by DS Butler
The solicitor told him they could only keep him here for twenty-four hours without charging him, unless they applied for an extension, or considered him a terrorist risk. And as he was an animal rights activist, that was a possibility.
The duty solicitor really didn’t seem that bothered by the outcome, one way or another. He probably wouldn’t care if they kept him locked up for months.
Ted tried telling the solicitor about the dogs in Larry’s lock-up and begged him to call the RSPCA as the police seemed to be doing sod all to help the dogs. But he just said, “Better get yourself sorted out first, son.”
Patronising idiot.
Ted was surprised the solicitor didn’t pat him on the head and stick a lollipop in his mouth and have done with it.
56
To make the night even worse, Charlotte couldn’t even go straight home. She had to go to a counselling session.
Charlotte stood outside the community centre and looked up at the grey, sixties-style building. Coming to these meetings always filled her with unease, which was stupid. No one here was a threat.
She knew she would have to get her fear under control soon, or choose an alternative career. You couldn’t be a police officer if you were scared all the time. A little fear could be a good thing, but jumping at every little thing was making it impossible to do her job properly.
People were starting to notice.
Rain began to fall in fat drops as she jogged up the steps to the front doors of the building. A security guard, stationed at the entrance, buzzed her through and then walked back behind his counter.
“Looks like the heavens are about to open,” he said, pushing the sign-in book and a biro, with a chewed end, towards her.
Charlotte managed to nod and smile while signing her name and then left the security guard peering out of the window at the grey clouds.
She could smell rain in the air mingled with the smell of brewing coffee, which was how these meetings always started: a cup of coffee and a cosy chat to put everyone at ease.
Charlotte walked down the magnolia corridor, passed a couple of rooms, one holding night classes in beginners’ French and the other a pottery lesson. The first time she had come to these sessions she’d wanted to escape to the pottery class instead. At least, she might have achieved something with that.
She walked on, past a green notice board with evening class schedules pinned to it and a poster that displayed a close-up view of a woman’s black eye and the words: He said he was sorry.
Charlotte suppressed a shudder and pushed open a green glass-panelled door with a dog-eared sign that had the letters WAG printed on it. In this case, the letters weren’t an abbreviation for the romantic partners of footballers. They stood for Women’s Aid Group.
There were a few women in the room already, huddled in groups of two or three, nursing cups of coffee. Charlotte felt their gazes slip towards her as she entered the room.
The room was large and reminded her of a school assembly hall. It even had that faint institutional smell, common to schools and community centres.
The meeting only took up a small corner of the room. The counsellor liked to arrange the chairs in a tight circle. Charlotte supposed that was to try to make the meetings more intimate and make the women feel more secure.
Samantha Dearing, the counsellor, smiled and approached Charlotte. Charlotte hated being singled out for attention. It was bad enough she had to come to these meetings anyway.
She tried to evade the counsellor by heading for the coffee flask, which stood on a table set back against the wall. She picked up a cup, filled it and then struggled with the lid of the milk, feeling all thumbs.
“Here, let me.” Samantha hadn’t taken the hint and joined her by the coffee table. Samantha peeled back the seal on the milk and handed it back to Charlotte.
Charlotte muttered her thanks and added a generous splash of milk to her coffee.
“How have you been, Charlotte?” Samantha asked.
“Oh, you know, fine.” Charlotte studied her coffee cup, avoiding eye contact.
“You’re back at work now, aren’t you? How have you been coping with that?”
“It’s been fine.” Charlotte looked around the room, hoping someone else would interrupt.
Samantha nodded, and Charlotte could tell she was thinking up more questions.
“Not everyone finds themselves suited to these sessions. If you would prefer…” Samantha was cut off as a short, black woman burst into the room.
Charlotte had seen her at these meetings before. Her name was Trisha and she wore her usual spray-on jeans. She took a couple of deep jerky breaths. Her eyes were wide and streaming with tears.
“He’s, he’s...” Trisha tried to collect her breath. She put a hand to her chest as she struggled to get the words out.
Samantha crossed the hall, peered out of the doorway and along the corridor and then closed the door firmly. She put her arm around Trisha and gently guided her to a chair, but Trisha didn’t want to sit down.
“He’s followed me. You don’t understand. He is outside now, waiting for me.”
Samantha’s gaze flickered to the door, but she kept her arm around Trisha’s shoulders. “It’s all right. You’re safe here.”
Charlotte watched the scene unfold. She was used to this type of situation. When she’d been at the Met, she worked for the CSU, Community Support Unit, where cases like this were common.
Samantha would call the police if she suspected the abuser had followed Trisha here. Perhaps, one of Charlotte’s old colleagues would attend. She shivered and put her cup of coffee on the table.
As Samantha spoke to the security guard in hushed tones at the door, Charlotte took a moment to look around the room at the other women. They stood, frozen in place, chewing fingernails or fiddling with their hair. No one spoke.
When Samantha re-entered the room, she walked over to Trisha, who was now slumped in a chair, and leaned over to whisper a few words. She then straightened and walked over to Charlotte.
Charlotte knew what was coming.
She was going to ask her advice, for Charlotte’s professional opinion. It was laughable. If Charlotte’s advice were worth anything, she wouldn’t need to attend these meetings. She didn’t have the answers. If her judgement were worth anything, she wouldn’t be here now.
Before Samantha had a chance to speak, Charlotte said, “I’ll go outside and see if he is hanging around.”
“Oh, I’m not sure that is a good idea,” Samantha said, but Charlotte was already walking towards the door.
She walked around the outside of the building, scanned the car park for anyone hiding behind cars, looked behind the bins and searched for anything out of place, anything that didn’t fit.
Nothing.
She flipped her collar up, hunched her shoulders against the rain and headed back to the main entrance. She saw the security guard climbing the steps.
“Anything?” Charlotte asked him.
“I didn’t see anyone suspicious. I even had a look along the road, but only saw a couple of teenagers at the bus stop. I don’t think he’s out here.” The security guard pushed wet strands of hair back from his face.
The rain started to fall heavily and Charlotte shivered.
57
Charlotte spent five minutes talking through the situation with the security guard. He said he had taken a good look around the site, and as far as he could tell, there was no one hanging around, waiting for Trisha. Charlotte thought he was probably right, but she understood Trisha’s paranoia.
It was easy to see danger everywhere after someone you trusted had betrayed you. It would be perfectly understandable if she had seen someone who looked like him and panicked. Perhaps she saw someone with the same colour hair, heard someone talk in a similar tone of voice. There are so many things that could make the fear bubble to the surface again.
Charlotte didn’t want to go back to the meeting now. She hadn’t wanted to go in the first plac
e, but it was a condition ordered by her GP. If Charlotte didn’t attend the meetings, she didn’t get the tablets, and she still needed those. She thought it was quite a devious ploy by the doctor, but it worked. She had attended the meetings so far.
The tablets calmed her anxiety. The dry-mouthed, heart-pounding, panic attacks were less frequent when she took them. She had picked up a full prescription last night so she could afford to miss this meeting. She could start going to the meetings again when she got down to the last few tablets.
The rain was really hammering down now and Charlotte hadn’t brought an umbrella. She would get drenched walking to the station, but that was still a better option than hanging around here.
She could feel the other women’s panic and anxiety prickling at her skin. She crossed the hallway to the women’s toilets and once inside, tied back her hair in a ponytail and wiped the rain-smudged eyeliner from under her eyes.
Charlotte had only just entered a toilet cubicle and shut the door behind her, when she heard the main door to the ladies’ toilets open and close.
Her heart jumped.
Trisha’s violent ex-boyfriend could still be hanging around.
Then she heard female voices and relaxed. Charlotte soon understood the women were talking about her.
“That’s what gets me,” the first female voice said.
“Exactly, she is so up herself,” the second voice said.
“Yeah, and she never talks at any of the meetings. She just sits there, judging the rest of us. She thinks she’s too good for the likes of us.”
“Uh huh, exactly. She acts like we brought it on ourselves.”
Charlotte heard their voices fade as the women walked out of the toilets.
Charlotte exited the cubicle, turned on the taps of the sink in front of her and splashed cold water on her face. She looked at herself in the mirror.
They were victims, but they formed part of a cycle.
They might not be physically violent, but it’s still bullying. To feel better about themselves, they turn on an outsider, trying to raise themselves in the pecking order. Human nature, and you can’t fight human nature.
By the time Charlotte walked back to the main entrance, the rain still hadn’t eased off. She peered out of the window on the right of the door and shuddered. She would get soaked if she went home now.
“Looks like it has set in for the duration,” the security guard said, far too cheerfully, looking at her through strands of damp, grey hair.
“Yes, you might be right. Goodnight.”
She pulled open one of the heavy green doors, fastened her coat and strode out into the needles of rain. Within seconds, she could feel the rain seeping through her clothes.
She was picking her way through the car park, eyes down so she could avoid the worst of the puddles, when a flash of movement caught her attention. She stopped and raised a hand to shield her eyes from the rain and looked into a dark corner of the car park.
It was nearly nine pm and dark. Flashes from car headlights reflected in the water on the ground, and the light bounced off car windscreens of parked cars. It made it difficult to see.
Was there really someone there?
Charlotte took a step to her right and then froze.
Twenty feet in front of her, crouched low against a red Honda Civic, a man watched her.
He seemed oblivious to the rainwater streaming down his face and splashing off his shoulders. She didn’t recognize him, but assumed this was the man who had caused Trisha to panic.
A noise from behind caught her by surprise, and Charlotte turned, again using her hand to protect her eyes from the rain. She could just make out the security guard shouting and gesturing at her as he clattered down the steps.
Charlotte turned back to face the man waiting in the shadows of the car park.
But he wasn’t waiting anymore.
He ran at full speed towards her.
He was over six foot and easily weighed fifty pounds more than Charlotte, but she could use that against him. His greater mass and momentum would be his downfall.
She waited until the last possible moment, until he was almost on top of her, fist raised, eyes rolled back to reveal the whites.
She heard the hiss of his breath as she moved to the side in one fluid movement, but kept her left leg in its original position so it hit him mid-shin. He fell forward.
When he fell, she moved right and pulled back her leg, so he wouldn’t fall on top of her and trap her beneath him.
His arm scrambled for something to grip, to break his fall, and he grabbed at her coat. That was a mistake. She took a firm grip of his left arm and yanked it behind his back. She followed up by raising her right knee to meet the small of his back and using her weight to make sure he continued to fall forwards.
He did. Hard.
With only one hand available to break his fall, it folded awkwardly beneath him. Charlotte held back a flinch as his head cracked on the wet tarmac.
While he was still dazed, she pulled his right arm from under him and held it behind his back, keeping her knee firmly in place, pinning him to the floor.
Within seconds, the security guard was by her side. “Quick reflexes,” he said.
58
While his colleagues at Wood Street celebrated the arrest of Ted Sanders, DC Collins was still at the hospital, waiting.
He’d given up on the coffee from the machine and opted for the hot chocolate. The chocolate had more of an effect than the weak coffee. He sat on the bench with the sugar itching its way around his bloodstream.
His foot tapped on the floor and his fingers drummed a rhythm on his legs that annoyed him, but he couldn’t seem to stop.
He’d been sitting in the same corridor, with its light green walls and the same old posters about HIV and the winter flu jab, for too long.
John Weston was in an isolation room because the doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him.
Weston’s room had a large window. Every so often, Collins would leave his bench and look at Weston through the window. Every time, he would see the same thing. Weston in his bed, pale and unconscious.
Collins willed him to wake up as he stood there. He imagined Weston opening his eyes, blinking, sitting up with a yawn and a stretch and asking Collins what was for breakfast.
Collins had his notebook ready. He had written down the questions he needed to ask. But Weston slept on.
Collins knew it must be his imagination, but Weston looked as if he were getting smaller as the days passed. Shrinking.
Collins should be at home, feet up with the paper, or putting his kids to bed. His left knee bounced up and down, like a nervous tic, as if all the excess energy he conserved sitting here over the past few days now demanded an outlet.
Debra sent him a text earlier, telling him the new yucca plant had arrived and asking him to thank Jack.
He heard footsteps running along a corridor.
He watched as a nurse he didn’t recognise jogged towards him, clamping her arm across her chest as she ran. Another nurse followed with the doctor Collins had spoken to frequently about John Weston’s condition.
All three of them ignored Collins. He stood up and watched as they put on their protective clothing – gowns, full-face masks and gloves, then entered Weston’s room.
When the alarm sounded, two further medical staff pushed passed Collins and entered Weston’s room. Collins drew back and returned to his bench. He opened his notebook and flicked through the pages of questions he needed to ask, not really looking at them.
He had a feeling he wouldn’t be able to ask John Weston anything now.
*
Charlotte spent most of the weekend curled up on the sofa. It was ridiculous. They were in the middle of an investigation and she wasn’t allowed to work outside office hours.
She was still furious at Mackinnon’s betrayal, and without work to keep her mind occupied, she couldn’t stop thinking about it. She wished sh
e had confronted him on Friday.
All that “is there anything wrong?” fake concern from Mackinnon, when all along he was telling Brookbank she was overreacting and jumpy.
Despite her overtime ban, on Saturday, she’d gone to the HPA’s main lab in Collingdale to watch the assay in progress for a few hours. They had samples of John Weston’s blood to work with, but the results were weak and inconclusive.
They needed to work with pre-transfusion blood samples from John Weston, but the first samples of blood had been mislaid due to a screw-up in the hospital lab; and both sets of scientists said the samples they did have were taken too late.
When DC Collins called to tell her Weston had died, Charlotte paused for a moment out of respect, wondering how anyone could want another person to suffer like that. It must have been an excruciating death. Then a cold, callous thought pushed its way to the surface - testing for the toxin would be easier now.
They could sample every tissue until they found what had killed him.
59
Ruby Wei rang the front doorbell and the ringing chimes triggered the yapping of Linda’s Yorkshire terrier, Minty.
A moment later, a shadow appeared through the misted glass panel and Gus opened the door, kissed her on the cheek and offered to take her coat.
He squeezed her in a hug. “Mum’s cooking spaghetti bolognese.”
Ruby smiled, touched that Linda remembered. The first time she’d come for dinner, Linda cooked spaghetti bolognese, and it had been the first time Ruby had ever eaten it. She raved about it and Linda gave her the recipe to try at home.
Ruby hardly ever cooked Chinese-style food. Her lab mates expected her to whip them up a chicken chow mein when they visited, but that was never going to happen. The Chinese restaurant food they were used to was nothing like the food Ruby had grown up with.
They followed the smell of cooking onions, garlic and tomatoes into the kitchen. Linda turned from the stove, her cheeks flushed from the heat of the pan simmering away in front of her.
Minty walked between them, snaking around Linda’s legs.
