Kiss Me, Kill Me

by Mullins, Louise

Garrett smirks. ‘Drop the gun, I’ll pick it up and shoot you in the eye, hold the detectives hostage. Death by cop.’

  Great. Not only is he impulsive, but he’s also suicidal.

  It’ll take ages for the Welsh police to call through for the firing squad’s attendance.

  ‘Shut up,’ I snarl.

  I have seconds to decide what to do.

  I point the rifle at the ceiling that’s survived two world wars and press the trigger, ducking to avoid a spray of plaster.

  ‘Drop the gun,’ yells DI Locke from somewhere down the hall.

  ‘It’s Garrett,’ I scream. ‘He’s holding me hostage. He’s going to shoot me,’ I manage before he clamps his hand round my mouth.

  ‘Not another word,’ he warns.

  He wasn’t prepared for my sleight of hand. He wanted them to think I was holding him hostage.

  ‘Put the weapon down,’ shouts DS Jones. ‘Unload it, drop it and kick it out here,’ he orders. ‘If you’re holding it when armed response get here…’

  Garrett smiles at me. ‘Your prints are on the gun. You fired it.’ He removes his hand from my mouth, holds his palms up mockingly.

  I take the opportunity to speak. They might be the last words that leave my lips before I’m arrested. ‘He killed them. Kirsty, Alfie and Leo. His own wife and children. He’s a murderer.’

  DI Locke’s silence unnerves me.

  Does she believe me?

  Until Garrett had shown up at my house all those years ago, I’d assumed Kirsty was the abuser in their marriage. At least that’s how the media had portrayed her. The articles described the domestic disturbances reported by her husband to police in the weeks leading up to her and the boys’ disappearances. I’d met her in the psychiatric hospital after he’d accused her of stabbing him. And she’d gone missing using my identity. But then he barged his way into my home, and I turned everything onto its head. I began to suspect he’d tormented Kirsty until she’d stabbed him, either in retaliation or self-defence, having been pushed beyond her limit of reason. Her actions leading to some form of breakdown which resulted in her being sectioned. I think she wanted to swap IDs in the hospital because he threatened to remove the children, stop her from having access to them. But then when she took the boys and he found them in Bristol he told her he forgave her, coaxed her into returning to him. She accepted his apology, as most women do to violent partners, and came back to the house where, I assume, he killed her and the children. Then he called the police, made a series of false reports concerning domestic abuse before faking his own disappearance. What I don’t know is where he’s spent the past five years, his resentment multiplying for my part in his wife’s initial escape. And I don’t know when he began stalking me. It can’t have been until recently otherwise he’d have shown his face before now. I suspect he always intended to frame me for their murders but witnessing me burying Humphrey gave him the perfect excuse to execute his plan now.

  ‘I know nothing I say or do can reverse time, alter what I did, and I deserve to be punished for it, but Humphrey was alive when I left him and would have survived had Garrett not been there, seen me leave and chosen to end his life. But Garrett murdered his family because he couldn’t stand the thought of them being happy without him.’

  And that’s so much worse.

  Garrett shrugs. ‘You’ve given them motive.’

  ‘Back off,’ I hiss.

  ‘Let’s play dangerously,’ he whispers, grabbing the nozzle, jerking the gun up, and squeezing my trigger finger, forcing me to fire a second shot.

  Half a plaster cast bunch of grapes hits my shoulder before Garrett’s fist connects to my face.

  I’m still holding the rifle as I land on my spine with a crack.

  There’s shuffling down the hall.

  Blue lights flicker in the gaps between the waving silver birches.

  ‘The police are here,’ says Garrett, turning and strolling to the doorway.

  ‘Where the fuck are you going?’

  He laughs, leaves the room.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  They’ll kill him.

  Or they’ll think he managed to evade a bullet to the head from me.

  ‘Shit.’

  I remove the cartridge from the chamber, throw the rifle across the room, stand, lock the gun cabinet, drop the key into the box and slide the drawer closed all with my sleeve-covered hand, and walk cautiously down the hall.

  Headlights pierce through the darkness. The police vehicle squeals to a stop in front of the porch. Someone jumps out of the car. Two sets of footsteps land on the ground. ‘Stand back,’ orders a male voice.

  ‘Get down on the ground,’ a woman demands.

  Though I can’t see him, I know it’s Garrett they’re commanding.

  The male officer rounds in on him as I reach the porch. ‘Now,’ he yells.

  Their voices fade to the thwomp of their target falling to the ground.

  Garrett lands on his side, clutching the collar of his shirt. The female police officer lunges forward, her knees hit the ground beside him as his foot begins to jerk uncontrollably.

  Blood seeps through the fabric of his shirt and onto the gravel.

  ‘Don’t move,’ says a man’s voice as my arm is forced behind my back, the other joining it, my wrists cuffed. Then I’m bent forward, marched towards the marked car and lowered into it with a firm hand pressed down against the crown of my head to prevent resistance.

  I watch the reflected image of the manor shrink in the wing mirror as the vehicle traverses off the drive and onto the dirt lane. When we hit the narrow, private road another set of blue lights split the dark green fields and the ebony sky in half.

  DI LOCKE

  Now

  I’m waiting for the call from – ironically – PC Malone, the police constable who kicked this entire investigation off after she’d attended the Goldcliff property in response to a report made by a neighbour concerning a complaint about loud music disrupting her sleep, to confirm Garrett’s hospital discharge from Gwent Royal.

  Jones isn’t interviewing him or Bethan due to the Firearm Related Incident we were both involved in. After our Critical Incident Debriefs, I declined the offer of an intensive two-hour long counselling session and insisted I conclude the investigation into Humphrey, Kirsty and the boys’ whereabouts from behind my desk.

  Jones enters the room, rubs his eyes and blinks several times.

  I push my untouched coffee across the desk towards him. ‘You look like you need it more than me.’

  ‘How much kip did you manage last night?’

  ‘Probably not much more than you.’

  Three and a half hours.

  Johnno begged me to stay in bed until 6 a.m., but I’d already slammed my second two slices of bread into the toaster by 5 a.m. Once I’m awake I have no hope of going back to sleep. Especially with a kid who’s up at the crack of dawn or as soon as his Melatonin has worn off- whichever comes sooner.

  ‘In light of her confession the CPS have agreed to charge Bethan with Humphrey’s attempted murder.’

  Which is what a live burial comes under.

  If PC Dowd hadn’t tasered Garrett, he might have used the screwdriver discovered in his pocket – the one we believe enabled him to enter the garage he stole the Jag from – to injure PC Malone. His resulting trip to A&E was a necessary precaution, a box ticking exercise due to the fact he’d hit his elbow on the gravel hard on his way down.

  The key for the Jag was hung on a hook above a fully stocked toolbox in the garage Cecil rented, which explains how Garrett was able to steal his car without heating and damaging the wiring.

  That’s what we arrested him for.

  Securing him in custody for a crime he can’t deny was our only way of ensuring he couldn’t evade the law a second time.

  The footage from the bodycams the PCs were wearing when they entered the house provided us with no evidence to contradict Garrett’s claim that he’d been h
eld hostage by Bethan. If CSI find her prints on the gun that he says she threatened to shoot him with, the CPS will agree to charge her for the possession of a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence on top of everything else we can pin on her.

  The rifle Humphrey owned was designed to shoot over twelve feet in range, and though it couldn’t kill you, injure or maim you it could. I’ve been advised it’s not worth pursuing a charge for possession of an illegal weapon because handling a gun without a licence is a lesser crime.

  After filing an incident report and getting formal approval to designate Winters to prep the interview room, I give her the go-ahead to conduct Bethan’s interrogation.

  An hour before lunch, after a short nap in a hospital bed under the supervision of PC Dowd and PC Malone, Garrett is driven to the custody suite.

  Unlike crime fiction in books and film there’s no two-way mirror. But I can watch Chapman questioning Garrett via live link to the audio-visual recording if I sit in the tech room upstairs using Kate’s monitor, and don’t talk or blink in case I miss something vital.

  I’m eating a toasted cheese sub roll with pulled beef and mustard dressing, chomping on it so vigorously I’m almost swallowing each mouthful whole, and practically starving myself of oxygen to eat it as fast as possible while Jones watches me with amusement, sipping his vending machine coffee. By the time I’m done Garrett’s videoed interview has just passed the introductions.

  He looks directly at Chapman. ‘You said you can place me at the scene of Humphrey’s murder.’

  ‘I said we have you on CCTV filling the tank of a stolen vehicle – a Jaguar with the registration GTY – at a petrol station in a town midway between Newport and Snowdonia. We can also place the car on ANPR cameras during the time that it was missing in various locations. Including near to Bethan’s home and Llanberis.’

  ‘Yeah, I nicked it.’

  ‘Are you admitting to being present in the vicinity of Humphrey’s fall?’

  ‘Yeah. I saw the whole thing.’

  ‘The GPS signal on your phone does place you at the scene.’

  ‘I was following Bethan.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I left the holiday park to buy some fags in the local shop and I saw Mel’s ugly mug on the front cover of a Home and Garden magazine. She convinced my wife to leave me, stole her identity, then disappeared off the face of the fucking earth. I must have wasted hundreds of hours in the past five years trying to track her down online, only to hit a dead end every time.’

  He’s been staying at a holiday park.

  ‘What was in the magazine that led you to her?’

  ‘It was an article about their wildflower garden winning an award. Mel was stood beside this old, rich dude, Lord Humphrey Philips. I scanned the article and realised she was calling herself Bethan and I thought, I bet he doesn’t know who she really is, so I went down there to confront her but that place is like a fortress. They live down a lane just off a private road so there’s nowhere to park without being seen. It was too risky to hang around so I pulled over up on the main road hoping one of them would get in the car and drive past. No one did so I came back the next day and just kept circling the area until this car crept right up to my rear bumper, beeped at me, then overtook me. It was her. She drives like a fucking maniac.’

  ‘How long ago was this?’

  ‘At the start of summer.’

  ‘This year?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He’s been following her for at least three months.

  Chapman tilts his head, inviting him to continue.

  ‘I was concerned for her husband. I thought he might end up missing too.’

  ‘You thought Bethan had something to do with Kirsty’s disappearance and feared something similar might happen to Humphrey?’

  ‘I needed proof.’

  ‘Right,’ says Chapman.

  He hasn’t once mentioned the boys.

  ‘I crept close enough to the manor to overhear them discussing plans for a holiday in Llanberis. I had the date and the time they planned to leave. The address was online. A holiday let turned timeshare. I was already there when they arrived.’

  He’s confirmed the timeframe the vehicle was flagged up on camera.

  ‘Just over twenty-four hours into their holiday a taxi pulled up to the cottage and I saw Humphrey exit it wearing a sling. I guessed he’d had a fall. The next day she’s driving a different car. They stopped off at this hotel-restaurant. I watched them through the window from the comfort of my car as they stuffed their faces. When they left, I drove a few vehicles behind them all the way to the quarry. I thought, what’s Lord Fool doing panting up there at his age? I followed them to the summit of the quarry. They had an argument. I couldn’t hear what was being said. She pushed him. He fell and hit his head.’

  ‘You didn’t report what you’d witnessed to the police.’

  ‘I was scared of her. If she was capable of making my wife disappear, lying about who she was and killing her husband, what would she do to me when I told her I knew?’

  ‘All the more reason to tell us so we could put measures in place to protect you.’

  He leans his elbows on the table and extends his hands to emphasise his supposed openness. ‘Okay, I wanted her to suffer.’

  ‘You were intending to enact your own brand of revenge?’

  ‘I was going to withhold the information as leverage.’

  ‘You were planning to blackmail her.’

  ‘My parents are hard up. They’ve been bailing me out for years. I thought the money would come in handy. She owed me anyway. It’s her fault Kirsty left me.’

  His parents know he’s alive. Have been in contact with him all these years?

  ‘A moment ago, you accused Bethan of making your wife disappear, now you claim she helped Kirsty to leave you. Why would your wife need help to leave you?’ says Chapman. Dismissing Garrett’s remark or waiting for the opportune moment to question him about his slip-up?

  ‘You’re twisting my words.’

  Chapman needs to pull Garrett back onside. And he does, swiftly.

  ‘What happened after Bethan pushed Humphrey?’

  ‘I left, like I told you.’

  ‘So he fell, hit his head…’

  ‘And I thought I’d better get out of here in case she sees me.’

  ‘You were close enough for her to spot you, so you didn’t come to his aid. Instead you… what?’

  ‘I walked back down to the car park and drove back to Newport.’

  ‘You witnessed a murder and you walked back down to the car.’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘And you didn’t report the incident to police because you intended to blackmail her.’

  ‘Look, I know how it sounds.’

  ‘That’s accessory to murder for the purpose of financial gain,’ says Chapman.

  ‘If you have a body, which you don’t.’

  You cocky, arrogant prick.

  ‘We’re having trouble locating Kirsty and your sons too. Any idea where they might be?’

  He turns to his legal aid who nods his assent for Garrett to continue. ‘No,’ he says, glancing round the room, flicking his nails like counters, click, click.

  Nerves or boredom?

  ‘What happened, Garrett? We have the domestic violence reports you made to police in the weeks preceding Kirsty’s disappearance. We know you claim she stabbed you, which resulted in her being admitted to St Cadoc’s. Did something similar happen this time?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘She didn’t work here, when she returned to Newport to move back in with you, after renting a flat in Bristol using Bethan’s ID. And even if she squirrelled money away it would have run out by now. She hasn’t used her old bank account or tried to open another since the day you – the last person to have seen her – reported her missing. No one’s seen or heard from her for five years, Garrett. Instinct tells me she’s dead. I just want to find
her, so she can be laid to rest. Preferably buried beside the twins.’

  My muscles tighten in anticipation.

  ‘Do you know how many people enter this room and lie, but can’t take the heat when faced with a prosecutor in the Crown?’

  My skin prickles with nerves.

  ‘If it was self-defence, there are protocols we can take. Advocates we can assign you who specialise in Intimate Partner Abuse who’ll support you during the trial.’

  Garrett’s breathing hard and fast.

  ‘I thought I was here for nicking a car?’

  ‘You’ve been charged with taking a vehicle without the owner’s consent.’

  ‘Then why am I still here?’ He stands abruptly but Chapman’s used to challenging behaviour and doesn’t even flinch.

  ‘I have a few more questions I’d like to ask you, Mr Richardson. Could you please remain seated?’

  He does, reluctantly.

  ‘We took a swab from you when you entered the custody suite.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘When we logged your profile on the system it flagged up a match to a crime one of my colleagues was assigned to investigate two years ago.’

  He narrows his eyes. ‘Two years ago, I hadn’t ventured further than the holiday park.’

  ‘That’s when the body was discovered.’

  ‘Body?’

  He seems rattled.

  ‘Her head and hands were missing so we had no way of identifying her through dental records or fingerprints. There were no identifiable features except she’d obviously suffered quite a beating.’

  ‘Beating?’

  He’s parroting Chapman. A common defence tactic when an interviewee knows he’s about to be confronted with hard evidence to prove him culpable of something he thought he’d be able to evade the blame for.

  ‘There were bone fractures the forensic pathologist was able to prove were older than the estimated date of her death.’

  He presses his lips together.

  ‘Could you explain to me how your DNA got onto the female’s body?’

  He folds his arms.

  Shit. He’s losing him.

  ‘Is she your wife, Kirsty?’

  He looks affronted, straightens his spine.