The Heights

by Louise Candlish

  I get the transfer – obviously.

  If there are any of you yet to make the link between this programme and the one Kieran himself undertook, I’m sure you will now. Just as he met James Ratcliffe inside, so I now meet Felix Penney. I’m following in his footsteps, how about that? Poetic justice, dramatic irony, double tragedy?

  Take your pick.

  Killing Time (cont)

  There were grumblings in some quarters about the leniency of Saint’s sentencing – more of that anon. But lenient it was. Among those to give a character reference for her was Vic Gordon, the last time he has gone on record in discussion of his infamous ex-partner. He judged her ‘anxious’ and ‘emotional’, but ‘in no way harmful’. ‘The only thing she ever wanted from Kieran Watts was the truth,’ he said.

  With good behaviour – and her behaviour, according to the prison governor, has been exemplary – Ellen Saint will be a free woman again in time to enjoy the fanfare surrounding publication of Saint or Sinner. The initial print run is ‘bullish’, according to her publisher, though sceptics will be pleased to know that UK law prohibits convicts from profiting from their crimes. Proceeds will instead be donated to a charity of the family’s choice.

  Sunday Times magazine,

  December 2021

  Chapter 39

  I am adding this short final chapter just before my book goes to press. It has a title now – Saint or Sinner – an editor, a publisher, even a publicist. I have approved the image that will grace the cover: mugshot me – I suppose that was inevitable. Taken on the night of Kieran’s death, I look like an ageing punk mildly inconvenienced by having been booked. (Justin told me that Vic said it reminded him of that famous mugshot of David Bowie from the 1970s. He had a poster of it on his wall when we met as students.)

  Release day is coming soon, in both senses of the word.

  According to my publisher, the media are interested in meeting with me, even shadowing me on the day itself and documenting my return to society. There’s been a call from the journalist from the Sunday Times magazine who sat in on our group months ago. Michaela Ross, she’s called. She’s read the full manuscript now and wants to schedule a big feature, maybe even a cover story, with photographs taken in the library. Imagine that!

  To be honest, I didn’t sense that Ms Ross liked me much the first time we met, so I don’t hold out much hope for a sympathetic portrayal. But who am I to talk about sympathetic portrayals? I doubt that Prisca will recognize mine of Kieran – or of herself, for that matter. Nor will James Ratcliffe or Jade or Sheridan, maybe not even Justin and Freya, who have visited me regularly here and support this project. Support me. And, believe me, I know just how lucky I am that they have not disassociated themselves from me and hidden themselves away. Instead, they consider me altered by my crime, cured by the act of retelling.

  I have not seen Vic. Through Justin, I asked that he not try to see me or contact me. As I told him the last time we were alone together, he needs to forget about me and focus on his new family.

  When the book comes out, the publisher is going to donate copies to prison libraries across the UK and Felix and I are scheduled to give a series of talks to women prisoners. I’ve been to those sorts of events myself while I’ve been here. They usually hold them in the sports hall. An outside speaker comes in and for a blessed hour you could be anywhere in England where educated people like to gather. The only difference is there’s no glass of wine, no bowl of crisps. No handbag on your lap or car key in your pocket. Only a faint guarded fascination in the speaker’s eye when it comes to rest on you. I wonder what she did.

  I will try my best not to look like that.

  And, then, after it all dies down, what next?

  Felix wants me to write fiction. ‘In many ways, it’s much easier than memoir,’ he tells me.

  Yes, I say. I imagine it is.

  PART FOUR

  Killing Time (cont)

  If there is one certainty to take from our society’s long history of crime and punishment, it is that we humans have a habit of repeating the actions of those who came before us. Sometimes, very recently indeed.

  On the two occasions I meet Ellen in HMP Langton, she gives no indication of knowing that while she has been busy writing a campaign has been launched outside to review the sentencing for her offence. Lock Ellen Up for Longer, in other words. There is no national newspaper partner, no army of supporters – it is progressing, in fact, in a style that is discreet to the point of covert – and yet its instigator, Prisca Evans, is no less tireless a warrior than Ellen herself ever was.

  ‘Encouraging or assisting suicide is a serious offence,’ she tells me in an email sent just before this piece went to press. ‘Let’s be honest, it’s the difference between life and death, isn’t it?’ A couple of recent cases in the US have given her hope that lawmakers in the UK will take a new look at the tariffs recommended for this highly unusual crime.

  ‘Meanwhile, I’m here to remind people that there’s a woman about to be released who directly and intentionally caused a man’s death,’ she says. ‘If Ellen Saint hadn’t involved herself in Kieran’s life, my boy would still be alive and getting the mental health support he obviously needed.’

  A fascinating parallel, I’m sure you agree. And just imagine if we were to follow this to its logical conclusion: Ms Evans might one day close her emails, seek out her nemesis and take the law into her own hands. She might even find herself jailed as a consequence, doing her time perhaps in the very unit Saint now occupies. Writing the story of her crime.

  But, no. That would be too incredible an ending, even for Felix Penney.

  Wouldn’t it?

  Sunday Times magazine,

  December 2021

  Vic

  December 2021

  He’s already turning the pages when he gets back to Skylark Apartments and waits for the lift, shamelessly scanning the print for his own name. Having torn open the plastic wrapper in the street outside the newsagent’s, he had the surreal experience of clapping eyes on Ellen on the cover of the Sunday Times magazine while treading on a discarded box of chicken bones. They’ve photographed her at her desk in the prison library, which looks pretty much like any other library in the land, and she’s not dressed in one of those prison jumpsuits you see on TV but in drab garments any civilian of limited means might wear.

  All in all, she looks OK, he thinks. There is none of her old glamour, of course, but she’s lost that terrible haunted quality he remembers. She looks earthly again, even at peace.

  The coverline reads, ‘Killing Time: The Sins of Ellen Saint’.

  Clever. But, then, the name’s a gift, isn’t it?

  * * *

  ‘Hey, you got it,’ India remarks, when he lets himself into the flat. Through their son’s open bedroom door, he can see Milo on the floor with his Noah’s ark shape sorter. He’s much too busy to call out to Daddy and is mercifully uncomprehending of any conversation involving words of more than one syllable. ‘Remind me when Justin said she gets out?’

  ‘Three days before publication, apparently,’ Vic says. ‘So that’s a week tomorrow. He’s bracing himself for all the publicity.’

  ‘What about their daughter?’

  ‘He’s shielding her from it as much as possible, but she sounds pretty strong. She’s coming home for Ellen’s release, but he thinks once she’s had some time with her mum, she’ll go and stay with her boyfriend for a while. Lie low there until the new term restarts. She’s in her final year at Warwick now.’

  ‘Sounds sensible.’ India has half an eye on the shape sorting. The wrong shape is being smashed into the wrong hole, causing volcanic frustration. She makes an encouraging noise and turns back to Vic. ‘Two years. It seems like no time, does it?’

  ‘It’s gone by really quickly.’ Though perhaps not so for Ellen.

  ‘Do they mention Common or Gordon in the article?’ Though technically only part-time now, India is always thinking about th
e business. It – and Milo’s future – is shaping up nicely.

  ‘I haven’t read it yet,’ Vic says, ‘but I don’t think so. I’m not really in it, thank God.’

  She nods. ‘I’ve just made a new pot of coffee. You have some time, read it properly.’

  She closes Milo’s door behind her and Vic hears her enthusiastic cry as she joins the fun. He does as he’s told and pours himself a coffee, sits down to read. It’s not a long feature, but the photographs and an extract from the book mean it extends to six pages. The final argument is a bit of a stretch, in his opinion. A little flight of fantasy on the part of the journalist, who plainly didn’t warm to Ellen. Whatever Prisca hopes to achieve, the crime is surely too rare for her campaign to gain traction in the mainstream media and, in any case, it is far too late to have an impact on Ellen herself. As for the notion of her following in Ellen’s footsteps and coming after the enemy vigilante-style… No, he can’t see it. Ellen is a one-off, all heart and soul, all intensity.

  He turns the page to the extract – they’ve chosen the night of Lucas’s death, when a sleepless Ellen has a premonition that something terrible has happened, hours before the knock on the door confirms it. But Vic doesn’t need to read that because he’s already consumed Saint or Sinner in its entirety, having been sent an advance copy by Ellen’s publisher several weeks ago.

  He took the day off work for the task, reading the last few chapters three times to check he hadn’t missed any clue regarding his own role. His final appearance comes on the evening of Kieran’s death, when he gives Ellen a lift to the station in his van and breaks the news about the baby. His final line is nicely prosaic: ‘You forgot your bag.’ Then, the very last reference to him comes in the closing chapter, about how Ellen wants him to forget her and concentrate on his new family.

  Which is exactly what he has done.

  Her account of Kieran’s death is immaculately handled. It is not only consistent with the official record but also quite poetic in its way – what was that line Vic liked? Something incurable has been cured, that’s right. She’s managed to construct an outcome of perfectly balanced justice, of symmetry – It is what I’ve dreaded and desired for as long as I can remember… The push and the jump are one – that doesn’t often occur in real life.

  It certainly didn’t occur in this one.

  Because, whatever else is true in Ellen’s soon-to-be-bestselling memoir, he knows for certain that Chapter 37, her account of Kieran’s death, is nothing more than a beautiful lie. Everything after Kieran tells her ‘You don’t need your gun’ is pure fantasy. A deliberate, self-sacrificing cover-up of the truth.

  And Vic is its only beneficiary.

  Vic

  19 December 2019

  From the footbridge, The Heights is a natural focal point thanks to the window halfway up thickly draped with lights, the oblique glimpse beyond of a seething Christmas party. Through its opening, the bells are ringing out – it’s ‘Fairytale of New York’, everyone’s favourite – overlaid with human shrieks and cackles. The storeys above and below are dark, but for the very top, where pale light from both window and skylight suggests the occupant is at home.

  Of course he is, Vic thinks. The flat is a mousetrap, but whether Kieran or Ellen is the one operating that trap, he does not know.

  He zigzags through the passageways to reach the top of Mill Street, then spends a moment at the main doors examining the entry-phone keypad. He is counting on the code remaining unchanged from the day he watched James Ratcliffe key it in and committed it to memory. Presumably, it’s an easy enough task to change it and inform the other residents, but the fatalism in Kieran’s manner that day makes Vic think he will not have done so. His dilemma these last weeks has not been if Ellen will come for him but how he will overcome her when she does.

  Well, tonight’s the night. Vic knows this not only because of the significance of the date – to Ellen, that will make her actions feel predestined – but because she as good as gave the game away herself in the car. I said this is nothing to do with you, she told him, in clear reference to Kieran, and yet Vic had only offered to go to a client’s party with her. Then there was the ferocity with which she snatched her bag from him, a different bag from the one she’s used for as long as he can remember. She has something in that bag that matters to her. Something that could harm Kieran.

  The code works! The door releases and he makes straight for the stairs; there is no time to lose waiting for the lift. He prays he is not too late. Once he’d ditched his car near the station and waited for the next direct train to London Bridge, he calculated that Ellen had only a half-hour head start on him. But then his train stalled owing to a signalling fault and put her lead at closer to an hour.

  As he climbs, the music from the party grows louder and then begins to fade. He reaches the top landing. His legs ache and his chest burns, but he can’t afford to rest. Ahead is that narrow window, with its glimpse of Tower Bridge, all lit up for its photo op. He raps on Kieran’s door. It opens at a push and he knows he was right. She’s here. She must have forced her way in and driven Kieran back before he could shut his own door properly. As he moves noiselessly into the main room, he half-expects to see blood spattered on the walls, Kieran’s mutilated body slumped in a corner. But it is unoccupied and, as far as he can tell, undisturbed.

  At first, he hears only the thud of the party below and perhaps the hum of an appliance of some sort, but then he picks out voices from above. As he creeps silently up the spiral to the mezzanine, he remembers his own advice to Kieran: Just get yourself out here. I guarantee she won’t follow. It seems he may have been wrong, however, because here she is, her slim black-clad figure poised on the threshold, her back to Vic.

  He prefers to stay unnoticed for now, to get a sense of her intentions, but Kieran’s voice drifts in – ‘Here’s the deal, Ellen. And you don’t need your gun’ – and Vic cries out without thinking:

  ‘What gun?’

  Ellen pivots to face him, her features twisting with confusion and annoyance. Her bag is over her shoulder, resting at hip height, with her right hand obscured. Does she really have a weapon? She must for Kieran to have said that. It is both surreal and frightening to know his instinct at the station was correct. She has come here to kill.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here, Vic?’ She answers her own question: ‘You followed me.’

  He swallows his panic and steps towards her. ‘No, but I guessed. Where is he? Is he all right?’ He can’t see beyond her from where he stands and she now widens her stance to block his path out to the terrace. He pictures Kieran hanging off the balustrade by his fingertips like one of those free climbers. ‘What gun?’ he repeats. ‘Show me, Ellen.’

  As if it were nothing, she twitches her right wrist to give him a glimpse, stepping adroitly aside when he tries – and fails – to reach for it. This at least allows him access to the terrace. As the sharp air hits his face, he registers Kieran in the unlit space, pressed dangerously backwards against the balustrade, as if he cannot support his own weight—

  Oh, God, has she already used that gun? Vic feels a clench of terror in his chest. But no, impossible. He’d have heard the shot, and so would everyone in the building. All those partygoers in the flat down there, they’d be screaming and fleeing, but, instead, the music plays on and their revelry is audible above the beat.

  ‘Well, you’re just in time,’ Ellen tells him, her voice pitiless. ‘He’s going to do us all a favour and fall.’ Addressing Kieran, she snarls, ‘Did you hear that? I’ve got no interest in any deal. I’m in charge here.’

  Vic gapes. He’s going to fall? She’s forcing him to jump at gunpoint? Ignoring Ellen’s protests, he strides over and grabs the young man by the shoulders, manhandling him a few feet forward and away from the drop. It is the first time he’s touched Kieran since – when? A slap on the shoulder as he exited his flat with Lucas in the summer after sixth form? Under his hoodie Kieran’s body is solid.
He’s made himself muscle-bound, a new version of himself. With this strength and youth, he should be able overpower the two of them – if he weren’t being threatened with a gun.

  Where the fuck did she get hold of it? The same place she once looked for a contract killer, he supposes. It figures that she’s cut out the middle man this time.

  He and Kieran stand facing each other, both breathing heavily. There is wary gratitude in the younger man’s face, a throwback to the ambush in the woods, when he understood that the rope Vic was throwing was to save him, not to hang him. It’s obvious he regards Vic as his ally in this crisis, not Ellen’s. It’s the two of them against the crazy lady. ‘Thank you,’ he mumbles.

  ‘Don’t thank me,’ Vic tells him curtly. He wants to save him, but that doesn’t mean he has to like him. He’ll never like him. He addresses Ellen. ‘Why don’t we all go inside and talk about this?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk.’ The hand holding the gun jerks. ‘If he doesn’t jump, if I let him live, he’ll hurt her, he’ll do to her what he did to Lucas.’

  ‘Who?’ Vic says.

  ‘Freya, of course.’

  What is she talking about? She can’t mean Kieran is back behind the wheel – and why would he be in a car with Freya Saint, anyway? Cries rise from the open window below and a few seconds later a helium balloon in the shape of a Christmas tree drifts past, trailing a silver ribbon. Glancing down, Vic sees the water far below, shivering in the lights of the dock.

  ‘What deal?’ he says to Kieran. ‘You said, “Here’s the deal”. What is it?’ He prays it wasn’t just some desperate tactic of Kieran’s to create an opportunity to save himself, that the bastard really does have something to trade.