by Roz Watkins
‘Shocking about her father being killed. And only up the road. I can hardly sleep at night. I might have to find somewhere else to rent.’ Elaine’s hand shook as she raised her cup to her mouth. Proper cups, like Gran used to use. She looked so unlike a murderer, it was almost comical. But could she have collaborated with someone? Harry Gibson? Rachel maybe? I had a stab of insight into how ridiculous I must seem to Jai – haring around trying to find anyone to blame other than Abbie.
‘It’s terrible, yes. I just wanted a word with you. You’ve been seen near Phil Thornton’s house a few times. I wondered if you could tell me what you were doing.’ This was a little creative, but worth a try.
‘Near Bellhurst House? Really? I often walk in the woods.’
I’d taken a chair facing the window, forgetting I’d be confronted with Elaine’s Uncanny-Valley dolls, full frontal, their white eyes staring sightlessly down at me. Where was the dog? I felt the need for his robust presence.
‘But you had some contact with Phil Thornton?’ I said.
‘Did I?’
‘He was a social worker.’
She sighed. ‘They took my Ollie away.’
‘Took him into care?’
‘They said Darren was hurting him. My husband. But he wasn’t. Ollie just had a lot of accidents.’
‘What happened, Elaine?’
She reached behind her for one of the dolls, placed it on her lap, and gently stroked its hair as she spoke. Its white eyes rolled in its head. ‘Darren used to get angry sometimes. He had a temper, but he wasn’t a bad man. We all have a temper. Ollie was a difficult child. They can see that now. I suppose that social worker was doing his best. But he was supposed to be watching Ollie at the seaside. Anyway, I have him back now. They gave him back to me. And he’s my baby again.’
I remembered the pyjamas, from a child about Abbie’s size, the rigid face when I’d been about to ask if she had a child. What had happened to Ollie?
I instinctively glanced around the room, as if he might be wedged behind the sofa or lurking under the TV. ‘Is Ollie in the house now?’
‘Yes. In the house. Darren’s outside.’
‘Your husband?’
‘The owner of the house put her pets outside. I sprinkled him there when I moved in. He couldn’t cope with . . . what happened. Broke him in pieces.’ She gestured out of a side window. A grassy area contained several small wooden crosses, surrounded by snowdrops. ‘I went back to my maiden name. It made it easier.’
I looked at her expressionless face, all emotion flattened out of it. ‘What happened to Ollie?’
‘I don’t really resent him. It wasn’t that man’s fault. Ollie was always accident-prone. I just wanted to know more about him. I’ve stopped now Ollie’s back. I still love him as much as I ever did.’
‘So you were following Phil Thornton?’
‘I wanted to see who he was. . . and his family. See if he still had a family. I meant them no harm. When this house came up, and I saw where it was, it seemed perfect.’
‘Did you ever follow the Thorntons’ car?’
She swallowed. ‘Not deliberately. Maybe by accident.’
It seemed likely that she was the stalker then. Curious about Phil Thornton – the man who she blamed for her child’s accident. ‘Where were you on Sunday night?’
‘Here. I told you. I saw a car go up the lane. Do you think that was the murderer? I’m always here. With Ollie.’
‘Can anyone confirm that you didn’t leave the house?’
She hit me with the blank face again. ‘Only Ollie.’
‘Could I see Ollie?’ I couldn’t imagine a child in this house. It was too silent. Why was the little boy so quiet? I had visions of a Psycho-style back room; Ollie in pride of place – embalmed.
Elaine nodded, put the doll back on its shelf, stood slowly like a much older woman, and headed for the door. ‘It’s easier if you come to him. Come through to his room.’
I followed her, a sense of unease twitching in my stomach.
Elaine pushed a door from the hallway and it creaked open. The smell reminded me of Gran’s room. Antiseptic and sickness. I walked in.
A woman sat by a bed. In the bed lay a boy – about ten years old.
Elaine walked to the side of the bed. ‘How’s my baby?’
The woman looked up. She was blonde with an open, crooked-toothed smile. ‘He’s not too bad this evening.’
It didn’t seem like a boy’s room. There were no toys, no posters on the walls, no sounds.
The boy was still, head rolled back, eyes open. He didn’t respond to Elaine.
I walked to his bedside. ‘Hi, Ollie.’
No response. I didn’t think there was ever going to be a response from Ollie.
‘What . . . ’ How could I phrase it? What happened to him? That sounded wrong. Rude.
‘Head injury,’ the blonde woman said. ‘The children’s home took the boys on a trip to the seaside. He fell and hit his head on a rock. Ironic, isn’t it? He was taken into care for his own safety.’
Elaine stroked Ollie’s forehead. ‘He’s my baby again now.’
The blonde woman stepped away from the bed to prepare some medication on the other side of the room. I edged closer to her and asked, ‘When did he get injured?’
‘A while ago. I’m not sure exactly.’ She lowered her voice and took a step closer to me. ‘He was in hospital a long time. He nearly didn’t make it. He came home about six weeks ago. But Elaine needs a lot of help. Her husband died after Ollie’s accident.’
I spoke quietly so Elaine wouldn’t hear. ‘Was a particular social worker held responsible for Ollie’s accident?’
The woman shuffled from one leg to the other. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Did Elaine get help from a therapist?’
‘I think . . . I’m not sure.’
I looked at Ollie’s eyes. Rolling up in his head. White and sightless. Like the dolls.
*
Hamlet trotted up Hannah’s hallway, yowling like a something from the seventh circle of Dante’s Inferno.
I leant to stroke him. ‘You haven’t been torturing him, have you, Hannah?’
‘He’s been fine. He’s eaten like a huge fat pig all day. Come through to the kitchen.’
‘Oh yeah, he will eat all day if you let him. Don’t be bullied by him.’ I scooped Hamlet into my arms and followed Hannah.
‘Tea or coffee? Assuming you’re not drinking?’
‘Better not . . . ’
‘You could stay over again? It’s not a problem. I’ll have to wash the sheets anyway – may as well get another night out of them. Have a drink, stay with your darling cat, and it’d save going back to your house of horrors.’
I put Hamlet on the table and sank into one of Hannah’s kitchen chairs. ‘I’m not sure one little doll through the door justifies the House of Horrors tag.’
‘Not everyone wants a cat on the kitchen table, Meg.’
‘Really? He’s much more appealing than these diet books.’ I lifted Hamlet onto the floor and shoved aside a stack of spinach-covered paperbacks.
‘I know. I don’t know why I waste my money. I should just buy bigger clothes. Anyway, are you staying over? Go back in the light tomorrow.’
It was tempting. It was a Friday, after all. I could forget about work for an evening. Get the image of poor Ollie out of my mind. And a dose of wine would tone down the inner voices that were telling me I shouldn’t have released Abbie – that Jai and Craig were right, and we should have charged her and kept her in custody. ‘Maybe I could.’ I’d be working tomorrow, but hopefully not going in to the Station. I was going to see Gaynor Harvey. ‘Okay, that sounds like a good idea.’
‘Brilliant.’ Hannah stabbed the Off button on the espresso machine. ‘Screw that. We’re on prosecco.’
Hamlet leaped onto my knee. ‘Oops,’ I said. ‘Catted. I’m so glad he stayed here today. He seems really happy.’
‘Yep, he’
s good. I had to pop out though. I didn’t stay with him all day. But he was locked in. Triple locked.’ Hannah produced a bottle of prosecco and split it between two extremely large glasses. Definitely not prosecco glasses.
I reached for my glass and took a life-enhancing gulp. ‘It’s okay, I didn’t expect you to sit and cuddle him all day. Where did you go?’
‘Doctor. They want to do another MRI on my back.’
I grimaced.
‘Yeah. Just lie there still as a statue for an hour, inside a hideous, claustrophobic metal tunnel while we smash hammers against it, right by your head.’
‘It doesn’t sound like a bundle of fun. Is it the magnets that make the noise?’
‘Apparently. They’re so strong that if you take your wheelchair in, they’ll whip it off the ground and slam it across the room like you’ve gone near a black hole. It happens every now and then. Flying wheelchairs, mangled MRI machines, and that’s if it doesn’t take your head off.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Meg . . . ’ Hannah sipped her prosecco. ‘I saw something on Facebook about the little girl killing her father because she remembered something from her heart donor’s death . . . ’
‘Oh fabulous.’
‘Is it true?’
‘Of course it’s not true, Hannah. People make this shit up all the time.’
‘Did she have dreams about her donor being murdered though? I read a book about that. Apparently it can happen.’ Hannah shuffled closer to me. ‘It’s really interesting. Lucky you, being involved in this.’
‘It’s not quite like that, Hannah.’ I felt crushed suddenly by the pressure of the investigation. The need to get everything right, knowing you were being watched and analysed, and that it would all be picked apart afterwards. Always hanging over us the nightmare of not getting a conviction because we mucked up some minor detail that a defence lawyer would spring on. And in this case . . . I could picture the barrister’s glee over this donor heart business. Field day coming. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t get to enjoy the excitement of this.’
Hannah didn’t seem to tune into my mental state. ‘I read about this girl,’ she said. ‘Who dreamt about her donor’s death and then the police caught the murderer.’
‘If you can locate any actual names or real evidence of that, do let me know, because all I can find is that some psychiatrist in America told some other psychiatrist in America that it had happened. So it doesn’t exactly meet the standards of criminal evidence necessary in UK law.’
‘Alright, no need to get snippy with me.’
‘Sorry, Hannah, it’s this stupid heart donor thing. I know it’s all very fascinating for everyone not involved, but the kid’s actually really nice. It’s quite upsetting that she’s being accused of killing her father.’
‘You don’t think she did it?’
I hesitated. ‘You know I can’t talk about the case.’ But I realised I’d shaken my head.
‘Oh.’ Hannah put her glass down with a thud. ‘You’ll do it, Meg. You’ll find who really did it.’
17.
I slept fitfully in Hannah’s hotel-standard spare room, and woke early with a nervous tingling in my stomach. If I was so sure Abbie was innocent, why did I keep thinking about her? I kept picturing the pink and white swimming costume, the bearded man, his teeth. Maybe Gaynor Harvey could help me understand what was going on.
I left Hamlet with Hannah and set off for Bonsall, which perched in the hills behind Matlock Bath. If it was going to snow again, it would do it big-time up there. The forecast was inconclusive so I chose to ignore it. I didn’t have time to muck around being put off by bad weather.
I parked near the base of some stone steps that had apparently been built by German prisoners of war, with a competence rarely found in the English. The Harveys’ cottage was around the corner and up an alleyway. A few random flakes drifted from the sky as I walked between mossy stone walls.
I knocked, and heard a good minute of muffled shouting before the door was flung open by a scowling man.
Bill Harvey must have only been in his sixties, but he looked ravaged, as if something had been eating him from the inside. He showed me into a heavily beamed living room and indicated a chair with its back to a mullioned window. I sat down.
A woman perched opposite on a floral sofa. She looked plump and healthy like a well-fed cat. It seemed wrong that she was the one who’d had the heart transplant.
Bill sat next to his wife and put his hand on her knee in a possessive gesture. ‘Is this something to do with a police investigation?’ He fixed me with a suspicious gaze. ‘Gaynor can’t get involved. She mustn’t get upset.’
‘I’m fine.’ Gaynor shoved Bill’s hand off her knee. ‘I don’t mind talking about it. I know you probably can’t tell us what it’s about.’
‘I think we do need to know what it’s about.’ Bill folded his arms. ‘My wife doesn’t mind sharing our personal information with all and sundry, but I do. I think I know anyway. It’s to do with that man who was killed. His daughter had a transplant. So, what’s going on? Why are you here?’
I hadn’t anticipated that. I’d only spoken to Gaynor on the phone and she hadn’t seemed interested in why I wanted to talk to her – she was just eager to share her story.
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you exactly what it’s about.’ I pulled myself forward on my too-squishy chair. ‘It would be helpful for me to know what it feels like to have had a heart transplant. If you’d prefer not to talk to me, that’s fine.’
‘I’m perfectly happy to talk to you,’ Gaynor said.
‘Gaynor’s not your typical patient.’ Bill gave me a hostile look. ‘She thinks the heart has a mind of its own.’
Gaynor spoke across the coffee table to me, excluding her husband. ‘You can’t understand unless you’ve felt it. Bill hasn’t tried to understand what it’s been like for me.’
I looked from one to the other. I didn’t fancy being the pawn in a huge marital blow-up.
Gaynor shuffled her body to angle it away from Bill. ‘In answer to your question, it feels very strange and it’s extremely difficult at first. You feel this tremendous guilt. Why should I be alive when the donor’s dead? If you believe everyone’s equal and has the right to life, why should I have survived at her expense?’
‘But, Gaynor, she would have died anyway. It’s not as if you killed her.’ I guessed from Bill’s extravagantly patient tone that this wasn’t the first time they’d had this discussion.
‘Thank you, Bill. I’m well aware she would have died anyway, but it’s still hard. I know it doesn’t make much sense to feel guilty for being alive.’
It made a whole lot of sense to me. I wondered if Abbie felt the same.
Bill leant forward and spoke directly to me. I felt like a judge in a courtroom. Were they going to whip out wigs and start calling me Your Honour? ‘I’m afraid Gaynor had some outlandish ideas about her heart. I think the guilt made her imagine the donor was still alive inside her in some way. It made it easier for her to cope.’
Gaynor shot him a defiant look. ‘Maybe you could leave us for a while, Bill.’
Bill stood, gave his wife an exasperated glance, and stalked out of the room.
Gaynor relaxed into the sofa and sighed. ‘There, now. Take a cup of tea, my love. And what else would you like to know?’
I hadn’t noticed there was a tray on the table containing a teapot, a milk jug and three cups. I obediently poured myself tea. There was no point trying to get information out of anyone in Derbyshire if you didn’t enthusiastically drink their tea. ‘Thanks so much for this,’ I said. ‘I understand that you felt . . . well, different after your transplant?’
‘Very much so. Bill says it’s all in my mind but he doesn’t know what it’s like. And you grieve for your old heart. Even though it did you no favours, it’s a bit like leaving a bad relationship.’ She glanced at the door. ‘You feel sad, even though you know it was killing you. I went through som
ething of a bad patch. And Bill and I . . . you see, when you’re ill, you put off arguing, you brush things under the carpet to deal with later, and I’m not sure either of us really thought there would be a later. We put off all our little disagreements and resentments. But then, after the transplant, you realise actually you may have quite a long life, so . . . we’ve been quarrelling. I seem to lose my temper a lot more than I used to. Sometimes I feel I could strangle Bill.’
Bill did seem quite strangleable, but it was making me uneasy that she’d felt more aggressive since her transplant. Like the mice. And like Abbie?
‘It must have been hard,’ I said. ‘I suppose everyone thinks you should be incredibly happy simply to be alive, but you still have your own problems.’
‘Exactly. But when I started coming out of the initial depression, I had this really strong sense of someone else inside me. And I kept dreaming I was in a car, and something was coming towards me really fast, and I was scared, and it came closer and closer and then, when I couldn’t cope with how scared I was, I’d wake up. Then I dreamt I was inside someone else’s body, and we were fighting. In the dream, I was her. The donor. I was dreaming it from her perspective. She was stuck inside my body fighting to get out. I had some therapy, and the counsellor said the doctors aren’t careful enough about their language. She said all this talk of your body rejecting the heart – it can make you feel this way, as if it’s a battle, as if my body was fighting with her. That made me feel better, but I still have this strong sense of someone inside me.’
‘That sounds really strange.’
‘It is. And then, there were other things. Bill said it was me struggling to adjust and not coping with the guilt. But I felt different. Even my taste in food changed, and music.’
I took a large gulp of now-cold tea. ‘You talk as if your donor was a woman. Did you have any information about her?’
‘Not at first. But I became desperate to find out who she was. I just knew it was a woman, and I thought she was young, and she’d died in a car crash. They let you send a card but it all has to go via the transplant coordinator and apparently a lot of donor families don’t want contact because it’s too traumatic. So at first I sent one saying how grateful I was. You can only include your Christian name. Anyhow, they sent one back, and we’ve exchanged a few letters. They don’t want to meet and I respect that. It’s still so raw for them.’
