Page 48 of The Tapes

THIRTY-SEVEN

I’m a cartoon character as tweeting birds circle my head. There are green and purple stars and, when I try to move, everything spins.

Not that I can move far.

I’m in a sitting position but perhaps it’s more of a slump. The cold ground seeps through my trousers, chilling my aching backside, as I fidget to try to get my bearings. My hands are tied to something behind my back, while something harsh digs into my wrists when I try to wriggle free.

It’s gloomy, though not quite dark and, as my eyes adjust, I realise I’m attached to some sort of railing. It seems like the sort used to pen in livestock, though it’s hard to know.

‘I didn’t expect this…’

A woman’s voice whispers through the dark. I twist against the railing, blinking away the stars as I realise a shadow is sitting on a chair a couple of metres away.

‘I knew something was up when you said you’d been thinking about your mum…’

‘Nic…?’

There’s no reply, not at first. The shadow shuffles a fraction, their feet tapping on the hard floor.

‘Where am I?’ I ask.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ she replies. ‘Who else did you tell about the tape?’

‘Nic…?’

This time, she moves, pushing up and out of a chair and stepping towards me, then crouching at my side.

Nicola is grey in the dim light, her hair tied into the tightest of ponytails, stretching her skin.

‘You told that idiot at your work,’ she hisses.

I sense her more than I see her. It must’ve been Nicola who hit me over the head at the storage units. I wonder where my car is, where the jewellery box has gone, whether she found the tape in my bag. I can’t process what’s going on. I tasered Nicola’s father back at the storage unit and now…

‘Did you kill him?’ I ask.

‘Well we didn’t find the tape at his, that’s for sure.’

Nicola stands and shifts away from me, returning to the chair.

We’ve always had an odd friendship that only really existed because of our daughters.

Our parents sort of knew each other but we weren’t mates at school.

After her dad helped get me off those police charges, we shared a bond that was difficult to quantify.

More than acquaintances, not quite friends.

‘Does “we” mean you and your dad?’ I ask.

There’s a long, long pause, broken only by the gentle tink-tink-tink of me wriggling against the metal bars. I can’t get comfortable.

‘I got a flat tyre one evening when I was on my way home,’ Nicola says.

‘This was before Mum and Dad downsized, before this was my place. I stopped by because I thought Dad could help with the wheel. I didn’t know Mum was at the theatre with her sister.

No one was home but there was a light in the shed.

I came back here – and that was the first time I knew the name Pamela Mallory… ’

The gasp that comes from me is involuntary. I spent the morning with Vivian, talking about Pamela. Nicola speaks so casually now, as if that young woman wasn’t somebody’s daughter.

‘What did you do?’ I ask.

‘What do you mean?’

‘What did you do to Pamela?’

I can hear Nicola breathing and then: ‘Nothing.’

‘What about your dad?’

I jump as a floorboard creaks. Deep in the corner, a second shadow moves as I realise it wasn’t Nicola’s breathing I could hear.

‘That taser really packs a punch,’ Kieron says, and there’s a surprising croak that undermines his usual assuredness. ‘I never asked you to get involved,’ he adds. I’m momentarily confused but then I realise the second part of the sentence wasn’t for me.

‘You’d have been caught without me,’ Nicola replies.

‘Don’t be silly.’ Kieron’s response to his daughter is snapped and sharp.

‘The only reason to stop is because you wanted Eleanor,’ he says. ‘I was fine before you and I’d have been fine without you.’

Nicola puffs an annoyance. ‘I literally just saved you.’

I can barely see either of them. Is this a family thing?

Is Lucy involved as well, or is she a clueless wife to Kieron and mother to Nicola?

I strain but there’s no sign of anybody else.

The tension bubbles between father and daughter.

Except I recognise a name. I’ve spent large parts of the week looking for details of the Earring Killer, and Eleanor Beale was the final victim.

Suddenly, I know where I’ve heard that name before.

‘Didn’t Ethan used to be engaged to an Eleanor?’ I ask.

There’s silence but I can feel Nicola and her father staring daggers through the dark.

I don’t know the full story of how Nicola and Ethan got together, but I know he was engaged to someone else when they first met.

It wasn’t long after Nicola had blown up her first marriage.

She told me she’d run into someone at a petrol station with whom she thought she had a connection.

It was around three years later when she introduced me to her new boyfriend and I realised he was the same person.

‘You killed Eleanor because you wanted her boyfriend…?’ I say, not sure I believe it. It can’t be real.

Except: ‘He’d have picked me anyway.’ It’s a spiteful, furious retort and I know Nicola doesn’t truly believe it.

She found out who her father really was when she walked in on him with Vivian’s daughter. There was one final killing after that – Eleanor – except that wasn’t Kieron, it was his daughter. Or maybe it was both of them?

‘Who killed Owen?’ I ask.

‘Does it matter?’ Nicola replies.

‘He was going to do me a favour.’

Neither of them answers – but I suppose that’s a truth in itself. As soon as I told Kieron about the cassette, he knew he needed it. He killed Owen looking for it, and, once he failed to find it at his flat, he broke into Dad’s house to see if it was there.

‘Did you kill my mum?’ I ask. Kieron told me he didn’t and something about the way he said it made me believe him.

‘You might as well tell her,’ Nicola replies, quieter. There’s a silence, still punctuated only by the gentle scratching of my wrists scraping the bars. Neither of them tries to stop me.

‘Your parents came here,’ Kieron replies.

‘This was back when we owned the farm. Maybe a year after one of her arrests, where I’d been trying to help her.

It was supposed to be a celebration of her staying out of trouble.

My wife loves dinner parties but your mother…

well, you know what she was. She took something that wasn’t hers and I suppose we both knew what was going to happen from that. ’

‘So it was you?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘I don’t get it. How are her fingerprints on that gun?’

Nicola sighs. ‘Just tell her.’

The croak remains in Kieron’s voice, a remnant from the taser. He’s still shrouded in shadow.

‘Your mother came to me after she stole the box,’ Kieron says. ‘She made an offer: she’d keep the box and keep my secret. In return, I’d leave you, your daughter, and your father alone.’

‘You killed her anyway…?’

‘I already told you no. But there was no way I could agree to that. She’d be able to hold it over me forever. I think she knew, even as she offered it. That’s probably why she left you her backup…’

That’s why there’s a tape with my name on it. That’s why another was mailed to Vivian. Mum was planning her visit to Kieron and didn’t know how things would go. She needed to leave the tapes behind to tell us what she knew, because she worried it might be too late.

I wonder where mine was left. Likely not in the shoebox with the others – which means Dad probably moved it, likely by accident. Instead of being left out for me, it was hidden.

‘When your mother took that jewellery box, it wasn’t the only thing she stole. I noticed the box was missing but not the second thing.’

I already know what she must have stolen. ‘She stole your gun?’

‘At the time I was so furious she’d dare steal anything from me.

Especially that jewellery box. When she came to make a deal, I couldn’t see past the betrayal.

It didn’t cross my mind she’d taken more than one thing – plus she came with a plan B.

I told her I couldn’t agree to her deal, and she told me it didn’t matter.

That’s when she pulled my own gun on me. Like mother, like daughter, I suppose.’

That explains how mum’s fingerprints ended up on a gun I knew couldn’t be hers.

‘Are you still pretending you don’t need me?’ Nicola says, and then: ‘I was in the next room. All those times listening to you whine about your mum… you don’t know how often I almost told you, just to shut you up.’

I stare. ‘ You killed her?’

‘She was threatening my dad with a gun. She was extorting my family. What do you expect? I slit her throat the same way I slit that bitch Eleanor’s.’

Her words are ice. I finally know what happened to my mother. I’d largely figured it out anyway – but it’s still shocking to hear.

Kieron at least sounds somewhat regretful about things but not his daughter. Not my supposed friend.

Nicola and I have never been truly close. But she’s still the person I talked to when I thought I might lose custody of Faith; when I thought I was going to prison.

And the whole time, she knew what she’d done.

But there’s something else going on here. A seething annoyance in Kieron’s tone. ‘How were you so careless?’ he hisses.

‘When?’ Nicola replies.

‘With the gun. How?!’

‘It was buried! I couldn’t leave it in the house, could I? You told me to get rid of it after the cinema.’

‘So why didn’t you?’

‘I did! I buried it at the back of the house – but a fox or something must have dug it up.’

‘You should never have had it outside in the first place. There are so many times you’ve almost ruined everything.’

‘I told you, I was carrying the gun because it made me feel safe!’

This is a conversation that has probably raged between them many times, likely in hushed, hissed whispers with nobody else around.

‘You shot the guy at the cinema?’ I ask.

‘I was having a smoke and saw some weirdo stab someone. My daughter was inside and he was heading for the lobby. What was I supposed to do?!’

‘Let someone else deal with it!’ Kieron shouts now and his voice booms around the tight space. Despite Nicola’s assertions that he needs her, he wants to be in charge.

Nicola waits a moment for the quiet to settle. ‘I ran back through the fire escape. I was so sure someone would’ve seen and it’d all be over. I thought we’d be evacuated – but nothing happened. We all just sat there watching the film as if nothing happened.’

I know the rest, because we left the cinema as a group that day, to find police tape around the lobby and a bloodstain on the ground. My surprise was genuine but Nicola already knew.

‘You should never have been carrying it,’ Kieron hisses.

‘Did you say that when I saved you?’

‘You left it to be found by my granddaughter. ’

‘Shannon’s my daughter.’

‘And you let her find a gun. Anything could’ve happened.’

Nicola huffs with annoyance. ‘Don’t talk to me like that. None of this would have happened if you didn’t feel the need to steal earrings and keep them at your house. ’

They’re both somehow breathless but perhaps it’s their mutual anger. Both seemingly want to be in control; neither seems to be.

‘I guess we’re lucky the foxes didn’t dig up Angela’s body,’ Kieron says – although he sounds cynical about the fox part. ‘I did tell you fingerprints can stay on something for a long time. Nobody was more shocked than us when the police came back with your mother’s prints on it.’

I only realise part-way through the sentence that he’s talking to me.

‘I bet I was more shocked,’ I reply.

There’s a scuff and then a scrape of a chair leg, then something skittles across the floor, landing near my foot. I can just about nudge it with my shoe but my arms are pinned and I can’t stretch. Nobody speaks but, through the gloom, I recognise the outline of Mum’s tape.

So Nicola did find my bag in the back of the car.

‘Any other questions?’ Nicola says. ‘You might as well get them out now.’

‘Why?’ I ask.

‘Why what?’

‘Why any of this? What’s the point?’

I struggle and strain. Neither of them tries to stop me, even as a metallic clink-clink-clink echoes. My shoulders are tight and there’s no way out.

‘Maybe it’s in the genes,’ Nicola says after a while. ‘Maybe I just like it. Maybe we both do.’

Kieron says nothing to either confirm or deny – and I’m not sure I’m going to get a better answer.

There’s no mention of Nicola’s mum. I sense Nicola moving before I see it – and then she’s in front of me.

Or, more to the point, her boot is. She stomps hard on the cassette three, four, five times.

Something flies off into the darkness and another piece bounces from my chest. There’s the sound of splintering plastic – and then silence.

She doesn’t know there’s a second cassette, and I’ll never say.

‘Will Faith be safe?’ I ask: the only question that really matters.

‘Henry’s a better parent to her – and you know it. She’ll be fine.’

Maybe both parts of that are true. Faith is going to have to deal with both a grandmother and a mother who simply disappeared. Will she really be OK?

I fell apart after Mum disappeared. Will Faith do the same?

There’s another scuff of movement and then I sense a pair of bodies standing over me. I rattle and fight against the railing but there’s nothing I can do.

‘I think it’s time,’ Kieron says.

‘Me too,’ replies his daughter.