And So It Begins

by Rachel Abbott

  Stephanie said nothing and watched as the detective continued his questioning. She couldn’t help comparing Evie’s quiet composure with Cleo’s raw emotion of the night before.

  ‘Why did you set the scene so carefully? The attending officer said the room was full of candles – was it a seduction scene?’ Nick asked.

  ‘I told you. I wanted to break the pattern. Mark liked the room to be dark. I don’t think he wanted to see my face when he was hurting me. I thought the candles might distract him – maybe they would give just enough light to stop him. It would be harder to blow out a dozen candles than switch off a light, and I always felt that the darkness allowed him to imagine it was someone else he was hurting. Mia maybe.’

  Stephanie felt a pulse of excitement. She had always been uncomfortable with Mia North’s death. Had Mark been abusing her too?

  ‘Why would he want to imagine he was hurting Mia?’ the detective asked, earning himself a grunt of reproach from Gus, who of course he could neither see nor hear.

  ‘Mark was carrying a weight of guilt around with him about Mia’s death. I think he felt responsible in some way, as if he could have prevented it. But he blamed her too. Maybe he wanted to punish her for leaving him – I don’t know. I’ve never understood how his mind works – does anyone understand an abuser?’

  ‘Move on, move on,’ Gus was whispering urgently. Stephanie tutted and he swivelled towards her. ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t we need to understand if this was a pattern?’ she said.

  ‘Mark North’s not the one on trial here. Neither he nor his wife are alive to tell us what happened in their marriage, so we need to focus on his death, not on something we can only make suppositions about.’

  Gus turned back, and Stephanie hated to admit that he might be right. Her attention switched back to the interview.

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ the detective said. ‘You wanted to change the atmosphere by lighting the candles. Very conveniently the lights went out. Are you telling me you had nothing to do with that?’

  Evie stared back at him without flinching. ‘Of course I didn’t. When the lights were on I was safe. When they were off I was in danger. Maybe Mark did something to the switch so it would be dark from the start. It was only because I’d put the candles in there that I was safe – or I thought I was.’

  ‘So talk us through what happened with the knife.’

  Evie sat up, leaning slightly forwards, a trace of irritation rising momentarily to the surface. ‘I told you. I handed him the knife to open his present.’

  ‘And what happened then?’

  ‘He said he would open it later and asked me to get undressed, ready for bed. That’s when I started to get scared, but I thought I could distract him. He got into bed next to me and I reached for him, but the knife proved too much of a temptation. For the first time he didn’t seem to care that it wasn’t fully dark.’

  Evie lifted her bandaged forearms as if providing evidence.

  ‘He laid me down on the bed and held both my wrists above my head with one of his hands. He got the knife and started to cut into my arms and my chest. I was crying, and he kept saying that he wanted to give me something to remember him by. Then he started to make love to me and he put the knife down on the bedside table. The hairs on his chest were rubbing against my open wounds and it was excruciating. I flung my arm out to the side as I screamed and in the candlelight I could see the lust in his eyes, the thrill of my pain. My hand hit the knife where it lay, and I picked it up, thinking I could cut him too – to see how he liked it. And then I don’t know what happened. I don’t remember – I just remember the agony of his sweat dripping into my open cuts, and I lost it. I didn’t want to kill him. I only wanted to stop him, but I couldn’t help myself – it was all too much and I was certain that he was going to cut me again and again, now that he had a taste for it.’

  After Evie’s description of the last moments of Mark North’s life, they had all agreed that a break was a good idea, and Evie didn’t object this time.

  Gus and Stephanie had escaped to grab a much needed cup of coffee, and as he stirred his drink Gus stared at the swirling liquid.

  ‘I’ve seen so many sad cases of abuse over the years, yet I’ve never had a real answer to one question. What makes a woman stay with a man who is hurting her so badly?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Stephanie replied. ‘People hurt each other in many different ways and I sometimes wonder if there isn’t a hint of the masochist in all of us.’

  ‘That’s a bit cynical, even for a police officer,’ Gus responded with a short laugh.

  She hadn’t meant it to be a dig at him, or at least not consciously.

  ‘There’s something I’ve been wanting to say to you since last night,’ Gus said after a brief pause. He still wasn’t looking at her. ‘Actually, I’ve been wanting to say it for a long time, but given that you wouldn’t speak to me… So I’ll say it now, when you can’t run away. I behaved like an arse, and I’m sorry I hurt you.’

  ‘You didn’t,’ Stephanie replied. ‘You disappointed me.’

  ‘Whatever you say, Steph, but you need to let me apologise. We’ve got to work together, and I think we should clear the air.’

  Stephanie felt her cheeks grow hot. She couldn’t afford to let him get close again.

  ‘Leave it, Gus.’ She could hear the harsh tone of her own voice. ‘We said everything that needed to be said months ago. Concentrate on Evie Clarke and Mark North.’

  ‘Jesus, you’re stubborn,’ he said.

  ‘And you’re an obnoxious prick sometimes, Angus Brodie, but this is my chance at getting into CID, and I’m not going to screw it up because I’ve had the misfortune to be assigned to your team.’

  He lifted his head to look at her and nodded briefly.

  ‘Understood,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to make things difficult. You’re an asset to the team, and I want you to do well.’

  For a moment, neither of them spoke.

  ‘What line are they going to be taking when they resume the interview?’ Stephanie asked, and heard Gus chuckle briefly at her attempt to divert the conversation away from anything personal.

  ‘They’re going to push her on why she killed him, what other options she had, try to determine if it was revenge. We need to cover every angle before we charge her, but I’ve no doubt at all that we will do.’

  ‘You don’t think it was self-defence?’

  Gus tutted. ‘Of course it wasn’t self-defence. She didn’t wrestle the knife off him, we know that. Whether or not we believe the terrible stories of what was going on in that house, the fact is that she waited until he was distracted – making love to her, no less. According to the law, that makes it murder, Steph.’

  26

  ‘You’re doing fine, Evie,’ Harriet said. ‘They’re concentrating the questioning on last night, which makes sense, but they’re going to want to know the background too. We should use this break sensibly – I need you to tell me how it all started. Has he always hurt you, because if he has, they’ll want to understand why you ever moved in with him?’

  Evie got that far-away look in her eyes again, as if she could see a clear vision of every detail of the events that had brought her here.

  ‘Mark didn’t start hurting me until after Lulu was born. He wouldn’t have done anything when I was pregnant, but by the time it started I knew something wasn’t right. I’d felt it brewing for days. He’d been looking at me and smiling, but there was a sense of madness in his eyes that I’d never seen before. I thought it was something to do with his work – an obsession with his latest project.’

  Evie looked down and Harriet gave her a moment, but they couldn’t afford to waste much time. ‘What happened?’

  ‘We were in the kitchen. I’d just put Lulu to bed and I’d gone to make a cup of tea. It was dark outside. I remember it as if it was yesterday. You haven’t seen our home, but there’s a vast window that looks out over the sea. It was
one of those dramatic winter evenings when we could hear the waves crashing onto the rocks below, but we couldn’t see much apart from thick rivers of rain running down the windows. I reached out to switch on the light, but Mark stopped me. “Don’t,” he said. “I love looking out on nights like this.” I knew what he meant – if I’d switched the lights on, all we would have seen was the reflection of ourselves in the glass.’

  Evie paused and looked down at her bandaged arms, rubbing the surface again. Harriet remained silent, knowing she was working up the energy to carry on with what had to be a painful story.

  ‘I walked over to the kettle and switched it on. Mark was leaning against the worktop, watching me. I put tea bags in both mugs and the kettle boiled. I reached for it. “I’ll do that,” he said. “Give me your hand.” I didn’t know what he meant, but I held out my right hand to him. He clutched it in his left hand, stroking the surface of my skin with his thumb. I thought he was going to pull me towards him to give me a kiss, but he yanked my arm across the top of the sink and held it fast. He looked at me – his eyes were burning. Then he picked up the kettle and tipped boiling water over my arm.’

  As Evie continued to list her injuries and the way they had been inflicted, nothing she said came as a shock to Harriet. She had heard it all, and worse, too many times. But there was something in the way Evie told the tale that chilled Harriet. It was as if she was talking about someone else, separating herself from the events so that they would no longer hurt so much.

  ‘I think that’s it,’ she said, turning her blank gaze to Harriet. ‘I’ve told you everything. Is it enough?’

  ‘For me, Evie, any one of those events would be enough. We’ve got to go back in now, but as I said, you’re doing fine. You really are.’

  As Evie and Harriet walked briskly back into the interview room, Stephanie looked at the lawyer’s face, and while Harriet was undoubtedly an expert at hiding her feelings, Stephanie was sure there was a touch more anxiety in her expression. Although previously her concern for her client had seemed real in a professional sense, there was something in the lawyer’s demeanour that hadn’t been there before. She seemed more attentive, and Stephanie wondered what had been said during the break.

  The interview restarted slowly, going back to the beginning of Evie and Mark’s relationship.

  ‘When I first met Mark, he was a wreck – there’s no other word for it. I don’t think he cared about himself at all. He cleaned up his act a bit because Cleo told him to. But the closer Mark and I got, the more Cleo didn’t like it. And when I became pregnant she was horrified.’

  ‘Was the pregnancy planned?’

  Stephanie felt her body tense and she kept her eyes firmly on the notepad in front of her. She could feel Gus watching her but she wasn’t going to give in to the temptation to return his glance.

  ‘Oh no. I had never thought for a moment that we would have a child together – it took a while for me to believe it was happening, but it was a total accident, although I’m not sure his sister believed that.’

  ‘How did Mark react to the fact that you were pregnant?’

  Evie half smiled. ‘He seemed genuinely surprised – as if he hadn’t believed he was capable of making a baby.’ The smile changed to a frown. ‘And then he went into denial. It couldn’t be his baby, or maybe I had done it on purpose. He even asked me if I would have an abortion.’

  ‘And what was your reaction to that?’

  ‘I told him I was perfectly capable of bringing up a child on my own, without any man in my life. It was his loss. He came round eventually and apologised, saying it had just been such a surprise. He started to get excited and begged me to move in with him.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘I said it was too soon to make that kind of commitment. Before I became pregnant, Mark had never shown any interest in us living together. He wanted me to stay over whenever it suited him, but I had always refused, and the last thing I wanted was for a man to be with me just because it was the honourable thing to do. He had to want to live with me, with or without a baby. It took him six months to persuade me.’

  Stephanie tuned out. Images of the day she told Gus she was pregnant and his look of disbelief flashed in front of her eyes. The pregnancy had been an accident, but this was their child – created out of what she had believed to be love – and in her view his reaction had told a different story.

  Sounds of quiet sobbing broke through Stephanie’s memories and her eyes flicked back to the screen. Evie’s head was bent and her shoulders were shaking, her words muffled and difficult to catch.

  ‘I thought I’d given it enough time. I was sure that if there was any evil in Mark it would have come to light by then. I know there were questions over his wife’s death, and there was no doubt that Mark had had problems with depression, but I loved him. I thought it was all going to be so perfect. How is it that women get that wrong so often?’

  Evie wiped away her tears with the heel of her hand and raised her red-rimmed eyes to the camera.

  ‘I was a fool. I should have known better.’

  27

  By the end of the day Evie’s energy appeared to be fading. Gus seemed happy with the way things were going, but Stephanie was slightly uncomfortable with his conviction from the outset that Evie Clarke should be charged with murder, not least because Evie’s solicitor, Harriet James, seemed equally confident that Gus was wrong. Her straight back and slightly raised chin spoke of a quiet assurance, and there was never a flicker of doubt in her gaze, no matter what the detectives asked. She had taken issue with them more than once when there was the merest hint of an assumption of guilt in one of their questions. Harriet was definitely someone Stephanie would want on her side if she was ever in trouble.

  The lawyer was so slim that she looked as if she would snap in two, but it was clear she was a formidable lady. Although young for someone with such a powerful reputation, she gave the impression that nothing would faze her. There was something almost pristine about her, as if it would be impossible for her to look untidy. Her dark hair was neatly tied back, and her huge brown eyes glinted with fierce determination, the pupils slightly dilated as if she was fired with adrenaline. Next to Harriet, Evie had looked drawn, her highlighted blonde hair having a faint yellow glow in the interview room lights, which did nothing to improve the pallor of her skin.

  Stephanie ruffled her own hair with both hands. She had been on nights when she and Jason were called to Mark North’s house, and had come straight into the incident room after leaving Cleo’s home in the early hours of the morning. She had been on the go for more than twenty hours and knew that her short wavy bob would by now appear lank and untidy. She didn’t have any makeup with her either. She felt like a pale shadow next to Harriet James, whose hair was darker, cleaner, tidier, and whose lipstick never seemed to dull throughout the hours of the interview.

  ‘You look fine, Steph. Stop messing with your hair.’

  She hadn’t heard Gus approach, and she couldn’t miss the amusement in his eyes. For a big man, he could move quietly when he wanted to. She hadn’t got used to seeing him with a beard, and wondered how it would feel if he kissed her. She closed her eyes for a second, furious with herself for being so weak.

  ‘I’ve been going through the phone records,’ she said. ‘Evie seemed to speak most often to a woman called Aminah Basra, and occasionally to Cleo North, but most of those calls were incoming. She called the shelter where she helped out a few times, but not often. There’s one number that’s interesting though. It seems she phoned the Samaritans on more than one occasion.’

  Gus pulled out a chair on the opposite side of the desk and sat down.

  ‘We’d better get a court order sorted so that we can hear what she had to say to them. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find out she told them she was going to kill him.’

  Stephanie grunted. ‘I sincerely doubt that. I think you’ll find people generally phone the Samaritans when they’re
thinking of killing themselves rather than someone else.’

  ‘Do you think charging her with murder is the wrong call, Steph?’ he asked, his face suddenly serious.

  That was a difficult question. Evie hadn’t claimed self-defence, which was just as well as there was little or no evidence to support that, but that didn’t mean that her actions had been premeditated.

  ‘I’m a bit concerned that you seem to have a closed mind – that you’ve been determined from the outset to charge her with murder. I can’t help feeling for her, given everything she’d been putting up with. But on the other hand it wasn’t an accident. Did I hear Harriet tell you that she’s unlikely to apply for bail when you’ve finally charged her? What about Lulu? It seems weird that Evie doesn’t want to do everything she can to get home to her baby.’

  Gus sat back and stretched his long legs out in front of him. ‘I agree. I can’t read Evie Clarke at all, but somehow I find it hard to imagine her letting North hold her down while he cut her. She seems more the type to have kicked him in the bollocks, although I accept it’s rarely that simple.’

  ‘She was probably terrified that if she fought back, he’d hurt her more. I would be, if I knew I was living with a sadist.’

  ‘I get that, and I know that for a lot of women the only answer seems to be to grin and bear it, poor buggers. But Evie doesn’t strike me as one of them. Look at the way she stopped Harriet intervening on her behalf a couple of times during the interview. Even when she’s hit rock bottom – which must be how she feels right now – she’s not a pushover, that’s all I’m saying.’

  ‘I just feel there’s more to it than that. I was there, remember, and Evie was holding Mark close, her arms round him. She didn’t seem to feel a scrap of malice towards him.’

  Gus sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. They were both silent, lost in their own thoughts, for a few moments.

  ‘I meant to ask – what did you make of the sister?’ he said, changing the subject.