Lies That Blind

by Tony Hutchinson

  Ed remained silent.

  ‘Maybe I should have done more to find her?’

  Val looked away, sniffed again, before turning back to Ed.

  ‘When she was about ten, we both lived with my parents by the way, I met George at a church. Lovely man. We went out a few times, then I introduced him to Tara and within six months Tara and myself had moved in with him, into this house.’

  ‘It’s a nice house,’ Ed threw a glance around the room.

  ‘Thank you. When Tara hit twelve, she became very willful, the whole ‘you’re not my dad’ scenario. It was pretty dreadful. George tried everything with her, but mostly she resented him, was absolutely awful towards him.’

  Time to push, Ed thought.

  ‘Awful in what way?’

  Val Lee took a moment, composing herself, heading to a darker place.

  ‘At thirteen Tara was very aware that she was attractive. Make-up, raising her school skirt, strutting around like she was on a catwalk. Then it was smoking and drinking. I blocked out thoughts she might be having sex.’

  Now the words began firing out so quickly they barely had time to form.

  ‘I’d gone out one night to visit my mum and dad. Tara and George stayed in. They were having one of their better spells. I got back and Tara started screaming, saying George had been watching her in the shower.’

  Val Lee put her hand to her lips, looked at her knees, whispered: ‘Awful.’

  Ed let the silence stretch.

  Val looked up, speed talking again.

  ‘I told her not to be ridiculous. She shouted, and please pardon my language, ‘you stop being fucking ridiculous.’ Her language was appalling. I don’t swear. And then…’

  She started chewing her index finger.

  ‘Then she accused him of trying to rape her, ripping off her towel, pushing her onto the bed. She said she fought him off.’

  Val took a deep breath.

  ‘And you didn’t believe her?’

  Val’s mouth dropped open and her legs pushed her out of the chair. ‘Of course I didn’t believe her, and I didn’t lower myself by asking George to defend himself.’

  Sam pulled over at a Costa and ignored the irritating woman on her SatNav repeating, ‘make a U-turn when possible.’

  Her next meeting was a couple of hours away, but so was the location.

  She bought a flat white, sat at a picnic table and savoured a Marlboro Gold.

  Nothing was certain in her mind with the exception that Zac Williams had been set up. He had not been the killer, had not shot anybody.

  The whole crime scene had been staged, faked to give the impression the killer was a jealous young man with an interest in serial killers who died behind their own guns.

  Sam slugged on the coffee and smoked.

  But how would the real killer, whoever that was, keep Zac under control? Zac would probably be compliant as long as Lucy was alive, but once she was dead?

  And if he knew Lucy was dead, why would Zac go to the window with the rifle in his hands? Why not scream out for help? Did he believe Lucy was still alive?

  And what had he said to Ed? ‘Help’s not coming’. What did that mean?

  Something, or someone, was keeping him compliant.

  Tara?

  The only means of leaving that house unnoticed once the siege began and before the rapid entry occurred was through the loft into Tara’s house.

  What if she was in Zac’s house?

  How much of the truth had she told? All of it? None of it?

  Tara Paxman…

  Sam was beginning to feel just a little out of control and that was never a good thing.

  Chapter 49

  ‘That was the end of the relationship with my parents,’ Val said. ‘They couldn’t understand how I wouldn’t believe Tara. She told them about the peeping and they were devastated. When she walked out of my life, she walked out of theirs too.’

  ‘She uses the surname Paxman.’

  ‘Really?’ A sadness came over her. ‘My mother’s maiden name.’

  ‘Why not use your maiden name?’

  ‘Maybe she liked Paxman better, maybe she didn’t want to use mine.’

  Ed heard the back door open, a voice calling ‘darling I’m home’ and a whirring noise he couldn’t place.

  As soon as George Lee came into the orangery Ed understood.

  ‘This is Sergeant Whelan,’ Val said.

  Ed stood up.

  George maneuvered his electric wheelchair across the wood flooring and the two men shook hands.

  Val explained why Ed was there and he sat back down.

  ‘Tara was always difficult, but I never blamed her,’ George said.

  Val smiled at him.

  ‘Tara was ten when she and Val moved in here. Big change for a young girl. New house, new school, no more getting spoilt by her grandparents. And looking back…well I was probably a bit hard on her.’

  ‘No you weren’t,’ Val said, shuffling on her seat.

  Ed kept his eyes on George, said nothing.

  ‘I kept nagging her about the state of her bedroom. When she hit her teens it became worse. It was always a cause of friction.’

  Ed nodded. ‘I’ve got a daughter myself. I remember the teenage years well.’

  George Lee gave Ed a weak smile.

  ‘I was probably worse because of my background. Ex- military and all that. How I ended up in this bloody thing. Iraq.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Ed said, which seemed inadequate, inappropriate somehow.

  George smiled more warmly this time.

  ‘Not your fault mate. Blame the politicians. And me, of course, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. IED went off and that was it for my spinal cord.’

  Ed nodded.

  ‘Could have been worse,’ George continued. ‘Mates died out there.’ He shook his head slowly, the smile gone. ‘For what?’

  He spun his wheelchair around and headed for the kitchen.

  Ed understood Val’s tight smile.

  Just give him a minute.

  ‘I met George when he got back home,’ she said. ‘He came to a church service, and the rest as they say…’

  ‘Brave man,’ Ed said, noticing for the first time the small photograph of George in uniform. He was with two other soldiers, obviously somewhere hot.

  ‘Very,’ Val was saying. ‘He could never understand why any woman would want to be with him, being paralysed, everything that it meant…called himself half a man. But I wanted companionship and I got that from George. More than I ever got from bloody Frank Worthington with all his flash and long hair.’

  Ed nodded. ‘Like the footballer from the 70s.’

  Val Lee’s mouth fell into a tight grimace.

  ‘That’s who he thought he was,’ she said. ‘A poor man’s football star.’

  Ed had instantly pictured the player as soon as Val mentioned the name – which football fan back then didn’t know it?– but the Frank Worthington he was thinking of now wasn’t famous…he was a Mason and a wanker, but he wasn’t famous.

  ‘I’ve put the kettle on,’ George said coming back to the room, the smile restored. ‘Do you want one Sarge.’

  ‘I’m fine thanks,’ Ed said, smiling at how easily George Lee had dropped back into rank structure. ‘I should really get going.’ Ed pushed against the cane arm and stood up.

  ‘Did you have a specialty in the military, corporal?’

  George returned the smile, acknowledged Ed’s courtesy. ‘Sniper.’

  Ed whistled softly: ‘Impressive.’

  ‘You still do clays now don’t you darling,’ Val with pride in her voice.

  Ed stepped towards the door then turned to George Lee.

  ‘Gets me out in the fresh air,’ George said. ‘Not quite as scientific as taking a proper shot, no need to measure distance and wind speed, but it keeps my eye in and the legs that don’t work don’t stop me competing against the legs that do.’

  ‘
I’m still impressed,’ Ed said.

  George held out his arm. Ed shook his hand.

  ‘It’s just great to be able to compete, sarge, and it gets me out of the house. If the skeet’s somewhere decent we make a long weekend of it.’

  ‘Tara used to come with us didn’t she darling,’ Val said.

  ‘She did. She was a really good shot.’

  Ed drove along the A19 until he reached the services at Exelby, a few miles north of Northallerton.

  Tara can shoot?

  He needed to write things down, join the dots.

  Tara’s mother was no alcoholic; George Lee was neither alcohol dependent or physically capable of raping Tara.

  What did that mean, apart from the obvious?

  He wrote ‘liar’ next to Tara’s name and underlined it three times.

  Next he wrote ‘Frank Worthington’. He’d joined the Masons a few years after Ed, really loved himself.

  Ed wrote ‘full of shit’ next to his name.

  Ed could see him going for Val Lee: young, attractive and naïve. And in return, he could see Val falling for his brash bullshit.

  Property developer? More like a front to launder drugs money although nothing had ever been proved.

  He’d poshed up his name to Worthington-Hotspur after claiming he was a descendent of Sir Henry Percy, aka Harry Hotspur, the medieval Northumberland nobleman who took up arms against Henry 1V.

  Had someone targeted his son to get at him? Make the father suffer?

  After the siege, Tara said she’d introduced Marcus Worthington-Hotspur to Lucy Spragg.

  Was that true?

  Had Tara slept with Marcus?

  Would she have known she was having sex with her half-brother? If that was a yes, what did that make Tara?

  Would she want to kill Marcus to take revenge on a father who abandoned her before she was even born?

  And what about Lester Stephenson, Harry Pullman, Hugh Campbell? Where did they fit in?

  Ed typed out a text.

  Tara is not what she seems. Be careful.

  Before he pressed send a thought occurred to him. Facebook.

  Something Val Lee said about Tara’s grandmother?

  It wasn’t hard to find a picture. Tara and her gran Penelope.

  Penelope Paxman until she married. Then Penelope Stephenson.

  Ed added to the text.

  She’s Lester Stephenson’s granddaughter

  Chapter 50

  Rain hammered against the windows, Ullswater hidden by darkness, but Tara didn’t care. Sitting in one of the tub chairs she had admired the view of the barman for hours. The man was still fit.

  Not that she had stared at him all the time; she was reading her Wainwright, the ‘Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells: The Eastern Fells’, the first in the collection that covered the Patterdale Valley.

  Her third gin and tonic was almost empty.

  He walked over to her. ‘Another one mademoiselle?’

  She checked her watch. 7pm.

  ‘No thank you Pierre.’

  The great thing about name badges is you don’t have to ask.

  Pierre bent down, leaned in close. ‘I finish in thirty minutes if you would like a walk.’

  ‘Best not,’ Tara said, fighting her instincts. ‘Busy day tomorrow. But thanks anyway.’

  Pierre didn’t push it. He’d probably already stepped beyond what the hotel would consider appropriate guest/staff boundaries.

  Tara finished her drink, walked out of the bar, through reception and stepped outside.

  Light glowed from the huge orangery and the driveway was well illuminated, but across the road Helvellyn was barely visible, a 950-metre mountain reduced to a dark, foreboding outline.

  Tara took a deep breath.

  Walking to the hotel had seemed a good idea at 3pm when it was still daylight; the bar in the White Lion had been quiet and she was glad of a change of scenery. But now, in the darkness…

  People who spend their lives in towns and cities under streetlamps have no idea how dark it gets in the country.

  Tara was about to find out.

  The man in the corner of the bar folded up his broadsheet newspaper, placed a disposable coaster over the pint of lager he’d spent an hour sipping and walked through the French doors onto the patio.

  He didn’t think any of the older residents scattered around the place were taking any notice of him, although you could never be sure.

  He was meticulously unmemorable: black polo shirt, black jeans, black trainers; short brown hair, no tattoos, no distinguishing marks. At 5’8” he was one of life’s grey men and that’s how he liked it.

  He took a cigarette, lit up and hastily blew out the smoke. He didn’t inhale. He despised cigarettes, but needed an excuse to be outside and the most natural reason to leave the warmth of a hotel lounge was to smoke.

  He walked away from the window and sent the text he’d typed earlier.

  She’s on the move

  By the time Tara got to the end of the drive her jeans were soaked. The lights from the Glenridding Hotel were on, the shops opposite in shadow. Beyond, it was as dark as the ghost train she’d enjoyed as a child, in the days before her mother got in tow with the cripple.

  It was less than a mile to Patterdale and the White Lion but in the dark, in the rain, twenty minutes would be an eternity.

  The street was deserted and silent but Tara’s imagination found shadows and noises behind every bush, around every corner.

  Tara started singing under her breath, although Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ probably wasn’t the best choice to calm the knot of fear tightening in her stomach even though it was nowhere near midnight.

  Her heart banged so fast she thought it was going to burst clean out of her chest and make its own bid for freedom.

  When she saw the soft-focus glow of the mini-market 100 metres ahead the relief made Tara laugh out loud, like the moment the doors would swing open at the end of that ghost train and the demons were left behind in the darkness.

  Then as the distance closed, she saw him.

  Someone was outside the mini-market standing statue still and silent.

  Who the fuck’s that? In this weather.

  Head bowed and eyes flicking to her right, she fought the urge to run or call out, concentrated on breathing with the panic running like ice water through her veins.

  Maybe he would cross the road, cut her off.

  She narrowed the gap between them and thrust her hands into her coat pockets, her head still down.

  She summoned the courage to glance quickly sideways as she drew level.

  The figure stayed motionless in the rain.

  She was relieved and angry at the same time, mind playing tricks on her.

  Get a grip you stupid cow.

  She smiled at the red post box – the motionless figure - and gulped in breaths of relief.

  His moving lips touched the yellow Motorola walkie-talkie gripped in his right hand.

  ‘She’s approaching the Glenridding Hotel, heading towards Patterdale.’

  He put the device, so much more reliable in the mountains than a mobile, on the passenger seat, grabbed the wheel with his left hand, and shuffled himself into position to drive off.

  His window was open just enough to keep the air circulating and the windscreen clear. The rusty Land Rover Discovery, stationary in a line of parked cars on a side road opposite the hotel, was as common in the Lake District as a baked bean was in a tin of Heinz.

  His left foot depressed the clutch, right foot hovered over the accelerator.

  The noise of another vehicle caused his thumb and index finger to freeze around the ignition key.

  He slumped down behind the wheel and watched the car drive past the Glenridding Hotel towards Patterdale.

  There was no rush. Let that one get out of the way. He knew where she was going.

  He stared at his wrist, watched the second hand tick through sixty seconds before mov
ing off.

  He didn’t put the headlights on.

  Tara, Tara, Tara. What’s your game?

  Finding her in that hotel had been easy. His accomplice, a man she had never met, walked into the handful of bars in the area and found her by the window reading a little green book. After that, it was just case of waiting.

  Of course, finding her without any idea where she was hiding would have been impossible. They had that bent bastard Whelan to thank for that.

  He turned right at the mini-market, emerged onto the main road and grabbed the walkie-talkie.

  ‘Where the fuck’s she gone?’ he said into the Motorola.

  The second man was in the car park to the driver’s left, behind the Glenridding Hotel, next to the steamer station.

  ‘How the fuck do I know?’

  The radios hissed crackling static.

  ‘I’m walking up towards the road now. It’s fuckin’ pitch black here.’

  ‘You were supposed to be hiding near the road waiting for her, you dick,’ the driver said, slowing the Discovery, turning on the headlights at full beam, looking left and right.

  ‘It was pissing down so I went to find a tree for shelter,’ the second man said. ‘Found one near the boat thing.’

  ‘Well get up here quick. She can’t just vanish. We need to find her before she gets back to the pub.’

  Radio static was replaced by the sound of light, rapid footsteps, the man sprinting towards the road, finger still on the transmit button.

  He was breathless in seconds: ‘I’m running up to the road,’ he panted.

  The Discovery headed into Patterdale, the driver watching the road and trying to look over the dry stone walls at the same time.

  ‘Fuck,’ he shouted, the palms of his hands slamming the steering wheel.

  He turned around in the White Lion car park, headed back towards Glenridding.

  ‘No sign of her,’ he said through the window to his wet, breathless accomplice.

  ‘She can’t have just vanished.’

  ‘Well she has. Something’s spooked her. She’s hiding. No way did she have time to get to the White Lion. She’s got to be close. Jump in.’