‘Zoe,’ I say thoughtfully, almost as if I’ve forgotten her name.
‘Yes, Zoe,’ Bismah says, amused. All three are waiting eagerly to hear what I have to say.
‘I’m in two minds about her, really,’ I say, shocking myself with the open admission.
‘Ouch,’ Pip says slowly. ‘Bit late to be thinking of a change now.’
‘I know, I know.’ I pull a pained face. If I can’t tell my girlfriends, best friend included, then who can I tell? ‘It’s fine, really. I mean, she cares greatly for the boys and keeps the house nice and—’
‘But you don’t like her,’ Pip says brutally.
‘No, it’s not that either. Truth be known, I really like her. She’s a little reserved and keeps herself to herself, but that’s understandable. I think she’s had boyfriend troubles.’
‘There you go then.’ Bismah always sees the best in everyone.
‘There’s just something about her. I can’t put my finger on it, but if I was forced, I’d say . . .’ I stare at the ceiling. ‘I’d say that . . . oh, you’ll think I’m being stupid.’
‘No, go on,’ Bismah says. Everyone’s listening.
‘I’d say that she’s got other reasons for being in our house.’
As soon as I say it, I regret it. I remember all the nice things she’s done for the boys since she’s been with us, not to mention how she’s really made an effort with me. ‘I’ve not been mean to her or anything,’ I add when I see the shocked faces of my friends. ‘I’m sure it’ll all work out fine.’
‘Hor-mon-al!’ Pip sings in a silly falsetto.
‘I am not,’ I say sternly, and we all laugh. ‘Well, yeah, maybe I am a little bit.’
‘Give her another few weeks. Once the baby’s born, once James is home again, everything will fall into place, you’ll see. Zoe will get stuck into a routine with the children, you can enjoy your maternity leave, and life will be pretty much perfect.’ An overstated smile punctuates Pip’s reassurance. The stretchy tunic top she is wearing clings to her bump, showing off just how close to giving birth she is. I love the sight of her. I love the sight of all of us.
‘You’re right of course,’ I tell Pip. But I still can’t help feeling the way I do.
24
CARLA DAVIS LOOKED dead even though she wasn’t. There were needles and tubes stuck in the back of her hand and sticky monitor pads on various parts of her body, exposing patches of pale flesh beneath the anaemic hospital gown they’d put her in.
‘It could have been a load of bollocks, of course,’ Lorraine said, staring down at the poor girl in the hospital bed. ‘The drugs talking.’
‘Barrett did say she was drifting in and out of sleep.’ Adam picked up the clipboard attached to the end of her bed. He soon replaced it, the scrawled notes and dots on the charts not meaning much to him. ‘But she kept mentioning the woman.’
‘Which potentially changes everything,’ Lorraine said. Possibilities rattled through her mind and none of them fitted with the meagre profile they’d so far built up. And they still couldn’t be certain that the two attacks were linked, even though they were gruesomely similar. Lorraine had hoped more leads would be forthcoming from Carla’s injuries, but the first priority was to save her life, get her fixed up in theatre, not have forensic pathologists probe around the mess on her body.
‘Tell me again what else Barrett reported,’ she said. He was one of their best DCs and had never let them down in an interview situation. He was thorough and thought on his feet.
‘We’ve been over this a thousand times already.’
It was true. They had discussed the investigations in depth at the meeting last night, with most of the team present. It had run on late into the evening. Then Adam and Lorraine had talked further at home while they cleaned up the mess Grace and her friends had left.
‘The ward sister only allowed Barrett to speak to Carla for a couple of minutes. He didn’t think that she had much idea of where she was or what had happened to her. She was very confused. She knew stuff like her name and where she lived but she had no recollection of the actual attack, only the moments leading up to it. But she kept saying that there was someone at the door, that she had to answer it. She got quite distressed about this, apparently.’
‘This mystery woman,’ Lorraine said, knowing the story anyway.
‘Correct,’ Adam said. ‘Barrett asked for a description and she just kept saying “thin” over and over. Doesn’t really help us much.’
Adam was suddenly leaning over Carla as she stirred. ‘Carla, can you hear me?’
Lorraine thought he was going to shake her. ‘Stop it, Adam, you’ll scare her.’ She also approached the young woman’s bedside. The sheets were draped over what she could only assume had been a very large abdomen until a short time ago. Did she even remember she’d been pregnant, Lorraine wondered? ‘Hello, love, can you hear me?’ she said softly. ‘I’m a detective. I just want to ask you a couple of questions.’
Lorraine ran a finger up and down the inside of the girl’s wrist. There was a plastic cannula taped to the back of her hand with a thin tube snaking up to a drip stand. Lorraine studied the skin on the inside of her elbow. The veins were bruised purplish-red with tell-tale dots of older scars contrasting starkly with her milky skin. This was not the work of doctors.
‘Love, can you hear me?’
Carla made a brief moaning sound and twisted her head left then right. Her eyes were closed although they opened momentarily. Lorraine could tell she wasn’t focusing on anything.
‘I want to find who did this to you, love. Can you remember anything about the attack or your attacker? What did they look like?’
Carla didn’t say anything. The machine behind the bed beeped, showing her blood pressure, oxygen saturation and breathing rate. Lorraine didn’t understand the numbers, but the machine was making a steady sound, somehow reassuring them that Carla was at least maintaining a hold on life.
‘I’m going to have to ask you to leave now.’ A nurse had come in. ‘I have to check her wound drain.’
‘We’ll come back later,’ Adam said.
‘Thank you,’ the nurse said, gently removing the bed covers from Carla.
She moaned again and the hand with the cannula flapped by her side.
‘Steady, now,’ a second nurse said in a lilting Irish accent. ‘Don’t want you ripping all this out.’
‘If only she’d speak again,’ Lorraine said as they left the room. They exchanged brief nods with the young PC on guard duty and then swapped glances with each other, remembering their own early days in the force. Lorraine swiped away the inevitable memories of how she’d met Adam, how she’d idolised him – no, worshipped him – back in those days. Here she was now completely unable to understand how the twenty-foot-high brick wall had grown between them. She refused to believe it was entirely her fault.
They were standing beside Adam’s car, Lorraine squinting into the burst of sun which had forced through the clouds, no doubt before the forecast sleet arrived later. ‘Fancy a coffee?’ she asked, pointing to the parked-up trailer serving drinks and snacks. The smell of bacon was irresistible.
‘Do you think they have green tea?’ Adam asked with a smirk.
‘Let’s find out,’ Lorraine said, surprising herself by briefly touching Adam’s arm as they wandered over to the kiosk. ‘Then you can come with me to visit Russ Goodall again. I have a few questions for him. With any luck he’ll have done a spot of housework.’
*
There was no reply when Lorraine knocked. She peeked through the grimy plastic letterbox. A putrid smell billowed out in a waft of warm air. ‘Jesus Christ,’ she said, recoiling. ‘Did someone die in there?’ She and Adam looked at each other, both sincerely hoping that wasn’t the case.
Adam stuck his nose close to the flap. ‘Not death,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘The rubbish needs taking out.’
‘Disgusting bugger,’ Lorraine said, banging her fist on the door then steppin
g back to peer up the tall building when they heard a window above them open. ‘Hello?’ she called out. ‘Police. Will you come down, please?’
There was a brief expletive and then moments later they heard thumping behind the door as someone came down the stairs. The door was unlocked and opened and they were faced with Russ Goodall in a vest and boxer shorts, shivering as if he’d been out in the snow for three days.
‘I was in bed,’ he said apologetically.
‘May we come in and talk to you?’ Lorraine asked. She could almost feel Adam’s disgust.
‘Yeah, s’pose,’ Russ replied, standing aside. He stumbled on a bag of rubbish that had been left by the door.
‘Couldn’t we have brought him in to the station?’ Adam whispered as they went up the stairs. Lorraine strode past him into the tiny bedsit and nudged him on the shoulder for being stupid. She often wondered if it was a good idea for them to work together any more. More so at work than anywhere, their behaviour was likely to deteriorate into that of squabbling children. God knows what would happen if she went for divorce. A transfer for one of them would be inevitable, but why should she be the one to move?
‘Sit down if you like,’ Russ offered in a voice whose high pitch betrayed fear and surprise.
There were only two options: a dirty plastic stacking chair beside a small table or the messed-up bed that appeared to double as a sofa. Adam darted for the chair, leaving Lorraine no option but to sink onto the mattress and release a fug of warm, stale body odour. She would thank him for that later.
‘I just wanted to run over a few things about your relationship with Sally-Ann, Russell. It’s nothing to be worried about, we just have to be clear in our minds about everything. Why don’t you pop some trousers on, eh?’
The cotton of his boxers was so thin that Lorraine was convinced she’d see more than she wanted to if her eyes strayed any further down than his chest. As it was, she could make out most of his skinny, undernourished torso through the worn, greying material of his baggy vest. He nodded and pulled on some ripped jeans. A nasty smell exuded from them as he battled them up his legs, hopping around the worn rug as he did so. Finally, he sat on the bed next to Lorraine. She moved to her left.
‘Did you and Sally-Ann ever argue, Russell?’ It was Adam who spoke first. Lorraine had been about to ask the same question. They just wanted to warm him up a little, have him almost relieved to spill the truth about anything he might now regret.
She took the interview baton that Adam hadn’t exactly held out. ‘And by that, we don’t simply mean the usual bickering that all couples do.’ She looked at Adam. He didn’t reciprocate but she noticed his jaw clench. ‘We’re more interested in knowing if things ever got, well, a bit hot under the collar, if you know what I mean.’
‘I never hit her, if that’s what you’re implying.’ Russell was fidgeting.
‘We understand how these things go: petty little disagreements escalating beyond all proportion . . .’ Adam said, offering a quick glance back at Lorraine.
‘And we also understand that sometimes these little disagreements aren’t quite so little; that maybe one of you might have had a very good reason to get upset.’ Lorraine emphasised the words ‘very good reason’.
‘Although sometimes these very good reasons can be misunderstood by one party entirely,’ Adam added, glaring at Lorraine.
‘But assuming they weren’t misunderstood at all,’ Lorraine continued, talking directly at Adam, ‘assuming one party was completely certain they were in the right, then we’d understand if you felt as if you might become violent towards that other person.’ Lorraine felt a sweat break out on her forehead. She steeled herself against the ridiculous emotions brewing and turned back to Russell.
‘Although I must stress that we’d never condone violence.’ Adam jutted out his jaw, and Lorraine could almost see the pressure building up inside him.
‘I’ll remember that, Detective,’ Lorraine said tersely through a forced smile. Before I thump you, she added in her head.
‘I never hit her, I swear,’ Russ said, completely oblivious to the subtext passing right under his nose. ‘She got into these awful moods.’
‘Go on,’ Lorraine said.
‘I reckon being pregnant made it worse.’ Russ hung his head and picked at a rip on the thigh of his jeans. A patch of white, hairy skin showed through. ‘One minute she was happy – I mean, like, really happy. The next she wanted to end it all.’
‘Was she depressed?’ Adam asked.
‘Maybe. I dunno. She used to go to the GP a lot.’ Russ looked utterly miserable. ‘It all started when he came on the scene.’
‘Liam?’
Russ nodded. ‘He ruined everything between us. I reckon we’d have got married if it weren’t for him sticking his nose in. He used Sally-Ann, he did. Used her for casual sex, like he did that other poor woman.’
‘We know for certain that he was the baby’s biological father,’ Adam said, causing Lorraine to sigh. She’d been going to wait before telling Russ this news, but it was said now.
Russ’s face took a moment to react, but when it did, it was clear that he’d been convinced he was the father. ‘Oh, no,’ he said flatly. ‘That’s really sad.’
‘Is it true that all the uncertainty caused a lot of friction between you and Sally-Ann?’
Floored by the truth, Russ nodded. ‘Yeah. But I was going to do the right thing. I’d have stood by her. I wanted that baby.’
‘Did Sally-Ann?’ Lorraine asked.
Russ dragged his head up. After a few seconds he said, ‘No. No, I don’t think she ever really did.’
‘So why didn’t she have a termination?’ Adam said. ‘Women have choices.’
‘There was this one time I really thought she was going to, to actually get rid of it, but she changed her mind.’
‘And when was that?’
‘She’d only just found out she was pregnant. After the initial shock had worn off, she got really excited. We were in the Bullring looking at baby stuff in a department store. All these little soft pink and blue things. But then she suddenly got really stressed about coping, about being a good mother, about the cost of everything. It was as if someone had flicked a switch.’
‘In the department store?’ Adam said.
‘Yeah. One minute she was fondling Babygros and the next she was swiping at displays and pulling tiny clothes off racks. She was yelling and everything. Making a right spectacle of herself. She nearly destroyed the shop.’ Russ was clearly troubled by the memory.
‘That sounds terrible. What happened?’ Lorraine said.
‘I tried to calm her down. Her arms were swiping and flailing and she was kicking stuff. She was screaming that she didn’t want the baby, that she wanted to get rid of it right there and then, that she’d do it herself if she had to. She yelled that she hated it, that it would ruin her life.’ Russ was whispering now, clearly traumatised by the memory. ‘People were staring, gathering round. One lady came to help her, said she understood, that she needed to calm down. Sally-Ann slumped to the floor and then the manager came and took her round the back for a cup of tea. Then we went home.’
‘Powerful things, those hormones.’
Lorraine glared at Adam. He was a prize idiot sometimes. ‘That must have been very distressing for you, Russell,’ she said. ‘Did anything like that ever happen again?’
‘She still got moody, but she never said she wanted an abortion after that. I asked her to marry me.’ Russ managed a small smile at the thought.
‘I’m so sorry for you, Russ.’ Lorraine meant it. ‘Can you give me the name of the other woman Liam Rider was apparently seeing?’
Russ scratched his head. ‘I only found out by accident,’ he said. ‘I went to the college to have it out with him, to warn him off my Sal. I found him . . . well, you know, doing stuff with this other woman. It was disgusting.’
‘Her name?’ Adam reminded him.
Russ thought hard. ‘S
he ran an evening course at the college. Jewellery-making or something. She was a right weird-looking woman, I remember thinking.’
‘Name?’ Adam persisted.
Russ shrugged. ‘She had an odd name, too. Like Delia or Celia. I dunno. Ask the college. She had this frizzy red hair, all tangled up.’
25
I NEARLY DON’T bother to answer the door but if it gets back to Claudia that I missed a delivery or failed to greet a friend then that’ll make her wonder what I was up to. I promised her I’d sort out the linen cupboard and finish the pile of sewing that looks as if it’s built up over a lifetime. Various items have been bagged up in the utility room with a sticky note saying ‘needs mending’ attached.
It’s jobs like these, Claudia told me when I started, that will make all the difference around the house. She smiled as if it – as if I – was the most important thing in the world.
How very trivial, I remember thinking when I told her that I liked sewing, that I had an eye for detail. Perhaps I have, I think as I reluctantly approach the front door. Maybe I got it from Cecelia as I watched her work through the long winter evenings. She’d hunch over the table in our tiny flat, an angled light shining above her as if she had a private mini sun in her own little world. Sometimes she’d work peering through a giant magnifying glass on a stand. I once looked at her through it. Her body morphed as if she were in the hall of mirrors at the fairground. She was huge and distorted like a great pregnant animal. I didn’t say anything. It would have killed her, especially as she wasn’t pregnant.
Whoever it is has rung the bell three times now.
I unlock the door and open it wide.
‘Is Claudia Morgan-Brown at home?’ a woman in a suit asks.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Not until tonight.’ I try to remember what time she said she’d be back.
‘I’m Detective Inspector Lorraine Fisher,’ she says.
I stare at her. I feel faint. The floor falls away from my feet.
Shit.
‘Are you OK, love? You look a bit pale.’ She takes a step forward.
Until You're Mine Page 18
