What She Left: Enhanced Edition (10 page)

‘You are one yourself,’ he said.

‘One what?’

‘You say humans have marked
their
bodies, but that’s a weird way of putting it. You ought to say
our
bodies because you are one, a human. But enough of that crap, what are we going to do about the letter, Mr Iceman?’

‘What letter?’

‘Don’t play the innocent.
Your
letter. You’re a local celebrity, dude, imagine the shitstorm there’d be if the media turned on you. They’d savage you, you
and
your missus.’

He delved into the rucksack, extracted a carefully folded piece of paper and slid it halfway across the desk, keeping his hand on the top. I recognized my handwriting and my heart did a little flip. ‘Sweet Alice,’ it began.

‘Get out or I’ll throw you out,’ I said, anger seizing me. It was reminiscent of when I was in my fifties or maybe my forties. I actually
felt
something. I fondled the paperweight and the most peculiar question unfurled in front of me: What would it be like to bring it down on his head? Make him go away, shut him up, make him know what it’s like to be mortal,
finite. I rubbed my face, composed myself. ‘She made people feel different about themselves,’ I said. ‘She touched people.’

‘She didn’t touch me. Maybe she did you? Maybe you did her? What’s the matter, you look like you’ve seen a ghost!’

Larry, it’s all so complicated. We know it’s complicated, but it’s even
more
complicated than it otherwise might have been. This little yob’s theory about suicide, I’ve been testing it, as I have all the others. My task is to assemble intelligence from the madness, shape order from chaos. It’s a calling in which I’ve been rather immersed; hence, incidentally, the disgracefully long gap since my last communication. You will make allowances for me, won’t you? Because I’ll endeavour to paint out the patterns, but my cognitive abilities aren’t what they were. A fresh day and new details filter to the crown of my mind, take precedence, chunks of past illuminated in the alternately faithful and foggy terrain of recall. But I’ll endeavour to demonstrate fidelity to the facts, however gory and salacious. It’s all there, locked away in the heads and hearts of a handful of us, primed for the extraction. My job is to dive into detail, verify, authenticate, substantiate, separate fact from fable: lies, love, grudges, adultery, betrayal, murder.

I sat there trying to breathe. Trying to breathe life back into more than one corpse.

There it was, conspicuous and incontrovertible, the billet-doux and the revelations therein: trumpeting a bitter cocktail of protectiveness and, well, something much more unchaste.

Jesus, what have I done?

Yours as ever,

Jeremy

First cop on scene of Salmon death quits force after ‘beyond the grave’ calls

 

The ex-cop who was first on the scene after Alice Salmon died has spoken for the first time of his harrowing experience.

Brave Mike Barclay has told
Southern Eye
how the episode, which refuses to leave the headlines nearly a year on, contributed to him quitting the force after nearly three decades’ service.

The official investigation remains open, but the former law-enforcer said his first reaction was that the incident could have been ‘sexually motivated’ because ‘her top was torn and hitched up’.

It was immediately apparent to the dad-of-three that he was dealing with a corpse, so he made no attempt to fish her out of the River Dane – instead calling for back-up. ‘I was prepared to walk alongside her if she floated downstream, but she was tangled in reeds,’ he said. ‘The guy who’d called 999 was sitting on the ground in shock, repeating over and over how he’d found her like this.

‘My sergeant arrived and took charge, then the whole world and his dog was there – CID, CSI, the bronze inspector, the boys with their scuba kit, the works. What was vital was sealing the area – the footpath, the steps, the bridge, basically the priority was scene preservation and stopping members of the public contaminating evidence.’

The post-mortem concluded the cause of death was drowning, with the coroner subsequently reporting Salmon to have alcohol and cocaine in her bloodstream. Returning an ‘open’ verdict, he also recorded ‘abrasions and cuts on her face, grazes on her knees and a large recently sustained bruise on her right shoulder’.

‘Even in the poor light and at a distance, I could make out injuries on her face,’ Barclay said. ‘I’d have hazarded a guess at blunt-force trauma – it was like she’d been punched.’

He was particularly distressed by hearing Salmon’s mobile. ‘It was in the mud beside the water and it kept ringing. Whoever was calling was entirely in the dark about the news that was on its way to them,’ he said.

‘If you do thirty years in this job you get desensitized, but my youngest daughter is in her twenties so it got to me.’

Barclay admitted to still having flashbacks, often triggered by the ‘sonar’ ringtone that had been on Salmon’s phone.

He concluded: ‘You have to deal with all sorts in the police service, but that case affected me in a way others haven’t. It was my granddaughter’s birthday party the next day and when she blew out the candles on the cake, I made a wish, too.’

The Dynamite Men are a band to watch.

They burst on to the stage at the Pump House, full of swagger and style and performed a sixty-minute set of hugely entertaining songs to a packed student audience.

Always a popular venue, it was standing room only, with the 200-strong audience having flocked to see this local trio.

First a confession, your reviewer has a vested interest. I once met the lead singer in a bar on East Street and was as awe-struck as a fourteen-year-old groupie. His real name, STUNT can reveal, is Jack Symonds and he’s nineteen and comes from the Hampton and is a modern-day Lord Byron, dishevelled and dishy with his curly dark locks, skinny jeans and brooding stage presence.

For an hour, the world slowed down. Money worries, exam stress and fascist landlords all receded as the world was stripped down to music that filled the room and filled our hearts. They sang of relationships, with the wistful and profound ‘Morning, Morning’, which laments ‘waking up with a strange woman. I rolled over and saw her face. She wasn’t smiling.’ Then there was the melancholy ‘Away’, which speaks of the trials and tribulations of leaving home – that instant when ‘we see what’s over our shoulder as smaller, but we’re taller, so we stand up proud and walk on.’ But the lyrics aren’t without humour. They explore what it is like to be penniless with the hilarious and clearly autobiographical ‘67p’. Another of my favourites was ‘You Kill Me’, a hymn to an unnamed first love (lucky girl!), someone who ‘broke my heart and didn’t as much as blink’.

There were lots of influences at work here. The Libertines, Oasis, even a bit of Amy. But they’ve merged all these influences into a unique sound. The sound of the Dynamite Men.

My favourite song was ‘Hit’, a searing analysis of addiction, which saw a tortured Jack alone on the stage, describing with pitch-perfect accuracy the clarifying, soothing and emboldening sensation drugs can bring. ‘My turn in the toilet, my turn for a tablet, like breathing in pollen or swallowing a sparkling fish …’

Course, he wasn’t entirely alone – he had bandmates Callum Jones (19) and Eddy Cox (20). They’re school friends, so he said at one point, drawn together by the power of music to change the world. ‘We thought we had something to say,’ he shouted.

We’re listening, Jack. We’re very much listening.

Music sources tell me there’s a lot of luck in this business and right now that’s all that’s between the Dynamite Men and the big time. One nineteen-year-old maths student described it as the best gig he’d ever been to and while I wouldn’t necessarily agree – Pulp’s at the Apollo in Manchester takes that accolade as far as this reviewer’s concerned – it came a close second.

It’s easy to see why the Dynamite Men have already got a loyal following on the university circuit. Jack hung out with gig-goers in the bar afterwards. (You’ll be pleased to hear your reviewer stayed with him until it closed – all in the name of research for STUNT naturally!)

I felt privileged to have seen this band. It felt like watching music history. Like how it must have been the first time the Arctics performed. The sort of moment people are still talking about in years to come. The night the Dynamite Men first played the Pump House. They will continue to make explosions. They will continue to make noise. This is one band destined to make a very big bang.

I’ll definitely be going to every one of their gigs from now on (student loan, what student loan?). Uni work can wait. Music like this can’t. Besides as Babyshambles put it,
Fuck Forever
.

I’ve checked Alice’s direct messages on Twitter. Glad to see you never took my advice and changed your password, Salmonette … you must have used the same one for every single site you ever registered for! I found this exchange on January 15. Obviously I’ve mentioned it to the police, but a fat lot of good that’s done. Publish and be damned, hey, Alice?

 

From @FreemanisFree: Haven’t forgotten about you my little freedom fighter.

 

From @AliceSalmon1: Who is this?

 

From @FreemanisFree: Patience patience little Miss Criminal Catcher. All in good time.

 

From @AliceSalmon1: You don’t scare me.

 

From @FreemanisFree: Feeling’s mutual.

 

From @AliceSalmon1: Who are you or haven’t you got the balls to tell me?

 

From @FreemanisFree: Oh I got balls enough, wanna see them?

 

From @AliceSalmon1: You’re pathetic.

 

From @FreemanisFree: Your dead.

 

From @AliceSalmon1: Stop tweeting me or I’ll report it to the police.

 

From @FreemanisFree: Like your new purpel hat. Would like to fuck you.

 

From @AliceSalmon1: Go to hell. And learn to spell while you’re there.