Engleby

by Sebastian Faulks

  It’s impossible to deal with a world in which the polarities aren’t mutually opposite.

  When they turned the lights off to play blind man’s buff, I had to leave the church hall. I stumbled down the row of chairs, kicking over drinks and ran to the back of the hall.

  Outside, I kept running, across to the main road, where the lorries were thundering down towards Archway. I thought of throwing myself beneath one.

  It was like the attack I’d had in Basingstoke. I didn’t know what the hell was happening. But I crunched two blue pills in my dry mouth and got into a pub where I poured vodka down me.

  It occurred to me as I stood there, waiting for the effect, that at such moments of extreme panic and anguish you do manage that trick with time: you are at last free from the illusion that time is linear.

  In panic, time stops: past, present and future exist as a single overwhelming force. You then, perversely, want time to appear to run forwards because the ‘future’ is the only place you can see an escape from this intolerable overload of feeling. But at such moments time doesn’t move. And if time isn’t running, then all events that we think of as past or future are actually happening simultaneously. That is the really terrifying thing. And you are subsumed. You’re buried, as beneath an avalanche, by the weight of simultaneous events.

  I have no memory of what happened then. The next thing I can recall with any clarity is the following day, being in Margaret’s flat.

  I was in bed and the alarm clock showed a time of ten past twelve. I was wearing only my underclothes. I put on a dressing gown and went to the bathroom, then through to the living room, where Margaret was reading the paper.

  She looked up and smiled. ‘Are you all right, love?’

  I rubbed my head. ‘Yes, I’m fine. What happened?’

  ‘What happened? You tell me! One minute we’re watching the play, the next thing I know you’ve run out and disappeared.’

  ‘Yeah, I know, I remember that, but I don’t know what happened next. I think I went to a pub. What did you do when I ran out?’

  ‘Well, nothing. I thought maybe you’d just gone to the toilet or something. The speed you went, I thought maybe you were going to be sick.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I left you to it. I thought if you were being sick you didn’t want me fussing over you. Plus I didn’t want to disturb the other people, or the actors. It was quite a small place and you’d already made an almighty racket going out.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Anyway, after about ten minutes, there was a short break and I crept out to see if you were all right. I expected to find you sitting in the churchyard, but you weren’t there. I decided to have a look in the street, but you weren’t there either.’

  ‘Were you worried?’

  ‘A bit, but not really. You’re a big boy, Mike. I knew you could find your own way home. To be honest I was just a bit cross that you hadn’t let me know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘What you were doing. I mean, you might have said something, or left a note for me – to say you were going straight home, or whatever it was you were doing.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, anyway, what were you doing?’

  ‘I don’t know. I felt . . . I felt ill in the play. I went out and then I went to a pub. But I don’t know what happened after that. What time did I get in?’

  ‘Not very late. About twelve. The play finished at ten, I had a drink with Carol and Tom. I was back here soon after eleven and I’d just fallen asleep when you got in. You seemed a bit the worse for wear.’

  ‘What? Drunk?’

  ‘Yes. And your hand was bleeding. You seemed . . . Woozy.’

  ‘How had I got back from Muswell Hill?’

  ‘I suppose you took a cab. You didn’t say.’

  ‘I didn’t say?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But it must have been nearly three hours since I left the play. Didn’t you want to know?’

  ‘Yes, but you weren’t very chatty. You went to the bathroom then just crashed on the bed. I helped you take your clothes off and you were asleep inside a minute.’

  The timings all made sense. The narcotic effect of the blue pills and the alcohol must have taken hold eventually. But as to what I had been doing between, say, nine-fifteen, when I felt subsumed by panic, and, say, eleven-thirty when I had found a taxi, I hadn’t the smallest idea.

  I was in the Peugeot 405, on the M4, on my way to Wales, listening to The World at One on Radio 4. I suppose I was somewhere near Hungerford and I was calculating whether I had time to leave the motorway and find a pub with reasonable food, or whether I should try and hold down whatever Membury Services had to offer.

  On long drives I usually talk to myself and try to sort things out. I rehearse what I’m going to say to Margaret or to old DT’s, when I go to ask for a rise; or to the people at the Independent (in the end they opted for that name over the Nation) when I submit my tardy job application. Sometimes I make a short political speech or argue the case for re-evaluating Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s Tarkus. What I’m trying to say is that although I have the radio or the cassette player on, I don’t listen carefully. I’m in my own world.

  So it was with some difficulty that I tried to rewind mentally and remember what I’d not been listening to. The first words to penetrate my private thoughts were these:

  ‘. . . reports that police in East Anglia have discovered the body of a young woman.’

  Perhaps there weren’t any important words before that for me to have missed.

  At any rate, my car swerved, the lorry behind blasted me with his horn, I straightened up, regained the centre of the middle lane, switched to the inside, after indicating, and turned up the volume on the radio.

  ‘Yes, Brian, that’s right. The police are expecting to hold a televised press conference at five o’clock this afternoon in which they’ll be giving details of their discovery. At this stage they won’t confirm or deny that the body is that of the student Jennifer Arkland, who disappeared in 1974. Her disappearance caused a great public outcry at the time.’

  ‘Can you tell us any more at this juncture, Sally?’

  ‘Not a great deal. I understand the discovery was initially made by a man walking his dog yesterday evening, near the village of Rampton. The police are unwilling to give any more details at the moment, though the secrecy with which they’ve surrounded it does suggest that they have a major announcement to make.’

  ‘What would the identification process consist of?’

  ‘Well it depends of course on how long the person has been dead. But if it really is Jennifer Arkland and she died at the time of her disappearance, then they are probably looking at dental records.’

  ‘And that would be straightforward?’

  ‘As I understand it. Yes, Brian.’

  ‘And have her parents made any comment?’

  ‘Well, her father died some years ago and her mother is unavailable at the moment.’

  ‘Thank you, Sally. You can hear more about that story on the P.M. programme at five.’

  I pulled off the motorway at Membury Services and followed the signs into the car park, where I pulled up and turned off the engine.

  I didn’t quite know what to do. I felt drained of energy. I leaned forward and rested my head on the steering wheel. Poor Jen. So she really was dead.

  The sensation of immense fatigue climbed slowly through me, from the foot well, through the seat and up into my shoulders. I felt as though I might never move again.

  Ten

  I was in a hotel room in Cardiff at five o’clock. I had both the radio and the television on.

  The press conference was about to start. There was a long table with a white floor-length cloth and blue screens behind it, on the central one of which was the coat of arms of the local constabulary, slightly skew-whiff. There were five seats with name cards in front of them, illegible at this distance, jugs of water, a bouqu
et of microphones pointing at the central chair and a single one in front of all the others. The orange, blue and black electrical leads trailed off the front of the trestle. Various technicians and town-hall clerks came in and adjusted seats, straightened mikes and disappeared again. The television camera briefly turned to show the rows of assembled journalists on foldaway council chairs. Bright overhead lights and spots were creating a circus atmosphere. The journalists chatted excitedly.

  I thought of the child Jennifer in her first year, in a college scarf.

  The TV reporter was beginning to struggle with the delay. There were only so many ways he could say that he didn’t know what to expect. We were taken briefly back to the studio.

  I stood up and poured some whisky. I went to the bathroom for water, and looked at myself in the mirror as I ran the cold tap.

  The face that looked back was nearly 35 years old. My hair was receding on either side and had vanished from the crown of my head. My student days had been in another life. My current life was fine.

  I sat down in the armchair and waited. There was a rustle and a sense that it was all finally happening. Figures emerged from behind the screens and took their places. They seemed burly and diffident as they clambered through the cables, trying not to trip up on the gathered tablecloth. The men stood back to allow a woman in plain clothes to pass in front of them, which created further awkwardness as each searched for the correct place, twisting the name cards round to check.

  Eventually, they were settled. The central figure, a grey-haired policeman with silver braiding and a chestful of medals, leaned into the microphones and spoke. A caption identified him as Deputy Chief Constable Adrian Bolton, OBE.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, first of all, thank you for coming along this afternoon, and thank you for your patience.’

  He then introduced his colleagues: a ruddy superintendent; the bobby who’d been first on the scene; a female pathologist called Hedgecoe; and, finally, the third of the cops who was none other than DC – now Chief Inspector – Cannon: baldish, but still gingery, still pent-up and smirking.

  ‘Let me come straight to the point,’ said Bolton. ‘At approximately five o’clock on Sunday afternoon a member of the public walking his dog near the village of Rampton discovered what appeared to be human remains. They were in a ditch, between the railway line and a watercourse at the edge of an area known as Westwick Field. This is open country, not close to any habitation. At the north side of the area is the end of Cuckoo Lane, an unmade road that leads into Rampton, and on the south side is the Oakington Road, though no lane or path leads up from it. It thus took some time for us to get the personnel and the equipment we needed to the site, which we approached from the Rampton end.’

  I wondered how much more Fen geography this Bolton was intending to give. He was certainly in no hurry. He spoke with grave emphasis, enjoying his moment beneath the lights, unable to keep a tremor of self-congratulation from his voice.

  ‘The body appeared to have been carefully buried, and covered not only with earth but also with pieces of concrete which were further weighed down with an old railway sleeper. Presumably this was in order to prevent the body being discovered or unearthed by wildlife or by dogs. Preliminary inspection established that it was the body of a young female, approximately twenty years of age. It was removed from the site on Monday evening and taken to a police laboratory. Tests carried out in the course of Tuesday and Wednesday established that the cause of death appears to have been a blow or blows to the skull which caused a fracture of the cranium and – presumably – internal head injuries. One of the legs was also broken. The extent of the decomposition of the body means that it is impossible to discover what further injuries, if any, to the soft tissues may have contributed to the death of the individual.

  ‘I am not proposing at the moment to give further details about the young woman’s body and this is for reasons of consideration for her family, and I know you will understand that.’

  Bolton paused hammily and poured himself a glass of water. There was utter silence in the room and in the broadcast.

  He coughed and resumed. ‘I am further able to tell you that tests carried out yesterday evening and comparisons with existing dental records enable us to announce that the young woman has been identified as Jennifer Arkland, a 21-year-old student from Lymington in Hampshire, who went missing in February, 1974.

  ‘I can further confirm that we will be pursuing our inquiries into this case with the utmost urgency. The case has never been closed, though it has been reclassified from one of “Missing” to one of “Murder” as of today. We have been in touch with the deceased’s family, and I understand that it is her mother’s intention to make a statement in the near future. In the meantime, I would ask all of you to respect their privacy at what must be a very difficult time for them.

  ‘I would like to end by congratulating my colleagues on the extremely swift and professional way that they reacted to this discovery. I know that this exceedingly sad case of a young person disappearing on the threshold of adult life was not only the cause of much public sympathy at the time, but also has long been something that my colleagues were determined to bring to a satisfactory conclusion one day. I know that Chief Inspector Cannon is one of many officers who consider the pride and reputation of their force to depend on a successful outcome to this case and I want to stress that I have every confidence in them.

  ‘If you have any questions you would like to ask me or my colleagues, then this is the moment. We have a time limit of fifteen minutes here, so I’m afraid you can ask only one question each. The gentleman in the blue blazer will bring the microphone to you and I’d be grateful if you could wait for him to reach you before you begin your question. Yes. We’ll start with you. The gentleman in the front with the grey anorak.’

  ‘Have you been able to date the time of death? I mean, how soon was it after she disappeared?’

  Bolton nodded to the pathologist, Hedgecoe. ‘We can’t be certain,’ she said. ‘But soon afterwards. Certainly within months, I should say.’

  ‘So it’s possible she was alive for some time?’

  ‘On the scientific evidence, yes.’

  ‘But on the circumstantial evidence,’ said Bolton, ‘it seems unlikely.’

  ‘Have you completely ruled out natural causes?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hedgecoe. ‘In our view it’s impossible for the head injury to have been accidental.’

  ‘There’s also the question of the interment,’ said Bolton. ‘Unless you’re suggesting that she died in an accident and then someone buried her. Which would anyway be a serious crime.’

  ‘Can I ask Chief Inspector Cannon if he’ll be re-interviewing old suspects or starting from fresh. Is he in charge and what’s his line of inquiry going to be?’

  ‘I think that’s four questions,’ said Bolton.

  Cannon leant forward eagerly. ‘First of all, I’d like to stress that this file has never been closed. So all our records are up to date and accessible. It’s not a question of “reopening” anything, merely of continuing with an ongoing inquiry.’

  ‘Does the discovery of the body give you new forensic evidence?’

  ‘You mean scientific evidence?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s possible. It’s too early to say.’

  ‘Do the recent techniques used in clearing the suspect in the double murder in Narborough in Leicestershire – the so-called DNA testing – have any bearing on—’

  I fired the ‘Off’ button on the remote control and the screen flashed away into darkness.

  Over the next few days, the national papers disinterred, as it were, the whole story and printed many heart-stopping pictures of Jennifer.

  There were at least three interviews with Anne, now head of a neighbourhood law centre in south London, and two with Molly, a GP in Staffordshire with plump twin girls – though none with the unfortunate Robin Wilson who, although he presumably long ago dispense
d with the National Health psychiatric services, lives ‘quietly’ somewhere in Wales, where he teaches at the local college. There was also a ‘quote’ from Malini Coomaretcetera, a New York paediatric consultant; from Stewart Forres (‘director of the edgy 1982 cult British film Sheet Lightning’) and from his ‘ex-wife Hannah Waters, who played Jennifer in the police reconstruction of her last night alive and is currently with the Bristol Old Vic theatre company’.

  That ‘ex’ shook me up a bit. How fast other people had moved onward in their lives. I hadn’t been to see the Forres film because the word ‘edgy’ put me off. It’s code for ‘the men all swear a lot’. (‘Feisty’ means the women all swear a lot.) I hardly ever swear myself and find it irritating. Perhaps I was also jealous of Stewart.

  Eventually, I stopped reading the coverage. I couldn’t stand another article about 1970s fashions, Abba or tank tops. This kind of decade-drivel used to be the territory of Chick’s Own or Bunty but has now run through whole sections of once-serious newspapers.

  On the following Monday I was telephoned by Tony Ball at home, and this was unusual, in fact unprecedented. He was ringing to suggest I do a big ‘background’ piece on Jennifer for the following Sunday.

  ‘But you didn’t like the thing I did about the new Master.’

  ‘This is different, though. It’s more your line of country. I remember that great piece you did on the Ripper. All that footwork in Bradford.’

  ‘This isn’t a serial killer, Tony.’

  ‘How do we know?’

  ‘Because there aren’t any other bodies.’

  ‘Could be linked to other unsolved crimes. Just that they haven’t made the connection yet.’

  ‘It looks like a straightforward domestic. It’s bound to have been the boyfriend.’

  I talked my way out of it, and for a time all went quiet. Ball still had no idea I’d been to the same university, let alone that I’d known Jen; and I certainly wasn’t going to tell him now.