The Suspects

by Katharine Johnson

  “They must know something about Stuart that we don’t,” said Imogen, wrapping her coat around herself. “They wouldn’t make an arrest unless they were certain. They must think they’ve got enough evidence for a trial.”

  “But he can’t have killed Xanthe,” I said. “I can just about believe he killed Bob/Oskar in a fit of rage but not Xanthe – even if she made him look like an idiot. He couldn’t have got to her. We know where he was that weekend. We all three came back together from Spud U Like and found Stuart tied up which makes it impossible.”

  “Although that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s not responsible,” Zak said, digging his hands into his pockets. “I’ve thought about this a lot. What if Stuart asked someone to tie him up to give him an alibi because he’d already killed Xanthe?”

  I held my hair back from the wind. “Are you serious? Stuart wouldn’t do that. Not to Xanthe. He loved her – in a way.”

  “Yes, but she was going to destroy his future. You heard him talking about his time in the detention centre. He’d do anything to avoid getting sent back into the system. Getting a place on the training scheme – he must have felt he’d turned his life around. But if Xanthe found out he killed Oskar and was going to the police he’d lose everything.”

  “I don’t know,” said Imogen. “I still don’t think he’s got it in him to do it. Although I suppose it’s just possible he could have arranged for someone else to kill her.”

  “How would Stuart know how to organise a hitman?” I asked. “You don’t just put an ad in the paper, do you?”

  Imogen shrugged. “He’s been Inside remember? He knows people. I’m guessing it’s just a question of having the right contacts.”

  It still didn’t seem believable.

  “First Xanthe gone and now Stuart. It feels as if we’re being taken out one by one. Who’s going to be next?”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  In those weeks after Stuart’s arrest we barely slept. I sat up all night hugging Liv to me, not knowing how I could let them take me from her. Every time I picked her up I thought it might be the last time. Sometimes Zak got there before me. He was much better at this baby business than I’d expected, handling the nappy changes and bottle paraphernalia without question. Listening to him sing to her and seeing her strung exhausted across his chest as he slept gave me glimpses of a future in which we were a conventional family and our life at number 17 a distant memory like a bad dream.

  I didn’t dare do any Christmas shopping – I felt it would be tempting fate – except for a few items for Liv which I wrapped and wrote labels for. I also bought eighteen cards and wrote on them for her in case I wouldn’t be around to give them to her in person and left them with Jess just in case the police found them and saw them as an admission of guilt. But in the end the four of us spent Christmas together in the house and kept ourselves busy on New Year’s Eve to try and take our minds off the events of a year ago.

  The trial took place the following spring. It was chucking it down as we travelled by taxi to the court, the streets merging into a wash of colour as fallen cherry blossom slushed like snow under the tyres. Outside, people scurried under umbrellas that lifted in the wind, and took refuge in the bright shelter of the shops. All that stress about what to wear, how much to spend, which size to get – if only they could see that none of it actually mattered.

  It was a shock to see Stuart sitting isolated in the box at the back of the courtroom when I was called up to the witness stand. It had all happened so suddenly after Xanthe's funeral and we hadn't even had the chance to say goodbye. We'd visited him while he was on remand but had clung to the hope it would never come to this. My mouth was dry. I answered the questions as best I could, not knowing what had been said before me, but whatever I said seemed to be taken as confirmation of Stuart's guilt and a couple of times I caught his reproachful, hate-filled stare.

  We’d hoped of course that Rick would help Stuart but he refused. Now that Xanthe and Oskar were both dead there was no one to corroborate our story that he knew Oskar, had bribed him to commit perjury or had anything to do with him the night he died. Besides, we’d agreed to keep Rick’s secret in return for him guarding ours – it was the only way.

  “One of you has to fall so the rest can walk.”

  We only chose Stuart because the police already had him and his alibi was the weakest. They knew he’d lied about his car being stolen, they knew it had been used to transport Oskar and they knew about his temper. In his original statement he hadn’t said anything about being tied up but was now relying on it to prove his innocence.

  Stuart was wearing the suit he’d bought for the trade show in Birmingham that was slightly too short in the arms. His scarlet neck portrayed the stress he was under.

  He caught my eye a few times during the proceedings and I understood something of the horror he was feeling and I wished there was something more we could do.

  The jury didn’t have to be told about Stuart’s previous conviction but for some reason the Defence thought it wise to bring it up at the start so there would be no surprises later. It seemed a risky strategy. He laid it on thick that Stuart was a reformed character. The one awful mistake he’d made in his youth had been punished. The short, sharp shock system had been effective, taught him a lesson he’d never forget and having tasted the penal system once he’d never let himself go down that road again.

  To give him his due Donald did admirably as a character witness, praising Stuart’s dedication to his work, respect for interviewees, his chivalry towards colleagues and ability to remain calm under the pressure of news deadlines.

  The lawyers spent a long time conjecturing over whether Stuart could have untied himself, done the deed and tied himself up again. The prosecution had some escapologist demonstrate it could be done by tying one knotted loop first, then all the other knots and putting his hand through the loop last, pulling it tight with his teeth.

  “This is a joke,” said Zak and earned himself a glare from the judge.

  When it was Stuart’s turn to speak I waited for him to drop us all in it which he could easily have done but he didn’t. His voice sounded clipped and his face went taut, his mouth slipping to the side as he spoke. He drank sips of water between questions.

  I studied the jury and wondered what they made of him. I tried to imagine I was hearing the details in the same way that they were. Would his posh voice and terse replies count against him or would they see through the pride and anger to the vulnerability and the honesty in his expression?

  But other things came out too at the trial – things we hadn’t been aware of. A witness had overheard Stuart tell Oskar to get out of the house and he’d been seen pursuing Oskar down the hall towards the cellar door. One of the advertising team on Golfing Weekly said that they’d heard him arguing with Oskar in the basement.

  When asked if he was sure it was Stuart shouting, the man said, “A hundred per cent.”

  “Bloody liar,” murmured Imogen.

  But blood particles had been found on one of Stuart’s hoodies which matched Xanthe’s blood and a motorist had seen a man of Stuart’s height and build wearing a matching maroon hoody emerging from the grassy bank onto the road close to where Xanthe was eventually found, brushing leaves off his trousers. I saw sweat glistening on Stuart’s forehead as he admitted he had no explanation for these things. I kept my eyes on him but he wouldn’t look in my direction. I began to wonder if we, rather than the jury, had been misled.

  The trial went on for a couple of weeks but there was a horrible sense of inevitability about it. Addressing Stuart at the end the judge said,

  “You told one lie after another. On both occasions your deliberately misleading actions interfered with police investigations and left two families in the agony of ignorance. You showed a callous disregard for your victims, one of whom not only knew you but counted you as a friend.

  “You gave no thought to the feelings of those families. Your only concern
was to save your own skin. You’ve shown no remorse for what you did and despite the evidence you chose to plead not guilty. As you must have realised this has led to a lengthy trial which has not only cost the State a considerable amount of money but put the families through the needless additional suffering.”

  I watched Stuart’s pale face empty of expression as the sentence was passed. Life imprisonment. He closed his eyes. A member of Oskar’s family cheered and a woman I recognised from Xanthe’s funeral said she hoped he’d rot in hell. Stuart had no relations present.

  Oskar’s family read a statement outside the court saying that Stuart’s sentence was minor in comparison to theirs. “He’ll be out in a few years, living his life. But he hasn’t given the family any explanation as to why he killed Oskar and nothing can bring Oskar back to us. So how can we call it justice?”

  Xanthe’s family’s lawyer read a statement as her parents clung to each other for support.

  “Charlotte’s only mistake was in being too trusting. She thought she’d found a friend in Stuart Mountford and the other people she bought the house with. For that lapse in judgement she paid with her life.”

  “What happens now?” I asked our lawyer at the end of the trial. “Will they come for us?”

  “My hunch is that if he was going to charge you with perjury he’d have kept you there today,” she said. “It could still happen but for now that’s it. I suggest you make the most of your lives. Have you booked a holiday yet?”

  We stepped out into the late afternoon sun. People were streaming out of offices and congregating outside the pubs along the river. I felt drawn to it all in a nostalgic way but all I wanted to do was get home to Livvy.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  After the sentence we travelled back to the house in silence. Mrs Parker was looking out for us, holding Liv who was fast asleep and blissfully unaware of the events going on around her.

  “She’s been an angel,” said Mrs Parker. “I’ll miss her if you move away. I suppose you will now, won’t you?”

  It seemed the only solution. We couldn’t get out fast enough. The mortgage rate had gone up to fifteen percent and the chances of being able to rent out Stuart and Xanthe’s rooms to cover their shares were miniscule now everyone knew what had happened. The only people who were likely to be attracted by a house like this weren’t the sort you’d want as housemates.

  Mrs Parker followed us next door, giving us a rundown of the baby’s feeds and nappies.

  Liv woke up as soon as we crossed the threshold, as if she knew it was a bad place. The house seemed so much bigger and emptier than before and her cries filled the space. I picked her up and soothed her. It felt so good to be reunited after a day apart.

  “I don’t know how you can bear to sleep here,” said Mrs Parker. “I have to say we were rocked by the news. We both thought – and no offence to the rest of you – that he was the trustworthy one. Just goes to show doesn’t it?”

  I found myself apologising for our behaviour – the noise and the parties. Now we knew our neighbours better I felt a bit ashamed of what we’d put them through.

  “It hasn’t been so bad lately,” she said.

  We stood in Stuart’s room which seemed cleaner and starker than ever. It was impossible to believe he wasn’t coming back, that he wouldn’t be striding around calling us “my furry friends”, ordering house meetings and shouting at us for leaving our underwear drying on the radiators or not taking our mugs back to the kitchen.

  Over the next few days we’d have to pack away his scant belongings. I picked up the picture of Skye that I’d been looking at that time when Stuart found me in his room. It was the only time I’d felt frightened with him and I’d convinced myself afterwards that it had all been in my head.

  “I still can’t believe it either,” I said. “I know he had a temper and I know he was going to pieces but I thought I knew him. I thought he was basically good.”

  “Why on earth did he do it?” asked Mrs Parker. “He hasn’t given any explanation. Was it the usual?”

  I was distracted by checking Livvy’s nappy. “I’m sorry? What’s the usual?”

  “Oh you know – jealousy. Sexual rivalry.”

  “No. We don’t know what it was but I’m sure it wasn’t that.”

  “Only I thought there might have been a falling out between him and that dark one.”

  “Zak?”

  “No, no. The other chappie that used to be around a lot, with the dark hair. We could never work out how many of you there were to tell the truth.”

  “You mean Rick? Tall, wears a suit most of the time?”

  “That’s the one. Perhaps they had a row over Charlotte, you know.”

  “Xanthe – Charlotte - wasn’t going out with either of them,” I said. I could imagine this sort of conjecture going on in houses around the country. When would it stop?

  “Well she got into his car. The dark one’s.”

  My hands froze. “Sorry, when was that?”

  “The very last time we saw her. We were just going out. She was about to go off in that funny little car of hers when he turned up and she went off with him.”

  “Wait. Can you say that again?”

  Olivia was still crying when Mrs Parker left.

  “I’ll take her.” Zak lifted her gently out of my arms.

  I went back to Stuart’s room where Imogen was still standing looking out of the window at the space where Xanthe’s car used to stand before her parents had collected all her stuff.

  “What if she’s right?” she said. “What if Rick did come to the house on the night Xanthe disappeared?”

  “We don’t know it was the same night,” I said.

  She turned and I saw the fear in her eyes. “But I remember he rang me at work the day I went to the press trip in Harrogate. He said he was going to call round – he wanted to talk. Only I didn’t get the message until the Monday. But what if he did come and what if he hurt Xanthe?”

  “Killed her you mean?” Zak stepped into the room. “Why didn’t you tell us this before?”

  “Because I didn’t think it was important. I didn’t know he’d come. He didn’t say anything about it. And well, I was still angry at you lot because you didn’t tell me about Oskar. I was still trying to sort it out in my head.”

  “You think Xanthe went somewhere with Rick that night?” I asked. “Why would she have done that? You don’t think they were seeing each other, do you?”

  Imogen smiled at the idea. To be fair I couldn’t think of any two people more mismatched. “No. I reckon Xanthe was going to the police just as Stuart says. She tied Stuart up so he wouldn’t be able to stop her, but Rick overheard their conversation and went after her. I don’t know what happened. Something must have gone wrong.”

  “Jesus, I hope you know what you’ve done,” said Zak.

  “But I don’t think he could have killed her. You heard what they said today about Xanthe’s blood particles on Stuart’s hoody.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “You know, I thought he was the love of my life. Now I wonder if I was just an alibi.”

  ***

  The following day we paid Rick a surprise visit in his Richmond office. His face brightened when he saw Imogen and paled when he saw us. He agreed to talk in more discreet surroundings, so we walked down by the river. It was too cold for most people to be walking except for one or two with dogs who moved briskly, ears muffled by woolly hats although it was spring.

  “We want the truth,” Zak told him. “And don’t piss about this time.”

  Rick sat down on one of the benches and we stood around.

  “I didn’t touch her. All right, maybe I clutched her, tried to stop her getting away. But I didn’t hurt her. I wouldn’t have. I saw her in her car outside the house. She was trying to get it started. I could see she was agitated. She was crying, shouting, thumping the steering wheel. I offered her a lift to wherever she was going. She said she was visiting a friend. But she asked me
to drop her off when we were just around the corner from the police station. I got suspicious. I speeded up and drove away.

  I wanted to talk to her, just needed her to calm down. I drove out past the football ground. I thought if we could go for a drink somewhere quiet I could talk her round. I don’t know if she thought I had other intentions, but she was hysterical, she wouldn’t listen to me. We were passing the woods, driving at forty, and she opened the door. I hauled her back in. She started hitting me.

  I pulled off the road, down a small lane. We came to a stop. I told her all I wanted to do was talk. I thought I was getting somewhere, persuading her that yes there was a chance the police would believe Oskar’s death was an accident but there was a bigger chance they wouldn’t, and it wasn’t worth the risk for any of us.

  “She said she couldn’t take the pressure any more – the guilt. And she was going to drop me right in it – pin everything on me. I had to stop her. Everything I’d worked so hard for would have been taken away. What future would I have? I worked my arse off for this career. I’d already lost Imogen and lost the house. I couldn’t have her throw away what little I had left.

  “I was trying to explain that she couldn’t do it without implicating herself and the rest of you. She grabbed the door again. I tried to stop her. She broke away. I jumped out and ran after her through the trees. It was pissing down and the ground was slippery. I tried to catch her but she ran out towards the road below. I couldn’t risk being seen so I retreated back into the woods.”

  “So you didn’t see,” said Zak at last. “But you must have heard.”

  Rick pressed his fingers into his head. “Of course I heard. I heard the brakes screech and the noise of the impact. I heard someone scream. It was probably her.”

  “For fuck’s sake, you know it was her.”

  He looked up, his eyes bloodshot. “All right, but I didn’t kill her. It wasn’t me. Much as you don’t want to believe it, the police got the right man.”