HER HUSBAND’S KILLER an unputdownable psychological thriller full of breathtaking twists

by MARGARET MURPHY

  * * *

  Helen Wilkinson looked up from her work. She resisted the compulsion to stand and pull out a chair for Mick Tuttle. He smiled, hovering in the doorway, embarrassed, she knew, by the last conversation they’d had.

  ‘I came to, um—’

  ‘Offer your condolences . . .’ Helen hesitated. ‘I’m not sure that’s entirely appropriate. You know how things were between us.’

  Tuttle dipped his head, neither accepting nor denying the truth of what she said. There was a silence in which he seemed to be considering, then he came into the room, closing the door behind him. He leaned with his back to the door for a few moments, whether for support or to give himself time to gather his thoughts was unclear, then he walked to her desk — a few steps only, but the effort it took him seemed a deliberate letting down of the barriers and in a momentary revelation, Helen realized that this was a physical manifestation of trust. For Mick was hypersensitive to the impression his arduous, creaking, leg-swinging movements made on others. He caught the rug with his foot and Helen made an involuntary movement.

  He smiled, bending to straighten the rucked edge.

  ‘Nice rug,’ he said.

  ‘I brought it in from home,’ Helen said. ‘I couldn’t stand the institutional drabness of the place.’

  Tuttle nodded.

  ‘The apricots and blues are a little out of keeping with all this mahogany and oak,’ she said, filling the silence as he laboured into the room with babble, unable to stop the words from tumbling out of her mouth. ‘But at least it’s cheery.’

  She clamped her mouth shut just as he reached the chair by her desk and lowered himself into it.

  ‘I should have come earlier,’ he said, ‘but—’ He seemed at a loss for something to say, and Helen couldn’t trust herself not to launch into a new tirade of meaningless prattle, so she lifted her chin in acknowledgement and said nothing.

  He looked out of the window behind her and then nodded at her computer monitor.

  ‘Working on your research proposal?’

  ‘I was lucky to be given an extension,’ Helen said in answer. ‘I thought I’d finished it. But I’d prepared it as a presentation for the seminar.’ That seemed better. Calm and to the point.

  ‘How’s it going?’

  She glanced at the text onscreen. ‘I’ve had to cut a lot of the good stuff out — the explanatory, the background. I think it weakens the argument, but I think I can convince the selection committee.’

  A frown creased his brow for a second and she recognized it as confusion that she was discussing her research proposal quite coolly, and had expressed surprise at being granted an extension — even though the reason was the death of her husband.

  ‘Emphasize commercial sponsorship — they’ll go for it,’ Tuttle said, filling what was becoming a difficult silence. ‘If you want me to look at it—’ He stopped.

  Did he think that she might distrust the offer?

  ‘I’ll do a print-out now.’ Helen said, turning away and focusing on the screen. She clicked on the print icon and then, conscious of his close attention to her profile as she worked, she turned back, catching him staring. Tuttle looked away and she pretended not to have noticed. ‘It was just as well you didn’t come earlier,’ she said. ‘Ruth says I’ve been out of my mind.’

  ‘Understandable.’

  His eyes dark, almost black, searched hers. There were depths of meaning in that look Helen was not yet ready to fathom.

  ‘I also came to apologize,’ Tuttle went on. ‘What I said that day — it must have sounded like whining self-pity.’

  Helen’s mind switched to the morning of their previous encounter. Monday morning. The day Edward had died. It was something over which she had no control, this instant replay: virtual reality. She watched it as a bystander as it played in her mind:

  * * *

  ‘I’ve just had my interview.’

  Helen takes a breath. She can imagine how Edward had treated him. ‘I’m sorry.’ The words are a reflex, a reaction to his evident distress, and they so inadequately convey her feelings that she blushes.

  He runs his fingers through his hair and Helen notices with too-rapt attention how thick and dark it is. Mick is deep-chested, handsome — in some ways like Edward. But there is a sensitivity, a compassion in Mick Tuttle that Edward lacks entirely.

  ‘He told me that reclamation of colliery spoil was old hat. Definitely out, he said. As if conservation is some kind of trend to go in or out of fashion. He asked me if I’d heard that just about all of the deep-pit mines in Britain had been closed.’

  Helen draws up a chair and sits opposite Mick. ‘What about open-cast mining?’ she asks.

  ‘That’s what I said. He laughed. Suggested I look for a more promising area of reclamation.’

  She feels a thud of hurt on his behalf. ‘Mick, I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Talk to him,’ Mick urges. ‘He’ll listen to you.’

  Helen looks, startled by the frankness of the request, into those dark eyes. His face, which is normally so controlled, as if denying the effort each step costs him, is flushed with agitation.

  ‘I really don’t—’

  ‘It’s not like I’m asking you to fiddle the departmental budget,’ he says, with such sudden anger that she sits up, increasing the distance between them. ‘I’m sorry, Helen. I know it’s not your fault but — you know what he said to me? “You wear those callipers like a badge of distinction, Dr Tuttle. But in my book, there are only two criteria for selection: academic excellence and commercial viability.”’

  Helen feels a wave of hatred for her husband. She hears Edward’s voice as clearly as if he had been in the room, calling Mick by the name he uses only in the privacy of their home: ‘The cripple.’ A simultaneous image floods her visual cortex — a knife slicing neatly through the intercostal muscles, meeting the smooth, slippery resistance of heart muscle, puncturing it with a faint pop.

  ‘I do everything I can to make people look at me instead of at these!’ Mick slaps his knees and Helen winces at the rattle of his metal callipers. ‘So I’m asking you to try and convince him.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can convince him on my own behalf, Mick. What makes you think I can argue your case for you?’

  * * *

  ‘I acted like a brat, storming out like that,’ Tuttle said.

  ‘Edward had that effect on people,’ Helen said, shaking herself out of the daydream, the action replay. ‘He made us all act out of character, one way or another.’

  Mick stood, and Helen wondered if she had offended him again. Then he picked up the freshly printed text of her proposal and said, ‘I’ll phone you when I’ve had a read through.’ He made his way to the door and stood looking at her for a few moments. ‘If you need me—’ he began.

  ‘I know where you are.’

  He stared thoughtfully at her as though he doubted that she would ask for help. ‘Or I could pop by, see how you are.’

  Helen felt a small contraction of her heart. Mick Tuttle didn’t just ‘pop by’ anywhere. In the first five weeks of the academic year he set up in the lecture hall before most of his students had stumbled to the refectory for breakfast. He volunteered for the early lectures so that he could be there before they started drifting in, he remained seated throughout and waited until they had all left before packing up to leave. He once told her that his first tutorials were make or break for most of his tutees: either they had already accepted him as a person and it was no big deal, or they were offended that they had been tricked all this time by a cripple.

  Helen blinked, realizing that she had let another silence develop, that he must have seen her drift off like some sad psychotic. ‘Yeah,’ she said, rallying. ‘Fine. I’ll make us some coffee.’ She tried to adopt the same careless tone Mick Tuttle had tried. And failed, as he had failed.

  * * *

  ‘I’ve just been talking to your boss.’

  Hackett slowed his pace, half tur
ned, waited for Ruth Marks to catch him up. He had chance to appraise her in the fifteen metres or so distance between them. Rangy, lean, fit. A woman who chose clothes for comfort and warmth, rather than fashion; today she was wearing faded jeans with ankle length, low-heeled boots. The blue check of her brushed cotton shirt was mismatched by the brown wool of her sweater.

  ‘You know,’ she said as she drew level, ‘if I had a German Shepherd with eyes that shade, I’d have it put down.’

  Hackett bit the side of his cheek. ‘I take it you didn’t get on too well,’ he said, electing understatement as a defence.

  ‘He’s mad as a rabid hound and twice as dangerous. Are you on your way to hassle some other poor bastard or do you have a moment?’

  Hackett was not in the mood for idle chat. He had just finished interviewing David Ainsley, who had confirmed that his wife and Professor Wilkinson had been having an affair. Ainsley claimed to have known nothing about it until the news article, and said he wouldn’t have the first idea how to break into a colleague’s computer. But then he would say that, wouldn’t he? DI Nelson had counselled diplomacy in the matter of the Apocalypse file. ‘Listen carefully and wait for someone to slip up,’ he’d said. Meanwhile, they would ask the computer services department to locate whose PC had been used to modify the file.

  Hackett was weary; his home was not the normal haven of quiet and comfort because of his mother’s frequent calls, and the new argumentativeness in Lisa. He was worried about Daniel, as well; he had become secretive, evasive, refusing to tell them where he had been the previous night. ‘Just out,’ he’d said. The fact that this case was keeping him away from home was not helping the situation.

  ‘You’ve given your statement to DI Nelson, Dr Marks,’ he said. ‘I’m sure that will do.’

  ‘Please yourself.’

  Something in her manner made him ask, ‘You have made your statement?’

  ‘I made a statement.’ She gave him a level stare. ‘I told him bugger all.’

  Hackett found her constant amusement obnoxious. He took a breath, ready to say what he thought of her light-hearted dismissal of their murder investigation, but she spoke again before he had a chance to begin:

  ‘I’m sorry, Sergeant, but I don’t like him. He has crazy amber eyes and a nasty mind.’ She paused, as if regretting the passion with which she had spoken. He thought he discerned a slight shrug, then she resumed in a more bantering tone, ‘Your eyes, on the other hand, are a very nice shade of green. Cats’ eyes. Sexy, if you want to know.’

  ‘So my wife tells me.’

  Ruth Marks laughed. She edged closer and whispered. ‘It’s all right, Sergeant. I’m not going to ravish you — you’re not my type.’

  Hackett huffed a little laugh. ‘All right, I can give you ten minutes.’

  He conducted the interview in the college refectory, partly because it was lunchtime and partly because it was the place Nelson was least likely to turn up.

  ‘So,’ Hackett said, trying not to show surprise at the four doughnuts Ruth Marks had picked up from the buffet. ‘What can you tell me?’

  ‘What do you want to know?’ she asked, biting into a doughnut and unselfconsciously licking the sugar from her lips as he watched.

  Apparently, she wasn’t going to make it easy for him. ‘Tell me about Professor Wilkinson,’ he said.

  ‘An unmitigated, selfish egocentric shit.’

  ‘The newspapers are carrying a story about an affair—’

  ‘Privatization has gone too far if you’re relying on the tabloids to direct your enquiries,’ Ruth said, sinking her teeth into the jam centre of the doughnut and groaning with pleasure.

  Hackett smiled obligingly and began on his sandwich to give himself time to think and Ruth Marks an opportunity to say more. She chewed thoughtfully and then nodded, pouching the mouthful of doughnut into her cheek and mumbling ‘Clara Ainsley.’ Noting his surprise with a self-satisfied smirk, she added through a doughy mouthful: ‘Clara and Ed had been at it for a year or more.’

  ‘And his wife didn’t suspect?’

  ‘Suspicion of adultery is one thing, proving it is another. And Ed was so convincing he sometimes fooled even himself.’

  ‘You knew him well?’

  ‘Too well.’ She took a swig of black coffee and swallowed. Hackett had to look away; there was an indecency in the way she abandoned herself to the enjoyment of her food, cramming the sweet, vanilla-scented cakes into her mouth. ‘Is that why you’re leaving?’ Hackett asked.

  For a moment Ruth seemed confused, as if working through the idea in her mind. She picked up the third doughnut and licked it, as a child might lick an ice cream. ‘It that why I’m leaving . . . ?’ she repeated, then bit thoughtfully into the doughnut, taking time to suck the jam from between her fingers. ‘Oh, you mean . . .’ She wiped her face and hands with a paper napkin, laughing into it. ‘My reasons for leaving are purely academic. I’m afraid Ed wasn’t my type, either.’

  ‘And what were his eyes like?’ Hackett asked, surprised and amused to find himself flirting with this wide-mouthed, blunt-talking, messy eater.

  ‘Brown, like velvet. But if you caught him when he wasn’t ready — when he hadn’t time to strike a pose — when he was being himself—’ She shrugged. ‘They were flat and dead — the inward-looking eyes of an arrogant narcissist.’

  ‘And Helen Wilkinson? Do you like her?’

  ‘I adore Helen.’ It was a simple statement of fact. ‘Everyone does who knows her well. Ask her students.’ She went on eating, apparently unaware of the effect her words had had on Hackett.

  ‘If you care so much about her, don’t think that you should have told Dr Wilkinson of her husband’s infidelity?’

  Ruth laughed, blowing sugar crystals from the last doughnut. ‘As a friend, you mean?’ She bit, chewed, swallowed hard. ‘Helen didn’t need telling, any more than David Ainsley needed telling about Clara. Helen knew.’ She chewed the next bite more slowly, her expression thoughtful.

  ‘I saw them once — Edward and Clara — by the river. They were having a picnic. He was pretending to be asleep. Just lay there, looking pretty, driving her wild making out he couldn’t feel her kisses, her caresses, her plaintive, humiliating pawing of that splendid body of his.’ She caught the sergeant’s startled look and added. ‘What I’m trying to tell you is the man was a sadist. A subtle one, perhaps, but no less damaging for that. If I sound bitter, it’s because I’ve seen what Edward did to people.’

  ‘Why didn’t Dr Wilkinson confront him?’

  ‘She did, more than once. Which is more than most women would have the courage to do, given Ed’s temper.’

  ‘He was violent?’

  ‘Physically, no. But I’ve seen him lacerate a few tough hides with that tongue of his. Edward Wilkinson made it his business to find a person’s weak spot and he would attack it without compunction.’

  Hackett listened to this, thinking how Wilkinson’s cutting remarks must have filleted the delicate tissue of this strangely insecure community.

  ‘You didn’t like him?’

  Ruth laughed. ‘You have a genius for understatement, Sergeant. The question is, did anyone? Except Clara, that is — and she’s a fool. Ed Wilkinson was despicable.’ She sucked her thumb thoughtfully for a moment.

  ‘Clara,’ she said again. ‘Perhaps she’s not so big of a fool as I’d thought.’

  Hackett waited and Ruth ran her tongue between her gums and her upper lip. ‘Valerie Roberts worked as Edward’s secretary for ten years, putting up with his sarcasm and his unreasonable demands on her time, smoothing ruffled feathers for him, getting him to where he needed to be — lectures, meetings, or mistresses’ beds — on time, properly prepared.’ She waited for the distasteful reality of her meaning to hit home, then went on: ‘And he was planning to get rid of her and install that silly, vain little bitch, Clara, in her place.’

  Hackett felt a tingle run from the back of his neck and down both arms. How t
he hell did she know all this? What was Ruth Marks’s relationship with Professor Wilkinson?

  ‘Ed felt safe discussing sensitive issues with me,’ Ruth said quickly, as though she’d sensed his suspicion. ‘Ed was a sucker for glamour, you see. And before long, I’ll be doing glamorous research on state-of-the-art technology in that most glamorous of locations, the USA.’ She smiled at him over the rim of her coffee cup. ‘He told me things he probably never even told Helen.’

  Hackett stared at her. ‘You realize you’ve removed Clara Ainsley’s motive for killing Edward?’

  ‘The fact that he told David he was not to have his contract renewed? God forbid that I should put that round-heeled slut in the clear.’

  So, she knew about Ainsley’s dismissal, too. Could Ruth Marks have access to the professor’s password? And did she feel sorry enough for Valerie Roberts to have changed the Apocalypse file entries?

  Ruth was playing with a little mound of sugar on her plate, all that remained of the doughnuts. ‘Try this,’ she said, drawing the crystals together into a small, slightly pink-tinged peak. ‘Clara thought Ed was going to dump her.’

  ‘Why would she think that if he’s just offered her a job working closely with him?’

  She tilted her head on one side, working on the sugar mound. ‘Ed played the game by his own rules. He might not have told her — kept it as a surprise. David gets home from his interview with God on Monday, tells her he’s out of a job, she assumes that goes for her, too.’

  Hackett watched, fascinated and repulsed, as she took a pinch of the sugar mound and trickled the sticky crystals onto the tip of her tongue.