Catalyst

by Mark Eklid

  He hesitated for a moment before he could go on.

  ‘She demanded a divorce and I gave in. I thought it might do even more damage to try to stop her going ahead with it because I couldn’t get through anymore. The only thing I could think to do was to live in hope that, one day, the thick mist of all that anger, grief and confusion would lift and Evelyn would come back to me. I decided to respect her wishes to leave her alone and wait. When we sold the house, I moved to this place, but I took on a two-person apartment because I still believed that we’d be together again soon. I’ve been waiting three years.’

  He sat motionless and quiet, contemplating.

  ‘From what she told you, it doesn’t look as if she’ll be coming back anytime soon though, does it? Poor Evelyn. She’s really had it rough and it must have been getting worse for her, not better. I should have done more to try to get her the help she needed.’

  There was nothing Martin could think to say that would offer comfort. Clearly, they had both been through hell, even though they had been sent hurtling along different routes.

  ‘I cannot imagine what you’ve been through, Frank,’ he said sympathetically. ‘Both of you. I can’t say that I knew your wife at all before she had her accident, but I have got to know her since and I’ve seen a change in her. She didn’t seem to want anything to do with anybody when I first started visiting her in hospital but, just recently, she’s different. I got the impression she wanted nothing other than to shut everybody out before but now, well. She opened up to me the other day and told me that she’s frightened by the prospect of being alone again. I think she sees the light again, Frank. She’s due to leave hospital tomorrow and I think if you come with me to take her home, it’ll mean the world to her.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ He wanted to believe that to be true.

  ‘I do. I think she might listen now. I think, between us, we could help her come to terms with losing Tanya and get her the professional help she needs.’

  Frank nodded and took a sip from his tea.

  ‘What time should I meet you there?’ he asked.

  24

  Crowd containment was not an issue. The only members of the public who seemed in the least bit interested were two teenage boys who had been intrigued enough to interrupt their Saturday morning bike ride and were watching from the footbridge, no doubt in the ghoulish hope that something grisly was about to be dragged off the river bed.

  Nevertheless, the three officers of the Police Underwater Search Unit had taken great care to cordon off the area with white and blue tape that had ‘Police Line Do Not Cross’ printed on it, repeated at two-foot intervals. And just in case anyone had not noticed the tape or the large white lorry with ‘POLICE’ on the front and the crest of the South Yorkshire Police Underwater Search Unit above the yellow and blue checks running down the side, one of the officers was unfolding a portable blue sign informing passers-by ‘Police Diving in Progress Keep Clear’. Had there been anyone passing by, they would have been in no doubt that they were required to stay back.

  The operation had taken over the whole of the car park from which, a week earlier, 17-year-old Chloe Wood and her affectionate boyfriend Sam had watched a man throw what they thought might be a gun into the river from the footpath on the opposite bank. With the photos Chloe took tying in with the information Beth Hughes had given them, suggesting her husband Wesley had been given the job of getting rid of a gun used in a violent armed robbery, the CID had taken the decision to send in the divers.

  While one of the officers was completing the task of tape and portable sign deployment, another was running through the final safety checks with the colleague who was just about to enter the near-frozen waters of the River Don. The diver gave a thumbs-up to indicate that he was getting a good flow of air from the two grey tanks on his back. He took measured steps in his black drysuit towards the slope of the riverbank, through a small gap in the car park perimeter wall, bending his head to watch the fins on his feet through the slightly steamed visor of his full-face mask.

  He jumped, feet first, the metre and a half from the car park level into the water and stood, waist-high, to make sure the other officer was ready to reel out the yellow safety rope that was attached to the diver’s suit. The river was not fast flowing at the part they were to search, falling as it did between two of the weirs on the Five Weirs Walk, but it was deep in the middle. The diver checked the stability of his mask again and plunged forward, breaking the surface. Soon, all that could be seen of him was a trail of bubbles around the yellow rope.

  Little more than ten minutes later, he bobbed back into view and raised his right arm.

  ‘He’s got something,’ said the officer on the other end of the yellow rope.

  ‘Is it the weapon?’ asked the other, stamping his feet to revive them.

  ‘It’s a weapon. Are you going to get it from him or what?’

  The policeman stiffly made his way to the gap in the perimeter wall and backed down a metal ladder so that the diver, having swum to the bank, could drop his find into a clear plastic evidence bag.

  ‘I’d say this hasn’t been down there for long at all, I think we have a winner,’ he said as he climbed back to the car park. ‘What do you reckon?’

  His colleague took the bag and held it to eye level with his spare hand.

  ‘Looks good to me. Signal to Phil to come out. It must be bloody perishing in there.’

  The signal was given.

  ‘Nice and quick, that’s what we like. Whose turn is it to get the teas in?’

  25

  Martin paced outside the entrance to the spinal injuries unit, nervously switching his cycle helmet from one hand to the other and habitually tucking his hair behind his ear, which he tended to do when he was on edge. He had strayed too close to the entrance doors once, triggering them to open automatically, and didn’t want anyone inside to think he might have done it deliberately. He had since restricted himself to a narrow two-metre corridor away from the sensors, making him appear like a fretful animal trapped behind an invisible force field to keep him from pouncing on hospital visitors.

  He had no idea how Mrs Dawes was going to react to seeing her ex-husband again. The very mention of his name always stirred animosity in her, as far as he had seen, but if what Frank Elliott had told him was true, her anger was a symptom of deep psychological trauma caused by the tragic loss of her beloved only daughter. She had lashed out at Frank, irrationally blaming him as the cause of her despair, and Martin feared what seeing him again would do to Mrs Dawes. Not only that, he also knew that they would have to confront her with the truth of Tanya’s death and he could think of no easy way to do that. They would have to help her deconstruct the conspiratorial stories she had invented for herself to save her from dealing with the finality of her loss and it scared him to think how she might respond to that.

  Could her fragile psyche stand it?

  Martin had spent another half hour with Frank the previous evening, after they had agreed a time to meet at the hospital. Frank had talked some more about Evelyn and Tanya and had told him that his last attempt to get in touch with his ex-wife through their solicitors – it always had to be through their solicitors, she insisted – had been to seek consent to donate the money from Tanya’s estate to the legal aid fund set up in the tragic couple’s names. That letter, Martin guessed, must have been the one that inspired Mrs Dawes to set out into a stormy night to threaten Frank with a World War Two pistol.

  He decided not to mention this.

  Martin had warmed to Frank but, when he returned home, he went straight on his laptop. It was not that he did not believe what he had been told, it was because he was curious to see what else he could find. The reason he had not been able to come up with anything previously was he had always searched for the name Tanya Dawes and Tanya Dawes, he now realised, had never existed. She was always Tanya Elliott.

  It was all there for him now, from the first reports in the Manchester
press of the mysterious disappearance of two partners from one of the city’s legal firms, to news of the increasingly desperate search, which had also been picked up by the national media, and, finally, the grave acceptance of the couple’s inevitable fate. Martin sifted through it all, suffering the sadness of it like a personal bereavement in fast forward. There could be no doubt the version of events Frank had told him had been accurate. Now they had to face the tragedy of the version Mrs Dawes had created for herself and that might be even harder to bear.

  Martin had arrived at the hospital early, just in case Frank was early too. He did not want the old man to go in alone. He checked his watch. Four minutes until the time they had agreed.

  He saw a man approaching and identified him first by his distinctive limp. As he came closer, huddled into a heavy overcoat with his head overshadowed by a trilby hat as he stooped into the face of a chill wind, Martin became more certain it was Frank.

  They acknowledged each other with a nod and a gloved handshake. Frank’s expression was pinched and pained. They both knew that what they were about to do might have consequences they could neither predict nor control.

  ‘It’s not easy getting parked at this place, is it?’ said Frank, attempting to break the ice of their shared apprehension.

  ‘I don’t know. I always bike here,’ Martin replied, raising the helmet in his hands as proof.

  They looked at each other, mutually reluctant to take the next step, until Martin suggested, ‘Shall we go in?’

  There was no one to greet them this time at the nurses’ station, so Martin led the way straight on to the bay.

  Evelyn was sitting in her armchair, clutching, in anticipation, the handle of the overnight bag in which she had packed all the things Martin had brought her from home over the last 18 days. Sister Suneeta was chatting to her as she stripped the bed. The old lady was cheerful, but her face dropped in an instant when she noticed the two men cautiously approaching her corner of the bay.

  The sister noticed the change and turned to see what had caused it.

  ‘Oh, hi Martin. Big day today. She’s ready for you,’ she said, attempting normality.

  But the smile of response was forced and who was this other man? Suneeta glanced back towards Evelyn, whose eyes fixed, half-scowling, half-fearful, on the stranger. Whatever was about to be said here would only be said once she was out of the way and the sister stopped busying herself with the bed.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ she said to Martin. ‘Just let me know if there’s anything you need. Would you like me to pull the screens around to give you some privacy?’

  ‘It’s fine thanks,’ he replied.

  Something was definitely not right. She left, ready to keep an eye or an ear on what might be about to happen from a discreet distance.

  ‘Hello Evelyn,’ said Frank.

  Her gaze was unbroken. His unexpected appearance disturbed her.

  ‘What are you doing here, Frank?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s come to take you home. We’re both going to take you home,’ Martin interjected.

  She snorted. ‘Not likely.’

  ‘Evelyn, I –‘

  She cut across Frank’s words as if he was not there to fix angry eyes on Martin.

  ‘Why did you bring him here? You know what he did to me.’

  The accusation of betrayal in her tone was clear. He edged closer and sat on the edge of the bed beside her.

  ‘It’s all right, Mrs Dawes. I know about Tanya. I know what really happened.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ she spat out.

  ‘The accident, Evelyn,’ Frank said softly as he, too, moved closer to her chair. ‘We lost Tanya in an accident three and a half years ago. Don’t you remember? She and Ryan went to the Caribbean on holiday and they went missing. They were never found.’

  Her eyes darted and she blinked rapidly.

  ‘What rubbish has he been feeding you? It’s all lies. My Tanya is perfectly fine, it’s just that he doesn’t want me to see her anymore. Get him to tell you where she lives now, Martin. He knows.’

  Frank bowed and Martin feared he might soon buckle. Every slashing word from the old lady appeared to wound him deeply but the inner strength that had helped him absorb so many blows through the last three and a half years was not spent yet.

  ‘There is nothing in this world that I would love more than for the three of us to be together again and I know you know that’s true, Evelyn. If I could give my own life to bring her back, I’d take the deal in a heartbeat, but wishing like that isn’t going to change a thing. There was nothing anybody could have done to stop Tanya being taken away from us and nothing either of us can do now to change that, however much we want to. We could never stop loving Tanya, but we have to accept that she’s gone, Evelyn. We’ve lost her.’

  The words echoed around her mind and struck strands of her consciousness that had been buried away for years. Outwardly, she was still hostile but, inside, the thaw had begun.

  She looked at Martin. ‘Is that true?’

  He nodded, sadly. ‘I read all about it myself last night. After I went to meet Frank, I did some searching on the internet and saw all the articles that were in the press at the time. I’m so sorry, Mrs Dawes.’

  Evelyn’s head was swirling with the confusion of the new information and the supposed reality she had lived by for so long. She wanted to fight the contradiction, deny what she was being told, but, deep within, she knew she should not.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said.

  Martin shuffled close enough to touch her arm.

  ‘Look, I don’t really know about these things but it looks to me as if you have been through a terrible, terrible shock and it affected you much more deeply than you might have realised at the time. But that’s OK because there are experts who can help you come to terms with everything you’ve been through and you’ve got the two of us to support you. Frank and I will be there for you whenever you need us. You don’t have to face this alone. You need never be alone again.’

  Tears welled in Evelyn’s eyes. ‘So, Tanya’s gone?’

  Martin did not need to respond. She knew it for herself. It was true. She was powerless to fight it anymore.

  Frank leaned forward to hold her hands as they tightly gripped the handles of the overnight bag.

  ‘We still have each other, love. These past few years have been rough, and I know it’s been even harder for you, but we still have the chance to get through the worst of it if we do it together. Let’s take care of each other again, Evelyn, like we always used to. We were a good team, you and me.’

  Echoes of a life long forgotten flashed before her again. Good times. Happy times. The times before… before…

  Frank squeezed her hands. ‘Would you like us to take you home now?’

  She looked deeply into his lined face and saw again the man she once loved, the man who stood by her for forty-eight years. He was beside her again.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, timidly at first but then, more assuredly, ‘Yes. I’d like that.’

  26

  A subtle feint and sharp change of pace were all the player needed to buy a few inches of open ground and send the ball fizzing low over the surface into the penalty area. The big defender was caught off-balance, hurried into a less solid connection on his attempted clearance than he wanted as he tried to change direction quickly, and was only able to divert it away from goal towards the edge of the box. On another day, that might still have been enough to clear the immediate danger, but he was unfortunate this time. The ball went straight to an attacking player. He took one touch and, before other defenders could rush out to close the space, struck a shot that ripped into the top corner of the net.

  The home supporters rose as one to let out a roar of jubilation. The TV commentator screamed the name of the ecstatic scorer, who, arms raised, dodged between crestfallen opponents to sprint away from the pursuit of happy team-mates.

  Darrell Morrison, howeve
r, did not move. The goal did not prompt so much as a flicker of a change in his blank expression as he lay on the sofa, listless and lethargic.

  He had been this way for two days, since Beth told him it was over. Dumped him.

  The foot was healing nicely, according to the nurse who had changed his dressings the previous day, and he was able to get around the house much more easily now that he had been issued with a hard boot, but he wanted no more than to lounge on the sofa and allow any TV programme, as long as it did not require him to think, to drift in front of his eyes.

  Darrell was not usually one to feel sorry for himself, but this was different. It was not just that he had been dumped, though he ached for the touch of Beth’s willing, youthful body and craved release from the torment of tracing the lines of the tattoos on her abdomen and her thighs every time he closed his eyes. It was what the end of the relationship meant that really hurt.

  He was thirty-seven years old. Being with Beth made him feel young. What did the future hold now? Middle-aged and past it. He might never know the pleasure of the touch of younger female flesh again and that made him sad. He had risked everything to be with Beth – not least his job as their liaisons became ever more reckless – but he hadn’t cared. Part of him wanted them to get caught, so that it would force him to quit his marriage and his job. He knew it was a fantasy – a hopeless one, as it turned out – but the thought of being made to leave in disgrace to take up a new life with Beth, scratching a living by working bar jobs or waiting tables, and having her, that body, all to himself was one that had been hugely appealing. He would have been poor but alive.