I would have spent a boring day if someone had remembered to confiscate my mobile. I thought about ringing my mother, but on reflection I realised she would only panic then drop everything and dash halfway across the country to see me, by which time I would probably have been discharged. As it was, I got straight to work instead and rang Emma at forensics.
“Where are you? I heard you were in hospital, badly injured.”
“Well, you know how people exaggerate, Emma. I’m in hospital but I’m all right, really. Listen; could you do me a small favour?”
“Go on. I’m listening.”
“The forensic report on the evidence we found in the field - the Josephine Marsden case. You remember?”
“Sure. What do you want to know?”
“Would you mind reading it to me again.”
“Couldn’t someone from the station read it out to you?”
I let her hear my dramatic sigh. “Emma. Come on; you know what they’re like. If you listen to them I’m lying here on my deathbed. Please – I’m begging you.”
“Okay. But you didn’t get it from me. Do you want to hang on, or shall I ring you back?”
“I’ll hold, if you don’t mind. I ain’t going anywhere.”
After what seemed to take an age Emma said, “Here we go.” She then proceeded to read out the section on the fibre, which I asked her to skip over.
“What is it you’re after, Angie?”
“I don’t know precisely. But I’m sure it has something to do with that footprint.”
“Well, it doesn’t tell us much, other than his approximate height and weight. Oh, yes. It also appears he must have had surgery on his right knee; we could establish that from the weight distribution of the print itself.”
“That’s it!” I exclaimed excitedly, remembering what it was that was nagging me.
“What is? The surgery?”
“Exactly. If he had surgery then there must a record of it somewhere. That’s what we should look for.”
“But, Angie, how on earth are you going to trace a knee operation? There must be hundreds of hospitals doing them every day. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“No; but I would. Emma, thank you – thank you very much; you’ve been a big help.”
Peter Conway was the next on my list.
“Sergeant Conway, CID.”
“Peter. Hi, it’s Angie. How are the vehicle checks going?”
“Angie! You’re supposed to be laid up in hospital. Have they released you?”
“Not yet. But I’m fine now. Listen…”
“That isn’t what the chief tells us. Last I heard you were taking it easy, and we hadn’t to expect you back for at least a week. What are you up to, Angie?”
“Peter, for fuck’s sake, stop rambling and answer the damned question, will you?”
“It’ll take more than a crack on the head to sweeten your disposition, won’t it? Anyway, the answer to your question is: they’re not. ...Going, that is. Quite a number of owners have sold their vehicles on for cash, and the registration documents haven’t been returned to DVLC at Swansea. But when you think about it that isn’t unusual; sometimes they don’t bother till they want to sell the car on again. Also, a lot of the owners seem to be away – at least, we haven’t been able to contact them. And we can hardly put out APBs on them, can we? So, we’re running into dead ends. Does that answer your question?”
“Yeah. Sorry, Peter. I’m a bit light on patience at the moment.”
“Oh, shit!” I thought, feeling the tears starting to flow again. I was behaving more like a silly schoolgirl than a mature police officer.
“Angie? Are you still there?”
“Ye...yes, Peter.”
“Why don’t you just give in to it? By all accounts you’ve had one hell of a shock, and you don’t get over these things that easily. I know; it happened to me not too long ago. I was laid up for over two weeks.”
“Can’t afford to; we’re trying to catch a very dangerous psychopath in case you’d forgotten. And I think he’s somehow found out where Connie’s staying, and he’s bound to go after her again.”
“Look, Angie; I don’t know what it is with this friend of yours – no one’s bothered to put me in the picture – but I’ll tell you one thing. Right now she’s got more security than the bloody Prime Minister.”
“Peter. There’s something I want to ask you. Do you mind coming over…to the hospital?”
“Course not. I’ll try and come by this evening. Are you sure you’re up to it?”
“No. I don’t mean later. Can you come now?”
“Now! You’ve gotta be kidding. We’re as busy as hell here. The place is a bloody mad house. It can’t be that important, surely? Won’t it keep until later? Or you can ask me now, if you like – I’ve got a minute. No, sorry, cancel that; the DCI is calling me. Look, I’ll come by later, Angie – promise. As soon as I can.”
I let out one of my customary sighs. I suppose it was too much to ask him just to drop everything and dash over here. And, of course, he was right; it wasn’t that urgent. Anyway, I thought, closing my eyes yet again, it would give me more time to plan what I had in mind.
I found my thoughts drifting back to my own life, to my mother and older sister, who had married and moved to America when I was still a teenager. I hadn’t seen her since then, although we still kept in touch from time to time. Marie lived in Seattle, had two children of her own now and would love it if I visited the States to meet them.
I’d already dismissed the idea of ringing mother; I would have loved to see her but she was much too far away, and, anyway, I wasn’t sure I was up to her lecturing me at the present. I decided I would contact her when I was out of hospital. Still, it would have been nice to have someone to comfort me in my distress, someone to love me and make me feel wanted.
I found myself sinking into a deep well of self-pity – something I hadn’t experienced for some time. Poor Angie, lying on her own in a small clinical room in the general hospital, badly injured, and not a relative in sight. I forced myself out of it by switching my thoughts to Connie and what a terrible childhood she had suffered. In truth, she hadn’t had a childhood. When other children were experiencing the joys of school holidays and Christmases with the family, Connie was having nightmarish visions of murdered children and helping the police to uncover dead bodies. I shuddered at the thought of what fate had done to an innocent young girl, imposing this terrible gift on her. Instead of playing hide and seek with her friends, Connie was forced to play the vision game, even now, with a murderer. All her teenage years to date had been spent in a psychiatric hospital, apparently abandoned by a mother who, for reasons we will never know, felt compelled to take her own life. No doubt she too was sick, but I found it hard to sympathise with a woman who left her own daughter in hospital, then committed suicide without any communication whatsoever.
I remembered, too, that time I was visiting Connie, not long after her mother had killed herself. She was sitting on her bed in the hospital, alone, crying her eyes out. When I asked her what the trouble was she sobbingly told me that something inside her had burst and she was bleeding to death. Sadly, no one had forewarned her about menstruation or the biological facts of life. I recall absolutely exploding with fury at the nursing staff because of their negligence, and spent the rest of the day explaining to Connie how her body functioned. She smiled when I convinced her she was about to become a woman. But what I found terribly sad about the whole episode was that it was something every mother should do for her daughter. “Where the bloody hell are you, Sylvia?” I remember almost screaming aloud.
A further near-tragedy that occurred with Connie was when she contracted a particularly nasty infection of the ovaries. She was dreadfully ill, and I took three days away from Warwick to be with her; three days I couldn’t really afford, since I was in my final year, but it was out of the question to leave her on her own. One of the repercussions of this awful illness, the seriousness of which to this day Connie was not aware of, was the improbability of her ever being able to have children. It was decided by Dr Simmons and the rest of the medical team – a decision with which I concurred – that nothing would be gained by adding to her suffering. Poor kid. She had endured the most appalling childhood; she had yet to reach 18; and, even today, she was frightened for her very life because some psychopath was probably hunting her. And here was I feeling sorry for myself.