You drink.
Even if you’re a reformed alcoholic, like me, you drink.
You do it to forget, not to enjoy.
Not long cold beers. Not fine wines. Certainly not comically christened cocktails.
You down shots.
Vodka.
In small glasses to start with. Because you still have some self-respect. And then, when the fiery anaesthetic doesn’t hit the spot quickly enough, you pick the bottle up, as I’m doin’ now and you hold it to your lips and you pour it down your throat until you start to choke.
I cough and splutter. Spit and spray. Leave spirits and spittle all over the kitchen table. Yes, I’m feelin’ sorry for myself. Yes, I’m depressed and desperate. And contrary to what people say, drink is the answer.
Soon, with a little luck, I will be unconscious. Delirious. Floatin’ on a black sea beneath a black sky, where nothin’ and no one can hurt me. Just pushin’ off from the shore makes me feel better. I’m sailin’ to Blotto and on the way I’ll become fuzzy-headed, and my thoughts and feelings will get lost like jumpers that I put down while playin’ soccer as a kid.
The pain will go. Vanish. Disappear.
But not yet.
From the moment Paula and I created that secret. From the very second, we swore not to tell a soul about what happened, I knew what I would one day have to do.
It is comin’ down to her or me. And it will not be me.
I take a final swig of the vodka and start to stand. I knock the table with my thighs and the bottle tips over. The last third spills across the wood. I leave it. Go to the fridge and look for wine.
Shit. I cleared everythin’ out. Everythin’ bar the vodka. Oh, and some whisky stashed in the loft! Two litres. In case of emergencies.
This is certainly that.
I climb the stairs. My legs grow heavy. The strong spirits starting their voodoo magic. The blackness is beckonin’. I pull out a stool from beneath Paula’s dressing table, stand on it and pop the hatch in the corner of the bedroom.
My fingers fumble in the roof insulation.
Here it is! Bottle one. I pass it to my other hand and throw it down onto the bed. More fumbling. Fumblin’ until my arm aches. At last, bottle two!
I get down and don’t bother closin’ the hatch or moving the stool. I just unscrew the bottle and take a belt of the deep amber fire water. I don’t give a shit now. I’m not supposed to touch a drop, so I lie back on my pillow and literally shower myself in whisky. I close my eyes and pour the wonderful peaty liquid over my face and into my mouth.
I sit up laughing. Put the bottle on the bedside cabinet and stare at a big suitcase on top of the triple wardrobe opposite me. Something snaps. I go over, pull it down, throw it on the bed, open it up. Then I find myself tearin’ things out of the wardrobe. Paula’s things. Dresses. Tops. Shoes. Hats. Handbags.
I squash them into the case.
I want everythin’ of hers out of my life. If she doesn’t want to be with me, then I don’t want any trace of her left around me. No reminders. I sweep a hand over the dressin’ table. Bottles of perfume crash against the wall. I pull out drawers of underwear and tip them into the overflowin’ case.
The sight of everythin’ packed is too much. I put a hand under the case and hurl it at the wall. Rage is eatin’ me up. If I stay in this room a minute longer, I’ll tear bricks out of the wall.
I leave the mess and go back downstairs.
And then I see it.
Lyin’ on the floor near the settee. Near where she’d been sprawled out. Near where we’d rowed and I’d pulled her back.
I bend down and pick up a piece of paper.
I unfold it and my anger evaporates.
Everythin’ is clear now. All that strange behaviour of hers. It suddenly makes sense.
39
Annie
Dee has made pizza for tea. Not ordered it from Gino’s, where you get a free bottle of pop and garlic bread when it comes to more than twenty quid. No, she’s only gone and baked it. Well, baked them, to be precise, because we have your classic cheese and tomato, and a very ambitious all-day-breakfast pizza with sausage, egg, bacon and tomato.
‘My idea,’ claims Tom as he cuts up the masterpiece for us. ‘I’m thinking of patenting it.’
‘I helped!’ protests Polly, eager not to miss out if any praise is being passed around.
‘You certainly did, princess.’ Dee sits next to her and rubs her head affectionately.
I look across the table at my sister, my son and my granddaughter and I think to myself, I love this. Yes, I wish Jack were here. And Lily too. But I know I’m lucky to have any family with me. To have had children. To have love all around me in the shape of my own flesh and blood. Nothing makes you count your blessings more than a health scare in the household. Especially one with the C word in it.
‘It’s Dee-lish–us,’ I pronounce while chewing my first mouthful of Margherita.
There’s a collective groan at my pun.
‘Yum, I can really taste where you helped, Polly,’ I add, nodding enthusiastically.
‘I didn’t help with that one, Gran.’ She points her fork. ‘Only the bacon one.’
I try a quick recovery. ‘Then I must be able to smell the help. The aroma must have drifted onto this one because they were in the same oven.’
‘What’s a roma?’ she asks.
Everyone laughs.
‘Aroma – it’s another word for smell.’
‘Why do you need another word?’ Polly screws up her face in confusion. ‘What’s wrong with saying smell?’
‘Why do you need more than one type of pizza?’ asks Tom. ‘We don’t need it – but it’s nice to have something different as well, isn’t it? Well, words are the same. You don’t need different words, but it’s good to have the choice.’
My phone rings. Vibrates on the table. Dee and Tom give me disgusted looks.
‘Excuse me.’
I scrawp my chair back and take my plate of pizza and the phone in the lounge. I can see from the caller display, it’s Nisha.
‘Hello,’ I mumble through a mouthful of mozzarella.
‘Sorry to call, but I think Alice Ross has come up with something, and, given the overtime restrictions, I need your okay for her to carry on.’
‘What’s she got?’ I take a bite of food as I listen.
‘Remember I said Ashley Crewe got badly beaten up once, had to go to hospital?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, according to one of the girls Alice spoke to, it wasn’t Kieran, or his dad who did it; it was another lad at the school.’
‘Okay. Then let’s interview him as well.’
‘That’s the problem, boss. He’s missing too.’
I put down my pizza. Now I’m interested. ‘Missing as in she couldn’t trace him within a few calls. Or missing as in he was reported missing.’
‘The latter.’
‘Then yes. Spend the overtime. And get her help if she needs it. I’ll call Goodwin and give him the heads up. Right after I’ve finished dinner and read a bedtime story.’
‘Aren’t you a bit old for that, boss?’
‘Goodnight, Nisha.’
40
Paula
John, my trusty driver, drops me at St Pancras and I book myself into the station hotel for the night. I’ve stayed here many times before, mostly when I’ve come back from a business trip and haven’t been ready to go home and face Danny.
I check in and as my bag gets taken upstairs I hide away in a corner of the Gilbert Scott bar. People are drinking and laughing, unwinding, dating, letting their hair down, readying themselves for an evening of fun. I feel like an outsider. A stranger in a strange town. Then I realise why. I am in limbo, the afterlife of the maritally deceased, the void between splitting up and receiving the decree absolute.
I also realise I am hungry.
I opt for pumpkin gnocchi and a side salad.
By the time I have eaten half t
he pasta I am tired enough to go to my room. It is too early to sleep and too late for someone freshly out of hospital to be too far away from a bed and the painkillers that I know I am going to need in an hour or two.
Normally, I’d walk upstairs, solely so I could enjoy the grand staircase and its layered views of the gorgeous old Gothic building. But not today.
The lift takes me to the second floor and I’m exhausted by the time I’ve turned the key and locked the door behind me. There are fresh flowers, a welcome note on the bed and my case has been thoughtfully left on a brass luggage holder. There’s not a lot in it. But I packed enough. Enough to finally start my new life. One free of Danny. Yes, his shadow will hang around for a while, but I’m sure he won’t go through with his threats. He’s held that particular sword of Damocles over me for so many years, I now feel foolish I didn’t call his bluff long ago.
I run a bath. Sprinkle in the complimentary salts. Leave my clothes in an untidy pile and ease myself into the warm water. It’s good. The heat is soothing both my physical and mental bruises. They really should have this on the NHS.
I close my eyes and allow myself to fully enjoy the scents of lavender and rose. Summer comes to my mind. Box hedging. Freshly cut lawns. Well dug borders. Thick purple shrubs of French lavender. Big white snowball blooms, Boule de Neige, standing out against the deep green grass. I am in heaven. A simple moment of escapism.
My mobile rings.
It’s in the heap of clothes.
I ignore it. Shut my eyes again.
It rings once more. And I know it’s going to keep ringing until I answer it or turn it off. I kneel up. Reach down. Pull over my trousers. Fish the phone out of my pocket. The caller has left a message.
I know it will be Danny.
I know he will be drunk.
And I know I shouldn’t even listen to it, before I switch off the handset and sink back into the bath.
But I do.
‘Guess what I just found, Paula,’ he slurs giddily. ‘You dropped it by the sofa in the lounge. Oh, God. Oh, my God, Paula.’
I have no idea what he is rambling on about.
‘I’m going to be a daddy. Wow! I’m going to be a dad.’
Now I know.
He found my hospital card. The appointment they made me for antenatal care.
Danny knows I’m pregnant.
41
Annie
Charlie York moves a step closer to sainthood by once more turning up with croissants and coffee. I don’t let on that I’ve already had breakfast and guiltily tuck away a delicious chocolate-oozing pastry while we swap information.
Jo Matthews rubs her beautifully manicured hands on a dull, recycled serviette, and tells us, ‘I’m afraid this is our last breaking of bread together. I am going back to London tonight.’
‘And I’m heading back tomorrow,’ adds Charlie. ‘Richardson has gone to ground. Local cops will pick Sharon Croft and her son Ronnie up, when they surface. There’s no point us being up here anymore.’
I swallow a chunk of chocolaty croissant and add my two penn’orth. ‘Shame, I was getting used to the hospitality.’
A knock on the door turns our heads.
‘Come in,’ Nisha shouts to a slim, dark-haired woman in her early twenties. ‘This is Alice Ross,’ she says to me.
‘Oh, good.’ I get up to say hello. ‘DI Parker, Alice.’ I shake her hand, as I add, ‘Thanks for working late for us last night.’
‘My pleasure, ma’am.’ She sounds nervous.
‘Relax. Grab a chair and tell us what you’ve got.’
She wriggles in alongside Nisha. ‘In the year after Ashley Crewe went missing from Lawndale two other boys disappeared as well. One turned up six months later in Glasgow. The other lad was never found.’
‘I know half of all missing people are fifteen-to-twenty-one-year-olds, but three lads from the same school in the same year, that’s odd, isn’t it?’
‘Not so odd, ma’am. There were almost two thousand pupils at Lawndale. From what I’ve read, a large number of boys from lower-working-class homes bunk off from school, find their way into drugs, part-time cash-in-hand jobs and then simply move on because they have no strong home life to tie them to the area.’
‘Broken Britain,’ says Charlie unhelpfully.
‘Broken record,’ I say dismissively. ‘Did these lads go missing before Crewe, at the same time, or after him?’ I ask Alice.
‘The lad who turned up is called Jordan Segal. He ran away three days after Crewe disappeared.’
‘Interesting,’ says Charlie. ‘Killers, especially young ones, tend to panic and run off.’
‘Jordan turned up, sir. I’ve spoken to him.’
‘And?’ I ask.
‘He says he ran away because of problems at home, spent the summer in Glasgow and then joined the army. I checked his records, called his parents and it all adds up.’
‘The army’s a good place to hide if you’re a killer,’ adds Jo.
‘Do you want me to get him in for interview, ma’am?’
‘We have to,’ I tell her. ‘Never eliminate anyone until you’ve looked them in the eye. And what about the other lad?’
She turns a page of her notebook. ‘I haven’t managed to trace him. He disappeared almost a year after Crewe and just a few days before the end of term. His name is Kenneth Aston.’
‘D’you know anything else about him?’ asks Nisha.
‘Only that he was also in a local children’s home in the Lawndale district and was one of the boys Mr Palmer interviewed in connection with Ashley Crewe’s disappearance.’
‘Why?’
‘Why what, ma’am?’
‘Why was he interviewed by Derek Palmer, Alice?’
‘I’m sorry, ma’am, I thought I’d said. They had a fight at school. No one would say why, and from what the DCI said it was brutal enough for Crewe to need a trip to hospital for stitches and a broken wrist.’
‘And do we know where our second suspect lives these days?’
‘No, ma’am, we don’t. Aston has not been seen since the day he disappeared. I’ve started to call classmates to see if he turned up in later years, you know, Friends Reunited, Facebook, et cetera, but I haven’t got lucky yet.’
‘Then keep trying, Alice.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
I can see the poor girl’s tired. ‘You’ve done well, Alice,’ I tell her. ‘Did Goodwin say how long we can have you working with us?’
‘He said until the end of the week, ma’am.’
Her comment makes all of us smile. ‘The end of the week’ is a supervising officer’s way of saying the operation is going to be ‘scaled back for economic reasons’, or, in plain English, ‘shut down’.
Nisha jumps in. ‘Let me give Records a rattle.’ She looks to Alice. ‘I know you’ll have searched but a fresh pair of eyes won’t do any harm.’
Alice remains impassive. I take it as prideful resentment that her work isn’t being trusted. ‘Anything else, Alice?’
‘No, ma’am.’ She stands and puts her chair neatly under the table.
‘Keep me updated, please.’ I pass her a card with my personal mobile number on it. ‘As you know, we only have limited time to pursue this.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ And with that, she’s gone.
I watch her leave, then turn back to the other three. Charlie York is grinning like the Cheshire Cat. ‘She reminds me of a young you,’ he says.
‘Really?’ I smile back. ‘I’m sure I never called you ma’am. At least not in public.’
42
Sarah
I’m in London and my husband is in his studio in the Cotswolds. Which means he is on Planet Martin and therefore barely listening to anything I’m saying to him down the phone. ‘Did you hear what I just said?’ I ask, more out of amusement than annoyance.
He knows this is his cue to stop painting, or cutting, or sticking or whatever strange collaging process he’s in the middle of.
‘I did,’ he replies, unconvincingly.
‘Okay – then tell me, what I just said.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he blusters. ‘Something about the clients you were seeing taking you to watch Chelsea and you not coming back tonight?’
‘That’s close. I said I’d been to a clients’ Away Day, at a dry ski slope called Chel-Ski.’
‘Oh, my God, it’s really called that?’
‘It is.’
‘I didn’t know you could ski.’
‘Apparently, I can’t. At least, not very well. I took a tumble and feel like I’ve been beaten black and blue.’
‘Oh, dear. Are you okay? Is it serious?’ he says, sounding wonderfully concerned.
‘Would be if I were planning a career as a nude model. No, it’s just a little painful right now. I’ll be okay. Anyway, it seems I made a good impression, or they felt sorry for me, because there’s some more work coming my way, but I need to stay another night.’
‘That’s good. The extra work, I mean. Not you being hurt, or being away from me. Being away from me is never good. But to be honest, I’m so far behind with this work for the exhibition, I think I’ll just use the time to focus on getting things done.’
‘That’s what I hoped. Hey, I love you.’
‘Love you too. You rest up now.’
‘Will do.’
I hang up and think of him slipping back into his art. He has no idea what work I do. How I earn a living and how much I bring in. I asked him once, and he said, ‘You do business things for anyone who’ll pay you,’ which made me sound more like a hooker than anything. I put him right by explaining that I was a self-employed consultant specialising in change and restructuring, but I could see he had glazed over at the mention of the word consultant. Money only interests Martin at the end of the month. If there’s enough there to feed us and pay the rent, he’s happy.
Right now, I’m tucked away in Starbucks, using their free Wi-Fi, while making a large black coffee and pain aux raisins last an inordinately long time. I have a morning ritual when it comes to starting computer work. As soon as I am online I check mail. Then I quickly browse a round-up of national news headlines and amuse myself with the latest antics of Donald Trump. Then I finally set about my Things To Do list.
Dead and Gone: A gripping thriller with a shocking twist (DI Annie Parker) Page 13