The Girl Who Turned a Blind Eye

by Diana Wilkinson

  I used to think of my outward appearance as that of a pristine Wimbledon lawn but today I consider that I have become much more like the courts I wander past. Not a blade of soft grass in sight. My surface is still green but with a sturdier, tougher, all-weather coating and the lines are much more defined than the threadbare chalk markings of Centre Court. My barrier against weeds and dormant threats is more robust.

  I wave at her. She’s on the court farthest away and as I draw close, I watch her bounce up and down eagerly between points. A whippet of a thing. Still all curls and giggles but some of the excitement has definitely gone; dissipated through disillusionment that has stolen some innocence and the belief that love conquers all. All down to Scott.

  Cosette waves back and uses her fingers to beckon me over. It feels good to know that I was successful in ruining their relationship. Scott definitely doesn’t deserve her.

  ‘Hi, Beverley!’ she shouts through the fencing. ‘I’m nearly done. Just a few more serves.’ The tennis coach is standing in close, pulling back her arms, like a ventriloquist controlling its dummy, to demonstrate the right action, and his groin is rubbing up against her thigh. I smile. She’s already moving on. Perhaps I’ll take up the game.

  I sit down on a bench and wait for her. She heads over once she’s finished.

  ‘Hi,’ she says.

  ‘Hi. Good to see you. Shall we grab a cold drink? It looks too much like hard work out there.’

  ‘Sounds good. Yes I’m, as you say in English, knackered.’ She wipes her brow with a small hand towel and flicks her hair loose from a hair band. ‘Claudio works me hard. Money well spent.’

  She waves back at her coach and I can see what she means. I suspect Claudio is the gigolo of Regent’s Park.

  ‘Same time next week?’ he yells. Money for old rope springs to mind; a bit like therapy. Although I’m not sure he’s what she needs at present, much too smarmy for my taste but I need to remember that Cosette is no longer my problem. It’s Scott I have to keep abreast of.

  Cosette sits down while I buy a couple of Diet Cokes from a vendor whose van is parked alongside the courts.

  ‘Well, how are you?’ I hand her a can and we open them at the same time, giggling as foam spews out over the tops.

  ‘I should be asking you. I read about what happened. It’s dreadful. I can’t believe your therapist tried to kill you. Are you okay?’ Her eyes are doleful, soft and trusting, like a puppy’s. I think fluffy bichon frise with its powder-puff coating. Cosette is incredibly nice, too nice perhaps, but then I’m a cynic.

  ‘Getting over it. At least she’s not likely to recover and shouldn’t be coming back to try to finish me off. Thanks for asking. It’s not been easy,’ I lie. There was nothing to get over, my planning couldn’t have gone better. ‘Tell me how you’re getting on. Any news of Scott? I think you had a lucky escape.’

  She slurps her Coke, throwing her head back, greedy to rehydrate until a sharp explosive hiccup escapes.

  ‘He’s back with Danielle. I went to pick up a few things from the flat after I’d stormed out and she was there. Sitting in the kitchen as if she’d never left. She even apologised to me. Can you believe it? Scott didn’t apologise though. He doesn’t think he’s anything to answer for.’

  The story tells me what I suspected, but I needed to know for certain and my young friend has confirmed the details. I wonder if she knows about a possible impending pregnancy. Perhaps she’d be able to let it go, move on and forget but that’s where we’re completely different.

  I’ve bought a new oversized desk diary which sits proudly next to my computer, a dated wall chart and yesterday I installed a calendar planning app on my phone. It’s a very trendy weekly organiser. My future will be as a well-programmed vigilante, punishing those who abuse, mistreat and toy with other people. I’ve special skills and there’s plenty of work to be done. No more classroom assistant jobs or Spanish lessons for me as wiping out evil is a full-time job.

  ‘I’m sorry. Perhaps it was a good thing that we went to that restaurant in Sloane Square. Otherwise you might never have found out. He’s a bastard and you’ve had a lucky escape.’ I pat her on the shoulder. I won’t push her on the Danielle thing; she doesn’t deserve it, and I can find out for certain on my own.

  ‘He’s moving away. He’s already packed up and they’re emigrating. He wouldn’t tell me where but I don’t think I really want to know.’

  He’ll be off to Italy; the Amalfi Coast, or Rome perhaps. But more likely it will be to the tumbledown farmhouse in the depths of Umbria which caught his eye. He always was a dreamer.

  I consider how nice it might be to move away myself and leave recent events behind. Forget about Ms Evans and Uncle Chuck. Italy might be the very ticket. I smile, doubting the Italians will be too concerned about stalking issues between English ex-lovers.

  ‘From what I see, I think you’ve already moved on.’ I tilt my head in the direction of the tennis courts.

  Claudio is watching us, in between giving scant instruction to a middle-aged woman while he scrolls up and down on his mobile phone. Cosette blushes.

  ‘Listen, I’d better make a move. I’ve left a man painting and decorating the house. I need to get back and check on progress. He’s been clearing out the attic, painting the walls a different colour and throwing out the tatty furniture. I don’t want any reminders of the visit from Ms Evans and I couldn’t face the task myself.’

  ‘Well, good luck. Keep in touch.’ With that, Cosette picks up her racket and rucksack. ‘I must get going too as I’ve got an exam tomorrow. I’ll be glad when the term’s over.’

  I stand up, lean in and hug her close. She’s like the daughter I’d have liked; the one I’ll never have. But we’ll keep in touch. I’ll let her know when Scott and Danielle’s move to Italy doesn’t work out and we’ll share a good laugh.

  We walk off in opposite directions, I go backwards and she goes forwards.

  ‘Bye, Cosette.’

  ‘Bye, Beverley. Adieu.’ And she is gone.

  62

  Standing across the main road, directly opposite the entrance to Beverley Digby’s house, Colgate squinted against the sun. The upstairs windows were flung open, unusually wide. The attic dormer stuck out at a ninety-degree angle to the roof.

  Colgate quickened his pace as he and Lindsay weaved between the rush-hour traffic. He strode up the front path and stubbed furiously at the doorbell, wiping his damp brow with the back of his left hand. ‘Shit, shit, shit. Answer the bloody door.’ He peered through the frosted panel and unglued his finger from the button as someone approached.

  ‘Hi. Can I help you?’ A young man appeared, straggling hair scooped back in a ponytail. The baggy tattered jeans, underpants visible over the top of a waistband and the paint splatters on a threadbare T-shirt confirmed Colgate’s worst suspicions.

  Colgate screeched over the din of background rock music. ‘We’re here to see Miss Digby. Is she at home?’ He waved his identification badge and, without preamble, pushed across the porch into the hall.

  The man wiped down his hands on his jeans and whipped back a stray flop of hair. He apologised for the noise and went back to close the kitchen door. ‘Sorry. She’s gone out for the day. Can I help?’

  ‘I hope so. May we come in, Mr…?’

  ‘Vickers. Vince Vickers. I don’t live here, by the way. I’m just doing some odd jobs. Is this about what happened last week? Dreadful business. Miss Digby doesn’t like to stay in much as she’s still really upset. Could you blame her?’

  Colgate sneezed, the fresh paint fumes riding up his nostrils. ‘We’d like a look around, if that’s okay.’ Without a search warrant, Colgate knew he was going against the law, but he had to act fast. ‘Starting in the attic.’ He moved towards the stairs without waiting for approval and climbed.

  By the time he reached the last flight, Colgate was gripping the handrail and his breathing was laboured, heavy in his chest. The rickety risers challenge
d each footstep and he could see how easy it would have been for Ms Evans to lose her footing.

  At the top, Lindsay and Vickers passed him, entering through the already-open door. The brightly coated walls screamed with a blinding red gloss. The garishness was a taunt, teasing at his tardiness, and Colgate knew he was too late.

  ‘It’s a bit bright, isn’t it?’ Vickers said. ‘Miss Digby wanted to remove all traces of the room as it was before Ms Evans tried to kill her. She was determined to use red but it’s a nightmare to work with.’ Vickers blinked rapidly.

  ‘I bet. Where’s all the furniture? There was a sofa here, a table there, and where’s the kettle?’ Colgate wandered round, opening and closing empty cupboards. The only signs of recent activity were half empty paint pots and brushes.

  ‘I took almost everything to the dump. She wants a fresh start, a complete makeover.’

  Colgate stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by red flames of hell. Conniving bitch. The whole thing had been planned, always one step ahead of him. Beverley Digby, the piece of shit, had put Ms Evans in the frame for murder and attempted murder.

  The policeman turned to Vickers. ‘Can you remember what you took to the dump?’ Colgate was grasping at straws, knowing full well that verbal confirmation of what had been in the room before the makeover was never going to put Beverley in the frame. Even concise descriptions of all the furniture items would be flimsy at best.

  ‘Yes. A sofa. A table with four chairs. A Bakelite radio and matching clock, of all things. I took them to the charity shop. Worth a few bob.’

  Vickers’ hand scrabbled in the tight back pocket of his jeans. ‘Here. Have a look. I’m taking progress pictures, before and after shots. Beverley keeps texting to see how I’m getting on.’ He turned the mobile screen towards the detective and scrolled through a series of pictures. ‘This is the room before I started work. You can see all the items and layout.’ Vickers’ chest puffed out.

  Colgate snatched the phone. ‘These are brilliant. Can you send them through to me?’

  Colgate jotted down his number and as Vickers forwarded the shots, the detective went back out onto the landing. His head swivelled through the full 360 degrees, his eyes working up and down the walls and across the ceiling.

  ‘What’s that on the wall up there? Halfway up.’

  ‘Where?’ Vickers appeared alongside, his phone stuffed back into his jeans.

  ‘Between the beam joists. Look.’ Colgate pointed to a small round silver unit jammed between the wooden slats.

  ‘Oh, that’s a light. Very bright. It’s normally pitch black up here and it comes on automatically with movement. There’s a switch here on the outside of the door. You need to have it set to “on” and then, when you come in and out, it lights up. It’s bloody bright though.’

  Vickers flicked the switch and jiggled his arm around in front of the sensor. ‘There’s also a remote control here which can be used as a zapper.’

  Colgate and Lindsay automatically put their hands up as the searing light from a fluorescent white strobe hit them between the eyes.

  ‘I keep it turned off when I’m working otherwise it blinds me every time I go up and down the stairs.’

  ‘Lindsay. Walk from the attic door to the top of the stairs. I want to see exactly when the light clicks on.’ As an afterthought he added, ‘Be careful though.’

  As Lindsay approached the stairs, the light clicked on the moment she went to take her first step down.

  ‘Christ, boss. I can’t see a bloody thing.’

  ‘Don’t move. I’ll turn it off. What height are you, Lindsay?’

  ‘Five feet six. Why?’

  ‘So, I suspect, is Ms Evans. I think the light was strategically placed to hit right between her eyes.’

  Colgate was now convinced that Beverley Digby had caused both tumbles, using invisible trip wires and in the case of Ms Evans, the addition of a blinding strobe light. Yet, the detective still hadn’t enough to make an arrest; he needed facts, hard evidence.

  ‘Lindsay, we need to dig around and find out who Beverley Digby really is. I suspect she’s changed her name. We need to know who she was back then, at the time of the Garden Shed Murder.’ Colgate strode ahead. ‘She seems to have staged the whole bloody incident in her attic.’

  The traffic on Southgate High Street muffled the DCI’s words but when they reached the station, he stopped, leant on the railings and faced Lindsay.

  ‘You see, I think Miss Digby knew Ms Evans at the time of the Garden Shed Murder and any revenge has probably nothing at all to do with the errant husband. That’s just been a red herring. I think she’s got a much greater axe to grind and that’s what we need to find out; her motive for putting Ms Evans in the frame for Chuck Curry’s murder and for wanting her out of the way. Come on. The clock’s ticking.’

  63

  Italy, here I come. I pull along a small hard-shelled cabin bag which I’ve just picked up; ‘cheap as chips’, as my mother would say. It’s like a pink tortoise on wheels. I’m toying with adding a couple of pink streaks through my hair to accessorise the sassy style, as life is all about co-ordinating.

  I jiggle the suitcase over the threshold of ‘Cutting Edge’. It’s little more than a kiosk on the end of the row of shops but a sign boasts an after-hours locksmith. Once I’m gone, no one will be able to gain access to my house. Vince Vickers won’t be getting paid, that’s for sure, and the spare key he’s got to finish the work won’t be any use. When it sticks in the lock, he’ll get the message. The ‘before and after’ snaps have sealed his financial failure and I’ll be long gone before the painter or my nosey keyholding neighbours are any the wiser.

  Colgate will no doubt have displayed his little rat-like teeth, gritted together, in a smarmy victory smile when Vickers produced the photographs. The detective is one snooping, nosey, sneaky bastard. It’s not that I think he’s got it in for me per se, but he’s an arrogant prick who can’t take defeat. He failed to nail the Garden Shed killer and he failed to convict me of Danielle’s accident and now he’s like a dog with a bone, desperate to convict me of Ms Evans’ tumble. He’ll be working on the premise ‘third time lucky’.

  Once I’ve arranged for the locksmith to come round in the morning and change the locks, I decide to take a detour home. I have a definite masochistic streak of which Ms Evans tried so hard to make me own up to.

  ‘Why do you keep going back for more punishment? For more rejection, Beverley?’ I can hear her. Dig, dig, dig. She had more shit below the surface than I ever did and probably more than most of her patients.

  As my pet tortoise and I trundle along, I realise that masochism has become part of who I am. Like bulimia, it provides a comfort blanket of familiarity even though it’s covered in vomit. It’s the friendlier neighbour of sadism as I’m only tormenting myself, no one else.

  This invitational punishment leads me to retravel the old familiar route one last time. I count the paving slabs, tripping over the old well-worn cracks, amazed as always that they’re still here after twenty-five years. Down Burton Avenue, past the post office, into Salisbury Road where Uncle Chuck enticed me into the sweetie shop for treats. Finally, on past Holdenhurst Avenue where I pull my case faster and faster until I break a sweat, hearing the stealthy tread behind.

  Once I reach the safety of my front gate I slot the handle neatly back into the case, preparing my tortoise for hibernation. I’ll hide it in the hall cupboard before I yell out to Vickers. He’s upstairs and I can see the brush strokes flowing back and forth from where I’m standing. Ha. Little does he know he’s working pro bono.

  I open the front door and yell up.

  ‘Hi. I’m home. It’s only me. Hannah.’

  Hannah McGregor. That’s my real name. Dad was Willie McGregor, a renowned Glaswegian drunkard whose claim to fame was the successful smashing of my mother’s jaw in several places. But I’ll let bygones be bygones. I’m going back to my real name now. It’s been a while but
I need to get used to it because it’s emblazoned across my passport. Hannah Beverley Digby-McGregor. My mother liked the double-barrelled pretention; it made her feel special like nothing else did.

  ‘Who?’ Vickers appears above me, sliding to earth along the last stretch of banister.

  ‘Hannah. Hannah McGregor. Don’t look so surprised. You don’t really think I look like a Beverley, do you?’ I laugh. ‘Fancy a drink before you go? I need a drink and company would be nice.’

  Vickers checks his watch. ‘Yes, go on then. Why not.’

  He thinks he’s coming back later in the week to finish the job and get paid, a nice hefty wad of cash, but hey ho. Serves him right.

  ‘I’ll explain over a drink, about my name change. Come on, let’s go into the kitchen and I’ll get out the wine.’

  He follows me through and takes a seat on one of my newly acquired bar stools. I uncork a bottle and hand him a glass, raising mine towards him. ‘Thanks for all the painting. You’ve done a brilliant job. Not much more and you’ll be finished.’ Vickers blushes like a five-year-old.

  We clink our glasses and Vickers knocks his back in one.

  ‘Top up?’ I offer.

  ‘Go on then.’ He holds out his glass, sits back and I tell him why I changed my name. I lie, tell him it was a teenage rebellion thing and chuckle. As he begins to tell me about his family and kids, I stifle a yawn and let his voice waft in one ear and out the other.

  This time tomorrow I’ll be on the last flight out from Stansted airport to Perugia in Italy. The plan is to mosey around Tuscany and Umbria for a while, get my bearings and find a nice little place to lay my hat until I find a permanent base. It’ll be near to Scott and Danielle, but not too close as I’ll need some space.

  In Italy, I’ll not have to worry about accusations that my choices are anything more than coincidence. The Italian carabinieri is much more laid back than the British police force and will most likely ignore approaches by Scott when he points accusing fingers. He’ll need to learn to hold his tongue because he’ll be no match for the machismo of the Italian men. Fluttering my eyelashes is a backup plan.