Where Wolves Fear to Prey
Page 24
‘Yes, they might be, but it still would have been a scandal,’ I added. ‘James and Jackie always denied that anything was going on. He would have been fired. Did Jackie ask you to lie?’ Charlie stayed quite for a while before answering, ‘No’.
‘Is there more to it than that, Charlie?’ Stokes said as he came and sat on the corner of the coffee table.
Charlie stayed quiet for a while longer and then the weight of the secret she had been carrying, the secret she had tried to protect even though it had been to her own detriment, came spilling out of her mouth.
‘James isn’t the father,’ Charlie said simply before telling us about how James had been away for a fortnight in Turkey with some friends and Jackie had gone out clubbing. Quite a few dances and shots later she had met Richard Rollins in a nightclub called Oceania and cheated on James. As stunned as I was, I had to admit that I admired Charlie for trying to protect her friend. Once again, I recalled how Jackie had held James’ hand to her stomach and how she had let it go when Paul had told her that Rollins was dead.
Paul didn’t say anything as Charlie told us what had been going on. I assumed he didn’t want her to know that Mr Rollins was dead or that James was critically ill. She would find out about it all, including Connor soon enough.
I wondered what she thought about the commotion over the road and I hoped that she never found out about the bedroom. Sadly, I feared that the police would need to interview her, but I thought that Stokes would be sensitive. I hoped he would be anyway.
‘Let’s go back to this boyfriend of yours,’ Paul said with an edge of fatherly concern in his voice.
I discreetly left Paul and Charlie to it, and I was pleased to see that Stokes got the hint and followed me. He offered me a lift home, which I gladly accepted. Rees talked the whole way, about everything and nothing, but Stokes was silent as he drove. He might have been concentrating on driving around the dark, twisting country lanes, but I figured he was putting all the final pieces together. I think I’d worked out most of the puzzle, but I didn’t really see how Sarah was connected. When we pulled up outside my house, my curiosity got the better of me and I had to ask.
Stokes looked across at Rees and I was relieved that he nodded his head in consent.
‘At the heart of all this is Connor and his obsession with Charlie,’ he began. I thought of the bedroom. ‘But, I still think there’s something else going on there,’ he began. ‘Paul told you about Charlie, and as a result you spoke to Richard Rollins and that, I’m afraid, Alex, set the dominoes in motion.’
I took a deep breath, I’d already realized that what happened was all my fault.
‘Rollins in turn spoke to Charlie, and this was overheard by Bethany Andrews and the rumours started. Connor must have heard these rumours. He would have been outraged. Charlie was his. So, he decided to punish the man responsible: Richard Rollins.’
‘And Bethany,’ I chipped in. ‘There were three girls that attacked Charlie. I wonder why he only took Bethany? And why Sarah? And James? Was it because he thought he’d got his sister pregnant?’
‘I don’t think so. When we interviewed Miss Alec in hospital this morning, she told us how she had been involved in rescuing Charlie from Bethany. Miss Alec told me she said to Connor that it was nice to know he cared. I think he took it to mean that he personally cared for Charlie, which of course he did, not that she knew that.’
‘But why would he attack her?’ I asked.
‘Who knows how his mind was working, how he saw things. Maybe he thought that if she worked out that he “cared” for Charlie that she might think he would want to punish Rollins, which, of course, again, he did. Paranoia and panic. Plain and simple.’
‘And James?’
‘He must have seen or heard something, or maybe Goodhand just thought he had, just as he did with Sarah. With Rollins dead and James looking a bit touch and go, I’m not sure we’ll ever find out.’
I nodded, waited a second or two and opened the car door. ‘And the bunch of keys you found?’ I asked, remembering their visit to me in hospital.
‘We suspect that they’re house keys belonging to female members of staff at your school. We haven’t decided whether to look into it or not. It might cause unnecessarily upset for people.’
‘But Rollins had Sarah’s keys so he could move her car. How did Connor end up with them?’ I asked.
‘That’s worth looking into,’ Rees rumbled. ‘Well, see you in the morning, Mr Freeman. Central Police Station, nine o’clock,’ he said before I closed the door. I watched them drive away, went inside my house and fell asleep on the sofa.
Ninety
A week later I was stood in a church with Sarah at my side. Even though it was a mournful occasion, I was happy that we were here together and that she was well on the road to recovery. I held her hand as we looked at the two coffins that sat before us. Sadly, James’s blow to the head had been more serious than anyone had thought, but what made this funeral sadder was the truth behind the whole sorry mess of that week in late October. As a result of it, Jackie had lost not only the father of her child, but also her boyfriend. I never told Sarah the truth though. Only Paul, me, and Charlie knew.
The day before the funeral, DC Stokes had rung me. Apparently Rollins popped into our caretakers’ office and asked one of them to move Sarah’s car as it was parked in a difficult spot and he didn’t want to scratch it. The Site Manager was too busy, so Connor volunteered. They had a key cutter in school so they could make all the copies they would need for all the locks in the school. Connor must have used it. Stokes suspected the three colours were a grading system.
Rees took great delight in telling me that Connor didn’t die from the fall but ended up a quadriplegic. He would also be going to a maximum security hospital, despite the fact he wouldn’t be going anywhere, ever again. Also, with the capture of his knife and samples of his DNA, Connor was also positively identified as the murderer of the prostitute and the pensioner that Rees had mentioned at my house.
An assumption started all this, then rumours. One lie, an innocent one, maybe, which was meant to protect, had ended with a heavy price, and I had played my part in it all. None of it was intentional, but I would always be left with the guilt that if I’d never spoken to Richard, Connor would never have done things he had to Sarah, Richard, James and Bethany. DC Stokes tried to convince me it wasn’t true, that Connor had already murdered two women and that he was clearly mentally ill. It didn’t change the fact that people I worked with and cared about had been hurt or killed and that now a child would grow up without a father.
I suppose that many of us were lucky to have walked away from this, and maybe we could learn something from it all. If I’d learned one thing over that week, it was that when Lord Byron said “Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey” he was only half right. It also has the power to turn us into wolves.
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Acknowledgements
The following people were willing victims who read my WIP or were sounding boards - Nicki Davis, Sally Watson, Louise Morgan, Maria Greeley, and Daniel Abbott. Thanks for your encouragement.
The following people were fantastic sources of information and gave up their time to help me. C Haddon, A Bowers, Kevin Robinson, Lesley Horton, Bernie Reed
Thank you.
G Mockford
03/08/13
Or on Twitter @GMockfordthrill
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