The Brighton Mermaid

by Dorothy Koomson

  ‘Mr Okorie,’ said the policeman with the scar on his cheek and the hate in his eyes as he arrived in the dining room doorway. He looked satisfied with himself as he watched my dad being held down, as though one of his dreams had finally been fufilled.

  I looked at him and I knew instantly what this was – my father had made him feel small, weak and stupid. He knew he could never come up against Dad and have a physical advantage, so he had done the next best thing – he’d found someone else to do it for him.

  ‘Mr Okorie,’ he repeated, ‘we meet again. And I somehow knew it would be under these circumstances.’ He didn’t move from the doorway as he spoke. ‘Mr Okorie, do you remember that Christmas eleven years ago when you were found to be over the limit while driving a car? Oh yes, your solicitor claimed it was eighty milligrams of blood alcohol and therefore simply on the limit, but we all know the law is the law. They can’t stretch it to suit anyone. Why am I bringing this up? Because that “incident” helped to provide myself and my colleagues with your fingerprints.

  ‘After processing all of the fingerprints from Judana Dalton’s bedroom, we discovered evidence that you were in her room. All over it, in fact. Your fingerprints turned up in places where a grown man’s hands should not be in a young girl’s room. Which has led us to believe that you had something to do with Miss Dalton’s disappearance, and that you probably had something to do with the murder of the young woman your daughter so coincidentally found on the seafront.’

  ‘No! This isn’t right! This isn’t true! ’ I was silently screaming. ‘My dad’s the most gentle man in the world! He wouldn’t do any of what you’re saying! ’

  Mum’s eyes, already round from the shock of what was happening, widened even more. Macy had stopped screaming at some point, and I looked to see if she understood what was going on. She had her face in her hands and her shoulders were shaking.

  ‘It’s a shame your family had to be here to see this,’ the policeman continued. ‘But we were sure a big … black fella like yourself would resist arrest, so we couldn’t take any risks.’

  I shook my head. No, no. This can’t be happening .

  ‘Take him away and somebody inform him of his rights.’

  The six uniformed men hauled my dad up and carried him out of there like a side of meat, not like a human being at all. My dad hadn’t resisted, he hadn’t even said a word, had barely moved. They did not need to do that to him. They did not need to treat him like that.

  The policeman with the scar was staring at me now, controlling his face to hide his glee at the situation. ‘See you again soon, Miss Okorie,’ he said with a ghost of a smile. ‘Very soon.’

  He hadn’t made me cry, like he’d wanted two months ago, but he had got me. Finally. And, more importantly, he’d got my dad.

  Now

  Macy

  Saturday, 24 March

  The children are eating ice cream from small tubs with little wooden spoons. They chose their own flavours, they were over-generous with the sprinkles, and now they all sit on the same side of the wooden picnic bench niggling at each other in between mouthfuls. It’s not warm enough for ice cream, but when Shane mentioned it – quietly so they couldn’t hear – I said yes. Mainly to make up for the rubbish week they don’t know they have ahead.

  I watch them and think of the times when Nell and Jude and I could be like that. Daddy would take us out somewhere and we’d sit together, Nell and Jude often talking in their secret code, but sometimes letting me be a part of them. Sometimes Daddy would buy us ice cream, but we weren’t allowed to tell Mummy because she would freak out about us eating in the street and having food from vans when they were basically germ palaces.

  Over the years, I’ve tried to pinpoint where it was that our lives changed. That we stopped being able to do things like go out to the park, or hang out at one of Daddy’s grocery shops, or even just be a normal family.

  I used to think nothing was the same from that moment when Nell and Jude found the dead body on the beach. I know I’m supposed to call her by that name, but if I do, it makes everything about that time seem vaguely romantic, a mystery that has endured through the ages. And for everyone else, I’m sure it is. But the reality, when you’re on the other side of the mystery? Not so romantic. Not so charmingly intriguing.

  Nell and Mummy, I’m sure, think our lives were recast when Daddy was arrested that first time. I don’t blame them for thinking that. Seeing the barbarity of how the police took him, hearing the voice of that policeman, feeling the terror from Nell and Mummy and not being able to do anything – those were some of the worst moments of my life. But it wasn’t then.

  ‘Mama …’ Aubrey says in his well-rehearsed wheedling voice. He’s the youngest, the one closest to still being my baby, and therefore the most likely to get whatever he wants, so the other two regularly get him to ask for stuff.

  ‘Yes, darling?’ I reply in the same tone.

  ‘Can we have a tiny bit more ice cream?’ he asks.

  I look from Willow’s face to Clara’s face to Aubrey’s face. They all beseech me: Let us have this. We don’t get ice cream very often so, please, Mum, can we? Can we? Can we?

  ‘Yeah, sure, why not,’ I reply.

  This week’s going to hell in a handbasket anyway – why shouldn’t they arrive with rotting teeth and high blood sugar levels?

  Daddy had grocery shops called From Our Earth all along the coast, but the one in Hove was the first and the biggest. When people started coming to his shop they were curious about the vegetables and fruits from all over the world that he sold. He told Nell and me that people would come in and spend ages picking up things and saying, ‘And how would I cook this?’ ‘How would you eat this?’ ‘What does this taste like?’

  He held tasting sessions, cooking lessons, would give out recipe sheets. It took him a while, but eventually people started coming to From Our Earth on a regular basis. After nearly ten years in the business, he’d bought the shop next door and expanded, going on to open up places all along the coast. The Hove one took up a substantial part of the parade of shops that backed onto the seafront and was as much a part of the community as the fish and chip place five doors down.

  The week after Daddy’s arrest, the Hove shop was vandalised. Someone scrawled ‘MURDERER’ across the front window. The next night someone broke the front window. But it wasn’t even then that our lives changed.

  Everything was irrecoverably altered when Jude disappeared.

  Not the night everyone thinks she left, but the night she actually vanished. That was the night it went wrong. That was the night when I saw the thing that has been slowly driving me crazy for more than half my life. That was the night when I realised I could never really trust my father.

  Nell

  Saturday, 24 March

  He needs to see you.

  Five more of those messages this evening. Five more. I read this latest one in bed at 11:30 p.m. What does he think is going to happen? That I’m going to jump into my car and drive over there right this second? As if .

  I delete the message.

  I stare at my phone while it’s in my hand. Zach has been on my mind all day. I’d found his number earlier, slipped into the slanted zip-up pocket of my jacket, and I’d typed it into my phone because I didn’t want to lose it before I decided whether or not I am going to call him. There’s something about him … He has such self-confidence and self-possession but not a scrap of arrogance with it. I want to see him again.

  I know the clock is ticking, though, and I know, realistically, I don’t have a year. I have until the anniversary, so three months, if I’m lucky. But he agreed a year, negotiated up from six months. I have to find a solid, tangible genetic link out there that will keep him at bay and get me the full year.

  So I probably shouldn’t text Zach. I probably shouldn’t do anything that isn’t 100 per cent focused on finding out who the Brighton Mermaid is, and what happened to Jude.

  Zach’s k
isses, though … I thought it was the tequila making everything swirly, but it was him. It was all him. I haven’t met many men who have done that to me and seemed like decent blokes as well. I haven’t met many men who I could quite happily spend the day cuddling and chatting to, should I dismiss that because of what the man who is controlling me might do? Before I can change my mind, I type

  Not quite a call. But will it do? N x

  and hit send.

  My phone bleeps almost straight away.

  It will definitely do. Now I get to call. :) x

  I probably shouldn’t have done that, but it doesn’t have to change anything. I just have to work twice as hard now to make sure I hit my three-month deadline.

  Now

  Nell

  Sunday, 25 March

  Ring, ring, ring .

  I don’t need to look at the clock to see what time it is. It didn’t work yesterday, so she’s trying again today. Same time, different day. This is the afterwards of finding the Brighton Mermaid, of Jude disappearing. This is what I can’t walk away from.

  Ring, ring, ring .

  This is my second chance. An opportunity to make up for yesterday. This is what I am always doing. Making up for yesterday, or yesteryear.

  Ring, ring, ring .

  I don’t want to pick up the phone. For some reason I just don’t want to. I can’t face it. I want to hide away and not deal with anything today.

  After the high of yesterday, the reality has come crashing in on me this morning and I don’t think I can do it. I can’t take on Macy’s worries as well as everything else.

  Ring, ring, ring .

  I’m not going to do it. I’m just not.

  Ring, ring, ring .

  1993

  Nell

  Tuesday, 12 September

  ‘You know he was screwing your friend, don’t you?’

  The awful policeman with the hate-filled eyes and scar on his cheek was called John Pope and he was waiting for me at the bus stop. I didn’t see him until I’d got off the 1A with the other children from my school.

  When everyone else had gone, dispersed in their different directions, there he was, standing with his arms folded across his body, leaning against the shelter. It’d been two months since Jude had disappeared and the world was skew-whiff, odd-shaped and colour-less without her. It’d been just over two weeks since my dad was arrested. He’d been released without charge because the ‘evidence’ of Dad having been in Jude’s bedroom turned out to be his fingerprints on books that had come from my house. Dad often helped us with our homework and sometimes I left my books at Jude’s house, sometimes Dad used her ones to help us. Everything that had Dad’s fingerprints on had mine on them too. There were no other fingerprints anywhere else in Jude’s room, despite what John Pope had said the first time around.

  It was a week since Dad had been rearrested. This time because a witness had called to say they’d seen a man matching Dad’s description with a girl matching Jude’s description on the night she disappeared and they had seen him on the seafront the night the Brighton Mermaid was found. The second time they took him in, they’d kept him there for four days, getting the permission needed to do so, while various lines of investigation were pursued. Until they couldn’t hold him any longer and had to let him go.

  I’d seen John Pope around since that second time, staring at me, watching me – basically stalking my family – but he’d never spoken to me before. Now he was speaking to me, I couldn’t walk away. Like when they’d arrested Dad that first time, I wanted to move but my legs would not work.

  ‘You know it’s true, don’t you? Your father was screwing your friend and he got rid of her to make sure no one found out. Maybe she got pregnant. Maybe she was going to tell. But you know he did it. And you know, deep down, that he was probably screwing that poor girl you found, too.’

  It didn’t happen: Dad didn’t do that – he wouldn’t; Jude didn’t do that – she wouldn’t. I wanted to say that to him, but I knew if I spoke to him he would find something else to say that would smear horrible things in my ears and whittle hideous images into my mind. He just needed me to engage with him once and then he would never let me go.

  You’re sick , I thought. You’re sick and disgusting .

  ‘How does that make you feel?’ he asked. ‘To know your father is a pervert. Or did you already know how depraved your father is?’

  This was all my fault. I should have said no to Jude that night. I shouldn’t have let her convince me to go along with her to that party. I should have said no and none of this would be happening.

  ‘Think about it,’ John Pope said as he walked away. ‘Think about it.’

  Saturday, 16 October

  ‘Eastbourne Police say the body of a young woman that was found on the beach in the early hours of this morning is not that of missing Hove teenager Judana Dalton. Miss Dalton has been missing from her home since the fifteenth of July. Police are treating the death of this young woman as suspicious and are linking the incident to that of the death of the young woman dubbed the Brighton Mermaid, who was found on Brighton beach in June of this year by Miss Dalton and her friend Enelle Okorie. More details as we have them.’

  Silence exploded in our living room. We hadn’t been chatting when the news had started, but now a different type of hush fell over us as Mum paused in her crochet; Macy, who was stretched out on the floor in front of the sofa, immediately stuck her finger in her mouth and began chewing at her nail; Dad, who had been completing a crossword puzzle, stopped and looked up at the television; and I curled my knees even tighter to my chest, trying to make myself as small as possible.

  Wednesday, 20 October

  ‘He was right here with us,’ Mum said to the police officers. ‘All night. He was right here.’

  They weren’t in uniform and they had knocked on the door. They were polite – almost respectful – as they asked my father to come in to answer a few questions about the young woman who was labelled the Eastbourne Mermaid.

  Another mermaid. Another unidentified young woman who had been strangled; who had been left without shoes; who showed signs of sexual activity that was most likely assault (the papers had hinted that she’d been repeatedly raped); who was found within walking distance of one of Dad’s shops (‘walking distance’ being a good fifteen minutes).

  The officers smiled knowingly at Mum because, of course, they’d heard that sort of thing from a suspect’s family before, and then they repeated their request for Dad to come in for a talk.

  Dad got his coat and we all knew as he shut the door behind him that it was all going to start again. And it was going to be so much worse than before.

  Monday, 25 October

  ‘Are you Nell Okorie?’

  There were a group of them. Ten or so. Mainly boys, a couple of girls. They looked vaguely familiar, most of them being in the sixth form, so slightly older than me. Their pale white faces, cast grey in the falling darkness, all had the same expression: mouths single straight lines, eyes hard and narrowed.

  I’d been cutting down across the back fields of school to get to the little pathway that would take me to a bus stop closer to home. I’d started to avoid my usual bus stop on the main road because it felt like everyone was staring at me. Another mermaid, two arrests, one ‘chat under caution’, ‘MURDERER’ viciously scrawled across the Hove shopfront several times and countless home raids meant everyone knew who I was. It didn’t seem so bad for Macy – she still had her group of friends and she didn’t appear to be bothered by the stares and comments and whispers. Maybe it was different for me because I’d found the first woman and because I was Jude’s friend. But I couldn’t stand it, so I’d started to walk this way after school, and by the time I’d get to the bus stop, a few buses would have gone, most of the children would have got on them and I could get home relatively unnoticed.

  I hadn’t clocked this lot following me, and now they were all around me. I said nothing to the tall boy
who’d asked the question. He wouldn’t be asking if he didn’t already know.

  ‘Are you Nell Okorie?’ asked the even taller boy next to him.

  I said nothing and stared instead at the space between them. If I moved suddenly, I could fit between that gap and run for it. I could make it down the path that was a steady downward slope, through the line of trees, through the fence and out onto the main road. They wouldn’t do anything on the main road with loads of other people around. If I could make it to the main road I’d be—

  The first shove came from behind. The second shove came from behind also and didn’t let me right myself so I flew forwards, landed on my hands and knees, scraping away skin on the cold, hard earth. I moved to get up, and ‘Killer!’ one of them spat just before pain exploded in my side. Someone had kicked me.

  ‘Killer!’ came another voice, followed by another kick.

  ‘Killer! Killer! Killer!’ The world was suddenly filled with that word as I threw my hands over my head and curled forwards, trying to make myself really small as they kicked at me and chanted, ‘Killer! Killer! Killer!’

  ‘You must not tell your father,’ Mum said to me as she wrapped a bandage around my midriff. Nothing was broken, she’d explained, so I didn’t need a doctor or the hospital, but because I could barely walk without crying, couldn’t breathe without wincing, she was strapping me up.

  They’d got bored after a while and had then run away. I’d stayed curled up, cold and in agony for many minutes, wanting to be sure they weren’t waiting for me to uncurl so they could continue to hurt me.