Stronger Than Death

by Andrew Lowe

  Alex’s voice drifted in. ‘I think you’re traumatised.’

  He turned and walked, stepping over the sleepers, towards the onrushing train.

  ‘The six-year-old who witnessed something too terrible to contemplate.’

  A blast on the train horn. He kept walking. The lights from the train getting closer, brighter.

  And then, his mother. Another good-looking work in progress.

  ‘Why?’

  He would never know the answer. He would never know the reason for the question.

  Another blast on the horn. The driver, leaning out of the cab. Waving, shouting.

  He stepped up his pace.

  ‘Jake! Run, my darling. Don’t look back!’

  Sawyer veered away from the train. He jumped over the rail, crunching into the trackside gravel, broke into a run for the shrubland, his leg blaring with pain.

  From behind, the whump of the passing train.

  He fell forward, gasping for breath. Dizzy now. Trembling.

  He took out his phone, felt his trouser leg. Warm and wet.

  His mother’s upturned hand.

  ‘Sir?’ Shepherd sounded groggy.

  ‘Step up the protection.’

  ‘Protection?’

  ‘On Amy and her daughter.’

  Sawyer swallowed, groping for the words. ‘Do it now. Don’t wait until morning. Have you got that?’

  Shepherd paused. ‘Are you okay, sir? It’s really late. Have you been drinking?’

  He was suddenly so tired. He closed his eyes.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘And feed my cat.’

  49

  White light. Voices.

  ‘How is he?’ Deep, vaguely Welsh. Keating.

  Then, a new voice. Clipped. High-born. ‘He’s lost quite a lot of blood. Gunshot wound. No bullet. Must have passed through. Just shy of the femoral artery. Mild hypovolemic shock. Dehydrated. He’s stable. He’s also incredibly lucky. Couple of millimetres difference and he wouldn’t have even made it here.’

  Sawyer wanted to stay there: at rest, unreachable. But he forced his eyes open. He was in an overheated hospital room. A ward, judging by the noise outside the closed curtain around his bed. Keating stood at the foot of the bed, in off-duty clothes, talking to a younger man in a white shirt and striped tie with a stethoscope and lanyard badge around his neck.

  Sawyer found his voice. ‘For a minute there, I thought I might be in heaven.’

  ‘Maybe you are,’ said Keating.

  ‘That’s your God complex talking.’ His voice was thin, his throat dry. ‘Protection,’ he said to Keating. ‘Amy and the others.’

  ‘It’s in hand. All fine. Your DS has it under control.’

  Sawyer reached to his bedside table and sipped from his plastic glass of warm water. He took in too much and spluttered. ‘Newspaper?’

  ‘Next on my list. Thumbscrews for Bloom.’

  The doctor stepped forward. ‘Morning! I’m Dr Harford. I’m one of the senior A&E doctors. You’re in Cavendish Hospital, Buxton. How are you feeling, Mr Sawyer?’

  Sawyer read the man’s lanyard: Dr George Harford. ‘I’m feeling okay. Bit sleepy. You’re the guy who saved my life, right?’

  The doctor laughed, and checked him over. ‘Hardly. Just plugged a leak. You’re on saline for now. You’ve had some morphine. And some blood.’ He wrote on the clipboard at the end of the bed, looked up. ‘You were shot, Mr Sawyer. I’m happy for you to go home, but you must rest.’ He glanced at Keating. ‘Whatever you’re… dealing with, it’s important that you give your body time to recover. And your mind. You may be feeling calm now, but you’ve been through a great deal of shock.’ Sawyer nodded, his thoughts spooling back through the scene at his house. ‘Someone will be in soon with more painkillers, and to check your dressing. You may need to change it yourself later.’

  Sawyer shrugged. ‘I’m a big boy.’

  The doctor narrowed his eyes. ‘You will need some time. Couple of weeks.’ He nodded at Keating and slipped through the curtain.

  ‘Close one,’ said Keating.

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘“Close”, as in, “would have probably bled to death if the train driver hadn’t reported some maniac on the track near Edale.”’

  He looked down at his gown, examined the bandage around his thigh. ‘How did I get here?’

  ‘Dispatch sent police and ambulance. Picked up the maniac. By the side of the track.’ Sawyer dropped his head, rubbed and stretched the skin around his eyes. ‘I called your father.’

  ‘Good catch-up?’

  Keating sat down beside the bed. ‘I haven’t seen him for a long time. He’s doing well for himself, but worried.’

  ‘About?’

  ‘About you. Wants me to update him.’

  ‘Like old times?’ Sawyer gently squeezed at his wound and winced at the jolt of pain. ‘Tell him I’m fine. Tell him the doctor says I’m fine. He has a thing for higher powers.’

  ‘I spoke to the officer who found you. The train driver said they’ve had trouble at that stretch lately. Someone running across the tracks. Playing chicken, or something. They’re lobbying for more security. A closed crossing.’ He pulled his chair closer. ‘Jake, if you were in my shoes, you would be asking what the fuck is going on.’

  Sawyer hitched himself upright against his pillow. ‘Well, I’m not you. But don’t think I haven’t fantasised.’

  ‘Maggie wants you to call her. I promised to let her know once I’d seen you.’

  He nodded. ‘Shepherd?’

  ‘He went to your house. Door was open. Looks like someone left in a hurry. He says the place was clear. Bit studenty.’

  ‘Studenty?’

  Keating looked at his watch. ‘His word. Evidence of an altercation. Furniture disturbed. Tyre tracks on the drive. Skid-marks. Bullet shells.’

  Sawyer stared ahead, recalibrating. ‘I was attacked in my home. I got away in the attackers’ car.’

  ‘And where is that now?’

  ‘I left it in the station car park. White Mercedes.’

  ‘There was a transponder key in your pocket. Shepherd took your house keys, secured your place. We had a look around near the station. No cars.’

  ‘They must have had a tracker on it. Dupe key. Picked it up before you got there. What time is it, anyway? How long have I been here?’

  ‘Nine-thirty. You arrived just after midnight. Considerate of you to do all of this at a civilised hour. Whatever this is.’

  Sawyer sighed. ‘It’s personal. I’ll fix it.’ He looked at Keating. ‘I’m fine. I’ll re-focus.’

  Keating bristled. ‘You are not fine. This is not fine.’

  ‘You know it’s pointless to insist I go home and watch YouTube for two weeks?’

  ‘I do. But Shepherd is to take on the bulk of the work. We’ve moved Amy and Ava Scott to a safe house. Kim Lyons is co-operating, but Jamie Ingram is a character. Another bloody unreconstructed male who thinks he’s the master of the universe.’ He took out a set of house keys and lobbed them onto the bedside table. ‘From Shepherd.’ He sighed. ‘Leave this to him for now. I need you strong. You’ve been weakened. Your body needs to renew itself. You’ve lost blood.’

  Sawyer smiled. ‘Ain’t got time to bleed.’

  ‘Predator. Now that I have seen.’

  After Keating had left, Sawyer lay there for a while, listening to the activity outside the curtain: chattering staff, footsteps squeaking on linoleum, bleating children, the tannoy’s muffled appeals. The sounds of human beings caring, repairing, keeping each other going. The urgency of life; the eternal wrestle to delay death. They had pieced him together here before, thirty years earlier, as a shattered six-year-old. He remembered the adults’ hollowed eyes and drained faces; the probing lights, the head-shakes. The way they peered at him, looked into him, searching for signs of survival, prising him back up, out of the dark, to face the horror of his freshly upside-down world.

  He dozed, dr
ifting in and out of consciousness. Images clashed and warped. The doctor’s lanyard badge photo. The monolithic mine buildings. The train lights. Joseph Dawson holding the blue spade high above his head.

  He pivoted out of bed, dressed, and signed himself out. In the cab back to the cottage, he checked his phone. Missed call from Shepherd. Messages from Maggie, his father. Nothing from Eva.

  The cottage felt surreal, unchanged. The chairs and kitchen table were back in place. Shepherd had cleared up some of the coffee table clutter, and even washed the dishes. There were no calling cards or sinister notes, and the Mini was untouched. A saucer of cat food lay on the kitchen floor; the half-empty can sat on the top shelf of the barren fridge.

  His attackers would have called for another car, tracked the Mercedes, picked it up from the station. With Shaun, and the European Health Insurance card, he had a clear connection to Dale. But it would be tough to directly connect him to the assault.

  He made tea and buttery white toast, and hobbled over to the sofa. The wound in his thigh rebuked him for the effort as he eased himself down and called Shepherd.

  Background office noise. ‘Sir. Are you out?’

  Sawyer sipped his tea. ‘What’s this Lily’s Kitchen shit?’

  ‘It was all they had at the farm shop. It’s good stuff. Ethical.’

  ‘I’ll never get him back on Whiskas now.’

  The background noise dropped as Shepherd closed his office door. ‘It ain’t cheap, either. I’ll be adding it to my housekeeping fee.’

  Sawyer laughed and looked around the sitting room. There was something vague and unwelcoming about the place, as if it belonged to someone else. His head felt fuzzy from the morphine. ‘I’m taking the day off. But, obviously, I’m still “on”.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Unrelated to the case. I’ve pissed someone off. He sent round some people to let me know it would be a good idea to stop pissing him off. I’m fine. Thanks for your help. I owe you.’

  ‘Yeah. £1.40 for the cat food, for starters.’ Shepherd paused. ‘Targets are protected. Walker is still with Jamie Ingram. I have a separate team with Amy and Ava at a safe house. Kim Lyons has reluctantly agreed to have the officers in the house. The Observation Points are in position. If he comes within fifty feet of any of the places, we’ll know about it in plenty of time to act.’

  ‘If we bring him in, we’ll still need to make a case.’

  ‘Of course. Still nothing on forensic leads, though. Nothing from local shops on recent purchases of the type of lock he replaced at Simon Brock’s house.’

  Sawyer flexed and unflexed his right hand. The bruising had eased, but the joints had stiffened. ‘He must have staked it, bought it somewhere distant. Online, maybe. How is Myers doing with the name trace? Have you checked chemistry graduates?’

  ‘Still going. Nothing. Sally mentioned that Dawson might have changed his name.’

  ‘It’s likely. Andrew said that he wanted to “start again”.’

  ‘A rebirth?’

  Sawyer reclined on the sofa. The urge to sleep swept over him, and he sat back upright. ‘I tried to track deed poll records on a previous case, find out someone’s old name from the post-deed poll change. Impossible.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There’s no obligation to announce the name-change. Even if you’re researching, say, when a person changed their name, you only find a trail of records in their original name and another trail starting from their new name. There’s usually no single document that links the two. We could send someone to the National Archives in Kew to search the indexes. Focus on the likely dates he might have registered the name change. We might get lucky and the index will include a note that refers to the new name, but it’s not guaranteed.’

  ‘And it will take a lot of hunting through documents, presumably?’

  Sawyer crunched into the toast. It tasted metallic, alien. ‘It will. You can’t search the indexes online. Get a researcher down to London. Or send Moran.’

  ‘Are you trying to get him to hate you?’

  ‘Okay. Send Walker.’

  ‘He’s on decent terms with Jamie Ingram. I’d rather have him covering there. And you know how he’s been pushing to be at the pointy end.’

  Sawyer blinked away another tug of sleep. ‘Just get someone, anyone, to do the digging. If we can find his current name, we can start to eliminate, narrow down his location, and hopefully pick him up bloodlessly.’ He paused, grasping for his next words.

  Shepherd cut in. ‘Rest up. Keating told me he wanted me to take on the bulk of the work while you recover.’

  Sawyer’s eyes drooped again. ‘So get on with it.’

  50

  ‘You look tired, Jake.’

  He kept his eyes on the carpeted floor. ‘Had a busy week.’

  Alex leaned forward. ‘How’s your sleep?’

  Sawyer reached for the plate of biscuits on the side table. Teatime assortment. Bright colours. Foil wraps. Chocolate coating. Icing. He took a dark chocolate digestive. ‘My sleep is interesting. I had a dream about the murder. The first lucid dream. I knew what it was. I knew what was happening. I tried to help. I tried to—’

  ‘Stop it?’

  ‘Yes. Usually, I’m just watching. Powerless.’

  Alex nodded. She was wearing a bottle-green shawl with buttons down one arm. Cape-like. No notepad this time. ‘And how are you doing with the fear? Are you still chasing it? Any luck?’

  ‘Plenty of scary situations. No fear.’

  Alex slipped on a pair of silver-framed glasses. ‘When you say, “no fear”, I wonder if you really mean “no feeling”.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Are you concerned about your choices? The distractions you’re seeking?’

  He crunched into the biscuit. ‘Not really. But everyone else seems to be.’

  She picked up a book from her side table. ‘How are you getting on with women?’

  ‘Again? This?’

  ‘Where else can you examine it safely? Isn’t that what you’re here for?’

  He sighed. ‘I’ve got my eye on someone, yes. Is that normal?’

  ‘We’re told not to say “normal” now.’

  ‘Neurotypical?’

  ‘Yes. And I suppose it is.’ She held up the book: a copy of The Gift Of Fear. ‘I’ve been re-reading this. There’s a part where he talks about stalking. Unwanted attention.’

  ‘I fancy someone. I’m pursuing them. That’s neurotypical, right? Sexual attraction. Stalking is about control.’

  Alex smiled and turned to a marked page. She read out loud. ‘Young women should know this. Persistence only proves persistence. It does not prove love. The fact that a romantic pursuer is relentless doesn’t mean you are special. It means he is troubled.’

  He stared at her, silent.

  ‘I also read an astute quote the other day. Somewhere online. It said that the problem is never the problem. It’s the response to the problem that’s almost always the real problem.’

  Sawyer nodded. ‘I like that. Very Stoic. Did you buy these biscuits especially for me? For the “frozen” inner child?’

  ‘This woman you have your eye on. Does she remind you of your mother?’

  ‘In some ways.’

  His phone buzzed in his pocket.

  ‘Seeking distraction and drama. It isn’t helping. What you need to do is to turn and face yourself. Know yourself as an adult. Like I said, I think you are frozen, and I want to start the process of thawing. The thing I talked about last time. Reliving. You’ve already taken me through what happened on the day of your mother’s murder. We’re now going to go one step further.’ She pulled out a small digital recorder. ‘We’re going to record you, walking through it, step by step.’

  ‘Hypnosis?’

  ‘No. That’s not the aim. But it’s along the same lines. You’re going to take me through it in the first-person present. Immerse yourself in the reality of the moment. Lots of sensory detail
. “I’m walking down the lane”, “I can see this”, “I can feel this”, “I can smell this”.

  Sawyer reached into his pocket and squeezed the button on his phone, turning it off. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because, in your mind, it’s all chaos. Horror. Confusion. Your brain can’t process it.’

  He sat forward. ‘Jung said, “In all chaos there is a cosmos”.’

  Alex smiled. ‘“In all disorder, a secret order.” That’s what we’re going to do. Clear away the chaos. Find the order. The first stage is to turn the event into something your brain can cope with. A clear, linear story. A narrative. You’re currently processing the murder as a six-year-old. The goal is to get it clear in your mind and then reframe it as something you can reprocess as an adult. Once we have that, then we can pack it away.’

  ‘And all shall be well.’

  She squinted at him. ‘It can’t just be forgotten. At the moment, your mother’s murder is a horrendous mix of professional and personal. We have to get it to a place where you can “solve” it as a case, without the trauma and confusion of the personal dimension. If it gets too stressful, we can come back to safety at any time, get re-grounded.’

  It took Sawyer half an hour to recount his story into Alex’s recorder. As he spoke, the daylight dimmed outside her window, and it was close to dusk by the time he had finished. He kept his voice soft and calm, but always on the edge of emotion. All the while, Alex sat there in absolute silence, never prompting.

  When he reached the end, and had stayed silent for a while, Alex leaned over and switched off the recorder. ‘Thank you, Jake. Now we have something we can really work with. I want you to take it away and listen to it. At least two times before our next session. Which moments are the hot spots, the most distressing moments? The points where you feel the most intensely? Remember, we’re looking to reframe those parts. That was then, when you were a child. This is now. You’re an adult. It’s only when you see this story from an adult perspective that we can move on to the final stage. Then you’ll still carry it inside you, as a painful memory, but it will no longer be something which makes it impossible to live a normal life, in the here and now.’