I Let You Go (3 page)

My laptop is in the kitchen. It holds photos; addresses; important information I might one day need and hadn’t thought to save elsewhere. I don’t have time to think about doing this now, and although it’s heavy and awkward I add it to my bag. I don’t have much room left, but I can’t leave without one final piece of my past. I discard a jumper and a fistful of T-shirts, making room instead for the wooden box in which my memories are hidden, crammed one on top of another beneath the cedar lid. I don’t look inside – I don’t need to. The assortment of teenage diaries, erratically kept and with regretted pages torn from their bindings; an elastic band full of concert tickets; my graduation certificate; clippings from my first exhibition. And the photos of the son I loved with an intensity that seemed impossible. Precious photographs. So few for someone so loved. Such a small impact on the world, yet the very centre of my own.

Unable to resist, I open the box and pick up the uppermost photo: a Polaroid taken by a soft-spoken midwife on the day he was born. He is a tiny scrap of pink, barely visible beneath the white hospital blanket. In the photo my arms are fixed in the awkward pose of the new mother, drowning in love and exhaustion. It had all been so rushed, so frightening, so unlike the books I had devoured during my pregnancy, but the love I had to offer never faltered. Suddenly unable to breathe, I place the photo back and push the box into my holdall.

Jacob’s death is front-page news. It screams at me from the garage forecourt I pass, from the corner shop, and from the bus-stop queue where I stand as though I am no different to anyone else. As though I am not running away.

Everyone is talking about the accident. How could it have happened? Who could have done it? Each bus stop brings fresh news, and the snatches of gossip float back across our heads, impossible for me to avoid.

It was a black car.

It was a red car.

The police are close to an arrest.

The police have no leads.

A woman sits next to me. She opens her newspaper and suddenly it feels as though someone is pressing on my chest. Jacob’s face stares at me; bruised eyes rebuking me for not protecting him, for letting him die. I force myself to look at him, and a hard knot tightens in my throat. My vision blurs and I can’t read the words, but I don’t need to – I’ve seen a version of this article in every paper I’ve passed today. The quotes from devastated teachers; the notes on flowers by the side of the road; the inquest – opened and then adjourned. A second photo shows a wreath of yellow chrysanthemums on an impossibly tiny coffin. The woman tuts and starts talking: half to herself, I think, but perhaps she feels I will have a view.

‘Terrible, isn’t it? And just before Christmas, too.’

I say nothing.

‘Driving off like that without stopping.’ She tuts again. ‘Mind you,’ she continues, ‘five years old. What kind of mother allows a child that age to cross a road on his own?’

I can’t help it – I let out a sob. Without my realising, hot tears stream down my cheeks and into the tissue pushed gently into my hand.

‘Poor lamb,’ the woman says, as though soothing a small child. It’s not clear if she means me, or Jacob. ‘You can’t imagine, can you?’

But I can, and I want to tell her that, whatever she is imagining, it is a thousand times worse. She finds me another tissue, crumpled but clean, and turns the page of her newspaper to read about the Clifton Christmas lights switch-on.

I never thought I would run away. I never thought I would need to.

Ray made his way up to the third floor, where the frantic pace of twenty-four-seven policing gave way to the quiet carpeted offices of the nine-to-fivers and reactive CID. He liked it here best in the evening, when he could work through the ever-present stack of files on his desk without interruption. He walked through the open-plan area to where the DI’s office had been created from a partitioned corner of the room.

‘How did the briefing go?’

The voice made him jump. He turned to see Kate sitting at her desk. ‘Party Four’s my old shift, you know. I hope they at least pretended to be interested.’ She yawned.

‘It was fine,’ Ray said. ‘They’re a good bunch, and if nothing else it keeps it fresh in their minds.’ Ray had managed to keep details of the hit-and-run on the briefing sheet for a week, but it had inevitably been pushed off as other jobs came in. He was trying his best to get round all the shifts and remind them he still needed their help. He tapped his watch. ‘What are you doing here at this hour?’

‘I’m trawling through the responses to the media appeals,’ she said, flicking her thumb across the edge of a pile of computer printouts. ‘Not that it’s doing much good.’

‘Nothing worth following up?’

‘Zilch,’ Kate said. ‘A few sightings of cars driving badly, the odd sanctimonious judgement on parental supervision, and the usual line-up of crackpots and crazies, including some bloke predicting the Second Coming.’ She sighed. ‘We badly need a break – something to go on.’

‘I realise it’s frustrating,’ Ray said, ‘but hang on in there, it’ll happen. It always does.’

Kate groaned and pushed her chair away from the mound of paper. ‘I don’t think I’m blessed with patience.’

‘I know the feeling.’ Ray sat on the edge of her desk. ‘This is the dull bit of investigating – the bit they don’t show on TV.’ He grinned at her doleful expression. ‘But the pay-off is worth it. Just think: in amongst all those pieces of paper could be the key to solving this case.’

Kate eyed her desk dubiously and Ray laughed.

‘Come on, I’ll make us a cup of tea and give you a hand.’

They sifted through each printed sheet, but didn’t find the nugget of information Ray had hoped for.

‘Ah well, at least that’s another thing ticked off the list,’ he said. ‘Thanks for staying late to go through them all.’

‘Do you think we’ll find the driver?’

Ray nodded firmly. ‘We have to believe we will, otherwise how can anyone have confidence in us? I’ve dealt with hundreds of jobs: I haven’t solved them all – not by any means – but I’ve always been convinced the answer lies just around the corner.’

‘Stumpy said you’ve requested a
Crimewatch
appeal?’

‘Yes. Standard practice with a hit-and-run – especially when there’s a kid involved. It’ll mean a lot more of this, I’m afraid.’ He gestured to the pile of paper, now fit for nothing but the shredder.

‘That’s okay,’ Kate said. ‘I could do with the overtime. I bought my first place last year and it’s a bit of a stretch, to be honest.’

‘Do you live on your own?’ He wondered if he was allowed to ask that sort of thing nowadays. In the time he’d been a copper, political correctness had reached a point where anything remotely personal had to be skirted around. In a few years’ time people wouldn’t be able to talk at all.

‘Mostly,’ Kate said. ‘I bought the place on my own, but my boyfriend stays over quite a lot. Best of both worlds, I reckon.’

Ray picked up the empty mugs. ‘Right, well you’d better head off home,’ he said. ‘Your chap will be wondering where you are.’

‘It’s okay, he’s a chef,’ Kate said, but she stood up too. ‘He works worse shifts than I do. How about you? Doesn’t your wife despair of the hours you do?’

‘She’s used to it,’ Ray said, raising his voice to continue the conversation as he went to get his jacket from his office. ‘She was a police officer too – we joined together.’

The police training centre in Ryton-on-Dunsmore had few redeeming features, but the cheap bar had definitely been one of them. During a particularly painful karaoke evening Ray had seen Mags sitting with her classmates. She was laughing, her head thrown back at something a friend was saying. When he saw her stand up to get a round in, he downed his almost-full pint so he could join her at the bar, only to stand there tongue-tied. Fortunately Mags was less reticent, and they were inseparable for the remainder of their sixteen-week course. Ray suppressed a grin as he remembered creeping from the female accommodation block to his own room at six in the morning.

‘How long have you been married?’ Kate said.

‘Fifteen years. We got hitched once we were through our probation.’

‘But she’s not in the job any more?’

‘Mags took a career break when Tom was born, and never went back after our youngest arrived,’ Ray said. ‘Lucy’s nine now, and Tom’s settling into his first year at secondary school, so Mags is starting to think about returning to work. She wants to retrain as a teacher.’

‘Why did she stop work for so long?’ There was genuine curiosity in Kate’s eyes and Ray remembered Mags being similarly incredulous, in the days when they were both young in service. Mags’ sergeant had left to have children and Mags had told Ray she didn’t see the point of a career if you were only going to give it all up.

‘She wanted to be home for the kids,’ Ray said. He felt a stab of guilt. Had Mags wanted that? Or had she simply felt it was the right thing to do? Childcare was so expensive that Mags stopping work had seemed an obvious decision, and he knew she wanted to be there for the school runs, and for sports days and harvest festivals. But Mags was just as bright and as capable as he was – more so, if he was honest.

‘I guess when you marry into the job you have to accept the crappy conditions with it.’ Kate switched off the desk lamp and they dropped into darkness for a second, before Ray walked into the corridor and triggered the automatic light there.

‘Occupational hazard,’ Ray agreed. ‘How long have you been with your chap?’ They walked down towards the yard where their cars were parked.

‘Only about six months,’ Kate said. ‘That’s pretty good going for me, though – I normally dump them after a few weeks. My mother tells me I’m too fussy.’

‘What’s wrong with them?’

‘Oh, all sorts,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Too keen, not keen enough; no sense of humour, total buffoon…’

‘Tough critic,’ said Ray.

‘Maybe.’ Kate wrinkled her nose. ‘But it’s important, isn’t it – finding The One? I was thirty last month, I’m running out of time.’ She didn’t look thirty, but then Ray had never been a great judge of age. He still looked in the mirror and saw the man he’d been in his twenties, even though the lines on his face told a different tale.

Ray reached into his pocket for his keys. ‘Well, don’t be in too much of a hurry to settle down. It’s not all roses round the door, you know.’

‘Thanks for the advice, Dad…’

‘Hey, I’m not that old!’

Kate laughed. ‘Thanks for your help tonight. See you in the morning.’

Ray chuckled to himself as he eased his car out from behind a marked Omega.
Dad
, indeed. The cheek of her.

When he arrived home Mags was in the sitting room with the television on. She wore pyjama bottoms and one of his old sweatshirts, and her legs were curled up beneath her like a child. A newsreader was recapping on the events of the hit-and-run for the benefit of any local resident who had somehow missed the extensive coverage of the past week. Mags looked up at Ray and shook her head. ‘I can’t stop watching it. That poor boy.’

He sat down next to her and reached for the remote to mute the sound. The screen switched to old footage of the scene, and Ray saw the back of his own head as he and Kate walked from their car. ‘I know,’ he said, putting an arm round his wife. ‘But we’ll get them.’

The camera changed again, filling the screen with Ray’s face as he delivered a piece to camera, the interviewer out of shot.

‘Do you think you will? Have you got any leads?’

‘Not really.’ Ray sighed. ‘No one saw it happen – or if they did, they’re not saying anything – so we’re relying on forensics and intelligence.’

‘Could the driver have somehow not realised what they’d done?’ Mags sat up and turned so she was facing him. She pushed her hair impatiently behind her ear. Mags had worn her hair the same way since Ray had known her: long and straight, with no fringe. It was as dark as Ray’s, but unlike his it showed no sign of grey. Ray had tried to grow a beard shortly after Lucy had been born, but had stopped after three days when it was clear there was more salt than pepper. Now he stayed clean-shaven, and tried to ignore the sprinkling of white at his temples that Mags told him was ‘distinguished’.

‘Not a chance,’ Ray said. ‘He went straight on to the bonnet.’

Mags didn’t flinch. The emotion on her face he had seen when he came home had been replaced by a look of concentration he remembered so well from their days on shift together.

‘Besides,’ Ray continued, ‘the car stopped, then backed up and turned round. The driver might not have known Jacob had died, but they couldn’t have missed the fact they’d hit him.’

‘Have you got someone on to the hospitals?’ Mags said. ‘It’s possible the driver sustained an injury too, and—’

Ray smiled. ‘We’re on it, I promise.’ He stood up. ‘Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s been a long day and I just want to have a beer, watch a bit of TV and go to bed.’

‘Sure,’ Mags said tightly. ‘You know – old habits, and all that.’

‘I know, and I promise you we’ll get the driver.’ He kissed her on the forehead. ‘We always do.’ Ray realised he had given Mags the very same promise he refused to give Jacob’s mother because he couldn’t possibly guarantee it.
We’ll do our best,
he had told her. He only hoped their best was good enough.

He walked into the kitchen to find a drink. It was the involvement of a child that would have upset Mags. Perhaps telling her the details of the crash hadn’t been such a good idea – after all, he was finding it hard enough to keep a lid on his own emotions, so it was understandable Mags would feel the same way. He would make an extra effort to keep things to himself.

Ray took his beer back into the sitting room and settled down next to her to watch the television, flicking away from the news on to one of the reality TV shows he knew she liked.

Arriving in his office with a clutch of files scooped up from the post-room, Ray dumped the paperwork on top of his already laden desk, causing the entire pile to slide to the floor.