by Braven
He paused and glanced at Karen as if he was looking for reassurance now.
“If you ask me, she so desperately wanted a father, a real father, that she willed herself to believe in Marshall, and that meant that she had to believe everything he told her about what happened with her mother and her sister. Marshall played daddy to her from the moment she rediscovered him, and she didn’t want it to end. By God, she didn’t.”
He stopped again. Karen studied him appraisingly. Sometimes she just could not believe the way Kelly behaved, the way he meddled.
“Psychiatrist yourself now, are you?” As she spoke she realized this was not the first time she had made that remark to him. But she had never been so serious before.
“Obviously not,” he replied very quietly. “I made a real balls-up of it. It’s true what I said before, all right, whatever you make of it. She’s dead because of me. I am responsible.”
“Two days ago now she phoned again and she said that she’d had several sessions with the shrink I’d recommended and that she had successfully recovered her memory, and that this time she was absolutely certain that she remembered everything correctly. She said she wanted to tell me all of it. But she wouldn’t talk on the phone. Said she wanted to meet me face-to-face. So I dropped everything and took the train to London.”
Kelly coughed dryly and reached for his glass of water. Karen was intrigued now.
“Why you, do you think?” she asked more gently.
“She said I’d provided the key to her memory and maybe I could tell her how to use it.” Kelly smiled. “Those were her exact words, come to think of it. Quite poetic really. I don’t think she knew who to turn to, actually. She had no friends worth mentioning and no family apart from Marshall.”
“What about going to the police?”
“Under the circumstances she didn’t think the police could help. Not this time round, as she put it.”
“Under what circumstances?”
Kelly smiled grimly. “Look, you don’t have to listen to me telling you anything secondhand,” he said. “I’ve got it all on tape.”
“You have?” In spite of herself, Karen could feel the excitement welling up in her.
“Yup. I did an in-depth interview with her at her flat the day before yesterday. Then afterwards I went back home to decide what to do with it, what to do next, what I could do next. It was pretty tricky stuff, as you can imagine. Then I heard the news yesterday morning that Richard Marshall had been killed. I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t expected her to do anything like that. I really hadn’t.”
Kelly covered his face with his hands.
“Anything like what, exactly?” Karen was being very careful.
“Well, I just knew at once that she’d killed him. That she’d killed Richard Marshall. I just knew it. I mean, if he’d been my father I’d have killed him.”
Yes, but not everyone is quite such a hothead as you, thank God, thought Karen. Aloud she said nothing. Instead she waited again for him to resume speaking.
“I knew she’d done it so I just got myself to the station and caught a train straight back here. I didn’t know what to do when I couldn’t raise her. It was during the night that I began to think she was probably dead, too. That was why I broke into her flat this morning.”
“And I was proved right, unfortunately. She was dead. Stone-dead. Half her bloody head blown off. And I’ll bet you, I’ll bet you everything I’ve got, that you’ll find the gun that killed her also killed Richard Marshall in Poole.”
By late afternoon the next day the Met were satisfied that Jennifer Roth had indeed almost certainly killed herself. The regional Home Office pathologist reported that the angle of the gun indicated a self-inflicted wound. Initial forensic evidence also backed up the suicide theory. And the gun used, a Browning 45, was also almost certainly the weapon used to kill Richard Marshall in Poole.
Kelly, who had been held overnight at Hammersmith Police Station, was released into Karen’s custody, enabling her to take him back to Torquay. She couldn’t wait to hear that tape which, for reasons that defied her, he had left in the drawer of his desk at home. His explanation was that he thought the content so explosive that he didn’t want to carry the tape around with him.
In the car on the way down the M5, Karen’s mobile phone rang and a familiar number flashed on to the screen. It was Cooper. For a moment she considered not answering it. She glanced at Tompkins. It was a filthy day again for the time of year. The rain was tipping down and the detective constable was frowning in concentration as he peered through the curtains of misty water being formed by the heavy traffic all around him. In the back seat Kelly, who had earlier grumbled that he had not slept for one minute during his night spent in a police cell, was snoring gently.
Karen let the phone ring several times before finally pressing the receive button.
“Yes,” she said curtly.
“Karen, I’ve got to talk to you—”
“This isn’t a good moment. I am in the middle of a murder investigation.”
“Look, Sarah has said she’ll give me another chance if I apply for a transfer. It’s not what I want, but I’m just terrified of losing the kids—”
Karen interrupted again. “I think it is what you want, actually.”
Something in her voice attracted Tompkins’ attention. She was aware of him briefly shifting his attention from the busy motorway and glancing at her curiously.
“I’m sorry, Karen. Look, it needn’t be permanent. I don’t want to lose you, honestly. But for the moment I think it would be for the best. She’s also said that if I do that she won’t take any action about you.”
“That’s big of her.” The words slipped out. Tompkins looked around again. Like most of his colleagues Tompkins, in spite of his taciturn appearance and manner, was a natural-born gossip. Karen knew that all his inner antennae would be waggling by now.
Cooper was still speaking. “I just don’t know what else to do, it’s all such a mess…”
His voice trailed off.
“That’s absolutely fine,” said Karen. And she ended the call.
Tompkins said nothing, as usual, but Karen had a small bet with herself that he had guessed who was on the end of the phone and was currently speculating colourfully about what might be going on. No doubt the incident would be reported fully back to Torquay nick ASAP.
By the time they reached Kelly’s house Moira had left for night duty at the hospital and the three of them had the place to themselves. Without preamble the reporter produced an audio cassette which he began to play on the big living-room stereo system.
Karen sat on a hard chair by the window. She didn’t feel like making herself comfortable.
Jennifer Roth’s voice filled the room. It was a good sound system. The result was extremely eerie. It was surreal. This was a voice from the dead. A voice Karen remembered so well and already associated with dropping bombshells. But never before a bombshell on this scale.
Kelly stood, leaning against the wall, over by the kitchen door. His head was bowed and he was stroking his forehead with the fingers of one hand. Tompkins perched on the edge of the sofa, hands on his knees, all ears, more alert than Karen had ever seen him before, she thought.
“I just wanted to tell you what happened, John, because I know now, beyond any doubt. I really know. And I’m talking to you like this because I want to put the truth on record,” said Jennifer’s voice on the tape. She was speaking very deliberately.
“Thank you for trusting me,” replied Kelly.
Karen shot him a mildly disgusted look across the room. Kelly had the grace to look ashamed. He had been using his “I’m a nice journalist, you can tell me anything” approach, and Karen was all too familiar with it.
“I have now completed six therapy sessions with the psychiatrist, Dr. Huxtable, who you recommended me to,” continued Jennifer. She was speaking almost without expression, the tone of her voice very flat, her public-school acc
ent less noticeable perhaps than usual.
“I was more inclined to go to him than you may have realized. I’d been having these dreams. I had them as a child. As a very young child. They were never clear. They were shadowy. I had a vision of being in another house, of a lot of shouting and screaming. Of dreadful things happening but I somehow wasn’t sure exactly what. All the while I was being brought up in Cheshire I knew perfectly well that I’d had another life. But I shut everything out because I wanted to escape from the things that happened in my head whenever I tried to sleep. My adoptive mother told me that I was just having nightmares. They were such good people, my new parents, Carol and Michael, they looked after me and loved me and they helped me blot out the past. I have no idea what they knew, more than likely the same story Richard Marshall was to tell me later, after Carol and Michael died.
“>It was then, when I was sorting through all their papers, that I came across letters from my real father. From Richard. He had obviously been keeping in touch with Carol and Michael, wanting to know about me. It was wonderful for me to find that I still had a father, my natural father, and that he had cared about me all these years.
“I wrote to him and he wrote back to me at once. He came to see me in Cheshire and talked to me about it all and explained what had happened when I was five, how our mother had tried to kill us all, he told me what had led him to give me away. And my sister Lorraine, he said. Suddenly it all made sense, the violent dreams, all of it, and I suppose what he told me was what I wanted to hear. Or as near as was possible, anyway, given that my mother was dead and I’d lost my sister. He seemed so kind and gentle and everything he said expressed concern for me.
“I believed him wholeheartedly. And then he told me about this new job he had in Poole and the flat and everything and asked me if I wanted to live with him there. It was like another dream to me, but a good dream for a change. He said the police had never stopped hounding him, that he wanted to protect me from all that, so it was better just to let people think I was his girlfriend.
“We were happy together. He was rebuilding his life, I think, after breaking up with his latest woman. He was honest enough about that side of himself, too. He said he had a weakness for the ladies. He said that had caused all of his troubles. He even told me about his fraud conviction, and he said he’d only done what he’d done then because he’d got into financial trouble when he’d been trying to run two families. I suppose I believed what I wanted to believe. Because I had always wanted something like that, to find my real father or mother again, to get to know them.
“I thought I did know him, too. When he was arrested I believed in him absolutely, and when I came forward after he was convicted I still believed in him. A lot of what the police and the lawyers said, though, about my being disturbed by what had happened to me as a child, did get through to me. Because I knew that none of it was clear, whatever I said, none of my memories were clear. They were all hazy around the edges.
“Then, after my father won his appeal, I began to get the dreams again. The dreams I couldn’t understand. That’s why I thought it might be best to move away from him for a while. I started looking for work elsewhere. I had been an office manager before, and I was rather good at it. I found a new job quite easily and moved here to Hammersmith. I didn’t tell my father about the dreams. I didn’t want to face up to them, I suppose. But they began to get worse and worse.
“So when you told me that my father had confessed more or less, to that crime reporter on the Sun, it really got through to me. And then when you explained about Recovered Memory Syndrome and suggested I see Dr. Huxtable, well, I wanted to do it at once even though I didn’t admit it either to myself or to you, John. I hadn’t talked to any other journalists. I’d never heard of RMS. I don’t read the papers a lot. I just wasn’t aware of it. For the first time in my life I could see how it might be possible to open a window into my past.”
Jennifer paused, and Karen could hear a swallowing sound as if perhaps she was taking a drink of something. When she started to talk again there was a definite catch in that flat well-educated voice.
“Dr. Huxtable just talked to me at first and then put me into hypnotherapy. We started to have results almost at once. I began to remember things in bits. It was like the dreams but this time I knew, just knew, it was what had really happened. I didn’t have any doubts at all.
“Suddenly I remembered it all so clearly as if it was yesterday. It was like I was five again, like I was there again.
“Our mother hadn’t tried to kill us in the car in the garage, neither had she killed herself. No…”
Jennifer’s voice broke completely. Karen could hear muffled sobs, and the young woman was still crying when she continued to tell her story.
“There was a terrible row. Lorraine and I were playing in our room upstairs but there was so much noise that we crept out onto the landing and then downstairs to see what was happening. We lived in a hotel, of course, and there were guests, but they wouldn’t have heard anything because the guest bedrooms were all in the new extension. Mummy and Daddy were in the kitchen. They were shouting at each other, screaming. Then Daddy caught hold of Mummy around the neck and started shaking her. She made this awful sound. This gurgling noise. I can hear it now, I can still hear it. I just turned and fled upstairs, but Lorraine was always braver than me. She ran into the room and I could hear her shouting at Daddy to stop.
“Then after a bit Daddy came upstairs with Lorraine in his arms. She was still in tears but she was fairly calm. Daddy said everything was all right and Mummy was fine. Lorraine and I just huddled together because we were frightened. Then a little later he came back and said that Mummy had been very cross with him and she’d gone away and he was going to take us next door to the neighbours because he wanted to go after her and find her.
“Even Lorraine was too frightened to say much that night but at school the next day she kept telling the teacher that Daddy had got rid of Mummy. I think that’s what she said. I think those were her exact words.
“We went back to the neighbours’ house after school that day but early the next morning Daddy came to fetch us. He said that Granny would be coming to look after us. I couldn’t take any of it in, really. Then he said we could have the day off school as a special treat. I still don’t remember much about that day. We stayed indoors, I think, until bedtime. And I do remember that when he put us to bed Lorraine kept asking him what he’d done to Mummy. Why had he hurt Mummy? Where had he put Mummy? I just clung to him, though. I don’t think I even wanted to know what was going on. I sensed that I had lost one parent, I suppose. I really didn’t want to lose another.
“Eventually I fell asleep. And I have no idea what else happened that night. But in the morning Lorraine wasn’t there. Her bed was empty and I never saw her again.
“Daddy said he was taking me to live with some kind people for a while who would look after me until he’d found Mummy and Lorraine. He kind of suggested that Lorraine was with Mummy, I think. I was too young to understand, to question anything.
“He took me to Carol and Michael. They had wanted children all their lives. They looked after me and cared for me and helped me forget, I suppose. So I blocked it out. That’s what kids do. Sounds incredible but it’s very common with small children faced with something terrible, Dr. Huxtable told me. They just shut everything out.
“Without his help, without learning about Recovered Memory Syndrome from you, I would never have remembered all this. Never have known the difference between my nightmares and the truth.”
Kelly’s voice broke in. “Are you quite sure of this, Jennifer?”
He sounded stunned, as indeed he might, thought Karen. Whatever he may have suspected, whatever any of them may always have believed, hearing it first-hand after all these years was something none of them would have thought possible. It was a total shock to Karen, too.
“Oh, yes, I’m quite sure. I can see it so clearly. It’s absolutel
y real to me. I can see our father bringing Lorraine upstairs and trying to tell us everything is all right. I can even see the scratches on his face, angry weals down both cheeks. Mummy must have tried to fight him off, but he was always such a strong man…”
Jennifer completely broke down in tears then. Karen found that her own hands were trembling, just as Kelly’s had been in Hammersmith Police Station. She remembered what her mother had said. “Scratches, he had scratches on his face.” The tape was silent for almost a minute before Jennifer’s voice filled the room once more.
“Lorraine wouldn’t stop accusing him. I have no doubt at all that he killed Lorraine, too. But not me. I survived because I didn’t really question our father, I think. Didn’t question him at all, in fact. Also, I think I’d always been his favourite. I was a complete daddy’s girl. I didn’t want to believe he’d done what he’d done, so I just didn’t accept it. And I was only five.”
Kelly’s voice came on the tape. “What now, Jennifer?” he asked. “What are you going to do? What do you want me to do? We should go to the police, you know.”
Kelly no longer sounded like a journalist doing an interview. It was as if he had been overwhelmed by the magnitude of what he had just learned. And Karen could understand that well enough.
“There isn’t any point in going to the police, is there?” It was a rhetorical question from Jennifer. “My father has successfully appealed against his conviction. He cannot be tried again. I know the law might change one day, but that’s how it is at the moment. In any case, would I be believed? It was my evidence, the evidence of my alleged memory, which let him walk away a free man, wasn’t it? I doubt what I have told you would ever stand up in a court of law. I don’t know what I’m going to do yet, Kelly. But I want you to take this tape away with you, so that the truth is on record. And I want you to get it published if you can.”
Kelly had said something about doubting that any paper would dare publish such stuff about a man who had been declared innocent by the Court of Appeal, and Jennifer had simply responded: “You’ll do your best, though, won’t you? I know you’ll do your best.”