Local Whispers

by C K Williams

  “I would like to think that the police will do their best to bring Alice justice,” I say, in the hopes of offering some comfort.

  “And what good is that going to do?”

  Megan’s hand is wrapped around the handle of the kettle. She turns around to look at me. Straight at me. Her voice is suddenly so harsh, as hot and boiling as the water. She pours it into the teapot, but it is going everywhere. Running down the side of the pot. Splashing onto the kitchen island. “What good is justice going to do my daughter? She’ll still be dead.”

  I get a kitchen towel from the roll hanging on a small fashionable rack next to her. “You don’t have to,” she says, eyes closed for a moment, looking guilty and stubborn at the same time, stubbornly determined not to fall apart.

  I almost press her arm. Almost give her an embrace.

  Then all I do is wipe up the water. “Is your husband here?” I ask gently.

  Megan huffs again. “He has been going for walks. That’s what he says, anyway. Walking to Will’s house, most likely, and shooting at tin cans with his old mucker.” She rubs her hands across her cheeks, once, twice, like a woman pinching her own cheeks to make it look as if she is wearing rouge. “In and out at all hours. This morning, last night, no time’s too odd for him. He doesn’t care what everyone will think. What I’ll think.”

  “And you?” I ask, concerned. “You just stay in here, all on your own, when he is gone? You were all alone last night?”

  For a moment, I see it flash across her face. An expression that makes me think that my questions scare her.

  “I am worried for you,” I say, I clarify.

  Megan’s mouth twists. She pours us tea. “I’m not. I was alone last night, and I’m not worried.”

  “Is there anything I can do for you?” I ask, taking the saucer from her grip.

  Her fingers are freezing cold.

  “Yes,” she says. She lifts her own cup to her lips. Takes a sip. Closes her eyes. “You can tell your friend to leave.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Megan Walsh opens her eyes. Some of her lipstick now sits on the white porcelain of the cup. Her cold hands, and the red lipstick looks like a wound in her face, her dark eyes like bruises blooming. “Pack up. Move away. Plenty of places to live. She isn’t welcome here anymore.”

  “Mrs Walsh, I want you to believe me when I tell you that Kate had nothing to do with your daughter’s death.”

  “And how would you know?” Megan Walsh asks. “You weren’t here. You don’t know what Alice was like, this last year. She was gone so much. Since last summer, she spent so much time out of the house. And then this Christmas, she was barely there. Even when she was here, she seemed a million miles away. Spent all her time with those twins.”

  “Which twins, Mrs Walsh? Are they friends from school?”

  Megan Walsh shakes her head. “My daughter wasn’t popular at school.”

  “But there were some classmates of hers at the vigil…”

  “Everyone comes to the bloody vigil,” Megan Walsh hisses. “For them, it’s a show, isn’t it? It’s dramatic. They can be dramatic there. But in school, they picked on my daughter. No, it isn’t them that Alice spent her time with. It’s the twins from the South. Betha and Enda. The last days of her life, and she spent them with two people who are as good as strangers.”

  She is not crying. But she looks as if she might. “I will pass on your message, Mrs Walsh,” I say as I rise. “But you could not have known. There was nothing you could have done.”

  She laughs. It is such a painful sound. Like a hooligan kicking your face in. “Did you know,” she says. “I did not want Alice.”

  I stare at her.

  “I was on my way to England already to have her removed. I was already at the airport.” She swipes her thumb across the lipstick stain on the porcelain, staring off into the distance, smearing the colour. “Seventeen years ago.”

  She bites her lip. Red stains on her teeth. “Pregnant at forty-one. Who could have expected that? Who could have wanted that? I would have boarded the plane if Pat hadn’t dragged me back. And since then, my very first thought waking up in the morning, for seventeen years, was for her. My very last, going to sleep at night, was for her. Because I love her so much. I never thought I would. The wee dote I almost murdered, and I loved her so much. We were best friends.”

  She looks back at me. “Every morning. Every night. There was no me. There was only her.”

  Eyes like bruises, boring into me. “That’s why you better make sure you get the message across loud and clear, Mr Loose. She better get out of here. She isn’t welcome here anymore.”

  I go. I even pretend that I do not see how her shoulders begin to shake with the tears she can no longer hold back.

  As I drive off, I look at the rifles, leaning against the wall.

  14:15

  I go find Kate at her practice. I want to have an eye on her, after all, and she can possibly help with those mysterious twins.

  Her receptionist is there.

  The waiting room is empty.

  Entirely empty.

  “I thought there were appointments?” I ask Kate, the moment the receptionist has shown me through.

  “Yes,” she says, dressed in her white lab coat and scrubs, all the tools of her trade spread out, yearning to be used. “So far, no one’s showed up, so it is.”

  20:30

  I did not have the heart to ask her any questions as we sat and waited in her practice. Waited all day.

  No one came by. All the appointments were cancelled; patients, when called at home, said they had forgotten and they did not want to make a new one, either.

  No one.

  So we went home. I made dinner, vegetarian lasagne, while Kate showered and changed. And then we had it. And a stiff drink. And now I am filling the dishwasher in the kitchen.

  Kate is leaning against the kitchen sink, arms crossed, wearing a chequered silk blouse and her lime-green Paul Smith, a suit she has had for years, bought when it still cost her an entire month’s wages. This is the suit she wears when she needs her clothes to hold her together. Her right foot is crossed behind her ankle. She is the picture of poise. I know that this isn’t a good sign. “So, while I was sitting there waiting for someone to show up, I had a look online. I thought, I don’t know. I thought maybe there was a killer who’d done something like this before. Cut up the body like that.”

  “Right.”

  “There isn’t,” she says. “No record online of any other psycho killers running around cutting people up and putting their limbs back together. Apparently, in all the other cases, limbs were taken away and kept as trophies.” She shifts. “Although there was this one case thirty years back, here in Mountains, too, where the murderer treated his victim in a similar manner, after she’d had a miscarriage; he was tried and got a fairly lenient sentence. The judge was very much on his side. A woman judge, by the way. Oh, and the papers also seemed to think it wasn’t all that bad what he’d done.”

  I prick my ears. Kate’s expression darkens even further. “Don’t get overly excited. It’s a dead end. The murderer has been dead for six years. The judge is retired now, too.”

  I close the dishwasher and go to lean up against the kitchen cupboards across from her, my own arms crossed, the pine-coloured sweater soft against my fingers. “Your patients will be back,” I say gently.

  She looks to the side. Her face is framed by the window leading out onto the drive and the slopes of the mountains. The moon is shining. The snow reflects its light, turning the night into a pale thing. It is like twilight out, only darker. Stranger.

  I take a sip from the mug I am holding. “Megan Walsh asked me in today when I drove past her house.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Asked me to tell you to pack up and move away.”

  Kate looks at the floor. “Fuck,” she says.

  “She also told me that her daughter had not been spending much time at home s
ince the previous summer. And almost all of her Christmas holidays with two friends.”

  “From school?”

  “No. Apparently, Alice Walsh was picked on in school. Did you know?”

  Kate shakes her head, but her expression is growing grimmer and grimmer.

  “Who are the twins?”

  Kate’s brow furrows. Then her expression smooths over. “Must be Betha and Enda. They’re from the South. They were the two young people in the front pew at the vigil. I believe they were visiting Alice Walsh for the holidays. From Cork, I think, they are. Or that’s where they met. Alice spent a couple of weeks there in the summer. They met on the beach, or something? Aye, aye, they did. They’re staying at a guest house in Killowen, right by the sea, fifteen minutes down the road. Said they’d come for Kilbroney Park. It think I saw them a few times, having cake at the Church Café in Rostrevor. It’s lovely, that café. Not a church anymore. Anyway, the guesthouse is part of another bit of Elizabeth Adams’s property, I think, William’s managing it for her.”

  “Maybe we should talk to them?” I suggest. “Teenagers are usually more willing to trust someone their age. They might know something about the pregnancy.”

  Kate nods, then goes back to staring into her mug. “I had a visitor while you were gone,” she finally says. “It was Florence. Florence O’Rawe.”

  “What did she want?”

  Kate jerks her head at the oven. A casserole sits on top of it, covered in tin foil. “She made stew. Thought I would need it, what with the head injury.”

  “How kind of her,” I say. “Did she also bring some paracetamol?”

  “You should have seen her,” she says, her face drawn. “She parked the car down the road, in that lay-over, you know? I’ve never had anyone be so eager not to be seen with me.”

  “At least she did not hit you over the head, or drop off threatening letters, or ask you to move away,” I point out.

  “There’s that,” Kate says and clinks her mug against mine. She takes a sip, then looks back at me. “Just, something occurred me while she was standing there, putting the casserole in the oven.”

  “And what was that?”

  Kate swallows visibly. “How did she know I’d been injured?”

  “Grapevine?” I suggest. “Small community?”

  “Did you tell anyone?” Kate asks.

  “No. Daniel?”

  “I called him,” she says. “To ask him if he’d told anyone. And guess what? He said no.”

  “He might be lying,” I point out.

  “What is it with you and Daniel?” she asks, frowning. “He’s a jealous prick, fine, but what’s your problem?”

  I look at her. Her face, framed by the window looking out into the night. The still grey night.

  I can feel my adrenaline spike before my brain has even registered what I am seeing.

  The night is not still.

  Something is moving on the other side of the window.

  “Kate,” I hiss, “get away from the window!”

  She stumbles across the kitchen to join me. I hit the light switch next to me, throwing us into darkness.

  There are the trees, the cowering rowans and tall pines, swaying silently in the wind and the weight of the snow. The mountains stretch out beyond the road, white and ghostly as fog in the light of the moon.

  Maybe it was only the trees. Their branches moving in the wind. The rowan and their branches, scratching against the kitchen window. The light of the moon, falling as silently as snow.

  Then I spot another movement.

  There is someone standing out there. A dark silhouette, stark and clear against the snow.

  They are holding a rifle.

  22:41

  There they are. Standing outside. Holding the rifle.

  Waiting.

  Watching.

  They seem to be looking at us.

  “Can you tell who it is?” I ask.

  She stares. And stares. “No,” she says under her breath. “No, it’s too dark.”

  “Call the police,” I say, not letting the silhouette out of my sight, “right now!”

  She does.

  I watch the silhouette. My blood is pounding in my ears. There is nothing I can do against a rifle. The blood keeps pounding. The adrenaline is rising. Nothing I can do. Stay still. Wait for the police.

  That is what they want, I realise, and it makes my blood roar. They want us to cower. They want us afraid.

  It takes the police thirty minutes to get here. The moment their sirens can be heard, the silhouette slips away into the trees.

  They are leaving. Not down the road.

  Into the woods.

  The Detective Constables try to be helpful, but it’s dark and we cannot even prove anyone was there. I thought I saw them leave towards the woods, but when we look for footprints, there is nothing much useful, at least not while it is still dark. We go with them to the station, report the incident.

  By the time they drive us back, both Kate and I are dead on our feet.

  Still, I find it impossible to go to sleep. Kate is lying next to me, breathing regularly.

  I lie awake and listen for any noises. For boots in the snow. The rustle of clothes. The sounds of heavy cold breath, fogging up the window, because they are standing right in front of the glass. Because they are watching us.

  I sit up so suddenly. My blood is thrumming. “Kate,” I say, shaking her shoulder. I am trying to go for gentle, but my grip is stronger than I want it to be. “Switch sides with me.”

  She mumbles something, her face crunching up. “’y?”

  “You should not be next to the window.”

  “… being stupid…”

  She tries to turn away from me, but I keep holding onto her shoulder. “Come on,” I say, pulling her back towards me, and I am shocked to hear that it does not sound like a plea. It sounds like an order.

  For a moment, our eyes meet. She is looking at me in a strange way. She is so still. Looking so closely.

  I can’t bear that expression on her face right now. I do not know what it means. All I need is for her to be out of harm’s way. I pull at her once more. She allows me to cajole her onto my side of the bed before turning back onto her side, away from me.

  I close my eyes. There is sweat on my brow. Sweat on my skin, from my neck down to the back of my knees. I try and match my breathing to Kate’s. It will calm me down. The blood still pumping, pumping, pumping. I feel so impotent. So helpless.

  I do not know how much time has passed when I hear the noise. Scraping. Crunching.

  Are those steps?

  My palms are sweaty when I glance out through the blinds.

  My blood freezes.

  There they are. Walking around the house, trailing the rifle behind them. The silhouette is too far away for me to recognise them. They are keeping close to the trees. Walking slowly.

  And then the head turns.

  They are looking straight at me.

  I let the blinds fall shut. The fear is overwhelming. There is nowhere to go, nowhere to run, you have to wait, wait for them to come to you, and they are. Step by step, they are coming.

  I get up. I am not going to fucking cower. I walk out into the hall, past the back door to get into the sitting room.

  Only I do not make it quite that far.

  When I walk through the corridor, I realise that there is a new letter. This time, it has been pushed through the slit under the back door.

  I go get a scarf, wrap it around my hand, then pick it up.

  Do not fret because of those who are evil or be envious of those who do wrong; for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away.

  My fingers are cold again. I push open the back door, my blood hot, my fists shaking. I am not thinking. I am charging. Charging out of the door and into the white night.

  But there is no one there anymore.

  There is no sign of the silhouette.

  No s
ign of a rifle.

  There is nothing.

  Notes

  Detective Constable Norah Bailey interviewing (follow-up to door-to-door)

  Elizabeth Adams

  3 Main Street

  BT34 4DDX

  But of course. Please, come in. Of course we can have a chat. You know me. I do like a chat. No, I quite enjoyed our conversation last time. I could not believe it when you told me about the bloody clothes.

  Oh, I know you shouldn’t have done that. But not to worry. I am sure no harm was done.

  No, I do not mind at all if you sit. It must be tiring, this work that you do. Forgive the boots. I was just outside in the garden. The poplar mushroom season has started, as you know, and I was hoping to find a few early specimens. I was down by the trees, they prefer black poplar trees and willows, you know. My father planted the black poplars specifically in the hopes that the mushrooms would choose them as their habitat. And for the sake of the trees themselves, of course. Did you know that they are the most endangered tree in England? They are almost extinct in the wild now, and grow mostly in parks and gardens and by riversides, especially in Cumbria, where I was born. They are tall and bushy, beautiful trees, with a thick bark. Sturdy, steady, like the country itself. And do you know about the yew trees? England counts the highest number of yew trees in the world. Some of them are ancient. Two thousand, perhaps even five thousand years old. And they enjoy no protection from the law at all. Anyone can cut them down when they are on private property.

  You have never seen a yew tree? But of course you have. There is one in the churchyard. And then there is one on Kate O’Leary’s property. She has thought about cutting it down, did you know that? It is a disgrace. She has been on this Earth for forty years, and she has the nerve to decide that she is entitled to cut down a tree that may be thousands of years old. All of that land once used to belong to my family. There were so many more trees back then, the black poplar with their burls, growing around infections like shields, defending the aging tree, and the yews with their limbs as thick and sturdy as a castle wall.