Authors: Michael Robotham
Close Your Eyes
Michael Robotham started his career as a journalist but then became a ghostwriter, writing many bestselling autobiographies in collaboration with politicians, pop stars, psychologists, adventurers and showbusiness personalities. His thrillers have been translated into twenty-two languages and he has twice won Australia’s Ned Kelly Award for best crime novel. He was shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger in 2007 and 2008 and was also shortlisted for the inaugural ITV3 Thriller Awards.
The Drowning Man (aka Lost)
The Night Ferry
Shatter
Bombproof
Bleed for Me
The Wreckage
Say You’re Sorry
Watching You
Life or Death
COPYRIGHT
Published by Sphere
ISBN: 9781405530668
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © Bookwrite Pty 2015
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
Sphere
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DY
Contents
For all those victims of domestic violence –
may we
never
close our eyes.
Thanks to all at Little Brown Book Group UK, Mulholland in the US, Hachette Australia, Goldmann in Germany, de Bezige Bij in the Netherlands and all of my international publishers and translators. In particular I wish to thank Mark Lucas, Richard Pine, Ursula Mackenzie, Georg Reuchlein, David Shelley, Lucy Malagoni, Josh Kendall, Melissa van der Wagt, Louise Sherwin Stark, Justin Ratcliffe, Nicki Kennedy and Sam Edenborough.
A year ago, on July 2nd, 2014, I lost one of my great champions, my Australian publisher Matt Richell, who was killed in a surfing accident at Bronte Beach in Sydney. Matt was not just a brilliant publisher but a wonderful friend, father, son, brother and husband. This book is for him.
Finally, as always, I wish to thank my three daughters, Alex, Charlotte and Bella, along with my long-suffering wife, Vivien, who has been my designated reader, sounding board, whipping post, life coach, publicist, cajoler, flatterer, confidante and true love. Should there be a Heaven it will have a special place for the husbands, wives, partners and children of writers.
My mother died with her head in another man’s lap. The car collided head-on with a milk tanker, which in turn crashed into an oak tree, sending acorns pinging and bouncing off the bodywork like hailstones. Mr Shearer lost an appendage. I lost my mother. Fate laughs at probabilities.
The car was a bright red Fiesta that my mother called her ‘sexy little beast’. She bought it second-hand and had it resprayed at some back-street cutting shop my father knew about. I watched her leave that day. I stood at the upstairs window as she reversed out of the driveway and drove past the Tinklers’ house and Mrs Evans who was pruning her rose bushes and Millicent Jackson who lives on the corner with her twelve cats. I didn’t realise that my world was coming apart until later. It was as though she had taken hold of a loose thread and the further she drove away from me the more the thread unravelled like a cheap sweater, first the sleeve, then the shoulder, then the front and back until I was standing naked at the window.
My Aunt Kate told me what happened – not the whole story, of course – nobody tells a seven-year-old that his mother died with a penis in her mouth. Those details tend to be glossed over like plot holes in a shitty movie or questions about how Santa Claus squeezes down all those chimneys in a single night. Everybody at my school knew before I did (about my mother, not Santa Claus). Some of the older boys couldn’t wait to tell me, while the girls giggled behind their hands.
My father said nothing, not that first day or the next or any of the subsequent ones. Instead he sat in his armchair, mouthing words as though conducting some unfinished argument. One day I asked him if Mum was in Heaven.
‘No.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Rotting in Hell.’
‘But Hell is for bad people.’
‘It’s what she deserves.’
I had always assumed that Mr Shearer also went to Hell, but discovered later that he survived the crash. I don’t know if they reattached his penis. I don’t expect they cremated it with my mother. Maybe they had to make him a prosthetic one – a bionic penis – but that sounds like something from a cheap porno.
Details like this have stayed with me while most of my other childhood memories disappeared into the long grass. My mother’s final day, in particular, is fixed in my mind, flickering against my closed eyelids, light and dark, playing on a continuous loop like an old home movie. I have protected and preserved these scenes because so little remained of my mother after my father had finished expunging her from his life and mine.
I cling to them still, these fragments of my childhood, some real, others imagined, polished like gems and as tangible and definite to me as the world I walk through now, as solid as the trees and as cool as the sea breeze. I stand on the brow of a hill and look at the spired town, shimmering beneath shades of darkening blue. Thin wisps of cloud are like chalk marks on the cold upper air. Beyond the rooftops, past the headlands and rocky beaches and sandstone cliffs, I can make out the distant shore where fallen boulders resemble sculptures, carved and smoothed by the weather.
I am not a fast walker. I take my time, stopping and pointing out things. Sheep. Cows. Birds. Horses. I make the sounds. Sheep are such passive, apathetic creatures, don’t you think? There is no intelligence in their eyes – not like dogs or horses. Sheep are just blobs of wool, blindly obedient, ignorant, as gullible as lemmings.
The footpath reaches a blind bend, hidden by the trees. This is a good place to wait. I sit with my back braced against a trunk and take an apple from my pocket, along with a blade.
‘Would you like a piece?’ I ask. ‘No? Suit yourself. You keep walking.’
I don’t mind waiting. Patience is not an absence of action – it is about timing. We wait to be born, we wait to grow up and we wait to grow old … Some days, most days, I go home disappointed, but not unhappy. There will always be other opportunities. I have the patience of a fisherman. I have the patience of Job. I know all about the saints, how Satan destroyed Job’s family and his livestock and turned him from a rich man to a childless pauper overnight, yet Job refused to condemn God for his suffering.
The breeze moves through the branches of the trees and I can smell the salt and the seaweed drying on the shingle. A sharper gust of wind blows leaves against my legs and somewhere above me a dove coos monotonously. Then a dog barks, setting off a conversation with others, back and forth, bantering or grandstanding.
I get up and put on my mask. I slip my hand into my trousers and cup my scrotum. My penis doesn’t seem to belong to me. It looks incongruous, like a strange worm that doesn’t know if it wants to be a tail or a talisman.
Withdrawing my hand, I sniff my fingers and lean against the tree, watching the path. This is the right place. This is where I want to be. She will be along soon, if not today then perhaps tomorrow.
My father liked to fish. He had so little patience with most things in life, yet could spend hours staring at the tip of his rod or the float bobbing on the surface of the water, humming to himself.
‘Thou shall have a fishy on a little dishy,
Thou shall have a fishy when the boat comes in.’
‘You can’t lie on the grass,’ says a voice.
‘Pardon?’
‘You’re on the grass.’
A figure stands over me, blocking the sun. I can only see his outline until he moves his head and then I’m blinded by the glare.
‘I didn’t see a sign,’ I say, shielding my eyes, my hand glowing pinkly around the edges.
‘Someone stole it,’ says the university porter, who is wearing a bowler hat, blue blazer and the requisite college tie. He’s in his sixties with grey hair trimmed everywhere except his eyebrows, which resemble twin caterpillars chasing each other across his forehead.
‘I didn’t think Oxford suffered petty crime,’ I say.
‘Student high jinks,’ explains the porter. ‘Some of ’em are too bloody clever for their own good, if you’ll pardon my language, sir.’
He offers his hand and helps me to stand. As if by magic, he produces a lint roller from his coat pocket and runs it over my shoulders and the back of my shirt, collecting the grass clippings. He takes my sports jacket and holds it open. I feel as though I’m Bertie Wooster being dressed by Jeeves.
‘Were you a gownie, sir?’
‘No. I went to university in London.’
The porter nods. ‘It was Durham for me. More an open prison than a place of higher learning.’
I find it hard to imagine this man ever being a student. No, that’s not true. I can picture him as an overbearing prefect at some minor boarding school in Hertfordshire in the 1960s, where he had an unfortunate nickname like Fishy Rowe or Crappy Cox.
‘Why can’t people lie on the grass?’ I ask. ‘It’s a lovely day – the sun is shining, the birds are singing.’
‘Tradition,’ he says, as though this should explain everything. ‘No walking on the grass, no sitting on the grass, no dancing on the grass.’
‘Or the Empire will crumble.’
‘Bit late for that,’ he admits. ‘Are you sure we haven’t met, sir? I’m pretty good with faces.’
‘Positive.’
He snaps his fingers exultantly. ‘You’re that psychologist. I’ve seen you on the news.’ He’s wagging his finger now. ‘Professor Joseph O’Loughlin, isn’t it? You helped find that missing girl. What was her name? Don’t tell me. It’s on the tip of … the tip of … Piper, that’s it. Piper Hadley.’ He beams as though waiting to be congratulated. ‘What brings you here? Are you going to be lecturing?’
‘No.’
I glance across the college lawn where coloured flags flutter above the entrances and balloons hang from windows. The university Open Day is in full swing and students are manning tables and stalls, handing out brochures to prospective undergraduates, publicising the various courses, clubs and activities. There is a Real Ale Society and a Rock Music Society and a C. S. Lewis Society; and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer/Questioning Society – a mouthful whichever way you swing.
‘My daughter is looking over the colleges,’ I say. ‘She and her mother are inside.’
‘Excellent,’ says the porter. ‘Has she been offered a place?’
‘I’m not sure,’ I say, trying to sound informed. ‘I mean, I think so, or she might still take a gap year.’ In truth, I have no idea. The porter frowns and his eyebrows begin to crawl, dipping and bowing above his eyes.
My body chooses that moment to freeze and I’m caught in a classic James Bond crouch, without the gun of course, my face rigid and body locked in place like I’m a playing a game of musical statues.