Episode Three.

The first thing she did after she got in through the door of her flat was to reach for the phone sitting on a table in the hall and clumsily dial 999. An operator answered immediately.

“Emergency. Which service?”

“Police.”

“I’m connecting you now.”

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line as the operator, a very efficient-sounding lady, did as she said. Pax felt each second stretch out long and desperate, then,

“Can I have your name, please?”

Water dripped from her hair, down her face, down the handset, all down her clothes and onto the floor.

“Pacifica Sutherland.”

The sound of a hurricane of keys pinning her, letter by letter, into a form.

“Address?”

Pax answered the operator’s questions as quickly and calmly as she could, though the horror of what she had realised threatened to burst out of her at any moment. All these details seemed irrelevant in contrast, but she guessed that even emergencies couldn’t stop the wheels of bureaucracy turning, not even if all it achieved was to kick up mud.

“And what is the nature of the emergency?”

“I want to report an attempted murder.”

She gave all the details she could and repeated them, twice to the detective to whom she was eventually transferred. He made no attempt to hide his incredulity throughout and it was with great reluctance that he promise that someone would begin to investigate it the next day.

When she finally hung up the phone, Pax felt exhausted. She peeled off her still-sodden clothes, slipped under her duvet and was asleep in moments.

She woke hours (days?) later to the sound of her buzzer going off. It seemed a tremendous effort to get up, drag herself into a dressing gown and make her way to the intercom and when her enquiry of “Who is it?” was answered by a policeman, her sudden relief was tempered by trepidation and weariness.

“The door's open,” she said as she pressed the button once more, “but please wait in the living room, while I get dressed, okay?”

When she finally emerged in some hastily pulled-on, mismatching, but dry clothes, there were two police officers shooting in her cluttered living room, a man and a woman, who looked up at her and offered the most official smiles she had ever seen. A slight twisting of the corner of the policewoman’s mouth told her, right away, that all was not well.

“Please take a seat, Miss Sutherland,” she said, gesturing somewhat redundantly at Pax’s own armchair.

“What have you found?” Pax asked, ignoring the request, “Did you check out the house with the hedge on Glen Road?”

“Well, that's the thing,” said the policeman, glancing at his partner as if for moral backup, “we went all along that road and found no evidence of the hedge you spoke of. There are no unusual gaps between the houses, the hedges are immaculate with no room for anyone to walk through between the plants, and there was no sign of the bloodied wire you described.”

Pax took a defensive step backwards.

“That makes no sense, it was there this afternoon, I swear! They couldn't have covered up a hole in a hedge that quickly!”

“That's precisely what we concluded,” the man continued, “which raises the question: did you really see what you think you saw?”

“Yes!” She couldn't believe this. How incompetent were the police these days? It had been a little hard to spot the gap in the hedge, yes, and perhaps she wouldn't have noticed had that old man or woman not slipped through it, but it was definitely there and any close examination ought to have uncovered it.

“It was exactly where I said it was! How could you not find it?”

“I assure you, Miss Sutherland, we have searched the whole road very thoroughly. There is nothing like what you described.”

“Are you saying I made it up?”

“We're not saying that at all,” the policewoman replied with what Pax could only assume was a standard issue ‘soothing manner’, “but there's no feeding you've been under a lot of stress lately, since your friend's accident and-”

“One, it wasn't an accident and two, how the hell do you know anything about what I've been through for the last two weeks?”

“We've been speaking to your colleagues,” the policewoman said in what was half answer, half continuation, “and we think you Night night have post-traumatic stress disorder. We'd like to refer you to a counsellor.”

She laughed then. It was ridiculous, after all. They had to be joking!

And yet the look on the policewoman’s face said that laughter was the wrong response, so she tried anger instead.

“That's it! Get out! I don't have to listen to this and you certainly can't make me to go some therapist because I made a legitimate call. If you're not going to help me, then fine, but get out of my living room!”

The police officers stood as one.

“You're right,” the policewoman said as they stopped, briefly, by the door, “we can't make you do anything. Not yet. But take this as a word of advice. You should get help now, before things get worse.”


Pax lay on the sofa for a long time afterwards, just staring at the ceiling, watching the grey day turn dark and the orange glow of the street lamps cut in through her uncurtained windows. She knew she should move, that there were jobs to do, not least of which was hanging up the wet clothes she had shed earlier, but she couldn’t find the energy.

They thought I was going mad. It was a single, uncomplicated thought, but it seemed to echo around her head in a million different, tangent-spawning variations. And always the refrain: And what if i am?

Because the gap in the hedge had been there and so had the bloodied shade-wire. She was sure of it! But if the police hadn’t been able to find any of it just a couple of hours later…

It was after eight when her phone rang from the bedroom. She had to fish it out from a still-damp pocket and wipe the screen before she could answer it, although, seeing who it was made her reluctant to put that much effort in.

“Hello, Izzy,” she answered drily as soon as the phone was to her ear, “I don’t suppose you’ve called to apologise?”

“What? Pax, what are you on about? This afternoon? That was… look it doesn’t even matter.” Izzy’s delivery was unusual, hurried, panicked even. Attention grabbing.

“What’s happened?”

“Well, you know I’m friends with Georgia, Terry’s sister, right?”

“Uh huh.”

“She’s just messaged me. He’s out of hospital.”

“That’s… that’s great, I guess.”

“No, Pax, it isn’t!”

“Whyever not?”

“Because he wasn’t discharged, you idiot. He just left! Didn’t even get changed into his own clothes or anything. He’s out there in the rain in nothing but a hospital gown and… and… Georgia said he was still… unstable?”

“What? What does that mean?”

“He attacked a nurse, or something. The police are looking for him. It’s just… it’s crazy, you know. You never expect things like this to happen to people you know and… Pax, are you there Pax? Pax?”

Pax pressed the end call button without saying anything. She knew what she needed to do and it didn’t involve listening to her ‘friend’ prattling on about things that didn’t seem to matter anymore.

She needed to find Terry before the police did, but that was okay, because she was starting to realise that she already knew where he was going.

She shoved her phone into her pocket, flung her still-damp coat over her i shoulders and stepped out into the dripping darkness.