The Long Fall

by Crouch, Julia

  More mystifying still was how she could have thought that the beautiful boy Jake, with his blue, blue, blue eyes, had turned out to be such an ugly monster? Her guilt, she supposed. Had he still been beautiful, it would have killed her there and then to know that she had so ruined a life.

  Instantly, she wanted to rip her insides out for having such a shallow thought. She had ruined a life. Two lives: Jake’s and her own. Three, if she included Beattie.

  But, she reminded herself, Jake had only been beautiful on the outside. What he did to Beattie was the work of the worst, most ugly soul. That’s why he had ended up over the cliff.

  And there was still the unresolved case of The Australian, whose passport had turned up in Jake’s rucksack. Perhaps the Jake imposter didn’t know about that and that’s why he denied it. Perhaps Jake had killed him back in Athens.

  If so, then he really deserved it. Didn’t he? This death penalty which she had doled out to him . . . Didn’t he?

  If she found out that this man facing her on the cliff had laid a finger on Tilly, she would – if she could – send him the same way as his predecessor. Without hesitation.

  She scanned the landscape. There was no sign of Tilly.

  ‘What have you done with my daughter?’ she said, stopping ten feet away from him.

  ‘She’s here,’ the big man said, spreading his hands.

  ‘You’re not Jake, are you?’

  The man didn’t move or say a thing. Just held his bare, tattoo-free arms out and looked at her with eyes that were not blue, but muddy brown.

  ‘Contact lenses,’ he said, noting her frown. ‘And suggestion. You wanted Jake to be alive, so you saw him in my eyes.’

  ‘Who are you, then?’ she asked him. ‘And why are you doing this to me?’

  ‘Money,’ the fat man said. ‘Just money.’

  ‘Where’s Tilly? I need to see her.’

  Then the man did something that completely flummoxed her. His shoulders dropping as if he were a puppet whose strings had been cut, he turned to the creeping oak – still the only tree on the bluff – and called out.

  ‘I’m done. This is where I leave. This is too much, Luanne.’

  Luanne?

  He turned back, set his face beyond Kate, and lumbered straight past her, motioning to the tree with his eyes and shaking his head. He didn’t look happy. Kate could read exactly what was on his face: the feeling she had woven into the very core of her own being, the feeling she had read and hated in the Tracey Emin drawing: self-disgust.

  He continued on, moving away from her, until he had disappeared over the lip of the headland, towards the coastal road.

  She turned to the oak, which was silhouetted behind a magnificent early evening sun. Tilly was here, he had said. This is too much, he had said.

  But who was he talking to?

  Luanne? Who the hell was Luanne?

  She ran, tearing across the scrubby grass towards the tree.

  But a movement from behind the trunk stopped her in her tracks so suddenly that she nearly toppled over.

  It was Tilly.

  She was squirming out from behind the tree, her hands behind her back and duct tape wound around her legs and body. Something – someone – shorter than her, hidden behind her, was holding something to her neck. Sunlight flashed off it, making it hard for Kate to see at first what it was.

  Shielding her eyes, she made out a knife. But not just any knife. It was the big Henckels that she hadn’t been able to find in her Battersea kitchen. For a second she tried to work out what was going on – had she had too much sun as she scoured the area for Tilly? Had her blood sugar plummeted from not enough food? Was she hallucinating?

  But the look of terror on her daughter’s face was all too real.

  ‘Please, Mum. She’s really serious about this shit,’ Tilly said, every tendon in her throat extended, tight and ready for the slip of the razor edge of the knife.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Me,’ an unmistakable, tobacco-gruff voice came from behind Tilly, and Beattie stepped out, still keeping the knife poised in its killing position.

  It was Beattie, but Kate felt like she was looking in a fairground distorting mirror. She was wearing clothes identical to her own – bigger, but the same clothes – and the hair and make-up were exactly the same, too. She even had a handbag just like the one Kate had slung over her own shoulder. The only difference was that Kate’s own bag still contained her knife, whereas Beattie’s was at her daughter’s throat.

  ‘You!’ she gasped. ‘It was you!’

  ‘Emma, honey. So you got it at last. My God, but you are the best gull in the business.’

  Kate reeled, images from the past weeks turning in front of her eyes like the wheels of a macabre carnival machine. What was going on? What had been going on? Then, before she had time even to register what she was doing, she had thrown herself across the grass towards her daughter and her captor.

  ‘Let go of her!’ she roared.

  ‘STOP RIGHT NOW!’ Beattie yelled, and, at the sound of that familiar voice using a tone she had never heard before, Kate skidded to a halt, the momentum taking her to her knees. ‘I will cut her throat,’ Beattie said. ‘Have no doubt about it, Emma. I will happily do that.’

  ‘What do you want?’ Kate said. She held out the portfolio, which trembled in her hands. ‘I’ve got the Rothko. You can have it. Please give me back my girl.’

  Beattie renewed her grip on Tilly, who whimpered as the knife nicked her throat. Kate gasped as she saw a bead of blood blossom on her daughter’s neck.

  ‘Do you really think it’s just about money, Emma?’ Beattie laughed. ‘Or some stupid art shit? I’ve had enough dough off you now to pay off old fat Sam there – not that he deserves a penny now but it’s the only way to keep him quiet – and to keep me going till I goddamn die.’

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘Goddamn wuss of an actor. All OK when it came to doing it to camera, but he just don’t cut the mustard when it comes to live theatre. DO YOU, SAM, BOY?’ she yelled, her voice reverberating up to the peak of the looming black mountain behind them. ‘Fucking waste of space. Cost me thousands, too, bastard.’ She spat into the rocky, dusty ground. ‘Bring him over to London and he hires a white Mondeo to trail us around. White Mondeo. Couldn’t he have found something a mite scarier?’

  ‘What do you want, Beattie?’ Kate said, her voice tiny, her eyes locked on Tilly’s, trying to reassure her, though she had no idea what she could do to stop what was going on, except to give Beattie what she wanted, whatever that was.

  ‘I want your life,’ Beattie said. ‘I want your goddamn life, you lucky, lucky bitch. Oh, you were all right, weren’t you? With your brilliant reinvention, your doting rich-boy husband, your lovely daughters. So sad one of them passed away, though. So sad for you. Poor us. Poor me. One little bad thing in our life.’ Kate realised that Beattie’s voice had taken on her own accent and tone; chillingly, she sounded exactly like her again, as she had in Athens all those years ago.

  The distorting mirror had taken on sound.

  But there was no time for Kate’s horror and revulsion. The look in Tilly’s eyes told her that she needed to act, quickly.

  ‘What happened to you?’ she asked Beattie, her voice as level as she could manage, in an attempt to keep things calm, to buy time, to stop the woman veering off into complete insanity.

  ‘Me? Beattie, you mean?’ she continued her impersonation of Kate. ‘That woman you know as Beattie never got it right, not like we did, Emma. She was in and out of jail all her life. Poor white trash, as I think they refer to them over there. Never got anywhere. She was always making mistakes, you see. Or, as she would say,’ and here Beattie continued in a caricature of her own accent, ‘“fucking up the whole Goddamn ball game”. You see, she never met another one quite so gullible as us again. Never met one who was so easily taken in who, dare I say, almost fell in love with her?’

  ‘What do you mean?’


  ‘Did you really believe all that friendship shtick “Beattie” gave you back then? Did you not ever, just once, get it into your tiny freaking brain too full of books shit that what you saw wasn’t exactly what you were getting?’

  Kate shook her head, her mouth open, catching grit and dust.

  ‘“I think Jake fancies me.” “I wonder if I’m a little bit in love with Beattie.” Whatever shit you wrote in your stupid diary.’

  ‘You read my diary?’

  ‘What the fuck do you think? Jesus. How we laughed at your silly little English schoolgirl whimpering.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘ME AND JAKE, ASSHOLE!’ Beattie threw the bound Tilly to the ground, where she landed with a thump. She stood with her foot on the girl’s neck, holding the knife up towards Kate, who had instinctively moved forward. Tilly closed her eyes. Her knees twitched.

  ‘You come near me and I’ll stamp on her neck,’ Beattie said to Kate. ‘I’ve done it before. It ain’t pretty, but it’s effective. So now. Where was I? Oh yes. Beattie and Jake,’ she continued, in her Kate impersonation. ‘Or shall we call them Bonnie and Clyde, or perhaps, let’s be honest, Luanne and Jack, for, my dear, those were their real names. Oh, they were a true couple of lovebirds, made for each other, together since they were thirteen. And of course they didn’t come from Manhattan and San Diego at all: they never even graduated from High School. They were no-good no-hopers from JEFFERSON CITY OHIO. Where’s that, my dear, you may ask? It’s THE MIDDLE OF FUCKING NOWHERE.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘But they were very good at one thing. Well, two things. Well, let’s say Jake was good at the second thing. Man, he was good. Best I ever had. Sorry you never found that out, poor little raped girl.’

  Tilly shot open her eyes and looked up at Kate from where she was trapped under Beattie’s foot.

  ‘It’s OK, Tills, just think of home,’ Kate said.

  ‘Yes, baby, think of home, Tills, darling,’ Beattie said, her voice indistinguishable from Kate’s. ‘But that Luanne was excellent at taking people in, performing. She should have been a goddamn actress. She shoulda been a drama student at Tisch doing the grand tour. But her mom never made enough money even to feed her properly in between drinks. You know? Sad old, same old, same old.’

  ‘So how did you get to Athens, then?’

  ‘I InterRailed in my year orf,’ Beattie said, her voice almost royal in its Englishness.

  ‘I mean,’ Kate said, realising now that she had to play along, ‘how did Luanne and Jack get to Athens?’

  ‘How they got to Athens . . . well, now. Luanne had this job in JEFFERSON CITY OHIO as a care assistant for this old, old woman. She took the job and for a whole fucking month she lived in the old, old bitch’s giant stinking house, cleaning up her shit, finding out where things were kept, all the jewellery and the bank statements and, Jesus, she found out the monster – and, believe me, this lady was nasty – was loaded. So she forged her signature and withdrew a load of money at the bank and stole the jewellery, and then the bitch got suspicious and started flinging all these accusations around and threatening to call the police and then, well, Luanne was in deep shit, so she had to make good and sure the old woman couldn’t tell no one nothing no more.’

  Kate gasped. ‘You killed her!’

  ‘D’uh.’ Beattie’s voice had taken on a new accent Kate hadn’t heard before. It was rougher, harsher, but it sat more easily with her cigarette-roughened tones than anything else she had heard coming from her mouth. ‘So Luanne and Jack knew when they were making their plan that they were going to have to disappear after, which was a good thing because they had always wanted to get out of FUCKING JEFFERSON CITY OHIO. So, never one to do things by halves, Luanne made this plan that after the deed they would go to Europe, somewhere they still have plumbing, but where there was little likelihood of some poky murder somewhere nowhere in America being any kind of an issue. They flew into Madrid – they had such great sex there in Spain, Emma, your mind would have popped – and moved real quick. By the time the cops worked out what happened to the old bat and who did it – Luanne wasn’t the kind who’d work under her own name, after all – our two fugitives were in Greece, lost in a muddle of bad paperwork, with shiny new identities.’

  ‘Jake and Beattie.’

  ‘You got it. Beattie was just a temporary name-change, but Jake was official. He even had his new passport, though you really don’t want to know how he came by that.’

  ‘The Australian who gave me a black eye . . .’

  ‘Nope, but similar. That Ozzie bastard just wound Jake up the wrong way, but the payback I doled out on him – oh yes, Jake was a fighter, but he was never a killer, the wimp – made a problem for us. We had to get out of Athens fast, so you were lucky there.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Jesus, you are so dense, girl. I was going to be Emma James, of course. There was enough of a similarity. I could have gone anywhere as you. I have your voice just right, don’t I? Bit more of a northern accent you had back then, though, eh?’ Beattie’s voice wove in and out of accents and identities so quickly that Kate felt quite dizzy.

  ‘What were you going to do with me?’

  ‘What do you think? You were lucky those Greek brats turned up on those rocks up by the Parthenon, and then, with that Australian, it all got too difficult to do the deed in Athens. So we decided to go along with your stupid island idea. It presented an opportunity. Do it out there, with no one to see, then fuck off back into the world as Emma James.’

  ‘So why didn’t you, then?’ Kate asked. Her need to know the truth now outweighed everything, but she also knew that Beattie was enjoying the telling of the story, and by egging her on, she was buying time and space for Tilly – and, she was beginning to suspect, for herself.

  But at this point Beattie tensed up, and Tilly squirmed as her foot tightened on her throat, just where her carotid artery pulsed under her skin. Kate slipped her hand in her bag and grasped the handle of her knife, ready to move.

  ‘Goddamn Jack,’ Beattie said, through clenched teeth. ‘The cheating skunk, he fell for you with your little-girl-lost, waif-and-stray shtick. He couldn’t take a strong woman like me no more, the weakling, the milksop, the bastard. The American Shit. Like that, Emma? Another shit for your shit collection. He begged me to save you and I realised he would get me if I tried to go ahead. We had quite a fight about it that last night. HE DID EVERYTHING I TOLD HIM UNTIL HE MET YOU, EMMA.

  ‘So when I got hold of your diary and read about that horny little Frenchy giving you it in France, well, I knew what kind of story would upset you most about Jake.’

  ‘No!’ Kate said, something molten and rotten welling up inside her. ‘You lied and lied. You got me up here and we tortured him and all he wanted to do was save me from you.’

  ‘Yep. Oops.’ Beattie put her little finger in her mouth and sucked it like an Orphan Annie. ‘But don’t you see? He had to die. He was no use to me at all.’

  ‘But why did you let me go, though? Why didn’t you kill me like you’d planned?’

  ‘It was the look in your eyes after you did it.’ Beattie pursed her lips. ‘You know what, honey? I saw a tiny bit of myself in you at that moment and, well, I just couldn’t bring myself to finish the job.’

  Shaking, Kate narrowed her eyes at Beattie. ‘I’m nothing like you. Nothing like you at all.’

  ‘And besides,’ Beattie went on, smiling broadly at her. ‘What would be the point of assuming the identity of somebody who had become a murderer? Kind of defeats the point.’

  Seeing Tilly’s eyes register this information, Kate stopped thinking. Knife held high, she launched herself at Beattie, whose absorption in her own storytelling had put her off-guard. The speed of the attack pushed her away from Tilly, but she escaped the trajectory of Kate’s knife, looping herself round, ready to act with her own weapon.

  As Kate faced her warped doppelganger, Beattie started laughing.


  ‘You’ll never beat me at this, girl,’ she said, again in her true Luanne voice. ‘I been cutting people since I was twelve.’

  ‘I murdered an innocent man,’ Kate snarled back at her.

  Tilly made a noise behind her, but Kate couldn’t take her eyes off her foe.

  ‘What did you want from me?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Oh, don’t put it in the past tense yet, honey,’ Beattie said. ‘I ain’t finished yet. I told you already. I want your life. I have your wardrobe, I have your daughter – although she’ll be going the same way as you after I’m done – and I have most of your money. The one thing standing in my way is you. At last your time is up. You gotta go, honey.’

  ‘You’re crazy,’ Kate said, launching herself at her. But, true to her word, Beattie caught her arm, knocked the knife from her hand, and pushed her backwards to the ground, falling heavily down on top of her, her full weight winding her, thumping into her bones.

  ‘We never did get to do this, did we?’ Beattie said, grinding her pelvis into Kate’s. ‘Ain’t that nice, eh? Mmmm.’

  If Kate had had any food in her stomach, she would have vomited. But she was empty, drained of everything. Caught. Powerless.

  ‘So, no knives, honey,’ Beattie went on, breathing her stale tobacco breath into Kate’s face. ‘I don’t want your pretty, skinny body cut none. If they find you, which they won’t, will they – we know that you don’t get found if you go over the edge, don’t we? We’ve done the trial run, after all – but if they do find you, I want it to look like an accident or perhaps even some tragic double suicide: poor mother and daughter throw themselves off of the cliff. Not that they’ll ever find out who you are, even if they get to you before all them little nibbling fishies.’

  ‘Giorgios knows who I am,’ Kate said.

  ‘He knows you’re called Emma,’ Beattie said, looking lovingly into her eyes. ‘He doesn’t know where you’re from, what your “real” name is; he doesn’t know about me.’

  ‘He does, though,’ a male voice said softly, behind them.

  Beattie looked round sharply. Giorgios was standing about ten feet away, his great-grandfather’s gun pointed directly at her.