Echoes of the Past

by Mailer, Deborah

  “What is it, Honey?” asked Lee following her gaze.

  “Over there.” Her voice was calm. She couldn’t believe it herself. Her stomach began to knot as both Lee and Tom followed her gaze to the corner of the room.

  “What’s wrong?” Lee and Tom looked at each other.

  “Could she still be asleep?” asked Lee concerned at the fear on Jess’s face.

  “Jess, look at me, Jess.” Tom had a harshness to his voice, a little like reprimanding a small child. Jess pulled her eyes from the girl and looked at her Dad.

  “You’re all right, it was just an awful dream. Come on, we can have a hot drink and a chat.” Tom pulled back the covers to help Jess on to her good leg. Jess knew she was not between sleep and wakefulness. She was also painfully aware of the fact that she was the only person in the room who could seemingly see this thing. Jess didn’t need any more convincing, hobbling with Topaz under her arm she left the room.

  The warm glow of the kitchen always soothed Jess. It reminded her of when her mother was alive, before the accident. They used to sit in the kitchen and talk and bake. Danny greeted her with a big grin.

  “What’s this, a new addition to the family?” He reached out a hand to pet Topaz. Lee busied herself making hot chocolate. The dreams Jess was having were putting Lee on edge. She had experienced that fear. She had felt that presence that defied explanation.

  “You know, Jess, the pain killers that make you so sleepy, may be causing the bad dreams,” Lee said.

  Jess didn’t reply; she knew the dreams had been haunting her a lot longer than that. She looked at the board in the kitchen with the faces of four pretty girls looking back.

  “Who is that, Dad?” She handed Topaz to Danny and limped over to the board. The red headed girl that looked back at her was someone she knew.

  “It’s just the cold cases I’m working on, love, don’t you worry about it.”

  “I’ve seen her before.” Jess pointed to Susanna Wheeling.

  “I don’t think so, Jess, that girl disappeared in 1968.” Tom walked over to the board and lifted it from the tripod. He flipped it round so as to conceal the pictures.

  “That’s the girl I keep dreaming about, Dad. Something awful happened to her.” Lee and Danny looked at Tom.

  “Honey, I thought you were dreaming about Olivia.”

  “I do, sometimes it’s Olivia and sometimes that girl is in them.”

  Tom looked at the blank board and then walked over to Jess. “Jess, your minds playing tricks on you, maybe you’ve seen her picture in one of my files or something. But you can’t know that something awful has happened to her, that’s why I’m looking into it to find out.”

  Jess lifted Topaz and buried her face into her fur. She knew her Dad wouldn’t believe anything he couldn’t see, touch or explain.

  “Can I sleep on the couch again tonight?”

  Tom didn’t see the point in arguing, he knew she was upset and scared. If the sound of voices in the next room helped her sleep then why not. Once again, Lee settled her down with her hot chocolate and the television remote.

  “Aunt Lee, I’m scared.” Jess confided in her, in the hope she could help.

  Lee pushed the dark curls away from her face. “I know.”

  “Dad doesn’t believe that there is something going on in this house.”

  Lee could sympathise with her, but she did not want to give any credence to what Jess was feeling. It would be much easier for her if she believed it was all in her imagination. “You just scared yourself with the board the other day, and now, you’re sleeping right above us and we are all talking about cold cases, no wonder your having bad dreams.”

  Jess pulled Topaz close and slid further under the quilt, she knew how to accept defeat. Lee kissed her on the head and left her to rest.

  When Lee went back to the kitchen, Danny and Tom were clearing away.

  “I think we should call It a night, Tomorrow I will go and speak to Samantha, Angela’s best friend and I will try and get hold of Jill Patterson’s family.”

  “What about me, Sarge?”

  “You just continue doing what you’re doing, you make sure you familiarise yourself with everyone in this village, not just the trouble makers. I will give you a shout if I turn up anything.”

  Danny packed up and said good-bye, while Lee tidied away the cups and papers.

  “Tom, have you considered the possibility that maybe there is something here that’s –”

  “Stop there, Lee, I wont go down this road with you again. I told you when we lost Sarah how I feel. When you’re dead you’re dead. And I don’t want you filling Jess’s head with any of that stuff; she’s confused enough as it is.”

  Lee took a deep breath. She hated it when Tom was patronizing.

  “You know ,Tom, you can’t prove that there is nothing there any more than I can prove that there is. In fact, your whole case is built on the absence of proof. I’m going home. I will call round tomorrow to make Jess her breakfast.” Tom stood silent as Lee gathered her things and left. He knew they had different beliefs but she had never lost her temper before, simply because he did not agree with her.

  *****

  Tessa Jenkins slipped on her burgundy uniform and combed her dark hair. She never imagined that she would find herself pushing forty, living in a rented flat and working in the heritage trust for Helensburgh She had planned a family, a life, a home. Everything seemed to have gone awry and she had no control over it.

  She pulled on her uncomfortable heeled shoes. The moment her feet slipped into them she could feel the spots that would undoubtedly be giving her extreme pain before the end of her 6 hour shift, but her boss liked her to look nice each day as she walked for miles around the trust with tourists, telling all the same stories.

  Her winter coat was still the garment of choice since the weather hadn’t changed here since December. She pulled the door of her one bedroom flat closed and headed into the sour smelling lift.

  The heritage trust was mainly a manor house steeped in history. It was fascinating to Tessa when she first worked here, but now the stories had worn thin and the mystery was all gone. She stood at the bottom of the unnecessarily long drive way and finished her cigarette. She sucked the smoke down deep into her lungs savouring every moment of it. The wind whipped her hair around her face as she turned her back to it hoping to get one last draw.

  “Excuse me, are you, Tessa Jenkins?” Tessa turned to see a rather handsome looking man. He looked to be in his late 40s, his hair beginning to grey. Her eyes moved across the broad shoulders and down to the wedding ring on his hand. Now only slightly less interested she nodded.

  “I’m Detective Hunter from Coppersfield, I wonder if I could have a word with you?”

  A cop. She should have guessed. She always went for them. Something about taking second place to the job seemed to attract her to them.

  “I start work in about fifteen min.”

  “It won’t take long; I’ll walk you up the drive.” He replied with a charming smile.

  “I’m looking into a couple of cold cases, Miss Jenkins. Some missing persons going back a number of years. Now I understand you were engaged to P.C David South.”

  Tessa felt a pang at the mention of his name. She didn’t think about him anymore. It was too painful.

  “Yes.” Her answer was a little more abrupt than she had intended.

  “Did he ever discuss any of his cases with you?”

  “He didn’t have any cases, as you put it. There is barely any crime in Coppersfield. What, do you think we spoke about tractor thefts and lost dogs?”

  Tom smiled again. They were reaching the bend in the drive way and he could now see the house looming ahead. “No, Ms Jenkins. This would be a cold case, one that was probably unrelated to Coppersfield.”

  Tessa stopped walking and turned to him. “You mean the Susanna Wheeling case.” It was a statement not a question.

  “Can you tell me anything a
bout it?”

  Tessa turned and begun to walk faster up the driveway. “No. We didn’t talk about the job. We were busy planning our wedding.”

  “Ms Jenkins. This could be really important. If you know anything you must tell me.”

  The wind snapped her hair like a whip across her face. The sky had become darker as an onslaught of grey storm clouds rolled in. As she reached the main door of the house, they entered the porch for some shelter from the bitter cold.

  “I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “Well, you can confirm that he was looking into the case.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know why he didn’t put anything on her file?”

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  “He seemed to be investigating under the radar, do you know why?”

  Tessa turned to look at him and paused for a moment to think about her answer.

  “David thought he knew what had happened to her,” she said. “He had linked it to another woman that had gone missing a year before Susanna Wheeling.”

  Tom frowned for a second. “You mean after Susanna don’t you.”

  “No. Almost a year to the day before Susanna he said.”

  “Do you remember her name?”

  “He didn’t tell me. I have to go.” Tessa opened the main door and entered the house.

  “Wait, Ms Jenkins, you didn’t say what David thought had happened to her.”

  “He believed she had been killed by a man she met at her work. He believed that man came from Coppersfield. I don’t want to talk about this any more, I really have to go.” Her voice had become no more than a whisper. Tom felt a chill in his spine. He knew there was a connection but he didn’t think the killer was in Coppersfield. With a population of around seven hundred, if P.C David South were to be believed, it would mean that he himself had probably met the killer at some point.

  Tom began to mentally run through the people he had met through this case, John Caulder, his son Peter. Jim Watt. Patrick Goyl. And he was intending to meet with Samantha Caulder at some point, maybe she would know something about the people in Angela’s life at the time of her disappearance. There was one other person that Tom hadn’t spoken to yet. Doctor Styles, he had been around the village forever. He would probably know a thing or two about the local residents. Tom knew if the killings had started in 1968, he would be looking for someone at least in their late sixties but most probably older. That is, if the same person is responsible for all four disappearances. Something deep in Toms gut told him they were all connected.

  The weather was turning nasty as Tom climbed in to his jeep, but in spite of it, he decided to head down to Glasgow to interview Samantha Caulder. He called Danny to verify her address; it would be interesting to see what she had to share about the old days.

  *****

  As Tom drove into Glasgow, the weather had improved dramatically. The storm clouds had stayed in Helensburgh and the temperature had gone up by three degrees. He pulled into a petrol station and picked up a coffee to tide him over until teatime. He drove another ten miles before he reached the housing estate that Samantha Caulder lived in.

  Row upon row of flats around four stories high, sat in the midst of a concrete jungle. A small veranda on each house appeared to be the only outdoor living space they had, each veranda fuller than the other with everything from washing to old bicycle parts. The view from each was simply more flats. Tom had the feeling that, no matter what memories she had, Coppersfield must be a more therapeutic place to stay for a girl with troubles rather than living here.

  He checked the address and felt relieved that she was only on the second floor. He knew there would not be any lifts. The blocks were not high enough for the law to make the council install them.

  He pushed the dark red door open and entered; the close was dark and cold. A strong smell of urine blew in from the back of the close, where there no doubt would be a concrete square for the tenants to use as a drying area. All in all the place had a dismal feel to it. A place where a lot of broken people came, some to heal some to be forgotten.

  Tom was surprised on the second floor when he saw Samantha’s door. Some one had been taking an interest here. The door had a fresh coat of blue paint. The landing had been scrubbed clean, and a white edge had been painted around the concrete floor. He rang the doorbell and a second later, a tall woman answered. She had dark grey hair pulled back in a bun giving her sharp features a severity they did not need.

  “I’m looking for Samantha Caulder.”

  The woman eyed him suspiciously. “Who is?”

  “I’m sorry.” Tom fished his warrant card from his pocket and introduced himself; Samantha looked closely at the I.D before finally opening the door wide enough for Tom to walk in.

  Inside the flat was painted bright colours; she led him down a long narrow hall and in to a bright kitchen.

  “Would you like coffee, I don’t have any sugar though.”

  “That’s fine, black will do nice.”

  Samantha offered him a seat at an old leaf style table.

  “I haven’t done anything wrong, so I don’t see why you’re here.” She defensively pulled her cardigan tightly around her painfully thin body.

  “It’s not anything you’ve done, Samantha, I wanted to ask you some questions about Angela Harrison. Do you remember Angela?”

  Samantha turned and stared out of the kitchen window at the identical flats across the street.

  “I have not come here to upset you, Samantha. I just want to get to know Angela a little better and I thought you were the best person to ask.”

  Samantha let out a long sigh and sat down beside Tom.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I would like to know what kind of person she was.”

  Samantha didn’t need to think about it, she seemed to be simply waiting for the opportunity to tell someone about her friend, anyone.

  “She was great. She was funny, intelligent. She got on so well with everyone.”

  Tom carefully broached the subject of Patrick, but Samantha didn’t seem to hold any grudges there.

  “We were both very young and stupid. It was for the best, I couldn’t look after a baby. When you are that young, sometimes your emotions get the better of you. Everything seems to overwhelm,” Samantha said.

  Tom asked her about the relationship with Jim Watt. However, Samantha again said the same as he had been told already, they were just really good friends.

  “What do you think happened to Angela?” Tom watched her carefully for any tell, that she may reveal.

  “I think she was killed.”

  “When you say killed, you mean murdered?”

  Samantha nodded. “Angela would never stay away from her parents, or her friends. She wasn’t like that. But no one seemed to want to look for her.” Samantha sighed and pulled her cardigan even tighter around her.

  “Who do you think would hurt Angela?”

  “It would have to have been someone up in Aberdeen. She never came home from there.”

  “I was reading through her diary, Samantha, in one of her last entries she spoke about how much she missed you and that she had tried to get in touch.” Tom hoped it would help her to know that Angela had held no bad feelings toward her before she died. He swallowed the rest of his coffee and thanked Samantha for her time. He didn’t want to stay too long. Samantha was delicate Tom felt; she had never really come back from everything that had happened. John Caulder had been right about that.

  “I know, I met with her the night before she left for Aberdeen,” Samantha said.

  Tom stopped. “You met with Angela Harrison?”

  Samantha nodded. “My Dad wouldn’t let me out, so I had to sneak out of the hotel, I waited till it was really busy and slipped out the back.”

  “Where did you meet her?”

  “At the old church on Church Street, just down from her house.”

  “What did she say? Did anything happen?
”

  “Yes.” Samantha smiled. “We made friends. She forgave me for keeping a terrible secret from her, and of course the other thing, and I told her if she loved Patrick then I was fine with it.”

  Tom knew ‘the other thing’ was a veiled reference to the knife. “You know she didn’t continue to see Patrick.”

  “Yes, she told me that night that it was a clean start for her.” Samantha had a look of contentment on her face when she spoke about Angela.

  “And was that all that she said, you can’t think of anything else?”

  “There was one thing, I tried to tell the police at the time, but after everything that had happened they wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “I’m listening, Samantha,” Tom said.

  Samantha sipped her water. “No one believed me, even my Dad sent me away when I started on about it. Her last night in Coppersfield, she said it would be a fresh start for her; she said she couldn’t wait to get away. Not just because of Patrick, but someone else. She never told me who it was or what had happened. She just said that she couldn’t get away from there quickly enough.”

  “Did she say whether it was a man or a woman?”

  Samantha thought. “She didn’t say, but I got the impression she was talking about a man. I don’t know why.”

  Tom prodded a little deeper to see if there was anything else hiding in Samantha’s mind, but eventually he had to give in. He stood to leave.

  “You know, lately I have been dreaming about Angela. I haven’t had a dream about her in years, then all of a sudden, I’m having the nightmares again and then you show up.”

  Tom walked down the hall and opened the front door. He noticed there were at least five different locks and chains on the door. “I am sure it is only a coincidence Samantha. Don’t give it any more thought.”

  He left his card with her in-case she remembered anything else and started down the stairs of the darkened close. As he climbed into his Jeep on the bright street, he began to realize that everything he was hearing just now was pointing back to Coppersfield. He knew that the whole point of moving Jess up there was to get her away from dangers. In the fourteen years, she had lived in Edinburgh she had lost her mother to a tragic and horrific accident; then her best friend was abducted and most probably murdered. Tom was having a hard time wrapping his brain round the possibility that a killer was sitting in the town he had thought of as one of the safest places on earth. The most disturbing thing was the fact that the main village only had a handful of streets, you could be passing his door everyday and not even know it.