Death Call

by Wendy Cartmell

  “Crane, sit down.”

  “I can’t. I’ve got to keep moving. Do something. Anything.” Crane started pacing around the conference table. “Let me help with the investigation.” Anderson didn’t reply and he seemed to be fiddling with his phone. ”Derek!” Crane shouted. “Are you listening to me?”

  “Sorry, Crane. Look sit down and I’ll tell you what we know.”

  “I told you I need to keep moving. What good does sitting down do, eh?”

  Crane turned to the window and looked out over Aldershot. In the distance, he could see the Garrison, the home of the British Army, his home for 22 years until he was thrown out, tossed away like a broken doll. All because of an accident that wasn’t his fault. Falling out of a moving lorry before the back of it had been secured. An accident that shattered his hip and most of the bones in his leg. In danger of becoming emotional again, he turned back to see Anderson, who had a mug in his hand.

  Actually, Anderson looked nearly as bad as Crane did. The bags under his eyes were suitcases and he seemed smaller and more crumpled somehow, as though he had been put in a tumble dryer on a hot cycle.

  “Here, sit down and have a coffee. I’ve got some goodies in my drawer if you’re hungry.”

  “No, thanks, I don’t want anything to eat.”

  Crane took the coffee though and once more turned to the window, the Garrison seemingly acting like a magnet. “So, what do you know?” he asked, but remained standing with his back to Derek.

  “The centre at Winchester is sure it’s just a computer glitch. Someone is investigating, one of the programmers I think, but they’re confident it won’t happen again.”

  “How do we know there haven’t been any more lost 999 calls? Maybe people haven’t reported them. There could be others. I bet I’m not the only one.”

  “Crane, you don’t know that.”

  Crane turned away from the window. “I’ve got a gut feeling, Derek. This could be big. Very big. A major fault in the system that Winchester aren’t admitting to. I’ve been thinking about it. Let’s do a newspaper article with Diane Chambers.”

  “Are you mad? That woman is nothing but a trouble maker, you and I both know that.”

  “No we don’t. I always thought that deep down she liked me. We have to do something, Derek. Why won’t you help me?”

  Crane thumped the table and glared at his so-called friend. He couldn’t understand why Derek didn’t have his back. Everyone seemed to be abandoning him. Leaving him. He didn’t understand what was going on.

  Hearing the door open, Crane turned his head towards it and saw Major Martin standing there.

  “Hello, Tom. How are you doing?”

  Crane couldn’t speak and stared at his friend and doctor. The man who had done the autopsy on Tina. Once more faced with the reality of her death, he shook his head and then slumped into a chair. His fading anger allowing despair to fill the void it left behind.

  “I’ve got the results of the autopsy. Can I sit down?”

  Crane nodded. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to hear the details. On the one hand, it was yet another slap in the face, reminding him of her death. On the other, it could make him even more incensed by her death, if it had been avoidable.

  Taking a deep breath Crane took the report held out by the Major and said, “Can you tell me what it says? I’m not up to reading at the moment.” The compassion he read in Major Martin’s face was nearly the undoing of him. “Oh God, what does it say? Tell me!”

  Hands in his trouser pockets and looking anywhere but at Crane, the Major said, “She died of a heart attack.”

  “That’s what I thought too,” whispered Crane. “Was her death avoidable?”

  “Possibly.”

  Crane’s head jerked up. “Possibly? Is that all you can say? Possibly?”

  “All right then, probably. Medically speaking she had a myocardial infarction, a sudden cardiac death.”

  “Which means in English?”

  “She had a ventricular fibrillation, which is when the heart quivers instead of pumps due to disorganized electrical activity in the ventricles. It results in cardiac arrest with loss of consciousness and no pulse. This is followed by irreversible death in the absence of treatment.”

  “In the absence of treatment?”

  Major Martin paused, and then said, “Yes, in the absence of treatment.”

  “Such as calling for an ambulance that didn’t arrive and then having to wait again for another one.”

  “That is one scenario, yes.”

  Crane stood and paced the room. “So if an ambulance had been dispatched from the first 999 call, what would her chances of survival have been?”

  “Best guess is a 40% survival rate, give or take. She would have been rushed into the operating theatre and given an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator rather like what we used to call a pacemaker.”

  “So that fucking bastard killed Tina.” Crane roared out his anger and punched the partition wall that cut Anderson off from the rest of the Major Crimes team, leaving a hole in the plasterboard.

  11

  “So, what do you think?”

  Crane sat opposite Diane Chambers in the lounge of his house in Ash. He hadn’t been able to face going into the newspaper’s office, so Diane had agreed to come to him. He’d just finished telling her his story and stared at her, watching for a reaction. He desperately needed her to write the story, but didn’t want to appear to be begging. Which of course he was. With bells on.

  “Where’s your evidence?” she said, glancing at her mobile phone on the small table between them. It was recording their every word. Crane glanced at it as well. It was still working.

  “Here,” Crane held out his own mobile phone, not understanding why she wanted evidence.

  She had never needed much corroboration for her stories before, not that he had ever seen at least. She went for dramatic headlines, overblown stories. Trashy stuff, but it sold newspapers. It must be because she was now the editor that she had decided to be more cautious.

  “You’ll see two calls logged to 999. The first one, the one that killed Tina, wasn’t logged onto their system and an ambulance was never dispatched.”

  “And you think there’s a computer glitch that could have caused it.”

  “That’s one theory.”

  “What’s the other?”

  “Promise not to laugh?”

  Diane looked confused but nodded.

  “I’ve been thinking about this for a while.” He paused and took a deep breath before saying, “What if it was done deliberately?”

  “Sorry?” Diane rocked back in her seat.

  “What if someone in the 999 ambulance control room was taking calls but somehow erasing them from the system. Or…”

  “Or?” Diane prompted.

  “Or someone was hacking into the system.”

  “But what on earth has made you think that?”

  “Because the person I spoke to asked me to do something very strange.”

  “Which was?”

  “To hold the phone to Tina’s head, so he or she could listen to her breathing. It was while I was doing that, that she took her last breath.”

  “But… but… why would anyone do that?”

  “To listen to her dying.”

  Diane stood and walked over to the window, looking out over the village of Ash, where Crane lived. Watching her back, he saw her shudder and wrap her arms around herself. For once, she made him feel under-dressed. His comfortable baggy clothing losing the fashion stakes against her leopard skin blouse and well-cut skirt, which suited her and she looked well groomed. However, her sharp clothes couldn’t hide the revulsion on her face as she turned back to him.

  “Crane, that has to be the sickest, most twisted thing I’ve ever heard of. Anyone who would do that would be certifiably insane. Let alone what it says about your mind, coming up with such a theory – its grotesque!”

  “That’s as may be,” Crane shrugg
ed off her words. “But the question is will you help me? Will you print my story?”

  Diane took a deep breath and returned to the settee.

  “Diane, there could be others.”

  Her head shot up from her introspection.

  “Others?”

  “Yes, There’s one other that we know about,” and he quickly told Diane about it. “Look, either way, if it’s a person or a computer glitch, if you do an article, it may make any other victims come forward. Just think, Diane, what a scoop that would be!” Crane moved to the edge of his chair. “The nationals and the television are sure to be interested – and you’d be the one who broke the story. The one they will all want to talk to. I’ll refuse any interviews and direct people to you.” Crane leaned forward and took her hands in his. “Please, Diane,” he furiously blinked away tears and gulped. “Please help me. I don’t know who else to turn to.”

  Crane felt as pathetic as he sounded. Not quite the gruff Sgt Major anymore, but a widower. Just the thought of the word made him shake.

  “Are you saying Anderson isn’t helping?” Diane frowned.

  Diane took her hands away from his, seemingly embarrassed by his sudden need to grab her. He realised he had to try to get back to the man he was before. But it was so hard. Crane was beginning to grasp that his life was now in two halves. Life before Tina and life after Tina.

  “He just thinks it’s a computer glitch, nothing more,” explained Crane returning to the subject in hand. “The centre at Winchester are supposedly looking at it. But I know there has to be more to it than that. Why on earth would the 999 operator have wanted to hear her breathe?”

  Diane chewed her lip. “That’s what’s getting to me too. I’m not sure I can go as far as you in thinking some sick individual is doing this deliberately. However, if you’re right, there must be others. If we don’t ask, we’ll never find out. All right, I’ll do it. As long as you promise to let Anderson know before it’s published. The last thing I need is for him to start shouting at me and refusing to let me have any more information in the future on the crimes he is investigating. Okay?”

  “Okay. I promise.” He thought that telling Anderson might cause a shouting match, but it would be worth it. He stood and held out his hand. After shaking it, she began to collect her things and turned off the recorder.

  At the front door, she turned and said, “I know it sounds like a platitude, but I am very sorry for your loss, Crane.”

  He managed to nod curtly in reply and closed the door on her, before she could see his tears and hear his sobs.

  12

  The sound of the organ swelled within the confines of the Garrison church as Tina’s coffin passed through the doors, with Crane following behind. At first Crane hadn’t wanted to even talk about a funeral, never mind organise or attend it. However, Padre Symonds had gently cajoled him into it. So there he was, doing something he’d never imagined he would ever do. Walking behind his wife’s coffin. As they reached the transept, her coffin was placed on the wooden stays and the pallbearers moved away. The Padre had asked if Crane wanted to be a pallbearer, but at the time that thought was so horrific he had asked Padre Symmonds if he was mad. Why on earth would he have wanted to bear her coffin? He would never manage that. He would buckle under the weight of his grief and her body. He’d wondered if the Padre was deranged by grief himself.

  Realising that he was still standing and everyone was looking at him, but without any idea of what he was supposed to do, Crane was rescued by Anderson and led by the arm into the front pew. He had left the content of the service to Padre Symmonds and Anderson told him what to do as it progressed. He stood, sat, kneeled, on Anderson’s command. The worst were the hymns. He had no voice for speaking, so therefore had no voice for singing. He stood with the hymn book in his hand and his mouth closed and looked around. Seeing those he knew triggered memories and he saw Tina with each and every one of them. Laughing, crying, with Crane, without Crane, pregnant, with Daniel. The images changed like a slide show projected all around the church. Wherever he looked, he glimpsed her; she peered around a column, stood behind one of the flags lining the church, was part of the stained glass window, sat in a pew behind him. And then she disappeared. Was gone. He looked around wildly, but couldn’t see her anymore and he finally understood he was on his own. She wasn’t coming back. He’d never see her again.

  He guessed Padre Symmonds must have done a good job of organising the service, for at the end, as he stood in the doorway, everyone was saying; “What a lovely service… you did Tina proud… so sorry for your loss… she was a wonderful woman.”

  Crane nodded and shook hands feeling like a robot programmed to repeat the same action over and over again to people he didn’t even know. Friends of Tina’s from work, mothers from the pre-school, friends from her school days and from university. He didn’t even know who had told everyone about the funeral, but guessed it must have been the Padre and Tina’s parents.

  It was standing by the grave that finally broke him. Looking down at her coffin in that hole. That was when he realised he was cast adrift in choppy seas, alone. Tina had been his lifeline, his reason for living, his rock. He wasn’t the most emotional of husbands, but he’d been loyal and brave and didn’t know how he could keep going without her. As he grabbed a handful of soil and threw it on her coffin, he vowed to throw himself into the investigation to find out who was on the 999 line that night and why.

  He needed help, of course, but wasn’t too proud to ask for it. Not anymore. He’d taken the first step by asking Diane to write a story for the Aldershot News. The second one would be seeing if anyone would help him investigate and get definitive answers about Tina’s death.

  Stumbling backward from the grave, he was steadied by the strong, much younger arms of Sgt Billy Williams, his young friend from the Military Police. As Crane turned to thank him, he was struck with an idea. Something that at first thought was a bit mad. Upon further examination of it, he thought it just might work.

  13

  Aldershot News

  Call for Help

  Imagine this. Your wife, husband, son or daughter, is dying in your arms. You call 999 and follow the instructions of the operator, who guides you in the art of resuscitation. In a short while, you hear the sirens of an ambulance and then paramedics rush into the house and take over from you, working on the patient and then rushing him or her to hospital. A few days later, all is well, and your loved one returns home.

  Now imagine a slightly different scenario, which has much darker implications.

  Your wife, husband, son or daughter, is dying in your arms. You call 999 and follow the instructions of the operator. All well and good so far.

  Then the operator doesn’t tell you how to resuscitate your loved one. Instead asks you to put your phone to the head of the patient, just as they take their dying breath. The operator then cuts the call. You are left with no ambulance, no paramedics, no instructions and a dead loved one.

  Upon calling the 999 emergency service again, you find they have no log of your first call and say that no ambulance is on its way. By now, it’s too late. The patient is dead and beyond help.

  This is a terrible tale. But it’s a true one. This actually happened to a local resident. Here at the Aldershot News we don’t shy away from difficult stories. We champion the underdogs, those who can’t speak for themselves. We challenge those who have something to hide and keep digging until we find the truth.

  It is possible that this tragic tale is being repeated around Hampshire. We sincerely hope not. But if you have also been a victim of this hoaxer then email me, in complete confidence, with your story and contact details at: 999@aldershotnews.com.

  Crane put down the newspaper on the kitchen table, after reading the article aloud. “So, what do you think?”

  “It’s horrendous. The whole thing. Bloody horrendous.” Billy stood and turned to look out over the garden. “I remember Tina being so glad to get back here
when you moved out of the Garrison. She wanted her garden back,” he reminisced. He was dressed down in civvies as he wasn’t on duty that day but still stood upright, hands stuffed in his trouser pockets, blond hair falling down over his forehead instead of brushed back, where it refused to stay, despite many applications of gel.

  “I keep thinking I see her, you know.”

  “Really?” Billy turned back to Crane.

  “Yes. It’s as though I catch glimpses of her every now and again. You know, out of the corner of my eye, but when I look properly she’s not there.”

  “I can’t imagine it. I’ve not been with Emma that long, but already the thought of losing her… Sorry, this isn’t about me. So,” Billy took a breath, “what do you want me to do?”

  “Diane Chambers has given me access to that email address, so I was hoping that you and I could arrange to go and speak to anyone who replies. I really do appreciate this, Billy.”

  Sgt Billy Williams turned to look at his former boss. “I wasn’t sure about helping, but it’s that piece in the paper that’s done it. Even if it was written by Diane.” He grinned at Crane.

  “Oh, God, you two were an item once weren’t you?”

  Billy nodded. “Yeah, we even lived together for a while.”

  “What went wrong?”

  “We became ships that passed in the night. She was always out chasing a story and I was always out investigating a crime. I was fed up of going home to an empty flat and so was she. In the end there wasn’t enough feeling in the relationship to keep us together.”

  “And with Emma?”

  “It’s good. Really good, actually.”

  Crane could do no more than nod. He wished his ex-sergeant and Emma Harrison all the best for their relationship, but was unable to articulate it.

  As if understanding, Billy said, “Right, talking about my love life isn’t going to get us anywhere. Call up that email address and let’s see if there have been any replies.”