The Soprano, page 18
“You cut yourself. It was bleeding. A lot. I’ve put some stitches in to hold it for now, but we should probably get you to A&E to have it looked at properly.”
That had been a lot for her to take in. In her confusion, her brain was at a diminished processing level which made ‘fire bad, tree pretty’ sound like Shakespeare. She sat up as soon as he released her hand, raising it to look at his handiwork.
A&E. He’d mentioned A&E.
“Okay, I’ll drive.”
Damien looked at her, confused.
“Drive? I don’t think-”
“You said we needed to go to A&E. I don’t want to get blood on your nice seats.”
“Don’t worry about that. Let’s just get you looked after.”
He helped her stand, carefully directing her movements to avoid letting her step in the large puddle of blood that had formed in a ring around where her bottom had been, staining the tub and her jeans a crimson nightmare. Not fully conscious and struggling to understand much of anything, she let him guide her, setting all of her weight against him as she raised her leg gingerly and stepped out of the bathtub. His frame was wiry and small, she thought, but he was sturdier than she’d expected, holding her firmly but gently as he led her out into the hall, out of her flat and into the lift. She wanted to protest, to use the stairs, but by the time her addled brain had realised that he was taking her towards the lift and had processed her usual objection to using it, they had safely reached the ground floor and were halfway towards the car park.
A large screen at the entrance to the A&E department noted a current waiting time of between four and six hours, and Damien wasn’t sure if this was genuine or a bluff to scare off time-wasters with minor injuries that didn’t truly warrant emergency treatment. He told the woman at the reception desk that she’d been slashed with a wine glass, had lost a lot of blood, and was in and out of delirious consciousness - all of which were true, but he had also heavily suggested that all of this had happened to her, a serving police officer, in the line of duty. Within twenty minutes Catherine had been through triage and taken straight through to the ward to be checked over. Damien had felt a little guilty, seeing more than a dozen people watching on as they were escorted straight through while they each had to wait. He made the mistake of locking eyes with a young woman cradling a crying infant. He was sure he’d remember those eyes for a while.
Despite his best efforts, Catherine had burst the rudimentary attempt at stitches and continued to bleed profusely, making Damien glad that his car had come with leather seats and black carpets. Having it cleaned wouldn’t be a problem, but seeing that amount of blood everywhere would, he thought, have caused her to freak out, making her heart pump faster and thus bleeding more. The other effect this had was that she was barely conscious when he’d brought her in, and she’d passed out by the time the doctor had checked and restitched the wound. Damien debated whether or not he should leave her to sleep while he worked his way through the list of suspects again, but hadn’t decided by the time a now-familiar voice rang out from behind him.
“How’s she doing?” Hales asked, and as Damien turned he could see that the detective was out of breath - presumably having run from the car park - and ashen-faced. As he surveyed his sleeping officer, Damien noticed him breathe a little easier. “She wasn’t answering her phone, so I called by the flat. Gave me a bit of a fright, if I’m honest.”
“Oh, shit.” Damien sensed the frustration in Hales’ voice, knowing what he’d seen there and where his mind must have instinctively gone. A missing officer, an unlocked door and more blood than an executioner’s block, trailing from the car park all the way inside her flat, then sprayed across the walls, floors and bathroom like the crime scenes Damien had seen on television, and Hales had most likely had to visit in real life. “Sorry” was the best he could offer. “I didn’t think - I just had to get her here.”
Hales nodded, eyes still trained on Catherine.
“What happened?”
“I’m not sure - I think she broke a glass and caught herself with it.”
Both men stood, momentarily silent, as they watched her shuffle uncomfortably on the narrow bed. The blanket looked like wool, but the scratchy sound it made whenever she moved suggested a polyester blend which made Damien itch just from looking at it.
“You said you’d been calling. What’s happened?”
Hales adjusted himself, standing a little straighter as he turned to Damien, averting his gaze from Catherine for the first time since he’d entered the cubicle.
“Oh, yeah. Gethin Roberts. He’s turned himself in.”
“What? I didn’t see that one coming.”
Hales shook his head. “No - nor us. He saw the appeal on TV this morning and called the number. I spoke with him a little while ago.”
“And?” Damien said, far too eagerly and, he worried, a slap in the face to the cool and methodical persona he tried to maintain in the presence of professional investigators.
“It wasn’t him.”
Damien felt the rush of anticipation fade always as quickly as it had risen in him, and he bit his tongue just hard enough to stop him from roaring out an expletive. He didn’t think the ward sister would appreciate him doing that.
“How do you know?”
“When Sarah disappeared, he was in Prescoed doing two years for aggravated burglary.”
“So where did he get the necklace?”
“He said he found it on the site, not far from where the body was buried. They’d started doing earthworks a few days before, so it’s feasible. Said he thought it might be worth a few quid, but when he saw his and Sara’s initials on it, he thought he’d score some brownie points and maybe get a shag out of it.”
“Well, he was right about that,” Damien grinned, but Hales appeared not to appreciate his attempt at wit. “So, what now?”
“Now, we scrub him from the list and carry on with the evidence we do have. If nothing new comes in, we’ve got plenty of old records and statements to revisit. I’ve even got two PCs working through 12 hours of CCTV footage from the shop down the road from Sarah’s house. They weren’t happy when I gave them that to do.”
“No, I’ll bet they weren’t. Any news on Jacob Morrison?”
Hales shook his head again, distracted by Catherine’s soft snoring. He reached under his mask and scratched the end of his nose.
“Nothing yet. There’s nothing about him here - hasn’t been on the electoral register since 2008. We’ve got Interpol and the Spaniards looking for him out there, but I’m not expecting a quick turnaround. Most of their Civil Servants are being even less cooperative than normal, and I’m not sure that’s because of their COVID restrictions, Brexit, or because it disturbed somebody’s siesta. Either way, I wouldn’t expect anything for the next few days.”
“Right, okay. Are you staying for a bit? I wouldn’t mind chatting with Cameron Barnes - something about him doesn’t add up.”
“It never did. I always liked him for it, but his alibi was pretty sturdy - there’s no way we’d have even got an extension to question him, and the CPS wouldn’t have touched him for prosecution. You want someone to come with you?”
“No, thanks. I’ve got a feeling he’s more likely to talk to me than to your lot.”
With a nudge in the right direction, Damien found Cameron Barnes living and working in the small hilltop town of Llantrisant, about 12 miles from Cardiff. It had a large church, the remnants of a castle rumoured to have been first established in the late eleventh century, and a person to pub ratio of 15-1. The town also boasted a small primary school, where Cameron taught music.
The main road into the town was too narrow, in places, to allow two cars to pass one another, and Damien had sworn loudly as the sound of his wheels scraping against the kerb filled the car. He’d already been delayed by the sheer volume of traffic entering the two retail parks which sat at the edge of the town, and his frustration and lack of patience would now cost him an additional few hundred pounds to get his wheels re-lacquered. He didn’t want to admit it, but Catherine had been on his mind at the time, and he probably wasn’t concentrating on the road as well as he ought to have been. She’ll be fine, he told himself, but he was worried that his ham-fisted attempt at sutures would lead to an infection in such a deep wound. He was supposed to be helping her, but so far he felt far more a hindrance than a help, and now she was hurt and out of commission for at least the rest of the day - although he did chuckle quietly at the thought of a junior doctor trying to keep her in overnight if the mood took her to leave.
Although almost twenty years had passed since the pictures Damien had seen in the ‘BARNES, CAMERON’ section of Catherine’s files had been taken, the man sitting alone on the base of a statue in what passed as a town square was unmistakably him. He’d gone from being chubby and having a kind smile to being morbidly obese and haggard, with large patches of grey spreading throughout the little hair he had left. He wore an ill-fitting jacket which suggested that he had once been significantly larger than he was now, and a tie with solid blocks of black, disrupted by narrow strips of scarlet running at diagonals. Damien’s school tie had been designed in the same way, and even seeing it now, so many years after leaving there, he always felt a little nostalgic.
He approached Cameron and introduced himself, stating clearly that he was working with the police, as opposed to being an officer, and that he had some questions relating to Sarah’s disappearance.
“Working with the police? As in, not actually police?” Cameron asked, with a confused expression dominating his ageing features.
“That’s right - I’m a freelance investigator. Sarah’s family hired me to look into her disappearance, and I’m working alongside the police to assist with the investigation into her death.”
Cameron flinched as Damien mentioned Sarah’s death. Damien had expected some sort of involuntary reaction, but hadn’t known which way to target his questions until that moment. Even seventeen years after her disappearance, Sarah seemingly still had a profound effect on Cameron.
“So, I don’t have to talk to you…”
Damien could see this being a wasted trip.
“No, you don’t have to, but if you can remember anything - anything at all, no matter how small or inconsequential it might seem - it might help us find out what happened to Sarah. Don’t you think that, after all this time, her family deserves to know?”
“I-” Cameron started, but caught himself and quickly stopped. “And what about the police? I mean, do you have to tell them? If I think of anything?”
“Legally no, I don’t have to tell them anything, but morally I think I’d probably have to, for the sake of my conscience. And we’re on the same side - we just want to find out what happened to Sarah and bring her killer to justice. I’d love it if you could help us to do that.” He smiled softly, and Cameron looked away, not willing to hold his eye.
“I loved her, Mr Owens. From the day we met, she was all I could think about. I was shy and awkward. Eighteen. First time away from home. She was this Siren, a beacon calling out to me, but rather helping me navigate the perilous waters instead of luring me onto the rocks. She was kind and funny. She never looked down on me like the others did, and so I’m afraid I rather latched onto her. Followed her around like a love-sick puppy, if I’m honest.”
Damien nodded, scribbling down notes as Cameron spoke - although the noise generated by the unexpectedly high volume of traffic passing through made it hard for him to hear every word.
“I’ve been told there was an incident. Outside Sarah’s house, a few weeks before she died. Can you tell me about that?”
Cameron’s head dropped slightly, turning his face away from Damien and muffling his voice against the background traffic noise.
“That was… regrettable. We’d been working together all day - she’d asked me to help her record a new demo reel in the studio on campus and I’d jumped at the chance. Not just because it meant spending time with her - although that was my primary reason for agreeing - but because hearing her sing had an uplifting quality, like her voice was laser-targeted directly at me, and we were the only people in the world. Some days, when everything just feels that much bleaker than I can bear, I still listen to her. She didn’t know that I kept a copy - she’d have been mortified to think of me - or anyone she knew - listening to her.” He stopped for a moment, looking wistfully down the road and over the large patch of common land at the edge of the town. “So, that day, once we’d finished recording, I asked her if she wanted to get a drink in the Union to celebrate. She said she had a date, but maybe another day. As always, like the pusillanimous little troll that I was - I am - I just took it on the chin and we said our goodbyes. Except when I thought about going home while she was out with someone else; laughing at his jokes, touching his hand and running her hands through her hair, pushing it out of her face like she did when she smiled. Kissing him. Fu-” He stopped, dead, and cleared his throat. It’d been hard to ignore the increasing volume of his voice. It had been steadily rising, which Damien had made a note of.
“And then what happened?”
“I went to the Union on my own and drank far too much cider. It bathed me in clarity, as they say - or, at least, the sort of drunken clarity one achieves when on a self-destructive path. I decided to tell her how I felt, but by the time I staggered to her house - which wasn’t far and took me far longer than it would have, had I been sober - it was late and everywhere was quiet. I knocked on her door but she didn’t answer. I waited and tried again. And again, and again. But she still didn’t answer, and in the state I was in I convinced myself that she wasn’t answering because she was too busy fucking whoever she’d been with that night, and that it should’ve been me. Then this sort of, I don’t know, like a high-pitched wailing started in my ears and it made my blood boil, and the ridiculousness of my situation - the nebbish friend, always waiting in the wings but never given the chance to prove myself worthy - sent me into a rage that I’d never experienced before, and haven’t since. It helps that I don’t drink anymore, of course. But, in that moment, I just had to let it all out - get it off my chest, so to speak - and I started shouting up at her window all of the mean and horrible things that were running through my head - anything my mind could conjure up to protect me from getting hurt and completely consumed by her. I never meant any of it, but I was angry and drunk, and I said some very unkind things that I never got to take back. I guess she called the police, because they arrested me and I spent the night in a cell, sleeping it off. I felt awful in the morning - and not just because of the cider - but I never got to make amends. She was never the same after that. We never worked together again, and she always made sure that we were never alone, there always had to be other people around or she’d just grab her bag and leave. Without even saying goodbye.”
Cameron sniffed away tears, taking a tissue from a packet in his pocket and blowing his nose loudly. Damien gave him a few moments to compose himself. He’d been in a similar situation when he was in his late teens, so he could empathise completely. Damien and Kevin’s mother had split up not long after he’d been born, when the strain of young motherhood had finally become unbearable for her and she’d started talking about putting the child up for adoption. I don’t see why he should be saddled with a crap mother is what she’d said, but Damien had known that she meant the opposite - she didn’t want to be ‘saddled’ with a child while her friends were going to university and parties, staying out until the small hours and getting off with strangers. She’d wanted her life back, so he’d taken full custody of Kevin and let her get on with it. Late on a Tuesday night, he’d left the baby with his parents to go to the 24-hour shop on the corner of Albany Road for formula milk and baby rice, and had run into her and a boy they’d both gone to school with, perched on a church wall, kissing, with one of his hands disappearing beyond the hem of her skirt. Damien had felt his temperature rising and his heart pounding, fury spreading through his whole body and burning his muscles. He’d wanted to scream at her, to ask if this was the reason she’d abandoned their son - for a quick grope on the side of the road - but something stopped him and made him carry on walking until he’d passed them and his rage subsided. He hadn’t realised at the time, but he’d dug his nails into his palm so hard that he’d broken the skin and was bleeding, which made carrying the shopping bag home more painful than it ought to have been.
“Thank you, Mr Barnes. Do you need a minute? I’ve only got a few more questions.”
Cameron shook his head, wiping the last remnants of snot from his nose and pocketing the tissue.
“No, thank you - I’ll be fine. God, I’m such a mess! I try not to think about it, but it’s hard to forgive myself when I said such terrible things to her - things I didn’t even mean! I just wanted her to see how badly I felt, for her to feel the same pain that I did. I ruined everything that night… I’ve got to head back to school in a minute - can’t miss the bell.”
“Right,” Damien nodded. “Of course. Can I just ask you about the night Sarah disappeared?”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“I know you have an alibi - the police showed me the CCTV image that puts you in town before Sarah went home, and Mr Alcock told the police that you both called it a night and went home around eleven thirty.”
Cameron stood, hurriedly, dropping the packet of tissues he’d seemingly forgotten was in his lap.
“That sounds right. I’m sorry, but I really need to be going.”
“Mr Barnes, please. I-”
“I’m sorry. It was a long time ago, and I can’t remember the exact details. But I went home and never saw the love of my life again.”
“So why didn’t you tell the police that?”
