Can't Let Go (24 page)

From where I sat on the edge of the cliff I could see
Rivers's body on the rocks below. It was sprawled
and broken and covered with blood. I had never
seen a dead body before, but there was no doubt at all that
he was dead. His neck was twisted around awkwardly, in
an unnatural position, and half his head was smashed in.
His brains had leaked onto the rocks.

The minute it happened, I regretted it. Of course I
did. I'm not a monster. The minute it happened, the
second it happened, the moment it happened. Even as he
was falling down, down to those rocks, I wanted
somehow to fly down and catch him up again. I wanted
to be able to turn back time. I wanted to close my eyes
and then open them again, and watch time move in
reverse – watch his broken bones knit themselves
together again. Rivers Carillo: one minute he was there,
big and strong and alive; and then he was down on the
rocks, broken and bleeding and dead. If you've ever
been in a car accident you'll know a little bit what it
was like. You'll know that feeling when time turns to
treacle, and you're aware that something awful is
happening but you can't stop it. It was a bit like that.
Something awful had happened and I would never be
able to stop it, and there was nothing I could do to make
it better.

Seagulls shrieked. The sea rushed against the rocks,
lapping over Rivers's body, lifting it slightly with each
wave. I watched for quite a long time. I watched as the
waves washed relentlessly against his corpse, scouring
away the blood and the brains. I watched until his body
eventually slipped under the sea and away from the rocky
coast.

What was I supposed to do? I didn't have a phone.
There was no one around, no one to report it to. And
besides, what good would it have done? He was dead; his
body was being washed out to sea. And no one had seen
what I had done.

I picked up his backpack. I looked through it, to see if
there was any evidence of me. His little Moleskine notebook
and his diary – I threw them into the sea separately,
skimming them, using the motion that Rivers had taught
me earlier. I wanted them to soak through and disappear,
just in case he'd mentioned me. I tried to throw his
backpack out to sea as well but the strap got caught on a
pointed piece of rock and it stayed there, resisting the tug
of the sea as hard as it could. There was nothing I could do
about it. I prayed, a stupid prayer, not a prayer of
forgiveness but a prayer that said:
Please God, let the sea
move the backpack. And please don't let me get caught.

And then I went back to the path and carried on
walking in the direction we'd been heading. I just carried
on, as if nothing had happened. I put one foot in front of
the other, and I counted my footsteps as I walked along
that narrow rocky path, and I tried to concentrate on
anything apart from what I'd just done. I felt completely
numb.

The path took me right under the bridge and out onto
a concrete plaza, with an information centre and some bus
stops. The fog was beginning to come down again, and it
was warm and muggy. There were lots of people around.
There were official people, National Park rangers with
uniforms and hats. I could have told one of them what had
happened, but I didn't. I checked my map and my public transport
guide, and I got on a bus to the Marina District.
I sat in a coffee shop while the fog descended again, and I
tore up the pamphlet I had in my bag, the one full of
Rivers Carillo's poetry. I stuffed it in a rubbish bin,
wrapped up in the pages of a magazine. Then I got on
another bus and went back to Joanna's house, let myself in
and climbed upstairs to my bedroom.

I finished packing. I remember doing that. I remember
getting out my plane ticket and my passport, and putting
them in my handbag. I remember deciding which
toiletries I'd be using the following morning and which I
could pack already. I remember checking that I'd ordered
the bus to the airport to pick me up at the correct time, and
I remember setting my alarm clock. And then I brushed
my hair and cleaned my teeth and wandered down to the
big kitchen where I discovered Joanna, cooking me a
surprise farewell dinner. I remember all these little, trivial
things that I did, but I don't remember how I felt.

It was on the plane home that I became Beth. I sat curled
up in my seat and I planned my future. First of all, I
tried to work out what would happen to Rivers's body. I
guessed that in due course it would get washed up on one
of the beaches or coves around the Golden Gate area,
depending of course on the tides, and I knew nothing
about those. Then I worked out how long it would be
until someone realised he was missing. I didn't even know
where he'd been staying in San Francisco, but I assumed
that his absence might not be noted for a couple of days.
After all, sometimes he stayed over at people's houses.

That was when I realised about Joanna. Suddenly I
realised how stupid I'd been. They were lovers. That's
why I'd seen him at breakfast time at her house. She
would miss him. She would report him missing. Did she
know about us? Did she know that Rivers had been
sneaking around behind her back to romance her young
house guest from England? He wouldn't have told her; no
way. But did she guess?

And who else might have known about us? The friend
who owned the bookstore? The friend who had loaned
Rivers the houseboat? Did he ever tell them? Did he ever
say, 'I have this hot eighteen-year-old English chick
who's dying to sleep with me and I need a place to do the
deed'? Did the friend ever work out whose blood it was on
his sheets?

And Rivers's wife, this mysterious figure back in
Indiana – what about her? Was she really expecting her
husband back? Did she guess what he really got up to on
his summers in San Francisco, 'finding his muse'? Would
she assume he was dead, or would she imagine that he'd
just left her, gone off somewhere, maybe faked his own
death to start a new life with someone else? Was he even
married? Or had that just been a lie to put me off?

I tried to decide what I should do. For a while, I
thought about changing my identity utterly. I thought
about doing what I'd read about in a thriller – finding a
grave or a newspaper report of the death of a baby, a girl,
back around the time when I was born. I'd read that you
could apply for a birth certificate that way, and then a
passport, and create a whole new identity. For at least a
couple of hours of my flight home I thought that was what
I would do.

But I didn't want to lose my family. I didn't want my
parents and siblings to lose me and have to hunt me down.
I remembered my father watching a television show about
some teenager who'd disappeared, years before, and his
parents had spent their whole life since then dedicated to
finding him. And my father had cried while watching it.
He'd said, 'That must be the worst thing in the world,
never to know.'

I couldn't have done that. I might have been a killer but
I couldn't cause that grief to my father.

And so I did the next best thing. I made myself as
different as possible. If Rivers had told anyone about me,
he would have talked about a bubbly English teenager
called Lizzie. A loud, flirty, fun, dramatic, silly girl called
Lizzie. And so I became Beth: quiet, sensible, studious,
unnoticeable, plain and dull. I became Beth, who no one
would ever look at twice. I arrived home and told my
parents when they met me at the airport that I wanted to
be called Beth now. And they seemed pleased that I'd
grown up.

I kept worrying over details in my mind. Joanna
worried me. One day I'd convince myself that she knew
all about us, the next day I'd be sure that she'd guessed
nothing. A few weeks after I got home I got a letter from
her, enclosing a bunch of clippings. First, Rivers had
disappeared – they'd found his backpack and one of his
shoes – so he was listed as missing, presumed dead. And
then his body was found, washed up on the shore; he'd
been identified by his dental records. A tragic accident
while he was out walking on his favourite path. Joanna
had written in her letter: 'I think you met him while you
were over here. I thought you'd be interested in this.'

I was utterly unable to tell her tone of voice from that.

Joanna died about ten years ago, of cancer. It was sad,
but I'd also felt a huge sense of relief. But there were still
things to worry about, and every time I thought about it I
found something new. Rivers's wife might have hired a
private detective, or pestered the police to investigate
further. DNA from the blood on the sheets in the
houseboat: could they still identify it? Would they be able
to match it to mine, if somehow someone were able to
remember my name and to find me? Would that
constitute evidence, or simply give proof that I'd known
Rivers and had slept with him?

The friends who knew about me, the woman who'd let
me use the toilet at the Palace of the Legion of Honor,
maybe the park rangers who'd seen me looking stunned
on that foggy afternoon at the bus stop by the Golden
Gate Bridge: could a good detective put them all together
and work out what had happened? All these things that
had occupied my mind for seventeen years, all these fears
and worries filling my brain; leaving me almost no room
to grieve for the man I'd killed.

'He tried to rape you,' said Danny. 'He tried to
rape you, you pushed him away, and he fell
over the cliff.'

I fidgeted. Danny's précis of the story made me uneasy.

'He tried to rape you,' he said again, and his voice had
an insistent note. It seemed that he wanted confirmation,
that he needed me to assure him that the killing had been
self-defence and entirely accidental. I couldn't assure him.
It might have sounded like that, the way I had told him,
but it wasn't the full story.

'I knew he was on the edge of the cliff when I pushed
him. I could have just fought him off but I didn't. I pushed
him, and I knew he would fall.'

'But he was trying to rape you.' I could picture Danny
sitting there at his kitchen table, his sleeves rolled up, his
tie loosened, struggling to process the information that I
had just told him to make it fit within his world-view. He
was trying hard to be understanding. He was trying hard
to convince himself that it didn't matter that I'd killed
someone. He was trying to find grounds on which he
could still care for me.

So I agreed. 'Yes, you're right. He tried to rape me. So
I fought back.' And thus I wiped out everything I had ever
felt for Rivers Carillo. I wiped out everything I had done
that made me culpable. I took away all the ambiguity in
that situation on the cliff, all the tenderness and love and
anger and hatred that I had felt, and the way things could
have gone either way, and I denied them. I denied all
those emotions. I pared it down to a few short words.
Hard words, single syllables: words that washed away my
guilt and made it into an acceptable story.

'You didn't tell anyone because you were scared. You
were just a kid. Jesus, you were eighteen years old. No
one can blame you for what you did.' Danny was
warming to his theme now. He was making me into the
victim so that he could still care for me with a clear
conscience.

'Someone does, Danny. Someone says I murdered
him. Someone killed Zoey to get back at me.'

'Are you sure that's what it's all about? There's nothing
else you've done that could have caused all this?'

A weird laugh escaped my lips. 'Oh God, you're right.
It must be about one of the hundreds of other people I've
murdered in my life. I'd forgotten all about them.' He said
nothing. He had never liked it when I was flippant. 'No,
Danny. Don't worry. I've only ever killed one person.
That's quite enough to wreck my life.'

'And have you any idea who's doing this?'

'Danny, I've been going over and over it in my mind,
all summer, ever since I got that first letter. At one point I
thought it might be you, even. That maybe you were his
son, or something. And then I thought maybe it was Zoey.
She looks – looked – a little bit like him, from certain
angles. But obviously it's not. It can't be, because now
she's dead and there's another letter. It's someone I don't
know, someone I've never seen.'

'Are you sure you've never seen them? Are you sure
you've never seen anyone following you?'

'Oh God, all the time.'

'What do you mean?'

'All the bloody time. Virtually every day of my life
since then. But it's him I see – Rivers Carillo, or people
who look like him. Younger versions of him, sometimes.
I see him in crowds, I see him sitting in cafes watching me,
I see him when I'm out shopping. I saw him the other day.
Here, in Edinburgh. I thought he was chasing after me.
I'm a nervous wreck, Danny. This thing has dominated
my entire life. And it's all my own fault.'

'You have to go to the police,' Danny said decisively.
'You're going to speak to the police. You're going to give
a statement about how you found the body, you're going
to show them that note and you're going to tell them
everything they need to know. Everything. Tell them in
exactly the same way that you just told me. No one can
blame you for what you did to that River guy.'

'Rivers.'

'Whatever. Now, go now. And if you need me, if you
think there's going to be trouble, call me. I'll get on a train
if you need me. But, Beth? This can't wait. You need to do
this now.'

He was right, of course. It was the only way to end the
nightmare.

Detective Inspector David Finlay was a tall, lean man
in his forties, with thinning grey-blond hair cropped
close to his skull, and clear, pale blue eyes. He was
wearing chinos and a blue shirt, sleeves rolled up, no tie.
He looked completely exhausted. He led me downstairs to
a little room and called in another detective, a younger
woman. And then he proceeded to take my statement.

I was as prepared as I could be. I had my story straight
in my head. All I had to do was to tell the truth. All I had
to do was to sit there and tell that policeman, with his lean,
wry face, everything I had done and how I had found the
body. That was the first thing I had to do. And then the
questions would get more difficult, and I would need to
show him the note, and to tell him about Rivers Carillo,
but at least I had my story straight. I would tell him
exactly what I'd told Danny. I knew what to say. And at
least in that little room I would be safe, for as long as it
took.

DI Finlay asked me how I knew Zoey and to describe
our relationship, and he raised his eyebrows slightly when
I said we'd been friends.

'Just friends?'

'Yes.' I was keeping my answers as short as possible.
He wanted to know why I was in Edinburgh and how
come I'd been staying with Zoey, and who else knew
Zoey and where she lived. I mentioned Steve's name, and
Laura and Suze, and he ticked them off on a list in front of
him. 'In a moment, Ms Stephens, I'm going to ask you
about finding the body. But first, I want you to tell me
what you were doing yesterday.'

'All day?'

'All day, please. Hour by hour. With proof, if possible.'

I pulled out my purse. I had tickets and receipts. I
always kept them – I don't know why. Any time I got
given such a piece of paper, I would shove it straight into
one of the sections of my purse without thinking about
it. I had a pile of little bits of paper that I spread out on
the table. I had the whole of the previous day, that lovely
day of fun and freedom, summed up in a bunch of tickets
and receipts. I had a timed and dated ticket from the
open-top tour bus, I had tickets for Edinburgh Castle
and Holyrood House, and a credit-card receipt from the
little Indian restaurant where I'd had dinner. I had my
ticket for the Josie Long show, and another one for We
Are Klang's show, which was called
KlangBang.
Finlay
looked closely at that ticket, at the time of the show.
Eight-forty p.m.: that interested him. 'Who are they,
these Klang people?'

'These three comedians. Three blokes. They do stupid
sketches. They're very funny.' As I said that, I realised
why he was asking. That must have been when Zoey had
been killed: that was why he was so interested. I had been
sitting there in that little room, nearly wetting myself with
laughter, while Zoey's stomach was being hacked to bits
by a madman with a knife.

'Can you prove this is your ticket?'

That was the young female detective, the first thing
she'd said. I shrugged. 'I don't know. I can't remember
how I paid. I think I used my credit card.'

She wrote something down. 'Can you prove you were
there? Were you with anyone? Did anyone see you?
Would anyone have noticed you there?'

I almost laughed at the irony. No one ever noticed me.
I'd lived half my life trying to go unnoticed. 'No. I was on
my own.'

'Maybe there's something about the show you
remember particularly?' Finlay picked up the questioning
again.

I thought hard. Of course I remembered it; but that
wouldn't help. One thing I knew from Zoey was that
comedians did more or less the same show every night.
Even the apparent ad libs were often rehearsed. Even if I
had recited the whole show, word for word, that wouldn't
have proved that I'd been there on the night in question. I
twisted my fingers together and then fiddled with the
receipts and tickets lying there in front of me, rearranging
them so that the edges were parallel with the edge of the
table. I looked at DI Finlay, at his interesting face, and
then I thought of something. 'They did this thing with
insults. They picked on members of the audience.' I
remembered sitting as still as I possibly could, plastering a
nonchalant look on my face, sending out
'Don't pick me . . .
don't pick me'
vibes. 'People had to come up with the best
insult they could for the guys on stage. It was really
stupid, but very funny.' Finlay was frowning at me,
wondering what I was about to say. 'Anyway, there was
this old woman in the audience. I mean, really old, like
eighty or something. And they picked on her, and she had
to insult one of the comedians, this funny-looking bald
guy. And she said he looked like a dead Gollum.'

So that was my alibi. The detective's mouth twitched
slightly at one corner. ' "A dead Gollum",' he said wryly,
and wrote it down. He smiled to himself, and shook his
head slightly. He looked at his colleague and she smiled
too. Then Finlay scratched his chin and looked at me for
a while, as if he was trying to work me out. I didn't know
where to look. I was very conscious of the note in the back
pocket of my jeans and I knew that soon I would have to
show it to him.

He cleared his throat. 'Now, Ms Stephens, I believe you
arrived back at the flat last night and found Ms
Spiegelman's body.'

I nodded.

'Could you speak up, please?'

'Yes. Yes, I did.'

'And what time was this?'

'It was just gone ten. I looked at my watch as I got back
to the flat.'

'I need to know everything you did and everything you
touched.'

I took him through it, from the moment I'd pushed
open the street door of the flats. Methodically, as calmly as
possible, I told him about the key not being there, and
about listening to all the phone messages as I climbed the
stairs. A s I spoke I had my hand in the back pocket of my
jeans, feeling the note, ready to pull it out and show him.
I told him how I had seen blood in the hallway, and how
I'd found Zoey's body, and how I had put my hands on
her stomach to try to stop the bleeding. My voice had been
quiet and steady until then, but it caught in my throat as I
got to that bit, and the young female detective went over
to a table in the corner and poured me a paper cup of
water. 'Take your time,' she said. 'This must be difficult.'

And that was when I lost my nerve. She was suddenly
kind and gentle, and my throat was dry, and I'd been so
strong until then. But I lost my nerve. I fingered the note
in my pocket one more time, and then I shoved it deeper.
I told them everything else that I'd done in that flat and
where I'd left my bloody fingerprints. But I didn't tell
them about the note. And I didn't tell them about Rivers
Carillo. At the very last minute my resolve fled.

'So why did you not report what you found? Why
didn't you call 999 straight away?' DI Finlay was
definitely playing bad cop. He glared at me, his forehead
wrinkled into a frown.

'Because I was scared,' I said. 'I heard footsteps. I
thought the person who killed her was also going to kill
me. I got scared, and so I ran.'

Finlay raised his eyebrows. 'And now you're
not
scared?'

'Of course I'm scared. But I couldn't stay running for
ever.'

He was going to ask me another question but there was
a knock on the door. A uniformed policeman came into
the room and apologised for the interruption. Finlay went
outside to speak to him, while the female detective and I
looked at each other across the table. She smiled at me.
'This won't take much longer,' she said.

After a few minutes Finlay came back in, looking much
happier. 'Okay,' he said, brushing his hands together as if
he had finished with the whole business. 'That's it, Ms
Stephens. Go with Detective Sergeant Ross here and we'll
take your fingerprints for comparison purposes, and then
you'll be free to go. I'm sure you'll be reassured to know
that we have a suspect in custody. I anticipate that charges
are imminent.'

'What?' I was stunned. 'You found him? Already?
Who? Who is it?'

But Finlay wouldn't say. I was ushered out of that tiny
room with my head spinning. This was crazy. Had they
really managed to catch the killer so quickly? Who was it?
Who the hell was it who had been haunting me all
summer?