He exhaled, opening his eyes in the process, one index finger aimed at the doorbell.
He noticed that his hand was shaking.
Two
Donna Ward thought she heard the two-tone chime of the doorbell and cocked an ear in the direction of the front door. The music continued to flow from the ghetto-blaster propped on the kitchen unit beside her. Donna wondered for a moment if she’d imagined it. She eased the volume down slightly, then continued with her task. She stepped back from the picture, trying to see if it was straight or not. She smiled to herself. Chris wouldn’t even notice when he came in. She’d hung three small pictures in the kitchen, military prints of men in uniform. She’d found them in a box under the stairs a day or two ago. Chris had owned them for years, as long as she could remember. He’d once had a passion for military history. Years ago.
This time, when the ringing of the doorbell came, she did hear it. She jabbed the ‘off’ button and silence dropped like a blanket over the house as she walked across the hall towards the front door.
Donna didn’t bother to check the spy-hole but she always left the chain in position and now, as she eased the door open, she only pulled it as far as the restraints of the metal would allow.
Through the gap between door and jamb she saw PC Cobb.
He nodded his head with such exaggeration it looked almost like a bow.
Donna felt a sudden, unexpected coldness run through her, as if someone had suddenly injected her with iced water. She didn’t know why; perhaps it was just the sight of the uniform. She’d seen policemen often enough when her father had been alive. They’d arrive at her parents house to tell her mother that the drunken wreck she’d married was either too pissed to get home and was sleeping it off in the cells, or that they had him in the car outside.
But that, as the saying went, had been then. This was now.
What was a policeman doing ringing her doorbell at seven in the evening?
She brushed a hair from her face and looked at him impassively.
‘Mrs Ward?’ he asked, his tone subdued.
She swallowed hard.
‘Mrs Donna Ward?’
‘Yes. What is it?’
‘Can I come in, please?’ Cobb asked, running a swiftly appraising glance over the young woman. Blonde, pretty. Slim. Late twenties, he guessed. She was dressed casually in jeans, sweatshirt and trainers. She had grey eyes, eyes which flickered back and forth, regarding him now with a combination of bewilderment and concern. He wondered for a moment if she was going to let him in but she pushed the door to and he heard the chain being slipped. The door opened to allow him entry, then was closed behind him.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘I was going to ask you in.’ There was a pleasant smile on her face, but it never touched her eyes.
Do your job.
Cobb stood rigidly in the hallway.
‘Mrs Ward,’ he began.
Go on, you can do it.
‘I’m afraid to tell you there’s been an accident. It’s ...’
She cut him short.
‘Chris,’ she murmured, her eyes riveted to the uniformed man.
‘Your husband has been involved in a car crash. At least, we think it’s your husband ...’
She closed her eyes tightly for a second.
‘Is he hurt?’ she demanded, her voice cracking.
‘We need you to identify him,’ Cobb said.
There were tears forming in her eyes.
‘How do you know it’s him?’ she said frantically.
‘We’re not sure; that’s why we need you to come with us and look at him. We have this.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small, plastic-wrapped package. With a trembling hand he held it out towards Donna, who snatched it from him.
‘Those are your husband’s initials, aren’t they?’ Cobb said, indicating the CW on one corner of the bloodied handkerchief.
‘Oh God,’ Donna said, her eyes brimming with tears. She put one hand to her mouth. ‘Is he dead?’
Cobb had been expecting the question but he still didn’t know how to deal with it. No amount of training could prepare you.
‘If you come with me, there’s a car outside,’ he said, trying to sound efficiently detached. ‘We’ll take you to ...’
‘Is he dead?’ she snarled through clenched teeth.
‘Yes.’
‘Oh God, no, please.’ She tried to swallow but couldn’t. The tears began to flow.
Cobb felt helpless. So fucking, pathetically, screamingly helpless. Jesus Christ, he wanted to help this woman, but what did he do? What could he do, except drive her to the hospital to inspect the body of the man they were convinced was her husband?
There was a coat stand close by. Donna reached for a leather jacket and pulled it on, pushing past Cobb and out of the front door towards the waiting police car. He slammed the front door behind her and followed her to the car, helping her into the back, scurrying around the other side and strapping himself in.
Donna wiped tears from her face.
‘We don’t know for sure that it is your husband, Mrs Ward,’ he said, as if that were some kind of comfort.
‘Just take me to him, please,’ she said.
The car sped away.
The sun slipped away, leaving the last of its colour to fade from the sky. Night closed in.
Now there was only darkness.
Three
She might as well have been blindfolded for the journey. Donna saw little or nothing of the houses and countryside that flashed by. Stigwood guided the police car along the streets with sometimes bewildering speed. She could see her own face reflected in the glass of the windows when other vehicles passed: her eyes looked blank. There was no expression behind them other than that of fearful expectation. Or desperate hope.
They’d said they weren’t sure if it was her husband or not.
You’re holding his handkerchief, for Christ’s sake. Look at it.
It could be someone else.
Someone who looked like him?
It was possible.
Someone who had the same initials?
Please God let them be wrong.
There was so much blood on the handkerchief she could have wrung it out. As she sat in the back of the car she ran her fingers over the plastic. Occasionally she would clasp her hands together.
The silence inside the car was as uncomfortable as it was impenetrable, but what were the uniformed men supposed to say? Stigwood was too busy concentrating on the road to strike up a conversation and Cobb couldn’t even bring himself to look round at the distraught woman. The only indication of her presence was the occasional sniffle.
If it wasn’t Chris, then how did they know where to find her? From his driver’s licence? She gripped the handkerchief more tightly, one part of her mind filled with the unshakeable conviction that the man she was being taken to identify was indeed her husband. The other part of her being fought to believe, prayed that there had been some terrible mistake. She tried to make herself think that there could be another Christopher Ward.
The police car slowed down as it approached a set of traffic lights, the glowing red in the gloom. The single scarlet circlet was like an unblinking eye. As red as the blood on the handkerchief.
Donna shifted position, pulling her jacket more tightly around herself, aware of the same bone-numbing chill that had enveloped her from the time Cobb had stepped into her house. But now that chill was deepening, freezing her blood, turning her bones to glacial props encased by bloodless skin. She had never felt cold like it.
Was death as cold as this?
Did Chris already know?
She closed her eyes for a moment but images of him appeared there, images she wanted to see but also ones she feared she might never see again. Images which would become only memories. Never again to be witnessed. She was to be left with nothing
but
memories, now.
In the night air the sound of sirens echoed stridently and amidst a blurr of flashing blue lights an ambulance hurtled from the main gates of the hospital.
Stigwood watched it go, checked that the way in was clear, then guided the car through the main gates.
As the car came to a halt and Cobb opened the door for her, Donna felt as if the very life were being sucked from her.
She brushed a tear from her cheek and followed Cobb inside the hospital.
Four
There were three of them waiting.
Donna had been guided through the labyrinthine corridors of the hospital by Cobb, hardly aware that her feet were touching the ground, seeing the activity around her but not registering it.
The nurse hurrying to casualty with packets of blood for a transfusion.
Two interns running along with a gurney.
Somewhere close she heard crying; always, there was that smell, simultaneously reassuring and nauseating. The disinfectant smell. It mingled with the stench of excrement as a nurse hurried to empty a bed-pan, walking past Donna without even glancing at her. Everything was happening in slow motion; the journey through the hospital took an eternity.
Until they reached the morgue.
That was where the trio waited to greet her, two men - one in a suit - and a WPC who smiled efficiently and took a step towards her, eyeing the bloodstained handkerchief that Donna still clutched.
The man in the suit also stepped forward, introducing himself as Detective Constable Mackenzie. Donna looked at him blankly and followed him through into the morgue.
Please God, don’t let it be him.
The WPC took her arm as she moved into the small room beyond. It was grey and white, bare except for a single slab in the centre of the room. On that slab lay a shapeless form covered by a green plastic sheet. The room was barely twelve feet square, but it might as well have been the size of a football pitch. The slab seemed to grow in Donna’s mind until it was the only thing she could see. The antiseptic smell was even stronger now.
She felt sick. Felt faint.
Please God.
The other man, dressed in a sweatshirt and trousers, said that he was the coroner, his name was Daniel Jordan. Something like that.
Donna felt a sudden feeling of light-headedness, thought she was going to faint. The WPC shot out an arm to steady her, sliding another arm around her waist, but Donna shrugged it off, pushing the offered support away from her with her cold hands.
Look at him.
No, don’t look. Turn and run.
A tear forced its way from her eye and trickled slowly down her cheek.
‘It won’t take a second, Mrs Ward,’ said Jordan, holding out a hand to beckon her closer.
And now every part of her mind centred on that shape in front of her. Moving like an automaton she stood beside Jordan, looking down at the sheet.
She clutched the handkerchief more tightly.
‘All right,’ she whispered.
He pulled back the sheet.
‘Oh, no,’ she gasped. ‘No.’
Jordan looked at her, then at Mackenzie, who merely shook his head slightly.
‘Chris,’ murmured Donna, her eyes transfixed on the face of the corpse.
The corpse of her husband.