Cath Staincliffe - Hit and Run

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?’

Marta knew as soon as the policewoman on the television news began speaking. She felt the skin on her face contract, her ribs tighten, her tongue thicken in her mouth. A falling sensation, as though the ground had staggered beneath her. She was alone in the sitting room, the other girls busy working. They had been jittery all day, ever since Marta told them Rosa hadn’t come back. No one had said very much, just asked the same questions as Marta had: where can she be, is she all right, what has she done?