A Death Divided

by Clare Francis

  ‘We were conned, okay?’ The words might have been extracted from Marc under torture. ‘The estate agent was conned. I was conned. We were all conned. It was a try-on.

  Okay?’

  ‘But who by?’

  ‘Well, if we knew that, we wouldn’t have had a problem, would we?’ Marc flung back. ‘For Christ’s sake.’

  ‘But surely there must have been a name, a contact phone number?’

  ‘A solicitor in Manchester,’ Marc chanted in a tone of exaggerated weariness. ‘Instructed by a company he couldn’t trace. Okay? A complete try-on, just like I said. But if you don’t believe me, Joe, you can check with the solicitor. Okay?’

  He cocked his head in a parody of the reasonable man sorely tried. ‘Because if anyone’s got egg all over his face, it’s him.’

  Taking comfort from this idea. Marc said, ‘Yeah, he was the one who got well and truly conned.’

  Or the solicitor wasn’t telling the whole truth, Joe thought.

  Joe chucked the keys across. Snatching the keys out of the air, holding them in his hands once again. Marc seemed to remember that Joe had put him at a humiliating disadvantage.

  Straightening his back, puffing out his chest, he hissed, ‘Totally out of order, Joe!’

  ‘If you say so. Marc.’

  Alan stood marooned in the centre of the living room. He had set off on some task a while ago and long since forgotten his purpose. Helena sat on a chair, motionless, watching Joe through narrow slow-burning eyes, her hand resting on the cat, which reclined imperiously on her lap. In the window behind her, the sunlight came and went under scudding clouds, flooding or darkening the room with the suddenness of a faulty electric light.

  Joe had always loved this room, with its faded curtains, its sofa and chairs covered in throws and cushions of every vintage and style, the ancient well-worn Axminster in a muted floral design, the herringbone parquet floor with its watermarks and ink-stains. For him it contained all the warmth and security of his youth, the games of Monopoly, the TV soaps watched with Jenna over toast and honey, the evenings of celebration, Christmases, birthdays, anniversaries, exam triumphs, musical performances; Helena would find the slightest excuse. But today Joe could find no comfort in memory, and the very familiarity of the room, the air of timelessness, was like the reproachful gaze of a puzzled friend.

  ‘Death threats?’ Alan said. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Someone thought Jenna was responsible for this boy’s death,’ explained Helena, who had understood immediately.

  ‘But how could Jenna have been responsible?’ Alan looked desperately from Helena to Joe and back again; he didn’t care who gave him an answer;

  Joe said, ‘There’s a suggestion she may have encouraged him to walk the weir.’

  Helena asked flatly, ‘The same weir?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was she in love with him then, to be so overwrought?’

  Joe realised Helena was back with suicide, that either she hadn’t come to terms with the idea of murder or she had rejected it out of hand.

  Alan was still struggling with his first thought. ‘But encouraging him - that wouldn’t make her responsible. You can’t be responsible for another person’s actions.’

  ‘But it’s what this letter-writer believed,’ Helena relayed tightly. ‘This person believed she was to blame.’

  ‘So -so—’ Alan clutched both hands to his head, as if to stop his thoughts from spilling out all over the floor. ‘Are you saying that this poison-pen writer killed Jenna?’

  ‘The police are going to investigate the possibility.’ Joe thought quietly: Or simply go through the motions.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Alan said with a sweep of one arm.

  ‘Someone waits for four years, then finds her, then …’ He trailed off unhappily.

  Helena said, ‘What do you think, Joe?’

  ‘To be honest, Helena, I have no thoughts. I’ve rather given up on thinking.’

  ‘Well, do you believe Jamie could be using these death threats to try and save his skin?’

  Joe gave a small shrug.

  But Helena wasn’t going to let him off that lightly. ‘Do you think he might have killed Jenna?’

  ‘I’m trying to keep an open mind.’

  Helena searched his face as if she didn’t believe him, or worse, didn’t trust him.

  Wounded, Joe said, ‘I follow no line on this, Helena,’ and saw her eyebrows lift very slightly.

  Abandoning his self-imposed exile in the middle of the room, Alan sank into the chair next to Helena’s. But sitting brought him no peace and after shirting back and forth in his seat he clambered to his feet again. Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he repeated mournfully, ‘I don’t understand.’

  Then, as if to contradict this, he delivered an insight that caused Helena to look at him in surprise. That’s why she went into hiding! She was frightened of this person. They were both frightened.’ He stood in front of Helena and cried triumphantly, ‘That’s why they hid away all this time!’

  Helena drew her mouth down. ‘Well, that’s neither here nor there now, is it?’

  ‘Of course it is! It explains everything. They hid away because they knew this person was trying to track them down!’

  Alan looked to Joe for support.

  Joe said, ‘It’s possible.’

  There was a pause during which Alan muttered something under his breath and retreated to the fireplace, Helena stroked the cat and stared blankly into a corner of the room, and Joe found himself thinking of Sarah at the door of her flat last night, of her eloquent expression which managed to convey everything and nothing at the same time. Sadness? Determination?

  Relief? In his more optimistic moments he saw her strange half wave as a move to beckon him back, an acknowledgement that there was unfinished business between them. He couldn’t help wondering what she might have said if there’d been more time. That she felt regret? That at another time and place it might have been different? On a more troubling note, he wondered what sort of a relationship she had with the policeman. Not an easy one, surely - he had looked the stormy type. And not a deep one either, though Joe knew this was just his vanity speaking. He didn’t want to face up to the possibility that she’d been living with the policeman all along.

  ‘Death threats,’ Helena said with disdain. ‘But that belongs to the criminal world. To all these dreadful gangs and drug dealers. Ordinary people don’t issue death threats. Ordinary people go to the police if they think there’s something wrong.

  They go to lawyers.’ The more she thought about this, the more indignant she became. They don’t issue death threats!

  This is nonsense, Joe. Nonsense!’

  Alan swung away from the fireplace with a fierce scything motion of one hand. ‘But it’s not for us to decide, Helena! It’s for the police. We have to trust in the police!’

  Meeting Joe’s eye, Helena’s gaze relented a fraction, only to sharpen as the doorbell rang.

  Alan commanded, ‘Leave it.’

  She shook her head. Disturbing the sleeping cat, which flexed its legs and hissed in protest, she disappeared rapidly.

  Alan said, ‘Flowers, probably.’

  ‘Helena said there’d been a lot.’

  ‘People are very kind.’ Glancing around the room, Alan seemed to notice the absence of flowers for the first time. ‘I don’t know where she’s put them all.’ He extracted a pipe from one pocket and a tobacco pouch from the other, and sitting down began to pack the pipe-bowl. ‘But there’ve been lots of letters as well, Joe. Wonderful, kind letters.’

  From the hall they heard the murmur of Helena’s voice, then the sound of the front door closing.

  ‘From patients. Friends. All sorts of people from the past.

  Jenna’s classmates. Fellow students at the Royal Northern.

  They all wrote, Joe! They all talked about her singing! Her marvellous talent. How she had the power to move people, to touch t
heir hearts.’ He pressed a fist against his breast.

  ‘Her voice was very beautiful, Alan.’

  ‘It was, it was!’ His eyes glistened, his face began to crumple, the pipe was forgotten. ‘And they all said how much they loved her, Joe. How much they were going to miss her.

  How full of light and life and laughter she was. They all said so!’

  ‘Not all of them,’ Helena announced as she slipped back into the room.

  Alan said resentfully, ‘Well, most of them.’

  ‘One of them talked about the boy who died and how unhappy Jenna had been.’

  There was a short silence before Joe and Alan spoke at once.

  Alan complained, ‘You didn’t show me that!’

  Joe asked, ‘Who was it, Helena?’

  She had the letter in her hand. She thrust it at Joe before going back to her chair.

  Joe read the signature on the back. ‘It’s from the guy at the farm,’ he said to Alan. ‘The one I traced before.’

  ‘The guitar player?’

  ‘Yes. Dave Cracknell.’

  Alan fidgeted. ‘Well, what does it say?’ Almost in the same breath, he muttered reproachfully to Helena, ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘It was there with the other letters. I thought you’d seen it.’

  She was watching Joe’s face as he began to pick his way through the erratic handwriting.

  I was sorry to hear about Jenna’s death, the letter said. My girlfriend and I stayed with Jenna and Chet up at Pawsey Farm five years ago. Great times. Great memories. It must be hard for you that she took the decision she did. But she was never the same after Sam died. He was a young kid she took under her wing and she felt really bad about his death. It was an accident but I guess she never got over it. I’m really sorry. She was a lovely lady. The signature was round and confident, with a flourish that sent a line through the middle of the name, as if to cross it out again. The letterhead was a studio - recording, Joe supposed - the address in Manchester.

  While Alan read the letter amid a cloud of smoke Helena picked up the cat again and, sitting sideways in her chair, back straight, began to scratch its head in a rhythmic massage that had the animal arching its back in pleasure. ‘So, how are the police going to investigate these so-called threats, Joe?’ Her eyes veered crossly towards him. ‘Are they going to start looking into this boy’s death after all this time? Try and blame Jenna? Because if so I think it’s a travesty, a disgrace, a complete misuse of their time! They should be finding Jenna’s killer. Nothing more, nothing less. A complete travesty!’

  Alan looked up from the letter. ‘This chap says it was an accident. He sounds very sure. Do you think we should put him in touch with the police?’

  ‘Why not? Can’t do any harm.’

  Sunlight burst through the window, plunging Alan’s features into shadow, but not so quickly or so completely that Joe didn’t see the doubt on his face.

  ‘Unless you’d like me to go and talk to him first.’

  The pipe smoke had drifted towards Helena and now she waved it away in a gesture of disgust. ‘To hear what exactly?

  He says it was an accident. What more do you want?’

  The sun went in again, rolling the shadows back towards the corners of the room. Alan met Joe’s gaze and they exchanged a look of complicity. Intercepting this, Helena shook her head and stroked the cat so fiercely that it gave a small yowl of complaint.

  Helena didn’t look up when Joe left, and she didn’t say goodbye.

  Joe arrived in a downpour and missed his turning. In the city centre, he got thoroughly lost among the steel and glass that could have belonged to any place in the world, and it was only as he escaped into the side streets that he recognised the Manchester of his memory, with its grandiose architecture and dusty plum stonework, stained a morose shade of burgundy by the rain. He had come here a couple of times to hear Jenna sing in college recitals, and once, famously, to visit an orthopaedic specialist whom his father predicted with quiet satisfaction would be unable to help Joe’s recurrent knee injury.

  Finding himself at the wrong section of canal for the second time in five minutes, Joe readdressed the map and set off westward down decrepit shopping streets plastered with damp litter, through an area of towering Victorian warehouses and sixties offices to the commercial area of the canal where a lone coaster sat disconsolately at the wharf. The studio occupied one end of an old stone-built factory. Inside, a notice read ‘all callers REPORT TO RECEPTION FIRST FLOOR’. Nearing the top of the concrete stairs he was met by a burst of rock music which came from nowhere and just as suddenly disappeared again, as though a heavy door had opened momentarily.

  There was no one in the office, just a smoking cigarette stub. On the landing there was a ladies’ room and a reinforced door with a code pad and a warning against entry, so Joe went back to the office and waited. Eventually a world-weary girl in tight leather trousers, a bare midriff and purple lipstick shuffled in on platform heels. She must have been all of sixteen. When he asked if Dave Cracknell was about, she announced in broad Mancunian that she was only here with the band. As to whether Dave was a member of the said band, she didn’t think so, though from her shrug it was a detail she could well have missed. After some persuasion, she agreed to go and ask the production team if anyone knew Dave. Joe wrote the name down on a piece of paper, so there’d be no mistake.

  She clumped back five minutes later and wordlessly handed the slip of paper back to him. A mobile phone number had been scribbled across it.

  Joe called from the car. The number rang for a long time before someone yawned a greeting into the phone.

  ‘Sure, sure,’ Dave Cracknell said when Joe reminded him who he was. ‘Come on down.’

  The house was a two-up two-down in Moss Side, one of a long terrace in sooty red brick overlooking an overgrown football pitch. The pavement was cracked and sprouting weeds and so was the narrow strip of concrete between the house and the ragged course of bricks where a wall had been.

  The stained-wood door was new, however, and so were the heavy locks. The electric bell made no obvious noise, so Joe knocked.

  He heard a voice humming, a latch turning, and the door was opened by a tall lean man in jeans and ragged T-shirt, with a pony-tail and a sleepy smile. ‘Hey, Joe, how ya doing?’

  The hand that gripped Joe’s was thin and bony. ‘Come in out of the wet, man.’

  As Dave closed the door, Joe was met by the odour of curry and a sharp smell like ammonia. Dave waved him forward with a curious twisting motion of the wrist and a contented chuckle as though life was a bit of a breeze just then and he was blowing right along with it. They passed an open door where a mangy mongrel of uncertain age and three legs stared at Joe through cloudy lenses before staggering back to a bed surrounded by newspaper. Joe saw an electric guitar on a stand and a gaggle of sound equipment with a tangle of wires along one wall. As they went towards the back of the house, the smell of curry grew stronger, along with the unmistakable whiff of pot.

  ‘Hey, siddown, Joe. Make yourself at home.’

  The room looked as though it had been furnished forty years ago on a tight budget. The two sofas were matching sixties-style mono-block foam, blue-covered and armless, the foam showing through the seams, the low table had the Mappa Mundi in formica for a top and metal strips with the brass effect worn off for its edges, the carpet, once patterned, looked as if it had seen a thousand nights of cigarettes and red wine and no Hoover. A doorway with no door led into a small kitchen extension, with an ancient cooker on tall legs and piles of unwashed dishes.

  Cartons of half-eaten Indian food sat on the Mappa Mundi, and a loosely-rolled joint lay on a saucer next to a pack of Rizlas and a rolling-machine. The air was thick from an ancient gas fire which burnt unevenly and probably leaked fumes.

  ‘Hey, tea, man? Coffee?’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks.’

  E Dave lit the joint with an over-size match from a slimline matchbox, t
he sort that classy restaurants leave on tables. After taking a slow contemplative drag, he offered it to Joe.

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Sure.’ Dave smiled beatifically. He looked thirty going on infinity. His face was exceptionally bony and tight-skinned, long and narrow with high angular cheekbones, a long hawkish nose, and a forehead which showed every contour of his skull and every squiggle of the raised blue veins at his temple. With his centre parting and pony-tail, his earrings and leather-and-bead neckbands, he looked like an anaemic Indian brave.

  ‘Hey, how’s Chet doin’?’ he asked. ‘Holding on in there?’

  ‘More or less. I don’t think it’s really hit him yet.’

  ‘I must give him a call. Yeah, I must do that.’ He nodded his bony head. ‘Gotta number for him?’

  ‘No offence, but I’m not sure he wants to speak to too many people just now.’

  Dave gave an easy shrug. ‘Sure. But tell him I asked, will you? Give him my best.’

  ‘How did you two meet?’

  Anticipating the joke, Dave gave a slow grin. ‘School.’

  Whatever Chetwood’s father had denied him, it had not been a private education. If Dave wanted to believe he was an unlikely product of the system then Joe was happy to go along with it. He showed suitable surprise.

  ‘I’m a credit to the place, right?’

  ‘Right,’ Joe agreed with a smile.

  ‘We were like survivors from this shipwreck, Chet and me, sort of clinging to the wreckage. Till Chet got clever and started doing his sums. I never got the hang of two and two.’

  After a short pause, Joe said, ‘Jenna’s parents very much appreciated your letter.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘They knew nothing about the Sam business, you see. Or the effect it had had on Jenna.’

  This thought settled slowly around Dave. ‘So they hadn’t reckoned on why she’d wanna go and end the story?’

  Dave obviously hadn’t been keeping up with the newspapers, and Joe hesitated to put him right. But Dave must have read something in Joe’s face because he said, ‘It was suicide, right?’

  ‘The police aren’t absolutely sure yet.’