The Brighton Mermaid

  I make it off the gravel driveway, through the gap in the hedge and then stumble out into the fields that surround the farmhouse. In this inky blackness, in the distance, I can just about make out shapes – bushes, hedges, a line of trees far, far down over the fields. I need to get to the trees. If I can get to the trees, I can hide.

  Thud, thud, thud, thud! The world around me is full of their footsteps, moving across the earth, chasing me down.

  My legs are stiff from where I’ve been lying in the same position for so long, and they protest as I try to pick up the pace, attempt to run faster over the uneven, soggy ground.

  Thud, thud, thud, thud! The noise … the vibrations … They sound horribly closer now.

  Thud, thud, thud, thud! There’s a fire in my chest where my lungs should be, and my eyes are struggling in the darkness as it constantly changes the shape of the horizon. But I can’t stop, I can’t even slow down, I have to keep moving.

  Thud, thud, thud, thud! Nearer and nearer.

  Thud, thud, thud, thud! I need my legs to go faster. I need them to call up the muscle memory of when I used to do this, when I had to literally run for my life. I can do this. I have to do this. I have to reach the trees. I’ll be safe there, I’ll be able to hide there.

  Thud, thud, thud, thud! fills my ears. Thud, thud, thud, thud! They’re right behind me. Thud, thud, thud, thud! My ragged breathing, the whistle of the wind, the creak of my bones are all drowned out by it. Thud, thud, thud, thud!

  I have to go faster. I have to—

  Suddenly I am flying, knocked over by force.

  Craig Ackerman. He threw himself at me and I tumble, winded by the way my body slams to the ground.

  I try to move again, but he’s on top of me, crushing my chest with the weight of his body, folding his hands around my neck with the anger of a man who doesn’t like people who defy him.

  ‘This is what she did,’ he snarls at me as he starts to squeeze. ‘This is why. She couldn’t just accept it, she had to run. She had to try and tell.’

  He’s going to do it, I realise. His hands are warm, heavy, deadly around my neck. He’s going to do it and there’s nothing I can do to stop him.

  ‘Get off her!’ Shane is suddenly shouting. ‘Get off, get off, get off!’ He tugs at Craig’s arms, extended and rigid as they lock onto my neck, tightening and tautening, closing and shutting.

  ‘You promised me!’ Shane shouts. ‘You promised me I would get a chance. You promised me!’ He sounds like a child pledged a first go of another child’s favourite toy, but who has had the offer taken away and is making his displeasure known. ‘Let her go! You promised!’

  Blackness is creeping in at the edges. With the hands around my neck and the weight on my body, I can’t hold on any longer. I have to keep fighting, I have to—

  Suddenly he’s off me. He releases my neck, and is off my body.

  As I cough and gag and splutter, rolling on the ground to get my breath back, I have to remember that this is simply a pause. Once Shane has had his ‘go’, Craig Ackerman will be finishing what he just started.

  There is another car in the driveway by the time they march me – each holding on to one of my biceps – back up to the grey-brick farmhouse with a slate-grey roof, and white sash windows.

  I stare at the car, blinking and blinking at it.

  I’ve seen that car before. It’s the latest in a long line of this person’s cars that I’ve seen since I was a child. The first was a beige Citroën. The second I can’t remember. The bright red one with the square frame, a Volkswagen, was Jude’s favourite. She used to pretend it was her car and planned to get one the second she had saved up enough money from her Saturday job. The fourth, a white Peugeot, was my favourite. I stare at the car, a brand-new black Volvo with leather seats and chrome roof rack.

  Slowly the car door opens and the light comes on, illuminating briefly the person inside.

  This is ‘him’. This is the man who they are both scared of, who has stopped me from being killed all these years.

  He stands in front of his car, his head on one side, and looks at me for many long seconds before he speaks.

  ‘Hello, Enelle,’ he says.

  Macy

  Saturday, 2 June

  Aaron Pope looks like his father.

  I wonder if he’s like his father in other ways? If he can look at you and make you feel insignificant, unclean, unworthy? If he relishes that moment when something he says breaks you down enough to cause tears? Nell never cried. Not that I witnessed, anyway. She stood up to him and I could see, even when I was sobbing and falling apart, he hated that. I wonder if this man is like the one whose face he almost shares.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asks when he opens the door to us. He doesn’t sound like his father. He sounds softer, nicer. But that means nothing, really. He keeps looking at me, puzzled, wondering if he knows me. I’m enough like my sister to trigger that in him.

  ‘Are you Aaron Pope?’ Zach asks.

  The man at the door nods slowly.

  ‘My name is Detective Sergeant Zach Searle. I need your help.’

  ‘I don’t know how I can help you, officer.’ He is still looking at me, his eyes slightly squinted, his mind obviously whirring.

  ‘I’m looking for Nell Okorie.’

  ‘Nell?’ he says, seizing on that word like it is a precious jewel. Another man clearly in love with my sister. ‘She’s not here. I don’t know where she is.’

  ‘No, I didn’t think she was,’ Zach says. ‘I think she’s in trouble. She told me you help her with computer stuff. I need you to trace a phone number for me to see if I can find her.’

  The man in the doorway looks wary. ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘Of course you can,’ I say. I point to Zach. ‘He’s not working with the police right now, you won’t get in trouble. He just wants to find my sister before someone hurts her.’

  ‘You’re Macy?’ he says.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’re Zach?’ he asks. ‘The guy Nell was seeing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All right, then. I’ll help you, but I haven’t traced a phone in ages. It might take me a while.’

  ‘I hope not,’ Zach says, obviously forgetting what he was telling me before. ‘I don’t think Nell has much time left.’

  1993

  Nell

  Monday, 26 April

  ‘I think your dad is the best because he’s just so cool about everything,’ I said to Jude.

  Jude hung her head over the edge of my bed, her two plaits stuck up on each side of her head like ears.

  I sat at the top of the bed, resting my head against the wall, next to a poster of Maya Angelou’s ‘Still I Rise’ poem. Jude had given it to me for my thirteenth birthday and I’d felt bad because I’d only got her a friendship bracelet.

  ‘I don’t think there’s ever anything you could do that would make him angry. Not like my dad who gets cross all the time.’

  ‘Your dad’s not angry,’ Jude said. She lifted her legs up a little off the bed and I was sure for a second she was going to slip off and conk her head on the floor. ‘He just tells you off. Mine never tells me off. Sometimes I want to do bad stuff and keep doing it until I find the thing that will make my dad tell me off.’

  ‘You can have my dad to tell you off if you want.’

  We both cracked up laughing because my dad was always telling Jude off – no chewing gum, why didn’t you do your homework, no shouting in the house. Sometimes Dad acted like Jude was his third daughter.

  ‘I’d love to be able to do whatever I want,’ I said dreamily. Even when Jude stayed out till late at our house and my dad had to drive her home, or she forgot to do her homework, or lost bits of uniform, her dad wouldn’t shout. Her mum would get cross and tell Jude to do better and she would want to stop her going out, or coming to my house; but her dad would say, ‘No, give the girl some freedom. She’s growing up and needs to make some mistakes for herself.’ r />
  I’d love it if my dad was like that. I could get things wrong and not worry about being told off, losing time with Jude, not being allowed to leave my room until I’d finished all my homework.

  ‘See, I think my dad not telling me off means he doesn’t care.’

  ‘Of course your dad cares about you,’ I said, aghast.

  ‘But he’s not interested in me,’ Jude said. We often talked about our parents. I’d told her how nervous and on edge my mum was, how strict my dad always was, but this was the first time she’d said anything like this about her stepdad. ‘I think, if it wasn’t for the fact I had to be with my mum, he wouldn’t even know if I was there. He’s only interested in Mum.’

  ‘Do you really think that’s true?’ I asked.

  Jude put her legs down and threw her arms back beside her head, pressed the palms of her hands onto the floor. Her body was arched, a perfect curve over the edge of my bed. She was the best gymnast in our school and she had been in primary school, too, but she never got to do any competitions because her parents never got around to signing the forms. That made me think – was she right? Did they really not care about her that much? Dad and Mum wouldn’t have approved of me doing something sports related instead of something academic, but they wouldn’t let me miss out for the sake of not signing forms. Jude’s mum and dad were always off out with friends, going to dinner parties, the theatre, the cinema. Sometimes, they went away for the weekend and said Jude could stay on her own or come and stay with us. I loved it because I got to have my best friend around all the time. But was that what Jude meant, as well?

  ‘Yes, I think that’s true,’ she said.

  ‘Well, like I said, you can have my dad to tell you off, if you want. I’m sure he won’t mind, he seems to really enjoy it actually.’

  Jude laughed again. ‘I love your dad,’ she said. ‘He’s like the best man in the whole world. When I get married, I want him to be exactly like your dad.’

  Now

  Nell

  Saturday, 2 June

  ‘Aren’t you going to say something?’ asks the man who has just exited the car.

  I can’t speak to Frazer Dalton, Jude’s stepfather. How can I speak to the man behind all of this? How can I do anything but stare in horror at what this all means? If I could get away from the other two, I was thinking, I would have a chance. I would be able to get a message to Zach, I would be able to convince the police to open a new case. But if it’s him – he who has drinks with senior police officers, and moves in legal circles – behind it, then what chance do I have, even if I do get away? There’s clearly never been any DNA or forensic evidence that would connect him to any of it. It would literally be my word against his.

  ‘Take her inside,’ he tells the other two, who have become almost meek in his presence.

  Craig Ackerman moves first, tugging me to get me to move while Shane’s fingers slip away. I look at Shane, wondering why he isn’t moving too, and find he is petrified, frozen to the spot, looking at Mr Dalton with absolute terror daubed across his face. I have never seen him so small and, quite obviously, terrified.

  ‘I didn’t—’ Shane says.

  ‘I’ll deal with you later,’ Mr Dalton interrupts, his voice as stern as a whip.

  Shane looks at his feet and nods.

  ‘Move,’ Craig snarls and tugs me harder, practically dragging me to the front door of the farmhouse, which is sitting open.

  The farmhouse is comfortable, cosy. The furniture is not new, it is well used as though someone lives here but not regularly. We come into the hall through a vestibule, to the right side of which there is a toilet and small laundry area. Dark green wax jackets hang on the pegs beside the door, three sets of rubber boots sit beneath the coats.

  Craig Ackerman pushes me through the doorway on the left, into the large kitchen. The floor is a slate-grey stone, the work surfaces are a pale wood and there is a large farmhouse sink that he forces me past into an area that is a dining-cum-living room. It is long and extends far beyond the depth of the kitchen, which means, I’m guessing, there are bedrooms downstairs – next to the kitchen – as well as up the stairs.

  I’m forced on past the large oak kitchen table with six chairs around it, and into the living room area. It has a matching cream, green and pink flowery sofa set as well as a large green beanbag.

  ‘Don’t move,’ Craig Ackerman says as he virtually throws me into an armchair against the back wall.

  I’m so tempted to throw my arms up in the air and wiggle my bottom back and forth against the seat, just to show him I’ll move if I want to. It won’t change the outcome, so what will he actually do if I do ‘move’? But I don’t ‘move’. There’s really no point in antagonising him.

  From beside the television, Frazer Dalton pulls up a leather chair and sets it in front of me. He sits back and looks down on me from on high, a king staring down at a disloyal subject, pondering what to do with her.

  He takes a deep breath. ‘What am I to do with you, Enelle,’ he asks rhetorically. ‘I’ve never wanted to hurt you.’

  Do you want me to be grateful or something?

  ‘I’m sure you must have a lot of questions,’ he says.

  I can only think of one question right now: ‘Where’s Jude?’

  Is she one of the ones who ended up a mermaid, left in water, robbed of her dignity and a precious piece of jewellery? Is she somewhere that no one has found yet?

  ‘I have been hoping for many, many years that you would be the one to tell me that,’ he replies. ‘I’ve been very disappointed, to be honest, that you haven’t. I’ve watched you find so many different people over the years, but never Judana. I was sure that even if you didn’t find her, she would contact you at some point. But no, she never did.’

  I look at Shane, standing on Mr Dalton’s left, and then at Craig Ackerman, standing on his right. How did he end up with these two? How did they end up with him? What is it that they do? The way they were talking in the car, it sounded like … it sounded like they were terrible people.

  ‘What are you going to do with me?’ I ask him.

  ‘I don’t know, Enelle, I really don’t.’ He shakes his head sadly.

  ‘Did you kill Sirene?’ I ask him.

  Craig Ackerman and Shane exchange looks, aware now that I was awake in the back of the van.

  ‘Sirene? Who is she?’

  ‘The Brighton Mermaid,’ I say. I stare directly at him because I sense fear is something all three of these men thrive on. I cannot show fear – that will make this whole thing a lot more satisfying for them. ‘You know that.’

  ‘I have never killed anyone,’ he states. ‘I find that sort of thing distasteful, to say the least.’

  ‘You and Shane both, apparently.’

  ‘Shane and I are nothing alike.’

  ‘I suppose not. Shane likes to see fear and possibly devotion. You don’t like that, do you?’

  ‘What do I like, Enelle?’

  I look over Mr Dalton, as he’ll always be to me. He is a neat, well-put-together man. Nothing is out of place: his brown-blond greying hair is neatly cut as always; his skin is well cared for although lined with age; his clothes are immaculately cleaned and ironed; his shoes are polished to a shine. He is all about order, control, image. What do I think he likes?

  I think he likes to control women. No, not women. They present too much of a challenge; are by their definition his potential equals. He likes to control girls. He likes to be in control of every little thing they do. He likes to break them down, remove any semblance of will or spirit until he has their complete obedience. He thinks he is a superior being. He thinks he is above everyone and everything and he believes he is in control. I think he likes to employ all sorts of methods, try out all sorts techniques to achieve his goal of ultimate obedience. That is what I think he likes.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I don’t know what you like.’

  Mr Dalton treats me to a ghostly, terrifying a
pparition of a smile. ‘I like to study the human condition and use it in a positive way,’ he says. ‘I like to see what limits a person can be pushed to, how you can deconstruct a person’s personality to become the better, more compliant version of themselves. You can take a person, hold their life in the palm of your hand, and shape it at will. Turn them into who you want them to be. That is what I like, Enelle. I like to create people.’

  ‘By “people” you mean “girls”, don’t you? You wouldn’t dream of doing any of that to a man your age, would you? It has to be someone who you think is weaker than you, right?’

  ‘Teenagers and young women are the ripest for picking, yes.’

  ‘Where did Jude fit in with all of this?’

  He sits forwards, folds his hands together and leans on his legs. ‘Judana was my greatest project. I had her for years, I could study and shape her from an early age. She had to understand how unwanted she was, how inconvenient she was most of the time. You and your family, you interfered, a lot more than I would have liked, kept boosting her by providing her with a place to go, but with careful handling I was getting there. I wanted Judana to feel exactly like the burden she was. And then, when she was broken down, when she truly believed she was worthless, I would build her up. I would shape her to be at my beck and call. She was meant to leave, but I would help her. Give her a place to stay, away from her mother and away from your lot. She was to be the ultimate specimen of what it is to create someone. In time, she would help me to create more girls like her. I invested substantially in Judana and she disappeared before I was ready.’

  ‘You … you wanted Jude? To have sex with?’

  ‘Nothing so base, Enelle. She would be the lynchpin to my plan to create the type of companions that men like myself need.’

  ‘You wanted to create women who are willing to wait around for men to come to them? What’s wrong with them having mistresses?’ He looks at me as though I am simple, that I haven’t been listening. ‘Oh, right, that’d be too much like hard work. Talking to them, having them expect things like consent, conversation, respect. You want girls who won’t answer back, who will put up with whatever you throw at them because they’ve been trained to expect nothing more.’