Bitter Blue

by Cath Staincliffe

  There was a scraping sound and the ground shook.

  ‘No!’ She hurled herself into the room and at me. I kicked out and broke another pane. She lunged at me. She had a hammer in her hand. I screamed, jerked my head back violently to avoid the blow. Watched her arm falling, her face brilliant with rage. The metal smashed into my shoulder. I rolled onto my side, gasping at the glow of pain radiating from the bulls-eye blow, the stabbing pains streaking down my arms.

  ‘You stupid bitch,’ she yelled.

  I didn’t move. I didn’t say anything. She was dishevelled and her suit was stained; large, dark daubs. The hammer hung from her hand, glistening, wet. She came over to me and stooped and grabbed the ropes near my shins. With a strength that alarmed me she hauled me out of the room, dragging me against the carpet and bumping me through the doorway and into the lounge at the front of the house.

  The smell hit me first, metal, like the taste of fresh fillings. And faeces too. For a stupid moment I was back at the Smiths’ house, in the bitter cold, looking at the old man, his face torn, his flesh dark and split and spoilt with decay.

  She hadn’t tied Benjamin up. Hadn’t needed to. There was blood everywhere. So much blood. He was on the sofa, head bowed on his chest, blooms of blood on his shirt, on his trousers and the cushions. His glasses in his lap. A stringy rope of gore hanging from the side of his head.

  ‘Oh my God. Oh, Lucy. You’ve killed him. Oh, God.’ I was babbling, gasping.

  She glared at me, her face working furiously. ‘You shouldn’t have interfered,’ she cried. The marks on her suit were blood, blackish clots and splashes.

  Benjamin stirred, made a small groan. Shock jolted through me.

  ‘Call an ambulance!’ I cried. ‘You can save him.’ Wouldn’t that appeal to her sense of high drama?

  I saw temptation flicker in her eyes.

  ‘If he dies, you’ll—’

  ‘Shut up!’ She swung her foot at my face. A kick to my jaw which made me swoon. The taste of blood in my mouth blended with the stink of it in my nostrils. When I looked again she was by the window, drawing the curtains, closing out the light. Shutting us off from the outside world. How late was it? Was Ray wondering where I’d got to yet? And Maddie, had school been all right? Please, I prayed, please let me go home.

  Lucy Barker would kill me. How could she not? Unless I could convince her to get help.

  ‘I thought you cared for him?’

  ‘You don’t know anything about me.’

  Too right.

  She stood on the rug in the middle of the room, pursed her lips, blinked. It was an expression of impatience or irritation. I could see no sign of grief or terror.

  ‘He needs help, soon. You’re the only one who can help him.’

  ‘Stop chattering,’ she shook her head fiercely as though my words were insects buzzing in her ears.

  I waited not wanting to provoke more violence. She still held the hammer.

  Finally she volunteered some information. ‘Benjamin’s had an accident.’

  I choked back a laugh. But if I could keep her talking, stop her hurting me. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Was his own fault. If he’d listened to me he’d be all right. So stupid. Some things are meant to be. He knew that – me and Benjamin, nothing could keep us apart – but he tried to leave. How could he do that!’ She shrieked and flung the hammer. It hit a row of CDs which clattered to the floor. I saw Benjamin jerk at the noise.

  She crossed the room, her feet cracking the CD cases and retrieved the hammer. I sucked in air, my brain febrile with fear, thoughts and pleas bursting like shells on a battlefield.

  She sat beside Benjamin on the sofa, the hammer on her lap. I couldn’t see any movement from him, no rise and fall of his chest or pulsing in his neck. She drew his hair out of his eyes. Blood fringed his forehead. She took one of his hands and pressed it between her own. ‘Why did you spoil it?’ she chided him. ‘He’s always been trouble.’ She gave an amused laugh.

  ‘Call an ambulance,’ I said.

  ‘Shut up! I couldn’t let him leave me. We’re engaged.’ She held out her hand, tilted it, admiring her ring, her head cocked to one side. ‘He’s staying here with me. I’m looking after him now.’

  My ears were singing as if there was a car alarm going off inside my head but I still registered a noise outside. A vehicle slowing and stopping. Next thing there was knocking at the door, the bell ringing and a loud voice.

  ‘Police! Open the door. Can you hear me? Police!’

  Lucy looked bemused. Her eyes darted one way then another. She grabbed the hammer and stood up. Started towards me. I flinched. There is no way to protect your head when your hands are tied behind your back.

  ‘You stupid cow,’ she spat at me. ‘You’ve ruined it all.’

  ‘Police! Open the door. Does anyone need medical attention? We have a doctor here.’

  ‘I’ve got a doctor,’ she said quietly. I doubted the man at the door could hear.

  ‘Help,’ I shouted out. ‘He needs an ambulance. Get us out of here.’

  She kicked me again in the back. It hurt. I wanted to thrash out, rain blows on her, smash that elegant face to putty. I squeezed my eyes tight to stop the tears. I needed to be strong. Use the anger not the fear.

  ‘No,’ she shouted, her voice hard. ‘Go away!’

  She ran from the room and her footsteps vibrated through the house as she went upstairs. I felt her crossing the room above. To look out, I imagined. At the police cordons, the ambulances standing by, the knots of alarmed neighbours and passers-by. Drawn by the spectacle, appalled at the potential for bad news. She’d love it.

  ‘Benjamin,’ I gave a loud whisper, ‘can you hear me?’

  Nothing. I’d read somewhere, talking to someone, or touching them could help them survive a trauma even when they were unconscious.

  ‘The police are here, they’ll get us out. We’ll get you to hospital. It’s going to be all right.’

  Inside panic skittered through me. The longer they left us with her the worse our chances were. She seemed oblivious as to whether Benjamin was dead or alive. Another fit of rage and she would turn on me again.

  Lucy hurried downstairs and into the lounge.

  Help, I thought, please help us now. Help!

  ‘You bitch,’ she screamed. ‘Why couldn’t you leave us alone?’ She raised the hammer.

  ‘No!’ My teeth gritted together. Maddie, please. Terror burst through my veins.

  There was a horrendous crashing sound and I heard Lucy yelp. The room filled with hissing, loud and sibilant. My eyes were burning, awful, like acid on my pupils, hot tears streaming from them but no respite. Smoke choking me. Impossible to see. No breath! I began retching, each spasm inflaming the throbbing pains where she had hammered my shoulder and head and kicked me.

  There was clamour and commotion, voices shouting, bulky bodies surging about then hands on my legs, pulling me, dragging me, through glass and splintered wood. Out. Out into the, fresh, cloudy, bloody beautiful daylight.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I couldn’t breathe, as if my throat had closed up. My nose was on fire and I could taste the bitter, chemical stench of toxins. My body was jerking in panic then someone clamped a mask to my face and I sucked in air like a swimmer surfacing from a dive. The world kept tilting and it reminded me of the giddying sensation of the minor earthquakes Manchester had experienced. The disconcerting physical feeling that nothing was solid anymore and the peculiar way the tremors travelled through the body, currents through water, a reminder of how much of us is liquid.

  Sometime later they took the mask away. A paramedic was releasing my arms. When he finally got them free blades of pain shot through my hands and travelled up my arms. So bad it made me weep. He murmured reassurance and then began to untie my feet.

  ‘We need to see to them cuts.’

  I twisted my head to see what he was on about. My trousers had ridden up and there were long s
lashes on my calves and ankles and ragged tears where the flesh was frilled and bloody from my kicking at the French windows. I couldn’t feel anything in my legs. Blood ran freely from one cut and he stuck a big dressing over it.

  ‘Any pain?’

  Where did I start? I wiped at my tears and set off the throbbing in my skull.

  ‘My head, shoulder.’ Talking made me cough.

  ‘Any double vision?’

  ‘Dizzy.’

  ‘Nasty lump, probably need an x-ray, check for fractures and a stitch or two. What did she hit you with?’

  ‘Hammer.’

  ‘Any nausea?’

  Surely he could smell it. ‘I was sick.’

  ‘Before the tear gas?’

  There was a burst of shouting from inside. I thought I heard Lucy’s voice in the midst of it. Then it went quiet. Even though it was cloudy the sky was too bright. I saw a seagull, way up high, storms at sea. Fly away. Stars peppered the fringes of my vision. I closed my eyes.

  ‘How did you know – who rang the police?’

  ‘The hospital – she rang them pretending to be a police officer so she could get his address. They thought it was a bit odd so they checked and we’d a report from the neighbours – windows breaking. That’d be you, would it? Nearly done and then we’ll get you to hospital.’

  ‘My little girl.’ I opened my eyes and the world slanted. ‘Will you ring them? I want to go home.’

  He smiled. What a lovely man, I thought. Gratitude swelled in my chest. I wanted to thank him. I tried to open my mouth but everything went soft and swallowed me.

  I don’t recall being in the ambulance. I woke up on a trolley covered in a blanket under ghastly bright strip lights. My mouth was parched. I narrowed my eyes and looked about but I couldn’t see anyone or any way of getting a drink. I fell asleep and was immediately woken by a nurse. When I asked for a drink she explained I couldn’t have anything in case I needed a general anaesthetic – an empty stomach was essential.

  ‘How do you know I didn’t have a four course meal before I got here?’

  ‘Did you?’

  I frowned.

  ‘A doctor will be with you soon.’

  Next time I opened my eyes I saw Ray. He looked so serious it frightened me.

  ‘Hello,’ I managed.

  ‘Christ!’ he said.

  I blinked. ‘It’s not that bad.’

  He made a funny noise. ‘Oh, Sal!’ There was such a depth of emotion in his voice: love and sadness and a profound, unashamed longing in his eyes. I couldn’t bear it. I closed my eyes, bit my teeth together and fresh pain flowered through my temples.

  ‘Maddie?’ I said eventually.

  ‘Fine. With Sheila.’

  ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘What does the doctor say?’

  ‘I haven’t seen one yet.’

  He sighed and went in search of someone.

  I had to be examined then they wheeled me to x-ray where they took pictures of my head, my shoulder and ribs. A nurse who smelt like an ashtray cleaned and stitched the cuts on my legs and one on my head. I hadn’t much room to talk; I smelt pretty foul myself.

  They finally let me have a small plastic cup of lukewarm water that tasted of bleach and felt like nectar. Ray waited with me and as the time dragged on there were flashes of normality, of the mundane, in our conversation that I was thankful for.

  A policeman, a detective, arrived. Reeking of aftershave and whisky. He asked me about the events leading up to the siege. I gave him a brief outline which was all he wanted at that stage.

  ‘How’s Doctor Vernay?’

  ‘I’m afraid he died.’

  Oh no, please no. My stomach fell.

  ‘The paramedics tried to revive him but—’

  Fear and grief rose in my throat, flapping like birds of ill-omen. I’d led her there, taken her straight to him.

  ‘What about Lucy Barker?’

  ‘She’s been charged with his murder.’

  Guilt circled me like a stalking horse. The words what have I done echoed endlessly.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Doctor Vernay’s murder was front page news. Inside features were dedicated to cataloguing the escalating violence that Lucy Barker had subjected him to. Editorials called for increased powers to identify and incarcerate potential killers like Lucy Barker while others argued the case for retaining civil liberties in a world where such murders were statistically very rare. My name was splashed across the pages too; my part described as the stooge, the unwitting private investigator, the hostage who had alerted the police, the dupe.

  And of course there were pictures of Benjamin. As best man at a friend’s wedding, as a boy on the beach in a rubber dinghy, at his graduation ceremony. Smiling, always smiling.

  I managed to function well enough for Maddie and Tom. The saturation coverage meant I couldn’t invent a story for my injuries but I underplayed the whole thing, and breathed a sigh of relief when a scandal about a government minister accused of rape pushed the story off the news.

  In the days that followed I was tormented. I’d made a living as a private eye for several years. I’d imagined I was good at it. People often came to me because I was recommended. My work was about helping people, about uncovering secrets and lies and finding the truth. Sometimes it was hard to hear and people struggled to cope with what they learnt. My work for Lucy Barker had cost Benjamin Vernay his life. Blood on my hands.

  The police conducted a long series of interviews with me, gathering then checking and re-checking my statements about the events. What Lucy had said when, her behaviour, what I had heard and seen at the doctor’s house. They were very thorough but considerate, stopping whenever I needed a break or became distressed.

  I picked over my dealings with Lucy. Surely a decent detective would have known Lucy Barker was bad news? I’d found her cold and awkward and I’d blamed that for my uneasy feelings about her. At some deeper level I must have known she was dangerous. Once I knew she’d lied to me I should have dropped the case. Why hadn’t I spotted her mendacity, her scheming? I’d danced to her sick tune like a puppet.

  She’s very plausible. He’d said that. But it didn’t help. I questioned whether I was good enough to do the job any more. I was heartsick, disillusioned and aching with regret. I had no peace.

  If I folded up the business what could I do? With no marketable skills I could find work in a call centre or as a cashier. Or stay home with the children and take up Ray’s offer of paying for Tom’s care.

  I tried to recall the cases I’d investigated that had worked out well. Families reunited, vulnerable people protected from conmen, fraudsters unmasked, criminals brought to justice. And the people who, at the end of their tether, had screwed up their courage, scraped together money and come to me: Agnes Donlan worried about her old friend Lily, Janice Hobbs desperate to find her missing son, Jimmy Achebe fearful that his wife was cheating on him, Luke Wallace, a terrified teenager locked up and charged with killing his best mate. Faces and voices came back to me, words of gratitude, letters of heartfelt thanks. Worse moments when I’d had to deliver terrible news and seen people’s hopes strangled and their lives turned upside down. The times I had sat with someone while they tried to swallow the bitter truth.

  I didn’t know if I could do that again. Without me Benjamin Vernay would still have been alive.

  So wrong. How could I have been so appallingly wrong?

  One weekend evening I was in the garden. May had arrived and I was planting up pots with pansies, petunia, lobelia and alyssum plugs, white geraniums and nasturtium seeds. I’d plenty of ivy and baby conifers left from the winter boxes that I could re-use and some fuchsias that looked like dead sticks but would flourish come the summer. The light was fading but the pansies seemed bright against the gloom. Maddie and Tom, staying up late, had discovered some chalk and drawn a target on the back wall. They were lobbing ‘arrows’ made of pea sticks at it.

  ‘We
need a bow,’ said Tom

  ‘Two bows,’ said Maddie.

  ‘I don’t think we’ve anything bendy enough to make a bow,’ I told them.

  Ray knocked on the window and held his hand to his ear, little finger and thumb making a phone shape.

  ‘Hello,’ the woman said when I answered. ‘I got your name from a friend Chris – in Hebden Bridge?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘She said you run a detective agency. You see I’m worried about my partner – she’s missing and—’

  Caroline! Shock flashed through my arms, my skin tightened and anger rose in my throat. Of all the bloody nerve.

  ‘You beat her up,’ I said baldly. ‘If she had any sense she’d prosecute. Don’t ever call here again.’ I replaced the phone, shaking and stunned at the gall of the woman.

  Diane took me out for a meal. Minty was still at hers, she was paying rent and would sort something else out by the end of the month. Diane filled the silence with talk about her work, she hadn’t got the residency at the infirmary but there was a chance of part-time lecturing at the university. It would mean regular income but she was worried it would squeeze out the time she had to work on her own pieces. We were half way through the main course when Diane finally got round to asking me ‘So, what’s next?’

  Suddenly I was full. I stirred the sliced potato around in the mushroom and brandy jus and tried to frame a reply. ‘Don’t know. Wait and see.’ I couldn’t meet her gaze. ‘You could try the lecturing for a year,’ I tried to divert her, ‘see how it goes.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she said.

  ‘I took her straight to him.’

  ‘No,’ she reached across and grabbed my arm, looking at me keenly. Her grip insisting I make eye contact. ‘She would have found him sooner or later.’

  ‘I should have followed my instincts. I didn’t trust her but I kept on working for her.’

  ‘You didn’t know she was a psychopath. She fooled everyone.’

  ‘He’s dead, Diane.’

  ‘She’d have killed eventually. That’s what they’re saying.’