by Nick Gifford
He hadn’t written what it was like to start at high school shortly before your father is due to be tried for a multiple murder. You go there, and there are people and faces you know from junior school, but most you’ve never seen before because they’ve come from loads of different schools, and some of your friends from junior school have gone to another high school altogether.
So most of the people there were strangers, but everyone knew Danny.
Word got around quickly.
They looked, they pointed, they talked in hushed tones so that he only heard enough to know they were talking about him, about his father.
Worse were the ones who looked and then immediately looked away again. Faces pale, turning from him, eyes averted.
As if he might be a chip off the old family block.
As if they didn’t want him to notice them, just in case...
The neighbours had never been kind to them, despite what Danny told the social workers in his diary. One side, the Walkers, never said a word. Old Mr Sabbatini on the other side was worse. He took to confronting Danny’s mother whenever he saw her, asking in his soft but persistent voice when she would be leaving as she and her kind were a blight on house prices.
None of this went into Danny’s spiral-bound notepad, of course. Give them what they want, but don’t give them anything of yourself. Lock everything up inside your head. Keep it all in check. That was the way to get through.
He closed the notebook. On the front cover, in the same neat hand, was written Daniel Smith aged 11 12.
Photographs.
There was a picture of Danny aged seven or eight, with his father. They were sitting side by side on the swings in the local park, back when they had lived in Loughton. Both had that family look: the dark eyes, the dark hair, the slightly crooked smile, higher on the left than on the right.
Another showed them in a large group on the sea-front at Brighton, the pier behind them. Danny stood with his mother and Oma. Great Aunt Eva was there, tall for an old lady, whereas Oma was shorter and frail from her long-standing illness. Eva had been Danny’s favourite grown-up, since she had arrived from Germany. She had taken to Danny straight away, and had a wicked sense of humour – much as Oma had developed when she had recovered from her illness.
There were the great uncles, too: Christian and Dieter. They were there with their wives and there were maybe a dozen more faces in the photograph which belonged to cousins whose names Danny had barely known even then. There hadn’t been a word from Christian and Dieter since the trouble, much to Oma’s distress. Just when the family should have pulled together, her brothers had abandoned them, disowning them and all their problems.
There was Chris Waller, too, a birdwatching friend of Danny’s father, who stood out from the crowd with his coppery hair and the binoculars around his neck. Danny remembered that the two of them had slipped away shortly after his father had taken this picture: along the coast to Rye to look for a Pacific Golden Plover which had been spotted that morning.
Another photograph: Danny, about ten years old, dark hair all over the place so that he looked as if he’d been dragged through a hedge.
Up against his chest, Danny was holding a pistol. He remembered its weight in his hands. He remembered holding it up to aim two-handed, trying to line up the sight at the end of the slender muzzle with the notch at the back. The words Krieghoff Suhl were engraved on the back of the pistol. It was a second world war Luftwaffe Luger, carried by German aircrews.
“It is perfectly safe,” Great Aunt Eva had assured them all. “They built them to last forever. But a little dirt, a little muck in the... how do you say? Mechanismus, the mechanism. My little lifesaver has been stuck up for many years. Is little more than a toy now. Here, let me take a photograph of you, Daniel. There! Like a stormtrooper!”
The Luger’s mechanism may have been jammed for years, but all it had needed, in the end, was cleaning...
He came to the newspaper cuttings.
BIRD RAGE KILLER SHOULD BE STRUNG UP, yelled one headline in white letters set against a black banner. COLD AND CALCULATED - THE MIND OF A KILLER, said another. ACCOUNTANT STALKED VICTIMS IN CRIME OF PASSION.
An accountant arrested by police investigating five north London killings was remanded in custody by magistrates yesterday.
Anthony Smith, 40, of Loughton, north London, was charged with five counts of murder in connection with the deaths, all of which occurred on the night of 18 April. Magistrates remanded Smith in custody until 25 April, when he is due to appear at the Old Bailey for a preliminary hearing.
Smith, nephew of one of the victims, Eva Hoeness, and friend of another, Christopher Waller, was driven to court in a people carrier with blacked-out windows, escorted by three police cars. He was covered in a blanket as he was led into the court building.
During the 10-minute hearing he spoke only to give his name and address...
Danny stopped reading it. He knew the words of every one of these reports off by heart.
He looked at the pictures instead. This one showed two worried-looking men, each with an arm around a figure hunched low beneath a blanket. A more distant shot showed them at the centre of a small crowd – some of the onlookers hostile, more merely curious.
Another story included a grainy version of the big group picture at Brighton, blown-up and tightly-cropped to show Chris Waller and Great Aunt Eva, the other two faces in the picture blacked out.
Danny took the cuttings, the photographs and the notebook and arranged them in a neat pile which he then slid into the brown envelope.
He placed the envelope by his side and sat for long minutes, calm and still.
He kept all this to remind himself of how it had been. He kept it to help him stay alert to the dangers, to remember why it was that he must never lose control.
He kept it to help remember just why it was that nothing could ever be normal again.
3 Dear Diary
Sunday morning. Mum and Josh in the kitchen eating toast, one in a high chair, the other eating as she stood and stared out of the window. As usual, the kitchen was spotless apart from this morning’s crumbs. Oma had been up late despite yesterday’s long journeys, cleaning and organising as always. No wonder she had slept in.
“Danny. Sleep well? You still look tired. Will you be okay with Josh this morning?”
“Morning, Val.” That was a Hope Springs thing: everyone on first name terms. It never seemed natural to Danny and his mother, but it had become something of a family joke. About the only one they had. “No problem. You with me today, Josh?”
The three year-old spat out a piece of toast and rubbed jam in his ginger hair. “I want Mummy!”
Danny glanced at Val and shrugged.
“He’ll be okay,” she said. She swept the dyed-red hair back from her face and spread her arms. “How do I look?” she asked.
She was a short woman, slim, with pale blue eyes. She was wearing yellow leggings and a cropped, tie-dyed top that revealed her newly-pierced belly-button – a sapphire to match the stud in her nose.
“You look like a middle-aged mother who’s trying to be a hippy,” Danny told her.
“You’re so sweet.”
“But true.”
“Wish me luck with the hostas.”
“Luck with the hostas.” That was what they called the people who came to study at HoST, the Hope Springs Trust. Stockbrokers and teachers and bankers spending a weekend learning how to do yoga, how to grow vegetables by the cycles of the moon, how to employ the healing powers of crystals. New Age drop-outs for the weekend, with their BMWs and Volvos clogging up the car park, and their mobile phones in their pockets just in case anyone from the real world needed to contact them.
She had gone. Off to teach the bankers yoga in one easy morning.
Danny brushed the hair back from his eyes and turned to his young brother.
“Daddy?” said Josh, as he was lifted from his high chair. Or it might have been “Danny
”, of course.
“Good of you to ask,” said Danny. “As nobody else seems interested. I thought no-one was going to mention it. Yes, I saw Dad yesterday, Josh. He’s locked up in prison where he belongs, so that the rest of us are safe from him. He seems okay. He seems ... adjusted, which is probably all you could ask for.”
He didn’t ask about you, though, young Joshua. I think he might even have forgotten that you exist. He must have tried hard enough.
~
They spent the morning in the greenhouses behind the Hall. Danny did his best to help David, the Trust’s founder, with the potting up of seedlings, and at the same time to keep Josh out of too much trouble in the compost.
Over lunch, Oma reminded Danny of his father’s journal.
“So,” she said to him, over a cup of milky tea. “Have you wrapped it up for Mr Peters yet?”
Danny knew immediately what she meant by the word “it”. “I’ve been looking after Josh all morning,” he said uncomfortably.
Oma glanced at the toddler and made a clicking sound with her tongue. She had never been close to Josh. She was always telling Val to be stricter with him.
“She should be doing that,” she said now. “Is her responsibility.” She returned to the subject. “So. You are wrapping it this afternoon, then. No?”
Danny didn’t answer.
He hated the thing and the feelings it stirred in him. He didn’t want to go anywhere near it. But on the other hand, it would be a relief to be rid of it.
They had come across it in one of the boxes in Josh’s room the previous weekend. They had been in this flat at Hope Springs for around six months now, but for some reason these four boxes had remained untouched. It wasn’t until Oma had suggested that they finish the unpacking that it had struck Danny quite how odd this should be. Oma was normally so efficient about organising the household, and yet these boxes had been left sealed.
It was only when he opened the first box that he realised why.
They were his father’s things. The few possessions of his that they had brought with them. Some of his books: the two big volumes of the Concise Birds of the Western Palearctic, a Moths of the British Isles, some volumes of poetry by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman. There were his binoculars, and a couple of hardback notebooks small enough to fit in a pocket – the kind he used to take with him when he went birdwatching, to note down his observations.
And a larger notebook, so much like the little pocketbooks that Danny almost overlooked it.
But no, it was as if he was meant to find it. His eyes had been drawn back to it and he saw that it was different. As soon as he opened it, he realised that it was a diary, each date double-underlined, followed by a colon and a dash, and then several lines of tiny handwriting. Apart from the handwriting, it looked just like Danny’s entries in his own diary, which he kept in the envelope under his bed. Like father, like son. From the very first entry, Danny knew what these pages would contain.
He had slammed it shut immediately. He didn’t want this. He didn’t want those old wounds to be opened up again. He didn’t want to be that close to what had happened. But at the same time ... he was drawn to it, he couldn’t resist.
Opening it would do no harm. Reading it.
24th December 2000:- Tis the season to be jolly. Ho ho ho. Wrapping presents with Val tonight. My head! It’s hurting. Bursting. I’m writing this down. Is it any use? I don’t know. I’ve got to let it all out somehow or I’ll burst.
He had read more of it, but then had shut it again, dropped it back in the box and fled the room. He couldn’t face it. And yet, ever since, he had been drawn back to it. Perhaps if he read more if it he would begin to understand his father’s madness.
It was as if there was a small voice, urging him to read it...
Now, Danny looked at Oma and nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll get it ready. I’ll go to the Post Office with it at lunchtime tomorrow.”
“Good good good. I give you the money for posting,” said Oma. “I get it from her.”
~
All the boxes were still there in Josh’s room, packing tape stuck back roughly in place. Last weekend they had got no further in unpacking them once they found the journal.
Danny took the large notebook and went back to his own room. He sat in the wooden window seat with the view over the crowded car park, and stared at the journal’s cover. There was nothing to identify it, no label or title, just the words Guildhall and A4 ruled in the bottom righthand corner.
18th January 2001:- They think I don’t know but I do. I see things. I watch them. I know all about what’s going on. Sometimes it’s in my dreams. I see what’s happening. I watched them today. Tonight, I mean. Saw what they were up to. I followed them. It was meant to be like this. Pre-ordained. He told me all about them. Hodeken tells me all kinds of things. He told me where they’d be tonight.
He remembered that bit from last Sunday – the entries he had managed to read before the memories it stirred became too painful. They were the writings of a madman. A man with imaginary voices in his head. And that madman was his own father, his own flesh and blood. Half of his genes had come from that man. So was he, Danny, half a madman?
16th February 2001:- Voices in my head. It’s driving me mad. It’s like my skull’s splitting open from the inside. They’re talking to me. Laughing at me. Telling me what to do. I’ll have their tongues. That’ll shut them up.
They had never claimed that he was mad, though. If they’d said he was mad he would have been sent to a secure hospital instead of prison and there might be a chance he could be cured and then they’d have to set him free. So no: the prosecution had said he was bad, not mad, and Danny’s father had not argued with that.
He was mad, of course. Anyone who had done what he had done must be mad.
Maybe if they had read this journal they would have treated him differently.
20th March 2001:- SHUT UP!!!!!
Danny closed the book. His vision was blurred. He couldn’t read the thing.
He wished he’d never found the diary.
As he had read those words, he could hear his father’s voice, as if he were reading them aloud. He put his hands to his face, and squeezed it between them as hard as he could. As if that would shut out his father’s voice, the madness in his words.
He remembered his relaxation lessons. The tightening and relaxing of every tiny muscle in his body, one after the other. The breathing. Breathe in, hold, breathe out and hold. Emptying his mind of thoughts. Squashing each new thought as it sparked.
He was in control.
Danny was in control.
Danny was always in control.
He had to be.
The alternative was too terrifying to consider.
He opened his eyes and saw that the journal had slid off his lap and fallen to the floor. He went over to his desk and gathered up the roll of parcel tape and the brown paper he had brought up earlier.
He kneeled. He spread the wrapping paper and placed the journal at the top of the sheet in the middle. Even now, he felt compelled to open it again, to read it and learn where his father had gone wrong.
Instead, he folded it over within the paper, and then folded it over again, and one final time, before folding in one end. Trapping the flap with his knee, he cut off a strip of tape and stuck the paper down. He then repeated this for the other end.
It was a well-wrapped parcel. It made him feel better that the book was so well-contained.
He copied the address of the chambers from his mother’s personal organiser using a black felt-pen. He realised that he had not enclosed a letter to explain the parcel’s contents, but he was sure that his father’s barrister would see immediately what this was.
He slipped the parcel into his school bag, placed the tape and organiser on his desk, and then rushed into the bathroom to be sick.
~
He dreamed that night.
He lay awake in his bed for what seeme
d like hours. His head was spinning, and whenever he closed his eyes he saw rows of tiny handwriting, twisting and swirling before him.
When he woke, he realised that he was squeezing his eyes tightly shut, but then he seemed to have forgotten how to relax those tiny muscles that controlled his eyelids and they remained sealed. No matter how hard he tried, he could not open his eyes.
There was a weight on his chest, too. Not a great weight. He could still breathe with ease. But a pressure, a presence. Something pressing softly down.
If he could open his eyes he would be able to see what it was.
He felt the panic rising. Like a balloon inflating. Soon, surely, it must burst.
If only he could open his eyes.
A voice: I can help you, Danny. You just need to open up.
He opened his eyes and it was still dark. There was nothing on his chest, no soft, insistent voice. All of that had still been the end of a dream.
All that remained was the sense of panic.
Out on the landing, or maybe in the kitchen, Oma was still moving about. She was humming softly, just loud enough for the tune to drift into Danny’s room.
He rolled onto his side, and closed his eyes.
If he dreamed again that night, he did not recall it in the morning.
4 Cassie
He woke and washed and dressed and shoved today’s books into his school bag. He looped the ready-knotted tie over his head and tightened it, leaving his top button undone. He pulled on the purple blazer that was too small for him because he grew out of things so quickly that he was reluctant to ask his mother for another one quite yet. He went through to the kitchen and chucked Josh under the chin, then regretted it immediately as his brother had been trying to eat Weetabix and had spread it all over his face and also, Danny saw, over Oma’s beautifully clean floor. She had been scrubbing the tiles again in the night. He washed the gunk off his hand and then wiped the floor. He made himself coffee and toast and glanced at his mother who was sitting at the table, checking through some notes.
In the five minutes or so that it took Danny to feed himself, the three of them didn’t exchange a single word. Mornings were like that sometimes. It wasn’t an uncomfortable thing, just how they worked.
