by Mel Sherratt
‘You need to keep your wits about you.’ Esther spoke quietly but with menace. ‘There are eyes and ears everywhere. Remember that.’
Tamara said nothing but watched as Esther turned and walked away.
‘Maybe you’d better remember that too,’ she said quietly.
Tamara decided there and then that she wasn’t going to go down without a fight. She would use that drive and spirit she’d found again during the past few months. She would believe in herself enough to take on Esther.
This was her reputation and livelihood at stake. She had to find some way of getting the truth out of Esther, to make sure of her own innocence. Then she would go to the police.
She hated to even think about it but there was only one person she could turn to right now.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Carley’s desk phone went off.
‘DC Evans.’
‘You dealing with the death of Jack Maitland, Carley?’ a voice asked.
‘Yes, in between everything else. I might be sweeping the floor soon as well.’ Her voice was light. Everyone was multi-tasking. ‘What’s up?’
‘There’s someone in reception that wants to see you. Mrs Williams. Says it’s urgent.’
‘On my way.’
The woman sitting in the interview room appeared to be in her mid-fifties. She was sitting upright, hands clasped on the desk in front of her. Carley knew the look, a talker who needed to get something off her chest.
She had blonde hair that had thinned out with age, and bitten-down nails. Her expression was one of concern but that wasn’t unusual. A lot of people were nervous in police stations, even if they hadn’t broken the law. She peered at her again, wondering why she looked familiar.
‘Mrs Williams?’ Carley sat down across from her and smiled. ‘I’m Detective Constable Carley Evans. I believe you might have some information for us with regards to Jack Maitland?’
‘Well, yes, but more about my daughter too. I haven’t seen her in years until yesterday.’ She rummaged in her bag, pulled out a newspaper and pointed to a photograph.
Carley studied it. It was a small feature on Jack Maitland’s death. The woman was pointing at a photograph. There were a number of people with him. Carley had seen it yesterday. It was a photo from the recent launch of the book Something’s Got to Give. She wondered what its significance was.
‘She knows Jack Maitland,’ the woman said.
Carley’s eyes snapped back to her.
‘Who does?’
‘Bethany.’ She tapped a finger on the image of a woman.
Carley looked again. ‘We know her as Esther Smedley.’
‘No, that’s my daughter, Bethany. I’m telling you, it’s her.’
A prickle of excitement rose up Carley’s back, the hairs on her arms standing up.
‘Mrs Williams,’ Carley found herself holding her breath, ‘are you saying that Bethany could be Esther?’
The woman nodded. ‘I haven’t seen my daughter since two thousand and two. She left home as soon as she turned seventeen. I tracked her down to a squat in Brixton. I asked her to come home with me, start again, but she refused. She said she’d never get over the trauma then, that she needed to stay away from somewhere everyone knew what had happened to her.’
All the while she’d been talking, Carley had been thinking. Where had she seen the name Bethany Williams recently? But the word trauma had her attention.
There was a small pause from Mrs Williams. A tear rolled down her cheek and she wiped it away quickly. ‘Bethany was raped when she was barely fifteen.’
Carley’s shoulders drooped. What a tragedy at such a young and impressionable age. At least Esther, as they knew her, had managed to sort her life out. Having completed a spate on the domestic violence team before moving to CID, she knew so many women who hadn’t been able to get over their attacks.
‘Are you able to tell me about it?’ she asked gently.
After a moment, Mrs Williams nodded. ‘Bethany was crazy about horses from a young age. When she was thirteen, she used to spend as much time as she could at the stables down the road.’
‘Down the road at?’
‘Ascot. I live a few minutes from the racecourse. Been there all my married life. Bethany was raised there too. She got a job as a stable girl when she was fourteen, for Reggie Maitland. It was only supposed to be the odd hour after school but she would spend as much time as she could there. Horses were her life then. They had fifteen and she got attached to so many of them. She was a quiet teenager, always on her own, so I guess she took solace in it. She said she was going to be a trainer one day – until the day her life changed forever.’
Carley took notes as the woman gathered a second wind. Her words tumbled out, as if she didn’t want to bring the memories to light again.
‘Bethany came home one Saturday afternoon and she wasn’t her usual self. I asked her what was wrong and she said she didn’t feel too well. She didn’t want to go to the stables on Sunday and begged me to keep her from school on Monday, saying she wasn’t well.
‘It took me four days to get out of her what had happened. She had been raped, in one of the stables. I had to listen to all the details while she cried. My poor baby had been violated by that … that bastard and your lot didn’t believe her.’ Mrs Williams’ tone became accusatory. ‘The family were well-to-do. Of course, he denied everything, but I knew my daughter. She would never make anything up like that.’
Carley put down her pen and frowned. ‘Are you saying your daughter knew who it was that raped her?’
CHAPTER FIFTY
Esther rushed back to her flat. Things were happening way too quickly. She needed to get away and then come back to sort everything else out once the heat was off her.
In the bedroom, she pulled down a small suitcase from the top of the wardrobe and threw it on to the unmade bed. She raced round opening drawers and pulling clothes out. She’d have to leave some behind. She certainly didn’t need all the fancy dresses, shoes, and bags she’d bought recently, only essentials. T-shirts, jumpers, and trousers. Underwear, pumps, and a jacket.
At the chest of drawers that doubled as her dressing table, she pushed off its contents with her arm and dropped them straight into a cheap toiletry bag.
In the bathroom, she retrieved the tin from behind the bath panel. She removed the passport and money she had saved, plus the gun, and shoved them in the suitcase too. At the bottom, underneath everything, there was an envelope. She rifled through its contents. The family photos were the only things she had left of her past now, but she couldn’t bear to look at them too often for that reason.
There was one of her mum and dad, standing proud on their wedding day. Underneath that, one of her and her mum. Another of her at the seaside on a donkey, head back as she had roared with laughter. Happier times. She’d had such a loving childhood.
Her dad popped into her thoughts. It felt so real it was as if he was sitting next to her, so much that she almost put a hand out to touch him. Her eyes brimmed with tears. She wondered if she’d have taken a different path if he had still been alive. He would have been so ashamed of her now, and that hurt more each day.
Esther had left home because she couldn’t bear to see the grief on her mum’s face. Mum said she had her dad’s eyes, most of his features and that it comforted her to see him looking back from her. But she knew that would have turned to hate eventually, when she realised she was never going to see him again, and that it was her fault.
The thought that she had brought on his death was enough for her never to want to see her mum again. She had let her parents down by allowing that monster attack her. She should have fought to stop him but she was too afraid.
The best thing she’d been able to do at the time was to leave. She had been unable to cope, become a burden, and she didn’t want that. And that was when her life had really gone rotten.
Next, she opened up her laptop and located a cheap holidays website. W
ithin minutes, she had found a flight that left early the next morning. There was a desk at the airport where she could pay for it in cash.
And then she’d probably have to change her appearance again.
She flopped down on the bed. What was she going to do about Danny? If the police came there, they’d find him in the garage and know what she had done.
And Tamara was innocent. She was the closest Esther had ever had to a friend. Someone she could have learned to trust in different circumstances. Someone she could have seen herself knowing for many years to come.
Tamara was such a lovely person, always put everyone before herself. She must have gone through some trauma for her to have a breakdown. Esther didn’t know why she had let that jerk Michael Foster do that to her. She was stronger than that.
And had things been different in Esther’s life, perhaps she would have had children, like Jack had, and a husband with a good job, a large house and a nice life. But now she’d never know because everything had been taken from her when she was fifteen.
She still remembered every bit of it: the hurt, the humiliation, the pain. And then the anger. It never stopped, and had got worse over the years.
And here she was again, taking her fears and frustrations out on innocent people.
But Tamara’s downfall had to be to Esther’s advantage. She would be believed over her because no one knew who she really was.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Carley listened attentively, adrenaline pumping through her.
‘Oh, yes, she knew who raped her.’ Mrs Williams nodded, wringing the handkerchief in her hand. ‘But he denied it all, said she had made it up because he was going to fire her. He said he’d caught her messing around with one of the stable boys. We found out the boy in question had been given one hundred pounds to say Bethany was his girlfriend and that they regularly had sex in the stables. The boy denied that when we challenged him, though. But it became their word against Bethany’s.’
‘Whose word?’
‘The Maitlands.’
Carley frowned, wondering if she was thinking along the right lines. ‘Are you saying the man who raped your daughter was Jack Maitland?’
‘No!’ Mrs Williams shook her head. ‘It was his father. It was Reggie Maitland who took my little girl’s innocence.’
Carley tried her best not to give away the shock that was running through her mind. Keeping her facial expression straight, she continued.
‘And you say you haven’t seen Bethany since she was seventeen?’
‘No. My husband suffered a stroke shortly after it happened, and then another one four months later. The first took his speech and mobility: the second took his life.’
‘And Bethany blamed herself?’
‘Yes. I’m sure it was nothing to do with it. She thought the stress had killed him because she’d overheard the doctor say it could be a factor. And because no one believed her, once it got out at school, she became a victim of bullying. She was called names, in particular a liar and a slut.’
Carley passed a fresh tissue to her, waiting patiently until she began again. It must be raking up such terrible memories for her.
‘I can’t tell you how many times I had to go into the school to talk to her teachers about it. Even I was accosted by some of the neighbours. It’s a small community and everyone knows everyone. News travelled fast and Bethany lost all her friends. She was fifteen, dealing with a rape and no one believed her, except us.’
Carley looked back at her notes. ‘But you said you reported it to the police?’
Mrs Williams wiped at her face. ‘They dropped the case through lack of evidence. Bethany went completely off the rails then. She got into trouble for vandalising Maitland’s car, and breaking into his stables as she wanted to see the horses. When her father died, I couldn’t keep her in school. I tried to get her into college but she didn’t want to leave the house. I felt such a failure as her mother but she wouldn’t let me help her at all. I think she blamed me for no one believing her.’
‘That can’t be true,’ Carley soothed.
‘She left when she was seventeen. She wrote a note saying not to look for her. It broke my heart, and of course I did, and then she broke my heart again when she wouldn’t come back. She was such a mess. She was dirty, smelt a bit, if I’m honest. She looked underweight and her hair was matted.’ Her voice caught in her throat. ‘I tried to be there for her but it wasn’t enough. I haven’t seen her since I found her in the squat. No letters, no phone calls, nothing. Until yesterday when I noticed her in the newspaper.’
Carley knew she couldn’t give details out but also knew that she had to tell her something. ‘We believe she might have had something to do with the death of Jack Maitland.’
Mrs Williams gasped. ‘But that doesn’t make sense. Jack Maitland was only a few years older than Bethany. She wouldn’t have known him that well. He would have been at some university like Cambridge or Oxford when she was working at the stables.’
Carley thought back to when she had met Esther. Although first impressions counted for nothing in this job, she had seemed extremely upset by Jack’s death. Was there more to her tears than grief?
It was time to dig into her past and see what she could find out. The things her mother was saying could have given Esther a perfect motive if it was Reggie Maitland that had died. Something didn’t add up; the case had taken a sinister turn.
Mrs Williams left and Carley almost tripped over her feet in her haste to get to see Max.
‘Esther is really Bethany Williams,’ she said, breathless as she walked into his office. ‘Her mum turned up at the station after seeing a photo of her in the newspapers yesterday. Bethany was raped by Reggie Maitland when she was fifteen. He denied it. No one believed her and then she went off the rails. Got in a heap of trouble. Left home at seventeen. I’m going to check if she’s on our system.’
Max’s eyes widened as Carley took a breath. He pressed a few keys to bring up a new screen on his computer and the image of a young woman came up. They both peered at it. The hair was blonde rather than auburn, but it was definitely Smedley.
‘Her charges range from shoplifting, prostitution, and the odd drug bust.’ He stopped. ‘She got three years for GBH – served eighteen months and was released six months ago.’
‘That’s not the address she gave to us,’ Carley said, pointing at the screen. ‘There’s a number for her probation officer, Amy Farmer. I can try her?’
A knock on the door. ‘You’re wanted for the briefing, sir,’ a young PC said.
Max nodded. ‘On my way. Carley, get on to forensics, see if anything is ready yet. We’ll need to find Smedley, see why she’s lying about her name, and why she’s changed it recently.’
Carley went back to her desk, picked up her phone and dialed Amy Farmer’s direct line.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Tamara took a deep breath as she opened the door to Foster Security Systems. Michael Foster had owned his company since he had left university. She held her head high as she marched across to the reception desk of the plush building.
‘I’d like to see Michael Foster, please,’ she told the young woman behind the desk.
‘Is he expecting you?’ she asked, with a welcoming smile.
Tamara shook her head.
‘Who should I say would like to see him?’
‘Tamara Parker-Brown.’
‘One moment, please.’
She sat down in a swish chair. The decor seemed more suited to an interior design company, or a hip marketing department, rather than a place where you could buy cameras and security equipment. Pale settees, light-oak flooring, bright chrome lighting. A magazine left out on a whitewashed, wooden coffee table made the place look less formal, but inviting at the same time.
The receptionist put down the phone and stood up. ‘I’ll take you to him.’ She smiled again.
Tamara breathed a sigh of relief as she followed her into a lift. At least Mic
hael had agreed to see her. She wasn’t sure what she would have done if he had said no. She clasped her hands together in front of her to stop them from shaking so much.
The lift doors opened on to a bright corridor with pale-blue carpeting, and cream walls below a row of frosted glass windows. They stopped at the second door on the right.
The woman knocked and went right in. ‘Your visitor, Mike,’ she said.
‘Tamara!’ Michael stood up and came towards her. ‘What a surprise.’
Michael was in his late thirties, tall and slim, with receding blond hair. She noticed a pair of glasses next to the desk phone, a few more wrinkles around his eyes. She wondered how he would see her now. Tired, wrung out, anxious.
His smile seemed so genuine as he pointed to a seat that she almost burst into tears.
The office was the same one she remembered he’d been in before but the decor was different, following on from the pale-blue and cream outside in the corridor. Michael had a large wooden desk that looked out of place but she knew it had been passed down from his father who had died when he was in his early twenties. It was good to see that he hadn’t wanted to dispose of it.
She glanced around, spotting a photo of him and another woman. She didn’t bear any grudges now – how could she after what she had done – but it did make her sad to think of what might have been between them if she hadn’t had a breakdown.
‘So, how’re things?’ he asked, sitting forward. ‘I’m not going to patronise you and say you look well. What’s brought you here?’
‘I’m in so much trouble.’ This time she let her tears fall. He moved to sit next to her while she explained what had happened.
‘You know how ill I was when I last saw you?’ she looked at him sheepishly, ‘but I am better now and I don’t want anything to happen to make me feel the way I did before. I was getting on my feet, doing well, and I trusted Esther but she played on my loneliness. I don’t know what to do for the best.’