I left his office wondering if my boss wasn’t in need of some heart medication himself.
78
If they’d had a dog, he would have had some warning that the paper had been delivered but they couldn’t have a dog because Connie was allergic to most pet hair. So instead, the first he knew was when he saw Connie walking down the hallway from the kitchen. He was standing in the doorway of the living room about to get himself a coffee when he saw her. Sauntering. Towards the Nottingham Today. Which lay like a bright hot burning beacon of his guilt on the mat. Screaming out the horror he was inflicting in the name of justice for their daughter. Justice she would never understand. It was this guilt and this knowledge that she wouldn’t understand and that she would be put through so much more pain that made him rush past her.
Isaac was panicked. Blinded by fear, his vision tunnelled and dark. The brightness of the Today searing into his brain and leaving no room for conscious thought, nothing but getting hold of it and saving her from its cruelty. Because the Today was cruel. Its portrayal so far had been cruel and unfair. It had been incorrect and it had been nonfactual.
Connie was the love of his life. He had chosen to spend his living breathing life with her and they had produced a miracle together. How could anyone ever think he could hurt her? And yet here she was, on the floor, leaning against the hallway wall with her hand on her head, asking him what an earth he was doing. There was blood on her hand when she pulled it away from her head. She looked at it before she spoke to him again.
‘I was fetching you the paper with your coffee, Isaac.’
79
His head screamed like a flock of angry birds in the air, fighting over the smallest of food scraps. How could this have happened? He looked down at his fragile and shaken wife, now pale with shock. He crouched down to her, trying to hold back the noise in his head and held out his hand to her.
‘Connie, let me help you.’
A look of confusion crossed her face. She dropped her hand from her head then looked away from him and put her hand back up to the small wound that was bleeding like a bloody great gash had opened up across her skull.
Isaac didn’t know what was happening. How had he got to the place where he had injured his wife, when all he had been doing was trying to protect her?
Eventually she was settled with a strong stewed tea on the sofa in the living room. She insisted she didn’t need to see a doctor, that she knew what signs to look out for if she had a head injury but that he was overreacting and there was nothing wrong with her. She wasn’t feeling sick, or dizzy, she only a slight headache and would keep an eye on it. It was, Connie explained to him in a tone she reserved for talking to a young child, a small bump, and nothing serious. Bumps and bruises happen as part of life. It was the look on her face that made him ache though. She was scolding him for his fussing when she should really have been yelling at him for his behaviour in making her fall to the floor in the way she did. If it wasn’t for him rushing at her that way she wouldn’t be on the floor and she wouldn’t be looking out for the signs of a head injury or scolding him for fretting over her. He would never stop fretting over her.
She was all he had left of Em.
She shooed him away and he was torn between wanting to stay and worry over her more and get back to what he had been rushing towards, the Nottingham Today. Isaac turned back and had one last look at her before he left the room and was stung by the look she was giving him. Her eyes were narrowed in on him while her fingers gently tapped on the cup of tea she was holding. He kept walking.
He picked up the Nottingham Today from where it still lay on the doormat and took it into the kitchen, sneaking a look at Connie who was drinking her tea and staring out of the window.
Again, it had made the front page. Little else made front-page coverage lately. It was dominating the local news. It was also starting to gain national coverage but all he was interested in was what was happening on a local level. This was the place that had let them down and this was the place that would carry on paying … until those who played fast and loose with the lives of those who trusted in them made their drugs safer, and the community more aware.
Killer Strikes Again
A 24-year-old man was found collapsed in the street and pronounced dead at the scene, with no obvious signs of injury. An incident that mirrors that of jogger, Angela Evans of Toton.
Damerae Rabasca was with his girlfriend at the time of his death. She is eight months pregnant with his child and does not want to be named. She describes his death as violent and sudden.
Mr Rabasca is the fourth victim of the killer who is using poison to murder his victims.
In a recent development, Nottinghamshire Police have released a new media appeal asking for any witnesses who may know who the offender is and are offering a reward for any information that leads to his arrest.
Detective Inspector Hannah Robbins from East Midland’s Special Operations Unit – Major Crime, based in Nottingham said, ‘At the moment, we don’t have much detail on where Mr Rabasca could have obtained the products he ingested, or where he has been the last few days, it is possible that someone could help us with those enquiries and help us build a larger picture of his last moments and in the process, narrow down where the poison could be filtered into the public domain.
‘If anybody has any information that they believe could help our enquiries then please contact police.’
They are also advising caution when buying, using, cooking and eating foodstuffs, telling the public to check all seals and labels, lids and tops to make sure they are secure, but warning against panic. You can contact the tip-line number printed below.
He slammed the newspaper down on the table and looked up at the door. The space there was empty. He was glad Connie wasn’t standing there. How could he explain his anger? His fury. His utter contempt for multiple organisations that were letting people down and letting people die. How could they stand by and watch this unfold and simply do nothing when they all had it in their power to do more? To stop it. All it needed was an admission of guilt and their culpability would come to an end.
Right now, however, he was failing. He was obviously not working on his plan hard enough. He was failing Em and it could be argued that he was now failing her more than they ever did. Unless he could get things back on track, he had been nothing but a failure for his daughter.
80
Bridgette York loved her new sandals. They had wide pink flowers on the bar that ran across her foot and in the centre of them were the cutest white buttons with smiley faces on. As she walked, she watched her feet. She watched the flowers. To make sure they were still smiling. She’d only got them yesterday so they had that lovely smell about them as well, but without bending down close to them she couldn’t smell it and she had hold of her mum’s hand right now. It did mean she could walk and keep looking at her flowers without bumping into things. Well, not too many things anyway. Occasionally she heard her mum tut as she hit her side on a shelf as they rounded the corner in the shop. Her mum was trying to do some shopping but she was also trying to stop Bridgette from walking into anything and Bridgette knew that the tuts she heard were not aimed at her, how could they be, she was protected by smiley-faced sandals. Her mum was tutting at herself because she had been unable to stop Bridgette from bumping herself again. Never mind. Bridgette grinned down at her beautiful, sunny, smiley sandals.
She felt her arm twitch as she was manoeuvred around the end of another line of shelves but she didn’t look up, she knew her mum was keeping her on the right track. And then Bridgette bumped right into her mum. Right into the back of her legs. With no warning. When she’d stopped to choose shopping from the shelves Bridgette had been guided to a stop in front of the shelf but this time her mum stopped abruptly in the centre of the aisle and Bridgette had walked into her.
‘Stay behind me, Bridgette.’
She looked up from her sandals.
She couldn’t see
anything because her mum’s legs were in the way so she shifted a little to the side and looked in the same direction as her mum.
‘Bridgette, I said stay behind me.’ She was pushed back behind her mum’s legs. Mum had never been that rough before. Bridgette twisted her neck so she could look around instead.
In front of them was a group of people. She could only count to ten and Bridgette thought there were less than that but the people were moving about, shouting, so she didn’t know if she was counting right or not. They were angry and there was a woman in the shop uniform who was trying to talk but they weren’t letting her, they were shouting at her so loudly.
Her mum stepped backwards one step and nearly stood on her sandals. Her hand went tighter around hers and Bridgette started to feel a bit strange. She didn’t know what was happening or why her mum was acting weird. She looked down at the smiley flowers again.
There was a crashing sound and the voices grew louder. Suddenly her mum let go of the shopping trolley and Bridgette was snatched up from the floor and they were running back the way they had just come. Past the fridges and freezers which made Bridgette cold. Little bumps grew on her arms and they grew on her legs because she had a dress on. She was cold even though it was warm outside. The sun was shining and her flower sandals could look up to the sun and smile.
She watched over her mum’s shoulder as the shop whizzed past, cold and blurry, her mum’s handbag bouncing against her bare legs as her mum ran towards the doors. She could still hear the shouting, she could see people running towards the voices as her mum was running away from them.
‘We’ll be in the car in a few seconds, sweetheart.’
It was the last thing Bridgette York heard her mum say.
She never saw the car barrelling through the store’s sheer glass window and barely had time to register the sound of shattering glass and screaming, panicking people – before her world went silent and there were no more flowers smiling for Bridgette York.
81
It was carnage. There was no other word suitable for what was in front of us. The car had been moved from where it had mown down mother and child, because the fire service had needed to get to the mother to save her. She hadn’t died. Her young child wasn’t as capable of taking the impact.
The mother’s injuries were severe and life threatening. Her status, as defined by the hospital, was currently critical, but her daughter hadn’t made it that far. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Her mother had been rushed away, unaware of what she was leaving behind in her unconscious state. The doctors and nursing staff had a difficult job ahead of them, not just with Trisha York’s physical needs but with the emotional needs that she would present when she woke from her surgeries.
The Honda Civic had been pulled out of the store window and now stood quietly in a disabled space near the doors.
Shattered glass lay in fragments along the shop floor. Sharp and bloody. A tiny pink sandal sparkling with shards caught up in the leather straps, discarded during the havoc. The early evening sun innocently reflecting rainbows.
The child, four-year-old Bridgette York, still lay in situ amongst the twinkling pieces of glass.
Damaged.
Not pretty or sparkling.
Her face; smashed and bloody.
Her legs bent out of shape.
Bone protruded from her arm, splintered and torn.
Blood congealed in her hair. Matted to her head.
We worked quietly and we worked quickly. To get Bridgette York out of here as soon as we could.
This was the work of our poison killer. This time, he hadn’t used poison, but his reach was even more deadly than before – because this time he had managed to put the fear of God into others to now do his bidding.
82
Nottingham Today – online article
Four-Year-Old Girl Killed By Car In Supermarket
A four-year-old child was killed and her mother was seriously injured when a Honda Civic ploughed through the window of Tesco supermarket on Carlton Hill.
Trisha York and her daughter Bridgette were in the store when a disturbance flared up in one of the aisles. One witness states that on seeing the fracas, Trisha picked up her daughter, dropped her shopping and headed for the exit. As the argument in the store became more violent, Trisha was seen by several people to start running with Bridgette in her arms.
One witness said, ‘She looked horrified at what she saw, she grabbed that little girl off the ground so quick. I could see what she wanted to do, she wanted to get out of there. Protect that little one.’
Staff at the local Tesco store in Carlton Hill say people were running in all directions, both away from and towards the main area of the chaos.
Shelf stacker Glen Moore said, ‘It was scary. It started with one woman asking how she would know which items were safe to eat and soon everyone was getting involved and people got frightened and then angry and it blew up.’
It is reported that as Trisha and Bridgette York were about to reach the exit of the Tesco store, a car was driven into the large shop window, hitting the mother and child head on.
Shop assistant Liz Butler said, ‘This guy ran out of the store, he was furious, I’d seen him in the middle of the row over which items were safe to eat, then the next time I saw him he was stumbling out of the car that had smashed through the window. He looked shocked when he saw that little girl and her mum. I don’t think he was aiming to hurt anyone. He was angry at the food situation.’
Bridgette was announced dead at the scene and Trisha is in a critical but stable condition after fire crews cut her out from under the wreckage of the car. We have been informed that she is currently unaware of the death of her daughter but family are at the hospital with her.
Trisha York is married to husband Ian and they have a son, Edward. Extended family are supporting them at this time.
The supermarket has issued a brief statement saying they are extremely saddened and sorry for the loss of Bridgette’s life and the injury to Trisha York yesterday and regret that it occurred at their store, offering their deepest condolences to the York family.
In relation to the fact that customers are concerned about products available in stores, the supermarket state that their products are all safe but to take precautions they are no longer selling off discounted goods, to prevent any tampering.
The driver fled from the scene on foot and was later arrested at his home address by police. David Burnett is still in police custody.
83
The heat of the day slid away, leaving the night with a sharp chill. Outside, the car park was close to empty, with only a single marked police car and four staff vehicles standing in the car park. The car that had come through the window had been taken away on the back of a low-loader by the police.
In the far right corner, over the meat counter, a bulb flickered continually. No one cared enough to notice, let alone change it.
Liam Scott was the store manager and he had never known a day like it.
He was considering resigning. His mum had always wanted more for him. She wanted him to attend college or university but he had insisted on leaving school as soon as he could and had taken the first job that he’d been offered. In his defence, he had been able to progress through the company and work up to the position of manager, but he would never have imagined that managing a store would leave him in a store at night, virtually alone, after a child had been murdered while he had been on duty.
He used to think the idea of being so close to a real life crime scene was thrilling but he now knew otherwise. There was nothing thrilling about seeing a young child dead in your store.
Bridgette’s mum had wailed like a broken animal when the car hit. Unable to move her legs, pinned beneath one of the wheels, her screams pierced the air around her, with the only word escaping being the name of her daughter. But Bridgette was silent. Bridgette couldn’t hear her mum’s screams and eventually the screams had slipped away as unconsci
ousness took her.
All those customers that had taken their phones out, minutes after they had apparently got over their shock, sickened Liam. There was no social value in death. In murder. In this whole craziness that was overtaking the city. His mum was right. He should have applied himself more. Dreamed higher. Now was the time to do that. This was the push he needed. When he finished up here he was going to do something about his situation.
He handed steaming mugs of coffee to the two cops guarding the scene at the front of the store, then stepped away. He was anxious around the uniforms but there was only him and three other staff left in store, and it was creepy being here when it was so quiet, so he stayed close to them.
He could apply for jobs in the city, in offices where nothing happened. He could study online and progress things from there. He had the brains. This wasn’t what he wanted.
Tim from the bakery walked towards him. A huge grin on his face.
‘So, what’re the odds our store would be affected by all this then, Liam?’
He sighed. Everyone loved a drama. ‘I don’t know, Tim. Extreme, I imagine.’ He straightened the boxes of cereals on the shelves in front of him.
‘Oh you bet they were, but look at us now.’ Liam didn’t think it possible but Tim’s face split into a wider grin.
‘Right in the thick of it aren’t we?’ Tim’s hands were firmly in his pockets, no inclination to do any work.
‘I suppose we are.’
‘Something to go home and talk about tomorrow, eh?’
‘I’ll be sleeping tomorrow, Tim.’
‘Oh, yeah, course. But, after that.’
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