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

by MARGARET MURPHY

  ‘Ed would have told her the good news eventually,’ she said. ‘But it was his way to withhold information; to make the people under him sweat a little—’ She paused. ‘Which when you think of it, was literally true for Clara. It would be typical of him to let Clara think he was about to dump her, so Clara would be more grateful when he did offer her the job — there’s nothing like gratitude to put a woman in a giving mood. But what if he didn’t get chance to tell her? What if she stormed round to his place and topped him before he had chance to explain?’

  Hackett stared. ‘You really don’t like Mrs Ainsley, do you?’

  Ruth laughed, slapping sugar grains from her hands onto her plate. ‘Ask her where she was on Monday afternoon, Mr Hackett.’

  Chapter 11

  Isaac Smolder wrote in his diary: ‘I saw Helen standing in the quad this morning. She was talking to that policeman. She nodded her head, smiling in that sad, sweet way. I don’t think she was listening to him — not really. She hadn’t put on an overcoat and was shivering. Her breath condensed around her face as she talked, turning back, caressing her skin. I felt a stupefying surge of emotion. I wanted to go to her, to put my arms around her. To make her warm. Foolish, really: one shouldn’t go against one’s nature, it only brings trouble, complications.’

  Although he was close by, she hadn’t seen him. He had found this difficult: the need to make contact was becoming stronger, more urgent. He thought that she might understand, but human emotion being something of a mystery to him, he was unwilling to make this bold step, for fear of spoiling what was, for the time being, a delightful indulgence.

  He knew that his preoccupation with Helen was becoming an obsession, but he could not help himself. He wondered what it would be like to experience her senses, emotions, urges. He had a dizzying notion that he would like to be inside her head, to feel the shock of synaptic electricity. Would it be different, seeing the world as Helen saw it? Watching her, unobserved, from his vantage point above the quad, her delicate gestures, her aching vulnerability, he thought that for Helen the world must seem a terrifying place.

  * * *

  The door to Helen Wilkinson’s office opened and Detective Inspector Nelson slowed his pace a little. He made a mental note — the guy with the callipers was on his way out. Tuttle closed the door behind him then turned away, and Nelson watched him start his slow journey down the corridor.

  Dr Wilkinson’s office was opposite the staircase and Nelson glanced at the fire doors as he drew level with them; a survival instinct he’d retained from earlier and more dangerous days when he had spent time in the drugs-ravaged housing estates. He saw a flicker of movement, a face pulled back from the wired glass of the door. Nelson shoved the door hard, grunting with satisfaction at the indignant cry of pain.

  ‘You bloody idiot! Who do you think you are?’

  ‘I think I’m Detective Inspector Nelson, Cheshire CID. Who do you think you are?’ Nelson turned a nasty smile on the scrawny looking youth, his eyes flashing an amber warning.

  ‘Oh, I — I’m sorry, I didn’t . . .’ Then, realizing he hadn’t identified himself, the youth said. ‘Ellis. John Ellis. I’m just a PhD student. I really don’t know — that is I didn’t know Prof Wilkinson very well.’

  Nelson raised his eyebrows, amused. Ellis, he thought. Referred to the Senate House Overview Panel. And who’d asked him for his life story, any road? ‘You know his wife better do you?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Or is she your supervisor — isn’t that what you call it?’

  Ellis’s laughter sounded brittle in the shrill acoustics of the stairwell. For a fleeting moment, Nelson saw someone else, and flinched at the recognition. ‘No, nothing like that.’ Ellis’s Adam’s apple bobbed. ‘I — Dr Mallory is my supervisor. I . . . er . . . I was just passing and—’

  ‘Dr Mallory? But his office is in the other building, across the quad. Surely you can’t have been just passing.’ Nelson could sense terror in the boy — and so far, he’d been quite polite. Ellis blinked.

  ‘Shall we begin again?’ Nelson asked softly. ‘Why were you about to visit Dr Wilkinson?’

  Ellis opened his mouth to speak, but another voice carried, echoing up the stairwell: ‘He came to pay his respects.’ Nelson knew the voice — even on such short acquaintance, Dr Marks was not an easy woman to forget.

  ‘Seems to be a lot of it about,’ Nelson observed, thinking of the labouring figure of the crippled bloke retreating down the corridor a few minutes earlier.

  ‘What?’ said Ruth. ‘Respect?’ She appeared on the second landing, her shoes making short rasping sounds on the stone tiles of the steps. ‘Nice to hear a copper say that. You’re not one of the hang ’em and flog ’em brigade then, Inspector?’ She was smiling.

  Nelson wondered if she used this strategy as a regular thing, wrong-footing the opposition — diversionary tactics. Well, he wasn’t about to enter into a philosophical discussion with Ruth Marks. He turned to Ellis who stood sweating, trapped between the handrail and the door. He looked guilty as sin.

  ‘You were about to tell me why you were here.’

  ‘It’s like Dr Marks said. I’m here to—’

  ‘Pay your respects.’ Nelson’s gaze flicked from the woman to the youth. ‘Like Dr Marks said.’ He stared the boy down, which was not difficult, but Ruth Marks looked back at him amused, interested. Nelson pulled open the door. ‘Don’t let me keep you, Mr Ellis.’

  Ellis blanched, glanced down the stairwell.

  ‘I was about to visit Dr Wilkinson myself, but I’ll wait till you’ve paid your respects.’ He saw the whites of Ellis’s eyes as he looked to Ruth Marks for help, but this time, inexplicably, she held back, apparently content to watch the play unfold.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll bother—’

  ‘No,’ said Nelson. ‘I insist. We can’t have you making such a long journey for nothing now, can we?’

  Ellis wiped his upper lip. Nelson could see he was seriously considering making a break for it, but abruptly he subsided, meekly edging past Nelson through the fire door which the inspector considerately held open for him. He knocked at Helen Wilkinson’s office door — a fumbled, multiple rap because his hand was shaking too badly to control it. Nelson listened to Ellis’s mumbled message while staring at Dr Marks. Ruth stared back, a look of open curiosity on her face. Ellis shuffled out of the room a few moments later, blushing to the roots of his hair.

  Nelson could only imagine Dr Wilkinson’s bewilderment at the visit. He stood square in front of the fire doors so that Ellis had to edge around him.

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to come back later if you’re after paying your respects to Dr Wilkinson,’ Nelson told Ruth. ‘I’ve got a few questions I’d like to ask her in private.’

  Ruth stared past him at the nameplate on the office door. White etched on black. ‘No problem,’ she said, the corners of her mouth curving up into a smile. ‘I’ve just remembered something I need to do.’

  She caught up with Ellis in the courtyard. He was almost in tears. ‘Bastard!’ he hissed.

  ‘Take it easy,’ Ruth said, putting a hand on his arm.

  He jerked away. ‘Bloody bastard!’ he repeated, but he slowed up a little. ‘She looked at me like I was mad.’

  Ruth laughed explosively, throwing her head back and catching, from the corner of one eye, a blue patch of sky in the jumble of grey and white cloud over the quad.

  Ellis stopped, jammed his hands into his trouser pockets and stood hunched over her like an overgrown schoolboy. ‘What’s so bloody funny?’

  ‘I was just thinking,’ Ruth said through her laughter, ‘it’d be a nice change for Helen, looking at someone like they’re mad instead of vice versa.’

  Ellis walked on, muttering.

  ‘Okay.’ She shrugged. ‘You don’t think it’s funny.’

  They crossed the courtyard, avoiding the rainwater puddled on the Yorkshire stone flags, hunching their shoulders against a fresh sp
attering of sleety rain. The foyer of the zoology building smelled of wet umbrellas and formaldehyde and years of dissections. The fish lingered for the greatest time: skate and mackerel, occasionally squid, always slightly off because the students’ inexperience led to dissections taking days instead of hours. Some were returned to the freezer; after several sessions they dissolved into a sodden mush.

  Ruth breathed deeply and then asked, ‘So why were you visiting Helen?’

  In the gloom of the poorly lit foyer she thought she saw Ellis twitch. ‘Nothing. No reason. I just — I wanted to ask her about my research proposal.’

  Ruth moved in closer, trying to read his expression. The foyer was walled in on either side by thick sandstone. Before and behind were heavy oak doors, and the only light was from two dim lamps set high in the ceiling.

  ‘Look, I know I told you Mallory wouldn’t be any use to you, but what makes you think Helen’d be any more help?’

  Ellis looked over her shoulder, his feet moved restlessly, and his lower body pointed at an angle away from her. ‘I suppose I thought Dr Wilkinson might — might know something.’

  ‘About what?’ Was he blushing? His body language suggested extreme unease, but the inadequate lighting protected him from close scrutiny. Ruth quelled an urge to drag him into the entrance hall and hold him under the lights. Ellis stirred himself under the intensity of her stare.

  ‘My research grant finishes in the summer. I was hoping to ask her about the availability of posts here. Interview tips, that sort of thing.’

  ‘From Helen?’

  If anything, his head sunk even lower.

  Ruth shrugged. ‘All right, why were you lurking at the top of the stairs? Why didn’t you just go into her office and speak to her?’

  He fiddled with his tie, then brought his hand down, trying to control the nervous restlessness of his movements. ‘Dr Tuttle was in there. I didn’t like to interrupt. Anyway, he makes me uncomfortable. I never know what to say to him.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Look — I have to go. Thanks for — you know — with that bastard Nelson.’ He hurried off through the heavy doors and ran up the central staircase as if Ruth might grab him by the scruff of the neck and drag him back. She watched him go and mused that the acronym SHOP might have another, quite different meaning.

  * * *

  Ellis ran on, past the postgraduate research laboratory, down the corridor, sweating. Tuttle had been with her. Mick Tuttle had been waiting in Mrs Roberts’s office when he had left after his interview with Professor Wilkinson. He must have heard the row. Did he know? What had he told her? What had the prof told her? ‘Christ, what am I going to do?’ he whispered.

  He ran up another flight of stairs, out of breath, close to tears, trying to recall exactly what had been said. Not enough, perhaps, on its own to implicate him, but if Tuttle had seen him in the labs when he should not have been there, he might make connections.

  * * *

  When the doorbell rang, Helen was standing at the bedroom door. She thought she had heard something. A noise. Something. The police had taken away the bloodstained bedclothes and duvet. Ruth had done her best to remove the stain from the mattress, had washed and turned it, had put fresh sheets and blankets on the bed, but Helen could see through the layers to the darkening rusty patch. X-ray vision. The stain would remain forever. On the mattress. In this room. On her conscience.

  She shuddered as the bell rang again, more furiously. Half a dozen reporters had been waiting for her at the college gates. The security staff had kept them out, but they could not protect her beyond the walls of the college and the reporters had followed her home, continuing their constant barrage of questions as she walked to her front door. Questions about Edward. Their relationship. Had she known about his affairs? About Clara? Could she account for the knife that was missing from the kitchen?

  Helen covered her ears against the insistent ringing of the doorbell. She screamed: ‘Leave me alone!’

  Abruptly, the bell fell silent. A voice, thin, frightened called up to her. ‘Helen? Come to the door, love.’

  Her heart began pounding. She turned, ran down the stairs, fumbled the chain from the door and flung it wide open. Someone stepped forward before the rest of the hacks and Helen blinked in the light of the flash. A picture of her with a vague look of irritation on her face would later appear in the Chester Recorder under Dermot Molyneux’s by-line: Molyneux got.

  Helen turned to the woman on the doorstep.

  ‘You shouldn’t have come,’ she said. Then: ‘You’d better come in.’

  She took the overnight case without comment and set it down at the foot of the stairs. ‘You’ll be wanting a cup of tea,’ she said, falling unthinkingly into the old patterns of speech. ‘You must be perished.’

  ‘Your dad sends his love—’

  ‘What were you thinking of, coming on your own?’ Helen burst out.

  ‘I got the train straight through — and a taxi from the station to the door. I’m not incapable, Helen. I can fend for myself. He’d have come but—’

  Helen did not want to think about why her father didn’t feel able to make the short train ride from Manchester to Chester. ‘I think Ruth got some food in,’ she muttered, turning to the refrigerator.

  ‘Helen — love.’ Her mother waited while Helen continued, frowning, sorting the cheese from the cooked meats, extracting the salad from the bottom compartment.

  ‘Ready-washed — just open and serve.’ She read the instructions on the pack aloud as if they could ward off her mother’s questions.

  ‘We were worried — your dad and me, when you didn’t phone back. We tried to get through—’

  Helen started guiltily. ‘I unplugged the phone. Reporters. Crank calls . . . I meant to call again — to let you know I was okay.’ She shrugged helplessly. Her mother smiled at her over the jumble of packages on the kitchen table, her concern, as always, an accusation.

  ‘Are you?’ she asked. ‘Okay, I mean.’ This, said too brusquely, encouraging a simple affirmative in answer, as though any admission of illness or unhappiness — even in bereavement — would be judged an imposition, a play for attention.

  ‘Hmm.’ Helen shied away from her mother’s caress, saw the hurt in her eyes and regretted it but, powerless to recall the action, instead fussed over the preparation of food. ‘I can do you an omelette — or would you prefer a sandwich?’

  ‘Omelette’ll be fine. What do the police say?’

  ‘They don’t say anything. They just keep asking me questions I can’t answer.’

  ‘So they don’t have any idea who—’

  Helen faltered, feeling a cold wave of dread. She wanted to say Not unless you count me, but that would be too cruel, so she said simply, ‘No. They don’t seem to.’ She could not keep the tiredness, the exasperation from her voice and her mother withdrew. Helen knew that her mum must be thinking she was the cause, and part of her wanted to reach out — to comfort and reassure her mother. But she saw the small changes in her mother’s appearance that signalled her disapproval: a tightening of the lips, hands crossed protectively across her abdomen, and she knew that any attempt to engage her now would only drive wedge between them.

  She reached for the short-bladed knife she preferred for slicing vegetables and recoiled when saw the empty space in the knife block where the boning knife should be. The police had returned the others, but they had not found the missing boning knife.

  ‘Why don’t you make us a brew?’ Helen asked keeping her voice level, ‘While I sort this.’

  She chopped the vegetables while her mother performed her tea-making ritual. As she waited for the kettle to boil, she filled the teapot and two mugs with hot water from the tap. By the time Helen was ready to whisk the eggs her mother was standing at the sink poised ready to tip the hot water out of the pot and add the tea bags at the exact moment the kettle clicked off. Of course, she preferred proper tea, loose leaf, like they all used to have, but she could make do when n
ecessary. Helen watched her mother, to distract herself from thinking about the glutinous mix of yolk and mucilaginous albumen in the bowl, to take her mind from the smells of hot butter and fried onions and tomatoes in the pan. She would not allow herself to check for tell-tale flecks of red on the yolks, but added ground pepper and salt, a dash of Worcester sauce and a spurt of cold water, and began to beat the eggs.

  The thick, liquid sound, a comforting rhythm in childhood, now made her stomach lurch and roll with every flick of the wrist. She tried not to think of the slimy liquid falling from the fork in ropy strands, but focused on her mother, adding the water to the tea bags, stirring the pot, placing the lid on it, looking around for a cosy and finding none, making do with a tea towel.

  She’s grey, Helen thought. Quite grey. And she looks exhausted. Only a couple of years earlier her mother had been dark, as dark as Helen; people had mistaken them for sisters. Now Helen could see in her mother the grey ghost of her future self.

  ‘Can’t the police do anything about those vultures outside?’

  Helen was nibbling at a cheese sandwich while her mother worked through the omelette. ‘I don’t know that they want to.’

  Her mother’s anxious look of enquiry forced an answer. ‘A knife is missing from the block.’

  Her mother’s head began to turn, then snapped back to look at Helen. ‘They can’t think that you—’

  ‘Why not? I had motive enough. I even wanted to.’ This was dangerous territory, this honesty. Who was she spiting, her mother, or herself? She felt herself hurtling towards an admission she did not want to make.

  ‘Helen! You mustn’t talk like that.’

  ‘Why mustn’t I, Mother? It’s the truth. And it was just as I’d visualized it.’ Except for the blood! She closed her eyes, but the image of Edward dead, white sheets and dark blood, was too strong and she gasped, standing, picking up the plates, throwing her half-eaten sandwich into the bin and taking the plates to the sink.