by Anna Legat
That day, the cursed white van was there and it was annoyingly slow and unromantic. Trevor had to get past it, so did Emma. He went first. Not surprisingly, the van driver failed to slow down to give way. He did the exact opposite – he sped up. They all do, Trevor laughed internally as he watched the sad little bastard wave his fist at him. Trevor could’ve simply put his foot down and whistle past the van, but he thought he could show off to Emma. He levelled with him and kept abreast with the van just for the heck of seeing the man squirm. Emma joined in the game. She did, for she too started overtaking the van, and there she was right behind Trevor. They were in it together. Trevor rejoiced.
The sad little bastard was accelerating. Pathetic! Trevor’s Aston could leave him in his wake in a matter of a split second. Emma’s Audi could do the same thing. Emma was all for it. When the huge lorry climbed over the Poulston junction, hooting and blowing steam, rolling towards him like a bulldozer, Trevor felt another kick of adrenalin. It would make a good game - a better game – to hold his nerve as long as he could before finally zooming in front of the white van and letting Emma do the same. Trevor knew Emma would love him for that. She was an adrenalin junkie. So he held his nerve, watching the lorry come closer, and closer...
The game of chicken.
The sad little bastard wasn’t slowing down. That threw Trevor a bit. By now he could see the lorry driver’s face, screaming something into the windscreen, fear in his eyes. Good thing Trevor could accelerate at the drop of a hat! He did. He jumped in front of the van, giving Emma enough time to do the same. So he thought, but perhaps she was a fraction too slow – that day.
He had no time to look back. As he re-entered his stream of traffic – only then – did he see the small blue car on the offside of the lorry, a stupid powerless thing trying to overtake the big, long tanker. The driver – a woman - saw him too, and swerved – mindlessly - right into the lorry to avoid a head-on with Trevor.
He didn’t even see the white van tumbling off the road. He didn’t see the point of impact as the lorry smashed into Emma. In fact, he thought it was the white van that had suddenly rammed into the back of Trevor’s Aston. He thought the sad little bastard had lost it and would have to pay for the damage... But it wasn’t a rational thought or a well-formed thought. There was no time for thinking in the fractions of the unimaginably brief seconds that at that very moment blew Trevor’s entire world apart. Firstly, it was just his rear-view mirror that had come ablaze, then the roar of the explosion and then the unthinkable happened: Emma had not come out.
No one came out. An old man from that small blue car had tried, but failed before Trevor’s very eyes.
Now Trevor can hear a police car siren behind him. It is coming closer, just like Emma did – that day. He accelerates. In front of him, just like that day, a lorry is rolling down from the opposite direction, horn blazing. Déjà vu...
Trevor changes lanes and enters the lorry’s path. His foot is on the gas. One last game of chicken, for old times’ sake. He can now see the lorry driver’s face. There is fear in it. He doesn’t want to play this game. He doesn’t want to die, but he freezes and his lorry continues on its trajectory.
It is Trevor that swerves his swanky Aston Martin off the road, at full speed. He hits a tree – a rowan tree reddened with autumn – and his car pings off, and explodes in flames. The car and the red tree are burning together.
Gillian and Erin are first on the scene. They have abandoned their car, with the blue light still flashing, in the middle of the lane. They are trying to bring order to the madness until the emergency services arrive in full force.
The lorry has come out of it unscathed. It sits diagonally across the road, blocking both lanes, with two queues of cars beginning to form on both sides, motorists coming out, leaving doors open, running as close as they dare to the blazing Aston Martin and the tree that has caught fire.
When Superintendent Scarfe arrives he has only one question, ‘Were you in pursuit of that car, DI Marsh?’ He doesn’t wait for Gillian to answer, and she hasn’t got the presence of mind to do so anyway. He tells her outright: ‘There is going to be an internal investigation, you know that, and I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.’
EPILOGUE
The lorry driver has corroborated Gillian’s version of events. The conclusion is that Trevor Larkin was not forced into the oncoming traffic by the police car in pursuit; he did it of his own volition. Gillian’s temporary suspension is at an end and she will be back to her duties at Sexton’s Canning CID on Monday, less Erin who has been transferred to learn proper detecting skills elsewhere.
Gillian has driven for over two hours, without stopping. She could not bring herself to spend yet another weekend moping about, contemplating the worst possible scenarios and putting herself through the torture of scrolling through Tara’s web photos. Tara has not spoken to her in two months. Gillian has stopped leaving pointless messages on her mobile – stopped banging her head against the brick wall. Her head was hurting, her mother’s heart was hurting, squeezing her whole ribcage like a clenched fist. She wouldn’t be able to breathe if she didn’t see her child in the flesh, even if only just in passing.
This morning she got into her car, and drove. The incessant rain that had been dragging on for a week now, was fighting back against the windscreen wipers and winning the day. The visibility was poor, but Gillian pressed on, regardless. She made it to Exeter by ten in the morning, parked the car and walked to the hall of residents where Tara lives. She has been standing with an umbrella obscuring her face, at the side of a footpath, at a respectable distance from the main entrance, trembling in November’s wet chills – waiting for Tara to make an appearance. She will have words with her: face to face. If the mountain won’t come to Mohammed then Mohammed will have to come to the mountain.
On her way here she has rehearsed what she will tell her daughter. She will tell her how childish Tara has been, how immature. She will tell her that blocking her mother off will not solve her problems. She will tell her she is pushing her best friend away – her mother – the only person on this earth who cares for her. She will tell her she must get help, and that Gillian knows where to seek help, there are professionals who know what to do, places to go – she will take her there. She will tell her that she is ill, it is an illness of the mind and it has to be treated. She will take charge before it is too late.
A group of four young women emerge from the building. They brave the rain, two to one umbrella, their arms hooked, their bodies doubled up against the wind that has picked up in the last hour. Gillian can’t see their faces, but she knows instantly Tara is one of them. She recognises her tall, unnaturally slim silhouette. She steps back behind the bush to let them pass along the footpath without noticing her. She has things to say to Tara but not in front of her friends. She will wait until she can get her alone.
She follows the girls from a distance. They walk in pairs, their pace fast, their stride long and bouncy. They lead her to an old part of Exeter with cobbled streets and arched passageways, with many boutique shops and cafes along the way sprouting the first buds of Christmas decorations. There aren’t many people out there in this atrocious weather so Gillian has to hide behind her umbrella each time the girls stop to look at a shop display, before crossing the street or just to linger under a roof when the rain intensifies.
At last they find a coffee shop that they like, and enter, folding their two umbrellas and leaving them on a stand behind a glass door. They sit at a table by the window. Taking refuge in a narrow alleyway across the road from the café, Gillian can see Tara’s profile as she buries her face in the menu. She is there, she is fine, she is just a stroll away from her. It is a calming realisation. Gillian’s heart begins to slow down and she is tranquil and content. Perhaps she doesn’t have to tell Tara anything. Perhaps she just needs to look at her.
A waitress approaches the table and takes their order. Tara gives her the menu, smiling. The girls ar
e talking and laughing. One of them has excluded herself from their banter and is playing on her mobile phone. Gillian is relieved that it isn’t Tara. She is part of the group. She is with friends.
They are all looking out of the window, even the one with her fingers scuttling across the screen of her phone – all as one. Gillian steps back into the shadows of the alleyway. She was confident the rain provided her with sufficient cover, but now she isn’t so sure anymore.
Tara gets up and disappears inside the café only to, within seconds, reappear at the door. She swings it open and runs out. No coat. No umbrella. She crosses the cobbled street without looking around for cars. She is so reckless!
And here she is – face to face with Gillian. Her long hair is dripping wet, her shoulders are elevated and her arms crossed against her chest. ‘Mother,’ she says, ‘are you stalking me?’
Gillian has had all her words rehearsed, but they have dissipated in the wind. She pulls her daughter under her umbrella to shelter her from the unrelenting rain. Feeling her scrawny frame inside her arms offers her immeasurable comfort. ‘Of course not! As if I would! I can’t believe you’d say that!’ she replies, feigning righteous indignation. ‘I was just passing through Exeter, thought I’d drop in on you, see how you’re doing –’ her voice cracks. She can say no more.
‘Oh, Mum,’ Tara hugs her, presses her forehead against Gillian’s. ‘You’re such a crap liar! Come, join us! You’ll catch your death out here if you’re not careful.’
Gillian purports to resist, ‘I was having a perfectly good time standing here on my own, watching people go past...’
‘You were watching me and my friends!’ Tara protests. ‘Do you think I don’t know you? You were spying –’
‘Was not!’
‘You coming?’
‘Only because you asked so nicely.’
They cross the street together, huddled up under Gillian’s umbrella. Was it Mother who said Gillian would have to let Tara go, be her own person, have her own secrets? She was wrong. Gillian must know. She must know everything. It simply cannot be helped.
THE END
‘A DARK, WONDERFULLY-WRITTEN CRIME NOVEL’
Jeff Murphy, BAFTA Award Winning Screenwriter, Hinterland
A sharp, clever thriller with a paranormal twist.
How far would you go to get revenge?
The first, thrilling instalment in
The Michael Violet Series
DRUG-DEALING, FIRE-ARMS, AND A NATIONAL ENQUIRY;
COULD THIS BE THE END FOR DCI BANHAM?
Book Three in the hard-hitting
DCI Banham Series
For more information about Anna Legat and other Accent Press titles, please visit
@AccentPress /AccentPressBooks
www.accentpress.co.uk
Published by Accent Press Ltd 2017
www.accentpress.co.uk
Copyright © Anna Legat 2017
The right of Anna Legat to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The story contained within this book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of Accent Press Ltd.
ISBN 9781783759637
eISBN 9781682996102
