Cath Staincliffe - Letters To My Daughter's Killer

Oh God. Jack was at the gym, so Florence must have been in the house when…

I lay Florence on the sofa and cover her with a blanket.

I change out of my jumper and jeans and walking shoes and put them into separate bags, and the policeman takes them away.

The house is cold, so I go into the kitchen and put the heating on. Milky comes and weaves around my legs. I stare at the vegetables on the counter, the crumbs of soil drying on them, the wispy roots of the carrots, the vivid green of the runner bean pods. Out of the window is a black sky and a frail new moon, scimitar-bright.

My head aches, a thudding pain beating in my temples and behind my eyes, and the words Lizzie’s dead go round and round to the beat of that drum. But they are just words. I can’t believe them. Not when I look at the carrots and the slice of moon and the child at peace on my sofa.

Ruth

17 Brinks Avenue

Manchester

M19 6FX

Did you think you’d got away with it, that first night? What were you feeling? Elation? Terror? Some sexual frisson? It’s the same physiological response, isn’t it – fight, flight, fuck. Violence, fear, sex. It’s on my list of questions. And did you replay events in your head or try to shut them out? Were you racked with guilt or full of exhilaration?

While I wait for someone to come, to break the spell, me and my granddaughter and the cat cocooned in the bubble, I try to imagine you. Broderick Litton, who I never met, never saw. Like a bodyguard, Lizzie said you were; smart, though, a military type, clipped and polished. Always very pleasant except when you were being a vicious bully. At the time you were stalking her, I grew more panicky than Lizzie. When the police did so little, I wanted her to move. Suggested we swap houses.

The questions swoop through my head like bats in the dark, to and fro, silent, quick and shadowy. Why wasn’t Lizzie more careful? Why did she open the door? Why did she let you in? Why? Why? Why?

Where are you? Scurrying through night-black streets smelling of blood, or lurking in some lair, drinking and gloating, or slipping into bed beside your drowsy wife?

It is hard to sit still and Milky senses my agitation, echoes it with repeated sorties out of the cat flap and back. My skin is cold; I am frozen to the marrow, despite the heating being on, and I’m itchy. I can’t stop scratching: my arms, my neck, my calves. As if I am shedding a skin, or trying to claw it off and make my body raw like the rest of me.

Lizzie’s photographs – Lizzie as a baby, as a child, with Jack, with Florence – clutter my walls. I am standing in the corner, staring at one: her graduation day, Lizzie flanked by Tony and me. Her eyes alive with happiness, ours too. Delight and pride. I rub at my shoulder. Tony – I must ring Tony. Should I? Or wait? Make completely sure? If there’s been a horrible mistake and I tell him now… that she is… A wave of nausea breaks through me, coating me in clammy sweat, shrivelling my stomach, forcing bile into the back of my throat. In the kitchen I spit it out and drink a little water.

A knocking at the door makes me jump. It is the family liaison officer. A beanpole of a woman with short greying hair and a weather-beaten face. Kind eyes. Stupid thing to say really, but they are not brash or judgemental, or even overtly emotional, but accepting. The sort of eyes you can stare into and not feel impelled to look away. (Or maybe that’s hindsight. Those early days, Kay, that was her name, was a sort of calm anchor for us all.)

Kay makes tea and explains what is happening, what will happen in the next twenty-four hours. That is as much as I can take in, and even that doesn’t really penetrate. There is a buffer between my understanding and the outside world, a fog that makes it hard to truly hear and know things.

‘It’s the shock,’ Kay says, when I apologize and ask her to repeat something. ‘You won’t be able to think straight,’ she says. ‘It’s normal.’

A flare of anger pierces the fug. I take issue. ‘This is not normal, none of this is normal.’

‘No,’ she agrees.

I pace the room; my scalp itches, I rake at it with my nails. And I try to remember what Kay has said. People will be busy at Lizzie’s house documenting the scene and collecting evidence. There will be a post-mortem. A host of television dramas come to mind, angst-ridden pathologists and flawed but courageous detectives. This is real, I tell myself. Real. Really happening. There will be the formal identification of Lizzie’s body. Kay says that, ‘Lizzie’s body’, not ‘the body’. Every time she mentions her, she uses Lizzie’s name. Keeping it specific and personal. They are probably trained to do that. I appreciate it. The understanding that their victim is more than a victim; she’s my daughter, Jack’s wife, Florence’s mother.

‘I should ring Tony,’ I remember in a rush. ‘Lizzie’s dad.’

‘Does he live nearby?’

‘Reddish Vale.’ A few miles. ‘He remarried,’ I say, ‘Denise.’

Denise the wheeze. My nasty nickname because Denise’s default position is to giggle, to laugh, and she is a smoker, which adds to the breathy quality of her chortling. It’s probably a nervous tic, but it makes me want to slap her. Grab her by the arms and ask her what’s so funny.

I have to look their number up in my address book; it’s not something I ever wanted to memorize. It rings and rings. Tony probably can’t hear it. He’s going deaf, Lizzie said recently, but he’s too proud or too macho to get his ears tested. Lizzie teased him about it, and said she’d have to teach him sign language. A bit more than the few signs we mastered when she first began learning BSL: hello, goodbye, I love you and a couple of swear words. She brings me titbits about Tony (and no doubt does the same in the other direction), and I accept them gracefully. We keep it civilized. For her as much as anything. And for Florence.

The phone rings out. ‘They’re not answering,’ I say to Kay. ‘I’ll try his mobile.’

Tony uses it for work but switches it off when he is at home. Or he used to. It seems to take forever to find my phone and his details. While it rings, it occurs to me that the Tennysons, Jack’s parents, need to know too. I mention it to Kay. ‘Should I wait?’ Have I even got their number?

‘Jack will probably want to tell them himself,’ Kay says.

‘Of course.’

She knows the etiquette, not just of death but of this particular situation: sudden, violent death.

Tony’s cell phone goes to voicemail and I hang up. Bury my head in my hands.

‘Try again in a while,’ Kay says. ‘Or we can send someone round there if you-’

‘No.’ It seems cowardly to do that. I should be the one to tell him, not some stranger.

The man who comes to take my statement seems far too young to be dealing with this sort of thing. But he’s not at all nervous or inept. He takes me slowly through the sequence of events: Jack’s call, the car journey, going into the house, being restrained.

Then he asks more questions about the house. Were the lights on or off, did I put any lights on? Was there any sound, TV or radio? What was the temperature like?

I laugh at this; it seems preposterous that in the face of such a huge shock, my sense of hot and cold would be functioning and that I might still remember.

‘No idea,’ I say.

I picture Lizzie, the contrast of her hair and the dark stains. Recall light flickering over her hand, her left hand. That would have been from the fire, their log-burning stove. ‘The fire was lit,’ I say.

Then the questions become more general, he confirms Lizzie’s date of birth and age. He wants to know about her life, her work, her marriage, her routines. When I last saw her. What we spoke about. And finally if I can think of anyone who might have wanted to cause her harm. I tell him all I can about Broderick Litton, urge him to check the police files. Surely they will know more than me.