by Jess Ryder
Archway College is huge and security seems tight. A row of shiny chrome turnstiles stretch across the airy foyer and two tall men in dark trousers and thick navy jumpers are sitting at the reception desk, one of them arguing with a girl who’s forgotten to bring her ID and the other – labelled Saf – eating sandwiches from a Tupperware box.
‘Can I help?’ he asks, with his mouth full.
I try to sound casual and friendly. ‘Yeah, I hope so. I’m looking for Christopher Jay, he’s a tutor in Performing Arts.’
Saf looks up at his colleague. ‘He’s off sick, isn’t he?’
‘Nah, he’s back. Saw him this morning.’
‘Oh, right.’ He looks up at the neon clock. ‘He’ll be in the pub, I expect – just across the street.’ He makes a drinking gesture with his hand.
‘Oh, great, thanks.’
‘Friend of yours?’ He looks at me doubtfully. I don’t reply.
The Star and Garter is a large barn of a pub, red patterned carpets, shiny polished wooden tables and leather-topped stools. Hits from the nineties are playing at full volume, like somebody’s trying to get a party going and failing. A few regulars are lolling against the bar; a married-looking couple are studying the All-Day 2-for-1 Menu. I have to walk right down to the end, where the toilets are, before I see Jay. He’s sitting by himself in a gloomy booth, a half-drunk pint of Guinness and an unopened packet of peanuts before him, reading the Metro. He has no idea that I’m staring at him. I wrinkle my nose at the faint whiff of piss coming from the gents’.
I go back to the bar and ask for a Beck’s. As soon as the barman reaches for the bottle, I regret my choice. A soft drink would have been more sensible and would have done just as well as a prop. He takes off the lid and the beer froths. I turn and look into the shadows, Jay’s solitary figure bent over the table. My knees start to knock with fear.
You’re here now. You’ve got to go through with it.
I walk back to the dark recesses of the saloon and put my beer down on the table opposite Jay. ‘Mind if I sit here?’ My voice is feverish. I sound like someone else, someone I don’t know.
He looks up from the newspaper and frowns. ‘Why? Not like there’s nowhere else.’ He gestures at the expanse of free tables. I smile weakly and sit down, reaching into my bag and taking out my phone. It’s already set to record.
‘Well? What is it? What do you want?’
I take the laptop bag off my shoulder. My hands are shaking so much I can barely open the zip. He stares at me as I take out the laptop and put it on the table, flipping open the lid and pressing the start button.
‘I don’t do surveys,’ he says. ‘Or opinion polls.’
‘I want to show you something. It won’t take long. You might have already seen it.’
His expression is half curious, half couldn’t-care-less. ‘Do I know you? Are you an ex-student?’
I meet his gaze. This is the moment. Tell him. Tell him. ‘I’m Becca’s daughter. Rebecca Banks. Remember her?’
He looks shocked for a second, then peers into my face, shadowy in the pub gloom. ‘Becca,’ he says, the word escaping from his mouth in a whisper. He looks around, as if expecting to see more people behind me – other ghosts from his past perhaps. ‘God… You look a lot like her.’
‘So I’ve been told.’
‘How did you know where to find me? Did that detective tell you?’
‘No,’ I reply quickly. ‘I just did a search – it wasn’t difficult.’ I open Media Player and click on the file named ‘Me’. ‘I’m going to show you a video that was made when I was four years old.’
‘Sorry, but what’s this about?’
I turn the laptop around so he can see the screen. He picks up his pint and takes a gulp, quickly licking the foam off his top lip. Does he know what’s coming? He puts the glass down and hides his hands beneath the table. I picture his fingers writhing nervously, his palms sweating.
Leaning across, I press play. He stares at the screen, listening but not really comprehending. ‘What’s this got to do with me?’ he says after a few moments.
‘You’ll see.’ I train my eyes on his features, watching every blink, every twitch, looking for signs – of what exactly, I don’t know. Recognition? Guilt? I try to imagine how he must have looked thirty years ago: taut skin, hair dark and thick, thin-framed, sharp-boned…
Suddenly he pulls back as if something’s just hit him in the gut. I can’t see the screen from where I’m sitting, but I know he must have got to the bit where Becca walks into frame. He’s transfixed now, his eyes darting across the screen, mouth open for more air. Shocked. Like all this is new to him, like he’s watching it for the first time. Or is he only pretending to watch it for the first time? I don’t know, I can’t read him. When we get to the important bit, where I mention his name, he gasps loudly and slams down the lid.
‘What the fuck is this? Some kind of joke?’
‘I found it at my father’s house a couple of months ago.’
‘And you showed it to the police, right?’ I shrug. ‘So that’s why…’ He takes several deep breaths. ‘They can’t take this seriously, they can’t. It’s absurd. I mean, it’s… it’s… nonsense. Why did she say that? Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’ve got to talk to her. Where is she?’ He flings his arm out towards me, grabbing my wrist.
‘You’re hurting …’ I wrench my hand free and pull the laptop back.
His eyes are bulging and his face has broken out in a sweat. ‘Please. Give me her number.’
‘I don’t have it. I don’t know where she is.’ I slide the laptop back into its case. He looks at me disbelievingly. ‘Sorry, you’ll have to ask the police. They’re looking for her; they might know.’
‘Jesus Christ…’ He lifts up his glass, his hand trembling violently, and takes a large swig, slamming it back on the table so hard I think it’s going to break. ‘I’m not going to prison for this, no way, no fucking way. They’ve got nothing else on me, it’s her word against mine. There’s no evidence. This… this shit’ – he points accusingly at the laptop case – ‘doesn’t mean a thing, it’d never stand up in court.’
‘I never said it would,’ I reply coolly. ‘But it does raise a few questions. Understandably, the police want to talk to her, but they can’t find her. She’s missing.’
‘Missing?’ He narrows his eyes. ‘What do you mean, missing?’
‘Nobody’s seen her for twenty-five years. But I think you already know that. You’ve been lying to me, pretending you want her number… talking about her in the present tense to mislead me.’
The penny drops. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘The police know you already knew each other.’ He shakes his head vehemently. ‘They think she lied for you.’
‘Not true. Absolutely not true.’
‘And years later, when she told you she was going to tell the police the truth, you flipped.’
‘This is crazy. I’m not listening to this crap.’
‘You’re the one who went crazy. You killed her in a fit of anger, just like you killed Cara.’
He leans over and grabs my shoulder. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are? I could have you done for harassment. And that detective – I’ll have him too, for persecuting an innocent witness.’
‘Let go of me now, or I’ll be the one calling the police.’ He pulls his hand away and tucks it under the other arm. His whole body is jerking in tiny spasms of tension. ‘You’re not an innocent witness,’ I say. ‘You’re the prime suspect. The police are re-testing everything for DNA. They’re going to find something, I promise, and, when they do, you’ll be charged again, and this time there’s no way you’re going to get away with it.’
‘Fuck off.’
I look him straight in the eye. ‘To be honest, it’s not looking good. You’ve probably only got a few days at the most before they come back and arrest you.’
He stands up suddenly, banging
the table with his legs. His beer glass shakes and my bottle slides a few centimetres across the polished surface. ‘I said, fuck off!’
I watch him limp off in the direction of the exit. He doesn’t look back once, but when he gets near the door he stumbles and has to hold on to the bar to steady himself. He walks out and the door slams behind him.
I pick up the Beck’s and drink it down in one go.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jay
He feels the anger rising within him, like a swollen, surging river. Stinking, filthy liquid is swirling around the pit of his stomach, threatening to vomit itself out of his mouth, to burst through his veins, explode from his ears. It’s a furious demon, a vile monster, but he has to contain it, keep it at bay. Pile up the sandbags. Shift the valuables upstairs. I will control it, he thinks, as he stands twitching at the edge of the pavement, breathing hard through his nostrils. Cars and trucks pass nose to tail, tormenting him, driving just that bit too fast for him to weave a path in between. He’s so wired he could risk it – just step into the road and make a beeline for the other side. If he’s struck down, so what? Better to be killed now than go to prison. He will not go to prison – not for Cara, not for Becca. Whatever happens, he will not go.
He turns his head slowly from left to right and back again, waiting for a gap. Something – it must be the anger – is pressing down heavily on his brain; there’s a sharp pain behind his eyes and his vision has narrowed. It’s like looking out from a lift as the doors slowly close, his world disappearing. He feels himself dropping, descending into hell.
The cars come to a brief halt to let a large articulated lorry swing around the corner, and Jay crosses – somehow – in its wake. He dodges in and out of small groups of students dotted around the college steps and walks into the foyer, pushing through a turnstile. When he arrives at Studio One, a couple of students are already there, waiting. He unlocks the door and turns on the fluorescent lights. The pain behind his eyes sharpens to a point.
He drags a grey plastic chair away from the wall and sits down. He tries not to think about what’s just happened, but the images on the tape keep playing on his inner screen. The little girl stabbing the air, Becca looking a ghost of herself, so thin and haggard, so desperate and afraid. He’d barely recognised her. Questions tumble over each other as they speed through his brain. Why is Becca trying to frame him? Why do something as bizarre as force a little child to act out a murder? It’s sick. Disgusting. And who’s the ‘bad man’ she keeps talking about? Is that supposed to be him? Did somebody put her up to this?
He starts to smell the rancid traces of Isobel. Not satisfied with killing Cara and wrecking his life, she’s turned on poor, innocent Becca. The evil bitch. Jay grips the edges of his seat until his knuckles go white. He should have killed Isobel while he had the chance. If Becca’s daughter is right and the police have got him in their sights, he hasn’t got much time. It’s now or never. Proper justice has to be done.
There’s a loud burst of laughter. Jay looks up, bewildered. He’d almost forgotten where he was, hadn’t noticed the rest of the students coming in, or heard their chatter. There must be about twenty of them now, suddenly appeared from nowhere. As usual, they’re ignoring him, behaving like he doesn’t exist. The atmosphere is more animated than usual; there’s electricity in the air. The tension is tangible. Or maybe it’s just him. His heart is pounding and sweat is seeping through his pores. How can he teach a lesson in this state? He should leave now, sneak out while nobody’s looking. Go and find Isobel. Get it over and done with before it’s too late.
But then a couple of lads walk in. Mo B, the techno-geek, and Devonte Lennox, a good-looking black kid, the best actor in the class.
‘She’s taking the fucking piss,’ Dev says as they walk past him to the back of the studio, sliding their backs down the black-painted wall, crouching on their haunches, holding themselves up by the strength of their thighs. They carry on muttering under their breath and he catches Santianna’s name.
Something’s going on downstairs. Maybe she’s planning an attack, Jay thinks. Another fucking bitch out to get him. He hears noise and looks towards the door. She’s coming, and she won’t be alone. Her over-loud voice bounces off the walls of the narrow corridor, the march of clumpy high heels like a bass drum keeping the beat. Santianna and her junk-fed, hyped-up army are coming to get him. In five seconds they’ll walk into the room, and who knows what will happen. He’s bubbling over like a boiling pot, can’t contain it much longer. If she steps over the line, just by an inch…
But it’s Devonte Lennox who makes the first move. He stands up and walks towards Santianna and her posse – three girls and two lads – as they swagger in. Mo B stays crouching against the wall, eyes fixed on the screen of his phone, keeping well out of it.
‘What the fuck are you on, fam?’ Devonte raises his arm and flicks his hand in Santianna’s face. She blinks at him with her thick false lashes. ‘Think man’s gonna sit on my fuckin’ arse all day waitin’ for you? We’re supposed to be fuckin’ rehearsin’. You might not give a fuck, yeah, but I ain’t gonna be going up on stage looking like a dickhead, you get me? Not like every other man in here!’
‘Are you mad!?’ She pushes Dev in the chest. ‘Who the fuck do you think you’re chatting to? Get the fuck away from me, I swear down – you need to get the fuck away!’
‘I beg you push me again.’ Devonte advances on her, face up close. ‘Watch what happens to you if you push me again, watch what I do – watch.’
‘Take it easy, man,’ says Mo B, still sitting with his back to the wall. ‘Bitch in’t worth it.’
Santianna lunges at Dev, her long, spiky pink fingernails reaching for his cheek; scratches him so hard she draws a thin line of blood. He cries out involuntarily, backing away for a second or two. There’s a brief moment of silence, a freeze frame, then it’s like somebody’s fast-forwarded and restarted the action several minutes further on, because suddenly everything is noise and chaos and everyone’s involved, except Mo B, who stays where he is and holds up his phone to start filming.
Santianna is shouting, ‘Look what happens when you get rude to me. I told you, don’t get fuckin’ rude to me, fam!’ Two of the girls grab hold of her and she wrestles to get free, turning her rage on them. ‘Don’t hold me back! Oh my daiz, don’t fuckin’ hold me back!’
Devonte Lennox wipes the blood off his face with his sleeve. ‘You wanna step to me, yeah? You sure you wanna do dat?’ The others start joining in, incoherent phrases firing from their mouths against Santianna, or in support of her; it’s impossible to know who is on whose side as they jostle around the room like out-of-control dodgem cars, shouting and bumping into each other.
Jay stares at the swirl of bodies, the kaleidoscope of faces. He blinks, disorientated. Was that Isobel he saw just then? Her jet-black hair, her swipe of red lipstick? A flash of her purple sleeve? He rises from his chair and staggers towards the chaos. There she is again! He saw her. She’s somewhere in this crowd. He turns in a circle, peering through the forest of bodies; he glimpses her face again as it slips behind Santianna; grabs at her shadow as it dissolves behind Devonte.
Isobel in the witness box, lying through her teeth. Isobel on the steps of the court, head back, mouth open, screaming at him as he was jostled by reporters. Isobel’s face on posters and book jackets. Isobel in magazines, her smile always mocking him. Isobel the puppet master, Isobel the murderer. He knows she’s here somewhere, hiding in the crowd. She won’t get away from him this time. He reaches into his inside pocket. The knife is still there from the other night, warm against his chest. A surge of power shoots up his arm as he whips it out and swivels the blade, letting it catch the light. Now let’s see who’s boss.
‘Fuck! Teacher man’s got a shank!’
‘What the fuck’s he doin’?’
Jay walks towards Santianna, except she’s not Santianna any more; her features are morphing and blurring and now it’s
Isobel standing before him, hands on hips, red mouth agape, her defiant stare taunting him. He’s found her at last.
‘Put it down, man!’
‘Get back, Santi! Man’s gonna cut you.’
‘Nah, he’s a pussy. He won’t use it.’
He lifts the blade and lunges at her. There’s a dull squelching noise. A red circle forms around the blade, which sticks in her chest, just beneath her large fleshy boobs. He lets go of the handle and steps back. He’s dimly aware of heavy breathing, a falling movement, a thud; dark shapes gathering around a body. Stillness. Silence.
He releases his breath and turns away, walks out of the studio and down the white-walled corridor, reaches reception and swipes himself through the barrier. He feels light-headed, floating on air. Nobody shouts out his name, nobody runs after him. Nobody stops him at the front doors. He looks back for a moment at the empty foyer. Why is nobody stopping him? Why are there no sirens or alarms?
Maybe it didn’t happen. Maybe it was just a beautiful fantasy. He limps down the steps and disappears quietly into the afternoon crowd.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Me
I’m woken by the sound of my phone, its insistent ring coming from somewhere in the bedclothes. My arms flail about, patting the mattress, feeling under the pillow, but by the time I find it – for some strange reason nestling at my feet – it’s too late. A missed call from Eliot. Shit. What if Jay has made a complaint? No way am I up to defending myself right now. Groaning, I pull back the duvet and swing my legs around the side of the bed. I’m still fully dressed, my clothes sweaty and creased, my eyes sticky with melted mascara. How long was I asleep? I glance at the alarm clock. It says ten to seven, and for a few seconds I can’t work out whether it’s morning or evening. I get up and lift the edge of the curtain. It’s dark outside and I can smell cooking, fried onions and meat. Evening then. The day is a dog running around in the distance, not wanting to return to my side. I call it in and the memories start to lick at me.
