by Mari Hannah
Then everything went black.
50
The chirp-chirp tone and the vibrating buzz of a mobile got louder and louder as it rang out. Daniels slowly opened her eyes, trying to drag herself from sleep. She lay motionless in the darkness, trying to make sense of what she was listening to.
A light was flashing . . .
The noise persisted . . .
And suddenly she was wide awake.
Turning over in bed, she reached out for her mobile as it disappeared over the edge of her bedside table, falling to the floor with a solid thump. Pulling herself up on her elbows, she turned on the light, wondering who was calling at ten past three in the morning. The control room usually called her landline.
Carmichael!
No. According the display it was DC Brown.
‘Boss, we have a problem. Lisa’s in a bad way . . .’ He sounded frantic as he rattled off an address not far away. ‘That’s her new flat. You need to come now!’
‘On my way,’ Daniels hung up.
She’d forgotten that Carmichael had moved. She’d been brought up by an aunt after her natural parents died, swept off a mountainside by an avalanche while on a skiing holiday in France when she was only three years old. She’d recently taken advantage of a dwindling housing market and – as a first-time buyer with a steady job – had seized the opportunity to strike out for independence.
Please God, let her be OK.
Daniels jumped out of bed, heart racing and imagination in overdrive. Pulling her hair into an untidy ponytail, she dressed quickly, a pair of old jeans, the first sweater she could find, trainers. Grabbing her biker’s jacket from the seat of her motorcycle, she left the house glad she’d refuelled the Toyota on the way back from the coast. The tank had been that low she’d been driving on fumes.
At the top of Osborne Road, she turned left at the T-junction and floored the accelerator, then straight on at the Blue House roundabout skirting the Town Moor. There were few vehicles about aside from the odd taxi and just one pedestrian, from what she could see. Traffic lights up ahead were on green. She turned right, passing a row of very posh houses, a parade of shops, then took a left up Kenton Lane, putting her foot down, checking the speedo all the while. Thirty, forty, fifty, fifty-five. . . Heading slightly uphill now and still accelerating, a vehicle displaying blues and twos suddenly appeared in her rear-view mirror.
Shit!
The patrol car overtook at speed, its blue light flashing. It slowed down in front of her, its POLICE STOP sign illuminated on the roof. Daniels pulled over, hoping it was someone she knew, trying to think of a plausible excuse for having exceeded the speed limit in a built-up area. Not finding one.
She sat there despondently, drumming her fingers on the Toyota’s steering wheel, staring at the brake lights of the patrol car.
Carmichael.
‘Get a move on then!’ Daniels whispered under her breath.
The Traffic officer didn’t get out of the patrol car. He was obviously doing a vehicle check. Daniels leaned forward and took her police radio from the glove compartment. She turned it on, just as an urgent call for assistance in the vicinity came through.
‘Control to all units. Police officer requires assistance, Stamfordham Road.’
Two units responded immediately: ‘3398, Byker . . . 3467, Gosforth, on way.’
‘Control to all units . . .’ The radio again, repeating the call. ‘Police officer requires assistance, Stamfordham Road.’
The Traffic man heard it too and responded, ‘5547 . . . Kenton Lane.’
Daniels did likewise: ‘7824 . . . Kenton Lane also.’
In the car in front, the Traffic officer quickly checked his mirror, then turned on his siren and sped off. Daniels followed suit, hanging on his tail past the Crofters Lodge public house. They shot across a busy roundabout, Daniels adding her own blue lights to his. Cars gave way as they continued at speed to the location given, concern for a fellow officer taking priority over everything else.
Carmichael would have to wait.
The radio crackled into life again. ‘3398, stand down. All other units proceed until advised otherwise, over.’
Daniels kept driving. The control room were now satisfied that enough officers were en route and had stood down the car the furthest distance away. She continued to follow the patrol car but was forced to take avoiding action when a car shot out from a side street. It too was being pursued.
It was all happening tonight.
The control room again: ‘5678 on scene . . . one person under arrest. Officer requires ambulance attention but everything under control now. All units en route to assistance call, Stamfordham Road, can now stand down, over.’
The Traffic officer ahead was first to respond: ‘5547, that’s received.’
‘7824, copy that,’ Daniels said.
The patrol car stopped at the side of the road, allowing Daniels to overtake him. A little further along, she did a U-turn and drove back towards him, stopping as she pulled up alongside. She smiled at him through the window, lifted her right hand off the wheel and slapped her left, acknowledging her wrongdoing.
He smiled back.
Daniels drove on, bloody lucky to escape a fixed penalty ticket. Arriving back at the busy roundabout where the emergency call came in, she thought about ringing Brown. But she was now only half a mile away so she pushed on instead. Turning left on to the airport road, she took the third exit towards Kingston Park. Three minutes later, she reached the address Andy Brown had given her, a 1930s semi-detached on the main road at Kenton Bank Foot.
Brown’s blue Honda was parked, nose in, at a slight angle on the steep driveway, the lights still on, the passenger door wide open. Daniels pulled up behind it and got out. Finding the control switch for the lights, she turned them off and made her way to the front door. But before she had a chance to ring the bell, it was yanked open by a hassled-looking Brown.
‘What the hell happened?’ she said as she entered the house.
‘Either she drank too much or someone spiked her drink.’
‘Not good enough, Andy! Which was it?’
Brown looked at the floor. ‘I dunno . . .’
‘Either way she fucked up . . .’ Daniels said. ‘Where is she?’
Brown nodded towards the stairs.
Daniels took them two at a time, arriving in a bedroom at the front of the house where a light was on. Carmichael was splayed out on a double bed, completely out of it. Her shirt was up around her midriff where Brown had dumped her, having struggled to carry her up the stairs. Her pulse was racing slightly but her temperature appeared normal. Daniels sat down next to her and lifted one of her eyelids. The DC moaned but the eye underneath failed to register.
‘She just looks like she’s off her face to me,’ Daniels said. ‘What happened?’
Brown sat down on a chair near the window. He looked worn out. He was wearing a navy shirt, sleeves rolled up, sweat patches clearly visible under his armpits. He desperately needed a shave and a change of clothes. From the look of him, a stiff drink wouldn’t go amiss either.
‘I had the eyeball the whole time, boss. I promise you. One minute she was fine, sitting having a drink at the bar—’
‘Was she talking to anyone?’ Daniels interrupted.
‘Yeah, this guy.’
Brown dug out his mobile, accessed the image gallery and handed the phone to her. Just then, Carmichael moved her arm across her chest, her eyelids twitching. Daniels watched her for a moment and then zoomed in on the image Brown had captured on his phone. The man in the photograph was smartly dressed, middle-aged, of slim build with dark hair flecked grey at the sides. He had perfect shaped eyebrows, was a man who obviously looked after himself. He reminded her of BBC television football commentator Alan Hansen.
‘Who is he?’ she said.
Brown shrugged, glancing at Carmichael. ‘You’ll have to ask Lisa.’
Yeah right. ‘So, one minute she was fine. Then wh
at?’
‘She went to the ladies’ loo. I thought she looked a bit spaced out so I kept an eye on the door. She was in there a while. When she came out she’d lost it completely. I had to bring her out, boss. Believe me, I had no choice.’
‘You did good, Andy. Don’t beat yourself up over it.’
Daniels was silent for a while, studying the Hansen look-alike.
‘There are more photos,’ Brown said.
Daniels scrolled through several images, some close-ups, others taken further away. He’d managed to catch the man from a variety of angles. They were good enough to make a definite identification.
‘He wasn’t the only one who could have spiked her drink.’ Brown’s eyes found Carmichael again, concern for his colleague written all over him. ‘The place was heaving all night, three deep at the bar at times. There were several changes of staff too. Should I have taken her to A & E?’
‘Only if you wanted to ruin her!’
Daniels was being ironic, but she knew he understood. If a serving police officer arrived at hospital under the influence of drugs, it would hardly sit well on her personnel file. At best, it would throw doubt over her chances of promotion if it became common knowledge. At worst it would end her police career.
And no one wanted that.
‘You did the right thing, Andy.’ Daniels tapped her DC’s arm. ‘Now fuck off home and leave Lisa to me. She’s going to feel like shit when she wakes up and she won’t want you here. It’s best if I look after her.’
Brown hesitated. He didn’t look happy to leave.
‘Go on, get out of here. If she gets worse, I’ll call a doctor.’
Brown began to walk away.
‘And, Andy . . .?’ Daniels waited for him to turn round and face her. ‘This goes no further, you hear me? I’ll tell Hank in the morning, but nobody else needs to know about it. Agreed?’
Brown forced a weak smile. ‘Agreed.’
Daniels gave a reassuring nod. She knew he’d keep his word. Brown and Carmichael were great friends. They’d joined MIT together and a healthy dollop of competitive spirit had developed between them, a strong bond and a camaraderie that would stick with them throughout their service.
It was clear from his glum expression that he felt responsible for not having protected her. He was her backup, put there specifically to watch her six. No matter what Daniels said to him now, nothing would dissuade him from the belief that he’d failed spectacularly in that regard. But there was only one person to blame for what had happened, and she was lying flat out on the bed.
51
Carmichael’s kitchen-diner was at the back of the house: a light, airy room, ripe for entertaining. It had been two rooms once, knocked into one in order to maximize the available space. It had an island in the centre separating the eating area from newly fitted kitchen units and enough electrical gadgets on show to put John Lewis to shame: microwave, digi radio, three iPods no less, docking station and a huge, flat-screen, high-definition TV mounted on the wall at the far end.
Using a remote, Daniels turned it on.
The picture was crystal clear, the sound quality superb; hardly surprising, given Carmichael’s interest in all things digital. The DCI listened to the headlines while making a pot of coffee and some toast. She’d woken up in a chair in Carmichael’s bedroom with a very stiff neck and a paperback book on her knee: The Giant Book of Dangerous Women, edited by Richard Glyn Jones. An intriguing read she’d dipped in and out of during the night, a book about the most murderous women in the world – including Ma Barker, Myra Hindley and Ruth Ellis – a woman the author claimed had killed in an emotional frenzy but was hanged for premeditated murder. The resultant outcry had led to a majority vote in the House of Commons to abolish hanging in 1956.
Daniels wasn’t opposed to capital punishment per se. An eye for an eye seemed fair and reasonable to her. But miscarriages of justice did happen and – even though Britain’s prisons were bursting at the seams – one innocent person put to death was more than her conscience could stomach. No. On this emotive issue the law makers had got it right.
For once.
Daniels’ wristwatch bleeped. She’d set it to go off at fifteen-minute intervals in order to keep a close watch over her young DC, make sure she didn’t choke on her own vomit during the night. But Carmichael had slept peacefully, occasionally stirring, but never fully waking up. Daniels felt suddenly fatigued. Her eyes were sore, gritty, the way eyes felt when you had to get up at some ungodly hour to catch an early flight with a ridiculous check-in time. Or, worse still, travel during the night.
No wonder they called them red-eye flights.
Lisa Carmichael looked no better than Daniels felt when she appeared in the doorway fresh from the shower. She was barefoot, dressed in a navy towelling robe, her hair in a turban to match. The cocktail of drink and drugs had taken its toll on her appearance. Her skin was sallow and dehydrated and she could hardly stand up on her pins. From the look of her, she wanted to curl up in a ball and die.
‘Sit down,’ Daniels said.
Obediently, Carmichael pulled a chair out from the dining-room table, grimacing as it scraped across the hard wooden floor. Flopping down on it, she made no attempt to speak.
‘Here, drink this,’ Daniels said.
Placing a mug of steaming coffee on the table, she walked back to the kitchen area to get toast. She had no interest in giving her young protégé any sympathy. Carmichael had fucked up big style and deserved all that was coming to her. Question was, would she get back on her bike and start pedalling, or would she fade away like a puff of smoke?
Daniels had known it happen before.
Walking back to the table with a plate of toast, she sat down too, trying to keep her temper in check. She was boiling up inside, angry with Carmichael for making such a mess of things, for allowing a man who may or may not be of interest to them to slip through her fingers.
Carmichael looked up expectantly, waiting for the tirade.
It didn’t take long to arrive.
‘You never do that again. Do I make myself clear?’ Daniels didn’t wait for a reply. ‘I take it you’ve heard of Rohypnol? ANY woman with ANY sense watches her drink in a club, doesn’t she? Jesus, Lisa! First rule: you buy a drink that comes in a bottle with the top on. Second: you open it yourself and never, EVER put it down! Third: you keep your finger over the mouth of the bottle the whole time.’
‘Don’t go on, boss. I feel bad enough.’
‘And so you bloody should! Andy had no choice but to pull you out. Fortunately for you, everyone in there took you for a pisshead. You’re not a pisshead, are you?’
‘No! Of course not, I—’
‘You sure about that?’
Carmichael didn’t reply, just sat with her head in her hands. Daniels pushed the toast across the table towards her and she immediately pushed it back.
‘You going to tell Naylor?’
‘No. But don’t think for one minute it’s to protect your arse, because it’s not! Your mistake could have cost you – not only your livelihood, but your life. Hank will have to know, obviously. But I don’t want your cock-up reflecting on Naylor, not on his first day with us. He doesn’t need it and, frankly, neither do I.’
‘I’m sorry, boss. I never had much to drink, I promise you. Two vodkas, that was it. Someone definitely spiked my drink and I’ve a good idea who. Trouble is, I just can’t picture him.’ Carmichael shut her eyes, trying hard to remember. But it was no use. She opened them again, her face a sickly shade of grey. After a few minutes, she said: ‘He was an older guy, I think. Smart, I think—’
‘You think? You’re going to have to do a damn sight better than that!’
‘I’m not sure.’ Carmichael met Daniels’ steady gaze across the table, fiery eyes that could cut through steel. ‘Maybe it’ll come back to me.’
Without saying another word, the DCI stood up and went out into the hallway. She leapt up the stairs two at a time,
turning left when she reached the landing. Her leather jacket was hanging untidily over the back of a chair in Carmichael’s room. In the right-hand pocket she found Brown’s mobile. Returning to the kitchen, she accessed the photographs he’d taken at Fuse, found a particularly good one, zoomed in on the man’s face and showed it to Lisa.
‘Is that him?’
Carmichael gave a little nod, her eyes misting up. She turned her head, suddenly interested in the patio doors and a well-tended garden beyond, a greenhouse, a little shed and fruit trees on the boundary fence. It was a dull, grey day outside. Depressing, much like the mood in the room.
‘Get dressed,’ Daniels said. ‘We’ve work to do. And by the way, you’d better eat that bloody toast. I don’t make breakfast for just anybody!’
Carmichael managed a weak grin. She pointed to the living room, asking Daniels to wait there while she went upstairs to get dressed. Daniels got up. Taking her coffee with her, she wandered through into a pleasant room with a wooden floor, an open fireplace with a rug in front of the hearth. Two comfy red sofas sat at right angles to one another and there was a second, even bigger, plasma television screen fixed to one wall. On either side of the fireplace, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves housed a massive collection of DVDs – the biggest she had ever seen outside of a shop on the high street.
It was like a mini cinema.
Carmichael’s movie taste was diverse: everything from romcoms through to sci-fi, horror and all drama in between. One DVD stuck out slightly from the rest. Assuming the disc was in the player, Daniels pulled it down. The cover featured Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck and Helen Mirren. It was one of her favourite thrillers: State of Play.
The muffled buzz of Carmichael’s hair drier reached her through the ceiling. A few minutes later it stopped, replaced by the sound of feet running down the stairs a lot quicker than they had gone up. Carmichael entered eating cold toast, made up and ready to go, her hair tied back now, no longer hanging loose around her shoulders.
A Herculean effort in anyone’s book, Daniels thought.