Dark Undertakings (30 page)

‘Just believe it, Dad,’ she sighed. ‘Why should I lie to you now?’

She told him how the day before Lapsford died, she’d tried to finish with Craig, once and for all. He’d clung to her, pleaded, threatened, until she’d been frightened and upset, but unshakable in her decision. He’d spent all night with her from Monday evening to Tuesday morning, waking her up a hundred
times to ask her again if she’d
please
,
please
change her mind. He’d followed her out of the house, making her late for work, pawing at her like a miserable, abandoned dog.

In the end she’d shouted at him, turning on him, almost pushing him off the pavement. ‘Just leave me
alone,
will you!’ she’d screamed. And at last he’d got the message, and turned away, letting her trot quickly around the next corner, without a backward glance. When they’d had that pub lunch together on Friday, it had seemed that he was beginning, finally, to accept her decision. The fact that Lapsford had died made it easier to convince him. ‘He thought we might have killed him, you see,’ Susie told Sid. ‘Viagra can give people heart attacks, can’t it, if they take too much of it? When Dr Lloyd diagnosed a heart attack, with no need for a post-mortem, I couldn’t believe our luck. Although I did feel guilty. Part of me wanted the truth to come out. I badgered the doctor about it, because really, he
shouldn’t
have signed the certificate like that. But Craig was terrified.’

‘I
knew
there was a connection,’ Sid said, smacking his right fist into his left palm. ‘As soon as they brought him in, and I remembered he was Dr Lloyd’s patient. I kept having this horrible idea that it had something to do with
you – because I haven’t forgotten what happened between you and Jim …’

‘Stop it, Dad! Nobody’s going to find out, though, are they?’ she asked. ‘The prescriptions, I mean.’

‘Not if I can help it,’ he promised her.

‘Thanks, Dad,’ she sniffed, burrowing into his chest like a little child.

After the scratchy encounter in the hospital, Susie knew she’d have to go and see Pauline – the sooner the better, before the numbness wore off and she got helplessly emotional. Craig’s mother had always been the best thing about the whole business. ‘You like her more than you like me,’ he’d accused, more than once. And it was true, in the end. Pauline was funny and sparky and alive. She rushed round helping everyone in sight, cheerfully devoting her time to doing an old lady’s shopping, or just sitting down for a long leisurely chat to one of her many friends. Susie had always admired Pauline, and wished she could be more like her.

Before she could find the energy to go out, there was a ring at her bell. She lived in a tiny flat over a shop, and had an entryphone that didn’t work. She’d have to go down and open the door herself. She already had a good idea who it would be, and was proved right.

‘I was going to come and see you,’ she said, feeling swollen with apprehension.

Pauline stepped inside, and began to climb the stairs without looking at Susie. From behind she seemed old, pulling herself up the steep staircase heavily, as if every joint hurt and she was carrying some heavy burden. Misery was too light a word for it.

At last, they faced each other, making no move to touch. ‘I know you think it’s my fault,’ said Susie, marvelling at her own courage. ‘I would, in your place. Let me show you his letter. He’d have wanted you to see it.’

Pauline took the folded paper gingerly, and slowly opened it. ‘Sit down,’ Susie said. ‘I’ll go and make some coffee.’

‘I can’t read it,’ said the woman, dropping the letter onto the table. ‘The words are dancing about. It’s like it’s alive.’

Susie said nothing, but withdrew to her kitchen. Returning five minutes later, she found her visitor crouched on a battered chair with wooden arms, her elbows making sharp angles as she clenched her hands together. Susie waited. There was a hollow thumping inside her head, making it impossible to speak.

‘The mother always blames herself,’ Pauline said. ‘Quite rightly, too. If I’d done it different, he’d never have got so obsessed with you.’

‘I don’t think that’s true,’ said Susie gently. ‘He didn’t want you to blame yourself – that’s what he says. Craig just never really understood how to be happy. We all did our best for him – and from his note, it sounds as if he knew that.’

Pauline looked up and gave a ghastly grin. ‘Funny business, life,’ she said bitterly. Susie closed her eyes and felt her whole body fill up with the sheer sadness of it all. A bottomless well of tears was suddenly there, where emptiness had been only moments before. Sadness was a relief after the fear and guilt there had been up to now.

‘Yeah,’ she agreed. Mindlessly, she moved towards the chair, and sank onto the floor, pushing her head into the older woman’s lap, the smooth texture of Pauline’s sweatshirt somehow friendly and ordinary. The tears soon soaked a sizeable area, while Pauline’s hands rested heavily on her head.

‘There, there,’ the woman murmured. ‘It’ll be all right.’

Susie knew that it wouldn’t, couldn’t ever be all right, but it sounded good, just at that particular moment.

Karen and Drew had dawdled over lunch and washing up, in an unspoken agreement to try to make time pass more quickly. Everything
within reach had been washed and dried and put away. In the living room, Karen plumped up the cushions, ran a duster over the television screen, and the front of the shelf unit on which it sat. The stage was set for an afternoon of video-viewing.

The phone hadn’t rung so far, and Drew was already beginning to assume that it wasn’t going to. ‘I’m going in two minutes,’ Karen announced. ‘If I see two that we’d like, I’ll get them. Otherwise, one long one, and then I’ll make some biscuits for tea. I’m going to Alldays, right? I should be back in twenty minutes at the most.’

‘Take your mac – it’s raining,’ he advised. ‘And mind how you cross the road. I’m sorry you can’t have the car, but if there’s an urgent call-out, I’ll obviously have to use it.’

‘No problem,’ she smiled. ‘It’s only drizzle. I won’t melt.’

‘See you soon.’ The door banged gently behind her, and he picked up the local paper for lack of anything else to do.

The streets were deserted. No pedestrians and not many cars. The intermittent splashing of vehicles driving along wet roads was the only sound. Karen had a sensation of being at a great distance from the important action. She had a sense of events taking place way beyond
her perception, doors closed to her, nobody caring that she even existed. And she was glad to have it like that. There were more important things to think about than a shambolic murder investigation into a death that nobody seemed to regret all that much.

She allowed her mind to return to the burning issue of the last few days. It swelled inside her, like a bright pink rosebud, secret and joyful. At the same time, she knew that this rising excitement would only make the eventual disappointment worse. The conflicting feelings were almost unbearable – all the more so for being repeated every two or three months. She preferred it when her period came early, before she’d even had a chance to start making assumptions. All she could do now was wait, try to keep busy and encourage time to pass as swiftly as it possibly could.

She reached the shop in five minutes. Scarcely pausing to look, she stepped into the road, trusting her ears to tell her that it was all clear. The Ford Fiesta came racing towards her at a rate far in excess of the speed limit, and Karen only saw it in the final second, just before it reached her. She did not recognise the woman behind the wheel, only saw the panic and horror on her face, as she tried to veer away from the spot where Karen stood.

She almost succeeded. The front of the car missed Karen by two or three inches, but the back was already skidding sideways, and the rear wheel arch gave Karen’s pelvis a heavy blow as it careered across the road in a tight arc, the driver continuing to pull the steering wheel down to the right and slamming hard on the brake pedal. The wet street, the locked brakes, the excessive burden on the power steering combined to send the car smashing explosively into the front of the electronics shop next to Alldays. The presence of a protective metal grid, designed to prevent ram-raiding, ensured that the front of the car was comprehensively shredded. Half sitting, half lying on the wet pavement, Karen heard the noise through a comfortably detached mist.
I’ll get up in a minute
, she said to herself.
Everything’s going to be all right
.

And then, quite gradually, people appeared. A woman with ginger hair leant over her with an expression of excited interest on her face. ‘You don’t look too bad,’ she said, encouragingly. ‘You don’t seem to be bleeding anywhere.’

A man behind her said, ‘You mustn’t try to get up. There’ll soon be an ambulance.’ The first stabs of alarm began then. She looked across the street at the car.

‘It was all my fault,’ she remembered. ‘Jesus – what have I done?’

Nobody answered. There was a much larger crowd gathering around the car. A couple of men were pulling at the driver’s door. She heard the words ‘air bag’ which filled her with relief. It was a new car, expensive-looking. Surely the driver would have been safeguarded by the latest technologies.

It was ridiculously comfortable on the hard, wet ground, but also embarrassing. Shouldn’t she make some effort to get up? In preparation, she began to pull her feet around, to act as leverage. A very decided pain happened, low down at the front, where the car had struck her. She put a cautious hand to the place. And then, like a hot poker pushing into her brain, she remembered. How could it have taken so long? ‘
No
,’ she sighed, giving in to the wave of misery and fear which bombarded her, all in a moment. Tears began to pour down her face.

‘Shock,’ murmured the ginger-haired woman, who was loyally remaining at her post. The onlookers began to cast impatient glances up and down the road. If the ambulance didn’t come soon, they might have to
do
something.

‘Oh, look – they’ve got her out,’ came a voice. ‘She looks all right.’ Karen grudgingly followed the general gaze, and saw a dark-haired, stocky woman emerge from the shattered car. She stood surrounded by
helpers, somehow larger than any of them, big with the aura of survival against the odds. Then she looked across the street and her gaze fell on Karen. Slowly, she walked towards her, people fluttering disapprovingly, but making no attempt to prevent her. ‘This is all your fault, you know,’ she said in a flat tone. ‘You stepped out in front of me.’

Karen closed her eyes. You weren’t supposed to admit responsibility for an accident. Something about insurance. And who had come off worst, anyway? Something hot broke through the despair.

‘You were going much too fast,’ she said loudly, accusingly. ‘And now I’m going to lose my baby.’

Horrified intakes of breath all round and a full set of reproachful stares at the woman. After all, she was the aggressor, on every level. The mangled car was only a
thing
, and was bound to be insured.

An ambulance siren sounded in the distance. And from the other direction, with no fanfare, came a police car. In no time there were uniforms, notebooks, questions. Gentle questions, which made Karen feel weak and childish. She cried again. Someone asked for her phone number and she remembered Drew for the first time. She gave her name, and asked them to phone him.
The dark-haired woman driver heard her, and gave a shriek. ‘You’re Drew’s wife?’ she cried. ‘My God!’

Karen looked at her. ‘Who are you?’ she said, with a frown.

‘His boss. Daphne Plant.’ Then she seemed to regret having given herself away, and put a hand over her mouth.

‘But – you’re supposed to be at the hospital,’ said Karen, thickly. ‘He’s at home on call because you said you were going visiting.’

‘Change of plan,’ Daphne muttered. ‘So what’s all this about a baby?’

‘If you don’t mind, madam,’ interposed an ambulance man, ‘I think we should get this lady to hospital as soon as we can. I’m sure you can catch up with her news later.’

Then they wrapped Karen in a warm red blanket and lifted her onto a stretcher, then into the ambulance and away. Every now and then she pressed a hand to where it hurt, assessing the damage. There was no sensation of bleeding. As the paramedics took her blood pressure and pulse, the lack of alarm on their faces was reassuring. They gently manipulated each leg, feeling the hip joints as they did so. Finally one said, ‘I don’t think anything’s broken. It seems you’ve been very lucky.’

‘But the baby?’ she whispered.

‘How many weeks are you?’ he asked.

At this, she grew hot and embarrassed. How could she have mentioned something which was still only a slowly forming hope? She shook her head. ‘It hasn’t been confirmed yet,’ she admitted. ‘It might be a false alarm.’

His face cleared even further. ‘In that case, we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed, won’t we.’

She lay back, and secretly crossed the fingers on both hands, under the red blanket.

The police desk was quiet as the night shift came on duty. The changeover needed no special briefing. The new officer glanced down the list of calls for the day, and paused at the brief account of Daphne Plant’s car crash. ‘That’s the undertaker, isn’t it? That’ll make a good story for the
Chronicle
.’ This was the only real excitement of the day. There had been one break-in, one missing child, found within twenty minutes, and three stray dogs reported, to complete the list. ‘Just one mad, hectic whirl,’ he commented. ‘Hotbed of crime, is Bradbourne.’

‘Don’t tempt fate,’ advised his departing colleague. ‘If you’re not careful, you’ll be dealing with serial rape, multiple pile-ups and the mysterious deaths of a whole houseful of people, all before midnight.’

‘That’ll be the day. This place is still living in the nineteen-fifties. I’ll have finished this by morning, you see.’ He held up a large paperback.

‘Good luck to you, then,’ was the parting comment.