The importance of being eleven-years-old Chapter 1, a lewis fanfic

Hathaway

In his dreams all he can hear is a steady drip…...drip…drip…drip…...

The sound of an overflow pipe dripping water through a hole in the top of a water cistern in the attic of a very respectable suburban home. One of the nicest areas of Oxford in fact, and Oxford seems to have plenty of 'nice' areas.

drip…

drip...

It's not a loud noise, not something that would keep the occupants of the house or even the neighbours awake at night. You cannot hear it unless you are in the attic, not unless you are right beside the cistern.

drip…

drip…...

drip…

It took them three days to figure it out.

Three days of frantic searching and questioning, three days of frustration after frustration, of pointless interviews with suspects who were too afraid or too stupid to help. Three days of chasing leads down blind alleyways, of theorising and arguments, of too much coffee and too many cigarettes and too little sleep.

Which could be any of their cases really. But this was different because this was a child. A ten-year-old girl who had been given permission by her cautious and loving parents to go the shops 4 doors down from her house alone for the first time because she had begged and begged, because all her friends were allowed and why couldn't she?

{"But I'm nearly 11"}

An almost eleven-year-old girl who had gone missing just after lunchtime on a very ordinary Saturday in one of the 'nicest' areas of Oxford. An almost eleven-year-old girl whose parents had frantically searched and searched for, ringing the police and everyone they knew to help. Good parents. Ordinary hard-working good parents with no skeletons in their closet and no secrets to hide and who had done nothing wrong, who knew like every parent that at some point they would need to start their daughter off on the road to independence.

drip…

Immediately afterwards it was in his head all the time, that noise, but it was loudest at night, whether lying in bed awake or asleep in dreaming. That noise and the sound of his own heart as he opened the lid of the water tank and everything stopped.

drip…

drip….

After a time, it had quieted away. Work, new murders, new suspects, beers and Chinese takeaway in his Inspectors living room, unspoken conversations, invisible arms holding his head above water while never saying a word, never having to.

It helped. They all helped it to fade away.

Three days out from the court case the sound came back. Softly at first, a faded background noise, He checked every tap to make sure they were properly off. They were and he knew they would be. That night he lay awake, his eyes shut, trying to concentrate on something, anything but the sound in his head.

drip…

Then came the dream and when he awoke the next morning he could feel his heart and his stomach and his mind hollowed out again, like a vacuum that was just filled with white noise and water and all he could think about was her. And that they were too late. That they should have worked faster, understood quicker, gotten angrier and pushed for answers. That they had failed. That an almost eleven-year-old would never be an actual eleven-year-old.

drip…

Peter Zalinski was a friend of the family. Not a close friend. Not someone who called around for coffee or played golf with the dad, not like that. They had met at a drinks party one Christmas; he was an architect and had called to the house shortly after to advise them on an extension they were planning. He was polite and friendly, married with 3 girls of his own {"I never touched my girls, I wouldn't, I wouldn't touch my girls ever"} He'd overseen the project and charged them a very reasonable fee and they had shared a bottle of wine to celebrate when the builders finally left. Sitting in the breakfast bar with dust and unpainted walls everywhere.

She must have been there too, maybe playing in the garden, maybe watching something on her tablet or on TV. She knew him, but maybe never warmed to him like she did with some of Mummy and Daddy's other friends. Children have better instincts and are less inclined to talk themselves out of believing them. Even ten-year-olds aspiring to be independent eleven-year-olds.

drip…

The night before the trial the noise becomes so loud, and so incessant and the dream is so real that when he wakes up its all he can hear is that noise. Climbing into the attic he'd known straightaway it was wrong. That drip…drip…drip wasn't the sound of water dripping onto water. There's a subtle difference. And he's a good detective. And he thought he would be able for it, would be able to handle whatever was under that lid because that was his job. He's found bodies before, he's seen people, people he was close to even, lying dead in front of him.

But they weren't a ten (almost eleven) year-old-girl lying naked in a freezing cold-water tank at the top of a very ordinary detached house in a 'nice' part of Oxford. They weren't an almost eleven-year-old girl who had gone to the shop with a five pound note to spend {"Get some milk, and biscuits for tea, you choose what ones"} and who instead had been swept off the street and raped and killed while three girls played in their next door neighbours garden.

drip…

Brown, shoulder length curly hair and brown eyes. Big brown eyes that stare blankly up at him as he holds her head out of the water and desperately tries CPR even though he knows she is dead, knows she has been there for some time, knows it no good. And all the time he's desperately waiting for the sound of a cough or a splutter or a breath and all he can here is that bloody dripping pipe and its not rational but its like the pipe is the thing that killed her. Like she would have been okay if that pipe hadn't kept dripping water in on top of her.

drip…

He knows the evils that people are capable of, more than he had ever realised, more than he had ever wanted to know. In the Seminary they talked good and evil all the time, but theoretical evil is much easier to understand, to justify, to accept. Real evil is painful and hard. It hits you across the chest and makes it hard to breathe, it punches you in the face so that your eyes close and fill with tears, your brain trying to find alternative answers, trying and failing to process that what is right in front of you has actually happened, is actually real. You can't debate real evil, can't understand it or justify it or look for reasons why it happened and how it could have been avoided.

Sometimes its just an almost eleven-year-old girl who did nothing wrong and is lying dead in his arms, her head being kept above water even though she's clearly dead because he cannot bear to let her fall back into that cold water and cannot move the body until someone {Laura} comes.

drip…

And now it's the day of the trial he's standing here beside Detective Inspector Lewis, waiting to be called, waiting to face the man who denied everything, who wouldn't even have the common decency to confess. And the noise and the drip, drip, drip won't stop, and now there's other noises alongside it, a whoosh as he lifts her head out of the water, the sound of his breath entering her body, the gentle lapping of the water in the cistern, the sound of the voice in his head shouting "NO! NO! NO!" and they are getting louder and louder and louder and ….

"Detective Sergeant Hathaway?" An ordinary noise, the sound of a court clerk calling his name.

And just like his head is a little quieter. When Lewis asks him if he's "Alright?" he says yes, because even though he's not and maybe he never will, maybe the noise and the girl and the water will never really go away. But he can do his job, this time he can get it right, he can stand up and talk about what he saw and make sure the next almost eleven-year-old can run home, excited to have bought her favourite chocolate biscuits and to tell her Mummy and Daddy all about the first time she want to the shop alone.

Any maybe someday he can say all this out loud to someone and the sounds will fade away forever.

Maybe.

END