Cath Staincliffe - Crying Out Loud

‘I can’t believe her mother’s not rung,’ I said. ‘Not a word. She must be thinking about her, worried sick about her.’

‘Yeah.’ Diane stuck a bowl of grapes in front of me.

‘About work,’ I said, ‘if I get really stuck…’

She groaned and dropped her head in her hands.

‘Only if I can’t find anyone else,’ I rushed to say.

‘It was a one-off,’ she complained. ‘That’s what you said. Anyway, I’m away Monday and Tuesday.’ She grinned with relief.

‘Where?’

‘Dublin. New gallery have given me a room for the glass.’ Before her project on Cuba, Diane had spent time with a glass blower and out of that had created an installation. She used thousands of pieces of smooth, coloured glass to make a pathway and a ‘curtain’ that the viewer walked through. The resulting sound, first the crinkle and crunch of the path, then the resulting chiming of the curtain and the way light spangled from the suspended globes and icicles, was wonderful. We’d gone to the preview at the Lowry in Salford. Most critics had raved but one influential commentator had been less appreciative – ‘a tacky fly-curtain that will appeal to lovers of whimsy and the knick-knack brigade’.

‘He can sit on it and swivel,’ Diane had muttered darkly at the time. But she had complete faith in her work and its value. I envied her that self-belief, that confidence.

Diane listened while I talked about Damien Beswick, and where that left my enquiry. I admitted to her that I wished I’d given him a little more hope at that last meeting.

‘Would that have been misleading?’

‘Yes, I suppose. At the time I was still so unsure.’

‘Hindsight’s a bugger,’ she said succinctly. ‘But now you believe him?’

‘I’d be a fool not to – his dying message to the world,’ I said. ‘It’s such a waste; he wasn’t much more than a kid.’

‘What about the other man’s family, the Carters – they must be all over the place?’

‘They are. And the girlfriend, the one who hired me. Going through all that and then finding that everything they’ve been told, everything they believed about that day is suddenly meaningless. It must feel like it’s happening all over again.’

‘Mummy.’ Maddie stood in the doorway, her wrists and ankles sticking out of her pyjamas, shoulders hunched. Her face was white. ‘I had a scary dream.’

‘Come on.’ I got to my feet and went to her. ‘Let’s get you back to bed.’

‘I’ll get going,’ Diane said. ‘See myself out.’

‘Have fun in Dublin.’

‘I will, and let me know… anything… everything.’

‘Know what?’ Maddie yawned as we went upstairs.

‘Oh, nothing special. So what was this dream?’ She didn’t need to hear about any of the uncertainty swilling round in my life. Not until things were clearer and I was surer where we were heading. If Ray and I were over. And what would happen to Maddie and me.

I lay awake most of that night, any chance of sleep ambushed by Jamie, who woke each time I drifted off. My mind was chewing over my worries. I wasn’t the only person to miss signs of Damien’s fragility but I longed to make reparation. Eventually I persuaded myself that the best thing I could do for Chloe, and in Damien’s memory, was to actively support her attempts to clear his name. By extension anything I could find that helped the police catch the real culprit would also help Libby and the Carters.

I’m the sort of person who copes with anxiety by doing something. Problem solving. If I could focus on my investigation, work hard, it would help and give me the hope that I could achieve results and make things better. With that in mind, I set out to make good use of Sunday by combining business and pleasure. I loaded the car with baby supplies, packed Maddie and Jamie in and drove out to Thornsby to visit the site where Charlie had lost his life. I’d no expectation of entering the property – presumably it would have been sold on, the floor ripped up and replaced or professionally cleaned. There might be people living there, or perhaps it was still a holiday home for someone. Would they know the history? Would any of them get a funny feeling about the house, sense a cold spot near the door or a peculiar anxiety in the dark?

I remembered Damien’s comment about the ghost in the prison. John Ellis, the hangman who’d slit his own throat. Was Damien with him now? A shadow swinging on a creaking rope in the dark end of the night. Another lost soul.

‘Where are we going?’ Maddie piped up, stopping my stupid fancies. Blame it on lack of sleep.

‘For a walk in the country.’

‘Will we see lambs?’

‘I think it’s a bit late for lambs, they’re born in the spring. But there’s a children’s farm.’

‘What, with children in?!’ She was astounded and then saw the joke. We both laughed.

‘For children. We’ll walk a bit then go to the farm. It might be feeding time.’

In the bottom of the valley, where Damien got off the bus, the road ran parallel to the river. We drove past the service station on the left and the pub advertising home-cooked food. From there I could see beyond the turn off to the bus shelter on the opposite side of the road, where Damien had been chucked off. I turned right at that junction to take the hill up to the cottage. The hamlet was pretty – maybe two dozen properties in all, clinging to the valley sides. Half of them looked to have grown out of the land, built low to the ground, the stone dark and weathered with age, the windows tiny – no doubt to avoid the punitive window taxes at the time. Somewhere like this must have been a working village, digging clay or lead or quarrying. The newer houses were bigger in scale: the same limestone but raw, glowing pale grey. They boasted picture windows, veluxes on the roofs and off-road parking.

I stopped my car partway up the hill, behind a vehicle on the left before the bend where the road twisted to the right. This was where Damien had passed two stationary cars and cased them for valuables. A Mondeo and a Volvo. The car in front of me now was a Volvo. I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck. It could be the same one. I used my camcorder to capture a shot of it and took in the locale as well.

‘What are you filming?’ Maddie smelt a rat.

‘This and that. We’ll take some of you at the farm, too.’

Jamie was awake but content and kicked her legs in excitement as I fastened her seat into the buggy chassis. The previous day’s fog had lifted and we had mellow autumn sunshine. Out here there was much more birdsong, the twittering of wrens and tits and finches pierced by the raucous calls of rooks patrolling two sycamores at the end of one of the gardens.

Damien had tried the cars, looked to see if there was anything worth stealing, then crossed over. I retraced his steps. As he rounded the corner he met a man coming down the hill. Pushing the buggy up the gradient, I tried to imagine the lane at night. There were some street lights, so it wouldn’t have been in complete darkness. The man had been heading down the hill. Where to? The man had crossed the road after he passed Damien, which was the wrong direction for the pub and the service station. Was he heading for one of the houses on that side of the road, or one of the cars? Or the bus stop?

If he lived here, how come he hadn’t been identified by the police? All the houses would have been visited, people asked to help. Damien had heard a car start as he approached the cottage. He’d frozen, listening in case it came his way but it had gone off down the hill. Driven by that man? I should have asked him if both cars had still been there when he fled down the hill after finding Charlie’s body, or had either of them gone? Too late, now. I’d never know.