‘Oh God,’ Ray groaned. He wondered if it was too much to hope for that the chief might not have picked up on any of this. ‘Did she give any indication at the time she wasn’t happy with police action?’
‘This is the first we’ve heard of it from the FLO,’ Stumpy said.
‘Speak to the school,’ Ray said. ‘Someone must have stayed in contact with her. And ask at the GP surgeries. There can’t be more than two or three in her local area, and with a child, she’s bound to have been registered at one of them. If we can find out which one, they might have sent her records on to her new surgery.’
‘Will do, boss.’
‘And for God’s sake, don’t let the Post know we’ve lost her.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘Suzy French will have a field day.’
No one laughed.
‘The loss of key witnesses aside,’ Ray said, ‘is there anything else I need to know?’
‘I’ve drawn a blank with cross-border enquiries,’ Kate said. ‘There were a couple of stolen cars that came on to our patch, but they’re all accounted for. I’ve eliminated the list of vehicles that triggered speed cameras that night, and I’ve been to every garage and body shop in Bristol. No one remembers anything suspicious – at least, not that they’ll tell me.’
‘How are Brian and Pat getting on with the CCTV?’
‘Getting square eyes,’ Stumpy said. ‘They’ve been through the police and council footage, and now they’re working on the petrol stations. They’ve picked up what they think is the same car on three different cameras, coming from the Enfield Avenue direction just a few minutes after the hit-and-run. It makes a couple of dangerous attempts to overtake, then it goes out of shot and we haven’t managed to pick it up again. They’re trying to work out what make it is, although there’s nothing to say it’s involved at all.’
‘Great, thanks for the update.’ Ray looked at his watch to hide his disappointment at the lack of progress. ‘Why don’t you two head off to the pub? I’ve got to call the superintendent, but I’ll be with you in half an hour or so.’
‘You’re on,’ said Stumpy, who never had to be persuaded into a pint. ‘Kate?’
‘Why not?’ she said. ‘As long as you’re buying.’
It was closer to an hour before Ray got to the Nag’s Head, and the others were already on their second round. Ray envied them their ability to switch off: his conversation with the superintendent had left an uncomfortable knot in his stomach. The senior officer had been nice enough, but the writing on the wall was clear: this investigation was coming to an end. The pub was warm and quiet, and Ray wished he could put work to one side for an hour and talk about football, or the weather, or anything else that didn’t involve a five-year-old child and a missing car.
‘Trust you to arrive just after I’ve been to the bar,’ Stumpy grumbled.
‘You don’t mean to say you got your wallet out?’ Ray said. He winked at Kate. ‘Wonders will never cease.’ He ordered a pint of bitter and returned, throwing three packets of crisps on to the table.
‘How did it go with the superintendent?’ Kate asked.
He couldn’t ignore her, and he certainly couldn’t lie. Ray took a gulp of his pint to buy some time. Kate watched him, eager to hear if they’d been given more resources, or a bigger budget. He hated to disappoint her, but she had to know sometime. ‘Pretty shit, to be honest. Brian and Pat have been taken back to shift.’
‘What? Why?’ Kate put down her drink with such force that wine sloshed up the inside of the glass.
‘We were lucky to have them for as long as we did,’ Ray said, ‘and they’ve done a great job with the CCTV. But shift can’t carry on back-filling their absence, and the harsh truth is that we can’t justify spending any more money on this investigation. I’m sorry.’ He added the apology as if he were personally responsible for the decision, but it didn’t make any difference to Kate’s reaction.
‘We can’t just give up on it!’ She picked up a beer mat and began digging pieces out of the edges.
Ray sighed. It was so hard, that balance between the cost of an investigation and the cost of a life – the cost of a child’s life. How could you put a value on that?
‘We’re not giving up,’ he said, ‘you’re still working your way through those fog lights, aren’t you?’
Kate nodded. ‘There were seventy-three fitted as replacement parts in the week following the hit-and-run,’ she said. ‘The insurance jobs have all been genuine cases, so far, and I’m tracing the registered keepers for all the ones who paid privately.’
‘You see? Who knows what that will turn up. All we’re doing is scaling things back a bit’ He looked at Stumpy for moral support, but didn’t find it.
‘The bosses are only interested in quick results, Kate,’ Stumpy said. ‘If we can’t solve a job in a couple of weeks – a couple of days, ideally – it drops off the list of priorities and something else takes its place.’
‘I know how it works,’ Kate said, ‘but it doesn’t make it right, does it?’ She pushed the tiny scraps of beer mat into a mound in the centre of the table. Ray noticed her fingernails were unpainted, and bitten angrily to the quick. ‘I have this feeling the last bit of the puzzle is just around the corner, you know?’
‘I do,’ said Ray, ‘and maybe you’re right. But in the meantime, expect to be working on the hit-and-run in between other jobs. The honeymoon period is over.’
‘I was thinking I might make some enquiries at the Royal Infirmary,’ Kate said. ‘It’s possible the driver sustained injuries during the collision: whiplash, something like that. We sent a patrol car to A&E on the night, but we should follow up with more specific slow-time enquiries, in case they didn’t seek treatment straight away.’
‘That’s good thinking,’ Ray said. The suggestion stirred something at the back of his mind, but he couldn’t place it. ‘Don’t forget to check Southmead and the Frenchay, as well.’ His phone, face down on the table in front of him, vibrated with an incoming text message, and Ray picked it up to read it. ‘Shit.’
The others looked up at him, Kate in surprise and Stumpy with a grin.
‘What have you forgotten to do?’ he said.
Ray grimaced but didn’t explain. He drained his pint and pulled a tenner out of his pocket, handing it to Stumpy. ‘Get a drink for the pair of you – I need to get home.’
Mags was loading the dishwasher when he walked in, dropping the plates into the rack with such force Ray winced. Her hair was tied back in a loose plait, and she wore tracksuit bottoms and an old T-shirt of his. He wondered when she had stopped caring about what she wore, and straight away hated himself for the thought. He was hardly one to talk.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I completely forgot.’
Mags opened a bottle of red wine. She had only got out one glass, Ray noticed, but he decided it would be unwise to mention it.
‘It’s very rare,’ she said, ‘that I ask you to be somewhere at a particular time. I know that sometimes the job has to come first. I get that. I really do. But this appointment has been in the diary for two weeks. Two weeks! And you promised, Ray.’
Her voice wobbled, and Ray put a tentative arm around her. ‘I am sorry, Mags. Was it awful?’
‘It was okay.’ She shrugged off Ray’s arm and sat at the kitchen table, taking a deep slug of wine. ‘I mean, they didn’t say anything dreadful, only that Tom doesn’t seem to have settled into school as well as the other kids and they’re a bit worried about him.’
‘So what are the teachers doing about it?’ Ray fetched a wine glass from the cupboard, filled it, and joined Mags at the table. ‘Presumably they’ve spoken to him?’
‘Apparently Tom says everything’s fine.’ Mags shrugged. ‘Mrs Hickson has tried everything she can to motivate him and get him to be more engaged in class, but he won’t say a word. She said she had wondered if he was simply one of the quiet ones.’
Ray snorted. ‘Quiet? Tom?’
‘Well, exactly.??
? Mags looked at Ray. ‘I really could have done with you there, you know.’
‘It totally slipped my mind. I’m so sorry, Mags. It was another full-on day, and then I popped to the pub for a quick pint.’
‘With Stumpy?’
Ray nodded. Mags had a soft spot for Stumpy, who was Tom’s godfather, and indulged his and Ray’s after-work pints with the tolerance of a wife who recognises a husband’s need for ‘man time’. He didn’t mention Kate, and he wasn’t entirely sure why.
Mags sighed. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘He’ll be fine. Look, it’s a new school, and it’s a huge deal for kids, moving up to secondary school. He’s been a big fish in a small pond for a long time, and now he’s swimming with the sharks. I’ll speak to him.’
‘Don’t give him one of your lectures—’
‘I’m not going to give him a lecture!’
‘—it’ll only make things worse.’
Ray bit his tongue. He and Mags were a good team, but they had very different approaches when it came to parenting. Mags was much softer with the kids; more inclined to molly-coddle them instead of letting them stand on their own two feet.
‘I won’t give him a lecture,’ he promised.
‘The school has suggested we see how things go for the next couple of months, and have another chat to them a few weeks after half term.’ Mags looked pointedly at Ray.
‘Name the date,’ he said. ‘I’ll be there.’
6
Headlights glint on wet tarmac, the dazzle blinding them every few seconds. People scurry past on slippery pavements; passing cars sending spray over their shoes. Piles of leaves lie in sodden heaps against railings, their bright colours darkening to dull brown.
An empty road.
Jacob running.
The squeal of wet brakes, the thud as he hits the car and the spin of his body before it slams on to the road. A blurred windscreen. Blood pooling beneath Jacob’s head. A single cloud of white breath.
The scream cuts through my sleep, jolting me awake. The sun isn’t up yet, but the light in the bedroom is on: I can’t bear to feel the darkness around me. Heart pounding, I concentrate on slowing my breathing.
In and out.
In and out.
The silence is oppressive rather than calming, and my fingernails carve crescents into my palms as I wait for the panic to subside. My dreams are becoming more intense, more vivid. I see him. I hear the sickening crack of his head on the tarmac …
The nightmares didn’t start straight away, but now they’re here, they won’t stop. I lie in bed each night, fighting sleep and playing out scenarios in my head like those children’s books where the reader chooses the ending. I squeeze my eyes tightly shut and walk through my alternative ending: the one where we set off five minutes earlier, or five minutes later. The one where Jacob lives, and is even now asleep in his bed, dark eyelashes resting upon rounded cheeks. But nothing changes. Each night I will myself to wake earlier, as though by disturbing the nightmare I can somehow reverse reality. But it seems a pattern has been set, and for weeks now I have woken several times a night to the thud of a small body on the bumper, and to my own fruitless scream as he rolls off and slams on to the wet road.
I have become a hermit, cloistered within the stone walls of this cottage, venturing no further than the village shop to buy milk, and living off little more than toast and coffee. Three times I’ve decided to visit Bethan at the caravan park; three times I’ve changed my mind. I wish I could make myself go. It’s been a very long time since I had a friend, and just as long since I have needed one.
I make a fist with my left hand, then unfurl my fingers, stiff from a night’s sleep. The pain rarely troubles me now, but I have no sensation in my palm, and two of my fingers have stayed numb. I squeeze my hand to chase away the pins and needles. I should have gone to the hospital, of course, but it seemed so insignificant in comparison to what had happened to Jacob; the pain so justly deserved. So instead I bandaged the injury as best I could, gritting my teeth as each day I pulled away the dressing from the damaged skin. Gradually it healed: the life line on my palm hidden forever beneath a layer of scars.
I swing my legs out from under the pile of blankets on my bed. There is no heating upstairs, and the walls glisten with condensation. I swiftly pull on tracksuit bottoms and a dark-green sweatshirt, leaving my hair tucked into the collar, and pad downstairs. The cold floor tiles make me gasp and I slide my feet into trainers, before pulling back the bolt to unlock the front door. I have always been an early riser; up with the sun to work in my studio. I feel lost without my work, as though I am flailing around looking for a new identity.
In the summer there will be tourists, I suppose. Not at this hour, and perhaps not as far inland as my cottage, but on the beach, certainly. But for now it is mine, and the solitude is comforting. A dull winter sun pushes its way over the clifftop, and there is an icy glint on the puddles punctuating the coastal path that runs around the bay. I begin to run, my breath leaving bursts of mist in my wake. I never jogged in Bristol, but here I make myself go on for miles.
I settle into a rhythm that echoes my heart, and run steadily towards the sea. My shoes make a noise as they hit the stony floor, but my daily runs have made me sure-footed. The path leading down on to the beach is so familiar now I could walk it blindfold, and I jump the last few feet on to the damp sand. Hugging the cliff, I jog slowly around the bay, until the line of rocks pushes me towards the sea.
The tide is as far out as it can go, a line of driftwood and tattered rubbish left on the sand like a dirty ring around a bathtub. Turning away from the cliff, I up my pace and sprint through the shallows, wet sand sucking at my feet. My head bent low against the biting wind, I fight the tide and run full-pelt along the shore until my lungs burn and I can hear the blood whistling in my ears. As I draw near to the end of the sands, the opposing cliff looms up above me, but instead of checking my pace, I speed up. The wind whips my hair across my face and I shake my head to clear it. I run faster, and the split-second before I smash into the waiting cliff, I stretch my arms in front of me and slam my hands against the cold rock. Alive. Awake. Safe from nightmares.
As the adrenalin leaves me I start to shake, and I walk back the way I came. The wet sand has swallowed my footprints, leaving no trace of my sprint between the cliffs. There is a piece of driftwood by my feet and I pick it up and idly drag a channel around me, but the beach closes around the wood before I have even lifted it from the ground. Frustrated, I walk a few paces inland, where the sand is drying, and trace another circle with the stick. It’s better. I have a sudden urge to write my name in the sand, like a toddler on holiday, and I smile at my childishness. The driftwood is unwieldy and slippery but I finish the letters and stand back to admire my handiwork. It seems strange to see my name so bold and unashamed. I’ve been invisible for so long, and what am I now? A sculptor who doesn’t sculpt. A mother without a child. The letters are not invisible. They are shouting: large enough to be seen from the clifftops. I feel a shiver of fear and excitement. I’m taking a risk, but it feels good.
At the top of the cliff an ineffective fence reminds walkers not to stray too close to the crumbling rock edge. I ignore the sign and step over the wire to stand inches away from the drop. The expanse of sand is slowly turning from grey to gold as the sun climbs higher, and my name dances across the middle of the beach, daring me to catch it before it disappears.
I’ll take a picture of it before the tide comes in and swallows it up, I decide, so I can capture the moment I felt brave. I run back to the cottage for my camera. My steps feel lighter now and I realise it’s because I’m running towards something, and not away from it.
That first photograph is nothing special. The framing is all wrong, the letters too far from the shore. I run back down to the beach, covering the smooth stretch of sand with names from my past, before letting them sink back into the wet sand. Others I write further up the beach; charact
ers from books I read as a child, or names I love simply for the sweep of the letters they contain. Then I bring out my camera, crouching low to the sand as I play with the angles, layering my words first with the surf, then with rocks, then with a rich slash of blue sky. Finally, I climb the steep path to the top of the cliff to take my final shots, balancing precariously on the edge, turning my back on the clutch of fear it gives me. The beach is covered with writing of all sizes, like the scribbled ramblings of a madman, but I can already see the incoming tide licking at the letters, swirling the sand as it inches up the beach. By this evening, when the tide retreats once more, the beach will be clean, and I can start again.
I have no sense of what time it is now, but the sun is high, and I must have a hundred photos on my camera. Wet sand clings to my clothes and when I touch my hair it’s stiff with salt. I don’t have any gloves, and my fingers are painfully cold. I will go home and have a hot bath, then load the photos on to my laptop and see if I’ve taken anything passable. I feel a surge of energy; it’s the first time since the accident that my day has had purpose.
I head towards the cottage, but when I reach the fork in the path I hesitate. I picture Bethan at the caravan park shop, and the way she reminded me of my sister. I feel an ache of homesickness and before I can change my mind I take the path leading to the caravan park. What reason can I give for visiting the shop? I don’t have any money with me, so I can’t pretend I’ve come for milk or bread. I might ask a question, I suppose, but I struggle to think of something plausible. Whatever I come up with, Bethan will know it is an excuse. She’ll think I’m pathetic.
My resolve fades before I’ve walked a hundred yards, and when I reach the car park I stop. I look across to the shop and see a shape in the window – I can’t tell if it’s Bethan and I don’t wait to find out. I turn and run back to the cottage.