by Dylan Young
Vanessa is almost twenty now. She was on a section of the M25, heading home after landing in Gatwick. They’d been to a family wedding in Crete. That section of motorway is a smart motorway with no hard shoulder. It was dark when their Renault lost all power and stalled. They drifted into the inside lane with no lights on and no juice for the flashers. Vanessa’s father was speaking to the AA when the Renault was rear-ended by a forty-four-ton juggernaut.
Vanessa’s parents and younger brother were killed instantly. Vanessa, asleep in the back, catapulted out through the windscreen and over the crash barrier into the wasteland to the side of the road. Her injuries were severe. Life-changing is a term that seems to have leaked into common usage. But I don’t like it; too much room for manoeuvre. I mean, if you’re a pianist and you lose two fingers, that just might qualify as changing your life. If you’re a budding model, a scar on your forehead might even sway a jury.
But being smashed into by a truck transporting eight cars doing sixty miles an hour does more than stop you playing the piano or get anxious about a posed selfie.
So life-changing, yes. But catastrophic would be the word I’d more likely have chosen. Vanessa required a craniotomy to relieve the pressure on her swollen brain and a fusion procedure to stabilise her damaged spine.
She is paralysed below the waist.
Both of her parents were only children. There are a handful of distant second cousins, but, to all intents and purposes, Vanessa is alone in the world. She is also in a wheelchair, unable to stand without help.
Her speech is slow and slurred. Her coordination poor. More often than not, when I call, I am her only visitor. I’m there because I’m one of the few people who knows what she is going through. She calls me the big brother she never had. She thinks I am the only person, apart from the brilliant therapists at the unit, who treats her as a human being.
To everyone else she’s a wobbly freak in a wheelchair.
She should have known not to tell me that, because now, when she gets uppity, that’s what I call her. VW. Vanessa the wobbly.
But that’s okay. She gives as good as she gets. She calls me Cam-a-one – referencing my blind eye – when we trade these affectionate insults.
All the staff recognise me. I greet them as old friends. But I’m here for Vanessa.
The sky is clear and even though March isn’t over, the sun is pleasant on my neck as I wheel her out into the street, and we head to a pub for a drink and a sandwich lunch. Unlike the clientele at the Grey Goose and The Pommelers Rest, some people are heeding the request to minimise social contact. For a change we have no difficulty in finding a table. I ask, ‘The usual?’
‘Onleeifyourhavinone.’ Her words slur and tend to run together. But I have no trouble understanding. I’m attuned.
‘Today I think vodka and lime on the rocks.’
‘Then a double rum and Coke it is. No ice. But I want an umbrella and a cherry.’ Vanessa smiles, and lifts her chin, which shakes faintly from side to side. She has a glorious smile. ‘Make it happen.’ The last sentence comes out as ‘Makeitappn.’
‘You sound half pissed,’ I tease.
‘I’m a cheap date.’ She waves her fingers in the air, laughing at her own joke. She does that a lot. Sometimes she laughs when she should be crying. But that’s just disinhibition. She’ll get over that. Just like she got over the enormous halo frame screwed into her skull which was present when I first met her. It was there to stabilise her spine. But she said they’d attached it because they finally worked out that she was a fallen angel.
An iron halo for an iron girl.
We overlapped at the unit for only about three weeks. When I got out Vanessa stayed. That’s why I’m here.
I bring back the drinks. Diet Cokes with ice and lemon for the both of us. The rum and vodka are just our little joke.
It’s a friendly pub. They even dare to use the word ‘gastro’ which adds an acceptable level of pretentiousness. So the shared lunch ‘sandwich and chips’ becomes chargrilled rosemary focaccia with pesto and balsamic-roasted tomatoes, and kachori lentil fritters. While we wait for our food, we talk about her week. Her progress is slow, but she’s doing great. She’s still in the unit because she’s in the throes of selling her parents’ house and buying a flat for herself. One adapted for her needs. That takes a lot of courage, a lot of money and a lot of time.
‘The insurance money is coming through,’ says Vanessa in response to my requesting an update. ‘Takes for ever.’
‘You could always move in with me,’ I say.
‘I’m having enough trouble looking after myself. I’d be hopeless having to look after you, too.’
‘Hilarious.’
‘Anyway, thanks for the offer, but no thanks.’
Rachel’s been helping Vanessa with a financial plan. Sorting out the house and arranging investments for the insurance payout that Vanessa got. All so that she can live comfortably while she recovers. She’s buying a flat in a new development in Elephant and Castle. That’s not far from me. I’ve told her that means all my friends will be able to help.
‘That’s another two people then.’ Dry as a bone is Vanessa.
She wants to get back to finishing her course at university. But what I want is to see her walk again. The docs tell her there is no chance. She can’t stand unassisted. But we’ve both seen the YouTube videos of the robotic exoskeletons that people with lower-limb paralysis can strap on and walk with. It’s sci-fi writ large but they are astonishing and in the marketplace. The trouble is, they’re also monstrously expensive. Around £100,000 for the machine, software training, etc. Cost means that these things are not available on the NHS. I think it would be great for Vanessa.
But we don’t talk about it much because that kind of money is no joke.
Still, I’d love to see her try. So I’m on it.
‘What about your week, Cam?’
‘I drove for the first time.’
‘Wow. How many dead?’
‘Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. When I’ve done a bit more we’ll be off to Brighton for lunch. Just you and me.’
I see her face change and realise with a pang that perhaps she may not want to go for a trip in the car. Not mine nor anyone’s.
‘If you want to, that is,’ I add with haste.
‘I do. But not yet.’
‘No, no. In the summer. When it’s shot.’
‘Hot,’ she corrects me. And the smile is back.
When the food arrives, I tuck a serviette into Vanessa’s collar front and we eat. She’s a great kid. I’ve never heard her complain once since she arrived in the unit. One day, she will walk into this pub with me. I have a plan. We chat and drink another Diet Coke for a couple of hours and then I take her back to the unit because I can see she’s getting tired. I kiss her on the cheek when I leave. Promise I’ll be back next week.
27
At 7.53 that evening, Nicole calls. Her voice is bright with anticipation.
‘Hey,’ she says.
‘Hey yourself.’
‘I finally managed to get away from Mia – she of the never-ending hen do. I told Aaron I was going back to my flat for a soak in the bath and an early night.’
‘Sounds like a tough weekend.’
‘I’m tired of wedding talk. But I’m not tired. How are you?’
‘A lot has happened since I saw you last.’
‘Good or bad?’
‘Both.’
‘Do you want me to come over?’
‘Is it far? I don’t have a clue where you live?’
Nicole laughs. ‘Minor detail. A flat-share with two other girls in Wandsworth. Converted council accommodation. In other words, the pits. I can be there in half an hour.’
‘Didn’t you want a bath?’
‘Don’t you have hot water?’
‘I don’t have a bath.’
‘No, but you have a shower. Much better for the environment. And big enough for the both of us if I remember
.’
Later, when we’ve had two showers, one before and one after Nicole has been her wonderful, generous and experimental self again, we sit with a glass of wine (just the one for me) and I tell Nicole about what’s happened with Stamford and Harriet. She listens, both surprised and horrified.
We’re on the sofa with just a table lamp lit. She rests her head on my arm, her fingers playing with a loose thread on my shirt. ‘I feel awful that you’ve had to do all this alone. Why don’t you wait until I can help you? Emma’s sister sounds like a real cow.’
‘She isn’t. She’s still very upset about Emma.’
Nicole sits up and stares at me with eyes muted to the colour of a stormy sea in the room’s shadow. ‘You won’t say anything bad about anyone, will you?’
‘I only wish I could feel some of Harriet’s pain. Her sense of loss. But I can’t. Emma’s death is like any stranger’s death to me. Awful, yes. But distant. Like reading about some terrible disaster that’s happened on another continent. You’re sympathetic but too far removed for it to have real impact. And it sounds like Emma’s family have been through hell.’
‘What would you call what you’ve been through?’
‘An unsteady walk in the spark… park.’
Nicole snorts and snuggles up to my arm again, her small hands wrapped around my bicep. Leon would be proud that there are some to wrap around. Nicole’s hands are like a child’s. But when she’s in bed, they’re one hundred per cent adult in what they do.
‘Once the wedding is over, I promise I’ll come with you to see the police and this private detective. Sounds like he knows what he’s doing.’
‘That would be great. But it’s easier for me to talk to him now with Rachel not being on my case. She’s tied up with the kids and she would not approve. Besides, I’ve lit the blue touch scraper.’
‘Paper,’ says Nicole. But her voice is tender, not mocking. ‘I hope you’re not doing this just for my sake,’ she says into my arm. ‘I don’t want you getting into trouble for me.’
‘I’m not doing it only for you. I need to clear a path for the future. For me as well as for us.’
Nicole tilts her head up. I study her face. Her skin is the colour of mellow ivory. ‘I like it when you say us,’ she murmurs. She buries her head and snuggles into my arm like a cat. ‘I never thought I’d hear you say it.’ Her hair is clean and smells of cucumber. ‘I can’t wait to get this wedding over. I promise we’ll spend the whole of the weekend after next together.’
‘That sounds nice,’ I say.
‘All I have to do is get Aaron out of my hair.’
‘Will that be difficult?’
She squeezes my arm with nails painted pillar-box red. ‘It shouldn’t be. He thinks of himself as God’s gift and tells me at least twice a week that I am lucky to have him.’
‘Is he?’
‘No on both counts.’
‘Okay. So he’ll be happy to be a free agent then?’
‘You’d think so. But I know him. He’s like a big kid. As soon as he knows he can’t have something, he’s mad for it.’
‘Anything I can–’
Nicole tilts her face up once more. She smiles, but not before I glimpse the worried look it replaces.
‘There is nothing you can do but be patient. I’ll sort it out. I promise.’
She calls an Uber at eleven and I’m left alone in the flat with my memory boards and heady Bandit hanging in the air, hoping that Aaron, whoever he is, is willing to be a grown up.
Nicole seems confident.
The trouble is, if I was losing someone like Nicole, I know I wouldn’t be.
28
MONDAY 16 March
DS Keely knows Harriet Roxburgh well enough to be on first-name terms. That’s what being the FLO in a case such as Emma’s does for you. There is nothing Stockholm syndrome about it, though she’d spent days at the Roxburghs’ house in the immediate aftermath of the horrors of Turkey and it was difficult to not sometimes feel that they were all being held hostage to dreadful circumstances.
But a link had been forged and it was now a question of continued contact and a wary respect. Not a friendship as such. At least not from Keely’s point of view. And she isn’t sure how Harriet might classify the arrangement. Given what Keely has seen of Harriet’s nature, she doubts she makes friends easily.
Keely checks herself and wipes the thought. Opinion, not fact. It’s still a bit of a tightrope walk when it comes to dealing with the Roxburghs though. Harriet deserves empathy but tempered by a degree of toughness. Especially when everything becomes messy and she blows up into a rage, accusing the police of not doing enough, of incompetence, of not giving a ‘flying fuck’.
Keely never quite got to grips with knowing what a flying fuck is even meant to be. But you learn never to sever the ties when there’s an open verdict and an ongoing investigation. The relatives deserve no less. Even when said investigation has hit a roadblock if not a complete dead end. And Keely is not a great believer in coincidence. So she understands the nagging itch that comes from seeing Harriet turn up at the station just days after Cameron Todd. An itch that will need to be scratched.
But not yet. First, she listens to what Emma’s wound-up sister has to say.
‘I brought it along in case you wanted to do fingerprints and such.’
Keely stares at the envelope inside a sealed, clear plastic bag held in Harriet’s hands. The envelope is manila, A5. Already opened, a brown smear on the inside of the ripped flap tells the story. She hopes, for Harriet’s sake, that she used a letter opener and not her finger to do the ripping. Even though the plastic bag is a barrier, the unpleasant sweetness of its faecal odour is unmistakable.
‘And you think Cameron Todd did this?’
Harriett looks aghast. ‘Who else?’
‘Any reason you suspect him?’
‘We argued.’ Harriet’s lips are wafer thin as she delivers this little sweetmeat.
They’re in the corridor at the station. Harriet is dressed in jeans and a padded gilet over a woolly jumper. She has scuffed trainers on her feet. She looks as if she’s come straight from home after discovering the post without passing go. Keely finds an empty interview room, ushers Harriet in and closes the door.
‘What kind of argument?’
‘A tiny altercation. In a pub. We bumped into one another. These things happen. Did you know he’s opened a new Facebook account in Emma’s name?’
Harriet has no accent, other than the one that comes from attending a good school that ensured a lot of stars got added to her first letter of the alphabet exam results. The ones that smoothed the way into medical school. Her sentences are clipped and assured. Keely has long since discovered that though bluster and confidence might get you a long way in the outside world, they count for sod all in the sceptical eyes of the law. She composes her face into a questioning pout. ‘No, I didn’t. He told you that, did he?’
‘No, of course not,’ Harriet answers. ‘But who else would do such a filthy thing?’
‘So he denied it?’
‘Yes he denied it. But then this appears.’ Harriet waves the bag. ‘As good as admitting it was him, isn’t it? I needed half a litre of Hibiscrub to get my bloody hands clean. I’m sorry, but he should not be allowed out on the streets unsupervised.’
Keely tilts her head with raised eyebrows. ‘That’s a little extreme, no?’
‘Opening Facebook accounts in the name of your dead girlfriend and posting shit through her sister’s letterbox I’d consider pretty damning. God, how much ammunition do you need?’
Ammunition, thinks Keely, for a firing squad no doubt. No accident in that word choice. In another universe Harriet Roxburgh would happily shoot Cameron Todd if she had the chance.
‘Did you see him do it?’
‘No.’
‘And he denies the Facebook thing?’
‘Yes. That’s why I brought the envelope. Fingerprints. DNA.’
�
�DNA? For a dog turd? I can tell you now we have no Alsatians on the database. Though I read that Southend council are considering testing pavement sausages and some village in Essex has been doing it for a couple of years. I even think there’s a company you can register your hound with called PooPrints.’
Harriet’s face sets hard. ‘I’m glad you’re finding this funny, sergeant.’
‘Ooh, sergeant is it? We being formal now?’
‘Rhian, this is no joke.’
‘Agreed. The smell of that envelope certainly isn’t. But unless you saw him do something there is no case. Did Todd say anything else to you during your argument?’
‘No. He was doing his rabbit in the headlights act. Again.’
‘I don’t think that’s an act, Harriet.’
‘Don’t tell me he has you fooled too?’
Keely sighs. ‘Did Emma ever mention anything about a colleague at Guy’s who was in trouble over drug abuse?’
Harriet frowns. ‘No. Why?’
‘Something’s come up, that’s all.’
‘You can’t say that and not explain.’
‘I can. And I will. You’ll be the first to know if it has legs. Once we’ve made our enquiries.’
‘Emma was allergic to other medics after what happened to her in Bristol.’ Harriet issues this as a statement in a low hissing tone. ‘You know that.’
‘I do. But it would be remiss of me not to ask.’
‘In a way, I wish she had been involved with another medic. Rather than that Cameron bloody Todd. Please tell me you’ll bring him in and talk to him.’
Bring him in. Keely hesitates for three seconds, toying with not wanting to give Harriet the satisfaction of believing she’s Queen of the Nile. But then realises that for once she’s one step ahead in this little game. ‘I promise I will. Talk to him, that is.’
‘Soon?’ Harriet waves the bag again.