by Gayle Curtis
DCI Cannan frowned. ‘You’re pregnant?’
‘Yes, almost five months. What’s the problem?’
‘No problem at all, as long as you make sure everyone thinks it’s Jason Brunswick’s . . . Is it Jason’s?’
‘No!’
‘Okay, but this could work in our favour from the point of view of the public and the press. You’re going to have to stick to the story that you were involved with Jason. We need you to do that.’
‘Funnily enough, that’s what he said.’
‘Did he? There’s only one reason Jason Brunswick wants people to think he’s involved with adult women . . . I’ll have a tea, please.’
Rachel frowned, waiting for the detective to elaborate, but she didn’t. And she didn’t really need to. Rachel took herself to the toilet, slightly baffled as to why she wasn’t being interviewed at the police station and why DCI Rita Cannan had asked to meet her at this café. She stood in the cloakroom, giving herself time to think about what she was going to reveal and what she would keep to herself.
‘How I see it,’ the detective said as soon as Rachel sat back down, ‘if you stay here and don’t give us the information we need, the press will find out about Dean Grayson and CPS will have no choice but to prosecute. The claims of fraud will also come out. Apart from the obvious implications, suspicion will be cast on you with regards to the murder and Cara’s disappearance because you’ve been involved with the two prime suspects.’
‘But you said there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute me.’ Rachel was baffled at the police officer’s change of tone. ‘Are you threatening me?’
‘Not at all, Rachel! I’m simply telling you how this is going to be if you stay.’ The detective reached across the table and squeezed her hand, harder than Rachel thought necessary.
‘What do you mean, if I stay?’
‘You would have to be placed under witness protection if you gave evidence against Adrian Player. We’d find you a safe house, give you a new identity.’
Rachel laughed, but then realised the detective wasn’t joking. ‘Is he that dangerous?’
‘Let’s just say Adrian Player has friends in high places.’
Rachel was quiet for a few moments, blowing on her hot coffee, watching the froth float across the surface. She couldn’t deny that the thought of a new identity, a new life somewhere else, really appealed to her. The DCI was right, she had no choice. If she stayed, she’d be completely vilified by the public, and possibly charged with crimes she hadn’t committed. Everyone would despise her.
Then the reality of being in prison with a newborn baby hit her like a whole new nightmare, and within those few seconds, she’d made her decision. The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them, and she started telling DCI Cannan everything, all the lifts she’d given to various children and the places she’d taken them. She knew the pause button should have been switched on when she began talking, but Rachel had decided she was going to look out for herself from now on. Herself and no one else. She headed home, knowing exactly what she needed to do.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Phil had just finished a night shift at the factory when Rachel knocked at his back door that morning. She’d left the house before the family liaison officer had arrived and then gone to a bus shelter near Phil’s house, waiting for him to return.
‘You didn’t answer my messages’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry about Cara.’
She pushed past him to get into the house. ‘Listen, Phil, this is all going to sound really bizarre, but I desperately need your help, so I want you to listen to what I’m going to say.’
Rachel could see he was bleary-eyed from his shift, so she kept it brief but told him the main points. Phil was the best person to help her. He was her oldest friend and had worked alongside her when he’d been a teacher many years ago. One day, completely out of nowhere, Phil had turned up for work and resigned. When she asked him why, he’d simply said he needed to sleep again – that teaching was too stressful for him. He’d ended up getting himself a job in a factory doing the night shift, which Rachel thought seemed ironic.
That said, Phil was generally quite laid-back and followed the motto that most things were none of his business.
Rachel needed somewhere to hide out – time and space to think and watch the news unfold – and Phil wouldn’t tell a soul she was there. She knew she could trust him. If she’d been on better terms with Patrick and he’d left his forwarding address in France, she’d have tried to make her way there.
Phil blinked at her wearily. ‘You know where the spare room is, Rachel – help yourself. As far as I’m concerned, you’re not here and I haven’t seen you. I’ll just carry on as normal. Now, if you don’t mind, I need my bed.’ And with that, he went upstairs.
Rachel had a long day ahead of her while Phil was sleeping, and she began to stew over everything Jason had said to her over the past few weeks, suddenly realising how utterly stupid she’d been. And now here she was, left with nothing and no understanding of what had happened to Cara.
She could feel herself slipping further into a dark void. Talking to DCI Rita Cannan had left her feeling completely vulnerable, when she thought it would make her feel safe from everything. She’d assumed that confessing all would mean she would be taken to the police station under witness protection but nothing had happened, leaving Rachel feeling like she’d been stitched up.
When she switched the television on at Phil’s and saw the latest news report, she wasn’t surprised to see DCI Cannan standing outside Rachel’s home, appealing for any information on her whereabouts. Rachel knew then the seriousness of her actions the previous night.
She stepped outside and lit a cigarette. While she was there, she distractedly began deadheading and weeding Phil’s garden, absent-mindedly muttering to herself about the fraud, the kidnapping, Cara, Adrian and his club, Howard – her mind frantically running through it all, unable to process any of it.
‘You all right out there?’ Phil said, startling her. Rachel turned around, thick soil and mud caking her fingernails and her hands. Two police officers were standing behind Phil. ‘Sorry, kid, but after you told me about Howard, I didn’t have a choice.’
‘No, Phil! What have you done?’ Rachel cried.
‘You need help, Rachel. This is the only way.’
‘You’re supposed to be my friend. I trusted you!’ Rachel screamed as she was cautioned, cuffed and led out to the police car waiting out the front. ‘What a tosser,’ she said to the police officer sitting next to her. There was no response, so she leant forward to address the driver. ‘You said I’d been arrested for murder. Does that mean my husband is dead?’
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
THE LESTER BARCLAY SHOW
FIVE YEARS LATER
In the studio, Rita was distracted again, wondering whether she should call one of her old colleagues and ask for some advice, but even though some of them were still her friends, she hadn’t left on the best of terms. There had been another card on her windscreen, with ‘FULL STOP’ written on it. She wondered if she was just being paranoid. She’d been on the television many times during her police career and received silly letters from local people who knew her address, threatening her anonymously or just making ridiculous requests. And she couldn’t assume these anonymous items had anything to do with The Lester Barclay Show – it could just be a coincidence, it had been five years since the case after all.
‘Can we return to Rachel Fearon?’ Lester said. ‘We touched on it earlier, but I want to explore what happened next.’ He squeezed his lips together and stared at her intently through his glasses. Rita wanted to ask him if his contact lenses were playing up, or if he’d left them at someone’s house before he took the walk of shame home.
‘There’s not much more to say, really. I’d only be repeating what the public already know.’ Rita knew she sounded awkward and a little nonchalant.
Lester chose to ignore her. ‘Can you actually tell us the
sequence of events, starting from when you asked Rachel about her husband, and what happened after you brought the cadaver dogs in?’
‘As is always the practice, we did a proof-of-life investigation, which, as we suspected, showed that Howard had been living in Wales.’
‘But then there was a shocking turn of events. Tell us about that?’
‘Rachel was behaving really strangely. After her husband returned home, she left without telling anyone where she was going, and we located her at a friend’s house.’
‘I remember reading about that. I think people were surprised she was able to leave the house when there was a family liaison officer in situ and reporters camped out the front.’
‘The FLOs aren’t there all the time; they tend to go home at night unless they’re needed. Rachel left the house in the morning before the family liaison officer arrived and we believe she left via the back and across the fields. She made her way to a friend’s house, a Phil Baker.’
‘He put the call in to the police, didn’t he? She confessed to him about her husband?’
‘Yes, and how she’d conspired to have her daughter kidnapped. She was so matter-of-fact and casual about it and her friend couldn’t quite believe it. I remember he told us it was like it was perfectly normal.’
Lester shook his head. ‘Quite some unravelling for the police to deal with. Howard Fearon’s return, I mean.’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘Quite a moment for you all?’
‘It was indeed. But it was complicated.’
‘In what way?’ Lester said, shifting in his chair.
‘Because we had to make some tough decisions. We had caught the Fearons committing fraud, and we needed to decide whether they should be remanded in custody or we should make an application for bail to be granted with the view to putting them both under surveillance. They had become the prime suspects in their own daughter’s disappearance and the murder of Raymond Hammond.’
‘But haven’t you always maintained that Adrian Player is guilty of those crimes?’
‘I never believed Adrian was guilty of murdering the children by his own hand, but we suspected he might have paid someone from within his circle, and we were now looking at two people who would do anything for cash. We also had evidence from Rachel’s phone records that she’d been conspiring to have her own daughter kidnapped. It wasn’t looking good for either of them.’
‘That confuses me, because Rachel didn’t actually go through with it. I think the public were quite baffled at the time, and many people still believe, to this day, that Rachel Fearon had something to do with Cara’s murder.’
‘That’s partly correct.’ Beginning to fidget, Rita found herself in desperate need of a coffee.
‘But you just said they became the prime suspects.’
‘They did, but we placed a bug in their home, organised for Rachel to do a televised appeal for information about her daughter, and nothing came of it. All the conversations she had with Howard in the house when the family liaison officer wasn’t there were all to do with their insurance fraud.’
‘Rachel must have been totally blindsided when she discovered the plan hadn’t materialised and her daughter had, in fact, been kidnapped for real – and possibly murdered.’
‘She altered markedly – quite a substantial change actually – when she was placed in front of the television cameras. She was crying so much she could barely speak.’
‘You decided to keep Howard very much off stage. It was quite some time afterwards before the insurance fraud reached the media. I mean, some people must have seen him and wondered how he’d returned from the dead?’
‘A few people, yes, but when he returned, in the main, people just assumed the story of his car accident had been gossip. You have to remember, Rachel didn’t report him missing for two weeks, so she’d already been sowing the seeds that he’d left. She reported it to the relevant people, it was investigated, and she kept it all to herself. In general, people don’t like to ask awkward questions, so they assumed he’d either died or left her.’
‘Quite a family.’
‘Yes, shocking that anyone could do that. And also, to plan to have one’s own child kidnapped. But sadly, Lester, it goes on. People have some ridiculous ideas when they’re chatting over their Saturday-night takeaway and bottle of wine. It’s wrong, but there was no real malice in what they had planned for Cara. She was simply going to stay with someone while Rachel organised crowdfunding, and at the same time they thought it would gain the favour of Adrian Player. His involvement would have brought national attention and, with it, huge benefactors would have come forward – at least, that was how she saw it. The main goals were notoriety and money. All this backfired because when Cara was genuinely kidnapped, Adrian didn’t want to show any obvious connection to her, in case it jeopardised his case.’
‘But why such extreme measures? How on earth did Rachel imagine she’d get away with it?’ Lester said, removing his glasses.
‘You have to bear in mind the mental state of this woman. Rachel Fearon was in a relationship with a teenage student of hers – he was sixteen, but only fifteen when they began, so she was breaking the law. Her marriage to Howard had been falling apart for some time before he disappeared, and she was already in trouble. And she had once had the attention of Adrian Player when he’d selected Cara for his private gymnastics club. It must have been like getting the golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, and they experienced a lot of local notoriety on the back of it. There’s no doubt about it, Cara was a very talented girl – she had shown promise with other coaches, and her prospects were good. Unfortunately, Adrian had other plans for her and she was abused for a very long time. He threw in plenty of competitions and try-outs that she actually went to, and then tempted her with inflated promises that never materialised. Then Cara became too old and his attentions turned to newer candidates, such as Raymond Hammond, who was slightly younger than her.’
‘Too old?’ Lester frowned in disgust. ‘But Cara was just eleven years old.’
‘Almost twelve. It’s not for me to comment on Adrian Player’s sexual preferences or those of his cronies.’
‘Do you think it was a mistake organising bail for them both, albeit at different times, in light of the events that followed? I mean, Howard became the next victim. Maybe you could remind the audience what happened next?’
Rita shrugged and was about to answer the question when they heard shouting.
‘You’ve persecuted an innocent man!’ a woman screamed from the back of the studio, causing everyone to turn and look. ‘A wonderful man, who worked tirelessly for charity and was honoured with an OBE.’
Lester began to say something to the woman, but she’d already stood up and was making her way towards the set, her face red with fury.
It was a few moments before Rita realised the woman heading her way was a very drunk Gloria Player.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Even during the service, Kristen couldn’t help looking around at all the mourners who had come to Raymond’s funeral. At one point, her gaze was fixed on a man in the third row, who became very uncomfortable and seemed to be concentrating hard on the memorial booklet. Kristen couldn’t place him, but that could be said for most of the people sitting in the church, although he seemed to stand out from everyone else. He was a large man wearing an ill-fitting suit, and he had an upturned nose, and Kristen was wondering if he was a paedophile when her mother turned to see who she was looking at and informed her it was one of her uncles. Kristen hadn’t seen him for years and didn’t recognise him at all. Everyone had looked like a stranger to her since Raymond’s death.
A few seconds later and Kristen was distracted again, turning around to run her eye over all the people who had gathered to say goodbye to her son. She was searching the crowd for the killer. She knew from speaking to Rita that they often attended funerals, blending in with family and friends, getting a kick out of being th
ere.
‘. . . asphyxiation, head injury . . .’ – some of the words Rita had used when Kristen had asked her to deliver the post-mortem results. She’d thought she could handle the bare facts, but when they were presented to her it had felt completely different. Her father had practically had to carry her back to the car when he’d taken her to the mortuary, because she’d insisted on seeing Raymond one last time. But ‘one last time’ hadn’t really registered in her mind, and the sudden thought of leaving and never seeing him again had made her feel as though her body was filling up with black tar, reaching her lungs and choking her to death. This little person, made up of pieces of her, had filled every room with his presence, and his existence was still tangible in the scent of the clothes he’d left behind, the words he’d written in his school books, the mud on his trainers and the smiling imprint of his face in the framed photos dotted around the house. But somehow she felt like he hadn’t existed at all. Tormented by memories she wished she could reach out and hold.
Shakily, Kristen walked up to the altar and unfolded the piece of paper she’d written on. No one had thought it was a good idea for her to talk about Raymond. Various people had offered to do it for her, but she’d said no, at one point becoming quite irate about it.
Kristen stood there for a few moments, staring at a large tomb situated in the recess to her left, which had for some reason caught her eye. A warm sickness began to creep up into her throat, the stark awareness, yet again, that her boy was going into the ground, beneath the cold, heavy soil. Nine years she’d had him for – almost ten if she counted the months she’d carried him. And as desperate and despairing as she felt to change what had happened, she’d never regret having him.
Kristen’s sharp eyes finally rested on the congregation. Most people were now looking down at their laps, too awkward to raise their heads. Some glanced at her but didn’t hold her gaze. She could see Raymond standing at the bottom of the aisle by the back doors. He was wearing his usual jeans, checked shirt and hoody. He smiled at her, immediately bringing tears to her eyes. Somehow, the words began to fall from her mouth, and she was talking about him, just as she’d hoped she would. Sharing the small and private details of their life together – how he loved spaghetti bolognese, but only if the cheese was on the pasta before the sauce; how he kept insects in plastic trays in his bedroom and wondered why they had disappeared in the morning; and how, when he watched a film he was engrossed in, his lips would move as if he were muttering. She told some funny stories about him, breaking down a couple of times, but she focused on Raymond, saw him standing there, and gave him the best tribute she could muster. It wasn’t until she reached the last few sentences she paused, becoming acutely aware of Adrian Player sitting with his wife Gloria, his eyes piercing into Kristen’s. Grotesque memories of him from her own childhood, and even more unbearable thoughts of what he might have done to her Raymond, burned through her as if she were filled with fuel, and she ached to kill him, light him afire and watch him slowly burn to death. It was unthinkably obscene that he should be allowed to live when her son had been hurt so horribly and was now sealed off from her forever, in cold blackness.
