Innocent

by Kinsley, Erin

‘That’s nuts.’

  ‘Is it? I don’t know whether you’re aware, but we can do an awful lot with people’s phones, these days. We can tell what numbers you’ve been calling and when, even where you were when you made the calls, where the person you were calling was when they answered. Even when you’re not making a call, if your phone’s switched on, we can look at data on it to find out where you’ve been. Did you know that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The reason I’m mentioning that now is that we’ve tracked several phone calls from your phone to Tristan’s. Do you remember making those calls?’

  Silence.

  ‘Most of them Tristan didn’t answer. Why do you think that was?’

  ‘I expect he was busy. Or with Izzy.’

  ‘Over a period of five weeks before the wedding, you called him rather a lot, but apart from one call – the very first you made to him – it appears he never answered those calls, nor did he ever call you. Can you tell us why that was?’

  Silence.

  ‘Where did you get his number, Gemma? Did Tristan give it to you himself?’

  Silence.

  ‘Gemma? Where did you get his number?’

  She gives a small smile, as if pleased at her ingenuity.

  ‘From my dad’s phone.’

  ‘So when you rang him, was he surprised to hear from you?’

  Silence.

  ‘Here’s the thing, Gemma. Whatever happened between you and Tristan that night, he’s no longer with us. He had a lot of fans and they all feel his loss, but the biggest tragedy is for his wife who’s now a widow, and especially his daughter, little Flora, who’s going to grow up without a dad. Whichever way you look at it, life going forward is going to be difficult for them. But you know what would make it a hundred times more difficult? If they believed – if the whole world believed – that Tristan was a bad person, that he attacked you, and that it wasn’t true.’

  ‘It is true!’

  ‘The facts say otherwise, Gemma. The facts suggest you were pursuing him, probably making life difficult for him. If that’s how it was, given the tragic outcome of that night, don’t you think you owe it to his family to tell the truth?’

  ‘I am telling the truth.’

  ‘You could wreck his reputation forever. Do you think that’s fair? Does he deserve that?’

  Silence. Gemma appears to be thinking about nothing in particular, gazing around the room as though interested in where she finds herself, her eyes everywhere but on the person in front of her: a classic stress behaviour.

  Weld lets the seconds tick by, until Gemma straightens up in her chair and says, ‘Can I talk to my lawyer for a minute?’

  ‘Be my guest,’ says Weld, and she leaves the room.

  ‘I don’t think I used enough pressure,’ says Weld to Gooch, as she waits to be called back in. ‘You have to be so careful in these situations. People jump in and shut you down if they think you’re pushing too hard.’

  ‘Do you think she’ll tell the truth?’

  Weld shrugs. ‘Hard to say. I hope so. If not, I’ll have to lean on her a bit harder, and I don’t want to do that. She looks like such an innocent.’

  ‘Not that innocent,’ says Gooch.

  Back in the room, Weld asks, ‘Are you OK to go on?’

  Gemma nods.

  ‘Let’s talk again about the phone, then,’ says Weld. ‘You’re saying Tristan never called you?’

  Gemma glances at someone out of sight. ‘I don’t want to hurt Izzy and Flora.’

  ‘Then you must tell the truth, or they might be hurt. Did he ask you to meet him by the pool?’

  Gemma starts picking again at the hangnail.

  ‘I asked him. I told him if he didn’t meet me, I’d tell Izzy we were having an affair.’

  There’s an audible sigh from Weld before she says, ‘So you blackmailed him into meeting you. Did you take the bottle with you?’

  ‘There was a bottle on the next table to ours. I took that.’

  ‘And the glasses?’

  Gemma nods.

  ‘And when you found him there, what did he say?’

  Gemma’s expression becomes hard to read, but there’s petulance, and anger.

  ‘He said I had to stop contacting him, that I was putting his career in danger if anyone found out. He said he loved Izzy and that I should find someone my own age. But I already had, and he’d gone off with my so-called friend.’

  ‘So what did you say?’

  Silence. Weld is about to go on, but Gemma begins to speak, falteringly.

  ‘I told him I was in love with him, that it could be a secret. I showed him the champagne and I was going to pour a glass, but he told me he doesn’t drink. I felt really stupid. He made me look a total idiot, you know? So . . .’

  ‘So what, Gemma?’ asks Weld quietly. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I didn’t mean it to be hard. I was having a really shit evening, first Darren and then him. I felt like no one wanted me. I was angry, so I hit him, and he fell down.’

  ‘You hit him with the bottle?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you do next?’

  Gemma shakes her head. ‘I didn’t know what to do. I thought he’d just get up. I dropped the bottle and it smashed everywhere and I thought the noise of it would bring people, so I left him. I thought someone would come and help him, but I didn’t want them to find me.’

  ‘You knew it was wrong?’

  ‘I was angry. I told him I loved him, and he just didn’t care.’

  ‘What did you do with the glasses?’

  ‘I dropped them in the pool.’

  ‘Just to be clear, then,’ says Weld, ‘when you hit Tristan, you didn’t feel under any threat from him, he hadn’t tried to touch you against your will or made any kind of unwelcome suggestions to you?’

  Now Gemma’s face is sad. ‘No, he didn’t do any of that. I told my mum that’s what had happened, but it wasn’t true. I loved him and he didn’t want me. That was it, really.’ She turns to the side, towards her lawyer and the appropriate adult.

  ‘Can we stop this now? I don’t want to say any more.’

  Fifty-five

  At Weld’s suggestion, Izzy’s meeting her at the Quiet Woman, which Weld judges to be about the halfway point between Sterndale and Burnt Common police station.

  Izzy and Tris used to visit the Quiet Woman in the early days of their romance, beguiled by its idyllic location, alongside a packhorse bridge crossing a river renowned for its trout fishing. The pub itself is charming too, a low, whitewashed building roofed in thatch, with tables spread over the river’s grassy banks.

  They sat, once, at one of the riverside tables, talking over a lunch which lasted well into the afternoon, until Tris excused himself and went inside. When he came out, he was holding a key, and took her hand to lead her upstairs to a misshapen, sloping-floored room with a leaded-glass hobbit window overlooking the river, and beams so low, he could only walk round with his head bent. They spent many hours in the four-poster bed, leaving it only to go down to eat the chocolatey desserts they were too full to eat at lunch, and long after that, to a breakfast with home-made marmalade and pots of strong Indian tea.

  As she leaves the car, she looks up at that window, wondering whether the shade of their time there might somehow be locked behind it, whether if she asked to go up and see the room, she might catch a gossamer breath of how they were that day. The memory of it provokes a pulse of pain, like the soreness of a splinter.

  Izzy is a few minutes late, and Weld is already seated at one of the wooden tables – by chance, the same table where she and Tris ate that day – close to where a weeping willow spreads its rustling branches over the water. Weld is alone, but there are two full glasses on the table.

  As Izzy approaches, Weld s
miles. ‘Hi, Izzy. Good to see you. I gambled that you’d like a sparkling water. If you’d prefer something else, I’ll get it for you.’

  ‘No, that’s great, thanks. Sorry I’m late.’ Izzy brushes a few willow leaves from her chair seat, and folds the skirt of her white dress under her before she sits down. When she takes off her sunglasses, Weld thinks how different she looks to when they first met: rundown, unwell. Trauma and stress will do that, no exceptions.

  ‘So.’ Weld leans forward on to her elbows. ‘How are you?’

  Izzy’s eyes go to the water and its steady flow. Some things, at least, are constant. ‘As well as may be expected, I suppose. One day at a time, you know? There’s so much to sort out, all the legal processes. He didn’t leave a will, or at least nobody’s found one. With us only being married a short time, it could get complicated. His ex-wife might be making a claim on the estate, on behalf of her son. Flora and I will be OK, but I really could do without it.’

  ‘How’s Flora coping?’

  Izzy taps her glass but doesn’t drink from it.

  ‘She’s confused, she doesn’t understand where Daddy’s gone. That’s not a surprise, at her age, and to be honest sometimes I feel the same way. One minute he was there, the next he vanished. She’s become very clingy, holding on to my clothes all the time, not wanting to be in different rooms. You can almost see the emotional damage happening, but what can I do? I’m staying with her as much as I can, but sometimes I need a break to deal with my own feelings. So I’m glad you suggested we meet here. Sterndale’s so claustrophobic.’

  ‘I know it’s hard,’ says Weld. ‘You have to give it time. Meanwhile, I have news for you. We’ve concluded our interviews with Gemma Ridley, and we’re waiting on a decision from the CPS. Our expectation is that they’ll tell us to go ahead and charge her with Tristan’s murder.’

  Izzy’s hands go to her face, and her mouth falls open. ‘Gemma? But isn’t she claiming self-defence?’

  Weld shakes her head. ‘We’re not aware of any such claim at the moment, at least. Her barrister may want to try that route, of course, but she’s already told us that she struck him in anger because he rejected her.’

  ‘He rejected her,’ whispers Izzy. ‘He didn’t – try and have sex with her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So he was innocent.’

  ‘Yes.’

  A swallow flies low over the river, almost skimming the water with its breast.

  ‘I’m going to get myself a proper drink,’ says Izzy.

  When she returns with a large glass of rosé, Weld says, ‘I wasn’t sure whether you’d regard Gemma being charged as good news.’

  ‘Honestly? I think it’s another tragedy,’ says Izzy. ‘She’s so young. And poor Laura. Poor Aidan and Josh. Are they OK?’

  ‘They will be, in time. People adapt, they cope. But for now, why don’t we focus on some undeniably good news. We’ve spoken to Martina Stokes. Amber and I went to Oxford, and I’m going to be honest with you, she wasn’t at all what we expected.’

  Izzy takes a long swallow of her wine. ‘What were you expecting? I’ll tell you what I’m expecting: blonde, early twenties, big boobs. Am I right?’

  ‘If I’m being frank, we were on the same page, but Martina’s nothing like that. How about mid-fifties, razor cut and tattoos? She’s had a tough life, tougher than most, but she’s come through it.’

  ‘So how did Tris know her?’

  ‘These days, Tina’s involved with a network of havens for women trying to escape domestic abuse. Tristan found her via the internet, and said he wanted to help make things better for those women, but in a low-key, no publicity way. That house they were building together is a safe house, a women’s refuge.’

  Izzy frowns. ‘You’re kidding. That makes no sense. Why wouldn’t he tell me about it? Why the secrecy?’

  Weld’s unsure of how much she should say. ‘It’s a sensitive issue, Izzy, especially since Tristan chose not to involve you in what he was doing. If I play by the rules, I shouldn’t tell you any more than what’s relevant to our investigation, and should only say that Martina Stokes and the other women whose contact details you found on Tristan’s second phone are not people of interest to us and have been eliminated from our enquiries.’

  ‘In police speak.’

  ‘In police speak. Off the record and woman to woman, there are some aspects of Tristan’s past of which you’re plainly unaware, and I’m concerned it’s not my place to fill you in. But now we’ve ruled her out as a suspect, I can put you in touch with Martina. If you’d like to speak to her, she’s very keen to talk to you. She wants to tell you what a wonderful man your husband was.’

  ‘So he definitely wasn’t having an affair with her?’

  Weld emphatically shakes her head. ‘Absolutely not. She states there was never any question of any kind of intimate relationship between them and I believe her. The other contacts in his phone all say the same.’

  ‘Then I’ve misjudged him on everything.’

  ‘That’s understandable.’

  ‘He never had the chance to defend himself. I came to think the very worst of him, and I was wrong.’

  ‘Martina can help you. Talk to her, because I think you need to know the truth. I’ll send you her details and you can get in touch. And I think you should speak to his family. I don’t believe they’ve been entirely straight with you.’

  A breeze rustles through the willow tree, and Izzy shivers. Glancing up at the window of that bedroom, she almost thinks she sees a face there, her own face from those happier times.

  ‘I will,’ she says. ‘And thank you for everything you’ve done.’

  ‘We meet again,’ says Muir, as he and Golding take their seats in the interview room. ‘Thanks for making the journey.’

  Murray Roe is dressed for the office where he no longer works, pinstripe suit, white shirt, garish tie. The shirtsleeve cuffs, Muir notices, are beginning to fray, and there’s a stain – tea or coffee – on his tie.

  ‘As it happens, I had nothing else on,’ says Roe. ‘But I don’t want to hang about. I only put an hour on the meter.’

  Golding opens a folder, takes out several stapled sheets of paper and pushes them to Roe across the table.

  ‘You do not have to say anything,’ says Muir. ‘But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Is that clear?’

  ‘All a bit formal,’ says Roe.

  ‘Do you wish to have a legal representative present?’

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘It’s your right. Do you wish to exercise it?’

  ‘I don’t think so, no.’

  ‘Let’s press on, then,’ says Muir, ‘since you’re on a meter. When we met before, you made that statement regarding the day of the assault on Tristan Savage.’

  Roe glances down. ‘I did.’

  ‘Is there anything you’d like to add to it?’

  ‘No.’ Roe looks from Muir to Golding, and seems less certain. ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like the visit you made that evening to Tristan’s house. I think you’ll find you forgot to mention it.’

  Roe smiles. ‘Did I? I suppose it slipped my mind.’

  ‘You don’t deny, then, that you were there?’

  ‘Why should I? I committed no crime.’

  ‘You conspired with Bridget Feahny to gather personal information for the purposes of making a profit. I think there might be something there that we could use.’

  ‘Hardly worth your time, though, is it? Anyway, I thought the case was closed. I heard on the news that you’ve made an arrest.’

  ‘So we have,’ says Muir. ‘But for completeness, we’d like to invite you to amend your statement, so we have a true record of your movements that eveni
ng. Just to keep things nice and tidy. And as we prepare the case for court, it’s possible your testimony may be pertinent.’

  ‘Pertinent in what way?’

  ‘You may have been the last person to speak to Tristan before he died. With the exception of his killer, of course.’

  ‘Really? Well, actually I find that rather chilling.’

  ‘I should tell you we do have CCTV of you at Tristan’s home.’

  ‘In that case, I see no reason to refuse.’

  ‘There is another matter.’ Muir pauses as Golding takes more papers from his file and pushes the first sheet across to Roe. ‘I wonder if you can tell me what you know about these?’

  The paper is a photograph of two small but pretty watercolours in gilded frames. Roe studies them and pulls a face.

  ‘Never seen them before,’ he says. ‘Not my kind of thing. I’m more of a French impressionist man myself.’

  Golding offers Roe another photograph.

  ‘Is that you?’ asks Muir.

  He watches Roe carefully. The photo’s a CCTV still, and now Roe has to gamble. Is it from Tristan’s house – where Roe’s already admitted he’s been – or could it be from elsewhere?

  ‘Hard to say,’ says Roe. ‘Those things are never very clear, are they?’

  ‘I think it’s you,’ says Muir. ‘It’s from a pawnbroker’s in Gloucester. Do me a favour, will you, and hold out your hands.’

  ‘What for?’

  Golding produces a torch.

  ‘Nothing to worry about, Murray,’ says Muir. ‘Standard procedure.’

  Roe offers the palms of his hands, and Golding shines the torch’s ultraviolet beam on to the skin.

  Roe’s hands light up with splashes of neon-green.

  ‘SmartWater,’ says Muir. ‘Sticks around for weeks. We can still call a lawyer for you, if you’ve changed your mind.’

  Fifty-six

  ‘I’ve been hearing things about Tris,’ says Izzy. ‘Things I didn’t know.’

  Steph is standing by the window, watching Eamon laughing with Flora as she’s picking daisies on the lawn. Flora’s wearing a bikini, and a pink cowgirl hat with a sheriff’s badge embroidered on the crown.