Stop Dead

by Leigh Russell

  In the meantime, Geraldine had other matters on her mind. She felt a familiar tremor hearing prison doors close behind her as she followed a prison officer to the visitors’ room. A long time seemed to pass before Linda shuffled in and sat down without looking at Geraldine. Her dark hair was greasier than Geraldine remembered it, and her extreme pallor looked sickly.

  ‘You’ve heard the news?’

  Linda gave no response.

  ‘About Ingrid.’

  Almost imperceptibly, Linda’s face coloured.

  ‘I don’t know anyone called Ingrid.’

  ‘You know very well who I mean. I’m talking about your niece. She’s changed her name to Ingrid, but you used to call her by her first name, Emily.’

  Linda raised her head. Her green eyes glittered wretchedly.

  ‘Leave Emily alone. She doesn’t need you pestering her after all this time.’

  ‘Linda, your niece has been arrested because we know what happened to your husband. We know it wasn’t you who killed him. Emily’s confessed. You’re going to be released.’

  ‘Released?’ she repeated, gazing around the room with an expression of bemusement. She turned back to Geraldine, suddenly angry.

  ‘I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Leave me alone.’

  She stood up but Geraldine told her to wait.

  ‘You can help Emily,’ she added.

  With a grunt, Linda sat down again.

  ‘Why did you take the rap for your niece when she killed your husband? You weren’t responsible for his death. Why lie about it?’

  Linda didn’t answer.

  ‘For twenty years you let his killer go free. You’ve spent a lifetime incarcerated for a crime you didn’t commit. Why did you do it, Linda?’

  Linda’s face relaxed into a smile. She leaned forward on her chair and spoke very rapidly, in a low voice. As she explained, her eyes stared ferociously at Geraldine, with a fervour that was almost manic.

  ‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand. But you’re right. It wasn’t me, it was Emily who killed him, and he deserved it, the sick bastard. I should have done it myself, not left it to the child. Because he deserved to die. And I deserved to be punished.’

  ‘You think what you did was right?’

  Linda shrugged, unrepentant.

  ‘You sacrificed twenty years of your life to protect your niece, knowing she had murdered your husband. You knew it was her, didn’t you, because you were there, in the shed. You watched her batter him to death and you didn’t do anything to stop her. But what I don’t understand is why you abandoned her like that.’

  Linda’s eyes opened wide in surprise.

  ‘Abandoned her? What are you talking about?’

  She raised her voice. The prison officer started forward. Geraldine shook her head and raised a hand to indicate she didn’t want to be interrupted. Linda dropped her voice.

  ‘You don’t understand. How could you? I promised my sister I’d take care of Emily, promised when she was dying. And then – then …’

  She drew a deep shuddering breath. Geraldine glanced over at the warder whose eyes were fixed on Linda.

  ‘It was all right to begin with, when she first came to live with us. I wasn’t sure how William would take to it, having her there all the time, but he was very nice with her, very attentive. But then it started. They were very close and one night I heard her whimpering. I went into her bedroom and I saw them. He was on top of her and I could see her face over his shoulder …’

  She broke off, lost in the horror of the recollection.

  ‘I can still see the terror on her face. She was only thirteen. But I didn’t do anything. I just stood there, watching.’

  She lifted her face to Geraldine in sudden appeal.

  ‘I didn’t know what to do. I was only nineteen, not much more than a child myself. You don’t know what it was like. It was such a shock. I’d had my suspicions before then, but yes, I didn’t want to believe it. You don’t want to believe it of your own husband. And what was I meant to do? I was too scared to confront him –’

  ‘Scared?’

  ‘I was so much younger than him and he was so sure of himself. I can’t explain it, but he wasn’t the kind of man you could argue with. He never listened to me anyway. But he must have realised I knew, because he changed. He stopped being furtive. I’d go into the lounge and he’d be there, with his arm around her, and he wouldn’t move away from her when I sat down. Nothing was the same after that.’

  She dropped her face into her hands as though to shut out the memory.

  ‘So you closed your eyes to what was going on. Wilful blindness.’

  It was a statement, not a question. Linda lifted her head and nodded, with an expression almost serene.

  ‘When it happened, when she killed him, I finally saw my way to doing the right thing by her –’

  ‘The right thing?’

  ‘I’d promised my sister I would protect Emily, look after her. When I was given this chance to make it up to her, I took her place in prison, so she could go free. None of it was her fault. She was only a child. She didn’t deserve to be punished.’

  ‘But you did, because you had kept silent about your husband’s abuse –’

  ‘Yes. I don’t regret what I did, not for a second, not even now you’ve caught up with her. Because she knows my sentence gave her twenty years of freedom, twenty years of life she would have missed out on. Twenty years of freedom while she was still young –’

  Coldly Geraldine interrupted to explain that if Ingrid had received professional help when she was fourteen, she might in time have been able to live a normal life, with a new identity. There were extenuating circumstances to her murdering her uncle. In sacrificing twenty years of freedom to assuage her own guilt, Linda had sentenced her niece to a lifetime of torment and hatred.

  ‘She’s insane, Linda; completely insane. Maybe she has been ever since she killed your husband. God knows what has been going through her mind for the last twenty years. You dealt with your own guilt, but left her to deal with hers alone. If she wasn’t damaged enough already, you abandoned her to turn into a psychopath, beyond hope of recovery.’

  Linda gave Geraldine a baleful glare.

  ‘What do you mean, a psychopath? You’re forgetting that Emily was the victim in all this, not William. He got what was coming to him. She never deserved to be abused. She never asked for it. That’s exactly why I didn’t want her to be put on trial, because of that kind of attitude. You don’t understand anything. She killed her uncle, so you immediately assume she must be evil, when she was just a frightened child.’

  Geraldine shook her head.

  ‘That’s not what I’m saying. Whoever was responsible for what happened to your husband, Emily needed help. In the course of a month your niece has battered four men to death, and who knows how many more she’s assaulted over the years. She was abused and seriously disturbed as a young teenager. I don’t know if her urge to kill people is part of her nature or was brought on by her early experience. I’m not qualified to hazard an opinion on that. But she’s a psychopath now, if she wasn’t born one. There’s a chance that, if she had received professional help after killing your husband, she might have grown up to lead a semblance of a normal life. She might have recovered from her experience. People do. But by refusing to acknowledge her guilt, you stole that chance from her.’

  With a cry of rage, Linda scrambled onto the table and tried to fling herself at Geraldine who dodged out of the way, just as the prison officer reached them.

  ‘You’d think she’d be pleased she’s going to be let out,’ the officer called over her shoulder as she led Linda away. ‘We only told her this morning.’

  ‘That depends,’ Geraldine called after her. ‘There are worse sentences than prison.’

  CHAPTER 72

  Geraldine had only taken a few days off work when she had moved to London. Her holiday entitlement had been accumulating fo
r a while. Nevertheless, she experienced a twinge of guilt when she locked her front door and set off for the airport. It was a long time since she had left work behind her for more than a few hours. A hire car was waiting for her at the end of her short flight. She set off to the small town where her father had settled, about fifty miles from Shannon airport. She drove along a well maintained motorway, bypassing the city of Limerick, and turned North towards her destination. Reaching her father’s small town, she gazed appreciatively at the picturesque scene that spread out in front of her.

  The town had grown up on two banks of a river beside a large lake. The square tower of a church appeared above the trees behind her. In front of her a row of boats bobbed gently up and down in a marina on the lake. Before going to her hotel, she parked the car and explored the streets on foot. It didn’t take long to do a circuit of the main roads on her side of the river. Traffic lights on either side of a narrow bridge allowed cars to cross singly, in one direction at a time. Even with little traffic on the roads, there were a few cars waiting to cross. She dreaded to think what the queues must be like at busy times. But gazing around, she wondered if the place was ever busy, it appeared so sleepy and quiet. A few people sauntered in and out of the shops, occasionally stopping to greet one another on the pavement. No one seemed to be in a hurry.

  There were several pubs offering accommodation in the town, but only one hotel. Studying the choices online, she had plumped for the most expensive option. Catching sight of the hotel from the bridge, she was pleased with her choice. With landscaped gardens leading down to a marina, and windows facing out over the lake, the setting couldn’t be more beautiful. Her pleasure was complete when she checked in and was shown to a spacious room with large windows overlooking the lake. No wonder her father had chosen to spend the rest of his life here.

  Although he had been married to Molly for longer than he had been with Geraldine’s mother, she had never met her father’s second wife. Soon after they met, Molly had taken him back to the town where she had lived as a child, and they never left. Celia and Geraldine had ignored his letters, begging them to visit him. Without mentioning his name, it was clear their mother would regard any contact with him as a betrayal. Even now, Geraldine had been reluctant to tell Celia when she decided to visit Ireland. In the end, she had merely told her sister she was going away for a few days. She hoped Celia wouldn’t realise her trip coincided with their father’s birthday celebration.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I haven’t decided yet. I’m due some time off –’

  ‘You can say that again!’

  ‘And if I don’t take it soon there’ll be another investigation and then I’ll never get away.’

  ‘It sounds like a good idea. You could do with a break from all those dead bodies! Tell you what, do you fancy going somewhere together? Just for a few days. One of my friends knows this fabulous retreat …’

  It sounded wonderful, but Geraldine had her own plans.

  ‘Not this time.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re going with someone else?’ Celia wanted to know. ‘You dark horse. There’s a man involved, isn’t there?’

  Geraldine sighed. In a way, Celia was right. But she didn’t suspect the man was their father.

  ‘No, I’m not going with anyone else. I really need some time to myself right now. It’s a great idea to do something together, just not right now. Let’s do something together soon.’

  The woman at the door had grey hair and sad blue eyes. She smiled nervously when she saw Geraldine on the doorstep, and greeted her by name as though they weren’t strangers.

  ‘You must be Molly,’ Geraldine responded.

  She tried to inject as much warmth into her voice as she could. She hadn’t travelled all this way to be hostile to the woman her father had fallen in love with over twenty years ago.

  ‘I brought you these.’

  ‘Thank you, they’re beautiful.’

  The flowers between them resolved any awkwardness about whether they should shake hands or attempt an embrace.

  Geraldine’s overriding feeling on seeing her father was sadness; he looked so old. She could have passed him in the street without recognising him. It was odd to think that he hadn’t been much older than she was now when he had left her mother for Molly nearly a quarter of a century ago. She looked for the father she remembered in the old man rising stiffly from his chair to greet her. Everything about his features had been clearly defined. Now it was as though he had been drawn in soft charcoal and someone had come along and smudged the edges of his portrait; his chin lost in sagging jowls, eyes peering from wrinkled folds of skin, the mop of fair hair she recalled all but vanished, leaving a shiny pate bordered by a few wisps of white. But when he smiled and held his hands out shyly, the years slipped away.

  ‘How are you, Dad?’

  He nodded and they embraced wordlessly. When she pulled away he covered his face, but not before she had seen tears in his eyes. All at once she was struggling to keep her own emotions under control.

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Molly said. ‘The others will be here soon.’

  Geraldine was glad she had arrived early, to meet her father without his neighbours and friends there to gawp.

  The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of introductions. Molly seemed to be related to half of Ireland. Her three sons and seven grandchildren all turned up. Geraldine hoped her father wasn’t grieved that not one of the guests at his birthday party was his blood relation. Even Geraldine was a stranger who had shared his home for ten years. She wondered if her parents’ inability to have more children after Celia’s birth had contributed to the breakdown of their marriage. But that was all in the past. Her adoptive mother was dead, and he had a new life.

  Seeing him surrounded by Molly’s family, it felt inappropriate to raise the issue of her search for her birth mother. She would ask him another time. In any case, it was unlikely her father would be able to help her. After all her anticipation, she decided against mentioning it, even though searching for her birth mother had been the main factor influencing her decision to travel to Ireland. Her father didn’t ask about his own daughter until Geraldine was leaving, speaking quickly, as though the words pained him.

  ‘Celia’s fine.’

  ‘And the child?’

  ‘Chloe? She’s fine too.’

  She didn’t know what else to say.

  ‘Still just the one?’

  Geraldine nodded.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘No-one, Dad. Just my work.’

  He smiled sadly at her, not knowing what to say. He had forfeited the right to pass judgement on her adult life before it had begun.

  Geraldine was relieved when it was time for her to leave. She suspected her father felt the same way. It would have been nice to have spent more time with him, and get to know him better. As it was, their parting was oddly formal.

  ‘It’s been great seeing you again.’

  ‘Yes, we must keep in touch.’

  Geraldine agreed, and this time she really meant what she said. She turned to wave as she drove away, but her father had already closed his door.

  CHAPTER 73

  It was glorious to oversleep and spoil herself with a late breakfast. At her favourite café along Upper Street she lingered over freshly squeezed orange juice, brown toast, and fluffy scrambled egg and bacon, with a cafetiere. England was enjoying an unexpected spell of beautiful autumn sunshine. After breakfast she strolled along the busy main road and back down the quiet side street to her flat. Picking up her car she drove into work to start on the paperwork which had to be completed before the case could finally be closed. However cut and dried the result, everything had to be in order for the prosecution, to ensure the case was watertight. Even after a confession, facts could be twisted. With a decent lawyer even those who were blatantly guilty could evade conviction on a technicality.

  It was hard to focus on her report. So many pe
ople had been involved in the case: widows and witnesses, victims and families, suspects and passersby, those who had been touched for an instant, and those whose lives had been transformed forever. Just twenty-four hours earlier, Geraldine could have recited chunks from key statements in the investigation. She had known names and relationships, and could have stated where suspects had been at the time of any one of the four murders, without recourse to her notes. This morning, she had to double-check the name of Patrick’s former mistress. The investigation over, she was already losing her grasp of names and dates, actions and injuries, that had occupied her thoughts over the past few weeks to the exclusion of everything else. Now she was exhausted, and her head felt empty.

  She didn’t stay late at work, wanting to reach Kent in time for the start of her former mentor’s leaving party. Out of all her ex-colleagues, she had only been in close contact with her previous sergeant, Ian Peterson, and wasn’t sure how it would feel to return to her old work place and meet her former colleagues on the Kent constabulary. As it turned out, they all seemed pleased to see her and teased her about deserting them for the bright lights of the capital. Ted Carter seemed delighted that she had made the effort to turn up.

  ‘I really appreciate your coming,’ he said, beaming at her over the rim of his glass. ‘I know how busy you must be in London.’

  ‘As it happens, we’ve just wrapped up a case,’ she told him, ‘but I wouldn’t have missed this anyway.’

  She waved her hand around to indicate the gathering. ‘Timing is everything,’ he told her and she smiled.

  They both knew she wouldn’t have made it if she had been tied up on a case.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Geraldine.’

  ‘Very good,’ a familiar voice chimed in.