Escaping Life (10 page)

“Police!” he
bellowed in his grainiest, throatiest voice.  “FREEZE!”  There was a silence in
the shop, an immediate and blunt silence, interrupted only by the shuffling of
panic that was confined to the magazine aisle.  Even the innocent dropped their
shopping baskets wondering how they had inadvertently broken the law.  The
teenagers were still shuffling about as he took slow and deliberately placed
steps towards the group, like a modern day Clint Eastwood cowboy whose boots
would resonate on the dusty wooden floor as he squared up to his next
unsuspecting victim, in the movies that he remembered watching with his father
as a child.  The sound of panic was escalating, growing in intensity, the
teenagers not yet backed up by enough confidence to face this situation off. 
He walked slowly towards the group, and stood at the end of the aisle, bringing
his suspects into view.

“Good morning
boys”, he growled, more than a little sarcastically.  He pulled out his ID
card, flicking open the small black wallet and holding it out in front of him. 
They tried to look innocent as their eyes fixed on the shiny silver badge.  They
could see the red lettering; ‘DETECTIVE’.  They stood still, just like when the
head teacher had caught them rummaging in the chemistry cupboards at school
trying to find the blocks of sodium that they would have thrown into the river and
stood back to admire the flame like regular little fire starters, as it
skittered about the surface of the water.  They hadn’t managed to find them in
time, but today they had no such luck.  They were too far down the line this
time; the crime was halfway to completion.  In fact, there was already a
magazine about to slip right out from underneath one of the boys’ T shirts. 
Jack Fraser stood, towering above the sweaty-faced boy, his acne disguised only
by his rosy red cheeks.  It could have been from heat or embarrassment.  “So
what have we got here?”  Jack Fraser snatched the magazine out from underneath
sweaty boy’s T-shirt.  The rest of the shoppers had already relaxed, reassuming
their innocence and enjoying the show.  Those who couldn’t already see, had
repositioned themselves to get a closer look at the three terrified rabbits, their
wide eyes caught in the headlights.

“I was gonna
pay for it!”  Jack Fraser wondered if sweaty boy actually expected him to
believe him.

“Really?” he
questioned slowly, nodding his head, “in which case, show me your money.”  The
other two boys were becoming fidgety, fuelled by the overwhelming urge to bolt,
which was desperately willing them to run.  Jack Fraser was desperate for one
of them to make a move too.  Even after all of his years as an officer, he
still took so much pleasure in these small incidents; this was fun for him. 
Knowing full well that he hadn’t any money in his pockets, they boy looked
helpless.  Jack could see the thoughts running through the boy’s brain as
clearly as if he were at the cinema watching them unfold on the screen:  the
police cell, the visit from a lawyer, the inquisition, and then worst of all,
the arrival of his parents.  Jack Fraser could have almost felt sorry for him. 
Jack Fraser could see he was either about to cry, or confess.  Or both.

“I’m sorry,
sir.  I won’t do it again.”  Jack Fraser had been quietly rolling up the
magazine.  Raising it up, he swiped each of them lightly on the side of the
head.

“Get out of
here!  Don’t let me see your face around here again!”  They were running away too
fast to make the corner of the aisle, and thus in their efforts to escape the
iron grip of the police, sent a small display stand tipping over and the rest
of the magazines from inside their shirts tumbling to the ground.  As it spun
on the ground, spewing its contents across the floor, the boys ran out of the
shop.  Jack picked up the stand, cradling the last few items still clinging to
it.  The shopkeeper hurried over to him, a friendly faced Sikh man, with a
large white beard and dark red turban. 

“Thank you so
much officer.  Thank you,” the shopkeeper offered.

“No problem,” Jack’s
gravelly voice now softer.  “Sorry about the mess though.”  Together they
cleared up the display and shuffled together the magazines. 

“Now officer,
how can I thank you?  You want cigarettes?  Newspaper?  Coffee?  We have good
coffee.”  He pointed to a small counter-top machine, the type with a single
nozzle that, depending on your selection, could dispense tea, coffee, hot
chocolate or chicken soup.  He had had the chicken soup before from a similar
machine.  It had tasted like stock water with dried up bits of vegetable in it,
and had burned the roof of his mouth after he’d drunk it too quickly. 

“Information,”
he said as he once again flicked open the ID badge, before sliding it back into
his inside pocket.  You must have heard about the woman’s body that was found
on the nearby Lyme beach?”  The shopkeeper nodded.  “Wondering if you remember
anything strange the week before.  Any strange sightings?  Strange customers?” 
The shopkeeper thought hard, as he raised his head in the air.  It must have
been 30 degrees in the sticky little shop.  Jack Fraser wondered how hot he
must be underneath that long white pyjama ensemble and heavy looking turban.  From
his thick accent, Jack assumed that the shopkeeper must be a first generation
immigrant.  He must have endured thirty summers of wet British weather now, and
yet still somehow seemed untroubled by the overpowering heat.  The shopkeeper
looked Jack Fraser straight in the eye.

“There was one
strange woman, about thirty-five, I would say.  She was wearing very old looking
clothes.  Like clothes I can remember from when I first came to England.  Not
your modern day things that one sees ladies wearing nowadays.  Very early one Sunday,
couple of weeks ago.  About four o’clock.  She was here wanting to buy
cigarettes.  I gave her a pack and she went on her way.  I thought perhaps she
was in trouble.”  Jack Fraser was pretty sure that the last bit of information
was pure embellishment.  Decoration for his story.  But the rest of the
information - now that was interesting.

“Can you
describe her to me?  What was she wearing?”  Jack Fraser listened intently as
the shopkeeper described her clothes:  an old brown dress; funny white necklace
that looked like bones.  This sounded like the dead woman.  This sounded like
the face he couldn’t get out of his mind.

“You’ll take a
coffee?  I must thank you with a gift.”  He was already placing the cup under
the nozzle of the table-top machine.  They watched as a stream of water gurgled
out of the machine, and then the hot thick black liquid, followed by a splash
of milk.  The shopkeeper handed Jack Fraser the coffee.  “There you go,
detective.  You are welcome anytime.”  The small queue of customers had grown
impatient at the time dedicated to the overdressed cop, and Jack could hear
their impatient sighs and the shuffling of feet as they grew hot and bothered
behind him.  They wanted him to take the coffee and get the hell out of there.  He
thanked the shopkeeper as he mopped his brow with a tissue found in his pocket,
and he was glad to get back out into the sunshine where there was at least a light
breeze.  
If this was the woman
, he thought,
she had been in
Chesterwood at four in the morning on the day she died.
  He set the coffee
down between his feet on the pavement and took out his black notepad.  He
scribbled down the shopkeeper’s words because, based on the description of the
clothing, this was his first positive sighting when the woman was still alive. 
He had something.  He felt the vibration of his phone in his pocket, and he
grappled inside.  It was Gibb.

“What you got
for me?”

“Boss, I called
down to Wellbeck, spoke to your man down there.  He knew about the accident with
Rebecca Jackson.  Fourth of April, two thousand and six.”  This was how Gibb
spoke.  He gave all the details.  It was as if he assumed all conversations
previously had been forgotten.  He hadn’t yet learned to be concise.  “There
was nothing left of that car.”  ‘
There was nothing left of that car’.   
He
replayed the words in his head, and he immediately reached for a cigarette.  It
was difficult to light as the gentle summer breeze thwarted his efforts.  ‘
There
was nothing left of that car’.   
He was silent only for seconds as the
words replayed in his head, but it was enough to make Gibb uncomfortable. 
 
“Boss,
you there?” 

“Yeah, yeah.  I
hear you.  Nothing left,” he said as he finally took in a deep drag of his
cigarette.

“That’s right,”
Gibb repeated.  “Told me there was no way anybody was getting out of that car
alive.  It was completely burnt out.”

“Yeah, I got it
already.”  He didn’t want the details.  He could imagine them clearly enough. 
The image of a still burning car was etched into his own mind, but it wasn’t
Rebecca Jackson’s.  “Good, scrub her off the list.  Anything from the lab?”

“No, still
waiting Boss.  Hobbs called ‘em, said another day or so.”

“Two more
fucking days?  Unbelievable!”  He had hung up the phone before Gibb had the
chance to reply.  He walked his way slowly through the streets, sucking hard on
his cigarette.  He was glad they didn’t have to follow up this woman in the car
crash anymore.  He could close that chapter.  He didn’t want to think about
smashed- in windows.  He didn’t want to taste the petrol fumes in his mouth
again, or feel the heat from the flames against his skin.  He didn’t want to be
pulled out of a smashed- up car listening as the crew screamed:  ‘It’s gonna go
up!  Get him out!’

As he climbed
up into his Explorer, he sipped on the coffee.  “Surprisingly good,” he said,
as the heat of the coffee brought beads of sweat to his forehead.  ‘
BEEP
BEEP’.   
He felt his pocket vibrate again.  He pulled his arms out of his
jacket and pulled out the mobile.

‘8pm, Flanagan’s. 
Don’t be late.’ 
Kate
had relented and finally agreed to meet him.  It would be good to have her
company; he didn’t want to go home alone again tonight.  Just the thought of
having to chase up this car accident down in Wellbeck was enough to stir up the
memories, the smells, and the taste of the past.  He didn’t want to go home
alone surrounded by the photographs of the dead body.  He didn’t want to eat or
sleep alone.  As he tapped out a response to Kate, he felt that same pang of
guilt that he had felt earlier on in the day and he thought again about Roxanne
as she had risen, picked up the money and left behind her nothing but temporary
relief and an overwhelming sense of loneliness.  He knew that he needed Kate
more than ever:  it felt as if his fate was catching up with him.  Every day he
thought more and more about his old car as it burned before his eyes whilst he
drifted in and out of consciousness, his skin scalded and his back grazed from
being pulled out only half alive.  He was beginning to accept the fact that
living in the suffocating vacuum of a dead family was slowly but very surely
killing him too.

Lyme beach was
still cornered off; the blue and white police tape flickered and flapped like
the bunting that Mrs. Lyons would string out for the summer fete back in
Haven.  She would string it in zigzags through the streets attached high up on the
lamp posts.  Only this was to celebrate the glory of the past summer, not the
unwanted discovery of a dead body.     

Jack Fraser didn’t
need to show his ID badge to the guarding officer, but he always did anyway as
he ducked underneath the flickering tape and stepped tentatively back onto the
sands of Lyme beach.  He had scanned the site himself every time he came here and
today was no different as he looked for any potentially missed clues; he knew
how sloppy some cops could be.  He spoke with the crime scene investigators,
who, after telling him that they hadn’t found anything new, assured him that
they would be on site and investigating for at least another week.

He arrived home
that night unsatisfied with the day’s work.  The sharp jangle rang out through
the cavernous apartment as he threw his keys down onto the glass hallway
table.  Nobody heard him come home.  He threw his jacket down onto the crumpled
leather chair as always and walked towards the photographs which decorated his
floor.  He looked at the dead woman’s face; her eyes were open just a little,
as if she had just woken up and the summer light was hurting her rich green
eyes. 
How beautiful they would have been in life
, he thought.  Her
cheeks were sunken too.  Her whole face had the mark of death; grey and inert,
solid but yet somehow still limp.  He didn’t want to work anymore today and
besides, he could see from his watch that it was nearly seven-fifteen, and he
didn’t want to be late.  ‘
8pm, Flanagan’s.  Don’t be late’. 
He had his
reprieve, and he didn’t want to mess it up.

He took a quick
shower, grabbed some clean underwear from his bedside table and got himself out
of the house as fast as he possibly could.  Glancing in the mirror in his
hallway, the big open space that it was that was really just an extension to
the lounge, he thought he didn’t look too bad, save the tired looking eyes.  He
looked at his watch.  Seven thirty-two.  He had time.

It was one
minute past eight as he walked through the door of Flanagan’s.  He thought for
a moment that Kate had already left. 
OK,
I’m late, but only by a
minute. 
 There was no parking near Flanagan’s, but she always insisted
that it was this bar they came to before they had dinner.  He scanned the room,
searching for the raven black hair that stood out against any other head,
wherever she was.  He couldn’t see it.  He scanned the room again and then felt
that familiar gentle hand as it rested into his shoulder.