‘Oh no, not now! Christ not after all this ...’
The helicopter buzzed across the top of the cathedral, I could feel the blast of air from the blades. My eye was bloody and sore, my hair was blowing over my face. I was crying now, begging for Meg to be okay.
Then I saw it. A hand. A bloody hand, hanging on to the stonework of the turret. As the helicopter moved away, I heard her shouting. She’d managed to catch the turret. I rushed over, that was what the guys in the helicopter must have been trying to signal to me. I grabbed Meg’s hand. It was wet, cold and slippery with blood.
‘I can’t hang on, Pete. Grab me, please grab me!’
‘Reach your free hand up to me ...’
‘I can’t, Pete. It hurts, it hurts so much ...’
Her free hand was clutching her stomach where the shots had entered her body, she looked as if she was about to give herself up for dead.
‘Hold on, Meg. Don’t you dare let go!’
I was aware of a flurry of activity below where Sally’s body was dashed on the aged paving slabs that surrounded the cathedral. It was growing lighter now, the darkness of night-time finally subsiding to bring in a new day.
I reached over the stonework and put my hands under Meg’s armpits.
‘I’m going to pull you, but you have to help me. You have to help, Meg. Do you hear me? I can’t do it alone. You’ve got to help me pull you up.’
She was sobbing, resigning herself to what she thought was the inevitable conclusion. She looked down at Sally’s body below. I could see her trying to work it out. How quick would it be? Would she die instantly?
‘Focus on me, Meg. Look at me! I’m going to count to three, then I need you to try to pull yourself up. I’ve got you, but I can’t hold you on my own.’
‘I can’t do it, Pete, it hurts so much, I can’t hang on.’
I watched as her grip loosened. She was slipping away from me.
‘Hang on, Meg. Don’t let go!’
Leaning over the turret, the hard, cold stone pressing into my side, I took her weight, but the strain was too much for my back.
‘Meg, come on, please, grab the side.’
She looked into my eyes. I was sorry for everything that I’d done to her, I was sorry that it had come to this. I just wanted my Meg back.’
She must have seen it. One moment she looked as if she’d given up, the next the light came back on. She reached up, wincing with the pain, making one last stretch to save her life. With Meg now taking her own weight, I was able to get more traction, pulling her up by her clothing, first back onto the turret, then over it again, onto the top of the tower. She was safe. I’d managed to pull her to safety. We rested against the wall, catching our breath, aware of the helicopter overhead monitoring it all.
Then, above the sound of the blades, the first clang of the cathedral bells. It was seven o’ clock.
‘Oh fuck ... Jem!’
Chapter Eighteen
What happened afterwards was a blur of questions, flashing blue lights and people in uniforms. For someone who was used to talking to the police as a journalist, I realised that I didn’t have a clue what it was like to be the one being questioned.
The minute that Sally’s gun was out of the picture, the police had started to make their way up the final sets of stairs, having been given the go-ahead by the helicopter crew. But it was too late for Jem. There was so much mechanical equipment around the bells that they were still assessing the risks when the first click of the wheel mechanism came. That vital delay meant that he was still straddled across the floor with his head through the wheel when everything started moving to make the bell chimes sound out across the city.
As the first chime announced the start of a brand new day, the heavy bell swung on its wheel, ripping off Jem’s head as it made its first rotation. It was a horrible way to die.
I was sad about Jem’s death, of course I was, but most of all I was mourning the loss of friendship and regretting how much faith I’d put in him. It was a terrible end to a miserable story. I often wondered what must have been going through Sally’s head in that moment when she decided to jump: hatred for Jem, contempt for Meg, disgust at me, fear for the future of the children and what the police might do. She’d taken things so far by that stage, perhaps it was difficult for her to find a way back.
Jem and Sally’s kids were found at home – not in a hotel as she’d claimed – safe and asleep on the sofa. Sally had left them watching videos, and they were well supplied with sweets and goodies. The beat officer said they looked beautiful when they entered the house. A huddle of children, dressed in pyjamas, curled up like a basket of kittens, oblivious to their father’s violent death and their mother’s tragic suicide. Perhaps the worst legacy from the entire sad affair is that the kids were immediately placed into the care system, separated and without the day-to-day love of their parents. However big a piece of shit Jem was, I know he loved his kids.
Piece by piece, the truth came out. There was a full investigation, of course, long and detailed interviews and a blow-by-blow account of everything that had gone on over that weekend.
I was immediately separated from Meg. She was being treated as a possible suspect, and I was in need of medical attention. It looked worse than it was. I won’t pretend that an air pistol pellet doesn’t hurt, but it’s hardly Rambo. It tore into the flesh above my eye, there was some concern about damage to my vision and the degree to which it had entered my skull, but it turned out to be a lot of blood about nothing.
I was soon back on my feet, bandaged and covered in plasters, anxious to speak to Meg again. But Meg didn’t want to speak to me. She co-operated with the police inquiry, staying at a local hotel. She wasn’t placed under arrest. I didn’t return to the house either, other than to pick up some things. I learnt that there are actually people who make a business out of cleaning up crime scenes. Once the forensics guys were done with the house, the cleaning team moved in. I told them to remove everything with blood on it, however little it was. I didn’t want any trace left of what had gone on there. I couldn’t see me or Meg moving back.
When I returned to fetch my clothes, what was left of the furniture had been deposited on the bare floors, most of the carpet and underlay was gone. It was the same for the spare room and bedroom too. They’d done a good job, but I’d never be able to go into that house again without picturing a dead Tony Miller in the bed and Jason Davies’ body bleeding behind the settee.
Martin told me that he was seeing Meg, as a friend and as a counsellor. I apologised to Martin, I felt that I owed him that much. I admitted that I’d thought he fancied my wife and that I’d underrated his abilities. I had been wrong about that. He’d shown himself to be reliable and trustworthy at a time when those qualities were in short supply. I still gave him some hassle about that Brompton bike, though. It was like having to assemble a Rubik’s Cube before I could actually get anywhere.
Meg was working through what had happened. She didn’t want to see me. Martin couldn’t tell me everything, he was bound by the client and counsellor thing. It was like having to speak through an intermediary. He made sure that Meg could go to the house to fetch some things without the risk of running into me. He accompanied her. He wouldn’t tell me which hotel she was staying in. He warned me that she’d be drawing down some savings from our account. Only half, not the full amount.
It was at that stage that I began to see the writing on the wall. Martin wouldn’t be drawn on the dates for the baby and couldn’t even confirm if it was mine.
‘It’s for Meg to decide what she shares with you,’ he’d told me. ‘I’m not trying to cut you out here, Pete, but I think she just needs some time.’
At least he was calling me Pete.
My impulse was to try to find her, to apologise and ask what was going on. But in a rare moment of temperance and good judgment, I held back. I didn’t even know if she was fully up to speed with Ellie’s part in all this, I wasn’t going to pu
sh it. I wasn’t sure if I could tell her the truth. If she decided to come back to me, giving her all the details about Ellie might be the final nail in the coffin. I kept away from her, frustrated by the lack of information, but thinking it wiser to wait.
It seemed to be an open-and-shut case as far as the police were concerned. It was good to know how the pieces slotted together.
I was right about Meg, she’d decided to come over to the hotel and surprise me on my birthday. It was a lovely thought, it would have been just what we needed. Right time, totally unexpected, a brilliant way to celebrate my fortieth birthday and move on. The pregnancy announcement would have topped it all off. If I hadn’t been such a dickhead, we probably would have picked up from there. Things would have returned to normal.
I struggled over what to tell the police about Ellie. In the end, I told the truth. I asked the police if they’d have to tell Meg. They’d have to corroborate events, they said. Who knew what that meant? One of the cops, off the record, told me that they wouldn’t drop me in it for the sake of it. Neither of us were suspects, they just needed to be clear about the timeline.
It turned out that Tony Miller had been following Ellie again, though he’d done a much better job of it since being frightened off by her brothers. Without Tony there to question, much of what happened would remain conjecture. It looked as if he’d followed her over to Newcastle and watched her return with me from the pub. CCTV showed that he’d actually entered the pub at one point, but Ellie had been too busy with me to notice. Fergus Ogilvy, the boring engineer, had let him into the OverNight Inn. Tony had been watching us as we walked along the corridor, he must have seen us through the glass windows in the fire doors. I didn’t even know he was there.
The investigations team reckoned that he’d been going to follow us, or confront us, then discovered that the room next door was open, a place to hide and wait. Maybe he wanted to catch Ellie on her own. What happened in that room would remain a bit of a mystery, it was only when Meg came along that there was any clarity.
Jenny came clean too, or at least partially. She didn’t say that she was meeting Jackson for sex, but she did admit that staff sometimes went for a nap in the empty rooms, especially when on late shifts. It was a good lie, it explained what Jackson was doing, and it kept her out of it.
Meg had come down the corridor to see me, but of course she went to the wrong room, Jenny had given her the number of the room next door. That’s how she met Tony Miller – the rest played out in the Facebook Live video. That piece of evidence was eventually retrieved from Meg’s account, the police had to file special documentation to request it off the servers from Facebook in the USA.
Meg would have filled in the gaps about why Tony decided to do a runner to our house. Apparently, he panicked when the fire alarm went off. He was waiting for Ellie to emerge from my room so he could try to intercept her. He’d realised what was going on in the room next door and decided to take Meg as a hostage when the alarm went off, a bargaining chip with Ellie. He punched her in the face when he saw that she’d recorded him killing Jackson. He’d thrown Meg’s phone out of the window when they were driving back from Newcastle. The recording didn’t get deleted until much later on – it had taken quite a while for the penny to drop with Tony. Even then, according to the police, he’d had to get Meg to delete the video via our home laptop, he was only clued up on the basics of social media.
Who knows what he was thinking of, but there it was. It was Ellie and me who pissed him off, Meg was just a timely arrival for him in his twisted fantasy.
It turned out that Sally had killed Tony. She’d had a row with Jem on the Friday afternoon before we all began to head off for Newcastle. It’s why Jem was late. He’d been waiting along our road to see Meg. Who knows why? To confess his love? To admit what he’d done? We’d never know – with Sally and Jem dead, we just had Meg’s word to figure out what had gone on.
Sally had followed Jem to our house that day. She’d seen Jem go in. He’d tried to encourage Meg into having sex with him – it was Meg who’d given him that scratch. That time he hadn’t forced himself on her, it sounded like he’d genuinely fallen for her. He’d waited for me to leave for Newcastle, then he’d gone to my house to seduce my wife. An evil predator.
Meg had left some time afterwards. She knew she was pregnant and decided that it was time we sorted ourselves out. Only it didn’t quite work out like that. Because of me. Me and Ellie.
Sally had been waiting in our house when Meg came back with Tony. After seeing what Jem had done the day before, she’d finally worked herself up enough to confront Meg. She must have got in with our emergency key, the one we keep in one of those false stones by the front door. It was hardly Fort Knox.
She was convinced that Meg and Jem were having an affair. According to Meg, she hadn’t been expecting Tony. She slit his neck when he went to go for a pee in our en-suite. She was waiting in our bedroom, she’d been inspecting the sheets for signs of sexual activity.
Sally saw Jason coming too. She’d whacked him with our baseball bat. I kept one tucked inside the front door, just in case. We’d found it washed up by the sea on a holiday in Fife a few years previously. You always see people in the States fighting off intruders with a baseball bat. When we found that one on the beach, we took it home with us. I left it by the door, gathering dust, there if I ever needed it. I never needed it, but it served Sally well that night.
Jason was well built. She hit him hard over the head as he walked through the sitting room and finished him off by slitting his throat.
Meg didn’t see any of this, she’d been secured with the parcel tape in the spare room. It was the same parcel tape that Sally used to restrain Ellie and Martin later in Martin’s office.
Sally had wanted to have it out with Meg and Jem when Ellie drew up in her car. It was terrible timing. Sally had been spooked by Jason, she didn’t know who he was or if the authorities had been alerted already. She’d become increasingly volatile according to Meg and Ellie. She sought sanctuary in Martin’s office, and that’s where I’d blundered in.
Sally had been contacting Martin constantly over the weekend, veering it seemed between taking his advice and getting revenge on Jem. She’d demanded he meet her at the offices at some unearthly hour on the Saturday night. He’d walked straight into a Quentin Tarantino movie.
She’d gone crazy when Jem joined them, cursing and accusing Meg and him of all sorts. She took them to the cathedral, where she and Jem were married. She was going to kill them both there. It was only when I popped up that it delayed things for a short time, she wanted to question me, find out what I knew about Jem.
There were a lot of gaps which the police would never fill in, not with so many of the key people dead. That was the best timeline of events that I could get out of the police. But the evidence seemed to fit the crime, the inquests were held and the bodies finally released for burial. It was only then that I learnt that things were not quite what they’d seemed.
It seemed to take forever for the bodies to be released, but it was a little over three weeks in the end. Time dragged. I was waiting for information, hoping that Meg would get in touch, and being fed occasional scraps by Martin.
I’d taken some time off work, I was too much on my own really, but I’m not sure that I could have stayed focused in the office. All the day-to-day shit seemed so insignificant after what had happened. I moved into a static caravan at a fading seaside resort a few miles away from the city. I didn’t have to commit to a contract, but paid a month at a time. Perfect for me.
My car had been written off. I’d completely crunched the front of it, the insurance company just sent me a cheque. I bought a banger from a local garage to keep me mobile, something small and cheap.
I was anxious to find out how things had worked out in Newcastle, so I messaged Jenny via Erazerr: Can I come over to catch up? When are you on shift?
Hey Pete, great to hear from you. Where have you been?
Come over Wednesday lunchtime. Let’s have lunch in the bar.
We fixed the date and I made sure I was there in plenty of time.
It was a weird experience making the drive over to Newcastle. I saw the spot where I’d come off the road. You wouldn’t have known it, there were just some muddy tyre tracks where I assume the tow truck had been. There was more undergrowth than I remembered too.
It was so good to see Jenny, I’m not sure why. Maybe it helped to close the circle. I was concerned about her too. I gave her a hug when she joined me at the table. It seemed the right thing to do, bearing in mind what we’d been through.
‘So, did Bob find out your secret in the end?’ I asked quietly, not wanting any of the other staff to hear what we were talking about.
‘Only sort of,’ she replied. ‘Derek’s a good guy you know, he knew what was going on, he helped me to cover. We just said we used empty rooms like a den. Bob was really cross, but he’s not taking any action. I think he got a hard time from the police about the CCTV at the entrance. That’s fixed now, by the way.’
She smiled when she said that. It looked like she was doing okay.
‘How about Jackson?’
‘I went to his funeral last week. It wasn’t serious between us, you know. We weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend, anything like that. It was only a bit of fun. Of course I’m upset about what happened but I’m pleased that it’s over now. It was my first funeral,’ Jenny continued. ‘Very sad, but you know, I’ll get over it. I just feel sorry for Jackson. He was a good guy, he didn’t deserve that.’
‘He was a good kid,’ I replied, thinking back to the video that Meg had filmed. ‘He tried to protect you, Jenny. I don’t know if you know that. He did his best to keep you safe from Tony Miller. You could have done worse.’
She nodded and looked down. She was resilient. It had just been a casual fling, a way to liven up the long, dull nights at the OverNight Inn. She was more shocked by the violence of what had happened than she was upset at his loss. She’d get over Jackson soon enough.
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