Cath Staincliffe - Desperate Measures

Outside, the aspens sighed in the wind and the house creaked in reply.

There was nothing else to do. No one to tell. Norma climbed upstairs and got things ready. She lay on the bed, let out a sigh.

‘Norma,’ he said.

‘I know,’ she answered, ‘I’m coming.’

She tried to think about the happy times, that first coffee with him, their honeymoon in Edinburgh, the happiness of easy routine and affection and comfort, of restyling the house and pouring her love into it. Don never left the house without kissing her goodbye. The wind blew again, stronger, so she felt the house shaking. Was that possible?

‘Norma.’

She couldn’t wait any longer. It was time to go.

The case kept shifting shape, Janine thought, every time they believed a line of inquiry was gaining legs, something would come along and kick them away, leaving them winded.

First they had the prospect of a robbery turned violent, then all the merry dance that Fraser McKee took them on, the hunt for a patient with a grudge, then Halliwell re-cast as a drug dealer, next the prospect of a crime of passion. And now, she thought, where are we now? What was solid?

‘With Langan and Mrs Halliwell out of the picture where do we go?’ she said to Richard as they drove towards the police station.

‘Aaron Matthews is all we’ve got,’ Richard said.

Janine rang Butchers. ‘We’ve hit a brick wall with the jealous spouse angle,’ she said.

‘Maybe not,’ Butchers said. ‘Halliwell called at Roy Gant’s at two o’clock but he told Gant he was going home before he went back to work. Perhaps things started going sour then.’

‘Norma’s just sworn to us that she last saw him in the morning,’ Janine said.

‘Unless Halliwell was lying to Roy Gant?’ Butchers said.

‘Why bother – why raise it at all?’ Janine said. ‘It’s more likely she’s lying to us. Again.’

Janine ended the call. ‘Halliwell told Roy Gant he was calling home,’ she said to Richard, ‘you just heard her say she last saw him that morning. Why lie about that?’

‘He comes home, she confronts him with the affair, he’s not sorry enough, he taunts her, tells her he’s leaving her maybe. She decides to punish him.’

‘But she was here when he was shot,’ Janine said.

‘She had help?’ Richard said.

‘I don’t know,’ Janine said, ‘but at the very least let’s challenge her on the last sighting.’

There was no answer when Richard rang the bell again.

‘Perhaps she hopes we’ll go away if she leaves it long enough,’ Janine said.

Richard walked down the steps and along to peer in the front room window.

‘No sign,’ he said,

Janine tried the windows at the side. She wasn’t visible anywhere downstairs. Janine felt a chill inside. ‘I don’t like this,’ she said, ‘we need to get in there.’

Richard didn’t hesitate. When the front door wouldn’t give under sustained kicks, he picked an edging stone out from the flower border and used it to smash through the stained-glass sidelight. He reached in and undid the latch.

Janine kept calling out, ‘Mrs Halliwell? Norma?’

After double checking the ground floor, they took the stairs.

The master bedroom was at the front. She lay there on the bed, comatose, a band tied around her arm and sharps and ampoules on the bedside table.

‘Oh, God,’ Janine said. She picked up one of the ampoules and read the label. ‘Diamorphine.’

Janine grabbed hold of the woman’s shoulder, shook her hard, her head fell to the side. ‘Can you hear me, Norma? Norma?’

Janine placed two fingers on the angle of the woman’s jaw, felt a faint pulse in her neck and nodded to Richard who was already calling an ambulance.

‘Now we know why Halliwell was stealing drugs,’ Janine said.

‘Help’s on its way,’ she said to Norma, ‘there’s an ambulance coming. You’re going to be alright.’

She thought of Adele Young then, of her desperate battle to save Marcie. How many times had she found her daughter like this? And then to have finally got her help with Dr Halliwell, with the hope of being weaned off the heroin only to find that the dose reduction was too savage, was unbearable for the girl. Knowing that she would relapse, go in search of one more proper high, with deadly consequences.

The hospital notified Janine when Norma was conscious and out of danger. Janine needed to talk to her, to try and establish if she had played any part in her husband’s murder but she was also aware that Norma Halliwell was extremely vulnerable, grieving and suicidal. Had the police questioning prompted her attempt on her life? Had the suicide bid risen from guilt? And given she couldn’t have pulled the trigger, that she was teaching at the time, was it possible she had engaged someone else to kill her husband?

A nurse was coming out of Norma’s room as Janine arrived.

‘She’s still awake?’ Janine checked and the nurse nodded.

Norma was sitting up in bed. Her eyes glanced at Janine then away again, indifferent.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ Janine said, ‘but there are questions I have to ask.’

The ethereal quality that Janine had noticed in Norma before seemed even more pronounced after her ordeal, her skin paper thin and porcelain white.

‘Mrs Halliwell, can you tell me anything about what happened to your husband?’

‘No,’ Norma said.

‘Are you sure about that?’ Janine said.

She raised her eyes to meet Janine’s. ‘I could never hurt Don,’ she said, ‘he looked after me, I depended on him completely.’

‘But the affair with his work colleague was a threat, and you got jealous?’ Janine said.

‘No,’ Norma said, ‘he’d never leave me, he loved me. She stroked the bed sheet, her long fingers pale, tapered, here and there a liver spot. ‘You know, when they told me he was dead, the first thing I thought of, before anything else, was: how will I get my medication? The very first thing.’ She made a little sound, breathy. ‘I lost my husband and I lost my supplier too. I couldn’t go on without him.’

‘How long has this been going on, the drugs?’ Janine said.

‘Since we met practically. Every few years, Don would try and persuade me to go into rehabilitation but I couldn’t face it. At medical school I’d needed stuff to keep me awake, stuff to help me sleep. I was always, strung out – I suppose. Then I got pregnant. We got married. But we lost the baby. Morphine made things bearable. Don helped me. And it got so there was no way back.’

‘He enabled your addiction,’ Janine said. ‘As long as he was around, you didn’t have to worry about it, deal with it.’

‘So you see, I could never have hurt him – even if I had wanted to – because then I’d have no way of getting my medicine.’ Tremors flickered in the muscles round her mouth.

Forty years, Janine thought, forty years of dependency. And the sheer hypocrisy of Halliwell. The same man who had kept his wife supplied with heroin had insisted on a rapid treatment plan for Marcie Young, against her family’s wishes. Could that have been because he’d seen how persistent, persuasive addiction was first hand and feared Marcie would go the same way that Norma had? Or had he been rigid as a reaction against his complicity with Norma – compartmentalising his approach? Norma’s addiction could be contained because she had money, access to safe drugs, privilege. Marcie’s addiction killed her.

‘What do I do now?’ Norma Halliwell said, sounding lost. ‘It’s all gone.’ She looked steadily at Janine, ‘ I wish you’d left me there,’ she said.

Janine took a breath. ‘People do it,’ she said, ‘they turn their lives around – it’s not impossible.’