Choked

by Tania Carver

  A few days away before returning to work. That was all it had been. After the wedding and the honeymoon. Just herself, Phil and his parents.

  And their three-year-old daughter.

  ‘No … oh no, oh fuck, no … ’

  She looked again at the burning ruin before her, walked quicker.

  Spending Easter in Suffolk. Aldeburgh, on the coast. Snape Maltings music festival nearby, a large stretch of beach, pubs and restaurants. A way of saying thank you to Don and Eileen for looking after Josephina.

  And now this.

  Marina was almost running in her haste to get there. She looked at the cottage, tried to make out shapes, called for her family.

  ‘Phil … Phil … oh God … Eileen, Don … ’

  Nothing. Her only reply the sound of the flames, intensifying as she got nearer.

  Her heart was ready to break through her ribcage.

  There was a blazing car in front of the cottage. Marina didn’t recognise it. Not theirs. Not Don and Eileen’s. She dismissed it from her mind, kept going, moving towards the cottage. She hadn’t realised how far away she had been.

  Part of her mind was asking the question: why was she not in the cottage? Why wasn’t she with the rest of them? Another part of her mind dismissed it. More important things to do. More important questions to answer.

  She heard voices behind her, becoming louder. She ignored them. Heard footsteps running towards her. Ignored them too. Staying focused on the cottage. Moving towards it. Her world narrowed down to that burning ruin. To saving her family.

  She had almost reached the car when she was grabbed from behind.

  ‘Get away from there! You mental?’

  She shook the hands off her, kept going. They grabbed her again.

  ‘It’s not safe, you’ll be killed. Come on … ’

  The hands pulled her back, stopped her from moving forward, separating her from her family.

  She tried to shake them off again, but they gripped harder.

  ‘Please, stay back … see sense … ’

  Desperation and adrenalin gave her strength. She turned, saw a man about her own age, concern and fear in his eyes, his hands grappling with her shoulders. She shook him off, broke free from his grasp.

  As she reached the car, she felt the heat on her face and body. It was so bright it forced her eyes to close, so powerful it knocked her back like a physical presence. She squinted through the flames. Tried to make out anyone else. Reality rippled through the heat haze.

  She heard the man’s voice behind her once more.

  ‘Get back! The car’s going to … ’

  She felt hands on her body, the sensation of being pushed roughly to the ground. Then a sudden burst of searing heat, like she was being devoured by a miniature sun, accompanied by a sound so loud it must have shattered her eardrums.

  Then nothing.

  Just blackness.

  4

  They had given him his own curtains. That was something. Curtains and a window. But not a view. That was asking too much.

  That didn’t stop him staring out of it, though. Staring and thinking. Some days that was all he did, because he had nothing else to do. Just stare and think. There wasn’t much to look at. Sometimes he counted the pigeons. Tried to identify them by their markings. Individualise them. Anthropomorphise them even, give them names, assign character traits. That was when he knew he had been staring too long. He would be dressing them up in little waistcoats next. So instead he would sit on the bed, turn his attention inwards rather than outwards.

  He would think about things he had read in books, the pencilled notes he had made in the margins. The books now sat permanently on his shelf. He didn’t take them down much any more. He had looked at them so often, he had memorised the bits he liked. The important bits.

  One of the main things he thought about was time. It occupied his mind a lot, and he had read plenty of books on it, with all sorts of theories. How it wasn’t a straight line. How it twisted, stretched. How sometimes it seemed short but was actually long. How it would loop in on itself. How it could fool you into thinking it was one thing when it was really another.

  He applied the things he had read to his own life, his own situation. The way it seemed short but was actually long. Although most days it was the opposite, seeming long but actually short. No, not most days: all days. And nights. The nights were worse than the days.

  Because he kept having the same dream, over and over, night after night. For years, since he had first arrived. He would dream his own death. And it was always a slow death. Cancer, MS, Aids, something like that. Something he couldn’t stop, couldn’t cure. Parts of him would be taken away, bit by bit. His body would become a cage, with him trapped inside. Sometimes it took everything away and left only his voice. A small, weak voice screaming silently within. Ignored. Unheard.

  When he woke up, the dream would still be with him, clinging, convincing him he was dead. He would have to force himself to believe he was alive. Then he would lie in the dark, hearing the groans and cries from beyond his door, and think about being dead. His body rotted, his mind dissipated. No longer existing. No thoughts, no life, no memories. Just nothing.

  And then he would feel more alone than he had ever believed a human being could feel.

  Eventually morning would come and another day would start: the same as the last one, the same as the next. Dragging a greater piece of the dream with him every time he woke, barely existing until he existed no more, until he eventually became nothing.

  Now he was just a collection of memories. And memories, he knew, were as reliable as time. If you told someone a table was a chair and you told them long enough and loud enough, they would eventually believe you. And that was what had happened to his memories. They had told him what he had done. What had caused it. What had happened as a result. And even though he hadn’t believed them and had fought against them, pitted his own memories against theirs, theirs had been stronger and theirs had won. It had taken years, but eventually he had accepted what they said as truth. That their memories were his. That he had done what they said he had done.

  It had been easier once he had let them implant their events into his mind. They had started to be nicer to him, talked about letting him go. Time might even have speeded up. But it may have just been time playing tricks on him once again.

  Or not. Because the day had come. And it was today. No more staring at the curtains. No more sitting in his room with his memorised books, dreaming of living death.

  He would be out. He would be free.

  They all told him it was a good thing. That it must be what he wanted. And he had agreed with them. Because that was what they wanted to hear. And if they were pleased, he was pleased.

  He heard keys in the door. Stood up. Stared straight ahead, at the wall. The door opened and two of them entered. One of them smiling.

  ‘Going home today, eh?’ the smiling one said.

  He wanted to say I am home, but knew better. Instead he nodded.

  Smiler laughed. ‘Won’t know what to do with yourself.’

  Knowing a response was expected, he returned the laugh. ‘Bet I will.’

  Smiler laughed again.

  ‘Get your things, then, come on,’ the other one said, yawning.

  He knew their names and had even used them sometimes. But he would forget them as soon as he left. Because he wouldn’t need them any more.

  He gave one last look round his cell. His home. He took in the curtains, the memorised books and the toiletries. ‘There’s nothing I want here,’ he said.

  ‘Suit yourself, then.’

  He followed them out.

  The door clanged shut behind them.

  He walked off the wing, down the corridor and towards the gate, trying to think of the future and not the past. Hoping time wouldn’t play tricks any more and that a table would become a table again and not a chair.

  Trying not to feel death in his every step.
/>   5

  Marina opened her eyes. She tried to focus, but there was too much light in the room, too much brightness. She closed her eyes to block it out, then opened them again, slowly this time.

  She saw curtains. Thin, patterned in a style she couldn’t identify. She looked round. She was in a small room. No, not a room, a cubicle. There was a beige wall with a small sink against it. She looked down and realised she was on a hospital stretcher. For a few seconds her consciousness floated adrift from her memory, then the two came crashing together. She jerked upright.

  The cottage … the fire …

  ‘Whoa, hey, it’s OK … ’

  She felt hands on her shoulders. Firm, not harsh. Not forcing her down, just holding her in place.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘Ipswich General. A and E.’

  The voice sounded familiar. Warm and friendly. Another thought hit her. ‘Phil, where’s Phil … ?’

  ‘It’s OK,’ said the voice again.

  Marina focused, managed to look at the face of the speaker. She made out dark skin and lightened hair, a denim jacket and a T-shirt. Her friend and work colleague, Detective Constable Anni Hepburn.

  ‘Anni … what—’

  ‘Just lie back, Marina. Lie back.’

  Marina didn’t want to do so, but she trusted her friend. She looked at Anni’s face once more. Her features were taut, drawn. No trace of the usual good humour there.

  ‘What’s happened? Where’s Phil? Josephina?’

  ‘Just … just take a minute. Just … relax, yeah?’ Anni didn’t seem to know what to say.

  Marina picked up on the unease and tried to sit up once more. Her bones ached and pain cranked through her body. She lay back down again.

  ‘What’s happened? Tell me … ’

  Anni sighed and looked round as if for support. Finding none, she turned back to Marina. ‘You were picked up outside a cottage in Aldeburgh in Suffolk. Last night.’

  Marina nodded, her head swimming. ‘We went there for the weekend.’

  Anni looked at her. ‘It was in flames … ’

  The brightness of the room couldn’t touch the darkness of Anni’s words.

  ‘Flames … ’ Parts of Marina’s memory returned to her, like garishly coloured jigsaw pieces against a dark matt background. ‘Flames.’

  ‘You tried to run towards it,’ Anni said. ‘A guy passing by pulled you away. If he hadn’t … ’

  Marina closed her eyes, the jigsaw pieces slotting slowly together. ‘The … the rest of them?’ Her breath caught. She tried to resist forming the words in her mouth, but knew they had to emerge sometime. Knew she would have to hear the answers to her questions. ‘Are they … ?’

  Anni sighed. Marina watched her.

  ‘I know that look,’ she said, apprehension and fear overriding tiredness, giving her a voice. ‘Phil does it. The one you put on when you’re delivering bad news. Telling someone their son or daughter’s been killed. Doing the death knock. I know … ’ Her voice trailed away. ‘Oh God.’

  ‘It’s … Are you ready for this, Marina? I mean, you’ve just—’

  ‘I don’t know, Anni. Am I? Am I ever going to be ready for this?’ Her voice snapping, harsh. She sighed. ‘Sorry. Just … just tell me.’

  ‘Phil’s … alive.’

  Her initial reaction was a huge wave of relief, spreading over her. Phil’s alive. But she stopped herself from being too relieved. The hesitation in Anni’s voice …

  ‘Alive?’ she said.

  Anni swallowed. ‘Yes.’ Another sigh.

  ‘Can I see him?’

  ‘Not at the moment. He’s … ’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Unconscious.’

  ‘Oh God.’

  ‘We’re … still waiting for him to come round.’

  Anni’s words hit her like a wrecking ball. She tried to process what she’d heard, but her head was a cyclone, the words spinning round and round.

  ‘And … and … ’ She couldn’t bring herself to say the name. Josephina. Her daughter.

  ‘Eileen’s fine,’ said Anni quickly. ‘Not too badly damaged. She was lucky.’ Her voice dropped. Knowing she had to say the words. Not wanting to even hear them herself. ‘Don wasn’t so lucky.’

  The cyclone spun all the harder. ‘What? Don … ’

  Anni looked straight into Marina’s eyes. Held them. ‘He’s … he’s dead, Marina.’

  The cyclone peaked. Picked up Marina’s thoughts, her emotions, spun them. She felt like her head would explode. It was too much to cope with. Too much to process all at once. But there was one question she needed the answer to. The one question she had avoided asking.

  ‘Josephina … ’ Her voice small, fragile.

  Another sigh from Anni. ‘We … we couldn’t find her.’

  Marina stared at her friend.

  ‘Honestly, she wasn’t … There was no trace.’

  6

  The firefighters had all but finished and the cottage had burned itself down to charred, smoking remains. A charcoal-blackened skeleton with the life blazed out of it. Detective Sergeant Jessica James stared at it, hand over her eyes, squinting against the sun.

  She had been briefed on the way from Ipswich. Holidaying copper and his family. Explosion. Fire. Probably a faulty gas supply, but maybe not.

  ‘Proceed with caution,’ her DCI had said. ‘One of our own, remember. Even if they’re not local.’

  ‘Brothers under the skin and all that,’ she had replied.

  He had nodded. ‘Just be thorough. That’s all.’

  And she would be. Probably nothing, just an unfortunate accident.

  But …

  A copper. Retribution? A villain nursing a bitter grudge against the guy who’d put him away, something like that? Fanciful, she would have said. The clichéd stuff of desperate TV cop dramas. That would never happen in real life. Not round here.

  But then if she’d been asked a few years ago whether a sexually sadistic serial killer could terrorise Ipswich and get away with murdering five sex workers, she would have said the same. A clichéd TV cop show. Not in real life. Not round here. But it had happened. And she had no intention of being the one getting caught out if something like that happened again.

  She ran her fingers through her hair, shook her head. Mentally blowing the cobwebs away. If she had known she was coming to work today, she wouldn’t have gone out drinking with the girls last night. Because those couple of drinks had turned into a couple more. Then a couple more. Then a curry, a half-remembered, slurry phone call home to say she’d be late, don’t wait up, then … what? Tiger Tiger? Dancing with some bloke? Flirting? Finally tumbling into bed at God knew what hour.

  And now this. Called back in to work, her weekend off cancelled, and sent up to Aldeburgh. Knocking back mints, paracetamol and Evian all the way.

  She crossed to a man giving orders to uniforms. Small, neatly dressed and holding a clipboard, he looked and acted like an Apprentice contestant focused on giving a hundred and ten per cent. More of a Sugary hopeful than a detective constable. But that was exactly what Deepak Shah was and it irritated her more than she let on.

  ‘What have we got, Deepak?’

  Hearing her voice, he turned. ‘Early days, ma’am, but it looks like the fire started in the living room,’ he said, pointing helpfully to the front of the cottage. ‘We’ve got a couple of eyewitnesses say it was an explosion. Then it looks like the fire spread to the rest of the cottage.’

  ‘Any survivors?’

  He nodded. ‘Only one dead. The father, it seems.’ He checked his clipboard. ‘He was in the room where the blast happened. Caught most of it. Died instantly. Two are critical. And there was one outside. She tried to get back in. That car stopped her.’ He pointed to a burnt-out wreck parked outside the cottage. ‘Explosion knocked her back. They’ve all been taken to the General in Ipswich.’

  Jessica James nodded and tried not to let her irritation at Deepak’s organisatio
n show. ‘Wasn’t there something about a baby?’

  Deepak turned to her. The usual fussiness and officiousness were absent from his eyes. In their place was the professionalism she expected from her team, and something else as well. A kind of compassionate determinism. And that, she realised, was why she put up with him.

  He shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘No sign.’

  ‘But there was definitely a baby there?’

  ‘Little girl,’ he said. ‘They booked a kid’s bed from the letting agency, for a three-year-old. We found some stuff, couple of toys, clothes, not much though. Might be a baby buggy in there.’ He pointed to the ruin once more. Three blue-suited people were making their way inside, stepping carefully. ‘Firefighters and forensics are still looking it over.’

  ‘Hope they’re careful,’ she said. ‘Mind what they’re standing on.’

  Deepak didn’t reply.

  Jessica James’s eye was drawn by an approaching car. It pulled up to the crime-scene tape that had been stretched across the gravel road that led down to the cottage. A uniform was standing there, stopping the car from going any further. It came to a halt and the driver emerged. Tall, burly, cropped head, dressed in a plaid shirt and jeans and seemingly uncomfortable in leisurewear, she noticed. He held something up and the uniform let him pass. He walked towards them. Jessica waited until he drew up next to her.

  ‘And you are?’ she said.

  He held up his warrant card once more. ‘Detective Sergeant Michael Philips,’ he said.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Jessica James.’

  They shook hands.

  ‘Major Incident Squad,’ he said, ‘Essex Police.’

  Jessica raised her eyebrows. ‘MIS? You’re a bit off your patch, aren’t you? Is this a major incident?’

  He nodded. Sighed, and some of the stiffness of his manner left him. ‘Yeah. I’m not here officially.’ He pointed to the cottage. Grimaced. ‘That was my boss in there.’

  ‘Never mind the was, Detective … what did you say?’

  ‘Philips,’ he said. ‘Mickey. And his missus. Marina. She’s a psychologist. One of our team too.’