Desire Line (39 page)

‘Right then. What you reckon, eh?'

My muscles weren't enjoying use this morning, probably from being only half Japanese. ‘Ye-s-s.' Translated, ‘still considering so too soon therefore shut up.'

‘What you wanted?'

We're the only ones in. No Tess, when a chat with her would act like an upper. No official visitors— there's a feeling in the Borough that Forward Rhyl's doomed which might be catching. It's the start of Omar's final week— but arrive on time, why wou
ld he? On my screen a dynamic picture, a present from Tomiko, keeps drawing attention to itself. It shows him crouched on his studio floor in a house I've never visited, in the process of finishing an ink wash study of
Kawaguchiko Threatened by Storm, Number 12
. The images are set on cycle. ‘What I
wanted?
' At the point I've begun to take notice, my father's body is in knots as the largest of his brushes –
Big Cloud
– delivers a shower of grey water onto unsuspecting paper. ‘Well, yes.' This is the moment he's been striving for. After more versions than he bothers to count, this is the day he captures the event in less than ten strokes of bamboo and wolf bristle over an existing wash. The downpour is about to obscure an entire mountainside and lake, birch branches in the foreground are stretched to breaking point by the rush of the squall and a hat from an unseen pilgrim flies skyward, spinning. Somehow you can see it spinning. ‘And no.' Tomiko falls back onto his heels. Having presented me with this gift (A Glimpse of the Artist at his Moment of Triumph) he's recently turned against the triumph,
Number 12.
Is on the brink of disowning it.
Not near quite good outcome.
He's always trying to force English into finer distinctions. Soon he'll make another attempt only this time, he
will eat no food.
Should I take the image down? Though exactly the same as when given, it ought to go.

Glenn's keenness shows by the way he licks round his mouth. ‘So did he do it? Did he ice'n'dice your granny?'

‘My grandfather wouldn't harm his own wife.'

The chair sighs under Glenn's weight. He frowns.
Not near quite good.

Tomiko creates a rock-strewn gully with minute expenditure of ink.

‘I'm gonna need more than that,' Glenn said.

‘Other people'd worry about the tone being wrong— you know, annoying or rude. Not you.' Tomiko's completed work makes up the final seconds of the display cycle. I realise I don't admire it any more. This mountainside lacks substance, the birches are thin— and unbalanced. And what is going on with that hat we're meant to believe has been ripped from an offstage actor? Was it a blemish, a false line somehow incorporated into the whole so it fooled most people, including me, but not the artist? Because
you
wouldn't hide, Tomiko. Sara saw you. Across from the fire she must've been instantly recognisable as Eurwen's mother and you gave yourself up. You were offering to be the victim. She notices you even on this totally bizarre night, and of course your excellent balance. Also how you can't meet her eyes. If she'd spoken you'd have spilled the story. Gone back to drag Eurwen for her out of Jay and Neil's van—

Glenn looked where I was looking and said, ‘Bollocks to that. You've got
to talk to somebody. Yeah?' He head-gestured at Tomiko, back to recharging
Big Cloud
. ‘Family? Till this I didn't even know you had one.'

‘Everybody's got one.' Watching Josh carry a corpse to his car had stirred up stupid responses. Childish responses when I should know better. I'd pretended to myself he could've killed her or been in on her death, let her die— whatever, just greedy for reprieve. As though the puzzle mattered. That was also a crime, downgrading Josh into an excuse of a man when he'd saved her once and would've kept on trying, given the opportunity. Geoffrey and Tomiko, I'd always respected— but I'd managed to lose sight of
the courage and professionalism of Officer Meredith
that used to make my eyes sting when said aloud. ‘She was a sad woman with— her problems, a lot of problems.' I told Glenn. ‘She wasn't caring for herself. She thought her husband and child didn't want her, either. Then she seems to have gone out one day and decided— all too much. Nobody else involved. You let me see. ' Glenn deserved the bit of flattery but as I was saying it, it turned into truth. I'd never have sorted out Sara's journals without
something to watch.
We all live in pictures in the end. So worth it, Glenn and as promised you've done me a favour. ‘It gets worse. Now she's really dead I bet there'll be her life story coming out. There's plenty about her doing the rounds. The
Tom Swift
film's getting hyped, have you noticed? Like making more money is some sort of homage while it'll actually be torture for the people left. Josh especially.' I should've added Eurwen but Glenn came back with a list of the mentions he'd noticed himself, snippets of Sara, ‘That Charity woman looks a bit of—' he made a vile sign. Then The Vanished muscled in. We knocked around the ideas you'll find at the start of this section, a lot of them Glenn's. I'd never heard of Ambrose Bierce or Lord Lucan, for instance.

At least Tomiko's safe, I didn't say, protected by distance and rusty English. ‘There's no answer. The day she went missing I can't find her in town. She doesn't show. And the rest of the time— she's just this sad woman looking for her daughter, wandering round, in and out the Clear Skies— gets mixed up with some scammer from there! D'you want to see?' I show him Kim Tighe or at least the billboard Kim Tighe claimed was her. I know her story's end at least.
*

He breathed out. Said, ‘Sod it, eh?' but he continued to lurk, staring now at my white seashell of building under blue sky, another secret he was going to be prying into soon. By bringing on PalmWalk, hunching over the next section, doing concentration about as subtly as a Kabuki artist, the shirt was encouraged to fade away as I had reached an untried route that could be absorbing – in fact, a real skill-bender – and probably was going to turn out more therapeutic than all the talk. Rhyl's a small place but complicated. There are numerous other possibilities, twice as many as you first think. I make a new beginning hovering over the flat Apollo cinema now and finally I find it, the desire line everybody wants to follow—

November 17th 2008

The sun is a weak colourless disc and Sara has it behind her— means she's shivering in SkyTower's shadow. Then swamped by the school-party outside the lost Seaquarium. All the time she's making for the quickest way out of town, using the edge of the land.

Nobody notices her. Not the massive workman stumping from a construction site in bulky overalls, though some instinct makes him glance over his shoulder. Two lovers are clinched in the middle of the path causing a pedestrian snarl-up she'll need to skirt round but at the last moment they drift to one side as though half-aware, clearing the way. That cart-pushing oldie with cleansing implements pauses. He's enough to obscure the slight figure he maybe recognises as the one who smiled— he was litter picking in Market Street the afternoon she shopped for Eurwen's scarf. But even the camera has missed today's chance to give her up.

Like AH is telling us she's really ‘Judy', she's really ‘Rebecca'. She's a ghost already.

Notes

*
See 
Appendix D

III

Stone

Viewed from Rhyl, Sara's life well justified the advice Tomiko gave me as a child. Re: family, wealth, occupation, place of origin— say nothing.
Mizu ni nagusu.
*
 
Write her story, Yori? That weight tied to your foot's finally flown off, has it? And hit you on the head? – which is exactly what I asked myself hour after hour, knee-caps to the polished parquet of Libby's floor, trying to piece together her final days.

But another vantage point you can see Sara from is Oxford's.
Yare yare!
(means
Wow!
) My grandmother –
my grandmother
– was an idol here. I learned that while growing up at Pryorsfield, heard it all the time, even out in a city overdosed on its own brainpower. Even my tutor Mr Dennis with the shakes so bad they could stop him drawing a straight line relied on her grandson having some facts (whether about Ruskin or Rembrandt) ‘because of your, er, impressive background.' The academic take on Sara stayed positive and it was buttressed by hundreds of thousands of non-combatants, history-dabblers, television-viewers and movie-buffs who bought her just to read and while the first group never admitted the second mattered, it did. And to date you'd still have trouble finding much from either team that damages her reputation. The meanest? Maybe she couldn't have pulled it off a second time. She'd found
the
subject to make any researcher look good. Lucky Sara. But never out of print right back to when most books never made it into print, when publishing was the last cartel, that says a lot.

Sara's vanishing trick may've left holes in our family roof but for maintaining a profile it was one brilliant stroke.

And
I
got given her confessional. OK, it has already been sifted through by Josh, then his fellow officers. It has been shared with his superiors— interviews that result with him sunk in everybody's estimation including his own and ended in
his
life being picked over. Never painless. I can imagine Kailash describing me. ‘Of course he was more or less dumped by his mother – so a real problem with women. Hardly went to school! He did what? No, it does
not
surprise me.' As for Josh, Careless, huh? was probably passed around behind his back. You've heard the daughter's turned up again, boyfriend in tow? – now the wife's done a runner! Like a fuckin' comedy.

The partner always heads the suspects and it was going to be worse for one of their own. ‘Officers investigating a missing person case will require access to the home address for a search with your consent' is still part of the protocol. (Had the journal already been surrendered? Yes to that. Since Josh didn't destroy it, he'll have come clean straight away.) Then there's the Last Seen Wearing report Charity reproduced on her site. Light brown chinos. Cream shirt retrieved from dry cleaners in Marsh Road. (Query when?) A man's hooded jacket, gunmetal, bearing an H for Haglöfs logo, property of the husband. Heeled sandals. (Query why not the Orla Keily sling-backs recently purchased as proved by the receipt from Clarks Shoes, High Street, Rhyl? Style: Milly, Colour: Mint, Price: £89.99— cheap she'd called them, probably the most expensive pair of shoes she could find in the entire town!)

It could be accurate. Or invented by Josh. At least the journal, copied and returned to him to pass to me, proved she'd come through some dark times in that final week and survived or how else had damaging CCTV pictures of a boozy wife dragged home in the early hours been suppressed? Unless they were never in the public domain— unless fellow detectives totally believed Sara in silk shirt, chinos and borrowed coat was still out there, a Misper who left no note. But even back then a man in Josh's fix, policeman or not, wouldn't get an easy ride. His career is wrecked. Especially as the hunt goes on and on – and was stumbling along right up till child Yori watched a bunch of white flowers set sail off Splash Point.

Charity Weiksner's recent post on her brand new 
HeresSara
 is tagged Women Funds University Virgin Isles Thomasina Swift Disempowered Refugee Abuse Access Memorial Scholarship. She's lived up to her name by endowing one. Still she can't leave it alone. ‘Sara's husband and only child have always refused to discuss my wonderful sister,' she has to go and remind strangers. ‘So unless there's an amazing turnaround of events, the mystery of her death is going to stay just that.'