He was keen to speak to her, but also extremely nervous as he didn’t know if she was still angry with him. Whatever her response, he was determined to overcome her resistance. He loved her more than he had ever loved anyone else, and he was sure she felt the same way towards him. She certainly had done, and such strong feelings didn’t just disappear in a fit of anger. They couldn’t. He tried to rehearse what he was going to say to her, but each time he thought about it, the words came out differently and nothing sounded right. He would just have to play it by ear. If she was adamant that their relationship was over, he would have to accept her decision, but he wasn’t prepared to give up yet, not without a fight.
Returning to the living room, he slumped down on the sofa and prepared to wait for her. She would come in, cold and tired after a frustrating day. It was typical of her to be out working, at a time when most people were enjoying their evening. The first thing he would do would be to pour her a glass of wine, and then they would talk. She would give him details about the case she was working on, and they would discuss it. After that, he would no doubt reveal a lot more about his time in London than was strictly allowed. He would tell her what was most important to her, that the drug dealer who had been harassing her twin sister had agreed to leave her alone and Geraldine could see Helena again. No one else knew what Ian had done, but he could trust Geraldine with his dark secret. She was the only person he had ever really been able to trust. With a sigh, he closed his eyes.
56
Thomas stared at Emily, registering her bewildered expression, and hating himself for upsetting her.
‘No,’ he muttered under his breath, shaking his head helplessly. ‘This isn’t how it’s meant to be.’
He closed his eyes, but nothing had changed when he opened them again. Emily was still sitting at the kitchen table, her blue eyes staring at him in dismay.
‘Thomas, tell me what’s going on,’ she said.
‘What’s going on? What do you mean, what’s going on? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Nothing’s going on,’ he gabbled. ‘I just don’t want you going to the police. I don’t want you going anywhere.’
‘What are you talking about? Thomas, what’s happened? What have you done?’
He took a deep breath and tried to control his panic.
‘I haven’t done anything. It’s just that the police don’t like it when people kick up a fuss unnecessarily,’ he explained in what he hoped was a reasonable tone of voice. ‘That’s all I’m saying.’
‘Thomas, you’re not making any sense. The police appealed to the public for information. Why would they do that if they didn’t want people to respond?’
‘Don’t you realise, everyone in York who owns a grey van has been phoning the police? And not only that. Everyone who has a friend, or a neighbour, with a grey van, has been calling them? There’s no way they’ll be able to deal with the volume of calls they’re getting. It’s a distraction from their real work. And you want to waste police time with yet another pointless call, over something as trivial as telling them I borrowed a van from a friend for a few days? Now let’s drop it. I’m not going to the police, Emily, and neither are you, and that’s that. I won’t hear of it. Once you draw attention to yourself, there’s no knowing what might happen. Do you really think you can trust the police?’
Emily stood up and began clearing away the breakfast things. She had barely touched her toast.
‘I don’t know what you’re getting so het up about,’ she said. ‘I’m just going to tell them there was a van in our garage, and they should talk to you to find out whose it was, and then they can find out exactly why this friend of yours wanted you to look after his van for him. It sounds dodgy to me, whatever you think. I can’t believe you don’t agree with me. A woman was murdered and her body was moved in a grey van. And just while all that’s going on, your friend – whoever he is – lends you his van. The police need to be told about it, and they have to question your friend.’
‘The van that was in our garage has nothing to do with the police,’ Thomas replied, but he knew it was hopeless. ‘If you knew the guy who owns the van, you’d realise straight away how ridiculous you’re being.’
‘Who is he, then, this friend of yours? You haven’t told me who he is. Is he anyone I know?’
‘His name’s Fred,’ Thomas lied, giving her the first name that came into his head. ‘He does odd jobs at my office. He’s freelance,’ he added quickly, realising she could call his office and establish there was no one on the payroll called Fred.
But Emily was unconvinced and she remained set on going to the police.
Helpless to dissuade her, he resorted to pleading with her. ‘Please, Emily, be patient. This isn’t what you think. I know it all sounds odd, but I’ll explain everything to you, I promise. Only don’t go to the police.’
She frowned warily. ‘I don’t understand,’ was all she said.
They stared at one another for a moment.
‘Go on, then,’ she said, breaking the tense silence. ‘Explain to me why you don’t want me to go to the police.’
Thomas hesitated. He had to give her an answer, but he needed time to work out what to say.
‘Neither of us is going to work today, and I’ve got nothing pressing to deal with. Let’s go for a drive and I’ll tell you all about it.’ He paused. ‘It’s not something I can explain quickly. It’s – it’s complicated.’
‘Where do you want to go?’
‘I’ll take you out for a nice pub lunch, somewhere along the river, and we can really talk.’
‘Why can’t we talk here?’
‘I just thought it would be nice to get out.’
‘No, let’s not go out. I want to listen to what you have to say, right here and now. And I want you to tell me everything, Thomas. Whatever it is you’ve done, we can get through this together. You know I’ll stand by you, but you have to be honest with me. Is there another woman involved? Is that it? You have to tell me.’
Thomas gazed at her, wondering quite how far her loyalty towards him would stretch. She said she would stand by him whatever he had done, but he wasn’t convinced she would forgive him if he told her the truth. Clearly she had no idea about what had really happened. She was worried he was seeing another woman. In a way, that was part of the truth, but he was never going to admit that. Instead, he started by telling her how he had tried to be a good Samaritan, but even as he was speaking he could see she was looking puzzled. She sat down and her expression hardened as she listened.
‘Let me get this straight,’ she interrupted him. ‘You’re telling me you brought a total stranger back here to our house, because you saw her in the street and she looked ill? Why didn’t you stay with her and call a doctor, or an ambulance?’
Thomas shrugged. ‘I probably should have done, but it was freezing outside. With hindsight, I can see that it would have been more sensible to call an ambulance, but I felt sorry for her and wanted to get her in out of the cold as quickly as possible. We were only a few steps from the house. Only when we got back here she collapsed. I think she was on drugs, or alcohol, or both. And she must have been suffering from hypothermia. As she fell, she hit her head on the coat stand and before I knew it, she was dead.’
Emily gasped. ‘Dead? She was dead? You brought her here and she died, here in our house?’
‘And then I panicked,’ he confessed.
That at least was true.
‘But why did you bring her here?’ Emily demanded. ‘Oh my God, Thomas, you’re talking about that prostitute who’s been in the news, aren’t you? You brought a prostitute here into the house.’
He lowered his head. ‘Yes, yes, of course I know now that she was a prostitute, but I had no idea of that when I saw her in the street.’
It sounded unlikely, even to his own ears.
‘I didn’t know who she
was at the time,’ he went on, more firmly. ‘All I knew right then was that she was freezing outside, and ill, and then she was in our hall and she was dead. There was a dead woman in our hall, Emily. What was I supposed to do?’
Having told Emily about the body, he stuck to the truth and described how he had bought a van and moved the body to the woods, while Emily stared at him, horrified.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said when he finished. ‘I don’t understand why you didn’t call the police straight away. What were you thinking of?’
‘I was afraid the police wouldn’t believe me,’ he replied. ‘Don’t you understand? I was frightened, Emily. I panicked. It wasn’t my fault she was dead. She just collapsed and then she was dead.’
The blackmailer’s death hadn’t been his fault any more than the prostitute’s, but he didn’t even get as far as telling Emily about that because she was on her feet, white faced with horror.
‘You brought a prostitute to our house while I was away,’ she cried out. ‘You killed her and tried to get rid of her body. If you’d buried her, she might never have been found, and no one would ever have known what you’d done.’
He wasn’t sure if she was angry because she thought he had killed the woman, or because he had left the body where it had been easily found.
‘I can see how it must look,’ he said, ‘but it wasn’t like that. I didn’t know who she was. And I didn’t do anything to her. I never touched her. She just collapsed. I’m telling you the truth, Emily.’
She had her phone in her hand.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m calling the police and you’re going to hand yourself in,’ she replied, her voice oddly calm. ‘You’re going to tell them exactly what you told me. You have to tell them the truth, Thomas. Sooner or later they’re going to catch up with you, and it’ll be better if you go to them.’
If he had only had the prostitute’s death to deal with, he might have gone along with Emily’s decision. But she didn’t know about his blackmailer. Feeling as though he had strayed into some dark fiction, he rushed around the table, snatched her phone and threw it across the room. It landed with a faint clatter on the tiled floor. He stood facing her, physically shaking.
‘What are you doing?’ she cried out.
Before she could say another word, he clapped his hand over her mouth, his index finger and thumb pressing her nostrils shut. She moaned and struggled, and kicked at his legs, but he held on, pinning her arms to her sides with his free arm. Hours seemed to elapse before she stopped moving and hung heavily in his fierce embrace. He didn’t know how long he had been standing there, supporting her inert body in his arms, when he heard knocking at the front door, and the sound of sirens in the street outside his house. With a cry, he dropped to his knees, still clutching Emily in his arms. Leaning forward, he wept over the limp body of the woman he loved.
57
It was midday by the time Geraldine knocked at Thomas’s door. She knew that neither he nor his wife was at work that day. She had brought several uniformed constables with her, and the back door to the house was being watched as she knocked on the front door.
‘Shall I break it down?’ a burly constable at her side asked her.
Geraldine gazed up into his broad fleshy face and hesitated. With all the noise of sirens in the street and the hammering on the door, anyone in the house must be aware by now that the police were outside, yet no one had come to the door. She looked around. Several neighbours had appeared on their front doorsteps, and a few people were already gathering in the street, curious to see what was going on.
Geraldine turned back to the constable and shook her head. ‘Keep knocking for now.’
Before battering the door down, she wanted to give Thomas time to answer. With the house surrounded, he wasn’t going anywhere, so she was in no rush to get inside. Walking back to the street, she approached a woman standing in the front yard of the neighbouring house and asked her whether she had seen Thomas or his wife that morning.
‘No, I can’t say I have,’ the woman replied. ‘But I don’t see that much of them. We live next door, but we’re not really on close terms with them. I mean, we’ve not fallen out or anything, but you know how it is. Everyone keeps themselves to themselves. Everyone’s busy.’
Geraldine didn’t point out that the woman was hanging around outside her house, doing nothing but watch what was going on next door. She crossed the road to speak to a woman standing on the front doorstep of the house opposite Thomas and Emily’s, and received a similar response. No one could recall having seen anyone come out of Thomas’s house that morning. Meanwhile, the constable had continued knocking and calling out in a stentorian voice, but there was no response from inside the house. Since a small crowd had now gathered in the street to watch, Geraldine silenced him before going through the side gate and speaking to one of two constables standing guard at the back of the house. With a nod, he kicked open the back door.
After the wailing sirens and the subdued buzz of chatter from excited neighbours, the interior of the house seemed eerily quiet. Geraldine entered cautiously and some instinct warned her to motion to her colleague to stay back. There was an unnatural quality to the silence in the house. Even the pipework wasn’t creaking and the floorboards made no sound beneath her feet. One step at a time, she advanced, hardly daring to breathe for fear of disturbing the silence in the house.
The back door led straight into a living room. There was a faint smell of burnt toast from inside the house as though someone had recently made breakfast. Listening, she thought she heard a sound somewhere ahead of her. She moved further into the room. Behind her, she heard the two constables following her, their footsteps falling almost inaudibly on the floor. She turned and whispered to one of them to remain on guard at the back door in case Thomas tried to run. Leaving the back room, she made her way into the hall. The stairs were on her right. The first door she came to on her left was closed. It swung open with a faint squeal to reveal an empty dining room. The door to the next room was open. From the hall, Geraldine looked into a kitchen at the front of the house where a man was crouching on the floor, his shoulders shaking as he wept softly over a woman who was lying perfectly still in his arms. His head hung forwards, masking the woman’s face, but Geraldine could see that her arms hung limply at her sides and she was making no attempt to respond to the man’s distress. Aware that the woman might still be alive, Geraldine entered the kitchen, motioning to her uniformed colleague to block the door.
‘Thomas,’ she called softly. ‘Is that your wife? I think she needs help.’ She drew closer. ‘Is she breathing? Thomas, we need to get your wife some help. Please, you have to let go of her so I can take a look at her.’
With a groan, Thomas laid the woman on the floor and rose to his feet to face Geraldine.
‘Who are you?’ he asked, glaring wildly at her. ‘What are you doing here? What do you want?’
‘Right now I want to see if your wife is alive and in need of attention,’ she replied evenly.
A second later, she heard the constable who was out of sight in the hall talking quietly on his phone. Clearly he was being careful not to disturb the volatile situation.
‘She’s fine,’ Thomas replied, his voice rising in anger. ‘Leave her alone. I can take care of her. I’ll take care of everything. Get out of my house. Leave us alone!’
‘Thomas, I’m here with the police. We just want to ask you some questions. But first, we need to see to your wife.’
She knelt down and began to examine the woman for any vital signs.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘I can take care of her myself. We don’t need you here. Get out of my house! Go away, please, just go away. I need to think.’
‘I’m not going away. I’m here with the police and we have your house surrounded so you’re not going anywhere either. We’re going to sit down and
talk quietly, but first we need to look after your wife.’
‘You leave her alone!’
Without warning he lunged sideways and seized a long knife from a magnetic knife holder on the wall. Geraldine hesitated to withdraw, but the woman on the floor was already beyond help. There were police nearby, but Geraldine was within arm’s reach of Thomas, who was clearly insane and wielding a knife. She stood up very slowly. As she did so, there was a noise in the hallway behind her and she froze. Thomas heard it too. Her fleeting hesitation had been a mistake. With a wild cry he leapt at Geraldine, slashing at her chest. If she hadn’t been wearing a bullet-proof vest, the attack would probably have proved fatal. She seized his arm, but he was strong and managed to wrench it free without dropping the knife which slashed in the air dangerously close to her face.
‘If you move, I’ll kill you!’ he shrieked, his face white with manic determination. ‘I’ll do it!’
‘Thomas, we have the house surrounded,’ a voice called out. ‘Put down the knife and come out quietly.’
‘Think about what you’re doing,’ Geraldine said, struggling to keep her voice even. ‘If you harm me, you won’t be able to claim it was an accident, will you? My colleagues are watching. What will it be? Assaulting a police officer? First degree murder? You can’t get away, and you’ll be locked up for the rest of your life. Is that what you want?’
‘Let me go and I won’t harm her,’ Thomas cried out, his voice shrill with desperation.
‘Come out, Thomas,’ the voice in the hall urged him.
‘Thomas,’ Geraldine said gently, eyeing the knife in his hand. ‘It’s over. You know they’ll never let you get away. The moment you set foot outside this room, they’ll disarm you. What can you hope to achieve with a kitchen knife against the police?’
Deep Cover Page 26
