by C. L. Taylor
DS Hope’s eyebrows flicker upwards. DC Wilson sits further forward in his seat.
‘What exactly did he do? Where were you?’
‘We were in the hallway. I was trying to go up to my room and he came after me. I told him that he was a liar, that I’d read Lou’s diary. That’s when he tried to grab me round the throat and Dad came back in.’
Anna glances down at her notes. Louise Wandsworth, the girl Michael Hughes groomed eighteen years earlier. She was the one who came in a couple of weeks earlier with an allegation that Michael Hughes was grooming Chloe. She’d given a different name, called herself Louise Smith. Anna puts a star by Louise’s name. One of the team needs to make sure she comes in for a chat. The DCI’s already got half a dozen of them trying to track down any other kids Mike might have come into contact with over the last eighteen years. Anna’s not a betting woman, but she’d put money on the fact that there are more victims out there, too afraid to speak up. Sounds like the bastard had violent tendencies too. More reason for the kids to keep quiet.
‘How did you get hold of Lou’s diary?’ she asks Chloe.
‘She gave it to me. I was waiting for Dad to pick me up from school and she showed up.’
‘Why did she give it you?’
‘I don’t know.’ Chloe shrugs. ‘She said she wanted me to realise the kind of man that Mike was. I thought she was a weirdo and I didn’t want to read it. Not at first.’
‘But you changed your mind?’ DC Wilson asks.
‘Yeah. I thought it might help me find him.’
‘She gave you the diary when he was still missing.’
‘Yeah.’
‘When was that?’ Anna asks. ‘Can you remember?’
She notes down everything Chloe says. She didn’t work on the Mike Hughes missing person case but she’s spoken to PC Bray about it. His house-to-house enquiries didn’t lead anywhere and, when Mike Hughes eventually did reappear, he didn’t report to the station. He went straight to Alan Meadows’ house by all accounts. Alan’s version of events seems to match his daughter’s. He said Mike had given him the impression that he’d gone off with some woman for a bit of fun. He did that a lot he said, disappeared off for the weekend without telling anyone where he was going, although he did say that when he turned up he smelt like shit – literally, like shit. They’ve tracked Mike’s last movements – several delivery jobs in the Malvern and Worcestershire area that were confirmed by his receptionist Joy, his customers and his mobile phone records. Data from the phone company showed he received a phone call from a public phone box just outside Bromyard, then several text messages and a phone call from Chloe Meadows in the Acton Green/Acton Beauchamp area on Monday 30 April. Sightings of his van in the area confirm he was there. There was no further activity on his phone until he made a call to Chloe’s house from Worcester city centre on Wednesday 2 May. After that, he completely disappeared off the grid. Wherever he was, he wasn’t with Chloe Meadows, that’s for sure. But his disappearance ties in with his murder, she’d put money on it.
‘So you think that if your dad hadn’t walked in when he did, Mike would have hurt you?’
Chloe nods. ‘He went for me, after I slapped him. I thought he was going to strangle me.’
‘Right. And you didn’t think to tell anyone—’
‘Tell who?’ Chloe jolts forward, reaching across the table as she stares Anna in the eye. ‘My seven-year-old brother? My psycho dad?’
Anna registers the way Julie seems to fold into herself as her daughter speaks. She feels guilty for abandoning her daughter when she needed her most.
‘A friend maybe? A teacher? The police?’
‘Yeah right.’ Chloe slumps back in her chair. ‘Like anyone would have believed me.’
‘I would,’ Anna says.
‘No you wouldn’t. I’d already told you that I wasn’t seeing Mike and you believed me. Remember?’ She gives her a defiant glare.
Something inside DS Hope twitches. Chloe’s right. She should have pressed her more.
‘I can only go on what you tell me, Chloe. I’m not a mind reader.’ She softens her tone as she hears how brittle and defensive she sounds. ‘Anyway, let’s get back to that night and how you were feeling.’
‘Destroyed.’ Chloe brushes a tear from a cheek. ‘My mum had walked out, my dad was … my dad … and the only person who said they could rescue me from all that shit hated me.’
‘You think Mike hated you?’
‘He tried to strangle me, didn’t he?’
‘Is that what made you decide to try and kill yourself again? Mike attacking you?’
Chloe sighs heavily. ‘Yeah. I thought if I killed myself everyone would be sorry for the way they’d treated me. Mike especially. I wanted him to know how much he had hurt me. That’s why I sent him the photo.’
‘It wasn’t a cry for help?’
‘Fuck off. Sorry,’ she glances at her solicitor then back at Anna. ‘Seriously, though, that’s really patronising.’
Anna raises her palms. ‘I’m sorry, Chloe. I didn’t mean to patronise you. I’m just trying to understand what happened.’
‘Well I didn’t want him to come after me and I didn’t want him to stop me. If I had I’d have told him where I was.’
‘But he did find you.’
‘Yeah. I heard him shouting my name and I came out of the bushes.’
‘What happened then?’
‘We had an argument.’ For the first time in the interview Chloe glances away, up into the corner of the room. ‘I told Mike that he was a paedophile. That he’d groomed me the same way that he’d groomed Lou and that, if he didn’t leave me alone, I’d go to the police.’
‘And what did Mike do?’
‘He called me a bitch and he stabbed me in the shoulder with a knife he was holding behind his back.’ She touches the top of her left arm and winces. ‘I thought he was going to kill me so I stabbed him in the neck.’
‘With the scalpel?’
‘No, with a carrot.’
‘Chloe,’ Simon Arnold says. He leans across and whispers something in her ear that makes her sigh.
‘Yes,’ she looks at Anna. ‘I stabbed him with the scalpel.’
‘Multiple times.’
‘It was self-defence.’
DS Hope waits for Chloe to continue her story. When she doesn’t she says,
‘What happened then? After you stabbed Mike?’
‘He … he fell. He dropped down to the grass and I freaked out. I knew he was hurt but I didn’t think he … he …’ Fresh tears roll down her cheeks. She reaches for the tissue box, pulls out two tissues and presses them to her face.
Anna Hope waits for her to compose herself again.
‘Can we talk a bit about Wendy Harrison?’
Chloe shrugs. ‘If you want.’
‘She was in the park and saw what happened …’
‘Yeah. She came over when I was down on the ground with Mike. She tried to calm me down and then rang the police.’
‘How did she react when she saw you?’
‘She was really shocked. She screamed a bit when she saw Mike’s face.’
‘Did you know he was her ex-husband?’
‘Not until she said, no. I’d never seen her before.’
There is so much about the Mike Hughes case that doesn’t quite add up, not least the fact that Wendy Harrison just happened to be in Priory Park at the same time as him when she’d been arrested for breaching her restraining order just days earlier. According to Wendy, she’d been walking her dog when he suddenly ran off. She’d stumbled upon Mike and Chloe when she was looking for him. It all sounded a bit bloody coincidental but Hills & Coleman vets in Malvern had confirmed that Wendy’s dog Monty was handed in to them by a member of the public after it was found wandering the streets. Unfortunately, the Good Samaritan didn’t leave their name.
If Chloe Meadows is sarcastic and fearful, then Wendy Harrison was the complete opposite. She was cold
and reserved, answering no comment to any probing questions about her relationship with Mike and her feelings about what had happened, but she had given her a full account of what she’d witnessed in the park. She was more reticent when Anna asked her about her black eye – ‘I walked into an open cupboard door’ and who the passenger was in her car – ‘a Polish farm worker hitching a lift’, but they had no way of disproving her ‘cupboard door’ injury (even if it did look like a punch) and the CCTV they’d got from a shop near the park was so blurry they couldn’t even make out the gender of the person sitting beside Wendy in her car. Anna’s instincts told her that Wendy was involved in the murder, but Mike’s DNA and blood hadn’t been found on her clothes or her skin and there was no evidence she knew Chloe Meadows. They’d been through Wendy’s phone records and the girl’s number wasn’t listed. Interestingly Louise Wandsworth’s number was. Anna’s interested to hear what she has to say when she interviews her next.
When pushed, Wendy had admitted going to Louise’s work under the pretence that she was a new client. ‘There’s no law against that, is there?’ she snapped.
‘There is,’ Anna retorted. ‘It’s called stalking.’ There was so much about the case that didn’t add up, but when it came down to it, there was no evidence to suggest that Wendy Harrison or Louise Wandsworth played any part in Michael Hughes’ murder. Chloe Meadows, on the other hand, openly admitted to stabbing him and the evidence backed up her claim.
‘That girl can’t be more than five foot four,’ Wendy had said when Anna asked her whether she believed Chloe’s life had been in danger. ‘Mike was well over six foot. He could have killed her. I don’t blame her for defending herself. And I doubt any jury would.’
Anna Hope agreed. If she had a daughter Chloe’s age she’d want her to retaliate too. Not least because paedophiles were the scum of the earth. But as DS Hope she had to put aside her personal feelings and investigate the incident. A man had been killed and Chloe Meadows had openly admitted to stabbing him. It wasn’t her job to decide if there were mitigating circumstances. She had to find enough evidence to send it to court and let a jury decide.
‘Okay, Chloe,’ she says now, laying down her pen. ‘We’re going to take a quick break, then we’ll carry on. There’s just a few more things I need to ask you.’ She presses a button on the tape recorder, then glances at her watch. ‘Interview terminated at 16.07. Okay?’ she says as she looks at the girl.
Chloe doesn’t reply. Instead she slumps onto the desk, rests her head on her hands and sighs with relief.
Chapter 46
Wendy
Two weeks later
Wendy Harrison bends over her newspaper. There’s a hideous photo of her on page five, leaving the courtroom yesterday after she gave evidence as a witness for the defence. She responded ‘no comment’ to the journalists who crowded around her, desperate for a soundbite, but they’ve written about her anyway, as she knew they would. It’s largely speculation – about her so-called ‘fragile state of mind’ having seen her convicted paedophile ex-husband bleed to death – and a few quotes from ‘friends and neighbours’. The reporter doesn’t mention any names, but she’s pretty sure the comment about her being ‘a loner who only socialises with her dog’ came from the idiot next door.
Wendy looks up, sensing someone watching her, and smiles tightly as a tall thin woman walks down the steps towards her. Wendy gives the smallest of nods, then lifts her handbag from the space beside her on the bench. The viewing gallery at Worcester Crown Court is packed and she’s had to defend the small space from irate journalists and members of the public ever since she sat down. The thin woman says thank you, then sits down. Neither Wendy, nor the woman say a word. Instead they stare at the small, round-shouldered figure in the dock.
It’s day five of the trial and, in a couple of minutes’ time, the jury will retake their seats and give their verdict. Hundreds of pairs of eyes will be fixed on the young girl’s face, watching for her reaction, then they’ll swivel towards Wendy, the ex-wife of the murdered man. Wendy shudders. Going to court once was bad enough, it brought back all kinds of horrible memories and she really doesn’t want to run the gamut of journalists and photographers again as she leaves. But she couldn’t not come. Not after everything that’s happened.
She glances, warily, around the court. Have any of the journalists noticed that she’s sitting next to Louise Wandsworth? No doubt they’ll be frantically scribbling in their notebooks if they have. Screw them and their speculation. She has nothing to be ashamed of. Neither has Lou.
Wendy cups a hand to her mouth, as though preparing to cough, and leans slightly to her left. ‘How did it go yesterday?’
Lou, also a witness for the defence, angles her head towards her. ‘It was horrible. I had to relive everything that happened in France. But I let them know what a monster he was.’
‘Good. Well done. And this morning?’
‘Okay, I think,’ she says, keeping her voice low.
‘Did the prosecution barrister give Chloe the third degree?’
‘Hmm, yeah. He really pushed her.’ Lou raises a hand to her mouth. ‘He tried to get her to admit that she was angry rather than scared. He said she wouldn’t have stabbed him so many times if she wasn’t. The defence barrister kept standing up to object.’
‘But he didn’t break her? She didn’t change her story?’
‘No. She was amazing.’
Wendy allows herself a small, self-satisfied smile. She’d had to think quickly, that afternoon in Priory Park with Chloe a quivering mess, Lou trying to play the selfless hero card and Mike bleeding out on the grass. All the evidence pointed to Chloe being the one who’d driven the knife into Mike’s neck. Wendy had watched enough episodes of Dexter to know that blood splatter analysis would reveal that she was standing directly in front of Mike when he was stabbed. There was blood on Louise too that proved she was nearby. Wendy was the only one who hadn’t been contaminated with the stuff as she’d been flat out on the grass several metres away when the stabbing took place. She had to act quickly. The longer she took to ring the police, the more suspicious it would look. No one else had appeared on the scene, but that didn’t rule out witnesses who had heard something unusual. The police would try to pinpoint what time the attack had taken place.
She knew that it would look suspicious, her magically appearing on the murder scene. That’s why she’d come up with the idea of pretending that she’d been walking Monty when she heard a commotion. Obviously there would be no dog when the police turned up. That’s why she’d told Lou to collect Monty from her house and take him to the vet, saying she’d found him wandering the street.
If getting rid of Lou had been tricky, the most difficult part of her plan was convincing Chloe to let her stab her in the shoulder. It didn’t matter how many times she explained that it would only be a flesh wound; the girl remained unconvinced. It was only when she pointed out that, if Chloe was sent to prison for Mike’s murder, she’d be over forty when she got out that the girl’s glazed expression faded and fear filled her eyes.
‘That’s old,’ she whispered. ‘That’s really old.’
It was all Wendy could do not to roll her eyes.
‘Mike attacked you with the kitchen knife first,’ she told the girl. ‘And you acted in self-defence, stabbing him in the neck. You threw the scalpel into the bushes, then realised what you’d done and tried to save his life. I heard the commotion and ran over to see what was going on and rang the police. Have you got that? Can you repeat it back to me?’ She stared into the girl’s pale, terrified eyes wondering whether any of it had gone in but, after a couple of seconds’ pause, Chloe robotically repeated the words back to her.
‘Good. You have to stick to that story, Chloe. Do you understand? The police will put a lot of pressure on you. They’ll suggest that something else happened. They might even suggest that Lou and I were involved. You need to tell them that you were feeling suicidal and you sent a text to s
ay goodbye to Mike but you didn’t expect him to turn up. When he did, you got into an argument. You told him it was over between you but he wouldn’t accept it. He stabbed you when you said you’d tell someone if he didn’t leave you alone.’
Chloe nodded mutely. Her gaze kept flicking back to Mike’s lifeless body.
‘Chloe!’ Wendy took her by the shoulders and shook her. ‘You have to get your story straight. If you don’t, you’ll spend the next twenty-five years in prison.’
She stared into the girl’s glassy eyes. She was in shock. When it wore off she’d get emotional, crumple under police questioning and tell them the truth. If that happened, Chloe wouldn’t be the only one who ended up in prison. Wendy and Lou could be arrested as accomplices to murder. It was already a risk, her claiming to be a witness and breaking the terms of her restraining order again.
‘Forget it.’ She released Chloe’s shoulders. ‘Forget everything I just told you. Just tell the police the truth. A good barrister might be able to get you a reduced sentence because of the abuse you’ve suffered.’
‘No.’ Chloe grabbed her arm as she turned to walk away. There was a defiance in her eyes, a steadiness that hadn’t been there before. ‘I can do this. I can. I know what to say to the police.’
Wendy nodded, impressed, as the girl repeated her story back to her, almost word for word.
‘Do it,’ Chloe said, gesturing at the knife. ‘Do it now. Quickly.’
‘If you’re sure—’
‘Do it now!’
Wendy braced herself, then drove the blade into the young girl’s shoulder before she could change her mind. It was a thoroughly unpleasant experience and she’d derived no pleasure from inflicting pain (unlike when she’d stabbed Mike in the leg).
All that was left to do then was transplant the knife into Mike’s hand, throw the leaf into the bushes, wrap her jacket around Chloe’s lightly bleeding shoulder and call the police.
Less than five minutes later they arrived.