The Mistake I Made

by Paula Daly

  ‘I expected you might have been in touch by now,’ I said, looking at DS Aspinall.

  ‘Because …?’

  ‘Because of the fingerprints? And DNA swab?’

  She looked at me blankly.

  ‘Mrs Toovey,’ she said, ‘we don’t contact a person to say they’ve been eliminated from an investigation.’

  Eliminated?

  ‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘You’re saying you did not find my fingerprints at Wayne’s house at all?’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said slowly, extending the words, a look of puzzlement coming over her. ‘Should we have, Mrs Toovey?’

  I dropped my head.

  What the hell was going on? My prints were everywhere in that room. The fish tank. The table. The windowsill.

  DS Aspinall waited for me to respond and, when I didn’t, she relaxed her shoulders, letting her full weight fall backwards against the chair as though she thought we could be here for quite a while. ‘Why don’t we start at the beginning?’ she said.

  So I did. Right at the beginning.

  I explained about losing my original practice, about Winston running up debts, about being once again on the brink of financial collapse. I explained about the general state of my affairs in the weeks leading up to Wayne’s disappearance.

  I told DS Aspinall about my first meeting with Scott Elias and how he’d arrived at my treatment room a few days later with a proposal for me to consider. I outlined the way he expected the arrangement might work and watched as both DS Aspinall and DC Gidley exchanged surreptitious glances, clearly amused at what had happened but at the same time keeping up an air of professionalism. They did not comment on this part other than DC Gidley asking me to spell out Scott’s surname.

  I told them how much money changed hands and how at first I was paid in cash, but then how that changed as time progressed. And I told them how Wayne wanted in on the deal and was blackmailing me.

  At this, they both sat up straighter in their seats.

  ‘Wayne Geddes wanted money from you?’ DS Aspinall asked.

  I shook my head.

  ‘He wanted sex,’ I said.

  ‘For money?’ she said.

  ‘For free,’ I said. ‘Wayne told me if I didn’t do as he asked, he would reveal what had been going on between Scott and me and I would lose my job. I didn’t have the luxury of calling his bluff, so I agreed to it.’

  I didn’t tell them about the other part. The part about Wayne saying he would tell the police that I had been ripping the company off.

  ‘Where did this meeting take place?’ DS Aspinall asked.

  ‘Wayne’s house.’

  There was a flicker of distaste evident in her face.

  ‘How many times did this occur?’ she asked.

  ‘Once. On the Saturday night. Ultimately, though, Wayne had a bit of a problem and couldn’t actually go through with it. And then he panicked and knocked me out, and I ended up staying there for around two hours.’

  ‘Were you injured?’ she asked.

  ‘A bad bang to the head.’

  ‘Okay, but according to your original statement, you said you last saw Wayne on the Friday, after work. Is that correct?’

  ‘I did say that, but I lied. You would have wanted to know why I was with Wayne, and I didn’t want to tell you. But remember, I didn’t know at that point he was missing. That he was dead. So I didn’t think it was terribly important to mislead you by a day.’

  She nodded.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘So, to return to my earlier question, why now? What has changed that you felt the need to come forward now?’

  ‘Two things,’ I said. ‘The secret arrangement I had with Scott Elias is no longer a secret.’

  DS Aspinall frowned, unable to see at that point what my sleeping with Scott for money had to do with Wayne.

  ‘And then there’s this,’ I said.

  I removed from my handbag the tracking device, which was wrapped in a plastic bag, and pushed it across the desk.

  ‘It was found stuck beneath my car. Someone has been tracking my movements. Someone knew I was at Wayne’s house that night and probably followed me there.’

  DS Aspinall turned it over in her hand and read the serial number. ‘We should be able to find out where this was purchased easily enough,’ she told DC Gidley.

  ‘I think Scott Elias manufactured it,’ I said. ‘He has an electronics firm. I believe they produce devices like this.’

  ‘You’re saying you think it was Scott Elias who placed this tracker and followed you there?’

  ‘That’s what I believe, yes.’

  ‘Do we have his prints on file?’ she said to her colleague.

  ‘I’d need to check,’ replied DS Gidley.

  DS Aspinall was silent then, again turning the tracker over in her hands, thinking through, I assumed, possible scenarios. I resisted the urge to tell her I thought Scott could be responsible for Wayne’s death, because it was pretty clear from her manner that DS Aspinall dealt only in facts.

  ‘A curious thing,’ she said absently, as if to herself. ‘I’ve never actually seen one of these before. Of course, we can’t say for sure that it was placed under your car before Mr Geddes’ death, and I wonder, why would Scott Elias feel the need to track you in particular, Mrs Toovey?’

  I shrugged. ‘I can only guess as to the answer to that. He did become rather possessive.’

  ‘Violent at all?’

  ‘I believe he came close to it a few times. Grabbing me harder than necessary and suchlike. And he did try to force himself on me sexually once. Ultimately, though, he didn’t go through with it.’

  ‘Did he make any threats towards you or your family?’

  I shook my head. ‘Not really. No direct threats.’

  ‘Does he have a history of domestic abuse that you know of?’

  ‘His wife’s brother mentioned he had a dark temper.’

  ‘Did his wife ever discuss this with you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So when you say “possessiveness”, what behaviour are you referring to exactly?’ she asked.

  My face must have hardened somewhat because she leaned forward a little, saying, ‘I’m not doubting you, Mrs Toovey, but I’d just like to know what precisely we’re dealing with.’

  I exhaled. ‘I know how this looks,’ I said. ‘You think I’m paranoid. You think I’ve been sleeping with some rich guy who has been monitoring my movements, and now suddenly I’ve gone unreasonable, crazy, thinking he’s responsible for every crime in the area.’

  ‘We don’t think that, Mrs Toovey.’

  ‘Yes, well, I would in your situation. I have no evidence at all that Scott Elias is involved in Wayne’s death. None. I was at that house and my prints were not found. I can’t explain how that can be the case. What I’m here to do is to tell you the truth as I know it. It’s up to you to decide whether to follow up on it. I don’t want to tell you how to do your jobs.’

  DS Aspinall smiled. ‘Appreciate that,’ she said.

  ‘When I tried to halt the arrangement with Scott, when I was becoming close to a man I met, Scott tried to talk me out of it.’

  DS Aspinall waited for me to continue.

  ‘When I refused, he revealed our arrangement to his wife and children, saying he was prepared to lose them so I would stay with him. Still, I refused, and he warned that if he couldn’t have me, no else could either.’

  ‘Which now leads you to think that he may have got wind of you and Wayne and put a stop to that as well.’

  ‘Precisely,’ I said.

  DS Aspinall blew out her breath. ‘Certainly an interesting story,’ she said.

  ‘You think it’s far-fetched.’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ she replied evenly. ‘But what I will promise you, Mrs Toovey, is that we will certainly follow up on it. And I’ll let you know as soon as I hear of any developments.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I replied, but I could see I’d lost her.
/>
  ‘There is one more thing,’ I said. ‘But before I raise this next point, I would just like to say that I have a child in the hospital at the moment and he is—’

  ‘We know about your son’s accident,’ she replied gently.

  ‘Well, if you could bear that in mind when deciding whether to …’

  I paused, wondering how best to phrase the next part.

  ‘Arrest you for prostitution?’ she offered.

  I nodded.

  She glanced at her colleague, giving what must have been some kind of imperceptible signal, because DC Hannah Gidley rested her pen down by the side of her notes.

  ‘It’s not illegal, Mrs Toovey,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not?’ I asked, astonished.

  ‘Not the kind of prostitution you were engaged in. But, please, remind me again, just how did Scott Elias pay for these encounters?’

  ‘Firstly, I was paid in cash,’ I said. ‘And on subsequent encounters, I provided an invoice and billed his firm directly.’

  ‘So his business covered the cost of your time together?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Interesting,’ she said again.

  42

  TWO WEEKS PASSED, and nothing. No phone call from the police. No arrest. Not a whisper that Scott had even been questioned.

  I had been so confident, so absolutely certain that something would come of my statement. But no.

  And to make matters worse, according to Petra, Scott was back inside the family home after persuading Nadine that what we’d had together was no more than a pointless fling – a fling that he now bitterly regretted. He was deeply ashamed of his behaviour and put it down to a moment of madness in the presence of a predatory female, he said.

  It was politician’s talk to appease the masses. And the remarkable thing was it seemed to have worked. Scott apologized to all concerned. He’d been a bad boy, he said, and everyone went around with the opinion that Hell, even the best of us make mistakes sometimes. Nobody’s perfect.

  Eventually, when I could take no more waiting, I called DS Aspinall. She was evasive, informing me that she couldn’t comment on the ongoing investigation into Wayne Geddes’ death, assuring me that, as soon as any arrests were made, I would be told.

  ‘So you found nothing linking Scott Elias to Wayne’s death? Nothing?’ I cried down the phone to her. Scott had been practically stalking me and she was behaving as though I was being silly and irrational.

  ‘We’re still pursuing all lines of inquiry, Mrs Toovey,’ she told me.

  ‘You need to actually do something!’

  ‘I assure you, we are.’

  It was fruitless. It was as though she had disregarded my statement as soon as I’d left the station, possibly not even gone to the trouble of talking to Scott at all.

  I should have gone to another detective. I should have given my statement to someone who would take me seriously. I regretted that now.

  ‘Let it go,’ Petra advised, when I complained to her that nothing was being done.

  ‘I can’t let it go.’

  By now, I had told Petra the full story about Wayne. Time to stop the cycle of lies, I’d decided. But Petra had the opinion that whatever had led Wayne to end up dead in that freezer was most likely the result of his own deeds. She didn’t think for one second it had anything to do with Scott. ‘That’s laughable,’ she said when I told her my theory. ‘Scott’s not capable of anything like that.’

  It was now Wednesday evening. We were in Petra’s kitchen, and though she was still frosty towards me, we were at least on speaking terms. Petra was working her way through the stages of grief at the loss of her friendship with Scott and Nadine. She would get to acceptance and, just when I thought she was done with it all, she would quickly double back to denial again. She wanted me to go through the ins and outs of ‘the affair’, as she insisted on calling it, much as you might when interrogating your spouse about an old flame. You shouldn’t want the details, but you just can’t help yourself. Like picking at the sides of a scab. Or poking at something dead with a stick.

  ‘And would you say you enjoyed it?’ she was asking, as she crimped the pastry edges of a steak-and-kidney pie. ‘Would you say that you actually enjoyed it?’

  ‘It was sex, Petra. You know how it goes.’

  ‘He told Nadine you only did it once. And Nadine’s telling people that your fanciful story about being his mistress for money was merely the mad claims of a desperate hysteric.’

  ‘Is she?’ I said flatly, because I had given up rising to it by now.

  She bit her lip. ‘Did he shock you, wanting weird things done to him? Did he want you to … you know.’

  ‘You know …?’ I repeated, lifting my eyebrows, because I didn’t.

  ‘I can’t bring myself to say it,’ she said.

  And so it went on.

  George was with Winston for the next three days. I’d told Winston to keep an eye out for Scott’s Range Rover, just in case, and though Winston clearly thought I was paranoid, he assured me he wouldn’t let George out of his sight – which wasn’t difficult, because George couldn’t get far, very fast. He was moving about pretty well with elbow crutches now, and wasn’t due back at the hospital until next week, when they planned to adjust the external fixator. I had returned to work, and a new manager had been employed in my absence named Andrea. She was smart, efficient and was already on to Gary, making him demonstrate his efficacy as a clinician and account for the number of treatments it took him to cure a simple injury. ‘Patients will not come here if you can’t get them better quickly, Gary,’ I’d overheard her saying to him, and he’d nodded, replying, ‘Absolutely, absolutely.’ Later I found him circling NHS job opportunities in the latest copy of Frontline, scowling at the text.

  Plans to return to running my own clinic had been shelved. After George’s accident, it became clear that I’d been delusional in thinking I could ever work for myself again. Self-employment basically means you can never be ill, which, for some reason, your body will agree to. The problem arises when you have children: they cannot be talked out of illness. Or car accidents. Things happen and, with me not having anyone to lean on, the practice would suffer and patients would go elsewhere. Reluctantly, I’d let Keith Hollinghurst know I would be unable to take him up on his offer of the rented premises.

  I’d had to let go of my dreams all over again. I felt like I’d failed all over again. And even though I had people around me – Petra, for one, who could witter on happily about anything, nothing, filling up a room with noise and conversation – I felt more acutely alone in the few weeks following the crash than I had done in years.

  I thought of poor Wayne being forced into the freezer, no one really bothered by how he’d got in there. And it seemed as though I was the only person half interested in whether his killer was found or not. And yes, this was guilt talking, because if I was right he was put in there on account of me.

  I resolved that if there were no new developments within the next twenty-four hours, I would return to the police station and demand an explanation. I would find out exactly what it was they were doing with their time. Wayne deserved that from me at least.

  Two nights later I returned home, the twilight turning to darkness. Still, DS Aspinall had remained steadfast at our meeting the previous day, revealing nothing while at the same time notifying me that everything that could be done was being done. And, For heaven’s sakes, Mrs Toovey, couldn’t I just let them get on with their jobs now?

  The figure at the dining-room table was not visible at first, the house being in semi-darkness.

  And so it was only as I went through to the kitchen and flicked on the light that I stopped mid-stride, turning around to stare.

  I stood very still. There was a ringing in my ears. An immediate feeling of terror gripped my body.

  ‘Hello, Roz,’ he said. ‘Long time no see.’

  ‘What are you doing here, Scott?’

  ‘I ca
me to talk. I think it’s about time, don’t you?’

  ‘Did you break in?’

  ‘The back door was open.’

  It wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t.

  I walked into the kitchen to check. There was glass on the floor. I thought about grabbing something from the drawer, a knife, anything, but Scott was already in the doorway behind me. I froze. Scared to breathe. Scared to move.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ he said tiredly. ‘Come and sit down. Let’s talk.’

  I did as requested, moving back to the dining room, watching him carefully.

  We sat opposite one another. ‘How is your son?’ he asked. ‘George, isn’t it?’ he went on, as if this was all very normal. As if he’d not broken into my house.

  ‘Better,’ I said.

  ‘Excellent. Good to hear. Excellent.’

  My hands were trembling. Scott glanced down, observed me as I clasped them together tightly, and he cast me a look of wounded bewilderment. As if I was completely overreacting to his presence.

  ‘I saw him in the hospital,’ he said. ‘He’s very like you.’

  ‘You did what? When did you see him? How did you get in there?’

  ‘It was just for a moment. I wanted to check for myself that he was okay. Don’t look so worried, Roz. We had a nice chat. He didn’t mention it to you?’

  Fine beads of sweat sprung up along my upper lip as I thought about what he had done.

  Visiting George. Without my knowledge. Christ.

  ‘Scott,’ I whispered. ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘You know, Nadine feels terrible about it,’ he said, ignoring the question. ‘I keep telling her it was an accident. That if she hadn’t been in that state of mind then she wouldn’t have been driving so recklessly. I keep telling her that she was no more culpable than we were, wouldn’t you say?’

  I didn’t answer, and he frowned, waiting.

  ‘Scott, you’re scaring me. Have you come here to hurt me?’

  And he gave a half-hearted laugh and shook his head. ‘Of course not,’ he replied. ‘I’d never hurt you. Why would I hurt you?’ He seemed genuinely astonished at the suggestion. ‘I just want to talk.’