by Sam Hayes
‘Yes, but how?’ Murray asks.
Another pause. He’s thinking of a way to say this. ‘Decomposition. The scent percolates up. The dog will catch this and the exact location will be marked until divers can investigate.’
‘She’s not dead,’ I whisper. I stare straight ahead at Mum. My mind runs through a film reel, spinning in fast-forward from Christmas Day to the current nightmare. My mother has always known what to do, has always been the mender of troubles, the fixer of crises, the healer of wounds. Now she is inert, a hindrance.
For the first time in my life, I hate her. Behind those lips are a thousand words just aching to be told, and perhaps just one of them might help find Flora.
Alex crawls between his dad and me, exhausted, pale and yawning. I kiss his head, already missing the second one I would stamp on his sister. Ed’s telephone rings. Someone saw a little girl.
MARY
Perhaps I should just go back to hospital and allow the good doctor to plan my treatment. After all, he did this to me. He took apart my young life, unravelling each stitch of time that I’d spent twenty-seven years knitting together. It would seem fitting for him to clear up.
In the day room at the hospital, amongst the jigsaws and empty coffee cups, an inch of newsprint told me that the case against David had been dropped. He has walked free once again. Therefore, so did I. Straight out of hospital. Two pages earlier, the newspaper also reported Grace Covatta’s death. There was a small picture of her, smiling, living her normal life. She looked a bit like I once did – happy, hopeful, in love with David. Battered Teen Loses Coma Battle, it read. The doctors had shut down her system. Nothing will wake her now; not even a kiss from David.
I think about myself. Similar to Grace, I have shut down my mind, my voice, my soul, in order to heal. I doubt that a handsome prince will come knocking on my door. The final sentence of the newspaper report revealed that the police aren’t hunting for Grace’s attacker any more. They are searching for her murderer.
Day two of the trial saw a selection of witnesses called from the wedding party. Most of them told a bland tale. Most of it was correct. Most of it made me sound like a girl without hope, without a future, intent on hanging around with a younger, hipper crowd; putting herself about, behaving like a floozy. After a while, I started to believe it myself.
‘All rise.’ The court shuffled to a stand as the judge entered after lunch recess. It was my turn to take the stand. As I approached the witness box, I threw up all over the floor. Sixteen weeks of pregnancy added to a deep fear facing the court delivered nothing more than watery bile. I hadn’t eaten properly for days.
‘Silence in court!’ The crowded gallery broke into a flurry of noise and commotion. I remember hearing the snap of the gavel on the judge’s bench and the insistent call of the usher attempting to quieten the onlookers. ‘Silence in this court!’ And there I stood in the box, a bunch of tissues crumpled at my mouth, a bucket in case it happened again, and two barristers ready to pull me in opposite directions. However much I tried, I couldn’t utter a single word.
The house is quiet. First light, and Murray and Julia have resumed their search for Flora alongside the police. They will watch from the bank, maybe hand in hand, as the rubber-suited bodies of divers sink beneath the river’s murk; holding their breath as if they too are underwater. They can only pray that the divers resurface empty-handed. I pray too.
Through my bedroom window, I watch as the night lifts and refreshes the fields with a weak frost and a skim of hope. The bright sun makes everything look better. Two tears roll down my cheeks. One for Flora and one for me – each of us encased in our own silent worlds; each of us lost.
There is a noise, someone on the landing. ‘You tell her then, stupid,’ Brenna says angrily. It seems like a million lifetimes ago since I first took them in. Even with the door closed, I can see Brenna shoving her brother towards my bedroom.
‘No, Baby, you do it. She’ll be cross.’ Gradin’s words are slow and stretched, as if he’s talking with a gobstopper in his mouth. Then there’s a tunnel of whispering.
‘You stupid boy. We’ll both go to prison now.’ There’s crying, and when I open the door, the teenagers jump like baby deer. ‘Mary,’ Brenna says almost flawlessly. Her eyes dart from me, into my room and back to me again. She looks well under the circumstances. In all of this, Julia has done a good job of looking after them. ‘Are you better? Are you home from hospital? We miss you.’ She’s covering something up, that’s for sure.
I glance at Gradin. His nails are still encrusted with a bronze paste of congealed blood. I take him by the arm and lead the boy to the bathroom.
‘What are you doing to me, Mrs Marshall? I don’t want to go to the toilet.’
‘Oh shut up, Gradin, and do as you’re told.’ Brenna leans in the doorway, chewing gum, liking the fuss. She watches as I roll up her brother’s sleeves and plunge his arms into a basin of scalding water. I scrub his hands, his nails, from fingertips to elbows, with coal-tar soap. He doesn’t protest, just watches as the water turns rust-coloured. I pull the plug, swill out the basin and remove his sweater. Whatever he’s done, I don’t want any trace of it in my house.
‘Miss Marshall, I do hope you are feeling better now.’ David’s barrister was slick in his grey suit with lapels that stretched to his shoulders. He wore green-brown shoes and I remember thinking that they were the same colour as my vomit. His moustache annoyed me. It looked false. ‘Perhaps we can start with you telling the court a little about yourself. I’d like to know your background, your friends, your ambitions.’
Gerald Kirschner struggled to his feet from behind the table. He muttered some legal stuff that honestly I didn’t understand. He was trying to object about something but all I could hear was the pounding of my own heart and the defence’s cross-examination.
‘When you’re ready, Miss Marshall,’ the judge said. He was a patient man, I could tell that much, but surely not endowed with enough patience to endure my sorry tale. ‘I’d like to hear this. You must answer the question.’
I stared at those sickly shoes. Then at the dark patch on the wood where the court janitor had magically appeared with mop and bucket. I swallowed. My lips buzzed and the place where the words usually were, the holding bay before speech, was totally empty of anything to say. It was as if my entire vocabulary had been erased. Simply, I was lost for words.
‘It’s important you answer, Miss Marshall, for your own defence.’ The barrister was cruising. ‘How much alcohol did you have to drink on the night of the wedding, Miss Marshall? Did you take any drugs that may have reduced your inhibitions? Were you dressed provocatively that evening? Is it true that you always denied Mr Carlyle sex, even though you outwardly flirted with him? Can you describe your relationship with the accused? How long have you known him? Did you pursue him if he avoided you? Were you hoping to have sexual intercourse with David Carlyle that night? Had you intended on charging for your services?’
The barrage went on, peppered only by the futile protests of my barrister, who had virtually given up on me and plainly wanted to go home. And that was exactly what I wanted as well. To go home. Back to Northmire, to erase and forget. I didn’t care that David had raped me. I didn’t care that no one believed me. I didn’t care that I had a baby growing inside me. I didn’t care that it was going to be Julia.
‘One last question, Miss Marshall. Can you tell the court what happened after the rape?’
I took a deep breath and peeled my dry lips apart. I turned to face David and a few words finally came out. They were glue in my throat. ‘He attacked me.’
MURRAY
Perhaps if I find our daughter safe and well – immersed in some massive game of hide and seek – Julia will forgive me and love me and take me back and, oh, in the craziest of dreams, we could be a family again.
‘Ju, we mustn’t give up. Flora is out there waiting for us to find her. I don’t believe she fell into the river. She can swim
.’ I twist my fingers into the cold knot of Julia’s fist and make her hold my hand. Reluctantly, she lets me in. ‘Ed’s team are still investigating the sighting.’ We stand on the ragged bank of the river. Light spreads across the countryside, giving me hope in my heart.
‘Wouldn’t it be easier if they just find a body?’ Julia’s voice is colder than the dawn. It has been the worst night of our lives. She snaps her head at me briefly before looking back to the river – a way of settling the blame without actually saying it. She stares straight ahead, trying not to cry and trying not to watch as the dog on the police boat sends his handler into a spin.
Ed strides along the bank and stops beside us. ‘The diver is going in.’
‘Does this mean the dog’s found something?’ I don’t want to know and I don’t want to hear. This is the point at which our lives could change for ever. Our daughter’s waterlogged body could be dragged to the surface; her blue limbs and sagging clothes hanging beneath her.
I turn and stare at the countryside around us. Police crime scene tape decorates the trees and hedges, cordoning off a wide area around Alcatraz. Several officers stand sentry to ward off the gathering press, and a space-suited forensics team picks through the undergrowth. My boat sits semi-submerged in the water.
There is a shout. The search dog barks and its tail wags feverishly. I can’t watch. I walk off a few yards. I drop down on to the frosted, trampled riverbank – not caring that the freeze soaks instantly through my clothes, or that the officer nearby sees the hot tears cut down my cheeks; not noticing, at first, that my hand has struck something hard, something cold and something plastic in the long grass. It takes me a moment, but when I realise that it is man-made, that it isn’t a rock or a twig or even a piece of dropped litter, my mouth opens long before I am calling out for help.
‘It’s Flora’s doll,’ Julia squeals. ‘Give it to me.’ Her face crumples into a frown as she stares at it.
‘Alex said she’d been playing with her dolls.’ I scan the riverbank for my son. ‘Alex, come here.’ He is studying the policemen at close range, but comes to me immediately. ‘What game was Flora playing with her dolls last night?’
‘I dunno,’ he says, and shrugs. ‘Something stupid like mummies and daddies, except Ken was the grandad. I told her he was too young to be a grandad.’ He eyes the doll sadly.
Suddenly there is another shout and some splashing in the river. I see a diver bubble to the surface shaking his head with his thumb pointing downwards in signal. As the father of a deaf girl, I am not sure if that means it’s good news or bad.
It was a split dustbin sack of decomposing fly-tipped rubbish, destined to get caught around the propeller of a passing boat.
The police helicopter spends three hours scouring the countryside. Fuelled by finding Flora’s doll, Julia, Alex and I beat down every inch of every field around Alcatraz. As of eighteen minutes past eleven, the police haven’t found anything else suspicious in the water.
‘Oh Murray,’ Julia says, stretching her back before dissolving into my arms. ‘What are we going to do?’
The sickest of feelings crashes through me. It comes in waves from the tiniest little breakers to all-engulfing tidal waves of despair. Julia looks up at me and Alex stands by my side. What have I done to my family?
Much of it was medical jargon that I didn’t understand, but I read it carefully anyway. I’d recovered from my dip in the river and, piecing the whole file together – even allowing for the unfamiliar language – it didn’t take a doctor to realise that Mary had been given a psychiatric treatment plan at The Lawns. I couldn’t comment on the medication prescribed, but the assessments and therapies recommended seemed more suitable for someone with depression than a woman with vascular dementia. It had all been overseen by Dr David Carlyle, even though he didn’t hold a position at The Lawns.
‘Chrissie,’ I said when she answered. It was my smooth voice, the one I usually reserved for Julia when we had an evening alone. It felt treacherous using it on anyone else. ‘How are you fixed for later?’
‘But I’ve only just seen you.’
‘I know. I can’t keep away . . .’
‘You want me to explain Mary Marshall’s notes to you.’
‘Bingo.’
‘Eight o’clock. The Bull’s Head at the end of the road where you’re parked.’
‘Moored,’ I told her.
‘What?’
‘You park a car and moor a narrowboat.’
‘See you later.’ And she did, informing me quite clearly of what I suspected as she sipped on a pint of Guinness. She eyed me over the rim, enjoying my surprise at her choice of drink as I settled next to her with Mary’s file and a double Scotch. I spread the papers out between us.
‘An awful lot of thought has gone into this treatment plan. There’s six months of intensive therapy booked, as well as a cocktail of prescribed drugs. Professor Joseph has been assigned for the therapy sessions. He’s highly respected in his field, very sought after, and also very expensive.’
I shrugged. ‘What is his field exactly?’
Chrissie sipped on her drink before answering. ‘Dr Joseph offers counselling and therapy for victims suffering post-traumatic stress disorder.’ Another draw of the pint. ‘All his patients are rape victims, Murray,’ she said matter-of-factly, wiping her lips, and watching as my eyes narrowed in confusion.
‘Rape victims?’ I said, trying to figure out what that had to do with Mary Marshall; trying to work out how such a terrible thing could fit into the life of a woman I thought I knew.
JULIA
‘Alex, get down on your hands and knees and search for any tiny little thing,’ Murray says. Ed takes Flora’s doll and seals it inside a plastic bag.
‘If Flora’s been taken by the bad man, there could be fingerprints on that doll.’ Alex is worried about his sister. He is pale and has lines on his face that shouldn’t be there on an eleven-year-old boy.
‘You’re right,’ I say, ‘and we’re going to find her.’
Murray and I crawl along the wet bank, peeling apart clumps of twitch grass and nettles, not caring that our hands mottle with white weals. Ed radios for the forensics team to come over immediately, and in the same breath orders us away from the river. ‘This is a crime scene, Julia. You have to leave.’
I give him a look which tells him he’ll have to drag me away if he wants me gone. We have searched maybe twenty feet further on from where the doll was found when Murray calls out. He holds up a tiny orange square of waxy paper.
‘Flora,’ I whisper, carefully crawling back to Murray along the track I have made and already searched. I’d bought the kids a packet of sweets each and Flora chose those chewy ones. ‘But Flora would never drop litter.’
‘She would if she was making a trail,’ Alex chipped in expectantly. ‘Like when we play imaginary games.’
Flora is a survivor and would never set forth on an adventure without leaving a trail to find her way home.
‘She’s leaving us clues,’ I cry.
‘What else do you know, Alex? Where did you go in your imaginary games?’ Murray takes Alex by the shoulders. ‘And what has Flora been drawing so secretively recently?’
Alex shrugs. ‘I dunno. She just kept drawing pictures of a man. She wouldn’t let anyone see, but I sneaked a look.’
Murray frowns, glances at me. ‘She was being very secretive about her pictures. It may be nothing, though.’
I nod, not knowing what to think. ‘We must keep searching the bank.’ It’s then that I feel a hand grip my arm.
‘Come on, Julia.’ Ed is giving me no choice. He leads me back to the path, away from the river. ‘Any news and I’ll call you immediately.’
As we stand alone, just the three of us, Murray’s hand slips easily into mine. Before I know it, his fingers are pressed to my lips. I am shaking. ‘The doll and the sweet-wrapper mean she left by herself; that she wasn’t taken. Someone has to find her soon.’
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nbsp; ‘Julia . . .’ He swaps my lips for his on the tangle of our fingers. ‘We will find our daughter,’ he says, but I swear it comes out as I love you.
Nadine takes care of Alex while we are at the police station. However many blankets and cups of sweet tea they give me, I still shiver. Murray is beside me, doing all the talking, being strong for us both as the afternoon light wanes into dusk. Nearly a second night without Flora.
‘I’ve released a statement to the journalists. They’re on fire around here as it is, since Grace died and Carlyle walked.’ Ed bows his head when he realises I didn’t know. ‘Hell, I’m sorry, Julia.’
‘Grace . . . is dead?’ I think of the crowd outside David’s house; Grace’s mother, their chant of revenge.
Murray holds me. No one says anything for a moment, which is confirmation enough. Grace is dead. She was murdered.
‘The press may be of some help,’ Ed continues as gently as he can. ‘We’ve set up roadblocks and are interviewing motorists. I have a team going door to door in the village speaking to the locals, and you’ll be relieved to hear that the river around the boat has been thoroughly searched and is clear.’
‘Just around the boat?’ I ask, wondering how to layer Grace’s death on top of everything else.
‘We can’t search the whole river, Julia. Not yet.’ Ed paces back and forth. ‘Read over your statements, please. Make sure everything is accurate. Especially you, Murray. You were the last one to see her.’
‘Not really,’ I correct. ‘Alex was with her last. When we found the doll and the sweet-paper on the bank, Alex said he thought Flora was leaving a trail like they do in their games. She set off with the intent of going somewhere, Ed.’ My voice falters. ‘We have to think like a child.’
