Towers of Silence

by Cath Staincliffe

  During tea, Maddie and Tom re-enacted for me all the adverts for absolutely brilliant, must-have toys that were dominating the telly.

  “And you can cut her hair off and make it grow,” Maddie said. For £29.99,I thought sourly. And then what? It hardly seemed the basis for hours of creative play.

  “I want to do another list,” said Maddie.

  “And me,” Tom echoed her.

  “I’ll get you pens and paper.”

  “You have to help us, though, with the spelling.”

  “Or you could do a picture list - draw what you want.”

  “Nah,” she said.

  “You might only get one thing on the list,” I reminded them later. We were sat on the floor in their playroom, the fabulous gluttonous lists before us. “Or even nothing.”

  “Or for my birthday,” Tom ever the optimist. “When I’m six. Like Maddie.”

  “I’ll be seven by then, Dumbo.”

  “Maddie,” I complained.

  “Will Laura buy us presents?” She asked, still in infant school but already a fervent materialist.

  “I don’t know,” I replied.

  “She is,” Tom said. “She told me.” Tom was passionately fond of his dad’s new girlfriend.

  “When are we getting the tree?” Maddie demanded. “You said soon.”

  “Maybe next weekend. We’ll have it up for a couple of weeks before.”

  “Why can’t we get it now?”

  “We don’t want it up too long.”

  “Yes we do,” she said.

  “I don’t - it feels more special if it’s only up for a couple of weeks. If we get it sooner it’ll be bald for Christmas.” I knew you could get trees that didn’t drop as much but they didn’t smell the same. And for my money the tree was the best bit of all.

  After they were in bed I soaked in the bath then watched ER on the telly. They had Christmas every couple of months. Plenty of drama, families forced together or apart, nativity scenes, snow and loneliness. Families.

  I looked briefly at the folder Patrick Dowley had left with me. It included official documents, the death certificate, the bill for the funeral, papers from the coroner’s office. There was a cutting from the Manchester Evening News - the announcement in the paper.

  Johnstone, Miriam. Suddenly on 6th October. Beloved mother of Constance, Martina and Roland. She has gone home, bathed in love, rocked in the warm and gentle waters, and her soul is bright with joy. Arrangements to follow.

  A further clipping gave the funeral announcement and asked for family flowers only and donations to MIND, the mental health charity. The rest of the papers were notes that the Johnstones must have made. Names and addresses of people to notify, questions to ask the coroner, practical lists for the funeral. There was a photograph too, Miriam Johnstone, head and shoulders, smiling, her eyes bright, crinkles at the corners. Holding a glass. A party? A happy attractive woman. A fuller face than her children but a clear resemblance. I turned it over. It was dated the previous year. The picture was a million miles away from the image I had formed of a scared, depressed woman climbing the stairs to her death.

  If she’d been like this on the Wednesday when her family last saw her I could understand more easily their refusal to accept the suicide verdict. Though it was the only plausible explanation. I’d sleep on it. Decide in the morning. This would be their first Christmas without her. A matter of endurance rather than celebration. Every aspect made poignant by her absence. One of the milestones of the grieving process. And would it be any easier to bear if I could tell them more about how she had passed her last day?

  Chapter Four

  Ray was taking the children to school so I was at my office for nine. I switched on the convector heater to take the chill from the place and made coffee. The aroma of the drink replacing the faint smell of damp brick. There was no hint of Christmas here apart from the temperature and the utterly natural frosting on the narrow basement window. I liked to keep it uncluttered; practical and functional though I painted it in bright colours and hung one of my friend Diane’s abstract pictures on the wall. I suppose my office is the only space I have complete control over, even my room at home bears witness to Maddie who always seems to come into it carrying something and leave without it.

  I looked again at the file on Miriam Johnstone. If I still said no what would they do? Try another agency? What could I offer? I sipped my coffee and thought. By the time my drink was finished I had made my decision and rehearsed what I would say.

  I turned my attention to my in-tray. I’d two invoices to send out and a report to spell check and send off. I’d managed to get a reconditioned computer cheap from a contact on Ray’s IT course. I was gradually transferring my work from the machine at home which Ray had let me share. I switched on and waited for it to boot up. Then got going. Invoices and report done, I busied myself signing up for e-mail and Internet access with one of the companies offering free calls. No one else had grabbed salk as a user name and I gave myself the same thing reversed as a password. Easier to remember. I updated my address book and set up folders for my inbox. I emailed Ray at home as a test, as well as my friends to let them know my new address.

  At eleven the phone rang.

  “Sal Kilkenny Investigations.”

  “Oh, hello.”

  I didn’t recognise the voice.

  “I got your name from the Yellow Pages. It says you do tracing and matrimonial work but I don’t know whether you could do what we require ... it’s not very straightforward.” She sounded quite businesslike though a little breathy. I wondered whether the ‘we’ was a firm or something else. I didn’t ask her name. Some people want a bit of confidential advice before committing themselves. Some want to remain anonymous until you’d agreed a contract.

  “Tell me what sort of work you were thinking of and I’ll have an idea of whether we can take it on.” I was a ‘we’ too. Gave people the impression that I was part of an organisation, not a lone operative. Safer all round.

  “I have a son,” she said. “He’s seventeen now and we’ve been having a lot of problems with him. He’s missing classes at college and he’s been disappearing for hours on end. Sometimes he doesn’t come back until the early hours. We’ve ended up having to drive round in the middle of the night looking for him. It’s an awful strain and the worst thing is that he won’t talk about it.”

  Sounded like fairly common teenage behaviour. Did she want someone to act as a truancy officer or a counsellor? I listened.

  “It’s affecting us all. We’ve other children too and it’s not fair on them. If you could find out where he goes, what he’s doing?”

  “Report on his activities for you?”

  “Yes. And find him when he goes off like that.”

  “You say he won’t talk to you? Have you told him you might involve someone else?”

  “Oh, no.”

  I told her what I always tell people who want to investigate a family member, spouse or otherwise. “Try and talk to him again. Tell him what you’re worried about and see if he’ll confide in you. Ask specific questions - start with the easiest - where did you go on Tuesday is easier than asking him what’s wrong. Perhaps find out if there’s anyone else he would rather talk to: a friend or a teacher.”

  “We’ve tried that,” she sighed.

  “Okay. I ought to warn you that there is a risk that this could backfire - bringing me in. If your son thinks he’s being spied on it may drive him further away. He’ll see it as a breach of trust. Have you thought about that?”

  “Not really,” she admitted.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I can definitely take the job on but you might want to have another go at talking first. You could even tell him that you’re thinking of getting help from someone else because you’re so worried - that’s up to you. Then if we go ahead I’d report his movements to you and you choose whether or not to confront him with what we find.”

  “Yes.”

  “Has
there been any trouble with the police?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “Any drug use?”

  “I don’t think so, nothing we’re aware of.”

  “What do his teachers say?”

  “That he’s very quiet, withdrawn. His work is sporadic.”

  “Is there someone at the college with responsibility for pastoral care?”

  “Yes and I’ve seen them. They said they’d try and have a quiet word with him but nothing’s come of it. They say unless Adam goes to them they can’t interfere. Although if his attendance drops too low he’ll be asked to consider whether to retain his college place.”

  “Okay,” I leant back in my chair, “going on what you’ve told me we could keep tabs on your son for a set period of time and give you a report - verbal and written - on his activities. We cost the job at an hourly or daily rate. Is there any pattern to his disappearances?”

  “No. Sometimes he skips college but he’s back for tea, other times he’s gone all hours. The first couple of times Ken drove round trying to find him but now he refuses to go, we just lie awake worrying.”

  “Might he be with friends ... have any other parents said anything?”

  “He hasn’t really got any friends. No one we see. He moved to the college in September and he doesn’t seem to have made any friends.”

  So this wasn’t just a teenager getting drunk with his mates every so often and not making it home.

  “And when you ask him where he’s been he refuses to talk?”

  “He’s monosyllabic at the best of times but he just clams up and digs his heels in. He always was stubborn. I just can’t see why he won’t tell us. It seems so petty.”

  “Where do you think he goes?”

  I poised my pen to write. People often have suspicions that they don’t voice for fear of sounding silly or paranoid or because they might be wrong. Or because they might be right and they don’t want their fears to come true. It’s always worth asking.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think there’s anywhere in particular but I really don’t know. He just goes.” She sounded tearful and I brought things back to the practical again. I established that he never left during the night which got me out of overnight surveillance. She agreed to try talking to him again and would come back to me if she wanted. At that point I would begin to follow her son. Tracking him from home to college or wherever. I told her my rates and warned her that it would soon mount up. There was silence.

  “I’ll leave it with you,” I said.

  “Yes,” she sounded subdued.

  “Sometimes,” I suggested, “families can do the work themselves. Though of course the emotional impact can be difficult if you find out something upsetting first hand. But you could always try it yourselves.”

  “No,” she said. “It’d be hard. I’m partially sighted so I don’t drive. Just getting about is tricky enough. And Ken has to travel with his work. He’s a rep and he covers the north east as well so he’s up there half the week. When he is here he’s out every day at work.”

  “I see. Well, think it over and see how you get on. Get back to me if you decide you want to go ahead. I’m sure we can help.”

  “Thank you. I think we’ll need it.”

  She had little faith that her son would open up. It looked like another job was winging my way.

  Chapter Five

  The room was stuffy. I turned the heater off. I filed the notes I’d made from the phone call and returned to work at the screen. After another hour I felt as though cement was seeping into the muscles that run from my neck to my shoulder. It’s always been a weak spot. Driving aggravates it too. And no matter how clear I am about the need for good posture at the computer; wrists relaxed, and level with the keyboard, one foot ahead of the other, knees lower than hips, back comfortably supported, when it comes to real life I end up hunched over the keyboard, head thrust towards the screen, neck horizontal, legs tangled, shoulders high with concentration, back rigid like some myopic emu.

  I stood and swung my arms a bit, managed to bash the paper shade on the light. Cellars have low ceilings. I swung my head about more gently but nearly dislocated it when there was a sudden loud knocking from upstairs.

  Through the spy hole I made out a distorted version of a face I knew. Close cropped grey hair, slate coloured eyes, generous mouth. I flung open the door.

  “Stuart, you’re back.”

  Observant, aren’t I?

  He grinned. “Last night.” Stepped forward to hug me. Then stood back.

  “I thought if you hadn’t had lunch ...”

  I rounded my eyes. Cheeky sod. Lunch was a euphemism. Oh, sure, there’d be something to eat but eating would be the hors d’œuvre or maybe the afters. I glanced at my watch.

  “All over by three,” he said. He had children himself and was well-versed in the school run.

  “I’ll turn things off.”

  He waited in the car while I closed up. I felt like a kid playing truant. As I climbed in the passenger seat I recognised the thrill of excitement and the lurch of uncertainty that accompanied teenage dates. I hadn’t been going out with Stuart very long - just a couple of months. My friend Diane had introduced us; she had decided we would be a good match and engineered it so we met at Stuart’s cafe bar without telling me first. It was my first relationship for longer than I care to remember and I felt as though I was entering unfamiliar territory where the ground might shift under my feet at any moment.

  I snapped my seat belt shut, turned and smiled at him. He leant closer and kissed me very, very softly. He ran the tip of his tongue along the edge of my top lip. My stomach rippled and my breasts tingled. The ache in my shoulder seemed completely irrelevant. I was starving. Mmmm. Love in the afternoon.

  In between sorting laundry and refereeing the children who were in squabbling mode I rang and collected my answer phone messages. Patrick Dowley had rung, he gave a phone number. I wrote it down.

  “You pig, you evil smelly pig.”

  “Get off me! Sa-a-al,” Tom roared for help.

  I marched into the lounge where the pair of them were glowering at each other. “He turned it over,” Maddie said pointing at the telly. “I was watching it.”

  “I didn’t. She hit me.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Leave the telly alone,” I told Tom, “and you don’t hit people,” I said to Maddie. “If there’s a problem, get me. And if there’s any more messing about, it goes off.” Maddie pulled a smirky ‘see’ face at Tom.

  “Maddie,” I scolded her. “I need to make some phone calls for work and I can’t do it if you two are screaming and shouting.”

  “It’s finished now anyway,” she said.

  “Would you like a video then?”

  They finally agreed on Winnie The Pooh and I went back to the phone and returned the Johnstones’ call.

  It was Connie who answered.

  “I’ve had a look at the file you left and a chance to think about it. I’m afraid I still agree with the official version of events, going on the evidence available. And if I did do any work for you I’d want that to be understood.”

  “Oh,” she said cautiously.

  “Mr Dowley suggested I could try and establish more about your mother’s movements during the Thursday. Try to fill in some of the gaps in the police account. There’s quite a lot of time unaccounted for when no one knows where she was, is that right?”

  “Yes, nothing after lunchtime. After she left the community centre. The police asked her neighbours if they’d seen her and I think that’s all. I don’t think they spoke to anyone else.”

  There was no reason to. Suicide isn’t a crime. And once it was clearly a suicide then there would be no need for the police to look any further.

  “They wouldn’t have,” I said. “But if further information about those missing hours is what you want then I can take the case on that basis but only on that basis. You may want to discuss it with the fami
ly?”

  “No, we all agree. We talked about it last night after we’d seen you. Patrick told us what he’d said.”

  “And you’d be happy with that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. I have a basic contract which I use and we’ll need to agree on an initial number of hours and fee. And I should make it clear that I can’t guarantee I’ll find any information. All I can do is look and use my professional skills to try and find out where she was, how she got to town and so on but I might not get anywhere. There’s always that risk. I’ll explore all the leads I can but at the end of the day you might not know any more.”

  “Yeah, but we’ll have tried and anything would help,” she said flatly.

  We agreed that I would call the following evening, when they would all be at home.

  Connie and Patrick had a house on one of the streets tucked away behind Wilmslow Road in Rusholme - the famous curry mile. That December evening the place was awash with neon, fragrant with the mouth-watering smell of pungent spices, crammed with traffic and already busy with the first wave of customers, some of them big groups obviously out for the work’s Christmas party; it was the fake antlers and pointy red hats with white trim that gave it away. It would get busier still when the pubs emptied later and the streets would be thronging with revellers after that final part of the night-out ritual - the curry that followed the last drink. After the clubs there would be another influx of people ravenous for Rogan Josh, Chicken Korma and King Prawn Madras.