by Jack Slater
‘Come on, son,’ he said through tight lips.
The doctor kept going. A dozen beats. Twenty.
‘Come on, Tommy. Stay with us,’ Pete insisted.
The doctor stopped at fifty compressions and the ECG flat-lined immediately. He shook his head. Looked first at the rest of the trauma team then across at Pete.
‘No,’ Pete moaned. ‘No. No!’ His denials grew louder. Desperately, he looked from one to another of the hospital staff, but none would meet his gaze. He turned to Jane, but then turned away. She wasn’t his wife. To seek comfort from her would be wrong in so many ways.
She reached out to him. ‘I’m sorry, boss.’
But Pete wouldn’t allow her touch to penetrate the infinite depth of his grief. He felt like he was falling into a dark pit, a bottomless shaft of inky blackness where no light, no touch, no humanity could penetrate. He didn’t know whether to go to Tommy or to turn and leave, get out of there, be alone with his grief.
He stepped forward.
‘I’m sorry, son,’ he murmured. ‘I’m so sorry.’ For everything, he thought, dimly aware of the other people around him – people he didn’t want to share his private thoughts with. For not being a better father. For not finding you last year when you were missing – were with Malcolm Burton. And most of all, for doubting you. For thinking, even for an instant, that you might have been guilty of what he said you were – of what the evidence we had suggested you were.
If the boy was really dead but was spiritually still here, then would he be able to read Pete’s thoughts? He doubted it. He was too much of a realist to believe in such things. Nevertheless, he hoped the boy’s spirit, if it was here, could see and sense his grief and sorrow, his regret for not being a better father.
‘You did all you could, boss,’ Jane said, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘We all did.’
‘It wasn’t enough, though, was it?’ he snapped, turning on her. ‘He’s gone. And now I’ve got to tell his mother and his sister.’ His face screwed up as the bitterness welled up inside him. ‘Steve bloody Southam’s cut him down before he could even get to be a man. I’ll kill the evil son-of-a-bitch, so help me, I will if I can get my hands on him,’ he snarled.
Jane said nothing, though he could tell she was itching to. ‘No, you won’t, boss,’ he imagined her saying. ‘You’re too good a man to stoop to his level, even after this.’
You don’t know what you’re talking about, he thought. I appreciate your faith in me, but I swear, if I catch him, I will finish the bastard.
‘The thing is, how are we going to track him down?’ Jane asked.
Do you really expect me to give a flying fuck at this moment? ‘I don’t know, Jane,’ he said. ‘But trust me – we will. Now give me a minute, will you? All of you.’ He let his gaze roam around the faces of the hospital staff as he said it, coming back finally to rest on Jane’s vivid green eyes. ‘I need…’ His throat clogged with emotion. ‘I need to be with my…’ he whispered. ‘My son.’ His eyes closed and he squeezed them tight to hold back the tears that he could feel prickling at the backs of them as his throat bulged and his lip quivered. Then his body began to shake. He withdrew into himself, barely aware of Jane nodding for the others to leave and following them out of the curtained cubicle, pulling the drapes across behind her.
He stepped forward. Rested a hand on Tommy’s arm and bent down to kiss his forehead, ignoring the raw and bloody injury to his ear which the nurses had had no time to deal with. Now, he could speak his mind in private. ‘I’m so sorry, son,’ he murmured. ‘I wish I could have been a better dad to you. I did try, even before you went missing, but even more so afterwards. And I wish I could have found you when you were gone, but you know how it works. There’s only so much a bloke can do when he’s directly involved in the case like I was. We all did all we could, though. Your mum, your sister, the guys at the station. Well,’ he grunted. ‘Not Simon Phillips, maybe, but he always was a lazy arse-hole.
‘I miss you already. I have ever since you went, last May. And I never seriously believed you were guilty of what Burton said you were, despite the evidence. I just hadn’t figured out a way of proving it yet, that’s all. I’d have got there, given a bit more time. And I was so proud of you in that courtroom. I really was.’ He squeezed the thin arm he was holding and drew a deep breath, letting it out in a sigh. ‘So now I’ve got to go and catch the bugger who did this to you. Because, whether I’m officially on the case or not, I’m here and he’s out there somewhere, a danger to society. And you’re…’ he stopped, his throat closing up again as emotion overwhelmed him. Bowing his head, he let his tears drip onto Tommy’s bare chest. Sobs began to wrack his body. He tried to hold them back, keep them in, keep his grief to himself, but the feelings were too strong. He sank to his knees beside the bed, both hands clutching Tommy’s arm and hand as he gave up the fight and let it all go.
*
He didn’t know how long it was until he calmed down and stood up. He kissed Tommy’s brow once more. ‘Rest easy, son,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll get him, don’t you worry.’
He wiped his eyes with a cursory hand and stepped out through the curtain. Jane was waiting a few steps away, near the door on the far side of the long, narrow room. One of the nurses was with her but they weren’t speaking. Jane looked across as he emerged and took a step forward. The nurse turned towards him, a large woman with soft strawberry-blonde hair tied up in a bun and a kind face.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.
‘Thank you,’ Pete returned. ‘And thanks, all of you, for trying to save him.’
She reached out with both hands to take one of his briefly as she moved past, towards the cubicle where Tommy lay.
Where Tommy’s body lay, he thought firmly.
‘You all right, boss?’ Jane asked.
He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Of course he wasn’t all right, but he was as near to it as he was going to get for a while. He blinked. Took a deep breath.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Pete was silent for a long time as they drove back towards Exeter, his mind numb and empty.
Jane had asked if he felt he could drive but Pete had decided the concentration would be good for him. He’d drop her off at the station before going on to the RDE, to Louise. He had to tell her about Tommy in person. It was the only way.
They were over half way back when he remembered something. ‘You asked earlier how we’re going to track down Steve Southam. There’s been nothing from Honiton about the stolen vehicle so maybe he got lucky on that, but he must be somewhere. He must have stayed somewhere. Not last night, maybe, but before that. And with his brother when they came down here before. Adrian mentioned two options: Kingskerswell and Ottery St Mary. He’d probably have gone back to one of them. An out-of-town hotel, off the main roads: somewhere remote enough not to overdo the security, where he might be accepted as a familiar face. There can’t be that many around those two places. And if he was lying, we widen the search to anywhere in a sensible range of Exeter and Burton’s barn. We’ll need to get out and about in person with the Southams’ mug-shots, see if anyone recognises them – other than from the news reports.’
‘I’ll call in, get things started. The Newton Abbot boys can help out again with Kingskerswell. Ottery can see to their own patch again, too. I’ll have a word with the guvnor if we have to widen it out.’
Pete nodded, not trusting himself to speak again for a moment. He was deeply grateful for Jane’s unquestioning acceptance of his need to continue with the case, despite the rules against it.
Then another thought struck him.
‘There’s two things that Steve Southam’s fixated on now. One’s getting his brother out of prison, which isn’t going to happen, and the other’s hurting me. If we could convince him that Tommy’s still alive and able to testify against him, he might come out of the woodwork.’
‘A baited trap. Yes.’ She paused then continued carefully. ‘They’ll hav
e to bring Tommy back to Exeter. If that was done with an ambulance, blue-lighting it back there as if it had a critical patient on-board, Tommy on a stretcher in the back, a side-room arranged for him to supposedly occupy on ICU.’ She looked at him. ‘Do you reckon it would work?’
‘I don’t know, but its one more string to the bow in case the hotel angle doesn’t pan out.’
*
Someone was pulling out of a space in the twenty-minute pick-up zone outside the main entrance of the Royal Devon and Exeter hospital as Pete drove up, so he stopped and reversed into the space they’d left, switched off the engine and sat, lost in thought.
His eyes closed and he hung his head as he thought of his son, who he had consistently failed ever since he stepped beyond toddlerhood. He’d been reliably absent whenever he was needed, work consistently taking precedence over family life until, even at the end, he’d failed the boy. Failed to protect him from Malcolm Burton, from the Southam brothers and ultimately failed to find him before Steve Southam could put him through the most horrendous, tortuous death.
It was Pete’s fault, he concluded, that Tommy had died in the way he had – agonised, alone and terrified, miles from the comforting presence of his loved ones and knowing that suspicion still hung over him and now would forever. Pete’s face screwed up there in his car, shame and grief tearing at his soul.
Then fear nudged in beside them. How was he supposed to tell Louise that she’d lost the son that she’d spent so long waiting to recover - that she’d gone through so much for over the past year or more, even beyond the normal maternal stresses and hardships that had preceded Tommy’s disappearance last May - that she’d mostly gone through alone, unsupported by the absentee husband that Pete had become? How would she react to this latest blow? Not so much in the immediate moment, though that would be hard enough, but beyond that.
A sob forced its way out. Even alone in the car, he tried to turn it into a cough, but it didn’t work. It was followed by another. He brought his hands up to cover his face as he felt the unwelcome moisture on his cheeks again.
The thought of possibly losing her – of losing both her and Annie, for she certainly wouldn’t leave her daughter with him if she went – was more than he could bear. He couldn’t lose them too. He just couldn’t. His life would be over. Wasted. He’d be left as bereft and terrified, as alone and agonised, albeit emotionally rather than physically, as Tommy had been in his final moments.
Maybe that was Tommy’s justice. To destroy the man who had let him down so often throughout his short and blighted life. It would be fitting after all.
But that selfish release couldn’t come before he’d at least gained justice for the boy. Revenge of sorts, albeit through the courts rather than the direct personal violence of Charles Bronson’s seemingly endless Death Wish movie series. He wouldn’t stoop to that. Not now, with the immediate threat to his son over. But he would catch the vicious bastard who’d put the boy through such needless and sadistic cruelty.
Before that, though, he had to face his wife, to tell her that her eldest child was no longer alive and to try to support her through the agony of loss.
In the back of his mind, he was aware that he was soon going to have to tell his daughter the same thing: that she’d lost the older brother that she’d doted on and delighted in almost since she’d been born. But that was for later. Now, he had to get out of this car, go in there and face Louise with the worst news of her life.
Of either of their lives.
He pulled in a breath, wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands and reached for the door handle.
Walking into the hospital was like an out-of-body experience. He felt completely numb and detached, his senses distant and remote, like his brain was somehow disconnected from his body or at least only tenuously linked to it. He was aware of the people around him, but only in the vaguest of ways – as colours and shapes moving past him rather than as sentient, recognisable human beings. If anyone spoke to him, he was unaware of it as he moved through the big reception area, heading for the ward he knew Louise would be working on.
Even as he pushed through the doors onto that ward, he still felt the same remoteness, like he was viewing his surroundings not as immediate reality but through the eyes of a drone he was somehow controlling and directing from a distance.
Vaguely, as if through cotton-wool, he heard his name. It was repeated. He blinked. Turned. Shook his head as if that would dislodge whatever was getting in the way of his connection to the world around him.
‘Pete. Are you all right?’ It was Louise’s friend and colleague, Janet Hedges. Pete had joked and flirted with her countless times over the past few years. Now she looked at him with an expression of deep worry.
‘Where’s Lou?’ he asked.
‘Here, sit down. I’ll fetch her.’ She indicated the door to the tiny space they called a staffroom – hardly bigger than a cupboard, but containing a kettle, a tiny sink and a handful of worn-out seats along with an assortment of mugs and the makings of tea and coffee. ‘Do you want a drink?’
Pete shook his head and, still moving as if under remote control, perched on the edge of a low seat as if he didn’t belong there and was prepared to run at the briefest notice.
He had no idea of the passage of time. It could have been seconds or hours before he sensed someone walking in to his right.
‘Pete? What is it? What’s happened?’
He turned and looked up at the woman he loved – that he’d loved since they were barely out of school – and he was lost. He had no idea what to say or how to say it. As a police officer, he was trained how to handle situations like this – how to tell someone that they’d lost a loved one. But all that had deserted him now. He had nothing but the emotion that welled up suddenly like the bursting of a dam inside him. He surged up out of the chair and took her in his arms, squeezing her so tightly that he felt her gasp and tense, but he couldn’t let go as his emotions came pouring out in a flood of sobs that he didn’t care who heard or saw.
He didn’t care about anything at this moment, other than the woman in his arms and the overwhelming need to keep her there, to give her comfort and draw it from her.
He felt her arms around him and it felt as good as anything ever had in his life.
‘Pete? What is it? What’s wrong?’ She sounded scared and… In pain, he realised suddenly and eased the grip of his arms around her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Pete?’
One more sob wracked his body. ‘It’s…’ He felt like something had dropped out of him, out of the very core of him, leaving an empty space right in the centre of his body. He couldn’t breathe. He could barely stand. Only the fact that he was holding onto Louise kept him from collapsing. ‘It’s Tommy,’ he choked. ‘He’s… Gone.’
‘What do you mean, gone? What…?’ She pushed herself back from him, staring up into his face. ‘What do you mean, gone?’ she repeated more forcefully.
‘He’s dead, Lou.’
‘No!’ she wailed. ‘No, he can’t be. He can’t be dead!’
He gathered her into his arms again, but she pushed him back.
‘No! You’re wrong. You need to get out there and find him.’
He shook his head. ‘No, Lou. I did find him. It’s… Oh, God, I’m sorry. I wish it wasn’t true – more than anything, I do. But it is.’
She pushed back again, more forcefully this time, and he saw the glitter of anger in her eyes. ‘And you… Where were you when it happened, eh? Where?’
‘I was trying to find him. I was…’ As the realisation hit him, something broke inside him again. ‘I was probably only a few hundred yards away,’ he whispered.
‘And you didn’t save him.’ Her small fist struck his chest with the force of anger and grief. ‘You didn’t save him! How could you! How could you be so close and not save him? God, you make me sick! Your precious bloody job’s more important to you than the r
est of the world put together – including us!’
Pete was lost. What could he say? What could he tell her? ‘That’s not true. It never has been, not for an instant. You and the kids, you’re everything to me. I’d give up the job, give up everything for this not to have happened. And I tried, Lou. God knows I tried! I just…’ He grimaced. ‘I just couldn’t get there in time.’
‘Couldn’t or were too busy to?’ she snarled. ‘Tied up on another bloody case, as usual, were you?’ Then something registered in her eyes and Pete felt a new dread creep up inside him. ‘Couldn’t get where?’ Her voice had calmed, deadened, focussed. ‘Where was he?’
‘He was down by the Teign,’ he said.
‘And you knew this?’
‘Not until the last minute, and it was too late by then.’
‘How did you know? How did he die, Pete?’
Oh, Jesus. ‘We knew because Southam told us. He sent us a message. Just didn’t tell us where he was.’
‘So… Tommy knew what was happening before it happened? How long before? How did he…?’ She stopped, the horror overwhelming her.
Pete slumped, letting his eyes close. He’d known this would happen, however much he’d wanted it not to – wanted to delay the inevitable so that she could absorb one thing before being hit with another. Or so he told himself, knowing as he did so that he wasn’t admitting the truth even to himself.
‘He drowned,’ he whispered.
‘Drowned? In the river?’
He nodded, opening his eyes to meet her horrified gaze.
She retched, almost puking. ‘Oh, God!’ She dropped onto the seat behind her as if the strings holding her upright had been cut.
Pete took one of her hands in his and numbly, she left it there. ‘I’m so, so sorry, love,’ he said.
She stayed silent and still, as if unaware he’d spoken or that he was even there for what felt like an age. Then she turned her head, her expression firm once more. ‘Just get the fucker. Don’t be sorry, just get him. Put him in jail for the rest of his miserable, worthless life. Or, better still, kill him. Because if I ever see him, I swear to God, I will.’