Dead End

by Sally Spencer

‘Oh, Mr Montague gave the impression that you were on his staff.’

  ‘He does that. Makes him feel a bit more important than he is. There’s no harm in it.’

  ‘Listen to that quality,’ the geek said. ‘I’m a genius.’

  ‘You don’t think it’s anything to do with the way it was installed?’ asked the other man.

  ‘That may have helped,’ the geek said, only a little reluctantly. ‘So what’s the pub like?’

  ‘Not bad at all. The landlord’s a good bloke, and given that it is northern beer, it’s really quite palatable.’

  ‘So do you think you might be going again?’ the geek asked.

  ‘Nah!’ the other man said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, the pub’s bugged, isn’t it?’

  ‘So it is,’ the geek agreed.

  THREE

  Louisa Paniatowski was in what was officially known as the ‘female officers’ cloakroom’, but was generally called the ‘women’s bogs’. Back in the day, when her mother had joined the force, it had been quite openly referred to as the ‘sluts’ room’ or – even more disgustingly – the ‘slits’ room’. It would be foolish to claim that all such prejudice had been swept away in the years which followed, but now the male officers who had no class and shit for brains were only likely to use such pejorative terms when in the company of their caveman friends.

  Louisa wasn’t speculating about changing gender definitions in the modern police force – she was examining her face in the mirror. Her reflection gave her little cause for rejoicing. True, her nose was not broken, but it had swollen somewhat, as if in sympathy with her upper lip, while her right eye had opted for the giant panda look.

  And it wasn’t just her face which ached. Several of her ribs were bruised, too, and kept issuing a periodic reminder that they didn’t appreciate being smashed into.

  But what was worse than any physical pain was the damage to her pride.

  She played back the scene at the allotments in her mind, inserting a script more to her liking.

  She is standing there with the video camera on her hand, when she sees Archie Eccleston charging in her direction. She carefully places the camera at a safe distance, and then places herself in Archie’s path. He sees her, but he is not worried, because she is a slimly-built five foot seven police cadet, whereas he is a solid man topping six feet – and he knows he barely needs to break step to fling her aside.

  What he doesn’t know is that Louisa has been accompanying her mother to her judo classes for the last three years, so that instead of sweeping her out of the way, as he expected to, he finds himself flying through the air and landing on his back with a sickening thud. And it is while he is struggling to regain his breath that he realizes that the little girl who is handcuffing him is the one who defeated him.

  That’s how it should have gone.

  How it did go is as follows; she is looking down the viewfinder when Eccleston makes his break, and she continues to look down it – in fascinated horror – for the two or three seconds it takes for him to reach her.

  And she stands there – and watches him do it!

  That’s right, she just stands there!

  And he – looking the other way as he attempts to make his escape – doesn’t see her.

  So instead of being the heroine, she’s a laughing stock – the girl who was just too bloody dumb to get out of the way.

  Worse yet, she doesn’t know what’s happened to the camera Inspector Metcalfe gave her – and she’s too scared to ask anybody about it.

  She wonders if she’ll ever live this down. She wishes she knew a great deal more about applying make-up.

  But she can’t stay skulking in the bogs for the rest of her shift, because if she does that she won’t be just despised by others, she’ll be despised by herself.

  By the time she’d stepped into the corridor, she’d decided to go straight to the canteen, for the simple reason that that would ensure maximum exposure – and the sooner all the gawping at her face was over, the better – but she hadn’t gone more than a few yards when she heard a voice she recognized as belonging to another cadet call out, ‘Uncle Tom wants to see you!’

  She stopped and turned around.

  The cadet didn’t look shocked, disturbed or merely amused when he saw her face, so he must have been practicing looking bland.

  Louisa appreciated the effort.

  ‘What does Uncle Tom want with me?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t know,’ the other cadet told her. ‘He just said that he’d appreciate it if you could slip down and see him when you have the time.’

  Sergeant Thomas White was in charge of the custody suite – that section of Whitebridge Police HQ where prisoners were booked in, examined, questioned, and temporarily incarcerated. One of the custody sergeant’s main tasks was to be the ‘prisoner’s friend’, which meant that it was his duty to see that all their rights were strictly enforced, and to protect them from any abuse. It was not part of his job to give his detainees encouraging smiles and Polo mints, but it was in White’s nature to be kind, and hence it was almost inevitable that he would become known as Uncle Tom, and that the custody suite should be referred to as Uncle Tom’s cabin.

  White had known Louisa as a small child, first when she had been brought into the station by her father, Bob Rutter, and later when she had accompanied her adopted mother, Monika Paniatowski. Until a few months earlier, he would have given her a bear hug, but now that she was in the force herself, he contented himself with a nod.

  ‘By God, your face is a right mess, Louisa,’ he said, grinning. ‘What have you been doing? Did you fall asleep on Aintree racecourse just before the Grand National started – or have you been in the ring for half a dozen rounds with Mohammed Ali?’

  ‘I see you’ve lost none of your tact, Sergeant White,’ Louisa replied, but she was smiling (if a little lopsidedly), because she knew that by treating it as a joke, White was hoping to encourage her not to take it too seriously herself.

  ‘Now I’m not putting any pressure on you,’ White said, his voice a little heavier, his expression semi-serious, ‘and it will be perfectly all right with me if you say you don’t want to do it …’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Uncle Tom, carry on at that speed and I’ll be an old woman by the time I get out of here,’ Louisa said.

  White chuckled.

  ‘You sounded exactly like your mother just then,’ he said.

  They both shivered, as if a sudden cold cloud had descended on them out of nowhere and was chilling them to the bone.

  It was Louisa who recovered first. ‘What is it you want me to do, sergeant?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s not me, it’s Archie Eccleston,’ the sergeant said. ‘He seems quite desperate to talk to you, but having seen for myself what he’s done to you, I’m not so sure you’ll be willing to talk to him – and I wouldn’t blame you if you said no.’

  ‘Why do you think he wants to see me?’ Louisa asks.

  ‘I imagine he wants to apologise for turning you into the bride of Frankenstein,’ White said.

  ‘You can go off people, you know,’ Louisa warned him. She thought about it for a moment. ‘Well, if that is what he wants to do, it would be ungracious not to give him the opportunity,’ she said.

  ‘Can we get this straight before we go any further,’ Sergeant White said, across the interview table. ‘You requested this meeting with Police Cadet Rutter, not the other way around. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes,’ Archie Eccleston said.

  He was probably around forty-odd, Louisa estimated. From his build he was likely an ex-rugby player, but then half the men in Whitebridge either played or had played rugby.

  What else?

  His hands, which he’d laid flat on the table, bore some signs of old scarring, but no evidence of recent damage, which probably meant that he’d started out doing some sort of manual labour, but had since risen in the world.

  Hang on, girl
, Louisa told herself, that’s a bit Sherlock Holmesie isn’t it?

  But though she might be wrong about that, one thing she was sure the hands told her was that Archie Eccleston had not been a happy man for some time, because his nails were bitten down to the quick.

  ‘I would also like to establish the fact that though you have been informed you are entitled to have a lawyer present, you do not wish to take advantage of that possibility. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes,’ Archie Eccleston replied.

  ‘Then say your piece,’ White invited.

  ‘I’m not a violent man, Miss Rutter,’ Eccleston said. ‘I’ve never hit a woman. In fact, towards the end my wife was hitting me, and I refused to defend myself.’ He laughed, bitterly. ‘And that, of course, only made her worse.’

  ‘I think you really do need to get to the point,’ White said – though not harshly.

  ‘I didn’t see you, Miss Rutter,’ Eccleston said. ‘I know you probably find that hard to believe, so I want to explain why I didn’t see you.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Louisa said.

  Eccleston took a deep breath. ‘I didn’t see you because the only thing I could see was something very precious to me that I’d left in my shed on the allotment.’ He stifled a sob. ‘Something that is now probably gone forever.’

  Louisa was halfway between headquarters and the allotments when the heavens opened up.

  What the clouds released was not so much rain as hail, and hailstones battered down on the Cortina’s roof like a thousand little toffee hammers.

  Louisa slowed down immediately. It paid to be cautious, she reminded herself. And anyway, the car wasn’t hers, and she really didn’t fancy the idea of having to explain to her mother, once she came out of the coma, that her beloved daughter – with only six weeks’ driving experience to her name – had wrapped the family Cortina around a lamppost.

  She was starting to preface so many of her thoughts with that reference to her mother, she realized.

  When Mum comes out of her coma, we need to talk about taking on a part-time cleaner, because the twins are becoming a real handful, and it’s unreasonable to expect Mrs Holcolme to look after them and manage all the other domestic arrangements.

  When Mum comes out of the coma, we’ll have to decide where we’re taking the boys for their first real holiday.

  When Mum comes out of the coma …

  She had to think like that, she accepted, because the idea of never sitting down with her wonderful mother again was almost unbearable.

  Besides, there were the boys to consider. If her mother died – or worse, if they decided there was no point in keeping her alive, and switched the machines off – then she, little Louisa, would have to become the twins’ guardian, and as much as she loved them, she was too young to be dragged down by that sort of responsibility.

  Far too young!

  She turned onto Old Mill Road. The hail seemed to have gone away, but the rain was no less fierce (she could tell that by the height it bounced back up to once it had hit the puddles) and her Cortina seemed to be the only vehicle around which was actually moving.

  She drew level with the southern end of the allotments. The mesh-link fence was still in place here, but it hung languid and lost now other parts of it had been removed.

  The main gates (or, more accurately, the spot where the main gates had been) lay straight ahead. When she’d been rushed away from the allotments on a stretcher – yes, the inspector had insisted on it, even though she’d said quite clearly and distinctly that she was fine – there’d still been several police cars around, and dozens of people had been pressed against the roadblock. Now, all the people had gone, and a single patrol car remained.

  Two police officers stood in close proximity to the car. They were dressed in waterproof oilskins, but from the expressions on their faces it seemed more than likely that a few adventurous raindrops had managed to circumvent the oilskins, and were now making their way down the backs of the policemen’s necks.

  As she parked, one of the policemen walked over to the Cortina and tapped on the window.

  Louisa wound the window down, and cold raindrops spattered against her cheek.

  The officer had obviously been about to ask her what she was doing there, then he noticed what uniform she was wearing, and said, ‘I hope you’re here to tell us we’re no longer needed, so we can bugger off back to headquarters.’

  ‘I’d like to tell you that,’ Louisa said, ‘but I’m afraid I’m not here to see you at all.’

  ‘Then why the bloody hell are you here?’

  ‘I need to get something from the allotments,’ Louisa said.

  The policeman gave her the sort of dour look that can only be produced after forty years’ exposure to Lancashire damp.

  ‘What allotments?’ he wondered, indicating with his thumb.

  Louisa looked, and saw what he meant. The bulldozer had gone on the rampage through the site, and many of the neat little sheds had already gone.

  A lorry emerged, loaded down with soil.

  ‘Breaks your heart, doesn’t it?’ the constable said.

  ‘What?’ Louisa asked.

  ‘These fellers with allotments spend years getting their topsoil right. They fertilize it religiously. They only grow things they know will help it improve. For some of them, the perfect soil is like the Holy Grail. And then what happens? Some demolition contractor comes along, and thinks to himself that he knows somebody who’ll pay top whack for good topsoil. It’s almost like he can’t wait for the body to go cold before he starts tearing out the guts. It’s enough to turn a normal decent feller into a bomb-throwing revolutionary.’

  ‘Could you step back a bit, so I can get out?’ Louisa asked.

  ‘You’re never going to go on that site, are you?’ the constable asked.

  ‘I might as well, now I’m here,’ Louisa said, realising what a stupid idea it must sound to him – what a stupid idea it sounded to her!

  ‘Listen, lass, apart from the fact that it’s bloody dangerous on a demolition site – especially in the rain – you’ll just be wasting your time. After the battering the site’s got in the last couple of hours, whatever you’re looking for will be long gone.’

  He was probably right, Louisa thought. After the bulldozers, and the diggers and the lorries, how likely was it that something as fragile as a coffee mug would have survived?

  But she had seen the pain on Archie Eccleston’s face. And if you didn’t have faith in miracles – didn’t believe that you could find the mug in all that mayhem, for example, or believe that your mum could come out of her coma – then where were you?

  The constable moved clear, and Louisa climbed out of the car.

  ‘Are you sure about this, lass?’ the constable asked worriedly.

  ‘I am,’ Louisa confirmed.

  ‘Then for God’s sake be careful in there.’

  Louisa crossed the pavement, walked around the tubular rods which had once formed part of the gates, and stepped onto what had been a path between the allotments.

  She looked around her at the desolation.

  This is what the end of the world will look like, she thought – and shuddered.

  Strewn around or trodden into the mud were calendars, seed packets, plant pots, biscuit tins and old cushions. Pieces of trelliswork lay on the ground like bits of a skeleton from another life. A whimsical wishing well was entangled with a miniature windmill, which itself had become attached to the sleeve of a small, unambitious scarecrow.

  On either side of the path were large holes, from where the good topsoil had been gouged.

  ‘My allotment’s on the left,’ Archie Eccleston had told her. ‘The sixth one up from the gate.’

  Louisa looked in that direction. There were no huts or sheds left standing, so the chances were that his allotment had already suffered the full assault of the barbarian horde, but even if it had, there was still a chance that the mug – like the cushion and the biscuit tin –
had survived.

  Always do a risk assessment before you put yourself in any kind of situation, they’d told her during training – so what was the risk here?

  Well, visibility was poor, and the diggers and lorries were both working against the clock and unaware there was anyone else on the site, so there was certainly a chance they’d run her down without even realising it.

  On the other hand, there wasn’t that much actual movement – the digger dug, the lorry waited to be loaded – and they’d already finished with the area she was interested in.

  And honestly, having come this far – having already got her shoes caked in mud and her stockings and her skirt spattered with it – it seemed a real pity to turn back now.

  She made her way carefully up the path. Some of the holes already had water in the bottom of them, and if it carried on raining like this, it wouldn’t be that long until they were full.

  She counted off the holes, and all the time, her shoes were getting heavier and heavier, as more mud adhered to them, so that by the time she reached the fourth hole, it felt as if she were wearing heavy clay boots.

  She finally reached the sixth hole. This was where Archie Eccleston had sought solace after his son’s death and as his marriage had collapsed. It was here that he had drunk from the mug which had announced him as the world’s best dad.

  The hole which until so recently had been an allotment was about half the size of a small public swimming pool. It was roughly rectangular in shape, but the edges were irregular and the walls were steeply sloped rather than vertical.

  Or to put it another way, Louisa thought, as an image of her little brothers came into her mind, it looked like Thomas’ ice cream bowl, rather than James’, because while James would attack his treat in a slow, organized and orderly way, Thomas would greedily scoop out the middle, and then, leaving half the ice cream still sticking to the sides, start to agitate for some new treat.

  She caught sight of something yellow sticking out of the mud at the lip of the hole.

  Could it be a mug?

  She really thought it might be.

  She bent over to take a closer look, and could see the letters ‘ST DA’.