Page 35 of The Tapes

TWENTY-EIGHT

There’s no broken glass but the door is a mess. I wouldn’t have guessed a crowbar, but Liam’s probably correct. The wood has splintered near the hinge and there’s a large gouge in the frame.

Inside, and three of the kitchen cupboard doors are open.

They were more or less empty anyway. Into the living room and it’s not an obvious burglary.

The television is there, as well as Dad’s record player.

Some of the drawers of his bureau are fractionally open, even though I’m certain they were closed.

I check and his pile of bills and bank statements remain in place.

Liam is behind me, pointing to a small cabinet with its doors open. I try to remember what was inside but doubt it was valuable.

‘People would’ve known the house was empty and that you were going to be out all day,’ Liam says – and he’s right. Dad’s funeral had been publicised. It would be known that he lived alone and people knew the times I’d be at the crematorium and then the social club.

Liam looks towards the TV and I suspect we’re both thinking the same. ‘What was the point of breaking in?’ he asks.

I look to him blankly, wondering whether people still nick televisions nowadays. It feels like a throwback to a time when they were more expensive and not everyone had a smaller version in their pocket.

‘I’ll check upstairs,’ I say, then leave Liam in the living room as I head up.

Dad’s clothes are still in his room, though a burglar taking those really would have left some serious questions.

The drawers on his chest are half open, half closed – and it looks as if a couple of rings could’ve been taken.

I hadn’t catalogued everything, and doubt they were valuable anyway.

The other rooms seem broadly untouched, though Dad had only been using them for storage anyway. Much had already been carted off to the tip.

Back downstairs, Liam is waiting in the kitchen. ‘Has much been taken?’ he asks.

‘I don’t think so.’

He raises a confused eyebrow, then looks to the back door.

‘I was always getting on to Dad about having better doors and windows,’ I say.

‘They were old and wooden and he’d complain about his electric bill.

I said he could probably get a grant for better windows, which would make his heating bill lower.

He said it sounded like a lot more trouble than it was worth… ’

I tail off, partly because I’m boring myself but mainly because it feels so inconsequential now. Nobody gets to the end of their life and wishes they’d had more conversations about windows.

‘Maybe whoever broke in didn’t know you’d already cleared so much,’ Liam says. ‘They were trying it on to see if there was anything valuable…?’

It’s possible, perhaps likely, but I wonder whether this is a one-off. If there was a person out there breaking into houses based on the times of funerals, wouldn’t someone have noticed by now?

‘You should probably call the police,’ he says.

‘I don’t know if anything’s been taken.’

‘It’s still vandalism.’

Liam looks to the door again but I’m thinking of Detective Sergeant Cox and how I keep appearing in her investigations.

It likely wouldn’t be her who came here – but she’d notice.

I can imagine the conversation with an officer, trying to explain that I don’t know if anything was taken.

Do officers still attend for this sort of thing anyway?

Don’t you just get a crime number over the phone?

‘I need to call a locksmith,’ I reply.

‘I can wait with you.’

‘It’s OK. I messaged when I thought I was going to spend the whole day stuck saying hello to people with the bar right there. I thought I’d need a bit of help – but I ended up meeting Lorna and it wasn’t as bad as it could have been…’

Liam bites his bottom lip, considering what to say. He only lives a few minutes away and has taken the trouble to rescue me, only to be told he isn’t needed.

‘Are you sure?’ he replies. ‘I’ve got all evening. I can wait, and we can do something after?’

‘I think maybe I need a bit of time to myself. I’ve been with people all day.’

I can see the uncertainty in Liam. We’ve known each other a long while now but we don’t talk about the important things, or even really the unimportant ones. We’re often just there – and it’s enough.

‘If you’re absolutely sure,’ he says, holding up his phone. ‘I can come back, or we can still do something later. I want you to promise you’ll call or text if you need something.’

‘I will.’

He steps towards the door and picks up a few large splinters of wood that he puts on the counter. I know he’d rather stay. There’s a final look over his shoulder and then he moves decisively out of the house and around the side back to the front.

I’m alone again and maybe this is what I want for now.

I search for locksmiths and call the first one on the list. I explain that the door is partially off the hinges, though she says they can help with that, or fix a new door entirely.

I can’t be bothered calling around, so tell her that’s fine.

She says it’ll be around ninety minutes, and so I pull the door as closed as it gets and then head into Dad’s living room to wait.

I probably should call the police, if only to get that crime reference number – but I’ve also had so many dealings with them in the past days that I don’t think I can take more bureaucracy. It would be different if I could specifically tell them something that had been taken.

Did someone really see the funeral notice and take a chance? It would have to be someone who knew where Dad lived.

I text Peter, to say someone broke into Dad’s house during the funeral, but that it doesn’t look as if anything was taken. It’s half his house, after all – and maybe he’ll insist on calling the police. Perhaps my brother will even come here and do it himself.

Then it occurs to me that somebody could have been specifically searching for the engraved jewellery box. The reason I haven’t noticed anything missing is that I didn’t know where it was to begin with.

Now the thought is there, I can’t escape the idea that the Earring Killer was here while I was either at the funeral, or wake.

Peter himself didn’t get to the wake. His wife said he’d taken one of their ill twins but that he was taking longer to get back than she thought.

Except my brother has his own key for the house and could have come by to search at any time.

Plus he’d likely removed something when we met here a few days back. Why wait?

There is an obvious answer to that. There’s no better way to get away with stealing a small thing than by hiding it among lots of other items. Somebody else could easily assume I actually did have a manifest of everything in Dad’s house, meaning I’d notice a single thing taken.

But if that one thing disappeared along with a couple dozen others, it wouldn’t have such significance.

It would be much smarter to make something look like a burglary.

Or… maybe I’ve completely lost it. I’ve spent the past few days suspecting everyone from my father, to my boss, to my brother, and who knows who else. They’re all the Earring Killer; the person Mum said was going to murder her.

I’ve been poisoned by Mum’s tapes. Despite the clear lies of stealing the neighbour’s car, or robbing a bank, I can’t stop believing that the other stuff is true.

I sit and wait. I might even nod off for five minutes because, when I next check my phone, Peter has replied to my text about the break-in.

OK

I swipe out and back, wondering if there’s more – but that’s it.

My brother co-owns this house and doesn’t seem too bothered that someone broke in while we were at our father’s funeral.

I should be surprised but he told me to my face he was sick of the drama caused by the women in this family.

He likely thinks this is more of that. Nicola’s father said something similar in that beer garden, when he questioned whether it was my voice on the recording, not my mother’s.

Is that how people see me? An attention seeker?

I check the window but there’s no sign of a locksmith, so I do a bit of cleaning up in the kitchen, while listening to my voice note recording of Mum’s tape.

‘This is my second go at this. My name is Angela and I’ve been murdered…

…

…

Well, I think I’m going to be murdered.

…

…

I don’t know. It’s just… I don’t think I’m a good person. I did something. I’ve done lots of things…’

I recorded the first part of the tape to voice notes but rarely listen to it, instead skipping for the part to which I’m addicted.

‘… if this is Eve listening, I just want you to know I’m sorry. If they say I’m missing, I’m not. I’ve been killed – and I need you to know that I love you.’

I drop a pan of dust and splinters into the bin – and finally realise why I need this to be true.

It’s because it’s all part of the same sentence.

If Mum’s lying about being killed, then she’s lying about loving me.

It’s why I can’t let it go, why I’m so desperate to prove this.

I can ignore the obvious lies later on the tape but it’s this line that must be real.

And that’s when I really listen to the start and realise the obvious thing I’ve missed this entire time.

‘This is my second go at this…’

If this broken, incomplete cassette is Mum’s second go , then where’s the first?