Nell jabbed her finger at the Graham house. ‘I know who’s in there.’
Paul hesitated. ‘Bremer is right,’ he said finally. ‘We can’t help Joanne if someone in there has a gun.’
‘But we don’t know there’s a gun. Carla just flagged up the fact the address might contain one.’ Nell was losing patience. She grabbed her stab vest.
‘I’m going in. You get there as soon as armed response arrives.’
‘Jesus, Nell, I’m not letting you go in on your own.’ He was already pulling on his stab vest before she caught his arm.
‘Constable, I’m telling you to stay by the radio. I need you to coordinate firearms when they arrive.’
Paul shook his head. ‘No way—’
‘Constable,’ she interrupted him, ‘that’s a lawful order.’
Paul stared at her. ‘That’s fucking low.’
Nell knew it stung to have her pull the superior-officer card – they were a team, equal despite the sergeants’ exam between them – but right now she didn’t care. She wasn’t going to risk his life just because she was risking her own. ‘I’ll see you in four minutes, OK?’
Paul’s look told her all the things he wanted to say, so he just nodded. ‘Stay safe, Jackson.’
The radio crackled. Bremer appeared at the door. ‘Carla?’
She looked up at him.
‘You OK?’ He looked concerned. The radio crackled again.
‘Control? Come in, Control?’ Paul’s voice came into the room and from Bremer’s expression, Carla knew his first thought was the same as her own – where was Nell?
Carla pressed the button. ‘Control here, go ahead.’
‘The suspect has been sighted. DS Jackson has gone in. Where is armed response?’
Carla could hear the tension in Paul’s voice. She caught Bremer’s eye, his look a mix of anger and concern. Striding across the office, he took the radio.
‘DC Hare, what do you mean DS Jackson has gone in? Gone in where?’
‘She’s headed to the Grahams’ address, sir.’ The helicopter was so loud in the background, it almost drowned out his words.
‘I told her not to go in without armed officers. How long ago did she leave?’ Bremer checked the clock.
‘One minute ago, sir.’
Bremer’s finger hovered over the button. He looked at Carla. ‘That leaves three minutes at least until the firearms unit gets there.’ He held the radio up to his lips.
‘DC Hare, you are not to follow DS Jackson, do you understand?’
‘But what about Nell, sir? She’s on her own.’
‘That’s the choice she made, Constable, but I’m giving you a lawful order, and I repeat: do you understand?’
Carla almost couldn’t bear to hear Paul’s response; a lawful order was as high as it got, you disobeyed a lawful order from a senior officer and you might as well hand in your warrant card to HR the same day. But how must he feel, knowing Nell was going in while he just sat and watched?
After a short pause, Paul replied. ‘Yes, sir.’
Bremer put the radio back on the desk and folded his arms. Carla didn’t say anything while he stared at a blank wall.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said, not looking at her. ‘DS Jackson can disobey an order if she wants to, but I’m not losing Paul just because of her stupidity.’ He stared down at her. ‘I’m not losing both of them, Carla.’
Nell entered the house silently through the back door. Baton outstretched, stab vest securely pulled around her chest, she scanned each room as she entered. With downstairs clear, she moved to the bottom of the stairs, pausing as she heard voices: upstairs, door to the left, immediately at the top of the stairs, two voices, both female. She moved slowly up the stairs and onto the hallway landing, then moved along the wall until her hand was on the door handle. She took three deep breaths, steadied her hand, and walked in.
Sixty-four
Now – Mary
There is a sound. It doesn’t come from the beach. I tense. The tears stop. I grip the metal in my hand.
‘It’s OK, it’s just the wind,’ Joanne tells me.
But it isn’t. The lights flash outside like a black and white movie and I pull myself up. I hear footsteps on the stairs, each one a burst of gunfire, then a face appears at the door. I know that face. How do I know it?
‘Eve Graham, put the gun down.’
I feel Joanne move from my side, but I don’t care. I’m too busy trying to understand why they think I am Eve.
‘Come on, Eve, give me the gun.’ The face has a hand now and it’s reaching towards me. I look at the gun, then back at the hand.
‘Nell?’
Her face is relieved. ‘Yes, Eve. It’s me.’ Her hand gestures towards the gun. I look at Joanne, cowering in the corner of the room. Why did I let her live?
Our lives, Aoife’s and mine, were set out before us from the moment we met. Or from the moment we were born. And even if we’d stood a chance, Alf’s arrival put paid to that.
I’m tired of being angry at the world for letting him near us. I’m tired of the guilt that’s consumed me ever since and the longing I feel to make it right.
I look at Joanne. She looks like Aoife, small and waiflike, with eyes that make you feel you’ve known her all your life and all the others that went before it.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
And then I pull the trigger.
Sixty-five
The pain took a moment to take hold, but when it did Nell grabbed her shoulder, thick, warm blood pumping through her fingers. Joanne screamed and crouched down next to her, eyes on Eve.
‘Get out,’ Nell hissed, ‘get out and hide.’
Joanne didn’t move as Eve walked towards them. Nell pulled herself upright, back against the wall, wincing with the pain of moving.
‘Get out,’ she repeated, trying to form thoughts, trying to judge how long she could contain Eve so Joanne could hide. But Joanne refused to move, as if fear had soldered her to the floor.
The room began to falter. Nell felt Joanne shift away, causing Nell to fall sideways, the movement seeming to shock Eve into action, as if only then remembering she was there. Nell tried to sit. She needed to get to Eve, get the gun.
Beneath them came the sound of a door being smashed open. Eve was standing over Joanne, so close she’d have no chance of survival if Eve pulled the trigger.
Officers shouted words Nell knew but couldn’t hear. The gun was still two feet from Joanne’s head. Steps on the stairs, voices loud, urgent …
‘Room clear, room clear.’
This room isn’t clear, she wanted to shout; this room has a gun and it’s two feet from Joanne’s head. Two feet.
Nell tried to kick, but her leg no longer belonged to her – useless limbs connected yet disconnected.
A black helmet appeared at the door, gun outstretched, a second helmet behind the first, a second gun outstretched.
‘Stop or I’ll shoot,’ the helmet said.
The room shrank further, the floor pulling Nell down as if into bed. Before she shut her eyes, Nell knew three things:
The helmet’s gun was four feet from Eve.
Eve’s gun was two feet from Joanne.
A gun went off as Joanne screamed.
And then Nell knew nothing.
She was on the floor, an officer pushing hard on her shoulder. She could hear shouts from downstairs.
‘It’s OK, the ambulance is almost here.’ The officer’s voice was gentle. She stared at his eyes, blue like the sea, his reassuring smile.
‘Eve?’ Her voice came out like a croak. She swallowed but even that movement made her wince.
‘Got her.’
‘Alive?’
He nodded. ‘You did really well.’
‘Joanne?’
The officer’s expression told her the answer. She felt a tear roll down the side of her face and down the back of her neck. Then she noticed the uniforms in the corner of the room wher
e Joanne had been crouching. She tried to pull herself up. What were they doing? They looked frantic; discarded first-aid wrappers littered the floor around their feet.
She looked at the officer.
‘It’s not looking good.’
Nell felt a surge of hope. ‘Let me see her, please?’ She couldn’t bear the thought of Joanne dying with a violence matching that of her birth. The woman deserved so much more from life than she’d had so far. Nell pushed herself upwards. ‘Please,’ she said again, and this time the officer relented.
Joanne’s face was covered in blood from the hole in her stomach. She was making desperate grabs for air, her eyes fixed on the officers as they tried to find enough material to stop the blood pumping out of her.
Nell took her hand and gently stroked it while the officers worked.
‘Hey there,’ she said.
Joanne tried to move her head but only managed her eyes, which grabbed hold of Nell and begged her to help.
‘I can hear the ambulance.’ But she couldn’t – where the hell was it? ‘It’s going to be OK.’ She gently squeezed Joanne’s hand. Joanne’s eyes told her she didn’t believe it.
‘You’ve got to think it will – you have to fight it.’
Joanne’s eyes looked up to the ceiling. It took a moment for Nell to realise she was trying to talk. She pulled herself closer and leaned down.
‘Is she dead?’ The words barely a whisper.
‘No, they got her.’
‘Jail?’
‘Yes. She’ll go to jail for a very long time.’
Joanne attempted a nod, then winced.
Nell stroked the hair away from Joanne’s cheek and held her hand tightly. Ambulance sirens got louder. ‘Can you hear that?’
Joanne was staring at her. Mute now, her body focused on surviving.
Nell watched the heartbeat in Joanne’s neck slowly fade, each gentle thud slower than the last, before it finally stopped as the paramedics arrived at the door.
Sixty-six
The main entrance to the hospital was brightly lit and the darkened windows above blinked machine lights, like reflected stars. Carla parked by the maternity wing, its entrance dark, as if babies were never born at night. As she walked past, the chill of the night a welcome reprieve from the weeks of heat, she thought of Baz and of the answer she was going to give him.
Carla continued left to the front entrance, where smokers gathered around the base of a tree, underneath a sign saying No Smoking. Ten feet away stood Ian Fowler with a man she didn’t know. He caught her eye and hate seemed to reach out and touch her.
She kept her head down but the man next to Ian called over to her. ‘Carla Brown. Got a quote for the Oxford Mail about how Thames Valley Police persecuted a young woman to her death?’ He stubbed his cigarette out and walked towards her, iPhone held forward as if to record her.
‘No comment,’ she said, pushing at the revolving doors.
‘Really? No comment when a woman who was wrongly convicted of killing her own baby was killed by the very woman who had testified against her?’
Carla glanced at Joanne’s husband; even in the shadows his face was grave and broken. The journalist’s anger seemed to radiate for the both of them.
She wanted to say she was sorry. She wanted to walk up to Ian and tell him that to his face.
‘No comment,’ she repeated, entering the small glass cubicle and willing it to revolve.
Bremer had been watching through the floor-to-ceiling glass window. ‘Well done.’
Carla didn’t feel like thanking him.
‘Remember, never say sorry, not until the case is closed and people are in jail.’
‘The coward’s way out?’ she said, instantly regretting it. Bremer let it slide.
‘How is she?’ she asked after a moment.
‘Argumentative. Wants to get out already. Hates being fussed over. So, very well!’
Carla laughed. ‘I’ll get her some grapes to really wind her up.’ She looked over at the M&S shop. Gerry was somewhere above them. Lying in some bed down a myriad of corridors, past countless swinging doors.
‘He’s on floor five,’ Bremer said.
She gave him a small smile. ‘Not sure I’ll go and see him.’ After all, what would she say?
‘You should. It will do you good. He’s going down for a long time – it may be your last chance.’
She nodded. He was right. She’d lost the nearest thing to a father figure she’d ever known, so the least she could do was say goodbye.
The lift took Carla to the fifth floor and tiny signs directed her to Gerry’s ward. Nurses were chatting at the nurses’ station, not bothering to look up as she walked past one bay after another, bedsides beeping, patient belongings scattered across movable cabinets, wipe boards scribbled with words dictating what could be eaten and when.
Gerry was the third bay down and furthest from the corridor. Half a curtain was drawn across his bed, light from the television printing colour onto its light blue material; the table by the foot of the bed, empty. Because, of course, who was there to bring him food now?
Gerry’s eyes were closed, his head heavily bandaged, face pale and sallow. She took a seat by the open window, glad of the light breeze, and took his hand. It was warm, sweaty. She held it for a few seconds, remembering the Gerry she’d thought she’d known, remembering the jokes he’d made and the warmth he’d shown her. All of which turned out to be a lie.
She squeezed his hand until his eyes flickered open.
‘Hey.’
He looked at her, surprise showing in his face before it was wiped off by pain. He managed a slight smile and a squeeze of her hand in return.
‘Thanks for coming. I didn’t think you would.’
‘I almost didn’t. Bremer persuaded me to.’
‘Ha. Never thought I’d have anything to thank that man for.’ He closed his eyes with the effort of speaking. ‘I thought once you’d found out my lies you wouldn’t want anything more to do with me.’
They sat for a moment, Carla’s hand on his.
‘Why did you lie?’
He opened his eyes. ‘It’s hard to explain.’
‘Try.’
‘When I first met Mary she was terrified. And in my own way, I was too.’ He closed his eyes. ‘My mum had abandoned me at birth and I didn’t get the best foster homes, so when I joined the police it felt like I’d found a family. I wanted the same chance for her. In one instant I made a stupid choice and all the ones I made afterwards stemmed from that.’
He paused, eyes still shut. ‘I’m not trying to make excuses. Just to explain.’
Carla nodded. ‘Go on.’
‘So we picked a new name. Eve.’ His breathing was heavy. ‘So she could still have a bit of Aoife with her, and it was fine for years. She worked hard to make a good life and her achievements astonished me. Her ability to do anything she put her mind to.’ He opened his eyes and looked at Carla. ‘Whatever happened and however wrong it was, she is a force of nature.’
‘Why a pathologist, though? Surely it would have been better to keep her head down rather than run head first into a role that put her in daily contact with the police?’
He leaned back against the pillow. ‘I suppose we thought hiding in plain sight might be better. Also, I’d transferred so was already pretty visible, and it just seemed OK for her to be the same.’ He shifted awkwardly, wincing at the movement. ‘And after a few years she became the Eve you knew. She wasn’t Mary any more; she was following her own map, not being directed according to ones other people had drawn for her. I think for a while we forgot Mary ever even existed.’
‘She did though.’
He closed his eyes again. ‘I know. I didn’t face it for a long time, but gradually Mary came back.’
‘When did you start to notice the lines becoming blurred?’
‘It happened gradually. About ten years ago I started to notice she would become confused; she’d be convinced Mary
was coming back, as if she’d forgotten she was Mary.’
‘Ten years, Gerry. That’s a long time to deal with shit like that.’
‘I love her,’ he said simply. ‘I love going to the cinema with her, walking across Port Meadow and picking up a pub lunch the other side. I even enjoy bickering with her just because we enjoy the banter. The best thing that ever happened to me was finding her.’
They sat for a while, holding hands, and Carla thought of Connor and Alf Waites. She wondered if the latter regretted not taking Mary down with him, and she supposed that had been another stress always hanging over her – wondering if one day he would.
‘Did Mary kill Connor because she couldn’t kill Alf?’
Gerry looked up, surprised, and she worried she’d woken him.
‘I gave up long ago trying to work out what drove Mary. But when Joanne found us it was like a trigger and everything just spiralled downwards. I think seeing Connor there with Kelly-Anne just brought out memories of Alf and what he’d done to her. She wanted to punish Kelly-Anne for her role in Georgie’s death while punishing Connor for his actions that killed their baby. But really she was punishing her fifteen-year-old self.’
‘I’m not sure Kelly-Anne is going to see it that way. The poor woman has been accused of murder.’
Gerry was pale. He reached for a glass of water, hand shaking. Carla leaned over and steadied it.
‘She tried.’ His free hand gripped her arm. ‘She wrote the letters to unmask herself and I gave them to you in the hope it would. She couldn’t just admit her past, so she was looking for someone to do it for her. I begged her to get help when I realised she believed she was speaking to Aoife, but she always refused. The letters were our last hope.’
Carla took her hand away. ‘You should have told someone, Gerry.’
‘I know. And I’m sorry.’
Sorry wouldn’t bring Joanne back.
‘We really wanted children, Carla, but each one wasn’t meant to stay with us.’ He gave a little laugh. ‘No wonder, really.’
She stayed silent.
‘Then when Joanne came back she felt like it was Aoife returning and she couldn’t face the physical manifestation of what she’d done.’
When I Lost You Page 25