The Decoy

by Florrie Palmer

  Eliza had sat quietly listening to all this in amazement. And relief. She had assumed Stella would be upset about Bob’s arrest and this had been the last thing she had been expecting. In a small way, it made her feel a little better. It felt as though the two of them were women who had suffered in very different ways but on account of the same man.

  When Stella finished what she had to say, while the shaking woman was blowing her nose and wiping her eyes, Eliza leant forward, stretched her arms across the table and took Stella’s hands in hers.

  “I was just learning to love your mother very much, and now she is gone.”

  The women squeezed each other’s hands. Together they bawled their hearts out.

  The same morning that Stella was meeting Eliza in Cambridge, Patrick was doing a last-minute check around Sparepenny Place where everything was packed ready for the removal company the following morning. He searched through cupboards making sure they were empty.

  When he got to Sinead’s old room, he got onto his hands and knees to open a small cupboard on the floor. Right at the back he found a dusty shoebox. In it were Eliza’s engagement ring, Jay’s credit card, Johnny’s iPhone and a dried-up flower head that he didn’t know was from Rose’s garden. He took the box downstairs and was just placing it on his hall table when a sudden anxiety shot through him. He had remembered something. He crossed to the inglenook chimney and reached up inside to produce a soot-covered, white crumpled handkerchief. He took this into the garden and burnt it. The blackened fragments were caught by the wind and blown across the now covered swimming pool.

  He remembered the day when, having checked Louise was working in her dark room, he had taken a taxi and told the driver to wait on the back road. He had told the driver he was arranging a surprise for his wife. That had been completely true.

  Then, having taken the padlock key for the back gate earlier, he had run through the trees into the garden. He recalled slipping off his T-shirt and shorts, dashing into the dark room, surprising Louise, putting his arms round her waist.

  He remembered his own fear as he had stuffed the hanky into her mouth and half carried, half dragged the terrified woman to the poolside. There, with her in his grip, he had jumped into the pool and held her under the water. It hadn’t taken long. He’d had so little time. But all he had needed to do was to put his body across hers and hold her under. Once she was dead, leaving her in the pool, he had rapidly dried with the towel he had brought with him and thrown his clothes on again. Then he had legged it through the front gateway, turned left out of the drive and around the corner to the back road to the waiting taxi. No-one could have seen him. It had been as pre-meditated as it gets.

  He had just had as much as a man can take. Louise had waved her affair in Patrick’s face and threatened to run off with Bob. Perhaps she had been hoping to provoke him into leaving her. If so, she had underestimated his love for his daughter.

  While the furniture van was loading up, he returned the stolen things to their owners. They all sympathised deeply with the state poor Sinead had been in and agreed never to mention it again. If it wasn’t for his darling Cambridge girlfriend, he knew he wouldn’t have been able to live with what he had done. Guilt acquired even in innocence or error can hound a person as long as they live, let alone if it is a real guilt. He prayed that in time it would subside and that his girlfriend would become his wife and a stepmother for Sinead.

  For the meantime, Sinead was loving Francesca’s cat Thai who now slept on her bed in their new house.

  Hamish and Katie were sitting quietly on the bench in their garden, gazing at the fields and woods beyond. Hamish had done the thing he had been planning to do the day of Annie B.’s murder. He had handed in his notice and left the following day.

  Hamish said quietly, “You know, our marriage and our happiness are far more important than anything else. If we are happier, our kids will be too. I love you, Katie Nicholson, and I think you love me. All we need to do to make it work is to join forces and set up our own business. ‘Wood Farm Products.’ I make the drinks and you the sauces and ice creams. How’s about it, old girl?”

  Suddenly, in a sentence, Katie’s life changed. It was an amazing experience and, in that moment, all her insecurities began to melt away. Her man loved her. He wanted to be at home with her full-time. He wanted to work alongside her and she knew then and there that they could make this work. She had not felt so good or so clear-headed for years. She jumped up and ran around in little circles shouting to the sky,

  “Eat and drink your way back to happiness with Wood Farm Products!”

  Then she threw her arms around Hamish’s neck and smothered him with kisses. He stood up and lifted his wife up high off the ground. She wrapped her legs around his waist while he danced across the garden. The birds in the trees, the ducks on the pond, the chickens in their enclosure, the sheep in the field, all stopped for a moment to wonder whether they should flee from the fearful sound of the raucous laughter that filled the air.

  26

  February, the following year

  None of them went to the trial except Stella and Rose. Consumed with rage as they both were, they wanted to see the bastard get his desserts. Annie B.’s statement was read out by the prosecution.

  To the Senior Investigating Officer in charge of the investigation into the murder of Anne Berkeley

  Although Annie’s identification of Bob seen entering Smith’s Cottage on the night of the fire held some weight, there was no actual proof that he had deliberately set the fire, so reluctantly the police had to agree they could not indict him for that murder. As a result of no evidence, the police couldn’t prosecute him, but the prosecution made sure the jury knew about Louise’s death and her affair with McKenzie and his probable role in Francesca’s murder.

  The jury took no time to reach a unanimous decision that the defendant was guilty of Anne Berkeley’s murder. In Judge Golding’s summing up, he called McKenzie “an evil, manipulative and dangerous man who must never be allowed consideration of parole”. Robert McKenzie was given a full life sentence that, in the judge’s words meant “the full twenty-five years”. He was sent to Whitfield Prison in Norfolk.

  Epilogue

  I hover, I vibrate and I watch. I don’t feel cold or hot or pain or any external feelings.

  He called “Eliza” and “Jay” softly. When he got no response, he went as quietly and quickly as he could to the downstairs cloakroom. I saw him remove a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and put them on. From a carrier bag he took out a strange-looking pair of woollen gloves with rubber pads on the palms.

  Then he pulled out a large monkey wrench. So that was what he killed me with. No wonder it hurt. He put it back where I suppose it ordinarily lived in Jay’s toolbox. Then, in one of the old oak cubbyholes in which we had always kept such things, he replaced what I now realised were Jay’s fishing gloves. He must have grabbed the wrench and gloves when he went to the loo after lunch on Sunday. What a quick-thinking bastard he is.

  When he washed his hands, which he did very thoroughly, I know he felt the full power of my hatred. He glanced at himself in the wall mirror and a shudder of extreme anxiety coursed through him. Not something the man is used to, angst being foreign to him. Then he sneaked back through the house and was gone before being noticed by either Jay or Eliza. He must have had a prepared excuse for calling round but had no need to use it.

  I stayed as close as I could to Eliza while she was in the bath. I know she felt my presence and thought about me, but I wasn’t able to influence her to get out of it and catch the man red-handed – literally – with my blood on his hands, or at least poor Jay’s gloves. I was desperate to let her know but there was no way I was able. I just had to hover and watch and hone in. I was always concerned that my statement might not have been enough to find him guilty, but it did get them to re-examine the case and release poor Jay.

  My last ever Sunday lunch was a dire affair. Had I known Eliza had in
vited the McKenzies, I would have cried off, but I had only seen her briefly when I had got back on Friday and collected Mildred. I didn’t see her at all on Saturday. I really hated sharing a table with the man who I knew was likely to become my murderer. More so, I loathed sharing a table with the family I had to say goodbye to forever. In fact, I got so close to calling the whole plan off. I had known I would have terrible doubts, but once Bob had my letter, it had been too late. I had delivered it to the front door of the manor on Saturday afternoon. I knew the housekeeper acted like a butler as well as cook. She always answered the front door, which was seldom used except for formal occasions.

  Once I had handed that letter over, for me there was no reprieve. When Bob had received it, he must have worked out that Jay was the best person to implicate. During lunch on Sunday, he deliberately turned the conversation to people’s daily routines and Eliza mentioned that I was a creature of habit who walked Mildred on the same route every morning at about 9.30am.

  Lingering over my grave at my funeral, my sorrow was overwhelming as I watched poor Eliza, Jay and the children sob their hearts out. I hurt so much for all of them. I had never even seen my first grandchild, Juliet, one last time before I left. I watched her blub and remembered her so well when she was little and how much I had cherished her arrival into the world.

  I miss my family, my friends and I miss little Mildred. I want to cuddle and feed and walk and sleep with her. And poor Pam grieves over my death. I contemplated including her in my plan, but knew I could trust no-one to take on the huge responsibility of permitting my murder to go ahead. They could so easily have baulked at the last minute and ruined things. These questions bother me. They will not let me be. Should I have been braver and stayed alive as long as I could? Or did I do the right thing?

  I watched the trial with fascination. McKenzie, of course, pleaded not guilty. Throughout the whole trial, his countenance showed not a hint of concern or remorse. In fact, he smiled a lot, as though he was amused by the wrongful absurdity of it all.

  But a unanimous jury found him guilty. He has been put away where he belongs. I followed him to prison and have stayed to watch him adapt to the life there. As cunning and clever as they are, psychopaths cannot resist the fear and admiration of others. The need to be one up can be irresistible to them and so often proves their downfall.

  I heard him brag to another prisoner how he detested and killed his wife’s Chihuahua, and boast about how he dropped in on Francesca who, already drunk, was about to make a bacon sandwich. Too far gone to resist his kiss, he told her he had always wanted her, took her up to bed and had sex with her. Afterwards when she had passed out into a deep snoring sleep, he had slipped downstairs, turned on the gas flame under the pan with uncooked bacon in it. He had moved the J-cloths and kitchen roll close to the hob and slipped out quietly.

  I was always in favour of the right to die by one’s own choosing. Regrets aside, I am lucky to have had the chance to be able to decide my own ending and to have accepted that fate before I left. Acceptance was what Bob craved, but altogether the wrong kind. I know that I am one of the lucky ones. Unlike too many hordes of babies, children, young adults born to live and die too fast, I was stopped late in the day after a good long game. But now it’s enough. I need to cease remembering, loving and hating. I have come away from Bob. Eliza feels my love and is safe to leave, so with reluctance I have broken away from her too. My story is done. So now, the essence of my being can merge into the vast sea of vibrations that connects us all.