Wrong Place

by Michelle Davies

  ‘He’ll make it sound convincing,’ said Eleanor. ‘Is it bad that I want him to die?’ she whispered.

  Maggie thought very carefully before she answered, mindful that she wasn’t allowed to counsel Eleanor.

  ‘I think you’ve been through a terrible ordeal and how you’re feeling is probably normal in the circumstances,’ she said. ‘Look, I should probably ring DCI Umpire and let him know you’re being discharged . . .’

  As if on cue, the consultant arrived. He seemed as taken aback as Maggie had been to see Eleanor already dressed and packed.

  ‘Ah, I see you’re ready. Well, I’m afraid you have to stay just a bit longer as we need to get your discharge drawn up. But it shouldn’t take too long,’ he said distractedly as he checked his pager.

  ‘Mind if I have a word?’ said Maggie.

  ‘By all means.’

  ‘In private?’

  ‘Oh. Okay. Do excuse us, Mrs Bramwell.’

  When the door was firmly shut between them and Eleanor, Maggie asked why he hadn’t thought to inform the police before telling her she could go.

  ‘I don’t have to explain my medical decisions to you. I wouldn’t ask you to explain yourself to me,’ he blustered.

  ‘No, but it’s been less than thirty-six hours since she was admitted and she’s a vulnerable patient.’

  The consultant shook his head. ‘My remit is to assess her medical condition, not her psychological state. Her wounds are healing well. She has no other medical concerns that she should be detained for.’

  ‘Really? She’s just been attacked by her husband and left for dead. Fine if you can’t keep her up here in HDU, but at least get her on a general ward for another twenty-four hours.’

  ‘I can’t justify taking up another bed when there’s no clinical reason for her to stay.’

  Maggie bristled with frustration but she knew it wasn’t his fault.

  ‘Fine, discharge her if you have to, but you still should’ve warned us. There are protocols we need to follow in a case like this, like making sure she’s got somewhere suitable to stay first. She doesn’t want to go home, understandably.’

  The doctor’s shoulders sagged.

  ‘I’m sorry, you’re right. We should’ve let you know. I did mean to, but the nature of the department, it never slows down enough for me to get everything done.’

  Maggie felt sorry for him. The poor man looked dead on his feet.

  ‘Can you at least keep her here until this afternoon? Give us some time to make arrangements?’

  ‘Yes, I can do that.’

  With that agreed, Maggie headed outside to call Umpire. Butterflies took off in her stomach as she dialled his number but their flight was cut short when he didn’t pick up. Frustrated, she left a message asking him to call back, but when her phone rang less than a minute later it wasn’t his name that flashed up but Belmar’s.

  ‘Hey, we got your message. What’s this about Eleanor Bramwell being discharged?’

  Umpire had listened to her message but refused to call back himself? Disgruntled, she gave Belmar a rundown of the morning’s events so far.

  ‘Well, if that’s what the consultant thinks,’ said Belmar. ‘It’s not our call anyway.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Trenton CID are running the show on their own now.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘About an hour ago. ACC Bailey said that now we know it’s definitely got nothing to do with Bramwell’s business connections it’s no longer HMET’s concern.’

  ‘If I hadn’t called, was anyone going to bother to let me know?’ said Maggie hotly.

  By anyone, she meant Umpire.

  ‘Of course. Ballboy’s just finished briefing the new SIO.’

  ‘Who might that be?’ She knew she must’ve sounded petulant but didn’t care.

  ‘It’s DI Green. Either she or someone else from CID will give you a call.’

  It wasn’t often Maggie was made to feel as though her position as FLO was so far down the pecking order it didn’t count, but this was fast turning into one of those occasions. It was bad enough Umpire wouldn’t talk to her, but was she now meant to wait on tenterhooks until DI Green deigned to contact her too?

  ‘What am I meant to do in the meantime with Eleanor Bramwell?’

  ‘Do as she’s asked. Take her to the hotel. She’s paying, so it’s not like you need to clear it. Look, I need to go,’ said Belmar. ‘Call Trenton if you need anything. Oh, and one more thing – thanks for sending my wife home drunk last night.’

  Despite her sour mood, Maggie couldn’t help but smile. ‘Sorry, we got a bit carried away.’

  ‘I’ll say,’ he laughed. ‘She threw up when she got in and was still feeling sick when she went to work this morning.’ His voice suddenly dropped to a whisper. ‘Allie said she told you about us doing IVF.’

  ‘Um, yeah, she did.’

  ‘You won’t say anything to anyone, will you? It’s just that, well . . . it’s my fault and it’s embarrassing.’

  ‘Belmar, you know I wouldn’t. But you shouldn’t feel embarrassed. It’s not like you have any control over it.’

  ‘That’s easy for you to say,’ he said abruptly. ‘Look, I just want it to stay between us, okay?’

  ‘Of course, I promise. Look, I’d better go too. Good luck with whatever case you’re on next. Drink soon?’

  ‘Yes, let’s get a date organized. Wait, hang on a sec.’

  Maggie heard muffled voices, as if Belmar had put his hand over the receiver. Then he was back.

  ‘DCI Umpire says thanks.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Doing a good job, of course.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  Belmar laughed. ‘What else were you expecting?’

  Maggie could think of a dozen things, but what was the point.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Nothing at all.’

  36

  Bea took two wrong turns on her way to the police station. This side of town was alien to her, far away as it was from the invisible boundary surrounding the shopping centre and six-screen cinema that she and her friends never strayed beyond.

  The first time she went up a cul-de-sac into a dead end she simply doubled back on herself, but on the second occasion she’d been paying far less attention, absorbed in her phone and a WhatsApp chat going on between a couple of her friends that she’d been included in. When she finally looked up, she had no idea where she was. She went to open Google maps to check her location but her phone battery chose that moment to die on her.

  Bea chewed nervously on her thumbnail. She was in a residential street lined with trees and parked cars. It wasn’t like the road where she lived, where all the houses had driveways – here the properties were knotted together in one long line, and you had to look hard to see where one ended and the next began. The exteriors revealed signs of neglect from their occupants – paint flaking off window frames, dirty net curtains suckered against smeared glass – and the pocket front gardens were either overgrown or cultivating piles of rubbish. This must be one of those streets her mum referred to as a no-go area.

  Bea walked back to the end of the terrace to check the street sign but was still none the wiser when she saw it: Clarendon Road. For a second she wavered. Why didn’t she just go home? She could ask someone for directions to the bus station and jump on the 365. Life would be so much easier if she didn’t tell the police.

  An elderly man with a shock of white hair was walking towards her with his dog straining at its leash. Displaying a confidence she didn’t feel inside, Bea stopped him.

  ‘Can you help me please? I’m lost,’ she said.

  He smiled. ‘Where are you trying to get to?’

  Looking into his kind, weathered face, Bea had a sudden flashback to the last break-in she and Sean had committed. She remembered the victim’s expression as she cowered in her hallway and begged Sean not to hurt her; Bea had tried to reassure the woman it would be okay but Sean had s
houted at them both to shut up and then he hit the woman hard across the face. Flooded with shame, Bea knew what she had to do.

  ‘The police station,’ she said firmly.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked the man with a trace of concern.

  ‘I will be, yes.’

  He gave her directions to get back to the main road.

  ‘It should be signposted from there,’ he finished.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Bea, and she bent down to pat his dog, a glossy-coated Golden Retriever. The dog butted his head up to meet her hand.

  ‘He likes you,’ said the man. ‘Take care now.’

  Bea bade them both farewell and continued in the direction the man had outlined. There would be no going home, not today. She had to tell the truth. Maybe, a little voice inside her head reassured her, the punishment wouldn’t be so bad because she was handing herself in and this would be the first and only time she’d ever been in trouble.

  Maybe.

  But as the police station loomed into view, Bea’s legs buckled beneath her and she began to shake. Twice she tried to step off the pavement to cross the road to get to it and twice she had to pull back as she thought her legs might give out. She was about to attempt it a third time when a hand suddenly encircled her upper arm and gripped it tightly, causing her to yelp.

  ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ Sean whispered in her ear.

  Keeping hold of Bea’s arm, he yanked her back from the kerb. A woman bustling past with shopping bags shot them a look.

  ‘I’m not doing anything!’ Bea protested. ‘I’m – I’m on my way home. I had an appointment.’

  Sean squeezed her arm even tighter and she began to cry.

  ‘Don’t lie to me. I heard you ask that old bloke for the way to the police station.’

  Bea struggled to make sense of what Sean was saying. How did he know about the man with the dog? Then it dawned on her.

  ‘Have you been following me?’ she squeaked.

  ‘Too right I have. First you go to the hospital two days on the trot, now you’re heading to the police station. Are you out of your mind? What are you playing at?’

  He reeled her round to face him, so they were almost nose-to-nose. Sean’s face was twisted in a snarl and Bea recoiled from the fury that burned off him like heat.

  ‘Well?’

  She was too terrified to answer.

  ‘Take another step towards that nick and I’ll push you under a fucking car.’

  Crying harder, Bea tried to pull away but Sean grabbed her other arm and yanked her towards him. He wrapped his arms round her body; anyone walking by would think they were hugging. Only close up would they see the terror stamped on her face.

  ‘I am not going to prison because some silly little kid can’t keep her mouth shut, do you hear me?’ he hissed in her ear.

  Bea nodded frantically.

  ‘I’ve warned you what will happen, haven’t I? Social services will be round to your house quicker than you can say boo hoo. And it won’t be just you they take away – it’ll be that sister of yours too.’

  She didn’t doubt he knew what he was talking about. Sean had told her, with some pride, that he’d been dabbling in petty crime since junior school and a previous arrest for stealing a car had earned him a community service order and his own social services case file.

  He pushed her back a fraction so she could see his sneering face. ‘She’s a looker, your sister. Maybe I should get to know her as well.’

  ‘She’s only twelve,’ said Bea hoarsely.

  ‘So?’

  Fear ripped through her at the thought of what he might do to Esme given half a chance.

  ‘I won’t say anything, I promise,’ she said. ‘I’ll go home now and I won’t go back to the hospital.’

  ‘Too right you won’t. What the hell were you doing going to see that woman? Do you want people to think it was us who did her over?’

  ‘I know it’s stupid but I wanted to say sorry that someone had copied us.’

  Sean rolled his eyes. ‘You are such a fucking sap.’

  ‘She didn’t hear me though, she’s unconscious.’

  ‘Just as well. Now, you’re going to go straight home like a good little girl and forget all about hospitals and police stations, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she stammered.

  He released her arm and stepped backwards, smiling as though nothing was amiss and he hadn’t threatened her life.

  Bea hesitated for a second then slowly began to walk away, fearful he might grab her again at any moment. She hadn’t gone more than ten paces when he called her name and jogged after her.

  ‘In case it hasn’t sunk in yet, I’ll be keeping a close eye on you, Bea. Anywhere you go, anything you do, I’ll know about it.’

  37

  Leaving Eleanor to cool her heels until her discharge, Maggie headed back to the station. There was a growing tightness in her chest, a reminder she was juggling two cases requiring her full and absolute attention. For the next couple of hours at least, it was Della’s turn.

  When she arrived back in CID, Pearl was waiting for her.

  ‘Don’t say I never give you anything,’ she said, thrusting a file at Maggie.

  ‘Is this . . . ?’

  ‘Yep. Everything we’ve got on Helen Cardle.’

  The file felt flimsy and light in Maggie’s hand.

  ‘Not a lot by the looks of things,’ she said, disappointed.

  ‘Nope. It’s pretty clear from the witness statements that she’d been talking about leaving for a while. My take on it, for what it’s worth, is that she didn’t want to be found.’

  Helen wouldn’t be the first missing person to fall into that category. Of the 200,000 or so people reported missing in the UK every year, at least two thousand went untraced.

  ‘I ran the usual background checks too, but nothing came up,’ Pearl added. ‘She’s covered her tracks well.’

  ‘Or she could be dead for all we know.’

  ‘I did look for a death certificate under the name of Helen Cardle but there was no match.’

  ‘Thanks for trying,’ said Maggie.

  Pearl’s enormous shoulders lifted in a shrug. ‘I’m not sure it’s going to be of much help.’

  Maggie dropped into her chair and opened the file on her desk. Across the office, she could see Renshaw was on the phone, talking animatedly. She looked up and caught Maggie’s eye and smiled. Maggie overcame her shock quickly enough to fire a bemused smile back. Then she turned her attention to the file.

  The preliminary police report revealed Helen Cardle was reported missing a month after her last sighting in Mansell on Saturday 21 August. Her father, Eric Cardle, had become concerned they’d had no contact with her whatsoever in that time. Maggie flicked through the papers to find the statement Sadie had given to officers once the investigation began. It didn’t make particularly comfortable reading: she’d effectively washed her hands of her ‘errant’ daughter, saying she had threatened to walk out so many times she assumed she’d made good on her threat. ‘Attention-seeking’ was how she’d labelled it.

  Helen wants everyone to make a fuss of her and beg her to come home but I’ve had enough. We’ve done it too many times already and our poor darling granddaughter doesn’t know whether she’s coming or going as far as her mum is concerned. Right now I don’t care if Helen never comes back.

  Maggie wondered what Della would make of that last sentence in Sadie’s statement. At least Eric was more forgiving:

  Our daughter will always have a home with us if she wants it.

  The file also included a witness statement from one of Helen’s friends, Gillian Smith. The two of them had gone shopping in Mansell town centre on the morning of Saturday 21 August and had stopped for a burger in McDonald’s for lunch. Afterwards Helen said she wanted to look in on the Mansell Show on their way home and Gillian was surprised – the show was something mostly old people and families went to. She suspected the
re might have been a man involved, although as far as she was aware Helen hadn’t arranged to meet anyone and when they got there they’d wandered around aimlessly for a bit.

  The statement then revealed Helen had provoked a row by bringing up an ex-boyfriend of Gillian’s who’d mistreated her. According to Gillian, Helen knew it was a touchy subject for her and in hindsight she thought Helen had mentioned it so she would get angry and leave, which is exactly what happened. Gillian had stormed off, unaware it was the last time she would ever see her friend.

  The officer who conducted the interview had pushed Gillian on why she should be so sure Helen had deliberately engineered the row.

  I think she set the whole thing up so she could leave that day. Helen has been very unhappy lately. She doesn’t enjoy being a mum, although I think she does love Della. Why is she unhappy? Well, she’s always talking about the places she wants to travel to and how having a baby ruined her chance of going. Did her parents tell you that last summer she took off for three weeks without telling anyone? When she came back she refused to say where she’d been but I think it must’ve been somewhere in this country as her dad said she didn’t take her passport. Actually, my money’s on the Isle of Wight, because a few weeks earlier a funfair had come to Mansell and Helen slept with this bloke who ran one of the rides. We’d been talking to him for a bit before they went off together and he said the fair was off to the south coast and then to the Isle of Wight and the dates tallied. I can’t remember his name though and to be honest she didn’t mention him after that night. He was young, about our age.

  Maggie flicked through the file but could find no mention of whether the funfair was followed up as a line of inquiry. She wasn’t wholly surprised it hadn’t been: as Pearl said, everything stacked up to suggest Helen had left of her own accord. Also, unbeknown to her parents, she’d withdrawn her savings a week earlier and while shopping with Gillian on the morning of 21 August had purchased new underwear and several changes of clothes. Her passport was also missing. With no sense of criminality playing a part in Helen’s leaving, Maggie could see why the case was quickly closed.