by P. D. Viner
He walks into the park and over to the Observatory. He remembers lying on the grass there years before, what eighteen years ago? Observing the skies with Dani and Izzy. There was supposed to be a meteor shower. It was a bust though – the cloud was too heavy and the three of them just lay there and talked about the future, what they would like to be when they were grown. Izzy wanted to travel the world, maybe as a wildlife photographer. Dani was still running then and wanted to be an international athlete. Tom remembers his mind going blank, all he wanted to say was – I’ll tag along with you. But he couldn’t. Instead he mumbled something about international aid – it sounded good and kind and laudable. He hadn’t meant it; his head had been full of Dani.
Here, in the present, he lies down in the grass and looks up at the clouds that skit above him. What would he tell the young Tom, if he could go back in time? He thinks hard, but doesn’t know what he would say. His imagination has entropied – that was what twelve years in the police did for you. Fact after fact after fact. Then he remembers: just as they were about to leave, the sky cleared and they saw a meteor fizz by. Then another, and another, all in CinemaScope. The shooting stars were all they could see.
He lies there for an hour. It is 2 p.m. and he realises he is quite depressed. Without work to keep his mind occupied he drifts into the past and seeks memories of her. He needs to stay in the present. Be here now, he tells himself.
‘Yeah, right,’ Dani-in-his-head laughs.
He walks to Valerie Brindley-Black’s house. A question is forming in his head but he can’t quite grasp its tail. It takes an hour to get there and as he walks, he thinks about Charlie and the knot of blood. On arrival he rings the doorbell. As it opens he begins to greet her.
‘Mrs Brindley-Bl …’ He trails off. The woman at the door looks like Valerie but it is not her.
‘Can I help you?’ she asks, her voice soft.
‘I’m Detective Inspector Bevans. Is … your sister here?’ He instinctively knows this is the woman she went to when her husband died of cancer. Sophie Brindley.
‘She’s asleep. Sedated. I don’t think I could wake her even if I wanted to.’
Tom nods, he understands. He is reminded of Patty, Dani’s mother. She was a crime journalist, prided herself that she had seen the very worst of human vice and corruption and still remained distanced enough to document it – until it was her own child. In those first days after the terrible news, she was out cold – zombified by drugs. Later, when she was back to normal, she was disgusted with herself, disgusted that she gave in to the darkness at the most important time to find the killer. She has blamed herself ever since for the fact that the killer was never found. Tom hopes Valerie never feels such regret.
‘Please tell your sister I called.’
‘Is there some news?’
‘No, no news.’
She slowly nods her head, to show she understands the import of what he had just said. ‘I am going to stay with my sister until …’
‘Good. That’s kind of you. I am sure she appreciates that.’
‘My children will be here soon too. They were very close to Charlie.’
‘Where are they coming from?’
‘Overseas. Helena, the older one lives in Tanzania and Lucy in Nicaragua. They both work for small charities.’
‘You must miss them.’
‘Of course,’ she laughs to herself. ‘But then I tell myself what a brilliant job I did raising two such extraordinary people.’
He smiles. ‘That’s a good way to look at it.’
‘The three of them were close, like peas in a pod when they were children.’ Her face crumples a little.
‘I’d like to talk to them at some point about Charlie. Do you know if they kept in touch, maybe email?’
‘Birthdays, Christmas – maybe more, I don’t know. They will be here for a few days, you could ask them. Unfortunately they can’t stay long.’
He nods. ‘I’ll call to make an appointment.’
‘There is a memorial service on Tuesday. Just small, so that they can be present. We don’t know when …’ a spasm of grief runs through her ‘ … the body will be released. I am sure Valerie would …’
‘Thank you.’ The two of them stand in silence for a few seconds. ‘I should go.’ He turns and is about to walk away, when he realises what sits in his pocket. He pulls out the small, paperback copy of On the Road. Inside is the Polaroid he found at Charlie’s flat. He turns back to the door.
‘I found this in Charlie’s things.’ He hands the book to her, the photo pokes out a little. ‘Inside is a photograph of her taken in the last couple of days – it is a little intimate. I thought it should go back to Mrs Brindley-Black. Could you?’
‘Intimate?’
‘Nothing really embarrassing – just a private photo. I thought Valerie would like to keep it, rather than it go into the evidence file.’ Tom squirms a little.
‘That is a rare kindness in today’s world,’ she opens the book and looks at the photograph. A cloud sweeps her face. Tom sees her hand shake a little.
‘What is wr—’
‘This isn’t my niece.’
‘Not Charlie?’
‘No, this is my sister. This is Jennifer, my elder sister. This picture is almost thirty years old.’
Tom feels the ground beneath his feet shift a little.
‘Valerie said she only had one sister.’
‘Only one alive. Our elder sister is dead – killed when she was nineteen.’
‘And this is her.’
‘Yes.’
‘Her hair?’
‘Was the most striking silver white. It was so beautiful.’
‘Did you know your niece dyed her hair, exactly like this, two days before she died?’
‘No. No, nobody said that.’
‘How did your sister die?’
After a significant pause, she says, ‘She was killed by a rug.’
‘A rug?’ he asks.
She nods, almost apologetically. ‘It was a horrible accident.’ She stops. Evidently, the memories have been locked away for so long they are difficult to recover.
‘What happened? Are you okay to—’
‘She was driving home, she’d gone to see a band … T-Rex, they were playing at some festival. She was in love with Marc Bolan. It was a week before Christmas. She had slept on a friend’s sofa after the gig and got up early the next morning to drive home. Such a long way, and we told her to be careful. She was – she was a good girl.’ Sophie is lost in the memories of her sister for a minute. Tom waits patiently for her to come back to the present. ‘But sometimes you can’t be careful enough can you – some things just come out of the blue, out of nowhere. How can you be safe all the time?’
Tom holds her eyes, he doesn’t blink. The pain in his face loosens her tongue and thirty-year-old tears return and run down her cheeks.
‘She was on the motorway – nothing ahead of her, clear for miles. But a car was driving on an overpass, a slip road that led onto the motorway. A woman was driving fast and a deer ran out in front of her … she swerved and a large rolled rug on her roof came loose and flew into the air.’ Tom sees her face shift as the memories flood over her. He can see that, even though she wasn’t there, she imagines its trajectory; sees her sister in the little car, oblivious to her impending death – singing, happy to have seen her beloved Marc Bolan. The carpet arcs through the heavens – coming closer and closer until it smashes through the windscreen and … ‘It was a dreadful tragedy all round. The woman who caused the accident had a breakdown, the guilt of it all. She hanged herself a few weeks later.’
‘Was there anyone else there?’
‘The woman’s son was in the car. No more than a boy.’
‘Do you remember their names?’
‘She was Anna … Anna something. And the boy, what was his name?’ Tom watches her try to prise the name from her memory. ‘Oh, this is dreadful. I can still see his quivering lip, his
tears. But his name …’ Then her face clears as it seems to come to her. ‘George. The boy’s name was George.’
‘The surname?’
She shakes her head. ‘I can’t remember. Isn’t that awful? I just can’t recall it.’
It is 9pm. Tom stands on the threshold and breathes. This is crossing a line, he knows that. Drake will not be happy with one of his officers calling unannounced at his home, but Tom is running out of time. He can see that something is happening this evening, lights blaze from every window and the drive and street around the house are packed with cars. With a slightly shaking hand he reaches out to the doorbell and touches it. Somewhere, deep inside the large house, a bell rings. He waits for a few minutes and the door is pulled open with great gusto. Standing there with a huge smile on his face and wearing a pink apron that says you are my cupcake is Chief Superintendent Drake. The smile dies on his lips as he sees it is Tom standing there.
‘What the fuck do you want Bevans?’
Tom hands him a file. ‘This is the killer.’
After leaving Sophie Brindley in the early afternoon, Tom had spent the rest of the day finding the accidental death reports on Jennifer Brindley from 1971. They corroborated everything Sophie had said. Then he found the report of the driver’s suicide three weeks after the accident, and finally he found reference to her son: George Albert Fforde-Merrison. A hunch had driven him onwards to find out that, despite his father being alive, George had been placed in care after his mother’s death. From there it had been easy to find the documents committing the boy to a psychiatric hospital. He was institutionalised a month after his mother’s suicide. But after that George disappeared. In fact, the last note on his file, from his doctor at the asylum, said he thought George Fforde-Merrison planned to go to Europe. ‘He talked about Belgium.’ The doctor wrote. That was in March 1980.
Drake eyes the folder Tom has given him with suspicion. Then with a sigh, he walks inside the house and along the hallway. Tom hesitates for a second and then follows him, pulling the front door closed. Drake stops at a door and goes inside, it is the kitchen. He pulls a tray of mini pies from the oven and then sits at the table and begins to read. Tom looks around the room – he could get his whole flat in this kitchen. From somewhere the sound of laughter bubbles up and Mrs Drake walks into her kitchen, the laughter trailing behind her. She gives Tom a perfect hostess smile. ‘Can I get you a glass of something?’
Drake calls out to his wife without looking up. ‘Don’t bother with him, he’s staff – and that might only be for another day or two.’
She smiles again at Tom, then opens the enormous fridge in the corner and seems to climb inside. Her husband continues to read – he goes over the cover sheet in detail then flicks through the rest of the report. When he’s done he throws it back towards Tom. ‘George Albert Fforde-Merrison.’ He says the name with distaste. ‘Born 1959 – missing presumed dead. Is this it?’
‘Charlie Brindley-Black was a dead ringer for her aunt who was killed by George Ffor—’
‘Oh, fuck me sideways, Bevans.’
‘Language, darling.’ Drake’s wife calls out, with an icy echo from deep inside the fridge. She emerges with a handful of cheeses. ‘I’m about to serve the cheese tray, are you going to be much longer?’
‘No. I’m not, am I, Sergeant Bevans?’
‘Good.’ She says as she walks back to her guests. ‘Nice to meet you.’
Drake waits until she has gone and then hisses at his junior officer. ‘Jennifer Brindley was killed in a road accident at the age of nineteen. At the scene was a child—’
‘The accident was caused by a carpet which was on the roof of one car. It became unattached and flew off from an overhead slip road and onto a motorway. It struck Jennifer Brindley’s car – embedded itself in the passenger seat and flung her through the windscreen. She died from her injuries – a shard of glass ripped her stomach open.’
‘Christ, Bevans.’ He shakes his head. ‘You come to my house on a Sunday evening, drag me out of a dinner party …’
‘Sir—’
‘… from a dinner party congratulating my son on a new job, to listen to this shit. This isn’t policing. Bevans. I am very disappointed. I will talk to you tomorrow.’
‘I won’t be in the office tomorrow.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m going to Amsterdam to question a witness.’
‘Not on my fucking budget you’re not. I want to see you in my office tomorrow at 9 a.m., or don’t fucking bother to come in ever again.’
‘Goodbye, sir. I will tender my resignation on Tuesday.’
‘Well, you better post it because you are not setting a foot inside my fucking unit.’
Tom takes the file and leaves. He looks at his watch as he walks down the street. It is 10 p.m. His flight is in eight hours.
Eleven
Monday 17 October 1999
It is an open prison, fifty kilometres from Amsterdam. It is specifically used for white-collar crime – fraud and embezzlement are its speciality. It reminds Tom of an up-market care home designed by IKEA. Everywhere there are units, shelves and pull-out drawers. It’s nothing like the cramped Victorian monstrosities he’s used to at home. The area for waiting is white and kidney-shaped. It has recessed lighting and a free-to-use espresso machine. Tom makes himself one and paces around. On the table are glossy magazines – from this month, not eight years out of date like they would be in England. He isn’t in Kansas any more, or Greenwich. He’s in the Netherlands, for the first time. He should be celebrating this rare trip overseas – but he can’t. He looks at his watch for the thousandth time this morning.
‘Come on,’ he says through gritted teeth.
‘Take it easy. We always talked about travelling – here we are. Let’s celebrate.’
‘There’s too much at stake, Dani.’
Today, Tom wears his uniform and looks professional. His hair is Brylcreemed and he shaved in the airport, just before taking a cab to the prison. He carries his warrant card and has signed in as DI Bevans. He trusts to luck that no one will call the department and check he is who he says he is. At three that morning he had been at his desk sending confirmation emails – luckily Drake hadn’t leapt into action and rescinded his access. Tom hadn’t thought he would. Tom also put his expenses claim into the system and filed it for Friday’s date. He wasn’t keen on being £300 out of pocket on this kamikaze mission.
‘Vig Berends.’ The prison governor introduces himself, holding out his hand and the two men shake. ‘I will take you to Mr Meyer – please forgive my poor English.’ He says, his language perfect. ‘Follow me.’ The two men walk down a long, well-lit corridor that has prisoner artwork all along one side. Berends points to the art as they walk. ‘Here we believe in rehabilitation and that art is the perfect way to calm the mind and reflect upon one’s past misdemeanours.’
‘Impressive,’ Tom murmurs unconvincingly.
They reach a gate and are waved through by a bored-looking guard. ‘Maarten Meyer has been an exemplary prisoner,’ the governor continues. ‘He was already an artist when he arrived here and we have allowed him to sculpt – which he has taken to with a real passion.’
They arrive at a communal area, a large room with tables and sofas. There is a coffee machine in the corner and fresh pastries on a counter. A few men sit around playing cards and one sits alone looking out of the window. The governor points to him and tells Tom that is Maarten Meyer. Tom thanks him and walks over.
‘Mr Meyer.’ Tom holds out his hand to the man who sits staring out of the window. ‘I am Detective Inspector Bevans of the Metropolitan Police, I would like to talk to you.’ Meyer, unresponsive, continues to look out of the window. ‘You are under no obligation to help me but I would be grateful if you would answer a few questions. It is a case of murder. The questions I have for you go back a long time, to 1980 and 1981.’
Meyer slowly looks up into Tom’s face. He is an old man, bald except for a
few strands of ratty grey-brown fibre around the ears. His face is mahogany with sun. Tom can’t tell if he has heard a word.
‘The man I am looking for killed three women in 1980 and 1981 and just recently killed again.’
Meyer gives out a raspy breath and the leather creases around the eyes. His English is rusty but Tom understands him. ‘So long, so many years between. I thought it had worked, that the beast was safe. I did my best.’
Tom sits down beside him. The old man bows his head. Tom takes a picture of Charlie from his pocket – it shows her head, nothing of the knot of blood. ‘This is the girl who was killed a few days ago.’ Meyer keeps his head bowed. ‘Please look at it.’ Slowly he pulls his head up and looks at the image.
‘It is the same. The same as all those years ago.’
‘Will you tell me what happened?’
‘I did nothing wrong. I helped to keep women safe.’
Tom keeps any anger from his voice. He looks deeply into the old man’s face. ‘I know that, you tried to help. I think you made a man a very special doll. A doll you hoped would keep him from hurting another woman.’
‘He came to me in tears, desperate – he said he had killed, that he couldn’t help himself. That if I did not help him he would end his life. I was scared …’
‘He threatened you?’
‘No. Not threatened me …’ he pauses and a far-away look fills the old face. ‘My son took his own life.’
‘I see.’ And he does. Tom Bevans knows about the need to try and save another life, any life. He understands atonement. ‘Please, tell me about your meeting with – George?’
The old man nods. ‘Yes, George, that was his name. He came to me. I lived in a building in Amsterdam, a run-down apartment block. In it many prostitutes worked. One night this young man pounded on my door, he took my hand and led me up two flights of stairs. There I saw the poor girl. I had said hello to her on the stairs once or twice. I didn’t even know her name. She was dead. He begged me to help him stop, said he must not kill again. He knew who I was, what skills I had and he asked me to make him a lover. A woman with silver-blond hair and golden eyes. He wanted to be free.’
