by Neil White
‘What do you mean?’
‘I could maybe accept some kind of mass telepathy,’ I said, ‘because a lot of these have human intervention. These were the days before suicide bombers. People put bombs on planes. Maybe people had been talking about old wooden football grounds and fire risks. All of that is possible.’
‘Telepathy?’ Laura queried, opening envelopes at the same time.
I laughed. ‘I can’t believe I’m saying that, but I suppose it’s the most logical explanation. But what no one could have guessed was how the press would report it. On these, he has predicted not just the events, but the way they were reported. That is something way beyond telepathy.’
I stopped talking when I saw Laura’s face drain.
‘What is it?’
She held up a painting.
As I took hold of it, I saw a line of buildings standing high above a thin ribbon of blue water. Right in the centre of the picture were two tall grey towers. The World Trade Center. Eric had clearly known this location, because the buildings were so recognisable, as if he had tried to make sure everyone would know that it was New York. But it was something else that drew my eye. Right in the middle of the sky was an aeroplane, a passenger jet, if the white body and blue stripe was anything to go by. And it was heading right for one of the towers.
I exhaled. ‘There’s no mistaking that one.’
Laura looked grim-faced. ‘It’s not just that,’ she said, and the photograph floated down to the table.
As I leaned in for a closer look I felt a cold prickle run down the back of my neck.
In the picture, Eric was standing in the usual place, in the middle of a dingy aisle and in front of the calendar. The calendar that was never wrong. He didn’t look happy. I sensed a real tiredness in his eyes, as if he had been missing sleep, and his clothes looked dishevelled, much more like the Eric I had met.
But it was the date on the calendar that had stopped the joking between us. In bright white letters: 11 September 2000.
I looked at Laura, and I saw how she looked nervous now.
‘He dreamt it,’ she said quietly. ‘Exactly a year before it happened.’
‘Mary said he hadn’t done any paintings for a few years,’ I said, ‘and that he had started again recently.’ I pointed to the painting. ‘I bet that was the reason he stopped. When the towers went down a year later, he knew he had seen it and had done nothing to stop it.’
‘But what about the rest?’
I shook my head. ‘He knew where this was going to happen. There is nothing specific in the other paintings, but there’s no mistaking that this is the Manhattan skyline.’
We stared at each other for a few moments, both of us remembering how we had felt on that terrible day, full of disbelief, how the world had suddenly seemed a scary place. And what if we had known it was coming, but just not when?
We both turned back to the box and began to lift out more envelopes in silence.
Chapter Forty-four
It was just past midnight when I finished going through the envelopes. Laura had given up an hour earlier, tiredness taking over when she had a run of no-hitters.
I had made a list of the pictures, just brief descriptives and whether or not there were any clippings in the envelope. Three hundred and twenty envelopes. Fifty-three hits, and some of those seemed speculative, but I had to admit that I was impressed. I was still a sceptic, but things had happened that I couldn’t explain.
There had been a gap, I was right about that. It seemed like Eric had done nothing for around five years after the 9/11 attacks, but then the dreams seemed to return. In those dreams, there was a theme. There were no hits, no matching press coverage, but it seemed like he had been dreaming of a building, maybe a house, dark and foreboding. The building was large, with two peaks at the front, like gables, and dark all around it. In others, there were just doorways, with someone silhouetted in them, but again they were lacking in detail. The theme was the same though, just a large house, shrouded in darkness. I remembered Lily’s dream from the meeting, running through a large house, always chasing.
I sighed. My story was getting strange, but it was getting interesting, and that was the key to any piece.
I went to the My Pictures folder on my laptop. I wanted to remind myself of what I had seen. If I was going to write the story, I had to confront all of it. Before the police had burst in when I discovered Eric, I had squeezed off a couple of shots. I didn’t feel good about it, but the story comes first. Always. Knowing Eric just made it harder.
I steeled myself before I looked at the pictures. When I eventually did, I felt just sadness. Eric’s legs dangled downwards and he had his eyes closed. The folds of skin on his neck were bunched up where the rope dug in. It changed his features from the man I had known into a grotesque corpse.
I was about to close the image file when something stopped me, a feeling that there was something not quite right about the picture. I looked closely, scoured the background, looking for whatever it was that had make me think something was wrong. I could see Eric, and then the chair, the boy on the floor nearby. Then I saw what had made me stop.
My hands trembled as I printed off a copy of the picture and turned off my laptop. I scribbled a quick note for Laura and left it on the table and looked for a torch in the boxes at the end of the room, those still not unpacked. Once I found one, I headed for the door.
The street was in darkness when I arrived. I parked outside Eric’s house and looked around. The pavements were scattered with cars—none of the houses had a drive—so passage into the street was limited to one in, one out. The houses nearby had blue glows flickering behind the curtains, televisions playing late into the night. As I stood there, I could hear people shouting in the distance, the sound travelling through the cool, still night.
As I stood at Eric’s gate and looked up the path, I patted my pocket; I’d put some washing line in there on the way to my car. I shuddered slightly. The last time I’d been in the house I had found Eric. Crime-scene tape was stretched in front of me so I listened out for the sound of the police. There was nothing, so I ducked underneath. I was surprised that there were no police officers outside, but I knew from Laura how the force was stretched at the moment. Maybe the suicide conclusion made watching the house an expense too far.
As I walked towards the house, the wooden boards over the windows seemed to loom out of the darkness, so different from the signs of life in every other house on the street. I tried the door but it was locked this time. I had expected that.
I moved around the side of the house, looking for something left insecure. I couldn’t see anything.
I went into the back garden, the green of the lawn now just a silvery sheen from the sliver of moonlight. I tried the back door handle but that was locked solid as well. I stepped back and looked over the house to find that chink, that way in.
I was about to turn away when I noticed that the bathroom window upstairs seemed to jut out slightly, as if someone had opened it and not closed it properly. It was the only window on the house without a board over it. I almost laughed. Eric had been right. He hadn’t been dead a full day yet, and already it was going to ruin.
I looked around to find a ladder. There wasn’t one. The drainpipe was the only option, a skill I hadn’t used since I was at school.
I slipped my camera into my pocket and gripped the drainpipe firmly in my hands. It seemed solid, old-style cast steel rather than one of the modern plastic ones. I swung my legs upwards, and when I felt my feet smack against the wall I started to pull myself up, a slow creep towards the window.
I was panting as I reached it, and tried not to look down. I could feel one hand slipping on the drainpipe as I pulled at the window with the other. Once I’d opened it enough, I gripped hard on the window sill, took a deep breath, prayed, and then let my body fall towards the wall, one hand taking my weight as I reached with the other for the sill. I began to haul myself upwards, straining, g
runting, until I fell into Eric’s bathroom, wincing as my ribs took a dig from the taps on the small white basin.
I stood up and brushed myself down. I listened for the noise of feet outside, but there was silence. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the small torch I had put in there. It wouldn’t be brilliant, but I reckoned it would give me enough light.
I made my way slowly down the stairs, every creak loud in the empty house. My torch flickered around the plain walls in the living room, every corner full of shadows. The light landed on a photograph, the one I had seen before, and when I looked, I saw that the young girl was Mary. I turned away from it and headed for the cellar door. I felt nervous. Once I was in there, I could get shut in and there would be no other way out. I should have told Laura where I had gone.
I opened the door and it creaked loudly. I flashed my torch down the stairs. It had been dark during daylight hours, but in the middle of the night it seemed to be in darkness so much more complete than I had ever seen before.
I stepped into the doorway and began to move slowly downwards. Once I got to the cellar floor, I looked around. The police had taken away everything I had recorded in the photograph, so I would have to use fresh props. But as I flashed my torch to the ceiling, I realised that my earlier suspicions were confirmed. Eric hadn’t committed suicide.
My mind flashed back to the images I had seen earlier in the day, and I remembered the style of the chair. I recalled something similar in the kitchen.
I rushed back upstairs, feeling somehow relieved to be out of there, and flashed my torch. The kitchen was as bare and unwelcome as it had been earlier, but I saw what I was looking for: a chair identical to the one that had been in the cellar with Eric.
I grabbed it and headed back down the cellar steps. I was moving quickly now, wanting to check out my suspicions, get some pictures, and then go home and clamber into bed with Laura. Safe and sound.
I shone the torch towards the ceiling and worked out which ceiling joist in the cellar had held the rope. I stood on the chair and pulled from my coat pocket the piece of washing line. I made a noose at one end, and then, as I thought back to the photographs, I tried to gauge how much rope there had been between the noose and the ceiling joist.
I stood on my tiptoes on the chair and threaded the washing line around the joist. I tried to make it the same length as the rope around Eric’s neck. I knew it wasn’t exact, but if I was right, it wouldn’t have to be.
I stopped. I had heard a noise. It sounded like a light knocking upstairs. I stayed still, silent, tried to hear the noise again. There was nothing. But if there was someone up there, I had to move quickly. It was too late to go back now.
I jumped off the chair, but then I heard another noise. A creak. I paused again, my ears straining, but the sound didn’t repeat itself.
I kept going. I went to put my camera on one of the cellar steps, so that the angle would be similar to when I had taken the pictures of Eric.
I heard a whisper, like a hiss, above me. I almost dropped the camera. I stopped and listened carefully A soft scrape on the floor. I knew I wasn’t alone. I thought about what to do, my heart beating faster, a bead of sweat popping onto my top lip. I could stay silent. But what if whoever it was didn’t know I was in here and locked me in?
Why wasn’t I alone? Maybe someone had been watching the house and had seen me come in. Which meant only one thing: that whoever was in the house was looking for me.
My breaths were coming fast now, my fingers damp as I tried to set the camera. Whatever happened, I had to get the story. I needed the picture.
I heard a soft footstep outside the cellar door.
Hands shaking, I flicked on the self-timer and put the camera down, the lens pointing towards the chair.
I stepped away to get back onto the chair, but I stalled for a moment when I heard the doorknob begin to turn. It screeched as it echoed around the cellar.
I jumped onto the chair—the flash would go off in twelve seconds—and I looked up towards the noose, my head directly underneath, my torch shining upwards. I could see the underneath of the noose, swinging from the draughts I’d caused. I smiled. I’d been right.
As I looked up, the noose was higher than me. I was taller than Eric, and the only item in the room had been the chair. If Eric had hanged himself, how had he done it? He could not have stood on the chair to put his head through the noose because his head wouldn’t have reached it. It was swinging above my own head. So if he hadn’t stood on the chair, and nothing else had been in the room, there were only two other options: that someone else had been into the house and moved whatever it was. Or he had been murdered, and the hanging had been staged.
I turned off my torch, and the cellar was filled with the red blinks from the self-timer. I heard the door begin to open and tried hard to stay still for the photograph. I heard the same loud crunches as feet edged their way down. Then I heard an echo, and I realised that the person wasn’t alone. I sensed a pause as they noticed the red light flicker on the back of the camera and then the footsteps got quicker.
I had literally stopped breathing by the time the flash went off, the cellar lit up by dazzling light. I heard a shout by the steps, as if I had made them jump. In the flashlight, I recognised the clothing.
As they turned on their own torches, I could tell that I might have some explaining to do.
Chapter Forty-five
At least I might be able to use it in the story, I thought, as the police car rattled down the cobbled slope into the police yard.
The two officers had been surprisingly friendly. I had been a welcome distraction from a night spent on an estate street watching Eric Randle’s house. They were supposed to be on the gate to keep curious onlookers away, but as the cold and boredom had crept in they had retired to their car parked further down the street. I hadn’t seen them as I’d gone in, but they’d seen me.
I wasn’t cuffed, and they joked with me as we walked towards the steel doors of the custody suite, but as we waited for them to open, I felt them each place a hand on my shoulders.
It was bright in the custody area, with a high mahogany counter and strip lighting, glossy posters on the walls telling prisoners of their rights.
The custody sergeant looked bored as I approached the desk. He had given up life on the streets to spend his days in the bowels of the station, processing criminals and paperwork. He glanced at me briefly when the arresting officer told him that I had been arrested for burglary—perhaps I didn’t look like the average deadbeat burglar—but he went through the standard questions on auto-pilot. My answers were just as routine as my mind raced with the thought of what Laura would say when she found out.
It was when they asked me if I wanted any legal advice that my mind clicked alert. I remembered how I had found out about Eric, and then I remembered Terry McKay.
‘Sam Nixon,’ I said, and I waited until the sergeant flicked through the business cards to get his number.
‘You might get one of his runners,’ warned the sergeant.
I shook my head. ‘It has to be Sam.’
He shrugged nonchalantly, and then held out a key to the arresting officer. ‘Tuck him in while we wait for Nixon,’ he said, and I turned to follow as I was led into a dim tiled corridor lined by thick grey doors.
Sam held Helena. She had cried herself to sleep and stayed away from the booze.
They were on their bed. Helena had said little on the way home, and nothing at all when they got there. They had done functional things, made the children their food and then put them to bed, and acted like nothing had happened. But it was there all the time, the talk they needed to have. When the children had gone to sleep, happy that Sam was at home, no one mentioning the drama of that morning, the smashed vodka bottle, the stain on the wall, Helena broke down.
Sam had stayed away from her at first, not knowing how to react, but when she looked up at him, tears streaming down her face, he’d gone to her.
Now, in the darkness of the bedroom, with Helena sleeping, he thought about Terry. He should have called the police when he’d found him. Or maybe an ambulance. How long had he been there, in agony? Had he left an injured man to protect Harry Parsons, or was it so he could hang on to his own job? Sam knew what he thought about Jimmy King, and now Luke. Was he so much different?
His phone rang. As he looked at it, he saw it was flashing ‘Blackley custody’. He should ignore it, stay with Helena, be there for her when she awoke.
‘Hello, Sam Nixon,’ he said automatically when he answered. He nodded at the message and then said, ‘I’ll be there in five minutes.’
The metallic rumble of the lock woke me, the crisp white shirt of the custody sergeant reminding me where I was.
