Page 11 of The Tapes
SEVEN
I can never watch mystery shows on television.
It’s mainly because I’m always stuck wondering why nobody ever has a job.
There’ll be these allegedly normal people going about their day, getting involved in scrapes, never once going to work.
I wonder how they pay their rent or mortgage, how they can afford things; where all the free time comes from.
That’s the thing with death, with mysteries: life goes on.
I’ve slept barely three hours, yet I’m behind a desk, trying not to yawn, pretending to focus on a computer monitor.
It’s my father’s funeral in two days and I’ve been up most of the night listening to the ghost of my mother tell me how she found a jewellery box filled with earrings of murdered women.
All I want to do is look for that box.
After being awoken by Mum’s voice, I listened to the whole of that tape for the first time, then turned it over and listened to the second side.
Of the ninety minutes, around an hour is my infant self, struggling with letters and numbers; fifteen to twenty is either blank or fuzz; and the rest is my mother talking about how she fears being murdered because she knows the identity of the Earring Killer.
If Mum names the person, it’s lost among the tape glitches.
It’s hard not to think on that, but I did fall asleep with the sound of my mother’s voice in the background for probably the first time in four decades.
I found a tape with her talking about a Sedingham summer fête. There were camels on the high street, and a dancing elephant – which reinforces, as always – that the 1980s were a very different time.
Another yawn. I’m the office manager of a landscaping company and, in the two hours I’ve been at work, I’ve deleted a few emails, had a conversation I’ve already forgotten, and three mugs of bad coffee.
I’m checking a work order against the inventory log, but the information isn’t going in. Usually, I could do this sort of thing on autopilot but the tiredness and the bright white strip lights are not a good combination.
As another yawn is fought away, the door opens and a pair of the gardeners come in.
Dina’s one of the few women who work for the company, though she’s the most competent person by a long way.
Owen’s not long out of college and likely has a crush on his older workmate, based on the way he constantly tries to look at her in a not-looking-at-her way.
‘Is the van booked in for its MOT?’ Dina asks, not one for small talk. I click between spreadsheets, trying to appear as if I’m awake until I find the correct page.
‘Friday,’ I tell her. ‘I’m not going to be here but there shouldn’t be any issues.’
‘You off on holiday?’ Owen tails off as it’s impossible to miss Dina’s very raised eyebrows.
‘It’s my dad’s funeral,’ I reply, trying not to be too harsh with it. Owen has the look of a person who wants the ground to swallow him up.
Part of being the office manager is essentially doing a bit of everything.
I book jobs, assign teams, order supplies, plus arrange maintenance for the equipment and vehicles.
Owen is saved by Dina taking over and asking what she should do with the paperwork.
With that sorted, they turn to leave for the day’s tasks, before I remember that it was me who went through Owen’s CV when he applied for the job.
He’s almost out the door when I call him back, asking if I can have a word.
He tells Dina he’ll be right with her, then returns to the desk.
‘Sorry about the, um… funeral,’ he says, avoiding eye contact.
‘Can I check something with you?’ I say. ‘Is it right you do audio editing on the side?’
He brightens at this. ‘There’s a podcast studio in town. I help out on weekends and edit at home as a bit of a side hustle.’
‘Do you know much about cassette tapes?’ I ask.
He laughs, presumably considering this a joke before his features become more serious. ‘Oh, right… yeah. I mean, I know what they are. I’ve got a degree in multimedia production, and we covered tapes.’
He laughs again, though there’s an edge. He’s probably had a conversation or two with his parents about why he spent three years doing a degree in multimedia, only to end up at a landscaping company.
‘I might know someone who can get old tapes, if that’s what you want,’ he says.
‘I was wondering if you’ve got the equipment to digitise a recording.’
‘Oh… I mean, probably.’
I remove the tape from my bag, and place it on the counter between us, knowing this is potentially dangerous territory. ‘Could you do this?’ I ask. ‘I can pay whatever it costs. It cuts in and out. I think they’ve tried to record over something but the old audio comes through underneath…?’
He nods along, though it’s unclear if he knows what I mean. ‘I don’t know a lot about cassettes,’ he says. ‘I think that can happen if the tape is thin? Maybe if it’s damaged? You can hear what’s on the other side…?’
Owen sounds unsure, though it’s hard to blame him. By the time he was born, CDs were on the way out, let alone tapes. I might as well be asking about typewriters or leaded petrol.
Still, I’m already in too deep.
‘Have you got any machines that might be able to salvage the audio? Even if it cuts out?’
‘So you could have it on your phone?’
‘Exactly.’
He shrugs. ‘Probably. If not me, there’s a guy in the studio who’s really old. He knows all about this stuff.’
There’s no malice, but the ‘really old’ feels particularly brutal. Owen reaches for the tape and picks it up. ‘Is this it?’
‘My mum’s voice is on there,’ I reply. ‘She’s been gone a long time, so it’s quite important to me…’
He nods, then opens the case and removes the cassette, twisting it in his hand as if he’s an art collector who’s heard all about the wonder and mystery of the Mona Lisa , but is only now seeing it in person.
‘It might take a few days,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to promise, but it’s probably OK.’
He turns the tape around, and then returns it to the holder. I wait until he looks up at me.
‘My mum says some strange things on the tape,’ I tell him. ‘She was ill towards the end, so if you could keep them to yourself, I’d be really grateful.’
Owen’s confused for a moment but I can see him turning things over in his mind. ‘Um… sure. Is it, like… illegal, or something…?’
‘She had a bit of dementia at the end, so wasn’t always sure what was real.’
It’s a lie and I’m not sure whether it’s a good one. Owen’s too young to remember my mother disappearing and I’ve phrased things in such a way that it sounds like she simply died.
Recording from analogue to digital means the audio will have to play all the way through – so someone could potentially listen to it all the way through. I figure it’s better to warn Owen ahead of time. If he knows about the Earring Killer, perhaps he’ll put it all down to the fake dementia.
‘Uh… sure,’ Owen replies, slipping the cassette into the pocket of his hoody. He glances backwards to the door, and Dina who’ll be beyond, ready to leave. ‘I think I’ve got your number,’ he adds. ‘If I don’t see you before, then good luck with Friday…’
I thank him for listening and then he spins and charges out of the office and into the waiting van. As soon as he’s out of the door, I pull my phone from my bag and place it on the counter, then load voice notes, before playing back the most recent clip.
‘… I need you to know that I love you.’
If something happens to the tape, I could probably live with it – but I couldn’t face losing those few seconds.
The quality is washed out from the cassette recorder’s speaker, and my phone’s microphone – but it’s enough.
Regardless of whether Owen can clean up the original recording, I’ll always have this.
As I listen a second time, something prickles the back of my neck and I glance sideways to realise I’m being watched.
The company owner, Mark, has an adjacent office that’s been empty all morning.
He must have entered via the other door, because he’s now perched on the corner of his desk, watching me not work.
There’s a frown and I wonder how long he has been there; whether he overheard me asking Owen for the favour.
He says nothing but he’s one of those men whose faces do enough talking without the mouth ever having to open.
There’s a less chat-more work look about him, which has me silencing my phone and returning my attention to the monitor.
All is immediately explained when I see the email at the top of my mailbox.
Eve. I’m not paying you to chat. Next door have been waiting for an engineer for over an hour. I thought you were on this?
Sent from Mark’s iPhone
Oops.
I thought my tiredness wasn’t affecting my work – but the moment I see the word ‘engineer’, I remember what I didn’t do.
As well as owning the landscaping company, last year Mark bought the storage centre on the adjacent plot.
The previous owner had a heart attack and I think it might have been an impulse buy.
Either way, I somehow ended up with a doubled workload more or less overnight.
This is what I mean about a job getting in the way.
Because I want to be at my father’s house, rooting through that garage, looking for the jewellery box Mum was talking about on the tape.
If it’s not there, is it somewhere else in Dad’s house?
The only thing I have to go on is that Mum said there were flowers engraved on the side.
If I can find that, I’ll actually have something to take to the police.
Except, I have to work.
So I make the phone call to the engineer needed next door, I double-check the MOT appointment for the work van, I reply to a couple of emails, answer a call from someone who’s waiting for one of our teams to turn up, check the company’s credit card statement for anything untoward…
plus all the other mundane parts of the job that somebody has to do.
As I work, I continue to feel watched, as Mark’s presence looms in the adjacent office.
He’s one of those who only knows how to use a computer keyboard in one way – banging the keys one at a time until they submit.
My actual work is punctuated by the rhythmic thump-thump-thump of whatever he’s doing in the next room.
I still find a bit of time to google the Earring Killer. I know the name, of course, because I grew up with it. The Earring Killer is like quicksand – one of those things I heard a lot about as a kid, but something that’s not affected my life as an adult.
He’s blamed for killing nine women, although, from the Wikipedia page, it doesn’t seem as if there’s been a single attack in thirteen years. That’s what Liam said, although it’s a stark number.
I never really connected Mum to the Earring Killer, and nor did anyone else. A body wasn’t found and disappearing always felt like something of which she’d be capable. If not that, then harming herself. That darkness was within her – and even she knew it.
Except… thirteen years is the same amount of years that Mum has been missing.