by Diane Saxon
DS Jenna Morgan marched side by side with DC Mason Ellis to the elegant double-frontage doors painted in muted Georgian blue grey.
Trudy Maxwell swung the doors wide and stepped back as they approached. A broad smile on her face, her eyes softened as she ran her gaze over Jenna, admiration and respect lurking in their depths. ‘Do come in. I’ll get you coffee in a moment, but I’m sure you’re anxious to see her.’
Anxious wasn’t the word.
They were there to get a statement, but Jenna’s heart gave a small skip of trepidation as Trudy pushed open the doors into the huge, high-ceilinged lounge.
Jenna had carried out her duty, to protect and preserve life. But her soul knew it was more than just duty. There was a connection, a bond, a feeling of continued responsibility for the young girl whose life she’d helped save. A desire to know that not only would she be safe, but she would thrive and flourish despite the horror she’d suffered.
The floor-to-ceiling windows allowed the softening evening sun to flood through and soak the room in golden light.
Three enormous cream sofas dominated the centre of the room in a U-shape around an antique woollen rug in muted hues of blues and greys.
On the middle sofa, Sophie stretched out with her back propped against cushions wedged against the high arm of the sofa. Cradled in her arms under a thick blue throw was a pale, sleeping Poppy. Smudges like bruises feathered from beneath her lashes fading across her ashen cheeks.
Sophie raised her head, her eyes widening as her gaze fell on Jenna. Her mouth popped open to form an ‘o’ and she nudged her friend awake.
Slow to move, Poppy struggled up as though every muscle in her body protested.
Before she could get up, Jenna stepped into the U and stood in front of Poppy.
The wild, anguished howl wrenched at her heart and tore her soul out, jerking unexpected tears that clogged her throat and filled her eyes before she could even stop them.
Wordless, she leaned forward, blinking rapidly, but the fat tears rolled down her cheeks and continued to blur her vision as she reached out and placed a wriggling, whining, hysterical Fleur into Poppy’s arms and stepped back to give them time and space.
55
Thursday 23 April 1810 hours
Heart still stuttering, Jenna cradled the coffee Trudy placed in front of her on the vast kitchen island and sent Mason a quick sideways look. He blew his nose into a clean tissue and mustered up a wobbling smile. If she’d thought to threaten him not to say anything, she had no need. His heart was as bruised as hers.
She cleared her throat. They’d come to do a job, but the right thing was to give Poppy her time alone with Fleur.
‘We need to take a statement from Poppy, I’m afraid. Do you think she’s up to it?’
Trudy drew out a stool and perched on the edge of it. ‘Physically, she’s exhausted, but she’ll recover. The operation went well. They managed to remove the bullet from her rib, leaving little damage, but she’s on a hefty dose of antibiotics for the infection that set in. Emotionally, she’s drained.’
‘We can take it a little at a time.’
‘She’ll be here. We’ve spoken with social services. Poppy has no next of kin. Apparently, she has a godmother somewhere she doesn’t even know.’
Aware of that, Jenna nodded and held her breath, willing the other woman to tell her what she wanted to hear.
Trudy raised her cup to her lips, paused. ‘Because of Poppy’s age, she gets a say in who she would like to stay with.’ Trudy’s gaze flickered to Jenna’s. ‘We discussed it in some depth last night. She chose us.’
Relief flooded through Jenna, and she struggled to keep from wilting onto the island as another flood of tears threatened.
Trudy’s voice thickened. ‘And we chose her.’
Jenna blinked and this time ignored the tear that plopped from her eye to run down her cheek to the corner of her mouth. Her breath shuddered in.
Without drinking, Trudy placed the cup back down. ‘I have no doubt this won’t all be smooth sailing, but Poppy and Sophie are best of friends and I couldn’t imagine for one moment allowing Poppy to do anything but come to us. It will be for the best. The girls will continue with their A levels and then we’ll see what paths they take. If it’s university, then so be it. Poppy wants to be a vet. Sophie wants to follow in her dad’s footsteps and be a barrister one day.’
Jenna poked her tongue out and tasted the salt of her tears. She raised her cup and took a sip, letting the coffee wash the taste away and out of the corner of her eye noticed Mason surreptitiously wipe his nose again.
‘I think it’s very noble of you, Trudy.’
‘There’s no nobleness involved, Sergeant. The girls have always been close from the first day they started at the high school. We were already family.’
A warmth filled her chest and spread down to her stomach.
Trudy picked up her cup and this time took a sip. ‘What happened with Mrs Crawford?’
Mason gave a small cough. ‘She’s under arrest for murder.’
‘Surely not? At her age?’
Mason spread his hands wide. ‘A crime is a crime at any age.’
‘Won’t they see it as self-defence?’
Jenna shook her head. ‘No, I’m afraid not. It wasn’t self-defence. Mrs Crawford loaded a gun with the sole intention of using it.’
‘Oh dear.’ Devastation filled Trudy’s eyes. ‘She’s such a lovely lady.’
‘She is. But the law is the law, and this is what I’m invested in upholding. For everyone.’
Cool and thoughtful, Trudy narrowed her eyes. ‘Can she plead diminished responsibility?’
Jenna’s gaze met Trudy’s and she gave her an acknowledging smile. ‘I’d leave that to her barrister to decide.’
Acknowledgments
What She Saw involved a great deal of background information and research into weaponry, fires and as usual police procedure. I’d like to thank the following for their immense support, advice and patience when I asked the most obvious questions, and pressed and prodded for more detail. Although I don’t go into depth, I hope the research I carried out gives the story a genuine and authentic feel. Any mistakes are my own.
Charlie Cartwright – I also borrowed his name for one of my characters. As I told him, it was a ‘solid’ name.
Derek Taylor
Peter Wright
Andrew Parkes
As always to my hugely patient family who always understand when I say ‘I’m on a deadline.’
Andy
Laura
Meghan
And to my sister Margaret who said, ‘If you’d given it to me earlier, you wouldn’t have had to write the last part again, I’d have told you it was wrong.’
More from Diane Saxon
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Chapter One
Friday 26 October, 15:45 hrs
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Felicity Morgan jammed her car into third gear and took the tight bend down the hill to Coalbrookdale with fierce relish.
‘It’s not right! It’s just not right. I’m twenty-four years old, for God’s sake, and still being told what to do!’ She pounded the palm of her hand on the steering wheel and whipped around another curve.
‘Not even told.’ She glanced in the mirror, her gaze clashing with Domino’s. ‘Nope, she didn’t even have the decency to speak to me.’ She floored the accelerator and snapped out a feral grin as the car skimmed over the humps in the narr
ow road.
‘She texted me. A freakin’ text!’ She shot Domino another quick glance and took her foot from the accelerator as the car flew under the disused railway bridge, past the entrance to Enginuity, one of the Ironbridge Gorge Museums.
Guilt nudged at her. ‘I know. I know, Domino. We’ve barely seen each other since I moved in because of her shifts and my workday, but for God’s sake. A text? Really? She must have been so peed off to send me a text. It’s her version of not talking to me. She’s done it all our lives.’ Fliss blew out a disgusted snort. ‘What the hell did you eat this time? Her bloody precious steak? One of her fluffy pink slippers? Hah!’
She appealed in the mirror to her silent companion. ‘She said, “Don’t forget to walk the dog.”’ She pressed her foot on the brake and came to a halt, sliding the gears into neutral as the traffic lights halfway down the hill changed to red. They always did for her. Every bloody time. With a rebellious kick on the accelerator, Fliss revved the engine.
‘She called you a dog, Domino. She couldn’t even be bothered to write your name.’ She stared at the big, gorgeous and demanding Dalmatian in her rear view mirror. Her lips kicked up as a smile softened her voice. ‘How could I possibly forget to walk you?’
An ancient Austin Allegro puttered through the narrow track towards her just as the traffic lights turned to green on her side.
‘Bloody typical.’
Domino raised his head to stare with aloof disdain at the passing Allegro and Fliss sighed as the driver’s wrinkled face, as ancient as the car, barely emerged above the steering wheel.
‘There was only once, a few weeks ago, I forgot to walk you. You’d have thought Jenna would have understood. I was hung-over from my break-up drinking bout. You, my darling, were suffering the consequences of a broken home.’ She let out a derisive snort as she put the car into first gear and glided through the lights, back in control of both her temper and her vehicle.
‘Not that you ever really liked Ed. You were just being empathetic. You sensed my…’ she drew in a long breath through her nose, ‘… devastation. You sympathised with me. How was I to know you’d eat your Aunty Jenna’s kitchen cupboard doors off while I was sleeping?’ They still bore the deep gouged teeth marks. ‘We didn’t have any choice but to move in with Jenna. We couldn’t stay with him. He was too mean. He wanted me to get rid of you. Said it was him or you.’
She flopped her head back on the headrest. Ed. The perfect gentleman, tender, gentle, an absolute charmer. To the outside world. Insidious, controlling arse to her. It had taken so long to realise his subtle intention to separate her from her mother, her sister, eventually Domino. The slick manoeuvres to keep her to himself. Unnoticed until her mother fell ill, when, in a flash, it all became clear.
‘Poor Domino.’ She glanced in her mirror to share the sympathy between herself and her dog as she slowed down to pass the stunning Edwardian building she worked in on her right. Coalbrookdale and Ironbridge School dated back more than two hundred years and had firmly entrenched roots at the centre of the Industrial Revolution. With the imposing cooling towers of the Ironbridge power station behind, they shared domination of the skyline from that angle.
She blew out a breath, making her over-long honey-blonde fringe flutter away from her eyes, just for it to land back again in the same place as she pulled the car to a virtual standstill to take a closer look at the school. Closed for the day, except the few lights in the left side of the building still burning for the after-school club.
A flutter of anxiety filled her chest. It hadn’t helped that she’d had such a dreadful day at school. The kids had run her ragged as she held on to her sanity with barely a thread of control left.
Who would have thought teaching would be so hard? Yes, she’d appreciated, before she started fresh from university a year gone September, that teachers worked long hours, but who knew children could be affected by the phase of the moon? Until year six teacher, Sarah Leighton, mentioned it to her at the end of their particularly fractious and demanding day.
Why did they have to have a full bloody supermoon in term time?
She cruised to the bottom of the hill.
Perhaps she should have taken a leaf out of Sarah’s book, gone home, poured a glass of wine and sulked in front of the fire until she was obliged to mark homework.
Instead, she’d been forced out of her own house by a text. Not that it was her house, and therein lay the problem.
‘I love her to bits. I really do, Domino, but I’m not sure we can live together. Six weeks is probably the limit.’
Fliss glanced in the mirror as she drew up to the mini-roundabout while Domino sat bolt upright in the boot, his proud head close to the rear window as he gazed out at the driver in the car behind. The woman smiled at him, just as everyone did when they caught sight of him, compelling them to give him the attention he was convinced he deserved.
Attention Jenna never gave him as she’d never forgiven him. Nor Fliss.
The constant reminders wore thin.
As her temper surged again, Fliss whipped the car around the pimple of the mini-roundabout and then indicated left into the Dale End car park parents used when they dropped their children off at school.
Despite her annoyance with her sister, she spared the school building another quick glance, the side view hindered by trees, but nonetheless stirring an affection in her. Steeped in history, it lent itself nicely to the quiet Victorian Town. She loved it, with its small community and less than two hundred pupils. Pupils who on a normal day were wonderful. They’d chosen not to be today.
‘We need to find our own place, Domino.’ His ears twitched, and he cast an unconcerned glance over his shoulder at her use of his name. ‘One closer to here, so I don’t have to travel twenty minutes to get to work. It means I could spend more time with you. If we lived on our own, I’d need to get home earlier because Jenna wouldn’t be there to see to you.’
She stopped the car in the middle of the car park to allow the elderly couple to cross over from the wrought-iron gates leading to the Victorian tearooms and smiled at them despite the mix of lingering annoyance and melancholy.
‘I hate living on my own.’ It made her nervous, for no particular reason. It just wasn’t right to live alone. She needed someone to protect her from her unreasonable fear of the dark and her own vivid imagination.
Fliss’s irritation cranked up again at the whine in her own voice as she circled her car around the almost empty car park and swung it with careless abandon into a space. She cut the engine and flicked the seat belt undone. Before Ed she’d never had such reservations. She was strong. She was capable.
Her shoulders sagged. She hated to be alone.
She shook off the self-pity, flung open the driver’s door and slammed it behind her before she strode to the back of the vehicle. She wasn’t alone. Not entirely. She had Domino. He was company enough. Surely.
‘Wait!’ she commanded as she opened the boot. She sensed the dog’s urgency, his desperate desire to run free, but he’d do as he was told, she had no doubt.
She drew in a deep breath before she clipped the lead onto Domino’s harness. She pressed her lips to his forehead as she fondled one silken, floppy ear before she stepped back to allow him out.
Bright and alert, all bunched muscles and restrained excitement, he bounded from the boot of the car and stood to attention, quivering in anticipation while she glanced at the people in the tree-lined park.
She zipped her coat up to her chin against the chill wind and hunched her shoulders, determined to move and keep the cold out.
‘Which way shall we go, lad?’
Muted voices floated across, an open invitation for her to join the others in Dale End Park. She chewed the inside of her lip, undecided for a moment, before she turned from the company of the twilight walkers with their idle chit-chat which she normally relished. They wouldn’t miss her, their unofficial dog meet was transient. If you turned up, you mingled. If
you didn’t, no one questioned it. A nice crowd, but she needed her privacy.
‘This way, Domino.’
If she allowed herself into their sympathetic fold, she’d be tempted to whine about Jenna, and if there was one thing she couldn’t stand, it was disloyalty. She huffed out a breath. Her anger with Jenna would pass. Until then, she’d keep to herself. Allow the solitude to blanket her.
She turned right out of the car park and strode out up the hill, past the small Co-op at the mouth of the Museum on the Gorge. It would be open until ten o’clock. Perhaps she’d nip in on her way home and buy that bottle of red wine.
Sodium lights illuminated the town to spread their warm golden glow as she lengthened her stride and marched along the narrow footpath, puffing out small bursts of vapour as her breath hit the cool evening air.
The Council had readied the flood barriers for erection along the Wharfeage, as the River Severn continued to rise after an unusually long, wet autumn. It threatened to break its banks early in the season, leaving a dull sense of foreboding for what the rest of the winter would bring. The town wallowed in an eerie quietness. The windows of almost all the premises overlooking the river dark, but for an occasional upstairs light on.
Breathless from her overexerted stride, she paused halfway up the hill before crossing the Ironbridge. A town in the summer overflowing with tourists keen to witness the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, the Ironbridge dominated the landscape with its iron structure pioneered by Abraham Darby in the eighteenth century. The plethora of museums drew people from all around the world. Somewhere for the locals to avoid. As a tourist town, however, devoid of visitors during the winter months, most of the shops had already closed for the evening.