She remembered a novel she’d read in her teens, Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. The opening line: Happy families are all alike, but an unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. The words had always struck her...
‘Don’t you see it’s my penance, Kevin,’ Joe had explained once, ‘for not doing anything to save the men that perished on my ship? For not being around to protect my Marie and Sophie?’ He’d dismissed the detective’s logical reasoning, that he’d been suffering from shock during the aircraft attack, that he’d not been in a fit state to help anyone. And again, when he’d been committed to hospital following his breakdown, the events that led to the hit and run had been beyond his control. ‘Doesn’t make it any easier to bear though, eh?’ he’d said simply. Coupland had merely shaken his head. He knew how slowly time passed for the grieving.
‘You know, I’m not convinced,’ Joe began evenly, once their breakfast plates had been cleared away and he’d wrapped up the left-over toast in his paper serviette for later, sliding it into the pocket of his hand-me-down jacket. Even on summer days he wore it, wouldn’t take it off his back. True meaning of the capsule wardrobe, he’d explained with a laugh, and Coupland knew in that moment that Joe would never return to a normal life, that he was intent on serving his penance.
‘Just how reliable is the information you have regarding this woman’s state of mind?’ ‘Well, like I said,’ Coupland replied, ‘the reports we’ve had back don’t flag up any areas for concern.’ ‘Maybe not,’ Joe countered, ‘but I’m telling you, the clues will be there… This young mother was deeply troubled by something she felt she needed to protect her son from. Something big enough to justify her actions – to herself anyway. Something she felt unable to share with anyone else.’ He paused, his eyes shutting down as though he was looking inside himself for the answer. ‘Do you think she was mad?’ Coupland asked. Joe rolled his eyes towards the ceiling, shaking his head. ‘How the hell would I know?’ he reasoned. ‘I’m a walking talking Looney Toon, but I recognise the actions of a desperate person, someone afraid to unburden their fears in case they are judged. It’s a typically British trait, stiff upper lip and all that… Realising you suffer from a mental illness is terrifying,’ he said purposefully, ‘it’s not just a condition, it’s a definition. It becomes who you are, or at least who the outside world thinks you are. From then on in, every action or reaction you have is put down to your illness and there is nothing you can do about it.’ He paused; spread his calloused hands flat on the surface of the table. There was dirt under his fingernails and they were broken. Tell-tale nicotine stains on the index finger of his right hand. On his left hand, scratched and battered out of shape, was a wedding ring. ‘I tried so hard to stay well for my Marie. She was struggling to cope with the little one and me. I’m sure there were days when she thought her life would have been easier if I hadn’t been discharged, or better still, if I’d been killed on that ship. The burden of caring for me was tearing her apart.’ He paused. ‘The nightmares I had about the ship being hit and the burning bodies didn’t stop.’ He looked across the table at Coupland. ‘The nightmares have never stopped, Kevin, I just learned to stop talking about them…’ ‘Didn’t medication help?’ ‘I don’t want a life of numbness!’ Joe spat. ‘I want to grasp life by the thorns until my hands bleed – isn’t that what I deserve?’ He looked down at his wedding ring, traced the edges of it with the index finger on his right hand. His voice shook when he spoke next. ‘It’s a fragile cord that binds us to sanity, Kevin, and wouldn’t we do everything in our power to cling onto that?’
Coupland said nothing. It was as though the life-force that had propelled him to the café that morning had finally deserted him. His shoulders looked a good couple of inches lower than when he’d first sat down. Joe leaned back on his plastic chair, studying Coupland as though he were an exhibit in a zoo. ‘What’s wrong?’ he probed. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘You’ve been on edge since we got here, like the past twenty minutes have been a warm up to something else, something bigger. I thought maybe you were building yourself up to it. Are Complaints on your back again?’ ‘No.’ ‘Then what? You’ve listened to me drone on enough about my problems in the past, if there’s something bothering you,’ Joe opened his arms expansively, ‘I’ve got all day.’ ‘Lynn’s got cancer.’ Even as he said the words aloud he didn’t quite believe them. His mouth filled with bile and his eyes felt as though a thousand needles were pressing into them. He swallowed down the sour tasting liquid, blinking his eyes several times in succession. ‘And all the time I was worried that she was upset with me over something I’d done.’ He slammed his fist down hard on the table, his action barely drawing a glance from the guy behind the counter. ‘I was too far up my own backside to realise something serious was troubling her. I took her moodiness to be her way of punishing me. I never gave a moment’s thought that she might be ill.’ When he’d drawn level with her the evening before at the hospital’s main entrance, she’d introduced him to a consultant whose name for the life of him he still couldn’t remember, all he could think of was bastard. She was leaving him for a colleague and for some reason that was beyond him she thought it was helpful that he met the man who would replace him in their bed. Strangely, Dr Bastard didn’t look very smug at bagging himself a stunner. In fact he looked pained, as though he’d rather be anywhere but here with his new girlfriend and her fat husband. They’d both looked at him then, as though he’d spoken aloud. ‘Kevin?’ Lynn whispered. She had that look in her eye when she wanted him to do something he was dead set against. ‘Nick has just asked if he can have a word, his consulting room is on the ground floor, just past the lifts.’ Good for him. ‘It’s more private there,’ Dr Bastard added. They turned in unison as though they’d been practising and walked back into the hospital leaving Coupland with little option but to follow. He remembered he’d left the car in a disabled parking spot and the wardens round here were like Nazis. He shrugged. Bring it on. The corridor was longer than Lynn had implied. Coupland found himself taking a left past the café and WH Smith then a right along a row of closed doors before slowing in a department signposted Oncology. Dr Bastard removed a bunch of keys from his pocket and unlocked his office, ushering Coupland and Lynn in ahead of him before asking them to take a seat on the two chairs in front of his desk. Funny how Lynn chose to sit beside Coupland rather than stand beside her new fella, Coupland observed, old habits die hard, he supposed. The consultant took his seat and began talking once more; only Coupland found himself having to concentrate really hard to keep up. ‘I’ve known Lynn for a number of years, worked with her back in the early days before we both moved into our specialisms…’ So what? Was he trying to justify their attraction for one another, rationalise it as something inevitable between good friends? Coupland glanced at Lynn suspiciously; she dropped her gaze but was leaning towards him to take hold of his hand. He knew at that moment that something was badly wrong, he just didn’t know what. He felt like he wanted to empty his bowels. Now it was Lynn’s turn to speak. ‘I wanted to be sure before I said anything, wanted to be done with the tests so I could tell you facts, not suspicions.’ Christ, you could tell she was a copper’s wife. ‘But even then I couldn’t bring myself to do it. You’d think being in the trade I’d know how to handle breaking bad news but that just isn’t true. For two nights on the run I’ve sat at my mum’s with a bottle of wine but by the time I got home I took one look at you and couldn’t bring myself to say the words.’ ‘What words?’ Coupland asked slowly, already fearing the worst. ‘Lynn has breast cancer,’ Dr Bastard told him, following it with a barrage of facts about survival rates and treatments, but all Coupland could hear was the sentence no one had spoken out loud yet. Lynn was going to die. When Coupland looked up Joe was standing beside him, his hand gripping his shoulder as though they were on the edge of a cliff and Joe was trying to prevent him from jumping. ‘I’m sorry,’ Joe said.
Coupland’s throat was sore, as though he’d swallowed a bag of razor blades. He merely nodded, pushing himself to his feet so that the two men were standing eye to eye. ‘How the hell will I cope without her?’ ‘She’s not gone yet. You need to be strong. For Lynn, for Amy, but most importantly, for yourself.’ ‘What if I can’t cope?’ ‘You won’t have a choice,’ Joe answered.
~~~
I was happy to have started reading this series from book 1. It is a long series and I doubt if I can take the time to continue reading, but I can already say that I recommend this book and the series... It is both well written, but, more, has provided an excellent base upon which readers will be able to move forward, knowing what to expect. Detective Sergeant Coupland is the main character... He's an interestng character who is constantly struggling with the world as it exists--for him... He had worked himself up to his present position, Detective Sergeant, but he knew he would be stopped from moving upward from there--he'd gotten a bit rough with a suspect years ago and would never get promoted further. And, he's also concerned about his home life, but, most of it is his own imagination, while his wife is dealing with a serious health issue that she has not told him about yet. Probably not a good decision on her part, but communication seems always to be a problem, especially for those in law enforcement. Everybody knows Joe is an ex-soldier, as he still carries himself like one and maintains a keen intellect, but has decided he is to do penance for the rest of his life, for all those he was involved with, who didn't make it... Hopefully, this will change in the future, since Coupland has asked him to help work on his garden at home when he's able...
Salisbury presents an interesting twist as she presents a number of different cases, while at the same time, multiple officers, suspects, and affected individuals are carried forward on an ongoing basis with Coupland keeping on top of everything. We know he's a good and caring cop, especially when he becomes friends (trying to help him) with a veteran, Joe, with PTSD as well as suffering through the loss of his family. Coupland seems to be well respected by his staff, including a young female officer who is quite good and with whom he has become close. She does a lot of his detail work, sometimes begrudgingly, but nevertheless does it because she knows it's important.
Was this apathy because parents viewed their children as their personal property, to do with as they wished? Free to harm their own but woe betide a stranger try to? She shook her head, unable to accept that thought. It occurred to her that, for a nation of animal lovers, the collective treatment of our children came in a poor second.
As a psychological suspense novel that hones in on a tragic murder/suicide within a family. It's the type of case that has affected everybody, including the husband who is the only remaining family member. The reason for what occurred takes up most of the book as everybody "needs" to know why a pregnant mother with one son, would first, kill her son and then hang herself... The scope of the work of the police is unbelievable, as they examine even the rope used, bringing in an expert to learn what type of rope it is and why it normally wouldn't be used for this...
Readers are given almost the entire book to consider the "whys" that could have caused this horrendous action. My guess was fairly close, but the actual reason requires a move into personal history of the involved...
At the same time, a knife killing has set the area into a state of fear, with a call that knives cannot be carried on the streets... Unfortunately, this includes two young girls who enjoyed the thrill of theft, and more...
It was not surprising that Coupland had begun to think about whether it was even worth working in law enforcement, when it never seemed to end--don't we all know that! Still, through fiction, we look toward police procedural novels and other types of stories that places the good guys fighting against the bad guys... Most of us can't...stop...hoping...
They had been too late. They were detectives, but they didn’t detect anything. They merely picked up the pieces, after the tragedy, time after time after time. Despite the fact that it kept him in work Coupland hated that bad things would always keep on happening. He’d once asked Joe, who had suffered enough hardship to last a lifetime, why this was so. It was the only time he recalled his friend stalling; it seemed for once he didn’t have an answer, yet it was surely something he’d thought about, a dark voice that counselled him in moments of doubt. They’d been sitting on a bench in Light Oaks Park, working their way through Joe’s roll-ups as they watched a group of small boys play football, the air thick with concentration. They’d trudged along a well-worn path over lawns displaying signs to keep off the grass. Joe’s face was covered in a sheen of sweat, but from exertion, not anxiety. It was hard to imagine he’d been up three nights in a row, unable to cope with the recurring nightmares of his last moments on ship, of the last time he’d seen Marie and Sophie. He’d blown smoke rings into the air, the corners of his eyes crinkling at a passing toddler who ambled John Wayne style beside her mother. The child slowed by the bench and pointed at the exhaled smoke, mesmerised by the cloudy patterns, her rosebud lips shaped into a perfect ‘O’. Joe pulled the edge of his mouth into a smile, turned to Coupland just as a cheer broke out and someone shouted Goal! Maybe bad things occur, he’d answered slowly, because it’s the only way we can recognise good when it happens.
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