by Anita Waller
‘Oh, Heather,’ Claudia’s eyes were brimming with tears, ‘I know how scary James was, believe me. What I’m struggling with is why you didn’t send for the police at the time. It was self-defence, you were badly injured. Your head was a mess.’
‘You want to know why I didn’t call them? They would have taken me away from you, and you were still so ill. I couldn’t leave you, couldn’t tell you, I just had to do what I thought was best. But they’re never going to believe the self-defence bit now, too much time has passed, and my head has healed.’
The two women sat and stared at each other, unable to comprehend fully the enormity of what was happening.
‘They’ll be here later today,’ Heather said. ‘I’ve a couple of letters to write, and I could do with some time out. Will you be okay if I take an hour?’
‘Of course,’ Claudia said. ‘I’ll bring you through a milky coffee.’
She stood and went to her room, picked up the plastic container of painkillers and diverted to the kitchen to make the drinks. She opened up four of the tablets and tipped the tiny granules into the hot milk. Anger was building inside her so fast it was threatening to overwhelm her. They were supposed to be such close friends, and yet Heather hadn’t spoken of the minor fact that she had killed James. It put a different light on Owen’s death. Claudia took deep breaths before leaving the kitchen.
‘Here,’ she said, and handed Heather her drink. ‘This will make you feel calmer for facing what we have to face later. And if you want to sleep, just sleep. I’ll still be here, I’ll make sure you’re okay.’
Heather took the mug and smiled. ‘You try to sleep, Claud. I’m so so sorry for having brought all this on you. You know I love you, don’t you?’
Claudia nodded. ‘Of course. Go and do what you have to. I won’t disturb you, I promise. And I love you, best friend.’ She walked out of the room, giving Heather the time and space she had requested.
Returning to the kitchen, Claudia emptied every tablet into an eggcup. She waited twenty minutes and quietly opened Heather’s door. She was sprawled on the bed, asleep. Claudia walked around the bed, picked up the cup using kitchen roll and went back to the kitchen.
Adding milk to the same cup was sensible, and she stirred in the pile of granules created by emptying eighteen tablets. She returned to the bedroom and lifted Heather, supporting her with difficulty and considerable pain.
She held the cup to Heather’s lips, and she moaned.
‘Just a little drink, Heather,’ Claudia said softly. ‘Then everything will be okay.’
It took ten minutes to get her to swallow it, and Claudia replaced the mug on the bedside table, along with the empty container. She flushed the split capsules down the toilet, not taking the risk of her fingerprints being discoverable on them.
‘It was self-defence beyond any shadow of a doubt,’ Liam said, the frustration evident in his voice. ‘Why the fuck didn’t she just get help? It would have been so clear at the scene, the blood on the headstone, the angle of the scissors… and, although she didn’t know it, every second of it is on CCTV!’
‘She was scared, boss,’ Rosie said. ‘She probably assumed she would be locked up, and she has a terminally ill best friend who needs her. These two women have gone through enough to break anybody, and I think this broke Heather Gower.’
‘Right, we need a forensics team at that baby’s grave, because from the amount of blood from Heather’s head, there’s bound to be some left, and I bet there’s some along the trail she made dragging him to the car. We’ve already linked them both to the Sportage, and now I’m going to take the Fiesta they use, to have that given the full forensics.’
Liam moved back to his desk and made the arrangements, then returned to his team.
‘Good work on this. We may only be a small team, but we’ve cracked this one. This afternoon Rosie and I will go to arrest Heather and tell Mrs Bell we’ve found her husband. I’m not going to ask her to identify him, but Harry, their son, seemed a smart enough lad when we went to see him. I’ll ask him to do it. I’ll check with pathology first, they may not want him to ID his father’s face, there was a lot of decomposition, but he had a large tattoo on his arm. He can ID him from that.’
Claudia slept until just after two o’clock and woke still feeling fuzzy. The tablets she’d taken from her second container were definitely too strong, although she was under no illusions about this blessed disease, she would need that tablet strength and more as she drew nearer the end of her life. After holding Heather almost upright, the pain in her side had been intense; co-codamol wouldn’t have cut it at all.
She headed down the corridor to the toilet, opening Heather’s door slightly as she went past. The room was in semi-darkness as Heather had closed the curtains, and she was still in the same position on the bed. Claudia softly closed the door. Time enough to open it later.
She grabbed a fresh glass of water and headed back to the lounge. She picked up her book but put it down almost immediately. She couldn’t concentrate. She really had believed James was still alive and had just taken himself off somewhere to punish her. James, her first love, and now her last.
The knock, combined with the doorbell, shook her in its unexpectedness. She waited a moment, and went to the intercom.
‘Hello?’
‘DS Norwood and DC Havenhand, Mrs Bell. Can we come up please?’
She felt sick. Holding tightly to the handrail she went down the three sections of the stairs and unlocked the door. There were two police cars outside.
The officers followed her upstairs, Rosie and Liam both aware she wasn’t moving at any speed.
‘Are you okay, Mrs Bell?’ Rosie asked, concerned for the woman’s pallor and general demeanour.
‘I have terminal cancer, DC Havenhand. I look peaky most of the time,’ she said with a smile.
‘Is Mrs Gower in?’ Norwood knew he sounded brusque, but he had never known a time when he had not wanted to arrest a perpetrator. This was a first for him.
‘Yes, she is. She went for a nap. I’ll go and wake her.’
‘Rosie will go with you, Mrs Bell.’
‘Oh… okay.’
Norwood continued down to the lounge, and Claudia quietly opened Heather’s door, not wanting to startle her awake.
‘Heather,’ she whispered. ‘Heather!’ There was no movement, and Rosie Havenhand walked around the side of the bed. She shook Heather’s shoulder, then put her finger on the pulse in Heather’s neck.
‘No…’ Claudia’s eyes opened wide in shock. ‘No!’
Liam heard her and ran from the lounge back to where the women were.
Rosie shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, sir, there’s no pulse.’ She took out her phone and rang for the ambulance
Claudia couldn’t cope. Michelle was blazingly angry.
‘The silly cow! She brought the police to my door because she buried the wanker virtually in the same spot George was! I’m glad she’s dead, I’d kill her myself if she wasn’t. What the fuck…’
Claudia sat, immobile, on the sofa. She wasn’t sure she was capable of dealing with Michelle at that moment.
‘And I bent over backwards to help you two.’
Finally, Claudia spoke. ‘But we didn’t know you’d killed George, you told us he was watching you all the time, you said he was the feller across the road. How could she have known?’
Michelle stormed down the corridor. ‘The second you die I’m taking back this flat,’ she called from the other end of the corridor. She went down the stairs and slammed the bottom door loudly as she exited.
And Claudia cried.
An hour later she stopped crying. She went to the small broom cupboard and took out the long pole that opened the loft hatch. She used it to pull down the loft ladder and climbed the treads, grateful that she still had enough movement to get about without too much pain.
She counted the loft boards and checked the third one. They were screwed down, not nailed, and she wa
s thankful for that break. She wasn’t sure she would have had the strength to lever nails out, but screws were manageable. She checked the screw head and went back down the ladder for the necessary tool. She blessed Heather for stocking them up with basic equipment.
There was only one screw that caused her a problem and she persevered until it loosened.
An hour later she had the gun, stored inside a box normally used to place purchased buns, and bullets, all wrapped in loft insulation that was making her itch like nothing had ever done before.
She replaced all the screws, leaving it exactly as it had been, then went back down to the lounge, careful to take everything with her. She checked the gun over in the way she had been taught at the gun range, loaded it, and placed it back in the box Michelle had used.
She raised the reclining footrest on the sofa, pushed the box underneath and lowered the mechanism. Totally concealed.
She spent the next half hour showering and washing her hair, getting rid of the itchy loft insulation.
The office Heather had created for them was a peaceful place, just as Heather had intended. Claudia researched gold bracelets until she found exactly what she wanted, organised the inscription, and paid for it. The site promised seven days delivery; all good.
Everything was in place.
Chapter 26
18 August 2017
DI Norwood checked over the last report to come in on the Bell case and moved it into the folder on his computer. He then archived it and expelled a long breath.
This was the case that had seen him promoted to DI; he had wondered why he had been allowed such a free hand to run it, and it had been obvious shortly after the end of it. DI Philippa Ray was now DCI, and there had been further changes in his team. DC Rosie Havenhand was now DC Rosie Evans, and DC Neil Evans was now DS Evans. Liam had asked Rosie to stick with her maiden name at work, it made life so much easier.
The George Ullyat case was still ongoing, and he often wondered if they would ever find anything else. The gun had never resurfaced in any other crime, and he feared it would become yet another statistic, a dead case unless something accidentally gave them a result on it. He had read the statements so many times, the reports after the finding of the body, but there was nothing other than a bullet to tell them anything.
Agnes and Craig Ullyat had closure of a sort in that they had a grave they could visit, and it appeared that Craig had turned his life around and was working as a trainee plumber, but the case niggled Norwood. One day…
Claudia smiled as her lunch arrived. She knew she wouldn’t eat much of it, and as a result of the loss of appetite she was losing weight, but the meals were beautiful to look at.
She had been in St Luke’s Hospice for three days; Mr Quentin had made the arrangements for her, telling her she maybe only had three weeks to a month left to put her affairs in order.
Her will had been sorted, and the children would be sharing the proceeds of the sale of the family home, plus the proceeds from the sale of Heather’s home. She felt happy that they would be financially settled. A tear clouded her eye at the reminder of Heather’s death. She had been shocked to find Heather had changed her will two days after she had killed James, to make sure Claudia’s children would receive the proceeds of the sale of her house.
Harry, Emma, Zoe and David didn’t know how little time she had left. She was getting very good at acting in front of them. They thought she had requested a room at St Luke’s to make life a little more luxurious for her final few months; they were wrong. There was a final scene to play out.
Yolande placed the tray in front of her and checked Claudia’s pulse. ‘I’m just going to do your blood pressure, and then you can eat this entire plateful, yes?’
‘Of course,’ Claudia responded, as she did every meal time.
‘Well if you don’t,’ the pretty nurse said, ‘you’ll be on the sachets of food supplements, from this afternoon. Just thought I’d give you a heads up on that, because they’re vile.’
‘I’ll eat it, I’ll eat it!’
‘Good. Now give me your arm.’ Claudia held out her left arm, ever mindful of long ago instructions that she must never again use her right arm for blood pressure or blood sample tests.
Yolande seemed satisfied and was just about to go out the door when Claudia spoke again.
‘Yolande, do you think I could have a day at home, back at the flat? There are a couple of things I need to sort, and then I can come back here until…’
‘Yes, of course, Claudia. Will somebody be picking you up, or will you need a taxi?’
‘A taxi please. I don’t want my family to know, they’ll only fuss, and I do want time on my own, one last day in my home.’
‘Many patients do this. It’s almost like reverse nesting. When do you want to go?’
‘I need to make a phone call first, but possibly tomorrow.’ Claudia needed all the plans she had made over the weeks since she had lost Heather to come to fruition, and it would all depend on one phone call.
Yolande nodded. ‘Just let me know, and I’ll arrange it for you. Do you have any pain?’
‘I do.’
‘I’ll get you some tablets. Now eat that lunch. Remember the meal supplements. Yuck.’
Claudia was eating some potato when Yolande returned with her tablets. ‘Good girl,’ she said with a grin and left the room.
Claudia climbed painfully out of bed and crossed to the bathroom. She scraped most of the meal down the toilet, and flushed it away, leaving a couple of small carrot pieces on her plate.
Yolande was pleased when she came to collect the tray. ‘That’s really good. What’s wrong with the carrots?’
‘Nothing, I’ve never really liked them. I ate a couple but that was enough.’
‘Okay. You had your tablets?’
Claudia waved the little pot at her containing the two capsules of powdered painkiller.
‘Just about to take them. They send me to sleep straight away, so thought I’d better eat lunch first.’
Yolande laughed. ‘They affect everybody like that. They’re strong but they do the job. You made your phone call yet?’
‘Doing that now as well. Are you nagging me?’
‘Yes, you need your rest, Claudia.’
‘Okay, get out of here, woman. Leave me in peace.’
Yolande laughed and left the room.
Claudia took her purse out of the bedside drawer, wrapped the tablets in a scrap of toilet paper and placed them in the zipped coin compartment. She then took the tablet she had saved from an earlier medication and put that on her table ready to take after she had made the phone call. It was only one, but it would take the edge off the pain. She needed to save the other two.
Her phone was fully charged, and she scrolled until she reached Monroe. She pressed and listened to it ringing out.
‘Good afternoon. Councillor Monroe.’
‘Councillor Will Monroe? My name is Claudia Bell, James’s wife. I’m sorry we didn’t get to speak at his funeral, I did see you, but I was too ill to speak to anyone. I would, however, like to speak face-to-face, because I have cleared a lot of the house prior to selling it, and I have found a heavy gold bracelet that I believe James bought for you. It is valuable and personal, and you need to have it.’
‘Mrs Bell, Claudia… I’m shocked. How do you know it’s for me?’
‘It has yours and James’s names on it. There is no ill feeling, Councillor, I stopped loving James a long time ago. I just think this is something you should have. There’s no receipt with it and as it’s engraved, no shop would take it back anyway.’
‘Thank you. This is so good of you. I can drive to Sheffield…’ There was slight hesitation as he checked his diary. ‘Next Wednesday?’
‘I may not be able to do that. I am in the last couple of weeks of my life, Councillor. I have terminal cancer. I need it to be very soon. Tomorrow if possible.’
‘Give me a minute.’
She could
hear him mumbling in the background and somebody responding, and then he came back to her.
‘Is eleven okay?’
‘That would be really good. I’m leaving my hospice for the day so that I can see you, I really would like to meet you. It’s clear that James really cared for you and I bear him no animosity for that. I just want to meet the person who became such a large part of his life. You have a pen?’ She read out her address, and he repeated it back to her.
‘Thank you,’ Claudia said quietly. ‘This means a lot to me. We’ll have a cup of tea and drink a toast to the man we have both loved at different times in our lives.’
They disconnected, and Claudia pressed her assistance bell.
‘Claudia. You want something?’ Yolande smiled at her.
Claudia waved the little pot containing the one tablet. ‘I’ve taken my first tablet, but thought I’d better tell you I’ll need a taxi for nine in the morning please, before I take the second one. Going to my home address if they need to know. I’ll be back early afternoon, but I’ll ring for a cab from home.’
‘Okay. I’ll sort out your lunchtime medication to take with you. You may need it before you get back, you seem to be needing it more frequently now.’
‘Only to be expected,’ Claudia said. ‘And I don’t feel frightened. I know I will slip into a coma when you have no choice but to keep me sedated for the pain, and I don’t want that time to come, but I’ve accepted it all now. My children haven’t, but they’re grown up, and will support each other.’
‘You’re a brave woman, Claudia Bell. Now take that other tablet and go to sleep.’
19 August 2017
The taxi arrived on time, and half an hour later, Claudia was slowly climbing the stairs back up to the flat. She had thought the two of them would be here for a long time; they had loved it on first sight. Now it held bad memories of Heather’s death, the horrific row she had had with Michelle, and now the final act of her own life.