If It Bleeds

by Bernie Crosthwaite

“She was found sitting on a bench in Jubilee Park.”

  The electricity in the room fell by a few volts. People started talking at once. Hypothermia? Or heart attack maybe? Drug-related, probably. Still a good story, though. Definitely front-page stuff…

  Tony held up his hand to silence them.

  “They don’t know the cause of death yet. But it’s definitely not natural causes. There’s a lot of blood.” He couldn’t help himself. His half smile spread until it reached from ear to ear. “Looks like murder.”

  Three

  The babble of excited voices stopped when Tony pointed a finger at Matt Dryden.

  “Think you can handle it?”

  “Just give me the chance. I won’t let you down. I’ll need a photographer.”

  “Don’t try and teach me my job, smart-arse.” He looked at me. “Who’s free in your department?”

  “I’d like Jude to come,” said Matt.

  Tony considered that for a moment. “Looks like you’ve got a chance to redeem yourself, Jude. Don’t mess up this time.” His face glistened as he addressed the room. “You know what they say — if it bleeds, it leads. If this pans out we’ve got a front page story, and one with legs. I don’t want anyone involved to cock it up. Do I make myself clear?” No one spoke. “Well, get on with it,” he spluttered, flapping his hands at me and Matt. “I want you there before the TV and radio turn up.”

  *

  “I’ll drive,” I said as we hurried under the glass bridge.

  “I’ve been here nearly a year now. I do know my way around.”

  “And all the shortcuts?”

  Matt hesitated when he saw my car, complete with shark’s teeth. “I’ve always meant to ask, did you do this yourself?”

  “My son painted it for me. It’s great for camouflaging the rust.”

  He looked doubtful. “It does go, does it?”

  “I can usually coax it into a slow chug.”

  “Why don’t we take mine?”

  “Get in.”

  I pulled out of the car park, into Millhouse Lane, a clear straight road where I was able to put my foot down. From the corner of my eye I could see Matt’s white knuckles on the dashboard.

  “All right. You’ve made your point. The car goes.”

  I slowed down. Left into Clarence Street, left again into Jubilee Road.

  “Listen, Jude… thanks for standing up for me back there. You put yourself on the line.”

  “I’m a big softie, me. I’ve still got the evidence to show for it.” I lifted my hand from the steering wheel to show Matt the bite, which was now looking angry and swollen.

  “Anything to do with a ferret?” He sounded ridiculously cheerful.

  “You reporters.” I smiled ruefully. “Never happier than when you’re chasing a story.”

  “I really need this, Jude. You heard what Tony said — the story’s got to be good.”

  “Today the Ravenbridge Evening Post, tomorrow the Guardian?”

  “Make that the Sun. And next week, foreign correspondent for CNN. I’m a bloody good journalist.” He started tapping his thighs with impatience. “When I get the chance.” He took out a pack of cigarettes. “Mind if I smoke?”

  “Yes, I do mind. It‘s a filthy habit.”

  “Don’t beat about the bush, Jude. Say what you really mean.” He put the fags away.

  The iron railings surrounding the park came into view. I pulled up near the main entrance only to find it blocked by a police car and ambulance. The gates themselves were marked off with blue and white tape. I drove round to the entrance on Victoria Street. More tape.

  “Shit. They’ve sealed the place off already.”

  We got out anyway. I led Matt to a point where the trees and bushes beyond the railings were thin and weedy. I slung my camera bag diagonally across my body. “We used to get in this way late at night when we were teenagers. And I’ve already had some climbing practice today.” I put my foot on the lowest bar of the railing.

  “Jude, you can’t just…”

  I was already halfway up the fence. I looked down at Matt. “Do you want this story or not?”

  He breathed deeply. “I’d give my right arm if I didn’t need it for writing copy.”

  “Get up here, then. And mind the spikes at the top.”

  I had already landed on the other side when I saw Matt jump and heard the rip of tearing cloth.

  “Whoops,” I said.

  Matt held the torn flaps of his wool coat. “Doesn’t matter. Go on.”

  I led the way out of the bushes and headed towards the pond. In the distance people in fluorescent yellow jackets were clustered round a park bench. As we grew closer we could see two scene-of-crime officers in white coveralls, and several uniformed police officers including a WPC. A police photographer was circling the bench taking shots from every angle. As he lowered his camera I saw it was Ben Greenwood, who used to be a mate of mine. Shielded by Matt, I fished a camera out of my bag and slotted in a new digital cartridge.

  We were only a short distance away when the WPC saw us. “How did you get in here?”

  Matt held up his press pass. “We’re from the Ravenbridge Evening Post. I know this is a bit cheeky, but it is a local story and we’d like a statement from the officer in charge before the rest of the media get hold of it.”

  While Matt was talking, the people around the bench shifted their positions. Now I could see the dead girl, although her face was still obscured by a SOCO officer leaning over her. She sat stiffly on the park bench, legs straight out in front. Her denim jacket was open, her t-shirt matted with blood, no longer scarlet but a reddish brown. My camera was in my hand, but I didn’t lift it. There were limits, whatever Tony Quinnell might think.

  “If there’s a psycho at large, the people of the town have a right to know as soon as possible,” Matt was saying.

  The guy in white overalls straightened up, revealing the girl’s face. The skin was bluish, the lips bloodless. The only life-like colour was her cloud of sandy-gold hair.

  “The whole park is a crime scene,” said the WPC, her voice becoming shrill. “And you come tramping all over it! We don’t even know the identity of the victim yet.”

  “Get them out of here,” someone said. A couple of uniformed officers started manhandling us backwards.

  “The public should be told – there could be a serial killer on the loose!”

  I wanted Matt to shut up, but I was so shocked by what I had seen I could hardly speak. It was as if the earth had suddenly shifted on its axis, throwing me off balance so that I could hardly stand up straight.

  “Move away, please, sir, madam.”

  “You need an ID?” I whispered.

  “Just leave it to us, madam.”

  “I know who she is.”

  They stopped pushing, then.

  “What?”

  “Her name’s Lara. Lara Ramsey. She’s my son’s girlfriend.”

  *

  They gave us hot coffee while we waited for the detective team to arrive. I tried to contact Daniel at home but he must have gone out. I wasn’t going to tell him about Lara’s death over the phone, just to stay where he was and wait for me. When I tried his mobile number all I got was his voicemail.

  “He’s forgotten to switch his phone on,” I told Matt. I remembered the light left on all night. “Typical Daniel.” Then I thought of something else. “I have to go.”

  “You can’t, Jude. I need you here. And they’ll want to talk to you.”

  “I have to tell Stan Roguski.”

  “Stan from the printworks?”

  “He’s Lara’s uncle.”

  “Phone him.”

  “I’m sorry, Matt, I’m off. There’s nothing more I can do here.” I gave him a small camera from my bag. “You might need this.”

  “I’m not a photographer.”

  “Just point and shoot. But remember to take the lens cap off, OK?”

  *

  I took the stairs to
the first floor. A heavy swing door led on to the glass bridge, which reeked of stale tobacco. The offices and works were strictly No Smoking zones, so nicotine addicts often came here for a fix.

  I reached the matching swing door at the far end, which led into the plate-making room. Zigzagging past the machines I ignored a sign that read Strictly No Admittance and entered the press hall. Immediately the clatter and hum of the machines hit me with full force. This was a modern state-of-the-art printworks but it was still incredibly noisy.

  A flight of metal stairs led down to the lower floor. I walked along the aisle between the enormous presses to Stan’s control booth. Unauthorised staff were not allowed down here without permission, strictly speaking. Even modern machinery could be dangerous. But I hadn’t wasted time getting a permit.

  The glass-walled office was the nerve centre of the whole operation. Stan was standing at a panel of buttons, playing it like a silent piano. When I rapped on the door Stan looked round and gestured me to come in.

  As soon as I shut the door the clatter of the machinery outside was reduced by half.

  “Stan…”

  “Hold on, Jude. It looks like there’s a problem.”

  A light was flashing on the control panel.

  “Running short of paper on web number sixteen.” He peered out of the glass booth. “Just as I thought. That new production assistant hasn’t put a fresh reel on standby and he’s gone for his lunch. Fancy a walk to the paper store with an old man?”

  “No, but I’ll come with you.”

  Stan smiled and my heart contracted. How was I going to tell him?

  He handed me a tiny plastic bag containing green foam ear protectors. I stuffed one in each ear, and I was glad of them as we marched towards the paper store.

  “What are you printing today?” I shouted. “Apart from the Post, I mean?”

  “In-house magazine,” he yelled back. “Kerwin and Black.”

  My heart squeezed harder still. Lara worked for the Ravenbridge sector of the company, which had branches all over the region.

  The pages were being printed in their hundreds and carried around on a head-high conveyor belt where they were automatically cut, collated and folded. At the end of the gangway I could see a line of freshly printed magazines pouring into the stitch-and-trim department in an overlapping row like an endless pack of cards.

  As Stan turned left into the paper store I grabbed an unstitched copy from the moving belt. Lara’s face smiled at me from the cover, her extraordinary Pre-Raphaelite hair surrounding her finely boned face. Underneath I read Ravenbridge Branch Scoops Productivity Award. Full story on page 6. It was obvious why the editor of the magazine had chosen Lara to represent her workplace rather than the dull-looking manager. It was a good picture too, but seeing her alive and beautiful, caught in a moment in time that could never be recaptured, was like a punch in the stomach.

  I wanted to keep walking forever, but it was all too short a distance to the paper store, which was a large barn-like space backing on to Stan’s control room. I followed Stan inside. Fat white columns made up of huge reels of paper were stacked on top of each other, nearly up to the high ceiling. Stan gave an order to the store manager, and with the help of a forklift a reel of blank paper was manoeuvred into the press area.

  It was quieter in here. I removed my ear plugs.

  “Stan, there’s something I’ve got to tell you.”

  “Fire away.”

  “It’s about the girl, the one who was found dead.”

  “What about her?”

  I showed him the cover of the magazine. “This is so hard… The fact is, it’s Lara.”

  His round pink face went completely blank for a moment. “Lara? What do you mean?”

  “I’m so sorry, Stan.”

  He took the magazine from me and stared intently at his niece’s face.

  “No… it can’t be.” He clutched the image to his chest as if he was holding on to her. “My lovely Lara? No… there’s some mistake.”

  I swallowed hard. “I saw her, Stan. I was the one who identified her. Unofficially. But there’s no mistake.”

  His face crumpled at last. He sank down on to a bale of paper. I put an arm around his broad shoulders. We stayed like that for some time, rocking to and fro, the eternal rhythm of grief.

  “What about your boy — Daniel — does he know?”

  “I haven’t been able to contact him, but I’m going straight home now.”

  “She was talking about him only yesterday. She spent the day with me and Carol. I didn’t know it would be the last time…” His voice cracked. I held his hand. He gripped me so tight my fingers went numb, but I didn’t care. Eventually he was able to go on. “We were joking with her — he’s too young for you, you cradle-snatcher.” He released my hand and wiped his face with flat palms. “Go on, Jude, go home and tell your son.”

  “And you too, Stan. You should be with Carol.” Stan and his wife had no children and I knew he thought the world of Lara, the only child of Carol’s sister.

  He nodded. “Tell him he was very special to Lara. Tell him that. At least he’ll have that to cling on to when you tell him she’s dead.”

  Four

  I didn’t need to tell Daniel.

  The living room door was open and I could hear the TV blaring out some daytime soap. I looked in but the room was empty. I switched the TV off. On the sofa I found Daniel’s mobile, the display window still lit up. Word gets round fast. One of his friends must have texted him with the news.

  I mounted the stairs slowly. Daniel’s door was ajar. As I got nearer I heard a sound that chilled me to the bone. I ran up the last few steps.

  He was lying on the floor, his chest heaving. He was breathing in laboured gulps but the oxygen couldn’t get far along his rapidly closing airways.

  “Where’s your inhaler?” I shouted.

  Daniel pointed to his desk, too far away for him to reach when catching every breath took all the strength he had. I searched frantically among the jumble of sketch books and paint tubes and old beer cans until I found the small blue periscope.

  I lifted his shoulders from the floor and placed the inhaler between his lips.

  “Come on, Daniel. You can do better than that.”

  His breathing was becoming more wheezy by the second. I punched 999 into the mobile still clutched in my hand, then cradled him in my arms while we waited for the ambulance. He hadn’t had a full-blown attack like this for ages. Was this going to be the day I’d dreaded all these years, the day I lost him?

  *

  They put Daniel in a room on his own and attached him to a nebuliser to help him breathe. I held his hand until he stabilised, only letting go when he slipped into sleep.

  At some point in the passing blur of time a nurse looked in, a young man, prematurely bald, with kind eyes. He took Daniel’s pulse and checked his heart without waking him.

  “He’s going to be fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “He’ll have to stay in hospital for a couple of days.” He saw my reaction. “He’s in good hands.”

  “I know. It’s just…”

  “Talking of hands…” He lifted my left arm. “What happened?”

  Only then did I realise how badly the ferret bite was throbbing.

  “It looks infected. I’m sending you down to A&E.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Maybe. But it needs checking out.”

  I had a horrifying thought. “Ferrets don’t have rabies, do they?”

  “Not as far as I know. Even so, this looks quite bad. When was the last time you had a tetanus injection?”

  I shrugged, then looked at Daniel. His eyes were still closed.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll look after him.”

  *

  First they cleaned and bandaged my hand, then they left me in a cubicle for a while, until someone was available to give me an anti-tetanus shot. When the nurse arrived, a dour middle-aged w
oman, she twitched the curtain shut in a manner that meant business.

  “Right buttock, please,” I said. I didn’t want anyone to mess with the tattoo on my left one. I’d had it done when I was seventeen, in the days when I’d been a bit of a wild child, still getting pleasure out of shocking my strait-laced parents. The tattoo was a reminder of those times, not happy ones but formative, and I was still fond of the evidence.

  She swabbed my right buttock then plunged the needle in.

  I took a sharp intake of breath.

  “Leopard, is it?”

  “It’s a tiger,” I said, offended. The design was a little faded but the tattooist had been an artist, the best in Ravenbridge. “A leopard has spots.”

  “I wouldn’t know.” She placed the syringe in the kidney dish with a clatter. “I had a snake in the other day. Tattooed all the way round his you know what. Quite appropriate, really.”

  I zipped up my trousers.

  “I’ve even seen a whole body tattoo. Looked like he was wearing a flowery tracksuit.”

  “Why don’t you have something done?” I asked her. “How about a skull and crossbones? Or barbed wire around your neck?”

  She actually considered this as a serious proposition. Then without a trace of irony she said, “No. It’s not for me. The thing is, I don’t like needles.”

  *

  When I got back to the ward, walking stiffly from the jab, I found Matt Dryden sitting next to the bed. For a moment I was disoriented. Matt didn’t know my son, so what was he doing here? Two parts of my life, work and home, seemed to have collided. It took a couple of seconds to remind myself that we were colleagues, working on the same story. The shocking sight of Lara’s body flashed across my mental screen. No doubt Matt was here to tell me the latest. Only I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  Matt stood up awkwardly. Daniel was awake and looking slightly brighter. The nebuliser had been moved aside. I hugged him as best I could with all the hissing, bleeping, ticking equipment surrounding him.

  “How you doing?”

  “I’ve been better,” he whispered.

  “I’ve been trying to cheer him up,” said Matt. “Told him a few jokes. And we’ve been talking football, haven’t we, mate? But for some inexplicable reason he doesn’t like Manchester United.”