Escaping Life (18 page)

As the face
came into view she saw the sunken looking features.  There were marks on the
head where it had been cut open, and no amount of careful stitching or makeup
could hide them. 

“Elizabeth?” 
Jack Fraser wanted to put the cover down.  He wanted to get out of here.  He
didn’t want to hang around dead people all day. 
Come on,
he thought to
himself. 

“It’s her.” 
She moved in closer and raised a hand as if to touch her.  “Can I?”  Jack
Fraser threw a brief look to the pathologist, who nodded in agreement. 
Elizabeth, with the softest of touches, traced the outline of Rebecca’s
forehead just underneath the incised and restitched line of flesh, the smooth
cold skin sending a quiver up her own back that reached to the top of her head
and down to her toes.  She ran her finger, like a mother across a baby’s back,
slowly tracing her face, remembering every curve and every crease as if it were
her own.  She almost looked younger than before.

“Why is she so
smooth?”  She looked to Jack for an answer.

“That’s how we
look when we die.”  He wanted to add:  ‘
If we’re lucky’,
his own
memories creeping to the surface.  ‘
We don’t look li
k
e that if we burned to
death’. 
Elizabeth
leaned down and planted the softest of kisses on the centre of Rebecca’s
forehead.  The chill from her skin crept immediately up on to her own lips.  It
was the bitter chill of death that slithers towards the living like a real, yet
inhumane entity.  She pulled the sheet back up, and quietly promised herself that
she would find a way to understand.  There was no place for anger anymore and
that feeling that she had experienced whilst out in the garden only hours
before was gone, and she knew that it wouldn’t return.  She would do anything
it took to find the answer as to why her sister was only now lying in the
mortuary.

As she walked out
of the viewing room, her father stood up erratically out of his seat where he
had placed himself immediately when they had arrived.

“Well,
Elizabeth?”  She wiped away the tears with the back of her hand.  Her eyes had
puffed up like plump red cherries from where she had rubbed her wrist back and
forth.

“It’s her.  I’m
going outside.”  She walked out, and positioning herself underneath the shade
of the large conifer tree, she sat on the cold ground huddling her knees in
close together.  Jack Fraser looked back to Edward Jackson, as he stood
motionless and stunned, his face lowered towards the ground. 

“Mr. Jackson.  I
think she needs you.”  Edward nodded the sort of uncertain nod when you
respectfully follow orders that you don’t want to, and he stepped outside the
door towards his living daughter, but yet in his life that may as well have
been as dead as Rebecca.  They were almost strangers.  Jack turned his
attention to the pathologist, who had by now followed him out of the room,
ordering Rebecca’s return to the fridge.  “Got anything new for me?”  It was
the same pathologist who had stood only a year ago with his arm around the
detective as he met his own family for the last time in the very same viewing
room.  He shook his head.

“From the contents
of the stomach, looks like a simple overdose.”  Jack shrugged, his face screwed
up as he wiped his hand over his cheek and lips, the salty taste of sweat
drying out his mouth even further.  He needed a good coffee and a cigarette. 
He tapped at the packet that was nestling neatly and securely in his back
pocket and he felt the stiffness in his shoulder.  He looked outside to the two
strangers, both alone and not talking.  He knew how Elizabeth felt.  He
remembered what it was like to stand there and know that you would never see
the person alive again.  That you would never see them smile, or hear their
breathing as you curl up next to them in the middle of the night.  He had
pressured the staff at the hospital to take him, and eventually it had been his
doctor, Kate, who had wheeled him across.  She had told him time and time again
that it wasn’t a good idea.  He didn’t care what state their bodies were in. 
It was his last chance to see them.  To touch them.  He didn’t have a choice.  He
had promised Kate and himself that it would help.  Yet with hindsight, he knew
that every night when he awoke from the same terrifying dream, where he is standing
before their blackened and charred bodies that seeing them had been the worst
mistake he had made.  He couldn’t move past standing here in the incense filled
room.  He could still smell their scorched skin.  He could still feel the
frozen chill from their rubbery bodies.  No amount of time or company could ever
take it away.  He couldn’t believe that he had just sealed Elizabeth the same
fate.

Detective Jack Fraser
arranged the identical plastic bags in neat rows along the interview table. 
They reminded Elizabeth of the plastic bags that she kept in her kitchen drawer
into which she would put leftover food, and on the outside of which there was a
small space for the date to be recorded, to act as a reminder of the date by
which she should eat the contents.  These bags had dates on too, as Jack lined
them up carefully, one by one, ensuring that the contents could be seen.  This
date was the day her sister really died.

He left the room for a few
minutes and returned with three cups of coffee in small vomit beige plastic
cups, which seemed too fragile and flimsy as he tried to carry all three
together, spilling some drips of brown gloop onto the floor.

“
Ah,
damn it!
”
he said, as he tried to scuff the coffee into the ground with the sole of his
regulatory shoe until the layer was thin enough not to be seen, but which would
surely form a sticky layer on the floor.  He placed the coffees on the table
and handed them to his two guests.

Elizabeth was sat quietly,
and she smiled a gesture of thanks for the bitter automatic coffee, a million
times reduced in quality compared with the coffee that she had served to him
when he had unexpectedly arrived at her door.  She sipped at the steaming
liquid, watery and full of bubbly froth.  The bitterness made her mouth purse
up tight, and her eyes squint.  Nevertheless, she was grateful for it.  Edward
Jackson made no such gesture of gratitude and he left his coffee where it was. 
They had travelled back to the police station in silence.  Jack had tried to
speak to Elizabeth a couple of times, in an effort to reassure her that they
would reach a conclusion.  He could see as she nodded that each time she did
so, she had to bite her lips, just hard enough to stop them quivering their way
into a full wail.  It was that same face of steel that he had seen earlier at
the service station.  She was nothing like his first impression, when he had
first turned up at the small fisherman
’
s
cottage and seen the delicately planted borders, and smelled the tenderly cared
for scent of the creeping clematis plants that dripped with the purest of
purples.  Then he had seen her, delicately featured and weekday morning
scruffy.  In his job, he was used to judging people quickly, making snap
judgments about character and background based on the initial evidence before
him.  In Elizabeth he had seen a homemaker, somebody who had left the city
because they couldn
’
t
cope, married to an older guy with cash.  What he hadn
’
t
expected was the steely determination of a Spartan warrior, strong in her small
army of one, but with a heart of many.  In the hours that he had known her, she
had seemed nothing but tough.  Her father, however:  he was quiet.  Either he
couldn
’
t
talk, or he had nothing to say.  Jack tried to refrain from judging him. 
‘
His daughter just came back from the dead and died again, all in the
space of an hour
’
,
he thought.  As far as situations go,
that had to be up there with the worst of them.

Jack sat down in a chair
opposite Elizabeth and her father.  It was hard not to think of them as
suspects; as his interviewees.  These rooms were not designed to make people
feel comfortable, with their bright corners and stark white walls with mirrored
windows to reflect back any snippets of truth that were trying to escape
undetected.  These mirrors always had somebody sat behind them.  Today was no
different.

“
Are
you both OK to make a start?
”
 
Elizabeth nodded, glancing nervously at her father, who was sat motionless and
quiet, his coffee untouched.  He had beads of sweat on his balding brow.

“
Daddy,
we have to start looking at this stuff.  Daddy?
”
 
It was as if her words went unheard.  His ears were closed to her voice and his
mind looked closed to the world. 
“
Daddy,
”
she spat out through gritted teeth, spraying both his shirt sleeve and the
table with shards of tense saliva.  She grabbed his arms, almost sending his
plastic cup of coffee flying. 
“
Where
the hell are you?  You have to help me with this!
”
 
She knew that anger usually didn
’
t
work, but what choice did she have?  He turned his head to stare at her, the
puzzled look on his face as if he had just woken from a dream and didn
’
t
realise where he was, and as if he didn
’
t
know the stranger gripping his arms. 
“
Please.
”
 
She was softer now, the blood returning back into her knuckles as her
short-lived rollercoaster ride came to an end.

“
I
’
m
sorry Elizabeth.
”
 
His mind was clearing, the clouds surrounding him blown aside, making room for
sense and clarity once again. 
“
Of
course you can
’
t
do this on your own.  I
’
m
here for you.
”
 
He placed his hands, his big, friendly giant hands over hers, as he stroked
them in reassurance.  As she felt the weight of his hands resting on top of her
own, she felt as if she was five years old again, tucked up in bed with him at
her side, breathing heavily next to her as she drifted off into another realm
of dreaminess, leaving her childish realities behind.  He would stay with her
until her breathing became heavy and her feet twitched, constantly stroking her
skin in his own rhythmic lullaby.  It was that feeling that she had as she sat
in the police interview room now.  One small touch was all it took for her to
feel protected.  She had missed this touch.  She had missed him.

“
OK,
let me start.
”
 
Jack was keen to get this back on track.  He had done nothing for almost a
week, and now with the fresh knowledge that he knew who the woman in his
mortuary was, he wanted to get moving.  He had four years of life to fill.
“
What
we have here are all of the items found at the scene, plus the two letters in
the paper.
”
 
He realised, as he said it, the harshness of that word: 
‘
The
Scene
’
. 
There was no euphemism in his words:  they were stark and blunt, like the cut
of a worn blade through raw flesh, they tore at you.  He remembered how that
felt.  He wished he had remembered earlier.

“
So
far, the only things we know are who she is, and where she was found. 
Elizabeth Jackson and Lyme beach.  I called the newspaper and her letters were
postal submissions.  Basically, that means that they are untraceable, apart
from the postmark, and they have thrown that away.  You need to help me out
here.
”
 
He tried to sound softer now, more delicate in his requests. 
“
Tell
me who she was.  Tell me who the person you knew was.
”

Elizabeth stroked her
forehead with the soft tips of her fingers.  She had a headache and the bitter
coffee had made it worse.  She wanted a cigarette, but she hadn
’
t
smoked in years.  She looked to her father, who stared back at her before
looking at Jack.  It was Edward who began.