Letters To My Daughter's Killer

by Cath Staincliffe

  When I didn’t speak, he cleared his throat. ‘It’s serious,’ he said. His hands, big, brawny hands, clenched together, one nail tugging at a scab.

  ‘Who is it?’ I found my voice.

  He blinked, his sea-green eyes glittering with something: shame, or embarrassment?

  My throat was dry, I stood quickly, went and poured myself a glass of water, took a drink. Turned to him, repeating my question.

  ‘Her name’s Denise.’

  I didn’t know any Denise.

  ‘Where did you meet her, who is she?’ My face felt odd, as though I couldn’t control my muscles, little tremors flickering through my cheeks, plucking at my lips.

  ‘At physio, she works there.’ Tony had hurt his shoulder lifting stuff at work. When it didn’t heal, I pestered him until he went to the GP, who referred him on.

  I laughed, feeling sick.

  ‘She was looking for a fireplace.’

  And got a lover into the bargain.

  He exhaled slowly and pulled a face.

  ‘Look, if this is just some fling—’ I was ready to forgive, to forget, to retreat. Something was breaking inside me at the prospect that he might leave.

  ‘It’s not,’ he interrupted. ‘I can’t stop seeing her, I don’t want to stop.’

  I turned to look out of the window. I couldn’t bear to witness it, what he was saying, the strength of his feeling. ‘You bastard,’ I said.

  ‘Ruth—’

  ‘Fuck off!’ I threw the glass across the room, relishing the sound as it smashed against the wall and water splashed on to the shelves and the floor. ‘Get out,’ I screeched at him.

  He tried to speak, something about sorting things out and Lizzie, but I was incandescent.

  That day I called in sick, and I was. Heartsick, wounded. Retreating to my bed, I wept and cursed, all but tore my hair out. What had happened? Obviously he didn’t love me as I still did him, but where had it gone? Nineteen years we’d been together. Nineteen.

  Lizzie shared my hurt and outrage when Tony and I finally told her what was going on. It would have been easy to form a little cabal, the two of us, to ostracize him, close ranks and sit together picking over his betrayal for our entertainment. Or to force him to choose between Denise and his daughter. But I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to be the stereotype of the cuckolded wife, cold and acerbic and unforgiving. Nor did I want Lizzie to be damaged in the fallout from the split.

  Yes, I was hurt, and it took me a long time to feel at peace again in my life. To be comfortable in my solitude. Fourteen years since the parting, and to be honest, there is still a residue there. The scars, perhaps, still niggle and ache.

  I’ve drunk at least a bottle of wine but I am stone-cold sober. I feel bruised everywhere, my muscles aching, my back sore when I stretch or breathe deeply. As if I’ve been in an accident.

  Milky slips up the stairs with me, finds my door shut and yowls and I tell him to hush. He slinks away. When I come into the spare room from the bathroom, he nearly trips me up.

  On the pillow, a scrap, bloody strings, half a wing, wet feathers, a beak. A dead chick. I swallow my cry of surprise and fetch tissue paper, take the bird down and put it in the compost bin. Milky at my heels, I retrace my steps.

  I spend the night fitfully, frightened to sleep, the cat at my feet. Questions wheeling through my mind: Did she die quickly? Did she suffer? Did she call out, did she speak? What were her last words? Blunt force trauma. How many times did he strike her? What with? Was he counting? Did he kick her? Did he rape her? Why kill her, my Lizzie? Why?

  When I do let go, my dreams are dark and steeped in blood, my arms full of dead things that I cannot wake.

  CHAPTER SIX

  17 Brinks Avenue

  Manchester

  M19 6FX

  Early Monday morning, there is a nanosecond of innocent ignorance as I come to and find myself in the spare bed. And then the fist of reality hits like a lump hammer. Shock spikes through me, an electric surge bringing with it an overwhelming feeling that I’ve done something very, very wrong. Akin to guilt or shame, the emotion sits cold and heavy in the pit of my stomach. Not logical but visceral, and I don’t even attempt to analyse it.

  No one else is up; it is six o’clock. Outside it is raining, a misty drizzle, and the light is violet grey.

  Out of habit, I pour a bowl of muesli and add milk. The first mouthful brings nausea as violent as morning sickness. Mourning sickness? A band of heat around my head, saliva thick in my throat, a spasm rippling up from my stomach.

  Restless, feeling confined, I leave a note and go out for a walk. The earliest commuters are about, walking briskly to the train station, or driving past me, sole occupants in their cars. None of the pedestrians speak to me. I keep my eyes averted just in case; we are prone to nods and smiles when we pass each other up here, so this signals that I am not available. I am invisible. A dishevelled grandmother in a sensible waterproof and muddy shoes. Thankfully, I don’t meet anyone who recognizes me.

  It’s as if I’m experiencing everything through a filter, and the rain blurs the world even further. I wander up to the park, ignoring the joggers and the dog-walkers and their animals. In the gloom of the day, a Japanese maple glows luminous red. Reaching the orchard area, I see apples on the trees. Could I eat an apple?

  There was a library project we hosted this time last year with the local Sure Start. The children came here and picked apples and then returned to the library for a puppet show about healthy eating and got to polish off their harvest, suitably washed and cored. The trees are labelled. I spot the Cox’s orange pippins, my favourite, and twist a small one from the branch, rub the fruit on my jacket and take a bite. It is tart and crisp and stings my taste buds. My eyes water. All those myths, apples that bring evil. Snow White choking, Eve and the snake. I won’t be tempting fate. The serpent has already come for me.

  The park is full of Lizzie, in her pram, on the climbing frame – though the old one was dull grey metal, four-square, not the wood and rope wigwam that Florence plays on nowadays. Lizzie flat on her back, having a full-blown tantrum, trying to kick me when I went to pick her up, her face red with rage and her hair still a toffee colour before the blonde came in. Blonde like I used to be. My hair now is white, better than grey, but people often assume I’m even older than I am because of it. Lizzie on the field for those family fun days. Later, bigger, huddled on the bowling green benches with her mates, smoking fags.

  I manage half the apple before my stomach revolts. I leave the rest for the birds.

  Jack and Florence are in the kitchen when I arrive home. She’s eating cereal and humming to herself. I can’t make out the tune. What on earth is going on in her head? Does she understand what she’s been told? Should I talk to her about it as well? I’m not sure I can do it without collapsing in tears. I remember my own high panic and deep unease as a child on the rare occasion my mother cried.

  ‘I’ve been sent through a summary of the post-mortem,’ Kay says when she arrives. ‘Would you like Tony to be here? Or I can do it separately?’

  ‘I’ll ring him,’ I say.

  Tony wears the same clothes he had on yesterday. I hesitate, but he moves to me, we hug again, and I’m thankful. We are her parents, after all; no one else can share our perspective. All our arguments and enmity, the bitterness and sorrow, set aside now.

  We sit around the kitchen table. More cups of tea. The only thing I can stomach. I have a DVD of Kung Fu Panda and I put it on in the living room and leave the door open so that Florence, clinging to Jack’s leg, can hear it. It takes a few minutes: she goes through to look and then comes back, twice. The third time she stays there.

  ‘She’s checking on you,’ I say to Jack, ‘in case you disappear as well. Has she said anything?’

  ‘No, nothing.’

  I’ve no idea whether that is a healthy response or not.

  Kay has the official papers in her hand. We fall silent and she cle
ars her throat, then reads them to us. ‘The post-mortem was carried out yesterday afternoon by Mr Hathaway. He’s one of the Home Office pathologists for the region. It began at two fifteen and lasted two and a half hours.’

  It’s peculiar, but the facts and figures help. Lizzie’s murder is impossible to deal with, to frame, but numbers, names, procedures are something to hold on to. Crutches, or footholds in the rock we have to scale. Are we climbing up or climbing down? A peak or a pothole? It is bleak and unmapped, our journey, but these facts are like sparks of light, matches that flame for a second and then gutter out in the fierce wind.

  ‘There was severe blunt force trauma to Lizzie’s head, her shoulders, her right arm. A dozen blows at least.’

  I start to shake, everywhere, uncontrollably. But I say, ‘Go on.’

  ‘The back of her skull was—’

  ‘Do we need this?’ Tony bursts out, ‘Do we really have to hear—’

  ‘No,’ Kay says immediately.

  ‘I do,’ I say, ‘I want to know. Everything.’

  It is true. There’s a void, a hunger that can’t be sated. The gap left by Lizzie’s absence is huge. Unfathomable. I need to fill it with anything I can. Better to fill it with truth than fantasy. No matter how dark the contents of the report are, they will never match what I dredge up in my imagination.

  ‘Tony, if you want to wait?’ Kay says.

  ‘It’s fine . . . just . . .’ Tony clamps his hands over his mouth and squeezes his eyes shut tight.

  Jack is silent, ashen, trembling as I am.

  ‘The back of Lizzie’s skull was crushed with multiple fractures, the right orbital socket around the eye was fractured, as well as the nose and the right ulna – in the arm. Cause of death was due to blunt force trauma. It is likely that she died as a result of one of the early blows.’ I wonder how they can possibly know that.

  ‘The weapon was long and narrow, cylindrical, almost certainly the poker that was recovered from the scene,’ Kay says.

  ‘Oh God,’ I breathe.

  ‘Poker?’ Tony says. The fire irons. Genuine antiques. Tony gave them to Lizzie and Jack when they put the wood-burner in. You can get modern ones almost identical, black cast iron. Long-handled shovel, tongs, brush and poker.

  Jack presses his fist to his head, closing his eyes for a moment. ‘There could be fingerprints?’ he says, looking at Kay.

  ‘Were there any on the poker?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Kay says. ‘It will take some time for us to have forensic results back, but fingerprints are one of the first things to be recovered and examined. The CSIs will also look for footwear impressions, palm prints, anything they can find. And DNA traces on Lizzie’s body. Her body has been swabbed and her hair brushed, scrapings taken from under her nails. These are all areas where the attacker may have left traces that can help us to identify him.’

  ‘Was she raped?’ My voice is uneven.

  Jack stiffens, and Tony hunches over in his seat.

  ‘There is no sign of that.’ Kay waits to see if we have any other questions before continuing. ‘There’s something else that the post-mortem revealed. Lizzie was pregnant.’

  ‘No!’ Jack says.

  Tony and I look at each other, both bewildered.

  ‘Seven weeks’ gestation. Twins. You didn’t know?’ she says to Jack.

  He shakes his head, tears welling in his eyes.

  The reverberations from that bombshell echo in the silence that follows. All the futures that might have been. Brothers or sisters or both for Florence; Lizzie pushing a double buggy. The hope and promise of new babies.

  Jack gets up abruptly and goes upstairs. We can hear him being sick, a raw, retching sound.

  ‘What about Broderick Litton?’ Tony says.

  ‘We’ve not been able to trace him yet.’

  ‘Why not?’ I say. ‘All the surveillance we have, cameras everywhere, bureaucracy, the internet.’

  ‘If people want to stay under the radar, it’s possible,’ Kay says.

  I think about it: no wages or NI, no GP or car registration, no bank account. You’d have to live on the streets.

  ‘We are looking,’ she says.

  I wonder where you are. Where you can hide. If you have gone on the run, to London, or Spain, or across the globe. Or perhaps you are still here, in Manchester, watching the news updates, relieved as Lizzie’s murder drops off the headlines and the front pages. Do you find an excuse to change channels when it’s on or are you audacious enough to make observations about it? I hope you are paralysed with fear. Unable to eat or sleep or think. Counting the minutes till there’s a knock on the door and they come for you.

  Ruth

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Monday 14 September 2009

  Jack’s parents arrive, Marian and Alan; Jack saw them briefly at their hotel last night. After a tactful few minutes sharing commiserations and expressions of shock and sad disbelief, I leave them to it, ask them to excuse me if I go and lie down. There are too many people in the house as it is, and I think they need some space to talk with their son. I’m also worried that if I don’t stop for a little while, I’ll physically collapse. I’ve never been a fan of melodrama, and me keeling over would only be an added strain for everyone.

  My heart is painful in my chest, a dull ache as if it’s swollen, and pounding too fast. I take my slippers off and lie on my back on the bed and try to slow my breathing, to release the knots in my stomach, the slab of tension across my back. It doesn’t work: as soon as I lose concentration, which I do easily, I find myself holding my breath. Dredging up some moves from yoga from years ago, I try those, but it’s hopeless. My body rebels, taut, spastic.

  Closing my eyes, I focus on the sounds: birds in the garden, a bus wheezing by, the sound of someone clinking pots from downstairs, the ticking of the central heating radiator, sibilant fragments from Florence’s DVD. There is some tinnitus in my ears, a revolving hum that may be a machine somewhere but is probably just a noise in my head.

  Should I see the GP about the burning pain in my chest? I’m on medication already for high cholesterol. Someone mentioned the GP, Tony or Kay, I can’t remember now. For tranquillizers or sleeping pills. The poker. A dozen blows. Twins. Like the whirring in my ears, the images, the details tumble around.

  This was Lizzie’s room.

  The place where she had her cot, though her incessant crying meant that for much of the first year she slept in with me while Tony managed on a mattress on the floor in here. When she was walking and talking, the crying eased and we moved her into this room. She outgrew the cot, had a child’s bed. Then came bunk beds and sleepovers, posters on the walls and a desk for homework. So fast. It all went so fast.

  The room has changed now: once Lizzie moved out for uni, I did it up. Started taking temporary lodgers, actors up for work at the Lowry or the Royal Exchange, Contact or the Palace. There’s a small TV and DVD in here for the lodgers. If we get on well, we watch some programmes together on the big set downstairs. Having the company is nice, and when I have the place to myself again, I enjoy the freedom. It helps pay the bills, and I’ve met some lovely people over the years, only one or two idiots. I also get to see an awful lot of theatre.

  ‘DI Ferguson wants to meet you,’ Kay tells us. ‘She is leading the investigation. Will this afternoon be all right? What about Tony?’

  ‘I’ll check with him,’ I say.

  ‘Have you had anything to eat?’ she asks.

  ‘I can’t face it.’

  ‘Some soup,’ she suggests. ‘Your friend Bea called while you were resting. She brought some leek and potato. And a French stick.’

  ‘I need to ring her.’

  ‘She said she’ll come round tonight unless you text her,’ Kay says.

  ‘Where are the others?’

  ‘They’ve taken Florence to the library.’

  ‘The library?’

  ‘That all right?’ Kay says. ‘They asked her where she�
��d like to go and that’s what she said.’

  It makes sense. Somewhere familiar, safe, welcoming. The staff know Florence through me, and Jack takes her to the story sessions and the events we have there. I’m about to reply, to tell Kay something about the library and my lifelong job there, when the pain in my chest ratchets up several notches and my head swims. I put out my hand but there’s nothing there to hold on to, and I feel myself swooning, falling back, my bones gone to water.

  The GP, someone from my practice I’d never met, listens to my heart and takes my blood pressure. He knows the situation and advises me to try and eat, little and often, and increase my fluid intake. He thinks I’m dehydrated as well as suffering from shock and stress. ‘Your heart sounds fine, no arrhythmia; your blood pressure is high, but that’s to be expected. I’m not unduly worried.’ Doctor speak. Unduly. Who else says unduly these days?

  He writes a prescription for a mild tranquillizer in case I need it.

  ‘What about side effects?’ I say. ‘Is it addictive?’

  ‘Not with a short course at this dosage,’ he says. ‘There are a range of potential side effects. The leaflet lists them all, but the most common ones are feelings of detachment . . .’

  Isn’t that the point?

  ‘. . . drowsiness, and a dry mouth.’

  Do I want to feel detached? If I muffle the emotions, won’t they just grow in intensity, waiting to ambush me when I stop taking the medicine? ‘I’m not sure I want it,’ I tell him.

  ‘Entirely up to you; the script is valid for six months, anyway. And if there’s anything else you need, do ring the surgery.’

  Marian and Alan bring Florence back; she’s clutching a pile of picture books that threaten to overbalance her. They plan to do some shopping for us. Marian is brisk and practical and talks too much, a running commentary. She’s probably afraid that she’ll fall to pieces if she stops. Alan’s reserved, speaks only to agree with her comments or echo her thoughts. We’ve only met them a handful of times, at the wedding, once before that and then at Florence’s first birthday party. I watch Marian heating the soup and talking about allotments and gardens. And home-cooked vegetables. She manages to talk about soup for a good five minutes.