Tania Carver: Choked

‘Anni … what—’

‘Just lie back, Marina. Lie back.’

Marina didn’t want to do so, but she trusted her friend. She looked at Anni’s face once more. Her features were taut, drawn. No trace of the usual good humour there.

‘What’s happened? Where’s Phil? Josephina?’

‘Just … just take a minute. Just … relax, yeah?’ Anni didn’t seem to know what to say.

Marina picked up on the unease and tried to sit up once more. Her bones ached and pain cranked through her body. She lay back down again.

‘What’s happened? Tell me … ’

Anni sighed and looked round as if for support. Finding none, she turned back to Marina. ‘You were picked up outside a cottage in Aldeburgh in Suffolk. Last night.’

Marina nodded, her head swimming. ‘We went there for the weekend.’

Anni looked at her. ‘It was in flames … ’

The brightness of the room couldn’t touch the darkness of Anni’s words.

‘Flames … ’ Parts of Marina’s memory returned to her, like garishly coloured jigsaw pieces against a dark matt background. ‘Flames.’

‘You tried to run towards it,’ Anni said. ‘A guy passing by pulled you away. If he hadn’t … ’

Marina closed her eyes, the jigsaw pieces slotting slowly together. ‘The … the rest of them?’ Her breath caught. She tried to resist forming the words in her mouth, but knew they had to emerge sometime. Knew she would have to hear the answers to her questions. ‘Are they …?’

Anni sighed. Marina watched her.

‘I know that look,’ she said, apprehension and fear overriding tiredness, giving her a voice. ‘Phil does it. The one you put on when you’re delivering bad news. Telling someone their son or daughter’s been killed. Doing the death knock. I know … ’ Her voice trailed away. ‘Oh God.’

‘It’s … Are you ready for this, Marina? I mean, you’ve just—’

‘I don’t know, Anni. Am I? Am I ever going to be ready for this?’ Her voice snapping, harsh. She sighed. ‘Sorry. Just … just tell me.’

‘Phil’s … alive.’

Her initial reaction was a huge wave of relief, spreading over her. Phil’s alive . But she stopped herself from being too relieved. The hesitation in Anni’s voice …

‘Alive?’ she said.

Anni swallowed. ‘Yes.’ Another sigh.

‘Can I see him?’

‘Not at the moment. He’s … ’

‘What?’

‘Unconscious.’

‘Oh God.’

‘We’re … still waiting for him to come round.’

Anni’s words hit her like a wrecking ball. She tried to process what she’d heard, but her head was a cyclone, the words spinning round and round.

‘And … and … ’ She couldn’t bring herself to say the name. Josephina. Her daughter.

‘Eileen’s fine,’ said Anni quickly. ‘Not too badly damaged. She was lucky.’ Her voice dropped. Knowing she had to say the words. Not wanting to even hear them herself. ‘Don wasn’t so lucky.’

The cyclone spun all the harder. ‘What? Don … ’

Anni looked straight into Marina’s eyes. Held them. ‘He’s … he’s dead, Marina.’

The cyclone peaked. Picked up Marina’s thoughts, her emotions, spun them. She felt like her head would explode. It was too much to cope with. Too much to process all at once. But there was one question she needed the answer to. The one question she had avoided asking.

‘Josephina … ’ Her voice small, fragile.

Another sigh from Anni. ‘We … we couldn’t find her.’

Marina stared at her friend.

‘Honestly, she wasn’t … There was no trace.’

The firefighters had all but finished and the cottage had burned itself down to charred, smoking remains. A charcoal-blackened skeleton with the life blazed out of it. Detective Sergeant Jessica James stared at it, hand over her eyes, squinting against the sun.

She had been briefed on the way from Ipswich. Holidaying copper and his family. Explosion. Fire. Probably a faulty gas supply, but maybe not.

‘Proceed with caution,’ her DCI had said. ‘One of our own, remember. Even if they’re not local.’

‘Brothers under the skin and all that,’ she had replied.

He had nodded. ‘Just be thorough. That’s all.’

And she would be. Probably nothing, just an unfortunate accident.

But …

A copper. Retribution? A villain nursing a bitter grudge against the guy who’d put him away, something like that? Fanciful, she would have said. The clichéd stuff of desperate TV cop dramas. That would never happen in real life. Not round here.

But then if she’d been asked a few years ago whether a sexually sadistic serial killer could terrorise Ipswich and get away with murdering five sex workers, she would have said the same. A clichéd TV cop show. Not in real life. Not round here. But it had happened. And she had no intention of being the one getting caught out if something like that happened again.

She ran her fingers through her hair, shook her head. Mentally blowing the cobwebs away. If she had known she was coming to work today, she wouldn’t have gone out drinking with the girls last night. Because those couple of drinks had turned into a couple more. Then a couple more. Then a curry, a half-remembered, slurry phone call home to say she’d be late, don’t wait up, then … what? Tiger Tiger? Dancing with some bloke? Flirting? Finally tumbling into bed at God knew what hour.

And now this. Called back in to work, her weekend off cancelled, and sent up to Aldeburgh. Knocking back mints, paracetamol and Evian all the way.

She crossed to a man giving orders to uniforms. Small, neatly dressed and holding a clipboard, he looked and acted like an Apprentice contestant focused on giving a hundred and ten per cent. More of a Sugary hopeful than a detective constable. But that was exactly what Deepak Shah was and it irritated her more than she let on.

‘What have we got, Deepak?’

Hearing her voice, he turned. ‘Early days, ma’am, but it looks like the fire started in the living room,’ he said, pointing helpfully to the front of the cottage. ‘We’ve got a couple of eyewitnesses say it was an explosion. Then it looks like the fire spread to the rest of the cottage.’

‘Any survivors?’

He nodded. ‘Only one dead. The father, it seems.’ He checked his clipboard. ‘He was in the room where the blast happened. Caught most of it. Died instantly. Two are critical. And there was one outside. She tried to get back in. That car stopped her.’ He pointed to a burnt-out wreck parked outside the cottage. ‘Explosion knocked her back. They’ve all been taken to the General in Ipswich.’

Jessica James nodded and tried not to let her irritation at Deepak’s organisation show. ‘Wasn’t there something about a baby?’

Deepak turned to her. The usual fussiness and officiousness were absent from his eyes. In their place was the professionalism she expected from her team, and something else as well. A kind of compassionate determinism. And that, she realised, was why she put up with him.

He shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘No sign.’

‘But there was definitely a baby there?’

‘Little girl,’ he said. ‘They booked a kid’s bed from the letting agency, for a three-year-old. We found some stuff, couple of toys, clothes, not much though. Might be a baby buggy in there.’ He pointed to the ruin once more. Three blue-suited people were making their way inside, stepping carefully. ‘Firefighters and forensics are still looking it over.’

‘Hope they’re careful,’ she said. ‘Mind what they’re standing on.’

Deepak didn’t reply.

Jessica James’s eye was drawn by an approaching car. It pulled up to the crime-scene tape that had been stretched across the gravel road that led down to the cottage. A uniform was standing there, stopping the car from going any further. It came to a halt and the driver emerged. Tall, burly, cropped head, dressed in a plaid shirt and jeans and seemingly uncomfortable in leisurewear, she noticed. He held something up and the uniform let him pass. He walked towards them. Jessica waited until he drew up next to her.