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Her lips fumbled sound which didn’t really emerge. She was too tired to struggle to speak; the words she tried to say bubbled silently on her lips.
Living took too much energy – was it even worth it? Had she been happy for an instant since Tom died? She had tried to get over his death, but a day had not passed without her missing him, grieving for him. Maybe she had been meant to die with him? Was that why the angel of death kept haunting her?
‘Haunting me, night and day,’ she thought aloud.
‘What’s that, darling?’ the paramedic asked, bending closer. ‘Can you tell me your name? Then we can let your family know what’s happened to you.’
She opened her mouth to speak but pain held her; she made a groaning sound instead. It hurts, it hurts, she tried to say, staring fixedly at the man’s face. He had a big nose, rough skin like lemon peel, kind eyes. She felt him willing her to speak again and she wanted to, but she couldn’t; she gave up and sank back instead into the well of pain.
The news of her accident reached Sergeant Neil Maddrell the following morning. It was handed to him by his inspector, a comfortably padded woman with startling ginger eyebrows. Neil read the faxed report several times, frowning.
‘What do you think? Is it coincidence? Or what?’ Inspector Burbage asked him in her deep, gravelly voice.
‘Or what, I’d say,’ Neil shrugged. ‘I don’t believe in coincidences this big. But I’d better interview the traffic guy who got there first, then I’ll talk to the witnesses he took evidence from. At least one of them seems to suspect the hit and run was deliberate.’
‘Depends whether the guy is paranoid, some people always suspect accidents are part of a plot. Anyway, there’s something else you ought to see.’ Inspector Burbage handed him another fax, a missing person report from an East End police station.
Neil half rose as he read, his face suddenly excited. ‘I must talk to this girl at once. If she’s the girl from the Finnigan case it changes everything.’
He began tidying up his desk, locking papers away in a top drawer.
‘Let me know how you get on, don’t forget the paperwork,’ the inspector said, waddling away like a ginger duck.
Neil took some time to get through the clotted traffic on the main road through the East End, the Mile End road, but eventually turned into a narrow lane running down to the river and the long-abandoned dockland warehouses. He parked and went up in a graffiti-scribbled lift to the fourth floor.
A small girl with a face like a petulant kitten opened the front door of a flat on the corner looking over the river and the grey expanse of buildings on the south bank.
‘Mmm?’ she mewed at him, dyed blonde hair cascading down one side of her shoulders.
‘Miss Liddie? Miss Delphine Liddie?’ Was Delphine really her name? Or had she invented it to give herself a more interesting persona?
‘Mmm,’ she admitted warily. ‘Who’re you?’
He pulled out his warrant card and showed it to her. ‘Sergeant Neil Maddrell.’
He saw her withdrawal, sensed she was thinking of slamming the door shut in his face, and added quickly, ‘About your missing flatmate – has she shown up again yet?’
‘Nah.’
A couple of women with shopping bags came past, staring.
‘Nosy cows,’ the blonde girl muttered. ‘You’d better come in.’
The flat was so grotesquely untidy that for a moment he thought it had been burgled; litter on the floor, the furniture, cans of coke standing on radiators, full ashtrays on tables, magazines and CDs lying on the carpet.
Delphine Liddie swept stuff off an armchair to join the other rubbish on the floor. ‘There you are. Take the weight off. Want a coffee?’
Briefly he hesitated, wondering how clean the cup was likely to be, then decided to risk it. Accepting hospitality made him more acceptable himself, in his experience. The public was always more forthcoming to someone they had fed or given a drink to. ‘Thanks.’
‘Black or white?’
‘Black, please.’
She vanished into a tiny kitchenette; he heard her clinking and banging about, then she came back with two mugs of black coffee.
He accepted one, saying, ‘Thanks’, again, and noting with relief that the mug looked perfectly clean. She sat down on a bean-bag shaped like a bright yellow banana, nursing her own mug, staring at him with those big, panda-like, mascara-ringed eyes. Her skin had an improbable tan, certainly not gained naturally – it probably came from a bottle, thought Neil.
‘So, tell me about your missing friend. When did you last see her?’
