Dying for Christmas (35 page)

‘But we haven’t started properly.’ Robertson is by her side, his face dusky with annoyance.

‘I’m sorry,’ the doctor says. ‘His concentration span is very limited. We’ll try again tomorrow. Hopefully he’ll feel more like talking.’

Kim finds herself at the same time relieved and disappointed.

Outside in the car park, Martin is keen to place his interpretation on the cryptic one-word message. ‘I think he was about to confess. He knows the game is up. He’s going to try to make some sort of deal. He’ll tell us what he’s done with Natalie in return for a lesser charge on Jessica Gold.’

Robertson looks at Kim. ‘What’s your opinion?’

‘I don’t know, sir. But knowing what we do about Dominic Lacey I’d be very surprised if he was about to admit to anything. Maybe he was trying to tell us something about where Natalie is.’ Now another explanation occurs to her. ‘Or maybe he was even saying there’s a connection between her and Jessica. Why else would he reply “Natalie” when the question was expressly about Jessica?’

‘But Natalie Lacey and Jessica Gold have never crossed paths.’

‘No, sir, but I still have this feeling that Jessica isn’t being completely transparent.’

Kim is aware that without any evidence she sounds as clueless as Martin, tossing theories around like confetti.

After the Super has driven off in his car, she and Martin make their way to hers.

‘Do you think it’s a woman thing?’ he asks her as he buckles up his seatbelt.

‘What?’

‘Your refusal to see Jessica Gold as a victim, despite the fact she had wounds all over her body and could have died? Do you think you’re just not a woman’s woman?’

Kim thinks about reaching over the hand-brake and grabbing hold of his hair and slamming his head down hard on to the dashboard.

For a split second it actually makes her feel better.

* * *

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: WTF

Just listened to your message from last night. There’s no need to make such a big fuss just because I didn’t pick up. I’m confused though. Why did Dominic ask to see your Family Liaison woman? How does he even know who she is? And what did he tell her?

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: re: WTF

I called you five times. I have no idea why he asked for Kim. All Kim told us is he still isn’t speaking properly but he wrote down one word.
Natalie
. He’s going to pull through. And then he’s going to tell them everything and we’re going to prison for a very long time. Why did I ever let you talk me into this?

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: re: re: WTF

Let’s just think. You let me talk you into this because you wanted to save your thirteen-year-old niece from a blackmailing, sadistic psychopath. And save yourself while you were at it, so Mummy and Daddy wouldn’t have to turn on the telly and see a film of their darling daughter trussed up like a side of beef and being sodomized by my husband.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: re: re: re: WTF

So what do we do? Kim’s going in to see him again tomorrow evening. He’ll tell her everything.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: re: re: re: re: WTF

Then it will be his word against yours. Don’t forget that as well as your written statement and the fact that you were almost dead, there’s also the case for my murder. With all my DNA around the apartment there’s no way he can convince them I just disappeared of my own accord. You just have to hold your nerve.

Chapter Forty-Five

Kim can’t remember the last time she was so nervous before an interview with a suspect. Back at Heather’s flat, she’d put the pink jumper on and stood in front of the bathroom mirror for a long time before swapping it for a blue top and the black jacket. She took extra care with her make-up, and then felt disgusted with herself.

Now in the station, she’s scrolling through all the police reports without really seeing them, checking the time every minute or so. When her mobile rings she sees Sean’s name on her screen and feels a pang of irritation, and then guilt.

‘Rory’s not good,’ he tells her, as if it’s her doing.

Kim’s stomach cramps with anxiety as she asks him why.

‘A bad tackle at after-school football. I always said that Connor kid was a nutter. Rory fell on his arm. We’ve just arrived at A&E. He’s asking for you. How soon can you get here?’

The hospital in North London is in the opposite direction from the hospital in the East End where Dominic Lacey is being treated. Her poor boy. But why now, when she is on the point of one of the biggest moments of her career? Why not an hour ago or two hours later? Of course she knows the answer. There will always be domestic crises, and there will always be career crunch points, and they will always coincide, pulling her in opposite directions.

‘I’ll come just as soon as I finish questioning the suspect in the Jessica Gold case.’

There’s a silence, followed by an explosion. ‘
What?
Please tell me you’re not serious. Your eight-year-old son has broken his arm and you’re going to fit him in after you’ve finished work?’

‘Tell Rory I’ll be there just as quickly as I can. It’s just that I have to do this.’

* * *

Walking alone through the main hospital entrance, she feels oddly vulnerable and wishes for the first time that Martin was with her. When Robertson first told her Martin wouldn’t be accompanying them to the interview, she’d been quietly thrilled. Though there was a reason given – a lead on a potential witness that needed checking out – Kim can’t help feeling it’s a vote of no confidence in her partner. She wonders if it means the Super has made up his mind about his recommendation and immediately slaps herself down for tempting fate.

She steps out of the lift on the second floor and through the double doors on the left, expecting to find Robertson waiting for her. Instead she is greeted by a scene of complete chaos. Uniformed police officers and white-coated doctors block the corridor, and when she pushes through to the doorway of Lacey’s room, it is a blur of activity and noise, with medical staff and police crowded around Lacey’s bed, and everyone shouting over everyone else. Kim spots her superior in a corner of the room and goes to find him, flashing her badge at a uniform on the door who tries to stop her going in.

As she crosses to her boss, she tries not to look at the inert figure in the bed, but she senses immediately – from the absence of that peculiar intensity Dominic Lacey generated – that their suspect is dead.

‘A nurse raised the alarm half an hour ago,’ the Super explains, as they make their way out of the over-crowded room. ‘The last time Lacey was checked he was OK. Weak, but stable, as he was when we saw him yesterday. Then less than an hour later he’s dead. Looks like he just stopped breathing. I really thought we were on the verge of getting somewhere. What a fucking cock-up!’

The boss is known for his calm, almost plodding manner. It’s the first time she’s seen him lose his composure. The corridor outside has emptied since she first arrived and they sink down on to the chairs recently occupied by uniformed police guards. She feels numb. Since yesterday she has been building herself up to another encounter with Dominic Lacey and now it has come to nothing.

She feels her phone vibrate in her handbag with an incoming call.

She lets it ring on.

* * *

‘I don’t believe it.’

My voice in my own ears sounds strangely flat and unconvincing.

It will be all over the news shortly, Kim says, so she wants to give me the heads-up. I think fleetingly about that term ‘heads-up’ and wonder what on earth it means.

I don’t know how to feel.

I ought to be either elated that the bastard is gone, or else terrified because it means I could be charged with murder. But instead I am detached, as if it is someone I hardly know, a friend of a friend I once met at a party and have difficulty recalling their face.

‘What’s the matter?’ Mum is watching me anxiously. ‘What did Kim want?’

I wish I was back at my flat where I could turn this news over in my head to find out how I feel, but my parents are both looking at me across the dinner table which is still strewn with our finished plates, and I have to say something.

‘Dominic Lacey is dead,’ I say out loud, and then I start laughing as if it’s the most tremendous joke.

My mother clamps her hand to her mouth and stares at me in horror, while my father knits his brows together. Neither knows what to make of me. So what’s new?

I am desperate to call Natalie. There’s a childish side of me that wants to be the one to break the momentous news.

I excuse myself, push back from the table and run upstairs with my phone.

In the bathroom I try Natalie’s number again and again, but she doesn’t pick up.

In between failed attempts I lean back against the tiles and think about Dominic. I think about the small boy forced to sit on that plastic stool and watch his father having violent sex with a woman who wasn’t his mother, and about his mother literally smothering him with a love that was more like obsession. I think of his little sister Bella, who shouldn’t have died, and the teacher who’d only wanted to make a difference. I think of poor Cesca and baby Sam in his mini football kit. I think of Natalie and me and all the other people whose lives will never be the same because of him.

After a while I go back downstairs where my parents have clearly been discussing the best way to behave around me.

‘You mustn’t blame yourself for—’ my father starts the minute I step into the hallway.

‘Can’t talk now,’ I call, pulling on my scarf and coat. ‘I’ve got to go.’

‘Jessica!’ my mother has hurried out and has her hand on my arm. ‘Come on. We need to talk about this.’

‘No, Mum,’ I say, gently removing her hand. ‘
We
don’t need to talk about anything.’

All the way home in the taxi I keep trying Natalie’s number, frustration growing exponentially with the number of unanswered rings. My earlier detachment has given way to a churning biliousness and images of Dominic pass through my head on a continuous loop. The way he looked when he first introduced himself at that department-store café, his stiff, scarcely held-in excitement when he inflicted pain, his tenderness when he washed the wounds he’d caused, his look of betrayal when Natalie let herself into his flat and he grasped he’d been set up, the utter incomprehension on his face when she slid the knife across his throat.

I need to talk to her. I need to ask her why I feel like something in me has died with him.

But she’s not answering.

Bursting into our flat, I search out Travis. He was still at work when I left to have dinner at my parents’ but he should be back by now, yet as soon as I let myself in I can tell the flat is empty. Switching on the television, I turn straight to the twenty-four-hour news channel. The first thing that appears on the screen is a photograph of Dominic and this confirmation of his death hits me like a punch to the stomach. On screen the police officer with a ruddy face is saying that at this time it appears Dominic died from injuries sustained during the incarceration of Jessica Gold, although a full autopsy will be carried out.

They flash up a photograph of me taken on graduation day at Manchester with the wind blowing my hair up in a dark cloud behind me and making my dress billow. I am smiling and holding on to the mortar board on my head to stop it blowing away.

Alone on the sofa in my flat, I find myself weeping for the girl I won’t ever be again.

Chapter Forty-Six

Kim knows she looks appalling. She has not slept all night and her grey eyes are ringed with shadows. Sean would not look at her when she walked through the front door last night after pushing her way out of the hospital past a throng of television crews from all over the world. When she’d rung him from the car, he told her only that they were back home, adding only, ‘Suit yourself,’ when she told him she was on her way.

Rory looked so pale and small on the sofa with a blanket over his legs and his purple cast resting on his chest. Kim felt a rush of love so powerful she almost couldn’t breathe.

She flung herself across the room and wrapped her arms around him, planting kisses on his forehead and cheeks.

‘Ow, Mum. Careful.’

She pulled back to look at him properly. He was holding his arm with a kind of awed pride, but she could see shock and pain still etched on his hollow, delicately featured face. When he went to bed just after eleven, she insisted on going up with him and sleeping in a sleeping bag on the floor next to his bed in case he needed her in the night.