by Tania Carver
But he had nowhere else to go. He had run through a few options in his head: cinema, walk, pub, back to work, even. But none of them worked, nothing grabbed him. He couldn’t concentrate on a film, didn’t want to be alone with his own thoughts on a walk, couldn’t face sitting in a pub on his own and watching everyone else in couples or groups, and he didn’t want to go back to the station and just sit there, unable to think clearly enough to do any work.
No. He knew where he wanted to be. And who he wanted to be with.
Marina.
Anywhere, as long as Marina was with him.
He put the bottle to his lips, took another swig. The beer had given him a taste for alcohol, and a mellow buzz that he didn’t want to let go of. He had stopped at an off-licence on the Hagley Road, driving back into the city; bought a bottle of Maker’s Mark. He wasn’t much of a spirit drinker, but he was quite partial to a good whisky or bourbon. And Maker’s Mark was his favourite. Expensive, and something he only bought himself as a treat, for special occasions. Well, he thought, this counts as a special occasion. Although there’s not much in the way of a treat about it.
He had parked up a few streets behind the row of shops he had bought the bottle from. Next to a tall brick tower. The locals had told him that Tolkien had used it as inspiration for one of his books. Phil neither knew nor cared if that was true. It was just somewhere convenient to sit. And think.
Marina was the love of his life. He knew that. Had felt it almost from the first time he met her. Like there had been some kind of electrical spark between them. Like she knew him, could see him as no one else had ever seen him. And he felt the same with her. Phil had thought the concept of a soulmate was something for trashy supermarket magazines. But meeting Marina changed his mind. Both damaged, both missing something, they completed one another. He had thought he would never leave her. Never lose her. And certainly not like this.
He could understand why she had gone. That was the worst of it. He could understand. After what they had been through together over the years, the threat of this Fiona Welch woman was just too much for her. She had reached breaking point. Something had to give. He just hoped she felt safe now, wherever she was.
Now he was alone. And lonely.
He had been tempted by Esme. He could admit it to himself. Very tempted. Even if it had been for all the wrong reasons. If they were in fact the wrong reasons.
She was attractive. Undeniably. Vivacious, fun to be with. Entertaining. And he had been very close to taking up her offer. Going back to her place. Having sex. Part of him had wanted to. A big part. Just for the connection that being close, intimate, with someone else gave. For the opportunity to take himself out of himself, even for a short while, to let another part of his brain take over. Even just to hold another body next to his.
But he couldn’t. Because he was still married to Marina.
I still love you, Phil. She had said that as she was walking out on him. I still love you. And he had held on to those words, believed in them, even while knowing that hope was the cruellest of all emotions. One day she would be back. One day they would be together again.
Hopefully.
And he had to keep believing that. Had to.
But now, tonight, sitting in his car, hope wasn’t enough. He had to talk to her, listen to her. Connect with her. Even though it was against the rules, even though he knew what the response would be, he had to try.
He took one more swig, for courage, and took out his phone. Hit her number. Waited.
Nothing. The phone just rang and rang, eventually going to voicemail. His heart fluttered at the thought that he might hear her voice, even if it was just a recording. But that was denied him too. Her voice was no longer there. She had replaced it with a generic service-provider speech, reiterating the number and asking him to leave a message after the tone.
The tone sounded loud and harsh in his ear. His mouth moved but nothing emerged beyond a couple of strangled, mangled sounds, halfway between syllables and sobs.
He ended the call.
The phone fell from his suddenly useless fingers, slid to the floor. He brought his head down on the steering wheel, slumped and breathless, like he had just run a marathon. Tears racked his frame.
He rode the tide of tears out. Sat back, wiped his eyes. Reached for the bottle, ready to take another swig. Checked the level. Nearly half gone. No. Not the way.
He threw the bottle back on the passenger seat. Thought.
That anger was still inside him. Anger and self-pity. He had to do something, get rid of it somehow. He thought for a few moments.
Then he had it. Just the thing. Yeah. Just the thing. He knew he was breaking all his own rules, not to mention the rules he was supposed to uphold as a police officer, but he had to do something. Something.
‘Right, you fucker,’ he said, and started the car up. ‘Coming to get you.’
He drove unsteadily away, Warren Zevon cranked as loud as he could stand it. So he didn’t have to listen to his own thoughts.
18
He loves me. I know he does. He loves me. That’s why he’s doing this, that’s…
Janine Gillen sighed, closed her eyes. Leaned her head back against the hard tiled wall, her legs straight out, her shoulders against the cold porcelain, even colder in contrast to the hot water she lay in. Tried to let the bubbles soothe and comfort her, her cares and worries rise and disappear like the steam all around her.
He loves me. I know he does. He…
Tried not to cry any more. Couldn’t.
The tears came again, shaking and shuddering the water, making the bubbles vibrate and quiver. It would have been comical if it hadn’t been so sad.
He loves me. I know…
She replayed the events of earlier over and over in her mind. The way Terry had touched her. Hurt her. The look on his face while he did so. The humiliating effect it had on her. And the way her boys had looked at her. God, the way the boys had looked at her… She shivered, despite the warmth of the water.
And then started crying again.
No, she thought; she might even have said it out loud, this isn’t love. Nothing remotely like love…
Instead of stretching her body, she curled it up as tight as she could. Made herself as small and insignificant as possible. Like a hedgehog fearing attack. She felt the muscles stretch and contract as she did so, thought of all the times he had hit her, taken out on her whatever had made him angry that day. She kept her eyes tightly closed, imagined all those beatings she had taken, the casual slaps and punches, the everyday abuse, like a map on her body. Leading from where she had started to where she had ended up. Her final destination. It had taken her a long time to realise that that was what it was, a long time to allow herself to actually use the word abuse, but she did so now. And she never wanted to stop doing it. Call it what it was, take the power of the word, of the abuser, away. But that didn’t stop her crying. In fact, the realisation of who and where she was, of how she had ended up, just made her cry all the more.
Eventually the tears subsided and Janine began to uncurl herself. She stretched out once more, the water now carrying a chill when she moved about in it. She lay back, staring at the ceiling until she could no longer look at it. Then she put a flannel over her face, closed her eyes.
In that moment she could have been anywhere. Lying in a bath in a beach hut in Mauritius, tired from the exertions of a day spent swimming in the purest blue sea, relaxing on a white beach, drinking the finest cocktails and eating the best seafood of her life.
Or in a Russian ice hotel, having a quick soak before heading down to the bar, surrounded by the most exquisite ice sculptures, wearing a gorgeous evening dress, drinking vodka cocktails and making sparkling, charming conversation with the most beautiful and handsome people in the world, all thinking she was so funny and profound, all loving her for who she was.
She moved her legs. Noticed that the water had become even colder. It brought her back to
where she was: in a characterless, charmless housing estate in West Bromwich. Each street like the wing of a prison. Each house like a spur on that wing. Each room in the house as small as a cell. And she was trapped in the middle.
Reluctantly she opened her eyes, took the cloth off her face. The bathroom light, cold and stinging, hit her like reality flooding back after a dream. Even more reluctantly she began to drag herself from the bath. She reached for a towel, wrapped it around herself, pulled out the plug. She stood and stared, watching the water flow away, until there was nothing left. Then she straightened up, walked into the bedroom.
It was gone. All of that was gone. Who she was, who she could have been. Who she had ended up as. Gone.
No more.
Her features impassive, eyes set hard, she took the suitcase from the top of the fitted wardrobe, threw it on the bed, opened it. Stared down at it. She turned back to the wardrobe, opened the doors, looked at her clothes hanging there. She suddenly hated all of them, didn’t want them touching her skin any more. But she knew she didn’t have the money to get new ones and she knew she had to wear something, so she pulled as much as she could from the hangers, crammed it into the case. As she did so, her face barely registered emotion. Like a blank mask in a Greek tragedy.
The suitcase as full as she could make it, clothes and shoes and coats and cosmetics crammed in, she pushed down the top, zipped it closed. It was heavy to pull from the bed and she was glad that it had wheels underneath.
Dressed, she wrestled it downstairs, checked her watch. She had about an hour or so until Terry and the boys came back from the football. A little pre-programmed shiver ran through her: I hope they win. She had always thought that, even praying to a God she had long since stopped believing in. That way, Terry wouldn’t take out the inadequacies of his team on her body like he usually did. She smiled. It didn’t matter any more. Because by the time he returned, she would be gone.
She sat on the sofa, having one last look around the place she couldn’t call home. Her arm accidentally rested on the remote, turning on the TV. She jumped at the sudden noise. The local news. A woman’s body had been discovered. Missing over a month. Janine shuddered. They showed a photo of the woman and her husband. Smiling. They looked happy. Something sank within Janine. Happy and still murdered.
Then the face of a stout, slightly sleazy-looking man filled the screen. He was greasy and sweating, but something in his eyes said his sweat hadn’t been honestly achieved. Detective Sergeant Hugh Ellison, a caption read underneath. He talked about the case before the screen gave way to a woman police officer, DCI Alison Cotter, who seemed altogether more capable and knew what she was talking about.
Janine turned it off. She didn’t want to hear any more.
She stood up, made her way to the coat rack. Pulled on her coat, felt in the pocket. The card was still there. Thank God. She knew, rationally, that it would be, but that still didn’t stop her worrying. While she was packing, she had even begun to imagine that she had made the whole thing up. That Keith hadn’t given her the card, hadn’t given her those all-important words of encouragement, of self-esteem. She had even begun to worry that Keith wasn’t real. That she had imagined him as well. That happened a lot to her. Events that she could clearly remember would be contradicted by Terry, even ones that he hadn’t been at. When she tried to point out that he was wrong in his recollection, she would receive a smack for her trouble. And if she persisted in pointing it out, she would receive another. And another. Until yes, Janine would agree with him. He was right. She must have been mistaken.
But not this time. She took the card out, took out her phone, too. Dialled the number.
Then stopped. Stared at the screen.
Just one little tap of the button, that was all it would take. One little tap. And she would never see Terry again. Never be hit, never be hurt, never be humiliated again. One little tap. That was all.
And never see her children again. A pang of loss passed through her at the thought. Her children. What kind of mother gave up her children? And then she thought about the boys. What they really were. Not hers. Never hers. They were Terry’s. She had just borne them for him. Dispensed food to them, cleared up after them. There was no joy in the relationship, either way. She was nothing to them.
She looked round: the hallway, the kitchen beyond that. The staircase. The door to the living room. Her house. Her world.
And she hit the button as hard as she could.
A woman’s voice answered. ‘Safe Haven.’
‘I…’ Janine sighed. The voice waited. ‘I think I need… no, I need, yes, I need to come to you…’
And the tears started again.
19
The bottle was now two thirds empty and Phil had the acid burn from his throat to his gut to match.
He picked it up from the passenger seat of the Audi, put it to his lips. Felt the liquid there but didn’t open his mouth. No, he thought. No more. He fixed the lid, tightening it hard, and threw the bottle on to the passenger seat once more, where it settled with a final, atonal slosh.
He looked instead at the house before him. Tried to convince himself he was doing something positive, something good. Something worth risking his licence for – his career, even. He had to squint to see it, covering one eye to throw the house into relief. He bit his lip at the same time, checking. If you can feel your teeth, someone had once told him, when it hurts if you bite, then you’re not drunk. Phil bit down on the corner of his lip. Hard. Harder. Ground his teeth, jaw straining with the effort. He felt something in his mouth then. Old pennies. Dirty money. Blood. Yeah, he thought. I’m sure I felt that. Yeah.
‘Fucking God-botherer…’ he mumbled, good eye on the lighted front room of the house. ‘Wife-beating fucking God-botherer…’
After his aborted call to Marina, he had driven out to Druid’s Heath, driven around until he had found Roy Adderley’s house, parked up in front of it. Doing something good, he thought. Yeah. Thanking a God of his own that he hadn’t had an accident or been picked up by the police.
Boxy and redbrick, on an estate of identical red boxes, it had probably looked modern sometime in the late sixties. There had been attempts at expansive individuality all down the street. Polite bay windows, Georgian front doors. The inhabitants trying to make the most of their homes, their lives. But the modest back and side conservatories didn’t enlarge the houses, just made already tiny gardens look even smaller.
Adderley’s house was unremarkable in every way. But Phil was experienced enough to know that a dull exterior was no disguise for what was going on inside.
He had checked Adderley’s file; the case of his wife’s disappearance, now murder. Adderley had claimed he was out at a church meeting the night she disappeared. However, cursory questioning revealed this to be a lie, prompting him to then become a person of interest. Eventually Adderley had admitted that he was at the flat of his girlfriend, Trudi. She had vouched for him, and with no body, there had been nothing to charge him with so they had reluctantly let him go. Now that Gemma’s body had turned up, Adderley was again of interest. And he knew it, which was why Phil could only talk to him with a solicitor present.
But it didn’t stop him doing this. Not harassment, though. Just parked up somewhere for the evening. Should anyone ask.
The alcohol had deadened any questions that Phil might have had about his actions. Both the cause of them and the effects they might have. And that was good. The less time he had to think, the more he just had to do, the better.
It was cold, both outside and inside the car. But Phil didn’t feel it. Or told himself he didn’t feel it. He wouldn’t put the heater on in case it ran down the battery. The same for the CD player, although he was in the kind of mood that he could never find music to accurately reflect. Warren Zevon had been fine for driving, but there was nothing in the glove box for just sitting. So he sat in silence, with only an unacknowledged, crystalline anger and the emptying bottle for company.
And that, he thought, with a bitterness in his mind to match that in his body, was fine by him.
The curtains of Adderley’s living room had twitched a few times while he had been sitting there. Phil took a cruel solace from that. Someone was watching him. Or was at least aware that he – or someone – was there.
‘Good,’ he said as the curtains twitched again, reaching for the bottle.
The front door opened.
Phil sat immediately upright, attention as focused as it could be. Roy Adderley stepped outside. Scanned the empty street. Spotted the car.
A rush of adrenalin went through Phil. Come on, he thought, come on. Over here, make something of it, come on…
He smiled, gave a little wave.
Even in the darkness, even across the street, he could see how the gesture enraged Adderley. Enraged but, Phil reckoned, scared him as well. Adderley walked over to the car. Phil flung the door wide, tried to square up for confrontation. But the drink had affected his legs, and he found that he had to stagger to his feet.
Adderley stopped before him. ‘You’re that copper from the airport.’
‘Yeah,’ said Phil.
‘You’re pissed.’
Phil managed a smile. ‘Yeah,’ he said, his words tumbling and slurring, ‘but in the morning I’ll be sober. And you’ll still be a wife-beating little shit.’
Adderley sprang back as if he had been struck. ‘I don’t have to take this from you. I could have your job for this.’
Phil attempted a shrug. ‘Really?’
‘This is harassment.’
Phil looked round with what he hoped was a nonchalant swing of the head but was actually a loping drunken swagger. ‘Public property here. Can park where I want.’ He took a step closer to Adderley, who flinched. ‘Why, you got something to hide?’
Before Adderley could answer, Phil saw another figure appear in the doorway. He recognised her straight away. Trudi, from the airport. He turned his attention back to Adderley. ‘You didn’t waste any time.’
