No Good Reason (2 page)

She shook her head, the memory indistinct and already slipping. No longer able to run, she could only stagger along what she hoped might become a path. Minutes passed, maybe hours, but the sky never lightened, and the path never materialised.

At least I got away from him, she thought, and in that instant, the ground disappeared from beneath her, leaving her in freefall. She landed with limbs entangled, her head striking against a rock. She took a breath, the pain already fading.

“At least I—”

Leaning back in his chair, the young man facing Sanne Jensen picked something from a tooth with a grime-stained finger and then grinned at her. His teeth were uneven, one broken, one missing, and all unbrushed. Sanne didn’t smile back.

“No comment,” he said, and the machine recording his interview abruptly clicked off, as if it too had reached the end of its tether.

Sanne set her pen down beside her notepad. “Mr. Clark, I’d like to thank you for your time and your illuminating contribution to the investigation.”

Callum Clark narrowed his eyes, not quite sure whether she was being sarcastic. He looked at his lawyer, who indicated that they had been given their cue to leave.

“Detectives Jensen, Turay. We’ll look forward to hearing from you.” Such was the lawyer’s haste that he almost bumped into Clark’s chest as Clark stopped and turned back to Sanne.

“Name like that”—Clark pointed his thumb at her ID badge—“I thought you’d be—”

“Blonder?” she offered.

“Taller.” He tilted his head to one side. “But yeah, now you mention it, blonder too.” He sounded disappointed, as if the futile hours of questioning in a stifling room that stank of crappy coffee and his own dubious hygiene habits had had the potential to be far more entertaining.

Sanne took the implied criticism on the chin. “Yeah, I get that a lot,” she said, ignoring her partner’s snort of laughter.

The lawyer ushered Clark out into the corridor, and the door swung shut behind them. Sanne leaned forward, her vertebrae cracking as she attempted to rest her head on her folded arms. Weariness made her miss her target, her forehead thudding onto the table.

“Fuck.” She groaned but didn’t have the energy to move. “Four hours, Nelson,” she said against the cool plastic. “Four hours of our lives we’re never going to get back, thanks to that little shit.”

Nelson Turay clapped her shoulder, and she banged her head on the table again. “Fancy a drink? My shout. Abeni’s taken the girls round to see her mum.”

Sanne pushed herself upright. “Cheers, mate, but I promised to meet Meg, and I need to type up the notes for the Dawkins case, or the boss’ll have my arse.”

“True.”

She showed him her notepad, holding it in front of her like a trophy. “I kept a tally.”

“One-oh-one?” He whistled in disbelief, displaying his own pad, which contained a similar series of marks. “Damn. I only got ninety-seven. Sure yours is right?”

“Dead sure.”

“Must’ve wigged out a bit toward the end there.”

“Well, you can double-check when you listen to the tape.” She winked at him and ducked as he tried to swat her. They had held a rock-paper-scissors tournament to assign that particular task, and he had lost, badly.

“Not tonight,” he said. “If you’re ditching me, and I have the house to myself, I will be eating pizza and drinking beer while dressed in naught but my underpants.”

She stared at him. “Thank you for that image. My day is now complete.”

“Don’t say I never do nothing for you.” Holding the door open, he gestured for her to leave first.

She glanced once more at the scrawled lines in the margin of her notepad and sighed. In four hours, six minutes, and approximately thirty-two seconds, Callum Clark had repeated the phrase “no comment” one hundred and one times.

*

It was never going to work. The angle of approach was too acute, the pressure too fierce, and the aim slightly off. The man jerked at the first sting of discomfort and howled as the needle dug in deeper.

“You fucking bitch!”

Her reactions honed by years of experience, Megan Fielding stepped calmly into the firing line. She placed one hand on the man’s chest, pinning him to the bed, and used her other to pull the startled junior doctor out of his reach. The junior’s ID marked her as Foundation Year One, that tricky transitional period between being a medical student and a registered doctor.

“
Enough
,” Meg snapped, as the man actually growled at her. “I’ve had enough.”

He held up his arm, displaying blood oozing from a popped vein, and pointed at the F1. “She did that on fucking purpose.”

“She did that because she’s new and because you moved your fucking arm,” Meg said. The F1’s face paled, and her mouth dropped open. Meg ignored her. “Now, it’s not our fault that—for the fourth time in as many weeks—you’ve decided to wash down a month’s worth of diazepam with a year’s worth of gut-rot cider. And it’s definitely not our fault that your veins are all shot to shit. Personally, I’d leave you to sleep it off and suffer the hangover, but protocol and a certain oath, yadda, yadda, yadda…” She tightened a tourniquet around his upper arm and prodded the crook of his elbow. “You going to stay still this time?”

“You going to hit the fucking vein?”

She pursed her lips and blew out a breath. “Can’t make you any promises, I’m afraid.” She palpated one of the few veins that the F1 hadn’t ruined, before sliding the cannula into place. “There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” The blood bottles clinked as she dropped the samples into the tray. She turned to address the F1. “Start a litre of saline, and refer him to psych when he’s sober enough to talk about it. That is, of course, unless he kicks off and then absconds, like he did on the last three occasions. In which case”—she made a show of checking her watch—“we’ll see him again in about seven days.”

The man opened his mouth to respond, froze, smacked his lips together, and projectile-vomited all over Meg’s scrubs top.

She took a belated step back. “Well, that’s just fucking perfect.”

*

As the printer churned out page after page of Sanne’s case notes, she stood by the window and let the bleating of sheep and the hum of traffic heading into Sheffield blot out the mechanised drone. Six months ago, a contractor rushing to meet a deadline had painted the window shut, and of the nine detectives in the East Derbyshire Special Operations department, only Nelson had the knack of opening it fully. The warm air wafting in did nothing to temper the stuffiness in the office, but at least it smelled more pleasant. Sanne knelt to push her face closer to the narrow gap.

“I don’t recall authorising any overtime for you, Detective.”

The sound of Eleanor Stanhope’s voice provoked a Pavlovian response. Sanne bolted upright, forgetting about the window and bouncing the top of her head off its frame.

“Ow, fucking hell.” She clamped a palm over the injured spot and looked up at the detective inspector. “Sorry. Ow, fucking hell,
ma’am
.”

Eleanor smiled. “Were you planning to stay here all night?”

“No, but I’m off tomorrow, and I needed to finish up the Dawkins notes.” Sanne quickly gathered the printed sheets and clasped them to her chest. “I was going to have a final read-through before I left them for you.”

“Why don’t you just give them to me now and go home? It’s late. I know you came in early, and I also know you spent the afternoon being no-commented by one of the finest scrotes Halshaw has to offer.” Eleanor held her hand out expectantly. “If I were you, I’d be neck deep in a bottle of Scotch by now.”

“I’d settle for fish and chips with a cup of tea.” Despite the lightness of her tone, Sanne surrendered her paperwork with reluctance, nervous about typos or questionable grammar that she might have overlooked. Even after twelve months, she was still the most junior member of Eleanor’s team. She had been selected on merit alone—Eleanor made no secret of her disdain for positive discrimination—but the urge to push herself that little bit harder than most had been ingrained in her from an early age. EDSOP’s remit was major crimes—murders, rapes, serious assaults, kidnappings—and they covered a large swath of east Derbyshire. Prior to joining the team, Sanne had worked Response for three and a half years, and she’d never regretted the move.

Eleanor slid the sheaf of papers into her briefcase and snapped it shut. “Go on. Get yourself to the chippy.”

They crossed the room together and paused at the door to Eleanor’s office.

“G’night, boss.” It went without saying that the DI would be working into the early hours.

“Night, Sanne. Enjoy your day off.”

That brought a smile to Sanne’s face. She had met her deadlines, cleared her outstanding caseload, and triumphed at rock-paper-scissors. For the first time in months, she had nothing work-related left to do.

“Cheers, boss.” She grabbed her jacket and leaned over her computer to log out of the system. As she headed for the stairwell, her phone buzzed. Meg’s text was brief and to the point.

Running late. Got puked on. Fancy a chippy tea at mine instead?

*

The hospital’s shower pressure left a lot to be desired, but the water was hot and plentiful, and Meg felt herself beginning to relax beneath it. She shampooed her hair and then let her arms fall to her sides, allowing the thin stream to do the work of rinsing for her. Her back ached, and she could still smell a trace of alcohol-laced vomit, even through the body wash.

“Sod it,” she muttered, switching the shower off. “Better than it was before.”

Her torso was rubbed almost raw where she had tried to scrub herself clean. Already starting to shiver in the cool bathroom, she dabbed the abraded skin with her towel. Once dressed and somewhat warmer, she tossed her filthy scrubs into a clinical waste bag, collected her belongings, and carried everything out into the corridor.

“Bright side, Doc?” one of the porters called to her, as he wheeled a patient past. “Least it happened at the end of your shift.”

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up.” She smiled as he over-steered his trolley and bounced it off a doorjamb.

“Bugger. Sorry, Ethel. See you tomorrow, Doc.”

Meg turned in the opposite direction and dumped her waste bag in the sluice, before hurrying toward the exit. As she neared the doors, she had to force herself not to run. This was always the trickiest part of the shift: leaving without anyone attempting to waylay her, to ask her for a second opinion or get her to do just this one small procedure that wouldn’t take more than a minute, honestly.

The doors shut behind her, and she stepped out into mild evening air, tinged with tobacco smoke as someone hidden behind an ambulance enjoyed a crafty cigarette. She breathed deeply regardless, and smiled when her stomach rumbled. On cue, her phone chirped.

Hurry up
, Sanne had typed.
Make mine the usual, and add curry sauce xx

*

Sanne moved around Meg’s kitchen with an ease born of familiarity. She knew in which cupboard Meg stored her crockery and behind which jar of pasta the condiments were hidden. Tea bags waited in mugs beside the kettle and slices of thick-cut buttered bread, while the oven burred in the background as it warmed the plates.

The end-of-terrace house had beautiful Victorian features, but the living room’s large bay window and high ceiling left it draughty and cold even in summer. Kneeling on the hearthrug, Sanne pushed another log onto the open fire and shifted its position with the poker. A rush of heat made her cheeks tingle pleasantly, and she smiled as the scrape of a key in the front door was followed by the traditional hail: “Anybody home?”

Lured by the scent of vinegary chips, Sanne scrambled up and found Meg in the hallway, struggling to untie her trainers with her hands full.

“Plates are in, kettle’s boiled, bread’s done, fire’s lit, and oh, I love your new hairdo,” Sanne said. She took Meg’s workbag and the chip shop bag, and stood patiently as Meg used her as a prop while she levered the shoes off.

“You’ve been busy,” Meg said, giving Sanne a wet kiss on the cheek. “I knew there was a reason you were my very best friend.” She poked experimentally at her hair. “Did I forget to brush it again?”

Sanne laughed. “I would say so, yes.”

“Does it look horrible?”

“It certainly looks original.”

“Well, you know me. I am all about setting trends.”

That just made Sanne laugh harder. Meg adored the hospital’s casual dress code of scrubs for its Accident and Emergency doctors, and spent most of her free time wearing combat pants and hooded tops. Her short hair needed minimal styling, and the only colour in her cheeks was a suntan acquired sitting in her back garden with her feet up, while Sanne tended to her plants. Sanne grinned and kissed Meg’s forehead. They had been best mates for years, and Sanne adored her.

“You look gorgeous,” she said.

“Mmhm.” Meg regarded her with customary scepticism. “I think the promise of chips is clouding your judgement slightly.”

“That’s a distinct possibility. Did you remember my curry sauce?”

“Of course I did.”

The protestation might have been more convincing had Sanne not already seen
CURRY!
scrawled across the back of Meg’s hand. “How far did you get before you had to go back for it?”

Meg attempted to feign indignation for a moment, before she sighed. “About a mile and a half.”

“So, better than that time you came home with nothing but two pickled eggs and someone else’s mushy peas?”

It was faint praise, but it seemed to cheer Meg. She opened the paper wrappings and shook vinegar across her fish with renewed zeal. “I even remembered to put the bins out this morning.”

“Yeah?” Sanne said through a pilfered chip, as they took their plates into the living room. “Good for you.”

“Course, it was cans and paper this week, and I put out household and garden, but at least I got the day right.”

They sat together on the sofa. Sanne reached over to tap her fork against Meg’s.

“You’re bloody brilliant,” she said, and took the lid off her carton of curry sauce, to find gravy instead.