Dead Time

by Anne Cassidy

  Rose stiffened. How had a conversation about Emma Burke being stabbed become a chance for Anna to criticise her mother?

  ‘I’m not leaving the school. These crimes had nothing to do with me. I was just trying to help someone. I would prefer it if you didn’t criticise my mother. You have no right to do that.’

  Anna’s face hardened.

  ‘I have every right. She was my daughter. I tried to do my best for her and she let me down. She made it quite clear that she didn’t approve of my lifestyle and went her own way. And what happened to her? A baby and a string of unsuitable partners. Becoming a police officer. A job that any fool could have done. Everything I did for her wasted.’

  Rose crossed her arms angrily. She didn’t trust herself to speak.

  Her grandmother’s voice dropped. ‘She stormed out of here and we never spoke again. You haven’t seen her for five years – it’s been so much longer for me.’

  Rose faltered. She stepped towards her grandmother.

  ‘Anna …’ she started.

  ‘Don’t throw away your education,’ her grandmother cut across Rose’s words. ‘You could walk into Oxford in two years’ time with your predicted grades. Don’t toss it aside like your mother did. That’s all I’m asking.’

  ‘I won’t talk any more about my mother,’ Rose said firmly, turning away, keeping her voice low, trying to stay calm.

  ‘Wait,’ her grandmother said.

  But Rose was striding along the hallway. She walked quickly up the stairs.

  ‘And don’t think I haven’t seen that appalling tattoo on your arm. Don’t think I haven’t noticed it!’

  Rose did not stop. She went up to her room and shut the door behind her. There was no lock so she stood firmly against it. She didn’t know if Anna would come up but she stayed there anyway, her back to the door, to the house, to her grandmother. Her eyes were hot and dry. She would not cry. She would not.

  Much later in bed she kept the lamp on and lay in the quiet of her room. It was quarter to twelve and she didn’t think she would get to sleep. She lifted her arm out from under the duvet and looked at the tattoo. The redness and swelling was receding; the blue of the Morpho deepening.

  What would Anna have said if she had seen her daughter’s tattoo?

  Rose thought of the day she had first seen it. It was a tiny butterfly, on the top of her arm, just an outline really, hardly any colour at all. Rose had pointed at it in amazement. It was when Brendan and Joshua were living with them. They’d gone to a football match, and Rose and her mum were getting ready to go out and meet them afterwards. She’d charged into the bathroom while her mum was drying herself. She’d stared at it in wonder. Oh, this! A moment of madness, her mum had said jokily, hugging her gingerly.

  Rose remembered her mum’s hugs, how they had smelled of perfume and hair shampoo and celery and basil and furniture polish and a hundred other scents that clung to her and lived in Rose’s memory.

  Now Rose was completely alone in the world. She had distant friends and she had Josh but really, when it mattered, she was on her own. Her mother, Katherine Smith, was gone.

  She thought of Smith, the name her mother had chosen. When Rose had first come to live with her grandmother, she had suggested that Rose change her name back to Christie but Rose hadn’t wanted to. Smith! Anna had sneered, what a pointless name. She might as well have called herself Katherine X! But Rose liked Smith. It was important to her that she kept it.

  Those were the days when she tried to distance herself from Anna. She didn’t allow herself to think of her as her ‘gran’. She was a woman who Rose had to live with. ‘Grandmother’ implied a familial relationship but she had no relationship with this stiff distant woman. She called her Anna and she thought of her as Anna.

  This Anna had little to do with Rose and her real mother.

  She pushed her face into the pillow and tried to picture her mother but it was only a fleeting image. She had a pile of photographs she could look at and often did but when she thought about her mother she remembered her mum doing things; reading, talking, cooking, driving. The everyday things that happened regularly like cleaning her glasses, using a special spray and cloth to get them just right. And it wasn’t just one pair of glasses. She had glasses to go out in, to drive with; she had glasses that she used to wear while working on the computer. She even had a pair of special half-moon glasses for when she was making notes on her work files. Rose watched her reading and writing pages of notes and then signing her name at the bottom, Katherine Smith. The K was huge and had a curlicue at the bottom. Rose had tried to copy it but couldn’t. She had pages of an exercise book full of ornate Ks and Rs but none of them came close to her mum’s handwriting.

  When her mother went missing Rose had spent time collecting those pairs of glasses together. She lined them up on her mum’s desk. Some of the cases were dented and scuffed. When Rose and Joshua had been taken into foster care she’d left them there for her mother when she returned. But she never had and Rose wasn’t quite sure what had happened to them. Years later Anna had told her that she’d employed a firm to clear the house for her. Most of the stuff there was sold but Anna had collected all of Rose’s things and brought them home along with family photographs and some possessions of her mother’s. Joshua and Brendan’s things had been sent to Newcastle.

  There had been no glasses.

  Rose let her eyes close. There were no tears, just a hollow feeling in her chest. The police had tried to explain. Her mum and Brendan Johnson, both police officers, had been transferred to a unit that worked on old cases. This was where they had met each other. The police inspector who had spoken to her said that in all probability her mother and Brendan Johnson had been killed for their part in one of these investigations. Months after they had gone missing he had visited her. His words had been kind but firm. I wish I could tell you something different but it is my conviction that Katherine Smith along with Brendan Johnson were both targeted by career criminals. It was a professional job and I doubt very much that any trace of them will ever be found.

  She thought of Emma Burke. In death Emma would leave traces. The investigation would pore over Emma’s body, her clothes, the path, the rose garden. They would look for clues; fibres, skin, hair, blood, saliva. Her killer’s body would betray him, would tell the police what they wanted to know and they would solve the murder.

  But they would never solve her mother’s …

  She shook her head. She would never say or even think the word.

  But it sat there in her heart, a splinter that wouldn’t budge, that burrowed deeper and gave her a thin sharp pain. Murder.

  TEN

  There was a knock on her door. Rose opened her eyes. Her room was dark because the curtains were drawn. Grey light showed at the edges. She turned to her bedside clock and saw that it was 8.07. She’d slept for almost eight hours.

  The knock sounded again. Then the door opened a crack.

  ‘Rose?’ her grandmother said.

  Rose turned away from the door and stared into the corner of her room.

  ‘Are you awake, Rose?’

  Rose made a sound in her throat. She did not turn round to look at Anna. She felt the door open wider and imagined that Anna had stepped into her room. Just inside the door. Anna never came any further into her bedroom while she was in there.

  ‘Rose, some unpleasant things were said last night and I wanted to apologise. I understand that none of what happened was your fault and …’

  Anna continued to talk but Rose wasn’t really listening. Anna always wanted to apologise after a row. It was an action she took, a form of words. It was polite and placed Anna back on the right side of the argument but she had never once used the words I’m sorry.

  ‘… So you’ll keep in mind my offer to transfer you to the school in Hampstead Heath but I understand if you wish to stay where you are for the time being.’

  The door closed and Rose waited until the outside door to her s
tudy closed and then she sat up. That was it. When she went downstairs later Anna would act as though nothing had happened.

  But things had been said that couldn’t be erased.

  She lay there for what seemed like a long time. Eventually she got up and showered. Afterwards she went to her wardrobe and took out some clean black jeans and a white shirt. She pulled out her DMs and looked for some socks. When she was dressed she looked at herself in the mirror. She saw a pale girl with chin-length hair. Her eyes were big and dark and made her look younger than her years. She pulled her hair back and held it behind her ears. She still looked young, not a girl of seventeen.

  Her shirt was loose and her jeans were skinny, her boots making her feet look huge. She glanced at her wardrobe. She had a line of hangers with black jeans or trousers and various black or white tops. Anna didn’t like the way she dressed but she didn’t care. At Mary Linton the talk was always about what you wore, what you looked like, who looked the best, whose clothes were the most expensive. Rose had felt completely at sea among the girls there, never knowing the right way to look. As soon as she got home she got rid of all the colours: the stupid skirts, tunics, leggings, T-shirts, dresses. She took them all to the local charity shop and bought herself some monochrome. She, whose very name suggested a variety of soft pinks, preferred herself in black and white.

  In the evening Joshua came. She got a text from him to say that he was in the lane at the back of the gardens. Anna was out visiting a friend so she went down and opened the gate. He gave her a hug.

  ‘Poor Rosie!’ he said.

  She took him into the studio. Anna wasn’t due back until after eleven so she was relaxed. Josh sat on the sofa and she pulled over the big cushion and sat on the floor. The electric heater had been plugged in for a couple of hours so the studio was warm. She’d already told Josh about the events of the previous night in an email.

  ‘If I’d got there earlier …’ she said. ‘If I’d been with Emma.’

  ‘Might not have made any difference,’ he said. ‘You might have been hurt.’

  ‘The police think I had something to do with it!’ she said.

  ‘You’re kidding!’

  She described the interview she had had and how the detective kept pressing her to answer in a certain way.

  ‘Do they want to see you again?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘The one thing I didn’t tell them about was this feeling I had when I was in the rose garden. It was as though someone was there. I looked round but couldn’t see anyone but I had this certainty that there was someone.’

  ‘A feeling? What kind of feeling was it?’ Joshua said, looking at her with interest.

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t say.’ Rose was cross with herself for not being able to be more specific.

  ‘Could someone have been hiding?’

  ‘I don’t know the place well enough. I was in there for two, three minutes, five at the very most. I was focused on Emma.’

  She stopped speaking because the memory was making her feel tearful. Joshua must have noticed because he put his hand out and grabbed hers.

  ‘I’m sorry about our trip across the Millennium Bridge,’ she said, pulling herself together, and trying to change the subject.

  ‘No problem. We can go another day. Are you going to school tomorrow?’

  ‘Not for a few days. I can’t really face people. First Ricky Harris, now this. It’s as if I’ve got some kind of curse …’

  Joshua looked thoughtful. After a moment he spoke.

  ‘Do you believe in any of that stuff? Supernatural phenomena?’

  ‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Not sure.’

  She felt odd for a moment, as if there was more that Joshua wanted to say. Instead he was fiddling with the beads round his neck. She changed the subject.

  ‘Let’s go and see the bridge on Wednesday.’

  ‘OK. Come round to the flat and have lunch and then we’ll go. I’ll tell you all about different grades of suspension bridges. It’ll be massively interesting.’

  ‘As long as I can tell you about T. S. Eliot’s poetry. There’s a bit in one where he walks across London Bridge.’

  Joshua put his hands up. ‘That’s an unfair swap.’

  ‘OK. I’ll tell you about a novel I’m studying and you tell me about the bridges.’

  ‘OK. A novel I don’t mind. Wednesday. My flat at midday.’

  He left soon after, squeezing her hand as he went out of the gate. She watched him walk down the lane as he did a backwards wave. She stood there until he turned a corner and then went back into the garden feeling brighter, happier.

  On Monday she waited for a call from the police to go in and see them again but none came. Just after lunch she opened the front door to find Henry Thompson standing there in his uniform, his cycling helmet in his hand, his bike leaning against the edge of the porch. Rose looked down to see the bike clips on his trousers.

  Her grandmother came out into the hall. Henry spoke formally.

  ‘Officer Henry Thompson, Mrs Christie. I’ve come with some information for you and your granddaughter about the events of Saturday evening.’

  Her grandmother ushered him into the house and insisted that he come into the drawing room. Rose followed him. He spoke in a low voice to her as he walked.

  ‘Rose, I wish I’d been at work on Saturday night but as you know I was off-duty. When I got a call from the detectives yesterday I couldn’t believe it. I did, of course, tell them I’d seen you just before …’

  ‘Take a seat,’ her grandmother said.

  He sat in one of her high-winged chairs looking a little awkward. He put his bike helmet on the carpet, then lifted it up again. He had a bottle of water in his hand and drank from it.

  ‘Would you like me to get a glass for that?’ her grandmother said, frowning at him. ‘Or some tea? Green tea? Earl Grey?’

  ‘No, thank you. I’ll get straight to the point.’

  Her grandmother sat down and Rose perched on the edge of the sofa. She picked up a satin cushion that had appliqué flowers. Her fingers played with the petals while Henry spoke.

  ‘I’m here to apologise to you and Rose for the vigorous way in which she was interviewed on Saturday night. We are very sorry for any upset that it might have caused. A murder investigation is a top priority and sometimes people are treated insensitively. Rose must have been shocked and upset, particularly after what she’d been through a few days before. It was not our intention to suggest that Rose was responsible. We are merely trying to find out as much as we can as quickly as we can.’

  ‘It seemed to me that you assumed that Rose was guilty,’ her grandmother said.

  Henry shook his head but she went on.

  ‘The whole unpleasant affair is in the hands of my solicitor.’

  ‘Mrs Christie. You are entitled to lodge a complaint but I would ask you to think about one thing. Your granddaughter here was upset and possibly traumatised – but she is now here with you. There is a family on the Chalk Farm Estate whose daughter will never come home to them again.’

  He stood up.

  Her grandmother nodded stiffly at him and Rose looked at him with admiration. There weren’t many people who could silence Anna. She got up and followed him out of the room.

  When Henry left she stepped out of the house behind him and suddenly felt awkward. She remembered him asking her to go to a club he ran for teenagers. She couldn’t remember the name of it but she hoped he wouldn’t ask her again.

  ‘What happened to Emma?’ she said, getting to the point. ‘You have to tell me. What have the police found out? What’s been going on?’

  ‘Confidential,’ he said, looking away from her, strapping on his helmet, taking his time with the fastening.

  ‘Please. I was there. I’m trying to make some sense of it.’

  He looked at her for a few moments and then lifted his bike away from the wall.

  ‘Wal
k along with me,’ he said. ‘Whatever I say to you is between us. Agreed?’

  ‘’Course,’ she said, and got into step with him as he walked along the pavement, leading his bike by the handlebars.

  ‘The detectives are looking through the CCTV footage.’

  The mention of CCTV cameras made Rose feel uncomfortable as she remembered Skeggsie hacking into them the previous week.

  ‘There are three cameras in the cemetery; one at the gatehouse, one in the centre and one at a small tradesmen’s entrance on the east side. The CCTV camera at the entrance showed Emma Burke going past just after 5.40.’

  Rose’s jaw tightened. Twenty to six. That was ten minutes earlier than they said they’d meet. Why had Emma gone into the cemetery early?

  ‘At six Lewis Proctor went in. At six minutes past you went in. At 6.15 Lewis Proctor ran out. There are cameras along Cuttings Lane but they show no movement from 5.40 when Emma Burke went into the cemetery until after the police arrive.’

  ‘Cuttings Lane?’

  ‘It’s a footpath that goes between the cemetery and the railway line. It leads to the footbridge into the Chalk Farm Estate.’

  Rose didn’t know it.

  ‘There have been robberies along Cuttings Lane so CCTV has been installed. There’s also a camera on the footbridge which oddly showed a person running across it at 6.20.’

  ‘Why oddly?’

  ‘Because there was no sign of that person along Cuttings Lane. My guess is that they came out of the cemetery. The perimeter is huge and is mostly hedges and fencing with a little brickwork in places. It’s entirely possible that someone could enter and exit some other way than either gate. We know that some young people trespass in the cemetery. It doesn’t mean that the person on the footbridge has anything to do with the murder but we still have to look into it,’ he said.

  They were at the corner of the main road.

  ‘Do you think the same person who killed Emma also killed Ricky?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘What about Lewis Proctor? What does he say?’

  ‘He’s not been home since this happened.’