It was hot for June. Sweltering for Scotland. The meteorologists called it a plume. Mediterranean air from southern Europe billowed up across the Channel, sending temperatures soaring. Suddenly men were in T-shirts and shorts, girls in denim cut-offs and flouncy tops, their pale northern thighs and chests blotched from the sudden exposure to rarely experienced levels of UV.
Thirteen-year-old Kirsty Smeaton told her eleven-year-old sister Blair she was taking her to the shop on Market Street for an ice cream. But really it was because their mother wanted half an hour’s quiet to smoke and watch the soaps on catch-up.
Blair dawdled beside Kirsty, concentrating on the Twister dripping sticky green and yellow tracks onto her fingers. Heat seemed to flow up in waves from the pavement. They’d crossed back over the Esk and Kirsty had demolished half of her Solero already, struggling not to get any gunk onto her phone. Her friend Marie had just sent her a Snapchat of her kid brother, Charlie, in a paddling pool with a rubber ring on his head, and she was texting a thumbs-up emoji in reply as she walked along the park path. She didn’t notice the dog until it emerged from behind the white van and they almost walked into it – a gorgeous, wonderful, floppy-eared German Shepherd puppy.
‘Careful now,’ said a voice.
The van stood parked at the kerb in the lay-by on Station Road, opposite the print works. A man followed the dog onto the pavement, clutching a long lead.
‘You need to look where you’re going, ladies,’ said the man, ‘in case you trip over Banshee, here.’
‘Banshee, is that his name?’
‘Her name. Cos she makes a noise like a banshee when she says hello.’
The dog looked longingly up at the girls’ lollipops, straining at the lead. The yellow and black jacket strapped around her chest said, ‘Guide dog puppy in training.’
‘Awww,’ cooed Kirsty.
‘Can we pet her?’ Blair asked.
The man frowned. ‘Well. You shouldn’t. Not really. Not while she’s being walked. But let me put her back in her crate and then we’ll see.’
The man picked the dog up and walked to the rear of the white van, opened the doors and put Banshee into a mesh cage. Both girls followed their progress, leaning in to touch the dog through the grille. Banshee was now in a tail-wagging frenzy, trying to lick as many bits of their flesh as she could.
‘Are you teaching her?’ asked Kirsty, grinning.
‘Oh yes. She’s a quick learner, too,’ said the man, adjusting the rear door inwards a little, shielding the dog from the street. He unclipped something from his belt. Something black and cylindrical that looked like a torch. He reached forwards casually as if he was going to shine it into the van, keeping it at shoulder level. Kirsty followed his hand. It moved slowly, non-threateningly, the man smiling as he noticed her curious gaze, tilting the object almost as if offering it to her. As if he was about to explain.
Blair was too preoccupied with Banshee to notice. But Kirsty frowned, her instincts alerted, blinked once and looked up into the man’s face just before he thrust the prongs towards her T-shirt and hit the skin behind it.
She jerked away, but not before the stun gun sent 800,000 volts pulsing through her with an accompanying crackle and buzz. Kirsty clattered against the van’s rear plastic bumper, her knees folding under her. Pain erupted as her muscles went into spasm and she collapsed against the inside of the rear door. She tried to scream, to breathe, but nothing, for several long seconds, emerged from her locked-up body. The very last thing she remembered before being thrown into the rear next to the yelping Banshee was seeing Blair’s lolly tumble from her hands.
One eyewitness on the other side of the bridge later said they saw a dog handler talking to two girls. The older girl seemed to slump and needed assistance getting into the back of the van. The witness had been too far away to see the make or model. Too far away to see a number plate. The driver, she reported, closed the rear doors, walked calmly around and drove away.
They found Kirsty eight hours later, stumbling, disorientated, in a field in Pennycuick with a stolen German Shepherd puppy at her side. She could add nothing to the accounts other than describing a man dressed in a brown short-sleeved shirt and cargo pants, wearing sunglasses under a green baseball cap. His shirt had looked a little bit too large for him, he spoke in a calm and steady voice that she didn’t recognise and, through her tears, she could think of nothing that made him stand out.
Despite a huge search, house to house on the streets surrounding where it had happened and a Police Scotland city-wide sweep that day, there was no sign of Blair Smeaton anywhere.
The staff nurse was new. He’d seen her a couple of times on shifts, her face blooming pink with adrenaline, her dark hair tied back. She was young, still keen.
‘Dr Hawley, Dr Hawley!’ Her voice cut through the war-zone noises; clattering trolleys, someone vomiting in an adjacent cubicle, an elderly patient pleading to go home, her confused begging forlornly hushed by a relative. Hawley didn’t reply immediately. He was busy turning over black instrument boxes on a shelf, searching for an ophthalmoscope. He needed it to examine a stroke patient’s retinas but the one he liked, the one with the least dust on the lens, wasn’t where it should have been. He preferred the wall-units, the rechargeable type. They, at least, never went walkabout.
‘Dr Hawley.’
He felt a hand on his elbow and turned, flicking his gaze down to her name badge. Kelly Mann. The noise of an ambulance siren slowly getting louder in its approach from the city centre drew her attention for a moment and she glanced towards the entrance. More patients on the way.
‘Motorcycle accident according to Charge nurse. Multiple injuries. No idea where we’ll put them.’ Kelly shrugged and proffered a sanguine smile.
‘We’ll find somewhere. He’s a magician.’
Kelly let out a small sigh. She hadn’t quite developed the thick skin you needed to work the Friday night six to two shift. Maybe she never would. Every training NHS doctor and nurse did a stint in A and E. It was more than a bit like conscription given that every day in every hospital in the country felt like a battle. But this wasn’t Syria, this was Bath in June. Not many trainees stayed after their mandatory stint. Only the brave, or the very foolish. Hawley knew to which category he belonged.
‘What can I do for you, Kelly?’
Someone, probably an anaesthetist judging by the green theatre scrubs, ran towards the resuscitation room. Through the open door, Hawley counted at least eight staff working on a forty-six-year-old cardiac arrest.
Kelly said, ‘I know it’s not yours, but I have a six-year-old who fell off a swing. Goran was dealing with it but he’s been in there,’ she nodded towards the resus room, ‘for twenty minutes and I just need someone to take a quick look and sign a form so that we can get the poor little thing to X-ray. Do you mind?’
He wanted to suggest she ask someone else but one glance told him there was no one. They’d had the usual slew of drunks and minor traumas, but the evening had been compounded by a collapsed stage at an agricultural show. No fatalities, but they could have done without the extra dozen cuts and scrapes that needed dressings and sutures.
With someone a little more experienced he might have suggested she fill the form in and he’d simply sign it, job done. But Kelly was new. It wouldn’t be fair to ask her to stretch the rules she was still learning.
‘Please?’ She let her chin fall and batted her lashes. He hesitated and her lips morphed into a flickering smile of confusion. That would have been his chance. There, with that little flicker. He could have told her why he hesitated and why he couldn’t help. But a paramedic pushed through between them, brusquely excusing himself, and Hawley’s chance evaporated, the moment lost. He was caught now with no way out. Despite all the promises he’d made to himself and stuck to for years, he heard himself say, ‘OK.’
Kelly beamed. ‘Oh, thanks. I know I’m being a pain, but she’s such a sweetie.’
She was already turning, leading the way across the frantic department, towards the paediatric cubicles. He heard a name as Kelly turned to deliver it, but only vaguely. The noise of shouted orders and bleeping alarms competed with the dull buzz in Hawley’s ears. He felt a prickling in his fingers and clutched his cold hands together. They crossed a corridor and the noise changed. The volume dropped away and instead of cacophony, here were muffled voices and the miserable wailing of a sick baby. Kelly pulled back a curtain and smiled brightly.
‘Hi, Ashlee.’
A student nurse in lilac scrubs stood sentinel at the bedside, the relief at Kelly’s return obvious in her anxious face. The little girl looked tiny on the trolley, her dark skin stark against the yellow sheets. A grey sling held her right arm flexed. Kelly kept eye contact, her dazzling smile not faltering for a second.
‘Where’s Mummy, Ashlee?’
‘She’s taken Efren to the toilet.’
‘Poor Efren,’ she made a joke of it, dropping her voice in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Look, I’ve brought Dr Hawley to make you better.’
Ashlee whimpered.
Kelly turned to the student. ‘Lucy, pop to the loo and tell Ashlee’s mum the doctor’s here.
Lucy nodded and hurried off.
‘I want Mummy,’ Ashlee said.
‘No, it’s OK, Ashlee. All Dr Hawley wants to do is look. All he’s going to do is look at your poorly arm.’
Hawley watched the exchange from the foot of the bed.
‘Will you let him have a peep if I hold your hand, Ashlee?’
Ashlee gave a solemn nod.
Hawley didn’t move. He looked at the little girl. She was scared and vulnerable. He felt saliva pooling on the root of his tongue. He tried swallowing, but his throat felt tight and narrow, forcing a noisy gulp.
‘Hi Ashlee,’ he said, his voice cracking.
Ashlee said nothing.
‘Show me,’ Hawley said. He moved to the side opposite the sling. Kelly, confused, waited.
‘Just lift the sling a little,’ Hawley ordered.
Ashlee’s arm was resting on her abdomen. Carefully, Kelly lifted the bandage. Hawley leaned forwards and peered. The swelling above the wrist looked like a barn door diagnosis. He’d put money on it being a Colles’ fracture.
‘Yeah, that needs an X-ray.’
‘Good. I’ll get the form…’ she froze with one hand raised and sent him a manic smile, ‘which I’ve left on the desk. I’ll be two seconds.’ Before Hawley could respond, she swept the curtain back and exited, leaving him alone with the little girl.
He turned back to look at her.
She watched him, her eyes huge, brow furrowing, sensing at last that something was off-kilter.
He almost laughed at the thought. Off-kilter was putting it mildly.
Hawley forced a breath, steadying himself. He ought to say something. Reassure his patient. But he didn’t trust Ashlee. More importantly, he didn’t trust himself. That was why he avoided seeing children whenever he could. It was difficult. Sometimes impossible. And when it became absolutely essential and unavoidable he would. But always with a nurse present and with a parent. There was good reason. That was the sort of world it was these days. Hawley knew that only too well.
It was why he never saw children alone, like this. It provided far too many opportunities for misunderstandings.
He didn’t say anything to Ashlee. He merely turned away and swept out of the cubicle, not wanting to let thoughts, dark thoughts, crowd in on him again.
He almost collided with Kelly, beetling back around the corner.
‘Dr Hawley?’ Concern tipped the last vowel of his name up an octave.
He held out a palm, willing her to stop and be quiet as he recovered.
Kelly ignored him. ‘What’s wrong? Is it Ashlee?’
She brushed past him, opened the curtains. Hawley heard her voice, in control, soothing. ‘Hello sweetie. Won’t be a minute. You OK?’
Hawley waited until Kelly emerged from behind the curtain.
‘Whatever’s the matter?’
Hawley was shaking his head. ‘You should never…’ he blew out air. ‘Never leave a kid that age unchaperoned.’ He sucked in a breath through his nose. ‘Never alone…’
Not with me.
Kelly stared at him. ‘I only went to get the X-ray form.’
Hawley squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them. ‘Never.’ He shook his head.
‘But you were—’
‘Never.’ It came out through gritted teeth and made her flinch. ‘Never fucking ever…’
Kelly flushed.
Hawley closed his eyes again, knowing he was going way too far. This girl wasn’t responsible for his baggage. Baggage that had fallen open again here in this busy A and E, spilling out all its dirty laundry for her to see. But she had to know. That much she had to realise. He picked up a clipboard from a desk and grunted. ‘Give me the form.’
Kelly handed him the slip. He filled it in, signed it, gave it back, not meeting her gaze when he said, ‘Get someone else to look at the X-ray.’
She took it and said to his departing back, ‘Have I done something wrong?’
He stopped, half turned. ‘Kids are… You can’t be too careful. Get Goran to review her.’
Kelly nodded, tight-lipped. ‘You sure you’re alright?’
In his head, he could hear a shrill voice laughing maniacally. He was far from alright. He quelled the voice and said, ‘Fine.’
As he walked away, he could sense her eyes on him.
Sometime during this shift, she would speak to Goran about him. He had a good idea of how that conversation would go. Goran would sigh and explain how it was such a shame. That Hawley was a good doctor, an asset to the unit whenever he did a shift. But that there was something no one could quite put a finger on. And when Goran would ask why Kelly wanted to know, she’d explain about Ashlee, and Goran would bare his teeth in a grimace of pained understanding. Dr Hawley avoided kids. Would swap the crappiest file, even see to a constantly retching food poisoning case or debride a putrid gangrenous foot, anything so long as he didn’t have to see any kids. The other staff were only too happy to help him out. And Kelly would ask why. And Goran would reply with a faraway look and explain that no one really knew but it must have been something bad. Maybe he’d lost one along the way. A meningitis, or an Addison’s. Something that had left deep and unhealed wounds. And Kelly would nod and look sympathetic and feel sorry for him.
Hawley went to the bathroom. Sweat had beaded on his clean-shaven top lip. He splashed water over his face and let it run over his wrists before sucking up a mouthful in his scooped hands. He glared at his reflection in response to what had just happened, and his own eyes looked back at him accusingly. There were easier ways to earn a living, but the crisis in recruitment in emergency medicine and the government’s targets of four-hour waits ensured that he, with his qualifications, could pick and choose his shifts in almost any unit in the country. But that still didn’t explain why he worked the worst of them: the Friday and Saturday nights, the bank holidays. What did explain it was the fact that they were the worst. He gobbled them up, relishing the constant mayhem. Alcohol-related injuries made up four out of every five emergency episodes during the weekends. That meant lots of fights. Lots of blood. Hardly any kids. No one in their right mind who wanted any semblance of work–life balance would ever choose to do the job.
He let out a wry exhalation on hearing his thoughts form the words ‘right mind’. What did that make him? Not right? Not normal?
He dried his face and hands and tried to clear his mind before pulling open the bathroom door. There was work to be done.
It was DI Anna Gwynne’s second week back at work and at last, at long last, she was beginning to feel normal again. It had taken a while. She’d made the most of it though, especially the last few weeks. She’d eaten well, thrown herself around the gym, swum lengths in the pool, made sure she was as fit as she could be. The dark circles under her hazel eyes had finally faded, though it had taken four of the six months she’d been off work before they disappeared completely. The pain from the stab wounds and the bruising around her windpipe had long gone, too, but there were other scars that would take far longer to heal.
Her attacker, a serial killer and rapist called Charles Willis, had been sentenced, but he’d only been caught after he’d killed four people and very nearly killed her on a chilly November day just over six months ago. In the slow weeks of recovery Anna decided she’d no one else to blame for him almost succeeding but herself. She’d finally seen through Willis’s clever subterfuge and had exposed his years of sexual assaults, tying him to several murders. For that she’d been lauded. But her procrastination, her self-doubt, had almost got her killed. There was a lesson to be learned there.
She gave evidence at his trial before her return to work. Willis was charged with four counts of murder, one of attempted murder and eighteen counts of rape or attempted rape. Anna described how Willis tracked her on one of her fitness runs, shot her with a veterinary dart laced with a powerful opiate and tried to kill her. She’d sat as Willis’s barrister, on the question of premeditation, cross-examined her. How could she be certain murder had been his client’s intent?
Anna fixed him with a cold stare and said, ‘I can’t be certain. But unlike his other victims, I was aware of what he was capable of. Perhaps he’d only make that final decision once he’d finished stabbing me.’
She’d found it an interesting position to be in, trying to be as professionally objective as possible to bring Willis to book while having a very personal need for justice and closure. The Crown Prosecution Service’s barrister was anticipating an indefinite term with no option of parole at sentencing. Anna would drink to that.
Anna got up from her desk and went to the window. The way she held herself made her look taller than the five seven that she was. Her dark suit jacket was draped on the chair back, and her shirt – one of several of the white or light blue she usually wore to work – was new and still had crease lines from how it had been packaged. She’d cut her hair back-to-work short and her skin was a healthy colour from the hours of running she’d done over the last month.
Outside the office in Avon and Somerset Police’s HQ, the summer sun was already warming the morning air, trying to make life just a little more tolerable on the western side of Britain. A blue-sky day with the promise of long light, tanned limbs and long drinks outside in the streets. Not the sort of day for contemplating mistakes or regret.
Though it was now possible for her to go a day or two without dwelling on the attack, still a shadow lurked. A reptilian skin of memory that she thought she’d shed. And there was the paradox. Anna dealt with the sins of others like a butcher deals with cuts of meat. And, just as a butcher would, inevitably, get blood on his hands, she was tainted by the mental stains left by dealing with criminality. Yet they were nothing a good glass of Riesling and half an hour’s dreamy Pink Floyd, or pastoral folk ballads from Zeppelin, could not ease away. A trick taught to her by her dad.
But since Willis had put his hands upon her, his shadow was always there in the background, like spilled port on a white carpet, resisting all her efforts at scrubbing him out.
Because of him and what he’d done, for a while Anna had doubted the wisdom of the road she walked. Perhaps not quite an existential crisis, it had still involved a stepping back, a sensible weighing up of her options. She’d chosen her job because it challenged her and she was good at it. The possibility of closing a case, of helping a victim, of relieving a family of the pain of not knowing drove her on in some way that was difficult to deny. And what other job was there that allowed her to be her stubborn, driven, analytical self and encourage her to use those traits? She couldn’t think of one. Slowly, as the weeks of recovery passed, her doubts had faded until, at last, she’d got the all-clear from the medics and here she was.
In early as always, she turned from the window in the open-plan office of the south-west Major Crimes Review Task Force, and sat, hip on a desk, looking at the whiteboard and the pinned photographs from the reactivated cold cases the team had been pursuing while she was away. Set up, as with many forces, in response to advancements in DNA techniques, the team was tasked with seeing if fresh eyes and technology could solve some of the region’s unsolved cases. Murder and rape were high on the agenda; and these had become Anna’s bitter bread and butter.
One such case was the rape of a young woman in 1983 near the racecourse on the outskirts of Bath. Lucy Bright survived, but her life had been blighted ever since. She’d never married and was not in a steady relationship. The attacker’s violations had left, as so often happened, the kind of deep and irreparable psychological damage that some victims were simply unable to overcome. Justice meant a lot to these people – offering a chance for them to draw a line in the sand from where they might start again – and its absence festered like an open wound.
At the time of the attack on Lucy Bright a significant amount of evidence and samples had been collected, including the attacker’s semen, but little had been made of those at the time. Analysis of these samples would not have included DNA. But with the establishment of the National DNA database in the early 1990s, samples in historically unsolved cases could be reanalysed and compared with newly acquired data. The samples from Lucy Bright’s case were logged but yielded no results initially because the perpetrator’s DNA was not in that database for a match to be made. For years, her attacker remained at large, dodging justice’s bullet.
But bullets could ricochet.
In March 2017, a DNA sample from a drink-driving offence was loaded onto the system and threw up a partial match of sixteen alleles out of a possible twenty-four tested. Callum Morton, aged nineteen, had not been alive at the time of the rape in 1983, but the match was close enough to suggest that a relative of his could have been involved. Anna’s team was alerted, the cold case their responsibility, and two men were now suspects: Morton’s father, Peter, a fifty-three-year-old paramedic, and his fifty-five-year-old uncle Dominick, a businessman with several properties abroad. Neither man was aware that familial tracing was slowly closing a ring around them.
Justin Holder and Ryia Khosa, the squad’s DCs, had worked up the case in exemplary fashion in Anna’s absence. They had enough evidence to question both men, but Superintendent Rainsford, Anna’s commander, was wary. If th. . .
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
