The Adulterer's Wife: a breathtaking psychological thriller

by Leigh Russell

  ‘Traces of your DNA on a coat in a charity shop would only prove you’d worn it or had tried it on. It wouldn’t provide evidence that you travelled to Scotland and back in it, returning too late to have killed Bella.’ He paused. ‘You could have gone into a charity shop after you killed her and tried a coat on with the intention of fabricating an alibi.’ He shook his head. ‘The coat proves nothing.’ He gave me a curious look. ‘Did you kill her? I’m beginning to wonder if you’re actually an extremely cunning woman.’

  ‘No. No, I didn’t.’

  He nodded. ‘Our problem is that you have a motive for killing both your husband and his mistress, and we are unable to prove you didn’t have the opportunity to commit both crimes. Jealousy and revenge are powerful emotions. I know you remain adamant you didn’t kill them, but you wouldn’t be the first if you had.’

  He left after promising me he would do whatever he could to prove my innocence, but it was a very unsatisfactory meeting. Had it not been for my son, I would have been tempted to give up the fight altogether.

  When I was told my brother had come to visit me, I stood up with alacrity. Ackerman was one of the few people who might be able to help me. Perhaps he was the only one. I needed to keep him on my side. Like Andrew, he insisted I tell him everything I had done since we’d parted at King’s Cross station.

  ‘And I mean everything,’ he insisted. ‘Don’t leave out a single detail.’

  He muttered something incomprehensible when I reached the part where I had discarded his oilskin jacket, but other than that he heard me out in silence, an expression of intense concentration on his face. I even went through my entire conversation with Andrew.

  ‘So, finding the coat will prove nothing,’ I concluded.

  ‘Unless you left your train ticket in the pocket,’ he said. ‘Now, how would you have known it was there if you hadn’t put it there yourself?’

  ‘You’re right. Although Andrew would point out that would only establish the fact that I bought a ticket. It wouldn’t prove I actually travelled anywhere.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true. It could be a ruse to set up an alibi,’ he agreed. ‘Andrew’s right. A prosecuting barrister would drive a coach and horses through a defence like that. Now, are you sure you’ve told me everything? You didn’t speak to anyone on your journey back to London?’

  ‘No. I was being careful not to leave any trace. I’ve told you everything I can remember, as accurately as I can.’

  ‘Leave it with me then. I’ll see what else I can find out. But first, there’s something I have to do.’

  He strode out of the room without a backward glance. The following day he was back, wearing a new coat.

  ‘How are you today, sis?’ He leaned forward. ‘There’s something I didn’t tell you yesterday. Are you paying attention?’ He lowered his voice to barely more than a whisper. ‘I’ve seen the autopsy report. There was evidence your husband had ingested Rohypnol before he died.’

  ‘I know. You already told me that. The police told me about it as well.’

  ‘I had a word with one of the SOCOs on the forensic team. Did the police also mention that traces of the drug were found on two glasses in your home?’

  ‘So?’

  It was clear from his animated expression that he was telling me something significant. I just didn't know what.

  ‘If you were slipping a roofie into someone’s drink, would you drug yourself as well?’ He paused, one eyebrow raised quizzically.

  I thought about what he said. ‘I was very groggy next morning,’ I said, ‘but I thought it was just a hangover.’

  ‘Did you have a headache?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I did. But I don't remember drinking with him when I got home.’

  ‘One of the effects of Rohypnol is that it induces a temporary amnesia. You might well not remember what happened afterwards.’

  ‘I don't remember. I don't remember anything.’

  ‘Which suggests you might have been given Rohypnol as well.’

  ‘Would I have been able to smother my husband with a pillow if I’d been drugged?’

  ‘No way. You’d have been unconscious.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. If it were urgent I’d have told you straight away. But you might mention it to Andrew next time you see him, in case the police haven’t shared the information with him either.’

  ‘I will, but I still don’t understand why you didn’t tell me straight away.’

  He shrugged. ‘I was busy.’

  ‘Busy? With what?’

  ‘I had to get myself a coat.’

  22

  When I heard that my son had come to see me, I felt as though I was suffocating. For a moment I couldn’t say anything.

  ‘Here?’ I asked when I found my voice. ‘My son’s come here? To see me? Are you sure?’

  I was impatient to see him but before going to the visitors’ room I went to the bathroom and washed my face, although I had showered that morning and my face wasn’t dirty. My hair was a mess, but I didn’t have a brush or comb on me. All I could do was run my fingers through it and try to make it look tidy. Smoothing the creases in my shirt, I hurried along the corridor to the room where Dan was waiting.

  My son was looking around with a surprised expression when I entered the room. My breath caught in my throat at the sight of him, he looked so small and helpless all on his own. Catching sight of me, his jaw dropped. Despite his apparent consternation, his hand rose in a tentative wave, but he didn’t answer my smile as I approached.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ he blurted out as I took my seat. Close I could see he had been crying. ‘Why did you kill him?’

  His direct question shocked me, as did his evident distress. We stared at one another for a moment. After weeks of rehearsing what I was going to say to him, when we finally faced one another I was unable to utter a word. The silence between us grew awkward, and I was aware that we might not have long. I forced myself to speak.

  ‘Dan...’ I stammered, ‘you can't believe I would ever do anything to hurt your father...’

  ‘Tell me what happened to him.’

  I shook my head. ‘I wish I could answer that question, and believe me I’d tell you if I could, but I simply don’t know. Even the police don’t know, and they’ve been investigating his death ever since it happened. No one knows how he died. But they think someone killed him, and I promise you it wasn’t me.’

  ‘So why are you here? First Nana Stella said you were in prison because you went crazy when you were drunk and killed him in a fight, then she said they let you out of prison because you didn’t do it, then she said you were back in prison because it was you all along.’

  ‘I didn’t do it.’

  ‘So why are you here now?’

  Having regained my composure sufficiently to be able to talk coherently, I tried to explain that I was being punished for having disobeyed an order to stay in London.

  ‘Why weren’t you allowed to leave London?’

  ‘It’s just something that happens when the police are carrying out an investigation. They wanted me to stay around in case they needed to ask me anything. They think what I have to say could be important because I knew your dad, and the house. And they think I might be able to help them because I know everyone your dad knew.’

  That wasn’t the case while Paul was alive, but it might be true since.

  Dan nodded. ‘So, the police want you to stay around. I think I get that. But why did you leave London then? If you weren’t allowed to?’

  ‘I went to Edinburgh to see you. Didn’t Nana Stella tell you? I’ve missed you so much.’

  ‘But I never saw you in Edinburgh,’ he replied, looking puzzled.

  ‘No. I went all the way there on the train.’ It crossed my mind to ask him whether he would tell the police he had seen me in Edinburgh at around midnight, but I couldn’t ask him to lie for me. It was simpler to stick to the trut
h. Or a version of it, anyway. ‘When I arrived your grandmother and I decided you might find it confusing to see me, so I went straight back to London. We didn’t want to upset you. We only did what we thought was best for you.’

  He shook his head. ‘Nana Stella didn’t tell me that. She doesn’t tell me everything.’ He paused and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial tone. ‘She didn’t want me to come here. She said you’re in prison and it’s not a nice place, and I shouldn’t come here. But I told her I was going to see you and she couldn’t stop me. So, she came to London with me. She’s waiting for me outside. She didn’t want to come in.’

  I reached across the table and took his hand. ‘I’m very pleased you came,’ I said. ‘Far more pleased than I can possibly put into words.’

  ‘It’s difficult, isn’t it?’ he agreed. ‘To say what you mean.’

  I remembered his childhood struggles to speak clearly, and the exercises I used to help him do for the speech therapist, but that wasn’t what he meant.

  ‘Yes, it can be very difficult,’ I said. ‘Sometimes it’s hard to find the right words, and sometimes it seems impossible to even work out what it is we want to say.’

  ‘But why are you in prison?’ he asked, reverting to his earlier question. ‘Nana Stella said they let you out because you didn’t do it, and you’re telling me you didn’t do it. So, I don’t understand why you’re still here. Why can’t we go home?’

  ‘The police haven’t finished their investigation,’ I replied. ‘They want to find out how your father died, and we need to know that too. The police think someone killed him, and until they find out who it was, we can’t go home.’

  Dan stared at me. ‘What do you mean?’ he stammered. ‘I don’t understand. Why can’t we go home now? Why?’

  His face had turned even paler and he was writhing in his chair, a physical sign of his agitation.

  I spoke firmly. ‘Dan, you need to stay calm. Breathe slowly. Close your eyes and concentrate on your breathing.’

  ‘But he was murdered!’

  ‘Yes, that’s what they think. It would have been very quick, Dan. The doctor said he wouldn’t have suffered at all. Anyway, the police still want to talk to me, to see if I can help them find out who killed him, and how it happened. They even thought at first that I might have been responsible. But of course, I wasn’t. You know I would never do anything to hurt your father. I... I loved him very much.’

  Dan’s face creased in a wretched smile. ‘I know you did, Mum. I love him too. And I love you.’

  I could no longer control my tears.

  ‘Wait... there’s more...’ I stammered, wondering how to explain that I had only been allowed out on bail. ‘It’s complicated, but I’m not completely free, not yet. The police are still looking into what happened. Basically, until they conclude their investigation, they’re going to want to know where I am, all the time. So, I can’t go away anywhere for now. It’s because they don’t trust me not to come to Scotland again, to see you.’

  He nodded. ‘I always knew you didn’t do it.’

  My spirits rose. Dan believed I was innocent, and in that moment, nothing else mattered.

  ‘What about me?’ he asked.

  ‘You’re okay staying with Nana and Granddad for now, aren’t you?’

  ‘Can’t I come home with you, Mum?’

  I hadn’t anticipated that question. ‘Of course, you’ll be coming home with me, but not just yet.’

  ‘Why not?’

  I glanced helplessly at him.

  ‘Apart from anything else, it wouldn’t be fair on Nana and Granddad to take you away from them so soon. They love having you staying with them, and you know your visit is really helping them to cope with losing your dad. In any case, I’ve just explained to you that I can’t go home just yet. The police haven’t finished their enquiries.’

  He paused. ‘They searched me when I came in,’ he said. ‘I had to walk through a huge metal door and they shut that behind me before they opened another huge metal door and then they shut that one behind me. And then they asked me to empty out my pockets and I had to walk through a metal detector. I asked them if they were looking for a gun. It’s like-’ He paused, searching for the words to describe what he meant.

  ‘Like a prison?’ I suggested softly.

  ‘Like a space-ship. I was going to say it’s like a space-ship.’

  I smiled.

  ‘But why can’t we go home, Mum?’

  ‘I told you, the police are still busy looking into it all. Until they finish, they can’t let us go home.’

  ‘Why not? Are they still searching the house for clues? Like in CSI?’ he asked, his eyes suddenly alight with understanding.

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly what it’s like.’

  That wasn't true. Apart from the fact that the forensic examination of my house had been completed, compared to the glamorised forensic science of the glossy American television series, the real-life search seemed to have been protracted, rigorous and professional, involving a lot of tedious sample gathering and testing of various fragments of different materials, all resulting in very little as far as I could tell. But the comparison seemed to make him happy. At any rate he nodded, apparently satisfied.

  ‘Okay, then,’ he said. ‘Now I get what you're doing here.’

  And just like that, it seemed his questions had all been answered. I had finally come up with a reason he understood to explain his continuing stay at his grandparents’ house. It was true that I wasn’t allowed to return home at the moment, but that was only because I was a suspect in a double murder investigation. It was also true that the police were still searching for clues, although no longer in my house. So, although what I had told Dan wasn’t strictly true, I hadn’t lied to him either.

  Telling lies is easy. The truth is rarely simple.

  23

  Slowly I settled back into my life in prison. There was no point in fighting against my situation and it wasn't that bad, once I got used to it. There were getting on for a thousand of us at the facility which had originally been designed to hold seven hundred prisoners, so many of the women had to share cells. That caused problems, mainly when someone was kept awake by her cell-mate snoring.

  I was lucky to have a cell to myself, and was allowed to keep photos of Dan on the shelf beside my bed. In fact, the management actively encouraged prisoners to stay in close contact with their families on the outside and allowed unrestricted phone calls and regular weekly visits. I had even been permitted to give my son a hug and a kiss when he had visited me. The memory of that kept me buoyed up for days afterwards. Of course, I wasn't a convicted criminal, but innocent until proven guilty, along with around twenty per cent of the prisoners who were also there on remand, awaiting trial. We were treated more leniently than those serving a sentence, but even those who had been convicted seemed resigned to their circumstances, and generally content. Their attitude surprised me when I first arrived, because of course none of us were at liberty. We were safe and well cared for within the confines of the prison, but we couldn’t leave and at night we were locked in our cramped cells for a twelve-hour stretch.

  Almost as restricting as the loss of freedom was the daily routine which forced us out of bed at seven o’clock every morning and had us back in our cells at seven every evening. That was when it really hit me that I was being held in a prison. My bed was comfortable enough, once I grew accustomed to it, but I resented being subjected to such an early lock-up time. Conversely, it was difficult getting up so early every morning with a dreary day stretching ahead in seemingly endless boredom. This was real loss of control, daily, grinding me down. I tried not to let it get to me, but it was a struggle not to succumb to depression.

  For the first few days, I avoided the company of my fellow prisoners, members of an intimidating criminal class with whom I had nothing in common. Afraid of being bullied, I had heard prison described as a training ground for villains and feared for my future. But as
day followed day in a monotonous routine, I became cautiously acquainted with a few of the other women. Like me, Tracey was also awaiting trial, but she had been arrested for fraud. Tall and slim, with neatly cut greying hair, she held herself very upright. She never told me the details of her alleged criminal activities, only that her ex-boss deserved to lose everything.

  ‘He’s the one who should be locked up, not me,’ she said, slagging him off in some of the foulest language I had ever heard.

  When she wasn't talking about her boss, she was well spoken and personable, so I avoided enquiring into her background and we became friends, after a fashion. We both knew that we would never see one another again once we left the prison. In the meantime, it was comforting to feel I had a friend in there, and I hoped she felt the same. We walked together in the garden, a path barely wide enough to allow two people to walk side by side, bordered by narrow flower-beds tended by prisoners.

  Polly was the only convicted prisoner to befriend me. She told me she was nineteen although she looked at least thirty, and she was serving a sentence for repeated shoplifting.

  ‘It's all right for them,’ she told me.

  She never clarified who ‘they’ were but appeared to hold a grudge against anyone who wasn't in prison. Listening to Polly complaining, I tried not to think about the clothes I had stolen to disguise myself and couldn't help wondering if I had just been luckier than her. But she was going to be released in a few months’ time. If I went down, it would be for life. I couldn't imagine spending the rest of my life locked in that small place with nothing to do but eat and sleep, walk and read. When it rained, I couldn't even go outside. I was offered work in the kitchens but declined. Once I was out of there I would be a wealthy woman, in possession of a house and a small fortune. I didn't need to do menial work for a pittance. But afterwards I regretted having turned down the offer. It would have helped to pass the time.