‘There was one other thing, ma’am. You asked me to take another look at the pictures from the swimming pool,’ Keith said.
Becky’s brain snapped into focus and she was no longer listening to Keith with even half an ear.
That’s it! Her eyes shot open. The man on the stairs – she knew who he was and where she had seen him before.
‘Keith, I need you to find out…’ she asked, interrupting him mid-flow. ‘What the hell…?’
She ended the call and leaped to her feet. The top of the metal staircase faced the north wing across the wide courtyard, and she could see two figures on the roof. A man dressed in black was pulling a girl with red hair backwards and out of view towards the far side of the roof.
Becky turned and ran towards the door, pressing the bell for the caretaker repeatedly while calling Tom on her radio. ‘Tom, Scarlett’s on the roof. There’s a man with her and he’s dragging her towards the edge. I think he’s going to push her over.’
‘Where are you?’ Tom shouted. She could tell he had already started to run.
‘I’m outside and the pissing caretaker won’t let me in.’ Becky stabbed at every button on the intercom system, but everybody was probably out at work.
‘Okay, call for backup. I’m just reaching the emergency stairwell now.’
‘Tom, it’s the lifeguard from the swimming pool. I’m sure of it.’
‘Shit! Just get up to the roof as quickly as you can.’
Tom ended the call and Becky hammered on the door with her fist while shouting into her radio for backup.
She was never going to make it. She turned to look back at the roof and yelled as loud as she could, ‘Police! Let her go, you bastard.’
She knew he wouldn’t be able to make out the words, but she hoped hearing a voice and knowing he had been seen might be enough to slow him down.
*
Tom took the stairs two at a time. Even if Becky made it into the building, she was going to be slower than him getting to the roof.
When he reached the door at the top of the stairs, it was propped open. Tom burst out into the hot glare of the sun. He could see Scarlett and a young man with dark hair and a thin growth of facial hair on the far side of the roof. The man had one hand over Scarlett’s mouth and was dragging her closer and closer to the edge. Scarlett didn’t seem to be struggling; she was like a dead weight. Maybe she was unconscious.
Tom shouted, and the man looked round. His eyes met Tom’s for a second then flicked towards the open doorway of the north wing fire escape. It was clear to Tom that if he dropped Scarlett now he could make a run for it through that doorway and down the stairs.
Tom quickly weighed up the options. If he rushed the man, he might panic and push Scarlett over the edge, knowing he could probably take Tom on and win. He was younger and fitter, and Tom didn’t fancy his chances. And anyway his priority was to keep Scarlett safe.
He stopped dead and the man froze too. At least for a moment. And then he started to pull Scarlett towards the edge again and Tom knew he couldn’t get to her in time.
*
Becky had given up trying to get the caretaker to open up for her. He either wasn’t in, or he had made a run for it. She hadn’t liked the look of him one bit and recognised something evil in him. She spun round, looking for anybody who might be able to let her into the building. She saw someone coming out through the door at the top of the opposite staircase.
‘Police!’ she shouted. ‘Hold that door open.’
A startled girl in her early twenties did as she was asked, and Becky raced down one staircase and up the other.
‘Thanks,’ she gasped, pushing past the girl and into the corridor. She remembered seeing an emergency stairwell at the junction of the corridors and she headed towards that, aware that she was going to have to go up several flights of stairs to reach the roof.
Come on, Becky. Show them what you’re made of, she thought as she tore down the corridor and burst through the door.
Where the hell is the backup? Bloody Manchester traffic clogged up, no doubt.
She made it up the first two flights of stairs, but by the third she was really flagging. Only the thought that Scarlett was in danger spurred her on. And Tom was up there on his own. What if there were more of them, not just this one guy?
‘Oh God.’ She had hardly any breath left, and her legs felt like jelly.
When she reached the open door at the top of the stairs she paused for a moment. She didn’t know what was happening, and if she ran out there without an ounce of strength in her body she might make things worse. She bent over double, grasping her legs just above the knees, trying to get control of her breathing.
She had just about recovered when she heard a shout: ‘No!’
It was Tom.
She rushed out onto the roof. Tom was some distance away, but Scarlett and the man were only a few metres from Becky, right by the low parapet. Scarlett was limp and the man was bending down. It looked to Becky as if he was about to throw her over the edge and she knew that he would come for her next. Standing in the entrance to the stairwell, she was the only thing blocking his escape. She looked around for a weapon, but there was nothing.
When she looked up again, she noticed that Scarlett’s eyes were open and staring straight at her, as if she was trying to tell her something, but Becky had no idea what.
The man had just got his hands under Scarlett’s knees when the girl drew her legs under her and powered to her feet, using all the strength in her thighs. The man was right next to the parapet. Scarlett’s shoulder hit him in the chest, and his arms shot out as he tried to regain his balance.
As he toppled back his hand reached out to grab at Scarlett. She screamed as she rocked towards him.
86
By the time he made it home that evening Tom was bone tired. He had sat through interview after interview, been interrogated by Philippa and produced a written report of everything that had happened on the roof and the events that had led to it. He had gone over the details with Becky more times than he could count, and, given the similarities between the two cases, they had re-examined the Jennifer Bale case. But there was no evidence that her death was anything other than suicide, and Tom had fought hard to block out thoughts of Linda Bale’s fatal leap.
Eventually he told Becky to go home. She was supposed to be taking things easy for her first few weeks back at work, and today had been both physically and emotionally demanding.
Could they have done anything any different? However many times he went over the scenario in his head, he felt sure that racing across the roof in an attempt to save Scarlett wouldn’t have helped. But he would never know.
As Tom steered his car into the drive, his heart lifted a little in spite of his exhaustion when he saw Louisa’s car parked in front of the garage. She was sitting on his front step dressed in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, her slim brown legs stretched out in front of her. He had no idea how long she had been there.
Tom turned off the ignition and jumped out.
‘Louisa, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you’d be waiting.’
She gave him a sad little smile. ‘After the day you’ve had, I don’t want to hear any apologies. I was hardly going to let you sit at home all night and worry about everything on your own.’
Louisa knew exactly what had happened. She was one of the team of doctors that had tried to mend a body badly broken in a fall from a roof.
‘Let’s go in,’ she said, putting her arm around his waist as if he needed help to stay upright, which perhaps he did. ‘You can tell me about it inside.’
Tom walked into the kitchen and threw open the doors to the garden in an attempt to catch a breath of air. But the night was still, the atmosphere heavy, as if a thick blanket was lying over Manchester, deadening all sound and draining the city of energy.
He poured them a stiff drink. They both needed it.
‘Here’s to a crap day that I never want to repeat,
’ Tom said, raising his glass. Louisa clinked hers with his and said nothing, waiting for him to speak. He didn’t look at her, just stared into his vodka as if once again seeing the whole disaster unfold.
‘I could have stopped it. That’s what I keep thinking.’
‘How?’ Louisa asked, her voice matter-of-fact. Tom was relieved that she wasn’t revelling in the drama, as so many would. She was calm, allowing him to say as much or as little as he liked, but he wanted to tell her everything, maybe in the hope that this time his role in the events would sound better to his ears.
‘I came out from the south wing stairs, and the man Scarlett knew as Lewis was on the far side of the roof, dragging her towards the edge. She looked for all the world as if she’d passed out. She was floppy, you know?’
Louisa nodded.
‘I was about eighty metres from the pair of them. I’m no sprinter, so with the best will in the world it would have taken me about twenty-five seconds from a standing start to reach them. Lewis was close to the edge, and I felt sure that if I rushed him he would fling Scarlett off the roof and run for the other fire exit. He was right by it, and he’s a lot younger than me. I didn’t know Becky was there.’
Tom downed the last of his drink in one gulp and turned to the fridge for a bottle of wine. He had realised long ago that alcohol was never the solution to any problem, but right now he didn’t care.
‘What I don’t know is whether I made an active decision not to move, or if I dithered,’ he said, taking two wine glasses from the cupboard.
‘I think you’re overanalysing this, Tom. I’ve not known you for long, but I watched you during that awful case earlier this year. It’s obvious how much you care, and you question yourself simply because it matters to you. You’d have instantly weighed up the options, and it’s only now that you’re doubting yourself.’
Tom’s eyes met Louisa’s. There was a stillness about her that he found soothing, and her confidence in him was comforting.
‘When Lewis got her right to the edge, Scarlett pulled her legs under her and stood up as fast as she could. She’s a tall girl, and he was completely off balance. Lewis reached out to grab her as he fell. I can still hear the sound of her scream.’
*
Natalie hadn’t been able to stop shaking since Becky Robinson had come to tell her what had happened. She’d heard the sound of sirens minutes before, but it never occurred to her that it was anything to do with Scarlett. She looked out of the window to see what was going on and had seen two ambulances. One raced round the corner as if heading for the main entrance of the building, but the other stopped about fifty yards along the road from her window. She leaned out as far as she could to look, but a crowd had gathered around what appeared to be a body, and she couldn’t see a thing.
Then the hammering had started on her door.
‘Natalie, let me in. It’s Scarlett – she needs you.’
Natalie felt as if her heart had stopped. Was that Scarlett down there on the pavement? For a moment she couldn’t move.
‘Natalie, open the door. Scarlett’s okay. She’s not hurt.’
She rushed to the door and flung it open. Becky was gasping for air, her face white and clammy. She was hanging on to the door frame as if she was about to keel over.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I just need to catch my breath. We need to get you up to the roof. Scarlett’s there. The paramedics are with her, but she’s okay. Just in shock.’
Natalie hadn’t waited for Becky to recover. She raced along the corridor and was about to turn the corner when Becky shouted, ‘Through the emergency exit. Just keep going up.’
She flung open the door, sprinted up the stairs and burst out onto the roof. Two men in green uniforms were kneeling by Scarlett’s side, and Tom Douglas was crouched by her head, talking quietly to her.
‘Scarlett!’ Natalie threw herself down onto the concrete roof and reached out to touch her daughter.
‘She’s okay, Natalie,’ Tom said. ‘She’s incredibly brave.’
‘What happened?’
‘She was in great danger but she kept her head. She managed to get the better of a grown man, and you should be very proud of her.’
Scarlett turned her head and spoke quietly, her voice surprisingly steady. ‘I did what Dad taught me. He said a dead weight was much more difficult to move, so I pretended I’d fainted and let my whole body go limp. When we got to the edge I stood up quickly and…’
Oh my God, Natalie thought. That must be him on the pavement.
‘Shh, sweetheart. It’s okay. I love you, baby.’
The paramedics had insisted that Scarlett go to hospital to be checked over, and as Natalie sat by her daughter’s side, holding her hand, the whole sorry tale had come out.
‘I believed Lewis when he said he was a policeman. I really did think he had been working with Dad before he died. But how did he know who I was?’
Natalie hadn’t been able to answer that, telling Scarlett that none of it mattered now. But a couple of hours later Becky had arrived at the hospital and explained it to Natalie as they sat together in the waiting room.
‘I’m afraid it seems Alison Morgan was working with Lewis. I can’t tell you much more right now, but I will as soon as I can. What I do need to tell you is that Lewis had some inappropriate photos of Scarlett. It looks like she didn’t know he was taking them – the bad ones, that is. She may be too embarrassed to tell you, but she needs to know that we’re fairly certain we’ve got them all, and nobody else is ever going to see them.’
Natalie’s mouth flooded with saliva and for a moment she thought she was going to be sick. The horror of what her daughter had been through made the pain of Alison’s treachery pale into insignificance. But there was one question she had to ask, knowing how much it would matter to Scarlett.
‘Do you think Bernie was involved?’
‘Well, I think it’s unlikely your husband was working undercover, if I’m honest. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t an excellent policeman, and we think – although we still have to confirm this – that Bernie was probably trying to gather evidence against Alison so he could get her to release her hold on him.’
‘Well, there was much easier option, if he’d had the balls. He could just have told me.’
Natalie could hear the disillusionment in her own voice, and Becky was sensible enough to say nothing. And Natalie was going to have to explain to Scarlett that her dad’s late nights and frequent absences were down to something far less honourable than overtime on a covert operation. She wasn’t looking forward to that.
The thought of the danger she had put her daughter in was sending shivers up and down Natalie’s spine every few minutes. Alison must have set up the apartment and got that bogus agent to call her. But why would she do that?
‘She and Lewis bought both flats through a company they set up,’ Becky explained. ‘DS Sims – you met him when you came for the interview – has checked it out. We found a message from Alison to Lewis on his phone.’
Natalie knew this wasn’t going to be pleasant, but she had to know. ‘Just tell me the worst. I can’t hate her any more than I already do.’
‘She started by blaming him for everything going wrong. He wasn’t supposed to be taking anybody into the other apartment and she thought it was safe to move you in.’ Becky paused and looked at Natalie, as if unsure whether to continue.
‘Don’t stop, Becky. I want to know.’
‘It seems she wanted you close by, and you’d mentioned going to Spain to stay with your parents. I’m sorry, Natalie, but she said she wanted to witness your unhappiness over the split with Ed Cooper.’
Can this get any worse? Natalie thought. And then it came to her in a sudden moment of clarity, so clear she didn’t know why she had never seen it before. Alison had never forgiven Natalie for giving up on their dreams. Natalie had chosen Bernie, and Alison – who had never had anybody to call her own – had been devastated. Natalie hadn’t cut he
r friend out of her life and had tried to include Alison in her family, but it wasn’t enough. Alison had felt compelled to destroy Natalie’s happiness.
87
Louisa had finally managed to persuade Tom to have a hot shower and get into bed, but he still needed to get it all out of his system, and it seemed Louisa understood. She rested her head on his shoulder and wrapped an arm around his waist.
‘Talk to me,’ she said. So he did.
He told her about Bernie Gray’s death, his wife’s new man Ed Cooper, her best friend Alison, family friend Megan, and the complex relationships between all of them. And Louisa just listened without interrupting him once.
‘One thing you need to know, Louisa, is that Lewis told Scarlett that I’m corrupt and into teenage girls. She was about to tell my boss all of this, and I’d probably have been suspended while they investigated his claims.’
Louisa lifted a hand to his chest and stroked it gently. ‘Come on, Tom. Nobody on this earth would have believed that.’
That wasn’t necessarily the case, as Tom well knew. Paedophiles don’t have their predilections printed on their foreheads, so he was grateful that Lewis’s lies had come out quickly, thanks to Scarlett, before people had started to look at him askance, wondering how much of it was true. He imagined, just for a moment, how it might have gone if he had been investigated, and how he would have explained it to his young daughter Lucy. The thought sickened him.
‘How was Lewis when you left?’ he asked, changing the subject.
‘Not good, but he’s alive. We’ve put him into an induced coma until the swelling on his brain reduces. He’s got a fractured pelvis and his spine’s damaged too. There are other multiple fractures, none of which could be described as serious in isolation, but it’s unlikely he’ll ever walk again.’
Tom knew that for some of his colleagues this would have been the perfect outcome. Not for Tom. He didn’t want the man’s terrible injuries to evoke one ounce of sympathy in a jury or the press. Lewis had come so close to killing Scarlett, and Tom wasn’t sure he would ever have been able to forgive himself for his decision not to race across that roof in an attempt to save her.
The Sixth Window Page 34
