The Blame Game

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The Blame Game Page 25

by C. J. Cooke


  When Reuben goes back to his room, Jeannie studies me with narrowed eyes. ‘How did that tag end up on the teddy?’ she says slowly.

  The tag and collar lie on the bed in front of us like an explosive device.

  45

  Helen

  7th September 2017

  ‘How long has the tag been on the teddy?’ Jeannie says.

  It’s like asking me how big the universe is. ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Was it there when you were in Belize?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘What about when you were in Mexico? Could one of the people on the tour group have done it?’

  I put my face in my hands, my mind racing. ‘I don’t know.’

  She folds her arms, flustered. ‘Maybe we should ask Reuben …’

  ‘It’ll be in the photographs,’ I say. ‘Michael took loads of photographs.’

  ‘Wasn’t his camera destroyed in the crash?’

  I nod. ‘But Reuben set up a thing called Dropbox so we could upload all our photographs. Michael uploaded all the photos to save storage on the camera.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘It’s online.’

  She rolls her eyes. ‘I know Dropbox is online. I mean, where’s your device? Have you got a tablet or were they all destroyed in the crash?

  ‘We can use Reuben’s iPad. I think I just have to sign in.’

  We call Reuben back into the room and ask him very gently if we can borrow his iPad. He’s reluctant to give it over but Jeannie offers to buy him a pair of top-of-the-range headphones, then promises to get his iPad’s cracked screen fixed, and he agrees. Luckily he recalls the password, too, and within seconds I’m back on our holiday, confronted by over four hundred images of Before. Images of the humpback whales, of Michael and Saskia posing on the boat, their arms around each other and their faces lit up with smiles. Images from just three, four weeks ago, and yet a lifetime ago.

  ‘It’s OK, Helen,’ Jeannie says, rubbing my back when I start to cry. ‘Stay focused. Deep breaths. We’re just looking for the tag, remember?’

  There are hardly any images of Jack-Jack. There is one on the plane at Heathrow, a blurry picture of Saskia in a window seat with the teddy on her lap, giving Reuben a cheeky grin. I figure out how to zoom in – the tag is there, a small but definite round shape at his neck.

  ‘Progress,’ Jeannie says.

  I find images from before the holiday, from months ago. Christmas photographs: Michael captured bleary-eyed and mid-yawn in our living room on Christmas morning as Saskia rips Santa-themed wrapping paper from her new toy pram, eyes wide as saucers. Jack-Jack is on the floor amongst the shredded paper, but no sign of a tag. Another image of Saskia at the dinner table pulling a face for the camera, her hands perched under her chin, her beautiful blonde hair in bunches.

  On the table, just by her elbow, is the white shape of Jack-Jack. No sign of the tag. I zoom as much as I can to be sure, but it definitely isn’t there. I note the date of the image file. July 14th. One day before Michael punched Ben Trevitt and eight days before we flew to Mexico.

  I want to reach into the images and stop us from boarding the plane. I burn to scroll back, keep us frozen in time, re-spool the flames from the bookshop back into the head of the match in my hands. I ache to keep hitting the little image of a trashcan to delete everything bad that happened, right to the moment I met Michael.

  If only the past was as easy to erase as photographs.

  ‘So,’ Jeannie says, re-ordering the images. ‘This photograph is taken on April thirtieth, and the teddy has no tag. The next image we have of him is July twenty-third, on the plane to Mexico, and he has the tag on his collar. So sometime between May and July, while you’re still at home, the tag appears on his collar.’ She fixes her eyes on me. ‘You know what that means, don’t you?’

  ‘Someone would have had to get close enough to Saskia to put that tag on him,’ I say slowly, and every hair on my body stands on end. A skin is ripped from the world I knew, revealing another filled with eyes and malice.

  Jeannie covers her mouth with her hand, turns her eyes to the screen. I know the thoughts that are spinning across her mind, because they’re my thoughts, too. Why would someone go to that much trouble to keep tabs on our location? In a horrible rush, it comes to me: if someone wanted to take out our car, make it look like an accident, they might put a tag on an object that’s going to be with us the whole time. And what better way to conceal it than a child’s toy?

  ‘Didn’t Saskia say anything about the tag?’ Jeannie says, scrolling frantically through the images. ‘She’s not the sort of kid who’d fail to notice something different about Jack-Jack.’

  I swallow hard. A new angle presses into the air, one I can barely allow myself to think. Chris Holloway spoke to Saskia. He persuaded her – or forced her – to put the tag on Jack-Jack. Oh, God.

  ‘What’s this?’ Jeannie says, bringing up a folder marked ‘Josh’s drone’.

  I’m gulping back air at the thought of someone forcing Saskia to put the tag on the teddy. I try and imagine her reaction. She’d scream, run away. She would have told me, wouldn’t she? Even if they threatened her.

  ‘Helen, look,’ Jeannie urges, tapping the screen with a fingernail.

  There are thirty-eight video files between twenty seconds and twenty-six minutes long. I click on one and immediately find myself looking down on our village from about fifty feet in the air. The drone moves over the chapel, the fountain in the middle of the village, then drifts up the high street towards our shop.

  As it circles back towards the town a black car is parked around the corner from the shop. I can just make out a man sitting in the passenger seat, a small thread of cigarette smoke curling up from the open window.

  I have Jeannie click on more videos. Aerial footage of the countryside and the coast, the pretty seaside towns of Berwick-upon-tweed and Alnmouth captured during a golden sunrise. Several others of the village.

  ‘The car is in this one, too,’ I tell Jeannie. ‘Look.’

  It’s a week after the previous video. This time the man is pacing the street, occasionally glancing up at the shop. He’s got black hair and a long black coat, white trainers. Michael comes out of the shop, looks up and down. I’m almost certain he must catch a glimpse of the man, who jumps back around the corner and ducks into his car, slamming the door. As the drone turns back, Michael keeps his gaze in the man’s direction before turning to look at the shop.

  I note the date stamp. 7/4/17. Didn’t Michael write that date in his notebook? Something about a man watching him?

  ‘Do you recognise him?’ Jeannie says when I press ‘pause’, freezing him at the moment that he goes to get into the car.

  I shake my head. She reverses the footage and we watch again.

  ‘He’s certainly sneaking around, isn’t he?’ she says, zooming in. ‘Look. He’s taking pictures. See that, in his hand?’

  She zooms in to 50x, and although the image is badly pixelated I see something small and black in his hand. I give a deep shudder. The last letter had been sent to the bookshop. No redirection label from our Cardiff address. They had found us.

  ‘Maybe if we can find his registration number, we can look him up,’ she says.

  It takes a few attempts, but eventually we catch a frame where the registration plate at the rear of the car is just visible. WD61 OWE. A black Renault Megane.

  ‘I had to do this in January,’ Jeannie says, opening up a browser on the screen and tapping the registration details. ‘Someone reversed into me on Parson’s Street and drove off. My dashcam caught the bugger’s details, thank you very much. You go to the DVLA website, fill in a form, pay some money, and they can give you limited details. A name, sometimes an address, depending on what you say you need it for.’

  She downloads a form headed ‘Trying to establish the condition of a vehicle before purchase’.

  ‘Says it can take up to four weeks for the i
nformation to come through. But at least we got this.’ She fixes me with a hard stare. ‘Promise me you’ll take it to the police first, Helen. No more breaking and entering.’

  ‘I promise.’

  Just then, a chime sounds from Jeannie’s phone. She looks up from her phone to me.

  ‘Is it from the DVLA?’

  She beams at me. ‘Yup.’

  ‘What does it say?’

  She rubs a thumb up the screen, her face aglow with the light of the screen.

  ‘His name is Kareem Ballinger,’ she says, her brown eyes glinting with excitement. ‘Shall we Google him?’

  To: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  Subject: Michael Pengilly

  Sent: 7th September 2017 22.31

  Dear Kareem

  I’m sorry this email comes out of the blue but I wish to ask you about my husband. It seems you own a Private Investigation firm and I have discovered that you were in our area recently.

  Our family has experienced a terrible accident and are investigating the cause. If you feel able to, I’d like to find out more about what you were investigating in our village?

  Kind regards

  Helen Pengilly

  To: [email protected]

  cc: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  Subject: Confidential

  Sent: 7th September 2017 22.48

  Dear Helen

  This is interesting. I was indeed investigating in your village.

  Before I say more, can you tell me what ‘terrible accident’ you are referring to?

  Best, K

  To: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  Subject: Re: Confidential

  Sent: 7th September 2017 22.51

  Dear Kareem

  My family was involved in a serious car accident in Belize that appears to be a deliberate attempt on our lives. My husband is now missing and we fear he may have been kidnapped.

  Did you have anything to do with this? Do you know where he might be?

  Helen

  To: [email protected]

  cc: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  Subject: Confidential

  Sent: 7th September 2017 22.55

  Dear Helen

  That is very alarming news.

  I do have information that may prove useful. I would prefer not to disclose this information via telephone or email but wish to meet you in person. Please can you meet with me at York Train Station as soon as possible? I can meet tomorrow morning.

  Sincerely,

  Kareem Ballinger

  CEO Smart Surveillance

  46

  Helen

  8th September 2017

  We are on the 10.04 from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to York.

  Jeannie takes the plastic lid off her coffee and pours in two sugar sachets. She’s still wearing yesterday’s make-up and looks tired. Neither of us has slept very much.

  ‘We should have told the police,’ she says, turning her eyes to the man at the table across from us who is typing furiously on his laptop. ‘Or at least sought legal advice.’

  ‘I don’t have time,’ I say flatly. ‘I don’t need anyone’s approval to speak to someone who was clearly spying on us. He’s a private investigator. Someone hired him.’

  ‘Can I ask you a question?’ Jeannie says in a low voice.

  ‘No.’

  Her face falls. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Of course you can ask me a question, Jeannie.’

  ‘Oh, OK. Well, you know Michael’s dream diary? And all that stuff about the door of flame?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Did he dream that before or after the fire at the bookshop?’

  I narrow my eyes at her. ‘I’ve no idea. Why?’

  She visibly bites something back. Replaces it with a more tactful observation. ‘Well, it’s a bit weird to be dreaming of a door of flame right before the bookstore mysteriously goes up in flames, don’t you think?’

  I know what she’s implying. ‘Michael is no arsonist, Jeannie. He didn’t start that fire.’

  She holds me in a deep look, arches a perfectly drawn eyebrow. ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  She leans forward, lowers her voice. ‘Would you have said the same thing about the painting? That Michael would never have destroyed it?’

  I turn away. The memory pierces me.

  ‘And by the way,’ she continues, having heard my answer in the silence. ‘Technically that was arson. So don’t say Michael isn’t an arsonist.’

  I can’t tell her about the fire. I can’t tell her I did it. She’ll never understand.

  ‘You can tell me anything, you know,’ she says, suddenly obsequious. ‘I know you still see me as your irritating little sister making stage sets out of bean poles and shower curtains, demanding everyone watch me perform. But I’m thirty-one now. I’m actually able to keep secrets these days.’

  For a moment, I consider. I say, ‘I’ve told you my biggest secret.’

  She leans back in her seat, sips her coffee thoughtfully. ‘All this stuff on Mont Blanc happened so long ago. Why didn’t you confront it at the time? Or a few years afterwards, even?’

  ‘I was deep in grief after Luke died,’ I say quietly.

  ‘You were in love with him,’ she says. It’s not a question. I sense that she’s delighted to learn that Michael wasn’t my first love.

  ‘I was only nineteen,’ I say. ‘It was reckless, obsessive love. Not the sort Michael and I have.’

  She considers that.

  ‘I felt so guilty,’ I say, wiping away a tear that comes out of nowhere. ‘I didn’t know how to handle it. Fight or flight.’

  ‘But what about when you started getting the letters?’ she says, lowering her voice. ‘Why not just contact the people who sent them?’

  Her wide grey eyes are fixed on me but I can’t meet her gaze. How can I explain? I speak slowly, picking through my words as though they’re covered in glass shard. ‘We had Reuben by then. The letters were obviously sent because they thought we’d killed Luke, that his death wasn’t an accident. Luke’s family were filthy rich. They’d obviously hired some big legal firm to take us to court. Michael and I had no way of fighting those big lawyers. We thought …’ My throat tightens at the thought of it, of losing our children. ‘It could still happen.’

  ‘It’s just … hear me out,’ she says, when she can see that I’m overwhelmed. ‘What if Michael hasn’t been kidnapped at all?’

  I shake my head, refusing to consider it. ‘I don’t think he would have left us in the hospital in Belize without saying something.’

  ‘But … you said he saw the letters. Do you think he’s gone to see this man? This Chris Holloway?’

  I fall silent. ‘It’s possible, yes. Michael would do anything to protect the kids.’

  She raises her eyebrows. ‘And you? Do you think he’d do anything to protect you?’

  I don’t answer. The truth is I don’t know anymore.

  ‘Kareem?’

  ‘You must be Helen,’ the man says, rising from his chair and extending a hand.

  ‘This is my sister, Jeannie.’

  He shakes her hand. ‘I know.’

  The footage from the drone was grainy, and yet I recognise him: the dark, greasy hair that turns out to be a comb-over, the slightly irregular posture, long, feminine fingers. It jolts me, meeting someone I caught in the act of watching our family. My first instinct is trepidation, wariness, until I see stains on the thighs of his trousers and feel reassured that he is, after all, just a human being. A Yorkshire accent inflected with Pakistani. Jowly, droopy eyed, a small shaving cut on his left jaw. A wedding band. We’re in a small café just outside York station: very public and loud.

  ‘Would you like anything to eat?’ he asks
politely. Jeannie and I shake our heads. Food is far from our minds.

  He asks about the train journey, Jeannie remarks that she’s not been to York before. A moment’s faltering silence. Finally, I whisper, ‘Thanks for emailing me back.’

  He smiles, gives a small nod. ‘Pleasure. You mentioned a serious car accident. What happened?’

  It’s difficult to slide this narrative into conversation with someone I don’t know, and particularly someone whose relationship with my family appears to be voyeuristic and implicitly predatory. I offer the least emotional account of the last two weeks as I possibly can in order to avoid breaking down again.

  ‘My husband and I took our children on holiday to Belize,’ I say. ‘We were involved in a serious car accident. Except, it was no accident. We were being watched. The person driving the other vehicle knew our precise location. Takes some skills to track someone down, especially when they’re in a foreign country. Were you involved in this?’

  For all my side-stepping and emotional retraction that hot lump of lava arrives back in my throat, right on cue. I don’t take my eyes off him as he processes what I’ve said.

  ‘I was approached in February by a client who wished to locate you and your husband, Michael,’ he says.

  I thought I was prepared for this and yet a shiver runs all the way up my spine, a full body shake. Jeannie glances at me and puts her hand on mine. She speaks for me.

  ‘Did they say why they wanted you to locate them?’

  ‘Not at first,’ he says, frowning. ‘They gave me an address in Cardiff, but it quickly became clear that Michael King had not lived there for some time.’

  Jeannie leans across the table. ‘Who was the client?’

  He gives a smile and leans back in his seat, avoiding Jeannie’s gaze even though she’s right in his face. ‘My client informed me that they had made a number of attempts to find Mr King,’ he says. ‘They had spent a lot of money already. I found him, of course, in Northumberland, and I told the client.’

 

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