by Rebecca Tope
She allowed her mind to return to the burning issue of the last few days. It swelled inside her, like a bright pink rosebud, secret and joyful. At the same time, she knew that this rising excitement would only make the eventual disappointment worse. The conflicting feelings were almost unbearable – all the more so for being repeated every two or three months. She preferred it when her period came early, before she’d even had a chance to start making assumptions. All she could do now was wait, try to keep busy and encourage time to pass as swiftly as it possibly could.
She reached the shop in five minutes. Scarcely pausing to look, she stepped into the road, trusting her ears to tell her that it was all clear. The Ford Fiesta came racing towards her at a rate far in excess of the speed limit, and Karen only saw it in the final second, just before it reached her. She did not recognise the woman behind the wheel, only saw the panic and horror on her face, as she tried to veer away from the spot where Karen stood.
She almost succeeded. The front of the car missed Karen by two or three inches, but the back was already skidding sideways, and the rear wheel arch gave Karen’s pelvis a heavy blow as it careered across the road in a tight arc, the driver continuing to pull the steering wheel down to the right and slamming hard on the brake pedal. The wet street, the locked brakes, the excessive burden on the power steering combined to send the car smashing explosively into the front of the electronics shop next to Alldays. The presence of a protective metal grid, designed to prevent ram-raiding, ensured that the front of the car was comprehensively shredded. Half sitting, half lying on the wet pavement, Karen heard the noise through a comfortably detached mist. I’ll get up in a minute, she said to herself. Everything’s going to be all right.
And then, quite gradually, people appeared. A woman with ginger hair leant over her with an expression of excited interest on her face. ‘You don’t look too bad,’ she said, encouragingly. ‘You don’t seem to be bleeding anywhere.’
A man behind her said, ‘You mustn’t try to get up. There’ll soon be an ambulance.’ The first stabs of alarm began then. She looked across the street at the car.
‘It was all my fault,’ she remembered. ‘Jesus – what have I done?’
Nobody answered. There was a much larger crowd gathering around the car. A couple of men were pulling at the driver’s door. She heard the words ‘air bag’ which filled her with relief. It was a new car, expensive-looking. Surely the driver would have been safeguarded by the latest technologies.
It was ridiculously comfortable on the hard, wet ground, but also embarrassing. Shouldn’t she make some effort to get up? In preparation, she began to pull her feet around, to act as leverage. A very decided pain happened, low down at the front, where the car had struck her. She put a cautious hand to the place. And then, like a hot poker pushing into her brain, she remembered. How could it have taken so long? ‘No,’ she sighed, giving in to the wave of misery and fear which bombarded her, all in a moment. Tears began to pour down her face.
‘Shock,’ murmured the ginger-haired woman, who was loyally remaining at her post. The onlookers began to cast impatient glances up and down the road. If the ambulance didn’t come soon, they might have to do something.
‘Oh, look – they’ve got her out,’ came a voice. ‘She looks all right.’ Karen grudgingly followed the general gaze, and saw a dark-haired, stocky woman emerge from the shattered car. She stood surrounded by helpers, somehow larger than any of them, big with the aura of survival against the odds. Then she looked across the street and her gaze fell on Karen. Slowly, she walked towards her, people fluttering disapprovingly, but making no attempt to prevent her. ‘This is all your fault, you know,’ she said in a flat tone. ‘You stepped out in front of me.’
Karen closed her eyes. You weren’t supposed to admit responsibility for an accident. Something about insurance. And who had come off worst, anyway? Something hot broke through the despair.
‘You were going much too fast,’ she said loudly, accusingly. ‘And now I’m going to lose my baby.’
Horrified intakes of breath all round and a full set of reproachful stares at the woman. After all, she was the aggressor, on every level. The mangled car was only a thing, and was bound to be insured.
An ambulance siren sounded in the distance. And from the other direction, with no fanfare, came a police car. In no time there were uniforms, notebooks, questions. Gentle questions, which made Karen feel weak and childish. She cried again. Someone asked for her phone number and she remembered Drew for the first time. She gave her name, and asked them to phone him. The dark-haired woman driver heard her, and gave a shriek. ‘You’re Drew’s wife?’ she cried. ‘My God!’
Karen looked at her. ‘Who are you?’ she said, with a frown.
‘His boss. Daphne Plant.’ Then she seemed to regret having given herself away, and put a hand over her mouth.
‘But – you’re supposed to be at the hospital,’ said Karen, thickly. ‘He’s at home on call because you said you were going visiting.’
‘Change of plan,’ Daphne muttered. ‘So what’s all this about a baby?’
‘If you don’t mind, madam,’ interposed an ambulance man, ‘I think we should get this lady to hospital as soon as we can. I’m sure you can catch up with her news later.’
Then they wrapped Karen in a warm red blanket and lifted her onto a stretcher, then into the ambulance and away. Every now and then she pressed a hand to where it hurt, assessing the damage. There was no sensation of bleeding. As the paramedics took her blood pressure and pulse, the lack of alarm on their faces was reassuring. They gently manipulated each leg, feeling the hip joints as they did so. Finally one said, ‘I don’t think anything’s broken. It seems you’ve been very lucky.’
‘But the baby?’ she whispered.
‘How many weeks are you?’ he asked.
At this, she grew hot and embarrassed. How could she have mentioned something which was still only a slowly forming hope? She shook her head. ‘It hasn’t been confirmed yet,’ she admitted. ‘It might be a false alarm.’
His face cleared even further. ‘In that case, we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed, won’t we.’
She lay back, and secretly crossed the fingers on both hands, under the red blanket.
The police desk was quiet as the night shift came on duty. The changeover needed no special briefing. The new officer glanced down the list of calls for the day, and paused at the brief account of Daphne Plant’s car crash. ‘That’s the undertaker, isn’t it? That’ll make a good story for the Chronicle.’ This was the only real excitement of the day. There had been one break-in, one missing child, found within twenty minutes, and three stray dogs reported, to complete the list. ‘Just one mad, hectic whirl,’ he commented. ‘Hotbed of crime, is Bradbourne.’
‘Don’t tempt fate,’ advised his departing colleague. ‘If you’re not careful, you’ll be dealing with serial rape, multiple pile-ups and the mysterious deaths of a whole houseful of people, all before midnight.’
‘That’ll be the day. This place is still living in the nineteen-fifties. I’ll have finished this by morning, you see.’ He held up a large paperback.
‘Good luck to you, then,’ was the parting comment.
The phone rang fifteen minutes later. ‘Control room here,’ came the broad-vowelled voice of the woman who fielded all police calls. ‘We’ve got something for you. Alarm ringing at Plant’s Funeral Director, in East Street, and the contact number isn’t answering. Funny, that. They’re supposed to be on call round the clock.’
‘I know why that is. Miss Plant smashed her car up this afternoon. She’s probably still in Casualty. We’ll send somebody over.’
‘Thanks. Sounds as if it isn’t her day.’
When they arrived at Plant’s, the police found nothing suspicious, apart from a slightly open window, which appeared to have been carelessly left unfastened. They looked at each other warily.
‘Should we open up and have a look round, do
you think?’ asked one of them.
The response was immediate. ‘Nah! What’s the point? Who’s going to nick anything from an undertaker? The office looks okay – see.’ He shone his torch through the office window, to reveal a tidy desk, a placid computer and not a hint of disturbance.
‘That’s what I hoped you’d say. You reckon we can go, then?’
‘I do. We wouldn’t know what to look for, anyway. Unless some nutter’s decided to steal a dead body, and I somehow don’t think that’s very likely. One thing’s sure – a corpse isn’t going to care, so whatever’s been going on can wait till morning. We’ll get one of the cars to patrol for a bit, keep an eye out, and leave it at that. Right?’
‘Right.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
Monday
Drew had stayed at the hospital until they threw him out at ten. Karen had been sedated, examined cautiously, and not given any X-rays. There seemed to be no suspicion that her pelvis was broken, for which he was tearfully grateful. On her uncovered body, the still-burgeoning bruise spread from hipbone to hipbone, and navel to pubis, a terrible shade of purplish red that looked inhuman. The thought of a tiny cluster of new fetal cells surviving inside such damage was impossible, despite the assurances of the doctor.
‘If she is pregnant,’ the young woman said, ‘there’s every chance that it’ll be okay. It’s almost too small to be seen by the naked eye – it can hide in a safe little fold of flesh, deep inside, and never notice a knock or two.’
Karen and Drew looked at each other and gave wan smiles. The image conjured by the words was enticing. They considered their hypothetical little one, nestling invisibly somewhere safe behind the bruise.
‘But she’ll be very stiff for a week or two,’ the doctor went on. ‘The bruising is severe, by any standards. We’ll find some arnica, and keep her in bed for a day or so.’
‘Arnica!’ Drew was surprised.
‘It’s safe, cheap and very effective,’ nodded the doctor. ‘We’ve got very progressive lately, and returned to the ways of the wise women. They used arnica in the Dark Ages. Before that, even. I think the Romans used it.’
Karen found the herbal treatment cool and soothing, and they watched some of the redness abating. ‘Very effective,’ said Drew approvingly and gave her a long kiss. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he promised.
Monday morning brought a number of dilemmas as well as another severe shock. He had deserted his post at the telephone, the previous afternoon, without a second thought, when the hospital phoned him about Karen. When he heard that it was his own boss who had crashed into Karen, he was simultaneously angry and embarrassed. Attempts to phone Daphne when he got home had been in vain: he supposed that the calls were still being directed to him, and would be until someone turned up in the morning to divert them back to the office.
He had no real excuse to miss a full day at work. Karen wouldn’t need clothes or make-up until they discharged her. There was a funeral at midday which would require him as a bearer, as well as the delivery of the Lapsford coffin to Primrose Close late in the afternoon. If Daphne was off work suffering delayed effects from her accident, then it would be chaotic enough without Drew going absent as well.
He knew there was a procedure for diverting telephone calls – some push-buttoned code which Sid and Pat and the others mainly understood, but which nobody had explained to him. With some trepidation, he drove as quickly as he could from home to work, and made immediately for the office. Olga was already there, the phone to her ear. This alone brought some relief. There was no sign of Daphne, for which he felt even more thankful.
‘Are the phones okay?’ he asked Olga as soon as she finished her call. She gave him a frowning look, her large brown eyes full of puzzlement.
‘What’s been happening?’ she said. ‘Daphne phoned me just now and told me she wouldn’t be in until lunchtime. She sounded a bit distracted and said you’d taken the phones yesterday. Sid isn’t in yet, either. And to top everything, the burglar alarm went off in the night and the police were called out.’ The phone rang, interrupting her, and she answered it.
‘Oh dear, I am sorry,’ she said, after a few moments. ‘I’m afraid we’ve had a few problems overnight … I’ll make sure someone’s there right away … Yes, I know. I really do apologise.’ She turned back to Drew. ‘That was Heathlands Nursing Home. They called us at nine last night and got no reply. Said they almost decided to use a Woodingleigh undertaker.’ She shuddered dramatically. ‘Perish the thought.’
‘Karen’s in hospital,’ Drew burst out. ‘She was hit by a car yesterday afternoon – and guess who was driving it.’
Olga shook her head reproachfully. ‘How can I possibly guess?’ she asked in her usual solemn manner.
‘Daphne, that’s who,’ he told her. ‘Karen’s not badly hurt, but it was a terrible shock.’
‘It must have been. How extraordinary! Is that why Daphne’s not here this morning? Was she hurt at all?’
‘I have no idea where she is,’ he said. ‘But her car’s a write-off. It smashed into the front of a shop that had an anti-theft barrier across it. Very solid, by the sound of it.’
‘Well you and Vince had better get off to Heathlands,’ she dismissed him. ‘We can’t keep them waiting any longer. Let me just type up the slip for you.’
The removal was carried out efficiently, the body stiff by this time, and heavy; the other inmates of the nursing home distracted by a loud singsong in the dayroom while the staff ushered the undertakers out by a side door as unobtrusively as possible. Drew wondered what the point of the secrecy was. Would poor old Mrs Dunmow simply drop out of everyone’s awareness now, as if she’d never existed? He had not yet shaken off the sense of something Stalinist about this kind of institutional death – a person deleted overnight, no questions asked.
In the mortuary, there was still no sign of Sid. Vince opened the door of the chiller and pulled out a tray. Drew went to the foot end of the newcomer and prepared to lift her onto the tray; as he did so, he automatically glanced down.
‘Hey!’ he yelped. ‘Where’s the dog?’
Vince almost dropped Mrs Dunmow’s head as Drew failed to take his share of the weight. ‘It was here,’ Drew continued, bending to examine the whole length of the bottom tray.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ Vince grunted. ‘Get this one in first, will you?’
Impatiently Drew thrust the new corpse onto its rack and resumed his search for Cassie’s body. It was gloomy inside the fridge and the dog was, after all, small. Ignoring Vince’s spluttered protests, he hoisted himself up, one foot on the lowest shelf, and peered into the recesses of the fridge. ‘She’s definitely not here,’ he announced. ‘Somebody’s taken her!’
There was nowhere in the mortuary a dead dog could have been hidden. And who would have done such a thing, even as a joke? Drew stared frantically at Vince. ‘Someone’s stolen it,’ he shouted angrily. Then he remembered what Olga had told him. ‘The alarm went off in the night. That must have been it. Someone broke in and took Cassie away.’
Vince grinned slowly, then hooted a deep guffaw. ‘Just one bloody farce after another, this place,’ he said cheerfully. ‘And I always said there was nothing anyone’d want to steal at an undertaker’s. Just shows how wrong you can be.’
‘But …’ Drew was desperate. Any idea that he was alone in his suspicions, investigating a crime that nobody else would acknowledge, had long evaporated. Now he was a puny meddler in something much bigger than he was, something dangerous. Nothing was what it seemed. He forced himself to think. The disappearance of the dog’s body could mean a dozen different things, ranging from an objection on principle to an animal sharing a human coffin on the one hand to a cunning removal of vital evidence on the other.
Who knew it had been there? Everyone at Plant’s, for a start, plus the whole Lapsford family and whoever they might have told. The two old women next door, who had seen him take Cassie away, possibly the people at Jim’s
printworks. Any number of people, in fact.
‘You okay?’ Vince asked curiously. ‘Something I ought to know about?’
Drew regarded him narrowly. Vince had acted innocent from the start, bluffly dismissive of anything suspicious. Drew wondered now how much he’d been deceived. If he’d been forced to point a finger at any of his colleagues, it would have been Sid, with his startled reactions and solitary habits. But Vince had known Sid for years and would probably protect him if the need arose. Drew felt as if he’d walked into a bog and his feet were slowly sinking into clinging black mud.
The associations formed slowly. ‘You know why Sid’s not here, don’t you?’ he said.
‘Course I do,’ came the ready answer. ‘His girl’s bloke’s hanged himself – not so funny, that. Specially since Sid was one of the chaps called out to collect him. The kind of thing we all dread.’
‘Did Sid like him? I got the impression it was otherwise from what he said the other day.’
‘That’s not the point, is it? It’s the shock. Bound to cause trouble in the family, a thing like that. But he’ll be in soon, you’ll see. He’s not one to let us down when he’s needed.’
Drew felt a strong desire to go somewhere quiet and have a good think. It couldn’t be as complicated as it seemed. The answers must surely lie in working out what everyone’s basic motives were, and that was something he’d always imagined he was good at – understanding people. ‘Yeah,’ he nodded at Vince. ‘I expect you’re right.’
Karen was stiff, as the doctor had predicted, but she was also deliriously happy. When there had been no overnight bleeding or undue pain, the ward sister had suggested they do a pregnancy test. ‘You’re late enough now to make it worth a try,’ she said. Together they had applied the drop of urine to the magic scrap of chemically-enhanced cardboard, and within seconds a blue line was clearly visible. When Karen cried, the sister had given her a hug. ‘Congratulations,’ she said.
