by Lauren White
The murder team investigating her case must have checked out the Missing Persons file, I left on their desk.
The uniform leaves the office, as soon as she has got the computer up and running. I log into the car registration database and enter the partial plate I can remember, cross referencing it with Ford Fiestas registered between 1995 and 2000. It doesn't get me as far forward as I’d hoped. There are too many cars listed here. It would take the living weeks to check them out. For me, it is impossible. The only alternative is to squeeze the rest of that number from my memory. I picture the sequence of events that led up to my death over and over, focusing my mind on the final frame – the number plate. I recover what I think is the digit before TUL. Then, I go to work on these four and another digit slides into place, and another, until I believe I can recall the whole number. This I feed into the computer and hey presto, there it is, the car which killed me and, yes, it is a Ford Fiesta. I wait impatiently for the owner's details to come up onto the screen. Any moment now, I shall know the name and address of the person who took my life - accidentally, negligently, or on purpose. When the information finally appears on the screen, I begin to doubt myself. It simply cannot be. I must have seen this number on the Missing Persons Database because the last registered owner is Leonard Doughton, from Chelmsford in Essex – the same Leonard Doughton who has just found out his daughter, Kerry, was murdered two years ago, when she and the red Ford Fiesta she was driving disappeared.
My flat is the place where I go when I'm feeling out of sorts. The ghosts of the past haunt me there as nowhere else. That's why I like it. Picking my way through a sierra of dust sheets, my life springs back into place, room by room, like grass after footfalls. I see Carrie on her hands and knees scrubbing the bathroom tiles when I first moved into this flat. Jethro leaving Pollock like tracks on the wooden floors, on the day I let him ride around the open plan kitchen and living room on his tricycle. Most of all I see Nigs. And, this is truly odd, because on the few occasions he dropped me off, or picked me up from here, before or after work, I never once invited him inside. Everything is as I left it. My ashes weren't even cool before Carrie put the flat on the market but she still can't bring herself to go through my personal effects yet. That is fine with me. I have anticipatory rage about what might happen when she does. I don't mind her giving a few bits to charity but if she slings anything out without consulting me, she'll pay. I never bothered to make a will so as my closest living relative she has inherited the lot. I wouldn't have wanted it any other way to be fair, except losing control over my home and possessions so abruptly does feel a little like being Sectioned under the Mental Health Act. Who says you can’t take it with you? If I'd known Carrie was going to sell my flat from under me, I might have tried. The thing that is really upsetting me, however, is that I never expected to have to investigate my own death. My colleagues should have seen to that, themselves. I knew I wasn't expendable. You can't have a genetic double and not know that. But, I was erased from my life by a truck and a car and nobody but me seems to care a fig about it. Suddenly, I understand why Bim wants to find her body and why Kerry wants her killer put in jail. Now I want something for myself too - to know whether or not I was murdered.
All we have is a string of bizarre coincidences, I admit to my clients and Jethro, who is seated at the table in the garden with us, wearing the Sherlock Homes hat, I bought him last year for a fancy dress party.
But, they have to mean something, surely, Kerry suggests, brightly.
I am being cued in to join the murder victims’ club but it is not in my nature. I’m not a joiner. Nor a victim. I might have been killed, on the same night, and in the same vicinity in South London as Bim, and possibly by the same car that Kerry was driving when she disappeared, two years before that, but that doesn’t mean our deaths are connected. Coincidences aren’t evidence of anything. If I were able to present what I've come up with so far to Bixby, he'd laugh me out of his office. I don't want to say this to Kerry though. Her presence has been looking so much better over these past few days, I’m reluctant to do anything that might upset her. She is less muddy now and there are blonde highlights beginning to show through in her hair. Strangely, Bim is looking worse. Bluish marks have appeared on her neck. I wonder whether she realises they are there? They must mean she was strangled like Kerry, I suppose. Was she drugged too? That might explain why they both have glassy eyes.
Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to stare!
I’m sorry, Bim, professional habit.
Kerry stirs. I could be wrong…
Bim interrupts her before she has the chance to go on. And, why would that be?
I just meant...
What? What? Spit it out.
I was just thinking it might be emotional.
Bim sighs, irritably. Now, I have to ask a question to find out what you’re talking about. Why is that? Say what you mean, why don’t you?
Kerry does as she has been told. The bruising on your neck must be emotional.
This produces a surprised silence.
Well, I suppose that would be quite perceptive…if it wasn’t already abundantly obvious it couldn’t be anything else – given I’m dead and my body is actually lying in an unmarked grave, God knows where! She turns to glower at me. You’re staring at me again!
We’ll find your body, Bim.
Yes, but when? She frowns at the green oblong table where we're sitting as though she can't quite believe in the existence of plastic garden furniture. All this garden truly lacks is a pit-bull, she mutters, bitterly.
I want to laugh but there is such a thing as familial loyalty. My sister’s garden is a clover lawn which, during the summer months, suffers from alopecia. There aren't any other plants, shrubs, or flowers, because there aren't any borders in which to put them. A rummage of balls, bats, plastic bricks, toy cars, headless dolls, swords, and a batman mask, is all there is to draw the eye. No guns or other weapons of mass destruction because as the boys know their mother has a rule about these. They're not allowed to have them until they're over eighty five. Only Sam truly understands the significance of this. Jethro and Caleb still believe in a world in which the sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 85 is not only possible, but highly likely, hopefully in time for Christmas. To help tire them out, and save on sedatives for Carrie, there is also a climbing frame, swing, and sandpit, as well as a play-shack capable of lowering the tone of any shanty town. I don’t mind. I'm a native to the scrappy rectangles found at the back of South East London dwellings but Bim grew up in a manor house in Wiltshire with a back lawn the size of Orkney and Kerry on an arable farm in rural Essex.
I might be wr…
Bim stops her with a savage look. Let’s dispense with the preamble shall we? What is it you want to say? Come on, out with it?
I try to mitigate her irascibility by smiling encouragingly at Kerry.
I was just think...
Didn’t I say no preamble?
I’m sorry, I just meant…
Meant what?
…they can be very child-friendly.
Kerry furtively monitors Bim’s reaction to see whether she is going to let her live. Unlike the two of us she has no experience of surviving sisters. She is doubly unlucky in that both Bim and I are older than her. She is never going to hold her own. This is the only thing Bim likes about her, of course.
What is she going on about?
I shrug out of sheer self-preservation.
...pit-bulls. They can be really sweet tempered.
Don’t tell me you used to own a pit-bull.
They can be lovely.
A geography student and a pit-bull owner, aren’t we lucky? Bim glowers at me, again. Do you think it’s possible that you could have upset someone so much they paid to have you run over, Kate?
I am beginning to suspect that Bim isn’t happy with me for agreeing to help Kerry, while I am still supposed to be searching for her body.
Spare a thought for the o
ffspring present, I grumble, glancing nervously at Jethro, who is crayoning in a colouring book of dinosaurs.
Fortunately for me, he doesn’t seem to hear. Caleb, playing in the sandpit at the bottom of the garden, is probably out of range of our conversation. Besides, he only understands us when we communicate very slowly and deliberately.
I don’t know what you’re worrying about, Kate. Your nephews see dead people!
That’s not the point. Carrie would be apoplectic if she knew we were discussing any of this in front of them.
Then, we’d better not tell her, had we.
My sister puts her head out of the back door right at that moment making us jump guiltily.
Caleb and Jethro go and have a pee before we go out, she shouts.
When there is no response from either of them, she comes out to take a closer look. Caleb is still in the sand pit building something avant garde. His mother smiles, indulgently, at him. He was a blonde haired angel with a halo of curls when he was born but gradually the Madding genes have asserted their supremacy, turning him into the olive skinned, dark haired, sand-speckled, cherub he is today. Sam my eldest nephew is the only one of my nephews who looks as though he might hang on to his father's blonde hair but even he has our dark eyes and skin.
What an interesting house, my sister tells her youngest son.
We turn to examine it - a little sceptically it has to be said.
Now come and wash the sand off your hands, we're going out, she adds.
It's a plane, Jethro corrects her.
The rest of us study it anew. It doesn't look like a plane to me but then it didn't look much like a house either. Carrie is wise enough not to pass any further comment on it.
Did you hear me, Jethro? We're going out. I have to do some shopping.
He continues colouring in his dinosaur book and I await the explosion. But, Carrie without Phil has become a more relaxed mother. She buys herself some time rather than colliding with him head on.
Where's Sam?
In his room, we all chorus.
He is always in his room even though the summer holidays have just begun. He has taken Phil’s departure the worst. Not that he was ever the kind of father who took much of an interest in him while he was living here. It is the loss of the hope he could one day become such a father which has hit Sam so hard, perhaps. A couple of meetings have been arranged with him since he left; on neutral territory, with - in view of the violent offence of which he is accused - a chaperone. But, Phil has failed to show up both times. Something always seems to come up at work, just like it did before he and Carrie split up. Caleb and Jethro show no obvious signs of suffering from his lack of attention but Sam does and, really, it is obvious even to me that three growing boys need a male figure in their lives to relate to. Carrie knows this too. She hears the information about Sam's whereabouts as an accusation and finally loses her patience
Jethro how many more times? Put that crayon down, have a pee, wash your hands, and change your sandals, in that order please, because WE ARE GOING OUT.
I don't want to go, Jethro tells her, sulkily.
Jethro, do what your mother says, I chide, gently.
No.
Carrie is standing there weighing up her next move. He is a bit big even at six to be forcibly removed from the table.
Jethro, please, I encourage.
But I want to stay here with you. I want to be part of the murder investigation team.
Carrie frowns. What are you talking about?
Jethro, leave it there, please, I warn him, quickly.
He looks up at his mother. I want to stay here with Auntie Kate and her...
Don't you dare mention Bim and Kerry, Jethro, don't you dare. Your mother isn't going to understand.
He blinks at me sourly from under his Sherlock Holmes hat.
Carrie puts her arm around him. She talks quietly because she doesn't want Caleb to hear. Auntie Kate is dead, Jethro. You know that. We went to her funeral. I understand you miss her. We all do. I miss her, terribly, myself. But, she is in Heaven now.
We all laugh at that, even Caleb whose ears started to wag the moment she dropped her voice.
It's not funny, she says, uncertainly.
Auntie Kate is sitting there, Jethro informs her, pointing at me.
Jethro, we agreed this was to be our secret.
No, you decided that.
I don't know what to say to that, because he is right. I disliked myself at the time for saying it but I wanted to spare us all – well, me and Carrie principally – all of this.
Okay, if this is what you want, be my guest.
Carrie asks, tersely: I decided what?
I don't want to go out shopping. I want to stay here with Auntie Kate who is sitting there. He points at me again.
Carrie straightens up and turns round in a circle. Reeling, is the word which comes to me as I watch her.
Jethro this is very important. Are you telling me you can see Auntie Kate?
YES, he shouts in exasperation. Can't we Caleb?
Carrie's hands go to her mouth in horror. Caleb too?
She spins around to find him.
He has left the sand pit to get closer to the fun. He nods his head, earnestly.
And, does she talk to you?
Of course she talks to us, Jethro says, as though she is being particularly dense.
Jethro, there's no need to talk to your mother like that.
He shrugs.
Carrie doesn't know what to do, or say, next.
Jethro is studying me. Prove to Mummy you're here, Auntie Kate.
Carrie follows his gaze to what to her is an empty chair.
This is your show not mine.
I get up from the table, ready to walk away and his eyes fill with tears. I have never seen such a look of wretched disappointment on his face and I feel as though I am failing him, irrevocably. I sit down again and lean across the table to pick up a crayon.
Carrie almost dies of fright.
Pass me your book, Jethro. He slides it to me. He is telling you the truth and I will look after him if you want to go out shopping, I write.
My sister runs inside the house.
Make her believe you, Jethro whines to me.
How can I if she runs away from me?
Tell her something only you two would know, Bim suggests.
Carrie comes back out of the house and picks up the book to read what I've written again. She almost can't believe she is entertaining the idea that I'm sitting here. The only reason she is is because she has felt my presence herself. She has had the same thought as Bim. What were the names we invented for ourselves when we were small?
Flopsie and Maisie.
After Jethro has repeated what I’ve said, I watch Carrie calculate whether she might have told him these names before. She thinks not but...Where did we hide granddad's false teeth?
Tell her, we didn't hide them we flushed them down the loo.
Jethro laughs. Did you Mummy? Did you flush them down the loo? Did you get into trouble?
She nods. There are tears in her eyes. She rips out the page on which I have written. Jethro makes a face.
It's only one dinosaur out of a whole book, Jethro and it’s mine now. She writes on it: I don't want to communicate through the boys. They've been through enough, already.
Fine, I reply, using another of Jethro's crayons.
I have a million questions.
I probably don't have one single answer.
We can't do this now. It would be better when the boys are in bed. And, I do have to go out. Can I leave them with you, or not? Will you look after them? I want an honest answer, Kate. Are you really capable of taking proper care of them?
Of course, I am - the same as always.
Only dead!
I ignore her remark. There's no point us falling out this early on.
Those helmet heads have only gone and arrested Reece for my murder, Bim announces, as she arrives
in my basement office.
Who's Reece?
My man. My boss. Remember? I told you about him. I was there at his house when they came for him.
And, they actually arrested him? On what grounds?
I don't know. They didn't spell it out. They just asked him to accompany them to the police station.
Bim didn't work in public relations for nothing. She likes to spin the facts. It's probably just routine, I reassure her.
But, what if they pressurize him into making a confession? He is very vulnerable without me. We have to do something, Kate.
She means I have to do something. Yes, but...
But, what?
You have no memory of what happened, Bim. Who is to say he wasn't somehow involved with your death?
She doesn't so much give me a withering look, as wither herself from my office. I'm not sure whether I'm more irritated with her or myself as I watch her disappear. I knew I should have immersed myself more fully in her case. If I was any kind of serious detective I would have paid Reece a visit, followed him even, by now. I would have acted on that first stab of suspicion I had about her involvement with him during our initial interview. If only I hadn't been so busy working with Kerry on a photo-fit picture of her killer...and I’ve been spending a lot of time with my sister too. That's right! This is all Carrie’s fault. The familiarity of my conclusion satisfies me on every level. It assuages the guilt I feel for failing Bim and distracts me from her case all over again.
I have owned up to Carrie not only about the existence of Bim and Kerry but also about my role in investigating their murders. She took it better than I expected. My new state seems to have afforded me some kind of celebrity status in her eyes. I feel uncomfortable about this and relieved at one and the same time. We've developed a technique for communicating, she and I, which used to be called automatic writing. She holds a pen, loosely, and rests it on a blank page, while I steer it for her. She appears to be genuinely pleased to have me around.
The thing I hate most about being dead is the passivity of it, I confided to her, that very morning. It seems to me I am only kidding myself about still being a detective. What I really am is a wait-ive and watch-ive. Apart from being able to do a few conjuring tricks, I am pretty useless. I can't question the living, only the dead, and that doesn't seem to have yielded any great advantage so far. I never expected my words to her to be so graphically borne out, only a few hours later.
