Guilty Conscious

by Oliver Davies

  As I drove away from the station into the street-light flooded city, Mills spoke into his radio.

  “Any sign of her?” he asked. A variety of responses came back one by one.

  “No sign,”

  “Not here.”

  “No, sir.”

  Mills listened to them all, his face unchanging. “DCI Thatcher and I are heading to the river, Monk Bridge, following a lead.” He gave me a quick glance, and I nodded. “Waters, head out and stick to the surrounding roads. If she is there and she runs, we need someone on the perimeter.”

  “Heading there now,” Waters’s rough voice answered.

  “Dunnes?” Mills asked next, staring out at the darkening city, the few people on the streets hurrying home from work. The traffic wasn’t great, red lights stared down at me menacingly, but I didn’t want to turn the sirens on, didn’t want to scare Freya off.

  “I’m with Mrs Fox now. We’re keeping a watch from the house. She’s concerned, for various reasons.”

  “Does she have an idea where Freya might be?”

  “None. Said if she’s not with her friends, she’s home by now. This is unusual behaviour, and Freya’s not been answering any of her calls or texts.”

  Mills looked to me, unsure of how to respond.

  “Assure her that we’re doing our best to find Freya and make sure she’s safe,” I called, loud enough for Dunnes to hear it. “When we find her, we’ll be taking her to the station.”

  There was a crackling pause as Dunnes relayed this message, then he came back.

  “She said she’s sure you are. And she asks that you be gentle with Freya,” he added.

  “We will,” Mills answered for us both. “Keep us updated,” he added before ending the conversation. Then he slumped down in his seat a bit, rubbing his face with his hands.

  “Has it occurred to you that we’re going to a bridge?” He asked.

  “It has,” I replied darkly. I just hoped we got our timing right, that we hadn’t squandered enough time already. I managed to slip through the traffic and pulled over to a road not far from the river and the old grey bridge that ran over, the traffic dawdling idly over.

  We headed down towards the bank, and the path, often found teeming with cyclists and runners, was empty, still wet from today’s rain. The grass leading down to the river was slippery, the water looking inky black in the low light, the tunnel of the bridge a shadowed black hole. Not a place to come alone at night.

  I pulled my torch from my pocket as we walked, turning it on and letting the light bounce along the path, not wanting to aim directly in anyone’s eye, not wanting to tip Freya off to our being here. A few birds flew overhead, squawking noisily, looking for somewhere to roost, and with them gone, apart from the traffic above us, it felt very quiet, very still. Even the cars were few and far between, and none of them could see us down here, as close to the bridge as we were.

  Mills stopped, tugging my sleeve, and I dropped the torch slightly, the light falling over a shadow close to the base of the bridge. They were sitting, their knees brought up to their chest, toying with something in their hands. I lifted the torch, letting enough of the light shine on their features. Freya looked up, squinting as the brightness and her eyes fell on us. She scrambled to her feet, slipping on the grass, standing dangerously close to the river, the hard winds making the current seem stronger than usual.

  I lifted my hands, stopping where we ended up a few metres from her.

  “Hello, Freya,” I called gently.

  “Hello, Inspector,” she called back. She stayed put, clutching whatever was in her hand, the other stretched out to the stone wall behind her for support.

  “We’d like you to come into the station, Freya,” I told her. “Can you come away from the river?”

  She shook her head. “You found Billie?” She asked.

  “We did. She told us what happened.”

  Freya laughed slightly. “She barely knows what happened,” she said in a scratchy voice.

  “We’re aware of that,” I said, taking a slow step forward, aware of the weight of the handcuffs on my belt. “Perhaps you can explain what happened properly for us? You seem to understand all of this better than anyone. I think, in fact, you’re the only one who has any clue what’s going on.”

  “Even you?” She asked.

  “Even me. Even us,” I added, moving a hand towards Mills. She looked at him, and he gave her a polite smile.

  “Hi, Freya.”

  “Hi, Sergeant. I can’t come with you,” she called.

  “Why not?” Mills asked, coming to stand beside me, looking very relaxed with his hands loosely tucked in his jacket pockets.

  “Because I can’t. You’ll arrest me.”

  I tilted my head to one side. “What are we arresting you for, Freya? Attacking Billie?”

  “Her. And Edward.”

  I took a deep breath and nodded slowly. “It wasn’t nice, none of it. Was it?” I asked sympathetically. “What he did to Stella and Billie, and you.”

  “He lied to me,” she snapped. “Lied right to my face.”

  “We know,” Mills told her reassuringly. “We also know what happened to you,” he added. “Five years ago.”

  Freya’s eyes shuttered, and she looked away, down towards the dark water, tangled with weeds that could easily wrap around a person’s leg.

  “Hasn’t bothered me for a while,” she said quietly. “I was healing, apparently. They even took me off my meds last year. That was good.”

  “Around the time you met the others?” Mills asked her. “When you met Edward, Fiona, Vanessa?”

  “And Billie,” Freya nodded. “I was never sure if I liked her or not,” she admitted, turning back to look at us. “She was straightforward, which I liked. Never took anyone for a fool, always said her mind. I liked that.”

  “What didn’t you like about her?” I asked, keeping the conversation going, hoping she’d relax, come away from the precarious place she’d chosen to stand.

  “I didn’t like the way she treated Edward,” she answered. “But he seemed to. He was sad when she dumped him. And cross.”

  “How cross?” I took a little half step closer. “Cross enough to want to hurt her back?”

  Freya shrugged. “I thought he’d move on,” she said, tucking her damp hair behind her ear. “And then Charlie had his party, and she was there. She bought Stella with her. Stella was so pretty,” Freya sighed. “A nicer than Billie. Dainty,” she said, waving her hand through the air. “Like a little fairy. Edward was looking at her, but Billie never left her side and anyway, Stella would have had nothing to do with her sister’s ex-boyfriend.”

  “Must have wounded his ego a bit,” Mills said, and Freya nodded.

  “Everything hurt his ego. Everyone was always so careful with him. You wanted him to like you,” she told us, meeting our gazes in turn. “So much, I wanted him to like me. And I thought he did, but he didn’t.”

  “Did he know?” Mills asked her, his voice soft. “About what happened to you? Did he know?”

  Freya gave one stilted nod. “I told him once. He was nice about it, supportive.”

  “You must have been very close friends then,” I pointed out. “He knew about that, and you knew about the studio.”

  Freya grinned then. “He took me after she dumped him. Thought it would piss her off to know that he’d let someone else into their precious little space.”

  “You trusted him,” I said. “Of course, you believed him.”

  Freya sighed. “I remember that night. I remember watching Billie lead Stella from the room and knowing that look on her face. Something had happened to her,” she said resolutely, “I just couldn’t believe it was Edward. I went to see him,” she told us. “After the report was made. He was sitting on the end of a bed, and he grabbed my hands really, really tight, looked me dead in the eyes and told me he was innocent.”

  Freya shrugged, looking down at whatever was in her hand. “
I believed him. Helped him. Through the allegations, through the rumours, through the sadness it all gave him. I let him lean on my shoulder and hold my hands. I treated him like the victim,” she said, looking sick at the thought. “And he was just like the man who raped me. Only I was his friend. Only I loved him.” She was growing angrier, and I took another careful step.

  “I think it might rain again,” I told her. “Why don’t we talk some more somewhere dry?”

  Freya ignored me or didn’t hear me and looked down at her hand. A photograph, I realised, the corner all bent and crooked.

  “Whenever Billie was mean to him, I was mean to her. I thought we should say something after she punched him, but Edward said no. Said it was a waste of time, that it was just Billie being Billie.” Freya loud out a single cold laugh. “I wiped the blood off his face with my cardigan sleeve! Then Stella died,” she muttered. “He seemed withdrawn around then, but he just said his dad was annoying him.”

  “What happened on Tuesday, Freya?” I asked her, seeing that she was in a sharing mood and not wanting to end that too soon.

  She sighed deeply and held up the photograph. “I’d left my jumper in the studio, so I went back to get it. And I got nosy.” She shook her head. “Started looking through things. He never let me in there without him, I’d never had the place to myself to look around before. I found the photos. Of Billie, and then of Stella.” Her voice dropped, and she let the photograph flutter to the ground. “And then the trophy. It was in the cupboard where he kept the sheets. He’d kept it. Knowing it was hers, knowing it was Billie’s too, he kept it. He kept a trophy,” she shouted, “of the girl he assaulted! He’d lied to me and used me and—” she broke off, breathing heavily. She was trembling, the words coming out like a snarl through her teeth. “I went to see him. Wanted to confront him.”

  “What did he say?” I asked gently, not taking my eyes off her for a second.

  “He said it didn’t matter,” she replied in a cold, dead voice. “What he did, what happened to Stella, what happened to me, didn’t matter.”

  “You took the trophy with you to confront him?”

  She nodded.

  “And then you got upset, and angry, as you would do. What happened then, Freya?”

  “I hit him,” she said softly. “Changed my clothes, threw up. I forgot to move the trophy,” she groaned. “Forgot until I sent you there. I just wanted to find Billie there.” She sucked in a ragged breath of air and looked around the empty river. “He deserved it. For what he did to her.”

  I couldn’t fully argue with that. “Why did you attack Billie?” I asked.

  “She shouldn’t have taken Stella to that party,” she told me. “She shouldn’t have given up on Edward. She should have done something!”

  “So, because she didn’t, you did? You can’t punish everyone, Freya.”

  “Just the ones who deserve it,” she spat back. “I know how Stella felt,” she shouted at me. “I know what she went through. I know what she would have wanted!”

  “Better than her own sister?” I asked.

  She laughed again, crying at the same time. “Edward got what he deserved.”

  I took a deep breath and looked sadly to Mills. His face, twisted into a frown, was still looking at Freya, but he gave me a slight nod, and I began walking towards her.

  “I need you to come with us now, Freya,” I said, keeping my voice gentle.

  She shook her head, backing up. She hit the wall, nowhere else to go. Mills moved to my side so that if she went up the bank, he could intercept her.

  “I did the right thing,” she told me.

  “You murdered someone, Freya,” I reminded her.

  She shook her head again and moved, slipping on the wet grass and went skidding towards the river. I darted forward, grabbing her arms as one foot hit the water and hauled her up, narrowly falling in myself. Mills ran down, grabbed my other arm and helped me gain my footing, pulling Freya up onto the path.

  “Freya Fox, I am arresting you for the murder of Edward Vinson. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

  As I spoke, I pulled her arms behind her back, securing her hands with the cuffs. She’d stopped crying and simply stood there, trembling, panting slightly, one of her legs soaking wet from the river. I left her with Mills, walking over to the photograph she had dropped on the floor. I didn’t look at it long, just flooded it up and stuck it in my pocket. It was of Stella and was all the proof they would have needed to have Edward arrest a year ago.

  My stomach rolling, I walked back over to Freya and Mills, and with a reluctant sigh, took her arm and led her over to the car. I could hear Mills talking on the radio behind me, Freya saying nothing as she slid into the back seat, her face stark but sure.

  Epilogue

  I always hated the silence that fell after I finished my tales, especially ones such as those. At some point, Elsie had reached out and taken my hand, slurping her tea every now and then. The mugs were long empty now, but we both still held onto them, sitting in the lull. Elsie breathed in suddenly and squeezed my hand, making me look up at her.

  “You’re not long after seeing that all wrapped up,” she muttered.

  I shook my head. The court case had only been a few weeks ago. A psychologist had been brought in to assess Freya’s mental state, and she was being treated as she served her sentence. A lot of people had been surprised by it being her behind Edward’s murder. Namely, his parents, who’d been expecting her to join him for dinner one night, and her friends, who had not seen it coming at all. Only Fiona didn’t look all that surprised, and I hoped she put her judgement and instinct to good use one day.

  “What happened to the girl?” Elsie asked. “Billie?”

  “She’s doing well,” I told her. “I’ve kept in touch. Pop into the café every now and then and see how she’s doing.” I’d grown a strange parental attachment to her, and she’d even called me once or twice to ask for advice. Mostly regarding her actual father, Mark Helman, who’d made a few slow steps into fixing their relationship.

  “That’s nice of you,” Elsie said. “You don’t normally check-in on anyone. Normally you finish the job then forget it ever happened. Can’t think of a single case you’ve worked where you’ve cared about the people enough to do that.” There wasn’t one when I came to think of it. Sharp had been right in the end, not that I would ever tell her as much; I was biased when it came to Billie. She reminded me of myself, sometimes of Sally, so if she’d let me stay in touch, I’d do it.

  “I know,” I said, putting my mug down and rubbing the back of my neck. “I don’t think I’ll be forgetting this one in any hurry.”

  “Not if you’ve gone and adopted the girl,” Elsie joked, laughing weakly. I grinned back and took her empty mug from her, placing it back on the tray.

  “You’d like her,” I said. “She’s a tough one, like you.”

  So tough, in fact, that she was still living in the flat with Cat, despite Agnes’s frequent offers. She’d changed the place up a bit, slowly, still holding onto the pieces of Stella left behind, and had been seeing Dr Kumar twice a week. She was doing well, and I’d remembered Crowe’s words about her needing support, and whilst I wasn’t sure that I qualified, she’d taken my gentle orders about eating proper meals with a roll of the eyes and then actually done it. I felt proud, more so than I had after a case for a long time, especially this one, where arresting Freya hadn’t felt all that victorious at all.

  “What’s on your mind?” Elsie asked, prodding me hard in the stomach. “You look troubled, lad. You’ve not even shaved, you slob.” She was looking at me with concern written across her face, her steady eyes looking me over from head to toe.

  I sighed deeply and nudged her over. “Budge up,” I muttered, making her shift to one side of the bed so that I could clamber on and sit beside her,
my feet dangling off the side. She muttered under the breath but let me slump beside her.

  “There are times when I’m not sure I’m always on the right side,” I admitted, finally letting the words out.

  “Ah,” Elsie hummed. “Go on.”

  “What Freya did—it was ghastly, don’t get me wrong. But so was what Edward did. Freya, in her own mind, was just trying to make it right. Punish him for his crime.”

  “Justice and the law aren’t always the same beast,” Elsie told me worldly. “Think of all of them superhero comics you used to like so much. None of them worked for the law, but they did justice. She has to pay for her crimes too, my lad. It’s your job to make sure she pays it properly. And that some skinny rascal in a skin-tight red wetsuit doesn’t come swinging in to do the job themselves.”

  I laughed quietly at her remembrance of my old comics and wondered, briefly, where they all were. In a box somewhere, lost in storage. I’d have to dig them out one of these days, find them a proper home on a shelf.

  “You had to be poorly when all of this was going down, didn’t you, Elsie? I could have used your help.”

  “I am good,” she replied haughtily. “But you know all of this far better than I do. Here,” she nudged me with her elbow. “Do you remember why you wanted to become a policeman?”

  “I have a vague memory of my grandad dressing me up in a deerstalker and giving me a pipe,” I replied. It was a very clear memory, a photographed one as well. I’d been eight or so at the time, and the hat almost covered my entire head, but it had suited me. A rather fetching tweed that I still had amongst the rest of his things.

  “Well, yes, your love of the great detective aside, do you remember?”