10. The Human Cost

DS Vega encourages DC Carmichael to better apply himself, before visiting Jodie again.

10

DC Carmichael became pale and swept his hand through his hair again. ‘Well done, sir,’ he said. ‘Good find.’
     Vega straightened himself up and studied Carmichael from on high. ‘You checked the bathroom, did you?’
     ‘Of course.’ Carmichael said, but his sergeant’s stare was penetrating. ‘I did!’
     ‘Bullshit is an occupational hazard. I can put up with it when it’s peddled by the cons but not by my own f*****g team.’ Anthony flinched and so Vega softened his tone. ‘Tell me, did you always want to be a copper, Tony?’
     ‘My dad is the Police and Crime Commissioner for Hertfordshire,’ he mumbled. ‘My brothers are all in the service.’  
     ‘So you were strong-armed into it, is that what you’re telling me?’
     ‘Pretty much. I wanted to be a DJ.’
     ‘A DJ…’ Vega looked out of the bathroom. He put a guiding hand on Carmichael’s shoulder and steered him out of the small room, back into the bedroom, and over to the window which looked out across the grounds. As they neared it he took a hold of Carmichael’s hair and slammed his forehead into the double-glazing. Carmichael cried out, grappling with Vega’s immovable fingers.
     ‘Do you see down there? Regardless of whether he took his own life or it was taken from him, a man died down there. A father.  If you half-arse your job, do you understand what the cost is, Tony? Do you understand the human cost?’ Vega let go of the detective constable and stepped back as Carmichael slung his fist at him. The punch went wide and Vega smiled. ‘Go on. Put your weight behind it.’
     ‘Everything okay in here?’ a SOCO asked from the doorway. ‘I heard a bang.’
     ‘It was a bloody great pigeon, stupid bird flew straight into the window,’ Vega said. ‘But look what Carmichael turned up. Have you got a bag for this?’
     The SOCO looked at the SIM card in his palm and went in search of an antistatic bag. Vega looked back at his detective constable, whose cheeks were ruddy now to match the red mark on his forehead. His hair was tousled and he was breathing hard. ‘Don’t do me any favours, sir.’
     ‘It wouldn’t occur to me to do you a favour, DC Carmichael. I just don’t want all the f*****g paperwork that card’s going to incur. You take care now.’ 

In the car he tried to call Rosen but her phone rang onto answerphone. He knew how busy she’d be, the amount of meetings she would have to attend over the next few hours, but there was a paranoid part of him that wondered if she was avoiding him. They hadn’t spoken since interview room 2.
     ‘Hi, Dar. It’s Richard,’ he said, wiping at his face; his skin had an unhealthy sheen to it, he needed more sleep. ‘Listen, I want to pursue this Reese kid as a person of interest. I know we’re forbidden from mentioning Tom Healy so we can forget about Reese’s connection to that. Let’s just proceed based on his flight from the second crime scene and the highly suspect SIM card we’ve just recovered from his room -- Carmichael will catch you up on that front. I’ll wait until your say so, though. Since we’re both professionals.’ He regretted that last dig and closed his eyes. ‘Hope you’re okay. Talk soon.’
     Vega hung up and let his head drop onto the steering wheel. He was parked outside Jodie’s building, trying to decide whether to bother her or not. He had an hour to waste, and so once he’d gathered himself he rang her bell.
     The buzzer sounded from somewhere inside and the lock snapped back. Vega let himself in and climbed the two flights of stairs that led to Jodie’s front door. It was propped open for him as it had been before, and Jodie was sitting on the scuffed leather sofa. Her eyes were raw and her demeanour one of defeat. She gave him a frail smile when she saw him and tucked her feet beneath herself.
     ‘If you’ve got more bad news to break then I’m going to ask you nicely to f**k off.’
     ‘I take it you’ve been informed of what we found back at your house?’
     Jodie nodded. ‘The…whatever you call them, the support officers, they left an hour ago. They’ve been very nice, but if anyone else offers me another cup of sodding tea…’
     Vega chuckled and sat uninvited in the armchair opposite her. Jodie tilted her head and observed him a moment. ‘I’ve met you before, haven’t I?’
     ‘I get that a lot,’ he said, not wanting to remind her that six years ago he had interrogated her eldest. ‘I think I must have one of those faces. Unless you ever go to St James’ Church?’
     ‘No, I don’t. Why, are you religious?’
     ‘Not particularly. Some weekends I step in for their organist.’
     ‘So music is your religion,’ Jodie smiled. ‘I worship at the altar of Kylie. Best music for the treadmill.’
     A silence began to stretch between them, but it wasn’t particularly uncomfortable. Jodie eventually sighed and scraped her hair back in a ponytail before letting it fall around her shoulders again. She swung her legs off the sofa and paced to the window, her hands on her hips as she took in the view: a panoramic of the south side of the town, the common and the geese which aggressively patrolled the pond, the misted fringe of woodland and the sprawl of supermarkets and DIY stores.
     ‘I feel like I’m drugged,’ she whispered. ‘Like I’ve had an anaesthetic but there’s this wound, and I know it’s there and that soon it’s going to hurt but for now it’s just a numbness. A fog.’ She turned to face him and the look in her eyes was one he recognised. One he dreaded.
     He knew what she was going to ask, even before the question was fully formed inside of her.
     ‘Is there anything I could have done?’ she asked. ‘Anything anyone could have done to have stopped this from happening? To my Deano? To my Sam?’
     ‘It would be easy to tell you no. To tell you that you share no responsibility for what happened to your son, and to your husband,’ Vega said softly. ‘But maybe you could have. We just won’t know that, not until we’ve established exactly what happened, and why. Blame can come then. Until then, shrug off the guilt. Guilt is natural whenever there’s been love. It’s destructive, though. It’ll eat away at your every joy if you let it.’
     Jodie nodded. ‘I understand. Thank you.’
     ‘Jodie, I need to talk to you about Reese.’
     She didn’t seem hugely surprised, and kept her attention fixed on the day outside. ‘I thought that might be why you were here.’
     ‘He was at the house, your old house. He practically led us to Sam. Did you know he was staying there?’
     ‘Reese was always closer to Sam than he was to me. No, I didn’t know he was there, but it’s not a shocker that he was. Still, I thought Sam might have mentioned it.’
     ‘Last time I was here, you said Reese had had issues. You didn’t elaborate and I didn’t ask you to.’
     ‘But now you are? Asking?’
     Vega inclined his head. Jodie saw the gesture in the reflection on the pane. She sighed, her breath fogging the glass, obscuring the detective from sight. ‘He’s always been a moody boy. Shy. Sam used to say, “Oh, he just likes his own company”, but I always wanted to drag him out of himself. It doesn’t do, living in your own head all the time. It makes you go…funny. Right?’
     ‘Did Reese do drugs?’
     Jodie gave a small laugh. ‘Don’t sugar coat things, do you? Not like that lady detective you came with. Your boss, is she?’ Jodie turned to face him now, leaning back against the wall, and hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her pyjama bottoms. ‘I think I like your way more.’
     ‘And I think you’re dodging the question.’
     ‘He did a little bit of puff, that’s it, and for full disclosure or whatever I do too and it’s not the sort of thing you go getting yourself in trouble over.’
     ‘And what sort of trouble would that be?’
     ‘Don’t. Don’t twist what I’m saying, okay?’ Jodie said, stabbing her finger at him before chewing her cuticle. ‘You know what I mean. You don’t go sticking up a bookies to get your next bag of weed.’
     ‘Did Reese have any experience with firearms?’
     ‘Firearms? Do you mean guns? No. Not really. He used to go clay pigeon shooting with his dad sometimes, but that’s it. He’s never shot as much as a rabbit.’
     He’d handled shotguns before, though. ‘So Reese didn’t have any friends, no peers? A job? Anything?’
     ‘He did a bit of bar work, for a time. It didn’t pan out.’
     ‘Why?’
     ‘The hours. Look, I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, you’re probably very good at it, but this is a waste of your time. Reese is a good boy. He ran from you because he was scared, that’s it. There’s no great mystery here, all right?’
     ‘I’m going to need the name of the bar he worked at.’
     ‘Why? That was a year ago!’ Jodie dropped back on the sofa, wiping her eyes. ‘I’m tired now, I think I’d like you to leave.’
     Vega didn’t move. Not at first. He was trying to decide whether to push his luck or not; Jodie was fragile, she was grieving, but there was more she could tell him and for some reason she was withholding it. Eventually he reached into his jacket and took out his Moleskine notebook. He scribbled a number down and tore the page from the book, folding it neatly and tucking it under her tea cup. ‘This is my number, my personal number. You can call it, any time you feel ready to talk. Okay? It could be that a girl answers, and if she does and you want to talk to her instead, she’s a great listener.’
     ‘Is she your daughter?’ Jodie said, scratching lightly at her chest and staring at the piece of notepaper. Vega hesitated
     ‘Yes, in a sense I suppose she is. You look after yourself now, Jodie.’
     She showed him to the door, removing the paint tin which had kept it propped open. He waited a moment in the hallway after the door had shut, listening, but unsure of what he was listening for. He heard nothing.
     Vega rubbed his palms together and blew warm breath into his hands as he crunched across the gravel to his car. He had twenty minutes to get through the town to Dowding House, which should be plenty. He turned the key in the ignition and let the engine turn over a few times. He’d stop off at The Black Dog on Camden Road to get himself a coffee and a bacon sarnie; his breakfast had been small and hurried. He was about to leave when he saw Jodie stepping out the front door, shuffling towards him in her loose slippers. He wound down his window.
      ‘I’m glad I caught you,’ she said, unconvincingly. Her skin looked worse than it had in the dim light of her apartment; he could see the shadowing beneath her eyes now, the fine lines around her mouth which suggested she smoked. Beneath the sun-bed glow he could tell her skin would be pale. Jodie pulled her dressing gown tighter about herself as a sudden gust tried to tug it open.
     ‘Is there something you wanted to tell me?’ Vega asked, trying not to sound too keen. Clouds of exhaust fumes were caught up by the wind and billowed past, so he shut off his engine. Jodie’s dark brown eyes, eyes that Reese had inherited, darted up from her footwear.
     ‘Can I borrow that pen?’
     Vega handed her his notebook and silver Parker pen; a gift from Rosen that Christmas, a week before she’d left him. A goodbye gift? He supposed it must have been.
     Jodie wrote something out, leaning on the roof of his car. She handed it back to him and he glanced at it before tucking it in his jacket: it was a series of numbers and letters.
      ‘I have a car. A black Audi A4,’ Jodie said. ‘Reese took it, a couple of weeks back. That’s the reg plate.’
     ‘Is he insured on it?’
     Jodie fixed him with a look that said he’d have to dig for anything else he wanted to know. She had given him all she would today. He nodded, patting his pocket. ‘Thanks, Jodie. I’ll be as discreet as I can, all right?’
     Jodie nodded. She turned and went back inside. Vega started up the engine again and pulled out of the little enclave, out into the midday traffic. He heard his phone trill and read the message while waiting in the queue to the roundabout on London Road; it was from Rosen, and was as brusque as ever.
    Carmichael wanting to make formal complaint against you. Why??
     Vega cursed and tossed his phone into the empty passenger seat.
    ‘Fan-f*****g-tastic…’

Author's Note

All constructive criticism gratefully received.

Reviews

[NoelHC]

This advances the tale well, and I really got a much better understanding of Jodie in this chapter, I hope she will continue to play a role in chapters to come.
Vega slamming Carmichael's head into the glass shows yet another facet of how much concern Vega has for victims, and getting in trouble with Rosen yet one more time will add to the tension. I want to know more about that failed relationship.
Another stellar chapter.

[SLD Bailey]

Thanks so much, Noel :) I was a little apprehensive about window-gate, because I don't want Vega to become an unsympathetic bully...but his actions will be explained a little more in the coming chapters, and I'm glad that you perceived it exactly as it was intended: concern for the victims, and those they leave behind. Also, Jodie will definitely have a featured part in later chapters!

[W.k.kortas]

I think the re-build of this chapter is much better than before you took it down; I'd thought Reese's escape a bit out of character, and it stood out because it just didn't feel like something that would happen naturally or organically from the situation, so taking that out was a plus, and the chapter retains the very effective Vega-Carmichael episode.

[SLD Bailey]

Thanks, Kortas! Yes, I had reservations about it from the get-go, and another reader pointed out the same to me. This story is a total reworking of an almost-completed book I wrote last year and I fell into the trap of trying to follow the same arc as the original; it didn't work then and didn't work this time. "Those who do not learn from history" and all that...!
I'm glad you found this a better route and that the Vega-Carmichael episode worked for you; that is an element of the story I'm keen to develop :)

As ever, thanks so much for reviewing.

[The Quill]

I feel envy to you ma'am, how can one write such a brilliant and intense
Piece :))))) , the emotions are knit by threads of words and thoughts , amazing one , once again

[SLD Bailey]

How have I only just seen your review?! I'm so sorry, I'm not sure how I missed it :( Thanks so much!