Deadly Encounter

by M A Comley

  His lips parted and Sally could see that a few of his front teeth were missing. “It ain’t gonna happen, lady.”

  She got the impression the officer was intentionally winding her up and decided to slap him down. “That’ll be ‘Inspector’ to you when you address me.”

  The officer smirked as if her reply had amused him.

  Deciding it would be best to ignore him altogether, Sally turned her attention back to the broken man in front of her. A quick study told her that there was no sparkle in his steel-grey eyes. His skin was a faint hue of yellow from lack of vitamin D, and his relatively broad shoulders were rounded, making her want to reach over and force him upright to give him a dose of self-assurance that he was obviously lacking. In other words, she couldn’t prevent her heart aching for the man. Her instincts told her there and then that he was as innocent as a new-born lamb, and he hadn’t even opened his mouth yet.

  “Hello, Mr. Gillan. I’m DI Sally Parker, and this is my partner, DC Joanna Tryst.”

  The man’s head lifted slightly, he flicked back a clump of long, dark grey hair and gave her the briefest of smiles. “What’s this about, Inspector? Finding my wife’s body last week?”

  “It wasn’t originally, but it is now. We’re part of a cold-case team, and your conviction was amongst the cases we were tasked with tackling. We were just starting our investigation when our database highlighted that Anne’s body had been discovered last week.” She noticed the way he winced when she’d deliberately mentioned his wife’s name.

  “Thank God. Now she can be laid to rest in peace. Every time I’ve closed my eyes over the past fifteen years, I’ve seen her terrified face, reaching out, begging for me to help her. Which of course was beyond me, stuck in here. I would have moved heaven and earth to find her, had I not been falsely arrested.” He lifted his hands and rattled the chains restraining him to the table.

  The officer standing by the door grunted. “Keep your hands still, Gillan.”

  Sally shot the prison officer a venomous glare. He smirked again and shrugged as if to say, “Whatever, bitch.”

  “This is why we’re reinvestigating your case. We recently dealt with a cold-case that was, shall we say, dubiously dealt with by Inspector Falkirk. The original suspects were exonerated in that case. We’re hoping that will be the outcome in your circumstances too, providing you’re innocent, of course.”

  He placed his chest closer to his chains and covered his heart with one of his hands. “I swear to you that I did not, could not have, killed my wife.”

  “Would you mind going over the events of that evening with us?”

  He exhaled loudly. “Of course. I won’t be able to tell you anything different to what I told that chump back then, though. Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound disrespectful to a colleague of yours.”

  Sally raised her hand. “I’ve called him a lot worse than that over the last few months. Please, in your own words, tell us what occurred that evening. My partner will be taking notes, if that’s okay?”

  “Of course. It’s like I told Falkirk. I was at home that evening. I’d put the kids to bed at about eight and prepared the dinner for when Anne… got home from work. She always told me not to bother with a dinner when she was on the late shift, but I refused to listen to her. We always shared our mealtimes together. I didn’t care that I’d have to wait an extra five hours to eat compared to normal. It was something we always did, had done since we got married.”

  “How long were you married?”

  “Ten years, although we’d never been with anyone else since the day we got together at secondary school. We only had eyes for each other. We were inseparable, until…”

  “I can see how much she meant to you. I’m sorry that you’ve had to endure this atrocious ordeal.” She sighed. “Going back to that night, did you alert the police?”

  “Yes, when she hadn’t arrived home by eleven thirty, I rang them right away. They chastised me, told me how foolish I was to report her missing after only fifteen minutes. But I just knew, felt it in my heart, that something dreadful had happened.”

  “Maybe your wife decided to go out with colleagues that night.”

  “No way. She never socialised with friends or work colleagues. We spent all of our time together apart from when we had to work. We were soulmates through and through. Thought what the other one thought, finished off each other’s sentences. For anyone to believe that I would be capable of such a heinous crime is just unthinkable. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve contemplated committing suicide over the years, but the thought of her still being out there prevented me from doing that.”

  Sally lowered her voice and leaned forward. “And now that her remains have been discovered? Are you tempted or have you been tempted to go down that route in the past week or so?”

  “The thought has constantly crossed my mind,” he said quietly.

  Sally suspected he feared saying it louder in case the officer reported back to the governor. “Please, don’t do anything rash. Think of your children. Molly and Jamie, isn’t it?”

  “That’s what has stopped me so far. I’d do it in a heartbeat if I didn’t have them. I couldn’t put them through losing both parents. Not that Jamie cares one iota about me. He’s cut me out of his life because he believes I killed her. I could put up with the fifteen years of hell living in this place, but that one fact, that my son believes I’m guilty, has torn me apart over the years.”

  Sally covered his hand with hers. “Then let’s work together and prove the jury and Falkirk wrong. Let’s do this for Jamie’s sake. How’s that?”

  “How? How can I prove my innocence sitting in this shithole?”

  “Through me.” She turned to face Joanna and pointed. “Through us, me and my team.”

  He fell silent. Where Sally had thought she would see relief in his eyes, she saw something else that she found difficult to recognise.

  Suddenly, his voice became choked, and his head sank to his chest as he said, “Do you know what it’s like to grieve for a loved one, Inspector?”

  “Yes, a grandparent. It’s awful. I hear that everyone grieves differently in this life.”

  “A grandparent,” he repeated quietly. “It’s not the same as losing a spouse, but you’ll appreciate the magnitude of the raw emotions and pain a person goes through during the grieving process.”

  Sally nodded, wondering where his statement was leading.

  “Now imagine living through fifteen years of hell, not knowing whether to grieve or rejoice in the fact that a loved one’s body hasn’t been found. Then thinking possibly that she might have run off and even done the unthinkable and staged her own death.”

  Sally’s mind raced. She felt sorry for the man and the torment he’d put himself through during his imprisonment. “I can’t imagine how that must feel. I’m so sorry.”

  He went on with his speech as though she hadn’t spoken. “If you could, I’d tell you to multiply the feeling by a million, and it still wouldn’t come close to what I’ve been subjected to over the years.” He rattled his chains as he pointed to his head. “It messes with this. Fifteen years!”

  Sally found herself in search of the right words to respond, but it proved impossible. She couldn’t begin to understand what he’d been through. He would have had little to no sympathy from the prison officers; that much was evident if the goon in the corner was anything to go by. He’d obviously been through a living hell during his spell behind bars.

  She reached across the table and touched his hand again. Her glance shot up to the guard as defiance rippled through her. “Craig, I promise you this: we’ll do everything in our power to help you achieve your freedom, so you can begin your life again to the full instead of just existing from day-to-day in here.”

  His eyes settled on her hand covering his. “How will I cope on the outside? Knowing that the love of my life is now dead? I might as well end it all now. What do I have to live for?”

  S
ally squeezed his hand then released it. “Think of the children. Think of Molly.”

  He shook his head. “I see what you’re doing, and it won’t work. Molly has coped without me all these years. She’ll be better off without me turning up and disrupting her life.”

  Sally inhaled and exhaled a large breath. “Look at me, Craig.”

  When he lifted his head, she saw the pain and misery within his watery eyes and knew she had to snap him out of it. “Talking that way won’t help. Self-pity is destructive and seldom serves a purpose. You need to be strong. Once we start delving deep into the case, we’ll need your help to try and solve it. You’ll only be able to do that with a strong resolve and determination. Don’t you want to help us find the real killer?”

  His eyes narrowed as he searched her eyes for answers that had evaded him over the years. “I’d like nothing more than to get my hands on the bastard, but I’d probably end up back in here on another murder charge.”

  “I’m not asking you to get that involved, but we’ll need you to fill in the gaps in Anne’s day-to-day life. Do you think you’ll be capable of doing that?” Sally hoped to give the man a purpose in life, something for him to concentrate on rather than wallowing in his self-pity should the day arrive that he be released from prison. It was all about having the mental strength to cope with the changes she hoped he would experience in the next few months. She was prepared to do anything she could to provide him with a new beginning with his children.

  He nodded. “I’ll do all I can to help, although I told the last inspector everything I knew, and it backfired on me big time. How else did I end up inside? When all I was guilty of is loving the very bones of my beautiful wife since we first met.”

  “If you’re willing to help, that’s all we can ask. Now, going back to the events that night or maybe the next day perhaps, when exactly did Falkirk find your jumper?”

  He shook his head. “It’s a bit blurry now, the timeframe in which everything took place. It might have been the next day. I believe he got a warrant to search the house and found the jumper at the bottom of the wardrobe.”

  “And where did the blood come from, Craig?”

  “I told that fool of an inspector, but he refused to believe me. Anne suffered from nosebleeds. They would just descend upon her without warning. We were snuggled up on the sofa one night, my arm was around her shoulder, she had an itchy nose and wiped her face on my jumper. She was horrified to see the blood when she pulled away. We both were. I told her it didn’t matter; the jumper was old anyway. We tried to wash the blood out of it by hand and machine, but the blood buried itself in the intricate cable and refused to budge. I flung it in the bottom of the wardrobe to use when I do DIY or decorate. Never once did I think that would be the key piece of evidence that moron would pin on me to say that I had killed my wife. What a prick he was. Sorry, excuse my language.”

  Sally smiled. “You’re entitled to your opinion on that one. I take it you recounted that story to Falkirk?”

  “Of course I did. He was having none of it. He saw me as the guilty party, and nothing I could say or do was going to dissuade him from thinking that.”

  “Okay, do you know if Anne visited the doctor about her nosebleeds?”

  “I’m sure she did.” The chains rattled as he ran a hand through his hair, agitated.

  “Put your hand down,” the prison officer snapped.

  Sally glared at the officer, narrowing her gaze as her anger mounted. “Then that’s where we’ll begin our investigation, by going to see her doctor.”

  “If he’s still around. I think Anne said Dr. Mountford was near retirement age. That would put him in his late seventies to early eighties now, right?” Craig added.

  “Can you tell us what surgery it was?”

  “You’re testing my memory here. I only visited the place once or twice. Steered clear of doctors wherever possible. Something with a tree name, Oakfields, Oakwood, perhaps? Up on the estate where we lived, it was. Should be easy for you to find, I think.”

  “If it’s still around, we’ll track it down. We’ll see if we can locate Anne’s medical files. Good, that’s a start. I have to ask if either you or Anne had received any bother from any of your neighbours or anyone you knew in the months leading up to Anne’s disappearance.”

  He fell silent as he thought. “No, I can’t think of anyone. We pretty much kept to ourselves, were easy-going as far as our neighbours were concerned, even when the guy next door started his motorbike up at five every morning to go off to work. You make allowances for things like that in this life, don’t you? If you didn’t, the annoyance would grind you down in the end. I really can’t add anything. I’m sorry.”

  “Any old boyfriends—or girlfriends, in your case—that we should know about?”

  “No, there were none. We met at school, and neither of us had dated anyone else before.”

  “Did you owe money to anyone? A loan shark, anyone like that?”

  “No, never. We lived by the rule that if we couldn’t afford something, we went without. We saved up for everything we owned, never had anything on lease or credit. The only money we owed was for the house, but even then, we had a relatively small mortgage, only about twenty grand at the time. Of course, the idiots took the house from us when I couldn’t keep up the payments.” His head slumped again. “That was the kids’ inheritance. Now what can I leave them or offer them? Nothing, a big fat zero, all because an idiotic inspector refused to do his job properly.”

  “I agree and can’t apologise enough for what you’ve been through the last fifteen years. Did either you or Anne see anyone hanging around your house in the weeks or months prior to that fateful evening?”

  “I can’t recall anyone. You think someone might have stalked Anne for a while?”

  “It’s possible. What about at work? Did Anne ever mention that someone was showing her more attention than they should have?”

  “No. She had a great working relationship with everyone at the factory, both on the production line and in the canteen. Hang on a sec—I’m lying. I had to warn one of her colleagues off.”

  “Warn him off? Why?”

  “I think he was a harmless enough chap, although very clingy. Used to ring the house all the time, kind of pissed me off in the end, so I put a stop to it, verbally.”

  “Can you remember his name?”

  “Endecott, something like that, I believe.”

  “Brilliant, we’ll visit the factory and see what we can find out. It’s asking a lot. Probably most of the staff will have moved on by now, but we might strike lucky. It’s certainly worth a try anyway. Is there anything else you can think of? You said you didn’t socialise much, but did either of you belong to a club of any kind? That you attended either separately or together maybe? A gym, squash club, perhaps go swimming together as a family?”

  “Yes, we used to go to the local swimming pool together, but we’d never experienced any problems, not in the slightest.”

  “Okay, is there any other route you think we should go down? Even if you think it would be silly to consider it, just tell us.”

  He shook his head firmly. “No, nothing else. I can’t believe someone we knew could be capable of such brutality.” His eyes filled up with tears yet again.

  “I know how upsetting this is for you. Forgive me, I’m sorry to have to put you through it all again, but it’s the only way we’ll get to the bottom of what truly happened. One last thought… what about at school? When dropping the kids off to school, did either one of you have a run-in with one of the other parents?”

  “Not that I can think of. It’s unthinkable that someone deliberately targeted Anne.”

  “Maybe it was just a random attack. Do you recall either reading or hearing about any other attacks in your area around that time?”

  “I can’t recall anything like that. We lived in a respectable neighbourhood, where things like that never occurred. Which is why the community turned on me,
I guess. Once the police started sniffing around, searching the house en masse and carted me off to the station for questioning, it was hard for our neighbours to see me in the same light as before. Who could blame them? I definitely can’t. I’m sure I would feel exactly the same way if the boot was on the other foot.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. I’d like to draw this meeting to a close now, if that’s all right with you, Craig. I’ll leave you my card. You have access to a public telephone in here, am I right?”

  Craig nodded.

  “Then I urge you to use it and call me if anything comes to mind after we leave. I also want to reassure you for a final time that we’ll do our very best to right the wrongs that have wrecked your life over the years.”

  “Thank you, both. I truly appreciate you coming to see me and taking on my case. I wish you luck going forward.”

  The prison officer approached and fiddled with the padlock to release Craig from the table, then he yanked the man to his feet.

  “Do you have to treat him like an animal?” Sally pleaded, hating the way the officer was manhandling Craig, who winced in pain as the man’s hands bit into his arms.

  “Whatever, lady. You ain’t got any jurisdiction in here.”

  “I’ll be having a word with the governor, believe me.”

  The officer glared at Sally and gave a nonchalant shrug. “Do what you’ve got to do, lady. Get back to your cell, Gillan.” He pushed Craig ahead of him. The poor man almost toppled over because he was unable to spread his legs apart sufficiently enough to keep his balance.

  Sally grabbed the officer’s arm. “I mean it. Either you treat him with respect, or I will make a formal complaint about you. Got that?”

  The officer pulled his arm away and grunted as he and Gillan set off back up the corridor to the cell wing.

  “Come on, Joanna. Let’s get out of here.”

  They followed the two men part of the way then turned right as the officer and Craig turned left. Sally glanced towards the left then stopped dead. Her heart pounded violently, so hard she thought it was about to explode. Standing on the other side of the bars was Darryl, her ex-husband. He had his back to her, but his build and hair colour were unmistakable. He was speaking to another man, who nudged him. Darryl turned around to look her way in what seemed like mega-slow motion. Sally knew she should have turned and rushed towards the exit, but it was as if she were mesmerised seeing him behind bars.