The Little Death

by Sarah Till

  She bangs on the table and I jump.

  ‘I don’t know. Sarah.’

  ‘I can’t. There’s nothing inside. Nothing at all. Of course, I get the urges that we all get, and on one level I get on with life – what choice do I have? I was only trying to help you, and I still think that a good fuck would help you take that poker from up your arse, but what do I know? I’m just a woman who can’t look after my own child. I should have looked after her better.’

  I flicker back to the letter I found amongst my own mother’s belongings and Polly’s stories about how she had doubted herself.

  ‘But it wasn’t your fault, Sarah. Nothing you could have done could have stopped the accident happening.’

  ‘You know why he was taking her out, though? So I could have some time to myself. To go to the beautician, have a leg wax, get my eyebrows plucked. Do some meditation. Yep. I sent my daughter away so I could keep my body beautiful, all for someone else.’

  ‘You couldn’t have known though. Please Sarah, you couldn’t have known.’

  ‘And she’d been at her father’s. So that bastard was the last one to see her alive, except me. And of course my partner. But he just put up with her, waiting until the next time I was on my own so he could screw me on this table.’

  I look at the dark wood and can almost predict what’s coming next..

  ‘Yes, right here. I’ve done it here with Gabriel too. In fact, most men I’ve brought home. We don’t usually talk about it do we, sex and death? It’s all stilted and awkward. But not for me, because it’s all that’s left for me. Sex and death.’

  ‘I know. He told me about his night with you. He was with me after that. We were planning to be together. At least that’s what he told me, until he shacked up with you.’

  She walks towards me and puts her hands on my shoulders.

  ‘For the last time, Patti, he’s not here. I haven’t seen him since that night. Anyway, I think you’ve got more to worry about than that. A girl from David’s school has gone missing. That’s where I’ve been, helping the parents find her. I’ve been advising ...’

  ‘Oh fuck off, Sarah. That’s even lower than telling Polly you know where Jimmy is. Don’t you have a conscience? Helping missing children’s parents? You’re making it up.’

  ‘I’m not. I was at the school earlier, and David was organising a benefit for her, helping the children to make posters. They think she’s run away. David was on the TV, on the news.’

  She flicks the TV onto the news channel, and David is there, large as life on her plasma screen. I’m mesmerised. I think that he looks a bit pale, and that his shirt collar is grubby. There are deep bags under his eyes, ridges in his forehead. The birth defect that runs through his family’s teeth is more pronounced now, and his teeth look yellow. He’s talking to blonde reporter.

  ‘So, Mr Anderson, what kind of pupil is Samantha Lewis?’

  ‘Well, she was very gifted. Very gifted indeed. She was in the school orchestra, and she was very good at maths. She was a wonderful girl, wonderful.’ He raises his hands to his eyes and I almost feel sorry for him. His nails are grubby and his hands rough. Very unusual for David. The reporter turns to the camera and continues.

  ‘Samantha disappeared from home eight days ago. Her parents had reported her missing the evening she disappeared, but as she had taken objects from her room, they assumed she had run away, perhaps after a teenage argument. But as Samantha hasn’t been seen for more than a week, the police are stepping up their enquiries. The police have issued this photograph of fifteen-year-old Samantha, known to her friends as Sam. They have also asked people to look out for a blue hooded jacket missing from her room, and a pink music box.’ A picture of the music box appears on the screen and I turn to Sarah, who begins to speak.

  ‘So really I need to see Gabriel. The thing is, Patti, and I don’t really know how to tell you this now, now that you’ve told me that you and Gabriel are together. The thing is, I’m pregnant.’

  I run out of the house and back to my own, as fast as I can. My legs are heavy and will hardly move, but I make it back and push the door open. Sarah stands in her garden and watches me as I sprint.

  ‘I’m sorry Patti. I didn’t mean for this to happen, but I’m keeping it. It’s my last chance.’

  I hardly hear her as I scrabble about in the drawer for the phone Gabriel gave me. Sarah’s in the doorway now, still talking.

  ‘I got one of those early pregnancy tests and it was positive. If you can just let me know where he is, he has a right to know.’ I run outside with the phone and she follows me. ‘I won’t be asking him for any financial...’

  ‘Shut up. Shut up Sarah. Just for a fucking minute, shut up.’

  I dial Gabriel’s number and listen for the faint ringing. We follow the ringing towards the barn, but it stops. I ring it again, and this time it’s louder, behind the barn. I stare at a corn chute, a storage box dug deep into the ground. The blue light of the phone is flashing on and off and I try to pull the door open. I can see a brown and blue through the wooden lats, and the green of a tarpaulin. The worse thing is, I can smell the musky ginger of him. There’s a faint smell of sherbet lemons, and the overpowering smell of freshly dug peat. I pull the wood at it with all my might but it won’t budge, so I dig at the sides with my nails, deep into the earth, on and on.

  ‘Gabriel! Oh God. Gabriel.’ I’m clawing at the earth, my fingers bleeding, and pulling at the wood. ‘Gabriel! No, please. No.’

  Sarah’s crying now, and she pulls me away.

  ‘We have to ring the police. We have to.’ I almost pull her over and she lets go. ‘Please, Patti, stop. We have to phone the police.’

  ‘Go away Sarah. I’m not leaving him here. I’m not. You ring them if you want. And tell them about David.’ I stand up and scream to her. ‘Tell them!’

  ‘What? What? What about David? I don’t understand?’

  ‘Don’t you get it? Holy shit, Sarah. Your psychic fucking powers are failing you now. Sam. Sam and David. Samantha. The girl on the TV. She plays cello in his orchestra. She was there that day at the school. He had her music box in his workshop. You know, the one that’s missing from her bedroom.’

  Her hand goes to her mouth and she looks at the bunker.

  ‘No. No, he wouldn’t. He was on the TV. He started a search fund at the school. He was talking to me earlier about her. Patti, he was genuinely concerned. He was talking to her parents, comforting them.’

  ‘Course he was. He’s trying to cover for himself. He hasn’t been here for days. Told me he was leaving after a row with Gabriel. Then, the next morning, Gabriel was gone. I thought he was with you. Oh my God.’

  She rings 999 and in ten minutes the police are here. We hear the sirens and see the blue lights long before they get here. Even before they reach the top of the road, the death tourists are here, cars stopped rubber necking like human crows, waiting for the accident, disappointed when the police van pulls into my drive. Sarah ushers them to the back of the barn, two uniformed officers in a van. I hear them radio for backup, and I go out to the wheelie bin and pull out the rubbish for the week. Inside are the remnants of the music box, and as I touch the ballerina, she springs to life and ‘Love Story’ begins to play in a weird, twisted fucked up tone.

  The Moorland Fires

  Gamekeepers are employed by the estate to keep the moorland in good heart. They protect the birds from predators like foxes, cuckoos and crows which steal the eggs and they maintain the heather the grouse need for both feeding and nesting. It must be tall enough to provide cover with plenty of fresh new growth to feed on.

  To facilitate this, they carry out a programme of controlled burning, when strips of heather are burned in rotation to ‘shock’ the heather seed into setting and producing healthy, vigorous growth. It’s contentious issue. Some claim that burning destroys valuable flora and fauna and threatens wildlife habitats, and if not done properly can even alter the physical structure of the s
oil and the appearance of the landscape. While Defra acknowledge the advantages of burning, they emphasise it should be carried out under licence and according to strict guidelines.

  The moorland fires pave the way for regeneration of the cycle, and are associated with the waning moon and death, but also with the dark of the moon and rebirth. Life continues despite the shock to the system.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I can’t stand it. I’m in the house with two detectives while the police work outside. I’m shaking, in shock, and a little bit tired of Sarah, who has assumed her role as medium to the whole spiritual world. I’m staring at her in disbelief, hoping that this is only because she wants more work from the police, more opportunities to pretend she knows where dead people are.

  I notice a TV van with a satellite dish outside, and cringe. A lady police officer makes me hot, sweet tea, and I sit in the lounge, on my huge leather sofa, hugging my knees. Eventually, the plain clothes arrive, have a look around and set about me.

  ‘OK, love, I’m DI Stuart McGuiness. And this is DC Wilson. We’d just like to ask a few questions about what’s happened. I’m just going to have a look round first.’

  Off they go, round my home, touching my things, opening doors and windows. Looking out across to the barn. There’s someone here with a fingerprinting machine. I was expecting an ink pad and paper, like you see on films, but this is a small device, and the woman places each of my fingers onto it. Someone is actually dusting the house with white powder.

  DI McGuiness returns and opens a notebook.

  ‘Right then. What’s happened here?’

  I redden.

  ‘I don’t know where to start.’

  ‘Well, we’ve got three missing persons potentially involved in this, all linked to you. Do you want to start with your cousin?’

  ‘Yes. Yes. We were very close, then when I left home and my mum died, we sort of grew apart. First I knew of her running away was yesterday, when I phone my Uncle.’

  ‘Right. So what made you phone your Uncle?’

  ‘I’d had a row with David. I broke into his workshop over there and found this bracelet. Like mine, see?’ They all lean forward to see the bangle. ‘I thought it was my Aunties, that he’d been sleeping with her, but then Polly looked at it with her eyeglass and she saw Leanne’s name.’

  ‘Polly?’

  ‘Mmm. She’s this woman who’s searching for her partner on the moors. The plane wreckage. I’ve been helping her. I think I found his shoe.’ The policemen look confused, and who could blame them. ‘Her partner Jimmy Jones went missing years ago. She’s been up there every day.’

  He sighs.

  ‘But the case is closed. There are no more bodies up there, as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘Yes. So you say. But what if I hadn’t been a jealous cow? What if I’d just let Gabriel leave, let David slope off, been selfish? Then you wouldn’t be here, would you? This could have gone unnoticed for years, like other missing people who stay on your files, but are never found. How many are there?’

  ‘Well, of course, it’s true to say that we don’t solve every case. But we do our best, and now we need to see to this. If you give DC Wilson the details, we’ll take the shoe and match it to the case and get someone to look into it.’

  I sigh.

  ‘All right. Where were we?’

  ‘The bracelet. Which we’re going to have to take as evidence, I’m afraid.’

  ‘So Leanne? Is she still missing?’

  ‘We checked our files and yes, your cousin is still missing. Her parents have had no contact with her for two years.’

  No contact. I remember cutting my cash card in half and pushing it down a grid. Working out elaborate ways I could get cash to spend. To pay the rent in the squat. Oh yes, we still had to pay rent. My teeth were rotten because I didn’t want to register with a dentist. I had no name, no national insurance number, I even changed the way I looked, from well-built and blonde to a skinny, heroine-chic brunette with speed teeth. It was a constant challenge, and one that led me down cash-in-hand avenues I didn’t know existed. I’d done it, and I wondered again if that’s where Leanne was? But then, how had David got her bangle?

  ‘Have there been any campaigns? By Missing People, or anything?’

  ‘No. Her parents are so upset they haven’t managed to do anything yet.’

  Another car pulls into the drive. We’re all momentarily distracted, and Sarah spots him first.

  ‘Bloody hell. It’s David.’

  No one moves, and he rushes into the room and stand in front of me.

  ‘What have you done, Pat? What have you done? Why are all these police here? What have you done with Samantha?’

  I stare at him, open mouthed.

  ‘Me?’

  He looks at DI McGuiness.

  ‘She was always jealous of her. Jealous of a schoolgirl. She’s even been into school, trying to accuse me of having an affair. Look, I’ve got her on CCTV, in the corridor with me.’

  He’s looking more manic now, and two officers move in behind him. He doesn’t see, and he thrusts the disc into DC McGuiness’ hands.

  ‘You need to calm down. Sir. Please. Just calm down.’

  ‘Calm down? She’s taken Sam. She’s taken her. Look.’ He points to the broken music box. ‘She’s smashed that up.’ He looks at me, his face soft. ‘Come on, Patti, the games up. Come on.’

  His arms are out, as if he’s going to hold me, comfort me, just before the police take me away. It’s so contrived that I can hardly believe it, but why wouldn’t everyone else? They don’t know him like I do. He walks up to me and he’s breathing in my face. I can see the tipping point approaching rapidly, the big vein throbbing in his head, the pulse in his jaw, banging now. The day-old stubble is bristling almost next to my face and his arms are on me, looking like a hug, but so tight I can hardly breathe. No one is doing anything, and I could kick him away from me, push him to the floor, but no. All these years I’ve been alone with him, with his cruelty, with his control, he’s had me here, a prisoner with no walls.

  I guess it’s a bit like Stockholm syndrome, where the hostage learns to live with the captor. I’d learned to live with his violence, his psychopathic reasoning and his infidelity. The puzzling aspect of it was that if he’d harmed Leanne, Sam and Gabriel, why hadn’t he killed me? He said he would enough times. He’d held me on the floor with a glass table over my neck, threatening to bring it down. He’d had a razor-sharp knife so close to my jugular vein that it had scratched my skin. So why hadn’t he done it?

  Everyone watched as he faux hugged me, I could see the police behind me waiting to pounce, but no one moved. I had my audience. He’d just tried to suggest that I had hurt Sam, out of some kind of misplaced jealousy. No doubt he had something ready for Leanne and Gabriel too. Who knows, he might talk the police round. He might, given a chance, convince them that I am mad, a lunatic, like he has spat at me over and over again. I should see someone. I’m insane. Maybe he’ll produce all the records from my visits to counsellors and doctors, to support it. Or cite my inability to carry a child, my biggest weakness, as a reason for my madness. It was all within his range.

  Still, no one moves, and his body is becoming hot. I can hear my joints crack as he crushes me. I know him, he likes to build up to an attack, to convince me that he’s really loving me. Once, he kissed me then bit my lip until it bled. Then threatened to kill me if I told anyone. He’s crushing me harder, and my ribs are hurting, my breath short. What seems like hours has been a couple of seconds, and I’m watching his jaw clench, ready for the attack. You see, seeing is believing. There are so many combinations, so many probabilities of what could happen next, ways David could get away with this. He’s very convincing, you know. He even convinced me, right at the beginning, the girl with no faith, that he loved me. For all I know, he could have been planning to blame me all along, setting me up to hate Sam, to sleep with Gabriel. If he’s killed him, and they find hi
s body, I’ll be all over him. My skin had only just rubbed against his, my lips brushed his, he would have my skin under his fingernails, and my smell still on him. I wonder, for a moment, what would have happened if I hadn’t climbed out of his bed and gone back to my own?

  David’s skin is glistening now, and a drop of perspiration glides down his neck and onto his shirt collar. So familiar, another danger signal that any minute he will erupt. My primal instinct to fight and run kicks in, the point where I would struggle, where any animal threatened with its life would try to bolt. This time I fight it and stay still. Seeing is believing. I need them to see. I need someone to see how I’ve suffered, the years of blows reigned on me, the purple bruises, the days, sometimes weeks, recovering from a swollen face, blue and black. Wondering if I will look the same afterwards, knowing he will never let me go to hospital, no matter what he does. I need a definite outcome, no chance of doubt, and there’s only one way.

  His hand’s up now, and I see the glint of steel before they do. He’s still holding me with one arm, but he misjudges the first blow, and I bite into his hand, through his skin. I stare at the blood and see everyone move in a blur. Someone screams, and he’s caught one of the policemen with the knife. I’m automatically covering my head from the blows, but I see the blade close to my face; it catches my hair and a length of it falls on the floor. Again, but I duck and he and catches my ear.

  It’s over in a second, and the room is full of blood and police. I’m sitting with my knees to my chest, holding my head, and DC McGuiness touches me.

  ‘It’s all right, Patti. It’s over. Are you all right?’ I look up, lopsided because my long hair has been partially shorn, and he looks over me, his eyes resting on my neck. ‘Did he do that as well?’ he points to the black and yellow bruises around my neck, and I suddenly realised how close I came to dying that day.