Critical Incidents

Copyright

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk

This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2019

Copyright © Lucie Whitehouse 2019

Lucie Whitehouse asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Cover photography Face: © Plainpicture / Cristopher Civitillo; Match: Shutterstocl

Epigraph taken from The Less Deceived by Philip Larkin, by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780008268992

Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9780008269012

Version: 2019-01-09

Dedication

For Bridget

Epigraph

I leant far out, and squinnied for a sign

That this was still the town that had been ‘mine’

So long, but found I wasn’t even clear

Which side was which.

Philip Larkin

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

Chapter One

Robin surveyed the table with its heap of crumpled napkins and burger boxes, stray fries and onion rings, the pile of bleeding ketchup packets. Aftermath of the cholesterol bomb. They’d had breakfast back in London, too, but as the road signs had started to portend BIRMINGHAM, her stomach started churning, and by the time they’d reached Warwick Services, it had felt completely empty or at least gnawing in some other way that made eating fifteen quid’s worth of Burger King seem like a good idea. Whoppers, milkshakes, the works – no section of the menu overlooked. Now she had stomach ache and she felt sick.

Across the table, Lennie’s stomach was a toddler-style pot under her Blondie T-shirt. She put her hands on it and grimaced. ‘Ugh. I feel like I’ve swallowed a sofa cushion. Full of grease.’

‘It was a two-seater. I got the fluff and loose change from down the back, too.’

Lennie laughed and for a moment, everything seemed brighter. There was still a chance this would all be irrelevant in the grand scheme, wasn’t there? A blip. Once, on one of the long nights when Lennie was a baby, she’d whispered in her ear that together, they could do anything. She would do anything for her, of course; but also, because of her, she, Robin, could do anything. Right, said a snide voice.

She stood quickly and began piling their rubbish onto the trays, crushing her burger box with a savagery that startled Lennie from her texting. ‘Once more unto the breach?’

A thump, hard but fleshy, as if a large bird – a pheasant, even a swan – had dropped from the sky and landed deadweight on the roof. They both jumped but a second later a smirking face loomed at the passenger-side window. For the love of god. Robin took a long breath then pressed the button to lower the glass.

‘Luke.’

Her own eyes looked back from a face that was her own, too, but pale and more defined, the jaw made square by pads of muscle. ‘Shocked you, did I? What are you doing sitting back here? There’s a parking spot outside.’

‘Someone must have just gone.’

Her brother made the yeah, right expression he’d been giving her since he was six. ‘How are you, Lennie? Can’t be many people who’ve staked out their own grandparents. Old habits dying hard, Rob?’

She flung the door open and moved to get out, remembering at the last second that she’d undone her jeans. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Same as you – come to spend time with the rentals. Though just the afternoon in our case.’ He smirked again.

Robin came round to the pavement and stooped to look at the roof. She couldn’t see a dent, but still. ‘Why would you hit my car, you … fuckwit?’ she hissed.

‘Afraid it’ll affect the resale value? What?’ The injured innocence he did so well. ‘You’re going to have to sell it, aren’t you, if you’re as broke as Mum says? Can’t drive an Audi if you’re begging. Even if it was second-hand.’

‘We’re not begging.’ She glanced at Lennie, just getting out, then glared at him: Watch it.

‘Would you be back here if you weren’t?’

‘Hiya, Lennie. Robin.’ Natalie, Luke’s wife, lunged at them. She was like a newly hatched bird, Robin thought, all beak, eyes and pushy hunger, thrusting herself into the middle of every situation to ensure she wasn’t overlooked or slighted in some other unguessable way. Her fringe absorbed make-up from her forehead and hung in damp-looking, fresh-from-the-egg strands.

‘Right.’ Robin opened the boot. ‘Since you’re here, Luke, make yourself useful.’ She handed him a box. ‘It’s only light.’ She wasn’t going to give him an excuse to put his back out and malinger with his PlayStation for weeks. ‘Natalie, have you got a spare hand? It’s just a bag of—’

‘Sorry.’ She held up a set of lilac claws. ‘I’ve just had my nails done.’

On balance, Robin thought as she locked the car, Luke had done her a favour accosting her out here. Better to have the opening skirmish under her belt than walk into an ambush. And being pissed off was useful, armour of a sort. She’d thought she was over the worst but as she’d turned into Dunnington Road, she’d felt a moment of suffocating panic. Here it all was again, as if the sixteen years in between had just fallen away – collapsed: the pairs of Fifties semis facing off across the wide street, their bay windows netted prissily against anyone who could be bothered to peer over the rosebushes or the brace of mid-range saloons in the tiny front gardens. It was all so low-rise, so stunted: nothing reached higher than two storeys. The sky yawned overhead for bleak white acres, uninterrupted. She was seized by a sense of personal jeopardy, actual threat: if she was under it too long, exposed, it would suck out her soul.

As they rounded Terry Willett’s white Ford Transit – the bane of her mother’s existence, herself aside, for twenty-five years – she saw number 17 for the first time and waiting in the ground-floor bay, trapped like a bug between glass and net curtain, her dad. She watched him light up like he’d heard it was Christmas. In a whisk of nylon lace he was gone. ‘Chrissie,’ she imagined him bellowing, ‘they’re here!’

Seconds later, the outer porch door opened. Lennie ran to him, the bag bumping against her back. ‘Hello, sweetheart.’ He held her away to look at her. ‘You’ve grown again, haven’t you? Who said you could do that?’ He lowered his voice. ‘I’ve got some Creme Eggs in for you – we’ll have one after lunch.’

Lunch.

Lennie turned, eyes wide. Robin shook her head: Say nothing.

They could smell it now, the scent wafting through the open door: roast beef, roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, gravy, carrots, sprouts, peas and god knows what else. Shit. Why hadn’t her mother said something? No – why hadn’t she known? Of course she was going to cook the fatted calf. And that was why Luke and Natalie were here, wasn’t it? Luke wouldn’t drive five minutes to see her but he’d never miss a free lunch.

Over Natalie’s head, her dad winked. When the others had moved inside, he took her bags then pulled her into a hug, crushing her face into his sweater. His smell, it never changed: Ariel detergent, Camay soap and, faint but unmistakeable, the stealthy cigarettes that he disappeared off to smoke twice a day and still believed her mother knew nothing about. Her ribcage buckled as he gave her a final squeeze. ‘Good to have you back, love.’

‘I knew you’d be later than you said so I aimed for three o’clock and it’s a good job I did, isn’t it? Was there traffic?’ Christine slid the potatoes back into the oven, straightened up and retied the apron over her cream blouse and floral skirt. The pattern was yellow roses, not unlike the one on the oven gloves, the blinds and the covered stools. Robin felt like a biker crashing the Women’s Institute garden party.

‘Hi, Mum.’

‘Hello.’ Christine touched her cheek briefly to hers. ‘I’ll get the greens going now you’re here. So was there?’

‘What?’

‘Traffic.’

Robin glanced at Lennie. A couple of minutes ago, when she was bringing in her suitcase, Lennie had come racing out of the house to tell her there were starters – ‘Cheese soufflé!’ – and pudding, too. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘Nothing. And not a word.’

‘But …’

‘We eat. Just do your best.’

The tea towels, Robin noticed, had the roses, too. ‘It was pretty busy,’ she said. ‘Especially round the Oxford turn.’ Before the epic Burger King, they’d had several goes at catching a stuffed pink alligator with a mechanical claw, and they’d lingered round the books in Smith’s so long they’d attracted the security guard.

‘It’s normally worse going into London, isn’t it?’ Christine said, sorting broccoli florets into portions. ‘How nice, to have Elena here.’ She turned and gave her a side-hug. ‘Now, the boys are having a beer, Robin, and there’s lemonade.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Natalie’s not drinking at the moment but don’t make a song and dance about it.’

‘Really? The thinnest woman in the West Midlands? Is she on another diet?’

‘Sssh. They’re trying again. Don’t say anything.’

‘Trying what?’ Lennie whispered.

‘To have a baby.’

‘Oh.’

‘Have you got a drink, Mum?’ Robin asked.

‘I’m going to have a spritzer once everything’s on the table. Would you like one?’

‘No, thanks, I’ll have one of these.’ She picked up a beer from the cluster on the end of the counter. ‘Purity? I haven’t seen this before.’

‘It’s local – the brewery’s out near Studley, I think. Your father likes it.’

Robin flipped off the cap and took a sip. ‘Yeah, I can see why. What?’

‘At least use a glass. And take that jacket off before we sit down, please. And those boots. You look like …’

She couldn’t help herself. ‘A dyke?’

Christine suppressed a shudder. ‘Like you’re going yomping across the Falklands.’

They managed the soufflés without major incident. As he’d pulled out her chair, her dad had murmured, ‘Don’t have a fight, will you? For your mother’s sake,’ and he’d done his best, steering the conversation towards such anodyne topics as the decking that Natalie and Luke were laying in their garden – or rather Natalie’s brother was relaying, Luke having botched it – and the restaurant in Moseley where they’d been for their anniversary, which now had a Michelin star, apparently.

‘A Michelin star in Birmingham – who’da thunk it?’ Robin said.

‘Actually,’ said Natalie, tight-lipped, ‘there’s five.’

The main course proved a bridge too far. The temperature in the room seemed to be rising, the oxygen level decreasing in inverse proportion. Robin had had the same piece of beef in her mouth for a minute but her stomach was drum-taut, painful when it met the table-edge. Glancing to her right, she saw Lennie – genius! – disappear a roast potato into a piece of kitchen roll on her lap. She pushed back her chair to go and get a piece for herself but Luke, obviously afraid of losing his sitting target, cut Dennis off mid-sentence.

‘So, Robin,’ he said, ‘Mum and Dad told me, obviously, but I’m still having problems getting my head around your … situation.’

‘Which part is troubling you?’

‘Well, for a start, how did you actually get fired? We thought, me and Nat, that you were some sort of golden girl down there, the great white hope of Scotland Yard.’ They looked at each other, struggling not to snicker.

‘Luke,’ warned Dennis.

‘What? I’m trying to understand.’

In another situation – any situation with no Lennie – she’d grab him by the collar and bounce his head off the wall. He’d done it to her enough times when his two-year advantage still counted. But then she’d turned eleven and knocked one of his front teeth out and that had been the end of it. The beatings, anyway.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘in layman’s terms, to help you get your head around it, my boss wanted to charge a bad man with a murder he didn’t commit just because he was bad and the public would be better off if he was inside, but I didn’t think it was right, so I said so and he – my boss – didn’t like it.’

‘And you got fired for that?’

‘Yes. They’re quite hot on insubordination in the police. I’m guessing it’s not such a big deal at Carphone Warehouse. Or is it T-Mobile these days?’

‘Robin.’ Dennis put a hand on her arm, calming or admonitory, she wasn’t sure.

‘But from what Mum told me,’ Luke said, ‘it wasn’t just that your boss didn’t like it. The guy – the bad man,’ he made a face that Robin yearned to plunge her fist into, ‘has gone AWOL, hasn’t he? So he’s out there somewhere, a known killer, because of you.’

‘He didn’t do it.’

‘But you don’t know that.’

‘I didn’t have evidence to prove it – I needed more time – but I’m pretty sure.’

‘And that’s enough, is it? The great Robin Lyons says so? “Oh, I’m pretty sure he didn’t do it, let him go – oh look, he’s killed someone else, that’s a shame.”’

‘Beyond reasonable doubt – heard of that? You can’t just lock people up because you think they’re bad apples.’

‘I don’t know why not,’ said Christine. ‘That always seems like a good idea to me. Put them away before they can do the damage.’

Robin gave herself credit for not rising. Even a couple of years ago, she wouldn’t have been able to let that pass.

‘But, sorry,’ Natalie took a prim sip of her water, ‘if you really were highly thought of’ – Princess Di eyes over the rim of the glass – ‘would one thing like that be enough to get you fired?’

‘Ah, that’s the bit she’s not telling us, isn’t it?’ Luke grinned. ‘It wasn’t just one thing – she was on a written warning before. She’s been busting that poor guy’s balls from the moment he started there. This was just the final straw.’

‘Language.’

‘Sorry, Mum, but I’m right, aren’t I? She couldn’t keep her mouth shut and this is what happened. With Adrian, too, I bet – no wonder he dumped her. That poor bas—’

‘Luke!’

A moment of seething silence in which Robin could sense Lennie gathering herself. She put her hand out – Don’t – but it was too late. ‘Ade loves Mum,’ Lennie said, voice tight. ‘He asked her to marry him.’

‘Len, it’s okay. You don’t—’

‘But it’s true. You were the one who said no so even if you had a fight, it doesn’t change that, does it?’

‘He asked you to marry him?’ Christine was staring. ‘And you said no? For god’s sake, why?’

‘Because I couldn’t … I just didn’t …’

‘Oh, you,’ her mother cried, ‘you, you, you. What about anyone else? What about poor Elena? Do you ever give her a second’s thought in all this, when you’re going around acting like you’re—’

‘What? How could you even—’

‘Robin – be quiet. Christine.’ Dennis had his hands out to the sides, boxing-ref style.

Her mother closed her eyes against the cruelty of the world, and the burden it had put upon her.

‘I’m fine, Gran,’ Lennie said. ‘Honestly.’

A hiatus, this time ended by Natalie. ‘So how long will you be here then? Your dad said you’re going to work for Maggie Hammond. That doesn’t mean you’re going to stay, does it?’

‘No.’ Please fucking god. ‘Maggie’s got a lot on so I’m going to help her until I straighten things out at the Met.’

‘Doesn’t she work for the council?’

‘She’s self-employed, they’re just one of her clients. It’s not just benefit fraud; there’s suspect insurance claims and—’

‘From Homicide Command in London to catching scroungers on the sick in Sparkhill,’ crowed Luke. ‘How the mighty have fallen.’

‘Luke, for the last time,’ said Dennis.

Cheeks flaming, Robin stood up. Blood pulsed in the backs of her hands. ‘Better to have fallen than to never even have tried to stand on your own two feet. You …’ The swirl of words and arguments and fury bottlenecked in her throat – she couldn’t choke them out. ‘You’re pathetic,’ she managed. ‘Just …’ She remembered Lennie. ‘Bugger off.’

She swung out of the room and took the stairs two at a time, her mother jabbering away behind her, a diatribe unchanged in twenty years: ‘I won’t have that language in this house; this is my home; I won’t have her behaving like this, Dennis; I just won’t.’

Robin slammed the bedroom door as she’d done a thousand times before, the wall shuddering as it always had. Sudden silence – after a few seconds she could hear herself breathing. She looked around and felt time judder to a stop.

Apart from the boxes behind the door, which Josh had sent the factory’s van to collect from London last week, the room was unchanged since the day she’d packed her bags for university sixteen years earlier. The same blue gingham curtains, chosen by Christine as gender-neutral and successfully, to be fair, given that she and Luke had both hated them; the same pale blue carpet with – yes – the old stain where she’d dropped a leaky ballpoint and deliberately left it. Free-standing wardrobe in white vinyl veneer, the side that abutted the tiny desk still covered with her brother’s Villa stickers circa 1994 and her own picture of Robert Smith in his heyday, all leather jacket and Scissorhands hair.

A vibration in her back pocket. Gid? She’d texted him from Warwick Services, not because she expected anything new today – he wouldn’t be at work; he’d be home with Efie and the boys watching football, cooking, regrouting the bathroom – but for morale, the feeling that on this shittiest of days she still had a line back. Hope.

Not Gid but Corinna: How’s it going over there? What’s the body count?

She thumbed a reply: Nil – for now. Waiting til Amazon deliver acid for bath.

Seconds later, Good thinking. Booze/takeaway/debrief at ours Tues eve? Tell Len Peter has new Xbox game he’s dying to show her.

Wilco and YES. Feed me gin. By the pint.

She slid the phone back into her pocket feeling fractionally better. Corinna the human night-light. When she’d come down to London last month, Robin’d gone to meet her at Marylebone. She’d looked like a beacon as she’d stalked down the platform in her tangerine canvas coat with its fern-print pattern. Black polo neck, indigo skinny jeans tucked into shiny black knee boots – even Rin’s hair had been kinetic that day, cut into a new bob that seemed in perpetual motion.

Len had had a sleepover at her friend Olivia’s house, and so they’d got hammered, absolutely wasted, Robin swinging between rage, incredulity and grief, Rin listening, matching her drink for drink. The next day, they’d staggered up the road like Mick and Keith and eaten their way through spring rolls and meatballs and Vietnamese curry in an effort to staunch the nausea. Afterwards Corinna had done her thing, advising and problem-solving in a way that, coming from anyone else, would have driven Robin round the effing twist. ‘You’ve started looking for your own place?’ she’d said.

‘Online, yeah.’

‘Want me to help? I can while away a dull hour at work on Rightmove.’

‘It’ll have to wait for a couple of months.’

‘Why?’

‘No deposit.’

Corinna had frowned. ‘What do they ask for, a month’s rent? Or a month and a half? Can you take it out of savings? It’s worth it, isn’t it, even if there’s a penalty for early withdrawal?’

‘If it was just a question of taking it out of savings, do you think I’d be moving back? I’m flattered you think I even have a savings account – how long have you known me?’ She’d watched it dawn on Rin that she wasn’t joking, then the volley of silent questions: hadn’t she had a steady job for years? A salary, not massive but solid? ‘My rent here’s a ton,’ she said, ‘and Lennie’s school, even with the scholarship. Then there’ll be a lot of other stuff – you know, moving. A storage locker, maybe.’

‘How much will that cost?’

‘Also, I had some parking tickets.’ She’d hesitated. ‘Which I hadn’t paid, so they’d doubled. Twice. And then there’s the credit cards …’

‘Robin!’

‘I know, I know, I’m an idiot – tell me something I don’t know. The lottery numbers, preferably.’

‘Can I lend it to you? No, don’t get funny, I’d like to. I’ll even charge you interest if it would make you feel better.’

‘No. Thanks but no. I got myself into this mess, I’ll get myself out of it. What I really need you to do is rewind the clock. Make me nineteen again, will you, so I haven’t screwed up my life yet.’

‘You haven’t.’

‘It’s different this time.’ As she said the words, she’d felt them settle on her shoulders like a lead poncho. ‘I haven’t lost my job before, have I? We know I’m relationship poison but I’ve always been able to count on the rest. Work.’

‘You managed before.’ Subtly, Corinna had tipped her head at the next table where a man of about forty moved an expensive-looking pram back and forth with his foot. Going by his wife’s hollow eyes and limp hair, Robin had guessed their baby was weeks old, even days, this one of their first tentative forays back out into the world. Corinna had done that for her, too, back then, broken her circuit between the crib, the changing table and her thesis, and taken her out, to places like this, to the park, a pub by the river. On the surface, the world had looked exactly the same but for her, it had been reconfigured, fundamentally changed. A bomb had gone off in her life, she’d thought, and no one except Corinna had heard a thing.