Out of the Dark

Table of Contents

Any novelist moving into strange worlds (like the City or the Bar) needs a guide. I have been lucky enough to have had the help of many. Among them are Suzanne Baboneau, Mary Carter, Sally Field, Jane Gregory, Peter Krijgsman, Lisanne Radice, Jonathan Sumption and Sheila Turner. I am immensely grateful to them all. Matters of fact have sometimes had to yield to the demands of fiction, and none of my guides should be blamed for any of my diversions from strict accuracy. This is fiction and nothing in it should be taken as any reflection on any real people, institutions or financial products. There is no Mull Estate in Southwark, and I am assured that there is not enough ‘European Junk’ for the kind of bond I have imagined.

Natasha Cooper

For
Jonathan and Teresa Sumption

He that wants money, means, and content is without three good friends.

 

Shakespeare
As You Like It

DC Martin Waylant pulled the door shut and let his head rest against the window. It wasn’t a squad car, but his own 1966 Citroën DS. It smelled of the yielding leather seats and a faint hint of fuel, and it was the thing he loved most in the world. He let himself think about the hydraulic suspension and calculated how soon he’d have to top up the fluid.

He was having difficulty getting new side panels. Rust had begun to eat into the original ones like fire into a worm-eaten old plank and he’d have to replace them soon. There’d been a suggestion on his favourite website that some might be coming available. He’d go on the Net again next weekend and see if he couldn’t track them down.

Opening his eyes, he could still see the light from her flat. He wasn’t sure if he could really hear the achingly naggy music she liked or whether he was just imagining it. He stuffed a heavy metal cassette into the player and turned up the volume until the beat drowned out her dismal Elizabethan songs.

There were plenty of words for what was going on in his head and making him want to puke or hit someone, but words were what
she
used and feelings were what
she
had and he wasn’t having any of them now.

He’d once read a story about ‘Red Indian squaws’ in the seventeenth century, and he couldn’t get it out of his mind now. The squaws had made needles out of thorns and sewn
thin leather strips into the flesh of captured English explorers before ripping them out, leaving raw, bleeding patches in their prisoners’ chests and arms and legs and worse. He rubbed his hand over his own chest, hating her.

The whole mess had started because he’d felt protective, and when he’d got to know her and the boy, he’d pitied her. Then, one Saturday afternoon when David was playing football with his mates, she’d taken him to bed and he’d discovered what a fantastic fuck she could be.

She might have been fifteen years older than him, but when she’d taken her kit off and let him rest between her soft lush breasts and shown him what sex could be like and let him do anything he wanted, he’d known what heaven was. He’d have done anything for her. Only then she’d let words in there, too, telling him her sad story and analysing everything, explaining all her feelings – and his – until he wanted to put a pillow over her head. He’d started to feel those needles digging into his chest when he’d tried to move away. She’d clung and wept and talked and talked. And she hadn’t understood a thing. Then one day, when he’d flagged halfway through, she’d been kind and understanding. He might’ve been able to stomach that, if she hadn’t talked on and sodding
on
about erectile dysfunction and how it didn’t matter or make him less of a man.

With the beat in his ears and hate in his mouth, like sick after a night out drinking, he leaned forwards until his hot forehead rested against the steering wheel. He concentrated on its shape, the one spoke, the amazing curve, the way it moved under his hands as he drove the engine to its best performance on hard, twisting roads, until he’d forgotten the taste of hate and the feel of her breasts against his face.

Soon he’d have to decide what to do, how to get out of it all without anyone finding out he’d been bonking her. But not yet. Let him have the music and the feel of the car and no ideas or fucking words for a bit longer.

‘I
didn’t
kill him.’

This was the twelfth time Trish had said it that night, lying huddled under an old tartan rug on one of the sofas opposite her empty fireplace. Unlike everything else in the huge, sleek flat, the shabby rug had been part of her childhood. She hadn’t used it for years, but tonight she’d hoped the familiar smell and reassuring roughness of the Shetland wool would take her back to a more innocent world.

She’d hardly known she was pregnant long enough for much more than one violent burst of impatience. Not now, for God’s sake! I’m busy, she’d thought. But that had been enough. She’d miscarried the next day. The physical pain was over now, but her mind still felt raw.

Experienced advocate that she was, she could find all sorts of arguments in mitigation. The phone call confirming the result she’d already got from her pregnancy-testing kit had come to chambers at a particularly bad moment. All morning she’d been trying to concentrate on a fiendishly complicated piece of mathematical evidence in a fraud case. For years she’d specialised in family law, submerging herself in the agonising detail of brutalised childhoods and unhappy marriages, and now she wanted out. With this new brief she’d have a chance to prove that she could hack it in a wider, much less personal, world.

But the evidence was even more complicated than she’d
expected, and that morning she’d begun to doubt that she would ever get to grips with it. Her head had been aching, her eyes dry and burning hot, and she’d felt sick and stupid. Already there had been six interruptions and each time she’d had to go back to the beginning of the file. Then had come the seventh interruption and the news that she was pregnant. The case was due to start in four weeks’ time and was likely to last for months. She’d never be able to cope unless she were on top form throughout. Pregnancy would have screwed everything up completely.

‘But I didn’t kill him,’ she said aloud to the empty spaces all round her.

If only she could pretend the whole miserable episode had been a medical mishap, nothing to do with a real child. But all she could think of now was the person the child might have become.

She and George hadn’t been actively trying for a baby, although they’d agreed that she should come off the pill ages ago. In fact, it was so long ago that she’d almost forgotten about it. They were nearly always too tired to make love anyway. But there had been one night, soon after his father had died nine weeks ago, when tiredness hadn’t seemed important any more. Trish still had no idea whether George had had some kind of subconscious urge to create a new life to compensate for the old; all she’d been thinking about was how to stop him hurting.

Now he was in San Francisco, unaware of the disaster as he tried to help his mother through her first weeks of loneliness by fulfilling her lifetime’s dream of seeing the city. He’d been reluctant to leave London just then, but the trip had been the only thing either he or Trish had been able to think of that might help. His emails had already told her that he wasn’t sure he was doing any good. In the last one he had written:

Would he have to know about the miscarriage, too, Trish wondered. On top of everything else? Should she tell him about the one, never-to-be-forgotten moment when fury had convulsed her whole body and their child had died? Trying to decide whether to confess adultery must be a bit like this. Only not quite so hard.

The gibbous moon blurred against the black sky outside her windows. There hadn’t been a single occasion since she’d met George when she’d been even tempted by the idea of infidelity. Not that they were married. They didn’t even live together, although they had each other’s keys and the freedom to let themselves in whenever they wanted, but they were absolutely committed to each other.

A shrieking squeal of rubber ripped into Trish’s thoughts. Then a bang, shocking as an explosion, forced her to her feet. Showers of broken glass rang against metal and concrete. Running feet squelched in the rain.

‘Oh, Christ! No. No!’ cried a woman’s voice as Trish moved towards the windows. ‘Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Oh, help. Please help!’

Trish dragged open one of the five huge windows. Despite her slenderness, she was wirily strong, but now all her joints ached with the effort of holding in her feelings and every movement was laborious.

‘Can I do anything?’ she called down, only just stopping herself from the silliness of asking if everything was all right. It obviously wasn’t.

A woman was beating her fists on the crumpled bonnet of a long white hatchback. Yellow light from the streetlamps caught in the drops of rain falling from her
dark hair. She turned to look up towards the sound of Trish’s voice.

‘There’s a child. I didn’t see him in time. I couldn’t help it. But I think he’s dead.’

Oh, God. ‘I’ll come down. Are you hurt, too?’

‘No. But he’s under the car. That’s why I skidded. I saw him in the headlights. I can’t get him to answer. He must be dead. But I wasn’t going fast.’

‘I’ll phone for an ambulance. Hang on.’

Trish punched 999 into the mobile handset of her phone. She tucked it between her ear and shoulder while she grabbed a long coat to pull over the outsize T-shirt she’d put on after her shower, then picked up her keys in case the door blew shut behind her. She didn’t want to be locked out on a night like this. Her narrow feet were bare, so she stuffed them into a pair of gumboots and clumped down the iron staircase to the street. Ambulance control answered as she reached the ground. She gave them the bare facts, relieved that she had a human being on the line and not an answering machine.

‘We’ll be there in about eight minutes,’ the voice assured her. ‘Don’t touch the child.’

‘Of course not,’ she said, shoving the handset in her pocket with the keys and wading across the road in her loose boots. Her bare skin rubbed against the fabric lining and she kept stubbing her toes as her feet moved faster than the boots.

The driver’s face was pale grey and her hair was draggled across her thin cheeks. Her mascara had run and she’d chewed off most of her lipstick. She was shaking.

‘You poor thing,’ Trish said in the professionally soothing voice she used for frightened clients. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘No. I told you. It’s him. He’s bleeding and hasn’t moved. He won’t answer me.’ Retching, she grabbed Trish’s arm, but she didn’t throw up. ‘I couldn’t help it. He ran under the wheels. I couldn’t help it.’

Trish freed herself to look, quickly straightening up again after one gut-punching glimpse of the small body.

‘If he’s bleeding that much he’s not likely to be dead.’

They hadn’t shown her the foetus in hospital, but her imagination had given her plenty of pictures to work on. She tried to think of something else.

‘I’m a fool, I should have brought an umbrella. You’ll be soaked. You haven’t even got a coat.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ A train rattled over the railway bridge two streets away, and the woman flinched. ‘Where’s the ambulance? Even if he isn’t dead yet, he will be soon if they don’t come.’

‘They’re coming now,’ Trish said, shocked to hear her own voice shaking. ‘Listen.’

A siren was whooping in the wet air. The faint sound intensified until the familiar boxy white shape of the ambulance itself emerged from the gloom at the end of the road. Two minutes later the paramedics in green overalls jumped down, asking questions even before their feet had hit the ground.

Trish left the driver to answer them, and forced herself to squat down again to see whether there was any movement from the child. The surprisingly sharp edge of the gumboots cut into her bare calves, and her coat trailed in the wet road. She bunched the skirts up around her knees and bent down to peer under the car. There wasn’t much light, but she could see that the child was not pinned against the wall; he’d slipped into the road, and one of his legs was bent at an impossible angle. The pool of blood was spreading steadily.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and heard a voice urging her out of the way. Standing up, she swayed. Her hands reached out for something to hold her up and met the slippery, wet metal of the car’s roof. Waves of dizziness intensified then gradually sank back. At last she could stand unsupported.

‘Were you driving?’ asked the second paramedic while the first lay prone on the wet road, shining a torch under the chassis.

‘No. I wasn’t even in the car.’ Trish pointed to the open window at the top of her building. ‘I live up there. I heard the crash, phoned you and came out to see what I could do. That’s the driver. I think she’s badly shocked.’

‘Probably. We’ll get to her in a minute. How is he, Sean?’

‘Alive. Broken leg. Multiple cuts and abrasions,’ came a muffled voice from under the car. The paramedic inched back into the street and stood up. ‘Can’t see what else. We’ll have to get this car moved.’

Another siren heralded the arrival of the police. The first paramedic nodded to the two officers who emerged from their small white car. ‘I think it’s drivable. Shirl, you’d better reverse it. Not far, mind.’

‘Hold on a minute,’ said one of the uniformed police officers. ‘What’s going on here?’

A quick explanation had him taking the driver by one arm and moving her to the shelter of Trish’s building, while Shirley clambered over the gear lever into the driver’s seat of the crumpled car, fiddled with the mirror, then inched the car back from the blank wall opposite.

‘Bit further,’ called Sean, holding out his right hand, palm down. Then he whipped it up, yelling, ‘OK. Stop. Stop!’

‘Who are you?’

At the sound of the policeman’s voice, Trish looked quickly away from the body, lying in a heap at the foot of the wall. With the car out of the way, there had been plenty of light to show her the astonishingly bright redness of the blood.

‘My name’s Maguire. I didn’t see anything,’ she said over her shoulder as she forced herself across the road to make sure no more harm was done to the child.

After a moment, the paramedic fetched a neck collar. He seemed careful – and skilful – as he moved around the boy and fitted the collar, before dealing with the terrifying pumping injury in his leg. Trish relaxed a little as the bleeding turned sluggish and then stopped, but when she saw Sean open his medical kit again, she touched his shoulder.

‘Dowting’s Hospital is so close,’ she said, fighting to keep all judgment out of her tense voice. ‘Mightn’t it be worth taking him straight there? In all this rain, I mean.’

She’d read about the damage that could be done to trauma victims by invasive treatment at the roadside. The paramedic didn’t protest, but she thought he looked reluctant as he clicked down the lid of his rigid box of supplies. He called his colleague, who had been talking to the driver and her attendant police officer. Together they got the child on to a stretcher and into the ambulance.

‘Now, I’d just like you to blow into this bag,’ said a voice behind Trish. She turned at once, and saw the driver weeping in front of a burly police officer.

‘Look,’ Trish said, conscious of the driver’s sweat and tears and the tremors that kept shaking her body, ‘she’s in shock and she may well have whiplash injuries. She should be taken to hospital, not interrogated in the road.’

She felt the woman’s wet, icy hand gripping her wrist.

‘Don’t leave me alone with them.’

‘What’s your connection with each other?’ asked the big officer.

‘We’ve never met,’ Trish said brusquely. She did not want to get involved. ‘But I live here and I heard the crash. I was the only person who even looked out.’

‘I’m not surprised, in a neighbourhood like this.’

Trish was outraged. Parts of Southwark might be among the most deprived in the city, but lots of the old disused light-industrial buildings were being turned into lofts like hers or taken over by architects and designers. And just
across Southwark Street, near Tate Modern and the river, there were flats that cost a fortune.

‘After what I’ve seen at the nick every Saturday night, I wouldn’t want to be out alone on the streets round here after dark,’ he said.

Trish thought of all the evenings when she’d walked back from work over Blackfriars Bridge or picked her way home through the dark streets from the expensive parking space she rented under the furthest of the railway arches. She’d never been molested in all the years she’d lived here, and she’d never been afraid of the area or of anyone else who belonged in it. George didn’t like it, of course. He much preferred the cosy, domesticated streets of Fulham, but they made Trish feel like an eagle crammed into a budgie’s cage.

The thinner officer was demanding the driver’s documents. She looked terrified now, as well as shivering and ill, and hardly seemed to understand what he wanted.

‘Oh, come on,’ Trish said, impatience adding a rasp to her voice. ‘You know perfectly well that hardly anyone carries insurance details, or even a driving licence. The law requires a driver to present her documents to a police station within seven days of being asked to do so. She’s got plenty of time. You have breathalysed her and found her clear of alcohol. She can’t have been driving anywhere near the speed limit or there would have been a lot more damage to the car as well as the child. You haven’t any reason to detain or bully her like this. And she should be in hospital.’

The officer’s face looked as though all the life had been washed out of it. Trish knew she’d blown her cover and could have sworn in irritation. She’d been so careful to avoid telling these two that she was a barrister, knowing how much most of them loathed ‘briefs’ for the way they were assumed to use legal technicalities to protect the guilty.