by CM Thompson
“So you collected Daniel from Kings and drove straight to his house?”
“Yes.” Another yawn.
“Did Daniel say anything during the drive?”
“He muttered a lot, I didn’t really listen.”
Daniel never shut up for the whole fifteen minute drive. Peter had finally agreed to “take her away” just to shut him up but it didn’t even slow Daniel’s ranting. Peter just tuned him out. The face scratches had made him feel a little sorry for Daniel, but not sympathetic enough to take Anne-Marie in himself, oh no, he was never going to do that again. No, he was going to take her straight to Sherri. His mother had made Anne-Marie like this, she should deal with the consequences.
“What time did you arrive back at the house?”
“It was about ten to five.”
“And then what happened?”
“Daniel originally didn’t want to get out the car.” This little detail of Daniel’s cowardice suddenly seemed important. “He was afraid of what Anne-Marie might be doing. He waited in the car as I went to the door. I couldn’t hear anything so I went into the house.” She was there, waiting for them to come home, right by the front door, waiting more patiently in death than she had ever waited in life. Peter had stood frozen for a moment, staring with cold relief. “I told Daniel to call an ambulance.”
There is a long silence, the officers watch and wait.
Peter closes his eyes, remembering the crumpled body, her hand outstretched in one last plea for help, the blood, the open, pleading eyes. “She was already … she … she …”
“Do you need a minute?”
Peter nods, trying to control his emotions. He is not going to cry here. It’s only because he is so tired that he can’t … He won’t cry here. Not for her.
“Would you like something to drink?”
Peter shakes his head no, angrily rubs his eyes and leans forward, in an I-am-ready gesture.
“You said you pushed open the door? It wasn’t locked?”
“No. My sister … she usually leaves the door unlocked.” Another cause of the endless arguments.
“She often left the door unlocked?” The officer parrots in slight surprise. They wonder why Peter thinks his sister left the door unlocked if Daniel had been the last one to leave.
“Well it’s not like anyone is going to steal that shit.” Peter unthinkingly mimics his mother, to no one’s amusement.
“Did you move your sister in any way?”
“No.” Peter knew she was dead, but still had to touch her, just slightly. She was still warm. He rubs his fingers against the stubble on his chin, trying to get rid of the feeling still lingering in his fingers. The feeling of her warm skin won’t leave him, neither will the smell of the blood. This shouldn’t be how he remembers his sister. “Fuck off” shouldn’t be the last words that you hear from anyone.
“Did Daniel move her in any way?”
“No.”
Daniel had deflated on seeing her and been utterly useless. His only contribution had been to stammer over the phone to the emergency services, then they had both waited in silence, staring, finally united with a sense of guilt.
The officers stare at Peter, waiting for him to say more.
“Did Daniel say anything?”
“No, he called for an ambulance, but I don’t remember him saying anything else.” What do they think he said? You grab her legs and I will get her arms? Trash day is tomorrow? It’s not like they tried to hide her. They did nothing, said nothing. What do these officers want him to say?
“What kind of relationship did Anne-Marie and Daniel have?”
The realisation hits through the sleepy fog, they think Daniel had something to do with Anne-Marie’s death. The thought had never even crossed Peter’s mind, he thought his brother-in-law was far too much of a coward to do such a thing. He just thought his sister had done something stupid, again, but only this time she was paying the consequences.
“My sister was working through some problems, it was affecting their relationship a bit.” Sometimes Anne-Marie was going to leave Daniel, sometimes Daniel swore he was going to leave Anne-Marie, but it was always just talk. Sometimes Peter wished one of them would leave, just to change the conversation, but he knew if one of them ever did, the other one would never shut up about it. Without each other, they would both still be boring and miserable. They would still be doing all they could to make everyone else miserable too.
“When did you last speak to your sister?” They have seen his phone, they already know the answer to this one, Peter thinks irritably, forgetting that he had changed his sister’s name to Bitch on his phone, in a fit of anger.
“Anne-Marie called me at three this morning. When I asked her what was wrong, she said that I wouldn’t understand and hung up on me. She likes to do things like that for attention sometimes, I don’t take her seriously.”
Now he sounds like an asshole. How do you explain Anne-Marie and Daniel? And their relationship? They were unhappy and they liked to make everyone around them unhappy, they were united in self-pity? That they deserved each other? They were the reason he rarely got a full night’s sleep or any enjoyment out of life? Peter wishes that the officers would just leave him alone, let him sleep. He could answer their questions later, when he could make sense of everything. He could be more articulate, actually think of examples to give them, but right now he really can’t think straight. Everything he says comes out wrong. What should he say? He was a sounding board to both of them but neither of them ever said anything worth recording.
“Anne-Marie had a previous incident in January. Do you know what happened?”
“I don’t really … she fell. She was drunk and she tripped down the stairs.”
“Is that what Anne-Marie told you?”
“No, Daniel did, Anne-Marie didn’t really want to talk about it.” His sister’s voice echoes in his mind. “I should have said he pushed me,” that’s what she said. She had been drunk at the time and furious with Daniel for some petty reason. She was in a paranoid stage at the time, convinced that everyone was out to get her. But she will have the last laugh, she assured him with a maniacal laugh. Peter, as usual, just dismissed it as stupid drunk talk.
“Were you concerned about Anne-Marie’s drinking?”
“She said it was under control.” Here he goes again, protecting her with lies. Of course he was concerned at first, wanted her to get help when it first started. Didn’t want her turning into his mother, but Sherri insisted Anne-Marie was fine. Then she just got more and more abusive. At that point Peter had to give up, for his own sanity’s sake, give up on his sister and leave her for dead.
Sherri Fowler doesn’t know what the fuck is going on. She needs to see her daughter, she knows that much, if everyone would just piss off out of her way. First that worthless twat Dummy Danny kept calling her. You would think the fact she won’t answer would give him a hint, but no. He has called twice today and that is two times too many.
Then Peter called and babbled a lot of things that didn’t make sense, some nonsense that Anne-Marie has had an accident and that the police needed to see her. She told him he was too old for these kind of stupid pranks and to grow the fuck up. He insisted over and over, daring to raise his voice at her! And then finally he yelled that Anne-Marie was dead. She had an accident and she was dead. When she asked him what kind of accident, he was snappish and didn’t want to give details – a sure sign he was lying. But then he told her that Anne-Marie may have killed herself. Which was utter bollocks! Her daughter would never do such a thing. Peter had cowardly backtracked to babbling again about how Anne-Marie had an accident, that Sherri needed to come down to the police station, that the police wanted to talk to her about Anne-Marie. No, he couldn’t pick her up, he wasn’t allowed to leave the police station. A likely fucking story.
Sherri somehow made it into her car, while in her mind she is driving to pick up her baby girl, take her home, away from that asshole of a
husband. She knows Peter is lying, she can’t be dead. She might be in trouble, people were always out to get her baby, the police should know better than to play along. He is lying, lying, LYING. She couldn’t be dead. She is still so young, she had made some stupid mistakes, like marrying the king of idiots, but she still has time to fix her mistakes, she still had time. Sherri had told her daughter over and over not to marry someone who promised her the world, but to marry someone who actually gave her the world; she shouldn’t marry anyone even slightly like Anne-Marie’s own cowardly louse of a father. Anne-Marie typically refused to listen to Sherri’s worldly wisdom.
“Now look what you have got yourself into!” she bellows to an empty car seat.
Anne-Marie never listened to her. (Peter didn’t either but that is because he is an idiot.) Anne-Marie had no confidence. That was her biggest problem, she could never believe that she could have done much better, certainty better than Daniel. She was too much like her father, despite Sherri’s best efforts. Sherri tries to concentrate on the road, every fucking idiot seems to be on the road and in her way.
“Fuck you!” she screams over and over, as they honk horns and gesture. Don’t they know her daughter needs her? “Eat shit!” she screams at an elderly lady who is trying to cross the road at the wrong moment. She parks, taking up two spaces in the police station carpark, and stands outside, furiously smoking cigarette after cigarette in an effort to calm down, refusing to allow even one tear to fall from her eye.
She gives her name to the gormless twat on the reception desk and is ushered quickly into an interview room, bringing her own smoke screen with her. Sherri badly wants another cigarette, anything to help stop her fingers from trembling, to stop the shaking palpitations coming from her heart. She needs the assurance that only comes from setting something on fire and inhaling it. Her grief makes her feel weak and Sherri despises the weak. Sherri is usually the one to prey on the weak. You wouldn’t think to look at her that she was capable of being mean – demure, with little grey curls and granny glasses. You wouldn’t suspect her catchphrase is “I expected better”, or that she often ends conversations with, “We are done here.” Nor does she believe in using “please or thank you”.
Sherri has been in the interview room for only a few minutes but already knows that these officers are useless. She can tell just by looking at their gormless faces. She doesn’t understand why she is even being interviewed. The female officer Col-Vin looks like she has just graduated and the older one Grimm? Well, who can expect any kind of competence from someone with a name as ridiculous as that! He looks as idiotic as his name suggests. Where is her useless son? And where are they hiding that bumbling cockwaffle, Daniel? He has some explaining to do! She doesn’t have time for this shit.
“… and I know this must be hard for you right now, but we need to ask you a few questions to help us understand what happened to your daughter.”
Sherri understands that her daughter is dead and that her daughter shouldn’t be dead. She doesn’t understand why she is dead or what happened but she is starting to guess what or who might be to blame. The officer continues asking questions: “Where she has been today?” “Did she receive a phone call from anyone today?” “And what time?”
They seemed particularly interested in what time she received those calls from Daniel. But that was nothing out the ordinary, the Toad never stopped calling her. She was always there if her daughter needed her, that’s what was important.
Now they are asking even stupider questions. “What kind of relationship did Anne-Marie and Daniel have?”
A shitty one, obviously. She has to hide her face in a tissue so the officers won’t see her expression. What should she say? I don’t know why my daughter insisted on staying with that warthog? That Sherri had offered plenty of times to take Anne-Marie away from that stupid fucking idiot, and her daughter always insisted on staying because she loved him. It was bloody revolting. Why won’t they tell her what happened?
“I kept telling her to leave him but she wouldn’t leave him.” The police need to know the truth after all.
“Why would she want to leave him?”
Sherri thinks quickly, what answer will get Daniel into the most trouble? Because he is a greedy pig? Stingy too, never gave her daughter anything she needed. Sherri had to privately slip her daughter money for essentials every time she saw her.
“We thought Daniel was having an affair. She would call me in tears sometimes.” Sherri would always go round after these calls, her daughter always looking tired and thin. She would be wearing ratty clothes despite the money Sherri gave her for new ones. All of her money must have gone on the ever-increasing swill bill for the pig. But at least Anne-Marie’s eyes always lit up at the sight of her mother and they would sit and drink the wine Sherri had brought. They would talk for ages over her suspicions. The wine would always go down too fast, even when Sherri brought two bottles. When it was gone, they still had so much left to cover so Sherri would buy food and more alcohol from the mousy woman in the corner shop, whilst Anne-Marie had a shower.
“Was there any evidence of an affair or do you know who with?” The officers are making careful notes now. She hopes they will find out who Daniel had been seeing, she would like a little word with them.
“No, we were trying to find out more.” It is hard to believe that there were two women in the world stupid enough to even kiss Daniel. Anne-Marie would never let Sherri confront Daniel. Made her swear on her life. Sherri sees now that she should have ignored her daughter, for her own good. She should have confronted the pig outright. Just wait until she sees that bastard.
“When did you last speak to your daughter?”
“I have been on holiday for the last two weeks. I came back on Tuesday. I didn’t speak to her before I left.” Sherri had been looking forward to sitting down and telling Anne-Marie about all the dreadful people on her holiday, the disappointing rooms and disgusting food. Now she will never speak to her again. A sob threatens; no, not here. She will cry later. “I haven’t spoken to her since the beginning of June. She had been a bit down. I think she was hoping Daniel would be taking her on holiday too.”
“Oh?”
“He is too tight to take her anywhere nice.” Miserable sod. Sherri had slipped her daughter the usual cash and promised to take her away somewhere nice when she got back.
Sherri sees now that she should have taken her daughter away when they first suspected an affair. Sure, he tried to pretend it was just one drunken kiss at that party Anne-Marie hadn’t been invited to and he had no business being there in the first place. They all knew it had been more than just one kiss. He was doing things he shouldn’t.
Why did she agree not to talk about it? Now she is suspicious. Just why had her daughter begged her not to say anything? Why are these officers asking these questions? Just what has that bastard been doing to her?
“Your daughter had an incident back in January. Do you know what happened?”
“She tripped down the stairs.” Peter had only told her that Anne-Marie had an accident and that was after Anne-Marie was released from hospital. No one had told Sherri that Anne-Marie had been drunk out of her mind at the time. Sherri didn’t speak to her son for a month for not telling her sooner. She had rushed to see her daughter, bearing flowers, chocolates and wine. It was a good job she had too! Her daughter looked at her with an expression of sheer joy and relief. The room she was in wasn’t helping either, and Anne-Marie had moved into the spare room to escape Daniel’s snoring or just, Sherri suspects, to escape Daniel. The room was sparse, nothing in there to make it homey or welcoming. No wonder her daughter felt down. Only a waft of something slightly unpleasant in the air, mixed with the smell of the flowers, gave any hint of how the room had previously been. But Sherri had not noticed the smell, she was too busy fussing over her daughter. Anne-Marie repeatedly assured her mother that it had been a silly accident, that she had tripped down the stairs, nothing to be concerne
d over. Sherri sees now that she was just putting on a brave face. The same stupid brave face she put on when Sherri told her it was time to take down those stupid babyish elephant curtains. Her daughter was too sweet for this world.
“Did she say any more about the incident or why she fell?”
“No, she just told me it was an accident.” What did the officers know? What are they not telling her? “After the accident, a few weeks after, Anne-Marie called me in tears.”
The officers lean forward slightly, oh finally they are interested! “Oh?”
If you say ‘Oh’ like that again you stupid man, you will regret it, Sherri thinks, trying hard not to let her anger show on her face.
“Daniel refused to give her some money for a haircut, told her to do it herself. And stupidly, she did. I had to help her out.” Anne-Marie had tried, bless her, but she was not a gifted hairdresser. Sherri took one look at the brutal cut and ordered her daughter into her car. She had bullied her own regular stylist until she agreed to fix Anne-Marie’s hair, calling it an “emergency appointment”. Then after Sherri had paid, she treated her daughter to a bite to eat and drinks to get over the upset. It had taken quite a few drinks too, just to see her daughter smile. Sherri even slipped her daughter more money for new clothes. Sherri was just having a cup of tea with her daughter, when the pig came home, and he dared to say that Anne-Marie looked nice! No wonder her daughter was always so thin, with that man taking everything and not looking after her properly. Sherri hated seeing her daughter cry and hated him for making her cry. She will get him for this. He won’t get away with this.
“Were you concerned about your daughter’s drinking?”
“Well, anyone who was married to Daniel would need a drink every now and again, but my daughter did not have a drinking problem.”
