by Deborah Bee
No movement.
‘I want you to know something. I haven’t told her anything you wouldn’t want me to tell her and I have been your friend from the start and will continue being your friend, if you’ll still have me. I need you, right now, so please don’t give up on me, and I’m sorry for lying to you, because, to be honest, I don’t know why we decided not to tell you ’cept that I was thinking I could help you more this way. But, looking at it from your point of view, I must just seem like a snitch. Seriously, I’m not and I hope you can forgive me.’
‘YOU LYING BITCH!’ she yells, suddenly leaping from wardrobe onto the chair next to it, and throwing herself into the bed, pulling the duvet over her face.
‘I know you must—’ I start.
‘YOU LYING BITCH, GET OUT!’ she yells again, sliding off the mattress and jamming herself between the wall and the bed.
If I’m honest, in a situation like this, I don’t think there’s much point in arguing because I think I’d feel the same if I were her. I can’t quite get my head around why Sue and I thought it was a good idea in the first place, not to tell her we were friends, but I guess it didn’t come from me. The whole thing, that Sue thought I’d get more out of her if I was her ‘friend’ rather than Sue would as a police officer? Well, let’s face it, that’s shit. Plus, the police don’t appear to have done much, do they?
‘YOU’RE JUST THE SAME AS THAT BITCH POLICEWOMAN,’ she shouts after me as I close the door. ‘SHE DOESN’T BELIEVE ME EITHER.’
*
Later on, I make a cup of tea, and I make her one as well, even though she doesn’t like tea. I knock on her door quietly and put it next to her bed with a couple of the chocolate Hobnobs she likes. And I say sorry, whisper it; I don’t even know if she’s awake or not cos she doesn’t move when I go in or when I leave.
Not long after that she comes out of her room and sits down on the sofa, with a face that looks swollen and blotchy the way my face does when I cry for a week. She doesn’t look at me, just faces the window with a rolled-up tissue dabbing at her eyes.
‘You wanna face mask?’ I ask gently.
‘What for?’ she says.
‘Make you less, um blotchy?’ I say. ‘It’s aloe and cucumber. Cooling,’ I say.
‘Don’t like cucumber,’ she says.
‘You don’t eat it,’ I say. ‘You put it on your face.’
‘Does it smell like cucumber?’
‘No, it smells like apricots, what do you think?’
‘Don’t like cucumber,’ she repeats.
‘Well, shove some cotton wool up your nose and pretend it’s apricots. It’s organic,’ I say, flopping down next to her with the sachet, ‘so it hasn’t got any nasty stuff in it.’
‘’Part from cucumber,’ she says, scrunching up her eyes. ‘Can you put it on me?’ she asks and it reminds me just how young she is and how all she really needs is a mum. She swivels round and flips her legs over the back of the sofa, so her face is on the seat. I cut off the top of the sachet and squeeze the contents onto a thick wad of cotton wool, moving her hair off her face, and gently wipe the green goo over her forehead. It’s seriously the most cucumbery smell I’ve ever smelled in my whole entire life, and I’ve used this one about a million times and never even noticed it, but by the time it’s right under her nose, the cotton wool is over her mouth and she can only mumble in protest. She looks like . . . I can’t think of his name . . .
‘The Incredible Hulk!’ I say.
‘What, not a Disney Princess?’ she goes.
‘That’s when you take it off,’ I say
‘I’ve always fancied being a Disney Princess – ever since I was a little girl.’
‘You’re not supposed to move your mouth,’ I say, ‘you gotta leave it on for five minutes and then you can peel it off,’ I say. ‘And that’s the most fun ever, cos it takes all them blackheads out of the pores on your nose.’
‘MMMMmmmmm, MMMMM, mmmmm, mmmm’ she mumbles, which roughly translates to, I haven’t got any blackheads on my nose.
‘Everybody’s got blackheads on their nose,’ I say, ‘you wait and see.’
She shuts up and I go and stand by the window, thinking about how Barney has obviously slipped off the wagon and I wonder if he’s really living in the squat up the road. I wonder how much Kitty knows and isn’t saying, and I wonder what it would be like to get on one of the trains going out of Euston and disappear to some island off the coast of West Scotland, where it would probably rain the entire winter and be full of midges the entire summer – so that’s that little dream out the window – and I wonder what’s gonna happen to Clare.
‘I saw Gareth’s journal today,’ I tell Clare.
‘He doesn’t have a journal,’ she says. ‘He’s not the sort. Seriously.’
‘You’re not allowed to move your mouth,’ I say. ‘Here, let me peel it off.’
I sit back down next to her on the sofa and start flicking up the rubbery edges of the mask.
‘It’s black leather and it’s handwritten with an ink pen, like a proper fountain pen.’
‘Mont Blanc,’ she says, without moving her lips.
‘He had a fountain pen?’
‘Pride and joy. I bought it for him as a wedding present,’ she says, still without her mouth moving.
‘I thought you—’ I say.
‘He told everyone it was a wedding present. Well, anyone who would listen.’
‘Friends?’
‘No, he didn’t have any real friends. People in shops. People at the pharmacy or at the doctor’s surgery. He’d whip out that pen at the drop of a hat.’
I’m peeling the mask from the top down and it’s pulling over her eyebrows where the rubber has got stuck in the hairs.
‘So apparently he’s been writing it every day for nearly two years and it says things like how the journal has become his best friend in his darkest hours.’
She sits up. ‘You have got to be kidding me. Gareth doesn’t speak like that.’
‘Says he was only marrying you because you had an extreme fear—’
‘– of abandonment. Yeah, I know. Let’s see—’ she says, pulling my hands towards her.
‘Loads of blackheads,’ I say and laugh.
‘Oh, my absolute God,’ she says, staring. ‘You’re not kidding. Loads of blackheads.’
‘Says that you are bipolar and that he is treating it with meds or some shit like that.’
‘That’s not right! I just had vitamins from Stephen. He’s really nice. He’s this Harley Street specialist.’
‘He’s a Harley Street specialist in personality disorders,’ I say.
‘Yeah, Sue told me that. And that he’d prescribed anti-psychotic drugs. But that’s not what he was doing with me. He said that the vitamins would cheer me up, improve my mood. Just vitamin shots and mineral supplements.’
‘Did you talk to him on your own?’
‘No, we always went in together. Gareth and Stephen are friends. He said they went way back.’
‘And you weren’t in the least suspicious of that?’
‘What, are you saying I’m a moron? Join the queue,’ she says, looking in the mirror, picking off the remaining bits of green rubber. ‘I’d stopped taking the vitamins anyway.’
‘Meds!’ I correct her.
‘Meds,’ she agrees.
‘Why?’ I say.
‘Because whenever I had them, I’d lose track of time.’
‘And it never occurred to you that something was going on?’ I ask, wondering if I’m pushing her too hard.
‘What, like he was drugging me off my head? Maybe,’ she says. And two fat tears gather in her lower eyelids and splash onto her cheeks.
‘We need to undermine the journal,’ I say.
‘What’s that mean?’ she says, wiping the tears away.
‘I mean that there must be things in there that we can prove aren’t true.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like
your wedding. He talks about your wedding day – at a registry office in Yorkshire.’
‘I’ve never even been to Yorkshire.’
‘The wedding photo. You say he took it in the shop, in the changing room.’
‘It even looks like a selfie, don’t you think? I think it does.’
‘I don’t know. It looks quite nice to me. Sue doesn’t think it looks like a selfie.’
‘He must’ve taken about a hundred shots. So he had plenty to choose from. Anyway, people see what they want to see, don’t they! She’s already decided I’m guilty, even though she’s got nothing on me.’
‘Sue’s a good one, Clare. Honest.’
‘Yeah, it really feels like it.’
‘I mean it. Her heart is—’
‘Look Sally,’ she says, getting up and walking to the window. She has her back to me. She’s so painfully thin I can see each one of her ribs through her T-shirt.
‘You might think Sue is the nicest person on the planet and she might be, but she’s no match for Gareth. He is the most manipulative person you could ever meet. And all this shit we’re going through now? He’s set it all up. He’s probably still setting it up. Maybe this was his plan all along. Make me look bad so he gets off scot-free. And then he’ll be able to go and do this all over again, somewhere else, to somebody else.’
Forty-Two
DS Clarke
DS Clarke sees great potential in PC Chapman. Noting Barney’s interest in Sal, and following up, that’s good policing. What is he doing hanging around there anyway? That’s what she’s thinking as Chapman clicks open her seatbelt and leans in to open the car door. She’s an old-fashioned style of copper. Even down to her oh-so-sensible shoes. She observes quietly. PC Chapman slams the door behind her, looking up the road and down. Calmly. Methodically. She’s instinctive. DS Clarke sees a bit of herself in Chapman.
DS Clarke makes a mental note of details wherever she goes. It’s a habit. What she means by mental note, is really a mental note – it’s as though she’s writing stuff down in her head, word for word, which makes recalling it easier later. Take now, for example. The street seems to degenerate with every step. At the north end, where they left the car, nearest the bridge towards Chalk Farm Tube station, the front doors are freshly painted in bright colours with shiny brass door handles and matching letter boxes. The paving slabs are smooth and evenly laid. The trees have been clipped. It’s past going-home time and there’s the smell of a dinner drifting from open kitchen windows – something easy for the kids, fish fingers and peas, while a pot of something more sophisticated bubbles away in the slow cooker. There’s a smart red bike, with white and red striped tyres, pushed up against a dark green bush.
A door opens and a young woman emerges, fair hair scraped back; she pretends not to notice two female police officers walking past. She lowers her eyes, wipes her wet hands on the back of her jeans, picks up the bike, and takes it inside. The windows vibrate in their oak frames when the door slams shut behind her.
The further south DS Clarke and PC Chapman walk, so the chinks begin to appear. There’s flaking paintwork, a half-missing picket fence, cracked concrete paving slabs and loose kerb stones. DS Clarke is wondering how the council draws the line between ‘worth maintaining’ and ‘not worth maintaining’. And if some poor unfortunate person trips on these uneven slabs, are they not as eligible for compensation as the more fortunate with the smooth pavements?
The front gardens are rammed with wheelie bins, overflowing with black bin bags. There are multiple buzzers instead of one gleaming doorbell. There are panels of safety glass in the beaten front doors, woven through with criss-crossed wires.
DS Clarke is beginning to wish they had some backup.
‘Did you tell Sal we were visiting Barney?’ she says.
‘No, course not,’ says PC Chapman. ‘I don’t think it’s even occurred to her. She’s known him for years. Got a bit of a soft spot, I reckon. She doesn’t see him as trouble.’
‘Course she doesn’t,’ says DS Clarke. ‘She doesn’t think anyone is any trouble, apart from Terry. How’d you say you got the address?’
‘Pharmacist. Barney’s quit the programme,’ she says quietly, over her shoulder.
‘Which makes him even more trouble. Talking of pharmacists – have we got an appointment with our vitamin doctor yet?’
‘Tomorrow,’ she replies.
‘I’m keen to see the whites of his eyes,’ says DS Clarke.
‘How come?’ says PC Chapman, slowing down. ‘I think this must be the one.’ She takes a left and kicks a crunched-up beer can off the tarmac path leading up to a front door, blonde ponytail swinging behind her.
Except there’s no front door.
‘You here, Barney?’ she calls into the dark rectangle behind the empty door frame.
‘Oy, Barney Pickard!’
No reply.
There’s a smell of fresh urine and rotting food.
‘We’ve come for a visit, Barn. Shove the kettle on, there’s a love!’
A window slides open, then slams shut, somewhere out the back, where it’s hidden in shadow.
‘You sure about this?’ PC Chapman says under her breath.
DS Clarke is most definitely unsure.
‘Well, of course I’m sure,’ she says confidently. ‘A couple of middle-aged women, walking into a squat full of criminal drug offenders . . .’ says DS Clarke.
‘Speak for yourself, grandma,’ Chapman whispers.
‘Oh, we’ve got a grandma here, have we?’ whispers a voice right in DS Clarke’s ear. A dot of orange, glowing in the corner, behind the sitting-room door, lighting up a dark face.
‘Jesus fucking Christ, Ryan! I’ll be lucky to make it to my next birthday at this rate!’ breathes Dawn, like she’s run out of air.
‘Can we get this straight once and for all,’ he smiles. ‘Is it no fucking swearing or lots of fucking swearing?’ He laughs then abruptly stops.
‘Where’s Barney, Ryan?’ asks DS Clarke, catching her breath.
‘All right, grandma, he ain’t here, right!’ he says, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. The ash silently falls off the end, onto what was once a carpet.
‘We’ll just see if he’s upstairs, shall we?’ says Chapman, but she’s lost the swagger in her voice. Ryan’s weak but he’s still, what, six foot two?
‘You got a warrant then, have you?’ he says, no more smiling.
‘For a squat, Ryan?’ DS Clarke says, folding her arms. Taking control.
‘It’s home to me,’ he says.
‘We’ll just have a quick look in here, shall we?’ Chapman, squeezes past DS Clarke towards the back of the house, where there was probably once a kitchen.
The innocence of that ponytail, golden in the grey, glowing in the gloom. Black greasy fingers, cracked nails, angry bruises wrapped in bloody grey bandages. She doesn’t scream when he slowly wraps his hand around her ponytail, and then yanks her head back. She just gasps, and puts her hands up to the sides of her head, trying to hold in the roots of her hair, as he pulls her back towards him and drags her small frame up to his. Her black hat skids towards the front path. Her shoes are kicking against the hollow skirting board. Her elbow hits the door frame. She gasps again.
As soon as he feels DS Clarke’s arms twisting through his, pinning his shoulders back, he drops Chapman. No struggle. The smell of sweat and skin and old beer.
She still doesn’t scream. Just lets out a gulp of air and runs to the open door.
‘You gonna arrest me now?’ he says to DS Clarke. ‘You gotta arrest me now.’
DS Clarke lets go of his arms and pushes him against the wall of the sitting room.
‘I assaulted a police officer – you gotta arrest me.’
DS Clarke slowly shakes her head.
He raises his arm and takes a step towards her.
‘I’m assaulting you, you daft bitch!’ he says, trying to smack her face. ‘Arrest me!’
&n
bsp; He strikes out at her, but she deftly catches his hand and holds it, steady.
‘Is that what you want?’
‘What do you think, grandma, eh?’ he shouts in her face so that spit sprays on her cheek. ‘What do you fucking think?’
She relaxes her hand and his arm drops.
‘Anything’s better than this,’ he whispers, tears slipping from the corners of his eyes and he slides down the wall onto his knees and buries his face in his coat.
‘Tell Barney, I wanna see him,’ DS Clarke says, picking up Chapman’s hat and striding out of the squat.
‘Now!’ she yells.
‘Oh, and by the way,’ she says, coming back up the path. ‘You ever touch one of my officers again, and I’ll do worse than bang you up.’
And she turns on her heel.
Forty-Three
Clare
Kitty is shouting through the door to be let in.
It’s not even 7 a.m.
‘Go away,’ I say.
‘You’re the only person I can trust,’ she says.
‘No, you can’t,’ I say. ‘I’m not trustworthy at all. I’m asleep.’
‘I need to talk to you, just for a sec . . .’
I open the door. She stares at me.
‘You’ve got some sort of green shit in your ear.’
‘Good.’
‘I’ve met this model scout and he says I have a real future.’
‘Oh yeah?’ I say.
‘He says I just need to get some shots done. Says he knows some top people and that he’ll do me an enormous favour and put me in contact with the best, but I need to have a few pictures of me, with like different hair and makeup, and different kinds of poses, to see how photo-ready I am.’
‘Did he say photo-ready? Like oven-ready?’
‘No, it was a way longer word.’
‘Great, let’s do it later?’
I try to shut the door.
‘No, it’s urgent.’ She bundles into the room and unpacks her makeup bag on the floor next to the mirror.
‘He wants to see something by lunchtime. He wants to send them over to Mario. How about I just do my makeup and you tell me when it looks great?’
