Strangers (42 page)

‘Go home, Lucy,’ Nehwal said again. ‘I mean it. Go home and put your feet up.’

Lucy nodded. Only to glance back when they were a few yards apart. ‘Ma’am?’

Nehwal looked round from the exit door.

‘Thanks,’ Lucy said.

‘For what?’

‘For not launching me off the front step. We haven’t worked together that long, but I’ve given you half a dozen reasons why you could and maybe why you should.’

Nehwal looked briefly thoughtful. ‘Everyone makes mistakes, Lucy. Even professionals. It’s human nature, and there are various degrees of seriousness within that – there are some foul-ups that simply can’t go unpunished. But the only people I don’t want in this job are the people who aren’t actually coppers. People who are playing at it, people who are only here for career advancement, people who’d rather be anywhere than on duty. No one could accuse
you
of that. Now, like I say … go home and get some rest. You need it.’

Lucy didn’t enter the private room that Des was located in, because when she glanced through the glass panel in the door, she saw that his wife, Yvonne, was already in there, alongside his two youngest children, a pair of cute pre-school girls wearing pigtails and, despite the autumn bleakness outside, bright, flowery dresses.

Des, for his part, though bandaged around the head, with his neck in a brace, lint looped under his chin, lots of stitching visible and one eye still firmly closed, was sitting up in bed in a hospital gown, grinning broadly as they showed him colouring books they’d recently filled in. An enormous bunch of grapes sat on a dish on the cabinet alongside him. There was also a preponderance of flowers, cards and boxes of chocolates.

Yvonne Barton was perched at the far end of the bed, while her daughters did all the talking. Lucy had never met her, nor had even been shown a picture of her until now, but was unsurprised to see a beautiful lady in her mid-forties, elegantly dressed in a dark skirt-suit and heels, her hair done up in a luxurious beehive. In comparison, Lucy felt like a scruffy urchin, her own hair still dripping dirt and leaf-mould, her face and hands grubby, her plastered arm zipped up inside a tracksuit top that barely fitted her. Quite a change from the ‘glam’ attire she’d adopted for SugaBabes. No one could say this case hadn’t brought out the chameleon in her. But none of this was why she decided not to intrude. The plain fact was that Des looked happy. He was with his family, those who totally and unconditionally loved him. Whatever he remembered about the beating he’d received, if he remembered anything at all, this was the perfect antidote to it. It hardly seemed fair crashing in on the cheery reunion like some brutal reminder of the nasty world waiting outside.

So she turned and walked away, exiting the hospital on its side where the taxi rank stood.

As soon as Lucy stepped outdoors, the cold embraced her viciously. She stumbled to the crash barrier, lightheaded. She was already in thrall to that curious physical weakness that always seems to kick in after hospital treatment. Despite the painkillers, her arm was hurting and her fatigue running bone-deep.

There were no taxis at present. So she leaned on the metal barrier and gazed bleary-eyed across the car park. In her addled state, it seemed to elongate, to telescope outward in length and breadth, acres and acres of damp, leaf-strewn tarmac. Lucy rubbed at the back of her neck, suddenly suspecting that she was going to be sick. She retched, but it was so long since she’d eaten that nothing came out. And then someone spoke to her.

‘Lucy?’

Lucy looked round – to spy her mother, coated and gloved against the chill, coming cautiously along the crash barrier. A padded anorak, one of Lucy’s own, was folded over Cora’s arm. Her face wore a deep frown of motherly concern.

‘How are you?’ she asked.

‘It’s nothing,’ Lucy stuttered. ‘Nothing a … a six-month luxury cruise wouldn’t put right.’

‘Lucy … you need to come home now, so I can look after you.’

‘Yeah, course, Mum …’

‘I’m serious, darling. You need to stop this foolishness … and come home.’

Lucy straightened up. Stiffly, defiantly.

And yet despite the anger of recent days, not to mention the sense of betrayal still nagging at her, it was difficult in her bruised and battered state to continue feeling hostile towards her parent; she was the sole stable fixture in Lucy’s life, the one person who’d always been there, who she’d always been able to turn to whether with a cut knee or a broken heart, the person who’d offered comfort and control in equal measure.

‘You know, Mum,’ Lucy stammered. ‘Because of your friends … a girl who never had a chance in life died last night … in a sodding sewer.’

‘I’m aware what happened,’ Cora said sadly. ‘And I’m aware there’s some culpability on my part.’

‘
Some
culpability!’ Lucy did her best to bristle. ‘This wonderful guy you once knew signed Tammy’s death warrant the instant you gobbed off to him about me!’

‘We can talk about that later. First, you’ve got to come home.’

‘I don’t have to do any such thing. Quite clearly, me and you live in different worlds … only you don’t seem to have realised it.’

‘I can’t help the past, darling.’ Cora imbued the word ‘darling’ with absolute sincerity. This was Lucy’s mother at her sympathetic, soft-hearted best, and yet Lucy still wondered if she knew the woman anymore.

‘The past, yeah,’ Lucy said. ‘But now you’ve brought it to the present. And someone’s dead because of it. I’m lucky
I’m
not dead. You know they shot my bloody shoe off!’

‘Look,’ Cora said. ‘You’ve got a serious injury. It’s patched up, but you can’t go back to that half-furnished bungalow, where there’s probably no hot water, no central heating …’

Lucy shook her head, which effort alone toppled her against the barrier. ‘Aren’t you even sorry?’

‘Of course I’m sorry.’ Cora put an arm around her shoulders. ‘But I did what I did for the best … or so I thought. I realised almost immediately afterwards that it was a mistake, but I can’t do anything about that now.’

‘You really don’t know these old friends of yours at all, do you?’

‘Again, we’ll talk about that later. Look at you, love … you can barely stand up.’

‘This is nothing.’ Lucy shook herself free, and tottered again. ‘Just … just tired.’

‘When did you last have something to eat?’

‘I could’ve had something last night when they brought me in, but they advised against in case I needed surgery … which I didn’t. So I’m fine.’

‘You still have to come home, Lucy. I told your superintendent that’s where you’d be if she needed you. Yes, that’s right …’ Cora nodded, bright-eyed; an effort to infuse some stern motherly humour into the conversation. ‘She called me at home to let me know you’d been hurt, and I chatted with her for quite some time while we were waiting for you to get your arm fixed. I got to know her pretty well.’

‘I hope you were careful,’ Lucy snorted. ‘It’s not quite as easy to pull the wool over Priya Nehwal’s eyes as it was mine.’

Cora remained determined. ‘Is this the way it’s going to be? Every time I say anything, you try to get the better of me with some smart-arse reply? Fine, I accept. It’s the price I’ll pay for what happened. In the meantime, you need to come home.’ She draped the spare anorak over Lucy’s shoulders and looped a scarf around her neck. ‘And as your mother, I have to be there to supervise it … so that cold, dreary bungalow of yours is not an option. Do you understand?’

Lucy didn’t argue further. She’d already decided that she couldn’t go back to Cuthbertson Court; not at present. The thought of a warm drink, a warm bed and someone to assist if she needed help was just too seductive.

‘One thing you did right, Mum,’ Lucy said as they trudged across the car park, leaning on each other. ‘You made me realise how hard this job can be. I had no idea before. But whatever you think, tough … I’m staying in it.’

‘Fine,’ Cora said. ‘But one thing at a time, eh?’

Chapter 32

On arriving home, Lucy had as thorough a wash as she could with one arm immobilised, accepted a bowl of chicken soup and a mug of milk, and then, as her mother instructed, limped upstairs, lay on the quilt in her bedroom and dropped her head into a soft pillow.

She’d often found at the end of unpleasant shifts that she didn’t slide into sleep easily, despite being physically and emotionally drained. Some police officers could hit an internal switch and it all went away. Lucy had never possessed this gift, though she was good at putting on a front. Now that she was alone, with no one to impress, she had no choice but to lie there and relive it. And though it wouldn’t be true to say that she didn’t sleep at all – she certainly dozed – she tossed and turned constantly, her mind awash with half-formed memories trawled from the difficult hours that had recently passed, snippets of reality interwoven with fantasies and imaginings. None were in any way relaxing.

‘Why are you so wedded to this awful job, Lucy?’ Tammy asked from the end of the bed, where she stood with a cup of tea clasped in her hands.

Lucy mumbled in response. There was no energy left in her body with which to wake up and tackle this thorny issue. Besides, somewhere deep down, she knew that it wasn’t Tammy; it was her mother.

‘What are you trying to prove? Who are you trying to prove it to? You ride that terrible motorbike, you get shot at for a living. I’m at my wits’ end every day you go on duty.’

Lucy couldn’t respond to that either. In fact, she
wouldn’t
. They’d had this conversation so often before that it was no longer worth a reply, especially as it was clear that her mother now had other, less admirable reasons for not wanting her daughter to remain a police officer.

Of course, that didn’t stop Cora talking. Mumbling in fact, continually as Lucy tried to sleep. No longer conversing with her daughter as such, but with someone somewhere else in the house – for what seemed like hours.

At first Lucy fancied she was dreaming this too. But gradually, as her room swam properly back into focus, and she squinted at the digital clock on her sideboard and saw that it was now two-thirty in the afternoon, she understood that it was reality; that her mother was discussing matters with someone downstairs. They weren’t talking loudly, but their voices were intense and animated. Whoever the visitor was, it was a man – she could tell that from his masculine tone. The words were inaudible, or so Lucy thought – until she levered herself upright on her one good arm, to listen.

‘So what are we going to do about this, Cora?’ the man asked.

‘At some point she’ll have to listen to me,’ Lucy’s mother replied.

‘Why would she?’ he said. ‘She’s on a mission.’

‘A mission? To do what?’

‘To be the man of the house. What else?’

‘That’s a very sexist point of view.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake … with all this crap coming down, you’re giving me PC bullshit!’

And now Lucy realised who was speaking – at last the voice was familiar to her, horribly so – and she could scarcely believe it.

‘There are reasons behind everything
everyone
does,’ the man said. ‘Would I have got to the top of the tree if I hadn’t been desperate to put my abysmal childhood behind me? Not very likely. She’s grown up with a mum who’s a perfect lady. But she needed some of the other stuff too, to counterbalance … someone who’d raise his voice now and then, who’d throw a punch if the family was threatened. She needed a dad. So now she’s fulfilled that role, herself. She’s opted for the most macho career she could find. And that’s not a criticism, by the way … I think it’s praiseworthy. But it still gives the rest of us a big, big problem.’

Lucy almost tripped in her haste to get downstairs, where she burst into the lounge, kicking the door open so hard that it slammed on the wall, shaking the ornaments in her mother’s display cabinet.

‘What the hell is this maniac doing here?’
she bellowed.

Cora was seated on the couch, hands joined on her lap as though in prayer. On the other side of the room, Frank McCracken – now ‘dressed down’ in a sweater, slacks and deck-shoes, slouched in the armchair. Before Cora could reply, Lucy rounded on the gangster.

‘Get your arse out of here!’
She jabbed a vicious finger at him.
‘Right now, or I’ll beat your sodding brains out!’

McCracken shrugged at Cora. ‘Told you she reminded me of me.’

Cora, suddenly flustered, opened her mouth to reply but nothing came out.

Glaring at her with accusation, Lucy stormed across the room to the front window to see how many goons he had waiting outside. But the terraced street was deserted.

And then, belatedly, his last comment struck home. She turned stiffly back to look at him.

‘What did you say?’

He arched an eyebrow. ‘You mean you haven’t worked it out yet?’

Lucy’s spine crawled as she stared from McCracken to her mother. It more than panicked her when the latter hung her head, refusing to meet her gaze.

‘Mum … what is he talking about?’

Cora still said nothing.

‘I said what the hell is this bastard talking about?’

‘Sorry I wasn’t around much, pet,’ McCracken replied on Cora’s behalf. ‘But I suspect you’d have preferred it that way … wouldn’t you?’

‘I’d prefer to get a straight answer!’ Lucy snapped, though she determinedly didn’t look at him. ‘Mum, what’s happening here? You’ve got to tell me!’

Cora analysed the carpet. ‘All I ever wanted was what was best for you …’

‘Don’t give me that Saint Cora crap!’ Lucy shouted. ‘What’s going on? Why the hell is he
here
?’

Cora finally glanced up. Her eyes glinted with moisture. ‘All those years ago, me and Frank … we weren’t just friends.’

‘You’re not …?’ Lucy shook her head. ‘You’re not … telling me what I think you’re …? No!’ She shook her head again, violently. ‘
This is a lie!
This is a total fabrication! He’s got you onside somehow, he’s made you think you’re actually part of his team and that I’m the enemy. Mum, he’s a career criminal, a murderer …’