Lying Beside You, page 30
I scan the length of the building, studying the large rectangular windows, which are covered by sheets of plywood on the lower floors and shattered by rocks or heat on the higher levels. I can imagine local children telling stories about this place—convinced they have heard screams at night or seen ghostly shapes in the windows. That’s what happened after my family died. Our house became the sort of place that children had nightmares about or challenged each other to ring the doorbell and scarper. It made drivers speed up and mothers clutch the hands of their children more tightly as they walked them to school.
Jumping down from the wall, I call Lenny. She’s almost back at Radford Road.
“Patrice Rennie sold his house last year to pay for his wife’s cancer treatment,” I say. “He’s been living in his food truck and hasn’t been seen since his wife’s funeral three weeks ago.”
“I’ll put out a BOLO on Rennie and the truck. Does anyone have a photograph of him?”
I look at Cassie. She nods and begins scrolling through images on her phone.
“We’ll send something through.”
“Who are you with?”
“Rennie’s sister-in-law.”
“I thought you were tracking Elias.”
“I am. They lost the signal thirty minutes ago. I’m outside an abandoned warehouse in Beech Avenue.”
“The old Maville Works,” says Lenny. “It used to be a lace factory called the White House.”
“It could be where Rennie kept Maya. Ness said it was likely nineteenth century.”
I have reached a set of iron gates. A padlock hangs on an uncoupled chain. I look across the asphalt forecourt, which glitters with broken glass. There is a loading dock with concrete ramps and parking bays. A metal fire escape leads halfway up the building before stopping in mid-flight.
I lower the phone and turn to Cassie. “You should wait here for the police.”
“Where are you going?”
“To get a closer look.”
After squeezing through the partially open gate, I crouch and run to the nearest corner of the factory. The foundation stone above my head reads “June 29th, 1896.” The sun is slanting through the trees, creating deeper shadows. Light catches a mirrored surface in the loading dock. A food truck is parked in one of the bays, partially hidden by rusting machinery.
Squatting on my haunches, I raise the phone to my ear. Lenny is still on the line.
“I think I’ve found Rennie.”
“Don’t move. We’re coming.”
70 Evie
As a little girl, I used to beg Agnesa to tell me bedtime stories. The scary ones were the best because I had an excuse to put my arms around her, pressing my head to her chest, feeling the vibrations of her voice.
One of my favorites was about three brothers who were building a castle out of stone. They worked all day, piling stone upon stone, but every night the walls would collapse. Eventually, an old man told them that they had to sacrifice someone so that the walls would stand. The brothers couldn’t agree on who to sacrifice, so they decided it would be whichever wife brought them their lunch the next day.
It was Rozafa, who was married to the youngest brother. When he explained to her the deal, she agreed to be buried in the walls of the castle, but she had one condition. She asked that they leave her right breast exposed so she could feed her newborn son, and her right hand to caress him and her right foot to rock his cradle.
I loved hearing that story even if I didn’t understand what it meant. Maybe some fables aren’t supposed to have a moral, or a message; or perhaps it’s just another example of a woman sacrificing herself to improve the lives of men. I have been Rozafa. Trapped in the walls. Unable to escape. I’m there now.
The door opens. The bald man cuts the ropes from around my arms and tosses me a dry blanket.
“Come out, when you’re ready.”
I climb slowly to my feet, rubbing circulation back into my wrists. I study the room, looking for a way out. It’s some sort of warehouse with painted brick walls that are peeling and crumbling in patches, damp to the touch. I pull at the sheet of plywood that covers the window. It doesn’t move.
I shuffle to the door and peer around the frame. The first thing I notice are the chairs and a table.
“That’s where you sit,” he says. He tries to touch my arm, but I pull away, glaring at him.
My jeans are still wet. The metal chair is cold. He takes a rope and loops it around my arms and the back of the chair, tying it against my spine.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask.
“This is not meant as a punishment. It is your civic duty.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“You are going to sit in judgment.”
“I want to go home.”
“Be quiet now. Listen.”
The new room is much larger and lighter, with painted metal poles holding up the ceiling. The floor is littered with rubble and broken panels of plywood and shattered glass. The large square windows are uncovered, divided into smaller panes, which are broken or missing.
The bald man leaves the room. I hear muffled groans and feet sliding across the floor. Daniela appears first. I barely recognize her because her hair has been hacked away, cut close to her scalp, making her eyes look enormous. Lilah is next. She must have fought harder because her shorn head is bleeding in places. Both have their mouths taped shut and their arms and chests are bound with rope.
Lilah continues to struggle, but Daniela shuffles to a chair and is told to sit. I try to make eye contact. She doesn’t seem to remember me. Rennie goes to the table and unzips a sports bag. He sets up a camera and a small tripod, checking that Daniela and Lilah are in the frame.
Satisfied, he takes a piece of paper from the pocket of his jeans and clears his throat. “Lilah Hooper and Daniela Linares, you are accused of murdering Oliver Rennie at St. Jude’s Medical Centre, Nottingham, on the sixth of February, 2013. You covered up your crime by lying to the police and to my family.”
Neither woman reacts.
“You have to let them speak,” I say.
“I don’t have to let them do anything,” he replies. “They have had many chances to speak. Each time, they told lies.”
“If I’m going to judge, I need to hear from them.”
“You will. But now it’s my turn.”
He begins talking, but I’m only half listening. He mentions his wife giving birth prematurely and the baby being transferred to the neonatal ICU and placed in a humidicrib.
“We took turns to sit beside the crib. We touched his hand. We talked to him. We told him the life we had planned for him. The doctors said that Oliver was a fighter and had a good chance. I believed them. I thought our baby was in safe hands.”
Lilah is shaking her head. Daniela doesn’t react. It’s like her mind has broken off and taken her somewhere else.
“He was two days old when he was given the wrong medication. There were three nurses on duty. You were two of them. One of you went to the pharmacy cabinet and took out heparin rather than Hep-Lock. One of you didn’t read the box. One of you didn’t check the dosage. One of you filled the syringe. One of you injected the wrong drug into the IV line.”
“It wasn’t done on purpose,” I say. “It was an accident.”
“That’s what everybody wants you to think,” he replies, “but wait until you hear the rest of the story. I wish to call my first witness, Lilah Hooper.”
Lilah’s eyes shoot up. Rennie steps in front of her and pinches the edge of the tape between his thumb and forefinger before ripping it away from her mouth. Her top lip is raw and bleeding. He does the same to Daniela, who doesn’t flinch.
“Please, Mr. Rennie,” sobs Lilah. “It was an accident.”
He rolls the tape into a ball and tosses it aside, wiping his hands on the back of his jeans.
“Who was in charge that night?” he asks.
“I was the most senior nurse on duty,” says Lilah. She’s telling the truth.
“Who administered the drug?”
“It was Maya.”
Now she’s lying.
“Maya told me that Daniela administered the heparin.”
“No, it was Maya,” says Lilah, starting to panic. “But it was my responsibility. I was in charge.”
“Why didn’t you name Maya in your statement?”
“We were protecting each other.”
“You were covering it up.”
“We couldn’t change what had happened.”
“You tried to make out that Oliver died naturally. You turned off his humidicrib and only turned it on again when his organs had failed.”
Lilah looks shocked. There’s only one way that he could know a detail like that—Maya must have told him. She starts to stammer and shake her head. “He was very sick. He was going to die anyway.”
“No! That is what the hospital wanted us to believe. He was a strong little boy. He was a fighter. That’s what the doctors told us when he arrived at the ICU. You didn’t give him a chance.”
“That’s not true. We told them what happened. We raised the alarm.”
“After he was dead.”
There is a groan from beside her. Daniela raises her chin. Speaks. “I made the mistake. Maya and Lilah had nothing to do with it.”
She’s telling the truth.
71 Cyrus
I am not a patient person. I dislike the passivity of lingering. The ineptness. The helplessness. I know that Lenny is coming, but the cavalry doesn’t always show up on time. In the movies, yes, but not in real life, which normally throws up near misses, wrong turns, bad choices, and unexpected delays.
Once Lenny arrives, I will have no say in matters. She will bring an armed response team with all the latest technology. They will put drones in the air and aim microphones at the windows. Officers in body armor and helmets will go from room to room, with guns drawn, yelling the word “clear.” That is how sieges are created and how innocents get killed in the crossfire.
From inside the factory comes a crashing sound that echoes through the stairwells. Something has fallen or been thrown. Cassie appears beside me.
“I told you to wait,” I say.
“Maybe we can stop this.”
I don’t know if that’s true, but I want to do something active, not passive. The tragedies in my life have always occurred when I’ve arrived too late to help or to change the outcome.
With Cassie behind me, we cross the pitted tarmac in a crouching run, reaching the first of four concrete ramps that make up the loading dock. A warning sign above our heads announces that trespassers will be prosecuted. I pause and listen, but the only sounds are bird calls and the distant horn of a train.
The food truck has been backed into a space amid a quartet of concrete pylons that support the roof and the floors above. Approaching from behind, I avoid the mirrors in case someone is in the driver’s seat. When I reach the rear of the van, I press my ear against the painted metal, listening for voices inside. Edging forwards, I pull myself onto the side step at the driver’s window and peer into the cab, which is littered with fast food wrappers, coffee cups, and plastic bottles of water.
My phone is vibrating. I answer the call.
“I picked up the signal again two minutes ago,” says Gary, “but it only lasted a few seconds. It came from the northern end of the building. Maybe he passed close to a window.”
The nearest door is marked as a fire exit but has been barricaded or screwed shut. The next one is also locked. Cassie follows me as I walk along the western wall of the factory, pushing through waist-high weeds, nettles, and blackberry bushes. Thorny branches tug at my coat and trousers.
Without warning, the ground opens beneath me. As I pitch forward, Cassie grabs my coat, hauling me back from the edge. Breathless, heart thumping, I stare into a brick pit overgrown with weeds.
“Don’t do that again,” she says.
“Noted.”
She points into the shadows. “There’s a door.”
The stone steps are slick with moss. I pull aside planks and fallen branches, before wading into knee-deep water the color of sump oil. A door is propped open by a broken beam. Ducking underneath, I squeeze inside, emerging into a large room with a ceiling crisscrossed by pipes. The broken concrete floor is covered in puddles and wooden pallets and rusting pieces of machinery. A chair. A pile of sand. Empty paint tins. Plasterboard. Tiles.
Cassie follows me as I navigate through the rubbish, using my phone as a torch. We head towards the only other light, which is coming from a lift shaft that reaches to the upper floors. The lift cage has gone, but a rusty metal ladder, dripping with water, is fixed against one wall.
I can hear voices coming from above me. Male. Female. I test the ladder, pulling myself up and dropping again, making sure it can hold my weight. It creaks. The noise echoes up the shaft.
“I don’t think it could take both of us,” I say to Cassie. “You should go back. Tell DSU Parvel where I’ve gone.”
She glances at the ladder and reluctantly agrees. “Tell Patrice…” She searches for the words. “Tell Patrice that I’m here and I understand him, but he has to stop this. Tell him that I loved Oliver too, and this isn’t what Jolene would have wanted.”
I begin to climb towards the voices.
72 Evie
The red light on the camera is still blinking. Rennie checks to make sure that it’s recording and adjusts the angle. He steps closer and crouches to meet me at eye level.
“You have heard their confessions. They have admitted their guilt.”
“It was an accident.”
“Which they covered up.”
“I don’t want to judge them. This is wrong.”
“They killed my son.”
“He was dying anyway.”
His hands are so low that I don’t see his fist. He strikes me across the face, and I topple sideways, still attached to the chair, tasting blood in my mouth, sickly and coppery and warm.
Rennie seems to realize that he’s been caught on camera. He picks up the chair with me still attached to it, setting it upright, apologizing.
He complains. “You promised to be fair.”
I blow hair out of my eyes and stretch out my lower jaw, moving it back and forth to make sure it’s not broken. “I didn’t promise you anything,” I say, spitting blood onto the floor.
“My son was defenseless. He was an innocent. He deserved a chance. They were supposed to heal him, to keep him safe, but they gave up and covered up. They killed him.”
“No,” says Lilah, shaking her head. “It was an accident.”
“You turned off his humidicrib.”
“He was already dead.”
“No! He was still alive!” He smashes his fist on the table. The camera topples. He curses and checks to make sure it isn’t damaged. He adjusts the tripod and frames the two women in the viewfinder.
“He didn’t suffer,” says Lilah. “It was quick.”
“Oh, that makes it OK,” says Rennie, sarcastically.
He has moved back in front of the camera, addressing an unseen audience.
“I didn’t get to hold my son before he died. I didn’t get to say good-bye. We didn’t just lose a newborn—we lost the one-year-old he would have become. We lost the toddler and the three-year-old. He would have gone to school. He would have woken us every Christmas morning and birthday. He would have dressed up at Halloween and had Easter egg hunts and written notes to the tooth fairy.
“Every year, on the anniversary of Oliver’s birthday, we would try to do something unusual to take our minds off what happened. One year we went skydiving in Spain. Another year it was indoor climbing. Then, three days later, we’d visit his grave. We would talk about him and imagine what he’d look like now. Eight years old. Everything ahead of him. When I picture him, I see his mother—caring, clever, funny, good at practical things, hotheaded sometimes, passionate.
“We kept Oliver’s memory alive, but the pain never diminished. And with every failed round of IVF, every miscarriage, every scalding disappointment, it grew worse. Do you understand what that’s like?”
He looks again at Lilah and Daniela but doesn’t expect them to answer.
“And yet we almost made it out of the vortex. Jolene had come to terms with never having a baby of our own. We were going to adopt. We were on the list. But then the cancer came. I have never seen such bravery. She fought to her last breath. She gave herself a chance, which is something you denied to Oliver.”
He pauses and wipes his eyes before moving slowly and picking up the heavy-duty tape. It screeches as he peels it from the spool. Using his teeth, he tears the tape and places it across Lilah’s mouth. She is begging him and shaking her head.
“What are you doing?” I ask. “They confessed. You got it on film. Let them go.”
He moves to Daniela, who doesn’t complain as the tape is wrapped around her head. He pulls it under her nose to let her breathe.
He drags the same black sports bag from beneath the table and slides open the zip. Reaching inside, he takes out a clear plastic pouch that contains dozens of small glass vials with labels.
“You gave my baby the wrong medication. A thousand times more than the recommended dose. His brain began to bleed, and his organs shut down.”
“Lilah said he didn’t suffer,” I say.
“Neither will they.”
He raises one of the glass vials and pokes a needle through the top, drawing the liquid into the syringe. I suddenly see what’s coming.
I look at Lilah and Daniela, wanting some wordless explanation, but their faces are staring at the needle as he pierces another vial. A noise echoes up the stairwell from somewhere below. Rennie’s head snaps around.
I start yelling. “Help! We’re in here!”
This time I manage to duck his swinging fist. The blow deflects from my forehead, but he comes again, gripping me across the mouth. I try to bite at his fingers as he reaches for the tape and wraps it twice around my head, hissing at me to be quiet.
