The Nightmare Place

by Mosby, Steve

  Part Four

  Forty-Seven

  For Miriam Field, it’s the waste ground.

  It’s a real place, and it’s one she is forced to see every day, so to some extent she has become inured to it over the years. Miriam is a practical woman, after all – some say hard, even cold, as though she has no reason – and she knows deep down that it’s only a patch of ground. It is where the thing happened to Jemima, not what happened. On their daily walks, Miriam manages to close her mind to the latter – and of course, nothing lingers here. There are no ghosts. Perhaps that’s even sad in a way, because ghosts would imply an afterlife of a kind, and at least then there might be something for them both to look forward to.

  She does dream about the place, though.

  They are on their way back from the shops now, and it lies ahead of them. But first they must make their way through the small copse of trees where the attack occurred. The Edith Copse, they used to call it, although some of the locals remember and call it something else amongst themselves. For some reason, this part of the journey bothers Miriam less than the waste ground, maybe because the latter is the place where Jemima might have been stopped and saved.

  Even so, she grips Jemima’s hand a little tighter.

  ‘Come on, love. Don’t hang around.’

  Miriam speaks to her daughter in an abrupt, authoritative tone, and anyone overhearing it would think her harsh. But over the years, she has learned that it’s what Jemima responds to best. Cajoling rarely works. Her daughter needs firm direction in the same the way a three-year-old does, and she harbours any resentment at the abruptness for about as long.

  Jemima is staring at the copse of trees, not with fear but curiosity, as though it is a harmless puzzle she can’t understand. At her mother’s words, though, she turns away from it, then keeps an awkward but eager pace along the footpath. It is heartbreaking for Miriam – it always is – but she doesn’t show it. Emotion is a luxury she can’t afford. This is just one more small sadness, and she stores it away out of sight with all the others.

  Hard, even cold, they say. Harsh. But, really, how could she not be? For the best part of two decades, her days have been regimented blocks of bathing, clothing, feeding. She washes Jemima’s hair and stubbornly applies make-up. There is this daily trip to the shop, and then the daytime television shows. The spooned food. The evening’s careful outing. Miriam still loves her daughter, but it is an existence they have now, not a life, and time is something to be survived, for no real reason other than to reach more time. When the two of them first moved here, all those years back, it was a blow, but it felt like there was still time ahead of them – that the separation and downsizing had just been the temporary dimming of a bulb that could be made to blaze again. It was astonishing to discover how much harder life could make it for you, with just one sudden, awful snap of its fingers.

  As they reach the top of the embankment, the waste ground opening up ahead of them, Jemima is dragging back again.

  ‘Come on.’

  Miriam gives her a harder pull, and then immediately feels bad. As much as she loves her daughter, it is sometimes difficult not to think of her as an object that won’t stay put – one that topples over however hard you try to balance it. But she remembers sitting with Jemima in the hospital, begging her to survive those terrible injuries, to come back to her no matter what, and it’s hardly fair to blame her now for having listened.

  ‘Come on.’

  She says it more softly this time, and even turns and gives her daughter a smile. I love you. I love you still. More every day, in my own way. But there is no sign on Jemima’s face that she has registered the impatience, or the repentance. She registers so little. More heartbreak, then – and again, Miriam stores it away with the rest. The place it all goes to must be infinite in size. It contains the enormous thing that happened to Jemima behind them, and then a thousand tiny moments from every day since. Every time someone has done a double-take at her daughter’s beautiful, ruined face, or made fun of her. The pebbles they sometimes throw at the windows late on. The wrestling and the hardship. The fact that after all this time, they are still here …

  Enough.

  With the bag of shopping in one hand and Jemima’s hand grasped firmly in the other, Miriam begins walking across the waste ground.

  ‘Come on, love.’

  In reality, it’s only a place, of course. Just dust and rubble. Bleak and dirty, yes, but given time and opportunity, even the most bereft of spots can acquire a kind of beauty. Some evenings, Miriam has watched the setting sun split its colours through the copse of trees behind her, and now she sees it rising in front of them, making it easy to imagine that the estate ahead is ablaze in the morning light. If only.

  They’re about halfway across when it happens.

  Jemima stops suddenly, the jolt from it hurting Miriam’s arm. She turns to look at her daughter, who is staring vacantly at the estate ahead of them.

  Oh God.

  Because this has happened before.

  ‘Jemima?’ she says, but as always in these circumstances, her daughter doesn’t respond. The concentration on her face is fierce but utterly still. It is like looking at a photograph.

  Then, without warning, Jemima starts moving again, much faster than before, and quicker than Miriam is used to. Her daughter overtakes her, and then Jemima is the one urging her on for a change.

  ‘Hold on, love. You know I can’t go that fast.’

  Miriam struggles to keep up. More heartbreak. The first time this happened, she thought a memory must have surfaced, and that Jemima was fleeing the trees behind them. But when they reached the estate, she saw that the smile on her daughter’s face contained a trace of joy, albeit one that faded quickly, and she understood. A memory had surfaced, but not an unpleasant one. Jemima’s body wouldn’t obey her properly any more, but a part of her had remembered what it used to be capable of, and her daughter had been trying to run.

  Hold on, love.

  She doesn’t say it, though. It’s heartbreaking, yes, but the smile always lasts at least a few seconds. It’s sad when it goes, not when it’s there. Let her run.

  As they stutter awkwardly across, Miriam looks towards the estate and sees that someone is standing there, silhouetted against the orange glow behind. They draw nearer, Jemima still leading her, and Miriam sees that the figure is a woman, dressed in jeans and a short black leather jacket. She is in her early thirties, with long brown hair tied back in a ponytail, and her face is disfigured. Certainly not as badly as Jemima’s, but obviously more recently. One of her eyes is bruised, and her nose has tape over the bridge. As they reach her, Miriam notices more bruising around one corner of her mouth. Whoever the woman is, she has been in a serious fight.

  And she is clearly waiting for them.

  They come to a halt close to her, and the woman stares at Jemima’s face with an expression Miriam finds hard to read. For a moment she feels indignant and protective, because even though her daughter is unaware of her appearance, strangers can be rude and mean, and she does pick up on that. But this woman’s own face doesn’t contain a trace of pity or disgust. Jemima, for her part, is looking off into the middle distance, oblivious to everything. The faint smile fades slowly from her face.

  Miriam lets go of her daughter’s hand and takes a step forward.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘No.’ The woman, who is still staring, shakes her head, then turns to look at Miriam instead. ‘I’m sorry. I tried your house first, but obviously you were out. So I came here on the off chance.’

  ‘You tried our house?’

  ‘Yes. Sorry.’ She takes out her wallet and shows Miriam a badge of some kind. ‘Detective Inspector Zoe Dolan.’

  The name means nothing to her, but the title generates a thrill of panic, and she starts to run through a short mental list of relatives, friends, acquaintances …

  ‘What’s happened?’

  The woman – Zoe – puts
her identification away.

  ‘Nothing. I didn’t mean to alarm you.’

  ‘Then …?’

  ‘I went to school with your daughter.’ She turns back to Jemima and smiles at her. ‘Hello, Jem. Do you remember me? It’s Zoe.’

  Jemima doesn’t say anything, but it’s strange, because she also doesn’t react the way she often does towards strangers. When she’s approached like this, she will usually turn to Miriam and almost press herself against her, the way a shy child might. Now, she doesn’t respond at all, which is the way she acts around people she’s more comfortable with. The silence pans out.

  ‘Jemima doesn’t talk much,’ Miriam says.

  ‘No.’

  She says it plainly: a statement of fact. Clearly, she knows what happened to Jemima, and the way she is looking at her makes more sense now. She is a policewoman, so she wouldn’t be fazed by the sight of such extensive injuries, but she also went to school with her, before the attack, so she is searching for traces of the girl she once knew, and perhaps wondering how much of that girl is left.

  Miriam is about to say something, but she’s distracted by a sudden burst of laughter a short distance away, and she turns to see three young boys on bicycles. They’re a familiar enough sight, and her heart sinks a little. Every few days she sees them, untethered and roaming the estate, and it’s always the same. If it’s not these ones that throw stones at their house, it’s others like them. Right now, two of them are laughing while the third is clawing at his face, pulling the bottoms of his eyes right down and making grunting noises.

  Miriam stares blankly back at them, putting this moment away with all the others. There is nothing she can do about it. She wishes she could make them both invisible, that they could get from place to place without being noticed, but that isn’t—

  And then she realises that Zoe is walking slowly and steadily towards the children. They fall silent as she approaches, but of course they don’t ride away. When she reaches them, she crouches down beside the nearest and begins talking quietly to him. They are far enough away that Miriam can’t hear what is being said, but she sees Zoe gesturing behind her, and then angrily to her own injured face. A moment later, she leans in a little closer, pulling the bicycle at an angle, and whispers something to the boy with such ferocity that for a moment Miriam actually feels scared for him.

  Zoe nods and stands back up again, then looks down at the children, who don’t look back at her. A few seconds later, the three of them cycle away, and Zoe stares after them until they are gone. Then she walks back over.

  ‘Just children,’ Miriam says sadly.

  ‘It happens a lot?’

  She nods, although there doesn’t seem any real point in answering. It happens a lot. But there are a large number of painful things that happen a lot.

  ‘Yes. We used to call the police, but they said there’s nothing they can do. Just children.’

  Zoe looks at her for a moment, and then at the estate itself. Finally she turns back to Jemima. If her daughter has noticed the exchanges, she doesn’t show it. She is just standing there. Waiting.

  ‘Is that right?’ Zoe says. Although she’s still looking at Jemima, it sounds more like she’s talking to herself. ‘Well, we’ll see about that.’

  Forty-Eight

  For Karen Cooper, it was a small black book.

  I had it in my coat pocket when I arrived at her house, and could feel the weight of it there, disproportionate to its actual size. That should have been strange, perhaps – but then again, it contained far more than it appeared to. It was heavy with things that weren’t actually there.

  We would come to that, but in the meantime I wanted to talk to her about her husband: to help complete the picture of Derek Cooper we had been assembling over the past few days.

  I rang the doorbell and waited on the step. The visit had been arranged in advance, so at least she would have had a chance to compose herself to meet the woman who had put her husband into the coma from which he was unlikely to emerge. And there was the sight of my face, as well, of course. The blatant evidence of what he had done to me. The visible legacy of his violence, which in some ways we shared.

  Karen opened the door, and for a few seconds we didn’t speak. I smiled politely – professionally – as her gaze moved over my face, taking in the damage.

  ‘He did that to you?’ she said eventually.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  I nodded once. ‘I’m sorry too.’

  ‘Please.’ She held the door wider. ‘Come in.’

  ‘Thank you. Are the children …?’

  ‘They’re still with my parents.’

  She led me through the kitchen to the front room. It was the first time I’d visited the scene of Derek Cooper’s explosion, and I glanced around as I followed her. It was easy to imagine the flurry of violence in the air as he attacked the officers, but the house also felt like him, somehow, as though a hint of aftershave lingered in the air, or as if he might be lurking in another room. It wasn’t quite enough to give me flashbacks to the fight in Sharon’s bedroom, but I still felt my chest tighten a little.

  A dangerous animal is nearby. A monster.

  Not any more, I thought.

  The front room was minimally furnished and spotlessly clean. Everything looked expensive and just so, like a show home. He would have insisted on it, no doubt: demanded that she play the good little wife. Appearance would have been everything.

  ‘How is she?’ Karen asked, after we’d sat down. ‘His last victim?’

  That was me, technically, but I knew who she meant.

  ‘Sharon Hendricks is in hospital,’ I said. ‘She’s doing okay, actually, all things considered. And Kieran Yates’s condition has stabilised. Right now, it looks like he’s going to make it.’

  ‘I’m glad.’ She glanced towards the kitchen. ‘I haven’t seen her since. The lady next door, I mean.’

  ‘Margaret Smith? She’s barely left his side.’

  Karen took a deep breath. ‘I keep thinking about the way Derek used to look at her. At Sharon, I mean.’

  ‘When he came to the shop to pick you up?’

  ‘Yes. I suppose I noticed it at the time and just never really took it in. He looked at a lot of women. She was his type, of course, but it felt stupid to be bothered by it. She was a smart girl. Pretty. Could probably have had anyone. So she wouldn’t have had anything to do with an older man, a married man. I was never worried. It was just Derek being Derek.’

  ‘I notice you don’t say that you trusted him.’

  That got me a hollow laugh. ‘Because I didn’t. Why would I? He made it quite clear how disgusting I am.’

  ‘Disgusting?’

  ‘Yes. He never said it outright, but it was obvious. He used to look at me the way he looked at Sharon, but not any more. And I couldn’t really blame him, could I?’

  I shook my head. Karen was an attractive woman, albeit obviously still clinging – with the make-up and the clothes – to an ideal of her younger self she could no longer really attain. I wanted to understand.

  ‘So he preferred younger women?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. And I’d trapped him, hadn’t I? I know that was how he saw it, deep down. The kids, the house, me. He never really wanted the kids, and then he didn’t want me any more either. He wanted something better.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like anything. That was Derek. He always wanted something better. And he always thought that whatever he wanted should be his by right. That he deserved it. Nobody crossed him.’

  And nobody will need to again. But I didn’t say it. Instead, I thought about what Karen had just told me, and remembered my impressions of the victims. They were all young, attractive and successful: women you could see on the arm of an alpha male, being shown off like a trophy or a badge.

  It was easy to tell that Karen Cooper had been very beautiful once, but it was equally apparent that hers was the type of be
auty that comes from maintenance: an act that becomes increasingly difficult to perform as time passes. The make-up she wore failed to mask her age, especially around the eyes, and whereas once she might have been vivacious and vibrant – full of hope for the future – now she seemed empty. Vacant, even.

  Once upon a time, she would surely have been Derek’s type, and I tried to imagine how it might have felt to him, anchored as the years passed to what must have seemed an increasingly rusty trophy, one that polished itself with ever-diminishing returns. Coming to hate her, not because of who or what she was, but what she wasn’t. Trapped. He always wanted something better. And eventually taking that hatred out on her, and on the girls he felt entitled to but couldn’t have.

  A lot of people felt like that, of course: constrained as the years passed; dissatisfied with the undeserved smallness of their lives. It could hardly be the whole picture. But Derek Cooper had been an angry, arrogant man, confined in a box he felt too tight for him, not good enough for him. I could at least begin to see it.

  ‘Did he ever mention Adam Johnson?’

  Karen shook her head. ‘No. I had no idea. He was the other one?’

  I nodded. ‘Your husband used to go and talk to him about what he’d done.’

  ‘Why?’

  That remained a question, and I still wasn’t sure I had a definitive answer. Johnson had assumed the man was trying to groom him – or at least involve and implicate him – but given Cooper’s meltdown after Johnson’s suicide, I wondered if there had been something more to it all along. Just as Johnson had phoned the helpline, I wondered if, for all his rage at the world, Derek Cooper had needed someone to confess to as well. If some of that hate might have been directed inwards.

  ‘We don’t know,’ I said. ‘But let’s talk about your husband for now. He was out a lot, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. But I just presumed he was with someone else. And actually, I didn’t mind that. Not really.’