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

by MARGARET MURPHY

  ‘Don’t do this, Ruth.’ Helen seemed disturbed and her eyes showed too much white.

  ‘Well I can’t look at food without seeing that damned mouse crucified on a board.’

  ‘Ruth, shut up.’

  Ruth stared, arched an eyebrow.

  ‘I’m sorry, but you do go on at the worst of times and in the grossest detail.’

  Ruth beat her breast in penitence, levelling a sardonic smile at her friend. ‘I hope you know who you should thank for the sudden emergence of the new, forthright you,’ she said.

  Helen flushed, and Ruth wondered what it meant. ‘The angel of mercy who topped Edward,’ she said, attacking her chips with renewed appetite.

  * * *

  Sweet sounds; sweet, mellow scents. Daniel lay back on his bed and closed his eyes, imagining himself on the Andean mountains. He visualized vast tracts of green and thin wisps of steamy condensation above the tree canopy. He took another drag from the inexpertly rolled spliff, which he had made using a diagram a friend had drawn for him; three pieces, two end-to-end, and one to bind them together. He sucked deep, taking the smoke to the bottom of his lungs, like he’d been shown, and held his breath, waiting for the chemicals to find their way into his bloodstream. Simple diffusion, he thought, inadvertently allowing his biology revision to intrude on his thoughts. He giggled, expelling puffs of smoke. THCs in, stress out!

  Terry Hackett pulled into the drive and sat for a minute or two, his eyes closed, trying to find the energy to get out of the car. He had time to catch an hour’s sleep, shower, and then back out to discover the truth of who had leaked information to the press, he told himself.

  Daniel’s bedroom window was open. ‘How many times do I have to tell him that most burglaries are opportunistic?’ he grumbled to himself as he found his key and let himself in. The bloody Yale wasn’t double locked, either.

  Daniel was beginning to float. Some of his mates at school didn’t rate Rocky, because they said it just made them feel dizzy, they preferred Skunk, but they didn’t have dads with noses like bloody Pinocchio. Anyway, this — He sighed, smiling to himself — this was more than dizziness. This was special. He took another pull on his joint and relaxed to the South American music he had picked up on his last protest weekend. An Ecowarrier called Treecreeper had sold it to him. She was gorgeous. He listened to the breathy tones of the pan pipes, and pictured himself with Treecreeper on one of the platforms of the tree she was protecting, smoking dope, listening to music, kissing . . .

  She had two rings in her lower lip, and he tried to imagine how it would feel, tonguing the thin rim of gold, probing deeper into her mouth, his hand around her waist, straying under the rough edge of her woven waistcoat, beneath the coarse linen of her shirt, to flesh and bone. He groaned.

  Hackett stamped upstairs, feeling increasingly irritated with Daniel. The boy had no regard for their feelings: he sneered at their perfectly reasonable requests to switch off lights, or to close doors and windows, and yet he constantly lectured them about their exploitation of the environment with their use of two cars, and the washing machine and God knew what all else.

  He opened Daniel’s bedroom door.

  Daniel leapt from his bed, yanking the radio, still attached to the headphones, from his bedside table. It fell with a clatter and the tape ejected. Daniel fastened his trousers, mortally embarrassed to have been caught in an erotic fantasy by his father.

  Hackett strode over to his son and dragged the remains of the spliff from his hand, then pulled the headphones off. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  Daniel was too shaken to sneer.

  ‘You should be in school. Why aren’t you in school? Where did you get this?’

  Daniel didn’t know which question to answer first. He stood, blushing to his ears, wondering with agonizing distress if his father had seen him with his hand down his trousers.

  ‘This is illegal, Daniel. Who’s your supplier?’

  Daniel regarded him in mute rebellion.

  ‘Do you know what this stuff does to you? Do you know the lasting damage marijuana can cause?’

  Daniel recovered enough to say, ‘No one calls it that anymore, Dad.’

  ‘I don’t give a monkeys what you call it,’ Hackett yelled. ‘Where’s the rest?’

  He started rummaging through Daniel’s things.

  ‘Dad!’

  He turned on the boy. ‘Empty your pockets,’ he demanded.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ll bloody well do it here and now, or you’ll do it down the nick.’

  For a moment, neither moved. Daniel stared at him with absolute hatred, then he began emptying his pockets.

  * * *

  Hackett tried to contact Nelson at headquarters and at home. His mobile was out of action and he wasn’t answering on his home number. No one had seen him or heard from him since they had split up after reporting in briefly that morning.

  Hackett had taken a frightened and sullen Daniel to school, and had spoken to the headmaster, requesting that any and all absences be reported to him or his wife immediately. Sheila had gone to visit her sister in Leeds for the day, which was why Daniel had thought he wouldn’t be disturbed. Hackett arranged for his mother to be at home when school finished and had left his mobile number so that she could let him know if Daniel was late. She had been delighted to be of use, and, mercifully, had not asked any awkward questions. He would talk to her and to Sheila that evening, and they would decide what sanctions to impose.

  In the meantime, he could not rest, and decided to drive around to Nelson’s house. He rang the bell and, turning his back to the door, cast a critical eye over the garden. Hackett helped Sheila with their garden when he could spare the time, actually enjoying it; he even knew the names of a few of the plants. Nelson’s garden consisted of a square patch of lawn, well-trimmed, the border ruthlessly weeded, but without a single flower or shrub. A barren suburban square.

  He returned to headquarters and sought out Sergeant Brinckley. Jane had known Nelson a long time and Hackett had noticed that he tolerated her more easily than most.

  ‘He got a call,’ she said. ‘Sounded urgent.’ Hackett understood from her quick, frowning glance around the room that there was more to say, but not here under the eyes and within the hearing of people who, by profession and habit, were unashamed eavesdroppers.

  He waited a couple of minutes, sifting through his memos to make it look like he had something to do other than track down his boss, and found the long-awaited search on Helen Wilkinson’s background. A rapid skim through the report increased his unease that they had been so quick to dismiss her as a suspect, and also prompted him to telephone his mother and tell her that Daniel was not to go to his room when he got in, but get started on his homework with her in the kitchen.

  He followed the sergeant out of the open-plan office and into the corridor. She pushed through the door leading to the back stairs and waited for him.

  ‘His son?’ Hackett asked, saving her from the ignominy of betraying the inspector’s trust so directly.

  Jane nodded — a slight flicker of movement, no more.

  Hackett considered asking — actually opened his mouth to speak, then decided against it. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘If he gets in touch, tell him I’ve gone to question Wilkinson and Tuttle. Ask him to contact me urgently.’

  ‘Sure, Terry.’ She seemed relieved that he had not asked for more.

  ‘Jane—’ Brinckley’s expression quickly changed to one of pained wariness. ‘It’s not about Nelson,’ he reassured. ‘But I do have a favour to ask.’

  ‘You can ask . . .’ she said.

  ‘Someone’s been leaking info to the press about John Ellis. It’s probably the reason we’ve got a photographer in hospital and a house burned out. For all I know, it triggered Ellis’s suicide.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘Yeah . . . Molyneux was shadowing Ellis, presumably hoping to be there at the arrest or somethin
g. His boss thinks Molyneux’s source was a WDC.’

  Jane Brinckley winced. ‘You want me to find out who?’

  ‘It’d be better coming from you than from me.’

  Chapter 22

  Conor Smith had known Jack Nelson for ten years. In that time he had developed — perhaps even nurtured — a profound dislike of the man. Nelson’s son, Ian, had been admitted as a patient during Dr Smith’s first week at Wesley Hospital. Since that time, Ian had returned, either as a voluntary patient or under a ‘section’ on scores of occasions. Nelson had refused to have anything to do with his son after he had reached sixteen, and so for Ian, Care in the Community had meant a series of hostels, bedsits and, latterly, doorways and dosses. He had disappeared for a few weeks, living rough, returning to the hospital some nights earlier because his voices were whispering to him to kill someone, and his only source of pride, the only sense of achievement Ian had, was in knowing that he had never harmed anyone but himself.

  Smith searched Nelson’s face for some glimmer of compassion or regret or guilt — any hint that the man was reachable, any sign of emotion that would make him despise Nelson less and perhaps help him to understand a little.

  ‘I’d only make him worse,’ Nelson said, staring back at him.

  ‘He’s asking for you.’

  ‘You saw what he was like last time.’

  ‘He needs you,’ Smith insisted. ‘He’s afraid of you, but he needs you. Let him know he doesn’t need to be afraid.’

  ‘I never laid a finger on him.’ A slight flare of indignation in those curious marmalade-orange eyes.

  Smith wanted to tell Nelson that his total rejection of his son, the literal fact that he ‘never laid a finger’ on Ian unless to perform some unavoidable act of care, perfunctorily and without affection, had wrought up the young man’s psychosis, that he was convinced Ian would be a normal, sane twenty year old if Nelson had responded to him and loved him, instead of depriving him of human contact and parental approval and affection from the day of his birth.

  Nelson shrugged. ‘The boy is worse when I’m around.’

  He can’t even give him his name.

  ‘Ian needs you,’ Smith said calmly. Ten years of psychiatric work had trained him in the art of hiding his true feelings so effectively that sometimes he had trouble analysing what he truly felt. ‘If you don’t speak to him, I can’t vouch for his safety.’

  ‘I’m no good to him,’ Nelson said, stubbornly, but would not meet his eye, and Smith knew he was making headway.

  ‘Ian has a knife in there. I think he’ll use it if you don’t talk to him.’

  For a fleeting instant Nelson looked up and Smith saw in his eyes an icy crystal of hope that all of this would finally end. It melted in the heat of shame and anger that followed. Now Smith began to understand. What Nelson desired most was what he was constitutionally incapable of achieving: he was one of the breed which longs for peace and creates only strife. Was it, Smith wondered, his wife’s death that had set up this irreconcilable conflict, or had Nelson always been like this? Had Nelson driven his wife to despair with his endless struggle against his own discontent — and blamed Ian rather than face his own part in her suicide?

  * * *

  ‘Aren’t you going to get a warrant, Sarge?’ DC Wright was anxious: he didn’t like taking action without DI Nelson’s say-so.

  ‘We don’t need a warrant to ask a few questions.’

  ‘Yeah, but . . .’

  ‘The Super’s approved this course of action, in DI Nelson’s absence,’ Hackett said, shrewdly striking at the heart of Wright’s objections.

  Wright had worked with Nelson long enough to know that he liked to be in control of things. Long enough, also, to lose the imperative of working on initiative which had once been so important to him. He nodded. They’d have to wait a bit, anyway, if Hackett wanted to interview Dr Wilkinson at home. With a bit of luck, the boss would be back in time.

  In the event, they waited until half past five, acting on a message from the surveillance team that had been placed outside Helen Wilkinson’s house. When Wright came through with the message, Hackett had been dozing pleasantly in Nelson’s chair.

  ‘Still no sign of the boss, then, Sarge?’ Wright said, remembering with spiteful glee something Nelson had said about Hackett reminding him of a ginger tom his wife had once owned.

  Hackett narrowed his eyes. Smiling, he stood and turned his back to the constable. ‘D’you see any boot marks on my backside?’

  Jerked out of his ill-will by the shock of having his mind read a second time, Wright muttered, ‘No, Sarge,’ then blushed at the stupidity of the answer. When he mustered the courage to meet Hackett’s eye, the sergeant chuckled.

  ‘Just remember the boot is on my foot, at least for the moment, eh, Wright?’

  ‘I’ll get my coat,’ Wright answered. He picked up the anorak he’d draped over his chair and met Hackett in the car park. He saw Hackett’s disparaging look. The anorak was the nylon type, with a flimsy hood and a drawstring cord which tied under the chin, and taking in the sergeant’s smart rain jacket, he felt scruffy, despite the good quality suit and silk tie he wore under his anorak.

  ‘What d’you expect to find, Sarge?’ Wright asked, breaking a silence which in the confines of the car was too uncomfortable to sustain, even on the short ride from headquarters to the Wilkinsons’ house. Wright was sensitive to atmosphere.

  Hackett leaned across Wright and pressed the release button of the glove compartment. ‘Take a look at those pictures.’

  Wright slid the two photographs onto his lap. Ellis checking the roadway before nipping down the side entry. Ellis with a white box in his hand. His own bloodier version of Dunkin’ Donuts.

  ‘So?’

  Hackett tapped the first picture. ‘The car.’ A gleaming silver-grey Nissan stood outside the Wilkinsons’ house. ‘It’s not hers. I checked.’

  ‘Well if you checked, you must know whose it is, then.’

  Hackett grinned. ‘Oh, I do. And I’d be interested to know if she does. ’Course, it’d be even more instructive if we knew what that poor bugger Molyneux had photographed — aside from Ellis with his confectionery delights, that is.’ He turned down the corners of his mouth. ‘But they’ve had plenty of time to clear up since last night, so I’ll settle for a chance to sniff around.’ He frowned, his eyes on the road, but Wright could see he was distracted. ‘Check the upstairs rooms, maybe . . . ?’ he finished.

  ‘Without a warrant?’

  Hackett smiled. ‘You’re nothing if not dogged, I’ll give you that.’

  Wright squirmed in his seat.

  ‘It’s surprising what people will agree to,’ Hackett said. ‘After all, she is a grieving widow, isn’t she? Surely a grieving widow would do anything to find her husband’s murderer . . .’

  Wright shrugged, unconvinced. ‘D’you think someone’s helping her?’

  In answer to Hackett’s quick, questioning look he went on, ‘You said they’ve had chance to clear up. D’you reckon it’s the gimp?’

  Hackett shifted a little in his seat; the word offended his sensibilities. ‘Doctor Tuttle — possibly,’ he said. ‘Or even her friend, Dr Marks.’

  At this time of the day, the Wilkinson’s house was in deep shadow, while the other side of the street twinkled in sunshine after a shower. ‘Dr Marks strikes me as the sort of woman who doesn’t make affiliations, let alone friendships, lightly,’ Hackett went on. ‘But I should think she’d do a lot for someone she did like.’

  ‘Pity you can’t get them all together in the drawing room and sweat a confession out of them,’ Wright said with heavy sarcasm.

  Hackett surprised him by laughing. ‘It worked for Poirot, eh, Wright?’ He drew in to the kerb and stilled the engine. ‘I’m not sure she’s got a drawing room — d’you think the kitchen will do?’

  Wright got out of the car scowling. Hackett had managed to turn the tables again, making it look like it was him w
ho was making all these bloody daft suggestions. To make matters worse, Pete Unsworth strolled over from the surveillance car and giving Wright the once-over, said, ‘What’s up, Wrighty? Piles bothering you?’

  Hackett laughed again. ‘He’s just feeling a bit Hackett off, eh, Wright?’

  Unsworth raised his eyebrows at the pun and the sour look it elicited from Wright. ‘She got here about twenty minutes ago,’ he said. ‘Arrived with Dr Marks.’

  Hackett nodded. ‘I see the press have made the connection between Molyneux and this lot.’ Two sodden and rather sorry-looking journalists loitered outside the gate. ‘If Tuttle arrives, make sure he doesn’t leave until I’ve spoken to him.’ Then, taking a deep breath of damp, grassy air, he walked, smiling, over to the journalists. Wright followed in bad humour.

  Ruth Marks answered the front door when they rang. ‘All on your own, Sergeant?’

  She means Nelson’s not with him, Wright thought.

  Hackett didn’t seem to mind. He said, ‘I have DC Wright with me, Dr Marks.’

  Wright had his warrant card ready. Dr Marks took it, making a careful comparison of the photograph with the real thing.

  ‘Doesn’t do you justice.’ A smile twitched at the corner of Marks’s mouth as she returned his card. ‘But that’s the British legal system for you. Come through.’

  Dr Wilkinson was sitting at the kitchen table. Wright had seen her a few times during the investigation, and she seemed brighter, more alert. The room itself was neat, well ordered.

  ‘How can I help you, Sergeant Hackett?’ she asked, with no more than a dismissive glance at Wright.

  ‘We’ve checked with the restaurant,’ Hackett replied. ‘They’ve confirmed you left at eleven o’clock, but we haven’t found anyone who saw you between that time and twelve thirty, when we were called to your house.’

  ‘It was a wild night. There weren’t many people about.’

  Hackett gave a non-committal grunt. He looked over at Wright. That was his cue: he fished in the inside pocket of his anorak for the photographs and placed them side by side on the kitchen table. Hackett took a step back and leaned against the sink unit. Helen gave him a furtive glance, and Wright thought, If that isn’t a guilty look, I’ll hand in my resignation tomorrow.