Lying Ways, page 5
‘So it’s a homicide then?’
He nodded. ‘Yup.’
‘Have you called for a perimeter?’
‘I was just about to.’
Kelly turned to Kate. ‘Get a forensic team here too. Let’s get covers, gloves and masks out of the car.’
They walked back to the rear of Kelly’s Audi. She glanced over at the small crowd of people watching from the car wash, which was closed, and they pointed when she brought plastic overalls out of her boot and began putting them on.
‘Kate, can you call Eden House and get Emma to trace the 999 call and get the address of the mother who called. We need to interview all the boys. I want a list of working businesses in this industrial estate too. Half of them look abandoned but someone might know something. Who is this building registered to?’ she asked. Kate took some overalls and the rest of the protective equipment she’d need to join Kelly inside, and made the required phone calls. Once she’d done that, she busied herself with covering up her clothes and anything that might contaminate the scene. Hairs, oil from hands, dirt from shoes or fibres lingering on their clothes could all transfer to items inside, potentially endangering the integrity of the crime scene.
The forensic team would gather and log evidence once they arrived, but Kelly wanted to assess the scene first. It was always fortunate when one got to attend a scene when it was relatively fresh. The ambulance crew had taken the man’s pulse and run a few other checks, to confirm life extinct, but they wore protective gear too. They left the medics to pack away their gadgets and tubes, designed to save lives, which wouldn’t be needed here today; Kelly caught the eye of one of them and noticed that the young woman looked as though she might throw up. Ambulance crews see some alarming sights, especially at the scenes of road traffic accidents, but attending a gruesome murder scene was quite rare. Kelly braced herself for what she’d find inside. This would be her first sight of a dead body since giving birth to a vital vibrant child, one who was at the beginning of her hopefully long journey though the shitstorm that is humanity. The irony wasn’t lost on her; she saw Lizzie’s smiling face in her head.
She went in.
The warehouse, which was more a series of storage garages, was empty, apart from a chair towards the back wall, in which sat the slumped figure of the victim. Kelly could see from all the way over by the door that there was a lot of blood, like the boys said. She noticed smashed glass on the floor; that was where the boys’ football must have hit. She went to the broken window and peered out, careful not to step on the glass. The shards would all be dusted for prints later. Outside she could see waste ground, perfect for a kick around. She examined the floor all the way up to the man, looking for any clues as to who – or what – might have been here. There were stains on it and she saw a cigarette butt next to a chocolate wrapper, which was blowing about in the wind coming through the window, and the now open door. It was the packaging for a Snickers bar.
An aroma of metallic sweetness reached her nostrils behind her mask and she knew that the poor guy had already begun to rot from the inside out. Blowflies had no doubt already done their work and laid the eggs of their young inside his cavities, to feed off his flesh when they hatched. All mothers want the best for their children. As if on cue, a big fat purple shiny fly landed on her arm and she shrugged it off, repulsed by it. It buzzed off and landed on the floor.
As she approached the man, Kate entered behind her and exclaimed.
‘Jesus, looks like an execution,’ she blurted. Kelly continued to look at the scene. She flipped open a notepad and began sketching the location of various items, so she could remember before the forensic team took everything away. She took photos to send to Ted, the coroner for the north-west, who’d no doubt be given the grim task of performing the post-mortem on the unfortunate fellow. Who knew – perhaps he wasn’t a nice person. But no one deserved to die like this: alone, stripped and beaten to death. She was used to seeing blunt trauma on a body, but the man’s flesh also showed signs of sharp wounds. It was ugly. There was a lot of violence in this act, she thought. It was personal.
The man was tied to the chair. His body was swollen and mottled from the bruising he’d suffered. Bruises continue long after human expiry and only Ted would know how long he’d been here. His hands were behind his back and Kelly noticed that blood pooling had begun to occur. Kelly looked at her phone and saw that the ambient temperature was twelve degrees Celsius. The temperature of the body would continue to decline by the hour, until it matched the air. Standard body temperature varied depending on a person’s activity, but in this scenario could be assumed as around thirty-six degrees, which would mean a drop of twenty-four to match the environment. But he could have been here overnight, when temperatures fall much lower. It was a clear night last night, without a cloud in the sky, and she and Johnny had sat out on the terrace with blankets, picking out constellations across the sky.
Kelly noted that the blood pooling was extensive in his feet and abdomen, where it had become trapped on its journey south, due to the generous nature of the man’s girth. His gut wasn’t green, as far as she could tell, and this was a sign, perhaps, that putrefaction hadn’t yet begun in earnest inside his bacteria-infested digestive system. So he was somewhere in between early post-mortem changes and the decomposition stages. In other words, it was a recent kill.
She couldn’t easily make out his facial features because his face had been bludgeoned and cut up, with bits of skin hanging off. His hair was white-grey and he was balding. The man’s genitals looked like black pudding and she felt sorrow for him. At a moment like this, any good detective saw the victim of such a savage crime as a real person, with family, desires, hopes and dreams. Somebody (or several people) had taken his life on purpose and he’d suffered. His eyes appeared closed, but then she moved closer and she realised that they just appeared that way because the lids looked drawn together, as if in repose. On closer inspection she saw that the cavities were empty. The eyes had been removed.
‘Fucking animals,’ said Kate. ‘He went through a prolonged and sustained attack. Poor bastard.’
At the moment, they had no clue as to the identity of the homicide victim.
‘Not much evidence,’ Kate commented. The clean-up (except the body itself) had been thorough, and there was no clothing to search for ID. He was intended to be found, just not identified, or at least not quickly. Unless the perp, or perps, were disturbed before they had chance to get rid of the body. It was certainly ballsy, leaving a dead body to be found like this.
‘Right, I’m done, let’s call the coroner,’ Kelly said, walking towards the door. ‘Let’s have a look at the perimeter for fresh tyre tracks, litter, drinks cans, evidence of food and cigarettes, or alcohol. How could anyone do this sober?’ Kelly asked. The she stopped. ‘Wait,’ Kelly said, stopping. She’d spotted something in the corner. It reflected light and she walked towards it and stopped, bending down.
‘It’s a Zippo lighter.’ They got close and Kelly took a photo on her phone. It had beautiful swirls and patterns engraved on it, as well as some initials.
The lighter would be bagged for evidence and hopefully might give them some prints.
They went out into the sunshine to wait for the forensic team. Shadows danced and jumped amongst the buildings and Kelly noticed that the crowd had grown bigger, but a perimeter team was already here dealing with that. A blue tented entrance had been erected between the warehouse door and a van, from where it would be extended once forensics were here. The body would be removed once they’d got what they needed, which wasn’t much. Perhaps the only way to tackle this job was to swab the whole place, especially the body. A great deal of contact had happened between this man and his killer (or killers), and Edmond Locard’s exchange principle held that a scenario such as this couldn’t happen without transfer. It was microscopically impossible. Sometimes Kelly thought about this when she was lying on the sofa with Johnny, Lizzie in between them: how many fibres, spittle particles, oils and skin cells floated around and ended up on Lizzie? Survival despite contamination was a wonder, and she prayed that whoever this man was, he had taken enough tell-tale signs with him into death to nail the bastard who did it.
Chapter 7
Johnny drove along the A66 towards Keswick. The day was perfect for a leisurely hike up Blencathra, one of the oldest mountains in the park, also known as Saddleback due to its shape when seen from the east: that of a ridge with a dip in the middle, where a saddle might be put on a horse. It was Alfred Wainwright who popularised the old Cumbrian name of Blencathra, meaning ‘top seat’. Johnny preferred the even older interpretation that the word in fact meant ‘working horse’ in old Welsh.
Lizzie gurgled and played with her toes, strapped into her car seat in the back of the car. She took in the sounds around her and listened to the voice of her father as Johnny told her names of things.
‘Look at that hill, Lizzie!’ She had no idea what he was saying, of course, but his attention was all she craved. Her replies were single syllable utterances mimicking his tone, and he smiled. Every parent wanted their child to be the first to reach milestones, and Johnny took enormous pride in pointing them out to Kelly after work over a glass of wine. He sang to the radio and Lizzie cooed. Kelly had bought a series of podcasts suited to babies for the car, but today they listened to Bay Radio. It played classic old rock tunes and foot-stomping pop, as well as delivering comforting news from around the region, unlike the big channels which only reported doom and gloom.
They were to meet Tom at one o’clock, and Josie had made sure that Lizzie was fed before they left. That way, she’d likely nod off in her harness strapped to Johnny’s front. He liked to have her facing him, but when they went walking he turned her around so she could begin to appreciate the beauty and wonder of her home. Johnny had only moved to the area about eight years ago, after retiring from the army. Ever since, he’d made it his mission to familiarise himself with every boulder, beck and beach. He intended the same for his daughter. Blencathra was a majestic walk on a day like today. The views would be magnificent. It stood at the top end of the national park and, when the skies were clear and still, one could see all the way to the Isle of Man to the west, the Yorkshire Dales to the east, and Blackpool Tower to the south.
He pulled off the road and saw Tom in the car park. They’d served together in Germany fifteen years ago when they were both senior captains. Since then, Tom, who was a Household Cavalry officer, had served in Afghanistan on a particularly tough tour. It had been shitty. Discharged last year, Tom was looking for meaningful employment, and tracked down his old pal. Soon after, Tom approached him about his mental state, and he became a welcome addition to Johnny’s growing client list.
The collective supposition amongst Johnny’s clients was that he himself had escaped the agony of being haunted by the past. It was a flattering assumption, but not accurate. Johnny had his fair share of memories associated with Helmand Province. No one knew why some soldiers became crippled by flashbacks, while others didn’t. If the experts had an answer, then there’d be a drug for it. All Johnny could promise his friend was that the air and expanse of the Lake District had soothed him, and still did, every day. There was something about the serenity of the mountains that healed. They were a magnet for the damaged. So, after a long drunken call together late at night, Tom had agreed to visit. That was at the beginning of the summer, and Tom had now made the Lake District his home. In three months, Johnny had watched Tom grow stronger and stronger.
Lizzie recognised him, and kicked her feet. Johnny parked the jeep and got out, holding out his hand for Tom to take. He was a little taller than Johnny, but with shorter hair, which had turned grey. His shoulders were just as broad as they had been in his soldiering days and he was still as fit, but his eyes had lost some of their lustre. Johnny had noticed that, in quiet moments, Tom would drift off somewhere private in his head, and his eyes would lose their sparkle. But those incidents had become less and less frequent. Trauma work was messy and painful, and Johnny knew that Tom was far from being out of the woods yet, but the move to the Lakes was having a positive effect on his friend.
‘Mate, she’s grown in two weeks! Hey, Lizzie, you ready for our walk?’ Tom asked. Lizzie smiled and babbled something to him.
‘I agree,’ Tom said.
He was a natural, thought Johnny. He knew Tom had several long relationships under his belt, but none of them had lasted. His battle with his mental health always got in the way. Maybe up here, surrounded by peace, he stood a chance to change that. Early results were promising. Johnny lifted Lizzie out of her seat and gave her to Tom, who jiggled her around and pretended to tickle her.
‘Typical,’ Tom said, watching Johnny gathering everything he’d need for the walk. ‘Like a military operation.’
Johnny laughed. ‘It has to be, mate. It’s the only way.’
‘How’s the missus?’ Tom, asked.
‘At work. She’s good. She misses Lizzie during the day, but it’s good for her to get out too. And I get to have this one all to myself.’
Tom passed her back and Johnny strapped her into the harness.
‘You make that look easy,’ Tom said.
‘Great day for it,’ Johnny said. ‘It’ll be perfect up there.’
Johnny locked the jeep and they set off up the steep track. That was one of the joys of hiking in the Lake District: a lot of climbs started from the base of the mountain. There was something about starting at the very bottom that made a walk so satisfying.
‘I did Sharp Edge last week,’ said Tom. Sharp Edge was a ridge that provided an alternative route up Blencathra for adrenaline junkies. It was exhilarating, and Johnny and Kelly had done it several times. There was a drop either side of the spine of about a thousand feet, and steady footing was essential. Johnny had made plenty of rescues up there.
‘What was the weather like?’ Johnny asked. It was a common and fundamental part of any walk in the Lake District and was hotly discussed. It could make or break an afternoon.
‘Proper crap. It started off all right but came in quick,’ Tom said. Lizzie had gone quiet and Johnny knew that she’d nodded off. So much for her experiencing the grandeur of the scenery, he thought. He put a hand over her head and adjusted the position of the harness tenderly so it made her more comfortable. They’d walked upwards for perhaps 600 feet already and paused to look back towards Keswick and Derwent Water. ‘That’s where the Wendy is moored,’ Johnny said, pointing to the large glistening sheet of water in the distance. Derwent Water was a pretty uniform shape, like a lake should be: oval. Many of the lakes in the park were oddly twisted, thanks to the ancient glaciers that had constructed them, but this one was satisfyingly regular.
They sipped some water and carried on.
‘I had an interview last week,’ Tom said.
‘That’s awesome!’ Johnny was genuinely thrilled for him. He knew that Tom wanted to buy a house so he could get out of the rental market, and a job would put him in a stronger position.
‘Where?’
‘Highton prison, it’s near here.’
‘Yeah, I know it well,’ Johnny said. ‘I know a few of the prison officers.’
From army to prison was a well-worn career path for a soldier. The work suited the discipline and standards of ex-forces personnel. ‘Some hard fuckers in there, mate,’ Johnny said, making his expletive quiet, as was his habit now so he’d hopefully avoid teaching Lizzie bad language by the time she was old enough to understand. He stopped and turned to Tom.
‘Do you believe you’re ready?’ he asked. Tom put his hands on the straps of his small rucksack, hooking his thumbs through, as he stared across the national park. They were close enough friends that the question wasn’t taken as a challenge, or indeed a moment of faithlessness. Tom looked at him.
‘Yeah, I do.’
‘Well, then, you are,’ said Johnny. They carried on. The feeling of being out amongst nature, with the warm wind blowing the grass in waves, and the sun shining her last murmurs of autumn before she went to bed for the winter, was exhilarating, and Johnny felt at peace. He wouldn’t swap positions with Kelly any day: he was perfectly content looking after Lizzie and doing this with old friends and clients.
‘Is Liam Fawcett still there?’ Johnny asked.
Tom nodded. ‘He’s a custodial manager.’ He laughed. ‘Is there anyone you don’t know? He was on my interview panel and showed me around.’
Johnny walked in quiet reflection. He’d known Liam Fawcett for years, and the guy had been beset with problems throughout their acquaintance. They still met occasionally and went for walks, in fact it was Liam who’d sent other ex-soldiers his way for therapy; soldiers who still struggled with what they’d seen and done. Johnny wasn’t keen on the man but he felt sorry for him. Liam was the type of person who always gave the impression that they were plagued by bad luck, when, in fact, they simply made terrible choices. Liam was immature, and the prison service suited him because it kept him contained. In the army he’d been a liability. There was talk of him executing Iraqi prisoners back in the Gulf War, though it never saw the inside of a courtroom. But it wasn’t Liam’s track record that made Johnny fall behind Tom at an easy pace, so he could take a breath, it was the recollection of another man, introduced to him by Liam. Another former brother-in-arms, who Johnny also still met occasionally, and had in fact based his first scholarly article on. The paper had gained international acclaim, though the world of trauma work was relatively small and so it wasn’t big news in that sense. Even Kelly didn’t know. He tended to keep his PTSD work away from her. She had opinions that weren’t helpful at times, and it created tension between them that he often worried about. As a law enforcer, Kelly’s orbit gravitated to punishment. Johnny’s trajectory was at odds with this; his priority was trying to repair the damage that led to behaviours that wider society saw as deviant and criminal. Johnny couldn’t accept that humans were born bad. Take Lizzie. Perfectly formed, innocent and sponge-like in her desire to learn from her parents. Anything that was injurious to that bond could serve to ruin her development at crucial stages of her life. The worse and more prolonged the harm, the more her growth would stall and even fail completely. That was the essence of trauma. For some it was so bad that they never recovered; they were simply too fragmented. Kelly said she understood the importance of an offender’s history but he didn’t think she really got it.
He nodded. ‘Yup.’
‘Have you called for a perimeter?’
‘I was just about to.’
Kelly turned to Kate. ‘Get a forensic team here too. Let’s get covers, gloves and masks out of the car.’
They walked back to the rear of Kelly’s Audi. She glanced over at the small crowd of people watching from the car wash, which was closed, and they pointed when she brought plastic overalls out of her boot and began putting them on.
‘Kate, can you call Eden House and get Emma to trace the 999 call and get the address of the mother who called. We need to interview all the boys. I want a list of working businesses in this industrial estate too. Half of them look abandoned but someone might know something. Who is this building registered to?’ she asked. Kate took some overalls and the rest of the protective equipment she’d need to join Kelly inside, and made the required phone calls. Once she’d done that, she busied herself with covering up her clothes and anything that might contaminate the scene. Hairs, oil from hands, dirt from shoes or fibres lingering on their clothes could all transfer to items inside, potentially endangering the integrity of the crime scene.
The forensic team would gather and log evidence once they arrived, but Kelly wanted to assess the scene first. It was always fortunate when one got to attend a scene when it was relatively fresh. The ambulance crew had taken the man’s pulse and run a few other checks, to confirm life extinct, but they wore protective gear too. They left the medics to pack away their gadgets and tubes, designed to save lives, which wouldn’t be needed here today; Kelly caught the eye of one of them and noticed that the young woman looked as though she might throw up. Ambulance crews see some alarming sights, especially at the scenes of road traffic accidents, but attending a gruesome murder scene was quite rare. Kelly braced herself for what she’d find inside. This would be her first sight of a dead body since giving birth to a vital vibrant child, one who was at the beginning of her hopefully long journey though the shitstorm that is humanity. The irony wasn’t lost on her; she saw Lizzie’s smiling face in her head.
She went in.
The warehouse, which was more a series of storage garages, was empty, apart from a chair towards the back wall, in which sat the slumped figure of the victim. Kelly could see from all the way over by the door that there was a lot of blood, like the boys said. She noticed smashed glass on the floor; that was where the boys’ football must have hit. She went to the broken window and peered out, careful not to step on the glass. The shards would all be dusted for prints later. Outside she could see waste ground, perfect for a kick around. She examined the floor all the way up to the man, looking for any clues as to who – or what – might have been here. There were stains on it and she saw a cigarette butt next to a chocolate wrapper, which was blowing about in the wind coming through the window, and the now open door. It was the packaging for a Snickers bar.
An aroma of metallic sweetness reached her nostrils behind her mask and she knew that the poor guy had already begun to rot from the inside out. Blowflies had no doubt already done their work and laid the eggs of their young inside his cavities, to feed off his flesh when they hatched. All mothers want the best for their children. As if on cue, a big fat purple shiny fly landed on her arm and she shrugged it off, repulsed by it. It buzzed off and landed on the floor.
As she approached the man, Kate entered behind her and exclaimed.
‘Jesus, looks like an execution,’ she blurted. Kelly continued to look at the scene. She flipped open a notepad and began sketching the location of various items, so she could remember before the forensic team took everything away. She took photos to send to Ted, the coroner for the north-west, who’d no doubt be given the grim task of performing the post-mortem on the unfortunate fellow. Who knew – perhaps he wasn’t a nice person. But no one deserved to die like this: alone, stripped and beaten to death. She was used to seeing blunt trauma on a body, but the man’s flesh also showed signs of sharp wounds. It was ugly. There was a lot of violence in this act, she thought. It was personal.
The man was tied to the chair. His body was swollen and mottled from the bruising he’d suffered. Bruises continue long after human expiry and only Ted would know how long he’d been here. His hands were behind his back and Kelly noticed that blood pooling had begun to occur. Kelly looked at her phone and saw that the ambient temperature was twelve degrees Celsius. The temperature of the body would continue to decline by the hour, until it matched the air. Standard body temperature varied depending on a person’s activity, but in this scenario could be assumed as around thirty-six degrees, which would mean a drop of twenty-four to match the environment. But he could have been here overnight, when temperatures fall much lower. It was a clear night last night, without a cloud in the sky, and she and Johnny had sat out on the terrace with blankets, picking out constellations across the sky.
Kelly noted that the blood pooling was extensive in his feet and abdomen, where it had become trapped on its journey south, due to the generous nature of the man’s girth. His gut wasn’t green, as far as she could tell, and this was a sign, perhaps, that putrefaction hadn’t yet begun in earnest inside his bacteria-infested digestive system. So he was somewhere in between early post-mortem changes and the decomposition stages. In other words, it was a recent kill.
She couldn’t easily make out his facial features because his face had been bludgeoned and cut up, with bits of skin hanging off. His hair was white-grey and he was balding. The man’s genitals looked like black pudding and she felt sorrow for him. At a moment like this, any good detective saw the victim of such a savage crime as a real person, with family, desires, hopes and dreams. Somebody (or several people) had taken his life on purpose and he’d suffered. His eyes appeared closed, but then she moved closer and she realised that they just appeared that way because the lids looked drawn together, as if in repose. On closer inspection she saw that the cavities were empty. The eyes had been removed.
‘Fucking animals,’ said Kate. ‘He went through a prolonged and sustained attack. Poor bastard.’
At the moment, they had no clue as to the identity of the homicide victim.
‘Not much evidence,’ Kate commented. The clean-up (except the body itself) had been thorough, and there was no clothing to search for ID. He was intended to be found, just not identified, or at least not quickly. Unless the perp, or perps, were disturbed before they had chance to get rid of the body. It was certainly ballsy, leaving a dead body to be found like this.
‘Right, I’m done, let’s call the coroner,’ Kelly said, walking towards the door. ‘Let’s have a look at the perimeter for fresh tyre tracks, litter, drinks cans, evidence of food and cigarettes, or alcohol. How could anyone do this sober?’ Kelly asked. The she stopped. ‘Wait,’ Kelly said, stopping. She’d spotted something in the corner. It reflected light and she walked towards it and stopped, bending down.
‘It’s a Zippo lighter.’ They got close and Kelly took a photo on her phone. It had beautiful swirls and patterns engraved on it, as well as some initials.
The lighter would be bagged for evidence and hopefully might give them some prints.
They went out into the sunshine to wait for the forensic team. Shadows danced and jumped amongst the buildings and Kelly noticed that the crowd had grown bigger, but a perimeter team was already here dealing with that. A blue tented entrance had been erected between the warehouse door and a van, from where it would be extended once forensics were here. The body would be removed once they’d got what they needed, which wasn’t much. Perhaps the only way to tackle this job was to swab the whole place, especially the body. A great deal of contact had happened between this man and his killer (or killers), and Edmond Locard’s exchange principle held that a scenario such as this couldn’t happen without transfer. It was microscopically impossible. Sometimes Kelly thought about this when she was lying on the sofa with Johnny, Lizzie in between them: how many fibres, spittle particles, oils and skin cells floated around and ended up on Lizzie? Survival despite contamination was a wonder, and she prayed that whoever this man was, he had taken enough tell-tale signs with him into death to nail the bastard who did it.
Chapter 7
Johnny drove along the A66 towards Keswick. The day was perfect for a leisurely hike up Blencathra, one of the oldest mountains in the park, also known as Saddleback due to its shape when seen from the east: that of a ridge with a dip in the middle, where a saddle might be put on a horse. It was Alfred Wainwright who popularised the old Cumbrian name of Blencathra, meaning ‘top seat’. Johnny preferred the even older interpretation that the word in fact meant ‘working horse’ in old Welsh.
Lizzie gurgled and played with her toes, strapped into her car seat in the back of the car. She took in the sounds around her and listened to the voice of her father as Johnny told her names of things.
‘Look at that hill, Lizzie!’ She had no idea what he was saying, of course, but his attention was all she craved. Her replies were single syllable utterances mimicking his tone, and he smiled. Every parent wanted their child to be the first to reach milestones, and Johnny took enormous pride in pointing them out to Kelly after work over a glass of wine. He sang to the radio and Lizzie cooed. Kelly had bought a series of podcasts suited to babies for the car, but today they listened to Bay Radio. It played classic old rock tunes and foot-stomping pop, as well as delivering comforting news from around the region, unlike the big channels which only reported doom and gloom.
They were to meet Tom at one o’clock, and Josie had made sure that Lizzie was fed before they left. That way, she’d likely nod off in her harness strapped to Johnny’s front. He liked to have her facing him, but when they went walking he turned her around so she could begin to appreciate the beauty and wonder of her home. Johnny had only moved to the area about eight years ago, after retiring from the army. Ever since, he’d made it his mission to familiarise himself with every boulder, beck and beach. He intended the same for his daughter. Blencathra was a majestic walk on a day like today. The views would be magnificent. It stood at the top end of the national park and, when the skies were clear and still, one could see all the way to the Isle of Man to the west, the Yorkshire Dales to the east, and Blackpool Tower to the south.
He pulled off the road and saw Tom in the car park. They’d served together in Germany fifteen years ago when they were both senior captains. Since then, Tom, who was a Household Cavalry officer, had served in Afghanistan on a particularly tough tour. It had been shitty. Discharged last year, Tom was looking for meaningful employment, and tracked down his old pal. Soon after, Tom approached him about his mental state, and he became a welcome addition to Johnny’s growing client list.
The collective supposition amongst Johnny’s clients was that he himself had escaped the agony of being haunted by the past. It was a flattering assumption, but not accurate. Johnny had his fair share of memories associated with Helmand Province. No one knew why some soldiers became crippled by flashbacks, while others didn’t. If the experts had an answer, then there’d be a drug for it. All Johnny could promise his friend was that the air and expanse of the Lake District had soothed him, and still did, every day. There was something about the serenity of the mountains that healed. They were a magnet for the damaged. So, after a long drunken call together late at night, Tom had agreed to visit. That was at the beginning of the summer, and Tom had now made the Lake District his home. In three months, Johnny had watched Tom grow stronger and stronger.
Lizzie recognised him, and kicked her feet. Johnny parked the jeep and got out, holding out his hand for Tom to take. He was a little taller than Johnny, but with shorter hair, which had turned grey. His shoulders were just as broad as they had been in his soldiering days and he was still as fit, but his eyes had lost some of their lustre. Johnny had noticed that, in quiet moments, Tom would drift off somewhere private in his head, and his eyes would lose their sparkle. But those incidents had become less and less frequent. Trauma work was messy and painful, and Johnny knew that Tom was far from being out of the woods yet, but the move to the Lakes was having a positive effect on his friend.
‘Mate, she’s grown in two weeks! Hey, Lizzie, you ready for our walk?’ Tom asked. Lizzie smiled and babbled something to him.
‘I agree,’ Tom said.
He was a natural, thought Johnny. He knew Tom had several long relationships under his belt, but none of them had lasted. His battle with his mental health always got in the way. Maybe up here, surrounded by peace, he stood a chance to change that. Early results were promising. Johnny lifted Lizzie out of her seat and gave her to Tom, who jiggled her around and pretended to tickle her.
‘Typical,’ Tom said, watching Johnny gathering everything he’d need for the walk. ‘Like a military operation.’
Johnny laughed. ‘It has to be, mate. It’s the only way.’
‘How’s the missus?’ Tom, asked.
‘At work. She’s good. She misses Lizzie during the day, but it’s good for her to get out too. And I get to have this one all to myself.’
Tom passed her back and Johnny strapped her into the harness.
‘You make that look easy,’ Tom said.
‘Great day for it,’ Johnny said. ‘It’ll be perfect up there.’
Johnny locked the jeep and they set off up the steep track. That was one of the joys of hiking in the Lake District: a lot of climbs started from the base of the mountain. There was something about starting at the very bottom that made a walk so satisfying.
‘I did Sharp Edge last week,’ said Tom. Sharp Edge was a ridge that provided an alternative route up Blencathra for adrenaline junkies. It was exhilarating, and Johnny and Kelly had done it several times. There was a drop either side of the spine of about a thousand feet, and steady footing was essential. Johnny had made plenty of rescues up there.
‘What was the weather like?’ Johnny asked. It was a common and fundamental part of any walk in the Lake District and was hotly discussed. It could make or break an afternoon.
‘Proper crap. It started off all right but came in quick,’ Tom said. Lizzie had gone quiet and Johnny knew that she’d nodded off. So much for her experiencing the grandeur of the scenery, he thought. He put a hand over her head and adjusted the position of the harness tenderly so it made her more comfortable. They’d walked upwards for perhaps 600 feet already and paused to look back towards Keswick and Derwent Water. ‘That’s where the Wendy is moored,’ Johnny said, pointing to the large glistening sheet of water in the distance. Derwent Water was a pretty uniform shape, like a lake should be: oval. Many of the lakes in the park were oddly twisted, thanks to the ancient glaciers that had constructed them, but this one was satisfyingly regular.
They sipped some water and carried on.
‘I had an interview last week,’ Tom said.
‘That’s awesome!’ Johnny was genuinely thrilled for him. He knew that Tom wanted to buy a house so he could get out of the rental market, and a job would put him in a stronger position.
‘Where?’
‘Highton prison, it’s near here.’
‘Yeah, I know it well,’ Johnny said. ‘I know a few of the prison officers.’
From army to prison was a well-worn career path for a soldier. The work suited the discipline and standards of ex-forces personnel. ‘Some hard fuckers in there, mate,’ Johnny said, making his expletive quiet, as was his habit now so he’d hopefully avoid teaching Lizzie bad language by the time she was old enough to understand. He stopped and turned to Tom.
‘Do you believe you’re ready?’ he asked. Tom put his hands on the straps of his small rucksack, hooking his thumbs through, as he stared across the national park. They were close enough friends that the question wasn’t taken as a challenge, or indeed a moment of faithlessness. Tom looked at him.
‘Yeah, I do.’
‘Well, then, you are,’ said Johnny. They carried on. The feeling of being out amongst nature, with the warm wind blowing the grass in waves, and the sun shining her last murmurs of autumn before she went to bed for the winter, was exhilarating, and Johnny felt at peace. He wouldn’t swap positions with Kelly any day: he was perfectly content looking after Lizzie and doing this with old friends and clients.
‘Is Liam Fawcett still there?’ Johnny asked.
Tom nodded. ‘He’s a custodial manager.’ He laughed. ‘Is there anyone you don’t know? He was on my interview panel and showed me around.’
Johnny walked in quiet reflection. He’d known Liam Fawcett for years, and the guy had been beset with problems throughout their acquaintance. They still met occasionally and went for walks, in fact it was Liam who’d sent other ex-soldiers his way for therapy; soldiers who still struggled with what they’d seen and done. Johnny wasn’t keen on the man but he felt sorry for him. Liam was the type of person who always gave the impression that they were plagued by bad luck, when, in fact, they simply made terrible choices. Liam was immature, and the prison service suited him because it kept him contained. In the army he’d been a liability. There was talk of him executing Iraqi prisoners back in the Gulf War, though it never saw the inside of a courtroom. But it wasn’t Liam’s track record that made Johnny fall behind Tom at an easy pace, so he could take a breath, it was the recollection of another man, introduced to him by Liam. Another former brother-in-arms, who Johnny also still met occasionally, and had in fact based his first scholarly article on. The paper had gained international acclaim, though the world of trauma work was relatively small and so it wasn’t big news in that sense. Even Kelly didn’t know. He tended to keep his PTSD work away from her. She had opinions that weren’t helpful at times, and it created tension between them that he often worried about. As a law enforcer, Kelly’s orbit gravitated to punishment. Johnny’s trajectory was at odds with this; his priority was trying to repair the damage that led to behaviours that wider society saw as deviant and criminal. Johnny couldn’t accept that humans were born bad. Take Lizzie. Perfectly formed, innocent and sponge-like in her desire to learn from her parents. Anything that was injurious to that bond could serve to ruin her development at crucial stages of her life. The worse and more prolonged the harm, the more her growth would stall and even fail completely. That was the essence of trauma. For some it was so bad that they never recovered; they were simply too fragmented. Kelly said she understood the importance of an offender’s history but he didn’t think she really got it.
