Any One of Us, page 24
It wasn’t unsettling to reframe her feverish ambition as a weakness. She’d discovered that herself the day she left. Every castle, every fortress, every inch of wall and wire had, at its foundation, insecurity.
Ruby and Giles’s relationship was no different. It was not built on strength. There was an unspoken fragility that neither of them had ever been brave enough to confront. But still, all shortcomings set aside, Ruby loved him. Truly. As much as a father. More. She respected him. And, like any sunlit horse she’d brought home from school, his efforts were notable. Giles had sacrificed his career, he’d dedicated decades of his life caring for her and, despite these flaws, Ruby knew that he had tried his best.
And that, for her, was enough.
Ruby arrived around 10am, greeting him with a smile and a long, tight hug. Eyes closed, both of them gripping hard enough to leave everything unsaid. No shared genes, no blood, just unconditional love. You actually can choose your family.
Giles felt old in her arms. A smaller, softer version of that towering commander she remembered from her youth. Greyer too, balder, the slightest of hunches forming as age began to deconstruct his once stately posture.
Having made drinks, he sat down in his chair at the round kitchen table. The exact same spot she’d left him in fifteen years prior, suitcase on the floor, tickets in hand. And it felt like nothing had changed. He was still wearing a woollen jumper, sheepskin slippers, a pair of his colourful chino trousers. Green today. As though the image she had in her memories had been plucked out and dropped into reality, perfectly formed. He was just as she saw him.
Ruby sat opposite and enjoyed the small talk. They’d spoken on the phone plenty of times over the years, but this was the first face-to-face conversation they’d had in well over a decade. Although she knew it was an illusion, she liked the comfort of feeling, for just a few hours, as though the outside world couldn’t get to her.
“It is really nice to see you,” he said, his eyes locked with naked sincerity. The walls were gone. There were no brave faces. They’d both grown out of them.
Again, she was struck by his apparent vulnerability, which she had never, not once, noticed growing up. It’s a formative moment when you discover that your parents, these adults you’d always assumed had everything figured out, had all the answers to all the questions any young mind might ask, were just the same as you. Humans. Fallible and guessing. Children who grew up and had to pretend they had the slightest idea what this entire thing was all about. It’d be cruel to act any other way. Kids deserve the charade.
“It’s been too long,” Ruby said. “I am so sorry.”
She’d wanted to say that getting away had been essential for her mental health back then. The opportunity to start fresh somewhere was irresistible and, having arrived just weeks after she and Will broke up, Ruby had no reason left to stay. The truth was, she’d felt trapped in Missbrook Bay, and moving to Australia seemed like a solution, an escape from it all. From all the eyes and names she knew.
The irony, of course, was that Ruby was running away from something that lived inside her. Your mind is the only thing you really can’t leave behind.
Most of all, though, she’d wanted to say that she wished she’d visited earlier. That something other than death had pulled her home. The saddest part was, she had no real excuse. Their final conversation was not dramatic. There was no fight, no slammed doors, no angry declaration or disagreement. It was understated, small, subtle and amicable, certainly there was no justification for any estrangement, let alone one as long as theirs had been.
Messages had been sent, things like, We must arrange something. Or, Perhaps next Christmas you could come home? Ruby had even suggested he fly out to her. But each time the plans just faded away and went cold as life marched on at its exponential speed. Another formative realisation. It’s short, they say. A hollow platitude that one day, with a heavy heart, reveals itself to be harrowingly true. Tick. Tock.
Fifteen years, Ruby thought, about as long together as apart.
But she didn’t say any of that. Ruby hadn’t visited Giles to probe into their past, but into her future. And their conversation did what she hoped it would – injected clarity into her clouded thoughts. While Lauren might have satisfied some dormant and emotional necessity, Giles was on hand to provide raw objective direction.
There, at the kitchen table, sitting right where she’d told him she couldn’t ride a bike, Ruby explained everything. Every shameful detail, an open book about the case. Giles just sat and listened.
When Ruby got to the end of her two-week story, she shook her head, looked down at the mug of coffee in her hands and said, “Now, I’m lost. I have no idea what to do next. No idea where to go.”
“This is quite the pickle.” He nodded.
“I feel like, I don’t know, like I’m missing something.”
As always, Giles cut through the noise.
“What do you know?” he’d said. “What connects them? What’s the one thing, the only thing?”
She stared at the wall, through it, shaking her head. “Same school year. But . . .”
“What?”
“Not anymore. Not all former students. Alfie was different.”
“He should be your focus, then.”
It was more complicated, though, given that Ruby had called Jay that morning and told him what had happened, formally connecting these deaths. She explained she was probably followed and that, she knew, it was her fault Alfie was dead.
Jay was speechless. And when he finally began to speak, Ruby hung up. That was a few hours ago now and she had been in no man’s land ever since, ignoring his calls and searching for an answer in this ever-narrowing window of time.
Crucially, she could not involve herself in the investigation. As such, the scene of Alfie’s death remained largely a mystery to her.
“To be honest,” Ruby said. “What I did there is serious. Although the heat had died down, Alfie was still in witness protection.”
“Will they fire you?”
“Possibly, yes. And absolutely they will remove me from the case. They probably already have.”
“So, what can you do?”
Ruby just shrugged. “Ask my dad for advice?”
Hand pressed against his smiling mouth, Giles laughed through his nose. He liked being asked but clearly felt underqualified. Still, as he always did, as anyone ever could, he tried his best.
“I would advise you to go out there and keep trying.”
“Go out where?”
“You’d assumed it was your year group, the class of ’99. But it’s not.”
“No.”
“So, again, what is it? What is the only common denominator?”
Ruby nodded. This answered both questions.
“Missbrook Heights.”
And that was why she was here, at school, stepping into the photography suite building. Like so much else, maybe even everything else, this felt like activity for its own sake. Ruby just had to do something. Even something that was, no matter how she levelled her sights, an extremely long shot. No, worse than that. She didn’t even have a target.
Turning a corner on the landing of the second floor, Ruby entered Alfie’s old office. There had been three occupants since he left under that black and scandalous cloud in 2001. All traces of him were gone.
“So, yeah, this is it,” Will said, from the doorway behind, holding the keys.
Ruby stepped to the desk, idly opened a drawer.
“Uh.” Will approached. “Maybe best not to snoop too much?”
He was probably right. What was she even hoping to find?
“Look, I’ve got to pop back to the staffroom,” Will added. “You OK here for a bit?”
“Sure.” Ruby sat down on the swivel chair, facing the window as Will left.
Through the glass, she could see nothing but a big tree. Thick branches, the wind shaking sun-glittered leaves, so much late daylight making green things white, cold things warm. Some of the thinner branches were touching the window, blocking the view. Spiderwebs, sticky seeds and sap around the frame. Mulch in the gutter. She heard twigs brushing against the building, a few birds outside, quietly singing their songs.
If she leant, she could just make out an after-school sports session on the far side of the pitches, boys dribbling balls between colourful cones – shouts echoing over the occasional blasts from a whistle, too far away to see any faces, any rosy cheeks, just blurred impressions of white t-shirts and blue shorts crisscrossing.
She slouched back in the creaking chair. Everything that had happened seemed to present itself all at once. Like a life review, your memories flashing before your eyes as you breathe your last few breaths. The black car that was following her. The culprit himself. The man who picked a lock, broke into Will’s house and stole her notebook.
Frank Enfield taking her hostage, interrogating her about the world, about truth and what it all meant. Her broken hand – it barely even ached anymore. Sharp in certain positions, or when she bumped it, but otherwise a vague throb, low enough to forget. Frank was still out there somewhere. Huge and busy, doing whatever it was he needed to do.
Then there was Scott, victim number two. Pivotal in some way. Different from the others. But not as different as Alfie.
Alfie Rogers. The anomaly. Her eyes swept the room, big arches around the ceiling. A former teacher. The man who took the full-year photo. He’d seen it from the other side. Why was he dead? Why were any of them dead? What did they do?
Maybe, he’d suggested, it wasn’t something they did. But something they saw. What could they have seen? she wondered, staring out of the glass at that tree. What could he have seen?
Nothing through this window. Those were old trees, they’d have been blocking the view just like this twenty years ago.
“Helpful?” Will asked, returning. He’d been gone quite a while. Ruby hadn’t even noticed that nearly an hour had passed.
She didn’t answer, just stared ahead, across the cluttered desk, through the glass, into the leaves. Darker now the sun was below the canopy line.
“I’ve got to pack up,” he said. “So . . .”
“Sure, sorry,” Ruby said, standing. “I’ll get out of your hair.”
She went back outside, onto the playing fields, stood beneath those trees, near the wall at the edge of the grass. Will waved as he wandered off across the playground, heading home for the day.
Down the shallow slope, the rest of the school spread out in front of her. The music department attached, bordering the playground on the right side of her view. Ruby could hear them practising in there, disjointed melodies. Stopping and starting. Five, six, seven, eight. Then muffled drums. A trumpet.
She was alone besides a few seagulls hopping around a bin at the edge of the concrete expanse, more above, squawking, circling over the faded hopscotch. But they were all scared away when a pair of students, two boys, maybe year 9s, came round the corner. The birds fled, flapping off and out of the evening shadow, up into the amber light then over the rooftops and away.
The boys walked past below Ruby, heading towards the gates in the bottom corner of the playground. They were talking, laughing, wrapped up in the haze of youth. Perhaps they’d been in detention. No, wait, Ruby spotted trainers, sports shorts, blazers over their white t-shirts. One of them made eye contact with her, possibly wondering who she was, what she was doing just standing up here.
The pair arrived at the metal hoop stands near the gate, where they unlocked their bikes. They climbed on their saddles and rode in a wide circle before they cycled off and out of sight, rolling down onto the road. Their clicking gears fading to silence.
Clicking like Kendall’s wheelchair, she thought, like those beads on the spokes.
Ruby realised she was standing exactly where it happened. This was where Scott attacked him. Nearby, on her left, the edge of the field. A wall. The modest five-foot drop down to the playground. Something they saw? And she looked up at the trees, the thick leaves. You couldn’t see down from Alfie’s office window. Not now. But in winter?
Still slow and drawn sluggish by a sense of futility, Ruby removed her phone and called Kendall.
“When did it happen?” she asked, once she’d raced through formalities.
“What?”
“Your fight, or . . . when Scott attacked you?”
“It would have been, um, year 10? So . . . 1997?”
Ruby was pacing, looking down at her feet. She put her bad hand against the trunk, thick bark, leant, head bowed. “What time of year?” Pushed against it, found the pain.
“End of November.”
She stopped, stepped back, looked up. “No leaves on the trees,” Ruby mumbled to herself.
“Um, I guess not?”
“Who was there?”
“I don’t know, I genuinely don’t. I’m sorry.”
She turned back towards the main buildings, phone pressed against her ear. Identical windows spaced equally across the three-storey brick façade – all but one classroom dark now. The sports had finished too. She looked across the empty grass. Long tree shadows now covering the entire field in dusk. Relative peace at every turn, the unique tranquillity found only after school.
“But,” she said, “it wasn’t just you and Scott?”
“No, no. There were people there.”
“OK.” Ruby walked forwards, over the grass, stepped up onto the wall, toes flush with the edge. Looked down. “Who?”
“Well, Scott was there, obviously. And . . .” There was a pause, Kendall seeming to realise what was happening. The names she was hoping to hear. “Oh. Oh, OK.” She heard him shuffle in his chair. “Um. Mary could have been there. But probably not, because . . . they’d broken up by that point?”
“Who had?”
“Well, she was seeing . . .” He paused again, humming like maybe, just maybe, this might fit. “She was seeing Little Adam Ward.”
Ruby’s mind gave her a flash – like subliminal messaging. Just a single frame of him dead on those tiles in the sports pavilion. And a near silent sound – a few notes of that eerie whistling they’d heard at the end of his 999 call. The cold, casual retreat. But then it was back to here. Back to now.
“So,” Kendall went on, “Mary would have been there if Adam was – maybe they were still together.”
“The others?”
“Elizabeth could have been there, feasibly. We went to drama club together.”
Little sparks in her memory. Yes. Elizabeth told Ruby about what happened. That’s how she knew. That’s why Ruby could picture it so clearly. Elizabeth saw.
“She was there.” So, that was four of the five. Scott was definite, the others hovering around the possible mark, Elizabeth fixed firm on ninety, maybe ninety-five percent. “Any staff?” Ruby wondered.
“No,” Kendall said. “Well, I’d like to think not. They’d have stopped it, right? Scott hit me a lot of times. My jaw was broken before he pushed me.”
Ruby sighed. She’d known it was a vicious encounter. Kendall was in hospital for weeks. And it all started because Scott asked him to pick up his bag. A simple request. And Kendall had said no. Which was, according to Gemma, the only word you must never, ever utter to Scott Hopkins.
She looked behind, imagined Scott punching him, pushing him. Closer and closer to the edge of this wall. The very wall she was standing on. And then, a final shove, his heels hit these bricks and over he went. She looked down. Wasn’t that high. She’d jumped from here as a child a hundred times. But falling backwards? Head first? Onto concrete? Yeah, it was high enough.
Violent, unjustified, barbaric. But also, a crime.
“It was reported to the police, right?” Ruby said. She’d have to call Jay. Get him to check the file.
“Apparently.”
Ruby could hear Kendall’s radio in the background. Still that vintage country music. The scene sounded just the same as when she’d visited on that rainy afternoon last week. Seemed like a lifetime ago. She could almost feel the cat, see the disjointed sofa covers, his glowing antique lamps.
“Did the police interview you?”
“Once. Literally nothing came of it, though. Insufficient evidence. Whoever was there, they weren’t brave enough to testify against Scott. Do you blame them? Look, I’m sorry, but I just can’t be sure on any of this. It happened after school; I know that. So, between 3 and 4pm. Or maybe later? It was dark. I remember the lights. Really, it’s possible that anyone could have been there at that time. Ruby, you could have been there for all I know.”
And a strange shiver crawled up her back. Hot, cold, itchy. Was she there? Had she stood in this exact spot twenty years ago and witnessed the incident? Could she really have forgotten something like this?
There it was again. That bittersweet duet of hope and fear. Incompatible and disparate. If Ruby was on the list, there was a real chance she was racing towards the end of something far more absolute than this case. But, then again, falling into the killer’s sights might well be her best chance at catching them. The fact remained that, despite her shifting labyrinth of memories, Ruby was almost certain she wasn’t there. She’d have remembered. Surely something that potent and visceral would not fade away? The attack was many things, but forgettable was not among them.
“Are you thinking it had something to do with that?” Kendall asked.
“I don’t know,” Ruby said. And she felt uncertainty creeping in. It was tenuous. Too many dots joined with ambitious, conditional lines that only survive if a list of accompanying things remain true. Things she had no way of knowing. The people she needed to ask were dead. And the list of possible victims ran, as it always had, well over the one hundred mark. No, higher. It wasn’t just former students. Not anymore.
She sighed, starting to deflate. Shit, she’d really thought this might be it. Again, she looked back up through those trees.
“You said it was dark,” Ruby heard herself say. “But you remembered lights?”
