by Roz Watkins
Rachel had fought strenuously to attend the interview, but we couldn’t let her, in view of her suspicious behaviour. Instead we’d let Rachel’s mother sit in. She was Abbie’s only grandparent – a robust-looking woman named Patricia, coiffured to perfection and botoxed into a permanent look of horrified astonishment, which seemed quite appropriate for the circumstances. I was a little concerned about her, since there was a chance she was lying to protect Rachel. But I wanted it to be someone Abbie knew.
Craig was in the room with me, Jai watching again.
Abbie was just about holding it together, shaky but coping. She was sandwiched between her grandmother and a child protection officer from social services, who looked about twelve. I tried to put Abbie at ease and gently shift her focus to the day before, by talking about Elaine’s dog.
‘You shouldn’t let her near pets,’ Patricia said. ‘She could get an infection.’
‘I want Mum.’ Abbie called Rachel Mum even though she wasn’t her biological mother. ‘Why can’t Mum be here?’ I sensed she was in danger of completely falling apart. Understandably.
‘Your mum’s right outside,’ I said. ‘You can see her in a minute.’
Abbie turned to Patricia. ‘This lady was nice.’ She pointed a shaking finger at me. ‘The dog was nice.’ There was tension between Abbie and her grandmother. The air looked sliceable.
I smiled at Abbie, and said to Patricia, ‘I’m sorry. We didn’t know about not letting Abbie near pets. But the dog helped us get home safely.’
Patricia sniffed and looked over her reading glasses, down her long nose.
Craig set up the recording apparatus and we gently took Abbie through the questions to find out if she knew the difference between truth and lies. It seemed she did. It was a shame we couldn’t do the same with the solicitors.
‘Abbie,’ I said, ‘we need to have a chat with you about what happened yesterday. Is that okay?’
She chewed on a piece of hair and nodded slowly, her eyes damp with tears. She was sitting bolt upright with her arms tight to her ribs, as if she didn’t want to spread towards either of her companions.
I focused my attention softly on the whole room, rather than directly on Abbie. ‘Can you tell us what you remember?’
A tear crawled down Abbie’s cheek. The social worker reached into her pocket and passed her a tissue.
Abbie took the tissue and dragged it across her face. ‘I had a dream,’ she said. ‘It’s hard to remember.’
‘It’s okay. Take your time. Just tell us anything you can think of.’
‘There was blood everywhere. Then I was in the shower. And Mum dried my hair. Dad was . . . ’ She swallowed.
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘There’s no hurry. You had a shower and your mum dried your hair?’
‘In my dream, I think?’ She said it as a question.
‘What else do you remember?’
She shook her head.
‘It’s okay. Do you remember waking up?’
‘I don’t know. Later, I woke up, I went to Mum and Dad’s room and . . . ’
Patricia popped up in her seat. ‘This is too much for her.’ She wrapped her arm around Abbie.
Abbie accepted the arm but didn’t seem to appreciate it. ‘And Dad . . . I couldn’t make him wake up. I got blood all on me. He wouldn’t wake up. I got scared and ran away.’ She gulped a single sob. ‘And you found me.’
‘Well done, Abbie. Well done for remembering.’
She gave me a tiny smile though her tears.
‘And the dream where you had a shower and your mum dried your hair – do you remember anything from before that?’
It was so vital not to lead, especially with children. You could easily implant false memories. I wanted to ask if she was sure this had been a dream, if she’d seen anyone else in the house, if she’d ever seen her dad with another woman, if her parents had fights, if she’d seen her mum slit her dad’s throat . . . But I had to keep my questions clean.
She swallowed. ‘Blood everywhere . . . I always have horrible dreams.’ She shrugged off her grandmother’s arm and blew her nose. ‘I’ve been screaming in the night. There’s something wrong with me.’
I looked into Abbie’s eyes. She had thick, dark lashes. ‘What do you mean, something wrong?’
‘I went to see a man to make me better, but I got scared.’
‘Who did you see?’
‘It was appalling,’ Patricia said. ‘They took her to a psychiatrist because of the night terrors, and he insisted on seeing her alone, and hypnotising her, and Rachel said she started screaming and screaming. It was terrible. I don’t know what he did to her.’
‘I got scared,’ Abbie said. ‘You won’t make me do it again, will you? Make me go to sleep like that?’
‘No. Don’t worry, you won’t have to do it again. Do you remember anything about why you got scared?’
I flicked a glance at Craig. He was tapping his fingers. Uh oh, I could do without him getting worked up. ‘Did the psychiatrist do something to you, Abbie?’ he said.
Abbie shook her head.
‘I don’t know . . . Yes . . . Daddy . . . ’ She stared behind us, as if she was looking at something we couldn’t see. She shook her head, and shrank back a little in her chair.
The social worker shifted forwards in her seat. ‘No more today.’
Abbie wiped her eyes. She was crying properly now. ‘It’s my heart,’ she said.
Patricia touched Abbie’s arm. ‘Come on now, Abbie, don’t get upset. They’re not going to ask you any more questions.’
I ignored Patricia and spoke gently. ‘What do you mean, Abbie? What about your heart?’
The social worker turned to Abbie. ‘It’s okay, you don’t need to say any more now.’ She gave me a hostile look.
Abbie let out a sob, and I felt a wrenching in my chest as if I wanted to cry too. Not a good move for a detective.
‘What do you mean about your heart?’ I said. Was this something to do with what Karen had said? Did Abbie believe her new heart had affected her too?
Abbie shook her head and cried.
I reached forward and touched her hand. She didn’t pull away. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘That’s enough for today.’
Abbie took a big, gulping breath. ‘Daddy did a bad thing. That’s what I dream about. My heart knows.’
*
‘Okay,’ I said, plonking myself on a chair in the incident room. ‘So, she dreamt about a shower and her mum drying her hair. And then later, she remembered finding her dad dead, and she remembered getting covered in blood and running out. Then I found her. Did you get that too?’
Jai nodded. ‘If Rachel Thornton killed him, Abbie could have come through and got covered in blood, and then her mum cleaned her up. She thinks the shower and her hair being dried was a dream but maybe it actually happened.’
Voices drifted through from Richard’s room next door. Craig was talking. Jai looked up sharply and glanced in that direction. I could only make out the odd word. She shoved her. Was that what Craig had just said?
I felt a twinge of worry. ‘What’s Craig saying to Richard?’
Jai looked blankly at me. ‘Didn’t hear properly.’
I paused and listened again, but someone had shut Richard’s door. I shook my head as if that could clear it of its paranoid thoughts. ‘Craig’s wife collared me yesterday,’ I said. ‘Asked me to go easy on him, can you believe?’
‘Go easy on him?’
‘Yeah. Said he was working too hard and blamed it on pressure from me.’
‘I’d hate to see him when he wasn’t working hard.’
‘I know. You don’t think he’s using work as a cover, do you?’
Jai shrugged. ‘Don’t know him that well. No love lost, as you know.’
I put Craig out of my mind. ‘So we’re thinking Rachel might have washed Abbie, dried her hair, put her back to bed and gone off to dispose of her clothes?’
‘It looks that way
. Which would mean Rachel must have had blood all over her at some point, and there must be some clothes somewhere that she wore when she killed him. Because there’s no way she could have slit his carotid without getting absolutely covered in the stuff.’
A knock on the door. Fiona.
‘We’ve found a plastic bag,’ she said breathlessly. ‘With clothes in it. And a knife. And some boots that look like the ones that left the marks outside the door.’
‘Fantastic!’ I said. ‘Exactly what we were talking about.’
‘It was dumped in someone’s bin on the outskirts of Matlock. It was bin day and they noticed the bag when they put some of their own stuff in, just before the refuse guys arrived. They fished it out because they thought it looked dodgy.’
‘Has it got Rachel’s clothes in it?’
Fiona rubbed her nose. ‘It’s a bit . . . strange.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There’s the men’s boots, and a set of clothes which look like Rachel’s, which have got blood smears on them. It’s all gone off to the blood guys but I thought I should let you know . . . ’
‘What? Spit it out, Fiona.’
‘Okay. There was something else in the bag as well. You know you can tell if something’s actually been spurted on? Arterial spurt. Like whoever was wearing them was standing over the person when they were stabbed. Well, there is something like that, but it’s not Rachel’s.’
I had a bad feeling, right under my ribs. ‘Whose is it?’
‘It has embroidered puppies on it. It’s a little girl’s nightdress.’
*
Sleet rolled down the hills as we drove towards Matlock. A grit lorry chugged along ahead of us. I tried to focus on the icy road, while my mind churned with the new information. Arterial spurt on a little girl’s nightdress. Did that mean poor Abbie was there, standing next to her father while his throat was cut? I felt sick at the thought.
‘Why are we driving all the way out to see her?’ Craig said. ‘We’ve got enough to arrest her.’
‘Maybe. But there are a few question marks around her behaviour.’
‘You overthink things.’
He certainly didn’t act as if he wanted to impress me. I wondered again what he’d been saying to his wife.
‘They pay us to think,’ I said. ‘Why would she kill her husband with her daughter there? So close she got spurted on? Why would she kill him, disappear, come back, and disappear again?’
‘We could ask her all this at the Station.’
‘I know. But sometimes you learn more this way.’
I leant forward and flipped the radio on, wishing Jai was with me. You could toss ideas around with Jai. He helped me think, even if he’d been a bit distracted recently.
‘I suppose you’ll have to come off the case anyway.’ Craig’s tone was pointedly neutral. ‘Looks like it’s going to be a biggie. And you’re on holiday next week.’
I contemplated pretending I hadn’t heard, but decided against. Rumours would be started that I suffered from hysterical deafness. ‘I’ll delay my time off.’ I glanced at the sky as if God might smite me for my lie.
‘Going anywhere nice?’
‘Not really. Was your wife okay the other day? She seemed upset. Is she worried you’re working too hard?’ Two could play this game.
The sat-nav interrupted us, for which Craig must have silently thanked it. ‘At the end of the road, turn left.’
I obeyed and sat-nav man told me we had reached our destination – a modern bungalow, surrounded by more of the same. It couldn’t have been more different from Phil and Rachel Thornton’s Gothic money-pit in the woods.
The door was answered by Abbie’s grandmother, Patricia, and an ancient-looking tortoiseshell cat. Patricia looked upset; the cat didn’t.
Patricia lead us into a chintzy front room. She wrenched her botoxed forehead into a frown. ‘I hope you’re not going to bully Rachel. She’s just lost her husband, and she has mental health problems. Did you know that?’
‘Maybe we could have a chat with Rachel first,’ I said. ‘And then we’ll have a word with you?’
‘As long as you know she’s not been well. I’ll make tea and ask her to come through.’
I sat on a velour sofa in a strange shade of green and Craig went for the matching armchair. They had doily things where our heads went. I hadn’t seen that for a while.
The door eased open and Rachel crept in and sat next to me on the sofa. She picked at a loose thread on her jeans.
‘Hi, Rachel,’ I said. ‘How are you?’
She shrugged. Her look said, I’m socially conditioned to say I’m fine but I’m quite clearly not.
‘We found the bag,’ I said.
Rachel jerked back an inch, as if she’d been hit. She took a sharp in-breath.
I held out some photographs. ‘Could you confirm if these are your clothes, and Abbie’s nightdress. And if you recognise the knife. We’ve sent them for analysis, but it would speed things up if you’d just tell us what you know.’
She licked her lips and said nothing. I contemplated all the blood on the nightdress, hoping she’d say That’s not Abbie’s nightdress and I’ve never seen that knife before. She didn’t. She leant back in her seat and sat very still, staring at an ugly standard lamp that squatted on the far side of the room. Even though she was shocked and upset, she looked more composed than she had the day before, and somehow more solid.
‘Did you kill your husband?’ I said.
She looked surprised, and paused with her mouth open. ‘No . . . Er, I . . . ’ She frowned and shook her head slightly. ‘No. No, I didn’t.’
‘You’d better tell us what happened then.’
She sighed and said nothing for a moment. Then she leant back into the couch. I did the same.
‘I didn’t want you to jump to the wrong conclusion,’ she said. ‘I know it looks bad but it must have been an intruder that killed him. That stalker. The woman he was having the affair with.’
‘What happened, Rachel?’
She paused. Licked her lips and took a breath. ‘When I got in, I went to our bedroom and . . . ’
I nodded encouragement at her.
‘And I saw Phil lying there covered in blood, like I’ve told you. And . . . ’ She waited a moment and then blurted it out fast. ‘Abbie was there. She was on the floor.’
‘With . . . ’ I took a moment to picture the scene. ‘With your husband?’
She nodded. I sensed she was telling the truth. One of those feelings I got, that Richard found so irritating.
‘Lying on the floor by our bed,’ Rachel said. ‘I was terrified she was hurt. Can you imagine how I felt?’
I nodded slowly.
‘So I rushed over and grabbed her. But she was okay. Covered in blood but asleep. And unhurt.’
Where does a mother go first – her husband or her child? It’s times like these the truth comes out. They usually go to the child.
‘She was absolutely drenched in blood.’ Rachel sat forward again and crossed her legs, jiggling her foot. She reached round and grabbed one of the doily things, and rubbed it between her fingers. ‘And it was really hard to wake her up. I didn’t want you to think . . . I got her up and put her in the shower, washed her hair. I had to dry it – it took ages . . . ’
Rachel juddered to a halt. She sat staring into space.
‘What happened next?’ I said, as gently as I could.
She moved her eyes slowly to me, then raised them as if trying to visualise the scene on that awful morning. Some people claimed that if suspects looked up and to the right, they were making things up, but unfortunately it wasn’t that simple. Anyway, Rachel was looking up and left. ‘I put Abbie back to bed,’ she said, ‘and packed our things with blood on them into a Waitrose bag, and then I put some of Phil’s boots on and I went round and made it look like a break-in, and messed up the study and our room, and then Abbie was sleeping again, so I drove off to hide our clothes a
nd the boots. I went up to Matlock and went to the petrol station, and then when I came back, you were there.’
‘If you thought there’d been an intruder, why did you fake one?’
She hesitated. ‘I thought you might not realise.’
‘Why did you do this, Rachel? What didn’t you want us to think?’
She took an audible breath. Wiped a tear from her cheek.
‘I can’t . . . ’
I waited.
‘That she did it,’ Rachel said in a tiny voice. ‘I didn’t want you to think Abbie did it.’
Craig let out his breath with a distinct puff. No finger tapping though.
I felt a coldness creeping through my stomach. ‘Did you see something else, Rachel? Why would we think Abbie did it?’
‘She didn’t do it. She must have walked in or interrupted an intruder.’
I clenched my fists together. Had I contemplated this? The possibility that Abbie killed her father? Walked in and cut his throat? I supposed I had, deep down, when we’d found the nightdress.
‘We need to know everything,’ I said gently. ‘All about Abbie’s nightmares, what she was saying about her father . . . everything. So we can try and piece together what happened.’
Rachel eased herself back in the sofa again. Her body was shaking. She whipped a hand to her face and sharply wiped away tears. ‘You know about her nightmares.’
‘We’ve been told she was scared of her father. Screaming about him.’
She took a breath. ‘I didn’t want you to think it was her. That’s why I didn’t tell you about the nightmares. She’s been screaming and sleepwalking. Screaming about . . . well, yes, she has been screaming about her daddy, but she didn’t mean Phil.’
I kept my voice soft, and hoped Craig would keep quiet. ‘When did this start?’
Rachel breathed out through her mouth. ‘It’s all since her heart transplant. Oh God, okay, I’m going to tell you. I kept saying to the psychiatrist, she’s changed. Her personality was different. She started drawing all the time – really good drawings, like she never used to do before. I mean, that was fine – the drawings. But not the rest of it. She started having these dreams. She was shouting as if someone was trying to kill her. It was terrifying. She’d run out onto the landing screaming and when we went to her, she’d go all glassy eyed and stare at something behind her. Then she’d swivel her head around and scream that her daddy was trying to kill her. It was horrendous, especially for Phil. It was her new heart. And the drugs they gave her. Oh God, I can’t . . . Everything was supposed to be okay once she had her transplant.’ She was openly crying now, breathing in big gulps, her shoulders shaking. ‘It’s not Abbie’s fault. I couldn’t bear her to go to trial and be locked up. She was asleep.’