Ali Harper - The Runaway

Addicts are people who have never experienced enough. Enough of what, I don’t know. Therapists would tell you they haven’t had enough love. I don’t know about that. I just know there’s never enough alcohol to get me out of my mind.

‘Well?’ asked Martin.

I nearly said no, but I caught the look on Jo’s face. And, I reminded myself, it’s good for me to be challenged. An opportunity to reassert my faith, my resolve. Least, that’s what the textbooks tell me.

I switched the phones over to the night-service and unhooked my jacket from its peg. ‘There’s The Brudenell,’ I said as Jo’s eyes lit up. ‘Just round the corner.’

The Brudenell is a social club but it’s not like your average working men’s club. For a start, nearly everyone in it is a student and probably not one of them has ever done a full day’s work in their lives – at least, not the kind of work that working men’s club implies. Recently, The Brudenell has been building a solid reputation as a kind of secret gig venue, with unadvertised performances by some big-name bands.

We were seated in the bar less than ten minutes after leaving the office, Martin and Jo both with pints – Landlord for Martin, lager and lime for Jo. I nursed a blackcurrant and soda. I can’t drink cola because the caffeine makes my heart race, and I’m never sure what else to order. ‘Let’s hear it then.’

He glanced around but it was still early, even by student standards. The closest drinkers were seated three tables away. ‘Trouble was no one was pushing for it to be solved. A body – young girl – young woman, a prostitute—’

‘Sex worker,’ said Jo.

Martin nodded and took a swig of his pint. The head of his beer left a foam moustache along his top lip. It suited him, matched the white of his hair. ‘Sex worker. Like it. Anyway, that was as far as they got. A body. A sex worker, they decided. No one ever came forward to claim her.’

‘Murdered?’

Martin popped a Fisherman’s Friend in his mouth and crunched. ‘She was dead. That’s about the only fact. Police decided it was suicide although they never found a note. Pathologist said somewhere between twenty-two and twenty-five. Autopsy showed she’d carried a child. Slip of a thing. Bruises that looked like she’d had some kind of fight, but they were old – not related to her death.’

‘Suicide?’ I know I’ve got an issue with suicide. To me, it’s selfish and passive-aggressive – a way of handing on your problems to someone else. It’s the easy way out. Jo gives me hell for my views but I can’t seem to change them. It’s like they’re ingrained in me. I took a sip of my blackcurrant and tried not to gag. ‘How she do it?’

He slapped me on the knuckles. ‘Not proved.’

‘Well, how’d she die?’

‘Poisoned.’

‘Poisoned? What, like an overdose?’

‘Strychnine – know how that works?’

I shook my head.

‘Starts with twitching. Facial muscles go first.’ Martin clenched and unclenched his fingers, balling his hand into a fist, then flinging his fingers back. He still wore his wedding ring and it squeezed the flesh of his third finger. ‘Spasms spread throughout the body, progressing to convulsions as the nervous system runs out of control.’

‘Weird way to kill yourself,’ said Jo.

‘Eventually the muscles that control breathing become paralyzed and the victim suffocates,’ Martin continued. ‘Stays conscious and aware the whole time up to death – in fact the nerves of the brain are stimulated, gives heightened perception.’

‘Christ,’ said Jo.

He took another mouthful of beer. ‘Hard to think of a worse way to go.’

‘Where’d she get strychnine from?’ I asked. ‘Is it legal?’

‘It was. Used by mole-catchers – but you had to be a licensed pest controller to get hold of it. Police never found where she got it from, least not that they told me.’

‘You don’t think it was suicide?’

‘She was found in the communal garden of a block of flats, overlooking Roundhay Park.’

I’d never been to Roundhay Park, but I’d heard of it. It was out to the north of the city, only about four miles away; but we’ve got Hyde Park right on our doorstep, so why travel?

‘She killed herself outside?’ asked Jo and I knew by the tone of her voice that she didn’t believe it. I could see where she was coming from – when you think of suicide, especially women, you think of pills in the bath, head in the oven. But then there were the jumpers, I thought. Beachy Head and that bridge near Hull. They were outdoors.

‘Perhaps she didn’t want a relative to find her,’ I said. ‘I mean, if it was suicide, and she’d killed herself in her own flat, chances are it would have been someone she knew who discovered her. Perhaps that’s why she went to the garden – she wanted a stranger to find her.’ Which, I thought, although I didn’t say aloud, made her more thoughtful than your average suicide. I don’t know how the tube drivers ever recover from what they must see when someone decides they can’t go on.

‘She didn’t live in the flats,’ said Martin.

‘Oh.’ I considered this for a moment. It didn’t make sense. ‘Why would you kill yourself in someone else’s garden?’

‘Where did she live?’ asked Jo.

Martin shrugged. ‘That’s the trouble. We don’t know. No one knows who she is. No ID on her; all they found was a train ticket from Nottingham. Like she’d travelled all the way from Nottingham to kill herself in the garden of this particular block of flats.’

‘She must have known someone in the flats,’ I said.

‘She’d tied herself to a statue. Right in the middle of the grass.’

‘If they didn’t know who she was, how did they know she was a sex worker?’ asked Jo.

Martin shrugged again. ‘Don’t know. And I’ve got to tell you here, after …’ He paused, looked at Jo again. ‘After last time. I want to put my cards right out there on the table, so you know what you’re getting into. I didn’t like the way the investigation was handled, if you catch my drift.’

‘Come on, Martin,’ I said. I banged my drink down on the table harder than I expected and caused the table to wobble and Jo’s pint to slop. I lowered my voice. ‘You can’t put your cards on the table and then ask us to catch your drift. What do you mean?’

Jo mopped at the spillage with a beer mat.

‘The policeman in charge. I had my doubts. That’s all. Nothing concrete, just a feeling that perhaps he wasn’t as committed as he could have been.’

‘Wasn’t committed or was bent? Massive difference.’

‘Lee,’ Jo said. She put a hand on my arm. ‘We’ve got to come to each case blank, you know that. Empty.’

I reminded myself to breathe. Martin looked at me and then at Jo, like he was watching a tennis match.

‘I don’t know why he decided she was a sex worker. That’s all. Maybe she was known to the police, or him; maybe he was working from the fact that no one ever claimed her, the bus driver’s impression … I don’t know. It might not be important. Anyway, to me it felt like she was trying to tell someone something. She was naked. Did I say that?’

‘She committed suicide naked?’

‘Bollocks,’ said Jo.

‘The report said she was naked as the day she was born except for a necklace,’ said Martin.

‘If she was naked, where was her train ticket?’

‘All her clothes were folded neatly next to the body. The train ticket was found in bushes less than three metres away.’

‘Might not be hers then?’ Jo said.

‘It had her fingerprints on it. And they found a bus driver who thought he remembered her getting the bus from the station.’