Hope Dies Last

by Deborah Finn

  “Oh fuck!” Farren leaned back on the seat, placing a hand over his eyes. “How the fuck did we get into this? That fucking Gallagher. I could finish him myself.”

  Holly placed her paws on her owner’s chest and started licking his face, whining a little. Farren pushed her away. “It’s alright, Holly,” he said in a flat voice. “Good dog.” He blew out a long breath.

  Jango twisted round to look at Farren. “The boss was on the phone before. He’s going apeshit.”

  “Fuck him,” Farren muttered.

  “No,” Jango said. “I mean serious, like.”

  “I’m fucking serious,” Farren said. “He’s off his head. Why’d he do her anyway?”

  Jango shrugged. “He thinks it’s our fault.”

  Farren laughed. “Oh right. It’s our fault that he cut her with a fucking steak knife, is it?”

  “No, man. I mean this,” he said, gesturing toward the phone and the CCTV. “They know where she was cos we didn’t get rid of the body. Not properly, like.”

  Farren laughed. “It was you wouldn’t go in the fucking train tunnel,” he said. “If we’d gone in the tunnel and dropped her at the bend, they wouldn’t have stopped. She’d have been mulched.”

  “Yeah, well,” Jango said. “If we’d have known when the train was coming I’d have done it. Anyway it’s done now,” he said.

  Farren stared out the side window for a minute. “Remember that drunk bitch?” he said.

  Jango nodded. “In the hotel? Yeah, I was thinking about that. She saw us.”

  “She was wasted, mind,” said Farren.

  “She was,” Jango agreed. “With a bit of luck she blacked out.”

  Farren sighed. “We need a bit of luck.” He looked down at the dog and ruffled her ears. “Don’t we Holly? We need a bit of luck.”

  “Anyway,” Jango said, turning round to face Farren again. “The boss has got another job for us.”

  Farren laughed. “You’re joking aren’t you? What’s he want now? Are we to go and wipe his arse for him?”

  “Mate,” said Jango, shaking his head. “I don’t think you get how bad this is?”

  “Oh right, I’m on Crimestoppers carrying a body through a hotel and I don’t get how bad it is?”

  “Crimestoppers is the least of it. The boss is a fucking psycho.” Jango’s voice was placid, but his slab of a face looked uneasy. Farren could see that twitch in his eyebrow that started up when he was under pressure.

  “I know,” he said. “He’s mental.”

  Jango nodded. “Yeah, he’s mental. And he reckons this is all our fault,” he said, gesturing towards the phone. “Don’t you get it?” He held up his hand, showing a tiny gap between finger and thumb. “We’re this close to being next on his list.”

  Farren tried to laugh. “That old bastard! He’d have to get us first.”

  “Don’t be such a twat! He wouldn’t do it himself, would he?”

  “Well who would he get?”

  “I don’t know,” Jango said. “He’s got other people on his pay, you know.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t fucking know,” Jango shouted.

  Holly barked at him, showing her teeth.

  Jango laughed. “But we’ll be alright with your attack dog.”

  Farren pulled the dog back onto his lap. “She’s a good dog.”

  “Yeah, well, you wanna watch out you don’t find her head on your doorstep one of these days.”

  “Oh my god, don’t listen to him, Holly,” Farren said, covering the dog’s ears. “I tell you, that bastard touches my dog, I’ll cut his dick off.”

  “He wants us to go follow that bloke,” Jango said.

  “What bloke?”

  “The one in the park. The one who was talking to that bird.”

  Farren nodded. “The one I took pictures of?”

  “That’s the one. Anyway, do you remember a kid?”

  Farren shrugged. “A kid? No. Hang on, the second time, maybe.”

  “There was a kid in some of the pictures, and the boss wants us to follow that bloke, and see if he’s with that kid.”

  Farren frowned. “A kid? I don’t get it. It’s like when he sent us round to that flat. I don’t want no messing with kids.”

  “It’s not like that,” Jango said. “Anyway, we just do what the man says.”

  Beth closed the door to the conservatory and leaned against it.

  “I don’t want him to see any of this,” she said. “I don’t want him to see us watching it.”

  Martin nodded his agreement. He glanced through the glass doors where Ben was playing in the back garden with his friend Jusef.

  “I’ve got the link open,” Beth said, nodding towards the desktop computer.

  Martin clicked the mouse and the screen came back to life. It was a video clip from a news site. There was a man in his sixties standing on the steps outside a police station. He was wearing a shapeless grey jacket and he looked tired. He was tall but stooped, his hands gripping a piece of paper. Martin clicked the ‘play’ button and the video began to roll.

  Today, I have formally identified the body of my daughter, Marilyn Souter. His voice was low, north country brusque. He paused and took a shaky breath, before raising his eyes above the line of the press. I have been looking for Marilyn for ten years, since she first disappeared from her home. She was... she was not well when she disappeared, and... He stopped speaking for a moment as he struggled to keep his composure. I thought she might be dead. He stopped again as tears finally spilled from his eyes. And now she is. But for ten years, she was alive. I want to know what happened to my daughter in those years, what happened to her at the end. He closed his eyes momentarily. Marilyn was pregnant when she disappeared. The man swallowed with difficulty. Where is her child? Do I have a grandchild to remember her by? Somebody out there must know something. Cameras flashed as tears rolled down the man’s face. A police woman appeared beside him and guided him back into the station. The last shot was of the officer’s hand on his arm as the door closed behind them. Along the bottom of the screen the ticker tape announced a £10,000 reward for anyone bringing information that led to the conviction of Marilyn’s killer.

  Martin stayed leaning over the monitor for some moments, then slowly straightened. He looked at the ceiling and shook his head slowly. Finally, he turned and looked at Beth. Her face was pale and pinched, her mouth was drawn tight causing little lines to fan out from her lips.

  “What do we do?” she said. Even her voice sounded strange to Martin’s ears. Everything seemed strange. The room looked odd, like the walls were pressing in on him. He had barely slept for the last week, and Martin realised suddenly that he felt quite sick. He crossed the room and sank onto the leather sofa. He tried to think straight. This was no time to lose it.

  “OK,” he said decisively. “Here’s what I think. I think you and Ben should go away for a while. Take a holiday, take Ben away from this.”

  Beth’s mouth fell open. “What? Take him out of school? Run away?”

  “It’s not running away, it’s just...”

  “What is it then? Martin why would we run away? You don’t think.... you don’t think we’re in some kind of danger?”

  Martin shook his head, trying to keep his face impassive. “No, Beth. It’s not that.”

  “Then why run away?” Her voice was high and taut. Her fists were bunched and he could see the cords in her forearms.

  “Beth,” he said, his voice deep and even. He patted the sofa beside him. “Come here and sit down for a minute.”

  Beth frowned. For a moment, Martin felt reprimanded. She was going to tell him off again, tell him he was missing the point, that he understood nothing. But then her shoulders slumped and she walked over to sit beside him and he could feel the warmth of her body. He looked at her. She was staring blindly at the rug.

  “Beth,” he said. “It’s going to be OK.”

  She didn’t react. Martin put an arm around h
er shoulder and pulled her to him carefully. She might push him away at any moment. But she didn’t. He felt her warmth against him, her head on his shoulder. He wished the clock would stop.

  “We need time to figure this out,” he said.

  “About...” she hesitated. “About Marilyn’s father?”

  “Yes,” said Martin. “That, and this whole thing with Gallagher. We need some time for it to blow over, and I just think it’d be better if you and Ben were away from all this.”

  “But I don’t want us to be away, Martin.” She pulled away from him to look him in the eye. “I think this is something we have to deal with together, you and me.”

  Martin stared at her. She wanted them to do this together. There she was, still inside the circle of his arms, saying she didn’t want to go away from him.

  There was a knock at the door, and they both jumped.

  “Who’s that going to be?” Martin asked.

  Beth shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m not expecting anyone.”

  They looked at each other for a few seconds, and Martin laughed. “Come on. We’re getting paranoid here. It’s probably a canvasser.”

  Beth nodded and rolled her eyes. “Yes, it’s bound to be. Shall we just ignore it?”

  “No, I’ll go,” Martin said, standing up. “We still have to talk this over,” he said, as he was walking away.

  Through the glass of the front door, he could see a small figure. Maybe it was one of Ben’s friends he thought, as he opened the door. But no, it was a woman on the doorstep; a small and elderly woman. She looked nervous. She was clutching her handbag in front of her with two hands, as if it was a steering wheel.

  Martin smiled. “Hello,” he said. “If it’s something religious, I have to tell you we’re not interested.”

  “Religion?” she said, and then shook her head. “Oh no. No, it’s nothing like that.”

  He smiled patiently as she stared at him, and then she seemed to pull herself together. “You’re Martin?” she asked.

  Martin frowned quizzically. “I am,” he admitted slowly. “And who are you?”

  “You won’t know me,” she said. She coughed gently. “Do you think I could come inside?”

  Martin hesitated. “I’m in the middle of something important right now.”

  She nodded. “Yes,” she said, as if she understood. She opened her mouth as if she would say something more and then she clamped her lips shut again. Her eyes suddenly filled with tears but she blinked them away.

  Martin felt suddenly ashamed. “Are you alright? Look, here,” he said, opening the door wider. “Come inside.”

  She stepped carefully over the threshold, looking at the polished wooden floor.

  Now that he’d invited her inside, Martin wasn’t entirely sure what to do with her. “How do you know my name?” he asked.

  She glanced up, her eyes swiftly taking in the pale walls, the wooden shoe chest, the large mirror. “From the photographs,” she said.

  Martin tilted his head enquiringly. “Photographs?”

  “Marilyn’s photographs.”

  It was as though she’d slapped him. He recoiled, staring down at her as if she was some kind of disguised weapon that he’d let into the house.

  “You did know her then?” she asked. She was looking at his face, reading his reaction.

  “Who are you?” he managed to ask.

  “Marilyn was my friend,” she said simply. As if she’d suddenly remembered, she looked down at her handbag and fiddled with the clasp. She pulled out a batch of photographs and held them towards Martin. The top photograph was a picture of him standing outside the house with his bike, helping Ben put on his cycling helmet.

  “I didn’t know what to do with them,” she said. “I thought, maybe you’d want them.”

  Martin took the photographs from her and looked at her carefully. He could see no malice there, no pretence. “You’d better come in,” he said, opening the door to the sitting room.

  She walked into the room and Beth stood up from the sofa, her eyes flicking questioningly towards Martin.

  “You’re Beth,” said the woman.

  “Ye-es,” said Beth uncertainly, her eyes more pointedly seeking Martin’s in an obvious question.

  “My name is Margaret,” said the woman. “I was...”

  “Have a seat Margaret,” Martin cut her off. He gestured towards the armchair and Margaret sat down.

  Beth frowned. “What’s going on?”

  Martin was flicking through the pile of photographs, shaking his head in disbelief. He handed the pile to Beth.

  “What is this?” she asked. She turned over the top photograph, reading the words written on the back. She looked up in puzzlement. “Who are you?” she asked.

  “She’s a friend of Marilyn’s,” Martin answered. “These were Marilyn’s photographs.”

  “I found them in her flat,” Margaret said, as Beth sank back onto the sofa. “I had a key, you see. She’d given me a key in case she ever lost her key or got locked out.”

  Beth nodded.

  “I wondered where she was. You know, she was never one for staying out or anything like that. But she’d not been quite herself lately.”

  Martin grunted, and Margaret looked up at him. “Sorry,” he said. “Go on. You lived nearby then, did you?”

  “I lived in the flat upstairs. Marilyn moved in about five years ago. I didn’t get to know her straight away. She’s always been very quiet.”

  She looked at Beth and Martin in turn, trying to find something in their faces.

  “She was a nice girl,” she said, as though they’d contradicted her. “Kind, you know. She’d loaned me her computer, her laptop, because my television is broken. She’d brought me some DVDs to watch, though I didn’t like them all that much,” she said distractedly, shaking her head.

  “You got the photographs from her flat?” Martin reminded her.

  “Oh yes,” she said, nodding. “I wondered where she was. I hadn’t seen her since the previous morning, and that wasn’t like her you know. And I just... I don’t know. I had a strange feeling. So I knocked on her door and she didn’t answer. I was worried. I thought she might be in there. I thought she might have been taken ill perhaps. I worry about that myself, you know, what would happen if I fell ill and there was nobody around.”

  Martin nodded vigorously, hoping she would get back on track.

  “Well yes, anyway,” Margaret said. “When she didn’t answer, I decided to get my key and just check. I’d never done that before,” she insisted. “I’d never invade her privacy. She was a very private person.”

  “So you went into her flat?” Martin said. “And you found these photographs there?”

  “Yes,” Margaret said. “They were arranged on the table, and they... oh I don’t know. They looked odd. There was something odd about them.”

  “Well yes,” said Beth. “She’d been spying on us.”

  “I supposed so,” Margaret said rather sadly. “But I didn’t know what to think. She’d written the names on the back, and dates sometimes. She’d written your address. There’s a picture of the house, well several pictures in there somewhere.”

  “So what made you take the pictures?” Martin asked. “Why did you take them out of her flat?”

  She looked up at him searchingly. “It was when the men came round,” she said.

  Martin felt a coldness creeping over his skin. “Men?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Margaret said, as if agreeing with him that it was strange. “I was in the flat, and I’d just gathered up all the photographs, and suddenly I heard a noise and I turned round and there they were, these two men standing right there in the doorway of Marilyn’s flat.”

  Martin nodded. “And who were they?”

  “They said they were her friends,” Margaret said.

  Martin bit his lip. “But you didn’t believe them?”

  She shook her head. “No, I didn’t,” she said scornfully. “Th
ey were rough sorts, you know. Common. I was frightened, to tell you the truth. I wanted to get out.”

  “And they let you out?”

  “Well yes,” Margaret said. “I just went along with their story as if I believed them. But I took the photographs. I just had a feeling I shouldn’t leave them behind.”

  Beth clamped a hand over her mouth. “Oh my God,” she muttered.

  “And then I didn’t know what to do,” Margaret said. “I’ve been looking at these photographs and then I saw the newspaper,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “If I’d had my television then I’d have known sooner. I didn’t know what had happened to poor Marilyn.”

  Martin stood up abruptly and let out a long breath. “OK,” he said, with more clarity than he felt. “OK, we need to hear everything you’ve got to say about Marilyn, everything she ever told you. And we need to hear about these men, and anything that’s happened since.” He looked at Beth for her agreement. She nodded.

  And then the door burst open and Ben tumbled inside, closely followed by Jusef.

  “Mum, can I go round to Jusef’s?” he asked. For no apparent reason, he began a little dance and tripped over Margaret’s foot. “Oh, sorry,” he said, noticing her for the first time. He looked back to his mum. “Can I? He’s got a new game and it’s aaaaaweesome!” He threw his hands in the air, as if addressing an audience.

  Beth smiled. “OK, but you’re not staying for tea.”

  “Yes!” Ben said, punching the air. “Come on J!” he said, as they ran from the room. “Laters!” he called, as he closed the door.

  Margaret was staring in the direction Ben had gone. Slowly she turned back to Martin. He could see from the astonishment in her face that she’d understood. “He’s Marilyn’s,” she said simply.

  “He’s ours,” Martin said firmly.

  Margaret’s face crumpled in confusion. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...”

  “It’s OK,” Martin cut her off. “Do you want a cup of tea? We’ve a lot of talking to do.”

  Jango shifted uneasily in the passenger seat. “But I always do the driving,” he said.