I turned to my left, breathed in the warm scent of his aftershave, before ending what should never have started – even though I wanted nothing more than to curl up around him and stay there for the rest of the night and play hooky with him the next day. To pretend neither of us had jobs to go to. Jobs that would decimate this and stop all chances of anything happening. Jobs that had already come between us, or was I making excuses? Was I the one to blame for how it had failed to work?
Ethan stirred, turning over and pushing the quilt away from him. I watched as it slid over his hip, exposing skin I had not long ago caressed and kissed. With a couple of painkillers and a couple of glasses of red wine inside me the previous night, I’d sent an irritated text to his phone, which had brought him to my door, his body shaking with frustration and anger at my constant inability to see things his way. We’d yelled at each other for ten minutes. I wanted him to stop reporting on the poisonings to which he’d replied I was an idiot, it was a job. He wanted me to listen to him and stop taking everything as a personal slight. I’d told him he was an idiot, I had a career and people’s lives were at risk. We yelled in circles until he stalked into the kitchen and helped himself to a glass of red wine and seated himself on the sofa. He told me he was tired of fighting with me.
Now, I shook his shoulder to wake him. ‘Ethan, you have to go.’
58
She filled the narrow hospital bed. Her bulky frame nearly spilled over the sides but the raised bars of the bed appeared to be acting as a restraint. Her skin was pallid. Her bleached hair yellow on the starched white pillow with a slight green tinge from the overhead bulb that was on in the dark ward.
There was coughing and shuffling as patients attempted to get comfortable and to sleep in uncomfortable and unknown beds. Nurses chattered at the night desk, their laughter reaching us. A normal working shift for them meant normal working engagement with their colleagues, despite the late hour.
Aaron nearly looked as distressed as Dawn Barry, the woman squeezed into the bed in front of us. His hands flicked up to his tie and he straightened it again, for the fourth time that I had seen. Not that it had moved in that period of time. I know it wasn’t great being woken up in the middle of the night, but he knew it was a part of the job.
‘Can you tell us what you were doing before you started feeling ill, Dawn?’ I asked as she pawed at her face, wiping away strands of hair that were sticking to it. Her blue eyes glued themselves to me.
‘I’d been out for a meal with me mates and when I got home I grabbed meself a tub of ice cream before I went to bed to cool me stomach down. We’d eaten a Mexican meal, you see. It wasn’t agreeing with me.’
‘Then what?’
‘That’s when it happened.’
‘I need you to tell me exactly what happened, Dawn. It’s the only way we can help you, if you tell us in your own words what happened.’
‘Well, I ate half the tub,’ she stopped and looked at us. ‘The Mexican food was really spicy. I don’t eat spicy food and I hadn’t eaten it before. I didn’t realise.’
‘It’s okay, carry on.’
‘So, I ate the ice cream and I started to feel worse – and not over-eaten worse, just worse. Really bad. Like I knew something was wrong, bad. Then it was like something out of The Exorcist, I was spewing out to the other end of the room and it was coming and coming and coming. And it was bloody as well. I felt like I was going to die. I was on me knees I was. My phone was in me pocket so I dialled 999 and left the line open cos I couldn’t actually speak. Then I don’t know what happened, I woke up here and they said they’d pumped me stomach and they’ve took a load of blood from me and then you turned up and here we are. And by the way, I feel like shit. What the hell happened and why are you here?’
‘Have you read any papers recently, Dawn?’
‘Can’t say I have. They’re full of crap aren’t they? You can’t believe half of what they tell you, there’s always an agenda, so no I haven’t.’ I couldn’t argue with half of what she was saying, there certainly appeared to be an agenda at play when reporting on police activity. ‘Again, why?’ She was trying to prop herself up but her body was weak, her elbows buckled under her and her body slumped back down onto the mountain of pillows that was raising her up. ‘Shit.’
A howling sound started up further down the ward. Aaron went straight for his tie. The laughter at the nurses’ station stopped and the howling became louder, punctuated with swearing and then finally sobbing. It was a minute before I realised the three of us had not moved and had stayed silent as the horrific sound had pierced the ward. I looked back at Dawn, who wasn’t looking too happy.
‘Is there anyone we can call for you? Who can come and sit with you for a while after we’ve gone?’
‘No. It’s fine. I’m gunna try and get some sleep if this racket dies down. I’ve texted a couple of mates and they’ll see me in the morning. They pumped my stomach, though I don’t know the hell why. I’m knackered. You telling me what’s happening, then?’
I looked at Aaron. How to tell someone they could be a part of a bigger picture, one that was being reported on in the news was never easy, as we didn’t know what reaction to expect. ‘We’ve had some deaths, Dawn. Deaths that are suspicious, highly suspicious and they’ve been caused by poison. We were called out tonight because your symptoms have been pretty severe and possibly caused by the poison that has killed our previous victims. You may have saved your own life by having your phone on you and being so quick thinking.’
‘Fuck me. Wait till I tell the girls.’ Well, she wasn’t overly fazed by it. Dawn’s pale face shone out at us in the yellowing light of the night-time ward. For all her joviality she was still heavy against the bed, no energy lifting her. ‘And that’s why you asked about the papers; it’s been in the papers, has it?’
‘Yes, there have been a small spate of victims so far and we were really glad you didn’t make it another, I can tell you.’
‘You and me both.’ Her hand grasped out to her left for something on the personal cart to the side, but she wasn’t looking at what she was doing. Her hand tapped with an increased urgency and her face changed colour to a pale and mottled green.
‘What is it, Dawn?’
‘The sick bowl. I need the bowl.’
I passed her the bowl and she heaved over it but nothing came out. Tiny droplets of sweat gathered across her brow and she shrank into the pillows. As if waiting for this moment, a nurse appeared.
‘Officers, I’m afraid you’ll have to leave. Dawn needs her rest. We’ll let you know if there are any sudden changes.’
‘Okay, thank you.’ We both stood. I opened my folder and grabbed the medical consent form. ‘Dawn, I need you to sign this so we can access your medical records from the hospital in relation to tonight’s incident.’ I pushed pen and paper under her hands and she gave a half-hearted scribble before we were politely but most assuredly shown out of the ward for the night.
59
‘The initial test results have come back from Dawn Barry.’ Aaron grabbed the chair in front of my desk and made himself comfortable. I don’t know how he did it, looking so bright and alert on so little sleep. I was exhausted and knew I looked it. After leaving the hospital last night I’d returned home for the few remaining hours I had before the start of the new working day. But because I was so hyped up with the case running through my head, with having a live victim in the hospital, making mental check-lists of all the enquiries we could work through because we actually had her to talk to, my brain wouldn’t switch off. Plus, nosing its way into all the work related noise in my head was the evening before with Ethan, and how he’d ended up in my apartment and in my bed, unsure how I felt about it, meaning I only ended up with a couple of hours’ broken and disturbed sleep. A sleep that didn’t feel like sleep. That felt like the sleep of the undead. Where the mind is still working but the body is trying to rest and recover, heavy on the mattress, unable to move. This morning my head
was a blurry mess with not a coherent thought in it. Yet here Aaron sat, looking for the entire world as if he’d had a full and heavenly night’s sleep, yet I knew differently.
I needed his body clock.
‘It seems she wasn’t poisoned by digoxin,’ he said.
‘So what does this mean? We spent the evening with her and all it was was a girl who had drunk too much? Who the hell had called us in for it? Who decided it was poison? Who can’t tell the bloody difference between a pissed-up girl and life-threatening poisoning?’ I shot off multiple questions at him. I was already exhausted from this job without it getting me out of bed for a drunk girl.
‘They made the right call, Hannah. Dawn was poisoned. Well, she had a poisonous substance in her system.’ He crossed his legs. ‘Just not by digoxin. It was a different poison.’
I rubbed my arm. ‘What was it?’
‘I’ve just finished a call with the hospital and they’ve run the tox screen and she doesn’t have digoxin in her system, so now they’re testing for other substances that specifically match her symptoms. She’s still quite ill so they’re treating her symptoms aggressively.’
‘Crap. So do we have a killer who is changing MO … or do we have a copycat on our hands?’
60
A walk to the local shop on Pasture Road would blow some wind into his head, clear it out a little. He was feeling tense. Cluttered inside. The continued reading of the newspaper reports was hurting his head. Providing too much information. When all he wanted to know was that the drug was being listed, he was getting personal details of those involved. No matter how much he tried to skim read he couldn’t help but pick up specifics he didn’t want.
Isaac bent down and laced up his shoes, and decided the day was warm enough to go without a jacket.
‘Connie, I’m popping to the shop, do you want anything?’ he shouted through to the living room.
‘No, thanks.’
The air was clear. The sky blue and cloud free. It was one of those mornings people loved to wake up to, where they felt happier and more alive. For him it served only as a reprieve from the black thoughts that shrouded his mind. It made a little room for him to be able to think again because the darkness made thinking an impossible task. Everything had become sluggish and stagnant. The sun that shone now would carve a little room out in that gloom and allow him to keep on going.
The walk was short. A couple of streets. Houses that pretty much looked like theirs. Streets he’d walked up and down the majority of his life. They’d lived together as a family on Kennedy Drive for as long as he could remember and for all of Em’s too short life. He could walk this route blindfolded.
This morning there were kids in uniform slouching in small groups, trying to make the walk to school drag out as long as possible. Rucksacks on backs, bags slung over shoulders with work nearly falling out and ties pulled down away from necks. The young rebelling against the regime that the adults tried to inflict on them daily. Cars pulled away from driveways in a hurry to get to work after seeing these children off. All sights he was used to seeing, yet sights he was now tired of seeing. Isaac was tired of it all. Tired of the normality, the banality. All he wanted was the Nottingham Today. He needed to see what they were reporting today and if they were getting it right. So far they had been useless, but they had to pick up on the truth of the matter now. All the poison was the same. How could they ignore that fact?
It was still early and though the day was bright, the sun was not hot. Despite himself, Isaac found it pleasant and he hated that feeling. He picked up his step and quickly made it to the shop.
There were a couple of people in his local paper shop. Isaac selected the Today from the pile on the floor and paid for it, giving no attention to those coming in for their daily bits and pieces before their day really began.
He kept the paper folded and slid it under his arm for the walk home. Reading the article was to be done in the privacy of his kitchen. Especially when he had no idea what he was going to read. Naturally, Isaac’s steps homeward were quicker. He kept his head down so he didn’t make eye contact with anyone and within minutes the door was closed behind him and he was safely locked back in the cocoon of his home.
He slid off his shoes without unlacing them and rushed into the kitchen, his socked feet quiet on the floor.
‘It’s me,’ he called out to Connie.
‘Okay.’
With the paper on the kitchen table Isaac sat himself down with a strong hope of what he would read coursing through him. It was front-page news again.
Fourth Person Poisoned
Another person has been poisoned and is currently in hospital after ingesting food bought while shopping.
Staff at the Queen’s Medical Centre has stated that the woman from Radford, is poorly but in a stable condition.
She is the first person to survive the poisoner who has, so far, killed three people in the past couple of weeks.
DI Hannah Robbins, leading the hunt for the killer, has confirmed that Nottinghamshire police are managing this poisoning as part of the ongoing murder investigation, stating, ‘We are awaiting full forensic testing on this woman’s blood work, but we are treating this incident extremely seriously. She has been very lucky to survive and it’s important that we talk to her.’
Police state they are making enquiries with the woman, who at this time does not wish to be named, to try to ascertain where she had been and what she had consumed.
But, for now, how do we know what is safe to eat?
The thoughts wouldn’t slide through his mind. They felt jumpy and kept stalling. He read the article again to see if he had read it correctly the first time but the text was there in black and white, completely blocking all function for him. What was happening? He hadn’t placed any products where this woman lived. How had this happened? What had happened? The police were now making a terrible mistake. This wasn’t him.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. This wasn’t his message. This person was ruining everything!
What about Emma? What about the pharmaceutical companies? What about the medical authority? They had to answer for what had happened and the question was getting lost in this mess now. This ... This person was ruining everything. This shouldn’t be happening. It couldn’t.
The paper was pushed off the table and his anger rose like a tidal wave gathering momentum but he had nowhere to send the energy it was creating. Isaac looked around in panic as he felt it grow from the pit of his stomach and rise into his chest, his head pulsating. There were cups and bowls on the drainer that had been washed. He grabbed a cup and threw it as hard as he could against the far wall near the door. It smashed and dropped. Crashing down in a quick movement. It wasn’t enough. It was all getting ruined. His Emma wasn’t getting noticed.
Ruined.
He picked up another cup and threw again. It crashed and dropped. He let out a breath of air but there was still swirling fog in his head. He looked at the drainer again and picked up a bowl. That went to the wall and smashed to the floor.
His chest relaxed. He reached for the last bowl and threw it. The momentum; less now. It broke up and lay with the rest of broken crockery. Isaac’s head felt heavy, his body heavy. He was tired. He slumped down the cupboard doors and sat on the floor, spent.
When he looked up, Connie was standing in the doorway, quietly watching him.
61
Dawn was lying in her hospital bed, looking no better now that daylight streamed through the windows rather than the awful dim lighting of the night-time ward. Her eyes were closed and she was curled in the foetal position, facing us as we entered. Her eyelids flickered, then opened.
‘Hi, how you doing?’ I asked.
‘Oh, hi. Dreadful. They said I’ve definitely been poisoned. The treatment for it is awful. I don’t know which is worse – the poison or the treatment.’ She pushed herself up on the pillows but stayed curled up, arms wrapped around her stomach.
‘They p
ut a tube down my throat and washed my stomach out.’ She grimaced. ‘What the hell did I do to deserve that?’
‘Not pleasant.’ I didn’t have the words. She was lucky to be alive, but it wasn’t what she wanted to hear right now. ‘I’m sorry you have to go through this,’ I answered her, pulling up a chair to seat myself at the side of her. Aaron remained standing. Stiff and unyielding.
‘Then I had to drink this awful black stuff. They’re torturing me.’
‘I’m sorry, Dawn.’
‘Thanks, it’s not your fault. Do you know who’s doing this, then?’
‘No, that’s why we want to talk to you. We had to be quick last night but today we have a bit more time. The staff have allowed us to come in before visiting hours so we can speak to you without disturbing the time you have with family and friends.’
‘Oh, thanks. I don’t really know what else to add.’
‘Well, we need to know where you ate last night, who you were with,’ I took out my major incident notebook so that I could take notes as she spoke. ‘What you did before you went out, and then between the restaurant and home and finally at home. It would also help if you could tell us if you have had any specific run-ins with people or upset anyone or if anyone could perceive themselves to have been hurt or upset by you, even if you don’t think they should have been.’
‘Wow, that’s a lot of information.’ Her eyes closed and we waited.
‘I know, I’m sorry, Dawn. I know you’re tired, but it’s the only way we can work our way through this and try to get to the bottom of what is happening.’
‘It’s okay. At least I’ll have one hell of a great story to keep telling me mates over and over on our nights out, won’t I?’ Dawn tried to smile but the joy just wasn’t in it.
The DI Hannah Robbins Series: Books 1 - 3 (Boxset) (Detective Hannah Robbins Crime Series) Page 35
