Witch

by O'Rourke, Tim

“But those tyre marks could have been made at any time...” Vincent put in.

  “They’re still fresh,” I came back at him. “And what are the odds of someone braking hard exactly in the same place where four people lost their lives?”

  “Perhaps whoever left those tyre marks broke hard because of a cow in the road or something,” Vincent tried to reason with me.

  “A cow!” I cried in disbelief. “What cow? There are no cows around here. Take a look. There are no cows in any of the nearby fields.”

  “Some other kind of animal, then?” Vincent suggested.

  “There wasn’t an animal out on this road,” I said, staring at him. “It was a horse and it was pulling a cart which was carrying Jonathan Smith and his family. And it wasn’t me who hit them!”

  “Who then?” Vincent asked.

  Turning in the road, I looked back in the direction of the farmhouse. “Farmer Grayson hit them, not me,” I breathed.

  “That reminds me,” Vincent suddenly said.

  I looked back at him. He was pulling something out of his coat pocket.

  “What’s that?” I asked, eyeing the folded sheet of paper he was now holding.

  “You asked me to do some digging on Michael Grayson,” Vincent said, unfolding the piece of paper. Handing it to me, Vincent added, “That’s a copy of Michael Grayson’s criminal record.”

  “Criminal record?” I whispered, staring down at the sheet of paper. It fluttered in the wind and I gripped it in my hands.

  “Michael Grayson has recently been released from prison, where he served ten years of a fifteen-year sentence for Grievous Bodily Harm,” Vincent explained.

  “GBH?” I breathed, trying to make sense of what I was hearing. “He couldn’t have been in prison. There must be some kind of mistake. Michael has been away in the Army for the last ten years.”

  “Not according to that,” Vincent said, pointing at the sheet of paper I held in my now trembling hands. “He got convicted of throwing a guy down a flight of stairs in a night club. Really nasty incident, apparently. The guy broke his back. Lucky to still be alive. That’s why Michael got such a lengthy sentence.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I whispered, shaking my head. In my heart I knew it made perfect sense. Michael had lied to me.

  “Michael Grayson was originally charged with attempted murder, the attack was that bad,” Vincent continued to explain. “But he eventually cut a deal with the CPS and he pled guilty to the lesser charge of GBH.”

  “But he told me he’d been in the Army,” I said, looking up from the sheet of paper and at Vincent.

  “You know him well then?” Vincent asked.

  “No, not really,” I said, pushing away images of Michael and me having sex. I suddenly felt sick in the pit of my stomach. How had I been so fucking stupid? How had I been so desperate? I felt cold all over at the thought that I’d been deceived by him. I’d had sex with a man who had been capable of nearly killing someone. I was meant to be a police officer, for Christ’s sake. I thought of my father, and my heart ached because I knew everything he had ever said about me was true. I was reckless and stupid. I was a screw-up, and not only had I let him down again, I’d let myself down like never before. Why had I always been so willing to give myself away? But I knew it had always been love I’d been looking for. The love I had never truly felt from my father nor my mother. He had always been so wrapped up in his career and my mother lost to her secret affairs. Where had I ever fit in to any of that? But I’d always had a choice. I could hate my parents for the mistakes they had made – but not for mine. I had to take responsibility for those.

  Shoving the sheet of paper back into Vincent’s hands, I turned and headed back down the road toward the farmhouse.

  “Hey, Sydney!” Vincent called after me. “Where are you going?”

  “I’ll see you later,” I shouted over my shoulder at him. “I’ve got to go and put right a mistake that I’ve made.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  With the wind blowing through my long hair, I marched up the path toward the farmhouse and thumped on the kitchen door. I heard movement from inside. My heart raced and my blood boiled. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so angry. The door swung open, Michael suddenly appearing on the other side of it. On seeing me standing there, his eyes lit up.

  “Hey, Sydney!” he beamed, his green eyes glowing. “Come in out of the cold. You look frozen through.”

  I pushed past him and into the kitchen. As usual, it was full of clutter. The kitchen table was covered in unwashed cups, plates, and littered with old newspapers. How had I ever even considered letting Michael try and have sex with me on there? I wondered angrily inside.

  “Let me take your coat,” Michael said, reaching for it.

  “I won’t be staying,” I snapped, slapping his hand away.

  “Is everything okay?” he asked, eyeing me.

  “No, everything is not bloody okay,” I hissed. “You lied to me!”

  “I lied to you?” Michael said, sounding surprised, but he couldn’t mask the sudden look of concern on his face.

  “You were never in the Army,” I said, fixing him with a fierce stare.

  “I wondered how long it would take for you to find that out,” he sighed, dropping onto a chair at the table. “I never wanted to lie to...”

  “Spare me the bullshit, Michael,” I snapped at him. “You lied to me because you nearly killed a man.”

  “I didn’t...”

  “Stop!” I said, raising my hand in the air. “I know exactly what you did. I’ve read your record. You were lucky not to have gone to prison for attempted murder. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I knew you would react like this,” he shot back. “You’re a cop.”

  “So why did you ever come on to me?” I came back at him.

  “Because you looked cute, that’s why,” he said. “I knew there was an immediate attraction between us – you felt it, too. I thought we might screw around once or twice and that would be the end of it. I’m hardly going to tell you I’m an ex-con while giving you one, am I? I was planning on telling you...”

  “When?” I sneered.

  “That’s why I asked if you wanted to get away from Cliff View for a day,” he reminded me. “I was going to tell you then, when we were on our own and we could really talk. I had no idea...” he trailed off.

  “What?” I barked.

  “I had no idea that I wouldn’t be able to get you out my head,” he said, staring at me. “Like I’ve already said, I honestly thought we would fuck once or twice – have some fun – and that would be it. So why would I tell you about my past? Have you told me all about yours?”

  “I haven’t tried to kill someone,” I shot back at him.

  “The guy was a jerk,” Michael said, standing up. Don’t stand there and judge me. You don’t know what happened, you weren’t there.”

  “No one deserves to be thrown down a set of stairs and have their back broken.”

  “Maybe not,” Michael said, “But the young girl he wouldn’t leave alone didn’t deserve to have that filthy animal stick his hand up her skirt all night long. I’d been sitting there drinking and watching him as he kept coming on to this young girl. She kept telling him to piss off, but he wouldn’t, and his mates were jeering him on. He started to get nasty with her. I couldn’t just sit back and do nothing. I left my seat and asked him nicely to leave the young woman alone. We got into a fight and I lost my temper. Yes, I did push him off me, but I didn’t know the staircase was there. He fell, and you know the rest.”

  “So why didn’t this damsel in distress give evidence for you?” I cut in.

  “She didn’t want to get involved,” he sighed. “That’s all the thanks I got for helping her out. I should’ve just sat there, sipped my beer, and watched just like everybody else. I spent ten years in prison.”

  “And the other guy gets to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair,” I snapped. I didn’t w
ant to see Michael’s side of the story. I didn’t want to feel sorry for him.

  “Don’t you think I haven’t thought about that every waking hour for the last ten years?” he growled. “I’ve paid my dues and I can’t take back what I did. We all make mistakes. I thought you would understand that more than most.”

  “And what is that s’posed to mean?” I spat.

  “You shouldn’t have been spread across this here kitchen table the other day, should you?” he said. “You shouldn’t have been drinking whiskey. You’re a law-abiding citizen – you’re a cop. A cop who dropped her knickers while on duty to have a quick fumble with a convict.”

  “You bastard,” I hissed, slapping Michael hard across the face. His head rocked backwards. The sound of my hand connecting with his face sounded like gunfire in the poky kitchen.

  Michael shot forward, grabbing my by the shoulders. The left side of his face looked red and sore. His eyes had clouded over, and the green had been replaced with a dull grey. I looked into them and could see his anger and pain. Is this how he had looked just before he had pushed that man down the stairs? Is this how he had looked when he pushed...

  “Oh, my God,” I breathed. “It was you...wasn’t it?”

  “What are you talking about?” he barked.

  “It was you who pushed Molly Smith into the well,” I whispered, shrugging his hands from my shoulders and stepping away from him. “You pushed her into that well just like you pushed that man down the stairs. It was you she was coming to meet that night...”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, taking a deep breath as if to calm himself. “I didn’t even know that girl.”

  “Yes, you did,” I said, “You knew her name. You knew her father. You told me he spoke kinda strange. Pronounced his words kinda funny.”

  “I said I knew of them,” Michael said. “I didn’t say I knew them.”

  “That’s why you and Molly kept your relationship a secret, because of your father,” I gasped.

  “What has he got to do with any of this?” Michael asked.

  “Your father hated that family,” I reminded him. “He called them witches. He told me that they were nothing but vermin – that they were thieves who kept breaking into his farm. Your father wouldn’t have been able to deal with the fact that his son had gone and fallen in love with one of them.”

  “Okay, so he didn’t like that family, but...” Michael started.

  “It wasn’t the Smiths who were the criminals. It was you and your father,” I whispered as everything seemed to slot into place.

  “My father’s not a criminal,” Michael snapped at me.

  “Yes, he is,” I said. “It wasn’t me who killed the Smiths out on the road, it was your father.”

  Michael looked at me, his face ashen. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again.

  “What’s going on here?” someone suddenly thundered from behind me.

  Startled by the deep, booming voice, I looked around to discoverer Michael’s father standing in the open kitchen doorway.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Sydney was just leaving,” Michael said, taking me by the arm and guiding me towards the door.

  “I’m going nowhere,” I said, shrugging off his arm.

  “Oh, no?” Grayson said, eyeing me. “So what seems to be the problem, officer? You are here in an official capacity, aren’t you...or is this some kind of social visit?” His large bald head looked ruddy and weather-beaten as he closed the door on the cold air blowing into the kitchen.

  Before I’d the chance to answer, Michael cut in and said, “Sydney seems to think I was somehow connected to the death of that girl who fell into the well.”

  “Her name was Molly Smith,” I reminded him, shooting Michael a glance. “She did have a name.”

  “What in the hell are you dragging that up for?” Grayson huffed. “That was years ago.”

  “Sydney seems to think I was having some secret relationship with her and that I pushed her into that well,” Michael said, not taking his eyes from me.

  “Is this for real, or some kind of joke?” Grayson snapped. Taking a step closer to me, he added, “Is this because my son went to prison for being in that fight? He’s paid society for his crime. Anyway, who says the girl was pushed? There was an investigation at the time. It was an accident. The girl fell into the well. It would ‘ave never happened if she hadn’t been trespassing on me land.”

  How could I tell Grayson and Michael it was Molly who had told me she had been pushed? How could I explain she had told me in a dream I’d had about her being at the bottom of that well? How did I tell them I knew she had been meeting someone on their farm that night? I only knew that fact because of the statement my father had tried to bury, but which Vincent had discovered hidden away in the filing room back at the police station. If I said that, then I implicated my father.

  “So c’mon, officer, tell us what makes you think that girl was pushed?” Grayson demanded.

  I looked at him, then at Michael. I felt a fool standing in their kitchen with a bunch of half-cocked theories. Theories I couldn’t prove without making myself sound like a crazy bitch and telling them my father was bordering on committing police corruption, if he hadn’t crossed that line already.

  “I think you should leave now,” Michael said. He didn’t sound angry, just disappointed and confused. I looked at him and could see the hurt in his eyes.

  I looked at Grayson. “So what were you doing last Wednesday afternoon?” I asked.

  “Is this some kind of police interview?” he grunted, rolling up the sleeves of his checked shirt to reveal his meaty forearms.

  “Please could you answer the question, Mr. Grayson,” I shot back.

  “I can’t remember,” he said, pushing out his chest defiantly and rolling back his powerful-looking shoulders. “What has it got to do with you anyway?”

  “Sydney believes it was you who killed that family out on the road the other day.”

  With his eyes bulging in their sockets like two large rocks, Grayson looked at his son, then back at me. “What!” he gasped. “What do you mean I was involved in killing those people?”

  “You disliked them enough,” I said. “You told me that they were witches and nothing but vermin.”

  “Just because I didn’t like their kind, it don’t make me no killer,” Grayson said, sounding flabbergasted. “What you say and what you do are two completely different things. You didn’t know them. They were strange – the lot of them. The old guy was the worst. You could barely understand a word he said, mixing all his words up and such. He sounded like that cartoon character Elmer Fudd, for Christ’s sake,” Grayson mocked.

  “Just because people are different – strange – as you like to put it,” I said, “doesn’t make them bad people.”

  “I didn’t kill them!” Grayson roared.

  “So how did you come by those dents and scratches on your four-by-four?” I quizzed.

  “So that’s what this is all about?” he sneered. “Can’t live with the fact that it was you who killed those people, so you come snooping around here looking for someone else to blame?”

  “How did you get those dents?” I shot back.

  With a look of exasperation on his face, Grayson leapt forward and gripped my arm. He shoved me across the kitchen and yanked open the kitchen door. It was twilight outside, and the sky was so overcast with bluish-black clouds, it looked like a piece of bruised and battered skin.

  “I’ll show you how I came by those dents and scratches,” he huffed, frogmarching me down the short, overgrown lane, past the parked 4X4, and to the wide gate which barred anyone from driving onto his property. “Look! Look! Look!” Grayson barked, pointing at the gate frame with one thick, grubby-looking finger.

  I pulled my arm free of his strong grip and looked at where he was pointing. At once, my heart sank and I felt foolish. The gate post was dented inwards, leaning to one sid
e where it had been struck. I could see that the bend in the metal frame was at the height consistent with being hit by the cattle grill on the front of his 4X4.

  “What have you got to say about that?” He glared at me. “Mm?”

  What did I have to say to that? What did I have to say about any of it? I looked at Grayson, then at Michael, who was now standing behind his father. Again he stared at me with that same look of bewilderment and hurt in his eyes.

  What had I done? I just wanted to curl up and crawl away.

  “So what have you got to say for yourself?” Grayson boomed, unwilling to let me off the hook, even though he had proved me wrong and left me feeling humiliated.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. What else could I say? It would seem I’d screwed up, yet again.

  “Sorry don’t cut it,” he breathed just inches from my face. “How dare you come onto my land and start making these wild accusations against me and my son! How dare you!”

  “Sorry,” I whispered again, unable to force myself to meet his stare.

  “I’ve got a good mind to ring your father and make an official complaint about police harassment,” he threatened.

  “Cut her some slack, dad,” Michael said, coming to my rescue. “I’m sure Sydney didn’t mean anything by it. I guess it’s been a difficult time for her lately – it can’t be an easy thing to come to terms with – what, with killing those people and all.”

  “Well, she better learn to live with it,” Grayson sniffed.

  “C’mon, dad, you’ve said your piece, let her be,” Michael said, trying to coax his father back towards the farmhouse.

  Grayson looked at Michael then back at me. “Okay,” he huffed. “But I’m warning you, if I see you back on my land, I’m going to make sure you lose your badge. Call yourself a copper? God only knows what your father must think of you? What a joke!”

  Grayson turned his wide back on me and stomped away, leaving Michael and me alone.

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said.

  Looking at him, all I could see was sadness in his eyes. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Michael,” I said.