The Missing Witness

by Jo Smedley

  Fiona nodded. “That’s it. That’s it exactly.” Her voice was a half sob. We understood. I could see the knife hand lowering imperceptibly. Perhaps she’d be OK. Perhaps we’d agree with her decisions. But she’d forgotten about Lesley. Forgotten where this path of deceit had led her.

  “So you buried him,” I said. Leading the confession towards its conclusion.

  “Pete had a big trench dug ready for the foundations. I’d been over there only that morning, checking on the place. I had the key while the Johnsons were away. I’d seen the pit. I knew I didn’t need to do much, just dig it a little deeper, and then cover the body with soil. The concrete was arriving the next day. He’d be gone for good. No one would know.”

  “No one but you,” I said. “And Lesley.”

  Fiona looked down at the knife and I watched as tears of frustration rolled down her cheek. We’d trapped her. We knew she’d disposed of Geoff, and here she was threatening us with a knife, a knife like the one which had killed the only other witness to the incident.

  “I didn’t know she was awake,” Fiona said. “I thought both girls were asleep upstairs. I checked in on them when I’d finished. Decided to stay at the house until Gill came back. Told Gill Geoff had asked me to look after them. That he’d had an emergency or something and gone out.”

  “She didn’t report him missing until the next day,” Irene said. “By that point you’d already disposed of his wallet and a suitcase of clothes you’d taken the night before.”

  “What happened?” I asked. “Did Lesley suddenly remember everything?”

  “I knew she’d been seeing someone. Gill told me. She was worried about her. Said there was something bothering her. That she thought it had something to do with Geoff’s disappearance.”

  “So you called in?” Irene prompted. “Just for a chat.”

  The penny dropped. Now I knew how Irene had slotted in the last puzzle piece. We always said it had to be a close friend or family member. Fiona was just that. Lou called her “Auntie” the day we first saw them together. If Lesley would have been comfortable with anyone in her kitchen, it would have been Fiona.

  “I hadn’t meant to,” Fiona said. Excusing herself. “I didn’t go there planning to do it. You must believe me.”

  I did. I believed she didn’t intentionally set out that evening to kill her, but yet she still had. I waited. Waited for Fiona to furnish me with an explanation I could believe. She had murdered her surrogate niece, stabbing her in the back. There had to be a reason. Had to be something I could understand. Murder was surely a rational act. There had to be a logical reason for her actions, a reason for a normal individual to just flip. There had to be. Or my world was suddenly full of more dangers than I had previously recognised.

  “She didn’t remember it all. Didn’t know what she’d seen,” Fiona said. “She was too young. But I knew given time she’d piece things together. She was always the bright one. Just like her father. So like her father. I don’t know what happened. I was worried. Worried about Janice, Paul, Nicholas. I didn’t want things to change. I didn’t want them to know what I’d done. I didn’t want them to find out. Didn’t want their world to turn upside down. I couldn’t bare the look on their faces; knowing.”

  “And Lesley, Lesley was the one who threatened all that. The only one. Just one person. She told me all about it. Told me what she remembered, how she remembered it. It was like I was reliving it all, all over again. You don’t know what it’s like, to be unmasked and yet unseen. It was only a matter of time. And only one person. She looked so like him. So like her father. I saw the knife on the side and… it was all over before I knew what had happened. You must believe me. I didn’t know what I was doing. It just happened.”

  “So you killed her,” Irene said. “Stabbed her in the back and then washed up your tea things and let yourself out like nothing had happened?”

  I felt the weight of Lillian in my arms. I couldn’t imagine resorting to murder to protect her, and yet I knew I would. Intrinsically that maternal instinct was built in to defend, to protect our offspring against wolves, lions. Somewhere in my psyche lurked a killer, and yet I had to believe it wasn’t that easy.

  “It wasn’t easy,” Fiona said, as if reading my mind. “I cried for her. Wept. She was like a daughter. But she wasn’t family.”

  I turned to Irene. We had our confession. I didn’t know what our next move would be. Irene stayed still. Impassive, as if waiting for something more.

  “I didn’t mean to,” Fiona repeated. “You must believe me.” She dropped the knife. Realising at last that her best defence was to throw herself on our mercy.

  Mental trauma, a sudden lapse of judgement. I somehow knew these would be her lawyer’s claims in court. A mental breakdown. They would plead guilty and hope for a lenient sentence. But she had never called that ambulance. She had never given Lesley the choice. I hoped the jury would see what we had.

  A woman scorned is a terrible thing; a mother trapped – worse.

  Movement outside the window caught my eye and I saw a police car, blue lights flashing, pulling up outside. Two officers got out and headed for the door.

  “I called them while I was upstairs,” Irene said. “I thought we might need them.”

  I nodded. We very nearly had. I kicked the knife away from Fiona’s feet, across to the skirting board.

  “I think you should call Janice,” Irene told Fiona. “Nicholas is going to need someone to look after him.”

  I watched as Fiona was led to the police car and helped into the back seat, her eyes red from crying and her hair in disarray. Janice was standing next to me, Nicholas in her arms, pudgy hands clutching a biscuit.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Janice didn’t respond. Whatever friendship we had started to form was over. She’d never forgive me for this one. Her mother may have been a murderer, but I was the guilty one. Me and Irene. We’d befriended her under false pretences. We’d exposed her mother. We’d ruined her nuclear family. Nothing would ever be the same.

  As the car pulled away she turned and stepped back into the house, closing the door behind her quietly but with an air of finality.

  I looked to Irene.

  “Home?”

  Chapter Thirty Three

  “So…” Inspector Laing looked between us expectantly. “You just thought you’d blunder in?”

  He was in his late thirties, if my age estimate was about right, tall, slim built, unshaven, though to be honest, that designer stubble look was in these days. He had blue eyes, the beginnings of crow’s feet at the corners, and a kind smile which, judging by the lines, was a familiar landmark on his face.

  He watched me over his coffee mug as I bounced Lillian on my knees. He took coffee, not tea; milk, no sugar. It appeared Irene had met him before, as she seemed to know his preference without even asking. Equally, he seemed to know his way around her house and had settled himself onto the sofa after moving around various books and painting accessories to accommodate his bottom as if he was a regular guest.

  We’d arranged to meet at her house rather than dropping into the police station. Irene thought it would be easier given the circumstances. I thought she meant Lillian. It turned out Lillian was only part of the reason.

  I sipped at my own tea. Waiting for Irene to respond. I knew she would. Russ had been released and the real killer arrested and charged and all because of what we had done. A double homicide. Two cases, nearly 20 years apart, but finally they had the killer behind bars. It would make the local news when it broke, but we had decided to keep a very low profile. The credit would go to the police. We would stay out of the media.

  “We didn’t exactly blunder,” Irene said. Inspector Laing might want to admonish us for our behaviour, but the fact of the matter was, we’d solved the case and apprehended the one responsible without police support. She wasn’t going to take any nonsense.

  “It could have been very different and you know it,” he said
.

  I remembered the knife and wondered what might have happened to us both had the toddlers not been present, distracting and grounding Fiona in the here and now.

  “I called you the moment I knew,” Irene said.

  “And yet you still waded in. You didn’t wait.”

  “Well.” It was a statement, a conclusion, not a preliminary to a longer explanation. I looked at Irene. Something about this wasn’t quite what I expected. It was hardly an interview and somehow it all seemed much more familiar than how I assumed a formal reprimand would go.

  “And you dragged someone else into it this time.” This time ? I looked back to Irene, her face was unrepentant and gave no clues as to how often she had interfered with police business. “You really should have known better than to risk, I’m sorry, what’s your name?”

  “Ruth,” I said. I couldn’t understand the way the conversation was evolving. There was something too – familiar about it. All too familiar.

  “To risk Ruth and her child in one of your escapades. I’ve told you before about this. The force view this sort of thing very badly, and, well, you aren’t exactly doing my career any good.”

  “I would think apprehending the wrong suspect wasn’t good for your career either Giles, at least this way –”

  “Mother!”

  She stopped. They glared at each other. I looked between them, first at Irene, then at Inspector Laing. Franks. Laing. Different surnames. But if she was mother to a police officer it explained her interest, her uncanny procedural knowledge. In fact it explained a lot of things. And yet, she hadn’t told me. Their relationship was both warm and frosty at the same time, but they knew things about each other I was still unaware of. I felt foolish, embarrassed, as if I was caught in the middle of a family row. I was about to say something, anything, when Irene broke the deadlock.

  “Biscuit?” He leaned over and took one from the tin. “What will happen now?”

  “She’ll stand trial. Though I would say it’s fairly certain she’ll go to prison. She’ll be tried out of area of course.”

  “Standard procedure,” Irene said, turning to me. “Too many people know too much about the case locally. She wouldn’t have a fair trial here.”

  Although I still wasn’t sure whether I was here as an audience, an accomplice or a witness, I could see she was trying to include me in their conversation as more than a mere observer. Out of area meant Fiona would probably be tried in Hull, maybe even Lincoln or Leeds. One thing was certain. She was going to miss out on her grandchildren growing up, the very thing she wanted to avoid. Some small part of me felt sorry for her, she had lost the very thing she had been trying to protect. But she was a murderer. She’d killed Lesley in cold blood; walked around behind the woman who treated her as an aunt and knifed her in the back.

  By the time Janice had come for Nicholas, Fiona had already provided the same confession she had given us at knife point to Inspector Laing, and with the secret finally out in the open, she had spilled the story again to her daughter; tears pouring down her face. The cost had been calculated. She knew she would lose both her daughter and her grandson, her marriage, her home. Her life as she knew it was over. Her family would never love her with the same free abandon again. Always there would be that thought, that nagging suspicion behind their eyes, would she kill again? They would ever fully grasp why she did what she did. She had rationalised it, but she herself wasn’t rational when she made the decision. No one would ever fully understand. A simple decision, a moment’s madness, but there was no going back.

  “You do understand that what you did could be construed as ‘hampering a police investigation’?” His tones were softer. An attempt at a compromise.

  “I made Russ turn himself in.”

  “Only after you’d debriefed him first.” He looked across at the crime boards still on her kitchen cupboards.

  Irene winked at me behind him. See ? I glared back. Winking was all very well, but she had lied to me. No, not lied, I corrected myself, just been somewhat sparing with the facts.

  Irene had been adamant we wouldn’t be in any trouble today. We’d helped the police. They’d made the arrest. There was only professional pride at stake, she said, and they’d get over that soon enough. Of course, she hadn’t mentioned her son was the investigating officer. He looked back at me. There was little of Irene in him. I wondered at their family connection, but right now I didn’t want to appear a total mug so I wasn’t about to ask. He might have his professional pride, but I had my own to consider. If we’d apprehended a murderer, I should have at least worked out Irene’s relationship to the police.

  “What I don’t understand is how you got as far as you did.”

  “We’re women,” Irene said, “Chatting is what we do.”

  Her son looked between us and I just smiled weakly. Irene was taking the lead on this one. A full confession wasn’t required.

  “Russ gave us the starting point. The same starting point he’d given you. We just took the investigation along a different route. You forget Giles, we didn’t see the body. We had no preconceived ideas. And I knew Russ. I knew he wasn’t capable.”

  “Maybe, but it’s not always obvious.” He was right. I’d never have named Fiona as a killer. Not right up to the point she had revealed her darker self, took hold of the knife and threatened us. Murderers weren’t always easy to spot.

  “You still haven’t told me how you found him, nor how you persuaded him to hand himself in.”

  “No.”

  He glared at her over his coffee mug and then caved in. “Very well. You can keep your secrets.” He probably knew as well as I did that you couldn’t force information out of Irene, but I could hear rather than see a wagging finger. It twitched in his hand. Perhaps he felt wagging a finger at his mother was a step too far. “But I want this to be the last time. I’ve told you before they view this sort of amateur stuff very seriously at the station. It’s dangerous. This isn’t television. You could have been hurt.”

  Irene looked contrite, but I could see something in her eye her son missed. Maybe he wasn’t as observant as he believed. Or else he didn’t know his mother as well as I did. I wondered if the family connection make it easier to mislead. Janice had never discovered Fiona’s secrets. Lucus had never asked me about my other life.

  He finished off his coffee and placed the mug back on the table.

  “Just so long as we understand each other,” he said.

  “We do.”

  “In that case, I’ll be off. No more amateur detective work.” He stood up. “You too.” He told me.

  I nodded. Dead bodies were few and far between. It was highly unlikely I’d get involved in anything of this nature again. Promising something that would never happen was easy.

  Irene showed him to the door and I was party to a brief normal family conversation about what was happening that weekend, and whether Irene was free for Sunday Lunch, before we all stood waving him off from the front door.

  I turned to Irene as he got into the car. “You should have said.”

  “I – um…,” She looked at me, and realising I needed a full explanation she said, “He’s my son-in-law. Was, no, is, well, it’s complicated.”

  She closed the door behind her and we walked back into the house. From a drawer in one of the sideboard units she pulled out a picture frame. It contained an old wedding photo showing a much younger version of the man I’d just met in full police uniform, and beside him a bride in a blancmange style dress, the type that was popular in the 90s.

  “He doesn’t like it on display any more. Not now he’s remarried. But I can’t quite make myself put it away in the loft.”

  “You had a daughter?” I asked.

  “Emma would have been about your age now. She might even have had…,” her voice trailed off, looking at Lillian. “Giles is a good lad. Keeps an eye on me. Remarried. Has kids of his own now. They always say blood is thicker than water, but I’ve not found that. I
think its family that’s thicker than blood. And your family is who you make them.”

  There was nothing I could say. After all we’d been through together, all we’d seen, and yet there was this pain, cutting deep into my friend, one she hadn’t let me see until now. I didn’t know how long ago she had lost Emma, nor what had happened, and I desperately wanted to understand, but watching Irene I knew instinctively now was not the time to ask any questions. There was pain in her eyes. It might have been years ago, it must have been, given that he had remarried and had children, but it was her daughter all the same.

  I looked at her, unable to find the right words. She just nodded. Words were unnecessary. My look had conveyed enough.

  “I suppose I better get off,” I said, and started to dress Lillian for her buggy. Grief was hard to live with, and rather than pushing, I thought it better Irene revealed it in her own time, in her own way. She touched my arm as I straightened up.

  “Thank you for not asking,” she said.

  I wondered if I reminded her of Emma. We didn’t look alike, but maybe we shared some mannerisms. Even if we weren’t alike in any way, I was surely a reminder of the daughter she had lost. Maybe that was why she never mentioned Giles. To do so would have forced her to tell me about Emma, and maybe she just wasn’t ready to have that conversation.

  “I’ll tell you about it one day. I’m just… well… I’m just not ready yet.”

  “OK,” I said. I knew she would keep that promise when she was ready. “Give my regards to Russ when he comes later.”

  “You won’t wait? I know he’d want to thank you in person too.”

  “No. Just give him my regards. I really need to be home when Lucus gets back tonight.” She nodded. She knew I had decided to break the news to Lucus. I wasn’t sure how I was going to explain all that I’d been up to, but there had to be a way that would downplay my involvement and yet provide some semblance of truth. Maybe I should take some hints from Irene’s behaviour and only reveal what was absolutely essential.