“What is it? Graham? What’s going on?” She stared at him hard, waiting for him to speak.
“Get dressed. There’s been an accident.”
Twenty
Jack Fraser was lying awake in his bed when the intercom bell buzzed. He hadn’t slept well last night anyway, and with the light of the city streaming in through the undressed windows, he had woken early to the chorus of pigeons who sat atop his building cooing in the break of day. He had called Kate, but she had got caught at work, and so he had curled up alone in bed. He had missed the feel of her next to him after waking up with her so closely only the day before. He glanced over at his watch which he had set down on the nightstand the night before. It was six-thirty. Who the hell is at the door?
His feet pattered along the exposed floorboards, avoiding the rough areas and creaking under his weight. The bell was buzzing again, impatiently waiting for him to answer. He was dressed only in boxer shorts. He was in his late thirties, and his body was still good, with the exception of his weak shoulder. It was always stiff in the mornings from the immobility of the night before. He had spent years as a tri-athlete, competing in local races. He had won over six medals too, although he had never been convinced at the quality of competition. He had pretty much stopped the training altogether now, the only give-away a slightly softer cushion of fat that bordered the top of his trousers like a tyre placed on the side of the harbour wall. Otherwise he had retained the muscles. The bike which sat in his hallway had been left untouched since the day he moved in and had collected a thick layer of dust.
He picked up the telephone. “Yes?” He rolled his shoulder round in circles, back and forth trying to limber it up.
“Detective Fraser? It’s Elizabeth Green. The sister of Rebecca Jackson. Can you let me in?” Six-thirty in the morning, he thought. How the hell did she find me? “I’m sorry, I appreciate that it’s early.” She had a plummy voice, but it had been softened by her time away from the city. Even yesterday, the easily detectable barrier of strength that sat like an invisible shield in front of her, virtually impenetrable, was somehow kinder and more forgiving when you matched it with her voice. It was sweet, like the tone of a nursery teacher, or the same delicately polite intonation of a Louisianan accent that he had heard so many times on the television and that always sounded to him like a shy apology. He couldn’t imagine being angry with this voice.
“Yeah. Slide the door.” He opened up the front door, and he could already hear the workings of the ancient lift mechanisms clunking and whirling along to send down the old freight shaft. He was not used to receiving visitors. Kate never came here of her own accord, and there wasn’t really anybody else who visited him. In fact, as he thought about it, Elizabeth was his first willing and unpaid visitor.
She pushed open his front door just as he was trying to pull up his jeans. His chest was still bare, and his shoulders glistened in the city light from the sweat that lay on his skin. She didn’t seem the least bit embarrassed; he didn’t even notice her flinch. It reminded him of Lisa Taylor, his girlfriend in his final school year who had walked straight into the boys’ gym changing rooms to tell him that their relationship was over. She had walked in, slamming the door open with her enraged arm, the thud of it against the wall stopping everybody in their tracks and he knew what was coming as soon as he saw her. She had walked right up to him and slapped him across the face, undeterred by the nakedness and leering of the other boys as she walked past them. He had stood there in his briefs, red-cheeked and embarrassed, not yet old enough to have the gall to ride out his own misguided actions. She had heard the rumour that he had been caught in the toilets with a girl from the year below hers, and she screamed her anger at him, lashing him with her tongue. “You’ll be sorry you piece of shit! I’ll make your life hell!! It’s over!!” To his friends afterwards he had become a hero. He had transcended their level of childish dalliances and quick fumbles, and become a real warrior of men in their naïve aspirations. Even the gym teacher had seen what was happening and had let it slide, smiling to himself wryly. He told Jack later that he had heard the rumours too. Mr. Wells, the geography teacher, had told him: “You have to learn these lessons Jack. If you want to mess around, you have to learn how to ride it out”, he had said as he patted him on the back laughing. Standing here in his own living room, he felt that same sense of inappropriateness that he had felt all those years ago. He fumbled around for his white T-shirt that was on the bed, and quickly put it on.
“I’m sorry I came here so early. I have just been wandering about all night, and I found your address in the phone book.” He didn’t even know he was listed. She’s like the Terminator, he thought. “I just needed to see somebody. You’re the only person I know here.”
“I thought you left with your father? I said I would be in touch.” What was she still doing here?
“I just couldn’t leave. She has sent me here on this journey. How can I abandon her? I can’t do that to her again. She wants to tell me something. I have to know what that is.” Jack was guiding her to the dining table as she spoke, clearly rattled and shaking from either the cold of a night spent outside or the first cracks of the heavy burden that she bore. His table hadn’t been used in months, and he could see that there was a soft layer of dust on its surface, the same as his bike, like a layer of soft but un-brushable fur. That was the problem with living here, high up where the winds carried the particles from outside and settled them onto every available surface. He quickly brushed off the dust layer from the chair, sending it scattering out in clouds and streams, and she sat down.
“You look like you need a coffee.” Elizabeth nodded in agreement and he moved across to the kitchen. His kitchen was formed by two rows of simple units. Everything was black, the shiny black of army boots, regimented and perfect. As he opened the fridge, she noticed that there wasn’t much inside. It was so different to her fridge at the cottage in Haven, always stacked full with fresh food and home cooked delights. He must live alone.
The smell of the coffee filtered up and over the floating clouds of dust particles and into her nose. It smelled rich, and unlike the coffee that he had given her at the police station the day before.
“Sugar?” She shook her head, needing nothing more than the caffeine-rich coffee.
“I would like to go to Lyme beach, if you can take me?” He placed two hot coffees on the table in front of them and pulled out a chair to sit next to her. He would happily take her to the beach. It was still cornered off, the plastic tape flickering in the summer breeze that rolled in from the ocean, but he couldn’t see what use it would be to the investigation. There was essentially nothing left there anymore, all relevant items bagged up and placed in an investigation box.
“I will take you, but there isn’t much there. The guys there are really finishing up and I heard that the site will be reopened tomorrow, ahead of schedule.”
“I just feel like it’s a place to start. I have all of the things she left going round and round in my head, and I can’t make any sense of it. Maybe if I go to the place that she chose to, you know ..... leave, maybe something will come to me. I have to work this out.”
“OK, let me go and get dressed. Drink your coffee and we’ll go.”
Taking her coffee in her hand, she rose after Jack, who was making his way into what seemed to be the only sealed room in the apartment. She wandered over to the windows that rose from the floor and ended above her at the ceiling. The apartment block was six storeys high and you could see the whole of Chesterwood below. You could see the river Lyme as it meandered through the heart of the city, peeking in and out of view as it wound around factories and parks. You could make out the open parkland, that by day hosted families and in the dark of night was the perfect cover for crime and shady dealings. There were maybe half a million people below her now, each one of their lives rolling by, almost to her undetectable. From this height there was no individuality. The city moved as a whole, the people just tin
y specks breathing life into it like cells in blood under the rhythm of the heart of the city. At her side there was a small table, and next to it a sitting chair. She perched on the arm. She thought that he must sit here and look out to the city below. On the table there was a book, some biography about an old dried-up rock star. But it was the photograph that captured her eye. The faces in it shone, radiantly and full of life. They glanced back at the camera in total trust, nothing but shared togetherness and love etched into their faces. A woman, squinting in the sun, her face nestled in close to the small boy next to her. His face smiled back at the camera, his little baby teeth on full show and full of gaps. It was a close up photograph, the kind that can only be taken by somebody who belongs there; not some random stranger. She was holding it in her hands, but she hadn’t heard him walk up behind her. He took it from her gently, but with the absolute certainty that this photograph wasn’t for her.
“I’m sorry. I was just looking.”
“It’s OK, it’s just ......” he waited, searching his mind for the words to describe it. “It’s just I really don’t want it to get broken.” He placed in neatly and exactly back into the spot from where she had taken it. She noticed that there wasn’t any dust here. “Shall we go?” He ushered her towards the door, realising the crime scene photography was still taped to the floor, and he didn’t want her to have to see it again.
As they pulled up at the beach, they sat for a moment, stationary at the end of the dirty and bumpy beach road. Jack had smoked two cigarettes on the way, and Elizabeth had again thought about asking for one, the smell drawing her to it with its heady concoction of addictive chemicals. She remembered the times that she had smoked, and thought she could almost feel the increase in heart rate and the furry tongue that she associated with those memories. A lone police officer stood at the roadside of the blue and white taped-off beach, his interest spiked at who might be in the car until he realised that it was Detective Fraser. Immediately, he stood a little sharper, and little more aware. They both chuckled inside the car, seeing the police officer before them smarten himself up as if the headmaster was approaching along a school corridor.
“You’re quite important around here, aren’t you?” she teased, but secretly she was glad to be at his side.
“So they tell me.” He opened up the car door, and Elizabeth followed him. He made his way across the first of the sand dunes, the marram grasses whipping at his legs with each step that he took. She followed, but not before removing her shoes as she had done the first time she had been here all those years ago. She looked at the dunes before her, which now seemed so small. Before, in their place, she remembered mountains, great big towering mountains that had to be challenged and beaten. How different the world looks through a child’s eye. She could see the image of her and Rebecca, charging aimlessly about the beach, Elizabeth following behind, tracing Rebecca’s footsteps as she always did. She could almost hear their laughter over the sound of the early morning tide rushing towards the shore and the occasional call of a solitary gull overhead. She put the mental images to the back of her mind, and pressed on over the dunes. She could see his heavy regulatory shoes plodding through, kicking up sand with each step. Her feet were delicate on the sand. This was the kind of ground she was used to now, but he looked wobbly and unstable, unaccustomed to the seaside. She trod lightly, keeping up with his pace and dodging the blades of grass. As she rounded the top of the last dune, before the expanse of beach, she could see the cornered-off area, the small yellow tent where the body had been found. It was exactly where she remembered them building their fortress all those years ago.
“Don’t tread near anything that has a flag close to it, OK?” She nodded in agreement and they started their walk towards the tent. They darted through a sparse array of plain white flags sticking out of the ground until eventually they approached the tent. As he peeled back the door, she saw the spray paint on the ground, measured out perfectly where Rebecca’s body once lay. She looked down the beach, seeing the cottage at the other end separated only by another of the police tapes. Jack Fraser started to go over the details of the placing of the objects that they had found; the photographs, the key, the bus ticket, the cigarettes and the shoes.
“What do you see Elizabeth? Think like your sister. What is she trying to tell you?” She stared at the paint and pictured the dead body of her sister lying there, just as Rebecca had intended it to be. Her eyes wandered across the scene, willing information to jump out towards her.
“I see that she was scared. That’s why she left, because she thought that nobody could help her. But we could of, Daddy and I, we could have helped her.”
“Look further. You have to start thinking about the clues. She left you clues.”
She thought back to the pictures of Rebecca, lying there with a deathly face, dressed in her mother’s clothes.
“I think she is trying to tell me the reason why she disappeared. Why she couldn’t stay.” He moved in closer to the body shaped outline, painted in a haphazard fashion against the rocks and pebbles that formed the sandy carpet underfoot. He knelt down, pointing out and describing each of the little flags, labelled ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘D’.
“This is where she put the shoes - your mother’s shoes, right?” She nodded. “In her hand here, she was clutching the photograph, in her other hand the bus ticket and key. Cigarettes over here, closer to the shoes.” He stood up, pushing himself up with his hands against his knees. They felt stiff and tired as if he had just finished the bicycle leg of a triathlon. “I don’t know if where she placed things was important, or if it’s just the fact that it is here. But,” he said as he walked out of the tent, “I am convinced that coming here was absolutely a purposeful decision. She came here because she knew you would know to find her here. She believed in you, Elizabeth. Still, after all the time that’s passed.” She was still nodding as she followed him out of the tent. “She chose this beach because she knew she would be found, and she knew that she would later be found by you. This guy,” he pointed up to the beach house, located just past the flickering blue and white tape, “he comes here every day. Same time, seven, every morning. She had to have known that. I am pretty sure your sister was seen in Chesterwood at about four the same morning. Unconfirmed, but it makes sense it was her. That gave her three hours to get here, set the scene and ........” he stopped, suddenly remembering that he was talking to the dead woman’s sister; he had started to think of Elizabeth as his ally, his sidekick.
“..... And kill herself. It’s OK. You can say it. It’s the truth.” He watched her walk towards the shore, the early sunrise still creeping up on the east of the bay, bathing the water in a soft blood orange haze. She sat down on the rocks, just inches from the water, the small pebbles and stones giving way as she sat, her knees crunched up underneath her chin and chest.
He sat down next to her as she threw in a series of rocks, randomly picked and launched towards the sea with an underhand throw. She sat with her knees up, cradled in the crease of her elbows. She couldn’t find the answers that she was looking for, and coming here hadn’t helped. What am I supposed to do Becca? Elizabeth wanted to scream it at the top of her lungs, hoping that somehow her words would reach Rebecca, reverberating across the water until they found her residing somewhere that she used to believe lay somewhere beyond the sunrise.
“Do you come here to the beach at all? It’s not very far from the city.” He shook his head. He hadn’t been to the beach for a long time.
“Not for a year or so. Never here.”
“You should. I go a lot, back in Haven where I live. I sit there, either on the wall or on the shore, like we are now.” She picked up another stone. “I like the beach at night, or first thing in the morning when the tides are gentle and there is nobody around - the peace and quiet.” She threw in the stone, and they both waited for the hollow splash as it displaced the water. “I sit and do this. Sometimes they drop in, and if you throw them righ
t you get a huge glugging noise, like that one. A huge splash that rings out to the world. Other times they just crash against the rocks if you don’t give them enough force, clattering about and getting washed back up.” She picked up a pebble, a small pink pebble, beautiful in its individuality and shine. She threw it in. “Other times you don’t hear them at all over the sound of the waves as they crash against the shore, just the gentlest of ripples and the stone simply gets lost. Disappears. You send it out and it just drops into the water. Gone. Without even a sound. No trace. You could never find it again, even if you looked.” They sat gazing out to the ocean, as the early morning shore crept towards their feet. “It’s like people, Jack. Sometimes they just slip away, out of life. You barely see them go and when you realise and look for them, it’s too late.”
“I’m sorry Elizabeth. Maybe I have asked too much of you.” She disagreed, her face dismissive of his ideas.
“No.” She looked at his face. It looked tired and drawn, like he had the weight of the world’s problems on his mind, any moment about to buckle under the pressure. “I’m sorry about your family.” He started at her, uncertain of what was just exchanged between them. “The photograph. It was your family, right? That’s why you don’t go to the beach anymore.” She was more intuitive than he had imagined. He nodded in agreement.
Escaping Life Page 14
