After Laura settled in Scotland with Stuart, Jackie used to go up to see her. Belle wanted to go too, but she was never invited. Jackie would come back saying what a lovely man Stuart was and how happy Laura and Barney were with him, and it was obvious to Belle that Laura had forgotten all about her.
Then Laura and Stuart split up, and Stuart arrived to work for Jackie.
From the first moment Belle saw him, she wanted him. No man before or since had had that effect on her. The softness of his Scottish accent, the gentleness in his grey eyes, the width of his shoulders and that wide smile all made her tremble.
She made excuses to go to the sites where he was working, and she’d watch the way he planed or sawed wood, and imagine those big, practical hands caressing her. He used to call her Rapunzel because of her long hair, and in her night-time fantasies he was her prince.
Everything about him was perfect: the leanness of his hips, his muscular arms and thighs, his shiny, shoulder-length hair with just a hint of auburn, and those sexy full lips. He was her dream man come true.
She thought she could have him because every other man wanted her. But though he seemed to like her, he didn’t want her. He was in love with Laura, and however hard she tried to make him forget her by luring him out to clubs, concerts and parties, it didn’t work.
The more deeply she fell in love with him, the more her love for Laura turned to hatred. Laura didn’t want him, but she had a hold on his heart, and that prevented Stuart from loving her. She didn’t want to remember the humiliation she felt when she finally got Stuart into her bed, and he couldn’t perform.
It began so well. She was burning up with desire as he kissed and cuddled her; other men she’d been to bed with leapt on her with hardly any foreplay but Stuart seemed only concerned with her pleasure. It was only when she became so aroused that she straddled him that she discovered he didn’t even have an erection.
‘I’m sorry, babe,’ he murmured. ‘I just can’t do it.’
She couldn’t accept that. Every man she’d been with before had been rampant even before they got her into bed. She tried her best to get it up for him, but when nothing happened she began questioning him indignantly.
‘It’s not you,’ was all he would say, with more apologies.
But she wouldn’t leave it, and all at once he was wriggling away from her and reaching out for his shirt at the side of the bed.
‘This was a mistake, babe,’ he said wearily. ‘I really like you, Belle, but I guess it’s too soon to even think about another woman.’
As she watched him pulling his clothes on, she felt he had insulted her in the worst possible way. She was young and gorgeous, but he couldn’t get it up because he was thinking of Laura. There was nothing on this earth Belle wanted more than Stuart, but that bitch had prevented her from getting her heart’s desire.
All that came back on 12 May as she sat there drinking and watching the clock; once again Laura was blocking the way to what she wanted.
At eleven o’clock she knew Laura would now be driving over the Forth Bridge. She’d be driving fast because she was worried about Jackie, and in thirty-five to forty minutes she’d be at the farm. When she got there, Belle knew her whole world was going to come crashing around her ears.
All at once she got up and dashed out to the car, sure that by now Jackie would have calmed down enough to promise not to tell Laura about Charles. Once she agreed to that she’d surely also agree to give them some money so they could leave Scotland.
As Belle got out of the car at Brodie Farm, she could hear Jackie singing along with the radio. It was Whitney Houston’s ‘And I Will Always Love You’, and the passion Jackie was putting into it, even if her voice was abysmal, was another reminder that she hadn’t even bothered to confide in her sister about this man she was going off with.
Belle walked straight in without knocking, and Jackie wheeled round in surprise.
‘I’ve got nothing more to say to you,’ she said icily. ‘You and I are finished, Belle. Go away.’
‘You don’t mean that,’ Belle said.
‘Oh, but I do. You know, Belle, every time you walk in that door or phone, I get a knot in my stomach because I know you want something. I don’t think you’ve ever come to me because you just want to spend time with me. It’s always that you’ve got a problem, or you need money. Well, that’s it, no more. I’m going to be as selfish as you are. So bugger off.’
Out of the corner of her eye Belle saw that document again. It was on the work surface, and she guessed Jackie had got it out because she was going to show it to Laura when she arrived; perhaps they would even take it to her solicitors together.
All at once white-hot, uncontrollable rage welled up inside her. She wasn’t going to let Laura have the farm. And she wasn’t going to let Jackie tell her about Barney either. She had to be stopped.
‘Go on, piss off, you make me sick,’ Jackie said, and turned dismissively back to the sink.
The kitchen knives were all there, right at hand, gleaming stainless steel embedded in a block of wood. One second Belle was just looking at them, the next she held a long triangular one in her hand.
‘Are you still here?’ Jackie said, without turning. ‘I wondered what the bad smell was. Get out now, before I throw you out.’
She turned round, and she laughed when she saw the knife. ‘Oh, do grow up,’ she said.
Jackie had said that same thing to Belle so many times and on every occasion it had hurt. This time it was like pulling a trigger, Belle ran at her with all her force, and the knife went straight into the left side of Jackie’s chest.
For a moment nothing happened. Jackie just stood there looking utterly shocked, the knife embedded in her just as it had been in the block of wood a few seconds before.
‘Belle!’ she said, but her voice sound disembodied and blood was coming out around the knife, staining her white shirt. ‘What have you done?’
She moved towards Belle, her hands out in front of her, and Belle backed away in horror. Then, as if in slow motion, Jackie’s legs seemed to crumple, and she fell backwards to the floor.
Belle couldn’t move for a moment or two, all she could do was stare down at her sister in horror. She didn’t know if Jackie was dead already, but she guessed from the amount of blood seeping out around the knife that it had pierced her heart and she soon would be.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, and suddenly aware of the enormity of what she’d done, she knew she had to get out of there quickly.
She got a piece of kitchen roll, dampened it slightly and carefully wiped the knife handle, putting the paper in her pocket afterwards. She was sure she hadn’t touched anything else for the door had been open on both visits. Then, picking up the deed of gift document which she needed to destroy, she ran for the car to the strains of ‘Never Let Her Slip Away’ on the radio.
‘I didn’t want to drive back on that farm track,’ she told Donaldson. ‘But I had to, in case I ran into Laura.’
Donaldson wiped his sweating brow with the back of his hand, for once stuck for words.
Never before in all his years of interrogating prisoners had he ever heard such a full and clear confession.
PC Price broke the silence in the room by mentioning the tape was almost at an end.
‘I think we all need a break,’ Sandra said.
Donaldson drew deeply on a cigarette as Price drove them back to Edinburgh. ‘If only,’ he sighed.
‘If only what, sir?’ Price asked.
‘That she’d been interviewed more rigorously on the day of the murder,’ Donaldson said thoughtfully. ‘This, laddie, is a fine example of the folly of taking everything at face value. She was such a good-looking woman, a respectable guest house owner, and, it appeared, the loving and distraught sister. She wasn’t even suspected.’
‘I read in the file that after Laura Brannigan was arrested, she kept sticking up for her and saying she couldn’t have done it. Why do you think that w
as, sir?’ Price asked.
‘To make herself look sweet and loving, I guess,’ Donaldson replied. ‘It worked too, I really fell for her tears and the bewilderment routine, and so did the jury.’
‘It was lucky for Brannigan that Macgregor turned up when he did,’ Price remarked. ‘She must have been through hell in the last two years.’
‘Aye, poor woman,’ Donaldson agreed. ‘I wish I could boast that I had my doubts about her guilt. But I was like everyone else; once I knew she’d been a bit wild in the past I couldn’t see beyond that.’
‘Do you think Belle Howell is sorry about what she’s done to her?’
Donaldson gave a humourless laugh. ‘She’s sorry for herself, sorry she didn’t clear off when her sister asked her to. Sorry too, perhaps, that her sister is dead. But I doubt she’ll ever shed any tears for Laura Brannigan.’
18
Heavy rain was splattering against the windows and although it was only three in the afternoon it was so dark that Laura had been forced to turn on a table lamp to see to read. She was feeling very snug and happy. Lucy, Meggie’s dog, was curled up on the settee beside her, she liked the sound of the rain on the window, and at long last she felt she had a future.
Two days earlier Patrick Goldsmith had rung to say Belle had finally confessed to Jackie’s murder, and that he was pressing hard for an immediate appeal date for Laura.
It was wonderful to know that she would soon be completely exonerated, and that the two-year nightmare was over but for the formalities, yet strangely she also felt deep sadness about Belle. Meggie had burst into laughter when she admitted this; in her view there was no punishment bad enough for the woman. But Laura had known Belle for thirty-four years and loved her like a younger sister, and she couldn’t switch off her feelings.
Her heart went out to Lena too. She’d lost her husband, Toby had gone off to Australia, Jackie had been murdered, and now she had to live with the knowledge that Belle was a killer. Laura had spent the whole of the first day feeling faintly sick and troubled and she certainly wasn’t in the mood to celebrate.
But the previous day she had woken up to find that had passed. At last she felt ready to detach herself from the past and move forward. As so often when she wanted to mark a change of heart, or a new beginning, she took herself off to the hairdresser’s.
Her hair colour was now back where she’d started. She had been through a full circle from mouse to red, on to black, dark brown, blonde and a dozen different variations and permutations along the way, and finally she was back to mouse again. Not as dreary as she remembered it as a child of course, that was only the base colour, with blonde highlights to create some definition. But what was astounding was that it had taken ten years off her real age, and she had a glow about her that she hadn’t seen for years.
Last night she’d gone out to Soho for a celebration dinner with her sisters. It was just the best evening ever, they had laughed so much that the restaurant owner had given them a free bottle of wine. He said he was grateful to them for creating such a happy atmosphere in his restaurant.
The conversation had come round once again to Stuart, with both Meggie and Ivy urging her to encourage him more. Laura hadn’t been able to come back with her usual excuse that she was all used up, because she realized that wasn’t true any longer. She was fizzing inside, a dozen different plans for her future suggesting themselves.
But Stuart hadn’t phoned for a week now, and when Laura had tried to ring him at the flat in Edinburgh the previous day, he hadn’t been there. She had no doubt he would surface again before long, but in her heart she knew Meggie and Ivy were reading too much into his interest in her. She was sure he only felt friendship, nothing more. Perhaps that was just as well; after all it was a well-known fact that old loves can rarely be rekindled.
Lucy suddenly cocked her ears and began barking.
‘Shush,’ Laura said, stroking her. ‘It’s only someone walking by.’
A ring at the doorbell proved this wasn’t so, and Lucy jumped off the settee in readiness. Laura frowned; she was much too comfortable to get up and she thought it was probably only a door-to-door salesman at this time of the afternoon. Her sisters had gone out to view a property and if it was them coming back they’d have let themselves in with their key.
When the bell rang again and Lucy continued to bark, Laura groaned and got up. She thought if it was Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses intent on converting her, she’d give them a piece of her mind.
Lucy had a habit of darting out when anyone came to the door, so Laura shut her in the sitting room before opening the front door.
Two men were standing there, wet from the rain, and they had none of the usual missionary characteristics like plain dark suits or a few religious tracts in their hands.
The younger one was tall and muscular in jeans and a denim jacket. She thought he was around thirty and he had a shaved head and a ring in one ear. The other was an elderly man in a long, dark, trench-style raincoat. He looked familiar, and he was looking at her as if he expected her to know him.
‘Come on now, Laura!’ he said reprovingly.
‘Robbie!’ she gasped. Even if he had aged dramatically, his Geordie accent was just the same. ‘How did you know where I was?’
‘It’s never hard to find someone when you’ve got friends in the right places,’ he said, grinning at the younger man. ‘So how about inviting us in?’
Laura felt a twinge of panic. Robbie Fielding was one man she never wanted to see or hear from again, and if she’d run into him out in the street she would have walked on by without speaking. She certainly didn’t want him in the house for she despised him, and his companion looked like hired muscle.
He smiled at her hesitation. She remembered his teeth being good, but they were now stained brown, with several missing. ‘Come on, just a cup of coffee for an old pal. You wouldn’t want to leave me out here in the rain, would you?’
As far as Laura was concerned she could have cheerfully watched him drown in the Thames and not lifted a finger to help him, but she couldn’t say anything along those lines for fear of him turning nasty. ‘It isn’t convenient right now. What do you want?’ she asked.
‘I was in London and I had a couple of things I wanted to talk over with you about Belle.’ He moved forward and put one foot inside the door before she could gather herself. ‘I also wanted to say how glad I was that you’ve got your appeal.’
Suddenly he was right through the door, pushing it wide open and nearly knocking her over, the other man following him. Laura’s stomach lurched and she cursed herself for answering the door.
‘By the way you are looking gorgeous,’ he said over his shoulder as he walked straight down the hall into the kitchen. He stopped inside the kitchen, turning back to her, and waved a hand at his friend. ‘And this is Andy, my right-hand man.’
‘My sister will be back any minute,’ she said, declining to acknowledge Andy. ‘And we’ve got people coming for dinner, so please make this snappy.’
He took a seat at the table, the other man doing likewise, and Robbie got out his cigarettes.
Laura waved a finger at him. ‘Please don’t, my sister doesn’t like smoking in her house.’
He put them back in his pocket and frowned. ‘You aren’t very welcoming!’
‘Why should I be, Robbie? You are part of a past I’d rather forget.’
Only the previous evening Laura had told her sisters that she felt her recovery was mainly due to there being no reminders of her past here. Now Robbie turning up was like opening the old wound. Suddenly she was anxious and tense again, just the way she had been for much of the time when she was working for him.
He looked so old and seedy, like a stereotype of a dirty old man. He might never have been exactly handsome, but he’d had a fine physique and the kind of bearing that got him noticed. His hair was a dirty grey now and very thin, and he had a large and wobbly stomach. The trench coat he was wearing and the dark
suit beneath it might be good quality, but the cheapness of his soul showed on his lined and sunken face. It made her squirm to think of all those afternoons she’d spent with him in hotel rooms.
‘I think I deserve a little gratitude for stifling some of that past for you,’ he said, fixing her with his dark eyes.
‘With the amount of mud that was slung at me, a little more wouldn’t have made any difference.’ She shrugged.
‘Oh, I think it would have,’ he said. ‘And now more than ever! How would you start out again if everyone knows what you were?’
Her stomach churned as she realized his sole purpose in coming here was to blackmail her.
‘It won’t work, Robbie,’ she said firmly. ‘For one thing, I’ve got no money, and for another, everyone whose opinion counts with me already knows the whole truth.’
He grinned wolfishly. ‘But a few well-chosen photographs landing on the desk of a tabloid editor’s desk on the day of your appeal would kind of hinder your future,’ he said. ‘And you’ve got money coming to you.’
‘Piss off, Robbie,’ she said angrily. ‘Clear off now or I’ll call the police.’
‘And tell them what?’ he said scornfully. ‘That an old lover has turned up? That happens a lot in your life, doesn’t it? Where is golden boy now? Still nursing his wounds from sticking his nose in other people’s business?’
‘I think the police would be very pleased to be called to eject you from this house,’ she said tartly. ‘And I think they’d be keen to question you about your relationship with Mr Calder.’
‘One of your biggest problems was that you always thought you were smarter than you really were,’ he said scornfully. ‘It seems you still have that problem. I can click my fingers and Stuart Macgregor will be dead. So don’t mess with me, hen. Or you’ll regret it.’
A cold shudder ran down her spine. Katy had claimed that Robbie had killed people who got in his way. Laura had always laughed at that, sure Robbie had spread the story to keep people in fear of him. But perhaps it wasn’t just a myth.
Faith Page 51
