As I sat on Janice’s sofa trying to hold myself together, everything fell into place. Just the right pieces filling the gaps in my mind. The dreams, the visions, the nightmares were all my father’s. It was his memory I had. My mother did the only thing she could to protect us from him, she gave us a new chance. A chance to start over with a family where both parents were loving. Where there was no danger.
Janice put her arm over my back and shoulders as I hunched over on her sofa, crying. I thought I would never stop.
I knew that Richard had killed Barbara Stannard and Laura Evans. And my mother obviously knew it too. Was that why she killed herself? Because of what she suspected him of? Or had he killed her too? Of course he had. Whether he physically tied the rope around her neck or not, he was the one that killed her.
I stopped crying and a burning heat flowed through my body. My breathing grew deeper and I filled my lungs with air. I had to see him. I had to go to the hospital and thrust my rage at him. I needed him to feel the pain of my anger. Old man or not, ill or not, he deserved to know how it felt to suffer.
‘I’m so sorry, Janice,’ I said. ‘It’s just so much to take in.’
‘Don’t worry, dear,’ she said. ‘I understand.’
‘Thank you for all your help,’ I said. ‘I’m so grateful.’
I left Janice’s house and walked into the cold evening air. My eyes stung as I walked against the breeze. The rage continued burning inside me. I still wanted to see Richard. To hurt him like he had hurt others. But what would it achieve? It would make me as bad as him. Like father, like daughter. I didn’t want that. That wasn’t me. I could leave Plymouth now. Catch a train and be back home by 9pm. Leave it all behind. Pretend it never happened.
But I couldn’t do that either. It was a part of me. It always would be. A memory passed on to me by my father. I had to at least know why. Why he had done what he did. I wanted to hear him admit it. To confirm everything I thought to be true. I couldn’t live a normal life without knowing. If he didn’t kill them, if it was just something my mind had made up, if it turned out to be my own madness, I needed to know. And the only way I would know for sure was by talking to Richard. By asking him the questions.
I delved into my handbag to find my phone, before remembering I had lost it somewhere on Rame Head. I decided to turn up at the hospital and hope he was awake and well enough to talk to me. Or well enough at least to listen. It was almost 6pm.
I paid the taxi and strode with purpose into the hospital. My footsteps echoed along the corridor towards my father’s room. To me they sounded determined. Like a vigorous march, not to be put off until the destination was reached.
I walked past the nurses station. It was empty. A moments hesitation, then I pushed open my father’s door.
An elderly woman lay in the bed before me. Hooked up to tubes and wires, just as my father had been. I recognised one of the two nurses attending to her. She looked over at me. I blushed, realising I had opened the wrong door, but the nurse said something to her colleague and rushed over to me. She ushered me outside into the corridor.
‘Mrs Marsden,’ she said. ‘We tried ringing you.’
The anger I had been feeling vanished. And I realised that I hadn’t got the wrong room. Only that my father was no longer there.
‘I’ve lost my mobile,’ I said. ‘What’s happened? Where’s my father?’
‘He’s gone,’ she said. ‘He discharged himself.’
‘Discharged himself?’
‘After you spoke to him on the phone he seemed to change. He became irritable and distracted. But he found a new energy from somewhere. I don’t know what you had said to him, but he insisted that he was feeling fine and he wanted to leave.’
‘He didn’t sound fine,’ I said.
‘In our opinion, he wasn’t,’ she said. ‘But he just up and left. The doctor insisted that he stay here. But we had an emergency come in and while we were all busy, he left. As I say, we tried ringing you. We rang your home phone too, left a message to say that he had gone. We don’t have any other numbers for him. No other relatives.’
‘Did he say where he was going?’ I said. ‘Before he left?’
The nurse shook her head.
‘Home, I think. But we don’t know for sure. We can’t keep people here against their will. If they want to leave, they can.’
‘How long ago did he go?’
‘A few hours ago. The emergency came in at about 3pm. We went to check on him at quarter to four, and he was gone. He had been walking about a fair bit before then, but he definitely wasn’t well enough to go home yet.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘For looking after him. And for trying to get hold of me. He’s probably just gone home. I’ll go there.’
‘There’s some stuff you need to take for him. There are several ECG reports for his doctor and a breakdown of all the superficial injuries he sustained during the heart attack. If you could just give them to him or to his GP. If he is at home, it would definitely be in his interest to come back to hospital. He really does need to be here so that we can monitor him during his recovery. He would be better off back here.’
She walked me to the nurses station and handed me a brown envelope. At the hospital entrance I jumped in a taxi and gave my father’s address.
The evening was starting to draw in. Rush-hour traffic was in full swing and the dark clouds above seemed to be moving quicker than the cars. I opened the brown envelope from the hospital. Several printouts, presumably the ECG’s, a letter written for his GP outlining the heart attack and the medication he had received. It finished by stating that he had discharged himself early, against the advice of the doctor.
Another sheet of paper highlighted the other injuries the nurse had mentioned. A few scratches and bruises; the nasty cut over his eye; and something else that chilled me. “Deep scarring and damage to upper left thigh. Probably an old injury, no current signs of trauma.”
The taxi pulled up outside my father’s house. I paid the driver and watched him drive away. A street lamp flickered nearby. It reminded me of the flickering light at the hospital while Neil and I had waited for my psychiatric assessment. Not quite on, not quite off.
The house looked dark. A small light glowed in the living-room, but nowhere else. I couldn’t see any sign of movement. I wondered whether he might have gone somewhere else, perhaps next door with Thelma. I wished I had asked the taxi driver if anyone else had been dropped off there that afternoon.
I put the brown envelope in my handbag and took the house keys out. How had my father got in if I had his keys? I glanced over the tiny front garden in case he was collapsed on the ground somewhere. There was no one there.
I put the key in the lock as gently as I could and turned it. The other keys on the bunch rattled against the front door. I put my hand around them to stop the noise.
I closed the door behind me and stood still, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. I spoke quietly, not wanting to startle him.
‘Richard?’ I said.
Nothing. I took a couple of steps further into the house.
‘Richard?’
A smell hit me. Metallic. A dull smell. It reminded me of blood. My heart went into a trot. I took another few steps, trying to scan the dim living-room at the same time.
‘Richard?’ I said again.
The smell grew stronger. Blood and something else too. Urine?
Something bad had happened to Richard. I moved quickly to the wall and found the light switch.
As the room lit up I immediately saw the blood streaked across the wooden floor. The clean white wall had been spattered red.
Ernie’s lifeless body lay at the foot of the wall. I held my hand to my mouth and kept the retching down. He looked like he had been hit by a car. But I knew the damage had been caused by a human. Kicked in the head, slid across the floor and his skull stamped on. The shape of a shoe was clear. Bloody footprints led towards the kitchen. I followed them.
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