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

by MARGARET MURPHY

  ‘What do you mean, how you’d visualized it? How could you think such wicked thoughts?’

  Wicked thoughts! Didn’t her mother know how she had fought over the years to repress the fury inside her — the wickedness — the natural unthinking urge to lash out?

  ‘Mum, you must have seen the papers—’

  ‘Lies. They make up stories to get people to buy. Surely, they must be lies, Helen?’

  Helen sighed. ‘I wish they were; then at least I could get angry instead of feeling this burning humiliation. It’s true, Mum. All of it.’ She wanted to say more, to explain, but her mother had been charmed by Edward, his middle-class manners and Oxford education, his easy, confident way of making small talk, appearing interested when he wasn’t listening to a word. Edward had made sure that they saw her family infrequently and fleetingly, so the illusion had remained intact.

  ‘Helen, we thought — your dad and me — we thought you and Edward were happy. Edward was such a nice man, so clever—’

  Helen smiled. Tears pricked at the back of her eyes and nose. ‘Handsome is as handsome does, eh, Mum? Anyway, what could you have done? I’m all grown up now.’

  ‘I know love, but you’re all we’ve got . . .’ She faltered, stopped, biting off her words.

  Helen plunged her hands into the scalding dishwater to stop herself finishing the sentence in her head: You’re all we’ve got since . . . The unspoken implication: And you’re a poor substitute, the question unasked a million times, but always there, as a reproach: Why him and not you?

  ‘I’m sorry, love,’ her mother said, breaking the silence. ‘I never meant—’

  ‘I know.’ The silence descended again, and Helen’s mother picked up a tea towel, ready to help, anxious to make amends. ‘Let them drain,’ Helen said. ‘Why don’t you go and lie down? The spare room’s made up.’ She had made it up for Ruth, whom she was expecting later, but Ruth would understand.

  Her mother folded the tea towel with elaborate care, giving herself time to say something, but was unable to find the words. She hung it up on the rail next to the cooker and left the room. Helen could feel the distance between them, the silence, tug at her. She wanted to go to her mother, to comfort her. But how can the guilty bring comfort? What could she say that would change anything? So, she waited until her mother was too far away to hear and then she whispered softy, ‘I’m sorry, Mum. I’m so very, very sorry.’

  * * *

  A sharp rap at the kitchen window made Helen start violently. She closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing. A second rap, something metal, perhaps a coin, then David Ainsley’s voice, muffled and tearful.

  ‘Oh, God.’ Helen leaned against the sink for a moment, still trying to regain her equilibrium.

  ‘Helen, please! Let me in.’ Not muffled, slurred: he was drunk.

  She opened the scullery door, shielding herself behind it, in case of photographers. He stumbled in and she slammed the door.

  David stood, swaying slightly, blinking in the light. ‘It’s quite all right,’ he said, enunciating carefully. ‘They didn’t see me. I waited until they weren’t watching. Came down the side passage, the gate was unlocked.’

  Helen looked at him, unshaven, his suit badly rumpled, the collar and cuffs of his shirt grubby, and wondered where he had been sleeping. ‘You must be bloody mad, coming here.’

  He grinned foolishly. ‘Create a splendid photo opportunity, wouldn’t it?’

  She led him through to the kitchen and cupped both hands around the teapot. It was cold. Crystal-gazing, she thought, fortune-telling. And what does the future hold for me? She frowned at the incongruousness of the idea. ‘I’ll make you some coffee, then you can go home.’

  His eyes filled with tears. ‘Can’t go home.’ He sounded like a pettish child. ‘You knew, didn’t you?’ His voice was high pitched, accusing. ‘It’s in the papers — have you seen? You knew and you said nothing.’

  ‘Are you saying you didn’t know?’ Helen spooned coffee into two mugs, her eyes fixed on Ainsley. He looked away, muttering something incoherent.

  ‘Sit down, David,’ she said.

  He dragged a chair out and collapsed into it heavily. ‘Bloody bitch!’

  Helen set down a mug in front of him and sat opposite. He was, she decided, referring to Clara.

  ‘Clara was another conquest for Edward,’ she said. ‘He notched them up and then moved on to the next challenge. She’ll realize that soon enough, if she hasn’t already.’

  ‘Oh, she has,’ he said viciously. ‘I made sure of that.’ This, muttered into his coffee mug as he lifted it to his lips, moving it too fast, miscalculating the distance so that the porcelain clicked against his teeth and a little coffee slopped out, scalding his chin. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, swearing. Then, in a deliberate motion, he placed his hand on hers. Helen jerked away. He looked, startled, into her face, ready to weep. His eyes were bloodshot and sore from drink and crying and sleeplessness. He let his head fall forward, his hair flopping in front of his right eye. ‘I thought you’d understand,’ he said.

  ‘I think I probably do.’

  ‘The police think I did it.’

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘Killed him. Stuck the knife in the bastard bloody home wrecker.’

  Edward smiling up from his bed, warm with the afterglow of sex. A kiss, a quick, firm push, and the knife went home. His gasp of surprise and pain . . . His hands grasping the sheets, spoiling their pristine smoothness.

  Ainsley flicked his hair from his forehead. ‘Some of his files were altered—’

  ‘I know,’ Helen said quietly.

  ‘He was going to get rid of me. Us. You’d’ve had him to yourself.’

  ‘I was past wanting him, either shared or all to myself,’ she said. ‘I wanted him out of my life.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ He tried unsuccessfully to bring the blurred outline of her face into focus.

  Helen paused, wondering how much she wanted to tell him, then decided he had a right to know. ‘You’re wrong about Edward planning to get rid of both of you. He was going to offer Clara Valerie Roberts’s job.’

  Ainsley’s eyes widened. His brain, steeped in alcohol, could not take this in. Then he saw Clara’s face as he had told her that Wilkinson was going to have his contract terminated. ‘No.’ He shook his head slowly, feeling the liquid swirl in the vestibular apparatus of his brain, seeing the room rotate alarmingly even with this slight movement, ‘No. She would have said.’ She had been shocked, angry, when he had told her Edward had been planning to sack him. Was there also regret? If she had known Edward’s plans, she would have said anything to hurt.

  ‘She didn’t know,’ Helen went on. ‘But he did plan to retire Valerie early, and he had recommended Clara as replacement.’

  ‘Bloody, sodding bitch!’ Wasn’t he allowed even the satisfaction that Edward would have abandoned her? ‘It’s his, isn’t it? Why else would he want to look after her? Shag ’em and leave ’em’s his motto.’

  ‘I know she’s hurt you, David, but you have to look to the future. What about Henry?’

  David snorted into his coffee mug, took another slurp. ‘Let her take care of the little bastard. Better if he’d never been born.’

  Something changed in the room. The cold tap dripped steadily into the sink, as it did before, the pale lemon walls reflected the blue-white glow of the fluorescent lighting but momentarily the darkness seemed to close in and the air grew hot despite the bitter easterly wind which rattled the window sashes. David frowned, feeling the change, chanced a look at Helen. Her face had grown solemn and still.

  ‘I think you should leave now,’ she said, quietly.

  ‘I didn’t mean—’ He reached out to touch her.

  ‘Leave me alone. I can’t help you.’ She stood and moved to the side of the table. He lunged forward, made to grasp her hands, missed, his hands fumbling at her waist. ‘Helen—’ She pushed with both palms, flat on his che
st but although he swayed, he did not yield, and Helen felt a clammy apprehension. He bent forward, his fingers straying lower now, gripping the tops of her thighs, cupping her buttocks. His face near hers, stale, smelling of cheap wine and vomit. She began to fight, knowing this to be the wrong thing to do, but the smell, the confining proximity of him was too much for her. She shoved hard and he staggered back, catching the base of his spine against the kitchen table.

  ‘Fuck,’ he muttered, releasing one hand from her buttock, flailing, knocking a chair over. Helen began to fall, but he caught her by the waist again and she swept her arm in a wide semicircle, connecting with a crack to the side of his face.

  David responded slowly, looking first at her, shocked by the strength of the slap, then raising his hand to his face. ‘Bitch,’ he said, softly, astonished, as though realizing the truth of it for the first time. ‘Fucking bitch!’

  ‘Go back to your wife, David.’ Helen’s voice was harsh, her breathing ragged. ‘Go back to your son.’

  He laughed, belching a sour cloud on his breath then he turned quickly, almost losing co-ordination, but steadying himself against the door frame before he drew himself up in an effort to regain some dignity and stepped carefully into the scullery. He paused at the back door. Helen stared at him. His face was contorted with hatred. ‘You didn’t realize how much you had in common with Clara, did you? She thinks you despise her for not having a job — relying on my income. And there he was, banging away at the both of you. It didn’t seem to matter to him. Like a dog, he followed any bitch on heat.’

  ‘David!’

  ‘It’s a pity you didn’t carry full term,’ he said, enjoying her outrage, the pain he was causing her. ‘Clara’s little bastard would’ve had a half-brother to play with.’

  Chapter 12

  Helen leaned against the back door, trying to think past the trembling that shook her body, above the pain in the middle of her ribcage, beyond the screaming in her head, to a small, white patch of nothing, where there was no pain, no guilt, no tomorrow. Edward had told Clara about their baby; had even told her it was — would have been — a boy. And Clara had told David. She felt a surge of fury at Edward’s continuing malign influence. When she thought her legs would support her she took a step into the kitchen. She gasped as though struck.

  ‘Mum—’

  Her mother looked at her, her head slightly lowered, angry, unapologetic, unembarrassed for the first time since she had arrived. ‘What were you waiting for, Helen? For us to read about that in the papers as well? Couldn’t you have told us — me?’

  ‘How could I have told you? I’ve hurt you enough. I couldn’t—’

  ‘You mean you wouldn’t. I’ll get my things,’ she said. ‘I’ll not trouble you any longer.’

  Her mother’s cold look of dislike was too much for Helen and she burst out, ‘Mum!’ her voice rising in panic. She took a step, tripped over the fallen chair, and her legs buckled, she felt herself falling, spinning and she snatched at the tabletop, missed, heard the sound of her fingernails scratch the wood.

  Her mother was bent over her, crying. Helen saw a tear fall and felt an urge to catch it, but her limbs wouldn’t work. Then she felt a sharp stab of pain in her cheek and everything returned to reality. Helen blinked, thinking, Real? Yes, I think this is real. But the impression lingered for a while longer that if she had caught that teardrop, she might have made everything right between them.

  ‘Get Dr Patterson.’ Her mother had not spoken. Ruth had arrived at last.

  ‘Help me up,’ Helen said. ‘Then call Sanjay.’

  Ruth gave her a long, speculative look. ‘I didn’t know you were on first-name terms.’

  * * *

  Patterson had wanted her admitted to hospital for observation, but Helen had refused and he had compromised with her mother and Ruth taking turns to watch her throughout the night.

  ‘It’s a nasty bruise,’ he said. ‘She’s lucky she didn’t catch herself half an inch higher or she might have lost an eye.’

  Helen lay on the sofa of her den and let the discussion go on around her while she determined what she could say to her mother, how much she dared tell her.

  ‘I’d like to speak to Mum, please,’ she said quietly. Ruth and Dr Patterson stopped talking to look at her. They exchanged a glance; the agreement was unspoken, and they left in silence. For several minutes the only sound in the room was the impatient spattering of wind-driven rain on the windows.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ Helen said at last. ‘I was trying to protect you both.’

  ‘From what?’

  Helen closed her eyes. From more pain, she thought. From letting you down again. Another loss, with me at the centre. What she said was: ‘I was only four months on.’

  Before answering, her mother took her hand. ‘Only four months.’ It was said as a judgement. Only Helen’s lapsed Catholicism would allow her to say such a thing. Her mother had read the statement as a dismissal of the worth of the child Helen had been carrying.

  Helen tried again: ‘He was perfect, your grandson . . .’ She couldn’t go on.

  ‘Grandson.’ Her mother tried out the word. She sighed.

  ‘I know all about foetal development,’ Helen went on. ‘I knew what to expect. But I was totally unprepared for how perfect he was, how complete. They let me hold him—’

  ‘What did you expect?’ She seemed to regret the sharpness of her tone and after a moment, she asked, ‘How did he die?’

  ‘He didn’t die. Not in the real sense. Because he’d never really lived.’ For a moment they were both thinking of someone else. ‘And that’s the tragedy of miscarriage.’ Helen searched her mother’s face. It was closed. Her mother had decided: Helen’s failure of faith; her immoral views on abortion; her inadequacy as a wife — the sins of her past had returned to punish her. Just before she looked away, Helen thought she saw an exultant glint in her mother’s eye.

  ‘It can’t be helped.’ This was said firmly, and Helen wondered if her mother wasn’t referring to that other time, that other tragedy.

  Helen closed her eyes, fetched a sigh that became a sob and turned her face away. ‘I didn’t want him. Not at first. I was furious with Edward.’ She knew it would do no good, but Helen needed at least to try and make her mother understand, to see just once, the pain she felt. ‘I think he wanted me pregnant so that I was out of the way.’

  ‘The affair?’

  Helen nodded. ‘And I’d just won backing for my project from one of the pharmaceutical companies. I think he was jealous.’ She risked a glance at her mother. Although she looked puzzled, lost almost. The dislike was gone, and this gave Helen the courage to continue. ‘I did it.’

  Her voice was no more than a whisper, but her mother’s head jerked up as though she had screamed.

  ‘It was my fault. We’d argued about Clara. I took a swing at him. I wanted to kill him!’ She paused for a moment, breathing heavily. ‘He dodged and I fell. I began haemorrhaging.’

  ‘You didn’t mean it to happen.’ It was meant as a reassurance, a comfort, but the inflexion was wrong. It came out as a question, despite her. Helen felt it as a physical blow.

  ‘Old excuse. Wears a bit thin, doesn’t it?’ She could not keep the bitterness out of her voice any longer.

  Her mother looked away.

  ‘No, Mother, I didn’t mean it to happen,’ Helen went on. ‘By then I wanted him. My baby. My son.’ Her voice trailed off and the room was filled with the throbbing grief of loss. The two women looked at each other, each aware for the first time the depth of the other’s pain and regret, but aware that the years of estrangement had rendered them powerless to breach the gap.

  Chapter 13

  Nelson seemed preoccupied, even shaken. Hackett tried to engage his attention and, failing, shrugged and drew up a chair for Dr Wilkinson. He leaned back against Mallory’s desk, his legs stretched out in front of him, fingers curled around its edge. It had been cleared of its ornaments — living
and dead. The tarantula would inhabit some other office until Mallory’s temporary exile was over, and the skull, cigarette still drooping insouciantly from between its upper and lower mandibles, now squinted down at them from the shelf opposite.

  Nelson had requested an interview with Helen Wilkinson. It was in all the papers; the Don Juan story had taken a new turn: the tragic loss of his wronged wife. They had somehow got hold of information that Helen Wilkinson had miscarried a child in January, and it seemed that her behaviour since had been strange, to put it mildly. The mood of the reports had changed: they were becoming more sympathetic to Helen, and Hackett wondered if she was capable of feeding them the story herself.

  Hackett looked at Nelson. He was standing at the window, feet slightly apart, hands in his pockets, staring out at the rain.

  ‘Sir,’ Hackett said. There was no response. He shrugged and turned to Helen.

  ‘Are you all right?’ He gestured to the swelling and discolouration on her cheek.

  ‘I fainted. Fell against a table. I’m fine.’ She tilted her head forward, so that her hair hid the bruising under her left eye. ‘Why did you want to speak to me?’

  Hackett watched her for some time, before asking, ‘You’ve seen the papers?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You didn’t tell us that you’d had a miscarriage . . .’ Hackett began gently.

  ‘Why the hell should I?’

  ‘Well . . . because it could be relevant — if you were depressed for example.’

  ‘Of course I was depressed. I’d recently lost a baby and my husband was having an affair with the wife of a colleague! Wouldn’t you be depressed?’

  Hackett looked into her pretty, elfin face. This was something new, this fieriness, this sparky aggression. Ruth Marks had told him that the fey, dreamy, damaged quality that he had seen up to this point was not the true Helen Wilkinson. Is this, he wondered, closer to her real self?

  ‘I think if it was me,’ he said, continuing in a warm, gentle tone, ‘I’d want to get back at him.’

  She tilted her head on one side as if seriously considering the notion. ‘You don’t seem the type for revenge,’ she said.