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

by MARGARET MURPHY

  Her eyes opened and she was instantly awake, totally conscious. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. A faint noise, no more than a creak and a dull thump, had roused her. She held her breath, waiting, listening, and imagined the intruder on the other side of the door, also listening, tense. The phone was in the hall, and that would be cut off by the intruder, but perhaps she could get out of the house by the patio doors. She eased herself into a sitting position and then stood. A floorboard creaked under her foot and she drew in a breath, her heart pounding. The presence grew stronger, an almost palpable menace filled the room. Helen saw the door handle begin to turn. She hadn’t locked the door! She looked over her shoulder at the patio doors. If she got out she would be trapped in the back garden — the key to the side gate was in a drawer in the kitchen — would anyone hear her if she screamed for help? But if she surprised the intruder . . .

  She went to the side table by the front window and picked up a statuette in bronze, a slender woman in diaphanous, clinging silk, but surprisingly, comfortingly, heavy. Helen moved to the door and raised the figure. As the door opened, she prepared to strike, then gasped in dismay and relief as the tall, muffled stranger yelped:

  ‘What the f—?’

  Ruth.

  ‘Jesus, Ruth — I might’ve brained you!’

  Ruth took the bronze statue from Helen’s trembling hand and placed it on one of the bookshelves.

  ‘I should bloody well brain you,’ she growled. ‘So much for alcoholic oblivion. Know where I’ve been?’

  Helen stared at her friend. ‘Ruth, what the hell are you doing here? Why didn’t you call first — or at least ring the bloody doorbell?’

  ‘You sound pissed off, Helen.’

  ‘I am! You scared the shit out of me.’

  ‘Good,’ said Ruth. ‘Why didn’t you say something, Helen? Why didn’t you warn me?’

  ‘Warn you about what? For God’s sake, Ruth, I thought you were—’

  ‘What? The murderer? Or the dear departed Edward?’ Ruth laughed, and Helen shuddered at the harshness of the sound. ‘He wasn’t particularly dear to you, though, was he, Helen, though his departure was dearly, devoutly hoped for.’

  ‘Ruth, what is it?’ Helen had never seen Ruth so angry.

  ‘I’ve spent a couple of hours in the company of the lovely Sergeant Hackett, accounting for the fact that my computer was used to alter the Apocalypse file.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Oh? Is that it? I lie through my teeth to protect you and all you can say is “Oh”?’

  Helen went straight to the phone in the hall. There was no point in apologizing to Ruth in her present frame of mind. Neither Inspector Nelson, nor Sergeant Hackett were available — hardly surprising since it was the middle of the night, but the officer she spoke to suggested Helen come in and make a statement at a more acceptable hour. Helen hung up and turned to face Ruth.

  She was still angry, but Helen could see that some of the heat had gone out of it and she was left with an overwhelming sense of Ruth’s disappointment.

  ‘Don’t you trust me, Helen? After all we’ve been through together?’

  ‘Ruth,’ Helen reached out to touch her friend’s arm, but Ruth flinched from her.

  ‘You let me speculate about the people on the list — Valerie Roberts, Ellis, Mallory. Did you think it was some kind of game? Were you laughing at me, trying to make a fool of me?’

  ‘Ruth, no!’ Helen knew that Ruth’s flippant humour and twisted irony were defensive measures, an armour against the snipes of colleagues who regarded women scientists as little more than window dressing, light, mindless froth, and yet, with typical inconsistency, condemned her research as unfeminine, immoral, projecting from it a terrifying future of cyborgs and cybernetic control. ‘I just didn’t want to involve you. I thought I could help a few people by altering Edward’s records.’

  ‘David as well — such Christian good will, Helen.’

  ‘He has a child to support. And there’s nothing wrong with his work. Edward simply wanted him out of the way—’

  ‘Whose child?’

  Helen was stung, but hadn’t she thought the same herself? That Henry was Edward’s son?

  Ruth glared back, and Helen saw in her friend’s furious gaze how much she had wounded her.

  Helen sighed. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’ll try for oblivion together.’

  Ruth hesitated, then, shrugging, followed Helen through to her study. Helen poured two large measures of whisky and handed Ruth one glass. She took it begrudgingly.

  ‘You’re thinking what right have I to judge other people’s work,’ Helen said. ‘Who am I to say David should stay on and Mallory go, right?’

  ‘It might’ve crossed my mind.’ Ruth flopped into a chair and scowled at Helen.

  ‘The Senate were going to get rid of Mallory with or without Edward’s say-so. He wanted to break the news himself, that’s all, wanted Mallory to think it was all down to him.’

  ‘I saw him leaving Ed’s office on Monday,’ Ruth said. ‘It was not a dignified exit. Ed really was a bastard.’

  Helen had no argument with that. ‘If I’d changed Mallory’s entry,’ she went on, ‘the Senate would’ve been onto it immediately. While I was waiting for you in your office, Valerie Roberts came in. She was looking for you.’ Helen stretched out, pointing her toes, tapping her friend’s foot with her own. ‘Poor Ruth, folk are always seeking you out to unburden themselves. Valerie told me she’d lied to the police about Edward wanting to keep her on. She was afraid they’d find the file and suspect her — well, I know it’s ridiculous, but I wasn’t thinking straight.’

  Ruth sucked her teeth and refused to respond.

  ‘I was trying to put things right, Ruth. Trying to redress the balance a little. I thought maybe if the selection committee accessed the file they might be influenced — that they might respect Edward’s last wishes.’

  A glimmer of amusement lit Ruth’s features and Helen lifted her shoulders and gave a rueful smile.

  ‘I know,’ Helen said. ‘Pretty naive, huh?’

  Ruth’s faint spark of humour became a grin and they laughed. Ruth took a swallow of whisky and swilled it around her mouth before swallowing with a slight wince. ‘Thing is, Helen, they’re likely to suspect you, now. After all, you get a promotion out of it.’

  Helen almost choked on her whisky. ‘I didn’t change my entry, for God’s sake!’

  ‘The thing is,’ Ruth repeated, ‘will the police know that?’

  Helen chuckled. ‘For someone who’s at the cutting edge of intelligent computer systems you know very little about the basics of the software.’

  ‘I’m strictly wetware, the bio of bionics. And anyway, neural nets aren’t programmed in the same way as your standard UNIX system.’

  Helen bowed her head, conceding the point. ‘They can tell which entries have been edited and which haven’t.’

  ‘Well,’ said Ruth. ‘That’s all right, then. So long as you’re in the clear.’

  Helen’s smile faded. She wished she were in the clear, and that it was all as simple as checking databases — if her own memory were only as accessible! What was it in her that so mistrusted people that she hadn’t even told Ruth that she had altered the files? Was it because she feared that the hidden part of herself might become visible to Ruth, and that, through Ruth she would be forced to see the awful reality of what she was, and of what she had done?

  Chapter 17

  Nelson seemed subdued, perhaps even reflective. The brooding anger was there still, unmistakably, seething beneath the skin but it had an altered complexion. He looked ill, and when Hackett had commented, he said that he’d spent most of the night thinking. Hackett believed this, although he would have given Nelson’s ponderings another name: the inspector’s present fixation on Ellis as a suspect was becoming an obsession and Hackett believed it was more than tenuously linked with his boss’s visit to the hospital the previous evening.

 
The inspector had shaved, but badly, and his skin, always uneven in texture, and suffused with an angry glow, was nicked in several places and had a shiny, scalded appearance. His breath smelled of peppermints, but there were undertones of heavy alcoholic consumption and his movements were a little too controlled, a little too precise.

  Hackett understood Nelson’s frustration. It wasn’t as if they didn’t have anything to go on — there were, perhaps, too many people who would have liked to see Professor Wilkinson dead. And it wasn’t as if the exhaustive list of suspects had watertight alibis — Helen Wilkinson had given conflicting stories as to where she had been at the time of the murder: first she had said that she had been with Ruth Marks all afternoon, then she had remembered that she had left work a little early and stopped briefly at the supermarket before walking home. David Ainsley and his wife were, separately — neither wishing to corroborate the other’s story — at liberty and unobserved at the approximate time of death, Dr Ainsley working in his study at home and Mrs Ainsley walking the baby in a fruitless effort to lull the child to sleep. Ellis, whose behaviour was growing increasingly bizarre, had been working in the computer suite at the Horace Shelby library, again unobserved. Hackett wondered at the insular and rather lonely life these academics seemed to lead, that they could spend hours of each day sequestered in some silent spot with not a single soul knowing or caring where they were or what they were doing. Perhaps it was a symptom of the escalating paranoia surrounding the reorganization of the departments, together with the consequent ‘staff wastage’.

  Whatever the cause of the overwhelming atmosphere of secrecy and suspicion at St Werburgh’s, it didn’t help their investigation when all they had were a few smudged and useless fingerprints. The murder weapon was still missing and the high hedge at the front of the Wilkinsons’ house and an even higher brick wall which enclosed the back had prevented even the most assiduous neighbourhood watchers from observing the murderer entering or leaving the premises.

  ‘So,’ Nelson said, breaking the silence at last. ‘Is she covering for Ruth Marks?’

  ‘Ruth has the least to hide,’ Hackett said. ‘She’s leaving for a much better paid and resourced job in the States in a few months. She wasn’t even listed on the Apocalypse file. What motive would she have?’ They were seated at opposite sides of the desk in Nelson’s cramped office. Helen had just left the headquarters after being interviewed. It was still early; Nelson had called Hackett in as soon as he’d got the message she had left during the night.

  What motive? Nelson repeated to himself. He shook his head, and Hackett noted that his gaze seemed unfocused.

  ‘What about one of the others?’ Nelson smoothed a hand over his face. It trembled slightly over the short distance between desk and forehead. He looked terrible.

  ‘Like who, for instance?’ Hackett asked, distracted momentarily by the tremor.

  ‘Clara Ainsley, for instance,’ Nelson said with choleric impatience.

  ‘Helen’s unlikely to cover for her, of course,’ Hackett said. ‘She wasn’t on the files, either, but Helen could be telling the truth when she says she was trying to help out the professor’s secretary and do a few people a good turn in the process. Which means the alteration of the Apocalypse file might have nothing at all to do with the murder. Now if Clara thought Edward was going to get rid of her, what would she do? She said in her original interview that she saw Professor Wilkinson at the university, but Mrs Roberts says she wasn’t listed in the appointments diary — and her story checks out. Of course, we know Mrs Roberts has no great affection for Clara, and that she has lied to us before. Neighbours saw no one enter or leave the Wilkinson house that afternoon. But the prof didn’t commit suicide, did he? So, someone must’ve been there, and it’s entirely feasible that Clara saw him at home, and not at the university.’

  ‘In which case she’s got some explaining to do.’

  Nelson screwed up his eyes as if the light hurt his head. He’s got the mother of all hangovers, Hackett thought.

  ‘Fetch Mrs Ainsley in and talk to her again,’ Nelson said. ‘Give us a call when you’re done. I’m going home for an hour or two.’

  Hackett was glad of that, Nelson would not be much good in an interview the state he was in, and with any luck he’d think to shower and change before he came back. He wondered whether his boss had a single moment of contentment or peace, and thought that his own situation, despite its complications, must seem idyllic to a lost soul like Jack Nelson.

  Hackett called in DC Tact to assist in the interview.

  Clara responded to the young constable’s vagueness, mistaking it for vulnerability. She combed her hair and insisted on getting changed before going with them. A university colleague agreed to look after the baby until she returned and as she slammed the front door shut, Hackett noticed that she had dabbed on a little make-up, but it couldn’t entirely cover the dark shadows under her eyes and the grey tone of her skin. She declined her right to a solicitor, and the interview began at nine a.m.

  ‘You say you saw Professor Wilkinson at his office on Monday,’ Hackett said. His hand rested on a red leatherette-bound book.

  Clara looked from Hackett to Tact, who was staring with intense curiosity looking at something a fraction to her left. Hackett saw her eyes twitch to the left, he wondered for a second if she would turn and follow his line of sight. But she blinked and sat up straighter and said:

  ‘I’ve already been through all of this.’

  ‘You told him you were finishing the affair,’ Tact said, as though trying to fix the facts in his own mind. ‘Is that right?’

  Clara lifted one shoulder. ‘It’s already on record.’

  ‘In his office?’ Tact again.

  Clara blushed.

  ‘You told him you were finishing your affair, in his office,’ Hackett repeated, approving of the line Tact had taken. ‘Within earshot of the professor’s secretary.’

  Clara looked down at the tabletop. ‘That’s right.’ She braced her shoulders and folded her hands demurely in her lap. ‘I thought—’ She stopped, seemed to consider the line she was about to take unwise.

  ‘What did you think, Clara?’ Hackett asked, leaning forward.

  ‘I wasn’t about to let him treat me that way—’

  ‘What way is that?’ Tact asked.

  Two bright spots of colour grew and deepened on Clara’s finely chiselled cheekbones. ‘I thought he—’ Hackett saw a tiny shake of her head. ‘I’m sure he was seeing someone else. I didn’t want him to take me for granted. I couldn’t bear to have people feel sorry for me as they did Helen.’

  ‘I don’t think there was any danger of that, do you?’ Hackett said, slouching back in his chair, pausing so that the insult had more impact. ‘Helen was his wife; she had a right to pity when her husband was unfaithful.’

  Tact drew down the corners of his mouth. ‘Mistresses don’t have the same rights to sympathy,’ he added, shaking his head regretfully. Hammering the point home.

  Clara’s eyes darted about the room, avoiding the two men. Her eyebrows were drawn together in a worried frown, and there was something in the set of her mouth that suggested tears were imminent.

  ‘Professor Wilkinson’s secretary has no record of you going to see him on Monday,’ Hackett said, opening the red book and identifying it for the tape as Professor Wilkinson’s appointments diary.

  ‘I didn’t need an appointment to see Edward,’ she said with stiff dignity.

  Hackett saw her swallow deeply and remembered from somewhere, the telly, or a course in interviewing techniques, that this was a sure sign that the interviewee was lying. Not that he needed to deploy such clever and close observation skills, since he had questioned Valerie Roberts on this very matter by telephone that very morning.

  ‘Mrs Roberts says everyone needed an appointment to see the prof that morning — even his wife.’

  ‘She would say that, wouldn’t she?’ Clara said with a sneer. But the colour in h
er face deepened.

  ‘She did say you visited the prof that morning, or at least that you were on your way to see him. But someone was already with him.’ Tact was staring in that focused, yet unfocused way over her left shoulder again. ‘And you left.’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘Come on, Mrs Ainsley,’ Hackett said, gently. ‘We’re just trying to get at the truth here. You were fond of the professor, weren’t you? You must want us to find out who killed him.’

  Clara mumbled something, and Hackett asked her to repeat it for the tape. ‘I said, I wasn’t just fond of him, I loved Edward.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Hackett.

  She looked into the Hackett’s face and he could almost see her making the calculations, deciding of which snippets of information would throw suspicion off her.

  ‘I had intended seeing Ed,’ she said after a long pause. ‘But when I arrived, he was having a terrible row with John Ellis.’ She frowned and seemed to be trying to remember. ‘No, that’s not quite accurate. Edward’s voice was only raised sufficiently to make himself heard over that lunatic’s ranting. Ellis stormed out, screaming at Ed, threatening him, calling him names. “I won’t let you do this to me. I’ll sort you.” Surely busybody Mrs Roberts told you? I didn’t want her listening in on what I wanted to say to him. It was private.’

  ‘So, you decided to see him later at home . . .’

  Clara stared at Tact and he stared back. ‘No, of course not. I was too busy with the baby.’ But she had delayed too long, and everyone in the room knew that her hesitation was tantamount to an admission.

  ‘When did you see him, Clara?’ Hackett asked. ‘At what time? We know he went home after lunch — sometime between one and two-thirty.’

  She bowed her head.

  ‘Someone murdered Edward Wilkinson, Clara.’ Hackett leaned forward. ‘Was it you?’

  ‘No!’ the flush drained from her face, leaving her sickly pale. ‘Look I don’t expect you to sympathize, but I’ve been bereaved, too—’

  ‘I know this is difficult for you, Clara,’ Hackett said. Then left a silence that lengthened, almost half a minute. They all felt the pressure of it; half a minute is a long time for silence between strangers. Clara felt it most, which was what he’d intended. Slowly, she began to speak.