by Deborah Bee
‘Why aren’t you doing it yourself?’
‘I’ve got to see Langlands. That idiot in Liverpool has made a formal complaint against me.’
‘Talking of total wankers,’ I say, ‘how is Terry?’
She tuts and takes out her laptop.
‘According to the highly professional team at Liverpool nick – bunch of tossers – Terry spent his first twenty-four hours of freedom at . . . his mother’s. His second twenty-four hours of freedom at . . . his mother’s. And if we had to guess, his third twenty-four hours of freedom at . . .’
‘. . . his mother’s,’ I finish. ‘And you get all that off the tag device, do you?’
‘They get a report every twelve hours. To confirm his whereabouts. If he goes more than one hundred feet from her house, it sets off an alarm. Or so it says here.’ She puts away her laptop. ‘Did she say anything to you about drinking paraffin?’
‘She said something about it last night, after she saw the doctor. She was crying cos the doctor was having a go at her. That’s what she said. So, what was it then, if it wasn’t paraffin?’
‘I thought she said it was, originally. We’ll have to listen to the tape again to be sure.’
‘She can’t remember much about the night before. And she certainly can’t remember being at the police station. So, it wasn’t paraffin then?’
‘It was a mix of stuff. But not paraffin. Do you think he gave it to her to drink or she drank it herself?’
‘ ’Christ’s sake Sue, I’ve told you – she can’t remember. So far, all I’ve managed to do is get her to eat two doughnuts.’
‘She ate them?’
‘She swallowed them down. Not sure if they stayed down, if you know what I mean.’
‘No, what do you mean?’
‘Sue, she’s bound to have some eating issues, after being abused for two years.’
‘So she says . . .’ Sue looks away.
‘Give her time, Sue. After what she’s been through, even she’s not sure if she’s a nut job.’
Sue sighs. ‘She didn’t say anything else?’
‘She said she could vaguely remember him getting drunk and losing control, wrecking the house, then locking her in the laundry room. Said he drank too much and slipped up, so she managed to get away. She thinks he’s a psycho. Oh and his mum died when he was a kid.’
‘Well, that’s a whole lot more than two doughnuts, Sal,’ she says. ‘We’re going to the house again this afternoon. We’ve got a warrant. If I go myself, we might actually find something. That Halsall wouldn’t only miss a needle, she’d miss the sodding haystack and all. We’re going to get inside and get some of her stuff, if she wants us to. We can have a good look around.’
‘You’re sure he’s not there? How’d you know he’s not hiding?’
‘We’ve got a neighbour on the lookout. Some woman. Said she heard some noises the night before. Said she thought it was maybe someone doing DIY.’
‘Who’s doing DIY?’ says Kitty, snaking through the door in that daft big woolly hat of hers and Sue flashes me a look, as if she’s wondering how much Kitty had just overheard.
‘Detective Sergeant Clarke,’ says Sue, who’s not in uniform so she looks like she could be anyone. ‘And you are . . .?’
‘. . . minding my own business,’ says Kitty and snakes out again.
Sue raises an eyebrow and I shake my head. ‘Bit of a loon,’ I mouth at Sue.
‘Young to be in here,’ she mouths back. ‘You know anything about her?’
‘She brought three bikinis in with her so she can sunbathe on the roof,’ I say, ‘’nuff said.’
‘LEAST I CAN GET INTO A BIKINI,’ shouts Kitty, skipping down the hall.
Sue shuts her eyes, shakes her head slowly, and she sighs.
‘Go and wake Clare up, will you?’
‘You go and wake her up,’ I say. ‘I’m her mate.’
‘Just tell her I’m here,’ she says and sighs. ‘Go on, Sal. For me! I wanna say hello before I go.’
*
‘There’s a couple of policewomen downstairs to see you,’ I say, walking into Clare’s room and talking to an empty bed.
‘Tell her to come back later,’ she says, from under the bed. She’s actually sleeping under the bed!
‘What are you doing?’ I say.
‘Nothing,’ she goes.
‘Why are you under the bed, then?’
‘Just tell her to come back later,’ she goes, like she’s mumbling and still asleep.
‘Somehow, I don’t think that’s how the police work,’ I say. ‘Last time I looked they were a bit more demanding, know what I mean? You want me to wash this for you?’ I say, holding up her dressing gown that’s lying on the floor. ‘Doesn’t half smell bad.’
‘What?’ she says, not moving from under the bed. As though I’d just said, ‘Can I kill your pet kitten with my bare hands?’ or something.
‘This dressing gown, you want me to wash it?’
‘Why don’t you fuck off, Sally,’ she says, red-faced, puffy eyes, crawling out and grabbing the dressing gown, rolling it into a ball and stuffing it under her chin.
‘I was only trying—’ I start.
‘Don’t try anything with me!’ she yells. ‘I don’t need anything from you or anyone else. Understand?’
‘I thought we—’
‘You don’t know anything about me, Sally. Get the fuck out of my room – and don’t let me catch you touching my stuff again.’
‘Can we get this into perspective, Clare?’ I shout back. ‘I just kindly offered to sodding help you by washing your sodding dressing gown, so why don’t you just fuck off instead?’ I slam her door and go into my own room and slam that door too, for good measure.
I hear her in the bathroom – my toothpaste, no doubt – and I hear her in the sitting room, slamming around, and I hear her close the door and go down the stairs, mad bitch.
I don’t ever get angry, you know, not anymore, no one to get angry with. Apart from the queues in Starbucks, and people who walk slowly. Hang on, changing lines at Green Park tube station, that gets me really angry, knock-me-down-dead angry; because it’s so bloody far, you may as well have walked to wherever it is you’re going. And there’s people dawdling all over the bloody place; nearly drives me up the sodding wall.
When I stop breathing so hard, I decide to have a bath and then sort out my stuff, put it all away, you know, properly, and then I think I could go and get some towels later from the garment wardrobe and hang them over that ugly great metal curtain rail to cut out the light in the mornings. The trouble is, I can’t get Clare out of my head. The bath is supposed to be relaxing but all I can think about is how angry she got. She seemed to snap. She was like a different person.
I can’t be bothered to go and get something to eat. At least I’ve got all my own things here. I push my suitcases under the bed and pull open my handbag, find the bunch of letters that PC Chapman picked up. As per usual, they are mainly bills.
Water rates, electricity, pension update – yeah, I know, I’ve got a pension, all right, calm down – and then at the bottom there’s this handwritten white envelope, no stamp or anything, addressed to Mrs Sally-Ann Mansfield. And I know that handwriting. I’d know it anywhere. My hands start to shake as I tear open the back and unfold the piece of paper inside.
My Sal,
I’ve been waiting here for you. Maybe you’ve gone on your holidays . . . but you left your case in the hall. I was hoping we could meet. It’s been a long time, girl.
Nothing’s changed for me Sal. That’s why I came to see you. Before I did anything else. I’ve spent the last twenty years dreaming of this moment.
Nothing’s changed.
You know what’s coming. x
A cross at the bottom. A kiss. The kiss at the end kills me.
I put the letter carefully back into the envelope, and place the envelope into my bag. I slowly walk to the bathroom a
nd kneel in front of the toilet, like I always do, bringing up the contents of my stomach quickly and silently without even coughing.
I haven’t forgotten.
I send a text to Sue.
‘I need to see you urgently.’
I can hardly see the buttons.
‘He’s back.’
Twenty-Four
DS Clarke
DS Clarke is fifty-two. A young fifty-two, she likes to think. Young enough to go hill walking in Scotland, take a spinning class once a week, pass the advanced driving course, find an alternative career. One day. However, also older than the mothers of most of her team. She misses Liz. Liz retired last year to a croft in Durness, in Sutherland, Scotland. Where no one knows she’s a retired policewoman, so no one bothers her with petty crime problems or possible insurgent sightings. Since Liz retired, DS Clarke has had no sounding board. Liz was the best sounding board. DS Clarke does have a white board, a famous white board. Liz always used to call it a wipe board, swore it was called a wipe board. DS Clarke once had to Google it for her to prove that she was wrong.
DS Clarke lines up the white board perpendicular to her desk. No one else has arrived for the early shift, and the overnighters are drifting off home, grey from tiredness, gathering up their coats. Someone has borrowed the white board and scribbled all over it, something about internal comms; HR probably. And now the board rubber is missing which annoys her all the more. She goes to get kitchen roll.
The kitchen area on her floor is always chaos, despite her nagging emails asking people to clean out the fridge, wash up after themselves, load and unload the dishwasher, wipe the side down, etc. Today it’s worse. And no kitchen roll.
Toilet roll would have to do, then.
She flicks the switch on the kettle, picks up three mugs before she finds one without dried-on scum left by the dishwasher, and spoons in two teaspoons of coffee granules. She unlocks the stationery cupboard and gathers up a selection of marker pens and a new board rubber.
While she waits for the kettle to boil, she thinks back to her training.
‘Put yourself in the position of the victim.’ That was the key message of her training.
She picks up the internal phone.
‘Joanna. Can you look for my mobile? It’s the one with the green cover. It might be in the breakout area. I think I left it there earlier. No, not my work one. The other one.’
She dreaded admitting that she’d lost her mobile. Again. It was like an admission of her own senility. She knew they all laughed about it. Sometimes before she’s even known she’s lost it.
‘Try ringing it, will you?’
‘What’s your number?’
‘Joanna . . .’
‘All right, all right!’
‘Ask everyone if they’ve seen it. I’m past caring. Send an email!’
*
PC Chapman was the next to arrive at the station. Bright and breezy, high blonde ponytail, bustling in from the cold.
‘Dawn. Come into my office when you’ve got a sec.’
‘How was Langlands?’
‘Oh, fine. The dick from Liverpool is retracting his complaint. For now! No, it’s about Clare.’
‘You’ve seen the statement I got from her?’ she says, taking off her uniform jacket.
‘You want a coffee?’ says DS Clarke, searching for another mug without scum.
Chapman nods.
‘Yup I saw the statement,’ says DS Clarke, pouring the boiling water over the coffee. ‘It doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.’
‘I know, but it’s a signed statement at least.’
Chapman adds some milk.
‘She refused the video?’
‘Yes, but we got audio.’
‘How was she?’
‘Same. Defensive. Nervous. Erratic. Emotional. What you’d expect.’
Chapman had been briefed to keep to the facts. Nothing too speculative. She perched on the side of DS Clarke’s desk.
‘She didn’t get violent?’
‘No, but she’s angry. She obviously thinks we’re shit. Thinks we missed Gareth at the hospital.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think we should start again with the CCTV. Maybe we missed him.’
‘Fuck. You think she’s innocent?’
Chapman nods. Emphatically, professional. ‘Of course, she’s innocent,’ she says. ‘What could she be guilty of?’
Chapman was watches DS Clarke suspiciously over the rim of her mug. DS Clarke is hard to read; she comes at life from a different angle. That’s why she wanted to work with her.
‘Put yourself in the position of the victim,’ said DS Clarke.
‘OK, where am I?’
‘You’re on the floor of the kitchen. You’re naked except for a bra.’
Chapman’s navy pen squeaks across the surface of the white board.
KITCHEN, she writes.
UNDERWEAR, she writes.
‘That I’ve been forced to wear?’ says Chapman. ‘And cuffed to the door handle of a kitchen cupboard?’
‘Yes, that’s it,’ says DS Clarke.
FORCIBLY RESTRAINED, she writes.
‘Am I blindfolded?’ asks Chapman. ‘She mentioned something about that.’
‘She said that it happened sometimes. That he liked it when he could see her fear. But it didn’t happen that night.’
‘OK, so not blindfolded.’
‘No. He’s poured paraffin in your hair. And you’re sitting in a pool of it.’
PARAFFIN, she writes.
‘Why paraffin. Why not petrol? Easier to get hold of?’
‘Less combustible. If it’d been petrol she’d have gone up like a rocket. And that would be no fun for him, either. He wants to see her fear. So how do you feel?’
‘I’m terrified.’
‘And now he tells you to drink something.’
‘What is it?’
‘Paraffin. Maybe.’
‘Is it in a paraffin bottle?’
PARAFFIN BOTTLE, she wrote.
‘Yes.’
‘Why would I think it was anything but paraffin?’
‘Good point.’
‘So, would you drink it?’
‘Do I have a choice?’
‘You could refuse. Why don’t you spit it out?’
DS Clarke clatters her mug down on her desk, like she’s irritated.
Chapman treads carefully.
‘Not if you were half-naked, chained up to a cupboard door, being set alight. You’d do what you were told, wouldn’t you?’
‘I wouldn’t. I’d rip his fucking throat out.’
‘Would you? How? If you were chained up and after two years of putting up with all that shit? I’d be petrified.’
‘You’re better at this role play than I am, Dawn. You’re right.’
DS Clarke draws a line under the points so far and divides the lower part of the board into two columns. At the top of the right-hand column she writes:
SUBMISSION, and underlines it. And underneath that she writes:
FEARS – FIRE/ BURNS/ ASSAULT/ CHEMICAL BURNS/ STARVATION/ POISONING/ HISTORY OF INTIMIDATION AND ABUSE.
At the top of the second column DS Clarke writes:
ESCAPE
She straightens up and, tapping her chin with the end of the marker pen, looks at PC Chapman.
‘So, what would make you stay, Chapman? Think like a victim,’ says DS Clarke.
‘Well, he’s clearly threatened her enough times.’ She picks up her laptop and starts scrolling through the statement.
‘He said he will kill me, kill my friends, kill anyone I care about. And then he said he will kill them first and make me watch,’ she reads.
‘OK – so try this,’ says DS Clarke. ‘You’ve been held captive by a controlling psychopath for two years. He’s abused you . . .’
DS Clarke stops. She picks up the board rubber and wipes everything off that she’s just written.
&nbs
p; ‘I’ve been coming at this wrong,’ she says. She continues, ‘He’s abused you, sexually, physically, psychologically. He’s beaten you, denied you food, and treated you worse than an animal. What’s more important?’ She draws two columns and begins to write again. FIGHT OR FLIGHT she writes across the top.
‘What would make someone fight back and what would make someone run away?’
‘Depends . . .’
‘Depends on what, Dawn?’
‘Depends on the person. If it were me, flight.’
‘Go on.’
‘I’d be so afraid of getting caught that I would be in escape mode. Just get away as fast as I can to the safest place possible.’
‘Get to a police station,’ says DS Clarke, and writes it on the board, under FLIGHT.
‘And if it were me?’ says DS Clarke, giving her a wink.
‘If it were you? Fight.’
‘How well you know me!’ DS Clarke writes, ‘Get rid of the threat’ on the board under FIGHT.
‘Clare’s not you or me, though,’ says Chapman.
‘No, she’s not,’ says DS Clarke, thinking.
‘She’s weak,’ says Chapman.
‘Physically, certainly. But she’s got a strong character. And she’s sharp as a knife. She misses nothing. And she wants her life back,’ says DS Clarke. ‘But she’s got no family left, and no friends who seem to care.’
‘So, the threat of killing them is a bit thin?’ says PC Chapman.
‘Not thin as much as it’s less immediate. Less pressing. He doesn’t even know who her friends are, anymore. And neither does she.’
Joanna has arrived, smirking.
‘Here’s your phone DS Clarke. It was in the ladies’ toilet.’
‘Thanks, Joanna, do knock next time.’
‘I thought you wanted your phone back!’
‘I did . . .’
PC Chapman is staring at the board.
‘Well? What do you think?’ says DS Clarke. ‘What made Clare decide between fight or flight? Why didn’t she fight?’
This is the time that Liz would always come up with something brilliant. Something no one had thought of.
‘I don’t know. She’s too weak. Her only choice was to come to the station.’
