by Liz Lawler
Alex shrugged resignedly, a half smile on her face. ‘Give me a minute and I’ll be in. Damned hot in there.’
‘Well what d’you expect, wearing a frigging woolly jumper to a party? Can’t you take it off?’
Alex shook her head. ‘Only a bra. I’ll have cooled off in a minute, and then I’ll be ready to party.’
The door behind them banged open and Patrick, face flushed and eyes glazed, joined them. ‘Hey, you two, the party’s in here.’
Alex let out a weary sigh. ‘I’m just cooling down, Patrick. I’m overdressed, as you can see.’
His eyes appraised her. ‘Darling, surely you have something better to wear than that? You left that little satin jacket in my car. Do you want me to fetch it?’
‘Good idea, Pat,’ Fiona said, and Alex noted the disapproving look he gave her friend at the shortening of his name. Fiona was aware that Patrick had upset her, without knowing why.
‘It’s Patrick, Fiona. You know I like to be called Patrick.’
Fiona gave a saccharine smile. ‘I do indeed. Which is why I call you Pat.’
‘And you can be so nice when you want to be,’ he quipped back.
Alex sighed again and Patrick gazed at her. ‘Why all the sighs? Is it me? You clearly aren’t happy for me to be here, even though you invited me. I saw you arrive an hour ago and yet you didn’t seek me out. I clearly can’t get anything right at the moment.’
Alex felt a tightness in her chest. She felt trapped and wanted to scream out loud at the top of her voice for everyone to just leave her the hell alone. Instead she gave an honest answer. ‘Well, Patrick, at the moment I think it’s me who can’t get anything right. I can’t fabricate or invent a story to suit your version of events. Unless you have concrete proof that I’m not a nutter or a liar there really is nothing more for us to talk about. It’s as simple as that, or wouldn’t you agree?’
His eyes had taken on a cool glint. ‘You’re being hysterical, darling, and I really don’t think this is the time or the place.’
Alex shook her head in disgust. ‘It never is, Patrick. And that’s the problem.’
‘Perhaps if you drank less, you’d see there needn’t be a problem.’
Her eyes rested on Fiona. ‘I’ll see you at the bar. I need another five minutes to cool down.’
And with that she turned and walked away.
*
Alex drained her third vodka, wishing she’d worn something lighter, as sweat gathered in the small of her back. Lately she had taken to wearing clothing that hid her shape. She didn’t bother to do her hair and used make-up only to disguise her pallor and dark circled eyes. She didn’t want to look feminine or sexy any more. She wanted to be invisible.
She caught sight of Nathan Bell at the bar and was surprised. She hadn’t seen him at one of these events before. She’d never wondered why, but if she had she would have said he was too introverted to attend. Socially shy. She didn’t know anything about his private life except that his mother had recently ‘been taken in again’. She didn’t know where she had been taken, as Nathan hadn’t expanded on his explanation, so she could only assume he meant a hospital. It was by chance that she heard him talking on the telephone, saying to the caller, ‘Give her my best, and tell her I’ll visit on Tuesday.’ When he saw Alex he simply said, ‘It’s my mother, she’s been taken in again.’
Making her way towards him, she gave Patrick a brief glance. He was on the dance floor with Fiona and several other nurses from the department, wearing a gold tinsel garland round his neck and having a whale of a time, judging by his uninhibited dance moves. Caroline looked awkward as she danced more conservatively with a few of the healthcare assistants and orderlies. She’d given Alex a little wave from across the room, but they hadn’t spoken. Edward Downing, the radiologist, was gathered in a corner with a fair number of staff from the radiology department, looking separate from the rest of the partygoers, and she wondered if he was having a goodbye party all of his own. Tom Collins and Maggie Fielding, both elegant and tall, were chatting together. She caught their eyes and nodded briefly. She turned her back and spoke to Nathan.
‘Hello, Nathan. Don’t see you at these dos often.’
He gave a self-conscious shrug. ‘Thought I should get out a bit more. Actually, it was Fiona; she said a few of the department were going. So . . . here I am.’
With only the right side of his face showing, Alex noticed he had a beautifully shaped face, with strong flat cheekbones and a long jaw. His lips were pale and not too full.
‘How are you?’ he asked unexpectedly.
‘Fine,’ she answered gaily. ‘Spiffing.’
‘Really? I would have thought things were still difficult for you.’
‘Why would you suppose that?’
‘The um . . . attack a month ago and, um, the situation at work. I’m sorry . . . it’s not my idea to shadow you. Dr Cowan suggests we work the same shifts for a few weeks. I hope you don’t mind?’
Despite the constant presence of Nathan, things at work had been going well the last few days. If anything, two doctors attending one patient at the same time had shortened the waiting time for the other patients. Caroline had used this as the reason for Alex being shadowed. She explained to other staff members that it was a time-and-motion study, and they seemed to accept it, which Alex knew she should be grateful for. If there were gossipy whispers, she wasn’t hearing them.
She realised how very lucky she had been over the George Bartlett situation. Any other employer would have demanded a full enquiry over the drug error, but Caroline was giving her a reprieve. She reached over for Nathan’s glass and drank a third of his beer. ‘Sorry,’ she said, not meaning it. She should be grateful to Caroline that she was not pressing for a formal disciplinary process. She should, of course, be grateful that her whole life had been fucked up.
He shrugged, dismissing the matter as minor, and signalled to one of the bar staff. ‘Let me buy you one.’
Minutes later, with fresh drinks on the bar and his change back in his pocket, Alex answered him as if there had been no break in the conversation.
‘Haven’t you heard? I’m a fantasist.’
‘Really?’
She gulped her drink. ‘Well, it at least lets me call the shots. Brain damaged or nutter doesn’t quite cut it. Fantasist. Well, it sounds rather exotic. Alex, the great fantasist.’
She was getting drunk and didn’t care if she sounded reckless.
‘Would you like to talk about it?’
‘No, thank you. I’d rather we had another drink and talked about you for a change, Mr Bell. I want to know why some nice lady isn’t with you tonight.’
‘I could ask the same about you.’
‘Oh, I’m with someone. The good-looking dark-haired man over in that far corner, who thinks I’m a drunk and unable to separate truth from fiction.’
Nathan Bell looked embarrassed. ‘I’m sure he doesn’t think that.’
‘Stop trying to make me feel better, Nathan. It’s over. He doesn’t fucking believe me! So it’s over.’
He winced, and as much as she would like to blame the effects of alcohol for her uncouthness, she couldn’t. She had wanted to shock the poor man, but in doing so she had shocked herself. She never spoke this way. Never stepped beyond the boundaries of decent behaviour. She had disgraced herself, and, now embarrassed, she tried to quickly sober up.
‘I’m sorry. I’ve got to go.’
‘Go? Oh no you don’t,’ shrieked Fiona from behind. ‘We haven’t even had a dance. What’s the bloody rush? You’ve got the lovely Dr Bell here and I’m sure he’d like to have a dance. Wouldn’t you, Dr Bell?’
Nathan held up his hands, palms forward defensively, ‘No, but thank you anyway. I’m absolutely fine standing here. I was, in fact, thinking I’d make a move myself shortly.’
Fiona stepped back, planting both feet apart. She screwed up her face, squinting at Nathan curiously, and then in near-
perfect mimicry, she repeated back his words: ‘I’m absolutely fine standing here. I was, in fact, thinking I’d make a move myself shortly.’
Nathan looked startled and smiled gamely, slowly clapping his hands. ‘Wow! That’s some party trick.’
Fiona gave a come-hither smile, her body becoming fluid as she slinked to the bar, squeezing in between Nathan and Alex, but with her attention solely on Alex. ‘Darling, surely you have something better to wear than that?’
The bar lady, having heard Fiona speak, gawped; her voice was full of admiration. ‘You’re amazing! Can you do any one famous?’
Other people at the bar had stopped talking to listen, and Fiona smiled at her waiting audience. Her eyes trapped Alex. She winked and glanced over Alex’s shoulder to where Patrick had suddenly appeared. Alex’s voice came out of her mouth, ‘Stop trying to make me feel better, Nathan. It’s over. He doesn’t fucking believe me. So it’s over.’
Alex felt as if she’d been slapped. She was shocked by how much Fiona sounded like her, and shocked that her closest friend had been cruel.
‘I’ve got to go,’ she mumbled.
As she stumbled through the car park, her face scorched with embarrassment, she was unaware that Nathan was following her.
She came to a halt as she saw her green Mini. Parked earlier with safety in mind, near to the building and lit by the outside lights, the message painted on the windscreen was easy to see.
In yellow spray paint across the entire width of the glass she saw the words: Alex likes to say yes.
*
At the police station, after a brief chat with the officer at the front desk, they were separated. Nathan was shown into an interview room adjacent to the reception area, while another officer pressed numbers on a keypad and escorted her upstairs to DI Turner’s office. After being left alone for more than forty minutes, the layout of the room and its contents was imprinted on her brain.
Pale lilac paint on all four walls and an air force blue carpet on the floor. White vertical blinds closed over the only window, shutting out the night and making the room claustrophobic. She was sitting on the visitor’s side of the desk, in a chair identical to the one across from her. The Bath Chronicle, the Guardian and the Daily Mail were spread on the desk in various stages of being read. A plastic Tupperware box had its lid off, and a half-eaten chicken and lettuce brown roll looked still fresh. On the radiator beneath the windowsill a battered can of Coke was balanced.
She heard a noise in the corridor, and DI Turner appeared in the doorway carrying a tray with two mugs and a sugar bowl.
‘Coffee,’ he said by way of greeting, then nodding at a mobile phone on the tray beside the coffees he added, ‘Quick thinking by your friend.’
Nathan had snapped several photographs of her car while she had stared at it aghast.
‘Sorry about the wait. I sent some officers up to the hospital to hopefully get some CCTV footage from the social club. They shouldn’t be too long.’
Alex breathed a sigh of relief. Any time now she would know who had done this to her. And so would everyone else.
‘Is he your boyfriend?’ Greg Turner asked.
Alex shook her head. ‘No. He’s a colleague. A friend.’
‘And you went to the party with him?’
‘No. I was with my boyfriend and another friend, Fiona Woods. Nathan was at the party and he followed me when I . . . Well, I embarrassed myself by getting drunk and Nathan followed me when I rushed out of the club. He was with me when I got to my car.’
‘Not planning on driving, were you?’ Greg Turner asked with a note of disapproval.
Again she shook her head. ‘I just wanted to be alone for a while. I couldn’t have driven it anyway. My keys are still in my bag and my bag is back at the party.’
‘And your boyfriend?’
‘Probably still there. Probably hasn’t even noticed I’ve gone.’
She flushed as she heard the self-pity in her voice, and quickly changed the subject. ‘How are Amy Abbott’s parents?’
He gave a small shrug. ‘Devastated. Unable to come to terms with what has happened.’
‘And the boyfriend? Have you found him yet?’
He looked down at his desk and rubbed a restless finger along the bridge of his nose. ‘We don’t know that she had a boyfriend, only that she was pregnant.’
‘You haven’t been able to find out anything, have you?’ she persisted.
‘Dr Taylor, I really cannot discuss the case with you.’
‘Nor look at me when you say that?’
He raised his head immediately and she saw he was more than capable of keeping eye contact. She felt foolish. He had honed the skill on criminals, who no doubt tried to avoid this very situation.
‘Do her parents believe she did this to herself?’ she asked. ‘Do they think their daughter died because of what she did to herself?’
He stayed silent, but she knew the answer.
‘Of course they don’t,’ she quietly stated. ‘It’s unthinkable and hideous that any young woman would do this to herself. And where was she all the time she was missing?’
His lips moved into the semblance of a polite smile. ‘We don’t know yet. We’re still checking. She had lots of friends. As you know she was found on a street. The last sighting we have—’
‘Is in Kingsmead Square,’ she finished lamely. ‘I know. I read it in the paper.’
‘Look, Dr Taylor, as far as we’re concerned this is not a murder investigation. At the very worst it’s suicide, but more likely it’s a tragic accident. You really must not think this has anything to do with you. Unless of course you know something different to us?’
Her head was throbbing from too much alcohol and the beat of the too-loud music she had left behind.
‘You weren’t there when she died. She was telling me something. I know she was telling me something. It was in her eyes . . . She—’
A knock on the door interrupted them. With surprise Alex saw Laura Best enter the room. The woman smiled at her with far more friendliness than Alex recalled. Maybe it was the fact that Alex was now wearing her own clothes and not lying on an examination table that made the female officer regard her as a person rather than as a victim to be questioned. Or maybe she was showing her sunny side for the benefit of Greg Turner?
‘Can I help you?’ he asked.
‘CCTV footage,’ she said, holding up a black video case.
‘Christ, that was quick – what did you do, fly there?’
Laura Best smiled. ‘I was close by, and it was easy enough to pick up. Dr Taylor has had enough to deal with as it is. I’m sure she’s eager to see her attacker.’
The stress on the word ‘attacker’ was subtle, but Alex was sensitive enough to realise it had been a dig.
DI Turner gave the woman a nod and indicated that she should put on the video. From the look and slightly dismissive shrug she gave her boss it was clear Laura Best had already seen the footage and that there was not a lot on the footage. Alex’s heart sank, and stayed that way as she watched the action take place on her car.
The vandal wore a dark bulky top with a hood that obscured his head and face entirely, and baggy trousers and gloves that hid the shape of his limbs and skin colour. There was no way of telling who it was.
‘I think it’s a joke.’
Alex’s eyes shot open. ‘Pardon?’
She wanted to get up and slap Laura Best’s face.
Laura Best glanced at Greg Turner, encouraging him to concur with her opinion. ‘A joke.’
‘A bit of a sick joke,’ Greg Turner replied.
‘Well, yes, of course, but a joke all the same. Or prank, if you prefer.
Alex felt sick as the implication of what she was hearing sank in. ‘You think someone did this because they know I said yes to him?’
Neither of them answered her.
‘You think someone did this because they think I’m an easy lay?’
Greg T
urner shook his head firmly. ‘Unless you’ve discussed the intimate details of your case, no one else should know. Do you think it’s possible that you may have told someone, who would then do this to your car?’
She shook her head firmly.
‘Well, I can only suggest that DC Best could be right about it being a sick joke. Possibly carried out by someone who heard about your experience and is now being cruel by turning it into a sideshow.’
Alex struggled to her feet. ‘I’m tired. I want to go home now.’
‘Drink your coffee first. We’ll talk a little more and then I’ll drive you home,’ he offered.
Alex was already walking to the door. ‘I don’t think so. I’m just a joke. Isn’t that right, DI Turner? Well, don’t forget to have a good laugh at my expense.’
‘Dr Taylor, you might want this?’
Alex turned and saw Laura Best holding out her black shoulder bag. Surprised, she went back across the room to take it.
‘The bar lady said you left it behind. Thought you might want it.’
Alex mumbled a thank you.
Silence followed her as she made her way across the foyer to the exit. Nathan was nowhere to be seen. Silence accompanied her out into the darkness, but she could hear her attacker’s voice taunting her beneath his surgical mask. ‘What does “no” mean? It’s a simple question.’
Chapter fifteen
It was six weeks since that horrific night and one week since the doctors’ party. Any hope of thinking he no longer was a danger had fled her mind as soon as she’d seen her car. She was terrified that he was still out there and there was nothing she could do to prove it. As far as the police were concerned the message on her car was a prank. She was the butt of someone’s cruel joke.