by Jane Shemilt
We climbed up the steep bank, our feet sinking in a mulch of withered beech leaves, and then we stepped over the blue and white tape that was threaded through the trees. Scratchy undergrowth pulled at my legs and I didn’t see the van at first. It had been pushed under a lone conifer tree, and the charred lower branches were bare. The windows had gone and the metal of the roof was blackened. I stood next to it, imagining the flames that did this, the heat that destroyed the skin of the van, the noise, and the smell.
We walked around to the front, where the hood rested against a tree trunk. Fragments of blue paint were left, mostly peeling and stained black. The license plate had been wrenched off.
“This part was less burned,” Michael explained. “The gas tank would have gone up first.”
“I want to see inside, Michael.”
“I thought you’d say that.” He went back to his car, pulled something from the trunk, and returned with a pair of blue rubber gloves. I put them on, struggling the rubber over my wet fingers.
The passenger door had gone; I leaned inside and saw the wires and springs, all that was left of the seats. I put my hand into the empty socket where the radio had been. The glove compartment had been ripped out. I looked into the backseat. More wires and springs. The rain had come in so that under the front seat was a big puddle, the water black. I couldn’t see what might be under it, though it didn’t look deep enough to hide anything. I put my hand down between the springs and brushed my fingers along the metal at the bottom of the car; I felt the skin of the car as carefully as I felt the skin of my patients. Nothing.
“Why here?” I said to Michael. “It’s so far away from anywhere. Not near a main road or a town or a railway station. There’s no way to escape.”
“Not obvious, is it?” Michael said. “Excuse me a second. I need to make a couple of calls.”
He walked away from me through the trees, bending over his cell, and after a few moments I lost sight of him. I thought how in the spring this place would be quite different; there would be sun and shadows moving on the ground among the bluebells and wild garlic, the light would be green and gold as it came down through the beech leaves, and the little wood might feel like a cathedral.
I heard the noise of the rain starting again as it fell on the leaves, before I felt the drops on my head. It was darker now, and I wondered what noises there might be in the wood when the night came.
“We need to go.” Michael had come back and was standing close to me. “There will be more of our men coming soon. The car has to go off for examination.”
I stood there for a moment longer. What had been achieved after all? There was nothing in this burned car or in the woodland that brought me closer to Naomi, nothing even to tell us if this had been the car she had gotten into. Nothing apart from a few flakes of blue paint.
“Has this all been a waste of time, Michael? We are no further forward at all.”
Michael gripped my hand for a second and let it go.
“You’re wrong there, Jenny. We are moving forward all the time, but you have to be patient. It’s easier for me; I’ve been trained to do this. Remember, it’s steps like this, one after another, which will get us there in the end.”
But the steps are too small, I thought. It will take too long. All the same, the weight of disappointment seemed to shift just a little.
“What will happen now?” I asked him.
“The car will be taken to the forensics garage at the police headquarters in Portishead and examined inch by inch; all the findings will be kept, in case further information comes to light that makes them useful. That’s how it works, you see,” he said.
Coming out of the trees I faced the view for the first time and saw how the green of the Severn estuary flattened out toward the broad river, some two miles from where we stood on the hill. The water looked brown between the high muddy banks where the bright hulls of sailing boats lay on their sides above the tide line. Away to the left the lights of the new Severn Bridge glowed through the dusk.
“Over there is Wales,” Michael said, and he nodded at the hills that looked close enough to touch, just on the other side of the water.
Chapter 27
DORSET, 2011
THIRTEEN MONTHS LATER
Coming back from the shop on Tuesday, I notice Mary moving slowly through her garden carrying handfuls of feathers. She looks at me over the wall.
“Fox,” she says. “Dug his way in.” Rounded shapes spill awkwardly from her grasp, tubes twist through her gnarled fingers. Close up, these become the torn necks of two chickens. Behind her in the coop are piles of red-stained feathers. There are no soft background bird noises, no heads dipping and lifting.
In the tar-smelling darkness of her neat tool shed, I reach for two spades from the shining rows hanging against the wall; we dig a deep hole in the corner of her vegetable patch where the soil is softer. She tips in the six dead birds, their broken bodies bright against the walls of cold black soil. We trample the surface flat when we have filled in the hole. The images come, as I knew they would; they still flare and burn, though less often. Now it’s her soft face that is under the soil, mud is matting her hair. I step away quickly. Mary nods at me as she takes my spade, and I wonder if she guesses.
“At least the leeks will be tasty next year,” she says. “Blasted foxes.”
Inside we sit together in silence on either side of her kitchen table. Sage and chives are bunched in a flowery teapot between us, and red, yellow, and blue squares of knitting spill from a paper bag, to be taken to neighbors for sewing into mission blankets. The stack of empty egg boxes sits next to them.
Her mouth purses around the lip of china and she pushes a tin of biscuits toward me. “Sandy brought these for Christmas. Don’t like them myself.” Mary’s love for her daughter is buried deep. Sometimes I try to dig it out.
“She probably made them, Mary.”
“If they look homemade that’s because she bought them cheap at the school fair. She can’t pull the wool over my eyes.” Then she adds, as if inconsequentially, “Dan liked meeting your boys. He’s planning on staying with them in New York.”
“He told me.” I reach out and rub a sage leaf between my fingers. “He popped in the other evening.”
Mary’s bright bird eyes half close against the steam from her cup. “The boy needs to get away.”
Dan’s face hovers between us.
“My old man left some cash for him.” She nods at the photograph on top of the television. “For his education. Comes in handy now.”
Deep-set eyes under thick eyebrows look sternly from the frame. He knew then that Dan might change. He must have watched and listened to his grandson in the way that I didn’t with my children. My regrets are just under the surface, waiting to emerge at any thought.
Mary gives a short laugh. “Dan’s in a bit of a fix with his feelings.” She looks at me sideways. “Thinks he’s in love.” She leans over, pats my hand. My cheeks feel hot, as though I am guilty of something.
“Mary, for God’s sake, he’s a child, like one of mine.”
“You don’t feel like a mother to him, that’s all. Not your fault.”
She stands, picks up the empty egg cartons, and drops them into her recycling bin.
LATER, AS I paint in the shed, Dan’s shadowed face, uncertain and unhappy, gets between me and the paper. I haven’t seen Dan since he came to supper. He would never admit to being in love, wouldn’t want to talk about any of it. He would turn his face away, crushed. Or am I wrong there too? Does he want to talk about how he feels? I sit down on the bench, brushes in hand, and look out of the little window up to the gray unmarked sky. What do I know about how much space a person needs around them? I thought Naomi had needed space, but perhaps that was what I wanted her to need. It was easier that way. I can think that was true as easily as I can think th
at of course it wasn’t. Everything has started wavering again. Time had taken me somewhere I could manage, but now I am sliding back to where I used to be. Since the drugs, since I saw the name Yoska again.
I stand up and look at the scatter of seeds on the paper; I make my eyes take in the tiny red oval fruits of the haws, the black dots at the top. Slowly they become all there is, these little waiting pips of life, shuttered, small, secret. The buzz of the cell phone breaks the silence.
“I’ve found a picture of Yoska Jones.” Michael’s voice sounds careful. “It’s not his real surname. He has several aliases.”
“What does he look like?” I hold the phone as tightly as if it were Michael’s hand.
“Mid-twenties, medium build.” Is it Michael’s clipped policeman’s description that makes me feel suddenly cold? “Olive complexion, brown eyes and hair.”
I remember the slanting brown eyes that had watched my every move.
“I did some investigating,” Michael carries on. “See you in a couple of hours.” He ends the call.
My thoughts jump over each other, like Mary’s chickens fluttering and scrambling in the dark to get away from the fox. What has he found out? If Yoska the patient turns out to be Yoska the drug dealer and he was involved, does that make it better than if it was someone I don’t know? If he was the one who took her, is that good or bad? Bad, answers the voice in my head. Bad, bad.
Could I have said something else in the office? If it was him, and I had asked him to come back, or if I had referred him, he might have been placated. What if I had asked him about the sister he mentioned and offered to help?
In the house, I build a fire to welcome Michael. Theo’s montage of photos catches the flickering light. The main photo in the center always holds me. Her face seems full of secrets. Today I look at her mouth, for the first time. I notice the lips have a little mocking twist. What about the photo before that one? In the corner there is a photo full of orange leaves—the first in Theo’s woodland series—and she is laughing, her face taken up with mouth and teeth, her eyes too difficult to see. The one before that? Her profile on a holiday. Her eyes are trained on something out of the picture, slightly narrowed. What had she been thinking? She had been quieter than usual, texting, reading, or hunched over her diary. She hadn’t fought with the boys so much; she hadn’t come shopping with me. Ted had said she was moody. I look back further and see her at the New Year’s Eve party the year before; Theo must have gone to collect the photos that were on my wall at work. I had noticed the intensity of her expression in this photo before, but now I see she looks even harder and more determined than I had realized. I sit down, trembling. Had she been waiting to escape for a long time? And when her chance came, had she been so focused on getting away at last that she forgot to be careful and took the first—dangerous—opportunity that came her way?
MICHAEL KNOCKS AT the door. He comes in and kisses me briefly, his eyes preoccupied, his lips cold against mine. He takes his coat off slowly, as I wait for this second to pass, then the next. Soon he will show me, soon I’ll know.
We go into the sitting room; he opens his case, pulls out the photo. The face in the photograph has thick stubble, but I know him instantly. The slant to the eyes, high cheekbones, handsome even in a mug shot.
I don’t want it to be this man; he was too cunning and his eyes had been so guarded. “That’s him. My patient.” Then I say quickly: “But even though this man came to see me and even though we know now he is a drug dealer in ketamine, that still makes it a long shot, surely?”
“Your office couldn’t help because he was a temporary resident and he’d failed to fill in the address, but there’s another connection,” says Michael. “I know his face. I’ve seen him before.”
“How come?” But, of course, a drug dealer. The police must meet them time and again.
“In the hospital.”
“What hospital?”
“Frenchay.”
Ted’s hospital.
“He was part of a large family of gypos who kicked up in summer 2009.” Michael’s voice is curt. I look at him, surprised. Travelers are often irrationally feared and despised. Michael is different, surely?
He continues. “They created a fracas in the ward, started smashing up furniture, breaking computers. They took to breaking into local houses.”
“Why?”
“They were angry. An operation on a young girl in the family went wrong.” He stops, sits down on the sofa, takes my hand to pull me next to him. “A neurosurgical operation.”
As he is saying it, even before, I know what he is talking about.
TED’S VOICE HAD been low, monotonous. Was it June or July 2009?
“Something bad happened at work. It was my fault.”
He usually never said anything was his fault. I should have listened. I was stacking clothes for the boys’ Duke of Edinburgh expedition on our bed. They were going to the Atlas Mountains with the school. I had checked off the list as I collected the clothes. It was hot; Ted had come home unusually early and had lain on the bed, his tie pulled off, shirt sleeves rolled up.
“What was your fault, darling?”
I glanced at him as I checked off thick socks, more comfortable inside climbing boots.
“An operation on this little girl. She had Hurler Syndrome . . . her spine was narrowed, she had a hunchback.”
His voice was so slow; I thought it was tiredness after a long day. He had been coming in later, working harder. I glanced at my list: sunscreen, sun hats, woolly hats as well because it gets cold in the mountains at night.
“Hurler Syndrome, that rings a bell.” I turned to him for a moment. “Lysosomal storage disease? Lacking an enzyme so abnormal metabolites get stored everywhere, the spine, the liver?” I was surprised and faintly pleased I could remember from my exams years ago.
I think Ted stood up and paced then.
“I let Martin do the op. He wanted the experience. It went wrong.”
I kept my finger on the place I had gotten to on my list.
“That’s bad.”
I added a fleece to each pile on the bed.
“It’s my fault, you see. They think it is, anyway.” He turned his head away and I couldn’t see his expression. His voice was so quiet. “Happened on my watch.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and put his face in his hands. “Might go to court.”
“That’s horrible, darling. Poor family. It wasn’t your fault, though. You’ll be all right, you’ll see. They’ll realize you weren’t to blame.” I sat next to him, resting the clothes on my lap. I couldn’t see his face, so I took his hand.
“But I am to blame. Morally and legally.” He moved his hand away after a while and I stood up, reluctant to leave the packing.
“I’m almost done here. Can you wait till supper? We’ll talk about it then. Try not to worry.”
But while I was still sorting clothes his cell rang; he had to go back to the hospital. I had supper on my own. I thought we would talk about it again; instead it quietly disappeared from view.
“IT WAS TED’S case, wasn’t it?” I ask Michael fearfully.
“Yes.”
“Shit. He was right, then.” Grudge holders, he had said. Doctors playing God.
“What do you mean?”
“Way back, when I was making that chart of people we should question, Ted thought we ought to consider the possibility of revenge. He said you can easily make enemies; all it takes is one mistake.” I can hardly breathe as I say these words. “I remember saying I didn’t think anyone would hate us that much.”
I get up to phone Ted and he answers almost immediately. “I’ve finished my list. I’m coming down now. I want to see the photograph.”
“Yes.”
“If it’s him, then it’s my fault.” His words come fast before he hangs up.
I turn to Michael. “You thought of this too.”
He frowns; I can see he is thinking back.
“A long time ago you asked me to make a list of enemies,” I continue. “All I was able to come up with were Jade’s father, Anya’s husband.”
He nods, remembering, and I feel the burn of regret. What if I’d known about Yoska then?
My teeth start to knock together, my body shivers. I must have caught Ted’s virus. Michael puts a glass of whiskey in my hand, and then he runs a hot bath for me. The warm water stops the shivering, and afterward his arms are close around me. He kisses me and pulls me closer, but I feel too ill, too distressed to make love. He is next to me as I drift to sleep, but when I wake I’m alone; I can hear Ted’s voice downstairs. I sit up confused, unbelieving that I could have slept, and then feel giddy when I stand up. My head is burning. Downstairs Ted takes a step toward me.
“Jesus, you look awful, Jen.”
Michael puts his arm around me and pulls me toward a chair. The fire is burning steadily again, the room has been tidied. Ted stops and looks at me, then Michael, his eyes darkening with realization. His lips tighten. He is deciding not to say anything, not now.
“Where is it?” Ted turns abruptly to Michael. Michael picks up the photo from the table where I had left it and gives it to him carefully.
“It’s one of them all right,” Ted says. He is about to put it down, as if he can’t bear to look, then glances at it again. “He was there the most.”
I look at him, unable to speak. My head starts pounding and shiny little lines move at the edge of my vision.
“He was there all the time, actually.” He turns to me and his voice sounds different, frightened. “Is that the guy in your office, the one you told us about?”
I nod. My voice comes out as a whisper. “What happened to that little girl? I never really knew.”