by Louisa Scarr
Robin nods.
‘Good. Plus you’ve wrapped up the criminal damage cases, too?’
Freya listens as Robin outlines the evidence returned from the beer cans at the vandalised houses. At last, they had a hit on the system – to prints taken from the note thrown through the broken window at fifty-six Wellington Crescent. They were expected to belong to David Franklin, son of Bethany Franklin, organiser of the swingers’ club. A fifteen-year-old kid, in with the wrong crowd, now terrified and confessing to what him and his mates have been up to, sitting in an interview room a few floors down, his mother by his side.
She feels sorry for the boy, and knows Robin blames himself. Maybe if he’d arrested him at the time of the original smashed window incident he wouldn’t be in the trouble he is today. But Freya can’t worry about that. She has bigger things to think about.
Robin finishes talking, and Baker looks happy.
‘Now,’ Baker asks, leaning back, clearly satisfied their conversation is nearly over, ‘is there anything else I should know?’
Freya doesn’t move. She feels her boss’s gaze on her face, and she remembers what happened Friday night.
* * *
Freya looks frantically from the sleeping Amy to Robin. She didn’t think it would actually work. She didn’t think it would happen this quickly. Robin’s staring at her.
‘What did you do?’ he hisses.
‘There were some pills on the side. Diazepam. Something else. I thought… I didn’t think. I ground them up with the back of a spoon and put some in her whisky.’
‘How much?’ Robin asks, his eyes wide.
Freya looks at the unconscious Amy. ‘A lot.’ Freya feels defiant. Justified. ‘It’s no more than she did to Jonathan.’
‘Fuck…’ he says. He stands up and starts pacing the living room, his hands on his head. ‘FUCK!’ he shouts, furiously, and Freya jumps. He turns back towards her. ‘And what do you think we’re going to do with her now?’
‘I don’t know!’ Freya reaches forward and touches Amy, then leaps back. ‘But she knows about you. She knows about Trevor Stevens.’
She watches Robin. He’s stopped pacing, silent now, looking down, thinking. She can see him chewing the inside of his lip. His gaze shifts to Amy Miller, slumped to one side on the couch.
‘Since we’re here,’ he says quietly, and she knows what he’s going to say. He continues: ‘We can’t leave any trace. Go to my car, get whatever PPE you can find out of the boot.’
Freya rushes out the front door. She returns with gloves, and shoe covers, and full white crime scene suits. They put them on in the living room, standing in front of the unconscious Amy, Freya still not convinced she’s not going to wake up any second.
And they start their search.
They begin in the bedroom. Robin remembers Liv’s instructions, and they pull away the baseboard of the wardrobe, quickly locating the life insurance documents. There are a few other items in there: a bundle of cash, some spare prescription medication and a small bottle with syrup of ipecac written on the side. Freya recalls Jon’s weight loss, his statement that he’d had a nasty bout of food poisoning, and feels the burn of anger towards Amy deep in her bones.
They put it all in evidence bags. Freya knows the continuity of exhibits will need to be falsified in some way, additional paperwork here, a forged signature there. But there’s no DVD. Nothing that might hold the CCTV footage from the garage.
‘Do you think she was bluffing?’ Freya asks Robin, and he shakes his head.
‘Even if she was, I can’t risk it.’
They start looking again. Freya’s only too aware they don’t know how long the drugs will hold. But she tries to keep her panic at bay, carefully checking and replacing belongings where they find them.
She leaves Robin upstairs, and goes back down to the living room. Amy hasn’t moved, still slumped on the sofa. Freya stands in front of her, looking at her slack features, her mouth open. Unguarded. Defenceless. She feels her heart start to beat faster. A wave of anger, adrenaline spiking. She’s never felt energy like it, fuelled by rage and hatred.
‘You don’t want to do it.’
She doesn’t turn. She knows Robin’s standing behind her. She knows what he’s implying.
‘If I’d asked you that two years ago, in that petrol station, what would you have said?’ she whispers back. Now she turns, looking at her boss. Deep lines appear on his forehead as his eyebrows draw together. His shoulders slump. ‘He was drunk, Robin. Steph confirmed it. He was out drink-driving that day.’
He stops. He blinks, once, twice. She knows there would have been no hesitation in his mind.
‘Freya, listen to me.’ Robin stares right at her. ‘You may think this will be okay. That Amy Miller deserves it. That she killed Jonathan, and it’s right you get this revenge. But however strongly you feel it, nothing can prepare you for the reality of taking someone’s life.’ He stops, pressing his knuckles against his downturned mouth. She sees his jaw clench, holding back the emotion. ‘It takes a part of you, too. That guilt, it eats away at you, until there’s nothing left.’
Freya turns back to Amy Miller. ‘She can’t get away with this,’ she whispers. ‘She can’t.’
She feels gentle hands on her shoulders. ‘We’ll get her,’ Robin says. ‘We will.’
Freya notices him step away, his reassuring contact missed when it’s gone. And along with it, her intention to do harm to Amy Miller. She turns away from Amy’s prostrate body, and watches Robin. He’s facing the bookcase now, staring at the same spot where they did that first search all those weeks ago. Robin reaches forward and takes Jon’s economics textbook from the bookcase. He glances to Freya, then opens it.
In the hollowed-out centre, where the camera was concealed before, is a small black memory stick. He takes it between two gloved fingers.
‘She has a sense of humour, if nothing else,’ Robin says.
* * *
Amy’s cleanliness works in their favour: they start from the kitchen, with bleach and cloths and antibacterial spray, erasing every shoe mark and fingerprint. Any sign they were in the house. Freya wipes down the boxes of pills, the whisky bottle, the cupboards, making sure everything shines. Exactly how Amy would have wanted it.
They plump up the cushions in the living room, carry their whisky glasses into the kitchen and wash them up. Robin collects a bin liner from a drawer.
The two of them walk towards the front door, wiping down handles, light switches, door frames. In the hallway, they pull off their white crime scene suits, putting them in the bin liner with the used cloths and their gloves and masks. They pull the front door shut and walk quietly out to the car. Nobody sees them leave. The neighbours are away. The road is empty.
They leave Amy Miller unconscious on the sofa.
All traces of them have gone.
Robin throws the bin liner in the boot and gets into the driver’s seat. He starts the engine, but Freya stops him, digs around in her bag, then jumps out. She wipes the key, the spare key, free of fingerprints and replaces it in the fake rock in the flower bed.
Then she gets back in the car and, wordlessly, they drive away. As they go, she risks a glance at her boss. His eyes are narrowed, hard ridges between his eyebrows as he stares at the road.
‘Robin…’ she begins. ‘What happens when she wakes up?’
His hands grip the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles have turned white. ‘It’ll be her word against ours. We went there, we asked her about the break-in, we left. Right?’
‘Right.’
‘We didn’t talk about Jonathan. We didn’t even walk in the door. We certainly didn’t drug her.’
Freya notices how he says ‘we’, although she’s only too clear it was her that put the pills in her drink.
‘We stick to that, we’ll be fine,’ he finishes, but Freya’s not sure who he’s trying to convince – him or her.
At last they stop at Freya’s house.
<
br /> ‘Robin,’ she says, and he looks at her. ‘Thank you.’
He doesn’t move. Then slowly he nods.
‘Dispose of the clothes you’re wearing,’ he says. ‘Just as a precaution. Burn them, preferably. I’ll do the same, as well as the bag in the boot.’
‘I will.’
‘And Freya?’
‘Yes?’
‘We will never speak about this again. You hear me? Never.’
But they do.
The next day is Saturday, and she spends it distracted. She wakes late, leaves the house only briefly in a taxi to retrieve her car from the police station, then watches mindless television, eats junk food. Until Robin calls.
‘Log on to the RMS,’ he says, without greeting. ‘She’s dead.’
‘What do you mean, she’s dead?’ Freya replies, her voice no more than a squeak. But it’s true.
Amy Miller has died. Her body discovered by her sister, later that night. Initial reports put it down to a tragic accident – she must have been walking round, prescription meds rampant in her system, when she fell, hitting her head on the corner of the kitchen worktop. Massive subdural haemorrhage. Would have taken her a while to die, but with no one there to help her, she had no hope.
‘That’s it, Freya,’ Robin says, his voice low and final. ‘It’s over.’
She hangs up. He’s right, she knows he is, but she doesn’t feel the relief she expects. It’s justice, of sorts, but all Freya can feel is the guilt. She did it. She didn’t intend to kill, but because of her Amy Miller is dead.
She stands, numb, in the middle of her living room. And then her legs can’t hold her any more.
She sinks to the floor, her knees up to her chest, her arms over her head. And she cries. She sobs until her body is cold and shaking, all her emotion spent.
* * *
She turns now to DCI Baker. He’s looking at her expectantly.
‘Is there anything else I should know, DC West?’ he asks again.
‘No, guv,’ she replies. ‘Nothing at all.’
74
After Amy Miller’s house, after Robin drops Freya home, he only has one thing on his mind.
He drives a well-trodden route, away from the city centre, out of town to where the nicer houses are. Where people go for the better schools, with parks and green spaces where children can play. Where Georgia lived with Alex and James. And Liam.
He stands outside the familiar door. Lights are on; he hears a distant sound of a television coming from inside. He rings the bell.
The hallway light comes on, and the door opens. At first his brother-in-law’s expression is one of confusion, turning to disbelief when he gets a better look at Robin.
‘Rob, what…?’ He opens the door wide and ushers Robin inside.
‘I’m sorry to drop by unannounced, it’s just…’ Robin doesn’t know how to finish the sentence. He needs to see family. He needs unconditional acceptance, and Liam is the only person he has now.
‘It’s fine, it’s fine. What happened to you?’
Robin knows he must look a state. He’s tired and sweaty, a black bin liner clutched in his hand. His head thrums with pain, his eye and stomach still ache from where he was punched. And he’s just left someone drugged and unconscious in their living room.
‘Let’s just say it’s been a long week,’ Robin mutters. ‘Listen, I need a favour.’
‘Anything,’ Liam replies.
‘I need to burn something in your firepit, no questions asked.’
Liam’s mouth opens and closes again. Then he points towards his back garden.
Robin takes the bin liner and carries it outside, through Liam’s garden to the back. They used to have bonfires out here, years ago. Letting off fireworks, watching them arc in the night sky, the boys’ mouths gaping, laughing in joy as the bright colours exploded above them.
Now it’s just Robin. He glances back and he can see Liam watching him out of the kitchen window. He places the bin liner in the big metal firepit, then goes into the shed for the lighter fluid and matches.
The fire erupts with a whoomph, flames leaping towards the sky. The crime scene clothes catch light quickly, the smell of burning plastic in the air. Robin pulls his shirt and jeans off, adding them to the pile, then his socks and his trainers. Robin knows he must look crazy, standing there in the light of the flames in only his boxer shorts, but he doesn’t care. He stares into the fire, feeling mud under his bare feet, listening to the crackle, and at last he feels like everything has been put to rest.
Then the final thing.
Before he drove off, Freya came back out of her house. She held out the disc of the CCTV from the petrol station, containing the footage of him meeting Trevor Stevens on that fateful day. She handed it to him without a word. And now he tosses it on the fire, along with the memory stick taken from Amy Miller’s house.
It melts slowly, bending and charring into nothing.
And he knows it’s over.
Once the fire has burnt down to cinders, he returns to the house. Almost naked, stinking of bonfires, shivering and pale. Liam looks at him, still speechless.
‘Can I have a shower?’ Robin says. ‘And some clothes?’ Liam nods.
Liam cooks him a pizza while he showers, and Robin eats it ravenously. He’s sitting on the sofa, wearing his brother-in-law’s clothes, washing it down with two bottles of beer. Nothing has ever tasted so good. He feels like he hasn’t eaten or slept for a week.
‘Listen, mate,’ Liam starts hesitantly, breaking the silence. ‘Do I need to call someone?’
Robin knows what he’s asking. And he doesn’t blame him. But he doesn’t need the doctors from the Priory. He doesn’t need their drugs, their injections, their therapy.
‘I don’t know much about what you’ve been doing lately,’ Liam continues. ‘But one thing I do know is that Georgia would never forgive me if I let anything happen to you. You were her little brother. She loved you.’ He pauses. ‘I love you,’ he adds awkwardly.
Robin nods, feeling tears threaten, wiping his hands free of greasy cheese on a napkin.
‘I’m sorry, Liam,’ he says at last. ‘I shouldn’t have been such a dick.’
Liam accepts his apology with a slow nod. ‘You were hurting.’
‘You lost your entire family. It was up to you whether you forgave Trevor Stevens or not.’
But Liam shakes his head. ‘I never forgave him, not for a moment. But I needed to do something, to move forward, and that small step helped a fraction. But when I heard Stevens had died…’ His brother-in-law looks at Robin, his face hard. ‘I felt the universe had put something right. Just for a second.’ He gives a long sigh. ‘And you’re here now.’ Liam smiles across at him. ‘Want another beer?’
‘Please.’
Liam gets up and Robin watches him as he goes to the fridge. His brother-in-law looks skinnier than he ever has, but in considerably better shape than Robin. And the house is tidy, at least reasonably so.
‘You seem to be doing okay,’ Robin says as Liam comes back, handing him a beer and taking a swig from one himself. ‘I mean, that’s a good thing.’
‘One day at a time,’ Liam says. ‘You want to watch the football?’
And, conversation over, they do. But even before half time, Robin is fast asleep on his brother-in-law’s sofa. Like so many days from the past.
* * *
Now, sitting in Baker’s office, he knows things could have been considerably worse. Freya’s holding it together; Baker seems to know nothing. Everything forensics have found supports their theory that they were right to try to nail Amy Miller for the murder. And Baker seems happy.
‘Right, then,’ their DCI says, putting both hands on the desk and leaning towards them. ‘CPS are happy to leave all this as is. Amy Miller is never going to be tried for her husband’s murder, but justice is served as far as they’re concerned. Now, if we could all go back to work, and you could apply some of that dedication to the unsolv
ed cases you have piling up on your desk, Robin, everyone will be happy.
‘So, DS Butler, is this over? Will you leave this alone now?’
Robin looks to Freya, and she gives a slight nod.
He looks back at his boss. ‘Yes, guv. Absolutely.’
* * *
Robin walks with Freya back to the incident room. He stops her in the doorway, his hand on her arm. Since discovering Amy Miller’s death Saturday morning, he’s been over it a million times in his head. They have no proof she killed her husband. A charred plastic bag and some tape won’t convict someone for murder. No CCTV, no traffic cams, no evidence of a body transported in the back of a van. Just eyewitness reports confirming Jonathan Miller at a party, and the testimony of a man racked with guilt, with a past of heavy drug use and now a stint in a mental institution. Amy Miller would have walked free, exactly as Trevor Stevens did, that day. Both murderers, both having killed people they loved. And both likely to do it again.
They didn’t kill Amy Miller on Friday night, but it isn’t a bad thing she has died.
He doesn’t say any of this to Freya. He says nothing, except, ‘You okay?’
She looks awful, heavy black smudges under her eyes, hair pulled back untidily from her face.
‘Didn’t sleep,’ she says.
‘It wasn’t our fault.’ Freya doesn’t reply. ‘It wasn’t,’ Robin continues. ‘We weren’t to know she’d have an accident. She’d probably wandered round that house drugged up to her eyeballs a thousand times.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘No. It wasn’t our fault.’
She nods slowly.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to take any time off?’ he finishes.
‘Positive.’
‘Okay, then.’
They walk to their desks, switch their computers on. Robin tries to focus on the many emails he’s received since the Miller case began. The monotony of the basic admin is soothing. Warnings about not refilling pool cars with petrol. Notices about menu changes in the canteen. Life goes on.