by Simon Lelic
I glared at her, still furious, but all of a sudden that fury felt closer to fear. It was the way I’d expected to feel when I’d stepped off that train.
‘Mum?’
The voice I heard was no longer my own. Or it was, just not Sydney Baker’s. It belonged to the old me. To the girl I thought I’d left behind. I’d always worried whether the woman I’d become was just a front – whether, rather than armour, Sydney Baker was in reality nothing more than brittle shell. And there, standing in my mother’s dismal hallway, I realized I was at last about to find out.
‘Oh Mum. What have you done?’
I found myself backing away towards the apartment’s front door. My mother was watching me pityingly.
‘He’s here, isn’t he? He’s actually here.’
I smelled him then, even before I heard him. The scent – the stink – was of nothing, individually, that would have been unpleasant and maybe it carried on a memory rather than physically through the air. But I smelled his aftershave, something like oranges. The coffee he drank. The gunk he slathered in his hair. Collectively it was worse than sewage and I might have gagged had a figure not at that point stepped into the hall. Like he was home. Like he’d never been away.
He smiled at me. The man who’d taunted me, tricked me, beaten me, broken me. He was here, now, right in front of me, smiling.
And then he spoke.
‘Hello, Maggie,’ my father said.
II
* * *
Jack
‘And that’s when we started writing.’
‘When?’
‘After Syd saw her father. After, three days later, they found Sean Payne in the alleyway behind our house.’
Inspector Leigh raises her head. ‘His body, you mean,’ she says. ‘After they found Sean Payne’s body. With a total of seventeen stab wounds in his neck, chest and stomach.’
She’s studying me and I do my best not to look away. I feel guilty, of course I do, but wouldn’t anyone? Seventeen stab wounds. It’s just … it’s brutal. There’s no other word to describe it. And I can tell she’s thrown the fact at us deliberately. She hasn’t mentioned it before. No one has, not even the papers.
Seventeen.
I look at Syd and I can see she’s thinking about the same thing I am. The morning the body was discovered we were looking out of our spare-bedroom window, and even through all the police officers we could see it. The blood. Sean Payne’s blood. It was everywhere. Syd, for one, almost vomited. It’s linked to her sister, I guess, this thing she has about death, but in the end the sight of all that blood is what got her to agree to my suggestion that we start writing things down. For her it was never about trying to understand, not the way it was for me, because Syd was clear about what was happening from the start. She recognized this was something her father had been building up to, and she realized what Sean Payne’s murder, for us, really meant. But all that blood … it made her recognize how important it was that we get our story straight. That we get it on record, in preparation for the point we’re at now.
Detective Inspector Karen Leigh links her hands together and lets them rest on the stack of pages in front of her.
‘Why?’
Syd and I exchange another glance.
‘Excuse me?’ Syd says.
‘Your father’s been on parole for barely six months,’ says Inspector Leigh. ‘He’s only just begun to rebuild his life. And yet on a whim he takes it upon himself to murder a complete stranger. To butcher him, in fact.’ She pauses, just long enough to check my reaction. ‘That’s your theory, if I’m not mistaken. So what I’m asking you, Ms Baker, is why?’
There is a flash in Syd’s eyes that anyone who knows her would recognize as a warning sign. ‘Didn’t you read it?’
I shift slightly in my seat. We’re in an interview room, bare apart from the grey plastic furniture. There’s just the three of us: Inspector Leigh on one side of the table, Syd next to me on the other.
The inspector’s hands are still resting on the printout. She doesn’t bother to move them when she glances down. ‘I read it, Ms Baker. Twice after you brought it to me yesterday. Once again just this morning.’
‘So what the fuck kind of question is that?’
‘Syd …’
‘No, I’m sorry, Jack, I’m serious. “Why?” ’ she mocks. ‘I thought you were a fucking detective. So fucking detect, why don’t you.’
‘Syd, please!’
Inspector Leigh, to be fair, doesn’t even flinch. She just tips her head slightly, as though re-evaluating whatever judgement of Syd she first made.
‘It’s a game,’ Syd says, exasperated. ‘OK? Payback, revenge, whatever you want to call it, but mainly, for my father, it’s a game. “Rebuild his life”,’ she quotes, shaking her head. ‘This is his life. This … toying with people. It’s what my father lives for.’
There’s a silence then, before Syd adds: ‘Oh, and for the record: my father never so much as chose what suit to wear on a given morning based on a whim.’
Inspector Leigh smiles at that, the same little half-smile she wore practically the whole of the last time I saw her. So far it’s not been much in evidence. Somehow her demeanour this time is different, as though she can tell the role she played with me isn’t going to cut it in front of Syd. She’s as good at reading people, I think, as I gave her credit for. It strikes me I should probably be reassured by that, but instead it only makes me more worried.
‘So in this game,’ the inspector says, with a slight emphasis on the final word that conveys her scepticism. ‘This is how your father wins?’ There’s a barely perceptible nod in my direction then, the first time Inspector Leigh has even tacitly admitted that I’m a suspect. Not just a suspect. The suspect. In a murder case where the victim was stabbed seventeen times. It’s not like it comes as a surprise – why else, otherwise, would we even be here? – but still that little nod hits me like a fist.
‘Honestly?’ Syd answers. ‘I don’t know what my father counts as winning.’
‘You think you’re in danger?’ the inspector asks her, and I watch Syd closely for her reply.
‘No.’ She shifts. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Of course she’s in danger,’ I put in.
The inspector turns her gaze on me.
‘I mean, it’s obvious she is. Isn’t it?’
Syd interrupts before the inspector can respond. ‘Whether I’m in danger or not isn’t the point. This isn’t about what my father might do. It’s about what he’s done already.’
Inspector Leigh stares for a moment, considering, then looks down again at the manuscript. Six days Syd and I have spent writing it – virtually every spare hour since the night of Sean Payne’s murder. And, OK, so it’s not like I’ve had a job to go to, and Syd’s hardly been prioritizing hers, but even so I’m beginning to wonder whether it was worth the effort. In one sense we’ve achieved what we set out to, in that Syd and I are at least now on the same page. But the idea as well was to convince other people.
‘It’s elaborate,’ says Inspector Leigh, ‘I’ll give you that. Unique, too. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a …’ She hesitates here, glances once again in my direction. ‘… of a witness,’ she settles on, ‘presenting a written statement before they’ve actually been asked. Certainly not one of such depth.’ She fans the pages.
‘But?’ Syd prompts, and the inspector meets her steely eyes.
‘But there are aspects to your story I still find confusing,’ she says. ‘The house, for example. Your father bought it for you, is what you’re saying. But without your knowledge. He …’
Syd is shaking her head and Inspector Leigh gives her a chance to interject. Obtuse: that’s the inspector’s tactic with Syd. And it’s working. Syd’s riled, which is what Inspector Leigh wants. She likes her interviewees flustered, I’ve come to realize, I suppose because she thinks it’s more likely they’ll reveal something they hadn’t meant to. This business about the house, f
or example. We’ve been over it. In the manuscript, in our discussions. But the inspector is raising the subject again because she’s seen Syd is getting more irritated every time she’s required to repeat herself.
‘He didn’t buy it,’ Syd says. ‘He saw we were interested, then bribed the estate agent to make sure it ended up coming to us. Probably pretended he was just a concerned parent, insisted to Evan that he wasn’t to let on. I bet he even paid extra for a spare set of keys.’
She says it with conviction, when this is the one part of our story that’s mainly conjecture. It makes sense, though. Evan Cohen was operating from a grimy little office two left turns away from the footfall on the local high street. He had no employees, no new properties up for sale (judging by the cards that were on display in his office window), nor even a proper website. He was the estate-agency equivalent of a shyster, who’d probably only got Patrick Winters’s business because Winters had felt sorry for him (and, most likely, because he’d felt more at home in Evan’s offices than he had in the poncey-wine-bar interior of the local Foxtons). On top of which, there was that annotated copy of the Racing Post I noticed when I went to see him, meaning Evan at the very least enjoyed a flutter. A failing business, then; potential gambling debts: it all adds up. And he’s gone. That for Syd and I remains the clincher. I went back not long after my first visit – after my conversation with Patrick Winters, in fact – and Evan’s office even at that point was boarded up. When Syd and I went together the other day it was in the process of being converted into a coffee shop. Moving premises, my arse. It’s like I said: Syd had him pegged right from the start.
‘He bribed the estate agent,’ Inspector Leigh echoes. ‘Again, I have to ask: why? I mean, effectively he would have been helping you. Right?’
‘He wasn’t helping us,’ Syd counters. ‘He was controlling us. Controlling me, demonstrating to me he still can. For my father, control is all any of it has ever been about.’
‘By “any of it”, you mean …’
‘I mean everything! Every single thing he’s ever done to me! Like with the house – it was his way of putting us exactly where he wanted us, somewhere he could get to us any time he liked.’
‘And the money?’
‘What money?’
Again the inspector unleashes her little smile. ‘That’s exactly my point. Your father’s assets were seized when he was convicted. Maybe he put in some extra stints in the prison laundry while he was inside, but what would you estimate your average estate agent goes for these days?’
‘My father wouldn’t have left himself broke,’ Syd responds. ‘Not ever. He was brazen but he wasn’t stupid. Whatever assets you think you seized there would have been double that amount hidden away under someone else’s mattress. And he’s never been interested in money just for the sake of it. It’s always been about what he can do with it. About who and what money can buy. That’s why he was in prison in the first place – remember?’
I’ve always been a little vague on how Syd’s father ended up in prison, mainly because Syd has always been fairly vague about it herself. But I’m up to speed now. Syd’s told me about the scams her father used to run: about how he arranged kickbacks for certain prominent members of the local council to facilitate his company’s property deals. And, after that, how he used to blackmail those same council members to get them to pay back what he’d given them, plus interest.
Inspector Leigh must know about this, too. She makes a face, half doubtful, half impressed that Syd is so convinced by her own story – and so able to come up with the appropriate answers. And the horrible thing is, I can see my own doubts reflected back at me in the inspector’s reactions. The back and forth I’m witnessing now, it’s a reprise of the toing and froing I had at the start of all this with Syd. Because I couldn’t accept it at first either: that everything that had been happening to us was part of one cohesive plan. In my head, when we’d started writing, Elsie’s father was still to blame for the majority of what had happened, and the rest – the shoebox, Syd’s sister’s name, maybe even the house – was down to … I didn’t know. Coincidence, I guessed. Happenstance. As for Sean Payne’s murder, I figured he must have had another argument or something in the pub. I mean, the bloke’s a headcase. Was a headcase. It stands to reason he had other enemies apart from me and Syd.
And there was something else, as well. What I said to Syd was, I just couldn’t believe that someone would go to such lengths purely out of hatred. That it was possible to harbour a grudge for so long. Which was the only time I can remember when Syd has looked at me with open contempt. If I didn’t understand that, she said, I didn’t understand anything.
‘And anyway,’ Syd is saying to the inspector, ‘the house was just a starting point. A stage. A good one, for my father’s needs, but if Evan had turned him down, say, or if Jack and I had walked away – it wouldn’t have mattered. Wherever we’d ended up, my father would have been there too.’
Inspector Leigh is somewhere close to where I was, I think. She’s not rejecting our story out of hand, but she knows there’s one crucial thing we’re missing.
‘Evidence,’ she says. ‘That’s what’s lacking, Ms Baker. And this, I’m afraid, doesn’t count.’ She opens her hand to indicate the objects spread across the surface in the space between us: the shoebox and the things it had inside, the (now bloodstained) photograph from the landing, printouts of the email Syd received and the picture of me getting kissed. There’s other stuff, too – things we found when, after we realized what was happening, we finally emptied out the house. A book that Syd claimed was her sister’s favourite. A necklace that had once belonged to Jessica, too. More of her father’s little taunts; more clues as to what we had coming. Like that cat, for instance. Even that cat, Syd told me, was part of this. It was a signpost, first of all – a pointer to lead us to that box. And it was also a message in itself. Remember that kitten Syd’s father bought her for her twelfth birthday? She claimed it was linked to that, and when I recalled what state I’d found the cat in I had to wonder whether she wasn’t right. I mean, how else could it have got into our attic if someone hadn’t physically put it there?
‘What about all the things my father’s destroyed?’ Syd says. ‘Jack’s career, for example. His friendships. His … relationships.’ Us, she means, and I remind myself she’s only saying it for effect. ‘Doesn’t all that count as evidence too? This stuff we brought with us – these things – they were just props. Reminders. It’s the damage my father’s done that should convince you.’
Inspector Leigh reclines slightly in her chair. ‘That’s another thing I’m finding confusing, Ms Baker. All this damage you mention. All the things you say your father has done. It seems to me they’ve mostly involved Jack. Based on what you’ve been telling me, I would have expected them to be aimed mainly at you.’
Anger flares visibly in Syd’s eyes. ‘They were aimed at me! It all is! He’s using Jack, that’s all. What he wants is Jack –’ She pauses, cuts off whatever thought she’s about to express. ‘What he wants is to hurt Jack because he knows by hurting Jack he’s hurting me. I told you, it’s a game to him. And the more players there are, the greater the fun.’
Inspector Leigh tips her head. ‘What made you interrupt yourself?’
Syd tucks her chin towards her collarbone. ‘Excuse me?’
‘ “What he wants is Jack …” Out of the way? Is that what you were about to say? What made you interrupt yourself?’
Syd shakes her head in frustration. ‘Look, I … I just don’t want anyone to worry, that’s all.’ She glances my way, and I realize by ‘anyone’ she means me.
The inspector notices it, too. ‘So you do think you’re in danger?’
‘What? No. I didn’t say that.’ Again, another glance towards me.
I’m frowning now, I can feel it. Is Syd more afraid than she’s letting on? And if so, why didn’t she tell me? On the one hand I’m worried now on her behalf – more worried ev
en than I was already – but also I’m annoyed at the thought she’s keeping her true feelings from me. No more secrets, that’s what we said when we started writing, and yet here Syd is doing precisely what we both agreed we wouldn’t.
‘You said you spoke to him,’ says Inspector Leigh, changing tack. ‘Your father. When you went to confront your mother.’
‘I didn’t speak to him. I saw him.’
‘And did he say anything to you?’
‘He said hello. And he used my old name.’
‘Right.’ Inspector Leigh consults her notes. ‘Margaret Anabelle Robinson.’ She lifts her gaze without raising her head. ‘You don’t look like a Margaret,’ she judges.
Syd doesn’t even blink. ‘That’s because I’m not.’
A little parenthesis appears at one corner of Inspector Leigh’s lips. She closes the cover of her notebook.
‘So that’s it. This … statement, these objects, and one possible sighting of your father. That’s essentially all you have to support your story.’
‘There was nothing possible about it. It was him, OK? It was fucking him. Standing in my mother’s hallway as though he owned the place.’
‘Yes, but even so. To have engineered everything you claim he has, your father would’ve had to have been watching you for months. One sighting, in my book, doesn’t –’
‘I’ve seen him, too.’
It’s the first time I’ve spoken in quite some time. My voice, compared to the others’, sounds thin and unconvincing, but even so both women turn to look.
I clear my throat.
‘At the open day,’ I say. ‘The day we first saw the house. He was there, I think. Watching us.’ That older bloke I saw staring at me from across the living room: I’d thought at the time he was just some rich kid’s snooty parent, turning up his nose at my scruffy jeans and battered trainers. But he fitted the description Syd’s given us of her father and as well as watching us he was lurking near the door, in the perfect spot to slip outside should Syd show any sign of looking his way.
