The Unwelcome Guest

by Amanda Robson

  ‘You need to leave the property immediately. I need to watch you pack your bag. Your house is now a crime scene,’ DS Badminton informs me.

  149

  Saffron

  I’m sitting in the police car, with handcuffs burning my wrists. DS Stephen Badminton is driving. PC Jenifer Tomlinson is sitting next to me, dark eyes watching my every movement. I shake my head. I can’t believe this.

  ‘What on earth am I supposed to have done?’ I ask.

  ‘Poisoned your mother-in-law with arsenic,’ Jenifer Tomlinson replies, her voice high-pitched and watery.

  I shake my head and laugh. ‘But that’s ridiculous – how could I have done that?’

  A condescending smile. ‘We’ll interview you formally at the custody suite. You can comment on the toxicology report then. There’s no point in having an argument in the car.’

  ‘I’m entitled to a solicitor. I want you to telephone John Thornton of Thornton Associates, at once.’

  She doesn’t reply. The black holes that she has instead of eyes harden.

  Inside the custody suite they remove my jewellery and my iPhone, and place them in brown paper evidence bags.

  Photograph. Blinking in front of a computerised camera.

  Fingerprints. Fingertips splayed on a machine like those I’ve seen only once before at Miami Airport.

  DNA. PC Jenifer Tomlinson takes a swab by scraping my cheek with a cotton bud. She leans over me and forces me to taste her stale breath. She frogmarches me to a cell and locks me in.

  The cell is worse than my worst imaginings, worse than my deepest fears. It is a hard white plastic bubble, with a shelf-like indentation in the wall for a bed. No windows. High ceiling. It looks like a hole inside a beehive made of slippery plastic. It contains a small metal toilet, with no toilet paper. That disgusts me. And a hole in the wall that sprays water. To drink. To wash my hands. So basically if I need to do a number two, I cannot wipe my bottom or wash my hands hygienically. I’m so upset and stressed that I am already trying to suppress diarrhoea. I look up. Cameras are pointing down at me. So this is the game the police play. No dignity. No privacy. I lie on the hard plastic slice in the wall and cry inside. I cannot think. I cannot sleep.

  At last the window in the door of my cell is opened. PC Jenifer Tomlinson’s head appears. ‘I’m coming into the cell to take you to the interview room,’ she warns me. ‘Sit up and don’t try anything on. You are being watched.’

  My solicitor, John Thornton, is waiting for me in the interview room. A room padded with plastic. Plastic table and chairs. Cameras watching. Recording. The sight of him comforts me a little. Kind eyes. Neat face. Rolls-Royce brain.

  ‘You can have ten minutes alone,’ Jenifer Tomlinson announces as she presses a button in the control panel. ‘I’ve turned the recording off so that you can talk in private.’ There is a pause. ‘Just ten minutes,’ she repeats as she leaves.

  ‘No time for small talk. I know you’ve been arrested for the murder of your mother-in-law.’ John Thornton stares at me. ‘What do you know about her death?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I snap. ‘They told me in the car that they think I poisoned her with arsenic. That is just ridiculous. Where on earth would I get it from?’

  ‘They will assume you bought it on the darknet. In all likelihood they will have already confiscated your home computer and be checking it. They will be examining all your computers at work. But that is more complicated because of solicitor-client privilege. Privacy protection is so important in your profession, so it’s likely your computer will be hard to crack.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t buy arsenic from anywhere. So that’s all right. They won’t find anything.’

  John Thornton leans back in his chair. ‘Good. Good. Well, they can’t nail something on you that you haven’t done. Sounds like you’ve nothing to worry about.’

  ‘I wish I had your confidence. I can see why people call the police pigs.’

  DS Badminton and DI Sarah Jones burst into the room. DI Sarah Jones is a big-boned woman with pale blonde shoulder-length hair and broad shoulders. DS Badminton looks perpetually worried.

  They sit down opposite us. DS Badminton presses a switch to begin the recording.

  ‘Let’s begin. DS Badminton and …’ he stares across at DI Jones.

  ‘… DI Jones,’ she announces clear as a bell. ‘Present.’

  ‘Also,’ he points at me, ‘Saffron Jackson.’

  He points at John. ‘John Thornton.’

  Then he re-arrests me. The words pierce into me again. Panic rises inside me.

  ‘Where did you get the arsenic?’ Sarah Jones asks, leaning forwards across the plastic table, face hard. Arms folded.

  ‘I didn’t,’ I reply.

  Her broad lips curl. ‘We know you’re lying.’ There is a pause. A long deliberate pause, designed to intimidate. ‘Where did you get the arsenic?’ she repeats.

  I shake my head. ‘I didn’t get any arsenic. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  Her eyes harden. ‘You’ll get a lower sentence if you co-operate and tell the truth as soon as possible.’

  I smile a short, clipped smile. ‘Check my computer. Check my house. Check anything you like. I’m clean. Whiter than white.’

  John Thornton coughs. ‘Please explain to my client why you are treating her like this. She denies the charge vehemently.’

  DS Badminton and DI Jones exchange glances. A buzzing sound trills in Jones’ earpiece. She frowns as she listens to whoever is speaking to her through the earpiece. She nods her head.

  ‘OK then. We found arsenic in a glass bottle beneath your kitchen sink. Your fingerprints and no one else’s on the bottle,’ she announces. She leans back and folds her arms. A flicker of a smile. Raised shoulders. ‘And we found traces of arsenic in your mother-in-law’s blood. Pretty conclusive if you ask me.’

  Anger explodes like a volcano inside me.

  ‘She hated me. She sent you a letter, didn’t she? She set me up. I think you had better look into this case properly. I think you had better do your job.’

  ‘I think you should be wary about being rude to a police officer.’ DI Jones scolds me with her eyes, and I know I need to calm down. ‘Tell me about your relationship with your mother-in-law,’ she pushes. ‘You just said she hated you? Did you hate her back?’

  I take a deep breath. ‘I didn’t find her easy, but I worked at it. I thought things were improving between us. That’s why I am so shocked and upset by what has happened.’

  DI Sarah Jones sits watching me, face like stone. I hear a buzz in her earpiece.

  ‘Interview terminated at 20.00 hours,’ she says in a steely voice.

  ‘You don’t look shocked and upset. We’ll continue this in a few hours. We’ll be interviewing you on and off all night. You’ve got plenty of time to confess.’

  150

  Miles

  We are driving to Aiden’s flat.

  ‘Where’s our mummy?’ Harry asks.

  ‘Why can’t we go home? I want to go home,’ Ben whinges.

  ‘The police are just asking Mummy a few questions,’ I reply as I pull up at the lights. ‘Trying to find out why Granny died. And just checking there’s nothing dangerous at our house. We’ll only have one night at Uncle Aiden’s.’

  ‘Are they stupid?’ Ben asks. ‘Granny died because she’s old.’

  ‘The police always check what has happened when someone dies. It’s one of their jobs.’

  ‘How can they?’ he asks, putting his head on one side. ‘The world population is 7.8 billion. So the police must be very busy.’

  When did my older son became so full of facts and opinions? I should be pleased about this as I am a philosopher, but today, upset and jaded, it’s too much for me.

  ‘The UK police don’t have to patrol the whole world,’ I reply, sighing inside as I park the car.

  ‘What’s Hayley doing at Jono’s? Why didn’t she come here with us?’ Harry starts.
r />   ‘He’s her boyfriend. I expect she just wanted to see him.’

  ‘He looks like a drip,’ Ben announces.

  ‘Yes he does,’ Harry chirrups.

  ‘It isn’t very nice to call someone a drip. Have you met him?’ I ask.

  ‘We’ve seen him through the window. He’s very thin and wears a lot of jewellery. His hair is purple and sticks out. He has a nose piercing.’

  I think about Hayley. So wholesome and appealing, she should star in a cereal advert. And yet her boyfriend is a punk. The memory of her flirting with me by the swimming pool pushes into me. Surely if she likes edgy and interesting, a middle-aged philosophy professor is not her type. And even if I was her type, she isn’t mine. Saffron, you are mine. My heart rotates.

  Saffron.

  The love of my life, who could not, in a million years, have committed this crime. Or could you? Did I never really know you? I tremble inside.

  Hands shaking, I park the car behind Harrods, and drag our suitcase out of the boot. I breathe deeply to calm myself as we walk around the corner to the entrance of Aiden’s block of flats. Red-brick sophistication in this famous part of London. I admire the curved doorways and elaborate floral designs carved into the brick. It’s hard to imagine, when he lives in such city centre splendour, why he spends so much time out with us in the sticks. But then my stomach tightens. I know exactly why he does.

  Aiden has given me the codes to his luxury life. I press buttons, the door opens and we step inside the marble-floored building. We call the lift. It whips us up to the third floor in seconds. Aiden, dressed in his silk housecoat and pointy slippers, is waiting for us at the door of his flat.

  ‘Welcome,’ he says.

  We step into his bachelor pad. Cold white stone. Mirrors. Glass. An apartment designed to look at, not live in. Another reason why he spends so much time at ours?

  ‘Come with me, boys. I’ve set up the computer,’ Aiden says taking their hands and leading them through the living area, towards the bedrooms and his study. ‘What do you fancy to play?’ He pauses. ‘Cuphead? Minecraft? Super Mario?’ he suggests. Relieved to be free of my responsibility for a while, I sink into Aiden’s low-backed designer sofa and close my eyes. Trying to behave normally in front of the children when I’m dying inside, means every hour is a battle. Everything is exhausting. I feel as if I am wading through lead. Living life in slow motion.

  Aiden is back. ‘Would you like a whisky?’ he asks.

  I open my eyes, and look at my watch.

  ‘It’s eleven in the morning,’ I reply.

  ‘I didn’t ask the time. I asked whether you wanted a whisky.’

  ‘Hell, yes.’

  He pours us both a stiff one, with ice. He sits down next to me.

  ‘How is she?’ he asks.

  I put my head in my hands and cry.

  151

  Hayley

  Jono’s squat is a bit of a dump. I don’t know why he’s so proud of it.

  ‘What’s not to like about my comfortable home?’ he asks as he catches me wrinkling my nose as I enter.

  I don’t know where to start, so I don’t reply.

  ‘You know I like it because it’s rent-free,’ he continues. ‘I’ve told you before just how sought-after this area is. But I suppose because you’re a Kiwi you’re not impressed to live near a shedload of Chelsea footballers. Esher is where they have their training ground. How cool is that? I saw Frank Lampard in Waitrose last week.’

  ‘You are seriously weird, living in a squat and shopping at Waitrose. Posh boy gone wrong.’

  He grins. ‘Posh boy gone wrong. I like that. And I can afford to shop at Waitrose because I live in a squat.’

  I sit on one of two deck chairs, in the middle of his uncarpeted concrete-floored lounge. Even though it’s a sunny day, I shiver. The dampness of the flat presses against me and makes me feel cold.

  ‘Let’s go and sit in the garden. It’s warmer outside,’ I suggest.

  ‘No. We can’t let the neighbours see us. They would report it to the police and I’d have to move out, pronto.’

  I sigh. ‘That would be a pity, wouldn’t it. Can we watch telly or something?’

  He shakes his head and shrugs. ‘The electricity has been turned off now.’

  ‘So you can’t even eat food from your toastie maker, or the microwave anymore?’ I ask.

  ‘No. I’ve started buying sandwiches and salads, and chip shop treats.’

  ‘Fabulous. Sounds delicious. And how do you charge your phone?’

  ‘I do it in the day at work, numbskull.’

  ‘You’re the fucking numbskull, living in a dump like this,’ I say keeping my voice light and jokey.

  ‘Thanks for that, Hayley. Charming as ever. Let’s hope you don’t ever need somewhere to doss after tonight. Remember your nob of a boss is in prison – that’s why you’re here right now. Don’t look down your nose at me. My home hasn’t been cordoned off for the police to investigate.’

  152

  Miles

  I am sitting opposite you at a plastic table, visiting you in prison. We are not allowed to touch. You are thinner than ever, black-eyed and tired. I long to push the world away, take you in my arms and hold you.

  You hated my mother, didn’t you? But did you kill her? I can’t make my suspicion go away. If I ask you outright, you’ll never forgive me for not believing in you. If I don’t ask you, I’m in denial, not willing to search for the truth.

  ‘I know you must be feeling very confused right now, but I need you to believe me. I didn’t do this,’ you say.

  ‘I can’t believe you would.’

  You shake your head. ‘That’s not good enough. You need to understand utterly and completely, I didn’t do it.’

  ‘Then who did?’ I ask.

  Your eyes fill with tears. ‘Asking that is one way of telling me you don’t believe me. Let me explain. Your mother must have set me up.’

  I shrug. ‘From beyond the grave?’ I ask.

  ‘And long before that, too. She must have planned this ages ago, so that if she died I would suffer. It wasn’t me. So it must have been someone else. Who do you think it was, if your mother had nothing to do with it?’

  ‘What about Hayley … or Aiden?’ I stutter.

  ‘My bet is on your mother. She was always making trouble for me.’

  Your words stab into me like daggers.

  ‘Setting someone up for murder is so serious,’ I protest, ‘much more so than trying to make out someone is playing away. She loved me so much, it’s hard to believe she would harm the person I love most in such an extreme way.’

  ‘Loving you so much, too much, is precisely why she would. Maybe as a man you can’t understand. She wanted to be the woman you loved best. The only woman.’

  I look across at your delicate face, contorted with despair. I reach for your hand beneath the table and wrap my fingers around yours.

  153

  Saffron

  He doesn’t reply. He wraps his fingers around mine, and frightened of losing him, I tremble inside.

  154

  Hayley

  I’m sitting in the garden, laptop on my knee, drinking iced lemonade, ‘organising’ the household for the week. Meal plan first. Then Ocado delivery. I zap into the online calendar, just to check the boys’ activities for the week. To make sure they fit in with Miles and me. To check they meet with my approval. I’m enjoying this. Enjoying being in charge of the household. Admin done, I snap my laptop shut. Time for my swim.

  I walk through the garden. The gardeners are busy. A young boy of about sixteen with a pudgy face and a pudgy hairstyle is mowing the lawn. A young woman in her twenties with a slim figure and tousled honey blonde hair is dead-heading the roses. Their boss, I think he is their father actually, is trimming the high hedge, with a machine that looks like a strimmer, but has a long, jagged saw on the end of it. I stand behind him, until he senses I’m there. He turns the saw off and stops. He pulls
his ear protectors off, to talk to me, and smiles.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ he asks, addressing me as if I am the boss. The owner. I like that.

  ‘Thank you, that looks lovely, but you’ve missed some on the top to the left.’

  ‘I’m about to do it, but I have to get the higher stepladder for that.’

  He is always ‘about to do’ whatever I ask. I have to keep an eye on him. Sometimes he’s a bit too hasty. A bit too Jack the Lad. I understand he has a bit of a local reputation as a womaniser. He’s someone young women have to be wary of. Caprice told me that.

  I stand at the edge of the swimming pool and press the button to remove the cover. The motor whirs, as the grey plastic pool guard pulls back slowly. I slip off my wraparound dress, kick off my sandals, and stand at the deep end of the pool in my swimming costume.

  I dive in. The water slips past my body, amniotic fluid, comforting me. My head emerges from the blurred world beneath, and the bright August day pushes into my eyes and makes me blink. I begin my swim. Twenty lengths of breaststroke. I do this every day. My body has never been more toned.

  I push through the water, stretching every limb, every muscle, every cell. From the tips of my fingers to the edges of my toes. Push. Push. Breathe. Breathe. Go. Go. Go. After ten lengths I hold on to the edge of the pool, panting. And then I go again. Sliding my body back through the water. Pushing, pulling my limbs through the water. Projecting my torso. So fast I’m pushing through pain. Twenty lengths over, I step out of the pool, and check the time on my waterproof watch. Twenty lengths in thirteen minutes. Not bad. I’m improving.

  I grab a towel from the basket by the pool and wrap it around my shoulders. I look at my watch again. I’d better hurry up or I’ll be late for yoga. My iPhone buzzes. A text.