Guilt Trip

by Judith Cutler

  ‘Business.’ I shrugged, scratching my ear now. ‘I just made a business decision when you set up that antiques centre on our turf. You seemed to take it personally.’ I wittered on, saying whatever came into my head. ‘Hell’s bells, if you’d got planning permission in the usual way, no one would have so much as squeaked. And if you’d asked me to restore china on my usual terms, I’d have jumped at the chance. Really bad thinking on your part. Mind you, I was impressed by your knowledge of the fashion business. A good alias you’ve chosen.’

  ‘I’m honoured by such praise.’

  ‘You really should have kept me on side. Because now I doubt if I could do anything worthwhile at the moment.’ I spread my hands, which were shaking with a life of their own – genuinely. ‘I’m very upset. And as you know, a happy worker is a good worker. Or do I mean that the other way round? So though I’ll glue your cracks, I don’t suppose I’ll be up to the museum-quality work I prefer.’

  ‘I think you’re beyond bargaining, Lina. After your activities in France.’

  ‘My activities! What about yours, trying to snatch Leda? I told your men what I think of that.’

  He whacked my mouth with the back of his hand. My brain supplied the words he probably meant to use: ‘That’s just a foretaste of what’s coming.’

  But neither of us said them aloud. Because from nowhere – actually, from the stable block – emerged a mob of black-clad figures, just like you get on TV, all with their guns pointed at us and all yelling at once. Hands up. Lie down. Face on the ground – except the guy waving a gun at me called it the floor, a mistake that always irritated Griff.

  Hands up, I lay face down on the ground. Nasty sharp large-sized gravel, just right for a carriage drive, but not much fun for a half-naked human with a vicious knee and bleeding lips.

  ‘You! Down. Face down!’

  Only when someone came to handcuff me did I lift my head enough to mutter, ‘But I’m the victim here. And you’ll find the mobile in this sleeve.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Victim. It wasn’t a word I’d ever liked using of myself. Survivor, yes – that was something to be proud of. But a victim was someone who had things done to them.

  And now I was in the hands of the police, swathed in a foil blanket, I felt more of a victim than I had while I was being assaulted. Not that they weren’t kind. They were. It was their very kindness that was almost suffocating. Their kindness, and their complete inability to answer my questions. One: where and how was Griff? Two: where and how was Morris? Please God, please, please God, don’t let him be the policeman the men had said was dead.

  I suppose it was because the police wanted to ask me lots of questions, and they were honour bound not to ask any until I’d been checked over in A and E – in Brighton, of all places – where I swapped the foil for a backless hospital number. Every injury, however minor, was photographed – I supposed grumpily it was for someone’s benefit, only realizing eventually that it was for mine, if I ultimately wanted compensation. Once I’d been photographed, each injury was treated in turn, with X-rays and scans on the house, it seemed. My goodness, when the NHS had an emergency on its hands, even if I had nothing seriously wrong with me at all, it pulled out every stop.

  In the event, all they decided to do was give me some cream to treat the patches of soreness and itching which were apparently the result of my petrol bath. Thanks to the gorillas and their water, they weren’t too extensive. Eventually, after what seemed like hours, I was returned to a waiting constable about my own age, who said that her name was Rach. She pressed a white suit into my hands; I emerged from the nearest loos looking like a polar bear whose pelt had stretched in the wash. The least said the better about the blue overshoes. Kind she might be, but she insisted that she was too low down the food chain to answer any questions. Her job was just to drive me to Police Headquarters.

  ‘I really need to know about my boyfriend and my grandfather. I’m desperate,’ I told her, bracing my legs as if she was going to drag me somewhere. I unbraced quickly. Too painful.

  She set us in motion. ‘I really don’t know.’

  ‘You’d know if a policeman was killed this afternoon?’ I pressed.

  ‘Oh, yes. Everyone’d know. Now, do you have a bag or anything? Because we should be on our way.’

  I shook my head, falling into step beside her. At least now we were off hospital premises I could try phoning. Surely, Griff would have picked up my phone wherever he was going.

  His was as dead as a doornail. No charge left at all. Well, what did I expect, leaving it open so they could trace me? At first the guys arresting Montaigne and his merry men wanted to take it into custody too, but eventually, when I’d told them where it had been, had agreed to let me keep it.

  ‘Can I borrow your phone?’ I asked as she helped me into the car as if I was a pensioner on Valium. ‘This one’s out of battery.’

  She handed it over with a grin. ‘Going to phone your boyfriend?’

  I clapped a hand to my face. ‘Oh, no! His number’s in my own phone. This is someone else’s.’ Actually, Griff might well have had Morris’s number, but I was just too confused to think clearly.

  ‘You mean you’ve got the wrong phone?’

  ‘Someone lent it to me. And he’s got mine.’ I hoped. At last, I took a deep breath, just as the therapist had told me, and tried to think. Yes. The obvious thing was to phone Griff and ask, but I couldn’t remember my own number. Griff’s, yes, but not my own. And of course I couldn’t get it off the dead phone.

  I hit myself again, harder this time, hard enough to make a mark. You’d think I had enough pain given the state of my knee, but I needed a bit more. All the years I’d been battling with self-harm, and I had to choose now to start again. Sitting on my hands was the only answer. In any case, I told myself, Morris would be waiting for me – I couldn’t, to be honest, work out why he’d not been holding my hand during my hospital adventures, but assumed it might be police procedure.

  No, I wouldn’t fish my hands out, not unless I could do something sensible with them. What I needed was a good idea. And at long last one arrived. ‘You don’t have a charger handy, do you?’ I asked.

  ‘Back on my desk.’

  So that was that for a bit. I continued to sit on my hands.

  Tea, sympathy, a soft interview room, two gentle interviewers who wanted to be called Julie and Mike, both detective sergeants – what else could a victim of crime want? Oh, and I got congratulations for the cool way I’d left my phone on (Griff’s, of course) and tried to update the control room on the way things were going. We all agreed it was a shame the battery had failed when they’d wanted to tell me to hang on till the team could deal with the kidnappers in the least dangerous way.

  But I wasn’t happy at all. The two people who should have been there to comfort me were nowhere to be seen. I know I’d been making a fuss about calling them, but deep in my heart I’d thought they’d be sitting side by side waiting for me – first in A and E, and failing that in the police foyer.

  ‘Before I give you any more information,’ I said, ‘I want to know what’s happened to Griffith Tripp, my grandfather, and to DCI Morris.’ Since the word partner applied to both in different ways, I thought I’d tweak the truth a bit. Only a bit. ‘And there was an elderly lady having a fit that triggered the whole event. Emilia Cosworth. How’s she? And is she connected with what’s been going on?’

  Mike held up a hand – amazingly well manicured, far better kept than mine – and said, ‘That’s a lot of questions. Can we come to them when—’

  ‘The last one’s just courtesy,’ I said. ‘But I need to know about Griff. My grandfather. He’s not well – he’s having heart tests – and I need to speak to him. Rach, that nice woman who brought me here, promised to find a charger for me, but she hasn’t so far.’ I poured out all my telecommunication problems again. They were never going to be interested, but the words kept coming, and blow me if I didn’t start cr
ying.

  ‘You’ve had a very difficult afternoon,’ Julie said, passing me tissues. ‘Go and find a charger, Mike, for goodness’ sake. Will DCI Morris’s number be on Mr Tripp’s phone?’

  ‘I hope so.’ I was really letting myself down with all these tears and snuffles. ‘It’d be in my diary, too – only, I left my bag in the car when I went walkabout. And – it’s a new car – I can’t even remember that number.’ Rather than hit myself, I literally grabbed my hair and pulled it as hard as I could.

  Julie put her arms round me, pulling my hands into a firm grasp. ‘Shock,’ she said firmly. ‘After the trauma. It’ll all come back. But this is why we need to talk to you now, before your brain wipes all the nasty details it’d rather forget and lets all this everyday stuff take over again. Just start talking about what happened this afternoon while we wait for Mike.’

  The length of time it took Mike to come back you’d think he’d walked all the way to the nearest phone shop only to find it was closed for the night. And then walked back. Meanwhile, Julie had kept my mind off my hands by asking question after question – ‘Just for the DPP,’ she’d insist, whenever I wondered why.

  Eventually, the story of my afternoon was well and truly down on paper.

  ‘Look,’ I said at last, ‘this just isn’t fair. I need – really, really need – to talk to Griff. And to know that he’s OK. And Morris. Please, can’t someone help me? It doesn’t take this long to find a bloody charger, for goodness’ sake! And don’t start talking about staffing levels and prioritization.’

  She had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘Mike has been gone a while, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Too long. And no, I don’t want more tea. I want – if you can’t help me – to go home and make calls from there.’ Brighton to Bredeham? Another hour and a half of not knowing. ‘Look, Griff’s booked into the William Harvey Hospital first thing tomorrow. I have to take him. And I still don’t know where he is!’ Suddenly, pennies started to drop. Painfully. OK, I’d been stupid not to think of it, but these people were paid not to be stupid. Why hadn’t one of them simply suggested I call home to see if he was there? Because they knew he wasn’t – that must be it. But I needed to know for myself.

  ‘Can I phone home?’ I asked, sounding horribly humble. ‘I know that number at least.’

  She passed over her mobile. But the call only confirmed what I feared.

  ‘One of your officers must have turned up at the oast when I dialled nine nine nine. They’d know what happened to Griff and Morris. Hell’s bells, a DCI with Interpol must qualify as being interesting, even if an old man isn’t.’ When she didn’t respond, I added, ‘And what was that one of the heavies said about killing a police officer? I worked out from the timescale that it couldn’t have been Morris.’

  ‘Why do you call him Morris if that’s his surname?’ she asked.

  If Mike hadn’t walked into the room, I truly think I’d have hit her.

  He was carrying what was left of a phone in a polythene bag. ‘Sorry, Lina, this got damaged back at the oast. There was a bit of a kerfuffle with that old lady having her fit. Your grandad was trying to help DCI Morris and must have dropped it and – well, it looks as if the ambulance . . . Well . . .’ He held up a hand to stop me screaming. ‘So I’ve been trying to locate the old gentleman using other means. He’s OK. That’s the first thing. He’s fine. Apparently, he insisted on accompanying Ms Cosworth to hospital, where she was detained. DCI Morris – he’d followed the ambulance in your car, apparently – offered to take Mr Tripp home, which he started to do. But Mr Tripp complained of chest pains, so Mr Morris took him straight to the William Harvey Cardiac Unit where I understand he’s due for an angiogram tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes, the tests I told you about.’

  ‘Right. Mr Tripp is still having tests, and Mr Morris is with him. So when you’re ready, we can take you there.’

  I wish I could say that I’d thanked him properly and thanked God for Morris being so sensible and having the right priorities. But all I managed was to put my head in my hands and cry.

  ‘Post-traumatic stress,’ Julie muttered. ‘Only to be expected. You’d better call the medics.’

  That was enough to make me pull together. ‘What? And waste more time here?’ I gave a huge sniff. ‘There’ll be plenty of medics at the William Harvey. Just get me there.’

  I expected the lowly Rach to drive me; I got both Julie and Mike. And a police tracksuit and a mysterious anonymous pair of flip-flops.

  Julie drove. ‘You never told me why you call DCI Morris by his surname,’ she observed, over her shoulder.

  ‘All his friends do,’ I said, non-committally. As if I was about to tell anyone I was going out with a man called Reg. ‘And you never told me why one of the heavies said stuff about killing a policeman.’

  Julie made a great fuss about a careful turn at an awkward junction.

  Mike replied, ‘Oh, there’s a lot to come out in the wash yet. I promise that you’ll be fully briefed in due course. Fancy some chocolate? I got some while I was trying to locate your grandad. He really is in the best place, you know.’

  If they were going to clam up about the dead cop, presumably it was because they were acting on orders. Taking the chocolate as a peace-offering-cum-supper, I treated them to a long explanation of why they should give up this brand and make sure they always bought Fair Trade. Very long. If I thought about the poor devils toiling away for other people’s profit, it always made me cross, and what better way to get out of victim mode?

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Mike and Julie dropped me by the main entrance of the William Harvey. In a far corner of a largely deserted car park I could see our car: oh, yes, I could remember the number now I saw it. So where was Morris? I checked in all the public spaces but couldn’t see any sign of him. Although Mike had promised Griff was all right, I was ready to panic. If I knew hospitals, they only let visitors stay on this late if there was something really wrong with the patient. Really, really wrong.

  I headed for the cardiac ward, ready to wring tears from the eyes of any nurse who tried to stop me seeing Griff by declaring I was his granddaughter, just as I had to the police officers, and blow the legalities. Mrs Walker swore that her sister-in-law had been denied information about her husband, in intensive care, because she’d kept her maiden name and the computer only wanted to admit Mrs Thingy, not Ms Somethingelse.

  To my amazement no one stopped me, and I found Griff in the first side ward I looked in. He’d been reading the Observer, but as I put my head round the door he laid the paper to one side and held out his arms. Neither of us could say anything; head on his chest, I listened to the beating of his heart and wondered how it dared to be ill while it was beating so well.

  At last he pushed me away, but we didn’t let go each other’s hands even as I was pulling a chair to the bed.

  ‘When they wanted to clear the crime scene, I said I’d accompany poor Emilia to whichever hospital they took her to,’ he said, ‘and Morris drove our car in the ambulance’s wake. When they said the tests would take time, Morris insisted I go home – he said I’d only be in the way of the police looking for you, and that at home they’d be able to contact me, with no worrying about poor mobile signals. You know how crabby he is about our rural reception. And then he noticed I was trying to make my puffer work and it didn’t seem to be doing any good, so he turned on to the motorway and drove at speeds likely to give me a proper heart attack. Actually, he did very well. Anyway, to cut a long story short, here I am. No machines, no nothing. Just regular observations. So you can see I’m not at death’s door. They only kept me in because they said they couldn’t trust me to starve without you to keep on eye on me. The angiogram goes ahead as planned tomorrow. But you are to go home and rest. Before you do, however –’ he pulled me conspiratorially towards him – ‘you are my bona fide granddaughter. Ah – you’ve already decided that, haven’t you?’

  ‘About the same time you de
cided, I should think.’ I gave him a version of the afternoon’s events that the American military would call redacted: in other words I filleted out all the really terrifying bits and tried to make him laugh with my descriptions of my successive outfits. He loved the idea of where I’d hidden his mobile and made a joke so blue that he surprised me into a shout of laughter, which kept bubbling up.

  ‘There’s no sign of Morris,’ I observed casually, when I could speak again.

  ‘No. He left the car keys in your bag in this locker – top shelf. And a note,’ he added with a kind smile.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘He was summoned back to France – he waited as long as he dared, but it seems Interpol won’t grant compassionate leave for your own grandfather’s illness, let alone your girlfriend’s not quite grandfather.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Apparently, the French and the English authorities are already bellyaching about who gets to try Montaigne – does kidnap cap diddling a prime minister, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Actually, I’m not sure he’s well. He was sniffing a lot, and his throat was really gravelly. Maybe too much emotion – quite possible, you know – or maybe the start of poor little Leda’s cold.’

  At this point a nurse registered my presence and strode in to ask what I was doing. He was built like a fast bowler and moved as if he was starting his run-up.

  ‘I know, I know,’ I said, hands up. ‘Grandpa will tell you why I came so late.’

  ‘You’re the woman that the police were talking about, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, in other circumstances I’d say you could stop and share your grandpa’s cocoa. But since he isn’t having any, you’d better scarper and get your own. He’ll phone when you can come and collect him – about midday, maybe half an hour later. Make sure you’ve got him a nice lunch ready – he’ll need it.’