Claire Soo

Claire Soo

 

 

M

y son, Stephen, walks into the front room. I lower my newspaper. I take off my glasses. Stephen holds out his hands. They are a fabulous red.

“What you got on your hands, Stevie?”

He is framed by the door as if in a painting.

“Is that…blood?”

He nods.

I sit up.

“You hurt yourself?”

He shakes his head.

“Somebody else hurt?”

He nods.

“Who, Stephen? Who’s hurt?”

The woods are blanketed in rotting leaves. A wind rocks the trees, their trunks creaking ever so slightly. Stephen’s little hand is in mine, pulling me towards a nightmare that is just about to begin. He keeps looking back, his face fearful of a beast only he can see. I look up. A crow calls out, its shrill voice drifting out over an ocean of silence.

“There.”

Stephen points.

A girl lies spread out on the forest floor. Her face is pale. Her hair a damp wad. Her chest a bloody mess. My Stanley knife is wedged in her rib cage. I look at her hands. One is clenched into a fist. The other is not.

I turn to Stephen.

“You did this, didn’t you?”

He nods.

The crow from the tree hops about near us, eavesdropping.

“Did anyone see you, Stephen?”

He shakes his head.

“You sure? It’s real important.”

He nods.

“We have to move her.”

The crow takes off.

“Go back to the house. Get some bin bags and the holdall from under the stairs. There’s some black tape next to it. Bring that too.”

I watch my son walk away. Stephen. A little boy.

“Run,” I shout. He turns round: a fox caught in the lights of an oncoming car. “Run, Stephen. Run!”

He pauses. Then scampers home.

I rest against a tree. Slide to the ground. Put my head in my hands and unbelievably, I sleep. Maybe it is only for a matter of seconds but it is enough to find my way to her. Her breasts. Her smell. Her embrace. Her taste. It is just enough.

I tell Stephen to pull the knife from her chest.

He shakes his head.

“Pull it out.”

He shakes his head.

“Pull the fucking thing out!”

He stares. I grab his arm. I pull him towards her, my breath in his face. I repeat:

“Pull the knife out of her.”

He shakes his head.

“Fuck!”

I wrap my hand round his. I grip him. And together our hands pull the knife free. It makes a noise as it comes free. Stephen laughs.

“Sounds like Ketchup from the squeezy bottle.”

I slap him. Hard.

“Don’t laugh, Stephen! Don’t fucking laugh. There is nothing funny about this. Understand?”

He looks distant. Morally vacant.

“Give me a black bag.”

I pull it up and over her torso.

“The tape.”

I wrap it around her, tightly.

“Another bag.”

I cover her spindly legs; her dainty socks; her polished shoes. Briefly, I see a distorted me reflected in their surface.

I wrap more tape round her, until she is a cocoon.

She won’t fit into the holdall. So I break her legs. It takes effort. I sweat. Stephen doesn’t flinch.

The sun decides to set.

I put the holdall down in the garage next to the car.

“We can’t bury her near here. We have to drive far away. And now. Bury her tonight. Understand?”

Stephen stares.

“We don’t have much time. The woods is one of the first places they’re gonna look.”

I put my arms on Stephen’s shoulders.

“Her parents: did they…did they know who she was meeting?”

He shakes his head.

“It was a secret? Between you and her?”

He nods.

“Okay. Okay. That’s good. That’s good, Stephen.”

She used to love driving at night. She said it was the only time when life seemed to find time to breathe. She’d sit in the back, curl up into a ball. I’d watch her through the rearview mirror. She was at peace.

I move the mirror. Stephen’s face is intermittently lit by the lights of passing cars.

“Stephen?”

He looks at me.

“You okay?”

He shrugs his shoulders

“You wanna stop and get something to eat?”

We turn off the road and find somewhere quiet.

Stephen plays with his fried egg, swamping the plate with the broken yoke. He yawns.

“You don’t need to go to school tomorrow,” I whisper.

“Did I do bad, dad?”

A man is looking at me from the corner of the restaurant.

I dip a slice of bread in Stephen’s egg.

“Yes.”

The egg yoke is sticky on my tongue.

“You can never tell anyone about this. No-one. Not a friend. Not granny. Absolutely no-one. Understand? This is the biggest secret you are ever going to have to keep. And I need you to keep it. Lock it deep down inside you. Can you do that?”

The man coughs loudly.

“Stephen? Can you do that?”

“I guess.”

I take his hands.

“Promise me.”

He is sweating. His palms are wet.

Smoke drifts across from a burning cigarette.

Stephen nods like he means it.

I squeeze his hands.

“I love you, Stephen.”

He goes back to school on Wednesday. I am waiting for him when he comes home.

“Did the police speak to you?”

He nods. His rucksack hangs off one shoulder.

“What did they ask?”

“Many things.”

“Like?”

He shrugs.

“Many things. I don’t remember good.”

“What did you say?”

He shrugs.

“What does that mean?”

He lets his bag slide to the floor.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. I just looked sad. Like you told me.”

“What did they say at the end?”

“End of what?”

“End of the interview! The end of the fucking interview, Stephen!”

“I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember? How the fuck can’t you remember? You only spoke to them today. Today!”

“Well. I don’t remember.”

“Jesus!”

He kicks his rucksack.

“I want to go to the woods.”

“What?! No! No, Stephen. You can’t go into the woods anymore.”

“But I like the woods. Why can’t I go? I want to go.”

“You know why you can’t.”

“No. No, I don’t.”

He is spitting. He’s been doing that a lot lately.

“Yes, you do. Don’t push me, Stephen.”

“I want mum.”

“Mum?”

“When is she coming home?”

I stare.

“She isn’t. We’ve been through this.”

“She lets me play in the woods.”

“How about a film and some pizza?”

“No.”

“We haven’t watched a film in ages.”

“I don’t want to watch a film.”

“We could go to McDonald’s.”

“No. I don’t like McDonald’s.”

“So…what do you want to do?”

His tired eyes fix on a distant memory. There is a brief respite. I hear my own heart in my ears.

“I want to see mummy.”

“I don’t know where she is. That’s the truth. I don’t know where she is.”

I put a hand out against a wall to steady myself.

“Why did she go?”

He looks at me, his eyes wet.

I think.

“Because sometimes the love just goes.”

“Does she have a new family?”

“Maybe.”

“Does that make you mad?”

He reminds me of her.

“Does it make you mad, Stephen?”

The news is about nothing else except her. Claire Soo. Her face seems to wallpapaer everything. She was pretty. This probably helps. Her parents are dramatically distraught. This probably helps. We hunger for only one denouement.  This definitely helps.

One expert says: “when are we going to stop making excuses for these evil people…” - I think she means murderers, like Stephen – “…these are simply evil people who want to kill. And until everybody in the world calls it by name - the evil that it is - stops making excuses for them, then I think we’re going to have a problem.”

Another says: “human behavior is complex, determined by a multitude of experiences, influences, interpretations, misgivings. We need to work with what we have, which isn’t a lot, rather than slapping labels too readily onto anyone’s head.”

I look at Stephen. My son. He holds a model airplane in his hands, which he built himself. The wings are wonky. The cockpit hangs loose. Dried glue has crusted over a number of joints. I just want to hold him in my arms.

Other news stories break and gradually Claire Soo retreats. Each day the column space her story fills is less and less. Without a body, rape, blood, mutilation, nobody can be bothered caring for too long. Her parents try. They set up a website. Pay for advertising. Collect money. But really nobody could give a shit. A small nation fights for its independence. This is what we are to care about now. Claire Soo has become less important than a railway strike. Until…

The police arrest a man. The TV shows a picture of him. A staid, old passport photo that contrasts brilliantly with the vibrancy and innocence of Claire’s smiling face. From that moment, he is guilty. Forty-six years old. Pedophile. Former teacher. Glasses. Bald. Never married. No kids. There’s no doubt. It has to be him. Neighbours knew he was odd. He kept to himself. Curtains were drawn in the day. They find CCTV footage of him. Hunched. Shopping. Grainy black and white. He looks at the CCTV camera. Hold. When he is sentenced, it is that image that fills the front pages. There is no body, but at least they got someone.

I pick Stephen up from school. A heavy frost is bedding down for the night. I watch him pad past kids. They look. They give him a wide berth, like they know.

“What do you want to be when you’re older, Stevie?”

We are eating Chinese takeaway.

He shrugs.

“Come on. There must be something?”

He looks up.

“We had to watch a film today. About abortion. They showed a baby’s head being crushed. Then it was in a flower pot. Dead. I want to do that.”

“You mean: be a doctor?”

“No. I want to crush babies’ heads. That’s what I want to do.”

He chews his food. Sweet-and-sour sauce runs down his chin.