I walk to the sliding doors and peer into the darkness of the garden. An outside light reveals a deck with a hot tub, covered for the winter. I try to picture Jodie here, but have too little information to breathe life into her pale corpse. I need to discover who she was before if I’m to understand what happened to her. Was she friendly and approachable? Would she say hello to a stranger who passed her on the footpath late at night? Would she nod and smile, or drop her head, avoiding eye contact? Would she run if attacked? Would she fight back? Would she submit?
‘Can I see Jodie’s room?’ I ask, directing the question at Dougal.
He hesitates for a moment, before showing me up the stairs. Jodie’s room is nearest the shared bathroom. Dougal won’t come inside. He hovers in the doorway, as though waiting for permission to enter from a daughter who will never be able to grant it.
The pillow on Jodie’s bed has a small indentation, where her head last rested. Next to it is a floppy rag doll with yellow yarn curls and button eyes. It is a typical teenager’s room. Messy. Cluttered. Characterful. Dirty clothes are strewn near a wicker basket and a lone shoe has been thrown towards the wardrobe. I have to stop myself wanting to bend down and put it in place. A damp towel from yesterday is lying on the floor.
Studying the room, I imagine Jodie sitting cross-legged on the bed, a little girl playing with dolls and cutting and pasting pictures. She grew up and graduated from crayons to eyeliner, from Barbies to boy bands. Every detail resonates; the book on her bedside table, doodles on a piece of paper, a collection of lanyards hanging from the doorknob.
Her shelves are lined with ice-skating trophies and medals. The wall above her bed is covered in photographs and posters of skaters, some of whom I recognise. Katarina Witt is among them, as well as Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. The camera has captured many in mid-air, seemingly defying gravity, while others glide across the ice with the grace of ballet dancers.
Polaroids are pinned to a corkboard above Jodie’s desk. Most of them show Jodie and Tasmin together. They are sitting on each other’s laps in a photo booth, pulling faces at the camera. Jodie is the prettier of the two. Tasmin is more self-conscious about her looks, tilting her face to hide the weight she carries around her neck. Jodie is smaller, with a skater’s body, slim and muscled. She’s more at ease with her body, showing it off in miniskirts and tight tops.
I notice a barrel bolt lock on the door, which has been affixed in a wonky fashion.
‘That was Jodie’s doing,’ explains Dougal. ‘She wanted her privacy.’
‘Who was she trying to keep out?’
‘Her brother, mainly. Felix can push her buttons.’
‘He’s older?’
‘Twenty-one.’
I remember the youth I saw at the community centre, urging Dougal to go home.
‘Does Felix live here?’ I ask.
‘He comes and goes.’
There are more trophies on a shelf above Jodie’s bed. Some have come from junior competitions in Moscow, Berlin and Hungary.
‘You must have been very proud,’ I say.
‘Every time I watched her skate.’
Dougal inhales, holds his breath and exhales.
‘Most people take figure skating for granted. They don’t realise what goes into it – the courage and skill it takes to glide across the ice and spring into the air and spin three or four times before landing on a single blade as sharp as a knife. I’m a boneheaded man. I don’t read books or recite poetry or understand paintings, but Jodie was beautiful on the ice . . . truly breath-taking.’
Lenny calls up the stairs. She’s ready to go.
We offer our condolences and leave two devastated families to their grief. Outside, as I reach the police car, I pause and turn back towards the house. A figure is standing motionless in an upstairs window, gazing steadily in our direction. Felix Sheehan is shirtless, or perhaps naked, his lower half shielded. He flicks at a cigarette lighter, triggering a flame and dousing it, while looking directly at us with a hatred that sustains rather than corrodes him.
What does he want to burn, I wonder, and why does he want to burn it?
6
Angel Face
‘Do you remember your mother?’ asks Guthrie.
‘With her long blonde hair and eyes of blue, the only thing I ever got from her was sorrow, sorrow.’
‘You’re quoting David Bowie.’
‘I like David Bowie.’
Guthrie is wearing a funky patterned jumper that was probably knitted by his mother. It’s too heavy for the central heating, but he won’t take it off because he doesn’t want to show his paunch.
‘What about your father?’ he asks.
‘Papa was a rolling stone. Wherever he laid his hat was his home. And when he died, all he left us was alone.’
‘The Temptations.’
‘It’s a good song.’
‘You’re not taking me seriously.’
‘You’ve asked me this stuff before.’
‘And you haven’t answered.’
‘Recognise the pattern?’
Leaning back in my chair, I rub the instep of one foot with the arch of the other. I’m not wearing shoes or socks – preferring bare feet because I like to feel the ground beneath me. My electronic tracker looks like a manacle minus the ball and chain. I tested it once. I made it as far as the parking area before the alarms starting sounding.
‘I want what’s best for you,’ says Guthrie, giving me his hangdog look.
‘Then let me go.’
‘Answer my questions.’
Isn’t my silence loud enough, I think. Don’t tell me that my silence doesn’t have a sound. I can hear it, loud and clear, screaming between my words.
Guthrie sighs and scratches at a razor burn on his neck, lowering his eyes to look at my file. He’s going bald in a neat round dome on top of his skull. Does it happen to all men? I quickly draw up a mental list. Alfie and Dylan from the kitchens have full heads of hair. Paddy the gardener is a little bald and Reno, one of the counsellors, shaves and oils his head, so it’s hard to tell. Terry Boland had hair, which fell out after he’d been dead a few weeks, which isn’t the same. Some do, some don’t, is my guess.
Guthrie has been talking to me. He lectures more than talks. His voice is so boring he should make meditation tapes. ‘Soporific’ is my word for the day. Every morning I choose a new one from the dictionary and try to put it into a sentence. Certain words stick in my mind like ‘peripatetic’ and ‘serendipitous’ because they sound so musical. Others I’ve forgotten already.
When my mind wanders the walls seem to drop away, and the streets and houses and cities disappear, until I find myself lying in the shade of a tree, smelling the grass and turned earth and wood smoke. Nearby, my mother is moving between the rows, filling a wicker basket with raspberries and redcurrants. I don’t know if this is a real memory, or if someone has planted it in my mind to make me believe that I had a childhood, but I can remember the soft golden light and the buzz of bumblebees in the hedgerows and the coarseness of the grass. I remember my mother’s dark hair, which curled over her shoulder as she worked.
Guthrie’s voice intrudes. ‘What would you do if you could leave?’