A Cross to Bear: A Jack Sheridan Mystery

by Vogel, Vince

  She went to get up, offering Jack a cup of tea, but he placed his hand on her shoulder and said he was okay for tea.

  “Helen, I need to ask you something,” he said at last. “It’s not going to be pleasant, so I’m just gonna come out and ask. Is that okay?” She nodded, her mouth screwing up into a rose-shaped ball, the look of sadness suffusing into one of wretched despair. “I need to ask you if you’ve ever suspected anything untoward between Steven and Becky?”

  Something appeared to break in the mother, and she immediately burst into tears, a rasping sound emerging from her lips.

  “Yes,” she sobbed, her head nodding up and down, eyes screwed up. “I did.”

  “Why did you suspect it?”

  “Because she came to me… she came to me and she… told me… and I… I was terrible to her.”

  She dissolved into heavy sobbing, and Jack instinctively placed an arm around her. The moment he did, she threw her face into his shoulder, crying herself into him.

  “It’s okay,” he gently cooed into her ear, rubbing her back. “It’s okay.”

  A few minutes later, Helen was off Jack’s shoulder and trembling next to him, wiping her eyes constantly with a tissue.

  “I’m gonna need you to tell me about it,” Jack gently said.

  “Okay,” she sniffed. “It was two years ago, when she was arrested with that guy in the car. I picked her up from the police station. I was so angry with her. I shouted at her in the car, and we argued terribly. I kept asking her why she’d done it. Then she just came out with it. She looked me dead in the eyes and said, ‘Do you know that when you’re away, your husband sneaks into my room at night and fucks me?’ She said it so viciously. Her eyes were glaring at me, and for the first time in my life, I was afraid of my own daughter.” Helen went silent for a moment and wiped more tears from her eyes. “She said he was a beast. ‘Your husband’s a beast.’ Screamed it out. Over and over. ‘He’s a beast, he’s a beast.’ It was as if something had broken in her, Jack. She was jumping up and down in the car shouting it out. And do you know what I did?”

  “What did you do, Helen?”

  “I smacked her,” she said in a dead tone, her eyes gazing into the hollow space before her. “Right on the mouth. Cut her lip. My little girl came to me with something so terrible, and I did that. When she needed me the most, I hit her. It will haunt me for the rest of my days.” She paused, her eyes still off somewhere else. “That night she went and cut her wrists in the bathtub,” she finally added, before dissolving into tears again, Jack rubbing her back as it shivered beneath his hand. Soon she stopped crying and sat dabbing her swollen eyes with a fresh tissue that Jack had handed her from a box on the coffee table. “And do you want to know what the worst part is?” she went on, a disgusted look opening up on her face. “The worst part is I believed her. Inside I knew it was true. There’d always been something about the way he looked at her, the way he always found excuses to be alone with her and how she always seemed so cold toward him. I kidded myself that it was merely my husband trying to be a father and her reaction nothing but the cold response of a girl pining for her big brother, unwilling to accept an imposter. But deep down, I felt something odd.” She looked away from the space and straight into Jack’s eyes. “What sort of a person am I, Jack?”

  “You’re no different than most, Helen. No different than most. Is that what you came to see me about earlier today?”

  “Yeah. I wanted to tell you, Jack, believe me. But I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. You see, when she got out of Rampton, Becky said that she’d made it all up. And being the weak bitch that I am, I went along with that lie. I was so weak, Jack. So weak.”

  “You’re being strong now, though. Aren’t you?”

  “How so?”

  “By telling me everything.”

  “But I should have said earlier. I should have said two years ago when she told me. The second she told me, I should have taken her back inside that station and reported it. How did you find out anyway?”

  “Becky was seeing a shrink. A Dr. Holby. I went to see him tonight, and he told me about the abuse.”

  “Becky was seeing a psychiatrist?” Helen let out with a confused look creasing her sad features.

  “Yeah. Which leads me to my next question. Where was Steve Saturday night?”

  Helen turned sharply to him.

  “He was out,” she muttered, a terrible thought passing through her mind.

  “Where?”

  “Drinking with a friend of his, David Greene. He’s a fellow teacher at the school.”

  “What time did he get home?”

  “In the early hours. He woke me up around one in the morning getting into bed.”

  “This friend of his, David Greene, has he got a wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “And is she a friend of yours?”

  “Yes. Sarah and I have been friends for a long time. We all go on holiday together.”

  “So if you asked her to tell you the truth, you think she would?”

  “I’d like to think so.”

  “Then I need you to call her and ask her where her husband was Saturday night and who he was with. If she tells you he was with Steve, ask her if she’s telling the truth. Find out if her husband hasn’t asked her to cover for him.”

  “You don’t think Steve could have killed her?” she asked with a horrified look.

  “I don’t think anything at the moment, Helen. Just call your friend.”

  “Oh, God!” she pitifully cried out. “If he’s killed her after what she told me… after what I knew… then I’m to blame, aren’t I?”

  “You can’t think like that, Helen. Please, call this friend and make sure.”

  With a trembling hand, she picked her mobile up from the coffee table and dialed the number. Before long, the wife of David Greene came on.

  “Sarah,” Helen said, “I need to ask you something. It’s very important. I need you to tell me where David was Saturday night.” She nodded along for a moment as the friend said something to her on the other end of the phone. The whole time, Jack eyed Helen studiously. “So David was at home, then? Uh huh. Did Steve come around at all? Or did David have to meet him at any point?” Again she nodded along. “Does David know where Steve was Saturday night?” There was more waiting as Sarah went off to ask her husband. Helen immediately heard raised voices. It appeared that David had been told by Steve to lie. Sarah then came back to the phone, and Helen’s face gradually contorted into a terrible grimace as her friend told her all about Steven asking David to give him an alibi. “Does he know where Steve was?” Helen enquired in the faint squeak of a voice. The friend barracked her husband once more for answers, before telling Helen that David didn’t know exactly. That Steven was pretty coy with him about it all and had merely told David to cover for him if Helen asked about it.

  The phone dropped from her hand onto the floor, and Jack could hear the faint echo of the person the other end calling out her name. He got up off the couch, picked it up, and put it down.

  “She said that Steve told David to cover for him,” Helen said in a near whisper when Jack had reseated himself.

  “And you’ve no idea where Steve is now?”

  “None. He just stormed out.” Her face collapsed into a million tears, and she threw herself back into Jack’s shoulder. “It’s all my fault,” she cried out.

  “None of this is your fault, Helen. None of it. You hear me?”

  “Yeah,” she whimpered.

  “Do you expect Steve back tonight?”

  She froze and Jack could tell that the prospect of her husband coming home haunted her more than anything.

  “Yes. But I can’t stay here. Not with him. Not anymore.”

  “Do you have anyone that you can stay with?”

  “No. I can’t go to any of our friends. I’d have to tell them.”

  “Then if you want, you can come back to mine.”

  A crooked half
smile momentarily quivered across her lips, and she took herself off his shoulder.

  “That’s really sweet,” she said, her misty eyes gazing at him. “You always were sweet, Jack. The way you used to come round after John died to update me on the case’s progress. The way you looked when you had to tell me that you couldn’t go any further with it. It was like you were guilty that you couldn’t do more. I saw that burden in your eyes. We were strangers to you, but I saw that you wanted to get us justice so much.”

  “I mean it, Helen. You can come and stay at mine until you sort something out.”

  “What about Steve?”

  “I’m afraid I need to talk to him urgently. In a minute, I’m gonna make some calls and have an arrest warrant put out on him.”

  “But he’ll only deny it all.”

  “Unless he can explain his whereabouts Saturday night, he’s in a lot of trouble.” He looked at her with such assuredness when he said this that she allowed herself another half smile. “Now pack some stuff—you’re coming with me to my place.”

  “There’s another thing too,” she said, the half smile dissolving completely.

  “What’s that?”

  “Alex came over tonight.”

  “Alex?”

  “Yeah. He came over. I couldn’t believe it when I saw him at the door. He’s changed so much. His eyes were so cold.”

  “Where is he now?” Jack enquired with an element of concern.

  “I don’t know. He was really strange. He started accusing us of things and then had some sort of turn where he began mumbling to himself. Then he left.”

  “What things did he accuse you of?”

  “Of allowing this to happen to Becky.”

  Jack wasn’t sure what this meant. He began wondering whether a trained killer was loose on the streets of London looking for some kind of retribution. He hoped not, but he couldn’t be sure. In the end, he said nothing about it to Helen and merely helped her pack some things. Once that had been achieved, they left in his car.

  43

  Dorring and Chloe Casper were driving through the incessant rain along serpentine country lanes on the outskirts of London. On either side of the road, tall leafless plane trees leaned over the hedges like giant spindly fingers reaching across to each other. The rain clattered on the road and made it a carpet of perpetual splashes. In front, they could see the faint break lights of Steven Cuthbert’s car dancing around in the murky darkness.

  “He’s heading to Epping,” Chloe remarked.

  “He is. I wonder what Mr. Cuthbert wants with the woods.”

  “Isn’t this where your sister was found?”

  “It is.”

  They drove some more through the torrential downpour, until they spotted the red lights turning off into one of the many car parks that fed into the forest. Alex pulled the car onto the side of the road.

  “Wait here,” he said to Chloe.

  Before she could answer back, he got out of the car and went to the trunk. Chloe watched through the half-misted-up back window as he placed a black ski mask over the top on his head and then some type of goggles over his face. Having done that, he put on a large black raincoat and walked off into the rain.

  Dorring made it to the side of the road, climbed over a small wire fence, and then into the woods. Moving stealthily through the dank trees as though he were a part of the forest, he came to the edge of the car park. Heavily immersed in the foliage, he crouched down and watched Steven Cuthbert in his car from about ten feet away. It was very dark, the clouds and trees conspiring together to block out the full moon, and, with the rain added to this, it made it almost impossible for anyone to see with the naked eye.

  In the green tint of the night vision goggles, however, Dorring could see everything he needed to. He watched as Steven Cuthbert sat in his car staring out the window. Through the continual din of the weather, Alex began to make out music and realized that Steven was listening to something on his car stereo. He observed that Cuthbert appeared to be crying, the man rocking back and forth and running his hand down his face every so often, as if he were trying to pull it off like a mask. Alex watched as Cuthbert began punching the inside of the car, the steering wheel, roof, doors, even himself as he thumped his chest. The music suddenly grew louder when he threw open the door and got out.

  Dorring stepped back into the trees and brush while Steven walked close by. He was making his way toward one of the footpaths that ran out of the car park and into the wood. Alex let him go a while before following on along the trees some distance away from the path’s edge. He soon caught up, Steven visible through the endless columns, stomping along the path. From time to time, Cuthbert would slip and fall, and each time he did, he’d sit on the sodden ground for a while, crying up into the rain.

  A little farther into the belly of the woods, the heaviest of the rainclouds passed, nothing but a patter now, and the trees lit up in the silver light of the large incandescent moon looming overhead. Alex held back a little now, afraid that he’d be seen. But his caution mattered very little. Steven Cuthbert appeared to be in some wretched world of his own and observed almost nothing of the dark wood around him. Eventually he made it into a heath of tangled nettles and fell willingly to his knees, his hands clasped together and his whole body craned up toward the glaring moon. He screamed fully at it, shaking his head and holding those trembling hands up, imploring it for something which only Steven Cuthbert knew.

  Alex stood watching this for another ten minutes, until the man got up off his knees and out of the mud. Cuthbert then returned listlessly to his car, all the dejection of a drowned rat in his movements. There was something about this man, Dorring thought to himself. A certain something that needed to be gotten at. And Alex knew for sure that the person to get to this certain something was himself.

  From the edge of the wood, Alex watched Cuthbert drive away and went back to Chloe.

  “What did he do?” she asked the moment he got back into the driver’s side.

  “Not much” was his answer.

  “Well, I have a hell of a lot more for you,” she said, picking up his phone from the middle of the car. “I was listening to that bug you placed at your mum’s and heard something really important.”

  “What was it?”

  “I think you should hear.”

  She pressed Play and the conversation between Jack and Helen could be heard, starting with Helen answering the door to him. Alex felt a surge of something at hearing the detective’s voice again.

  “That’s Jack Sheridan,” he muttered.

  “Who’s he?”

  “A good man.”

  With that they gathered around the phone and listened, Alex’s countenance becoming darker by the second as he heard what was said between his mother and Jack.

  44

  Jean had only that second finished washing up the dinner plates with the help of Tyler when she heard Jack’s car pull up next door. She raced into the hallway and flipped the curtains open, seeing that it was him. She wasn’t happy with Jack. He was supposed to have been back two hours ago, and all she’d gotten was a text saying I’ll be late. That was about an hour ago when he’d already been late. She’d tried to call after that, but his phone had been on silent. Jean, as had often been her custom with her next-door lover, was furious with him.

  “Ty, sweetie,” she called out into the kitchen from the hallway window, “you finish up with the dishes, and I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

  She wanted to rebuke Jack without the boy seeing. Rapidly, she threw her shoes on and marched out the door. Passing her fence, she glanced at the car and had her anger further enflamed when she saw a woman getting out the passenger’s side.

  “What the bloody hell is this?” she cried out, unable to keep it in.

  Jack and Helen both turned to her, Jack immediately putting on a meek expression. He knew he’d be in for it and needed to take the sting out of Jean as soon as possible.

  “Jean I’
d like you to meet—”

  But it was no good. Her ears were off limits for the moment, too bunged up with fire.

  “You think you can leave me looking after your grandson,” she launched at him, “while you’re out picking up… floozies!”

  “It’s not what you think, Jean. Helen’s an old friend.”

  “Oh, I bet she is!”

  Helen was becoming more confused by the second.

  “What’s the matter, Jack?” she asked.

  “Helen, this is Jean,” he replied, pointing to the furious red-haired woman rapidly approaching from the pavement. “She’s my neighbor.”

  “Bloody cook, babysitter, and lover too,” Jean fumed.

  “Yeah. Those too, I guess,” Jack said in an apologetic tone.

  “You’re a real bastard, Jack Sheridan,” the jealous woman barked into his face the moment she was only a foot away.

  “It’s not what you think. Helen’s going to stay at mine tonight.”

  “I bet she is.”

  “Jean, will you let me finish,” Jack said softly, taking her by the shoulders and gazing into her flame-ridden eyes. “Helen’s going to stay at mine because she can’t go home at the moment. Something bad has happened, which I can’t tell you about, and the thing is is that Tyler’s in Corrie’s room, meaning I need another favor off of you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I need to stay at yours tonight.”

  Jean’s face changed and she continued to glance incredulously between the two of them.

  “Of course,” she finally said. “So you… and her…”

  “No, Jean. She’s just a friend.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jean said to Helen.

  “It’s okay,” the latter replied meekly.

  Jack put his arm around Jean’s shoulder and began walking her to the end of the drive.

  “Come on, Helen,” he said over his shoulder. “I want you to meet my grandson.” Turning back to Jean, he added, “How’s he been?”

  “Good as gold,” she replied. “He loves chatting away, doesn’t he?”