Desperate Measures (4 page)

Norma lay on the bed. She wanted to turn over and open her eyes, to see Don there, solid, real. To make that real, not this. Not this appalling thing they had told her. Forty-four years together and now she was alone. would snap under the pressure, that her bones would crack like twigs and her head burst and her heart collapse. She had heard the adage that a woman had to be twice as good as a man to do half as well and here it was writ large. The lecturers, from the most junior to the professors, treated her in one of two ways: either she was invisible, ignored when tasks were allocated or opinions invited; or she was a dolly-bird for them to leer at or fondle. The first time her anatomy tutor slapped her bottom she felt a rush of shame followed by a sting of anger but all she did was giggle like some character in a Carry On film. And on the rare occasion that Professor Malkin spoke to her, he stared at her breasts all the while. She hated it but had to put up with it. She’d have been blacklisted if she’d tried to object or complain.

By the summer term of the first year she was close to dropping out. No matter how hard she studied, how many hours she spent reading in the library or memorizing schema and lists until the words danced and blurred on the page and her neck was locked stiff and her headache grew more nauseating, she was never more than mediocre in her tests and essays. She feared she would not get through her exams.

It was then, at her lowest point, that she first met Don. She was on campus, unlocking her bike ready to go home. It was windy and her hair was whipping in her eyes. She climbed onto the seat, pedalled a few yards and felt a jarring sensation. A puncture. She burst into tears, feet planted either side of the bike, hands covering her eyes. Then she heard him. ‘Give it a good kicking. That’s what I do.’

She didn’t know him, he wasn’t in her intake. She sniffed, wiped her face. Said nothing.

‘Or maybe not in those.’

Her shoes were open-toed. She wore flatties for rounds but kept decent shoes in her locker.

‘I can offer you coffee?’ he said.

She was about to refuse, not knowing if he would expect something in return.

‘Or bus fare home?’

‘I’ve got bus fare,’ she said.

‘Coffee then. Come on, it’s bloody freezing.’

She went with him, wheeling her bike, to the Italian coffee bar around the corner.

‘I’m Don,’ he said, on the way, ‘third-year medicine.’

‘Norma,’ she said, wondering if her mascara had run. ‘First year, but probably not for much longer.’ She meant to make a joke of it but it sounded like she was whining so she added, ‘Sorry, awful day … week.’

‘I could tell you it’ll get easier,’ he said, holding the café door open for her, ‘but I’d be lying.’

She groaned.

Settled with their espressos, he offered her a cigarette. She took it, grateful to have something to fiddle with, she felt so awkward.

He chatted away, making her laugh with his comments on the teaching staff. He seemed so confident, not at all ill at ease given he’d just seen her bawling her eyes out. He just seemed to believe everything was basically all right.

His company, the cigarette and the coffee, the warm fug of the place helped her to relax so that when he finally said, ‘So what’s the hardest thing?’ she could answer without welling up. ‘I can’t sleep,’ she said. ‘It just keeps going round and round and then I’m simply exhausted. And I get these blinding headaches. I’ve tried Pro Plus but I can’t see that it’s helping.’

‘You need a doctor.’ He smiled. He’d thick fair hair, just touching his collar, a slightly ruddy complexion like someone who enjoyed the outdoors. A hearty look. He didn’t walk her home but he did invite her to the pictures the following week. And when they met he brought with him something she could use for the headaches and something for sleeping.

Those heady days when they were first in love, when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. She’d tried the birth control pill but the side effects, the bloated feeling, the tension and PMT were dreadful. At the family planning clinic they said she could use a different brand or the Dutch cap but she thought that was just too messy, and she didn’t want to stop each time and put it in, so eventually she opted for a coil. It would allow her to be spontaneous, just as the pill had, to respond whenever he reached for her.

She passed her exams, just, and made it through to the second year and she’d moved into a room in Don’s shared house. It was a way of living together without upsetting their parents.

Don was right, medical school had not got any easier, but the painkillers sorted out her headaches and she was sleeping better, she was less anxious. Sometimes it was still hard to concentrate but she didn’t get all in a state about it. They were both working flat out but there were always uppers available if they needed a kickstart for a party at the end of a long week.

Don had the constitution of an ox, no matter how much he drank or what he took, he’d wolf down a full English breakfast and coffee and aspirin and be ready for anything. Norma couldn’t stomach food on those mornings, she would take more tablets and drink some water and do her best to sleep the day away. If she did try and face the world she felt queasy and shaken as though some terrible thing had happened and she was partly to blame. It fuelled her anxiety so it was best to hide away. She would emerge at teatime, finally ready for a plate of macaroni cheese or liver and onions or whatever Don had thrown together. Usually Norma cooked, her mother had taught her, though it was important to make things she could do quickly with the burden of work still so heavy. And they could only afford cheap cuts. Don had a full grant, Norma’s parents gave her a modest allowance and they tried to live within their means.

Don was very protective of her. When one of the other housemates, a boy from Liverpool, referred to her as ‘the Duchess’ on account of her accent and the fact that her family were comfortably off, Don had said, ‘Her name is Norma.’ And his tone was so cold and firm that Robbie, who could be quite argumentative, simply held up his hands and muttered, ‘Fine by me, kiddo.’

There was a photograph she remembered from that time. Don’s 21st. Most people celebrated their 18th by that time and Don had done, at home, but he wanted to celebrate this time, just with friends. They had a house party. Someone’s girlfriend took a photo early on. Robbie made some punch, which had Norma squiffy after one glass. The housemates posed in the back garden, Norma in the centre, Don and Robbie either side of her and the other two girls on either edge. Norma looked like a doll next to Don, pale even though it was summertime. She never could take the sun, went red and peeled if she tried to. Her hair was silver blonde, her head reached his chest. She sometimes wondered if Don’s desire to support and defend her came from the fact that she was so petite. If he had been shorter or she’d been taller or less slender would he still have treated her like that? Or would he have done that for anyone he loved?

And now – where was he now? How could he just leave her like this? How would she survive? Norma felt despicable, the shame hot in her guts because when the police told her he was dead, her first thought was not for Don – she didn’t think about what might have happened to him or if he had suffered – but for herself. What it meant for her. She was so selfish. But how would she cope without him? It was impossible. She pushed the thought away and went in search of solace. Something medicinal, she thought, tears standing in her eyes, for the shock.

For the shock.

It had all seemed to happen so quickly, she thought, as Adele went over and over the sequence of events during the day after the inquest: Marcie changing from a goofy twelve-year-old who liked baking and
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
and hanging around the Arndale Centre with her mates from school, to a sulky, withdrawn girl who was out all hours and bunking off.

It was Howard who first called it. Adele thought it was teenage rebellion (and maybe that was part of it) and that after a few months of back-chat and door slamming and sleepless nights for Adele, Marcie would re-emerge but as soon as money started disappearing from his wallet and Adele’s purse Howard realized. ‘She’s using it for drugs,’ he said.

‘No way. She’d never touch them, she doesn’t even smoke,’ said Adele, who couldn’t kick her own fifteen-a-day habit. ‘You’re wrong.’

They’d confronted Marcie who had sworn on her grandma’s grave that she’d never touched any drugs or taken any money and had flounced out of the house.

Adele was wild with anxiety. She looked up help lines and advice services, all the while thinking maybe Howard was mistaken. Then the police came round. Marcie had been caught breaking into a car.

It was all downhill after that.

Those endless nights, lying awake, Adele kept imagining her hurt or being hurt, nodding off in some filthy rat hole or freezing to death in a shop doorway. Some nights they’d go out looking for her, driving around, a blanket and a thermos for her in the back.

They found her a couple of times and persuaded her to come home. And the next time Marcie left, something else would be missing, jewellery, mobile phone, DVDs – anything portable she could sell.

The hardest thing was Marcie’s point blank refusal to talk about what was happening, to admit that was a problem, to accept that she was an addict. Smelling dirty and with her face all spots and scabs, she’d eat sugar by the spoonful, half a bag at a time. She was skin and bone in a few short months. There was sometimes a moment when Adele caught sight of the girl beneath all this, a glint of mischief in her gaze, but most of the time the habit seemed to swallow Marcie whole.

Adele was frantic to help but could see no way. If she’d had more money she could’ve paid for the stuff herself, rationing it out, so at least the stealing and lying and run-ins with the police wouldn’t happen.

The spectre of prostitution hovered close by. Adele didn’t know if Marcie was already embroiled in that but knew that it came with the territory. Prostitution, AIDS, homelessness, overdoses.

Don’t give them money, that was what all the charities said, money will go straight to the addiction. It doesn’t help. Not the answer.

‘What’s it like?’ Adele asked her one evening. Marcie was getting jittery. Adele could see it in the way her eyes swung about, the muscles jumping under her skin. ‘What does it feel like, the heroin?’

Marcie waited a moment, mouth open, finding the words, then said, ‘Heaven.’ And a look of lust and longing filled her eyes.

‘What it does to you, what it’s doing ...’

Marcie shivered and scratched her neck. ‘You don’t get it,’ she said.

‘Maybe not,’ Adele said, her voice rising, ‘but what I do get is that you can’t carry on like this, babe. It’ll kill you. Don’t go out,’ she had begged later, ‘I’ll sit up with you.’

The next time Howard had seen Marcie on his way home from work, begging. The building was in a row that had been waiting years for redevelopment. Boards over the windows, grass in the guttering, pigeons on the roof. The place was freezing cold, the stones glistening damp, a smell of wet earth and human mess. Marcie was filthy, dirt ingrained in her hands, pin thin arms livid with sores and needle marks.

Adele had thought that was the lowest point. To see Marcie had started injecting now, that the high couldn’t come fast enough or go deep enough.

They had brought her home, stuck her in the shower, given her clean clothes, fed her Coco Pops and toast and drinking chocolate. Adele slept with her purse under the pillow. Twelve hours later Marcie had gone again.

The turning point had been an intervention from a drug abuse officer who worked with the neighbourhood policing team. Marcie had been arrested again and was facing possible charges which could lead to a custodial sentence. The officer, Sandra Gull, was working with a small group of offenders with substance abuse issues to try and get them on the rehab route. Faced with the choice, Marcie agreed to try the scheme. The day Marcie went to the surgery to see Dr Halliwell about the methadone replacement programme, Adele felt as though the sun had returned after a long, dark, winter. Hope replaced dread. Sandra was having excellent results with the programme and lives were being saved. Adele felt hopeful, at least for those first few weeks before it all went so very wrong.

Fraser McKee’s neighbours on one side were away, according to the ones on the other side, who were only just arriving back from work as Butchers went to greet them and were astonished to see the state of the house. So the police had no witnesses to the destruction of the property.

Butchers was heading for the police station when he was notified that there’d been a road traffic accident involving Fraser McKee’s Peugeot on the dual carriageway near the airport car-hire village in Wythenshawe.

Butchers doubled back and made his way there.

His first thought, as he saw the car, was that they’d got a second fatality. The vehicle was upside down, on its roof, on the grass verge, at a bend in the road. A traffic police unit was attending.

One of the traffic officers came to meet him and Butchers introduced himself, explained they were looking for McKee. The officer told Butchers the Peugeot was empty and there was no sign of any occupants in the immediate vicinity.

Butchers looked up the road, ‘Any cameras?’

‘No. Not on this stretch.’

‘Can I take a look?’ Butchers asked.

‘Sure. We’ve got blood on the driver’s side. The driver is likely to be injured.’

Butchers crouched down to peer into the vehicle. The airbag had inflated and there were smears of red on that, more on the side window.

‘Could he have walked away?’ Butchers asked.

‘See all sorts,’ the traffic officer replied.

Butchers rang and discussed the situation with the boss. She agreed he could organize a search of the immediate area but not to run it all night, give it a couple of hours then close it down.

It was close to midnight when Janine arrived home. She sat for a moment in the car, summoning the energy to move. Her back ached and her feet throbbed, she felt light headed and slightly nauseous from too many cups of coffee and not enough to eat.

It was quiet as she got out of the car, just the sound of a goods train rattling through the station, almost a mile away.

It had been a long day. Tonight Don Halliwell’s widow was facing a future on her own, her world torn apart by the violent death of her husband.

And Fraser McKee?

Whoever was after McKee meant business, Janine thought to herself. And, if they had caught up to him, Janine and her team could be faced with investigating a double murder.

All Janine wanted to do was sleep.

The kitchen looked more or less how she’d left it, the dirty dishes still on the table, though someone had put the ice cream away – unless they’d polished it off. Janine surveyed the mess, considered leaving it till morning but told herself to just stop wimping out and get on with it.

Half an hour later, after checking Tom and Charlotte were safe in their beds, she got into her own, setting the alarm for six-thirty and praying that Charlotte wouldn’t wake in the night.

The constable on the front desk looked up as the buzzer sounded for the exterior door. The security lamp illuminated the man outside: youngish, suit and tie, short sandy-coloured hair, face cut and bruised, blood stains on his shirt collar. A fight, the constable wondered, or a drunk? Or both? He wasn’t a regular customer. There was no match on tonight. Tuesdays were usually quiet. The man’s body language wasn’t aggressive, he wasn’t mouthing off or hammering to get in, so the constable released the door switch.

The man limped up to the counter, his face pale, his breath coming fast as though he’d been running. ‘You’ve got to help me,’ he said, ‘I need protection. My name’s Dr Fraser McKee and somebody’s trying to kill me.’