by Susan Lewis
Donna’s eyes widened with surprise. ‘You mean Lauren’s ex? What about him?’
‘Well, he’s been pestering her, hasn’t he, wanting to get together to talk, trying to persuade her to go out with him again.’
‘Well, yes, but I wouldn’t say pestering, exactly, and anyway he knows she’s not interested.’
‘Is he upset about that?’
‘I don’t know. I mean, he was, but ...’ She shrugged as her answer trailed off.
‘Do you know him very well?’
‘I guess so. He lives about four streets from here and we went to the same primary school.’
‘So you introduced him to Lauren?’
‘No, she went to the same school. She knew him from there.’
‘Do you know when he was last in touch with her?’
‘Not really. I think she said it was a couple of weeks ago, but she didn’t text him back.’
‘So does she have another boyfriend now?’
A swathe of painful colour came rushing back to Donna’s cheeks. ‘No, neither of us do at the moment. We’ve got our A levels coming up. We’re having to work really hard, so we don’t have time for anything else.’
‘Except Lauren had time to drive into Somerset on Saturday night, apparently on her own, though we can’t actually be sure of that. Was someone with her?’
‘No! I mean, I don’t know.’
‘Which is it? No, or you don’t know?’
‘I don’t know. I already told you I thought she was going out with Melissa ...’
‘And Melissa’s already told her mother that she’s keeping a secret for Lauren because it’s what Lauren would want, and apparently you agree with her. That sounds very much to me like you both know a lot more than you’re telling.’
‘No! I only know that Melissa asked me if she should keep the secret and I said yes, because if she didn’t it would be like we thought Lauren wasn’t coming back.’
‘She might not, Donna, so what then?’
The girl’s eyes flooded with tears. ‘I don’t know, and I don’t understand why you’re questioning me like this when the only person who’s done anything wrong is the one who got drunk and drove his car into her. He’s the one you should be talking to, not me.’
Dennis feigned surprise. ‘You think he knows why Lauren was in the middle of the road when he came up over the hill?’
Seeming to crumple, Donna said, ‘No, I’m just saying, he’s the one who’s committed a crime, so you should all of you, everyone, go and talk to him and leave Lauren alone.’
After a frustrating half an hour further along the street with Parker Jenkins whose broken heart seemed to be well on the mend if the new girlfriend he’d mentioned was genuine, Jackie Dennis was now back in her car heading towards the M4. ‘Hi, it’s me,’ she told Clive Andrews when he answered his mobile. ‘So how did it go with Melissa?’
‘I didn’t manage to get any more out of her than her mother did,’ he replied, sounding weary and exasperated. ‘She knows something, obviously, she’s not actually denying that, but no way is she going to give it up. How about Donna, any more communicative?’
‘No. She’s not even really admitting to being in on the secret, but I’m not swallowing that. She knows as much as Melissa, that’s for sure, but whatever it is, like you said, no way are they giving it up.’
‘Of course it could all be totally irrelevant.’
‘It could, but there again it might not. Did you get anywhere mentioning the Osmonds to Melissa?’
‘Another blank. Apparently she’s never heard of them.’
‘Did you believe her?’
‘She sounded pretty convincing, but not knowing her, I’ve no idea how good a liar she is.’
‘Mm, I’m left feeling pretty much the same way about Donna. I couldn’t get anything out of the ex-boyfriend either, apart from how he’s really sorry about what happened to Lauren, and he really hopes she gets better, but he’s over her now – he’s met someone else apparently – and surprise, surprise, he’s never heard of the Osmonds either.’
‘So what next?’ Clive asked.
‘Good question. Without any actual evidence of a crime I guess we’ve gone as far as we can for now, because we have no powers to seize phones or computers, apart from Lauren’s of course, much less to shake the girls up with a trip to the station. So, what can I say apart from thanks for coming on board today? I’d hoped, with you being that bit closer to the Scotts and what’s happening with them, it might have persuaded Melissa to open up.’
‘I hoped so too, and I ladled it on, believe me, but her loyalty’s firmly with Lauren, misguided though it might be, and right at this moment I can’t see a way to change it.’
‘OK, I’ll catch up with you tomorrow. Let me know if there’s any change in Lauren,’ and after ringing off she clicked the controls on her steering wheel to take an incoming call.
‘Hey ma’am,’ the voice of one of her sergeants came cheerily down the line. ‘It’s Chester.’
‘What’s up?’ she asked.
‘Two things. First, the CPS is sniffing around wanting to know more about the Scott–Lomax case.’
‘What? Why? Does he know something we don’t?’
‘No idea. I’ll have to leave that with you.’
‘OK, go on. Second?’
‘Second, we’ve had some interesting news from the labs where Lomax’s blood’s been tested.’
‘Oh?’ she said curiously. ‘Not the results, surely. I wasn’t expecting them for at least another month.’
‘Not the results, no.’
‘Christ, don’t tell me, he’s got Aids.’
‘Not even warm. Are you sitting comfortably? You’re going to like this, but probably not a lot.’
It was Wednesday evening, just after eight. As soon as he’d finished his exams Charlie had driven straight to Gloucestershire, arriving not long after Oliver’s closest mates, Alfie and Jerome, had turned up. With Russ in Bristol at some TV awards do, they had the place to themselves; nevertheless Charlie had decided to hold their strategy meeting in Oliver’s room.
‘I haven’t had as much time as I’d have liked on this,’ he was telling them, pushing his glasses up his nose as he took out the papers he’d brought with him, ‘but I’ve been looking into it and honest to God, there’s more case law around drinking and driving than practically anything else. It’s a minefield, but the good news is, we’ve got a few ways we can go.’
‘I thought you had a lawyer,’ Jerome said drily to Oliver.
Turning his gaze from the dark night outside, Oliver shifted on the window seat as he said, ‘I have ...’
‘And Jolyon’s definitely one of the best,’ Charlie jumped in. ‘But he’s like mentally busy, so I thought if we did some of the groundwork for him, we could take it to him when we’re done and with any luck your defence will be all wrapped up.’
‘And you’ll have a job,’ Alfie quipped.
‘There is no defence,’ Oliver reminded him. ‘I was breathalysed, and ...’
‘I know all that,’ Charlie interrupted, ‘but that’s not where it begins and ends. There’s all sorts of mitigation we can bring into play, what the law calls “special reasons”, or “mistakes in police procedure”, “duress of circumstances”, “medical issues”, there’s loads. We’ve just got to work out which will suit us best. I’ve made a list, and at the top, for the moment anyway, I’ve got “spiked or laced drinks”. This is where you come in, Alfie and Jerome, because if you were to say that you’d spiked his drinks at the party, chances are he can’t be found guilty, because he wouldn’t have known he was over the limit.’
Alfie definitely appeared impressed as he looked from Charlie to Oliver, and then to Jerome. ‘I’m up for it,’ he said. ‘Anything to help get him out of this.’
‘Sure,’ Jerome agreed. ‘It’s just, are we going to find ourselves up on some sort of rap then?’
‘No,’ Charlie assured him, ‘becau
se you had no idea he was going to get in a car.’
‘We can’t ask them to lie,’ Oliver protested.
‘Oh for Christ’s sake,’ Charlie cried impatiently, ‘do you want to make this go away, or don’t you?’
‘Of course I do, I just don’t like the idea of my friends having to lie like that.’
‘What difference does it make?’ Alfie protested. ‘All we’ve got to say is that we poured a couple of vodkas into your beer, and job done.’
‘What if someone comes forward and says it’s not true?’
‘They won’t,’ Charlie told him. ‘Why would they? Anyway, how would they know?’
Realising they probably couldn’t, Oliver said, ‘You mentioned there are other ways, so what are they?’
Charlie looked at Alfie and Jerome. ‘We’re OK with the first one as it stands?’ he said.
They both nodded.
‘Right, keeping that on the list, the next option could be for Oliver to say he wasn’t driving when the accident happened.’
Oliver looked stunned. ‘How the hell can I do that, when I was right there?’ he expostulated. ‘The car doesn’t drive itself ...’
‘Did anyone actually see it happen?’ Charlie challenged. ‘As far as I’m aware there were no witnesses.’
‘No, but it’s my car, for God’s sake, and everyone saw me leave the party on my own. Anyway, who the hell am I going to say was driving when no one else was at the scene?’
‘You can say that the driver legged it. It’ll be your word against the police’s, and they’ve got no way of proving you were actually at the wheel when the car hit the girl.’
Flinching, Oliver said, ‘Please tell me you’re not about to ask one of my friends to say he was driving, because no way ...’
‘That’s not where I’m going,’ Charlie cut in. ‘All you have to do is say it wasn’t you, it was someone else, but you’re not prepared to give his name.’
Alfie and Jerome were looking as doubtful as Oliver. ‘I don’t get how that would fly?’ Jerome queried.
‘It won’t,’ Oliver told him, ‘because no one’s going to believe it.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Charlie declared, ‘the point is, they can’t prove you were at the wheel, and if they can’t prove it, they don’t have a case.’
Alfie still wasn’t convinced. ‘If it was that easy, wouldn’t everyone be doing it?’ he asked.
‘Lots do, and they get away with it.’
‘I can’t see Jolyon going for it,’ Oliver stated.
‘Maybe he won’t, I’m just putting it forward as an option. We can always throw it out, but for now we’ll leave it on the table. Next is what they call the hip-flask defence. This is when someone has a drink after the event and prior to being breathalysed. Sure, you’ll be positive, but the point is, you were sober when the accident happened, and then had a drink to calm yourself down.’
‘I was in the middle of nowhere so where was I supposed to get this drink?’ Oliver demanded.
‘It was already in the car, vodka, beer, cider, it could be anything ...’
‘And they have the car now, so they’ll know there was nothing ...’
‘True, but you could have tossed the bottle over a hedge. OK, they can go searching for it, and they’ve probably already combed the area, so perhaps this option is a nonstarter, but I had to run it past you.’
‘This is frigging amazing,’ Jerome commented. ‘I had no idea about any of this.’
‘Why would you, when you’ve never needed to?’ Charlie replied. ‘So, next up we have mistakes in police procedure. We’ll have to go through the police reports with a fine-tooth comb to check this out, but you’d be amazed to know how often they miss out one little thing, or don’t use the correct wording, and if they do, the case just collapses. But since we can’t know about that until we see the reports, we’ll put it aside as a possible, and move on to the next. This is the one where I think we’ve got it cracked. In fact, it can’t fail, provided you, Oliver, are prepared to go with it.’
‘Anything that gets him off the hook, man,’ Alfie said, glancing at Oliver, who was staring out of the window again.
‘This is a kind of mix between “special reasons” and “duress of circumstances”,’ Charlie informed them, really warming to his theme now. ‘Where are my notes? Right here. First up, we say you were responding to an emergency, which you were, and that already constitutes a “special reason”. But listen to this, I’ve written it down somewhere, ah here it is, so I’ll read it out: “In a situation where an individual fears serious harm to him or herself, or to anyone else, this may amount to a legal defence, and may avoid not only a ban, but also a conviction and criminal record.”’ He looked up triumphantly and had the pleasure of being regarded with gobsmacked awe. Even Oliver had turned to look at him, though his expression was harder to gauge.
‘That is it, you’ve got it,’ Alfie told him. ‘Oliver, did you hear that, man? This isn’t only about avoiding a driving ban, this gets you off the hook completely, for everything.’
‘All we have to do,’ Charlie continued, ‘is get Mum to admit that she made the call. I mean, they can easily trace the fact that she rang you that night, but what the trace won’t tell us is that she was the one who actually made the call, or what she said. For that, we’re going to need her to come clean.’
‘I told the police,’ Oliver said, daring to get excited, ‘and they sent someone round that night to check up on her. That’s surely got to count for something.’
‘It’s a slam dunk!’ Jerome declared, high-fiving Alfie. ‘This is going away, Oliver. The future’s looking bright, my friend. Where are the beers?’
As he and Alfie charged off downstairs to fetch some, Oliver sat looking across the room at his brother. ‘Do you think Mum will admit it?’ he asked, trying to get his hopes back under control, while wondering, considering the state Lauren Scott was in, if he had any right to hope at all.
‘She has to,’ Charlie assured him. ‘No two ways. Just don’t start telling me that you want to protect her ...’
‘Of course I do, we all do, but I’m not going to let her problems screw up my life.’
‘That’s what I want to hear. It’ll be tough on her, obviously, having to go public with her issues, but the way I see it, once she does, she won’t have any choice but to go into rehab.’
Though Oliver didn’t imagine it would turn out to be quite as simple as that, he had to admit that his brother had really done him proud with all this, and if they could prevail upon their mother ...
Much later that night he was alone in his room, staring at Lauren Scott’s face on his computer screen. For once it was a still image of her laughing at the camera. Usually he watched her on YouTube, either playing her flute, strumming her guitar, sometimes singing moody songs, or even reciting poetry. She danced a lot too, crazily, gracefully, flirtatiously ... She wasn’t like anyone else he’d ever known; she seemed so alive, so driven and passionate, and he couldn’t bear to think he was the one who’d brought it all to an end. Moreover, it seemed cruel, unjustified somehow, that he was starting to see a way to help himself now, when what he really wanted, more than anything, was to find a way to help her.
*
Lauren’s smiling face was filling the computer screen in Donna’s bedroom. Donna was staring at it, barely able to contain her tears. She wanted her friend back so much she could hardly bear it.
‘That moment of naturalness was the crystallising feather-touch,’ Lauren recited from Middlemarch in a whispery chant. ‘It shook flirtation into love.’
‘We all love you,’ Donna wept.
The visit from the police had upset her so much, especially when she’d been asked why Lauren had taken her flute.
She knew why, but she could never, never tell anyone. It wasn’t only Lauren she was trying to save, but herself – and him. He’d begged her to keep their secret, and what choice did she have?
Chapter Eighteen
‘EMMA? AM I interrupting?’
Emma looked up from her computer, feeling a gritty strain in her eyes after weeping over so many emails. It was eight fifteen in the morning. She’d be leaving around nine to go to the hospital. With Frenchay being across the other side of the city she’d decided to pack a lunch to take with her, and wondered if she should add something for Will, who’d returned from London yesterday and was now staying with friends near Bath. Harry had gone home last night, he had a family and job to attend to, but he’d promised to come again at the weekend with Jane; they’d probably bring the children too. Lauren was very close to her cousins. Rather than let her mother or Berry stay alone at a hotel, Emma had given up her own bed last night and made another on the sofa. Her mother and Berry had argued, of course, but Emma had won and had ended up sleeping surprisingly well.
‘I wanted to have a quiet word while Berry’s in the bathroom,’ her mother said, closing the kitchen door behind her.
Dragging her hands over her face, then pushing them into her hair, Emma said, ‘OK. What is it?’
‘It’s Berry. She won’t tell you this herself, so I’ve decided I should do it for her.’
Emma’s heart contracted. She couldn’t take any more bad news, please, she just couldn’t. ‘She’s all right, isn’t she?’ she said, making it a command more than a question. ‘Oh God, her art show. She needs to be there ...’
‘No, no, it’s not that,’ Phyllis interrupted. ‘She’s already pulled out of it. It’s Alfonso. He’s had a fall and they think it might have been caused by a stroke.’
‘Oh no,’ Emma murmured, sorry, of course, but more relieved to know that Berry was all right. ‘When did it happen?’
‘She got the call late on Monday. She was going to tell you on Tuesday morning, but then decided not to, because she thinks you need her here. She’s very torn, Emma ...’
‘Oh God, of course she is. Poor thing. She has to go to him. I’ll tell her as soon as she comes down. Meantime, I’ll see if I can get her a flight.’
Phyllis’s smile was grateful. ‘She’ll probably put up a fight, but I think she needs to go, if only to reassure herself that it’s not as serious as she fears.’