The Brighton Mermaid

by Dorothy Koomson

  ‘Boy …’ Pope says, threateningly, telling his forty-year-old son not to defy him. ‘Boy …’

  ‘Come on,’ I say to Aaron.

  Aaron doesn’t move. The fear on his face is apparent, his body is almost rigid with the terror of going against his father. I hold out my hand. He can do this. He can walk away. Even for just a little while. He can do this: he can start to cut the cords that bind him to his abusive father. And I will help him.

  Nell

  Monday, 28 May

  There is stuff missing from my files.

  The way everything had been strewn around, screwed up, ripped and thrown, I hadn’t really thought it might have been to try to hide the fact that things had been stolen along with the computer hard drives. I haven’t had a chance to go through it since Zach did the initial living room tidy-up, and I did the office, and we both just piled stuff together and stacked it up. Having been through it now, I see that the stuff that’s missing is specific. As I suspected, it all relates to the Brighton Mermaid and to Jude. Every scrap of the stuff relating to the other mermaids that were found along the coast is also missing, probably because I didn’t take them to Leeds with me. I’d wanted Aaron to get me their DNA profiles, too, but it was too risky. He said he would do it, but I could tell he knew the second he did, it’d trigger an investigation that would lead right to him, so in the end I said we’d work without it. If we got any further with the Brighton Mermaid we’d go to the police about the others.

  The person who broke in spent a lot of time gathering that information from the stuff I had.

  Aaron has been sitting very quietly on my sofa, having a private, near-silent breakdown while I go through my papers. He was mute on the drive here, his eyes wide and fixed on the road ahead, his skin pale and clammy as though he had just been through a severe shock. Which, I suppose, he has. I was shocked and reeling a little, too. I’d never spoken to Pope like that before, so I can’t imagine what it must have been like for Aaron to just walk away.

  Right now, on my sofa, with his eyes wide and his mouth shut, I think Aaron Pope is trying very hard not to rock to soothe himself.

  ‘There’s stuff missing,’ I say, although I’m not expecting an answer. I’m saying it to say it out loud, a point of aural reference so I can look back in a while and remember that I said there is stuff missing. ‘Quite a bit of it.’

  I took a lot of paper files to Leeds with me, but not everything. Some of the newspaper cuttings, the ones with more in-depth reporting, have been stolen. I’d highlighted sections on some of them, like the fact her vest top was from a shop only found in Birmingham. The police didn’t have the resources to send someone up there to show her picture, but they’d faxed over the artist’s impression and spoken to someone on the phone, Pope told me, and no one had recognised her. He said they’d even persuaded a local news programme to do a mention about her along with the drawing, but no one had called in. Not even the usual cranks who called in for every police appeal. I’d managed to get the local newspaper item which ran at the same time, but that is missing.

  I’d also done so much research on her tattoo. The police hadn’t been able to find the tattoo artist who inked her ‘I am Brighton’ mermaid. It was so distinctive, so unique, the type of thing you would have to detail on a passport, but no one had recognised it. I’d also printed out many pages of tattoo chat forums where I’d asked lots of questions about the style of art and the potential copycat artists who might have done it. All of them had led nowhere, but I’d kept a record of those searches, hoping to come back to it at some point. All of that is gone, too.

  Everything relating to Jude is missing, as well. The photo of her that I’d pinned up. The photocopied pages from her diary that were in the original police reports that Pope passed on to me. All of the family tree stuff I have done, the contacts, the relatives I’ve found and been in touch with, the branches of family that have appeared along the way. Even though Mr Dalton has no blood relationship to Jude, I still put him on the family tree. And though it made it more complicated, trying to find out about his branch without that much information from him, I did the best I could. I did the best I could and Jude’s tree started to reach its natural end with nothing really to show for it. And yet, those years of painstaking work have vanished from my flat just like Jude disappeared from my life.

  Which means there must be a stronger link between what happened to Jude and what happened to the Brighton Mermaid than I thought.

  ‘There’s stuff missing,’ I repeat to the dust floating in the air, because Aaron is clearly not going to snap out of his near-catatonic state for a while.

  Is it really only those two files? All the others seem to be there. Maura Goodrich’s friend’s file is still there, I just saw that. But what about Craig Ackerman? I still don’t have his DNA back and I haven’t found out much about him. He said, when I took his family history, that his parents weren’t keen on him tracing his birth family so he couldn’t talk to them about what they knew. He hadn’t applied for his adoption records, which is where most people start when they are tracing birth family. And he wasn’t thrilled about giving a DNA sample. He didn’t protest, but I saw the surprise flash across his eyes when I mentioned it.

  I look down at the papers spread out all over the living room floor and frown before I get down on my knees again and look through them. His information, what little there was of it, is missing, too. If he is something to do with this, if he harmed Pope all those years ago when he thought he was getting too close, then he’s always known about me. About Macy. About Shane. It would be easy to get talking to Shane, get an introduction. Try to find out what I know. But why after all this time? What has changed to make him take such a risk? Was I getting closer and I didn’t realise it?

  Is there something that made him decide he had to meet me? Because looking back, his story is flimsy. The people who I have met who want to find birth parents have done some stuff themselves. Craig Ackerman had done nothing. But why would he meet me? Did he think I’d tell him what I know about the Brighton Mermaid and then he could decide how much of a threat I am to him? If that’s the case, the DNA must have panicked him. He must have been trying to get it back . Does that mean he fears he might have left some DNA behind at a crime scene?

  Hang on, hang on . I get to my feet, so quickly it brings Aaron out of his trance enough for him to frown at me. I go to the fridge-freezer in the kitchen.

  When I was waiting for the police, I did touch one thing – the fridge. All the stuff had been emptied out, the freezer drawers opened and partially emptied, and I couldn’t stand the frantic, panicked bleeping of the ‘door open’ alarm any longer, so I’d closed it. Didn’t tell anyone, just put as much back into the drawers as I could, shut them and went back to sit by the front door to wait for the police.

  I have a two-bedroom flat and I live alone, but I have a large fridge-freezer. In the freezer, in the compartment used to make ice, I store DNA samples. You wouldn’t know it because it has an inbuilt ice-tray with an insert you remove. Once the ice is made, you twist the handle and the ice is dispensed into the compartment below it. I have ice made, but I never use the compartment below because it is the perfect size to store the buccal sample tubes. It’s a bit eurgh if I think too deeply about having other people’s DNA where I store food, but generally I don’t think about it.

  I have some of Craig Ackerman’s DNA in my freezer. The backup samples I always keep in case something goes wrong. Well, something has gone wrong. Horribly wrong in a way that I could not have predicted. I need to know who Craig Ackerman really is.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Aaron asks from the doorway of my kitchen. I pull open the freezer door. The ice compartment wasn’t disturbed when I shut the freezer door. Maybe whoever trashed the flat, who took those specific files, didn’t think to look in the ice-cube tray or, if they did, didn’t think to look underneath it. Maybe, maybe …

  I pull out the ice-cube box and unclip the upper
tray. They’re still there, six sample tubes from the last DNA samples I collected, six sample tubes with my writing on the labels, each with their little swab end, sitting in stasis, waiting to be taken out and tested. I usually don’t need these backup swabs; I usually keep them six months until all the results are back and then I dispose of them. Three of them belong to Craig Ackerman.

  ‘I’m seeing if I still have Craig Ackerman’s DNA swabs,’ I reply.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The case I was working on a few weeks back, remember? The guy who was adopted and wanted to find his birth family, see if he had any other siblings or anything? Remember I told you that he hadn’t done much?’

  Aaron’s face tells me that he has no idea who I mean. ‘What’s he got to do with anything?’

  ‘All of this started happening not long after I met him. I didn’t think much of it, didn’t connect him and all the weird stuff, but since his files were taken with the Brighton Mermaid ones and Jude’s ones, it must be related. No pun intended.’

  ‘Maybe we should just leave it all alone,’ Aaron says tiredly. ‘It’s too much, all of this. We’ve wrecked our lives and maybe we should just let it all go.’

  What is this ‘let it all go’ nonsense? ‘And then what, Aaron? How are we supposed to tell the people who are trying to run us down and sending dead rats that we’ve decided to let it all go? Stand in the middle of the street and scream it out in the hope that whoever’s doing this hears us and stops trying to kill us?’

  ‘I don’t know if I can do this any more,’ he says quietly. ‘Before, when I was helping you and writing computer programs and going through the results with you, it was all a bit odd, a bit out there, and a way to get the whole Brighton Mermaid thing out of my life. But it wasn’t serious. Not like this. I could even tell myself my dad had an ordinary accident. But someone almost killed Sadie. They tried to kill me. They hurt you. This is too much. I don’t live in this kind of world.’

  ‘Aaron, whether we want it or not, we’re in this. Right in the middle of this. Your father put us there a long time ago and we’ve kept ourselves there for whatever reason. But there’s no way out of this now. We’re here, and we have to see it through to its conclusion.’

  ‘We really don’t,’ he states. ‘Look, I’m going to go home. See if I can make it up with my dad. Try to put all of this behind me. I think you should do the same.’

  ‘OK,’ I say to Aaron. What I want to do is scream at him that pretending it’s not happening won’t protect him; that if he goes back to his dad now, when not even four hours have elapsed since he made a stand, he’s going to be his father’s lackey for the rest of his life. But I can’t do that. I can’t be like Pope. I have to leave Aaron to find out the truth all by himself. I thought I was saving him earlier, but maybe I just pushed him too far, too fast. ‘You do what is best for you.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s best for me, Nell. Haven’t you worked that out yet? I do things because of other people, because of my dad, because of you. I’m never sure what’s best for me. But I’m scared. I think we could both end up really hurt, like Sadie in a coma, or worse. I just want us to both walk away from this thing while we still can.’

  ‘I can’t walk away from it. I have to see this through to the end.’

  Aaron rubs his fingers over his forehead, looks pained. Eventually he lowers his hand and sighs. ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘You don’t have to be involved in this, I can do it alone.’

  ‘Where would the fun be in that?’ he replies flatly. ‘What are you going to do?’

  I hold the three tubes in the palm of my hand. ‘We need these processed properly so we can find out who Craig Ackerman is and why he’s brought all of this into our lives.’

  ‘How are we going to do that? I don’t think I’m going to be able to persuade Dad to get one of his mates to help us.’

  ‘I’ll find a way,’ I reply.

  Oh, don’t worry, I know someone who’ll help us , I think. I just have to ask in the right way .

  Macy

  Monday, 28 May

  I’m hoping that Zach is right about the fakery of social media, and that nobody should need to call someone an amazing dad because he does those things by default. I’ve been thinking about it and I’m hoping those things are true, and that Clyde didn’t just leave because there was something wrong with our family. Not that I’d wish a lazy-arse fecker on anyone, I just don’t want to have been the reason he left. I want it to be something about him.

  I was normal with Clyde.

  Well, as normal as I could ever be, I suppose. I didn’t do half the things I do now and he still left. That’s what’s galling, I suppose. I’d clawed my way out of my teenage years, not completely unscathed but all right, met Clyde which seemed perfect and then it wasn’t for ever.

  I should probably go home because I can’t stay away for ever. That’s what the logical part of me says I should do. But the other part of me, the part that sees what I’m like, knows I should actually keep my distance. I don’t want my children to turn out like me. I wonder, sometimes, if this is another aspect of how my mind works, my new obsession. I think I can control how their lives turn out, how their mental health expresses itself by not exposing them to me. But what if me not being there is what will send them over the edge? It was loss that started this off for me. I know it. I can’t stop it, but I know it. First the loss of Jude, then the loss of Daddy as the man I knew him to be, then the loss of our life in Brighton. I got better. Much better. Then Clyde was lost to me and suddenly it was all back. I had to find ways to make the world understandable and controllable and clean. I like things that are clean.

  I stand at the door to Zach’s bathroom. It’s clean for now. I’m not sure which he prefers, actually, my drinking or my cleaning. Yesterday he came in from work and stood very still, looking around, and then went, ‘Well, OK. Thanks for cleaning, Macy. I, erm, appreciate it.’

  He didn’t look like he appreciated it.

  ‘It’s cleaning or drinking,’ I explained.

  ‘Well clean away, Macy. Clean away.’

  I can see why Nell liked him so much. I really can.

  Nell

  Tuesday, 29 May

  ‘I couldn’t believe it when I got your message,’ Zach says when he opens the door. ‘And now you’re here. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.’

  I really wish seeing him didn’t give me an almighty kick in my chest and stomach. I look him over and those kicks begin to pummel my heart. ‘I miss you ,’ I want to say. ‘I really, really miss you. I know we weren’t together for long, but I miss you so much .’ I have better things to think about, though, so I shove those feelings away, force them under the rug like an uncomfortable truth that needs to be hidden and ignored at all costs.

  ‘Like I said, I need your help.’

  I am all business. Even when he steps back and lets me into his flat, and I see the little silver coat hooks on the wall where I’d usually hang my bag, and the large framed map of Africa and its islands – each country a different colour, the River Nile a bright red line that snakes through eleven countries – that I almost always stopped in front of to gaze at. I don’t stop, I don’t indulge myself in the nostalgia of it, I stay focused. I remain all business.

  ‘Look, I know, and she’s all right,’ Zach says.

  ‘Pardon me?’ I reply.

  ‘You want my help to find your sister, right?’

  ‘Macy? You know about Macy?’

  ‘Yes. I, erm, yes.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘She called me. But she’s fine, that’s the main thing. She’s fine.’

  ‘No, that’s not the main thing at all. The main thing is: what the hell?! The main thing is: why did she call someone she has met for a total of five minutes? And the main thing is: why on Earth didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I don’t know why she called me; she said she got my number from your phone and said she wanted to talk a
bout you. I figured if you didn’t want to speak to me directly, you might do it through your sister – so I met her.’

  ‘And why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘She said she would disappear completely if I told you I’d spoken to or seen her. I didn’t want that. I knew you wouldn’t want that, either. So many people – women – go missing every year and I didn’t want that to happen to Macy, or for you to have to deal with it.’

  There is more. Much, much more.

  ‘Where is she?’ I ask. His face is broadcasting loud and clear where she is.

  ‘Right this second, I don’t know.’

  ‘But … ?’

  ‘She’s been staying here. In the spare room.’ He adds that last statement like it will make any of it any better.

  Is this what it’s been like for Macy with Shane? Does she feel like someone is slowly slicing away pieces of her heart? Is that why she decided to sleep with Zach – to make us even? ‘Did you sleep with my sister?’ I ask him. I know the answer – I just want to know if he’s low enough to lie about it.

  He does not look away or seem uncomfortable when he instantly replies, ‘No, I did not sleep with her. Or anyone else since you, in case you’re wondering.’

  ‘But … ?’

  This time he does glance away and wither a little more before dragging his gaze back at me. ‘But it’s been complicated. She’s not in a good place. I think getting away from it all has been good for her, but she’s still struggling.’

  I nod. ‘Right, so in other words my sister’s tried it on with you a few times and you’re not sure how much longer you’ll be able to resist her?’

  ‘I’ll be able to resist until the end of time,’ he says firmly. ‘You are all I want.’

  ‘I don’t have time for this,’ I say. ‘Sleep with her if you fancy it. It might clarify that what you do is nothing to do with me.’