Watch Over Me: A psychological thriller with a jaw-dropping twist

by Jane Renshaw

  So please don’t send me any more letters or cards. But I know Caroline loves your drawings – maybe you can make a card for her saying thank you for all she’s doing for you. She’s your real nana and she loves you so much, and I know you love her too.

  Goodbye, darling.

  Mum

  And here she’s running up the stair, and I’ve my door open giving it, ‘Bekki darlin’!’ and she’s in my arms, wee wet face pushed in my chebs.

  ‘It’s okay Bekki my wee love, my wee darlin’. It’s okay.’

  35

  Flora knew it was good news as soon as Charles came into the little room set aside for visits from lawyers. He probably thought his professional demeanour was intact, but his eyes were sparkling. Brian, the lugubrious PI, slunk in behind him as if he were attending someone’s funeral, but Flora suspected he’d look the same if he’d just won the lottery. He was carrying a laptop under his arm.

  ‘We’ve been granted leave to appeal!’ Charles blurted out as soon as he’d sat down. ‘They really couldn’t not grant it, given the strength of the new evidence – but until you get the word, you can never be quite sure.’

  Flora released a huge breath. ‘Thank God. Or rather, thanks to you and Brian.’

  ‘Ah, but that’s not all.’ He was practically rubbing his hands together. ‘Flora, the even better news is –’

  ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Before you tell me…’ Her leg was jigging under the table like Danielle’s. She wanted to reach across and hug them both. Beckie. Soon she would be back with Beckie. ‘Before you tell me whatever it is, I want to show you this.’

  She pushed the letter across the table.

  ‘I know it’s got nothing to do with my conviction, I know it’s not going to influence the appeal…’

  Brian, sighing in a ‘What now?’ kind of way, started to read the letter over Charles’s shoulder.

  Dear Rachel

  I was going to put ‘Flora’ because that’s who you are now, but then I thought no, you haven’t chosen to be Flora Parry, you had to stop being Rachel Clark because people hated her. And that’s my fault.

  I’m so sorry.

  Really inadequate, I know.

  I’m going to tell the police what really happened. But first I have to do something even harder, and that’s tell you. Because I don’t think you know. I think you went into shock and your brain shut down or something. Otherwise, you’d have told them the truth. Like I should have.

  I know it’s nearly 40 years too late. I know I could have put things right at any point in those 40 years and I chose not to. Why now? you’re probably thinking.

  It was seeing you on TV getting into that van outside court. The look on your face.

  I don’t believe you killed your husband. But how were you going to convince the police you were innocent when they knew you were Rachel Clark?

  So I’m going to tell the police that Rachel was innocent then, and maybe there’s a chance they’ll see you’re innocent now.

  When Tricia gave you that bow and arrow and told you to shoot me, I knew you wouldn’t do it. You were nasty to me, yes, and I hated you for it, but you weren’t evil like Tricia. You were just acting out because your mum made your life a misery. You probably don’t see it that way, even now, do you? You always made excuses for her, like she wouldn’t let you come out to play and made you slave away doing housework because it was good practice for when you had your own home.

  Anyway. When Tricia gave you that bow and arrow, I knew you weren’t going to shoot anyone. You just sort of stood there frozen, while Tricia yelled at you to ‘Do it!’ and threatened all kinds of things if you didn’t. Tricia was ‘in your face’ as my kids would say, and you backed up, holding the bow and arrow in front of you to stop her coming any closer, as a kind of barrier, but then you stumbled on a tussock of grass and let go the arrow and it went into Tricia’s eye.

  It was an accident.

  I told the police you’d fired the arrow at her while the two of you were arguing, but that was a lie. I told them that because I hated you. I hated you for being horrible to me when we were supposed to be friends. But you didn’t fire the arrow. You tripped and let it go.

  And once I’d told the lie, it took on a life of its own and I didn’t have the courage to take it back. Until now.

  I hope it’s not too late to put right some of the damage I’ve done. I’ll go to the police a week after I’ve posted this.

  So sorry

  Gail

  Charles looked up at Flora, his grin widening. ‘But this is dynamite! You say it won’t influence the appeal, and in theory it shouldn’t – but I learned a long time ago that there’s no such thing as impartiality. We need this all over the press so whoever hears the appeal can’t help but be aware of it. This is great.’ And he half reached across the table towards her hand. ‘Write back to Gail, tell her how much this means to you – urge her to go to the press. And if she doesn’t, we will.’

  Flora nodded. ‘I still can’t believe it.’

  ‘You never thought of contacting Gail yourself?’

  ‘No. I suppose I just accepted her version of what happened because, as she says, I must have blanked it out… Well, I remember tying Gail to the tree, and Tricia yelling at me to shoot her, and I remember the arrow… I remember it going into her eye…’ She swallowed. ‘But nothing in between. Although –’ She shrugged. ‘I suppose I always felt it was wrong, that I wasn’t the person everyone said I was, this – this psychotic girl called Rachel Clark. This monster. I couldn’t think of myself like that.’

  ‘Of course you couldn’t.’

  ‘By rights,’ said Brian, ‘Gail Boyle should be charged with perverting the course of justice.’

  ‘Oh – I wouldn’t want her to get into trouble.’ Actually Flora didn’t care if they locked Gail up and threw away the key – as Gail herself had said, she’d had forty years to put this right and hadn’t – but it was almost as if Flora had been handed back her virtue. As if she had to live up to everyone’s new idea of her.

  ‘She was a traumatised child,’ said Charles. ‘They won’t charge her with anything.’ He grinned at her. ‘So, don’t you want to hear the best part?’ He was like a favourite uncle about to present the birthday girl with the best gift of all.

  She nodded.

  ‘In the light of the evidence Brian’s unearthed, the police are reopening the investigation.’

  Flora could only stare at Brian.

  Such an unlikely saviour.

  ‘What evidence?’

  Brian sighed, and opened the laptop on the table. ‘Finally got the CCTV footage off Eden Security. The outfit who installed your system. And I’ve been through the lot, minute by minute, for the day of the murder.’

  Brian turned the laptop round so Flora could see the screen. ‘This is footage from one of the cameras covering the east side of the house. 9:42 a.m. on the morning of that day.’

  The shock of seeing the house, their house, their home, on the screen was physical. The footage was of a section of the driveway and the side of the house facing the garage, with the window of what had been the old pantry and was now a storeroom to the left, and the downstairs loo, and then the dining room which they never used. On the dining room windowsill she could see the dusty dried flower arrangement she and Beckie had made years ago, and through the frosted glass of the loo window, the vague shape of the ‘Victorian’ pendant light fitting.

  At 9:42 Alec was probably inside, in his study, little knowing…

  ‘Watch the dining room window… Now!’

  The dried-flower arrangement suddenly jumped to the left.

  Brian reached over to the keyboard and rewound the footage. ‘Now watch the time at the top left… See? Jumps from 9:52 to 10:22. Same with the camera next to it. This system, which lets you switch the cameras on and off remotely, doesn’t show a blank screen when the camera is off – the footage is continuous.’

  ‘Oh my God. They switched off t
he cameras and got in at the dining room window?’

  Charles nodded. ‘And in doing so, accidentally moved the flower arrangement.’

  Brian sighed. ‘According to Eden Security, someone logged into the system at 9:52 a.m. and switched these two cameras off. Talk about negligence. Some PC Plod’s had the footage from eight cameras to go through, right, and he’s looking for an intruder, he’s not looking at the time, he’s fast-forwarding and he goes for a bite of Mars Bar and he’s missed it. He’s missed the outages from 9:52 to 10:22 on these two cameras.’

  ‘But how could the Johnsons have switched the cameras off?’

  ‘That is the problem. Your system’s state of the art, right? Sure it’s communicating over the net, but the data’s encrypted like something out the bloody Pentagon.’

  Charles shrugged. ‘They must have hacked into it somehow. The lad Connor works at PC World. He’ll be IT savvy.’

  Brian looked mournful. ‘A wee laddie from PC World up against programmers this good?’

  ‘How else could they have done it?’

  ‘Haven’t got a bloody clue.’

  ‘But however they switched off the cameras,’ Flora said, ‘we kept all the windows locked. And the police checked them all, and they were all still locked. Apart from the one I broke, obviously.’

  Brian nodded. ‘I’m thinking one of them must have got into the house at some point previously to unlock the dining room window. They could have remotely switched off the camera covering one of the doors, snuck in, unlocked the window, snuck back out again, and switched the camera back on. I’ve been checking through the footage for another outage and haven’t found anything as yet, but I’ll keep looking.’

  ‘But how would they have got in? I was always careful to keep the front door locked, and the patio doors at the back.’

  ‘What if you were in the garden? Very few people lock the door behind them if they’re in the garden.’

  ‘Oh. No, of course. If I was in the garden, I’d leave the patio doors unlocked.’ She frowned. ‘Okay, if they managed to sneak into the house at some point while I was in the garden, that would explain how they unlocked the window, but on the day that… after they’d… after they’d killed Neil, and got back out through the window… How did they lock it after them?’

  ‘No idea.’ Brian snapped shut the laptop. ‘It’s sometimes possible with the locks on these old windows to manipulate the mechanism through the gap between the sashes… Magician’s trick kind of thing.’

  ‘But however they did it, the important thing is that there’s evidence of tampering with the cameras to create an opportunity of entry,’ said Charles. ‘And there’s more. Jasmine Young has made a statement to the police to the effect that she saw a man in a boiler suit going in at your gate at approximately ten to ten that morning. Which dovetails nicely with the camera evidence.’

  Flora blinked. ‘Jasmine?’

  ‘Yes.’ Brian sighed. ‘I had a word with the neighbours, badgered them a bit maybe, went back to the Youngs a few times because I thought there was something there, you know?’ He rolled his eyes as if to say The people I have to deal with. ‘Last time, the daughter’s saying “Mum, we should –” but the mum, Ailish, shuts her down. So I stake the place out and a couple of days later, Jasmine’s coming out the door with her earbuds in, oblivious, and I follow her into town. Make like it’s a coincidence when I bump into her in French Connection, buying a present for the wife. And I tell her straight: “Jasmine, if you know something that could get an innocent woman out of prison and back with her child, you have to go to the police.”’

  ‘Oh my God. So…’

  ‘Seems that when the shit hit the fan and it came out Neil had been murdered et cetera, Jasmine told her mum she’d seen this guy at your gate on the morning of the murder, and the mother tells her to keep quiet and not get involved. Said it was probably your lover, your accomplice. But I put the girl straight. And she’s done the right thing at last, been and made a statement and even picked Ryan Johnson out of a photo line-up, although he was wearing a disguise when she saw him – long curly blond wig in a ponytail and sideburns. Teenage girls might be the most bloody annoying sector of the population, but at least they can be counted on to notice every detail about a good-looking guy. In particular, in this case, thick black eyelashes and a tiny scar at the side of his right eye. She got a good close look – was walking past him on the pavement when he was opening your gate. Oh yes, she’s going to be our star witness, no doubt about it.’

  ‘What with the CCTV evidence and Jasmine’s statement, the procurator fiscal considers there are grounds for a warrant to search the Johnsons’ house again,’ said Charles. ‘Hopefully they might find physical evidence connecting them to the crime scene. Something stolen from your house, for example.’ He was practically bouncing on his chair. ‘But even without anything like that… Flora, you’re getting out of here. The evidence we’ve already got is strong, and now the police are seriously focused on the Johnsons, they’re likely to uncover more… You’re getting out of here.’

  I’m raging so I am. ‘Disguise, is it? Fucking disguise?’

  Ryan takes a swally Coke. We’re in the KFC round from the scheme. ‘Dinnae have a cow, Maw. Fucking photy line-up? Brief’ll pick that to pieces in three fucking seconds. And alibi’s fucking solid.’

  ‘Aye son, but the bitch was that confident. Her brief and that fucking PI have telt her her conviction’s unsafe and she’s getting out.’

  ‘Aye, that’s briefs. Fucking warrant, is it? Aye, be my guest, gents. They’re no gonnae find nothing in the house.’

  ‘You sure of that, son? It’s your Da and Travis and Connor we’re talking about here. Who’s to say one of they fuckwits hasnae stashed away something incriminating?’

  ‘Like what?’

  I take a bite of my Big Mac. ‘Who the fuck knows? We’re lighting it, son. Petrol through the letterbox. There’s no shortage of candidates will be in the frame for an arson attack, eh? And then yous are outta here. Me and Bekki’ll have to wait till the adoption’s through, but the rest of yous is on that fucking boat and off to Sunny Fucking Spain, right?’

  Ryan’s set us all up with new identities and that. And a bastard with a boat so we willnae have to present our new passports at customs.

  But he’s no a happy bunny. He doesnae like it when we’ve to switch to Plan B. He’s a Plan A kind of guy.

  ‘Right, son?’

  ‘Aye, Maw, right.’

  36

  Flora couldn’t help it. Before Caroline had even sat down, she was asking her: ‘You told her? You told Beckie?’

  Caroline shrugged out of her coat. ‘Yeah, sorry Flora, she’s… She’ll come round, I’m sure she will, she probably just needs time to digest it all, you know?’

  ‘She won’t know what to make of it all. If I could only talk to her…’

  ‘I know. I’m working on it, trust me.’

  ‘Sorry, it’s just – everything suddenly happening, and I just need to see her, I need to reassure her that everything’s going to be fine. Because it really is. Caroline – you’re not going to believe this, I can hardly believe it myself, but the appeal’s been accelerated, in view of the new forensic evidence, and Charles says it’s just a formality, I’ll be out of here in a week, two weeks at the most. It –’

  ‘Oh wow Flora, that’s brilliant!’

  ‘I know! I can’t believe it!’

  ‘What new evidence? Do you want a coffee…?’

  ‘No thanks. You go ahead though.’

  Caroline shook her head. ‘Don’t keep me in suspense! What new evidence?’

  ‘Well!’ Flora wanted to jump up and move, walk, jump, run. Caroline was looking at her almost in trepidation, as if afraid Flora was getting her hopes up prematurely. ‘The police have searched the Johnsons’ property – not much to find in the house, obviously, it’s basically been wrecked by the fire and any forensic evidence that might have been in there’s been o
bliterated – but in the so-called garden they found a chain buried, wrapped in a boiler suit. And the chain matches the chain that was used to strangle Neil. Apparently there’s tests they can do to match the metal and the way it’s made… Anyway, the neighbours say they used a long chain to tie up their Rottweiler in the garden, after it jumped the fence and went for someone… But then the chain was replaced by nylon rope, right after Neil’s murder apparently. So it looks as if they used a bit of this chain, and the idiots buried the rest of it.’

  Caroline blinked at her. ‘In their own garden?’

  ‘I know, stupid or what? But that’s not the best part. Ryan Johnson’s DNA is all over the boiler suit, along with Neil’s. It’s conclusive. My conviction is going to be overturned, and Ryan Johnson is going to be arrested for Neil’s murder!’

  ‘That’s – that’s amazing, Flora. I’m sorry, I’m in shock here…’

  ‘I know! Me too! Apparently there’s probably going to be compensation as there’s a question of police incompetence in that the initial investigation was incomplete, and Caroline, no arguments, I want you to have it. I want you to have the compensation money – you’ve more than earned it, you’ve been absolutely wonderful. I was going to ask you, though, for one last favour?’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘There’ll be a period of adjustment for Beckie. I wonder if it would be okay if we all lived together for a few weeks, just until she gets used to having me around again? Would it be okay if I joined you in Bearsden?’