Poetic Justice

by R. C. Bridgestock

  Dylan’s eyes were downcast as he nodded.

  ‘But, be assured, we are doing everything we can for her.’

  Dr Ande made a move to stand. ‘Shall we get this over with, if you are ready? I don’t think any time is going to be a good time, do you?’

  Dylan nodded. ‘Yes, and thank you for your time,’ he said, offering her his hand.

  ‘Not a problem. We are all here for Isla.’

  When he entered her room, Dylan was shocked to see Isla lying so still on her bed, with tubes running out of her arms into the monitors. But she seemed to receive his news with a certain amount of resolve. He was encouraged to leave her when she was brought her afternoon tea, which consisted of soup, sandwiches, jelly and ice cream.

  Isla waved him off with a limp hand and a weak smile. She licked her lips and blew him a kiss. ‘Love you,’ she said quietly.

  ‘I love you more,’ he replied, as he always did.

  When he was gone, she pushed the tray of food away and closed her eyes.

  Dr Ande walked with Dylan to the end of the corridor. ‘I am meeting with the rest of the team looking after Isla this afternoon to discuss the way forward,’ she said.

  ‘Please keep me updated. You can get hold of me anytime on my mobile,’ Dylan replied.

  The news that Dylan couldn’t attend Kay’s post-mortem was expected: protocol did not allow it, which he knew was the case. With Larry occupied on the hunt for Fisher, Sergeant Thewlis and DC John Benjamin were the nominated officers and he knew they would glean what they could to enable him to have the best possible chance to get justice for Kay.

  Delays in the release of Kay’s body for her funeral were inevitable now that a second post-mortem was required, and its time and date were dependent on the availability of the pathologists who would re-examine the body.

  Dylan’s house had been released from its crime-scene status, however, so he had arranged to meet the insurance personnel at what was left of the property.

  Josh Ferrell, the loss adjuster, was a tall, thin man with a long, narrow face and a neatly trimmed, auburn goatee beard. A smile lifted the corners of the young man’s mouth as he extended his hand in greeting, but his gaze went straight beyond Dylan, down the path towards the charred ruins of the house. As if reading Dylan’s thoughts, he asked if it was okay to go ‘inside’. His voice was soft and sympathetic. Dylan nodded his approval and followed behind him.

  Ferrell moved around the house in silence, taking notes and ticking boxes. Several times he stopped and hummed and hawed, lightly stroking his beard and looking from Dylan’s charred lot to his clipboard and back again. Sensibly, he’d worn knee-high green Wellington boots.

  The inside of the house was a blackened, soggy mess. Wet debris stuck to the bottom of Dylan’s shoes and when Josh Ferrell stopped to ask him the mandatory questions, it suddenly hit him: his past no longer existed. He was consumed by an unfamiliar sense of hopelessness.

  As they wandered through the remains, Dylan stopped now and then to pick up a shard of glass, or piece of pot that could potentially cause harm to anyone cleaning up – why, he didn’t know. There were far too many for him to remove on his own. The pace of the viewing was dictated by the other man and was extremely slow. Hands stuffed into his pockets, Dylan hung his head, shuffled his feet and kicked the toes of his shoes around in the dirt. There was nothing for him to do but stew in his powerlessness. When spoken to, he lifted his head and scanned the debris and tried his best to seek answers to the questions being asked of him.

  Acting on the insurance company’s orders, several workmen were already present and in the process of erecting secure fencing around the property. Of course, Dylan would have a key to the gated access, he was told, so that he could salvage any personal belongings – if there were any left, which he sincerely doubted.

  The ruins still bore a strong smell of petrol fumes, which didn’t go unnoticed by Ferrell. Before he left the house, he informed Dylan he would be in touch with a report and a possible settlement figure as soon as possible. Dylan believed him when he promised he wouldn’t ‘drag his feet’.

  ‘Do you have somewhere to stay?’ asked Ferrell. Dylan was taken aback. He looked down at his stained wax jacket, the frayed bottoms of his heavily creased suit trousers and realised he must look a right state. ‘I’ll be fine. I’ve requested a place at Heartbreak Hotel …’

  Ferrell gave him a quizzical look.

  ‘The police-owned flats,’ said Dylan. ‘Believe it or not, they’ve actually got a waiting list!’

  ‘Oh, I believe it, all right,’ Ferrell said. ‘My sister was briefly married to a copper.’

  Dylan sat in his car with his head in his hands; he felt numb. He owned nothing, not the car he sat in, not a wardrobe of clothes, not even a place to lay his head down at night, and he had nowhere to bring Isla home to when she was released from hospital. But at least, for now, he’d done what he needed to do and he could concentrate on getting justice for Kay, which was also the only thing he could proactively do for Isla.

  He was angry and he wanted revenge. He had a lot of issues to resolve, but he knew that, if he worked through them systematically, he would eventually succeed.

  Dylan’s priority remained to trace both Todd and Fisher. He knew in his heart that one, if not both, of these men had brought disaster to his door.

  When he returned to the office, he found it hard to concentrate. Images of Kay continued to hover in his mind, both as his wife and as her lover’s mistress. He was aware that some of his colleagues would think him overzealous in his enquiries. Was he clutching at straws, because it was his wife that had died in the accident? He believed otherwise. He was merely being thorough. He’d been to enough crime scenes over the years to realise that nothing should be overlooked; ignore an ‘action’ at your peril, as his mentor, Inspector Peter Reginald Stonestreet had taught him.

  Jen headed to the supermarket in her lunch break to buy a few fresh vegetables. As she strolled around the store, her thoughts were mainly about Max waiting for her at home, and of the lovely, peaceful walks in the countryside that were waiting for them both to enjoy. ‘God’s own country’ she’d heard Yorkshire called. Now that she was settled, and free, she could concentrate on getting to know it.

  She’d loved Wuthering Heights at school. Now she couldn’t wait to see where the author had lived and been inspired. She found herself silently reciting one of her favourite Emily Brontë quotes as she made her way through the store, basket in hand: I have dreamed in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind. She was excited about discovering more.

  One way of avoiding boredom while waiting in the queue for the checkout was to people watch. Jen was fascinated by the hotchpotch of human life that would never usually be brought together. It was probably why people queued in relative silence, she decided.

  Jen turned when a lady some way behind her shouted to her obese husband who was leaning on the trolley in front.

  ‘D’ya want some Diet Coke?’ Their child, obviously tired, screamed over her father’s reply. Two minutes after the father had silenced the child by putting a hand over her mouth, he yelled back. ‘What d’ya say?’

  Feeling a little embarrassed, Jen looked elsewhere, and unexpectedly caught sight of Jack Dylan standing at the entrance to the store. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end as their eyes met. She smiled nervously.

  ‘Next!’ the cashier said to Jen in an irritated manner.

  Distracted, Jen unloaded her basket. As she packed her bags, she realised Dylan was no longer standing there and she was filled with disappointment. Scanning the entrance, she looked everywhere and at everyone, to no avail.

  Dylan’s eyes flashed a hint of excitement as he listened eagerly to what Larry had to say. He put his half-eaten pork pie back in its paper bag and drained his coffee cup.

  ‘The hosp
ital staff at Burnley have alerted us to a patient in A&E requiring treatment for burns to his arm. He’s using the name Kevin Fisher. On questioning, we were told that Fisher also has previous burn injuries, which he told staff he received in a road accident. He won’t elaborate on his recent injury, other than that it happened at work. Trouble is they have no way of detaining him, so we’ve got to get there ASAP.’

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ Dylan said.

  ‘No, you’re not!’ Larry snapped. ‘Your target is Todd. Remember? We discussed this.’

  So shocked was Dylan by the authoritative tone, that Larry had disappeared out of the office before he had time to argue.

  Larry was right and Dylan knew it. As he stood at his office window, he saw two CID vehicles tearing out of the metal station gates, en route to Burnley, Lancashire and he willed them with every ounce of his being to bring Fisher back to face the music.

  Kenny Fisher lost his balance and fell face forward onto the stone flags. One arm in bandages, he had clocked the police team at exactly the same time as they had seen him emerging from the revolving doors at Burnley hospital’s entrance. When he’d attempted to run away, four officers, out of the traps like whippets at the local greyhound track, were immediately in hot pursuit.

  Fisher swayed as DC Andy Wormald lifted him unceremoniously off the ground by grabbing hold of the collar on his jacket.

  Getting into a police vehicle was difficult for Fisher with his hands cuffed behind his back. Not only that, they twisted against the bone on his wrists – he’d cried out several times in pain as they were put on. The officers were unsympathetic. A quick search had revealed a sheath knife tucked in his right boot together with a set of car keys, a wallet and his passport in his coat pocket. Besides being clearly prepared to do a runner, Larry had every reason to believe he would have used the knife against the officers if he’d been given the opportunity.

  Larry spun his prisoner around so that his back was facing the open door of the car, put a hand roughly upon Fisher’s forehead and pushed downwards to thrust him towards the vehicle. ‘Mind your head,’ he said in a casual way as Fisher fell into the back seat, hitting his head. ‘By the way, you’re nicked!’

  Larry and the team were on their way back to Harrowfield with Fisher well and truly collared. Putting in the call to Dylan to say he had Fisher in custody was highly satisfying.

  Detective Constable Wormald used the keys they had found in Fisher’s possession to locate a Mercedes parked in the disabled bay of the hospital car park – a quick getaway had obviously been part of Fisher’s plan.

  The three vehicles were driven in a convoy down the motorway. Larry sat next to Fisher who was prone on the back seat of the first car, shivering. When he caught the detective sergeant looking down at him his lips curled into a mocking smile.

  ‘Something amusing you?’ said Larry, his eyes darkening. He wondered if it might have been Fisher’s voice that he’d heard talking to Kay the night he had called with Dylan’s coat, but the few words he’d muttered so far hadn’t allowed him to be certain.

  Fisher didn’t respond to the DS, whose anger steadily rose inside him, radiating heat throughout his body.

  From his office, Dylan watched the vehicles creep into the police station yard. His mobile rang. He took a deep breath, took two steps towards his desk and reached over to pick it up. ‘Dylan,’ he snapped.

  ‘The syringe tested positive for insulin and your wife’s toxicology results also show an abnormal amount of insulin in her blood,’ said Thewlis.

  ‘Bastard,’ Dylan growled, as he watched Larry grab Fisher by the shoulders and drag him out of the car and onto the ground.

  ‘And now we wait for the coroner’s officer to get in touch with a date for the second PM,’ said Thewlis. ‘I’ll keep you briefed.’

  Dylan’s office phone started ringing, but his mind was focused on one thing only, and that was seeing Kenny Fisher, the man who’d murdered his wife. Purposefully, he walked past the desks in the CID office. Such was his concentration that Ned Granger had to stand, lean over and grab his arm to gain his attention. ‘Boss,’ he said urgently. ‘We’ve had a definite sighting of Patrick Todd, in Pearson’s bookies on the high street in Brelland.’

  Patrick Todd paced his cell, small though it was, with one hand placed over his swollen eye and the other holding up his trousers because they had taken his belt away. There was no reason why Jack Dylan had had to hit him so hard – he would be having a word about that with the duty solicitor when he saw him. His head was pounding. Resisting arrest, they’d said. Of course he had! But Dylan running at him like a stampeding bull, fists flying, and landing a punch that should have been kept for the boxing ring, was way over the top in any arrest. For God’s sake, he’d just been sitting minding his own business on a stool in the bookies, still inebriated from the dinner time session at the Old Cock.

  Todd slid onto the small, plastic mattress that lay upon the bunk secured to the cell wall and curled up, sore, angry and bewildered. Blood still ran from his crumpled nose, and his burst lip felt crusty to the sweep of his tongue. He wiped it on the blanket they had given him, then smeared the whole bloody mess on to the shiny magnolia-painted cell wall.

  ‘If only detectives carried batons,’ Dylan said to the custody officer as he stood at the custody suite counter.

  ‘It’s a bloody good job they don’t, Dylan,’ said Larry. ‘Otherwise we would have a murder on our hands. Whether it was self-defence or not!’

  Dylan was never without his mobile these days and always kept it charged. He had taken to holding it in his hand as though it was a lifeline, hoping he would get a call with good news from the hospital and fearing, with equal intensity, that if news came it would be bad. When the phone eventually rang it was Isla’s doctor and Dylan listened with his heart in his mouth.

  ‘I’m afraid the team here think we need to act now. Isla is not eating enough to sustain her. We are worried about major organ failure if we don’t intervene.’

  Dylan mumbled through numbed limps. ‘I’m on my way.’ His voice was calm; his hands trembled.

  White knuckles gripped the steering wheel. Waiting for the traffic lights to change, he forced his fingers to relax.

  People moved about the hospital with a lazy afternoon casualness, migrating from one building to another. In the face of coming rain, the air felt heavy and still as grey clouds gathered overhead.

  With his head down, Dylan walked to the ticket machine as the rain started to fall lightly. There was a queue to pay for the parking and he stood, waiting, one part of him anxious to get to Isla’s bedside, another wanting to run away to happier times.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Isla was curled up foetus-like beneath the sheets, her bed framed by stainless steel metal guards. A machine to her left displayed cryptic results. It hummed, breaking what otherwise would have been an unbearable silence. Dylan could hardly bear to see the image before him. Her tiny skeletal frame was severely out of proportion: her head made barely an indent in the soft pillow, yet seemed way too big for her body. She had never been a big girl, but twenty-nine kilos was what they said she weighed now. Where had the red, chubby cheeks of his beautiful, adorable angel gone? He bent his head and kissed her thin-boned hand, webbed by almost translucent skin, that lay so delicately, limp in the palm of his.

  He sat beside her through the night watching, waiting, hoping, praying for a miracle. The slow rising and lowering of her chest showed him that she was comfortable and calm.

  To the right on her bedside cabinet sat a book and beside it her childhood teddy. Uncomfortable under the unblinking gaze of the soft toy, Dylan picked Teddy up and cuddled him. Something pricked his finger, drawing blood. Shaking his hand, briefly convinced he had been stung, he pulled a tissue from its box and wrapped it around his finger, watching as the blood was absorbed quickly, forming a slender thread on the paper. He checked the bear over. Inside one arm he found the blade of a pencil sharpe
ner, which Isla must have concealed within.

  Tears welled up in his tired eyes. ‘Why Isla? Why?’ he asked, as he threw the blade in the bin and put Teddy back in its rightful place, watching over her.

  Shaking, he took a deep, ragged breath, leaned back into the chair and gazed again on his daughter, not for the first time questioning her sanity and seeking within him an answer as to what he should – could possibly – do. There was no policy to guide him, no training for this unexpected role. He looked up and he prayed, but the stark white ceiling merely stared back and he berated himself. If there was a God then why would he allow this to happen? His eyes turned to the clock on the wall. It was seven minutes past seven. Suddenly, he felt drawn to Isla’s book. He reached up and pulled it from the shelf. He stared at it, willing it to give him a sign, some sort of guidance, but instead it sat heavy in his hands, silent and self-contained.

  He opened the cover and he saw she had signed her name on the inside. Running his fingers over her writing, he felt closer to her. He flicked through the pages, one by one, and on the seventh page found a folded piece of writing paper. With his heart beating fast, he opened it.

  Dear Dad,

  I wish I could make you understand.

  I wish you knew what it was really like for me but, then again, I hope you never know.

  I cannot fight any more than I have done.

  I want you to understand, I’ve tried so very hard, but it’s beaten me.

  Please don’t let them try to keep me alive.

  I wanted to have a life, but I don’t have one.

  Don’t cry for me.

  If I could give you one thing, I would give you the ability to see yourself through my eyes.

  Then you would realise how special you are to me.