No Way to Say Goodbye Page 4

“I’m a friend.”

  “A friend of Daddy’s?”

  “No, just a friend.”

  The phone clattered down, and there was the sound of footsteps and the child’s voice further away. “There’s a man on the phone, Mummy.”

  I fed more coins in the box, then heard a woman’s voice, very like Rachel’s, with a familiar pitch and hesitance; it took my breath away for a moment. I told her it was Jack.

  “Jack?”

  “Jack Keyse.”

  “Oh, yes, Jack ... How did you get this number?” she sighed. “Never mind ... What do you want, Jack?”

  There was fear in her voice, fear and guarded hostility. I told I needed to talk to her, to see her and talk about Rachel.

  “Why don’t you talk to the police?”

  “I need to talk to you, Catherine. It’s important for me. Please.”

  The pips went, and after I fumbled for more change and fed it in she said that she would ring me back. Minutes later, when I was on the point of walking away, the phone rang and she told me resignedly that she was coming to the city that weekend and we could meet then.

  We met two days later on a Saturday in the foyer bar of a new city hotel chosen by Catherine. A faint reek of tar drifted into the foyer from the weekend road gangs outside, burning off road markings with an orange flame. I perched on a sofa seat and waited. Catherine was four years younger than Rachel. I remembered her as a plainer, perhaps cleverer sister. Once, at university, I had to entertain her with lunch while Rachel attended a tutorial. I remember her light eyes behind the round specs, her faint resemblance to her sister, her evident boredom, her discomfort at my attempt at polite chatter and my gratefulness when Rachel returned. She had matured to be as sensible and pragmatic as her elder sister was dreamy and forgetful. She had married a businessman in the new technologies, and when Rachel mentioned her to me we would both smile, as if we knew something superior and amusing and found something funny about her skiing holidays, her two spoilt children and her succession of new BMWs, of which she was so proud.

  I made her out threading her way through the scatter of guests and drinkers. She looked well groomed and sleek; the glasses had gone, and I could now see her sisterhood to Rachel in her tall narrow figure, in her slightly flat-footed walk, and the way the eyes were set in their sheltering brow. She asked for a coffee and kept her coat on, sitting a distance away. I went to the bar to order and glancing back could see her sitting hunched, looking down at my tumbler of scotch.

  “You look well, Jack,” she remarked. When I returned with her coffee and set it down she added, “Why have you got me here?”

  I stumbled over an account that I had prepared; it sounded stilted, but I kept on speaking. I told her that I found it unbearable to wait like this, wondered if she could tell me what the police were doing, asked if she knew anything that was being withheld by the police. I also told her that I had kept in touch with Rachel and felt awful about what had happened.

  After a while she waved her hand stopping my flow. “I’m not sure why you are telling me this. Ray and I have been supporting Layton. He is devastated and stayed with us in the first week — that’s why we have come up today.”

  Her eyes were cold and her expression severe. I begged her to tell me what happened.

  She softened a little and told me of those first days, the searches, what Rachel was probably wearing, the last sightings, the police searches, the sequence of events. How the police were still treating her disappearance as a missing-persons inquiry and how the television wanted another interview as there was going to be a new appeal on a crime programme. Her business-like tone faltered and her gaze slipped away from me, she spoke of the frustration, the pain, as time passed and hope ebbed. She asked, “Do you know anything, Jack? Is there anything you’re hiding?”

  I spoke of my sadness, my wish to help search or do anything. Catherine regarded me for a moment, then pulling her coat round her said, “I am going to tell you something. You hurt her, Jack. You hurt my sister badly. You broke her heart. I remember her staying with us after you left her. We listened to her crying at night, many nights. I will never forget it, and you would not let her go afterwards. Her hanging on, living here for years, not leaving this city because of you, her chances in life slipping away, on her own, waiting and you not letting her live her life. It’s hard to forgive that, Jack — your carelessness.”

  As I sat staring back at her, she turned and gestured. There was a movement behind her, and her husband Ray emerged through the drinkers by the bar to stand next to her. A thickset, balding man, he nodded to me warily, two little girls twisted in the grip of each hand where he held them tightly. He had probably been there all along. Catherine buttoned her coat and pulled on little black fur-trimmed gloves: I handed her a slip of paper with my number on it. She hesitated, then, taking one glove off, placed the piece of paper in her coat pocket and said, “Goodbye, Jack. We’ll find her. When she’s home safe that’s all that I want. Don’t call me again, will you?”

  I nodded, watching her go as the bar staff moved in, swiftly rubbing the glass surface of the table with a cloth and taking away her untasted coffee.

  The CID took a renewed interest in me after I had contacted Catherine. I guess she informed them, and maybe some of her anger at me was displaced hope that I could provide something to resolve the mystery.

  During the next week as I was driving into the work car park, with the leaves spinning to the gravel from the fading limes in the asylum grounds I noticed a biscuit-coloured Ford Sierra that came nosing down the car park and now came to a halt across the front of my car. I stepped out with a file of clinical papers under my arm. The driver’s window came down and I could see it was Hedgepeth, the detective who had come to my office.

  “Dr Keyse, we would like to see to you.” He spoke to me from the car. There was a studied hostility in his eyes. I felt flustered and stammered that, yes, I could make an appointment.

  “We want to see you today,” he insisted, with no change in his expression, and I did not argue. I wanted to be there among people who knew about Rachel and I made my way to Central station within the hour. I waited by the high wooden reception desks, among sullen youths reporting on police bail, and a middle-aged woman who sat alone dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. Hedgepeth emerged from the stairway passage and conducted me through a heavy door past the custody cells on the ground floor. I caught glimpses of faces looking back at me through grilled vents in grey plated doors, of a stained metal lavatory in a recess, and of narrow passages leading away under the station. There was no natural light here and the sound of keys clinking and of prisoners calling to the custody staff were accentuated. I wondered if he had taken me here deliberately to unsettle me.

  We entered a small interview room. There was a mirror high on one wall. Hedgepeth bade me sit on a narrow plastic chair drawn up at a battered wooden table. He left the room and I concentrated on the black tape machine in front of me with piles of new cassettes heaped on top of it. I noticed that some past offender had managed to etch a furtive graffito on the table top with a cartoon sorrow face and the inscription “Gaz was ’ere”. It felt unreal, yet somehow I was comforted that in an odd way I was playing a part in Rachel’s life here.

  Hedgepeth came back with the blonde DC Canter. They carried notebooks, entered the cramped interviewing room, and sat around the deal table as if it was a séance. They reintroduced themselves with set expressions. This was to be an informal interview, entered into with my consent. “Do you have any questions?” I had many, but none I could articulate. Hedgepeth interviewed me. I noticed his shave line, the stippled rash on his neck, and the dusting of white flakes on his shoulders under the harsh overhead lighting and felt an obscure tenderness for him. After a while he took off his jacket revealing humid patches on his shirt. He took me through the day and evening of 4th September and I listened to his voice with its flat Midlands inflexion. He asked me again what I had been doing that night.
I sensed that he was leading up to a trap and admired his technique. I became vague and hesitant as he pressed me.

  “Dr Keyse, you told us that you stayed in that night, but that is not true, is it? We have a witness who says that you went out that night, you had a visitor at your house and went out, not returning until late.”

  I knew of course that it was my neighbour, Mrs Mullender. Louie and I used to giggle in bed sometimes as we listened to her standing in her driveway next door, calling her cat, in shrill tones. She lived alone, fearful, resentful and alert, her TV flickering spectrally through her net curtains at night. She disapproved of my irregular hours and complained of the nettles and willow herb which crept across into her garden from my neglected patch, although I softened to her one night when I heard the sound of muted sobbing coming from her bedroom window and recognised that we both had grief in common.

  “I put it to you, Dr Keyse, that you have not told us the truth about the night of 4th September and about the nature of your relationship with Rachel Hauser.”

  I kept my voice steady and spoke in terms of apology and informed them that I was not a doctor but a therapist. I also told them that I had made a mistake. That night I was with a friend and did go out. I gave them Louie’s name.

  Canter carefully wrote her name down and it felt like a betrayal. The heat went out of it once I had mentioned Louie. I told them she was my girlfriend. They switched to questioning me about my relationship with Rachel and I conceded that we had once gone out together. I realised then that they had my letters. I told them that it had long blown over and that we had remained just friends. They asked me about my job and with whom I worked. They listened without expression.

  The interview slowed. The detectives looked at each other and there appeared to be an unspoken ending. I asked them about the course of the investigation, then Hedgepeth turned to me.

  “Mr Keyse, we want you to know that we are taking an interest in you. We do not appreciate wasting time. We cannot afford anything but complete honesty in this inquiry. We may wish to speak to you again.”

  I stared back at him and wondered what it was that angered him about me.

  As we emerged from the interview room we were met by a thickset older man in a crumpled grey suit, with wiry grey hair, and an air of authority. He did not introduce himself but said, in a Scottish accent, “I’d like to thank you for your cooperation. This is a difficult inquiry.” I sensed he was sizing me up and had watched the interview through the mirrored window.

  I nodded in response, saying “OK,” wondering what message he was giving me.

  I tried ringing Louie soon after getting out of Central, rushing to a phone box to warn her. She was not on her shift and the one phone in the nurse’s residence rang unanswered. I thought perhaps she was sleeping after a binge and a late night. I called at the residence and left a message with an irritable nurse who eventually answered the door. I asked her to slip the message under Louie’s door. It read: “Regret police may interview you about night in September. Sorry. Love Jack.”

  I felt too unsettled to return to work and drove out near Rachel’s old school to walk the river bank, thinking of Louie among those who have loved me. I looked out at the water where rowers from the university were pulling against the current. We had met in a bar a year before. She was a staff nurse in casualty at the local general hospital. There was a pub across from the nurse’s home. The nurses would come over after late shifts, hastily changing out of uniform in time for last orders. Louie was there one night; I had not noticed her before. She had blonde hair and hazel eyes that seemed to hold a mocking glint. She was well made, upright, and had a mannered way of holding herself, like a mannequin, her arms curved away from body. She had a clown’s face with a narrow tippy nose and brows which rose in a circumflex arch. Her lips seemed always slightly parted, puckered in an O of surprise and showing a diastema; a little gap between her front teeth. She proffered a brittle glamour and on that first night I was attracted to her pale skin against the one-piece black dress with thin straps and the silver neck chain carrying a tiny jet heart, but what I most appreciated about her was her direct, uncomplicated presence. She had introduced herself coolly and I enjoyed her candid gaze, and her sympathetic, easy company.

  She casually said at the close of the evening, “Are you coming back with me?” and I followed her to her rooms along with some of the other nurses. Her rooms were spread with disarray; there were dolls in national costumes ranked on all the ledges and on the floors, a litter of gold cigarette packs, Pils bottles, filled ash trays, horror video cassettes, tights, clothes, towels and makeup containers. She played her favourite song at the time, Come On Eileen, very loudly, over and over, not caring about neighbouring rooms. The others came and went. We drank bottled lager and shared cigarettes; the chorus spun around the room, Louie crooned along “Ah, come on, come on,” then took my hand and we swayed unsteadily together, then she pulled away and looked at me solemnly as her last guests left and said, slurring her words as she spoke, “Well, are you staying?” and I said, yes, of course I would stay.

  She was good to me, and, although she had other lovers she showed me a tender attachment, almost believing that somehow we could make something permanent. Six months into our relationship she gave me an engraved silver-plated Zippo lighter with filigree chasing. On one side it had the inscription: “J and L Forever”. I used to play with the lighter, my fingers turning it over and over in my hands; it was heavy and satisfying to hold and had a solidity that our fragile link did not possess. I appreciated the life that Louie brought me, her amatory competence, her lack of curiosity about my inner world and her accepting presence. She offered me a continuum, a way of rubbing along and a distraction from the voices of my patients, hungering to be told how to live. Both Louie and I were on the run from memory. We both fled from pain and, as we went to the pub, speeded by a shot of sulphate, she would sometimes tell me of what she had encountered on her shifts in casualty. The man quite flat from the waist down after the great wheels of a crane had passed over him but living and speaking; the leg that came away when lifting someone out of the ambulance; people with objects in them, hammers, bolts, blades and parts of cars. The selfish, bawling drunks who demanded all her time and the quietly hopeful parents waiting to be told that their boys were dead; their motor-cycle helmets like cracked eggs under the resuscitation-room trolleys.

  How she could transform herself! She would come in to my place from her shift in her work clothes carrying a bag, or I would sit there watching her in her nurses’ rooms. She would seem then quite plain-looking, even austere and stocky in her dark-blue uniform, caught at the waist by a black elastic belt with its old-fashioned silver buckle, her hair pinned back, dark under the white frilled cap. She would disappear into the bathroom and would emerge in her towel in a cloud of steam, shaking out her clothes on their hangers before crouching in front of a mirror usually propped against a stool or sometimes looking down at it on her knees, hair in a towel wrapped like a turban; doing her face, a cigarette burning next to her, the TV on — perhaps a soap opera — or music pulsing from the sound system, sometimes everything on at the same time. I’d watch her shedding towels, walking around pulling at her panties where they caught in the fold of her buttocks. Then on would go the club gear and her hair would be released from the turban, at first crimped, then springing out teased and fluffed with the hair-dryer, Louie pulling at it and brushing it until it stood out in a gold curling mass. She would take a final look in the mirror at her makeup with a down-turn of her mouth of critical displeasure, a few more adjustments would be made, and then, when she was satisfied, she would snap on her bangles and rummage for another wrap of speed in her bag.

  Arm in arm we would go out into the night, she walking at a cracking pace, heels down, toes forward, like a guardsman, her gold ankle bracelet swinging. In our nights there would be movement, lights, a sense of exaltation as she spun on the dance floor with the men around her, th
en nemesis would come in her quiet times when she would hide away, slumped, inert, not speaking. She would drift, in a sluggish state with the TV always squawking in the background, just sitting, smoking, coiling a tendril of hair or tugging at her long eyelashes. She also loved to sleep, cocooned, reluctant to get up. She would murmur in the mornings, “I look like a bag of shit,” peering into the mirror with her hair standing on end, or just lying there, a shape in the bed, inanimate and greyskinned. Then, shamefully, I could not stop resenting her and, itchy with disgust, sour and unhappy, I would recoil from her in an unloving way and despise myself for it, and after the distractions of the night I would return to pining for Rachel.

  Louie rang me late that same night, very angry in a way I had never heard from her before.

  “What’s going on? Why are you lying?” she had complained. Apparently CID had caught her at the end of her shift, asking her to verify that she was with me on 4th September. Like the professional she was, she had assured them that she was with me and that we had been out clubbing, and had robustly dealt with their questions about our relationship. She had loyally stuck by me but felt angry and wounded, sensing that there was more happening than she could understand. I coaxed her into going out for a drink that night. She refused at first but came in the end, barely speaking, picking the labels off her Pils bottles with her long nails. As we left the bar her need for forgetfulness overcame her, she took my arm and she tottered home with me on her clacking high heels. As she pulled off her dress that night to show a one-piece satin body suit, all the rage then, with just two poppers at the crotch, I saw her eyes gleaming, watching me. I could not read their expression as I reached down and undid the poppers with a tug in a hot tangle of hair.

  * * *

  November came and still there had been no word, no clue and nothing found. Not her, not her keys, not her little umbrella, not her triangular clutch purse in green leather, not the plastic bag with her rice and cooking foil. I was left waiting and wondering, and sometimes I would dream of Rachel even when sleeping with Louie; I would dream of her coming to me in my rooms, naked and frowning and pointing to something that I could not see, then fading, going away with a rueful smile, although I tried to flounder after her.