by Gemma Rogers
I sat with Mum for a while, finished my tea, which had gone cold. She told me about her week, the physio which seemed to be working for her leg, but her hand coordination was not improving. I could tell by her expression she was frustrated. Her recovery wasn’t moving quickly enough. I understood from Helen she’d never fully recover, but I didn’t mention it, not wanting to rub salt in the wounds. Instead I asked her to show me the exercises and we did some together. Giggling when she got stuck on the floor and I had to help her up.
Afterwards, I went to get my shopping and came back to make Mum a drink and a snack before I left.
The bus stop outside was empty, any sign of Karla or our scrap further down the road was long gone. On approach, I saw scrawled on the glass backdrop in black marker:
JESS STRICKLAND IS A MURDERER
I dropped my bags, swearing under my breath. No one was around, so I tried to rub it with my sleeve, but it wouldn’t budge. Fucking Gilby and those knobs wouldn’t let it go. Were they trying to hound me out of town? Did they think I was living at Mum’s?
I turned my back on the graffiti, annoyed I was carrying too much to make the journey home on foot. I hated being dependent on buses, but after what happened I never wanted to drive again. How could I possibly be in charge of a two- or three-tonne weapon. That’s what a car was after all. I was lucky to have survived the accident, my seat belt and airbag saved my life. I’d walked away with bruises but no broken bones. My scars were on the inside and I’d never be allowed to forget them.
The sky clouded over, and the heavens opened, large fat droplets fell, the smell of spring strangely with them. By the time the bus arrived, I was soaked. I looked around at the faces of the passengers. Why were some staring at me? Then I remembered the fight; I reached up and touched my cheek, the cut still smarting. No doubt the skin around it was turning yellow.
I shuffled to the back and sat to people-watch, the younger passengers scrolling on their phones. A woman in her mid-forties was reading a Kindle and a man, like me, clutched a bag of clothes in one of those large checked holdalls. They were likely going home to their families or partners. Saturday night in front of the television with a takeaway or going home to get ready for a big night out with their friends. Wistfully I imagined all the nights I’d missed, the rites of passage I hadn’t taken.
I was going to visit Ashley in Portsmouth next weekend; I’d made my mind up. I needed a distraction, something normal. I could talk to Ashley, tell her everything that had been going on. Everything except the crime we’d committed. I couldn’t tell her that, how I’d disposed of a body. I’d never tell another soul. However, I could explain that Karla had my back against the wall. She would know what to do.
I wanted to cut loose. I was twenty-two for Christ’s sake and going home to an empty bedsit with only a microwave meal and some children’s literature to look forward to. I didn’t even own a bloody television. Decision made, I smiled out of the window, watching the houses whizz by, trying to ignore the niggling voice in my head. If you still have your liberty by then.
47
By Sunday night, my cheek was an apple green colour but no longer swollen. I also had a graze on my forehead and had to change my parting to the side to cover it. How did Karla look? Would we both arrive at work tomorrow with our faces advertising our falling out? I hoped it was over now. Had I said enough to stop her pursuing my incarceration? I wished we’d had longer to talk as I had no idea where her head was at. I was still in limbo and it made me increasingly nervous.
On top of that I was dreading seeing Dan, my phone had been annoyingly silent all weekend. I hoped he’d call me, and we’d make up. It was foolish though; he probably thought I was nothing more than a silly girl with a crush. It was always going to be like that for me, with him being my first. I couldn’t just discard him, but it was different for men. He could have been out at the weekend and hooked up with someone else already. I had no claim on him after all.
On the way to work on Monday morning, my stomach churned, I was jittery. My heels were still sore in my trainers and stupidly I’d forgotten to buy plasters, so I waited for the bus. I would have asked Dan if he had a first-aid box, but that ship sailed as soon as I saw him. Hands behind his head, frowning at his monitor, swivelling from side to side in his office chair. I walked past, looking in through the glass of his office. We locked eyes for a second, but then he looked down at his keyboard. It told me all I needed to know. I’d done enough with my speech on Friday to put him off me for good.
‘You okay?’ a deep throaty voice came from behind me as I limped towards the lockers.
I turned and saw Detective Wimslow. Inwardly I cringed, forcing a smile. What was he doing here? Goosebumps dotted my arms and a chill caressed my skin. Where was Karla?
‘Yeah, fine thanks, blister,’ I explained, slipping my heel out of my trainer to show the bubble on my skin. I didn’t want him conjuring up anything else from my limping.
He nodded and I carried on towards the lockers.
‘Mr Bright has given us permission to search the premises, but we’ll try not to get into your ladies’ way.’
I nodded and he smiled tightly, pulling a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket. Mansfield came through the entrance with Officer Stokes, both already wearing gloves. The goosebumps multiplied, my skin turning to ice and I froze, gripped by panic. What would they find? What had Karla planted?
Regaining use of my limbs, I shuffled forwards, finally reaching the lockers. I made to open mine, aware Mansfield was watching from afar, over my shoulder. Without hesitation, I chose the next one along. Swinging the door open, seeing it empty and breathing a silent sigh of relief. I threw my bag in and closed the door. Satisfied, Mansfield turned away to talk to Dan, who’d come out of his office carrying some paperwork. Dan was being overly accommodating, gesticulating wildly. I overheard the mention of an anonymous tip.
Anonymous tip my arse. Karla had to be behind it. Had the truth not done anything to sway how she felt about me?
I slowly opened my locker to retrieve my tabard, checking again that no one was watching. Terry’s gold ring caught in the light, almost blinding me. Fuck! I gritted my teeth and swiped it off the floor of the locker, thrusting it in my pocket. I had to dispose of it, but where?
I felt close to hyperventilating. Was it a proper search, with a warrant? Where everything would get torn to pieces? Where would I put the ring? I couldn’t keep it on me. If I were arrested, I’d be searched. I’d been strip-searched once before and it wasn’t much fun, nor did it leave anywhere to hide. Not anywhere I wanted to put the ring anyway. Chuck it in the drain? Flush it down the toilet? In the incinerator? Where?
I headed into the toilet and locked myself in a cubicle. Pulling the ring out of my pocket, I wrapped it in tissue, then wrapped another layer around it and scrunched it into a ball as though someone had blown their nose on it. As quietly as I could, I climbed onto the toilet and opened the tiny window on the back wall, easing the squeaky lever out of its position and pushing on the wood, where it stuck in the frame.
This side of Bright’s faced the road and a tissue would look like it had been discarded. It was the best I could come up with at short notice. I’d collect it later once the police were gone. After one practice go, I flung it to the right, in the direction of the bin, so it hadn’t looked like it’d been dropped out of the window. Stepping back down from the toilet, I flushed the chain and washed my hands in the sink. Now I had to deal with Karla.
I found her in the yard, smoking a cigarette even though she’d barely started her shift. Dan was getting too lax; the girls would walk all over him if he let them.
‘What the fuck do you want from me?’ I shouted from the door, not caring who heard. My temper fast becoming uncontrollable. Her eye was open now, no longer swollen shut, although it was a lovely shade of green like my cheek.
‘I want you to go to hell,’ Karla shouted back.
I ran towards her before an
outstretched arm reached around my middle, scooping me off my feet so my legs swung in the air.
‘What’s got into you?’ Dan hissed. ‘The bloody police are here.’
I glowered at him.
‘They’re here to take her away,’ Karla sneered as she sauntered past us back into the warehouse.
It clearly wasn’t over.
‘Let go of me.’
I pushed Dan’s arm away, catching the hurt in his eyes before I thundered after her.
‘I thought we were friends! I can’t do this any more, Karla, I just can’t,’ I said to her retreating back, ‘and if you make me, I’m going to tell everyone about Eddie.’
She stopped dead in her tracks and spun around, eyes ablaze.
‘Go, both of you, get out of here, go for a walk and come back when you’ve sorted out your differences,’ Dan snapped.
I wasn’t even aware he was behind us, or anyone was watching. Karla and I were too swept up in the moment to notice was what going on.
‘Everything all right?’ Mansfield’s attention had been captured.
‘Fine, just low blood sugar makes me hangry.’ Karla smiled as though butter wouldn’t melt. She was a better actress than me.
My nostrils flared.
‘Coming to the café, Jess?’ Karla asked, and it was as though I’d been transported back to when we first started to work together. Her voice light, eyes expectant. Although any friendship I believed was developing back then was a lie.
‘Sure,’ I mumbled and followed Karla out the back of the warehouse and into the yard. We walked silently until we were off the premises and around the corner, the animosity between us growing, the lid on a bubbling pan about to explode.
Karla drew out a packet of cigarettes and lit one nonchalantly and I pressed my nails into my palms. It was clear she still thought she had the upper hand and I had to level the playing field.
‘I mean it, Karla. If you don’t drop this, I’m going to tell everyone what happened the night of the accident. I don’t want to do that. I’ve kept it a secret for this long, for Ashley, but I won’t go back to prison.’
‘You deserve to rot in there,’ Karla whispered, her eyes already brimming.
‘I’m sorry,’ I cried. ‘I’m so, so sorry you lost your brother and I was responsible, but I can’t turn back time. Don’t you think I’ve spent years wishing I could? I wrote to your parents, told them how sorry I was.’
‘It’ll kill my mum if you say anything,’ Karla said, cutting me off. ‘She thought the sun shone out of Eddie’s arse.’
‘I don’t want to expose him, but I’m not going to take the fall for Terry. If I go down, you’re coming with me.’ I thrust my hands on my hips.
‘Ha! You think? I’ve got an alibi, sweetheart. The Friday Terry disappeared, John picked me up and brought me straight home. We were there all evening,’ she sneered. I’d been right not to say we’d been together.
‘Ah, the elusive John? He must be your boyfriend if he’s willing to lie to the police for you!’
‘What if he is, it’s none of your business. He takes care of me.’ Her eyes flashed; John obviously meant something to her. I really did know nothing about Karla.
‘The police will never believe I got him in that incinerator without help. Your DNA will be in the boot of his Audi, Karla, they’ll check if I tell them to. If you say anything, you’ll be going back inside too,’ I snapped.
We glared at each other for a second, I could practically see the cogs turning in Karla’s head. She knew I was right; she couldn’t fix me up without getting caught herself.
‘I’m going to get rid of Terry’s ring and I want that footage. No more fucking around. No more photos or surprise gifts. Just how long were you going to drag it out for?’
‘Until I thought you’d suffered enough, then I was going to send the photos of you to the police, that lovely one of you kneeling over his corpse.’ A shiver descended the length of my spine. Karla’s eyes were steely, her voice cold.
‘How?’
‘John’s got a printer, it’s easy to print still images from footage.’
‘Does John know what we did to Terry?’ My eyebrows shot skyward.
‘No, not everything.’
I sighed, feeling my anger slowly dissipate. It was such a mess. ‘Terry was a sleaze; he did awful things to us all. We did everyone a favour,’ I said, trying a different tack.
Karla snorted. ‘I don’t feel any guilt about Terry, I helped you because I needed you to trust me. I wanted to mess with your head before sending you back to prison for another murder, but this time you’d get life.’ Her words were filled with so much venom and we glared at each other again.
A minute later, she sat on the kerb, staring into the distance. A balloon that had been deflated. I sat beside her, tucking my knees up to my chin.
‘It’s over now. You had your fun. What did you tell the police?’
‘Nothing, I was biding my time, I didn’t give you an alibi, thought you might trip yourself up there. I told them you’d been sent photos, but that was it.’
I sighed, rubbing the back of my neck.
A car passed us and beeped its horn, Karla gave them the finger.
‘You’ve got your last appointment with Barry this week, haven’t you? You’ll be free of Bright’s, go to the coast like you wanted to. If that wasn’t a lie?’
Karla shook her head, lighting another cigarette and taking a long drag, blowing the smoke into the air. ‘I’ll never be free.’
‘Why not?’ I asked.
‘Because I owe a lot of money to some very dangerous people.’ Karla looked resigned as she got to her feet. It seemed even outside of prison you could still be trapped, longing for freedom through imaginary bars. It wouldn’t be my life; I wasn’t going down that path. I just had to find a way out of the mess we were in.
48
Karla and I made our way back to Bright’s, an unspoken truce between us. She didn’t elaborate on who she owed money to and I didn’t want to know. I had enough to worry about.
The atmosphere was sombre inside the warehouse. Laura had her radio switched off and there was barely any chatter. It was stuffy and I perspired as soon as we walked in. An increase of a few degrees outside made all the difference in the warehouse, taking the environment from bearable to stifling.
The police were still searching, moving things around on shelves, checking documents and rummaging through the store cupboard. My heart skipped a beat when they looked over the incinerator. Karla and I glanced at each other across the room and I bit my lip until it bled. I thought it had been used since that night, to burn hospital sheets, but I still went cold. Mansfield was looking in the ash drawer, which even though we’d emptied, forensically there was likely to still be traces of Terry left behind.
Karla gave the slightest shake of the head and I concentrated on the towel I was folding.
‘What’s going on with you two? Is this all over Dan?’ Agnes asked me.
‘Sort of,’ I replied. It was a perfect cover for everyone to think we were falling out over a mutual attraction to the boss. Agnes tutted and rolled her eyes, before going on to talk at length about the pastries she was going to bake after work.
By lunchtime, the police were finished with the search and spent some time in Dan’s office talking to him. I wanted to go in afterwards and find out what was said, but I had no reason to now; no excuse to breeze in and see what the latest was. He looked at me stonily as I stared into the office, daydreaming. Brought back into the present by Hanna tapping me on the arm and asking if I was okay. She was trying to find out how Karla and I had got our bruises, but I wasn’t going to tell her.
Outside later, I retrieved the tissue, well, three which had been discarded between the toilet window and the bin, feeling through them for Terry’s ring. One was still wet and sticky. I gagged, wiping my hand on my jeans. Slipping the ring into my pocket, still in the tissue, I saw Dan approaching, probably going to
the café for a coffee. Gone was the sullen expression from earlier.
‘All right, Tyson,’ he said, the smallest smile escaping from his lips. His eyes rested on my cheek.
I couldn’t help but laugh. Tyson was the boxer who went mad and bit his opponent, wasn’t he?
‘Friends again?’ he asked.
I nodded and he bumped shoulders with me.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, unable to keep up the pretence of being angry any longer.
‘Me too. This Terry thing is driving me nuts, that’s all. Kim’s been on the phone all weekend demanding results. I should never have doubted you.’
I chewed the inside of my cheek, guilt sitting in my stomach like a brick.
‘Why were the police here again today?’
‘Anonymous tip apparently. They didn’t tell me what, just asked if they could search. I told them it was fine as long as they were tidy. Barry came in for his weekly catch-ups and they left with him. No idea what that was about.’
I stifled a laugh. It would be good for Barry to have a bit of pressure for a change.
‘Do they think something bad happened to Terry?’ I asked.
Dan shrugged. ‘It’s been weeks now. Kim is still sure he’s coming back, tells me Harriet is missing her daddy. Perhaps we’ll never know.’ I swallowed the lump in my throat.
Dan’s mobile rang, and he fished it out of his pocket, giving me a wink and walking away to answer. The knot in my chest seemed to ease now we were talking again. I had to take one day at a time. My freedom wasn’t guaranteed, for all I knew Barry might be talking to Detective Wimslow now, trying to throw me under the bus just as Karla had. I was sick of living on the edge all the time, running on nervous energy alone. If I lost any more weight, my jeans wouldn’t stay up.
