“I don’t know Boss, but for me, something doesn’t fit. The first thing is this.” He held up a fuzzy black and white picture of a woman that could potentially have been Elizabeth, or Rebecca. “When Barry’s story checked out and Rebecca was at the bus station every week, just like he said she was, I checked with the guys down in Wellbeck.”
“With the police? Yeah, me too.”
“No, with the bus station. I wanted to know if she got there.” He extracted a fuzzy- looking black and white photograph from the pile of loose paper. “This is from their CCTV. It came through late last night. It was taken on a Saturday that we have got her on CCTV at Chesterwood bus station.” Jack rubbed his chin with his hands, the pads of his fingers making a perfect resting point for his head as he slouched backwards in his chair, folding his arms and giving Gibb room at the desk. Gibb held out the photograph to Jack. He shook it, prompting him to take it. Jack stared at the photograph, looking for any clue that it might be the face that he had come to know so well, before taking it from Gibb.
“We can’t be certain that this is Rebecca and anyway ......” he said as he tossed the picture back down on the desk, “Barry already told us that she said that she went there. Maybe it was a trip down memory lane.”
“OK, but tell me this. We are saying that this woman imposed this isolation on herself. Why?” It was a rhetorical ‘why’ that promised an answer. “Because she was terrified. Terrified that her mother had been murdered. If that’s so, why would she go back?” Jack was silent as he processed Gibb’s words. He took a sip of his coffee and reached for his cigarettes.
“Go on.”
“Somebody who is terrified hides. They fake their death. Yes. They stick crazy shit all over the walls in their flat. Yes. But they don’t go back to the place that terrified them in the first place. The place that they are trying to escape.” Gibb had a point. Without any evidence the whole idea that she had returned to Wellbeck, or Haven, was just a theory. He picked up the photograph and studied it carefully. It was blurred and pixellated and he couldn’t categorically say that it was Rebecca, but it sure as hell looked like her.
“OK, let’s go with it being her. How does this change anything?”
“On its own, not a great deal. It’s just another theory of some other cop. But you said to me that her family never saw her, right? They had no idea that she was alive.”
“They thought she was dead. They had a funeral. Of course they didn’t see her.”
“But yet I’ve also got Edward Jackson on the same CCTV footage.” Gibb handed Jack another photo. Jack’s chair creaked as he burst forward to take the photo from him, and he snatched it from his hand. The person staring back at him was undeniably Edward Jackson; the same tall stature, the same wispy hair, the structured face and long pointy nose. There was no mistaking him. “Same day, five minutes apart. The photographs are taken in the same waiting room.”
“They could have passed each other. Five minutes is a long time to walk across what ...?” he tried to imagine the bus station, although he had never been there, “....... two hundred metres, tops?” Even as he raised the question, he doubted himself. He knew how many times he had imagined seeing his wife and son in crowds since they had died. He knew how many shoulders he had almost touched, convinced that it had to be them. There was no chance he wouldn’t have seen them. Gibb held up another two photographs, one in each hand. The times on both were identical. In one photograph he saw Rebecca and in the other, Edward Jackson.
“They both left fifteen minutes later. Her towards the bus, him towards the main exit. I saw these this morning, before you came in.” He could see that Jack didn’t know what to say. “Afterwards, I just kept thinking that we had missed something. Something just didn’t seem right. I got looking at the evidence again. The photograph she was holding. It’s him that’s missing. He might be taking the photo but he’s not in it. Look at this.” He laid out a few photographs in front of Jack, who was now sat upright in his chair and smoking an illicit cigarette, waiting for Gibb to speak. He laid out four photographs that would, when matched up together, form a continuous image of Rebecca’s living room wall. He grabbed the papers from the desk that he had placed there only minutes before and started flicking through. Jack craned his neck to see what was written there. They were old case files. Murder files. “Here, look. James Davies.” He pointed to the name on the photograph with its red circled edges. He flicked the pages in front of him until he found the corresponding name. “James Davies was murdered three years ago, January the sixth. Case was solved. Guy called William Flatley. Bashed his skull in. He was only nineteen, Davies was thirty-two.” He pointed again to the photograph, tapping the news report that Rebecca had glued to the wall next to James Davies’ obituary. There was another red circled name; William Flatley’s. “You see? This is not just the victims that she has been cataloguing. It’s the murderers too. Next one.” As Gibb spoke, rattling out more names of victims and their murderers, each duo clearly documented in the sickening collage of old newspaper clippings, Jack barely listened to what he was saying. He knew these cases off by heart; he had lived and breathed these cases. He had looked at their bloodied faces last thing at night before he slept; he had relived their injuries as he ate his breakfast; he had seen the victims’ families fall apart, and watched as the perpetrator sat, often remorselessly, in court as the verdict was read out and they were sentenced. How had he not seen the names of the murderers?
“And then you get to this one.” He pointed out the name from the oldest dated newspaper clipping. “Alice Jackson. Look whose name is next to it, Boss.”
Thirty three
Graham had called out to Edward as he sat in the garden smoking. He either hadn’t heard him, or he had chosen to ignore him, like the ignorant sod that he knew he could be. Their relationship had always been a bit difficult, and with the exception of his honest desire to try to help him and Elizabeth come through this mess, having him here was starting to grip his muscles and every tendon in his body every time he was around Edward. Graham would always remember the first time that they’d met: Edward had barely spoken, other than to raise his sarcastic concerns that a man in his thirties had surely grown out of dating girls fresh out of university, but Graham figured that the youngest child would always be a father’s baby, and he tried to cut him some slack for this. As he pulled out of the driveway, he coasted in neutral down to the road that would lead him around the bay and up towards the long winding country lane that would eventually join the larger roads, like capillaries leading to a vein and which would take him directly into the heart of the city. He took one final glance in his rear view mirror, and whispered his usual silent goodbye to Elizabeth as he left the village of Haven and their cottage behind.
Elizabeth had made the decision that the best way forward for her was to keep busy. By ten o’clock she had already cleaned the bathroom, including a wall of tiles that no matter how small the cottage was seemed an endless task, like the painting of the Forth Bridge. She had emptied the cupboards: the shelves had been cleaned and the towels all returned into neat little piles of differing heights, like a virtual city skyline. Her efforts had moved through to the bedroom, where the open window was still letting the trails of cigarette smoke from the garden below creep in. She closed the window that faced the garden and opened the other side that faced out onto the village and the hills behind her. She pulled the sheets from the bed and a small scattering of dust rose into the air, like the first flurries of snow that would in a few months be falling on the bay before her. Winter, she thought, was a beautiful sight from her hilltop garden. It was too cold to sit out there, and the wind battered the walls of her cottage like the northern face of a towering Himalayan summit. As this weather front would invariably hit her home with the full force of an army, and the fog would creep in from the open ocean, crawling along the surface visibly riding over the waves as it clung low and secretively to each broken ripple, it would consume the whol
e of Haven. If the snow fell heavily enough, they would be cut off by road too and this had occurred a number of times over the last few winters. It had been at times like this that the weather had been a fortress, designed to keep everybody out. She had never realised how much she cherished those times until today as the thoughts of winter came back to her, and to her fresh mind. She wondered if now she would find the same peace in the isolation of it, knowing how isolation can destroy life, rather than protect and heal it.
She had placed the sheets from the bed in the washing machine and the gentle whirling and sound of the water gurgling through the pipes, either being squirted in or sucked out, was strangely meditative as she cleaned her way through the cupboards in the kitchen. She couldn’t shake the image from the corner of her eye of her father still sitting in the garden. She had seen him move a few times. He headed once over to the apple tree that had failed to fruit this spring and early summer. He had sat down again, and then later headed over to the side of the garden by the fence, where only the smallest barrier was there to obscure the path to the side of the cliff. The cliffs were maybe thirty metres high at the highest point just up the road from the cottage and adjacent to the bench where she had first sat. At the level of the garden they were still well over twenty metres higher than sea level, and occasionally she had sat on the edge to admire the crashing of the waves below. She had only done it a few times, never daring to continue the habit in case her continued weight in the same spot somehow caused a weakened fracture of the ground that was invisible to the naked eye. One thing that she knew was that she had no desire to die and she had even less intention of sliding down the edge of these cliffs, never to be found again. That’s when they’d decided that they had to build a fence, and they had barely stepped over it since the day it was erected.
With the contents of the cupboards securely back in place, neatly stacked food placed in rows and ordered by type and size: pasta on one shelf, tins on another and so on and so forth, she grabbed the washing basket from the under stairs cupboard. By the time the washing machine had stopped revolving and had begun impatiently beeping at her, she was already crouched down next to it waiting. She dragged the bundle of sheets out of the machine, dropped them into the plastic basket and braced herself ready to go outside. She didn’t want to avoid her father, but she really didn’t feel that she wanted to spend any time with him either.
Propping the blue basket against her hip and gripping it with the other hand, she opened the French doors that led into the garden.
“Hey, Daddy.”
“Good morning Elizabeth.” His words felt like an announcement, not at all relaxed nor welcoming. “You have been a very busy girl today. I hope you haven’t been avoiding me.”
“Daddy? Why would I avoid you?” She hoped that he couldn’t sense the lies. She could feel the knot in her throat that always came when she told a lie, and she replayed her words over in her head to see how they might have sounded.
“Well, because I have been very difficult to be around. It took me quite some time and quite a lot of these evil little friends of mine,” he motioned to the cigarettes, “in order to find some clarity in all that has happened.”
“Of course it did Daddy. It would for anybody. Me too.” She walked over to the washing line which was a roller system that was hooked up between the house and one of the large trees that bordered the far side of the garden. It was effective, but it essentially blocked out the whole view from the garden. She tried to use it only in the morning and late afternoons, the times when she would normally be working at her desk inside. She picked up the first corner of sheet from the basket and pegged it to the line with a little red plastic clip. “To be honest, I had forgotten that you even used to smoke until I saw you this week.”
“Yes. I assumed you had.” She carried on hanging up the sheets, one by one clipping the pegs onto the line. He didn’t offer to help her, and she didn’t expect him to either. He had never been the handy type, or a husband who would chip in with the washing up. She thought that he had probably never even changed a nappy in his life, even with two daughters. She considered her last thought over and over again. Yes, two daughters. It was still the right thing to say. She was pleased to have some sense of normality back with her father, as his depressive, immovable mass in the garden had started to infect the rest of the house. His sullen and consistent silence had started to filter through the nooks and crannies, and his rejection of the events of the last few days had been taking its toll on both her and Graham. At least with him talking, they would start to move on. As a family again.
“I’m making a cup of tea. Would you like one?” Her face was both sympathetic and inviting. She wanted to sit with him now. She wanted them to make the first steps to a future; she wanted to make them together. She noticed that her mobile was on the table in front of her father. She must have left it out there the night before, when they had gone to bed and left him sitting there.
“I left this here last night?” She looked at Edward, but he didn’t respond. She pressed the small silver button and the screen came alive, casting a glow onto her face and highlighting her dark, sunken eyes. Eight missed calls. All from Jack. “Daddy, why didn’t you tell me it had been ringing?” She didn’t care if he heard the annoyance in her voice. She wanted him to hear it. She dialled Jack, but she could already see the battery was flashing red. Jack answered so quickly it was as if he’d already had the phone in his hand.
“Elizabeth! Where are you? Are you OK?” There was a rush in his voice, and she heard it. He sounded panicked, or as if he was running.
“Jack? What’s wrong? What’s the matter?” She heard the beep of the battery; it was about to give up on her.
“Elizabeth, who is…….” then the phone went dead. She brought it away from her ear quickly enough to see the quick flash of the ‘goodbye’ message just before it shut down. Battery dead.
“That was weird.” Her face contorted as she pondered the strange and unnerving phone call. In all the time she had known Jack, she had never once heard him flustered. To her, it was as if he walked around with a constant air of que sera sera. But not today. “Daddy, you should have told me the phone kept ringing.” She took in a relaxing deep breath. Her patience was frayed and her words sounded tight, like a stretched elastic band. She suddenly felt the urge to go back inside and leave him out in the garden on his own again, but she fought against it. “Do you want that cup of tea?” she said trying to sound as unperturbed as possible. He started to nod slowly, as if he had considered a much more conspicuous offer, one with considerably more conditions and issues than a simple drink with his daughter.
She filled the kettle with water and set two cups down on the workspace. She plugged in her mobile phone and set it down. It wouldn’t turn back on for at least another couple of minutes. Long enough to make the tea, she thought. While she waited for the kettle to boil, she placed her hands onto her neck, stretching it back and forth to relive the tension from the morning of over-enthusiastic cleaning. The kettle jumped about on its base, sending out jets of steam and water droplets. She heard the click as the boiling stopped and into both cups she placed tea bags, filling the cups with the freshly boiled water. She added the milk and stirred them both, creating a ringing sound like cut crystal as the metal of the spoon rang against the sides of the ceramic cups. She pulled out the tea bags and dropped them into the old ice cream tub that sat on the workspace for this very reason. Grabbing both cup handles she turned to walk back out into the garden, when suddenly, she let out a yelp, the adrenaline of surprise surging through her body, grabbing her and twisting her in an instant and terrifying hit, the muscles of her body and hands tightening right up, sending the cups crashing to the ground. She hadn’t seen nor heard her father creep up behind her, but he was now no more than half a metre away from her. His full height towered over her as she grabbed a roll of kitchen towel and began mopping up the spilt tea which had scalded her bare feet as it had cascad
ed down like a waterfall, before rising back up like the water in the ocean when broken by a huge stone thrown from the beach.
“Daddy! What are you doing? Look what you made me do!” He wasn’t paying her any attention. He stood instead above her like a huge towering cliff face, blocking out the light. “What’s wrong with you?” She was on her knees in front of him.
“Don’t you ever wonder why she chose that life, Elizabeth? Don’t you think that it doesn’t make sense?”
“What? Rebecca?” We haven’t moved on at all, she thought. They were right back to square one, at Rebecca’s miserable flat, her father standing there in a daze. Or even back at her parents’ kitchen, her father sat outside in an ambulance talking constantly, but not making any discernible sound or coherent words. Only this time he was talking properly and his eyes were fixed on her, not staring off into the unknown distance. He was scaring her, and Elizabeth suddenly thought of all the times that she had been sat like this, outside of that childhood dining room door, listening as her father had bellowed at Rebecca on the other side. “Daddy, it will never make sense. There is nothing that can make it make sense.”
“But there is, Elizabeth.” She tried to get up, and he held out his hand. At first, she thought that he was trying to help her, but then she felt the full force of his overpowering frame pressing against her shoulder and at the same time, feeling the broken edges of the ceramic cups digging into her leg. She let out another cry, only weaker this time, her voice fraught with fear.
“You’re hurting me, stop it!” She was starting to whimper, tears in her eyes and her heart beating like the revolving coupling rods that held the wheels of a steam locomotive together as it powered along at full speed.
“If only you knew what she had seen, Elizabeth.” His fingers dug into her shoulder. She was completely submissive. She dared venture his words further.
Escaping Life Page 24
