Close Your Eyes

by Robotham, Michael

  This is how Emma talks, barely pausing to inhale. Sometimes I think she must cycle breathe like a didgeridoo player. Either that or she streams her thoughts directly from her brain without any filter. I take my medication and wait for the tremors to stop. Emma flits around me, a skinny little thing with a mop of curly hair and an oversized mouth with two rabbit-like front teeth.

  ‘I’ll stay home today,’ she says.

  ‘But you have school.’

  ‘It’s my last day. We can go for a bike ride. You’ll have to pump up my tyres and fix my bell. Justin Barclay broke it when he rode my bike into the river.’

  ‘Why did he do that?’

  ‘I dared him.’

  She makes it sound so obvious.

  ‘I have work today. You should go to school.’

  ‘OK, but you’ll be here when I get home. Mummy said you weren’t coming till the weekend. You’re sleeping in my room, so don’t make any bad smells. You’ll have to look after Oscar.’

  ‘Who’s Oscar?’

  ‘My goldfish. Charlie doesn’t want him in her room because he sucks rocks and spits them out, but he’s a goldfish, right, he’s supposed to suck rocks.’

  ‘Right.’

  Julianne rescues me and tells Emma to get ready for school. Grudgingly she obeys, stomping noisily up the stairs. She yells over the banister, ‘I know you’re talking about me.’

  Julianne rolls her eyes. ‘Tell me she’s not a narcissist.’

  ‘What ten-year-old isn’t?’

  My wife – can I call her my wife? – is wearing a two-piece business suit and heels, with her hair pinned up. She looks great, like some fashion editor’s idea of a career woman. She speaks four languages and works part-time as a court-appointed interpreter in Bristol.

  ‘Do you have a trial today?’ I ask.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Meetings?’ I ask.

  ‘A doctor’s appointment.’

  ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Under control.’

  What sort of answer is that? I want to press her on the details, but she hates me meddling. That privilege was lost to me when we separated. She’s already gone to collect two bottles of milk from the doorstep, along with the local newspaper, the Somerset Guardian – an august organ of record for locals interested in births, deaths, marriages and bicycle thefts.

  Charlie is the last to arrive downstairs, her hair wet and half-brushed, wearing black jeans and her Doc Martens. She grabs the newspaper and begins turning pages.

  ‘You’re up early,’ I say.

  ‘Job hunting.’

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘Part-time. Pays a fortune. No experience necessary.’

  ‘Good luck with that.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘How about some cereal?’ Julianne asks.

  ‘Not hungry,’ says Charlie.

  ‘At least take a banana.’

  Emma interrupts. ‘Can Daddy walk me to school?’

  ‘You can walk to school by yourself,’ says Julianne.

  ‘I can do it,’ I say.

  Charlie has stopped turning pages. ‘Hey, that’s you!’

  The headline reads: RIPPER WILL KILL AGAIN. Underneath is a sub-heading: Profiler Accuses Police of Incompetence.

  The photograph shows Milo on stage, arms spread, face raised to the lights, looking every inch the evangelist. I’m visible in the background at the side of the stage.

  ‘So he’s your competition,’ says Julianne. ‘He’s rather handsome.’

  ‘Very tasty,’ choruses Charlie. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘One of your father’s old students,’ replies Julianne.

  Charlie bites into a banana. ‘I’m going to enjoy university.’

  ‘You have to be careful of the good-looking ones,’ says Julianne.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Other girls will try to steal them away.’

  ‘What about Daddy? Did girls try to steal him?’

  ‘I had to beat them off with a stick.’

  Emma looks up from her cereal bowl. ‘Who did you hit with a stick?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘But you said you beat someone with a stick.’

  ‘It’s just a turn of phrase,’ explains Julianne, but Emma has already launched into another story.

  ‘Casey Finster hit Beau Pringle with a stick and knocked out his tooth and Mrs Herbert made him write a letter to Beau’s parents, who said Casey had to pay for the orthodontist, but Casey’s father said Beau started the fight by throwing a rock, only it wasn’t a rock, it was a clod of dirt with a rock inside it but Casey didn’t know that so it wasn’t really his fault.’

  The entire sentence is delivered without her drawing breath.

  Charlie rolls her eyes and grabs her car keys. ‘Will you be here tonight?’

  ‘That depends,’ I say, glancing at Julianne. ‘Would that be OK?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Charlie kisses us both on the cheek. ‘Later, losers.’ And then she’s gone, throwing open the front door with a flourish and confronting the day like an actor walking on to a stage.

  Emma takes my hand as we climb Mill Hill Lane, heading for St Julian’s Primary School, which is opposite the church. Her questions, observations and statements become the background noise, which I occasionally punctuate with ‘uh-huh’ and ‘really’ to make her think I’m listening. Emma knows this but seems happy to leave her thoughts drifting like dandelion seeds, perhaps hoping one might germinate into a conversation. From somewhere in the hum and whirr I hear the words ‘hospital’ and ‘mummy’.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Will you be looking after us?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When Mummy goes to hospital.’

  ‘Why would Mummy be going into hospital?’

  ‘For her historicalectomy.’

  ‘Do you mean hysterectomy?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  I don’t argue with her. ‘When is she going into hospital?’

  Emma shrugs. ‘Nobody tells me anything.’

  8

  The windscreen wipers pause between each sweep across the glass. Rain, a summer shower, warm rather than cold, makes the villages blur and streak. Having passed through the southern outskirts of Bristol, I reach the coast road and follow the shoreline where the trees are stunted and bent by the prevailing winds.

  Across the Severn Estuary I can make out the mauve mountains of the Brecon Beacons. I grew up on the border of Snowdonia, a very similar landscape to this, where low islands, cliffs and shingle beaches were punctuated by wetlands. It was an idyllic childhood until I was sent away to boarding school at the age of twelve. I missed my sisters. I missed my mother. I even missed my father – God’s personal physician-in-waiting – an imposing yet compelling presence, quick to criticise and slow to praise. Every summer I would ride my bike to Abersoch and watch the teenage girls run shrieking into the waves, imagining that one day I might have the courage to sit down beside one of them. I fell in love with a girl called Carise who had a friend called Tessa; they would rub coconut oil on each other’s backs and lie on their stomachs, casually lifting their legs to kick at the sunshine.

  My mobile is sitting in a cradle on the dashboard. I have tried to call Julianne twice and left messages. She’s not answering. Avoiding me. Pulling over to the side of the road, I try again, typing the words: Emma told me you needed an operation. Please explain. Call me.

  I wait. A message pings back: Can’t talk now.

  I type: When?

  Later.

  I try to call her. She doesn’t answer. Why is she so bloody infuriating!

  All this time I’ve been worrying that there was someone else – another man, a new lover, my replacement – and now I discover that she’s sick. That’s why she invited me to live at the cottage.

  She needs a hysterectomy. I studied medicine for three years and I know enough to be worried. It could be bleeding, or fibroids, or a prolapse. She
could have cancer. My stomach lurches. I’m the one who’s supposed to be sick and crumbling, jiggling my way through each day. Julianne never gets sick. Hardly ever. She’s the healthy one.

  I feel as though someone has played a tasteless practical joke on me, tricked me into believing that happiness is a possibility before snatching it away. Now I’m sulking, touching at the truth with the barest tips of my thoughts, frightened of what I might find. When was she going to tell me? Did I have to wait until she went into hospital?

  I’m angry at her secrecy, but at the same time I feel guilty. I have wished for something like this to happen – some event that I imagined would send her hurtling back into my arms. Now that it’s transpired I blame myself for contemplating such a terrible thing. Nobody can know. Please, please let her be OK.

  Just after ten o’clock I pull through the farm gates, splashing through puddles before parking in the cobblestone yard. Monk is waiting. He almost seems to unfold as he gets out of the car and pulls on a rain jacket.

  ‘Could be wetter,’ he says sarcastically, carrying a box to the front door and keying open the padlock. He brushes raindrops from his hair and hands me a USB stick. ‘The statements are on this.’

  ‘What about the post-mortem report?’

  ‘That too.’ He hangs up his jacket. ‘You’ll also find the 3D scan of the farmhouse, maps, timelines, phone records, financial statements and receipts. The statements are colour-coded – red for high priority, then orange, then yellow. The boss thought you might want hard copies of the photographs.’ He points to the box.

  ‘I might also need a printer.’

  ‘Colour?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  We walk past the open sitting room door. I don’t look inside.

  ‘You going to be OK out here?’ asks Monk, as we reach the kitchen. He opens the curtains.

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  He tests the lights and turns on a tap, checking that I have water.

  ‘What do you think happened?’ I ask.

  Monk flexes his nostrils and rubs the grained skin of his jaw with one finger. ‘I think Mrs Crowe met some random stranger for sex, or someone watched her having sex, and followed her home.’

  ‘She chose the wrong one.’

  ‘It happens.’ Monk’s face is elongated, almost jug-shaped. ‘I don’t like speaking ill of the dead, but by most accounts Mrs Crowe was the sort of woman who liked all flavours of ice cream except the one she had in the freezer.’

  ‘Care to explain that?’

  ‘You see it often enough – a middle-aged woman goes searching for a little excitement or to recapture her youth – a Mrs Robinson type, who reaches her sexual peak and then sees her beauty starting to fade. I’m not being sexist – men do it as well: buy a Porsche or run off with their secretary. I got a feeling that Mrs Crowe was never going to settle for slippers and a cat.’

  ‘You sound as though you’re speaking from experience.’

  Monk grins sheepishly. ‘I used to have women hitting on me all the time when I was young and single. Some of them wanted to sleep with a black man. Try it once. See if the stories were true.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘I’m a happily married man,’ he says, ‘and my Trisha would snip Little Monk with garden shears if she caught me bumping nasty with another woman.’

  ‘Tell me about Elizabeth’s ex-husband.’

  ‘Dominic Crowe. Nice guy. Bitter.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She took him to the cleaners. Hired a head-kicking lawyer from London – the same brief who looked after Nigella Lawson when she split with Charles Saatchi.’

  ‘He lost the house.’

  ‘And his share of the company. You want to know the worst part? Dominic’s best friend and business partner had been shagging Elizabeth Crowe for years.’

  ‘Jeremy Egan?’

  ‘Yeah. Dominic had no idea. Poor schmuck.’

  Monk circles the kitchen counter, running his finger over the bench top.

  ‘What do other people say about Mrs Crowe?’ I ask.

  ‘Depends who you talk to. I interviewed some of the tradesmen who were fitting out the bathrooms. None of them liked her. She screwed them on costs and kept changing her mind.’

  ‘Did any of them have keys to the farmhouse?’

  ‘The architect.’

  ‘Egan?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘What’s going to happen to this place?’

  Monk shrugs his shoulders. ‘Elliot Crowe will most likely inherit … unless we find that he’s responsible.’

  ‘You think he could have killed them?’

  ‘He’s a junkie, not a genius, but yeah, he’s in the mix.’ Monk looks at his watch. ‘I got to get back to headquarters. I’ll try to get you that printer.’

  After he’s gone, I boot up my laptop and plug in the USB. The files are indexed and dated. Within two hours I realise the size of my task. There are hundreds of statements and thousands of other pieces of information that have to be collated and cross-matched to reveal any inconsistencies or anomalies.

  Opening a new file, I hit ‘play’ and the 3D scan starts to run. Time-coded at the bottom of the screen, it begins on the morning after the murders. An overview of the farmhouse shows the floor-plan and the relationships of the different buildings. There are two cars parked in front of the barn. One of them is a Volvo estate and the other a small hatchback, which belonged to Harper. A sticker in the rear window reads: Horn Broken, Watch For Finger.

  By moving my cursor I can circle the farmhouse, entering doors, moving along corridors and turning 360 degrees. The detail is extraordinary. It’s as though I’m standing in each room exactly as it was that morning. I can see coffee cups on the shelves, a spoon beside the sink, condiments on the table. There is a coat-rack on the wall. Matching Barbour jackets. An umbrella stand. Walking sticks.

  The front door has a splintered wooden panel above the deadlock. Shards of wood were found scattered on the doormat. Elsewhere there are no obvious signs of a struggle.

  Moving the cursor, I enter the sitting room. Elizabeth is lying on her back, her legs splayed, her head turned to one side, arms outspread, one hand seeming to point towards the door. Opening an album of crime scene photographs, I see an attractive woman, not beautiful but well preserved, her stomach sagging slightly in a paunch and a caesarean scar the only blemish on her white skin.

  I change the point of view until I see the candle holders coated in wax. He left them burning. Why light them at all? Amid the speckles of blood on the sofa there are larger smears on the front of the cushions. He sat down after he finished. He needed to rest. I can also see where he knelt to clean the knife on a cushion. A partial shoeprint was found inside the front door and further bloodstains in the hallway. Did he remove his shoes?

  Traces of blood show his progress through the house, into the kitchen, then the laundry. He cleaned up using a cake of soap and a hand towel. Perhaps he took off his clothes. Did he bring a spare set, or borrow something?

  Closing the computer, I walk to the sitting room and take a seat on the solitary armchair. Opening an album of the crime scene photographs, I leaf through the pages. Elizabeth is lying on her back, her dressing gown open. She’s naked underneath. One breast is visible. The blood and urine stains suggest that she had been standing when the fatal blow was delivered. He held the knife in his right hand. He raised the blade above his shoulder and drove it into her neck below her left ear, angling down to her spine. He let her fall. She lay on her back.

  The second phase of her injuries then began. He stabbed her thirty-five more times, most of the blows delivered after death, some so violent and deep they damaged the rug beneath her body. He focused on her genitals. The knife rose and fell in an uncontrolled frenzy. There was anger in this act. Hatred. Perhaps revenge. Likewise exploration. He wanted to punish Elizabeth, but also to test his own boundaries.

  I open my ey
es. The dark stain on the floor is like a shadow without a light source. Crossing the room, I crouch down, propping on my haunches, and study the speckled pattern of blood on the floor. Something must have been covering the floor when Elizabeth was first stabbed. The object had one straight edge and one obvious corner, slightly curved. A plant? A table? A lamp? Nothing in the photographs or the 3D scan reveals the source. Perhaps the forensic team took it away for analysis. I cross-check with the evidence log and find no record of the item. Either a mistake has been made or the killer took something away with him.

  Leaving the sitting room, I climb the narrow stairs, pausing involuntarily as my left leg freezes mid-step. Focus. Move. Obey.

  Entering Harper’s room, I see a publicity poster for Game of Thrones fixed to one wall. Opposite are two large photographs of a wind farm and a coal-fired power station. Which is the greater blight on the countryside? reads the caption.

  The ceiling slopes above the bed, following the roofline. Harper has used the space to display dozens of Polaroid images, mostly artistic shots of abandoned buildings, railway goods yard.,warehouses and stretches of stark coastline. Elsewhere in the room there are charcoal and pencil portraits, given depth by the delicate cross-hatching and shading. Some of the drawings still have notes in the margins from her art teacher: Tone does not follow form … flattens it … Don’t use cross-hatching for foliage … You lose perspective in the foreground …

  Opening the relevant album of crime scene photographs, I follow as each shot moves closer to the single bed where the duvet has been pulled up, shielding the occupant from immediate view. I can only see the top of a head with sleep-tousled hair. The duvet is pulled back for the next series of images. Harper looks as though she’s sleeping. I half expect her to groan in protest and roll over, telling me to go away.

  She is lying on her back with her hands folded on her chest, her right thumb hooked into the silken bow tied at the front of her pale yellow nightdress. Her hair is spread in a halo across her pillow, perfectly framing her face, except for a few strands that have come to rest on her cheek.