The Judas Scar

by Amanda Jennings

  ‘Who did you say?’ Harmony barked. Her heart started pounding.

  ‘Mr Barratt-Jones.’

  ‘Ian?’ she asked. ‘Is the man called Ian?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the lawyer. ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Yes, I bloody do,’ said Harmony, suddenly incensed. ‘And he’s bloody lying too.’

  As soon as she put the phone down, Harmony grabbed her keys from the hook and ran out of the flat to the car. As she drove she drummed her fingers against the steering wheel. Ian was Luke’s alibi? Why? Why would he lie to protect Luke?

  She turned off the M40 and took the road that led to the village where Emma and Ian lived, her mind seething.

  ‘Answer the door!’ Harmony shouted, banging on the door of Oak Dene Hall with the flat of her hand.

  She knew they were in; she’d seen Emma cross in front of the kitchen window when she pulled up. Harmony banged again on the door. ‘Emma! Let me in. I need to talk to you!’

  Emma hadn’t returned any of her phone calls since the police arrested Will and now she knew why. Harmony kicked at the gravel in frustration, then marched up to the kitchen window and peered in. She saw a flash of one of the children and swore under her breath. She went back to the front door and began to hammer on it again.

  ‘Emma! I’m not bloody leaving!’ Harmony paused but still her friend didn’t come to the door. ‘I just want to talk to you,’ Harmony said, no longer shouting. She rested her head against the door, suddenly feeling alone and desolate. Then she turned and sat down on the step, her head in her hands. She heard the door open and jumped to her feet.

  ‘Harmony,’ said Emma. ‘What are you doing here?’

  She was dressed in tracksuit bottoms and an old sweatshirt, and wearing no make-up, the skin around her eyes pink and puffy. Harmony couldn’t remember seeing Emma without make-up. Even when they were younger, make-up was always done first thing in the morning. Her face looked old, wrinkles she hadn’t been aware of lined her eyes and lips. Her hair was clean and brushed neatly.

  The two women stood either side of the door frame, neither of them moving. ‘Is Ian here?’ Harmony said. ‘I need to speak to him.’

  Emma shook her head. ‘No, he’s not.’

  ‘Can I come in?’

  Emma glanced at her quickly and Harmony saw the hesitation on her face.

  ‘Please?’

  She saw Emma wavering.

  ‘I promise I won’t stay long.’

  Emma stepped to one side and allowed Harmony in. The house smelt of Pledge and floor cleaner. In the kitchen, the surfaces shone, not a speck of dust or an out-of-place paper anywhere to be seen. The sound of children’s television from the den broke the silence.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ Emma asked, without making eye contact.

  ‘Will didn’t do it.’

  Emma turned away from her to fill the kettle from the tap. She turned the tap off, but kept her back to Harmony and put her hands on the edge of the sink and gripped it.

  ‘Will didn’t kill that man,’ Harmony said again.

  Emma turned around and crossed her arms. ‘I don’t know what to say, Harmony.’

  Harmony felt the sting of tears and her stomach knotted. ‘Just say you believe me.’

  ‘The court will have to—’

  ‘Fuck the court!’

  Emma turned slowly round to put the kettle back on its base and flick its switch.

  ‘It was Luke Crawford.’

  Emma shook her head, there was a stoop to her shoulders that aged her.

  ‘Luke killed him.’

  Emma turned to face her. ‘He didn’t.’

  ‘Because he was with Ian the night that man was killed? Why didn’t you tell me Ian was Luke’s alibi?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t really know how to. I didn’t think it was relevant.’

  ‘Not relevant?’ Harmony cried. ‘Of course it’s relevant! My husband is in custody facing trial for a murder he didn’t commit and the man that did it is going to get off because he was supposedly with your husband?’

  Emma visibly winced and her eyes shot to the floor.

  ‘And we both know he’s lying. We spoke that night. You told me you were with Ian. You remember?’

  ‘No, you’re mistaken,’ she said, her eyes giving her away, darting from one side to the other. The kettle reached its boil noisily and clicked off. ‘I was here alone.’

  ‘No, you told me you were both here, watching a film. One he’d picked up at the supermarket.’

  ‘No, you’re wrong. I—’

  ‘Stop it!’ cried Harmony, slamming her hand on the work surface. ‘Do you know what you’re doing? My husband could go to prison for murder.’

  Emma crossed her arms around her body, her hands pulling at the sides of her sweatshirt. She shook her head. ‘He won’t. If he didn’t kill him he’ll get off. They won’t send someone to prison without evidence. If he’s innocent he’ll get off.’

  Harmony laughed bitterly and looked at the ceiling. ‘Don’t be so naive! People go to prison all the time for crimes they didn’t commit. Why are you lying about where Ian was?’

  ‘I’m not. Ian was with Luke that night. He was being … entertained.’ She said the word ‘entertained’ as if it caused her physical pain.

  Emma lifted her head and locked eyes with Harmony. Harmony didn’t understand. Why was she lying? Why would Ian protect a work colleague – his lawyer, for God’s sake – over one of his oldest friends?

  Then suddenly it was if a mist had cleared. ‘Oh my God,’ she breathed. ‘Luke has something on Ian, doesn’t he?’

  Emma’s face fell in panic and Harmony knew she was right. Emma glanced through the kitchen door to the hallway, then squared her shoulders. ‘Ian and Luke were out in London. Ian was entertaining Luke. They stayed out late.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ Harmony said. ‘I know you are; I’ve known you all my life. I can tell.’ Harmony took a step towards her but Emma stepped backwards. ‘Do you know what Luke did to that man, Emma? He tortured him to death. He beat him and cut him and kicked him in the stomach and head and genitals until he broke almost every bone in his body.’

  Emma threw her hands up to cover her ears and squeezed her eyes shut like a child.

  ‘Do you really think Will could do that? You’ve known him for twenty years. He can’t even kill a bloody wasp. It was Luke, Emma.’ Harmony couldn’t help her voice rising. Frustration and contempt began to boil over inside her. ‘Why are you covering for him? My husband’s sitting in a cell, right this minute, while yours is out gallivanting on some golf course and that cold-blooded murderer is free.’ Emma tightened her arms around her quivering body. ‘Please, Harmony,’ she whispered. ‘You need to leave now, or I’ll … or I’ll …

  call the police.’

  ‘And what?’ Harmony shouted. ‘Tell them more lies? Try and get me locked up as well? You could try breaking and entering. Maybe tell them I stole some jewellery. Say I hit you.’

  ‘Don’t—’

  ‘You know … ’ Harmony had to stop speaking to allow the lump of emotion to subside in her throat. ‘You know he’s stalking me.’

  Emma’s face contorted in confusion. ‘Stalking you? Who is?’

  ‘Luke. He’s been following me, and Will. I went to his apartment and saw photos he’d taken.’ She paused. ‘We had an affair, Emma.’

  Emma stared at her in confusion.

  ‘That’s right. An affair. Christ,’ she said then, still unable to believe what was happening. ‘I can’t even call it that. We had sex.’

  ‘But how—’

  ‘How did we have sex? Will and I had an argument, then Luke and I met up and we fucked.’ Harmony saw Emma flinch at her words. ‘We fucked and then I realised I loved my husband. I told Luke it was over and told Will I loved him and we started getting our marriage back on track.’ Harmony took a deep breath, laughed bitterly. ‘We’re actually going to try for a baby. Can you believe that?’ She rubbe
d her face. ‘But no, Luke didn’t like that. He blames Will for something that happened when they were children. He texts and calls all the time. He turned up at my sister’s. Emma, I’m scared. I’m scared because I know Will didn’t kill that man. And I know Ian was here with you that night, which means I’m pretty sure Luke is a murderer and I am scared for my own damn life, scared he’s going to appear one night and do something to me. He’s a murderer, Emma, and you’re protecting him.’

  Emma dropped her eyes to the floor.

  ‘So that’s it? You’re happy to risk my life, to let Will go to prison?’

  ‘You don’t understand.’ Emma spoke so quietly Harmony could barely hear her.

  ‘No, you’re right,’ Harmony said with angry frustration. ‘I don’t understand. Please, please, Emma, explain it to me.’

  ‘There is nothing at all to understand.’

  Both women jumped at the sound of Ian’s voice and turned to see him looming in the doorway. Harmony was shocked by how exhausted and dishevelled he was.

  ‘I thought you weren’t here.’ Harmony stared pointedly at Emma.

  ‘I wasn’t. Now I am.’ Ian walked over to the large American fridge-freezer, opened it and got out a bottle of beer. ‘So did I hear you right just then? You and the handsome lawyer have been having a bit of fun?’ He said the word in a way that made Harmony’s skin crawl.

  ‘Why are you lying? Why are you protecting him? And don’t say you’re not because I know you are.’

  ‘You know?’ He retrieved a bottle opener from the cutlery drawer and opened the beer. He drank straight from the bottle, chucking the bottle top onto the kitchen worktop. ‘How do you know? Were you there?’

  ‘I rang Emma the night it happened, when you were supposedly out with him. You were here, watching a film together. You’d bought it from Tesco or Waitrose or wherever. It was a war film and Emma wasn’t enjoying it.’

  ‘You’re mistaken. She was watching the film on her own because I was out.’ He sat down heavily at the table, his beer clasped in his hand, his gaze seeming to lose its focus. ‘I was with Luke, drinking champagne, enjoying some whores.’

  Harmony looked at Emma but she’d turned her back on them and was looking out of the window that overlooked the driveway.

  ‘Luke and I were together all night. And there’s bugger all you can do about it.’ He lifted his head and looked at her. ‘Do you understand now?’

  Harmony knew then that she was wasting her time. It was there, clear fom the stoop of Emma’s head and shoulders, the way she gripped the side of the worktop, and the monotonous conviction in Ian’s dishonest words.

  ‘You disgust me,’ she spat. ‘You both disgust me.’

  Then she turned and walked out of the kitchen and into the hallway, hoping she’d make it to the car without collapsing. She fumbled with the latch on the front door, then pushed it open and stumbled down the steps. She stopped before she reached the car and stood still in the middle of the enormous expanse of new, clean gravel, and realised she had never been so alone in her life.

  C H A P T E R T H I R T Y

  Harmony drove straight to her sister’s, and when Sophie opened the door she fell into her arms and held her tightly.

  When they finally pulled apart, she followed Sophie into the kitchen. It was quiet and tidy, with Ella Fitzgerald playing softly in the background. Harmony saw her mother then, just as she used to be, before the illness had ravaged her beyond recognition. She remembered how the soothing tones of Ella would float through her bedroom wall. How she’d climb out of bed to creep along to the sitting room and peer around the doorframe in the hope of catching her mother dancing around the room, totally lost in the music she loved.

  ‘Where are the boys?’ Harmony asked.

  ‘George is at football, Matt’s at a friend’s and Cal’s at his girlfriend’s house.’

  ‘His girlfriend? Really? Is she nice?’

  Sophie nodded. ‘She’s lovely, actually. Bright, pretty, good strong opinions, and seems to really like him. God knows why. She even laughs at his jokes, including the dreadful ones.’

  ‘He’s a great kid, he deserves someone lovely.’

  Sophie put her arms around her and gave her another hug. ‘You know what we should do?’ she said with a soft smile.

  Harmony shook her head.

  ‘Come with me,’ Sophie said, as she opened the back door and took Harmony’s hand. They wove their way through the assorted sports paraphernalia that littered the terrace and onto the lawn. Sophie sat down and patted the ground beside her. ‘How about a bit of cloud staring?’

  Harmony burst into tears and laughed at the same time. She and Sophie lay back, their legs out straight, holding hands. Harmony searched the sky for animals. They used to do this with their mum if they’d had a bad day, if someone had been mean to them or they’d been upset by a teacher or embarrassed themselves somehow or – towards the end of her illness – when one of them was feeling particularly sad or scared. She’d kiss them and give them a chocolate biscuit then whisper: How about a bit of cloud staring? Then they’d lie on the grass holding hands, like a paper chain of people, and silently scan the sky until they found a creature lurking in the clouds, maybe a running fox or a jumping hare, and then they’d point and cry out with such excitement that soon the bad thing was forgotten.

  ‘Luke Crawford reminded me of our dad,’ Harmony said.

  ‘How?’

  Harmony searched the clouds above her but there were only large amorphous shapes that offered her nothing. ‘The mystery, maybe. The excitement I felt reminded me of what Mum described, how she said she felt when she was with him. That shortness of breath, the thumping heart. And he had the same hands.’

  ‘The same hands? You can’t possibly remember Dad’s hands.’

  ‘No, I don’t, but Mum said he had long, elegant fingers, like a concert pianist.’

  Sophie snorted. ‘He was a waste of space, not a bloody concert pianist.’

  Harmony turned her head so she could see Sophie. Her sister looked beautiful in profile, her nose small and neat, her skin clear, with fine, even creases around her eyes and long eyelashes that were tipped with blonde.

  ‘Why do you hate him so much?’

  The sisters had never discussed this. It was as if they’d come to an unspoken mutual agreement whereby Sophie was allowed to loathe him and Harmony was allowed to love him. Harmony had no reason to love him other than her desperate desire to do so. As a child she had idolised him, had chosen to adopt her mother’s rose-tinted memories in place of her sister’s hateful ones.

  Sophie stayed staring at the clouds. ‘We shouldn’t talk about it;

  you love him and it’s not fair for me to bad-mouth him.’

  Harmony smiled. ‘You’ve done nothing but bad-mouth him since she died.’ She rolled back to stare at the clouds again. ‘Please tell me.’

  Sophie didn’t answer immediately. ‘He broke my heart, that’s all,’ she said at last. ‘Mine and Mum’s. I loved him so much. He was my world.’ She hesitated. ‘He left the day she found out about the breast cancer.’

  ‘No, surely you’ve remembered that wrong,’ Harmony said.

  ‘The same day?’

  ‘I was with her. She was crying. There was a typed letter in her hand. It must have been from the hospital. She sat me on her lap and I cuddled her and told her it would be okay. When he came home she handed him the letter and I watched his face. Everything went dark, like he was cross with her.’ Sophie paused. ‘That night I heard him shouting. I sat in the corridor outside their room and I heard him say we were suffocating him, which I didn’t understand then, I thought he meant actually suffocating. And then I heard him tell her he didn’t want to spend the rest of his days looking after her. That he was a free spirit, not a nursemaid. Then he started screaming at her, telling her to stop crying, to stop laying on the guilt. It scared me, and when I heard him coming out of their room I ran back to bed and hid beneath the covers.
He was gone in the morning.’

  ‘Poor Mum,’ said Harmony. ‘I can’t imagine how desperate she must have felt.’

  ‘He took his toothbrush, his passport and all the money in the joint account, and just left us. I used to sit there sometimes, watching her sleep, her face pale from vomiting, those drugs attacking her body along with the cancer, and think about how he’d broken her heart. How he’d left me to look after her, left me to try and be both a mother and father to you. I gave everything up when she died: my exams, my friends, my life. I wanted to be an architect. Did you know that?’ She turned her head to look at Harmony.

  ‘I had no idea. I thought you weren’t interested in exams. I thought that’s why you left school.’

  ‘No, I left school to look after you.’

  ‘I’m sorry you had to do that.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry.’ Sophie looked back at the sky. ‘It’s not your fault. And it was worth it; you did so well. I’m very, very proud of you. As proud of you as I am of my sons.’

  Harmony squeezed her hand and felt Sophie squeeze her back.

  ‘I called him the day after she died. Dad, I mean.’ Sophie’s voice was soft and distant. ‘I found an old number for him and talked to a woman who knew where he lived. He was living just north of Birmingham. I was terrified before I phoned. I remember shaking so hard I could hardly dial the number. The first time he answered I put the phone down as if it had bitten me. Then I plucked up the courage and rang him back and told him that she was gone and that Nan didn’t really want us to move in with her and could we come and stay with him.’

  ‘What did he say?’ Sophie didn’t answer.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘He said he wasn’t interested in us.That as far as he was concerned he wasn’t our father.’

  Harmony was quiet for a moment or two. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Sophie looked at Harmony. ‘I didn’t want to hurt you. I knew how important it was for you to love him. It gave you strength, and I didn’t want to take that away from you.’