Someone To Save you

by Paul Pilkington

  The officer suppressed a smile, getting back to the task at hand. ‘Mr Becker,’ he hesitated, ‘it is Mr, isn’t it?’

  Sam nodded. He had successfully completed his training and royal college of surgery exams six months ago, and in the ironic world of medicine, the seventy hour weeks, the nights sleeping on the ward whilst on-call, the years of study, all those personal sacrifices, had resulted in the dropping of the Doctor title he had worked so hard for in the first place.

  ‘Well, Mr Becker, Sam, I’m Detective Inspector Paul Cullen, of the British Transport Police, and this is my partner, Detective Sergeant Tony Beswick. We’re part of the accident investigation team examining this afternoon’s crash. We have a few questions, if that’s okay with you.’

  ‘Sure,’ Sam replied. ‘But can I ask a question first?’

  Cullen nodded.

  ‘How are the children, and their mother?’

  ‘The children are all fine,’ he confirmed.

  ‘Even the baby?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the mother?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  Sam wasn’t surprised but it still saddened him greatly. He nodded his understanding.

  DI Cullen continued. ‘No-one could have survived a head-on impact at that speed. The train was travelling at fifty miles an hour when it hit. She would have died instantly.’

  Sam took in the news. The woman had got part of what she wanted, but she hadn’t taken the children with her. Had she really wanted them to die too? And what about the other people who were affected? Did she think about them when she’d made the decision to crash through the fence and drive onto the track?

  ‘The passengers on the train?’

  ‘All okay,’ he said, ‘a few walking wounded – half a dozen or so cases of whiplash, minor injuries to arms and legs, and some people with shock. The driver is being counselled. As you can imagine, he’s pretty shook up about the whole thing. Thankfully, the train stayed on the tracks. If the thing had derailed, the situation would have been very different.’

  Sam pondered on that thought. It was still hard to believe that he’d been a matter of metres from a head-on high-speed train collision, yet had survived with nothing more than a black eye and slight bruising. And for the baby to have been unharmed too, it was nothing short of miraculous.

  ‘Are you okay to answer some of our questions now, Mr Becker?’ the officer asked, his voice revealing a touch of impatience. ‘We’ll be as quick as we can.’

  ‘Fire away,’ Sam said.

  ‘Great,’ he replied. ‘We need to piece together what happened. How you became involved, what you did, what you saw, right up until the impact.’

  Just then Sam heard a commotion outside and saw a flash of light up against the window of his private room.

  Cullen spun round and pointed at the door. ‘Get that photographer ejected from the premises,’ he barked at his colleague. ‘And if they resist, arrest them. I told them, no-one is allowed up here.’

  His colleague nodded and exited the room.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he said, regaining his composure. We tried to keep the media away from this, but there’s a swarm of them down at reception. Somehow they must have found out which ward you were on.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Sam said, exchanging glances with Anna, who was looking out towards the melee. You could hear DS Beswick directing the photographer back downstairs, in no uncertain terms.

  ‘Right,’ Cullen said. ‘First of all, what brought you to the location of the crash?’

  ‘I was driving back home from a family event in the North West,’ Sam explained.

  ‘Family event?’

  ‘My sister’s birthday,’ he added.

  ‘So you were with your sister over the weekend?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Sam replied.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Sam hesitated and Anna, who had been listening intently, picked up the baton. ‘Cathy, Sam’s sister, died when she was young. Yesterday would have been her thirtieth birthday.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ Cullen said, his brow creasing. ‘Sorry to hear that. So, it was a commemoration…’

  ‘Celebration,’ Sam corrected, ‘at least that was the plan.’

  ‘Okay,’ Cullen said, making some more notes. ‘So can you just talk me through what happened as you were driving back home.’

  ‘I was driving back; it was about five o’clock, when something ran straight out in front of me. It came from my left, and my first thought was that it was a deer or something. But I realised it was a girl, a teenage girl. I swerved to miss her, and then I followed her down to the…’

  ‘You were led to the scene by a teenage girl?’ he interrupted, his face expressing surprise, possibly disbelief.

  ‘Yes, Alison,’ Sam confirmed, noting Cullen’s reaction. ‘The woman’s daughter. What’s the matter?’

  Cullen didn’t answer, simply raising a pausing hand as he brought a police radio receiver up to his mouth. ‘Hi. DI Cullen here. We’ve got a problem.’

  3

  The morning following the train crash, Sam prepared the breakfast, handling the knife with a surgeon’s skill as he buttered the toast and skimmed off the top of the boiled eggs. He’d been up for three hours now, since just before five, unable to stop his mind from racing and his body aching. For a time he’d just sat up in bed, staring at the wall while Anna slept, before tuning in to the early morning news. The main news items that had been replayed several times in the ensuing hours - a hurricane slamming into the Caribbean, and yet more killing in the Middle East, weren’t a recipe for sound sleeping.

  Anna appeared, and Sam smiled as she approached. Her slender, almost fragile frame belied an inner toughness, and her youthful face disguised a wealth of life experience. She was wearing her pyjamas, with her chocolate brown hair tied back away from her lightly tanned skin in a loose ponytail - a style that always reminded him of the first time they had met, when a feisty, determined twenty-four year old Anna had burst into his sweltering corrugated iron outreach theatre room in the tiny rural Indian village, cradling a young girl who she had found lying by the side of the road having been hit by a motorcycle. Bypassing the security on the door, who had told her to wait, Anna had taken it upon herself to bring the child, Grace, to his attention. And for good reason – ten minutes later and she might not have survived her internal injuries. That meeting had sparked an instant and lasting mutual attraction. They grew closer throughout Sam’s year elective at the Verlore Christian University Medical School, and for the next two years after that, when Sam returned home, inspired to train in paediatric surgery following his experiences in India and Anna continued her work abroad, they stayed in contact by email and phone. Then one day Anna turned up at his flat. She’d been promoted, and her time would now be split between co-ordinating projects in countries around the world from the London offices, with occasional travel abroad to oversee the work. A year later they were engaged, and eighteen months after that married. It was only then Anna admitted that, with her father being a successful but work-addicted consultant neurologist, who always put medicine before family, she had initially been extremely hesitant about getting into a relationship with a doctor.

  ‘Couldn’t sleep?’ Anna asked, rubbing her eyes as she watched him pour the tea.

  ‘Not much,’ Sam admitted, turning to face her.

  ‘Bad dreams?’

  Sam shook his head, stirring the tea. ‘I just keep seeing the look in the eyes of that woman. And I keep thinking – how can you do that to your children?

  Anna shrugged.

  ‘I mean, what could be so bad that you’d lock your baby up in the boot of your car, strap your children in the back seats, and drive straight onto a railway track?’

  ‘She can’t have known what she was doing,’ Anna replied, taking the tea that Sam proffered.

  ‘Probably not,’ Sam agreed, looking off towards the left.

  ‘What are you thinkin
g?’

  ‘I’m thinking that she must have locked the doors after driving down the embankment,’ Sam explained. ‘She watched one of her children get away and run for help, and her reaction was to lock the doors, knowing that the other three would probably die as a result.’

  ‘It’s impossible for us to understand,’ Anna said.

  Sam exhaled, taking a sip of tea and grimacing at the singeing heat. ‘If only I could have got the car off the tracks. I was nearly there; I could feel the car moving…’

  ‘You’re bound to think things like that,’ Anna said, cradling her drink. ‘But you couldn’t have done anything more. You saved three people’s lives.’

  But he hadn’t saved one person’s life. And that thought gnawed at him, the same as it did whenever a patient was lost. Yes, you pushed it to the back of your mind, you had to in order to focus on the next person, but the regret was there. It was what drove him to improve – he didn’t ever want to find such failure acceptable.

  ‘I should have called someone to stop the trains. I should have gone back to get my phone.’

  ‘It’s easy to say that now,’ Anna countered. ‘Hindsight is a wonderful thing. And who’s to say the outcome would have been any different?’

  Sam nodded. ‘You’re right - as usual.’

  ‘Come here,’ she said, putting down her tea and embracing him. They hugged tightly, and Sam wallowed in the comfort of Anna’s body as it moulded to his. He buried his head into her hair, smelling her shampoo.

  ‘I do love you, Sam Becker.’

  ‘I love you too,’ he replied over her shoulder, kissing her hair. He pulled back to see Anna with watery eyes.

  ‘You okay?’

  Anna nodded. ‘Just a bit emotional after everything that’s happened. I don’t like the thought of losing you.’

  ‘You won’t,’ Sam reassured her, hugging her again. ‘I promise. I’ll take you to the airport. Seeing as I’ve now got the day off.’

  This time Anna pulled back. ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to stick around?’ she said, searching his eyes for the answer. ‘I can call Bob now and that will be that. They’ll just have to make do without me this time.’

  Sam shook his head. He had persuaded Anna on the drive home from the hospital that she should make the trip to Bangladesh – they desperately needed her expertise – so she had somewhat reluctantly booked a replacement flight when they got home. ‘They need you, Anna. Honestly, I’ll be okay. The hospital wouldn’t have let me go so soon if they hadn’t been satisfied. I just need some rest. Anyway, it’s only four days.’

  ‘Okay,’ Anna replied, not sounding convinced. ‘But on one condition.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘That you’ll think about seeing that counsellor.’

  The hospital had offered Sam an appointment with a counsellor, which was now standard procedure for anyone involved in a traumatic event. It was meant to reduce the likelihood of developing post-traumatic stress disorder, although there were some who believed that it actually increased the chances of suffering after-effects. Sam had politely declined, although Anna had thought it could be a good idea.

  ‘Okay,’ Sam conceded. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  An hour and a hearty breakfast later, Doug McAllister, a consultant anaesthetist who was a good friend and work colleague of Sam’s, rang to let them know that there was a short piece in the Telegraph about the train crash. Anna set off immediately to the local newsagents, returning ten minutes later.

  ‘I checked all the papers, and the story is in five of them.’

  Anna handed Sam the pile of papers as he sat by the large bay window of their ground floor flat. It offered a lovely view across to a small but beautiful area of parkland in Clerkenwell, North London. The place, the bottom half of a Georgian property, wasn’t the largest, but it was more than adequate for two people, and they were lucky in having the garden. It had also been fortunate that they’d bought when they did – just before the London house price boom. Their long-term upstairs neighbours, a young couple with whom they had become good friends, had recently sold the top floor apartment for just over three hundred thousand. It was no wonder that the new guy to move in was a city banker – you had to be to afford those kinds of prices. Sam had been meaning to return the spare front door key, which they’d recently found buried in a kitchen drawer.

  Sam surveyed the papers on his lap with horror, hardly daring to open them for fear of what was written inside.

  ‘They don’t mention you by name,’ Anna said, flicking through the top newspaper and pointing at the story on page ten. The headline read “Good Samaritan saves train crash family”. Sam skimmed the article. There was indeed no mention of his name, although the piece documented the identity of the dead woman, Jane Ainsley, from Islington, North London, and her children Alison, Simon, Charlotte and baby Jessica.

  ‘They only live just down the road,’ Anna said, settling down next to Sam, perching on the wide ledge.

  Sam nodded. ‘It doesn’t mention that Alison is missing,’ he noted, reading on.

  ‘None of the papers do,’ Anna confirmed. ‘They’re all a little sketchy. I guess they had to go to print before they could get many details. What do you think’s happened to her?’

  ‘Who knows,’ Sam said, ‘maybe like Louisa said, she’s traumatised and just wanted to get away. I just hope that she’s safe, wherever she is. I guess we’ll just have to wait to hear from the police.’

  Anna nodded. ‘They’ll probably want to speak with you again.’

  ‘I would say definitely, especially if Alison isn’t found soon,’ he said, moving on to the next paper. The story was essentially the same. He placed all the papers on the side and looked out across the street outside, watching the people pass by. Sam watched a stocky man as he crouched down, stroking his dog in front of the flat, before moving on. ‘I hope that’s the end of the press. I don’t want any publicity.’

  ‘You’re afraid they’ll pick up Cathy’s story?’

  ‘They did last time.’

  Twelve months ago, in the middle of a transatlantic flight to a conference in Washington DC, Sam saved a baby’s life. The baby, who was suffering from a collapsed lung, was saved by using a straw and a needle, which enabled Sam to reopen the airways. The saving of the baby, who happened to be the child of a high-profile American senator and expected future presidential candidate, made headlines around the world. It brought press attention that Sam found difficult to handle - especially when they picked up on the story of his sister Cathy’s death, who over a decade ago had been brutally raped and murdered by Sam’s then best friend, Marcus Johnson. The coverage had reopened wounds that even a surgeon of Sam’s talent couldn’t easily mend.

  ‘Maybe today’s stories will be it,’ Anna said.

  ‘Hopefully.’

  Anna reached for his hand. ‘I’m really sorry. With all that’s happened we haven’t even spoken about what it was like at the weekend. Was it okay?’

  ‘Better than I expected,’ Sam replied. ‘Mum and dad seem to be finally moving on with their lives. It’s only taken fifteen years.’

  ‘Did anyone mention Marcus Johnson’s release?’

  Marcus Johnson, the person who had so brutally cut short his little sister’s life was now able to walk the streets and make a new start. Sam shocked himself by the strength of hatred he still felt towards the man who he used to be so close to. It remained unfathomable to Sam how Marcus could have betrayed such trust. And during his fifteen years in jail, Marcus had offered no explanation. In fact, he had always protested his innocence, despite the overwhelming evidence against him. It had happened on a camping trip in North Wales. Sam and Marcus, Louisa and Cathy. On the second morning Louisa had woken Sam and Marcus. Cathy had gone. After twenty minutes of frantic searching, her body was found on the nearby sand dunes. Tests revealed later that Cathy’s body had been covered with Marcus’s DNA. There was hair, skin, semen – it all matched. They had never found
the murder weapon, thought to have been a glass bottle, but they hadn’t needed to. In the immediate aftermath Marcus had denied being with Cathy that night. But when it became clear that the evidence was so stacked against him, he changed his story. He claimed they had been dating in secret for months, and that they had crept out of the tents and walked down to the beach, before drinking vodka under the stars and making love. He had written to Sam, protesting his innocence. He said his last memory was lying down next to Cathy, and although he was unable to remember anything after that, he would never have hurt her.

  Sam shook his head. ‘No one said a word about it, including me.’

  His parents hadn’t spoken about his release, and instead it had hung over the remembrance day like a ghost.

  ‘So you don’t know how they feel about it – your parents?’

  ‘I can guess,’ Sam replied. ‘I think they just want to pretend that he’s still locked up.’

  ‘And you?’

  Sam shrugged his shoulders. ‘Pretty much the same really. I think he should have spent the rest of his life inside. But, he’s out and that’s it.’

  ‘You sure you’re okay?’

  Sam glanced across at Anna in the front passenger seat, as they crawled through the traffic on the outskirts of Heathrow later that afternoon. She’d been uncharacteristically quiet throughout the journey to the airport, and had spent most of the time staring out of the window.

  Anna shook herself out of her daydream. ‘What? Sorry?’

  ‘Just wondering if you’re okay,’ Sam explained. ‘You’ve been really quiet. If it’s about going away, I’ll be okay, honestly. And if it’s about me risking my life like an idiot, I promise I won’t do that again.’

  He glanced over at his wife.

  ‘It’s something else?’ Sam tried. She was biting on her lip – a sure sign that something was bothering her.