The Bridge

by Stuart Prebble

  Michael held up his arm to stop the police from approaching. “What do you mean?” he said. “You said it was me who should have shared the blame. That’s why you did what you did to have me arrested. To give me a taste of what happened to you. She couldn’t have helped you. She was playing with me when Amy was drowned.”

  “Yes, she was, but it wasn’t me alone who wanted to play with the water, to play with our little sister. It was you and her, too. We were all playing with her, all of us together. But she was the one who lifted the baby into the bath, and she was the one who turned on the taps and left us. Read what they said at the inquest. If wrong was done, it’s as much the fault of the two of you as it was mine, but I’m the one who has had to carry the can, and now it’s time for some proper justice.”

  Michael looked into Alison’s face and saw her staring back at him with the expression of someone about to pass through the gates of hell. Every dark shadow of her entire life was concentrated into that moment, and all the realities of the guilt she had felt, the doubt about the part she had played, her share of the responsibility for the death of Martin and Michael’s baby sister and their grandfather, had all been focused into that single instant. She was suffering her own special torture of deep water.

  “It’s not true, Alison,” shouted Michael. “I don’t believe that’s what happened, and you don’t believe it either.”

  “Yes, it is true. What he says is right. Of course it is. I am every bit as much to blame as he is.” Alison was screaming at the top of her lungs. “It was me who put Amy in the bath. It was me who turned on the taps. It was me who did it all. It was me, it was me, it was me…” and the shape of her mouth continued to form the words as they guttered into a wail and were overwhelmed in the gusting wind.

  “That’s rubbish,” Michael shouted. “The coroner said that someone held her down, pushed her down under the water. That can only have been him.” He pointed directly at his older brother. “And he has proved that in the last weeks. Murdering tiny defenseless children like they’re nothing. He is the Madman. It’s him. Not you. Not me. It was never either of us.”

  “No.” Alison screamed with renewed vigor. “I killed Amy every bit as much as he did, and it’s me who deserves to be punished every bit as much as he does. Either way…” She lunged herself backwards, tilting the top half of her body against Martin, and at the same time reaching down to grab his legs to lift him off his feet. Michael propelled his body forward, trying to take hold of anything, and managed to gain a grip on flaying limbs, which may have been Alison or may have been Martin. He tried to hold tighter and to press himself backwards and away from the railing, when he felt the pressure of strong hands from behind, and now he was being wrestled backwards. The police were pulling all three of them away from the water’s edge, but at that moment Martin jolted with what seemed to be unnatural strength and shook loose from Michael’s grip. Two other police officers rushed forward a few steps to grab at whatever they could but were too late to prevent Martin and Alison from toppling over the railing and then plunging down towards the water. Michael rushed to the edge and looked over, just in time to see both bodies bounce off the metal parapet and twist into unnatural shapes before they hit the surf below.

  EPILOGUE

  For the second time in just two weeks, uniformed police officers were stationed at the gates of Wandsworth Crematorium with instructions to prevent journalists or the ghoulish from gaining access to what was intended to be a private family funeral. Nonetheless, Michael and Margaret felt their hearts sink as their car reached the brow of the hill leading down towards the cemetery, and they could see the size of the crowd awaiting them. News of the dramatic cornering of the notorious Madman who had been terrorizing families in the south of England for months had dominated world headlines ever since the incident, and it seemed as though every news organization on the planet had sent a representative.

  On this occasion, unlike the last, Michael and his mother had heeded advice to accept the services of a driver, preferring to sit in the back of the funeral car rather than handle things themselves. In the event, unknown to them, the man in the dark suit driving the vehicle was a plainclothes police officer rather than an undertaker. The public mood remained volatile, and Superintendent Bailey wanted to do everything possible to avoid any demonstrations from getting out of control.

  As their car covered the last few hundred yards before the iron gates, Michael reached for his mother’s hand. Lines of police officers were struggling to hold back the crowds, and when they slowed to turn the corner, he was able to take in a variety of facial expressions—ranging from the natural solemnity which might be appropriate at a family funeral, to what seemed to be the totally uncontrolled rage of others. Perhaps some of these were friends or relatives of the murdered children, though Michael thought it unlikely. He noted that most of the dozens of news cameras were tilting towards the noisiest and most vociferous of the demonstrators, and these would no doubt be the images flashed around the world.

  Michael tried to decipher any of the constituent words making up the barrage of abuse which was being directed towards himself and his mother. Not for the first time, he wondered what might be the purpose of all that aggression and anger. Some of those present were there because their job required them to be, but others were merely rubberneckers, that strange crowd of people who no doubt in times past would have turned up to see public floggings or executions.

  Michael and Margaret renewed their grip on each other’s hands as their car swept through the gates. Suddenly the camera flashbulbs were exploding strobelike through the windows, and Michael had time to recall the advice he had received earlier about avoiding the appearance of a fugitive being driven into a jail. Nonetheless, both mother and son found it necessary to raise their forearms to shield their eyes from the glare, which gave the photographers the shot they wanted.

  Their vehicle eventually drew to a halt behind a clump of trees which took them just out of sight but not out of earshot of the crowds, and Michael saw that a number of what he took to be unmarked police cars had arrived before them. There were two further vehicles—one a shiny black upright van which was used for transporting corpses as discreetly as possible from hospitals or crime scenes to mortuaries. Parked behind it was another midsize van, this one also unmarked and painted black.

  Michael and his mother got out of their car and stood silently. He turned to his right and saw that a small group over to one side included Esme and Sergeant Mallinson. Behind Esme he could see the outline of another figure, and he had to take a step back in order to see that it was Christopher—the St. Thomas’ nurse who had been their guardian angel at the recent death of Grandma Rose. Michael was very glad to see him, and the two men exchanged a smile. There also were the detectives Bailey and Collins. Bailey removed his trilby hat and seemed to contemplate the ground in front of him.

  The rear double doors of both vehicles were opened, and Michael and his mother watched as six men wearing dark suits gently eased the plain wooden coffin backwards so that it slid smoothly onto a trolley. All at once from over on his right he heard someone shout something which sounded like “They’re moving the bastard now,” which provided the cue for several hundred other voices to join a chorus of yelling. “Murdering bastard!” “A funeral is too good for him.” “Just throw him in the water,” and this last comment was followed by a burst of raucous laughter.

  Michael turned to look at the activity at the back of the other vehicle and was aware of the workings of an electronic lift gradually being lowered. Unable to remain still any longer, he took a few steps forward towards the wheelchair so that his movement caught her attention. She turned her head slightly towards his approach, and he had to brace himself to suppress his instinctive reaction to her appearance. The vivid bruising on the side of Alison’s face was already turning a variety of shades of blue and black, and her hair had been shaved to the scalp to allow access for the twenty-six stitches which were holdi
ng the top of her head together. Her right arm was in plaster, and her left leg stuck out straight in front of her, providing an effective battering ram against anyone who came too close. Carefully avoiding any chance of contact which might produce further agony, Michael leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. He moved round to the rear of the wheelchair, gripped the handles, and started pushing her towards the chapel.

  “Imagine if it had been you who drowned and he that had survived,” said Michael. “He’d be in a maximum-security hospital for the criminally insane.” They watched as Martin’s coffin was lifted off the trolley and hoisted awkwardly onto shoulders, as though the corpse inside had somehow corrupted its container, turning it into something unclean or untouchable.

  Such had been the injuries to her head and neck in the fall from the pier that after emergency treatment in Brighton, Alison had been airlifted to the intensive care unit at St. Thomas’ in London. For several days and nights, she had hovered between life and death, drifting in and out of consciousness. In her brief moments of lucidity, Michael whispered reassurance that she would survive and be well. The doctors advised that she should not attend the funeral, but she insisted, and now the couple hung back as the mourners slowly filed into the crematorium.

  “I don’t know if there will ever be a good time to ask you,” Michael leaned close to her and spoke hardly above a whisper, “but sooner or later I need to be able to understand what was going through your mind on the pier.” He watched Alison’s face carefully as she registered his words. Her eyes were turned towards the sky, and she blinked slowly but did not speak, so he continued, “I can work out why you took it into your head that Martin’s life had to come to an end, but surely not at the cost of your own?” Suddenly all the weight of pain and grief which he had worked so hard to suppress during recent days threatened to overwhelm him, and he brought up his forearms across his chest as if to defend himself against further hurt. His voice cracked as he spoke again. “Didn’t you think I have lost enough already without also losing you?”

  Still Alison did not turn to look at him, but she reached out with her hand and took hold of his, gripping it tightly. For several moments she could not find the right words, but then began to speak.

  “I don’t know if I will ever be able to make you understand, any more than I do, but let me try.” She closed her eyelids, and behind them the pupils were darting around, as though she was involuntarily reliving the story. “Those few words that Martin spoke on the pier suddenly brought back to me a clearer memory than I’ve ever had of that day. In those few seconds, I could see you playing, I could see Martin playing, I could see myself playing, and there was little Amy giggling happily. None of us apparently had a care in the world.” A trace of a smile flickered across Alison’s face, but was instantly replaced as though she had been stabbed by a sharp knife. “Then suddenly all those images were lost, and instead I was confronted by the sight of Amy’s tiny body lying quite still but facedown in the water.”

  The vision she described was familiar to Michael. It was the same as he had imagined many times since hearing the story from his mother only two weeks earlier. “I can see why that would be absolutely bloody awful,” he said, “but I still don’t get it. Why did that thought make you want to throw away your life as well as his?”

  “Don’t you see?” asked Alison. “That image of Amy lying facedown is not from my imagination, it’s from my memory. If it’s something I saw rather than imagined, it means I must have been with Martin in the bathroom when Amy died. Exactly as he said I was. It wasn’t until I heard him say it that I realized that it must be true.” She paused to allow Michael to absorb the import of her words. “Even now I don’t think I will ever know exactly who did what, but what I can’t deny is that I was more involved in the death of your sister than I have ever admitted. Surviving the fall from the pier has made sure I have to face up to the fact.”

  Michael was about to protest again but stopped short, and finally he understood something more about what Alison had said on the journey home from Greenacres on that day of the first murders. About how any of us can find ourselves caught up in events which change our lives forever, but there is no such thing as a pure truth of anything which follows. In this case there had been his grandfather’s truth, there had been Martin’s truth, and now, after all these years, Alison had arrived at her own version of the truth. Michael knew that it would be a long and difficult journey for both of them but that he would be there to help her to find a way to live with it.

  By now the pallbearers had carried the coffin containing the last earthly remains of Martin Bannerman into the chapel. The handful of witnesses had also gone inside, and Michael stood alongside Alison, his hand resting on her shoulder. He was about to speak, but then something moved in the corner of his vision, and he turned from her to see that Christopher had been sent to find them and was indicating that the funeral service was about to begin. Michael remained still for another moment, and then he turned to take a firm grip on the handles of her wheelchair and began to push it forwards.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank the teams at Curtis Brown, Gelfman Schneider, and Mulholland Books who have helped to bring this novel to publication, and especially Gordon Wise, Deborah Schneider, Wes Miller, Emily Giglierano, Betsy Uhrig, and Sue Betz.

  About the Author

  Stuart Prebble is the author of four novels, five comedy books, and a history book and is also a producer of documentary and current-affairs programs for television. He was formerly CEO of the UK television network ITV and is currently chairman of the TV production company Storyvault Films. He lives in London.

  Follow him on Twitter @stuartprebble.

  Books by Stuart Prebble

  The Insect Farm

  The Bridge

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