I dodge around a car coming up the ramp from below and change direction to head toward him. A van passes in front of him as the phone buzzes again in my hand.
You have until tonight.
For a crazy second I think it must be him who’s sending me these taunting messages, who’s threatening my family as casually as sending a text on a Monday morning. I break into a run, sprinting up the ramp to the next level, my head pounding, scanning left and right to see which way he went.
But there’s only a blonde woman in jeans and a jacket getting out of a Range Rover.
The figure in the gray coat is gone.
It’s a five-minute walk from the car park and I watch for the gray-coated man all the way, doubling back and taking an indirect route to see if he’s following me.
I don’t catch sight of him again.
The city’s central library is a modern glass-fronted building near the train station, with high ceilings and plenty of space between the bookcases. The microfiche reader sits in a corner at the back and looks decades old, cream plastic surrounding a large screen, with a pair of control wheels—one horizontal, one vertical—instead of a keyboard.
A staff member hunts out a cardboard box from a rack behind the desk, sliding out a sheaf of densely printed transparent plastic sheets and checking the tab at the top of the first one:Nottingham Evening Post 1/12/2001–4/12/2001.
“Each one of these sheets is about three days’ worth of papers,” he says. The screen lights up as he switches the reader on and slides in one of the clear plastic sheets. “Each page of the city final edition, reduced to four percent of its original dimensions. The lens magnifies it back up to legible size. Controls here and here for moving the lens from one page to the next.”
He wanders off back to the front desk. I sit down at the reader and flick through the cardboard box of plastic microfiche sheets, the printing impossibly small for the naked eye, tiny consecutive pages laid out in rows side by side.
Elizabeth Makepeace and Peter Flack had died on December 27, 2001, but both of them had lived in my house for years—or maybe decades—before that. I start with that day’s edition, scanning each page carefully for any mention of sudden or unexpected deaths. The type is thick and old-fashioned, the headlines blocky; the whole thing has the feel of a period piece, like something you might discover under the lining of an old carpet.
I scan through pages, slowly at first, moving more quickly as I get the hang of it. The single page of national news on the twenty-seventh is dominated by news of the “shoe bomber” Richard Reid, who had been arrested after trying to bring down a transatlantic flight with explosives in his shoes. The next day’s national story is about the recent invasion of Afghanistan, following the 9/11 attacks.
The first hint of what I’m actually looking for is in the New Year’s Eve edition: a few paragraphs on page two. No names, no details, simply that police had been called to an address on Regency Place in The Park after the discovery of two bodies in circumstances the police were treating as “unexplained.” I take a picture of the story on my phone. On the second of January, there is a longer piece that takes up half a page under the headlinePOLICE PROBE DOUBLE TRAGEDY. In the article itself, there are quotes from neighbors and friends paying tribute to the pair and describing how Peter,a doting grandson, had lived with his grandma since his mother died when he was a boy, his father having long since departed.
I don’t recognize any names among the people quoted, and frustratingly it still doesn’t give a cause of death.
But itdoeshave photos of both victims. Elizabeth is a small, frail-looking woman with a halo of snowy hair, leaning on awalking stick at what looks like a garden party. Her grandson is the absolute opposite in every respect: a broad-shouldered man in his prime, with dark hair and a strong jaw, laughing eyes that brim with confidence and charisma. In the picture he’s wearing a muddy rugby shirt, grinning as he holds up a trophy.
I take photos of everything and scroll on through the next day, and the next, each edition comprising dozens of pages. Scanning every article, large and small, for any mention of the mysterious deaths that had happened two days after Christmas. I slot in another of the microfiche sheets and keep going, my head starting to ache as I stare at page after page of black type on the backlit screen. Scrolling, scanning, moving onto the next page. I reach the end of the sheet, then go through the whole of the next one without finding a single mention. Surely there would have been an update, a court report, something from the police? Perhaps I’ve missed it. I rub my eyes, scan back through again before reaching for the next sheet and slotting it under the lens.
I find the answer on January 11th.
I stop, the breath catching in my throat. Reading every word of a story that takes up most of page five, not quite sure yet what it means or how it fits into everything else. Even as I know in my gut that it’s another piece of the puzzle. Because there was no crime, no dramatic incident all those years ago. No attack, no intruder, no murder-suicide. No perplexing mystery still waiting to be solved.
It had been a tragic accident.
52
Elizabeth Makepeace and Peter Flack had died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Not deliberate, not in the garage with a hosepipe attached to the exhaust of a car, but because of a faulty gas fire turned all the way up on a cold December night.
According to an inquest opened early in the new year, 2002, post-mortems had revealed fatal levels of carbon monoxide in the blood and tissue of both victims. Subsequent testing of an old gas fire used to heat the sitting room had found it was leaking “significant” amounts of the gas—which had no telltale odor, color, or taste. With the heater on maximum and the hall door closed off with draft excluders to warm up the old room, the build-up of gas had reached toxic levels. Both Elizabeth and her grandson, the coroner surmised, had been watching TV after dinner and had slipped into an unconsciousness from which they never awoke. With a horrible jolt of shock, I realize the story also features a grainy black-and-white picture ofmy house. The picture caption reads: “DOUBLE TRAGEDY—Victorian villa in The Park where pensioner and grandson died.”
I comb through the rest of the inquest report to make sure I don’t miss anything. The alarm had been raised on December 30th by a family friend who stopped by to wish Mrs. Makepeace and her grandson a happy new year. The curtains were closedeven though it was daytime, and they could hear the noise of the TV but nothing else. By this time the friend had already noticed that a phone call to Elizabeth had not been returned, and that she had missed their regular Friday morning coffee group.
Peter had been out for a lunchtime drink with friends on the 27th and that was the last time he was seen alive, before returning home for what had turned out to be a last supper with his grandmother.
According to the police, there were no suspicious circumstances, or any indication of a third party being involved. Foul play had been ruled out, so there was never a criminal investigation. I wonder, as I reread the article, whether Peter Flack might have had a sibling, a child, some other relative who had come out of the woodwork after all these years to do… what, exactly? Was it the watch, had it originally belonged to him? But there’s no mention of wider family in any of the articles.
I replace the microfiche sheets in their cardboard folder, switch off the machine, and head out, keeping a wary eye out for the gray-coated man all the way up the hill.
A police patrol car pulls up to the curb outside my house as I’m putting my key in the front door. And, once again, I find myself sitting in my lounge opposite PC James although he’s with a different partner this time, a stern forty-something who introduces herself as Sergeant Okoro, both of them festooned with equipment, cuffs, radios, spray, batons, pouches, and body-worn cameras. I take them through the events of Saturday nightas James makes notes in a small pad and Okoro listens, asking pointed questions now and again.
“So,” she says eventually. “Just so I’m clear on the facts: there are no indications of forced entry, no damage to the property, and nothing was stolenfromthe property during this power cut.”
