by Cari Hunter
Back downstairs, she found Nelson drying pots. Her mum handed her a fresh mug of tea, ushered her into a seat, and put a sandwich in front of her.
“Nelson said you missed your dinner.”
“Mm.” Suddenly ravenous, Sanne took a mouthful and spoke around it. “I was busy with an interview.”
“You need to eat, San. You’ve lost weight. Is Meg not taking care of you?”
“Meg takes care of me just fine.” She winked at her mum. One of her mum’s biggest regrets was Sanne’s and Meg’s refusal to do the decent thing and get married.
“Bring her for tea one night. It’s weeks since I saw her.”
Sanne toasted the idea with her mug and wrapped the rest of her sandwich in a napkin. “We should make a move.”
“I tried to answer Nelson’s questions,” her mum said, “but I really haven’t seen anything that might help, and your dad’s not left the house in two weeks.” She added a slice of cake to Sanne’s picnic and carried the rest into the pantry.
“What about Keeley?” Sanne asked Nelson.
He consulted his notes, biding his time to ensure her mum was out of earshot. “She said she hadn’t been into Rowlee for almost a month, because, and I quote, ‘that prick Nathan who works in the butcher’s keeps trying to cop a feel.’”
“Perfect,” Sanne said. “Thanks for trying, anyway.”
Outside, they found a light rain had started to fall, making the streets look even less inviting. They waited until a young man had ridden past on his bike, dodging potholes and broken glass, and then crossed the road. Music was blaring from the window of a nearby flat, but beneath the relentless bass an argument was clearly audible. Sanne hated coming back here, hated the claustrophobic feel of the streets: too many houses and too many unhappy people, crammed into too small a space. Of her colleagues, only Nelson and Eleanor knew she had grown up on Halshaw. She wouldn’t lie about it if someone asked her directly, but it wasn’t something she wanted to shout about. Meg had lived two streets over, and somehow they had both managed to avoid the trap of unemployment and reliance on government benefits that had ensnared their siblings. Not many people truly escaped from the estate—not unless you counted those who found a new home in a prison cell—and Sanne’s mum had been delighted the first time she had visited Sanne’s cottage.
Knowing that the DI rarely did things by chance, Sanne suspected Eleanor had assigned her that patch of Halshaw to ensure that no other members of EDSOP would happen upon her family.
“Okay, cheers for that,” Nelson said into his radio, and Sanne realised that an entire conversation had taken place over the comms without her hearing a word. He held out his list for her to consult. “We have Scafell Walk and Thirlmere Avenue still outstanding.”
She pulled a face and handed Nelson the piece of cake. The quizzical look he gave her made her laugh. “Eat it. Trust me, mate, if we’re going to Scafell we’ll need the sustenance.”
Three hours later, footsore and soaked to the skin, Sanne was attempting to question a lethargic nineteen-year-old with heroin-narrowed pupils, when the comms buzzed.
“Excuse us a minute,” she said. The lad tutted and folded his arms, as if the delay kept him from attending to something of vital importance.
She ignored his tapping feet as Eleanor’s voice greeted her and Nelson with a terse, “Where are you?”
“Halfway down Thirlmere Avenue. Is something wrong?”
“Nelson, you requested a background check on a Ned Moseley this morning?”
“That’s right,” he said. “Preliminary came back clean. I left Scotty chasing down the rest of it.”
“It was all clean,” Eleanor said, “but guess who’s come up as the general handyman and caretaker of Rowan Cottage?”
Sanne and Nelson reacted in unison. “Bloody hell.”
“My sentiment exactly. He lives on the outskirts of Rowlee, about three miles from Halshaw. George and Fred are on their way over, but the address is a terrace with a back alley, so we need someone to cover that in case he does a runner.”
“What about Tactical Aid?” Nelson asked. The TAU were far better equipped to apprehend potentially dangerous criminals than EDSOP were.
“They’re at an EDL rally in Sheffield. You’re on your own.”
“Well, we’ve both got our big-boy boots on,” Sanne said.
Nelson apologised to the lad and turned a blind eye to the answering gesture. He and Sanne hurried away from the house.
“Keep me up to speed, and be careful,” Eleanor told them.
Sanne signed off, breaking into a trot as she plotted the quickest route back to Nelson’s car.
“I’ll toss you for it!” Nelson had to shout to be heard above the thudding of their boots on the pavement.
“Tails,” Sanne shouted back.
Reaching his car, he flipped a coin and whooped when it landed heads-up. “Next time, San, I promise.” Grinning like a child, he got into the driver’s seat, stuck his blue light onto the roof, and activated the beacon as he pulled away from the kerb. “Oh, I’m getting chills. It’s been way too long since we did this.”
He skidded to a halt at the junction, set the siren wailing, and sped out onto the main road.
Chapter Thirteen
The drizzle had turned into a downpour. It bounced off the windscreen as Nelson extinguished his blues and turned onto Prospect Road.
“Name seems a bit cruel,” Sanne said, craning her neck to look at the street of scruffy terraced houses suggesting little in the way of good fortune.
“It was probably nicer when they built it.” Nelson eased the car into a gap between a Micra with a flat tyre and a knackered Fiat with a huge exhaust and a ludicrous body kit.
“Yeah, maybe.” Far from convinced, she raised her hand to acknowledge George.
Minutes later, they were crammed into Fred’s car, steaming up his windows while peering through the darkness at the middle house on the row. There was nothing to distinguish it from the others: a two-up, two-down, it opened directly onto the street, and its downstairs curtains were drawn as if to shut out the miserable weather.
“Lights have been going on and off, so someone’s in. The woman at the rental agency reckons he lives alone.” Fred had offered around a bag of humbugs and was picking caramel from his teeth as he spoke.
“Right, what’s the plan?” Nelson asked.
“At the moment, he’s nothing more than a ‘person of interest.’” Fred wrapped the phrase in air quotes. “We knock and invite him down to the office for tea and a chat. With a bit of luck, he’s all obliging, grabs his coat, and offers to provide the KitKats. You and Sanne just need to hang out round the back in case he decides to play hard to get.”
Sanne grinned, making her mint rattle against her teeth. “Who could possibly resist your charms, Fred?”
“My first, second, and third wives, love.” He gave a theatrical and slightly camp sigh. “Sometimes I wonder about switching to your team.”
In a flash, George had his door open. “I think that’s our cue to leave. Buzz us when you’re in position.”
At the entrance to the alley, Sanne flicked her torch on and panned it across the narrow passage. The houses on Prospect Road and those on the road running parallel had backyards instead of gardens: depressing concrete squares devoid of flowers or trees, some still dominated by air-raid shelters, and all surrounded by high brick walls. Hemmed in on both sides but unsecured at the entrances, the alley between them provided the perfect opportunity for illegal rubbish dumping.
Sanne negotiated a careful path through the heaps of debris. “Shame no one’s been bothered to gate the alley.”
“I might write an angry letter.” Nelson tripped over a rusted toy scooter before stopping on Sanne’s cue. “Is this us?”
“Yep, eighth house down.” She keyed her radio. “Ready when you are, Fred.”
“Roger that.”
A minute passed, then another. Standing to one side of the
yard gate, Sanne adjusted her weight from foot to foot while Nelson kicked two squashed cans and half a loaf of bread back toward a gnawed-open bin bag. In the next street, a car alarm blared. He swung around toward it and then shook his head at his own edginess.
Sanne put her torch beneath her chin and pulled a face, making him laugh. “Maybe Ned didn’t answer the door,” she said.
Nelson flicked a crust from the toe of his boot. “Maybe he invited them in for coffee, and they’ve forgotten all about us.”
“Knowing those two—”
“Bloody hell! Stop! Oh, arse!” Fred’s yell cut across the comms, swiftly followed by another. “Nelson, San! Incoming!”
That was all the warning they got before the gate slammed open and a dark shape barrelled into the alley. Ned Moseley led with his fists, hitting out repeatedly at Nelson and forcing him against the wall. With no time to consider the consequences, Sanne threw herself forward, trying to put herself between the two men, but Nelson was already slumping to the floor. Seeing his escape route almost clear, Ned punched her once—a sloppy hit that caught her shoulder—and set off at a run. She took half a step after him before hesitating and looking back at Nelson.
“I’m fine.” He waved her away, urging her to give chase. His nose was bleeding, and more blood dribbled down his chin as he coughed.
“Back in a minute.” She turned to cast her torchlight down the alley.
Hampered by the near-total darkness, Ned hadn’t got far. As he floundered over an upended sofa, she ran after him, skirting the torn bin bag and then sprinting down the centre of the alley, where less rubbish had collected.
“He’s heading west, west, west,” she shouted into the comms.
“Backup’s seven minutes out.” Fred’s voice, puffing for breath. He sounded as if he was running but already winded. “He slammed the front door on us. We’re coming round the side.”
“Shit,” she whispered, and swore again as she lost her footing and collided with a gate swinging from its hinges. She quickly righted herself and charged onward, spotting Ned on his hands and knees about fifty yards ahead.
“Police! Stay where you are! Oh, for fuck’s sake…” She’d put everything behind her command but wasn’t surprised when he ignored her. Although she was faster than him, he definitely had the advantage in build, and she doubted her torch would double as a cosh.
The orange glow of streetlights brought the end of the alley into focus. Ned ran across the dividing road beyond it and into another unlit passageway, this one overgrown with weeds. She heard a sudden shriek and saw him hopping over to the left side of the path. For the first time, she realised he was wearing only boxer shorts and trainers. His progress became a halting dance around clumps of nettles and brambles.
“Seriously?” she muttered, slowing to a jog and then a cautious walk. Fifty yards narrowed to ten, until she was close enough to hear his yelps every time something snagged him. “Cross the street at the west end of Prospect,” she said into her mike, struggling to keep the tremor from her voice. “We’re in the ginnel immediately after that, and I don’t think we’re going much further.”
An affirmative response and the wail of sirens reassured her somewhat—until Ned abruptly stopped and turned to face her. She held one hand up in an attempt to placate him, using the other to direct her torch at him.
Shielding his eyes, he took a step forward. “Officer Sanney?”
She stood her ground, angling the light to impede his vision. “Yeah, Ned. We met on the moors.”
He nodded, and his bottom lip began to quiver. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”
She instinctively moved closer. “Who didn’t you mean to hurt?”
He pointed back over her head. “That cop. I was just watching Emmerdale, and those blokes scared me. I wasn’t doing nowt wrong.”
In the corner of her eye, she saw blue and red flashes. “It’s okay, Ned. We just need to have a chat with you, that’s all. Shall we get out of these nettles?”
“I’m allergic to nettles.” He was staring past her, mesmerised by the strobes, and without being prompted, he held out his hands in surrender. Technically, they hadn’t come to arrest him, but that was before he assaulted a detective, so she snapped her cuffs around his wrists and recited his rights as they picked their way back to the street.
“Sorry I hit you,” he said. He tripped over his flopping shoelace, and she had to grab his arm to right him, keeping hold of it to steer him toward the closest police van. When he saw the officers charging over to meet them, he hid his face in his hands and started to cry.
“This our chap?” one of the officers asked. He kept glancing over Sanne’s shoulder, as if waiting for something more exciting to emerge from the shadows. His team was obviously geared up for a scrap, not for a compliant, blubbering perp wearing nothing but boxers and nettle rash.
“Aye.” Sanne handed him over and waited until the van pulled away. “Fuck me,” she whispered to herself. Her legs felt like jelly, and she had to keep her mouth shut to hold back a hysterical bubble of laughter. Still shaking her head in disbelief, she went to find Nelson.
*
Meg injected the morphine into Hilda Ratcliffe’s IV and watched as her eyes flickered before finally closing. Even in sleep, the patient continued to mumble, her words nonsensical and tangled. Meg took hold of her hand, nodding at Emily as she did so.
“You should be okay, now that she’s more settled. Soon as you’re done, we can get her up to Ortho.”
Emily opened a suture kit and picked up a syringe of local anaesthetic. “Right. Are you sure about this?” The back of her wrist bore vivid scratches where Hilda’s fingernails had raked across it. Her multiple attempts to insert the IV had not been appreciated, and Hilda’s screeches had brought Meg running to the cubicle.
“I’m sure. She’s pretty out of it.” Meg touched a hand to Hilda’s brittle hair. Blood matted a large area where she had hit her head, but it was the fractured hip that would probably prove fatal. For a ninety-one-year-old already in fragile health, a general anaesthetic would be high-risk and her recovery fraught with complications. She was unlikely to be able to fight off any kind of post-operative infection. Her nose twitched as Emily began to inject the lignocaine, but she remained asleep.
“Poor old sod,” Meg whispered. The woman was covered in bruises and scars from previous falls, and her skin tented where Meg pinched it, showing how dehydrated she was. “We’d put a bloody dog down if it ended up in this state.”
Emily stiffened slightly but didn’t contradict her. “Which home is she from?”
“Juniper Bank. It’s a proper shithole. Care Quality have threatened to shut it down twice, but somehow it keeps rising from the ashes. The manager couldn’t even be bothered to send an escort with her.” Meg encircled Hilda’s wrist with her index finger and thumb. The woman was so emaciated that Meg’s fingers easily met. Alzheimer’s had left Hilda utterly dependent on care home staff, and it was evident that they were failing her. “The paramedics are going to report the home again. They think she’d been on the floor for a few hours before anyone found her.”
“That’s awful. I could never put a member of my family in one of those places.”
In retrospect, Meg wasn’t sure if it was the pious tone of Emily’s voice or the bald naivety of the statement that made her hackles rise, but she replied without thinking.
“My mum’s in one of those places.”
The sharpness of the retort made Emily hesitate midway through tying off a suture. A flush crept up her neck, but she didn’t apologise; she just looked at Meg in curiosity.
“She is? Why?”
Meg had to give her credit for audacity. She might still be useless at cannulation, but she had apparently developed a backbone during the last few days of Meg’s unofficial tutelage.
“Early-onset dementia.” Meg shrugged off Emily’s sympathetic wince. “I couldn’t afford to give up work and look after her, my brother’s a
n idiot who can barely look after himself, and I’ve not seen my dad in years, so full-time care was the safest option. San helped me check out all the homes in the area, and we picked one with an excellent rating. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than the alternative.”
Emily placed a dressing over her neat row of sutures and started cleaning the blood from Hilda’s neck. “My dad’s been screwing his secretary for five years, and my mum pretends she doesn’t know.” She continued to scrub at the blood, her tone that of someone chatting about the weather.
Meg blew out a breath that rippled her fringe. She didn’t know what to say to that, which wasn’t a situation she often found herself in.
It was Emily who cracked first. A hint of a smile broke into a full grin. “With families this messed up, how did we turn out so normal?”
“Damned if I know.” Meg held up a hand in apology as her phone began to ring. Seeing Sanne’s name on the caller ID, she ignored the department’s rules and answered it. “Hey, you. What’s up?”
There was a short delay before Sanne spoke. When she did, Meg had to strain to hear her over the noise in the background.
“Hiya. You’re on a late today, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” Sanne’s sigh was cut short by the unmistakable sound of someone vomiting. “You couldn’t free up a cubicle for Nelson, could you?”
*
For the second time in less than a week, Meg met Sanne in the ambulance bay. On this occasion, however, Sanne pulled up in an unfamiliar car. She gave Meg a quick hug before going over to the ambulance she had been escorting, and as they waited for its doors to open, Meg took the opportunity to eyeball her. She was a little rumpled, and her coat-sleeve was torn, but she seemed hale enough.
“Dare I ask?” Meg said.