The Guilty Wife

by Elle Croft

  ‘What was your husband doing there?’

  ‘He was looking for evidence. Against Vincent.’

  ‘What kind of evidence?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask Jason? He’s the one who found the personnel file. It shows that Calum wouldn’t promote Vincent when he asked, multiple times. That’s motive, right?’

  ‘As I say, we’ll look into it. But from what we understand, your husband helped Mark Dunbar to keep you there while our officers arrived to arrest you. That doesn’t sound like someone who believes your innocence.’

  I shot the detective a look that I hoped made her regret her barb. But it had hit its target. I wanted to understand Jason’s actions, to believe that I’d have done the same thing in his position. But that didn’t stop it from feeling like a betrayal, and I was still reeling from it.

  ‘Were you having an affair with Mr Bradley?’

  ‘No comment.’

  My voice sounded like my throat was being squeezed. My lungs were smaller, somehow, and my body demanded more oxygen.

  ‘Did you argue with Mr Bradley in the days leading up to his murder?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Did you kill Calum Bradley?’

  ‘NO!’

  I found the breath for that one. It was the one truth that remained steadfast.

  ‘Absolutely not. I didn’t kill Calum. I would never have hurt him.’

  The detective looked at me coolly, with mild interest, as though she was trying to decide if I was lying or just insane. I held her gaze, defiant. Let her think I was crazy. I only needed her to believe me on one point: I didn’t kill Calum.

  She looked down and shuffled some papers. Leaning over, she tapped the photo in front of me, the one taken in my own home the night I’d decided that Jason was the killer. Guilt wrung my insides, but I ignored the sensation. I had no space for anything more than self-preservation.

  ‘Can you tell me whose knife this is, Mrs Reston?’

  I opened my mouth to refuse to comment when there was a knock on the door. Constable Clayton’s chair scraped across the hard floor as she got up without looking away.

  She opened the door just a crack and murmured a conversation with someone on the other side.

  ‘Mrs Reston,’ she said as she returned to her seat, ‘that was one of my colleagues informing me that a hat matching the description of the one in that CCTV recording has been found in your home.’

  She paused. I could feel the borders of reality shifting around me. Everything I’d once believed – that innocence meant safety, that the good guys always prevailed – was evaporating, swirling into a fog that suffocated me.

  ‘We’ll be testing the hat, and the clothing we found in your home that we believe you were wearing on the night of Calum’s murder, for traces of blood.’

  I felt a rush of relief. There would be nothing to find on my clothes.

  Clayton slid something else across the table towards me. An open manila file. It was red, and I wondered if that meant something.

  ‘Bethany Reston, I need to inform you that you’re being charged with the murder of Calum Bradley.’

  The sound of seconds passing became deafening and I felt the blood draining from my head, my hands, my heart.

  ‘But how can I be charged for something I didn’t do?’ I whispered. ‘And why aren’t you listening to me? It was Vincent!’

  ‘The evidence would suggest otherwise, Mrs Reston. Here is your charge sheet. Please read it carefully and discuss it with your lawyer. Your case will be heard by the magistrate’s court tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s too soon,’ I said. ‘How am I supposed to prove it wasn’t me before then?’

  ‘I’m not sure you understand how serious this is, Mrs Reston. You have just been charged with murder. You don’t get to prove anything. You get to go to jail and wait for your trial.’

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Once the ringing of the door closing behind me had dissipated, I stood inside my cell, home for the foreseeable future, and forced myself to count to ten, slowly and deliberately.

  I’d been so confident, so certain that once I’d told the truth, once I’d given the police Vincent, I’d be on my way home, this whole nightmare over. I knew all along that the evidence against me looked bad. I’d just always assumed that somehow everything would work out fine. But my announcement of a new key suspect had been met with barely a flicker of interest. Would they even look into him?

  Panic threatened to replace logical thought. To keep it at bay I repeated the same assurance every few seconds: You’re just waiting. This will be over soon. I wasn’t sure if I believed it, but I couldn’t bear to consider any alternative. I took in my surroundings slowly, learning every detail. The walls were whitewashed and stark, apart from a few choice words graffitied in scratches at eye-level, and a small, ancient-looking television set attached to a bracket at head height.

  I stepped tentatively towards my bed, which was nothing more than a small, metal-framed cot covered by a thin mattress. There was a basic desk complete with a hard plastic chair, and a steel toilet with no seat or lid. It was clearly visible through the viewing window in the door. I didn’t even want to think about using it.

  After Clayton had charged me with murder, Shannon had explained what would happen when I appeared before the magistrate’s court the next morning, that it was really just for the sake of procedure. Murder cases almost always went to the Crown Court, especially if I pleaded not guilty. Which I obviously did.

  She also warned me that the judge would probably deny me bail. She was right about that, too. I was considered a flight risk.

  You’re just waiting. This will be over soon.

  I knew I wasn’t going to get any sleep, not with the yells and clanks coming from the other side of that green metal door. So I reached up and turned on my little television, hoping for a distraction. I should have known better.

  My face stared back at me, a photo swiped from my website, alongside the picture of me walking away from the spot where Calum had been murdered.

  Billionaire Butcher Arrest! screamed the headline in bold letters. I knew I should just change the channel, but I needed to see. This was everything I’d been so scared of, the exact scenario I’d feared for so long, and now it was happening in the most public way possible.

  ‘Investigators have confirmed that Bethany Reston, a thirty-four-year-old photographer said to be working for Bradley Enterprises on the soon-to-be-aired Calum Bradley documentary, has been charged with the murder of the famous businessman. Following her arrest last night, Mrs Reston appeared before the magistrate’s court this morning and will await her trial in custody. Unconfirmed reports have suggested that Mrs Reston and Mr Bradley were involved romantically, but Scotland Yard has declined to comment on the specifics of the case.’

  So this was it. All of my dirtiest secrets laid bare for the public to pick through, like a troop of monkeys combing for fleas.

  I suddenly wondered if it mattered.

  I’d been so terrified of being found out. Of being called an adulterer, of my husband discovering the truth about Calum and me, of my marriage disintegrating, of public shame. Now that it was actually happening, it seemed trivial in comparison to being charged with murder.

  Maybe if I hadn’t been so worried about my own image, if I’d just confessed to the affair at the start, told the police the truth, then I’d be home with Jason, begging for his forgiveness and avoiding trashy headlines. Not sitting in prison awaiting a trial.

  But then I remembered Kitty. Violated, terrified, ruined Kitty. My silence hadn’t just been about vanity, although that had certainly played its part. It had been fear, and that was far more powerful.

  I wondered what would be waiting for me when I eventually got out of here.

  The public would hate me. If they’d hated Kitty, simply for being a home wrecker, I could only imagine what they thought of me, the woman who’d slept with Calum and then supposedly murdered him.
It wouldn’t matter that it was really Vincent. I was the other woman. I was the Billionaire Butcher. Labels are sticky like that.

  Perhaps prison was the safest place for me to be. The irony of this fact didn’t escape me. No matter what happened now, I would have to let go of the life that had once been mine. Nothing would be the same, even if the charges were dropped and I was released, innocent by law, if not by reputation.

  I’d have to move, change my name, give up my business. Would Jason come? Or would he wash his hands of our wreck of a marriage? He’d said in Calum’s apartment that he still loved me. But I couldn’t imagine that lasting for ever, especially not if my face was going to be plastered across the news for months, as I suspected it would be. I needed the police to find the truth. I needed this to be over so I could move on, work out what my new life was going to look like, and hide away in peace.

  I sighed, turned off the television and focused on staying calm. I’d been in prison for just a few hours. I couldn’t lose hope yet. This was only the beginning.

  So instead I breathed in, counted to ten again, and repeated my new mantra.

  You’re just waiting. This will be over soon.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  After almost a month in prison, I was beginning to accept my new routine. It wasn’t normal. But it was familiar. And Vincent couldn’t reach me in here.

  The sense of familiarity in itself was terrifying. I couldn’t bear the thought that I was getting used to this.

  I’d just spent an hour outside, running laps around the yard with a few of the women who didn’t scare me. I tried to keep to myself, in part because making friends would feel like some kind of admission that this was a long-term situation. And there was also the fact that so many inmates looked like they wanted to hurt me, and were probably more than capable of doing so. But however tempting it was to ignore everyone, I needed some kind of human contact between my visits from Jason, Alex and Adler, and so I ran and made small talk each day. I’d even laughed once or twice, which had shocked and worried me.

  After showering, I made my way to the common room to rifle through yesterday’s newspapers. It was part of my new daily routine, as unmissable as breakfast or coffee. If something was being said about me, I had to know it, even though the headlines I’d read so far had all amounted to the same thing: I was guilty. The press had sifted through my life. Multiple times. They always got stuck on motive, though. There was no money to be made from the murder, which made their Billionaire Butcher label a little insipid, but they stuck with it anyway. And there was no proof of our affair, even though the rumours were rife. Whenever I felt overwhelmed by the speculation, I clung to Shannon’s words. We didn’t need to lie. We just needed to maintain reasonable doubt. And to prove that I didn’t do it.

  I knew that I should resist the urge to look at the news. And yet I needed to know. It made me feel more in control, seeing what I was facing out there. The more lies I heard the media say about me, the less they hurt. Which was good. Because I’d need the thickest skin I could possibly grow before my trial.

  But this time it wasn’t my own face staring back at me from page two.

  It was Vincent’s, his dark brows protruding like shelters over his eyes. Green. Like a snake’s.

  The photo was grainy, the pose forced. It looked like a passport picture, or perhaps the image that was displayed on his Bradley Enterprises security pass.

  Underneath him was another photo, smaller, and inset. It was me, but this particular one hadn’t been seen by the public before now. I was standing just inside the open sliding doors of Calum’s apartment, his arms outstretched towards me, my face a clear picture of ire.

  Where the hell did they get that?

  My initial thought was quickly replaced by the obvious truth. Vincent. Needing me to have an undeniable motive, the final nail in my coffin, he’d leaked the same image he’d used to keep me quiet. It wasn’t a smoking gun, but it gave credence to the theory that we were in a relationship. Colleagues don’t fight like that. But why was he in the paper?

  I read the headline.

  Bradley Murder Trial: The Evidence,

  The Witness, The Scandal

  I scanned the article, my sense of dread growing as I understood what was happening. The prosecution was using Vincent as a witness. Against me. I couldn’t even begin to guess what he was a witness to. There was nothing he could say that would make me look guilty without implicating himself, too. And why would he send the photo to the press and then leak his own name as a witness? I couldn’t understand the rules of whatever game it was that he was playing, but it unnerved me all the same.

  The newspaper offered few facts, and plenty of rumour. The supposed evidence their headline promised to reveal was simply the photos the nation had seen so many times before. The witness, whose name had apparently been leaked by a source close to the police, was Vincent. He’d refused to comment. And the scandal was the photograph of our fight, which they wrote about as if it showed me in the act of actually murdering Calum.

  I tore the page from the newspaper, folded it quickly and stuffed it inside my sleeve.

  Then I stood up, jaw set, and walked to the library.

  ‘Hey,’ said Trisha, one of the nicer inmates, when she spotted me. ‘How are you feeling after that run? I’m knackered.’

  ‘I’m fine. I need a favour.’

  ‘Nice to see you too, Bethany.’

  ‘I have fifty quid in my cash account. I’ll buy you whatever you want from the canteen on Wednesday.’

  ‘You must be desperate.’

  Not desperate. Livid.

  Hours later, I waited in the dark until everyone had gone to sleep. The guards had just done their round, which meant I had at least ten minutes to savour the moment I’d been anticipating all day.

  Lifting my mattress, I retrieved the hidden newspaper article and the contraband I’d borrowed from Trisha. I turned it over with my fingers, then flicked the metal wheel with my thumb. There was a spark, then a flame. Vincent’s face stared back at me from behind the small circle of yellow light, and my hatred intensified.

  Slowly, carefully, I brought the corner of the article down to meet the tiny fire I’d created, and with a soft crackle the paper turned orange, then black, and curled its way towards the face of the man who had ruined my life.

  The destruction edged closer and closer, and in the dim light of the prison cell, I allowed myself a smile. There wasn’t much enjoyment left in my life, but as I watched Vincent burning into embers, I couldn’t help but feel a flutter of satisfaction.

  And then the darkness closed in around me, and all that was left of that feeling was the smell of fire and a pile of ash by my feet.

  Chapter Fifty

  Nothing in life – not even eight months of anticipation – can prepare you for sitting through a trial, during which you’re being accused of murdering someone you loved.

  The wait had been excruciating. There were times when I allowed myself to feel optimistic, like when Jason and Alex would visit and refuse to leave without making me laugh. But then there were the weeks when it all felt hopeless, like the times when Shannon refused to reveal the details of her trial strategy, or when I didn’t have any visitors, or when the news headlines were so overwhelmingly negative that they made me wish I didn’t have contact with the outside world.

  But even after all that time of knowing it was coming, as I was led into the courtroom, I couldn’t believe that I was actually on trial for murder.

  I walked into the small, jarringly warm space and took in the wood panelling, the antique light fixtures and the windows that were flooding the place with light. It looked more like a theatre than a courtroom, complete with main characters and an audience.

  I glanced up to the public gallery and spotted Jason, looking pale and gaunt, but somehow still handsome, and nodded at him. I’d been told that I was not allowed to smile under any circumstances. It would make me look like I was enjoying mysel
f.

  I didn’t just have a lawyer for my trial – I had a whole team. There was a public relations guy, who had tried to get positive stories about me into the media for the past few months, and a handful of investigators who’d worked tirelessly to find evidence against Vincent. I was ushered to my seat next to Adler. I leaned over to see past her, and two other lawyers who were fighting on my side nodded back at me.

  The proceedings began dramatically. The prosecutor, Marling, was a baby-faced man; blond, with a surprisingly deep voice and an annoying twitch in his wrist, which he flicked every few seconds, causing a series of little clicks as joint cracked against joint. It bewildered me that someone so innocent-looking could be so brutal towards me, a complete stranger.

  His opening statement was so compelling that it almost made me believe that I had killed Calum.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,’ he said. ‘Over the course of this trial you will hear rumours, and you will hear truth. Your job will be to sift through these statements and decide which is which, but I’d like for you to focus, right now, on the facts. The fact is that this woman, Bethany Louise Reston, was having a secret affair with our victim, Calum Bradley.’

  He pointed at me as he said my name and all eyes in the courtroom turned to stare at the woman accused. I hated them all, but used every last scrap of the energy I had to keep an impassive expression plastered on my face.

  ‘This woman met with her lover in secret, led him to a quiet corner of London, brutally stabbed him and walked away calmly, stopping only to disable the CCTV camera that could identify her. These are the facts. And throughout this trial, I will show you evidence, and you will hear testimony from witnesses, that will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the brutal murder of an innocent man, Calum Bradley, was perpetrated by this woman.’

  Another finger point. A flick of the wrist. A click that made me grind my teeth.

  ‘At the end of this trial you will not be asked to make a difficult decision. You will be left with no doubt as to the guilt of Bethany Reston, who has proven herself to be a pathological liar, a master manipulator and capable of carrying out the unthinkable. She is, in short, a cold-blooded killer and you will be left with no uncertainty as to the truth of these statements.