Breathe

by Cari Hunter

  “Yes.” The tapping stopped. “The shit’s hit the proverbial after the post-mortem on our lad from last night. The pathologist ruled the head injury as cause of death but couldn’t determine whether it was inflicted deliberately. He found other injuries consistent with an assault, though, and the tox screen was positive for alcohol, cannabis, and spice.”

  “Fucking hell. Have you ID’d him?”

  “Within the last hour. My lot are opening out the overtime for house-to-house, and I was hoping you might come and search the family manse with me and Ray before we get saddled with some knob who’ll drive us both to distraction.”

  Rosie rolled over and stared at the ceiling. She really wanted to go. The case had the potential to be massive, and being involved at such a critical stage would put a tick in all the right boxes, should she ever take the plunge and apply for the National Investigators’ Examination. On the downside, she felt like death warmed over and didn’t want to risk making a mistake because she had a night shift hangover.

  “Are you bringing the coffee?” she asked.

  Steph didn’t miss a beat. “Latte with a double shot of espresso and two sugars. Get here for half-one and I’ll have it waiting for you.”

  Rosie made it to Clayton ten minutes later than arranged, but Steph held up her end of the bargain, throwing in a couple of pastries in lieu of breakfast. As predicted, she didn’t appear troubled by scant sleep and a stressful case. She’d curled her dark hair into a pristine knot, her shirt was crisp and pressed, and her makeup was flawless. Sitting in the passenger seat of the pool car, Rosie dabbed crumbs from her uniform trousers but could do little else to improve her sleepwalked-through-a-hedge-backwards look.

  “Ray’s meeting us after he’s organised the door-to-doors,” Steph said as she waited at the car park barrier. “Kash is coming along as well, so you two can start the search while we interview Mum and siblings.” She fished in her leather-bound, official-issue Major Crimes binder and pulled out a sheet of paper with a school photo clipped to its top corner. “Here you go: Kyle Parker, fourteen years old. A mate of his PM’d the Manchester Met Facebook page this morning when we ran a report and a description of Parker on our wall. He had a distinctive scar from an old fracture, so we hit the jackpot early. According to the message, the friend hasn’t seen him for two, maybe three weeks.”

  Rosie looked at the image, finding it difficult to reconcile the smirking lad—cowlicked hair, cockeyed school tie, freckles across the bridge of his nose—with his traumatised body.

  “He seemed smaller last night,” she said. “It’s weird, isn’t it, how big a part personality plays.”

  “Without that, we’re just meat and bones.” Steph flicked her visor down, blocking out a rare glare of sunshine that was bouncing off the wet road. She sounded far more sanguine than Rosie, but then she hadn’t spent an hour pounding on the child’s sternum.

  “Has he been missing from home or skipping school?” Rosie asked.

  “Both, apparently.” Steph turned the page in Rosie’s hand. “There’s a transcript of the first contact with Mum halfway down. The rumour mill on Curzon beat the official death message visit, and she phoned within ten minutes of us receiving the Facebook PM. Needless to say, I can’t wait to meet her.”

  Rosie read through the transcript, reached the end, and reread it to let it sink in. Deborah Parker—“Call me Debbie”—had opened the conversation by declaring she’d always known her eldest son would “go and do something fucking stupid.” Having declined to attend the mortuary to identify his body—“I’ll send my dad. I’ve got to collect my bennies at eight”—she had ended the call with an enquiry about “doing one of them press conferences like what you see on the telly.”

  “She sounds delightful, doesn’t she?” Steph said. She turned off the main road and braked for the first in a series of speed bumps designed to stop joy riders from haring round the estate.

  Rosie clung to the armrest and watched rows of grim, grey-washed houses pass by. Thanks to her years on response, she knew the Curzon estate like the back of her hand, knew which of the flats had been colonised by addicts and alcoholics, and where the worst of the recidivists lived. Red door: twenty-eight-year-old male hanging. White door with the scuff marks: domestic assault, vic refused to press charges. North of the precinct, the houses were largely owned by right-to-buy residents, people who had lived on the estate for years, raised their children, scraped together enough for a mortgage, and then watched the area disintegrate around them. Burglaries and car thefts were their main complaints, as they were repeatedly targeted by those on the south side. The crimes reoccurred like clockwork, timed to hit insurance payouts, with the replacement televisions and computers disappearing almost as soon as they entered the houses. The luckier families could afford to move away, but most were stuck fixing bars to their windows and installing alarm systems that everyone ignored.

  “Are we, perchance, heading to the south?” she asked.

  “Battersby Walk,” Steph confirmed. “Smack bang in the deepest, darkest, southernmost corner.”

  “Bleedin’ hell,” Rosie said. “I should’ve stayed in bloody bed.” She and Kash had once spent a particularly lively set of nights on Battersby racking up an assault with a deadly weapon, two heroin overdoses, and a fatal leap from a third-floor balcony, in one record-breaking thirty-six-hour stretch. Even the stray dogs went around there in pairs.

  “Aw, come on, no pouting,” Steph said in a tone Rosie recognised all too well. It was the one Steph had used to wrap Rosie round her little finger, to get her to stay out for “just one more drink” or to call in sick when Steph fancied a duvet day. It had lost its efficacy in the end, but now, with Rosie’s guard crumbling beneath three hours’ sleep, it sent a flutter of sensation down her spine that wasn’t altogether unpleasant.

  “How many Parker kids are there?” she asked, making a determined return to the business at hand.

  “Five now. Girls at eighteen months and eleven, and lads at four, six, and nine. They’ll all be at home, so we should be able to have words with the two eldest, if they’re in any fit state. I’ve written up an interview plan with Social Services, and one of the family liaison officers will be sitting in with us. We’ll probably have to go back tomorrow to finish everything up.”

  Rosie nodded, glad that her contact with the family would be indirect, limited to sifting through their possessions rather than dealing with their emotions, whatever those emotions might be. There were countless ways in which people reacted to a loss, and she knew Debbie Parker’s disdain for her son was liable to evolve at a moment’s notice, with the usual processes of anger, denial, and grief all on the cards. Rosie had seen people punch holes in walls and throw televisions through windows. When cast in the role of messenger, she had taken a few punches herself, assaults that often ended with her assailant collapsed in her arms, their sense of loss so complete that it stole everything from them. She had wept with grown men, held on to children, and gripped the hands of bereaved mothers more times than she could count, but she had never tried to save a child one day and had to look his mum in the eye on the next.

  “Here we go. Number thirteen. Christ, unlucky for some, eh?” Steph said, parking outside a dour, pebble-dashed house. Its front lawn, mostly taken up by a large trampoline, had been stomped into a muddy pulp, and overflowing bins stood like sentries along a crazy paving path.

  Rosie’s legs felt leaden as she got out of the car, the stench of nappies and rotting dog food like a slap in the face after half an hour of breathing Steph’s designer perfume.

  Steph joined her on the pavement, briefcase in hand and binder readied. “Cocktails at the Blue Door tonight. My treat.”

  Rosie murmured her accord without committing. She’d always found it easier to keep the peace and think of an excuse later than to immediately derail one of Steph’s plans. “After you,” she said, holding open a gate that almost fell off in her hand. They navigated the path in single f
ile, aware of curtains twitching in neighbouring houses, and setting a dog barking before Steph could knock.

  “Who is it?” a woman yelled. “If it’s the press, you can fuck off!”

  Steph readied her warrant card. “It’s DS Merritt, Ms. Parker. We spoke on the phone.”

  The door opened a crack, allowing a woman with straggly bleach-blond hair and mascara-smeared cheeks to glower at them. Her hand shot out, grabbing Steph’s ID and pulling it closer.

  “It’s Debbie,” she said. “Not Ms. Parker, just Debbie.”

  “This is PC Jones,” Steph said. “She’s going to help with the search.”

  “You were the one what found Kyle?” Debbie directed the question at Steph, stepping clear of the door and escorting them into an uncarpeted hallway strewn with shoes and school bags and small coats.

  Steph paused to pick up a pink jacket, draping it over the banister so it wouldn’t get trodden on. “No, Ms.—Debbie. I was called to the scene by PC Jones, who did everything she could to help Kyle.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” Debbie sniffed in apparent contempt, but she was chewing a ragged path through the gloss on her bottom lip.

  “I’m sorry we couldn’t do more,” Rosie said. She shook her head at the inadequacy of the sentiment. “We tried our best, we really did, but nothing worked.” She shuddered, hit by an unwelcome flash of Jem, drenched and freezing, struggling alone in the dark with a dead child. Something of the horror of that night must have shown in her expression, because Debbie sobbed and quickly covered her mouth to stifle the sound.

  “Mam?” A girl’s voice, young and fearful, carried from behind one of the closed doors. “Mam, you okay?”

  “I’m fine, Lily.” Debbie wiped her face and straightened her shoulders, steel returning to her posture and voice. “Get Maisie’s milk ready and put them beans on for you and Harley.”

  “All right, Mam.” Pans clanged, and Rosie heard bare feet pattering across a tiled floor. “I’ll do toast with the beans.”

  “Good girl. Cut them crusts off for Harl,” Debbie told her.

  “I know, Mam. I’m not stupid,” Lily yelled, and Debbie managed a wan smile as a hint of normality bled back into their lives.

  Steph cleared her throat, obviously reluctant to intrude but needing to get her side of the proceedings underway.

  “In here.” Debbie opened the living room door and paused on the threshold, turning to Rosie. “Kyle’s room is the second left off the landing. I’ve not—I went in there this morning, sat on his bed, but I didn’t move anything.”

  “That’s not a problem,” Steph said before Rosie could respond. “If PC Jones needs to take an item to assist the investigation, it will be logged and returned to you if at all possible.”

  Rosie didn’t catch Debbie’s reply; the door was already closing behind them, leaving her alone in the hallway. Concerned for the eleven-year-old fending for herself and her siblings, she pushed cautiously at the kitchen door and peered through the small gap. Warm air washed over her, carrying the scent of toast and tomato sauce, and she could see Lily and two younger children sitting on cushions on the floor, their dishes on their laps, their attention fixed on a wall-mounted television. The gas stove was off, no one was running with knives, and the baby’s fingers were nowhere near any of the plug sockets.

  “Atta girl,” Rosie whispered, as Lily held her toast with one hand and the baby’s bottle with the other. The scenario was so familiar that Rosie could almost feel the rhythmic tug on the bottle as the baby suckled. She closed the door as quietly as she had opened it and walked upstairs.

  * * *

  Jem handed her dad a mug of tea and settled on the carpet by his chair, her arm tucked around his leg and her cheek pressed against his thigh. She closed her eyes as his fingers stroked through her hair. She had never been a lap child, so sure of her place that she could curl up on an adult’s knee whenever she needed comfort. The floor seemed safer somehow, close but not close enough to be considered presumptuous, and despite her dad’s best efforts to reassure her that this family—her new family—was forever, she had never broken free of all her old habits.

  “Do you want to tell me about it?” he asked. He always bought the early edition of the Manchester Evening News, and one glance at its headline had prompted him to phone her. She couldn’t count the number of her jobs that had made the front page. Her mum had kept a scrapbook for a while, until things had started to get ridiculous.

  “Not really,” she said. She knew the lad’s name now and what he had looked like before someone assaulted him and left him to die. She raised her head so she could see her dad, and he smiled down at her, crinkling more lines into his forehead and dimpling his cheeks. He touched the skin beneath her eyes, his fingertips rough with calluses. He’d been digging in the garden when she arrived, and he still smelled like damp soil and lavender.

  “You look tired, Jem.”

  “I am. I didn’t sleep much.”

  “Me neither. Our latest arrival saw to that.”

  “How old?” she asked. The foster child was with Jem’s mum at a doctor’s appointment, so she hadn’t met him yet.

  “Eight months. Emergency domestic violence placement. He came to us in the wee hours with a swollen cheek and a busted lip.”

  “Poor little mite.” She took her dad’s hand and squeezed it. “He’ll settle once you’ve worked your magic.”

  He chuckled. “Wasn’t magic with you, love. We spiked your Horlicks with brandy.”

  “You never did!”

  His mug wobbled as he laughed, and he put it down for fear of spilling his tea. “No, but we were very tempted, especially when you were up all night coughing your socks off.”

  “Fair point,” she conceded. “Might’ve worked better than my inhalers.” Stretching her legs out, she leaned back on the chair, trying to alleviate a stubborn niggle across the base of her spine. She had woken stiff and miserable after three hours of broken sleep, and the paracetamol Ferg had propped by the kettle had barely taken the edge off.

  “Here.”

  A plump cushion dropped onto the floor beside her. She tucked it under her bottom without protest, too weary to be stoical, and watched the flames licking over the kindling and coals on the open fire. This little snug, sequestered at the back of the Victorian semi with a view over the fruit trees and the frog pond, had always been her sanctuary. Her mum had never paid it much mind, allowing Jem’s dad to cram it with mismatched armchairs, antique wooden furniture, multicoloured throw rugs, and old ships he’d half-built from model kits. As there had invariably been more children than bedrooms, Jem had taken to hiding away in here, spending hours with her dad while he read to her, beat her at Monopoly and Go Fish, and repaired the damage wrought by an education in constant flux. Whenever she came home for a visit, it was the first place she checked, if her dad wasn’t in his greenhouse.

  “You sure you don’t want to talk about it?” he asked quietly.

  She drew her knees up again and wrapped her arms around them. “There’s not much to say. I did what I could, but it wasn’t enough, and he died.”

  “The report said you were on your own out there.”

  “Aye, for a while. Then Rosie came, and she helped a load.”

  She heard him sip his tea, and the satisfied sigh that followed his first taste of a decent cuppa. His favourite method of contemplation was slow and steady, with a brew in hand.

  “Is Rosie one of yours? I don’t recognise her name.” He kept the enquiry light, but there was curiosity simmering below the surface.

  “She’s a police officer. We met on a couple of jobs over the weekend, and she took my statement this morning.”

  Her dad nudged her bum with his toe. “Your ears are pink.”

  “They are not!” She clapped a hand over one, full of righteous indignation until she felt the heat there. “Bloody hell.”

  “The cat has scarpered from the bag, Jemima. Elaborate,” he said with uncontained glee
. He loved gossip almost as much as he loved growing oversized competition veggies, which, given his impressive trophy cabinet, was saying a lot.

  She threw up her hands. “Okay, okay. I like her. She’s funny and pretty, and daft as a brush, and she gave me gloves and half her roast dinner.”

  Her dad toe-poked her again. “When’s she coming for tea?”

  “She’s not. She promised to cut my hair for me, I promised to pay her in toffee, and that’s all there is to tell. Besides which, I have a date with ‘wear something comfortable’ Sylvie tomorrow.”

  “Ah, that’s tomorrow, is it?”

  “Yeah.” Jem twisted a tassel on the cushion. “I don’t think anything will come of it, Dad. Nothing ever does.”

  “Now, now.” Her dad leaned forward and unravelled the cotton before it could turn her finger white. “That’s absolutely not the spirit, Jem.”

  “I know. I can’t help it.” She rarely talked about this with him. She knew how much it upset him. “I just—it’s easier not to get my hopes up.”

  “Balderdash,” he said, scratching his thin growth of whiskers. “So, we have two winsome ladies in contention, eh? If I were a betting man, my fiver would be on the enigmatic Ms. Rosie.”

  She slapped his foot, glad to play along. “Sod off.”

  “Sylvie doesn’t make your ears blush.”

  Jem spun round and chucked her cushion at him. “I’ve never even met her. She might be The One, for all I know.”

  “She might well be,” he said, his tone implying the opposite. “We are fickle fools in the face of this thing called love.”

  She puzzled that one out for a moment. “Shakespeare?”

  “Fortune cookie. We had Chinese the other night.” He guffawed and held up his empty mug. “Come on, let’s find those posh biccies your mum bought and hid away somewhere.”

  “You really don’t know where she stores all the loot?” Jem asked. She had found her mum’s stash six months after moving in, and assumed everyone else had figured it out as well.