Page 45 of The Tapes

THIRTY-FIVE

We’re at opposite ends of the storage unit, maybe five or six metres apart. Kieron sighs, touches his head and glances towards the open crates.

‘There’s a sensor,’ he says, pointing to a small black square on the wall at his side.

There’s one on the other side too. ‘It’s sort of an invisible tripwire.

The moment anyone breaks it, I get a notification on my phone.

Happened last year when there was a mix-up and they accidentally entered my unit when they meant to go into the one next door. I got a free month out of that.’

He blows a low, gentle raspberry as I realise that I would have already left if not for Mark returning to find that second phone.

‘Why are you here, Eve?’

I’m holding the jewellery box and he must know. ‘Did you kill my mum?’ I ask.

I expect a reaction – outrage, resignation, maybe even anger – but there’s nothing.

I didn’t know Nicola’s father that well back then.

He’d been involved with one of my mother’s arrests and helped her out for a while.

That’s how he knew my parents but it was later I came to know him.

He was the officer who sat across from me in the police station when I’d rammed that glass into Jake Rowett’s face and almost ruined my life.

He finds me a couple of times a year and we have that sit down where he asks how I am.

Really, he’s asking if I’m drinking again.

Kieron pretended to mentor my mother and he pretended to mentor me. But all this time…

He is the same man now, the one I’ve always known, yet different. The eyes are dead.

‘Why would you ask that?’ he says calmly. ‘You’re the one trespassing.’

‘But did you kill her?’

He has a moment, takes a breath, lets me wait and then: ‘Actually, I didn’t.’

The response comes with such assured calm that I instantly believe him. Why would he lie? Why now? It’s only us.

But that has me looking to the jewellery box again, because if he took this from Mum – but says he didn’t kill her – then who did…?

Unless…

‘Is she still alive?’

And, suddenly, it’s all I can think about. Because Mum shot a gun two years ago. Her fingerprints are on it. She isn’t dead.

This seems to take Kieron by surprise and it’s as if we’re having two different conversations. ‘Are you drinking again?’ he asks. ‘You are, aren’t you? I knew it the other day.’

There’s a stab somewhere between my stomach and my heart and I push a finger into my middle, trying to make it go. ‘I’m not,’ I reply.

‘Why else would you be here, jumping to such conclusions?’

‘I’m not.’

There’s a flittering murmur of a smile to him now. He knows what he said and why he said it.

‘I’m not,’ I repeat, talking to myself, more than him. I’ve changed – and people are allowed to make mistakes. What matters is learning from them.

‘Why did you stop?’ I add, trying to prevent him taking control of the conversation. In a flash, that wicked suggestion of a smile disappears.

‘What?’

‘You killed nine people in seventeen years but nobody in the last thirteen. Why did you stop? You obviously enjoyed it.’

Somehow, Kieron has taken a couple of paces towards me and I hadn’t noticed. I blinked and he’d moved. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he says.

I offer up the box, running a thumb across the grooves of the engraved flowers.

‘Mum stole this from you. She couldn’t help herself.

You must have had her and dad over one night and then, after they’d gone, you went to check on it – but it was gone.

You knew it had to be her – and she knew you were coming for her. That’s why she made the tape.’

There’s no acknowledgement but I know I’m right.

Not only that, I’m inwardly screaming at myself.

When Kieron and I were sitting in the beer garden, I was the one who told him the tape existed.

He was sceptical, saying the voice sounded like mine, acting as if it was a cry for attention. But all the while, he knew it was real.

He knew it was real because I told him.

I’m so stupid.

I played him the voice note from my phone. I told him Owen had the original.

Oh, no.

‘Did you kill him?’ I ask.

‘I heard he killed himself.’

It takes a second but: ‘I never specified the him…’

And we both know now, as if there was any doubt. Kieron might have been the person who killed Owen as he went looking for the tape – but I’m the reason Owen is dead.

‘Where’s the tape?’ Kieron asks.

My phone is at my feet – but my bag is in the back of my car. The tape is there. I feel Kieron’s eyes on me, weighing up whether I have it now.

‘He didn’t have the tape, so you must have it,’ Kieron says. ‘Where is it?’

I don’t answer because I don’t trust myself. I’ll accidentally mention Vivian and the second tape.

Kieron doesn’t wait long. He scratches his head and sighs. ‘I do actually like you,’ he says. ‘Faith is a good friend for my granddaughter and I’m a family man before anything else.’

‘All those women had families too.’

There’s a twinkle in his eye. ‘I said I liked you. But nobody’s going to miss you, Eve. Faith’s dad is a better parent than you’ll ever be. Both your parents are gone. Nobody even knows you’re here. Nobody cares.’

He pulls up his top and slips a knife from his belt. The light glimmers from the blade that’s as razor-sharp as his words. Both feel too real.

‘I wonder if I’m out of practice…’ he says.