The Sister

by China, Max

  The show also covered an armed robbery on a jeweller's shop, an aggravated burglary, an appeal for information about a fifteen-year-old runaway girl thought to be living rough in the London or Essex area. DCI Kendricks also put in an appearance, appealing for help in solving a rape and attempted murder case.

  The filming completed without a hitch, but when they broadcast the programme later, there was a problem with the editing. They'd mixed up the cases and the detectives who were dealing with them. Kennedy's name and contact telephone number were allocated to the rape case, and Kendricks' details to the Kathy Bird disappearance.

  Apart from the mix up with the cases and the phone numbers, the show had gone remarkably well. They corrected the numbers in a bulletin at the end of the show.

  When he watched a re-run of the programme - at the point immediately after they gave his contact details, he heard something in the background. Rewinding, he played it again. With the volume right up, someone could be heard speaking faintly in the background, something unintelligible and then quite suddenly, and barely audible . . . These people are vile . . . Said off camera, it had cut in right after the piece by Kennedy. It sounded like him, but he knew the voice wasn't his; it only took a moment to figure out.

  Kendricks said it!

  Nobody else seemed to notice.

  It wasn't right. He debated whether to complain about it. The comment was irrelevant, but Kendricks shouldn't have said it. He would have words with him in the morning. He imagined himself talking to John senior about it. Anyone can make a mistake, John, but if you feel that strongly about it…

  He thought about his father, and it took him back twenty-three years, to just after the news that he'd been the last person to see Kathy alive. John senior had picked it apart for him.

  "She said she knew him; you had no reason to 'call it in'. They called you out to attend a disturbance; you did what you had to do. It was a million to one chance . . . something like that happening; you can't feel guilty about it. Everything you did was right. It isn't as if you knew he'd kidnap her, is it?"

  "I should have known . . . I should have had a gut instinct . . ."

  John senior had laid a reassuring hand on him. "Those gut instincts take time and experience to recognise. You did nothing wrong."

  Maybe, Dad, but it still haunts me.

  Compared to the mistakes he'd made twenty-three years ago, the production errors paled into insignificance. By taking it no further, he set in motion a chain of events he couldn't possibly have foreseen. When he later looked back at the pivotal events around which everything turned, he would realise the editors and their cutting room mistake, had started a lunatic off on his trail.

  Chapter 40

  Tina Solomons heard the front door open. She turned the television volume down and listened intently.

  "Mum, is that you?"

  There was no reply.

  Tina swung both legs out from underneath her on the sofa. She was half way across the lounge before she heard the rustling of shopping bags. It was her mum.

  She sighed with relief.

  At the other end of the hall, Jackie Solomons heaved the last of the shopping bags in, and turning, back-heeled the front door closed. She leaned against it for a moment with her eyes closed. She could have slept there and then she was so tired. As Tina watched her, she suddenly sprang back to life. The few seconds rest had allowed her to snap out of it. Come on girl! She started putting the bags away.

  "Don't look Tina!" she called out. "Most of these are for you." It was almost Christmas. Tina smiled. The only time of the year, her mum was truly happy.

  Half an hour later, after Jackie had showered, she entered the room dressed in a black silk kimono, her long dark hair tied back. From behind, she could almost have passed for a Japanese lady. She was carrying a plate with a couple of sandwiches on it. "Want one?" she said, offering them to Tina.

  "No, I'm all right, Mum - I had something earlier."

  "What's that you're watching?" Tina quickly switched the channel over.

  "No, wait - go back a sec."

  After what happened to her, she never watched programmes like Crimewatch. She always felt that whilst the programme did a lot of good in respect of helping to solve crime and catch criminals, a lot of the viewers came from the same mould as people that craned their necks round to have a good look when they passed a road crash, human vultures flicking through the channels, looking for someone else's misery to feed on . . . It was part of the reason she didn't like Tina watching it.

  The photograph had her hooked; caught on screen in the moment it took Tina to change the channel. "Go back!" Jackie said.

  The girl had reminded her of someone.

  "Mum, it's Crimewatch!" Tina said.

  "Put it back on. I want to see."

  When Tina switched it back over, the girl had gone, but Jackie had seen enough of her to register. She looked like me.

  Jackie should have just walked away, but her curiosity was aroused.

  "Who was that girl, Tina?"

  "She's someone who's gone missing from near here . . ."

  "Oh, Jesus - no!" Jackie's hands flew to her cheeks, partly shielding her eyes.

  "It's okay, Mum, you don't have to worry. It's a cold case. It happened over twenty years ago."

  After that, she knew for sure that she should have gone to watch TV in the other room, but the preview, the glimpse of a girl who looked like her, kept her watching the whole programme and in doing so, started her remembering things she'd spent years trying to forget. It seemed she was destined to watch it tonight.

  Such a long time ago . . . what was it sixteen years? Since then, she'd lost two children; married, had another child, lost a husband and built a thriving business.

  The programme made compulsive viewing.

  She found herself experiencing a rising level of discomfort after each case. She kept telling herself to turn the channel over, but she didn't want to miss the reconstruction of what happened to the girl in the photograph. She kept watching. The next case was a reconstruction so similar to what had happened to her; it triggered a whole series of recollections she'd not thought of for years. She couldn't take her eyes off the screen.

  Although they showed the part using an actress, the interviewer spoke to the victim herself. She had waived her right to anonymity. She admired the bravery of the woman. It wasn't something she could ever do herself.

  Her situation was different, best left in the past. Once the programme was over, she would re-submerge the memories. She knew she'd have a spate of nightmares for weeks. The same thing happened the last time she thought about her ordeal. After a while, they would occur only occasionally. It was partly why she kept a prescription of sleeping tablets in the bathroom cabinet; they helped to suppress her nightmares. Don't have nightmares; do sleep well.

  She knew she'd be taking an extra one tonight.

  The programme had ended; she'd gone right through the missing girl case, without taking any of it in.

  What she'd wanted to see, she'd missed. What she'd avoided for years was in her thoughts again.

  Fate has a way of catching up to you. She didn't know who said it, but she was beginning to believe they were right. No matter how high the walls she built to hide behind, she was still afraid in the quiet of the night, still afraid of walking alone in wide-open fields and still wary of strangers.

  What that woman did, brought her to the brink of confronting her own demons. She wondered if one day she might find the courage to pick up the phone, dial the number and say, "I've just seen your programme, and I'd like to go on air to talk about what happened to me, because there's a chance it might help someone else who is going through the same thing, and also because I'd like the chance to purge myself of guilt by standing in the studio on television, in front of millions of viewers to say, 'Look it's me, Jackie Solomons; what happened to me wasn't my fault, and I shouldn't be ashamed!'"

  She felt strangely empowered by p
laying the role in her head.

  Her attacker was probably in his fifties back then, which meant he would be at least in his seventies now. The realisation made her feel physically safer than she had for a long time.

  It put a different perspective on it all. She didn't feel afraid anymore, but it also reminded her why she could never do what that woman did; she was hampered by a secret. Something she'd judged best kept from her daughter. Oh, she knew about the little stillborn brother that came and went before her, but Jackie had never told her about the rape or the older sister she would have had if she hadn't given her up for adoption because the rapist made her pregnant.

  She wondered what had become of her.

  She never told Tina, because she was too young. It was just too big . . . too ugly a truth to tell. Now she was older; she still couldn't tell her.

  As her thoughts shifted away from herself, parts of the reconstruction she'd just seen came back to her. Missing for twenty-three years? She's dead. Jackie was back to thinking about herself again. She might have gone missing too, if it hadn't been for her friends.

  "What's up, Mum, you look upset - is it the programme? I'll turn it off."

  Jackie turned away from the screen to face her daughter, managing a thin, tired smile. "It's nothing, love; I was just miles away thinking about that poor kid's parents, that's all."

  She picked up her plate; most of the sandwich remained uneaten.

  "I'm off to bed … night, love." At the door, she turned and blew her a kiss with her free hand.

  "Night, Mum." Tina watched her go.

  Wide-eyed with weariness, even without make-up, she looked like Cleopatra. With her long dark hair tied back, she looked a little plump in her silk pyjamas, but still a very attractive woman. She couldn't help thinking how lucky she was that her mum was so pretty. It meant there was a fair chance that she would be when she reached her age. She smiled at the adage: If you want to know, what your girlfriend will look like in twenty years time, look at their mum!

  She knew her mum was keeping something from her; she also knew she'd tell her one day, when she was ready.

  Lying in bed, waiting for sleep to come, Jackie thought about how she lost her father in 1979, killed in a car smash when she was four years old. He set off for work, and he never came home. It triggered a separation anxiety in her; she would struggle to cope with all her life.

  Jackie drifted into thinking about the letters her mum and dad had written to each other. She'd found them in the loft, taped up in the same box where they'd been placed when the house was cleared after her father died. They’d lain together, in unsorted neat little stacks of pink and pale blue envelopes tied with thin and faded ribbons. She’d untied a pink one. A trace of perfume so faint it couldn't have been more than a few molecules, triggered an image of her mother in her favourite summer dress, standing against the light shining in from outside, her outline unmistakable, her face partly obscured, dark hair tied up the way she liked to wear it in summer, clear of her face, with the exception of a few loose tendrils deliberately left hanging down in front of each ear.

  She’d unfolded them one by one, never imagining her father to be sentimental in any way at all. Reading the letters exchanged between them, she had realised she was wrong. Her father had been a sensitive soul. Sometime later, she'd sorted them into date order from start to finish. Different hands, different inks. Thoughts, dreams, love shared . . . lying side by side, folded up together like paper ghosts, echoes of lives gone by.

  Sealing them back together, her eyes had filled with tears at the things she couldn’t change.

  Chapter 41

  In the Midlands, a stranger watched the programme in his hotel room. He remembered the events of that night better than anybody else.

  Whenever he could, wherever he was, he always tried to catch Crimewatch. He loved to see the clues the stupid criminals left behind. They were as good as caught.

  The case Kennedy outlined reminded him of the 'Cornish Girl' as he'd come to call her; she was very much a part of a fantasy he'd played out over the years. What he would do, if he ever came across her again . . . the thought started in his head and spread to his loins.

  He could see only the outline of the sister speaking from the shadows, captured in the contrast between light and darkness, she turned slightly; the shape of her face astounded him. Unmistakably female in profile, her dark bee-stung lips curved out and away as if she pouted especially for him. He whistled softly in appreciation, in anticipation of what she would be like in the flesh. He decided he would find her. It wouldn't be difficult; he already had so much information to work with. As his dark fantasies unfolded, he caught a comment made in the background; his condition meant his ears were extra sensitive, more able to analyse speech patterns to perfection. His memory was second to none, with total recall, although he struggled with his own voice; he could replicate those of others with ease. He was born with a stutter and much like those who can sing beautifully with no trace of their impediment, he could do the same, imitating voices, using them instead of his own. His favourite was Clint Eastwood. Rewinding the sound in his head, he deciphered what someone off camera had said. These people are vile.

  He growled as he slammed his fist into the wall with a dull thud that shook the partition so hard; it stopped the couple next door mid-stroke in their lovemaking. He stared at the three bloody flaps of folded back skin on his knuckles.

  Who the hell does he think he is? To judge me! You're going to pay for that Kennedy. You've made it personal now.

  He sucked the blood from them and cursed him as he lay back on the bed, recalling the nurse as she was then, how he'd looked over at her as he left the stupid Irishman on the floor, how she smiled nervously at him, her dark eyes shining, so pretty in her uniform, dark hair tumbling down; she was so full of life back then.

  He remembered how he'd hung around outside in a doorway, following her when she came out, trailing her all the way to the Dire Straits concert. As he tailed her in, he'd grabbed a ticket off a tout and scowling aggressively, had given him a five-pound note. The tout opened his mouth to protest, but then thought better of it, and pocketed the money.

  He spent the rest of the evening, keeping her under close observation from the fringes.

  At first, dancing at times with her arms up above her head, she reminded him of a Spanish gipsy girl with castanets. Later, losing herself to the sound, she'd let herself go, swaying and pumping along to the music. She hadn't known he was there, watching. After the ride home, they'd become acquainted with each other.

  He touched himself and found he was hard.

  The benefits of a good memory.

  When he'd finished, he had the bones of an idea in his head. These people are vile. He'd make Kennedy eat those words. First, he would find the runaway; then he'd get the sister, and after that, he'd put the bite on Kennedy.

  Chapter 42

  After the Crimewatch interview, Stella felt oddly detached. She'd worried beforehand that she might not get through it without crumbling. She needn't have concerned herself; she dealt with it as she did everything else, from behind a shield that protected her, hiding her true thoughts and feelings. Nothing can touch me here.

  She watched the show that night in the privacy of her own home. With no need for shields, she felt the old pain rising up in her, seeping out through the gaps in the wounds the last few days had re-opened. She tried in vain to seal them back up, but the floodgates had opened too far, she gave up resisting and began to cry so hard she thought she'd never be able to stop.

  The release lasted a few minutes; a sense of balance returned to her and with it a vague feeling of disappointment at her lack of control. There was no point to it. Nothing would change. The well of grief would be emptied, but she knew it would just fill up again. Better to keep it in for when she was strong enough, for when she'd be able to grieve properly without having the fear she would never be able to stop.

  She sat in the light
of the small oriel window on its wide, triangular windowsill, the unread letter in her hand. There was no need to read it, she knew what it would say, and she understood it, in a way. She didn't need more words to twist into wounds that would never heal.

  The belief that her parents had clung to, was that one day soon their beautiful long-lost daughter would just walk in the door as if nothing had happened, with an explanation that would make everything all right. I got drunk – this much they knew, she was seen by a policeman in the company of a man who'd never come forward. I fell over and banged my head. I couldn't remember who I was. I met this guy; fell for him, head over heels. We left for Australia the next morning. I was always thinking - I'll remember who I am tomorrow, and then tomorrow turned into next week, next month or next year, and this is your new baby grandson, by the way . . .

  When that didn't happen, there was always another plausible excuse. She'd heard them all. As time passed, her parents had stumbled and faltered. They lost the blind faith that had previously hauled them through.

  She grew up in the shadow of someone she was too young to remember, someone she knew only from photographs. Sometimes, she'd examine the face in the portrait they'd had blown up to hang over the mantelpiece in the middle of the lounge. It was their favourite picture of her, smiling for the camera outside in the sunshine, in her crisp new uniform, in front of the holly bush in the back garden.

  Twenty-three years ago now, and the colours had faded. It was getting harder to make out her features. She'd been absent from their lives, longer than she'd been in them.

  Could you learn to miss someone you had never known?

  She missed her for her parent's sake, but not the way they did. How could she?

  She knew, or at least she thought she knew, what it must have been like for them, but to have waited that long and then given up… It made no sense.

  She pursed her lips, deep in contemplation.