by Neil White
‘And did he?’
Ted nodded. ‘He was respectful, until I came out of there and asked him to tell me what he knew. No, not asked. I begged him. I cried, pulled on his clothes, lost every shred of dignity I had left.’
‘And what did Billy do?’
‘Nothing, except that he looked like he wanted to tell me, but something was stopping him.’
‘How do you know it wasn’t just guilt at something he’d done?’
‘Oh, there was guilt, but there was something else too; fear. He knew damn well who killed my daughter. He was just too scared to tell anyone.’
Sheldon was about to say something, but Ted held up his hand. ‘You don’t need to tell me that he was just scared of getting caught. I’ve gone through every possibility in my head, but each time I come back to what I thought when he looked at me, and it was a certainty that he was scared of telling me.’
‘But yesterday you were angry at what his lawyer said to the camera, that he died an innocent man,’ Sheldon said.
‘Just because he didn’t kill Alice doesn’t mean that he’s innocent. He was a coward, and I can’t forgive him for that.’ Ted rose up out of his chair. ‘Follow me,’ he said, and went towards the stairs. Sheldon went after him, not sure what to expect.
Ted was quiet as he climbed the stairs. Sheldon kept a respectable distance as Ted headed straight for the room that he and Tracey had avoided: Alice’s old room. Ted undid the bolt at the top of the door and pushed it open gently, stepping aside to allow Sheldon to enter.
It was a square room, with fitted cupboards at one end and a single bed below them. There was a corkboard of photographs; teenagers having fun, family pets, some people holding beer bottles. The room was clean, and Sheldon could tell that it was cleaned often. There was a picture on the side, in front of a switched-off clock radio. He didn’t need to get too close to know that it was Alice, and that it was the one item that had been added after she’d died. Her head was cocked, smiling, the sunlight shining through her hair like a halo. Sheldon imagined Ted and Emily sitting on the bed, clutching her photograph in the room that Alice had grown up in, from a toddler full of promise to a party-loving student, all of it snatched away by one night at Billy Privett’s house.
Sheldon thought that he had been brought to the room to be reminded of Alice, but he didn’t need to be reminded, because he thought of her every day. Then Ted opened one of the cupboards and Sheldon saw folders lined up, each with a title marked out in bold red on the spine. Friends. Parties. Neighbours.
‘These are all the notes I’ve made from the people I’ve spoken to,’ Ted said, and then he gave a bitter laugh. ‘At least, those who would speak to me.’
Sheldon went towards them and ran his fingers down one of the spines. His fingernails looked long and dirty.
‘Can I look?’ he said.
‘I’ll bring them downstairs,’ Ted said. ‘But first you eat.’
Sheldon was confused. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Inspector …’
‘Sheldon.’
‘Sorry, Sheldon. You don’t look well. You look tired and hungry.’ He pointed out of the room. ‘Have a bath, relax for a few minutes. I’ll find you some clothes. I think I’ve got some that will fit. I’ll make you some food. Then we’ll talk.’
Sheldon felt tears jump into his eyes, and his mind went back to the moment on the church tower, to how that young woman had saved him. He knew Ted was right.
‘I don’t think I’ve been dealing with it very well,’ Sheldon said.
‘No need to explain.’
Sheldon smiled his gratitude, but the choke of his emotions caught in his throat stopped him from speaking.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Charlie knew he had to get rid of the knife first, and so he turned towards Amelia’s house, wanting to put the knife back in the block. Then he would call the police, tell them what he had found, and all about the two men in suits.
He followed the same route back, ducking down back alleys, dodging round the discarded boxes and junk and dogshit, the knife inside his jacket. He was able to circle the town centre without venturing onto the street, his eyes always looking out for an unlocked gate so that he could hide out of view if a police car passed the end of the alley. He emerged onto the main road further down the hill from the town centre, with Amelia’s house on the other side. He wanted to walk there casually, so that he wouldn’t seem suspicious, but just as he was about to cross the road, there were police cars bunched up ahead, blocking off the road near Amelia’s.
Charlie jumped back into the alley, the knife digging into his side. Someone had found her; the news was out.
He turned to retrace his steps, not taking as much care, just wanting to get away from where the police were. He jogged along the alleys that ran behind the terraced streets, short parallel strips that stacked up the hills. His apartment was somewhere to avoid as the two men would still be there, but he knew he had to get rid of the knife before anything. Then Charlie remembered a quarry, now filled with water, a favourite for the local kids whenever the sun came out. If he followed the line of the houses, he would get to it. So he moved quickly, one arm clenching his side to keep the knife lodged there.
A shale path went towards a bramble-covered waste ground and then curved downwards to the lip of the quarry. He checked around, even though he knew it made him look more suspicious, but he couldn’t stop himself. Charlie wanted to know who might have seen him, so he would know who might one day give evidence against him. He had never been in this position before, so he didn’t know the rules.
The quarry appeared as a cliff behind some wooden fencing twenty feet above the water. Charlie peered over. The surface was deep blue and still.
He took the knife out of the bag and looked at it one last time. The sun caught the blade and sent flashes of light to his eyes. He thought of Amelia again, of what harm the knife had done to her, and then took another look around, to make sure that no one was watching. It was quiet, just a brief moment of calm in a day that had so quickly turned his life the wrong way. Then he shook his head, suddenly angry with himself. What about poor Amelia? What had she suffered before she died?
As Charlie held his hand out over the wooden fence, towards the quarry edge, he paused. What he was doing was wrong. He was disposing of a murder weapon. Then he remembered how the evidence looked stacked against him, and so he had to act.
It didn’t take much more than a flick of his wrist and then the knife was tumbling in the air, bright silver flashes as it arced downwards. And then it was out of sight. Charlie didn’t even hear a splash.
Now he just had to work out what had happened.
Images of Amelia kept on coming back to him, and not just her body in her house. Her smile, or the elegant sweep as she came into the office most mornings, tossing her black hair and putting her sunglasses onto her head. They hadn’t been close, but there had been a bond, he realised that now, and suddenly he felt lost.
But he shouldn’t think like that. Sadness over Amelia was no good now. Or was it just self-pity? Whichever it was, it was draining, self-destructive. Everything had changed so quickly, the length of time it took for him to take in what had happened to Amelia. And now there were men in suits looking for him, ones he had seen coming out of the office the day before. The murder weapon had been next to him as he woke.
Charlie thought briefly about the possible explanations, like a jealous boyfriend or disgruntled client, but he came back to one obvious answer: Billy Privett, because Billy was Amelia’s client. But where did Charlie fit into it all? He had nothing to do with Amelia’s death, he knew that. He wasn’t a murderer, it wasn’t in him. If something had happened, he would have remembered it, he was sure of it.
Then the other reality hit home, that if someone else had killed Amelia, they had tried to frame him, and had planted the knife on him. What was the reason for that?
Charlie tried to think that one through, want
ing it clear in his head before he went back into Oulton, so that he would have a plan. He didn’t dare go to the police, because if someone could plant a knife, what else could they do?
Whoever had put the knife there hadn’t expected him to be in the office, because he hadn’t planned to sleep there. So they must have gone to the office for a different reason. And the answer was so obvious; the Billy Privett file. He remembered the burglary. Amelia’s room had been the target, not his, and nothing was taken. That was the night Billy was killed, and the file was the one thing that Amelia had that connected her to his murder. It told Billy’s story. So Amelia must have given up the secrets, Charlie thought, or else why was he still alive?
Charlie got the shivers as snippets of memory came back, snapshots from the night before. He was with Ted, in the pub, The Old Star, but when he left for home, he went for a walk. He had stumbled and fallen into a wall, which must have been how he got the graze on his cheek and on his hand. He remembered people laughing at him, and someone used his name. Then he was in the office, rummaging around Amelia’s room.
He put his hands to his face. There was a hazy recollection now of finding Billy’s file and looking through it, trying to find some snippet to help Ted Kenyon, because in his drunken haze, it had seemed like such a good idea. When he was drunk, he was everyone’s friend. But like all drunken thoughts, such as late night calls made to his ex-girlfriend, it was only ever going to be a bad idea. What had he wanted to do; turn up at Ted’s house, staggering, holding out the file, hoping to be invited in as his saviour, giving him the details of how his daughter died? Not very heroic, when viewed in the harsh glare of sobriety.
So he had been reading the file, but because he was away from the pub and the alcohol had stopped flowing, he’d fallen asleep. So he ended up on the floor, and someone came looking for the file, and then the knife had been planted.
Why hadn’t he been killed too? Was he nothing more than a deflection?
Charlie pulled out his phone and called the office. If the police were there, he wondered whether it would be answered. It rang out a few times, and then a voice came on, meek and nervous. It was Donia.
‘Don’t react,’ Charlie said, talking low so that no one passing by could hear him. ‘If the police are there, just say that Charlie isn’t in the office at the moment.’
There was a pause, and then she repeated what he had told her, that Charlie wasn’t in the office.
So the police were there already. They had moved fast, had obviously found the body, although he realised that the link with Billy Privett sent the investigation straight there.
‘I was reading Billy Privett’s file last night,’ he said. ‘I need to know if it was taken.’
‘I don’t know if I can help you,’ she said, her voice quiet.
‘I need to know about the file, Donia. Is Linda talking to the police?’
‘Yes,’ she said, her voice a whisper.
‘Can you go into my room for me? It will be on the desk, or perhaps on the floor.’
Another pause, and then, ‘What do I do?’
He tried to picture the scene, the police everywhere, but he knew they wouldn’t be able to take all the files. They would want Billy’s though.
‘Just find it,’ he said, some desperation creeping into his voice. He knew what he was going to ask her to do, and it was wrong. Donia was just a kid, a wannabe lawyer looking for some work experience, but he couldn’t think about that. ‘Try on the floor in my room, near to my desk. If it’s there, just put other files on top of it, and my dictation machine. They won’t expect it to be there. Bluff it, say that it’s my typing pile.’
There was a pause, and then the phone went quiet. She had hung up.
Fuck!
Charlie paced up and down and gripped his phone, almost threw it into the quarry. He would have to go to the office for the file, if he was going to get it at all. But what alternatives were there? He could just come out of hiding, blame it all on a bad hangover and invite them to prove something against him. But that was too risky, and he wasn’t ready for a prison cell. No, he had to see what was in the file, if it was still there.
Then his phone buzzed in his hand. He looked at the screen. A text.
Got file. Im in weekly rental flat. Marshall Ave. 66. Fl 6. Go there. Donia.
Charlie looked at the screen, unsure what to make of it. It could be a trap. He didn’t know Donia’s number, so how did she know his? The police might be behind it.
He knew one thing though; he had few options.
He texted her back. OK. Then he turned away from the quarry edge and started jogging towards the town.
Chapter Thirty
Sheldon came down the stairs, rubbing his hair dry with a towel, dressed in Ted’s old clothes; jeans that hung low on his hips and a shirt that revealed the bones in his shoulders. They showed how much weight he had lost, but at least they were clean. As he walked along the hall, Ted was standing in front of a microwave oven, and as he got closer, the smell of curry drifted towards him.
‘Emily has gone away to her sister’s,’ Ted said. ‘This is the best I could do at short notice. Jake hasn’t got beyond the microwave with his cooking skills, but I found this in the fridge. Chicken Madras.’
Sheldon smiled. ‘That’s perfect,’ he said. ‘Did I have anything to do with Emily going?’
‘Yes, you did,’ he said, a scowl appearing for a moment. ‘She was expecting more visits from you and couldn’t stand the thought of me being locked up.’ He sighed. ‘It was more than that though.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You remember the girl in the car? Well, she believed me about that, or at least she said she did, but there is that small part of her that doubts me, because it sounds implausible, doesn’t it? It sounds like bullshit, but I can’t change what happened, and Emily knows that since Alice died, well, we’ve been pretty quiet in the bedroom.’
‘I don’t need to know this,’ Sheldon said.
‘I know that, but who do I have to talk to?’ Ted said. There was some desperation in his voice, as if he needed to explain himself, his words coming out quickly. ‘Alice being killed affected both of us badly. I dealt with it by becoming more vocal about it, but Emily just retreated. She spends hours in Alice’s room, just lying on her bed, hoping that one day Alice will walk back in. I can’t blame her for not being interested in sex anymore. Hell, I don’t think I’m too bothered. It just wouldn’t seem right to be so carefree, as if we had forgotten about her already. But Emily thinks I’m lying, just to be kind, because I’m a man, and we have urges, right? So there is a small part of Emily that wonders if I was with that girl, because I just needed something, like some closeness, or even just a release. And so I could see it in her eyes, that if I lied about that, perhaps I lied about Billy Privett, and that I did kill him.’
‘So Emily thinks you killed Billy?’
Ted shook his head. ‘No, she doesn’t, because she knows me, but there is a small part of her that is not prepared to rule it out, like with the girl.’
‘I’m sorry if I made it worse,’ Sheldon said. ‘I just haven’t been myself lately.’
‘No need,’ Ted said, and pointed Sheldon through to the dining room, next to the kitchen and separated from the living room by wooden double doors. There was a conservatory behind, filled with cane furniture and potted plants. In the dining room, there was a large mahogany cabinet with glass shelving units. On top there was a framed photograph of the Kenyon family, showing Ted and Emily sitting at the table, beaming proudly with their children behind them, Alice’s arms wrapped around Ted’s neck, and Jake’s around his mother’s.
Ted brought the curry through, and saw Sheldon looking at the photograph.
‘That’s the last picture of us together,’ Ted said. ‘I didn’t donate it to the police for a press release because it would taint it. It would be the picture they splashed on the news when they talked about her. I wanted to remember the afterno
on as it was, everyone happy. Alice died the weekend after.’
Sheldon felt a wave of sadness as he thought of his own family. It was still intact then, or at least he thought it was. As he thought more about it though, perhaps it wasn’t. He couldn’t remember a family photograph as happy as that, not since Hannah was a small girl, when all he had to do was be there.
Sheldon turned away from the photograph and thanked Ted for the food. As he sat down to eat it, he became ravenous and realised how much he had neglected himself. Ted watched him eat for a while and then said, ‘If we are sharing information, you tell me: what suspects did you have?’
Sheldon paused as he thought of it. ‘None, other than Billy. We knew who some of his friends were, because we had been up there enough times over party noise before Alice died, but everyone had an alibi that they could prove. And anyway, we believed them, because they all said the same thing, that Billy hadn’t invited them up for a few weeks. It was as if he had got himself new friends.’
‘And you couldn’t find out who they were?’
Sheldon shook his head. ‘There was blood at the scene, but we don’t know whose. Did you find anything out?’
Ted shook his head. ‘I thought people were embarrassed at first, about what had gone on up at Billy’s house, because his money loosened clothes and no one would tell me too much. Except that Billy had new friends, but no one knew who they were. Some people had gone up and Billy wouldn’t let them in, and on the drive were old vans, and there were Goth-type kids, all in black, different to Billy’s usual crowd. Billy’s old friends were from the estate, people with no money helping Billy to spend his.’
Sheldon stopped eating for a moment and said, ‘Do you have any suspicions?’
‘Drugs,’ Ted said. ‘People told me that there were always a lot of drugs at the house, but they thought Billy was running out of money. He used to buy cars just so they could race them on the field behind his house, but for the few months before Alice’s death all he had done was repair the old ones. And he was starting to buy dodgy vodka, and was selling the drugs, cocaine and cannabis mainly, not giving it away. That’s why people weren’t as bothered about missing out on the parties. Too many people had watched their boyfriends or girlfriends sleep with other people, just because the mood was right, but if they were going to have to pay for it, what’s the point, right? Billy thought he was Mister Popular, but he wasn’t. He was just the mug willing to spend his money.’