“I was though, I was. I’m to blame!”
“Now, come on, please don’t do this to yourself. You’ve been through a terrible time. Don’t wind yourself up. Of course you weren’t to blame. I don’t know what the world’s coming to when innocent people can’t even sleep in their beds without… well… this.”
“Innocent? I’m not sure I am Dolly! I didn’t mean for any of this. I don’t know how everything has turned out this way. I didn’t think… I just tried to help and then I was afraid… but I did it, I pushed him and before that, earlier, I lied. If I hadn’t lied in the first place this wouldn’t have happened and they were such stupid lies, probably not even necessary, but I was scared.”
“Now, come on. You’re not making any sense and I think it’s best if you just sit quietly and wait for the police. I’ll make some more tea and how about a piece of toast? Could you eat a piece of toast?”
At the thought of food Pauline’s stomach churned and she shook her head and gulped back the bile in her throat. “A cup of tea would be nice.”
All she had tried to do was protect herself. Right from the start the lies had been only to hide from George. The accident and all the horror that had come from her one kind action was still an unexplained nightmare. There had been no diamonds, no bag, no memory stick. She closed her eyes and concentrated on remembering the man when she had first found him, unconscious, his legs in the ditch. She remember the fear and panic. She had gone through his pockets looking for a phone but there had been nothing. She had only looked in his jeans anyway. Perhaps the things that he had lost were in his leather jacket? If that was the case though then where were they now? If the hospital had kept her jacket and handed it to him with its traitorous note inside then surely they would have returned his jacket to him as well?
So, someone else had removed the bag then. Surely not the rescue services, nurses, doctors; they were people to trust weren’t they, not thieves and pickpockets. No, there must be another explanation. Perhaps the bag had fallen into the road and been swept away? It may be lying in the ditch even now. But would he not have gone there? Surely he had looked? Now it was too late to ask him, even as the salt and grit dried in her hair the regret and self doubt crept into her mind. She had handled this all wrong, hadn’t she; everything she had touched had been tainted by her own desire for safety. Could she not have talked to him, logically and calmly? The horror was retreating now in the warmth of Dolly’s home and so Pauline began to second guess her actions and her shocked and confused mind filled with what ifs.
As thoughts chased puzzles through her head she rubbed her hands together and the chaffing on her wrists spoke plainly of the truth. He hadn’t wanted conversation and explanation; he was convinced that she had his property and his anger had been driven partly by fear. She had seen it in his eyes when he had screamed at her. The fog of confusion closed her lids and exhaustion lulled her to sleep before she realised that she had drifted away…
“Pauline, Pauline, come on my dear, wake up. The police are here. I’ve made some tea.”
With a groan she came back to the world, pushed up from the slouch and turned to the doorway. A young woman in a dark suit and a tall uniformed police officer waited. “Have they found him? Have they got the body?”
The pair moved into the room and perched on the edges of homely old chairs. The woman leaned forward. “Pauline, may I call you Pauline? I’m Detective Ryan. I have to ask you some questions and see if we can sort out what’s been going on here. Do you feel well enough? You look pretty beaten up; have you had a doctor look at you?”
“No, no I don’t want that, I’m alright really. I just want to have a bath and get clean. Have they found him? Have they got him out of the water?”
“They’re searching now.”
“But, he’s there, just in the water at the bottom of the cliffs. I can take you.” As she spoke the words she prayed that they wouldn’t ask her to follow through on the offer. She didn’t believe she would be able to trudge back across the sands and make the climb and she didn’t want to see him again rolling in the waves, bumping against the rocks.
“We have a team looking now, the lifeboat is there and the coastguard, but I have to tell you that up to now there is no body. We haven’t found anything. Are you quite sure that was where he fell?”
Chapter 28
Pauline felt that she was teetering on the edge of insanity. There was now even more hell heaped on the torment she had already suffered. The side room at the hospital was bland and not quite clean. The medical team were calm and professional but without any warmth. Though the people searching had still not found a body the possibility of murder or misadventure had meant that she must be “processed.” It was an awful concept and a dreadful ordeal.
While she was examined, poked, prodded, scraped and questioned, her clothes were taken away and put in bags. At first they offered her a paper suit to wear in place of the hospital gown, but in the end Dolly was allowed to wait by the front door of the cottage until one of the forensic people brought her some of her clothes from the wardrobe and drawers at her cottage. It seemed that they didn’t quite know how to treat her. She was so very obviously a victim and yet with no real evidence and only her confused account of events they didn’t know whether she was a murderer or not. They were polite, kind and sympathetic to her wounds, but in the back of their eyes she could see suspicion.
However it was clear to everyone that she was on the verge of total exhaustion. And so with the strong urging of the doctor and because she was now almost incapable of forming meaningful answers to any questions they took her back to the farm. They had wanted her to stay in the hospital and she had begged to be allowed to leave. In the event they had no real means to make her stay. They had of course wanted her home address and because she didn’t have the strength for anything else, she had given them the details of the house in The Dales. Trying to explain that she didn’t live there anymore brought more tears and so they gave up on the questioning and sent her away, “For now,” they said, and the words chilled her.
She asked to go to the cottage but they were adamant. It wasn’t possible; the little house was now a crime scene, tape covered the doors and it would be sealed while they combed the rooms for evidence of the intruder. What would they look for? There was nothing to find; just her clothes, a couple of books. She had so little; would that in itself cause them to be suspicious? She didn’t know.
It was only the feel of Dolly’s kind arms around her and her gentle voice urging her to be calm and promising a bed at the farm house that stopped her from falling apart completely. Then after it all; the hospital, the questions, the empty silences filled with puzzlement and disbelief, there was a drive home in the back of a police car with a silent driver and Dolly uncomfortable and embarrassed beside her.
At last she clambered between sweet smelling sheets in one of the neat little bed and breakfast rooms. A drug induced sleep carried her away, and while boats and police teams scoured the cliffs and beaches she slept, with Dolly creeping up the stairs at regular intervals to listen at the door and shake her head in confusion…
The house was quiet and calm. Pauline didn’t want to open her eyes. If she could just stay where she was in the warm, dark place, maybe it would all go away.