Death in the Family

by Jill McGown

  He glanced at Lloyd, who was looking out of the clear pane of glass at the top of the frosted window, as though anything and everything was more interesting than listening to him.

  So he addressed himself to Sandwell, telling him that he had picked himself up after falling on the body and had then heard a car pulling up. He had frozen for a few moments, panicking, then had hidden behind the car in the garage. He saw the utility room light go on and heard someone dialling 999, asking for help, and tried to get away before he got the blame, but he was seen. The keys were in the ignition of the Audi; he got in and reversed out. He had not realized that he had run anyone over.

  Sandwell had asked the odd question—did he know whose body it was, did he see the man who had called the police, did he see anyone else there, that sort of thing. His answers were that he thought the body looked like Kayleigh’s mother, no, he hadn’t seen the man who had called the police, just heard him, and no, there had been no one else there to the best of his knowledge.

  Lloyd had got tired of looking out of the window; now he was perched on the edge of a low cabinet, leafing through some booklet.

  “How did you find out where Kayleigh lived?” Sandwell asked.

  “Hasn’t she told you?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  He explained about her writing to him in prison.

  Sandwell made a disbelieving noise. “And why would she do that? She was the one who had you put away—why would she want to get in touch with you?”

  “Look, I know what it sounded like in court, but it wasn’t like that.”

  “It doesn’t matter what it was like,” Sandwell said. “She was a thirteen-year-old child.”

  “I know that now, but she didn’t look thirteen. She told me she was eighteen, and she wasn’t a child. When I finally did ring her she told me she had had my baby in December, before the trial.” He gave up on Sandwell ever believing him and looked at Lloyd, who now seemed to be reading with great interest the notice that gave advice to people in custody. “She had my baby,” he repeated. “Doesn’t that prove she wasn’t a child?”

  Lloyd ignored him, and Sandwell was still unimpressed. “She was barely thirteen years old,” he said again. “Baby or no baby. And why would she tell you about it now? She didn’t mention it at the trial, did she?”

  “But she did tell me. And she said she wanted to see me.”

  “It didn’t sound to our witness as though she wanted to see you.”

  “Witness?” repeated Dean, baffled. “What witness? And what is your witness supposed to have witnessed?”

  “All in good time, Dean. How did you really find out about the baby? How did you know where she lived?”

  Dean looked down at the table. He didn’t have any proof that Kayleigh had wanted to see him, and for some reason, she hadn’t told them that she did. He wondered, then, if something had happened to her. “Is Kayleigh all right?” he asked.

  “She’s fine.”

  Then why hadn’t she told them? They thought he’d come looking for her, and that would make it all even worse than it already was. He supposed she thought she should keep quiet about him being there at all, since he was breaking the conditions of his parole. “She told me,” he said wearily. “How else could I have found out?”

  “Prisons have grapevines. If you wanted to know where she was, there are people who can find out for you.”

  “Oh, yeah, like I was one of the lads.” He looked up. “No one would give me the time of day, never mind Kayleigh’s address. She told me. And she wanted to see me.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Sandwell. “You wanted to see her, though. You heard that she’d had your baby, and that she was going to take her to Australia, and you didn’t like that, did you?”

  Dean blinked at him. “Australia?” he repeated, shaking his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Sandwell sat forward. “You were overheard, Dean. Someone heard you shouting at her that she couldn’t take your daughter to Australia.”

  Dean stared at him. “I never even saw her or the baby! They weren’t there. I don’t know anything about Australia, and I didn’t have an argument with anyone.”

  “All right—let’s say I believe you. She asks you to meet her, and despite the fact that you say she lied to you about who she was and how old she was, despite the fact that she then reported you to the police and made you out to be an Internet pedophile, despite the fact that you could find yourself back in prison if you were seen with her, you agreed to meet her?”

  Put like that, it sounded crazy. It had been crazy, he supposed. But though he had done many things in his life before thinking them through, that hadn’t been one of them. “To start with, I said no, but she really wanted me to do it, and I thought maybe it was the least I could do.”

  “Wanted you to do what?”

  “She wanted a photograph of me holding Alexandra,” Dean said. “She wanted Alexandra to have it. So that she would know that her father had seen her, and held her. I said I’d do it.” He looked up again at Sandwell, not expecting to be believed, and he wasn’t disappointed.

  “You came to have your photograph taken? Do me a favor, Dean.”

  “Yes, I came to have my photograph taken. Because I knew that she had a real hang-up about not knowing who her father was. I think it really screwed her up—I think that’s why she got involved with me in the first place, why she told me all these lies about herself. I didn’t want the baby to be screwed up like that because of me. If this photograph would help, then I was prepared to do it.”

  Sandwell raised his eyes to heaven. “Did you do a psychology course in prison?”

  Dean ignored the sarcasm. “It didn’t seem much to ask, and she said she could make sure no one saw me.”

  “Oh, yes?” Sandwell’s face was like stone.

  It didn’t matter, Dean told himself, if they didn’t believe him. Kayleigh would confirm it once she realized that there was no point in keeping quiet about it. He described how she’d told him to wait on Brook Way Bridge and that she would come and meet him.

  “She said to watch for a white van, because they’d borrowed it for the move and it had to go back to its owner. Once it had gone, she would tell her mother that she was taking Alexandra out for some fresh air, and she would meet me without the risk of anyone seeing me with her, because her mum would be in the cottage and her mum’s boyfriend would be driving the van.” He grew tired of Sandwell’s disbelieving expression and turned once again to Lloyd. “But she hadn’t turned up, so I went to the cottage.” He was talking, of necessity, to Lloyd’s back, since he seemed to be reading the instructions for the fan that sat in the corner of the room.

  “What time was she supposed to meet you?” asked Sandwell.

  “No particular time—anytime after the van passed, she said. I don’t know what time it was.”

  “What made you think she wasn’t coming?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Then why didn’t you wait for her? Why did you go to the cottage? I thought you didn’t want her mother to know you were there.”

  “I thought Kayleigh would be on her own. I thought her mum must have taken the van back instead, because I’d seen the van go past, and then I saw her mum’s boyfriend leaving.”

  That got Lloyd’s attention. He looked up from the fan instructions. “You saw him leaving? In a vehicle, or on foot?”

  “On foot.”

  “How do you know her mother’s boyfriend?” asked Sandwell.

  “Kayleigh told me about him. And he came to the trial, sat with her mother.”

  “Describe him to me.”

  “He’s in his late forties, early fifties, maybe. Not a lot of hair. Not fat, but he doesn’t exactly work out a lot.”

  Lloyd shook his head and went back to the instructions, apparently not in the least interested in that.

  “Sorry, Dean,” said Sandwell. “Nice try. But her mother’s changed boyfrie
nds since the trial. That one doesn’t live with her anymore.”

  He had known they wouldn’t believe him. “I saw him,” he repeated. “So I started walking back through the woods to the cottage. I thought I’d either meet Kayleigh on her way to the bridge, or see her at the cottage. But when I got there, no one answered the door. And everything happened after that the way I’ve already told you.”

  The fan whirred into life. Lloyd examined it closely, pushed in a button, and the blades sped up.

  “There’s just one problem with that,” said Sandwell.

  Dean, fascinated by Lloyd’s activities, brought his attention back to Sandwell with some difficulty. “What problem?”

  “Kayleigh’s confirmed that you and she were the couple having the row.”

  He felt as though he’d been punched in the stomach, and he closed his eyes, almost in physical pain. “No,” he said. She couldn’t be screwing his life up again, not again. Why? Why would she lie? Why would she do that? He opened his eyes and looked at Sandwell. “No!” he shouted. “I don’t care what she’s saying. I wasn’t arguing with Kayleigh or anyone else. Kayleigh wasn’t there. The baby wasn’t there. I fell over a dead body, and now you tell me I ran someone over, and I’m sorry about that, but it was an accident. That’s what I did. And it’s all I did.”

  Sandwell was entirely unmoved. “She told you that you weren’t Alexandra’s father—did that upset you?”

  Dean stared at him. What was all this? Was Sandwell making it up? Was his so-called witness? Was Kayleigh? It made no sense, anyway. “Why would she tell me that? She got me here because I’m Alexandra’s father!”

  Sandwell nodded, his face thoughtful. “All right—I’ll accept that. But you went to the cottage, instead of waiting for her where she’d told you to wait, and you were wrong about Kayleigh being there on her own, because her mother was there. So was it her mother who told you that you weren’t the father? Was that who you had the row with? Did she find out about your tryst with Kayleigh, and put a stop to it?” His eyes widened slightly as another solution presented itself to him. “Did Kayleigh kill her? Is that why you keep saying she wasn’t there?”

  Dean didn’t even bother to answer. Lloyd pushed another button, and the fan began to oscillate slowly. He moved the fan experimentally, presumably trying to gauge the best position for the even distribution of disturbed air.

  “Just tell us the truth, Dean,” said Sandwell. “I’m tired of playing guessing games.”

  “I’ve told you the truth. I’ve told you a dozen times.”

  The fan’s configuration finally met with Lloyd’s approval. Now he came and sat down opposite Dean. “From the top,” he said.

  Dean frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s an informal musical expression, Mr. Fletcher. It means to repeat what you have just done, from the beginning. In your case, I want you to tell me your story again, from the beginning—by your reckoning, for the thirteenth time. By mine, for the second time.”

  “You mean right from where Kayleigh wrote to me in prison?”

  “I do. You can, of course, refuse. That is your right.”

  Dean shook his head wonderingly. “No, I don’t mind. But if you listened the first time round, you’d find your interviews would go a lot quicker.”

  And tiredly, a little self-consciously, he began all over again.

  Theresa had stayed all night, despite the attempts of the hospital staff to make her go home. He was breathing for himself now, and the doctors were very pleased with his progress—they said that his level of consciousness had improved considerably, and they really seemed to think he was going to be all right. Except, she thought, as she looked at his peaceful, blank sleeping face, Chief Inspector Lloyd believed he had murdered Lesley. It seemed ludicrous. But then . . . he had never been bullied before. And perhaps . . .

  No, she told herself, that was nonsense. He could never have been so calm, so ordinary, if he had just done something like that. But at the back of her mind she knew she had heard those words, read those words, in the accounts of murder trials. People who murdered and then went to the pub as usual, people who murdered and went to work. Everyone saying how normal they had seemed.

  Not Ian, though. Not Ian. She had known Ian all her adult life; he never lost his temper. He would put up token resistance and then just go along with people, like he was going along with Lesley about Australia.

  Phil—well, by his own admission, he flew into rages. He said he’d never been violent toward another person, but Theresa didn’t know that he hadn’t. And he had been very angry when she’d told him about them going to Australia. She had tried to ring him several times, but all she got was the answering service, on his home phone and his mobile. He did seem to have disappeared. Oh, but surely not. Surely he wouldn’t have done something like that.

  She tried not to think about it, because if he had, it was all her fault.

  Fletcher was telling his story again, still looking perplexed about why he was being asked to do it.

  But Lloyd always found it best to let people talk, and then go over what they had said. That way, he could find out if it had been rehearsed—people tended to use exactly the same phrases, tell the story in exactly the same order, if it had. And he could seek clarification of any points that concerned him with the benefit of having already heard the whole story. So far, Fletcher was passing his tests; Lloyd hadn’t had to interrupt him at all.

  But he couldn’t understand why Fletcher was so anxious to keep Kayleigh out of it. As he had pointed out, if she had brought him here purely so that the baby could have a photograph of her father holding her, telling him when he got here that he wasn’t the father would seem a particularly perverse thing to do. And yet Kayleigh had confirmed that she was the one having the argument, so someone was lying. It was much more likely to be Fletcher, much more likely that Kayleigh hadn’t told him about the baby at all, that he’d heard about it from someone else and had gone there to make trouble. The problem was that Lloyd believed Fletcher and didn’t believe Kayleigh. Fletcher was convincing; even Bob Sandwell seemed to be coming round to that way of thinking.

  When Dean had finished, Lloyd pulled a bundle of papers toward him. “I had this faxed through,” he said. “It’s a transcript of your trial.”

  Dean rubbed the back of his neck. “Look—I know you think I’m some sort of creep who looks in chat rooms for underage girls, but I’m not.”

  “She said that she was nervous of being there with you and wanted to leave, but you persuaded her to stay and got her drunk so that you could have sex with her. That afterward you told her not to tell anyone or you’d get into trouble. That you gave her presents to let you, to use her words, ‘do things’ with her.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Did you stop her leaving?”

  Dean looked uncomfortable. “Well—yes, I suppose. I thought she had just got cold feet because she’d never done anything like that before, but neither had I, so we were in the same boat. I mean, I just said she couldn’t run out on me, not after all the stuff she’d been writing to me. I was on a promise—that sort of thing.”

  “Did you buy alcohol?”

  “Well—yes. A half bottle of vodka. She suggested it. She said it would steady her nerves.”

  “Was she under the influence of the vodka when she finally did let you have sex with her?”

  Fletcher sighed, nodded. “A bit. But she wasn’t drunk.”

  “Did you say anything about getting into trouble?”

  “I—well . . . I knew she had sneaked out to meet me, that she wasn’t being completely straight with me. So I said I hoped she’d keep me out of it if she got found out, because I didn’t want to get any bother about it. But I meant with her boyfriend or husband or whatever. And, yes, before you ask, I bought her presents! Didn’t you ever buy your girlfriends presents?”

  “No lies, then.”

  Dean looked down at the table. “Not lies,
exactly. But she made it sound . . . I don’t know . . . dirty. And it wasn’t. I didn’t abuse her! We made love. Both of us.”

  “She was thirteen years old,” Bob Sandwell said for the third time.

  “She told me she was eighteen.”

  “We’ve seen Kayleigh,” Sandwell said. “Spoken to her. Even if she did tell you she was eighteen, you must have known it wasn’t the case. You just didn’t care. It amounts to the same thing.”

  Sandwell was right, of course, thought Lloyd. Fletcher couldn’t possibly have believed she was old enough. But as for the rest, the truth could be stretched to breaking point without actually committing perjury. It didn’t lessen the offense, but it did put a different complexion on it.

  Dean sat back. “Has Kayleigh told you all this about Australia and me having a row with her about Alexandra? It isn’t true.”

  “She’s told us very little,” said Lloyd. “Which is why I’m inclined to believe you.”

  Dean sighed. “Is this where he’s the aggressive cop and you’re the sympathetic one? There’s no need for all that. Just ask me what you want to know.”

  Lloyd did have sympathy for Fletcher, but not because he and Bob had worked out some interviewing strategy. Kayleigh’s youth was what made the relationship illegal, but hardly unnatural; Lloyd was inclined to agree that anyone sexually mature enough to give birth was no longer a child. After all, he thought, Judy was thirteen when he was twenty-three; he hadn’t known her then, but what if he had? He would have had the sense not to get involved with her, but he might well have fallen for her. He couldn’t voice any of that, of course, but yes, he did have sympathy for Fletcher.

  “Look—all I want is for you to stop thinking of me as some sort of child abuser, because I’m not. We met over the Internet. Hundreds of couples have met that way—I didn’t think anything of it. And I’ve had it up to here with being treated like some sort of monster, like one of those sickos who get their kicks doing it with kids, because I’m not one!”