‘What do you mean?’ asked Barrett.
‘Because she told me about her suicide plan before she told Stephen.’
The detectives exchanged loaded glances. This was not the sort of interview they had been led to expect. Stephen Brookland had told them that his wife would deny everything. They were not to trust a single thing she said, either, because apparently she was an expert liar, as murderers usually are.
‘When was this?’
‘About a fortnight after she moved in. She could speak well then but by the month after there were times when she was barely intelligible. She showed me a package that she kept in her bag. There was a sheet of instructions and a plastic bottle with liquid in it. She’d bought it from Mexico on the internet. I can’t remember what it was called but I know it was some sort of veterinary drug, it was obvious even from the Spanish wording. She wanted me to tell Stephen for her. I think she thought he’d be upset.’ Although she had wondered since if Alma hadn’t told him first because she thought he might not be upset. It hurt her that she knew he didn’t love her as much as she loved him.
‘She wanted to end her life whilst she still had some control. She was terrified of Stephen seeing her as a burden.’
The two police officers and David Charles shifted nervously in their seats at this revelation. The word ‘burden’ was a word that might infer this was a self-serving crime rather than a compassionate one.
‘Did you see her as a burden?’ asked Henderson.
‘No I did not,’ Bonnie returned adamantly. ‘I saw her as a frightened old woman in pain.’
‘So, what was Mr Brookland’s reaction when you told him about his mother’s plan to end her own life?’ Henderson unconsciously leaned forward, interested in the answer to this one. Stephen Brookland had said that he had no idea his mother had contemplated suicide until he found her dead and his wife confessed to being party to knowing.
‘He didn’t believe me at first, he said that I must have misunderstood, so I took the package out of Alma’s bag when she was asleep to show him. She was hoping that she wouldn’t have to use it and she would die in her sleep. She used to cry in the mornings when she woke up to another day.’ Bonnie realised she was straying from the question and apologised. ‘He was angry, I could tell, but he didn’t say much, only that it was absolutely ridiculous and he told me to put it back in her bag.’
If he was so incensed, why didn’t he destroy it himself, thought Henderson and scribbled that on his pad.
‘You said there was a sheet of instructions.’ Henderson herded her back to that point. ‘Typed or handwritten?’
‘Her writing, very clear capitals, a line to each point. It was written as if . . . for . . . written to someone’ – this was going to sound very wrong – ‘. . . to someone who would do it for her, if she couldn’t manage it herself.’
Barrett raised her eyebrows. Henderson didn’t react. ‘Can you remember what it said?’
‘At the top there was an instruction in very large letters that under no circumstances should she be resuscitated. Then a line denoting a new section which was about using the drug: that it had to be administered orally, on an empty stomach and that all evidence should be destroyed so that no one would know she had ended her own life.’
‘Why didn’t she want anyone to know that?’ asked Barrett.
‘She thought suicide was a weakness and a sin against God. She fell out with someone quite spectacularly at the church she attended after spouting her theories on that after their son had hanged himself. It caused a lot of trouble.’
‘Whose computer did she use to buy this drug on?’
‘Presumably her own,’ replied Bonnie. ‘It was an ancient Hewlett Packard, a hulking great thing. Stephen smashed it up when she died and took it to the dump because he didn’t want anyone accessing his mum’s personal stuff.’
‘And what happened on the day of her death?’ asked Henderson, his voice low, gentle, coaxing.
‘Can I go back to the previous day?’ asked Bonnie and Henderson nodded. ‘Just before she went to sleep, she found she couldn’t swallow. She went into a total panic and started coughing and choking and I rang 999 but Stephen grabbed the phone from me before it connected. He said that his mother had told us that she did not want to be resuscitated and we had to respect her wishes so we had to stand there, watching her struggle for breath and I didn’t know what to do so I held her and she came out of it. It was horrible, horrible.’
Bonnie folded forwards. The memory was intense and disturbing.
‘I really think my client might need a break,’ insisted David Charles.
‘No, I’m fine. Please.’ Bonnie blew her nose and took a deep breath. ‘It scared Alma so much, it was the signal she was waiting for. When I tried to settle her for the night, she was agitated because she was trying to speak and it was very hard for her to be understood. I had got used to the sounds she made though, so I was pretty sure she was trying to say “tomorrow”. I repeated it back to her to make sure and she nodded.’
‘And what did you think was going to happen tomorrow?’ asked Barrett. Her tone was flat, disbelieving.
‘That it was the day when she was going to kill herself,’ said Bonnie. ‘It couldn’t mean anything else. If you’d been there with her, seen how this disease was stripping her of her every dignity, you would have known that is what she was telling me. She was scared of dying, but after that episode, she was more scared of living.’
‘So we come to March the fifteenth,’ said Henderson. ‘What happened on that day?’
‘I woke up, had breakfast with my husband and then he went out to work . . .’
‘A normal day then?’ asked Barrett.
‘Well . . .’ Bonnie lifted and dropped her shoulders. ‘As normal as it can be with the possibility of what might happen sometime during it.’
‘Your husband went to work, you say. Did you tell him that his mother had made noises that she wanted to die on that day?’ Barrett’s tone was overtly derisive and David Charles’s annoyance showed in the way he tapped his pen on the table, warning her.
‘Yes of course I told him and asked him to take the day off. After Alma had nearly choked, I was scared to be alone with her because I wasn’t sure that I could watch her go through that again without ringing an ambulance. I would have been cursed if I did and cursed if I didn’t. I hadn’t slept very well, I couldn’t get the image of her panicking out of my head.’
‘But he didn’t take the day off?’ Barrett pushed, wanting an answer to this particular question.
‘No. He said that he couldn’t. He had an important meeting to go to.’
Barrett raised her eyebrows. She didn’t know it but she was thinking the same as the solicitor and Henderson: if what she was saying was true, Stephen Brookland was an insensitive arsehole at best.
‘I imagine you were very tired by this stage,’ Henderson said softly.
‘I was, yes,’ said Bonnie. And she had been. When she wasn’t working at Grimshaw’s, she was cleaning, feeding and keeping Alma company or cleaning the house and feeding Stephen. Even when she was asleep, her ear was permanently cocked for signs of distress from Alma’s room. She was mentally and physically exhausted by then.
‘And how was Mrs Brookland that day?’
‘Weak,’ said Bonnie. ‘She wouldn’t eat anything. She was scared of triggering off that swallowing thing again, I think. She let me put a sponge to her lips with iced water on it.’
‘Talk us through the day,’ said Henderson.
‘I changed her, gave her a wash with a flannel, she liked to be clean. She . . .’ Bonnie had been about to tell them what Alma had said to her, but they wouldn’t believe her. Besides, it was a private moment and for no one else’s ears but hers. ‘She . . . I mean I brushed her hair, patted a bit of her powder on her face. We watched a couple of antique and home restoration programmes because she liked those, then she had a nap and I hung out the washing – she needed clean sheet
s on her bed at least once a day. I checked on her every twenty minutes and when she was awake, just after two-thirty, I brought her some soup but she couldn’t eat it. So I read to her. Persuasion, by Jane Austen. The last quarter of the book. Then Stephen came home from work and had his tea.’
He hadn’t been very pleased that it had been some of the broth that Bonnie had made for Alma and not the customary meat and two veg, but she didn’t mention that trivial detail to the police.
‘Then he went up to see his mother just after seven and when he came downstairs, he announced he was going out.’
‘Did he say where he was going?’
‘No, just out and that he would be back at ten. He never went out in the evening. I was sure he was deliberately . . . getting out of the way.’
Brookland had said that he had been out watching a football match in a pub, though he couldn’t remember which pub or which match. He’d been upset about how poorly his mother was and wanted some time away from the house to recharge his batteries, he’d explained. Henderson had thought at the time that it was his wife who was the one that needed her batteries recharging. If what Bonnie Brookland was telling them was true, Stephen Brookland had left her to deal with it. Nice.
‘So after your husband had left the house, what happened then?’
‘I went back upstairs to sit with Alma. She was upset when I went in. I think it was because she knew that she would never see her son again.’ She gave a sudden gasping sob. ‘He should have been there with her. He should have been there for his mum. My dad died when I wasn’t there but Stephen had the choice to be with her right at the end.’ Barrett passed Bonnie the rest of the pack of tissues that she had in her pocket and Bonnie apologised for her outburst. She dabbed her eyes, as she had dabbed Alma’s when she found her crying. ‘I tried to wet her lips with the sponge, but she wouldn’t let me. She pointed to her bag and I knew what she wanted. I really didn’t want to get it, but she was ready. I could see that she’d had enough.’
Bonnie lifted her head and saw the two police officers waiting for her to continue. She knew they dealt in facts and not suppositions. If only she could have shown them the pictures in her head of Alma’s determined face, the strength shining in her usually dull eyes.
‘I passed her the bag. It took her a long time to open it because she couldn’t flick the clasp but she kept trying until eventually she did it. Then she dragged the packet out and the bottle and tried to screw off the top but she couldn’t do it. So she pushed it across the quilt to me.’
All eyes were on Bonnie now because this was the kernel of the story.
‘. . . and I opened it for her. I took off the lid and gave it back to her.’
Which is why they’d find Bonnie’s fingerprints on the bottle that Stephen Brookland had produced. He said that something about his wife’s account of what happened hadn’t rung true and so he’d had a feeling that he should keep it safely stored away.
‘There wasn’t much liquid in the bottle but she couldn’t lift it to her mouth and was struggling. It was awful to watch. Then she looked up and said, “Bonnie”. It was the first time she’d ever called me Bonnie and the word came out clear as a bell. She was asking me for help, I have no doubts on that.’
‘And did you help?’ asked Henderson.
‘Yes,’ said Bonnie. ‘I lifted it to the height of her mouth but I was very careful to leave a gap; it was she who leaned forward and put her lip against it and she nudged at it like this—’ Bonnie demonstrated, butting her mouth against a hand curled around an imaginary bottle. ‘She swallowed all the liquid, then she sank back against the pillow and I sat on the bed next to her with my arm around her. She drifted off to sleep and didn’t wake up. I don’t know exactly when she died. I was still there when Stephen came in but she had gone.’
‘What happened then? As precisely as you can, please.’
‘He walked into the bedroom and I told him that she had slipped away, very peacefully, and he said that she had a good death and went the way she wanted to go.’ She thought he might have kissed his mum then, let down his emotional fence, but he hadn’t. ‘Then he asked me to tell him what had happened, so I told him from her pointing to her purse onwards. He said –’ her voice faltered ‘– I must have tilted the bottle because she would never have been able to drink it otherwise.’
Henderson shifted in his chair. This was a game-changer. This tipped the case from assisted suicide to murder.
‘You can’t remember if you tilted the bottle?’ he asked her.
‘I was sure I didn’t. When it was happening I was so careful to let her take the lead, but when Stephen said my account of things wasn’t likely, doubts crept in . . .’ She passed her hand wearily across her eyes.
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Barrett, louder than she’d intended, which caused David Charles to tap his pen against his notepad with overt annoyance.
‘And what happened then?’ prompted Henderson.
‘I panicked that he was right and I was wrong. I wanted to ring the police and tell them that I’d helped her commit suicide but Stephen said that I wasn’t to do that because no one must know. He said that it was unthinkable that I should even consider it when Alma had gone to so much trouble to do what she had done secretly and that the details didn’t matter really because her aim had been achieved in the end. I told him that the details did matter but he wouldn’t discuss it any further, he just ordered me to go and sort myself out whilst he rang for the doctor.’
‘What do you mean “sort yourself out”?’ asked Barrett, wrinkling up her nose.
‘Well, I took it to mean wash my face, brush my hair. I looked a bit of a wreck. Just before I left the room, he asked me where the bottle was. It was on the bedside table.’
‘What happened to it then?’
‘He said he’d move it. And he obviously did because it wasn’t there when I went back in there later.’
Henderson turned to a new page in his pad. ‘I understand that you and Mr Brookland have recently become estranged.’ And lucky for you, he thought to himself.
‘I’ve started divorce proceedings, yes,’ said Bonnie. ‘I was going to leave him before but Stephen said that he would report me to the police if I did, so I stayed. I’m glad it’s happened. It’s been hanging over my head for far too many years.’
‘Sorry, you said before. When was this?’ asked Henderson, thinking that this was noteworthy.
‘Four years ago. I told him I was leaving, I hadn’t a clue where I’d have gone but I couldn’t stand living with him any longer and I had to get out. He told me that I owed him for his silence.’
It was certainly starting to look to Henderson as if Brookland knew more about his mother’s death than he was saying, but he’d bring that up with him at their next meeting.
‘So, you left your husband recently, can you remember the date?’
‘May the tenth.’
Barrett checked her notes. ‘And so let’s go to the conversation you had on that day with your husband about your mother-in-law. How exactly did that start?’
Bonnie looked at her blankly. ‘What conversation?’
Barrett licked her lips. ‘The conversation in which you admitted to Stephen Brookland that you had forced the liquid in the bottle down his mother’s neck because you were fed up of looking after her. You’ve already said how much hard work she was.’
Barrett’s words flapped in the air as if they were bunting. Bonnie was momentarily stunned into silence.
‘I don’t understand. Forced? I never . . . Why would I . . .?’ she said eventually, her eyes travelling from the detectives to the solicitor and back again. ‘I did help her do what she wanted to do and Stephen knew that all along. But Alma was never mentioned on the day I left. Honestly. I tried to get out of the house without him seeing me because I knew he’d try and stop me going. But he locked me in my bedroom. My boss came round when I didn’t turn up for work and he heard me shouting for help.’
; Well, Brookland hadn’t mentioned that, thought Henderson. If it was true, of course.
‘And your boss is?’
Bonnie closed her eyes against the thought that she might have just dragged Lew into this mess. She gave a heartfelt sigh and answered, ‘Lewis Harley. The Pot of Gold antiques centre in Spring Hill Square. If you don’t have to contact him, please don’t. I don’t want to lose my job.’
Henderson recognised the name. Brookland had called him ‘her fancy man’. He made Bonnie no promises though. He wouldn’t go and see Lewis Harley if it wasn’t relevant to the enquiry, but he would if they uncovered something that might make a visit essential.
‘You say you left your husband on Friday May the tenth. Are you definite about that?’
‘Oh yes. I couldn’t forget it.’
Henderson tapped his fingernail on the desk as he weighed something up in his head. So there were over three weeks between the date when Stephen Brookland said his wife revealed she had murdered his mother and the date when he walked into the police station to report it.
‘And was that the last time you had contact with your husband?’
‘No. That was last Tuesday – the twenty-eighth. He’d sent me a letter a couple of weeks before when he realised that I’d filed for divorce. He wanted me to change my mind by the end of the month or he said he was going to the police about me. I didn’t respond so he came into the shop on Tuesday and started shouting at me but then customers came in so he went.’
Brookland was emotionally blackmailing his wife then, thought Henderson. It said something that she would rather be arrested for a possible murder than return to him.
‘Do you still have the letter?’ asked Barrett.
‘Yes.’
‘Can you let me have that, please?’ asked David Charles eagerly.
‘Yes of course,’ replied Bonnie.
David Charles insisted then that Bonnie have a break. They were all ready for one.
Henderson couldn’t wait to see Stephen Brookland again, in the light of this interview, and Katherine Ellison, the friend. Historic cases were always a nightmare though, too many false memories and missing details. He was looking forward to going home already, and it wasn’t even anywhere near lunchtime yet.
The Queen of Wishful Thinking Page 27