‘It’s the truth,’ Felicity said to her daughter. ‘And your schoolwork suffered, he never thought about that, did he?’
‘Mum, don’t,’ Phoebe muttered.
This was impossible. Janine nodded to Richard signalling with her eyes that he should concentrate on Felicity. Janine moved around the other side of the sofa, putting herself in between mother and daughter.
‘Was it a difficult break up?’ Richard asked Felicity.
‘Had he tried to see you before?’ Janine said to Phoebe.
But Phoebe didn’t reply, she seemed intent on listening to what her mother was telling Richard. ‘He made such a mistake, abandoning us. I think he knows that now. Clive and I, a love that deep – it’s not a bond you can ever break. If it hadn’t have been for the baby—’
‘Mum!’ Phoebe said. Janine saw she was trying to protect her mother.
‘Phoebe?’ Janine said, ‘Your dad, he’d not contacted you before?’
The girl, shook her head rapidly. ‘No. Well, he came round here with Sammy a few weeks ago. Some deranged plan that if we got to know him it’d change everything. Soo not a good idea,’ she said.
Something else Clive Wray had failed to mention. Did he think they were idiots, that this wouldn’t come to light, just like his trip to see Phoebe at the stadium had done?
Felicity was still waxing lyrical. ‘He’d never have left me but for that. He wants us back. He’s just in denial.’
Janine saw a spasm of irritation on the girl’s face as she swivelled round on the sofa arm and said hotly, ‘We’re second best. He picked Claire, he picked Sammy.’ Janine knew the feeling. Pete had picked Tina. How much more painful if a child had been involved then? Janine sensed the loneliness, the rejection that the girl felt. It was all so keen at that age, so cut and dried.
Phoebe jumped to her feet. ‘When Mum was ill, she,’ Phoebe hesitated, flushed, ‘she took an overdose. I had to stay at Dad’s. I was invisible. My mum had nearly died but all they could think about was Sammy. Dad didn’t want me there and she didn’t. They just wanted to live happily ever after—’ her voice was cracking.
‘It must have been hard,’ Janine said.
Phoebe blinked back tears but didn’t say anything.
‘You met Sammy?’ Richard said to Felicity.
She stared at him, Janine could see a smirk twitching at the corners of her mouth. She took a drag on the cheroot. ‘I never wished the child any harm.’
‘Mum—’ Phoebe tried again to stop her talking but Felicity was apparently determined to say her piece, ‘I just wished it hadn’t been born.’ She looked at Janine then Richard. ‘You think that’s a terrible thing to say?’
‘He’s only little,’ Phoebe looked upset. ‘It’s not his fault.’ She sat down heavily. ‘How could anyone do that?’
Felicity moved over and put a hand on Phoebe’s head. ‘I know,’ she murmured. ‘Poor Claire.’ Her tone hollow, disingenuous. She didn’t mean a word of it.
‘I’ve got hockey practice,’ Phoebe announced.
Janine looked at Richard, he’d no objection. They had got what they had come for, for now, corroboration of Clive’s relationship with Phoebe and the context for their meeting. They’d also found someone else who was worth considering, Janine thought, Felicity Wray the wronged ex-wife with an axe to grind.
‘Bunny boiler,’ Richard said as they reached the car outside the house.
‘A credible suspect?’ Janine asked.
‘Certainly got motive, revenge,’ Richard said.
‘Felicity hates Clive for destroying the marriage,’ Janine agreed.
‘But she wants him back,’ Richard said. ‘She blames Sammy for Clive leaving. Maybe seeing the child triggers that rage. She thinks with Sammy out the way, Clive’ll come back to her.’
‘Helluva grand gesture. Mind you, fond of those,’ said Janine. ‘The suicide attempt on the day Claire goes into labour.’ Janine tried to imagine herself doing something like that to queer the pitch for Tina, and failed.
Richard said, ‘Or the girl? Angry, jealous. You saw how she was shielding her mother.’
‘Phoebe does it for Felicity?’ Janine said.
‘Or for herself?’
‘Children who kill – they’re invariably very damaged. I didn’t get that impression, she was upset, maybe confused but nothing extraordinary given the situation.’
‘Living with Felicity can’t have done her much good,’ Richard said. ‘Must have messed her head up.’
Janine considered it. She couldn’t see Phoebe abducting and then killing her half-brother. But Felicity? ‘The witnesses from the park – they say there was a woman there on her own. Could it have been Felicity or Phoebe? Make that a priority tomorrow.’
Chapter 9
He came back.
Claire’s first instinct when she heard Clive’s key in the door was to hide. To run upstairs and climb into the fitted wardrobe, like Sammy used to, or wriggle under their bed.
Instead she forced herself to stay where she was at the kitchen table, which was littered with bits of the kitchen roll she had been shredding. Tearing the sheets into smaller and smaller strips.
Did he know she had told police about his boots? Given them the flyer?
Here he was, back home, so the police must have had some answers to their questions or they’d have kept him longer, wouldn’t they?
He stood in the doorway, almost as if he needed permission to cross the threshold. His face sombre.
She raised her eyes to meet his, a bite of fury piercing the numbness that kept descending on her. His eyes told her nothing.
‘What happened?’ she said.
He cleared his throat, ‘They wanted to know where I was.’ He moved into the room, pulled off his jacket, displacing the air and sending pieces of kitchen roll fluttering on to the floor. He sat opposite her.
‘I’m, erm … Hayfield … I wasn’t at Hayfield.’ He tapped his right thumb and index finger together, nervously.
She waited, unwilling to supply questions, to ease his admission.
‘I should have told you, I know that now.’
He was having an affair! Oh God. What a fool she had been. She should have seen it coming. He’d left Felicity for Claire and now he was leaving Claire for whoever was next in line. While she had been running round the park frantic for her son, dread thickening her blood, Clive had been screwing some woman.
He swallowed, made to speak and failed. Claire picked up some shreds of paper began to roll them in her fingertips into a little ball.
‘It was … I was seeing Phoebe,’ he said.
Phoebe. The other woman is called Phoebe?
‘She was playing in the schools’ hockey tournament at the stadium.’
Claire looked at him, his wretched face. ‘Your Phoebe?’ she said.
‘I know we’d agreed to keep a distance, that with Felicity poisoning her towards us it was the only way but I felt … I thought … Now she’s that bit older.’
She felt a wave of anger crash through her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because I’d promised you not to have anything to do with them, because when Sammy was gone it didn’t seem to matter. All that mattered was getting Sammy back. How could I upset you more by—’
‘Upset me? Oh, for pity’s sake, Clive, I was deranged already. I couldn’t have cared less about you and your cosy father-daughter date.’
‘It wasn’t exactly like that,’ he muttered.
‘I don’t care,’ she snapped. ‘What I do care about is that you lied. To me.’ She was on her feet.
‘Of course.’ His eyes fell. ‘Look, I’m sorry I misjudged—’
‘Misjudged!’ Had he really so little idea? ‘I thought, God, I even thought …’ she still couldn’t say it.
‘What? Claire, please?’
‘I thought there could only be one reason someone would lie to the police like that.’ Tension sang in the air and his eyes filled with horror as
he grasped what she meant and cried out, ‘No, you can’t possibly—’
‘I did. Thanks to you. I couldn’t trust you any more. Because of that stupid lie.’
‘You knew? But how?’ he said. So the police had not told him what she had discovered.
‘Does it matter?’
‘And you thought I—’ His temper broke then, ‘How dare you?’ he shouted. ‘I love Sammy, I love him every bit as much as you and I would never ever …’ he sputtered to a halt. ‘How could you think that? OK I lied about where I was but to imagine … to jump to that conclusion. That I might—’
‘What else was I supposed to think?’ she screamed. ‘You lied. Sammy was gone. Probably lying dead already in that drain and you couldn’t tell the truth. If I couldn’t trust you to be honest then, what hope is there?’
He didn’t answer.
She could not tolerate being in the same space as him. She walked slowly away, too drained to cry anymore.
Day Three
Wednesday April 30th
Chapter 10
Janine had sent Butchers and Shap to talk to those witnesses who’d seen a woman on her own at the park when Sammy was taken. Richard was updating the incident board with the new details about Clive Wray and his first family and other information from the various lines of inquiry. Janine was in her office catching up on reports from the different teams and trying to plan a strategy for the next twenty-four hours when Millie came in.
‘I’ve just had The Star on. Donny McEvoy’s trying to flog them pictures from the crime scene. Took them with his phone.’
Janine groaned. ‘What a prat,’ she said, ‘they’re not biting?’
‘No. They know the score,’ Millie said.
Richard interrupted them. ‘A witness sighting of a woman hanging outside the Wrays’ on Foley Road on Saturday the nineteenth of April. “Hippie–chick,”’ Richard quoted, ‘“but a bit past it. Frizzy blonde hair.”’
‘Felicity Wray,’ Janine said. ‘Why didn’t this come up in the missing persons inquiry?’
‘The girl who reported it was visiting her father, went home on the Sunday morning, so they missed her on the first door-to-door,’ he said.
‘Let’s see what Mystic Meg has to say for herself?’ she invited him.
‘Phoebe’s not here,’ Felicity Wray said when she answered the door.
‘It’s you we want to talk to,’ Richard told her.
‘Honoured I’m sure,’ she said archly, turning away and leaving them to follow her in.
‘Saturday the nineteenth of April, you were seen at Foley Road, shortly before one pm.’
‘Was I?’ she said with that little smirk.
‘What were you doing there?’ said Richard.
‘If Clive wants to play daddy to Phoebe again then he’ll have to give it one hundred percent, I went to tell him that.’
‘You want him to come back to you?’ Janine said.
‘Yes. I went to tell him. All or nothing. When I think what he’d done. Our lovely girl, he abandoned her, cut her dead. He almost destroyed me. I know what it means to be insane with grief.’
Oh, please, spare me.
‘You knew Clive had been up to see Phoebe playing in the tournament?’
‘Yes, she rang me on her way home – so upset.’
‘And what did Clive say?’ Richard asked.
‘Oh, he wasn’t there, no-one in,’ Felicity said.
‘So you went to the park?’ Janine said. ‘You saw Sammy and Claire.’
Felicity ignored her. She stroked her neck, speaking dreamily. ‘He loves me. That’s what people miss. That connection, the passion—’
Janine interrupted her, ‘They looked happy, Claire and Sammy. You and Phoebe had been happy, you and Phoebe and Clive. Until Sammy came along.’
‘Times like this, people see what really matters,’ Felicity said. ‘Like Clive and I. It’ll bring us closer in the end.’
The self-obsession of the woman. Janine lost patience. ‘Did you go to the park?’ she demanded.
Felicity surveyed her for a moment, one eyebrow raised. ‘You’re holding on to a great deal of anger.’
Janine felt heat in her face.
‘Mrs Wray,’ Richard said in warning.
‘No,’ Felicity said.
‘And after that?’ Janine said.
‘Had a walk, came home.’
‘And Phoebe?’ Richard said.
‘She was here.’
‘What time was that?’ he said.
‘I don’t wear a watch,’ she said.
‘Mrs Wray do you know anything about the abduction of Sammy Wray?’ Janine said curtly.
‘Only what I’ve seen on the news,’ she replied.
‘We may well want to speak to you again,’ Janine said.
‘Well, I won’t leave town, then,’ Felicity Wray said.
Janine left the room before she lost all reason and clocked her one.
‘She’s messing with us,’ she said to Richard once they got into the car. ‘I think if she was involved, she’d tone it down a bit, don’t you?’
‘If she was at the park and wearing that get-up then wouldn’t the witnesses have mentioned it?’ Richard said.
‘You know eyewitnesses – notoriously unreliable. We’ll see what Shap and Butchers have found out,’ Janine said. ‘But we need to get to the bottom of this happy families malarkey and eliminate Looby Loo in there, and Phoebe and Clive Wray or look a lot deeper. Why didn’t Clive tell us he’d taken Sammy round there? Maybe that’s what kick-started this whole bloody mess.’
‘Maybe that’s what he’s afraid of,’ Richard said.
‘Let’s ask him.’
It was a very fine line to tread. Claire and Clive could well be bereaved parents and nothing more. If the Wray household had an air of tension on Janine’s previous visit it was now stretched to breaking point.
Claire wore the same clothes as the previous day. Had she even slept, Janine wondered. Sue, the family liaison officer, looked tired too and when Janine asked her how everyone was, she gave a look of warning.
Clive and Claire Wray were at opposite sides of the room, Claire in the corner of the sofa, gazing at the floor, Clive standing over by the window.
‘We’ve been speaking to Felicity, Mr Wray.’
He stilled and Janine saw Claire look up. ‘Why did you take Sammy to see her?’ Janine said.
Claire Wray gasped, her mouth open with shock.
‘He’s just a little boy,’ Clive Wray said, ‘she acted as if he was the devil incarnate … I just thought if she saw him, got to know him—’
Claire stood up quickly, stumbled a little. ‘You took our son to see that bloody woman – after everything she did to us—’ She stopped abruptly, her frown clearing as if she’d made a discovery. ‘The car, the tyres and the scratches. That was her again, wasn’t it? Not vandals.’ A reprise of the harassment that Felicity had subjected the couple to when Clive first left.
He began to object but Claire raised her voice. ‘You still love her, don’t you? Felicity’s been right all along. You only left her because I was pregnant. You never really loved me. Always Felicity, wasn’t it?’
‘No,’ Clive Wray said.
‘Bloody tragic Felicity and her precious daughter,’ she was shouting, spittle flying from her mouth, her face suffused with red. ‘She couldn’t even let me give birth in peace – had to grab the spotlight, try and kill herself.’
‘Claire, please,’ Janine made an effort to calm the situation.
Claire glared at her then her face changed and she visibly crumpled, ‘My boy,’ she said quietly.
‘She’d never touch him,’ Clive said insistently.
‘How do you know that? How can you possibly know that? She’s off her head and you let her meddle in our lives whenever she likes.’
He turned to Richard, ‘You’ve no reason to think so,’ he appealed.
Richard took a breath. ‘Felicity was seen outside this hous
e, on the nineteenth; she admits she came here.’
‘She killed him,’ Claire said in horror. ‘It’s your fault. That mad bitch came and took him. See what you’ve done,’ she was sobbing, frantic with grief. Then she lunged at her husband, screaming. Richard and Sue moved in to separate the couple. Janine called out to Claire to calm down. Claire was slapping at Clive’s head. He tried to dodge the blows. Sue got hold of Claire’s shoulders and as she eased her back, Richard stepped in between the couple.
At that moment Janine’s phone rang. She stepped back to take the call. She asked them to repeat the information and then she said, ‘Are you sure? There’s no doubt whatsoever?’ She felt the blood drain from her face.
Clive Wray was shouting back now, ‘Felicity is not a killer. And I love you, Claire. You and Sammy and Phoebe. I may have lost one child but I’ll fight damn hard now to be a father to the other one.’
Janine put her phone away. Clive was still talking, Claire shivering as he said. ‘I can’t have Sammy back but I still want a life with you – and I want my daughter in it. That’s how it’ll be. And if you love me, you’ll accept that.’
Richard saw Janine’s expression and saw that something had shifted. Something had happened.
‘What?’ he said.
She took a breath and moved closer. ‘Clive, Claire.’
They looked at her. Claire distraught, dishevelled and Clive breathless.
‘Oh, I am so sorry,’ Janine said. ‘The child, the little boy we found. It’s not Sammy. They’ve got the DNA results back. It’s not Sammy.’
It was as if the air had been sucked from the room. A moment where no-one moved and then all hell let loose. Claire flew at Janine, hitting out at her and crying. Clive began shouting, ‘What do you mean? Where’s Sammy? You said—’
Janine pulled Claire close, so she couldn’t keep thumping her, and held her while she wept.
Chapter 11
Detective Superintendent Louise Hogg never raised her voice, didn’t need to, but the message was crystal clear to Janine in every crisp syllable. The two women were in Hogg’s office and Janine was acutely aware that her team out in the incident room, could see through the glass partition that she was receiving a comprehensive bollocking.
Make Believe Page 5
