‘Thank you,’ I said to him and reached out my hand.
He grasped it in both of his, they were warm and strong. ‘What for, love?’
‘For staying with me. For not leaving even when things are…’ I trailed off and looked towards the other car.
‘Hey, I came to you. I’m not going to leave you, am I?’
He was a good man.
‘Now then, what do we have in here?’ A jolly woman in a green jacket and trousers bobbed down so I could see her.
Hashim stood. ‘I’m right here, Alice. I’m not going anywhere.’
And he never did.
I looked back over to the other car. Saw paramedics run over to the driver’s side. Listened to the quick and raised voiced explanations of what had happened. Heard the sobs.
Watched as the police arrived and moved everyone back. Saw tear-streaked faces.
The paramedics slipped a back board down behind me, shoving me forward a couple of inches as it was pushed into place. Everything was firm but gentle. A collar was strapped around my neck, Velcro securing it into place, my head lifted and secure. It was then that they agreed to manoeuvre me out of the car, so with several kind words and a couple of strong firemen I was leaned sideways and slipped out of the car.
My poor car.
I couldn’t see much strapped to the gurney, the blue sky with white clouds scudding across as though this was still a bright and cheery day instead of the dismal one it had turned into.
Out of the side of my eyes I could see the second ambulance was still here. I could see the head of a police officer standing near the other car, not facing towards it but away, talking into his radio.
And as I was lifted into the ambulance Hashim was there. A small voice on the step. ‘Can I come with her?’
The jolly woman, I now knew her name was Julie, looked at me.
‘Yes, it’s fine. I’d like the company,’ I told her.
‘No one else I can contact, love?’ Hashim asked as he clambered in beside me.
‘No one else, Hashim.’
And I thought of Beth and how devastated she would be to know I was here and to know what I had been through. How much it would hurt her to know she was unable to be here to hold my hand through it all, unable to support me. But just knowing her love was there was enough. Anyway, I had Hashim.
‘The other woman?’ I asked.
A look passed between Julie and Hashim. I didn’t need the words. I didn’t need to be told. What I did need, though, was to understand how.
‘I’m sorry,’ Hashim said. The colour drained from his face.
‘I don’t understand,’ I answered.
‘We won’t know until a later date,’ said Julie. She turned to Hashim. ‘You need to put your seat belt on.’
I heard him fumble with his seat.
‘But the woman,’ I pressed.
‘It looks like a possible underlying medical condition, nothing to do with the accident, or maybe exacerbated by the accident. I can’t guess,’ Julie repeated. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘She’s dead?’ I whispered.
They both looked at me and then at each other again as they realised no one had said the words to me.
‘I’m sorry, love,’ Hashim said again.
I didn’t have anyone, but if anyone had to be with me I was glad it was this sweet old man.
I heard one of the back doors close and Hashim peered down at me with concern on his face.
‘Which hospital are we going to?’ he asked Julie.
‘N and N,’ she answered. Norwich.
‘Wait,’ he shouted before the second door could be closed. ‘Let me follow in my car. I think it will be better.’ His eyes held mine. ‘For later.’
I was in too much pain to know why he wanted to drive there but I offered him a smile. I was grateful for his company, no matter how little of it he wanted to give me.
The ambulance set off for the hospital and I was left to think about what I had been through. How I had survived the accident and the other woman hadn’t. How she had died saving the child. The little boy who had run into the road as children do. An act of extraordinary coincidence that she and I, the ice-cream van and the boy were all there at that time and caused the perfect storm and now a woman was dead.
Just like that.
I had never been near a dead body before.
I had written about them. I had mutilated them. Dragged them through untold horrors for the sake of entertainment. But not once had I ever been near a dead body or been involved in a death. The feeling was… I wasn’t sure I could put my finger on how I felt.
There was the whole body having been in a car crash thing to contend with, and the worry about Beth not knowing, and now I had to try to figure out what it was I felt about this woman who had saved the child. Dying in the act of saving him.
That empty void that I carried around with me was back. In place of a feeling I carried an emptiness. I had presumed I lost all my feelings when I lost all chance of being a mother. It was only when I was with Beth that I felt anything again. She had saved me and I owed her. But I wasn’t sure how much she had managed to save because I felt closed off and cold when I wasn’t with her. It was strange. To be this person.
But today, it was the first day I had been involved in a death and on the same day Beth asked me to help her to die. I had a lot to process.
5.
I was released from the hospital a few hours later. There was no permanent damage to my spinal cord. I was advised that the pain should subside on its own in a few weeks and if it didn’t I should see my GP about getting some physiotherapy.
Hashim had stayed at the hospital and offered to drive me home. He was the sweetest man I had known.
‘Don’t you have a wife wondering where you are, Hashim?’ I asked as he walked me to his car at a steady pace, my arm wrapped through his to keep my balance as painkillers fuzzed with my head.
It was unusual for me to speak to anyone other than Beth for this length of time. Being a freelancer, someone who worked from home alone, I didn’t have colleagues. There was no standing around a kettle waiting for it to boil and talking about the previous day’s events or the tyrannical boss. It was me and Lilac. Yes, she was a great listener, but she didn’t do much by way of conversation. Sometimes people would start a conversation with me in a coffee shop but I would feel distracted by it as I was there to work.
Yet, here was Hashim offering to spend more time with me and I wasn’t quite sure how to react to him and to his offer. I was disorientated. Couldn’t get my bearings on how to behave.
I thanked him profusely but he looked embarrassed by my enthusiasm and I had a feeling I was overdoing it. I held back a little.
‘Look, it’s no trouble, love. You’ve had a tough day. You don’t seem to have anyone close by, so it’s the kind thing to do.’
‘That woman,’ I said as we travelled to my small home.
The mood in the car felt heavy.
‘I know.’ He kept his eyes on the road.
‘I’ve never seen a dead body before,’ I told him.
‘You didn’t see her,’ he reminded me, risking a sideways glance.
‘Yeah, but I feel responsible.’ I scratched at my arm where they had drawn blood. Why they needed to draw blood for a neck injury I wasn’t sure. I think they liked to do it for everyone who entered the A&E doors.
There was silence for a moment. I didn’t think he was going to respond. Then he said, ‘I get that. I do. But,’ he let out a sigh, ‘You’re not, Alice. No one is responsible. I imagine the mother of the boy feels the same way this evening. But it’s not her fault either. You were the closest to her when this happened. You can’t take it to heart. It was a freak accident by the sound of it. We’ll know more later, after the post-mortem, when they do the inquest. But…’ he sneaked another glance.
‘That’ll be months, love. You’ve to take care of yourself in the meantime. Don’t take the blame. It wasn’t your
fault.’
I stayed mute. The painkillers the hospital had given me were mussing up my head. My thought process didn’t feel quite straight. But I figured out what Hashim was saying.
There was still an unusual aura around me because of the death. I had been directly involved in this woman dying. If I hadn’t been there, impacted with her, then whatever happened in her body would not have killed her and she would still be alive. It was a strange load to carry.
Hashim pulled up in front of my home, a red brick block affair that looked a little like a set of stables, but was a section of terraced houses alongside the River Waveney. I loved it here. It was gentle and soothing.
‘This you then, love?’
‘It is.’
I would have offered him a drink but I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was curl up in my bed and sleep.
‘Get a good night’s rest,’ he said. ‘Can I have your number? Check on you tomorrow?’
He was a good man. I gave him my number then watched as he steered the car down the road and away from me.
It was late. The streets were silent and the houses around me were cloaked in darkness. Pockets of light broke through the gloom as the street lights led the way down the pavement. I let myself in and was greeted by Lilac as she padded towards me. She wrapped herself around my legs, her tail twining its way upwards, like a serpent with its own life.
The house was cool. I pulled on a cardigan that I had draped over a chair, filled the kettle, pulled down a mug, phoned the insurance company while the kettle was boiling and made a cup of tea. With it made I took it to bed and Lilac followed. Climbing into the vast space of the king-sized bed, one luxury I afforded myself, I pulled the quilt up around my shoulders and stared up at the ceiling as the tea cooled on the bedside table. It had been an incredibly long day and though I should have been tired I was unusually and unexpectedly alert now I was lying down.
With a soft plop Lilac was at the side of me and with a gentle shuffle she made herself comfortable on the pillow. I turned my head and faced her.
‘I have no one else to talk to,’ I told her.
Her throat thrummed in response. Her eyes blinked slowly as she assessed me.
‘She died, you know.’
There was no answer.
I turned back to the ceiling.
The woman had died.
It had been my fault.
If I hadn’t been there at that precise moment when the boy ran out, when she had swerved, regardless of what had happened to her body, if she had not collided with me, then she would still be alive. No matter what anyone said, I was, in some small part, responsible for this woman’s death today. My being there, in that time, in that place, meant she had died.
She wouldn’t lie in her bed tonight and talk to a loved one or a pet. I looked at the empty space at the side of me, the space where Matt used to sleep that was now filled by a small furry purr machine. At least I wasn’t alone, I supposed.
The woman wouldn’t wake in the morning and go about her day as I would.
I didn’t even know if she had any loved ones at home waiting for her. I had no idea about her life beyond that split second where hers had collided with mine.
I was grateful for Hashim having been there at the scene today and more grateful that he had attended the hospital. That Beth was not able to be there for me anymore hurt, but to have someone, even a complete stranger, well, I felt secure and safe in knowing he was around.
I didn’t even know this woman’s name and yet here I was, grateful to a stranger for supporting me. Hashim would never know quite how much he had done in being there today. I would maybe repay him some day.
But tonight I brought the quilt tighter around my shoulders, kept the chill of the night at bay and wished for Beth to be well. To have the relationship we used to have. Not just for me, but for her. I hated the place she was in now and the way she was thinking. Where this disease had taken her. What she expected of me. She would be devastated to know I had been hurt and she couldn’t get to me. I would have to keep today a secret from her and secrets were no good to anyone.
6.
The next morning the sun streamed in through the open curtains. I never closed them at night. I liked the sun to wake me, at whatever hour that was. Working from home I could rise and fall as I wanted and needed, and I found that allowing my body to slip into a natural rhythm was the best thing for me. I had found that I functioned the best I ever had. Not being a slave to an alarm clock, or making sure I was in bed at a certain time because of said clock, going when I was tired, it made me more alert and productive through the day. I thrived.
It didn’t always work the way I wanted because sometimes Lilac would nudge me with her warm rough nose before I woke naturally and tell me she wanted feeding.
Today I was awake early, my body hurting from the day before. I looked at my clock and saw that it was only 5:39 am. I had a few hours to kill before I could head into town and into a coffee shop to do some work. I would need something to ease the pain.
I padded into the kitchen, flicked the kettle on, took a couple of pills and made a mug of tea, sticking last night’s mug in the dishwasher.
Taking my drink, I dropped onto the sofa and browsed the news sites from my phone. I had to go to the local news to find the report of the accident yesterday.
I scrolled down until I found the woman’s name. She was Vivian Conway, twenty-seven, of Beccles, and a dog groomer. She ran her own business grooming local dogs and, according to the report, she was very well thought of in the community. People were not surprised to find out that she had swerved into oncoming traffic to save the life of a young boy. She left behind a fiancé who was devastated.
I threw my phone down. I didn’t need to read any more. I didn’t need to know his name. I didn’t need to know how wonderful she was. I already knew everything I needed to know. I had been there when she had given her life.
When I had taken her life.
If only I had been able to speak to her beforehand.
What would I have said to her?
I scrubbed a hand through my hair then leaned back. I was going around in circles here. I should get some work done. I took my mug and moved to the dining table, opened my laptop, input the password and watched as it woke, bringing my world to life. Because that was where I lived. Inside this machine. I was an introvert, my world was inside this laptop.
The manuscript I had been working on before I left to do Beth’s weekly shop was still open where I had left it. Forty thousand words in and eight weeks to go before the deadline when I needed to send it off to my agent, Corey. I needed to pull my finger out. I had to finish writing it and then do any rewrites that I thought appropriate before Corey read it. He was pretty hands-on and would send me his thoughts before we sent it to my editor. This was mainly because I was a nervous author. I was afraid to send work straight to my editor. Afraid that she would think me stupid and wonder what the hell she had signed and make a promise she would not sign me for any further books, no matter how many copies they sold.
My books were always quite dark. I liked to kill in unusual ways and my protagonists, even the good ones, always had a deep and unnerving flaw that underpinned them. If you were after a light-hearted crime read you never picked up a Alice Friend book.
The first time my editor saw me she laughed and asked me if Friend was my real name or if I was using it as an ironic pseudonym for a crime writer. I assured her it was real. I wasn’t sure if she was secretly pleased with this, she just smiled and nodded.
I re-read the last chapter I had written the day before to get a feel for where I had left off.
Poppy, my editor, had read the outline for this book and had given it the go ahead, but I had veered away from the plan slightly and wasn’t sure what she would think of the changes I had made to the story. In my eyes it was better. I had put my main character through so much more. She had to fight much harder and the killer, well, I wasn’t yet sure
if he was going to get his comeuppance or if he would walk away in this book and live to fight another day. I knew if I did that I would have a battle on my hands because readers like to have an ending. They like to have the story wrapped up and feel a sense of achievement by the end of the book, after you have dragged them to hell and back. To end in such an ambiguous way was dodgy ground and I wasn’t a big enough author to get away with such a move.
But this was an important consideration for the story, and the series, and it irked me that I was still struggling in this profession. I had been writing and getting published for the last six years and I hadn’t had a break-out novel yet. This seventh book was, again, the last book in a contract, which meant I would be out and that was another issue in ending the novel on such a cliff-hanger. If the publisher didn’t offer for me again, then the readers would be left hanging.
It was such a difficult place, publishing. All I wanted to do was write, to find more interesting ways to kill people that would engross my readers, and I felt that I was pushing at a brick wall. I wanted readers. I wanted more readers. I wanted to be an author who could focus on her writing and not have to scrape about doing other jobs as well.
There’s a huge public misconception that if you are an author with books out every year you are loaded. It’s so far from the truth. You can’t make a career out of being an author alone. Not unless you are one of the lucky few. If you are a mid-list author like myself then you usually have to have a day job to help support yourself.
I finished reading through the chapter and realised I had left it in the perfect place. I needed to murder someone. My villain was in the vicinity and my victim had a sensation of being watched, but it was too late, far too late for him.
His time was up.
I started to type. The blade was out. Held in the palm like a real pro. Not held out like a kid in a council estate, pointing it, sticking it. This villain knew how to handle his weapons and this kill would be swift. Bloody, but quiet and swift.
Silently he moved forward, enveloped by the night.
Perfect Murder Page 3