Hit and Run

Chapter Three

Chris Chinley’s heart cracked when he saw Debbie. She was curled into a chair in the waiting area, her head down. No one else about. ‘Debs?’

She started, stood up and his arms went round her. She was tiny; her head barely reached his chest. When he first met her, he thought of her like a bird: all fine bones and a fast heartbeat and eyes bright and alert. But the impression of physical frailty concealed a surprising strength. When things had been really bad with the baby, the one they lost, it was Debbie who had held it together, who’d clung on and kept on and dragged him with her.

‘What’s happening?’ he asked. ‘Where is she?’

‘They’re trying to stabilise her, she’s still in Casualty.’

‘Can we see her?’

Debbie shook her head. Chris stepped back a pace; he needed to sit down. She sat beside him; her fingers sought out the end of the zip on her top and she plucked at it.

‘Debs?’ He needed to know: how is she, will she be all right? But was too scared to ask. Christ, he hated hospitals. With the baby, Debbie’s first pregnancy, they’d been in and out. Bed rest and observations, scans and tests and, at the end of the day, none of it had worked. Nearly three years to conceive and the baby miscarried at five months. Then Ann-Marie, their little miracle.

‘Debs?’ He begged her again.

She began to tell him about the accident, speaking quietly in fits and starts, trying to steady her voice. She was a nurse; she would know the score. He feared she was building up to bad news, thinking that if she started with the where and the when, the facts of the matter, told it all in sequence, that he’d somehow be able to take the truth when she got there.

‘We were waiting to cross. I was talking to one of the other mums. Ann-Marie,’ her voice lilted dangerously, ‘was waiting. There was nothing coming… I know that… I remember that, and she stepped out. I remember thinking, it’s OK, there’s no traffic… Then this car, it just came from nowhere, so fast. All at once, they were there… Ann Marie,’ her voice broke and she made a flapping motion with one hand, the other darting up to press against her mouth. ‘They drove off,’ she blurted out.

He put his arm around her and pulled her close, his chin on her head. He felt hot inside, his heart swollen with rage. They hadn’t stopped! The image of Ann-Marie tossed, falling, scalded him and his eyes and throat ached. He ground his teeth together.

‘They were very quick,’ Debbie spoke eventually. ‘The ambulance. Really quick. She was unconscious.’

He couldn’t speak but he nodded. She didn’t add anything else. More pictures danced in his head: his daughter crushed and bloodied, limbs bent this way, that way, the wrong way. Eyes closed, peaceful. Eyes open flaring in pain. Her body twitching.

Some minutes later, Debbie sat up, pulled away from him and wiped at her face.

He stared at the wall opposite. Another row of polypropylene bucket chairs, a notice board with signs on reminding people of the hospital’s no smoking policy, of the cost of missed appointments, exhorting people to ring up if they couldn’t attend. He gazed at the fluorescent lights, at the vinyl flooring and the skirting board and the chairs opposite.

‘I should have held her hand,’ Debbie cried. ‘I always hold her hand to cross. I always make sure she holds my hand.’

‘Shhh, Debs, don’t.’ He put his hand on her leg and pressed. ‘Don’t.’

She stood impatiently, wrapped her arms across her stomach, took a few steps this way and that, then sat back down. He saw her fingers start to fret on the zip again.

He closed his eyes and prayed.

Marta had woken in the night, unsure what had disturbed her. The room was dark, impossible to see anything. In the summer months the light shone through the thin curtains, making it hard to sleep late. She couldn’t hear Rosa. She switched on the small bedside lamp. The other bed was empty. Her watch read three-thirty. Rosa should be back by now. The club closed at two. Was she downstairs? Marta listened. It was quiet, so quiet. A lone car in the distance but nothing else.

At home, the nights had carried different sounds. Her father’s coughing had punctuated the house, night and day. And beyond that there was the noise from the steelworks, the droning of machinery, the screech and clang of metal, the shriek of hooters signalling the change of shifts and the rumble of heavy plant machinery. Round the clock, continuous production until the place was closed in the mid-nineties. Her father was thrown out of work like so many others. Her mother the only one with a wage. Her father would sit about the house or escape to the café and spend the day there with the other men, their arms pockmarked with silvery scars, the burns left by flying scraps of molten metal. When he coughed Marta imagined his lungs full of wire wool, threads twisting with each breath.

One night, after they’d silenced the machines, she had heard the howl of a wolf, her blood thrilling at the sound and a prickle of fear at the nape of her neck. She’d never seen a wolf, though her babka, her grandmother, swore they were still there if you looked carefully. Not so many, of course. A lot of the forest had gone now; they’d cut back the tall, dark green conifers, and the wolves and the bears had retreated to the wild places in the mountains.

Marta remembered a trip to the forest for her name day when she was small. She had woken to presents and flowers and cards and her father had borrowed the car from the schoolteacher. The three of them, plus Babka, had travelled for an hour and a half to one of the big lakes. A rare adventure for, apart from that day, Marta couldn’t remember any other such family outings. Sometimes she wondered if it had been a dream. Babka had brought food: soft pierogis filled with lamb and blintz dusted with sugar. When she bit into the blintz and the jam oozed out the wasps had come whining around. Her parents had lit cigarettes and blown smoke at the pests.

They had been able to swim in the lake, the ones closer to home weren’t safe. ‘Chemical soup,’ her father always said. ‘Strip you to the bone and melt your eyes.’ But here the water was clear and silky, achingly cold. As she struggled in, her feet slipping on the muddy stones, Marta felt the cold stun her feet and her calves. She stumbled and fell in, losing her breath at the shock of the icy wave on her back. The lake was filled by the melted ice from the mountains.

The chill water had set her father coughing and she’d had a sudden flight of fear. What if he collapsed? How would they get home? But he smiled at her, through the spasms, nodding his creased red face in reassurance.

Marta’s mother was careful not to get her hair wet, sticking her neck up like a swan and moving her arms gently without breaking the surface. She was the picture of elegance, scolding Marta if she came too close with her whooping and flailing about.

Afterwards, her fingers blue and her teeth chattering, Marta sat wrapped in a scratchy towel eating the last blintz while the adults argued about the government.

Later, she went for a walk with her father, along the lakeside. The air was rich with the sharp scent of pine, the trunks of the trees dotted with the honey-brown clusters of resin. She rolled a piece between her fingers, sticky and crunchy like melting sugar, and sniffed at it.

There was one point where the undergrowth was thicker and a couple of boulders offered a stopping place. Her father paused, leaning his hand on one of the rocks. He tested the air. ‘Smell that.’

Marta breathed in. A foul smell, like fly-blown meat. She felt her gorge rise.

‘Bear.’

Her eyes had widened and her nerves started. What if the bear heard her father coughing? She didn’t want to get eaten by a bear. Not on her name day of all things. Her father obviously agreed and they had made their way back to the women and told them there was a bear about.

Marta shivered in the chilly Manchester night. She listened again. No sound from the other rooms, or downstairs. Everyone asleep. What could she do? Nothing. Maybe Rosa had worked longer, got held up? She tried to settle herself with the explanation but knew it to be feeble. She turned the light off, closed her eyes and pulled the cover up over her head. Resorting to prayer, she rattled off a decade of the Holy Rosary, not because she particularly believed any longer but because the rhythm of the words brought some comfort, distracting her a little from her worries about Rosa.

Janine rang Connie en route to the press conference, while refreshing her make-up in the women’s toilets. She examined her reflection: not bad given her broken nights. Concealer disguised any shadows beneath her large blue eyes.

‘Connie, it’s Janine. There was an accident outside school this morning,’ she told the nanny, ‘a little girl got knocked down. Tom might be upset when you pick him up.’

‘Did he see it happen?’

‘No, thank goodness. But some of them did, it’ll be all round school.’

Janine put her make-up away and slung the bag over her shoulder.

‘How’s the little girl?’

‘Don’t know; she’s in intensive care.’ She used her free hand to open the door. Richard was still waiting for her in the corridor with an official release from the press office. She took it from him, began scanning it as they walked briskly towards the conference room. ‘And I’ll be working late, so-’

‘You know I’m going out?’ Connie interrupted.

‘Yes. I’ve asked Pete to come over for six-thirty.’ Pete was her main fallback now. Her stalwart neighbour and good friend Sarah had moved away for a better teaching job and her parents were getting past the point where she felt able to rope them in as babysitters. Pete worked as an air traffic controller at Manchester Airport. His availability depended on his shift pattern but it only took him twenty minutes to get to Janine’s from work.

‘How’s Charlotte?’ Janine asked Connie.

‘Fine. Sleeping a lot.’

‘Not at night, she isn’t,’ Janine muttered.

Journalists with notebooks, cameras, microphones were gathered waiting for them. Richard and Janine took seats behind a table at the front of the room. Janine read from the prepared statement, ignoring the flashes from the welter of technology pointed at her.

‘This morning the body of a young woman was recovered from the River Mersey. We’re treating the case as murder. She is a white woman, believed to be in her twenties, five foot six inches tall, with a slim build and long dark hair. We think she also has an identifying mark on her right thigh. We would like to appeal to the public to help us find out who she is. If you know of anyone answering that description who has gone missing, then please ring in straight away and let us know.’

She paused and then invited questions.

‘How was she killed?’ A young reporter with severe black clothing and hair to match.

‘How long has she been dead?’

‘Was she drowned?’

Others joined in and Janine raised her hands. She would take them one at a time but there was little she could add to the information she’d already given them. The questions and her ‘no comment’ or ‘we can’t say at this point in time’ were part of the familiar jousting between the force and the media. Keeping relations sweet was essential: inappropriate or inaccurate coverage could seriously hamper their efforts while responsible reporting could generate help and vital information from the general public. All a matter of balance. And Janine reckoned she was good at balance, juggling home and work, seeing all sides of a story keeping the plates spinning. Must be circus blood in my veins, she thought wryly as she nodded to the journalists.

The rest of the afternoon flew by in a whirl of activity, mainly setting up systems to support the enquiry and ensuring everyone knew how to process data so it would be most useful. Information from the teams out in the field would pass to officers here. Everything would be entered in the computers and the most salient facts written up on the boards in the incident room.

At four-thirty Richard took a call from the forensic science lab. ‘She hadn’t been drinking and no evidence of recreational drugs,’ he told Janine.

‘What did we have on stomach contents?’

‘Just partially digested coffee and biscuits.’

‘So she’d not been wining, or dining, or clubbing it.’

Richard began to add the notes to the boards. ‘Domestic then?’ He paused and looked at her, marker in his hand.

‘It’s unusual,’ Janine shook her head, ‘most domestics, they panic. If they do cover their tracks it’s token. This – the weights, the river, the face – it’s very extreme. I know we can’t rule anything out but I reckon there could well be more to it.’

Richard cocked his head inviting her to elaborate.

She shrugged her shoulder. ‘I don’t know. We’ll just have to find out, won’t we?’