Human Remains Read online

  Mr. Armstrong served as councilman for Castle Ward from 1975 to 1988, when he retired. He was leader of the city council in 1980 and 1985 and was considered to be instrumental in securing the future of hundreds of workers at the Langridge paper factory, who had been threatened with redundancy, in 1980.

  A neighbor, who did not wish to be named, revealed that Mr. Armstrong had not been seen for some time. “He used to be always out walking; he’d always say hello. I haven’t seen him for a few months. I thought he’d gone into the hospital, or into a home.”

  Marjorie Baker, of Newton Lane, said she believed Mr. Armstrong had gone to live with family in Australia. “I think it’s terrible that in this day and age nobody notices you’re gone,” Mrs. Baker said. “People should take more care of each other.”

  George

  Things were never the same for me after Vilette died. Vi, I called her. She was my sunshine and my light and my joy for fifty-nine years. Vi was the reason I was here, just as I was the reason she was here.

  We met when I was twenty-two, quite by accident as it turned out. I was on shore leave, only two days, and then I was back to sea. It was February and the lake was frozen over. I was taking a shortcut across the park back home; I’d been to the store to get some cigarettes I think. Some errand for my old mum, anyway. I saw a group of girls by the lake; they were scuffling, laughing, you know, messing around. I saw something fly up into the air and sail in the wind out onto the surface of the lake, something bright blue, like the wing of an exotic bird. It sailed up into the air and the breeze caught it.

  Then the girls ran away, laughing, leaving one of their number behind at the edge of the lake.

  The blue thing—a silk scarf, as it turned out, that had been given to her French mother when she had lived in Paris before the war, a scarf that young Vi was forbidden to look at, never mind take out of the house, never mind wear—was lying forlorn in a little blue puddle about ten yards from the edge.

  Before I could get to her to help, she’d set one foot on the ice and then another, and was walking with a determined but cautious gait toward the middle of the lake, and the scarf. She was only a slip of a girl, just eighteen, light as a feather and tiny, but even so the ice was thinner than it had been when she’d skated on it the weekend before, thinning by the day thanks to the weak February sunshine.

  When I was still a hundred yards away the ice cracked beneath her. I was close enough to see the shock on her face, hear her scream, before it cracked again and gave way. She only fell in up to her chest—thankfully the water wasn’t deeper than that—but still she clawed on the edge of the ice and could not get any purchase to pull herself out.

  “I’m coming,” I yelled. “Don’t worry!” As though that would make any difference to the terror and the pain of being stuck in an icy lake.

  I took off my woolen coat and the sweater that my mum knitted for me last Christmas and my shirt, too, and tied all the sleeves together. That wasn’t long enough, so I ended up taking off my undershirt, too, and tying that on the end. All the while I could see her turning blue. After that it was just long enough for her to reach, and I told her to wind the end of it around her hands so that she didn’t need to grip, and then I hauled her out.

  We were both shivering, her more than me of course. By this time a little crowd had gathered, including my brother Tom, who’d come to see where I’d gotten to. He gave me the coat off his back, and someone else took off their coat and put it around the young woman.

  She was taken to the hospital but she was all right after that. She even managed to get the scarf put away back in her mother’s closet before it was missed.

  The next day I went over to see her before I had to go back to the ship and she told me that I’d saved her life. It didn’t feel like all that big a deal to me. After all what was I going to do? Leave her in there? But by that time I’d seen her big beautiful gray eyes and how she got dimples in her cheeks when she smiled.

  We got married in 1943, which was the next time I put in to port—just a quick wedding, me in my uniform, her in a coat she borrowed from a friend and wearing the beautiful blue scarf, lent by her mother.

  Vi died the year before we would have had our diamond wedding anniversary. We were planning a big party, with our daughter Susan and all her family coming over from Australia, but by the spring both of us knew she wasn’t going to last that long. She fought so hard, but in the end it took her the way we knew it would. She died with me holding her hand on a rainy day in March.

  I kissed her good-bye and went home.

  You want to know about my story, don’t you? Well, my story ended on that day I left my Vi behind in the hospital. Things happened after that but they weren’t important. Nothing was important anymore.

  Susan came over from Australia for the funeral. She stayed two weeks and then went back again. I knew she wouldn’t come back to England again until it was my funeral, and maybe not even then. After all, I wasn’t to know about it either way, was I?

  Annabel

  Mum’s funeral took place eleven days after I left the hospital. Sam had helped with the arrangements. He’d asked for quotes from other funeral directors and then went ahead with the organizing, once I was able to start making decisions again. He hadn’t wanted me to go back to the Co-operative Funeralcare on my own once I’d worked out that that was where it had happened—where I’d met him, the angel, whoever he was really.

  Irene helped me get ready. She let me borrow a black skirt and a nice cashmere sweater; I didn’t think it would fit me, but to my surprise it was quite loose.

  “What about a bit of makeup?” she asked me. “Brighten up that beautiful face of yours? Hmm?”

  “I don’t usually bother,” I said.

  “Come with me.”

  I was starting to realize that there was no point arguing with Irene. She took me into the bedroom in the front of the house, sat me on the edge of the double bed, and fussed around with my face while I kept my eyes closed.

  “Always makes me feel better when I’ve got my lipstick on,” she said.

  Whenever I’d worn makeup in the past it had made me feel grubby, but I didn’t tell her that. It was easier to just let her do whatever she wanted to.

  “You’re very kind,” I said. “Taking me in like this. What did you think, when Sam told you I was coming to stay?”

  She laughed. “I wasn’t surprised. He talked about you a lot. He was really worried when you were in the hospital, you know.”

  “Was he?”

  “Of course.”

  “I don’t understand why he goes to such trouble.”

  Irene was rattling through her makeup bag. I looked at it curiously. How could one person need so much makeup? What was it all even for?

  “I think he sees a lot of himself in you, Annabel. He was very depressed when his mother died, you know. He loved her very much. It took him a long, long time to get over losing her.”

  “I thought he just wanted to get to the bottom of the story.”

  A frown creased her forehead. She was pretty, I thought. Younger than Brian. I wondered how old she was.

  “No, that’s not our Sam at all. He’s a good journalist but he’s also a very moral person. He thinks he can help you, so that’s what he’s decided he’s going to do. He’s one in a million, Sam is.”

  She moved out of the way and let me see myself in the mirror. I looked very different. Not like me at all. I smiled at myself experimentally.

  When I went back into my room I found a small white feather on the floor by the bed. It was from my mom, a message to say that she was there; she was with me. Maybe she even liked the fact that Irene was taking care of me. I felt a sense of relief. There had been moments when I wasn’t sure if I still believed in angels, and perhaps I’d been hoping for a sign without expecting it. And here it was.

  A couple of people from the Social Club came to the funeral, Len from next door, without his wife. To my surprise Kate came along,
and told me that although Frosty had said he was going to try to make it, too, something had come up at the last minute. Sam was there, of course. He’d turned into my shadow, and if it went on for much longer he was going to start to get on my nerves.

  Even so, the crematorium was horribly empty. She’d isolated herself so much after Aunty Bet left; there was scarcely anyone who knew her, let alone who would call her a friend. This came as a nasty shock, and it led to a worse one—the realization that I was heading in exactly the same direction. If they held my funeral, how many people would be there? Probably not that many more than this. And I was trying, every minute, to come to terms with how close I’d been to that day being right now.

  Sam held my hand when the service started in the crematorium, three minutes late. They were meticulous timekeepers but I think they were holding out for a few more people. As it was, there wasn’t much to say. I wasn’t up to speaking in public—even in front of just a few people—so the celebrant read out the eulogy I’d written, with a lot of help from Sam.

  I stared ahead at the coffin while the words faded away, and tried to remember Mum as she had been years ago. How much I’d disrespected her when I was a teenager. She must have hated me then.

  They played Jim Reeves. After that Sam got up and read out a poem that he’d found online. He read clearly, his voice strong, although he was blushing. He addressed the clock at the back of the room, above the double doors through which we’d entered.

  I tried to think of my mother in a brighter place, as the words of the poem suggested, but all I could think of was how much she would hate it if it were crowded.

  When Sam sat down again I whispered to him, “Thanks.”

  He took hold of my hand again and squeezed it by way of a reply. When this was over we were going to go back to the house in Keats Road and have a dinner that Irene was cooking on the unspoken premise that I would need food to cheer me up. In the past few days she’d cooked me healthy, nutritious dinners that I’d done my best to eat. It still felt strange, unnecessary; I think if it had not been for their cautious monitoring of me I wouldn’t have bothered to eat at all.

  The celebrant brought the service to a close and we all got to our feet. The doors opened at the front of the room and we filed out into the drizzle. We looked at the three floral tributes outside, and after that there was nothing to hang around for. I said thank you to Len, all previous awkwardness between us forgotten, and shook his hand before he turned up his collar against the rain and headed back to the parking lot, hunched into his coat.

  “Annabel? I’m off now.”

  It was Kate. I had to focus on her hard to remember who she was, even though I’d sat opposite her every day at work for the past three years.

  “Oh, right. Thank you for coming. It was . . . kind of you.”

  “That’s all right. I was really glad to get the invite.”

  “I didn’t do the invitations,” I said automatically. “That was Sam.”

  “Oh! I see. Well . . .” Her cheeks were flushed.

  “I mean—sorry. That was rude. I’m just surprised to see you.”

  She frowned at me. “Why should you be surprised? We’ve all been worried about you, you know. I know you think—God, this is awkward—it always feels like you don’t want to be in the office with us. I wish you’d join in a bit more sometimes.”

  Now it was my turn to be shocked. “Really?”

  “Of course.” She smiled at me and for once I was almost sure it wasn’t all an act. After all, it was just us. Nobody she was trying to impress, nobody she was showing off for.

  “So . . . who’s this Sam?” she asked. “New boyfriend?”

  For a moment I was so taken aback I couldn’t reply. How could someone possibly think? But then she went on, “He’s a cutie. Where did you meet?”

  She was looking over my shoulder. I turned to see Sam talking to one of the ladies who had come from the social club. He was smiling at her, his head inclined toward her so she could hear him, dark hair falling over his eyes.

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I said, shocked.

  “Oh,” she said. “He seems very nice, anyway.”

  “He is. He’s lovely.”

  “But not . . . ?”

  I shook my head. Not my type, I thought, not having any clue what my type actually was, nor why Sam wasn’t it.

  “We miss you at work. You know that,” she said. “I mean it. They all send their love.”

  “I’ll be back soon,” I said. “Maybe Monday.”

  “Take as much time as you need,” she said. “But it would be good to have you back.” She turned to go, but hesitated and came back to me. “You know Frosty’s got a whole pile of bills? He’s pretending that he knows what to do with them, but you know . . .”

  “Phone bills? For the job?”

  “Yeah. I mean I could look at them, but it’s your baby, isn’t it, this one? I don’t want to interfere with it.”

  “He never said.”

  “He’s probably trying not to put you under pressure to come back, but you know—if it was me—I’d want to be involved. You don’t mind me telling you?”

  “No, of course not. And you’re right. I do want to be involved. Thanks, Kate.”

  She headed back toward the parking lot. I watched her go, feeling a buzz of excitement inside. I’d not been looking forward to going back to work, remembering that feeling of isolation, but actually speaking with Kate had made me feel a bit more cheerful about it. She hadn’t had to come to the funeral, but she’d made the effort, not just to be there but also to speak to me afterward. Maybe things would be better from now on. And now I had a real purpose, a task to do.

  Back on Keats Road, Irene had cooked a roast lunch that I had to force down, even though it was delicious. I’d forgotten what hunger felt like. The atmosphere around the table was subdued, which must have been on my account. Every mealtime since I’d arrived had been conducted to the accompaniment of bright conversation and laughter. Brian was a joker, always starting off long anecdotes about friends, work colleagues, Irene, or Sam, with a twinkle in his eye that I’d worked out meant that it was a complete fabrication and at the end of it would be some corny punch line. His method of delivery was always the funniest part.

  “Don’t mind him,” Irene had reassured me, the first time this happened. That particular story had taken twenty-three minutes to tell from one end to the other, partly because he’d been distracted partway through it and had lost track, diverting to a story about someone’s dog that had eaten a prawn sandwich containing a hidden antianxiety tablet and had to have its stomach pumped (apparently the stomach contents were also found to contain a mysterious diamond ring that nobody recognized, and a Roman coin), and then eventually picking up the thread of the original story about a friend of his who’d accidentally overdosed on his Valium and ended up asleep for five days. None of which was true. I listened to it all, rapt, mainly because it meant I didn’t have to say anything.

  Irene and Sam seemed to deal with him by talking between themselves. They’d heard it all before, after all. Every once in a while he’d come up with a new one and then they would both listen with smiles on their faces, waiting for the joke.

  When we sat down to eat the roast, Brian started off on a story of a funeral he’d been to, of a colleague whose hobby had been ventriloquism. Irene gave him a look across the table and brought the anecdote to an unexpectedly abrupt halt. After that we sat in silence.

  “I’m going to go out for a while,” I said after we’d eaten.

  They all looked at me in surprise.

  “I’m coming with you,” said Sam, standing.

  “No, it’s all right. I just need . . . um . . . a bit of fresh air.”

  Before they could argue I was out of the door and unlocking my car.

  The police station parking lot was mostly empty, which was unsurprising given that it was nearly four o’clock on a Friday afternoon. They were all in the pub, or o
n the way home, or playing snooker in the club across the road. I parked in one of the Intel bays.

  I made my way up to the Incident Room and did not see anyone on the way, but when I opened the door there were three people in the office—all of them on the phone. I vaguely remembered being introduced to them all on that first day, but none of the names came back to me. I sat down at the desk Frosty had given me and logged on at the workstation. Once the system granted me access, I opened my e-mail and saw that there were 427 new messages. That wasn’t bad going. I sorted the e-mails by sender and concentrated on the ones from Frosty. There were five with the subject headings “Phone statements,” “More statements,” “Statements for 872 number,” “Statements for 481,” and “Sorry last bunch I promise.”

  I sighed with something that might have been pleasure. I’d worked on phone data before; other people might see it as endless lists of numbers, endless spreadsheets with no apparent meaning, but I loved it. It was the knowledge that somewhere, buried deep in tens of thousands of numbers, dates, times, and durations, there was a pattern: useful information hidden inside, waiting for me to find it.

  I opened the first e-mail. There were several spreadsheets attached to them, identified by cell phone numbers. The message read:

  Annabel,

  Don’t know when you’ll get a chance to work on these but if you can sort them out for us it would be great. These are the statements for the phones found at the properties so far. We’re still waiting on the others. Rachelle’s looks interesting. As you know, we never found the cell phone that she took with her when she left her parents’ house. This one was a basic PAYG. The phone downloads have been authorized and we’re waiting for those, too.

  Andy

  I started up a new spreadsheet to record all the information, listing the victims’ names, phone number, the date range of all the statements, and the phone type. Most of the columns were blank but with a bit of luck I’d be able to fill them in as I went along. I opened all the e-mails and added the details from the remaining spreadsheets. There were statements for the phones found at all the most recent addresses, as well as a name that gave me a jolt—Shelley Burton.