Gareth Dawson Series Box Set Page 9

  Doctor Raout’s mouth was still opening and closing, but the only thing I could hear were the words “might not survive” echoing in my head. I looked at PC Turner, imploring him to help me. He looked back at me with a blank face. I shook my head to try to clear it and concentrate on whatever the doctor was saying. It didn’t work. There must have been a mistake, I told myself. This couldn’t be happening to Jennifer, to me. To us. It must all be a horrible mistake.

  The door opened, and I saw a young woman with a shock of blonde hair peer into the room. She was wearing the same pyjamas as Doctor Raout, but I had no idea who she was. Nurse? Doctor? Not a clue, nor did I care.

  “Dr Raout?” the woman said. “We need to go soon.” She looked at me and smiled, but it was a sad smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Do you want to come with me?” she asked. Even though I didn’t know who she was, she obviously knew who I was and why I was there. I got to my feet, knocking over the cup of tea which spread a wet brown stain across the carpet. I looked down at it and then at the tissues on the coffee table.

  “Don’t worry about that, Gareth,” PC Turner said. “I’ll sort it out.”

  “It’s Gareth, is it?” the woman asked. “I’m Bridget, the senior nurse on duty tonight.” I noticed a faint Irish accent. “Did Dr Raout tell you about your wife’s injuries?” I sat back down and looked across at the doctor before replying.

  “He did, kind of,” I said, “but Jennifer will be okay, won’t she?” The nurse shot the doctor a withering look.

  “Your wife has suffered some quite serious head injuries, and she needs to have an operation to try to fix some of the damage,” Bridget said. I felt the colour drain from my face, glad I was sitting down. Hearing this woman say the same thing as the doctor had made it a bit more real. Head injuries? What did she mean by that? “Now she’s been put under an anaesthetic, so she’s not in any pain, but you might be quite shocked when you see her. She’s connected to lots of tubes and different pieces of equipment. They’re all there to help and to keep her comfortable, so just try to ignore them if you can.”

  The nurse turned and opened the door. I stumbled to my feet without a word and followed her out into the corridor. When we reached a set of double doors, she paused and turned to me. She smiled again, the same sad smile as before, and reached out her hand.

  “Are you ready?” I felt her cool fingers on my forearm. I nodded in reply, unable to speak. She pushed the door open and walked into the resuscitation room. I followed her, looking around. It was just like something off the television. In one corner of the room was a hospital trolley with more people in green pyjamas gathered around it. Bridget walked towards them, announcing my arrival. The pyjamas all looked at me as I approached, stepping away as I reached the side of the trolley.

  The figure who lay on the trolley looked nothing like Jennifer, and as I stood there I couldn’t help but hope again that there had been a mistake. That this was some other poor woman who’d been knocked over who had head injuries. Thick bandages came down to just above her eyes, covering her eyebrows. Her eyes were taped shut over ugly bruises below each one, and a green tube came out of her mouth. It wasn’t until I looked at the woman’s nose and saw the familiar freckles that I realised it was Jennifer. My Jennifer. Any hopes I had about it all being a case of mistaken identity disappeared in an instant, and in that moment of realisation, my life changed forever.

  As I watched, a machine to the side of the trolley hissed and Jennifer’s chest rose before falling back again. There was a horrible smell in the air, a mixture of lots of different things. The only one which I could identify was the metallic, coppery smell of blood. I looked down at Jennifer’s body, covered in an inflatable sheet. Ugly looking tubes snaked underneath the sheet, connected to a variety of bottles hanging on a metal stand attached to the side of the trolley. The machine hissed again, breathing life into Jennifer. Did that mean she couldn’t breathe for herself? Was she so badly hurt she couldn’t even breathe?

  “Gareth?” I heard Bridget whisper beside me. “We really need to go to the operating theatre now.” I felt my throat tighten and tears in my eyes. I’d not cried for the best part of twenty years, and I’d never cried in front of strangers, even as a child. Not once. The nurse was asking me to say goodbye to Jennifer, and I didn’t know if I would ever see her again.

  “Can I kiss her?” I asked, barely able to speak. “Please?”

  “Of course you can,” Bridget said. I leaned forward, my hands gripping the safety bars on the side of the trolley. As I kissed Jennifer on the cheek, one of my tears dropped onto her face. I wiped it away with the back of my hand. Her skin was freezing, like ice. I felt Bridget’s hand on my forearm again and I stepped back from the trolley. The medical team folded back around the trolley, and I saw Dr Raout pick up a phone.

  “We’re on our way,” he said to whoever it was on the other end of the line. “Two minutes.” I glanced around the room. There was a chart of some sort on a table, lots of different coloured lines all over it. I had no idea what they were, but I could see all the lines were pointing downwards. I watched as the team manoeuvred the trolley with Jennifer on it and all the equipment she was plugged into, through another set of double doors at the end of the room.

  Back in the relatives’ room, PC Turner had made me a fresh mug of tea and done a decent job of cleaning up the previous one. We exchanged small talk for a while, and he explained that he was waiting for the Detective Inspector who was in charge to get to the hospital. After a few minutes, we fell silent. I wondered how Jennifer was getting on, but they would have only just started the operation. I didn’t even know what the operation was for. She had head injuries, but what that actually meant I didn’t know.

  I was standing outside the hospital entrance smoking a cigarette I’d cadged off the drunk man with the bandaged hand when a police car pulled up. The same young policeman from earlier was driving, and when he saw me he nodded in my direction, saying something to the man sitting next to him.

  “Mr Dawson? Gareth?” the passenger asked as he got out of the car.

  “Yep, that’s me,” I replied. He walked toward me, hand extended.

  “I’m Detective Inspector Griffiths. The senior officer in charge this evening.” He had a firm handshake, confident but brusque. “Please, call me Malcolm.” Under any other circumstances, I would have grinned at his name, but not tonight. He wore a suit, with a shirt and tie I recognised from Next. I’d almost bought exactly the same set for my wedding, but decided against it at the last minute.

  We walked back into the hospital, and Malcolm led the way back to the relatives’ room. I followed him, wondering how often he had to do this sort of thing. He was quite a big man, not quite as tall as me but well built. The same physique as Tommy had, but the policeman was in much better shape. Malcolm opened the door to the room, and PC Turner stood up as he walked in.

  “Sir, good to see you.” From the look on his face, he meant it.

  “John, thanks for holding the fort up here,” Malcolm replied. “You couldn’t do me a massive favour, could you?”

  “Tea?” PC Turner asked. “No problem. I’ve found out where the nurses hide the decent tea bags.” He hurried off, looking almost pleased to have something to do.

  Malcolm sat down and I sat opposite, getting a good look at him for the first time. He had quite a craggy face, acne scarred from the look of his cheeks. I was sure none of the other kids took the piss out of him when he was younger, though. He looked like a serious bloke.

  “So, what happened?” I asked, unable to hold back. Malcolm opened a small notebook and read for a moment.

  “This is what we know so far,” he said, looking at me with tired eyes. “Your wife,” he glanced back down at his notebook. “Jennifer,” he nodded. “Jennifer left The Old Buck just after closing time. Her friend, er Lucy, wanted to go to a nightclub, but Jennifer was keen to get home and was walking to a taxi rank. No one saw what actually happened, but she was
crossing the road and was hit by a car travelling down the Yarmouth Road, sustaining what the doctors have described as ‘life-threatening’ injuries.”

  I looked at him intently, waiting for him to continue, but he said nothing for a minute or two. Finally, he continued.

  “We’ve got a forensic team down there now, examining the scene, but the weather was horrendous at the time of the accident. There’s not a great deal for them to go on in terms of evidence. It was pouring with rain when the accident happened.” I remembered the thunder from earlier. I also remembered waking up. Had that been the time of the accident? Malcolm continued in a low voice. “We have arrested the driver of the car, though.” I should bloody well hope so, I thought. Some maniac mows down my wife, that’s the least they should do. Hopefully, he’ll get a good old-fashioned kicking in the cells by the coppers, but I doubted it. Malcolm said something else that I didn’t quite catch.

  “Sorry, what was that?” I asked.

  “The driver was over the limit,” Malcolm replied. “He’s been arrested for drink driving.” My fists tightened at this, knuckles whitening. I hoped he’d be put away for a long time. A very long time. Either in a hospital or a prison. Or even better, both. Malcolm looked at me closely, as if he was trying to decide whether to tell me something. “There’s more, though,” he said, deciding that he should.

  “What?” I asked, clenching and unclenching my fists to try to ease the tension in my hands.

  “According to Jennifer’s friend, the driver of the car knows your wife.”

  “What?” I repeated. “How does he know her? Who was the driver?” Malcolm looked down at his notes one more time and then his gaze met mine.

  “His name’s Robert Wainwright.”

  My heart thudded in my chest, and I could feel my back teeth clench together as I absorbed this news. Robert. Robert fucking Wainwright. I could picture him hunched behind the wheel of his BMW, waiting for Jennifer to leave the pub. How had he known that she was in there? Jennifer had mentioned a couple of times that he was still hanging around, but I’d not done anything about it because she hadn’t wanted me to. She figured that he’d get the message and drop it, but obviously, he hadn’t.

  “What did you say you’d arrested him for?” I asked Malcolm. “Drink driving?” Malcolm sat back on the sofa, looking spent.

  “That’s what we’ve got him for at the moment, yes. He claims she ran out in front of him without looking and that there was nothing he could do. Before he realised she was there, he’d hit her.” I could tell from the look on Malcolm’s face he was thinking what I was. That story was bollocks. Malcolm looked at his notes again. “An unfortunate coincidence. That was the phrase he used when I interviewed him.” My teeth really started to hurt. “I’ve been a copper for too long to believe in coincidences,” Malcolm said. He paused for a second before continuing. “We’ll have him, don’t worry about that.”

  “If you don’t, I will. I swear to God I will,” I replied almost in a whisper.

  “Please, Gareth. Whatever happens, leave it to us,” he said, but with no real conviction in his voice. I figured he was just saying that because he was Old Bill and I glanced down at his wedding ring. What would he do if it was his wife in the operating theatre, I wondered? I stood up, shaking my head, trying to clear it.

  “I’m going for a smoke,” I said. The drunk bloke in the waiting room had disappeared, so I ended up going to a corner shop and buying a packet. It was going to be a long night. As I stood outside the hospital smoking, I tried calling both Andy and Jacob, but neither of them answered.

  When I came back inside, PC Turner had returned with two mugs of tea and was sitting on the sofa like a spare part before Malcolm dismissed him. We sat in silence, sipping our tea, waiting. About two hours and numerous smoking breaks later, there was a tentative knock at the door. Malcolm got to his feet and opened it, stepping back to let Dr Raout and Bridget into the room. Their faces were inscrutable, and I couldn’t read them at all. We sat, Malcolm shuffling to let Dr Raout sit next to him while Bridget sat next to me.

  “Gareth,” Bridget said. I looked at her and a hammer hit me in the chest. I knew exactly what she was about to say. My heart thumped and bile rose in my throat as she continued.

  “I’m afraid we’ve got some really bad news for you.”

  With that simple phrase, my world tilted on its axis until it was upside down.

  13

  Andy, Jacob, and I sat on the hard, uncomfortable chairs at the back of the courtroom. I don’t know why they called it a public gallery as it was nothing like a gallery. It was just a row of seats with a small wooden barrier in front of it, set against the back wall of the courtroom. If I’d known the next time I would sit in the courtroom I’d be on trial myself, I would have been less bothered about the uncomfortable seats. Opposite the three of us on the other side of the room was the judge’s bench which was currently empty. We’d spent the last three days in this room, listening to the various legal arguments, only some of which I understood. The one thing I understood, beyond any reasonable doubt to use the legal term I’d heard, was that the man sitting on the left-hand side of the courtroom as we looked at it had killed my wife, Jennifer. Murdered her as far as I was concerned. The law didn’t see it that way, though.

  It was three months since Jennifer had died. Three long months when I’d wished that every day was my last. There’d been a post-mortem, which I wasn’t happy about, but it wasn’t my choice. The minute Jennifer had died she’d become the property of the coroner, wife or no wife. I’d had no say in the matter. The only part of the trial I’d not sat in this courtroom for was when the coroner had given evidence about her injuries and the post-mortem. Andy had sat in for it, while I paced outside the courtroom and smoked, Jacob watching me. When Andy came out to get us both and tell us that the coroner woman had finished, he’d aged ten years in less than an hour. He told Jacob and I that when Jennifer had been hit, her head had hit the windscreen so hard that they had both shattered. I guessed that he was trying to tell us both she didn’t suffer, but it didn’t work. Not when he had tears streaming down his face.

  Jennifer’s funeral had been held a fortnight after the accident. It was a small affair, not because she wasn’t popular but mostly because we’d put people off coming. The three of us had decided that it should be a family affair, which limited attendance to hardly anyone. A few of her closest friends had come, such as Lucy, but that was it. Just the way we all wanted it. Only the people who loved Jennifer, really loved her, put her to rest.

  The last three months had been the worst time of my life by far. There was no doubt at all about that. The pain inside me was palpable. I could feel it every day like a malignant cancer in my chest when I woke up. The worst mornings were when I’d been dreaming about Jennifer. For a few tantalising seconds after I woke up, she was still alive and I reached across the bed for her more often than not. Then reality kicked in, and I would remember she was dead, bringing my entire world crashing back down as I lost her all over again. Happiness to despair in the blink of a tearful eye. They were the worst mornings. The only thing I could do to stop the dreams and numb the pain was to drink before I went to bed. It wasn’t working, though. I’d thought coming to the trial would help, provide closure but all it was doing was fuelling the anger.

  Robert was being tried with dangerous driving. Not murder. That was all that the law allowed, so the British legal system said. Malcolm had been through it with us many times in the last few months. For a copper, he was a top bloke, but he came across as being just as frustrated as we were. The stakes were different for him, though. He’d given evidence in the trial, and at one point I thought he was going to leap across the witness bench and give the defence lawyer a well-deserved slap. As I thought about this, I looked across at Robert’s lawyer, a weedy looking man in his early thirties with glasses that sat halfway down his nose. He probably thought they gave him an air of gravitas, but they didn’t. They made him
look like an idiot which, fortunately for Robert at least, he wasn’t. The lawyer was deep in conversation with Robert as I looked at them. I wondered what they were discussing and then started to wonder how many times I could punch Robert if I leapt across the barriers myself. He was flanked by a couple of burly court security guards, so it would probably only be one slap if that. It was nowhere near enough. Robert glanced at me briefly before looking away again immediately. He’d spent the last few days doing that.

  “What the hell’s the judge doing back there?” Jacob said, unfolding his arms and rubbing his hands on his thighs. Andy stirred and looked at him. We’d been sitting here for the best part of an hour, waiting for the judge to come back out from his chambers. He’d disappeared into them a while ago after Robert’s lawyer had finished his final statement.

  “Reading the paper, having a whisky? Maybe he’s leaning out of his window having a cigarette?” Andy’s attempt at humour fell on deaf ears.

  “Do you think I’ve got time for another one?” I asked them.

  “Jesus, Gareth,” Jacob said, frowning. “You smoke like a sodding chimney.” I looked at him, trying not to get annoyed. Both he and Andy were suffering as much as I was. It was just that they seemed to be dealing with it a hell of a lot better than me. I was getting worse with every day that passed. I’d even been to my general practitioner at Andy’s insistence and the doctor had referred me to a grief counsellor. The doctor had gone on about the stages of grief, and about how anger was normal. Apparently, I was supposed to move on to bargaining with God or some shit like that at some point soon. I’d got as far as making the appointment with the counsellor and then spent the afternoon in the pub.