Black Heart

by Anna-Lou Weatherley

  She speaks into the recorder: ‘Florence Williams’.

  The solicitor casts me a shifty glance.

  ‘But that’s not your real name, is it Rebecca? Your birth name is Rebecca Jane Harper, that’s correct isn’t it?’

  She looks at me intently. ‘Yes, but call me Florence.’

  ‘Can you confirm for the tape that your name is Rebecca Jane Harper and that your date of birth is 21 June 1987?’

  ‘I’ve never liked the name Rebecca, never felt it suited me.’

  ‘Is that why you use aliases? Danni-Jo, Florence…?’

  ‘Florence was my grandmother’s name.’

  ‘You told me your parents named you after the place you were conceived.’

  The solicitor glances at me.

  I continue, ‘Do you know the difference between the truth and a lie, Rebecca?’

  She looks at me, a half smile on her face. She’s sitting forward in the seat now, swaying slightly as if she’s a little drunk.

  ‘I could ask you the same question, Daniel. Tell me, how’s life in the world of architecture?’ She giggles. Now I’m convinced she’s drunk. I try and remember how much retsina she drank at the restaurant, probably not even a glass.

  ‘Do you know why you’re here, Rebecca?’

  She nods. ‘To finish the story.’

  ‘And what story is that?’

  She doesn’t answer.

  ‘The story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears?’

  Silence.

  ‘Where is George, Rebecca?’ I keep my voice level but firm. I need to play this very carefully.

  ‘Who?’

  She’s still wearing the plum dress, but she’s not as perfectly groomed as she was a few hours ago. The wig looks as if it could do with a brush. Her bare legs are crossed and she’s sitting at the table as though we’re still in the restaurant, discussing our respective working weeks over olives and taramasalata.

  ‘The baby, Rebecca, the little boy you had in your charge, the one you told me about tonight: George. Where is he? Has he come to any harm?’

  More silence.

  ‘Tell me where he is. Where is Baby Bear?’

  She lifts her head up when I say this. Her solicitor whispers something in her ear and I feel like reaching across the table and strangling him with his shitty tie.

  ‘You used the name Goldilocks when you were searching for prospective men online to murder. Why did you choose that name? Were you acting out a fantasy fairy tale Rebecca, the story of the three bears?’ I think of Nigel Baxter then, his body in the bath in that beautiful hotel room and I try to imagine the rage and hatred and anger that must’ve been inside her and driven her to do what she did.

  ‘You were working as an escort weren’t you Rebecca? Meeting rich older men, sugar daddys who afforded you a lavish lifestyle in return for sex. But that’s not the only reason you went looking for that particular type of man was it? Nigel Baxter was Daddy Bear wasn’t he? Did Nigel represent your father? Was Nigel the father who abused you? Is that why you poisoned him and then slit his wrists.’

  She visibly shrinks at the mention of her father. I slide the crime-scene photographs across the table and they naturally fan out like a pack of cards.

  ‘You did this, didn’t you, Rebecca? You drugged Mr Baxter in suite 106 of La Reymond Hotel on April 12 of this year while he was in the bath, while you were both in the bath, drinking champagne, and then you slit open his wrists and watched him bleed to death, didn’t you?’

  She tilts her head to one side. Her eyes lower to look at the ghoulish images of Baxter’s bloated and bloody corpse, close-ups of his injuries, his open, congealing wounds and his large fleshy form slumped over the tub.

  I show her a picture of the teddy bear left at the scene. ‘You had this made especially for Mr Baxter, for Daddy Bear. That’s right isn’t it, Rebecca?’ I lean forward across the table towards her. ‘That’s right, isn’t it? You had sex with Mr Baxter and then fed him chocolates laced with enough arsenic to shut down his organs as he sipped champagne with you in the bath. Then you took a razor to his wrists and sliced them open.’

  Her eyelids appear a little heavy as she looks up at me.

  ‘You’re wearing the earrings he gave to you now, aren’t you, the Tiffany diamond studs?’

  She’s expressionless.

  ‘Then you methodically cleaned up in a bid to erase any DNA – and you did a good job, I have to say – before disguising yourself and making an exit.’

  She gently touches the prints on the table, running her fingers along the outline of the deceased nostalgically, like she’s looking through old holiday snaps.

  ‘Karen Walker, Kizzy, your neighbour. The woman who lived opposite you in your Mayfair apartment. Tell me about Kizzy, Rebecca. You liked her didn’t you? She liked you too. You were friends…’

  One of her legs is swinging manically over the other as she watches me silently.

  ‘You poisoned Kizzy’s cat didn’t you? After she had entrusted you with a key to her apartment. And then you invited Kizzy for dinner, cooked her pasta, a special recipe that included large amounts of sleeping pills, that’s right isn’t it? Then when she returned to her apartment to sleep, you let yourself in and slit open her wrists, just like you did Nigel Baxter’s. Then you staged the scene to look like a suicide once again.’

  Rebecca is looking at me but I see nothing behind her eyes, it’s as if she’s disappeared somewhere within herself.

  ‘Karen, Kizzy… she was Mummy Bear wasn’t she? You told a police officer that she’d been like a mother to you. Why, if that was the case, would you want to hurt her?’

  Nothing.

  ‘And George. Is he your next victim? A tiny, defenseless baby… Why would you want to harm a baby, Rebecca? The woman I met – she would never do that – the woman I met was beautiful and kind, she had a good heart, she’s a good woman… Tell me Rebecca – please tell me where he is.’

  Complimenting her seems to have evoked a reaction and she turns away from me, lowers her head. I know there’s something there, a human part of her that’s still alive, barely breathing but still alive, that wouldn’t hurt a child. And I need to get to it, quickly. Time is running out.

  I change tactic. ‘Why did you come, to the restaurant? You knew who I was, didn’t you? You knew I was a policeman. When did you find out? If you knew that I would arrest you, why did you come? Why didn’t you run? You want this to be over don’t you; I know you do. I do too, Rebecca and it can be over if you talk to me, tell me where George is…’

  The rat-faced solicitor looks confused. ‘Excuse me Detective, sorry, but do you two know each other?’ He’s pointing at us simultaneously as though he’s interrupting a private conversation. ‘Hang on… Detective Riley, if you are familiar with my client on a personal level then this is highly unorthodox and I must insist that another officer conduct the interview immediately. You have arrested my client on the suspicion of two counts of murder in the first degree and I—’

  She turns to the solicitor. ‘I want you to leave,’ she says sternly, ‘I want to talk to Daniel alone.’

  I suspect that Woods is watching all of this and is probably on the verge of a heart attack. I’m expecting him to knock on the door any minute and terminate the interview, but I have to get a confession from her, I have to find out where George is.

  ‘Ms Harper, I would strongly advise you not to do this,’ the solicitor addresses her gravely. ‘It is in your best interest to have a solicitor present, given the nature of the accusations against you I must insist that you—’

  ‘I want you to leave,’ she says again.

  ‘Ms Harper, look… Detective,’ he turns to me, ‘it is clear that my client is not in any fit mental state to make any rational decisions—’

  ‘Just get out!’ she screams and he visibly flinches, takes a step back from her in shock.

  ‘As you wish, Ms Harper,’ he mutters, gathering his briefcase and papers hastily, ‘it
’s your funeral.’

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  ‘Alone at last, Detective Riley,’ she says once the solicitor has made a hasty retreat.

  I sit down, adopt a less formal stance and lean in towards her from across the table. ‘How long have you known, about my identity I mean?’

  She smiles.

  ‘We didn’t get to finish our dinner together Daniel… shame, the lamb cutlets really were tasty. I think they use a special marinade you know, an ancient Greek recipe…’

  I get up from the seat and the scraping sound startles her, momentarily shattering her cocksure façade that’s as brittle as glass.

  ‘Why, Rebecca. Please, tell me why?’ I place my hands flat on the table. The photographs are still strewn across it, gruesome images of her victims staring up at us. I point a finger at one of them. ‘Just tell me you haven’t done this to that child… tell me he’s safe. You can do that, I know you can,’ I say, imploring her, ‘you can redeem yourself, just tell me where he is and let us go and make sure he’s okay. He’s just a baby, a tiny, helpless baby.’ I hear the emotion in my own voice, unable to disguise my desperation.

  I touch the tips of her fingers with my own and she runs her index finger gently over the top of mine for a second before pulling her hand away.

  ‘I know about your childhood; Dr Magnesson told me about the abuse, what happened to you and your mother – what you did to protect her. Talk to me and perhaps we can do some kind of deal? I can talk to the right people, have you sent to a secure hospital, somewhere they can help you. Do you know what they do to baby killers in prison? Do you? I don’t want that for you, Rebecca. I know you’ve suffered enough.’

  I hear the click in her throat as she swallows. Her face seems to be getting paler by the second and suddenly she bends double as though in pain. I ask her if she’s okay.

  She sucks in breath through her teeth. ‘Cramps,’ she explains, grimacing, ‘time of the month.’

  ‘Do you need some pills, some paracetamol? I can arrange for a doctor to come down and administer some.’

  She smiles through her obvious discomfort. ‘That’s your trouble isn’t it, Daniel? You care too much. It’s been both your success and downfall in life hasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘I do care. I care about George. And I care about you too.’ Worse still, I actually mean it.

  She sucks in another breath before straightening herself up. ‘Don’t listen to that bitch Magnesson, she knows nothing.’ Her face changes and I catch a fleeting glimpse of the malice within her. ‘Silly cunt thought she had all the answers. But the truth was she never even had the right questions.’

  ‘And what are the right questions? Jesus, Rebecca… what are?’

  ‘No hospitals,’ she says quietly after a moment, ‘please.’

  ‘I can help you,’ I say, ‘let me help you, let me help you help yourself. Tell us where George is.’

  She appears to be somewhere else, lost in thought. ‘Do you know what it’s like, being in one of those places as a child? Greene Parks was nothing more than a concentration camp, a torture chamber masquerading as a hospital. It was no better than the home I had come from, just in a different sort of way. They abused me too; studied me, experimented on me like a laboratory rat. I wasn’t treated as a human being, I was a subject.’

  ‘You were just a child.’

  ‘I was never a child,’ she hisses, ‘I was sucking my father’s cock at five years old.’

  I grimace inwardly. I look at the photographs on the table to remind myself of what she is, what she’s capable of.

  ‘Is that why you killed Nigel Baxter and Karen Walker, Rebecca? Was it retribution for your own suffering, for what your father did to you?’

  She snorts at me like I’m an imbecile who hasn’t got a clue.

  ‘You mother suffered too didn’t she, years and years of horrendous abuse, is that why you killed her, put her out of her misery, stopped her suffering for good?’

  ‘Oh Daniel, you really don’t know anything do you?’ She throws me a pitiful glance. ‘I didn’t kill my mother,’ she says, ‘my father did, well as good as. Mother, she tried to take her own life so many times over the years I lost count in the end. Pills, alcohol, slit her wrists twice… She threw herself down the stairs in the end. We had this big house with a large Victorian staircase. First time she just knocked herself out so she tried again and broke her ankle, didn’t make a very good job of it. The third attempt she almost succeeded.’ Rebecca seems to drift off somewhere else for a moment. ‘She broke both her legs, one an open fracture, and her back. She was still breathing when I found her but I knew it was bad, I knew that she would suffer more, that she was already suffering and wanted to die. I figured that it would only be a matter of time before my father actually murdered her, or that she would once again try to kill herself. I just couldn’t bear to watch her in so much agony. The physical pain was torture enough, but it was the emotional and psychological anguish that was the worst to witness. She couldn’t even get killing herself right, she was just so… so defeated by him, by the years of abuse, and so I sat with her for a while, at the bottom of the stairs, watching as she slipped in and out of consciousness, high on a cocktail of prescription drugs that basically allowed her to function as a human being, jabbering nonsense, wailing. And then I kissed her and put a pillow underneath her head and one over her face, held it there, and sang nursery rhymes to her, just like the ones she used to sing to me when I was a child. She didn’t kick or scream, she couldn’t I suppose because of the injuries, but I don’t think she would’ve done anyway. She welcomed her death. If she could’ve thanked me I know she would’ve.’

  My heart is knocking against my ribs but I stay silent, let her finish. ‘My father, he panicked, thought that he would be exposed, that it would all come out in the open, the things he had done, the years of physical, emotional and,’ she pauses slightly, ‘sexual abuse, and so he threw me under the bus, concocted a story to the police, told them that I was evil, a devil child, mentally defective, sick, and that I had killed her. He said I needed psychiatric help and so he, they, had me incarcerated.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell the truth? Why didn’t you confide in someone sooner, a neighbour, a teacher, a friend’s parents?’

  ‘Friends? I had no friends,’ her tone is dismissive, she seems as cold to her own suffering as she is to that of others. ‘Do you understand fear, Daniel? Real fear I mean?’

  ‘Yes,’ I pause, I think I do.’ And my memory flashes back to the night they came to tell me that Rachel was dead, thought of the icy fear that had penetrated through my flesh and bones like fire.

  ‘Fear is the most debilitating of all the emotions. It paralyses you, governs your every waking moment and thought. It conditions you. And I lived in fear. Lived with it every moment from the day I was born. I was trained to be so terrified of my father that I learned to accept it, to accept all the abuse. Fear became my normality. In the end I found that I couldn’t live without it, couldn’t function. I told Magnesson about the abuse, but by then I had been written off as a psychopath. A danger to myself and others apparently; damaged goods, beyond repair. It was easier, in a way, to say I was responsible for my mother’s death. It kept me away from my father, kept me from his evil, deviant, depraved ways. But it brought a new set of fears.’

  ‘What happened to your father?’ She blinks at me. Her skin is pallid, almost as white as her hair. ‘The checks we made say he died of natural causes.’

  She laughs then and throws her head back. It gives me the chills. I take another sip of water and refresh her glass, even though she hasn’t touched a drop of it.

  ‘Nothing my father ever did was natural.’

  ‘You continued to live with him though, that’s right isn’t it? Right up until his death? Why? Why, if your father was the monster you say he was, did you go back to live with him after you left Greene Parks? Was it some kind of misplaced loyalty? Were you still scared of h
im?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. I notice beads of sweat have formed on her skin, small shiny beads, glistening. ‘I was always scared of him, right up to the end.’

  ‘What did he die of?’

  ‘He was a strong and fit man, my father, in the “rudest health” as he used to say. Would’ve lived to a ripe old age no doubt… those bastards always do. Only the good die young don’t they, Daniel? Like Rachel—’

  I try not to show any emotion at the use of her name.

  ‘So why didn’t he live to a ripe old age?’

  ‘I poisoned him,’ she says with a look of triumph, her eyes narrowing. ‘But I did it s-l-o-w-l-y… gradually, very gradually, day by day by day… I watched him deteriorate over a long period of time. Tiny, miniscule amounts of thallium administered every day in his food and drink. I was patient, I waited. And over time, well, thallium builds in your system, it’s a toxin – and it was just enough to make him sick, slowly but surely, to debilitate him and keep him in constant poor health. After a while he began losing his hair, that really pissed him off.’ She’s smiling now and I can see Florence has all but disappeared. ‘He was so vain, my father, and his hair, it was thick, you know, took after his mother’s side. The Harpers were all very proud of their crowning glory and the fact the men in the family never went bald. But I made sure he broke the mould.’