by Faith Martin
‘Oh yeah. Well, I always thought so, anyway. Melvin had a good job, and he weren’t bad looking. She had the kids, never seemed to want for anything. Why shouldn’t she be happy?’ Debbie asked, and there was an edge of bitterness now that was unmistakable. ‘Anyone else would have been. But she had to have more, didn’t she?’
‘It hurt, didn’t it,’ Hillary said softly. ‘When you found out about her and Shane – your own husband. Isn’t that the ultimate betrayal? The one we’re all scared of? That someone we love will go behind our back with someone else we love and trust?’
Debbie smiled and shook her head. ‘At it again, huh? But I’m telling you, like I told Squires before. I didn’t know about it, did I? Not until she was dead, and you lot dug it all up. They kept it very quiet, they did. Must have been very crafty about it, because I hadn’t got a bloody clue, had I? How thick am I?’
‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of, you know,’ Hillary said quietly, leaning forward on her seat to create the illusion of sympathy. ‘If your husband cheats on you, especially with your own little sister, you are allowed to feel hurt and betrayed and angry. I know I would.’
Jimmy, who so far hadn’t said a word, sat and watched and marvelled. He knew Hillary Greene’s own husband had shagged anything that took his eye, and yet nobody would ever guess it from the way she was handling this witness. None of her own personal history showed.
He’d heard before that Hillary was a marvel with witnesses and now he could see the magic working for himself. It was as if Debbie Gregg was being prised open like a walnut, and she was already beginning to talk freely.
‘Well, of course it hurt. I’m only human, ain’t I? But even if I had known about it, it doesn’t mean to say that I’d have hit the poor cow upside the head with her own rolling pin and killed her, does it?’
‘Nobody has said you did.’
‘Squires thought so!’
‘I’m not Detective Inspector Squires,’ Hillary said firmly, holding the other’s woman’s eye. ‘And your sister’s case is now my case, not his. You can tell me anything you like, and I won’t judge you. It’s not my job to do that. Only to try and find out who killed Anne.’
Hillary let that sit for just the right amount of time, and then added softly ‘You’d like to see Anne’s killer caught, wouldn’t you?’
Debbie sighed, her eyes wandering around the room restlessly. ‘It’s been twenty years,’ she said flatly.
Hillary nodded. For the first time, she was avoiding giving an answer. And that was very interesting in itself. Why not come flat out on one side of the fence or the other? If she was guilty, then a vehement affirmation that of course she wanted the killer to be caught must have sounded like a good way to go. And if she was innocent, but still full of self-pity and defiance, then why not go the other way, and sneer and say that she couldn’t care less one way or the other?
But this sudden caution on the part of the witness set Hillary’s radar off with a loud ping.
And not knowing what was behind it, made knowing how to proceed a bit tricky. When in doubt, Hillary had found from past experience that it was best to circle around, and come up with a different angle. She could always ask the question again another time.
‘It gets easier to cope with, after such a long time, is that it?’
Debbie shrugged. ‘It never goes away, but it gets easier, yeah. At first, I knew that everyone was looking at me and pointing the finger. Word gets around, everyone knew the cops kept pulling me in. “No smoke without fire” that’s what they were all thinking. It’s why I had to move away. Came to this place. It got easier then. And people forget, mostly. Oh, they know around here that I had a sister murdered – you can’t keep that a secret for long. And every now and then I catch one or two of them looking at me funny. But mostly nobody bothers me. And I’ve got Colin now. That helps.’
‘Your fellah?’ Hillary prompted. ‘Known him long?’ Could her husband not have been the only one in their marriage that was playing around?
‘Yeah. Colin works up at that racing car place. In maintenance, like. We’ve been together six years now.’
Hillary nodded. So he hadn’t been in the picture when Anne McRae was murdered then. Scratch Colin.
‘That’s nice. Your husband Shane died in a car crash, that right?’ she changed the subject abruptly. Sometimes a sudden switch could startle a straight and condemning answer out of the unwary.
Debbie’s red-painted lips twisted into a sneer. ‘Drunk,’ she confirmed flatly.
‘Oh. Was that as a result of what happened to Anne, or was he always a bit …’ she pantomimed lifting a glass to her lips and Debbie sighed.
‘No. It was Anne all right. Give the devil his due, he wasn’t a boozer before it all happened. But it sent him right off the rails. And it was the end between us, of course. I’m just glad we didn’t have no kids. That would really have done it.’
‘And was not having kids a bit of an issue?’ she probed delicately. And when Debbie frowned at her, obviously not understanding her meaning, added softly, ‘do you think he really wanted kids? Was that why he strayed – with Anne? Or was he always a bit of ladies’ man?’
Debbie shrugged. ‘Who knows? He swore up and down at the time that Anne was the first. But by then I didn’t trust him. Why should I believe him?’
‘And why do you think Anne let it go on?’ Hillary asked, genuinely curious now. ‘Was she bored with Melvin, did she secretly want to get caught, and use it as an excuse for a divorce? Or was she just a bit of a thrill seeker? Some people aren’t happy unless they’re living life on the edge.’
‘Anne was used to winding men around her little finger, that’s all,’ Debbie said angrily. ‘She wasn’t happy unless someone was paying attention to her, admiring her, listening to her, doing her bidding. She used to run that family of hers as if she was a sergeant major in the army. She had Melvin well trained, I can tell you that. I bet he never strayed – he wouldn’t dare! And even the kids jumped to it when she said. There was only room for one person in the spotlight, and that was Anne.’
Hillary nodded. It was always fascinating to have a picture of the victim slowly take shape. From crime-scene photographs of a dead woman, a living, breathing human being was gradually taking shape, with all of her foibles, weaknesses and secrets being dragged into the light.
‘She must have made enemies then. A woman like that,’ Hillary said softly.
Beside her, Jimmy almost smiled. Wily as a fox, this new guv’nor of his, no two ways about it. It was a pleasure to watch her work.
‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’ Debbie said, her face twisting into a wry grimace. ‘But for all that, she could charm the birds out of the trees, as Dad used to say.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘More likely she just learned that you could catch more flies with honey. She was like that. Always got what she wanted, but made you feel like she was the one doing you the favour. Know what I mean?’
Hillary did. ‘Yes, all the reports in her file say she was popular with neighbours and the like.’
‘That was Anne. Mind you, she had her good points too. You gotta be fair.’
‘Working at the charity shop, you mean?’
‘What? Oh that, yeah. No, I wasn’t thinking of that so much,’ Debbie mused with a sigh. ‘She only did that because she was bored, and it got her out of the house. No, I just meant that she was a good mum, for instance. She might have kept a sharp eye out on her kids, but they’d always feel safe and cared for, you know? And she’d help you out if she could, if you had any problems, like. She didn’t begrudge giving you her time or making an effort if you needed it. Once, when I had flu, she practically nursed me through it for the first three days and nights.’
Again her eyes wandered restlessly around the room. ‘It’s still hard to believe she’s gone. Even now I sort of half-expect to hear her voice on the phone when it rings, or to see her come walking through the door.’
It wasn’t the first time
Hillary had heard family members say something similar about a lost loved one.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly.
Debbie’s eyes turned her way again. ‘S’all right. Like I said, it’s been twenty years.’
‘And you really have no idea who killed her?’
‘No, I really don’t.’
‘You never got any feeling that something wasn’t right? When was the last time you saw her?’
‘The weekend before she died. We went over there for Sunday lunch. And she seemed much the same as ever.’
‘She wasn’t upset, or depressed, or angry about anything?’
‘No, not so’s you’d notice. Melvin was abroad, but then he was always abroad, driving that coach of his here and there. I think it used to nark her that he was always “on holiday” when she was stuck back at home. I tried to tell her, it wasn’t as if he was really on holiday, was it? He was working, driving all them hours. I think she resented him living in hotels and seeing all them foreign sights. But like I said to her, he went to the same spots time after time. He always said it just got plain boring after a while.’
‘But apart from that? She wasn’t acting oddly, or upset by anything?’
‘No, just the usual niggles. Family life, all that. I think her Peter was in a snit, because he kept having a dig about something, but Anne just ignored him. And Jenny was playing up merry hell about not getting some sort of game that she’d really wanted for her birthday. Anne finally got narked with her and told her that if she didn’t pack it in, she wouldn’t be getting it for Christmas either. But nothing like what you’re thinking. I didn’t get the impression she was afraid that some mad axe-man was out to get her or anything.’
Hillary nodded. ‘And she never talked to you about any men in her life?’
Debbie snorted with sudden laughter. ‘Well, she wouldn’t, would she? Seeing as it was my husband that was the man in her life at the time.’
With a wry smile, Hillary had to concede that she had a point.
‘So, what do you think?’ Hillary asked, as they returned to the car a little while later. Hillary had taken her through that day again, when her sister had died, but Debbie Gregg had nothing new to add. She’d been at home with no witnesses to confirm it. She had nothing new or different to say, and her responses were almost word-for-word what she’d said to DI Andrew Squires, twenty years ago. But there was nothing necessarily suspicious about that. It might smack of rehearsal, but then again, she’d probably said the same thing over and over so many times, that now it was stuck in her head like a groove in a vinyl record.
Jimmy slid in behind the wheel and shrugged. ‘Hard to say, guv. She didn’t seem to be all cut up, but like she said, it’s been twenty years. She seemed straightforward enough, but then, more often than not, they do, don’t they?’
‘Killers?’
‘Right.’
‘So you agree with Squires? You think she did it, but there just wasn’t the evidence there to prove it?’
Jimmy settled himself more comfortably behind the wheel and shrugged. He was too canny to commit himself so soon. Besides, he had a feeling that Hillary liked to keep an open mind about things, and would probably prefer it if her team did the same. Which was fine by him. ‘It’s hard to say, guv. It’s early days yet.’
‘A pity the husband’s dead,’ Hillary agreed. ‘I would have liked to have heard about the affair from Shane Gregg’s point of view. Would he have given us a similar picture of our victim, I wonder?’
‘I doubt it, guv. In my experience, a man tends to look on the woman he’s with through rose-tinted glasses. Well. For a while, at any rate,’ he added phlegmatically.
Hillary grinned.
‘So where to now, guv?’
‘I’d like to go and take a look at the house where she died. I know the family don’t still live there, but it won’t hurt to get a feel for the place.’
‘Right, guv. To Chesterton then.’
Melvin McRae had not lived in Chesterton for nearly twenty years. After burying his wife and the mother of his three children, he’d put the house up for sale and moved to a neat little semi, not far from St Edburg’s Church in the nearby town of Bicester.
He was still living there that morning, when the letter plopped through his letterbox.
He’d retired from driving the coach two years ago, but had taken a part-time job in a newsagents, more out of loneliness than out of any need for money. His second wife, Shirley, worked full time as a hairdresser in the unisex salon a few shops down, and every lunch time, they’d meet up for a bun in Nash’s. They’d paid off the mortgage on their house, ran a reliable second-hand car, and if they didn’t eat steak and caviar every night, had no complaints. A divorced woman with two grown kids when they first met, he and his wife lived what most people would describe as a mundane, uninteresting life, but it suited them both.
That morning had begun as every other morning had, with Melvin rising first and making tea and toast, the appetizing smell of browning bread being enough to bring Shirley down eventually. He’d read the paper after she’d left for work, and had been working on the less-than-taxing crossword puzzle in a best-selling tabloid when he’d heard the postman.
And along with the usual bills, guff and advertising material, he had produced an official-looking long white envelope bearing the Thames Valley Police Service logo in one corner.
Now Melvin McRae sat at the kitchen table, the remnants of his breakfast still on the countertop by the sink, and read the piece of paper in his hands for a second time. Again, the words seemed to swim in and out of focus and he forced himself to read it yet again. It was that hard to take in.
But they were looking into Anne’s death again.
Eventually, with hands that shook just slightly, he let the single page rest on his knee.
He looked around the kitchen, as if seeking help, but the McRaes didn’t have even a cat to relieve the sudden emptiness of the house or offer comfort.
‘Why now?’ Melvin heard himself ask out loud, and shook his head.
But the question hung there, ominous, vibrating in the air of the still kitchen.
Had they found new evidence?
Had a witness come forward after all this time?
Had someone confessed? No, that wasn’t possible. He was being stupid.
The letter was frustratingly sparing in its details. It simply informed him that the murder of his wife, Anne McRae had been reopened and was being actively investigated by the CRT. And that he could expect to be contacted by a civilian consultant to the police in the near future.
He got up on legs that felt just a little shaky and walked to the sink to refill the kettle. He didn’t really want another cup of tea, but he wanted to do something with his hands.
He stared out over the small neat garden as the kettle began to drone. A chaffinch was on the bird table eating some seeds Shirley had put out yesterday.
Anne.
It had been years now since he’d thought about her – truly thought about her. At first, she’d been with him every moment of every day. And all the baggage that she brought with her. The horror of that moment when he’d been told she was dead. Killed. Murdered. The shame and humiliation when he found out about her and Shane. Memories of the funeral, the publicity, the questioning, the kids, bemused and bewildered and crying for their mum.
The kids.
‘Oh hell, no,’ Melvin McRae said softly, and sitting down abruptly at the table again, he began to cry.
Chesterton was a fairly large village, and sprawled itself without any real cohesion across flat farming land. For ten minutes, Hillary Greene and Jimmy Jessop drove around it, trying to get their bearings.
‘I reckon it must be in one of these cul-de-sacs, guv,’ Jimmy finally said, pulling back onto the main street. ‘I didn’t see any street signs back there for Cherry Tree Crescent, did you?’
‘No, but wasn’t there a blind turn-off back up here a bit. Yes, just her
e, see it? Perhaps this is it.’
A few moments later they were parked up at the end of a cul-de-sac that did indeed proclaim itself to be Cherry Tree Crescent and climbed out of the car. There were about fourteen small houses in number, all detached but set close together in a sweeping semi-circle around a central grassed area that did in fact, boast three cherry trees.
The houses had probably been considered modest affairs back in the 1990s, but would probably now sell for a sum that would have made Anne McRae’s eyes shine with delight.
‘Nice enough area,’ Jimmy said, glancing around, as a pair of amorous robins flitted past them.
‘Yes. What number were they?’
‘Eleven. That one there.’ Jimmy pointed.
Number eleven looked like all the others: yellow-bricked, grey-tiled and double-glazed. A small front garden held host to a forsythia bush that was just beginning to flower. ‘They’d have back gardens stretching back almost to the road, I reckon,’ Hillary said, remembering from the file that a neighbour had seen their murder victim working in the back garden on the afternoon of her death.
‘Don’t suppose there’s any way around to the back?’ she asked, setting off for the end house. But they were in luck, for a narrow pavement did in fact circumnavigate the area. A near twenty-foot tall wooden fence screened the houses from the road beyond, so no one driving by could see into the windows. At the rear of the houses, most of the gardens were also protected from prying eyes by wooden fences, but she could imagine that the linear boundaries were probably a bit less stark. Privet hedges maybe, or lattice-work festooned with climbers. It would have been easy for neighbours to chat across them, and see one another from their own windows.
They went all the way around and back out to the front again. On the other side of Cherry Tree Crescent was a scrubby-looking field being cropped now by some placidly grazing sheep.
‘Not much passing foot-traffic,’ she said flatly. ‘No wonder DI Squires had so much trouble finding witnesses. Unless you had business here, nobody had any reason to be passing by. And the houses can’t be seen from the road.’
