by Ann Troup
‘As I remember, they sort of got on. They argued a lot, but more like banter. I think she liked him – no, not liked, admired him. She thought he had guts.’
This was interesting. ‘Would you agree, Mr Jones?’ Ratcliffe asked, aiming his gaze at Charlie.
Charlie shrugged. ‘I suppose. She used to flirt with him a lot. Mainly because it used to bug Stella I think, but I suppose you could say they got on.’
‘Any idea why she might have killed him, given that it appears their relationship might have been relatively good?’
‘How do you know she did? You’ve been wrong before,’ was Charlie’s barbed reply.
‘We have sufficient evidence to prove it. Which reminds me, do either of you recognise this?’ Ratcliffe pulled out a photograph from his pocket and showed it to them.
‘It’s an earring,’ Charlie said.
Rachel took the photo and peered at the earring. ‘Frances had a pair like that; they were a birthday present from our mother. I remember them because I borrowed them once. She went mad at me. Where did you find it?’
Ratcliffe took the picture back. ‘In Roy Baxter’s hand, along with a handful of her hair. Pretty conclusive, I’m afraid.’
‘Has she confessed?’ Charlie asked.
‘No, and it won’t go in her favour.’
‘Then perhaps she didn’t do it,’ Charlie said.
Ratcliffe gave him a dismissive look, and turned his attention back to Rachel. ‘Do you remember anything about the day Roy disappeared? Anything at all?’
‘I’ve been trying to think back since he was found, and I honestly keep drawing a blank. All I can say was that one day he was there, the next he was gone. I can’t even give you a date. I remember knowing he had left Stella, but no one talked about it. Everyone was relieved – life was calmer afterwards. We were glad.’
‘He was found in the shed, near the house. What do you remember about that shed?’ Angie asked.
‘Nothing. It was just a shed. Always locked – again, I never questioned it.’
Ratcliffe looked at Angie. It didn’t seem like they were going to get much more than this from Rachel. ‘I think that’s about it for today, but we might have more questions. Will you be here for a while?’
‘I don’t know,’ Rachel said weakly. He could see sweat trickling down the front of her neck. It was starting to pool in the hollows of her collarbone.
‘Yes she will,’ Charlie said.
‘One more thing,’ Rachel said as they stood to leave. ‘The baby. You haven’t said anything about the baby.’
Ratcliffe sighed. ‘Still a bit of a mystery, I’m afraid. We do know that he was stillborn, so no one is suspected of murdering him. Someone could be charged with concealing the body, but we suspect that either your mother or Stella was responsible for that, and obviously we have no way of proving it, and no one to pursue for a crime. The body will be released for burial at some point. Would you like us to let you know?’
She nodded. She had found him; she would deal with it.
Back in the car, when they had pulled off the drive and were a little way down the road, Angie asked, ‘Why didn’t you tell her about Stella, about her claims of being her mother? Don’t you think she has a right to know?’
Ratcliffe had put a lot of thought into this one. ‘Yeah, I do, but not yet. You saw the state of her. I don’t think she’s up to hearing that she’s the product of incest right at this moment do you? Besides, Ferris said there’s no clear evidence of it. Stella could, but might not be, her birth mother.’
‘But Rachel’s got to know sometime, if it is true.’
‘My plan is to let her get her head around this little lot, then call her into the station. I think we’ll let Dr Ferris explain that one. It’s her bag, not ours.’
Angie shot him a wry smile. ‘She’ll love you for that.’
Ratcliffe just shrugged. ‘Got any more of those femmy things? They’re pretty good.’
***
After they had gone, Diana busied herself by tidying up the tea things. She was good at knowing when to leave well alone. Charlie looked pensive and uncomfortable, not surprising given his history with the police. Amy had explained it to her while they had made the tea, protesting his innocence more than was necessary.
Now he was rooting about in the freezer muttering about making a meal for them all. Diana offered to do the cooking and he took her up on the offer with visible relief. He was about to go back into the lounge when Diana caught his arm and shook her head, pointing surreptitiously into the other room. Through the half-open door, they could see Amy sitting with Rachel in what appeared to be a comfortable silence. A good sign in Diana’s book.
‘Leave them to it. You could peel some potatoes if you like,’ she said.
Charlie nodded, and started to run water into the sink.
Diana smiled, and passed him the peeler.
***
Amy sat next to Rachel. ‘I don’t know what to call you,’ she said.
Rachel looked up at her child, who was not a child, but a younger, better version of herself. ‘What do you mean?’ She knew exactly what Amy meant, but didn’t have a solution. She figured she was lucky that the girl was talking to her at all.
‘Well I can’t call you Rachel, it wouldn’t be right. And calling you Mum is strange. I don’t mean to be horrible, but it feels weird.’
‘You’re not being horrible, I understand. I don’t know what to suggest, but I won’t object to Rachel if it feels more comfortable.’
‘OK. Can I get you anything? You look really tired. Do you want a blanket?’
Rachel shook her head, though the movement made her dizzy and nauseous. ‘No thanks, I’m actually feeling really hot. My leg’s a bit sore. I probably need to change the dressing again. I think your dad’s got some stuff. Would you ask him?’
‘Sure. Can I do it for you? I need the practice – wound care and all.’
Rachel had forgotten that Amy was training to be a nurse. ‘If you like.’
Amy raced off into the kitchen and was back in minutes with Charlie’s first-aid kit, a clean towel, and a bowl of water. She put the towel under Rachel’s leg, and started to unwrap the bandage that Charlie had put on. ‘Strictly speaking I should be using a sterile dressing pack, but we’ll have to make do with what we have,’ she said, carefully peeling the old dressing away from Rachel’s leg. Heat was radiating from the wound, which was angry and red, the stitches tight. Pus oozed from it and there was a sweet, nauseating smell. A red line extended along her leg – the inflammation was spreading. She knew enough to realise that this was a bad sign.
‘Just going to check your pulse rate and breathing – might as well go the whole hog as I’m here,’ Amy said, gently grasping Rachel’s wrist and measuring her pulse against the ticking of the clock. Rachel already knew it was far too fast, as was her breathing, which was shallow and rapid. She was hot – too hot.
‘How do you feel?’ Amy asked. The girl wasn’t daft. Rachel could see that she was worried.
‘Pretty lousy if I’m honest,’ Rachel said with a thin smile.
‘OK, I’m just going to go and get something from the kitchen. I won’t be long.’
***
Amy shut the door behind her quietly. Her dad was at the sink. Diana was peeling carrots next to him. ‘Dad, it’s Rachel. She’s running a temperature, she’s tachycardic, the wound is infected, and her respirations aren’t right. These aren’t good signs.’
Charlie put the potato he had been peeling into the sink, and dried his hands. ‘Say that again in English.’
‘I think she may be in sepsis – I mean she might have blood poisoning,’ Amy said, her heart pounding almost as fast as Rachel’s.
‘Let me look at her,’ he said, striding towards the door, as if Amy was overreacting.
Diana dropped the carrot and followed, wiping her hands on her skirt.
As Charlie opened the door, they all heard a dull but significant t
hud. Rachel lay on the floor in the throes of a massive convulsion. Diana rushed past him, throwing herself down beside Rachel. ‘This isn’t like a normal fit. You’d better call an ambulance,’ she called.
***
Charlie’s fingers were shaking as he dialled 999 whilst Amy quietly sobbed at his elbow.
‘Is she going to be all right, Dad?’ she whispered once the ambulance was on its way.
‘I don’t know, love. I don’t know.’ He had a horrible sense of dread that Rachel might have pushed it too far this time, and the thought clutched at his heart like an ice-cold fist.
Chapter 31
Ratcliffe’s breast pocket started to vibrate yet again. ‘Bloody hell! What now?’ he demanded of no one in particular as he retrieved the buzzing phone.
‘What’s up?’ Angie asked as they paused their walk across the car park outside the station.
Ratcliffe put the phone back in his pocket. ‘Rachel Porter is in hospital, in the ICU, in critical condition apparently. Blood poisoning from her leg injury,’ he said dully.
Angie took a breath. ‘Bloody silly cow! What is it with these people?’ She had just about had a gut full of the Porter family. They were a bloody nightmare. She couldn’t stand self-effacing people like Rachel Porter; did they honestly think they were being brave and stoic in the face of adversity? Bullshit. They were the most selfish types of all. Half of them killed themselves with self-neglect and left everyone else to pick up the pieces; the other half sucked the rest of the population dry. Shame the whole family hadn’t been in that bloody house when it went up in flames.
‘I need a drink,’ Ratcliffe said. ‘You coming?’
‘Does a bear shit in the woods?’ she said through gritted teeth.
***
When they reached the pub Ratcliffe sat moodily staring into his pint and she had to wonder why he’d bothered to ask her to go with him.
He wasn’t with it. His mind was elsewhere – still on the case, she suspected. ‘Come on, share,’ she said, waving her hand in front of his face to break his trance.
He sat back and let out a long, slow breath. ‘Just thinking that we’ve missed something. We should at least have a suspect, and we don’t have a clue.’
‘That room, in the flat, do you think Stella did it? Like some kind of weird guilt trip thing over the incest, and having a child?’
‘I suppose it fits, I mean you saw her – she was hardly sane.’
‘Are any of them?’ was Angie’s cynical response.
‘What’s bugging me is that if she didn’t set fire to the flat, who did, and why? My guess is that someone else knows that room exists, and that person didn’t want it found. But that person is also getting sloppy. The fire didn’t take; the room has been seen.’
‘It stands to reason that it’s the same person who killed Stella then, doesn’t it?’ she said. It did stand to reason but she wasn’t entirely sure how or what their motive might be.
‘So what did Stella know that this person didn’t want her to talk about? What’s in that room that might give the game away? And who haven’t we talked to that we should have?’ Always the same: more questions than answers.
‘Well we’ve got Frances Haines for Roy Baxter. She isn’t talking and it’s not helping her. So, it can’t be to do with what happened to him, so it must be to do with what happened to the baby, given what was in that room.’
‘But why isn’t Frances Haines talking?’ Ratcliffe asked, finally taking a large slug of beer.
Thank God. Angie was down to the watery dregs of a melting ice cube in her glass. ‘Another?’ she said, now that he had less than half a pint. She stood to go to the bar. ‘Obviously, she’s not talking because she doesn’t want to land herself in the shit even deeper,’ she added.
It didn’t take long to be served. The bar was quiet and the barmaid wasn’t the chatty type. Mind you, they never were when it came to other women, in Angie’s experience.
When she got back, Ratcliffe looked pensive again. ‘Maybe you’re right, maybe not. What if she’s not talking because she doesn’t want to land someone else in the shit?’
‘What do you mean? Baxter had half her DNA in his hand, and her earring, which has now been positively ID’d.’ She was glad she had bought a double. She had a feeling she might need it.
‘Well, I’ve been thinking about that, and I think we’ve been in too much of a hurry to nail someone for this and get it over and done with. Yes, Baxter had her hair in his hand, and the earring, but he was bashed over the head with something, from behind. Did he reach behind him and grab her while she hit him. Or could it be that he attacked her, and got hit from behind by someone else?’
‘Are you suggesting she might be innocent?’
He shook his head. He had a mouthful of beer. ‘Far from it, I think she’s in it up to her neck. For instance, I’m pretty certain she knew exactly where that body was, and intended to find it that day, with a witness. If she hadn’t found him someone else would have, and she would have instantly been in the frame. She knew Stella was barking and I’ll bet she figured that Stella would take the rap and she would be off the hook.’
‘But wouldn’t she have got rid of the forensic evidence first?’ Angie reasoned.
‘That guy had been in there for twenty-odd years. Back then the only police show on telly was bloody Z Cars. The public barely understood fingerprinting, let alone DNA analysis. I doubt it even occurred to her there would be any forensic evidence. And even if it did, I doubt she thought it would have survived.’
It wasn’t an unreasonable thought, Angie concurred. ‘So we’re back to Stella or the mother as suspects then? Which is pointless because they’re both dead, and we can’t prove it.’
‘No, we’re not. You just said it: they’re both dead, and Frances may be covering for someone who is very much alive. If the killer was dead, she could tell us any cock and bull story and we’d have to buy it, and the worst she might be facing is a charge for aiding and abetting, or concealing the crime.’
‘But you’re suggesting she is worried enough to face a life sentence rather than tell us what actually happened?’
He drained his glass. ‘Or I’m talking shit, and she did do it. Either way, there’s a story there, and we need to hear it, otherwise this one is going to bug me for the rest of my days.’
‘But who’s left in the frame? Rachel?’
‘She was only a kid at the time. It’s not impossible, but I don’t think she did it. Though I do think she might know more than she thinks she does.’
‘What, like a buried memory or something?’ She didn’t really believe in such things, but it was a thought.
‘Maybe. But we’re not going to get that out of her any time soon. There has to be someone else in the picture, someone else connected to the family that we don’t know about yet,’ Ratcliffe said.
‘So who can we talk to who might know?’
‘There’s only one option. Delia Jones.’
***
Charlie came back into the waiting room. Amy had finally stopped crying and appeared to be dozing on a grubby sofa that dominated one wall of the tiny room. Diana was sitting with Rachel, and had stayed with her while he’d gone outside to phone his mother and tell her what had happened.
He’d had to explain to her that it didn’t look good, that the doctors wouldn’t speculate on an outcome, and that a nurse had warned him that two-thirds of people who were hospitalised for septic shock died. He had told his mother that he was prepared for the worst.
Delia hadn’t said much and he had taken her silence as an indication of her shock at this turn of events. She had offered to come to the hospital, but he had told her not to bother. Rachel was out of it, hooked up to a ton of machines that were monitoring her life source in a detached and frightening way. There was nothing anyone could do except wait and see if her body had enough strength left in it to fight the battle.
He had his doubts. Even if her body did, he wasn�
��t sure her mind would want to wage war on this never-ending tide of misfortune.
He was awash with coffee. It felt like he had done nothing but imbibe gallons of the stuff in the last few hours. Sit with Rachel, get frustrated, go out, drink coffee, calm down, go back, and sit with Rachel. It was a caffeine-fuelled nightmare on constant loop and it was all his fault.
He should have taken her straight back to hospital as soon as he found out she’d discharged herself. He’d said that to the doctor, but had been told that it might not have been the best thing at all. The leg infection had been caused by MRSA, and the chances were she’d picked that up at the first hospital. There had been some mention of amputating her leg – if they could stabilise her, that was. It didn’t bear thinking about.
Elton John’s greatest hits were playing in the background. It had been playing over and over since they’d arrived.
If he heard ‘Candle in the Wind’ one more time, he thought he might go insane.
Chapter 32
Frances sat demurely on her thin, plastic-covered mattress stoically ignoring the paper plate full of congealing food. Never, ever, had she eaten off a paper plate or used plastic cutlery and she did not intend to start now.
Over the hours, she had wondered if this was the same cell that had held Stella, not that it mattered either way. They had all been in the same cell for years, just a different kind, where the bars and the steel door were all in the mind.
Peter had proven himself the abject disappointment she had always known him to be. At least that hadn’t been a surprise in this whole debacle. She put her fingers to the back of her head, and felt gently for the lump and the slight bald spot where the hair would never grow back. If only she hadn’t fallen like that and knocked herself senseless for days. Otherwise, she might have got away with it.
Now it was too late. They had evidence of her involvement with the incident.
God knows how. She had no memory of him grabbing at her that day, or of losing her earring. She never wore those earrings anyway; they were hideous. But to explain that to the police would be far too dangerous, would mean pointing the finger in an entirely different direction, with not a shred of evidence. All that planning, all for nothing. Now what? Languish in jail for the rest of her days? There had to be a way out of this, a loophole somewhere. She just needed to think.