Kiss Me, Kill Me

by Mullins, Louise

  ‘You told my colleagues shortly after your arrest that Bethan, who was known as Mel at the time we are discussing, stole your wife’s identity.’

  ‘She did.’

  ‘We have evidence that they voluntarily swapped ID.’

  He shrugs.

  ‘We know that you attended the flat your wife rented in Bristol using Bethan’s ID.’

  He glances down and around the room in boredom. Not the reaction I’d expect from a loving husband whose wife and children mysteriously vanished. No matter how many years have passed since the event I’d expect him to want closure. That is of course, unless he knows how they disappeared.

  ‘What reason did Kirsty give for leaving you to move to Bristol with Alfie and Leo?’

  ‘She didn’t.’

  ‘Could you explain to me why your wife might have wanted to alter her name to move out of the home you shared?’

  ‘No idea.’

  I look at Jones. ‘At least he’s not no commenting.’

  The interview continues this way for over half an hour then cuts to a short break when Garrett insists he needs the toilet almost immediately after Chapman produces the printouts of the ANPR camera shots and a copy of the CCTV image from the petrol station, placing Garrett in Rhayader.

  What story is he going to cook up while spraying the urinal to defend visiting a town one hundred miles from where Bethan and Humphrey were staying?

  ‘Do you want another coffee?’

  ‘Please.’

  Jones re-enters my office carrying two steaming cups. ‘I bumped into Chapman in the corridor. What he said to Garrett before recess must have worked. He thinks he’s going to break. Said he’s blinking loads and keeps tapping his foot.’

  He’s agitated.

  The first part of an interview is aimed specifically at fact-finding, asking questions, paraphrasing and then summarizing the arrestee’s responses for clarification. The second part is fault-finding, to present evidence to contradict their version of events to discredit the reliability of their story. The third part is to assign blame. After the re-introductions, the second instalment hits a grand start.

  The interview recommences.

  ‘Okay. I’m going to tell you something. But I don’t want it used against me.’

  ‘I must remind you, Mr Richardson, that anything you say may be given in evidence.’

  ‘I know that. It’s just…’ He bites his lip and leans forward. ‘Look, Kirsty pushed me too far. She knew exactly which buttons to press and she kept on hitting them, over and again.’ He emphasises this by slamming his fist onto the table with each word. ‘Kirsty took my kids away from me. She would have done it again if I hadn’t stopped her.’

  ‘You needed to prevent her from removing the children from your care again.’

  ‘I found her address easy this time because she was using that dumb bitch’s name, but I might not have been so lucky if I had to find her again.’

  ‘You were afraid that discovering her might be more difficult the next time she left you.’

  ‘I told her that if she came back to live with me, I wouldn’t keep her away from the kids. I wouldn’t punish her for leaving. I wouldn’t hurt them.’

  ‘You promised not to harm her or the children if she returned.’

  ‘I said I was sorry for fighting for custody, for causing her to think the only way out was to run away.’

  ‘You apologised for using the children as weapons and assured her it wouldn’t happen again.’

  His eyes glint as he wipes a bead of sweat from his upper lip.

  He’s not about to cry, he’s hoping that Chapman’s eating the bullshit that he’s feeding him.

  The change of Chapman’s tact is notable only to me.

  ‘I can see this is upsetting for you, but you’re doing very well, Garrett. I really appreciate you being so open and honest with me, it’s incredibly helpful.’

  He laps up the praise like a thirsty dog. His shoulders relax and his hands still. He’s forgotten or no longer cares his every word, every movement, is being recorded and may be used as evidence against him in court.

  ‘I loved Kirsty the second I saw her. But she changed the moment she moved in with me. We used to have fun together, but she wanted to go out with her friends all the time, dressing up like a slag and getting wasted, flaunting herself in front of the lads, making herself look whorish. But as soon as the… when they were born… she stopped going out, focused everything on them. It felt like she didn’t want to know me anymore. When she took them to Bristol, we hadn’t had sex in months.’

  ‘Priorities shift when you have children.’

  He shakes his head. ‘It was like I wasn’t there anymore.’

  They, them, he’s refusing to identify the boys or acknowledge that they’re his.

  ‘She’d got what she wanted from me.’

  ‘He was jealous of the twins,’ says Jones from his seat beside me, eyes pinned to the screen.

  Chapman goes to speak but Garrett dismisses him. ‘I wanted her to suffer, like she made me.’

  Garrett wants to dominate the interview. Chapman lets him take charge. Now his defences have dropped he’ll incriminate himself.

  ‘She always put them first.’

  Bile climbs up my throat.

  ‘I didn’t know who Bethan was when Kirsty visited her in McDonald’s that day or that they’d swapped ID. I only learned that later. I followed Kirsty, watched her from the opposite side of the street. I wanted to make sure she was going to pick the k— them up from nursery. Kirsty knew I was there, she was glancing round, looking for me. I let Kirsty go on ahead of me and followed Bethan back to a house. I Googled the address. It was listed to a Melanie Driscoll as she was on the public voting register at the time of the last general election. Kirsty was in the bedroom when I got home, stuffing clothes into a suitcase. She was planning to leave me again with the kids. I couldn’t have that.’

  ‘You weren’t going to let her take the children this time.’

  Chapman homes in on what Garrett is about to reveal, disinterested at this stage in reconfirming Bethan’s earlier statement.

  ‘She said, “I’m going. There’s nothing you can do about it.”’

  ‘She was leaving you, suggesting you couldn’t stop her.’

  ‘That fucking bitch put it into Kirsty’s head that I was no good for her.’

  ‘Bethan convinced Kirsty you were a bad influence.’

  ‘I was angry. I saw red and I lost it. But I didn’t kill her. I swear on my mother’s grave.’

  Jones groans beside me.

  His half-baked confession doesn’t wash with me, and neither thankfully, does the traumatic amnesia defence wash with Chapman.

  ‘So what are you saying?’

  ‘There might have been a confrontation. I might have hit her. I can’t remember. But that’s all. Just a slap.’ His eyes widen, begging Chapman to sympathise with him.

  ‘For the record you’re admitting to having hit Kirsty during an argument the day she disappeared?’

  ‘I can’t remember who threw the first punch. It was a fight. She gave as good as she got. She’s not the victim in all this.’

  I feel my body stiffen with the impulse to wipe the smug smile off his face.

  ‘A moment ago, you said you might have slapped her. Now you’re admitting to having punched her.’

  ‘She hit me first.’

  ‘You admit you’re responsible for hitting Kirsty during a fight shortly before she went missing?’

  ‘Yeah. But that’s all it was, a fight. I didn’t kill her.’

  ‘She was alive when you what?’

  ‘I left her there.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the house. I left her in the bedroom.’

  ‘And the boys?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about them.’

  The chair flips over beneath me and I’m across the office, the door is flung open towards me, and my feet are moving al
ong the carpeted incident room under a red mist of my own. Though I’m fully conscious of my actions and completely in control.

  Once I’m outside I lean over the bonnet of my car and whack it hard with my palms flat, straighten, and unlock it with my key fob intending to reach inside the glovebox to light a cigarette I know isn’t there because I haven’t smoked in months.

  Evans is standing at the smoky glass window overlooking the car park. He sees me, taps the glass and signals to the phone in his hand. I head inside and call out for Jones to follow me on the way to his office.

  I knock three times out of politeness and enter ahead of Jones when Evans invites us in.

  ‘Sir?’

  He hands me the phone, mouths the name of the caller.

  ‘Vickers?’

  ‘Interpol have informed me that they’ve received a call from a French airport where security have detained a gentleman for using a stolen passport to fly a private plane into the country.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘He claims he’s intending to stay at 13117 Route de Ponteau, Plage des Laurons, Martigues. That’s Ponteau Road, Laurons Beach for us English speakers who chose to study Spanish instead of French in school.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘He has a Welsh accent.’

  ‘Humphrey was on his way to Derek’s vineyard?’

  ‘They’ve sent me a snap of his mugshot and a scanned copy of his passport photo. It’s him alright.’

  BETHAN

  Now

  HMP Eastwood Park is my new abode. The external paintwork on the two-storey building looks clean and fresh, and the communal area and canteen are, but my cell is the size of the broom cupboard at Wildflower Manor and it smells of sweaty metal.

  As I’m on remand I can’t access any of the education programmes yet, and the waiting list for access to the prison library is restricted to inmates already sentenced, so I spend most of my time reading worn books, yellowed with age, the covers missing, chewed, or the edges ripped off for roaches that I’ve been handed down by my cell-mate Charmaine.

  After Garrett was charged with Kirsty’s murder, he took a vow of mutism and refused to answer any more questions.

  Charmaine updated me on the investigation when she arrived last Tuesday, for her second shoplifting stint. She was released on Monday, picked up and relapsed hours later, stealing a multi-pack of razors from Boots to sell in a pub she got into a fight in to fund her heroin habit. The police were called, she was arrested and charged and driven back here on remand Tuesday afternoon.

  Most of the women here are drug addicts. Charmaine seems to have calmed down since they put her back on a Methadone prescription. But she’ll be back out on the Gloucestershire streets again in a few months. Will she reoffend? Will she yo-yo back and forth into the system like most of the repeat offenders in here?

  She flushes the toilet. The stink fills the room. ‘It’s blocked again,’ she says, wiping without shame while I pretend not to watch her expression.

  She pulls the curtain back, a wave of shit floods my nostrils and I gag.

  I turn away from the stink and back to the chapter of the book I’ve been trying and failing to read for the past ten minutes.

  ‘The police have confirmed the human remains found inside that suitcase belong to Kirsty.’

  I close the book, throw it on the bed. It doesn’t bounce, the mattress is too hard.

  ‘How?’

  ‘The boys’ mitochondrial DNA matched the hard tissue DNA that was extracted from her bones.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Russ.’

  Her boyfriend who’s still using street heroin and who visits her every week.

  She knows who I am. My face has been plastered across every front-page copy of The Argus since Humphrey reappeared. Discussions are underway between a production team and ITV to create a true crime documentary about the case starting from when the investigation into Garrett and the twins’ disappearance was first opened.

  ‘Johnno Locke covered the story.’

  A relation to DI Locke perhaps?

  ‘Said death seems to follow you.’

  I guess it does.

  First, Maddison, then Brandon, then Norman, then Kirsty.

  After Norman’s death his daughter Karin inherited his house, kicked me out, and homeless but determined to seek financial independence, I was forced to live in a cramped bedsit, buying groceries with the money I scammed off men online.

  I used the same lines every time: ‘I’ve just lost my job and I can’t pay my bills; my mum’s sick but I don’t have the money to visit her; I’d love to meet you but I don’t have the finances to travel; my sister’s been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and the only available treatment is experimental and therefore expensive so I can’t afford it; I’d love to accept your marriage proposal, just wire me the money to pay for my flight over so we can start planning the wedding.’

  I never got caught because the moment the final payment reached me, I’d close the fake account I’d set up for the purpose and reappear on another online platform using a different name I’d found in an obscure chatroom and the profile image of another attractive female model. But the money didn’t last long, and it never felt like enough. I suppose I got greedy. That’s why I began hanging out in bars. I didn’t want to go back to providing escorting services, but I knew I couldn’t survive long off handouts. The fees were high so the men who used the agency were wealthy enough to afford them and my pay was so good I didn’t notice the commission the company took from my wages. But what I really wanted was a permanent income, a long-term partnership with a man who wanted female companionship from a woman who could run his household and attend social engagements with him, but who did not mind the lack of sexual intimacy.

  A trophy wife.

  Humphrey fit the bill perfectly.

  If it wasn’t for Garrett nicking that Jag, following us to the quarry and witnessing Humphrey’s fall, the police wouldn’t have had any reason to suspect he was still alive, was responsible for Kirsty’s murder.’

  I swallow a lump of fury.

  He still discusses Alfie and Leo as if they were inanimate objects, just possessions that he discarded when they were no longer of use to him.

  I couldn’t make it to Kirsty’s funeral for obvious reasons, so I visited the chapel to light a candle in her memory and the prison chaplain said a prayer for her instead. I’m not religious, but it’s so quiet in there I almost imagined she was at peace.

  Humphrey returned from his convalescence at Gerald and Roberta’s château last week. I can’t call him. All numbers must be approved by the governor. My mother has disowned me. Gran won’t speak to me. But my father agreed to talk to me. He’s accepted my Visiting Order too, so I’m hoping to see him on Saturday. We have a lot of catching up to do.

  DI LOCKE

  Now

  I tuck Jaxon into bed, kiss his soft little forehead, wondering how monstrous a man must be to murder his own family.

  Johnno’s standing in the doorway when I turn to switch off the light and place the battery-operated nightlight at the end of Jaxon’s bed. It leaves a muted colour-changing glow to melt into the stark white duvet.

  For a kid that dislikes sleeping, he has an entire Argos catalogue of soothing objects to make his bedroom as comfortable as I find lounging on the sofa, eating Aldi’s own-brand chocolates and sipping tea while Johnno threads his fingers through my hair.

  I have Johnno’s face in my hands, his five-day-old beard as rough as sandpaper against my palms, his lips smashing against mine, his soft tongue darting into my mouth and violating my senses, when my mobile phone forces us apart.

  ‘Winters?’

  ‘I’m just back to the unit from Duffryn. I wanted to call you before I write up the report.’

  ‘You’ve finished interviewing the grandparents?’

  ‘And the twins. The child protection order will stay in place until they’re settled, and the guardianship ord
er has been made by the family court, but for now social services and CAFCAS have agreed for Alfie and Leo to remain in their care.’

  It was Garrett’s comment about the holiday park, his parents subsidising his living costs for the past few years, and his refusal to discuss the boys during his interview with Chapman that made me suspect the parents might know where the boys were and wonder if they were living in a static caravan like Cecil.

  As soon as Garrett’s face had been flagged up on CCTV – due to the facial recognition software we’d applied to it, using every individual we had images of who had some kind of relationship to Bethan after her arrest – Kate had been tasked with finding out where Garrett’s parents lived. We couldn’t risk sending anyone to their address until we had Garrett in custody to lessen the risk of him panicking and taking the boys deeper into hiding. But after Mr and Mrs Richardson Senior had sold their house in 2010, they’d stopped voting and paying council tax so Kate hadn’t been able to find them. As soon as I finished my call with Vickers, having just learned Humphrey was alive and kicking and living in the lodge on the farm at Gerald’s vineyard I called the Lighthouse Park Estate manager’s office. The man who answered confirmed that a Mr and Mrs Richardson lived there. I kept him on the phone while I texted Winters their address, to ensure he didn’t inform his longest tenants that a detective was about to visit their home to question them about harbouring their fugitive son.

  ‘How did you know which holiday park they’d be living on?’ she’d asked, afterwards.

  ‘I guessed Garrett stole Cecil’s car because he knew the old man’s routine. That he lived on the same estate.’

  I can hear seagulls squawking down the line. ‘How are the boys?’

  ‘Happy and healthy,’ says Winters. ‘They were as oblivious as Garrett’s parents were as to their mother’s murder.’

  Garrett told his parents that Kirsty was depressed, couldn’t cope, had left the boys in his care. They’d gladly taken them in when he told them he’d secured a job overseas. A ruse so they wouldn’t expect he’d killed their mother and was struggling to parent two energetic boys on his own.

  ‘Have you organised for a Victim Support volunteer to visit the family?’