The phone rang again. Had Valerie thought of something else? ‘Hello?’ I said.
‘This is Heather Carter.’
The back of my neck prickled and I felt my stomach drop.
‘Valerie rang me earlier.’ Her voice was soft, troubled. ‘She said you were asking questions about us, about Alex and me.’
I didn’t confirm or deny it, just sat it out waiting to see what she wanted.
‘I’d like a chance to talk to you, to try and clear things up.’
As if it was a little minor misunderstanding; something that could be ironed out, fixed by a little civilized discussion.
‘You can talk to me now,’ I told her.
‘Not over the phone,’ she said.
Was it a trap? There was no way I was going round to her place. If Heather had done what I thought she’d done then she would be desperate to stop the news getting out. That thought was followed swiftly by another: if Heather tried to hurt me it would be obvious to the whole world whodunnit and she’d be inviting arrest. She’d be stupid to try anything – and her ability to evade detection, presumably to think fast and smart under enormous pressure, to protect Alex and herself and persuade the policy of their innocence, showed she was far from stupid.
Nevertheless, I exercised caution. I wouldn’t invite her into my space either but meet her somewhere neutral. Somewhere busy, in public where we could talk without people listening.
‘Albert Square,’ I told her. ‘Outside the town hall, half past two.’
She thanked me and hung up.
I’d a sick feeling of apprehension about meeting Heather but it was tempered by a keen curiosity. My chest felt tight and my throat dry and I shivered, chilly even though I had the heating on.
Heather Carter was there before me; I saw her get to her feet from the bench where she was sitting and I raised an arm in acknowledgement. That hurt. I was still having to move gingerly to try and minimize the pain from Dryden’s attack on me.
The storm had moved on by mid-morning and now the day was fine: wisps of cloud in a china-blue sky, the sun slanting across the cobbled square, caressing the honey-coloured stone of the town hall with golden light, everything washed clean by the rain.
As I’d hoped, the place was busy with people: office workers on late lunches eating sandwiches or smoking, a large party of oriental tourists, maybe Japanese or Chinese, following a tour guide over to the fountain at the far side of the square.
Heather and I had the bench to ourselves. Her forehead was furrowed with concern; I could see the tension in her shoulders, huddled as though she was cold in spite of the roll-neck sweater and brown suede jacket she wore.
I waited for her to speak, nervous myself, feeling faintly nauseous, but intrigued as to how she would play it.
‘These . . .’ She faltered, began again, her fingers worrying at each other. ‘The things you’ve been implying – that we might have lied. I don’t know how you’ve come up with that idea but it’s a horrible mistake. I want to set things right.’
I didn’t believe her, not for one second. If she and Alex were innocent, she’d not have given me the time of day. She’d more likely have gone to the police herself, to complain, and would never have invited me to meet with her. She was on a fishing trip, I thought, to see how much I knew, see how big a threat I was.
‘You’re wasting my time. I didn’t come here to be fed more lies.’ I got to my feet, ignoring the stab of pain in my calves.
‘Please wait,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s not what you think.’
I sat back down carefully. ‘One of you killed Charlie,’ I said quietly, ‘then you covered it up.’
‘No,’ she insisted.
Across the square a man stepped into a taxi and the cab pulled away; the line of black taxis moved up the rank. A flock of pigeons rose and circled the square. A woman was taking photographs of the marble statue of Oliver Heywood, raised to the benefactor for his devotion to the public good.
‘Either you or Alex were at the cottage earlier,’ I carried on, ‘and you constructed an alibi, making it look like Charlie was still alive much later in the day and exonerating yourselves. Damien Beswick was convicted on the strength of his false confession. He died in prison. He couldn’t face another night, another day. He hung himself rather than go on. You knew he was innocent.’
‘I loved Charlie,’ she said, still denying any blame.
‘And you were losing him,’ I pointed out.
Her face flooded with colour and she turned her head away. A light breeze toyed with the curls on her head.
Another cab drove off. The photographer walked along to the bronze of Gladstone.
‘What are you here for, Heather? What did you expect?’
‘It’s not all cut and dried,’ she said. ‘You talk as if you know everything and you don’t. We had nothing to do with it.’
‘I know enough to talk to the police,’ I said.
‘The police already investigated,’ she said sharply. ‘There are no grounds to do so again. You’re just going to make a complete fool of yourself.’
‘There’s new evidence: evidence from Damien Beswick. It’s all in my report. I think it’s compelling.’ At that stage I didn’t even know whether Damien’s evidence would be allowable, given he wasn’t around to be tested on it. But I was banking on the fact that she wouldn’t, either.
‘What evidence?’ She sounded perplexed.
I wasn’t going to disclose any details. I didn’t want to give her the ammunition. ‘You’re going to need a lawyer,’ I said.
‘I didn’t do it,’ she said simply.
I sighed, growing tired of her protestations. Her silence stretched out, then the bell in the town hall clock tower rang out once for quarter to three: a mournful toll. The pigeons wheeled and landed by the benches, scouring the cobbles for crumbs. They were a scrappy bunch: two had deformed feet and another had dull, bedraggled feathers.
I waited, counting silently to ten, preparing to leave her.
‘It was an accident,’ she whispered, ‘a silly accident.’
‘No reason for a cover-up, then,’ I came back.
‘He didn’t mean it,’ her voice trembled, ‘it was self-defence.’
‘Who?’
‘Alex.’ The word choked her.
I felt prickling as the hairs on my forearms rose.
‘Charlie lost his temper. He flared up sometimes, it was frightening. He could be very violent. He went to hit Alex and Alex grabbed the knife. He was just trying to protect himself but Charlie tried to get it, he tripped. He fell.’ She gave a shaky breath.
I tried to imagine the situation. Charlie yelling, Alex panicking, fearful, grabbing what was to hand. Charlie lunging and the sudden, irreversible horror as he fell. The blood. Alex rigid with shock, his father dying before his eyes. The terror at what he had done consuming everything else.
A car cut in front of another, swinging round the corner into the square. The blare of horns startled me.
‘Where were you?’ I asked.
‘I wasn’t there,’ she said simply. ‘Alex rang me: he was hysterical, terrified.’
‘He didn’t call an ambulance? Get help?’
‘It was too late.’ She shuddered beside me. Her face was etched with anxiety. ‘Alex was petrified; he knew he’d be arrested, locked up. That’s why he needed the alibi. If it had been me then no question . . . but my son.’ Her voice quavered.
‘His age,’ I objected. ‘The circumstances – they’d have been taken into account. If it was an accident or even self-defence he wouldn’t be blamed.’
‘What if they didn’t believe him? He wouldn’t hear of it and I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t lose him as well.’ She sniffed.
I watched a man, clutching a can, walk unsteadily to the Albert Memorial, settle down on the bottom step and lay a cap on the floor by his feet.
‘What good would it do now?’ she asked.
‘You sacrificed another boy’
s life for Alex’s,’ I said.
She had no answer for me, her mouth worked with emotion. ‘I came here to beg,’ she said. ‘Perhaps I was foolish—’
‘Callous.’ I couldn’t keep quiet. Seeing Damien again, twisting in his chair, that sudden fleeting smile, the last glimpse I had of him as he lay his head on his arms. Defeated. I was determined to make her acknowledge the extent of the damage she’d done.
‘But I had to protect Alex. He was all that I had left. He was so frightened. He’s never been strong. He was terrified of Charlie.’
‘Why was Alex there, at the cottage?’ After all, I thought, Libby was due to turn up later. He might run into her. The three adults had tried to keep the state of play from Alex, not wanting to upset him before his exams. So why would Charlie have taken him there?
‘Driving practice.’ She stared at her nails. I saw the wedding ring on her finger. That she wore it still seemed monstrous. ‘Alex was taking lessons. Charlie said Alex could drive out there; he was laying carpet and Alex was going to help him fit it.’ She cleared her throat.
The flock of tourists disappeared up the steps into the main entrance of the town hall.
‘So the phoney conference at the NEC – you invented that for the alibi?’
‘No, that was true. Charlie had told us he was going on down there later that afternoon.’
‘And how would Alex get home?’
‘Charlie would drive him back to the main road on his way to the M6. There’s a bus from there.’
How had they held it together? I wondered. Blood on their hands. Where had they found the resolve to enact the pantomime for Valerie Mayhew? To fake their reactions when the police came with tragic news? How on earth had a seventeen-year-old boy not betrayed the terror in his soul as he sat beside his mother and answered those mundane questions about the day?
And in the weeks that followed when they were informed of the arrest of a suspect, when they buried Charlie, when they went to court to hear Damien plea, how had they borne that secret?
‘He nearly went mad.’ Heather spoke as if she could hear my thoughts. ‘He still has nightmares. He can’t go to college. He couldn’t survive in prison.’ Anguish tore at her words.
‘Nor could Damien.’
She looked away again. I was aware that she had ventured no apology for any of it: not a sorry for lying, for the miscarriage of justice, not a word of regret for Damien’s suicide.
‘Perhaps that would have happened anyway,’ she said. ‘By all accounts—’
‘Don’t you dare.’ I felt anger sluice through me, my skin grow hot, my chest burn. I stood up. The taxi drivers were clustered outside their cabs, exchanging gossip, smoking, laughing on this fine autumn day.
‘You’ll destroy him,’ she pleaded. ‘For what? Have you no compassion?’
I walked away, across the setts, past the Albert Memorial, up along Princess Street where the wind was funnelled along the road, and the traffic swept past, unending, relentless.
NINETEEN
The bus cruised down Oxford Road, past the BBC and the universities, on through Rusholme and Fallowfield. I was dimly aware of the people paying, showing their passes, of those getting off, murmuring their thanks to the driver, of the mix of old and new buildings along the route. The weather was changing again, the sky darkening and there were the first fat drops of rain. But I was rerunning Heather’s story, thinking that if I went over it often enough it might become comprehensible. I didn’t dispute the facts of what she’d told me and they fitted with Damien’s account, but the sheer scale of collusion, the amorality and audacity, the stone cold nerve that both of them had demonstrated was hard to swallow.
Not quite ready to face home and hearth, I went to the park when I got off the bus. In the little copse by the stream, where the path meanders and old frayed rope swings hang from the sturdier branches, I watched the sun slice beams through the crown of the trees and midges dance in their shadows. The air was rich here, redolent of sap and must and the heavy clay soil.
Libby needed to know what had happened, Chloe, too, and then Dave Pirelli, the police detective and Damien’s lawyer. There was nothing to stop Heather denying her confession to me; in fact, if she was still hell bent on protecting Alex, she’d have to. Having come this far and with little sign of guilt or shame for her behaviour, she would probably stick to her original version of events. Had she really expected me to let it lie? For me to walk away and say no more about it? Did I have enough to convince the police to reopen the case? A hearsay confession from Heather, the recollections of a dead man: a darkened cottage, a cooling engine, a stranger hurrying down the hill. Could that possibly be enough?
Abi had walked the kids home and when I arrived back Maddie and Tom had been playing make-overs with Leanne. They’d raided my cosmetics and various kitchen items. Maddie had full-blown panda eyes and her hair had been backcombed and sprayed, forming clots and spikes, a sort of dragged-through-the-hedge look. In a stroke of genius, Leanne had suggested special effects to Tom, who had a scar across one cheek (lipstick, eye pencil, peanut butter and cornflakes), a moustache and a tattoo on his arm. Not to be left out, Baby Lola sported cat’s whiskers and a black nose.
I wasn’t unaware of the contradictory position I held. On the one hand I was intent on making the truth known about Alex’s attack on his father and the ensuing cover-up engineered by his mother and determined to see justice done – for Charlie, for Libby, for Damien and his family. On the other I was sure that my decision not to reveal the truth about Leanne’s past crime and in effect to help her evade prosecution was the right one. Alex had unintentionally killed his father in a messy argument; Leanne had intentionally taken a life in an act of revenge, in the midst of a terrifying encounter, hitting back at one of the men who had orchestrated abuse on a brutal scale.
The process of law can be a clumsy tool but while I thought Leanne would only have suffered further at its hands, I really believed there’d be understanding and clemency for Alex. If only he had admitted to the terrible accident immediately. His mother’s counsel had been disastrous, distorting everything and trapping them both in a tragic lie.
Why had Heather been so intent on covering up? Had it not been the accident that she described? Self-defence, she had said at one point. Charlie had been violent – lunging at the boy. But if that wasn’t the whole truth, if Alex deliberately attacked his father then Heather’s actions after the death made a lot more sense.
I’d rung Libby and asked her to come round to my office. I wanted to tell her what I’d learnt in person. I told Leanne that Ray would soon be home if she could hold the fort till then – I’d be an hour or so.
Even with an umbrella, I got wet walking the short stretch to work. The rain drummed on the cars parked along the roadside and gushed along the gutters. It spattered the leaves on the trees and bounced off the paving stones.
In my office the Tupperware on the window sill was catching the drops from the leak in the narrow basement window frame: plop, plop, plop. I turned up the heating to take the chill off the room, made fresh coffee and rang Dave Pirelli. He was in, though rushed. But I impressed on him that what I had to tell him was extremely serious and wouldn’t wait. He couldn’t cancel his meetings that day but promised to see me first thing in the morning. I was thankful he hadn’t given me the brush-off or told me not to waste police time – both responses I have had from detectives in the past.
How might Libby react? I was nervous, having second thoughts. The truth would be a huge shock. Might it not be easier to fudge what I’d learnt and leave it as it was? If and when the police took action they could answer Libby’s questions. But I owed her: she’d hired me to do my best and expected an honest account from me. Could she handle it? Thinking about Libby and how she had conducted herself reassured me: she had survived the pressure of suspicion when the police first began the enquiry; she hadn’t gone haring off to Chloe Beswick when she got the letter about Damien’s conviction
but brought me in to check it out; she had coped with me finding merit in Damien’s position with good grace and had now gone so far as to reverse her opinion and join Chloe Beswick in asking for further police investigation. She had done all this after finding Charlie violently killed, and in the midst of her shock and grief. In the past year she had lost her lover, their future together and had borne his baby. The latter in itself can be enough to make a woman slightly deranged for a good while, going by my own experience. She had kept her business going, too. Libby was strong enough to take the news and sorted enough not to do anything stupid. I’d a box of tissues handy in case of tears – and a bottle of brandy in the filing cabinet, in the best private-eye tradition.
Libby shook the rain off her coat and I told her to leave it on the hooks in the hall. She’d brought Rowena in with her; the baby was dozing in her car seat.
We sat on the sofa downstairs in my office. She picked up on the atmosphere straight away. ‘What’s happened to your face?’
‘Nick Dryden warning me off.’
‘Oh, my God!’
‘But he’s not involved with what happened to Charlie. He got the wrong end of the stick: thought I was spying for his creditors or the authorities. And I got the wrong end of his temper.’
‘Have you reported it?’
I shook my head. ‘I’m going to let it go. Too complicated. I don’t ever expect to hear from him again. But I’ve got other news. It’s going to be a big shock,’ I warned her, ‘I’m sorry.’
She drew herself up in preparation and regarded me solemnly; a wary look hooded her eyes.
I repeated what Heather had told me, sticking to the bare bones of the confrontation. Her eyes filled with tears and she didn’t say anything for a few moments after I’d finished speaking. Then she rubbed her hand across her forehead. ‘So, the alibi, and the things that Damien remembered – how does it all fit together?’
Crying Out Loud Page 18
