The Evidence: A completely unputdownable psychological thriller with a shocking twist

by K. L. Slater

  It was the two of us against the world back then, and we were so close nobody could have ever come between us. No hidden agendas, no duplicity. Betrayal was a world away from touching us. However rocky the road ahead would be, this was the way I’d try to remember my sister.

  A call rang shrilly from the hands-free, bringing me back to reality with a jump. I answered and Justine’s voice filled the car, low and concerned.

  ‘Esme? I just showed Zachary the photograph you sent. I’m putting him on now.’

  There were a couple of moments silence, then my son’s bright, innocent voice. ‘Mum?’

  ‘Did you have a good day at school, sweetie?’

  My heartbeat felt as though it had relocated to my throat, but I tried to sound normal. I didn’t want to make a big deal about the photograph, and I didn’t want him to ask about Michelle. I didn’t want to lie to him, but he’d be broken when he found out his auntie had died.

  ‘School was OK. Justine showed me a photo and the man who Aunt Miche was talking to outside school is on there.’

  The picture I’d sent over was taken outside the court when the Free Simone Fischer group had tried to force a retrial last year by a demonstration. I hadn’t shown Zachary this one the first time, as it had more people than just Peter Harvey in it, and I’d wanted to keep it simple.

  ‘So which man is it?’ I managed to say, even though I could barely breathe.

  ‘It’s the man stood on the steps away from the group of people,’ Zachary said. ‘That’s the man I saw Aunt Miche with outside school.’

  I knew the press tagline underneath the photograph read: A rare sighting of Simone Fischer’s son, Andrew Fischer.

  Heart racing, I made a phone call.

  ‘DI Sharpe.’

  ‘It’s Esme Fox. Zachary has recognised the man Michelle drove off with at school as Andrew Fischer, Simone Fischer’s son.’

  ‘Not her brother, Peter Harvey? That’s who you were concerned about.’

  ‘He’s picked Andrew Fischer out, and I’m heading over to him now. I’ve had contact with him already through the podcast. He lives and works at a care home called The Spindles, in Nether Broughton.’

  ‘Listen to me, Esme… hold fire, you mustn’t go there. I’ll speak to my colleagues, we’ll need to check out what you say.’

  I end the call without committing to anything. I didn’t turn the car around; I continued with the journey.

  I didn’t know why I was going there, didn’t know what I thought I might do when I got there. Part of me knew I should leave it to the police, but I needed to hear what Andrew had to say after all the lies he must have told me. I needed to hear the truth with my own ears.

  Simone’s confession burned brighter in my mind. I’d tried to push it away; it was information I didn’t want to have. I didn’t want the burden of it on my mind, constantly swaying between the right thing to do.

  But if I’d known about Andrew attacking his father, I’d have instantly been cautious. As it was, he was so personable and friendly, so different to Peter, and I’d trusted him. Simone’s lies might have inadvertently caused Michelle’s death, because she’d allowed Andrew to live his life unhindered.

  When I arrived at The Spindles, there were only a couple of cars out front, but the entrance door of the house was wide open.

  My skin prickled as I began to wonder what Andrew might be capable of. What was his state of mind under the respectable exterior he’d perfected over all these years? Had he really no memory of what happened that day, or was it just buried deep, festering and waiting for its moment?

  As soon as I stepped inside the building, I heard raised voices. I rushed over to the main room and saw a couple of carers encouraging the young people in the lounge to go back to their rooms. Then I saw Peter had Andrew by the scruff of his neck up against the wall.

  ‘Peter, wait!’ I ran over, my heart racing.

  ‘He’s admitted it.’ Peter clenched his teeth. ‘Looking through my emails. Deleting my messages. It was him who made that Facebook page!’

  I thought about Justine’s observation that the origins of the page looked like one person had created it but that it could actually be another. That hadn’t made sense at the time, but now it did.

  ‘You’re crazy… get off me!’ Andrew yelled, his face puce. He pushed Peter hard and his uncle staggered back.

  ‘What about the emails?’ I asked Peter, trying to find out what was happening.

  The older man’s face was flushed and sweat peppered his upper lip. ‘When you said your sister had sent me a message about meeting up, just something about it made me think. On a few occasions I’ve tried to find an email containing important information only to find it had disappeared into thin air. Before I’d always blamed myself for my lack of technology skills. But after I spoke to you today, I asked Janice Poulter who oversees the FSF website to take a look.’ He turned to glare again at Andrew. ‘She found a whole bunch of deleted messages in the virtual bin of my email account. Including one from Michelle Fox asking to meet up. In the message, she’d said she had a lucrative proposal she wanted to discuss with me.’

  Andrew smirked at Peter. ‘You’re the one who met with her. You’re the reason she ended up in hospital.’

  ‘You’ve always been a coward,’ Peter said, quieter now. ‘Even as a child, you stood by and let that pathetic excuse of a father of yours terrorize your mother.’

  ‘That’s not fair. I was just a kid.’ Andrew’s face darkened.

  ‘I don’t know. I think most teenagers would have tried to protect their mum. But you just stood by, let him abuse her. You’ve always been such an inadequate, weak individual.’ Peter assumed a mocking tone. ‘He can’t even remember what happened, do you know that, Esme? How convenient, forgetting how his mummy had to fend for herself against that monster of a—’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong… I remember everything!’ he spat the words out. ‘Every last detail. Him stuffing food into her mouth as if she were just a vessel for him to abuse, the filthy things he called her, the way he’d try and drag me into it all. I’d seen him with one of his women in a coffee shop when I walked by a week before. He’d rushed out, explained it was just someone he worked with. But I’d seen the way she’d looked at him, traced over his hand with her long red nail. I was a naïve kid, but it all felt wrong.’

  ‘So you remember it all?’ I repeated.

  ‘Yes! When I heard Mum cry out and I saw his hand take a handful of her hair I just went for him. I saw the knife, the biggest one in the block. Mum must’ve used it because the blade seemed almost illuminated, so bright, as if it were beckoning me to pick it up.’ He turned to Peter. ‘So don’t you dare say I just stood by. I was brave. Do you hear me? I was brave!’

  Peter sneered but I stepped forward. This was my chance.

  ‘Why hurt Michelle though, Andrew? You met with her and then attacked her… why? She’d done nothing to you.’

  ‘She wanted to hurt Mum, hurt me, to make money. She had no intention of helping Mum’s cause like you did. And when I told her I wasn’t interested in working with them, she turned nasty, said she’d do it without me.’ He hesitated, his face turning pale. ‘Then she said she’d done some digging and maybe I wasn’t telling her everything. She said she was going to write an article assassinating my character, raising the question of my involvement in Dad’s death.’

  I shook my head. ‘She couldn’t have known that. She would be bluffing and you fell for it.’

  ‘I just flipped. She was just a bitch and she deserved everything she got… just like my dad did.’

  Voices began shouting from out in the foyer.

  When I turned to look, DI Sharpe stood in the doorway and uniformed officers charged towards us.

  Sixty-Seven

  ONE MONTH LATER

  Mo had been arrested on a number of charges – fraud and stealing intellectual property – but DI Sharpe informed me he refused to speak about anything to do w
ith Michelle. Without Mo speaking out, I would probably never find out the truth.

  I wasn’t interested in the business side of their deception; what I really wanted to know was why? Why did my sister, to whom I felt so close, betray me? Mo was the only key to me finding out now. Michelle was gone, and every day I mourned the sister I used to have, the one I knew and loved.

  ‘I’m sorry to have to say this, Esme,’ Sharpe said regretfully, ‘but it’s highly possible Mo Khaleed just intends for their secrets to stay buried.’

  Andrew Fischer had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act, as he was deemed to be a danger to both himself and other people.

  ‘Although we didn’t get a full and detailed statement from him about the death of his father and also Michelle, we did get some answers,’ Sharpe said grimly. ‘He made arrangements to meet with Michelle, but became aggressive and that got Michelle’s curiosity up. She approached him a second time, suggesting – and most probably bluffing – that maybe he’d been the one to kill his father, not Simone.’

  I said, ‘It tipped him over the edge, forced him to face the past he’d tried to hide from, and he became violent. Michelle didn’t stand a chance.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But why did he meet her at school?’

  ‘Apparently, Michelle was keen to keep you from suspecting her involvement – no surprise there,’ Sharpe said. ‘Fischer insists she’d told him to meet her after the school run as it was one of the rare times she wasn’t in the office with you. They drove out a couple of times to parkland to talk, and it was on the second meeting he lost control and attacked her. He swears he never meant to hurt her, just that things got out of hand.’

  ‘But Michelle had called me from the supermarket to ask what to get for tea that day,’ I said, frowning. ‘That was after she’d seen Fischer the second time.’

  Sharpe shook his head. ‘That was a ruse just to ensure you were safely at work and going through with the TrueLife meeting. Fischer said she’d told him she had no intention of turning up for the meeting and it was all part of the masterplan that you’d mess it up so Michelle and Mo could approach the television company directly after the event.’

  He’d beaten my sister to death because she’d stumbled on the possibility there might be more to Grant Fischer’s death than first met the eye.

  There was a further piece of devastating information DI Sharpe came to impart.

  ‘Owen’s parents knew all along that he was the driver in Zachary’s hit and run. Both Owen and they maintain it was a complete accident, an awful coincidence, and that he has been wracked with guilt ever since.’

  I shouldn’t have been surprised, given everything else they’d done, but… it was shocking. I felt an electric bolt shoot through me, and I knew, in that moment, I probably wouldn’t be able to fully trust another human being again. I had refused to meet up with Owen and refused to let him see Zachary so far. But I knew that couldn’t continue. I had to face him at some point.

  Sharpe said, ‘Owen told us his parents helped him plan how to get over the accident, and also form a contingency plan in case it did come out that he was the culprit. This involved him agreeing to his parents taking temporary custody of Zachary so you wouldn’t have the power to keep his son away from him. They’ll probably be charged with perverting the course of justice.’

  Apparently, Owen kept all sorts of evidence to show I was an unfit mother – even video footage of me drowsy on prescribed medication after Zachary’s accident. Just in case I found out what he’d done and he needed it to blackmail me, keep me quiet. It made me feel physically sick to think about his duplicity.

  But if Brooke and Eric Painter got their comeuppance at last, then there was hope of some justice being done, at least.

  Sixty-Eight

  Justine had taken Zachary to the local park while the detectives were over under the ruse of getting him away from his screens for a while. When the police left, I finally called Owen to say it was a good time for him to come over to talk.

  His car pulled up outside the house and I opened the front door to him. He looked as if he’d aged ten years from the last time I saw him, the day he went to the police station.

  His skin looked dry and grey, his clothes hung shapelessly on a leaner, less flattering frame. He wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  ‘Go through to the living room,’ I said. ‘I’ll make us some tea.’

  I followed him up the hallway, and when he turned into the living room, I carried on into the kitchen. When the police told me about the DNA match from the accident that day, I swear, if Owen had walked in, there and then, I’d have gone for him. Clawed, punched, kicked… I was so angry. So hurt, betrayed and bent on revenge.

  But now those feelings had settled and I felt very little towards him. The revelation of what he’d done had killed off any emotion I felt towards Owen at all, and now, when I looked at him, I just felt flat and empty.

  I took the tea through and sat as far away from him as I could.

  ‘I don’t blame you for hating me,’ he said, his voice thick. ‘For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I’m very sorry for what I did to you. To Zachary.’

  ‘What exactly happened, that day?’

  He sighed as if he didn’t want to talk about it. ‘I was so tired, driving down from Newcastle. I hadn’t slept well the night before and I’d had a bit more wine than I should with colleagues at lunchtime. Instead of stopping for a coffee and resting on the way back home, I drove through the bad weather to get back earlier. I had this idea I might be able to pick Zach up from school, surprise you both. An important call came through, about some work at a plush new gym in the city. They asked me for some information that was on paperwork just to my left, on the passenger seat. I took my eyes off the road for one second – I swear that was all – and… I hit something. That dull, heavy thud is in my nightmares.’

  I closed my eyes against the horror of the vision in my head. Owen hitting our boy.

  ‘I slammed on the brakes and got out to look. I thought it was a dog, an animal, but I felt sick to my core. It was as if, deep down, some part of me knew it was a person. The road was so quiet, nobody was around. The last person I expected to find was a child. I was on a quiet side street, not outside the school gates. I got out of the car and walked around it into the road and saw the legs, the shoes… his head and torso were hidden under the car. I thought, it’s Zachary. It’s Zachary! And then I told myself I was an idiot, that it couldn’t be because I knew you were picking him up from school after his club. I heard some shouting, people on the next street, and I knew they’d be coming around the corner any minute and I…’ he squeezed his eyes closed, ‘I bent down, dabbing at his bloody leg with my hanky, and I thought, they’ll get help. The people will help him. I sort of watched myself get back in the car and backed up, drove off in the same direction I came in. It was like I was a witness to myself, but the person who’d done that… it wasn’t the real me.’

  ‘But it was the real you.’ My voice sounded cold and level. ‘And you’d dropped your handkerchief.’

  ‘Yes. I’d dabbed my own cut hand with it, too. I wasn’t in my right mind. I swear I thought a thousand times about telling you, about giving myself up, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t, because I knew I’d lose you both.’

  I took a sip of my tea and looked steadily at him. ‘You’re the person who has to live with what you did for the rest of your life, Owen,’ I said. ‘In five, ten, twenty years, when Zachary is frustrated because his leg injury prevents him from doing something he wants to do, stops him playing football with his own children. Every single time he’ll think about your lie. Despite you trying to blame me and pile guilt on my shoulders, you can never escape what you did, and the blame will always lie squarely at your door.’

  I felt a cold indifference to him. I couldn’t look at him.

  He looked down at his hands. Nodded. ‘I know. The thing that gives me nightmares is telling him… telling him what I
did. And what I’ve come here to say, apart from apologising to you, is to beg for you to let me see my son. I understand you must hate me; I take ownership of the terrible thing I did to Zachary. But I can’t live without him. I just can’t.’

  His voice broke and, pathetically, he covered his face with his hands and began to sob.

  I sat silently and said nothing. When he removed his hands and roughly wiped his cheeks, I spoke up.

  ‘I’m not going to make any snap decisions. Zachary loves you so much; he worships the ground you walk on. It would break his heart not to see you.’ A sob caught in Owen’s throat. ‘But we can’t keep this a secret. He has to know the truth, and we’ll need professional help to do it properly, to do it in a way that will hurt Zachary the least, and that he can understand.’

  ‘Anything,’ he said, sitting up a little straighter. ‘Whatever you want, I’ll do. I just need to be part of my boy’s life. He can come to Mum and Dad’s with—’

  ‘You’ll need to come here to spend time with him. I don’t want him anywhere near your parents for the foreseeable.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘It’s not negotiable, Owen. It’s the only way I’ll agree to you seeing him.’

  ‘Fine. If that’s what it takes, that’s what I’ll do. But I hope in time you and I can rebuild our relationship. Be a family again.’

  My days of pleasing Owen were long gone. Zachary was my only priority now.

  ‘And there’s one more thing I need to tell you,’ I said. He looked up hopefully. ‘I want a divorce.’

  Sixty-Nine

  TWO MONTHS LATER