by Black, Helen
‘There was a misunderstanding, sir.’
‘God’s teeth, Jack, why the hell did you arrest him?’ asked the chief. ‘He can’t give you anything without consent.’
‘All to do with Ancient Greece, I understand,’ said Jack. ‘If you want my opinion, it’s a pile of shit. Doctors shouldn’t be above the law.’
The chief closed his eyes and sighed. ‘Tell me he’s not suing.’
Jack remembered that Lilly had threatened exactly that.
‘I’m telling you now,’ said the chief, ‘if he sues, your days as a DI are numbered and I won’t be able to protect you.’
Jack couldn’t think of a time the chief super had ever protected anyone but himself.
‘Piper’s not the type to sue,’ he said.
‘You’d better pray you’re right about that,’ said the chief. ‘And you’d better pray he doesn’t get himself a decent lawyer.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘In the meantime get a court order for the medical records like you should have done in the first place,’ said the chief. ‘Then put this bloody mess to bed.’
Alice had fallen asleep on the carpet, saliva dribbling down her cheek and pooling in the fibres. Lilly toyed with putting her into her cot, but even the gentlest of touches could wake her, which would mean running the risk of an Alice-style meltdown.
Instead, Lilly left her where she was and draped a blanket over her. A social worker wouldn’t approve, but they didn’t have the devil child to deal with, did they?
She grabbed her laptop and tripped down the stairs in search of food. Sam was still glued to the television, but David was in the kitchen, rummaging in the fridge.
‘I haven’t managed to get to the shops,’ she said. ‘What with the snow and this case, there isn’t a free minute.’
‘I’m thinking it’s got to be pasta,’ said David, extracting a few puckered cherry tomatoes from the fridge, each a small, red kiss.
Lilly headed to the cupboard. It wasn’t bare but it wasn’t bulging Nigella style either.
‘We’ve enough to cobble something together,’ she said. ‘Hopefully things will have calmed down tomorrow.’
David peered out of the kitchen window. Despite the hour, heavy-bellied white clouds bleached the sky. ‘I wouldn’t put money on it,’ he said.
Lilly retrieved a jar of black olives and a bottle of extra virgin olive oil. ‘Things should definitely be more quiet at work anyway. I’ve pretty much solved Jack’s case for him.’
David poured boiling water into a pan and dropped in a few handfuls of spaghetti.
‘How did you manage that little trick?’
Lilly sniffed a piece of Parmesan. It was past its best, but it would have to do.
‘I’ve got the names of the only two people who could possibly have raped Chloe.’ She glanced at her laptop. ‘Or at least I will have any moment now. Then all Jack has to do is match up the DNA.’
‘Will it really be that straightforward?’
Lilly reached for the cheese grater. ‘I don’t see why not.’
Right on cue, a ping sounded from Lilly’s laptop. She opened the email from Harry. All it contained were two names:
1. Elaine Foley.
2. John Staines.
‘Everything okay?’ David asked.
‘Yep,’ she said and joined him at the window.
A wind had got up, haranguing the tree branches and rattling the cottage woodwork.
‘There’s a storm coming,’ David said.
Gem pulls up her hood against the cold. The wind feels like there’s ice inside it, jabbing at her cheeks.
She said she wouldn’t be long, three-quarters of an hour tops, but it’s going to take her longer in this weather. She hopes Feyza don’t go mental at her. It ain’t as if she’s messing around or nothing, but it’s really hard to even walk in this.
She fights her way through the Clayhill, to the address she’s been given. It ain’t far from their own block as it goes.
It weren’t hard to find out where the Slaughter brothers lived. She just asked a few people on the estate. Nobody questioned why she wanted to know. People round here are always needing a bit of help to tide them over. It’s not like they can just rock up at a cashpoint, is it?
Once, when Gem was in foster care, the woman used to do her big shop on a Saturday and on the way she’d stop at the bank to do ‘business’. That made Gem laugh ’cos she thought it meant doing a shit. Thing is, she’d never been in a bank before. Turns out the woman meant paying in cheques and taking out some cash. Plus, she always got a statement. Gem remembers the look on her face as she checked the printout. Proper smug it was.
‘There you go.’ She used to shove it under Gem’s nose and tap one of the numbers with her finger. ‘My little gravy train is what you are.’
She was all right as it goes. Better than some of the others. At least she left Gem to get on with it and didn’t keep asking her how she was feeling.
When she gets to the door, she suddenly feels nervous. The Slaughters ain’t exactly friendly. Then again, she’s come to give them money, so they shouldn’t be too unhappy.
She knocks on the door and waits, moving from foot to foot because it hurts if she keeps them in one place for too long. She needs thicker socks. With no holes either. When she’s sorted all this, she’ll make a shopping list, maybe go into town tomorrow.
At last someone opens the door. It ain’t either of the brothers.
‘What?’ he asks.
He’s a small, black geezer with about twenty chains round his neck. There’s no way they’re real gold.
Gem pulls off her hood. ‘I need to speak to the Slaughters.’ The wind hits her from the side, making her ear throb.
‘About?’
He’s a proper cocky little arsehole, giving it the big ‘I am’, thinking he’s hard because he works for the hard boys, when all he’s doing is opening their door.
‘I’ve got something for them,’ she tells him.
Someone from inside the flat shouts, ‘Shut the fucking door, will you.’ It sounds like one of the brothers. ‘You’re letting all the fucking heat out.’
‘Wait here,’ says Mr Cocky and bangs the door in her face.
Gem blows on her fingers. She can’t remember ever being so cold in her life and there’s been a million times when they’ve had the gas and leccy cut off.
The door opens again and Mr Cocky nods his head for her to go in. He kicks the door shut behind her, like he’s using some karate move. Gem walks down the corridor to the lounge. Their flat’s got the same layout, plus the telly’s on proper loud.
She opens the door and finds the brothers sat on a settee, smoking and watching porn.
‘She says she’s got something for you,’ says Mr Cocky.
The younger brother looks up from the telly and frowns. ‘Jesus fucking Christ, she’s dripping every-fucking-where.’
Gem looks down at herself and the ice crystals falling off her coat onto the carpet.
‘And she’s got fucking shoes on,’ the brother shouts.
‘Take them off, you silly cunt,’ Mr Cocky tells Gem.
‘You’re calling her a silly cunt?’ The brother laughs. ‘You’re the silly cunt who fucking let her in.’
At least that’s something Gem can agree with him about.
‘Get ’em off,’ Mr Cocky says, so she bends down and takes off her trainers, but they’ve already left two wet marks on the carpet.
‘Look at that,’ the brother snaps. ‘Put them by the fucking door.’
Mr Cocky grabs Gem’s trainers and scuttles away with them.
‘You’ll fucking clean that up as well,’ the brother shouts after him. Then he turns to Gem. ‘So, what do you want?’
Behind him, the other Slaughter brother hasn’t even bothered to look at her. He’s just staring at some girl on the telly while someone out of shot shoves a dildo up her arse.
‘I don’t know if you remember me,’ says
Gem.
‘’Course I fucking remember you,’ says the younger brother. ‘Do you think I’ve got fucking Alzheimer’s?’
‘I didn’t know how many people you deal with,’ says Gem.
‘Too fucking many.’
Gem knows that as far as men like these are concerned, there can never be enough people borrowing money. If silly mugs like her mum dry up, they might have to get a job or something.
‘So how much do you want this time?’ he asks.
‘I don’t want to borrow any money,’ says Gem.
‘Then what the fuck are you bothering me for?’
‘I’ve come to pay back what Mum owes early.’
Now both brothers look at her proper shocked. They don’t say nothing so the room just fills with the sound of screaming from the telly.
‘Oh, baby,’ the woman shouts at the hand and the dildo. ‘All the way, baby.’
It don’t look to Gem like there’s any further for the dildo to go.
‘How much have you got?’ asks the older brother.
‘Enough,’ says Gem.
He grinds his fag out in the ashtray on the coffee table.
‘She borrowed forty didn’t she?’ Gem asks.
‘That’s right,’ says the older brother. ‘Plus the cost of our wasted visit.’
‘Plus interest,’ the other one chimes in.
Gem nods.
‘It comes to a round hundred,’ says the older one. ‘You got that, have you?’
Gem reaches into her pocket, pulls out a roll of notes and holds it out. ‘It’s all there. You can check.’
The younger Slaughter takes the notes from her and counts them out. ‘Fuck me.’ He hands the cash to his brother. ‘Where did a little fucker like you get that?’
‘Don’t matter,’ says Gem. ‘Just cross my mum off your list all right?’
They don’t answer her so she turns to leave. When she gets to the door, Mr Cocky is waiting, her trainers in his hand, a stupid grin on his face.
‘You’d better get in there and clean up the mess,’ Gem tells him.
‘And you better get back out there and do some more grafting,’ he says.
‘Ain’t your business what I do,’ she tells him.
He lets out a laugh and Gem can smell stale fags and beer on his breath. ‘You’re gonna need more cash to give us.’
‘I ain’t giving you nothing,’ says Gem. ‘I’ve sorted it.’
‘Don’t be fucking stupid,’ says Mr Cocky and opens the front door letting in a blast of freezing air. ‘You’ll make your payments like usual.’
Gem tries to grab her trainers from him. ‘I told you I’ve sorted it.’
Mr Cocky laughs again then with a swift jab that Gem ain’t expecting he pushes her outside into the snow.
‘Your silly slag of a mother came round earlier today,’ he says. ‘She needed a bit to tide her over.’
Gem shakes her head. ‘You’re lying.’
‘Shut that fucking door,’ one of the brothers roars from inside.
‘You’re lying,’ Gem screams, her feet burning with cold.
Mr Cocky throws the trainers past Gem and over the balcony.
‘Tell me you’re lying,’ Gem is crying now.
But he just laughs and shuts the door.
I pour Jack a tumbler of whiskey and dig out two ice cubes from a tray in the freezer. They stick to my thumb and burn the skin.
‘Join me, Kate?’ he says, when I hand him his glass with a chink, chink, chink.
I don’t drink alcohol of course. I can’t abide the sensation of being out of control.
‘Just a small one,’ I say with a cheeky smile and splash some in a glass for myself.
Over the years, I’ve learned to bring it to my lips when people are watching and spit it out when they’re not. I love the subterfuge of it all, if I’m honest. A small thrill in a dull day. And so much better than explaining myself.
There have been a couple of occasions when I’ve thrown caution to the wind and knocked it back. Those occasions didn’t end well.
Mummy used to call her evening glass of gin ‘medication’. She thought that was funny. Oh, how we laughed.
I’ve had my share of medication. Thorazine, Mellaril, Risperdal. Tiny white and blue pills that steal away your life. Not in a dramatic whoosh, you understand, more a gradual unravelling. After a while you can only watch as who you are floats away like dead leaves in a slow-moving stream. At first they dance around in the water, just out of reach, but still in sight, until piece by piece you realize they’ve gone.
A girl with very long, very black hair taught me how to hide the pills under my tongue and spit them out later. I wonder what became of her?
‘Did you sort out a court date for the medical notes?’ I ask.
‘Kerry’s on it.’ He means the fat prosecutor. They’ve been on the phone all evening. ‘She’ll let me know first thing.’
‘I think the whole thing’s ridiculous,’ I say.
‘Too right.’
‘Since when were doctors above the law?’ I say.
Jack waves his now empty glass in my direction, the ice cubes rattling at the bottom. ‘That’s exactly what I tried to explain to the chief.’
‘What did he say?’ I ask, giving him a refill.
‘What do you think?’ Jack takes a gulp. ‘He told me I’d better pray Piper doesn’t have a good solicitor.’
‘Why?’
‘In case he sues,’ Jack replies, his voice slightly blurred around the edges.
I shake my head. ‘I know you and Lilly have been having a few small problems …’
‘Small?’
‘Okay. I know you two have been having some pretty huge difficulties lately,’ I say. ‘But I don’t believe she would ruin your career like that.’
‘No?’ He looks into his whiskey as if the answer might be hiding in there.
‘No.’ My tone is firm. ‘You’re the father of her child after all.’
He takes another long sad drink and I top him up again.
‘Are you trying to get me pissed?’ he asks.
‘You look like you need it,’ I tell him.
As much as I dislike drinking myself, I’ve always enjoyed watching others do it. That way you can retain control of yourself and take away the other person’s. With men like Jack you don’t even need to take it. They just hand it to you gladly.
‘Look,’ I say. ‘I’m no fan of the way Lilly’s behaved recently, but she wouldn’t ruin your life to make a point. No way.’
Jack pats my leg. ‘You always think the best of people, Kate.’
Chapter Eleven
Luton Express and Star
Date: 16/03/2008
Judge Attacked in Family Court
Police were called yesterday to an incident at Luton County Court when a twenty-year-old woman let off a fire extinguisher in the face of a judge.
His Honour, Hugh West, was hearing an application by the young woman to be allowed contact with her younger siblings who are in foster care, but when he explained that would not be possible she became angry.
‘At first she was just shouting and swearing,’ said Carlton Reed, who works as a security guard in the court. ‘To be honest, I felt sorry for her because she only wants to see her family.’
Carlton confirmed that the young woman’s solicitor tried to calm her.
‘She gave her a glass of water and tried to make her see sense,’ he said. ‘The problem was some of her witnesses hadn’t turned up to give evidence so the judge’s hands were tied.’
Unfortunately, just as everyone believed the situation was under control, the woman grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall.
‘I thought she was going to throw it,’ Carlton said. ‘But she managed to get it working and fired it straight into the judge’s face.’
Mr West was taken to hospital and, although shocked, has not suffered any lasting injuries.
The twenty-year-old, who cannot be named
for legal reasons, was arrested and is due to appear in Luton Magistrates’ Court today.
Lilly made herself a cup of tea and stretched her sleep-sodden legs. Today she was going to have a quiet one. She was going to play with Alice, take a walk in the snow, go out to the shops and cook for everyone. She thumbed through a cookbook, mentally tossing up between slow cooked beef and fish pie. Either would provide the rib-sticking comfort she craved this morning.
‘You working today?’ Sam looked over Lilly’s shoulder.
‘Nope,’ she said.
‘Amazeballs.’
‘Is that even a word?’ she asked.
‘It is if you’re under sixty.’
Lilly tried to bat him around the head but he ducked away.
‘Have you seen your dad?’ she asked.
‘No.’ Sam looked worried. ‘Isn’t he here?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Lilly replied. ‘He wasn’t on the sofa when I got up.’
‘What did he say last night?’ Sam asked. ‘Did he mention he was going out?’
Lilly laughed. ‘I’m not his mum.’
‘You don’t think he’s gone back to Cara do you?’
‘I doubt it,’ Lilly said. ‘He’s left his manky razor in the bathroom.’
Sam frowned, anxiety etched across his forehead.
‘Would it be such a bad thing if he did go home?’ Lilly asked. ‘Little Flora needs her dad.’
‘I need my dad.’
Lilly smiled at him. Sam had loved having David around. He’d been so much less moody with Lilly and much more accommodating of Alice. But would it hurt all the more when David did leave? Would it open up all those old wounds?
The unmistakable sound of a key rattling in the lock came from the front door, followed by David swearing as he tripped over the recycling.
‘Dad?’ Sam’s face lit up. ‘Dad, is that you?’
David ambled into the kitchen holding a supermarket carrier bag of food in each hand. ‘Who were you expecting?’ he asked. ‘Still, I suppose it’s possible anyone could turn up to see your mother.’