Caught in the Web

by Emmy Ellis

  He stared back, wide-eyed at the state of her. She was never in a state. Always looked nice. Clean. Perfect hair, perfect makeup.

  Now? Cheeks red. Lashes soaked. Mascara running. Lips quivering. Fingers knitted. Light-pink blouse marred with dark wet spots. Black trousers with a crease pressed into them, the hems shivering as much as she did. One foot bouncing, bouncing, bouncing.

  The policeman glanced at Burgess, sympathy in his eyes. “Best you leave the room, son.”

  Burgess glanced at his mother for confirmation. She nodded, and he turned, walked out, pressing himself to the wall in the hallway, right beside the door.

  “How?” his mother asked again. A whisper.

  “I’m sorry to say he was murdered, Mrs Varley.”

  “Oh, dear God…”

  “I have to ask. Is there anyone you can think of who held a grudge? Did Mr Varley have any enemies?”

  “No. He was a good man. Everyone loved him.” Her voice was cracked. As broken as she was.

  “Has anything out of the ordinary happened recently? Maybe he was acting out of character. As though he had something on his mind?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  Burgess imagined her shaking her head, denying anything could possibly be wrong in their world. She did that a lot. Everything had to be perfect. Just so.

  “Any small thing will help, Mrs Varley.”

  Burgess stood there for what seemed the longest time, no voices coming from the living room, just sounds of his mother crying, his heartbeat pattering too fast. He slid to the carpet and sat hugging his knees. Murder meant someone was dead. His dad was dead, was that it? Never coming back? Never giving any more hugs?

  That didn’t sound very nice. Not very perfect.

  “A woman. She came here this morning,” his mother said. “I don’t know her. She was young. Needed a bath. Her hair was greasy. She…she had a boy with her. Five or six years old, I think. She said… She said he was William’s. That…that they’d had an affair and it was high time he was looked after by his dad. That she’d had enough”—a sharp sob that must have hurt—“of the ugly little fucker.”

  “Right. What happened then?”

  “I think I told her not to be so ridiculous, that she must be mistaken—I can’t remember my exact words. But she told me things. Things about William that she’d only know if…if she’d seen him naked. And I… I’m so sorry, but I slapped her around the face and slammed the door. Oh God, I hit someone.”

  “Understandable in the circumstances. Take your time, Mrs Varley.”

  “I don’t believe her. She must have seen him somehow—maybe he went swimming and she saw…certain things on his body.”

  “Did Mr Varley swim often?”

  “No. No. Never. But that has to be it. He went swimming, didn’t he?”

  “Are you all right?” Shaw asked.

  Burgess opened his eyes. They stung, as did the knowledge he’d buried for so long. Oh, he’d known it had been there all along, hiding in the recesses of his mind, but his young self had filed it away as something he didn’t need to know about as he’d grown older.

  Now he knew again, and Christ, what was he supposed to do about it?

  “Um, I just remembered something,” he said and related everything, the telling just as raw as the remembering.

  “Blimey. So what you thought was a coincidence earlier? It’s looking likely it might not be.”

  “Hmm.”

  “We need to find the woman. The child. Who’d be what, about thirty-five now, thirty-six?” Shaw asked.

  “Same as the bloke in the picture with Anita, yes.” Burgess swallowed to ease the tightness in his throat. If this were all true, his half-brother was…

  Fuck it. Fuck. It.

  “You might be taken off the case,” Shaw said.

  “I know.”

  “But we could keep what you’ve remembered quiet for as long as we can, you know, if you want to stay on and catch him.”

  “How? How the hell do we not share this information now?”

  “Look, what if we go with it on our own for today, then if we find the woman and her son, you talk to the DCI. Say you didn’t believe it at first, that you thought, which you did, that the dates and the bloke looking similar to your dad was a huge coincidence?”

  “I can live with that.” Burgess nodded. “I honestly forgot about that conversation until just now, so I can say I didn’t remember without it being a lie.”

  “Were you there when she called round? The woman and the child?”

  “I think so. Something I’ll delve into more once we’ve got this over and done with—seeing my mother, I mean.”

  “All right.”

  Burgess looked through the passenger-side window at the house. It had been considered posh back in the day, people probably thinking it belonged to folks who had a bit of money behind them. Burgess’ childhood had been pretty privileged. He’d never gone hungry, never had dirty clothes, always had a full belly. Now the building appeared as a house the same as any other from that decade, lost amongst the newer builds that had sprouted up on the outskirts of the estate. His family home was somewhat dated now he came to think of it. But his mother had always carried that air about her, like she was well-to-do, her house a status symbol and proof she wasn’t like them, other women who struggled to get by day to day.

  She’s a snob. Might as well face it.

  And she’d passed her pristine clothing obsession down to Burgess, the need for his home to be spotless. That memory—there was more to it and how it affected him. How he’d thought it had been his father’s death that had prevented him from committing to anyone in a relationship—the fear of losing them. Perhaps it had more to do with infidelity and receiving the crushing news that your husband had another child with someone else. It must have stuck in his mind, that, stopping him from going into a permanent pairing.

  Accept that and deal with it later.

  He sighed. “Best be getting on with it then.”

  Out of the car, Burgess led the way up the path, no longer feeling like the copper turning up to give bad news about a death, but one sent to rip an old woman’s soul apart all over again with things from the past that would have remained hidden if a man hadn’t taken it upon himself to murder two people.

  How strange life was. How clever, how sneaky to hold secrets then spew them out years down the line.

  He knocked on the door—he’d relinquished his keys when he’d moved out, and besides, his mother wouldn’t want him just walking in. She had standards, she’d always said, and opening the door to him instead of him just waltzing in was one of them.

  The shape of her approaching was a fuzzy silhouette through the mottled glass, then the handle turned down and she opened the door, surprise on her face that her son was standing there.

  “Burgess. How lovely to see you!”

  You won’t think that in a minute.

  “Mum.”

  She stepped back, arm extended, gesturing for them to go inside. “And Shaw. To what do I owe this pleasure?” She patted her hair, something she’d always done, and smoothed her lips over each other, ensuring her pink lipstick was evenly spread.

  Burgess went inside first. “Just a few questions. Thought you’d be able to help with a case we’re on.”

  Shaw came in and closed the door, and Burgess followed his mother into the kitchen at the back.

  “Oh, not those dreadful murders,” she said, busying herself with the coffee machine.

  “Afraid so.” Burgess sat at the pine table.

  Shaw followed suit, sitting on the opposite side, near the door. “Terrible business.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it is,” she said. “That poor woman. And this morning it’s a man, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Burgess said.

  “I saw it on the news.” She poured from the coffee carafe into china cups, added cream and sugar, then placed the cups on saucers.

  Burgess thanked God he hadn�
�t gone as far as to have those in his house, the saucers. She joined them at the table, perching beside Burgess.

  Maybe it’d be easier that way, to question her so he didn’t have to look directly into her face. Maybe it would be better if Shaw did the talking. Not so personal. Accusatory. Burgess glanced at Shaw, who nodded, getting the gist of it.

  A conversation ensued, coffee sipped along the way, his mother chatting about the things Burgess had done as a child, stories Shaw had listened to on numerous occasions, the poor bastard. Shaw laughed in all the right places, and his mother tittered in her tinkling way, eyes gleaming with happiness from the past.

  And we’re about to ruin it all.

  “So, what can I help you with?” she asked. “Although I think I have an idea. Those murders bring back memories, you know.”

  They do?

  Shaw cleared his throat. “This news may be painful for you. I wanted to warn you about that straight off. It seems this case is related to your husband.”

  Seems the killer’s related to him, more like.

  Burgess wanted to laugh. The absurdity of it, the probability that this was even happening. A fucking cliché in his own back yard—killer goes after copper. If that’s what was happening. It could all still be a coincidence.

  He held tight to his emotions and eyed his empty cup.

  “What on earth do you mean?” Mum asked. “He’s dead, God rest his beautiful soul. How can this have anything to do with him?”

  Shaw gave her a smile—a bit tight, but a smile nonetheless. “We have reason to believe that the man doing this is…is related to your late husband.”

  God help us if we’ve got this wrong…

  “What?” She slapped a hand to her chest. “That’s impossible.” She laughed—that tinkle again. “All William’s relatives are dead, too. His mother, father, cousins, the lot of them, gone.”

  “But not his other son?” Shaw delivered it so calmly that it was more a gentle prodding of her memories than an outright shocking question. “He had another son, didn’t he.”

  She paled. Fiddled with a locket about her neck. Glanced from Shaw to Burgess. Her scrutiny was uncomfortable. So there, so abrasive. He continued to stare at the cup but reached out to lay a hand on her forearm, squeezed a little, then took it away to place it on his lap beneath the lip of the table.

  “Burgess?” she whispered.

  “It’s all right, Mum. Tell Shaw what you know. Stop pretending now.”

  Tell him what you never told me. What you’ve hidden all these years. I understand why you did.

  “But…but what about you?” she asked.

  “Doesn’t matter. Just let it all out.” His throat hurt from holding his emotions in check. “Wasn’t your fault or my fault. And he was still a good man, regardless.” He thought that might chivvy her along. If his father’s memory could continue with the fallacy that he’d never done wrong, even though they were about to discuss something very wrong, that was all right by him. Whatever it took to get the information they needed. Whatever it took to get it out of her without her breaking down. Hysterical. Wrecked. Her fabricated recall of life before his father’s death exposed to the three of them. And later, if it proved to be true, exposed to the country via the news.

  Ouch.

  “But it does matter. I protected you from it all.” Her locket jangled where she fussed with it so much. “I didn’t want you to ever know.”

  “But I do, and now we must deal with it.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “You have to know he was good,” she said. “I won’t continue until you agree with that.”

  “I already said something along those lines, didn’t I, Mum. Things happen. Life takes weird turns, and Dad just happened to go down a road he shouldn’t have. Got lost for a while, shall we say. Like I said, wasn’t your fault, wasn’t mine, and maybe, mad as it sounds, it wasn’t his. All right, he had the responsibility of control, but sometimes we lose that. She might have enticed him, met him at a vulnerable stage in his life. What was he doing around that time that could have made him do such a thing?”

  He couldn’t say it outright. What could have made him shag another woman? Talking sex with her had never been something they had done, Burgess finding out it existed through the kids at school and biology lessons. Discussing his father’s sex life in any form…well, that wasn’t the most comfortable of conversations, but it was on the way and had to be deliberated.

  “When…when you were about five, we weren’t getting along, me and your father,” she said. “We argued about almost every little thing. God, I’ve been denying this for so long that speaking about it now feels surreal. Like it isn’t me, wasn’t us involved.”

  “Go on,” Burgess said. “It’ll be all right. Might be good for you to get it all off your chest. Must be difficult holding a beacon for someone all these years.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Quite. He…he was late home from work, the usual rubbish excuse, but his wages didn’t reflect the overtime. I remember looking at his payslip, the realisation that he was possibly having an affair hitting me hard.” She lowered a hand from her locket and held one of Burgess’ beneath the table. “So I asked him. Asked him outright. He denied it, of course, and we continued on as though nothing had happened, but it was always there, in the back of my mind. The overtime stopped at that point, and not another word was said about it—any of it.”

  “How did you deal with that kind of betrayal?” Burgess asked.

  “Oh, you know, you tell yourself it didn’t happen. How else can you go on?” She stroked her thumb over the back of his hand. “You pretend you’re happy when inside you’re crumbling, that sort of thing. All easily done. And I had you to keep me going. I didn’t want you living with just me, a broken marriage behind us.”

  Burgess winced. That was his mother all over. Prepared to stick it out so she wasn’t shamed by having a divorce under her belt.

  Although he’d signalled for Shaw to do the talking, Burgess found that it was all right, he could do it now. “What time did the woman come to the house? With her son. What time of day was that?”

  She gasped. “I thought…I thought you’d forgotten.”

  “Just answer the question, Mum. It’s important.”

  “Morning. I remember it was half term and you were home. She came around ten.”

  “And the police came to you about eight at night, didn’t they.” Not a question. Definitely not a question. He’d read the case file too many times not to know. He now remembered it had been dark, he’d had a bath, had been in his pyjamas when they’d knocked on the door.

  “Yes. I’d telephoned the police about seven because your father hadn’t come home from work at five.” Her breathing was unsteady. “And it wasn’t because I thought something had happened to him.”

  “What was it then?” Burgess nudged.

  She coughed. “It was… I was desperate. A silly young woman. I wanted to show him that I knew what he was up to. I thought…thought he was seeing someone again and I wanted him to know that I wasn’t going to put up with it a second time. Calling the police had been my way of saying that. A drastic way. Serious. Do you understand? I know now how ridiculous it was, what a waste of police time, and that still troubles me even to this day—now that you’re a policeman and you’ve said before how much time it wastes when people do those types of things. I’m ashamed of myself for that.”

  “These things happen,” Burgess said. “Carry on.”

  “So when they did come and they told me he’d been found, I felt justified in contacting them. He’d been in an accident, that’s what I told myself, and they were coming to tell me he was in hospital.”

  Burgess had expected denial or tears, a telling of the tale that would be pitted with sobs and wails, another fabrication of what she wanted to believe had happened. But her calm, truthful explanation—no, he hadn’t expected that. It could be a worrying sign, how she was so serene, but perhaps she’d had man
y years of thinking about it, reliving it, that now she had to get it off her mind it was more a relief than anything else.

  “But as you know, they didn’t tell me that.” She let go of her locket and circled her finger around the lip of her cup, over and over. “And as you know, he was bludgeoned to death. And they said it was possible a woman had done it. Something about the strength with which he’d been hit. Was it me? That’s what they insinuated.”

  Yes, that was in the file. The assailant had been estimated at a foot shorter than his father, so a slight male or a female had killed him. Burgess had always allowed himself to believe a man had done it—what type of woman would his father have known who would do that to him?

  Now he knew.

  “Do you remember going to your nan’s for the night? That night?” his mother asked. “They’d questioned me for hours at the station, but thank goodness I had you as my alibi for the whole day. And we’d been out to the kids’ club—do you remember that place? Lots of fun to be had there.” She smiled wistfully. “We’d been seen by so many mothers and children around the time he’d been killed. Lunchtime. Perhaps he’d met with her on his break. And all the while I hadn’t known a thing. While I’d done a jigsaw with you or drawn a picture, he was being murdered.”

  “I remember going to Nan’s that night now. The club.” I wish I didn’t.

  “And I knew it was her who’d done it. That woman. Yet they hadn’t been able to find out who she was. I invented scenarios for years afterwards, you know. That she’d got hold of him to tell him he had another son and they’d argued. And the type of woman she was… Dear Lord, what had he been thinking? She was filthy. The sort who was loose, if you get my drift.”

  Burgess did get her drift. “Sorry to be blunt, Mum, but sometimes a bit of rough is what a person needs. Nothing to do with what he has at home. It’s just something that happens. Not your fault, okay?”

  “Oh, the things you come out with, Burgess… A bit of rough! I’ve been through all that, too. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so house-proud. Maybe I shouldn’t have made sure I always looked nice. But that’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it? I was taught that to keep your husband, you had to be everything he wanted and needed. I did my best at it all and still it wasn’t good enough.”