Page 74 of The Tapes
It had been a normal day at the Shell petrol station for Ethan Collins. There had been a rush early in the morning as drivers filled up on their way to work or school drop-offs. After the usual mid-morning lull, Ethan had kept an eye on the tanker refill, though that had gone according to plan. At the end of his shift, his till receipt matched perfectly and he spent five minutes talking with his colleague about the weekend’s upcoming football matches.
From there, Ethan drove to the nearby Akbar’s, where he ordered a lamb madras for himself, a butter chicken for his girlfriend, and two garlic naans. A curry was their weekly treat, because Fridays was the evening their work shifts matched up, guaranteeing them an evening together. They’d eat from theirlaps and spend the night catching up on whatever their Sky Plus had recorded across the week.
Ethan parked on his driveway and headed through the side door, as he always did. He called for his girlfriend, only to be met by silence.
Eleanor Beale was dead on the floor of her own kitchen: her throat slit, an earring ripped away.
A little over three years have passed. Ethan never returned to the Shell petrol station, nor spent another night in that house. He is currently working in Hollicombe Bay, where he coaches his niece’s football team. They’re all under-ten and swarm the pitches in groups, everyone chasing the ball until it breaks to one of the lone girls standing in space.
‘It’s not really about tactics at this age,’ Ethan says. ‘I suppose it would be if you were at a big club, something like that, but these are kids. Sometimes you just want to chase the ball at that age, don’t you?’
Ethan has spent the past month working five-days-a-week as a part-coach, part-teacher, part-friend, part-parent to a group of a dozen girls who have been ever-present at football camp. We’re on the sidelines, watching as the ball bounces erratically around the hard ground. Five or six girls chase as one but the ball bounces off one of their legs, breaking to another girl who was standing separately. She can barely believe her luck as she runs through towards goal, before shooting wide. Ethan claps loudly. ‘Next time, Lyla. Next time. That’s great positioning. Good work.’
I wait a moment, although I already know the answer. ‘Is that your niece?’ I say.
‘Lyla,’ Ethan replies. ‘I suppose she’s not technically my niece. Eleanor’s sister has a pair of girls. Lyla’s here for the summer but Maddison’s a bit young. Maybe next year – but I don’t think football is her thing.’
Ethan jogs on and off, half refereeing, half watching. I do a lap of the field and spend some time watching the older children on an adjacent pitch. It’s a little over an hour later that I next catch up to Ethan. He waves off the last of his girls at pick-up time and then kicks the dried mud from his boots, before asking if I’m OK to sit on the floor. I tell him I am, even as my knees insist I’m not. We end up on the edge of the pitches as Ethan does a series of small stretches. He doesn’t stop moving as he talks.
‘I sort of blacked out,’ he says. ‘I remember taking the curries into the kitchen and then… They say I called the police but I only know that because there’s a recording. I was at the police station and they were asking what had happened during the day. I was talking to them about our curry night and I kept thinking Eleanor would come in and say it was all some weird joke. I couldn’t understand what had happened.’
Ethan finishes his stretches and momentarily lies flat on the grass before sitting up, his legs crossed. He no longer works at the petrol station and has started working self-employed as a personal trainer. It was always his goal. He’s the sort who’d knock off a 10k in the morning, before heading to the gym to spend the rest of the day helping others do the same.
‘We were talking about getting a puppy,’ Ethan says. ‘We were due to be married in the April and the long-term plan was to have children. Eleanor always wanted girls and I’d joke that I wanted boys but, really, it wouldn’t have mattered to me.’ He waits a moment, tugging restlessly at his vest. ‘I still think about it now: Ellie and me, our puppy, a couple of girls or boys, still having curry night on Fridays. It feels close but I know it’s gone.’
Ethan needs a minute and I let him have it. His way of working things out is exercise, so he jogs to one end of the field, turns and then sprints hard for ten seconds or so. He walks for another ten and then goes again.
The killing of Eleanor Beale was a big change from anything that had gone before. She was attacked in her own home, which left the police with many more questions than answers. Had she opened the door for an attacker? There were no signs of a break-in and, though her back door was unlocked, that wasn’t unusual. That door opened into a small yard, with an isolated cobbled alley behind, where residents stored their bins.
There were no witnesses to what happened, very little in the way of evidence, and no known motive. There were already eight unsolved killings but this provided even more of a puzzle for investigators. Why Eleanor? Was it random?
The town had gone through so much.
When Ethan finishes his sprints, he returns to where I’m sitting, beads of sweat dripping from his tanned face. He apologises, though there’s no need – then he jokes that he’s going to have to do his warm-down again.
There are nine named victims of the Earring Killer, all women – but the tendrils of evil stretch so much further into the community. People like Ethan are also victims, yet they’ve never been acknowledged as such.
Janice McNally is an outreach officer for the local network of churches. Her role encompasses a breadth that includes everything from visiting local schools to helping with a shelter set up to give vulnerable women a place to stay.
‘That escalation with poor Eleanor told women we weren’t even safe in our own homes,’ Janice says. ‘We’d already been told we had to go everywhere in pairs or groups; that we could protect ourselves if we chose not to wear earrings; that we should avoid nights outs. But then, even if a woman abided by all that, we were still under threat. If we can’t feel secure at home, how can we live our lives at all?’
Janice is a slight woman but she speaks with controlled fury. In the days after Eleanor’s death, she led a march through townin which almost six hundred women united to demand police do something.
‘We were desperate,’ Janice says. ‘Maybe we still are.’
Partly in response to that community anger, the police agreed to extra patrols and a more visible presence in town – especially after dark.
But would it be enough?
Seventeen years had passed since the first killing, nine women were dead, yet still the Earring Killer roamed.
THIRTY-SEVEN
I’m a cartoon character as tweeting birds circle my head. There are green and purple stars and, when I try to move, everything spins.
Not that I can move far.
I’m in a sitting position but perhaps it’s more of a slump. The cold ground seeps through my trousers, chilling my aching backside, as I fidget to try to get my bearings. My hands are tied to something behind my back, while something harsh digs into my wrists when I try to wriggle free.
