by Paula Daly
‘Fast,’ Dr Letts had informed us, solemnly.
And when we’d asked what that actually meant for Leon, she’d refused to commit. She’d said these were the early stages of what could be a very long process, but again that they were doing everything they could to ensure a good outcome for Leon.
She’d kept using that word: outcome. And each of us had accepted it, as though it meant something to us. As though we actually had some clue of what might lie ahead.
We were at Leon’s bedside, Gloria, Juliana and I (Meredith had gone home for now), and we were helplessly willing the pressure inside Leon’s brain to recede when my mobile rang and Inspector Ledecky said, ‘It’s your nail gun, Mrs Campbell. The nail gun belongs to you. The two sets of prints on it are yours and Leon’s.’
I noticed immediately that she’d reverted to using my surname.
‘Hold on,’ I replied, quickly moving from ICU to the corridor outside. Once there, I said, ‘But I’ve never seen the nail gun before,’ totally baffled by this piece of news, certain the police had somehow got their wires crossed.
DI Ledecky seemed unsurprised.
‘Would you know if you owned an electric screwdriver, a power sander, an angle grinder?’
‘Do we?’
‘You do.’
Leon had a whole cornucopia of power tools in the garage that I was unaware of, it seemed. Which was peculiar to say the least, since I couldn’t remember the last time Leon had attempted any DIY. Leon tended to break things. Tended to make matters worse. He had very little interest in home improvement and didn’t derive any pleasure at all from, say, tinkering around in the garage the way some men did.
‘But how would my fingerprints even get on that gun?’ I asked.
‘Well, aside from the obvious,’ Inspector Ledecky said, and then she paused, waiting for me to play catch-up, waiting for me to comprehend her full meaning, ‘aside from that,’ she continued, ‘you probably moved it without thinking. Perhaps when searching for something else.’
Her tone was different from the night before. I was no longer somebody to be consoled. To be supported after a traumatic event.
Her voice was cold, level. Unsettling.
‘The obvious?’ I repeated. ‘What do you mean the obvious?’
Inspector Ledecky lowered her voice. ‘Mrs Campbell, do I really need to spell it out?’
‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘No, you don’t.’
I put my back against the wall. A porter was wheeling an empty bed along the corridor. He looked hungover.
My prints were on the weapon used to try to kill Leon.
‘Am I under arrest?’ I asked quietly.
‘Not yet,’ she said.
I thought of the open garage door, the nail gun on show. Someone must have simply picked it up and walked the two or three steps to where Leon was sitting in the driver’s seat, raised their hand, and fired. Leon would have been trapped. He couldn’t have escaped even if he knew what was happening.
We were told that one nail had entered Leon’s temporal lobe, from just behind his right ear, and they thought that this was the first nail to be fired. Then, on realizing he had been shot, perhaps, Leon turned his head to the right, and this was when the second nail was fired straight into his forehead. This nail had lodged itself in his frontal lobe.
I made myself avoid Google. I told Juliana if she wanted to look up the consequences of the positioning of the nails then that was up to her. But I didn’t yet feel ready to speculate on whether Leon would lose his mobility, his sight, his speech.
I didn’t want to know what his ‘outcome’ might be. I just wanted him to get through the next day. To stay alive.
I needed him to stay alive. I needed him back where he belonged.
Leon’s protection was something I’d always taken for granted. If there was a noise in the night, I would move a little closer, feel almost smug in the fact that I’d bagged myself a real man this time. Because the men I’d dated up until Leon were just boys really – boys, who had played at the game of being grown up.
Leon was my security. My shield. It was his job to safeguard us. His job to keep us out of danger.
But now Leon wasn’t at home. And as the days began to pass I felt his absence keenly at every moment.
I’d never been afraid before. Never sat in my house with the lights off watching for signs of movement outside. Never been startled by the sound of the phone, the doorbell. Never made it my business to watch Lawrence Williams in the house opposite as he went about his chores, as he moved from room to room, all the while wondering: Had he tried to kill Leon? Why had he tried to kill Leon? And, if so, why hadn’t he been arrested by now?
Or was this person a stranger? An opportunist?
Leon had talked about installing CCTV once. This was after someone had stolen a crate of beer from our porch (which miraculously turned up in the boot of his car). I’d pooh-poohed it, said we didn’t need CCTV. ‘Only crooks need a deterrent like that,’ I’d said. Now I wished we had it.
The police remained tight-lipped when I asked about the progress of the investigation. I’d given a formal statement and Inspector Ledecky had not been present. And she was right when she said that as the investigation went on there was less and less time for victimology.
As we moved into day three, day four, day five, appallingly, no one was asking questions about Leon any more. About the type of person he was. Leon was now referred to as ‘the victim’, and when he was discussed, it was as if he was completely without personality, without character.
I could feel Leon slipping away.
And this wasn’t merely because of the way the police now referred to him; there were physical changes to Leon too: Leon didn’t look like Leon any more.
His brain had continued to swell, and he would need to stay sedated, kept in an induced coma, until it showed signs of receding. He had a probe inside his skull that measured intracranial pressure and it was this, this probe, that I tended to fixate upon most when I was at his bedside, because, suddenly, gone was his beautiful face. Gone was the face I knew so well, and in its place was a bloated, piggy-eyed version of the man I loved.
Add to that that Leon’s hair had started to grow back. I’d never seen Leon with hair, except in photographs of him as a child. He shaved his head every second day in the shower and, with the beginnings of a head of hair, he looked like another man entirely. Somebody else’s husband.
But it was his face. The face that had always been so pleasing to me, the face that evoked a real, visceral reaction: a blooming in the chest, a warmth spreading throughout my limbs; feelings that when I looked at him meant there was quite simply love present. That face was no longer there and it had been replaced by the countenance of a very different man. A man of hard living and excesses. A man who looked as if he’d abused his body. A man who didn’t like his own mind.
‘Come back to me, Leon,’ I would whisper.
‘When is Daddy coming back?’ asked Jack now. We were coming in from the car after I’d collected them from my mother’s – again. My mother, whom I called every night and again each morning to check she’d not over-medicated.
‘I don’t know, honey,’ I told Jack. ‘Soon, I hope.’
I’d not told them very much. Daddy was unwell and he was in the hospital: that was the extent of it. They didn’t know he had a brain injury and Jack, particularly, was starting to suspect I was withholding information. Inspector Ledecky had arranged for another detective, a young woman with experience in dealing with traumatized small children, to question Jack and Martha that morning. And she went at it very softly-softly. She spent a long time ‘establishing trust’ before coming out and asking them directly about the day of the attack, and what they remembered.
They remembered nothing. I could’ve told her that. It wasn’t like I hadn’t asked them myself: ‘What happened when I left you in the car?’ ‘What happened to Daddy?’ ‘Who did you see?’ ‘Did Lawrence hurt Daddy?’ ‘Did you see anyone hur
t Daddy?’ ‘How could you have seen nothing at all?’
But they’d had their earbuds in and their eyes on their iPads and the outside world had ceased to exist for them at the exact moment someone was trying to execute their father.
When the young detective was clearly getting nowhere fast, Inspector Ledecky stepped in and raised the idea that perhaps Jack and Martha were so very traumatized by the event they’d witnessed that they’d buried it immediately. So deep that they couldn’t access the memory.
‘Young children do that sometimes to protect themselves,’ DI Ledecky added helpfully, and Jack shot me a withering look, like, That’s not what I’m doing here.
I went along with the notion all the same though because Inspector Ledecky was still cool around me. She was still watchful of my movements, distrustful of my behaviour, and I didn’t want to give her reason to think I was trying to stop my own children from outing me as the perpetrator. As ridiculous as that was.
‘Grab your rucksack, honey,’ I said to Jack now. I had Martha in one arm and a bag of groceries in the other, and I was trying to close the car door with my hip. Martha was sleepy and heavy. She’d nodded off on the way home from my mother’s and if I didn’t get her inside fast and lay her down on the sofa, with either her comfort blanket or something sweet to suck on, she would cry pretty much until bedtime. And then, once in bed, she’d cry some more, and I’d have to resort to letting her cry herself to sleep while I sat on the bottom stair, listening, hating the fact that she was so distressed.
My mother’s generation had none of these problems. As kids, we were all tucked up asleep by seven o’clock apparently. Night-time misery was alien to them. They just got on with it, according to my mother.
I was struggling to get the key in the lock and hitched Martha higher on my hip so that I could reach when I became aware of a sound behind me. A scraping sound. A foot on gravel.
I turned.
There was no one there.
It must have been someone passing on the street. Or else my imagination.
Since the attack I’d become hyper-aware. I seemed to sense stuff I’d been blind to up until that point, and my brain now felt assaulted by the sheer number of stimuli.
Martha whimpered, and then, without warning, she flung her head back hard and I almost lost my grip on her. She writhed in my arms as she began building up to her biggest cry when I heard footsteps. Footsteps right behind me.
I pulled Martha in close. She fought me. I held her so tightly that I knew I was hurting her as I battled with the lock.
I’d envisioned this.
I knew I was vulnerable. I knew that whoever had attacked Leon would be back. Knew they wouldn’t be content with leaving him as he was and—
The lock released and we crashed through the door. I pulled Jack along with me by his hood, hurting him in the process, for he shouted out. I practically threw Martha to the floor and shoved the two of them inside as I slammed the door shut behind me.
There was someone there.
I saw him. Just glimpsed. But there was definitely someone in my driveway. He was standing, unmoving. He was watching me.
I gripped both children and put them in the kitchen before grabbing my phone. Then I ran back towards the lounge at the front of the house so I might catch sight of who was out there.
It was when I was dialling the first 9 that I saw him.
Glyn Williams.
Glyn Williams, Lawrence and Rose’s oddball son.
Glyn was in my driveway and he was rubbing his chin with his palm as if he was undecided what to do next. He took a step forward and then stopped.
I dialled a second 9.
He appeared to be talking to himself. Reciting something. He seemed almost trance-like.
I eased away from my spot and angled myself behind the edge of the curtain so I couldn’t be seen. He seemed to catch my movement and for a minute he focused on the window. They weren’t visible to me now, but I knew Glyn Williams had the palest, roundest blue eyes. They appeared as though all the colour had been washed from them and he would hold them steady, too steady, on anything except the person he was conversing with.
My heart raced. There was an unpleasant taste in my mouth.
What was he doing here?
Did he know I was watching?
He looked troubled.
He took a step forward and then stopped again.
He looked like he had something he really needed to say.
Or else do.
But for whatever reason, Glyn Williams didn’t approach further; he seemed almost blocked. As if an invisible barrier thwarted him. I stood with the phone in my hand, ready to redial the emergency services should he move.
Did he know something?
By now, my brow was slick with sweat. My heart hammering. The kids were being quiet in the kitchen – too quiet; I needed to check on them. But the sight of Glyn Williams there, static, unmoving, was strangely arresting.
He was such a peculiar man. Until this moment, he’d never done anything to make me feel really fearful of him, but there was something always a little ‘off’. I tended not to turn my back in his presence, tended to wonder where exactly in the house Leon was whenever Glyn called around. He had the creepy habit of turning up at the back door, unannounced; just appearing there, even though he knew the front door was our main point of access, and once inside the kitchen he would stroke his hand backwards and forwards across the kitchen work surface, repeatedly, as if checking for imperfections in the granite. And he always wore the same waterproof jacket. He was wearing it now in fact.
Bonita began snaking around my legs. She leaped up on to the windowsill and the sight of her through the glass seemed to startle Glyn. A look came over him. A look of confusion. As if, suddenly, he wasn’t entirely sure how he’d got there, the last few minutes a mystery to him. He appeared quite stricken and, as he turned on his heel, he stumbled. He completely lost his footing and had to put his hand out fast to steady himself by holding on to the car.
He paused there for a while, smoothing his hair down, checking his laces, before slinking away, and I watched him, my teeth cutting into my bottom lip.
I exhaled. I tried to calm my breathing. I reached for Bonita and she headbutted my hand to ensure a firm stroke, when – there was a scream from the kitchen.
Martha.
She was ratcheting it up for a full-blown meltdown, so I hurried in, straight to the cupboard, ready to pacify her with something inappropriate. Something that would destroy her appetite for the rest of the evening and mean dinner would be a total write-off.
Then I called Inspector Ledecky.
‘Hazel Ledecky,’ she said upon answering, and I sensed she was in the car. I could hear the extra static from the speakerphone and she was projecting her voice as though talking to someone in the next room.
‘Glyn Williams was in my driveway,’ I said. My voice had a distinct tremble to it. ‘It’s Jane Campbell.’
I paused.
‘Glyn Williams was in my driveway and he was acting strangely. I don’t know what to do.’
‘Was he acting in a threatening manner?’
I hesitated. ‘I’m not sure if you’d call it—’
‘What did he do exactly?’
‘He just stood there … But I’m on my own with the kids, and you appreciate I’m not exactly relaxed here, obviously.’
‘He didn’t threaten you physically?’
‘No.’
‘And he’s not out there now?’
‘I don’t think so. I’m in the kitchen—’
‘Mrs Campbell,’ she interrupted, ‘would you mind going to the front of the house and checking? I’ll stay on the line.’
I heard the click-clack of Hazel Ledecky’s indicator as I went through to the lounge. Bonita had remained on the windowsill and arched her back in readiness, thinking I’d returned with the sole purpose of petting her again.
‘He’s not out there,’ I said, scan
ning the driveway, scanning the street beyond that.
I almost felt disappointed. Ledecky, in her usual businesslike manner, was making me feel as if I was wasting her time. Making me feel my unease was unwarranted.
But then she surprised me.
‘I’m not far from your house, Mrs Campbell,’ she said evenly. ‘Leave it with me. I’ll talk to him.’
6
Half an hour later, Hazel Ledecky was in my kitchen.
‘Why was Glyn Williams out there?’ I asked.
‘I’ve requested he not come around here for a while and he agreed. As have Mr Williams – Lawrence – and his wife, Rose. Glyn apologizes if he startled you, and says he won’t come here again. It’s probably best if you do the same.’
‘Not talk to them, you mean?’
‘Don’t go over there,’ she said.
‘I wasn’t planning to, but why?’
‘Because it makes life simpler.’
I looked at Inspector Ledecky as if to say, That’s your answer? but she didn’t take the bait, she merely held my gaze, almost challenging me to say something more.
Something incriminating perhaps?
In that moment, I was very aware that, as far as she was concerned, my fingerprints were on the weapon and I had no alibi for the time of the attack. I was still on her list of suspects. Which was absurd because while she was considering my part in this, the person who actually did it was roaming free. She was wasting time.
‘Why don’t we know who did this yet?’ I said. ‘This is attempted murder, for Christ’s sake, and you don’t seem to be doing anything. What is it? Is Leon not important enough? Why haven’t you arrested Lawrence? He was here, wasn’t he? They were arguing. He could have wiped his prints from that gun before he threw it in the hedge. Surely you know that.’
Inspector Ledecky maintained her self-possession. ‘I know it’s frustrating. And I know you feel like you’re being left out of the loop, but that’s because our investigation hasn’t generated enough evidence against one particular suspect. We can’t arrest someone until—’
‘But Lawrence!’ I snapped. ‘He was here and—’
‘Mrs Campbell,’ she said, firmly, to shut me up, and then she paused. ‘Jane,’ she said, more quietly, ‘I’m sorry that there’s not been more progress. It’s frustrating for us too, and we’re doing everything we can, I assure you. But there’s something else I need to make you aware of that’s’ – she took a breath – ‘well, it’s not exactly what we were hoping for.’