by Jane Casey
‘Can you unlock your phone?’ He did as I asked and handed it to me, his hands shaking. ‘Get him some help, for God’s sake,’ I said to Derwent. ‘He needs his inhaler and probably an ambulance.’
‘I’ll be OK,’ Turner croaked, but his lips were turning blue.
Derwent half-dragged, half-carried him down the street to his house. I knew he wouldn’t leave him until he was safe. I flicked to the recent calls on Turner’s phone and found Chloe’s number. I sent the contact information to my own phone but used Turner’s mobile to return the call, hoping she’d pick up.
Praying.
And she answered. Instead of hello, I heard the wind whistling across the phone, and a sound that might have been a sob.
‘Bethany?’
A long, nerve-shredding pause. Then: ‘What – who is this?’
‘DS Maeve Kerrigan. Bethany, where are you?’
‘Where’s William? Why are you ringing on his phone?’
‘He gave it to me.’
‘Gave it to you?’ A sniff. ‘Why?’
‘To talk to you.’
‘I want to talk to him.’
‘He can’t talk to anyone at the moment. He’s gone home to get his inhaler. His breathing wasn’t good.’
Silence. I listened intently, hearing the swish of cars. So she was near a road. That narrowed it down. Fine detective work, DS Kerrigan.
‘I don’t believe you.’ Her voice was absolutely toneless.
‘It’s true. I’ve never lied to you, Bethany.’
Another silence as she considered it. ‘Is he going to be OK?’
‘One of my colleagues is with him. He’s calling an ambulance for William. What about you, Bethany? Are you OK?’
A sob. ‘N-no.’
‘Where are you? You’re not at home, are you?’
‘No.’
‘Where, then?’ In the background I heard something that chilled me: a two-note, mournful train whistle. ‘Bethany?’
It came again and this time I heard it too, carried on the breeze rather than by mobile phone signal. She had to be somewhere close to me, near the railway line.
And she’d called Turner to say goodbye.
Shit.
‘Bethany, have you spoken to your mum?’
She was crying properly now. The sound from the phone was muffled.
‘Where are you, Bethany? Please tell me. I’ll come and find you.’
‘No!’
‘I’ll tell you about Chloe. I’ll tell you what happened to her.’
‘You don’t know.’ It was a long wail.
‘I know more than I did yesterday. I know how she died.’ I closed my eyes for a second. ‘I know it wasn’t your fault. You were trying to help her, weren’t you?’
‘That’s all I wanted.’
‘You didn’t know what was going to happen. You couldn’t have known. You mustn’t blame yourself. It’s no reason to harm yourself.’
She laughed, a horrible, ragged sound that set my teeth on edge. ‘That’s not why – you have no idea.’
‘Tell me, then.’
An ambulance swung into the street, the siren going, the lights blinking blue. I ran down the road to flag them down, pointing them towards Turner’s house.
‘What’s that?’
‘An ambulance.’
‘For William?’
‘Yes.’ The two green-clad paramedics climbed out, shouldering their equipment, and hurried up the path to his front door. ‘He was really worried about you, Bethany. I want to be able to reassure him. Can you tell me where you are?’
‘No.’ Her voice sounded distant. I was losing her, I could feel it. My shirt was sticking to me between my shoulder blades and under my arms.
‘Keep talking to me, please, Bethany. There’s nothing so bad that it’s worth killing yourself for.’
‘You have no idea. I shouldn’t even be here.’ She laughed again. ‘You don’t know what I am.’
‘I know you’re a clever girl. Too clever to think killing yourself will fix anything.’
Derwent appeared in the doorway of Turner’s house, saw me and hurried over. He held up his car key and I nodded, following him to his car.
‘It’s too late to fix anything. But at least I won’t feel anything any more. I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.’ She laughed. ‘That’s how it’s supposed to work.’
‘It gets better, Bethany. Whatever it is that’s making you feel this way, you’ll feel better about it in time. You’ll put it behind you.’
‘No.’
I was leaning across to see the road atlas Derwent liked to have in his car: he was old school, no faith in satnavs, no interest in relying on his mobile phone. I pointed at the black line that ran through it, representing the train tracks.
‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’
‘I wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘All right. Tell me about Chloe.’ I spoke louder to cover the sound of the engine starting. ‘Why did you run away with her?’
‘I thought it would keep her safe.’
Derwent put his hand out to flick on the siren and lights and I grabbed it, shaking my head. I couldn’t take the risk of spooking her.
‘Safe from what?’ The car swung round a corner and I grabbed on to the dashboard, bracing myself. ‘Who was she scared of?’
‘I can’t tell you. I don’t know.’ She sounded distracted again as another train hooted in the background and suddenly I remembered something I’d heard on the radio about engineering work overrunning, causing travel chaos on the line into Waterloo. Engineering work meant the trains that did run would be extra-slow, extra-cautious, and extra-noisy. The drivers had to blow the horn to warn the men to clear the track.
‘Go to the train station,’ I said to Derwent, covering the phone.
‘Is that where she is?’
‘No.’ That was all I had time to say before I had to speak to Bethany again. ‘So she told you she had to go and you ran away from home with her, without asking any questions?’
‘You don’t have to believe me.’
‘I don’t believe you were following Chloe’s plan, because I don’t think Chloe was capable of coming up with one.’ I waited and heard nothing. ‘Or am I wrong about her? Was everyone wrong about her?’
‘She was cleverer than she let on.’ Another sniff. ‘But it wasn’t her idea. It was mine.’
It was the first thing Bethany had given me, the first indication that she could answer my questions. Progress, if she hadn’t been planning to kill herself.
‘What was your idea?’
‘To hide. To wait.’
‘For what?’
‘For it to be over.’ Her voice was fainter; I had to strain to hear her.
‘For what to be over?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
We turned onto the main road and a river of red brake lights stretching into the middle distance: London traffic at its least helpful. I could see the train station and I popped open the door of the car before Derwent had actually stopped. There was a risk in asking any more questions, I knew, but it was a risk I had to take. I was running down the road towards the station, trying to keep my voice level.
‘Bethany, I understand you might not like me asking the question, and I know it might be hard to answer, but do you know who killed Chloe?’
A van driver was inching forward, impatient even though the traffic was clearly going nowhere. As I ran by, he nudged the bumper of a car that was pushing in from a side street. The car’s driver leaned out of his window, instantly incensed, and yelled something that for sheer offence took my breath away. The van driver shouted back.
‘What was that?’ Bethany sounded terrified.
‘Nothing.’
‘Is it to do with William? Is he OK?’
‘He’s fine. I’m not near him any more. It’s nothing to do with him.’
There was a tiny silence. ‘If you’re not near him, wher
e are you?’
‘Bethany, I just want to make sure you’re all right.’
Silence.
‘Bethany?’
I was talking to dead air.
26
I got to the front of the queue to speak to the yellow-jacketed man from Network Rail by shoving and holding my warrant card up, making no friends.
‘Where are the engineering works still going on? Show me.’ I stuck my phone under his nose with the map on the screen.
‘They’re on the up line towards central London. That’s why this station is closed and there’s a rail replacement bus service in operation.’ He’d raised his voice for the last bit; I did not appreciate him multi-tasking by addressing the queue of frustrated commuters.
‘Show me exactly.’
He gave me an odd look but pointed at the map. ‘About half a mile from here. Near enough to East Putney tube station. The District Line is running, if you want to try that.’
‘Is there anywhere nearby that overlooks the tracks?’
The man shrugged but someone in the queue behind me said, ‘Yeah, there is. There are two footbridges across the tracks, one on Oxford Road near the art college and one on Woodlands Way.’
Think fast. Guess right. She would want to be undisturbed.
‘Which one is busier?’
‘Oxford Road, I suppose.’
I ran, my phone to my ear to call Derwent. ‘You still in traffic?’
‘Yeah. I’ll dump the car.’ He sounded deeply tense. ‘I can see you. Where are you going?’
‘Woodlands Way near East Putney tube. It’s a left off the Upper Richmond Road.’ I could hear him flipping through the road atlas. ‘There’s a footbridge. There’s another on Oxford Road, before that, but I think she’s on Woodlands Way.’
‘I’ll check it out. Have you called it in so BTP can be informed?’
‘You do it,’ I said, short of breath already, and hung up. British Transport Police had jurisdiction over the railways and the land surrounding them. It was both courteous and correct to inform them about Bethany, but I wasn’t going to wait for them to find her. The road noises – well, Upper Richmond Road was part of the South Circular Road and the traffic was pretty much constant.
I almost went straight past Woodland Way, in part because it wasn’t an idyllic bosky grove but a narrow dead end that ran between some lock-up garages and a block of flats. Maybe the trees were on the other side of the railway line, I thought, racing down to where the District Line ran overhead. Beyond it there was a narrow bridge, blocked off for vehicular access and only really wide enough for bikes and pedestrians anyway.
There was no one on the bridge.
Fuck.
I stopped under the bridge, hearing a train rattle overhead, struggling to breathe. I’d guessed wrong. Derwent would get her, I told myself, wishing like hell I’d turned down Oxford Road. I’d run past it. I’d gambled and I hoped like hell Bethany wouldn’t lose.
The phone purred to life in my hand. I answered with, ‘Did you get her?’
‘I was just going to ask you that. No sign of her.’
I closed my eyes for a second in despair. ‘I thought she had to be around here somewhere. It’s the obvious place. I could hear the trains.’
‘I’ll go back for the car and drive round the area. Try calling Bethany again.’
I hung up. Turner’s phone was locked. I’d have to hope she was willing to answer a call from a strange number.
I walked across to the bridge as I waited for the call to connect. I could see the men who were working on the track a little way away, ten or twelve of them in hard hats and bright orange boiler suits. The parapet of the bridge was chest-high on me – high enough to prevent accidents, but not high enough to stop suicides. They came in handfuls, I knew, one inspiring another, and they caused chaos across the transport network. There were stations where it happened relatively often, where the fast trains went through in a blur of metal and noise and the difference between life and death was a split second. There was nothing the drivers could do. The human body was not designed for high-speed impact with a train.
A mobile phone chirped somewhere nearby and I looked around, trying to work out where the sound was coming from as it stopped halfway through the ringtone. Then I found myself listening to the voicemail message, the generic one from the phone company. Did teenagers even listen to voicemails? I killed it and hurried to the end of the bridge, where a high, sharp-tipped metal fence blocked off access to the embankment. There was a gate in the fence to provide access for the men who were working on the line, but it was padlocked. A fan of metal spread across the angle between the bridge and the fence to stop people climbing over the edge of the parapet and dropping down to the embankment – but Bethany was small …
‘Scuse me, love.’ It was a cheerful man in an orange suit, heading down to the tracks.
‘Can you let me through this gate?’ I was holding up my warrant card.
‘Sorry, I’m not allowed to let anyone through. Health and safety—’
‘It’s an emergency.’
Something in my face or my voice convinced him he didn’t want to get between me and what I wanted. He unlocked the gate and held it open for me. ‘Stay away from the tracks and listen for the trains.’
I nodded. ‘BTP are on their way.’
He looked very slightly reassured and then I forgot all about him as I edged down the steep embankment, slipping on the long grass. She couldn’t be anywhere in plain sight or the men would have spotted her – although they were head-down, focused on doing their work in the intervals between trains. Overrunning was a disaster. They didn’t have a lot of time for looking around.
I looked down the track, then back to the shadows under the footbridge. It was dark there, especially in contrast to the bright sunshine. I started towards it, wishing I had my torch. I could see something under the bridge, a small shape, a bundle of clothes. A split second after I started towards it, the bundle unfolded and turned into a girl.
‘Bethany!’
‘Leave me alone!’ She stood up once she knew I’d spotted her and started to edge away from me, towards the track. Her hair hung in hanks around her white face.
‘Look, I just want to talk to you.’
She shook her head.
‘Please, Bethany, don’t do this. I need your help.’
‘I can’t help anyone.’
‘You know what happened.’
‘No. I can’t say anything.’
‘Can’t or won’t?’ I took a step closer to her. Behind me the long two-note call of a train sounded. I glanced back to see the men clearing the track, standing to one side. The track was straight so I could see the train in the distance, the light on the front shining despite the sunshine. I took another sliding step towards the shadows.
‘Bethany, whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.’
‘You have no idea.’
‘No, I don’t, but you could tell me. We could talk about it.’
‘It’s all in the bible. Do you know your bible?’
‘Not as well as I should,’ I said, trying to smile.
‘For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me,’ she recited.
‘What sin, Bethany?’
‘Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, oh God, oh God of my salvation and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.’
‘Kerrigan!’
I glanced up to see Derwent peering over the parapet. He looked furious.
‘How did you get down there?’
I ignored him because the train was closer now, the sound increasing as my heart rate rose, and I’d just made the decision to try to grab her when she exploded into movement like a prey animal breaking cover. She ran as fast as she could towards the track.
‘Bethany! Stop!’ I sprang after her, not thinking about the train or the danger of slipping on the embankment. I knew what she intended and I wasn’t going to have it; I wasn’t going to le
t another teenager die while I did nothing. The train’s horn sounded again, much too loud, much too close and Bethany hesitated for a second, her face flashing like a pale flame in the darkness. I reached out and caught her sleeve as she gathered herself to jump towards the rails. It was like being inside a hurricane as the wind and noise blasted around us; the train was seconds away. Then I was falling and so was Bethany and there was nothing I could do to save either of us. I think I screamed; I know Bethany did. Every muscle in my body tightened, as if that would help … and we fell, tangled together, as the sound of the train broke over us like a wave.
It took a long couple of seconds for me to realise that we had fallen beside the track, not on it, and the train was passing by safely. The wind dragged at me – it was far too close. I was holding on to Bethany, half-lying on her, and I could feel the sobs wracking her body. My head was ringing and I felt weak, my knees and hands trembling. I wasn’t planning to stand up until the train was gone but I wasn’t altogether sure I’d be able to. It didn’t matter. I crawled forward so I could see Bethany’s face.
‘It’s all right. You’re going to be all right.’
‘Leave me alone,’ she sobbed. ‘Why couldn’t you leave me alone? I don’t want to be here any more.’
‘This isn’t the answer.’
She started to laugh while still crying, a hiccupping jagged sound that made me wince.
And then it was as if the bubble surrounding us had burst as the men reached us, running awkwardly in their heavy work boots: big hands helping to set us on our feet, guiding me up the embankment as I twisted to see that Bethany was following too, a jumble of accents around us – English, Eastern European, Irish, Jamaican, Glaswegian … London, basically. I felt giddy and knew that was shock, like the tremor in my joints and the frantic buzzing of thoughts that made my head feel like a jar full of wasps.
I looked up to see a BTP officer unlocking the gate, and Derwent standing behind him, his face sheet-white. I ignored that, needing to concentrate on Bethany, on making sure they didn’t let go of her.
‘Do you need an ambulance?’ That was the BTP officer.
‘I don’t think she’s injured but she’s suicidal. She needs to be sectioned.’