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Rachel
How I got through work that day I will never know. Nothing was solid, if you know what I mean. I felt like I wasn’t tethered to the earth, like I might float away and never be able to get back down. That young lass. Stabbed, left for dead. She was just a girl, on the cusp of womanhood, lying on the pavement alone, a crumpled heap of clothes. And so near to her friend’s house. So near to where I’d said goodbye, my God. It didn’t bear thinking about, but think about it was all I could do. I did nothing but imagine that knife, how hard you’d have to push to break the skin. How easy it would be after crossing that precious boundary to drive the blade in, how much blood, how soon she’d lose consciousness. I saw it. I felt it, over and over – the pressure in my hand, the sudden lurch forward once the skin broke.
Had she tried to crawl to her friend’s house or had she just dropped where she’d been attacked and passed out?
Around lunchtime, theWeekly Newswebsite was updated.Doctors fear for knife-attack girl.I caught it later, towards two, on my lunch.
The woman found unconscious near Runcorn Town Hall late on Saturday evening, Joanna Weatherall from Farnborough, Hampshire, is said to be in a critical condition.
‘She’s lucky to be alive,’ said Helen Parkin, a spokesperson for Halton Hospital. ‘But it’s too early to predict her chances of survival at this stage.’
Nicky Andrews, a friend of Ms Weatherall’s, was at the hospital.
‘Jo was coming to visit,’ Ms Andrews told theWeekly News. ‘We started to get worried when she didn’t answer her phone. I drove to the station to find her, and when she wasn’t there, I drove round all the roads, thinking she must have walked. She walked everywhere, did Jo. She loved her fitness. But there was no sign of her, so in the end I called her parents and then I called the police.’
One eyewitness said he saw a young woman matching Joanna’s description talking to a middle-aged woman near the town-hall park earlier in the evening. He thought they might be mother and daughter. He described the young woman as thin and pale, with dark hair, but couldn’t give any details on the older.
Police are appealing for information.
‘We’re keen to establish the identity of both these women,’ said police spokesperson Keith Woodhead. ‘If anyone has any information they believe to be relevant in any way, they are encouraged to call the following number…
There was the number followed by the usual links:Knife crime on the rise;How safe are our streets?;Knife crime at record high;How to talk to your kids about knives.
I sent the link for Jo’s story to my home email to print off later. The witness either hadn’t seen or hadn’t remembered the dog, which was lucky. I was glad we’d gone for a small black Cockapoo, though why these thoughts were coming to me I didn’t know. I hadn’t touched Jo apart from laying my hand on her back. I hadn’t harmed her in any way, and I certainly hadn’t driven a blade through her ribs. Twice. I was pretty sure the middle-aged woman in the article was me. That would have been when we stopped, before we climbed over the fence. Or after. If it was me, that would explain why the witness couldn’t remember anything. Not easy, is it, describing someone invisible?
But Jo would wake up sooner or later. Surely she’d remember something about me, something more thanmiddle-aged? And for all that being The Woman No One Saw was bothering me, I wasn’t sure if I wanted Jo to remember me at all.
That week I kept my head down, checked the news for updates. Tuesday, another appeal for information, a report that the CCTV camera had been out of order, police keen to speak to the woman who might have been talking to Joanna Weatherall shortly before she was attacked; Wednesday, another appeal, Joanna still critical; Thursday, nothing. Forecast: rain again – it was all right in the morning but bucketing it down when I came out of work. I’d put my cagoule in my bag, thank heavens, but even so, I hadn’t expected it to be so heavy. I didn’t have my umbrella with me and I knew I’d be soaked by the time I’d crossed town. I hovered in the doorway even though I was running late because there’d been a bit of argy-bargy with a customer, as there sometimes is when they’ve had one too many. It wasn’t about the wrong change, which was what he was claiming I’d given him; I was just taking the flak for his shitty day. He’d probably fallen out with his missus or something. Constipation, whatever. Piles.
Outside the pub, people scurried past the Devonshire Bakery, the indoor market, shoulders hunched, faces pinched, eyes thrown upwards in disgust. Pulling a face, the great British defence against the weather. There was no sign of the homeless lad and I hoped he’d found shelter somewhere; couldn’t stand the thought of him getting wet through with no way of drying off. I really didn’t fancy getting wet either, but with the downpour showing no sign of abating, in the end I grabbed the dog-earedRacing Postthat Phil had left on the bar, shoved it over my head and legged it.
I ran all the way up Church Street and past the Co-op. Katie and Mark would be chomping at the bit for their tea, as would the boyf if he was there, as he often was, sitting on the kitchen table, legs swinging, shovelling my stash of digestive biscuits down his cakehole like there was no tomorrow. I was supposed to be doing cottage pie, and I knew that if I didn’t get a shift on we wouldn’t be eating much before seven. Katie says I’m a weirdo for thinking everyone needs at least one hot meal a day, and I suppose it is old-fashioned, but that’s me. I’ve never been into food fads, and how sushi is classed as a meal I will never know. Raw fish, what’s that about?
There I go again, veering off topic. Rushing past the Co-op, wasn’t I, betting paper on my head, odds of staying dry very low indeed. I ran across the high street and hit the path that leads past the doctors’ surgery, where I’d seen the GP, to the car park beside the canal. At the near end of the path, raindrops splashed into a puddle. I stopped a moment, transfixed by how quickly the drops lost their edges and became one with the murky water, but then a great trickle ran into my collar, down my back and became one with my pants.
By the time I got to the car park, I was wetter than a haddock’s bathing costume, thePostall but reduced to papier mâché on my head. I fumbled for my keys, got myself into the car and sighed massively. The windscreen and all the windows were fogged up. I turned the key for the ignition. The engine coughed and fell silent.
‘No,’ I said through my teeth. ‘No, no, no, no, no.’
It doesn’t rain, does it? I thought. It bloody pours. And it really was chucking it down, so the expression fitted doubly. If I hadn’t been so hacked off, I might even have laughed at the irony. I tried again with the ignition, but there wasn’t even a cough this time, just a last asthmatic gasp. And then I noticed the switch for the headlights was turned to on.
‘For crying out loud,’ I said to no one. And then I had a good old swear, but that kind of language doesn’t need repeating here, does it? Suffice to say that what little air there was in my rusty Renault was a filthy shade of blue.
I dug around in my bag for my mobile, found it, switched it on. I was about to call Mark, but I didn’t. He’d be just in the door from work and I couldn’t face the sulky voice on the other end of the line when I told him I’d left the headlights on, which in that moment I decided not to tell him at all.
I would try and flag someone down on the high street and see if they’d give me a lift home. I knew where the jump leads were – in the dresser in the garage. Yes, jump leads. Sisters are doing it for themselves.
Of course, at that moment I didn’t have a clue how the evening would go, did I? I had no clue what terrible significance those jump leads would come to have.
18
Ingrid
Transcript of recorded interview with Ingrid Taylor (excerpt)
Also present: DI Heather Scott, PC Marilyn Button
HS: So, to clarify, your relationship with Mark Edwards was purely platonic?
