by D C Vaughn
‘Dumb arse.’
Jenny’s greeting was wrapped within an embrace as she ushered Rebecca in and shut the door behind her.
‘You don’t do shit by halves, Becca,’ she said as she puffed on one of her stick–thin roll–ups. ‘What did Sam do? Leave the toilet seat up?’
Rebecca felt mildly stunned, as ever, by Jenny’s free–wheeling take on life’s tragic twists and turns.
‘He could be dead, Jen.’
‘You do it?’
Rebecca raised an eyebrow. ‘Et tu, Brutus?’
‘Eh?’
‘Never mind.’
Jenny gestured to a sagging sofa with one lazy flip of her arm. Rebecca sat down on it, her knees almost cracking against her chin as the sofa sank beneath her. Jenny flopped into an equally ragged armchair opposite, one tanned leg draped over the arm as she spoke.
‘It was all over the news, love,’ she pointed out. ‘Samuel Lincoln shot in an apparent mugging. It’s not like they could dredge the water without anyone noticing. Half the bloody river was a crime scene. I’ve never seen so much yellow tape in all my life.’
Rebecca had already thought about the news coverage, although she hadn’t seen anything. She knew that Kieran would be under pressure to develop leads and she figured it was only a matter of time before they asked her in for further interviews. Simple, really: most murders were committed by someone the victim knew, and always the first place to look was lovers or spouses.
‘I didn’t do it,’ Rebecca said finally. ‘Trouble is, I took a hell of a knock and I can’t remember a damned thing about what happened.’
A dull pain throbbed through Rebecca’s skull and she winced, a vision of Sam flashing through her mind’s eye. She touched her head as the pain passed after a moment.
‘You okay hun?’ Jenny asked.
‘I’m fine,’ Rebecca replied. ‘The doctors said I’d get pains from time to time as the wound healed.’
Jenny watched her for a moment, and a sly smile crept from one corner of her lips. ‘I got something for that, if you want it.’
Rebecca didn’t want to know what Jenny had tucked away in the apartment. She was more than aware that her friend was willing to bend the law a little from time to time, and that in effect she was aiding and abetting Jenny by not reporting her, but Jen had a more important role as one of the police department’s most valuable informants. More often referred to as a “CI”, there wasn’t much that went down in Exeter without Jenny hearing about it, and thus Rebecca got wind of much of the city’s criminal element through her school friend. The fact that she worked in one of the city’s largest pubs helped with maintaining a link on the local gossip.
‘I’ll be fine,’ Rebecca assured her, and tried to order her thoughts. ‘I reported him for assault, against me, before he was shot.’
Jenny said nothing, watching Rebecca closely for what felt like a long time.
‘What?’ Rebecca finally asked. ‘You think he would do that to me?’
‘You don’t remember anything like that happening?’
Rebecca remembered Sam standing in front of the windows, screaming and raging. She averted her gaze from Jenny’s and her friend didn’t miss it.
‘Son of a bitch,’ she whispered. ‘I didn’t have him down as a beater.’
‘He wasn’t,’ Rebecca replied instantly.
‘You can’t have it both ways hun,’ Jenny pointed out. ‘Either he was or he wasn’t. Did he hit you?’
The blow. Rebecca falling sideways on the sofa, pain on her face. An image of Sam’s mother striking her just half an hour before.
‘I think it runs in the family,’ she whispered as a black wave of grief swelled from somewhere deep in her psyche and threatened to crash down upon her.
Jenny saw it coming and leaned forward, pointing a glowing cigarette butt at Rebecca.
‘Don’t you dare cry for that arsehole,’ she snapped. ‘He wasn’t worth it.’
Rebecca angrily wiped a tear from her eye.
‘He was,’ she whispered in reply. ‘That’s just the point, he was. It’s not how I remember him. He was kind and fun, nothing like what they’re painting him as. You knew him. You just said yourself he was no wife beater.’
Jenny leaned back again and shrugged. ‘Behind closed doors and all that.’
‘I was behind those closed doors.’
‘And you remember him hitting you, presumably at least once. What do you want me to say? That you’re not remembering something that I never witnessed? Doesn’t make sense, does it?’
Rebecca’s head felt clogged, slow, as though she had a cold that she couldn’t shake. She rubbed her temples.
‘I’m so confused right now,’ she admitted. ‘A few days ago we were talking about getting married, now he’s a wife beater who might be dead and I might have pulled the trigger. How the hell did all this happen?’
Jenny appeared cautious, the cigarette held casually in one hand hanging off the end of the arm of the sofa but her eyes clear and sharp. ‘Do you remember pulling the trigger, Becca?’
Rebecca sat in silence and stared at the thin carpet at her feet. She could hear a clock ticking somewhere in the bedroom, so silent was the flat in the wake of Jenny’s question. She could not bring herself to speak, but instead she shook her head once.
Jenny remained silent and still, the cigarette smouldering forgotten between her fingers.
‘Thing is,’ Rebecca whispered, ‘I have thoughts like that all the time.’
Jenny raised an eyebrow. ‘No shit?’
Rebecca nodded, aware that she was now coming across to her friend like a maniac. Yet, she wanted so desperately to tell the truth, now more than ever. Her life was in turmoil and without Sam to steady her she felt lost, like a boat that had slipped its moorings in a storm and was drifting out to sea with nobody at the helm.
‘I was diagnosed with OCD when I was twelve,’ she said. ‘Violent or bizarre thoughts are a daily thing for me. It’s not something that I know how to control very well. But they’re never something that I act upon, just something that’s always there, y’know?’
She looked at Jenny, who shook her head.
‘No, I fricking don’t,’ Jenny chuckled in amazement. ‘Never had anything like that in my life.’
‘Oh, glad I brought it up then.’
‘Look,’ Jenny said as she stubbed out her cigarette, ‘you’ve just been through hell and it hasn’t even given you any answers yet. If you say you didn’t shoot Sam then I believe you, because I’ve known you for nearly thirty years and we’ve been through too much crap together for me to doubt you. But…’
‘But?’
‘But that doesn’t stand if you can’t trust yourself. How can you be sure that you didn’t shoot him if you can’t recall what happened?’
Rebecca shook her head. ‘I know that it couldn’t have been me. I don’t own a pistol.’
‘You don’t have them in the police?’
‘Yes, but firearms officers handle that. They’re more likely to pull a Tazer, and even the ARU teams will try a baton gun before shooting to kill. This is Exeter, not Los Angeles.’
‘Yeah, but you just said that you’ve never owned a pistol. How would you have known it was a pistol used in the shooting?’
Rebecca’s train of thought slammed to a halt. For the first time she realised that she knew something for certain.
‘Yeah,’ she nodded. ‘It was a pistol, no doubt about it.’
Jenny was watching her intently. Rebecca resisted the temptation to ask her what she was looking at, sensing that her friend was thinking.
‘You know,’ Jenny said, ‘it’s possible to have witnessed the event but not been the shooter. You took a bullet to the head after all. If your brain’s been scrambled by what happened, your recollections could be just a representation in your mind of what happened. Trust me, I’ve smoked some serious shit and you’d be amazed what you’ll think you’ve seen after a couple of joints of…’
‘I get the picture, Jen.’
Jenny grinned and changed tack.
‘Well, maybe it’s a bit like when you remember a day at primary school or a place from your childhood, then you go back there and it looks all different to how you remembered it.’
Rebecca wasn’t sure if Jenny was serious or was just trying to calm her nerves, but she smiled.
‘Thanks. Listen, I need your help. Can you keep your ear to the ground, see if anything surfaces about the shooting?’ Y’know, kids bragging about a mugging, a dumped gun found, that kind of thing?’
Jenny didn’t respond. She was looking past Rebecca, her features blank. Rebecca turned to the television that was playing behind her, and there upon the screen she saw a camera shot of the River Exe glittering in the streetlights, police teams swarming the banks, and scrolling beneath the image a line of text:
BODY FOUND IN RIVER EXE SHOOTING INVESTIGATION
***
IX
Rebecca reached the site of the dredging within fifteen minutes of her rushing out of Jenny’s apartment, the cold night air whipping along the water as she hurried down to the towpath to where a police line blocked access to the river. A small crowd of media and passers–by were watching the police as they worked.
The river was illuminated with stark white light, arc lamps mounted on the shore pointing down at the water to where a skiff was moored. Police divers from the Force Support Group were working in the black water, but Rebecca could see that on the skiff was a body wrapped in polyurethane sheets that was being swarmed over by forensics teams.
Rebecca spotted DS Russell and DC Marchant on the shore, standing with their hands in their pockets against the cold. Beside them was a short, stocky man with a close–shaved head alongside a taller, younger man whom she assumed were CID detectives now attached to the case. Rebecca turned her collar up, pulled her scarf up over the lower half of her face to conceal herself from the nearby watching media, and walked along the upper path. She then cut down the bank toward the police line, hoping to catch Kieran’s attention.
He seemed to be in deep conversation with Hannah, who spotted Rebecca first and gave her boss a nudge. Kieran saw her, turned and immediately made his way toward the line as Rebecca reached it.
‘Is it Sam?’
Rebecca’s voice was taut in her own ears, and she tried her best not to shout the question above the sound of the generators powering the lights. Kieran reached the cordon and shook his head.
‘We don’t know who it is, but it’s not Sam. Male, Caucasian, jeans, trainers, dark hooded top.’
Rebecca’s shoulders sagged with relief and she peered at the body on the skiff as it was gingerly manoeuvered to the shore, ready to be taken to the morgue.
‘A body in the same part of the river as Sam was shot,’ Rebecca murmured. ‘What are the chances?’
Hannah reached the cordon and replied.
‘We’re not ruling anything out. Folks have vanished here before, gone into the water, that kind of thing.’
Rebecca was tempted to suggest that Hannah could take her opinion and shove it where the sun didn’t shine, but she held herself in check and focused on Kieran.
‘Any other news yet?’
‘You know I can’t talk to you about that.’
Rebecca knew that as a potential suspect in the case, Kieran and others on the MCIT would be forbidden from talking to her about the investigation, but this was different at least as far as she was concerned.
‘Come on, Kieran,’ Rebecca urged. ‘My fiancé is missing and I’m a suspect. I tried to talk to Helen and Peter but they shut me out.’
Kieran took a deep breath. ‘You can’t start getting involved, Becca.’
‘I already am involved! I was there, in case you’d forgotten.’
‘And you can’t be a part of an investigation when you’re a subject of that investigation,’ Hannah replied, ‘in case you’d forgotten.’
‘You know, for a newbie you’re really good at giving out advice. Here’s some for you. Why don’t you go take a running jump into that river? It might warm you up a bit.’
Kieran ducked under the cordon, took Rebecca by the arm and led her back up the bank before Hannah could formulate her reply.
‘Okay, enough,’ he snapped as they walked. ‘Hannah’s right, you can’t be here.’
‘I can’t just sit on my arse while this plays out!’
‘You’re going to have to!’ Kieran shot back, loudly enough to attract glances from others watching the skiff nearby. He dropped his voice again. ‘You’re on the hook for this, Becca. You’re the last person to see Sam alive and now you’re gobbing off at your colleauges.’
‘Hannah’s not my colleague.’
Kieran raised an eyebrow, and in saying nothing he said more than he ever could. Rebecca knew that she was out of line but the frustration was proving too much for her. She stared at the river, the lights flickering on the black water, the tow path before her. A pulse of white pain blossomed like a supernova in her head and one hand flew to her wound as she doubled over, a sudden vision exploding into view.
‘What?’ Kieran asked, all anger gone now as he placed one hand on her shoulder.
The river.
Black water sliding past, the echo of a gunshot and Sam’s body crashing into the water. The gun in Rebecca’s hand, cold, heavy, her wrist aching from the sudden recoil. The sound of traffic and a shout from somewhere in the darkness. The pistol turning in her grip, the wicked black barrel pointing at her face and then…
‘I’m okay,’ Rebecca said, holding her head with one hand as she steadied herself, the vision and the pain fading away to the rapid beats of her heart.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Kieran said, ‘you shouldn’t be out at all. You need rest, Becca. Go home, leave this to us. If there’s anything that turns up about Sam, I’ll call you as soon as I can, okay?’
Rebecca turned, saw Hannah watching her with an unsympathetic gaze, as though she thought that Rebecca was somehow putting on an act to curry favour. A compulsion to charge at Hannah and throw her into the water herself flooded her awareness. She had nothing to lose. She could do that just as easy as…
Stop it! Rebecca felt nauseous and dazed, the memory of Sam’s body crashing into the water filling her with a self–loathing that made her want to puke. Suddenly she wanted to be nowhere near this place, where so much suffering had occurred.
‘CID are here,’ Kieran said, and gestured to the stocky man and his colleague, who were watching Rebecca with interest from a distance. ‘They’re taking over, Rebecca. You need to stay out of this from now on, okay?’
The two detectives watched her intently, Hannah Marchant alongside them. It was as though they could see right into her mind, her memory of the gun, the shooting, everything.
Rebecca turned away and staggered up the bank and along the towpath, began walking for home, her pace quickening. She suddenly thought about the river again, so close alongside her, black and cold and dark. Maybe Sam was somewhere down in there right now, no longer burdened by the wearisome cares of the world. She could just throw herself into the Exe and all of this would be over. No more problems. No more worries. No more accusations.
Rebecca squeezed her eyes tight shut and hurried home. She reached the apartments and fumbled with the keypad code, then got inside and rushed up to her front door. She scrambled for the correct keys and opened the door, rushed in and slammed it shut behind her.
The balcony. You could go off the balcony. Two seconds, head first, no more worries.
Rebecca put both hands to her head and pressed hard, as though she could squeeze the thoughts out of her head. The world around her seemed to tilt to one side and she stumbled, dropped to her knees next to the sofa. Her eyes fell upon a cabinet, within which were bottles of liquor and wine.
She scrambled for them, yanked open the door and pulled out an unopened Pinot Grigio. Within moments she’d unscrewed the cap and
gulped down a stiff mouthful. The wine scalded her throat and her eyes stung as she swallowed it, but it felt good, cleansing, as though it was scouring her body of cruel thoughts.
She reached for a glass and poured herself a generous helping, then slumped against the sofa, her coat in disarray around her, and began sipping the wine as she waited for the laborious voices in her head to piss off and leave her be.
***
X
The light was the first thing Rebecca saw.
It streamed in through the balcony windows in brilliant golden rays that both warmed her and seared her brain like a laser beam. Pain bolted once again through her skull and nausea poisoned her innards, but this time she knew the cause. The bottle of wine lay empty nearby, and her back and limbs ached with cold from where she had slept on the floor with her coat over her.
She glanced at the clock on the wall. 8.47am. She dimly recalled drinking with abandon, sat there on the floor with the little Budhha statue alongside her and the television on as she watched crime documentaries to take her mind off, ironically, the crime committed within a couple of miles of her home.
Denial.
As a police officer and then a detective, she had cossetted herself in the knowledge that she operated on the right side of the law. She did not fear justice but instead was an instrument of that justice. She drew comfort from watching documentaries on real–life murders, learning about how other police forces had solved crimes while reminding herself that it would never happen to her. She had watched documentaries on prisons, secure in the knowledge that she would never have to face life from within a cell. That was the fate of the criminals that she caught. Sometimes, she thought of them, suffering even now in whichever prison they had been cast, paying for their crimes one day, one hour, one slow and painful second at a time.