by Diane Saxon
Jenna scanned the room. With none of her familiar team available to call upon, she sailed on through without picking anyone else up. She'd rather have Mason or Ryan with her, but they weren’t on until later. If she grabbed someone from the other shift, she’d have to hustle things around so they could fit in with her or vice versa. Sometimes it wasn’t worth the hassle.
She could deal with a sudden death on her own.
As a thought occurred to her, she clicked the radio back on. ‘Morris, can you make sure you get a hold of SOCO.’ More important than the dead woman they could do nothing for, it was essential to get a scene guard in place for preservation of forensic evidence. If it was an accident, all well and good. If it was murder and they’d failed in the first steps of preserving a scene, they were buggered.
‘Already done, Sarg.’ His melodic tones floated over Airwaves.
Of course, it was. Cool and efficient, Morris would have coped, doling out jobs in a controlled, efficient manner, no matter what the panic. His calm, composed nature a boon to the position he held. Not all operators were like that. Not all police officers were like her team.
She sucked air in through her teeth while she blocked the avenue of thought nudging at her. She had a good team. The best. They’d be back on shift soon enough. She could redistribute the workload then.
In the meantime, she had a job to do and a little juggling with a case that could go either way. Accident. Murder. Her mind scanned through the possibilities of what she was likely to find when she arrived at the house.
Jenna’s long legs ate up the distance through the dim electric-lit high-ceilinged corridors of Malinsgate police station. She opted to take the stairwell instead of the lift and made short work of trotting down, appreciating the dip in temperature through the hallways. She had no urge to go to the gym as others did but kept slim and gained her exercise through taking the stairs and walking a huge Dalmatian most days.
With Domino pushing into her thought process, she smiled as she bumped through the door and made her way to the front desk. She swiped up the keys to the brand-new police car and waggled them in the air at the civilian operator at the other end of the office. An edge of excitement spiked her pulse. One advantage of working Sunday, she got the choice of car and not the one that smelled of piss and puke this time.
With a quick stroke of a pen, she signed the car out and stepped outside Malinsgate Police Station.
Constructed in the 1980s, the ugly brick and flat faced glass building was in need of a thorough renovation, or possible demolition. She’d thought the air con in the rest of the station hadn’t been working, but the truth of it was, it was a damned hot day, and anything would struggle to keep the temperatures down.
The heat of the day blasted through and made her regret even more the decision to wear her heavy trousers. She jogged over the bridge and made for the car, desperate to get inside so she could blast out some cool air.
The driver’s seat was in the shade, if not she suspected she would have scorched her hands on the leather steering wheel. The fresh smell of new leather lifted her spirits as she slipped inside the car and strapped herself in. The job needed to be done, but it didn’t mean you couldn’t take your pleasure where you found it.
It took her a millisecond to find the push-button starter as she dropped the key fob into the central console. It took her a millisecond longer to realise the car she was about to drive was an automatic.
Secretly thrilled, she put it in drive and appreciated the smooth flow of it as she pulled out of the police station car park.
She headed towards the older side of Telford, navigating the quiet roads around the retail parks. Most people had already made their way to the garden centres and outdoor markets, avoiding the enclosed shops of Telford town centre on such a brilliantly perfect summer’s day.
Jenna took one hand off the steering wheel and smoothed away the heavy vertical line that had started to take up residence between her eyebrows. She didn’t put it down to age, but rather to nine months of continuous stress and the claustrophobic sensation of drowning under the weight of her own constricted chest when the image of PC Lee Gardner slipped uninvited into her mind.
If she closed her eyes for too long, splashes of crimson daubed the insides of her eyelids until they flew back open again in self-defence while she gasped in quick snatches of breath, each one lodging in her throat. It wasn’t PTSD. There was no way she suffered from that. It was pure flashback, nothing else.
It didn’t matter that she never wanted to see it again, but it was insistent, nudging at her subconscious each time she let down her guard.
Late nights and alcohol didn’t help. She’d have to remember that. Although, recalling the previous evening, it was sometimes the late nights and alcohol that got her through, allowing her to switch off and relax without judgement.
She blew out a breath. A whole bottle of wine was unusual for her. Too much alcohol and too little sleep blurred her sharp mind and allowed her defences to weaken.
Weakness wasn’t something she’d have imagined in her psyche, but PTSD could affect anyone, she’d learnt. It didn’t make her weak, just meant that she was subjected to moments of weakness.
The flashbacks she’d endured for the last four months. Visions of those final moments before PC Gardner had died. Flashbacks she pushed to one side so she could deal with the everyday. The job.
She made her way along the A442 Queensway towards Coalbrookdale, straight ahead at the roundabout with the mineshaft sculpture and took a left down Cherry Tree Hill, slowing to a virtual standstill as she took special care over the speedhumps that were far too big for any normal-sized car to get over without scraping the chassis.
The total silence in the car was unnecessary, she could have had any choice of music, but she appreciated it. It gave her time to think with clarity.
Without warning, a sharp pain shot from the centre of her ear downwards and she whipped her hand up to cup the right side of her neck.
If she had a chance to forget for a short while, it proved a vicious reminder of the incident. A burst eardrum from being too close to an exploding shotgun. The shotgun that blew her colleague’s head off and splattered his brains all over her.
Lucky to be alive herself, she was left with an occasional sharp pain she was assured was psychosomatic rather than physical. Could have fooled her. Bloody pain wasn’t her imagination. A red-hot poker up the arse of her consultant wouldn’t be their imagination either.
His words hadn’t been reassuring, they were a disinterested reaction from a man who possibly should have retired a millennium or so ago. Worse than his indifference to her situation was his insistence on continually rubbing the end of his bobbly, purpled nose while he seemingly bestowed her with his concentration.
Apparently, her hearing was one hundred per cent too. Nothing to worry about, except for the high-pitched whine piercing through the stillness of the night from time to time to throw her out of a peaceful sleep into sudden wakefulness.
Tinnitus, he said.
It’ll go in time, he said.
Hadn’t bloody gone fast enough.
With no particular urgency to reach her destination as uniform already had the situation in hand, Jenna stuck to just on the speed limit of 30 mph. She skimmed through the traffic lights, which were obliging enough to stay on green, and onwards along the narrowed road past the Coalbrookdale Inn with its abundance of flower baskets spilling their blooms in splashes of scarlet down the walls of the Grade II listed building. Built in the 1830s, its original purpose was to serve real ale to the ironworkers and subsequently to tourists who visited the Inn situated in the heart of the Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site, opposite the Museum of Iron.
She took a sharp left up the steep incline towards the Holy Trinity Church on her right and pulled over behind the queue of parked cars to let an oncoming Peugeot squeeze its way past on the narrow hill.
As she waited, she cast her gaze over the be
auty of the church nicknamed ‘the Jewel of the Dale’ with its rare sixteenth-century Flemish glass window depicting the Last Supper.
She held her breath as the elderly driver almost scraped her wing mirror off, insistent on keeping away from the edge of the road in case it disappeared down the gorge. The Peugeot’s mirror missed hers by a hair’s breadth.
Jenna depressed the accelerator and took off before another decrepit driver decided to meet her halfway. It wasn’t a hill to get stuck on, neither direction was good to reverse along.
As she climbed higher up the gorge, the houses became older and further apart, their brick walls coated with the coal dust from the Industrial Revolution. Coal had continued to be transported by train until relatively recently.
Approaching the address registered on her satnav, her heart gave an uncomfortable squeeze at the scene ahead of her.
She swallowed down on the ball of fear threatening to surface.
‘Oh God.’
She’d been assured by the welfare counsellor that her PTSD was a side effect of experiencing a traumatic event. She’d assured the counsellor she didn’t suffer from PTSD. Not if she wanted to return to active duty, she didn’t. And active duty was her life. She didn’t want to be stuck on desk duty, doing half the job she lived for. Not at the age of twenty-nine. She dealt with the brief moments of flashback.
She’d taken her eight allotted counselling sessions and reassured them she no longer needed them while she ignored the look on her counsellor’s face as the man signed her off and confirmed she was healthy and fit for duty.
Jenna drew in deep breaths of cooled air through her nose, expanding her chest until it almost burst. She was fine. Fine as she’d ever been. She could handle it. She always handled it.
She glanced in the rear-view mirror as she edged along the road and idled the car so she could squeeze it into one of the rare spaces along the narrow lane where most of the Georgian or Victorian houses, due to their age, had no drive. They’d not needed drives before the invention of cars.
She caught herself chewing at her bottom lip and sighed.
When Mason was with her, she probably handled the little spikes in stress much better. So he never saw the blanket of fear draped over her for small snatches of time. He never witnessed the clamp of control she exerted every time her heart ratcheted up a beat. Something she knew had never happened until nine months ago, then one major event after the other had stretched her nerves to the limit.
Stretched but not broken.
She blew out a slow, smooth breath. No, she didn’t need a counsellor any longer. She knew the techniques, understood how to keep everything under control. How to block, how to release.
Except on a bad day.
On those days, the little wisps of pain sneaked under the wire to torment her. Days like today when her resistance was low.
6
Sunday 11 July, 11:30 hrs
Jenna drew up behind the ambulance with its lights blazing and back doors wide open, sirens silent.
The heat of the day evaporated in an icy chill of premonition as she turned off the engine, unclipped her safety belt, opened the door and stepped out of the car. She turned, aimed the fob at the car and pressed the lock button.
Even the blazing sunshine couldn’t chase away the cold unease that crept across the back of her neck in sharp little prickles.
She scraped her fingers through her thick, choppy hair to stop it sticking to her scalp as she crossed the narrow cobblestone street, focusing her attention on five onlookers from the quiet widespread neighbourhood. Concerned neighbours, or plain nosey, they’d have their use in the small community.
Raising her ID in the air, Jenna stepped up to them. ‘Morning, I’m DS Jenna Morgan, everything okay here?’
At their wide-eyed looks, she threw them what she hoped was a reassuring smile, raising her eyebrows in something she knew resembled her mother the older she became.
‘So, what have you heard?’
A desperate-eyed woman in her late thirties stepped forward. ‘They said Imelda’s had an accident. Fell and bashed her head.’
Jenna poked out her bottom lip as she nodded as though this was the first, she’d heard of the matter. Vagueness sometimes paid off, you got the feel for things. ‘Anything else?’
‘No, just to stay back.’
‘Well, we would appreciate that, and obviously as soon as we know anything further, I’m sure we’ll let you know.’
She circled her gaze around, a quick assessment of who the ladies were, aware that shortly she would most likely need to announce the demise of the poor woman to her neighbours. She’d gauge their reactions.
‘Was it a fight?’ With discontented lines pulling at her mouth, an older woman stepped forward, a spark of malicious interest lighting her eyes.
At this point, Jenna had no idea, nor had there been any hint of a domestic, so far. They were the questions that would need to be addressed.
She raised her eyebrows and didn’t attempt to stop the woman in her onward rush to disseminate her knowledge.
‘There’s been a lot of noise coming from there recently.’
Irritation slid across the younger woman’s face. ‘No, Shelly, it won’t have been a fight.’ She tilted her head to one side in a quick challenge to the other woman and then turned to Jenna. ‘They adore each other. I know Zak, he’s lived here all his life.’
She jerked her chin towards the three-storey Victorian house that had the distinct look of a home someone had devoted time and loving attention to renovating. The painted windowsills without a speck of dust, the windows gleaming as though they’d recently been cleaned. The garden maintained a shabby, lived-in look. Perhaps they were working their way from inside to out.
The woman’s voice drew Jenna back again. ‘He’s a lovely man, very gentle. His parents used to own the house, but they sold it to him a while ago so they could buy a smaller place with less work. He’s in the middle of modernising it. Said they needed a little more space with the new baby coming along.’ She turned her head to look at Shelly again. ‘It will have been an accident. I’m sure Imelda will be fine.’
Aware of movement from the open doorway, Jenna mentally filed the information away as she cast the onlookers a quick, reassuring smile, not willing to impart the knowledge that Imelda had already departed this world. She needed to get inside and investigate, not stand around listening to gossip. Gossip had its place, though, and she always reserved the right to return to it.
She blew out a breath and then stepped through the old wooden gate as the small crowd talked in hushed voices behind her. They’d have more to talk about shortly when they discovered that Imelda was dead.
Jenna made her way towards the open front door of the tall Victorian house where the backs of the paramedics shielded the woman on the floor from inquisitive neighbours.
In her experience, most people watched, not necessarily out of a morbid sense of curiosity, but because they genuinely didn’t know how to respond to a situation and simply wanted to help. And help they would if they could, but this was out of their hands.
Out of her hands, too, and in the hands of the double-crewed ambulance.
Jenna peered over the shoulder of the paramedic assistant who knelt on the floor at the woman’s side. She frowned at the frenetic movement, her pulse kicking up a beat.
She squinted as she raked a quick gaze over the scene. It wasn’t the incident she expected to be confronted with. Instead of slow and sympathetic, this was fast and frantic, indicating possible life.
Jenna blew out a surprised breath and bent over at the waist to get a better view. She rested her hands on her knees, but in the enclosed hallway she didn’t have a clear view past the assistant’s broad shoulders to double-check if the casualty was alive or not. From the activity, she’d roll with the assumption that she was alive.
‘DS Jenna Morgan. Hi.’
‘Hi.’ With barely an acknowledgement that she existed, the
paramedics continued to administer to the woman stretched out, feet closest to the door on the intricately patterned Victorian tiles.
Jenna had no expectation that they would take notice. Not until they were ready. Their priority was to tend to the wounded, save a life, not regale the police with information. That would come later.
She raised her head to glance beyond them at the desperate features of a tall, young man at the end of the hallway. Zak Cheetham-Epstein, she assumed. Husband of the injured woman and the person who’d called the incident in. She may have to listen to the recording later for verification, but right now, she assessed the man in front of her.
Strain lines feathered out from blue eyes darkened almost to navy while the peachy colour that should tinge his cheeks had leached out to leave him grey and pallid. The thick black flop of his hair over his furrowed forehead accentuated the paleness of his skin.
His broad shoulders curled forward in a self-conscious roll and his slender frame appeared to collapse in on itself. With his gaze fixed on his wife, Jenna knew he had no awareness of anyone or anything, but the agony he suffered, which pulsed out from him while he remained silent, his long, bony fingers clenching and unclenching. Shock hit people in different ways at different times, as she well understood from personal experience.
Jenna moved her gaze on, to take in everything so when she wrote her notes up later, she could recall the scene in the minutest detail.
Beside Zak stood one of her stalwart uniforms, almost bringing a smile of relief to her face, before she stopped it in time and nudged her chin up in silent acknowledgement as her gaze met the cool, calm and collected one of PC Ted Walker. The curl of warm gratitude circled in her stomach at the same time as the conflicting spark of defence pushed her shoulders back, so she stood erect.