Sins of the Father

by David Harrison

  The following day the national papers pounced on the news. Most of the tabloids ran stories along the lines of Late Star’s Daughter-in-law in Mystery Death Plunge. Some featured photographs of Nick as a child, and much larger ones of Eddie Randall in his heyday. Only one thought to include a picture of the victim herself: a cropped portrait from her wedding.

  Virtually every article mentioned Howard Franks. One paper reminded readers that it had serialised Franks’s last book, and devoted more attention to the forthcoming biography of Randall than it did to Sarah’s death. It riled Alex that someone else should be profiting from what she’d worked so hard to achieve.

  Not treated as suspicious. That was all that mattered.

  Ironic, really, when she considered the reaction to her own father’s death. He’d been tossed into the path of a train. The driver had witnessed two figures on the bridge, had seen the body fall but couldn’t stop in time. Nobody had stood trial or been charged. There hadn’t even been any confirmed suspects. The police carried out barely a dozen interviews, none of which produced any other lines of enquiry.

  “They didn’t want to know,” Alex’s mother had raged, night after night. “Bastard police don’t give a monkeys for my Leslie.”

  My Leslie. Alex always remembered that, the bitterness in her mother’s voice. The truth was that Hilda had hated Leslie, and he had despised her. He stayed with her for one reason and one alone: Alex. He couldn’t deal with Billy, the crybaby, the mummy’s boy who was wrong in the head. Leslie cared only for his daughter.

  “You’re my future, lady, you know that?” he used to say, stroking her hair as she lay in bed. When he returned from the club in the early hours he’d always come in her room and kiss her forehead. Sometimes she’d pretend to be asleep and she could feel him watching her, adoration pouring out of him like heat.

  And then one night he didn’t come home. Childhood was over. Cancelled. Stolen.

  By Eddie Randall, according to Hilda.

  Alex couldn’t remember when she’d first heard the name, but for the whole of her childhood it became a familiar litany. Whenever she was denied something, whenever she had to go without, the response was always the same: “Blame Eddie Randall.”

  She turned on to the river path, noticing a couple of horses in the field to her right. She’d gone through a few years of equine infatuation in her childhood. Not that she’d ever stood a chance of riding one. Black Beauty on TV was the closest she got.

  It wasn’t until she was thirteen, in early 1972, that Alex finally confronted her mother. “If Eddie Randall killed Dad, why haven’t the police done anything about it?”

  “You think they listen to the likes of us?” Hilda had said scornfully. “He covered his tracks, didn’t he? Folk like him, they get others to do the dirty work. Then it’s just my word against his.”

  For the first time Hilda divulged that Leslie had been involved in a ‘financial arrangement’ with Randall, which Alex had correctly guessed meant blackmail. After Leslie’s death Hilda had even managed to contact Randall by phone, but the actor flatly denied any involvement in Leslie’s death and refused to meet her.

  “What good would it have done, anyway?” Alex had asked.

  “I dunno. I wanted to look him in the eye. Then I’d know if he was telling the truth.”

  “So what? You just said the police would do nothing.”

  Her mother had sniffed and looked evasive.

  “You’d ask him for money?” Alex guessed.

  “And why not?” Hilda responded savagely. “You think he doesn’t owe us? Think I enjoy working my fingers to the bone at two bloody jobs, trying to keep you fed and watered and out of mischief? Compensation is what it would be. It’s only what I’m due.”

  But Randall had just laughed off Hilda’s clumsy attempt at extortion, and Alex didn’t know who she despised more: Randall for the original crime, or her mother for being such an inadequate opponent. Even at thirteen Alex knew she wouldn’t have taken no for an answer. She’d have searched for a way to make Randall admit his guilt, no matter what it took.

  TW ELVE

  The unreality gripped Nick when the police dropped their bombshell and didn’t let go for eight days, when exhaustion finally rewarded him with ten hours of heavy dreamless sleep. He awoke with the savage realisation that Sarah was gone, but his recollection of the preceding days was as hazy as his memories of childhood. All he had was fragments, vivid but unreliable, which might just as easily have belonged to someone else.

  DCI Pearce gently informed him that a body believed to be that of his wife had been discovered at the foot of the cliffs east of the Belle Tout lighthouse. The circumstances suggested that she had either fallen or jumped to her death.

  He’d insisted on identifying the body straight away, although DCI Pearce made it clear he could wait until the following morning. He remembered the journey in the police car, the crackle of routine messages on the radio, familiar landmarks passing unrecognised, but nothing of the identification itself. Except the knowledge that it was Sarah.

  He spent the next day at his sister’s. Patrick took compassionate leave and disappeared with the kids, while Diana sat with Nick and they talked. And at some point he’d made the phone call to France, and Gerry Clarke had bellowed and thrown the receiver down. Diana was in tears later, fielding hysterical calls from Lisa Clarke and Sarah’s sister, Elaine.

  The police returned, asking him about his movements on Tuesday March 23rd, all perfectly routine. Later they confirmed they were not treating the death as suspicious. An inquest was opened and adjourned, the body released for burial. Then DCI Pearce gave him the shattering news that Sarah had been in the early stages of pregnancy.

  The funeral took place a week later, at a cemetery in Hove. For days the weather had been overcast with frequent squally showers. Now the sky was washed clean and offered the bitter promise of spring, tiny pink and purple shoots bursting through the grass around the grave.

  The service was low key and stilted, nothing like the big showbusiness celebration his mother had masterminded for Eddie Randall. Everyone seemed too shocked to grieve, and from Sarah’s family came the first indication of what promised to be a fierce animosity. Gerry lunged at Nick as they filed back to the cars and had to be dragged away by Pat and one of Nick’s cousins. The wake was hastily rearranged; Sarah’s family withdrawing to their Brighton hotel while the Randalls convened at Nick’s home.

  The day after the funeral Diana rang to say there were reporters outside. Her phone rang each time she renewed the connection. Later she had to confess that she’d told Howard Franks about the tragedy and asked him to leave Nick alone, never imagining he would tip off the papers in order to generate interest in his book.

  It was around the same time that Nick heard himself described as a widower. Surely that word belonged to a frail old man in a cardigan, struggling to cope after forty or fifty years of marriage?

  After the funeral he received a letter from Sarah’s sister, Elaine. She refused to believe that Sarah would have taken her own life, no matter what the provocation. The police would be asked to carry out a thorough investigation, paying particular attention to Nick’s conduct in recent months.

  Waking clear-headed for the first time, Nick re-read the letter and knew that the coming weeks would be more turbulent than his sister had maintained. But at least Elaine’s prescience had one benefit: when the police returned to see him, they weren’t entirely unexpected.

  ***

  On Friday April 2nd a sixty-two-year-old man from Polegate walked into Eastbourne police station and announced that he had seen Sarah Randall before her death. He’d missed the original report in the local papers, and only realised he might possess significant information when he read an article about Eddie Randall’s daughter-in-law in the Sun.

  “It was from a distance, like, but I’m positive that’s who I saw. I was on my way back to the car when I turned round to call the dog. I saw this woman up ne
ar the lighthouse, dark hair, wearing a red jacket. Just like it said in the papers. Only she wasn’t on her own. There was this feller with her, he had his arm round her shoulders and they were kissing. Lucky sod, I thought. I turned away, didn’t want to be gawping at ‘em, like. But I thought I better report it. I mean, why’d she wanna go jumping off a cliff when she’s with her bloke?”

  ***

  Nick was interviewed under caution at Eastbourne police station, and invited to have a solicitor present if he wished. He declined.

  This time there was no sign of matronly, sympathetic DCI Pearce; in her place a burly middle-aged detective inspector called Flynn and a young female DC, Kaur, both of whom were distinctly cool towards him. They went through his movements in meticulous detail, and he thanked God it hadn’t been a quiet day when he might have parked in a lay-by and read the paper.

  With the possible sighting of Sarah they were able to estimate the time of death at between two and five pm on the Tuesday afternoon. At that time Nick had finished taking a statement in Hailsham and then driven frantically to his sister’s house to confront Howard Franks. This could be confirmed both by Diana and by Franks himself, whose tip-off to the media had brought the witness forward in the first place.

  DS Flynn floated the suggestion that Sarah had been having an affair, and Nick was asked if he could name any possible candidates amongst her colleagues or friends. Nick was aghast at the suggestion that his wife might have slept with someone else, and then saw the terrible irony in that.

  “I really don’t know. Maybe someone at her office.”

  “What about her female friends?” asked DC Kaur.

  Nick frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, is there anyone she’s likely to have confided in?”

  “There was someone she met at the gym a little while back. I think they got quite friendly.”

  “Name?” Flynn barked.

  He shifted in his seat. “Alice, possibly.”

  “You did live together, I take it?” asked Kaur sardonically.

  “We were having problems, as you know,” Nick said. “In that situation you don’t communicate very well.”

  “We’ll need her address book,” said Flynn. “We’ll also be following up any calls made on her mobile phone over the past few weeks.”

  “What I can’t understand is why, if she was having an affair, she would have died the way she did?”

  “We’re still trying to determine exactly how she died,” Kaur reminded him.

  “Could have been a lovers’ tiff,” Flynn added. “Just in the wrong place and time. Very passionate, these illicit relationships.” He was clearly relishing Nick’s predicament, and Nick felt a wave of hatred towards him.

  “Then why not come forward, if it was an accident? I can’t believe anyone I know would be capable of just… leaving her there.”

  “You’d be surprised the things people are capable of,” said Flynn darkly.

  After three hours he was allowed to go, and he sloped out of the police station feeling as guilty as if he’d killed Sarah with his bare hands. No doubt that was exactly what the interview had been intended to achieve. That night, for the first time since learning of her death, he drank himself into a stupor.

  After lying unconscious on the sofa for hours, he woke at four in the morning and threw up on the living room carpet. He cleaned up then stumbled into the shower, by which time the first traces of light were showing through the curtains. He felt tired and wretched, but rather than go back to sleep he forced himself outside.

  There was a sharp westerly wind, but the sky was blue with only a light scattering of cloud. Jogging across the road in front of a milk float, he spotted a police car cruising slowly along the promenade, flashing strobe-like in the gaps between the beach huts. Nick faltered, wondering for an awful moment if they were sneaking up on him. And then he dismissed the idea and ordered his reluctant legs to advance. The car drew level with him as he approached, and the driver sent him a quick once-over before moving on.

  Nick sighed, relieved but also despondent. Was this how it felt when you had committed a crime? And if someone out there had killed Sarah, was he feeling like this right now, waiting for the knock on the door?

  And the worst question of all: did Nick know him?

  The further he walked, the better he felt, so he ended up going as far as the dilapidated West Pier, where he stopped briefly and watched the early joggers, rollerbladers and dog walkers competing for space on the prom. By the time he got home it was nearly eight o’clock. His head felt clearer, but no less confused.

  He was finishing breakfast when the doorbell rang. He checked the window and saw the familiar form of DCI Pearce. He had another horrible premonition: somehow he’d been framed for Sarah’s death, and she was about to arrest him. Had another officer gone round the back to prevent his escape?

  He opened the door, picturing his father-in-law’s immense satisfaction as a life sentence was passed, and then Pearce said brightly, “Good news. You’re in the clear.”

  ***

  Nick noticed that instead of the usual tailored suit, Pearce was wearing a woollen jumper and denim skirt. “Is this an official visit, Chief Inspector?” he asked.

  “Melanie, please.” She grinned. “I happened to be in the area, and I thought you’d want to know as soon as possible.”

  “I appreciate it.” He made some more coffee and led her into the living room. Pearce wrinkled her nose.

  “Sorry about the smell,” Nick said. “I was, er, taken ill.”

  “You might want to use some carpet cleaner. I don’t think that’s quite enough.” She indicated the kitchen roll on the floor.

  “I can see why you’re a detective.”

  “Luckily for you I’m a keen one. I’ve spoken to various people about your alibi.” A smile crept on to her face. “Mr Franks seemed positively disappointed to be verifying your whereabouts.”

  “It’s a better story if I’m under suspicion.”

  “I daresay. Because of the media interest, I’ve authorised a statement confirming that we’ve ruled you out as a suspect.”

  Nick’s relief was so great that Pearce looked slightly embarrassed. She let out a sigh. “The next bit’s not so good. We went back to the Parkside and found one of the kitchen staff who recalled Sarah waiting in the car park.”

  Nick leant forward in his seat. “Did they see…?”

  “I’m afraid not. A car pulled in at speed, collected your wife and took off like a maniac, in the words of our witness. They didn’t get the registration mark, but they think it was a black Ford Focus.”

  “Not the rarest of cars, then?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  Nick gave a sarcastic laugh. Pearce smiled, then regarded him sadly. “You looked the image of your dad then. I remember watching that sitcom when Trevor and I were first courting.” She sighed wistfully. “Was that really thirty years ago?”

  “I used to get teased at school,” Nick said. “Kids wanting to know why he wasn’t in something decent, like Dr Who.”

  Pearce laughed, and so did Nick, and for a moment they were simply friends sharing a fond reminiscence. There was a maternal warmth about Pearce that Nick found tremendously comforting, and he suspected that Pearce knew it too.

  He said, “What about the witness at Beachy Head?”

  “He wasn’t close enough to see a face.”

  “So all we’ve got is a boy racer in a black Focus?”

  DCI Pearce clasped her hands together on her lap and nodded. “We’re still checking CCTV cameras in the area, and we’ll continue to interview her friends and colleagues, but there’s a real possibility that he’ll never be identified. And even if we do locate him, we still have no evidence of foul play.”

  “Apart from the fact that he’s not come forward?”

  “That’s not enough to support a prosecution,” she said gently.

  “Do you think it was an accident?” His voic
e thickened. Pearce looked away, gave the question the time it deserved before meeting his eye.

  “I can’t rule it out,” she said. “Perhaps he panicked, and now he’s too ashamed to contact us. Perhaps… he’s also in a relationship.”

  Nick didn’t want to think about this. He pressed on, unable to keep the emotion from his voice. “But equally, he might have killed her and got away with it?”

  Again DCI Pearce took her time to respond, but eventually she nodded. “It makes me sick to say so, but yes. He might have got away with it.”

  THIRTEEN

  Roger Knight saw a brief item about Sarah’s death on a local news bulletin, but he didn’t make the connection with Nick Randall until he picked up a Daily Mail and found a whole page dominated by the story. His initial reaction was shock, then relief as he realised the news might stop Randall snooping around.

  This in turn was followed by a thought so horrifying that he must have exclaimed out loud. aitlin, reading W.H. Auden alongside him on the sofa, turned to see him drop the paper on the floor.

  “What is it?”

  “Doyle. The stupid fucking…”

  Caitlin frowned. “You’re talking like he does. What’s he done?”

  “I don’t even want to think about it.” He hurried to his study and logged on to the internet.

  According to the Sussex Express website Sarah Randall was thought to have died during the afternoon of March 23rd. Roger checked his diary and found that this was the day after Nick Randall interviewed Lauren Doyle. He knew Kevin had reacted violently during Nick’s visit, but would he really have taken such drastic measures so soon?

  He wanted to say no, but knowing Doyle as he did, anything was possible.

  Kevin’s mobile was switched off, and he wasn’t answering his landline. Roger left messages on both numbers and then had to stew for the rest of the evening, which in turn caused a row with Caitlin. Even a late call from his eldest daughter failed to lift his mood. He was hoping to hear from Doyle, and made the grave error of saying so.