“But he was guarded?”
“And he killed his guard.”
“Do you know Melanie, these past weeks I thought I was going crazy. I thought Van Meer was following me – I kept seeing him out of the corner of my eye. Everywhere I went he seemed to be there. Yet I knew he was in prison.”
“You thought you saw him?” Her stare was intense and searching. “But that’s impossible.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?”
“Umm.” She gave me a serious look, forehead creased into a frown. “I’m sorry. I really really hate to say this Jack, but I’ve got to be honest. You must know that having hallucinations are one of the symptoms of severe mental exhaustion, or a stress-related breakdown. When I first saw you tonight, I thought…”
“What?”
She shrugged. “I was just so shocked. Look in a mirror. Of course I’ve never seen you before, so I’ve nothing to compare your appearance to, but you really do look dreadful. There are bags under your eyes, you’re pale as a ghost, you look absolutely wretched. And you have been under a lot of stress recently, haven’t you?”
I closed my eyes in horror, remembering the psychiatric hospital, the corridors, the terror, my living nightmare. Was it going to happen all over again? She stared at me for a long time, almost daring me to speak, until she broke eye contact at last.
“Take no notice of me, God, what do I know? But it strikes me that you could be heading for another breakdown. You need to talk to someone Jack, you need to talk to someone urgently, to tell them what’s been happening. Someone professional who can give you proper help.”
“Drugs? Long counselling sessions? Maybe you’d suggest a few weeks in an asylum?”
“I don’t want to worry you, Jack, I’m saying it for your own good.” She paused. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have.”
I clenched my fists, trying and failing to control my temper.
Shortly afterwards Melanie looked at her watch and said she had to be on her way, and that she’d be in touch.
I got back home at 10 o’clock, parking in my drive, taking the usual cautious look around the front door, expecting to see the crouching shape of Van Meer, ready to leap out from the shadows. Melanie’s comments had made me feel much worse, and several times I’d had to suppress the overwhelming urge to slap her smug, self-satisfied face. Before I’d known that Van Meer had escaped I was aware that the hallucinations, seeing him in all those different places, could have meant that I was heading for another breakdown, but I didn’t want to face it I didn’t want it put into words. I began to remember those hours with him, the smell of that torture room, the taste of the metal of the gun’s barrel in my mouth, the stink of my own sweat...
Once I was inside, I locked the front and back doors, and made sure all the windows were completely fastened.
Heading for another breakdown.
Melanie’s words burned into my brain, and I wondered if she was right. The electricity wasn’t on yet. I sat in my living room in the pitch darkness on the battered old sofa, closed my eyes and wondered if I really did look like the wreck Melanie said I was. Bags under my eyes? A strained wary look? It was no wonder. Right now, a homicidal maniac was running free, and plotting to kill me. Van Meer had no way of knowing my address, but I knew that for a man of his intelligence, tracking me down was just a matter of time. I groped my way to the sideboard and poured a large glass of whisky, sipping it slowly over the next hour, closing my eyes and almost dozing, then waking up with a start. The house was in silence, not even the hum of the fridge or the clicks of the boiler. I was waiting and hoping that the power would come back on, so at least life would assume a semblance of normality, and I could think clearly. I phoned the power company, they apologised saying they were doing all they could and anticipated the electricity would be back on within the hour. So I sat on in the dark. Pondering on my chances of survival.
I finally decided. No way could I sleep in my house until he was caught. Any time there could be a knock on the window or a shriek in the night and I’d be instantly awake, not knowing when the knife could be at my throat and that I’d die after minutes, hours or even days of indescribable torture. And I knew that if Van Meer ever caught up with me again I’d have no chance at all of escape, unless I managed to kill him first.
After another half hour I couldn’t stand it any longer.
By the light of a torch, I threw a change of clothes into a suitcase, gathered up my laptop, phone and wallet and put them in the car. As I turned the ignition it occurred to me that earlier on I’d had a couple of drinks in the pub, added to the huge whisky I’d had just now, not having planned to drive again that night. I felt drowsy from the alcohol, and was in no fit state to drive. The best plan was to call a cab to take me into town: with luck the driver might even know of a cheap hotel and I could take some of the temazepam I’d been prescribed to help me sleep, and try and get a good night’s rest. For days I’d been forcing myself on, and sleep, above all, was what I needed.
As I was about to get out of the car, I heard the sound of a vehicle approaching from the main road. Twin headlights appeared in my mirror as it turned into my drive. I ducked down, praying that it wasn’t him. I groped around the floor pan of the car and found the heavy ball-pein hammer I’d borrowed from Stuart. I picked it up and held its shaft in my hand, wondering if my alcohol-slowed reactions would be fast enough to smash it into his head before he killed me.
The car’s engine died. I stayed, hunched there, waiting for what would happen next. I heard the car door open and the crunch of gravel underfoot.
Chapter 10
BUILDING BRIDGES
“Jack?”
A woman’s voice. Clear, measured and precise. I raised my head.
There, standing beside her car, was the policewoman, Jane Redfern. Jane, who’d saved my life a few days ago. The woman I’d been thinking about, on and off, ever since I’d met her.
I opened the door and got out, leaning against my car, trying to calm my rapid breathing.
She smiled when she saw it was me. “Sorry it’s so late. I came round to give you the good news. We’ve made an arrest for Shelly’s murder. A previous boyfriend who called on her that day.”
“Has he confessed?”
“No, but we wouldn’t expect him to. There’s forensics to link him with her, and he was seen leaving her flat, just after the noises that we’re assuming were indicative of a struggle. We haven’t got a motive yet, but who knows? Maybe she told him about her affair with you and he got jealous. Maybe he was into sadomasochism and he took things too far by mistake, as you suggested. Unless he confesses we’re never going to know for sure. But we’re holding him now, and expecting to find enough evidence to charge him. I thought you’d want to know, so I came straight round to see you.” Jane was beside me now. She took hold of my arm, was looking into my face. “But tell me what’s happened, Jack? Why are you so uptight?”
I stood there for a few moments feeling like a fool, and let my hand fall to my side and dropped the hammer onto the ground. I told her about Van Meer’s escape, how I knew he was determined to find me and kill me.
“I’m in trouble Jane. I’m ill. My judgement’s all over the place. For heaven’s sake, you're the first friendly face I’ve seen for days and I nearly stoved your head in.”
“Why?”
I felt myself start shaking, unable to stop. “I’m wrecked. So bloody terrified that I can’t even think straight. My nerves are shot to pieces. I was so hyped up I could have killed you.”
“But you didn’t. You wouldn’t have. It’s okay – really Jack, it’s okay…” She took me in her arms and held me tight for a while, talking in a soothing tone. “It’s okay. Just calm down and tell me all about it.”
Someone once told me that when you’re wound up and desperate with worry, a small gesture of sympathy is enough to open the floodgates of emotion. Sensing Jane’s gen
uine concern made me realise that it was true.
But I gulped and managed to control myself, feeling my voice tremble as I went on, telling her about Van Meer’s escape, and his determination to kill me. “I reckon that now my only chance is to clear off for a few days, so I’m not a sitting target for him. Do you know any cheap hotels around here?”
She shook her head. “But I’m off duty. Get in and I’ll take you into town. You can tell me all your troubles on the way.”
With my case in the back of Jane’s Corsa, I sat beside her as she drove, reflecting that her voice had northern intonations that I hadn’t noticed before. I hadn’t noticed a lot of things about her that I was seeing now. The calm decisive way she turned the wheel, watched the road, and kept tactfully silent, in stark contrast to Melanie Deeprose’s incessant frenetic chatter. The way her dark hair brushed the top of her spectacles, the freckles on her cheek, the dimples when she smiled. I realised that I still remembered Jane’s face from last time I’d seen her, so that every line, every plane of her cheek, the way her mouth turned up at the corners when she smiled, were like familiar friends to me. And there was a light of kindness that never quite left her eyes.
“I wanted to thank you for saving my life,” I began.
“So what stopped you?”
“I never got the chance at the hospital. I called the station several times and left messages, but you were never there.”
“I never received them.”
“The officer I spoke to seemed preoccupied, maybe he forgot.”
“I gave you my mobile number.”
“I lost it. Must have fallen out of my pocket in the hospital.”
“I’ll give it to you again.”
“Thanks.”
“Jack.” She turned towards me for a second before her eyes were back on the road. “Do you realise that your hands are still shaking?”
“Are they?” I made a deliberate effort to press them down on the seat so she didn’t notice. “Shock I suppose. Stress.”
“I know you’ve had quite a time recently, I’ve done some checking up on you. I read all them newspaper reports. What that man Van Meer did to you, how he tortured you, how long you were in the room with those dead women. And the time you spent in the psychiatric hospital afterwards. And just as you’re starting to get your life back on track, you get tied up with Shelly Hart’s murder. And now that bastard Van Meer has escaped and he’s out to get you. Jack Lockwood, you live a pretty wild life.”
“And pretty lonely too,” I said.
“Lonely? A good looking guy like you?”
“My wife left me, and lots of my friends were hers too, and they kind of drifted away over time. And after my spell in the psychiatric hospital I lost most of the few I had left. People were wary, they avoided me, you know? And now I’ve got out of the habit of socializing.”
“Same for me in some ways.” She slowed for a bend, eyes everywhere, competent and careful movements as she guided the steering wheel, the consummate professional driver. “Your mates are mostly in the job, because only other people in the force understand the way we have to stick to awkward shifts, days off cancelled at a moment’s notice, and how sometimes the stress you’re under makes you right bad company. And people in the job tend to move around quite a bit, so you make a close friend, then you lose them. Yeah, I know what loneliness can be like.” She nodded into the silence.
“Do you know something Jane?” I watched the road out of the window, the rows of terrace houses, the pub on the corner, flashing by like the background images in a dream, and began to relax for the first time in hours. I noticed the small jewel on her key ring in the ignition swing to and fro and saw how it caught the passing lights through the window. “I really like you. I liked you from the first moment I saw you. I just felt a connection, you know?”
“Oh aye?”
I stared into the darkness. “Even when you were questioning me, giving me a hard time, I wanted to get to know you, to talk to you. I felt as if we…” I tailed off, feeling a fool.
“I reckoned you were a heartless bastard.”
“And now?”
She smiled to herself.
“Sorry,” I finished lamely. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Nowt wrong with a bit of honesty.”
So why did I feel foolish, as if I’d been trying a cheap pick-up line, when I’d intended to convey something which I’d only just realised to be true? Maybe speaking a truth like that always sounds crass, naïve, insincere. We’re all so used to dissembling, speaking half truths about our feelings for fear of embarrassment or rejection. But that night I was too tired to play any games of bluff. I just wanted to be ruthlessly, totally, honest.
We were approaching the town, the distant lights getting closer. There was a chill breeze through the partly open window. Jane’s face was concentrated, as if she was puzzling out some inner problem, was barely aware I was beside her.
“So you were going to be a doctor – you nearly made it.” I broke the ensuing silence, remembering what she’d said in the ambulance, when I was being taken to hospital.
“Except, deep down, I knew I weren’t cut out for it. I managed to get through the work, but God, there’s a sight more to it than that. Medicine is relentless, it’s a treadmill that never stops. Even once you’ve passed the exams, there are always more hoops to jump through if you want a decent career. More qualifications to study for, better jobs to apply for, the prospect of travelling around the country for promotion, never settling in any one place for long. I thought my parents would be upset when I jacked it in. My mum was but not my dad. He’s as Yorkshire as they come, he just said, ‘look lass, if it’s not right it’s not right, you gotta do summat else’.”
“Do you miss it?”
“Of course. It was my burning ambition, ever since I was a little girl. You’ve got no idea of the thrill, the buzz of being on the inside of a hospital team. A nurse I worked with once told me why it was that medical people just go on accepting long hours, unpaid overtime, all the shit from the managers and the public, the bad conditions of work. It’s because there’s just nothing like it, nothing can compare with the life. How can I explain? It’s not necessarily exciting, or even rewarding for most of the time. Sometimes it’s absolutely awful. But when it all feels right, when you feel as if you’ve made a difference,” she smiled wistfully into the darkness, “there’s nothing like it in the world. I spent a lot of time on A & E. Saving someone’s life is like nothing else you can possibly imagine until you’ve done it. I suppose it’s the ultimate high. I still wonder if I gave up too soon.”
“It’s never too late to change your mind.”
She shook her head, smiling and pulled in to the side of the road and stopped. “Look Jack, it’s late. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a hell of a day. Last thing I want is to go searching for some crowded pub in town to talk, or asking around for a hotel. I’m smashed. I just want to go back home, have a couple of drinks and chill, and I reckon you want the same thing. How about coming back to my flat to talk? I mean to talk, I don’t mean owt else. I warn you, don’t get any ideas.”
“Yes. Thanks. I’d like that very much. And look, Jane, what I said before wasn’t what it might have sounded like. I really meant it. I meant I liked you as a person, I didn’t mean–”
“What?”
“You know, that I was trying to–”
“What?”
“Chat you up. That I was trying out some pathetic chat-up line because I fancied my chances.”
“So you don’t?”
“What?”
“Fancy your chances with me?”
“Of course I do. I didn’t mean that. I meant–”
I joined in her laughter, realising the joke was on me. And after that the tension between us was broken.
She took me to a modern block of flats just outside town, and after climbing several flights of stairs we arrived at her front door. She led me
into her comfortable hallway, then the living room, and made me strong coffee with three teaspoonfuls of whisky in it. It was a comfortable room, with a deep-pile blue carpet, leather sofa and bright landscape paintings on the white walls. In the corner was a spiral staircase. She opened the window and looked outside. The noise of loud music filled the room.
“Bloody people downstairs,” she said. “Always having parties. This is a block of twelve flats. Eleven of us fit in with each other, act with consideration, and there’s one selfish pair of arses who don’t care a damn about anyone else. Noisy parties and music all the time. They’ve fixed a huge satellite dish onto the wall right below my window, expressly against the management company rules. But what can you do?”
“Nothing except move. Or hope that they move,” I said.
She smiled and closed the window and the noise abruptly ceased.
Jane left me and returned a few moments later. She had changed from her formal trouser suit into jeans and a white sweatshirt with the scrawling red letters saying Rock’n’Roll Forever across the front. I relaxed on the black leather sofa and she leaned back in the armchair opposite, her legs stretched out in front of her, red-painted toenails moving against the carpet’s thick blue pile.
I told her everything. From my accident when I killed Martin Gallica, the details of my run-in with Van Meer, to the embarrassment of my failed career as a BIA, and finally my debacle over Crash and Burn. I told her about looking in the attic of the house at St Kilda’s but stopped short of telling her about the two men who’d died at Clifftop Paradise, aware that if I had, she would have been obliged to arrest me on suspicion of involvement in their murders: keeping quiet or covering up a crime simply is not an option for a Detective Constable. I needed a friend I could trust, and Jane, with her kind expression and down-to-earth common sense, fitted the bill. Besides I’d had enough of keeping secrets, I just wanted to unburden my conscience.
Rock'n'Roll Suicide (Jack Lockwood Mystery Series Book 1) Page 16
