Her Secret Past: A completely gripping and heart-stopping crime thriller

by Kerry Watts

  ‘Yes, the full three hundred maximum. Whoever it was wanted as much as they could get, it would appear.’

  Jessie’s eyes scanned the kitchen for Jean Angus’s handbag, which she quickly spotted hanging on the back of the utility-room door. She unhooked it and searched for the purse. Inside she found twenty pounds in cash but no bank cards. No cards at all.

  ‘Can you see if you can locate Malcolm’s wallet?’

  ‘Sure, but I haven’t seen one as yet,’ Dylan replied.

  Jessie moved the fruit bowl from the top of the fridge but found only a large bunch of keys.

  ‘Bag these, will you?’ She handed them to Dylan. ‘That’s a large bunch of keys for an elderly couple, don’t you think? How many locked doors and cupboards do they have?’

  ‘Clearly more than my granny and grandad had, that’s for sure,’ Dylan chirped.

  ‘Did you check for a safe?’ Jessie suggested. Her eyes scanned the kitchen, coming to rest on the top of the fridge, which was fitted tightly between the pine kitchen cabinets and the corner wall. Behind one box of cereal and a tin of loose porridge oats, tucked right at the back and almost hanging off the top of the fridge, was a locked red money tin. Jessie stood on her tiptoes to reach to the back and struggled to get hold of it.

  Dylan moved over. ‘Here, I might be able to reach it.’ He pushed his hand up and grabbed the money tin with ease.

  ‘Cheers.’ Jessie shook the tin but there was no distinctive chink of coins inside.

  Dylan began, ‘I’ve seen folk at the farmers’ market using them on their stalls. It’s like a mini till with slots for different denominations of coins.’

  Jessie shook the tin close to his ear. ‘There’s no coins in here.’ She placed the tin down onto the table and tried the lid but, just as she expected, it was locked. ‘Give me that bunch of keys, will you?’

  She rummaged in the chaos of keys that must have been more than thirty strong and ruled out the larger ones immediately as being clearly way too big for the tiny lock. She tried every one that looked like it might fit but none of them would unlock it.

  ‘Argh, typical,’ she said. ‘Bag the box. We’ll take it with us.’

  Dylan opened the cutlery drawer and retrieved a large knife. ‘Couldn’t we just jimmy it open with this?’

  ‘Aye, good idea. Pass it here.’ She held out her hand and took it from him but couldn’t get the lid to budge.

  ‘Give it here. Let me try.’

  Dylan wiggled the tip of the knife under the lip of the lid and after a few jerks the lid popped open. ‘Bingo.’

  Jessie grinned at him. ‘I’m not sure I like how impressed I am that you managed that, and I’m certainly not going to ask whether you’ve done that before.’

  Dylan laughed. ‘I wouldn’t tell you anyway.’

  The two detectives stared into the tin’s contents then at each other, both stunned and sickened as the other. This was the last thing they’d expected to find.

  9

  January 1991

  ‘They said you smashed your grandparents’ heads with a hammer. Is that true?’

  The overweight girl with the short, spiky hair and nose ring who sat on the table next to Alice scared her. Alice didn’t think keeping her waiting for an answer was a good idea. She glanced behind the girl, who looked a lot older than her, and saw another two girls sitting nearby playing cards. Every girl in the young offenders place wore the same thing. A drab grey tracksuit. Very few bothered with make-up, she’d noticed, but neither did she anymore. She stared at the girl who had questioned her and straightened up in her chair at the dining table.

  ‘I—’ Alice found it hard to speak because of her anxiety. She feared another panic attack was always close. It made her throat feel dry and tight. This girl was twice her size, if not more. What if she didn’t like Alice’s answer? ‘Yes, we did – I mean, it’s not like it sounds,’ she stuttered. She felt her cheeks flush pink and she looked down at the table. ‘We just, just, I don’t know…’ she heard herself ramble but seemed unable to stop.

  ‘Holy shit,’ the other inmate replied and let out a laugh. ‘Better not get on the wrong side of you.’

  Alice glanced up into her grinning face, a little confused, and frowned, then couldn’t stop the smile that grew on her own lips.

  ‘Good to know,’ the girl announced as she got up to walk away. ‘If you need any help, with anything, just give me a shout.’

  ‘Yes, sure, thanks,’ Alice replied. ‘My name is Alice.’

  The girl smiled again. ‘Oh, I know who you are. Everybody knows Alice Connor.’

  Before Alice could respond an officer stood next to her.

  ‘Come on, breakfast time’s over. Get your plate and cutlery to the hatch. Alice, your solicitor is here. I’ve got to take you to see her.’

  Alice hurriedly lifted her things and tidied them away at the serving hatch then followed the officer into a room with a table at the far end next to a window with a far-reaching view into the Grampian hills. It looked cold out there, snow resting on the peaks. The room was hot, with the central heating on full blast. The farmhouse Alice had been raised in was cold in the winter, apart from the kitchen, which was kept lovely and cosy by the range. A memory of sitting at the long dining table to do her homework while her grandmother laid out a plate of home-made shortbread next to a glass of milk crept into Alice’s mind. She had to push it away. She couldn’t think about things like that now.

  Alice removed her sweatshirt because the small room was so hot.

  ‘Hello, Alice.’ A voice caused her to turn away from the window and she smiled at her solicitor, who was closing the door behind her. ‘Come and sit down. We have a lot to get through before your court appearance.’

  Alice’s eyes widened.

  The solicitor stopped rummaging in her briefcase. ‘It’s OK. I’m going to explain it all to you, don’t worry.’

  Alice pulled out a chair and slumped down opposite her, picking at her thumbnail as she stared at the floor under the table. She knew her solicitor was talking but Alice wasn’t listening. Her mind drifted to thoughts of what David was going through. Alice missed him terribly. She missed the way his arms felt around her, enveloping her and making her feel less alone – because that’s what she was before David. Alone. He was the first person who ever seemed to care what Alice thought. How she felt. Her opinion counted. For the first time in her life Alice had known what it meant to feel happy. David didn’t care if she only got a B in a test and he certainly didn’t flip out the way her grandmother did when she came home with a C for her history essay on the Second World War. She wondered if he was scared where he was. She’d been told he was being held on remand in Perth prison and was charged with two counts of murder and of sexually abusing Alice. David had never abused her. She vehemently denied he’d ever forced her to do anything she didn’t want to do. She loved David and he loved her. This would never have happened if her grandparents had listened instead of trying to force them apart. But they wouldn’t listen. They never listened.

  ‘Alice, did you hear what I said?’ her solicitor asked.

  Alice sat bolt upright in her chair and blushed. ‘What? Sorry, no, I was miles away.’

  ‘I was explaining what was going to happen next.’ Her solicitor was about to read from a piece of paper on the table when Alice grabbed her arm.

  ‘How’s David?’

  Alice’s solicitor ran her fingers through her curly brown hair as she looked into Alice’s searching eyes. She’d been anxious when her boss asked her to take this on. It was such a huge case. The whole country was talking about the brutal slaying of an elderly couple in their own home, especially because one of the people accused of carrying out the crime was their fourteen-year-old granddaughter. She genuinely believed Alice when she told her that she loved David and he loved her. She believed that Alice truly believed that. It had to be something she thought was real to make a teenage girl create the sickening carnage she had wi
tnessed on the crime-scene photos.

  Her first interactions with Alice had been a shock. The girl sat cowering in a police cell did not look like the same girl that had smashed a hammer over her grandfather’s head so hard that pieces of his brain became stuck to the wallpaper. Her face had been smeared red with his blood as she sat with her knees curled up to her chest, her eyes staring at the ground the whole time.

  ‘David’s doing fine,’ the solicitor lied. She didn’t need her client to be thinking about anything other than her own defence. Alice didn’t need to know David was being kept away from other prisoners. For his own protection.

  10

  The low winter sun streamed in through Jessie’s office window and she tilted the blinds to stop it dazzling her. She always felt bad about doing that. Her mum used to say she was shutting the sunlight out or tease her about hiding away in the dark. A small smile crossed Jessie’s lips at the memory. She sipped the coffee that Dylan had left for her and stared at the red money tin on her desk. That she had not expected. Images of the sickening photographs and newspaper cuttings haunted her.

  David Lyndhurst had no plans to take Tommy’s assault any further. He didn’t want the hassle and besides, he told her, he didn’t think the man had even realised he’d hit him. He was so out of it. Jessie still needed to talk to Tommy, though. The revelations in the will and the upsetting contents of the box created several questions, but the text that she received distracted her briefly. Jessie had grown closer to Lyndhurst’s former assistant in recent months and Benito’s words made her smile. He made Jessie feel comfortable; safe.

  Can’t wait to see you

  She replied to his suggestion that he travel from Edinburgh that night to see her. His reply made her blush and stuff her phone back into her pocket.

  Jessie gulped the last of her coffee and stood up from her desk with the evidence bags tightly clutched in her hands. Dylan’s voice called out from behind her just as she reached for the handle of the door to the interview room where Tommy was waiting for her.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘There’s been a sighting of Gordon Angus. You want me to check it out?’ Dylan asked.

  ‘Thanks, yes, that would be great.’ Jessie dipped the handle then released it. She turned to call out after him. ‘Dylan—’

  He stopped and spun round. ‘What?’

  ‘Just be careful, will you?’

  Dylan nodded and winked, then moved swiftly through the door towards the station exit.

  Jessie meant what she’d said. Something about Gordon’s response to the death of his grandparents made her shiver. Sitting there like that, so cold; indifferent at best. Certainly not grief-stricken like Tommy appeared to be. That wasn’t normal. Was that red tin his perhaps? What significance did that array of sickening photos of dead and mutilated corpses have to the case?

  ‘Hello again, Tommy.’ Jessie pulled up a chair and joined him at the table in the small beige interview room.

  Tommy lifted his head then dropped his gaze quickly back down. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered. ‘About your colleague. I shouldn’t have hit him. That doctor was just trying to do his job.’

  Jessie nodded. ‘I know you are. That’s not what I’m here to talk to you about.’

  Tommy’s head snapped up to face her. ‘No? Then what is it? Have you found the person who did that to Mum and Dad?’ His voice quivered when he tried to control the emotions that bubbled in him. ‘Who was it? Was it—’ He hesitated. ‘Rachel Ferguson?’

  Jessie’s eyes widened at that. She spotted the way Tommy’s hands were shaking too. ‘Why would you think Rachel had anything to do with your parents’ death?’

  Tommy arched his back and rubbed at his face with both palms. ‘Och, I don’t know. I don’t really. It’s just—’ He sighed. ‘Just, she was going there, wasn’t she? Where’s Gordon? I need to see that my son is all right.’

  Jessie didn’t want to acknowledge his theory for now. Neither did she want to tell Tommy nobody had seen Gordon since he’d left the scene of his grandparents’ murder.

  She placed the two pieces of evidence on the table between them. It was the will she slid closer to Tommy first.

  ‘Do you recognise this?’ she asked.

  ‘What is it?’ Tommy lifted the clear plastic bag and peered at the contents. ‘I can’t read this without my specs, not properly.’ He handed it back to Jessie. ‘You better tell me what it says.’ He scratched at his head and sniffed.

  ‘This is a copy of your parents’ joint will, Tommy.’

  Tommy rested his elbows on the table and clasped his hands together over his mouth. He inhaled a huge breath and exhaled slowly though his fingers.

  ‘Aye, I figured that much already,’ he admitted but avoided her eyes. ‘But I don’t know what it says.’

  Jessie spotted that Tommy glanced to his side as he spoke. ‘You’ve never seen this before?’

  Tommy answered with a simple shake of his head and a sigh. If this was true Jessie figured that his reaction when she read the details to him should be interesting. She pulled the pile of papers from the bag.

  ‘I’m going to read a small extract from it for you. Is that OK?’

  Jessie glanced at Tommy’s solicitor, who nodded and wrote something on his notepad. Tommy nodded too.

  ‘OK,’ she began. ‘After our death the entire estate, including the Clachan farmhouse, is to be left to our grandson Gordon Angus.’

  She thought that was a good place to stop reading and waited for Tommy’s reaction but instead he kept his eyes down and his shoulders slumped. She allowed him another moment to say something and started again when he continued not to speak.

  ‘Our son Tommy is to have a small allowance to meet his basic needs on a weekly basis.’

  Jessie didn’t bother going into the details of how it would work or who would make the arrangements. Tommy held his head in his hands. He seemed oddly unmoved. Emotionless.

  ‘Tommy, do you have anything to say?’ Jessie probed.

  His answer came with another shake of his head.

  ‘You don’t seem very surprised,’ Jessie suggested. ‘It’s a little humiliating if you ask me. Your son gets everything, not you.’

  Now Tommy’s solicitor chose to speak up. ‘I don’t think that’s necessary. How my client feels is not in question here.’

  Jessie held up her hand. ‘I know; you’re right. I’m sorry, Tommy. I shouldn’t have said that.’

  Tommy shrugged. ‘Why not? It’s true, isn’t it? My parents were ashamed of me. Ashamed of the drunken waste of space I’ve become.’

  Tears bubbled up in his bloodshot eyes and Jessie noticed his hands had started to tremble. Tommy shivered.

  ‘God, it’s cold in here,’ he remarked.

  ‘I think it might be a good idea to stop there, Detective,’ his solicitor interrupted. ‘I think my client needs a break and to see the doctor. Tommy, you’re not looking too good.’

  Tommy’s trembling and agitation increased before he hammered the table. ‘I’m fine,’ he roared then started to sob and clutch his stomach. ‘I just need a drink,’ he ended in a whimper. ‘I’ll be fine if I can just get a drink, one drink, just to take the edge off.’

  Jessie tapped her thumb on the red box in the other evidence bag. She was desperate to quiz Tommy about the contents but his solicitor was right. Tommy needed help.

  One last question couldn’t hurt, though, could it? Jessie took a chance and pushed the box towards him. ‘Do you recognise this?’

  ‘Detective,’ Tommy’s solicitor warned, growing increasingly frustrated by Jessie’s persistence.

  Tommy stared at her with a blank expression on his face. He winced from his abdominal cramps and held his stomach, then turned and vomited on the floor at the side of his chair. Jessie hoped Dylan was having better luck than her until a uniformed officer knocked on the interview-room door.

  ‘DI Blake, can I have a word? It’s important.’

  11
>
  Gordon Angus paid the bus driver and headed to a seat at the back. He’d been surprised to find there were any buses running at all. He stuffed his wallet and keys into the bottom of the rucksack at his feet and pressed his earbuds in, then squeezed his bag closer to his legs and leaned his head on the window. The clouds overhead were black and looked heavy with rain. The branches of the trees that lined the winding country road bent and bowed in the strong winds that had increased in the past few hours. The song he was listening to stopped abruptly as a call came in on his phone. It was his mum. He knew rejecting her call would make her worry and that would result in her leaving loads of messages for him so it was easier to answer her.

  ‘Hey, Mum.’

  ‘Gordon, is everything OK – you didn’t call me to wish me a happy Christmas.’

  Gordon nibbled his fingernails and stared at the field of blackface sheep in the field. Just like Grandad’s, he thought. He wondered if they were his grandad’s sheep. His dad had explained that they’d had to sell them when Grandad became ill. He had asked why Tommy couldn’t take over but his dad couldn’t give him an answer. It wasn’t worth pursuing the point.

  ‘Sorry, I forgot…’ he answered.

  ‘You forgot,’ his mum responded then paused. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of your dad. Is he there with you? Can I speak to him?’

  Gordon Angus had lived with his dad since his parents’ divorce a year ago. His mum wanted to move closer to her own parents in Crieff but Tommy wanted Gordon to stay with him so he could finish his course at Perth college first.

  ‘No, Dad’s not here.’

  ‘Where are you? Are you outside somewhere? It sounds like you’re on a bus,’ she suggested. ‘Are you on your way here? You should have said. I would have come and picked you up.’

  ‘You don’t have to do that. I can manage.’

  He heard his mum sigh on the other end of the line. ‘It would be nice to see you, son. It feels like ages since we’ve caught up and you can open your presents when you get here too. There’s a few under the tree for you. Grandma and Grandpa miss you. It’s been a long time since you visited them.’