Desperate Measures

Chapter 1

‘No one is killing anyone,’ Janine said.

Eleanor and Tom began objecting but Janine raised her hands. ‘We finish the meal like civilized human beings, without squabbling or fighting, or you two can go upstairs – no pudding and no screen time.’

‘God.’ Eleanor made a show of rolling her eyes and Tom scowled.

Charlotte, aged four, clapped her hands.

‘That really isn’t helping,’ Janine said to Charlotte.

Janine seemed to spend half her life as a referee. Eleanor at fifteen was prickly and volatile and dripped misery like every other teenager while Tom, five years her junior, was either winding his sister up or bearing the brunt of her crushing putdowns.

‘I want pudding,’ Charlotte said.

‘Please,’ Janine prompted.

‘Please.’ Charlotte beamed. Happy little soul. Who knows where she’d found that equilibrium. Her life had been the most unsettled to date, born into the immediate aftermath of the marriage break-up, her dad Pete living elsewhere with Tina and now their new baby. Charlotte had been looked after by a succession of nannies with the help of Janine’s eldest child Michael while Janine worked. Now Michael had left home, a man of the world, and Janine was still adjusting to the change.

Janine got the ice cream out of the freezer. Running the hot water over a spoon, she caught Eleanor’s reflection in the window, mouthing something at Tom. Nothing pleasant, Janine was sure.

‘I can see you, Eleanor,’ Janine said.

‘Well, he’s a saddo. I’m sick of it. Loser.’ Eleanor lunged forward towards her brother.

‘What did I say?’ Janine turned round.

I don’t want any, anyway,’ Eleanor said, ‘I hate manky ice cream.’ She shoved back her chair and thundered out of the room.

‘Hah!’ Charlotte said.

‘Indeed,’ Janine said.

Tom was still brooding, mouth set, brow furrowed.

‘You want a flake in it?’ Janine said.

‘Have we got some?’ Tom said.

‘We just might have.’

‘I couldn’t see any,’ Tom said.

‘Because I have got a new hiding place,’ Janine said. If she didn’t stash the sweets away the kids attacked them like a plague of locusts.

‘You dish this up.’ She put the tub of ice cream and the spoon on the table near to Tom.

Out in the hallway, once the door had swung shut behind her, she got the old shopping bag down from the coat rack and picked out three flakes.

She was just helping Charlotte stick one into her ice cream when her phone rang. Richard Mayne, her Detective Inspector.

‘You do it.’ Janine handed the flake to Charlotte.

‘Richard?’ Janine moved back into the hall as she answered the call.

‘Dead body,’ he said, ‘just been called in.’

‘Suspicious?’

‘I’d say – shot three times.’

‘OK. I’ll see you there.’

Richard gave her the address, on the Chorlton/Whalley Range border, and rang off.

Janine took a breath and went upstairs and knocked on Eleanor’s door.

‘Go away,’ said a muffled voice from inside.

‘Eleanor-’

‘I don’t want any ice cream and I don’t want another stupid, boring lecture.’

‘I need you to babysit,’ Janine said.

A strangled groan from Eleanor.

‘I’ve been called into work,’ Janine said.

‘I hate your job.’

‘Eleanor, I need to go.’

‘Why can’t you take them to Dad’s?’ Eleanor said.

‘You know why. We’ve not arranged it and while Alfie’s so small it’s not fair. You’re here and I need you to be responsible.’

‘You could ring Sylvie.’

Sylvie was the babysitter cum nanny. ‘She’s not back till tomorrow,’ Janine said. ‘I’ll pay you.’

Janine was aware of the time, anxious to leave.

‘Will you?’ A change of tone from Eleanor.

‘Yes – and that means I expect you to do it professionally. No being mean to Tom. A bath and bedtime story for Charlotte.’

There was the sound of movement from inside the room. Then Eleanor opened the door. ‘How much?’ she said.

‘The going rate,’ Janine said.

‘OK.’

‘I’ll tell them I’m off,’ Janine said.

In the kitchen Janine explained about work and stressed to Tom that he had to cooperate with his big sister and no more bickering.

‘Can I have your ice cream?’ he said.

‘All right then but not this.’ She grabbed the flake and bent to kiss him, he dodged, ‘Ewww! Get off.’

Janine kissed Charlotte on the top of her head, less ice cream there than anywhere else, and then set off.

In the car, she keyed the postcode into the satnav and saw that the address was only a couple of miles to the west. It was still light, just before seven, on an early autumn day.

I hate your job, Eleanor had said. And I love it, Janine thought. It was always challenging and there were times when it was exhausting, when it was hard to stomach, times when it could break your heart if you let it. But she was experienced and skilled, she had to be to reach the level of Detective Chief Inspector, and the work was compelling. Most of all, it mattered – to her and her team and to the people who were left behind.

Monday – 24 hours earlier

Chapter 2

When the coroner announced the verdict, Adele Young felt as if someone had reached into her chest and torn the heart from her. After all this, the weeks of grieving, the long dark nights with the walls closing in and all she could feel was an absence, Marcie missing, after the battle to try and get someone to listen, to take her seriously and understand that her daughter’s death could have been prevented. After all that to be told this.

The clerk was calling for order. Adele’s eyes flew across the courtroom to the public gallery where he sat, Dr Halliwell, and she saw relief in the twitch of his mouth, then he looked straight at her, some sort of sick triumph in his eyes.

Accidental death. She staggered and felt Howard grab her, heard him shout, ‘Travesty, a bloody travesty!’

Adele bit down hard on her tongue, determined not to weep. She could bawl her eyes out later, in private, but in public she would not give them that satisfaction.

She wondered again how it would’ve been if Marcie had been some rich white kid instead of a poor black girl. If Marcie had been the GP’s daughter or the daughter of the coroner sat up there in his fancy carved chair. Would it have been accidental death then?

People were filing out. She turned to Howard; his eyes burned with outrage.

‘The papers will be outside,’ she said, ‘the telly.’ Marcie’s inquest had attracted plenty of media attention already. Adele’s belief that Dr Halliwell had treated Marcie wrongly and that medical neglect had led to her death made for a human interest story. It had attracted sharks too. Legal firms (at least that’s what they called themselves) had hounded her, touting for business, eager to bring suits against the GP. It wasn’t money she was interested in, it was recognition, acknowledgment, apology. It was making people see that doctors should listen to their patients, to family and not play God. She didn’t want her efforts to be tainted with the smell of chasing money, no matter how hard up they were. And times were hard. Harder than they’d ever been.

‘It doesn’t stop here,’ she said to Howard. ‘We carry on.’

He gave a shake of his head. She saw the muscles in his face move, his jaw set tight, too angry to speak. He had been with Adele every step of the way even though Marcie wasn’t his by birth. He’d moved in six years back and come to love Adele’s daughter as his own. He had been at Adele’s side day and night. They’d taken out a loan recently so he could buy a decent suit to wear to the court, and smart shoes. This morning he’d shaved his face and oiled his hair and put on a clean shirt with the suit and she was so proud of him, proud and thankful. He was a fine-looking man, a good man, skin the colour of dark chocolate, almond eyes, a slow smile which still made her stomach turn even after all these years. Not that there had been anything to smile about in these last months.

She put her hand on his shoulder. ‘Come on.’

Their appearance outside was stage managed by someone from the court press office. All the main players, the doctor and herself, had to be ready and in place. Adele would be able to speak first, if she wished, then Dr Halliwell. She did wish.

The scrum of photographers and reporters hummed and surged like a swarm of bees.

Adele felt a moment’s dizziness and reached for Howard’s arm. A microphone was thrust into her face. ‘Mrs Young how do you feel about today’s verdict?’

‘Devastated,’ she said with a crack in her voice but she reined in her nerves and spoke louder. ‘We are not giving up. We will keep fighting for justice for Marcie until we win.’

‘You’re not satisfied with the jury’s verdict?’

‘Satisfied?’ Howard shouted, ‘This isn’t justice, this is a mockery.’

Don’t. ‘Wait!’ She spoke over Howard, squeezing his hand to silence him. If he lost his temper here who knew what he might say or do and then they’d be labelled troublemakers, lowlife scum, the same as Marcie had been by the worst of gutter press.

She turned back to face the cameras. ‘We’ll get an independent review for Marcie and if that doesn’t work we’ll go to the ombudsman. These professionals need to start listening to us, to the families. And we need to stand up for ourselves and for the ones that are vulnerable, like Marcie, because no-one listens to them. We still believe that her care fell well short of what was required. We are especially concerned that our wishes were ignored, our concerns dismissed by her GP and we believe that led directly to her death. If we had been listened to, Marcie would still be with us today.’

Inside her something broke. She felt tears in her throat, and pain in her chest. She fought to breathe. At some signal, a final round of photographs was captured before Adele and Howard were edged away and Dr Halliwell took centre stage. He looked sober, dignified, with his greying hair and his smart camel coat. Silver spoon, that’s what her mother would’ve said, nursed on a silver spoon.

Dr Halliwell made all the right noises; Relieved… very sad case of Marcie Young… sanity prevailed. As though Adele with her quest was insane, mental, off the wall.

She watched him talk, the man who had been her family GP all her life, who had seen her through her pregnancy and given Marcie her first jabs, the man who prescribed anti-depressants when Adele went to him in tears, at her wit’s end with her daughter’s antics. The man who, in the last prescriptions he had written for Marcie Young, signed her death warrant as far as Adele was concerned.

She watched him speak, that mock sincerity, slick tongue and clever words. And she hated him. For his arrogance and his lies. For what he had done. She hated him and she wished him dead.

‘You have to keep calm,’ Adele said to Howard in the taxi home.

He shot her a glance, his eyes still bright with anger. ‘I couldn’t believe it,’ he said, ‘it’s all a sham, a fucking sham.’

‘It’s all there is,’ she said.

‘People like us, the system is stacked against us.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’ She was suddenly angry at him. ‘But there’s nothing else we can do.’

He looked away from her, out of the window at the rain. ‘He needs teaching a lesson.’

Adele just caught his words. ‘Don’t you dare,’ she said quietly, anxious that the taxi driver might overhear. ‘Don’t you start thinking like that. That’s no answer.’

He didn’t reply. They sat in silence. She listened to the beat of the windscreen wipers and the drone of the traffic and closed her eyes. Inside she was trembling, her stomach knotted, her chest aching. She had clung to the hope that today would bring some resolution. Instead they’d been kicked in the teeth.

Chapter 3

Peggy’s breathing was worse. Roy checked that the oxygen mask was in the right position and that the cylinder had plenty in reserve.

Peggy was asleep, she’d barely woken in the past few days. The medicine that helped with the pain also made her drowsy.

He wondered if he should send for the priest yet. She was dying. He knew that. Dr Halliwell had explained it clearly, talked to them about hospices, but Peggy wanted to be at home. And Roy wanted her there. Nevertheless calling the priest seemed so final, like throwing in the towel. But if he delayed and she died before having the last rites she’d never forgive him. No, that wasn’t true, he thought, Peggy had always been a forgiving sort, a peacemaker, a good Catholic. It was more that Roy would feel bad for letting her down if he misjudged the timing.

She was so young, only sixty, most people lived into their eighties or nineties now. But Peggy had never been strong health-wise: asthma all her life and then the emphysema and the heart trouble, problems to do with her weight, too. She tried to lose some, countless times, diets and Weight Watchers, eating Ryvita and cottage cheese after making hot pot or pie and chips for Roy. Roy had gained weight too, and more since he stopped work to look after Peggy. At the warehouse he probably used to walk a few miles a day, overseeing the packers, dealing with snarl-ups in the system when incoming stock didn’t match the dockets or the goods were faulty.

Now and then, as a young man, he used to go out hiking in the countryside, down to the peaks in Derbyshire. After he met Peggy, walks were gentler, on the level, along riversides or through country parks, the deer park at Dunham Massey, that sort of thing.

Peggy still had a pretty face, round cheeked, warm brown eyes, even though the grey had replaced her chestnut curls.

She stirred a little, made a croaking note as she inhaled, but her eyes didn’t open. It was two hours until her next dose was due, though if she woke sooner and asked for it she could have some of the Oramorph. He wouldn’t see her suffer. He was clear on that. And the doctor had said there’d be no need.

He’d have to see if she’d take some Movicol as well to help with the constipation. She’d not eaten today. He’d made her Weetabix and warm milk but she couldn’t have swallowed more than a teaspoonful.

He left the room quietly and went into the kitchen. The parish bulletin was pinned up on the notice board. Roy took it down and turned it over to read the phone number then keyed it in, ready to speak to Father McDovey.

Father McDovey put out his hands, took Roy’s between them and grasped tightly.

‘How are you bearing up?’

‘I’m OK,’ Roy said, ‘thank you, Father. Come through. Would you like a drink?’

‘No, thank you,’ the priest said, ‘I’ve been plied with tea and biscuits all morning.’ He smiled. ‘Now.’ He set his briefcase down on the kitchen table. ‘In here I have an order of service for you, so you can follow what I’m doing.’ He drew out a laminated card and passed it to Roy. ‘Is Peggy awake?’

‘She’s drifting in and out,’ Roy said, ‘but never awake very long now.’

‘So Communion?’ the priest asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ Roy said.

‘She can swallow?’

‘Yes, small amounts.’

‘Well, we’ll see how it goes. It’s a sad time but she has the love of God and his mercy.’

Roy nodded, a lump in his throat.

As the priest began his ministrations, touching Peggy’s eyes and nose and mouth with the oil and reciting the prayers for the ceremony, Roy held her hand. He had first met Peggy at church. Roy and Ann, his wife, had separated by then. Roy was still driving the wagon.

During his marriage he’d be away for days at a time, and it got so he dreaded coming home what with Ann complaining about everything, wanting him to be different, to be something he wasn’t. He never really understood what she wanted from him. She complained of his silence, his ignoring her, said she wanted holidays, so they went on holidays and then she complained that he was a miserable sod.

‘Why did you marry me, then?’ he blurted out one day when Ann was having a go.

‘I thought I loved you,’ she said, ‘and I thought you’d change. Wrong on both counts.’

That hurt and she knew it. She looked away and shook her head and said, ‘I think it was a mistake, Roy, I’m sorry. I’m just so unhappy.’

So they had parted ways and split the money from the sale of the house. She’d never tried to claim maintenance, at least that was something. Ann moved away, she met a man who was taking over a salon in Alicante and set up with him.

Roy started going to St Agnes’s, near his new digs – though his visits were irregular, depending on his schedule. Peggy went too. She got chatting to him one day after mass. Their mothers had known each other, Peggy said. Peggy and he had been to the same primary school, though she’d been three years ahead of him so she would never have noticed him back then.

The next time he saw her, she asked if he’d come with them as a helper for the trip to Lourdes. He was about to refuse, he saw enough of the continent as it was with the truck driving, but the way she smiled changed his mind.

It went on from there, the friendship growing quite slowly, unlike the sudden both-feet-first nature of him and Ann.

After a while he plucked up courage to invite Peggy out for a meal, to an Italian restaurant. He appreciated the company. She would chatter away but it wasn’t like the gossip Ann had shared, spiked with putdowns or disapproval. Peggy was more positive than that. She didn’t seem to be bothered by his reticence, either. She never chivvied him to talk which made it easier for him to do so.

That evening, outside the house she still shared with her parents, she had kissed him.

‘I can’t marry you,’ Roy said.

‘I know,’ she said, ‘we’ll just have to live in sin.’

He stared at her, shocked to the core. He knew how much her faith meant and what it might cost her once word got out.

‘It wouldn’t be fair,’ he said, ‘what about church, and your family?’

‘It wouldn’t be fair if we were kept apart because of some outdated dogma.’ Her eyes were warm, merry.

‘But people – you know what they’re like?’

‘Yes. We might have to go to a different church,’ she said.

He looked at her – did she mean it, would she really live with him outside of marriage?

‘Why should I have to choose between my faith and a chance at happiness?’ she said, ‘I want both.’

He kissed her then and she responded.

They moved in together a few months later and started going to St Edmund’s. Roy bought her a gold ring. Peggy began to use his surname. She had one proviso, she asked if he would consider doing a different job, if he could find something so he wasn’t away so much.

He agreed and got the job at the warehouse. He didn’t think he could be any happier and then they had Simon.

Now the priest began to recite a Hail Mary. Roy listened, one thumb stroking Peggy’s hand, but he didn’t join in. He didn’t pray anymore. He didn’t believe in it.

Chapter 4

‘Thank you, Mrs Halliwell.’

‘You’re welcome, Oliver, tell your mum that I’m very pleased with you. And have a think about the exam will you?’

‘Yes, Miss.’

Norma shut the front door. He was a sweet child, polite and good-mannered but natural enough to get the giggles sometimes when he made mistakes that sounded comical. And she laughed along with him. He was her last pupil of the day.

She put the music away in the piano stool, went through and turned the lamp on in the living room and closed the curtains.

An hour later, Don still wasn’t back. After all the strain of the inquest and with him completely exonerated she thought he might have come home to relax and well – perhaps celebrate wasn’t the right word – but give thanks that the ordeal was over, share that with her. She had made a Boer chicken pie with a beautiful puff top pastry and some cauliflower cheese. It would re-heat in the microwave. She wondered whether to have some herself or to wait and decided that she would have a glass of wine and if he wasn’t home by eight then she’d see if she was still hungry.

He had someone else to share his good news with, she was almost certain. That side of things had dwindled between them over time, especially since the menopause. It still happened, but rarely. When they did have sex she wondered why they didn’t do it more often. Norma never initiated it, never had, the thought made her toes curl. What if Don said no and turned her away? Sometimes she had dreams and woke aroused, even had an orgasm, but she had never told him.

Norma suspected he had a lover because his hours had got longer again, the partners’ meetings more frequent. And she had sensed a new energy to him. At least before the inquest loomed. You don’t live with somebody for thirty years without being able to read the smallest changes in mood and behaviour.

There was no point in dwelling on it. There had been other women, other flings. Discreet and short-lived. He would never leave her. She knew this like she knew the scales on the piano keyboard or that the sun would rise in the morning. There was too little loyalty these days, people gave up on marriage at the first hurdle. She was loyal to Don and vice versa.

Norma hadn’t attended the Marcie Young inquest. She had offered, dreading that Don might take her up on it, but he’d said, ‘I’d only be worrying about you. I’ll be fine.’

He wasn’t fine though, she had seen the signs of strain on him as the start date drew closer. Last night when he came home, he was ashen-faced, distracted. She teased it out of him, ‘How was it, did you have to speak?’

He said a little, then added to it, then elaborated until he was giving full vent to his sense of outrage at the whole charade. He was drinking more, a tumbler of whiskey as soon as he crossed the threshold, wine with his meal. But who was she to comment? He’d been under so much pressure, what with the inquest and problems at the surgery.

Don generally got along with people but one of the GPs, Fraser McKee he was called, got right up Don’s nose. A younger man, he was trying to tell Don how things should be done. He wanted to coach patients and staff to use the Internet, to research current medical thinking, he had ideas for setting up clinics for this, that and the other, as though Don’s thirty years in the job counted for nothing.

At first Don had appreciated Fraser’s clumsy attempts to innovate, then he began to complain mildly about him, putting it down to the man’s inexperience but as the months went on Don became increasingly hostile.

‘He’s after a partnership,’ Don had said, ‘he talks as though it’s a sure thing.’

‘And it’s not?’ Norma said.

‘Over my dead body,’ Don had said, ‘he’s no idea how to work as a member of the team. If you don’t agree with his projects and his buzzwords he writes you off.’

‘What do the others think?’ Norma said.

‘He’s not made himself popular,’ Don said. ‘I don’t think anyone will disagree.’

Norma wondered now, as she ironed his shirts, what sort of doctor she herself would have made, if things had turned out differently. Would she have gained the loyalty and affection of her patients and colleagues like Don had or been an irritant like Fraser? Would she even have been a GP? Perhaps she’d have chosen a specialty and gone for a hospital career instead.

At eighteen all she knew was she wanted to study medicine, to save lives. She had worked so hard to get her A levels, to get into medical school, swotting late into the night, taking diet pills to keep awake. Diet pills and black coffee. There were extra classes at school, too, and she went to every one of them. There were about a dozen girls selected for the fast stream, about half of them doing science.

The exams made her terribly anxious, a tightening across her back, churning in her stomach and a clammy sensation across her forehead. She gripped the pen so hard that the indentations remained on her fingers for hours. Once, half way through the first chemistry question, she tore a hole in the paper.

They were in France when the results came out and she had rung Uncle Marty who had opened the letter and read out, ‘Four As: biology, chemistry, physics and maths.’ Four As! She had her place in Manchester.

The relief was like someone releasing her from an iron lung or something and she’d spent the rest of the holiday having fun with the friends she’d made from the village where the gîte was, in a haze of Gauloises and cheap wine, holiday romance and Pernod.

There were three weeks after they got back from France to get ready for student life. She was going into halls for the first year. She’d never been north and imagined it to be pretty grim but when the training was done she would be able to work pretty much anywhere, even abroad. Doctors were always in demand.

Mummy and Daddy drove her up one fine Saturday afternoon. She felt sick with excitement as they carried clothes and records, her books, sheets and blankets and her castor oil plant up to the room.

Once lectures had started, it didn’t take long for that excitement to be replaced with the crushing realization that if swotting for exams had been hard going at school then studying medicine was ten times worse. Until she met Don.