I go up to him and we hesitate a moment, as if we may kiss on the cheek as friends rather than as—what? What are we to each other? He was the person who told me it was you they’d found, you in the toilets building. He was the man who’d taken my hand and looked me in the eye and destroyed who I was up until that moment. Our relationship isn’t cocktail-style pecking on the cheek, nor is it simply that of policeman to relative of a victim. I take his hand and hold it as he once held mine; this time it’s my hand that’s the warmer.
“I wanted to say sorry, Beatrice.”
I am about to reply when a waitress pushes between us, tray held aloft, a pencil stuck businesslike into her ponytail. I think that we should be somewhere like a church—a quiet, serious place—where the big things are talked about in whispers, not shouted above the clatter of crockery and chitchat.
We sit down at a table and I think we both find it awkwardly intimate. I break the silence. “How is PC Vernon?”
“She’s been promoted,” he replies. “She’s working for the domestic violence unit now.”
“Good for her.”
He smiles at me, and ice broken now, he takes the plunge into a deeper conversation. “You were right all along. I should have listened to you and believed you.”
I used to fantasize about hearing exactly that kind of a sentence and wish I could whisper to my earlier self that one day a policeman would be telling me that.
“At least you had a query,” I say. “And acted on it.”
“Much too late. You should never have been put in jeopardy like that.”
The sounds of the restaurant suddenly mute, the lights are dimming into darkness. I can just hear DS Finborough talking to me, reassuring me that I’m okay, but then his voice is silenced and everything is dark and I want to scream but my mouth can’t make any sound.
When I come round, I’m in the cafe’s clean and warm ladies’ room. DS Finborough is with me. He tells me I was out for about five minutes. Not so long then. But it’s the first time I’ve lost sound too. The staff at Carluccio’s have been solicitous and call me a taxi to get home. I ask DS Finborough if he’ll accompany me and he willingly agrees.
I’m now in a black cab with a policeman sitting next to me, but I still feel afraid. I know that he’s following me; I can feel his malevolent presence, murderous, getting closer. I want to tell DS Finborough. But like Mr. Wright, he’d tell me that he’s locked up on remand in prison, that he can’t hurt me again, that there’s nothing to fear. But I wouldn’t be able to believe him.
DS Finborough waits till I’m safely inside the flat, and then takes the taxi on to wherever he is going. As I close the door, Pudding bends her warm furry body around my legs, purring. I call out Kasia’s name. No reply. I dampen down flaring sparks of anxiety, then see a note on the table saying she’s at her antenatal group. She should be home any minute.
I go to the window to check, pulling back the curtains. Two hands pummel the glass from the other side, trying to smash it. I scream. He vanishes into the darkness.
21
When I get there, I am glad for the crush in the lift but anxious, as usual, that my pager and mobile don’t get reception and it’ll get stuck and Kasia won’t be able to get hold of me.
As soon as I’m spat out onto the third floor, I check that they’re both working. I didn’t tell her about the man at the window last night; I didn’t want to frighten her. Or to admit the other possibility—that it’s not just my body that is deteriorating but my mind too. I know that I am physically unwell but never thought I might be mentally unwell too. Is he simply a delusion, a product of a diseased mind? Maybe you need physical strength, which I no longer have, to keep a grip on sanity. Going mad is the thing I fear the most, even more than him, because it destroys who you are inside a body that somehow, grotesquely, survives you. I know you must have been afraid too. And I wish that you’d known it was PCP—not some weakness or disease in your own mind—that threatened your sanity.
Maybe I’ve been given PCP too. Has that thought crossed your mind before it has mine? Perhaps a hallucinogenic is responsible for creating the evil that stalks me. But no one could have given it to me. I’ve only been at the CPS offices, the Coyote and the flat, where no one wishes me harm.
I won’t tell Mr. Wright about the murderer at the window, not yet, nor my fear of going mad. If I don’t tell him, then he’ll treat me normally, and I will behave that way in return. He has expectations of me to be completely sane and I will rise to meet them. Besides, at least for the hours I’m with him, I know that I am safe. So I’ll wait till the end of the day and tell him then.
This morning, Mr. Wright’s office is no longer bright; there’s darkness around the edges, which I try to blink away. As I start talking to him, I hear my words slur a little and it’s an effort to remember. But Mr. Wright has said we may be able to finish my statement today, so I will just have to push myself on.
Mr. Wright doesn’t seem to notice anything wrong. Maybe I’ve become adept at hiding it, or he’s just totally focused on getting through the last part of my statement. He recaps the last part of our interview.
“Hattie Sim told you that the man who gave her the injection and delivered her baby wore a mask?”
“Yes. I asked her if it was the same person and she said it was. But she couldn’t remember any more—voice or hair color or height. She was trying to blank out the whole experience and I couldn’t blame her.”
“Did you think that the man who delivered her baby also delivered Tess’s?”
“Yes. And I was sure he was the man who murdered her. But I needed more before going to the police.”
“Heavy counterbalancing facts?” asks Mr. Wright.
“Yes. I needed to prove that he wore a mask to hide his identity. I hadn’t been able to find out who had delivered Tess’s baby—deliberately, I realized. But maybe I could find out who had given Tess and Hattie the
