A Fatal Verdict (4 page)

‘So at what point did he do the flower arranging, do you think, Trace?’ Terry studied the flowers curiously, then lifted them out of the vase. Water dripped from their stems. ‘No sign of blood on these.’

‘It’s a regular domestic scene, sir, isn’t it? Meal prepared, flowers on the table, glass of wine, and then this ...’

Terry gestured towards the bloody bathroom. ‘Does it make sense to you?’

Tracy shook her head. ‘Not as a normal suicide, sir, no. I mean, if you really mean to kill yourself, why go over to your boyfriend’s flat and do it in his bath? While he stands in the kitchen cooking a meal?’          

‘Or goes out shopping,’ murmured Bill Rankin.

‘Maybe she didn’t like his ideas for the menu,’ Tracy suggested. ‘Or they had some kind of quarrel we don’t know about.’

Terry shrugged. ‘So what are we looking at here? Cry for help, a serious attempt at suicide, or ...’

‘Attempted murder, disguised to look like suicide,’ said Tracy, completing his thought.

‘Exactly. In which case, we assume, until persuaded otherwise, that a serious crime may well have been committed here and get a SOCO team over here straight away to do a full examination. I want you, Bill, to put a guard on the door, make sure no one - including the owner - comes in or out until they arrive, okay? I’ll get on the phone to them right away. And then I think you and I’d best get over to the hospital and start asking a few questions, don’t you, Trace? If that young woman’s still alive maybe she can solve some of these mysteries for us. And if not ...’ He sighed, contemplating a long night’s work ahead, and the emotional strains it was likely to bring. ‘Well, either way, there’s going to be her family to contact, as well.’

4. Phone call

The phone call came when Shelley’s mother, Kathryn Walters, was on the treadmill. A bouncy, energetic woman in her late forties, she had joined the health club three years ago after a cruel comment from her husband, and had found it so compulsive that she now came three or four times a week, as often as the demands of running her home and business would allow. She valued it equally for the warm comforting afterglow of the endorphins flooding through her brain, and for the physical results whose evidence she saw every day from her mirror and weighing scales. A determined woman, she had joined battle with the forces of ageing and was convinced that, for the moment at least, she had them well and truly on the run. Life, for Kathryn, had always been a struggle for achievement, and now that one daughter was married and the other settled at university she had time and energy to expend on herself.

She had just completed ten minutes power walking and had switched the machine up to jog when her phone rang, its little extract from Don Giovanni, in her handbag on the floor in front of her. She always brought her small handbag in here with her; there had been a spate of thefts a few months back and she didn’t trust the lockers. Anyway her eldest daughter Miranda sometimes rang from America on Sunday nights and she wouldn’t want to miss that, wherever she was. So even though she was nicely warmed up, skin glowing and breath coming smoothly, she stopped the machine and picked up the phone, just in case.

‘Hello?’

‘Kath? Thank God you’re there.’ Kathryn recognized the voice of Jane Miller, a friend who was now a senior nurse in Accident and Emergency. The next words turned the sweat on her skin to ice. ‘It’s Shelley - she’s here in Casualty. It’s very serious, Kath, you’d better come at once.’

‘Shelley? Why, what’s happened?’

‘I can’t say for sure, but she’s lost a lot of blood. They’re doing all they can but it’s serious, Kath. It seems she cut her wrists.’

‘What? Shelley - no!’ At the tone of her voice heads turned on the exercise machines, some concerned, some irritated, others blankly incurious. Kathryn snatched up her bag and began to walk towards the changing room, her phone still at her ear. ‘What do you mean, cut her wrists? Has there been an accident?’

‘It’s hard to say, Kath. She was found in a bath. Look, where are you? Is there anyone who can drive you?’

‘I’m at the gym. No, that doesn’t matter, I’ll be OK.’ She was in the changing room as she spoke, fumbling for the key to her locker when she thought, what the hell am I doing, I don’t need to change, I’ll go as I am. ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes, Jane, I’m at the Swallow Chase. My God, Jane, how is she? How bad is it?’

‘It’s quite bad. She’s lost a lot of blood. They’re giving her a transfusion now. Her boyfriend’s here, at least.’

‘Christ, no! Not him!’ Kathryn was in the car park as she spoke, still in her tracksuit and trainers, squeezing the button on her keys to unlock the car, opening the door with one hand and talking into the phone with the other. ‘What’s he doing there? She’s left him!’

This question was beyond Jane Miller, so she ignored it and responded instead to the panic in her friend’s voice. ‘Kath, for heaven’s sake drive carefully, will you? Think what you’re doing - you won’t help Shelley by causing another accident. Is Andrew there with you?’

‘No. I’ll call him.’ She clicked the phone off and drove out of the car park, not even noticing the young man who had to skip for safety into a rose bed as she spun the tyres on the gravel. Shelley, in Casualty, with cut wrists - a transfusion! Thank God she was so close. The health club was in the Swallow Chase hotel by York’s Knavesmire racecourse, only a couple of miles through the city centre to the hospital. It was a pleasant, sunny evening in May; as she accelerated towards the city she saw a father holding up his daughter to pat the noses of some horses under the trees, and children flying kites and playing football on the Knavesmire beyond. The sight seemed surreal to her, an insult - people casually going about their normal business while Shelley was bleeding to death. No, don’t say that! This can’t be happening, she thought - I’ll get there and find it’s all a joke, a misunderstanding.

But Jane Miller wouldn’t joke about a thing like this, and the fact that Shelley’s boyfriend David was there in the hospital too added a macabre touch that terrified her as much as the news itself.. Ever since she had met that boy Kathryn had loathed him. He was rude, arrogant, idle, and apparently committed to turning Shelley not only against her own parents but also against all the habits of industry and self-reliance which she, with a little help from Andrew, had worked so hard for so many years to instill. In a few weeks, beginning last December, Shelley had changed from being a moderately confident, communicative young woman to someone they hardly recognized - anxious, withdrawn, obstinate, nervous as she had been in the worst of her teenage years, prone to increasingly wild mood swings and defiant in her defence of this new and unpleasant boyfriend.

That, at least, was how Kathryn saw it. Shelley had begun at university last October, and all had gone well until six weeks later her steady boyfriend of several years, Graham, had met another girl from Sheffield and, in the cruel modern jargon, ‘dumped’ her. This, of course, had sent Shelley into a depression, but instead of seeking comfort from her mother, as she would have when younger, she set out to deal with matters on her own, and, to Kathryn’s horror, had somehow come up with this arrogant, manipulative, pretentious boy David Kidd. Every time she thought of him her blood boiled and her mind seethed with anger and frustration - how any daughter of hers could be duped by such a self-regarding, deceitful ... the adjectives piled up like stones she would hurl at him if only she could.

And yet he was Shelley’s choice, so she had tried to respect it. And not everyone loathed him as she did. Shelley’s father Andrew, whom she worshipped, had welcomed David into their house at Christmas, being charming and pleasant as he so easily could. When David had seemed rude, Andrew excused his lack of manners as mere awkwardness, telling Kathryn he hoped that Shelley’s love would transform him from a toad into a prince. It was a naive hope which had failed as Kathryn had always known it would. Even though, just as in the fairy tale, Shelley had not only kissed the toad but no doubt made love to him many times as well, it hadn’t transformed him at all; he remained just what he had always been: an arrogant, deceitful fraud who should have had no place whatsoever in their bright, intelligent daughter’s life. If any transformation had taken place it had been the other way: his slime, his idleness and cynicism had rubbed off on her, making her a stranger to her own mother - and to her liberal father too.

Cut wrists ... suicide. Kathryn’s own hands trembled as she gripped the wheel and slammed through the gears with unaccustomed violence as the lights changed in Blossom Street. Surely that was impossible. However sulky and obstreperous her youngest daughter had become she had never harmed herself before. Quite the reverse - she had always turned her anger on her parents, teachers or friends, whoever was irritating her at the time. She was more likely to cut someone else’s throat than damage herself in any way, Kathryn thought. So this must be an accident; either that, or something worse. Even when her marks had gone down after Christmas she never turned things inwards to blame herself; her character wasn’t like that. She blamed her parents all over again, her tutors, everyone except herself and the real villain of the piece, that ghoul who was waiting with her at the hospital. Christ! Kathryn swung the car aggressively towards the station, thinking if only I was a man, if only Andrew had been tough enough to slam the door in that flashy young man’s face when he first appeared. If only I could get my daughter back again, healthy and sane ...

But then that was exactly what had happened, a week ago. Shelley had come home in a tearful rage to say that she was leaving David, he had deceived her with another woman and it was over, it had all been a dreadful mistake. Joy had leaped in Kathryn’s heart and she had broken open a bottle of wine to celebrate. Shelley had embraced her mother for the first time for months. Her eyes were open now, Shelley told her, she understood how David had tried to manipulate her and draw her away from her own family while lying to her about his other girl, or girls, however many there were. He was history now, she was going to start her life again, change everything. She acknowledged the dreadful marks she had had this term but her last essay had been better and she was going to work hard from now on.

So how could she possibly be in hospital now with cut wrists, the mark of a suicide, a cry for help? It made no sense at all. It must be an accident or some stupid student prank unless ... well, what else could it be? Jane’s message had frightened Kathryn so much she hardly knew where she was or what to do next, except get to the hospital as fast as possible which she couldn’t do now, because she was stuck in a traffic jam on Lendal bridge. She drummed her fingers furiously on the steering wheel as people strolled by in the evening sunshine, talking, holding hands, kissing, pushing babies, leaning over the parapet of the bridge to admire the river view.

My daughter may be dying in hospital, doesn’t anyone understand? She felt so alone, in a glass bubble all of her own with no one to talk to. Then remembered she had to ring Andrew. She pressed the  button on her mobile which stored his office number, but it rang unanswered. In the library no doubt, she thought bitterly - among the medieval archives where he said a mobile phone would be out of place and disturb his concentration, the hypocrite! If he was there at all and not in bed with some graduate student like last time. God, where is the man when I really need him? She rang the answerphone at home and left him a message, it was all she could do for the present. By the time she had finished that she was moving along Gillygate where David had his wretched flat, and past the Salvation Army Hall to the hospital on the left, a vast grey city where life and death were decided, and there was a long queue outside the pay and display car park for Christ’s sake, with people carrying flowers and taking their grandchildren to visit, while my daughter may be bleeding to death at this very moment ...

Grimly, to an accompaniment of horns and shouted protests, she overtook the queue and  screeched into the Accident and Emergency car park where she pulled up beside a police car.

Waiting for her at the entrance was her friend, Jane Miller. As Kathryn approached she could see in her face that the news was not going to be good.

5. Accident and Emergency.

Accident and Emergency was always essentially the same, Terry thought. Ambulances and doctor’s cars outside, a receptionist asking someone to fill out a form, a collection of patients and their relatives on plastic chairs in the waiting room vacantly gazing at the television chattering mindlessly to itself between the vending machines. As usual, Terry marvelled at how many of these people seemed perfectly uninjured, malingerers apparently content to wait two hours simply to be treated for a headache or a tetanus booster injection. So trivial and mundane it seemed. And yet Terry could never walk through this place without fear. For at any time the most dreadful injuries could be wheeled though the door only few feet away, the paramedics buzzing with concentration and energy to stop their patient’s life ebbing away.

But it was most painful, Terry thought, for the relatives who came in here in shock, their minds so inflamed with anxiety that they perceived everything with the sensitivity of someone who had lost two layers of skin. So it had seemed, at least, to Terry when he had come here for the death of his wife, Mary, whose body had been extracted from her car like so much butcher’s meat that was still, faintly, breathing. Three years later he could still vividly recall every word the doctor had spoken, every touch of the nurse’s hand, every embarrassed, sympathetic glance. He even remembered the two people arguing in the waiting room on the way out about changing the channel on the TV.

A & E had no memory of Mary, of course, but Terry had forgotten nothing. Every time he came here he trembled. And today something similar would begin, he assumed, for the relatives of this young girl, Shelley Walters.

He and Tracy were met at reception by a nurse who escorted them along a corridor with red and yellow lines to a doctor in a crumpled white coat, who was entering something on a computer. As he turned to face them Terry noticed streaks of blood on his coat, and the look of resignation and grey weariness on the absurdly young face.

‘Shelley Walters, yes,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid we couldn’t save her.’

Well, you should have tried harder, a voice buried deep in Terry’s subconscious screamed. You should never give up, never! This isn’t just a day’s work, it’s a life.

‘I see.’ Terry nodded slowly, glancing away from the doctor into a room full of medical technology, where a nurse was drawing the screens around a bed. ‘Was it suicide?’

The doctor spread his hands apologetically. ‘That’ll be for the coroner to say, I suppose, after the post-mortem. But at first sight it looks like that, certainly. Wrists slit, massive loss of blood. Though she’d also nearly drowned in the process. We thought we’d recovered her from that when we lost her, unfortunately.’

‘So what did she die of, exactly?’

‘Heart failure, basically. Probably caused by blood loss and shock. Though the drowning couldn’t have helped either.’

And so the main question. ‘Could it be murder?’

The young doctor shrugged, again in a weary, off-hand way that made part of Terry want to pick him up and shake him hard. But then he’d probably been on duty for twelve hours already, seen other deaths and injuries.

‘That’s for you to decide, not me. It’s a possibility, I suppose. But as I say we’ll learn more from the post mortem ...’

They were still talking when Kathryn appeared. Jane Miller had met her at the front door but Kathryn ran ahead of her, still in her dark blue tracksuit and trainers, until she saw the doctor talking to a man and a woman whom she knew, instantly, must be police officers. She was still half-running, partly to keep ahead of Jane and avoid hearing what she feared she might say, partly because if she kept moving, doing something, however futile, she might still be in time to save Shelley from ...

She identified the doctor immediately and interrupted, cutting in on Terry’s conversation.

‘Excuse me, Shelley Walters? I’m her mother, I’m told she’s in here.’

‘Er, yes, of course. Just a minute, Inspector.’ The doctor’s face changed, in a way that Kathryn would remember all her life but which she didn’t want to believe, not now. Not while the words had not been said. Directing a reproachful glance at the nurse, he took Kathryn by the arm, leading her towards a room across the corridor. ‘If you’d just step in here for a moment.’

Kathryn pulled back. This was not the way it was supposed to go. It must not be allowed to go like this. ‘I want to see her!’

‘If you’d just step this way I can explain everything.’ And she knew by his face and the tone in his voice, she knew almost certainly that all was lost. Numbly, she let herself to be led those few strides towards the waiting room. But then as he opened the door she saw the room was not empty, there was someone else inside. A uniformed police constable, sitting opposite a young man with short bristly hair, large muscular arms and hands that were clenched tightly together between his knees. The man she wanted to see least in all the world. The young man saw her too and stood up, the eyes in his flushed, oddly childlike hateful face bruised and red-rimmed with something that other people might take for grief.

The doctor looked surprised, as though had forgotten the man was there, but recovered swiftly. ‘You’ll know her boyfriend, I suppose. Mr, er, Kidd, isn’t it?’

Kathryn noticed that David’s white teeshirt was stained with blood. Shelley’s blood, it had to be hers. She started to tremble, she couldn’t help herself.

‘David, what’s happened? God, look at you - what the hell have you done, you little shit?’

‘What d’you mean, me?’ David protested. ‘I haven’t done anything - it’s not me, I just found her!’

‘You’ll have had something to do with it, you must have done!’

‘Look, I didn’t do it, of course I didn’t.’ He spread his hands wide, looking away from her to the doctor and police officers behind. ‘If anyone made her kill herself, it was you, not me. You pressed her too hard!’

‘Kill herself?’ The words burst in Kathryn’s mind, excluding everything else. ‘Christ, what are you saying, you monster?’ She turned to the doctor desperately, appealing to him to deny something she already knew by his face, by his look of acute embarrassment and pity, that he would not. ‘She’s not dead?’

Before the doctor could answer David stepped forward, confronting Kathryn directly. ‘Oh yes she is,’ he said bitterly. ‘And what’s more you drove her to it, didn’t you? She’s killed herself because of you, that’s what she’s done!’

His mocking face filled her vision. She had never been so close to him, she felt unable to stand the bitter intensity of his gaze. She looked away, down at the blood on his clothes. In a faint but crystal clear voice, she said: ‘That’s Shelley’s blood, isn’t it? You killed her.’

‘Did I fuck!’ The accusation seemed to enrage him further. His big hands seized her shoulders, shaking her roughly. Tears flooded her eyes.

‘I’ve told you, she did it herself. I just found her, I tried to save her. And why do you think she did it? Because of you and all your bloody nagging, trying to get her away from me, when she’d made her own choice for once! Well, you’ve done it now, haven’t you? She’s killed herself! I tried to save her but I was too late. And now you come. Well, go home. You’re not wanted!’

‘No ... that’s not ... she’s not dead!’

Kathryn tried to push him away but she was helpless in his grip; then he threw her contemptuously aside so that she stumbled, tripped and collapsed onto the floor.  For a moment all of them - Terry, Tracy, the uniformed constable, the doctor, the nurse - were struck dumb with shock, unable to move or respond to the appalling drama exploding in front of them. Then, as Jane Miller bent down over Kathryn, Terry Bateson sprang to life.

‘All right, son, that’s enough.’ He stepped forward and put his hand on David’s arm,  trying to guide him away from the woman. David gasped, and flailed at Terry with his other arm, but PC Newbolt caught that before it could do any harm, and the two of them frogmarched him out into the corridor, where they held him up against a wall.

‘Get off me, you fascist bastards! You can’t do this!’

‘All right, Nick, let him go.’ Terry and Nick slackened their hold but stood close enough to prevent him getting back into the room. Terry took a deep breath to keep his temper under control. ‘Look, sir. If the young woman’s dead we need to take a statement, and that has to be done at the station. I’ve got a car outside. We might as well go there now, and get it over with.’

The two police officers towered over the young man, who was surprisingly short - only five foot six, eight perhaps. For a moment it looked as though he would put up a fight; then, like an irritated turkey cock, he shrugged and strutted to the door.

‘All right. There’s nothing left for me here anyway.’

Nick escorted him out to the car, past nurses, patients on trolleys and those still waiting to be seen. Terry turned to Tracey who had followed them into the corridor. She looked shocked.

‘He’ll complain, sir, if you’re not careful,’ she said. ‘He’s just the sort who knows all his rights.’

‘Oh, sure. Rights and no responsibilities,’ said Terry, straightening his jacket. ‘No manners either. Christ, did you hear what he said to that woman?’

Tracy nodded numbly. ‘What a way to learn a thing like that.’

‘There’s no good way,’ Terry said grimly. ‘But that was the worst I’ve ever seen.’ He walked away from the car to gather his thoughts, conscious of the ambulance drivers and an old man in a wheelchair watching him. Would nothing good ever happen in this place? He was conscious of a tide of anger surging through him - was it just because of the way the young man had behaved, or did it have something to do with Mary as well? He so wanted to avenge her, but this was not the way. If he was to do his job properly, he had to keep control.

He drew a deep breath and smiled at Tracy apologetically. ‘All right, panic over. Look, Trace, go back inside and see if you can get that woman’s story, will you? She needs sympathy at the very least. You’re better at that than me. I’ll deal with this guy. If it is murder it must have been him. After all, she was alone with him in his flat, wasn’t she?’

‘Just her and him,’ Tracy nodded. ‘All right, sir, I’ll see what I can do.’

‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Walters,’ the young doctor said, when Kathryn had recovered. ‘I thought ... since he was her boyfriend ...’

‘I want to see my daughter,’ said Kathryn desperately, looking away from him to the nurse, Jane Miller. ‘Please, where is she? I need to know.’

‘Yes, of course.’ Tracy Litherland watched as the doctor led her out, across the corridor to the room with the medical machinery and the screened bed.  He drew back the screens, bent over the bed, and smoothed the sheets back gently around her daughter’s face, as though it could make any difference now. ‘Please, Mrs Walters, stay as long as you want. Nurse Miller will see that you’re not disturbed. I’m so sorry.’

‘Oh God.’ Kathryn bent to put her cheek across her daughter’s forehead, as though to warm it with her own blood. It was already cooler than a living person’s, and pale, too, when she drew back to look. Shelley’s skin was white, not like the sheet exactly, but like - tripe. She shuddered as the image flashed across her mind. This was dead flesh, meat that had been bled, not her daughter at all, ever again. She reached for the girl’s lifeless hand, clasped it in her own, felt the flaccid eternal inability to respond. The skin stiffening slowly.

‘Oh Shelley, Shelley ...’ She bent her head and wept, and the tears fell on the hand that could never feel again, that could only decay. ‘Shelley, where have you gone?’

Thanks, boss, Tracy Litherland thought, watching from the door. How on earth am I going to handle this?