#YouToo

by Candy Denman

  Finally losing patience at being kept out of the loop, Jo called Jayne Hale to get an update on what was going on. Jayne happily told her that everyone in the different police forces involved in the various aspects of this investigation were looking for Fiona Hutchins now, but that none of them were having any success, even with the updated description. Jayne also told her that they finally all did believe the lawyer to be responsible for the deaths as well as the other events, and were busy collecting the evidence so that she could be charged once she was found. The techies were sure that they would be able to link all email addresses used to contact her victims and send details to the press.

  And there were several common factors in the events apart from her history, as most of the victims could be connected to a mystery overweight woman immediately before their incident. She lived downstairs from Giles. She spoke to and then helped Doreen Ponting at the pub and so could have spiked her drink. Witnesses had now come forward to say a woman with the same rough description was on the train with an absolutely paralytic Adrian Cole, apparently helping him, at exactly the time the emails had been sent from his phone, and also on an early morning train from the station near Compton Cazeley after Cole’s body was left in the pool. And she had been in the bar where John Dixon left his bottle of wine and glass unattended whilst he went to the lavatory. And of course, they knew she was at the cottage. What amazed everyone was that none of her victims saw through her dis- guise, even though they all knew her. Jo had to admire the woman’s ingenuity and found it hard to condemn her for her actions. What had been done to her had been so awful; Jo couldn’t even begin to imagine how she would have reacted if it had been her rather than Fiona who was the victim. The frustration at not being able to see her assailants punished must have been simply overwhelming. Jo could never con- done killing a fellow human being, no matter how awful a specimen they were, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t understand why someone might feel they had been left with no other choice.

  If Jo was hurt that Miller didn’t contact her to thank her for com- ing to his rescue, she tried not to show it, especially when she was with Billy, although, in truth, it wasn’t hard to put it to the back of her mind when she was with Billy. It was Jayne who finally explained his lack of contact.

  ‘The photos were sent to the boss’s wife,’ she told Jo.

  ‘But there was no way of her knowing who it was in the pictures,’ Jo said, and then remembered the English rose tattoo. Of course, the press wouldn’t have been able to identify Miller but his own wife ob- viously would.

  ‘Oh dear. I take it the pictures didn’t go down well.’

  ‘I think that’s probably an understatement,’ Jayne said tactfully. ‘You know things are a bit,’ she struggled to find the right word to describe the Millers’ relationship, ‘volatile, particularly with the pregnancy.’ Jayne obviously related to this, having three kids herself, although Jo couldn’t imagine solid, stoic Jayne being so much as faintly ruffled by pregnancy, let alone ‘volatile’. It always seemed as though she took everything in her stride.

  ‘Of course.’ Jo understood why he hadn’t been in touch now. Calling another woman, let alone sending her flowers as a thank you, would only make matters worse if Lizzie was upset. She wondered if Lizzie really thought her husband had been complicit in the bondage session, or if she accepted that he had been drugged and placed in that position. Her hormones, let alone her bipolar disorder, would make it hard for her to keep things in perspective. Either way, Jo knew that it was going to take a lot of effort on Miller’s part to smooth things over.

  It was another lovely sunny afternoon, with just a hint of summer in the air, the kind of day that made you believe that winter really was on the way out. Jo and Billy were taking advantage of the fine weather and walking on the West Hill. Jo turned and took a deep breath, smiling as she took in the view of the old town. The sun was glinting off the sea and the gulls were wheeling overhead and all was right with the world, it seemed to her.

  ‘Almost as good as the view from your place,’ Billy said as he took her hand.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘but it’s nice to get a different perspective every now and again.’

  They stopped for a while, Billy putting his sweatshirt on the damp grass for her to sit on.

  ‘Are you going to be warm enough?’ she asked, and he laughed. ‘Of course! It’s a lovely day,’ he assured her and it was, she thought,

  as she closed her eyes and listened to the seagulls. Eventually, some clouds came over and they decided to go to the café at the top of the lift for tea and cake.

  As they approached the café, Jo could see a small group of people gathering at the top of the lookout point above the teashop. Some- one shouted, several others seemed to have their phones out, some to make calls, others to film whatever was going on. Jo looked at Billy and they both hurried on up there.

  As they reached the top, Jo could see someone standing on the edge of the high rocks where she knew there was a dizzyingly steep drop.

  ‘Shit,’ Billy said, as he pushed his way through the fast gathering crowd, closely followed by Jo. Once she was in front of the crowd, Jo could see that it was a woman standing very close to the edge, looking down.

  ‘Don’t!’ she called out urgently and the woman turned around, wobbling slightly as she did so.

  ‘Fiona!’ Jo exclaimed. She recognised the woman standing on the edge as the person she had seen living downstairs from Giles Townsend. ‘Don’t do it!’

  Fiona gave a slight smile of recognition. The crowd hummed with expectation.

  ‘At last!’

  Jo was puzzled by the response. She moved forward, despite Billy touching her arm, wanting to hold her back but letting her go at the same time. She could feel his eyes boring into the back of her head, willing her to take care.

  ‘Why do you say that? Were you expecting me to be here?’ Fiona shook her head.

  ‘No. I meant, at last somebody actually recognises me as me.’ She sighed and looked around at the assembled people, but it was clear she wasn’t seeing them. ‘When I was younger, slimmer, beautiful, people wanted to know me, they recognised me, they paid attention to me – too much attention.’

  ‘I know what happened to you, Fiona. I do understand.’

  ‘Do you? I doubt it. They didn’t want to pay for what they did. No one wanted them to pay.’

  ‘I know, they should have listened, they should have -’ Jo was edging closer as she spoke and could sense Billy moving forward too, trying to stay close to her, but not stopping her. Jo stopped as Fiona suddenly fixed her with a piercing look.

  ‘Do you know what that CPS bitch said?’ She was shaking with an- ger and stepped back to steady herself. Her foot was dangerously close to the edge and there was a collective gasp from the crowd behind Jo. Jo shook her head and stayed still, holding her breath. Behind her, Billy stopped too.

  ‘She said I should have known better.’ Fiona spat out the words. ‘Better than what? Better than to let my boss force me into bed? Or better than to have bothered reporting it?’ She gave a short bark of empty laughter. ‘I should have known better.’

  Fiona looked down and round slightly, seeing how close she was to the ledge, testing the distance.

  ‘When I came out of the psychiatric clinic, I thought that everyone would look at me and see someone who should have known better, but they didn’t see that, they didn’t see anything. In fact, I found they didn’t see me at all.’ She looked at Jo. ‘You should try it. Put on a bit of weight.’ She laughed, looked at herself and then at Jo again. ‘Make that a lot of weight. Let yourself go. Leave the hair dye and makeup in the box. Stop bothering to pluck your eyebrows or shave your legs. You’ll see. It’s such a relief. Freedom. No one notices you. No one sees you. You become invisible. And the men? The men who pawed you and stroked you when you were beautiful? They don’t even recognise you when you stand in front of them. All they ever saw was a beauti- ful woman, they never actual
ly bothered to look at me as a person. It never occurred to any of them that this fat slag saying good morning, serving them drinks, sitting next to them in a bar could be the beautiful Fiona Hutchins. It’s been the perfect disguise.’

  ‘I know you. I recognised you,’ Jo told her.

  ‘Ah, but you had never seen me before that day. The day you found Giles’ body.’

  ‘I didn’t find his body, it was the receptionist from the firm, wasn’t it?’ Jo edged forward again. ‘Why did you put her through that?’

  ‘I did feel bad about it.’ Fiona admitted. ‘But I had to stop him before he did it to anyone else. Better to find a body, don’t you think? Than be assaulted?’ Jo didn’t quite know what to say to that.

  ‘I knew they would send someone over when he was late for work and not answering his phone. I knew she would be young. They all were. And I was sure it wouldn’t be a receptionist that knew me, as they always changed so regularly. No one wanted to put up with Giles’ antics for long. They were always happy to take a payoff and run to an- other firm clutching their non-disclosure agreements and that hard-earned cash.’ Fiona looked down again. Jo could hear sirens in the dis- tance, emergency services responding to the calls from the expectant crowd. She had to keep Fiona talking until they got there and could take over.

  ‘Had you planned it all along?’

  Fiona looked at her, knowing what she was doing, but still tempted to talk. To explain herself.

  ‘No. I saw the flat up for rent and I thought I would live there and just see if he recognised me. He didn’t of course, didn’t even give me a second glance when he passed me in the hallway.’ She smiled and shook her head. ‘I still had the keys from when I used to work for him. He’d given me a set so that I could ‘drop papers off’. That was always his excuse. What he meant was, so that he could flash you, grope you, pin you to the bed and threaten your career if you dared to complain.’ Jo could see tears on her face and feel movement in the crowd behind her, as they were quietly moved back, away from the incident by the police who had finally arrived.

  ‘I didn’t have much of a plan at all, at first. I thought maybe I could do something to hurt him, hurt his career. I used to go into his flat, look around, take things, or move them. My idea was nothing more than to do a bit of gaslighting. Make him think he was going mad by moving things, hiding them, that sort of thing, but then I found his gear, his auto-asphyxiation gear, and the plan, a different plan, began to form. A way to get back at him and all the people who helped him get away with it. You don’t think of them, do you?’ she challenged Jo. ‘The people who facilitate predators like Giles and Adrian? The lawyers who draw up the non-disclosure agreements, the HR bosses who sort out the termination of your employment and the glowing references. The professional associations who turn a blind eye to the complaints because you’re just a bit of hysterical totty!’ she almost spat those words and Jo had to wonder if it was John Dixon or someone else who had used that unfortunate remark. ‘Not to mention the col- leagues and wives who feign ignorance of just what these men are like.’

  Jo was at the edge of the rocks now, not quite close enough to reach out and touch Fiona.

  ‘Why don’t you come away from the edge?’ she said holding out her hand in encouragement.

  ‘And do what?’ She looked at Jo intently, ‘I’ve spent enough time in institutions thanks to these people. I’ve no intention of going back to one, to prison.’ She turned, ready to leap from the edge, but Jo had seen her prepare and launched herself at Fiona, catching her loose clothing and pulling it as hard as she could. The two of them lost balance and crashed on to the ground, just short of the edge. Jo’s head hit the hard stone and she was momentarily disorientated, but she could feel people pulling her away, away from Fiona and away from the edge and then she was in Billy’s arms as he helped her to sit up.

  ‘Steady now, you’ve hurt your head.’ He said gently as he exam- ined a tender lump on the back of her skull. She could see DS Jeffries crouched next to Fiona, who was lying on her stomach, blood trickling down her face, as he handcuffed her. She looked at Jo with hatred and despair, and Jo wondered if she would ever forgive her for saving her life.

  ‘Ouch!’ she said, as Billy touched a particularly tender spot on the back of her head.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘We’d best get you checked out at the hospital; that’s quite a lump you’ve got there.’

  Jo let Billy fuss as a paramedic came over and examined her. In between having lights shone in her eyes and being asked how she felt for the umpteenth time, she watched as Fiona was formally arrested and led towards a waiting police car. It was only then that DS Jeffries came over to speak to her.

  ‘Nice work, Doc. I would’ve hated for her to top herself before we managed to arrest her.’

  ‘That’s a surprise.’ He looked at her questioningly. ‘I’d have expected you to have been happy to have been saved the bother of a trial and all that that,’ she said gruffly, telling herself that she shouldn’t let him get under her skin.

  ‘Yea, but there would still have been loads of paperwork.’ She could see from the glint in his eye he wanted to ask her about a lot of things, but mostly about finding Miller, but there was no way she wanted to talk about that here, so she turned away and allowed Billy and the paramedic to help her up and walk her towards the ambulance.

  ‘Nobody looks at a fat bird twice.’ Jeffries said to her retreating back. ‘There’s a lesson there somewhere.’ Jo gave him a look that she hoped adequately conveyed her feelings at this typically crass remark. He really was the end.

  Chapter 31

  Billy had insisted on staying the night with Jo once she had been discharged from the emergency department, having been given the all-clear. She was sure she didn’t need anyone to keep an eye on her as she hadn’t lost consciousness at any point, and apart from a slight headache she had no ill effects. But he said he wanted to be sure she didn’t develop any symptoms of concussion and she had to admit that it was nice that someone wanted to make a fuss of her. It was a long time since anyone had cared enough to look after her. She could re- member having a bad bout of tonsillitis when she was small and her mother wiping her fevered brow with a handkerchief soaked in cool, fresh Eau de Cologne, and her father smuggling in ice cream to help dull the pain. But she had been a child then and no one had looked after her like that since she had left home.

  Jo had a long, relaxing scented bath, as Billy cooked a risotto and fielded phone calls, including from Kate and her mother, both wanting to know what on earth she felt she was doing putting herself in danger by trying to stop a deranged woman from killing herself. Shaky film of the incident, taken by onlookers with their mobile phones, had been shown on the news. Jo knew that most people would think she should have let Fiona jump, but that would have meant too tidy an end. The world deserved to hear what had turned a beautiful and talented law- yer into a killer; how the system had let her down when she needed its help most. Even if Fiona pled guilty, her lawyer ought to be able to use what had happened to her as mitigating circumstances. And Jo told Billy that she hoped that Fiona herself would understand in time how important it was that she tell her story, because time was something she was going to have in abundance. It occurred to Jo that, much as Fiona hadn’t wanted to go to prison, she was likely to be looked up to by other prisoners, who might well have been abused by men and let down by lawyers themselves. She might be able to help some of them with appeals and even become something of a hero to them. In time, perhaps Fiona could learn to forgive, if not the men who had abused her, then at least Jo.

  As Jo ate her risotto, thinking that Billy was really a surprising- ly good cook, certainly much better than she was, she pushed other thoughts to the back of her mind. Tomorrow she would have to think of a way to explain Billy’s presence in her flat to her mother, who was probably already checking out mother-of-the-bride outfits on line. In fact, she’d actually go and see her parents and let them know that she was
fine, but she probably wouldn’t subject Billy to meeting them. Not yet. She didn’t want to put him off, after all.

  Jo was happily dozing next to Billy on the sofa, with the one glass of wine he had allowed her – ‘No more as you have had a head injury and alcohol might disguise your symptoms’ – when her doorbell sounded.

  ‘I’ll get it.’ Billy jumped up and went to the intercom. ‘Hello?’ he said and there was a moment’s silence.

  ‘Is Jo in?’ came a disembodied voice that Jo recognised as Miller. Billy turned to Jo, his eyes silently asking her if she wanted whoever it was to be buzzed in. She nodded, but some of her confusion must have shown on her face, because when he opened the door for Miller, Billy turned to her and said:

  ‘I’ll just go and get some things out of my car,’ and tactfully left them.

  Miller stood just inside the door and looked as if he had no idea what he ought to do next.

  ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come,’ he said and turned to go out again, but Jo stood up and came over to him. He looked terrible. There was a bruise on his cheek and scratches on his neck.

  ‘For goodness sake sit down before you fall down,’ she told him, and to her relief he did as he was told. ‘Can I get you anything to drink? Coffee? Brandy?’ Jo didn’t really think she had any brandy so goodness knows what she would have done if he had said yes, but he shook his head and sat down heavily.

  She sat down next to him and waited for him to tell her what was wrong, although she had a good idea that it was Lizzie. It was always Lizzie. After a while, when she was beginning to think she was going to have to prompt him because he was just staring into space and wringing his hands, he said, ‘She saw the pictures and we had a terrible row.’ He dropped his head into his hands. ‘She was screaming at me. I tried to calm her, but …’ Jo could see he was crying and she rubbed his shoulder. She knew how much he loved his wife, and how much this must be costing him. ‘She kept hitting me and shouting at me and then she ran out of the house and drove away.’ He sniffed loudly and Jo handed him a tissue from the box on the table in front of them, but he didn’t use it. ‘Her sister rang later and told me. She got there okay but she was in a terrible state. So upset there was nothing they could do. She started having cramps, bleeding. She lost the baby and it’s all my fault. She’ll never forgive me for this, never.’