Inheritance

by Thomas Wymark

I held the phone against my ear. A drummer took up residence in my chest and started pounding, as though making up for lost time. I couldn’t speak. Even if I had been able to, I wouldn’t have known what to say.

  The phone clicked at the other end of the line. Too late I found my voice.

  ‘Neil?’ I said. ‘Neil?’

  His name tasted bitter on my tongue. I couldn’t shut the drummer up, and now he had his foot against my lungs. Pushing them down, constricting them so that only a fraction of the breath I needed to live would flow into them.

  I dropped the phone onto the work surface. It clattered to the edge and dropped onto the floor. I didn’t try to catch it.

  All I could think about was those poor girls. Missing, presumably dead, at the hands of Neil. I staggered to the kitchen sink, kicking the phone along the floor as I went, and threw up.

  I knew what had happened to them. I had seen it all in my dreams. The terror in their eyes. The pain they had gone through. And I wondered now if the woman I had seen, writing at the table, was one of the mothers of these girls. Or if she was me, wretched and scared for not having spoken out. For not having done anything to stop my husband from killing.

  I retched again. Turned the kitchen tap on and moved the washing-up bowl out of the sink. I should have moved it before being sick. I decided I would throw it away and just buy a new one.

  I wiped my eyes and nose on my sleeve. My eyes were wet from the exertion of being sick, but I hadn’t been crying. For the first time in a while, the stabbing pain came back into my leg. I kicked against the cupboard door underneath the sink, tried to take my mind off the pain. The pain from my leg and the pain from what Neil had done. I folded my arms on the edge of the sink and slumped my head onto them. Kicking the cupboard, fighting for breath and cursing the drummer in my chest.

  It was too late to ring Mum and Dad. Too late to ring Abi. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to speak to anyone anyway. I looked down at the phone on the kitchen floor. The battery sleeve had come off and another small piece of plastic lay next to it. It confirmed to me that it was the right decision to not call anyone.

  It took me twenty minutes to get ready to go to the police station. Actually, it took me two minutes to get ready, but eighteen minutes to calm down.

  The taxi was cold and smelled damp. I looked out of the window into the dark streets. I already knew that I didn’t want to see Neil. I couldn’t work out what was going on inside me regarding him. There was a feeling, I could only put it down to love, that seemed rooted to me. It was as though I was trying to pull it out, get rid of it, but it was dug in so deep that nothing I could do would shift it. But obviously I was pouring tons of other stuff onto it. Disgust, hate, vitriol. Everything related to the missing girls. I was frightened that if I saw him, it might bring up the deeply rooted feeling. The nice one. But what he had done was unforgivable. There could be no room for love.

  ‘I see they’ve got someone.’

  At first it sounded like a noise of the night. Just one of the many sounds floating around us that we subconsciously delete.

  ‘I said, I see they’ve got someone.’

  It was the driver. Looking back at me, over his shoulder.

  ‘Sorry?’ I said.

  ‘For those girls. Apparently they’ve arrested someone.’

  My stomach turned over. There surely couldn’t be anything more to come up. I covered my eyes with my hand. Looked down at my lap.

  ‘Have they?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, some bloke off the Internet apparently. They knew him, the girls. Went to meet him. He was taking them on holiday apparently.

  ‘One of the girls phoned home, to tell her mum not to worry. They’d seen all the hoo-hah in the papers and that. So one of them rang to say they were OK.’

  I managed to answer.

  ‘They’re OK?’

  ‘Yeah, who knows what might have happened if one of them hadn’t phoned. But they’ve got the bloke.’

  If the story of the arrest had been on the television and radio, everyone would have seen it. Everyone would have seen Neil. I thought about Mum and Dad. Thought about Abi and Oliver. My heart stopped as I thought about Michael and Rose.

  ‘Did they show the man?’ I said. ‘The one who took them? Did they show him on T.V?’

  ‘He didn’t take them, they went with him.’

  I bit my lip.

  ‘Was there a picture of him?’

  ‘I don’t know, love. I’ve been on shift since lunchtime, I’ve only got the radio. They mentioned his age, I think. Said he was fifty-eight or something. On the Internet he had told the girls he was eighteen. Bet they got a shock when they met him.’

  Involuntarily my hand clamped to my mouth. Neil wasn’t fifty-eight. Neither was Colin Connell. I pictured Doctor Jones. White hair, wrinkled face. He looked older than Colin Connell. But how old? He could have been around fifty-eight, give or take a year or two.

  I pulled my hand away from my mouth.

  ‘They’ve only arrested one person?’ I said.

  ‘That’s all there was, apparently. Just this bloke.’

  I wanted to believe what the driver was telling me. But he drove a cab. How much of what he said could be construed as factual? What if he had got the age wrong? What if the man was younger than that? Neil’s age?

  ‘Do you know where they were found? Where they got him?’

  ‘Up in the Lake District, apparently. The three of them turned up at a hotel near one of the lakes and that was when one of the girls phoned home. Apparently.’

  I put a hold on all the hateful acid I had been pouring on that deep root inside me. Gave it some air.

  But they don’t arrest you for no reason. Neil must still have done something. He had sounded a little drunk. Perhaps it was just that. Drunk and disorderly. It wasn’t completely out of the question. He used to play rugby.

  But what about all the lies? The working late and the money from the joint account? Something wasn’t right. If the police saw fit to arrest him, perhaps I should hold onto the acid a while longer. Even if it turned out he wasn’t a killer.

  ‘Are you alright, love?’

  So maybe there wasn’t a conspiracy between Neil, Colin Connell and the doctor. What a difference that would make.

  ‘Love?’

  Was he talking to me? I brought my eyes into focus.

  The taxi had stopped outside the police station. The driver had turned in his seat and was looking between me and the fare reader.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘How much?’

  ‘Eight-fifty, love,’ he said.

  I gave him ten and told him to keep the change.

  I climbed out of the cab and stood on the pavement. I expected the cab to drive off straight away. But it didn’t. I looked back and could see the driver waving at me through the window. He held his radio mike in the other hand. He was obviously worried enough about me to make sure I made it into the police station.

  Although I could see the main door to the police station, it took all my concentration to walk there and to maintain a reasonable line. If any police officer happened to be looking out at that moment I was sure I would have been breathalysed. I hadn’t eaten properly for hours. And I had retched up whatever had been in my stomach. No wonder the world was spinning.

  I was surprised at how dark the building looked. I would have expected all the lights to be on. To be able to see activity going on inside. I had assumed that police stations were buzzing 24 hours a day, but at nearly 10pm this one looked like it was closed for the night.

  The main door was locked. An arrow directed me to push the button on an intercom to the side of the door. A man’s voice answered my call. He sounded like he wanted to go home. I explained that my husband had been arrested and that I was there to see him. The door buzzed and I leaned into it. A click, and then it opened. As the door swung shut behind me, I heard the taxi cab finally drive away.

  Inside the small reception area, three plastic chairs backed
against a wall which was covered in posters and leaflets. Opposite the chairs was the reception desk itself. A thick sheet of glass partitioned those on my side, in the waiting area, from those on the other side, the police station proper. On my side, there was only me. On the other side, no one.

  Another arrow pointed to a bell push on the desk. A small sign next to it suggested I ring for attention. I thought this probably wasn’t necessary in my case as I had just rung to be let in the main door.

  I paced up and down, glancing at the posters above the plastic chairs. Every one of them seemed to mention drugs, knives, guns and assault. For some reason Neil popped into my mind. On one of the posters someone had hand-written an abusive slogan. I wondered if the author might have been a weary police officer, rather than a drug-taking, knife-wielding, gun-runner who was on a break from assaulting people.

  There was no clock that I could see, but it felt like minutes were ticking by. I wondered what was taking so long. Then I noticed a CCTV camera up high in one corner of the area. Were they leaving me here on purpose? Watching to see what I would do?

  In a flash I remembered what I had done to Neil. All the blood on the sheet. Was I in trouble? Was his phone call simply a ruse to get me to come to the police station? My hands felt clammy. I pressed my guilty fingernails into my palms. I looked towards the main door and considered leaving. But they had already seen me on the CCTV. Obviously they had already seen Neil. I wondered how bad he looked. I walked over to the exit, put my hand on the handle.

  ‘Mrs Marsden?’

  I jerked my hand back from the door, as though a jolt of electricity had just passed from the handle into my hand. I spun around and saw a female police officer. She held open a door to the side of the reception desk. I was surprised I hadn’t noticed it before.

  I didn’t remember giving my name on the intercom.

  ‘Christine Marsden?’ she said.

  I nodded.

  ‘Would you like to come through?’

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