As they came to the zebra crossing between the High Street and Bisham Gardens, they heard the unmistakable sound of a police car racing up the hill. They turned to watch as it tore past, its whirling blue light bouncing off the shop windows. Hard on its heels came an ambulance, then another police car. The heavy evening traffic had to swerve and even mount the kerb to clear a way for them and April covered her ears as they shot past, sirens blaring.
‘Blimey!’ Caro shouted over the noise. ‘They’re in a hurry.’
But the sound of the sirens didn’t diminish. Even though the cars were out of sight, the clamour continued.
‘Hey - whatever it is, it’s close. Let’s go and see what’s happened!’ said Caro, pulling at April’s elbow.
‘No, Caro, people are probably hurt and they don’t need spectators,’ said April, hanging back.
‘Oh come on!’ shouted Caro over the sirens. ‘How often do you get to see a real emergency? Just for a minute? Come
on
!’
Caro sped off across the road and April followed reluctantly behind her. She caught up with Caro as she was turning into South Grove and cutting across towards the square.
‘Wow, it’s right on your doorstep,’ said Caro excitedly, running on.
Yeah, like that’s a good thing,
thought April,
like I need any more drama in my life
. She dodged around a white van, which swerved and the driver honked his horn angrily.
‘Sorry!’ she said, sprinting over the road. When she got to the other side, it was as if the whole of Pond Square had been lit up for Christmas, with red and blue lights spinning off the buildings and trees. The emergency vehicles were parked higgledy-piggledy in the road and there were people running back and forth between them, shouting above the noise. It was only then that she noticed Caro had stopped and turned back towards her. Her friend’s face looked pale and serious in the weird pulsing light. April instantly sensed that something was wrong, pushing past her friend when Caro tried to grab her.
‘April, stop ...’ she said, worry in her voice. ‘I think it’s your house.’
‘What? No, it can’t be,’ said April, smiling uncertainly, her feet already moving across the square. But between the cars she could see that the yellow front door was open. ‘Oh God,’ she breathed, wrenching herself out of Caro’s grip.
‘April!’ her friend shouted desperately. ‘Wait ...’
But April wasn’t stopping for anyone. Traffic forgotten, she dropped her bag and ran as fast as her legs would go, crossing the distance in seconds. A uniformed policeman saw her approach and tried to block her, but April was moving too fast. She barged him out of the way and shot through the front door, almost tumbling over a man in a bright green jacket crouching in the doorway to her dad’s study. She went down on one knee, pain shooting up her thigh.
‘What’s going on? What are you doing?’ she rasped, the words coming out in a harsh whisper. The corridor seemed to tilt to one side as her wide-open eyes tried to take in the scene. To her right, she saw the living room; it looked as if a bomb had exploded inside. Papers and books were strewn across the floor, even the shelves and pictures had been smashed. The hallway table was lying at an angle across the corridor with the phone next to it, the handset looking as if it had been used by someone with ink on their fingers.
I bet I’ll get the blame for that
, she thought randomly, her mind scrabbling to get a grip and knowing, deep inside, that it wasn’t ink. Slowly, with a detached fascination, she let her eyes follow the dark smears across the floor and up the wall. There was a wide daub - a
handprint,
her mind corrected - on the doorframe, tailing off into a long smear, as if someone -
your dad, your dad -
had reached out for support and then slid to the floor.
‘NOOOO!’ she screamed, and everything flashed back into full speed. Caro and the policeman were grabbing her, trying to pull her back as she pushed past the paramedic hunched over the thing on the floor.
It wasn’t a thing. It was her father - her
father
. He was lying on his back, half-in, half-out of the study, staring up at the ceiling, a black pool spreading around his shoulders. The paramedic was working on a deep wet wound in his neck. It looked as if his neck had been torn open.
‘No, no, no, Dad, no,’ she whispered as she fell to her knees, trying to hold him, clutching his wet hand.
It’s blood
, she thought in her vague, detached way,
I’m covered in my father’s blood.
His eyelids fluttered and a horrible rasp came from his throat.
He’s alive! He’s alive!
thought April, looking up at the paramedics desperately, but they were oblivious to her, their concentration fixed on the job in front of them. The hands behind her were still trying to pull her back, but again she shook them off.
‘Honey ...’ gasped her father, squeezing her hand, his head turning, a slight smile on his lips. ‘Don’t...’ He coughed with an ugly rattle and bright red bubbles appeared on his lips. ‘Don’t ...worry.’
The paramedic pushed April aside and shone a light into her father’s eyes. ‘Can you hear me?’ He touched William’s face. ‘Come on, mate, stay with us.’
April’s father gave the slightest of nods and the man went back to work, pressing a dressing to his throat which immediately became dark with blood.
‘April,’ whispered her father, his voice a barely audible croak, his gurgling breath getting weaker. ‘April ... you need to know. Your mum ...’
Suddenly his body tensed and he moaned in pain.
‘Dad, no,’ sobbed April. ‘Please, don’t talk ...’
He smiled with red lips and gave her hand another squeeze. ‘I love you, April. I’ll always be here for you.’
‘I love you too, Daddy, don’t leave me, please!’
She looked up just in time to catch a glance exchanged between the medic and the policeman: a slight shake of the head.
‘No, no, no!’ she screamed as the policeman got a hold of her and yanked her backwards.
‘Let them do their job, love,’ he said in her ear; urgent, but not unkind. ‘Let them help him.’
‘No, no, I can’t leave him,’ she cried, fighting the policeman, her arms reaching out for her dad as she was pulled away, screaming for him, hands clawing against the doorframe, her own red fingerprints mixing with her father’s, her tears falling uselessly on the steps.
She knew he was dead when they brought her the blanket. A female police officer draped it around her shoulders as she sat on a bench in the square, Caro close beside, holding her tight. She could see the open doorway, she could see the paramedics wheeling the stretcher up the steps. They were doing all the right things, going through the correct procedure, but there was no urgency to their movements. There was no rush to get her dad into the ambulance and down the hill to the hospital. And she could feel it deep inside her, though she didn’t know how or why - she could feel that he had gone.
‘Your mum is on the way,’ said the policewoman softly. ‘She’ll be here soon.’
April stared straight ahead, her face expressionless.
Caro looked up at the woman and nodded. ‘Thanks,’ she said.
The police had taped off the whole square, but the curious rubberneckers seemed to be keeping a respectful distance anyway. Perhaps they sensed that something terrible had happened. The ambulance slowly rolled out of the square and April followed behind in a police car. She sat in silence, Caro on one side, the policewoman the other. She supposed it should feel weird or tragic or surreal, but she couldn’t conjure up any of those feelings. She was numb and empty, as if she was one step away from the world, could see it but not touch it.
‘Why would someone do that?’ asked April, as much to herself as to the policewoman.
‘There are some pretty nasty people out there, love,’ said the officer, ‘but you can be sure we’ll do everything we can to catch him.’
April wanted to say something, to tell her to get out there and find the killer straight away, but she couldn’t seem to open her mouth, it was as if she was encased in ice. Then they were standing at the hospital entrance, blinking in the harsh fluorescent light, watching as the paramedics wheeled the stretcher quickly away down a corridor, getting smaller and smaller, until it bumped through some double doors and disappeared.
She looked around her, the bustle and purpose of the doctors and nurses somehow rendered ridiculous by the broken patients around them, shuffling along in their backless gowns, pushing walking frames or trailing drips, not a trace of joy or hope in their faces.
‘What is this place?’ whispered April.
Is this hell?
The policewoman came and ushered them into a private waiting room and sat them down on wipe-clean plastic chairs.
‘I should be crying,’ she said flatly.
‘You are, honey,’ said Caro. April touched her face and found it was true. Tears were quietly rolling down her cheeks, wetting her collar.
‘He tried to tell me something, before he ... before ...’
Caro nodded and pulled her tight. ‘We know. We know, honey.’
‘What did he say?’ asked the policewoman.
April glanced at her; she was young, perhaps only a few years older than her and Caro, quite pretty in a scrubbed, pink-cheeked way, but there was a look in her eyes when she asked her question that put April, even in her numb state, on her guard. She was ambitious, eager to uncover some vital piece of evidence. April couldn’t blame her for that, but even through her fug she knew she needed to think, needed to work things out before she said anything else to anyone. She wanted to get it all straight in her own mind first. April felt a sob welling up in her throat.
‘That he loved me,’ she said, her voice cracking.
‘Of course he did,’ said Caro, hugging her tighter. ‘Of course he did.’
But April knew there had been something else in her father’s last words. Something vital he was trying to communicate in the serious look on his face when he had spoken to her: ‘There’s something I need to tell you ... your mum ...’ And had there been another half-word he was struggling to get out?
She shook her head. Her father’s last words. April felt a horrible sickness spreading from the pit of her stomach as she remembered her last words to him that morning: ‘I’ll never forgive you!’, ‘I hate you!’, her spiteful, selfish words. Words designed to hurt him, words she had meant, really truly meant. She had screamed that she hated him. Yes, she had said she loved him in those last terrible moments on the floor of the study, but she knew those horrible, childish, petulant words were the ones that would haunt her for ever.
‘Oh, God. Forgive me,’ she whispered, feeling as if someone was twisting a knife in her heart. ‘Please, Daddy, forgive me.’
The waiting room door burst open and her mother flew in, her arms wide, her face creased with concern.
‘Darling, darling!’ she cried, scooping April up, squeezing her tight, her arms wrapped hard around her. And then the tears came for real and April finally gave in to it, crying so hard she choked, unable to breathe, her body sick with the pain, her face contorted, feeling as if she could never stand it, as if she must die too.
Why him? Why, God, why? Can’t you turn back time? I want my daddy back.
And through it all, she clung to her mother like a rock in a storm, and Silvia cradled her like a baby, whispering soothing words, kissing and stroking the tears away, crying with her. Then, when April finally surfaced from her grief, completely wrung out, head pounding from crying so hard, Caro and the policewoman were gone. She wiped her eyes and looked up into her mother’s face.
‘Who would do that to him, Mum?’ she asked. ‘Who could hate him so much?’
‘I don’t know,’ said her mother forcefully, ‘but we’ll find them and we’ll make them pay. Believe me, they will pay.’
Her eyes were glittering and fierce and there was a look of determination on her face April hadn’t seen before.
‘Do you think it was something he was working on? Like an investigation?’
Silvia shook her head. ‘I really don’t know, but whoever it was, they will wish they had never touched that sweet man ...’
That was too much for April; she began choking on her tears again, to think of her kind, gentle father lying somewhere nearby, lifeless and cold. It was ridiculous, absurd and so very, very unfair. Silvia held her again, whispering soft, comforting words that could never help.