I finish a sip of wine.
‘I’ve got the locals looking for Sharon as well. She’ll have been lumbered with the grandchild so she’s got to surface quickly and return to the house.’
I put down the wine and ask him something that’s been bugging me. ‘I guess I owe you an apology.’
He frowns at me. ‘For what?’
‘I think the neighbours saw me blundering around in the bushes like a baby elephant. I was hardly the SAS back there. And I reckon someone rang Sharon to say there was a weirdo at the bottom of the garden.’
‘Hopkins,’ says Charlie. He takes a slug of beer and adds, ‘House to house said a Mrs Christine Hopkins thought she’d seen a “suspicious figure” lurking in the Croft garden and she phoned Sharon. That must have been the mobile you heard ringing.’
I feel even more depressed than I did earlier. ‘I really wish you hadn’t told me that.’
‘Sorry. Do you want me to tell you something you would like to know?’
‘Go on.’
‘I still fancy you. Every bit as much as I did when we first worked together.’
‘No, you don’t!’ I redden and laugh at him. ‘You fancy Miss Fancypants Matthews – that’s who you fancy.’
‘Sometimes, Annie Parker, for a great detective with amazing intuition, you can be very dim. The exceptionally lovely Jo Matthews is in a long-term, astonishingly loved-up and immensely happy relationship. With a woman. A woman.’
He’s right. I never saw that one coming.
Charlie breaks the silence as I soak up the news. ‘So how about we get a taxi and grab some food to soak up all this drink?’
‘Where you thinking? I don’t fancy Indian or Chinese.’
‘I’m thinking my hotel. What do you think of that?’
29
Paula
I remember the fall.
At least, I remember my feet slipping from under me. As always, I’d been standing in a sea of hot soapy froth from using too much shampoo and shower gel.
The slip felt like when I first fell on ice as a kid. Scary and painful. Followed by an explosion of blackness. A roaring sound, as if a beehive had been smashed over my head and angry insects swarmed inside of my skull.
Then the ambulance.
A woman in green, peering down at me through a milky haze. An outstretched hand. Tubes. Male and female voices. A man’s face. Not Danny’s. Wrinkled forehead and bushy ginger eyebrows. Glasses. Searching brown eyes behind black spectacles. Big white gloved hands falling upon me. Pressing my chest.
Shocks. Tingles. Suffocation.
Air.
Sharp hits of cool air in my burning lungs. Like drinking iced water after chewing spearmint gum.
Pain.
The bees work their way down into my eyes. My neck. My shoulders.
Then darkness again.
Peaceful darkness. Quiet enough to dream. A holiday somewhere. All the colours are saturated. Shimmering pink terracotta rooftops. Cracked earth vineyards. Spidery olive groves. Dazzlingly yellow sunflowers. Lusciously green cypress trees.
‘Mrs Smith.’
I’m on a sun lounger by the pool at a luxury hotel. Drying off after a cooling swim. An Italian waitress is calling me. She’s young and pretty. Has thick black hair and killer lashes.
‘Mrs Smith, can you hear me?’
I open my eyes.
I’m staring at a middle-aged nurse, blue uniform, dark hair, kind smile.
‘There you are. How do you feel?’
I try to speak but can’t. My mouth feels as if it’s been filled with sand.
‘Here, have a drink of water.’
Nurse Kindly lifts my head. I see I am alone, in a hospital room. Blue-grey walls and matching blinds, a vase of cut flowers on the window sill, medical drips and equipment to the left of the hard, high bed on which I am pillowed-up. Clicks and beeps spill from screens with spiky lines and ever-changing numbers, the algebra and graphs of life.
My eyes catch the back of my hand, a needle in a vein, held down by transparent plaster, a thin snake of a tube, charmed over my shoulder and out of sight.
A glass touches my lips. The water is warm and smells heavily chlorinated. But it’s good. It flows across parched lips, over cactus teeth, down the desert tongue into a fire-pit belly.
Nurse Kindly’s hand deftly pinches my wrist and steals my pulse. ‘Almost normal,’ she declares with a smile. ‘You’re on the mend.’
‘Thanks.’ I don’t know why I’m thanking her. It just seems rude not to.
‘Where do you hurt?’
I roll my eyes. ‘All over.’
‘Where especially?’
‘My head. My elbow.’ The bees of pain buzz in agreement. ‘And my hip.’
‘All a result of your fall,’ she explains. ‘You have a nasty cut on the back of your head, that needed gluing up. And you’ve sprained your elbow and bruised your pelvis.’
She stands back from me a little and her facial expression shifts, becomes considerably more serious. ‘Your husband is outside, asking to see you. Given your injuries, I thought it best to find out how you feel about him being here.’
I get her drift. She thinks he beat me up. ‘Danny didn’t assault me. We had an argument in the shower together. I slipped, that’s all.’
Her face says she doesn’t believe me.
‘Honestly, I slipped.’
‘We see a lot of people who slipped,’ she observes, pointedly.
There’s a knock on the door and Danny sticks his head hopefully through the gap. ‘Hiya.’
‘It’s okay,’ I say to the nurse.
‘You can come in,’ she tells him.
Danny walks straight over to me. ‘How you feelin’?’
‘Not so good,’ I reply.
‘The consultant will be here in a minute,’ says the nurse, reassuringly. ‘Once he’s been through your notes and talked to you about the X-rays and MRI scan, we’ll give you some pain relief.’ She touches a red cord dangling at the edge of my sight. ‘Pull this if you want anything. I’ll be right outside.’
‘Thanks.’
I watch Danny, watching her leave. The door closes behind her. There’s an opportunity to be seized here. He wants to talk. And so do I. The uneaten French dinner has left much for us to chew over.
‘Paula, there’s somethin’ I want to say.’
He’s beaten me to it. The fall has dulled my reflexes. I am injured prey.
‘Please, Danny, nothing heavy. My head feels like someone’s poured hot lead in it.’
‘It’s not heavy. Just the opposite.’
He’s lying. I know he is. I shut my eyes and run for the darkness, back to the Tuscan countryside, the pool and safety of the sun lounger.
‘I’m sorry, babe, I really am.’
I see the blue water rippling. Feel the heat of the sun on my back. My fingers flutter in the virgin white holiday sand.
‘Paula.’
Danny’s hand touches the needle in my vein. Goose bumps run up my arm. All the way to the swarming bees in my head and shoulders.
I don’t want to open my eyes, but I do.
Danny looks pitiful. His face full of guilt and uncertainty. He knows that if he’d only stayed downstairs in the kitchen, then the worst thing that might have happened would have been an argument over the fine dinner he’d been cooking.
‘I didn’t mean to hurt you, babe. You just fell.’ He screws up his eyes and clenches his fists.
I recognise the rage building in him. Watch him force it down into the dungeons of his soul.
Danny reaches for me again. ‘I was going to ask you somethin’ over dinner. I’d planned everythin’.’ He struggles with the words. ‘I had this big thing – a really big thing to ask you.’
‘What was that?’
He smiles hopefully. ‘I thought we could go back to Gretna. Go and renew our vows.’
I am dumbstruck.
‘You loved Gretna, didn’t you?’
‘What d’you think, Paula?’ He strokes my bandaged wrist. ‘You always said Gretna was the best time of our lives. Let’s go back there and start again.’
30
Danny
Gretna is my trump card.
I know it.
It’s the proverbial ace in the hole. Paula’s face right now is a picture. The idea of renewin’ our vows is so romantic, she’s speechless.
‘So, what d’you say?’ I give her my killer smile. ‘Paula Smith, will you marry me – again?’
‘Danny—’
‘I don’t mean we rough it again. No cheap bed ’n’ breakfast this time, babe. We’ll take the bridal suite in the best five-star we can find.’
‘Danny—’
‘And we’ll be chauffeured everywhere. Not in a tatty taxi but a spankin’ new Roller, with white ribbons runnin’ from the roof right down to that winged bird on the bonnet. It’ll be mint.’
She shuts her eyes and I know she’s picturin’ it.
The door opens behind me. In swans a small Indian bloke. He has a greasy bald head, little black eyes and one of those white coats what says he’s a doctor or such like. Behind him traipse a bunch of young hangers-on, kitted out with digital notebooks and danglin’ stethoscopes.
‘Hello, Paula,’ he says. ‘I am Mr Herindi, your consultant.’
I stand to catch his attention. ‘I’m her husband.’
‘Then I will talk to you after I have seen my patient.’ He raises thick eyebrows to ward me off. ‘First, though, we need privacy, so please wait outside.’
‘If it’s okay with you, I’d like to stay.’
‘Outside would be better.’ He gives me the kind of stare that in other circumstances would earn him a swift right-hander.
Paula isn’t askin’ me to stay. She’s not even lookin’ at me.
I shrug and walk out.
But I go slowly, like a star footballer, pissed at being subbed.
They shut the door behind me, then pull down the blinds. Well, balls to them. They’d better do a good job after all this fuss. I stand close to the door, but I can’t hear a thing, so I decide to go to the toilets to kill time.
I take a leak, then wash my face as well as my hands. I do that sometimes, just to freshen up and feel more alert. The guy in the mirror seems the same to me as the one who married Paula. I just wish he seemed the same to her.
I wonder if we met now, say in a pub, would she fancy me?
Would I want her to?
If we knew what each other were like, would either of us want to build a life together?
I would.
Yeah, I would. Paula’s worth it. Sure, she’s a pain in the arse, but I love the bones off her. I mean, all the divorce paper stuff, it’s a cry for attention, ain’t it? You know, like when people take an overdose. They don’t mean to kill themselves – they just want to be saved.
That’s Paula.
She needs me to save her.
And I will.
I make my way back to her room. Screwed to the walls are pictures of smilin’ staff, consultants and nurses with their names and job titles underneath. Ours is there. Turns out she’s called Karen Molloy and is a Ward Sister.
I wait outside the room until the whitecoats come driftin’ out.
Herindi makes a beeline for me. ‘Mr Smith, your wife still has concussion following her fall. There is no immediate danger but we need to keep her in for further observation.’
‘What does that mean?’ I fear something worse.
‘It’s routine with head injuries,’ he says reassuringly. ‘The scans showed some swelling to the back of the brain. We must monitor it and be certain that the swelling subsides and there is no bleed.’
‘She needs to rest,’ adds Molloy.
‘Yes, she does,’ stresses the consultant. ‘Rest, sleep and nutrition are now vital for her condition and recovery. It is best if you let her sleep now. Go home and call us in the morning, so we can tell you whether your wife will be coming home, or if we need to keep her another night. If that’s the case, then she may well need you to bring some things in for her.’
I look past him and through the reopened blinds. Paula is lyin’ flat in bed. The covers are pulled up high, almost like a hood over her head. It’s somethin’ she does at home when she’s sick. She tries to curtain off the world. Hide away.
‘Tell me straight, has Paula got some brain damage or somethin’ that’s gonna cripple her?’
‘No. No. Don’t go worrying yourself.’ He takes me by the elbow and leads me away. ‘Paula is making a full recovery. There’s no reason why tomorrow or the day after she shouldn’t go home with you and pick up life as normal.’
Normal.
Now there’s a joke.
If he knew what life was like for Paula and me, he’d never describe it as normal.
Before I know it, I’ve been led into the corridor and doors have closed behind me.
I’ve been shut out.
I want a drink.
Need one so much it hurts.
On the way out, I pass a chapel. I stop. Turn. Walk back and go in. It’s small. Just a few rows of seat. No windows. An altar. A crucifix. I’m not religious. Never have been. I don’t know whether this is Catholic, Anglican, Methodist or whatever. I just know if I stay in here I can’t get to the booze. Won’t get drunk. Won’t mess up the last tiny chance I have of keepin’ Paula and me together.
31
Annie
Let me put the record straight. I didn’t go back to Charlie’s hotel last night. Didn’t have dinner with him. Didn’t sleep with him.
So, this morning, I had the luxury of arriving at work feeling guilt free. I managed to look at him without feeling awkward and I could stare Nisha and Matthews in their prying detective eyes and had nothing to hide.
Except maybe a few regrets.
The truth is, Charlie York is a good-looking man. He’s strong, honest and hard-working. And let’s face it, there are not many of those around in my age group that are unmarried and at the same time bother to give me a second glance, let alone a flirtatious word or two.
Ordinarily, landing Charlie would be quite a catch.
But I’m not in the market to catch anyone. I am nowhere near over the loss of Jack. Maybe never will be.
Fortunately, neither the dashing DI nor Jo Matthews are here at the moment. They’ve just headed out together, chasing up a tip from an informant that Sharon Croft’s handsome son, Ronnie, has surfaced in Nottingham.
Nisha sidles over to my desk, sipping from a plastic bottle of water. ‘Did DI York tell you last night about what the pathologist told him?’
I raise my head from some reports I’ve been reading. ‘No. No, he didn’t.’
‘Well, it’s good news. Hang on, I need my notes for all the medical words. She pulls them from a tray on her desk. ‘He ruled out global brain ischaemia caused by hypotension or hypoglycaemic injury and said Ellison died of a neoplasm, which apparently is a growth in the brain. It was nothing to do with him awaiting medication or drugs, it was just a malignant growth in the brain that could have killed him at any time.’
‘I see why you needed the notes,’ I tease. ‘Those are big medical words, Nisha.’
‘Anyway, we are not to blame. No one’s to blame. Not even Ellison.’
Inevitably, discussing something medical triggers thoughts about Dee. ‘Funny, isn’t it,’ I say distantly, ‘how we can all look perfectly normal, yet inside our bodies, there are all kinds of weird things happening that we’re unaware of, things that could kill us within the next minute, next month or next year.’
Nisha pulls a sour face. ‘Forgive me, boss, but that’s not my idea of funny.’
‘Mine neither.’ I get to my feet and go to one of several marker boards on the wall. ‘While the others are out,
let’s do a round-up of where we are and what we’ve got to go on.’
On the first board, Charlie has laid out photos, names and details of his case – the escaped prisoners –
On the first board, Charlie has laid out photos, names and details of his case – the escaped prisoners – COLIN RICHARDSON AND CALLUM WATERS. Lines from their mugshots extend to the names RONNIE and SHARON CROFT with the notations ASSISTED IN ESCAPE? – HARBOURING KNOWN CRIMINALS. A further line extends to a photo of ANDY ELLISON with the notation ABDUCTED BY RICHARDSON/WATERS and then to the name ASHLEYE CREWE, beneath which are the remarks MISSING/CERTIFIED DEAD.
My attention drifts to an adjacent board. One dedicated to my case.
ASHLEY CREWE, SON OF DOROTHY (DECEASED) AND FREDDY, YOUNGER BROTHER OF RAURIE AND KIERAN. KIERAN – SERVING TIME FOR MANSLAUGHTER. RAURIE – MD OF MEDIUM-SIZED BUSINESS.
I can add some details.’ Nisha picks up a blue marker pen. ‘Kieran Crewe is being held at Full Sutton. The same nick Waters and Richardson escaped from. They were together on F wing.’
‘I know. I’ve spoken to the governor and asked that Kieran has no contact with Waters, not until I’ve been up and interviewed him.’
‘You want me to come?’
‘No. There’s too much else to get through. Liaise with Charlie and Jo on their case and chase up the actions we started before I went AWOL at Sharon Croft’s.’
‘Will do. Before I forget, yesterday, DI York said the NCA thought Callum Waters might be part of the Appleton gang.’
‘Appleton?’
‘They’re a big Romany family, run many of the drug syndicates up in the North West.’
‘Okay. A couple of questions, then,’ I say, thinking out loud. ‘Is there a link between Ashley Crewe and Waters or the Appletons?’
‘I’ll ask Jo. She didn’t mention one.’
‘And where have we got with regards to talking to Crewe’s family and his old classmates?’
‘We’ve spoken to all the teaching staff at Crewe’s former school, Lawndale, and the consensus is that Ashley used to be very unpopular.’
‘How so?’
‘He was a bully. And was repeatedly in trouble for fighting and stealing.’
Dead and Gone: A Gripping Thriller With a Shocking Twist Page 10
