Letters To My Daughter's Killer (2 page)

I turn cold, wild panic sizzling through me. My heart contracts. Blood thrums in my ears. ‘Lizzie,’ I call to her, move forward, wanting to clear the hair from her face, help her up, help her breathe, but hands are pulling me back, people shouting, dragging me away, pushing me outside. I resist, try to fight them off, desperate to see my girl, but they hold me tighter, instruct me to do as I’m told, to let them do their job.

We are moved, Jack and Florence and I, taken further down the street. Various people ask questions. I feel like batting them away, my eyes locked on the doorway, waiting for them to bring Lizzie out and put her in the ambulance, get her to hospital. My frustration is so great that I round on the next person who comes to us. ‘Why aren’t they taking her to hospital?’

‘Mrs Sutton?’ he checks. ‘Lizzie’s mother?’

‘Yes,’ I snap.

His face softens with pity and my throat closes over.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Sutton, Lizzie is dead. We’re treating it as suspected murder. The Home Office pathologist is on his way and the area will be cordoned off for our forensic teams to start their work. Would you be able to take Florence home with you?’

My mouth clamped tightly shut, I nod my head.

‘Mr Tennyson – Jack – will be giving us a statement. And we’ll want to talk to you later. There will be a family liaison officer to help you. They’ve been alerted. I am very sorry,’ he says, ‘but I need to ask you a few questions now, in case there’s anything that might help us. You went in the house?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you use a key?’

‘The door was open,’ I say.

‘Unlocked, you mean?’

‘No . . . erm . . . yes. It wasn’t pulled shut.’

He writes down what I tell him. ‘Where did you go?’ he says.

‘Just inside the living room.’

‘Did you touch the front door?’

I think back. ‘Yes, I pushed it.’

‘Did you touch Lizzie?’

‘No.’ I didn’t get the chance. I wish I had.

‘Did you touch anything else?’

‘No.’

‘Think, anything at all: to steady yourself, perhaps? Or did you pick anything up?’

‘I can’t remember. I don’t think so.’

He writes some more, then says, ‘Because you’ve entered the crime scene, we need to take your clothes and your shoes. How close do you live?’

I tell him.

‘We’ll send someone with you now; if you can change immediately and put everything you’re wearing in the bags you’re given.’

‘Broderick Litton,’ I say, ‘he stalked Lizzie. She reported it. You lot did nothing. You must find him.’ I’m shivering, my words broken up. My knees buckle. He reaches out an arm and steadies me.

‘Do you have an address, date of birth?’ he says.

‘No. Check your files – there must be something there.’

‘We will do.’ But he goes nowhere. ‘We’ll take further details when someone comes round to you – they won’t be long.’

Jack brings Florence to the car. She’s fallen asleep and barely stirs when he eases her into the booster seat I keep in the back.

‘What happened?’ I ask him before we part.

‘I don’t know,’ he says, shaking his head, fresh tears streaking down his face. ‘I’d been to the gym. She was fine when I left. I just saw her . . .’ He can’t go on, and I hold him close. One of the police officers gets in the passenger seat and I start the engine.

Florence has a little bed in my room for when she comes to stay, but I’m not going to sleep and I don’t want her to wake up alone after all this. Did she see Lizzie? Did Jack manage to get her downstairs and out of the house without her waking? He’d have had to walk through the living room with her. The house is small, modern, the only thing they could afford.

Oh God. Jack was at the gym, so Florence must have been in the house when . . .

I lay Florence on the sofa and cover her with a blanket.

I change out of my jumper and jeans and walking shoes and put them into separate bags, and the policeman takes them away.

The house is cold, so I go into the kitchen and put the heating on. Milky comes and weaves around my legs. I stare at the vegetables on the counter, the crumbs of soil drying on them, the wispy roots of the carrots, the vivid green of the runner bean pods. Out of the window is a black sky and a frail new moon, scimitar-bright.

My head aches, a thudding pain beating in my temples and behind my eyes, and the words
Lizzie’s dead
go round and round to the beat of that drum. But they are just words. I can’t believe them. Not when I look at the carrots and the slice of moon and the child at peace on my sofa.

Ruth

17 Brinks Avenue
Manchester
M19 6FX

Did you think you’d got away with it, that first night? What were you feeling? Elation? Terror? Some sexual frisson? It’s the same physiological response, isn’t it – fight, flight, fuck. Violence, fear, sex. It’s on my list of questions. And did you replay events in your head or try to shut them out? Were you racked with guilt or full of exhilaration?

While I wait for someone to come, to break the spell, me and my granddaughter and the cat cocooned in the bubble, I try to imagine you. Broderick Litton, who I never met, never saw. Like a bodyguard, Lizzie said you were; smart, though, a military type, clipped and polished. Always very pleasant except when you were being a vicious bully. At the time you were stalking her, I grew more panicky than Lizzie. When the police did so little, I wanted her to move. Suggested we swap houses.

The questions swoop through my head like bats in the dark, to and fro, silent, quick and shadowy. Why wasn’t Lizzie more careful? Why did she open the door? Why did she let you in? Why? Why? Why?

Where are you? Scurrying through night-black streets smelling of blood, or lurking in some lair, drinking and gloating, or slipping into bed beside your drowsy wife?

It is hard to sit still and Milky senses my agitation, echoes it with repeated sorties out of the cat flap and back. My skin is cold; I am frozen to the marrow, despite the heating being on, and I’m itchy. I can’t stop scratching: my arms, my neck, my calves. As if I am shedding a skin, or trying to claw it off and make my body raw like the rest of me.

Lizzie’s photographs – Lizzie as a baby, as a child, with Jack, with Florence – clutter my walls. I am standing in the corner, staring at one: her graduation day, Lizzie flanked by Tony and me. Her eyes alive with happiness, ours too. Delight and pride. I rub at my shoulder. Tony – I must ring Tony. Should I? Or wait? Make completely sure? If there’s been a horrible mistake and I tell him now . . . that she is . . . A wave of nausea breaks through me, coating me in clammy sweat, shrivelling my stomach, forcing bile into the back of my throat. In the kitchen I spit it out and drink a little water.

A knocking at the door makes me jump. It is the family liaison officer. A beanpole of a woman with short greying hair and a weather-beaten face. Kind eyes. Stupid thing to say really, but they are not brash or judgemental, or even overtly emotional, but accepting. The sort of eyes you can stare into and not feel impelled to look away. (Or maybe that’s hindsight. Those early days, Kay, that was her name, was a sort of calm anchor for us all.)

Kay makes tea and explains what is happening, what will happen in the next twenty-four hours. That is as much as I can take in, and even that doesn’t really penetrate. There is a buffer between my understanding and the outside world, a fog that makes it hard to truly hear and know things.

‘It’s the shock,’ Kay says, when I apologize and ask her to repeat something. ‘You won’t be able to think straight,’ she says. ‘It’s normal.’

A flare of anger pierces the fug. I take issue. ‘This is not normal, none of this is normal.’

‘No,’ she agrees.

I pace the room; my scalp itches, I rake at it with my nails. And I try to remember what Kay has said. People will be busy at Lizzie’s house documenting the scene and collecting evidence. There will be a post-mortem. A host of television dramas come to mind, angst-ridden pathologists and flawed but courageous detectives. This is real, I tell myself. Real. Really happening. There will be the formal identification of Lizzie’s body. Kay says that, ‘Lizzie’s body’, not ‘the body’. Every time she mentions her, she uses Lizzie’s name. Keeping it specific and personal. They are probably trained to do that. I appreciate it. The understanding that their victim is more than a victim; she’s my daughter, Jack’s wife, Florence’s mother.

‘I should ring Tony,’ I remember in a rush. ‘Lizzie’s dad.’

‘Does he live nearby?’

‘Reddish Vale.’ A few miles. ‘He remarried,’ I say, ‘Denise.’

Denise the wheeze. My nasty nickname because Denise’s default position is to giggle, to laugh, and she is a smoker, which adds to the breathy quality of her chortling. It’s probably a nervous tic, but it makes me want to slap her. Grab her by the arms and ask her what’s so funny.

I have to look their number up in my address book; it’s not something I ever wanted to memorize. It rings and rings. Tony probably can’t hear it. He’s going deaf, Lizzie said recently, but he’s too proud or too macho to get his ears tested. Lizzie teased him about it, and said she’d have to teach him sign language. A bit more than the few signs we mastered when she first began learning BSL: hello, goodbye, I love you and a couple of swear words. She brings me titbits about Tony (and no doubt does the same in the other direction), and I accept them gracefully. We keep it civilized. For her as much as anything. And for Florence.

The phone rings out. ‘They’re not answering,’ I say to Kay. ‘I’ll try his mobile.’

Tony uses it for work but switches it off when he is at home. Or he used to. It seems to take forever to find my phone and his details. While it rings, it occurs to me that the Tennysons, Jack’s parents, need to know too. I mention it to Kay. ‘Should I wait?’ Have I even got their number?

‘Jack will probably want to tell them himself,’ Kay says.

‘Of course.’

She knows the etiquette, not just of death but of this particular situation: sudden, violent death.

Tony’s cell phone goes to voicemail and I hang up. Bury my head in my hands.

‘Try again in a while,’ Kay says. ‘Or we can send someone round there if you—’

‘No.’ It seems cowardly to do that. I should be the one to tell him, not some stranger.

The man who comes to take my statement seems far too young to be dealing with this sort of thing. But he’s not at all nervous or inept. He takes me slowly through the sequence of events: Jack’s call, the car journey, going into the house, being restrained.

Then he asks more questions about the house. Were the lights on or off, did I put any lights on? Was there any sound, TV or radio? What was the temperature like?

I laugh at this; it seems preposterous that in the face of such a huge shock, my sense of hot and cold would be functioning and that I might still remember.

‘No idea,’ I say.

I picture Lizzie, the contrast of her hair and the dark stains. Recall light flickering over her hand, her left hand. That would have been from the fire, their log-burning stove. ‘The fire was lit,’ I say.

Then the questions become more general, he confirms Lizzie’s date of birth and age. He wants to know about her life, her work, her marriage, her routines. When I last saw her. What we spoke about. And finally if I can think of anyone who might have wanted to cause her harm. I tell him all I can about Broderick Litton, urge him to check the police files. Surely they will know more than me.

He writes it all up and reads it back to me. Four pages in all. And I sign in the proper place.

When I call Tony again, Denise answers.

‘It’s Ruth, I need to talk to Tony.’

There’s a wait while she fetches him or takes him the phone, and then his voice, thick with sleep. I say his name and then I freeze. I swallow. Force breath into my lungs. ‘Tony, I’ve got some really, really bad news. Oh Tony. It’s Lizzie. I’m so sorry. Lizzie, she’s dead.’

He makes a noise, a sort of howl, strangulated.

I can’t tell him the rest, not on the phone. ‘Can you come?’

‘Yes,’ he says. That’s all he says. Just yes. Quick and quiet. And hangs up.

Jack gets back first; it is almost dawn. His eyes are red, his lips chapped, his face grey. He is wearing navy jog pants and black trainers and a nylon anorak which the police must have given him to replace his clothes. He takes the coat off, moving slowly like an arthritic old man, and sits beside Florence, still sleeping on the sofa.

There’s no mistaking whose daughter she is. The same shiny straight black hair and even features, prominent cheekbones. The only thing Florence got from Lizzie are her eyes, sea green, the same as Tony’s.

Jack’s been the main carer the last couple of years. Lizzie and he are both freelance, so whoever has work offered grabs it and the other person picks up the domestic reins. It’s hard for them – juggling, coping with the uncertainty of money – but they both love their work and neither of them would swap it for the security of doing something tedious nine to five.

Jack will do anything he can get: radio parts, panto, telly, as well as theatre, which he likes best. He keeps going up for auditions but hasn’t had anything for months, whereas Lizzie’s been flat out. She first began interpreting at conferences and for deaf students at the universities here, then developed her theatre work, which has really taken off.

Kay brings Jack a cup of tea and he wraps his hands around it and hunches over. She tells him what she’s already told me about the day ahead. About what will happen to Lizzie. What must be done. She leaves us to talk.

He is clearly exhausted, but I am desperate to know what he saw, to hear the sequence of events, to find out if he’s learnt anything yet from the police.

‘What happened?’ I ask him.

He shakes his head. ‘They don’t know.’ His voice is worn out, husky, almost gone. ‘I’d been to the gym . . .’ He tries to clear his throat. ‘She was watching TV when I left . . .’

They both go to the gym regularly. Lizzie likes it as a way of keeping fit, and Jack has to keep in shape for his work in the theatre.

‘I got back . . .’ His hands tighten round the mug. ‘She was there . . .’ his composure breaks and he speaks, fighting tears, ‘she was there, like that. Who could do that?’ He looks at me.