by Paula Daly
‘Glyn,’ I said, ‘you’re not supposed to come here.’
And he nodded his head vigorously, as though yes, yes, he knew those were the rules, but said, ‘I brought you this.’
He handed me an envelope with my name and address on the front. ‘URGENT ATTENTION REQUIRED’ was printed across the top and so I turned to fetch my reading glasses from over by the sink, and in the split second it took for me to reach them, Glyn Williams had stepped inside the kitchen and was closing the door behind him.
My pulse rate doubled. I’d never been inside the house with Glyn on my own before.
I checked the clock. My mother wouldn’t be here for another ten minutes at the earliest.
‘Glyn,’ I said, ‘you can’t be …’ but then I glanced at the envelope. ‘This letter’s been opened.’
He bit down on his lower lip. ‘It was delivered to ours … I mean my parents’ by mistake.’
The letter was from Liverpool City Council. Inside was a notice to say our council tax payments were in arrears. I would risk a fine if I did not settle the outstanding amount immediately. Must be a mistake.
‘Who opened this, Glyn?’ I asked.
‘It’s not been read,’ he replied defensively.
‘That’s not what I asked. Who opened it?’
‘Mum,’ he admitted, and he began stroking the work surface, backwards, forwards, with his right hand.
I fingered the page. There was a circular coffee stain next to my address. It had definitely been read.
I thought about Rose aiming stones at Bonita.
‘Glyn,’ I said, ‘does your mother have an issue with me?’
He didn’t respond.
‘Does she have an issue with my cat?’
Nothing. No answer.
This was what Glyn was like. Leon called him ‘Oddball Glyn’. Or, when he was feeling less charitable: ‘That Weird Fucker Glyn’. ‘How old is he?’ Leon would say. ‘Forty-five, and he still practically lives with his parents?’
I could ask Glyn a question straight out and if it made him uncomfortable, or if he didn’t quite know how to respond, he would stare at his feet until I could bear it no longer and I would have to break the silence myself. Then he would resume conversing as if this weird little episode had never occurred, filling the air with random facts he’d gathered, sometimes hanging around in the kitchen until I almost forcibly evicted him: We’re just about to eat now … I really must give the children their bath …
‘You know your dad was the last person to speak to Leon before he was shot in the head, Glyn,’ I said. ‘That means he’s part of the investigation. Inspector Ledecky thinks it’s best if we don’t talk to one another until after things have been sorted out. Do you understand that?’
He looked crestfallen.
I really wanted to press him about his mother, but I wanted him to leave more. He was setting my teeth on edge.
‘The letter said urgent,’ he said.
‘So why not just put it through the letterbox?’
Glyn shifted his weight on to his other foot.
‘Does Lawrence know you’re here?’ I asked.
He shook his head. Then he lifted his gaze, just for a second, and said, ‘I’ve written a new story … Would you like to read it?’
I sighed. Closed my eyes briefly. ‘It’s Jack’s first day of school … I really have to get going shortly and—’
He was already withdrawing a folded sheet of lined paper from his pocket. He liked to read his work aloud and, in the past, I would sit, politely listening, nodding reassurance, when really I felt like driving a fork into my own hand.
He cleared his throat, ready to begin, but I stopped him. ‘Glyn,’ I said, ‘what exactly were you doing in my driveway that evening? You looked as if you had something you wanted to tell me … Do you have something you want to tell me? Do you know something about Leon? About what happened?’
And Glyn stared at the sheet of paper in his hands as it started to shake wildly as if of its own accord.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to tell me because if you do know something then wouldn’t it just be easier if—’
Jack came in with his rucksack over his shoulders and asked when we would be leaving. I turned to tell him he should go and get his shoes on and turn the TV off and tell Martha it was time to put her coat on.
When I turned back around, I found the kitchen empty.
11
Jack went ahead of us through the school doors into the changing area and seemed completely horrified when he came upon a knot of mothers, crying openly, hugging, consoling one another at having to leave their child for their first full day. Jack shot me a warning look before whispering, ‘You’re not going to do that, are you?’ and I told him I’d try my best to hold it together.
We’d been to the school on a number of visits to prepare for today and, without being asked, Jack now found the peg with his name next to it, removed his raincoat and hung it up, before slipping off his new Start-Rites and replacing them with slippers that each child was required to wear indoors. My mother hung back. Let him get on with it. She was wearing her favourite seventies ladies’ trench, red stilettos, and had her hair piled up high on top of her head. I noticed a few sidelong glances from mothers in trainers.
Jack took his lunch box out of my hand and, catching sight of a woman blowing her nose noisily into a tissue next to me, said, ‘Will you be all right today, Mummy?’
I squatted down to his level. ‘Look at me,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about me. I am very proud of you. And today, all that you need to concentrate on is having a lovely time.’ I resisted telling him that Leon was proud of him too. Even though he would have been, even though it was true. I resisted, as I suspected it might unsettle Jack. Unravel him when he was doing so well.
My mother stepped forward. She planted a kiss on the top of Jack’s head. ‘Now, don’t forget what we talked about, sunshine, will you?’ and Jack nodded soberly.
‘What did you talk about?’ I asked her when we were getting in the car.
‘I told him if anyone messes with him, he’s to tell them his daddy will rip their head off.’
I just looked at her. ‘Jesus, Mother.’
‘What?’
‘Like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle? Jesus, what were you thinking?’
My mother rolled her eyes. ‘I always liked that film.’
Ninety minutes later and I was at the Merseyside Police Headquarters at Canning Place.
I’d driven past this ugly, red-brown brick building, next to the Salthouse Dock, a forgettable number of times. But I’d never actually imagined myself inside.
I’d asked DI Ledecky on my previous visit if we were at this location because of the severity of the crime, but she didn’t commit to a yes or no. ‘I’m based here,’ she said simply.
Now, turning on the recording equipment, she looked at me, before glancing at DC Payne, finger poised, saying, ‘Everyone ready?’
We nodded.
She cleared her throat and pressed record.
‘I’m Detective Inspector Hazel Ledecky,’ she said from her script, as if we’d never met, ‘and my role here today is to interview you in relation to the offence against Mr Leon Campbell. Also present is Detective Constable Kevin Payne. The time is …’ She paused, checking the clock. ‘… eleven oh two on the seventh of September 2017. Can you state your full name, please?’
‘Lucy Jane Campbell. But I go by my middle name – Jane.’
‘And for the purposes of the tape can you confirm that there are no other persons present in the room.’
‘There’s no one else.’
‘Good. You understand, Mrs Campbell, as with the last interview, that you are here voluntarily. That means you can leave at any time and you’re not under caution.’
‘That’s been explained to me.’
‘OK,’ Hazel Ledecky said, ‘then we can begin.’
That all sounded quite benign, didn’t it?
>
Here voluntarily. Not under caution. Leave at any time. She made it sound almost cosy, as if this was nothing more than a friendly chat.
It wasn’t. I’d learned that much by now. After a small amount of digging, I’d found that the police did this, not because they were wanting to come over as friendly, but because of budget cuts. Arresting people is an expensive business, so you’d better have all your ducks in a row before you went ahead and did it.
‘Last time,’ Hazel Ledecky said, ‘we talked about the day of the attack, and you described to us what you were doing when Mr Campbell sustained the brain injury. I’d like to go back to that time and go over a couple of the details if that’s OK with you?’
I signalled that it was and waited for her to go on.
She had an A4 folder in front of her. Inside were loose typed pages. She flipped through the first two or three before landing on what she was after.
‘You said you were in the house for around seven minutes. Can you tell us what you were doing in that time?’
‘Collecting beer for Leon. And listening to an answer-machine message from my mother. I’ve told you this.’
‘Yes, but seven minutes seems rather long … Have you ever actually counted how long a minute takes to pass, Mrs Campbell? It takes more time than you might think.’
‘I can count to sixty,’ I replied flatly. ‘And I can estimate how long seven sets of sixty would take. Or to put it another way, I know I was in there for more than five minutes but less than ten. I’ve also explained that the reason I was in there for that length of time was because Leon and Lawrence Williams were arguing.’
‘Why would you want to avoid their arguing?’
‘Because it’s easier. Because I’ve heard it all before. And because I prefer to stay away from confrontation. I don’t enjoy it.’
‘Your children were in the car, Mrs Campbell. Surely if you were avoiding the two men because you found their behaviour threatening, you would have taken your children inside with you.’
I hesitated.
‘It wasn’t like that,’ I said.
‘What was it like?’
‘Leon and Lawrence were bickering. I wasn’t in fear of my life. And I certainly wasn’t afraid for the children. They weren’t at risk or I wouldn’t have left them.’
Inspector Ledecky looked at me levelly. ‘And yet, while you left them unattended, your husband was shot in the head.’
‘They weren’t unattended. They were with Leon.’
‘Who, as I said, was shot in the head.’
‘He was,’ I admitted.
She lowered her head and flicked to another section in her notes.
‘So, you stayed inside the house,’ she said after a moment, ‘and you did what exactly? As I said, I’m struggling somewhat with the seven-minute timeline. It was incredibly hot that day, and to leave toddlers inside a hot car when the temperature was, quite frankly, stifling, seems an unusual thing for a responsible mother to do.’
I was starting to get rattled. Where was she going with this? Was she doing this on purpose? Trying to enrage me so I made a mistake? Or did she genuinely believe I’d left my children at risk?
‘I was delaying,’ I said. ‘I was waiting for Lawrence to leave.’
I thought she might take this opportunity to say something about Lawrence. Explain exactly why he had not been charged.
But instead she said, ‘Tell me about your marriage.’
‘My what?’ She had caught me off-guard.
‘Your relationship,’ she said. ‘What were things like between you and Leon before this happened?’
‘We were like any normal couple.’
‘So it was a good marriage? Solid? Happy?’
‘Of course.’
‘Did you trust him? Did he trust you? Was it a loving relationship? Did you tell each other everything?’
‘Yes!’ I snapped. ‘Yes, to all of those things! We were close. We were happy. We told each other everything. I’ve told you before that there were no problems between me and Leon.’
‘But …’ she said carefully, referring to her notes, skipping forward a few pages, ‘you confided to me shortly after the attack that Leon did indeed keep secrets from you.’
I frowned. Didn’t answer.
Inspector Ledecky flicked over to the next page. I could see a section of text had been highlighted.
‘You say here that you wouldn’t have known if the author who accused Leon of stealing his work, Alistair Armitage, had been back in touch with Leon … because he kept that subject to himself.’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Did you say that, yes or no?’
‘Well, if you’re going to split hairs, then OK, we didn’t tell each other absolutely everything. Who does? And why is that important?’
‘You also said that you were jealous of your husband’s career.’
‘I don’t think I did.’
‘You effectively admitted that the reason you were attracted to him in the first place was because you were so desperate to be a published author yourself.’
I stared at her. ‘I did not say that.’
Inspector Ledecky held my gaze. ‘It’s how you felt though, isn’t it?’ she said, goading me. ‘You fell in love with him in the first place because you thought he held the key to fulfilling your dreams of becoming a writer.’
‘That doesn’t mean I’d shoot him in the head.’
Inspector Ledecky changed her expression. Gone suddenly was the hard stare and in its place was a look of impartial neutrality, as if she was open to anything I had to say. As if she could understand that I might have been driven to shoot Leon in the head. Under the right circumstances.
‘That’s not much of a motive,’ I said.
‘You’d be surprised what motivates people, Mrs Campbell. Particularly when they’re unhappy at home.’
‘I’m not unhappy at home!’
She glanced down. ‘I quote … “We’ve been together a long time … it’s not all hearts and flowers … there are days when we probably both want to kill each other.”’
‘Jesus Christ. I meant like any couple …! Yes, we’ve had our share of ups and downs like any normal married couple! You’re twisting my words. You’re twisting what I said when I was upset.’
I pushed the chair away from the table, scraping it along the floor. ‘You said I could leave at any time. Well, I’m leaving.’ I stood.
‘For the purpose of the tape,’ Hazel Ledecky said, ‘Mrs Jane Campbell is leaving the room and this interview is terminated at eleven oh nine a.m.’ She stopped the recording.
‘I thought you wanted to help us,’ I said, grabbing my bag.
She stood and met my eye. ‘My job is to help your husband, Mrs Campbell. And my intention is to keep going until I find someone to charge for the deplorable thing that happened to him.’
‘Do you think this is easy? Do you think it’s easy living with the reality that whoever did this to Leon can return at any time?’
She didn’t respond.
‘You waste your time asking me these bloody stupid questions when you can see that Leon doesn’t know which way is up. Meanwhile, I’m scared shitless in my own home every day because you’re doing nothing to find out who really did this. I don’t get it. You’re a woman. You must realize how frightening it is for me to be alone with two small children and not know who did this to him. You’re wasting time questioning me for this, you’re—’
‘Mrs Campbell, I assure you I wouldn’t be bringing you in here unless—’
‘Unless what? Save it,’ I said. ‘And don’t think of bringing me back here unless you’ve got something to charge me with.’
12
Ledecky didn’t charge me. She couldn’t. Leon was just about the most unreliable witness you could wish for, and so a couple of weeks passed, me hearing nothing from her, whilst Leon settled into the neuro-rehab unit. It was a welcome change from the starker hospital se
tting. Here, a team of professionals worked on Leon’s cognition, memory, on his emotional state, and the place itself was much less clinical. It had been designed that way to mirror the home situation, so that patients might relearn the skills required to live in the outside world. The unit would have been a far less frightening setting for Jack and Martha to visit Leon in, but we couldn’t take the risk. He had no memory of them. And this wasn’t some experiment that we could keep repeating for Leon’s benefit: How about now, Leon? Do you recognize your own children NOW?
So we kept them away.
But Gloria and I showed Leon endless pictures, videos of the kids, in the hope that it would jog something. But even though he could recognize himself in those pictures, even though he could see himself holding hands with me, loving me, it was as if his brain couldn’t put all the pieces of the puzzle together. Sometimes I thought we were getting somewhere; he would allow me near him without flinching, without looking at me suspiciously, and I felt there was real recognition in his eyes.
And then we would be straight back to square one.
Gina remained at the forefront of his mind and every day was a sad, difficult, draining battle. A battle that was beginning to beat me because there seemed to be no end to it.
‘Officially,’ Dr Letts said, ‘Leon’s out of the post-traumatic amnesia stage. So we should begin to see signs of recovery.’
And we were. He was improving. Things that he couldn’t remember a week ago – the titles of all his novels, for instance – now he could. He also knew that he lived near Sefton Park. Knew that he ran there on dry mornings, and that it was 2.5 miles around the perimeter. He knew that he could run it twice without becoming out of breath, and that its design had been based on Birkenhead Park, the first publicly funded civic park in the world. He also wanted to impart to anyone who would listen that in 1850, a visiting American landscape architect was so impressed with the design of Birkenhead Park that he used it as his template when later designing a park for New York. Central Park.
Leon was thrilled to have retrieved this piece of knowledge.