Flynn Berry - Under the Harrow

“Why was Rachel unmarried?” he asks.

“She valued other things. Why are you not married?”

“I’m divorced,” he says, as though it answers the question. “It sounds like Rachel could be unpleasant.”

“I liked that about her.”

He smiles, and I have the sense that he agrees with me, and understands her. She matters to him now in a way that’s different than with anyone else.

“I’M SORRY. I’m so sorry I didn’t go with you.”

“Don’t apologize,” she said. She lowered her face and pried her rope bracelet from under the hospital wristband. The pale gold straw was now stiff and rust colored, and she began to work it off with her teeth.

When I first saw her, I started to cry and Rachel tilted her head at me. This was a second shock. Her eyes were so swollen I had thought they were closed and that she was asleep. Her appearance frightened me, like the bashed-up girl was the scary thing instead of what had happened to her.

Her face was swollen and garish. Her mouth was twice its normal size, as though she had drawn around it with lipstick, and both of her eyes were almost hidden under black bulges. Someone had combed her hair, and the comb left raked lines in her scalp. A greasy ointment covered the stitches on her brow and cheek. One arm was folded across her body in a sling.

We were at the hospital in Selby, seven miles from Snaith. “How did you get here?”

“Banged on a door. They wouldn’t drive me. They were scared I’d die on the way to hospital and they’d be held responsible. I had to talk to the 999 operator myself, and they wanted me to wait for the ambulance outside.”

A couple, the same age as our dad, and, she said, with the same habits. “Which house?” I asked, because I was going to torch it when I got home. She couldn’t remember the number.

“Has the hospital told Dad?”

“No. I said he was camping.”

Two tall men came into the room. Both ignored the visitors’ chairs and stood at the end of her bed. Rachel turned her battered head at them, and they asked me to leave. They didn’t try to shut the door. If they had, I would have screamed the place down.

She told the officers what she had told me, and she added that the man had black hair to his jaw and a narrow face, with a pronounced plate of bone under his forehead. He wore a canvas jacket that was too large for him. One of the detectives stopped her. “Where had you been?”

“A friend’s house.”

“And what were you doing out so early?”

“I wanted to go home.”

“Had you been drinking?”

“Yes.”

“How many drinks did you have?”

I begged her to lie. “Four,” she said, and in the hallway I dropped my head to the wall and sighed. It was a lie. It was probably the number she thought reasonable. They were cops, surely they drank, surely they understood that four drinks over many hours wouldn’t impair your judgment.

“Anything else?” asked the same officer. The second one was silent. I don’t think I heard his voice once.

“What do you mean?”

“Any drugs?”

“No.”

“Did you argue with anyone at the party?”

“No.”

“How clear is your memory of the night?”

“It’s clear.”

“Did you recognize this man?”

“No.”

“Any chance you saw him before, even in passing?”

“No.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“He wasn’t my boyfriend. I’d never seen him before.”

“It would be helpful if you could answer the question.”

“No.”

“Can you tell us who was at the party?”

They asked her to go through it a few more times, and then to sign a statement. They said they would be in touch if they identified a suspect, but of course they never did.

RACHEL WENT TO Bristol Prison. She would have dressed for the occasion, I think, to prove he didn’t damage her. It would be much worse for him than her, in the end. Dark fabric, sharp boots, lipstick. She would dress like her own solicitor.

On the drive to Bristol, the hour and a half on the M4 in March, I imagine she was taut and icy with fury, and triumphant.

“I found you. I always knew I’d find you.”

I wonder if she had a few searing minutes of thinking it was finally over before Healy explained he’d been in prison that summer. It’s difficult for me to think about. The drive to Bristol is better.

• • •

“We’ll try to finish this as quickly as possible,” says Lewis after he joins us in the interview room. “It’s unusual for someone like Rachel to be the victim of two random assaults.”

“What do you mean, someone like her?”

“Not a sex worker,” says Moretti.

“She also lived in areas with a low incidence of violent crime,” says Lewis. “She had no involvement in gangs or drugs.”

I don’t correct him. He means the trade, not snorting lines at a club in Shoreditch. Which I miss, suddenly. I used to wear a pair of ankle boots with a sharp heel, leather leggings, a black cotton shirt that I bought for one million pounds at AllSaints on the King’s Road.

I let my head tip back. Rachel liked a club behind Hoxton Square the best. “Let’s go take a few dances,” she said, and unlatched the toilet stall, and out we went, tripping up the stairs to the main floor.

Across the table, the detectives wait. Rachel rubbed her finger above her sharp white teeth. She rolled a note against her leg.

Moretti unbuttons his suit jacket and leans forward. “Grievous bodily harm,” he says in his Scottish accent, “is very similar to murder. It becomes murder if the victim dies. Your sister was the victim of two nearly identical crimes.” He stumbles on the last four words, intentionally, I think, to stress how difficult this is to believe. “We’d like to ask you some more questions about the first incident. Can you describe her assailant?”

“He was older than her, around twenty-five, six foot, dark hair, pale, a narrow face with a high, strong forehead. Do you think it was him?”

“He may have been angry that she got away,” says Lewis.

“She didn’t get away. She could barely walk when he finished.”

“Did he rape her?”

“No.”

“Why did the attack stop?” asks Lewis.

“She didn’t know. He may have thought someone saw them, or he just decided he was done. She said he lurched off her and walked away.”

Short bouncing steps. I could imitate him for them, like Rachel did for me, but there isn’t any point.

“He walked funny,” I say. “On his toes.”

Moretti writes this down. The fluorescent lights hum above us. She isn’t coming back. Lewis notices me rubbing my head and stands to switch off the lights. The electric whine disappears, and the room dims. Rain patterns the window as the worst of my headache drains away.

Moretti opens a folder and says, “For the purpose of the tape, I am now showing Miss Lawrence three photographs. Do you recognize any of these men?”

“Yes.” Both detectives tense. I tap the middle photograph.

“How?” asks Moretti.

“He killed a girl in Leeds.”

“Did you ever discuss this man with Rachel?”

“Yes. I showed him to Rachel and she said it wasn’t him.”

“When?”

“A long time ago. Rachel might have been eighteen or nineteen. I know he was caught right away. He had blood on him and he took the girl’s bracelet.”

“Why did you show his picture to Rachel?”

“I thought she would want to know.”

“But you were surprised that she visited Andrew Healy,” says Moretti.

“I was surprised that she visited him in March of this year. She said she wanted to forget about it, and I thought she had.”