‘Right,’ said Ray. Where on earth were they going to start?
She looked at him. ‘Will you find him? The man who killed Jacob. Will you find him?’ Her voice cracked and the words fell apart, morphing into a low moan. She bent forward, hugging the school bag into her stomach, and Ray felt a tightening in his chest. He took a deep breath, forcing the feeling away.
‘We’ll do everything we can,’ he said, despising himself for the cliché.
Kate came back from the kitchen with Brian behind her, carrying a mug of tea. ‘All right if I finish this statement now, guv?’ he asked.
Stop upsetting my witness, you mean, Ray thought. ‘Yes, thank you – sorry for interrupting. Got everything we need, Kate?’
Kate nodded. She looked pale, and he wondered if Brian had said something to upset her. In a year or so he would know her as well as he knew the rest of the team, but he hadn’t quite sussed her out yet. She was outspoken, he knew that much, not too nervous to put her point across at team meetings, and she learned fast.
They left the house and walked in silence back to the car.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked, although it was clear she wasn’t. Her jaw was rigid; the colour had completely drained from her face.
‘Fine,’ Kate said, but her voice was thick and Ray realised she was trying not to cry.
‘Hey,’ he said, reaching out and putting an awkward arm round her shoulder, ‘is it the job?’ Over the years Ray had built a defensive mechanism against the fall-out of cases like this one. Most police officers had one – it’s why you had to turn a blind eye to some of the jokes bandied about the canteen – but perhaps Kate was different.
She nodded and took a deep, juddering breath. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not normally like this, I promise. I’ve done dozens of death knocks, but … God, he was five years old! Apparently Jacob’s father never wanted anything to do with him, so it’s always been the two of them. I can’t imagine what she’s going through.’ Her voice cracked, and Ray felt the tightness in his chest return. His coping mechanism relied on focusing on the investigation – on the hard evidence before them – and not dwelling too deeply on the emotions of the people involved. If he thought too long about how it must feel to watch your child die in your arms, he would be no use to anyone, not least to Jacob and his mother. Ray’s thoughts flicked involuntarily to his own children, and he had an irrational desire to call home and check they were both safe.
‘Sorry.’ Kate swallowed and gave an embarrassed smile. ‘I promise I won’t always be like this.’
‘Hey, it’s okay,’ Ray said. ‘We’ve all been there.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Even you? I didn’t have you down as the sensitive type, boss.’
‘I have my moments.’ Ray squeezed her shoulder before taking his arm away. He didn’t think he’d ever actually shed tears at a job, but he’d come pretty close. ‘You going to be okay?’
‘I’ll be fine. Thank you.’
As they pulled away, Kate looked back at the scene, where the CSIs were still hard at work. ‘What sort of bastard kills a five-year-old boy, then drives off?’
Ray didn’t hesitate. ‘That’s exactly what we’re going to find out.’
2
I don’t want a cup of tea, but I take it anyway. Cradling the mug in both hands I press my face into the steam until it scalds me. Pain pricks my skin, deadening my cheeks and stinging my eyes. I fight the instinct to pull away; I need the numbness to blur the scenes that won’t leave my head.
‘Shall I get you something to eat?’
He towers over me and I know I should look up, but I can’t bear to. How can he offer me food and drink as though nothing has happened? A wave of nausea wells up inside me and I swallow the acrid taste back down. He blames me for it. He hasn’t said so, but he doesn’t have to, it’s there in his eyes. And he’s right – it was my fault. We should have gone home a different way; I shouldn’t have talked; I should have stopped him …
‘No, thank you,’ I say quietly, ‘I’m not hungry.’
The accident plays on a loop in my head. I want to press pause but the film is relentless: his body slamming onto the bonnet time after time after time. I raise the mug to my face again, but the tea has cooled and the warmth on my skin isn’t enough to hurt. I can’t feel the tears forming, but fat droplets burst as they hit my knees. I watch them soak into my jeans, and scratch my nail across a smear of clay on my thigh.
I look around the room at the home I have spent so many years creating. The curtains, bought to match the cushions; the artwork, some of my own, some I found in galleries and loved too much to leave behind. I thought I was making a home, but I was only ever building a house.
My hand hurts. I can feel my pulse beating rapid and light in my wrist. I’m glad of the pain. I wish it were more. I wish it had been me the car hit.
He’s talking again. Police are out everywhere looking for the car … the papers will appeal for witnesses … it will be on the news …
The room spins and I fix my gaze on the coffee table, nodding when it seems appropriate. He strides two paces to the window, then back again. I wish he would sit down – he’s making me nervous. My hands are shaking and I put down my untouched tea before I drop it, but I clatter the china against the glass tabletop. He shoots me a look of frustration.
‘Sorry,’ I say. There’s a metallic taste in my mouth, and I realise I’ve bitten through the inside of my lip. I swallow the blood, not wanting to draw attention to myself by asking for a tissue.
Everything has changed. The instant the car slid across the wet tarmac, my whole life changed. I can see everything clearly, as though I am standing on the sidelines. I can’t go on like this.
When I wake, for a second I’m not sure what this feeling is. Everything is the same, and yet everything has changed. Then, before I have even opened my eyes, there is a rush of noise in my head, like an underground train. And there it is: playing out in Technicolor scenes I can’t pause or mute. I press the heels of my palms into my temples as though I can make the images subside through brute force alone, but still they come, thick and fast, as if without them I might forget.
On my bedside cabinet is the brass alarm clock Eve gave me when I went to university – ‘Because you’ll never get to lectures, otherwise’ – and I’m shocked to see it’s ten-thirty already. The pain in my hand has been overshadowed by a headache that blinds me if I move my head too fast, and as I peel myself from the bed every muscle aches.
I pull on yesterday’s clothes and go into the garden without stopping to make a coffee, even though my mouth is so dry it’s an effort to swallow. I can’t find my shoes, and the frost stings my feet as I make my way across the grass. The garden isn’t large, but winter is on its way, and by the time I reach the other side I can’t feel my toes.
The garden studio has been my sanctuary for the last five years. Little more than a shed to the casual observer, it is where I come to think, to work, and to escape. The wooden floor is stained from the lumps of clay that drop from my wheel, firmly placed in the centre of the room, where I can move around it and stand back to view my work with a critical eye. Three sides of the shed are lined with shelves on which I place my sculptures, in an ordered chaos only I could understand. Works in progress, here; fired but not painted, here; waiting to go to customers, here. Hundreds of separate pieces, yet if I shut my eyes, I can still feel the shape of each one beneath my fingers, the wetness of the clay on my palms.
I take the key from its hiding place under the window ledge and open the door. It’s worse than I thought. The floor lies unseen beneath a carpet of broken clay; rounded halves of pots ending abruptly in angry jagged peaks. The wooden shelves are all empty, my desk swept clear of work, and the tiny figurines on the window ledge are unrecognisable, crushed into shards that glisten in the sunlight.
By the door lies a small statuette of a woman. I made her last year, as part of a series of figures I produced for a shop in Clifton. I had
wanted to produce something real, something as far from perfection as it was possible to get, and yet for it still to be beautiful. I made ten women, each with their own distinctive curves, their own bumps and scars and imperfections. I based them on my mother; my sister; girls I taught at pottery class; women I saw walking in the park. This one is me. Loosely, and not so anyone would recognise, but nevertheless me. Chest a little too flat; hips a little too narrow; feet a little too big. A tangle of hair twisted into a knot at the base of the neck. I bend down and pick her up. I had thought her intact, but as I touch her the clay moves beneath my hands, and I’m left with two broken pieces. I look at them, then I hurl them with all my strength towards the wall, where they shatter into tiny pieces that shower down on to my desk.
I take a deep breath and let it slowly out.
I’m not sure how many days have passed since the accident, or how I have moved through the week when I feel as though I’m dragging my legs through treacle. I don’t know what it is that makes me decide today is the day. But it is. I take only what will fit into my holdall, knowing that if I don’t go right now, I might not be able to leave at all. I walk haphazardly about the house, trying to imagine never being here again. The thought is both terrifying and liberating. Can I do this? Is it possible to simply walk away from one life and start another? I have to try: it is my only chance of getting through this in one piece.
My laptop is in the kitchen. It holds photos; addresses; important information I might one day need and hadn’t thought to save elsewhere. I don’t have time to think about doing this now, and although it’s heavy and awkward I add it to my bag. I don’t have much room left, but I can’t leave without one final piece of my past. I discard a jumper and a fistful of T-shirts, making room instead for the wooden box in which my memories are hidden, crammed one on top of another beneath the cedar lid. I don’t look inside – I don’t need to. The assortment of teenage diaries, erratically kept and with regretted pages torn from their bindings; an elastic band full of concert tickets; my graduation certificate; clippings from my first exhibition. And the photos of the son I loved with an intensity that seemed impossible. Precious photographs. So few for someone so loved. Such a small impact on the world, yet the very centre of my own.
Unable to resist, I open the box and pick up the uppermost photo: a Polaroid taken by a soft-spoken midwife on the day he was born. He is a tiny scrap of pink, barely visible beneath the white hospital blanket. In the photo my arms are fixed in the awkward pose of the new mother, drowning in love and exhaustion. It had all been so rushed, so frightening, so unlike the books I had devoured during my pregnancy, but the love I had to offer never faltered. Suddenly unable to breathe, I place the photo back and push the box into my holdall.
Jacob’s death is front-page news. It screams at me from the garage forecourt I pass, from the corner shop, and from the bus-stop queue where I stand as though I am no different to anyone else. As though I am not running away.
Everyone is talking about the accident. How could it have happened? Who could have done it? Each bus stop brings fresh news, and the snatches of gossip float back across our heads, impossible for me to avoid.
It was a black car.
It was a red car.
The police are close to an arrest.
The police have no leads.
A woman sits next to me. She opens her newspaper and suddenly it feels as though someone is pressing on my chest. Jacob’s face stares at me; bruised eyes rebuking me for not protecting him, for letting him die. I force myself to look at him, and a hard knot tightens in my throat. My vision blurs and I can’t read the words, but I don’t need to – I’ve seen a version of this article in every paper I’ve passed today. The quotes from devastated teachers; the notes on flowers by the side of the road; the inquest – opened and then adjourned. A second photo shows a wreath of yellow chrysanthemums on an impossibly tiny coffin. The woman tuts and starts talking: half to herself, I think, but perhaps she feels I will have a view.
‘Terrible, isn’t it? And just before Christmas, too.’
I say nothing.
‘Driving off like that without stopping.’ She tuts again. ‘Mind you,’ she continues, ‘five years old. What kind of mother allows a child that age to cross a road on his own?’
I can’t help it – I let out a sob. Without my realising, hot tears stream down my cheeks and into the tissue pushed gently into my hand.
‘Poor lamb,’ the woman says, as though soothing a small child. It’s not clear if she means me, or Jacob. ‘You can’t imagine, can you?’
But I can, and I want to tell her that, whatever she is imagining, it is a thousand times worse. She finds me another tissue, crumpled but clean, and turns the page of her newspaper to read about the Clifton Christmas lights switch-on.
I never thought I would run away. I never thought I would need to.
3
Ray made his way up to the third floor, where the frantic pace of twenty-four-seven policing gave way to the quiet carpeted offices of the nine-to-fivers and reactive CID. He liked it here best in the evening, when he could work through the ever-present stack of files on his desk without interruption. He walked through the open-plan area to where the DI’s office had been created from a partitioned corner of the room.
‘How did the briefing go?’
The voice made him jump. He turned to see Kate sitting at her desk. ‘Party Four’s my old shift, you know. I hope they at least pretended to be interested.’ She yawned.
‘It was fine,’ Ray said. ‘They’re a good bunch, and if nothing else it keeps it fresh in their minds.’ Ray had managed to keep details of the hit-and-run on the briefing sheet for a week, but it had inevitably been pushed off as other jobs came in. He was trying his best to get round all the shifts and remind them he still needed their help. He tapped his watch. ‘What are you doing here at this hour?’
‘I’m trawling through the responses to the media appeals,’ she said, flicking her thumb across the edge of a pile of computer printouts. ‘Not that it’s doing much good.’
‘Nothing worth following up?’
‘Zilch,’ Kate said. ‘A few sightings of cars driving badly, the odd sanctimonious judgement on parental supervision, and the usual line-up of crackpots and crazies, including some bloke predicting the Second Coming.’ She sighed. ‘We badly need a break – something to go on.’
‘I realise it’s frustrating,’ Ray said, ‘but hang on in there, it’ll happen. It always does.’
Kate groaned and pushed her chair away from the mound of paper. ‘I don’t think I’m blessed with patience.’
‘I know the feeling.’ Ray sat on the edge of her desk. ‘This is the dull bit of investigating – the bit they don’t show on TV.’ He grinned at her doleful expression. ‘But the pay-off is worth it. Just think: in amongst all those pieces of paper could be the key to solving this case.’
Kate eyed her desk dubiously and Ray laughed.
‘Come on, I’ll make us a cup of tea and give you a hand.’
They sifted through each printed sheet, but didn’t find the nugget of information Ray had hoped for.
‘Ah well, at least that’s another thing ticked off the list,’ he said. ‘Thanks for staying late to go through them all.’
‘Do you think we’ll find the driver?’
Ray nodded firmly. ‘We have to believe we will, otherwise how can anyone have confidence in us? I’ve dealt with hundreds of jobs: I haven’t solved them all – not by any means – but I’ve always been convinced the answer lies just around the corner.’
‘Stumpy said you’ve requested a Crimewatch appeal?’
‘Yes. Standard practice with a hit-and-run – especially when there’s a kid involved. It’ll mean a lot more of this, I’m afraid.’ He gestured to the pile of paper, now fit for nothing but the shredder.
‘That’s okay,’ Kate said. ‘I could do with the overtime. I bought my first place last year and it’s a bit of a stretch, t
o be honest.’
‘Do you live on your own?’ He wondered if he was allowed to ask that sort of thing nowadays. In the time he’d been a copper, political correctness had reached a point where anything remotely personal had to be skirted around. In a few years’ time people wouldn’t be able to talk at all.
‘Mostly,’ Kate said. ‘I bought the place on my own, but my boyfriend stays over quite a lot. Best of both worlds, I reckon.’
Ray picked up the empty mugs. ‘Right, well you’d better head off home,’ he said. ‘Your chap will be wondering where you are.’
‘It’s okay, he’s a chef,’ Kate said, but she stood up too. ‘He works worse shifts than I do. How about you? Doesn’t your wife despair of the hours you do?’
‘She’s used to it,’ Ray said, raising his voice to continue the conversation as he went to get his jacket from his office. ‘She was a police officer too – we joined together.’
The police training centre in Ryton-on-Dunsmore had few redeeming features, but the cheap bar had definitely been one of them. During a particularly painful karaoke evening Ray had seen Mags sitting with her classmates. She was laughing, her head thrown back at something a friend was saying. When he saw her stand up to get a round in, he downed his almost-full pint so he could join her at the bar, only to stand there tongue-tied. Fortunately Mags was less reticent, and they were inseparable for the remainder of their sixteen-week course. Ray suppressed a grin as he remembered creeping from the female accommodation block to his own room at six in the morning.
‘How long have you been married?’ Kate said.
‘Fifteen years. We got hitched once we were through our probation.’
‘But she’s not in the job any more?’
‘Mags took a career break when Tom was born, and never went back after our youngest arrived,’ Ray said. ‘Lucy’s nine now, and Tom’s settling into his first year at secondary school, so Mags is starting to think about returning to work. She wants to retrain as a teacher.’
I Let You Go Page 2