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

by MARGARET MURPHY

  Helen’s pulse quickened. ‘Are you saying that’s what happened to Edward? That he deserved to die?’

  Ruth’s eyebrows quirked. ‘He certainly didn’t deserve to flourish.’

  ‘I wish I had your single-minded sense of purpose,’ Helen said bitterly.

  Ruth laughed. ‘But you do! How else d’you think you’ve survived all of this? Edward, his petty cruelty, the miscarriage, the death of your brother, the indifference of your parents — despite everything, and still you managed to make your mark in this male-dominated arsehole of academe?’

  ‘I put up with Edward’s infidelity,’ Helen said, playing devil’s advocate, ‘I accepted his constant criticisms.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have for much longer. You’d been fantasizing about doing him in for months. It was only a matter of time.’

  ‘They were just that — fantasies. I couldn’t have killed him — at least I hope not. I might’ve left him . . .’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody wet, Helen! Left him! After what he did to you?’

  ‘You meant it, didn’t you?’ Helen said, shivering in the cold, but unwilling to return to the house. ‘When you said someone had done me a favour, getting rid of him. Do you really think the only fitting punishment for Ed was death?’

  ‘Eye for an eye, life for a life. I can’t help it, Helen, it’s my Jewish upbringing,’ Helen thought she was serious, at least in part. ‘You should have some sympathy with that, being a good Catholic girl.’

  Helen looked into Ruth’s eyes and saw, for the first time in the blue irises, several shades lighter than her own, a cold, uncompromising venom. ‘I’m an atheist,’ she said, a little breathlessly. ‘And anyway, Catholic teaching comes from the New Testament.’

  ‘Turn the other cheek, all that bullshit? Spare me!’ Ruth exclaimed. ‘Accept that dishwater doctrine and you may as well go around with a “kick me” sign on your backside. That’s your trouble, Helen. If a task is too unpalatable, you can’t see it through to the end; it’s a weakness that diseases every aspect of your life. Take your research — too bloody for you?’ Her voice took on a whimpering, high-pitched, childish quaver. ‘Let’s use something innocuous and inoffensive, like nice, pink, agar jelly. What was it with the drugs pusher? Did you feel sorry for him at the last moment? His poor upbringing, his lack of a good male role model? Did you ease off the accelerator a millisecond before impact? Too much blood, Helen?’

  Helen stared at her friend. Was this what Ruth really thought of her?

  ‘Edward did everything in his power to destroy you,’ Ruth went on, ‘your confidence, your reputation, your academic standing within the department, even your identity as a woman — and yet you couldn’t find it in you to do something about it.’

  Helen’s heartbeat matched the noise in her head — the insistent beat of Acid House music — the track that had been playing when she had heard Robbie’s first screams and had run to find him squirming on the floor, grotesque, his head swollen, his face distorted with pain and retained fluid. The track ran on as she’d tried to revive him, called for an ambulance, rang her parents. One hundred and twenty beats per minute; the heartbeat of an infant.

  Suddenly, everything made sense.

  ‘Come into the kitchen,’ Helen said. ‘I want to show you something.’

  * * *

  ‘You might be interested in this, sir.’ DC Tact had interrupted the continuing discussion between Hackett and Nelson.

  ‘Well, will I or won’t I?’ Nelson snapped. ‘Don’t ponce about, lad!’

  ‘Not for me to say, sir.’

  Nelson sighed, heavily. Tact was another in the mould of Hackett. Said what he thought and remained impervious to criticism. He’d that dreamy, abstracted look on his face that he said he’d been pratting about with computers. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s have it.’

  ‘Best if I demonstrate,’ Tact said.

  Nelson set his jaw and took a few deep breaths before slouching through to the main office with his hands in his pockets. Bits of cannibalized computer hardware had been tucked against the wall behind Tact’s desk; among the detritus Nelson recognized the dented outer casing of Molyneux’s PC.

  ‘There was a lot of damage,’ Tact explained, his voice taking on an authoritative air that only ever seemed to surface when he was talking about computers. ‘Blown chips, mostly. But the hard drive was intact, apart from a few damaged sectors. I’ve fitted it into a similar PC, so we can run the programs and data stored on it.’ His eyes were fixed on the monitor. ‘Actually, it was a good idea of yours, sir, to check it over.’

  ‘We aim to please.’ Nelson replied, heavy on the sarcasm.

  Tact did not notice. ‘I’m going into the folder where Molyneux stored the images of Ellis before transmitting them. As you can see, there’s four images stored. The first two are of Ellis — I’ve checked them. But this one . . .’ There was a delay, while the computer loaded the file. A blurred image, shadowy behind the window of Helen’s study. ‘I think he was working on it, trying to enhance the focus before downloading it to the Recorder.’

  ‘Not much help, is it, bar the fact you can see it’s a woman.’

  ‘The next image,’ Tact said, clicking on icons and waiting while the drive loaded the second file, ‘is much clearer.’

  ‘Oh aye,’ Nelson said, taking his hands from his pockets and leaning on the desk to get a closer look at the screen. ‘You can see who that is, all right.’

  * * *

  The two women sat at opposite sides of Helen’s kitchen table. Between them lay the blood-encrusted knife, still wrapped in its plastic food bag.

  ‘How does it feel to be a fugitive from justice, Helen?’ Ruth asked.

  ‘Fugitive implies on the run,’ she said. ‘I don’t intend to run.’ Helen was shivering violently, but it wasn’t from cold.

  Ruth touched the corner of the bag, then withdrew her hand. ‘What are you going to do about this? The police will be back soon, with their warrant.’

  ‘I intend to give it to them.’

  ‘They’ll arrest you.’

  ‘Yes, but they won’t convict me.’

  ‘You’re certain you didn’t kill Edward?’

  Helen thought carefully about what she wanted to say, before answering that question. ‘Someone killed Edward and kept the knife, and I can’t imagine why anyone would do that. A woman might kill out of jealousy, or because Edward was blackmailing her; a man — well, I suppose jealousy might be a motive there, too, but of a different kind. Almost anyone might have killed Ed in a rage against his vicious treatment of them during the interviews.’

  ‘So, you do understand,’ Ruth said quietly.

  ‘I can understand the motivation, but not the hoarding of the knife, and I can’t imagine what I did that so pissed them off that they planted the knife here, in my home.’

  ‘Clara must be feeling fairly bruised — she’s lost Ed and her husband,’ Ruth suggested. ‘She might blame you.’

  ‘She may have a key, I suppose. Whoever it was must have had a key — there was no sign of break-in. But why would Clara blame me? And anyway, would she risk leaving the baby to come here and leave the knife, just to give me a scare?’

  ‘Don’t judge everyone by your own standards.’

  Helen stared at Ruth. Her eyes seemed cold, wintry, bleak. ‘That is a mistake I make, isn’t it? For instance, when you concocted that story for the police about you and me being together most of the afternoon the day Edward was murdered. Were you my alibi, or was I yours?’

  ‘Come on, Helen, there was a whole hour between three, when we said we split up, and the time you got home. What advantage could that give me?’

  Helen wasn’t ready to discuss that as yet. She said: ‘He was seeing someone else.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ruth said, impatient. ‘Clara. You knew that.’

  ‘No. I mean other than Clara. I always knew when he’d found someone else, started a new affair. He was livelier. Jaunty. Never so alive as
when he had a new lover.’

  Ruth blinked. ‘Who do you think that was?’

  ‘I was hoping you’d tell me. You seem to know so much about everyone. We all confided in Ruth, didn’t we? Reliable Ruth. Rational Ruth. Ruthless Ruth?’

  ‘Nice alliteration,’ Ruth smiled, uneasily.

  ‘Did you want them to find it, Ruth? Did you want the police to arrest me? Why? I don’t understand.’

  ‘That makes two of us.’ Ruth laughed. ‘Look, why don’t I pour us a drink and let’s both calm down.’

  ‘Sit down.’ Helen stood, seizing the knife through the plastic and Ruth collapsed back in her chair. ‘The police knew Ed had had sex before he was murdered — there’s forensic evidence. Edward had a lot of failings — and believe me, I knew them all — but he wasn’t a five-minute man. So, let’s say, twenty minutes — that’s how long it’d take me to walk home from the university. Time for a little foreplay, sex and murder, then enough leeway — another twenty minutes — for you to drive back to your office. It doesn’t seem feasible.’

  ‘You’re bloody right it doesn’t seem feasible.’

  ‘Stop it, Ruth!’ Helen begged. ‘Please stop! Were you counting on the police thinking the same thing? That Edward’s murder had been carefully planned and carried out — that it was unhurried, a precision job? With the alibi I gave you, how could they possibly suspect you?’

  Ruth spread her hands. ‘Helen, sweetheart, I really don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’

  ‘You put the knife in the cupboard upstairs. Why? Was it some kind of game? You always did like your games, didn’t you Ruth?’ She stopped, amazed she hadn’t seen it before. ‘You and Edward were so alike. Both supremely arrogant. Both feeding off control. Is that why you started seeing him? Because you had so much in common?’

  ‘You bloody bitch!’ Ruth snarled, suddenly furious. ‘You’ve no idea, have you?’

  ‘I know you had an affair with my husband while professing to loathe him, and all the while you let me believe that you were my friend.’

  ‘Believe it,’ Ruth said.

  ‘I want an explanation.’

  Ruth laughed, gently mocking, not without affection. ‘I’m surprised you need one. And I’m not sure you deserve one. But for old times’ sake . . . And do us both a favour — put down the knife — you know you’re not going to use it.’

  Until a few seconds ago, Helen had not been sure, but now she knew: she could not harm Ruth, no matter what she had done. She eased the knife onto the table.

  Ruth stared at it for some time.

  ‘I’m listening,’ Helen said.

  Ruth’s gaze lifted slowly from the weapon to Helen’s face. ‘I did what you wanted, but couldn’t do,’ she said. ‘You came up with the idea yourself. The fantasies. Killing him in bed, where he was at his most vulnerable, where he would least expect to be attacked. All I did was to act it out for you. It was the easiest thing in the world, persuading Edward I was infatuated with him. Narcissistic bastard! We had arranged to meet after he’d had a whole morning of humiliating his colleagues. He was horny as hell.’

  She smiled at Helen’s revulsion. ‘Yes, I screwed him first. Just the once, to see what it was like. In a way, that’s what all of this was about. Seeing what it was like. First encounters. New experiences. And, of course I knew I’d be helping you out.’

  ‘I didn’t ask for your help,’ Helen said.

  ‘Didn’t you?’ Ruth shrugged. ‘Crossed wires, I suppose. Scrambled signals, but I took you at your word when you said you’d like to see him dead.’

  ‘I never saw you as an altruist.’

  ‘You know, Nelson said almost the same thing, only he didn’t use that particular word.’

  ‘You underestimate people, Ruth.’ There was open hostility between them now.

  Ruth shook her head, her mouth curved down. ‘Nah. I know, for instance that you won’t turn me in. You see, you really did want him dead. You hated Edward, and I haven’t heard you lamenting his passing — no one has. Also, you’d tried to kill someone before — and failed, admittedly — but the will was there.’

  She leaned forward suddenly. ‘You understand it, Helen. Tell me you didn’t enjoy the rush it gave you, seeing the look on his face.’ She smiled. ‘You can’t, can you?’

  Helen wouldn’t lie, but she wouldn’t answer the question, either.

  ‘I’ve disappointed you, haven’t I?’ she said. ‘What was it — the fact that I stopped acting like “poor little Helen”, and started taking my own decisions? Did you disapprove of my independence, Ruth? Or was it the loss of control that infuriated you? I wasn’t following the sub-routines you’d carefully tapped into my programming — you’ll have to get to grips with that, Ruth. Neural Networks are supposed to develop minds of their own.’

  She saw a flare of heat in Ruth’s face and realized that she’d hit a nerve.

  She couldn’t know that for one brief fraction of time Ruth was a scabby-kneed child, crouched in the hot dirt on a spring day, screaming at a beetle, wanting to make it notice her, finally making it take notice.

  Ruth’s mouth twitched. ‘Just thinking. The knife blade slipped between Edward’s ribs easier than a blackthorn into the thorax of the beetle.’

  * * *

  ‘We could move in with the warrant and search the place,’ Hackett suggested.

  ‘And warn the other one we’re on to her.’ Nelson unwrapped the egg sandwich he had bought on the way to Helen Wilkinson’s house. He’d parked with deliberate obtrusiveness directly outside her front gate.

  ‘We both know it’s got to be Ruth,’ Hackett said. ‘The picture’s clear enough. Her going into the house shortly after Ellis left.’

  ‘She’s a friend of Helen’s. She pops in and out all the time. Unless we can get confirmation from Molyneux that it was her who hit him over the head, we can’t arrest her. Look, Hackett, I’m on your side. We know Ruth’s done it, but what have we got? Bugger all’s what we’ve got.’

  ‘So we waste time freezing our arses outside an innocent woman’s house,’ Hackett said.

  ‘Tetchy today, aren’t we?’ Nelson was feeling the kind of euphoria only experienced after the remission of a near-fatal hangover. ‘Missed our beauty sleep, have we?’ He sank his teeth into the egg sandwich, thinking with perverse satisfaction of the unsettling effect eggs invariably had on his digestion. ‘Here,’ He thrust a copy of the Chester Recorder in Hackett’s lap. ‘Have a squint at that, it’ll take your mind off, make time pass.’

  Hackett opened the paper and flicked the interior light on. The front-page headline read:

  DON JUAN WIDOW IN NEW ATTACK PUZZLE

  Below it, a picture of Helen Wilkinson gazing up at the house. Next to it, a column on Dermot Molyneux — Ace photographer . . . ‘Bloody hell,’ Hackett grumbled. ‘“Ace photographer.” They’re not serious, are they?’ Brought you the news as it happened . . . He skimmed the rest. Condition described as critical . . . And a photograph. Molyneux with his tousled hair and disarming grin. Beneath that, a shorter piece on John Ellis:

  SECOND TRAGEDY STRIKES JINXED COLLEGE

  Hackett tilted the paper to Nelson. ‘Yeah, really takes your mind off.’

  Nelson found himself staring into the face of his son. He blinked, swallowed painfully, and the picture resolved into a bad passport photograph of Ellis. Hackett went back to reading the paper.

  Nelson, who had never confided in a colleague, nor anyone else since Beth had died, suddenly felt the need to talk.

  ‘You’re a family man, aren’t you?’ If he’d he sensed a shift in attentiveness, if Hackett had given him one of his cat’s eye once-overs, Nelson would have clammed up immediately, but he didn’t.

  ‘Teenage kids don’t constitute a family,’ Hackett said. ‘They constitute trouble.’

  Nelson glanced across.

  ‘Don’t ask,’ Hackett said. ‘You don’t want to know.’

  Nelson thought perhaps he did, which su
rprised him: he wasn’t generally interested in the personal lives of his team. He thought he might even understand. Of course, the boy’s psychiatrist wouldn’t agree: Dr Smith acted like he was the one with the problem and not the boy. ‘Rejection, isolation, they’re very damaging,’ Smith had said.

  ‘I told my boy’s shrink today that I’d hated my son ever since my wife died.’ Had he really said that, and to a shrink?

  ‘Why?’ He sounded curious, rather than horrified.

  ‘Christ knows. I suppose I’m just so bloody knackered I was off my guard.’

  ‘No,’ Hackett said. ‘I meant, why do you hate him?’

  Nelson realized belatedly that this was not something he wanted to discuss in detail. He had expected that he would say what he needed to say to unburden himself and that would be the end of it. He had not been prepared for this interest, even less for direct questions, however, since he had brought the subject up, he felt he had to say something aside from ‘mind your own bloody business’.

  ‘The shrink says it wasn’t his fault.’

  ‘Your wife’s death?’

  Nelson felt a shock like a physical blow. Your wife’s death.

  Just like that. Out in the open, like any normal topic of conversation. Like: did you watch the match on the telly last night? or I wish this sodding rain’d stop, or how’re the kids — and by the way, how do you feel about your wife’s death?

  ‘Maybe it wasn’t his fault,’ Hackett said.

  ‘What do you know?’ Nelson demanded. Hackett sighed and went back to reading the paper, leaving Nelson to his thoughts.

  It was the boy’s fault. If he hadn’t been born, she’d’ve been fine. She was okay until she had Ian. They had given him his name when Beth was seven months pregnant; they had waited until then because Beth didn’t want to invite bad luck. And they had loved him, made plans for him, for the three of them. They had loved and wanted their son until he was born, then, because Beth had rejected him, Jack Nelson had no longer wanted the child, either.

  ‘Christ!’ he muttered. ‘This bloody case is starting to get to me.’ He threw the remains of the sandwich out of the window and stifled a belch.