‘A little,’ she said though in truth it hurt like hell. As well as the sting of the cloth against broken skin, she could feel her whole knee beginning to stiffen as it swelled.
‘Who the hell were they?’ Graham was gently attempting to clean her knee without hurting her and although it felt strange to be sitting alone in the darkened newsroom with her editor while he sat on the floor and tended to her like this, his concern was touching.
‘A couple of morons,’ she said dismissively. Although it was tempting to tell him the truth; that they had been sent to warn her off, she couldn’t afford to be sidelined by a well-meaning editor trying to protect her.
‘What did they say to you?’ He looked up as he asked this.
‘Nothing but abuse,’ she told him. ‘I’d rather not repeat all of the words, if you don’t mind.’
‘So you’d never seen them before?’
‘Never,’ she replied honestly.
‘And they didn’t know you,’ he said it almost to himself and she decided to treat the question as if it didn’t need an answer, ‘so I guess you were just unlucky.’ And then he got to his feet. ‘All clean,’ he said. ‘We should call the police now.’
‘Oh no, really, let’s not,’ she urged him. ‘What’s the point?’ she had already lied to her editor by omission and didn’t want to compound the sin by misleading the police as well. ‘It was dark and I could barely describe them. The last thing I need right now is a few fruitless hours down the police station.’
At first it looked as if he was about to argue the point. ‘I’m fine,’ she said firmly, ‘really.’
‘Okay,’ he said uncertainly, ‘if you’re sure?’
Helen got to her feet then and instantly regretted it, crying out in pain. He grabbed her as her knee gave way and helped her stand straight again. ‘I’m alright,’ she said but he did not let go of her arm. Instead he steered her to the door, supporting her as they went. ‘I’ll drive you home,’ he said. ‘Your car will be fine here overnight and I’ll pick you up again in the morning.’
‘That will set tongues wagging,’ she told him.
‘I don’t mind if you don’t.’
‘I don’t,’ she told him.
Chapter Ten
As he drove into the prison, Tom Carney knew deep down he was kidding himself. This was a one-off job, he had reasoned, which would probably only last for a week or two but it didn’t mean he was back in journalism and he certainly wouldn’t be writing another book. Financially, it made sense at a time when he desperately needed an injection of cash and he absolutely wasn’t giving up on the house renovation. Perhaps now he would be able to afford to get someone in to help him finish some of the trickier jobs.
The one thing he didn’t admit was the truth. Tom was experiencing something he had not felt for some time: a surge of excitement. He was intrigued by the Rebecca Holt case. Tom was convinced there were secrets here, and he wanted to be the one to uncover them.
‘What do you think of me, Tom?’ Richard Bell asked abruptly as soon as they were seated in the visiting room. ‘Be honest.’
‘Think of you?’
‘I’m sure you’ve done your homework and we spent time together. What impression did you form of me?’
‘I’m not sure, yet.’
‘Do I look like a murderer?’ Bell probed.
‘Very few people look like murderers.’
‘Strike that then. Do you think I am a murderer?’
‘I honestly don’t know, Richard.’
Perhaps he had hoped for more. ‘Well, at least we are on first-name terms.’
‘You are capable of violence though,’ Tom reminded him.
‘I was attacked,’ Bell protested. ‘It was self-defence.’
‘I don’t mean in here. I’m talking about the ex-girlfriend.’
‘That was years ago. Christ, we were kids.’
‘You were twenty.’
‘Don’t you remember what it was like to be that age?’
‘I never punched a woman.’
‘It was a slap,’ Bell replied, ‘not a punch, and I’m not proud of it either way.’
‘It did you some damage in court.’
‘Look, it was a very long time ago and I got run ragged by the girl in question. I lashed out and I have regretted it ever since. Ask Mark …’
‘Your best man? The character witness that didn’t work out the way you intended?’
‘That wasn’t his fault,’ said Bell, ‘the prosecution lawyer tied him up in knots, but he’ll tell you the truth. What happened with Amy doesn’t make me a murderer.’
‘I won’t lie to you,’ Tom said, ‘I could look into this case for you but I won’t sugar-coat what I find.’
‘I did not kill Rebecca Holt. I did not beat a woman I cared for over the head with a claw hammer. I know that saying it out loud won’t make you believe me but I will not give in until I have cleared my name.’
‘Who said it was a claw hammer?’ asked Tom, fixing his gaze on Bell.
‘Well,’ was there a slight stammer in his reply, ‘the prosecution had an expert witness …’
‘He said it was a blunt instrument.’
‘Which was most likely a hammer,’ Bell corrected him firmly, ‘because of the dimensions of the impact marks on Rebecca’s skull.’
‘A hammer yes but he didn’t say it was a claw hammer.’
‘Do you own a hammer, Tom?’
‘Of course.’
‘Usually they have a flat bit at one end of the head to bang in nails and a claw at the other end to pull them out again,’ and he looked Tom right in the eye, ‘hence my use of the words, claw hammer.’
‘Okay,’ said Tom, letting it go, ‘so you were saying … about wanting to clear your name.’
‘Freedom without exoneration is meaningless to me. How can I look my daughters in the eye and tell them their daddy is a killer,’ Richard asked, ‘or try to explain that he isn’t but had to admit to being one just so he could get out of jail?’
‘I understand.’
‘Do you? I seriously doubt that. It’s not as if saying it would even change anything. I’d still be in here with no hope of release for years. What are you planning for the next five years, Tom; meet a girl, settle down, have some kids, get a home, a better job maybe with nicer prospects? That’s what people usually do. They try to improve their lives. All of that is on hold for me until this nightmare is over. No women, no booze, shit food, nothing to look forward to. What do you think most people would say if they knew what my life was really like?’
‘That you deserved it,’ offered Tom, ‘for killing Rebecca.’
‘Yes,’ he admitted, ‘you’re right. I think that’s exactly what most of them would say – but I did not kill Rebecca. You’ve got to believe me.’
‘No, I don’t,’ Tom told him, ‘I don’t have to do anything,’ and before Bell could contradict that he added, ‘but I’ve decided I will look into your case. I’ll do some digging and I’ll see if I can come up with something new and, with permission, I’ll speak to your nearest and dearest to see if they can shed some new light on the events of that day – but you won’t be able to control my opinions or conclusions and you might not like what I find,’ warned Tom. ‘If it’s something about Rebecca that you didn’t know or I discover the real reason she was killed …’
‘Tom, I assure you I can live with anything if the alternative is to stay in here for the rest of my life.’
‘And what if all the evidence I uncover still points to you?’
‘Then I’ll be no worse off but I have every faith you will find the real killer.’
‘How do you want to play this? Do I keep visiting you here with updates?’
‘The governor isn’t too keen on that idea.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because he knows that sooner or later one of his guards will sell the story to the newspapers.’
‘What story?’
‘Journalist re
opens Rebecca Holt murder case,’ Bell explained. ‘You can keep my wife informed. Annie visits regularly and this way nobody will ever know you are working with us.’
Tom liked the sound of that. Working for a convicted murderer wasn’t something he was keen to include on his CV. ‘I still have a lot of questions.’
‘Then you’d better ask them.’
She’d asked for a couple of days off and Graham said she’d earned them. He’d told Helen it might be a good idea to keep her head down anyway following the incident which, in the cold light of day, Helen was able to shrug off, particularly as the damage to her knee was less serious than she first thought. Aside from painful stiffness when she went up and down stairs, it was already on the mend. The time off was to accommodate her boyfriend, who had been granted a couple of free days by his father in return for all the hard work he had put in lately at the family business – a small chain of carpet stores in Surrey that Peter had been wholly dismissive of when they first met. He was not going to work for the old man, Peter had told her firmly. He was going to start up his own business. She had believed him.
A year after graduation, reality set in and Peter told her he was going to work for the business after all. It seemed the prospect of entry-level jobs while he saved up and planned his own venture was not that appealing. ‘This way I get proper hands-on experience before branching out on my own,’ he’d enthused. A few years down the line and Peter no longer talked about his own dreams, only the intricacies of the carpet retailing business he was being groomed to take over, and Helen no longer asked about them.
They were walking down by the river together. A bracing breeze travelled along the Tyne towards them. ‘Isn’t it a beautiful city?’ she remarked about her adopted home.
Her boyfriend snorted, ‘What’s beautiful about it? Half of it’s a building site.’
‘They’re regenerating the place. When it’s done it will look amazing. They are going to build a massive concert hall on the banks of the Tyne and they reckon they can get funding from that new lottery. They’re going to convert the Baltic Flour Mill,’ she pointed across the river to the imposing old building, ‘into an art gallery.’ When Peter offered no further thoughts, she continued, ‘Of course, that will take years …’
‘If it ever gets beyond the planning stage.’
‘But when it’s done it will be fantastic. Anyway I still think it’s beautiful, down here by the river beneath the bridges.’ And she did. As well as the famous Tyne Bridge there was Robert Stephenson’s High Level Bridge, a wrought-iron engineering miracle that still supported both road traffic and the trains from the railway in a single, two-tier construction, which had spanned the river since the days of Queen Victoria. She was about to tell him this was the bridge they used in Get Carter, but he might ask her how she knew that and it had been Tom Carney who told her, as they had raced over it on the way back from seeing the key surviving witness in the Sean Donnellan case. Peter didn’t like her mentioning Tom. He wasn’t jealous, he told her, he just didn’t like her ‘banging on’ about the guys she worked with and anyway, Peter wasn’t looking at the bridges. He was frowning at some young girls in short skirts who were laughing raucously on their way to a pub.
‘Does anyone ever wear a coat round here?’
She wondered if he was going to say they would all probably catch their deaths. When she didn’t immediately answer him, Peter turned to look at her as if he’d been slighted somehow. ‘Just because I don’t find this northern outpost at the end of the known universe beautiful,’ he was doing his exaggerated I-was-only-joking voice with accompanying winning smile, the one that had worked on her the night they first met in the bar of their student union, ‘doesn’t mean I’m not happy to be here. It might not be beautiful but you are.’ He put his hands on her waist then kissed her on the forehead, which she supposed was sweet but it did have the effect of making her feel like a little girl being counselled by a man who considered himself older and wiser, even though they were the same age.
‘I’m also bloody freezing,’ he told her then he shivered melodramatically, ‘so can we please find a pub or something?’ He was still talking in that breezy manner, as if everything was just too silly to get upset about. ‘You know, one without sawdust on the floor.’
She wanted to say she had never been to a pub in Newcastle with sawdust on its floor but Helen knew he would sigh and say, ‘I was joking,’ before going into one of his sulks, so she agreed to go for a drink, since that was easier than an argument, even though their walk had barely lasted a hundred yards along the river bank.
As she headed for the pub she found herself wondering whether Tom Carney would have wimped out of a bracing autumn walk like that. No, she thought, he wouldn’t, but he would probably have been just as dismissive of Helen’s romantic view of its post-industrial landscape, with its cranes and heavy girders in perpetual motion on the south side of the river. Tom was like a lot of people she’d met since she’d moved up here: fiercely defensive of the north-east to outsiders but just as likely to do the place down amongst themselves for its lack of opportunities. Absent-mindedly, Helen found herself wondering what Tom Carney was doing right now.
Chapter Eleven
‘When the police first questioned you, you denied you were having an affair with Rebecca Holt.’
‘Yes,’ admitted Bell and Tom waited for an explanation. ‘Well you would, wouldn’t you? I panicked. At that point I thought I was only putting my marriage in jeopardy but denying it at the beginning made me look bad later when it was mentioned in court. I understand that now. The prosecution made it sound like I was an effortless liar who wasn’t even upset to learn the news of Rebeca’s death.’
‘And were you?’ Tom said. ‘Upset, I mean?’
‘Of course!’ Bell said. ‘I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I cared for Rebecca deeply, and when the police told me she’d been killed, well, it was a complete shock.’
‘What did they say?’
‘That Rebecca’s body had been found in her car. That it was parked in a lovers’ lane and she had been murdered.’
‘Did they say how she’d been killed?’
‘Not at first but I asked them.’
‘And what did they say?
‘With a blunt instrument.’
‘How did you feel when you heard that?’
‘How do you think I felt?’ Bell snapped.
‘I have no idea,’ said Tom calmly. ‘Maybe you were shocked and completely devastated or perhaps you were worried the police thought you’d done it. Possibly you were panicking because you didn’t want your wife to find out about your secret lover, maybe you were worrying about everything you could lose: the job, the money, the house, the family. I don’t know, Richard, because I don’t know you. That’s the point and it’s why I’m asking these questions … and if you want me to help you then you really should consider answering them.’
Richard Bell held up a hand to placate Tom. ‘I’m sorry, you’re right, you don’t know me or anything about me apart from what I’ve told you and the stuff you read about in the newspapers.’ He was quiet then and seemed to be recalling the moment when the police knocked on his door. Eventually he spoke: ‘It was like someone had punched me in the guts. I remember having to make a conscious effort of will just to stay standing and not crumple to the ground in front of them.’
‘Did they question you right there on the doorstep?’
‘Pretty much; they asked me about my relationship with the victim. I told them we were friends who had met at the sports club. They then asked me if we were just friends and I assured them we were.’ And he shook his head, ‘I didn’t know they already knew. Otherwise …’ Richard shrugged.
‘You would have confessed to the relationship?’
‘Yes, of course – but at that point I was still hoping it wouldn’t all come out. I was in damage limitation mode.’
‘How did they know?’
‘One of my notes,
’ he answered. ‘Rebecca stuffed it into the glove compartment. She must have forgotten to destroy it. Obviously they found it straight away. I don’t think the police ever seriously looked beyond me as a line of enquiry from that day to this.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know,’ and when Tom looked unconvinced, ‘I really don’t. You’d have to ask them. I honestly can’t think why they would assume I’d killed Rebecca and not her husband say or some random nutcase.’
‘Oh yes, the nutcase theory,’ said Tom.
‘Why do you say it like that?’
Tom quoted from Bell’s letter: ‘He’s still out there, waiting to do it again.’
‘Got your attention, didn’t it?’ Bell smiled grimly.
‘That the only reason you wrote it in your letter?’ asked Tom. ‘To get me out here?’
‘There have been reports of a man roaming the area near the lovers’ lane for years. Numerous incidents have been attributed to that man or possibly several men. The police don’t know if it is the same person and it is a wide stretch of land, which is why people meet there for …’
‘Sex?’
‘I was going to say privacy,’ Bell replied, ‘but yes, if you are going to have sex with someone in a car then Lonely Lane is as good a place as any.’
‘Back when I was a teenager it was known as “Shaggers’ Alley”.’
‘With some justification,’ conceded Bell. ‘The lane stretches for miles across fields between two arterial roads, with deep woods on both sides. That combination is always going to attract lovers, plus all manner of sleazy individuals. It was only when we got into the case against me that we discovered there were guys out there doing all sorts of things in the woods and fields surrounding the lane.’
‘What kind of things?’
‘Voyeurism, for starters,’ he began. ‘One guy was arrested with a camera and a zoom lens. He’d been taking photos of people having sex in their cars. They don’t know if he was a blackmailer or just an old-fashioned pervert. Most people have no idea what goes on in the woods. I certainly didn’t know. There’s been more than one rapist,’ Bell told him, ‘some have been caught and some haven’t. It’s the ones that haven’t you should be looking for.’
Behind Dead Eyes Page 7
