Alias

by Cari Hunter

  The knock on the door comes far too soon. Pinpricks of stars are just beginning to appear, and the cold air is free of the medicalised stench that clings to everything in the hospital.

  “Alis?”

  I put a name to the voice even before I’ve turned to check it’s really him. Keith Wallace drops a plastic bag on the overbed table and crosses the floor in four big strides. He stands in front of me for a moment and then smothers me in a hug.

  “Hey,” I murmur into his chest. His heart is booming beneath my ear, and he smells of stale tobacco and the gum he chews after every fag. Pushing sixty, he’s unhappily married, with two kids who refuse to leave home, and he’s been a detective with MMP for longer than I’ve been alive.

  All of this hits me so quickly I feel as if I’m compiling a speed-dating profile. Likes: growing dahlias on his allotment, real ale, and fishing. Dislikes: Man United, slugs, and “all that social media shite.”

  “You recognise me, then?” he asks as he releases me.

  “Naw, I just let any old bugger come in here and cop a feel.”

  He hacks out a laugh, and I perch on my bed, leaving him a choice of chairs.

  “Are you on your own?” I ask.

  “No, the DI is chatting to your doc. You know you’re in the shit, don’t you?”

  “Aye,” I say, lapsing into his accent, which is broader than mine.

  His chubby face flushes as red as a post box. He’s on a shitload of blood pressure and cholesterol meds, none of which seem to be working at the moment.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” he says, his voice rising along with his colour. “Fucking off like that? You made me look a right twat. God, Al. Driving over here, I didn’t know whether to kiss you or throttle you, and now to see you all beaten up—”

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper, and I truly am, because I think he’s a good bloke who was probably easy to hoodwink. “I’m so sorry. Have I got you in trouble?”

  “No.” He slumps in the chair and rests his hands atop his belly. It’s rounded and firm enough to support a pint pot without spilling a drop. “Not after the stunt you pulled with your mobile.”

  That draws a complete blank. “Dare I ask?”

  He raises an eyebrow but then seems to realise I’m not having him on. “You really don’t have the foggiest, do you?”

  When I shake my head, he glances at the door. It’s still closed, and there’s no sign of Ansari lurking outside, so he pulls his chair closer to the bed and explains in a rapid undertone. “You used an app to send a text like clockwork every time you were scheduled to check in. Each message was slightly different, and I had no reason to think you weren’t writing them. We weren’t due a face-to-face until tomorrow.” He picks at a greasy splotch of yellow on his tie, reminding me that he also likes a good fry-up. “I caught the tail end of yesterday’s lunchtime news. I wasn’t really listening to it until they mentioned the accident and your alias, and even then I didn’t think anything of it. I mean, what are the odds that it was you, right? But it nagged at me for the rest of the day, so eventually I drove out to your Gorton flat. There was a load of junk mail behind your door, and I found your phone lying by your bed.”

  I nod, avoiding his eyes. I don’t want him to see how troubled I am by the lengths I went to.

  “Was she worth it?” he asks. “Was she worth sending your bloody career up the Swanee?”

  The door opens again, saving me from having to answer, and a smartly dressed Pakistani man walks in. Instinct compels me to scramble to my feet, but he waves off my attempt before my heels have hit the tiles.

  “Evening, sir.” I keep my greeting formal, not daring to downgrade to “boss.” Ansari is far younger than Wallace—mid forties, perhaps?—and he’s giving me that sweaty-armpit, butterflies-in-the-belly feeling that superiors provoke in underlings they rarely encounter.

  “DC Clarke.” He shakes my hand, his grip firm and cool against the damp heat of mine. “How are you feeling?”

  “Better than I was, sir.” I touch my head, drawing his attention to my Frankenstein sutures. “Still muddled up here, but I’m getting some things back.”

  “I was just speaking to Dr. Lewis. She tells me it’s a gradual and rather unpredictable process.”

  “Yes, it’s very frustrating.” I raise my head, ensuring I make good eye contact. “Obviously, I want to help you as much as I can.”

  “I appreciate that,” he says. “Dr. Lewis asked that we keep this brief, given the amount of information you’ve had to process today, and I’ve already spoken at length to DS Pryce, so I just have the one question.”

  He takes a small Dictaphone from his pocket and sets it running. I’m sure there are rules about recording interviews, but I’m too rattled to object.

  “What exactly was the nature of your relationship with Jolanta Starek?” he asks.

  I don’t need to exaggerate the effect this enquiry has on me. I sway on the spot and grab the rail on my bed. Wallace lurches forward, but Ansari’s hand on his arm stops him. I was naive enough to believe I was prepared for this, but as I look at Ansari’s face, at the challenge and barely contained fury bright in his eyes, doubt begins to pepper holes in everything I’ve rehearsed. What if I’m closeted at work? I would guess that I’m out, but to what extent? Immediate colleagues or all the way up to the brass?

  “We…uh…” Tears start to cloud my vision. I’m not only outing myself here, I’m outing Jolanta, and I don’t even think she was gay. Her parents have just lost their daughter; they shouldn’t be forced to read sordid lies in the tabloids as they grieve.

  I wipe my face on a tissue and blow my nose. Ansari makes a point of checking his watch, as if he has somewhere far more important to be than slumming in a hospital room with a detective he can’t wait to scrape from the bottom of his team. I screw up the tissue and shove it into my sling. Fuck him. Someone murdered Jolanta and almost killed me, and it’s possible one of his precious team is involved. If he wants an angle of attack, I have to make sure it’s the wrong one.

  “We were lovers,” I tell him. I bow my head in contrition and improvise slightly. “I didn’t mean for it to happen, sir, any of it. We must have been coming here so we could be together without worrying about being seen. I probably thought no one would miss me if I set my phone to send automatic texts.”

  I can hear the scratch of his pen as he takes notes. He doesn’t write much, and he stops the recorder once he’s sure I’ve finished speaking.

  “I’ll be handing this over to the Serious Misconduct Investigation Unit,” he says. “I strongly suggest you contact your Federation rep.”

  “Yes, sir.” Under normal circumstances, the prospect of a SMIU hearing would be an officer’s worst nightmare, but it’s the least of my current concerns.

  I push off the bed as Ansari stands to leave. Wallace doesn’t dare hug me again, but he knuckles my chin behind Ansari’s back.

  “See you soon, Al,” he says.

  “Yeah, I hope so, mate.”

  I want to go with them, to get home and start searching through my case notes. I can’t do anything while I’m stuck in here, and if the SMIU suspend me, they’ll demand my files. I let five minutes pass and then dodder barefooted to the nurses’ station.

  “Hey, is Dr. Lewis still around?” I ask its lone occupant.

  “Nope. She went home.” The nurse continues to leaf through a medical formulary. “Anything I can do for you?”

  Discharge me, steal me some clothes, and smuggle me to Manchester, I think. “No,” I say. “Thanks, though.”

  Back in my room, I have an impotent, wall-thumping paddy, and plot to sign myself out first thing in the morning, whether or not Lewis approves. My bravado lasts for all of forty seconds before it’s replaced by an exhaustion so complete I barely make it to my bed. As I drag my legs under the covers, I spot the plastic bag Wallace brought and pull it toward me. He must have made another trip to my flat prior to coming here, because the bag is
full of clothes—my clothes. Jeans, T-shirts, a jacket, pyjamas, even underwear. One of the socks jangles, and I empty out a couple of keys that presumably belong to my alias. There’s no mobile, though. He hasn’t gone so far as to return that to me. He’s slipped a raisin and biscuit Yorkie into the middle of everything and stuck a Post-it Note on its wrapper: “These are your favourite.”

  With my head pillowed on my jacket, I open the chocolate bar and stuff a chunk into my mouth, letting it melt and then crunching the biscuit pieces. Despite everything that’s happened today, I fall asleep smiling.

  * * *

  I’m awake with the larks the next morning, which is fortunate, because getting washed and dressed one-handed takes forever. The fingers on my bad hand are less swollen than they were, but they’re not very dextrous, making even simple tasks such as squirting toothpaste assume immeasurable layers of complexity. When I root through my bag of clothing, I’m relieved to discover that I favour crop-top bras without hooks and eyes. I need to show Lewis I can cope, so I muss and feather my fringe until it resembles Ceinwen’s style, and use my teeth to help me tie the laces on my trainers.

  Lewis sticks her head around the door before the breakfast trolley has started to rattle along the corridor.

  “Morning,” she says with the pep of someone who can put her knickers on in less than fifteen minutes. “Ceinwen said you wanted to speak to me.”

  “Yeah.” I drag the word out as she notes my neatly folded scrubs and the toiletries I’ve repacked in their plastic wallet.

  “Ah. Planning the great escape, are we?”

  I nod, but it’s hard to maintain a façade of steely determination when I’m fidgety with impatience. “I think someone might need this room more than I do.”

  “You do, huh?” She sits on my bed. “I thought we’d pencilled in your discharge for the end of the week.”

  “We did, but I have a place to live now, and family, so I’m sure I’ll be all right.”

  “Do you live on your own?” she asks.

  That’s a good question. Wallace implied that Rebecca rented her own flat, but I’m not Rebecca anymore. Alis Clarke will have an entirely different address.

  “Fucking hell,” I mutter. I was so sure I had this figured out, but I haven’t even grasped the basics. I forgot to ask where I live, I don’t have the door keys to my place, and if there’s an alarm to deactivate, then I really am fucked.

  To her credit, Lewis doesn’t jump on my insecurities and use them to her advantage, and when she does speak, she sounds less like a doctor talking to a patient than a professional chatting informally with another.

  “Look, I’m not going to muck you around, Alis. You probably are fit for discharge. I just want to make sure you’re safe.”

  I nod, careful not to react to her choice of phrasing. “I’ll be okay. I have a few things to sort out, but I can manage.”

  “You’ve made up your mind, haven’t you?”

  “Yes,” I say, drawing a line beneath the discussion. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, Doc.”

  “You did most of the hard work yourself. I’ll discharge you into the care of a colleague of mine at Manchester Royal, and I’m sure Dr. Chander will do likewise. Were you hoping your brother would give you a lift home?”

  “Aye, that was the plan.”

  She could drive a truck through the holes in my plan, but she chooses not to. “I’ll get your papers and your meds sorted,” she says. “Don’t go anywhere without those.”

  I attempt a demure look and cross my heart.

  She rolls her eyes. “You coppers are all the bloody same. Stubborn as mules and twice as daft.”

  I can’t argue with that.

  An hour later, a paper bag of take-home meds sits beside my empty porridge bowl. My appetite has improved day by day, and I’m spreading marmalade on a second slice of toast when someone knocks on my door. Expecting Martin, I freeze, the knife poised mid-smear, but it’s Pryce who walks in.

  “Hey.” She stops a couple of steps beyond the threshold. “Sorry, I know it’s early. Are you busy? I can come back.”

  “No, you’re fine.” I wave the knife at her, casting blobs of marmalade willy-nilly. She’s brought coffee—two takeaway cups in a holder—and she seems so unsure of herself that I discount how much of a shit she was yesterday and attempt to put her at ease by offering my plate. “Toast?”

  The gesture earns me a smile. She accepts a piece and places it on a napkin before putting one of the cups and a handful of sugar sachets in front of me.

  After almost a week of tepid, insipid hospital brews, the scent of freshly ground coffee and full-fat milk rising from the gap in the lid sets my mouth watering. My only problem is getting the damn sugar into it without throwing it all over the floor.

  “Here.” She lifts the lid from the cup. “How many do you have?”

  “Two, please.”

  I watch her shake the sugar onto the foam and stir it in, and then she sits back to watch me take my first joyful sip. I can’t help myself; I moan with pleasure and let my eyes close. “Aw, Christ on a crutch, that’s good.”

  Despite Pryce’s chuckle, her face is sober when I peek over the brim of the cup, and I start to worry about why she’s here, bearing gifts, at stupid o’clock in the morning. Still cradling my coffee with my right hand, I’m working up the nerve to ask her when she pre-empts me.

  “I was just on my way into work, and Esther sent me a text.” She picks up her drink but puts it down again without tasting it and corrects herself in a murmur. “Dr. Lewis. Dr. Lewis sent me a text to say you were going home.”

  “Aye.” I gulp a hot mouthful, killing time while I endeavour to formulate a more intellectual response. I’m accustomed to the DS version of Pryce, the official one with sharp edges and suspicious eyes, not this strange fallible woman picking at the rim of her cup as her hair falls from its tie and curls around her face.

  “I might be able to cadge a lift with my brother,” I say.

  She nods, but I doubt she’s really listening. She pushes her cup away and brushes the scraps of paper into a neat pile.

  “I should’ve handled things better,” she says so softly that I have to lean closer. “Yesterday, I mean. I didn’t have any right to speak to you the way I did, and I wanted to apologise for that.”

  “Oh.” I’m gobsmacked. I’d guessed at a few motives for her visit, but an apology wasn’t one of them. Flustered, I fall back on magnanimity. “It’s okay. No harm done.”

  She shakes her head. “It’s not okay. My conduct was far from okay. I don’t have all the facts, and I had no right to judge your actions.”

  I have more of the facts than she does, and guilt creeps over me as I look at her reddened cheeks and the puffiness beneath her eyes. I bet she’s been awake for most of the night worrying. She seems the type to let something like this chew a hole right through her conscience.

  “It’s my fuck-up, not yours,” I tell her. “You were only the messenger.”

  “Still, under the circumstances,” she sighs and opens her hands, “I wish I’d broken the news with more discretion.”

  “Hey, hindsight is a wonderful thing.” I manoeuvre the cup in front of her. “Come on, it’ll get cold.”

  She relents and drops three sugars in it. By the time she’s screwed up the packets and added them to the mound of debris, she’s relaxed enough to suck the foam from the stirrer. I catch myself staring as her lips purse around the wooden stick, and I quickly avert my eyes.

  “Are you based here in Bangor?” I ask, for want of anything else to say.

  “No, Colwyn Bay. That’s where our headquarters are.” She stretches out her legs, holding her cup loosely with both hands. “But I live near Betws-y-Coed, so I was sort of passing by.”

  Her wry expression tells me that’s a fib. “Betws-y-Coed,” I say, mimicking the singsong lilt she wrapped around the name. “That sounds so much prettier than Ardwick or Beswick.”

 
; “It’s lovely.” Her voice is wistful. “I don’t have any neighbours, just mountains, lakes, and rivers.”

  The description strikes a chord. “I think I ran away from somewhere like that. Not recently,” I add, spotting her confusion. “When I was eighteen or so. I have this image of a farmhouse and a field where we’d play, but every time I think about it, it’s all scratchy and wrong.”

  Her brow knits. “Scratchy and wrong?”

  “Yeah, like ants under my skin.” Right on cue, the wrist encased by the cast begins to itch. I snarl and grab the knitting needle Ceinwen sneaked in from her gran’s, digging it in until the irritation is soothed. As metaphors go, it’s bang on.

  “That’s a tidy trick,” Pryce says, but her head is tilted, and she’s obviously dwelling on what I said. “Any idea why you left?”

  I pause, the knitting needle still buried. “At a guess, it was possibly a gay thing.”

  “Right.” Pryce takes a moment to sip her coffee, and her voice is solemn when she continues. “Not easy, is it? Being the only queer kid in the village.”

  “No, I don’t think it was.” It’s a relief just to voice this, even if I can’t pinpoint what actually happened. “I hope I haven’t spent my adult life in hiding as well.”

  She has no difficulty following my train of thought. “You mean with the UC assignment?”

  “Aye. New name, new job, new role to play.” I touch the ring in my nose. “I want this to be Alis, not Rebecca.”

  She shrugs, a hint of amusement in her eyes. “Either way, it suits you.” She checks her watch. “Hell, I should get a move on.”

  I nod, reluctant to see her go. We’re not friends by any stretch, but I’ve enjoyed chatting to her. Given my current run of luck, she’ll probably arrest me the next time she sees me.

  “Have a safe trip home,” she says.

  I raise my cup in salute. “Wherever home may be.”

  “Oh, I might be able to help with that.” She pats her pockets and then rummages through her bag, eventually pulling out a wallet—my wallet—and a piece of paper. “This was logged into evidence. And these are the addresses for you and your alias. I thought DC Wallace would have given them to you.”