by TL Dyer
Sometimes still wishes that five years later, he’d said, perched on the edge of the desk and looking each of us in the eye. ‘But I’m working on it. Maybe if I can save one of you from ending up where I did, something good can come of it.’
The room was silent, warm and uncomfortable, every one of us struggling with the after-effects of a night shift, and with a hot meal, shower and bed on our minds. So when he got to the end of his suggestions for taking care of ourselves, recognising the signs, listing the people who were there to support us, he asked if anyone had any questions, and it took a long time before someone raised their hand.
‘Officer Russell, right?’ Sanchez said.
All eyes peered sideways at our most gregarious colleague, curious to see what he could possibly add to this conversation, and how we’d feel about it when he did, how we might feel about him, about ourselves.
‘That’s correct, sir,’ PC John Russell said, coughing and shifting in his seat from slouched to upright. ‘I was just wondering. With all this going on... Did you have any regrets about your move from Barcelona to Arsenal?’
*
The pounding at the front door brings me too quickly from sleep and I bolt upright, gasping for breath, the image of Anna still there in my mind. The back of my head throbs as it catches up with the movement and I grip it with my hand, feeling sick and empty and worthless, the same way Anna had made me feel in the dream. She’d turned away, looking at me over her shoulder with eyes grey and cold, before linking arms with the man at her side. Tall, skinny man. Not Simons, nothing like Simons. When I tried to shout to her, stop her leaving with this man, my voice didn’t work, nothing came out, and my feet wouldn’t move. Someone behind me said, ‘Forget about her, Steve. Move on. Move on to the next call.’ But I couldn’t do that, not when I knew who the man was, and that something was very, very wrong. The smug grin and the thinning hair were Zippo’s, I was certain of that. But it couldn’t really be Zippo, because Zippo was dead. I had killed him.
‘Steve!’
The voice is in the hallway, but muffled where it comes through the letterbox.
I swing my legs from the bed, step on last night’s clothes dumped in a pile on the floor. Bundling them up, I throw them in the bottom of the wardrobe, and from the drawer take some running joggers and a t-shirt. Peering through the curtains, the light stabs my eye and goes right through to my skull. It stabs a second time when I see the squad car parked on the driveway. I drop the curtain and run my hand over my mouth. My lips are dry, and when I swallow, it’s like my throat’s been cut.
‘Steve, it’s me. It’s Neil.’
Passing the mirror on the wall, I make the mistake of glancing in it. To say I look like shit would be a compliment. In a weak attempt, I brush my fingers through my hair, but it still springs up at an awkward angle so I could pass for fifty, not forty. I’m not the only one who notices.
‘Fuck me, Steve,’ Smithy says, when I get downstairs and open the door to find him standing there in uniform.
‘Not right now, I’m a little hungover.’ I shuffle down the hall to the kitchen, leaving him to let himself in. ‘You look rough yourself. You not booked off yet?’
‘Just on my way.’ The front door closes and his heavy boots peel over the floorboards.
At the sink, I fill the kettle and put it on to boil, pleased when I turn and hold up a cup to see that my visitor has taken off his utility vest and dropped it on the counter. Not an official call, then. He declines a drink but pulls out a stool, and I go back to the coffee. Once I’m sitting opposite him though, there’s no avoiding him. His face is ashen, brown eyes dark and bloodshot, the skin around their edges lined and folding in on itself. Your typical end of a shit shift complexion. Except I’m sensing he’s not quite done yet.
The radio on his vest speaks, breaking the silence. He reaches over to turn it down, and then he’s back to studying me.
‘Accidental death,’ he says, with a curl of the lips, as if even the words in his mouth are an affront to his old friend’s memory.
I shake my head, using a sigh as an excuse to press my fingers into the side of my forehead where someone’s drilling a hole. ‘That’s a real shit, mate, I’m sorry.’
‘Thought you said wait until tomorrow.’
He’s glaring at me hard when I look up. ‘Yeah, that’s right. I did.’
My eyes are stinging like hell, but I don’t blink under his scrutiny.
‘Was it you?’ he asks.
‘Me what?’
‘Don’t bullshit me, Steve.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
When he blinks, it’s with lids of stone, and I wonder as I watch him, if he’s in that place. The one Sanchez talked about. The one where you don’t notice you’ve gone over the edge until someone explains you’ve landed face first, pride second. He certainly looks like it, but don’t we all after a long night, and what would I suggest anyway – I’m hardly in the best position myself. How long would it be before Smithy told me to sod off, he was fine? Then what would it have achieved except to push another wedge between us?
‘They found Waterman at the empty warehouse down at the docks. Same one he burned on his spree last year,’ he says, then waits for me to say something but I don’t, only raise the cup to my lips and sip at the hot bitter coffee.
‘He’s alive but only just. Blunt force trauma, took a hell of a beating.’
‘He say who did it?’
‘Not saying diddly squat, he’s on life support. Touch and go.’
‘Any leads?’
His answer is a weary blink. He’s too exhausted for this.
‘Well,’ I say, wrapping my hands around the mug. ‘He’s upset a lot of people.’
‘Yes, he has.’
‘So maybe no one will give a shit either way.’
Smithy thinks about that even as he stares at me. Poetic justice is so rare in this line of work. His eyes soften and he rubs his fingers over his mouth, eyelids falling closed for a second. And when he drags them open again, the toll the night has taken on him is frightening.
‘Neil, head back and book off, mate. Get yourself home.’
‘Yeah,’ he says on an exhale, running his hand over his hair and gripping it in his fingers. But to the table, he mumbles, ‘Did you drive through the town, Steve?’
‘What?’
‘You heard. Did you go via the town?’
‘When?’
‘Were you seen on CCTV? Did you cover your face, Steve? Did you wear gloves? Did anyone see you? Did Waterman see you? Did he have someone with him? Did he know who you were?’ He brings his head up. ‘Did you do this to save my arse, Steve?’
I lift the cup, blow away the steam, and take a mouthful. When I set it down again, I tell him, ‘You’re a good officer, Neil.’
He tries, but he can’t hold eye contact this time. Looking to his vest, he pulls it towards him and stands to leave, tongue running over his bottom lip. I stare down into the cup, from where the steam comes up to cover my mouth, my nose.
‘So are you,’ he says, before his footsteps go down the hall, the front door clicking closed behind him.
Once I’ve heard the car drive away, I run to the toilet and throw up the coffee and what’s left of yesterday’s booze, choking it from me while hot tears sting my eyes.
Chapter 38
The college car park is full and people are still arriving. Cars overspill, lining the roads in and out of the campus, pulling up to the pavement and onto grass verges. All for Anna.
I thought about not coming. I thought about it all night apart from the one hour I slept. There were more than enough reasons to stay away. Guilt, for the assumptions I made about Simons, the accusations I blurted at him, hitting a nerve I had no right to prod at. Shame, for the dreams I’ve had of Anna, the ones where I’ve woken with the weight of her head on my chest and her body wrapped around mine. Fear, of seeing Tricia again and how I’ll feel about that and what a
fool I might make of myself. Deceit, that I’m not the person I profess to be, that the things I’ve done these last few months are not the actions of the kind of man I thought I was. Ange is gone because of it. Probably Dan too – when I call there’s no answer, when I text he doesn’t reply.
The day is grey, but still. The shirt collar rubs my neck and I’m warm in the blazer. Some of the girls wear dresses and heels, the boys breaking out the ill-fitting suit for the second time in as many months. But others are casual, fresh from their last lecture, and maybe only know Anna as that girl from their college who died in a car crash.
I step onto the grass with my eye on the tree line, a place I can hide while the crowd’s still gathering. I catch glimpses of a mound of earth and a sapling in a pot alongside it, next to which is a small group, Anna’s parents, her sister Sienna, and who I assume to be faculty and dignitaries from the college. Just to the right of them is Tricia. She wears a pale peach skirt and blazer suit, and white blouse. Her hands are loosely clasped, lips thin and features concentrated as she listens to something Anna’s father is saying. I walk further away, drop back beside an oak tree and scan the faces for Simons, but I don’t see him.
Just after three o’clock, the principal of the college introduces himself and talks about Anna – what kind of student she was, what she brought to the campus, and how much she’s missed, by students and staff alike. I look again for Simons among the faculty, but there’s no sign of him, and I wonder if he would have come today if I hadn’t paid him a visit in the way I did. I wonder if the things I accused him of bother him as much as they bother me.
The principal calls on the same young woman who spoke at the funeral to read from a passage of Anna’s favourite book as a child, The Wind in the Willows. ‘Something to do with all the talking animals. She was obsessed with creatures,’ she says with a smile, and muted laughter spreads around the group. I glance to Tricia, see her smiling down at Sienna in that gentle way she has. But when her head comes up again, that concern she wears so close to the surface twists something in my chest.
Toby Johnson speaks next, thanking everyone for attending and for their support over the most arduous weeks of their lives. He says Anna was proud to be a student at the college, and turns to his left to add, ‘And thrilled to work alongside Tricia Summers at the surgery. She spoke of you daily, Tricia, and was grateful for your tutelage. You were a fine mentor to her. So, thank you. I know she’d want me to thank you.’
Tricia nods but looks at her feet. The principal asks if anyone else would like to say something, but when no one volunteers, he walks towards the tree in its pot and gestures to Anna’s family. Sienna steps forward, slipping on a pair of pink gardening gloves with a shy giggle at something the principal says. He loosens the pot while she lifts the sapling and places it into the ground, where her father then takes up the shovel and returns the earth around it. Murmurs of conversation begin and spread, hanging in the air in a low hum. A woman hands Mary a watering can, and she holds it with one hand on the handle, the other underneath as she sprinkles water over the fresh earth Toby has patted down. With the tree planted, the principal reveals a plaque, made by a local carpenter and engraver, which will be mounted beside the sapling in the next few days, and concludes by thanking everyone again for coming.
There’s a slow dispersal of the crowd, and I wait for those close to me to move, choosing the right moment to leave when I won’t be seen. I keep my head down, but as I reach the edge of the grass, someone grips my arm. Looking up, I see it’s Toby. He’s holding out his hand.
‘Good of you to come, Officer Fuller,’ he says, clutching my palm and directing me out of the line of foot traffic to a quieter spot off the path.
‘Not at all. Least I could do.’
‘And thank you again for being there with Anna that night. I mean, I know how it works. Roll of the dice, of course, if it hadn’t been you it would have been one of your colleagues. But all the same...’
‘Of course.’
‘She wasn’t alone, that’s the main thing. I’ve heard how you stayed with her, and that means a lot. I can rest, knowing she wasn’t alone or afraid.’
‘Your daughter was a credit to you,’ I say, the same words I’ve spoken before falling limp from my mouth this time. Was that important to Anna in her last moments, that she be a credit to her family? Maybe it was, given her insistence about the phone messages.
Toby nods, his lips pinned together to hold back the pride that’s much bigger than he is and painfully bittersweet. He glances over my shoulder.
‘Mary still struggles with some of this, you see.’
‘Of course.’
‘Has this guilt thing, that it wasn’t her there with Anna at the end.’
‘That’s only natural.’
A chuckle bursts from his lips. ‘She says she always liked a man in uniform, but now she’ll never be able to look at one again. You know?’ He laughs again to cover his discomfort, and quickly changes the subject. ‘I hear you have a son, not far off Anna’s age.’
‘That’s right,’ I say, my voice catching in my throat. My smile is still there but only just, and it wavers the longer Toby looks at me. As if, by being a father himself, he can see what kind of father I am too.
‘It’s not easy, is it?’ he says. ‘No one gives you the manual. No one tells you when you’re getting it right, only when you get it wrong.’
I smile politely, while thinking of last night when I’d gone into Dan’s room and sat on his bed with his dirty clothes from the floor on my lap, wondering when it was he’d got away from me and why I hadn’t noticed when it happened.
I feel somehow Toby knows all this, that he can see it in me and is about to set me straight. But what he says is, ‘We had a rough time with Anna for a while. Mary, she... Well, I suppose they’d call it a breakdown. They took her into the hospital. She was gone for a couple of months. Not herself, sort of thing. The girls were only little. Sienna a baby, Anna six, seven. And it frightened Anna, I expect. She thought her mother wasn’t coming back.’ He looks over my shoulder. ‘So did I, for a while. It was a strange time, even after Mary came home. I don’t know whether Anna rejected her, was angry that she’d left her or what, but she clung to me like I was her life raft. Nice for me, not so much for her mother. But we got through it. Anna got over it and everything righted itself at some point. That’s all you can do. Ride out the storm. Do the best you can. It won’t ever be perfect, but what else is there?’
He smiles, puts his hand to my arm and, gripping firmly, brings his face close to mine.
‘Appreciate every single minute with your boy,’ he says, eyes wide and waiting for confirmation I’ll comply.
‘Absolutely,’ I say, even as I’m wondering if he knows I’ve already fucked that bit up.
‘Anyway...’ He steps back, dropping his hand, which falls with a slap against his side. ‘We need to move on. Keep going forward. As best we can anyhow. That’s what Anna would want, and what Sienna needs. You understand what I mean, Officer?’
‘Of course,’ I say, automatic pilot again. But automatic or not, it’s enough for Toby. He nods once and brushes past me to return to his wife. He puts his arm around her, plants a soft kiss on the side of the head, a silent signal perhaps that he’s done the thing she asked him to do. They were grateful for what I did, but they don’t want to see me again. Why would they? They will always associate me with the worst thing that could ever have happened to them. To them, I am Anna’s death.
When I drag my eyes from them, Tricia’s standing about fifteen feet away. She’s looking at me in the same way she looked at Mary Johnson, like it’s hopeless and she doesn’t know what the answer is. Except I don’t even remember what the question was. It’s all I can do to smile. I turn and leave, each step I take a little faster, breath a little harder. Because the blazer’s too hot, the tie’s choking me, and I can’t do this any more. I miss my wife, and I miss my son, and I can’t get away from this p
lace quick enough.
*
I’m only a few miles down the road when I have to pull over, undo the belt to take off the blazer and loosen the tie and top button. The air conditioning from the car cools the sweat spreading over my shirt under my armpits, and even my back is damp. I yank the tie over my head and throw it to the passenger seat, swipe my phone screen on the dashboard and punch at Dan’s number. It rings and I wait for the voicemail to kick in so I can leave another message. But there’s a click, and a deep, cautious voice says, ‘Hello?’
Jerking upright in the seat, I snatch the phone from its holder and take it off speaker.
‘Dan?’
A sniff and then, ‘Yeah?’
‘Hey. Glad I caught you. How are you doing?’
‘Good.’
‘Yeah? How’s life with Nanna?’
‘S’alright.’
‘Are you getting to school okay?’
‘Yeah.’
I suck in a silent breath, wondering how I’ll find a way to say the things I want and whether he’ll want to hear them.
‘I get a bus,’ he mutters.
‘Yeah? The school bus?’
There’s a tapping noise in the background, like he’s softly hitting or kicking at something while we speak.
‘Nah. Stagecoach.’
‘That’s excellent, mate. Does it take long?’
‘Twenty minutes. Nothing really.’
‘You have to pay?’
‘At the minute, but Mum’s sorting out a pass.’
I prop my elbow to the door and lean back against the seat. The early evening traffic rushes passed, rocking the car.
‘Well, that’s great, Dan. That’s really terrific.’ Specks of rain hit the windscreen. I pick out one, my eyes clouding over the longer I stare at it. ‘How’s Mum? She okay?’
‘I dunno. Think so.’
‘But you’re okay, Dan? You’re alright there with Mum and Nanna?’
His soft breath hisses down the line, a sigh, either at the question or the answer, I’m not sure which. ‘Suppose so.’