No Further Action

by TL Dyer

  I ask if he knows who it was she was calling, and the sarge looks over the top of his glasses at me as if I’ve just cursed his grandmother. ‘I look like a forensic investigator to you?’

  ‘That’s a no, then.’

  ‘Case is closed, Miss Marple. Another tragic loss to our friend Puff the Magic Dragon. And who says pot isn’t fatal?’

  ‘Right,’ I say, dropping my hands into my pockets. ‘Actually, do you know what happened to her things? Were they returned to her parents?’

  Roberts shifts all his weight to one hip and gives me the dead-eye. ‘If I didn’t know better, Fuller, I’d think you were checking to see if I’ve done my job properly.’

  ‘Not at all, Skip. Just curious, that’s all. Putting it to bed, so to speak.’

  He pushes his forefinger to the bridge of his glasses and thrusts them up his nose. ‘You can rest assured, my good man, it’s been bathed, sprinkled with talc, tucked in, read a bedtime story, and is already well and truly sparked out. I returned her things to her parents myself yesterday afternoon. That suit you?’

  ‘Including her phone, sarge?’

  ‘No, I flogged that on eBay this morning. Now, you want to chair this briefing for me, son?’

  I force a smile and find a seat as the room fills up. But once we’re all in and Roberts makes a start, I have to struggle to focus. Because all I can think about is gentle Toby and distraught Mary, and the messages on Anna’s phone I couldn’t bring myself to delete, even though she’d begged me, and I promised I would.

  Chapter 13

  The service takes place in St Catherine’s Church at the edge of Rogerstone on a beautiful crisp day. The sky is a shameless blue and sun shining for Anna, warming the still, afternoon air. The start of a new season, end of another.

  Towering dark pines border the church grounds. They provide shelter for the discoloured stone slabs and tilted crosses sprouting in no fixed order from the overgrown grass off to one side of the ageing building. A picture postcard church setting. But one too old and unfitting for someone like Anna.

  When I arrive just before three, having changed from my uniform into my suit at the station, a steady stream of mourners are still making their way under the archway at the gate, and up the cracked flagstones into the vestibule. I let them pass, following only once there’s no one else and the organ begins to play.

  A young lad with a neat buzz cut and pink cheeks, wearing a blazer a few sizes too big for him, hands me an Order of Service. I smile and thank him, finding somewhere to stand at the back, behind the pews, out of the way. It’s a large church inside, but all the same, the rows of pews are filled. A group of four come in, but can only line up alongside me.

  There are a lot of young people. Anna’s friends, her classmates from school and college, those who’ve grown up with her. But it looks like she has a large family too; they huddle together in the first few rows. From here, I can make out her mum’s red hair, and beside her, another woman with an arm around her shoulders. Then Toby, his head up, eyes fixed perhaps on the white, red-rose-adorned coffin, wondering how on earth that could be his daughter in there. I can’t see Sienna, but imagine she’ll be somewhere close to her mother.

  The organ brings All Things Bright and Beautiful to an end, echoing the last notes up to the beams above us and leaving behind a heavy silence that goes on uncomfortably long before the vicar speaks. Heads bow and prayers are said. I lower my own out of respect, but I’ve never been a praying man. I can’t even say whether or not I believe. Maybe one day when I have more time to consider it, it’ll all become clear, but for now I’d rather deal with what I can see, not what I can’t.

  One of the mourners, a young man, approaches the lectern, opens the Bible to where it’s marked and reads a passage. He’s older than Anna, perhaps an uncle or a cousin. He speaks fast, his voice thin and not carrying to us here at the rear, but it holds steady and he gets to the end without pause. When he steps down, his gaze remains fixed on the path he needs to return to his seat. The vicar recites another passage, before the congregation stands for Abide With Me. The opening bars are loud enough that their vibrations flutter in my chest. Dad chose this hymn for Mum’s funeral. Ange and I chose it for his.

  Tasting blood and realising I’ve bitten the inside of my lip, I open the Order of Service to join in the singing.

  As the hymn draws to a close, a young woman steps up to the lectern. She carries a piece of paper in her hand that she lays down and smooths out in front of her. When she speaks, it’s to talk confidently of her friend Anna, a friend she’s known since nursery school. Brown curls drop over her shoulder and she brushes them out of her way and clears her throat. She tells an anecdote of a time the pair went on a History field trip to the Roman Baths in Caerleon and Anna found an injured sparrow among the ruins. No one else wanted to touch it, and after the novelty had worn off, they all moved on to more interesting things. But when they were on the coach returning to the school, Anna reached inside her coat pocket for the tiny bird that she had wrapped in napkins from the cafeteria. She nursed it at home until it came around and, when she was sure it was well enough, made her parents drive her back to the Baths to set it free.

  ‘She was the most kind and caring person I know,’ she concludes. ‘She was my best friend. Fly free, Anna.’

  Stepping down from the lectern, she receives a gentle touch on the shoulder from Anna’s father, who passes her with his own sheet of paper clutched in his hand. The young woman resumes her seat and Toby clears his throat. He looks small from this far away. Or maybe it’s just that his shoulders slouch under the weight of the black suit he wears for his daughter.

  As Toby talks of how easy a child Anna was, from her unexpected quick birth that almost happened in the car park of the Rose and Crown, to the awards she won at school for her hard work and diligence, I stare down at Anna’s picture on the Order of Service. It’s not a formal one, this one. More a family snap, a moment in time naturally captured. Anna lounges on the sofa with her feet up, body angled away from the camera and towards the dog wrapped up in her arms. Her head rests against the Terrier’s, and she smiles at the taker of the photo with sleepy eyes.

  I keep my head bowed as Toby struggles through the latter part of his eulogy, telling us how their lives will never be the same without her, telling us he never thought he’d have to do this, telling us just last week she was still here and teasing him about his receding hairline. If he didn’t feel old then, he says, he certainly does now. He breaks altogether when he looks to his left and tells her he loves her.

  Stepping away from the lectern, he pauses only to press his fingers to his lips and then to the coffin as he passes it. Back by his wife, he puts his arm around her and she leans into him, and to the strains of Amazing Grace, the pallbearers step up to the front to carry Anna from the church.

  When the doors open, I slip out before everyone else. I feel strange. My head is light, like it doesn’t belong to me. And my chest is tight enough that I can’t breathe.

  Chapter 14

  The service at the crematorium is brief, but there’s also something calming about it after the stuffiness of the church. It’s as if Anna’s not gone, but released. A ridiculous thing to think, but that’s what comes to mind. Released from the pain, at least, that she would have suffered the rest of her life had she survived. The physical pain being just one part of that.

  I don’t intend to follow the mourners to the rugby club, but as we leave the crematorium and I pass on my condolences to Anna’s family, Toby grips my palm firmly in his and, with his free hand on my arm, tells me he’ll see me there to buy me a pint.

  And so here I am, having taken two paracetamol in the car to stave off a nagging headache, and made hard work of chewing on a nutty bar I found in the glove compartment to give my energy levels a kick up the backside.

  Anna must have had a lot of friends. The club is a large hall with tables and chairs grouped at one end, most occupied by those I assu
me to be relatives, including her mum, dad and sister, and the rest an open space with seats lined either side of it. That space is filled with young people of Anna’s age, some dressed in black, some bucking the trend to wear a splash of colour for their friend’s last goodbye. Their chatter fills the air as they raise their glasses, and the alcohol goes down without too much trouble after the thing they’d been dreading melts into something easier to bear.

  Toby sees me waiting at the bar, and after some wrangling over what I’m having to drink, he settles on buying the half pint of lemonade I’ve asked for. To ease his conscience, I lie and tell him I’m on duty later, and when I clink my glass against his pint of Guinness, he nods his head for me to follow him to a quieter spot at the end of the bar.

  ‘You heard what they said?’ he asks, eyes darting to his left. To his wife, I imagine. ‘That she...’ He runs his hand down his moustache, cheeks pale and more gaunt than the last time I saw him. ‘We had no idea. She was always such a good girl. We just... We can’t quite comprehend it.’

  I nod, wait for him to take a long draw on the Guinness. Once he has, his dark eyes come up to mine, weigh me up first before stepping in a little closer.

  ‘Mary and I, we were wondering if there could have been a mix-up. You know, between samples. Only, we just can’t see it.’ He drops his voice. ‘I mean, pot? Anna? We’d have known, wouldn’t we?’

  He’s waiting on my answer, and I’m trying to think how to give it while also considering another potential mix-up. Like whether Roberts was right about returning the phone to the Johnsons and whether they read the messages on there. Because if they had, Toby’s questions would be moot. The confirmation was right there in black and white. Unless he’s just clinging to some far-fetched denial.

  ‘If you’re asking me, Mr Johnson, if you should dispute the findings of the investigation unit, then by all means you’re within your rights to do that. From my own experiences, the team and our forensics department have always been professional and thorough. In twenty years, I’ve never witnessed evidence being recorded in error, or outcomes of road traffic collisions in our region being overturned upon further investigation.’

  Toby nods, looking down into his pint as if this was the answer he was expecting but is no less disappointed to hear.

  ‘Mr Johnson, I hope you don’t mind me saying, but from what we see, things are very different for teenagers today.’ I keep my voice low, wait for him to look up. ‘This stuff is easy to get hold of. It’s everywhere. And just as it used to be flagons of Strongbow or a pack of Benson & Hedges, now it’s this. But for what it’s worth, it doesn’t change who your daughter was. This could have been a one-off, for all we know, or it could have been something she only did occasionally.’

  Toby’s still nodding, his eyes misting over as I wait for him to mention the messages with Stokes, ask what they could mean. But what he says is, ‘Yes, perhaps you’re right. We never smelled it on her. She never seemed out of sorts.’

  ‘Your daughter is still the young woman you thought she was. The results of the investigation will never change that.’

  The smile he gives is thin, tipping the edge of his moustache up to one side. But I can’t help thinking all this feels too much like me just trying to justify myself to Anna, for not doing as she asked.

  ‘By the way, did my colleague return Anna’s belongings to you?’

  He takes three long swallows from his pint before bringing the glass down and wiping away the trail on his moustache with the back of his hand.

  ‘Yes. Yes, he did.’ Again the nervous glance to his left. ‘Though, between you and me, Officer, I told Mary only her jewellery was returned. She treasures the necklace, but the clothes... Anna’s dress, like that. Her phone, the one she was using when... I couldn’t show her those. I just couldn’t.’

  ‘Of course. I understand.’

  Toby draws in a shaky breath. ‘Could barely look at them myself. Just bound them up in black bags. Bin collectors took them this afternoon an hour before the cars arrived.’

  His hand trembles as he brings the glass to his lips, perhaps feeling like he’s done something he shouldn’t have, something he might one day regret when his head’s on straighter. But all I can think of is I’m off the hook. I failed to carry out Anna’s last wish, but her last wish has still been granted and her parents will never see those messages she wanted gone from her phone.

  ‘I’m sure it’s for the best, Mr Johnson,’ I say. ‘Your memories of her are more important now than any reminders of that night.’

  He nods, as if yes, that makes sense. ‘I appreciate that, Officer Fuller, thank you. Again thank you, for everything you’ve done. Mary’s...’ His eyes drift across the room. Though I wonder if it’s more himself he’s referring to, when he says, ‘She’s all over the place. It’s just one shock after another. I don’t even know if any of it’s really gone in yet.’ He looks back at me with an edge of terror to his sadness. ‘God help us when it does.’

  Toby gets lost to a group of well-wishers, so I take my lemonade and find a quiet seat away from the bar. I’ll stay only long enough to finish it before heading home. Maybe it’s got something to do with the shift we had this morning, the shitty kind where we chased our own tails a lot and caught nothing, but I’m still drained even after the tablets and the Tracker bar. I sip from the lemonade, hoping the sugar will help and pray I’m not coming down with anything. Working the job when you’re not up to par is grim. The lack of sympathy from colleagues a lot grimmer. No one wants to be stuck in a car all night, shoulder to shoulder, with a living, breathing infection. I take out my phone to message Ange, tell her I won’t be long.

  ‘Sorry. Do you mind if I sit here?’ a voice says beside me.

  I recognise the woman from the crematorium. She was in front of me as the mourners shook Toby’s hand and kissed Mary on the cheek. I remember too how when she turned I registered her as having one of those kind faces. Some people do. Some people you can read almost immediately.

  ‘Of course,’ I say, shuffling in my seat even though I’m not encroaching on the one next to me. As she says thanks with what sounds like a breath of relief, I leave the message for now and drop my phone back into the pocket of my suit jacket.

  The woman sits, balancing a glass of something clear on the thigh of her trousers after crossing one leg over the other. The perfume she wears is light and flowery, reminding me of my aunt’s apartment in the centre of London that’s filled with the scent of fresh lavender and geraniums and begonias and god knows what else, which she grows in pots on her fifth-floor balcony. A natural oasis in the middle of a man-made concrete jungle.

  There are other chairs the woman could have picked, and I wonder why she chose the one next to mine. Maybe she knows me from town, has seen me on shift, but I don’t recall seeing her before today.

  ‘I’m a bit of a stranger here,’ she explains, answering my unspoken question. ‘Feels like I’m intruding.’

  Her eyes are a soft brown and apologetic, and that answers my other question. She sat here because I look like I don’t belong either.

  ‘Same here,’ I say, and she nods.

  Her shoulders relax, but her attention is drawn to the youngsters whose voices are notching up. Some of them are smiling now, a couple laughing, but the woman watches them with a sadness that’s hard to read.

  ‘How did you know Anna?’ I ask.

  A thin smile pulls on her lips. A beauty spot above the right side of her mouth tilts upwards, and a dimple deepens in her chin.

  ‘I guess you’d call her my apprentice.’

  I shift in my seat to better face her. ‘The vet?’

  ‘That’s right,’ she says, with a soft laugh. ‘Tricia. Tricia Summers. Nice to meet you. Though not here, of course.’

  ‘You too,’ I say, with a light grip of the warm slim hand she offers. ‘Steve Fuller.’

  ‘How about you, Steve? How did you know Anna?’

  I take a sip from th
e lemonade, before bringing it back to rest on my knee. There’s no easy way to say it.

  ‘I’m a police officer.’

  ‘Oh right. It’s okay, you don’t have to—’

  ‘Not at all. I was on duty that night.’

  This, I feel, sounds better than, I attended the scene, or even, I held her hand while she was dying.

  It might have sounded better, but the effect of my words are the same. Lines at the edges of the woman’s eyes splinter and she tucks a strand of fair hair behind her ear, dropping her gaze to her drink which she brings to her lips and downs in three swallows.

  ‘Can I get you another?’ I ask, as the empty comes back down. An automatic gesture, but she gives me an odd look. I can’t tell whether it’s sad or angry, or maybe wary. Here I am, some bloke she’s never seen before in her life, and I’m offering to buy her drinks already. And at a funeral, too.

  I finish the rest of the lemonade, its taste sickly sweet, and get to my feet.

  ‘Well, it was a pleasure to—’

  ‘Gin and tonic, please.’

  She holds out her glass. I stare at it, wondering how to extricate myself from my offer of a moment ago. But she shakes the glass in the air, and a wry smile says she’s waiting. I take it from her and return to the bar where I order the G and T for her and an alcohol-free Heineken for me. My phone vibrates in my pocket while I wait, Ange asking if I’m alright and when I might be home. I tell her I’m fine and won’t be much longer.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Tricia takes the glass from me as I sit. The teenagers have moved from their spot in the middle of the room, and the place looks smaller now that it’s empty.