Rupert Thomson - Death of a Murderer

“What’s she wearing?” he asked.

Sue told him.

Unable to find any security guards, Billy ran upstairs to the Centre Management Suite and asked the man in charge to broadcast the following announcement at regular intervals: Would anyone who sees an eight-year-old girl with Down’s syndrome please accompany her to Centre Management immediately? She has shoulder-length blonde hair, and she is wearing a pink T-shirt and jeans. Her name is Emma Tyler.

Having checked all the exits, he began to cover the shops systematically, one by one, ridding his mind of everything but Emma’s hair, her spectacles, and the distinctive, slightly tilted angle at which she often held her head. He talked to himself constantly under his breath so as to stop thoughts forming. Come on, Emma. Please. Where are you? In particular, he was trying not to think about the parents of children who had gone missing. He didn’t want to become one of them. He wouldn’t be able to bear it. “Come on, ” he murmured to himself. “Where are you?”

What hellish places these shopping centres were, with their piped pop music, and their groups of sullen teenagers, and their endless bloody discounts and bargains. Every vertical surface had been fitted with mirror-glass, which made the public spaces look twice as busy as they really were, and he kept catching glimpses of himself, a big man, hot and anxious. The glass shop-fronts gleamed. So did the gold rails. Everything reflecting, distorting, confusing.

Once, as he passed a record store, he thought he heard her. That unmistakable tuneless booming sound she made whenever she joined in with West Side Story or Beauty and the Beast. He rushed into the shop, calling her name, but stopped before he reached the end of the first aisle. A girl with Down’s was standing at a listening post with a pair of headphones on, singing along to what was obviously one of her favourite CDs. She was older than Emma. Her hair was brown. He saw how oblivious she was to the world around her. Emma would be no different. It was unlikely she’d be feeling abandoned or lost. She probably wouldn’t even have realised she was on her own.

When he met Sue by the lift, as arranged, she was shaking her head.

“I can’t do this any more,” she said.

He told her to wait where she was.

On his third circuit of the ground floor, he noticed a door marked fire exit. It opened on to a windowless space that had the dimensions of a warehouse, a vast interior of poured concrete and metal stacking-systems, and there under the stark lights, there among the cleaning equipment and the fire extinguishers, was a girl in a pink T-shirt and jeans. Arms in the air, she was swaying to the piped music, but her eyes were on her feet, checking that they were doing what they were supposed to. He wondered whether she had noticed the announcements. If she had, she would probably have imagined that there was a direct connection between the repetition of her name and the songs that were being played. She would probably have assumed that the music was for her. She would have felt special, and that would have encouraged her to go on dancing. In her mind, she was at a party, or in a show. Certainly, she seemed quite unaware of how inhospitable, how inappropriate, her surroundings were. For a few moments, the sight of her held Billy where he was, fifty yards away.

Sue was waiting by the lift when Billy appeared with Emma. At first, she didn’t react — she hadn’t believed that he would be successful, perhaps — but then she dropped to her knees.

“Emma, Emma,” she said. “Are you all right?”

“I was dancing,” Emma said.

Sue had her arms around her daughter now, and she was holding her tight. “I thought you were lost. I didn’t know where you were.”

“Naughty.” Emma had adopted a strict expression, which she had copied from a teacher at school.

A brief, involuntary laugh came out of Sue, then she began to cry.

Billy could see Emma’s face over Sue’s right shoulder. The strictness faded, and a look of sympathy, almost of pity, took its place. One of Emma’s hands lifted into the air, then faltered. Peering at the side of Sue’s head from close up, she started, rather clumsily, to stroke Sue’s hair.

“There,” she said.

Once again, Billy couldn’t bring himself to move. Mother and daughter in each other’s arms, and strangers passing on either side, their heads turning, sensing a drama, perhaps, but knowing nothing of the real story — and him just standing near by, watching…

Things like that were always happening, it seemed, or on the point of happening. He turned to Eileen as if seeking confirmation, but carried on before she could open her mouth. Sometimes it got too much for him, he told her, and he would drive to the Orwell estuary after work. The thought of going home frightened him. Or exhausted him. He didn’t know which. Maybe both. He had a hard time working out whether he was lucky or unlucky. He had no clear view of the value of his life. Usually, he was down by the river for an hour or more, trying to cobble something together, some new version of himself. Not that it would last. Well, not for more than a couple of days, anyway — or sometimes it fell apart the moment he walked through the front door. Some days he’d sit in the car, not think at all. He would just switch off. Or he would read about the birds that passed through the area, and it would occur to him that he wasn’t so very different, the way he stopped by the water, gathering his strength, and then moved on. He felt Eileen’s silence near him in the room. He couldn’t decide what he should tell and what he shouldn’t tell. There didn’t appear to be any barriers or boundaries. When he touched his cheek, he found that it was wet.

Eileen walked over and put a hand on his shoulder.

“I’m all right,” he said. “I’ll be fine.” He smiled at her through his tears. “It’s just that it’s difficult sometimes, and no one’s very strong, really, are they?”

“No,” she said quietly.

“Thank you, Eileen. Christ.” He used both hands to wipe his face. “I didn’t sleep yesterday, that’s all it is. Normally, I have a nap in the afternoon.”

“You must get some rest when you go home,” Eileen said. “We all must.” She took her hand off his shoulder and stepped over to the wall again.

“I suppose I’ve been thinking too much,” he said, “imagining things…” His eyes moved to the locked fridge. “Phil said you had the key.”

She nodded, then patted her jacket pocket. “It’s in here.”

“But you’re not allowed to open the fridge, are you?”

“Not unless I’m authorised.”

“So you couldn’t open it for me?”

“No.”

“That’s what I thought. It makes you curious, though, sitting here all night…”

A silence fell between them, and Eileen made no attempt to fill it.

“Did you ever see her?” Billy said at last.

“Once or twice.” Eileen gave him a look that he had already noticed on the faces of other people who were closely involved in the operation. There was wariness in it, and a fear of being indiscreet, both perfectly understandable in the circumstances, but there was also a hunted quality, a coating of guilt, as if merely to have been associated with that murderer of children, no matter how innocently, was to have laid oneself open to suspicion or recrimination, or even to have committed a kind of crime oneself.

“What was she like?” he asked.

“Well,” and now Eileen’s eyes drifted away, towards the far end of the room, “I was never with her for more than a couple of minutes at a time, and never on my own.” She paused, as though trying to summon one clear image. “She seemed, I don’t know, very frail…” Another long pause, and then she looked directly at Billy. “If I hadn’t known what she’d done—”