She couldn’t think straight. After that frantic cycle through the dark landscape, to be confronted by this, this scene of horror –
All she could focus on was this man under her, this man whose life could depend on her keeping a cool head. She had learned first aid as a teenager and taken refresher courses regularly, but she’d never had to do it for real.
She knew he was dead.
She knew he wasn’t responding.
But still, she had to try.
By the time the paramedics arrived, two big, capable men, Lulu was close to collapse. She let Nick put an arm round her and guide her to a chair. ‘I’ll get you a glass of water.’
She watched as one of the paramedics continued the compressions while the other checked Duncan for vital signs and then bent over Maggie, untying her wrists and ankles and helping her sit up. Maggie, all the while, watched Duncan.
More men arrived, the police this time, just as the paramedic who had been performing the compressions sat back on his heels and looked at his watch. ‘Twelve-forty-three.’
‘Oh God, oh God, no!’ Nick dropped the glass of water he was carrying and went to Duncan. ‘No! Dad!’
‘I’m sorry. He didn’t make it,’ the other paramedic said gently, a hand on Nick’s shoulder. ‘We’re going to take him in the ambulance.’
‘I want to come!’
The other paramedic had been having a whispered conversation with the policemen. Both policemen were in their mid-thirties, she guessed. One had red hair in a short back and sides style and close-set eyes, while the other was a bit of a pin-up with boyish hair and regular features. The red-haired one said, ‘I’m sorry, but no one can leave just yet.’ And he nodded to the paramedics.
When they had left with Duncan’s body, he said, ‘I’m PC Collins and this is PC Webb. I must ask you to remain where you are and not touch anything. You’re all going to have to come to the station to give statements. Our colleagues are on their way, and when they get here we’ll transport you there.’
‘She killed him! She’s killed my dad!’ Nick yelled, pointing a trembling finger at Maggie. ‘She couldn’t stand it that he was finally reaching out to me. And so she killed him!’
Lulu stared dully at Nick. She had felt it so deep within her, almost the first time she’d met him: a connection. Something she’d never felt with any other human being. It hadn’t just been that they were on the same wavelength, it had been as if their thoughts were perfectly synched, the peaks and troughs of the waves exactly matched.
All that had been nothing but a mirage?
‘I didn’t,’ was all Maggie said.
She looked so small, somehow shrunken from the last time Lulu had seen her. She sat, her back against the sofa, her legs in dark navy jeans stuck out in front of her. She was wearing, incongruously, pink fluffy slippers, which just made her seem all the more vulnerable and pathetic.
The policemen were looking from Nick to Maggie, obviously weighing things up, trying to get their heads round what had happened here.
Which was the perpetrator and which was the innocent bystander?
34
Maggie - June 2019
‘Check her record!’ Nick was going. ‘She’s been in prison for GBH! Oh God, I knew she was dangerous and I knew she was angry with Dad, I knew she was furious with him, and I left him here with her alone!’
‘Okay, sir. We’ll get all your statements in due course.’
‘She poisoned Dad against me. She even tried to set up their disappearance to make it look like I’d killed them! Left her own blood on the floor. Left the cooker on, as if something had suddenly happened. Put a third mug and bowl on the table to place me there. She wanted me convicted of their murders! She’s a fucking nutter!’ And suddenly, convincingly, Nick was sobbing. ‘You were always jealous of me taking Dad’s attention away from you, weren’t you, Maggie? We were always so close, and you couldn’t stand that. And now, you couldn’t bear us being back together. They were having a huge row about it when we left.’ He looked across the room at his wife. ‘Weren’t they?’
The airhead looked blank, and a kick of anger went through Maggie.
Nick had just killed Duncan.
And here was his wee airhead wife, along for the ride.
‘No,’ went Maggie. ‘He’s twisting everything.’
The good-looking cop spoke for the first time, eyeballing Lulu. ‘Do you know what happened here?’
His colleague frowned. Likely this was against protocol. Likely they were meant to keep the questions until later, until they were at the station under controlled conditions where their statements could be recorded and each of them questioned separately, so their stories could be compared.
‘This is my wife,’ went Nick. ‘She got here just after Maggie stabbed him – she didn’t see anything.’
‘Okay,’ said the red-haired cop. ‘You’ll all get the chance to tell us your versions of what happened once we’re at the station and –’
‘I did see what happened,’ Lulu’s voice suddenly rang out. ‘I got here just in time to see him stab Duncan. Nick. My husband. Maggie was already tied up. It was Nick who killed Duncan.’ And she turned to Nick, and Maggie registered, just for a split second, the cold calculation in the lassie’s eyes.
It all happened too fast for the cops to do anything.
‘What the fuck?’ Nick roared. ‘You fucking bitch!’
He swooped on the knife that still lay on the floor where Duncan’s body had been. And then he had leapt across the room at Lulu, his arm raised to bring the knife down, but with surprising speed she had dodged him, and he stumbled, and she was across the room, away from him, and at last, at last, at last, the policemen had hold of him, were overpowering him, disarming him, yanking his arms behind his back to snap on the cuffs.
At last.
35
Lulu - January 2020