‘What do you mean?’
‘Like heroin. When you start using, it’s all about the buzz you get at first. But after a while, you’re using it to take the pain away.’
‘I don’t want to know this,’ said Fry.
‘The point is - that doesn’t make a heroin user much different from anyone else, does it? We all need something to take the pain away now and then. Some of us need it more often than others, that’s all.’
‘There are better ways. Positive things that don’t damage your body.’
Angie laughed. ‘I bet you’ve never taken anything in your life, have you, Sis? Not even a puff of cannabis?’
Fry shook her head stiffly.
‘God, I can’t believe how straight you are.’ said Angie. ‘My little sister. It’s a scream.’
‘I’m glad you think I’m so funny.’
Angie’s mood changed suddenly. ‘Look, there’s no need for you to get all snotty about it. I’m off the stuff, all right? I told you, I went through the whole detox business. Besides, don’t you know that in hospitals they use heroin as a painkiller? Only they call it diamorphine, which makes it all right because it has a posh medical name. They even give it to mothers in childbirth. Hey, Sis, you could hang around the maternity ward and nick a few new mums. Earn yourself another promotion, why not?’
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Fry stood. The conversation was making her too restless. She couldn’t bear to sit still and listen to what her sister had to say.
Till make some coffee,’ she said.
‘Besides, it doesn’t do the body much harm,’ said Angie. ‘Provided you’re careful and don’t do anything stupid like overdosing. You probably lose a bit of weight, you get a bit of a tendency to infections and stuff, that’s all.’
Angie looked sideways at her sister, and Fry became conscious of her running nose and itching eyes. She popped a couple of tablets of Zirtek from their package.
‘In your case, Cetirizine takes it away,’ said Angie.
‘Mmm?’
Fry went to the kitchen to make the coffee. She drank a glass of water and wiped her face on a piece of kitchen roll. Ceti-what? She looked at the box that her antihistamine tablets had come in. She had never read the ingredients before - why should she? But Angie was right. The active constituent of Zirtek was something called Cetirizine hydrochloride.
‘So if it really doesn’t do you any harm, why did you stop?’ she said from the kitchen doorway.
Angie looked up. For a moment, she’d seemed to be about to fall asleep. But Fry couldn’t let the subject go just yet.
‘When you’re single, skint, homeless and begging on the street, then you know it’s time to stop,’ said Angie. ‘If you still have any sense left, that is. Then there’s the wait for rehab. Nine months it was for me, even after I got the money together.’
‘But you found a way to do it?’
‘Sometimes, you’ll do anything to find a way out. Anything.’
Late that night, Diane Fry woke with a jolt, sweating. She had been dreaming of the sound of a footstep on a creaking floorboard, a door opening in the darkness. Opening and
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closing continually, but nothing coming through. She had been dreaming that she was frightened, yet had no clear focus for her fear. She heard the footstep, and the door opening, saw shadows sliding across the wall. Still nobody came in. She woke with a wail in her throat and the smell of shaving foam in her nostrils - a smell that always made her nauseous, even now.
It was the presence of her sister in the house that had caused the nightmare, and Angie’s insistence on talking about their childhood. It had been a big risk, she knew. Just one sound, a single movement or a smell, could trigger the train of memory that stimulated her fear.
Angie herself had changed a lot in fifteen years, yet there was still the familiar rhythm in her speech, the faint buzz of a Black Country accent under the studied flatness from her time in Sheffield. And Fry couldn’t avoid noticing a characteristic gesture, a tense lifting of the shoulders that she knew very well because she was aware of doing it herself.
Fry turned over and tried to go back to sleep. She heard the sound of voices on the street outside, two men arguing loudly, a girl shouting, but she ignored them. When she was off duty, she didn’t feel any obligation to concern herself about the dangerous private lives of her neighbours.
When it had quietened down, all she could hear was the rain. It beat against her window in fat drops, hard and persistent. But her window was closed against the intrusion of pollen. So the rain couldn’t get into her room, and not even the poisonous air could reach her.
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21
Thursday, 15 July
At 15.40 hours on Monday, 9 October 1990 I attended an Incident at number 82 Pindale Road, Castleton, following an emergency 999 call. At the time of the incident, I was on Uniformed Patrol with Constable 4623 Netherton in a liveried police vehicle.
I parked the vehicle in the entrance to the driveway of the property and PC Netherton and I went to the front door, which we found to be unlocked and partly open. I pushed the door open fully. I saw a hallway with four doorways leading from it. Two of the doors were open, but the hallway was empty. I shouted: ‘Police! Who’s in here?’ There was no response. I moved further into the hallway and called again: ‘Police! Is there anyone here?’ An unidentified person said, ‘In here.’ I determined that the person was speaking from the second room on the right, where the door was open. I indicated to PC Netherton that he should wait in the hallway and I proceeded to enter the room, which transpired to be a sitting room. Inside, I saw a man who I knew to be the Defendant,
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Mansell Quinn. He was in an armchair near the fireplace, about ten feet away on my left. He was sitting in a relaxed posture, slumped in the chair. I gained the impression that he had been asleep until woken by our arrival, and I could smell alcohol on his breath. Although I could not see a weapon in his possession, I knew it was possible that he was concealing one, either in the upholstery of the chair or under his clothing. Also, I noticed several heavy items within the Defendant’s reach that might be employed as a weapon, including an iron poker which was in the fireplace. There were no other exits from the room apart from the doorway I was standing in.
