by Deborah Bee
Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
Forty-Seven
Forty-Eight
Forty-Nine
Fifty
Fifty-One
Fifty-Two
Fifty-Three
Fifty-Four
Fifty-Five
Fifty-Six
Fifty-Seven
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
To all the employees and volunteers at bodyandsoulcharity.org, who are helping to transform the life-threatening effects of trauma with love.
One
Coco
Don’t know why the woman behind the counter doesn’t look up.
She knows I’m here.
Throat is burning.
Can’t breathe.
Lungs about to burst.
Sweat and rain dripping off my nose.
Don’t know why the woman behind the counter still doesn’t look up.
Wait.
Leaving pool of water around my feet.
Breathe slower.
If you ever go to the police, I will kill you.
You know that.
I will kill you and then I will kill your friends.
Or maybe I will kill your friends first.
And then I will kill you.
Put fingertips on the counter. Just fingertips. Just to steady myself.
Leave wet prints. Wipe with sleeve.
Leave a smudgy mark.
Try to rub it out with my fingers.
Leave wet prints.
And another thing.
Shut up talking to Louisa.
Don’t let me catch you telling any of your friends anything about me.
Geddit?
NOTHING ABOUT ME.
EVER.
Unless it’s good.
They probably want to talk about me.
I see Louisa looking at me.
She wants me. I know she does.
Door shoots open and a massive gust of wind and rain bangs it hard against the waiting room wall. The noticeboard jumps. Notices flutter like frightened birds.
A man shuffles in.
Doesn’t look up either.
Woman behind the counter’s hidden behind a computer screen. The back of it’s facing the waiting room. Black and blue wires where her face should be.
Five minutes I’ve been here.
Think I have, anyway.
Probably, I have.
If I rest one foot on top of the other, like this, the soles of my feet start to warm up.
For a second.
Line of wet footprints on the carpet tiles.
Leading to me.
Maybe she can’t see that my feet are bare.
Perhaps she doesn’t realise . . .
‘Errrr. Excuse me?’ I say.
Babe.
Who were you on the phone to?
You know you’re lying.
I can always tell when you’re lying because you start to back away.
Stop lying.
COME BACK HERE AND STOP LYING.
Swallow hard.
Throat sore.
Quick, blink.
Stop the tears falling down my cheeks.
Eyes flick sideways from her screen.
Then back again.
I cough.
Words have got stuck.
‘’Scuse me. Could you help me, please?’
‘With you in a second,’ says the woman, in a sing-song way.
Like I’ve asked her for a Big Mac and fries.
I call her a woman.
Can’t be much older than me.
Twenty-five?
Maybe.
Dark hair.
Sensible centre-parting.
White shirt.
Short sleeves.
Epaulettes.
You know.
Black-and-white checked scarf thing.
First job.
Probably.
How does someone so young get to be so like this?
‘I’d like to, um, maybe talk to someone,’ I say, wiping away hot tears with my sleeve. ‘Do you have someone I could talk to? Just for a minute?’
Door bangs against the wall again.
I jump.
Notices flutter.
Just another guy.
‘With you in a second,’ she says again.
Same voice. Doesn’t even look at me.
A phone buzzes.
‘But,’ I say.
‘Just a second!’ she hisses and snatches up the headset in a flash, straightens it over her ear, snaps a button on the keyboard.
‘Front desk, Joanna speaking,’ she goes. All professional. All smart.
‘No problem,’ she says. ‘I’ll have it with you in a second.’
Slips off the headset and hardens her gaze at her screen.
‘Here! Joanna,’ says a voice behind me.
She jumps.
Makes me jump too.
A man’s voice.
‘Can I just say? I hope their second don’t take as long as her second seems to be taking.’
‘What?’ says the woman behind the counter, looking behind me, showing her pristine white teeth.
‘Oh, shaddup, Barney,’ she says, relaxing, looking back at the screen.
Silence.
Throat is getting tighter.
‘Is there not somewhere private I could go?’ I say.
Sound like I’m whining.
Unwavering gaze at the screen suggests there isn’t.
‘Um. To talk to someone. You know, privately. Like maybe a private room? You know . . .?’
She tilts her head to one side.
‘You do know this is a police station, right? Not a private members’ club.’
She says ‘private members’ really loud.
Is she allowed to talk to me like that?
I think that.
I don’t say that.
Babe. You know you won’t go to the police.
What would be the point?
Babe?
Babe!
Shut up crying, will you.
Your snivelling totally does my head in.
Legs are beginning to buckle.
‘’Scuse me,’ says a muffled voice behind me.
A thick, gravelly woman’s voice. A Liverpool accent.
‘’Scuse me,’ she says again, louder. ‘Could I just bother you for one moment, because I was just wondering, if it’s at all possible, and if you can spare the time from your very important task, for you to do us all an enormous favour and give this poor girl a break? Would you?’
I turn around.
The row of plastic chairs stuck to the back wall is filled with a collection of dirty old down-and-outs.
Tramps.
They’re not even really that old.
You can tell they’re not.
Just thin and tired and cold and grey.
Apart from this one.
On the end.
A lady.
Purple anorak.
‘Thank you for your interest but this is a police matter,’ says the woman behind the counter, hardly moving her lips, like she’s sucking on a wasp.
She doesn’t look up.
The bloke at the other end of the row of chairs is slumped in his seat, legs outstretched, head buried into his upturned collar, arms folded, like he’s trying to keep the world out.
Sole of his trainer is coming away at the side. Frayed.
Pulls his woolly-hatted head out, looks at the woman behind the counter and then at me.
‘Feck,’ he says, at the exact same time as he sighs.
So, you can’t even tell if he really just said that or not.
‘And I’d be grateful if you wouldn’t swear, Barney, thank you very much’, says the woman behind the counter, raising her voice in case he can’t hear her under his collar. ‘Especially not in front of other visitors.’
‘You’ve finally noticed you’ve got a visitor then, have ya? Anyway, feck isn’t swearing,’ he mumbles as his nose dips back inside his collar.
‘Feck isn’t the same as fuck, you know, Joanna,’ says the bloke in the middle. ‘Feck is a proper Irish word. Ain’t that so, Olly? Been around for centuries. Olly? You awake?’ He nudges the coat next to him. It jumps into life.
‘Shup up, Ryan,’ says Olly, putting his oily old finger on his chin.
‘Feck’s not swearing though is it, Olly?’ says Ryan, nudging him again.
Olly’s hands are wrapped in crepe bandages that are grey and torn around his knuckles.
‘Let me tink . . .’ he says; also Irish.
He taps his chin and looks at the ceiling.
‘Guess what, yeah?’ he says. ‘I don’t give a feck, right.’
The line of dirty overcoats shakes up and down.
Just a little.
And a snigger and a cough creep out.
‘Pipe down, will you, Olly?’ shouts the woman behind the counter. Joanna.
‘Now, what is it you would like to report, madam?’
She stresses ‘is it’ as if whatever it is, it’s not worthy of her time or attention.
And she says ‘madam’ in the most patronising way ever.
She looks at me properly for the first time.
Like I’m shit.
I wish I hadn’t come.
I can tell what she thinks of me.
She glances over my shoulder.
She thinks there might be something more worthy of her attention.
Gareth used to do that.
Can I just tell you about your friends?
They aren’t really friends.
You know that, right?
They don’t even like you.
You’re shit.
‘Is it just me, or is there a strange smell in here?’ Joanna says, looking at me first, then accusingly at the row of men behind me.
‘There’s something. Now what is it? Petrol. Barney, have you been drinking petrol again?’
‘I think I might need help,’ I say, quietly.
She ignores me.
Totally.
‘Is it washer fluid?’ says Joanna
Then back at me: ‘What kind of help is that?’ she says, broadcasting it to the room in her loudest voice, pen raised to the lined notepad in front of her.
‘Can’t you just help me, please?’ I say.
I feel the blood rushing around my head, my heartbeat is getting faster and faster.
I’m hot.
The room gets darker and begins to spin.
‘Can’t you just help me?’ I say again, and my legs start to give way under me.
I’m going to be sick.
None of this is my fault.
Gareth says it’s all my fault.
I only stay with you because I pity you.
Fix me a drink.
Like NOW, fix me a drink.
Two
Sally
I can’t sit here and listen to that nasty little cow a second longer. They shouldn’t have girls like her in the force – she gives it a bad name, she really does. Girls like her are more interested in their bleedin’ selfies than they are in helping people, that’s what I think. Girl at Tesco Express was telling me only last week that it takes her two hours to get her slap on in the morning. And I thought, ‘Elizabeth . . .’ (her name was on her badge) ‘. . . Elizabeth, my dear, truly, it ain’t worth it. Not with the hand that you’ve been dealt.’ Not that she’d helped herself any. What with her false eyelashes and her lip liner and all that. And you know what she’d gone and done? She’s plucked out all her eyebrows so she can draw them back on higher up. Seriously. I’m telling you.
Anyway, this little PC tart, Joanna here, is cut from the exact same cloth if you ask me. She’s got drawn-on eyebrows and all.
‘What is it with you?’ I say to her. ‘What is it with you not helping someone like this poor lass, for heaven’s sake? Give her a break, will ya?’
I’m being nice, but believe me, I’d sooner knock her stupid, overpainted block off.
I go get the girl from the counter; she’s still in her dressing gown, mind, and I put my arm around her scrawny little shoulders and I gets her to sit down with us. Me and the lads who are here for the Drugs Intervention Programme.
‘You can sit here, can’t she, lads, if we all move up a bit, like?’ I say, half picking her up and guiding her across the waiting room. They are waking each other up to shuffle along a bit.
‘’Scuse me,’ I say, over my shoulder. ‘I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job or anything’ – not much I think – ‘but can’t you just call Sue Clarke, because I happen to know she’d think this lady needs to be seen very urgently?’
I lower the girl into the chair.
‘Do you mean Detective Sergeant Clarke?’
No, I mean the Queen of bloody Sheba, I think to myself.
‘I think I’ll be the judge of which member of the team needs to be alerted,’ she snaps. ‘Who are you, anyhow?’
I’ve told her already, told her when I got here, ages ago.
‘I told you, I’m Sally-Ann Parton, to see Detective Sergeant Clarke, 9 a.m. – and for the love of God, why don’t you just stop being nasty and help her?’
You know what I think. I think that police stations ain’t what they used to be and police reception staff ain’t what they used to be either. I know I lost my temper, and I shouldn’t have, but little tarts like her need to be put in their place. They don’t get taught at school that if you’re rude to people, they’re going to be rude back.
‘Fuck’s sake!’ she says, under her breath, rolling her eyes.
Three
DS Clarke
When Detective Inspector Bruce Langlands introduced a No Paper Policy in 2017 at Camden Road Police Station, he hadn’t bothered to inform Detective Sergeant DS Clarke. If he had, she would have told him straight off that, at the ripe old age of fifty-two, she wasn’t about to go kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century, thank you very much.
Now hot-desking had apparently arrived, and she wasn’t about to adopt that either.
‘Jesus, Livvy. Will you get your filthy chocolate biscuits off Chapman’s desk?’ she says to PC Olivia Halsall, pink-cheeked with smudges of chocolate in the corners of her lips. Livvy is sipping a mug of coffee – at least, she was – with her laptop and gluten-free Chocolate Hobnobs laid out on what DS Clarke considers to be PC Chapman’s desk.
‘But—’ starts PC Halsall.
‘No buts,’ says DS Clarke, cupping her hand around the crumbs that are
scattered on the surface of the table and moving them to one corner. ‘Get rid of these,’ she says as she unpacks her laptop.
Halsall gathers the crumbs carefully into her palm and throws them on the floor.
‘But DI Langlands said we have to feel free to . . .’ She trails off as DS Clarke stares at the crumbs on the carpet. ‘DI Langlands said it’s the modern way,’ she starts again. ‘He said that it fosters camaraderie, cohesion and collaboration.’
‘Does DI Langlands share his desk?’ asks DS Clarke, handing her a tissue and nodding towards the crumbs.
‘No, Sarge,’ says PC Halsall, stooping to pick them up.
‘You see, all animals are born equal, Livvy, but some animals are more equal than others. Especially pigs,’ DS Clarke says as she opens her office door.
‘I love that film,’ says Livvy.
‘Which film?’
‘Babe. Love it. Almost as good as Wallace and Gromit. Oh, there’s someone in reception for you. Joanna called just now,’ she says, planting her coffee, biscuits and laptop on another vacant desk.
DS Clarke goes into her office, opens the top drawer of a filing cabinet and leafs through the green hanging files; the same files that were supposed to be digitised before the no paper policy arrived and still haven’t been. But these date back years, to when reports were handwritten. In pen. In notepads.
Terence Mansfield
57, Aigburth Road, Liverpool.
L17 6BJ
Conviction: Murder of Hayley Thomas and the serious assault of Mrs Sally-Ann Mansfield.
Sentence: Life
Liverpool Prison
Status: Awaiting Review Board. April 2017
Partner: Sally-Ann Parton (previously Mansfield)
DS Clarke draws in a breath when the Daily Mail front page falls open in the file.
HAYLEY THOMAS KILLER GETS LIFE, it says in thick black letters. DS Clarke recognises the picture of the girl underneath – it was on every newspaper front page. Only twenty-two when she was brutally murdered. And Terry’s mugshot. Not an ounce of remorse. Not then not ever, that’s what they said.
Awaiting Review Board, she thinks. ‘Maybe he’s found God,’ she whispers.
‘You called?’ says DI Langlands, grinning.
He was likeable enough, DI Langlands. Not the sort of colleague you’d go for a drink with, unless pressed. DS Clarke had never met his wife. She never turned up at the Christmas party. He took her to the office summer party last year though, and according to PC Halsall, who whispered it around the office at the time, she wears orthopaedic shoes. DS Clarke had wiggled her toes in her own orthopaedic shoes, rolled her eyes and smiled.