by Dylan Young
Pure fiction, right? But I don’t look out of the window. I’ll sleep better if I don’t. I turn off the TV and drag myself to bed. The world is going to hell but oddly enough, after chatting with Vanessa, I’m bathed in a strange sense of calm.
I sleep well. Dreamless oblivion. No hypnagogic fugues tonight.
Sunday, I mooch around, reflecting. Mostly wondering what happened on the viaduct at Hockley, hoping Nicole is okay and willing her to ring. But she’s been to a wedding. Her best friend’s wedding. Chances are she has a hangover. Best I leave her alone.
I walk down to the newsagent and buy a paper. It makes for grim reading.
Two thousand cases of Covid-19 in London, but the bad news is the rest of the country is likely to follow over the coming weeks. A hundred people have died in the city. The forecast is for thousands.
National Trust has shut its parks. The mayor of London has not yet closed the Tube, arguing that it’s vital for key workers, but he fears too many people will use it on Monday. There are photos of people on beaches in Devon and hundreds on the Yorkshire Dales.
At some point in the afternoon I lounge on the sofa, draw the curtain to cut out the light slanting in, bleaching out details on my wall, and think. I try to fit all the bits and pieces I have together into a messy collage of what I know. See if I can make some kind of plan. More a thought cloud than anything, yet somehow it helps. I slide my gaze over the wall and focus in on the people playing the biggest part in my life. I don’t include Rachel or Josh because they are constants. This is more about me trying to chart the changes.
The first image I land on is DS Keely. The photo of her is a newspaper cutting from some case that made the papers. She’s with another officer but I’ve snipped him out. I scanned and enlarged the image. Her hair is longer than it is now, but still Keely. Still that unforgiving I-dare-you-to-lie stare.
On a sheet of blank paper I write Keely’s name as a heading and scribble my thoughts underneath.
KEELY
Suspicious of me. Still thinks I’m guilty. A person of interest.
Thinks I’m unstable.
Doesn’t like me meddling.
Next comes Stamford. His image is culled from his website. He looks more like a friendly financial advisor than a private investigator. Something to do with the side-on shot, the suit and tie and the cheesy grin.
STAMFORD
Has information on the Turkish angle.
Comes across as genuine.
Admits his first loyalty is to the Roxburghs.
Even though I underline the last sentence, I know I want to trust him. He is the only one as keen as me to find out what happened in Turkey. Or so it seems. But there’s one more name to add.
NICOLE
Willing to help.
Knew Emma.
Treats me as normal.
I want to cross out the very last sentence as soon as I’ve written it.
It rankles.
I’m a thousand light years from normal. I shouldn’t be expecting anyone to treat me that way. Yet, Nicole accepts me for who I am. Flawed and damaged. She’s one of a handful of people who do. Josh does, Stamford and Vanessa do. Adam does too – though I’m his patient and by definition that’s a different relationship. Still, with Nicole, she’s the first woman since Emma that I’ve slept with. I may have slept with any number of others before Emma, of course – oh, yeah.
I guffaw. Who the hell am I kidding? I can’t remember sleeping with Emma, so there is no chance of me remembering anyone before her even though I must have. So in effect Nicole is my first.
What a way to reboot the system.
I slouch off to bed with Nicole on my mind. I want to message her, but I don’t. I promised myself I wouldn’t. She may, at this moment, be telling Aaron. Explaining to him how none of this is his fault. That I’ve reappeared out of her past like a ghost, definitely no shite whining armour involved.
That one stops me in my tracks. My dysphasia normally throws up malapropisms. Spoonerisms are rare, though this one, shite whining, is a classic. I must write it down for Josh. He’d love to see a knight in shite whining armour.
I scribble it down in my notebook and drag my thoughts back to between the tramlines. The point, what my addled brain is trying to explain to itself is, the last thing Nicole needs is pressure from me. The ball is in her court.
I must be patient.
But it is hard.
48
I’m in bed by eleven that night, halfway through McCarthy’s The Road. Neither the boy nor his father yet have a name, and I’m guessing their anonymity will persist as they trudge through a nuclear winter. At first, the lack of quotation marks bothers me, but the spare style suits the harrowing subject matter. In a self-flagellating kind of way. I text Josh and tell him this. He comes back with a smiley face and:
Read one more chapter and then listen to this. https://youtu.be/SJUhlRoBL8M
I finish the chapter and surf to the provided URL and a crucifixion scene. This is a bit too much irony even for Josh. Never one to be troubled overmuch by the issues of good taste, sometimes Josh walks perilously close to the line marked crass. But then, on the video, one of the crucified men starts singing. I know who Eric Idle is, but I’ve never seen or heard ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’ before.
I close the covers of The Road and watch the video five times.
The sixth is interrupted by my phone cheeping. If it’s Rachel, I will not answer. But this signals a Snapchat message.
Nicole.
Hi Cam. I spoke to Aaron at his. He didn’t take it well. We had a blazing row. He’d had a few drinks and lost it.
I text back.
What do you mean?
There was a lot of noise. Mostly Aaron shouting. His neighbour knocked on the door. Aaron swore at him. The neighbour called the police. It wasn’t pleasant. I left before the police came. Better they didn’t see me.
What does that mean?
This time, when the phone pings, an image pops up, a Nicole selfie. Only not the usual smiling Nicole. She has no makeup on and she’s pouting, but only to demonstrate the bruise around her lip and over the corner of her mouth.
I sit up, heart pounding. I slide to my feet, scattering sheets behind me like a snake shedding its skin.
Let me call you.
No. It’s late and I’m at a friend’s. I promised her I wouldn’t speak to anyone. I promised her I’d be quiet. We’re both pretty shaken. But I had to tell you.
Where is Aaron now?
Don’t know and don’t care. It’s over. He’s furious. He knows about you. Don’t ask me how. I want you to lock your door.
He can’t get in. I’m on the first floor.
Lock your door.
Okay. Don’t worry about me.
But I do. A lot. Aaron is unpredictable. And he’s been drinking. Stay safe. Come to my friend’s place tomorrow morning. I’ll send you the address. She says she’ll stay off work but I don’t want that. She’s a key worker. If you come and keep me company, I’ll feel much better.
Of course I’ll come.
Thank you. Catelyn, my friend, has given me one of her sleepers. I’m going to try to get some rest now. Thinking of you. I love you, Cam.
When I text back, there’s no delivery confirmation. She’s switched her phone off is my guess. I don’t go back to bed. I can’t. I’m on my feet pacing.
Poor Nicole. She’s done this for me. For us. That bastard Aaron… It’s an hour before I finally sit down on the edge of the bed and untwist the covers. But I struggle with getting my thoughts in order. If I’m honest, I’ve been like this since I drove to Emma’s old surgery. Something’s shaken up my brain, that’s obvious. I crave sleep but I’m not really tired when I should be exhausted. How can that be?
Buggering up your meds, idiot.
There is that. But my mind fizzes with disjointed thoughts. The message from Nicole has only upped the white noise by fifty decibels.
Ye
t even through the crackle and hiss, deep down I know why I’m so restless. Nicole’s hurt because of me. Just like it’s my fault Emma is dead and Harriet hates me. Am I cursed? Does everything I touch get damaged?
I wrestle with these thoughts through the long hours of the night, wondering if I’ll ever learn the truth. If I’ll ever truly get any peace. The one slight comfort I latch on to is knowing Nicole is waiting for me come the dawn. I grasp at that soothing anticipation until it lulls me into a fitful sleep a little after 3am.
I get three-and-a-half hours before I’m wide awake again.
49
MONDAY 23 MARCH
DS Rhian Keely stares at the screen in front of her, waiting for the page she’s called up to load. The server, never fast, is on the go slow and has been all morning. Another stabbing on their patch. The male victim, a teenager, seems to have been a case of mistaken identity just to make a crap situation immeasurably worse. Keely is certain it’s gang-related, but she wants to make sure Dwayne Green is indeed the nice guy everyone says he is. Dwayne is out of surgery and looks like he’ll live. Eyewitnesses have named his two attackers, but Keely is trying to access a local newspaper website to read an article highlighting Dwayne’s athletic prowess. He’s a track star, apparently. But she’s learned the hard way not to trust what people say. For all she knows Dwayne may be a runner, but for the dealer in one of the estates off Jamaica Road, not on the 800 metres track in Southwark Park.
Sometimes innocent victims aren’t as innocent as they’re made out to be.
Finally, the page begins loading just as Messiter sticks his head around the door with an apologetic look Keely’s come to recognise as a harbinger of grim news. She’s told him he should never play poker.
She glances at the wall clock. 8.25am. ‘It better be good,’ Keely says.
Messiter’s lips pull back in a rictus grin. ‘It isn’t. But she won’t talk to me.’
‘Who won’t?’
‘Harriet Roxburgh.’
Keely’s head drops between her shoulders. This is all she needs. Already her day is two thirds down the toilet what with the stabbing and the briefing they’d had about how things would change after the new virus-related powers come in. For a start they’re going to close down businesses. She knows of at least three pubs on the patch who will no doubt offer lock-ins to their favourite punters because that’s what they were doing anyway. They’re geared up for it. Convinced in their right to bend the law a little.
She’s seen films about speakeasies but never thought she’d see the day one might appear in London. Shutting them down would not be easy. On the other hand, the power to remove people from public places to their homes is one she is looking forward to. Ever since they’d had the heads-up about it there’d been a flurry of jokers practising ‘Move along there’ in the corridors. No longer were stroppy feral youths effing and blinding at passers-by going to be able to say, ‘You can’t make me, I’m not doing anything.’ Loitering with a gang of other lowlifes swearing and sipping vodka was now ‘doing something’. She can’t wait.
What she isn’t looking forward to is dealing with arseholes who might decide it was a laugh to spit on her, or to cough in her face. She’s had colleagues suffer such indignities at the hands of the mad and the bad in exactly that way. Now the arseholes will get short shrift. Even so, she is considering wearing a motorbike helmet to work.
Wordlessly, she pushes back from the desk and walks through a door Messiter holds open for her. Keely mutters as they stride the length of the corridor.
‘You told her we have other cases to deal with, I hope?’
‘Yes.’
‘That we can’t spare any more resources?’
‘I did, sarge. Water off a duck’s arse.’
‘It’s back.’
‘What is?’
‘Never mind.’
They reach a closed door. Keely brushes off a muffin crumb – bran and walnut mini – from her blouse, sends Messiter one last long-suffering glance, and opens the door.
Harriet Roxburgh is sitting at a desk on a steel-framed chair angled towards the door. Arms folded, legs crossed, one foot jiggling up and down maniacally as if it has lost all control. A barometer of the wild energy that seems to ripple through her like a winter storm whenever Keely sees her. She’s an attractive woman, or could be, Keely thinks. If it wasn’t for the sour disdain making her mouth into a thin-lipped bloodless slash of disapproval and the constant look of someone smelling a blocked drain that screws up the rest of her face.
‘You’ve seen it, I take it?’ Harriet fires off a challenge.
‘Seen what?’ Keely replies. For a moment she half hopes this may be some kind of anxiety over an infringement of human rights the new Coronavirus Act could be seen as. But Harriet Roxburgh has never struck Keely as an activist other than over the death of her sister. An occurrence which preoccupies her every living moment. No room for a bigger picture in Harriet’s hornet’s nest mind.
‘Emma’s fake website,’ spits Harriet. ‘Someone’s posted more filth. And when I say someone, we both know who.’
Keely walks in to stand opposite Harriet but she doesn’t sit, preferring to stand to show she’s there under sufferance. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. But as I explained this isn’t a police matter.’
Harriet reaches for her phone and stabs and swipes at the screen before holding it out towards Keely’s face.
‘There. Just look at what he’s written.’
Keely can’t see the screen from where she’s standing and does not try to take the phone. Frustrated, Harriet pulls it back and describes what’s written.
‘That’s a photograph of my sister in a bikini. She had a nice figure. But what’s written under it? DILF, that’s what. Do you know what that means?’
Keely thinks she does but isn’t sure. It sounds like MILF and she knows what MILF means. She glances at Messiter who shakes his head.
‘Oh, come on. Take a stab in the dark. DILF. Doctors I’d Like to F… you know the rest. And under it are a dozen sick comments that leave little to the imagination.’
‘Is this on Emma’s site?’
‘Not on her memorial site. On the other site, The Emma “Roxy” Roxburgh site.’
‘And you know who put that image there?’
‘The implication is it’s my sister. But it isn’t her because she is dead. So who do you think is doing it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Cameron Todd, that’s who.’
‘You have proof of this?’
‘No. Of course not. But we both know the man is unstable. He’s accused my sister of having an illicit affair with a doctor and dabbling in drugs.’
‘We’ve put him right on that one,’ Messiter says.
The sound of his voice draws stares from both women.
‘Good, delighted to hear it.’ Harriet stabs at her phone again. ‘But if you want proof he isn’t all there, this is him down in Winchester yesterday.’
Once again, Harriet turns the screen towards Keely. This time she takes it and holds the screen closer so she can examine the image. It takes a moment to make out the details. Her eyes are drawn to the spans of a viaduct filling most of the frame, but she strokes her fingertips apart to enlarge the image and sees a figure standing on top of the parapet, arms outstretched. It isn’t clear because the snap has been taken on a long lens. The light isn’t great either and the big shapeless jacket the figure is wearing hides the build and blurs the features, but it still looks enough like Todd for her to sigh and snap her head up. ‘How did you get this? Are you following him?’
‘Really? That’s the most important question to ask in this situation?’ Harriet shakes her head.
‘Are you?’
‘No, I am not–’
‘So what? You’re paying someone to?’
Harriet is unruffled. ‘This man is posting vile rubbish about my sister on Facebook. And he’s standing on tall buildings like sodding Superman. Who knows
what he’ll do next.’
‘Has he threatened you?’
‘No. He doesn’t need to. Anyone can see what’s going on in that sick mind of his and I want you to do something about it.’
‘He isn’t breaking any laws, Harriet,’ Keely says.
‘Wonderful. Let’s wait until he turns up at my parents’ house with an axe, shall we? Let’s wait until he breaks into my flat at midnight with an effing chainsaw singing “Saturday Night Fever”.’
Messiter tries placation. ‘We’ve already spoken to him. He didn’t seem all that…’
‘Go on, say it,’ goads Harriet.
‘Disturbed,’ Messiter says.
‘My sister is dead. Someone is posting on social media pretending to be her. You do not need to be a genius to see what’s going on here.’ She pauses, her voice dropping. ‘He needs to be off the streets.’
Keely shakes her head. ‘This isn’t Russia or North Korea.’
Harriet stands, eyes blazing and tucks her phone away. ‘I should have known this was a complete waste of bloody time. Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
‘Where are you going?’ Keely asks.
‘To do your job for you.’
‘We’ve talked about this before.’
‘Yes we have. And you disappoint me every time. I’d like to leave now.’ Harriet glares at Messiter. He opens the door and follows her out. Keely stays in the room, wishing, for the hundredth time, that she had never heard of Cameron Todd or Emma Roxburgh.
50
I punch the address Nicole gave me into my phone. Greenwich is eight stops away on the Tube. I could drive, but it’s Monday and, despite the essential journeys only warning, I’m not going to risk the traffic or overzealous police roadblocks.