A Poison Tree (Time, Blood and Karma Book 3) (28 page)

The drugs don’t work.

“Please get them to give me something. We need to end this.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I do. Talk to Linda. She likes you. Tell her I need a big dose. Enough to stop the pain permanently.” She looked at me, her eyes brimming with tears.

It’s too soon. Anna was wrong about cancer being a long goodbye. This is still too soon. I’m not ready
.

“Talk to Linda.”

I went in search of the nurse. She knew from the expression on my face what I was going to ask her.

“Claire needs to die now.”

She dropped her gaze.

“She is in agony. We wouldn’t let an animal suffer like this.”

“We can’t give her any more, Mr. Braddock. We just can’t.”

“Please.”

“We can’t.”

I returned to Claire’s room. It was
like a phantasmagorical dream from which no awakening was possible. Outside the window, the branches of a large ash tree swayed in the wind. The sky beyond was the colour of steel. Details. The smell of disinfectant. Irrelevancies bombarding me. Numbness. Unreality.

I shook my head, tried to keep the tremor from my voice. “Linda will come soon and try to make you comfortable. It’s all she can do.”

Claire struggled onto her side and pulled the pillow from under her head. It was her pillow from home, her ‘comfy’ one. She handed it to me, as another rictus distorted her face.

“You must help me, David.”

“What? No.”

“You promised you would, if it got too bad.”

That had been hypothetical, like the Jim Fosse conversations. Not serious. Not real. She hadn’t meant it.
I
hadn’t meant it.

“Don’t ask me to do this.”

“It has to be you. Quick, now. Before they come.”

I stood, frozen, as if the opiates were pouring into my bloodstream, rather than
into my wife. My final role, my last service to Claire. Not carer, but killer. The woodsman chosen to fell the tree. The serpent beneath the root. My mind scrambled for an exit. There was none.

“I love you, David.”

I saw the pleading in her eyes. Tears streamed down her face. Her breath was coming in ragged gasps. The pain had broken through her final defences and she was helpless.

I kissed her and tasted the salt of her tears.

“I love you too, Claire. I always will.”

I climbed onto the bed,
pressed the pillow over her face and held it there.

After a few moments she began to struggle.
Something within her fought for life. I increased the pressure, applying more of my weight. Sweat ran off my brow. I pushed down harder, and tried not to imagine her face, her desperate attempts to breathe. Only a few seconds more. Extinguish the pain. Put out the light.

I
set the pillow aside.

Claire was gone.

I waited for the Earth to stop spinning, for the rift to open and swallow us. Yet the ash tree remained framed in the window, refused to fall. Rain streaked the glass. Blood throbbed in my ears. Preternatural silence. The cruellest April.

I was not deceived. What I saw was
samsara
, illusion. The world had ended. I was sure of it. The seer’s prediction was just off by sixteen months.

Nothingness.

Emptiness.

Free fall.

41

DAVID

Linda found me sitting by Claire’s bed,
stroking lifeless fingers, willing them to stir. The nurse examined my wife, then took the pillow and positioned it under Claire’s head.

She
put her hands on my shoulders.

“Go home, Mr
. Braddock. Your wife has died. You have done nothing, do you understand?” She spoke slowly, as if to a child. “She died while you were here and that is all. You have done nothing. The cancer has taken your wife. She is at peace now. Go home. Come back tomorrow and ask for me. Will you do that?”

I walked out of the hospital and kept walking.
A downpour whipped the streets but I felt nothing. People avoided me. It was almost as if they knew what I had done. My feet moved of their own accord.

I had no plan, no direction. I just walked.

Eventually, the rain slackened off. When I came to, and examined my surroundings, I found myself on a footpath outside a church. It had walls of blackened stone. Grills covered the windows.

I pushed on the
heavy wooden door and stepped inside.

42

ADELE

Adele Darrow looked at the suitcase on her bedroom floor. A laptop bag and a bulging rucksack sat beside it. Everything she owned – except for the toiletries and cosmetics still in her bathroom – was packed into those three
pieces of luggage. It did not seem much to show for twenty-odd years of life.

Travel light. Don’t get tied down.
Only rely on yourself.

Given her situation, these were sensible guiding principles, although she could not help experiencing sadness that after these years in Leicester, there were only three people to whom she had to say goodbye. Miss Connie and Nina had hugged her and told her to stay in touch, but she knew she wouldn’t. At the Gold Club,
when her clients asked for her and were told she had gone away, they would go upstairs with another girl. Flesh was replaceable.

Adele hesitated over her
third farewell. She had not spoken to Simon since she went to see him at the vicarage. He had not called. Was that only a week ago? Seeing him again would be difficult, but she wanted to part on good terms with the man who had brought her security and self-respect, at least for a while. She owed him that. Sneaking away without closure struck her as cowardly. Perchance even at this late hour, she could undo some of the damage she had wrought.

Adele
made a sweep of the room. In the bedside cabinet, she found a packet of condoms and some tissues. She stuffed the tissues into her coat pocket and dropped the condoms into the rubbish bin in the kitchen.

Outside
, the heavy rain had given way to a light drizzle. Adele moved through the lobby of the building and opened up her umbrella.

She
walked purposefully through the streets, avoiding puddles and the splashes from passing cars. The houses and shops appeared familiar, yet strange. She had never truly belonged here.

This time tomorrow I will be on a train, on my way to Aberdeen
.

Her friend Moira had agreed to put her up until she could find a job and a place of her own. Moira had not asked too many questions, for which Adele was grateful.

Adele had no cogent plan, only the strong conviction that her time in the Midlands was over. She had outstayed her welcome.  Perhaps she would find her father in the Granite City. Perhaps she would end up remaining on the game, serving the men from the rigs. Maybe that was her true vocation.

Whatever lay in wait for her, at least she would be nearer Jamie. She could not face the thought of living in Glasgow, becoming her mother’s
carer. That would be like death.

Adele’s pace slowed as the church came into view, but she kept going. She shook out her umbrella on the porch of the vicarage and rang the bell.

What to say? How to begin?

She took a deep breath and composed herself.

Seconds ticked by.

She rang again. There was no reply.

Simon might be in the church.

Adele made her way through the churchyard and
shoved on the big, pitted door, half-expecting it to be locked. It wasn’t.

There were no lights on, and the interior of St. Mark’s was
dark and uninviting. Adele was about to leave when a movement in one of the pews caught her eye.

In the half-light, she could discern the shape of a seated man. He appeared to be sobbing. Her first instinct was not to approach, but his distress drew her forward.

“
David?
” she said.

The man looked up. His hair was wet, plastered to his head, and his clothing was soaked through. He squinted at her through red, swollen eyes.

“Adele?”

“Are you all right? What are you doing here?”

“I’m – I’m not sure. I needed to sit down. I’ve just killed my wife, you see.”

“You’ve done what?” Adele stepped back.

David started to laugh, but it turned into a choking sob. He tried to breathe deeper, to fight the spasms in his chest. He doubled up against the pew in front, and for a moment Adele feared he was about to vomit. But he managed to steady himself. He stared forward, his breathing more regular. He held his hands before him and looked first at one, then the other, as if trying to understand something that eluded him.

“The tea is hot. The tea is cold. Claire is living. Claire is dead.”

Adele wanted to run, but her legs were rooted to the spot.

“David, what are you saying? You’re frightening me.”

“I’ve killed Claire. My wife, Claire. At the hospital. She asked me to. She was … I was there with her.”

He raised an eyebrow in puzzlement and dropped his hands onto his lap. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet. His eyes had a faraway, lost look.

“She was in so much pain,” he said, his mouth twisting at the memory. “Cancer. Terminal lung cancer. The King of Terrors. I put a pillow over her face. I put an end to the pain.”

The words seemed to surprise him.

Adele suppressed her
fear and sat down beside him. His body was limp, and he was in deep shock. She dared not touch him. It was unlikely he was dangerous, but Adele did not want to take any chances.

“Did you walk all the way here from the hospital? In the rain?”

David nodded.

“You’re soaking wet. You need to dry off. Go home, David.”

A bitter laugh escaped his lips.

“You sound like Nurse Linda at the hospital. She told me to go home. She said I’d done nothing wrong. I think she intends to cover up for me.
Yet another wife killer to escape scot-free. Call me Jim. That would be appropriate.”

Adele only half-understood what he was telling her, but replied, “
I expect the nurse thought you and your wife had suffered enough.”

“I don’t care one way or the other. If the police want to get involved, let them. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

In spite of her nervousness, Adele laid a hand on his arm. David didn’t react.

“Don’t you have a daughter?”

“Yes.”

“You need to think of her. You don’t want the police involved. You must say nothing. You did a merciful thing, David. Don’t punish yourself for it. Consider your daughter.”

“Katie,” he said, stirring. “I have to tell Katie.”

“Tell her what? That her mother has died
, is all you need to tell her. I doubt she could cope with hearing anything else.”

“Yes,” he whispered. “I must think of Katie.”

For one mad instant, Adele wanted to throw her arms around him, to tell him to come away with her. But the moment passed. She could not know what would come of David’s wife’s death, or even what the circumstances of it were. All she had to go on were the words of a traumatised man. The last thing she needed was involvement with the police. She had her son to think of.

Yet she wanted to offer him some comfort. His situation put her own into perspective.

There is always someone worse off than you
.

David looked at her.

“My wife isn’t coming back,” he said. “I’ll never see her again.”

A reminiscence pushed through into Adele’s mind.

“You can still talk to her.”

He snorted. “How? Through a medium? Via some priest? I don’t even believe in
God.”

“Listen, David. When my grandfather died, my grandmother told me she used to talk to him often. She wasn’t crazy. She said so long as her memory of him remained, so long as she could still converse with him, a part of him lived on.”

Adele could not read his expression or tell whether he had understood her, but she continued.

“Do you remember the photograph of my boy you saw on my fridge? Until recently, I wasn’t allowed to contact him. Social Services took him away. Yet I spoke to him every day in my head. I still do. We must never let our loved ones go. Not ever.”

David wiped his eyes.

“You are a good woman,”
he said.

“No, I’m not. In fact, I’m so not-good that I can’t stay here. I have to leave, to go back to Scotland.”

“Why?”

Adele shrugged. “It’s just how things are.”

“So we won’t meet again?”

“No.”

“I see.” He squeezed the cuff of his shirt and water trickled onto the floor. “I had better get home. There are things to do.”

“Do you want me to find you a taxi?”

“No, I can manage. I’m sorry I’m so … well, you know. Thank you for your kindness.”

David rose to his feet and
edged past her, moved to the door and pulled it open. He hesitated for a moment, as if there were something he had forgotten. But then he straightened up and walked out into the grey light.

Adele looked at the
place on the pew where David had sat, and touched the pool of rainwater. Sadness for her troubled friend enveloped her. She became conscious of the dampness permeating the air of St. Mark’s, and she shivered.

At the front of the church, the crucified Christ hung in the silence, watching her.

God knew where Simon was. But God wasn’t talking to her.

Time to go.

“So long, Jesus,” she said to the statue. “When you next talk to Simon, tell him I called round to say goodbye. I hope you’ll do that for me.”