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

by MARGARET MURPHY

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Sweet, nice, bland, nondescript, boring, tedious, vapid—’

  ‘Yes—’ Helen interrupted. ‘All right. I get the general idea.’

  ‘Well, talk about damning with faint praise!’

  ‘Ruth—’

  ‘All right . . .’ Ruth sighed. ‘But at least admit that you like him as a man.’

  Helen said nothing, and she heard Ruth catch her breath. ‘Oh my God . . . is that where you’ve been all afternoon? He wasn’t in his office, either. Helen, you minx—’

  ‘He helped me search the house,’ Helen blurted out, just to make her stop.

  ‘Search the—? Oh, Helen, you’re not still obsessing about that bloody knife?’ Helen heard a choked laugh. ‘Sorry — bad choice of words.’

  Helen took the phone away from her ear and glared at the receiver. Ruth had been impatient that Helen persisted in her self-doubt, or rather in the possibility that she might really have killed Edward and had refused to help her search the house, ‘checking for non-existent evidence’ as she termed it. She was about to hang up, when Ruth said:

  ‘You didn’t find it.’ It was a statement of fact.

  Helen now discovered a lingering and, she knew, unwarranted resentment against her friend, tempered by embarrassment and tinged with relief, that she and Mick hadn’t found anything. Mick had left exhausted and she suspected in pain, but at least he had taken her seriously, had understood her need to convince herself once and for all, that the knife. The murder weapon — was not hidden somewhere in the house.

  ‘If you did find it, I’d fall on it myself as an act of penitence for not having believed you,’ Ruth said.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t make jokes like that,’ Helen said, wincing, but at the same time recognizing it as one of Ruth’s veiled apologies.

  ‘Who’s joking?’ Ruth replied. ‘Look at it this way, they say some women fantasize about rape — not my scene, I have to admit — I see myself more as a dominatrix, but that’s not my point. Just because they fantasize about it, does it mean they actually want to be raped? Of course not. Because in their fantasy, they’re in control. They know exactly who the guy is — and more than likely they fancy him. They determine the moves, the duration, what he does or does not do, because the fantasy is theirs. But the real thing is someone else’s fantasy; it’s brutal and ugly. Like murder.’

  Helen’s eyes snapped to Ruth’s.

  ‘What?’ Ruth said. ‘I’m only telling it how it is.’

  ‘I’m tired, Ruth,’ Helen said, suddenly exhausted, and wanting to avoid an argument about Ruth’s lack of tact.

  ‘Okay, I’ll pick up some wine and Chinese food, bring it round. We’ll get hammered.’

  Helen knew she would feel differently after a good night’s sleep, but for now, she could not take another moment of her outspoken friend.

  ‘I need some sleep,’ she said.

  ‘So,’ Ruth said. ‘You don’t want your old buddy, your mucker, your pal—’

  ‘Look,’ Helen said, interrupting what she feared would become another of Ruth’s thesaurus-mode monologues. ‘If you’d really like to—’ She regretted the words even as they tumbled out of her mouth. She really did need sleep, she hadn’t been lying about that, but before that, she needed to think about Mick and her unexpected reaction to his presence in the house. His proximity as they searched through the seemingly endless boxes and bookcases had acted as a balm. A male presence that did not threaten or challenge, but which soothed and reassured, it was all the more shocking when they had touched as he climbed the ladder behind her to check the top shelf of the bookcase in her study and the contact had felt like an electric charge.

  After a brief silence, Ruth said, ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m bushed. I’ve been holding John Ellis’s hand for the last few hours.’

  ‘John? Is he all right?’

  ‘Don’t ask. Suffice to say that counselling neurotics takes its toll, you know?’

  Helen felt the muscles at the back of her neck tighten. ‘Yes, I suppose it does,’ she said.

  A pause, then ‘Oh, Jeez, Helen, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—’

  Helen relaxed. ‘It’s all right, Ruth,’ she interrupted. ‘We’re both tired.’ It was a typical Ruth comment, unintentionally hurtful, retracted in an instant and probably worried over for hours afterwards. ‘Forget it.’

  ‘No,’ Ruth insisted. ‘I’ve put my size sevens right in it again, haven’t I?’

  Helen laughed. ‘Who’s being neurotic now?’

  ‘Last offer. Do you want me to come over and keep you company?’

  ‘Ruth, I’m fine. I’ve got a bit of sorting to do, then I’m going to bed.’

  ‘Before you do, check out the fridge. You’ll find something mouth-watering.’

  ‘Ruth!’

  ‘So, tell me you’ve eaten.’

  Helen laughed. ‘I promise I’ll check out the fridge before I go to bed, Mum. But I can cope for one night on my own.’

  There was a hesitation before Ruth said, ‘To tell you the God’s honest truth, I was hoping you’d say that. What I lust after most just now — picture this, if you will — is to curl up with a large gin and tonic (heavy on the gin) and tipple myself into oblivion.’

  Chapter 16

  Nelson’s close scrutiny burned his skin. He felt it in tiny splashes, not enough to leave a mark, but sufficient to make his arms and upper body jerk in a hundred minor spasms. Like hot fat, it seemed to continue burning, layer on layer, until he could feel it freckling the pale flesh of his face, marking it. His cheek muscles twitched with each explosion of heat; he would be scarred by the encounter.

  He covered his own eyes to protect them from the light coruscating from Nelson’s in short, searing radioactive bursts. He knew there were gamma rays emanating in deadly particle-waves, penetrating the dermis, mutating irretrievably the Malpighian layer, burrowing deeper into his body, poisoning his liver and destroying it. He knew with a feverish helplessness that toxins were building up to dangerous levels.

  Orange light pierced his fingers, he could see the glow even though his eyes were shut tight. He breathed hard, sobbing with each breath, and Nelson kept up his incantation of muttered words, arcane magic.

  He fled to the window and stared out through the mesh, willing Nelson away. The entire room was now bathed in the unnatural sodium glare, it intensified and pulsated, gaining power from his neural circuits, piercing the protective carapace of his skull, probing the delicate pathways of thought, shorting the synaptic connections, destroying millions of cells in the ferocity of its heat.

  A sudden scream roused Nelson and he became aware that he must have been staring. The stand-off between father and son had resulted again in a wordless battle of wills, the unspoken hostility that had characterized their every meeting. Hackett moved quickly across the room, anxious to stave off another outburst, soothing, calming, softly calling the boy’s name.

  ‘You’re killing me!’ the boy screamed. ‘You’re burning through my brain!’ He turned to the metal grill on the window and plucked at it despairingly.

  * * *

  Smolder wondered how she could be so taken with that phoney, that invalid, that cripple. Helen always was easily moved to pity. Stray dogs, mangy cats, ragged people, the flotsam and jetsam of life. And now this — it’s too obvious, too hackneyed, this elevated compassion, and for him!

  He was consumed with disgust. She used her vulnerability like a pheromone. What is it? Some kind of exhibitionism? Wasn’t she satisfied that she was free? What was she trying to do — drive him crazy? Smiling at that policeman — after all, he’s oh so polite. And now that damned mutant, Tuttle! Letting him talk to her. Listening to him, taking his advice, throwing her door open to strangers. She’d be giving the press an exclusive before long. He flung down his pen, unable to concentrate. He knew what was right for her, why couldn’t she see that?

  * * *

  Helen lay awake for
a long time, listening to the muffled sighs and occasional creaks of the old house. She tested her feelings as one might test a bruise — gently, approaching the tender area obliquely. She had felt safe tonight with Mick Tuttle, protected in a way that she had longed for, but never felt, with Edward. It was something approaching trust; a warmth, an emotional security that Mick had summoned like a charm by his unquestioning, unjudging presence. With Mick, there was no need to keep up the defences she had built high to keep Edward at bay.

  Soon, she would tell him the rest: about Robbie, but also about the night she had gone out, looking for the man she held responsible for his death, and finding him, had—

  The moon flashed suddenly from behind a cloud, and she saw again the sharp glint of light on metal, the slow, arrogant walk, the easy smile, and she experienced the same searing rage that had made her want to kill.

  Helen groaned and turned over. Pale, cold moonlight shimmered dimly through the curtains, casting shadows from the pear tree onto the window. She had arranged to meet Edward’s parents the next morning and she had no words of comfort for them, no tears, no regret to share with them, no sense of loss. And now she was being drawn to the one man in the college whom Edward had despised more than any other! For hours she watched the pear tree’s shadow see-sawing in the wind.

  * * *

  The exchange was quick, money for a twist of something wrapped in silver foil. ‘Bold as you like,’ the locals said, but this was not bold, it was discreet, a business transaction. No one wanted to get caught and, the trade completed, he left. Daniel Hackett couldn’t see the harm in that. He wasn’t shooting up in anyone’s doorway. He didn’t rob grannies on their way home from collecting their pension, and he resented being made to feel like a criminal just for the sake of the occasional tab of E, and maybe enough weed to roll a couple of spliffs.

  Nevertheless, he walked quickly away from the housing estate. He’d been relieved of his purchases more than once on the dusty route back to the outside world, and if there was nowhere to run, it was best to give in with good grace: less chance of getting hurt.

  The wind whipped up bits of grit, and he turned his face away to protect his eyes. In the darkness, chip papers and polystyrene boxes lifted and skittered along the road towards him, sinking as the wind dropped, as if in exhaustion, only to rise and dance a few fluttering yards more with the next gust. He tasted grit in his mouth and thought, this is excitement. This is real life. The comfortable, lazy existence his parents called living was like a long sleep, a living death.

  A noise to his left made him whirl round, but it was only a tin can, skittering along in the wind, bouncing hollowly from gutter to roadway and back, overtaking him in its bustling urgency to be elsewhere. It was darker that the streets of home: lads with air rifles put out the streetlamps, sometimes for sport, and sometimes for money, or a little twist of paradise — the pushers didn’t like to be too closely observed. Daniel laughed suddenly and started to run, chasing the tin can in the wind.

  * * *

  Nelson drove around the city aimlessly, first heading for home, but the thought of the empty house was unbearable, and he turned the car towards the city centre and the County Headquarters. The sight of the shabby, glass-fronted building depressed him further and he drove past, unable to stop the automatic glance upwards, the check on which offices were lit.

  He flicked on the radio, punching the off button immediately to silence the nasal whine of a jilted cowboy. Finally, unable to stand his own indecision, he pulled over and jumped out of the car in a fury and landed a satisfying kick to its offside front wheel, screaming ‘Fuck!’ a few times for good measure.

  A car full of youths cruised by, windows open, stereo thumping an insistent, meaningless beat: noise to attract notice. They hung out of the windows, laughing, asking if he had a flat tyre. ‘Use the spare!’ one wag yelled. ‘The one keeping your trousers up!’

  Their laughter, the noise, the erratic swerving of the car was enough. Instantly, Nelson was back in control, he didn’t need to remind himself that he was a professional, these boys had welded him seamlessly back to himself. He watched their car edge past at a strolling pace and memorized the index number, even smiling a little as he put the call through to Traffic to have them pulled over and checked for drugs and booze.

  Feeling much better, he drove on a little further, then swung off the road by Grosvenor Park and eased the car into the kerb in front of St John’s church.

  The night was cold, and the wind blew in petulant bursts, subsiding from time to time, before whipping up again to bring in a few spots of icy rain. Between the clouds, the Plough was just discernible, shimmering in the orange-tinged sky. He locked the car and walked down the narrow path between the ruins of the old collegiate church and the park. Its closely mown lawns were damp and sparkled in the ghostly light of a low-energy streetlamp.

  Nights like this, he used to ache to be home. But that was when Beth was still alive. He always called her if he was going to be late and the miracle of it was that she never seemed to mind. She had made an adventure of those nights, listening to the radio while she ironed or sewed. Sometimes she would bake bread.

  He still couldn’t walk past a bakery without having to suppress a bubble of emotion, remembering the warmth of the house as he opened the front door, the air fragrant with yeast and malt and the faintly beery promise of the loaves proving by the hearth. And Beth, waiting for him, so cross with herself if she’d dozed off that he’d quickly learned to slam the door as he came in, to avoid disappointing her.

  She was truly lovely, his Beth, with her thick brown hair and her creamy skin. Full-lipped and generous-spirited. She had seemed to glow with an inner happiness during the pregnancy. Her skin was furred with the faintest hint of down, an ethereal phenomenon, which he could feel with his fingertips and his lips, but which suggested itself to the eyes only as a reflection of light from her face, like a golden aura.

  And with the baby, she had died.

  Not immediately, it wasn’t a sudden demise: she wasted away, body and soul. Soul first, before the rest, in stages, one merging with the other until he couldn’t be sure exactly when she reached the point from which she could not be recalled. It was as if the child had drained all the life out of her. She ignored it and of course it had keened like a lost kitten, endlessly, hopelessly. Even when he had succeeded in coaxing her into holding it, she had only looked at it with a kind of dull disgust.

  Nelson thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his raincoat and trotted down the steps, slowing at the bottom to negotiate the stone sets that glistened, treacherously wet in the lamplight.

  Baby Blues, the doctors had called it. In those days they had simply waited until the woman snapped out of it, hormone imbalances and biochemically induced depression as yet unheard of. So it went on for two years and eventually their GP had prescribed antidepressants, and the boy learned in infancy to mistrust, when he should have known only certainty. Even the provision of comfort and food, which he should have been able to take for granted, were provided sporadically, unreliably, for in Nelson’s absence, when he went to work, or to buy groceries, there was no one to remind Beth, and Beth needed reminders. More importantly, the boy learned that he had no right to love. He was neither loved for himself, nor for what he did. His mother was unpredictable, except in her coldness towards him, and so he learned also to fear. He could not know that as he looked up at them with those huge fearful eyes, his fear and unhappiness was both an accusation and a reproach, but Beth felt it, and finally she could take it no more.

  Nelson turned instead of crossing the footbridge and followed the path beside the river. At this late hour the riverside was deserted. His footsteps echoed in the quiet moments when the wind was still. He continued, deep in thought, only dimly aware of the sound of his footsteps ringing out on the flags and the biting cold nipping at his ears and his fingers.

  He had found her, lying on the sofa, a bottle of whisky empty on the
floor beside her — his whisky — a bottle of paracetamol beside it. Ever practical, she had placed a bowl beside her on the floor, but she hadn’t the strength to lift her head, so she had lain in vomit half the night. The boy had been playing quietly on the floor beside his dead mother, and Nelson’s overriding urge had been to yell at him: Why didn’t you stop her?

  They had pumped the child’s stomach in case he had swallowed any of the pills and Nelson had felt a perverse, shameful, sadistic satisfaction in the boy’s pathetic cries as he balked on the tube.

  She had left a note: ‘I thought it would be so perfect—’ The sentence was unfinished, the note unsigned.

  Nelson paused at the bandstand to catch his breath and looked down at the black water. He hadn’t allowed himself to think of this since the day it happened, since Beth’s suicide. He had blanked out the details of that night, but it was there, always, like a haunting, if not the images of Beth, grey, repugnant in death, as she had never been in life, then the feelings he couldn’t suppress: pulsating, fearful waves of emotion. He thought of all the times he had sat, staring at the boy in silence, hating him for taking Beth from him. The boy had curled up, shielding his eyes, hiding from him, from the hatred that must have flowed from him in tidal surges. Nelson uttered a cry of anguish and jerked away from the rail, walking quickly in the direction of the weir, wanting its roar to silence these newly awakened thoughts.

  ‘He’s burning into my brain!’ the boy had babbled. ‘His eyes. The fire. Make him stop! I can’t think. Help me!’ The screams had pursued Nelson into the corridor, down the staircase, out into the car park of the hospital. They echoed now in his head. He felt they would follow him — accusing him, cursing him for ever.

  * * *

  Helen surfaced briefly from a light sleep of confusing dreams, sighed and sank again. Moonlight and shadows played over the bedding, the dark jagged lines of the twiggy branches, and the pale blue reflections from raindrops on the window, dripping like melting wax down on the covers.