The Split

by Sharon Bolton

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Joe says, when the boy comments upon his absence over the last few weeks. ‘I had some personal problems I needed to sort out.’

  ‘It’s not about the stuff,’ the boy says, looking down at the sandwich wrappers. ‘It’s – you know – someone to talk to. Knowing someone gives a shit.’

  In his absence, the street people have become angry. The failure of the police to find Bella’s killer has convinced them that no one cares what happens to the poor and the miserable.

  ‘You remember that hostel I mentioned in Peterborough?’ Joe says. ‘They’ve got a space for you. They can help you find work. Even go back to school if you want.’

  The boy looks back at the woman and the sleeping child. ‘Nah,’ he says. ‘I’m needed here.’

  Talking to the homeless usually makes Joe feel better about his own life. Tonight, every encounter seems to depress him more. Once he leaves the parks and hits the streets, he finds it harder to track down the people he’s looking for. Their number seems to have diminished. This should feel like progress but doesn’t. There is a nervousness in the city tonight, and even those people who know Joe shrink away at his coming, as though he too has become someone to fear.

  In his pocket he has a pack of giant chocolate buttons for Dora, her favourite treat. She isn’t by the market. He knows that she sometimes sleeps on deck of an empty boat at Jesus Green Lock but there is no sign of her there tonight.

  The vague sense of unease that has dogged his footsteps since he left home assumes a more solid form as he approaches the skatepark on Jesus Green. Taking seriously the possible sighting of Ezzy at Bella’s funeral, the police have been on the lookout ever since but there has been nothing further.

  ‘Have you seen Dora?’ he asks Kirk, the old soldier.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Dora. In her sixties. Wears a green coat and a blue hat most days.’

  ‘Daft old bird, pulls a trolley around? I think she’s down by the pond.’

  ‘OK, I’ll try there. Thanks, Kirk, look after yourself.’

  He is glad to leave the skatepark behind. Even in the darkness, the sound of skating seems to haunt the place and he can’t quite push away the thought of Ezzy, small and slight but phenomenally strong, hurtling towards him with a blade in her hand.

  It’s a fair walk from Jesus Green to Silver Street pond, and he thinks he might call it a night soon, whether he finds Dora or not. He leaves Sidney Street to walk past Boots on Petty Cury, because she sometimes sleeps in the doorway, but she isn’t there tonight. From there, he passes through one of the quieter, older parts of the city centre. As he walks down Free School Lane, the buildings keep out what little light the moon and stars throw down, and there are no streetlights. He quickens his pace, knowing how quickly a skater would speed along the smooth road surface. Telling himself that it is Shane, not Ezzy, who broke into his flat doesn’t help. The dread of her follows him like an ink-black shadow.

  And whilst Ezzy might be long gone, Shane haunts the city still. He has seen it in the faces of the homeless tonight. They are living in perpetual fear.

  He is halfway along the narrow street now, the furthest point from potential escape and his heartbeat has been picking up for several minutes. The university buildings on his left are empty at night and the street is overlooked by dozens of small black windows, without blinds, curtains or shutters. He has no reason to believe himself in danger on this particular street, but the anxiety he has sensed tonight among the homeless is infecting him too.

  Something falls at his feet. Small stones, or maybe a broken tile from a roof. He steps away from the building and looks up in time to see a shadow dart behind a chimney stack. He sets off again, faster this time. There cannot be anyone on the roof. People do not climb the roofs of Cambridge at night. The legendary night climbers are exactly that, legends. The university clamped down hard on the suicidal practice of scaling roofs and peaks at night and even the most idiotic of students doesn’t risk it any more. That thing behind the chimney stack, that is watching him even now – he can see the gleam of eyes when he glances back – is a cat, not a stalker.

  Still Joe moves quickly, towards the end of the street, scanning the rooftops as he goes. Once, he hears a sound like that of a foot sliding along tiles. His nerve breaks, he turns and runs. He holds his breath as he plunges into the darkness at the corner and turns into Botolph Court. Still he runs. By the time he is out of breath and must stop he is at the corner of Trumpington Street, not far from the river.

  He cannot go on like this. Either he gets over this unreasonable fear that Ezzy is alive after all and back in Cambridge, or he stops his night-time patrols.

  A glimmer of movement in the distance down Silver Street catches his attention. For a second there, he’d seen a figure in white running across the bridge. Still breathing heavily, he crosses the street and walks until he has passed the apex of the bridge and is heading down to the common land behind Queen’s College. There, behind a clump of laurel bushes.

  ‘Felicity!’

  The white figure disappears.

  She cannot be out on her own at this hour, still wearing that skimpy white dress. Joe pulls out his phone and dials her number. After four rings it goes to answer mode. He tries her home number and by the time he has reached the spot, it has rung seven times.

  No sign of the figure in white. Unwilling to give up, he heads across the grass in the direction of the Backs. He can hear movement.

  ‘Felicity?’

  He walks quickly towards where he is sure now that he can hear voices and comes across them before he expected to.

  ‘All right, mate?’

  The group of youngsters who are camped on the river bank regard him with surprise. Felicity is not among them, but one of the girls is wearing a white T-shirt.

  ‘My mistake.’ Joe turns and walks back into the city.

  52

  Felicity

  It is the smell that brings her round. Felicity tries to cough it away but it comes back, stronger than ever. She sits up, gasping, and feels a moment of crippling fear when she realises she has no idea where she is. She can see nothing beyond a brick wall inches from her face.

  The air is damp and full of sound. From somewhere nearby the yellow gleam of a streetlamp fights off the darkness. In the distance she can hear a siren. Beneath her is something that feels silky and sticky at the same time. Putting her hand down she touches the smoothness of a sleeping bag. She pulls her knees up and they rustle over carrier bags.

  With an effort, she gets to her feet. She is in a rough sleeper’s den, between the unused rear doorway of a tall building and a refuse skip. Possessions lie scattered around her. It is urine that she can smell.

  The gravel bites into her bare feet as she slides out from behind the skip. Her shoes are nowhere to be seen, neither is her handbag, but she is still wearing the white lace dress. She is filthy. The dress has a dark, damp stain on the front. She emerges from the alley into Downing Street and knows, from how few people she can see, that it is late.

  It has happened again, except this time, instead of a great gaping hole in her life, flashbacks come thick and fast. She remembers Freddie staring down at her from the gallery in Heffers.

  She reaches the end of Downing Street. She has no idea where her car is. She has no money to pay for a cab, and what cab would pick her up in her current state? She will have to walk home, barefoot.

  The flashbacks keep coming. She remembers driving her car too fast and braking hard. She remembers people outside a pub, coming over to speak to her, the concern on their faces turning into alarm. She distinctly remembers, as she ran from them, someone mentioning the police.

  She remembers hiding in a doorway, hearing a siren go past. Then she was driving, heading out of the city, with no thought in her head but that she had to get away. No, she’s getting confused, that was earlier. She put her shoes on the passenger seat because the heels were too high to drive in safely. She drov
e away from the city and yet somehow she has found herself back here.

  She keeps going, leaving the city centre behind, and reaching Maids Causeway as the church clocks chime two o’clock in the morning. She is nearly home. Her car is not parked outside her house, haphazardly or otherwise. She has to climb over the fence that surrounds her courtyard.

  She has never left a spare key outside the house because she has never found a hiding place she trusts. She will have no choice but to break the smallest window and squeeze through into the basement. She finds a stone garden ornament and sees the large recycling bin has been moved to block sight of the basement window. She wheels it back to where it should be and then drops to all fours in front of the tiny window.

  It is already broken. Someone is inside.

  * * *

  She follows the intruder in. She has no choice. She has reached a place where no one can help. Her feet crunch on broken glass. Stepping away from the shards she picks up the sharpest one that she can see. She doesn’t look at the under-stairs cupboard in the basement, because she never looks at the under-stairs cupboard in the basement, but if she did, she would see that the padlock is still in place.

  Conscious of treading blood through the house, she climbs to the ground floor. The bolts are drawn shut on both front and back doors. Her intruder is still inside.

  He’s here.

  She ignores the voice. The voice isn’t real. It is the man she must find. The man who spotted her in Heffers and who somehow knows where she lives.

  He’s known for weeks. He’s been coming here for weeks.

  ‘Stop it.’

  The silence in the house seems to shift. She has been heard. The sense of another presence is so strong she can’t understand why he isn’t in the same room. One by one, she checks the kitchen cupboards that someone could hide in, and those that no fully grown human male could possibly squeeze into. Her cleaning materials are in the cereal and pasta cupboard but that hardly feels like the most urgent problem right now. She takes a second to wrap a towel around her right foot and then makes her way into the bathroom. She searches the bedroom, inside the wardrobe, behind the curtains, even the drawers beneath the divan bed.

  She climbs the stairs, and her eyes go to the bolts that Joe fastened on the loft hatch. They are closed. He cannot be in the loft. The glass shard is cutting into her hand as she enters the spare bedroom and her palm is sticky with her own blood. She wipes it against her dress and looks down properly in the light. The stain on her bodice is blood, she is sure of it now.

  There is no one crouched under her desk, or in the corner of the room between the filing cabinet and the bookshelf. There is no one beneath the spare bed. She checks her living room last but there are no hiding places in this room. Only when her heartbeat is starting to slow does she remember the under-stairs cupboard on the ground floor.

  Well, this is a turn-up. How many times has he come looking for you under there?

  ‘Stop it. It wasn’t him. I made a mistake.’ As she says this she feels a surge of hope. The man she saw in Heffers wasn’t exactly like the man in the photographs. He looked older, for one thing, and not so handsome.

  She’s fooling herself. It was Freddie.

  Eight, nine, ten. Coming ready or not!

  ‘Shut up.’

  She reaches the bottom of the stairs, wanting nothing more than to run out of the front door and never return. She jumps back as she opens the cupboard door, knowing he will spring at her. Nothing happens. Her duvet is curled around her pillow as she left it. Her house is empty.

  * * *

  She removes her dress and underwear and switches on the washing machine. The dress is torn as well as badly stained. She will never be able to wear it again. And yet, still, she feels this irresistible urge to wash it and to do so in the dark. She has turned out all the lights in her house.

  She cleans the blood from the kitchen floor in the dark.

  She is stepping out of the shower, towelling her hair, when the knock sounds on the front door. She dresses quickly, and knows before she opens the door that it is the police.

  ‘Felicity Lloyd?’ The male constable holds up his warrant card and after a moment’s pause, the female constable with him does the same. ‘May we come inside for a second?’

  Felicity’s heart is beating so violently she has to resist the urge to clamp hands to her chest. She turns without a word and leads the way back to her kitchen. From downstairs she can hear the rhythmic gurgles of the washing machine.

  ‘Can you confirm that you’re the registered keeper of a black Audi A3 registration number KL61 RZM?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘that’s my car.’

  The man looks at her dressing gown, at her trembling, grazed hands and says. ‘Can you tell us what happened this evening?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she says. ‘A dog ran out in front of me. I thought there was a child chasing it, but I’m not sure about that. I swerved. I think I banged my head.’

  She reaches out and takes hold of the worktop. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t feel too well.’

  The police officers steer her to a chair and she can hear the sound of the kettle being filled but their questions don’t let up.

  ‘Where was this?’

  ‘What time did this happen?’

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s all very confused. I parked in the Grand Arcade because I needed to pop into Heffers. That was early evening, about seven o’clock. I wasn’t there long. I planned to get some fuel, so I could have been on the way out towards the ring road.’

  She wonders if she has been planning this for some time. A story of an accident, and a head injury, vague enough to withstand questioning.

  ‘Did I hurt someone?’ she asks in a small voice.

  ‘Miss Lloyd, we need you to take a Breathalyser test.’ The male constable has the equipment in his hand. ‘If you decline to do so, you will be placed under arrest and escorted to the station where you will be obliged to take a blood test.’

  ‘I don’t mind. You can breathalyse me.’

  The test is over soon. She passes easily and that is one disaster averted.

  ‘Why did you leave the scene of the accident, Miss Lloyd? Why didn’t you phone for assistance?’

  ‘I don’t have my phone,’ she says. ‘My handbag is gone.’

  ‘Someone stole your handbag?’

  ‘I can’t remember when I last saw it. Do you mind if I find some paracetamol?’

  As she is reaching into the cupboard the male constable receives a phone call and steps out into the hall.

  ‘Your handbag’s been found in a waste bin on Sidney Street,’ he says when he comes back. ‘There’s no cash in your purse and if you had a mobile phone, it’s missing, but your credit cards, your car keys and work ID all seem to be there.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she says.

  ‘Miss Lloyd, do you need medical attention?’ the female constable says.

  She is stiff and sore, especially her hands and feet, but the last thing she wants is to end up in hospital again.

  ‘No, I’m fine. I just need to get to bed. Can I collect my car in the morning, or does it need to be done now?’

  ‘Your car was causing a hazard and has been towed to the city pound,’ the man tells her. ‘But we’re actually more concerned to find out what happened to you between the time the accident took place, which we think was around seven thirty, and now. Where have you been, Miss Lloyd?’

  She shakes her head. ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘We had a report of a young woman in some distress on Hobson Street at eleven thirty. Would that have been you?’

  ‘Do you own a white and pink lace dress, Miss Lloyd?’

  ‘It’s in the washing machine.’

  The two officers exchange a glance and then the male says to her, ‘Miss Lloyd, we’d like you to accompany us to the station.’

  53

  Joe

  Two hours after returning home from his street patrol, Joe is in a
s deep a sleep as he manages these days, which isn’t very. The phone wakes him at the first ring. He blinks at the screen lighting up the darkness. His mother is calling him at three thirty in the morning.

  ‘We have Felicity Lloyd in our interview suite. I thought you’d want to know.’

  Joe sits up in bed, not without checking the corners of the room to make sure no one is lurking in them.

  ‘Is she under arrest? What has she done?’

  ‘If you’re coming, we can explain when you get here.’

  * * *

  Delilah meets him in the car park.

  ‘How did you know she was my patient?’ Joe asks as he and Delilah head into the building. ‘How did you even connect her with me? Did she ask you to call me?’

  ‘We’re detectives.’ A second later, Delilah’s face softens. ‘I remembered meeting her on your staircase. When I saw the footage tonight I put two and two together. The car accident gave us her name.’

  She takes him into the open-plan office where most of her team work. At this hour, though, most of the team are at home. A solitary detective is chatting to a couple of uniforms, a man and a woman. After introductions, they gather around a desktop computer.

  ‘Show him,’ Delilah says.

  Joe watches CCTV footage of Felicity, shoeless, wearing the white and pink dress of earlier, running down Sidney Street. The time in the corner of the screen says 22.16. He sees passers-by watch in astonishment, one or two trying to speak to her, but she runs on, wild-eyed and frantic.

  ‘Her car was abandoned on Queen’s Road,’ Delilah says. ‘Sometime between seven and eight o’clock. No one else involved, thank God, but it took a nasty bump when it hit a lamppost. She claims she swerved to avoid a cat and banged her head. Can’t remember anything else.’

  ‘She told us a dog at first,’ the female uniform says.

  ‘Animal of indeterminate species,’ Delilah clarifies.