Kiss Her Goodbye: The most addictive thriller you'll read this year Page 13

  She laughs to herself and walks over to the table to pick up a knife, as if everything is still the same as it was before Dad rang. She hacks at the thick gooey sponge on my birthday cake and the knife leaves a brown chocolate stain on the white linen when she puts it down. She’s drunk, but it annoys me that she doesn’t ask me if I’m all right. She’s meant to be my best friend after all, and she should know how I feel about my dad by now.

  Mike looks up at the photograph. ‘Seen any kingfishers lately?’ he asks, but he must know that there aren’t any. It’s a river of dead things now, not a place where blue birds dive through scattering fish, so I don’t bother to answer. I stare at the silent phone instead, and think about the last time I saw the kingfisher at the river. I heard its shrill call over the brown water. The orange and blue feathers were so bright as it caught an arching silver fish in its beak. It was beautifully brutal as it beat the fish against the branch and swallowed it headfirst. It came back to the log three times before it flew away, never to be seen again. I think about it as next door’s baby continues to cry, on and on.

  The faint smell of Mum’s cigarette drifts in from the open kitchen door and Leila looks at the piece of cake in her hand and puts it back down on the table.

  ‘I don’t feel so good,’ she says, before turning to vomit over the carpet. As the chewed-up pancakes and beer pour out of her, Mike grabs the bin and holds it under her face. I can’t help thinking that it would be nice to throw up all the bad things, until I felt clean inside.

  ‘Fuck’s sake, Leila,’ I say, before I go upstairs and slam the bedroom door behind me. I sit on the end of the bed and wait for someone to come up, but they all stay downstairs, until Mike takes Leila home. When he gets back, I hear Mum tell him off for giving her beer, but nobody comes up to see me.

  After about half an hour, the haunted notes of ‘Elegia’ come on again downstairs and I know that they’re dancing to my album again. I look up at the New Order poster that I got from the market and squint my eyes. In the photograph, I can almost see Kirsten under the black rippled shapes in the water. I hate the thought of them even touching the album sleeve and Gillian Gilbert looks sideways from the poster as though she can’t bear it either. As the song creeps upstairs, I put on Big Audio Dynamite as loud as I can, so that I can’t hear what they’re doing down there. I don’t want them to be a part of anything that’s mine; they make everything dirty.

  The freshness of the wind through the window takes me away: through the garden, over the lane and past the industrial estate to the twisted trees by the river. A firework bangs like a gun and then crackles as it dies. I pull the duvet up to my ear and watch the shadows move across the poster. Kirsten’s dead face flickers, off and on, like a strobe in my mind, as I lie there. Like a fish under the shadow of a bird, I wait, but there’s no sign of her tonight. I’m alone. She doesn’t like them playing our songs either.

  Time goes on and the music ends. Mum and Mike go out to the pub, but I can’t relax. My mind won’t give me peace and I go downstairs. It smells like vomit and vanilla air freshener as the orange street lights shine through the glass panels on the front door, calling me outside. I think about Mrs Green, telling me to come day or night, and I slip on my shoes and open the front door.

  Outside, the road is quiet and the distant rumble of a train is the only sound as I walk to her house. It takes longer at night than it does during the day as the lane is so dark that I can hardly make out the path. Everything is tinged sepia brown, apart from the branches of the cherry tree in her garden that are lit orange from the street lamp opposite. I knock on the front door, but there’s only darkness behind the net curtains.

  Eventually, I give up and go round the side of the house. The fat moon reveals a garden so big that I can barely see the back of it. There are no river smells here and, instead, the faint scent of lilac hangs on the air. I step into the garden and a knotted rope-swing creaks as it moves from the branches of a tree. I picture Kirsten on it, head flung back and smiling on a summer day, while Mrs Green tends to the flowers nearby. It feels like a glimpse into a life that I have always wanted.

  I try the handle of the back door, but it’s locked, so I kick it to see if I can get in. Next door’s dog starts to bark and when their kitchen light goes on, I run out of her garden and down the path. Once I’m in the middle of the road, I look back to see Mrs Green’s silhouette at the bedroom window, with her hand up against the glass as though she’s calling me back. There’s a loud whistle, before a rocket explodes behind her house and red sparks pour through the sky like tiny droplets. I put my head down and walk on.

  Going there hasn’t made me feel any better at all. I used to go on night walks all the time, with only the sound of my feet on the pavement to interrupt the silence. Sometimes I’d stand outside Kirsten’s house and wonder what she was doing in the darkness before I walked on. People vanished with the light and the streets were mine. I’d walk, until all the thoughts changed from shouts to whispers and it felt as if there were no one else in the world. I wish I could listen to ‘Sub-Culture’ now. It’s just the right time for it. My music is the only perfect thing I’ve got now and I hum the tune as the night air fills my lungs.

  The scream and bang of fireworks fills the air as I walk. I continue through the night until my fingers start to feel numb and just before I’m about to turn back, I notice a black shape on the pavement. My first thought is that it’s Kirsten, but when my eyes adjust I realise that it’s a man, face down on the concrete. I wait for him to get up, but he doesn’t. When I reach him, I poke him with my shoe, but he doesn’t move. I kick him, but he stays still. A dark patch of blood has gathered like an inkblot on the pavement, beside the cut on his forehead, from where he’s fallen over.

  When I bend down closer, the smell of booze is so strong that I hold my breath as I reach into his pocket to take out the wallet that’s stuck out of it. It’s warm from being so close to his body and I take out the five pounds inside and put the wallet back.

  The sound of a bus breaks the silence and as I walk back down the road, I look back at the man, but he still hasn’t moved. The blackness of his clothes blend into the shadows and only the white stickers on his new shoes give away the fact that he’s there – so beautifully still and silent in the darkness. When I close the front door, the latch makes a tiny click. Mum and Mike are back and I hear them talking in the kitchen. I take my ‘Low-Life’ album from downstairs and go back to my room.

  I slip off my jeans, get into bed and slide the five pounds under my pillow, with the smell of the night air still on my hair. Nobody hears me come in, just like they didn’t know I’d gone out. I’m like a ghost in this house. If Dad were here, he would laugh, because it’s the sort of thing he’d find funny. His phone call at the party comes back into my mind and my thoughts begin to race.

  I stare at the black and white letters on my precious album. One word is written over the other, yet you can still read all of it. It’s like a reminder that there’s no escape from what’s underneath. Before I go to sleep, I think about the man outside and try to imagine that it’s Dad’s new family out there instead. I picture them all lying on the pavement, lined up like sardines in a tin, as their lifeless eyes stare up at the night sky. If that happened, he’d come back for me, I just know that he would.

  18

  DS Beverley Samuels

  It’s a clear night. Orange street lights illuminate the pavement and the black sky lights up as fireworks pop in the distance.

  ‘Can you believe the timing?’ Nick says.

  ‘Selfish of him to die just before the end of your shift. You’re right.’

  Nick screws up his face in mock annoyance. ‘It’s bad enough having to work on Bonfire Night without this.’

  It would be hard to see the man, if there weren’t another police officer standing next to him. His clothes have faded into the darkness at the side of the road.

  As we get closer, the new shoes and leather jack
et that the man is wearing tell me that he’s not one of the homeless. A broken pint glass lies to the right of his hand and his head is resting on a pool of blood.

  I look over my shoulder, towards the path.

  ‘From the pub up there maybe?’ I say to Nick.

  ‘Looks like he fell and hit his head.’

  ‘There weren’t any witnesses.’

  A rocket shoots into the sky behind the bridge and explodes in a shower of white light that illuminates the scene. The man has a dark wet stain between his legs and his arm is folded underneath his chest. The word ‘Gouranga’ is graffitied in white letters on the bridge above him.

  ‘Heart attack maybe,’ I say.

  ‘Could be,’ Nick replies.

  ‘Still got his wallet.’

  ‘Yeah, doesn’t look an attack.’

  We wait, while the area is secured, as fireworks crackle and pepper the sky. I was with Tom this time last year and I remember the warmth on my skin as the embers flew up from the bonfire. On the way home, he kissed me on the bridge with the fireworks going off over the fields and I wish that Mum knew him then. She never understood what made him special. He’ll always be just another one of my mistakes to her.

  ‘I’m going back to the Reynolds’s,’ I tell him.

  ‘Really?’

  I inhale through my nose.

  ‘It’s more important than what they want us to do at Raymond’s garage.’

  ‘Dave wants the garage as priority.’

  My shoulders tense, but I try not to show it.

  ‘He’s box ticking. It’s all that matters to him.’

  ‘It’s just politics.’

  ‘Politics don’t interest me and I’m going to the Reynolds’s this week. I’ll do it as overtime if I have to.’

  Nick’s eyes narrow. ‘You’re going too far with it.’

  I walk over to the path and lean over the fence.

  ‘Maybe you’re not going far enough.’

  As a train goes past, the clack and thump of the tracks are the only sound as I stare into the night. I am the first to speak.

  ‘Kirsten Green deserves things to be done properly.’

  ‘And we have. It’s like the carnival. There was no point in us going.’

  ‘You can’t just make assumptions all the time.’

  ‘Waste of time. Same with Kirsten Green. It was suicide. End of.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘Not everything can be tied up neat in a bow. We might never know what happened to Stephen Fitzpatrick. It’s just how it is.’

  The two cases are so different. Stephen Fitzpatrick was drunk. He went to the canal at night, instead of following the road to where his friends were waiting for him. He was not a young girl walking back from college in the afternoon.

  ‘The family might not agree.’

  ‘Maybe not. We’re the professionals though.’

  Nick looks over at the body on the floor and then back at me. I follow his eyes to where the man is lying and we stand together without a word.

  ‘He probably came from The Crown,’ I say.

  Nick opens his mouth as though he’s going to say something, but doesn’t. If he wants me to focus on other things then I will. I haven’t seen him come up with anything though. It’s always the same. He just follows my lead.

  ‘Looks that way.’

  We exchange a look that means we aren’t going to discuss the Kirsten Green case today and we check around the area instead. There’s a smear of red on the corner of the kerb, next to where he’s fallen, and I realise who it is. He’s one of the regular drunks that we’ve had through the station a few times.

  ‘It’s Justin Townsend,’ I say.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know him.’

  Nick comes round to where I am and kneels down to get a better look at his face.

  ‘Surprised he’s lasted this long.’

  I wonder to myself if this is what the future holds for Tom. Going from pub to pub to hide the number of pints he’s had, before ending up in a ditch, covered in piss and blood.

  ‘What a time to go. Right in the middle of the qualifiers,’ Nick says, in an attempt to smooth things over. There’s more to say, but this isn’t the time.

  ‘He’s past caring.’

  Nick smiles. ‘Didn’t even wait to see if we beat Northern Ireland.’

  I raise an eyebrow.

  ‘What?’ he asks. ‘Aren’t you excited for Mexico?’

  I shake my head. ‘Can hardly wait.’

  By the time we leave, my hands are numb with cold and I’m ready to go home. It doesn’t look as if anything suspicious has gone on. He’s collapsed drunk and Tom’s on my mind because of it. It still hurts to remember that final night, when he came home drunk and smelling of sex, with the empty condom wrapper in his jacket pocket. A sad crimson rocket fizzes into nothing above us, as I pull my coat tighter around me on the walk back to the car. The last few days have left me deflated. The cold air makes clouds out of our breath that disappear into the night, like all the lost promises of the past, as we walk in silence up the hill.

  The Kirsten Green case sits unspoken between us on the way home and I make sure not to drive through the industrial estate tonight. It’s become a habit to make it part of the route, in case I see anything unusual down there near the river, and Nick might be right. I have been obsessing about it.

  Nick presses the Peter Tosh tape into the car stereo and stares out of the window. This time last year, we’d be laughing and making jokes and I wonder how much of it is down to me. I wait for him to complain about the music as he usually does, but he just sits and watches out of the window. We pass the road that leads to Kirsten’s house near to the old Brickworks and I try to look forwards and not think about her. It has taken over. As we go through the town he says, ‘There’s another one!’ whenever he sees a firework and I’m glad when I finally drop him off at home. It’s been a long day.

  *

  The next morning, I plan to see the Reynolds’s, but Nick wants to go to Raymond’s garage to speak to the owner and I reluctantly agree.

  Most of the local shops closed when the new supermarket opened up at the top of the hill and the shutters are down as we drive past. The town looks unkempt and scruffy, no longer the industrial giant of its past. The red-bricked terraced houses built for the mill workers still line the roads and derelict factories stand crumbling on the wasteland. A girl stares at us through the smashed glass at the bus stop and, behind her, the boarded-up windows of the butcher’s are sprayed with swirls of graffiti. Her candy-floss-pink hair is the only brightness amongst dirty grey concrete as we pass by. Stockport’s grim, but at least it’s honest. Manchester’s dirty little sister.

  ‘Do you think it’s an insurance scam?’ Nick asks as we get out of the car.

  ‘Bet he’s up to his eyeballs in debt,’ I reply.

  I gesture to the empty car park.

  ‘Where are all the cars?’

  ‘I thought the same.’

  The place looks closed, until a man comes out of the workshop. His navy overalls are smeared with grease from a time when there was work to do.

  ‘Raymond Gary?’ Nick asks.

  The man looks over his shoulder.

  ‘In there,’ he tells us, with a nod towards the building.

  Raymond Gary is sitting at a wooden desk at the back of the workshop, with papers all around him. The concrete floor is black with oil and the furniture he’s sitting on is flecked with old paint and dirt. Spanners and wrenches on hooks line the wall, waiting to be put to use.

  When he sees us, he stands up and grins at me, as though I will find him charming. I don’t. The paint is peeling off the metal support girders and the brick walls are covered in pictures of topless women.

  ‘What can I do you for?’ he asks.

  He glances around, as though he’s uncomfortable.

  Since the Kirsten Green case, I can’t get Moira Timperley off my mind. I ha
ve no focus and as I look over at the engine parts on the worktop, I think that Moira Timperley would have liked this place. She liked mending things. She’ll always be that girl who slipped through the system now though; the girl who lied to get attention and wasn’t believed when it counted.

  I’m aware of how close to the river we are and as Nick looks around the garage, my thoughts are back on the bank, near the bulrushes, with Kirsten Green’s body in front of me. I look away from the picture of a topless Sam Fox on the wall and wonder if the car park leads through to the scrubland behind.

  ‘Mr Gary, where were you on September 20th?’

  Nick stiffens.

  ‘Were you working?’ I continue.

  Raymond Gary walks over to the back of the garage, gets out an oil-stained diary and opens the page.

  ‘We had a Metro in. Replacing the cylinder head gasket. I was on it most of the day. Andy will remember. He did some work on it in the afternoon. Why?’

  ‘You were here all day?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you know a Kirsten Green?’ I ask.

  ‘Who?’

  Nick walks over to him. ‘Can we borrow that diary? I’ll get it back to you later on today.’

  Nick can hardly look at me.

  ‘She was found in the river,’ I tell Raymond Gary.

  ‘That kid that killed herself? Didn’t know her,’ he replies.

  ‘How’s business?’ Nick asks with a glance over at me.

  ‘All right,’ Raymond says.

  ‘She lived close,’ I continue.

  Nick coughs.

  ‘Just over the road there. You didn’t know her, then?’

  ‘There’s loads of kids round here, love.’

  Nick looks angry.

  ‘Did you speak to any of them about it?’ I ask.

  ‘Must be hard to find the money to keep this place running,’ Nick interrupts, with a glance at the empty garage. ‘There’s only one car in here.’

  Raymond Gary tilts his head and narrows his eyes. ‘I do all right.’

  ‘We’ll need to go through your paperwork,’ Nick tells him. I can tell by his voice that he isn’t happy. If he wants to run this, then he can do.