The mysterious woman known to Billie as Emma Dearing was having a bad day. Traffic north of the city's ring road was tying itself in knots, and she thumped the steering wheel in frustration, her mood darkening by the minute. Work had been demanding, as always, and it seemed everyone wanted a piece of her. As soon as she’d dealt with one problem, another two jostled for her attention. She’d delegated what she could to junior officers, but then had much of it thrown back in her lap after one guy was pulled for another task by someone of higher rank. Typical non-joined-up teamwork. She was on the edge of a migraine too, and she was due on. Could things get any worse today?
Forward another twelve feet. Not too close to that HGV—spewing noxious fumes out his back end. Must be burning oil. An email pinged on her phone. Piss off. Sirens behind? She looked in her mirrors and spotted the flashing blue lights of an ambulance a couple of hundred yards back. He was fighting his way up the outer lane of the dual carriageway. Fair enough, pal. She edged forward with care, on full lock, to make room. At least the HGV was doing something similar. Shit! Another one?
A second blast of a siren from her left, her blind side. Gridlock now. No one moving. She picked up her phone to check what further aggravation just landed in her inbox.
Hi Em—I hope things are okay with you? Did you get my email from June 12th? Ed and I have made a lot more progress since then. I’ve got a few conclusions about witness statements at both enquiries and I reckon some of those by the crew (inc officers) were outright lies. Question is whether they were co-erced and I wonder if you have a view on that? Also Ed has found some conclusive stuff about the collision and where the ship was holed. He also believes speed was a hugely contributing factor and wonders if Capt Smith was under some pressure to go faster for a particular reason. Need your views on this so please get in touch. Billie
Bugger. More pressure. Like I need this right now… Breathing exercises from her yoga class to ease that grumbling abdominal pain… Better… Or was it? Nothing left in her day to feel positive about, until she heard the engine of the HGV rumble louder, and a growing gap opened up in front. At last! Now she needed a short cut.
But, like an Aesop fable, her increased speed through quieter streets led to further obstacles. Two schoolgirls on the way home chose to be in one road at the same moment she did. They were having a good day, holding hands and chattering happily, oblivious to the five-year-old blue Honda accelerating toward them from round the corner. The older of the two became aware of the danger a fraction ahead of the other, pulling her sister back into a gap between parked cars as a screech of tyres against tarmac filled their ears. Car at a stand-still, a third frightened face stared back at them both from a metre away.
*
An hour later, she stood under a hot shower and tried to face down her demons. Those girls… Like me and Em. It had been another day, another life. A fast car; two sisters walking slow. Her or me? Not my choice. Hot tears dissolved on her skin, yet the memory remained. Today she had come close to living on the other side of a twenty-five-year-old nightmare. Fuck it, who picked me not to die? She gripped her arms hard enough to bruise, angry with herself for being so angry.
Out of the shower, trailing wet footprints across the kitchen tiles to the fridge. She needed a distraction and a drink, preferably in the form of a horny male carrying a bottle of something around forty percent proof. Where was Brad Pitt when you needed him? She had the ice. Now where was the gin?
Shit. Out of gin… out of men.
She found the TV remote and turned up the volume. More politics. Conservatives falling out among themselves. Labour pointing proverbial fingers—we told you so. Same old, same old. A familiar face. His face! Shock running through her again like a hit of pure cocaine.
“…once one of the loudest critics of the current administration, Baron Gris had voiced his dissent over the call for a referendum in a speech in February. His death yesterday after a short illness came as a surprise to members of his party. He was just a month short of his eighty-third birthday.”
Muting the sound, she played the words back in her head. It couldn’t be true. He could not be dead. But if he was… what now?
The girl who’d taken the name of Emma Dearing retreated to a darker place. Light streamed through the window of her apartment but she was not aware of it. A deep darkness had taken over, a cloud of paranoia holding her captive, besieging her brain with familiar aggravation. She slumped naked against a chair in a corner of the room, hair tangled and unkempt, sweat and saliva staining her chest. A scratched and chipped toenail marked the limit of her vision; a purplish bruise on the other leg balancing any physical discomfort. Their presence a minor irritation, like the pixelated colours on the screen opposite.
She sniffled quietly. Eyes unfocused. Oblivious to the cold.
Has it all been for nothing? Has he won in the end? By cheating me?
She didn’t hear an answer. But deep inside a fire still burned.
I won’t let him win! There’s more than one rotten apple on that tree!
Then the fear surfaced.
He’ll still come after me. He’ll still have Meredith and… and God knows who else. I’ll see him in hell.
But Emma’s demons were familiar friends. Death was a close neighbour. Perhaps aware of that mortal proximity, she brought her palms up in front of her face. Scarring on one wrist a reminder of a life after extreme pain. The menace of the man had filled her adult life. A public face full of falsehoods. A wielder of power reaching for her throat, lusting for control and sex in equal measure.
I know what that feels like. Especially with a sharp knife in her hand.
Somewhere nearby, at the very edge of consciousness, a small vibration.
Piss off. Whoever you are, just piss off.
But the smartphone on the chair behind continued to probe her conscious state until it got a physical reaction. Flying through the air in the vague direction of the television, it missed the screen by little more than an inch.
Silent and invisible now. How she liked it. How she needed it. She closed her eyes in triumph at scoring one very small win.
*
Also in a dark place that night, a personal preference to assist his interaction with the screen, Eric Vinke was reading his online newspaper. The announcement of the death of Peter Gris nearly escaped his attention. He’d been amusing himself over the political fallout following the Yes vote in the referendum and the resulting scramble by the Tories to show some unity. Then he had found an article referring to the sad loss of a Conservative peer and former Cabinet Minister from the Thatcher and Major era, who had passed away peacefully at his home in Coventry at the age of eighty-two. He learned that Gris had survived the Brighton bomb at the 1984 Tory conference and two further attempts on his life, one as recently as 1999. He had never married, left no family and had been cared for by close friends during the last few weeks of his life. Death was thought to be the result of pancreatic cancer.
Vinke blinked, refreshing the page, then focused on a button at the top of the screen and blinked again. Another newspaper. He made a search [GRIS, DEATH] and found a similar column with almost identical wording. He wondered if he should tell Helen.
Far away he could hear the doorbell chiming, then a female voice below.
‘I’ll get it, dear!’
Vinke would have smiled if he could get the muscles to work. As if there was any chance of him opening the door. Whoever it was, it would not be good news at this time of night.