Left for Dead: A Maeve Kerrigan Novella (Maeve Kerrigan Novels) (9 page)

‘I’m not going to let him get away with it.’

‘Okay. Up to you.’

My palms ached. I looked down at my lap to see my hands were fists. I unfolded them, looking at the perfect half-moon shapes my nails had left on each of them. The anger was lodged in my throat, making it hard to swallow or speak. I wanted to scream at Gary. I wanted to show him he’d underestimated me. I wanted to hurt him, to break his confidence and teach him a lesson.

But I knew that Chris was right. Try any of that and I’d make this into a big deal.

Lost in my own misery I missed our call sign coming over the radio and Chris picked it up.

‘Receiving, over.’

‘Lima Delta Nine Five, can I head you towards 17 Jaipur Avenue? Graded immediate, domestic in progress: female screaming and the line was lost.’

‘Received, towards.’

I put the lights on as Chris turned the car towards Jaipur Avenue. I knew it, in fact; it was a scruffy little street where we’d often gone to execute a warrant or hunt for stolen goods. The houses were ex-authority, sold off during the eighties and now rented back to the
council at vast expense by private landlords. They weren’t too fussy about the tenants who lived in the houses, and it showed.

‘Anything else we need to know, over?’

‘Nine Five, we’re doing checks at the moment.’ That meant the control room staff were looking up the address to see if we had a history of trouble with any of the occupants.

‘This’ll take your mind off it, anyway,’ Chris said comfortably.

‘I don’t need a violent domestic to make me feel better. Unless it’s between me and Gary. That could do the trick.’

‘Just don’t do it on duty,’ Chris said. ‘And don’t get arrested, either.’

I didn’t respond. I was thinking about a female screaming before her call to the police was cut off. It was, after all, my job.

* * *

At first glance, the house in Jaipur Avenue was completely normal. I peered in through the window. Despite the late hour the lights were on. A television took up most of one wall of the small sitting room at the front of the house, and a man sat on the sofa drinking from a can of lager. He glanced up at me and raised the can in a salute I was pretty sure he didn’t mean. The message had come through from the control room when we were a couple of minutes away: they were sending another unit because the occupier, one Sid Hudson, had a record of resisting arrest. There had been a string of similar incidents at the house over the previous few years, but although he’d been arrested he hadn’t been charged. It was the neighbours who usually called us, according to the control room. So whatever had made Sid’s partner call us herself, it had to be bad, I thought.

Chris had knocked on the door while I was still eyeing Sid. I heard it open and moved to join him. The woman who’d answered the door was maybe thirty, with thin brown hair and worried eyes. She had a red mark on the left side of her throat and her mouth looked swollen.
On a night when it was warm enough that I was in shirtsleeves, she was wearing a high-necked long-sleeved top and jeans, so I couldn’t see if she had any other injuries.

‘Is everything all right?’ Chris asked. ‘We had a 999 call from this address.’

‘My fault. I knocked the phone off the hook and I must’ve leaned on it.’ Her voice was husky and low, a smoker’s voice. Her mouth twisted as she spoke, as if she didn’t want to open it too widely, to hide any damage that was inside or to avoid hurting it. She looked from Chris to me. ‘I just hung up when I realised the call had gone through. I should have said something.’

‘What’s your name, love?’ Chris asked.

‘Dani Hudson.’ She spelled her first name, carefully, as if it mattered that we knew how to write it down, when neither of us had a notebook out.

‘They said you asked for the police and the control room heard screaming before the line dropped.’

She shook her head. ‘No. Sorry. They must’ve got it wrong.’

As she said it, she put a hand up to tuck her hair behind her ear. I saw the bruising on her fingers at the same time as I noticed the blood on her ear lobe.

‘Can we come in?’ Without waiting for an answer Chris stepped up on to the doormat. I knew he’d seen her injuries too. ‘Thanks, love. I’ll just have a word with your bloke and my colleague here will chat with you in the kitchen. Two sugars if you’re making tea. I could do with a cup.’

I hoped Chris would be all right on his own with Sid. I knew he wanted me to talk to Dani rather than wasting time minding him, but my skin was prickling with unease as I watched him disappear into the sitting room. I followed Dani down the hall and into a tiny kitchen that was spotless, down to the tea towels hanging in a neat row on the cooker door. It
smelt of lemon-scented cleaner and the floor was damp in the corner, as if it had just been mopped.

‘Bit late to be doing housework, isn’t it?’

‘I stay up late.’ She was gathering mugs from a cupboard, setting them by the kettle. She worked one-handed, her right arm down by her side. I watched her as I wondered about what was under the long-sleeved top. ‘It’s hard to get things done with the kids around.’

There were no pictures on the fridge and no toys cluttering the kitchen. ‘How many have you got?’

‘Two. A boy and a girl. Five and three.’

‘That sounds like a handful.’

‘They are.’ She forgot herself and smiled at me, then put a hand to her lip with a wince.

‘Are you all right, Dani?’

‘Fine.’ She said it quite loudly. In the small house, everything we said in the kitchen was probably audible in the living room, especially since Chris had managed to get Sid to turn off the television.

I leaned over and flicked the switch on the kettle. Thank God for the national obsession with tea: there was always a reason to come and stand in the kitchen, beside a device that emitted highly effective white noise when you used it.

‘If you are concerned about your safety we can help you. We can take him away now and you can make preparations to leave. Women’s Aid can provide you with a safe place to go with your children.’

‘I don’t need any of that.’

‘Dani, you’ve got some nasty injuries and they’re just the ones I can see. What did he do – stamp on your hand? Rip your earring out?’ I leaned over so I could see the uninjured ear, where a gold pyramid swung. ‘Where’s the other one?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why did he do this to you?’

She shook her head, her face turned away from me.

‘I’ve got a form in the car that I need you to go through with me. If you can tell me that he did any of the things on it, or that you feel afraid for your personal safety, he’s coming with us. Even if you just nod in answer to the questions, that will do. I only need a nod.’

She sniffed and dabbed at her eyes with the cuff of her top, but otherwise she ignored me. I headed out to the car, taking the opportunity to check on Chris’s safety. Sid Hudson was slumped on the sofa, his arms stretched along the back, looking unthreatening. Sid was older than Dani, and lean. His hair was cut very short but the white skin around the edge of his hairline told me that was a recent image change. No earrings, no rings, no tattoos that I could see. He looked ordinary and not remotely nervous. He certainly wasn’t the one you’d pick out of a line-up if you were asked to find the sadistic wife-beater.

That was the thing, though. You couldn’t tell from the outside.

Chris was standing in the middle of the room, massively calm and unflustered by his companion.

‘All right?’ I asked.

‘Never better.’

‘Just going to get some stuff from the car.’ He would know what I meant.

‘Take your time.’

I hurried all the same, not keen on leaving Chris in a stranger’s house with no one to watch his back. As I dug in the boot for the right form, I saw the lights of another patrol car
approaching. I stood and waited for it to come up beside me, suppressing a groan when I saw who was inside.

Gary Lovell and Andy Styles. Of course, it had to be.

‘Chris is in there on his own,’ I said shortly, as Gary rolled down the window. ‘I’d better get back.’

‘Do you need a hand?’

‘You’d better come in. He definitely beat her up but I don’t know if we can get her to give a statement.’

‘If anyone can manage it, it’s you.’

A few hours earlier, that compliment would have had me turning cartwheels. Now, it turned my stomach. ‘I don’t know, Gary. Maybe we should send you to talk to her instead. You’re good at talking women into doing things against their better judgement.’

I saw it hit home. He sat back in his seat for a second, then put the window up before driving past me to park. I didn’t wait for them. I went back into the house, my nerves jangling, and walked a little too fast to the kitchen where Dani whirled around, one hand to her throat as I approached.

‘I thought you were—’

She didn’t say it but I knew who she meant.
Sid
.

‘How are you getting on with the tea?’

‘I’ve made it.’ She indicated the two mugs on the counter, then leaned back so she could see the front door, where Gary and Andy were coming in. ‘But I should make some more.’

‘They don’t need any.’ I took Chris’s and carried it in to the sitting room, ignoring the other two men. Then I closed the kitchen door behind me and laid the form on the kitchen table. ‘We have to go through this form, I’m afraid. Have you seen it before?’

She nodded. The two of us slid chairs out from under the table and sat down. I went on, my voice low despite the closed door. It was all about making her feel safe – making her feel she could trust me. Sometimes it felt like a confidence trick.

‘And you know you don’t have to say the words out loud if you’re too scared to. You can just nod or indicate to me that you agree or disagree with the yes or no answers.’

A nod.

I folded the form in front of me and started reading. ‘Has the current incident resulted in injury?’

She nodded, showing me her neck and her mouth.

‘What about your arm?’

‘What about it?’

‘You’re not using it.’

‘That wasn’t tonight. That was earlier in the week.’

‘What happened?’

‘He twisted it. I’d made a mistake with the laundry – washed some clothes of his that had some stains on them. I didn’t know they were so dirty or I’d have soaked them.’ She looked down at her hands, which were trembling. ‘The doctor said I’d torn the muscles in my shoulder.’

‘
He
tore the muscles in your shoulder, you mean. Did you tell the doctor how it happened?’

A quick shake of her head.

I made a note that it wasn’t the first time she’d been injured by her partner and moved on. The next question was on the form was, ‘Are you very frightened?’

She laughed.

I’d have given quite a lot to never hear that sound again.

‘What are you afraid of? Is it further injury or violence?’ I wasn’t allowed to deviate from the wording of the form, even though privately I thought it was painfully obvious that the answer would be yes, and kind of insulting to break it down, as I had to, into fear of being killed, injured or ‘other’. She was worried for herself, Dani admitted. She wasn’t scared for the children.

‘He’d never touch them.’ She sounded sure but I wasn’t, not at all. The only thing I was sure about was that I was going to risk assess this one as ‘high’.

‘Is the abuse happening more often?’

‘No. Less often. Until this week,’ she corrected herself. ‘He’s been doing really well.’

‘When it happens, is the abuse getting worse?’

She looked at me for a minute without answering, as her eyes welled with tears. ‘Yeah. I suppose.’

‘Has Sid ever used weapons or objects to hurt you?’

‘Yeah.’

I waited for more details but none were forthcoming. ‘Has Sid ever threatened to kill you and you believed him?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Has Sid ever attempted to strangle, choke, suffocate or drown you?’

She looked thoughtful. ‘Never drowning. He’s never suffocated me either. He chokes me. What the difference between choking and strangling?’

‘No idea,’ I admitted. ‘Does Sid do or say things of a sexual nature that make you feel bad or that physically hurt you or someone else?’

She literally recoiled from the question, hitting the back of her chair with a thud. ‘I don’t want to answer that one.’

I paused, my pen against the page to mark my place. ‘Sorry?’

‘Move on. Next question.’

She’d been being so forthcoming and helpful it came as a shock to run across something she really didn’t want to answer. I could only imagine it was because the answer was yes but I left the box blank.

‘Has Sid ever mistreated an animal or the family pet?’

She snorted. ‘No! The hamster. Sid loves that little thing. He’s the one who looks after it. Lets it eat food off his mouth. Disgusting. He won’t let me go near it, not that I would.’

‘Okay,’ I said, making a note. Only cruel to humans. I wasn’t inclined to give him any points for that.

‘Is Sid under any financial pressure at the moment? Are you dependent on him for cash? Has he recently lost his job?’

‘Yes, yes and yes, sort of. He was working at a supermarket in Thornton Heath but he got the sack for being rude to a customer.’

‘When was that?’

‘A couple of months ago. He’s still driving a minicab in the evenings, so we’ve got some money coming in. I just look after the kids.’ At the mention of them, her voice filled with warmth. She clearly adored them.

I ran through the last questions about Sid’s drug use, threats of suicide and criminal history, getting the answers I expected. Something was bothering me, though, and I couldn’t work out what. I ran back over what Dani had said, trying to pick out what mattered from the swirl of information about mispers and nominals and taskings and call signs that passed for my brain on duty.

Less abusive lately, but more violent.

Getting angry about the laundry earlier in the week.

Working in Thornton Heath until a couple of months ago. Thornton Heath, which was next door to Croydon.

Minicab driver, working evenings and nights, driving around the area unnoticed, unremarked.