by TL Dyer
‘No, not alright. Not alright at all, Shaun. You and your numpty, fist-happy friends couldn’t have put me in a worse position. He’ll hold this over me now. One wrong move from me, and you’ll go down, you know that, don’t you?’
He snorts through his nose, but the tap of his knuckles against his temple suggests his indignation is for more than just the man he beat up.
I turn to face him, dropping my hip against the bench. ‘Look, I’ll do everything to not let that happen, okay? But you’ve got to think before you do stuff like this. Drunk or not. Because I won’t always be able to help you. And that terrifies me more than it does you. So please, for fuck’s sake…’ I stop myself. Shaun’s biting his lip, looking over towards the Kawasaki like it’s the only thing that might save him from a fate worse than death. That fate being prison.
‘It’s for Jake,’ he says, digging his tongue into his teeth. There are deep circles under his eyes when he looks back my way. ‘The bike. It’s for Jake.’
I reach for my throbbing jaw and run my fingers over the lump there, my exhaustion complete, all energy drained so that it almost pains me to speak. ‘He’s six years old, Shaun.’
‘I know. It’ll keep.’
He waits for my approval, wants me to thank him for the nice gesture, tell him Jake will love it eventually. But I don’t have it in me.
‘I need to ask you something,’ I say, and his folded arms tighten.
‘Alright.’
‘You won’t like the question, but I need you to be absolutely honest with the answer.’
‘I’m always honest.’
‘Are you?’
‘Yes,’ he says, his blunt reply hardening his eyes.
‘Okay. When you pleaded guilty, Shaun, were you telling the truth then?’
His arms drop and he strides across the garage to the door, only stopping when his fingers are on it. I can hear his shallow breaths from here. But I need to know. I have to be certain who’s told the truth and who’s lied.
‘Did you hurt Lee Cavendish, Shaun? Did you do to him what you did to Darren?’
‘No,’ he shouts, the word echoing off the bare brick walls. ‘I had to lie then. I was made to. You know all that.’
‘So you didn’t touch him?’
‘No. I wasn’t there. Why are you asking me this?’
His voice is rising, cheeks and neck flushed red. The spot I’m pressing is so raw that if I’m not careful I could push him back into the hole he was in when he came out of prison. Could I live with that? To protect Jake, could I ruin my brother by sending the life he’s rebuilt spiralling into the void?
When I cross the room to the door, he tries to pull it open to get away from me, but in his frustration he loses his grip and I get there first. I touch one hand to his arm and push the door closed with the other.
‘It’s important, Shaun,’ I say, in a quiet voice I hope will calm him. ‘Whatever your answer is, it won’t make any difference. All that’s over with now.’
‘Then why are you fucking asking?’ he snaps, tugging his arm from me, hazel eyes shrouded in fear.
I could give him any number of white lies just to get him to talk. But if the truth is what I want from him, then he’s entitled to the same from me.
With a soft sigh, I drop my shoulder against the door. ‘It was something Darren said.’
There’s a thin line between fear and fury, and I’m not sure which of these I see in Shaun’s face as he waits for me to go on.
‘He said he knew what really happened that night. The truth about your involvement.’
Confusion breaks his hard exterior and darkens his eyes. ‘What fucking truth? And what the fuck would he know anyway?’
‘You tell me, Shaun. But he implied you were a part of it.’
His mouth drops open before the words come. ‘He’s fucking lying. The tosser. Why would he say that? It’s a fucking lie.’
‘Maybe he was just angry after what you did,’ I say, backtracking now as Shaun’s fingers curl into a fist. ‘Or he got it wrong. It doesn’t matter. I’ll speak to him, put him straight. I needed to ask, that’s all. Alright? I just had to know.’
He grounds his jaw as he looks at me. ‘You already knew.’
‘You’re right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have questioned you.’
‘No, you shouldn’t have.’
He turns his back and returns to the bench where he flips open the lid of his toolbox. My apology won’t go far enough for him to erase this conversation or to stop him from ruminating on it later. I’ve hurt and upset him and I can’t take that back. But I got what I came for. I got my answer. Darren had lied about Shaun. And so what else might he lie about? What level of deception is he willing to go to in order to manipulate people to get what he wants?
My head throbs in time with my bruised jaw, and I turn to yank on the door. I need to go home and get some sleep, then I have to find Eliza, get her side of the story before Darren can worm his way too deep into Jake’s life. But the clang of something heavy coming down hard on the workbench makes me jump and spin around.
‘Craig,’ Shaun says, a wrench clenched in his tight fist.
‘What?’
‘It was Craig. He saw us after we left the snooker club.’
I step back inside, my hand still gripping the edge of the door. ‘Craig? No, he’d gone by then. He wasn’t living here.’
Shaun shrugs. ‘I don’t know what the fuck he was doing, but he was there. Asked where we were going.’
‘Who was he with?’
‘No one, I don’t think. He asked what we were up to. I didn’t tell him anything, but Fish whispered something to him. Probably told him we were on our way to do Cavendish over, bring him down a peg or two, some shit like that. You know what Fish was like, gob wider than Cheddar Gorge. But I bet that’s what Craig told his old man, that we were all going, me included. Well he was fucking wrong. I went home. Only, he wouldn’t know that, because he’d gone by then.’
‘Where did he go?’ I say, as my legs weaken, my chest tightens.
‘Fucked off. Who cares?’ He shrugs again; not his problem.
‘How was he? I mean, how did he look?’
‘Fucking hell, Sach, I don’t know, this was years ago. He looked like any other druggie, is how he looked. Like he could do with a wash and a fucking pick-me-up.’
‘Did he say anything? Did he ask about me?’
‘Yeah, the fucking stoner asked if you were home,’ he says, taking the wrench over to the bike.
‘And what did you say?’
‘I said probably not.’
‘But I was home.’
Shaun drops the wrench beside the bike. It hits the concrete floor with a clatter that drills through my skull. ‘I didn’t know that, did I? Anyway he was a dopehead, I wasn’t about to just send him round the house, was I?’
‘So you sent him away instead.’
‘I didn’t fucking send anyone anywhere. I said you probably weren’t home and then he fucked off, that was it.’
Shaun crouches behind the bike so all I can see of him is the top of his head, a signal that this conversation is over. But I want to know more, every word Craig said, what he wore, how he looked when he asked after me, and again when he left. I want to know why Shaun couldn’t have walked with him to the house, why he couldn’t have let me know before now that he’d seen him that night. And I want to be angry with him too, at what might have been if only Craig and I had talked, if I’d known he wanted to see me. But the longer I stand there not saying any of that, the greater the emptiness expands in my chest and the more certain I am that none of that matters any more. Because it changes nothing.
‘So you can tell Darren Isaacs he doesn’t know fuck all,’ Shaun says, his voice muffled behind the Kawasaki’s engine. ‘Whatever his son told him, he got it fucking wrong. Which would be about right, because that whole family’s full of shit.’
The vehemence in his words is meant for me as much as Darren, for believing
Darren’s word over his. I can’t blame him for that, and I’d have no energy left to try. So I leave, pulling the door shut behind me. And on the short walk back home, two things stand out in my mind that I know I’ll have a hard time shifting. One is that Craig did seek my help and I wasn’t there for him. The other is, regardless of the fact that Darren’s information about Shaun’s part in Cavendish’s attack was wrong, he didn’t lie. He told me what he thought was the truth.
So where the hell does that leave me now?
Chapter 34
I start the next set of night shifts feeling like I didn’t finish the last ones. It’s never a good sign when all the work days roll into one and the off days slip away before you’ve had chance to get anything out of them. Whatever peace of mind I may have left Jen’s office with yesterday afternoon was soon banished following my visit to Ty Bryn and then my conversation with Shaun. Both were revealing, but in ways I hadn’t expected and that I’m failing to get my head around. Now, after only a few hours of restless sleep, I’m back at work with gunpowder running through my veins that won’t take much of a spark to ignite. It’s a terrible combination for a profession that requires tact, diplomacy, a cool head, and one hundred percent focus at all times. If I ever wanted to hide behind a computer screen or in the toilet cubicles for the best part of the shift, it’s now. But I committed to the job, so excuses won’t do. I have to push down my anger, my restlessness and my worry, and do what my colleagues and those I serve entrust me to do.
It’s Friday night. Town’s busy and the first half of the evening ticks away the hours at a reasonable rate, but we hit a lull around two in the morning. Single-crewed, I head back to the station to tackle the paperwork. I manage all of thirty-five minutes, which for a fast typist isn’t too bad, before Roberts approaches the desk and tells me I’m wanted on a shout. A young woman’s put the call in from a bed in the City Royal, claiming she’s been attacked.
‘She phoned through direct,’ the sarge says, as I’m already closing applications on the computer and getting up from the chair. ‘Demanded to speak to Smithy. Yes, you heard me correctly. Demanded. Sounded like a right handful. My first thought was a crank call. We’ve had several of them concerning our suspended colleague just lately. But her name’s in the system. Charlotte Stevens. Not the first time she’s been on the wrong end of a fist. Multiple reports over the previous eighteen months to two years, the last a couple of months ago when Smithy was called out by a neighbour reporting sounds of disturbance at her property in town. Got little out of her, it seems, so the case went dead. But the system flags links to Sex Crimes as part of a broader operation, so I’ll give them the heads up.’
‘Right, Sarge.’ I fasten the Velcro on my utility vest and grab the car keys from the desk.
‘She’s receiving treatment, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble from her whatever her story is. But shout if you need assistance and I’ll pull an officer from out of my backside. Or some other such magic they expect from me.’
‘Thank you, Sarge,’ I say, as he heads back to his office wittering obscenities about his superiors that I’d rather not be party to.
With my lid in one hand and keys in the other, I’m just glad of the distraction. But it doesn’t take long for the novelty to wear off.
Charlotte Stevens is a twenty-one-year-old female with a battle-weary head on her shoulders, a worn look in her eye, and a mouth like the entrance to the pits of hell. She’s what I’d call ‘difficult’. For one, I’m not Smithy, and it was Smithy she asked for. And two, I’m assuming even if I was Smithy, I’d still be getting the same dressing down that she gives to everyone – the only difference being that she knows him and he knows her. Presumably he has a better handle on her too, because I’m finding her something of a struggle.
That she’s been assaulted is not in question. Her attacker left his signature on her face, her throat, her chest, and possibly in other places too, but they’re the ones I can see. Who her attacker is, is the sticking point. As is what exactly he did to her and why. Those things she’s keeping close. Which is fine, but not when you’ve called out the police for the purpose of reporting a crime. In those instances, if we’re to do our job, we need to know everything.
On another night I might have had more patience, at least I like to think I would, but of all the people I could have encountered tonight, she’s the worst. As our conversation wears on, getting nowhere, and her attitude grates over my worn nerves like two sticks sparking a fire, it gets ever harder to not lose my temper. And she sodding well knows it, too.
‘Did they send you as some kind of joke?’ she says, her words slurred from the drugs they’ve given her to numb the pain of two broken ribs, her dark eyes sleepy but taunting.
‘I’m sorry?’ I’m standing at the end of the bed with the stylus poised over the handheld, though for what reason I don’t know. I’m not getting very far.
‘They send a smashed-up copper to speak to a smashed-up victim of crime.’
I touch my fingers to my bruised jaw. It’s no longer swollen, but still signals its presence in rich aquatic tones. Dropping my hand, I say, ‘So the attack happened at your property on Caerau Road between eleven and midnight, but you won’t tell me who did it and what led up to it. So how do you expect me to help you, Charlotte?’
‘I don’t. I requested PC Neil Smith.’
‘Well, I’m sure he’ll be very touched, but that’s not how this works. You witness a crime, you call the police, you get a police officer. You don’t get to choose which one.’
‘Then I don’t wish to report the crime.’
She turns her head to the side on the pillow as if that’s this conversation done. Her riotous blonde hair falls across her cheek, giving her the appearance of a moody teenager. Her chin and her throat are mottled with red blemishes, the skin swelling and distorting the still child-like tilt of her jaw. But unlike my own bruises, hers weren’t caused by an object but by a person’s actions, a person’s strength. Though, if I think about it, I can still feel Darren’s crushing arms around me, his palm pressed to the back of my head, reluctant to let me go.
Realising I’m holding my breath, I draw in a deep inhale and pull up a chair beside the bed. Charlotte tuts and shifts the other way so that I’m looking at a two-inch tattoo of a rose just down from her left ear, beneath which is a large oval beauty spot. Her parents, whoever they are, will know the beauty spot well, its identifying mark. But I wonder if they’re as familiar with the rose. It looks like a recent addition, the scarlet petals and green stem as perfect as the rose held captive within its glass jar in Beauty and the Beast. Beautiful but untouchable.
‘Charlotte, my job is to ensure your safety. I can only do that if I have all the facts. Whatever went on at your home tonight, you weren’t safe there. Someone’s hurt you. Someone who had no right to touch you like this. What concerns me is, if you return home your safety might still be compromised.’
She says nothing, only stares across the room. I don’t know whether she’s thinking about what I’m saying or waiting for me to shut up.
‘Could you at least tell me exactly where you’re hurt?’
She flops her head my way and glares. ‘What, you mean you can’t see it? Did you get concussion, too, when he did that to you?’
I bite back my first response. No one did this to me, it was an accident.
‘I can’t see all of it, Charlotte, no,’ I say instead. And unable to hold eye contact, she looks away.
‘Well they told you about the ribs,’ she mumbles.
‘Yes. They did. They also told me they were concerned about something else. Bruising on your hips. Your thighs.’
‘Did that ages ago.’
‘Fresh bruises.’
‘I like to roller blade.’ Her voice is deadpan, and her eyes flatlining when she looks at me.
‘Charlotte, if you’ve been sexually assaulted—’
‘Fuck off.’
‘You need to report it.
For your own sake, first and foremost. And for the sake of others who might be subject to the same treatment if the person responsible isn’t apprehended.’
‘I said fuck off.’
‘Do you want whoever hurt you to get away with this? Because I wouldn’t.’
‘They got away with that, didn’t they?’ She nods towards my jaw. When I don’t answer, a thin smile of satisfaction peels across her lips. ‘They did, didn’t they?’
‘Is it someone you know, Charlotte? A friend, family member, work colleague?’
‘Was that?’
‘Why won’t you let the nurses examine you? They need to treat you if you’re hurt. And we can still collect DNA that could be used as evidence to secure a conviction against whoever did this. They’d go away for a long time, Charlotte. But the longer you leave it, the less chance we have. Any DNA could be lost.’
‘I’m guessing it was your boyfriend, or your husband. It always is with women like you.’
‘Women like me?’
‘Good girls,’ she says, with a fake voice and a mocking smile. ‘You accept your lot, take what’s dished out, probably think it’s all you deserve.’
‘Is that how you feel, Charlotte?’
‘Bet you were a real daddy’s girl when you were younger. Been looking for a substitute ever since. Maybe you’re even used to being kept in line by the men in your life.’
‘Are you going to let the nurses examine you or not?’
‘Was Daddy loose with his fists too?’
‘You’re way off the mark, but I’ll put it down to trauma. I’m giving you one more chance to protect yourself and do the right thing.’
‘Someone else then. You get what I’m saying, I know you do. I can tell by looking at you.’
I get up from the chair. Just for a second she looks disappointed. She was enjoying herself.
‘This isn’t a game, Charlotte. I get what you’re saying because in this job I see it all the time. In battered and bruised faces like yours. And in the heartbreak and tears of those who want to help themselves. Women who want to be free of fear so that they can stop being someone else’s puppet and control their own lives. The same way you could if you wanted. Last chance, Charlotte.’
