Times and Places

by Keith Anthony

  “Three, two, one… Fire!” Fergus pulled the chord, there was a flash and a loud bang, the magician stumbled backwards, briefly putting his hands to his face and then, regaining his composure, pulled out from his mouth the small white cannon ball still marked with Fergus’ name.

  “Wasn’t that amazing?!” The Cruise Director raved as the magician took a bow. “Ladies and gentlemen, the ‘Mystical Michael’… and a big hand for Francis too.” The magician took his final bow and, glancing frostily one last time towards the man who had nearly sabotaged his wonderful act, he retreated backstage. Fergus was released and, with the spotlight now as uninterested in him as the Cruise Director who had got his name wrong, he fumbled his way back to Sylvie in the darkness and sat down. She grasped his hand again and whispered:

  “I’m so sorry.” He looked back at her and gave a short, resigned smile. Meanwhile, the singers and dancers had been introduced, but Fergus was still recovering and in no fit state to take them in. The truth is they were lame too, with one of the men singing a dull song, the other singers doing backing vocals, while the dancers strutted about stage in over elaborate costumes. Fergus was aware enough to know that it was pretty grim stuff, and he felt guilty towards Nicole and Holly for thinking that, whilst suspecting their hearts weren’t much in this either.

  “What a wonderful night, ladies and gentlemen!” concluded the Cruise Director, “one of the best that we have ever seen here in the Poseidon Theatre! Thank you for coming, enjoy the rest of the evening and, don’t forget, tomorrow is our very last night and we have the crew show, you won’t want to miss that!”

  “The whole thing was awful, not just the last song!” Sylvie bemoaned, as she led her shell-shocked husband back to their cabin. Fergus was exhausted, as the adrenaline finally drained from his system. He had energy only to get undressed and to make a poor go of cleaning his teeth, before falling into bed.

  “Are you OK?”

  “Yes, I’m fine, just extremely tired.” Sylvie looked across and her husband’s eyes were already closed and his breathing soon grew deep. She watched him for a moment and then kissed him goodnight on the side of the head. She took her time, changing quietly and then washing slowly in the bathroom, running through the evening in her mind: her husband’s quietness at dinner and his torment at the show. These thoughts were still going around her head when she turned off the light and got into bed too, but they soon dissipated as sleep overcame her and the cabin fell silent.

  28

  London – Monday 12th December 2016

  Hannah had lived in secret with the accident for three years, only Nu had known. It had been a weight around her neck, knowing she was a killer, knowing that one day she was going to hand herself in and face the consequences, knowing that, as she went about her everyday life, there was somewhere a prison cell patiently awaiting her arrival. She deeply regretted the precious time she would have had with Nicole and Dylan, but which she would now miss in jail. She tormented herself as regards how her daughter and son would see her once they knew what she had done. She had a secret – would they still love her if they knew the truth?

  “Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid…” she prayed earnestly every Sunday, wondering for how many others in the church around her the words would be so apt?

  Most of all, she kept seeing in her mind the aging couple who had been on the TV: the poor girl’s parents, that hollow look in their eyes which can only stem from deeply-felt grief. Had they seen her letter? Did they understand why she had not come forward? She consoled herself that one day she would know and this torture would be over. In the meantime, whenever the despair was too great, she knew she could turn to Nu.

  Only in 2013, when her daughter had safely graduated from university, did she finally confide in Nicole, looking down at the ground as she confessed, for fear of seeing horror etched across her face. When she eventually looked up, Nicole appeared stunned.

  “Are you sure Mum?”

  “Yes, I rewound the programme again and again… it aired on 23rd June 2010 and specifically said it was the fourth anniversary. I know that on 23rd June 2006 I side-swiped a woman walking around that corner, at the exact same time they mentioned. They even said she was a female cyclist.”

  “Oh, Mum, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You had already lost your father. I didn’t want…” She started to cry. Nicole came and sat next to her, holding her tightly. Hannah recounted her desperate visit to Nu, how she had written the letter to the police and how, once Dylan was settled, she would hand herself in.

  A burden shared wasn’t exactly a burden halved, but it was an immense relief to Hannah that her daughter’s affections had not changed, that she wouldn’t lose her. Somehow, she felt stronger for having the extra pillar of support, along with Nu. She only hoped Dylan would, one day, react the same way and that she would then have the courage to go to the police.

  It took a little over three more years for both children to be safely through university and gainfully employed and then, late in 2016, Hannah finally decided the moment had come. Nicole was working on a cruise ship at the time, but had been allocated a week off just before Christmas, subsequently scheduled to rejoin the vessel again for its festive cruise. On Sunday 27th November, Hannah phoned Nicole on board the Magdalena to tell her that she intended to hand herself in to the police while her daughter was home. Her thinking was that they would at least have a weekend together before she did so and that, afterwards, Nicole would have a few days to understand the situation and to ensure Dylan was coping with it, before she rejoined the ship, which Hannah hoped she still might.

  “Mum, please don’t,” Nicole begged on the phone.

  “I have to… I did something terrible…”

  “It was an accident…”

  “I was on the pavement… a girl died…”

  “Handing yourself in won’t change anything…”

  “Yes it will… it will give her parents some sort of justice… they may be waiting for this moment… It will give me peace.”

  Nicole could hear the resolution in her mother’s voice.

  “At least let me come with you.”

  “Thank you, I’d like that very much.”

  Hannah went on to see Nu, telling him the news too. He didn’t argue, he could see that, if she had meant what she had said about giving herself up, now was as good a time as any. He promised, whatever happened, to keep an eye on Nicole and Dylan.

  And so, at eleven o’clock on that Monday 12th December, Hannah and Nicole climbed the steps of Paddington Green Police Station. It felt in many ways like the most ordinary of days: grey, with a dull drizzly rain, the scene urban, with dreary buildings and busy flyovers, a nearby pneumatic drill occasionally roaring into life, drowning out the constant rush of background traffic as workmen dug another hole in the road. But, unnoticed by everyone else, the day in fact was extraordinary, it was a long anticipated date with destiny and Hannah didn’t hesitate, she knew if she did her courage would desert her.

  “Please can I speak to Detective Sergeant Katie Brady?”

  “Er, Detective Inspector Brady… is she expecting you?”

  “Kind of…” she replied, remembering the promise she had made in her letter, “My name is Hannah Webster.”

  The Desk Clerk looked a little unsure, but then made a phone call.

  “She’s on duty and will be down in a moment, please take a seat.”

  Mother and daughter took their places on red plastic seats opposite the front desk and waited. A clock on the wall to their right seemed to draw out time, as it stretched seconds into eternal minutes. Tick. Now and then someone, often a uniformed police officer, would emerge from a door next to the desk, cross in front of them and head out into the street. Tock. Sometimes that process would reverse and an officer would clatter in through
the entrance, dripping rain water as they fumbled for a card which, with a distinct bleep, would open the door through which they would disappear into the back offices beyond, their radios crackling unintelligible messages as they went. Tick. Hannah looked around and noticed a teenage boy slouched to her left and an elderly man sitting up straight to her right, fellow human beings separated by postures and about fifty years, but both, like Hannah, waiting. Tock. The boy’s eyes were glazed as he stared out in front of him, while tinny music leaked from his ear phones. Hannah watched him for a few seconds and then, afraid he would take offence, turned away – but he hadn’t noticed or, if he had, he didn’t care. Muffled, in the distance, she could still hear the drill as somewhere, back in the ordinary world, a hole continued to be dug.

  Finally, the door opposite opened and a lady Hannah instantly recognised from the TV programme emerged. She looked around, spotted the only women waiting and asked:

  “Hannah Webster?” Hannah and Nicole both stood up, “DI Brady. Come on through.” They followed her through the door, Hannah wondering when she would walk back out again and, in her distraction, nearly bumping into a man bringing the desk clerk a steaming cup of tea.

  “Careful there!” he said, but not angrily.

  Katie, still unsure as to which of the two women might be Hannah, led them down a featureless corridor smelling of disinfectant and on to a side room, where they sat down on more red plastic chairs, these chained to the floor, either side of a table.

  “So, how can I help?” Katie said, wrongly looking at the younger woman.

  Hannah began to cry and Nicole held her hand tightly. She pulled herself together and spoke the lines she had rehearsed for the last six and a half years.

  “On 23rd June 2006, I was riding my bicycle on the pavement along the Marylebone Road when a woman stepped out from Great Central Street. I side-swiped her with my bike, but I didn’t think I had hurt her… I was wrong, I should have stopped. Four years later, on the anniversary of the accident, I saw a TV programme in which it featured, and only then did I realise I had killed her. I didn’t know what to do, my husband had recently died and I had two children to take care of…” Hannah began weeping again and Nicole squeezed her hand more tightly. Composing herself quickly, before the Detective Inspector could interrupt her flow, she continued:

  “… so I decided I would live with it until my children could fend for themselves, but I promised myself I’d hand myself in then. I don’t know if you remember, but I wrote to you. I’m so sorry.”

  Katie remembered the letter well, they had tried hard to trace the sender, but there had been no clues from where it had come.

  “Thank you, Mrs Webster. Please will you wait here a moment.” Katie left the room, her heart racing at what she had just heard. Meanwhile, Hannah and Nicole sat there, wondering what was going to happen next. An identical clock to that by the front desk hung to one side, its second hand moving not smoothly, but marking those stretched seconds in jolts as it went around. The white walls were otherwise bare, save for a red panic strip running around the room which, just for a moment, Nicole felt an irrational urge to press. She placed her hands beneath her thighs, as if to stop herself doing so. A frosted window let in a dull light: perhaps on a brighter day sun beams could have pierced it more strongly, illuminating the wall behind them, a reminder of the outside world and a sign of remaining hope, but such was not the weather today. Nicole checked her phone – no signal.

  “Well done Mum, I’m proud of you.”

  The die now cast, Hannah dissolved into tears again, just regaining her composure as Katie re-entered the room holding a file and some sort of machine. She placed them on the table, sat down and pulled her chair back in, scraping it along the floor in a manner which made Nicole wince.

  “I do remember your letter,” she said, extracting it from the file. It looked old and dog eared but Hannah recognised it immediately. “And I did try hard to find you. I’d like to ask you a few questions if I may. How do you know your accident was on 23rd June 2006?”

  “Because I had an important meeting that day and I was running late, that’s why. With the traffic so chaotic, I rode on the pavement,” she handed over her 2006 diary with the page open at the requisite date, clearly showing the scheduled meeting. “The only thing the TV programme got wrong was saying that I was riding fast… I only wish I had been, I might have missed her. But I was riding cautiously, because I was on the pavement, that’s why I didn’t think I had hurt her… killed her.”

  “Can you remember what you were wearing that morning?”

  “No, but I usually cycled in leggings, with a T-shirt and fleece, and I wore a white cycle helmet.”

  “Always?”

  “The cycle helmet yes… the rest, well it depended on the weather, I can’t remember specifically on that day.”

  “Can you remember the weather?”

  Hannah struggled, so Katie clarified, “Was it raining for example?”

  “No, no it wasn’t… I remember that much.”

  There was a long pause while the Detective Inspector appeared to reflect on what to say next.

  “Mrs Webster, we searched for you as hard as we could…” Hannah missed it, but Nicole was momentarily confused by the unexpected hint of apology in the statement. Katie opened up the machine which turned out to be a DVD player. “I should warn you, this is a little upsetting.” She pressed ‘Play’ and CCTV footage of the corner appeared. While the image was surprisingly good, it was a little hard to see the detail because it was clearly raining quite heavily. Suddenly, a bicycle appeared at speed, heading west on the pavement along the north side of the Marylebone Road. The cyclist swerved to avoid a woman pushing a large buggy and then again to miss a street sign, but as she – and despite her dark helmet it clearly was a woman – reached the junction with Grand Central Street, she hit a pedestrian emerging from it with her head down against the rain. The cyclist just about maintained her stability, putting her foot on the ground to help her do so, but continued across the street, onto the pavement the other side and then out of shot. The woman who had been hit spun around, hopelessly sought to keep her balance and then fell, appearing to strike her head hard on the concrete as she did. She lay there motionless. Then the woman pushing the buggy appeared, rushing up and having the presence of mind to apply its brake before getting down on the ground, next to the lifeless body. She gently shook it, but seemed to know instinctively there was nothing she could do. Instead, she held her head in her hands as others quickly gathered round. Katie clicked the button marked ‘Stop’.

  “I don’t understand,” said Hannah, “that wasn’t me… and it wasn’t raining when I had the accident.”

  “She – the woman on the video I mean – was wearing a dark helmet Mrs Webster, you said yours was white. I don’t know how much you have changed over the years, but she doesn’t much look like you either. You say it wasn’t raining when you had your accident, but it clearly is on the video. Most important though is the date. You may recall that in June 2010 a famous singer, Summer Martins, passed away, her greatest hit ‘Roam’ seemed to be playing everywhere for weeks, perhaps you remember that?”

  Hannah nodded, but didn’t understand the relevance.

  “They made a tribute programme for her which aired on the 21st June… it was felt appropriate apparently, because it was Midsummer’s Day… but it meant our programme went out two days later than originally scheduled, on the 23rd. It was pre-recorded and, to be honest, nobody considered, before it was shown, that the reference to the fourth anniversary would be wrong; nobody noticed that we hadn’t actually specified the date. In fact, the accident was four years and two days earlier… we did try to find you Mrs Webster, honestly.”

  Hannah sat silently while the implication sank in. More than six years ago, a TV programme had transformed her instantly from an ordinary person into a killer, today the rev
erse process had been just as sudden and just as unexpected.

  “Mum, it wasn’t you! It wasn’t you!” Nicole cried, throwing her arms around her mother. But Hannah was still trying to take it in – six and a half years of guilt and inner torment and she wasn’t a killer after all. In the deepest recesses of her mind she even thought she remembered, on the day, having cycled past a yellow police sign appealing for witnesses to an accident, but she couldn’t be sure and it was so long ago that she had not taken in its significance.

  “Did you ever catch her?” she eventually asked.

  “No, I’m afraid not.” Katie replied.

  “And the girl’s parents… how are they?”

  “They are coping… we stay in touch.” She paused. “Actually, they have been worrying about you; they will be pleased you finally came forward.”

  “But I was riding on the pavement, how can they have been worried about me when someone doing the same thing killed their daughter?”

  “Six years of torment is a heavy penalty for something hundreds of cyclists do every day in London alone. You said yourself, you were riding carefully, plus it wasn’t raining. I mean I am not excusing it, you did brush against someone and, yes, you should have stopped, but perhaps it’s because you were riding slowly that she wasn’t hurt.”

  “I have wasted so much of your time, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s OK… it really is, I knew as soon as I read the letter that it wasn’t you. The dates didn’t match. Also, to our surprise, we were able to find your CCTV too, from the 23rd. It should have been wiped but, by chance, it wasn’t.” Katie switched disks and pressed ‘Play’ again. Hannah saw herself pedalling, indeed fairly cautiously, along the pavement and swiping a woman who was rushing out of Grand Central Street while talking on her mobile phone. She could be seen glimpsing back briefly as the woman spun half way round with the momentum of the encounter, fleetingly looking as though she might lose her balance, but regaining it quickly, then shouting and gesturing angrily after Hannah, who by now had cycled out of sight. Katie pressed ‘Stop’ again and they sat in silence for a full minute, before Hannah spoke: