Do Her No Harm
Page 24
Kay stopped for a moment, watching my reaction, then continued. ‘I estimate I gave Tabby 2,859 times the human lethal dose by injection. I put it in her forehead, for obvious reasons, so it could be explained away as an accident at her own illegal practice if it needed to be.’
My voice roars, incensed by Kay’s twisted justice. ‘You played God, then took Tabby’s story and used it to make your podcast series a hit.’
Kay smiles. ‘Painting Tabby as the victim, raising her profile, then revealing her for who she really was, outing what she did – and worse – all of her secrets. That was my revenge. First, I killed her. Then I killed her legacy.’
‘I see,’ I reply.
‘She had a rich, brilliant, story and the journalist in me couldn’t resist. Everyone’s doing true-crime podcasts nowadays… and if I was behind the story, able to control every aspect of it, I couldn’t see how it would go wrong.’
My eyes flare.
‘And you really think people will believe your final episode? That I’m actually Tabby… that I’d go to the lengths of starting a podcast about myself? Even if you kill me there’ll be plenty who won’t buy it.’
‘And plenty who will,’ Kay replies. ‘Stranger things have happened.’
‘But no one will ever be able to put me on the scene, there won’t ever be any evidence.’
‘The public won’t mind – they believe what they want to believe – since when has evidence got in the way of anything nowadays?’
I run my fingers through my hair, anxious, talking before thinking.
‘You’re a bad person,’ I level at her.
‘Oh AB,’ she whines. ‘That really hurts my feelings,’ she says, mocking me.
I feel the glare of Tabby’s face from behind me. I am alive, I can still do something to stop Kay, to out the truth.
‘You told me once that killers always want people to know how great they are at killing, well, no one knows what you’ve done, they just think you’ve swooped in to pick up the pieces. They think of you as a vulture, Kay, a scavenger.’
‘You’re wrong, people know what I have done because I tell them, every week. And what’s better than telling them – being so clever that I’ve pulled the wool over their eyes too – it’s not just the authorities I’ve fooled, but the entire world. Better still, I can obsess over Tabitha, I’ve spent months digging into her dirty secrets, further justifying my surety that killing her was the right thing to do. I love what I do because I can talk about it, what breaks most killers is that they try to take the secret to their grave, never discussing the case, never saying their victims’ names out loud. Not me.’
‘Where is she, Kay? What did you do with her body?’
I think about the hordes of junk lying around and I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d kept pieces of my friend all over this place. A locket of Tabby’s hair in an old microwave in the kitchen, her jewellery in an old biscuit tin stacked tall in the lounge. This whole house is teaming with the trapped gasps of Tabby’s life. No wonder Kay’s always burning incense to hide the smells that must cling to these old, cream-paper walls.
She looks me in the eye, then her gaze falls.
‘Tomasz got a job on Ernest Rice’s farm five years ago. There were a couple of other Polish men on the team and Ernie was grateful for the extra labour.’
My memory recalls Ernie telling me about his ‘Polish lads’ when we visited his farmhouse, and I’m irritated I didn’t put the number plate together with this clue. We should have asked to see their identification; we should have interviewed them.
‘After I killed Tabby, Tomasz and I buried her on Brimley Farm, in the field behind Ernie’s farmhouse. Tabby had told me he was a horrible man, that he abandoned her when she was young, left her to rot in foster care. In a way, he’s to blame for what happened to Orla. If he’d looked after Tabitha, she wouldn’t have turned out the way she did.’
While Kay’s distracted, revelling in outing her secrets for the first time, I take the opportunity to lunge towards her. I know she’s not a fighter, and she’s almost two decades older than me, so I have an advantage. But she spots me as I reach her, my body coiled, about to explode with one great, twisting hit and grabs my arm, catches it mid-flight, her strength surprising me, and we struggle round the perimeter of her investigation walls, sending paper and notes and thread to the floor as we fight, my fingernails digging deep into her shoulders, hers digging deep into mine. I catch a flash of fear on her face and it emboldens me. I curl my head backwards then thrash it towards her, landing a giant blow against her forehead, a hooligan-worthy headbutt that sends her staggering backwards.
It takes me a second to realise my freedom but, when I do, it is quickly taken away. I race to the door, twist the lock back, and run in a straight line for the exit but, too late, I realise I have doubled back, ending up at the back of the house, at the threshold of a tiny room. I hurry inside and slam the door behind me, but there’s no lock, just a window, so I start hauling a crate of junk in front of the doorframe to block myself in. I can just make out the sound of Kay’s footsteps and then, silently, she disappears.
I pivot in mind-numbingly stupid loops, not sure how long I have before Kay comes back, trying to find a way out. I crack my fists against the tiny window, but even if I hollowed it out, it would not be helpful: the frame is too small and, even if I did get out, I’d break my legs in the fall. Better than dying. The space is full of tatt but this time I pull at it, looking for – I don’t know – a weapon, or a place to hide, a magic door to another room, a secret fire escape leading me out. I sift through an entire box of keys – I empty them onto the floor – I find an old bicycle, a collection of ancient suitcases with broken handles. I pant in the space, ready to face an absent enemy, casting my eyes over the piles of rubbish around me, tricking me into seeing her in them, jumping at the mannequin on the far side wall, its head between a deconstructed drum-kit, its arm winding around a cymbal. But it’s not here and, beyond, the house is quiet until—
Whack! The door screams, splitting in two, a foot crushing through the wood. I hiccup a mouthful of bile then grab for something, anything. Thwack! Another hit crashes the house and the foundations themselves seem to rock with the impact. Dust and debris confetti the room and I close my eyes to stop the splinters from blinding me, and it’s in these eyes-shut, body-frozen moments that I lose the fight. Kay breaks down the door and, without hesitation, rushes in and spears my neck with a needle. I hear her manic laughter in the background, somewhere behind my splitting headache, and she’s talking to herself, saying something, but I’m on the floor before I know it, clawing for the stairs, my vision blacking and, at that moment, I realise she’s injected me with a sedative of some sort.
‘I’m sorry,’ Kay repents. The blindfold she’s tied tight to my eyes squeezes them back into their sockets and I can only see a blue-black colour, a you’ll-never-see-the-light-of-day-again shade.
Kay
Now
‘Rick,’ I stutter, surprised to find his cool stare and tall frame on the other side of my front door.
He looks distracted, jumpy, and I brace myself for an interrogation about Annabella’s whereabouts. It’s the first time I’ve met Rick in person, and I wonder if he’s as fascinated to meet me as I am to meet him. A dark leather jacket hugs his shoulders.
‘I want to talk,’ he tells me, then looks over his shoulder. ‘On your show, I mean, an interview.’
‘You do?’ I ask him, hardly believing my ears.
The journalist in me salivates. It would be my most-listened-to episode, the scoop I’d need to take this podcast to the big screen, to make it the most successful true crime series of all time.
But the killer in me hesitates. Annabella’s upstairs, heavily sedated. I weigh up the risks and rewards but, as my dark eyes twitch in their sockets, Rick makes it hard for me to decline by letting himself in.
‘Where do you record?’ he asks, not making eye contact, a hint of
men’s cologne reaching my nose as he steps past.
‘Through here,’ I say, gesturing with my free hand, mind made up. Rewards don’t come without risk, I think to myself, closing the front door. I imagine picking up a heavy, gold-plated trophy for my efforts. And the award goes to… the most pioneering podcast of the decade… Kay Robero’s Cold Case of Tabitha Rice!
I direct Rick through the cream-coloured walls of the hallway into my kitchen and set him up at the table. I offer him a glass of water, which he declines, his nose slightly upturned, and I think that he and Annabella have more in common than I thought. Uppity, judgemental, rude. Annabella never liked coming here, either, I could see it, I could smell it, she felt uncomfortable in my home. Where I lived wasn’t up to her standards.
‘Are you sure about this?’ I ask, taking the seat opposite him, setting up the microphones, checking the sound. ‘What is it you want to tell the world?’
He straightens up and looks at the floor, weary with the weight of whatever he wants to get off his chest. He runs an absent hand through dark hair.
‘I listened to what Mandy revealed on the show,’ he says, biting at his back teeth. ‘And I want to put my voice behind it. Tabby, the things she did when we were together, I’m not surprised this deception was the latest twist in her horrible tale, nor that I ended up being the punchline.’
My immediate reaction is a combination of amusement and horror. Rick must know that Annabella isn’t Tabby… and yet, this is how far Mr Rick Priestley is prepared to go to clear his name, to shift some of the blame from his back onto hers. Not that he knows it yet – not while this is the complexion of the story – but Rick’s making a big mistake. The police will be able to match the DNA of the body on the farm to Tabitha before long and, though I’m certain Ernie will take the rap for it, it will take a while to convict him. Who knows, he could even end up having some sort of alibi? That’s when I plan for the second series to come out: The twisted truth about Ernie Rice. DNA profiling will confirm the body is Tabitha Rice, that Annabella was really Annabella and, gosh, how horrible that she fled the country as a result of the allegations Mandy Evans and Rick Priestley made against her.
Given that Rick’s here, adding fuel to this fire, my second series will have to focus on his guilt and Mandy’s culpability. People will wonder how they were both so sure that Annabella was Tabby, when she wasn’t, and will realise just how willing he is to lie about this case, will question why he jumped on this red herring so quickly. They’ll be writing it in the papers before I can say it myself: There’s no way Rick Priestley’s not, at the very least, complicit.
I can’t wait for series two. But, for now, I look at my interviewee.
‘You’re really brave to do this, Rick, to speak up. I know this can’t be easy.’
*
I tell my listeners, thousands of them already listening live, that I’m joined, for this special episode, by Rick Priestley.
‘Hi,’ Rick croaks into the microphone, clearly nervous. ‘I wanted to thank you for giving me the chance to speak.’
My listeners will be sceptical; they tune in every week for the regular episodes, eagerly awaiting the next live instalment which always signifies a major development. They chatter about it on Twitter before, during and afterwards, #TheColdCase often trending worldwide after each live episode. Do you know how many people have to be listening to your show for it to trend worldwide? My winning formula: fiction dressed as true crime.
‘Shall we start at the beginning?’ I ask him.
‘Sure,’ he replies, his features hardening.
‘You met Tabitha Rice while studying at Oxford University. Correct?’
‘Correct.’
‘How would you describe your relationship? Because, on this podcast, we revealed that she wasn’t your, sort of, official – shall we say – girlfriend at that time. Were you embarrassed by her? What was it about being with Tabitha Rice that meant you had to hide her?’
‘I liked Tabby a lot and we dated for a few months. I decided, pretty early on – because of my problems, not hers – that she wasn’t the right person for me. I met Saskia, moved on, but Tabby was persistent. She wouldn’t let me give up on her.’
‘The theory we had on the show was that she must have had pretty severe abandonment issues. She grew up in foster care because her mother couldn’t take care of her and her father was… well, no one knows. Her grandfather didn’t want anything to do with her. Her foster parents, by all accounts, weren’t particularly kind to her. And then she met you and she couldn’t bear to let you go, she wasn’t prepared to let another person desert her.’
‘I think you’re right,’ he says.
‘There’s a pretty uncomfortable story we uncovered while researching the show. An alleged rape accusation against you. We didn’t air the details at the time for a few reasons. The first was that Annabella – our theory that she’s actually Tabby making sense in this context – didn’t want it to get out. The second that we weren’t absolutely sure it was her. Can you shed any light?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it on the show, it’s not relevant.’
‘Well, with respect, Rick, of course it’s relevant. If Tabby had a history of lying, of deceit, the listeners deserve to know. They deserve the full picture.’
‘Tabby had a lot of demons, let’s just say she let a few of them loose on me. But she did the right thing, in the end. She dropped the allegation.’
I nod enthusiastically, rewarding Rick for confirming that story with a metaphorical pat on the head.
‘We went through a lot together,’ he continues, buoyed by the praise. ‘A miscarriage, a suicide attempt, and, going through those extreme events, they brought us closer together. As you know, we ended up getting married pretty young and moving in together, starting a new life here in London.’
‘How quickly did things start to go wrong? There was infidelity in the marriage, I believe?’
‘The trauma of what we went through brought us closer, that was for sure. We were each other’s support systems. I couldn’t talk to anybody else about what I’d been through with Tabby, except Tabby. But, though it was what drew us to one another, ultimately it also pushed us away.’ He chews the inside of his cheek, biting back his emotions. ‘As we got older and our scars healed, just looking at her was a reminder of our painful past. And not just for me, for her as well. We both craved the peace we felt when we weren’t together. We could start again, be whoever we wanted. It wasn’t her fault, it wasn’t mine. It just was.’
‘So, what do you think pushed Tabby over the edge? Why would she commit this horrendous injustice against you if your relationship was ending amicably?’
I wet my lips and recant the theory Rick’s so desperate to subscribe to. ‘Do you think it was as simple as rejection? Suddenly, you could move on but she was stuck… She was so angry with her friend Annabella, for having the qualifications she didn’t and the looks she coveted, that she flew into an impulsive and jealous rage and killed her best friend. Then she went through a raft of cosmetic procedures using her connections in the industry to create a look as similar to her old friend as possible, living as her for five years. She even hired a private detective in the interim, after “Tabby” went missing, to check that what she was up to wouldn’t come to light. Then she waited for the case to die down, for your life to just about begin returning to normal… And that’s when she struck. She was eager to get involved with this show. She stalked you, you know, for weeks, gathering information. She broke into your home to find ‘evidence’ that you were up to no good. She even started a dating you. Did you have any idea, any at all, that Annabella wasn’t who she said she was? That Annabella was actually your wife Tabitha Rice?’
I watch him shift in his seat.
‘It’s funny,’ Rick says. ‘I know now, obviously, about Annabella and the podcast and I can’t say I wasn’t hurt that she was using me to feed information back to you. That one will sting for a whi
le.’
I rearrange my skirt and sit in a different position.
‘But you have to understand, I knew Annabella when Tabby was alive. And I was married to Tabby.’
His eyes change, he’s about to pounce.
‘No amount of plastic surgery would be capable of convincing me that Tabby had become Annabella.’
I stammer, caught off-guard, Rick’s admission punching through me. This isn’t what he said he was here to say. Is he playing me?
‘How do you explain the procedure that Annabella butchered? She’s a qualified nurse, she wouldn’t make a mistake like this,’ I retort.
‘She’s been under a lot of pressure. She makes mistakes when things aren’t right, when things aren’t perfect.’
‘Or the break-in? That was her, you know, in your home.’
‘She had her reasons. I know she was desperate to find out what happened to her friend. But, what I think’s particularly interesting is the thread that holds her actions together.’ He pauses.
‘You.’
There’s a brief hiatus as I reach for the power supply.
‘The puppet master pulling the strings behind the scenes – always everyone else getting their hands dirty. Never you –’
At that moment I pull the plug on the broadcast and cut Rick’s microphone.
‘What are you doing?’ I shout. ‘You can’t say things like that, I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt here, let you into my home and this is how you want this to go?’
I stand up, jabbing an angry finger at his face, mouth frothing.
‘I know it was you, Kay,’ he says slowly. ‘There’s a car in the garden, it has a Polish number plate and, if a forensics team got their hands on it, I’m sure they’d find Tabby’s DNA in the passenger seat.’