Picture of Innocence

by Jill McGown

  ‘It’s been goin’ on ever since he came here ’bout the vandalism,’ she was saying. ‘Only – there wasn’t no way I could get away to see him. Bernard never let me out of his sight that long. Curtis don’t even live in Bartonshire, and couldn’t neither of us afford to go to hotels or get a flat or nothin’. Only time I saw him was when he come to the farm. But after the alarms went in, there wasn’t nothin’ bringin’ him here. And I thought up the death threats. That was all,’ she said. ‘It was just to get Curtis here.’

  The thought of assisting her to make assignations with her lover was worse, much worse, than assisting her to do away with her repulsive husband. A voice at the back of his head was pointing out that Curtis Law was her contemporary, not old enough to be her father, but it made no difference to how he felt. She had used him, used every trick in the book to ensnare him, knowing he would do exactly what she wanted.

  ‘That’s all there was to it,’ she said. ‘ Nothin’ to do with you.’

  No. Nothing to do with him. He’d risked prison so that Curtis Law could get his leg over, while all he could do was fantasize about it. But tables could be turned; that fantasy could become reality. He breathed in her perfume, instead of trying to ignore it. It would become reality.

  She gave him a little smile. ‘ You goin’ to buy the land now?’ she asked. ‘Now you know I wasn’t tryin’ to set you up?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll go, then.’ She walked past him, back into the house.

  She thought he would call her back, but he let her go, because she was desperate for that money, and she would be back. And next time she would do what he wanted, for a change.

  Nicola came home to find Inspector Hill waiting for her.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘ Gus keeps saying I should get a mobile phone.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said the inspector. ‘I’d just like to ask you a few more questions.’

  She had been expecting this, had resigned herself to it, steeled herself against it. She hoped.

  Inspector Hill got straight down to the reason for her visit, with what Nicola already recognized as typical directness. ‘Yesterday,’ she said, ‘ you were going to tell me something about Rachel. What was it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Nicola, pushing her hair behind her ear, and wishing she hadn’t. It wasn’t a good start.

  ‘Something that you thought had caused your father to get violent. Not the baby business – something Rachel had been doing, rather than not doing. What was that, Mrs Hutchins?’

  ‘It’s none of my business,’ Nicola said fiercely. ‘And Rachel wasn’t there. She was in London.’

  ‘But you think she had been there, don’t you? You think he might have assaulted her, so you must think she had been there to be assaulted.’

  ‘I just assumed she was there!’ She wasn’t going to say what she saw. If he had been going to do that to her again, he deserved everything he’d got, and anyway, she still didn’t understand what had happened. ‘And I assumed he’d been hitting her, because he was always hitting her. She didn’t do as she was told, not like me.’

  Inspector Hill looked concerned. ‘ Rachel told me your father had been physically abusing you since you were two years old,’ she said. ‘Is that true?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Nicola. ‘But I can’t remember him not doing it.’

  ‘Didn’t your mother—?’

  ‘Don’t start blaming her! She was frightened he’d do something worse if she tried to stop him, and she was right, if what he did to Rachel’s anything to go by.’

  ‘Why didn’t she leave, him?’

  ‘She was frightened to. She tried to, once, but …’ Nicola shook her head. ‘He stopped her.’

  In the silence that followed, Nicola could hear the big old-fashioned pendulum clock tick away the seconds in the waiting room next door, and remembered that day. Her mother had never learned to drive; she had waited until the coast was clear, and had ordered a taxi. It had arrived in the courtyard; hooted. She had picked up the cases, shepherding Nicola ahead of her. Nicola had gone out to find the taxi driving away, and her father standing there. She closed her eyes, her fists clenched to her mouth, as the memory claimed her. ‘ He stopped her,’ she repeated, her voice a whisper.

  ‘Is that what you thought Rachel had done? Tried to leave him? And he had tried to stop her?’

  Oh, God. The detour into her personal history had lowered what defences she had managed to build up, sending her right back to her totally defenceless childhood. Nicola had counted thirty-five ticks of the waiting-room clock when she caved in. She had to tell her something. She didn’t have the pith to keep this up, so there was no point in trying to. Better just to get it over with, tell her what she wanted to know. Rachel wouldn’t do this to you, a voice in her head was saying, as she spoke. But she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t.

  ‘I know she had an affair with someone,’ she said. ‘It was weeks ago. It might all be over.’

  Forgive me. Forgive me, Rachel. I’m not as strong as you, not as brave. I can’t do this.

  ‘Let’s take this one step at a time,’ said Inspector Hill.

  ‘You promised.’

  Jack ran his hands down his face, and looked at Terri. ‘I swear

  to you,’ he said. ‘I am not and I never have been having an affair

  with Rachel Bailey.’

  ‘You’ve sworn to me before, Jack Melville!’

  He knew that. That was the thing about being a liar. No one believed you when you were telling the truth. His web was even more tangled than most; the more he protested his innocence, the less she would believe him, and that suited him right down to the ground. Did that make the truth a lie?

  ‘I know I have,’ he said. ‘Terri – I love you. You know I do. And I know I’ve been a lousy husband in that respect, but – maybe I make up for it in others?’

  She shook her head, sniffed away a tear. ‘You promised,’ she repeated.

  He had gone up to her yesterday after the inspector had left, but she hadn’t spoken to him at all. She hadn’t come downstairs again; he had slept in the spare room. That was the pattern, after he had been discovered in an infidelity.

  ‘I knew,’ she said. ‘I knew as soon as she came here, as soon as I saw her. You’d never be able to ignore someone like her.’

  Now, the recriminations had started. He would protest his innocence, and would sleep in the spare room for a few nights, while she went on at him about broken promises and didn’t cook for him. And eventually, he would confess, and she would let him sleep with her again. No sex. Then, after a couple of weeks of that, she would forgive him, he would promise never to look at another woman, they would make love, and life would go on peaceably until the next time.

  ‘But she could ignore me, and did. She isn’t interested in married men.’

  Tern’s eyes blazed. And how do you know that? How do you know she isn’t interested in married men?’

  ‘I may have made a pass.’

  ‘May have? Don’t you remember?’

  All right, I did make a pass. I’m sorry. But – well, I did it from force of habit, almost. And she turned me down.’

  ‘Playing hard to get?’

  No, she hadn’t played hard to get, thought Jack. She’d played impossible to get. ‘ She turned me down,’ he repeated. She had told him, politely, and very, very languidly, to get lost. Married men were not, it would appear, Rachel Bailey’s cup of tea. He had tried a few times, but always the same answer.

  ‘Oh, I’ll bet she did! I’m sure Bernard Bailey was so fascinating she couldn’t tear herself away from him!’

  ‘It was before she was married, and she turned me down. She told me to behave myself and go home to my wife, and that was what I did. I haven’t even seen her to speak to since she married Bailey.’

  ‘Then why did you go there on Sunday night?’

  ‘To see Bailey. I told you, he had some investments.’

&
nbsp; ‘Will you stop lying to me! No one believes your ridiculous story about investments! Not me and not the police. And if you are seeing Rachel Bailey, you had better come up with a better lie than that!’

  He would. Just give him time.

  She stood up. ‘I’m going out,’ she said. ‘ You can get your own lunch.’

  He sat down at the computer, switching it on, his mind not on his job, but on how he was going to weather this. ‘If’ had crept into the accusations, he’d noticed, and that was a little worrying. Perhaps the truth wasn’t as convincing a lie as he had thought.

  He might have to confess. To having an affair with Rachel, of course. Not to what he’d really done.

  Rachel got into her car as soon as Inspector Hill had gone, and drove to the flat. She had had a difficult day; first, she had had to explain to Steve Paxton and the other three men that there was no money for their wages, and had promptly lost three-quarters of her workforce. Steve had said that he would help her out until something got sorted. Then McQueen had turned awkward on her, and explaining about the death threats had just made matters worse. He had been jealous. She could use that, though. She could handle him, she was sure of that.

  She wasn’t so sure about Inspector Hill. Nicola had told her about finding her with Curtis, of course, and Rachel had admitted it, though she had still denied that he was with her at the hotel. Whatever happens, just deny it, Curtis had said, though she couldn’t see the point. But what was bothering her was that the inspector had been going on about some money that was supposed to have been in the safe; Rachel had told her she knew nothing about any money, that as far as she knew, Bernard had had none.

  What else could she say? He had scraped together some cash for her to go to London, accepting how much it cost without a murmur, happy to stick to his side of the bargain now that she was sticking to hers. She had pretended to book herself in, as though places like that could give you suites in the middle of summer at a week’s notice. Curtis had booked it in Bernard’s name weeks before, and she had just kept her fingers crossed that Bernard knew as little about how hotels conducted their business as she assumed, and he had. And as far as she had known, that was the only cash Bernard had had; she certainly didn’t know about any more. She had thought that Bernard had just juggled figures around, borrowed money from one source to pay back his borrowings from another; that was why she had been so certain that there had to be a limit to how long he could go on doing that. Now it looked as though he had had a supply of cash all the time.

  But finding out that she might have been in a no-win situation all along was something a gambler like Rachel could live with; the real worry was that it was Curtis who had told the police about this money, and maybe it had never been there in the first place. Maybe it was part of the plan, something he hadn’t told her about. He hadn’t told her much, had said it was better for her not to know the details, but she had no idea what was going on. He hadn’t come round last night, and she’d stayed in all evening, desperate to see him, her bewilderment of the morning turning to anger when he didn’t arrive.

  She let herself into the flat, stepping over the letter on the mat, and sank down at the table, suddenly very tired. When she heard his key in the door, she went out to see him stoop and pick the letter up. It was just more junk mail – he wouldn’t get any real mail here, and that unconcerned, unthinking, reflex action upset her even more.

  ‘What went wrong?’ she demanded, but the question came out without warning through sobs as sudden and unexpected as when she had first talked to Inspector Hill.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, throwing the letter into the bin with all the others, coming to her, putting his arms round her. ‘Nothing went wrong. Everything’s fine.’

  ‘But he’d been stabbed!’

  ‘I know. I know you got a terrible fright. I couldn’t tell you, don’t you see?’ He was holding her close, stroking her hair, kissing her face. ‘ I couldn’t. Your reaction had to be real, Rachel. It had to be. I couldn’t tell you. I didn’t know it would do that to you.’

  ‘You told me that he looked like he was asleep!’

  ‘Yes. I know, I know.’ He led her into the living room, and sat her on the sofa, still holding her, stroking her ‘ I lied. First, I don’t know a thing about chloral hydrate, but I expect he’d have to drink a bucketful before it killed him. And second, you had to find something you didn’t expect, so that your reaction was right. Someone could have come in with you – Nicola, or anyone.’

  She pulled away from him. ‘But I nearly died! I thought it had all gone wrong! Then when the cops came and dragged you away, I thought we were goin’ to be arrested!’

  ‘I know. But it hadn’t gone wrong. We weren’t arrested, and we’re not going to be.’ He smiled at her. ‘He was drunk,’ he said. ‘Really drunk. He made it easy for me.’

  ‘Bernard?’ Rachel had never seen Bernard drunk. ‘ Why’d he be drunk?’

  ‘I don’t know. And I don’t care.’

  Rachel did. Bernard didn’t get drunk. ‘Somethin’ must’ve happened,’ she said. ‘If he got drunk.’

  ‘So what? We did it,’ he said again. ‘We did it, and we’re going to get away with it. You said I could run rings round them, and I have.’

  She sighed. ‘You sure that newspaper thing’s going to work?’

  ‘Oh, don’t start that again!’ he said, almost laughing at her now. ‘Of course it’s going to work. Chief Inspector Lloyd’s off checking my story even now.’ He grinned. ‘You were right about Paxton. He blurted it out as soon as I asked.’

  Rachel still felt worried about that, even in retrospect. ‘What if he hadn’t?’ she said.

  ‘I’d have made some excuse to get up to the farm. But he did, so I didn’t have to, because Gary was up and off before I was.’

  ‘That’s another thing! Why did you let him come in filmin’ everything?’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, a little shamefacedly. ‘ Well. It was a scoop, wasn’t it?’

  She sighed, and hoped his lack of sensitivity meant that he made a good assassin. ‘Nicola’s told them bout us,’ she said. ‘And she told them bout him kickin’ me half to death that time.’

  ‘We knew she would,’ said Curtis, then paused. ‘Rachel,’ did you know that Bernard was in financial difficulties?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Because, thought Rachel, it’s none of your business. You know what I want you to know, Curtis Law, and no more. ‘What difference would it’ve made?’ she asked.

  ‘None, I don’t suppose.’

  Rachel changed the subject. ‘Nicola was there,’ she said. ‘At the farm. On Sunday night. Somethin’ ’ bout a sheep. She reckons Bernard was out.’ She frowned. ‘I don’t get that.’

  Curtis shrugged. ‘She probably just didn’t see him.’

  Maybe not, thought Rachel. The sitting-room door was closed. But she’d waited for him for over an hour. Wouldn’t she have checked to see if he was in the sitting room? She would, of course she would. Her heart dipped a little as she realized why Nicola had been having such a hard time with the inspector. ‘I think she did see him,’ she said. ‘But she’s trying not to say, because she thinks stabbed him.’

  ‘Well, we knew he might have callers. And she might have been there, and she might have seen him, and if she says so, then she says so. But you weren’t there, were you? It’s called the burden of proof, Rachel. And it means that it doesn’t matter what they think. They have to prove it.’

  He was always telling her what things meant. Mike McQueen didn’t. Chief Inspector Lloyd didn’t And that was another thing. ‘I saw your programme,’ she said. ‘ You tried to make Chief Inspector Lloyd look stupid, but he’s not.’

  ‘Yes, he is.’ Curtis smiled, hugged her. ‘Come to bed,’ he said. ‘We should celebrate.’

  Rachel groaned. ‘Curtis. Didn’t you get enough at the weekend?’

  ‘No. I can never get enough of you. Come t
o bed, Rachel. Stop worrying. This wouldn’t be happening if you hadn’t been so desperate to get your hands on that money.’

  She couldn’t help worrying. ‘That’s another thing,’ she said. ‘What’s all this bout some money in the safe?’

  ‘Oh, yes, that. I saw a lot of cash in the safe. They say it wasn’t there when they checked it. Probably took it themselves,’ he said, with a grin.

  ‘Don’t joke about it! Someone took it. Maybe someone was there, maybe they saw you—’

  ‘No one was there. No one saw me. I think your foreman helped himself to it.’

  ‘Steve Paxton? When?’

  ‘When the police had their hands full with you and me and Gary.’ He got up, and held out his hand. ‘Come to bed.’

  That might explain why he didn’t mind helping her out for nothing, Rachel thought. She looked at Curtis’s outstretched hand, and sighed. She was tired. She had been living on a knife edge since Sunday evening. And he hadn’t even come to see her. ‘That’s another thing!’ she said. ‘ Why didn’t you come over last night?’

  ‘I had to collect the car.’

  ‘You could’ve come after! You must’ve known I’d be worried ’bout Bernard bein’ stabbed and everythin.’

  ‘I had to go into Barton. They had a run-through of the programme before it went out, and they wanted me there to answer questions from the newspapers once it had been shown. And that went on for ages afterwards. I was whacked, Rachel. I hadn’t had any sleep. I just went home. Anyway – we’d agreed I shouldn’t go to the farm.’

  ‘You could’ve rung,’ she said.

  ‘It was too late. And I knew I’d be seeing you today.’ He grinned. ‘If you’ve finished grumbling, come to bed.’

  She had slept on her own two nights running now, and she had enjoyed that. Sex at lunchtime hadn’t been on her agenda.

  ‘I got rid of him for you,’ Curtis said. ‘Don’t I deserve some reward?’

  He had. He had got rid of Bernard Bailey, once and for all. She smiled, and took his hand. ‘Yes,’ she said, allowing him to pull her up, lead her into the bedroom. But she was still worrying. She didn’t like the bit about Bernard being drunk, and she didn’t like this money that had gone missing from the safe.