by J. M. Hewitt
Irrationally, childishly she wanted to stamp her foot. ‘I’m not wrong, this isn’t wishful thinking. This man, this boy, is not my son.’
As they continued to silently watch her, Emma wished Jade were by her side. Jade wouldn’t have doubted her like these men were doing now. She would have held Emma’s hand, a silent support, like always. Suddenly she regretted bringing Martin instead of asking Jade. She glanced at him, but his eyes held no expression. They were dark and blank. Like the eyes of his son used to be.
Paul said, ‘Okay, Emma, thank you––’
Even though he seemed to accept her answer Emma felt the need to convince them. ‘IT’S NOT HIM!’ She slammed her hand to the window and stared at the body of the boy in the next room. ‘It’s not him,’ she said, quieter now, as her breath misted up the glass.
* * *
Carrie nodded. ‘Okay, Emma, we really appreciate––’
‘He’s not fat like that, Jordan. He was thin, always was thin, even though he ate like a horse, he never put on any weight.’ Emma pushed on.
Carrie nodded, eager to get her out now. She restrained the sigh that threatened to heave from her. Another body. Another victim.
‘Okay.’ Carrie’s voice snapped out into the room and she walked over, herded Emma and Martin towards the door. ‘I’m with you, Emma, but we had to be sure. If I’m honest, given the time that has passed I would have expected more water damage. I agree, this isn’t Jordan. I don’t think this man has been in the canal long enough for it to be Jordan.’ She nodded, almost talking to herself when she said, ‘I had to be sure.’
In the corridor, away from the faint antiseptic smell, Carrie let go of Emma’s arm. She laid her head against the cool white paint of the wall.
Emma spoke at last. ‘So, it’s another body, another murder.’
Carrie clenched her jaw. ‘Can I leave you here?’ She glanced at her watch as he spoke. ‘I need to get to the station, to report this, but I’d like to catch up with you both later, if that’s okay?’
‘Yes,’ replied Martin. ‘Thank you.’
Cold words, thought Carrie as Martin guided Emma down the corridor towards the car park.
A cold man. And it could be as simple as shock.
Or it could be something far more sinister. Where was he last night?
When she slipped back into the room the pathologist, Andy, had joined Paul.
‘What have you got, then?’ she asked.
‘Not been in the water long,’ Andy said, brisk and business-like now the family had gone. ‘Cause of death almost certainly drowning, but it looks like he was immobilised before going into the water.’ He looked at Carrie over his half-moon glasses. ‘Knocked out, in layman’s terms.’ He studied his clipboard. ‘His teeth were not in good condition, but one of his teeth has been newly broken.’ He looked back into the room, the body still on display. ‘And look, see that faint mark there?’ He gestured to a slight imprint.
Carrie gazed through the glass.
‘A punch.’ She looked up, fixing her eyes first on Andy before turning to Paul. ‘Again.’
Their silence spoke volumes.
Twenty-One
DAY FOUR
‘If she didn’t think it was Jordan why did she put me through that?’ Emma hissed as they walked back to Martin’s car. ‘That was cruel. She doesn’t like me, that detective, she looks down her nose at me.’ When Martin didn’t answer she turned her glare on him.
He shrugged. ‘Do you want to come back to mine?’ he asked, half-heartedly. ‘Or I can give you a lift back to—’
‘Yours,’ she snapped.
* * *
The first thing she saw in her second visit to his apartment was the article about Jordan on the table beside the window, looking out over the river. Trying not to look at it she threw herself into the chair, spun it around and gazed out across the Irwell. The same river next to her house, but a totally different life.
Suddenly she was exhausted, yet earlier, she had been elated. In spite of how the detective seemed to view her, she had felt revitalised, reborn after the body ID. The body that wasn’t that of her son. She had felt hopeful, daring to wish that there was another ending, one that didn’t involve her in a morgue. Only now another thought was pushing through; that the agony was simply being prolonged. She looked up at Martin, wondered why she had come back to his home. Because going back to hers was too painful, she concluded. The silence, the memories, the absence of Jordan.
‘Tough day,’ Martin mumbled.
She looked at him, hands in pockets, staring at nothing on the opposite wall. How had today impacted him, seeing that body there on the slab?
‘Did you ever feel like they might not be… dead? Your parents?’ Her words tailed off to a whisper, and even before she had finished her question something glinted in his eyes.
He came over to sit beside her in the other leather recliner.
‘Not now, not anymore.’
‘But you did?’ she pressed him, eager to hear someone else’s story that matched the way she felt right now.
His eyes flickered towards the window and the left half of his mouth twisted into a rueful smile.
‘I had these… fantasies,’ he said, his tone lowered as if he was sharing a confidence. ‘Silly, extreme daydreams. I imagined the plane broke apart, my mum and dad were ejected from the flight, into the sea. They were strong swimmers and there was debris in the ocean that they clung onto while lifeboats made their way to the sea-swimming survivors.’ He shook his head as if to dispel the memory. ‘It was flawed, it wasn’t possible. The route of the flight and the site where it went down was nowhere near the sea.’ He closed his eyes but not before she saw the pain in them. ‘It didn’t stop me, though, I reached for another daydream, I actually went so far as to research survivors’ stories from across the years. Those I read about had mostly experienced crash landings, where the odds seemed better. My parents’ flight had crashed into a hotel, it was a fireball, there was no chance there would be survivors.’ He opened his eyes and she breathed in sharply at his expression. ‘It was a fucking fireball.’
Emma swallowed as she remembered the scenes from the television and newspapers. Hesitantly she lifted a hand, a gesture of comfort, before changing her mind. He didn’t notice, he was still talking as though now he had started, he couldn’t stop.
‘I read about a couple who were leaving their country because of a civil war, they were white South African, I think, and they stole a couple’s passport and tickets and got on a plane, using the passport owner’s identity! I said this to my sister, to Claire, I actually said those words; “What if Mum and Dad had their passports and tickets stolen? What if they’re still in France?”’
‘What did she say?’ Emma asked.
‘She looked at me like I was a fucking idiot,’ Martin replied, his eyes glinting now, with hurt or anger Emma couldn’t tell. ‘She often looks at me like that.’ He breathed out, shook his head, that strange smile twitching at his lips again. ‘I didn’t tell her anymore of my fantasies. I got over them eventually, when a hundred and nine bodies had been accounted for, and tallied against the hundred and nine people that had been on board. When we found my mother’s jewellery, and my father’s pocket book.’
There was a long moment of silence while Emma absorbed his words. Was that to be her life now, waiting, fantasising, only to have her hopes dashed again and again? And that look in Martin’s eyes, that deep, dark look. What had that done to him, that tragic event in his life? Had it sent him mad, turned him into a monster? One minute she was almost sure he had nothing to do with her own tragedy, the next she was plunged into doubt again.
‘Do you think Jordan isn’t dead?’ Martin interrupted her thoughts.
She hadn’t fully realised it, but they were the words she had been waiting for. Emma half stood. Her legs trembled visibly and she fell back to the chair. ‘Yes,’ she said, and it was more of a cry. ‘Well, I don’t know. But while he hasn�
��t been found, there is a chance, there’s a real chance that he is not dead. Your mum and dad were accounted for, you said it yourself; there were bodies, belongings. There’s no… body, Jordan hasn’t been found. And,’ she continued, holding up a finger now, ‘I don’t think he was pushed. Jordan never drank himself to oblivion, he always wanted to be in control. He was very… controlled, and he took too much care over his appearance to drink heavily. All these men who have been pushed, all the ones I’ve read about in the papers, they were all drunk, beyond drunk.’
‘Drugs?’ Martin asked.
She shook her head firmly, lips pressed tightly together. ‘Never.’
He raised his eyes at her, she interpreted it as a ‘what would you know’ look. She ignored it, pushed on.
‘Really. When he was a teenager, I offered him beer and a cigarette. I didn’t want me and him to be like my mum and me. I wanted him to know he never had to hide anything from me, that if he smoked I wouldn’t mind, that if he drank it was okay.’
‘And?’
She shrugged, let out a little laugh at the memory, a real one, not like the fake smiles she had tried to present to him before. ‘He declined, on the cigarettes anyway. He told me how awful they smelled and how he wished I wouldn’t smoke inside the house.’
She stood up, properly this time, moved behind the chair to stare outside. She felt her jeans slipping past her narrow hips. Hooking her thumbs into the belt loops she hitched them up.
Martin looked at her. ‘When did you last eat?’ he asked. ‘If I make something, an omelette maybe, will you eat it?’
She thought back to the sandwich she’d had the night her world was blown to pieces. Was that really the last food she’d had? As if to answer her, her stomach growled. ‘I’ll try,’ she replied.
She remained by the window while he fussed around with the pan, the eggs, some potatoes and an onion. A Spanish omelette, she noticed, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a decent, home-cooked meal. Not even before all this happened, she realised. When had she stopped taking care of herself?
Her thoughts moved on, Martin’s story lingering around the fringes of her mind. ‘People always say they want to know, they want closure.’ She spoke suddenly, her voice jarring in the silence of the apartment. ‘You know, you always hear mothers saying that, they just want to know, so they can move on.’ She looked over at him, her eyes dark, soulful and mournful. ‘I know I said earlier I want to know, but I really don’t. I don’t want that.’
‘You don’t?’
‘I mean, if he’s okay, somewhere, I want to know that.’ She watched him carefully, hoping her words came across as she wished them to, to give him a chance to confess if he was involved in Jordan’s disappearance. ‘If there’s that, then I want to know. I wouldn’t be angry, I wouldn’t even tell the police. I could just go and get him. But I don’t want him to be gone.’
He nodded, concentrating on the steaming pan in front of him. She felt her body sag, deflated once again.
‘As long as they don’t find a body, there’s a chance he is alive.’ She tried again, still with her eyes on his. I need more, she thought. I need him to relax, to be comfortable with me. ‘Do you have a smoke?’
He shook his head as he cracked the eggs into a bowl. ‘I quit, years ago.’
She swore softly, sat back down in the chair. ‘Do you remember that mother of the little boy who went missing in Greece, and the other one, the mother of the one murdered on the Moors. They’re still on the television, in the newspapers, they say it all the time: I just want closure, I just want a body to be found so I can lay him to rest.’ She hung her head. ‘I don’t want that. If they don’t find him, something else could have happened. He could have run away, left and gone down to London, or something.’
‘Was he unhappy? Were there any signs he might have thought about running away?’
‘Not that I noticed. Maybe I should make contact with some of his friends, try and speak to them, see if they knew anything.’
Infuriatingly he nodded again, placid, calm, not looking like someone who had something to hide. Come on, she told herself. Try harder, make Jordan real to him. Inspiration struck and she spoke again. ‘He went to Greece, you know,’ she said suddenly. ‘On his own, a summer exchange thing, when he was fifteen.’
He lowered the heat on the hob, made his way over to sit in the chair beside her. ‘Did he? I like Greece. Did he enjoy it?’
She nodded, but her eyes were a million miles away, back there in that time, those brief hours after he returned home from his summer away.
‘He was different when he returned.’ A frown creased her brow. ‘I think it was in Greece he realised he could be…’ She tailed off before speaking again, ‘But when he came back, he changed again, went back to how he was before.’
Martin lowered the heat on the hob. ‘Tell me what you mean about him changing,’ he said. ‘You keep saying stuff, hinting at things, but you never finish telling me.’
She didn’t reply, couldn’t reply. She wanted to make Jordan real to Martin, but not that real, not the truth. She didn’t tell that to anyone, not even herself.
She shook her head, smiled up at him brightly. ‘How long is that omelette going to take? I’m suddenly starving.’
Twenty-Two
DAY FIVE
The sun woke Emma. White, bright, and she squinted against it. Why hadn’t she closed the curtains?
She sat up, rubbed her hair which felt as rough under her fingers as a bird’s nest and looked around the room. A form deep under the covers next to her made her catch her breath.
Martin. She was in his home. In the home of the man who might have harmed her son. Rummaging under the covers she moved her hands over her body. She was fully clothed, and for that she was thankful. He was on his back, mouth slightly open, gentle snores the only sound in the quiet room. She stared at him, and it could have been twenty years ago, watching him in deep slumber. But the world crashed in, this wasn’t then, it was now and this stranger she once knew so well was sleeping beside her as though they were a normal couple, and this was just an everyday morning. Bile filled her mouth and she clapped a hand to her lips.
She looked back to the window. It must be late for the sun to be up already, and there were no clocks in Martin’s bedroom.
Emma slid from the bed and darted into the kitchen area where she pulled her coat and shoes on quickly. Her hands shook as she looked at the time on the oven. Ten past nine. There had been no canal walk yesterday when she left the morgue, and none this morning. Anything could have happened.
On the black granite counter, she saw the empty bottle of red wine. They’d finished it, after dinner, although she thought she’d had more glasses than him.
She bit her lip to stop a scream as disgust flowed through her as easily as the wine had last night. What was she doing, staying out all night, staying with an old lover who had wandered back into her life after twenty years, when she should be out there, looking for her missing son?
You’re baiting Martin, she told herself. You’re trying to find out if he had something to do with it.
But the thought didn’t make her feel any better and another one came in its place. Would she have to go further trying to snare him? Would she have to sleep with him? Was that why she kept waking up to find him beside her every day? Was that what he was hoping for – late night after drinks passion, or lazy, early morning sex?
With one last look around his apartment, scanning the furnishings for any sign Jordan might have been there and seeing nothing, Emma slipped out of the door and ran for the lift.
The sound of the banging on the door made Jade jump. She had dropped Nia off at her morning nursery, was planning to spend the day alternating between checking to see if Emma had come home yet, watching the television to see if the latest man had been identified and napping. Her sleep had been broken for days now; the thought, the realisation of the tragedy always there, simmering just below th
e surface. It was exhausting. It must be ten times worse for Emma, she acknowledged, and just as she was thinking about her friend, the sound of urgent rapping at the front door came, as though she had conjured her up with the power of her mind.
She lunged for the door, let out a yelp as Emma stood on her step, hand raised to hammer at the door some more. Jade pulled her into a hug.
‘I’ve been worried, where have you been?’ she cried, drawing Emma inside.
Jade stood back, held Emma at arm’s length as she studied her friend. She looked like she’d been sleeping rough, unkempt, her hair everywhere, and Jade was pretty sure she was wearing the same clothes she’d seen her go out in yesterday.
Jade’s eyes widened. ‘Was it… was it him?’
Emma shook her head, reached out and smoothed Jade’s hair back. ‘No, sweetheart, it wasn’t him.’
Jade staggered backwards, felt the arm of the sofa behind her and she sat down on it. Emma followed her, and for a while they sat in silence, clinging to each other, both feeling the deep pain of the absence of the only man who had been in both of their lives.
‘Jade, I really need to pee, put the kettle on, love, and I’ll tell you all about it.’
By the time Emma returned downstairs, Jade had switched on the fire and had a hot drink ready. Emma grabbed the mug gratefully, wrapping her fingers around it and sinking into the chair.
‘God, I need this,’ she gasped.
‘Where have you been?’ Jade asked, joining Emma on the sofa. ‘I was worried. I saw everything going on at the canal. I… I didn’t know what to think.’
‘Another body pulled out of the water. Another man.’ Emma fixed her eyes on Jade. ‘I had to go and identify him.’
