Escaping Life

by Michelle Muckley

  As he walked into the station, the humidity rose and he got that same feeling as stepping off an air-conditioned aeroplane and being hit by a tropical wall of heat, and a layer of sweat formed immediately on his brow. He made his way down the corridors, as police officers of lower seniority nodded their heads towards him, accompanied by a curt ‘morning Detective.’ He arrived at the incident room to find his team of detectives hanging around drinking coffee and with their feet on the desks. Like a collection of jack in the boxes they sprang into action, straightening themselves up like a bunch of sloppy students caught slacking off by the teacher.

  “Morning Boss.” DC Nathan Gibb was the only one paying any attention or doing any work. He was the newest of the bunch and this was his first proper investigation and only his second week out of uniform.

  “Which one of you lazy bastards is gonna make me a coffee?” He didn’t look up as he walked through the room and up the small corridor to where his office was located. He could hear the fuss and commotion that his request had provoked, and knew all fingers would be pointing at Gibb. Jack was just out of the main hub of things, but close enough to hear what was going on.

  “Here you go Boss.” DC Gibb placed a cup of coffee down on the desk, his voice casual enough to sound, he thought, like he wasn’t trying too hard. He spilled a drop and it formed a wet ring underneath the mug, slowly seeping into the papers underneath it. Jack grabbed a tissue from his inside pocket and dabbed it at the ring, his actions jumpy and laced with annoyance at Gibb’s over enthusiasm. They could hear the mobile phone in Jack Fraser’s pocket ringing. As he picked up the vibrating phone, he could see it was Kate’s name, and he felt as sure as anything that pang of guilt that he promised himself he would deal with today. Jack Fraser looked up at Gibb, who was hopelessly hanging around looking for a way to undo the last two minutes of his life and take back the coffee stained papers.

  “I need to take this call,” he said, as he motioned to the phone, signalling that he wanted some privacy. “Do you think the dead woman’s gonna identify herself?” DC Gibb left the room, muttering an apology that Jack Fraser didn’t really hear. He was already answering the phone, and trying to think of the right words.

  “You called late last night. I was out. What did you want?” There was no pleasant ‘Good morning’, no ‘How did you sleep?’ He wouldn’t have wanted to tell her, even if she’d asked.

  “I was just wondering if you were free? If perhaps you would have come over?” The pissed off sigh that he could hear on the other end of the phone was enough to make him realise that what he had just said didn’t sound that good. No call all week and then a late night Sunday telephone call only sounded like one thing. Roxanne didn’t have a problem with that, but when she left his house it was with forty quid tucked inside her bra. This kind of telephone call to your girlfriend wasn’t permitted. Not by Kate at least.

  “Is that what I am to you Jack? A late night fuck buddy?” When she spoke like this, in her upper class southern accent, it always turned him on. The words and the voice were such a contrast. “If you only want to see me at that time of night, don’t bother calling me.” She had a point, he realised.

  “No, no.” He wanted to sound convincing. “I wanted to see you. I wanted to spend time with you. I’m sorry it was such a busy week.” This at least was true; he had missed her the last week. He had had been so caught up with the unidentified dead woman lying in his morgue, that he hadn’t had any time for her. He was thinking on his feet. “I’ll meet you tonight, if you can?”

  “I don’t know, I’ll let you know,” and before he could answer, she had already hung up the phone. He placed the phone down on the desk and emptied the cigarettes from his pocket and set them down next to it. He took a big glug of his coffee, and walked back into the incident room. They were all still sat doing nothing.

  “Right, you,” Jack pointed, “get on the psyche report. And you speak with the lab to see if we’ve got any forensics back yet”. Addressing Gibb, who was alert and ready for instruction, “Give this guy down in Wellbeck a call. There was a woman who was in a car accident three or four years ago. Rebecca something ......Jackson, I think. Find out if there is any way that our dead could be her.” He handed Gibb a note of paper with the name and number of the officer that Elizabeth had given him the night before. “Boys, we’ve got a dead body in our morgue, and I want to know who she is and how she got there. Get on it.”

  Nine

  After kicking the butts of his squad, he wanted to get out of the office. Walking into that office again today and seeing that face, framed by blonde hair and with dead green eyes staring vacuously back at him was just a constant reminder that he hadn’t got anywhere with the case. He had already spent a week fending off television and newspaper interviews with the press, and they had released a few details about a body being found, but without the identity of the woman known, they couldn’t get any further. He had put all his eggs into the laboratory basket, hoping that if he could find some DNA he could run it through the database and find a match somewhere. At least that would give him a start. Right now, his main efforts had to be on trying to find out what this woman had been doing here in the first place, and the best place he knew to find answers to that was the most populated place closest to Lyme beach. Somebody had to have seen her.

  As he drove his Explorer into the busy Chesterwood high street, he scanned the road for somewhere to park. He knew coming out to interview random people was a long shot, and way below his pay grade, but he couldn’t stand being cooped up in that office. Plus, he knew his detective skills were sharp. He could find details that might pass other people by. He had seen it before, time after time. He could recall one case when all he had found was a grocer who remembered seeing a dark haired guy, tall and tanned run past his shop, desperately looking over his shoulder a week or so before. He had let it go, thinking that the guy looked more than able to handle himself, whatever it was that he had got involved in. Coming in to identify the dark haired stranger had put the man who his girlfriend testified, was at home with her, in the location of the mugging that had occurred in the stairwell of the car park on the same day within the same hour. His positive identification had saved the case.

  He pulled his car up into a space, parked so askew that it looked like he had mounted the side of a mountain using all of the car’s off-road ability, but it had been a long time since he had driven this thing like that. Grabbing his jacket from the passenger seat, he slammed the door shut. It was too hot for his jacket, but he wore it anyway, such was the ease at having his cigarettes, phone and notepad immediately to hand. He was trying to give up smoking, but he couldn’t stand the thought of not having a pack in his pocket. It was his ‘just in case pack’. He needed to know that his ‘crutch’ was there and if it wasn’t, he knew the moment would come when he would reach for their addictive chemical support, and when a frantic search of his pocket proved fruitless he would drop everything to seek them out and smoke like he hadn’t smoked all year. Knowing that they were there was sometimes enough. He had given up before, but a little over twelve months ago he had started again. Kate had been nagging him ever since to give up. That wasn’t the crutch that he needed, or so she said.

  The best places to start were the convenience stores, where people bustled in and out every couple of days; shops with heavy traffic. The people who run these stores have an eye for faces and would remember their customers: it was part of the service in shops like this, even in Chesterwood. He passed through the four that he could think of, always starting out with the same line of questioning. Most people in the town had heard about the body now; people knew somebody had been found. In fact, people had been slowly filtering past the beach, up to the police line in order to get a glimpse of the location where a mysterious dead body had been discovered. The lonely beach comber had also become an unwilling local celebrity, with news agencies and nosey parkers all trying to get access to him in order to discover the detail
s. Nobody knew the details yet, and ‘that’s how it will stay, nosey little bastards’, Jack Fraser thought to himself. He bustled into the final store, past the young mothers laden with shopping bags, and shifty looking groups of teenagers who huddled in groups in the quieter aisles waiting for an opportunity to fill their pockets. The shop keeper was understandably preoccupied with these young troublemakers, knowing full well that his magazine shelves where about to be ripped off again. He paid no attention to the tall and still handsome police detective, despite the dark circles underneath his eyes and wrinkles that cut deep into his forehead as he walked into the shop. Immediately, Jack Fraser knew what was going down. He glanced over at the teenagers in the large domed mirror above the shop counter. They couldn’t have been more than about fourteen years old. He knew how to diffuse this situation.

  “Police!” he bellowed in his grainiest, throatiest voice. “FREEZE!” There was a silence in the shop, an immediate and blunt silence, interrupted only by the shuffling of panic that was confined to the magazine aisle. Even the innocent dropped their shopping baskets wondering how they had inadvertently broken the law. The teenagers were still shuffling about as he took slow and deliberately placed steps towards the group, like a modern day Clint Eastwood cowboy whose boots would resonate on the dusty wooden floor as he squared up to his next unsuspecting victim, in the movies that he remembered watching with his father as a child. The sound of panic was escalating, growing in intensity, the teenagers not yet backed up by enough confidence to face this situation off. He walked slowly towards the group, and stood at the end of the aisle, bringing his suspects into view.

  “Good morning boys”, he growled, more than a little sarcastically. He pulled out his ID card, flicking open the small black wallet and holding it out in front of him. They tried to look innocent as their eyes fixed on the shiny silver badge. They could see the red lettering; ‘DETECTIVE’. They stood still, just like when the head teacher had caught them rummaging in the chemistry cupboards at school trying to find the blocks of sodium that they would have thrown into the river and stood back to admire the flame like regular little fire starters, as it skittered about the surface of the water. They hadn’t managed to find them in time, but today they had no such luck. They were too far down the line this time; the crime was halfway to completion. In fact, there was already a magazine about to slip right out from underneath one of the boys’ T shirts. Jack Fraser stood, towering above the sweaty-faced boy, his acne disguised only by his rosy red cheeks. It could have been from heat or embarrassment. “So what have we got here?” Jack Fraser snatched the magazine out from underneath sweaty boy’s T-shirt. The rest of the shoppers had already relaxed, reassuming their innocence and enjoying the show. Those who couldn’t already see, had repositioned themselves to get a closer look at the three terrified rabbits, their wide eyes caught in the headlights.

  “I was gonna pay for it!” Jack Fraser wondered if sweaty boy actually expected him to believe him.

  “Really?” he questioned slowly, nodding his head, “in which case, show me your money.” The other two boys were becoming fidgety, fuelled by the overwhelming urge to bolt, which was desperately willing them to run. Jack Fraser was desperate for one of them to make a move too. Even after all of his years as an officer, he still took so much pleasure in these small incidents; this was fun for him. Knowing full well that he hadn’t any money in his pockets, they boy looked helpless. Jack could see the thoughts running through the boy’s brain as clearly as if he were at the cinema watching them unfold on the screen: the police cell, the visit from a lawyer, the inquisition, and then worst of all, the arrival of his parents. Jack Fraser could have almost felt sorry for him. Jack Fraser could see he was either about to cry, or confess. Or both.

  “I’m sorry, sir. I won’t do it again.” Jack Fraser had been quietly rolling up the magazine. Raising it up, he swiped each of them lightly on the side of the head.

  “Get out of here! Don’t let me see your face around here again!” They were running away too fast to make the corner of the aisle, and thus in their efforts to escape the iron grip of the police, sent a small display stand tipping over and the rest of the magazines from inside their shirts tumbling to the ground. As it spun on the ground, spewing its contents across the floor, the boys ran out of the shop. Jack picked up the stand, cradling the last few items still clinging to it. The shopkeeper hurried over to him, a friendly faced Sikh man, with a large white beard and dark red turban.

  “Thank you so much officer. Thank you,” the shopkeeper offered.

  “No problem,” Jack’s gravelly voice now softer. “Sorry about the mess though.” Together they cleared up the display and shuffled together the magazines.

  “Now officer, how can I thank you? You want cigarettes? Newspaper? Coffee? We have good coffee.” He pointed to a small counter-top machine, the type with a single nozzle that, depending on your selection, could dispense tea, coffee, hot chocolate or chicken soup. He had had the chicken soup before from a similar machine. It had tasted like stock water with dried up bits of vegetable in it, and had burned the roof of his mouth after he’d drunk it too quickly.

  “Information,” he said as he once again flicked open the ID badge, before sliding it back into his inside pocket. You must have heard about the woman’s body that was found on the nearby Lyme beach?” The shopkeeper nodded. “Wondering if you remember anything strange the week before. Any strange sightings? Strange customers?” The shopkeeper thought hard, as he raised his head in the air. It must have been 30 degrees in the sticky little shop. Jack Fraser wondered how hot he must be underneath that long white pyjama ensemble and heavy looking turban. From his thick accent, Jack assumed that the shopkeeper must be a first generation immigrant. He must have endured thirty summers of wet British weather now, and yet still somehow seemed untroubled by the overpowering heat. The shopkeeper looked Jack Fraser straight in the eye.

  “There was one strange woman, about thirty-five, I would say. She was wearing very old looking clothes. Like clothes I can remember from when I first came to England. Not your modern day things that one sees ladies wearing nowadays. Very early one Sunday, couple of weeks ago. About four o’clock. She was here wanting to buy cigarettes. I gave her a pack and she went on her way. I thought perhaps she was in trouble.” Jack Fraser was pretty sure that the last bit of information was pure embellishment. Decoration for his story. But the rest of the information - now that was interesting.

  “Can you describe her to me? What was she wearing?” Jack Fraser listened intently as the shopkeeper described her clothes: an old brown dress; funny white necklace that looked like bones. This sounded like the dead woman. This sounded like the face he couldn’t get out of his mind.

  “You’ll take a coffee? I must thank you with a gift.” He was already placing the cup under the nozzle of the table-top machine. They watched as a stream of water gurgled out of the machine, and then the hot thick black liquid, followed by a splash of milk. The shopkeeper handed Jack Fraser the coffee. “There you go, detective. You are welcome anytime.” The small queue of customers had grown impatient at the time dedicated to the overdressed cop, and Jack could hear their impatient sighs and the shuffling of feet as they grew hot and bothered behind him. They wanted him to take the coffee and get the hell out of there. He thanked the shopkeeper as he mopped his brow with a tissue found in his pocket, and he was glad to get back out into the sunshine where there was at least a light breeze. If this was the woman, he thought, she had been in Chesterwood at four in the morning on the day she died. He set the coffee down between his feet on the pavement and took out his black notepad. He scribbled down the shopkeeper’s words because, based on the description of the clothing, this was his first positive sighting when the woman was still alive. He had something. He felt the vibration of his phone in his pocket, and he grappled inside. It was Gibb.

  “What you got for me?”

  “Boss, I called down to Wellbeck, spoke to your man do
wn there. He knew about the accident with Rebecca Jackson. Fourth of April, two thousand and six.” This was how Gibb spoke. He gave all the details. It was as if he assumed all conversations previously had been forgotten. He hadn’t yet learned to be concise. “There was nothing left of that car.” ‘There was nothing left of that car’. He replayed the words in his head, and he immediately reached for a cigarette. It was difficult to light as the gentle summer breeze thwarted his efforts. ‘There was nothing left of that car’. He was silent only for seconds as the words replayed in his head, but it was enough to make Gibb uncomfortable. “Boss, you there?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I hear you. Nothing left,” he said as he finally took in a deep drag of his cigarette.

  “That’s right,” Gibb repeated. “Told me there was no way anybody was getting out of that car alive. It was completely burnt out.”

  “Yeah, I got it already.” He didn’t want the details. He could imagine them clearly enough. The image of a still burning car was etched into his own mind, but it wasn’t Rebecca Jackson’s. “Good, scrub her off the list. Anything from the lab?”

  “No, still waiting Boss. Hobbs called ‘em, said another day or so.”

  “Two more fucking days? Unbelievable!” He had hung up the phone before Gibb had the chance to reply. He walked his way slowly through the streets, sucking hard on his cigarette. He was glad they didn’t have to follow up this woman in the car crash anymore. He could close that chapter. He didn’t want to think about smashed- in windows. He didn’t want to taste the petrol fumes in his mouth again, or feel the heat from the flames against his skin. He didn’t want to be pulled out of a smashed- up car listening as the crew screamed: ‘It’s gonna go up! Get him out!’