Chapter Fifteen.
Perhaps the mind can't help dramatising bad news. I imagined the whole school – children and teachers – with their faces, wet with rain, upturned to the child teetering on the brink of the building. Spectating rather than witnessing. Hoping to forestall or waiting for fate to cast the die. And then the Rubicon moment, the step into disaster, the silent fall – real and symbolic – elongated in time, lessening the second when sound returns and the world rushes back in, and the child lies smashed and broken on the unforgiving ground.
Of course, or actually, it hadn’t happened like that. There were no witnesses, or none that came forward. There was certainly no audience. The child had disappeared between classes, and her absence was raised and remarked upon by another pupil who had been with her in the previous lesson. Since there were plenty of innocuous explanations, the teacher simply suggested that the girl step outside and try ringing her – mobile phones were not allowed in class and were meant to be turned off. When she came back in and reported that there was no reply – which, of course, there wouldn’t be if the callee were obeying the school rules – he did what he was supposed to do and reported the absence to the deputy head teacher. At this point, the child had been missing for twenty minutes or so. As yet, no cause for alarm. The deputy head teacher, en route to the head teacher’s office, put her head round the staff-room door and asked the two teachers on a free period if they’d mind checking the toilets and the playground. Mr Goddard, being male, took the playground, leaving Ms Hays to check the toilets. Mr Goddard had drawn the short straw. He found the child at the back of the school, broken and bloody, and almost certainly dead. He sprinted back to the head teacher’s office and raised the alarm, having left his mobile phone in his jacket in the staff-room.
Ms Brampton took the decision to keep the children, and their teachers, in their current classes on the basis that to evacuate the school would cause unnecessary alarm. As was mentioned later in the local press, this effectively – given the school rule on mobile phones – kept the children incommunicado. Also worthy of later press comment was the prompt arrival of the ambulance. It was estimated that the time from discovery to removal of the body – the implication being that the child was already dead – had amounted to less than ten minutes with the suspicion being that this had been done to get the body off the school grounds. The ambulance service, of course, simply stated that they were trying to save her life by getting her to hospital as promptly as possible. Emergency treatment, they added, had been given at the scene and in the ambulance, and she was pronounced dead at Amberton General Hospital.
Her name was Chloe Johnston; she was fifteen years old. At the hospital, a suicide note was found folded and tucked into her right sock. In forward-sloping handwriting on lined jotter paper, she had written in blue ink: If you’re reading this, I’m dead. I wonder who you are, which is more than anyone’s ever bothered to do for me. Sorry for the mess. Seriously. I hope you enjoy the rest of your life. Chloe. After that, she had printed the address of a website or blog – which, for reasons more to do with curiosity than investigation, I sat in the car reading on my phone prior to driving to the family home to give them the news of her death. I would later wonder, guiltily, if this had ungenerously coloured my view of her parents before meeting them.
Hi, if your reading this I’m dead. It’s good that I’m dead because it wasn’t much fun being alive. I hated my father. I’d like to say he abused me, but we were never that close. There was a picture of her father in a business suit, looking rather pleased with himself. Presumably it had been chosen for this reason. Underneath were three lists with comments on the entries.
Things my father likes:
Money. Yup, he adores it. It's the measure of everything. Winners make money, losers don’t. My father thinks he’s a winner.
Business people. All the people he admires are rich arseholes.
His car. It declares to the world he has money. He likes that.
Himself. Caroline reckons I’m wrong about this. People like my father are, she says, insecure, which is why they desperately want to be approved of by being what they think of as successful. I’d like to believe she was right, but I think some people are just arseholes, and my father’s one of them.
Football. He likes to watch it with his mates. They drink beer and eat pizza, and shout and grunt at the television. We usually go out.
Things my father dislikes:
Losers. This includes a lot of people. The homeless are losers. People on benefits are losers. People in shit jobs are losers. Teachers and social workers are losers because they’re the kind of people paid with his money, who always have too much to say for themselves. People who care about things other than making money are losers. He calls them “bleeding hearts”.
Us – being me, Mum and my sister. My father would like to have had a son to bring up in his own grubby image. He imagines that such a boy would have turned out to be a mini-he. Instead he got lumbered with girls. Pesky females with their emotional concern for things other than money and football.
Not being admired. Oh, dear, poor Daddy. No-one looks up to him. All his family thinks he’s something of a joke. Rather magnificently, Mother’s shagging the electrician who came to rewire the garage. Who can blame her? It’s hard to imagine anyone finding Father attractive. I don’t know if she knows we know – but she must know we wouldn’t tell if we did.
Things my father says:
“It is what it is. You have to learn to live with it.” There are, of course, variations on this pearl of wisdom. “That’s how the world is – deal with it.” Oh, Daddy, you’re so philosophical. “It’s a dog eat dog world.” Which means: I’m entitled to be an arsehole. “You have to look out for number one.” Which means: I’m entitled to be an arsehole. “You only get out what you put in.” Which means: I’m an arsehole, who thinks he’s put a lot in. “I am what I am. I don’t put on airs.” Which means: I’m a vulgar, self-righteous arsehole.
I was, I realized, laughing. I caught my reflection in the rear-view mirror and it was shaped and shadowed with humour. The theme here – the leitmotif – seemed to be that her father was an arsehole. It was my job, my duty – indeed, my solemn duty – to visit said arsehole and inform him that his daughter was dead.
The house was on Longtree Drive, near the centre of Amberton. It was a modern house with futuristic pretensions – lots of glass and shiny wood – the front jutting out over the entrance like the prow of a ship – or, less generously, a Neanderthal forehead. A man I recognised as her father answered the door. He was thickset with thinning sand-coloured hair, and was wearing a white shirt – with a blue silk tie pulled down from the collar – and charcoal trousers, presumably the bottom half of a suit. He had a mobile phone pressed to his right ear and he was expressing his displeasure at something to somebody. He beckoned me in with two fingers without inquiry – verbal or mimed – as to my identity. I entered and stood in the spacious hallway while he turned away from me and made his telephonic demands. He wanted something or other by Saturday, Sunday at the latest; Monday, it seemed, wouldn’t be good enough. Having, I assumed, been assured of satisfaction, he terminated the call and turned to me. “What can I do for you?”
I introduced myself and produced my identification. “Are you Mr Johnston, Chloe Johnston’s father?” For formality’s sake.
“Yes. Why, what’s she done?”
“Is your wife at home, sir?” I asked.
I watched sand shift under trivial assumptions. “What’s happened? My wife isn’t here. She’s at work. Has something happened to Chloe?”
“Sir, if you’d like to sit down.” This, of course, only served to confirm his worst fears. He didn’t move. “Sir, I do need you to sit down.” I was thinking that I should have called DC Taylor and told him to accompany me here. Mr Johnston turned and led the way into a small sitting-room – or snug – and sat down on a white sofa. He looked at me expectantly. I said, “I’m sorry to have to tell you, sir, that your daughter has died.”
Silence – entirely expected and understandable. No emotion, though. Finally, he said impatiently, “Well, are you going to tell the me the hows, whys and wherefores, or is that still under investigation?”
“We think she committed suicide, sir – by jumping from the main school building between lessons. She left a note. But, yes, we’re still investigating.”
He stood up and said, “I’ll give you my wife’s work address. I’d rather she heard it from you. You see, Daddy’s going to be the villain in this little drama.”
“You didn’t get on with your daughter, sir?”
“She was a dreamer. Head in the clouds all the time. Wanted the world to be all fluffy bunny rabbits.” He was walking out of the room. Obviously I was meant to follow.
I said, to his back, “That’s not so very terrible, is it, sir? Better, surely, than wanting it to be cruel and ugly.”
“The world is cruel and ugly,” he said. “That’s just the way it is. Chloe couldn’t handle that. She used to say if that’s how it was, then life wasn't worth living.” He laughed drily. “I didn’t realize she was that serious.” We had moved into a study, or home office. He sat at the desk and wrote something – his wife’s work details – on a scrap of paper and handed it to me.
I said, “Can I get someone for you, sir?”
“What? Oh, I see. No, I’ll be fine. Johnnie Walker’s in the next room.” He stood up. “Unless you have more questions, you can piss off now. I have things I need to do.”
“You have another daughter, sir?” I asked. I had nearly said: She has a sister, sir?
“Yes – Samantha. She’s very like her sister, and shares her opinion of her dad. She won’t survive this.”
“Sir?”
“Some people aren’t strong enough for the world,” he said, “and are better off not in it.”
*
“Ms Johnston?” Late thirties, early forties perhaps. Blonde hair with dark roots tied back in a ponytail. Spray-on tan provided by a salon. Smartly dressed for business in black and white. We were in an office with two desks, in which she was something with manager in the title. I didn’t care. It hardly mattered.
“Yes.”
“Chief Inspector Black.”
“Yes?”
She was, of course, alarmed now, expecting bad news, which I duly delivered, though not before, considerately, inviting her to sit down behind her own desk. I watched her face spider-web into anguish, heard, oddly muffled, the accompanying soundtrack, and – appallingly – found myself wishing that she might have managed some restraint. Some expression of compassion was surely in order, and yet I simply watched her – observed her – with a mixture of detachment and distaste. The breakdown, the disintegration, continued. She shrieked obscenities, directed at her husband, and choked on sobs. She held herself and rocked backwards and forwards. She was struggling to breathe. I called for assistance, which amounted to a doctor to minister to her and a WPC to sit with her and accompany her to her sister’s, which was where she said she wanted to go. As she was being helped into the car, I asked about Samantha.
“I don’t know.” She shook her head. She seemed unfocussed, only vaguely aware of her surroundings. “I haven’t seen her. I think she might be dead.”
“What?” I stopped WPC Levitt from closing the car door and crouched down to Ms Johnston’s sitting level. “I need you to explain that to me, Ms Johnston. Why would you think Samantha was dead?” I thought she might be confused, addled with grief, and thus confusing her daughters.
“They were always talking about dying,” she said; “about life not being worth it. Chloe loved Samantha, and wouldn’t go on living without her. I don’t think Chloe would kill herself unless she knew Samantha was already dead.”
“You think both your daughters are dead?” I was dimly aware of the rain falling on my back, and of WPC Levitt standing over me.
“Yes, I think so,” she said vaguely. “You will find her for me, won’t you? I’d like to bury them together, you see. I think that would be nice, don’t you?” She reached out and touched me on the shoulder. “Thank you for your kindness.”
Kindness. I smiled bleakly and straightened up. I glanced at the clouds, which were surrendering rain in increasingly heavy droplets. WPC Levitt closed the car door. “Take care of her,” I said. “Make sure she isn’t left alone.”