I'll Find You

by Liz Lawler

  Dalloway leaned back in his chair. ‘I followed her lead. I knew it was untrue, but I followed it nonetheless.’

  ‘You more than followed it, Mr Dalloway. Your own account was full of lies,’ Crawley said bluntly. ‘Your niece must have seen the arrival of Detective Inspector Sutton and staged the whole thing.’ He paused, then said, ‘You still haven’t answered the question as to whether you are aware of any involvement in the death of Nina Barrows from anyone else you know.’

  ‘I can’t answer that question,’ Dalloway replied, sounding tired.

  Crawley sighed. ‘Oh dear, I was truly hoping that you would help.’

  He stood up, and Geraldine was surprised. They had not yet asked the whereabouts of Sophia Trendafilova’s body.

  Dalloway sat forward and tapped the photograph. ‘You haven’t asked me about the knife.’

  Crawley sat back down and waited.

  Dalloway seemed to be having some inner battle in his mind as fleeting expressions crossed his face before finally settling to show the bleakness he was feeling. ‘It belongs to Shelly. It’s part of a set I gave her. You’ll find the others in her home. My niece is the person you need to be questioning about Nina Barrows’ death. Not Emily. Emily has been through enough already.’

  ‘And what role did Nina Barrows play in all of this?’ Crawley asked.

  Dalloway shook his head. ‘She didn’t have one. She would never have known we were using that room for Sophia until Shelly put Emily in there by mistake.’

  Crawley gazed at him sceptically. ‘By mistake? A planned illegal operation which your niece was involved in, and you’re telling me she put Emily Jacobs in there by mistake? It doesn’t ring true, Mr Dalloway.’

  ‘You’ll have to ask her why she did it then. I have no other explanation to give. All I can tell you is that Nina Barrows was not involved until she got herself involved. She phoned me on Sunday afternoon to tell me she had found CCTV footage showing a young woman coming out of the same room where Emily Jacobs was a patient. She wanted answers, because she now believed Emily was telling the truth about what she’d witnessed.’

  ‘And you told no one about this call, I take it?’

  ‘I told my niece,’ he said quietly.

  Crawley stared at him in surprise and then slowly shook his head in disappointment. ‘You’re either a fool, Mr Dalloway, or you’re not as principled as I first thought. And I’m beginning to think it’s the latter. You told your niece because you knew she would sort the problem. It’s as simple as that. And that makes you culpable.’

  Dalloway stared back defiantly. ‘I had no idea she would kill her. I was going to see her at her home, but Shelly said it would be better coming from her. She said she would go and talk to her. I would never let someone be killed to save my skin.’

  ‘And yet people have died, Mr Dalloway. Maybe not to save your skin, but they have died because of what you set in motion. Sophia Trendafilova, Nina Barrows, who you must surely have realised, when you heard of her death, was killed by your niece.’

  Dalloway looked away.

  ‘And your son, Mr Dalloway, he too has died.’

  Dalloway shook his head and his eyes filled with unshed tears. ‘I did not kill my son. I tried to save him.’

  ‘By taking the life of someone else. We’ve already interviewed your wife and your sister-in-law. They both say the same thing. That your intention was to let Emily Jacobs die. Is that true?’

  Dalloway sat perfectly still. The tears were finally falling, and his face was bathed with their wetness. He seemed too calm, as if a weight had lifted from his shoulders. ‘Yes, it’s true. They had no idea that that was my intention until I started operating.’

  Geraldine wondered if he’d just told a lie to take blame away from his wife and sister-in-law, to make their guilt less. She remembered how Jemma Dalloway begged him to not stop the operation and ignore the presence of the police. As far as Geraldine was concerned Jemma Dalloway was just as guilty as her husband of this crime. Her intention had been solely to save her son, and if Geraldine hadn’t got there in time then Emily would most definitely be dead.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Later that day, Shelly Dalloway sat sullenly across the interview table, having just confessed to the murder of Nina Barrows. Geraldine saw no remorse in her face and felt the woman was more piqued by the knowledge that her uncle had outed her. She was the last of the four to be interviewed, and Geraldine would be glad when it was over. Crawley looked every inch the senior detective and she was proud of the way he had conducted himself. She wished he had another ten years to go before his retirement. He still had so much to offer. She felt grubby from her time with each of the suspects and couldn’t wait to breathe air that was not contaminated by their presence.

  ‘Did Nina Barrows know of your relationship to Rupert Dalloway?’ she asked the woman opposite her.

  ‘No,’ Shelly replied in a droll tone. ‘She had no idea. The place is so up itself they only give healthcare assistants a first name on their badge. I got the job while she was on holiday for the sole purpose of being there at the right time to do my bit.’

  ‘Your bit being to take care of Sophia Trendafilova after her surgery?’

  ‘That, but also to assist with the surgery. I’m a qualified theatre nurse.’

  ‘I’m interested to know how you all thought you could get away with performing an illegal operation without anyone being the wiser. Surely you knew you ran the risk of being caught?’

  She shrugged. ‘You’d have to work in a hospital to realise that patients come and go all the time, and once they’re in a room sometimes no one else sees them other than the doctor or the nurse.’

  ‘Or other patients,’ Geraldine said. ‘Did you put Emily in that room by mistake, or deliberately?’

  ‘Well, that’s the thing about hospitals.’ Amusement glinted in her eyes. ‘As soon as you become a member of staff you get given all these privileges. You get to see confidential medical notes. You see prior medical conditions. What blood group they are, etcetera etcetera. You see interesting things that may become useful. Emily being in that room may have become useful.’

  Geraldine stared at her coldly. ‘You put her in that room for the purpose of using her if things went wrong with your first victim? Isn’t that right? That’s why you put her there?’

  Shelly laughed. ‘You should see your face. You really believe that? It would have been OK if Sophia had stayed out of sight until her surgery was due. Rupert brought her in far too early, put her in his office. It was sheer bad luck that Emily saw her. She wasn’t going down to theatre till that evening, after all the other lists were done and the interfering theatre coordinator had gone home. But she wandered out of the office to the room we had picked out for her and Emily saw her. Which was a bit of a nuisance really, because otherwise, when things went wrong, Emily could have been convinced that she’d only dreamed her.’

  ‘She still became useful, though, didn’t she?’ Geraldine goaded.

  ‘She was in the right place at the right time,’ said Shelly.

  Geraldine moved on to the next set of questions she had to ask. ‘Why did you kill Nina Barrows, Shelly?’

  Shelly smirked. ‘She called me a menace.’

  ‘You killed her because of that?’ Geraldine asked in a voice filled with derision.

  Shelly tutted, and then answered, ‘No. Because she was becoming a problem. She couldn’t keep her beak out of it. She had Rupert all hot and bothered. She had to go.’

  ‘So you went to her home and simply killed her?’

  ‘Well we didn’t have tea first, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  Geraldine stayed silent.

  Shelly leaned back and stretched her arms wide. ‘Yes. It was no big drama. In and out before she knew anything about it. She died gracefully, let me tell you.’

  Geraldine eyed her disdainfully. ‘And yet you carelessly left her front door open?’

  Shelly smirke
d again. ‘Who said it was careless? She needed to be found while Emily was on the run.’

  ‘So you deliberately set Emily Jacobs up as a suspect?’

  Shelly nodded, beginning to look bored. ‘You lot sometimes need leading by the bloody nose. Her escaping hospital was too good an opportunity to let pass. She had a knack of being in the right place at the right time. From my point of view, that is. Barrows said Emily had passed out with fear when you lot came to capture her. She didn’t. She just couldn’t stand up after what I gave her.’

  Geraldine felt her blood boil and wanted to reach across the desk and slap Shelly’s face at the cruelty she’d inflicted on Emily. She had watched her collapse in that corridor, and hadn’t questioned the cause of it, instead taking Dr Green’s assumption that it was fear of a uniformed presence which had caused her to fall to the ground like that. And she hated the thought that Emily knew why she collapsed while they all just watched. She hoped that Shelly would be put away for a very long time and that Emily, when all this was over, gave no more thought to this despicable woman.

  When the interview ended she and Crawley walked silently down the corridor together. He stared back down its familiar length as if memorising every inch of it. His face was drawn, his voice worn. She could hear a rasp in it as he spoke. ‘What a sad mess. They’ve destroyed so many lives to save a sick little boy.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘There’s no accounting for how far people will go to save a child.’ He left her then and she watched him slowly amble away, his large shoulders slouching and looking heavier, his vitality seeming to have diminished.

  *

  The local evening news informed the viewers that a thirty-year-old woman had been arrested for the murder of Nina Barrows. Geraldine knew that when the story behind the killing broke, the residents of Bath would be deeply shocked. It was unsettling enough to hear of negligence and malpractice in the normal run-of-the-mill bad news. The story that was about to unfold would put the fear of god in them at the thought of ever stepping into a hospital. She pitied the doctors and nurses out there now, who over the next day or so would be dealing with patients about to undergo surgery. They would probably insist on having a witness present in the theatre to ensure they left with everything they went in with. It was going to be an interesting few days, she was sure.

  Geraldine hadn’t been home since she’d packed her car boot with her finery in the hope of going to yesterday’s wedding. She had dozed for an hour in a chair while waiting for a senior officer from the Romanian police to get back to her, and was relieved that he was fluent in English when she had spoken to him. He had managed, on the scant details she had sent him – a name and a photograph printed from the CCTV images – to discover that Sophia Trendafilova was from Ploieti, a city some thirty-odd miles from Bucharest. She discovered that her only surviving relative was a grandmother, who sadly hadn’t even thought her granddaughter was missing, because as far as she was concerned she was in England, and not expected back if she found work. Her monthly call to her grandmother wasn’t due yet. She was seventeen years and eight months; she would have been eighteen in November. She was not nineteen, as Dalloway had believed her to be.

  Geraldine had informed the inspector that she would keep him updated on any new developments, especially on the whereabouts of Sophia’s body. Dalloway had refused to say where Sophia’s body was, and Geraldine wondered if it was because of the shame of admitting that he had got rid of it in an incinerator.

  Typing up the last few words of her report, she closed her laptop and readied herself to leave the office. She would call into the hospital and see Emily on her way home and then hopefully, finally, get to see her own family.

  Her mobile vibrated on the desk. She didn’t recognise the number and she answered it reluctantly. ‘DI Sutton speaking.’

  ‘PC Roberts, ma’am.’

  Geraldine knew the voice; he was one of the two uniforms who had been with her at the Dalloways’ house, the one who used his radio and nearly gave away their presence. ‘How can I help you, PC Roberts?’

  ‘I have a foreign woman here at the Dalloways’ house. She is crying, and I’m not too sure what to do with her. She’s got cases with her and is expecting to stay here.’

  Geraldine’s shoulders slumped; a further delay before going home was now inevitable. ‘Keep her there and give her a cup of tea. I’ll be along shortly.’

  *

  Emily ate the small pieces of toast cautiously, chewing slowly like Gems would. She was ravenous and could have gulped it down with two bites, but risked being sick and having to hold onto the wound in her side. It was the first solid food she had eaten in two days. Her last meal of cooked chicken seemed a lifetime ago. They had failed in their duties as hosts to feed her, she thought with dry humour. She would not be recommending them on TripAdvisor anytime soon. She sipped the lukewarm tea and over the rim of the cup saw a scruffy man, trying to look less scruffy with his dark grey hair combed over and an old suit jacket covering his collared T-shirt. Emily put down the tea as her father made his way to her bed.

  ‘You look like you’ve been in the wars, girl,’ was his first remark.

  Emily’s jaw had stiffened as she stared at the impossible sight of him standing there. She could not recollect the last time she had seen him anywhere but on a couch in their sitting room.

  He spied a vacant chair at the bed beside her and dragged it over to sit down. In astonishment she saw him remove from his jacket pocket a small box of Maltesers. ‘They were always your favourite when you were a kid.’

  Emily gazed at him mutely. She had no idea what to say to him. Their conversations were always of few words, with her usually asking him whether he needed something to eat or fetched from the shop. She had no real idea what he was thinking or feeling. She couldn’t recall any substantial conversation ever taking place between the two of them.

  ‘Your mother was a bad mother for treating you the way she did, but I was a bad father for letting her. We’re ignorant, you see, Emily. And you were always too bright for us. We didn’t know how to handle you, and that’s a fact. Zoe wasn’t the same, you see. She was more like us. And if it weren’t for you, she probably wouldn’t have amounted to much.’

  He looked her in the eye. ‘Your mother resented you for that. Zoe loved you like you were her mother, and I reckon that you’ve mourned her loss like one.’

  The tears rolled down her face and she used her hand to cover her trembling mouth.

  ‘Don’t be coming to the house anymore, girl, waiting on the likes of us. You don’t need to do that no more.’

  He stood up and leaned over the bed and awkwardly patted her on the shoulder. He turned to leave.

  ‘Dad?’

  He stared back at her and in his worn features she saw a resemblance to herself. ‘Will you come and see me?’

  He smiled. ‘I might if I knew where you lived.’

  Emily watched him slowly walk back down the ward. The man who had been her father all her life had just spoken to her as if she was his daughter. She was not so alone after all.

  *

  The woman was sitting on a garden bench, a mug in her hand, two suitcases at her side and her swollen feet resting on slipped- off white shoes. A cloth doll sat beside her. She introduced herself to Geraldine as Maria Vasile, before realising she had already spoken to the detective on the phone. Her first question was expected. Where were the Dalloways?

  Geraldine sat with her for more than an hour, taking her through what had happened, letting her cry when needed. She questioned her carefully, but there was not much the woman could tell her other than the Dalloways were kind people who had two children, a son who was sick and a daughter she had grown to love. It seemed she knew nothing of what went on in the boy’s room; it was only ever other carers who went in there. Her role was to mind Isobel and help out with housekeeping. Geraldine wondered how she was going to tell her that her journey was wasted and that any hope of seeing Isobel again was unlikel
y.

  The activity going on around them showed that someone other than the police had taken charge of the Dalloways’ property. A man was leading a horse into a trailer. Geraldine waved at him to let him know she was coming over. She left Maria on the bench, thinking she would ask PC Roberts to take her to a hotel, if that’s what the woman wished, or even back to the airport to catch a flight home.

  The man’s face was similar to Rupert Dalloway’s, though he looked older. Geraldine pulled out her ID and introduced herself.

  ‘Henry Dalloway, Rupert Dalloway’s brother.’ he replied in a manner that suggested he didn’t wish to converse, his hands busy closing the trailer door, his eyes fixed on the job he was doing.

  ‘I’ve had permission to remove the horses, in case you were wondering.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry for what’s happened in your family.’

  His shoulders stiffened and he bowed his head. ‘My daughter has been charged with murder. My brother will go to prison. My nephew has died. A lot has happened to my family.’

  ‘I really am sorry,’ she offered again.

  He ignored her and would have walked away but for the sound of a vehicle rolling across the gravel. They both turned to see the newcomer. Henry Dalloway’s features marginally brightened. ‘My wife. She’s been to collect Isobel. She knows she won’t be staying here, but we want to let her see her home is still here and that not everything has gone from her life. I haven’t seen much of my brother’s children over the years. Walter took all of his spare time, so Isobel probably sees us as strangers.’

  The Range Rover pulled to a halt and as the passenger door opened they heard a squeal of delight. Henry Dalloway and Geraldine watched as the girl ran into the arms of the small woman, each holding onto the other fiercely. Maria reached for the doll on the bench and handed it to her. ‘That’s their housekeeper, isn’t it?’ he asked.