His expression seems off. As always, I pause the video and stare into the man’s eyes, observing the concern on his face. It could be my paranoid imagination, but David Fielding strikes me as a man who has observed and imitated what a concerned expression should look like. There he sits, with his eyebrows knitted, his jaw clenched, and the barest hint of moisture in his eyes. I can’t stop staring at him as he tricks the entire audience. I’m convinced he’s a sociopath. Convinced.
With a sigh, I click the play button and allow the video to progress to the part I love to hate: the part about me.
“And what about the nurse who was in charge at the time?” Kirsty asks. “Do you blame her? It says here that Isabel was on twenty-four-hour surveillance at the time. How could this have happened? Isabel left wearing the nurse’s clothes, carrying the nurse’s pass. It’s almost unbelievable what happened.”
“No,” David replies, shaking his head and looking down at the ground. For dramatic emphasis he lifts his head and stares directly into the camera. “It’s not unbelievable, not if you look at the facts. Since Isabel’s escape, the nurse has been admitted to a psychiatric facility. She’s deeply disturbed. Do I blame her? No. She’s ill. She should never have been allowed to work. How could her mental illness go unnoticed? Why didn’t anyone see that this woman was unfit to be a nurse?”
“But what do you believe happened in that room?” Kirsty prompts. “Did Isabel overpower the nurse?”
David shakes his head again. “No. I don’t believe that. This nurse was just disturbed enough to let my daughter out. The nurse was deluded enough to believe that Isabel is innocent, and in her sick state she let a dangerous criminal into society.”
“You think she acted out of some sense of justice? She freed your daughter intentionally?”
“Yes,” David says. “That’s exactly what I believe.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
If there’s one good part of this chaotic mess I’m in, it’s that I’ve managed to keep Tom away from it all. After I was found delirious and drooling on the floor of Isabel’s room, and later committed to Oakton Hospital, Tom was taken into foster care. At seventeen years old, Tom could legally live on his own or ask to come home to me, but I’ve suggested that he stay with the foster family until everything is settled. I’ve met them a few times since leaving the hospital, and they’re good people with a lot of patience. Tom is happy with them for now.
They live ten minutes outside Hutton in a pleasant, five-bedroom house situated away from major roads, with a long-stretching back garden and a brown fence. Mary and Gavin have three children, two of whom have left home for university, and have been fostering children for the last five years. When I was told that Tom would be taken to a foster home, I imagined a care home filled with lurking evil in the older bullies and the abusive staff, but this couldn’t be further from my fears. Mary’s cocker spaniel, Rusty, greets me as always with a friendly bark and tail-wag as I open the gate to the garden, and their youngest daughter Cora waves from the swing at the end of the lawn.
“Hi, Leah.” Mary is drying her hands on a tea towel. Her hair is messy, more grey than black, and she has deep lines around her eyes, but she also has the easy, relaxed smile of a woman who has lived well. “Tom’s upstairs. He’s excited about seeing you. Go on up.”
“Thanks.” I rub my hands on my jeans, always feeling awkward whenever I see Mary or Gavin. I’m never sure what they know about my past. Do they know about Tom? Do they know what my father did to me all those years ago? Do they know that Tom is my son and my brother?
I keep thinking about Dr Ibbotson’s words during my therapy sessions. He has this idea that telling Tom who his real father is would help me heal from the guilt I carry. He thinks that I no longer feel guilty about the actual abuse, and that my current guilt stems from the lies I told to protect Tom from the truth. But how can I do that to him?
“Hey, stranger,” I say, poking my head around his open bedroom door. As always, I find myself choking up when I see him, especially in this spacious, pleasantly decorated attic room, nothing like the poky rooms in the cottage with scatterings of mould in the corners of the ceiling.
Tom is sitting at his desk with his back to the door. When he hears my voice, I see his body jolt with surprise and his hand moves swiftly to the mouse to click off the web page he was looking at. I don’t get a good look at the page, but I see enough to know it isn’t porn, which is a relief.
“Everything all right?” I ask.
My son has his father’s eyes, which are currently red and blotchy. He tries very hard to wipe away a tear before I step into the room, but it’s too late, I’ve spotted it.
“Hey, what’s going on?” I hurry over to the desk and stretch my arm across his shoulders, squeezing him to my waist. “What’s happened?”
A few moments pass before Tom composes himself enough to be able to talk. “They’re all fuckers and I hate them.”
“Hate who?” I move away and sit on the edge of his bed, all my focus on Tom. A hot blast of protective emotion spreads over my skin, prickling the hairs on my arms. I don’t know if it’s motherly or sisterly, and perhaps I’ll never know. All I know is that I want to hurt whoever has hurt him.
“Them. The people who made this.” He clicks the mouse and the website pops up again.
This time I get a good look at the entire page, which is cruelly called ‘Tommy’s Jugs’ and contains photographs of Tom from school in unflattering poses, zoomed in so that his unfortunately large and flabby pecs are showing through his t-shirt. Some are zoomed in to show his birthmark and double chin.
“It gets worse,” Tom tells me.
He clicks onto a separate page where there are Photoshopped pictures of Tom’s face put onto the bodies of sumo wrestlers, hippopotamuses, pandas, and anything else round-shaped. He scrolls down the page slowly so I get a good view of the imaginative cruelty inflicted by teenagers.
“People can upload whatever they want. They’re all from different people at school. Dozens of them.”
“Do Mary and Gavin know?” I ask.
He shakes his head.
“I’m going to fucking kill them,” I say, and for a fleeting moment I actually want to murder the little bastards who think it’s amusing to demoralise and target a vulnerable young man like Tom. “Wait, hold on, go back one.”
Tom scrolls back up the page, past a Photoshopped image of him on a mobility scooter in a mall in America, and another image of him next to an enormous cheeseburger, to the one I want to take a second look at.
“Stop.”
“What is it?” he asks.
“Nothing, just… that one’s a bit weird. Different to the others, don’t you think?”
“I guess so,” he says.
The picture is of a large, fat bird with a red chest. A robin. The bird’s head has been replaced with a picture of Tom, which I notice is the same picture of Tom used in a few of the other images. But more care has been applied to this Photoshop. The composition is more pleasing to the eye and the background is pretty. The bird is on a branch next to the window of a house that looks a little like the cottage.
The position of the bird looking in the window of the house is unnerving and artistic. It’s too familiar.
“Shut it down,” I say.
*
Mary and Gavin are kind enough to go with me to the school to speak to the head teacher, Mr Kallas. We want to show a united front against the bullying Tom is facing at Hutton Comprehensive.
“I never expected this from a rural school,” I admit, as we sit in the office that overlooks the rugby pitch. “The level of maliciousness is frankly worrying. And from A-level students! They should know better.”
“I completely agree.” Mr Kallas lifts his hands. “The creators of the website will be excluded. It’s without a doubt the most shocking incident I’ve ever seen here at Hutton School. I’m so sorry Tom has had to go through this.”
The meeting consists of the head teacher,
as well as a school psychologist, one of the governors, and a police officer, PC Abbott. The police are involved to try and work out who set up the website. None of them seem to believe me about Isabel Fielding, but I’m told they’re also looking into the origin of the bird image. I don’t hold out much hope.
When I let out a heavy breath, Mary reaches across and places a hand on my arm. I can’t bear to think of Tom going through all this. Knowing he’s safe has been the one good part of this mess, and the one thing I think about when I’m on my own in that cottage that makes me happy. I miss him, of course I do, but knowing he’s safe is everything. Everything.
Someone is trying to take that away from me, and I think it’s Isabel. And if I’m right, it means she was guilty all along.
“He wants to leave,” I tell the head teacher. “But there’s nowhere else he can attend to sit his A-levels. He doesn’t have a car yet—we can’t afford one—and all the colleges are over an hour on the bus. Please, sort this problem out so my…” I hesitate. “…brother can continue his education. He’s done nothing wrong. I’m the one who’s made the mistakes and that’s probably why they’re targeting him again.”
Mr Kallas’s sharp blue eyes hit mine, and I know he’s thinking about the escaped psychotic criminal from Crowmont Hospital, and my stay in the psychiatric ward. I’m sure he’s one of the people who whisper about me in Hutton village. I see them all, casting guilty glances my way before they disappear behind their hands to talk about me. They all wonder if I did it. Well, so do I.
“I know his home life has been disrupted recently,” Mr Kallas says tactfully. “But his grades are still decent and I can see he’s trying hard. We like Tom very much here. He has a flair for creativity and his essays are very thoughtful. You’re doing a good job raising him, Leah.”
The words thump me in the chest, and my chin wobbles as I stem the desire to burst into tears. I might be Tom’s mother, but I’ve never felt like it. Yet, at the same time, I have raised him, because my parents weren’t fit to do the job themselves. I have raised him, and I don’t want to let him down. Not now.
Mary passes me a tissue.
True Crime Junkie
Road trip
By James Gorden
The last sighting of Isabel Fielding was in the northeast of London two weeks ago. Your intrepid blogger decided to travel down to the area in the hope of catching a fleeting glimpse of the woman herself. What did I expect to see? An innocent woman enjoying her freedom? An innocent woman with nowhere to go and no one to see, living homeless on the streets of London like so many others? A guilty woman searching for her next victim? Evading the police with clever disguises?
Or, most probably, I wouldn’t see her at all. But I had to try.
So I took a copy of the photo the police supplied when Isabel escaped, and I walked the streets of London asking people if they’d seen her. During that time I was mugged once and assaulted twice by the helpful people of London town, but no one recognised her.
It has been a week since I set up in a cheap B&B (no expense account for me! Get on Patreon, you lovely lot), but I’m still hopeful. Isabel Fielding is out there, and I want to be the one who finds her.
Meanwhile, guess who else is in London? According to his Twitter account, David Fielding is in London on business. While he has a meeting in the Gherkin, his daughter is lurking somewhere, out there. Does he know? Has he come to meet her? Is it a coincidence?
Who knows?
Maybe I’ll be the one to find out!
COMMENTS:
Bundy’s Bitch: James, get over yourself, you’re not going to be the one to find Isabel. She’s clearly being funded by her dad. I bet she’s getting plastic surgery right about now.
TrueCrimeLover: James, BE CAREFUL. These people are dangerous!
Chapter Twenty-Three
There is a point, above the cottage, above the abandoned farmhouse, above the village of Hutton and all the countryside that spreads out below, where I can find peace. It’s a quiet place, away from the main path, where the cold wind stings my skin, and my lungs get that good ache that reminds me I’m alive.
That’s where I am right now, letting all my fears drop away one by one. Isabel rolls down the hill away from me. Tom gets lost in the grass. Money seeps into the soil. I’m free.
Seb shifts near me, pushing his hands deep into his pockets. Since Isabel escaped from Crowmont, he has accompanied me on the occasional walk, showing his support with silence as always. His silence is as familiar and warm as a well-fitting glove. When I sit down on a rock jutting out of the hill, he sits next to me and our legs casually brush together. The intimacy is there, but we haven’t acted on it yet. I’m not ready, and I think he senses that.
We’re not looking at each other, but I see movement out of the corner of my eye and know he’s turned his head to face me. I do the same until we’re looking into each other’s eyes. What do I say to the man who has quietly saved my life? Without Seb I would be homeless and afraid with no one in this world to count as a friend.
My phone rings, rudely breaking the silence. I dig into my pocket and answer the call.
“This is DCI Rob Murphy. You asked me to look into one of the posts on the bullying website in connection to Isabel Fielding.”
“I did,” I reply. “And?” My leg moves away from Seb’s as I feel myself close in and withdraw from him, preparing myself for the worst.
“The post was made from a public library in East London,” says the detective. “Whereas the website and the other posts were all created in and around Hutton. You might be right about Isabel’s involvement in the website. I don’t know how she might have heard about this website, unless she’s been keeping tabs on social media. Does your brother have a Facebook profile?”
“Yes, of course he does, he’s seventeen. He has so many social media accounts that I can’t keep up. I haven’t heard of half of them.”
“Tell him to disable them all,” Murphy says.
My throat is raw. Here is my worst fear coming to life in the place I find peace. I can’t bear it. “You need to keep him safe.”
“And you, Leah. If Isabel is stalking you both, you will need to be careful. Is there someone you can stay with?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll see what manpower we can spare. And you call me on this number every night to tell me you’re safe. Is that clear?”
“It is.”
“I’m not happy with you still being in that house,” Murphy says with a sigh. He’s mentioned this before in previous conversations, but I’ve always been pretty insistent on staying at the cottage. I want to be close to Tom, and I don’t want to give up the job Seb has given me. “Isn’t there a hotel you can stay in?”
“I can’t afford it,” I admit.
Seb looks at me sharply with eyes that scrutinise me. I’m sure he’s wondering how much money he can offer me before I get offended and clam up. A small shake of my head hopefully puts those thoughts out of his mind.
“I feel safe here,” I say. “I have the Braithwaites’ farm a few minutes away. She doesn’t know where I live. I don’t use social media and I never told her.” It’s true, but there were things I revealed in the hospital that she might be able to put together. My other worry is that David Fielding could use his power and connections to find out exactly where I am.
“You have my number,” he says, before hanging up.
I’m convinced that the pity he feels for me runs deep. As far as DCI Murphy is concerned, I let Isabel go, thinking I was acting as some white knight there to save her from her conviction. For all I know, he could be bang on the money. I truly believed Isabel was innocent and that the murder of Maisie Earnshaw should at least be re-opened. The email I sent to the police didn’t help my case. There it was, in black and white, with underlying tones of obsession between every line. Everyone knew my interest in Isabel bordered on creepy, and my conduct at the hospital hadn’t been great either. I’d received a warni
ng for arriving late to work, and my colleagues had noted my often slightly dishevelled appearance.
DCI Murphy is proceeding on the basis of Occam’s Razor, whereby the most logical and probable solution is most likely the truth, just as James Gorden had explained in Costa on that warm spring Saturday. I am beginning to come to the same conclusion.
Back at the cottage, Seb leaves me with fresh milk and eggs so I can at least eat, but I’m not hungry. I ring Tom instead and cringe when I hear the note of worry in his voice.
“Leave the school,” I urge. “I know I told you not to, but it’s different now. If you’re in any kind of danger whatsoever, keeping you safe is more important than any exams or sticking it to a bully. While you’re in school Isabel knows where you are. There’s one school in Hutton village and she’ll figure it out. At least, if you’re home with Mary, Gavin, and a police escort, I don’t have to worry about you.”
“Come stay with us.”
The phone is slippery in my sweating palms. I want to, but wouldn’t doing that put him in even more danger?
“Mary and Gavin are nice people, but I think that might be pushing it a bit far, matey.”
“They’ll be fine,” he says, his voice high-pitched and frightened. “They’ll understand.”
“Hey, who’s the big sister here? I’m supposed to be the one telling you what to do.”
“Not that I ever did what you told me to do,” he points out.
I let out a laugh. “You weren’t so bad, little bro. I have the Braithwaites up here. They’ve got my back, as well as tractors and diggers, and about a hundred pigs out for blood. I’m going to be fine.”
A short exhale is all I get for the attempt at humour.
“Leah, can I ask you a question?”
“Of course you can. What is it?” Despite common sense telling me otherwise, I’m gripped with fear at the thought that Tom has somehow figured out the truth.
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