‘No!’ said Erika, as what little colour Sparks had in his face began to rapidly drain away. ‘One of you! Find out where that ambulance is!’
She unfastened the next couple of buttons on Sparks’s shirt, exposing his chest. She tipped his head back, and began to perform CPR, working on chest compressions and then dipping down to breathe into Sparks’s mouth.
‘He said he’s been feeling ill for a while…’ said a voice behind Erika as she counted fifteen chest compressions.
‘I’ve known him for over a year, and he always looks ill,’ said another.
Erika leaned down and blew into his mouth again. Sparks’s chest rose, but his face stayed slack and white. The room was strangely silent as the officers watched her.
‘Come on, you’re a fighter… Fight! Don’t stop now!’ she said.
His eyes remained closed, and his head lolled slightly on the carpet as she counted chest compressions, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.
From the corner of her eye, she saw a picture on the desk; Andy Sparks with his wife. They were both crouched down on a sunny patch of grass with a small girl, grinning a gummy grin as she sat on a little pink toy scooter. She continued to work on his chest, alternating between artificial respiration. Sweat poured off her face from the exertion. It seemed to go on and on, the silent room watching her.
Finally, two paramedics in yellow jackets, carrying a first aid kit, entered the office, and took over, but it was too late.
They pronounced Superintendent Andy Sparks dead at 9:47 a.m. The irony wasn’t lost on Erika that this was Friday the thirteenth.
Chapter Fifteen
Erika watched as Sparks was wheeled out of his office in a shiny black body bag. Her legs started to tremble with shock, and she had to sit when she gave her statement to the uniformed police who’d arrived on the scene. It was a strange situation, police interviewing police, and the confusion as to how to deal with the tragedy. Andy Sparks was only forty-one years old. He’d been her bitter enemy until the previous evening, and now he was dead.
She was unsure of what to do, and how to feel, when she emerged from the main entrance of West End Central. A freezing wind was blowing, and a large expanse of green mesh covering a scaffold opposite hummed and keened. She didn’t know any of the police officers at the nick. There was no one to talk to. She crossed her hands over her chest, feeling the icy wind pierce her thin jumper. Sparks had been wrapped in her jacket when he was loaded up into the body bag, and it didn’t seem appropriate to ask for it back. She pulled out her phone and called Peterson. He told her to get in a cab and come over.
* * *
When he ushered her into his warm flat, an hour later, she was shaking with cold, her teeth chattering almost comically. They stood in his living room, and he held her for a long time, just the sound of the water filling up the huge tub in the bathroom.
‘Jeez, Sparks dead… I assumed he was in it for the long run,’ said Peterson.
‘He’s got a small daughter, and a wife who needs him, and the last person he spoke to was me.’
‘You said you tried to save his life.’
‘I did. But I can’t imagine dying and the only person there to hold your hand is your worst enemy.’
Erika wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She’d stopped shivering.
‘You’re a good person, Erika. You are on the side of good,’ said Peterson, pulling back and looking in her eyes.
She was overwhelmed with tears again. ‘James. I’ve watched so many people die young, my husband, my colleagues, and… why them and not me?’
‘You shouldn’t feel guilty.’
‘I do.’
‘Look. The hot bath is ready, I’ll get us a drink,’ said Peterson.
* * *
She soaked in the hot water for a long time, cradling a large tumbler of whisky, and Peterson sat with her, perched on the lid of the toilet. Erika told him what had happened the previous evening.
‘Why do you think he changed his mind about working with you?’ he asked.
Erika shrugged. ‘Maybe I saw another side to him. I overheard the argument with him and his wife, and he still defended her to me… I made a snap decision about him, and it never changed. Maybe he was just…’
‘Erika. He was an arsehole.’
‘Yes. At work he was…’
‘But we had to work with him. We didn’t see this other side, so to us it didn’t exist.’
‘But it did.’
‘Okay it did, but if you’d started to work on this case with him, do you think he would have kept his word? And what would it have done for your reputation?’
‘I don’t care about my reputation.’
‘That’s a really stupid thing to say.’
Erika smiled weakly. ‘Yeah, you’re right.’
‘What’s going to happen with the case?’
‘I don’t know. They have to release Steven Pearson by tomorrow lunchtime. Melanie Hudson now has everything: the files on Janelle Robinson. And, of course, her incentive to work with me is now gone.’
‘Because Sparks ordered her to,’ finished Peterson. They were silent for a moment. She shivered, and he turned on the hot tap. ‘Erika, I know I’ll never replace Mark. And that’s cool. You take all the time you need.’
He leaned across her and turned off the water. She looked at his proud handsome face, his dark hair now clipper cut short. She leant up and placed her hand on his cheek.
‘I can’t replace someone who’s gone… Mark is gone, James. I have to live my life. He always said that if he died he would want me to…’ She hesitated.
‘He’d want you to live?’
She nodded. ‘But that’s the hardest thing. Just living. Knowing how to live on my own and then with someone else.’
Peterson took her hand, leaned over and planted a kiss on her wet hair.
* * *
It was dark outside when Erika emerged from the bath and sat on the sofa in a large squishy bathrobe. Peterson switched on the early evening news. The lead story on BBC London was that Steven Pearson, who’d been arrested in conjunction with the abduction and murder of Lacey Greene, had been released due to lack of evidence.
‘So they’re taking the info you gave them seriously?’ said Peterson, topping up her drink.
‘They have to,’ said Erika, watching as a news reporter spoke from outside the revolving sign of the New Scotland Yard building.
‘And they’re keeping Janelle Robinson’s murder quiet.’
‘Her abduction and murder. She was a missing person, James. Just because the poor girl had no one to miss her doesn’t mean she wasn’t missing.’
‘I know… You can chill out, I’m not against you,’ he said.
‘Sorry. It’s so frustrating. Melanie Hudson was ready to charge Pearson and close the case, and now she gets to pursue things, and she’ll probably make an arse of it all.’
Erika’s phone began to ring in her bag, and Peterson passed it to her. When she pulled it out, she saw a number she didn’t recognise and she answered. Peterson watched her talk, swirling whisky in his tumbler. The news bulletin in the background moved onto a different story, about life for residents of the Olympic Village in East London.