Made To Be Broken

by Rebecca Bradley

  I believed we were at the correct address, but I wasn’t taking chances with this so I’d sent Martin and Ross and another search team to the other address to cover our bases.

  Aaron was quiet, hands firmly in his trouser pockets. He wasn’t expecting trouble either.

  How did I resolve this with him? He’d taken me into his confidence but in the most awkward of circumstances. With, I imagine, little way out. I didn’t want him to be in distress and definitely not with me.

  The door opened.

  The woman stood before me was pale and slender. Her skin tight to her face.

  ‘Mrs Knight?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can we come in please?’ I held up my warrant card so she could see it. ‘We need to speak with you and your husband and it’s better if we don’t do it on your doorstep.’

  The woman sighed. Not annoyance. Or fear. More resignation. Had she expected this day?

  We followed her in to a living room that was clean but lacking. In what exactly, I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

  ‘Is Mr Knight at home? This conversation needs to involve both of you.’

  ‘No, he’s not.’ She seated herself on one of the two chairs in the room and indicated with a hand for us to do the same. ‘Can I ask why you’re here?’

  ‘Before I answer any questions,’ I took the other chair and Aaron took up position on the two-seater sofa, ‘can I ask you about your daughter, Emma?’

  She sucked in a breath and her hand went up to her mouth.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Knight, we need to talk about this. We are aware of your loss and don’t want to be insensitive but we need to ask where her medications are, the ones she was taking for her heart failure?’

  She nodded and stood.

  ‘This way. I’ll show you.’

  We walked through to a large square airy kitchen. A circular family table was placed in the centre of the room. Connie Knight opened an upper level cupboard door and started moving mugs, boxes of paracetamol, ibuprofen and antacid. She moved them from one side of the cupboard to the other and back again. Her arm movements became more and more frantic.

  ‘Mrs Knight?’

  She turned around.

  A single tear slipped down her face.

  ‘It’s not here.’

  102

  The tears kept falling silently. Aaron fiddled with his tie; a sign I was now beginning to understand. So many things were slipping into place.

  ‘Connie,’ I looked at her, at her soundless distress. ‘Can I call you Connie?’

  She nodded.

  ‘We need to know where your husband is. Where has Isaac gone?’

  One hand gripped tight hold of the kitchen worktop. Her skin, taut and white over her knuckles.

  ‘He left. You’ve only just missed him,’ her voice was barely a whisper. She didn’t ask why we needed to speak to him. The tears told me all I needed to know. They kept falling. A silent trail of her agony.

  ‘Where? Where has he gone? It’s important we get to him as quickly as possible.’

  ‘He has an allotment. The one on Bessell Lane at the other side of Stapleford. He spends a lot of time there. I don’t see much of him. He says he’s going there. We hurt each other with our grief. He goes to the allotment so he doesn’t have to face me.’ Her fingers gripped harder.

  ‘And the drugs?’ Aaron asked.

  She nodded and tears fell from her face to the floor. ‘Yes. If he’s taken them. Then yes.’

  103

  We were too far away and too many lives had already been lost for me to be precious about who got to Isaac Knight first, so I phoned Ross and told him and Martin, as they were closer, to get to the allotment and we’d meet them there.

  The support van started up and pulled off behind us. Getting off this housing estate wasn’t going to be a problem but we’d seen how snarled the traffic was on the main roads as we drove in. People were trying to get home from work now. It had taken us several hours to get the list, make the enquiries and get the search warrant.

  Aaron was quiet behind the wheel. Focused.

  ‘I’m sorry, Aaron.’

  ‘Don’t be.’ He didn’t flinch.

  ‘But I am.’ I hated myself sometimes. ‘I lashed out and it was wrong. I took it out on you and I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  Derby Road was slow going. Painful.

  ‘But it does. I rely on you and you know that – and I repay you how? By shouting at you in the corridor.’

  Silence.

  ‘I didn’t mean to put you in a place where you felt you didn’t have a choice but to make that disclosure.’

  ‘I know you didn’t.’

  Dammit. I wanted a conversation. To be let off, I suppose.

  ‘Do they know?’

  ‘Who know, what?’ His focus was firmly on the road and progressing as quickly as he could to our destination.

  ‘Work. About … about the Asperger’s.’

  ‘Yes, I disclosed it on my application form, then went through the rest of the application process and passed it in the same way as any other person.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I just choose not to keep telling every single set of supervisors every time I changed department within the organisation, Hannah.’

  ‘I get that. Again, I’m sorry I put you in that position.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. I won’t.’

  ‘Okay.’

  I picked up my phone to call Ross to see if they were there yet. He’d had it rough. I was worried about how this was going to turn out. It was a volatile and sensitive situation. Was Ross really the right person for this job? To be talking to the poison killer? I’d been supportive as I should be, but that didn’t mean I thought he was in quite the right place yet. He had Martin with him, though.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘For?’

  ‘Telling me.’

  I pressed Ross’s number. There was no answer.

  104

  It was warm outside, but inside the confines of the small, dark shed it was cooler. He liked that about the allotment. The coolness it offered in the face of blazing heat, as well as the obvious privacy. The weather report said that it would be dry and sunny all week. Another week for him to spend his time here. It had been a long time since he used the allotment for the purpose it was intended. He couldn’t remember the last time he had planted or tended a vegetable or green salad. Many people came to their allotments for time out as well as for growing, but time out was all he came for now.

  The knock on the wooden door made him jump. No one came here. Connie didn’t visit and he gave her no reason to. He hadn’t spoken to his allotment neighbours in such a long time, other than a passing ‘good morning’. Before he lost Emma, at weekends they would sit outside and drink whiskey out of old jars until late in the day and wander home after a good day planting and putting the world to rights. But now, he wouldn’t know who would be knocking on his small part of the world. Isaac didn’t move, his thoughts lost in the past.

  Then a voice broke through.

  ‘Mr Knight, it’s the police, can you open up please so we can have a word?’

  So this was it, then.

  Isaac had never wanted it to go this far. He hadn’t wanted that small girl to die. He didn’t want the city to crumble and break. He simply wanted people to notice his girl was gone and to pay attention as to why, to do something about it.

  What would happen to him now?

  His hands shook in his lap where he was seated.

  He never wanted this hell to break loose.

  ‘Mr Knight? We really need you to open the door. It’d be much better if we could come in and talk to you, rather than talk to you through the door where others might hear your business.’

  Isaac Knight stood and opened the door.

  105

  There were two men standing in front of him. One younger than the other. Both looked ver
y serious. They asked to come in and he moved aside so they could enter. The shed might have been small but there was room to move as he kept it tidy. Underneath the running kitchen worktop was a cupboard where he was storing all Em’s leftover medications.

  Two three-legged stools fit neatly into the space and propped in the far corner were his spade, fork and trowel.

  They looked at him a moment and he looked back. The time had come.

  Then the older of the two men broke the silence. He introduced them, though Isaac instantly forgot their names as his mind whirled with the mental overload of what he’d done and what was to come. The older officer then told him that officers had been to his house. That they’d spoken to Connie.

  His Connie.

  His darling, Connie.

  His wife. The woman he loved. The woman he had pushed away for so long. Police turning up at their door because of him. How do you cope with more pain when you already have more than the world should ever throw at a person? How does one deal with the grief when a child has been so savagely taken from you – slowly and painfully?

  The older one spoke again, breaking through the fog and pain of swirling thoughts. He said they were looking for something and that Connie found it wasn’t where she expected it to be, became upset and directed them here. Maybe Isaac could help?

  His mind stuck on the words that she had become upset. He had done this to her. How could he have not known this would have hurt her?

  A small voice emerged from Isaac. ‘She has been grieving so much. She lost so much. I never wanted to cause her any pain.’

  106

  David cleaned out the bucket and tidied it away into the cupboard. Mrs Rudyard wasn’t well today and had vomited all over herself and the floor in the dining hall, much to the shock and disgust of some of the others. They were a funny old bunch. Set in their ways. Crotchety and bad tempered at times, but he loved working here. He’d cleaned up the floor and chatted to the residents to calm them down while Cressida had taken Mrs Rudyard back to her room to get cleaned up.

  He wasn’t worried about her. She was old now, ninety-two years of age and still going strong. But they would keep an eye on her.

  He opened her door and found her sitting up in her chair. A spot of colour, one on each cheek, glowing on her face. He adored this woman. Nothing ever stopped her. He fully expected her to get her letter from the Queen and he’d be here to open it with her. She smiled that cheeky smile at him as he walked in.

  ‘So, David, did I upset Vernon and Pauline just now? I can imagine their faces.’ Mrs Rudyard laughed, which changed into a cough.

  ‘Hey, take it easy.’ David sat in the other chair. ‘You did get a few tuts and funny looks as you were leaving, but you also had some concerned looks, Lois. Give them some credit, you have some friends out there.’

  She made a shooing motion with her hand. ‘I know, I know. I’m fine. It must have been something I ate this morning. I feel better now it’s out. I’m going to sit in here for a little while and listen to my audiobook before I come out to the rec room. Okay?’

  ‘Okay. You want me to pass you your CD player from the bedside table?’

  ‘Yes please, David.’

  He handed her the small machine. ‘What’re you listening to?’

  ‘I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.’

  ‘Any good?’

  ‘Yes. You should read more, young man.’

  He laughed. ‘I read plenty, Lois.’

  ‘I don’t mean the sports pages.’

  ‘You’ll convert me one day, but I spend so many hours here I don’t have much time left. I do enjoy hearing about the stories through you, so let me know all about The Caged Birds when you’re done.’

  ‘Okay.’ She put her skeletal hand over his. ‘Thank you, David. You make this place so much more bearable.’

  He smiled down at her and patted her hand with his free one. ‘You know you’re my favourite and you’re the person who makes working here a complete pleasure.’ He stood and moved towards the door.

  ‘Press the buzzer when you want help to come back out to the rec room.’

  107

  They asked him if he had any medications in the shed that he wanted to hand over before they did a search of the entire area. Shed and allotment.

  Isaac only took a moment to think about his answer. He had been thinking of nothing else but the consequences of his actions the past few days, even if he hadn’t considered this particular scenario. He knew what the right thing to do was.

  He sat with a thud down on the stool he had recently vacated. It was cooler now, the air in the allotment shed chilling the plastic seat. He welcomed the freshness. It was starting to feel stuffy and claustrophobic in this space, where the single strip light overhead cast a weird amber sheen on everything in the wooden hut.

  ‘I did it for Emma, you know,’ he said as he twisted to collect the last of her medication from one of the cupboards on the floor. ‘The medical profession failed her. Let her down.’ Upright again now, bottles in hand. ‘They let her die.’ He could feel his heart contract in his chest as he talked about her. His baby. His precious baby. ‘I wanted them to know, to feel some pain, to notice.’ He looked the older of the two officers in the eye and sneered. ‘To look down from their ivory towers and see that their prized drug was killing people, that it was in the press and for all the wrong reasons, that people were talking badly about it, that they needed to do something about it and quickly before anyone else died. Their drugs were faulty, they didn’t save lives at all, they needed to know that and what better way than to show them, to show it as harmful. They would look at it then. Assess it again. How long is it since it was assessed?’ He could feel the cold sharp blade of anger cut through the grief as he talked.

  The medication was quietly taken out of his hand and placed into a clear plastic bag with an orange stripe around the top and sealed.

  The older officer looked at him, ‘Mr Knight … Isaac.’ He paused, took a breath then started again, ‘Emma stopped taking the drugs of her own accord because they made her feel ill. We’ve seen the medical records. She informed her GP she was going to do this and she didn’t want it disclosing to either you or her mother because it would upset you so much.’

  Isaac looked at him. Silent.

  ‘Isaac, she stopped taking the digoxin herself. It was helping her, but she chose not to take it.’

  His chest contracted again and he felt a heat rush through him. How could they try and blame Emma? And when she wasn’t here to defend what they said? She would never do that. She wouldn’t give up on life, on the life she had planned, the white picket fence, the 2.4 family, wanting to be a barrister. She wouldn’t give up on herself like that. And she wouldn’t give up on them. Him. Her mother. Good God, her mother.

  He stood with such force the stool flew back and crashed into the spade and fork in the corner, making them topple over. There was a moment of metallic noise and the three men regarded each other.

  Then he hissed, ‘How dare you? She would never do that. She loved her family too much. She would never abandon us without a fight. You think you’ve won,’ he laughed, ‘you have the last of the medication, but I put products back on the shelves yesterday.’ More laughter and this time he seemed genuinely happy. Gleeful.

  The older one queried him, ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘There are contaminated products still in the shops.’

  108

  Ross stepped forward. His heart was in his mouth. He couldn’t stand back and watch from the sidelines any more. This man was hurting. The grief was palpable in the small space. The anger combustible. He could feel the stirrings of recognition, of the feelings, in the pit of his stomach. Ross could see these emotions were eating at Isaac. Raw and savage. Here was a man who was lashing out because he couldn’t cope with what was going on inside of him. Ross needed to reach him if they were to save lives – instead of watching more be snuffed out.

  Space in the s
hed was tight but Ross shifted his weight past Martin so he could be seen by Isaac Knight properly. He wanted to create eye contact. He wanted to create a bond of honesty.

  But could he do that? Could he go there? Face his own grief?

  Martin’s arm went out to the side, blocking his path as he tried to step past him. Ross put his hand onto Martin’s arm, looked him in the eye and nodded. He was okay to do this. Martin hesitated, keeping his arm in the way, but Ross knew they didn’t have time for this.

  ‘Isaac … is it okay to call you Isaac?’

  ‘Do what you will, it doesn’t matter now’

  ‘Ross?’ Martin interjected, but Ross continued to speak.

  ‘Let’s grab these seats and get a bit more comfortable. It’s not the best place I’ve ever had to have a conversation.’ He grabbed the toppled stool, handed it to Isaac and pulled up the other one for himself. ‘But, then again, it’s not the worst.’ He smiled.

  Isaac seated himself but didn’t respond.

  ‘Look, I have to caution you before I go on, because it’s procedural stuff, but I want to talk to you, Isaac, it’s really important. Okay?’

  He nodded, mutely, and Ross quietly cautioned him.

  ‘Look, Isaac, I can hear your pain. Really, I can. And believe it or not, I understand it.’

  Martin leaned back on the worktop and listened. Isaac glared at him.

  ‘I had a colleague last year; you may have read about her. She died. On duty.’

  Isaac looked up at Ross then.

  ‘Her name was Sally. She was wonderful, you know. Funny, serious, hard-working, kind, self-conscious, annoying, frustrating, everything a person can be, should be and I looked up to her. I thought we’d work together for a long time and she’d teach me everything she knew and we’d laugh about the jobs we’d worked and support each other when times got tough …’