The Missing Witness

by Jo Smedley

  “How much older is Paul?” Irene asked.

  “Oh, he’s younger than me actually, but only by about fourteen months. He was taller than all of us by the time he was thirteen. Lesley was the eldest, not that you’d know it in this photo.”

  Irene smiled. “Well… I guess we must be off.” She took hold of Lou’s hand, squeezed it. “Look after your mum won’t you. It’s difficult going through something like this. No parent should have to bury their child.”

  This outpouring of heartfelt emotion was unusual from Irene and it left me surprised. Especially given that we thought Gill was the killer. Lou smiled thinly at her.

  “I am,” she said.

  I walked outside with Lillian in my arms and followed Irene across the herringbone brickwork. Neither of us looked back. I heard the door close behind us and turned to Irene.

  “What?”

  “We’ve been idiots,” Irene said. “We’ve been looking in the wrong place the whole time.”

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Knowing where the body was was only half of the problem. We still had no idea who had put it there and there was certainly no way the police were going to destroy the rear end of a neighbour’s house to recover a body just on the say so of two women. I wondered how easy it would be to trace the previous owners of the house. Perhaps they could shed some insight on Pete and Gill’s relationship at that time. They might even have noticed something unusual when they popped back to check on the progress of their extension.

  I headed for the car expecting a debrief back in Irene’s kitchen but she stopped midway there. I turned to her. Her face was unreadable.

  “What?”

  “I think I need a wee.”

  It was the first time Irene had ever suggested she might have a bladder problem. I’d seen all the adverts on TV about leaking issues in older age, but in all the time I’d known her she’d never been caught short.

  “I may just need to call in on Fiona,” she said. I followed her to Fiona’s front door, embarrassed on her behalf.

  The door was opened before we’d even rung the bell. She must have been watching us from the window. Lillian and I spent a lot of time at windows and we’d surprised the postman now and again by opening the door before he reached it. When Lillian was at her worst it was my only contact with another human being during the day. A lifeline of normality. Even if it was just junk mail I received.

  “How’d you get on?” she asked. Nicholas was holding onto her legs, needy.

  “Great,” Irene said. “I’ve got enough cuttings I think.” She lofted one of her cutting bags. “Only, well, this is rather embarrassing… but is there any chance I can use your loo?”

  “Of course. Come in, come in. Have you got time for a brew? I was just about to put the kettle on.”

  “We have, haven’t we Ruth? Lillian doesn’t need a nap or lunch or anything just yet, does she?”

  “No. We’ve got time. Only – I feel a bit like we’re imposing,” I said. “We were only here yesterday.” Irene shot me a look and I realised suddenly there was more going on here than a weak bladder. The bladder was an excuse, not the cause of the visit. I couldn’t believe how naïve I still was to Irene’s ruses.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Fiona said. She’d missed our non-verbal interplay. “It’s good for Nicholas to have some company. He’s a little grizzly today. I’m not sure what’s up with him. Teeth probably.”

  Teeth were blamed for everything at this age. Dribbling, temperatures, bad moods, poor sleep.

  “Upstairs?” Irene asked. It had been me who went last time.

  “Yes. You can’t miss it. Second on the right.”

  Irene headed upstairs, leaving me to wonder what she was really up to while I settled Lillian down in the living room. As expected Nicholas ignored her arrival completely until she went over to take a look at the cars he was playing with. Realising the competition, he grabbed the cars in his chubby fists, yowled and ran off stumpily to find his gran. Lillian ran after him. She giggled as she chased him and I couldn’t help but grin when Fiona came in and was immediately accosted by her grandson, who wrapped himself around her knees. Had he been capable of speech I’m sure he would have been shouting “Save me! Save me!”

  She stooped down and explained the situation calmly; the tones of her voice conveying what words could not to someone his age.

  “She only wants to play, Nicholas.” She told him as he burst into tears. He really was in a bad mood today. Given his red cheeks I thought Fiona’s assessment of teeth was probably the right one.

  Nicholas glared at Lillian, snuggling himself into Fiona as much as he could, his fingers tightly grasping the cars. “I know,” she said, “Why don’t I hold onto these two for a while? Put them safe up here.”

  “Newest toy,” she told me, as she placed them up on the mantelpiece out of both children’s reach. “Quite obsessed. I only got them for him yesterday evening.”

  I smiled at her. Lillian didn’t allow anyone else to play with her whisk. But explaining that to someone who didn’t know about her heuristic play box, would have required more effort than I was presently inclined to give. The sofa was comfortable, Lillian was happy, and I’d had an early start this morning. I could feel myself relaxing already.

  I heard the kettle click off in the kitchen and Fiona left the room, heading back to make the tea. Irene was taking her time upstairs which convinced me my assessment was right. She wasn’t just using the facilities. I listened out for footsteps but if she was prowling and prying upstairs, I couldn’t hear her moving about. I wondered what she was looking for now.

  Fiona returned with the tea things and a thick Victoria sponge cake.

  “Been baking.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That looks delicious.”

  If there was one thing I liked more than biscuits it was cake. This one looked light and airy. It had jam in the middle and was dusted liberally with icing sugar. A sharp knife rested beside it ready for action, though if the look of the sponge was anything to go by, it would slice easily.

  While we waited for Irene, I filled the room with small talk, asking about Janice, whether she’d be at baby group this week, what progress Nicholas was making with walking… We were chatting quite pleasantly about her daughter’s work-life balance when Fiona suddenly went quiet. Soft on her feet, Irene had returned and was standing behind me, a presence over my shoulder. I turned to face her. She had something with her. Something large and rectangular. She handed it to me.

  I looked. It was the photo of Fiona, Janice, Paul and Colin, the same family photo I’d looked at the day before.

  “Did it fall down?” I asked innocently.

  “No. Look at it,” Irene said. “Take a good look. This is your son Paul, isn’t it?” Irene said to Fiona, pointing.

  “Yes,” Fiona said, but she looked anxious. Irene’s words and actions had unnerved her in some way.

  I looked. Nothing had changed in the faces since I’d seen them yesterday and yet Fiona was clearly anxious, as if Irene had discovered something. I looked hard across all the faces, Janice and Fiona were so similar. Paul and Colin so different. If anything Paul looked more like… I looked at Irene, suddenly understanding. She nodded at me. Like the dead body, we had been looking for our suspects in the wrong place.

  “He must have been born after he disappeared,” Irene said. “The youngest of Geoff Allenby’s children.”

  I looked from Irene to Fiona, Fiona to Irene, and I watched as the initial shock of discovery disappeared from Fiona’s face, replaced by a mask so rehearsed it was almost indistinguishable from the Fiona I knew. Paul was proof of her marital infidelity but from the look on her face, there was more to it than that.

  “Did he know you were pregnant?” Irene asked him.

  “Yes. But none of this matters now, does it? He’s gone. The affair was over the day he left.”

  “But he didn’t go away though, did he?” said Irene.

  Fiona
said nothing. She had been tricked into revealing this much and she wasn’t going to fall into the same trap twice.

  “You weren’t booked to sit for the girls that night were you?” Irene said. “You went round to see Geoff. You knew Gill was out and you went round to see him.” It was a supposition on her part, but Fiona didn’t refute it.

  Her face was blank, but her eyes betrayed her, flickering between us nervously and I knew then, just as Irene had known instinctively, that we had found our killer. The Fiona I knew, the happy carefree grandmother, had been replaced by a much darker personality. This one had all the defences, all the skills with subterfuge and misdirection. The Fiona I knew might still be there, but she was hidden, cocooned away, protected by this other self.

  The surfacing of this new personality made perfect sense to me. I knew from experience how difficult it was living a double life. Irene’s investigation had been hard enough to keep hidden from Lucus, without needing to hide something far more sinister like a murder. Fiona had created an alibi and had been maintaining her lies under the pressure of a police enquiry for years. It was as if there were two different people in one body. The fluffy grandmother I knew and deceptive murderer I didn’t. I wondered if perhaps all killers were like this. In all the programs I’d watched, all the magazine articles I’d read, serial killers lived entirely normal lives, unsuspected by anyone until they finally slipped up. Their utter ‘normalness’ was how they got away with the murders for so long.

  “Did Lesley know Paul was her brother?” I asked.

  “Did your husband know?” Irene said, keeping the pressure on.

  “No. Nobody did. And I’d prefer to keep it that way if you don’t mind.” She made to grab at the photo, but Irene held it firm.

  “I’m sure the police would find it most interesting,” she said. “It puts you squarely in the frame for Geoff’s murder.”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “That’s not what Lesley thought. She told Rose she’d seen you.” She hadn’t of course, but Fiona didn’t know what we’d heard from Rose.

  “Rose? You mean her busy-body good-for-nothing spiritual advisor? You should never listen to a word she says. The police never have.”

  “But they’d listen to me,” Irene said. “You buried him in next door’s foundations didn’t you? They can soon check. An anonymous phone call ought to do it.” She reached for her phone.

  I could see what Irene was trying to do. She was pushing her. Trying to force a confession. But between us and Fiona were Lillian and Nicholas.

  I watched Fiona’s eyes glancing between us. Then saw her eyes light on the knife. I was too slow. She grabbed it.

  “Wait!”

  I watched the knife glinting in the sunlight from the window. We knew she had form. This wasn’t an idle threat.

  We watched her, waiting to see what she was going to do. The room was strangely silent, as if the entire world was paused. There were no sounds of traffic, no birds outside. The two toddlers looked up, unsure what to make of the sudden stillness of the adults within the room. They’d noticed the change in atmosphere. Even at their age they were sensitive to the undercurrents of strong emotion present. I willed Lillian to stumble towards me, but she stayed where she was, just out of reach.

  Irene hadn’t thought about the kids. She might have jumped intuitively to the right answer, but her timing couldn’t have been worse. We should have gone home, considered the next action, left Lillian safely with Lucus, not run headlong with her into this confrontation.

  “Don’t call them. Not just yet. Not ‘til you’ve heard my side of the story”

  We waited. Watching her. Irene lowered the phone, giving her the time she asked for.

  “I didn’t kill him,” she said.

  “I don’t believe you,” Irene said. “All this time you’ve maintain Geoff ran away. And all this time you knew exactly where he was. Who does that? Who buries a man and says nothing?”

  “It’s not as simple as that.”

  “Really? Then tell us,” Irene said. “Tell us how you came to bury a man you didn’t kill.”

  “I didn’t do it! I didn’t do anything. You must believe me! It was an accident. He just died.”

  “Then why did you say he ran away? Why the pretence? Why not just call an ambulance.”

  “I don’t know. I… I guess I panicked.”

  “Panicked?” I said. I wasn’t sure I believed her. Burying a body took time. She’d lied to the police, concocted a story. Panicking people called ambulances. There was much more to it than she was letting on.

  Irene looked out of the window towards the house opposite. The one we now knew contained the body in the foundations. A body Fiona had put there.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said. “You hid the body. What innocent person hides a body? Come on Ruth. We should go. Telephone the police.”

  “No!” Fiona shouted. Brandishing the knife, a look of sheer rage on her face. “No! You don’t understand. I had no choice. You can’t go to the police. You can’t. I’d lose everything. And it was all an accident. ” She backed us towards the sofa.

  Lillian’s eyes darted between us all, frightened by the body language and the raised voices. I smiled at her, willing her to come to me. I watched as her lip wobbled and slowly reached out my hand, one eye on Fiona, the other on my daughter. Finally she ran over and I pulled her to me in a reassuring hug. Nicholas seemed eager to do the same, but he hung back from Fiona. Like me he could see there was something different about her, and it was clear he wasn’t sure what to do.

  We waited. The silence pregnant around us. Fiona glared at us. Her face hard, bitter. All these years she’d hidden this aspect of herself, locked it away, and now two strangers had prised it out, pulled this darkness into the open. Her freedom was in the balance. I wasn’t sure what she would do, but I saw Irene nod imperceptibly. She would sacrifice herself for me and Lillian. She would take that knife if it came to it. Fiona couldn’t get us both, Irene would let me escape.

  Suddenly Nicholas burst into tears, his plaintive whine breaking through to the grandma underneath. Fiona reached out one of her hands.

  “Come to Grandma,” she wheedled, the knife still in one hand separating us from escape. “Everything will be all right.” But I could see from Nicholas’s face he didn’t believe her. Like us, he’d seen the wolf and the Grandma skin didn’t fool him anymore. He stayed where he was, watching the knife she held ahead of her threateningly.

  I held onto Lillian tightly and watched as his face slowly crumbled, falling into terror. He was scared. While he didn’t understand the words, he heard the tone, he saw the body language. Ignoring the still outstretched arm of his Grandma and her coaxing calls he sat down. His face a picture of despair. He knew nobody in the room. He was alone. His wails filled the silence.

  “Then tell us,” Irene said, her voice calming, taking on the tones of a counsellor; gentle, reassuring. “Tell us what happened.”

  Unable to bear his cries any longer, Fiona stepped towards Nicholas, sweeping him up into her arms one handed. She tucked his head in close to her chest, and the sudden comfort of a familiar smell, the scent of his grandma up close, did what his eyes failed to do. Comforted, he snuggled into her shoulders, his terrified screams soothing down to sobs and snuffles.

  She struggled to juggle both the toddler and the knife in her arms, wanting to sooth him, yet unwilling to let go of her only bargaining chip.

  “He wasn’t happy,” Fiona said, watching us both. “She made him terribly unhappy.”

  Maybe she’d done the maths, worked out as I had, that she couldn’t get us both. We were two against one, one of us would be able to get away to tell the tale. Maybe instead she could persuade us not to tell anyone else. Convince us it was an accident. If only she could make us hear the whole story.

  “We were supposed to be going away,” she said. “That day, that evening. I waited. I waited in the car for him on the road. But he never ca
me.”

  We listened. We had no choice. Fiona still stood between us and the way out, and while I wasn’t sure Fiona could do anything with Nicholas in her arms, I wasn’t prepared to risk Lillian until it was absolutely necessary.

  “I called at his house. Gill was out. She’d left him with the children. He said he couldn’t go. But I knew he didn’t just mean that night. He meant ever. I don’t know what happened. It was all so fast…,”

  “He rejected you,” Irene said.

  “Yes.”

  “And you killed him.”

  “No. No. It wasn’t like that.” She started to rock Nicholas, side to side, side to side, just as any other parent would, soothing him. “I knew what everyone said about Gill and him. I’d seen the bruises, but I hadn’t believed it. I believed him. He said she was mentally ill. That she was manipulative. That she did things to herself. But it wasn’t like that at all. We argued. He - hurt me. Held me against the wall.”

  Whatever happened that night it was clear Fiona believed this version of events. Truth was evident in her eyes. Whether she’d convinced even herself after all this time about what had happened, we could never be sure. The only other witness to events was dead. The survivors always had a monopoly on history.

  “He had his hands around me, pressing, hissing at my face,” Fiona told us. “Telling me I meant nothing. I couldn’t breathe. I pushed him away, that was all, just pushed him away. But he fell, hit his head on the radiator valve. It must have caught him at the wrong angle; a freak accident. But that was it. That was all that happened. I knew he’d gone. I could tell. He just lay there. Didn’t move.”

  “But why didn’t you call an ambulance?” I said.

  “He’d already gone,” she said. “There was no point. And there was…,”

  “Colin,” Irene said, finishing her sentence. “Colin didn’t know about the affair, did he?” Fiona shook her head. “You had a baby on the way. And a husband who’d take care of you so long as he never found out.”