FIFTEEN

There were people in the hotel bar, a couple of men drinking brandy and smoking small cigars. I was damp from the rain. Bethany had stopped talking to me, disappearing as we made our way through the downpour back into town. I ordered a whisky and carried it to my room, turned on the television and smoked cigarettes one after another. I watched a rolling news channel, stories tumbling out, presented in strobing graphics and discussed by experts and the professionally concerned. I wondered if Bethany’s death would have made it on to the news now, and knew that it would. A pretty white woman; a carnival queen, how could it not?

The next morning I found a pizza box and an empty bottle of wine outside Ferne’s room. The maid was cleaning inside, piles of clothes on the floor and a mess of cosmetics on the dressing table. There was also a stack of cheap thrillers. She caught me looking, but was too wrapped up in her phone call.

‘Can’t you just for once sort this out yourself?’ the maid shouted into the mouthpiece. ‘I’m supposed to be working here, aren’t I?’

Outside it was bright again, the roads sludgy with traffic and the High Street surprisingly busy. I found the police station next to the library that Dad and I used to visit every Saturday when I was young. He liked to read military history, mostly about the air force, and he would deposit me in the children’s section while he browsed the shelves. He liked the silence, I always thought, and there was precious little at home in those days. The building was looking seamy, like it had been left to fester, though there was a windowed atrium tacked on where people were using computers and drinking coffee. Bethany and I used to walk past on the way home some nights and see the books that people had posted through the letter box. There used to be a sign telling lenders not to. There was no sign there now.

After my interview with the detective and the WPC, there had been no follow-up. I was never required to attend the station and so now couldn’t tell whether it had changed much. The desk sergeant was talking on the phone and taking notes. A woman waited on one of the brown sofas, her handbag close to her chest. In front of her was a plastic cup of coffee, steaming and ignored. A policeman punched the digits on the combination lock and she looked up.

‘How much longer?’ she said. ‘I’ve got to be at work for twelve.’

‘They’re just processing him, Mrs Reynolds. Shouldn’t be too long now.’

‘He’ll never learn, that boy. Maybe this time someone’ll press charges. Might do him some good.’

The policeman smiled and disappeared into the back of the station. The desk sergeant put down the phone and looked up at me.

‘Can I help?’ he asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘I hope so. I was wondering whether it might be possible to speak to DI Simon Parks.’

The man chewed his pencil and screwed up his eyes.

‘And what is this concerning?’

‘Well, I’d prefer not to say. It’s just important I speak with him.’

‘Really?’ the sergeant said. He had deep-ringed eyes, a smirk to his face and hair protruding from his shirt collar and his jumper’s rolled-up cuffs. ‘I dare say it is important, but DI Parks retired about five year ago. So whatever it is, you’ll be needing to speak to one of the other DIs. And I’ll need to know what the “important” thing is before I can refer you.’

‘It’s sort of a personal matter. I really need to speak to DI Parks.’

‘Well, I can’t help you there, sir. I’m sorry.’

‘Do you know where I might find him?’ I asked. The desk sergeant shook his head and the heavy door opened. A youth came out accompanied by an officer; there was blood on his T-shirt and his jeans were ripped.

‘Here you are, Mrs Reynolds. Be seeing you soon.’ The officer turned to the lad. ‘Lucky day again, Scotty. Let’s hope they don’t ever run out, yeah?’

‘Fuck off,’ he said.

‘Be seeing you,’ the officer said.

Mrs Reynolds pushed the boy out of the double doors. He was laughing and telling her to shut the fuck up as he lit a cigarette.

‘They should give her her own parking space,’ the sergeant said.

‘I really need your help,’ I said, leaning against the desk. ‘It’s important. Is there no way you can give me his contact details, or a phone number or something?’

‘Do you really think that we give out that kind of information? We might be coppers but we’re not stupid.’

‘I need to talk to him about Bethany Wilder,’ I said. ‘I’ve come a long way and I need to speak with him.’

He cocked his head to one side.

‘You journalists never give up, do you?’ he said. ‘That story’s dead anyway. He said all he knew on that television programme they made. Just watch that and let the man alone.’

‘I’m not a journalist. I just want to talk to him, that’s all. Ask him a few questions.’

‘Whatever you are,’ he said. ‘He won’t speak to you.’

The telephone rang and he answered it politely, looking over at me with disdain. I remained standing, not to show resolve, but because there was nothing else to do. I watched him take down notes and reassure the caller that a squad car would be there as soon as possible. He put down the phone and put out the call to the cars on the street.

‘You still here?’ he said to me eventually. ‘We’ve got work to do, you know.’

‘I appreciate that, but look, I need to see him. It’s . . . look, he interviewed me at the time. I was Bethany’s boyfriend. Mark Wilkinson.’

It was the first time I’d said that name in well over a decade. It felt like a confession all of itself.

‘You have any ID to prove that, sir?’

‘Not on me, no. Look, you’ve got to trust me on this.’

‘Trust is something I’ve kind of lost track of, sir?’ he said, laughing. ‘Now this might come as a shock to you, sir, but I tend not to believe everything I’m told. And even if you are who you say you are, why do you think he’d want to go back over all that?’

The sergeant stood up and placed a file in a wire-mesh tray. He was taller than I expected with a colossal rear that shuddered as he walked.

‘You’d think,’ he said, ‘that people would just forget about it. There’s been enough murders since and no one comes round asking about them.’

‘I just need to talk to him. It’ll only take a moment.’

He settled back into his chair, rocked on its back legs and laced his fingers together.

‘So why now?’ he said.

Bethany laughed, sitting on the sofa that Mrs Reynolds had recently departed. Yeah, why now. Why don’t you tell him?

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Things have just kind of . . . I don’t know, come to a head.’

He looked at me for a moment, rubbed his eyes, then looked at me again. The double doors swung open and a middle-aged man flanked by two uniforms came through. He was booked in for shoplifting meat from Tesco’s. He looked as grey as his Farah slacks. The desk sergeant watched me throughout the procedure. Eventually he slammed down his pen and shook his head.

‘When things come to a head,’ he said to me as he filled out a form, ‘I tend to go to the pub. The Crown mainly. You know it?’

I nodded.

‘Well, they’ll be open in a half-hour or so.’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘Good luck,’ he said and went straight back to his paperwork.

*

The Crown was over on the other side of town, a pub designed to serve the boxy housing estate in the hinterland between the town and its more expensive environs. I knew it only by its reputation for lock-ins and as the venue for Hannah’s dad’s fiftieth birthday, which we had attended under sufferance. There was a St George’s flag on the roof, banners advertising All Sports Shown Here and inside screens everywhere: small ones inset behind the bar, large pull-downs and flat screens on the walls.

I ordered a drink and sat down, on some paper wrote down the detective’s name and underlined it, looked at it for a time, then lit a cigarette. You know what you want to ask him, right? Bethany said. You must know that, surely? I shook my head. She laughed. You’re here, at least. That’s something, I suppose.

Someone ordered a pint of best and I felt a tap on my shoulder.

‘I heard you want to speak to me,’ the man said. ‘Come on, I don’t have long.’ He picked up his pint and walked over to a raised area by the pool tables. DI Parks had aged rather better than I had expected, his body lean and his eyes still sharp. He held his back erect, but shook slightly as he drank. He hadn’t shaved, his stubble greying at the corners of his mouth.

‘If you’re a journalist, I’m walking out of here right now,’ he said. ‘I’ve had it up to here with journalists.’ He raised his hand to his face as in salute.

‘I’m not a journalist. You know who I am,’ I said. ‘We’ve met before. You interviewed me. I was Bethany Wilder’s boyfriend when she died.’

He leaned over the table. ‘You’re not writing a book, are you?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Nothing like that. I just want to talk, that’s all. I need to talk.’

You don’t know what to say, though, do you? You’re looking at him and you don’t have the first idea. Are you scared? You should be scared.

I looked at my notes and then back at him.

‘So?’ he said finally. ‘You wanted to talk. So talk.’ He shifted his weight on the stool and looked straight at me. It was perhaps something he had learned as a policeman, the right way to elicit a confession or to get a prisoner to open up.

So open up, honey. Talk to the man. Ask him what you really want to know.

*

I finally told O’Neil on a bright Sunday morning, as we drank coffee. It was Bethany’s birthday and I hadn’t slept. It came more simply than I could have imagined.

‘My girlfriend was killed,’ I said, hoping it would shock him. It did not. ‘Murdered,’ I went on. ‘They found her body a few months back. He’d hurt her so badly that they wouldn’t even let me see her.’

I told him everything: the first and last time I went through it with anyone. Maybe he looked like he’d opened something up that he wished he hadn’t, I don’t remember. What I do remember is what he asked when I’d finished.

‘Did they ever think that you’d done it?’

*

I looked down at my notes, the empty space below his name. Parks had necked almost half of his pint already and was glancing at his watch. Bethany was sitting on the top of the fruit machine, her legs dangling over its display. Go on, she said. You can trust him.

‘Did you ever think that I killed her?’ I said eventually. Parks looked genuinely surprised and rapped his fingers on the table, then laughed.

‘What a strange thing to ask, Mr Wilkinson,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t expecting that. Not in a million years.’

He shook his head and laughed again. It was low and guttural.

‘No, you were never a suspect. There were no suspects. If there’d been a sniff of anything wrong, we wouldn’t have let you go abroad, would we? America somewhere, wasn’t it?’

I nodded. ‘New York.’

‘Yes, I remember now,’ he said, rubbing his head.

‘Anyway, Mark. You mind if I call you Mark?’ I waved my hand at him. ‘Look, the only mystery about what happened was whether Bethany was the only one, or whether the sick bastard had done it before. That was the only question we had. All the reports were conclusive: he killed her. There wasn’t any doubt. Like I said, the only doubt was whether she was the last or the first.’

‘Did you ever find out?’ I said. You’re not asking the right questions, honey. Ask him why. You want to know that, don’t you? Don’t you?

‘We never had the chance. He was arrested at the scene. He refused representation and didn’t talk. We held him. We charged him and he went on remand. DNA came back with nothing. He couldn’t be placed at any other sex crime or anything else. Then he hung himself.’

I had not thought of him as being alive or dead, only imagined him as he was in the photograph, blurry and undistinguished, that the local news had somehow found of him. I wondered when you’d get to this, Bethany said. Why didn’t you want to know anything about him?

‘We kept the case open for a while,’ Parks continued, ‘but there were no leads. I thought he was good for one or two murders but there was nothing we could prove.’

He spoke with an evenness that, despite the police-report staccato, betrayed a slight agitation. He chose his words with deliberation, almost reticence, as though worried about giving too much away. He coughed, sank the rest of his drink and pointed at mine, pushed himself up and went to the bar. He walked stiffly, as though he had just woken from a long sleep.

‘You see,’ Parks said when he returned, ‘I’m looking at you now and you seem . . . what, disappointed? That’s the problem. This isn’t a satisfying story. I don’t even tell it well. Journalists, they come and go, you know? They’re always asking the same question, desperate to uncover some dark secret or something they can sell. They come here for the truth and when they find it, they don’t like it. They always end up writing about how a sleepy town woke up into the modern world. They don’t mention the murder the year before. They don’t write about the three kids taken into care after their father was discovered interfering with the youngest daughter. None of it fits. Whenever that case is mentioned, it’s like a fantasy land. None of it seems real, the way they put it.’

But there’s something, Bethany said, there’s something he’s not telling. She was sitting on the pool table now, cross-legged, her cheeks flushed with revelation. Something about it all that doesn’t quite make sense. I can see it in his face. In his hands. Ask him. Ask him why he’s really here.

‘I don’t remember much about it,’ I said. ‘I remember you coming to the house with a woman police officer. I remember you saying that if I had anything to tell you, I should call you.’

He wiped his chin and started to fiddle with the ashtray. He was avoiding my eyes.

‘Why did you do that?’ I said. ‘What were you thinking I’d remember?’

Parks looked up.

‘Look, Mark, I’m not one of those people who obsess about things. You meet people who do in the force. They’re the ones who end up alone and drunk and working as security guards. For a time I thought about it. Thought about it a lot. I mean, how can you forget something like that? But after a while, I had to let it go. I don’t think about it now, I just don’t. I’m just a normal bloke. It’s not like I sit at home and go through the case files trying to find evidence of something else. The case is over. It’s done, okay?’

He got up suddenly and I grabbed at his arm. He looked down on me with surprise.

‘Please,’ I said. ‘Please tell me.’

He sank back down and shook his head.

‘It’s nothing. Not really. It’s just . . . I always wondered why she was down there. That’s what I couldn’t ever get.’

I wish I could tell you, Bethany said.

‘There was no struggle, you see, no tyre marks to speak of. There was no evidence that she was coerced down there. No suggestion that she had been moved. The time she was last seen outside the leisure centre suggests she walked straight to where she was killed. Not that it matters. The case was closed.’

If I could tell you, honey, I would. You know I would.

‘And that’s what you wanted me to remember.’

He let out a long breath.

‘I don’t know. What difference does it make now, anyway? Like I said, I don’t sit at home and mope over it. Thing is that there’s always crazies. Always those who’ll want to kill and there’s no reason why. Personally I’m amazed there aren’t more. Murderers, I mean.’

He looked like he was about to launch into a long screed, a well-rehearsed monologue, but instead he put his head on his fist and gave me a long stare with his once-detective eyes.

‘Can I ask you something, Mark?’ he said. ‘Why now? Why now, what is it now, twelve, thirteen years later? Why come find me now?’

Tell him, Bethany said. Tell him I won’t leave you alone.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ve been away for so long . . . it’s complicated.’

I could think of no more questions. The only one that mattered he couldn’t answer. Does it really matter, though, honey? Bethany said. Like the man says, what does it matter now?

‘Why did you agree to see me,’ I said. ‘If none of this matters.’

Parks chewed the inside of his lip and smiled sadly. He fumbled in his bag and took out his darts case and began affixing the flights.

‘I didn’t remember you when I first saw you, you know that?’ he said. ‘I thought I would, but I didn’t. Funny isn’t it, what you remember and what you don’t? When they came to do that telly programme, the researcher kept asking me whether the case still kept me up at night; whether I was working on it now that I was retired. You could see the glint in her eyes. I told her the truth: I didn’t really remember a whole lot about it. I can tell you what was in the police reports, but I don’t actually remember all that much about it.’

He’s lying, Bethany said, he’s good at it too. Watch him. He thinks about me all the time. The way I looked when I was found, the inquest and the post mortem, the days of trying to get the man to speak, to get to the bottom of it all. How can you let that just go? How do you just go back to your house and sleep at night?

‘So you don’t think about it? Not at all?’

He laughed. It should have sounded cruel but it was oddly comforting. He stood up and started throwing his darts. He had a practised, fluid rhythm.

‘Of course I do. I didn’t work many murder cases, so it was a big deal. But that’s it. Now I draw my pension, do some odd jobs on the side and come for a pint and a game of darts while the wife’s round her mother’s.’

Bethany smiled and shook her head. He wants you to believe it. Perhaps he believes it himself.

I nodded at both of them and looked at my watch. It was just gone one.

‘Listen, son,’ he said, the darts thudding into the board. ‘I’m not going to pretend I know what it is you’re going through. But my advice is just to leave it. You’ve got a whole lot of life to live, don’t live it knee deep in the past.’

He’s fighting it. He wants to ask you something. He wants to know if you were with me that evening, Bethany said, clambering down from the pool table and lighting a cigarette. Look at the way he’s throwing those darts, the precision of the anger.

‘I wasn’t with her, you know,’ I said, standing up. ‘If that’s what you were thinking.’

‘Oh no,’ Parks said. ‘She couldn’t have been with you. I knew that already.’

He stood, his dart stalled.

‘Was she meeting someone?’ he asked. ‘Did you know that she was meeting someone?’

There was white skin on his knuckles and a colouring to his cheeks.

‘I wish I knew,’ I said. He stood like that for a moment, then threw the darts. He took them from the board and turned to me.

‘If you do find out,’ he said, ‘don’t come looking to tell me, okay? I don’t want to know.’ He weighed the darts in his hand. ‘I’m serious. I don’t want to know.’

I said goodbye and left the pub. It had rained while we were talking and the pavements smelled of playgrounds.

*

The last time Bethany and I were in the park was after someone from school died. He was killed instantly as he came off his motorcycle while negotiating a roundabout in Crewe. We knew him vaguely. It was a summer’s evening and we didn’t fancy the pubs or being at home. So we sat on the bench by the bowling green smoking spliffs and drinking from a bottle of red wine we’d pushed the cork into.

‘I don’t feel anything,’ she said. ‘I know I should, but I don’t.’

‘You didn’t know him that well. He was just some guy from school.’

‘I should feel something, though, shouldn’t I?’

She passed me the spliff and took a long pull on the bottle of wine.

‘Maybe it’s the shock,’ she said.

You didn’t feel anything either, did you? Bethany said. Not a single thing.

There were still rugby posts up on Greenliffe Field, but now joined by a small skate park around the back of the leisure centre. The bandstand was still upright, still peeling paint and rotting wood; the aviary by the north gates too. I walked past the birds in the cages, so few of them now it seemed that they had been abandoned, left to fend for themselves. Beyond them were the old factories: cranes swaddling the brickwork, diggers at their foot, Portakabins and Portaloos in close proximity. I took a right and followed the path through the woods.

The area at the end of the path was clear, paved now with asphalt and with a bin for dog shit and one for recycling. Parking spaces were marked out in thick white lines. They paved paradise . . . Bethany sang. Some fucking paradise. Some fucking parking lot. There was a plaque on one of the benches dedicated to a woman called Susan. She must have been a bit of a one, that Susan, Bethany said. Imagine wanting to be remembered here . . .

I sat down, the wind troubling the trees, the bags in the bins flickering. It did not look like a place someone could die; a place where someone could just be erased. My expectation was of somewhere cold and unforgiving, icy even on that summer’s afternoon. And of somewhere that was for ever hers. What were you expecting? A memorial? A cross? Some flowers? Bethany said.

I was expecting to feel something, Beth. I was expecting to feel something.

*

I slept for hours, without dreams. My notes were on the dresser, Simon Parks’s name scrubbed out in biro. I kept hearing Bethany ask me: What did you expect? and having no answer for her. Not Parks’ strained indifference. I should have been more rigorous in my questioning; but what would that have gained? There were the facts: a death, an arrest, another death. Would it have helped if he’d produced the case files, explained his theories, worn his obsession like a costume?

I wonder if I’d lived, whether I’d have come to pity you the way I do now, Bethany said, lying on the bed in her underwear. ‘You’re not helping,’ I said out loud. ‘You’re really not helping.’

I know, she said, I could never help you. No matter how hard I tried.

Ferne was sitting on the same stool at the bar. Her hair was down and she was winding it around her index finger as she read. I watched her for a moment, wondering whether I had upset her the night before. You care about her feelings? Bethany said. Already? You sure about that?

There was a clear way of exiting without alerting Ferne, but I decided against it. Instead I sat next to her and tried to catch the barman’s attention. She looked up and folded down the corner of the page.

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Hi,’ I said as the barman poured me a pint of bitter.

‘Did you go to the Indian in the end?’ she said. ‘I hope it wasn’t too awful.’

‘It was okay. Didn’t realize how hungry I was till I got there.’

‘I’m glad it was okay,’ she said.

She went back to her book and I took out my notes. I wrote Simon Parks’ name, and underneath: Gives the impression of knowing more than he lets on. But doesn’t. Does not dwell on the past. After a pause I added: He is lucky.

‘What you writing?’ Ferne said.

‘Just notes. I had some meetings today.’

‘They go well?’

‘Sort of.’

She smiled. It was simple and beautiful in a fractured kind of way.

‘I can’t stand the thought of another night in this place,’ she said. ‘I could show you around if you’d like. Not that there’s much to see.’

I didn’t say anything and she wound her hair tightly in her fingers.

‘You probably have plans, though, right? Saturday night and all that.’

‘No plans,’ I said. ‘But no matter how drunk we get, promise we won’t end up at Chaps.’

I smiled but Ferne looked confused. Chaps was the town nightclub, and the only place to get a late drink. Before going out, Hannah, Beth and I would promise we wouldn’t be tempted.

‘What’s Chaps?’ she said.

‘I thought you told me about it,’ I said. ‘A nightclub or something? Upstairs on the High Street?’

‘No. Not me,’ she said. ‘Must have been someone else.’

‘My mistake,’ I said. ‘Must have been in one of my meetings.’

Very convincing, Bethany said, leaning against the fridges behind the bar. She must think you’re a fucking weirdo already. She’s pretty, though. Looks a bit like me, don’t you think?

‘Well,’ Ferne said, ‘I promise not to take you to the place I’ve never been to. Guide’s honour.’

Ferne did not look like Bethany; a little around the mouth, a similarity in the eyes, but that was it. It did not stop me from staring, though, keeping my eyes on her as she lit a cigarette. She blew out smoke like Bethany; held her cigarette in much the same way. She set her cigarette in an ashtray and put her book in her handbag.

‘We don’t have to, you know. I just thought it would be nice, that’s all. Since we’re both stuck here and all that.’

Bethany put her head on one side and filled up a drink from the optic, then shot down the whisky. I think she likes you, honey. Maybe you should go and fuck her.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’d like to go out. You can show me around.’

Ferne smiled and flicked her ash. ‘I’ll just get my coat and then we’ll go and eat.’

She came back ten minutes later, her jacket furred at the collar and long over her trousers. She had done her eye make-up like Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra and had changed her handbag. As she approached I could smell her perfume: it was heady and surprisingly light.

‘Where to first?’ I said.

‘The Counting House,’ she said. ‘I really fancy a cocktail.’

*

Over a Mai Tai and a gin and tonic, we traded stories about our friends, Ferne doing most of the talking. It was a strange sensation, standing in an unfamiliar place, talking about a past we did not share, and none of it scripted, no chance of my guessing whether everything was true, or what was embellished, no recourse to notes, no background intel. It was like being unmoored. Yet it was real and easy: just two people in need of company. Like me and O’Neil, once. It felt like a long time since I’d had such a conversation, a long time since I’d been able to relax and not worry about an endgame or resolution. We talked because that’s what people do: they talk, they laugh and they find other reasons to keep on going.

‘Right, time to make a move, I think,’ Ferne said. ‘The Falcon next.’

Perfect, Bethany said. Twat central. I wonder if you’re still barred?

The Falcon had always looked like an Alpine ski lodge, had always been full of the people we sought to avoid and was always the most expensive place in town. Nothing had changed. Ferne bought a bottle of white wine and we sat by the window. I wanted to tell her that I had once sat on the same table with Bethany and Hannah, the night we discussed whether Hannah should do anything about the mystery man in her life, and both Bethany and I tried to dissuade her, thinking this could only be about Bethany’s father, but hoping it wasn’t.

‘I prefer this place,’ I said. ‘Less . . . gaudy.’

‘And you’ve been here before, too,’ she said with a smile. ‘So what’s the deal?’

‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

‘You’ve been here before. When we left the last place you knew that we were turning left, you knew the Falcon was the next pub along and you knew where the toilets were, even though they’re not signposted. QED, Joe. QED.’

Tentatively, she put her hand on mine.

‘Talk to me, Joe. Why don’t you talk? All you seem to do is sit there and listen.’

Don’t talk, Mark, Bethany said. Just listen.