The Split

by Sharon Bolton

  Three times now, he has allowed himself to be compromised by vulnerable and – might as well face it – attractive young women. His judgement has been seriously at fault.

  Delilah pulls up outside his house and they sit in silence. Joe wishes he was twelve again, because when he was twelve there were no problems his mum couldn’t fix.

  ‘Thanks,’ he says, in a small voice.

  He feels her hand cover his.

  ‘There’s something wrong,’ he says. ‘More than her health problems. She’s just admitted to being married and I think she’s genuinely afraid of her husband.’

  ‘Name?’ Delilah has switched instantly to police mode.

  ‘Frederick Lloyd, I assume. She calls him Freddie.’

  Joe feels a pang of conscience as he speaks, and wonders if he is choosing to blame Freddie for Felicity’s problems because it lessens his own failure to diagnose her properly.

  ‘She told me she saw him in Heffers last night,’ he continues. ‘I think he’s here, in the city. I think she’s terrified of him for some reason she can’t or won’t admit to, and I think she’s prepared to travel to the other side of the planet to get away from him.’

  ‘Lots of women never report their abusive partners,’ Delilah says. ‘Even very smart ones.’

  Joe knows this. He’s met several before now.

  ‘I’ll make some enquiries,’ she tells him. ‘Now, get some rest. I’ll wait till I see you in the window.’

  He opens the passenger door and then bends low to say good night. ‘When do I start looking after you?’ he says.

  57

  Felicity

  He’s here.

  Felicity starts awake to find her bedroom unusually dark. No light at all seems to be coming in from outside. She lies motionless, hot and damp between the bedsheets, her heart hammering. In the distance, she can hear a dog barking, and also the gentle roar of traffic. A subdued groan sounds from the hot-water system and music at a low volume is coming from one of the neighbouring houses. A minute goes by, and another. She tells herself that there is nothing to be afraid of.

  Her skin prickles. Her beating heart will not listen to her. She eases herself up and turns her pillow. The reverse side is pleasantly cool and she pushes the duvet away from her shoulders. Her hair is damp against her neck and she finds that she is thirsty, as though she has drunk heavily. She pulls herself out of bed and switches on the light.

  Nothing happens.

  Bulbs blow all the time in old properties, she has been through several in recent months, a bedside lamp failing means nothing. Telling herself all this and more she steps carefully in what she thinks is the direction of the bedroom door. The room really is very dark.

  The wall arrives sooner than expected. Her sense of direction has deserted her. Panic multiplies as she stumbles around, grasping for the main light switch. She finds it. Again, nothing. It doesn’t work. The hall is as black as her bedroom. The tiny electronic lights that normally illuminate her house just enough for her to be able to walk around at night have vanished and from upstairs in the study she can hear the gentle beeping that tells her the laptop battery is nearly empty. She’d left it charging.

  She is not going to think about the fuse box in the basement. One switch flicked and the house would lose all power. She is not going to think about the un-repaired window. This is a power cut. This is her house, not some nightmare world in which she is blind. She turns to where she thinks she will find the hall table, to where she is sure she will still find the soapstone bear, only because it doesn’t hurt to be cautious.

  Watch out. Watch out. Watch out.

  Something springs at her from behind and she almost tumbles to the hall floor. Even as her mind screams that the threat cannot be real, a great weight is pulling her down. She staggers back and the two of them come up hard against a wall. Her scalp burns as her head is tugged backwards and metal gleams a few inches from her face. Thinking, knife, she twists, bucks, claws at anything she can reach.

  He’s got you. He’s got you. Kill him now. This is your chance.

  You’re going to die, you’re going to die.

  Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!

  Tear out his eyes. Pull his face apart.

  Voices scream at her. Men, women, children. She has no idea which are in her head, and which are real. Some of them, she thinks, are her own. A hand wraps itself around her mouth and her hair is free. She slams her body backwards. A pained grunt sounds in her ear and she feels a second of freedom.

  ‘Help!’ She yells. ‘Police!’

  ‘Bitch, bitch, bitch. I’m going to kill you.’

  She can feel breath against her face.

  Fight him, come on, fight him. You’ve been waiting for this.

  Two hands are on the knife now. Her own and another. It is tugged this way and that. It is inches from her throat. She is fighting someone with phenomenal strength. She screams again. She has neighbours on both sides. They can’t hear this and do nothing.

  ‘Shut up, bitch.’

  They are speeding forward. She sees the faint outline of the front door’s glass panel hurtling towards her. Her face is pressed against the glass. It is going to break. Someone is laughing. She kicks back and makes contact with bone, hears a cry of pain and then the pressure on her is released. She spins to face her assailant as the dark figure leaps on her again. Now she is on the floor. Her head bangs against the carpet of the stairs and tiny glints of light break up the darkness. Someone is kneeling on her chest and there are hands around her neck.

  He’s going to kill you. He was always going to kill you.

  Thought you’d get away from him. You’re a fool.

  Die now. No one will miss you.

  Something strikes the side of her head and her vision is filled with white light. She can’t breathe. She grasps the hands around her throat, digs in her nails, tries to pull them away.

  Someone is screaming and she doesn’t think it is her. Something is banging, deafeningly loud, over and over again, and she wonders if it is her head, thudding against the stairs. She pictures the stone bear, smashing into her skull, breaking the bones like eggshell. Bang. Bang. Bang.

  Everything goes away.

  * * *

  Her attacker becomes a uniformed police officer. He holds her wrists gently and says, ‘Steady, steady, take it easy, Felicity.’ Then he changes again, this time into a paramedic in a yellow vest, who puts a mask over her face.

  The voices have become gentler, kinder.

  ‘Stay with me, Felicity. Keep your eyes open.’

  ‘You’re safe now, Felicity. We’ve got you.’

  She much prefers these voices to the last lot. One voice is most insistent that she stay with him. He repeats it over and over again, but she is so sleepy, she can’t seem to keep her eyes open.

  They will not let her sleep. The voices are ruthless beneath their gentle tones. They lean over her, patting the side of her face, lifting her hands, and saying her name. She can hear a siren. She has no idea how much time is passing. The lights get brighter. She is inside and surrounded by a rush of people. Still the voices sound in her ear.

  Finally, when she can hear the city beginning to stir, she opens her eyes and sees that she is in a hospital room. Small and square, painted a dull matte white, she is surrounded by instruments that buzz and beep and the electronic dawn chorus has an oddly reassuring feel. She is alive, and for some time last night, she really didn’t think she would be. Behind the window blinds, she has a sense of the darkness softening. It is nearly dawn, and Joe’s mother is standing in the doorway of her room.

  She lets the door close softly behind her. She is a large woman who, judging by the lines on her face and the puffiness of her skin, is fonder of alcohol than she should be. Her pink and blonde hair would be more suited to a teenager than a woman in her fifties and her trouser suit is a size too small. She looks nothing like Joe.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Lloyd.’ She pulls a chair away from th
e wall and sits beside Felicity’s bed. She does not ask her how she is feeling, or whether she is up to answering a few questions. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Delilah Jones. Can you tell me when your basement window was broken?’

  Detective Inspector Jones pulls a recording device from her bag and places it on the bedside cupboard. She switches it on without asking permission. ‘We’re thinking it wasn’t last night.’

  ‘It was Friday night.’ Felicity’s throat feels sore and she isn’t sure until she hears words coming out of her mouth whether or not it will work. It does, but the effort hurts. ‘At least, I found it on Friday night, it could have been earlier in the week and I didn’t notice it. I couldn’t get a glazier out before next week so I nailed some wood to the frame to make it safe.’

  ‘Didn’t work too well, did it? So, you’ve had two break-ins on two successive nights. Did you report the first one?’

  Felicity shakes her head.

  ‘I’m sorry, could you speak up for the tape?’

  ‘Don’t you need my permission to record me?’

  ‘No, but you don’t have to talk to me. Of course, if you refuse, I’ll have to take this to the next level.’

  Felicity doesn’t need to ask what the next level is. The hospital, and her frail condition, will only protect her for so long.

  ‘I didn’t report the first break-in. Nothing was taken.’

  ‘Even so, someone breaks a window to enter your house and you don’t report it? Why ever not?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Felicity says. It is the truth. She doesn’t know. So much of what she does she can make no sense of, even to herself.

  Joe’s mum is looking for something in her bag. When she straightens up, Felicity gasps. She is looking at a knife in a large plastic bag.

  ‘Recognise this?’ Joe’s mum asks.

  She can see faint brown specks on the blade that could be blood. ‘Is it one of mine?’ she asks.

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘I have a set like that,’ Felicity says. ‘You can check easily. If there’s one missing from the knife block, it’s mine.’

  The policewoman nods. ‘We think it’s yours,’ she says. ‘We’ll need to keep it for a while.’ The knife disappears back into the bag. ‘What can you tell me about your assailant?’

  ‘He was very strong,’ she says. ‘And fast. He kept coming at me. From every direction. I’m sorry, could you pass me some water?’

  Breathing heavily, Joe’s mum pours water from the jug on the bedside cabinet, spilling some of it. Felicity pushes herself up in the bed and holds out her hand.

  ‘He?’ DI Jones asks. She makes the handing over of water, the most simple of human courtesies, feel begrudged.

  Swallowing hurts. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You said “he”. It was a male then?’

  It has never occurred to Felicity that her attacker might not have been a man. She remembers the voices screaming in her ears. Kill him, this is your chance.

  ‘I assumed so,’ she says. ‘He was very strong.’

  ‘Can you describe him?’

  ‘It was dark.’

  ‘How tall?’

  ‘He attacked me from behind. I didn’t really see him.’

  ‘Black, white, Asian?’

  ‘It was too dark.’

  ‘Was he masked?’

  ‘Maybe. I’m not sure.’

  ‘Did he speak to you? Did you hear his voice?’

  Impossible to tell. She had heard so many voices.

  ‘No. I didn’t hear his voice.’

  ‘The medical staff tell me you declined an intimate examination.’

  ‘I wasn’t raped.’ There had been nothing sexual about the attack. It had been about maiming, killing, obliterating.

  ‘There’s a cut on your neck, some bruising on your head and around your neck,’ DI Jones says. ‘You had concussion. What do you think the motive was?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you have any enemies, Miss Lloyd?’

  Does she? She feels as though she does, and yet none she can name. ‘No,’ she says.

  ‘Was anyone behaving oddly when you were out last night?’

  ‘I didn’t go out last night. I was home all evening.’ No sooner are the words out of her mouth than Felicity’s heart starts to hammer in her chest. She tries to turn back the pages in her mind and sees them all blank. She has no memory of going out last night. And yet she has no idea what she did instead.

  In the meantime, Delilah’s eyes have become mean slits in her puffy face. ‘You had dinner with my son at Galleria,’ she says. ‘You were both caught on camera on Jesus Lane. I collected him from your house myself.’

  Felicity has no memory of meeting Joe. She is going to be sick. She looks around but she cannot get out of bed without unhooking herself from machines and drips.

  DI Jones does not seem to notice her panic. ‘My son tells me you have an estranged husband. He thinks you’re afraid of him.’

  Felicity gulps in air and says, ‘Is he supposed to tell you that?’

  The policewoman knows a threat when she hears one. She gets up from her chair. ‘He also tells me you’re leaving town,’ she says, as she switches off the recording equipment. ‘Have a good trip.’

  58

  Joe

  Joe walks into the café expecting to meet his supervisor and sees his mother at a table by the window, tucking into smashed avocado on sourdough toast. She folds up her newspaper and lifts her bag from the other chair. For a moment, he is tempted to walk out.

  ‘Seriously?’ he says. ‘This is verging on stalking.’

  ‘Get over yourself,’ Delilah snaps. ‘I’ll be gone in five minutes. I wanted to catch you before work. I won’t get a moment to fart once I get in.’

  ‘And people wonder why I’m a bit rough around the edges.’

  Joe orders an Americano from the counter and sits down. ‘What’s up?’ he says, although he knows this can only be about Felicity. He has spent twenty-four hours telling himself that he cannot visit her in hospital, that he can’t even phone to check on her progress.

  ‘Felicity Lloyd has discharged herself from hospital,’ she begins.

  Joe isn’t surprised. ‘Never a good idea,’ he says.

  ‘She wasn’t that badly hurt.’ Delilah slices into a tiny vine tomato. ‘She’s also contacted the station saying she doesn’t want any further action taken in regard to her break-in. She thinks now that she was probably confused. She got up in the night, disorientated because all the lights were out and because she’d had a bit to drink the evening before – I guess you’d know something about that – she fell down the stairs. She says she’s sure now that she wasn’t attacked and apologises for wasting our time.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  Delilah drops her fork with a clang on the counter. ‘Do I look like I’m playing for laughs?’

  ‘Does it ring true to you?’

  She resumes eating. ‘It rings like complete bollocks. Even without two sets of fingerprints on the knife we found, and two distinct types of human blood. We’ve also found both sets of fingerprints in other places. One set occurs throughout the house, so probably Felicity’s. The other in just a few places on the ground floor and around the basement window, so probably the intruder.’

  ‘You say probably. You haven’t checked?’

  ‘If she’s refusing to co-operate, this is going nowhere. I can’t waste money getting forensics involved.’

  Joe’s coffee arrives. It’s too hot to drink, but he warms his hands around the over-sized cup. His mother pushes her plate to one side.

  ‘Joe, we see it all the time,’ she says. ‘Women will not testify against abusive husbands and partners. I feel for the lass. But I care more about you. I don’t want you involved any more.’

  ‘What if she’s badly hurt next time? What if he kills her?’

  His mother gives a long, drawn out sigh. She is about to respond when the doorbell chimes and Torquil be
nds his head to get in through the door.

  ‘Delilah! How delightful.’ He kisses her on both cheeks. ‘Can I get anyone a top-up?’

  Both Joe and his mother decline and his supervisor moves away towards the counter.

  ‘Mum, there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about,’ Joe says. ‘I’m worried about one of the rough sleepers.’

  Delilah is gathering her things but he knows she is listening. She is always listening.

  ‘Woman called Dora,’ he goes on. ‘Early sixties. White. Grey haired. Frail. Wears a blue hat and a green coat. No one’s seen her for days. Not since Tuesday anyway.’

  ‘They come and go.’ Delilah is ready to leave now. ‘You said yourself they’re nervous about this Shane bloke, who must rise from a coffin when the sun goes down because I swear we can’t find a frigging trace of him.’

  ‘I know. But that doesn’t make sense for Dora. She’s lived here for years. I’m not sure she’d know how to go somewhere else. And she has a soft spot for me. I’m lucky if I can go three days without her popping up somewhere. And now she’s vanished.’

  Delilah’s eyes narrow. ‘You think something’s happened to her?’

  Joe doesn’t want to think this, but still … ‘It’s not like her.’

  ‘If you’re going to make someone disappear, pick on the homeless,’ Delilah says. ‘No one looks out for them.’

  ‘I know,’ Joe says. ‘Which is why we have to.’

  * * *

  ‘I love your mum,’ Torquil says, as they watch Delilah stride down the street to her illegally parked car. ‘But she always looks unhappy. Police officers need a settled private life, and so few of them have it.’

  ‘She never got over Dad running off with one of my secondary-school teachers,’ Joe says. ‘Although she freely admits she was working every hour God sent. It’s one of the reasons she’s so protective of me now. She feels guilty about never being around when I was growing up.’

  Joe changes the subject. He doesn’t want to talk about his parents. ‘So, how’s this for a theory?’ he says instead. ‘Felicity’s husband is hanging around town and he’s dangerous. He’s been stalking her for some time now. He’s responsible for the break-ins at her house, for her cupboards being rearranged, for the abusive diary entries, for the TV being turned to channels she’s never watched. She’s seriously traumatised by all this. However, because of abuse she suffered as a child—’