‘An easy target.’
‘Just so.’
Ness slides his arms through the sleeves of his coat. ‘I can’t tell you the exact cause of death, but the temperature on Monday night fell to below freezing. Jodie was cold and wet and barely conscious. She was always going to die unless someone found her.’
As I’m leaving, I pass the viewing suites and the waiting room. A lone figure is sitting on a plastic chair, bent forwards with his elbows on his knees and his eyes fixed on the floor. Even without seeing his face, I recognise Felix Sheehan.
‘We haven’t met,’ I say. ‘I’m Cyrus—’
‘I know who you are.’
‘I’m sorry about your sister.’
‘You didn’t even know her.’
‘That’s true – but I’m still sorry for your loss.’
I notice a cigarette tucked behind his ear. He touches it occasionally, before lacing his fingers in his hair. He’s dressed in baggy jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, that hang so loosely on his lanky frame they could be draped on a wire coat hanger.
‘Have you been waiting long?’ I ask.
‘I want to see Jodie.’ The words catch in his throat.
‘Can I ask why?’
‘She’s my sister. Isn’t that enough?’
‘The post mortem has just finished. They’ll be getting her ready.’
I can picture them dressing Jodie in clean nightwear and brushing her hair. Afterwards, her body will be arranged in a supine position and covered in a white sheet with only her face and hands visible.
‘When did you last see her – Jodie?’
‘At the fireworks.’
‘What time did you leave?’
‘More fucking questions,’ he snarls, rattling off the same answers he gave to the police about visiting a nightclub and picking up a girl. ‘First I knew about Jodie was when Mum phoned me.’
‘Did you get on well with your sister?’
‘What sort of question is that?’
‘I’m trying to learn more about her.’
His eyes narrow, fixed on mine. Black. Hard. ‘You think I killed her.’
‘No.’
He can’t hold my gaze. Relaxes. Shrugs. ‘We got on OK. I saw less of her when I moved out of home. She had her skating. I had my shit to do.’
‘What do you do, Felix?’
‘I buy and sell stuff, on eBay mostly. Somebody’s trash is somebody’s treasure, right?’
‘Is there much money in that?’
‘You’d be surprised. People throw all sorts of stuff away. I picked up a box of vinyl the other day and came across a mint copy of Sticky Fingers. Classic Rolling Stones. Sealed. Unopened. Worth three grand, at least.’
He’s watching me closely as he relates the story, as if gauging my reaction. Suddenly, he changes direction. ‘Was she raped?’
‘She was sexually assaulted.’
He swallows. ‘Did she suffer?’
‘I don’t know.’
His fingers are opening and closing into fists, while his knee jiggles rhythmically. A nurse interrupts. Jodie’s body is ready for viewing. Felix hesitates. His lower lip disappears as he bites down.
‘I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to see her.’
He brushes past me, striding along the corridor, jabbing impatiently at the button on the lift, desperate to be outside, away from this place. It’s like he’s holding the sick in his mouth, looking for somewhere to vomit. As the lifts doors close, his arms form a tent over his head and his eyes shine like gemstones in a dark cave.
11
Silverdale Walk is a different place with the sun shining. Trees blaze orange and red, while others stand naked and grey; as if the artist ran out of paint on his palette before he could finish the landscape. Daylight has given context to the location, revealing landmarks and lines of sight. A thickly wooded ridge. A grass-covered coppice. The reed-fringed pond.
It has taken me twelve minutes to walk from Jodie’s house to the clearing where her body was found. A young police constable is standing guard at the scene, stopping bystanders from getting too close. A makeshift memorial has sprung up, a mound of flowers, cards and soft toys. Someone has made a sign saying, ‘Justice for Jodie’. Remnants of crime-scene tape flutter in the breeze.
A team of police divers are packing up their gear, loading air tanks into wooden racks and hanging damp wetsuits over railings. The last of their number emerges from the water. Dripping in wrack and weeds, he looks like prehistoric sea monster, crawling before he can walk.
He stands and pulls off his mask, letting his respirator dangle against his chest. Clad in a wetsuit, his short, barrel-shaped body appears to be carved from granite or ebony. He swings his air tank to the ground and unhooks the harness.
Ducking under the tape, I clamber down the embankment and join him beside the pond. The diver gives me a momentary glance and peels back the hood of his wetsuit, revealing a nest of shaggy hair.
‘Dr Haven,’ he says.
‘Sergeant Thorndale.’
We shake hands damply and I fight the urge to wipe mine on my thighs.
Jack Thorndale is a former patient, a hostage negotiator, who came to see me after a sixteen-hour police siege went south. A disgruntled employee gunned down four of his workmates before turning the weapon on himself. Jack took the failure personally and it almost cost him his marriage and his career. Eventually, he retrained as a police diver, saying he’d ‘rather wade through filth’ than negotiate with madmen.
‘Any news?’ I ask.
‘The more we dive, the more shit we stir up. If she dropped her phone it could have drifted downstream or be deep in the mud by now.’
He points to a tarpaulin that is covered in a pile of rubbish retrieved from the pond. There are bicycles, a shopping trolley, broken concrete, metal pipes, half-bricks and nondescript machinery parts, all caked in mud.
‘Forensics are coming to take a look. Maybe we’ve stumbled upon a murder weapon, although I doubt it.’
Someone yells from the van. His colleagues are cold and want to go home.
Jack holds up a thumb. ‘You working this one?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’d wish you luck, but you don’t believe in it.’ He grins.
During our sessions I talked to Jack about the difference between chance and luck. Chance is a random outcome in the real world whereas luck is the value we place upon it when we label it good or bad. Whether the police find Jodie’s phone isn’t lucky or unlucky, it’s the same chance event.
Slinging the tank over his shoulder, Jack makes the embankment look easy as he joins his team. I walk to the footbridge and lean over the side. The brook, swollen by recent rain, is running freely and foaming as it enters the pond.
In this quiet, lonely place, two people came together and one of them died. There must have been an interaction, however brief or violent. What did they say to each other? How did they spend their last moments together? What relationships and experiences shaped their personalities?
No two people respond to the same situation in the same way. If Jodie met a stranger on the path on Monday night, would she automatically see him as being dangerous, or would she smile and say hello? Would she start up a conversation, or respond to a question? Would she turn her back? Would she run? Fight? Plead?