“Daddy, you don’t have to believe me. We are identifying her body in an hour.”
He sat down next to her, his legs and arms spilling over the plastic seats. He neatly folded and placed his jacket on the seat next to him, taking out his handkerchief and dabbing at the beads of sweat from his brow and then his neck in the respectable way he had learnt to do so when he lived in that big old house. She could see from the way he regarded their surroundings and the disdain with which he looked upon the other people in the waiting room - people that Elizabeth had barely noticed - that he felt that he didn’t belong there. He looked as if he was trying to smell the air around him, his nose twitching at the rate of a rabbit’s. Elizabeth sat next to him in silence, as she had done so as a child, when she knew that she had his disapproval and desperately wanted his forgiveness for whatever misdemeanour it was that she had committed. He was breathing deeply as he sat there quietly trying to process his daughter’s words. He was continuing to sweat, and she wondered why he still insisted on dressing for autumn when it was clearly the height of the warmest summer recorded in the last fifty years.
“I have to ask you, Elizabeth.” He didn’t turn to look at her, although she was staring directly and expectantly at him. “For what reason are you so convinced that this woman that we will be viewing is Rebecca? Do you not remember that we went to her funeral?”
She wanted to scream at him: “We never buried anything!” She wanted to scream: “I have already seen her face, dead as anything lying there on a beach, looking just like a dead version of me!” She said neither of these things. Anger was not the best way to deal with her father. She had learned this on countless unforgettable occasions as a teenager, sitting beside him, waiting for absolution many times before. Her own anger had always prolonged her agony.
“She sent me the letters in the paper, Daddy. They were from her. The police believe me.”
“Well, everybody knows that the police can make mistakes. My daughter died four years ago.” As he mopped his sweaty brow for the third time in as many minutes, his handkerchief saturated in sweat, she knew that there was little point in continuing her case. He rested his head back against the wall, his hands resting on his knees. He had decided that whatever they saw today, he wouldn’t believe it. In his mind, the truth was set. Finalised. There was nothing that would sway him. She was on her own.
Detective Jack Fraser came through the double doors, his hand held out in deference to the imposing statue of a man before him. Edward Jackson grabbed the outstretched offering of Jack Fraser with his giant hand and firm grip. “Detective, I am sorry, but I believe we are wasting your time.” He shook the detective’s hand vigorously. “My daughter, you see, has never really accepted the loss of her sister.” They were both looking at Elizabeth now. She considered the fight; she considered what it would be like to become another one of the bickering families or couples in the waiting room of the police station, who dragged up their messy lives and purged out obscenities at one another in full view of the world. In truth, she would love to tell her father exactly what it was she thought of him right now, and she was sure that the watching crowd would love to see it too. They were watching them intently, as if they could sense the education, the money, and the grandeur of the lives that they lived when not confined to the police reception area. Instead, she kept her mouth tightly shut, as she chewed on the inside of her top lip.
“Well,” said Jack Fraser, “I’m sorry, but that is probably with very good reason.” He was on her side. He was her back up. “Before we go over anything, or discuss in any further detail, I need a positive identification.” He had already prepped Elizabeth. She knew what they were about to do, and so she made her way out of the front door into the sunlight, so bright it almost blinded her. She walked calmly, yet with conviction, each step a confirmation that she was doing the right thing. The sunlight was strong on her face, and the heat prickled at the damp surface of her skin. She knew that they would be following her, but she was just glad to get outside. There was a very slight breeze coming from behind the police station, and it flicked her blonde hair over her shoulders. She opened the door of Jack Fraser’s Explorer, the leather of the seat burning her as she sat. She was in the car and winding down the windows before the others were even at the door.
As they drove towards the mortuary, Jack Fraser spoke continuously. He explained the white cloths draped over and underneath the body. He explained the stained glass window. He explained that there would only be one other person in the room besides them. He explained how only one of them needed to identify the body. Elizabeth already knew that it would be her. As they pulled up outside of the small brown building, it looked more like a cheap home, built somewhere on an estate: rows and rows of identical houses all lined up together. Yet it stood alone, surrounded in trees in some sort of man-made arboretum which made her think of her grandparents’ house again. ‘Come and catch me Betty!’ The words raced through her mind, as the image of two girls charging towards the billowing river, the noise of it almost drowning out Rebecca’s words, lit up in her memory. Elizabeth closed her eyes tightly, replacing the miserable brown home of the dead that stood before her with the image of her sister, a living eight year old running along in front of her, with straw-yellow pigtails and ruby red ribbons flapping behind her as she ran through the grounds of the Victorian house. As Elizabeth braced her little chin against her chest to confront the forthcoming winds, and sprang her legs into action, she raced after her sister and promised herself at that moment that she would always follow her, no matter where it was that she went. Today was no time to back down from that promise as the unexpected smell of incense filled her nostrils, almost making her gag.
“Are you ready?” Jack Fraser looked at them both, as they stood before a very solid looking door. The small metal plate, brass with engraved letters stood before them.
‘Viewing room’.
Jack Fraser pushed open the door, holding it firm to the side to let Elizabeth pass, and she felt him come in immediately behind her. It was cool in the room, and she could hear the air conditioner whirling away above her. There was a bible on the table and other books that she didn’t recognise, for denominations of faiths to which she didn’t belong. There were decorative flowers that stood on ornate candelabras either side of the table that was covered by a brilliant white sheet. There was a form underneath the sheet, just as Jack had explained. As she stepped into the room and closer to the sheet covered lump the smell of incense grew stronger, a heady mixture combined with the fresh flowers. The sheet was fine, much more silken than the idea that she had in her head, from endless police and hospital shows that played out on the television. She used to love those shows, but she doubted that watching them would ever have the same draw again. It was heavy too, and it clung to the features of the corpse’s face. She could already see the nose and chin; the mouth looked hollow, like it had dropped open slightly. It didn’t look like Rebecca; the profile was different.
“I’m going to pull back the sheet, briefly,” said Jack Fraser. “I just need you to give me a ‘yes’, or a ‘no’, like we talked about. OK?” His words were softer than before, but programmed. He had done this a hundred times before, she assumed. He was used to seeing dead bodies. More than she could ever realise.
As the face came into view she saw the sunken looking features. There were marks on the head where it had been cut open, and no amount of careful stitching or makeup could hide them.
“Elizabeth?” Jack Fraser wanted to put the cover down. He wanted to get out of here. He didn’t want to hang around dead people all day. Come on, he thought to himself.
“It’s her.” She moved in closer and raised a hand as if to touch her. “Can I?” Jack Fraser threw a brief look to the pathologist, who nodded in agreement. Elizabeth, with the softest of touches, traced the outline of Rebecca’s forehead just underneath the incised and restitched line of flesh, the smooth cold skin sending a quiver up her own back that
reached to the top of her head and down to her toes. She ran her finger, like a mother across a baby’s back, slowly tracing her face, remembering every curve and every crease as if it were her own. She almost looked younger than before.
“Why is she so smooth?” She looked to Jack for an answer.
“That’s how we look when we die.” He wanted to add: ‘If we’re lucky’, his own memories creeping to the surface. ‘We don’t look like that if we burned to death’. Elizabeth leaned down and planted the softest of kisses on the centre of Rebecca’s forehead. The chill from her skin crept immediately up on to her own lips. It was the bitter chill of death that slithers towards the living like a real, yet inhumane entity. She pulled the sheet back up, and quietly promised herself that she would find a way to understand. There was no place for anger anymore and that feeling that she had experienced whilst out in the garden only hours before was gone, and she knew that it wouldn’t return. She would do anything it took to find the answer as to why her sister was only now lying in the mortuary.
As she walked out of the viewing room, her father stood up erratically out of his seat where he had placed himself immediately when they had arrived.
“Well, Elizabeth?” She wiped away the tears with the back of her hand. Her eyes had puffed up like plump red cherries from where she had rubbed her wrist back and forth.
“It’s her. I’m going outside.” She walked out, and positioning herself underneath the shade of the large conifer tree, she sat on the cold ground huddling her knees in close together. Jack Fraser looked back to Edward Jackson, as he stood motionless and stunned, his face lowered towards the ground.
“Mr. Jackson. I think she needs you.” Edward nodded the sort of uncertain nod when you respectfully follow orders that you don’t want to, and he stepped outside the door towards his living daughter, but yet in his life that may as well have been as dead as Rebecca. They were almost strangers. Jack turned his attention to the pathologist, who had by now followed him out of the room, ordering Rebecca’s return to the fridge. “Got anything new for me?” It was the same pathologist who had stood only a year ago with his arm around the detective as he met his own family for the last time in the very same viewing room. He shook his head.
“From the contents of the stomach, looks like a simple overdose.” Jack shrugged, his face screwed up as he wiped his hand over his cheek and lips, the salty taste of sweat drying out his mouth even further. He needed a good coffee and a cigarette. He tapped at the packet that was nestling neatly and securely in his back pocket and he felt the stiffness in his shoulder. He looked outside to the two strangers, both alone and not talking. He knew how Elizabeth felt. He remembered what it was like to stand there and know that you would never see the person alive again. That you would never see them smile, or hear their breathing as you curl up next to them in the middle of the night. He had pressured the staff at the hospital to take him, and eventually it had been his doctor, Kate, who had wheeled him across. She had told him time and time again that it wasn’t a good idea. He didn’t care what state their bodies were in. It was his last chance to see them. To touch them. He didn’t have a choice. He had promised Kate and himself that it would help. Yet with hindsight, he knew that every night when he awoke from the same terrifying dream, where he is standing before their blackened and charred bodies that seeing them had been the worst mistake he had made. He couldn’t move past standing here in the incense filled room. He could still smell their scorched skin. He could still feel the frozen chill from their rubbery bodies. No amount of time or company could ever take it away. He couldn’t believe that he had just sealed Elizabeth the same fate.
Eighteen
Detective Jack Fraser arranged the identical plastic bags in neat rows along the interview table. They reminded Elizabeth of the plastic bags that she kept in her kitchen drawer into which she would put leftover food, and on the outside of which there was a small space for the date to be recorded, to act as a reminder of the date by which she should eat the contents. These bags had dates on too, as Jack lined them up carefully, one by one, ensuring that the contents could be seen. This date was the day her sister really died.
He left the room for a few minutes and returned with three cups of coffee in small vomit beige plastic cups, which seemed too fragile and flimsy as he tried to carry all three together, spilling some drips of brown gloop onto the floor.
“Ah, damn it!” he said, as he tried to scuff the coffee into the ground with the sole of his regulatory shoe until the layer was thin enough not to be seen, but which would surely form a sticky layer on the floor. He placed the coffees on the table and handed them to his two guests.
Elizabeth was sat quietly, and she smiled a gesture of thanks for the bitter automatic coffee, a million times reduced in quality compared with the coffee that she had served to him when he had unexpectedly arrived at her door. She sipped at the steaming liquid, watery and full of bubbly froth. The bitterness made her mouth purse up tight, and her eyes squint. Nevertheless, she was grateful for it. Edward Jackson made no such gesture of gratitude and he left his coffee where it was. They had travelled back to the police station in silence. Jack had tried to speak to Elizabeth a couple of times, in an effort to reassure her that they would reach a conclusion. He could see as she nodded that each time she did so, she had to bite her lips, just hard enough to stop them quivering their way into a full wail. It was that same face of steel that he had seen earlier at the service station. She was nothing like his first impression, when he had first turned up at the small fisherman’s cottage and seen the delicately planted borders, and smelled the tenderly cared for scent of the creeping clematis plants that dripped with the purest of purples. Then he had seen her, delicately featured and weekday morning scruffy. In his job, he was used to judging people quickly, making snap judgments about character and background based on the initial evidence before him. In Elizabeth he had seen a homemaker, somebody who had left the city because they couldn’t cope, married to an older guy with cash. What he hadn’t expected was the steely determination of a Spartan warrior, strong in her small army of one, but with a heart of many. In the hours that he had known her, she had seemed nothing but tough. Her father, however: he was quiet. Either he couldn’t talk, or he had nothing to say. Jack tried to refrain from judging him. ‘His daughter just came back from the dead and died again, all in the space of an hour’, he thought. As far as situations go, that had to be up there with the worst of them.
Jack sat down in a chair opposite Elizabeth and her father. It was hard not to think of them as suspects; as his interviewees. These rooms were not designed to make people feel comfortable, with their bright corners and stark white walls with mirrored windows to reflect back any snippets of truth that were trying to escape undetected. These mirrors always had somebody sat behind them. Today was no different.
“Are you both OK to make a start?” Elizabeth nodded, glancing nervously at her father, who was sat motionless and quiet, his coffee untouched. He had beads of sweat on his balding brow.
“Daddy, we have to start looking at this stuff. Daddy?” It was as if her words went unheard. His ears were closed to her voice and his mind looked closed to the world. “Daddy,” she spat out through gritted teeth, spraying both his shirt sleeve and the table with shards of tense saliva. She grabbed his arms, almost sending his plastic cup of coffee flying. “Where the hell are you? You have to help me with this!” She knew that anger usually didn’t work, but what choice did she have? He turned his head to stare at her, the puzzled look on his face as if he had just woken from a dream and didn’t realise where he was, and as if he didn’t know the stranger gripping his arms. “Please.” She was softer now, the blood returning back into her knuckles as her short-lived rollercoaster ride came to an end.
“I’m sorry Elizabeth.” His mind was clearing, the clouds surrounding him blown aside, making room for sense and clarity once again. “Of course you can’t do this on your own. I’m here for you.�
�� He placed his hands, his big, friendly giant hands over hers, as he stroked them in reassurance. As she felt the weight of his hands resting on top of her own, she felt as if she was five years old again, tucked up in bed with him at her side, breathing heavily next to her as she drifted off into another realm of dreaminess, leaving her childish realities behind. He would stay with her until her breathing became heavy and her feet twitched, constantly stroking her skin in his own rhythmic lullaby. It was that feeling that she had as she sat in the police interview room now. One small touch was all it took for her to feel protected. She had missed this touch. She had missed him.
“OK, let me start.” Jack was keen to get this back on track. He had done nothing for almost a week, and now with the fresh knowledge that he knew who the woman in his mortuary was, he wanted to get moving. He had four years of life to fill. “What we have here are all of the items found at the scene, plus the two letters in the paper.” He realised, as he said it, the harshness of that word: ‘The Scene’. There was no euphemism in his words: they were stark and blunt, like the cut of a worn blade through raw flesh, they tore at you. He remembered how that felt. He wished he had remembered earlier.
“So far, the only things we know are who she is, and where she was found. Elizabeth Jackson and Lyme beach. I called the newspaper and her letters were postal submissions. Basically, that means that they are untraceable, apart from the postmark, and they have thrown that away. You need to help me out here.” He tried to sound softer now, more delicate in his requests. “Tell me who she was. Tell me who the person you knew was.”
Elizabeth stroked her forehead with the soft tips of her fingers. She had a headache and the bitter coffee had made it worse. She wanted a cigarette, but she hadn’t smoked in years. She looked to her father, who stared back at her before looking at Jack. It was Edward who began.
Escaping Life Page 12
