Epitaph (14 page)

Gina Hacket looked at the phone, watching it as intently as a mongoose watching a cobra.

For what seemed like an eternity she had sat gazing at it. Wanting to pick it up but not daring to.

She had tried the police and they wouldn’t help her. Her own husband had yet to return home. She was alone and helpless. She needed to speak to someone else, to tell them of the terrible fears she was feeling and to pour out her pain and longing. Gina wanted to tell someone else what was happening. She wanted to explain that her daughter, the one person she loved most in the world, was missing.

Gina swallowed hard, even the thought of the word making her shudder. She sat on the edge of the chair in her darkened living room, her body quivering slightly as if the house had been cold instead of filled with cloying heat the way it was.

With the onset of evening had come a cloaking humidity that had closed around her like a moist glove. She could feel perspir -ation running down her face and her back and she wasn’t sure
that all of it was caused by the dull, unbroken humidity. She felt the sweat of fear as well. A fear that told her over and over again that her daughter was already dead. That she would never see her again and, no matter how she tried to fight those thoughts, they remained firmly planted inside her mind.

She looked at the phone again, knowing who she wanted to call.

She wanted to call her lover. She wanted to tell him what was happening. She wanted to hear him tell her that it was going to be all right, that there was no need to worry any more. She yearned to hear those words from him but she knew that she wouldn’t because she knew she could not call him, to begin with.

That was one of the rules.

Rules that they had both adhered to firmly during their illicit relationship. It was a game and every game had to have rules. They both understood that. No contact other than when they met. Of course there had to be the furtive phone calls to arrange their sordid little liaisons but nothing else. There were to be no impromptu chats over the phone. No passing of the time. Nothing. What they had didn’t exist away from the grubby hotel rooms. There was nothing beyond the feverish fumbling and penetrations that they both enjoyed so much when they were in the sanctuary of their deceit.

That was the first rule. There were others that had to be strictly adhered to as well, but that was the first and the most important and they both realised it.

However, at this precise moment in time Gina cared nothing for the rules or for their consequences. She just wanted to hear his voice. To hear him say that he would help her. That he would be there for her. How badly she wanted to hear him tell her not to worry. That he would find her daughter and everything would
be fine. That he would whisk them both away to a better life once all this was over.

Gina gazed blankly at the phone and reached for her cigarettes, cursing under her breath when she remembered that she’d smoked the last one ten minutes ago. She hoped that Frank would bring her more when he finally got home. She’d reminded him enough times, after all.

She reached for the phone, her hand shaking, but she swiftly withdrew it and clutched her hands together on her lap in a contemplative position.

She wondered what he would do if she did call him. Would he be angry? Or would the knowledge of her predicament override that? Would he tell her that he would help her find Laura? Gina shook her head, determined not to break that first cardinal rule that governed all adulterous relationships. If she did ring he might well decide that it was over between them and she couldn’t face that.

Not now.

So she continued to stare impotently at the phone, her mind returning more fully to her missing daughter. She got to her feet and walked across to the bay window once more, peering out into the dimly lit street.

It was as she stood there that she saw the car headlights lance through the gloom beyond.

Only when the twin beams cut through the night in front of her house did she realise that they belonged to a police car.

Paul Crane knew nothing about how the human mind worked.

Not the actual chemical composition and how the thought processes functioned. He knew that there were things called neurons and synapses and that there were certain electrical charges that fired these components, but as to the actual composition of the physical parts of the brain he was ignorant. It was made up of a number of parts such as the medulla oblongata, the forebrain, the brain stem and others but what function each performed he had no idea.

He was, for instance, oblivious to which part of his brain controlled his hearing. But, whichever part it was he was beginning to think that it had deteriorated more quickly than the others due to his imprisonment inside this coffin. Perhaps, he reasoned, it was something to do with the lack of oxygen. Maybe that affected the auditory responses of the brain before anything else. He wouldn’t know when
his sight failed because it was so impenetrably black inside the box anyway but, for now, his concern was with his hearing.

At first he had imagined the gnawing and chewing of graveyard rats outside the coffin, the mucoid slithering of bloated earthbound slugs and worms determined to devour him while he still lived. That had been bad enough. But now, he was sure he’d just heard a voice inside the coffin.

And that was the crucial difference. The voice wasn’t inside his head. It wasn’t the internal voice that had taunted and challenged his thoughts and it wasn’t the sound of his own fears and jumbled musings. This sound had been inside the coffin, he was sure of it.

Perhaps it was the voice of God, preparing him for his last journey.

Paul actually managed to smile at the thought. The possibility of some omnipotent being greeting him as he left this life was comforting. Or, if not God Himself, maybe one of His angels. Perhaps God didn’t trouble Himself with personal visits to every single person who was about to die; He probably had people to do that for Him. What was the point in being God if you had to do all the little jobs yourself, Paul thought.

Why buy a dog and bark yourself, that kind of thing.

Again, he smiled thinly to himself.

He wondered what these angels would look like. Would they be seated on clouds carrying harps, as was expected, or would they assume a form more pleasing to the particular person they’d come to escort to eternity? After all, the Vikings had the Valkyries, didn’t they? When they were killed in battle and escorted off to Valhalla they weren’t
taken by some scraggy-looking old hag dressed in an ill-fitting sack; they were taken to the home of the gods by beautiful maidens in gleaming armour. Paul wondered if his escorts would be slender blondes in skin-tight, short, black dresses teetering on high heels.

Each to his own, eh?

He was now convinced that his time was running out as quickly as his oxygen. Auditory disruptions. Hearing things. That must be a sign that the final stages were approaching.

For fleeting seconds he wondered if the voice might actually belong to someone who was standing next to the coffin. Someone who was going to undo the lid and free him. But the fantasy evaporated all too quickly. He knew and had known in his heart for a while now that he was going nowhere. This really was his last resting place and all the praying, positive thinking and fighting back wasn’t going to change that.

Or was he just hearing the voices of those he was going to leave behind, he asked himself. Had the voice he’d imagined he’d heard (because, after all, how could he actually have heard a voice six feet below ground in a sealed coffin? It was impossible) belonged to Amy? Was he projecting his thoughts of her to the extent that they had become audible in the form of her voice? Perhaps this was part of his life flashing before him; maybe he would hear his girlfriend speaking to him. She might deliver some kind of eulogy about him. Then after that other voices might rumble into his mind to speak about him. He wondered who would be next. He wondered what they would say.

Would they say that he would be missed? That he’d been a good man or a bad man? Would they say he was reliable, trustworthy, respected, all the other epithets that people so badly hoped others would apply to them when they were gone?

Do you think you were a good man?

He exhaled slowly and tried to think if his life, the life that was ebbing away with every breath, had been worthwhile. Had he made his mark? Because, in the end, that was all anyone wanted, wasn’t it? To know that they’d made a mark. To understand that people would know they’d been there. In five years’ time would there be any tangible evidence of his presence on the planet? Would people remember him for something he’d done?

Paul struggled to think of anything. His work in advertising was there for all to see but how long would it remain and, besides, who would know that he’d been responsible for those adverts? It wasn’t like being a writer and leaving loads of books behind that people could read for years to come. It wasn’t in the same class as the achievements of a film star whose performances were there onscreen for others to enjoy for the foreseeable future. If he was honest with himself, there was very little to show that he’d ever been on the planet. It was a thought he tried hurriedly to dismiss. But
were
you a good man?

He’d never knowingly hurt anyone (had he?). Did that qualify as being good? What definition of good were we using here? Whose definition?

Paul coughed and tasted bitter phlegm in his mouth. He swallowed it and lay still, aware only of the silence and of the pain that still throbbed in his hand. The blood had
stopped flowing from his torn nail but the splinter that was wedged into his flesh was still hurting.

Still, it won’t matter soon, will it? Nothing will matter any more.

‘Oh, God,’ he murmured thickly.

When the voice spoke again, Paul Crane knew that he wasn’t imagining it.

Gina Hacket watched as the police car cruised up the street, slowing down every now and then as if the occupants were checking the front doors of the houses.

Checking for what, she wondered.

She watched as the car moved further up the road then stopped for a moment.

Gina could feel her heart beating more quickly and she wondered if, after her earlier call, they had finally come to help find her daughter. Yes, that was it, she convinced herself. They had decided that they wouldn’t wait the prescribed length of time before a search could be initiated. They had come with aid now. Taken pity on her. She actually managed a smile as she saw the police car gently reversing and she was sure now that the occupants were checking door numbers. That had to be the answer. The door of their house wasn’t particularly well illuminated and they’d driven past it the first time; now they were rectifying their error.

There was a space next to her car and she watched as the police car reversed into it. It sat there for a moment, engine idling,
then the driver turned it off and the stillness of the night descended once more.

Gina ran a hand through her hair, wanting to look presentable when she answered the door to the policemen. She wanted to look good for the men who had come to help find her daughter.

She felt a new belief flowing through her as she saw the two uniformed men swing themselves out of the car.

Now something would be done, she assured herself. Now Laura would be found and brought home safely. They would probably have her back in the house even before Frank got home. That thought buoyed her like no other that evening. She saw the two of them walking towards the house, heading for the short path that led to the front door and Gina headed for the hallway, ready to open the door and greet them.

She wondered if, at this very moment, another police car was arriving at the hospital where Frank worked to inform him of their involvement. He would be as relieved as she was.

Gina, now in the small hallway, heard two sets of footsteps approaching and she opened the door before either of the men could knock.

She smiled at them. One was in his thirties, the other older. His hair was greying at the temples and he had a thin moustache. It was this man who spoke.

‘Mrs Gina Hacket?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she responded. ‘It’s about my daughter, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, madam, it is,’ the older man said. ‘Could we come in, please?’

His voice was soft, even gentle, and Gina nodded enthusiastically and beckoned the men inside, closing the door behind them as she ushered them through into the living room.

Once inside they stood rigidly by the window, the older of the men looking evenly at her.

‘You called earlier, didn’t you?’ he said.

‘The man I spoke to said that there was some kind of time limit on how long a person had to be missing before you could start looking for them,’ Gina announced. ‘But I knew you wouldn’t just leave a little girl out there without trying to find her. Not these days.’

‘Would you like to sit down, Mrs Hacket?’ the older man asked.

‘I was going to ask if you wanted a cup of tea or coffee,’ Gina continued.

‘If you just sit down, please,’ he said again. ‘It might be best.’ For the first time, Gina noticed weariness in his tone. She also noticed that the younger policeman was holding a clear plastic bag.

There was something dark inside it.

‘What’s wrong?’ Gina wanted to know, her own tone darkening as surely as her mood.

She saw the older man nod to his companion and the other policeman reached into the bag and removed the dark object. As he unfolded it, Gina could see that it was an item of clothing.

It was a small cardigan.

She recognised it immediately and felt a coldness sweep over her. For a moment she thought she was going to faint.

‘This was found about an hour ago,’ the older policeman informed her.

Gina rose slowly to her feet, reaching for the cardigan.

The younger policeman allowed her to look at it but not to touch it. He had folded it over so that the nametag at the back of the neck was showing. Gina had known what it would say even before she saw it.

LAURA HACKET.

‘Is this your daughter’s, Mrs Hacket?’ the older man asked quietly.

Gina nodded blankly, her eyes still fixed on the cardigan.

There was blood on it.