Shadow of a Doubt

by Michelle Davies

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ Tishk asks me for what must be the twentieth time. ‘Does your throat hurt?’

  I rub the skin there and it does feel horribly sore, and when I swallow, it’s as though the flex is still choking me. Yet the paramedic who examined me said it was superficial, like a Chinese burn.

  ‘It’s a bit sore,’ I admit. ‘But it could’ve been a lot worse.’

  Tishk shakes his head, wincing in pain from the headache left by his injury, which has been glued and dressed. ‘When I think about that––’

  I quickly take his hand. ‘Then don’t. It’s over. Leonard can’t hurt me any more.’

  We are sitting in darkness, dawn at least an hour from breaking. The house is creaking under the weight of the investigators, but I am calm. I have never felt calmer. Mustard, still dozy but awake now, is by my feet.

  One of the voices at the back door seems louder than the rest and as I tune into it, I recognise the shrill female demanding to be let in. Leaving Tishk on the sofa, I go into the kitchen, where I find Karen remonstrating with the officer standing guard there.

  ‘I need to see my niece,’ she’s saying. Then she spots me and bursts into tears. ‘Oh Cara. Heather just called me. She said someone broke in and I knew it can’t have been Gary because he’s asleep, so I came straight round.’

  I nod to the officer. ‘Let her in, please.’

  Karen stumbles over the threshold, arms open wide to embrace me. While I’m not entirely comfortable doing it, we hug, then I pull away first.

  ‘I am so sorry we suspected Uncle Gary,’ I say.

  ‘You’ve got nothing to be sorry about, Cara,’ says Karen tearfully. ‘It’s me who’s the sorry one, thinking he could be capable of something so awful. I just have to pray he never finds out I thought so badly of him. It would be the end of our marriage.’

  We go back into the lounge and Karen sits down after hugging Tishk.

  ‘So who broke in?’ she asks.

  The police have seized the cameras from around the house, but I still have the footage saved on my phone. I play Karen the recording from the stairs camera and she gasps when she sees Ian Leonard come into the frame, his features ironically rendered ghostlike by the hazy green night-vision.

  ‘The estate agent?’ She turns to me, baffled. ‘Why did he break into a house he wants to sell?’

  ‘Karen, he’s Limey Stan,’ says Tishk patiently.

  ‘But – but … he’s too young to be. I mean, how old was he in 1994?’

  ‘Seventeen. A year older than I was,’ says Tishk.

  I then show my aunt Matty’s hospital ID bracelet with the postcode written on the inside. ‘This is the postcode for the street where Leonard lived at the time. I think Mum wrote it on the bracelet and she put it in a box of my things so I’d find it.’

  ‘That’s her handwriting,’ Karen confirms. ‘So this really is the postcode for Limestone Road?’

  ‘Yes. I always thought I heard Limey Stan whisper his name up the stairs to me, but I think what I really heard was Leonard saying his street name while calling for a taxi. Our phone was at the bottom of the stairs then.’

  My aunt nods, remembering.

  ‘I was being seen to by the paramedics when he was being loaded into the ambulance and as they were taking his details to pass to the hospital, I heard him say his surname is actually Lawler and that Leonard is his middle name,’ Tishk reveals. ‘Lawler sounds a bit like a solicitor’s name when you think about it, so maybe that’s why he used Leonard to be an estate agent.’

  The blood drains from my aunt’s face.

  ‘What is it?’ I press her.

  ‘Your mum worked for a family called Lawler, but the woman got rid of her and Anita wouldn’t say why.’

  ‘Leonard said he and Mum had an affair and that his mum found out and didn’t react well to her teenage son sleeping with the housekeeper. That’s why she sacked her,’ I say.

  Tishk takes Matty’s ID bracelet from me and examines the postcode.

  ‘Why leave you a trail of breadcrumbs to find though? Why not leave a direct message telling you who Limey Stan was?’ he ponders.

  Karen interrupts to tell us about a conversation she had during one of my mum’s hospital stays, about her wanting to atone for putting me into foster care. ‘I suggested she leave a letter with her solicitor to be opened after her death, but she was adamant you had to work it out for yourself,’ she adds. ‘She didn’t trust that if she wrote a letter it would get to you.’

  ‘She owed Leonard nothing after he killed Matty,’ Tishk remarks. ‘Why not tell the police straight away it was him?’

  ‘The night he killed Matty, he threatened to kill me too,’ I reply. ‘He said he warned Mum that if she ever told the police about his involvement he would come back and finish me off some other way. That’s why she sent me away – to keep me safe and hidden from him. I always thought she hated me, but it was the opposite.’

  I cannot stop the tears coming then and nor can Karen.

  ‘She must have been absolutely terrified of him, and she lived with that fear right up until she died,’ she cries.

  I nod. ‘Leonard told me he would turn up here to remind her of his threat. He had such a hold over her.’ I turn to Tishk. ‘It must’ve been him who ransacked the house before I moved in – Leonard said Mum told him she would find a way to expose him once she was gone and I think he broke in looking for evidence of it. He never found this though.’ I take Matty’s bracelet back from Tishk. ‘Although, if it wasn’t for the girl in Timothy Pitt’s group, I might’ve overlooked it too.’

  ‘What girl?’ Karen asks.

  I tell them about Jenny and repeat what she said about not ignoring what is precious at the beginning because that was the road I needed take to end this. ‘She was scarily accurate,’ I add. ‘The bracelets were given to us when we were born, so at the beginning, and were kept as precious mementos and the postcode for Limestone Road, where Leonard lived, was written inside Matty’s.’

  As Tishk reacts with astonishment, Karen begins to laugh. Not giggles, but proper belly laughs. I stare at her, bemused.

  ‘Oh Anita, you beauty,’ she says, wiping tears from her eyes. ‘You planned this all along.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asks Tishk.

  Karen hiccups another laugh out, then turns to me. ‘You’re right, Cara, your mum did want you to find out. This Jenny, what does she look like?’

  As I describe her, Karen scrolls through her phone. ‘This girl?’

  She shows me a Facebook profile picture of Jenny smiling widely and looking very un-Goth-like in brightly coloured clothes.

  ‘That’s her!’

  ‘She’s one of the volunteers who cared for your mum at the hospice in her final weeks and she’s as much a medium as I am the Queen of England. The two of them became close and Jenny was even at the funeral. I bet, if we asked her, she’d admit your mum asked her to get that message to you after she died.’

  I should be annoyed this Jenny person played on my grief by pretending to be a medium, yet I’m not. It was a brilliant ruse to get me to listen to her. At some point, I will track her down and thank her. I shall also take great satisfaction in contacting Pitt to let him know he’s been duped too – by Jenny and Limey Stan.

  Karen shakes her head. ‘You know, when we talked about getting the house valued, Anita was adamant I mustn’t use Leonards, but I thought she was being silly. They’re the most popular estate agents in town, so it made sense to use them. But she must’ve been worried it would provoke Leonard into coming out of hiding. If I’d known––’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ I assure her. ‘You weren’t to know.’

  ‘What did the police say when they arrived?’ she asks.

  I sigh. ‘They’re going to take some convincing that Leonard was trying to attack me and not the other way round. It looks like falling down the stairs broke his back and they keep asking if I pushed him deliberately.�
��

  Karen is outraged. ‘How can they think that?’

  ‘I’m the girl from the Heldean Haunting. If you were a police officer and I said to you the estate agent I had willingly approached to sell the infamous haunted house in Parsons Close was Limey Stan all along and he tried to kill me tonight after suffocating my brother behind a curtain twenty-five years ago, how would you react?’ Her expression answers me plainly. ‘Exactly. Don’t forget I also gave an interview a few days ago admitting I was ill the first time round and the police kept going on about what medication I’m taking now. Right now I think they believe him more than me.’

  ‘I knew talking to that reporter was a mistake,’ says Tishk darkly.

  ‘But I’ve got footage of Leonard prowling downstairs and then attacking me,’ I remind them. ‘The cameras caught everything and the police have taken them all. Leonard can deny it all he likes, but soon the whole world is going to know he was Limey Stan.’

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Karen

  Gary is in the kitchen making porridge for breakfast when Karen returns home. He reacts with surprise when she lets herself in the front door.

  ‘I thought you were asleep in the spare room,’ he exclaims. ‘Where have you been?’

  Without a word, she crosses the kitchen to him, wraps her arms around his middle and begins to weep. He doesn’t pull away to demand an explanation and instead hugs her until her tears are spent. Finally, when her eyes are almost dry again, she lets out a sigh and disentangles herself.

  ‘What’s going on, love?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m not sure where to begin,’ she says. She is assailed with guilt that she let herself believe Gary might have been Limey Stan and knows that if her marriage is to continue, he must never find out. She was leaving Cara’s as Lisa arrived and the two of them made a pact to never speak a word of their suspicions. Lisa is going to be interviewed by the police later to recount what she can remember of the night Matty died and thinking it was her dad’s voice she overheard most certainly won’t be a part of her statement.

  ‘Is it Cara?’ he surmises.

  Karen nods, her eyes refilling with tears. ‘It wasn’t her, Gary. She didn’t kill Matty.’

  He is stunned. ‘But the police, Anita––’

  ‘I know. But Cara was telling the truth. It was Limey Stan all along, except Limey Stan was a real person.’

  ‘What?’

  She leads him over to the breakfast bar, sits him down, takes the stool next to his and over the next fifteen minutes narrates the events that led to their niece being attacked by Ian Leonard and almost hanged. By the time she finishes, her husband is ashen with shock.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he breathes. ‘Poor Cara. From day one she said she was innocent and none of us believed her.’ Then his expression hardens. ‘How could Anita do that to her own kid?’

  ‘I’m not trying to defend her, because she could’ve done the right thing from the outset and told the police Leonard was responsible, but I think the impact of Matty’s death, the grief she was experiencing, meant she wasn’t thinking straight. Once Cara went to hospital, the whole thing snowballed and Leonard must’ve terrified her. He’d killed one of her children – she must’ve been convinced he would kill the other one too.’

  Gary shakes his head. ‘You’re making excuses for her. She did a despicable thing to her daughter. And having sex with a seventeen-year-old. I know she was your sister and you loved her, but even you can’t condone that.’

  Karen wasn’t planning to bring up what Lisa told her about seeing Gary and Anita together at the New Year’s Eve party, but his obvious disgust at her sister’s affair makes her want to. Is it because he’s jealous?

  ‘Was Anita ever inappropriate with you?’ she asks. When Gary shifts awkwardly on his stool, she adds, ‘It’s okay, you can tell me. I won’t be cross.’

  His brows knit in a frown. ‘Wait, you think something happened between Anita and me? Nothing could be further from the truth, believe me.’

  ‘But she wanted something to happen?’ asks Karen. Her heart feels like cement in her chest as she waits for him to answer.

  ‘Love, why does it matter? You adored your sister. Christ, there were times when I thought you loved her more than you loved me,’ he grimaces. ‘But that doesn’t mean I want to ruin your memories of her.’

  ‘She’s managed that on her own, with what she did to Cara,’ says Karen wryly.

  Gary rubs his hand across his chin as he thinks. ‘Okay, I’ll tell you, but you’re not going to like it.’

  Karen steels herself.

  ‘Anita made it known that if I was interested, she was available. I wasn’t though. I made that very clear to her,’ he adds hastily. ‘We always got on well as a rule and I think she just mistook my friendliness for more. You know how fed up she was with Paul – all she wanted was for someone to pay attention to her. The reason I never told you was because she’d been drinking – when I saw her afterwards, she was so embarrassed. So I put it down to the booze talking and it was just the once it happened.’

  ‘Was it at that New Year’s Eve party we threw in 1993?’

  He pauses for a moment. ‘Did Lisa tell you about seeing us? She came out into the garden as I was giving Anita a hug. Anita was upset I wouldn’t kiss her back and I was trying to be nice about it.’

  Karen stares deeply into her husband’s eyes. She wants to believe he’s telling the truth, but after everything she’s learned about Anita these past few days she’s not sure she can trust her own judgement any more. How could she be so close to her sister and not realise she was lying to her about Cara? What if Gary’s lying now and she just can’t see it?

  He leans forward. ‘I’m telling you the truth, love. I’ve never cheated on you. Why would I? It’s like that hamburger and steak joke, why go out to eat when the special’s being served at home.’

  This makes her smile, because she knows it’s Gary’s clumsy way of trying to be romantic. He’s never been one for elaborate declarations of love and that’s as close as she’ll ever get from him. Karen decides, for her sanity, she will believe it was Anita who did the chasing, not him.

  As though sensing he’s off the hook, Gary asks what will happen next with Leonard.

  ‘I suppose it depends on the extent of his injuries when the police can question him, but the fact Cara’s got him on tape attacking her surely means he’ll be charged,’ says Karen.

  ‘You know that if he stands trial for Matty’s murder he’s going to drag Anita’s name through the mud. I would, in his shoes,’ says Gary. ‘It was her house, her son, her daughter she blamed. His defence will have a field day.’

  Wretchedly, Karen nods. ‘I know, but seeing what Anita did to bring him to justice, the clues she left for Cara, I don’t think she would care if Leonard tries to paints her as the most terrible mother who ever lived. It’s over now – she won. He’ll be locked up and Cara will be safe.’

  Chapter Seventy

  https://theheldeanhaunting/blog

  THE END

  28 December 2019

  Comments [873]

  Sometimes in life we have to admit we have made an error of judgement because our passion for a subject might have blinded us to objectively examining it from all sides and considering different explanations. This, I write with a heavy heart, is the position I find myself in presently and is why this will be my last blog post for a while.

  It is now public knowledge that Cara Belling has admitted the events of July 1994 were not related to paranormal activity, as many others and myself have long believed, but were, sadly, the direct consequence of her suffering from an illness that at the time was affecting her perception of what she saw and heard. The subsequent arrest of Heldean resident and estate agent Ian Leonard on charges connected to Matty Belling’s death has also put a new slant on the subject.

  In the light of this apparent confirmation that Limey Stan never existed, I have decided to pause my research on the sub
ject of The Heldean Haunting. It is the right and proper thing to do for the time being. Having met Ms Belling in person at Parsons Close and seen the effect her notoriety has had on her, I sincerely hope she has now found peace from her tormented thoughts.

  I have, after some deliberation, decided to let this blog remain public for whoever wishes to read it, however. If nothing else, I hope it is an entertaining read! That has certainly been my aim in the years I’ve been writing it. Likewise, my investigative account of The Heldean Haunting shall remain on sale, but I will be updating the book forthwith to include recent developments and I shall naturally be a front-seat observer when Ian Leonard stands trial next year to bring you all the details as they are revealed. The current version is still available to download as a 99p ebook if you click here.

  Timothy Pitt

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Nine weeks later

  Cara

  Everything seems brighter and sharper this morning, as though a filter was applied and now it has been peeled back and I am seeing clearly for the first time in years. My devastation at finding out the truth still weighs heavy within me, but jostling for space alongside it is an excitement I never imagined I would one day feel – excitement at being given the chance to rewrite my history. No longer am I the girl who tried to hoax a town and a nation to absolve her guilt at smothering her brother: I am the woman who is bringing his real killer to justice twenty-five years after being framed.

  I should be ready for this interview – I’ve been up pacing the house since five and have been showered, dressed and had my make-up applied since six. But as the start time fast approaches, I suddenly feel nowhere near ready and I am worried what questions they’ll ask me.

  ‘You’ve got to calm down, Cara,’ says Tishk. ‘We’ve been through this already: if they ask you about Leonard’s arrest, tell them you’re not allowed to comment or even give any details off the record. They’ll understand, you’re the key witness.’