A Question of Identity (6 page)

‘The trouble is, you can’t plan these things and it’s the randomness you need to deal with. If you were told you had to walk into the undertaker’s parlour in a week’s time you could prepare yourself and do it. You’d be fine. Seeing a funeral cortège with hearse and coffin right in front of you when you’re crossing the road . . . that’s the sort of thing that throws you. Perfect trigger for a panic attack.’

‘I know I’m not going to die, I know it. But what I know in my head doesn’t seem to help at the time. I feel as if I’m dying and then I start seeing Fison everywhere. Some man on a poster looks like him, a bloke walking past me turns into him and he’s seen me, he’s not going to let me get away this time.’ She gave a small scream of anger and frustration and pushed her face down into the blanket. Cat went and put her arms round the girl and tried to calm her.

‘Moll, you are getting better, you’re so much improved.’

‘It’s going on too long.’

‘No quick fixes. We want you to get better and stay better. It’s hard but it does work.’

Molly sat up suddenly. ‘Oh my God, I’ve forgotten the book group, I was supposed to be making the cake and –’

‘Don’t worry, Judith’s here, she’s taken over.’

‘Oh God, I’m a total failure. I can’t go on being like this.’

‘You won’t. Listen, make a list of all the days this week when you’ve functioned normally, had no panics, nothing. You’ll find it’s six out of seven.’

‘It doesn’t feel like that inside my head.’

‘Your head is giving you an unbalanced version of events, that’s all.’

‘You know, when I saw that . . . hearse and the coffin inside, I just . . . if I just jumped in front of it, it would all be OK. I’d have sorted it.’

‘Is this something you’ve thought about before? Killing yourself?’

Molly winced and turned her head away.

‘You thought that killing yourself by jumping in front of a car would solve everything? Who for? And suppose you just injured yourself very badly, became a paraplegic or were brain-damaged but didn’t die?’

Molly sat up and looked at her. ‘What are you trying to do to me?’

‘Get you to face it.’

‘I face it all the time. All the bloody time.’

‘Do you? Molly, if you actually do want to die and plan to make it happen there’s nothing I can do to stop you. But I doubt if you actually do. You want to live a full, normal life, have a career, be happy, fulfil your very great potential, and you will.’

‘How can I do that so long as I feel so crap? My head’s all over the place, I can’t get rid of those thoughts, that memory, I can’t make it un-happen, I can’t pick it out of my head and chuck it away. It’s there. It plays itself over and over again like a film on a loop. I need to get out of myself and I can’t.’

Half an hour later, Cat had persuaded her to come down and supervise the cake-making, something she knew would make Molly feel better because she took great pride in her baking, which she claimed had kept her sane when working for her exams. The moment she went into the kitchen and saw the cooling rack on the table she took over, persuading Judith that she needed to leave the cake in for another five minutes, suggesting a different consistency for the fudge icing. Hannah had gone to start her homework with some reluctance.

‘What about something savoury as well?’

‘Cheese straws?’

Molly snorted. ‘Parmesan crunch and paprika biscuits. I’ll do them. What’s the book you’re discussing tonight?’

‘Graham Greene.
The End of the Affair.
We avoid the latest best-sellers.’

‘I’ve never read any Greene. But I’m pretty ill-read all round.’ Molly, who was not tall, pulled out the stool to reach a top cupboard. ‘Maybe I should join, but I’m not sure I’d get through the books. I’m better as Catering Manager.’

‘She looks fine,’ Judith said, helping Cat set out the china and glasses in the sitting room.

‘She isn’t but she’s always better being busy and being with other people. I still have to remind her of it. She says she feels safe on her own in her room.’

‘Poor girl. It’s going to take a long time for her to forget what happened.’

‘She never will. People don’t. Damage limitation is what we’re about. How’s Dad?’

Judith made a face. ‘Not sure. Something’s ruffled his feathers lately but of course he won’t tell me what.’

‘I thought he talked to you. You’ve made him open up far more than the rest of us ever did. Mum just gave up and got on with her own life but you’ve been brilliant. Even Simon thinks you discovered there was a heart beating under there.’

‘You know there is.’

‘Yes. I do. Mostly. Not everyone agrees.’

‘I’ll wait a few more days for him to tell me, and if he doesn’t, I’ll have to tackle him. He’ll let it fester on and it’s making him bad-tempered and unreasonable.’

Cat glanced up from opening a bottle of wine. Judith usually sounded upbeat, even jokey, about Richard Serrailler’s moods, with which she had always coped so well. Now she sounded weary.

From the kitchen came the sound of the radio, and Molly singing softly along with Bette Midler. Cat was relieved she could stop worrying about one person in the household, at least for the rest of the evening. But that storm clouds were gathering and thunder rumbling in the distance she had no doubt at all.

IN A RASH
moment, Harry Fletcher had promised to take Karen to see Will Young for her birthday, should he be performing anywhere within a reasonable distance of Lafferton. He had felt pretty safe there until Karen had pointed out a Will Young gig in Bevham.

‘You couldn’t bloody make it up.’

He hung back until the last minute hoping the venue would be sold out. Just his luck that there were a handful of returns when he rang up.

‘It was absolutely bloody brilliant. Thanks, love.’ Karen leaned over to pinch his cheek. ‘You didn’t hate it that much, did you? Honestly?’

‘Nah, I coped. He can sing a song, I’ll give him that. Just not the sort of stuff I’d pay good money for again.’

‘And we know what that stuff is.’

‘So, what’s wrong with Status Quo?’

It was gone eleven as they drove into Lafferton, the roads quiet. Karen’s friend Lorna was babysitting the boys, the first time they’d had a proper night out together since Harvey was born and Harvey was rising four. Bradley was five and they’d left him for the odd night quite early on. Bradley had slept and generally been laid-back with life. Harvey did not sleep and battled against life twenty-four seven.

‘Want to stop for a drink? Might as well make the most of it.’

‘Great. I’ll just text Lorn, see if –’

‘No you won’t. If there’s been any sort of problem she would have texted you.’

‘I suppose.’

‘And has she?’

‘No, only she won’t be expecting us to stop out till midnight. Maybe I should just give her a quick bell.’

‘She’ll be fine.’

‘It’s Harvey . . .’

‘I know it’s Harvey. It’s always Harvey. That’s why I slipped him a double brandy in his beaker.’

He saw her face and let out a bellow of laughter.

They parked at the end of the Lanes. Reynaldo’s Club was on the opposite corner.

‘You can’t,’ Karen said.

‘It’s gone eleven, it’ll be fine. Yellow perils don’t work night shifts.’

‘Coppers do.’

‘When did you last see a copper around at this time? Correction. When did you last see a copper?’

Harry took her arm. Seconds later, he was dragging her back by it onto the pavement as a black 4 x 4 with a wide, ugly bull bar swung round the corner, two wheels over the kerb and all but mowing them both down.

Karen screamed. The car drove up the cobbles of the pedestrian-only street, reversed, swung round again, and within seconds was ramming backwards fast into the plate-glass windows of the jeweller’s shop. The noise was sickening.

Harry spun round and as he pulled Karen, shielding her with his body, he was unlocking the door of his car. He pushed her inside, and ran round, trying to find his mobile as he did so, but Karen already had hers out, hands shaking. He was starting the car as a man with a stocking over his face was coming down the street towards them, his arm raised.

‘Oh God, Oh God . . .’

‘Get down, Kaz, lie down.’

The bullet hit the side of the car as he accelerated up the road, grabbing Karen’s phone as he went. Behind them in the Lanes,
shouting, more glass breaking, another shot, the engine of the 4 x 4 revving and revving.

‘Oh God.’

‘It’s all right. You’re safe. It’s OK, Karen. Yes . . .’ he said into the phone, ‘In the Lanes, opposite Reynaldo’s.’

The jeweller was standing on the glass-strewn pavement in shock, his dressing gown unbelted, his feet bare and bleeding. Others stood around him – the man who owned the deli, Emma from the bookshop, still in her coat after a late return from the reading group meeting at Cat’s, the antique dealer and his wife, white-faced but already organising coffee from the room at the back of the shop.

PC Robin Crabbe felt someone tugging at his arm.

‘You’d better listen to me. Two of them had guns, they waved them all over the place.’

‘Thank you, sir, if you could just stand over there off the pavement, out of the way of the broken window . . .’

‘It was like in a film. That’s what I thought, you see, I thought, “This is people making a film, this is going to be worth seeing” and then –’

‘I’ll take statements in a minute, sir, don’t go away but if you could just –’

‘I knew you wouldn’t listen.’

Crabbe turned his back, that being the best way of dealing with the sort of man who tugged at your elbow, didn’t draw breath and smelled of drink.

‘Over here.’ His partner was beckoning. ‘Forget him, it’s Nobby Parks.’

‘Says they had guns.’

‘They did, two of them had sawn-off shotguns,’ Laurence from the deli said.

‘I’ll get the tape round, someone’s going to slice their foot in half on this lot. Anyway, who’s Nobby Parks?’

‘Pain in the arse. Hangs about town at night, turns up like a bad penny. Lives in one of the old canal cottages. Here’s the backup. That guy needs the paramedics as well.’

The circus swung into action. Lights were set up, crime-scene
tape run out, more blues and twos screeching up. Information went round.

‘They had guns. Two of them. Should be hung.’

‘Get bloody Parks out of here,’ the DI said.

‘Says he saw it all . . .’

‘Right, and I saw the men land on the moon. Get him out of here. Someone can go round to his fleapit tomorrow but we need to get these guys sorted.’

PC Crabbe went over. ‘You,’ he said. ‘Home. Now.’

‘I want a lift.’

‘You’ll walk.’

He took a stringy-feeling arm beneath a greasy jacket and marched Parks to the end of the street. ‘Go.’

The man went, swearing under his breath, leaving a beer and body smell on the air behind him.

‘It’s minus seven,’ PC Crabbe said. ‘Anyone realise that?’

The DI who had turned up and taken charge glanced round at him. ‘And your point is?’

‘Sir.’

But Nobby Parks had been right, he thought, going over to the huddle of people just inside the bookshop doorway, it was like a film set. The lights. Radios going. Sudden bursts of movement, then a pause. A film. Weird. But not a film.

What in God’s name was happening to the quiet town he’d grown up in?

Slugs I worked with, creepy-crawly neighbours, bastard who was my dad. Wife. Ex-wife now. No, I haven’t forgotten them. Haven’t forgotten a thing. What it was like, the old biddies, cops, stir, brief, then the Big Bang. I haven’t forgotten a speck of it.

Keeps me warm at night. Even now.

THE DAY BEFORE
had been so cold the streets were empty at three o’clock in the afternoon. Even the teenagers who usually hung about in all weathers without a coat between them had fled to the warmth of coffee shops and, as a last resort, their own homes.

The pavements were scoured by a bitter north-east wind, the sky looked flayed, as if it had lost a skin. But just after midnight, the wind veered south-west then dropped, and clouds piled up.

‘Here we go,’ PC Crabbe said to his partner, turning the patrol car into the square. He flicked on the wipers as the first flakes came swirling down. Twenty minutes later, there was a covering over the pavements and the verges. An hour later, the roof outlines of the cathedral and the houses in the Close were softened by half an inch of snow.

Judith Serrailler, sleepless, looked out of the window and saw a pure white garden. Five miles away, Cat Deerbon, going to Felix who was thrashing and shouting from the depths of a nightmare, looked out of his window onto a world of dizzying flakes. It was still extremely cold but the wind no longer cut through every chink in the woodwork, roof and walls of the old house.

It snowed on, piling into drives and gateways and entrances.

‘Look at it this way,’ PC Crabbe said, ‘it’ll be mayhem in the morning but at least nobody’ll be out thieving and ram-raiding.’

Dawn seeped in late with a puffy, leaden sky and snow piling upon snow upon snow.

Bradley and Harvey Fletcher were out in the back garden soon after seven, padded up like moonwalkers, throwing snow, kicking snow, rolling in snow, chasing the next door’s cat through it, pushing piles of it up against the passage door, starting the foundations of a snowman, but within half an hour, inside, hands scarlet and burning, drinking hot chocolate.

‘Don’t mither your dad. He’s got to get to work somehow through this lot.’

‘He can stay at home and play.’

‘Right, and that’d pay the bills. Not. Now you heard me, leave Dad alone to have his breakfast, finish your chocolate, and then either back outside or play in your room.’

The boys sped upstairs as their father crossed the landing and reached out to pull Harvey to him in a bear hug.

‘AAAGGGH. Will you do a snowman with us?’

‘Be dark by the time I get in, son. Saturday, no prob.’

‘But –’

‘You deaf now or what?’

Harvey shot into the room he shared with his brother, and banged the door. It was the big back bedroom, with plenty of room for their space-station layout and the moon-landing area they were making out of scrumpled-up newspaper and Play-Doh.