by Julie Corbin
She looks up at the ceiling and sighs. I brace myself, but this time she doesn’t hit me. She stands up, grabs me by my hair and pulls me along behind her. We go through to a room at the back, where the curtains are closed. ‘If you wake her,’ Megan says into my ear, ‘I’ll knock her out. Is that clear?’
I nod and walk towards a single bed under the window, where I can see the outline of a child’s body. I have to hold my hand over my mouth to suppress a cry of bittersweet joy and anguish. Joy because it’s Bea. So precious, my fingers itch to reach out to her. She’s lying on her side fast asleep, her breathing deep and regular. And in her arms she has Bertie, his soft head resting against her cheek just as he does at home. Anguish because I want to take her in my arms and hold her, run out on to the pavement and back to my car, but I know I won’t get as far as the front door. For the moment, I have to be satisfied with the fact that Bea is alive and safe.
‘That’s it,’ Megan says, and pushes me ahead of her back to the front room and on to the chair. She sits down opposite me again and says, ‘Now tell me.’
‘Will you please let Bea go free?’
‘When we have the witness, I’ll let you both go free.’ Her expression is one part restraint, two parts impatience. She leans towards me. ‘Now tell me what I want to know.’
‘Kaloyan Batchev.’
‘Batchev?’ she snaps back and for one heart-stopping moment I think Mac has given me false information. And then she says, ‘Pavel thought he was dead.’ She nods like this explains a lot and then she laughs and talks under her breath. She muses for a bit, looking up at the corner of the room, seeming to find conversation among the cobwebs and peeling wallpaper.
When she stares back at me, it’s with flat eyes. ‘And where is he?’
‘Fifteen Gordon Avenue,’ I say, making a sudden decision that avenue or place, the important thing is that I buy some time and get Bea out of here before the men return. ‘It’s in the East End.’
‘You’re not playing a game with me, Claire?’ Her voice is gentle. ‘Are you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Making up an address to buy you time?’
‘No.’ She’s so close to my thinking that I wonder whether it will show on my face. I make a point of holding her stare. ‘I wouldn’t do that.’
‘So how did you get the details?’
‘I have my contacts,’ I say.
‘Well, I know Julian didn’t tell you. He’s far too principled for that.’ She moves in close. ‘Was it our trusty copper?’
I look down.
‘So it was.’ She thinks about this. ‘Why did he tell you?’
‘I have something on him.’
‘What?’
‘We used to work together.’
‘And?’
I hesitate. While I don’t want to give Megan any power over Mac, the choice between keeping his secret and ensuring Bea’s safety is an easy one. Still, I won’t give Megan more information than I have to. ‘Some years ago he made a procedural mistake,’ I say. ‘I could make sure it comes back to haunt him.’
‘I see.’ She stares into my face for a few seconds more, seems satisfied and stands up. She pulls her phone from her pocket and makes a call. She talks curtly in Bulgarian, apart from the address, which she repeats in English. When she finishes, she lights up a cigarette and goes to the window. She stands with her back to me, and with each inhalation of nicotine, her shoulders relax. There are net curtains across the glass so that no one can see in. She moves the curtain slightly to one side and looks along the street in both directions. Then she rests the cigarette on the edge of the windowsill and raises binoculars to her eyes. She checks across the park in a wide, slow, panoramic sweep. I have the brief and foolish idea to rush her, try to get her down on the ground before she knows what hit her, grab the knife from her belt and threaten her with it. I’m contemplating doing it – it may be our best and only shot at escape – when she tunes into my thoughts and says casually, ‘Don’t even think about it. I won’t hesitate to kill you.’
I don’t believe her. Despite the blackmailer’s assertion that she’d killed before, I’m not convinced Megan is a cold-blooded murderer. But nevertheless she does have a knife and I don’t want to find myself on the wrong end of it. I decide that the best thing to do is to get her talking. See whether I can reach the Megan who is familiar to me. She has to be in there somewhere.
‘Will you let Bea go now?’ I ask.
‘Not until we have Batchev.’
‘Why didn’t you wait?’
‘Wait for what?’
‘I got you the information. I told you I would. There was an accident on the road and that’s why I was late.’
‘You were the one who’d set the midnight deadline.’ She turns to face me. ‘We didn’t want you moving to a safe house. It would have complicated things.’
‘And were you following us?’ I think about walking back from the deli and then Bea being watched as she played in the sandpit. ‘Did you go to the nursery?’
‘If you’d had the sense to check,’ she says smugly. ‘You’d have discovered I was working from home on both those days.’
How well she fooled us all. Not once did it even cross my mind that the blackmailer could be Megan. In spite of the fact that she regularly came to my house, I never once suspected her. I was blinded by her ambition and her professionalism and her all English background.
‘And how did you know about what happened at Bea’s party?’ I say.
‘That was Julian.’ False regret puckers her eyebrows. ‘I spoke to him when he was in the taxi going to the airport and he told me all about it.’
I look down at my feet, feeling sick to my stomach. When Julian wakes up, he will be devastated to remember that he has unwittingly helped Megan, and that opening the door to her led to Bea being taken. But he’s not the only one who’ll suffer from feelings of guilt. I’m already beginning to question my own involvement. If I hadn’t set the deadline, would Megan still have come for Bea? If I had been at home, would Julian have opened the door? If I had acted differently, could all this have been prevented?
‘And the magazine at your front door?’ Megan says. ‘Did you find that?’
I nod. The one I blamed Mary for. ‘You left it?’
‘I slipped in without anyone hearing me.’ She shrugs. ‘And still you were several steps away from realising it was me.’
‘I have to hand it to you, Megan,’ I say, wondering whether I will reach her through flattery, ‘you managed to stay successfully under the radar. There was no suggestion that you had any links with Georgiev.’
‘We have always been extra careful.’
‘You met him when you were on your gap year?’
That surprises her. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Your parents.’ She’s thrown for a moment. Her eyes narrow and slide away from mine. It’s fleeting, but it’s there and it gives me hope. ‘They’re being questioned by the police.’
She raises a lazy eyebrow. ‘Goodness knows how they’ll explain that at the country club.’
I lift my hand up to my face to bite my nails and notice traces of Julian’s blood trapped in the cuticles. I shudder and slide my hands under my thighs. I don’t want to think about the moment when I found him, helpless and dying, and we were both swallowed into a facsimile of hell. I rock myself backwards and forwards.
‘How could you do that to Julian?’ I blurt out. ‘He’s lying in hospital hovering between life and death.’
‘He’s still alive?’
‘Yes.’ I nod my head emphatically.
‘Well, good for him,’ she says, as if he’s won a tennis tournament or run a marathon.
‘You left him for dead, Megan.’ My eyes sting. ‘How could you do that?’
‘He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ She pauses for thought. ‘A couple of months ago I tried to get him into bed, you know? But he was having none of it.’ She gives a short laug
h. ‘Just think, if he had been willing to commit adultery, I could have found out what I needed to know and none of you would be going through this. It’s a case of too much virtue.’
This is so unfair. Her view of what’s happening is so twisted that bitterness fills my mouth and hardens my spine to steel. ‘So when you sat in my house five days ago and said you admired and respected Julian, that was a lie?’
‘It wasn’t a lie. I’ve learned a lot from him. He’s an excellent barrister.’
‘And yet you allowed someone to slit his throat?’
She has no answer to this. I feel a power shift and I move to capitalise on it.
‘Georgiev is worth that? He’s worth you becoming a woman without a heart? Is he?’
She stares at me blankly.
‘And what will happen now your cover’s blown?’
‘I’m more than just a solicitor to Pavel.’
‘But surely he values you in proportion to your usefulness?’ As I say this, I realise it might be a mistake to push her to examine her relationship with Georgiev, but instead of making her angry, it has the opposite effect.
‘Poor Claire.’ She laughs. It’s silent. Her shoulders shake but no sound comes out of her mouth. ‘I really thought you were smarter than this.’
‘Then help me understand,’ I say, keen to draw her physically closer because I’m not going to put up with this for much longer and if it’s her against me, then I reckon I can handle myself. Yes, I’m smaller and lighter and not trained to fight, but my daughter is lying unprotected in the next room and that’s powering me with a strength that makes me believe I could lift a small car. ‘Explain it to me.’
She takes the last drag of her cigarette and sits down opposite me again. ‘Pavel has made me everything I am.’
‘He’s a criminal.’
‘Yes.’ The edges of her face soften. ‘But I see past that.’ There is not even a spark of self-doubt in her expression. ‘I love him.’
‘And your elaborate charade? Working for the CPS when you’re in bed with a criminal? That’s love, is it?’
‘Have you ever been in love, Claire?’
‘You know how much I love Julian.’
‘Then you have to understand that for me, love doesn’t have any limits.’
‘And you have to understand,’ I say quietly, ‘that there’s more than just a touch of craziness about that.’
She throws out her hands. ‘Do I appear crazy to you?’
I have to admit that she doesn’t. She seems remarkably poised, considering.
‘So this is all about love?’ I say.
‘Yes.’
‘Two policemen are dead, Megan.’ I look down at my feet and shake my head. ‘Faraway and Baker – my God! You were making friends with them just the other day. They didn’t have to die.’
‘If it was up to me, I would have left them alive.’ She shrugs. ‘But that’s not the way it’s done.’
I want to end this. I feel my heart’s yearning for Bea, fast asleep, not thirty feet away. ‘Did you give Bea a sedative of some sort?’
‘It won’t cause her any long-term damage.’
Another chink. Another toe in the door that leads to the Megan I know. I have the sure and sudden knowledge that there’s no need to physically fight with her. The vestiges of the Megan who has been to my house, sat Bea on her knee, chatted to us all – I think I can talk her round. ‘You have to let Bea go before the men get back. You know you do.’
‘I’ve told you. I’ll let you both go when we have the witness.’
‘When the trial collapses, are you and Georgiev going to go off together? Happy ever after?’
She can’t help but smile. ‘Something like that.’
‘Do you want a child’s death on your conscience?’
‘Nothing will happen to Bea.’
‘You sure about that? You sure that when the men get back, they won’t just kill me and Bea? I mean, why not? We’re loose ends. And like you say, it’s the way it’s done.’
‘I won’t allow it.’ Doubt flickers at the corners of her eyes. She looks at her watch. ‘It won’t be long now.’
I lean forward in my seat. ‘You really think you can stop those two?’ I take a gamble. I don’t believe that Georgiev is even halfway decent – how can he be when he traffics teenage girls for sex? – but my hunch is that Megan considers him an ‘honourable’ criminal, however much evidence points to the contrary. ‘Georgiev is sophisticated. He’s cultured. He keeps his hands clean,’ I say. ‘But by necessity, some of the men who work for him are not. Granted, Georgiev is a criminal, but he has old-fashioned values. Like for like is acceptable. The policemen, Julian – they were pitting themselves against him. They’re fair game. But a child? A little girl? Would he be happy with that?’
Doubt holds her in the chair. I watch her lips tremble and know that she is conflicted.
‘I’m going to the bedroom.’ Energy and determination thunder through me. ‘I’m taking Bea.’ I stand up. ‘I’m not going to look back. I’m not going to tell anyone about what happened here. I just want my child.’
I don’t wait for her reply. I turn. I walk fast. I hold my breath. I reach the bedroom. I gather Bea into my arms. She doesn’t stir. I walk back along the hallway. One, two, three . . . ten, eleven, twelve steps. I reach the front door. I balance Bea on my right arm and open the door with my left hand. I step on to the gravel. The sunlight bathes my face. I feel a moment of pure joy and then there’s a loud crash, my ears buzz and I’m falling back against the wall of the house. A rough edge of brick scratches along my neck.
‘Steady.’ A policeman wearing a flak jacket takes Bea out of my arms. ‘Come with me, Mrs Miller.’ He walks off to one side, but before I follow him, I glance behind me, bewildered. There are half a dozen men, dressed like him, filling the hallway. I can hear Mac’s voice shouting, ‘On the ground! Face down!’
I blink. Another policeman lays a jacket on the grass. The one carrying Bea lowers her down gently. The garden has been left to its own devices; the grass is long and straggly. I fall down on my knees in front of Bea. She’s lying exactly as she was in the bed: on her right side, her legs drawn up, Bertie close to her cheek. I stroke her hair and shake her gently. ‘Wake up, Bea. We need to go home.’ She snuggles further into herself, feeling for Bertie.
There’s a commotion behind me. I look round. My eyes focus on Mac. He’s on the driveway, pushing Megan ahead of him, her hands cuffed behind her back. She is staring at the ground, her expression hidden. But her body language says it all: hair tangled, slumped shoulders, feet dragging two or three seconds behind her body, which sways as if drunk.
I don’t want any more of this. ‘Bea.’ A sob catches in my throat. ‘Please open your eyes.’ I shake her more forcefully. ‘Wake up, sweetheart.’
And she does. She opens her eyes very slowly and sits up. ‘I don’t like Megan, Mummy.’ She frowns at me. ‘She gave me pink milk and it tasted funny.’
Without warning, tears spring from my eyes. They are huge, hot and quick, Olympic tears running at the sound of the starter’s gun. They course down my cheeks and make a soggy puddle on my T-shirt.
‘Mummy.’ She yawns. ‘Why are you crying?’
‘I’m just so happy.’ I bring her on to my knee and hug her tight. She looks at me closely then yawns again, her eyes drooping.
‘You have blood.’ She forces her eyes open wide and looks at me closer still, leaning right in so that I can feel her breath on my throat. ‘You cut yourself.’ She sits back a bit and nods. ‘You need a plaster.’
‘Let’s go and find one, shall we?’ I stand up and lift her into my arms. Her head settles against my neck.
‘I need my Nemo boots,’ she says, her voice still drowsy with sleep. ‘And can I have Coco Pops?’
‘Yes.’ I wipe the tears from my cheeks. ‘Let’s go home.’
21
‘Comas like this normally last between two and four weeks.’
> ‘And then what?’
‘And then he may wake up . . .’ Teresa leaves the sentence hanging.
‘Or?’
‘He may slip into a persistent vegetative state.’ She looks apologetic. ‘But his observations are encouraging and he is triggering the ventilator now, which means he’s almost ready to breathe for himself, so let’s stay with that.’
One week has passed and Julian is no longer critically ill. He is now just seriously ill. His last scan shows that his brain is swollen. I learn a whole new vocabulary. I know what ‘raised intracranial pressure’ means. I know what the brain stem does. I write words down in my notebook – Glasgow coma scale, dexamethasone, peritoneal dialysis – and when I get home, I look them up on the Internet so that when the doctors do their rounds every morning, I’m able to ask relevant questions.
‘How are his bloods this morning?’ I ask Teresa.
‘Potassium levels are low. We’re correcting that.’
I watch as she inserts a bolus of potassium into the bag of saline that runs into his central line. ‘That’s bad for the heart,’ I say. ‘Fluctuating potassium levels.’
‘Don’t worry, Mrs Miller. We’ll have that sorted directly.’
She teaches me how to care for him. His lips crack as the tube pulls at the edges of his mouth. I rub Vaseline into them. His right eye is still swollen shut and I rub ointment over it.
The physiotherapist visits every morning. ‘Passive limb movements are important,’ she tells me. She cycles his legs through the air like he’s riding an imaginary bicycle. ‘Otherwise the ligaments shorten and the muscles waste away and he’ll have all sorts of problems when he starts to walk again.’
Several times a day I whisper in his ear, ‘We found her, Jules. She’s safe. Not at all traumatised. Her normal self.’ I don’t tell him about Megan being in the prison hospital or the delay to the trial. I don’t know what’s going on inside his head, so I try to keep it simple. For hours at a time I sit beside his bed, hold his hand and talk to him about the little things that Bea’s doing and how much we’re looking forward to him coming home. Other times I just sit and stare. I don’t know how long I sit there. I think of nothing. Nothing at all. I’m not asleep and I’m not awake. I exist in a kind of nowhere land, awaiting my next trigger.