Chapter 57
Everything seemed distorted and dreamlike when Bonnie entered the police station with the detectives: the custody sergeant behind the wide elevated desk appeared huge, built of different proportions to a normal man. The shouting from the smartarse drunk in front of them in the queue hurt her ears, the rancid body-odour of the man with the tattooed face whom she had to sit next to in the waiting room made her feel sick. None of it appeared real, yet at the same time she knew it was very real and she was here and it was every bit as grim as the detective sergeant had told her it would be. The rhetoric he and the arresting officers used brought it home to her that she was in terrible trouble: Due to the seriousness of the offence . . . refused to comply with voluntary attendance . . . arrested on suspicion of encouraging and aiding the suicide of her mother-in-law. A woman police officer snapped on some blue gloves, took her into another room and searched her before returning her to the custody sergeant. She had her fingerprints scanned to be compared to those recovered from crime scenes. Her necklace, watch, dress-belt and handbag were put into a bag. The policewoman suggested she put her cardigan in there as well just to be sure, the inference being that she could hang herself with it. She was given a rip-proof grey sweatshirt to wear instead for warmth. She was told she had the right to free and independent legal advice and could look at a book which detailed how she should be treated by the police. She was asked if there was anyone whom they could inform of her arrest. She said that there was no one.
The detention officer led her to a cell. He was putting her in the one at the far end, which would be the quietest, he said. She had to leave her shoes outside the door. The cell was small and square with glossy yellow wipe-clean walls; a Crimestoppers telephone number was stencilled on the ceiling and a steel toilet stood in the corner. There was a wooden bench with a plastic-coated mattress little more than an inch thick. It smelt so strongly of cheap disinfectant and sweaty trainers that she could almost taste it in the back of her throat. When the door shut with a loud, heavy clang, Bonnie truly realised what had been set in motion now. She made it to the toilet just in time to vomit. There was nowhere to wash her face afterwards or swill her mouth or sponge the splashes off her dress.
Minutes later, the flap on the door was pulled down and eyes appeared in the gap. Then the flap slid down further and a flimsy green blanket was pushed through. ‘Just in case you feel cold. And I’ve got some food and a hot drink for you. Do you take sugar?’
‘No thank you.’
‘Here you go then.’
Bonnie got up to receive the polystyrene bowl with soggy chips, a square of grey fish and congealed beans and a cup of weak coffee through the hatch.
‘Try and get your head down. The duty solicitor says you’ll need a specialist because she can’t handle what you’ve been brought in for but he won’t be here until the morning. Little tip, we’ll check on you every hour so if you want a bit of privacy to use the toilet, go and use it straight after we’ve been.’ The custody officer didn’t extend the courtesy of his advice to everyone, but he felt this lady should have it.
‘Thank you,’ replied Bonnie.
She couldn’t eat the meal but the coffee was welcome. She was shivering. The cell wasn’t cold but the chill was bone-deep, borne of panic and desolation. She felt numb at the core of her, but at the same time her senses were hyper-aware. Her ears sifted through the layers of sound outside the cell: shouting, doors clanging, banging, people talking, swearing, echoes falling from them all. So much for this being the quietest cell.
She curled into a foetal position on the wafer-thin mattress and knew the policeman was right and that she wouldn’t sleep. She wanted to be at home in the bed that Goldfinger had given her, snuggled under her cheap Argos quilt with a salted caramel latte swilling in her stomach and she tried to wish herself back there now, looking forward to waking tomorrow morning on her Monday off. She had planned to fill some of the plastic pots which she had found in the tumbledown shed with the flowers she had bought that day from the florist in Spring Hill Square. She’d left them outside the back door and they’d be dried out and dying by lunchtime. She should have watered them before she left. Then she thought how ridiculous it was that her anxiety levels were spiking over a fiversworth of marigolds when she could be charged with murder. Because that’s what assisted suicide was really, wasn’t it? And she was guilty but she would have done it all over again if time had been rewound. So it was right that she should be here in this cell with despair and fear solid in her gut like a dense boulder. She should have walked into a police station as soon as Alma died. She had wanted to . . .
She closed her eyes and thought back again to that night, but it was like a well-worn recording and she wasn’t sure if she was remembering it properly any more. Guilt and emotion had warped it.
She had waited by Alma’s side until Stephen returned from wherever he had been. She’d heard once that the newly deceased were often disorientated by their new state and so she talked to her, hoping she could hear her and be comforted by her. Then, when Stephen arrived, Bonnie left them alone. He was dry-eyed at his mother’s passing, which was ironic, though she hadn’t thought about it until now: her devoted son emotionless, her despised daughter-in-law, heartbroken.
‘She went the way she wanted to go, Bonita. She had a good death,’ Stephen had said.
‘I think I should go to the police,’ said Bonnie.
Stephen had rounded on her fiercely. ‘You will not tell ANYONE that you helped my mother end her own life. You will not damage her memory in that way. There will be no fuss, is that understood?’
There had been a warning in the way he said it. ‘Go and sort yourself out before the doctor arrives.’
She had not known then that her involvement in Alma’s death would be his insurance policy against her leaving him. He wanted it known that his mother died naturally until he needed to expose the truth to benefit himself.
As grim as the police cell was, it was nothing compared to the prison that had been her marriage to Stephen Brookland.