Scorned

by Denver Murphy

  So sure had Kate been that the net was closing around her that she had been convinced the conversation would end with her being arrested. In a way, that would have come as a relief because at least she would have known where she stood. Instead DC Knight had gone on her way much as she had done before, and Kate was left wondering how soon she would be back with another barrage of impertinent questions. She had heard people speak of police brutality but had assumed it had only referred to them physically chastising their suspects. To Kate the form of abuse she was suffering was far crueller; it was mental torture and if she didn’t find some way to alleviate it, she was bound to crack eventually.

  ‘I’m going out,’ she declared, picking up the car keys again.

  ‘No!’ The uncharacteristic forcefulness in her mother’s delivery was enough to stop Kate in her tracks. ‘You can’t go out in that state; you’re liable to have an accident or something. At the very least you need to stay a while and calm down.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Kate responded, but not for the reasons stated. She realised now that thoughts of diverting DC Knight’s attention by giving her a list of stolen items had been a pathetic attempt to find an alternative to what needed to be done. In the face of such suspicion and mistrust there was only one way to create an effective distraction.

  ‘Right,’ her mother responded, clearly taken aback by the apparent sudden turnaround. ‘I’ll go and make us a nice cup of tea then.’

  As soon as her mother retreated to the kitchen, Kate bounded up the stairs. She would take her time to shower and make herself presentable. She would only have one shot at this but if successful there was every chance she wouldn’t have to see DC Knight again.

  Chapter Sixty-six

  The silence on their walk back to the car was enough of a contrast to PC Ramsey’s enthusiastic chattering on the way there for Ruby to know something was wrong. ‘You think I was too hard on her.’

  ‘In a way, ma’am,’ he responded, opening the passenger door and clambering in. ‘I could understand it if you confronted her with what we did round at her house, but you didn’t even go back over that stuff about reaction times and stuff.’

  ‘Is that what you think I should have done?’

  ‘I’m not saying that but I’m not quite sure what those other questions achieved.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Ruby replied. ‘What if I were to tell you I was probing for more weaknesses.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that would make sense but I’m not sure you found any. Unless I’m mistaken on that, then I don’t understand why you didn’t then revert to where we know there is the clear weakness.’

  ‘Okay then, let me find another way of putting it.’ Ruby was enjoying the exchange. It was an open discussion, devoid of any tension or competitiveness, and a welcome contrast to her recent dealings with Cooper. Ramsey seemed genuinely keen to learn and, having come to respect him in the few hours they had been together, Ruby was happy to test out her ideas on him. ‘Would it be fair to say we had been backing Kate into a corner with our earlier visit?’

  ‘Yes, but I think that’s my point, ma’am. Why didn’t we keep going?’

  ‘And achieve what? We already know that she’s lying about something and to revisit the same ground would show her our hand; until we know exactly what she was lying about or the reasons for doing so, our hand isn’t that strong.’

  ‘Okay, so you were trying to strengthen our hand first,’ Ramsey responded, nodding. ‘You know, like in poker, when you’re holding a pair and you’re waiting for the turn of the community cards to see if you can make three-of-a-kind…’

  ‘Do I look like a girl who plays a lot of poker?’ Ruby added a smile to soften the words. ‘But if I get the point you’re making.’

  ‘So, what then? We go again in the hope that the next turn of a card adds to what we’ve got?’

  ‘We could do that, or we could wait to see what she does next. She looked rattled when we arrived and even more so when we left. Considering we caught her in the process of going somewhere, perhaps it would be better now to let her show us her hand.’

  ‘Er, why are you starting the car then?’ Ramsey asked in response to Ruby switching on the engine.

  ‘Just to find a more discreet line of sight.’

  * * *

  ‘Would you mind doing me a favour?’ Ruby asked. It had only been twenty minutes since they had repositioned themselves and already she was getting fidgety.

  ‘What’s that?’ Ramsey replied, not taking his eyes off the view out of the windscreen.

  ‘Will you call up the station and see whether they’ve got the other suspect?’

  ‘What’s going on, ma’am?’

  ‘They’ve cut a deal with the female suspect in return for her giving up the location of the guy we didn’t manage to catch.’

  ‘And that’s a problem, is it?’

  Ruby thought about sharing her views on Lexie but couldn’t find the words to describe her intuition without it sounding far-fetched. Instead she decided to focus on the Jordan element. ‘As soon as they arrest him they’re going to seek to wrap this all up; dumping all the blame on him.’

  ‘And you think he might be innocent?’

  ‘Jesus Christ no,’ Ruby responded with a snort of bitter laughter. ‘I’ve seen him myself and I have no doubt he’s an evil son of a bitch.’

  ‘So, what is it then?’ Ramsey had finally turned to face her.

  ‘That’s a good question,’ Ruby responded, as much to herself as Ramsey. It was only now, away from Cooper and Nelson and with someone prepared to pose her probing questions, but only through curiosity rather than trying to feed one agenda or another, that she finally stopped to think about what it was she was doing. As affronted as she had been by Cooper’s threat, perhaps it had been born out of genuine concern. It was only now that she was beginning to consider that all this was simply a refusal to accept that she had been wrong.

  ‘I think I understand, ma’am,’ Ramsey said after a few seconds of uncomfortable silence. ‘Are you into football?’

  ‘I hate to conform to all the female stereotypes, but as well as not knowing all the rules to poker, no, I don’t follow football.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Ramsey responded, offering his own laugher this time – much purer and fulsome than Ruby’s had been. ‘It wasn’t going to be a complex analogy anyway. You see, I’m a Watford supporter. People sometimes ask me why I don’t follow one of the bigger teams, you know, like Manchester City or Liverpool or whoever. Well, I usually start going on about being a proper fan and how my whole family have always supported Watford, but the truth is I wouldn’t want to.’

  ‘I don’t really see how any of this is related.’

  ‘The reason why I don’t want to support any of them is that they expect to win, and not only that – they expect to win in style. Whereas for me, I couldn’t care less how Watford play as long as we get a win out of it. Usually I’m perfectly happy with a draw.’

  ‘Nope, I still don’t get it.’

  ‘What I’m saying, ma’am, is that if you were into football, I reckon you’d follow one of the big teams. In fact, I reckon you’d be an Arsenal supporter, content not to always get the three points as long as you play attractive football.’

  ‘Are you calling me shallow?’ Ruby demanded, despite Ramsey’s tone continuing to be friendly.

  ‘I’m not trying to insult you; in actual fact it’s something of a compliment. Arresting that suspect would be a result, and possibly a good one at that, but you want to make sure it’s the right result. No contentious penalties or dodgy own goals.’

  ‘I think I see what you’re getting at and, yes, whilst I couldn’t care less if Jordan cops more blame than is truly warranted, the flip side is that another murderer would have got away with it as a result.’

  ‘But the woman in custody couldn’t have killed Kate’s husband.’

  ‘No, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Jordan either.’

  ‘So
, it was Kate, then?’

  Ruby was about to reply but movement out of the corner of her eye drew her attention away from Ramsey. ‘Perhaps we’re about to find out,’ she said instead, pointing at Kate getting into a Honda Civic.

  * * *

  ‘She’s probably just going back to the house,’ Ruby said a couple of minutes later when it was clear that Kate wasn’t just popping to the local shops.

  ‘Well, she did say that’s where she was going earlier,’ Ramsey conceded before sitting up straight in his seat. ‘Perhaps she’s realised she’s left some crucial bit of evidence behind and has gone to stash it?’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Ruby replied. It wasn’t so much that she was disinterested but the last thing she needed was Ramsey feeding the hope that she was trying to prevent building inside her.

  ‘You know she said she was in the middle of changing the sheets? What if she was in bed with her lover and her husband got home early and there was a scuffle and the lover killed the husband and Kate is trying to cover it up. She stripped the bed to hide signs of their affair.’

  ‘Sounds plausible,’ Ruby admitted, ‘but that wouldn’t explain the other crime scene.’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘Sorry, there’s another thing I haven’t told you. When the gang attacked that couple in King Harry, there was another attack that night. I didn’t like the way the second one looked; there were key differences to the others. To cut a long story short, no one was interested in my concerns but if this one isn’t down to the gang, then...’ Ruby left the implication hanging.

  ‘Oh, so that rules out my theory,’ Ramsey said, clearly disappointed. ‘I mean, I get that there might be two sets of murderers in all this but three…?’

  ‘And yet, we still know that Kate’s been lying to us. Look, would you mind phoning the station again?’ As soon as they had set off in pursuit of the Civic, Ruby had finally got Ramsey to make the call. Units from Norfolk Police had been sent to scour the caravan sites around Great Yarmouth.

  ‘If you insist,’ he replied reluctantly, and Ruby knew even before he ended the call and turned to give her an update that there had been no more news on Jordan.

  ‘This is still kind of fun though, isn’t it?’ Ramsey said when they were halfway back to St. Albans. ‘Normally when we’re following a suspect, we’re trying to catch up with them rather than hanging back, all covert and everything.’

  ‘It’s boring if you ask me, especially as Kate seems determined to stay 10mph below whatever the speed limit is.’

  ‘We know where she’s going, why don’t we overtake and we can be all parked up and out of sight before she gets there?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ruby replied uncertainly. ‘I think it would be best to stay as we are.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right. For all we know she might be off to her boyfriend’s instead.’

  ‘Fuck it,’ Ruby said, flooring the accelerator and pulling out into the right-hand lane of the dual carriageway. ‘If we kept on following her, we’d have to hang back when we got to the house. At least this way we’ll see her when she gets out of the car. I want to see the look on her face when she visits the place her husband was murdered for the first time.’

  ‘What are you expecting to see?’

  ‘I hope for her sake it’s sorrow,’ Ruby replied dryly.

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  Kate had come back downstairs sufficiently composed that she managed to reject her mother’s request to accompany her without having to resort to insults. But as soon as she got in the car the emotions she had temporarily stemmed came gushing forth once more. She hated that she was being forced to do this but there really was no other way out. If it had been a straight choice, she would have happily traded her freedom for this but, in doing so, she would be turning Scott into some form of martyr. It’s one thing to be the victim of a random burglary but another altogether to have people believe he had been murdered in cold blood by his wife, especially when it was bound to come to light about him and Donna. Rather than understand that Kate had been left with no choice, the papers would paint her actions as one of jealous rage, where she was unable to accept that he had found love elsewhere. And what about poor Sadie, David’s wife? She would have been through enough these past few days without her world being tipped upside down all over again.

  But knowledge that she was doing the right thing, the only thing, didn’t stop Kate from feeling dreadful about what must be done. Part of her accepted that her sedate driving was as much about trying to put off the inevitable as it was not drawing attention to herself and ensuring that her tear-filled vision didn’t cause her to have an accident.

  Besides, it was only the beginnings of rush-hour and she was likely to have to wait around for a while anyway.

  Kate didn’t have the exact address but knew where the new bit of King Harry was and, once there, it didn’t take long to figure out which house it was. The police cordon may have been taken down, but the bouquets of flowers left by the front gates were as good as any signpost. She wondered if any had been left at her own house yet and what she would do with them when she finally moved back in.

  But seeing people’s tributes to the victims didn’t just stir up thoughts of home; it was yet another reminder of what she was being forced to do. Coming to King Harry had made sense; it was the site of an attack furthest from where she lived and striking again so close to one of their previous targets would back up the notion that the remaining members of the gang were brazen and remorseless.

  Kate did a U-turn further up the road so she would be pointing in the correct direction when making her escape. She would wait until she spotted the right person before getting what she needed from the boot.

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  ‘She should have been here by now,’ Ruby commented, the panic in her beginning to rise.

  ‘Maybe she stopped off to get something on the way.’

  ‘I don’t like this,’ she continued, as much in reference to Ramsey’s eternal optimism as the situation they were in. It was his fault they were sat here like this. ‘If she doesn’t turn up in the next ten minutes we’ll… I don’t know what we’ll do.’

  ‘I’m sure we’ll think of something. Maybe we could give her mum a call to see if she’s gone back to Hatfield.’

  ‘That’s a good idea.’

  ‘Is it?’ Ramsey responded excitedly, reminding Ruby of the gleeful way a dog returns a ball to its owner.

  ‘No, it bloody well isn’t!’ Ruby replied bitterly. ‘If you’re so keen on phoning anyone, why don’t you call the station again for an update?’

  ‘You could just radio it through,’ he muttered as he punched the redial button.

  ‘Yeah, and have everyone know how bothered I am,’ Ruby retorted before letting out a deep sigh. Here she was having some kind of petulant squabble with a rookie officer she had drafted in just this morning. If she wanted further indication of how shit her day had turned out, then this was it. Not for the first time she wished she was Danny with his swanky office and his PA to bring him hot drinks whenever he needed. She bet he’d never had to put up with this sort of crap; perhaps that’s why he had enough energy to come home and cook fancy dishes each day.

  She was so caught up in her own self-pity that it took her a while to notice the change in Ramsey’s demeanour.

  ‘Really, when?’ he asked, sitting up straight.

  ‘Give that to me!’ Ruby barked, snatching the phone out of his hand. ‘This is DC Knight, what the hell is going on there?’

  She listened with increasing shock as the evidently rattled officer in dispatch recounted events in Great Yarmouth. Officers had arrived at the third holiday park and it hadn’t taken long to track Jordan down. A quick check of the lone car parked next to a static home towards the back of the site revealed it had been stolen in central Luton the day before. They stormed the caravan and found him sat watching television, but the element of surprise hadn’t prevented Jordan from managing to inj
ure two officers, and by the sound of things, one of them severely.

  ‘I guess that’s its then,’ Ruby whispered. There was no doubt in her mind that they would look to pin anything they could on him. Deal or no deal, Lexie’s story about how he had used and abused her would sit nicely, and add weight to the official version of his apprehension which would look to ignore any failing on the part of the police.

  ‘Could you repeat that please, ma’am?’ the officer on the other end of the line requested.

  Ruby was about to hit the end button but then an idea occurred to her. ‘I need you to run the plate through the ANPR cameras.’

  ‘What plate?’

  ‘The car!’ Ruby shouted. ‘The bloody car he was using.’

  ‘I… I’m afraid I don’t have that facility on my system,’ came the nervous reply.

  ‘Then go get someone who has!’ she roared so loudly that Ramsey recoiled next to her.

  ‘What’s the matter, ma’am?’ he asked whilst Ruby stared angrily at the handset, willing the jobsworth in dispatch to hurry up.

  She was tired of having to explain things to him and listen to his ridiculous suggestions. All she wanted to do was wait impatiently until she was given the information she craved.

  ‘Are you trying to find out if Jordan went straight there?’ Ramsey offered meekly; the extent of his intuition causing Ruby to tear her eyes away from the phone’s screen.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied simply. What she really wanted to say was that she didn’t know what she wanted the result of her enquiry to be. To find out that Jordan hadn’t returned to St. Albans would been the vindication she had been seeking all day but there was a substantial part of her that would welcome a conclusion to everything. If Jordan had come back to St. Albans, then it was highly probable that he had carried out the attack on Kate’s house; the very house they were sat just a few doors away from. By the same token, then it was probably him too, and whoever else he had managed to recruit, that killed that man in his flat; the one that Lexie was apparently claiming to have no knowledge of.