For Reasons Unknown

by Michael Wood

  ‘What are you talking about? He wasn’t playing a game at all. Stephen was a good guy. There aren’t many left in this world. He liked me. Actually he loved me. I’ve no idea why but he did and he wanted to help me. That’s all. He had no ulterior motive and he wasn’t taking me anywhere.’

  Maun looked up. Her eyes were red and full of tears ready to fall. ‘I am so sorry Jonathan.’

  ‘Sorry? How can you say that? You killed him in cold blood and all you can say is sorry? I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you’re sorry at all. You planned this all along. It takes time to hire a car, to find out where he was, and when to strike. It was in your head all that time and you went through with it without a second thought.’

  ‘That’s not true Jonathan, I…’

  ‘No. You don’t get to say anything right now.’ He slammed the red leather scrapbook down on the floor. He sat down on the opposing armchair and leaned forward. His eyes were wide and starry, his jaw clenched and determined. ‘Why did you reverse?’

  ‘What?’

  The bright red of the reversing lights caused him to squint. A few seconds later and the car started moving, heading straight for Jonathan.

  The wheels crunched over loose stones as it reversed. Ten seconds went by, then twenty. Jonathan could smell the exhaust fumes and feel the heat coming from the car. It was almost upon him. Eventually he opened his eyes. The car had stopped in front of him, less than a yard away.

  ‘After you ran over Stephen you carried on driving then stopped. A few seconds later the brake lights came on and you reversed. Why?’

  She stuttered. ‘I…I was going to make sure he was dead. I thought you would have jumped out of the way but you didn’t. I saw then how much he meant to you. You were willing to die with him weren’t you?’

  He leaned back in his chair and held eye contact. ‘Yes. He was all I had left.’ Jonathan didn’t even have to think about his reply. Of course he was willing to die with Stephen.

  ‘What about me? I’ve not meant anything to you all these years have I?’

  ‘That’s not true. You’re a good friend. Correction, you were a good friend.’

  ‘Don’t say that Jonathan. Please. I’m sorry. I really am sorry.’

  ‘You’ve done this your whole life haven’t you? Any time something happens that you’re not in control of or that will upset you, you leap in and change it. You destroy it. If you can’t be happy then why should anyone else.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Of course it is. The evidence is right here in your scrapbook. What happened between you and your husband that caused you to do this?’

  Jonathan opened the scrapbook, flipped through a few pages, and when he found what he was looking for he turned it towards Maun.

  She winced at the headline: ‘WAS BARRINGTON’S CAR ROADWORTHY?’ She didn’t say anything. She just looked into the face of the young man she thought she knew. The rage building up inside him was intense. She could see the veins in his neck throbbing.

  ‘Tell me about your husband,’ Jonathan said.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ She swallowed hard and fingered the tight collar on her blouse.

  ‘Everything. Everything the press left out.’

  ‘Sit down Jonathan. Come on, sit down and have a cup of coffee. I don’t know what you’re thinking here but…’ She trailed off. She couldn’t finish that sentence.

  ‘You’ve always said the neighbours shunned you because you didn’t seem particularly upset at your husband’s death. However, he was cheating on you with his secretary and she was pregnant with his child, the ultimate kick in the teeth for a woman unable to have children. So why did they shun you? Surely they would have been sympathetic to a wronged woman whose private life was suddenly splashed all over the papers?’

  ‘You’d think so wouldn’t you but that’s not how it turned out,’ she replied with a shrug.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You do. Come on Maun, you’re talking to me now. You’re a very strong woman. If someone had been ignoring or bad-mouthing you for no reason you would have found out. You knew about the affair didn’t you?’

  She paused. She waited until she had the courage to allow it all to come out. The strength, the energy, rose up inside her like an erupting volcano. She looked Jonathan in the eye and knew it was time to tell all. ‘Of course I knew about the affair,’ she said with an angry bitterness. ‘Peter was an excellent businessman but as a person, as a hider of secrets, he was terrible.’

  ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘I saw it in his face straightaway. I left it for a while and gathered evidence; the sudden weekend meetings, late nights at the office. He turned into a walking cliché. One night over dinner I just came out with it. He tried to deny it, obviously, but his face gave him away. That’s why he was such a terrible poker player. Every lie he tried to feed me I saw through straightaway. Then came the biggest betrayal of all; his young tart was pregnant.’

  ‘He told you?’

  ‘Oh yes. Well, he sat me down and said he had a plan. His exact words were “I have a business proposition for you my dear”. He wanted a divorce but he didn’t want any scandal, so he wanted me to file for divorce and say I had met somebody else. Can you believe that? He was the bastard yet he wanted me to become the social pariah.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said I’d think about it. He’d already given it plenty of thought; he’d put together a very attractive package to sweeten the deal.’

  ‘But you weren’t having any of it?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she blustered. ‘Did he honestly think he could treat me like that after all the years of playing the dutiful wife and attending all those dull meetings, dinner parties, conference weekends in sodding Worthing? I wasn’t prepared to be cast aside like a dirty towel. He was going to pay and I wanted more than any amount of money he was prepared to offer.’

  Jonathan allowed the silence to build. ‘You killed him didn’t you?’

  ‘You know, cutting the brake line on a car is more difficult than the films have you believe. I looked under the bonnet of his car and had no idea what to do. It took some researching to figure out how to make it look like wear and tear. I suppose it’s much easier these days with the Internet. I got a book from the university library and ended up interfering with the brake pedal, and to make sure it worked, I sabotaged the linkage on the steering too so that, at some point in his journey, he’d lose control of the steering, slam on the brakes, which would also fail, and that would be it. He was on the Snake Pass when it happened. He went over the side and crashed into the countryside.’

  ‘He had a pregnant woman with him. How could you…?’

  ‘Hand on heart I genuinely did not know she was going to be in the car,’ she interrupted him. ‘I knew he was going to Manchester, but it was just to sign a contract. There was no reason for her to be with him. It was just a happy accident.’

  ‘A happy accident? My God, you’re proud of what you did.’

  ‘Of course I am. I was being humiliated.’

  ‘And what about his secretary?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She was innocent in all this…’

  ‘Innocent? She was sleeping with a married man. How is that innocent? Since when was being a whore innocent? Whatever happened to her she deserved.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’ve just said that. You killed two people, three if you count the unborn baby, and you’re not even bothered about it.’

  ‘I had no choice,’ she stated matter-of-factly.

  ‘And what about Stephen. Did you have no choice there either?’

  Maun fell into her armchair. There was no way for her to talk herself out of this. Her demeanour changed. She felt no emotion for her husband and his bit on the side. Jonathan, however, was a different story. She loved him.

  ‘Jonathan…I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It’s far too
late for apologies. You’re a control freak. You’ve tried to control everything all your life and when anyone got in the way of what you wanted you killed them. Is there any wonder you’re on your own? You’re evil. You’re an actual psychopath.’

  Jonathan calling Maun a psychopath seemed to resonate within her. The pathetic tired look in her eyes had gone and she stood up and loomed over him.

  ‘Well, you’d know all about that wouldn’t you?’ Her voice was quiet and deep and held a vicious bitterness.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Now it was Jonathan’s turn to look worried.

  ‘Sometimes it takes a psychopath to find another psychopath.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh don’t come the innocent with me Jonathan Harkness. The clues are all there in the newspaper cuttings. I’ve read them over many, many times and I’ve spoken to people about you. I know more than you think. I know all about you.’

  ‘You don’t know anything,’ he said, swallowing the bile that had risen in his throat. A sheen of sweat appeared on his forehead and his hands were visibly shaking.

  ‘Wrong. I know absolutely everything.’

  Chapter 42

  The Murder Room, the unofficial name for the Murder Investigation Team’s briefing room, was a mass of noise; several conversations going on at once between plain-clothed and uniformed officers, telephones were ringing and rapidly answered, and computer keyboards were being heavily beaten with the fast-paced fingers of the stressed-out officers.

  Matilda walked to the head of the room and stood in front of the whiteboards covered in crime-scene photographs and a blown up copy of Matthew Harkness’s driving licence. By the time she turned around to face the room everyone was silent and awaiting her to begin the briefing. It felt like old times. Where was the anxiety, the fear of failure, the paranoia?

  ‘Good morning everybody. Nice to see you all bright-eyed and raring to go. Now, I have spent the last half an hour with ACC Masterson and we have made some decisions in how these cases are currently run. I think it is safe to say that the killer of Stefan and Miranda Harkness and Matthew Harkness is one and the same person. Also, the hit-and-run, which left Stephen Egan dead, is too much of a coincidence not to be connected, but for now it is being investigated by CID. DS Jackson is leading that case and will keep us informed. We will, however, conduct our own investigation into it and liaise if and when necessary.

  ‘Now, as Matthew Harkness is our more recent victim we will concentrate on his killer. I’ve been told there is no CCTV of the murder scene, but there aren’t many exit points from Holly Lane. Do we have anything at all from the surrounding area?’

  Matilda looked around at the faces staring back at her. There was no nervous tension, no prickly sensation crawling up her neck, no sweaty palms, no stuttering with self-doubt, no negative thoughts, and not a single Prime Minister in sight. She could see the usual crowd, her dedicated team she could always rely on, and a few uniformed officers she remembered from before her enforced sabbatical, and plenty of new, fresh faces too. Acting DCI Hales was notable by his absence.

  ‘We have managed to get footage from a number of cameras in the area and there’s a team of officers going through it all.’

  ‘Thank you. It’s Faith, isn’t it?’

  ‘DC Easter, yes ma’am.’

  ‘I’m sorry we haven’t had time to chat yet but we will soon. In the meantime, please ignore any rumours you may have heard about me.’

  Easter’s face was stony until Sian Mills laughed. The rest of the room murmured and Easter smiled, relaxing in the presence of the formidable DCI.

  ‘Who do we have as a suspect for Matthew Harkness?’

  Sian put down her cheese salad sandwich and dusted her hands free of flour. ‘Current thinking is Jonathan may have killed him out of self-defence after Matthew attacked him. However, if we’re saying Matthew was killed by the same person who killed his parents, are we really believing an eleven-year-old could butcher his parents in such a manner?’ She pointed to the crime-scene photographs of the Harkness double murder on a separate whiteboard.

  ‘There’s no way an eleven-year-old could have committed those crimes,’ said DC Scott Andrews. ‘Look at the pictures of a young Jonathan; he’s a bag of bones. He looks like a good meal would kill him. There’s no way he could have overpowered two adults.’

  ‘So if Jonathan didn’t kill his brother then who did? Who knew he would be in Sheffield on that night?’ Matilda asked nobody in particular. This was an open discussion and she welcomed comments from everyone.

  ‘Maybe it was a random killing,’ Rory said taking a final swig of coffee.

  ‘If Matthew had been to Jonathan’s flat, beaten him, and sexually assaulted him isn’t it a bit of a coincidence that he then just happened to get himself killed in a random attack?’ Aaron pointed out. ‘This is real life, not Emmerdale.’

  ‘I really don’t think we can rule Jonathan out as a suspect,’ Sian added.

  ‘What is his official statement for the time of Matthew’s death?’

  ‘Well obviously he had just been attacked. He says he was in his flat on his own.’

  ‘What do the neighbours say?’ Matilda asked.

  ‘A neighbour saw Matthew leave the apartment building but nobody else heard or saw anything,’ Aaron said. He had been one of the officers who had spoken to everyone in the building. As the majority of the residents claimed to have heard and seen nothing, he didn’t need to consult his notebook.

  ‘His neighbour upstairs, Maun Barrington, bring her in, let’s have a full statement from her and get her to dish the dirt on Jonathan,’ Matilda said. ‘Faith, check to see if there have been any similar attacks recently. We need to cover every angle of this, but I’m with the majority; I don’t think this was a random attack. Did the search of Jonathan’s apartment reveal anything interesting?’ Matilda asked, looking at Sian.

  ‘Apart from the fact that he’s not normal,’ Rory said, concentrating on opening a Mars Bar. ‘I mean, how can you not have a TV?’

  ‘He doesn’t have a telly?’ Scott Andrews scoffed.

  ‘No. It’s just books, books, and more books.’

  ‘Bloody hell! Imagine a house with no background noise. I’d go mad with all that silence.’

  Matilda interrupted before the discussion lost its way completely. ‘Apart from the fact he doesn’t watch Match of the Day, did we find anything useful?’

  ‘His story seems to be backed up. There were fragments of glass in the living-room carpet and specks of Jonathan’s blood. Matthew’s fingerprints are all over the living room too,’ Sian said.

  ‘What about his bedroom?’

  Sian was just about to put the last bite of her sandwich in her mouth when Matilda asked a follow-up question. She placed it back into the plastic box she had brought it in and picked up her notebook. ‘No. Just Jonathan’s in there. It looks like the sexual attack took place in the living room.’

  ‘Did we go through his bins?’

  ‘We did. Nothing unusual in there either; empty tins, used tea bags, deodorant can, old razor blades, etc. Nothing out of the ordinary.’ She quickly ate the last bite of sandwich.

  ‘So, on the basis of Jonathan’s story being true and Matthew sexually assaulting him in his own home, are we going down the route of Jonathan following Matthew and killing him in an act of self-defence?’

  ‘I think we have to, unless Matthew had an enemy in Manchester who followed him to Sheffield.’

  ‘Please don’t complicate matters any further Sian,’ Aaron said, rubbing his temples.

  ‘Not a bad question though Sian. Get back on to Manchester police and ask them to delve into his life a bit more. Oh, did you get in touch with Charlie Johnson?’

  ‘I called his agent yesterday. She says he’s away finishing his next book due out next summer. Apparently she’s tried to contact him herself but hasn’t been able to locate him.’

  ‘Is this something we should be worried about?’
/>
  ‘His agent isn’t worried. She says a lot of writers go off the radar when they’re putting the finishing touches to a book.’

  ‘Right. Well keep trying. I want a word with him.’

  The atmosphere in the room suddenly darkened. Matilda saw Ben Hales enter before anyone else did, but the look on her face told them something was horribly wrong. Everyone turned to look at the doorway. He perched on the edge of the nearest desk and looked to Matilda with a smirk on his face. He was unshaven and his hair was an unruly mess. His eyes looked dull and the bags underneath were noticeably bigger than they were yesterday. Maybe he hadn’t had the much-needed sleep she’d had. She smiled to herself as she considered sending Adele round to help him out.

  The silence dragged on and the oppressive tension was felt by everyone. Aaron nudged Sian, prompting her to say something, do something to lighten the mood, move the situation along, but Sian was struck dumb.

  ‘Right, I think we’ve covered just about everything,’ Matilda stuttered. She was just about to recite the names of British Prime Ministers from the beginning of the twentieth century when she stopped herself. Hales was not worth the anxiety. ‘So, does anyone have any questions?’

  ‘Are you taking the kid gloves off?’ Hales asked. His voice resounded off the walls and everyone held their breath. Hales was covering the only exit to the room. Matilda was at the top, everybody else was in the crossfire.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Are you still treating Jonathan Harkness like he’s made of glass or are you finally looking at him as the key to this whole affair?’

  ‘In what way is he the key?’ Matilda asked, folding her arms so nobody would see her shaking hands.

  ‘Well, we can definitely get him on killing his brother for a start…’

  Matilda interrupted. ‘I will be interviewing Jonathan later today and putting questions to him about his brother’s death.’