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40
Rachel
I’m at home. Saturday night. Silence and darkness. It’s late. After midnight. The back door blows open and clatters against the wall of the house. I pull it shut and lock it. I make myself a hot drink and sit in the dark watching grey clouds float over the moon, and all I can think is that the day has ended. It’s over. Now, hopefully, sleep will take me at least until the small hours. I am so tired. In the morning, I’ll call the police and tell them everything I know about Anne-Marie, about Jo and about Henry Parker. But first I will rest.
On heavy legs, I climb the stairs to bed.
Mark is asleep, snoring softly. The room smells of stale beer, clothes thick with cigarette smoke. He said he was meeting Roy at the golf club Saturday night, tonight. Golf club, my arse. Look at him, sleeping the sleep of the righteous. Exhausted after an evening at Lisa’s. Nothing stopping them now her girls have gone, is there? I’m out of their way, as I have been for some time.
I pull my shirt over my head and am about to drop it on the chair in the corner when I see my rucksack on the floor beneath. I never emptied it from Thursday night. I pull it out from under the chair and creep into the bathroom. I switch on the light and lock the door, close the loo lid and sit down. All day I’ve been shaking from head to toe whenever I sit down, but that’s just shock. All day I’ve done nothing but run through what has happened since Katie’s party. The girl I made a meaningful connection with in a secluded place was brutally murdered. The man I saw hidden in the shadows of shame was strangled. The woman I spoke to as the light fell and the surroundings became deserted was stabbed to death. It is still unbelievable, even now, after having a whole day to process it.
Whoever killed Anne-Marie is the same person who attacked Jo, I know that. Maybe not the fella in the churchyard, but Jo, definitely. A knife in the ribs. The same… what d’you call it? Modus operandi. I hope that it was sharp like Mark’s, the knife. I hope Anne-Marie didn’t feel it, didn’t know too much about it. She should have had someone with her. She should have had someone by her side in her last moments. She died alone and afraid. Alone and afraid, poor woman. Her poor family. Her kids, oh, her kids.
I pull sheets of loo roll from the holder and wipe my face. My throat aches with tears for Jo, for Anne-Marie, stolen from their loved ones in the cruellest possible way. They’ll never get over it, never. You can’t get over something like that.
With shaking hands, I unzip my sports bag and pull out my crumpled hooded top. I was too hot to put it back on. The towel that I used to wipe the sweat from my face and neck has dried. There’s nothing else in the bag. The knife isn’t there, thank goodness. Although why am I reassuring myself? Why would it be?
I’m about to drop the rucksack to the floor when I spot the front pocket is half undone.
I wipe my eyes, sniff hard, pull it fully open. I see and don’t see what’s inside. A balled-up wad of tissues. Bright white, bright red. Tissue. Blood.
‘Oh God,’ I whimper into my hands. ‘Oh heaven help me.’
I am crying into my hands then and now. I don’t expect you or Blue Eyes to feel sorry for me. I just want you to know that I’m sorry. I’m sorry for not being clearer, but this is all I know. I’m sorry for not getting to it in a straight path, but this zigzag was how it went. I didn’t remember killing her then and I don’t remember it now, but I know that I did it and for that I’m more sorry than I can say. And for Jo and for Henry. I’m sorry; I’ll be sorry for the rest of my days. I’m a danger to myself and to others. I don’t deserve to be free. I don’t deserve to live.
Blue Eyes pulls the last tissue from the box and hands it to me. ‘So was that the moment you became convinced you were responsible for the attacks?’
‘Yes. No. I don’t know. I’d already decided to call the police. I didn’t know where the knife was but I knew they were my tissues and I knew it was her blood. Anne-Marie’s.’
‘How did you know that?’
‘I don’t know, I just did.’ I look up at her. ‘Well, it was, wasn’t it?’
She frowns. ‘You tell me.’
‘There you go. It was.’
‘But you didn’t call the police?’
‘I can’t remember much more than numbness, all over, like your face after the dentist has injected your gums, you know? It was only the next morning that I rang them, the police. Only after I read about the lad. About Ian.’
‘So that night you didn’t call anyone or tell anyone?’
‘No. Ian Brown was already dead by then, obviously. I’d already killed him, but that was nowhere, nowhere at all in my mind that night, honestly it wasn’t. I’ve nothing to hide anymore and I swear to God I’d tell you if I’d had any idea, any ghost of an idea as I sat on the loo with those bloody tissues in my hand, I would. But honestly, it was only when I read about him the next morning that it really came back to me, not before. The whole of Saturday came back to me. The day. The evening. The night. I remembered all of it. And then there was no doubt, no doubt left at all.’
‘I think we need to talk about that,’ she says softly. ‘Don’t you? Don’t you, Rachel? Do you think you can talk about it?’
Why are you so kind?
She doesn’t answer. I haven’t said it out loud, that’s why. I wipe my eyes. My face is chapped. Sore.
Blue Eyes knows what’s coming. She’s read the statement, seen those terrible photos. But she needs to hear me say it, in a different way to the others. I know she’s not police. I know she’s a psychiatrist building a forensic case history of a criminally insane murderer. I don’t care. I care only about how kind she is in this moment, the way she listens with that hidden, waiting smile, about the fact that she sees me. That’s all any of us want, isn’t it? To be seen, to be listened to with compassion and attention while we unload our troubled hearts.
‘Rachel? Do you think you can tell me? Can you tell me what happened?’
She slides another sheet of paper towards me.
41
