They trudged slowly back down the dark stairway, gradually walking towards the light. Her eyes hurt as they approached the lower levels, only now appreciating the darkness that entombed the higher floors. Graham was already outside. He had followed Edward, who had left the room early. It was the first time that Elizabeth had seen her father crying. Not even at the funeral had he cried, not for their mother and his wife, or Rebecca. He was already sitting in the car with his hands on the wheel, eager to leave this place. Elizabeth stood with Jack, taking in big breaths of fresh air, desperate to breathe in anything other than the staleness that had filled her lungs inside the small flat. She felt like the stink of the stairway was upon her, and she could still smell that same disgusting stench.
“She was terrified Elizabeth. She chose to duck out of the world. She just couldn’t cope. She became obsessed with the crimes that reflected in some way the crime committed against your mother.”
“But what about the clues? The letters in the paper, the photographs, and the key? Why would she do that? Why now? Why kill herself now?” Elizabeth was trying to process the information. She was trying to place the sister she knew into the facts of the life that she had learned of in the last week. None of it made any sense to her.
“Elizabeth, how do you feel when you’re on your own? Do you enjoy your own company?”
She didn’t understand where this was going, but she nodded. “Yeah, sometimes.”
“Sometimes. But only when you want it, right? You can choose to live in solitude for a few hours, even a day, but eventually you’ll crave the company of somebody else. Maybe Graham, your father, your friends. To take that choice away, to remove that stimulus of the outside world and the normal everyday things that make our lives human and tolerable,” he paused, “it destroys us. It destroys who we are. We are human, and we are somebody, at least in part, because of other people. How do we even know we are alive, if there is nobody in our life to remind us?”
Elizabeth looked at Graham, fifty feet away, crouched down at the side of the car, next to the open driver’s door. Her father was sat beside him, his hands still on the wheel and ready to drive away. Graham was holding the keys, talking to him. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but she could imagine it. “You think that’s what she chose?” she asked, as she turned back to Jack. “Just simply not to be a part of the world anymore?”
“She lost control when your mother was murdered. She couldn’t find her way in her old life. Instead she found her way here. The clues. The letters. It was all just an attempt to try to make a last connection with you, knowing that she wouldn’t be around any longer. She couldn’t cope anymore, but she simply couldn’t forget you. She just couldn’t let you go.” He rested his hand on her shoulder, and he pulled her in a little closer. He put his other hand around her back and held her tightly. It was a simple hug and she returned it. It was the hug that she had first wanted to give to him when they’d sat together at Lyme beach. It was not the embrace of two lovers, whose bodies melt into each other; it was an embrace of understanding, of completion. They knew the case was over. He let her go, and rested his hands onto her arms. “Remember her words, Elizabeth. Remember what she taught us both. Never choose to be alone.”
Thirty one
The car journey back to Haven passed in somewhat of a mental blur for Elizabeth. She was aware of what was going on around her, yet somehow felt that she wasn’t quite part of it. Her head bobbed along against the window as Graham drove along with her sat in the back of her father’s car, her mind playing out fragmented images from the past. The tormented scenes of their final meeting gradually passed her by, the anguished face of Rebecca fading to reveal a lighter and happier memory. She remembered the times that they had sat together in the city apartment that they’d shared before Elizabeth had moved into Graham’s apartment. She had moved in straight from university, her hippy style rucksacks stuffed full of unwashed clothes and draped over both her shoulders. Rebecca had laughed at her when she’d met her outside the tube station, had grabbed and cuddled her, poking fun at her scruffy red converse pumps with the laces hanging out and the heels wearing thin. “You’ll need to buy some new threads, Sis!” she had said as she gave her the warmest hug. Rebecca herself was only twenty-five, but she had been living in the city, doing well as an investment banker for one of the top firms whose offices were so high up in the skyscrapers that it was virtually impossible to see them from the road, due to the glare of the sun against the wall of glass. They had arrived home, the spare room of Rebecca’s minimal apartment Elizabeth’s new home, and had popped a bottle of acidic Chardonnay to celebrate their new adventure. It had been a wonderful time, living together, full of laughter and late night settee dozes surrounded by takeaway pizza boxes that they had brought back with them from their night out. They both had other friends, but rarely saw them, never having the need for anybody from outside of their own virtually impenetrable unit.
As she dozed in and out of sleep, other more distant memories would come to her. She remembered their times at the seaside, but for Elizabeth these times would now always be tainted in some way. She recalled how she had been bullied when she’d first started high school, and remembered the day that Rebecca had seen what was happening and had walked straight up to Janice Scott and punched her squarely on the nose. Rebecca found herself in an inordinate amount of trouble for this action, and had been on lunchtime detention for two weeks, clearing chewing gum from the desks. She had taken her punishment though, and had told Elizabeth that she hadn’t regretted it for a second. That had been the last time anybody had picked on Elizabeth. Her memories rolled by in a dreamlike state; flash images of the park, their bikes, broken chains that couldn’t be repaired and had to be pushed back; days of baking with their mother and fixing the bikes with their father; lazy Sundays when they would always read the Announcements before racing off to their playroom to play another game of Bride and Groom and where Elizabeth always had to be the groom, no matter how many times she had begged to be the bride. They would recreate anything from the announcement pages: weddings, birthdays, anniversaries. They only played funerals once, after their mother had told them that it was disrespectful the first time they’d done it. Elizabeth had played the dead person then. She had watched from half-open eyes as Rebecca threw her voice low and deep, her words slow, yet rising to a crescendo before dropping even deeper at the end. They had found her impression of the local vicar hilarious, but their mother, who had been drawn by their laughter, had scolded them harshly and forbidden such heinous re-enactments.
She awoke from her dreams as the car drove over the curb and she heard the familiar crunch of gravel under the tyres of her father’s car. The journey had been quiet, and nobody had been talking. There were no toilet or coffee breaks, and the incessant chatter between Graham and Edward that had filled the journey there was nowhere to be found. Getting out of the car, her senses were met with the smell of home as the last days of the scent of the honeysuckle wafted through the air, and the rows of blood orange Heleniums, that she had planted for a splash of later summer colour danced as they were swept along by the constant coastal breeze. Everyone sat quietly in the garden at first, sipping tea prepared by Graham. It was Elizabeth who broke the silence.
“I couldn’t believe the place that she was living.” Elizabeth wanted to talk about it. She wanted to verbalise her thoughts aloud. Everything that had happened today was real and she could accept it because she had felt it. She had seen it and smelled it; she had sat on the couch and felt the dust beneath her hands; she had seen the crusted walls that spoke of nothing but death, with newspaper cuttings galore and decorated only in red circles of madness. “It was disgusting, wasn’t it?” She looked at Graham. He had a slightly surprised look on his face.
“I wouldn’t wish her to have lived like that, no.” He had loved Rebecca too. It was easy for Elizabeth to forget how close they had been when she was alive, and still in their lives. They too, had b
ecome sister and brother. It was easy to misjudge his level of hurt, and how almost unimaginably strong he had been for her. Elizabeth turned to her father.
“Daddy?” She lowered her head to look up towards him, his chin too low to his chest to see his face properly. “Daddy, are you OK?” He didn’t say anything as Elizabeth put down her tea and reached for his hand. She looked to Graham, a plea for help, her own mind blank and at a loss as to what she should do. Graham reached his hand across Edward’s shoulder.
“Edward, come on. Now is the time we have to pull together. We can draw a line under the past. Have a proper funeral, like you said you wanted.” Graham was trying his best, and trying to appeal to Edward’s own desires. This was the first time that he had felt in his own heart that closure may be at hand, and that they may be able to move past the two horrible deaths that had afflicted their lives for so long. Edward’s mouth trembled, as if the words sat tentatively on his lips, yet not quite fully formed and able to be spoken.
“What, Daddy? What is it?” He thought for a moment before he looked up at her and finally began to speak.
“I let you both down so terribly. Your mother too. Everything was such a mess at the time. I wasn’t there for you both.”
“Edward, you can’t begin to blame yourself.” Graham still had his hand draped across Edward’s shoulder and it reminded Elizabeth of the first funeral that they had held for Rebecca when they had pretended that she had died. She wondered briefly if they would all cry at the next funeral, or whether they had cried all of their tears already.
Edward turned to face Graham, no hesitations this time, the words already formed, spilling out before even he realised that he was talking. “Oh, but I can. To abandon a child, to cast her out. And then a second.” He pointed at Elizabeth. “I let you down too”.
“Daddy, it wasn’t you that cast Rebecca away from us. You didn’t make her leave.” She was begging him now, her hand gripping his tightly and her eyes a fixed, determined glare.
“I didn’t make her stay. I should have done the necessary things to make her stay.”
The next couple of days were hard for Elizabeth, whilst her father sat almost continuously in the garden and only ventured into the house to use the bathroom and to sleep. The end of the summer was proving to be remarkably mild, although the nights were beginning to draw in, and after eight o’clock there was a definite chill in the air as it whipped up over the cliff top and into the garden like a wave from the ocean. Edward continued to sit outside. She had mentioned this to Graham several times, telling him that she was sure that somehow, her father blamed himself.
“It must be hard for him to see how Rebecca was living, Elizabeth. Give him time” was all that he’d said. Time seemed, in some way, like the only thing that they had. She had spoken to Jack a number of times, and he had reassured her that although the case wasn’t closed, there were still just a few formalities that needed to be carried out. He told her that as soon as they were done, he would be able to release the body for them to have a funeral. As far as she could make out, it seemed to be about a week that she would have to wait, and it was almost impossible to make any proper arrangements before the body was released to them, so she tried to restore an air of normality about the house. She sent Graham back to work. The longer he stayed around, the more abnormal the house would feel. She had got used to spending days on her own, she’d told him. In all truth, it was strange for both of them to be out of their routine, but even returning to work was no solution. Whilst Edward continued with his self-enforced silence, there was a constant air of apathy surrounding their little cliff top cottage.
By the time Elizabeth was awake and taking her shower, Edward was already outside. He had wandered down to the local shop early on the Tuesday morning, before most villagers were out, but not so early that Mr. Madden wouldn’t have the corner shop open. She had seen him wandering down the cottage path when she’d first woken, and was pleased that he was going for a walk. It will clear his head, she’d thought. He used to do that when she was a child. He always said that it was his time to think and she, Rebecca, and their mother knew better than to try to disturb him when he was thinking like this. By the time she had taken her shower and had turned off the water, she could smell the faint, but unmistakable smell of tobacco smoke. She knew that Graham smoked the occasional cigarette, but never at seven in the morning, before work. She went down into the kitchen where Graham was drinking his coffee and she could see her father sitting outside the French doors, his head only just visible in an almost continuously renewing cloud of smoke.
“I never knew that your father smoked, Elizabeth. That’s his third since he got back. He’ll be ill,” Graham had said, as he motioned his head towards the figure of Edward sat virtually motionless outside. Elizabeth poured herself a coffee from the pot that was being kept at a steady temperature by the built-in hot plate on the filter, keeping one eye on her father outside.
“I had forgotten that he ever smoked, it’s been that many years since I last saw him doing it. I just don’t know what to do about him. I don’t know if I should just leave him to come out of it at his own pace, or try and talk to him. I try to find things to do in the garden, so that I can be around him. Every time I talk to him he just says the same thing over and over. That he was responsible for Rebecca; that he should have made her stay. I can’t just sit there with him anymore.” She took a sip of her drink and looked back to her husband; his big, brown and usually comforting eyes looked strained and tired, just like hers did. “He’s destroying my faith in what we have learnt.”
Thirty two
Jack had spent the days following the discovery of Rebecca’s apartment doing some serious thinking. He hoped that Elizabeth had begun to accept the message that Rebecca had been trying to convey, that being alone was a mistake and that no matter how much isolation you impose upon yourself, and no matter how far you run, you cannot escape the things that haunt you. He had thought about Elizabeth a lot over those days, and looked for reasons to be in touch. He wanted to speak to her and to know that she was OK.
They had bagged up as much evidence as they could from the apartment, everything movable, even down to the tatty old bed linen. The forensic teams had bagged up the smallest of samples of hair, old tissue scraps found on the floor, and after they had stripped it of any detectable life, the photographers arrived. It had taken them a long time to take all of the photographs, methodically cataloguing the extent of the wall covering that Rebecca had created over a four-year period. The fingerprinting teams had been in, and Jack stood in the empty space, surrounded by a collection of lost names. Before his colleagues sealed up the door with police tape and a thick impenetrable metal padlock, he glanced around at the bare room. The only things left staring back at him were the random thoughts of a crazed lonely woman, no longer able to be saved.
He thought about Rebecca’s life and how it must have been to live alone like this. He tried to imagine what it must have been like to have found your own mother lying strangled on the floor of her own kitchen. He tried to put himself first in that position, and then tried to imagine living alone in the tall dark tower block - a living hell if ever he had seen one. Even the extent of his own loneliness and the difficulty of his own life couldn’t compare.
It was quiet at work as Jack waited for the laboratory to finish up. He couldn’t close the case until then, so he chose to enjoy the free time rather than seek out a swift solution. On the Monday, he drove to the hospital and met Kate for lunch. She had been staying at his apartment ever since that afternoon when he had first picked her up from work. He called into the offices of an estate agent, a small corner building in an old Edwardian street in the centre of the town, and asked for a rough price for which he could sell his industrial minimalist apartment. The agent had been positive, and Jack had left with the details of two prospective properties in the suburbs that he could consider: open-plan kitchen/diner, lounge overlooking the garden, no pond, at lea
st two bedrooms. There was a long way to go, but he felt positive about life for the first time. He had made his choice; it was to not be alone. He had shut people out of his life for far too long.
On the Tuesday morning, and before he took Kate to work, he had packed up the photographs of Rebecca that he had stuck to the apartment’s floor. He cleared away all of the remnants of the case, and took the presence of death with him to the office where it could be filed away. There was no place for it in his home anymore. When he arrived at the office, Sam and the other officers were out making the most of the free time that could be gleaned for personal enjoyment, or errands, when a case was solved, but not yet officially closed. He knew that they would be out somewhere, probably all together and planning to have a pub lunch and a pint, enjoying the last days of sunshine before the end of August would bring in the dawn of autumn. The summer was rapidly drawing to a close. The air was cooler in the city, and the humidity had dropped. Jack was grateful for the respite, and his shoulder had felt looser and more comfortable over the last few days. Gibb was still in the office. He was pottering around with files and pondering over reports. He was filing things away too, but every now and again he would stop and read more thoroughly. It is going to be good working with Gibb, Jack thought to himself. Another two cases and he’ll have got the hang of it.
Graham was reading the newspaper and sipping his coffee when Gibb approached him, a pile of notes and loose sheets tucked under his arm.
“Boss, you got a minute? Can I show you something?” He put the notes down on Jack’s desk and started to leaf through them, looking for the relevant ones.
“What is it? Found something we missed?” He was laughing slightly, offering a sarcastic token of approval at Gibb’s thorough commitment to the case.
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