Black by Rose

by Andrew Barrett

  “Charlie is what she said.”

  “Charlie?”

  Eddie nodded.

  “No surname?”

  He shrugged.

  “And what did you plan on doing with ‘Charlie’ when you got her home?”

  “I didn’t plan at all. I wanted to help her,” and that bit was still true, no lying involved there. “I said I had a spare room she could use.”

  Benson raised his eyebrows.

  “Not everyone thinks like you do.”

  “A judge would.”

  Eddie looked forward again through the screen, could just make out Ros nodding to the officer in the ARV. The officer nodded back, looked down as though writing something. Then another officer tapped on Benson’s window and beckoned him outside.

  “Stay in here,” he said, and then stepped out.

  Eddie lit a cigarette, wound the window down. He couldn’t hear what Benson was listening to, but he could guess.

  Within a minute, Benson was back. “I forgot to tell you I found out her name.”

  “Yeah, Charlie.”

  “Angela Charles.”

  Eddie looked at Benson quickly. “Angela Charles? She’s the—”

  “Killer. I know.” Benson stared at Eddie, not speaking for a long time.

  Eddie drew on the cigarette then flicked it away, wound the window up.

  “You knew that. I think you found her at her house—”

  “How? That bastard Crosby didn’t. The two bobbies who searched her house didn’t. So how the hell did I?”

  “I think you found her. What I can’t figure out is why you didn’t turn her in. You knew she was a killer—”

  “She didn’t…” Eddie turned away quickly.

  Benson’s eyes searched his face. “You were saying?”

  Eddie wiped his eyes, didn’t look at Benson.

  “I think you found her and thought you’d help her, hide her somewhere.”

  “Rubbish.”

  Benson smiled at Eddie, raised his chin as though he’d had a sudden flash of intelligence and he knew what had happened. “Stay here,” he said again, and left the car. He knocked on the ARV’s window, and the officer wound it down. Benson leaned in.

  Eddie closed his eyes. This was either the part where he’d be driven to the Bridewell to be booked in for the night, at least, or it was the part where Benson would have to believe him. Eddie swallowed, fingers curled into knots, foot tapping the carpet.

  Benson finished with the officer, and he sat back next to Eddie again. Eddie looked on, expectant, hopeful, fearful. “Where were we? Oh yes; for some reason you didn’t want to turn her in, or you didn’t dare take her to the hospital – which is what any sane person would have done, or any person who had that woman’s health and well-being in mind.” He took a breath but his eyes never left Eddie’s. “Instead, you decided to keep her out of the loop, and try to hide her from the Crosbys who,” he said, getting more wound up, “also seem to think she killed Blake Crosby!”

  “Since when—”

  “Shut up!”

  Eddie clamped his mouth shut, jaws grinding.

  “I think you’re pretending not to know her fucking name so I won’t bang you up for perverting the course of justice.”

  “I never—”

  “I said shut the fuck up!”

  Eddie swallowed.

  “I could bang you up on kidnapping and false imprisonment charges.”

  Eddie’s mouth was open, ready to spit another line of innocence out, but Benson stared, daring him. Eddie remained quiet.

  Benson turned in his seat and faced Eddie. “I think you knew exactly who she was, Eddie.” His voice was calm, almost a whisper. “I think you actually did try to protect her. And I think, well I hope, that it tears you up inside to learn that you indirectly killed that woman.”

  There was nothing he could say to that. He’d spent the last hour thinking the very same thing. His head fell. Benson was spot on.

  “I wonder,” Benson went on, “just how close you came to being dead. They followed you, found out where you took the girl. Lucky for you that you went out again. Unlucky for everyone else.”

  Eddie swallowed.

  “If I ever learn that you took her from her home, that you didn’t just pick her up in Garforth, I will charge you. If I find out that you knew who she was, I will charge you. Do I make myself clear?”

  Eddie nodded, still looking at the floor.

  “Now get out.”

  “You’re not locking me up?” Eddie asked the question before he could tell his mouth to shut up. He simply couldn’t believe it: how did Benson know he didn’t kill the girl himself; it was just another part of the protocol – lock up the people at the scene and then go about ascertaining their innocence.

  “She dialled three-nines,” he said, “at twenty-three minutes past eight. You were sitting at your desk at the time.”

  “And Jeffery was with me.”

  “Yes he was.”

  “Can’t believe you checked on me.”

  “I’m a fucking detective, Collins. And this is you we’re talking about, you slimy little shit. If I thought for a second you had anything to do directly with her death, you’d be bleeding on the floor of the shittiest cell I could find.”

  Eddie looked at him, whispered, “Thanks.”

  “Now get out of my car.”

  “What about them, the Crosbys?”

  “Don’t you worry about them, we’ll get round to ’em.” Benson paused, and then repeated, “Now get out of my car.”

  Eddie did. And it wasn’t until he stood shakily outside in the cooling breeze that he realised how much he was sweating. His face was wet, his pits were saturated.

  The place was alive with police. Another car had joined the outing, it seemed, and a CSI’s van too. Officers were busy stretching tape everywhere; huddles of people talking, pointing, gesticulating, laughing. Just another major scene under way.

  The window slid down, and Eddie turned to see Benson leaning across the seats, looking out at him. “One more thing,” Benson said.

  — Four —

  “Ready?”

  Ros nodded at him and he opened the door for her, “Let’s get you home.” And just those words caused her pallor to change. He noticed it like he’d notice a chameleon changing from green to blue. Just the thought made her tense.

  I mean, he thought, being at a murder scene was fine, but the thought of going home to dear old Brian – when he was in a “good” mood, seems to scare the shit out of her.

  “All set?”

  “How come he was here and not regular CID?”

  “She rang in,” he said. “Must’ve given her name and it flagged MCU up straight away.” He said nothing for a while as he imagined Charlie inside the cottage with people trying to break in through the door. He could imagine how scared she must have been – petrified, knowing who it was, knowing it was the same maniac who’d searched her house and from whom she’d successfully hidden and survived, only for it to end badly a few hours later anyway. She had the good sense to at least call the police.

  Eddie took a breath, blinked to clear his eyes and then looked at Ros, “You okay?”

  She just nodded again and got in the car.

  Tonight was a night for sighing and Eddie did his best one so far as he crossed the front of the car and got behind the wheel. It wasn’t a sigh for the mess those bastards would make in his house – he probably wouldn’t notice anyway. Nor was it a sigh for Charlie. He’d sighed plenty for her, and he would shed more tears for her too, later. But the prize-winning sigh of tonight was for Ros. She sat there staring straight ahead with her stubborn chin held high.

  She was like a proud prisoner facing the firing squad: resolute, stiff upper lip and all that.

  He wished she would trust him again.

  Again? Did she ever trust you? And then he checked himself; yes, she had trusted him. He might be the world’s most despicable idiot, he thought, b
ut he was good where it mattered. And she knew it too. He knew she knew it. She had trusted him in McDonald’s.

  And as they drove, he decided he ought to cut her some slack. She was going in to a house where a man who slapped her during arguments lived. She was preparing herself for a confrontation, maybe; she was preparing herself to resume the argument, or to put it on pause until Eddie had gone, or until the morning. And Eddie cursed himself for getting her into all this trouble tonight, not just with the dead girl, but with her husband as well. And then he cursed himself some more for being too flippant about other people’s lives and their problems.

  Just because he lived alone, he decided, didn’t mean he had no effect on other people’s lives.

  But he was there for her. For what good it would do. They would part at the door and Eddie would drive away oblivious to the raised voices and ill-feeling he would leave behind.

  The journey was silent, only punctuated by a squeal of brakes as the car halted behind a big Dodge pickup truck. He saw her take a breath just as she opened the car door and just as Brian opened the front door. Eddie rushed to get out.

  * * *

  The car shook and vibrated as it rolled along. And that was good because it meant she couldn’t feel her hands shaking. She said nothing, and she heard nothing. Eddie could have been talking Martian for all she knew.

  But maybe he wasn’t.

  Finding that dead woman had shaken him up quite badly. It must have been like rescuing a puppy from a cruel owner only for it get hit by a car on its first day of freedom. Except it wasn’t. She didn’t suppose it had really hit him yet, but it would. Maybe tomorrow he’d wake up and realise he had blood on his hands – indirectly of course, but there was no doubt that he had caused her death. And Eddie would take that very hard. He was as tough as granite on the outside, but Ros knew his heart was easily injured.

  Perhaps troubling him too was how easy he’d made it for the gang. They had followed him; he’d been almost gullible. And now he was vulnerable. They knew where he lived, and… don’t be silly, she thought, the days of gangs killing coppers and police staff were–

  She was about to say “long gone”. But look at Tony Lambert and his wife. Was nothing safe anymore? Time was as a copper, the badge you wore protected everything about you; it almost granted you immunity from gangs – they didn’t want the trouble. But now, now the rules were skewed and everyone was a target.

  She sneaked a quick look at him, and his eyes were focused well ahead of anything in his field of vision; unsurprisingly he was lost in thought. Lucky he wasn’t locked up for this evening, she thought. And she wondered if Benson had granted him freedom because of the past they had shared. It might have been full of animosity – yes, they hated each other’s guts – but there was obviously some kind of professional respect there. And that’s what Benson must have seen in Eddie’s eyes. Anyone else, anyone at all, would have been in a cell.

  And that thought brought her round to Brian. And then she began shaking again.

  He’d been great on the phone when she’d rung him from Eddie’s place. She had expected him to go wild. But he hadn’t. And somehow that was even more worrying. She didn’t want to upset him again. He could be nasty when she upset him. She’d learned her lesson, and they got along fine now that she had learned it; but it was better not to take chances.

  She swallowed, and wiped her hands down her legs as Eddie brought the car to a halt behind Brian’s truck.

  Brian was half way down the short driveway and Ros stood there waiting as Eddie came to her side. She looked nervously between the two men.

  “You must be Eddie.” Brian held out his hand, big smile on his face.

  Eddie shook, and returned the smile.

  Ros looked into his face but couldn’t read anything.

  “I’m sorry I took Ros from you—”

  “Hey, I know how important work can be. It’s fine.” He turned to Ros, “You okay, babe? Glass of wine waiting for you.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered. She could, however, read Brian’s face.

  “You’ll stop for a glass too, Eddie?”

  Ros pitied Eddie. She could see that the poor man didn’t know whether to stay and protect her from Brian, or leave so they could work things out in peace. There were things to work out – no doubt about it. That was part of the expression she could read on Brian’s face. We have issues, it said. We need to re-establish the pecking order.

  And then Ros looked back at Eddie. And she almost burst into tears; she could see herself leaping back into the car, wanting to drive away from here as fast as she could. With Eddie at her side. And that was about the biggest lump of regret she could feel bubbling up inside her throat, so large and so hot that it could choke her to death. Her chin wobbled and she took a huge breath. “See ya,” she whispered to Eddie, and walked up the path without looking back.

  — Five —

  “And?” He stood in the lounge with his arms folded, and he stared at her.

  Ros looked up at him and wondered what the hell she ever saw in him. Surely being a spinster would have been the better option. Of course it would have been, but she didn’t know all this shit back then, back when she said I do. “I’m sorry, Brian.”

  “I nipped out for an hour or two and when I came home…” he shrugged. “No wife.” He smiled broadly, took a step closer.

  Ros’s heart sank. “I called you,” she said.

  “From his house.”

  “There was a dead woman in there!”

  He said nothing and the magic smile disappeared.

  “Brian,” she whispered. “Please, I won’t do it again.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  — One —

  In the darkness the tap dripped.

  She watched the moonlight reflect off the rippling water onto the wall tiles to her left, and then stiffened as he whispered, “Watching you.”

  All she could think of was Eddie. The look on the poor man’s face when he found that girl dead. It was enough to make her cry too. Eddie was a dancer with two left feet; he tried to be serious and sensible and everyone thought he was a clown. But he wasn’t serious or sensible. Ros could still see right through the tarnished veneer and saw a vulnerable man who cared about things, and cared about people; and he was always getting his fingers singed, was always stepping on his dance partner’s toes.

  He tried. And that’s why she lov–

  Ros’s eyes sprang wide at the realisation.

  — Two —

  There was a chair in the corner of the room; something like a Shackleton’s high seat chair. It was one of those crusty old things you’d find in an old folks’ home. The smell of piss didn’t bother him. He sat in it quietly, feet up on the creaking old bed, looking at the patterns on the frayed curtains, and the slim orange stripe of street light from outside that showed the fleur-de-lys wallpaper. Between his fingers a cigarette curled smoke into the room, and on the bedside table next to him, a cup of something they called coffee was cold and untouched.

  Next to it was a half-bottle of cheap whisky. The seal unbroken.

  Eddie flicked ash and took a drag, rubbed his aching eyes and considered the words Benson had spoken: Everyone around you turns into a corpse.

  Down the hall, outside his room, a door banged and he could hear people shuffling about in the next room, mumbled voices.

  What was the point of life if you did no good with it? What was the point of life if you just died and left nothing of yourself behind? Because once he was dead, he thought, and those around him died too… who would remember Eddie Collins? No one. He would leave no legacy, nothing on this shitty earth would be any better for him having been on it for thirty odd years. Certainly no body, no person, would have been better off for him having been here. And that was the point, surely; to make someone’s life better.

  But he’d tried.

  He’d tried to help Charlie, and look what happened. He’d made it worse, he’d gotten her ki
lled. She was worse off for knowing Eddie Collins. He was in negative equity.

  “Don’t you worry about them,” Benson had said, “we’ll get round to ’em.”

  “Bollocks,” Eddie whispered to the empty room. MCU had been dealing with gangs and organised crime for years. And there were still gangs and organised crime around. Most of the crimes he’d dealt with as a divisional CSI were propagated by organised crime and street gangs.

  Noises from the room next door grew louder until Eddie’s thoughts dispersed like mist in sunlight, and all he could hear was groaning; getting louder, more intense. He banged on the wall. “Hurry up and come, will you!”

  There was a muffled laugh, and then a muffled retort, “Piss off!”

  Eddie sighed. His thoughts might have dispersed, but his anger hadn’t. He reached for the bottle of whisky and his car keys.

  — Three —

  In the darkness the tap dripped.

  Her teeth chattered. She tried to sit up.

  “Watching you.”

  Eddie would never do something like this to her. Eddie cared about her. And she wanted him to care about her, she wanted him to protect her, and that’s why she’d invited him to MCU in the first place. He would never do anything like this to her.

  Of course it was all her fault. She had come to realise that over the last half an hour. Brian was right after all. And she was genuinely sorry; yet Brian’s punishment did not fit the crime. But he was in control now, he steered their ship and she went wherever he sent her, and he doled out the punishment for her misdemeanours as he saw fit. She couldn’t complain. And she wouldn’t complain.

  — Four —

  He had very little idea of what he wished to achieve. All he knew was he was pissed off and the chances of the law actually getting off their fat arses and doing anything about it were pretty slim. Eddie decided to do something about the Crosby bastards by himself.

  Had he stopped and thought more about it instead of cracking the seal on the whisky bottle, he might have saved himself a lot of trouble. Eddie was one of life’s deep thinkers. But tonight, he wasn’t. Tonight, Eddie was angry. Tonight, Eddie had given someone his word, and these bastards had broken it for him. And that was more than he could tolerate.