PAIN HAS A PERMANENT ADDRESS - READ BETWEEN THE LIES

PAIN HAS A PERMANENT ADDRESS - EPISODE THIRTEEN

Chapter Thirty-Four

  A ripple of residual anger, burnt a hole in the centre of my chest.  I couldn’t afford to get hung up on this overpowering emotion. One of all the misguided, aimless punches I was trying to throw.

  The rain continued to fall, a gentle drumbeat against the houses, but as more clouds overhead came together, it became a marching army of sound.

  Caught in the beam of the next-door neighbour’s sensory security light, the rain became needles dropping out of the sky.

  Movement.

  Goosebumps scattered across my skin as I saw Cowan climbing over my back-garden fence.

  I hobbled after her.  The burnt, nauseating stench of gunfire drifted into the night.  Hauling myself over the fence panel, I was careful how I landed on the other side.  Cowan looked back at me.  She had a calm, measured expression on her face. She tilted her head slightly to one side, a bird-like movement, and then veered right, across the marshes.  As she moved, the shadows reset themselves filling her eye sockets until they were just black discs, then carving down across her face.

  I followed as quickly as I could, keeping to the path.  It was cold.  The chill air.  The wind.  The rain.  Ahead of me, she tried desperately to get some distance between us.  Her head tilted the other way, as if trying to force herself to see further, attempting to lose me and fade into the night.  I kept hobbling, my heart thumping in my ears, my body greased with sweat and rain.

  There was no light around me.  I looked up, dark clouds were stitched together like a quilt.  I’d have to follow her slowly, and I’d have to follow her blindly.

  The rain grew heavier, running under my footwear in streams, saturating the ground into pockmarks pounded out the earth by corrosion.  I could hear my feet squelching, but I couldn’t see anything.  All I had was what I could hear and feel.  When the wind came, it was biting, and an uncontrollable shiver passed through me.  I was soaked to the bone, shirt, and jacket like a second skin.  I hobbled forward across the marshes, careful where I was putting my feet.

  A thin shaft of moonlight pierced the rain clouds, arcing down out of the sky and hitting the landscape ahead of us.  I tried to move faster, letting the soles of my footwear steady my tentative steps, trying to ensure I had time to stop myself when I hit uneven ground.

    I quickly glanced back towards the town of Oxmarket, fading behind a curtain of liquid velvet, as the clouds were drawn together.  The ghostly outline of the town, and known landmarks were veiled in a torrential mist.

  For a moment the chilling autumn blast, dropped away and all that was left was the rain, tapping against the grass, the marshland and the mudflats, its noise like a lament from the heavens.

  And that was when I saw her.

  At first, I thought I had been mistaken. But no, there it was.  A flicker of light.  A wavering firefly, sometimes obscured, by grasses or ferns sometimes disappearing altogether but always returning.

  I took my mobile out of my pocket and switched on the torch mode.  I pointed it downwards.  Around me was rough grass, but I was on a narrow path.  Bending forward I ran as quickly as I could making sure that I could still feel the path.  My posture was agonizing, but I had no choice.  I had to keep the torch lit.  Running on this narrow excuse for a path, snaking the marshes and mudflats, was an extremely hazardous task.  One wrong step to either side and I could be plunged into the thigh-deep marshes, which shook for yards in soft undulations around my feet.  Its tenacious grip plucked at my shoes as I ran, as if some malignant hand was trying to grab me and pull me down into the bowels of hell itself.

  The rain grew heavier nearer the sea.  As the biting wind came from the sea, an uncontrolled shiver passed through me.  Soaked to the bone, I kept going, careful where I put my feet.  The restless sea boomed against the rocks, before drawing all the way back out again.  And then it would come again, metronomic, a dam breaking and draining, over and over.

  I stopped.

  The light had gone out.

  I flicked the torch on my mobile off.  I didn’t want to give my position away.

  But it was too late.

  A second later, there was the soft suck of footsteps across the marshes – and then it felt as if she had broken my jaw.  She had hit me so hard with her torch that I left the ground and landed on the wet path as if I’d fallen from the sky.  All my breath, every last drop of air, seemed to burst out of me, and, after that, only pain: it tremored across my face, taking my breath away for a second time.  As my senses restarted, I got slowly to my feet.  She stood there watching me, gripping her torch in a way that meant she would hit me again.  Her eyes were dark and controlled, expression blank and unreadable.

  Then she came at me again.

  I shifted to the side and felt the torch brush the side of my face, and as her momentum carried her though, I smashed my foot into her leg.  A soft crack.  She made a short sharp sound – an animalistic growl – and staggered back across the path, reaching down for it.

  I’d broken her knee.

  She shifted her weight onto her good leg, soundlessly, her pain internalized.  But then, as I moved over to her, something in her face stopped me.  There was a weird kind of calm to her suddenly, a light being switched off, even though her leg was damaged.  A tilt of her head.  Then a smile broke across her face.

  What was she smiling at?

  Alarm fluttered in my chest. 

  What had I missed?

  My eyes lingered on her.  I felt a brief moment of vulnerability, but I pushed it away.  There was no way for her escape.

  And yet, somehow, I still didn’t feel safe.  My clothes felt like sheets of ice, and my jaw was starting to ache even when I breathed.  I rolled it a couple of times.  It wasn’t broken, but it was painful, and I could feel blood and fragments of teeth rinsing around.  I spat them out on to the ground and cut through the darkness, once more with the torch on my phone.

  Cowan was shrinking into the ground.

  She was still smiling.  But the smile was just a lie, a piece of tracing paper I could see right through.

  She was sinking into the mud.

  “Give me your hand!”  I shouted, reaching for her.

  She did not respond.

  I removed my rain-soaked jacket and bundled it into a long-wet shape that I could use as a make-shift rope.

  “Catch the other end of this when I throw it to you.”  I kept the torch on, holding it in my free hand, the small puddle of light shining on her face.

  There was no reaction.  She stared at me blindly as she had now sunk to her waist.

  I threw the jacket.  The wet end slapped onto her chest, but she made no attempt to grab it.  It was still raining.  I gasped at the shocking cold, my jeans and jumper clung to me.  The rain stung my face and made my eyes weep.

  “You must catch it!”  I pleaded.  “I can’t reach you any other way!”  I had a sense that every second, every fraction of a second, might count now.  Like atoms being split, Cowan’s world could fracture at any moment.

  “Are you ready?”  My voice rolled out over the sea and broke somewhere in the distance.  She didn’t answer.  I flung the end of my jacket again and again she made no attempt to catch it.

  “Cowan, for God’s sake!”  I shouted.  “You are going to die!”

  She ignored me.  She was now submerged up to her breasts.  Her hands were down by her side, beneath the surface so there was no chance of her catching my jacket now.

  I pocketed my mobile phone and flung myself forward so that my body weight was spread flat across the surface of the clawing mud.

  I gasped at the shocking cold, which almost took my breath away.  I could no longer see Cowan.  Black on black.  Depth on depth.

  I stared through the darkness and could just make out her shadow.  A tiny island of flesh, like the belly of an upturned fish.  A mouth open like a gill, purses for oxygen.

  “Try and get your hands to the surface!”

  She continued to stare at me blindly.  Her lips gasping at the remaining air.  Mud bubbled at her upturned chin.

  It was then that I realized the futility of my attempts to save her.  She wanted to die.

  “What about Isabella?”  I said as my last throw of the dice.

  Her eyes widened.  Out of her mouth, came a long bubbling mew.  It wasn’t a human sound at all.

  The last few minutes of her life seemed to drag by for an eternity.  It was a painful death and dreadful to watch.

  I pleaded.  I begged.  But she just stared at me.  I didn’t want to see her die, but I felt she enjoyed doing this to me.  She wanted me to watch her perish.  As though she felt that the lasting memory would haunt me forever.

  She wasn’t wrong.

  However, there was a brief moment, just before the mud enveloped her completely, that I saw a hint of regret in her eyes.  But then she was gone.

  I don’t know how long it was I lay there.  It could have ten minutes, it could have been an hour.  Finally, I eased my saturated body slowly backwards and sat on the path.

  And then for the first time since Zoë had died, I cried without inhibition.

Chapter Thirty-Five

On the day of Paul Silver’s funeral it rained.  The late summer long gone, replaced by the grey of the autumn, clouds knitted together, the temperature down to single figures.

  It surprised me at the number of people who turned up to say goodbye to Silver.  As I’d driven to the cemetery with Kira that morning, I’d been worried the only other people at his graveside would be his wife Philippa, their children, DI Peter Draw and maybe a few other policemen who had worked with him over the years.  Instead, forty-six travelled up from the Met, joining some neighbours from Oxmarket and some cousins who had driven up from Kent.

  He was buried in the grounds of the Anglican cathedral in the neighbouring coastal town of Bedericsworth and the service was carried out by the Dean Francesca Canton.  With Philippa, a little dazed and punch-drunk, I’d offered to take care of all the arrangements.

  Philippa didn’t cry at any point in the run-up to her husband’s burial.  Instead, she’d sit there, staring into the middle distance, telling me she trusted my judgement, the coffin I’d chosen was fine, the flowers were lovely and the hymns were perfect.  For two weeks, she was like a dam groaning under the weight of water.

  I watched her with her two teenage daughters during the service. They welled up as the coffin was lowered into the ground, gripping their mother’s arms as if trying to prevent themselves from falling in after it.  Philippa, immaculately turned out, held out for an hour, first in the church and then out at the graveside, but on the walk back to the car park I saw her stumble a little, like her legs gave way.

  Then, finally, she cried.

  The wake was held at Oxmarket golf club and while Kira socialized, I stood on my own at the windows of the clubhouse, looking out at the greens, I saw a reflection shift in the glass to my left, and when I turned I realized I’d been approached by DI Peter Draw.

  “John,” he said.

  I nodded at him, but we didn’t shake hands; he just looked me up and down.

  We stood there in an uncomfortable silence for a moment, then draw said, “I understand from what I’ve read that Cowan Carter drowned in the marshes, and you tried to save her.”  It wasn’t a question, so I just nodded again and let him continue.  “Very gallant of you, considering she had made many attempts on your life.”  He stopped this time for longer.  I didn’t like him, and I could sense he felt the same about me personally and professionally.  “I no longer want to see your name plastered all over the local newspapers.  We won’t be calling on you again.  You’ll have to just let us get on with our jobs.”

  “I didn’t realize I was stopping you.”

  “You’ve damaged cases, John.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “Don’t I?”

  “I helped improve the local constabulary’s success rate.”

  “So it’s a public service?”

  I shrugged.  “It’s whatever you want it to be.”

  He smiled but didn’t say anything.

  Over his shoulder I could see a crowd of other detectives looking on, with Kira also among them.  They were obviously all in whatever this was.  Briefly, my eyes met hers, and then a guy leaned in and whispered something to her, and she turned and said something in return, which immediately wiped the smile off the man’s face.

  “I don’t want the local constabulary chasing around after you, trying to clean up all the messes you make.  I am sorry for what happened to DI Silver but if I’m honest, John, I don’t think we’d be here now, and I don’t think he would have died like he did, if he hadn’t met you.”

  I frowned.  “How do you figure that?”

  “You brainwashed him.”

  “That’s rubbish, and you know it.”  I took a step closer to him.  “Paul Silver was my friend and I would have done nothing to harm him.  I think you should look closer to home for the reasons why.”

  “Really?”

  “I helped him.  I didn’t look for any praise or thanks, but Paul Silver was a good man and gave the credit when credit was due.”

  “You’re trying to rewrite history, John.”

  I shrugged.  “Whatever helps you sleep at night?”

  “You still like to think you have all the answers, don’t you?”

  I swallowed my anger, but it didn’t disappear.  Draw looked around at the rest of the room, over to where the group of detectives is:  every face was on us now.  It seemed to spur Draw on: “If you had a shred of decency, you would have stayed away.  We’re burying the poor man, we’re leaving his children fatherless because you got inside his head.”

  Kira was at my side at an instant.

  “Come on, John,” she said, pulling me away.  “Pat and Mel want to chat with you.”

  I noticed that Higgins and Softly were the only people among the group who weren’t looking at me.  They’d turned away, embarrassed, pretending that something else had got their attention, unable to face me. 

  “It’s been good catching up,” I said, as Kira and I made our way across the room to where Higgins and Softly were standing together, talking to one of Silver’s relatives.

  Behind us, we heard the policemen erupt into laughter as Draw returned – swaggering, triumphant – but I didn’t look at them.  Instead, we chatted for a while and then sought out Philippa and her daughters.  We told them that we would catch up with her at some point over the coming days – and then we made a break for the car.

  Twenty minutes later, we were heading south, rain spitting against the windscreen, traffic heavy as rush hour crept closer.

  “When is Sabrina Muller’s funeral?”  Kira asked after we had been silent for about ten minutes.

  “Tomorrow,” I replied, “and then Buster Bill’s is the day after that.”

  “I don’t think I could take three funerals in a week.”

  “You don’t have to come with me.”

  She looked at me with relief.

  “Are you certain?”

  “Of course.”

  I looked over the roofs of the cars in front of me, the road rising to a ridge beyond which I could see nothing.  The rain got heavier.

  When we got home, Kira dropped me off while she went off to a meeting with the builders that were going to renovate her house and then to call in at work to see if anything had happened while she had been at the funeral. We’d agreed that she could stay at mine until her house was ready.  We’d dismissed the idea of moving in together.  We loved each other, but we were both to set in our ways, too used to our own company and routine.  It was a shame because I had hoped for more, but it wasn’t to be and after a great deal of deliberation I knew I had to just settle for that.

  I kissed her before I got out of the car and watched her car disappeared around the corner at the end of the road.  I stood there in the rain for a few minutes thankful for her support and then turned and walked the short distance to my front door.

  My house was back to normal, I had a couple of friends who were DIY enthusiasts and the repair work was done within a few days.  The French doors replaced by Ian, the plastering done by Grahame and the painting done by Kira and me over one weekend.  

I showered and changed, grabbed a beer from the fridge and sat at the half-light of the living-room windows.  I hadn’t slept well for weeks, not since I had been initially called in to consult on the case, and as I listened to the rain peppering the glass, I knew immediately that tonight would be the same again. 

  Chapter Thirty-Six

As we gathered outside the Oxmarket Church the balloons outside the made the biggest impression.  Hundreds tied to railings, gates, and wrists, all of them in the colours of the German national flag.  Sabrina’s colleagues from the massage parlour were carrying stuffed baby-elephants, all of them purple and mauve, handing them out to mourners and passers-by.

  “Take two,” the red-headed woman I had seen before said.  She wore a short black dress and explained that purple had been Sabrina’s favourite colour and elephants her favourite animal.

  “Do you want a balloon?” 

  “I’m a bit old for that.”

  “You’re not old,” she said, winking at me.  I held out my hand.

  “Thank you.”

  “No, thank you.”

  Posters were displayed at the entrance to the church, each featuring a photograph of Sabrina.  The message above read: ‘Celebration of Life Service.’  There were more photographs in the printed ‘order of service.’  They showed Sabrina with changing hairstyles, colours, and fashions.

  On the edge of the churchyard, TV crews and photographers had taken up positions on a footpath, spilling on to the narrow road where Sergeant Higgins directed traffic.

  A tall blonde man arrived alone, wearing a black suit and tie, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses.  In contrast, a woman who obviously was Sabrina’s sister wore bright colours – a mauve blouse and voluminous white skirt.  Another woman, petite and Italian-looking walked through the gates with another man in dark glasses and a dark suit.  He carried a baby in a portable car-seat.  People stopped, bent, and smiled at the little boy.  Someone tied a trio of balloons to the handle of his career.

  Inside the church they took a seat in the front row.  An organ played.  The petite Italian made eye contact with the tall blonde man, held his gaze for a few seconds, long enough for something to pass between them.

  I’d been to my share of funerals, but this one seemed wrong.  Most of the mourners were young and might not have lost someone close to them before.  Standing in clusters, unsure of what to say or do, they talked in whispers and hugged each newcomer.

  The service opened with a jazzy hymn.  The Canon Pastor and Sub Dean opened his arms.

  “The grace and peace of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.”

  “And with you,” came the murmured reply.

  “My name is Matthew Vernon,” he said.  “I am the Canon Pastor and Sub Dean of Bedericsworth Cathedral, and I am carrying out this service at the request of Sabrina’s partner.”

  All eyes fell on the tall blonde man.

  “There are many people still outside.  I know it might not seem like an occasion for making new friends, but what better way to celebrate Sabrina’s life than to embrace each other.  So, squeeze up, people, let others sit down.”

  The funeral was a simple, sombre affair with gospel readings, communion, and prayers before words of remembrance.  A friend from the massage parlour talked of Sabrina’s talent as an amateur artist – her eye for beauty and composition.

  The pictures in Cowan Carter’s hallway!

  Sabrina’s oldest friend from Germany recounted their first meeting.  “The moment Sabrina walked into a room she commanded attention.  Nobody could ignore her energy, the sparkle in her eye.”

  The boyfriend was last to speak, breaking down as he tried to read from a prepared speech.  Someone stepped up to the microphone and helped him finish.

  “I am overwhelmed by the support we have received.  At our flat block, the ribbons and the flowers and the cards on the door are just unbelievable.  It shows how much people must have loved Sabrina.”

  The cynical side of my brain went into overdrive, and it took me a while to get my thinking back on track.

  After a final hymn, the coffin was carried outside, and I could hear broken sobs from the pews behind me.  Those who hadn’t made it inside the church were still waiting, lined up along the driveway and the road.  The coffins were slid silently into the hearse and the wreaths were arranged.  The car pulled away, flanked by a police motorcyclist.  Most of Oxmarket’s European community hard turned out.  Some were holding posters written in German.

  I drifted to the edge of the mourners and noticed Detective Inspector Peter Draw trying to slip away as quietly as he must have arrived,

  “I didn’t expect to see you here,” he said.

  “Why is that?”

   He stiffened and stood awkwardly.  Rocking back and forth on his polished shoes and patting his fringe.

  “You were the one who chased her to her death.”

  The last of the mourners were making their way to their cars.  Some were still carrying balloons.  Others had released them, watching them float away on the breeze, as though it symbolized something they couldn’t put into words.

  A new one rose.  The tall blonde man stood beneath it.  The balloon swirled sideways in the breeze, and it caught the branches of a tree.  After a moment it popped and suddenly denoted something different.  The man lowered his head and left quickly, walking in his reality.

  Before he could reach the gate a scrum of reporters surrounded him.  One of them shoved the microphone under the man’s nose.  “How do you feel about your girlfriend earning her living as a prostitute?”

  The bluntness of the question shook everyone else into silence.

  “What did you say?”  The man’s German accent suddenly sounded more pronounced.

  “I asked how you felt about your girlfriend earning her living as a prostitute.”

  The man found the strength to ignore and pushed through the crowd.  Cameras chased him across the road and into a side street where he dodged between cars, trying to shield his face with his coat.”

  Meanwhile, a reporter from the local radio station saw draw and confronted him.

  “Do you admit that the police investigation made a great deal of mistakes?”

  For a moment, it appeared as thought draw might ignore him completely, but then he stopped and turned.

  “Today we have said goodbye to and celebrated the life of Sabrina Muller who was the victim of an extremely violent crime.  Unfortunately, some members of the media have shown they have no respect for the dead or the law.  Even worse, certain individuals have actually sought to investigate a murder investigation.  I did make a mistake.  I should have intervened earlier and told the late DI Silver to dismiss the private detective John Handful earlier from the case.  He has had access to confidential information and has jeopardized our investigation by trading on people’s fears.”

  All the attention was now on me, but I held my council and remained silent.

  “This man is pariah and a fraud.”

   I still said nothing.

  He turned and left and the mourners stepped aside.  Momentarily robbed of speech the reporter looks from face to face and then back at me.

  I proceeded to move through the crowd and the lichgate, where Draw stood smirking at me as I walked in his direction.  He dropped his shoulder as I passed, but I had seen it coming and braced for the inevitable contact.  The Detective Inspector went down like a felled tree, holding his face.

  “You saw that,” he yelled at anyone who would listen.  “He hit me.  A police officer.  That’s assault.”

  I looked at him disgusted.

  “Get on your feet,” I said, and then to the witnesses.  “Show’s over.”

  Draw is still complaining, but everyone is ignoring him.

  “That was some dive,” Sergeant Higgins said to me smiling, as I passed him.

  “He’d give most premiership footballers a run for their money.”