by Jessica Moor
Then a struggle, and he’d got the knife off her.
And stabbed and stabbed and stabbed.
He had blacked out, he said.
There was no reason not to believe what he said was true. The doctor who examined Peony had found bruises on her body. A row of some kind. It was impossible to say what had really happened in these situations.
Valerie Redwood would be incensed, of course, Whitworth thought. She would want Lynne to have had the kind of death that suited her purposes, a martyr’s death. Some steely piece of reality would slip between her theory and the reality like a penknife picking a lock. The door had swung open to reveal – nothing at all.
* * *
• • •
The front door of the house opened and the gurney carrying Lynne Ward’s body – bagged, labelled, thingified – rattled down the garden path, its spindly wheels skipping over the gravel.
‘Nothing more we can do for her tonight,’ Whitworth said.
Brookes gave a sharp sort of nod, like a military cadet who was learning to receive orders, and stood up. They walked towards the car.
All the lights in the house were still on, the front room lit invitingly behind heavy velvet curtains.
‘She thought he was following her. I could tell. When I talked to her,’ Whitworth said.
‘How?’
‘She was scared. Convinced that any bloke on the street had come to spy on her.’
‘Maybe she was always scared. Just her personality. Even a stopped clock, and all that.’
‘You’d never think it of a guy like that, would you?’ Whitworth looked over to the police car Frank Ward was sitting in. Someone had wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and, from the way his hands were clasped together, you wouldn’t know that they were cuffed.
He could hear Peony wailing. Daddy Daddy Daddy. It tore at Whitworth’s own breath.
‘He wanted his kid back,’ Brookes said. ‘He wanted his life back.’
‘Maybe. Either way, sounds like we know who the bloke hanging about was.’
‘That’ll make Val happy.’
‘Val’s never happy. But it clears it up.’
‘Doesn’t help with the Katie Straw case.’
‘Do you think Val Redwood’s right?’ Whitworth said. ‘Do you think some men just hate women?’
Brookes frowned a little then took a bottle of water out of his coat pocket and unscrewed the cap meditatively.
‘Nope,’ he said, after a gulp. ‘I don’t. Look. It doesn’t make any sense for men to hate women. Biologically. It doesn’t work. Look at Lynne Ward.’ He gestured back towards the house with the water bottle.
‘We don’t know what she did. For all we know, she spent every day dragging her husband through the dirt while she lived off his money. You saw that house. You saw all the things he gave her. And what did she do in return?’
He gestured at the police car in which the social worker was sitting with Peony Ward. ‘She took his kid away. She stopped him seeing his own kid. When you think about it like that – I mean, I don’t know the full story – but you’ve got to understand why people can snap. It’s not right, but you can understand it. Doesn’t make it any less pathetic, but it makes sense.
‘It’s just individuals,’ he said. ‘Humans. It’s not this big ideological thing, like everyone makes out.’
Whitworth had always made a point of not trying too hard to understand criminals.
It was so easy to go native, to slip into their systems of logic, their ways of thinking, and then the next thing you knew you were understanding them, and then the next thing, you were forgiving them. Then the next thing, you were letting them get away with it.
But sometimes, the questions nagged.
Whitworth believed that women and men were equal. Different, but equal, and the problem these days was that people tried to get rid of the different part to make the equal part easier.
Did that mean that women were more able to accept the wounds that men dealt them? He thought perhaps they were.
Frank Ward had gone too far, of course. He wasn’t justifying the behaviour of men like Frank Ward.
‘Bye, sweetheart.’
Brookes was crouched in front of the little girl. Every angle of his body was bent towards her. He looked like he wanted to say something important – maybe give this little girl a key to navigate what promised to be a fucked-up life.
‘Take care,’ he said, in the end.
Whitworth wanted to shake his head. That wasn’t the point. The little girl would learn to take care of herself, sure she would. That wasn’t the point.
They drove, back through the winding hills, the fifty minutes to Widringham. It wasn’t the kind of road that was important enough to be lit at night, and Whitworth felt a childish wariness of whatever it was that lay beyond the circle of the car’s headlamps, though he knew it was only the heathery rocks, the sheep fields, the smattering of woods he’d grown up among.
‘One of the nice things about moving to the country,’ Brookes said, after a good twenty-five minutes of silence, ‘is that you can see all the stars.’
Whitworth wasn’t sure what to say, so he just grunted.
Brookes dropped him outside his house.
It was nearly two in the morning, and all the lights were off. Whitworth went to the fridge, wondering if Maureen might have kept back a plate for him, but there was nothing apart from a carton of eggs and a few onions. He thought briefly about making himself an omelette, then shut the fridge door and put a couple of pieces of bread into the toaster.
He’d get Brookes to ask Frank Ward about it in the morning. How long he’d stalked his wife. Could you stalk your own wife? Was there such a thing?
Surely there was only such a thing as a father who wanted his daughter back, who wanted his wife back, who wanted someone to attend to the wound, to acknowledge what he’d lost.
40.
Then
The neighour across the road had called the fire brigade. He had seen the flames when he had gone outside to switch off his car alarm. He had saved her life, all the emergency services are at pains to point out.
The fire started because she left her curling iron on. That is pretty clear.
I hope you understand you could have died, young lady.
It might be true. She remembers so little at the moment. She needs to sleep.
She is sinking in and out of consciousness. She isn’t a young lady. She is either a child or an old woman, but she can’t quite say which.
She is in pain, but she doesn’t understand this kind of pain. It’s a pain of the lungs, of the skin.
The pain is dimming, like music fading out. She doesn’t have the chance to miss it before she falls into a state like sleep.
* * *
• • •
She’s awake. Properly awake this time. She feels the way she always does when she’s slept for too long. There is a heaviness in her, and an absence, the feeling that she ought to be feeling something – either pleasure or pain. But at the moment there is nothing.
The nothing will surely go away soon.
Jamie is here. Jamie is always here.
‘How could you do this, Katie?’
But Jamie hasn’t been . . .
Did he not come to bed?
Her fingers grasp at squeaky cotton sheets. This isn’t her bed. This isn’t home. The lights are too bright.
‘Never mind how could you do this to me – how could you do this to your mum?’
His voice is right in her ear. Everything else is distant.
It had been so quiet. Quiet apart from the door. Apart from the car alarm.
There should have been something else.
Her mum is there. Mum is always so sick, so tired of being so sick.
Her father’s th
ere, too. He is standing behind the glass as well, with his arm around her mother, kissing her face and pinching at her shrunken breasts and laughing, always laughing. Nothing is ever too serious for him.
Maybe her mother will watch her die. Then she won’t have to watch her mother die.
‘Why did you leave the curling iron on?’
His voice is so loud it rings and clatters in Katie’s every cell. ‘This is why I can’t trust you to look after yourself.’
‘I didn’t curl my hair.’
Jamie seizes a fistful of it, yanking it around in front of her face. The ends fall into corkscrew curls. ‘What’s this, then?’
‘I don’t know.’
She is so tired. Too tired for lying.
‘You did it,’ she says.
Jamie draws in his breath. She wonders if he is preparing to scream at her. Finally. She has been waiting for this for so long. Always dangled in front of her. Never realized.
But the scream doesn’t come.
A nurse has walked in.
‘Just taking your blood pressure, my darling.’
Jamie smiles.
‘Thanks so much,’ he says. ‘You’re doing a wonderful job.’
‘I want him to leave,’ Katie says, her voice cracking. Her throat is so dry.
Jamie laughs. ‘She’s been making jokes all morning,’ he says. ‘I think it’s a sign she’s on the mend.’
The nurse laughs too.
‘He’s going to kill me.’
‘I should think he might be a bit cross, yeah.’
The nurse is now taking her temperature, pushing the gun-like thermometer uncomfortably far into her ear. ‘That’s all his things that got burned up, too.’
‘She always worries too much,’ Jamie intercedes.
Then he sits on the bed with her as if they are an old couple, in it together. He wraps his arm around her shoulders. The breath quickens in her scorched lungs.
‘As if I’d be angry. I’m just so relieved she’s safe.’
The nurse smiles.
‘He’s a keeper, this one,’ she says, nodding at Jamie.
Yes. Jamie. He always keeps.
The nurse’s face shifts into a knowing smile. ‘I can see you already think that.’ She is looking down at Katie’s left hand, where a little silver ring sits against her red, swollen fingers.
‘Let’s hope that bump on the head didn’t change her mind,’ Jamie says, laughing again.
To say it is like a bad dream would be a lie. It is all the worst things about being awake, seeing that ring on her finger.
It sits like the one visible link in a chain that goes on for ever. It is a lovely ring, she has to admit. Bright and delicate and strong as the silk of a spider web.
Jamie has good taste.
* * *
• • •
‘Oh, good!’
It’s another nurse now, one who barely glances down at the bed as she makes her way through the curtains.
‘You’re awake,’ she says. She looks down at the bandaged arm then frowns slightly. ‘Wouldn’t recommend that you wear any jewellery on the burnt areas for the time being.’
Jamie smiles. ‘She didn’t want to be without it,’ he says.
The nurse has already gone back to her clipboard.
‘Okay. Well, that’s up to you. Anyway, since you’re awake . . . just got a few standard questions. Could you confirm your full name for me?’
She draws in a breath, but before she can get any sound out the empty space in the air has already been filled.
‘Katie Eleanor Bradley,’ Jamie says.
The nurse writes something on her clipboard.
‘Right. Date of birth?’
Jamie supplies it smoothly.
‘Do you happen to know your blood type?’
Katie turns to Jamie, frowning slightly.
‘A-negative,’ he says.
‘And last but not least . . .’ The nurse turns to Jamie and jerks her chin a little. ‘Can I assume this gentleman is your next of kin? Husband?’
‘Fiancé,’ Jamie replies. At the same time, Katie says, ‘No.’
The nurse ignores Jamie and raises her eyebrows inquiringly.
‘No?’ she says.
‘She’s a bit confused . . .’
The nurse ignores him. ‘Who’s your next of kin, my love? It’s really important that our records are correct.’
The pain in her arm starts to flare up again.
‘There’s my mum . . .’
‘Where’s your mum, Katie?’
‘She’s also in the hospital,’ Jamie interjects. ‘Over on the oncology ward.’
A small crease appears between the nurse’s brows as she raises her eyebrows.
‘Oh, I see . . .’
‘She’s forgotten. Or she’s confused,’ Jamie continues.
He is doing his authority voice, the voice they once practised together for his job interviews, the voice that summarizes the situation and squashes it into a neat little ball.
‘She’s . . . well, technically, her mother’s her next of kin. But she’s sedated a lot, you see. I’m thinking in practical terms, in terms of who can actually make decisions with regard to Katie’s care . . .’ He picks up the left hand with the ring on it, very gently, and holds it up for the nurse to see. ‘It looks like, really, I’m your guy.’
The nurse’s nod, which was as rhythmic as a metronome, is conspicuously absent.
She takes a pair of glasses from around her neck to look at Jamie before returning her gaze towards Katie in a way that somehow seems to exclude anyone else.
‘So. Katie. The doctor’s asked me to come and have a chat with you. Most of your burns are pretty superficial, but there’s some fairly serious damage to your left arm which could result in a bit of scarring. Now . . .’ She looks up from the clipboard. Her long black braids make a slight rustle as she tilts her head to one side. ‘Now, one option is to have some surgery on that arm, where we’d clean up the wound. It’s not essential, but it could reduce some scarring that you may want to avoid.’
Surely Jamie wouldn’t want any scars on her? He is always talking about how much he loves the smoothness of her skin. He looks back at her and his eyes seem blank. Then he switches to an abrupt warmth, like a gas fire springing into life, as he turns to look back at the nurse.
‘I think we’d better have a talk about it,’ he says to the nurse.
She frowns again. ‘Well, it’s not so much for you to talk about. It’s really up to Katie whether she wants to have the surgery or not –’
‘She likes to have me as a sounding board,’ he says. ‘She’d tell you so herself but, as you can probably see, she’s a bit knocked out from all those drugs you keep giving her.’
The nurse nods.
She seems to spend a longer time than usual making notes on her clipboard, which she then doesn’t return to the place at the end of the bed but tucks under her arm.
‘Well, Katie, the consultant will be over later. Maybe you can have a think about the surgery until then.’
Then she steps back outside of the blue curtains, but instead of drawing them shut behind her she pulls them a little more ajar, leaving a larger crack between the bed and the outside world.
‘It’s a nice sunny day,’ she says, tidying the curtains and opening the window slightly. ‘Bit of a shame if you don’t get to see it.’
Then she disappears.
Jamie is still wearing a taut smile.
He stands up, stretching his arms above his head and rocking on to the balls of his feet before loping into the middle of the ward.
He casts his face around, looking into the other beds, then, apparently satisfied, he walks back towards the bed.
He sits down on the stool next to he
r and draws her left hand into his.
In the morphine fog, his hands feel too warm; they’re the only things that keep her from floating away into a smooth, pleasant nothing. Then he leans into her ear, his breath close enough to brush the baby hairs on her face, and says, in his softest, gentlest tone, ‘Now you listen to me, for once in your fucking life.’
The words don’t stick.
‘You’re not getting any fucking surgery to pretty up your skin. You’re going to wear those scars on your whore body for the rest of your life, and you’re going to remember what you did to me. Got it?’
She nods.
Because, for the first time in a long time, she realizes that she does get it.
‘Good,’ Jamie says. He raises her left hand to his lips and kisses it.
‘Now go to sleep,’ he says.
And she does.
41.
Now
Angie stood on the bridge. She had thought it might make her feel close to Katie, but all it made her feel was alone.
Katie had been a young girl. Her whole life ahead of her. Should have been ahead of her. Angie was . . . whatever Angie was. A project that Charlie had started.
She could finish it.
Thing is, Charlie would hate it if she died. Because then she’d be gone forever. He wanted her back; he kept saying so.
A new sensation bloomed up in her. Vindictiveness.
‘Well, sod you, I’m not coming back,’ she said. To the night, to the river, to the bridge. To the last place Katie had been alive.
‘You got away. It’s taken all this time, but you’ve done it. Can’t you see what that means, Angie?’
* * *
• • •
Angie sat in the room where she and Katie used to talk together and nodded into the darkness. Yes, she thought. Perhaps she is starting to see it.
She could turn the lights on, but sometimes it was easier to understand things in the dark.