Epitaph, p.12
Epitaph, page 12
Would they say that he would be missed? That he’d been a good man or a bad man? Would they say he was reliable, trustworthy, respected, all the other epithets that people so badly hoped others would apply to them when they were gone?
Do you think you were a good man?
He exhaled slowly and tried to think if his life, the life that was ebbing away with every breath, had been worthwhile. Had he made his mark? Because, in the end, that was all anyone wanted, wasn’t it? To know that they’d made a mark. To understand that people would know they’d been there. In five years’ time would there be any tangible evidence of his presence on the planet? Would people remember him for something he’d done?
Paul struggled to think of anything. His work in advertising was there for all to see but how long would it remain and, besides, who would know that he’d been responsible for those adverts? It wasn’t like being a writer and leaving loads of books behind that people could read for years to come. It wasn’t in the same class as the achievements of a film star whose performances were there onscreen for others to enjoy for the foreseeable future. If he was honest with himself, there was very little to show that he’d ever been on the planet. It was a thought he tried hurriedly to dismiss. But were you a good man?
He’d never knowingly hurt anyone (had he?). Did that qualify as being good? What definition of good were we using here? Whose definition?
Paul coughed and tasted bitter phlegm in his mouth. He swallowed it and lay still, aware only of the silence and of the pain that still throbbed in his hand. The blood had stopped flowing from his torn nail but the splinter that was wedged into his flesh was still hurting.
Still, it won’t matter soon, will it? Nothing will matter any more.
‘Oh, God,’ he murmured thickly.
When the voice spoke again, Paul Crane knew that he wasn’t imagining it.
39
Gina Hacket watched as the police car cruised up the street, slowing down every now and then as if the occupants were checking the front doors of the houses.
Checking for what, she wondered.
She watched as the car moved further up the road then stopped for a moment.
Gina could feel her heart beating more quickly and she wondered if, after her earlier call, they had finally come to help find her daughter. Yes, that was it, she convinced herself. They had decided that they wouldn’t wait the prescribed length of time before a search could be initiated. They had come with aid now. Taken pity on her. She actually managed a smile as she saw the police car gently reversing and she was sure now that the occupants were checking door numbers. That had to be the answer. The door of their house wasn’t particularly well illuminated and they’d driven past it the first time; now they were rectifying their error.
There was a space next to her car and she watched as the police car reversed into it. It sat there for a moment, engine idling, then the driver turned it off and the stillness of the night descended once more.
Gina ran a hand through her hair, wanting to look presentable when she answered the door to the policemen. She wanted to look good for the men who had come to help find her daughter.
She felt a new belief flowing through her as she saw the two uniformed men swing themselves out of the car.
Now something would be done, she assured herself. Now Laura would be found and brought home safely. They would probably have her back in the house even before Frank got home. That thought buoyed her like no other that evening. She saw the two of them walking towards the house, heading for the short path that led to the front door and Gina headed for the hallway, ready to open the door and greet them.
She wondered if, at this very moment, another police car was arriving at the hospital where Frank worked to inform him of their involvement. He would be as relieved as she was.
Gina, now in the small hallway, heard two sets of footsteps approaching and she opened the door before either of the men could knock.
She smiled at them. One was in his thirties, the other older. His hair was greying at the temples and he had a thin moustache. It was this man who spoke.
‘Mrs Gina Hacket?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she responded. ‘It’s about my daughter, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, madam, it is,’ the older man said. ‘Could we come in, please?’
His voice was soft, even gentle, and Gina nodded enthusiastically and beckoned the men inside, closing the door behind them as she ushered them through into the living room.
Once inside they stood rigidly by the window, the older of the men looking evenly at her.
‘You called earlier, didn’t you?’ he said.
‘The man I spoke to said that there was some kind of time limit on how long a person had to be missing before you could start looking for them,’ Gina announced. ‘But I knew you wouldn’t just leave a little girl out there without trying to find her. Not these days.’
‘Would you like to sit down, Mrs Hacket?’ the older man asked.
‘I was going to ask if you wanted a cup of tea or coffee,’ Gina continued.
‘If you just sit down, please,’ he said again. ‘It might be best.’ For the first time, Gina noticed weariness in his tone. She also noticed that the younger policeman was holding a clear plastic bag.
There was something dark inside it.
‘What’s wrong?’ Gina wanted to know, her own tone darkening as surely as her mood.
She saw the older man nod to his companion and the other policeman reached into the bag and removed the dark object. As he unfolded it, Gina could see that it was an item of clothing.
It was a small cardigan.
She recognised it immediately and felt a coldness sweep over her. For a moment she thought she was going to faint.
‘This was found about an hour ago,’ the older policeman informed her.
Gina rose slowly to her feet, reaching for the cardigan.
The younger policeman allowed her to look at it but not to touch it. He had folded it over so that the nametag at the back of the neck was showing. Gina had known what it would say even before she saw it.
LAURA HACKET.
‘Is this your daughter’s, Mrs Hacket?’ the older man asked quietly.
Gina nodded blankly, her eyes still fixed on the cardigan.
There was blood on it.
40
‘Can you hear me?’
Paul Crane froze where he lay as the words were repeated.
One part of his mind told him that he was hallucinating. The other that he dare not believe what he heard because to do so would have been to cling to hope and hope was something that currently had no place in his world. However, one tiny fraction of his tortured brain told him that he had heard those four words spoken before. That was what he’d heard. Not the gnawing of graveyard rats, not the projection of thoughts about Amy and not his own internal voice somehow made tangible. None of those things. What he’d heard was the voice of another human being. And they were the words of the person who was going to save his life.
‘I know you can hear me,’ the voice repeated.
Six words this time, he thought joyously. But where were they coming from? Who was speaking them?
Why? What? When? Who?
He exhaled deeply and waited, trying to focus on the sounds. They were distorted. It was even hard to tell if they were male or female at first.
‘You can hear me,’ the voice went on. ‘Can’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Paul said breathlessly, praying that he wasn’t merely talking to himself. ‘Yes, I can hear you.’
He spoke the words with a joy he had long forgotten. A surge of ecstatic relief that knew no bounds and that coursed through his entire body like a new and highly potent and benign drug. Forget the pathetic attempts to push the coffin lid open, banish the thoughts of picking a hole in the wood and somehow crawling out. Those were false hopes, fantasies that only came about because of desperation. This voice offered real hope. It offered the promise of release.
The promise of life.
‘I can hear you,’ he repeated. ‘I can hear you.’
Paul wondered if shovels were already being driven into the ground as a team of eager rescuers dug down into the earth towards him. In his mind’s eye he could see them toiling away above the surface, getting closer and closer. The earth would be flying as they dug, hurrying to reach him and prise the lid from the coffin. Or perhaps they were using one of those small JCB diggers that you sometimes saw on building sites so that they’d reach him more quickly. There’d be an ambulance waiting by the graveside, too, ready to whisk him off to hospital. Paramedics prepared to take away the searing pain in his hands and to give him some much needed oxygen. Someone had found out that he’d been buried alive and now he was going to be saved. He felt like crying again, but with relief rather than despair.
‘Get me out of here,’ he called, a smile on his lips.
There was a long silence.
Again Paul wondered if this was some kind of cruel hallucination. A last trick that his mind was playing on him before he entered his final moments.
‘Help me, please,’ Paul called. ‘Please. Get me out of here. Can you hear me? I said, get me out of here. I don’t know what happened but I shouldn’t be here. Please, help me.’
Again there was silence.
Paul imagined that the diggers were more than halfway to reaching him by now. In fact, dependent on when they started, they might even be only inches from the lid of the coffin. Soon he would hear the clunk of shovel blades against wood and then they would be able to free him from the coffin for ever. He imagined someone kneeling on the lid of the box carefully removing the six screws that held the top of the casket securely in place. When all of them were removed the lid would be lifted and fresh, clean air would envelop him. He would drink in huge lungfuls of it as he was helped from the casket, embraced by his rescuers. And they would help him from the hole where he’d been placed and the nightmare would be over.
‘I don’t know what happened to me. I don’t know how I got in here but I’ve got to get out. You’ve got to get me out. I don’t know how much oxygen I’ve got left but it’s getting difficult to breathe in here. Please help me.’
‘Why would I want to help you?’ the voice asked flatly. ‘I was the one who put you there.’
41
Frank Hacket saw the police car as he rode up the street on his pushbike.
For a moment he didn’t realise that it was parked outside his own house but, as he wheeled the bike off the road on to the path, he could see that the vehicle was indeed outside his house.
He could also see faces in the windows of the other houses in the street peering in his direction, similarly puzzled or concerned by the presence of the emergency services.
Frank headed along the narrow passageway that led to the back of the house, wedged his bike against the nearest wall and let himself in the back door.
He heard the sound as he walked in.
Loud crying punctuated by wails of pure despair.
It was Gina.
He could also hear a deeper voice. One that was trying to calm her but having little joy.
Frank blundered into the living room and saw the two policemen, both of whom turned to face him.
Gina got to her feet instantly and snatched the blood-spattered cardigan from one of them.
‘Gina’s dead,’ she shrieked, holding up the garment as confirmation of her words.
Frank looked at the small cardigan and then at the face of the older policeman.
‘Mr Hacket?’ the older officer said quietly.
Frank nodded.
‘Is this about my daughter?’ he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
‘She’s dead, Frank,’ Gina interjected, tears rolling down her face. ‘I told you. I said there was something wrong but you wouldn’t believe me. I knew something had happened.’
The older policeman took the cardigan back from Gina and motioned for both her and Frank to sit down. They did so on either end of the sofa.
‘The body of a little girl was found, Mr Hacket,’ the policeman went on. ‘She hasn’t been identified yet so we don’t know for sure that it’s your daughter.’
Frank felt sick. He felt his stomach contract and he thought that he was going to vomit. He clenched his teeth together in an effort to prevent this.
‘That’s her cardigan,’ Gina reminded him.
Frank nodded.
‘Where is she?’ he wanted to know.
‘She’s at the hospital,’ the policeman told him.
‘And you need someone to identify her?’ Frank murmured.
The policeman nodded.
‘I know this is painful,’ he said.
‘You don’t know what it feels like,’ Gina chided. ‘How can you know what it feels like?’
‘This isn’t easy for us either, Mrs Hacket,’ the older man told her apologetically.
‘They’re just doing their jobs,’ Frank reminded his wife, his gaze fixed on his daughter’s cardigan.
‘We are going to have to ask you to come with us to the hospital,’ the older man informed them.
‘To identify the body,’ Frank murmured.
‘I’m sorry but it has to be done as soon as possible so the investigation can begin in earnest,’ the policeman told him.
‘We’ll come with you,’ Frank said. He got to his feet despite the fact that his legs felt distinctly shaky. He extended a hand towards Gina who merely looked at the outstretched limb dumbly.
‘We’ve got to do it,’ he told her, his hand still outstretched.
‘I can’t,’ she told him.
‘Then I will. But you don’t want to stay here alone, do you?’
‘No,’ Gina said sharply. ‘I’ll come too. It might not be her. There might have been a mistake.’
Frank looked at the cardigan once more.
‘I hope so,’ he breathed, his voice quivering. ‘Oh, God, I hope so.’
42
The words hit Paul Crane like a thunderbolt.
He felt his chest and throat tighten as they seemed to echo around the inside of the coffin. Spoken with such seething anger that they raised the hairs on the back of his neck.
The fear that he had come to know all too well during the preceding time inside the coffin now resurfaced with renewed ferocity and he felt himself shaking. He tried to control his breathing.
Just like at the beginning.
His heart was hammering against his ribs so hard he feared it might burst through the protective cage and explode before his eyes.
‘Who are you?’ he said slowly.
‘I’m the person who put you in that coffin,’ the voice told him triumphantly.
‘But why? I haven’t done anything to you.’
‘You don’t know who I am. How do you know you haven’t?’
Paul tried to swallow but it felt as if someone had filled his throat with chalk. He licked his lips, feeling that they too were dry and cracked. As if he’d been trekking across a desert beneath a blazing sun.
‘It’s what you deserve for what you did,’ the voice continued.
‘What did I do?’ Paul asked. ‘Whatever it was it can’t have been bad enough to deserve this. What am I supposed to have done?’
‘I knew you’d do this. I knew you’d be like this.’
‘Tell me what I’m supposed to have done.’
‘You murdered my daughter.’
Paul heard the words as they seemed to echo around the inside of the coffin and he felt that all too familiar icy chill course through his veins again.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve never killed anyone in my life. Never even hurt anyone.’
‘I knew you’d say that. I expected it. You must have thought you’d got away with it when the police didn’t find you. I bet you were thinking you were so clever, weren’t you?’
‘Please. I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Please? Is that what my daughter said before you killed her? Did she plead for her life? Well, now you’re going to have to plead for yours but this time I’m in control. I decide whether you live or die, just the way you decided if my daughter lived or died. But you didn’t give her a chance, did you? She never had a chance once you’d made up your mind.’
Paul tried to concentrate on the words he was hearing. Not just their content but their timbre and tone.
The voice that he heard was metallic, almost robotic. As if it was not only coming from far away but as if it was being spoken by some automaton. And then there was the question of how he was hearing the voice in the first place. The words that were being spoken became almost secondary to discovering their source.
‘Tell me who you are,’ Paul asked, anxious not to inject too much anger or fear into his voice.
You want to know how you can hear them. How about how they can hear you?
He extended both arms as far as he could, trailing them slowly over the satin there, not completely sure what he was doing or what he was looking for.
A speaker of some kind? It’s got to be that. How else could you hear them?
And yet the voice still sounded androgynous. Neither male nor female. Was it, he wondered, being fed through some kind of audio filter?
Why would they do that? In case you get out suddenly and come after them? Get real. They’ve got you, whoever they are. You are completely at their fucking mercy. So just shut up and listen carefully.
‘Can you hear me?’ Paul went on when there was no response from his captor. ‘I asked who you were.’
‘I heard you,’ the voice told him.
