by Jessica Moor
But the hotel sheets had been damp, the eggs at breakfast had been claggy, and when Maureen had made her advances on him he had grunted that his back was too bad and rolled away.
That was what marriage was, of course. Good parts, bad parts. In between the good and the bad you had to keep the faith. Whitworth did have the capacity for faith, but he used it all up at home.
Just as well, really. How much faith could you have in anything when you had to look down at a dead girl’s face on a Monday morning?
3.
Then
The beautiful boy turns towards Katie, sweeping his eyes across her face with choreographed elegance.
‘Hi.’
For a few moments her drunkenness seems to reassert itself. She takes a step towards him then trips slightly on her heels. That little lurch brings the world back into focus and she imagines how she must look to him. A dull-faced, off-balance girl, her makeup smeared, her hair lank with the night’s sweat.
She converts the little stagger into a wide arc, which takes her back to where Jamie stands, waiting.
It’s one in the morning. The thin crowd has swelled into a living body. The music was cool five years ago, but to Katie’s ears it now sounds clunky and echoing.
She watches Jamie exchange a brief goodbye with the group of men he’s with (‘Work guys. Don’t really like them,’ he explains dismissively), and they set off.
They’re holding hands. Anyone who saw them would think they were a couple.
Before long she’s limping a little, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
After ten minutes or so she takes her shoes off and lets them dangle from her hand by the straps.
Jamie frowns.
‘There’s a lot of broken glass here.’
‘I’m being careful.’
‘You should put your shoes back on.’
Katie dawdles for a few seconds, uncertain.
‘Look, you’re making me worry about you. Just put your shoes on.’
She does it.
He has stopped talking about himself. Instead, he tells her how beautiful she is. The way he says it makes her feel like he’s talking about someone else.
They lapse into silence. He holds her hand.
The night is cloudy, the sky like oxidized iron, betraying in patches a deepest blue and a scattering of stars.
‘Look,’ Katie says. ‘There’s the North Star.’
Jamie follows the uncertain line of her finger.
‘Oh, yeah.’
‘Or . . . I don’t really know. Is it Mars?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Or it could be a satellite, I guess.’
Jamie says nothing. He re-laces his fingers with hers. Their hands slot together with ease.
‘So, you live with your mum?’
She thinks it might be the first question he’s asked her about herself all night.
‘Yeah.’
‘Me too.’
‘It’s just for now.’
‘You’re moving out?’
‘No.’
It’s the first time she’s grappled with how to say it out loud.
‘She’s . . . she’s not well. She might not . . . she’s got cancer.’
‘Oh my God.’
‘She had it before. A few years ago. It went away but then it came back.’
She tries to keep talking but her voice splinters.
‘You’re the first person I’ve told. I don’t know why I’m telling you. I wanted to tell my friends, but it just didn’t feel right, somehow. We thought it was gone. We found out this week.’
‘That happens.’
‘I didn’t think it would happen to me. To her, I mean.’
‘And your dad?’
‘He’s dead.’
‘Shit. He got ill too?’
‘No.’
‘Oh.’
‘I guess . . . I mean, some people say alcoholism’s an illness.’
‘Right. I see.’
‘But no one made him drink-drive. He went into the back of a lorry.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’m just glad he didn’t hurt anyone else.’
‘Of course. He’s responsible. You can’t put it in the same bracket as people like your mum.’
‘Yeah. Exactly.’
Katie’s worried that she might cry, so she heads off the possibility by saying, with a little smile, ‘Sorry to be such a massive downer.’
‘Don’t be sorry. I mean . . . thank you. For sharing with me.’
Sharing doesn’t feel like the right word, but it’s the only word he offers, so she accepts it, and they keep walking.
He says goodbye to her at her mother’s front door. He doesn’t make any indication that he wants to come in, and she’s grateful for that. Her mum sleeps odd hours.
He asks for her number. She gives it to him.
* * *
• • •
Katie isn’t sure if what she’s feeling is hunger or anxiety, so she hedges her bets and makes tea and toast.
She checks her phone. Nothing. It’s 1.58 a.m.
She puts her phone on silent and eats sitting at the table, staring at the jumble of pill boxes, plastic bags and old detective novels that covers the table-top. Her mother has left the TV on with the sound muted, which lends the faces onscreen a kind of weariness.
The fuzz of alcohol has worn away completely and left a hollow feeling in its place. A small part of her head, just behind her fringe, begins to ache.
She crosses to the kitchen cabinet to take down one of her dad’s old pint glasses and fills it with cold water. Then she throws away the packaging for the microwave moussaka her mum must’ve had for dinner and washes the dirty dish in the sink.
She checks her phone again and switches it on to vibrate before turning off the lights and going upstairs. She avoids the creaking floorboard outside her mum’s room.
She takes off the remaining smears of makeup, puts on a pair of clean pyjamas and gets into bed.
She feels the same sense of anticipation she did on the day she left for university, and, perhaps perversely, on the day her dad walked out on them. There was even a shameful note of it when her mother told her about her diagnosis, although that quickly gave way to a metallic chill that she now carries daily at her core.
Her phone fusses on the bedside table. She counts to five, then picks it up to look at the screen.
It was great meeting you tonight. J xxx
4.
Now
They drew up to a street lined with Victorian houses in the posh part of Widringham, the part that made tourists think it was a nice town.
Parking on the roadside, Brookes crossed to one of the large houses. Its gravel drive was oddly carless and the recycling bins were overflowing. Whitworth followed him. They climbed a set of stone steps, then pressed the button to the entry videophone.
There was a long pause. Both men glanced sideways at the beady camera lens. Then the door cracked open enough to reveal a short, fat woman. She had turquoise horn-rimmed glasses, a slash of red lipstick on lips so dried out they resembled a cat’s arse and black hair dyed far past the point of believability.
‘You were supposed to meet me by the pillar box,’ she snapped, instead of a hello.
She inched herself out of the front door piece by piece, never opening it any more than was absolutely necessary, then thudded it shut with her back. Once the door was closed she began to advance on the two men, forcing them down the stone stairs one by one.
‘Oh, it’s all right, love. We didn’t want to come in anyway.’ Whitworth made a show of blowing out his breath, emphasizing the frosty vapour that it formed in the February air. ‘Don’t worry about us. Brrr.’
He stamped his feet on the crunching gravel and a tiny p
uddle of muddied ice cracked beneath his shoe.
The woman didn’t smile. She held out her hand imperiously.
‘Credentials, please. If you are who I think you are.’
Whitworth sneaked a look at Brookes, who was smiling blandly. He reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew his police badge, wordlessly presenting it for the woman’s inspection. Brookes did the same.
The woman narrowed her eyes as she read, folding her arms across her heavy chest. Whitworth was reminded of a school dinner lady.
‘We take no chances here. Not with the kind of characters we’ve had poking around. With the threats we’ve been having. Certainly not after what’s happened to Katie.’
She moved towards Whitworth without extending a hand or a smile.
‘I’m Valerie Redwood. Chief executive.’
The way she said her name made Whitworth think she was in the habit of announcing herself.
‘I’m not sorry for obstructing you,’ she continued, not giving Whitworth a chance to reply. ‘I make no secret of the fact that I’m a difficult woman.’
Her vowels sounded like they had been forced into the contours of a local accent, but there was a fruitiness underneath that suggested an expensive education.
‘This is a female-only safe space. I make no apology for that.’
She gestured at the two men.
‘For all I know, you could both be perpetrators. My job is to protect women, not necessarily to help the police.’
Whitworth was used to ungrateful attitudes towards the Force. Perhaps some people really couldn’t help it – it was just the environment they’d been brought up in. But women like Valerie Redwood ought to know better. He couldn’t stand the self-importance of it all – the way posh women like her mined past history to convince themselves they had problems. It made him think of his mother, quietly earning her factory wage, ruling over four children and a drunk husband with an iron fist. Yeah, his dad had given her the odd backhand when he got home from the pub. She’d clocked him right back. It was the way it was.
‘Well, Mrs Redwood.’
‘Ms.’
‘Well, Valerie.’ Brookes stepped in. ‘You say you want to protect women. That puts us on the same side, doesn’t it? If Katie was killed by some . . . you know’ – he lowered his voice – ‘some unstable character, then we need every bit of information you’ve got to put him away and make this town safer for women. Besides’ – he jerked his head towards the front door of the house – ‘we don’t want to take you away from your vital work at what must be a very difficult time.’
She seemed to soften slightly.
‘This is Detective Constable Brookes,’ Whitworth said.
She pursed her lips, tilting her head to look up at Brookes, as if she were trying to decide what species he belonged to.
Then she turned wordlessly, producing a bunch of keys from the pocket of her leopard-print raincoat, and led them back up the stone steps to the front door. She made to put the key in the lock, then paused and dropped her hand, turning back to the two detectives.
‘I should emphasize to you that this is an absolute exception,’ she said, each consonant thrutting out spittily between her teeth. ‘We never usually permit males in a refuge. Never.’
‘That’s understandable.’ Brookes shot a glance at Whitworth.
‘These are exceptional circumstances, Valerie,’ Whitworth said.
Valerie Redwood’s scarlet lips tightened over her teeth for a second, then she turned her back on the two of them, as if to attend more closely to the lock.
‘Please comply with any instructions I give you as we move around the refuge,’ she muttered to the crumbling paint of the door. She seemed to steel herself for a minute, then turned the key. The door swung open and the three of them entered.
As Whitworth stepped over the threshold, following Val Redwood, a wave of central heating hit him, carrying with it the smell of stale cooking and own-brand fabric conditioner. Mother-smell.
He found himself in a narrow hallway with all the beige internal doors closed. On the wall hung a corkboard with fire-safety regulations, a list of house rules and a cleaning rota. There was little inside the building to distinguish it from anywhere else.
Valerie called out to the house. ‘It’s Val. Just letting you all know that I’ve got two male police officers with me.’
The house made no reply.
Whitworth glanced at Brookes, who gave the faintest indication of a shrug before smiling jovially and following Val into a pokey office. The walls were decorated with children’s drawings, with the words ‘thank you’ spidering across the pages in coloured pencil. One of them was unmistakeably a portrait of Val herself – black hair, red lipstick, massive bosom and all. Some of the pictures were yellowing and curling at the edges.
‘I’ve prepared Katie’s employment records for you to review,’ Val said, gesturing towards the desk, which was clear except for a slim cardboard file. Beside it sat a much thicker wad of papers, zealously highlighted and spiked with coloured sticky tabs.
‘Also, for your convenience, a copy of the evidence I submitted to you several weeks ago,’ Val said. ‘Maybe now you’ll take it more seriously.’
Whitworth managed to stop the question ‘Evidence?’ slipping out of his mouth, but Brookes was less discreet, craning his neck to see the pile of paper.
‘Oh . . .’
It seemed to be a collection of emails and . . . screen grabs, were they called? – from Facebook, and the other one. Twitter.
Could @valredwood please tell us how much of the money raised will go to male victims of domestic violence, since she claims to care about ‘all victims’?
Interesting that @valredwood never replied to my simple request for information. Her misandry shows through once again
@valredwood feminism is cancer
1/? Ideology-driven lesbian bitches like @valredwood and the rest of them at @widwomensaid serve to trivialize REAL rape you can’t just change your mind on a whim then cry about it in court
2/? Women these days are encouraged only to think about themselves (the nasty side of so-called female empowerment) and have no regard for the men whose lives are being ruined by reckless accusations
3/? The facts are plainly apparent that men are being scapegoated
4/? Yes all societies have their problems but to claim that there’s some epidemic of violence that only affects women is unjust and absurd
5/? Most murder victims are men but I don’t see @valredwood and her feminist pals speaking out about this I WONDER WHY???
@valredwood women are unbelievably coddled by the modern world even though men are committing suicide in droves it seems these feminists don’t care at all
interesting that @valredwood did not attend the PCC engagement event and sent one of her flunkies instead DO NOT BE FOOLED the feminist lobby is incredibly powerful and will silence anything that doesn’t fit their agenda
this modern obsession with victimhood turns my stomach. If that dyke @valredwood really thinks all men are rapists then maybe she’ll get what’s coming to her
It went on and on, for pages. At a glance, it looked like a difference of opinion rather than a threat of violence, Whitworth observed, even if the language was a bit crass. If you were looking for offence, you’d be able to find it, certainly, but that didn’t make it criminal.
‘Oh, yes, sir, we’ve already had this,’ Brookes said.
‘We have?’
‘It’s separate –’
‘It may very well not be,’ Val Redwood interjected.
‘They’re woman-haters, for sure,’ Brookes continued. ‘Mum’s-basement types, in my experience. Sorry he called you a lesbian, Valerie. That’s really not very nice. But I’m sure it’s just internet chatter. They never actually do anything, this lot. There’s nothing he
re we’d call a viable threat of violence.’
‘And the rape threats?’
‘Rape threats?’ Brookes looked blank.
‘If that dyke Val Redwood really thinks all men are rapists then maybe she’ll get what’s coming to her,’ Val recited, apparently from memory.
‘I’m not saying it’s not upsetting. But I think you’re reading into that a bit, maybe,’ Whitworth said.
‘I don’t think I am,’ Val replied, her voice shaking. Clearly, she was pissed off. ‘The point is, Detective, that we have plenty of reasons to believe that the situation has escalated, even putting Katie’s death to one side for a moment. We’ve had strange cars parked across the street. Side gates left open at night. And’ – she leaned forward to indicate the CCTV screens on the back walls – ‘one of our cameras stopped working. Mysteriously.’
‘Sounds like you might need to maintain your equipment a bit more carefully, love.’
Whitworth knew he was being flippant, but there was something addictive about seeing those cheeks purpling on cue.
‘We’re not careless here, Detective,’ Val responded. ‘I don’t know what you think a refuge is for, but I can tell you that our number-one job is homicide prevention. We’re careful. Katie was careful. Most of the women here have a viable death threat on their heads. They’re relying on me to keep them safe.’
She tapped on the front of her polyester jumper.
‘Not you. Not the police, not the courts. Me, and my expertise, and this building. On a forty-grand grant, and that’s getting cut next year. I sent all this information to your station weeks ago. Do you think I’m having a laugh here, Detective?’
She seemed to swell.
‘We’ve been a bit overstretched –’
‘My employee is dead. I’d be grateful if you took my expertise seriously. This is male violence. This is –’
‘DC Brookes.’ Whitworth picked up Katie’s employment file and the pile of print-outs, thrusting them both towards Brookes. ‘Perhaps you could review this – both of these – while Valerie and I have a chat?’
Val Redwood still looked annoyed, but she didn’t seem to be able to find anything specific to disagree with.