Page 13 of The Tapes
I’m an addict.
Except my eyes close and I let my thoughts drift and swirl and…
‘… that’s why it’s my fault. I found a jewellery box.
…
OK, I didn’t find it. I just… couldn’t help myself. It was so pretty with the flowers engraved on the side but then, when I had it back home, there was something about the light and the colour. It didn’t seem that nice at all. It was ugly, really – scratched, too. I couldn’t figure out why I’d taken it but that’s what my book says. I keep reading the same bit about impulse control. It says you want something, so you take it, even though you don’t necessarily need it, or even want it. I know I shouldn’t, I know I don’t really want these things, but I can’t stop myself.
…
That was the thing with the jewellery box. It was empty, and ugly, but there was also a rattle. Like there was something in it, even though there wasn’t. I became obsessedwith it after that, until I found a catch that opens a secret bottom. That’s where I found the earrings. They were?—’
I stop the tape. I must have been drifting, asleep for maybe ten or fifteen minutes. The tape is much further on now and it’s entirely my mother’s voice. I had never let it get this far before, assuming the rest of the recording was the infant me learning numbers and letters.
I sit on the edge of the bed, wide awake, and rewind the past few seconds.
Thisis why Mum knew the identity of the Earring Killer. She stole a jewellery box, filled with stolen earrings.
‘…I found a catch that opens a secret bottom. That’s where I found the earrings. They were all singles, not pairs. It took a couple of seconds but I knew I’d seen them before. Then I realised they’re from the photos, the news reports. It’s all the single earrings he took from those women. There’s one that has a peacock dangly bit and it’s so unique.’
There’s a near-silence in which I can hear my mother breathing steadily into the microphone. A few seconds pass as the hairs on the back of my neck flare.
‘I can’t go to the police, not after everything. Maybe that’s why I’m recording this. I don’t know what to do, or who to tell. He’s going to know I took the box, and then he’s going to kill me.’
LAURA
Extract fromThe Earring Killerby Vivian Mallory, © 2015.
I’m on the canal bank when the pair of lads call across from a slowing narrow boat. They’re sitting on the edge, legs dangling, each wearing tracksuits, baseball caps and bright, white trainers. The sort of teenagers certain tabloids insist are running around stabbing one another in absence of anything better to do.
‘You got a light?’ one of them asks. He can’t be older than seventeen or eighteen and it strikes me I’ve never associated canal boats with young men in tracksuits.
When I first got into reporting, an old editor told me I should always carry three things: a notepad, a pen, and a lighter. ‘You never know the conversations you’ll get into with people who need a light,’ he said. I always took the advice to hand, so, back on the canal bank, I fished around before tossing the lighter across the small gap in the water to the boat. It only occurred to me later that the boys might have been too young to smoke but the pair of them each lit a cigarette. Then, with a grin that I found impossible to resist, the taller of the two asked if he could keepit. The cheek of it all was enough for me to tell him it was fine – and off they went in their boat, chugging along at a few miles-per-hour as I trailed on the towpath.
I had long since improved my old editor’s advice by always carryingtwolighters.
The Sedingham Canal runs almost through the centre of town, with the path providing something of a shortcut to get from one part to another for anyone not in a vehicle. I joined the path at the back of the cricket club where I met Harry Bailey. It’s a nicer day today: crisp in the morning but warm by the afternoon. The sky is a perfect, endless blue. As I follow the canal, I’m passed by couples on bikes, kids on BMXs, plus that curious breed of people in hiking boots who chug along at a serious clip, while never seeming to draw breath.
The Sedingham Canal is a mix of tracksuited teenagers on canal boats, bumming a light with a cheeky smile; plus middle-aged men in expensive boots barrelling along as if they’re training for the Olympic towpath-walking competition.
It wasn’t always like this.
Laura March left work at a couple of minutes after six on a spring evening where the sun was low and the shadows long. The police later followed her route via a series of shop CCTV cameras, which is why they know she stopped to talk to aBig Issueseller at 6:11 p.m. He told the police she asked whether he was hungry, before volunteering to pop into the Tesco Express to buy him something. He insisted he was fine, so, instead, she gave him a fiver and said she didn’t need a magazine.
There’s a moment in which the cameras catch Laura stop on the corner of the high street, look both ways, and then make a decision that cost her life.
If it had been a little wetter, or a little colder; if she’d been in more of a rush, or got trapped at work for longer than expected, she would have almost certainly turned left. Thatwould have taken her down the hill, towards the bus stop outside the Ladbrokes bookmaker. There, she would have caught the number nineteen bus, and taken the twenty-three-minute ride back to where she lived on the Glenhills Estate.
It was the same bus she caught every day that week.
Instead, Laura paused. Even from the CCTV, a viewer can sense that indecision. She glances up, then looks to her watch, before making her choice.
Laura waited for a silver Toyota to pass, and then crossed the road. She’s next seen by a jogger who was doing laps of the cricket club field. She watched Laura head around the back of the clubhouse, following the trail down to the canal.
From there, it was a forty-minute walk in something close to a straight line until she’d reach the Lock Inn pub, where she’d follow a gravelly path to the Glenhills Estate.
It’s a different time of day and year as I follow that same route. If anyone was asked whether they’d seen me, there would be those two lads on the canal boat; the couples in their walking gear; those on bikes. The path is a vibrant part of town life.
