Stark had been right. There had been more than one leak. Acting on his supposition, Maggie had apprehended one mole busy texting updates throughout the whole ordeal, right from the control room where he was primary uniform liaison with Maggie’s civilians. Groombridge was quite sure that disarmingly cheerful Maggie would cheerfully de-arm the culprit if she ever clapped eyes on him again. Hell had no fury like an old softie betrayed. But the man wasn’t facing charges. Caught red-handed, he’d confessed to spilling confidential information, not to the press, but to DAC Stevens. Rumour had it he was a Freemason candidate trying to curry favour, but he claimed he was just following orders and was now parked firmly behind a union lawyer. He’d be moved to a different station. Stevens hadn’t denied the texts, dismissing them as merely ‘judicious oversight’.
The second leak was worse, but harder to prove. The photo on Kirsch’s basement wall-of-hate showed Harper, recent masonic initiate, passing a file to Stevens. Both men had dismissed it as an innocent progress update, but that sort of flannel never washed with the rank and file and would be hard for the brass to overlook. Too many snippets of information had found their way to the press.
That was the crux.
While Cox had been edging for promotion, someone up-chain had been agitating for change, for power. The illicit paper Cox had shown Groombridge proposed a number of mergers, consolidating boroughs to cut costs. The name on the proposal – Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stevens. The ‘Super Boroughs’ would each be led by Chief Superintendents, no doubt supporters of Stevens and any bid he planned for Commissioner. Greenwich and Lewisham had been identified as the ideal trial subject. Both Cox and the young Super of Lewisham were ‘acquaintances’ of Stevens’ and both were in line for promotion to Chief, but Stevens was more likely to garner support from a new-broom climber than old-school copper.
As well as his spy in Maggie’s team, Stevens had foisted Harper on them not as a salve but as a puppet, extracted information and leaked it at key moments to destabilize and discredit the borough. All it took was a pay-as-you-go phone and the number of a friendly reporter. In this case, Groombridge suspected, a bottle-blonde with a penchant for red, working for a satellite news station with affiliate newspapers. Utterly deniable, of course. Stevens could blame the whole thing on phone hacking, where lack of proof was cover enough. No amount of public enquiries or prosecutions would drag a confession out of the press.
The best that could be hoped for was that opponents to Stevens’ plan now had the ammunition to quietly see him off.
Little compensation for the terrible loss.
The threat of internal changes had lifted too. Cox wouldn’t be moving on up any time soon; this was his patch, his mess. So Groombridge would not be taking his chair, acting or otherwise, and ‘austerity’ therefore dictated that Harper’s secondment ‘not be extended’. That was the outward message, at least. Harper could brazen out his collusion with Stevens, but not the interview footage. So far, knowledge of his incendiary threat to Kirsch remained hidden in the silence of the interview recording. Public knowledge might end his career, but it was wider knowledge inside the station that Harper feared more. Officers had died.
Fran shifted on her feet beside him, her impatience with the world never far from the surface.
The vicar concluded his ministrations and one by one coppers began filing past to pitch a pinch of earth into the hole.
Fran would never forget seeing Stark lowered down the side of the tower on a thread-thin black rope; dangling limp, lifeless.
It had taken an age to get to that point and, apart from the two paramedics who’d raced up the tower to relieve the firearms officers, no one knew whether he was alive or dead. Groombridge had ordered Sergeant Dearing to deter Fran from charging up there and getting in the way. She still hadn’t forgiven him, and the fact that he was right wasn’t going to change that any time soon.
There was no easy way to get Stark down the winding stairs, apparently, and the air ambulance didn’t have winch capability. The coastguard offered but the firearms boys got their ropes together and heaved Stark over the side instead.
So ignominious. So cold. The news channels ran the footage over and over. Video excerpts were all over the internet.
Fran shuddered, unable to forget the skin, where it wasn’t livid with bruising or caked with blood – corpse white. The paramedics’ haste gave hope. Their grave expressions stole it back. They slammed the doors and rushed him away to hospital.
When Fran finally got there the doctors were unwilling to speculate and only Groombridge’s arrival averted her ejection into the street. One of the paramedics had thoughtlessly told her that he’d never felt a pulse so weak in a patient that lived. Stark had lost about as much blood as a body can lose. If he hadn’t thought to use his belt as a tourniquet he’d have been dead before anyone reached him.
Surgeons operated to stop the bleeding, closed the wound temporarily, topped up his blood, slapped on an oxygen mask and hoped for the best.
Marcus Turner had stopped by the hospital to offer some authoritative medical translation and, when Groombridge wasn’t looking, to squeeze Fran’s hand. Bloody man – nearly made her cry. But he couldn’t linger. His own grisly vigil called; to assist SOCO in the exhumation of the shallow grave in Oxleas Woods and subsequent identification work. Marcus had driven the DNA samples to the lab himself.
Fran stamped her feet on the cold ground, and hunkered down in her coat collar. Shallow graves, in her opinion, were as lazy as they were insulting.
That first night in the hospital had been torture. Kelly had shown up, hesitant and stiff-faced with worry; Major Pierson decked out in desert fatigues, cap and boots, on her way somewhere, unhesitant, short on time and temper. And the mother, terrified and tearful. Same hospital, same patient. None of them smiled at the déjà vu. Nor at the blunt-faced head-shrink, Doctor Hazel bloody McDonald; so infuriatingly calm and compassionate, worse even than the police counsellors.
Extras had been drafted in to begin the arse-covering clean-up. The cheek to suggest she take ‘personal time’! To ask how she felt.
Incan-bloody-descent!
Ready to slit her throat just for the chance of marching into hell and giving Simon Kirsch the slap he so richly deserved.
Or at least that’s how she’d feel tomorrow, or the day after. Right now she still felt … numb; the anger hovering just out of reach, forcing her to fumble elsewhere for an outlet. But in the meantime she had a team to hold together, and a mountain of work to delegate to keep their heads busy. Later, a week from now, a month, she’d go home, get royally pissed, cry and probably break something; but not yet.
How dare they?
‘I’m not confident of funeral etiquette, Sergeant,’ said Groombridge quietly, ‘but I think unconscious tutting is probably poor form.’
‘Guv,’ muttered Fran, only just stopping herself from tutting again.
Their turn came and she shivered in the freezing air, shuffled forward and threw dirt on a wooden box. She could summon no words to say or think, other than she hoped he’d died knowing he’d made a difference.
She’d gone with Groombridge right after Kimberly’s father had been told. Striding past the receptionist’s odd protestations in his hurry to share the news with his old Sergeant, his stride only breaking at the sight of the stripped bed, sanitized room and the commiserating eyes of the nurse.
Ronald Cooper had passed away in his sleep the night before.
85
Hazel waited while the consultant scribbled something on Stark’s notes.
She felt anxious. Not an inappropriate state. Their first session, as the doctors brought him round, had begun and ended with one croaky word. ‘No.’
Not the most auspicious start.
Since then he’d refused to see anyone except his mother.
DS Millhaven wasn’t taking that well. But it was hardest on Kelly. Finding her hovering, distressed, Hazel had sat with her over a coffee
. Things were complicated there, perhaps too complicated for hope; but letting go was easier to think than do.
The nurses said he was a model patient, if quiet. Hazel would expect nothing else. The pain was troubling him, they thought, confused that the morphine wasn’t suppressing it. But Hazel knew that previous experience had somehow taught him to see around it. ‘Smoke and mirrors’, he’d called it. Morphine didn’t remove pain, merely hid it.
The second operation, to review the stitching on the femoral artery and assess the muscle and nerve damage, had gone well. He was young and would recover quickly, they said, though quickly was a relative term. He was looking at weeks of rehab and physio, perhaps months. They seemed to think his previous experience would stand him in good stead in that regard. Hazel was less sure. He mended quickly but loathed hospital, loathed incapacity, loathed reliance on others and was apt to attack recovery with too much impatience, leading to inevitable frustration.
No broken jaw, but a stupid amount of bruising. More had radiated out across much of his torso, she’d been told. Ribs now broken, but not displaced. No fracture to his skull but another dozen stitches. More to his tally, she thought. Did he even keep count any more?
Stubbly hair and chin, he looked more gaunt than ever, almost cadaver-like.
He’d grown leaner over the last few months, harder, throwing himself into exercise to plug a Kelly-shaped gap; but it was more than that. Indeed the signs had been there earlier, visible with the twenty-twenty clarity of professional hindsight. As with most things he’d pushed too far, too fast, too hard. Penance, and not just for Kelly. Ever conscious of his previous decline, Hazel had witnessed this calcification with growing alarm, her subtle interventions ignored, her unsubtle ones rebuffed.
And now this …
He may have shut himself off from colleagues, but he’d been watching the news to satisfy his inevitable first question – How many?
In that respect alone the news had been better than feared, but not good. No one in the police station was seriously hurt. Some cuts from flying glass, a few knocks from panic and plenty of emotional trauma to keep her ilk busy for a while. But the officer Stark had rescued from the street looked to have pulled through. PC Chris Woods. PC Steve Lamont hadn’t been so fortunate. Not someone Stark knew above a nod, DCI Groombridge said. Along with the traffic cop, PC Greg Butler, from the previous week. The funerals would be held after the coroner was done with the bodies but before the doctors here were done with Stark’s. And today, someone called Sergeant Cooper was being buried.
Stark had talked in the past of missing funerals. Those flown home while he fought on. Those killed that fateful day that ended his war. Others while he recovered. More since. He knew shame was illogical but couldn’t shake it. Hence his pilgrimage to Wootton Bassett to watch Private Lovelace’s cortège.
And then there was the shame in his injury, knowing that he could never go back, never do what he’d trained for, never be the soldier inside, while his comrades went into battle without him. Soldiers from his old TA company had deployed since. Some had died. Dear God, how did any of them cope, coming home? Even the ones who came through outwardly unscathed?
Her fingers tightened around the book in her hands; a beautiful leather-bound anthology of war poetry that Stark had given her after that first partial breakthrough, suggesting some might explain what he could not, and in his way gently mocking the shelves of vocational tomes lining her office. The poems made her weep. What did they do to Stark? Never once a tear let fall, in all their sessions. Nor even in the lonely dark, she suspected. What did it cost him to hold them in? How much more did he think he needed to give? Or atone for?
The media were already clamouring for him to be awarded the George Cross, the non-combat equivalent of his Victoria Cross. He would be the first person ever to receive both, to ‘do the double’ as they blithely declared it, with no inkling … Another weight to his chest, another pressing to his mute endurance.
A pushy young reporter had sweet-talked her way in, claiming acquaintance, but been ejected before she made it into Stark’s room. She’d be back, in that form or another. Hazel had once probed the possibility of Stark telling his story. Selling, he’d countered. The pressure would be all the greater now, but she wouldn’t raise it again.
The other injured officer, Stark had known personally. Constable Marianne Pensol. Shot but survived through the quick actions of DCI Groombridge. A ricochet, the bullet was removed from her right lung and she was expected to make a full recovery. That ought to be good news, but Stark would likely look past her survival to her trauma and stack yet another stone upon his chest.
Remembrance, thought Hazel, recalling where this had all started. Conscious memorial or guilty conscience, wounded soldier or haunted killer, it all came down to what you did with it. How you channelled it. Construction, or destruction. Good versus bad. Hope over despair. The difference, she hoped, between Joseph Stark and Simon Kirsch.
Hazel sighed. There was no telling how this would go. People would say that it was her job to know, but she wasn’t a mind-reader. Sometimes – often, in fact – she was glad of it. More often than not with Stark. God knew which of his torments was going through his mind at any one time.
But today was different. For only the second time, he had asked to see her. And today, she held the joker. So much of her job was about timing. Careful listening, observation, patience, and timing. Choosing when to speak was as critical as deciding what to say or how.
He had all but died, again. All but. That was her winning card.
He was never likely to wash down a fistful of pills with a bottle of whisky, whatever his past abuse of the two. He couldn’t. He was trapped by his debt to the dead and the living. He subsumed despair, accepting the manifest hardening in sentiment that cut him off further. Thoughts of blissful oblivion were dismissed as indulgence. Self-murder was not an option. But, presented with peril, he consistently marched forward. Though it always appeared to be the right thing to do, the ‘heroic’ thing even, he would argue something darker; anger most often. He described a kind of cold clarity descending, that even to Hazel’s professional ears sounded chillingly clear-headed. Anger made him logical, he said. It made him do what he must. But it also made him question his motivation afterwards and devalue his victories. He seemed only ever to see what he’d failed to do, never what he’d done.
It was a perverse kind of conceit. He placed himself firmly at the centre of his own universe, but not in a narcissistic way. If a tree fell in the woods it was his to hear and his fault it had fallen. He thought, therefore he was responsible. Perhaps he really did think everything else was a metaphysical uncertainty?
Hazel would argue that in his experiences anger was just, and his logic both faultless and all the more remarkable for it, the clarity to choose the lesser of evils. It was going to be a long argument, long overdue. He had a number of arguments ahead, if his list of rejected visitors was any measure.
She sighed again. So many variables.
The transition from depression to acceptance was never clear and never quick.
But a joker did no good in your hand. Sooner or later you had to play it. She could draw this out, try to get him to say it, but he would see through it and dig his heels in. Sometimes that was worth it for the sheer provocation, but not today. She would have to say it:
The tourniquet.
Instinct might have prevented him simply toppling from the roof, giving in to gravity; but instinct had nothing to do with the tourniquet. Bleeding to death didn’t require a decision, merely inaction; a blameless slide into the welcoming darkness. No one would ever have known. But in that final moment, some voice in his head had persuaded him otherwise. He’d chosen life. And for the first time in their relationship Hazel had something to work with, a fulcrum with which she might eventually lever him free.
He stirred, eyes fluttering open, lips smacking, working his dry mouth, moving his neck stiffly to look around. H
is squint came to rest on Hazel.
The consultant retracted his pen point with a click and nodded. ‘Ready?’
Hazel took a deep breath and let it out. ‘Ready.’
Acknowledgements
The completion of any book owes as much to the forbearance, enthusiasm and effort of others, as to the author. None more so than this. The delight with which I explored this second Joseph Stark novel was augmented by all those who read, reviewed or shared the first, and in some cases let me know they were looking forward to more. If, reading this, you are one of them – thank you. Nothing gives a debut author greater encouragement than to hear their book is being read with appreciation.
Particular thanks must go to Gwen and Wendy, their countless helpers and all the wonderful people of Waverton, for their kindness and hospitality, hard work in promotion of reading and debut authorship, and for voting If I Should Die their Waverton Good Read – British Debut Novel of the Year 2014–15. I could not have hoped for any finer accolade, nor a more invigorating boost to my efforts with this sequel.
Finally, I offer profound thanks to all my loving family for their unstinting faith, to firm friends and warm acquaintances who never tired of asking how it was going, to my agent and editor for their elastic patience and discerning input, my copy editor for her keen-eyed care, everyone busy on my behalf at Penguin Books (Michael Joseph imprint) for affording me this chance, but most of all, as ever, to my darling wife and sons, for the joy.
THE BEGINNING
Between the Crosses (Joseph Stark) Page 38