by Liz Lawler
‘I’ll be there in a sec,’ she hollered, grabbing the cushion and duvet off the floor and shoving them behind the sofa.
In the mirror in the hallway she saw her ravaged face. Panda eyes stared back at her from where her mascara had run the night before in the shower. She looked an utter mess and would probably have been unrecognisable even to those who knew her.
She opened the door and peered through a crack.
The police officer from the night before was standing there wearing the same suit with a different shirt and clean tie.
‘Can I come in?’
She backed away from the door and let him follow her into the living room. She made no attempt to pick up her wet clothes or hide the evidence of her drinking. Let him think what he liked. Everyone else did, she reasoned. Why should he be any different? ‘Would you like some coffee?’ she asked.
‘Please.’
She left him alone, and while the kettle boiled she washed her face and combed her hair. When she returned he had his back to her, standing at the window, and she saw his brown hair was more like auburn in natural light. Very few men visited her apartment and she wondered if he found it too stark.
‘What a fantastic spot,’ he said. ‘You can literally step outside and row down the Avon. I envy you.’
‘I usually run along it, which is pretty special I suppose.’
Her apartment was situated on the south bank of the river Avon, which was the other reason she had chosen to buy it, that and the fact that the grounds were only accessible to other residents, and security was stringent. He had no doubt been able to gain direct access to her front door only because he was a policeman.
A black fur rug and chrome and glass coffee table separated twin brown leather sofas. Silver dome floor lamps stood tall before curving gracefully over each of the sofas, and a third lamp, with a burgundy thread shade, was placed in a corner. There were no ornaments except for two Waterford crystal vases, empty of flowers, on the slim sideboard, and a large piece of driftwood, dried to a silvery grey, set between them.
She had allowed Patrick to guide her in her choice of décor, and had grown to like the room’s sparseness until she saw Greg Turner standing next to the clean furnishings. There was an earthiness about him that suggested he would be more at home surrounded by wooden objects and tactile materials. In her mind she saw him with dirty hands, preparing a large coal fire, a dog dozing next to the hearth, which raised its head dopily, in hope of being patted.
She shook her head, despairing of her fanciful notions. He was a policeman in her home, wearing an ordinary suit and tie, and she had put him in different places because of the colour of his hair and the fact that he didn’t suit the room. In truth, very few people did, unless they were wearing sharp suits or cocktail dresses. She now saw it as cold – calculatingly chic – somewhere you didn’t drop crumbs or throw off your shoes.
‘How are you today?’ he asked, turning to face her.
‘I feel as if my brain has been in a blender. It hurts to move my head.’
He smiled sympathetically. ‘Try Resolve – I find that to be the best remedy, but you’re the doctor so I’m sure you know what’s best.’
‘A nice saline drip is what I give to most of my patients. A couple of paracetamol will have to do for me. Have you been working all night?’
‘And all morning and afternoon as well,’ he replied. He saw the surprise on her face. ‘It’s a quarter to four.’
Alex was shocked. She had lain in her makeshift bed for nearly ten hours. She’d returned home after touring the theatres just after five, found her way into the living room, and tucked herself against the wall with the remains of a bottle of vodka. She had thought that it was still morning. In another five hours she would be back at work. She would have to face the music; to apologise for leaving Nathan Bell to pick up the pieces, for disrupting the department, for causing a complete fuck-up. Again.
‘I’ve just spoken to the coroner. I have the PM prelims back. Still waiting on toxicology and other results, but he’s given me enough to be going on with.’
She inhaled deeply, waiting to hear the outcome.
‘He thinks it was self-induced abortion.’
Alex sank down onto her couch. She had been so sure, so convinced that her attacker had been responsible. She took a shaky breath, and tried to get her head around this revelation. ‘Why do they think it was self-induced?’
Greg Turner shook his head. ‘They’re not ruling anything out yet, but the findings are leaning that way. Her fingerprints are on the instrument.’
‘What instrument?’
‘She tried to keep it medical. There’s the possibility that she may have collapsed while doing it to herself, or else she was in too much pain to pull it out.’
‘You mean it was still inside her? What did she use?’
‘A uterine curette. I’m not entirely sure what that is. It perforated her uterus and was still embedded post-mortem. The pathologist is writing cause of death as haemorrhagic shock. So what is it?’
‘It’s a surgical instrument, shaped like a long crochet needle with a teardrop hook. It’s used to scrape contents from the uterus. Used during surgical abortion and always under anaesthetic. Can you imagine any woman doing that to herself? Inserting a needle through her own vagina? I’m sorry to be so graphic, but that’s exactly what this is.’
She saw his grimace and pressed home the point. ‘Why would she do that to herself? Not here, not in the UK, not in the twenty-first century. We have the NHS, and an abundance of private clinics all too ready to help. Why would any woman resort to such a risk on her own to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy?’
‘According to her GP she had been depressed for a while, more so since she found out she was pregnant. He’d been treating her for gonorrhoea and she was worried it could harm the foetus. She discussed a termination with him two weeks ago. He was waiting on her decision.’
Alex stood back up, waving a hand in despair. ‘So why didn’t she go back to him? She could have got help easily.’
‘We don’t know yet why she did this. She was a qualified nurse. Maybe she thought she could handle it by herself. Or maybe depression made her desperate. We’re trying to locate the father. Her parents tell us she didn’t have a steady boyfriend, but if we can find him, he may be able to shed some light, tell us something we don’t know.’
‘So everything I told you now sounds ridiculous. You must think me a madwoman for calling you in. I just thought . . .’
Greg Turner perched on the windowsill and crossed his ankles. ‘There is no connection that we can find, Dr Taylor. I went through your statement and I checked with DC Best. You are aware that they made a thorough search of both the grounds and the hospital that night. They found nothing. The theatres were all searched. In three of them operations were taking place at the time you say you were in one of them. The entire theatre team for that night have been interviewed and they all agree that there is no way anyone could have occupied one of the others without them being aware of it. The night cleaners were there till gone midnight because there was an MRSA case earlier in one of the theatres, and they had the entire suite to deep clean. Unfortunately, CCTV doesn’t reach the part of the car park where you were found, but that area was searched, and there were newly broken tree branches on the ground near to where you were lying.’
Alex struggled to stay calm. She needed a drink; the whisky-laced coffee in her hand was not enough. She wanted the kick of something strong and undiluted slipping straight into her bloodstream. ‘My dress, which your officer still has, is something I don’t think DC Best noticed that night.’
His eyes narrowed at the tone in her voice when she mentioned the female officer’s name, but he sat silently.
‘It was dry, bone dry – not a mark on it, from what I could see. They found me in the car park where I lay in the rain, and yet it was dry. How do you explain that, DI Turner?’
‘I can’t. Maybe the
lab can. If it hasn’t already been checked, I’ll chase it up. I’ll also discuss it with DC Best. Though I am sure she would have noticed the state of your dress. She’s pretty thorough.’
Alex flushed at the rebuke, but she’d be damned before she apologised. DC Best hadn’t even had the decency to ring up and check on how she was doing.
‘DC Best came to see you a few days later, but you were away. Your colleagues told her you were having a week off work.’
Alex bit hard on her lower lip to stop it from trembling. She was sick of crying and showing how weak she was. She breathed slowly and steadily until she felt calmer.
‘Two weeks ago I had a normal life. I had a job I am good at, colleagues who trusted in my judgement. And now it’s in tatters. I can’t put it back together again. What would you do if you were me?’
He cradled the coffee mug in his hands and took a moment before replying. ‘I’ve seen many men and women reach a crisis point in their lives. A friend of mine who’s a police officer and was on duty during an incident, at this very moment is undergoing therapy for severe stress. He blames himself for the death of a pedestrian who stepped out into the road in front of his speeding vehicle. No matter that he has been exonerated of any blame, he feels he should have known that a man, at that precise moment, was going to appear out of nowhere and walk across that road. The helicopter overhead hadn’t spotted the pedestrian, the officer in the passenger seat beside my friend hadn’t noticed the man, but my friend blames himself. Talk to someone, Dr Taylor. The mind is a fragile thing. It can deceive us when we least expect it and it can punish us in a way no one can explain. When you’re ready you will be able to put yourself back together again. You will have a normal life again.’
Chapter twelve
In her childhood bedroom, in the house where she grew up, the cream walls still bore the scars of Blu-tacked photos and Sellotaped posters, and in large glass picture frames prints of Andy Warhol’s portraits of Jackie Kennedy and Ingrid Bergman still hung. In her childhood bedroom where she had slept and dreamed of her future.
Alex’s legs were shaking badly and her grip on the door of the wardrobe was all that prevented her from toppling right in. The dress she was looking at was the same shade of pink she had worn on the night she was attacked. The same style of dress, except longer, and the same type of strappy shoes. Her sister, Pamela, was staring at her with a mixture of anger and resentment. This was not new; Alex felt there had always been resentment from her younger sister. Eighteen months separated them in age, but in terms of maturity, Alex had always felt far older.
Pamela had grown up believing that Alex had achieved her ambitions effortlessly, and that everything she did was accomplished with a snap of her fingers. It never occurred to her to think about the years of studying Alex put in, and the great parties, family holidays and social events that Alex missed so that she could stay focused and disciplined until her exams were passed, her future set, and yes, her ambition achieved.
Pamela went to college instead of university, took a BTEC course instead of a degree, worked part-time jobs instead of getting a student loan and had gone on to be an assistant hotel manager. She had spent the last several years seeming to enjoy life: nice boyfriends, nice girlfriends, nice holidays, nice everything. Nice and safe, with nothing to mar her happiness except for a childish resentment of her older sister. On the few occasions where the sisters met up and Alex was introduced to whoever was with her sister at the time, inevitably the question of ‘What do you do?’ was asked and Alex would see the admiration in Pamela’s friends’ eyes and the envious looks her sister gave her. It was the title that peeved her sister most. She was into titles.
Her husband-to-be had a title. He was a laird or lord, a Scottish representative peer, who came from a long line of Scottish landowners in the Highlands. He had been a guest at the hotel where Pamela worked, wealthy, a man beyond Pamela’s wildest dreams. He had whisked her away from her job, and on this very day he would be marrying her. Rich, slightly boring Hamish, who Alex was still getting to know, had chosen her little sister when, with a bank balance like his, he could have had his pick of any well-heeled socialite.
It was Pamela who had it all, while Alex was still paying off student loans, struggling with a hefty mortgage and had a life that was falling apart. Yet she persisted in allowing herself to feel like the underachiever, the poor little me that was overshadowed by her older, more academic sister.
‘What the hell is wrong with it, Alex?’ Pamela shoved her aside to reach inside the wardrobe and pull out the dress. ‘It’s your colour! If you’d taken the time to come over and see it you could have said then if you didn’t like it.’
Alex closed her eyes, determined to pull herself together. ‘It’s fine, Pamela.’
‘Fine! Well, thanks a bunch, Alex. I got you a dress that I thought you’d love. But no, all you can say is, it’s fine. You’ve got yourself a nice tan, found time to have a holiday, and now, on my wedding day, decide you don’t like the dress.’
Alex forced a smile. ‘I’m sorry. I do like it. It’s not the dress. I do like it.’
‘I saw your face.’
Alex wondered if now was the time to tell her sister what had happened. ‘I promise you it’s not the dress. I—’
Pamela’s eyes shone with resentment. ‘My day, Alex! Not yours! We’ve done your days. Mum constantly tells us how St Alex has saved yet another life.’
‘Pamela, please, it has nothing to do with the dress. I need to tell you something.’
Pamela shook her head, a false smile pinned on her face. ‘Not today, Alex. Today is about me, for once.’
The slam of the bedroom door left Alex alone in the room. With trembling hands, she reached into her handbag and pulled out the paper bag she had been carrying with her these last few days. Gathering the neck of the bag, she closed it over her mouth and nose and started to re-breathe in and out of it until her panic attack was over, and her heaving chest and beating heart had both slowed down.
A hysterical laugh burst from her throat as she wondered if there was any point in ever telling Pamela what happened. She didn’t think there was. Her sister would think she had made it up. Thirteen months ago, she had seen the scepticism in her sister’s eyes when she told her of the other situation, and that had been believable, was something many women had experienced. This recent experience, as Laura Best suggested, could have come right out of the movies.
Downstairs the relatives congregated, and her parents were in their room still getting ready. Patrick was in the garden keeping the younger guests amused with stories of ‘Animal Hospital’, no doubt, and here she was in her childhood bedroom with a paper bag to her mouth, falling apart.
Under crystal chandeliers, dimmed for the evening, the two hundred or so wedding guests gathered in the Assembly Rooms danced to music provided by a six-piece jazz band. A different band had played during the meal – a string quartet, setting the mood. No expense had been spared. At Bath Abbey the choir was outstanding, and when a soloist sang ‘Ave Maria’, Alex had felt at peace for the first time in ages. The flowers on the altar cascaded in mounds of cream, the air rich with their scent, and as Pamela glided up to the altar she looked every inch a fairytale princess. Here at the reception, matching flowers rose up like fountains before trailing over pale stone columns.
The canapés of scallops, tiger prawns, miniature fish cakes and parcelled salmon were served on banana leaves by an endless parade of immaculately dressed waiters and waitresses. The champagne flutes were refilled time and time again with the best vintage champagne, long before any speeches were made, and the hand-rolled cigars were delivered to every man to try.
It was a wedding to remember, to tell other friends about, and would no doubt make its way into the society column in the Telegraph on Monday morning.
Alex watched her sister without envy and truly hoped she would be happy with Hamish, that theirs was a match made in heaven. Judging by the gleam in her
sister’s eyes, and the flush of happiness on her face, she was having a taste of it now.
They had made their peace as Pamela stepped out of the Rolls-Royce – seeing Alex in the pink bridesmaid’s dress, tears had momentarily filled her brown eyes.
‘I’m sorry for being such a cow. I’m really glad you’re here.’
Alex had kissed her carefully through the veil, and felt better than she had all week.
Across the table, Patrick sat with an audience of small children hanging on his every word. He’d carried on minding the younger guests and was still finding exciting animal stories to amuse them. She stared at him fondly, her recent disappointment in him temporarily forgotten. He was a good man, a kind one; was it really so awful of him to not want to talk about it, be reminded of it all the time? If she’d heard the same story from Fiona, or perhaps Pamela, she imagined she would have a hard time believing it ever happened. He at least was willing to believe her. There was no evidence. There was no logic to it. She had survived a horrific ordeal virtually unscathed, but the police couldn’t take it seriously. And neither, she suspected, did Fiona. Not that she had said anything, it’s just she seemed to be avoiding her. They talked at work, but it was always about the patient. If last year hadn’t happened, Fiona probably would have believed her story, or at least accepted that she’d suffered something more serious than a knock to her head. But last year did happen, and Alex would always wonder if Fiona believed her even then, or thought Alex was in some way to blame?
Maybe there really was no point in dwelling on it. She was alive. Maybe the man who attacked her wasn’t a risk to anyone else. Perhaps he was an escaped patient from a psychiatric wing who had got out for one night and in his hours of freedom had targeted her. If this was the case, no one else was in any danger. It was a comforting thought and one that, as the champagne worked at dulling her normally analytical senses, she was willing to accept.