by Menon, David
Guy Matheson had always tried to love both Jade and Tabitha equally but it hadn’t been easy when his wife Juliet had never let him have much of a say when it came to raising the girls or how the house was run. His job had been to bring in the money for Juliet to spend and in that respect he’d been a thoroughly good husband. He’d successfully built up his sports equipment mail order business to the point where they hadn’t had to think about money for several years now and he was thinking of accepting one of the many offers from one of the bigger boys in the game to buy him out. It would make him millions and he’d be able to wipe the slate clean with Juliet too. The business had been sound for a long time and it had meant that both Jade and Tabitha had grown up with an enviable lifestyle. Jade had always appreciated it. Tabitha never had. But there were other reasons for that distinction.
Looking back Guy had always thought of himself as a fool for not having taken any notice of the signs. Jade was a two year-old toddler running round the place like the mad things that two year-old toddlers tend to be and they were both proud parents. Then something started to change. Juliet started out late with her friends. She went off on shopping trips and came back with precious little to show for it which was highly unusual for her. He’d caught her out having lied to him about where she’d been. He hadn’t confronted her about it. He hadn’t questioned it when she’d refused to have sex with him. They were still young back then. They were busy with the business and the house but that shouldn’t have lessened any desire of the carnal kind. Then she announced to everyone except Guy that she was pregnant. And still he didn’t question it. She’d told all their friends before telling him as if it was all part of some plan she had to present Guy with a situation he couldn’t turn away from. And still he didn’t question it. All he did was settle in his mind with the conclusion that whoever she’d had the affair with had not been able to do the right thing by her and she’d made a choice to stay with Guy and bring up the child as a full sibling to Jade. For all her guile at having had an affair with another man his wife Juliet clearly lacked the guts to walk away from Guy and start a new life because it meant she would be on her own and her bread was buttered better if she stayed at home. She must’ve thought of how it would all look to their social circle if she’d left Guy. All the sympathy would have gone to him and she really wouldn’t have liked that. She’d always been very good at starting a row and then twisting it round until Guy himself believed that it was all his fault and that he was the one to have to do all the apologising. She cultivated an image to the world of an innocent and a thoroughly decent person. She wouldn’t have wanted people to know the truth that only Guy knew and that was that she actually was a manipulative liar and a thoroughly nasty little bitch who could have an affair with another man and treat her husband with complete contempt. She stayed with Guy and that’s when their years of thinly veiled animosity towards each other began.
And when Tabitha arrived on the scene Juliet seemed to make it abundantly clear that she was her favoured one. She grew to be a spoilt and rather irritating brat who Guy couldn’t stand. He knew that Jade was hurt by how the ‘family’ worked. He knew that she felt intense pain at the way Juliet made her feel so worthless and compared her so unfairly to Tabitha and Guy felt a great sense of shame that he hadn’t stood up for Jade more often than he did. He left it all to Juliet and she was spiteful towards her eldest daughter. Guy understood it all now. Jade was the daughter by the man she didn’t love but had needed to settle for and Tabitha was the daughter by the man who she really had loved and kept the affair going with him by placing Tabitha on a pedestal. It wasn’t poor Jade’s fault. Guy knew he’d really let his daughter down. He’d tried to make up for it by buying her the hairdressing salon in Wilmslow that she was making a great success of but he knew that the scars his daughter felt would never be healed with something as worthless as money.
‘Do you have any idea as to the enormity of what you’re asking me to do?’ asked Guy who’d broken out into a cold sweat at hearing Jade’s request. He’d turned up unexpectedly at her place in the hope of trying to see what the Hell she was up to. And it was worse than he’d imagined. So was the fact that she was asking for his silence.
‘Yes’ Jade answered. Her bags were packed and she was standing at the bottom of the stairs at the back of her hairdressing salon. She lived in the flat above. ‘But you owe me, Dad. You know you do and I’m calling in that debt’.
‘You’re running off with someone who’s wanted for murder for God’s sake!’
‘It wasn’t my intention that you’d know’.
‘No, I can see that’ said Guy. ‘Christ Jade, you’re my daughter. I can’t let you do this’.
‘I don’t think you’ve got any choice, Dad’.
‘What’s happened to you?’
‘I blame the parents!’ Jade retorted bitterly. ‘Especially the father who stood by and watched his daughter being constantly put down by her mother. All those times I ran off in tears because I couldn’t take anymore and what did you do? Absolutely nothing. So like I said, this is your chance to make up for all that and I’m going to see to it that you do’.
‘I wish it didn’t have to be like this’.
‘So do I but it can’t be helped, Dad’ said Jade who then gave in to the overwhelming urge to throw her arms round her father. ‘I love you, Dad’.
‘Have you really been carrying on with Chris behind Tabitha’s back?’
‘Dad, I owe her absolutely nothing’ Jade emphasized. ‘Surely you of all people can understand that? Despite the fact that you never stood up for me I love you because I know how hard it was for you’.
‘Tabitha isn’t my daughter’.
Jade threw her back and laughed. ‘Well doesn’t that little fact make a lot of sense. Mum has taken you for a ride all these years, Dad. My advice would be to get out now whilst you’re still young enough to meet someone else and be happy’.
‘It isn’t my happiness that concerns me’
‘I know, Dad, I know’ said Jade.
‘Were you there when Chris shot Barry?’
The question knocked Jade off balance for a second.
‘Haven’t you seen it on the news? The police say they have a witness claiming that you drove the getaway car’.
‘I don’t think I’m going to answer that one, dad’.
‘For crying out loud, Jade!’ Guy yelled despondently. ‘How did you get into all this?’
‘Chris has his reasons for doing what he did, Dad’ Jade insisted. ‘And if you knew what they were you’d maybe understand’.
‘I could never understand something like that’.
‘I have to go, Dad’.
‘Will I ever see you again?’ Guy asked, tearfully.
‘I don’t know, Dad. I’m sorry. Now I have to go and meet Chris. You know what you’ve got to do?’
‘I know perfectly well’.
‘Then please just do it, Dad. For me, for all my lost years when you could’ve helped me fight my corner but didn’t. This is your chance to make it all up to me’.
‘My husband is out I’m afraid’ said Juliet Matheson after she’d answered her front door and let the two police officers in. ‘I don’t know where he is and he isn’t picking up on his mobile. It’s going straight to voicemail’.
‘It isn’t your husband we’ve come to see, Mrs. Matheson’ said DSI Jeff Barton who was accompanied by DI Ollie Wright. ‘It’s your daughter Tabitha’.
‘Officer, she’s been through enough!’ Juliet protested. ‘Not only has her husband been murdered but now she finds that her sister, her very own sister, has run off with the man that she loved and has been carrying on with him behind her back for months. Now I really can’t allow you to hassle her any further at this stage’.
‘Is she under medical supervision?’
‘Well, no but … ‘
‘…then you don’t have any say in the matter’ said Jeff who then started walking through the Matheson
home looking for Tabitha.
‘How dare you barge into my house like this? I’ll have you know that I attend a lunch club with the wife of the chief constable!’
Jeff put his hand to his mouth and affected a yawn. ‘Mrs. Matheson, if I had a pound for every time I’d heard that sort of crap I’d be a very rich man and living in somewhere like the Cayman islands. Now stop hindering this investigation which, I might add, is a criminal offence, and bring us to your daughter now’.
‘She isn’t the criminal here!’
‘I’ll be the judge of that, Mrs. Matheson!’ Jeff barked. He’d really had enough of the twisted nouveau middle class sensibilities of this bunch of parasites. He wanted some proper and genuine information that would give him something to go on. Nobody knew where Chris O’Neill was. Nobody knew where Jade Matheson was either. It looked like they’d done a runner together and Jeff was angry. These people didn’t know the kind of fires they were starting and with a known former member of the IRA Army Council about to land on him from the other side of the world he wanted to have all the bases covered. This was all starting to get very messy indeed. The man known as Chris O’Neill murdered Padraig O’Connell and Jeff was now convinced that he’d murdered Barry Murphy too. But who was Chris O’Neill? Where the Hell had he come from? And what was his purpose in going on the killing spree he’d started? And was it over? Had he finished? He’d put out an arrest warrant for Jade Matheson in connection with the murder of Barry Murphy and he was now going to do the same with her darling little sister Tabitha.
To screams of protest from her mother, two WPC’s who Jeff and Ollie had brought with them led a weeping Tabitha to the waiting police car parked prominently on the Matheson’s drive. Tabitha’s daughter Georgina was also sobbing her little heart out and her grandmother tried her best to reassure her that everything would be fine.
After the police had gone Juliet tried one more time to get through to her husband Guy and this time, miraculously, he picked up.
‘Guy, you’ve got to come back from wherever you are and I mean immediately. They’ve arrested poor Tabitha and I’m going out of my mind!’
‘Don’t you want to know what’s happened to your other daughter Jade?’
‘She’s betrayed her own sister! She doesn’t exist anymore as far as I’m concerned’.
‘You heartless bitch’.
‘What did you call me?’
‘I called you what you are and that’s a heartless bitch. Well how about taking some of your own medicine. Tabitha is your daughter and we both know that she isn’t mine. So you deal with the precious and thoroughly self-centered little cow you’ve created. And by the way, I’m going to go for custody of Georgina but as far as you and I are concerned it’s over. I want a divorce, Juliet. I’m not going to let you make me miserable any longer’.
‘So where is he, Tabitha?’ asked DSI Jeff Barton who was sat in the interview room with DI Ollie Wright and on the other side of the table was Tabitha Murphy and her solicitor who was a rather chubby middle-aged man called Michael Ackroyd. Jeff had met him before.
‘I don’t know!’ Tabitha retorted.
‘Oh come on, Tabitha. You must’ve spoken about making plans together? I’d say you were lying if you told me you hadn’t!’
Tabitha had gone ballistic when she got the note from her boyfriend Chris O’Neill to tell her that he’d absconded with her sister Jade. This just wasn’t happening! How could her own sister do that to her? She was full of pure hatred towards her.
‘I’m not lying’.
‘You’ll have to do better than that, Tabitha’ said Jeff. ‘Oh you’ll have to do much better than that’.
‘I can’t tell you what I don’t know! My own sister has absconded with my boyfriend. Isn’t that enough for me to have to deal with just at this point in time?’
‘Your husband was also murdered less than a week ago’.
‘Well yes and there’s that too. Don’t you have any sympathy for the obvious predicament I’m in? I mean, when Chris came into my life I thought that all the pieces were finally starting to fit together. I’d found a man I loved. He treated me so well. He treated me like a lady. I mean, we never even slept together’.
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really and you can spare me the attitude of thinking I’m some sort of upper class slag’.
‘That thought really didn’t cross my mind’ said Jeff who was trying not to laugh. The bars of Alderley Edge were full of upper class slags. Pretentious, egotistical, shallow, vacuous, and just plain thick as shit, but upper class slags they were. They were no different to the sad slags like poor old Carol Anderson who’d have probably given a man anything for his company at Sunday dinner. Just because girls like Tabitha were in Alderley Edge and other parts of the Cheshire set hangouts didn’t mean they were any better at all from the likes of tragic Carol Anderson. Although of course they thought they were better. That’s why they were as thick as shit.
‘Oh yes it did! Well I never slept with Chris. He said he wanted to save all that for when we could be together properly and I so wanted to be with him that I agreed. I just didn’t know that he was biding his time between my sister’s legs’.
‘Tabitha, Chris O’Neill is wanted in connection with the murder of two people, one of which is your husband’.
‘Yes and I know he did that!’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I know that Chris killed Barry’ Tabitha revealed. ‘I know that he was planning to do it the night it happened’.
‘And you never told us?’
‘I was protecting him because I loved him!’
‘You were protecting yourself and a way out of a loveless marriage’.
‘No, that’s not true!’
‘Oh come on, Tabitha! You can’t expect us to believe that!’
‘It’s the truth!’
‘You calmly tell us that your boyfriend was planning on doing away with your husband and yet you didn’t think to tell us out of love for him? I’m sorry to have to inform you that your little tale isn’t unique. It’s a pretty classic case of a human triangle and Barry knew all about Chris, didn’t he Tabitha? Your husband knew all about his competition? Didn’t he, Tabitha?’
Tabitha nodded her head reluctantly. ‘Yes, he did’.
Jeff leaned forward with his clasped hands on the desk and spoke quietly but with great firmness. ‘I want to know everything, Tabitha. I want to know everything that you know. I want to know who this man Chris O’Neill really was, this man who you loved and who was willing to murder your husband but who also wanted to display some kind of misplaced gallantry and protect your virtue. I want answers, Tabitha. And I’m losing my patience’.
Tabitha didn’t know why she was protecting anyone anymore. Nobody had given a damn about her and her feelings so why should she keep her mouth shut now. She asked for a break whilst she consulted with Michael Ackroyd and Jeff agreed to five minutes. When they came back together Ackroyd said that Tabitha was willing to talk but in exchange for a deal.
‘That depends on what she has to say’ said Jeff. ‘No agreement to any deal until that’s clear’.
‘No agreement to talk from my client until her immunity from prosecution is firmly promised’.
Jeff rose to his feet and Ollie Wright did the same. ‘Then no deal can be agreed at this stage. Maybe a night in the cells will soften your clients delusion that she’s somehow bigger than justice’.
‘You can’t send me to the cells!’ Tabitha protested.
‘Oh yes I can’ Jeff retorted. ‘Use the time to reflect on your circumstances. You’re under arrest for conspiracy to murder. If you end up going down for that you’ll have a lot more nights in much nastier cells than the ones we’ve got here. Think about it, Tabitha. Nobody can get to you here. But out there in one of her majesty’s prisons a pretty little posh girl like you will be the bitch of every lesbian top dog in that place whether you like it or not. Not to mention all the family money
that you’ll be forced to access on their behalf. A simple little sentence for conspiracy to murder where the social workers will advise you to keep your head down and get out early on good behavior will turn into something much more lengthy and you won’t see your daughter again until she’s well into adulthood and forgotten all about you. Maybe that’s what you want? After all you did say she was a real Daddy’s girl and I get the feeling that she’s a bit of an inconvenience to you. So is that what you really want, Tabitha?’
‘I’ll tell you everything I know!’ Tabitha blurted out. ‘And I mean everything’.
‘Okay’ said Jeff. ‘But DI Wright and I have gone way past our hours for the day and there’s a real clampdown going on with regard to police officer’s overtime. Besides, we’ve both got happy homes to go to so we’ll see you in the morning’.
The next morning Jeff went into work in a great mood. His brother Lewis and his partner Seamus had been round last night and announced that they were going to get married. Lewis had asked Jeff if he’d give him away and Jeff had accepted with great love and affection for Lewis and Seamus. They’d pulled out all the stops when Jeff lost his wife Lillie Mae and been there every step of the way for him and his young son Toby. It was some welcome good news. Toby was going to be a page boy whilst Jeff and Lewis’s sister Annabelle was going to be a bridesmaid along with Seamus’ two little nieces. Annabelle’s son Kyle was going to be an usher. They hadn’t settled on a venue yet but since Ireland had just legalized same sex marriage in a national referendum they’d decided to have the ceremony over there in a place where Seamus grew up and where his family still live near Dublin. It was a few months away but everyone got their computers out and booked flights and the hangover Jeff was nursing reminded him that all the adults had celebrated long into the wee small hours.
He swept through the station exchanging greetings with people he knew as he went. He got up to his office where DS Adrian Bradshaw was sitting at his desk looking at something on his computer.
‘You’re in early, Adrian’ Jeff noted. ‘And it’s not the first time’.
