I try to make my expression one of sorrow as I take another step.
‘I don’t want you to die,’ I lie. ‘Can’t we talk? Please, Robert?’
For a moment I think I’m getting through, and then Robert glances behind me, and his eyes change. He’s seen somebody. He knows it’s not just him and me. He pulls Freddie tighter to him and starts to back up towards the edge of the cliff. I can’t let him get close but he only has about eight metres to go.
I can hear Jasmine and Billy crying behind me, and I take one look at Freddie’s terrified little face. I don’t stop to think or to plan. Robert has my baby. I lean forwards and rush at him. Two steps and I leap to try to knock him to the floor. He’s not a big man, but he’s bigger and heavier than me, and he absorbs the shock without falling. He has loosened his hold on Freddie, though, and Freddie has wriggled free.
Robert grabs me round the neck and pulls me to him, squeezing hard, muttering insanely under his breath about his perfect love. I want to break free, but I hear Jaz screaming, and over Robert’s shoulder I see Freddie is backing away from us, not realising that in just a few tiny steps his foot will come down and meet thin air as he tumbles down the cliff face.
I can’t breathe. I’m fighting not for my life but for Freddie’s and I can’t shout out. I try, but the pressure on my throat forces nothing more than a squeak from my larynx.
I can’t turn my head, but from nowhere I see a dark shape swoop towards Freddie and pluck him right from the edge.
Thank God. My children are safe.
I can die now.
60
From where I am sitting on the sofa, I can see the chief inspector – Tom, as he told me to call him during our interminable two-hour wait at the cliff top – at the dining-room table, nursing his hand in a packet of frozen peas wrapped in a tea towel; an injury sustained as he dived to the ground to grab Freddie back from the brink. According to the doctor it’s just a sprain, but I will never be able to thank him enough for what he did.
Robert has been arrested for crimes committed on Alderney soil, and has been taken to the cells. A UK warrant will be delivered tomorrow, and then apparently they have to decide if Robert should be returned to Manchester to be charged with offences committed there, or remain here to be charged for his attack on the children and me. I asked Ray what offences in Manchester, but he told me it is something I need to discuss with Tom.
I am hemmed in on all sides by children. Jaz is on one side and Billy on the other, both crushed up against me so that rather wonderfully I am almost unable to breathe as they squeeze themselves as tightly as possible against my ribcage. Freddie is on my knee, curled up in a tight ball, his head pressing against the bruises on my neck. The pain just reminds me of what I almost lost.
The children are shocked, and I don’t know how I am going to be able to get them past this. I’m hoping that the peace and calm of this island will soothe them. Jasmine is going to take the longest to recover, though. Her serious little face settles from time to time into a frown as if she is trying to puzzle something out in her own head.
Tom is looking at me, and I know he wants to talk to me about something – something serious. He stands up and walks over, speaking in a quiet even tone to avoid any hint of tension creeping into the calmness of the room.
‘Olivia, do you think we could have a word, please? I know you don’t want to leave the children, but Becky will stay with them. We can just sit over there in the dining area so you can still see them, but it’s probably best if we’re not overheard.’
I have a quiet word with Jaz, just to make sure she’s okay, and suggest she chooses a DVD that they might all enjoy. Perhaps a harmless, happy cartoon would be best.
I follow Tom, but make sure I am never out of their sight, and Tom sits with his back to my children, as if he doesn’t want them to hear what he’s saying.
‘Tom, how can I ever thank you for what you did today?’
He smiles at me kindly. ‘You risked your life, and we nearly lost you. I don’t think I would have forgiven myself if that had happened.’
They have told me how Tom scooped Freddie into his arms and passed him to Jasmine while Ray tackled Robert to the ground; how Becky guided my distraught children to safety while the two men secured Robert with handcuffs. But I was already unconscious, and once again they had to resuscitate me.
The first thing I saw when I came round was the incredible sight of my three children, hovering over me, their dirty, tear-streaked faces looking more beautiful than I have ever seen them. I drag myself back to the present as Tom reaches over and gives my hand a gentle squeeze.
‘We knew Robert was coming for the children. Sophie told us. It must have been impossible for you to believe what he planned to do.’
‘It was, but sadly he wouldn’t have been the first father to do that, would he? And he wanted me to suffer for not loving him.’
Who would have believed me if I’d told them what I suspected – that my children’s lives were in danger? Thank God Sophie understood, incredible as my story sounded. But then she had witnessed Robert’s obsession all those years ago, and knew that he was capable of anything. It wasn’t long after that we worked out the rest of it.
What would I have done without Sophie? I had asked Becky to phone her as soon as we were safe. Even though I want to speak to her myself, the children have to be my priority. I’ll call her later, when they are tucked up in bed.
Tom leans forwards and lowers his voice still further.
‘I’m sorry to add to the horrors of today, but I need to ask you about Danush Jahander. What can you tell me about him?’
I knew this was coming, of course, and I should have been prepared. But hearing his name on somebody else’s lips still makes me ache for him. I try to keep my voice steady.
‘You know about him leaving all those years ago – I remember you now from that dreadful night. It seems so long ago, but you were kind to me then and you were so supportive about my parents.’ I nearly lose it at that point. Whichever way I look at it, it seems it is my fault they died. But Tom wants to talk about Dan, so I drag my mind back.
‘I’m sure you know that I got a text from Dan when he left to say he was sorry, and then I heard nothing more from him until about a year ago. He’d tracked me down; he wanted us to get back together. I couldn’t do it. I love Dan so much, and I always will, but I knew what Robert would do.’
I can’t look at Tom as I tell him this. I trace shapes on the table with my finger, and focus my attention there.
‘So what happened?’
‘I saw Dan a few times, and he begged me to leave. He even wanted me to take Jaz to Iran to meet his family. I nearly did, too. But I couldn’t make him understand that I needed time, and the risk to both Dan and my children was far too great.’
‘Did you know that Danush contacted your husband two weeks ago? Apparently he wanted to set up a meeting.’
I concentrate fiercely on the shapes on the tablecloth that are becoming increasingly intricate. My voice drops to little more than a whisper.
‘Sophie told me. Dan’s still a bit hot-headed and he didn’t want to wait for me. But Robert was in Newcastle, so I guess it wasn’t possible for them to meet. I haven’t heard from Dan in two weeks, and he’s not answering his phone. So I assume he’s still mad at me for running away. Maybe now… I don’t know. It’s all so long ago.’
I still can’t look at Tom. My head is swamped with an image of Dan, laughing at something I’d said, reaching out an arm and pulling me close to him and burying his lips in my hair. Tom is speaking again, but I keep the image in my head. I like to look at it.
‘We think your husband arranged to meet Danush at your house last Wednesday. We know Robert came home that night.’ I feel a tight band squeeze my chest. I know what Tom is going to say. ‘I’m sorry, Olivia. You’ve had a huge amount to deal with today, and I hate having to add to your burden, but we believe your husband killed Danush Jahande
r.’
I let my head drop down on to folded arms, resting on the table. The grief wells up in me, as at last I feel free to mourn my lovely, beautiful Dan. In my mind I can still see him. I pull back from his imagined embrace, look into his chocolate brown eyes and smile while Tom continues with the details. Dan smiles back. I think he’s proud of me.
‘We found blood in your husband’s study. We matched it to DNA from a pair of gloves we found in a box in the attic belonging to Danush. But we do need to be certain that it was Dan’s blood, so we’d like to take a DNA sample from Jasmine, if it’s okay with you.’
I lift my tear-stained face and look at Tom. I hate myself for what I’m about to say, but I have no choice.
‘Take one by all means, Chief Inspector, but I’m not sure it will help you. Unfortunately Jasmine isn’t Dan’s daughter. She’s Samir’s.’
61
Wednesday
Tom was surprisingly quiet on the flight back. But Becky was jubilant. At last this family could live in peace. It was tragic that Dan couldn’t be part of it, but to live without fear must be such a relief for Olivia.
‘Are you okay, Tom?’ she asked. ‘Is your hand hurting?’
‘Yes, but I’ll live,’ he replied.
Becky waited, but there was no more to come.
‘Is everything okay?’ she asked. She was puzzled by his expression. He was deep in thought and kept chewing his bottom lip in a most un-Tom-like way.
‘Fine, thanks.’
Bloody hell, this was like pulling teeth. At least Sophie Duncan had sounded elated when Becky had phoned to say that Olivia and the children were safe. She hadn’t mentioned Danush – she would leave it to Olivia to explain.
‘What do you make of the whole Dan and Samir thing, then?’ she asked, in a last ditch attempt at starting a conversation.
‘Not a lot. She said she told Dan that Jasmine might be Samir’s all those years ago, and that’s why he left.’
‘But why, though? Why did she have an affair with Danush’s brother if she loved him so much?’
Tom shook his head.
‘Ours not to reason why, Becky. People do all sorts of daft things for no reason that anybody else can understand.’
Becky hoped this wasn’t a barbed remark about her and Peter Hunter, but it was so unlike Tom that she discounted the idea.
‘I think it was all tied up with her trying to make Dan jealous and simultaneously trying to charm Samir,’ Tom said, ‘and it all got a bit out of hand. Something like that. Anyway, despite Jasmine’s blood parentage, Olivia has always thought of her as Danush’s child, and that’s what she’s brought her up to believe. We’ll test Jasmine’s blood, but I’m fairly sure that we will find a match to her paternal uncle – which is what Danush is.’
‘So what’s eating you?’ Becky persisted.
‘I don’t know. There’s something wrong. I know it, I can feel it. But I don’t know what it is.’
They were silent for a few moments, each lost in their own thoughts. Tom picked up some notes he was studying, and immediately put them down again.
‘There’s something else I’ve been meaning to tell you, although I’m not sure if it’s the right thing to do. I don’t want to lose you from the team now that I’ve got you.’
Becky turned her head sharply towards him. ‘What? I’m not in the shit for something, am I?’
‘No, of course not. When we were waiting for the plane at Guernsey airport I had a call asking if I would be interested in filling a temporary post back in the Met.’
‘You’re not going to take it, are you?’ Becky said, unable to disguise the horror in her voice.
‘No, but I thought I should tell you it’s Peter Hunter’s job. I don’t know how this will affect your thinking, but it seems his wife has finally given up on him and she’s left. He’s taken a leave of absence – he’s been signed off with stress.’
Becky was silent. She really didn’t know what to say, and Tom being the man that he was, he didn’t press her for a comment.
She stared out of the window at the white clouds below. So Peter was free now, was he? Just a few months ago, that would have filled her with joy and hope for the future.
She tried to dig around in her own emotions. What do I feel? Do I want him back? But all she came up with was emptiness and she realised that finally, she felt nothing – neither satisfaction that he had got his comeuppance nor joy that he was free.
Becky leaned back against the headrest and turned slightly towards Tom with a grin.
‘You’re not getting rid of me that easily, Tom.’
‘Good decision,’ he muttered with a trace of a smile, turning his attention back to his notes.
62
Thursday
Tom had spent the night thinking about everything he knew and everything he suspected. He hadn’t seen Leo; he had just sat in his kitchen with a bottle of wine, a plate of pasta and a pen and paper. Nothing got written down, though.
He needed to see Philippa.
As he walked into her room, Philippa stood up with a beaming smile, reaching across the desk to shake his hand.
‘Well done, Tom. That was a particularly excellent piece of police work, and I’ll make a point of seeking out DI Robinson to tell her. But please pass on my congratulations to the team.’
‘Thanks, Philippa. But before we get over-excited, have you got a minute?’
‘Of course, take a seat. Why so glum, Tom? You should be ecstatic.’
Tom wasn’t quite sure where to start.
‘You know Robert Brookes is claiming he’s innocent of Jahander’s death, don’t you? He swears he never left the hotel that night, and that somebody else must have taken his car and driven it back to Manchester to frame him. And of course there isn’t a body as yet.’
Philippa shrugged. ‘Nor likely to be, if it’s at the bottom of a reservoir, as you suspect. And of course he’s going to proclaim his innocence. We wouldn’t have expected anything less, would we? Who else could have wanted Jahander dead?’
Tom shook his head. He had a feeling it wasn’t that simple.
‘Robert asked us to check if the spare keys to his Jag were in the drawer at home. They weren’t – but we’ve only got his word they were ever there.’
‘Tom, we have an open-and-shut case here. We know that Jahander called Robert Brookes in Newcastle. We know that they arranged to meet and Brookes came home. He was seen by not one, but two people. We found the blood in the house and in his car, which was back in Newcastle by the morning – a knife was missing, and it was subsequently replaced. By Robert. And Jahander is missing. Nobody has seen or heard of him since last Wednesday.’
‘I know, Philippa, but there’s something not quite right about the whole thing. Robert bought a replacement knife but we have no idea what happened to the original, and it’s odd that although he had the precise product code written down, it was the wrong product code. Yes, somebody did call Robert from Sophie Duncan’s phone. But they could have said anything. We have no evidence other than Sophie’s word that it was Danush setting up a meeting. But that’s only one of the things that seems off. I tried to write it all down, but it didn’t make any more sense than just picking random threads out of my head.’
‘Well, whatever’s bothering you, fire away with those random thoughts and I’ll jot them down. See if we can sort it all out that way.’
‘I think Olivia Brookes has played a very clever game,’ Tom said. ‘She managed to convince her husband that she was somewhere she wasn’t on at least three occasions that we know of. With Sophie Duncan’s help, of course.’
‘Who can blame her? From everything we’ve learned, it seems that Robert’s obsession was getting more and more out of hand. Olivia is a clever and resourceful woman, and thank goodness for that.’ Philippa nodded her head, as if with respect.
‘She is. But I’m fairly certain that Olivia must have been the one to tamper with the videos on Robert’s computer.’
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Philippa gave Tom a puzzled frown.
‘Why would she do that? Was it to fool Robert into thinking she’d been there all along?’
‘It could have been. But she wasn’t coming back – so what did it matter what Robert thought? I think we were supposed to work out that they were fake, but assume Robert had tampered with them. Which, of course, is exactly what we did.’
Philippa was tapping her pen on the desk.
‘I’m struggling to see quite why this matters, Tom.’
‘Okay, why did we search the house?’ Tom didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Because we thought that Robert had lied to us repeatedly. If he hadn’t done a runner, the next thing we were going to do was check his computer. We would have found the videos, analysed them and discovered that they were all faked, as was the schedule on the kitchen wall. Once we knew that, we would have been certain that Robert had been lying to us about Olivia’s whereabouts and when she’d last been in that house, and I would have had to call in the crime scene boys. I think this trail of evidence was all left for us so we would eventually bring in the forensic team, search the house and find the blood.
Tom wasn’t making any headway, and he could understand why not. He hadn’t been able to work it all out himself, but he was sure that he was pretty close.
‘And there are little things, like the security light suddenly being knocked out of position so that it shines in the neighbour’s house and wakes her up. Too many coincidences.’
Philippa was leafing through the papers on her desk.
‘Tell me about the folder you found in Robert Brookes’ possession.’
Tom sighed. This made it all so much worse.
‘We think this is what he was hiding behind the bookcase. It had a false back with a space that appeared to have been accessed recently. The folder’s a good fit, but we’ll never know for sure. Anyway, inside the folder there were hundreds of photographs of Olivia, and a key.’
‘And what do you surmise from that.’
[DCI Tom Douglas 03.0] Sleep Tight Page 29