M.J. Ford - Keep Her Close

‘Tyndle must’ve made us for police, even in plain clothes, because suddenly he detoured. Pulled a U-turn through traffic, and sped off the other way. We followed. I was all for calling it off, discontinuing pursuit, but Ben had that look in his eyes. He said Tyndle was armed and that now he knew he was busted, he was too dangerous to leave on the street.’

‘And did you agree?’ Dr Forster’s interruption made Jo focus on her.

‘Ben was my superior.’

‘That isn’t what I asked,’ said Dr Forster. Jo had noticed the counsellor liked to have her questions answered. She could be steely like that.

‘I tossed it up the chain,’ said Jo. ‘And it came back in the affirmative. We were to stay in pursuit, blues on, in the hope Tyndle would think again. They just didn’t want that gun on the streets, in Tyndle’s hands, under any circumstances. They’d found the sister’s address, but the armed response was re-routing to us. Parameters hadn’t changed. We weren’t to engage directly with Tyndle.’

Jo wondered if the doctor actually had access to the hearing papers and this was some sort of test. It was all in there, in the transcripts and statements. They only told half the story though. Such operational tactics looked fine on paper, but on the ground it could get … complicated. There were split-second decisions to be made.

‘I remember we were doing close to ninety on an urban A-road, cutting through traffic. I trusted Ben behind the wheel. That was part of the training. And he was good. Then the lights went red ahead. The junction wasn’t busy. And Tyndle wasn’t braking. I shouted for Ben to stop. I think I did. But I can’t blame him for not listening. If I’d outranked him, maybe he would have. He was single-minded. Tyndle was armed, and we couldn’t let an armed suspect escape.’ She paused, her mouth dry, and drained the rest of the water from her glass. The next bit was the hardest part to relive, and she’d never spelled it out to anyone before. ‘The ambulance was suddenly there, right in front of us. It apparently had its sirens on, but I didn’t hear it. There was no way Tyndle could’ve swerved. His bonnet caught the rear end of the ambulance, spun it round and up onto two wheels. Then it went over. Metal ripping. Sparks everywhere. Like something out of an action film, but a lot more real. Horrible, really. It slid up a bank, hit a tree.’

She remembered Ben pulling over, looking at her, and asking if she was okay. She’d thought that was odd, because she was fine.

‘Training took over. I called an ambulance – another one. We got out of the car. I saw Tyndle in the road. No seatbelt, it seemed, so he’d gone straight through the windscreen. Ben told me to leave him. To prioritise. While he went to secure the firearm, I made my way to the ambulance. The paramedic was climbing out through the driver’s window.’ He’d been bleeding, and obviously dazed, dragging a leg with the foot kinked up at the wrong angle, enough to make her retch. ‘The poor guy just said, “In the back”. I left Ben with him and circled to the rear doors. I couldn’t hear anything inside. The mechanism must’ve got stuck in the collision, because I couldn’t get the fucking thing open. In the end, a guy came out from the pub across the junction. He brought a fireman’s axe – Christ knows where he got it – and together we managed to use the head to lever the doors.’

She tried to drink again, but there was nothing in the glass.

‘Would you like some more water?’ asked Dr Forster.

Jo shook her head. She wished she’d never started the story, but she knew she couldn’t leave it hanging. In her mind, the images were fresh.

‘The other paramedic must’ve been travelling with the patient,’ she continued quietly. ‘He was on the floor, unconscious. The patient – a woman – she was pressed against the wall, still strapped into the stretcher which had gone over.’ Jo remembered her face. The utter disbelief. ‘She was talking … well, mumbling really. She was in a night-dress, hitched up around her waist. I … I got inside, trying to work out what to do. Who to help first. There was so much blood. My shoes were slipping in it. I mean, fucking pints of it. More than you’d think a person could lose, you know? I went to her, and then I realised what it was she was saying, over and over again, gripping her stomach. She was saying “My baby … my baby … my baby”, like her brain was stuck on some kind of short circuit.’

Jo fell silent, so lost in the memories of almost ten years before that she didn’t even realise Dr Forster had stood up to offer her a tissue. Jo took it, and wiped her eyes.

‘She miscarried the foetus?’ asked the counsellor, sitting back once more.

In any other person, Jo would have deemed the tone insensitive, but she’d grown accustomed to the psychologist’s sometimes blunt questioning and exact use of language. Indeed, when everyone else around Jo spoke in euphemisms and platitudes about her last case – your ordeal, the incident , that night – it was actually refreshing to have a dose of the psychiatrist’s candour. She’d have made a good detective, Jo thought. No bullshit.

‘Yes,’ she said, screwing up the tissue. ‘They rushed her to hospital and tried to deliver by emergency C-section, but nothing could be done.’

Dr Forster leant forward slightly. ‘That must have been very upsetting.’

Jo glanced at the clock again. Officially there were seven minutes remaining of their designated hour together.

‘Of course,’ she said. For a long time, she’d blamed herself. Nightmares, insomnia, anxiety. It had been Ben who helped her heal.

‘And what happened to Frank Tyndle?’

‘He got eighteen years for the drugs and firearms offences.’

‘And for the death of the foetus in utero?’

Jo shook her head. She hadn’t been in court – by then she’d been moved on to Hertfordshire, for the start of her investigative training on the road to becoming a detective. ‘The woman had been on the way to hospital because of breach complications anyway. Hence the dash with the blues on. The prosecution couldn’t prove the baby would have survived in normal circumstances, so they couldn’t pin the death on Tyndle.’

‘What did Ben think of that?’

He’d been spitting feathers, she remembered, and it had kindled a long and almost personal hatred of defence barristers.

‘With eighteen years, there was a chance Tyndle could be out in half the time,’ said Jo. ‘Not that he was in much of a state to enjoy life. Going through the windscreen took most of his face off. Severe lacerations to the bone.’

Dr Forster cocked her head, completely unfazed. You wouldn’t be if you’d seen him …

‘Karma, perhaps?’ said the counsellor.

‘Ben thought so,’ muttered Jo. ‘Said he deserved everything he got.’

Neither of them spoke for at least thirty seconds. Jo looked at the screwed-up tissue in her hands. So much for holding it together …

Dr Forster put aside her writing pad, and placed her hands on her knees, looking at Jo like she was a rare specimen.

‘Do you blame yourself for what happened to Ben later?’ she asked.

With four minutes until the session ended, the question took Jo by surprise, telescoping time from the earliest days of her relationship with Ben to the final, terrible day when he was killed. It wasn’t like she hadn’t asked herself the same thing, or a version of it, a thousand times though. What if they hadn’t argued that night? What if she hadn’t left him alone and headed upstairs? What if she’d made the connections and arrested a suspect more quickly? Any number of minor actions on her part and he would still be alive.