I was bad juju again. But this time they had learned from experience, and had tucked me away out of sight. Unlike the previous fiasco in Cardiff, when they tried to pull a PR trick and highlight me as a hero in an attempt to deflect the mess that had really gone down. No, this time they knew better. This time they treated me like the crazy uncle in the attic, and used the equivalent of nine-inch coach bolts and a heavy-duty plank to keep me secure behind the door.
I didn’t care, because this time I had real injuries.
The medicos were mostly concerned about the after-effects of the concussion that had knocked me out. I wasn’t, because that was nothing more than clinical record by the time I surfaced from it. The real bitch for me was the cracked ribs. Especially since the fuckers had only just started to heal after the Evie Salmon investigation. The contusions didn’t help either. The fact that my face looked like a twisted biochemist was trying to cross a yellow tomato with an aubergine. With stubble, as it hurt too much to shave.
They had shipped me off to a specialist hospital in north Shropshire. I only found out later that I was in a secure and private wing that they kept reserved for damaged cops and high-echelon gangsters who had been mysteriously injured in the course of turning Queen’s evidence.
I was hurting.
And as I started to adjust to it and come to terms with the physical side of the pain, the emotional trauma took over. But no one would tell me anything. They shushed me and said I needed to reserve all my mental strength for the recovery process. But even in a tight, shut-down place like that I was picking up the broad brushstrokes through a kind of osmosis.
Something terrible had happened.
I had quickly checked out the fundamentals. I still had my arms and my legs, my cock and my balls, and could move the parts that were meant to be moved. I could still remember that a tangent was the product of the opposite over the adjacent, and my date of birth. So it wasn’t me.
It wasn’t too hard to figure out after that. Although I was still refusing to accept it.
Until I had to.
Two days into it and they deemed me fit enough to receive a visitor.
DCI Bryn Jones knocked diffidently and shuffled his big bulk uncertainly into the room. It was crepuscular, the blinds were drawn, and I could tell that he wasn’t ready to be sure that he had the right occupant. Until he started to adjust to the light and his expression screwed-over involuntarily at the sight of my face.
I shuffled to sit up. He gestured for me not to bother. It was the signal I had been testing for. This was unofficial. He was on his own.
‘It’s a stupid question, but are you okay?’ His exploratory smile didn’t mask his concern.
I nodded lumpily, keeping the movement within the safe parameters I now knew to work to. ‘Thanks for coming.’
‘Everyone in Carmarthen sends their best,’ he lied.
‘Will DCS Galbraith be coming?’
He knew what I was asking. ‘Not yet,’ he said softly.
He had answered my question. I had to accept it then. I was a Cop Who Had Killed a Girl.
I was Bad Karma.
‘They haven’t told you?’ he probed.
I shook my head gingerly.
‘It would have been instantaneous.’
The suppressed knowledge crashed to the surface. And there was no relief in the acceptance. ‘Tell me about her, Bryn.’
‘What do you know?’
‘Her name was Josie.’
He shook his head gently. ‘Jessie.’
Fuck. I felt the tears rise. I had killed her, and I hadn’t even got her name right.
‘Jessie Bullock.’
‘What age?’ I asked, dreading the answer.
‘Nearly eighteen.’
My multicoloured face collapsed.
He looked miserable as the messenger. ‘Don’t blame yourself. It was an accident. We’re all sure there’s nothing you could have done about it.’ He paused, waiting for me. I stayed silent. ‘What do you remember?’
I lay there, looking up at the grid of ceiling tiles, but knowing that I would have to relinquish the numbness I had previously found there. ‘I’ve been in car crashes before. There’s usually an instant when you recognize the inevitability of it, and time locks down, and everything shunts on towards the moment.’ I shut my eyes and went back to it again. ‘But not this time. There was no build-up, Bryn. No recognition that we’d just entered an event. This was like suddenly finding yourself blindfolded and taking off in a rocket that you didn’t even know you were travelling in. There was no lead-up sequence of things starting to go wrong. It was as sudden as that.’
He nodded. ‘They say that your seat belt saved your life.’
‘Why didn’t hers?’
His expression saddened. ‘She wasn’t wearing one. They found her outside the car. She had been thrown. Her neck was broken.’
I shook my head. I looked at him intently. ‘She had her seat belt on, Bryn.’ It wasn’t meant to be a plea, but it came out like one.
‘Put your seat belt on.’
After Bryn had gone I went back to that night in the car park in the woods in the rain. The girl had been pulled. But they had already fucked up. They had been too eager. Broken out of cover too soon. We were standing around in the drizzle, heavy drips coming off the trees, while they reorganized themselves. They were going to have to go chasing into the woods now, relying on blind luck. This was bullshit. I wanted out of there. I offered to take the girl off their hands and drive her back to the police house in Dinas.
Why hadn’t I got to know something about her? Concentrated, made more of an effort. Instead of just using her as a ticket out of that mess.
‘Here’s how it’s going to go down,’ I told her as I led her back to my car. Knowing better than to hold her. But poised, ready to grab her above the elbows if she made any move to run. ‘I’m going to drive you to Dinas. There will be a woman police officer there to look after you’ – I avoided using the word process – ‘until we bring the others in, and then you’ll all be taken to either Aberystwyth or Newtown.’
‘How are you going to do that?’ she asked.
And that was the only time I really saw her. I looked down at her then. In the pale second-hand gleam of a headlight reflecting off a car’s side window. A wan teenager with a sharp nose and a curled wisp of damp hair dangling over her forehead under the hooded top. Curiosity framed in her expression.
‘Do
