Little Black Lies

by Sharon Bolton

  A sigh seems to escape both police officers at once. They look at each other, and back at me.

  ‘So what she told us was true?’

  ‘Of course it was.’ I feel an odd, twisted pleasure in defending my former friend. ‘Catrin doesn’t know how to lie.’

  A pause. They look at each other and again sigh in unison. I have a sense that Catrin’s exoneration pleases both of them.

  ‘Carry on, Mrs Grimwood,’ says Savidge.

  The terse instruction takes me by surprise but, of course, in the story I’ve been telling, my youngest son is still alive. I have to get to the end.

  ‘I could see him near the gate. I waited for his brothers to come and collect him but they must have gone further down the garden towards the beach. I couldn’t hear them. Then he made for the hedge again and started to climb through. He’d found some weak point and was getting out. Obviously I had to go down there.’

  ‘So you did?’

  ‘It took me a few minutes. I wasn’t quite dressed. But when I got down, sure enough he was on the road again.’

  ‘And was Mrs Quinn anywhere to be seen?’

  ‘No. There was no sign of her car. I thought I could hear an engine, someone else coming up the hill, but I didn’t hang around. I picked the baby up and carried him back into the garden.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘As soon as we got back through the gate he went mental.’

  ‘Mental as in…’

  ‘Completely berserk. A proper tantrum. Screaming, kicking, crying. Hitting me with his fists. I’m not sure how much experience either of you have of tantruming two-year-olds but they can be very strong.’

  ‘We’ll take your word for it,’ says Josh. Skye has fallen quiet and I’d be willing to bet she’d rather not listen to what’s coming next. God knows I’d rather not say it.

  ‘He wanted to be out on the road, or to be with his brothers. What he didn’t want was me spoiling his fun.’

  I stop. There is water on the table although I have no recollection of either officer providing it. I pick up the glass. Warm, like the room. Pale in colour, like a fine Scotch whisky. It tastes bitter, as though it was poured days ago. The officers are waiting for me. I look at him, then her and see the condemnation that I know will be in every pair of eyes that looks into mine from now on.

  ‘Go on,’ says Josh.

  ‘I put him down, he went straight for the gap in the hedge again. I physically blocked it, he started kicking and punching me. Two-year-olds can be monsters, they really can.’

  ‘And what did you do, to this monster in front of you?’

  Skye looks reproachfully at her colleague. She doesn’t want him condemning me, not until they’ve heard my full confession.

  ‘I don’t remember much of what happened next.’ I try. ‘I’m sorry, it’s actually very difficult to talk about.’

  We all jump as a stone hits the window. Josh picks up the phone, has a brief muttered conversation with the desk sergeant about sorting out the bloody hooligans outside, then looks at me again.

  ‘What did you do to him?’ he asks.

  I look at the man I’ve known since childhood and I can see sympathy seeping from him. With every second that passes, his judgement is hardening. Of the two of them, Skye is holding up better. She leans towards me and pats my hand. ‘I’m afraid we do have to know exactly what happened, Rachel. Take your time. You’re doing really well.’

  She sits back again and rubs her fingers where they touched mine.

  ‘I took hold of him by the shoulders and gave him a shake to stop him crying. He was hysterical. He needed a shock.’ I can’t look at either of them as I say this, so I stare at the tabletop.

  ‘The shaking seemed to make him worse. I don’t really remember much. I must have shaken him again. I honestly don’t know. I just remember looking down and seeing him limp in my arms.’

  Out of the corner of my eye, I think I see Skye drop her head into her hands. She recovers quickly. When I look up again, her face is pale but composed.

  ‘I let him fall to the ground. He wasn’t breathing.’

  ‘Did you try mouth-to-mouth? Did you give him CPR?’

  I stare back into cold blue eyes. ‘There wasn’t a lot of point, Josh. His neck was broken.’

  ‘How could you be so sure?’ Skye is practically whispering at me. I’m tempted to tell her to speak up for the benefit of the tape, but common sense prevails and I don’t.

  ‘Have you ever seen a broken neck, Skye? Trust me, they’re pretty much unmistakable. Besides, it only takes a few seconds for a corpse to start turning blue.’ The confession is getting easier. I practically have to remind myself that I’m talking about my own son.

  ‘Did you consider calling for help? Letting the authorities know?’

  ‘Not really. I was more worried about getting him out of the way before the boys could see him.’

  I hear myself. My youngest son. My baby has turned into a nuisance. An inconvenient piece of rubbish I had to get rid of. I’ve crossed the line.

  ‘The boys weren’t anywhere near at this point?’

  ‘Good God, no. As if they’d let me harm their brother.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘Panicked a bit, I think. I thought about throwing him over the cliff, pretending he’d got out through the gate and stumbled in the bad light. But I wasn’t sure whether the post-mortem examination would find the broken neck and realize it couldn’t have been sustained in a fall. Besides, I could hear the boys coming back. I could hardly have pitched their little brother over their heads, could I?’

  Now, it is the two officers who need to take their time. Savidge leans back, holds up a finger, in a half-hearted attempt to slow me down. I give him a few seconds, but it is Skye who speaks first. ‘The boys were coming back. You had only a few minutes to dispose of the body. So what did you do?’

  ‘I put him in the boot of my car.’

  ‘Your car?’

  I shrug. ‘It was handy.’

  Savidge looks as though I’ve slapped him. ‘Not possible. We searched that car. We searched the whole premises.’

  ‘Actually, Josh, your officers did a very perfunctory search. Even I could tell their hearts weren’t in it. Everyone assumed he’d either been taken by Catrin or by the same person who abducted Archie West. They assumed he was heading for a sex fiend’s lair somewhere in camp or on a boat out to sea. No one expected him to be close to home. And no one looked in the boot of my car.’

  There is some small level of satisfaction in being able to point out that they screwed up too.

  Savidge is on the point of getting up. Skye puts a hand on his arm. ‘We can check, Sarge,’ she tells him. ‘Let’s see this through.

  ‘So what did you do with him then, Mrs Grimwood?’ I am not Rachel to her either, any more, I notice. There is no sympathy, real or fake, in her eyes. ‘Or am I to assume he’s still in the boot of your car?’

  ‘No. I disposed of him.’

  ‘Where?’

  They’re not going to like this next bit. They wait, give me a moment. Only a moment.

  ‘Mrs Grimwood?’

  Still I say nothing.

  ‘Mrs Grimwood, what did you do with your son’s body?’

  ‘I won’t tell you,’ I say. ‘I’ll tell Catrin.’

  36

  I have a sense of air being sucked out of the room, of tension prickling between the three of us. I see a battle imminent and know it’s one I have to win.

  ‘That isn’t going to happen.’ Josh Savidge looks like I’ve slapped him.

  ‘Why not? What do you think I’m going to do to her? I know she didn’t hurt my son, I know that better than anyone. And if she was going to do me harm, she could have done so any time the last three years. I want to talk to her. If you let me see her, I’ll tell you where you can find my son’s body.’

  ‘We’ll find him, whether you tell us where he is or not,’ says Josh. ‘He has to be somewhere o
n or near your property. There simply wasn’t time for you to do anything else with him and I know you’ve hardly been alone since he vanished. This time we’ll do a proper search. We’ll find him. We may have been distracted by what happened to Archie West last time, but—’

  There is a knock on the door. Josh runs his hands across his face, but I think he half welcomes the interruption. He suspends the interview, gets up and opens the door. The voice on the other side is one I don’t recognize.

  ‘Get on the phone to the boss,’ I hear Josh say. ‘We need some uniforms down here.’

  More mumbling.

  ‘I don’t care what they’ve got kicking off up there, tell him I’ve got two women in custody, exactly five officers and a gang outside intent on causing trouble.’

  The door closes. The tape is switched on again, and Josh crosses to the window to look out before he sits back down.

  ‘Sarge.’ Skye has been flicking back through her notebook, a crease line between her eyebrows. ‘The thing that’s been puzzling us is which, if any, of the four cases of missing children are connected. People have been arguing that Catrin must have taken Fred and Jimmy because they both looked so much like her sons and because she found Jimmy’s body. On the other hand, Archie was fair, completely different to the other two, and wasn’t harmed.’

  Blue eyes fix on me. ‘So, did you take Archie West as well, Rachel? Did you kill Fred and Jimmy?’

  I’m glad she asked. ‘Of course not. I have no idea what happened to Jimmy and Fred but my guess is their deaths were both accidents, exactly what Chief Superintendent Stopford has been arguing for years.’

  ‘They did look a lot like Catrin’s children, though,’ says Skye.

  ‘A quarter of the kids on the islands are of South American descent,’ I say. ‘I don’t think it means anything.’

  Savidge starts to interrupt. I don’t let him. ‘I can, though, tell you exactly what happened to Archie West. I realized a couple of days ago.’

  Another puzzled glance between them. They speak almost in unison. ‘Go on.’

  I fold one hand over the other on the tabletop, trying to look relaxed, like the monster they now believe me to be. ‘I’ll tell you if you let me speak to Catrin.’

  Savidge taps both hands down flat. A ring on his left hand clatters, making the gesture more aggressive than I think he meant. ‘Why is it so important for you to speak to Mrs Quinn?’

  ‘I want to tell her I’m sorry. I want to look her in the eye and tell her I’m truly sorry for destroying her life. For killing those boys, who I loved almost as much as she did, by the way.’

  Savidge doesn’t buy it. ‘You’ve had three years to do that.’

  ‘No, because for three years she hasn’t been anywhere near me and I’ve been afraid to go to her. She didn’t want to hear my apologies or my excuses. She didn’t want to set eyes on me.’

  ‘It’s quite likely she may still not,’ says Skye.

  ‘But she will, if she knows it will lead to my son being found.’

  Silence while they think about it. They clearly want nothing more than to huddle in a corner, whisper through a plan. But if they leave the room now, momentum will be lost.

  ‘Oy, Quinn! What’s it like to kill a kid?’

  ‘Murdering bitch! What have you done with Fred?’

  ‘Tell us where they are, Quinn!’

  The voices sound as though they are directly outside. Skye can’t stay focused on me any more, her eyes are constantly flicking to the window.

  ‘Those bozos outside are here for Catrin,’ I say. ‘Where is she? Is she safe?’

  ‘She’s fine.’ Josh’s voice is louder than it needs to be. ‘Tell us what you know about Archie West’s disappearance.’

  ‘Can they get inside?’ Skye looks at Josh in alarm.

  He shakes his head. ‘Neil’s locked all the doors until we have more guys back here. Won’t take long.’ His smile looks forced.

  ‘Ask her if she’ll talk to me,’ I try again. ‘Just ask.’

  ‘I think it better if you talk to her once we’ve sorted this out.’

  Josh’s assumption that I’m stupid annoys me. ‘What bargaining power will I have then? Why should you or she agree once there’s nothing more I can tell you? Besides, when this is over, I’ll be sent to England, to prison or some psychiatric hospital. I’ll never see her again. This is my only chance.’

  Behind me the clock ticks. I count four, five, six beats. Outside there is a constant rumble of noise. Beer cans thrown, complaints and shouts. Stones flung at walls. What I don’t hear are police sirens. I wonder what can possibly be going on up at the bonfire to prevent officers being sent down here and remember that Chris and Michael are up there. This needs to be brought to a close, now.

  ‘How about you tell us what happened to Archie, as a gesture of good faith, and then we let you see Catrin?’ says Skye.

  Josh stands up. ‘Interview suspended at twenty zero four hours. Word outside, Constable McNair.’ He gestures towards the door and Skye gets up too, pushing the chair over in the process. It is she, though, not the man in charge, who remembers to switch the tape off.

  ‘I agree to that,’ I say, as they reach the door. ‘Come back, switch the tape on and I’ll tell you what happened to Archie. Then you can check it out and when you find I’m telling the truth, you can let me see Catrin. This whole nasty business could be over with before the bonfire burns low and you two could be well on your way to your next promotion.’

  ‘We don’t care about that,’ says Skye quickly. Without even thinking about it, I believe her. ‘We just want – wanted – to find your son alive and well.’

  Josh says nothing, merely switches the tape back on. They look at me like a pair of dogs, hungry, but wary. I throw them the bone they need.

  ‘Archie’s disappearance from Estancia farm was entirely accidental.’ In spite of the tape running, Skye is scribbling notes, and I give her time to catch up. ‘He and his brothers and friends were playing hide-and-seek,’ I say, once her pencil stills. ‘How much have we heard about how Archie loved hide-and-seek? It was his favourite game. That’s why the parents weren’t too worried at first. They thought he’d found an extra good hiding place.’

  In spite of everything, I’m actually quite proud of myself for working this out.

  ‘So where did he hide?’ Skye’s pencil is tapping away on her pad.

  ‘In his parents’ hired Land Rover. Or, what he thought was his parents’ Land Rover. There was actually another car there that day, of identical make and colour. It was only parked for a few minutes, while a visitor popped into Estancia farm, and the rear door left open. Then the owner returned, closed the door, with no idea there was a small child tucked away inside, and drove off.’

  ‘Archie’s brother talked about another silver Land Rover,’ Skye reminds Savidge.

  ‘Which no one else had seen,’ I say. ‘So because no one could corroborate, and because he was only a kid, you discounted his evidence.’

  Savidge doesn’t like this. I can confess to murdering an infant, but no way is he going to admit to making a mistake. ‘We asked the Barrells. No one visited the farm that afternoon. They knew nothing about a silver Land Rover.’

  ‘Did you ask George Barrell?’

  As Savidge blinks, trying to remember, Skye shakes her head. ‘He wasn’t there that afternoon but we talked to him the next day. Nobody came to the farm.’

  ‘He’s lying to you. For a good reason, but he’s lying all the same.’

  Another pause, while they think about what to ask me next. Savidge goes first. ‘OK, so Archie is in this mysterious Land Rover, being driven God knows where. Why doesn’t he say something?’

  ‘At first he assumes it’s the family driving the car and he’s still hiding. When he realizes it’s not, that he’s actually in a car with a perfect stranger, he keeps quiet because he’s scared. Quite possibly frightened out of his wits. How often do we tell our kids not to get in car
s with strangers? Well, not so much here, but in Britain people are paranoid about stranger danger. Archie was a British child.’

  ‘And this Land Rover is headed for the food shed where we found him?’ Skye looks puzzled.

  ‘Yep. For an assignation. The driver has been meeting someone there for some time. The two of them fixed it up to suit their purpose. They thought it would be the last place anyone would think of, and it probably would have been, had they not picked up a little stowaway.’

  ‘They were having an affair.’ Skye looks like she’s discovered alchemy. ‘Two islanders, married to other people. That shed wasn’t a paedophile’s lair, it was a love-nest.’

  ‘Who?’ Savidge demands.

  ‘George Barrell, for one,’ I say. ‘That’s why he lied about the silver Land Rover. His girlfriend came for a quick visit, they arranged to meet at the shed, she drove away, unseen by anyone but Archie’s brother. A few minutes later, George followed her. He passed me coming back, early evening.’

  ‘Who’s the woman?’ Skye asks. ‘Who was George meeting?’

  ‘Roberta Catton.’ In different circumstances, I think I might have rather enjoyed my Miss Marple moment. ‘Bob-Cat from the diner. I saw her car as well that afternoon, silver Land Rover, exactly like the one the Wests hired. The registration letters are SNR. It’s quite a bit older than the Wests’ car, but I’m not sure a three-year-old would appreciate that. She was coming back from the direction of Darwin when I pulled on to the main road. At least, I didn’t recognize her at the time, but I saw her car registration and then I saw it the next day outside her diner.’

  Skye’s face is creased with concentration. ‘They must have seen the kid when they got to the shed.’

  I shake my head. As far as I can see, Barrell and Catton are only guilty of adultery and I’m not going to beat them up about that. ‘Not necessarily. Archie would have been terrified, remember. I think he got out of the Land Rover and hid. He talked about a man and a woman, when you spoke to him later, didn’t he? He hid while the two of them were in the shed, doing what they had to do, then I imagine they left quite quickly, driving away and leaving him stranded. He did the only thing possible. He sheltered inside, lived off the bits and pieces of food they kept there, and finally, when he couldn’t stand the loneliness any longer, made for the road. Luckily for all concerned, Callum and Catrin were driving by at the time.’