Breakneck point, p.9
Breakneck Point, page 9
‘I tried.’ A meaningless phrase that’s more a gasp than anything.
‘You promised. You always let me down.’
14
It’s early evening and the sun has set low enough at Seven Hills Lodges for the midges to meet and merge in a frenzy of dull brown clouds in the shade of the pine trees.
It’s a short stroll down the tarmacked path from Cabin 27 to Penny’s white bungalow situated at the entrance to the site. A few of the lodges are occupied and in among the pine trees I glimpse the odd checked shirt or white floppy hat – mostly retired couples making the most of the out-of-season deals. It’s still early July. High season doesn’t kick in until the schoolchildren break for summer at the end of the month.
I’ve given up trying to talk to Megan. She refused a lift home from school and when she walked in, she went straight to her room. After a couple of one-sided conversations with her locked bedroom door, I conceded defeat and decided to decamp to Penny’s.
Through the kitchen window, I can see Penny sitting at her kitchen table, already chugging her way through a bottle of cider. Smiling, she beckons me in, but on catching my expression, her own switches to concern.
‘You look like you could do with a drink.’
‘I’m OK, thanks.’ There’s no point holding back. I couldn’t if I tried so I just blurt it out. ‘Sean’s working at Megan’s school.’
Her bottle bangs the tabletop. She knows all about Sean, but he’s not the only one on her mind. If Sean – my ex from years ago – can come back into my life after all this time, maybe Ian could come back into hers. Monsters from our past.
‘Oh shit, no.’
‘Actually, I will have that drink.’ Penny grabs me a bottle from the fridge, takes the top off with the bottle opener and hands it to me. I take a quick swig. ‘That’s why she bunked off school. She’s still terrified of him.’
‘Oh my God. What are you going to do?’
‘I already did it. I went to see him. Told him to leave. Begged him, in fact, but he refused. He’s still the same manipulative bully he always was.’
‘Can’t you speak to someone at work? Get him arrested for harassment. Or get a restraining order on him?’
They’re just words chucked out at random to try to make things right, but they don’t mean anything because we both know the truth.
‘There’s nothing I can do. He’s not been convicted of anything. I never went to the police, remember?’
I wasn’t a CSI then. After I left Sean, I got a cleaning job at the local police station. It was Arthur, the station sergeant, who suggested I go for a job on the front desk. He urged me to put in an application to become a CSI too. ‘If you examine scenes as thoroughly as you cleaned this place, no criminal will be safe,’ he once told me.
Is there blame in my voice? Penny looks at me as if there is. Part of me hopes there is. If I’d reported Sean, none of this would be happening. It was Penny who stopped me.
She knocks back the last of her cider.
‘So, what are you going to do now?’
‘Nothing. Just like I did all those years ago.’
‘What about Megan?’
‘She won’t talk to me. Says I’ve let her down and she’s right. I couldn’t protect her then and I can’t protect her now. What kind of a parent does that make me?’ Silence fills the kitchen. Penny lost in her own nightmare scenario involving Ian, me searching for a solution. ‘There’s only one thing I can do.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I’ll keep her off school.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘None of this is Megan’s fault. Why should she suffer? I’ll call the school and tell them she’s gone into hospital for a minor op and needs to convalesce. It’s only three weeks to the summer break. By the time she goes back to school in September, Sean will have gone.’
Penny nods.
‘I can keep an eye on her while you’re at work. There’s plenty of little jobs she can do around the site to keep her busy.’
‘Thanks, Penny.’ It’s not ideal, but at least it’s a solution and I feel a lot better at the thought Megan will be nowhere near Sean. My mood lifts. ‘So any news from Ringo?’
Penny twists a row of coloured beads threaded through her long grey hair around her finger, a nervous habit of hers, especially when talking about men.
‘Oh, I don’t know. He’s asked again if we can go on a date.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘I said I’d think about it.’
‘If you keep him hanging on, he’s going to get fed up sooner or later.’
She throws her hair over her shoulder.
‘I just don’t know if I’m ready for all that.’
‘It’s a date, not marriage.’
‘I’m still not sure. He could be anyone. He could be a mad axeman.’
‘And he could be the man of your dreams.’
‘Or nightmares.’
‘All I’m saying is you’ve got nothing to lose and plenty to gain. Message him, tell him you’ll meet him.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’
But I know she won’t. I finish my drink and get up to leave.
‘I better get back.’
‘Ally.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Megan is in the kitchen that’s more of a kitchenette as it’s tiny and separated from the living room by a narrow breakfast bar. She’s making her favourite meal: baked beans on toast, covered with melted cheese. It’s what she makes herself when I’m not around. It smells good and I realize I haven’t eaten since breakfast.
‘Any leftovers for me?’
Megan glances at me.
‘Maybe.’
This is teen language for ‘I haven’t completely forgiven you, but I’m not as mad as I was’. It’s a start.
‘Thanks.’
There’s not enough room in the cabin for a dining table so we sit on the sofa in the living room, balancing our plates on our knees. I don’t want to say anything for fear of saying the wrong thing. Just having Megan in the same room as me is progress so we eat in silence, scraping our plates clean. I’m beginning to wonder if this is the best I can hope for when Megan speaks.
‘Why didn’t you go to the police and tell them Sean was hitting you?’
This is the last conversation I want to have, mainly because of the utter shame that fills me every time I try to answer that question myself, but I owe it to Megan.
‘After we left, I wanted him out of our lives. If I’d gone to the police, it would have meant court. They probably would have interviewed you too. I couldn’t face it and I couldn’t put you through that.’ It’s as rehearsed as it sounds and Megan knows it, which is why when I stop talking she says nothing. She’s waiting for the truth. ‘And I wasn’t brave enough.’ There. I said it. That’s what it comes down to. I didn’t have the guts. I ran away. Your mother is a coward. Penny isn’t to blame for my inaction. I am.
Megan nods.
‘That’s OK. Seeing him again brought everything back.’
‘I know and, if I could go back in time and change things I would. I’d give anything not to have met Sean Parker.’
‘He’s not a nice man, is he?’
‘No, and I made a terrible mistake, but that doesn’t mean I have to keep on making them.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m taking you out of school until the end of term. By the time you go back in September, Sean will have gone and our lives can go back to normal.’
Megan tears up and throws her arms around me, sending her plate tumbling to the floor. The circumstances are terrible, but the feeling of her hugging me is glorious.
‘Thank you, Mum. I’ve been so scared.’
‘I’ll call the school first thing Monday morning. Now, I’ve got two days off so how about you and I grab our bodyboards and hit Morte Sands in the morning? The surf’s fantastic at the moment.’
She considers my proposition and I wonder if I’ve overstepped the mark, but she smiles a smile that lifts me above Sean, above my job and all the crap that comes with it.
‘Yeah, OK.’
Megan clears the plates away, declares she’s exhausted in typically dramatic teenage fashion and turns in for the night, leaving me sitting alone in the front room. I rest my feet on the glass coffee table and lean back. I can’t remember the last time I felt this relaxed.
Bernadette hates the cabin which she says is only fit for hillbillies, but it’s been our home for eight years and we’re happy here. The living-room wall is papered floor-to-ceiling in a mural of a beach somewhere in the Bahamas because we don’t do white sand and palm trees in North Devon. I came in from work one day, about six years ago, to find Megan had taken her new Sharpies to it and added two people, playing in the surf, one with long straight hair, the other sporting a dark frizz, both with the biggest grins across their faces.
‘That’s you and me, Mummy.’
I couldn’t be mad at her. In fact, I loved it. Just Megan and me. Having fun. And we did have fun. It’s just that I’ve forgotten, in among the demands of the job which I could have done something about and her hormones which she couldn’t. Over the years, other images were added – sailing boats, sharks, dolphins, submarines – but Megan’s drawing of us is still there, a little faded with time, but it’s still there.
15
The call comes in at 5.45 a.m., Monday morning. I’m not due on shift until 2 p.m. and my body responds accordingly by ensuring I’m in the deepest of sleeps when my phone starts buzzing.
Stumbling into my jeans and a sweatshirt, I scribble a note to Megan, thanking her for the best weekend ever, adding I don’t know when I’ll be back, but there’s plenty of baked beans in the cupboard and cheddar cheese in the fridge.
Minutes later, I’m heading out of the site onto the road towards Bidecombe town centre. My destination isn’t far. Jake’s already texted me to say he’s collecting the CSI van and it’s stocked for all eventualities. He’ll meet me there.
I take the road along the seafront and the stretch of gaudy amusement arcades which are brought to a merciful and abrupt end by Steep Hill, a great big implacable wedge of a cliff that defeated Victorian engineers and still juts stubbornly out into the sea. Dad and I used to climb the grassy hill when I was young. From the top, you could see Wales across the Bristol Channel and behind us the town, its buildings sitting awkwardly in the folds of the hills, trying to shelter from the winter gales gusting up the Channel from the Atlantic. By the time I reached my teens I’d grown to hate the town and I couldn’t wait to leave. The whole place just seemed an embarrassingly tacky intrusion into nature, a lumpy rash slowly spreading inland over fields and woods, but now it’s hard not to be impressed by its sheer resilience.
Beyond Steep Hill lies Bidecombe Quay, where Janie Warren was murdered, but I take the right fork and the road rises, rejoining the end of the high street where the shops peter out. Straight on, past the rec on the left, the road dips sharply. In the hollow, a right turn leads to the Tarka Estate, a cluster of grey pebble-dashed houses that have all the charm of a public toilet. No thatched cottages or honeysuckle hedges here: this is the Devon the tourists don’t see, the Devon where I spend much of my time. It’s home to some seasonal workers, but mostly generations of families who have never worked and dealers feeding off their benefits and boredom. It used to be my home too.
The blue lights of the emergency services vehicles guide me in and I add my car to the huddle. The fire crews are sitting on their rigs, yellow suits peeled back to their waists, helmets off, tucking into bacon sandwiches. God knows where they got those at this time of day. Firefighters have a knack of finding decent food no matter when or wherever they’re called, perhaps it’s in their training, but it means the fire is already out. There’s no point calling us when it’s still raging.
Leaning against the CSI van, Jake is knocking back a coffee. I get out of my car and a woman in a black trouser suit, standard uniform for a female detective, strides towards me, hand outstretched.
‘Hi, Ally, I’m acting Detective Sergeant Shirwell.’
She’s based at Barnston CID. I’ve never worked a scene with her, never been to one serious enough to coax a DS from out behind her desk. I’d like to think she knows me because I’m good at what I do and not because I got the force’s favourite DI two years inside. I suspect it’s the latter, but she seems pleasant enough.
‘What do we know so far?’ Jake hands me a forensic suit, mask and shoe covers which I put on while Shirwell brings me up to speed.
‘Fire services were called just after 3 a.m. A neighbour – a bouncer, coming back from his shift at Climax Bar – saw the smoke. They put it out quickly, but not enough to save the female occupant, it seems. She’s burned to a crisp.’
‘Cheryl Black?’
‘Yes, but how—?’
‘I’ve been here before – a few times.’
Cheryl Black is one of those poor souls whom life has it in for. Her solution to her three failed marriages was alcohol and pills. She kept herself to herself until, recently, she made the mistake of complaining to the police about her neighbour’s noisy kids. Since then, her life has been hell. Hammering on her door at all hours, throwing bricks through her front window and, when I last saw her three weeks ago, posting dog shit through the letterbox. It isn’t anything you’d be sent down for, which her tormentors know, of course, but it’s enough to tip anyone over the edge. And Cheryl was on the edge. That’s how I know her.
There was nothing I could do, forensically, but I cleaned it up for her, made her a cup of tea and left a message with social services saying she needed help urgently, but mostly she needed CCTV installed so we could catch the scum destroying her life. No one called back and Cheryl didn’t get her CCTV.
A tall, grey-haired figure emerges from the house that shows no outward signs there’s been a fire. I’ve known Jeff, the fire investigator, for years. He’s the best there is.
He shakes my hand.
‘Good to see you, Ally.’
A car pulls up and out steps Alex Blandford, suited but dishevelled. I haven’t seen him since Janie Warren’s postmortem four days ago. He grins at me.
‘Fancy seeing you here.’
We spend a few minutes getting suited and masked up and then Alex, Shirwell and myself follow Jeff into Cheryl’s house. The dawn light is too watery for us to see properly so he swings his torch from side to side, guiding us from the hallway to the back living room.
‘If you touch the walls, do it with the backs of your hands. We’re still trying to make the electrics safe. One body is quite enough, thanks.’
The air in the hall is acrid, permeating my mask, stinging my eyes and the back of my throat. This discomfort intensifies when we enter the living room. The combination of smoke-blackened walls and poor light means we can barely see. Jeff points his torch into the corner.
A circle of light picks out a dark brown form. It looks like a piece of macabre modern art someone has welded together. It’s not. It’s the charred corpse of Cheryl Black kneeling in front of a mantelpiece – not that she is recognizable in any way. Her head is scorched of her burgundy bob and her hands have melted to stumps. Shirwell gasps. I’m guessing she hasn’t seen many burned bodies.
‘Why is she kneeling?’ I ask.
The pool of light flicks to the corner behind Cheryl. There’s nothing there but a pile of ash and melted metal. The wall behind it is tar-black.
‘We think she was sitting in an armchair that was quickly reduced to nothing by the fire and so her body fell forward.’
‘She didn’t try to escape the fire, then?’
‘She was probably overcome by smoke in her sleep. It doesn’t take long.’
I squint into the gloom. The fire is localized. The firefighters got to it quickly, but not quickly enough to save poor Cheryl. It’s summer so she wouldn’t have had the two-bar fire on. There’s really only one explanation.
‘Cigarette?’
Jeff nods.
‘You’re learning. There’s no obvious accelerant like petrol which might point it towards arson. The electrics are good. The fire was switched off. It’s the only explanation.’
‘Accidental, then?’ asks Shirwell hopefully.
‘Would seem so unless Alex has something to add.’
I admire Alex Blandford. It doesn’t matter how awful the sight is, he’s right in there. This time, he’s five centimetres from Cheryl, scanning her body with his own mini torch for anything suspicious.
‘She either died from smoke inhalation or possibly her burns, depending on how quickly the fire took hold, but I won’t be able to say any more than that without a PM.’
Shirwell chips in.
‘The paramedics said they were here on Friday. She had a bit of a turn. Nothing serious. Apparently, she was a very heavy drinker and on a lot of medication. She’d already accidentally overdosed last year. Maybe she passed out with a cigarette in her hand.’
Alex nods.
‘That’s very possible.’
Shirwell turns to me.
‘In that case, it looks like we’re just after the usual – visuals and any samples you and Jeff think are worth taking, Ally.’
I don’t respond. A memory has planted itself in my mind and Shirwell isn’t going to like it.
‘Ally?’
‘Cheryl didn’t smoke. She gave up some time ago. She used vapes. Her favourite flavours were Gummi Bear and Blue Raz Cotton Candy.’
They look at me. They want to ask how I know this; when you’re going through people’s personal possessions in pursuit of the perpetrator, they often end up telling you things that are unrelated to the crime they’ve fallen prey to, but I have the kind of mind that remembers them.
When someone finally speaks, it’s Jeff.
‘I’m as certain as I can be this fire was caused by a cigarette. Obviously, I don’t know who that cigarette belongs to. That’s your job, but if you wanted to set fire to someone deliberately, you’d also want to make sure you’d done it properly. There’s no way anyone could have stayed and watched this lady burn without being overcome by the smoke. You’ve not been here five minutes and you’re all struggling to breathe and you’re wearing masks.’
