Dead To Me

29

IT WAS TOO late to ring Nick. Rachel longed to talk to him, explain something of the freakshowfucking nightmare day. She had caught him briefly the evening before. Told him about her car chase, one in the bag. As a defence barrister, Nick hadn’t done more than his opening speech at the Old Bailey and had to wait, garnering ammunition, while the prosecution case was presented. He was confident, that was part of who he was: confident and assured. He’d gone to an independent school before doing his law degree. Rachel hadn’t even gone to university, but she’d done well at sixth form – well enough. By then already set on the police, she got work at a young offender’s institution and took various courses: first aid, computer training, kick-boxing. She learned to drive and volunteered as a special constable.

Nick never seemed particularly curious about her past and didn’t talk much about his own. It was the present and future that excited him. The same for Rachel. On the few occasions when he did ask, Rachel had dismissed her earlier years as boring: boring house, boring family, dull, middle of the road, thought I’d suffocate…

In the time since she joined the police, Rachel had reinvented herself. Learning new habits, new lifestyle. She chose clothes and accessories carefully, quality items that would last and most importantly of all would lend substance to the impression that she wanted to create: smart, stylish, contemporary. When she got her flat she didn’t bring anything from home – not that there was much to bring. If it had been down to Rachel, she’d have set the family home alight and razed it to the ground, but Dom still lived there, and their dad – when he could remember what his address was. In her own place everything was new, clean. She liked it simple, unfussy. It suited her new streamlined life. No baggage, no history, no ghosts weighing her down.

She kept in touch with Dom back then, but on her own terms. She didn’t invite him to hers but met him in town. She hoped he’d get out too, soon. He was bright, clever, a daft streak in him that needed channelling. Rachel had worried that he couldn’t seem to settle on any one thing. He’d messed about at school, but talked about learning a trade, carpentry or brick-laying, then next month it was catering or Internet start-ups. All ideas and no action. Rachel tried to point this out, but he got the hump. Thought she was getting at him.

Alison was out working by then and doing her diploma in social work, so Rachel was the one minding Dom. For a while she thought he might try the police, or the fire service. Once she’d left home, she felt her influence weakening. But he was a grown-up, he had to make his own way, sort himself out. Trouble was, he liked to be liked, was easily swayed. ‘They’re twats,’ Rachel remembered yelling at him one time when he’d been excluded from school for disruptive behaviour, along with his so-called mates. ‘They’ll drag you down with ’em. You’ll end up like Dad – or worse. That what you want?’

Now and again he tried to defend himself: ‘There’s no decent jobs, I’ve no bits of paper like you have. You expect me to work forty hours a week shovelling chips for five quid an hour? You don’t get it.’

‘I do,’ Rachel had said. ‘It’s down to you, pal. You find your own chances. No one’ll do it for you. You make your own luck.’

And he had. Bad luck. All that potential, all the energy and cheek and charm, lost because of some crackpot caper, some get-rich-quick scheme. Armed robbery. Four years. The shock when she heard, a shower of ice-cold water, then the sadness. Dom gone bad, after everything she had tried. But the overwhelming emotion was anger, spitting tacks just thinking about it. His whole life wrecked, all because he hadn’t the sense to say no, to walk away, let some other loser make up the numbers. She couldn’t forgive him. He’d chosen that path, he could walk it without her.

How could she ever have told Nick the half of it and kept his interest, his respect? Alky dad, benefit drinker, Mam ran off and left the kids – chavs the lot of them, brother serving time. Welcome to the Baileys. Nick’s smile fading, eyes growing cold with distaste, seeing her as some trashy slag from a council estate, ideas above her station. Fridge full of sterilized milk and pies and chips. Tat on the walls, Jeremy Kyle on the box. Common as muck. Thick as pigshit.

He would never know. That Rachel was gone now. The new Rachel made sure she’d never see the light of day again.

Gill had a face that’d turn milk.

‘She’s ignoring me,’ Rachel leaned over and whispered to Janet. ‘She’s got it in for me.’

Rachel looked exhausted, bags like thumbprints under her eyes. Janet thought she’d probably taken the suicide harder than she’d ever let on. She had brushed aside any attempt Janet made to ask her how she felt, shaking her head emphatically when Janet suggested she take some time off. Seemed to get no succour from the expressions of sympathy and nods of understanding that the lads had greeted her with as they each arrived for work.

Janet gave it a little while and then went in to talk to Gill. ‘You got a moment?’

‘Depends.’

‘About Rachel?’

‘Did you know she was moonlighting?’

‘No, she’d hardly tell me,’ Janet said.

‘Did she talk to you about this rape case?’ Gill said.

‘Yes. I told her there’s nothing in it.’

‘And she ignored you?’ said Gill.

‘So it seems. Look, she was using her initiative. OK, she was wide of the mark – but you can’t blame her for the suicide.’

‘I don’t, I wouldn’t. You know how I work.’ Gill raised her arms. ‘But I can’t have anyone breaking ranks. This is my call, Janet.’

‘I know that.’

‘What’s she doing now?’

‘Writing up her report for the IPCC,’ said Janet.

‘So, what changed your tune?’

‘Last night – she’s trying hard not to let it show, but it’s bound to hit her hard. She’s going to have to live with that. And if she has the potential you’ve talked about – and we saw some of that with the shopping,’ Janet pointed out, ‘then I think she deserves a bit more of a chance. We’re not exactly overflowing with brilliant young female detectives,’ she added.

‘Present company excepted.’

‘I said young.’

Gill sighed and shook her head. There wasn’t anything else Janet could think of to say, so she went back to her desk.

There was a message on her phone, from her mum: Thanks for presents going for lunch later u all well? xxx

Janet’s mum had ended up with smash-and-grab presents: bunch of flowers and an M&S voucher. Not good enough really, but it was that or nothing. Her mother had always been there for her, never making a song-and-dance out of it, but happy to babysit, to take the kids on the occasions when Ade and Janet’s work schedules clashed. To offer unlimited support after Joshua died.

She had been poleaxed at Janet’s sharp swerve in direction at A-levels. Before then Janet had been following firmly in her footsteps, heading for a lifelong career in teaching. Either English or History. Janet had secretly fancied primary, but her mum said there was too little recognition in the field, ‘Just look at how few men there are – that says it all.’ A feminist streak her mum had, underneath it all.

So when Janet suddenly switched to wanting a career in the police, donning a uniform and working with the riff-raff and the chancers, her mother was at a loss. ‘But why?’ she kept saying. ‘Please, just tell me why?’

Janet couldn’t admit that it was Veronica’s murder that had prompted her interest, or that one of the things that helped her recover from the breakdown was a determination to try to put things right now she knew about it – that would have been too weird. So she talked of the plus side: the decent pay and stability, the pension, the fact that it would be interesting and varied.

‘And dangerous,’ her mum said. ‘Look at Yvonne Fletcher.’

Policewoman shot in front of the Libyan embassy in London. ‘One person,’ said Janet.

‘What if that’s you?’

‘They’ll teach us to look after ourselves.’ Janet liked that idea: of having the guts and the technique to overpower some thug, of being able to break up a fight, make an arrest.

‘Perhaps it’s just a phase,’ she overheard her father say after one such discussion. ‘She’ll come round.’

‘I hope so,’ said her mother, ‘see sense.’

But she never did.

Rachel looked to Janet, guarded, expecting the worst. Janet flicked her eyes to the corridor, picked up her handbag. Rachel followed her.

They passed Kevin at his desk, sprawled in his chair, hands clasped at the back of his head. ‘Who’s been a naughty girl, then?’ he gloated.

Janet turned as Rachel opened her mouth to protest and flashed her a warning glance. Don’t! ‘He likes the attention,’ Janet said as they went through the door into the corridor. ‘Don’t encourage him.’

In the Ladies, Rachel leaned against the sink. ‘Well?’

Janet said, ‘I put in a word. She’s hacked off. It’s the thought of you going behind her back. She understands about the rest, about Rosie. Look, you don’t have to see them today, you know, if you’re not in a fit state.’

‘I’m OK. The IPCC, what could they do me for? I didn’t break any procedure.’

Putting a brave face on. ‘Didn’t exactly follow it either,’ Janet said. ‘Gill’s her own woman, but she expects things to be done properly.’

‘So she can sack me anyway?’

‘She can do what she likes – shunt you sideways, team you with Kevin for the rest of your natural life.’

‘Cow!’

‘What’s the worst that you can tell the IPCC?’ Janet said.

Rachel pulled a face. ‘I wasn’t wearing my body armour, no personal safety equipment. Barged in, wouldn’t take no for an answer. Maybe I was a bit full-on. She was psychotic, seeing things. But I’d no idea she was going to jump.’ Rachel looked down at the floor, her shoulders slumped.

‘It’s a big shock, something like that. If you bottle it-’

‘I’m fine. I didn’t know what was going on in her head.’

Nor me with yours. ‘No, and you tried to get her help, from what you said last night. Just be straight with them,’ Janet said. ‘They’ll be fine. They know what it’s like, how it feels to be caught up in this sort of thing.’

‘And Godzilla?’

‘Grovel.’