by Helen Cox
Forty-one
‘Mal!’ Kitt screamed and then said to Banks: ‘Oh God, he’s got too tired. The current has sucked him under.’
Tearing her eyes away from Evie, Banks looked over at where Kitt was pointing.
Without a word she started taking off her shoes and jacket just as Halloran had done.
‘Wilkinson,’ she shouted at her colleague. ‘Get some bandages out of the first aid kit for these cuts. I’ve got to go after Halloran.’
‘Banks, no, you mustn’t,’ Kitt said.
‘I have to,’ said Banks.
‘No, Halloran wouldn’t want you to,’ she said.
‘Well then, he shouldn’t have bloody well jumped in himself,’ said Banks. ‘Be ready with that life ring,’ she said, before striding to the edge of the wharf, taking a deep breath and diving into the river. She came up for air a few seconds later, gasping with the shock of the cold but heading, undeterred, in the direction of the car in the hopes of finding Halloran.
Free of her bonds, Evie rolled onto her back and lay on the hard stone cobbles of the wharf, moaning and bleeding.
‘Oh, Evie, my God,’ Kitt said.
Wilkinson brought over some bandages and a blanket. He wrapped the blanket around Evie’s shoulders and then started trimming and taping bandage along the cuts, whilst keeping half an eye on the progress of Banks.
‘This is just temporary until you get to hospital,’ said Wilkinson. ‘You’re probably going to need a few stitches.’
Looking at the deep gouging on her friend’s face, it seemed to Kitt that Wilkinson was understating the matter slightly, but better that than alarm Evie.
Kitt divided her attentions then between rubbing the circulation back into Evie’s arms, and scanning the river for any sign of Halloran, or in case Banks signalled for help.
‘I thought I was going to die,’ said Evie. She seemed to be crying, but she was so saturated from her ordeal it was difficult to work out the exact source of all the water.
‘I know, love. It must have been terrifying. How did they get hold of you?’ Kitt asked, trying to ignore the fact that the bandages on her friend’s face were turning red quicker than she’d like.
‘They tricked me.’ Evie closed her eyes as she spoke. ‘They invited me out for a drink, but said they had to stop off at their place on the way.’
‘And they held you hostage there instead?’ asked Wilkinson, his attention split between Evie and Banks, who, Kitt could see, had reached the car and was swimming around it, looking for signs of life.
‘They tied me up. Gagged me,’ said Evie.
‘Kinky,’ said Kitt, willing to attempt anything to distract herself from how frightening those cuts across Evie’s face looked. Evie’s eyes flashed at Kitt. She was fighting a smile, and winning. ‘Too soon?’
‘Maybe wait till I’m at least in dry clothes?’
‘Noted.’
Wilkinson smirked, while looking out once more at the river. But all too soon the smirk was replaced by an anxious stare as he searched the river for his colleagues.
‘Did you find that letter?’ Evie asked through chattering teeth. ‘It wasn’t true, any of it. They said they’d kill me if I didn’t write it, like they had the others.’
‘I didn’t believe that letter for a second,’ said Kitt.
‘I knew you wouldn’t. They tried to make me believe you would though. They said all my friends and family would think I was a murderer, and that I might as well kill myself like the letter said. I refused and they said they would do it for me and make it look like a suicide. I’ve been tied up at Heather’s house since last night. Earlier this afternoon they . . . held a knife against my throat and made me swallow six diazepam tablets.’
‘Oh my God, Evie, I’m so, so sorry this happened to you,’ Kitt said, shaking her head and trying to digest everything her friend was telling her whilst keeping one eye on the river.
‘Given what had happened to their other victims I thought that was going to be the end of me. I can’t remember much because I was in and out of consciousness. I didn’t know where I was, or what they were going to do with me.’ Evie covered her face with her now-free right hand and then winced as she accidentally knocked one of her wounds.
Kitt leaned forward to comfort the poor soul, but the sound of more glass smashing drew her attention. Banks was using her baton to smash at what little of the windscreen was still above water. After a few hard swipes, the windscreen started to give and shortly after a large plate of the glass floated upwards and was carried off by the river, narrowly missing Banks. Banks took a deep breath and submerged her body again, leaning forward into the front of the car.
‘Is she really trying to save Heather?’ said Kitt.
‘She wants her to face the charges for what she’s done,’ said Wilkinson.
‘Oh God, why isn’t she coming up?’ said Kitt, her eyes fixed on the last visible part of the car roof.
Wilkinson and Evie, like Kitt, could do nothing but stare at the water. It probably wasn’t more than a minute but it felt like a lifetime, and then Banks’s face sprang out of the water. Her mouth wide, gasping for air. She had a limp-looking but vaguely conscious Heather in her arms. Trying not to think about the fact that the person Banks had pulled out of the water wasn’t Halloran, Kitt threw the life preserver out to the sergeant. She reached for it and, with the help of Kitt and Wilkinson, the pair were guided back to shore.
Heather had enough strength to frown at Kitt as she was hoisted over the edge of the wharf. Her long blonde hair was matted and her skin was almost blue. She lay face down, breathing hard, and spat out a stream of river water. Next, Kitt pulled Banks up over the ledge. She was gasping and wincing. From the look on her face it seemed even breathing was painful for her.
‘I’ve got to go back for Halloran,’ said Banks.
‘No,’ Kitt said. ‘You can’t. You’re exhausted. You’ll drown.’
‘We can’t just leave him to die,’ Banks said.
‘I know,’ said Kitt. She looked out at the water. Halloran had told her she wasn’t permitted to follow him into the river, but when he spoke those words he probably thought he had a good chance of coming out alive. She couldn’t just leave him. She couldn’t just let him die.
Kicking off her suede boots, she edged close to the water and looked into the river below, readying herself for the cold.
‘No way,’ said Wilkinson. ‘If anyone else is going in there, it’s me.’
‘Are you a strong swimmer?’ Kitt said, tilting her head at him. He looked as though he’d snap like a twig at the slightest pressure.
‘I’m all right,’ he said.
Kitt shook her head and started to remove her coat.
Slowly, she stepped towards the edge of the river and took a deep breath. ‘Courage, girl. Strength, metal,’ she said, but as she looked again into the watery depths, something made her pause. There was a dark shape just visible in the water. A face. A man’s face. The eyes a dark, unearthly grey. The head splashed out of the water, Kitt shrieked and jumped back in surprise. It was Heather’s accomplice. Or perhaps her boyfriend? Either way, seeing him at close range, she knew where she recognized him from. He’d been working behind the bar at Ashes to Ashes the night that Kitt had interrogated Ritchie. His job there would have made planting evidence in Ritchie’s locker a cinch. A moment later, Halloran’s head also splashed out of the water. He took a deep breath, spluttering from the water he’d swallowed.
Kitt helped the officers pull first the suspect and then Halloran out of the river. The second Halloran’s hand was in Kitt’s she breathed a sigh of relief. For his safety, and for the fact that she wasn’t going to have to jump in the river after him – that really wasn’t on her list of preferred activities.
Halloran, soaking and scratched from shards of glass, was panting hard enough
to split his lungs. Glaring at Heather, he used what must have been the last of his strength to manoeuvre himself into a kneeling position. He looked at Heather who, courtesy of Wilkinson, had already been handcuffed. ‘Heather Young, you are under arrest for perverting the course of justice, the kidnapping of Evelyn Bowes, and for the suspected murder of Owen Hall, Adam Kaminski, and Tim Diallo.’
‘Whatever,’ Heather said, glowering at Halloran. ‘None of it matters anyway.’
‘I suspect you’ll feel differently when you see the inside of a prison cell,’ said Halloran. ‘Or maybe if you have any capacity for understanding what your ex-fiancé will feel when he sees you on the news.’
Heather gritted her teeth. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. Lloyd will understand. He will see then, how much I love him.’
‘I wouldn’t count on that,’ said Halloran.
‘Shut up!’ Heather screeched, before fixing her eyes on Evie. ‘Owen got over you so quickly, you know. All the others needed persuasion. But he invited me into his own home with barely any prompting. Just the promise of a good time.’
Evie’s eyes widened and more tears followed those that had already fallen. Kitt gripped her friend’s shoulder.
‘All right,’ said Wilkinson. ‘That’s enough out of you, you can put the rest in your confession.’
‘My pleasure,’ said Heather, as Wilkson pulled her to her feet. ‘I won’t spare one detail. How easy it was to seduce them into a situation they weren’t coming out of alive. How they looked, right before they died.’
‘Come on,’ said Wilkinson, pushing the ranting Heather off towards his car.
Banks, somewhat recovered from her untimely swim, cuffed the bartender from Ashes to Ashes, who was still struggling for breath.
Halloran looked at Kitt and smiled; she smiled back, but the triumph written across his face was swiftly erased. The officer’s brow crumpled in agony. He clutched a hand to his side. Kitt could see blood gushing from around his hand.
‘What the—’ Kitt moved his hand for a moment and found a deep wound in Halloran’s side. She pressed both their hands against the cut, applying pressure. ‘What happened?’
‘H-Heather’s boyfriend,’ he stuttered, ‘had a knife.’
Kitt lay him back on the ground. ‘We need an ambulance,’ she shrieked at Banks.
‘They’re already on their way, or should be. I called them when I saw the car in the river,’ said Banks.
‘Bloody government cuts, you’d die before an ambulance reached you,’ said Kitt.
‘Comforting,’ Halloran groaned.
‘Sorry.’ Kitt winced, stroking his hair.
‘I’ll go and check on their status,’ said Banks. Wilkinson helped Banks back on her feet and she straggled back towards her car to use the radio.
Kitt took off her crimson winter coat, folded it under Halloran’s head, and brushed his hair out of his face. He coughed and his eyes didn’t seem able to focus on one thing. His white shirt had been ripped to shreds during his ordeal and was covered with blood. The tearing had revealed the tattoo on his right arm. It was a woman’s name. ‘Kamala’.
Halloran had his wife’s name inked on his skin. Kitt’s stomach tightened and her throat felt as if it was closing up. There was something unbearable about looking at it, about knowing he had loved someone else so much that he had committed her name to his body.
‘I’m sorry about all this,’ Halloran moaned.
Remembering where she was, Kitt shook her head and smiled down into Halloran’s face. ‘I should think so that you’re sorry. What a pain you are, getting injured. Most inconvenient.’
He managed a weak smile. ‘Don’t pretend that the wounded soldier look doesn’t work for me,’ he stammered, his teeth beginning to chatter.
‘Mmm, all right. I’ll give it to you. You’re about eight per cent more attractive with a bloody slash across your stomach. But you’re not to tell anyone I said so,’ Kitt said, taking Halloran’s free hand and squeezing it.
Halloran squeezed Kitt’s hand in return. ‘I thought girls from the Middlesbrough area were supposed to be tough. Surely this is no more than a scratch to you?’
‘Oh, it is only a scratch, but it’s impolite to make a person feel like they’re over-dramatizing at a time like this,’ Kitt said. Halloran’s eyes had a momentary glint in them, a suggestion that if he could have smiled just then he would have. In the same instant Kitt heard his breathing starting to slow.
‘I don’t want to be here.’ The words drifted out of Halloran’s lips.
‘Funny, I was just thinking the same thing,’ said Kitt. ‘Where do you want to be?’
As Kitt spoke she watched Halloran’s face contort into a smile, but just as before, his smile faded far too soon. His eyes began to close.
‘Mal,’ she said, and then again, ‘Mal!’ Kitt had read somewhere that the most comforting sound a person could ever hear was their own name. She understood that paramedics were told this when they were training. It could help people feel safe, and sometimes keep them conscious. In this case, however, the cold had eaten away at Halloran for too long and Kitt had no choice but to watch as his face lost all expression, while the ambulance sirens lamented somewhere in the distance.
Forty-two
‘I look like the Bride of Frankenstein,’ said Evie, sitting up in her hospital bed and for the first time daring to look into a mirror at the wounds that had been carefully stitched along her right temple and left jaw. ‘This is the giddy limit.’
Kitt shook her head at her friend’s phrasing. Even in extreme circumstances, it seemed, Evie had the energy to insert some antiquated saying or other into the conversation. ‘I always thought Elsa Lanchester rather alluring in that role.’
Evie let the mirror fall into her lap and scrunched her lips up at Kitt.
‘It’s your peculiar expressions, not the stitches, that make your face a funny one to look at,’ Kitt added with a twinkle in her eye.
Evie turned the mirror to her face again. ‘Oh God, I do look a bit funny when I pull that face, don’t I?’ She let out a short giggle, but in an instant she was running her fingertips along the side of her stitches, assessing the damage. Kitt only hoped her friend would heal from all that had befallen her in the last few weeks. Not just physically, but emotionally.
‘Hello you two,’ said a familiar voice.
‘DS Banks . . .’ Kitt’s eyes widened as she turned to see the sergeant wearing a pair of black slacks and an oversized grey hoodie. Her brown hair hung limp and damp around her shoulders. Given her past exchanges with Banks, it wasn’t a shock to Kitt that it took something as dramatic as a near-fatal car accident to get the officer to let her hair down. She was standing just inside the cubicle Evie had been assigned, bordered with a thin blue curtain.
‘I think now that you’ve dragged me out of a river, we can shift to a first-name basis,’ Banks said.
‘Charlotte, then,’ said Kitt.
‘Charley,’ Banks corrected.
‘Charley,’ Evie repeated. ‘I like that.’
Kitt watched her friend studying the officer. Banks certainly did look a lot different out of a suit and with her hair down. Everything about her seemed softer. Even more surprising was how coy Banks looked on hearing Evie compliment her name.
‘How are you feeling?’ Banks asked, taking a couple of steps further into the cubicle.
‘Fair to middling, all things considered.’ Evie shrugged. ‘The doctors said there’s likely to be some scarring. So I’ll either have to have some kind of treatment for them or take up a new career.’
Kitt turned to her friend and frowned. ‘Why? You love being a massage therapist.’
‘I know, but not many salon owners are going to employ someone with facial scarring. Not exactly the picture perfect image the beauty industry thrives on.’
‘I don’t really agree with Kitt on much,’ said Banks. ‘But I’m siding with her on this. People won’t disregard your vocational skills because of a couple of scars.’
‘You don’t think?’
‘If they try, you can refer them to me,’ said Banks. ‘Besides . . . scars can be beautiful, you know.’
‘You really think so?’
‘I do,’ Banks said with a smile, but then she glared across at Kitt, who was beginning to feel a little bit like a third wheel. ‘Halloran’s asking for you, Kitt. Walk out of here, down the corridor and take a left. His room is three doors down on the right-hand side, if I remember correctly.’
‘Oh, all right,’ she said, wondering if he really had asked for her or if this was just a way of Banks securing some alone time with Evie. ‘I’ll go and check in with him.’
Kitt squeezed Evie’s hand and the patient gave her a grin to let her know it was OK to leave her. She then turned and walked out of the curtained cubicle, towards the door and followed Banks’s instructions.
The door was open and Halloran was sitting on the edge of his bed. A male nurse was trying to coax him back into a lying position.
‘Please, Inspector,’ said the nurse, who was dressed in blue scrubs. ‘The doctor says you can’t get up yet.’
‘I’m perfectly fine,’ said Halloran, wincing even at the effort it took for him to push a hand through his dark hair, which was dishevelled from his impromptu swim. It had looked similar last night, after Halloran had kissed her, after she had run her fingers through it.
‘Is this patient giving you trouble?’ Kitt asked.
Both men turned. Halloran’s frown morphed into a slow smile.
‘I’ll take it from here, don’t worry,’ Kitt assured the nurse.
He looked between Kitt and Halloran, and with a nod left them alone.