‘I want to get dressed,’ says Charlie, suddenly self-conscious.
‘Sure. Just let these officers take a look at you. Just to be sure.’
I tear myself away from her and go downstairs. Ruiz is in the kitchen with Veronica Cray. The house has been searched. Now detectives are scouring the garden and the garage, poking at dead leaves with heavy boots, squatting to peer at the compost heap.
The trees along the northern border are skeletal and the shed has a derelict forsaken look. A wrought iron table and matching chairs are rusting under an elm tree, where colonies of toadstools have sprung up after the rains.
I walk out the back door, past the laundry and across the sodden lawn. I have the uncanny sense of the birds falling silent and the ground sucking at my shoes. My cane sinks into the earth as I walk between flowerbeds and past lemon trees in enormous stone pots. An incinerator built from breezeblocks is against the back fence, alongside a pile of old railway-sleepers meant for garden edging.
Veronica Cray is alongside me.
‘We can have ground-penetrating radar here within the hour. There are cadaver dogs in Wiltshire.’
I stop at the shed. The lock has been smashed open in the search and the door sags on rusting hinges. Inside smells of diesel, fertiliser and earth. A large sit-on lawnmower squats in the centre of the floor. There are metal shelves along two walls and garden tools propped in the corner. The blade of the shovel is clean and dry.
Come on, Gideon, talk to me. Tell me what you’ve done with her. You were talking half-truths. You said you’d bury her so deep I’d never find her. You said she and Charlie were sharing the same air. Everything you did was practiced. Planned. Your lies contained elements of the truth, which made them easier to maintain.
Leaning on my cane, I reach down and pick up the padlock and broken latch, brushing away mud. Tiny silver scratches are visible against the tarnished metal.
Then I look back into the shed. The wheels of the mower have been turned, wiping away the dust. My eyes study the shelves, the seed trays, aphid sprays and weedkiller. A garden hose is looped on a metal hook. I follow the coils, growing dizzy. One end of the hose droops downward against the upright frame of the shelf.
‘Help me move the mower,’ I say.
The DI grabs the seat and I push from the front, steering it out the door. The floor is compacted dirt. I try to move the shelf. It’s too heavy. Monk pushes me aside and wraps his arms either end, rocking it from one side to the other, walking it towards the door. Seed trays and bottles topple to the floor.
Dropping to my knees, I crawl forward. The compacted earth becomes softer near the wall where the shelf used to stand. A large piece of plywood has been screwed into place. The hosepipe hangs down the plywood and seems to disappear inside it.
I glance back at Veronica Cray and Monk.
‘There’s something behind the wall. Get some lights in here.’
They won’t let me dig. They won’t let me watch. Teams of two officers are taking turns, using shovels and buckets to scrape away the floor. A police car has been driven across the lawn and its headlights are allowing them to see.
Shielding my eyes to the brightness, I can see Charlie through the kitchen window. The blonde paramedic has given her something warm to drink and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders.
‘Someone you love is going to die,’ Gideon told me. He asked me to choose. I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it. ‘No choice is still a choice,’ he said. ‘I’m going to let Julianne decide.’ The other thing Gideon said was that I would remember him. Whether he died today or spent a lifetime in prison, he wouldn’t be forgotten.
Julianne told me that she didn’t love me any more. She said that I was a different person to the one she married. She was right. Mr Parkinson has seen to that. I am different- more pensive, philosophical and melancholic. This disease has not broken me against a rock, but it is like a parasite with tentacles coiling inside me, taking over my movements. I try not to let it show. I fail.
I don’t want to know if she’s had an affair with Eugene Franklin or Dirk Cresswell. I don’t care. No, that’s not true. I do care. It’s just that I care more about getting her back safely. I am to blame, but this is not about seeking redemption or easing a swollen conscience. Julianne will never forgive me. I know that. I will give her whatever she wants. I will make her any promise. I will walk away. I will let her go. Just let her be alive.
Monk calls for help. Two more officers join him. The digging has exposed the lowest edge of the plywood. They’re going to rip down the wall.
Dust and dirt reflect in the beams of the headlights, penetrating the cavity. Julianne’s body is inside, curled in a foetal ball, with her knees touching her chin and hands cradling her head. I catch a whiff of the urinous smell and see the blueness of her skin.
Other men’s hands reach into the cavity and lift her body out. Monk takes her from the others and carries her into the light, stepping over a mound of earth and placing her on a stretcher. Her head is encased in plastic tape. The headlights have turned her body to silver.
A blonde paramedic pulls a hose from Julianne’s mouth, replacing it with her lips, forcing air into her lungs. They’re cutting the tape from her head.
‘Pupils dilated. Her abdomen is cold. She’s hypothermic,’ says the paramedic, yelling to her partner. ‘I got a pulse.’
They roll Julianne gently onto her back. Blankets cover her nakedness. The blonde paramedic is kneeling on the stretcher putting heat packs on Julianne’s neck.
‘What’s wrong?’ I ask.
‘Her core body temperature is too low. Her heartbeat is erratic.’
‘Make her warm.’
‘I wish it were that easy. We have to get her to hospital.’
She’s not shivering. She’s not moving at all. An oxygen mask is pulled over her face.
‘Coming through.’
Julianne’s eyes flutter open, blind as a kitten in the brightness. She tries to say something but it comes out as a weak groan. Her mouth moves again.
‘Charlie’s safe. She’s fine,’ I tell her.
The paramedic issues instructions. ‘Tell her not to talk.’
‘Just lie still.’
Julianne isn’t listening. Her head moves from side to side. She wants to say something. I press my cheek close to the oxygen mask. ‘He said she was in a box. I tried not to breathe. I tried to save the air.’
‘He lied.’
Her hand snakes out from beneath the blankets and grabs my wrist. It’s like ice.
‘I remembered what you said. You said he wouldn’t kill Charlie. Otherwise I would have stopped breathing.’
I know.
We’re almost at the doors to the ambulance. Charlie comes sprinting out of the house, across the grass. Two detectives try to stop her. She feints left and goes right, ducking under their arms.
Ruiz hooks her around the waist and carries her the final few yards. She throws herself at Julianne, calling her Mummy. I haven’t heard her use the word in four years.
‘Be careful. Don’t squeeze her too hard,’ warns the young blonde paramedic.
‘Do you have children?’ I ask her.
‘No.’
‘You’ll learn it doesn’t hurt when they squeeze you hard.’
Epilogue
It’s a typical spring day with the mist being burned away early and the sky so high and blue it seems impossible that space is a dark domain. The stream looks clear, shallow at the edges where the gravel is clean and eddies swirl around the grasses.
On the far side of the valley the road is visible through the budding trees, curling around a church and dipping out of sight over the ridge.
‘Any bites?’
‘Nope,’ says Charlie.
I keep an eye on Emma who is playing with Gunsmoke, a gold-coloured Labrador I rescued from the pound. He is a very earnest dog who regards me as the cleverest human being he has ever met. Unfortunately, apart from loyalty, h
e is almost totally useless. As a guard dog he barks whenever I get home and completely ignores strangers until they’ve been in the house for upwards of an hour at which point he howls as though he has just discovered Myra Hindley coming through the window. The girls love him, which is why I got him.
We’re fishing in a stream about a quarter of a mile from the road, through a farm gate and across a field. A picnic rug is spread out on a grassy bank, just near the gravel beach.
Charlie has adopted the Vincent Ruiz mode of fishing, eschewing bait, lures or hooks. This is not for philosophical reasons (or beer drinking), it is because she cannot bring herself to putting a ‘living breathing’ earthworm on a hook.
‘What if he has a whole earthworm family who will miss him if he gets eaten?’ she argued.
At this point I tried to explain that earthworms were asexual and didn’t have families but that just confused the issue.
‘It’s just a worm. It doesn’t have any feelings.’
‘How do you know? Look, it’s squirming, trying to get away.’
‘It’s squirming because it’s a worm.’
‘No. He’s saying, “Please, please don’t stick that big hook in me.”’
‘I didn’t know you could speak worm.’
‘I can read his body language.’
‘Body language.’
‘Yes.’
I gave up after that. Now I’m fishing with bread, watching Emma, who has managed to sit in a puddle and get pondweed in her hair. The worm debate is lost on her. Gunsmoke is off chasing rabbits.
The changing seasons are more obvious since we moved out of London, the cycle of death and rebirth. There are blossoms on the trees and daffodils in every garden.
It has been six months since that afternoon on the bridge. Autumn and winter have gone. Darcy is dancing at the Royal Ballet School in London. She’s still living with Ruiz and constantly threatening to leave if he doesn’t stop treating her like a child.
I haven’t heard any news of Gideon Tyler. There has been no military court martial or official statement. Nobody seems to know where Gideon is being held and if he’ll ever stand trial. I did hear from Veronica Cray that the military chopper had to land after leaving Bristol. Apparently, Gideon managed to pick the lock on his handcuffs using the frames of his glasses. He forced the pilot to put down in a field, but according to the Ministry of Defence he was recaptured quickly.
I also heard from Helen Chambers and Chloe. They sent me a postcard from Greece. Helen has opened the hotel for the season and Chloe is going to a local school on Patmos. They didn’t say very much in the card. Thank you seemed to be the gist of it.
‘Can I ask you something?’ says Charlie, tilting her head to one side.
‘Sure.’
‘Do you think you and Mum will ever get back together?’
The question snags like a hook in my chest. Maybe this is how an earthworm feels?
‘I don’t know. Have you asked your mum?’
‘Yes.’
‘What does she say?’
‘She changes the subject.’
I nod and raise my face, feeling the warmth of the sunshine on my cheeks. These warm cool clear days bring me comfort. They tell me that summer is coming. Summer is good.
Julianne hasn’t filed for divorce. Maybe she will. I made a deal. A pact. I said that if she were alive, I would do anything she asked. She asked me to move out. I have. I am living in Wellow, opposite the pub.
She was still in the hospital when she told me what she wanted. Rain streaked the windows of her room. ‘I don’t want you coming back to the cottage,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you ever coming back.’
She kicked me out once before but that was different. Back then she said she loved me, but couldn’t live with me. This time she hasn’t offered me any similar crumb of comfort. She blames me for what happened. She’s right. It was my fault. I live with that knowledge every day, watching Charlie closely, looking for any sign of post-traumatic stress. I watch Julianne too and wonder how she’s coping. Is she having nightmares? Does she wake in a cold sweat, and check the locks on the windows and doors?
Charlie winds in her fishing line. ‘I got a joke for you, Dad.’
‘What’s that?’
‘What did one saggy breast say to the other saggy breast?’
‘What?’
‘If we don’t get some support soon we’ll be nuts.’ She laughs. I laugh too. ‘Do you think I should tell it to Mum?’
‘Maybe not.’
I still regard myself as being married. Separation is a state of mind and my mind hasn’t come to terms with it. Hector the publican wants me to join the Divorced Men’s Club of which he’s the unofficial president or chairman. There are only six of them and they meet every month and go to the movies or sit in the pub.
‘I’m not divorced,’ I told him, but he treated that like a minor technicality. Then he gave me the speech about getting over the shoals and heading back into the mainstream. I told him I’m not a classic joiner of things. I’ve never been a member of anything, not a gym or a political party or a religion. I wonder what they do at a divorced men’s club?
I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want the long empty moments. It reminds me too much of crappy dorm rooms at university, after I left home and couldn’t find a girlfriend.
It’s not that I can’t live on my own. I’m OK with that. But I keep imagining that Julianne is thinking the same thing and will come to realise that she was happier together than apart. Mum, Dad, two children, the cat, the hamsters, and I could bring the dog. We could shop, pay bills, choose schools, watch movies and romance each other like normal married couples, with flowers on Valentine’s Day and anniversaries.
Speaking of anniversaries, today is a special one: Emma’s birthday. I have to get her back to the cottage by three for a party. We pull in the fishing lines and pack up the picnic basket. Gunsmoke is filthy and smelly and neither of the girls want to sit next to him in the car.
The windows are kept open. There are lots of shrieks and girlish laughter until we get to the cottage, where they tumble out the doors and pretend that I’ve gassed them. Julianne is watching from the doorway. She’s put coloured balloons over the trellis and the letterbox.
‘Look at you,’ she says to Emma. ‘How did you get so wet?’
‘We went fishing,’ says Charlie. ‘We didn’t catch anything.’
‘Except pneumonia,’ says Julianne, shooing them upstairs for a bath.
There is an abstract sort of intimacy in our conversations now. She is the same woman I married. Brown-haired. Beautiful. Barely forty. And I still love her in every way but the physical one where we exchange bodily fluids and wake up next to each other in the morning. Whenever I see her in the village I am still struck by wonder: what did she ever see in me and how could I have let her go?
‘You shouldn’t have let Emma get wet,’ she says.
‘I’m sorry. She was having fun.’
Gunsmoke is tearing through her garden, chasing a squirrel and trampling her spring flowers. I try to call him back. He stops, lifts his head, looks at me as though I am extremely wise and then takes off again.
‘Everything ready for Emma’s party?’ I ask.
‘They should be here soon.’
‘How many are coming?’
‘Six little girls from day care.’
Julianne’s hands are stuffed into the front pocket of an apron. Both of us know we could pass our time like this, chatting about storms or whether to clean the gutters or fertilise the garden. Neither of us has the vocabulary or the temperament to share what remains of our intimacy. Maybe this is a form of mourning.
‘Well, I’d better get Emma cleaned up,’ she says, wiping her hands.
‘OK. Tell the girls I’ll come and see them during the week.’
‘Charlie has exams.’
‘Maybe on the weekend.’
I smile a winning smile at her. I am not shaking. I turn an
d walk to the car, swinging my arms and holding my head up.
‘Hey, Joe,’ she calls. ‘You seem to be happier.’
I turn back to her. ‘You think so?’
‘You’re laughing more.’
‘I’m doing OK.’
Acknowledgements
This story was inspired by true events in two countries but not based upon either of them. It could not have been told without David Hunt and John Little who were invaluable in helping my research. Among the others who answered my questions and shared my excitement were Georgie and Nick Lucas, Nicki Kennedy and Sam Edenborough.
As always I am indebted to my editors and their teams, Stacy Creamer at Doubleday US and Ursula Mackenzie at Little, Brown UK, as well as to my agent Mark Lucas and all those at LAW.
For their continued hospitality I thank Richard, Emma, Mark and Sara and their respective broods. My own brood must also be acknowledged- Alex, Charlotte and Bella, who are growing up before my eyes despite my pleas for them to never change.
Last, but not least, I thank Vivien, my researcher, reviewer, reader, therapist, lover and wife. I have promised her that one day I’ll find the right words.
About Michael Robotham
Before writing full-time he was an investigative journalist in Britain, Australia and the US. He is the pseudonymous author of 10 best-selling non-fiction titles, involving prominent figures in the military, the arts, sport, and science. He lives in Sydney with his wife and 3 daughters.
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