I know I should get back in the car, drive away and call the police, yet instead I cover my hand with my jumper and push open the front door.
‘Hello?’ I shout nervously.
There goes your element of surprise, Sherlock
. No one answers my shout, and encouraged by the fact that I haven’t had my head bashed in with any of my own ornaments yet, I take a step inside.
My hallway has been trashed. There is no other word to describe the scene that greets me. The table where I keep my post has been smashed, the drawer and all its contents have spilt out on to the floor and everywhere is covered in red paint. The walls are smeared with it, droplets marking a trail into the kitchen ahead. I’m perversely reminded of one of those demonstrations against women who wear fur. I know I shouldn’t go in. No good can come of it. Edging forward, I push open the kitchen door.
The kitchen is, if possible, even more of a mess than the hall. Cutlery has been scattered all over the place, my juicer lies smashed across the kitchen counter and the toaster is in bits on the floor. Paint smears the walls, counter tops and floor; my house looks like a scene from
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
A sudden thumping noise from upstairs makes me cry out in shock. It is unmistakably the sound of footsteps running across my landing, and before I can react, it’s on the stairs. As whoever is in my house runs down the stairwell, I scan the mess for something I can protect myself with. My trendy designer knife block is empty, all six knives sticking menacingly out of the wall. They have been driven deep into the plasterboard and I can’t wrestle any of them free. That’s when the panic sets in.
Fumbling with my keys, I am trying desperately to open the back door when I hear the front door slam loudly. Breathing heavily and beginning to feel hot all over, I practically fall into the back garden, pulling my phone out of my pocket. I scan through my contacts with a shaky hand and press call. Cassie’s phone rings and rings: no answer. I scroll down, and relief courses through me when the phone is picked up and I hear the deep voice at the other end.
‘Nick? It’s me, Susan.’
‘And after you exited out of the back door, what did you do then, Ms Cartwright?’
I try to let out my sigh slowly so that the officer doesn’t notice my impatience. I have been sitting in Ludlow police station for nearly three hours now and am going through my statement for the fourth time. They already know who I am – the probation service is obliged to keep them informed, in case of situations like this I suppose – and when they arrived it was almost as though they’d been waiting for something like this to happen.
‘That was when I called Nick, um, Mr Whitely,’ I repeat, knowing what the next question will be, and not really knowing how to answer it.
‘And why is it that after finding your house and possessions trashed and a possible intruder in the property, instead of calling 999 you decided to call a reporter you met for the first time today? A reporter who lives almost
three hours
away?’
‘The intruder wasn’t still in the house,’ I reply defensively. I realise that that isn’t the point of what he’s asking me, but I don’t like what he’s implying, and being obtuse – along with the sarcasm – is another one of my specialities when I’m pissed off at someone. ‘I tried my best friend first. She didn’t answer.’
‘But you had no idea where the intruder was?’ the officer presses. ‘And yet you had a whole conversation with Mr Whitely before you called for help?’
He has a point, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let him know that. It’s none of their business why I called Nick before the police, but it certainly wasn’t to report a story, which is what he’s insinuating. Him and the other three officers who have interviewed me since rescuing me from my back garden a quivering mess.
‘I wouldn’t say a whole conversation,’ I reply, digging myself in deeper. ‘And I don’t see the relevance here. I called the person I’d been with that night, the first person that came to mind. He told me to ring the police and he’d get here as fast as he could. That’s when I called the station. It was two minutes at the most.’ I don’t want to tell him why I was reluctant to call the police, the panicked memories that even seeing the uniform brings back. The feeling of being led away in handcuffs has stayed with me for four years. The realisation that the police aren’t always on the side of the good guys. That you don’t always know if you’re one of the good guys.
‘Two minutes can cause a large delay in apprehending a potential criminal.’ His eyes narrow. ‘But I’m sure I don’t have to tell
you
that.’
The meaning of his words slaps me in the face.
‘I don’t see what you’re getting at—’ I start, but he cuts me off.
‘What we would usually do in a case like this is to narrow down people who might want to harm the alleged
victim
. . .’
I’m too stunned at this point to cut in, even to defend myself.
‘. . . but in this case I think we’d have an easier time narrowing down the people who
wouldn’t
want to harm a convicted child killer.’ He leans in closer and fixes me with a stony look. ‘We live in a small quiet town,
Ms Cartwright
. We don’t take kindly to criminals on our doorstep.’
Before I can speak to defend myself, the door to the interview room opens and relief overtakes my anger. Another police officer who looks younger than the socks I’m wearing crosses the room without even glancing in my direction. He leans down and speaks quietly to my interrogator, who nods and looks up at me.
‘It would seem your knight in shining armour has arrived.’ I feel a jolt of nervousness – he’s actually
come
? What am I supposed to say to him? Now that I’ve calmed down, I feel more than a little silly at having to face the man I’ve only met once and summoned a hundred and thirty miles to rescue me from an intruder. Better to get it over with, I tell myself, following the officer out into the reception area.
Nick is standing in the foyer, head down and hands shoved deep into the pockets of his light grey tracksuit bottoms. I don’t know why I was expecting to see him still in his suit trousers and crisp white shirt; it’s close to 3.30 a.m. and I’ve obviously dragged him from his bed. A fleeting image of Nick Whitely rising from his bed crosses my mind. Shaking my head to dislodge the picture before I have to face him, I cross the reception and am surprised when he hurries forward and takes me in his arms.
I wasn’t expecting the embrace but it’s exactly what I need. I don’t care about the officers watching us with raised eyebrows, or the fact that I’ve known this man less than twelve hours; after my run-in with the intruder followed by the horrible police officer, all I need is some human contact, a little bit of compassion. The tears begin to flow and Nick holds me tighter, my head buried in the armpit of his navy blue hooded jumper, body racked with sobs. When the tears begin to subside, he holds me gently at arm’s length and looks me square in the face. ‘Susan, are you OK?’
Immediately I feel stupid. Of course I’m bloody OK, it’s not like I’ve been attacked. ‘I’m fine,’ I mutter, wiping my eyes on the sleeve of my jumper. ‘Sorry.’ Nick smiles at me kindly, then looks over at the policemen behind the desk, who are making no effort to hide the fact that they’re glued to the scene in front of them.
‘Are we all right to go?’ he asks them shortly. The officer who was so horrible to me only moments ago now nods as if butter wouldn’t melt.
‘We have everything we need, sir. The officers have secured your house, Miss Cartwright, but you can’t stay there tonight I’m afraid. Is there somewhere else you can go?’
‘I’ll try Cassie again,’ I say. ‘I’ll have to go and stay with her.’
‘Not tonight you won’t,’ Nick tells me, taking me by the elbow and leading me out to the car park. ‘I’ve already booked us in at a hotel down the road.’ He opens the passenger door of his car and practically places me inside. ‘We’ll be in bed before you know it.’ He cringes at the look that clouds my face. ‘Not together,’ he hastens to add. ‘I mean separate beds, in separate rooms. I don’t want to . . . well, not that I don’t
want
to . . .’ He sighs in defeat. ‘Look, it’s late and I’ve lost the ability to speak properly, so how about we head to the Travelodge and get some sleep.’
The Travelodge is closed but Nick has had the good sense to arrange for the night porter to let us in and book us into our rooms. It’s with a huge sense of relief that I thank him again for his help, and after I manage to convince him that I’m not on the verge of a nervous breakdown, I settle into the comfortable bed and pull the covers up round my face, just like I used to do when I was a little girl. With the last couple of days’ events running through my head, I don’t expect to be able to sleep at all, but as I lay my head against the pillow my eyes close automatically and I drift away in an instant.
13
The room is cold.
Which room? Where am I? Is the room cold or am I cold? I don’t open my eyes, I can’t open them. For now my world is confined to my other four senses.
Smell. I can smell the fresh, citrusy scent of the shake and vac I regularly use on the carpet to cover the cloying smell of baby sick. There’s something else: a male scent, a man that isn’t my husband. An expensive scent that smells cheap, something one of my ex-boyfriends used to steal from his dad when I was a lot younger than I am now.
Touch. My body seems to melt into the carpet – my carpet judging by the smell – but when I try to spread my hands beneath me they won’t work; almost like I’ve forgotten how to make them perform the simple function of opening and closing. What has this man done to me? Who is he and why is he in my home?
Focus, Susan, what else is there? Taste. Something acidic stings the back of my throat, almost a burning sensation but without the pain. My mouth is dry, like I’ve been asleep a while. I try to swallow to move some saliva around, but none comes, just that feeling I get when I’ve drunk too much the night before, like I’ve swallowed a mouldy sock.
Was I drinking last night? I can’t grasp at the last thing I can remember, how I have come to be sleeping on my sitting room floor rather than in my bed with a funny taste in my mouth and another man’s scent in my nostrils. I try to focus on sound but the room is silent, another sense that has betrayed me. Have I gone blind
and
deaf? No, it isn’t an absolute silence – there’s just nothing to hear – and my eyes are definitely closed, I’m not blind.
‘She’s dead. Shit, she’s really dead.’ It might have been a minute or an hour. I feel as though I’m drifting in and out of sleep, the way I do on a long car journey, never realising how we’ve got from A to B so quickly when I’ve been awake the whole time, honest. Just resting my eyes.
When I wake at the Travelodge the next morning, my head feels like I’ve gone ten rounds with Amir Khan and nearly every inch of me aches. I should be used to lack of sleep by now. My time with Dylan was punctuated with trips around the house in my pyjamas, rocking and shushing, praying to the gods of sleep for just one peaceful night. Afterwards, in hospital and Oakdale, my sleep was deep and dreamless – I took so many pills I hardly knew when night finished and day began – but I never woke up feeling rested. I don’t remember the last time I felt rested.
I roll over in the luxurious king-sized bed and check the time on my phone: 9.20. I have three messages and four missed calls, which I ignore, deciding to tackle them later. I step into the spacious shower and my aching muscles welcome the hot spray like an old friend. I stay there longer than usual, hidden away from everything that awaits me outside these safe and secure walls. I know I’m simply trying to prolong the moment when I have to go downstairs and confront the complete stranger I dragged from sleep at midnight and who drove three hours just to escort me half a mile down the road and sleep twenty-eight rooms away. It’s safe to say I feel a bit of a prat, which is probably why I spend half an hour showering and applying my make-up. The plus side of this is that I don’t look half bad when I finally decide to head downstairs in search of Nick. Crossing the hallway and pressing for the lift, I pluck up the courage to check the messages and missed calls on my phone. The texts are all from Cassie, wanting to know what I was calling her for last night. Two of the four missed calls are from her too. The other two are from a withheld number. Nick? I find his number in my phone’s address book and press call.
‘Morning.’ His voice is gravelly, the voice of someone who hasn’t had much sleep. Immediately I feel guilty again, although it does sound a little sexy. ‘How are you feeling today?’
‘Like crap,’ I admit. ‘And starving. Did you call me? Where are you? Did you know when you booked this place that there’s no restaurant?’
‘My apologies,’ Nick laughs. ‘There aren’t too many places willing to answer the phone at midnight, let alone take your breakfast order. I’m in the pub next door. Cracking food, are you coming?’
‘You had me at pub. I’ll be there in five; feel free to order me a full English.’
The pub is homely and welcoming, everything you would expect from a Shropshire country inn. Nick is sitting well away from the bar, presumably to avoid being overheard. To his right stands a huge log burner that looks like it could produce enough heat to keep the whole of Ludlow warm when it’s lit. I sit down next to him and give him a weak smile, thank him for the mug of tea he’s ordered and dig in when the food arrives. Nick’s right, it tastes amazing, and to his credit he waits until I’ve finished shovelling huge forkfuls of beans, bacon, sausage and egg greedily into my mouth before attempting to broach the subject of last night.
‘Before you start,’ I interrupt as I see his mouth open to speak, ‘I really am sorry for calling you last night. I have no idea why I didn’t just ring the police. It really was so good of you to come all this way, especially as we’ve only just met. I feel like a prize—’
‘For God’s sake, woman, will you stop apologising?’ Nick cuts in. ‘I heard enough of it last night. I came because I wanted to make sure you were OK. I can’t just leave someone who’s in trouble, you know, even a person I’ve known less than twenty-four hours.’