What She Saw

by Diane Saxon

  They’d need her. She was a police officer and a witness. They’d want her statement. But her body refused to obey as she clung to Poppy, her sole purpose to protect.

  Shock.

  They said she was in shock.

  She might recognise it, but it didn’t mean she could push her way through it.

  She blinked her eyes open, then scrunched them up against the bright white light that tore through her system. She didn’t want to see. Why did she have to see? What if Poppy’s face had been blown off too?

  Jenna flinched as the image of Lee’s head exploded in her mind.

  She loosened her grip from the girl’s hair and skimmed tentative fingers over the side of her face and ear. The warmth of Poppy’s skin belied the stillness of her body.

  Rough hands grabbed at her again.

  With a voice as rusty as a ninety-year-old COPD sufferer, Jenna croaked out the one reply that would stop Mason from trying to get her to roll off Poppy and checking her over for injuries. She’d roll when she was good and ready and when she knew with absolute certainty the child was safe. Nothing was going to harm her now.

  Jenna had her.

  ‘Fuck off!’

  Muscles lax, she batted him off as he yanked her up and slammed her hard against his chest.

  Her gaze clashed with his desperate one as he swept away the thick coating of pulp from her cheeks with fingers that shook. The horror slashed into his features and she fluttered her eyelids closed against the rawness of his emotions.

  ‘You stupid fucker. I thought you were dead.’

  Warm wetness dripped onto her face and she risked another peep through her eyelashes. She needed him to know she was all right. Alive at least. ‘Chance would be a fine thing. Jesus, Mason. Pull yourself together.’ What she intended to come out as funny whispered from between stiff lips.

  Face close to hers, Mason took a swipe with the back of his hand over his cheeks to rub away the tears trickling down his bleach-white skin. ‘You fucking scared the shit out of me.’

  Shock still buzzed through her system like a loose electrical circuit. ‘Yeah, well, it didn’t do me a whole host of good either.’ She scraped her hand through her thick choppy hair and whipped it away as it stuck in the thick pulp coating her head. Numb, she stared at her hand as Mason covered it and lowered it to her side.

  Muscles still liquified, Jenna struggled to sit upright with jerky uncontrolled movements. She twisted around in his arms to see Ryan crouching over Poppy’s inert body. Face down, her stillness gave Jenna a quiver of fear.

  ‘Poppy.’ Her voice rasped from a throat so parched, she could barely swallow.

  Ryan raised his head, eyes bleak and old beyond his years.

  Jenna’s heart gave a painful contraction. Jesus. Poppy. ‘Is she hit?’

  Mouth grim, he shook his head as he placed his hand on Poppy’s shoulder. ‘Not that I can see.’ He lowered himself down until his ear was level with her mouth. ‘She’s breathing.’ He raised up and blew out a breath while he pressed two fingers against the artery in her neck and nodded with sober satisfaction.

  ‘Roll her over, Ryan. Put her in the recovery position.’ Mason’s voice came from a distance through the screech of tinnitus rattling in Jenna’s head.

  She nodded her agreement and her head went on a wild revolution.

  ‘Jenna.’ Mason brought his face close to hers, his lips moving with exaggerated care. ‘Jenna.’ He repeated and it reverberated through her head.

  Nausea clamped her stomach and she fluttered her eyes closed again. ‘My ears.’

  ‘We’ve paramedics on the way. They’ll be here any moment.’

  Not daring to nod again in case she fell off the edge of the cliff she seemed to be hanging onto, Jenna forced words out through clamped teeth. ‘Okay.’ She didn’t want a paramedic. She wanted to push herself up off her arse and walk her way out of there. If she could only go home, she’d be fine.

  She placed her hands either side of her hips and pushed up, only to have a firm hand on her shoulder hold her in place and demonstrate just how weak she still was.

  ‘Stay where you are, Jenna. The paramedics are on their way.’

  Humiliation nudged its way past the weakness as she hung her head. ‘I’m okay. They need to see to Poppy first. I need to get up.’

  ‘You’ll stay exactly where you are until we get you checked over.’ Mason’s voice rang with the authority he used when dealing with the most hardened of criminals, persuading her not to argue. She’d no desire to anyway. Not really.

  Her concern more for Poppy, she shuffled so she could keep a watch on her as Ryan unzipped his fleece and laid it over her repositioned body, his voice speaking words that made no sense in Jenna’s pounding head, but the tone of reassurance washed over her.

  ‘Is she okay?’ She clenched her jaw as her teeth chattered. The bloody ground was freezing. She was freezing. She tucked herself up tight into a ball, a vague memory of the effects of shock and hypothermia stirring in the thickness of her thoughts.

  Ryan glanced over, his ashen face wobbled as he nodded. ‘She’s awake. Responsive.’ He lowered his head towards Poppy’s blonde one, stretching a small smile. ‘She said she’s okay.’ He stroked a hand over the girls’ shoulder. ‘Stay where you are, the paramedics will be here shortly. They need to check you over before you move, in case you’ve been…’ His gaze flickered over to Jenna and Mason. ‘…For injuries.’

  Aware she could barely hear Poppy’s mumbled reply, Jenna shuffled her backside to get closer.

  Mason’s hand gave her shoulder a light squeeze. ‘Stay where you are. We need to make sure you haven’t been shot.’

  ‘I wasn’t hit.’ She considered the amount of blood and guts still dripping from her and swiped her nose with the back of her hand. Revulsion skipped through her stomach as she stared at the mess she’d swiped away and then raised her head to meet Mason’s desperate gaze. ‘Not by a bullet in any event.’ Her mind refused to allow her to take the pathway through what had happened.

  Features hardened by a challenging job in a tough world, concern deepened the shadows in Mason’s nutmeg eyes as he smoothed his thick fleece over her shoulders. The warmth from his body soaked through her flesh to set up another wracking shudder.

  Her own pulse pounded inside her head to compete with the rhythmic throb of emergency service sirens.

  She raised her hand again, this time to press her fingers against the entrance to her ear. When she pulled them away, her gaze skittered over the fresh mucus and blood-filled pus on her fingertips. It wasn’t anyone else’s. It was hers. The warmth of it seeped from inside her ear in a soft glug and dribbled down her neck. ‘I think I burst my eardrum.’ Her shocked voice echoed inside her head.

  Mason nodded as he reached out to cup her cheek in the palm of his hand. ‘That’s a possibility, Jenna. That gun was fucking close to your ear.’ He glanced up over the top of her head. ‘The paramedics are here now, just getting clearance.’

  Nothing more than a grunt came from her throat. Her eyes fluttered shut as she drew in a breath. There was something she needed to ask. Important. Her mind reached out to grasp the question.

  ‘Have you cleared the situation?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is he dead?’

  The long silence held a grim warning not to push the door too far open yet. She wasn’t ready for it.

  Mason stared over the top of her head. ‘Lee Gardner.’ He dipped his head to bring his face closer to hers, his eyes crinkled at the edges with his grimace. ‘There’s no doubt.’

  Confusion stole through the thick fog in her head. She knew Lee was dead. There was plenty evidence of that. She had half his brain splattered over her. It wasn’t him she needed to know about.

  She coughed to clear her throat of the dust and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth to give a distressed clucking noise that would normally have shamed her. Too numb, she was beyond shame.

  ‘Gordon Lawre
nce. Did he get away?’ She needed to know, because if he was still out there, Poppy was still in danger and her boys didn’t seem to be rallying.

  Mason pulled back, his gaze taking on a hawk-like stare as he gave a controlled shake of his head.

  She blinked up at him. It was as she thought. There had been a second shot. Not an echo. She was sure.

  But where from?

  As Mason moved, she followed the track of his gaze and rolled onto her side to look behind her.

  Ethel Crawford’s frail shoulders hunched forward over the still smoking double-barrelled shotgun. With the barrel cracked open from the stock to make it safe, she cradled it in competent, unshaking hands.

  With the pull of Jenna and Mason’s stare on her, she did a slow head turn, her watery gaze meeting theirs.

  ‘I said he was a nasty man.’ Her fingers whitened as she tightened her hold on the gun. ‘Nobody listened.’ Her eyes glazed over. ‘They never listen when you get old.’

  Jenna’s mouth fell open. ‘Oh, Ethel…’

  52

  Tuesday 21 April 1725 hours

  ‘Hey. What have we got here?’

  Jenna whipped her head around at the soft female voice.

  In the ugly green uniform of paramedics, the tall woman hitched her trousers as she squatted next to Jenna. ‘Would you give her some room, please?’ Her tone brooked no argument as she reached for Jenna’s wrist. She pushed her weathered face close to Jenna’s. ‘What’s your name, my love.’

  Her tongue thick, Jenna swallowed. She’d not lost her mind, only her voice. ‘Detective Sergeant Jenna Morgan.’

  ‘Well, Detective Sergeant Jenna Morgan. My name’s Lucy. Lucy Beck. I’m just going to check you over for injuries. Is that okay?’ So close that Jenna could see every fine line and wrinkle feathering over the other woman’s face as she studied her. Soft eyes of lavender blue, with the short, stubby, faded eyelashes that came to women of a certain age. Strong fingers of one hand pressed against Jenna’s wrist while the woman tucked salt-and-pepper strands of hair behind her ear, only to have it whipped away by an errant wind.

  As awareness returned, Jenna shuddered. Her teeth rattled inside her head as that cool wind penetrated her clothes and chilled her to the bone in one fast rush.

  ‘Can you tell me what happened?’

  ‘No.’ She didn’t want to. Not yet. She wasn’t ready.

  ‘Okay, we’re going to lift you onto the stretcher and get you inside the ambulance.’

  ‘I can walk.’

  ‘I don’t think—’

  ‘I’m not injured, merely in shock.’ She dropped her voice an octave to make her point. ‘I’ll walk!’

  Determination shot through to give her the energy she needed to lift her arse from the cold ground and march to the ambulance no more than thirty paces away. This time no-one attempted to stop her as she clenched her jaw and struggled up. The solid, reassuring touch of Mason’s hand on her elbow gave her enough resilience to put one foot in front of the other with little more than a slight waver as she passed by PC Gardner’s body. She hesitated as she reached him and forced herself to look, because if there was one thing she knew for certain, her imagination would be far worse than the reality.

  She sucked in a whistling breath through her teeth as she raced her gaze over him. Half his head missing, which would explain the amount of matter sprayed over her. Other than that, nothing. Not a mark on the rest of his inert body.

  She swallowed the bile that threatened to rise in the back of her throat and took a deliberate look away. She’d deal with it. She had no option. She blinked. As saliva rushed into her mouth she swallowed again. It was a vision she’d never forget.

  She raised her chin and followed Lucy to the ambulance, her teeth chattering until her jaw ached.

  Lucy closed the ambulance doors behind them to lock out everyone other than Mason, who slipped inside and stood, his head bowed to avoid the roof of the ambulance.

  Lucy turned and flicked a switch and heat pumped out to fill the small space.

  ‘Hop on the bed. We need to warm you up before hypothermia sets in.’

  ‘Hypothermia. I don’t have hypothermia.’ Her teeth rattled in her head.

  The smile was kind, creasing deep into Lucy’s cheeks. ‘Slip your coat off and roll up your sleeve.’ Too weary to question, Jenna did as instructed while she attempted to follow the general gist of the conversation. ‘You may not have hypothermia yet, but it’s surprising. How long were you on the ground? Forty minutes. Forty-five?’

  Confused, Jenna squinted at the other woman. Had she been down that long? Could she have been on the floor that length of time? ‘I don’t know, I…’ It all came back to perception distortion. It happened so quickly. It was a lifetime. Two timelines intermingling in her head.

  ‘Twenty-eight minutes.’ Mason’s waterproof coat rattled as he fidgeted to find a comfortable position. He’d be cold too, he only had a shirt underneath the coat. He’d given up his fleece for her. Wrapped it around her. The memory rushed back.

  Without looking at him, Lucy indicated a seat at the head of the ambulance. ‘Take a pew. We’ll be a while.’

  He squeezed past and grunted as he perched on the small pull-down seat at Jenna’s head.

  Lucy bustled about, she pressed buttons, moved equipment, adjusted the height of the bed once Jenna had made herself comfortable and draped a cellular blanket over Jenna’s legs. ‘You’re young, strong. It’s quite mild and you hadn’t been out there long. Just imagine…’ she strapped a blood pressure cuff to Jenna’s exposed arm, chattering all the time, Jenna suspected just to distract her, ‘…elderly people who take a fall, it doesn’t take long for hypothermia to set in, even in their own homes, at this time of year. At least you were dressed appropriately for the weather conditions.’

  Jenna recalled a time when she hadn’t been, when Fliss had gone missing. She’d learnt her lesson well then and not been caught out since. Her mother would be proud of her. She huffed out a breath.

  ‘It wasn’t my intention to take a lie-down.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘My legs just gave way. Crumpled under me.’

  Lucy nodded and released the cuff as she skimmed a sympathetic gaze over Jenna. ‘I’m not surprised. Anyone would have hit the ground under the circumstances.’

  ‘It wasn’t intentional. Just instinctive.’

  ‘Shock. We all react in different ways. No one person can dictate what will happen.’

  The warmth in the ambulance seeped through her clothes and Jenna’s clenched jaw softened as the trembling lessened. Shock, hypothermia, whatever the terminology, the numbness started to wear off and as her body relaxed and she closed her eyes, PC Gardner’s head exploded all over her face once more—

  Her eyes sprang open and Jenna lurched up.

  A soft hand applied gentle pressure on her shoulder. ‘It’s okay. You’re safe.’

  Surprised at the motion of the ambulance, Jenna peered down the length of her legs at her stockinged feet poking out of the end of the NHS blanket. She clucked her dry tongue against the roof of her mouth.

  ‘We’re almost there. You fell asleep.’ The woman’s voice echoed through soft cotton clouds in Jenna’s head, distant and muffled. The vague ringing overriding all other sounds.

  ‘I’m okay. I can go now. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘No, you definitely won’t be fine until you’re checked over by a doctor. I think your left eardrum has ruptured. We’ll get it checked out for you.’

  Warm and comfortable, Jenna relaxed, closed her eyes again and let herself drift. Aware of the discomfort of a stiff face, she raised her hand to investigate. As her fingers encountered PC Gardner’s drying blood and grey matter, she let out a whimper. ‘Oh, God.’

  This time the hand that landed on her shoulder was far more robust as Mason leaned over the top of her. ‘Sorry, Jenna. Don’t touch it. I know you want to get it all off you, but you’re a crime scene. Forensics need ever
ything. You don’t want to contaminate the evidence.’

  If anyone could elicit a smile from her, it would be Mason. Ever practical. Ever down-to-earth. There was nothing she could do to help her situation but close her eyes and wait for the whole process to be over and done with.

  53

  Tuesday 21 April 1820 hours

  Chief Superintendent Gregg hovered over the top of her bed. Steel-grey hair swept straight back from a high forehead, his normal bright, hawklike gaze softened with sympathy to make the breath catch in her throat.

  Shit. It must be serious.

  Strong and professional, Jenna prided herself on her ability to keep her emotions under control, but from the attention she currently had, she had serious misgivings that she could keep them in check. Sympathy had always weakened her, and she feared the compassion that oozed in the small, overcrowded side room they’d found for her in the Princess Royal Accident and Emergency department.

  She skimmed her gaze over her sister, and moved on. She was there, she was her strength.

  Gregg pulled back, his slow smile spread to deepen the wrinkles in his cheeks and his eyes sharpened. ‘Good to see you, Jenna.’ He reached out a hand and squeezed her wrist. Possibly the only part of her that wasn’t a forensic crime scene. ‘If you need anything, anything at all, let me know.’

  Tears clogged her throat and the smile she gave him wobbled. ‘Sir.’

  She allowed her gaze to wander across to DI Taylor. Another of her stalwarts. At home in the discomfort of the high-back acrylic-covered chair in the corner of the room, he peered over the top of his glasses at her. Not one to hold her hand, the raw whisky that scraped at his voice still told of his care. ‘Jenna. Your statement in your own time. If you’d rather someone take it, let me know.’ The pause was long. Ex-Army, Taylor kept his feelings close, but the concern in his direct gaze couldn’t be masked. He cleared his throat. ‘We’re here for you. Anything you need.’