Hilary Bonner

by Braven

  No details of the appeal were released, of course, but Torquay Police Station, in common with most, Karen thought, leaked like a sieve. One of the first and most disconcerting press calls she received, on the very day that the appeal was announced, was, predictably enough, from John Kelly. It shook her into a stupid reaction.

  “I just want you to tell me that what I’ve heard is wrong,” he began.

  Karen found herself playing cat and mouse with him. She had little choice.

  “And what might that be?” she enquired, trying desperately to sound unconcerned.

  “As if you don’t know.”

  “Kelly, I do know that you think you’re the greatest fucking hotshot newspaper reporter who ever walked this earth, but the information you glean from the various lowlifes you hang out with is not always fucking sacrosanct.”

  She regretted the outburst as soon as she had made it.

  Kelly did not respond in kind. There was a pause, and when he spoke again his voice was very quiet and strained.

  “I heard that Jennifer Roth is claiming to be Richard Marshall’s daughter,” he said simply.

  Karen sighed. She still didn’t know how to deal with this, but she was, in spite of her display of anger against him, glad at least that it was Kelly who was on the line with it, and not some anonymous flash young hack from London.

  “Look, John,” she began, her voice as quiet as his now and the use of his Christian name was not usual for her. “Look, even if that were true, you couldn’t print it, an appeal’s been filed—”

  Kelly interrupted her.

  “I do know the law, Karen. I am aware of all the implications. And I can’t think of anything more likely to get that bastard’s conviction overturned. I just want to know for myself. It’s important to me…”

  His voice trailed off.

  Karen sighed again. She’d always trusted Kelly and he’d never let her down yet. She’d only rounded on him out of sheer frustration, and she hoped he knew that, because she wasn’t going to tell him so. That would be going too far.

  “It’s true, and it’s indisputable,” she admitted. “We’ve had DNA tests done.”

  “Ah.” Kelly sounded as down as she felt. “Thanks, Karen. I did need to know.”

  He’d rung off then, abruptly, leaving Karen feeling slightly puzzled. Why was it so important to Kelly, she wondered? Why did he need to know? This was a seriously great story, of course, and John Kelly had been involved from the very beginning. But Karen felt there was more to it than that. She remembered again Bill Talbot’s words in the pub, about how much it mattered to Kelly. But the reporter had shown no inclination whatsoever to share his motivation on this with her. She made a mental note to phone Bill Talbot that evening and ask him what he had meant.

  Meanwhile, now that the DNA results had dealt their irrevocable blow to everything the police and the CPS had tried to achieve, Karen did her best to concentrate on the case as a whole, and to endeavour to think of ways in which they could come up with something, anything else in order to block the appeal. It was going to be an uphill struggle, she reckoned. In a vain attempt to keep her team’s spirits up, she did not allow them a moment’s respite in which to dwell on the consequences of the potentially disastrous new developments. Instead she threw work at them. She insisted that all the old records be studied and dissected yet again, every witness, however peripheral, re-interviewed, every jot of evidence scrutinized for the umpteenth time.

  It turned out to be true that a schoolmate of Marshall’s had been killed in a playground accident, but the coroner’s verdict at the time had been accidental death and the new enquiries shed no further light on the affair. But fifty odd years later, that was not really surprising, Karen reflected. However, almost thirty years ago, when Marshall was first arrested, a similar investigation may well have produced very different results, just as Jennifer had suggested.

  Karen even got on to Interpol and had Marshall’s former lover Esther Hunter re-interviewed in Canada where, having a Canadian father and therefore dual nationality, she had gone to live when she and Marshall had split up about five years after the disappearance of Clara and the girls. Esther, while being another of Marshall’s women who apparently believed totally in his innocence, had also always claimed that she knew absolutely nothing about anything, which was why she had not been called to give evidence at Marshall’s original trial. And she proved no more able or inclined to help now than she had been at any previous stage. Nonetheless, it all kept the troops busy.

  She also made herself go to the Bell occasionally after work, particularly if there was a special reason, like PC Brownlow being promoted to sergeant. She knew that most of her team would be there that night. Brownlow was a popular young officer, and she felt it was important for morale and solidarity that she joined the troops, all of whom were feeling pretty beleaguered.

  Phil Cooper was already there when she arrived, but he didn’t look capable of joining in any kind of celebrations. Instead he was sitting morosely alone in a far corner beyond the pool table, a pint of bitter and a whisky chaser in front of him. When he saw Karen walk into the bar he got up at once and made his way across the room to her.

  She was mildly surprised. After all, not only had he made it perfectly clear that he wanted no more to do with her personally following their night together, he had also, since she had blown him out publicly over the Jennifer Roth thing, avoided all direct contact with her as much as possible. He had got on with his job, but also tried to keep his distance. She really didn’t expect him to come near her ever again, and was still trying to get her head around a way of dealing with their working relationship at least. She certainly didn’t want any sort of confrontation with him in the pub, and she began to push her way through the crowd in order to both get to the bar and to avoid the detective sergeant.

  He was too quick for her. He cut her off easily, even though just as he approached her he bumped into a chair and slopped beer down his shirt, narrowly avoiding spilling it over Karen too. He stumbled quite heavily as he recovered himself and it was then that Karen realized that, in spite of the speed with which he had moved, Cooper was already a bit drunk. His face was flushed and he was sweating.

  “I just wanted to say I was sorry, boss,” he muttered, swaying gently as he stood before her. His words were very slightly slurred.

  “What about?” she asked briskly.

  He looked slightly uneasy then, but continued nonetheless.

  “About Jennifer Roth, of course,” he said.

  “Of course?” she queried obliquely.

  His unease seemed to develop into full-blown bewilderment then. That was all right. Karen had no wish to discuss the other matter in the station pub, if indeed there was any point in ever discussing it at all.

  “Ah yes, Jennifer Roth,” she went on, causing Cooper to look all the more flustered.

  “Don’t worry about it, Phil,” she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “Any fool could have done it.”

  She brushed past him, knocking against him as she did so. She hadn’t actually meant to have another go at him, certainly not in the pub, but she hadn’t been able to stop herself. She told herself he deserved it. The whole case, the case they all cared so much about, was up in the air again. She knew it wasn’t all Phil Cooper’s fault, but she was looking for a scapegoat, someone she could blame as well as herself. And, of course, although she tried not to think about it, Cooper had hurt her, really hurt her, by backing off in the way he had following what really did seem to have turned out to be just a sordid one-night stand.

  She strode past him to the bar, ignoring everybody else who spoke to her, although she was well aware of their curious stares, and ordered a double Scotch. Then another one.

  An hour or so later Cooper approached her again, by which time she suspected she might be a little drunk herself, too. She was talking to a uniformed sergeant nearing retirement age who was being particularly gloomy about his bitter disappoint
ment at the prospect of this man they had all wanted behind bars for so long winning his appeal. Cooper pushed his way between them.

  “I just wanted to say I’m sorry about the other thing, too, boss,” he said.

  Karen shot him a withering look. “I was having a private conversation, Cooper.”

  The uniformed sergeant, however, no doubt picking up on the atmosphere between the two detectives, backed away at once leaving them more or less alone in the crowd.

  “Look, I just wanted to say sorry, boss,” Cooper repeated.

  “Sorry for what exactly?”

  “You know boss, w-what happened…you know, what happened between you and me…and everything…” Cooper seemed unable to get the words out. Whether this was caused by embarrassment or alcohol, Karen did not know.

  “Don’t worry about that either, Phil. I was beginning to think you weren’t aware that anything had happened at all, and that’s probably the best way to keep it. I’m sure you’ve been quite right to do so.”

  Phil’s alcoholic flush began to turn into a proper blush then. Karen hadn’t realized until recently that Cooper was inclined to blush when he was embarrassed, much as she did. The first time she had seen it had been, of course, when she admonished him on the day that Jennifer Roth had revealed her true identity.

  The DS moved closer to her, looking anxiously around to make sure nobody else was listening. Even though she had been drinking heavily since she entered the bar, she was quite overwhelmed by the sour smell of beer and whisky on his breath.

  “Look, Karen, I’m really really sorry—” he began in little more than a whisper.

  “So am I,” she interrupted, but he wasn’t to be put off.

  “Look, Karen, I just couldn’t carry on with it. I’m married, it’s my wife, you see, and the kids, and you’re the governor, it’s all too much—”

  “Really, Phil.” Karen treated him to her most withering look. “And that’s all new, is it?”

  “Sorry, boss?”

  Cooper was obviously not at his quickest on the uptake. The alcohol had thoroughly dumbed him down, it seemed.

  “I mean, your situation is new, is it? You have only acquired a wife and family since you spent half the night fucking me, have you? Because quite obviously you wouldn’t have done so had you already been a husband and father, would you?”

  Cooper’s blush deepened. He had turned bright red right into the collar of his shirt now, and he seemed to be looking around the room even more frantically to reassure himself that nobody was listening.

  Karen slammed her drink down on the bar and left, aware of even more curious glances as she headed for the door, but well past caring. She had to get out. She didn’t trust herself to stay. Not with several large whiskies inside her.

  The next day she went to visit her mother again at the Old Manor nursing home. She hadn’t been for weeks. The effort required to make herself do so became increasingly greater. Sometimes she wondered if her visits helped anyone.

  Unusually, Margaret Meadows was sitting in an armchair looking relaxed and comfortable, which made Karen feel marginally less guilty. But only marginally. Her greeting to Karen was the same as ever. And nonetheless gut-wrenching for its familiarity.

  “Have you come to take me home?” she asked.

  “Not until later,” replied Karen. The same lies. The same bending of the truth. The same desire to run and run. To go anywhere in the world, to never ever have to put herself through this again. She didn’t run, of course. Instead she sat down next to her mother and took hold of her hand, stroking it. Margaret Meadows, apparently forgetting her request to go home, smiled at her daughter and promptly fell asleep, her head lolling forwards onto her chest. Karen resisted the urge to try to rest it on a cushion. Such ministrations invariably merely left her mother distressed.

  So she just sat there quietly holding her mother’s hand and tried to think happy thoughts which, in that nursing home, and with both her personal and professional lives causing her distress, was pretty difficult.

  After a few minutes her mother snapped awake, quick as a flash, in that way she had a habit of doing.

  “He wasn’t going to stay with that hairdresser woman, you know,” she said suddenly. “It was me he cared about. Always.”

  “What, darling?” Karen was startled. Was her mother really saying what she thought she might be?

  “But there were scratches,” she went on, spitting the words out as if they were something she wanted to get rid of.

  “What scratches, darling?” Karen asked.

  “Scratches,” repeated her mother. “His face had scratches.”

  “Whose face?”

  “Him, him.” Her mother sounded impatient. With the finger of one hand she tapped the copy of the Daily Mirror which lay open in her lap. Karen still paid for her to have a daily paper, even though it was a very long time since she had seen Margaret Meadows respond in any way to a newspaper, let alone attempt to read one. The displayed page carried a picture of Richard Marshall.

  “I didn’t tell, though. I couldn’t tell. Not on him. I loved him.”

  Karen felt as if she had been pole-axed. She had more than once over the years tried to ask her mother about her part in the tragic events of all those years ago. It had never got her anywhere. And in recent years she did not think that her mother even knew what she was talking about.

  “Richard Marshall had scratches on his face?” she enquired softly.

  “I’ve just told you, scratches.” And with that Margaret Meadows raised her right hand to her face and stroked both cheeks as if showing where the scratches had been.

  Karen made herself study her mother dispassionately. At that instant Margaret Meadows seemed perfectly alert and lucid.

  “Was that the night he came to see you, the night he brought the little girls around?” Karen asked, remembering vividly all over again her own half-view of the proceedings from the top of the landing.

  “What?”

  Karen looked deeply into her mother’s eyes, trying to decipher what lay within her confused head.

  “Was that the night he came to see you, brought the little girls around?” She repeated the question in as calm a fashion as possible.

  “Who?”

  “Richard Marshall?”

  “Who?”

  Karen squeezed her hand more tightly. Margaret Meadows’ eyes had acquired the frightened bewildered look her daughter knew so well, the look that indicated that she didn’t understand what she was being asked, that she didn’t understand anything very much and remembered even less.

  Karen tried one more time.

  “You remember Richard Marshall,” she prompted, pointing at the photograph of him in the newspaper still lying open on her mother’s lap. “You looked after his children when his wife disappeared.”

  And you had an affair with him, too, she thought obliquely. An affair neither you nor I ever told anyone about. And apparently, even after he moved Esther Hunter into Parkview, you carried on believing in him, carried on covering up for him.

  Her mother glanced down briefly at the paper, then screwed up her features into an expression of pure anguish. “Richard who?” she asked, her brow creased into a deep frown.

  “It’s all right, darling,” muttered Karen. “It’s all right. Just forget it.”

  She knew, however, that her mother already had forgotten it. If Margaret Meadows had been as lucid as Karen thought for just a few seconds, then she was no longer so. She was quite sure that her mother had been telling her that Marshall’s face had been scratched that fateful night. Quite sure. But the moment had passed.

  That, and anything else she might know, was once more locked inside Margaret Meadows’ troubled head.

  And the one thing her daughter was certain of was that nothing would be gained by passing on the half-delivered message to anyone else. Not now. It was far too late. Margaret Meadows could never be a witness. She could not even give a statement. The best thing
that Karen could do, for her own sake as well as her mother’s, she knew, was to keep quiet. Just as she had for nearly three decades.

  Richard Marshall was given leave to appeal and his case came up at the Court of Appeal in London’s Strand three months later. Karen accompanied Sean MacDonald, just as she had done at the trial. She felt that she could do no other. However, she had few doubts about the eventual outcome, she could really see little alternative to Marshall being released. The appeal proceedings were every bit as much of an ordeal for her and for Mac as she had expected.

  Jennifer Roth appeared under her given name of Janine Marshall, although Karen, hard as she tried, could not think of her as that. Indeed, when she gave her evidence it was a bit like watching a ghost talk, Karen thought. She was, however, both clear and succinct. She repeated almost word for word what she had already said in her statement to the police—that her mother had tried to kill her and her sister Lorraine before succeeding in killing herself, and that, far from harming his family her father had done what he thought was the best thing to do, albeit misguidedly.

  The prosecution counsel, David Childs again, did his best to cast doubt on her testimony, pointing out, as Karen had tried to earlier, that the young woman must have been deeply scarred by her childhood experience and would undoubtedly benefit from psychiatric help in order to work through the minefield of her memories. But Jennifer, speaking quietly in her nice public-school accent, was extremely convincing. David Childs also attempted to explore the aspect of Jennifer’s, or Janine’s, missing sister. Jennifer merely insisted that she had never known where her sister was and had no wish to upset her life by involving her again.

  Richard Marshall took a similar attitude, just as he had done in further statements made since the intervention of his younger daughter.

  “I lost touch with my elder daughter Lorraine a few months after I placed both girls with families,” he said. “I believe that her adoptive parents took her abroad, but I don’t even know that for sure. And I never tried to find out. Although I was more than happy that Janine’s new family were prepared to keep in touch with me and tell me how she was getting along, I understood the attitude of Lorraine’s family. I told both families more or less the truth. But the girls had to be protected. That was why I acted in the way that I did. I didn’t want them to grow up with the stigma of being my daughters, living in the shadow of their mother’s disappearance. Although it hurt me, I was and am happy to think of Lorraine growing up without that shadow. She may even have shut the whole thing out of her mind, I don’t know. But she has never tried to contact me, and I respect that. I have no intention of revealing even the names of her adoptive parents or any details that might identify them in this court today or to anyone at any time. And I honestly don’t even know the name Lorraine uses now.”