Cliff Edge: a gripping psychological mystery

by Florrie Palmer

  A few days before, I engineered a conversation with the whore about how difficult it is to remember all the different passwords and the stupid slag had given me just what I’d been after: ‘Oh, I keep mine in a file on my laptop!’ So all I had to do was watch and learn her laptop password.

  I remember the triumphant moment when I shoved her from behind. To avoid getting DNA on her clothes, I used the point of the trekking pole.

  What a moment, seeing her plunge into the Cauldron. So satisfying to watch her struggle in the freezing water unable to get out. It gives me goosebumps of pleasure and a great feeling of invincibility to know she suffered in that sea grave, even if it wasn’t for long. No less than she deserved and she certainly felt great fear.

  I cannot help congratulating myself on my own brilliance in persuading her to wear my green puffer coat on that last walk of hers. I assured her it was so much warmer than the cheap one she had. The stupid slag had failed to notice the few blood spatters of Mike’s, but had she done so, I had a ready answer about helping a poor injured deer I had found on the road. The goodie-goodie bitch would love a story like that. I always kept an extra puffer at Cliff Edge that I was now wearing. But Bette was known in the neighbourhood for wearing that particular green coat so if the police checked with anyone local, I’d covered that one. And if they found the blood spatters… then they might jump to the conclusion that Bette had killed Mike.

  That cleaning woman had to go. I’d forgotten about her until she showed up. So, I let her tidy and then improvised. So glad I’d bought that box of nitrile gloves, I got a pair out and put them on. I then got some broad duct tape that we kept in the toolbox, I then cut two suitable lengths of duct tape and put them ready on the back of one of the kitchen chairs.

  I sat the unsuspecting woman down, made her a cup of tea and as I brought it to her, from behind her chair I grabbed her arms, forced them behind her back and quickly taped her wrists together. That done, it was simple to tape her mouth.

  I needed her to be able to breathe through her nose for the moment, so I made her leave the table, walk out of the house in the falling snow to the car and forced her to lie down in the boot. I threw her coat and bag and the suitcase she’d brought in, after her and took the duct tape and a pair of scissors with me. She had to remain alive for the moment. Then I drove her to a place where there was a lot of snow near the outskirts of Swansea. I needed to cast the son as the likely murderer.

  I got the shivering woman out of the boot and taped her nose as well so she couldn’t breathe at all then I made her walk into a deep drift. I watched her collapse and waited a minute or so until she lost consciousness and was on the way out, then I untaped her hands, mouth and nose, threw her coat and bag down beside her and left her there. The snow would cover my tracks and was already partially covering her freezing body. In the morning I chucked the suitcase, the duct tape and the gloves in the sea.

  So the last one was gone and that was that.

  All except the darling dogs and they’re the ones I loved. Once the police allowed me to leave Cliff Edge, I drove home to Sara’s dingy, horrible flat where I had to wait with the dogs until things died down. I must say I played an award-winning performance being that woman. I got the accent just right with just that hint of foreign that one isn’t quite sure of where the person comes from and that careful way of speaking and even her gushing over-the-top politeness.

  But after a month I made a bolt for it and the three of us headed for London. We drove away in my new estate car with my new licence, courtesy of Sara de Vries. I managed to keep quite a bit of Mike’s money. In fact, I had hidden away a decent sum in readiness for this occasion.

  At Christmas, I’d transferred £20,000 from the joint account into Sara’s as a ‘gift.’ Of course, the police had checked my bank details as they had seen the transfer and when they’d asked about it, I said it had been a loan from my friend Bette to help me through a financially sticky time. Clever, so clever, I cannot help be so pleased with all my planning and the way it worked out so well.

  I had a bank card that drew money from Sara’s measly account. I had her national insurance number and her easily copied signature and – at last – I had a passport!

  When I moved to London, I changed my name by deed poll to Jackie London. Jackie after Onassis. Quite a role model, I thought. I dyed my hair black to match. London seemed a good enough name.

  I had to put the dogs in temporary kennels in Kensington while I rented a bedsit for eight weeks. I walked them every day for a couple of hours or more and that is where I met Donald.

  So Bette Davies is no more. And nor is Sara de Vries. I have killed them both off. I am young, I am desirable and I know just how effective my pulling power can be. I am resourceful. I am versatile. I am imaginative, entrepreneurial, clever, a highly convincing liar. I am a player. I can have any man I want. And I am getting bolder as time goes by.

  This will be the third time I have reinvented myself.

  It may not be the last.

  6 February 2020. Durrum Castle, Perthshire. Lady Jackie McNarris’ Five-Year Diary.

  So here begins my diary as the newly-married wife of Sir Donald McNarris of Durrum Castle in Perthshire. We have just returned from the most romantic fortnight’s honeymoon in Sri Lanka and I must be the happiest woman alive. We went exploring inland which was fantastic. What an amazing country. Such lovely people. I was the only tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed young woman some of them had ever seen. It was a wonderful place although the climate proved a bit too humid and the food a bit too spicy for poor Donald.

  We had a few nights in our Kensington house before coming back here where we have settled in with Brynn and Gin and Donald’s darling Labradors with whom my two have a great time. This is the most beautiful countryside with forests, mountains, glens and the river Tay very nearby in which the dogs love to swim and Donald to fly-fish for salmon. It is great hiking country.

  The castle is very well run by the staff and apart from talking about the menus and to the housekeeper about guests, I shan’t have to worry too much, which is great.

  Donald is at the age when he’s had enough galivanting to be happy to stay here and let me visit our house in Kensington whenever I like as I do love London. Also, he has children and grandchildren, some of whom are grown up, so he has no interest in having more kids. What a great man I have found.

  How lucky to have met him in Hyde Park walking his Labradors (he takes them everywhere with him). Especially lucky, since he only goes to London about twice a year to visit his sister who also lives in Kensington. Our courtship went slowly to begin with: we were both scared of the big age gap but once he had invited me to Durrum and had seen how I had taken to it like a duck to water, I think something clicked for both of us.

  His previous wife died late last year. I read about it in the papers at the time: she was killed in a horrific motorway pile-up on the M6. Poor Donald was miserable. But I am happy to say I have brought some happiness back into his life which he deserves.

  His children don’t seem to approve but I shall win them around in time. I do understand their reluctance. I’m younger than all of them! Jealous, I expect and maybe they think it’s too soon. Well, they should think about their father and what makes him happy.

  Epilogue

  Easter Monday, 13 April 2020. Cable Bay, Anglesey, North Wales

  At Cable Bay in Aberffraw, on Anglesey Island off North Wales, over thousands of years sand has been blown inland by onshore winds to form extensive dunes that roll parallel to the strip of beach.

  It is the first rain-free day for eight days running and a pale, weak sun has appeared in a whitish sky. This is enough for the local kids on holiday. When the weather is right and the usually aggressive wind speeds are calmed, their chosen pastime is beach frisbee. There is always a breeze blowing in off the sea but that is part of the fun.

  One of the older boys executes a throw so vigorous that the frisbee, caught on the breeze is
carried high into the air and sails inland to float down among the dunes. Children scramble through the sand to search for it. When one stumbles on something hard and stubs her toe, she stops to see what she has tripped on and shrieks in shock. Half buried in the sand, among the coarse grass, the grinning jawbone and lower half of a human face juts out.

  On April 17th, 2020, in a laboratory in Anglesey, a forensic scientist closely studies the skull which is attached to the upper part of a spine that was found at Cable Bay. She cannot miss the depressions and fractures on the top and back of the skull that, judging from its size, is definitely male, and has been hit by a hard object several times. She concludes there is no doubt that the man was murdered. DNA tests come back to match with missing person, Michael Hanson.

  Summer 2020, Carmarthen

  DCI Jane Owen is watching the news, cuddled in the arms of Gareth on his sofa in his Carmarthen house. These days, life for Jane is so much easier.

  Meg now drives, she has a job in Carmarthen and has even reunited with her original boyfriend who is staying with her in the Llangunnor bungalow tonight.

  These days, Jane doesn’t feel that constant pressure all the time. Her job is not easy and demands long hours but she doesn’t mind that. Before, there was all that extra worry and work involved with Meg.

  The headline on the local news is that missing suspected murderer Michael Hanson’s skull had been found on the beach at Cable Bay.

  Jane sits up, rigid with interest. She had missed this earlier as it was her weekend off. She asks Gareth sweetly if they can turn down the volume while she thinks about this. He knows it was her case and has done it before she’s finished the question. She leans back on the sofa and looks out of the window. The dark sky helps her think.

  Can it be that a murderer has been murdered? Or was perhaps Mike Hanson not a murderer after all? She wonders whether there is a chance she was duped by Sara de… What was the woman called? She wonders whether, after all, the woman killed Mike and pushed Bette Davies.

  But what had she hoped to gain? Money? No. Could jealousy have been a strong enough motive? Jane’s brain whirred. Did she check out Sara de whatnot properly? Her background, her love life, her character? She knows she didn’t do nearly as much as she should have done. She concentrated the enquiry wholly on Mike Hanson. She had been so certain he was to blame.

  She remembers the abandoned BMW and quite out of the blue, a memory comes to her of Sara saying she had sat in the car with Mike Hanson and begged him not to drive in a snowstorm. Jane thinks back long and hard. Sara’s DNA was in the BMW. She could have pushed Mike over the cliff.

  She now also begins to wonder whether she put away the right man for the murder of Gwyneth Edwards who cleaned for the people at Cliff Edge. She had never considered that Sara might have done away with her too. Perhaps because she had seen too much? It would be a plausible reason. Guilt runs through her and she shudders. Did she get it wrong in one or even both cases? Her first two murder cases – should she reopen them? It wouldn’t look great on her record…

  THE END

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