‘The more money we’ll have? There is no “we”, Peter. If there was, we would have talked about this. We would have agreed on how to deal with it. Instead there is me, a victim, and you, a criminal. I should go to the police, and you should start praying that it’s only the theft I tell them about, because you could end up on the sex offenders register for what you did.’
I was thinking out loud with this, and on reflection I should have kept my thoughts silent and let my actions speak later, but I wanted to see him reel, like I had been reeling from blow after blow since I got home and heard that fateful email ping.
The slow electrocution seemed to jack up a few hundred volts.
‘NO!’
Peter balled his fists as he yelled, his spine straightening out of its previously craven posture.
‘I was desperate because I’ve come this far and I can’t afford the whole project to fail. Don’t you fucking understand? I only did this for you. I only did any of it for you. Perfect fucking you who never screws anything up, perfect fucking you for whom nothing’s ever good enough. I wanted to be good enough, Diana. I needed to pull this off so that you’d respect me, so that I’d be the husband you wanted.’
His eyes were blazing: they were fixed upon me and yet it felt like he was looking at something else. It reminded me of how he had been when we argued in the car: consumed by his emotions and increasingly detached from awareness of his circumstances, of his actions.
We weren’t in the car now, and I was in no state to mollify him. I wasn’t letting him have his tantrum. I wasn’t letting him justify himself. I yelled back, right in his face.
‘I wanted a husband I could trust. I didn’t want a pervert. I didn’t want a thief.’
That was when he hit me.
PART THREE
FEARS AND CONFESSIONS
Parlabane hung up the call and placed the mobile down next to his laptop, a long sigh breezing between his lips. The final version of the copy had been cleared, and they weren’t merely running the story: they were leading with it.
He felt drained, the tension and frantic effort of the past couple of days finally spent.
He already had Professor Emily Gayle on tape, and a few calls to local papers in Oxford and Yorkshire provided him with details of what was documented regarding the death of Agnes Delacroix.
He had recorded the Skype conversation with the individual he had been able to identify as Evan Okonjo. Given that he knew when the guy had worked at Alderbrook, a bit of digging had thrown up a limited number of possibilities as to his name, after which it was a lot easier to sift those thirty thousand forum posts for relevant details. As promised, he wasn’t going to name him in the piece, but confirming who he was and where he worked meant Parlabane could stand up that part of the story.
After that it was a question of sounding out who might want it, and he wasn’t short of takers.
He thought back to what a patronising cop had said to him a few months back, when he had made a nationwide arse of himself chasing a story that had turned out to be a flushing-out exercise waiting for a useful idiot to take the bait.
‘You were trying to get back in the game with one swing.’
Well, it had taken a sight more than that, but he was back in the game for sure, and not with a swing, but with a splash: a front-page splash.
He had given Catherine McLeod advance notice, in case she wanted to move on the information before it went to press. She told him he had banked another favour, and it always felt good to know he was in credit with a senior poliswoman.
He ought to be elated, but as he sat staring at his laptop, at the copy that was now out of his hands and soon to be landing on newsstands up and down the country, he felt torn. There was one call he still had to make, a warning of collateral damage to the person who had called in the airstrike.
Lucy.
She had come to him seeking answers, though really, he knew, she had been seeking peace. She even thought she had found it. But then he had delved into the darkness at her request, and now he had to tell her that her fears had been right on the money all along.
He had tried to call her earlier, before he filed, but her phone was off. It wasn’t like he was going to hold the story if she had an issue with it, but he would have felt better about it had she been given the heads-up before he was talking details (not to mention money) with the news editor he sold it to.
He tried again, and this time it rang more than twice without being cut off for a voicemail message.
‘Jack. What’s up?’
She sounded bright. He could hear a hubbub of voices and the echoing tones of a PA in the background.
‘Where are you?’
‘London. I just got off a plane. Heading for the Heathrow Express.’
‘Look, I need to let you know: you were right about Peter. I don’t believe his death was an accident. I’ve discovered some things. There’s going to be a newspaper story.’
‘A newspaper story. About Peter.’
Her voice was blank, neutral, drained of its previous emotion.
‘You okay?’
‘I need a seat. What did you find out?’
Parlabane told her about Agnes Delacroix and Evan Okonjo, about his abduction on Saturday night, and finally about the sex tape.
‘Oh Jesus.’
He could hear her breathing, the phone pressed close to her cheek. He could imagine her feeling exposed, sitting in a public space when she most needed somewhere private to speak and probably to cry.
‘Oh Jesus. Peter.’
‘Look, I know this is awful, and I wish I was with you rather than doing this over the phone, but there’s something I need to ask you.’
‘It’s okay, Jack.’
Her voice was dry and croaky.
‘I mean, it’s not okay, it’s fucking awful, but you know what I mean. What do you need to know?’
‘When you first came to my flat with this, and a couple of times since, I got the impression there was something you weren’t telling me. Maybe because you didn’t want to believe it or … I don’t know. But everything is coming out now, Lucy. This is going to press tonight, so if there is something that I ought to know, you need to tell me.’
He heard only breathing again for a few seconds. Then she spoke.
‘Okay. Okay. There was something. You’re right. I didn’t want to admit it might be relevant, but that’s not the only reason. It’s not something you ever want to admit about someone you love, even when he’s gone.’
She paused again, this time like she was holding her breath. He could hear a tannoy announcement in the background warning about unattended luggage.
‘Peter could be violent.’
‘I see.’
‘I don’t want to overstate that. I don’t mean frequently or uncontrollably, and I don’t mean he was remotely dangerous, except to himself. It was an impotent rage, really. As a kid, he would sometimes strike out when he felt cornered or under too much pressure. I think subconsciously it was a form of surrender. He would only do it to someone he considered stronger, and who he knew would hold back from retaliating too much, whether that be his parents or his big sister.
‘I thought he would grow out of it, but he’s done it in adulthood too. He hit me once a few years back when we were arguing, and it was like he forgot he was stronger than me. In his head I was still his big sister. There was an incident at work too, in one of his previous jobs. He was being serially got at and he felt trapped. He got suspended and ended up leaving soon after. My concern was that it could have been much worse. The guy he hit read the situation for what it was and didn’t over-react. But I always had this fear that one day Peter would lash out at the wrong person, and it would cost him dear.’
ONE STRIKE POLICY
I grew up with two boys. Rough and tumble was a part of living with my brothers. Throughout most of my pre-teen childhood my arms and legs were seldom free of bruises. We would all lash out at times: loss of tempe
r, loss of control, a desire to strike back, a desire to punish. It was usually a thump on the upper arm that I was on the receiving end of, sometimes a kick to the shin.
A girl at school once slapped me on the cheek. I can’t remember why, but I do remember that my outrage was greater than my pain.
I had never been hit in the face with a closed fist before.
Peter punched me on the cheek, below the eye socket. There was a flash of light then a dull, solid pain, a pain that was putting down foundations and starting to build.
I fell against the car, knocked off balance in that narrow channel between my A5 and the wall. My hand shot out and grabbed the edge of the workbench before I lost my footing altogether. Some instinct took over, dictating imperatively that I must not end up on the floor.
I recall turning around, gripping the workbench with both hands as I steadied myself. I recall seeing the wall rack and its rusted tools. A pair of pliers. A hacksaw. A claw hammer. A monkey wrench.
I worked a year in A&E when I was a house officer. I remember treating a woman who had ‘fallen down the stairs’ late on a Saturday night. She had a broken nose, a hairline fracture to her cheekbone and a number of bruises on her forearms indicative of a defensive posture against further blows.
There was a nurse working with me that night who I will never forget, a redoubtable Irish woman by the name of Dymphna Flaherty. She asked the woman calmly if she wanted us to call the police, to which the patient responded with an insistence that it wasn’t what it looked like.
The husband had brought her in, all shocked concern over this dreadful accident, and was outside in the waiting area while we treated her. His performance was authentic enough that I bought it at first, until I saw her arms. I was sure his contrition and promises that it would never happen again would be equally convincing.
Dymphna sat on the edge of the bed and spoke to her gently but firmly.
‘What I’ve got to say doesn’t really apply to you,’ she told her, ‘because you only tripped and fell down the stairs. And we can all have a nasty accident, can’t we? Nobody knows that better than us here in Casualty, because we deal with it every day. None of us sees that nasty accident coming. None of us thinks it’ll happen to us. But seeing as you’re sitting there a moment, let me say this anyway: this thing that doesn’t apply to you.
‘If a man ever hits you, it’s over. That’s what my mammy told me, and it was good advice. Not that it applied to me either, if you know what I’m saying. But good advice nonetheless. No second chances. No matter how much he apologises, the truth is it’s only become more likely – even inevitable – that it will happen again. Once the line has been crossed, it only becomes easier to cross it the next time. And I remember saying to my mammy that everyone deserves a chance at redemption, and that maybe unique circumstances can contrive to make a good man lose control. She asked me this: if it was a twenty-stone, six-foot biker with five mates that he was angry with, would he lose control then?
‘So it’s sad, because you don’t want it to be over, and you think it doesn’t have to be. But it is, and it does. It’s like he’s died or he’s dumped you, or cheated on you: turned out not to be the person you thought he was. Do you hear what I’m saying?’
The woman nodded, weeping silently as she did so, but when we finished treating her, she went home with her man.
I can still see her walking through those double doors towards the street, his muscular arm supportively placed around her tiny shoulders. I knew Dymphna was right. I knew that same arm would be driving his fist into her face again: it was only a matter of time.
As I watched them leave, I vowed that I would never be in similar denial about Dymphna’s advice. If a man were to raise his hands to me once, I would ensure the bastard could never do it again.
CORNERED PREY
Appropriately for a surgeon, in the end it was blood and bone that gave away Diana Jager.
Ali had been part of the team combing every inch of her property for the proof of what had really happened to Peter Elphinstone. She had seen the tents erected in front of Jager’s house and garage, flagstones hauled up to give access to the drains, but it was actually in the boot of her A5 that they found the most crucial forensic evidence.
She had been present at the arrest too: her and Rodriguez. Once Catherine McLeod had informed Sergeant Glaister about what was about to appear in the newspaper, the whole picture changed. It was made known that their insubordination hadn’t been forgotten, but was at least being backgrounded for the moment.
‘You got lucky this time,’ Hazel warned them. ‘Your instincts were vindicated, but that doesn’t mean your conduct can be excused. We don’t work on the basis of instinct in this job any more than we rely on luck.’
The sergeant’s tone had been as stern as Ali had ever heard, underlining the importance of the lesson she wanted them to learn. Nonetheless, she interpreted it as something of a pat on the head that she and Rodriguez were asked to sit in on the interviews, watching on a monitor in an adjacent room.
Admittedly a larger consideration in this was probably the fact that they had been the primary point of contact with Jager throughout. It was they who had broken the news of Elphinstone’s accident to her and seen how she reacted; or more significantly, seen how she barely reacted. As such it was hoped they would be a useful barometer for Bill Ellis and Tom Chambers to refer to as they braced their suspect.
It was always odd watching on a relay. Even though the interview was taking place right then, only a matter of yards away, they could have been watching a recording from a station in London filmed ten years ago. It was disempowering not to be able to contribute or intervene, but that didn’t spare them the tension, or the feeling that Jager knew she was being watched.
She was as cool and detached in the interview suite as she had been in the comfort of her living room, and little Ellis or Chambers said appeared to penetrate her façade.
Only the mention of the sex tape had made an impact. She kept her expression impassive but Ali saw her eyes fill as the implications sank in: these men had seen it.
‘Have you seen it?’ Rodriguez asked.
Ali could hear the sympathy in his tone, though whether this was for Ali’s sensibilities or for Jager’s suffering remained unclear.
The answer was yes. She guessed he had too, and she was suddenly grateful she had seen it alone. Watching it with someone else in the room – someone male in particular – would have made it even worse.
‘Working Traffic, I’ve been to RTAs that made me less queasy,’ she said. ‘And it’s not because I’m prudish: I’ve seen my share of porn.’
‘No, I hear you. It made me feel horrible too. It felt like something beyond voyeurism and beyond betrayal. It was consensual sex and yet I was watching a violation.’
Ali nodded. She had been with guys who asked to film it and she always refused. This was what happened when they didn’t take no for an answer: a different kind of rape. She thought of how she had felt when Martin pretended not to notice that he’d come inside her. Multiply that by a thousand, she thought, and you’d get how it would feel if he had leaked a non-consensual sex tape.
‘No wonder Jager killed the fucker,’ she said.
On the monitor, Ellis was in full flow, speaking with his signature calm and slightly patronising authority.
‘We have found a small quantity of blood and powdered bone fragments in the boot of your car. DNA analysis has proven both to match that of your husband. A wee drop of blood, we couldn’t get ourselves too excited about that. A scraped knuckle opening the boot, helping you in with the shopping, perhaps. Any number of reasons why that might be found there. But it’s the powdered bone mixed in with it that really intrigues us, Dr Jager. Apparently it’s the human equivalent of sawdust. Do you have any ideas as to how that got there?’
Jager didn’t respond, didn’t look to her lawyer, didn’t even shake her head.
‘Well, as you’re feeling a wee
bit reticent, why don’t I have a go? You argued, quite understandably, about this sex tape Peter had made: this surreptitiously obtained and mercilessly candid video of things that should be kept between two trusting people. It must have been more hurtful than any of us can imagine, and you must have been uncontainable in your anger. But then to make it worse, rather than get down on his knees and plead for your forgiveness, he hits you. He punches you in the face, leaving you with the black eye that PC Kazmi and her colleague PC Rodriguez observe the following morning.’
Jager glanced up briefly. Did she look to the camera, Ali asked herself, or was she imagining it? Did she even know the camera was there? It certainly felt like it, but maybe this was merely a hangover guilt from her previous compulsory voyeurism.
‘That was what pushed you over the edge,’ Ellis went on. ‘You were angry and you were probably scared too. Who wouldn’t be, in your position, having learned what depravity your husband had stooped to? You had no idea what else he might be capable of. So you had to take drastic steps. You had to act on the spot, in fear and in the heat of the moment. Did you grab what was to hand? Where did it happen? Did you hit him on the head with something, then realise you’d hit him harder than you meant to? Did he maybe hit his head on something as he fell?
‘Or was it more instinctive than that: you’re a surgeon after all. Even without thinking, your hands would know where to put a blade to inflict the most damage in the shortest space of time: a small woman with a limited window of opportunity against a bigger man who was bound to strike back. Again, were the consequences greater than you had intended? Because we could easily be talking manslaughter, self-defence even. But I need your input, and so far you’re giving me nothing.’
Jager simply stared at him with unnerving detachment, like she was the one in Ali’s role: listening intently, observing, taking mental notes.
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