Little Black Lies

by Sharon Bolton

  ‘Rach.’ She’s leaning across the table. The two minders copy her, ready to pull her back. ‘Listen to me.’

  I think her voice is the only thing tethering me to sanity.

  ‘I’ve spent three years thinking about how I’m going to hurt you. Three years with nothing in my head but misery and stupid plans for revenge. I even wrote some of them down, which is why I’m here in the first place. And everyone is quite right that Thursday had a special significance. Thursday was the day I was going to bring everything to an end.’

  I can’t do this. I thought I was strong enough. I’m not.

  ‘Rach, listen to me, look at me. I was going to call you on Thursday, round about three o’clock, before the boys got home from school. I was going to say that we needed to talk, that things had gone on long enough, and I was going to suggest we go out on my boat, so that we could be alone, so that no one would know what we were doing or try to interrupt us. I knew you’d agree.’

  ‘Yes.’ I would have done. I’d have agreed instantly.

  Catrin’s eyes remain on mine but her lips are curling upwards in the faintest hint of a smile. ‘I was going to drive us out of harbour and then, when we were out of sight of anyone on land, I was going to shoot you with a tranquillizer gun.’

  No one was expecting that. I can tell from the starts, the puzzled frowns, the nervous eye movements.

  ‘It was risky.’ Catrin ignores the police officers. It might be only the two of us in the room as far as she is concerned. ‘I roughly knew your weight, of course, and could calculate the amount of anaesthetic I’d need for a marine mammal of similar size. But different species react to drugs differently. There was a chance I’d end up killing you.’

  ‘You weren’t going to kill me?’

  Her grey eyes are cold as steel. ‘Of course I was. Just not quickly.’

  Again, the mood in the room shifts. Savidge clears his throat, but doesn’t seem to know how to begin. It is Skye who speaks next, from her position on the floor beside me. ‘So what was the plan? When – if – Rachel woke up?’

  ‘We were going south.’

  The officers are exchanging looks around us. ‘What’s south?’ asks one of the constables.

  ‘Nothing,’ I say, because in those four words she’s told me exactly what the plan was. ‘We were going to die together, weren’t we? After days, maybe a week or so, the seas would get too big for that small boat and we’d be lost.’

  Catrin inclines her head. ‘I was planning on a few days at least. Enough time for you to dwell on what was going to happen. On what you were leaving behind. A few days of agony didn’t really feel enough, but it was the best I could come up with.’

  ‘Until you saw Peter in the road?’ says Savidge. ‘When suddenly you had a much better plan. You decided to take the child, rather than the mother.’

  ‘Yes.’

  This is it. It’s coming. I reach out for Skye but she’s moved. I can’t look for her. I can’t take my eyes off Catrin.

  She gives a heavy sigh, as though her confession, like mine, is proving exhausting. ‘When I saw Peter in the lane that day, I stopped the car, got out and picked him up. Just as you saw.’

  I want her to stop. I’ve changed my mind. I can’t bear to hear this.

  ‘It was the second time in two days that I’d held a young child. Archie, when I found him, was too shocked and cold to do anything but cling to me, but Peter was quite different. He wrapped his arms round my neck and pushed his face against my shoulder, the way Kit used to at that age.’

  Her eyes stay on mine but their focus drifts. She’s slipped away, is reliving the moment she held Peter in her arms. I think I can see the gleam of a tear.

  ‘And…’ prompts Savidge.

  She comes back to us, blinks, gives a half shrug. ‘And everything changed.’

  Savidge opens his mouth, she doesn’t give him chance.

  ‘I knew I could never kill Peter.’ She’s speaking directly to me again. ‘I didn’t even want to kill you any more. So I carried him to the gate and put him back in the garden. I turned the car and I drove back down the hill. The last time I saw your son, Rachel, he was alive and well.’

  And again, we stare at each other for what feels like a very long time.

  Until Savidge interrupts. ‘So if you didn’t take Peter, Catrin, why did you race down to your boat? Why did you disappear for hours?’

  Her eyes drift briefly from mine. ‘Because I needed to think. I’d spent months planning that my life would effectively end on Thursday. I needed to come to terms with the knowledge that it wasn’t. That I wasn’t going to die and I wasn’t going to kill Rachel.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us any of this before?’

  She tosses her head in exasperation. ‘It would hardly have helped my case, would it? And it was completely irrelevant, because as far as I was concerned, the last time I saw Peter, he was absolutely fine.’

  She seems to lose interest in Savidge and turns to me again. ‘I know what happened that day,’ she says. ‘You know, the day Ned and Kit died?’

  I can only stare back. She knows? She knows what I did that day?

  ‘I know how you felt about Ben.’ She shakes her head sadly. ‘No one cries for five hours at a friend’s wedding. And I know you knew about Callum.’ She shrugs. ‘I guess the temptation was too much to resist.’

  She reaches out towards me but the table is too wide. ‘It’s OK,’ she says, and there is a ghost of a smile on her face. A smile of pity, but I’ll take what I can get. ‘You know what? If it hadn’t been for the accident, you’d probably have done me a favour. Really, it’s OK.’

  I hadn’t known it was possible for misery to hurt this much. And yet, somewhere, out in the universe, a cog slips back into its rightful place. The wheels start turning again, and their movement is smooth.

  He’ll shrieve my soul, he’ll wash away

  The Albatross’s blood.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say.

  Her small, slim body relaxes as her hatred of me slips out of it. She knows that I’ve seen it. ‘I know,’ she says.

  ‘If there was anything, anything at all that I could do…’

  She gives a brief, almost amused, look around the room. ‘Clearly.’

  The sound of wood scraping along the floor. ‘Enough.’ Savidge is on his feet. ‘I’m getting the boss in. I’m separating you two. One way or another, we’re going to get to the truth.’

  I open my mouth. Catrin beats me to it.

  ‘Don’t be such a twat, Josh. Get Stopford by all means, get the entire bloody constabulary back, but splitting us up will achieve nothing. We’ve told you everything we know. Rachel did not kill Peter. She couldn’t kill to save her own life.’

  ‘And Catrin doesn’t know how to lie.’ I’m talking to Josh, but looking at my best friend.

  She’s looking right back. ‘Unlike you. You’re a bloody master at it.’

  ‘Could never fool you, could I?’

  The tiniest of smiles and then she’s talking to Savidge again. ‘Josh, come on. While you’re focusing all your efforts on us, no one is looking for Peter. You haven’t been looking for him since you made up your mind I took him.’

  She hasn’t convinced him, I can see from the look on his face. He’s had two suspects today, he’s not going to let us both go without a fight.

  A knock on the door. It opens. The desk sergeant. ‘Josh, I need a word.’

  ‘Give me a minute, Neil.’

  ‘No, has to be now. I’m serious, Josh.’

  ‘For God’s sake, what is it?’

  The desk sergeant looks around and seems to decide. ‘I’ve got Callum Murray in the interview room. He’s claiming he killed Peter Grimwood.’

  37

  I’m back in the interview room, alone. Catrin has been returned to her cell. Callum’s arrival – not to mention his confession – has floored all of us, but Josh Savidge has wit enough to realize that he needs to talk to him alone.<
br />
  Already, ten minutes have passed and they won’t even have finished booking him in yet. There is no time for this. My baby is out there. Peter. I’ve started whispering his name to myself like a mantra. Peter, Peter, Peter.

  I can’t sit down. I pace the room, pound my fists on the walls, but not so loud as to attract attention, because I mustn’t waste any more time. I peer out into the corridor and see nothing. I walk to the window and look up at the sky.

  I don’t believe it. Not the man on whose shoulder I wept only this morning. I have always liked Callum. He is big, friendly, larger than life in every respect and yes, there might be shades of him that are darker, no one can have been through what he did in the war and come out of it unscathed, but he keeps his dark places hidden away and private. I have never thought him dangerous.

  My dad thinks the world of him, and he’s never wrong about people. He certainly had me pegged years ago.

  Callum could not have harmed my child. And yet I no longer believe it was Catrin. I’ve looked into her eyes. It wasn’t Catrin.

  Was it me? Did I kill him and wipe the memory from my mind? Is that even possible? Much more of this and I’ll start to believe anything. I think back, watching Catrin walk towards her car with Peter in her arms, losing sight of her (she was spot on about that), running from the room, out of the house, across the garden.

  Outside, a large engine roars into life and I can’t help but step away from the wall. The revving sounds continue, increasing in volume. Then a burst of forward momentum. I back up, almost to the door, and the truck stops. Its headlights are shining in through the window. Then, equally quickly, the engine squeals, tyres scrape across the road and it speeds away.

  Inside the building I hear footsteps running. Another siren sounds but it’s heading up the hill to the bonfire.

  I want to bang on the door, demand to know what’s going on, but there simply aren’t enough people in the building to deal with hysterics on my part. I may be losing my mind, but I have to do it quietly.

  There’s something going on up at the bonfire, otherwise more police would be here. I’m praying Sander had the good sense to take the boys home; that wherever my three men are, they’re safe.

  An alarm sounds, drowning out external noise. From inside the building I hear more running footsteps.

  An escape? Callum changed his mind and ran for it?

  The alarm continues, painfully shrill. Then someone is at the door. I step back and Skye rushes inside. She is wearing her high-visibility jacket.

  ‘Get your coat.’ Without waiting for me to move, she grabs it from the back of the chair I’ve been sitting on.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I speak without thinking because from the corridor comes the faint but unmistakable aroma of smoke. Skye has brought it into the room too, clinging to her like cheap perfume.

  ‘Someone sent a firework through a window. The main office is on fire.’ She’s holding out handcuffs. ‘I have to cuff you, I’m afraid. Sergeant’s orders.’

  The smoke is thicker in the corridor and from somewhere close by I can hear crackling as Skye, now cuffed to me, drags me towards reception.

  ‘Breathe as little as you can till we’re outside.’ She succumbs to a fit of coughing.

  My eyes begin to sting. There are footsteps at our rear but I don’t look back. We run through the security doors into the reception area. Neil, the desk sergeant, a handkerchief to his face, is holding open the front door.

  Smoke is racing ahead of us, thickening in the cooler air. Skye pulls me outside, beyond its reach, beyond the wave of warmth that has been increasing with every second. The cool clear air feels like a huge relief.

  A window shatters as Catrin, handcuffed to the uniformed constable, follows us out. She rubs her eyes with her free hand and looks around. Her eyes settle, not on me, but on Callum. He is already in the car park, similarly restrained, standing with his minder by the police minibus. He keeps his eyes on his feet, his shoulders lifting visibly with every breath he takes.

  Josh Savidge is last to leave the building. ‘Fire brigade?’ he asks.

  Neil throws up his hands. ‘On its way. But guess where everyone is?’

  Josh strides towards us. ‘Everyone in the bus.’ He feels in his pockets. ‘Come on. We don’t know who threw that firework and I’m not having you three out in the open.’

  ‘Where’re you going?’ Neil asks.

  Josh doesn’t know. It’s obvious from the look on his face. ‘I’ll be on the radio,’ he tells Neil. ‘Get hold of the boss for me.’

  We are dragged and coaxed on to the bus. Josh has the engine on before the rest of us are even sitting and we pull out of the car park.

  ‘Town hall,’ Skye suggests.

  ‘Bad idea,’ the constable with Callum pipes up. ‘It’ll be swarming with people tonight. You really want to throw three confessed child-killers into the mix?’

  ‘Holy shit.’ Josh leans on the steering wheel. We are right in the middle of the road.

  ‘Cathedral?’ suggests the constable cuffed to Catrin.

  ‘It’s locked at night,’ she says. ‘Josh, go to the Conservation. We keep a key hidden in the porch. No one will look for us there and you can hide the bus round the back.’

  Josh sees some sense in this, or maybe he’s grasping at straws by this time. He releases the brake and we head towards the offices on Ross Road where Catrin works.

  At the Conservation, we all file out. No one is around. Or, if they are, we can’t see them. Smoke from various bonfires has filled the atmosphere. It is as though fog has covered the whole of the Falklands and the endless fireworks sound like artillery fire.

  Catrin finds the key and we all go inside. Once the doors are closed and locked, Catrin and I are uncuffed and she leads us to a conference room. It is eerily similar to the one we left behind at the police station. She pulls down the blinds and we are cut off from the world.

  Callum isn’t released from his restraints. The four officers are taking no chances with a fourteen-stone former soldier. They lead him to the head of the conference table and he sits, separate from the rest of us.

  ‘What now?’ He still can’t look anyone in the eye, least of all me. ‘What happens next?’

  What happens next is that we argue. Josh insists we wait for Stopford, for others to join us. Procedure has to be followed, he says, and we three suspects need to be interviewed separately.

  Catrin pitches in, arguing that it will take too long for Stopford to get here, for him to be brought up to speed. ‘And he’s not exactly quick off the mark,’ she reminds them. ‘Splitting us up is stupid,’ she says. ‘Every time one of us says something, you’ll have to double-check it with the others. We’ll be here all night. And while we’re faffing around, Peter is out there.’

  It becomes a mantra for Catrin. Every time she presses urgency upon us, she reminds us that Peter is out there, waiting for us to find him. I’m sure if I weren’t here, someone would point out that Peter is dead, and that a few hours will hardly make much difference. But I am and they don’t.

  ‘We’ll never secure a conviction if we mess up the interview,’ Skye warns Josh.

  ‘He’s confessed,’ one of the constables says. ‘The conviction is a done deal.’

  ‘Yeah, well I’ve had three bloody confessions in one evening,’ snaps Josh. ‘Forgive me if I can’t take them seriously any more.’

  For nearly ten minutes Catrin argues, with me joining in occasionally. Josh wants backup, but his attempts to get information out of Neil back at the station come to nothing. The desk sergeant’s priority, understandably, is to stop the building burning down. Callum appears almost to have gone into a trance. Eventually, with misgivings that are practically etched on his eyeballs, Josh agrees. He wants the truth as much as anyone.

  Catrin finds a tape recorder. It’s checked and switched on, we all give our names for the record, Callum last of all.

  He is redder in the face than normal. He has
the sort of fair skin through which every emotion he’s feeling shines. He is breathing heavily, but otherwise seems calm enough. Until you look at his hands, clenched tightly behind his back. Those hands cannot stop moving.

  Josh has taken a chair at the foot of the table, opposite Callum. Ten minutes to eleven. It is completely dark outside.

  ‘Tell us what happened on the afternoon of November the third,’ Josh begins. ‘The afternoon Peter Grimwood went missing.’

  Callum swallows. ‘I was worried about Catrin.’ He doesn’t look at her, although she’s barely taken her eyes off him since we entered the room. ‘I knew she’d seen her photograph in the Daily Mirror. I knew she’d be upset. I wanted to find her, make sure she was OK.’

  He glances right, meets her eyes for a second. She seems on the point of speaking, then shakes her head.

  ‘I followed her in my car.’ His eyes flick in my direction. ‘Up towards your place, Rachel. I didn’t think she should be on her own.’

  ‘What time was this?’ asks Josh.

  ‘A few minutes before four, I think. I know it was starting to go dark.’ He looks at Catrin as though for confirmation. She seems bewildered. Catrin, who kept an icy calm all the time I was confessing to killing my own child, has gone to pieces now that Callum has started speaking.

  ‘OK, carry on, please.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have been driving. I could feel an attack coming on.’

  ‘An attack?’

  ‘A blackout. No, that’s not quite right, I’m not epileptic or anything, but I have episodes.’

  Around the room, faces are puzzled.

  ‘I suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. I have flashbacks to what happened in the conflict. They can last for several hours, and afterwards I remember practically nothing about where I was or what I did.’

  Around the table light is dawning. We’ve all heard of PTSD.

  ‘Can anyone corroborate these flashbacks?’

  ‘Dr Pirrus. I’ve been seeing her for a couple of years now. And Catrin. I nearly strangled her a few nights ago.’