by JANICE FROST
Bolan leaned back in his chair, appearing to be relaxed, but Neal suspected a lot was going on in his head.
“You can’t prove nothing,” Wade said at last, and Neal smiled inwardly, satisfied now that he was right, even if, ironically, Wade was also right. He stood up, signalling to the guard that he was ready to go.
“I’m going to appeal, you know. Now it’s come to light I never killed Debbie nor Amy, I’m getting out of here with a truckload of compensation for wrongful conviction.”
Wade’s words stopped Neal in his tracks, “You’ve spent eighteen years of your life in this place. No amount of money can compensate for that,” he said, but his heart was in his shoes. In a perverted way, Wade had served his sentence backwards and he was likely to be well recompensed for his time.
Even if he were guilty of hiring a hit man to kill Amy, Wade Bolan could not be convicted of murdering her twice. It was an unsatisfactory conclusion to the investigation. Even tracking down Bolan’s hitman — which might or might not happen at some indeterminable time in the future — would bring small reward. The whole case, like life, Neal supposed, was full of small victories and crushing disappointments.
All the way home, Neal wrestled with his feelings. He thought about the letter Richard Turner had shown him a few days after Nancy’s suicide, in which she confessed to feeding Debbie Clarke painkillers and smothering her with a pillow before abducting Amy. Richard had wanted to throw it away without showing anyone, but in the end his conscience had made him take the letter to Neal. This backed up Simon’s story, which might otherwise have been dismissed as a false memory.
Richard Turner had also confessed to knowing about Bradley’s trip to London to see Wade Bolan. Once Bradley found out that Amy’s father was a ‘jailbird,’ he had wanted to use this information to hurt and embarrass her. He had had no idea that Nancy was not Amy’s real mother nor could he have foreseen the tragic consequence that would result from his visit to Bolan. Between father and son, Neal could not decide which was the more pathetic.
He thought also about Nancy Hill and the choices she had made. It had recently come to light that, while she had been in foster care, she had been raped, aged fourteen, by a fifteen-year-old boy, and became pregnant. The child had been stillborn.
Had Nancy seen in Emily Clarke the baby she had lost and now could save? No amount of tragedy in her life could justify what she had done to Debbie, but as Neal so often observed, people who do wrong have very often been wronged themselves.
He picked up his mobile and called home. His sister answered on the second ring.
“It’s me,” he said, “Is Archie home?”
THE END
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