I Choose You Page 5

  Unable to understand what the message meant, Alistair logged into his Facebook page to see if Ida was online. He couldn’t see anything, so he clicked on Ida’s name and the screen loaded with some photographs that someone had taken of her. She was smiling and laughing in a few of them, but he couldn’t figure out when they had been taken and he knew they weren’t ones he’d snapped. They’d been posted that day, just after he left her at Ray’s. He stumbled home, not sure what to do or who to speak to. He found the number for the local police station and phoned them but only ended up rambling, unsure what he was calling for, so he hung up. Then he tried to ring Nathaniel back, but a woman answered so he aborted the call. Before he reached home, his phone had pinged with several Facebook notifications, tagging him along with Nathaniel, Elise, Sonny and Magda. The pictures of Ida were all over Facebook, seemingly sent by her.

  Alistair tried Ida’s phone again and had just put the key in the front door as a police car pulled into the driveway.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  At some point in your life you will realise you can’t buck against the magnetic force that surrounds us. I found this out very early on in my life.

  It was many years ago, when I was still at school. One particularly cold winter, a teacher of ours allowed us to skate on the pond which was situated in the school grounds. The ice was thick and solid, or so she thought. But there was a small patch that was darker, more transparent than the rest; it went unnoticed by her at the time. One boy in the class gravitated towards this area – he couldn’t seem to stay away from it, pulled by the curiosity of how close he could get to the middle without falling through the ice. Everything began to slow down as we all stopped to see what was happening. Why did we stop? Have you ever noticed that? There is always a silent pause amongst everyone before anything traumatic occurs.

  The crack in the ice caused children to grab on to each other as we all slowed in our frost-filled waltz. Then he was gone, disappearing into the icy water.

  The usual panic ensued, as it always does when there is any sort of crisis. Then it was still and oh-so-quiet as we watched the teacher lie down on the ice and slide herself across the precarious slab; the only frantic movement was her arm waving around in the water when she reached the hole, as she tried desperately to find him. Then she went in, but still couldn’t find him. She got out quickly, the water being too unbearably cold for her to be of any use in his rescue. Having screamed at us to get help, she went in again, only to reappear moments later.

  Anyone with any sense would have known that a couple of minutes in that kind of temperature would disable an adult, never mind a thirteen-year-old boy.

  He was dead, gone, absent from this world – he had slipped into the next, and I was fascinated and infatuated by it. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Couldn’t stop playing it in my head: his blue face, his dark lips forever emblazoned in my mind as we watched the caretaker pull him from the icy tendrils of his liquid killer.

  My obsession with him continued for years. I hero-worshipped him, admiring his phenomenal bravery in leaving his body, choosing to step out of it and into the unknown. The rest of the school was devastated, swathed in the melancholia of tragedy. I wasn’t. I wanted answers. Had he felt death creeping up behind him when he got up that morning? Had he known he’d eaten his last breakfast, taken his final walk to school, uttered words during a conversation that he’d never speak again? Where was he now? Could he see himself dead? Was death there, in the physical sense, talking to him through the door? This became my focus for weeks – months, even. And then I realised I wasn’t going to get any of the answers because they weren’t for me to know. Not yet. They were his answers and for him alone to know. What had I learnt from it? Death is very private and belongs to each one of us in its own way. I wanted to be Death. I wanted to become the one that is there on that special day. I suppose the curiosity was to see if Death is real. He’s most definitely there. You can’t always see him; he’s the black shadow in the corner, the watchman you’ll never get rid of, the spirit that never leaves. You waited up to see Saint Nick when you were a child – I began my quest to see Death.

  The teacher – Vivian was her name – committed suicide. Even before the incident, she wasn’t like the other members of staff. There was something of the misfit about her, as though she couldn’t seem to keep it together like the rest of her colleagues. Always late, always disorganised, always making the wrong choices. And her narcissism allowed her to believe the death of her pupil was down to her.

  I found her, hanging from the tree in the caretaker’s garden, early one morning; body bloated and eyes opaque. Most days I arrived at school well before everyone else, with the excuse, should anyone enquire, that I helped the caretaker in the garden before school started. The truth was, it was so I could buy cigarettes from him. We had a small enterprise going – I bought the fags and sold them to my classmates.

  Vivian knew I’d be the first to find her. She wanted it to be me; a final gift from her to yours truly. We were close. I understood her desperate need to fit in and she understood why I didn’t want to. I expressed things to her that I didn’t feel able to broach with anyone else. You should feel a connection with someone to want to talk to them, and there seemed to be a rare few connections throughout my childhood. They passed through my life like dark angels, sprinkling their wisdom around me.

  We smoked, we talked, she said I was mature beyond my years. I know many people would think it strange for an adult to have such an affinity with a child, but we were the same really. Age didn’t come into it when we were sitting on our hidden bench amongst the greenery. We were just two souls, two beings, two minds sharing our thoughts. Her soul was lost but I learnt so much from her and she became one of my main markers on how not to conduct one’s life.

  When I found her hanging there, she was stunning, the most beautiful she’d probably ever been, all the marks and strains of conformity having lifted from her face and body. It was as though she’d finally discovered the answers to all her turmoil; I knew she’d had that conversation with Death that I was so intrigued to know about. This is what fascinates me still, and I wait in anticipation of my own private conversation with Death. Ever since then, I have always leant in close to see if I could hear Death whispering.

  As it turned out, Vivian had broken her neck, and she’d been dead for quite some time. By the time I found her, I could feel death’s absence; it was cold and still. She sparkled in the early-morning light, tiny flecks of sweat encrusted her body, her hair. She had no clothes on; she’d always told me she wanted to die naked. I want to go out the way I came in, she had said – a beautiful, enigmatic pose between life and death. I spent a while with her before anyone else found her, wanting to keep the vision close in my mind. I had no comprehension of Death at the time, that she was more alive than she’d ever been, her spirit still present; I thought she was merely pushing her face through the dimension of another world.

  It was the stillness I couldn’t comprehend, the silence of the atmosphere; a dark area of the garden which always held the anticipation of something deeper. The trees hung in shadowy coves, encasing their inhabitants in a majestic pattern, and I was caught in her magnificent beauty. Not in a sexual way, you understand. We didn’t have that kind of relationship; she wasn’t one of those. But a teacher being friends with a thirteen-year-old is inappropriate within the confines of the school gates, no matter what.

  No, it was seeing the glamour, the stunning beauty that death had somehow breathed into her, for at that moment, she was more alive to me than she’d ever been. Transfixed in my teenage hypnosis, I was eventually taken away by the caretaker, who assumed I was in terrible shock.

  It was almost like Vivian had died and been resurrected, and from then on, I found myself obsessed with death. I have been blessed with many moments such as that, and I have been allowed a glimpse of the true essence of what it means to extinguish your physical form and step into a new realm.
r />   CHAPTER NINE

  THEN

  DI Davis joined DC Chilvers, who was sitting opposite Sonny in interview room three. Sonny smiled at him but didn’t speak. He’d known the officer for years and they’d always had healthy banter, although Sonny was under no illusions he was liked by Davis. There weren’t many police officers who were keen on defence barristers or solicitors, and he could see their point, but to him it was just work, like any other job.

  ‘Sonny John Travers. I never thought I’d be sitting opposite you in this capacity.’

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t, David, but I’m here answering some voluntary questions, nothing more. I’ll let you pretend you’ve arrested me, if that makes you feel better.’ Sonny winked at the officer and rested his elbows on the table, twisting his gold sovereign pinkie ring.

  ‘Quite right. You’re free to leave at any time.’ DI Davis smiled falsely. ‘Let’s get started.’

  DC Chilvers switched the tape on and they all focused on anything but one another as they waited for the long beep to finish, then introduced themselves for the benefit of the tape.

  ‘Mr Travers, can you tell us what you were doing between the hours of four and six p.m. this afternoon?’ DC Chilvers said, leading the interview.

  Sonny breathed in through his nose before he answered. ‘I came home from work early, waited for everyone to leave the house, apart from Ida, of course, then I set to her with a weapon I found in the shed and cracked her skull open, drove her body to Priory Woods and dumped her in a shallow grave.’

  The two officers looked at one another.

  ‘That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it? I’m the obvious choice out of the family – adopted, only returned three years ago, shady background, recovering alcoholic.’ Sonny screwed up his nose and continued to fiddle with his ring. ‘The problem you all have, and I know this only too well, is that you would have to prove it in a court of law.’

  ‘Are you admitting to a crime, Mr Travers?’ DI Davis glanced at the tape recorder.

  ‘No. And I’m not obliged to answer your questions.’

  ‘Tell us what happened, Sonny. There’s a vulnerable young girl missing who should be celebrating her sixteenth birthday this evening. This isn’t the time for joking.’

  ‘I wasn’t.’ Sonny leant back in the chair and tilted his head to one side. His long, slim face, tanned skin and dark blue eyes gave him a look of arrogance before he’d even opened his mouth to speak. ‘Okay, I came back from work just before six. The house was in darkness and I thought everyone had already left for dinner. I switched the lights on and that’s when I spotted Ida lying on the floor in the orangery. I didn’t touch her or move her; she looked in a bad way. I crouched down to check her pulse and couldn’t find one. I thought I heard movement coming from the back of the house, so I went to investigate. The security light in the garden had just switched itself off as I reached the kitchen window, so I turned off the lights in the house to get a better view of outside, and that’s when I saw a dark-clothed figure making his way across the garden. So, I ran after him, which is when whoever it was hot-footed it out the back and across the field.’

  ‘Then what happened?’ DC Chilvers stopped taking notes and looked up at Sonny.

  ‘After chasing the assailant some distance, I eventually lost whoever it was and returned to the house to check on Ida. The police had arrived by that time.’

  ‘But you thought she was dead, so why did you come back in to check on her? Why not call the police?’

  ‘Because, DI Davis, I was pretty certain she was dead, but I needed to make sure before I called the police.’

  ‘You needed to make sure your niece was dead before you made a call to the emergency services? Or you came back in to make sure she was dead before you left the scene? Wasn’t it more a case of being interrupted by your father, so you had to quickly get rid of her, return to the house and pretend you’d found her?’

  ‘If that’s the case, where is she? How far do you think I would have been able to get with a body and then return to the house in such a short space of time? When I came back in, Ida was gone.’

  ‘You tell us. You were gone from the house for a while, and clearly there was enough time for someone to remove your niece while your father was outside looking for the ambulance. You were the only other person there, apart from Dr Coe, so unless he’s not telling the truth, your story doesn’t add up.’

  ‘I don’t have to answer these questions. Don’t make me “no comment” you, David.’

  ‘You can leave whenever you like, pending further investigation. On the other hand, I could take you to the custody sergeant and get you booked in.’

  Sonny raked his fingers through his unruly dark hair and linked them behind his head, observing DI Davis. ‘You could do that, but you’d have to nick me first.’

  ‘I can do that, no problem.’

  ‘But you’re not going to, because that would mean the clock would be ticking and, right now, you don’t have any evidence to prove I’ve done anything wrong.’ Sonny sat forward and resumed his earlier position, his elbows leaning on the table. ‘I suggest you take my word for it. I found my niece lying on the floor, blood gushing from her head, and chased what was possibly her assailant across the garden and into the park.’

  ‘Who was the person you chased?’ DC Chilvers tried to pull the interview back to normality.

  ‘I wouldn’t like to speculate. I really don’t know. I gave your officers a description, but I only saw the back of him. Tall, lean, wearing black clothes and a hoody.’

  ‘Dr Coe says you returned to the house earlier this afternoon, around 3.30 p.m., and left again. What was that for?’

  ‘I’d left an important file at home. I dashed in and out again.’

  ‘Who was in the house at that time?’ DC Chilvers was building momentum.

  ‘Ida was in the kitchen with Alistair, and I believe Ray was in his office with a client.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I heard voices coming from that room and the door was closed.’

  ‘But you didn’t actually see who was in there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was there anyone else in the house at that time?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge. Like I said, I literally walked in, briefly spoke to my father when he poked his head out of the door, and walked out again.’

  DC Chilvers observed Sonny for a few moments. ‘Can you tell us how you came to locate Dr Coe and his family?’

  ‘You know all this; it was in the papers.’

  Sonny remembered only too well the day he’d first met Ray, even though he’d been blind drunk.

  Sonny had spent hours walking the streets, trying to find Ray’s house, and by the time he did, he was cold and exhausted, pissed off that there was no answer when he rang the bell. Sonny had slumped in the doorway of Ray’s large Victorian house holding an empty bottle of whiskey. This was not that unusual a sight; a well-known psychiatrist who had gained notoriety on a famous chat show where he was the on-screen therapist, Ray regularly took in people like Sonny, often allowing them to stay with him temporarily until they were stable enough to move on. What most people didn’t realise was that Ray had been practising the kinds of tests he’d become infamous for since the late sixties. Sonny had spent years researching him and reading everything he’d ever written.

  Quite literally, they bumped into each other. Ray was coming out of his gate, on his way out to get some food; Sonny, who had gone off in search of more booze, had decided to go back and ring the bell one more time. He was drunk and staggering along the pavement when they almost collided.

  ‘I’m nobody!’ Sonny had shouted as he dodged Ray at the gate, his arms spread wide, as though he was going to embrace him.

  Ray glanced at him briefly and walked away; he was used to this kind of behaviour outside his house.

  ‘Did you hear me? I’m no one!’

  This sentence caused Ray to stop, and he told S
onny later how his words had resonated, as he remembered Elise saying the very same thing when she was younger, not long after she’d started school and one of the teachers had remarked that her name was made up and utterly ridiculous.

  At the time of them meeting, Sonny had been sleeping in a hostel not far from Ray’s house. They’d told him to leave because he’d failed to adhere to the rules. When Ray found this out, he was immediately interested in why he’d done this; what had made him decide to jeopardise all the opportunities laid out before him and forfeit a warm bed for a night on the concrete, and a freezing one at that, as the iron fence along his front garden was already sparkling with frost and the daytime had only just slipped into the dark. But much like now, Sonny hadn’t wanted to answer any of his questions and had simply asked Ray for help.

  ‘I don’t want your fucking change,’ he’d snarled as Ray reached into his pocket to give him a card with his details printed on it.

  ‘I had no intention of giving you any. I’m going out to get some supper. I’ll be back in approximately twenty minutes. That card contains my address, where we are standing now. By the time you’ve wandered around, fulfilling your urge to drink, you’ll have undoubtedly forgotten where we met. There’s a hot shower and a warm bed for you, and a meal, should you decide to accept my offer.’

  Sonny remembered wondering about the man standing before him, and how he’d stared at Ray for quite a few moments, looking him up and down, assessing his appearance.

  ‘What are you, some sort of pervert?’ Sonny shouted drunkenly, as Ray turned to leave.

  ‘No. If you read the card, you’ll see what I do. Probably against my better judgement, I’m offering you a bed and some food. It will cost you nothing.’ Then Ray had turned up his collar, shoved his gloved hands deep into his pockets and left Sonny standing there.