Free A Clear Conscience by Frances Fyfield

Only the one we’ve got is less of a yob and stupidly loyal.’ They had wandered from that theme to others, to weekend plans, to the speeding clock which told them a month of their lives had passed in one evening, until Helen’s thoughts returned to Bailey’s laconic narrative of pavement death.
    â€˜What was his name, the dead man?’
    â€˜Damien Flood. Ex-boxer. Pool player. Handsome man.’
    â€˜I don’t understand men,’ she said. ‘Why do they always want to fight?’
    â€˜Hormones, I’m told. I wouldn’t know. I don’t want to fight any more.’
    â€˜No, you don’t.’
    Not for me or against me, she added to herself. Not for anything. You sidestep, like a dancer. You would fight for your own version of justice, but you will not fight to keep me.

C HAPTER F OUR
    S hecould hear the thump, imagine the silence which would follow; then the chorus of voices. Then the screaming. Mary Secura played it like a video in her mind, first fast, then slower, until the frames were frozen. A slow wash of blood came down over the scene, like the crimson curtain in a theatre. End of Act Three. Time to go home. Act One: Shirley Rix, pretty child, bruised by her dad. Act Two: pretty woman, battered by her husband; devoted mother. Act Three: on the run, for reasons she wouldn’t begin to define for herself. She tries to cross the road on the way to her sister’s at nine thirty in the morning. She has an old suitcase in one hand, the child is being dragged along by the other. Shirley has to adjust the suitcase: it is heavy. She loses hold of the child who wants to go home. He runs into the road; she runs too, screaming at him, unable to see where he has gone before someone grabs him as the bus grunts to a halt. And as all the passengers lurch forward in their seats, Shirley gets a sidelong blow from the lumbering beast, enough to send her spinning into the path of the car which is late for work, impatiently overtaking the number 59. Shirley Rix, crashing against the windscreen, teeth bared, arms and legs waving like the obedient puppet she was, sliding out of sight, her fingers clawing the bonnet, leaving marks. The driver, numb, the whole scenario falling into silence apart from the boom of sound from his stereo, until, with the actions of an automaton, he turns it off. Other sounds, then. The wailing of a car horn, a woman’s scream which turns into a chorus, the drumming of heels on the road as the body with the broken neck jerks without control. Someone at the side is hugging a child to an ample stomach, pushing his head into her skirt while he protests at the embrace of a stranger, but the stranger will not let him go.
    Theyall watch, paralysed. Someone else moves forward, treading carefully.
    M ary Secura waited in the Unit in case someone rang. However pointless and aimless it seemed, she needed to remain where she was, to play with paperwork, and compensate her own nagging sense of failure. She had often suggested, to blank stares of amazement, that if they wanted to be more effective than they were, there should be someone on duty at night. It was the drink, so most of the victims said, which meant someone should be sitting in this office beyond the witching hour when public houses closed and men went home to beat their wives. Poor Shirley Rix had denied her husband the chance to kill her. Mary had no business being here. No-one was paid overtime to wait for a call when the answerphone worked and victims of any kind had universal recourse to dialling 999. The sergeant at the front desk had asked, didn’t she have a home to go to? Mary resolved to use the back way out.
    She had what her employers described as a stable existence, particulars of which had been added discreetly to her annual reports for the last two years. Officer resides with PC Dave Inglewood (nice lad: should go far), attached to traffic, ‘A’ division; joint mortgage on