Escaping Life (23 page)

“You knew
Rebecca and you are telling me she used to come here every week and take the
bus?”  The man stood there, unsure of what it was that he was saying that was
so very difficult.

“Yes,” he said
very slowly.  “I work there, and we had coffee here every Saturday, except for
last week.”  He pointed uncomfortably to the ticket booth once more and at the
coffee table before him as he spoke.  The woman before him, who was wiping
tears away from her face, was making him nervous. 

“Why not last
week?”

“I took a
holiday - what is this?”

“When did you
last see her?”

“As I said, I
took a holiday.  She was going for a day out, so I took her and then carried on
for my holiday.  Where is Rebecca?  Why are you asking me so many questions?” 
Jack could see the tan on his face, and it certainly explained the red cheeks. 
His hands were tanned too, with a clear white mark where his watch had covered his
skin from the sun.

“Where did you
take her?  When?” 

“Couple of
Sundays ago.  Said she was going for a day out to the beach and wanted dropping
off early as possible near the other side of the city.  Said she would walk a
couple of miles and spend the day there.  I was going early to miss the road
traffic.  You look so alike, you know.”  He was staring at Elizabeth again,
surveying her face, just to make absolutely sure that she wasn’t Rebecca. 
Looking for the tell-tale marks, the wrinkles, the moles, the subtle differences
that helped people tell them apart. 

“What’s your
name?”  Jack was taking out his small black notebook that was permanently stowed
in his jacket pocket.  He placed it on the table and began flicking to a blank
page.  The short ruddy man, wishing that he had never even approached the table,
could see the notebook.  Normal people didn’t make notes about what other
people said.  Only crazy people and the police.  He didn’t know which he’d rather
Jack to be.

“Barry.  Barry
Smith.”  He had shoved his hands down into his pockets far enough to hold them
steady and to stop them shaking.  He could feel his pulse quicken into a gallop,
uncertain at what he had walked himself into.  The hairs on the back of his
neck stood up and there were small beads of nervous sweat starting to trickle
down his forehead.  He wiped his brow furiously with his milky white wrist
before quickly tucking his hand back into his pocket.  He didn’t want to look
shaky.  “Why?  Why is all this so important?”

Jack wrote the
name ‘Barry Smith’ onto his little black leather pad and circled the name twice. 
He placed the pencil down and stared up at Barry, who was gulping back his
fear.  Jack was about to make it worse. 

“Because you
were the last person to see Rebecca alive.”

As they drove
the fifteen minutes across the city, the car was silent.  Passing by the
buildings that soared towards the sky, Barry sat motionless, his hands tucked
underneath his legs like a school boy awaiting judgement from the headmaster. 
He could feel Elizabeth’s eyes boring into him in the reflection from the
vanity mirror, looking for answers.  He sat staring at the back of the headrest
of Detective Fraser’s seat, scared to look at either of them in case he
accidentally let something slip, something he wasn’t even aware of.  When
you’re the last person to see somebody alive, you need to be careful with your
actions, guilty or not.

“Pull in over
there.  I live just here.”  His practical words broke the silence.  As
Elizabeth stared up at the run-down building, she wondered how anybody could
live there.  The top two floors looked derelict, boarded up and empty.  Turning
to Barry, she could see that he almost looked ashamed as he pointed to the spot
where he had told Jack to park.  “I’m afraid it isn’t much.  I’m not used to
guests.”  They got out of the car and the heat and smell of the city crawled
upon them.  Barry lived in an almost uninhabited area, grey and cold and
virtually devoid of people.  Generally, people avoided Woodside, except for
those who lived an alternative existence, one not compatible with the
majority. 

Barry nudged
open the door, putting his weight behind it as he jammed the key in the lock. 
He looked jittery, much less confident and bolshie than at the bus station. 
Elizabeth watched him as he glanced over his shoulder, checking the perimeter
to his home, ushering them through.  He looked relieved as he closed the door
behind him, glad to be inside, and protected by four walls.  The entrance room
was small and cramped and the door to his apartment locked.  The other wall was
bricked up, bare chestnut-coloured bricks lined with sandy cement.  It covered
what once would have been the entrance to the stairs.  It would have been a
grand entrance to surely what would have been a grand house, before the centre
of the city was moved and the residents left their houses, no longer interested
to be near the old mills and factories.  The wall looked haphazard and
unprofessionally built.  Jack looked at Elizabeth, his eyes wide.  She thought that
he must be used to a lot of things as a detective, but it seemed even places
like Woodside could surprise him. 

On the other
side of the door, it was like a different world.  It was as if they had stepped
into another realm, another life, to the one that they had left behind.  The
carpet looked freshly hoovered and the cushions lined up in order along the
ornate and old fashioned settee.  There were pictures on the wall, generic-looking
pictures of country scenes and still life fruit.  There was a small table in
front of them, with an open space through to the kitchen.  There was a scent of
roses that permeated the air, which almost masked the smell of old damp wood. 
Barry offered out his hand to a place on the sofa, and as they sat, he closed
the door behind him, securing the chain and closing it as solidly and securely
as possible.  Elizabeth watched him closely as he checked the locked door
handle, and she realised that she knew that feeling.  She knew what it was like
to be scared in your own home.  She hoped never to have that feeling again.

“You can’t be
too careful around here,” Barry said, as he pulled up the armchair next to
them.  “When I went away for the week, I left these timers on,” he said
pointing to the little boxes that sat next to the lamps, “so it looks like
somebody is here.  Since I laid the bricks to shut off the door to upstairs,
I feel a lot safer though.  Now,” he said as he slapped his hands down onto
his knees, “what do you want to ask me?”

Jack had been
thinking about this ever since he first started the journey to Woodside.  He
had been desperate for a lead, any lead, and had been searching for one hidden
amongst the clues and details of the case.  This new lead had fallen completely
unexpectedly into his lap, a curve ball from far up field that he had been neither
anticipating nor prepared for.  To find a random stranger offering up
information had thrown him completely off course.  He was getting used to that
feeling in this case.

“I think you
should start by telling us exactly what happened the last time that you saw Rebecca.”

“As I say, I
went on holiday to Torquay for a week.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.  I was
going to drive down early, I told Rebecca about it and she asked for a lift. 
It was maybe five, five-thirty when I picked her up.  I don’t remember exactly.”

“From where?”

“Outside a
paper shop.  It’s in the city, the small one on the corner before the main
shopping street.  She told me to meet her there.”  Jack thought back to the
time that he was at that paper shop and what the shop owner had said after he
had chased out the would-be teenage thieves.  He had described Rebecca at that
shop at that time.  It had been her.  “I drove her about ten miles, close to
the beach.  She said she wanted to go to the seaside for the day.”

“Did you notice
anything strange about her that day?”  Barry shifted in his chair, gulping
harder than before.  He looked as if he was trying to hide something, but even
he didn’t look like he knew what it was.  He had the face of an innocent, the actions
of a perpetrator.

“Well, she was
dressed differently.  Not like her.  I just thought she had dressed up for the
day.”  He rubbed his hands across the back of his neck.  There was something on
the tip of his tongue; it was burning him, making him cough and choke. 
Whatever it was, he wanted to spit it out.  Jack could sense the impending words;
he had sat waiting with expectant eyes for the one vital piece of information,
desperately snatching it out from the torrent of useless facts, countless times. 
He had developed patience.  “She,” Barry began, pausing in case what he was
about to say might, in some unexpected way, implicate him in a horrible crime,
“she was acting a bit weird.”

“What kind of
weird?” Elizabeth interrupted.  She was sat there listening to the details of
the final moments of her sister’s life, from a man she had only met an hour
ago.  He knew more about Rebecca’s life, it seemed, than anybody else.  It was he
who Rebecca had seen last.  He was the person with whom she chose to spend her
final shared moments on this earth.  Rebecca had a family:  a father, a sister,
a brother-in-law.  She had had friends and a life and it had been rich and
warm, yet right before she took her own life, she had dressed in her mother’s
old clothes to spend her final fifteen minutes with a stranger from the bowels
of the city.

“She stared at
me a lot.  She didn’t stop staring at me.”  Now it was Elizabeth staring
suspiciously at Barry through squinted eyes and it was making him more
uncomfortable.  It was like being watched by a ghost. 
What did he mean by
that? 
“It was a soft look, but she stared at me constantly.”

“Why?”  Jack
wasn’t sure that there was anything else to be gleaned from this conversation. 
Barry just seemed to be just like any of the other losers he stumbled upon in
his enquiries.  Just another poor dumb fool who got dragged into a situation
that he knew nothing about.

“I asked her
the same thing.  I asked her, why do you keep looking at me?  At
me
.
 
I am not stupid,” he held out his palm, hot and sweaty and gleaming under the
bright artificial light.  He pointed towards Elizabeth, “She was beautiful,
like you.”  For Barry, it was as if Rebecca was back in his life, sat here on his
settee in front of him.  How he had longed to have Rebecca in his home; how he
had longed for her to be more than a companion with whom he shared a weekly
coffee, yet he had always been too ashamed of himself and his life to even
think about inviting her to share it with him.  “I pulled up, where she asked
me to.  I was about to get out of the car, you know, to open her door, and she
grabbed my arm.  Not strong, just with a certainty that stopped me.  She looked
at me, right in the eye.  Then she kissed me.  I wasn’t expecting it, but she
kissed me, right on the lips.  And properly.”

“She kissed
you?”  Elizabeth couldn’t comprehend what she was hearing.  The Rebecca that
she knew wouldn’t have kissed the man sat before her.  She wouldn’t have looked
at him twice. 

“I know it
seems hard to believe,” he said with the same defeat and the same sense of
shame of who he was creeping back over him even as he relived the happiest
memory of his life.  “She kissed me, maybe ten seconds or so and then said to
me, ‘Never choose to be alone, Barry’.  She touched my face, the softest
touch.  Then she got out of the car and left.  That was the last time I saw
her.”

“What does that
mean?”  Elizabeth was looking at Jack
.
 “
N
ever choose to be alone?”

“Elizabeth,
your sister chose to be alone.  Our job,” he stopped before correcting himself,
“my job, is to work out why.”  He turned to Barry.  “What else do you know
about her?  When did you meet her?”

“About four
years ago.  She was always in the bus station, and she had the kind of face you
remember.”  They both looked at Elizabeth who averted her eyes awkwardly.  “I
was always working on a Saturday, and we just got chatting.  I never saw her
anywhere else.  When she asked me to take her somewhere, you know, out of
routine, I liked it ‘cos I thought maybe we would end up being better friends.”

“You don’t know
anything else about her life?”  Jack could barely believe that you could pass
through four years of life with somebody but know hardly anything about them.

Barry shook his
head.  “I don’t even know where she lives.”  He shrugged his shoulders,
realising that once again he had proven to be somewhat useless.

“You don’t mind
if I take a look around?”  Jack had no idea what it was that he was hoping to
find.  But he wanted to test Barry; he wanted to know that he wasn’t hiding
anything.

“Please, help
yourself.  But try not to make a mess.”

For a few
minutes, their silence was broken only by the noises coming from the other
rooms as Jack searched the house.  They could hear the rattle of drawers and
the rustle of paperwork.  Elizabeth was watching Barry out of the corner of her
eye.  He didn’t look uncomfortable anymore.  He didn’t look harassed at the
thought of the house search.  He could have prevented it if he had wanted to.  She
was certain that he wasn’t hiding anything.