Breathe

by Cari Hunter

  She chuckled but then sobered as she heard the sound of boots pounding toward them. “Aye up. Here we go.”

  Three houses down, the TAU lead hammered on the front door, his team poised around him. “Police! Open up!” he yelled, and Rosie saw a succession of nearby curtains start to twitch. The neighbour at number one came out in his dressing gown, his legs bare and a copy of the Daily Telegraph clutched beneath his arm.

  “What on earth is going on?” he demanded.

  “Sir, please go back inside,” Kash said.

  “Is that Adrian’s house? Why are you at Adrian’s house?”

  “Sir, please go back inside,” Kash repeated, emphasising his request by barricading the garden gate and unfastening his CS gas.

  The TAU had charged into number five, their shouts of “Clear!” muffled by a woman yelling and the cries of children.

  “Shit,” Rosie said. “He’s got kids.”

  “He’s got two,” the neighbour said. “Eleven and fifteen. You can’t seriously be arresting him.”

  As if to prove the neighbour wrong, the TAU sarge marched down the garden path with the man Rosie had last seen buying vodka and chocolate for a fourteen-year-old boy. Apparently dressed for work, he was wearing a smart grey suit, but his head was bowed and his hands were cuffed behind him. A woman ran after him, her slippers slapping the paving stones and her nightie flying up around her thighs.

  “He didn’t do it!” she shrieked. “He didn’t do anything wrong! That boy asked him for sweets, that’s all!”

  Rosie snapped around to look at Kash, who seemed just as appalled. “Did she fucking know?” she said.

  Kash shook his head, stunned. “Perhaps she saw it on the BBC.”

  “And what, they decided to sit there and wait for the knock on the door?”

  “Maybe not,” he said as a TAU officer carried a holdall through the porch and handed his sarge what appeared to be a passport.

  “Bloody hell.” Rosie absently yanked a schoolkid to a standstill by the scruff of his neck. “I guess that’s just pissed all over his chances of getting bail.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jem woke with a thick head and a cough reminiscent of a cat hacking up a fur ball. She was already upright, propped on a pile of pillows, but she leaned forward to rest her hands on the mattress, assuming the tripod position of the chronically oxygen deficient. A couple of blasts from her inhaler kicked the worst of it into touch, and she relaxed back, watching shadows cross the ceiling as the sun shimmied in and out of the clouds. It was late by her standards, almost eight thirty, but she had lain awake until three and then clocked every subsequent hour, on the hour. If there was a bright side, what little sleep she’d managed had been too meagre for nightmares.

  Her phone buzzed as she was mustering the energy for a shower: Ferg video-calling her on WhatsApp.

  “Shit.” She dipped her fingers in her glass of water and damped down her hair, then straightened her T-shirt. She couldn’t pretend she was up and dressed, but she hoped she’d look a little less lamentable. Plastering on a smile, she accepted the call.

  “Good morning,” she said, all bright and breezy and trying not to cry.

  Ferg made a show of peering into the screen. “You look terrible, hen. Did I wake you?”

  “No,” she said, abandoning her attempts to pull the wool. He knew her too well to be fooled, in any case. “Waking me would imply I actually slept.”

  He clucked his tongue. “Should you have stayed in the hospital?”

  “I don’t think so. My inhalers and the steroids seem to be doing the trick. Harriet gave me so many pills I’m rattling.”

  “Is Rosie not taking care of you, then?” He wagged a remonstrative finger. “You’d be getting breakfast in bed if I was there. Has she not done you a nice bacon butty?”

  For a split second, Jem debated the merits of lying, coming clean, or feigning a broken connection. She wasn’t quick enough for Ferg, however.

  “Jem, what did you do?” he said, his lovely Scots burr now more of a growl.

  “Nothing.” She held the phone farther away, lessening the impact of his glare. “Everything’s fine.”

  “She’s not there, is she?”

  Jem shook her head, unable to answer.

  “And you’re not fine at all, are you?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  “No.” She couldn’t. He might understand, but she wouldn’t be able to put it into words.

  “Do you want me to come home?”

  She managed a smile, grateful to have him on her side no matter what. “Thanks, but no. I might go and see my mum and dad later. I’ll be all right, really.”

  “You will, will you?” He gulped from a mug of what looked like diluted tar. His eyes were heavy-lidded and bloodshot, and whenever he turned his head she swore she could see pigtails.

  “How hung-over are you, Ferg?”

  “Scale of one to ten?” He grimaced. “Twelve. The Wiganers were in last night, and they can down ale like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “I can imagine.” A couple of the lads on her paramedic course had been from Wigan. Pies and pints had been the loves of their lives. “What time did you get to bed?”

  He had the grace to look guilty. “Ask me if I’ve been to bed.”

  “Fergus McClellan! You’re an absolute disgrace.”

  He snorted into his brew. “You’re only jealous.”

  “I am. You definitely had a better night than I did.” She blew him a kiss. “Thanks for phoning.”

  “My pleasure. Want my advice?” He held the phone in both hands, keeping it steady and focused, and he didn’t wait for her to answer. “Sort this thing out with Rosie. Every time you mentioned her, your face lit up like a wee bairn on Christmas morning.”

  She did her damnedest to ignore an analogy so perfect it broke her heart all over again. “I don’t think it’s sortable,” she said.

  “You’ll never know if you don’t try,” he said, and the screen went blank.

  She stayed where she was and pulled her quilt up to her chin. His closing comment had hit home, burrowing beneath her skin like a thorn she couldn’t get a needle to. Yesterday morning, when she’d been sleep-deprived and poorly and floundering out of her depth, she’d thought that destroying any chance of a relationship with Rosie was best done brutally. Let Rosie hate her and be relieved to walk away. With the benefit of hindsight, however, though Jem still agreed with her reasoning, she cared too much for Rosie to leave her without an explanation. No matter what she’d said to assure Rosie, she knew Rosie would be blaming herself, and that was the last thing she wanted.

  Snarling in frustration, she threw off the quilt and stomped into the bathroom. She would have a shower and something to eat, and take her meds. She really should phone her dad and text Harriet, and then, when she had run out of ways to procrastinate, then she might feel brave enough to speak to Rosie. Sitting on the side of the bath with the shower running as hot as it would go, she waited for the room to warm and let the first tendrils of steam dismantle the wall in her chest.

  * * *

  The house on Cedar Road had fallen quiet, its hush broken only by the creak of floorboards and the rap of cupboards closing. It always seemed strange to Rosie that she was allowed to enter someone else’s home and search its most private places, leafing through diaries and opening bedroom drawers, tossing out underwear to ensure nothing had been concealed beneath the faded, well-worn knickers and the lacy matching sets reserved for special occasions.

  The house hadn’t been quiet when she first walked in. The TAU had escorted Adrian Peel’s wife back into the living room, where she’d sat in the centre of the sofa, her arms around her children, and continued to protest her husband’s innocence. The daughter, dressed for school and wide-eyed with bewilderment, had still been clutching half a crumpet, while the son typed on his mobile phone and scowled at anyone who came near him. T
hey were all on their way to Clayton now, to be interviewed once lawyers and social workers had been arranged.

  “I wonder if the lad was the one who caught the footage online,” Rosie said to Kash as they each chose a side of the master bedroom and began to process it. “The only time he showed any emotion was when Steph confiscated his phone.”

  Kash crouched by the mirrored dresser, out of sight apart from his dark hair bobbing in the reflection. “We’ll find out soon enough,” he said. “It’ll all be on his internet history. Going off his reaction, I don’t think he was convinced by his dad’s ‘I was just buying a poor waif some chocolate’ cover story.”

  “No one in their right mind would be.” Rosie laid three jackets out on the bed. “Have you still got the clip on your mobile?”

  “Yeah, here.” He opened the file and tossed his phone into the middle of the bed. Thanks to a friend on the TAU, he’d acquired the unexpurgated CCTV footage shortly after the arrest.

  “That jacket’s missing,” she said, comparing Peel’s outfit in the video to the clothing she had taken from his wardrobe. “And he wasn’t wearing it this morning.”

  Kash peered over her shoulder to examine a freeze-framed image. “Might be hung up downstairs, or in the wash.”

  “I’ll double-check with Smiffy. The jeans are too nondescript for me to tell, but that shirt’s not here either.”

  “That raises a big red flag.”

  “Aye.” She keyed Smiffy’s point-to-point code into her radio. “Doesn’t it just?”

  Twenty minutes later, as Rosie helped Kash upend the mattress, Smiffy radioed to confirm that neither the jacket nor the shirt had been found in any of the obvious places.

  “I’ve spoken to DS Merritt, and she’ll mention it in the interviews,” he said. “But Peel has already started playing silly buggers. When the custody sarge asked him to confirm his name, he said ‘no comment.’”

  “I bet you a fiver he cracks,” Rosie said. “Give him a couple of hours in a windowless cell, wearing manky custody-issue sweat pants, without a phone, not knowing when someone will look in and catch him on the loo. He’ll be singing like a canary as soon as Merritt offers him a brew and a butty.”

  “A fiver, eh?” Smiffy said. “You’re on. I’ll come up and shake on it when we’re done in the kitchen.”

  “I’d have gone for a tenner,” Kash said, hooking his thumbs beneath the fitted sheet and stripping it from the mattress. “Peel won’t last half an hour with Steph.”

  “Smiffy never bloody pays up anyway. He still owes me from that…” The thought went nowhere as the edge of the mattress hit the overhead light and set it swinging, the bulb’s beam playing over an irregular bump in the mattress’s base that she hadn’t previously noticed. “Just lower this again, gently,” she said, and Kash did as she asked, bringing the bump into reach. She slid her fingers over it until she found a small tear she could fit her hand into. She reached inside and pulled out a mobile phone and a leather wallet.

  “Would you look at that,” Kash said as she held them up. “He had his mobile on him when he was arrested.”

  “Not this one,” she said. The phone was fully charged and locked, and the wallet was stuffed with twenty-pound notes. “What’s Mr. Two-point-four-kids doing with a burner?”

  “Renting another kid,” Kash said with rare hostility.

  She sealed the phone and wallet in evidence bags and stripped off her gloves. The bedroom was full of smells that were just too personal, and the warm ripeness of body odour from the sheets seemed thick enough to coat her tongue. “Are you okay here for a few minutes?” she asked. “I need a bit of fresh air.”

  The air outside was very fresh, with hail bouncing amongst the raindrops and crunching underfoot. She found an isolated spot down a small ginnel, away from the house and the prying eyes of its neighbours, and somewhat sheltered by a conifer’s overhanging branches. She took her phone from her pocket with chilled fingers and fluffed her passcode twice. Even when she’d managed to access the main screen, she wasn’t sure of her intentions. Although she was no longer afraid of waking Jem, she didn’t know whether it would be better to text her and try to arrange a face-to-face meeting, or phone her and see whether she would actually answer.

  A half-melted hailstone dripped from a branch and slithered down her neck, as if goading her into making a decision.

  “All right! All right!” she said, and dialled Jem’s number.

  * * *

  Jem answered her phone without looking at the caller ID. Forewarned might be forearmed, but it also allowed her to be a gutless wonder.

  “Hello?”

  “Jem?” The voice sounded strange, its features distorted by pain and panic.

  “Paula? Is that you?” Jem did check the caller ID then, almost sure but still needing confirmation. “Are you all right?”

  “No.” Paula started to cry. “Can you come to the cafe? I can’t get hold of Dan, and the police say they’ll be half an hour.”

  “Of course I can,” Jem said, rummaging in the drawer for her car keys. “What’s happened?”

  “They burned me,” Paula whispered. “I couldn’t stop them.” Jem heard her retch and then vomit, and the call cut off.

  “Paula? Shit!”

  Jem didn’t waste time trying to redial. She kicked off her slippers on the way to the door and snatched her coat from the end of the banister.

  Despite the mid-morning dawdlers clogging up the roads and the surface water playing havoc with visibility, Jem made it to the cafe in less than ten minutes, thanks to her knowledge of the back streets and speed cameras. She grabbed the first aid kit she’d thrown onto the passenger seat and rattled the handle on the cafe’s front door. The door was locked, its sign turned to “closed” in spite of the early hour, and the blinds were drawn. The hair stood up on the back of her neck, and she clutched the first aid kit like a shield. Almost afraid to look behind herself, she turned slowly to check the street for anything out of the ordinary. There was nothing. Hers was the only car parked in the vicinity, and a stray cat skulking along the pavement was the sole sign of life.

  “Paula?” she shouted through the letterbox. “Paula, it’s me.” A key rattled and two bolts slid back, but the door didn’t open until Jem pushed it. “Paula?”

  The cafe was dark, and a clatter off to her left made her jump. She coughed, whirling toward the sound and then stumbling back when Paula lurched into her arms.

  “Hey. Hey, you’re okay. I’ve got you.” She held on to Paula tightly, but Paula’s bad leg gave way, taking them both to the floor.

  “I’m sorry,” Paula whispered, sobs hiccupping through the words. “Dan’s in a meeting, so he’ll have his phone off, and I didn’t know who else to call. I know you’ve not been well.”

  “I’m fine, all mended. What the hell happened?” Even in the dull light, Jem could see the cafe had been ransacked. Tables and chairs were overturned, and the counter was in pieces. “Where are you hurt? Were you robbed?”

  Taking a breath, she forced herself to stop firing out questions. She was accustomed to dealing with other people’s crises—she’d been doing that for years—but emergencies were far easier to cope with when the patient was a complete stranger. She hugged Paula close, stroking the tangles from her hair, until the tremors wracking her slowly subsided. It gave Jem the chance to gather her wits and view the scene with necessary detachment.

  “Paula, where are you hurt?” she asked again.

  “Hands,” Paula gasped. “He burned my hands.” She was holding them out in front of her, her elbows on her knees. The sun flitting between the blinds’ slats illuminated raw patches on her fingers and palms, the skin glistening and blistered.

  “Jesus,” Jem said. She took off her coat and tucked it around Paula. “Give me a minute, okay?”

  As Paula nodded, Jem scrambled up and hit a light switch. Nothing happened, and she squinted upward, swearing at the shattered bulbs and ruined shades. Shards of gl
ass and crockery covered the floor, splintering beneath her trainers as she ran to each window in turn and opened the blinds. She locked and bolted the door on the way past, and then knelt by Paula and retrieved the first aid kit. The astringent smell of tea tree oil overwhelmed that of fried breakfasts as she tore open a packet of burns dressings.

  “There were two of them, two men,” Paula said. “Waited until the morning rush finished, then came in with metal bars.” She groaned as Jem carefully turned her hands over.

  “How much did they take?” Jem asked, aiming to distract her while she wrapped the pads over the burns.

  “They didn’t take anything.”

  Jem paused in the middle of bandaging the first pad into place. “Then why? What the hell were they doing?”

  “Warning me,” Paula said quietly. “They were warning me not to ask questions. They smashed everything and pushed my hands on the grill, and then they just walked out.”

  “Oh shit,” Jem whispered. “Is this because of me? Because I told you about Tahlia and the shelter?”

  Paula nodded with obvious reluctance. “I can’t think of anything else, love. I’ve been asking my regulars if they’ve heard of a place called Olly’s or seen that missing lass.” She winced and repositioned her unbandaged hand. “Word must have got back.”

  Jem resumed dressing the wounds, her actions slow and deliberate. If she stopped to consider, even for a moment, the chain of events she had set in motion here, she wouldn’t be able to help Paula.

  “Did you see their faces?” she asked.

  Paula shook her head. “They both wore balaclavas. After they—when they left, I couldn’t get to the door. I couldn’t see their car, but I heard them drive away.”

  Jem tied off a second bandage and found a box of paracetamol. “Here, take these,” she said, popping out a couple of the pills and fishing a bottle of water from under a chair. The men had wrenched the drinks fridge off the wall and sent its contents flying. “I wish I had something stronger with me, but they’ll do till I get you to the hospital.”