Janine tried the windows at the side. She wasn’t visible anywhere downstairs. Janine felt a chill inside. ‘I don’t like this,’ she said, ‘we need to get in there.’
Richard didn’t hesitate. When the front door wouldn’t give under sustained kicks, he picked an edging stone out from the flower border and used it to smash through the stained-glass sidelight. He reached in and undid the latch.
Janine kept calling out, ‘Mrs Halliwell? Norma?’
After double checking the ground floor, they took the stairs.
The master bedroom was at the front. She lay there on the bed, comatose, a band tied around her arm and sharps and ampoules on the bedside table.
‘Oh, God,’ Janine said. She picked up one of the ampoules and read the label. ‘Diamorphine.’
Janine grabbed hold of the woman’s shoulder, shook her hard, her head fell to the side. ‘Can you hear me, Norma? Norma?’
Janine placed two fingers on the angle of the woman’s jaw, felt a faint pulse in her neck and nodded to Richard who was already calling an ambulance.
‘Now we know why Halliwell was stealing drugs,’ Janine said.
‘Help’s on its way,’ she said to Norma, ‘there’s an ambulance coming. You’re going to be alright.’
She thought of Adele Young then, of her desperate battle to save Marcie. How many times had she found her daughter like this? And then to have finally got her help with Dr Halliwell, with the hope of being weaned off the heroin only to find that the dose reduction was too savage, was unbearable for the girl. Knowing that she would relapse, go in search of one more proper high, with deadly consequences.
Chapter 39
The hospital notified Janine when Norma was conscious and out of danger. Janine needed to talk to her, to try and establish if she had played any part in her husband’s murder but she was also aware that Norma Halliwell was extremely vulnerable, grieving and suicidal. Had the police questioning prompted her attempt on her life? Had the suicide bid risen from guilt? And given she couldn’t have pulled the trigger, that she was teaching at the time, was it possible she had engaged someone else to kill her husband?
A nurse was coming out of Norma’s room as Janine arrived.
‘She’s still awake?’ Janine checked and the nurse nodded.
Norma was sitting up in bed. Her eyes glanced at Janine then away again, indifferent.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ Janine said, ‘but there are questions I have to ask.’
The ethereal quality that Janine had noticed in Norma before seemed even more pronounced after her ordeal, her skin paper thin and porcelain white.
‘Mrs Halliwell, can you tell me anything about what happened to your husband?’
‘No,’ Norma said.
‘Are you sure about that?’ Janine said.
She raised her eyes to meet Janine’s. ‘I could never hurt Don,’ she said, ‘he looked after me, I depended on him completely.’
‘But the affair with his work colleague was a threat, and you got jealous?’ Janine said.
‘No,’ Norma said, ‘he’d never leave me, he loved me. She stroked the bed sheet, her long fingers pale, tapered, here and there a liver spot. ‘You know, when they told me he was dead, the first thing I thought of, before anything else, was: how will I get my medication? The very first thing.’ She made a little sound, breathy. ‘I lost my husband and I lost my supplier too. I couldn’t go on without him.’
‘How long has this been going on, the drugs?’ Janine said.
‘Since we met practically. Every few years, Don would try and persuade me to go into rehabilitation but I couldn’t face it. At medical school I’d needed stuff to keep me awake, stuff to help me sleep. I was always, strung out – I suppose. Then I got pregnant. We got married. But we lost the baby. Morphine made things bearable. Don helped me. And it got so there was no way back.’
‘He enabled your addiction,’ Janine said. ‘As long as he was around, you didn’t have to worry about it, deal with it.’
‘So you see, I could never have hurt him – even if I had wanted to – because then I’d have no way of getting my medicine.’ Tremors flickered in the muscles round her mouth.
Forty years, Janine thought, forty years of dependency. And the sheer hypocrisy of Halliwell. The same man who had kept his wife supplied with heroin had insisted on a rapid treatment plan for Marcie Young, against her family’s wishes. Could that have been because he’d seen how persistent, persuasive addiction was first hand and feared Marcie would go the same way that Norma had? Or had he been rigid as a reaction against his complicity with Norma – compartmentalising his approach? Norma’s addiction could be contained because she had money, access to safe drugs, privilege. Marcie’s addiction killed her.
‘What do I do now?’ Norma Halliwell said, sounding lost. ‘It’s all gone.’ She looked steadily at Janine, ‘ I wish you’d left me there,’ she said.
Janine took a breath. ‘People do it,’ she said, ‘they turn their lives around – it’s not impossible.’
Norma turned away, her hands no longer smoothing the sheets but one set of nails digging into the flesh at the base of her thumb.
Norma Halliwell had been living in a cocoon, Janine thought as she walked along the corridor to the exit. A comfortable life as the doctor’s wife, teaching piano and looking after the house. Respected, cosseted. Putting up with his dalliances because she had no option. It was a prison of sorts, trapped by her addiction. And the drug was the one true love of her life.
Chapter 40
Janine found Richard, Shap and Butchers at the pub, the two sergeants half way through a game of pool. They paused to hear what the trip to the hospital had produced.
Shap shook his head, mouth twisted. ‘Who’d have pegged her for a junkie?’ he said.
‘You didn’t see that one coming, did you, Shap?’ Janine said. ‘Me neither. Well, this time, Norma took the lot. She wasn’t getting high, she was getting out.’
‘Guilt?’ Butchers said.
Janine shook her head. ‘She’d never hurt him. No matter what she felt about the affair, all that really mattered to her was where her next fix was coming from. He was her source. No way would she jeopardise that.’
Shap nodded to Butchers and they returned to the pool table.
‘No Lisa?’ Janine said.
‘She knows we’re here,’ Richard’s tone was cool.
‘Make her feel welcome, did you?’ Janine said.
‘Look, it’s sorted,’ he said. ‘I spoke to her this afternoon. But until the case is cracked she doesn’t know exactly how much damage she’s done. She probably wants to see how it plays out.’ He shrugged.
Janine studied him. ‘You can come across as very harsh, you know?’
‘Harsh? Hah! Harsh? You’re calling me harsh? Is this a staff appraisal or what?’ His eyes were gleaming, was he teasing her or spoiling for an argument? It wasn’t how she would have managed the situation, coming down so heavily on Lisa. Lisa knew she’d made a mistake, a basic one and was obviously beating herself up about it. She would need to improve her performance, regain her reputation for being conscientious and reliable, which Janine believed her to be. But a cold shoulder from her line manager, exclusion from the inner circle of the team, was nothing less than petty. Janine wondered if there was anything else going on, other problems in Richard’s life that were causing him stress and making him more judgmental. Teamwork was crucial to their job, to the possibility of success, and Janine prided herself on commanding the respect and loyalty of her troops but it could easily be jeopardized if schisms started appearing. She didn’t feel now was the right time to go into it any more with Richard. She could only hope they got to solve the case because if Lisa’s mistake put it out of reach then everything could collapse.
Richard was still looking at her. Janine held her hands up, letting it go.