‘Late husband,’ Sue said.
It was a simple statement of fact. If there was any malice there, it was well disguised and it struck Gardner more as a reminder to herself than anything else. An explanation as to why she was sitting where she was and not at home watching daytime TV or marking homework assignments.
‘So … we’re trying to piece together what happened in Sarasota when you were there and I was kind of hoping you might be able to fill in some of the gaps.’
‘I’ll try.’
‘Well, we think he took Amber-Marie during the hour or so you were at the Westfield Mall and kept her in the trunk of the car for the rest of the day.’
‘But that would mean the body was there when he came to pick me up.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Wouldn’t there have been a … smell?’
‘Not straight away, no.’
‘What if I’d seen it?’
‘I’m betting he put your shopping bags in the trunk.’
Sue thought about it. ‘I suppose he must have. I mean otherwise …’
‘I’m not sure he thought it through real carefully, you know? Sometimes these are spur-of-the-moment things.’
Sue looked doubtful. ‘I don’t know. I’ve been thinking back and trying to remember the way he looked at that girl … if it was any different. All the lies he’d been telling me about his work, the covering up. He wasn’t particularly … impulsive.’
Gardner nodded, like he was considering it. ‘I’m not trying to be funny, but you know, bearing everything in mind, maybe you didn’t know him as well as you thought you did.’
‘We were together twenty-five years,’ she said, simply.
‘Well, whether putting her in the trunk was part of the plan or not, he got away with it and then it was just a question of getting rid of the body.’
‘It had to be during the night,’ she said. ‘We put our suitcases in the car the next morning.’
‘We can’t be sure of the time, but we think he drove down to the fishing dock at Turtle Beach, took one of the kayaks that’s moored up there.’
Sue opened her mouth and closed it again, looked down at the table.
‘What?’
‘We went kayaking there last year.’ She managed a half-smile. ‘I saw a manatee.’
‘Right,’ Gardner said, pleased. ‘So he knew the place … knew where to find a kayak. Maybe he put the body in the kayak or laid her across it or something, we’ll probably never know. It’s no more than a fifteen-minute paddle from there to where we found her in the mangroves. Then he wedged her in under the roots there, paddled back and left the kayak where he’d found it. Whole thing could have taken him less than an hour. Maybe he had a change of clothes—’
Sue had been shaking her head and rubbing her hands together for the last few seconds before she cut him off. ‘How though? How on earth was he gone for an hour in the middle of the night? Why didn’t I wake up when he left? Or when he came back?’
Gardner raised his arms. It was just another thing he would probably never know. ‘Are you a heavy sleeper?’
‘Well, I’m not a light sleeper.’
‘Had you been drinking?’
‘A little,’ she said. ‘It was the last night, so …’
‘Fact is, he got away with it,’ Gardner said. ‘Same as the trunk thing. And you know what, there’s no point beating yourself up about it, because even if you had woken up, he could just have said he was going for a walk or he’d been for a walk. He couldn’t sleep or whatever.’
Sue looked at him. ‘I don’t think that’s going to be particularly easy.’
‘What?’
‘Not … “beating myself up”.’
‘Yeah, it’s easy to say, right?’
‘He told the police he was with me at the shopping mall and I went along with it. That first day when she went missing.’ She was still rubbing at her hands, one laid flat on the table and the other pressing down as though trying to wear it away. ‘If I hadn’t, Samantha Gold might still be alive, that’s right, isn’t it?’
Gardner was aware of Barstow looking at him. ‘There’s no way of knowing that.’
‘I lied for him.’
‘I know,’ Gardner said. ‘I wanted to ask about that …’
‘He said it was because of the rape. He said he couldn’t tell them he was on his own driving around, because if they thought he was any sort of a suspect they’d dig around and find out about what had happened with that woman six years ago and then … you know.’
‘He’d be even more of a suspect.’
‘He said I had to back him up.’
‘Did he threaten you?’
She shook her head, sadly. ‘I wish I could tell you that he did, but it wasn’t really like that. Not like … the other night. It was more like he was begging me.’ She looked at him again, licked dry lips. ‘That’s something else I’ve been thinking about. One of many things. The rape …’
Gardner glanced at Barstow. ‘I spoke with Jenny Quinlan, who I believe you know?’ He waited. A small nod. ‘She interviewed Annette Bailey and she’s fairly convinced that your husband did rape her.’
She did not look surprised. A little extra tonnage to a weight that was already unbearable. ‘Right. Of course he did.’
‘Something … interesting, though.’ Gardner hesitated, embarrassed once again by his choice of word. Clumsy, considering what he had to tell her, though he could not imagine it would make this woman feel any worse than she already did. ‘Miss Bailey told her that Ed asked her to dress up as a schoolgirl.’
Sue Dunning looked genuinely shocked for the first time, shaken out of a dark torpor. She lowered her head. She said, ‘Oh God.’
‘Sorry,’ Gardner said. He asked himself what the hell he was apologising for. Why this in particular?
Sorry that your late husband, the rapist and double child-killer, had a bit of a thing for gymslips and training bras.
‘It’s all about children, isn’t it?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘What he did,’ Sue said. ‘It’s all about our child. About Emma.’
Gardner felt a little uncomfortable. ‘I’m not a shrink, Mrs Dunning.’
‘I should have known. He was always so weird about Emma, refusing to discuss it, like he was trying to pretend we’d never had a daughter. Now, of course, I’m asking myself if Ed ever … when Emma was alive, you know?’ She shook her head, firm with herself. ‘No, not that. Whatever else has happened, I can’t go there …’
Nobody spoke for a while, until eventually Barstow said, ‘We should probably wrap it up, unless there’s anything else?’
Gardner said he was about done, but when he looked back at Sue she was staring at him, as if she’d suddenly seen something in his face. ‘Do you think I knew?’ When Gardner did not respond immediately she carried on, producing a smile that looked almost painful. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve already had a few comments from women in prison. It’s obvious what they think from what they’ve said they plan to do to me when they get a chance. I know that’s what most people will think. It’s what I’d probably think. The wife always knows.’
‘I think you’re in hell,’ Gardner said, quietly. ‘And it’s not your fault.’
For the first time, Sue Dunning looked as though she might weep. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
Gardner started to gather his papers.
‘Do you talk to her mother? Amber-Marie’s, I mean.’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Please say I’m sorry, if you remember. I’d really like her to know that.’
Gardner assured her that he would pass the message on.
Twenty minutes later, Gardner and Barstow stood at the rear entrance to the station, watching the blue metal gates slide back and the van carrying Sue Dunning back to prison disappearing through them.
‘So how do you think it’s going to go?’ Gardner asked.
Barstow sniffed, reaching into his jacket for
cigarettes. ‘Noises the CPS are making … the provocation, the self-defence angle, I think they might decide to go for manslaughter as best chance of a conviction.’
Gardner was still having a little difficulty with the Scottish accent. He had lost the odd word, but got the gist of it. ‘That’s good news,’ he said.
The DI nodded as he lit his cigarette. ‘Bloody right it is, pal, and between you and me I don’t think there’s too many round here are going to be trying awfully hard, if you know what I mean.’
Gardner looked at him.
‘Like you said in there, she’s in hell. Can’t see what good prison’s going to do on top of that, can you? Ten years dodging bull-dykes with home-made blades.’
‘I guess not,’ Gardner said.
‘Especially not when she’s done the world a favour.’
SIXTY-TWO
Patti Lee Wilson topped up her glass, sat down and, for the third time in the last thirty minutes, picked up the phone. This time, after emptying half the glass in one, she dialled. She waited for the connection to be made; a few more seconds during which she had to fight the urge to hang up.
The woman who answered sounded sleepy, a little worried.
‘Is this Sonia Gold?’
‘Who’s this?’
Patti heard a man’s voice, muffled. ‘Who the hell’s that?’
‘I’m Amber-Marie’s mother,’ Patti said. ‘Amber-Marie Wilson?’
There was a pause, then the woman said, ‘I know who you are.’
‘God, did I wake you? I wanted to call earlier, but I was a little nervous, you know?’
‘It’s fine,’ the woman said. ‘We’re in bed a bit earlier than normal, that’s all. The trial starts tomorrow, so …’
‘Yeah, that’s why I called. To wish you luck, kind of thing. Does that sound strange?’
‘Not really. Well, perhaps a bit.’
‘Maybe I should be wishing her luck,’ Patti said. ‘You want her to get off, right?’
Another pause. ‘I don’t know what I want.’
Patti swung her feet up on to the couch. ‘I know, it’s messed up.’
‘I mean, yes … I think so. There’s still a little part of me though that wonders if she … you understand.’
‘No way,’ Patti said. ‘I talked with the detective who questioned her over there. He’s a pretty good friend of mine, actually. He looked into her eyes, you know?’
‘There’s a part of me that hates her, if that makes sense.’
‘Sure.’
‘I want it to be him.’ The woman’s voice was still quiet, but the passion was clear enough. ‘I wanted to see his face when he got put away. When he got to really understand what he’d done … what he’d taken from us. From you, too.’
‘I near enough jumped for joy when I got the call saying the fucker was dead, pardon my language.’
The woman laughed a little. She told Patti that she’d said a lot worse.
Patti said, ‘If we’d caught up with him over here, he’d be getting the needle and I’d be sitting right there in the front row, laughing my ass off.’
‘Would you?’ the woman asked. ‘Honestly?’
It took Patti a while, the rest of the glass, before she said, ‘No, I guess not.’
‘It won’t bring our girls back, will it?’
Patti heard the man’s voice again, could not make out what was being said. ‘Listen, I should probably let you get some sleep.’
‘It was kind of you to ring.’
‘I wasn’t sure if I should.’
‘Did you not think about coming over yourself?’
‘Money’s kind of a problem right now,’ Patti said. ‘Maybe I should’ve saved up though. Be worth it just to shake her hand.’
‘Well, anyway …’
‘Listen … I guess I really called just to say hang in there, OK? I know it’s been a while already since your little girl passed, but I’ve got a bit of a head start on you and I wanted you to know that it gets easier. Not easy, nothing like that, but it’s more like an ache, you know, instead of just something … raw. It’ll get easier, honey. I promise.’
She heard the woman suck in a breath.
‘God, I hope so …’
‘And you know what else? That bastard didn’t take her from you, not really. Not all of her, he didn’t. Not the very best part.’
Then Patti sat, cradling an empty glass and listening to a woman three thousand miles away, whom she had never met, starting to cry.
SIXTY-THREE
‘So, can you tell the court what happened when the argument moved from the living room into the kitchen?’
Sue stood three-quarters on to the jury in the way she had been told would be most effective. For the last six months she had done everything she had been instructed or advised to do. By prison officers, solicitors and by her defence counsel, who now stood looking up at her. What to wear and how to present herself. She had chosen a dark skirt with a simple white blouse and, even though she’d put on weight in prison, she thought she looked as respectable as could be expected, given the circumstances.
‘Mrs Dunning?’
She looked at the barrister’s face; jowly with a drinker’s nose, but creased into a suitably compassionate expression. She knew what was coming and how painful it would be, but understood that it was necessary if she was to avoid spending years in prison. Certain facts had come to light since her arrest that it would be stupid to deny.
She knew what she would need to confess.
‘Ed was … storming around,’ she said. ‘He’d thrown the duvet off the sofa-bed and a few things had got knocked over, candles and things. I was telling him to be calm and to stop shouting, because at that stage I was only concerned about waking the others up. I was … embarrassed more than anything.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘Then he hit me.’
‘Had your husband ever struck you before?’
‘No, never. If he had then I don’t think I would have been so shocked. He had this look on his face though that I’d never seen before. It was as if he was suddenly stone-cold sober and while I just stood there holding my face he started telling me … what he’d done.’
‘What did he say to you, Mrs Dunning?’
She took a deep breath, but it was not quite enough, so she took another. She leaned forward and grabbed hold of the rail that ran around the witness box. ‘He said that for all these years he’d stood by me. He’d supported me no matter how stupid I’d been, no matter what I’d said and what I’d done because he loved me so much … and now it was my turn to do the same for him.’
‘To stand by him?’
Sue nodded. ‘I asked him what he meant.’
‘And this was when he told you what had happened in Florida.’
‘It was so strange, because as soon as he started to tell me it was like I … wasn’t surprised. I mean, I didn’t shout out or fall on the floor or anything. I just stood there and listened to this … what he’d done to that girl and how he did the same thing all over again when we came home. I was just so cold, that’s what I remember most. I was suddenly shivering.’
‘So, what happened after he told you about these murders?’
‘I was just standing there, like I said … frozen, almost literally … and he said, “Aren’t you going to ask me why? Don’t you want to know why?” He looked … desperate and his face was getting redder and redder and when I said no, I didn’t want to know why because there couldn’t be any reason that would explain something like that … he got angry again and started coming towards me.’
‘And how did this make you feel?’
‘I was frightened,’ she said. ‘That was when I was suddenly very scared and I bolted out of the door and ran into the kitchen.’ She lowered her head for a few seconds. ‘I should probably just have gone upstairs and knocked on one of the doors. I should have woken up Angie or Dave or someone and told them what was happening, but I didn’t think. I p
anicked.’
‘Did your husband follow you?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, he was right behind me. He was ranting about how I never supported him and how it wasn’t fair. He kept saying that he needed me and that if I wasn’t going to stand by him there wasn’t any point to it.’
‘What did you think he meant by that?’
‘I don’t know,’ Sue said. ‘Thinking back now, I wonder if he meant that he was going to kill himself, but right then I was just thinking … just …’
‘What were you thinking, Mrs Dunning?’
She blinked, breathed heavily. ‘I was thinking that he was going to kill me. He kept coming towards me and I didn’t have anywhere to go and I couldn’t take my eyes off his hands. I couldn’t stop thinking that he’d strangled those girls with them and the edge of the worktop was digging into my back … I just kept looking at his hands.’
‘Was your state of mind affected by the threats your husband had made earlier in the evening? The threats to which other witnesses have already referred?’
Sue said that it was and the QC asked her to repeat them so that the jury could hear.
‘So, what did you do then?’
‘I just put my hand out without thinking and there were all these dirty plates and knives and forks. The dishwasher was already on, you see, but there was lots of stuff that wouldn’t fit in … I knocked a lot of things on to the floor … scrabbling around. I was still looking at his hands and he was shouting and I just put my hand around this knife. This knife …’
‘Do you need to take a minute, Mrs Dunning?’
She shook her head, swallowed. ‘He put his arms out in front of him and he lunged and I sort of … pushed forward.’
‘With the knife?’
She nodded. ‘I remember screaming when I did it. I thought his face … the look on his face was just because I’d let out this God-awful scream, you know? I wasn’t even sure what had happened until he stepped back and he was looking down and his mouth just sort of fell open.’
‘Take your time. There’s no rush …’
‘Then I saw the blood on the knife, and he sat down … dropped down and he was up against the cupboard.’
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