Gideon views the rest of the tape at double and even quadruple speed, making his father comically dash all over the site jerkily pointing out the Heel Stone, the Slaughter Stone and the north-eastern entrance.
He takes a short break, makes a mug of tea and returns to watch the last uncatalogued video. He pulls it from its cardboard sleeve and sees a label in the centre that hasn’t been written in his father’s faded hand. It reads: ‘To Gideon, my loving son and pride and joy.’
He hasn’t seen the handwriting in decades but recognises it instantly. It’s his mother’s.
65
Jimmy Dockery pulls on a Tyvek suit and curses the fact that he’s the one who’s been called out in the dead of night. It always seems to be him that cops for the worst of jobs, the graveyard shifts with their mundane crime scenes. Any bit of mess — get Jimmy to mop it up. First it was chasing missing persons, sweeping up after some old man’s suicide, and now it’s a burned-out barn. In his head he’s a better investigator than that. If his father, the Deputy Chief, knew the kind of crap they sent him on, he’d sack them all.
Dockery flashes his ID and ducks the fluttering yellow tape. An exhausted-looking PC takes his name and he wanders into the blackened ribs of the barn. Soco arc lights illuminate the charred metal remains of the Campervan. A burned-out replica of the one he saw on the footage he recovered from the service station. The one half the police in the country are looking for. Jimmy picks his way over a non-contamination pathway to the vehicle. Inside, a man and a woman are on their knees inspecting the body.
‘Is it the girl?’ Jimmy asks. ‘The one who’s missing.’
The question bounces off the back of Home Office pathologist Lisa Hamilton.
She recognises his voice. ‘No, it’s a man — and Sergeant — just a word of warning, don’t crowd me, don’t press me, don’t annoy me and don’t on any account mess up my crime scene.’
‘Understood.’ It’s water off a duck’s back to Jimmy. Everyone is always giving him a list of don’ts. Besides, he has a soft spot for Lisa. Even at two in the morning, she triggers something primeval inside him.
From over her shoulder, he can see that the corpse looks like badly barbecued meat — a sickening mix of pinks and blacks. Tattered remnants of clothes are stuck to charred bone and tarry puddles of human fat are spread on what’s left of the base board of the Camper. Jimmy notices part of the vehicle’s metal frame is bent upwards ‘There been some kind of explosion?’
‘Gas canister by the looks of it,’ says a young SOCO, a spotty-faced lad with spiky hair. ‘From the blast pattern, it seems like it blew under the cooking ring.’
Jimmy moves around them and scans the rest of the burned-out vehicle. ‘So no sign of the girl?’ he calls over his shoulder. ‘You sure bits of her aren’t in here?’
Lisa Hamilton cranes her neck upwards from her crouch. ‘You seriously suggesting I might have missed a whole woman?’
He feels stupid. ‘Of course not. It’s just that we’re all going crazy trying to find her.’
The pathologist continues scowling. ‘This isn’t about any missing woman. Right now my concern is this man, here. And I’m trying to afford him the dignity and respect he deserves by properly investigating his death.’
Jimmy gets the message and backs off. Other SOCOs are hard at work bagging and tagging whatever can be picked or scraped from the floor and walls. He sees a stack of paper bags containing a broken tumbler, burned saucepan, an empty vodka bottle and blackened cutlery and crockery.
A female SOCO appears at his shoulder with a plastic evidence bag. ‘We discovered a driving licence and hire documents in the glove compartment. They’re smoke-damaged but intact.’
Jimmy holds the bag up to a light so he can read through the covering. The writing is just about legible. ‘Edward Jacob Timberland.’ As he says it, he feels a wave of sadness. Putting a name to the body always alters things. He calls towards the pathologist. ‘Prof, I’m going to go back to the station. When will your report be ready?’
She doesn’t break from her examination. ‘After breakfast. I’ll mail through an outline and be available mid-morning if you want me to run through it in person.’
‘Thanks.’ He’d like that. A nice chat over coffee. Who knows what might come up. Jimmy raises a hand as he leaves. ‘Goodnight everyone.’
There are muffled replies as he heads out of the barn.
‘Good morning,’ shouts the professor playfully. ‘Get your facts right, detective, it’s already morning.’
66
Gideon can feel his heart thump as he slides the old VHS tape into the player.
The woman who comes on screen is barely recognisable as the mother he loved. He expected to see the beauty from the video in Venice. Laughing. Vivacious. Full of life. But it’s not to be.
She sits in a sick bed, resting against a plump white mountain of pillows and from the angle of the camera it looks like she’s filming herself. The skeleton-thin face, the prematurely white frizzy hair and bloodshot gaze are cameos of pain.
Marie Chase is close to death as she smiles at her son through the TV monitor and through the ages. ‘Giddy, my darling. I’m going to miss you so much. I’m hoping that you will have a long and very happy life and know what a joy it is to be a parent. Once you were born, my life felt complete. I never wanted for anything more than you, me and your father to be happy together.’ She fights back her emotions. ‘Darling, that’s not to be. I don’t have much time now, but there’s something I have to tell you so I leave you this message for when you’re older, old enough to see me in this state and not be frightened.’
Gideon has to wipe tears from his face. He realises for the first time that he’d never been allowed to see his mother in her final days, in the period when she wasted away so painfully. Marie Chase is crying too as she reaches out to her only child. ‘Giddy, no one but you has ever or will ever see this recording. Not your father. Not anyone. Just you. I have something I must tell you personally and your father respects that. He is a good man and he loves you more than you know. I hope you look after each other when I’m gone.’ She reaches to the bedside cabinet and raises a glass of water to her parched lips, then forces another brave smile.
Gideon smiles back. He misses her. More than he has ever admitted to himself.
Marie Chase completes her message from beyond the grave, her final words to the son she never saw grow up. Then she tells him what she always told him at night as she switched his bedside light off and kissed his head: ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of, sweetheart. I love you and will always be there for you.’
The tape turns into a snowstorm of grey fuzz and spins noisily into rewind. Gideon is left gazing at the blank screen, his mind still fizzing from the shock of the secret that she just shared with him.