by Keith Dixon
*
I woke the next morning with a roaring migraine that beat at my head and narrowed my vision to a small tunnel. I staggered to the bathroom and downed aspirin, then fell back into bed and pulled up the covers. The pain was a constant shriek over my eye that I couldn’t escape. There was nothing I could do, nowhere I could go to relieve it. All I could do was wait for the pills to kick in and allow me at least to stand up and get things done.
I was lucky—the migraines were coming infrequently now, though there’d been a time three years before when I’d had one a month. The doctors said they were caused by stress, and it was true that when I left C & E they’d almost disappeared. Now I worked for myself the stress was just as great – but caused by the job, not by the people I worked for.
My house stands by itself on the edge of countryside but within walking distance of Crewe railway station. The previous owner had run a car repair business from the garage, which he’d extended upwards to accommodate a hydraulic car-lift. Where the second storey of this extension joined the back of the house he’d installed a large window so you could stand inside the house and look over the garage and into the countryside beyond. To stand there was a test for my vertigo but at the same time a calming influence.
Migraines and vertigo. I wondered why all my troubles seemed to be located in my head. It wasn’t as if I used it for much thinking.
For a while I stood with my forehead against the glass and watched the dead fields outside. Within a few minutes, though, I felt ill again, and walked around the house trying to settle down and rest, as the doctor had told me. Whenever I sat, I had to stand up. As soon as I stood up, I had to move around. As I began to move around I understood I was restless and should sit down to stop my head throbbing.
After two hours of this perpetual motion I was finally able to go downstairs and drink a litre of bottled water. Groggily, I collected the newspaper from the doormat, then spread it on the floor and stared at it. I couldn’t summon the strength to turn the first page. There was no point anyway; it was too soon after Tara’s abduction for any mention to be made in the press.
Slowly I began to function and was able to consider my next steps. I’d had instruction from Tara to quit the case, to leave it to the police. But no one except me knew that. I hadn’t revealed this piece of information to Inspector Howard. I’d told him that Tara wanted to see me to explore how the investigation was going. I’d made up some dialogue and created an attitude of supportive encouragement. After all, we’d been married once.
But now I’d had enough. Getting back into Tara’s life had caused me physical pain and professional failure. It occurred to me that if I walked away I could tell Laura and anyone else who was interested that it had been Tara’s last wish for me to drop the case and leave it to the police investigation. No blame in that. This series of crimes was escalating anyway. Press and television news coverage of Rory’s murder had intensified in the last couple of days, making it harder for someone like me to do my job. It was more complicated, more high profile and more difficult than any other case I’d worked on, and it was easier to let go and slip away, leaving Howard and his troops to toil for another six months before giving up. At this point I could just walk away and no one would think any the less of me.
But there were memories that were coming thick and fast now that I’d seen Tara and talked to her.
The day after we were married we’d driven to a caravan site near Filey and spent a week sheltering from an icy wind blowing down from the Arctic Circle. Her father had hired a large caravan for us overlooking the beach. It had two bedrooms, a kitchen unit, a shower and a large sitting area whose cushions unfolded imaginatively to create one huge bed. The smell of Calor gas hung over everything and hit you with a blow to the sinuses when you came inside after spending any time outside. During the week we barely left the caravan for anything but basic supplies and wine. So it was a surprise when Tara asked me to leave her alone one afternoon. She said she wasn’t feeling well and wanted to sleep without me walking about and making the caravan rock.
So I wrapped myself in a heavy coat and walked a few miles up and down the east coast, towards Scarborough and back, picking my way over the coarse sand and smiling grimly at other holiday-makers caught up in the same foolhardy pursuit. Exhausted and wet through, I arrived back at the caravan, to find that Tara had cooked a three-course ‘honeymoon dinner’, as she called it, on the gas-fired four ring hob.
‘You deserve it,’ she said. ‘For putting up with me. I’m probably going to give you hell while we’re married, but we might as well start off on the right foot.’
We hadn’t been married for long, and she had given me hell, but Tara had become part of me at that moment, and I resented the fact that she’d been taken away. Twice. Resented it enough to want revenge on whoever was responsible.
Suddenly I realised that my fists were balled and that I’d torn the newspaper in half. My thoughts were so disorganised that I hadn’t noticed myself doing it. It struck me that this was what I did when I was angry. And I was angry because I was affronted. I knew that I’d been caught out by an expert. Someone who knew where to hit me. Someone big enough and strong enough to overpower Tara and take her away.
Someone like Gerald Finch.
