HER HUSBAND’S KILLER an unputdownable psychological thriller full of breathtaking twists

by MARGARET MURPHY

  ‘Looks like he was a benign sort of deity, then.’

  ‘Inquiries so far suggest Professor Wilkinson was not a philanthropist.’

  ‘Not all inquiries, surely, love,’ Sheila corrected.

  ‘Excluding the computer files,’ Hackett conceded. He had, by now, poured them both a mug of tea and he sipped from his own, sitting at the kitchen table, dunking a biscuit into the hot brew before continuing. ‘The only two we had any doubts about were a Dr Mallory who is definitely out on his ear, and a PhD student called Ellis. There was just one word written under his entry—’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘SHOP.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’

  ‘That’s what we thought, until someone told us it stands for Senate House Overview of Progress. It’s a panel the PhD students are referred to periodically. A matter of routine.’

  ‘So, Mr Ellis can breathe a sigh of relief. But what about this other chap?’

  ‘Dr Mallory. Bit embarrassing, really. He’s loaned us his office for interviews. Then young Jem discovered the file had last been modified on Tuesday at two p.m., the day after Wilkinson was murdered.’

  ‘You need to find out either who changed the file, or what the original entry was,’ Sheila said. ‘Anyone who gets a better deal on the new version is suspect. Be interesting to see if Dr Mallory’s entry has been changed.’

  Hackett grinned. Sheila had been a CID officer before she had retired to bring up the kids.

  ‘Don’t you give me that indulgent smile, Terence Hackett, I’m not one of your trainees. I take it you’ve checked his office for backups of the original file?’

  Terry made an attempt at seriousness, but he could see that the strain of Sheila’s afternoon was wearing off with the intellectual challenge of the puzzle he had set her. ‘There weren’t any,’ he said.

  ‘What about home?’

  The smile returned, but only briefly as Sheila threatened him with the wet end of a peeled potato. ‘DC Tact has been despatched to search the professor’s study. I’m meeting him back at HQ at seven. Speaking of which’ — he checked his watch — ‘I’d best get off, if I’m to fetch Lisa.’

  * * *

  Lisa took a few steps at a run when she saw him, then stopped, throwing a furtive glance at her school friends. She turned her back on him and stood in a huddle for a few minutes, engaged in excited chatter and over-loud laughter with the three other girls. Lisa was twelve years old and couldn’t wait to be grown up. She had coerced her mother into letting her have her ears pierced on her twelfth birthday, and insisted on wearing large, brightly coloured earrings which flashed in her hair. She had inherited his hair colour and she let it cascade gloriously over her shoulders. She fiddled with it constantly, a kind of preening gesture, and Hackett was uncomfortably aware of the attention it drew from boys her own age and older.

  She finished her conversation and sauntered up to him. ‘Hi, Dad.’

  He bent swiftly and kissed her on the cheek before she had time to react and she scowled up at him. ‘You did that deliberately.’

  He grinned back. ‘It was an accident, your honour.’

  ‘Very funny.’ She sulked for a bit in the car, but soon forgot that she was supposed to be cross with him, when he asked her how the rehearsals were going. ‘Miss Armitage said the boys’ll have to overcome their self-consciousness if they’re to be at all convincing. Chris was practically monotonal in the balcony scene.’

  ‘Monotonal’ was a new word she had learned from her drama teacher, and she had been using every opportunity to try it out over the last few days.

  ‘I mean totally crap!’

  ‘There’s no need for language like that, young lady.’

  Lisa rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, Dad, crap isn’t a swear word.’

  ‘It’s not very nice, either.’

  ‘Not ladylike enough for you?’

  This was an old theme: expectations of girls and boys being different, double standards. ‘It’s not a question of you being a girl, I just don’t like my children using bad language.’

  ‘You should hear what Daniel says.’ She slid him a sideways glance.

  Hackett realized suddenly that he hadn’t seen Daniel at home. ‘Where is he tonight?’ he asked.

  ‘How should I know?’ She flicked a hank of hair over her shoulder. ‘Miss Armitage said I was a natural. She said I carried the scene, but Chris couldn’t rely on that on the night. Everyone’s got to pull their weight. She said Gita’s the best Nurse she’s seen in years — a real comic talent, she said. Dad, can Gita stay over tomorrow night, after the rehearsal?’

  ‘No.’ He knew Gita and liked her. A big, robust, slightly blowsy girl who was inclined to raucousness and insomnia. ‘Not during the week, Lisa. You’ve homework to do.’

  ‘You let Daniel do whatever he wants, but I can’t even invite my friends over.’ From ennui to enthusiasm, poise to petulance in seconds, this had become the pattern for Lisa since reaching her twelfth birthday.

  ‘Daniel does not have friends over during the week. You know that.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘But you don’t know where he is, do you?’

  This was said out of spite, he knew, but it made him uneasy. Daniel had become secretive of late. Normal, he told himself. Entirely normal. The majority of boys Daniel’s age went through a phase of not wanting their parents to interfere, but in a way, he preferred the blatant flouting of his authority that had been the norm for a time, the succession of trendy causes on the periphery of what Hackett was willing to allow as ‘normal’, or even legal. Just after his fifteenth birthday, they had had to fetch Daniel from a demo against a new housing estate which was due to be constructed on green belt land near their home. It hadn’t got as far as an arrest, and Daniel hadn’t even got his picture in the local rag; it was embarrassing, but at least they had known where to find him. The more subtle bending of rules, the evasiveness of recent weeks had been more difficult to deal with; he had warned himself against overreaction but could not help running through a mental checklist of Signs and Symptoms.

  ‘Do you know where he is?’

  ‘Per-lease, Dad, don’t do the Detective Sergeant on me.’ She looked out of the passenger window and started humming to herself, a sure sign she was hiding something.

  It was almost a relief to return to work. Hackett couldn’t take Sheila’s easy-going approach to their children’s bids for independence, and he thought it was probably just as well that she dealt with them more often than he did. Coward’s way out, his conscience told him, but at least this way they got some peace at home, uneasy though it might be at times.

  * * *

  Jem Tact was a curious combination of intense, nervous energy and other-worldly dreaminess. He had a sensitive, kindly face and was softly spoken, and Hackett suspected that if it weren’t for his basketball player height and rugby player breadth, he would have been a target for canteen barracking.

  He wasn’t strong on details, so Hackett had spent the first five minutes of their meeting bombarding him with questions which Tact seemed to view as a minor irritation, and a diversion from the main item on the agenda, namely, the results of his search. Hackett’s questions drew out the following facts: Dr Wilkinson hadn’t been keen on a second invasion by the police; she was even less keen on the removal of the disks but had accepted Tact’s properly made out receipt with bad grace, and only after an argument. Tact had offered to make a copy of the disk for the good doctor, but she had refused.

  ‘Odd thing, to make all that fuss and then refuse a copy.’

  ‘Mm.’ Tact was loading the disk files into the computer on Hackett’s desk, and was not really attending to the sergeant’s questions.

  ‘Have you seen this already?’

  Tact gave him a sideways grin; his eyes remained fixed on the monitor. ‘Had to,’ he said, then, adopting the manner of a man explaining quantum physics to a two-year-old: ‘That disk represents about point oh-oh-one per cent of the total ban
k of floppies Prof W had at home. That’s about a thousand disks,’ he added helpfully.

  ‘Thank you, Jem.’

  ‘That’s okay.’ In his intense mode, Jem was immune to irony. ‘Luckily, he had a good filing system.’

  ‘Did—’ Hackett found himself talking over Tact’s lecture. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but did Dr Wilkinson see what’s on the disk?’

  ‘Of course not. I shut the door.’

  Consider yourself dismissed, Hackett thought. ‘I hope you were, um, subtle about it,’ he said, floundering for the appropriate adjective.

  ‘By name and nature,’ Tact had apparently learned, even at his tender age, that it was always best to get the name jokes in yourself. Hackett chuckled obligingly. He’d had enough of ‘Terry looks a bit Hackett off,’ type jibes in the early days to sympathize with the lad.

  ‘These’re the alterations,’ Tact said, indicating the screen. He’d highlighted the changed items of information by in blue font.

  Mrs Roberts had been mistaken — or perhaps she had lied to them –Prof Wilkinson had intended to offer her early retirement. David Ainsley’s contract was recommended not to be renewed. Mick Tuttle was to be referred to the equal opportunities panel — the recommendation being non-renewal of contract. Feeney was down for early retirement, and Rutherford was a borderline case.

  ‘When was this file last updated?’ he asked.

  Tact grabbed the mouse and clicked in the file menu, too fast for Hackett to follow exactly what he did. A grey box opened on the screen. Hackett skipped down the list: File name . . . Created . . . Last saved . . .

  ‘That’s last Sunday, isn’t it?’ He leaned over Tact’s shoulder, a feat which was only possible because Tact habitually slumped in his chair with his size thirteens sticking out the other side of the desk for people to trip over.

  ‘Yup. Last saved at nine forty-five p.m. on Sunday,’ Tact confirmed. ‘No revisions. He really wasn’t a very nice man, was he Sarge?’

  Hackett looked hard at the constable, then deciding that this was Tact’s brand of irony, replied, ‘Wilkinson had already made up his mind what he was going to do — who he’d recommended they keep and who to sack, and he was going to put them through the interviews, the presentations, the seminars, all that crap — I’d say he was an out and out bastard, Jem.’

  * * *

  Helen looked out, through the pupil of her own eye and beyond it, saw the slightly blurred aureole of iris and pupil of another, distinct eye. Unexceptional, but for the fact that she was viewing it from within, the spokes of radial muscle curved outward, concave, rather than convex, and their colour was the mud brown of muscles, fibres, blood vessels.

  She remembered, as clearly as only dreamers can, of that other time when the tiger had slipped free of its prison and her other self had sought out the man under the streetlight. A flash of silver, orange light reflected on tarry black. His look of terror; his mouth opening to scream, the impact that stopped it.

  She woke with a start and lay still for some moments, realizing that she had fallen asleep on the sofa in her front room. Had she killed Edward? She had wanted to, though she realized that didn’t necessarily amount to the same thing — and she couldn’t always remember what her other self had done in those moments when despair, or blind rage took over.

  Helen glanced up. There was a face at the window! A man peering in, his hands cupped to the glass. She screamed and leapt from the sofa to draw the curtains, shouting at the man to go away. Her scream, or the subsequent shouting seemed to trigger a burst of noise at the front of the house and Helen whirled, disorientated by the furious knocking and rattling at the letterbox. Half a dozen — maybe more — voices raised, calling for her to come to the door, cajoling, asking questions, wheedling for just one picture. The pills Sanjay Patterson had given her were still working their sluggish way through her system and she felt adrift, out of touch.

  Alone in the house, her instinct was to call Ruth. She edged slowly to the doorway of her sitting room and slipped silently into the hallway, keeping close to the wall, inching towards the telephone. She had slept at home the previous night and Ruth had asked:

  ‘You’re not afraid?’

  ‘What’s there to be afraid of?’

  She had sensed Ruth’s smile rather than seen it. ‘Nothing,’ Ruth had said, ‘Nothing at all.’

  But they had reckoned without the press.

  Ruth arrived ten minutes later, striding up the path as though it were empty. She rang the bell, then whirled suddenly on the unruly flock of reporters crowding behind her. They took a joint step back, cameras still ready, pocket-sized tape recorders thrust forward. She scanned the group and picked on a fresh-faced youth with red hair — a photographer, by the look of his gear; he had the dishevelled look of a boy student, first time away from home. She hooked a finger through the straps of his satchel which hung from his shoulder and drew him closer.

  ‘Now, you know you’re getting old,’ she said, inviting the collusion of the others, ‘when they start sending schoolboys to cover murders.’ She gave the lad a friendly shove and turned away from them, enjoying their good-humoured laughter.

  Helen let her in, hiding behind the front door from the curious faces. The babble of shouting followed them through the kitchen, where Helen had pulled down the blind. ‘What the hell started all of this up again?’ she asked.

  Ruth dragged a folded copy of the Chester Recorder from her coat pocket. A black smudge marked the tan wool of her jacket. ‘This,’ she said, opening the paper and holding it up for Helen to read.

  It was a good picture, almost contemplative in its detached serenity. At first Helen did not recognize the subject: a small woman, bundled up in a dark overcoat, evidently slight; there was an ethereal, almost fey quality about her. Her head was tilted upwards and she seemed to be staring at one of the upstairs windows of the house which formed the backdrop of the photograph. Her hair fell away in one silky sheet from her face, revealing a pretty, rather pale young woman. She seemed to see something beyond the glass, beyond the closed curtains of the upper room.

  * * *

  Jeff Townley, editor of the Chester Recorder, had been more than pleased with the photograph. He had previously been agonizing over a choice between using a blurry snapshot of Helen Wilkinson on a field trip with some students, taken several years previously, her face practically obscured by mizzly rain and the hood of her waterproof jacket, and a formal portrait of her in cap and gown after receiving her doctorate.

  ‘What you got there?’ Dermot Molyneux had arrived from Dublin nine months ago and had been on the staff of the Chester Recorder for three weeks. He had freelanced for the paper for six months prior to that and Townley still couldn’t work out how Molyneux had talked him into signing him up and paying him a salary.

  Townley squinted aggressively at the photographer — a habit he’d developed when smoking was the norm, and the norm for him was to have one fag permanently in his mouth and another burning to nothing in the ashtray in his office.

  Molyneux edged between Townley and Rick Lazenby, his news editor, a practised, insinuating movement, born of years of filching pictures that his elders and betters had spent hours setting up, and Townley found himself nose to curls with Dermot’s auburn mop. ‘I know her,’ Molyneux said, picking up the studio photograph of Helen in cap and gown.

  ‘You damn well ought to — you were sent to get a picture of her yesterday. Oh — but I’m forgetting myself,’ Townley said, ladling on the sarcasm. ‘An artist such as yourself needs the right lighting, the ambience, the setting.’

  ‘Well you’re right about the ambience,’ Molyneux said, refusing to be ruffled. ‘But finding the subject was the hard bit, in this case. No — what I mean is I’ve seen her — in the flesh, so to speak. Only I didn’t know it was her at the time. She’s not much like these shots, you know.’ He stopped, listening to the silence, relishing it. For a few seconds the only sound in the room was the gentle rasp of Townl
ey’s breathing, then Townley, bracing himself for disappointment he said, ‘Tell me you got a picture.’

  Dermot Molyneux suppressed a sigh of pleasure, allowing himself — just — the tiniest of smirks. ‘I’ll tell you anything you like, boss,’ he said, ‘just so long as it makes you happy.’

  Townley looked ready to do murder and Molyneux decided it would be safer to play straight. ‘Didn’t I look everywhere for the good doctor yesterday, and wasn’t she nowhere to be found?’

  ‘Do me a favour and cut the professional Paddy crap,’ Townley said. ‘What’s the bottom line?’

  ‘To tell you the truth, boss, I didn’t know it was her. I’d given up on finding her at the university and I was too shit-scared to come back with nothing, so I thought I’d do a few spooky shots of the house—’

  ‘I saw them,’ Townley interrupted. ‘Hackneyed.’

  Molyneux shrugged. ‘Yeah, well.’ His ego didn’t bruise easily. ‘Wait till you see what else I got.’ He rummaged in a battered, brown leather satchel which looked like it had seen service during his school days. He placed three A5-sized black-and-white photographs side by side on the desk.

  ‘Fuck me,’ Townley said softly, his tone so caressingly gentle that Molyneux couldn’t stop the reply tumbling out of his mouth:

  ‘Well that’s an interesting suggestion. Perhaps some other time. And what do you think of the photos?’ Townley’s stare put him in a spin. He’d gone too far. Blushing, he added, ‘I mean, sir, Mr Townley, boss. Oh, feck.’

  Lazenby laughed, setting the room reverberating with his barrel-chested ho-ho-hos, and Townley, startled by this sudden reminder that he and Molyneux were not the only people in his office, forgot his annoyance with the Irishman.

  ‘It’s a pearl of a picture,’ he said, picking up the centre photograph as Molyneux had hoped he would. ‘Haunting.’

  ‘Now that’s what I thought,’ Molyneux said, swivelling his eyes in Townley’s direction to gauge his reaction. ‘At first, I thought she was just another ghoul, come to see the house, but there was . . . I don’t know, there was something about her. That face — it — it’s . . . What would you call it?’