Chapter 78
David Charles gestured towards the chair. ‘Please take a seat, Bonnie.’ He thought that the woman in front of him was so much more fragile than the one he had seen the morning after her arrest. She was wisp-thin, pale and there were dark rings around her eyes that told of sleepless nights, even though she was taking tablets designed to alleviate that. This was a woman crushed under a press of mental torture and yet he noted that she held her head high when she walked into his office. She might have been terrified of this tough world of police and cells and authority, but she had never once kicked against accepting the punishment for the part she had played in Alma Brookland’s death.
‘I asked you to come in for an update because I thought it might help you if you had any questions to talk through with me. Any trouble from your husband?’ said David Charles.
‘He’s left me alone since I quit my job,’ said Bonnie. He couldn’t follow her in the car, because she didn’t go anywhere. ‘David, can you tell me what will happen on Friday? I can’t remember. Do I need to take anything with me when I turn up at the station? Will I have to stay in . . .’ She was gabbling fretfully. David held up his hand and stopped her flow.
‘Look, Bonnie, since my secretary rang you yesterday to make an appointment with me, there’s been a proper update. I won’t beat about the bush . . .’
I won’t soften the blow, I’ll tell you it as it is, plain and simple, let’s call a spade a spade; her whole body scrunched up, her jaw tightened, she prepared herself.
‘. . . in the last hour I have been told formally by the police that the CPS have knocked it back. They aren’t prosecuting you. There’s insufficient evidence and it is not in the public interest to take you to court, so it’s over. And the police agree.’
He didn’t expect her to react. People who were told this sort of news often didn’t. ‘Kicking bricks into treacle’ was the phrase he likened it to. They were numb, thrown into shock, their brains would not accept what they’d just been told because they’d built a protective fence around themselves to guard against false hope and it would not be demolished by the impact of a few words. Sometimes he’d see the sun dawning on their faces as bit by digestible bit the information started to sink in, but he wasn’t seeing this now with Bonnie.
‘Bonnie, you can go home and carry on with your life,’ he said gently, slowly.
‘What about the police station on Friday?’
‘There are no charges to answer, you are free. You do not have to turn up at the station. The police will send a letter to confirm all this but that’s it, the end.’ He buzzed on his intercom for his secretary to get a glass of water for Bonnie. He was a little worried she was going to faint.
‘Please tell me you aren’t in your car. I would not advise you to get behind a wheel,’ said David.
‘I had to get a taxi here because my car’s got a puncture.’ She’d had it a week but didn’t want to go out of the house to get it fixed in case she saw Stephen framed in her rear view mirror. Stephen. She hadn’t realised she’d groaned aloud until David asked if she was all right.
‘Stephen. He’ll go into overdrive . . .’ The water was jiggling in the glass because her hand was shaking so much.
‘Bonnie, he will be in big trouble if he does. He will have to forget it.’
‘He won’t though.’
‘I think we both know that he wasn’t primarily trying to get justice for his mother,’ said David with conviction. ‘If Stephen contacts you again, you must report him to the police for harassment, you won’t have any problem with them believing you. He’ll find that he’s the one being arrested and investigated if he’s not careful. He’s told quite a few lies, has old Mr Brookland.’ DS Bill Henderson had even told the solicitor that the police would be only too happy to review those statements Stephen had made. ‘Once the law has told him to stop harassing you and he doesn’t, he’s flipping the bird at the law more than he is at you and the law doesn’t like that, Bonnie. It makes the law very angry. Do you understand what I am saying?’
‘Yes, I do. There’s no . . . no chance you could have misheard what the police said?’
Maybe with other clients, David might have been slightly insulted by that, but now his face broke into a smile.
‘None.’
‘I’m sorry if that sounded rude. I . . .’
‘Bonnie, you’ve been through a lot. But you can trust me in this, it’s over. Forget it and pick up your life where you left it. One of the receptionists downstairs will ring a taxi for you.’ David Charles held out his hand. ‘I wish you well, Ms Sherman. And I hope I don’t see you again for the very best of reasons.’
Bonnie stood up. David Charles had a warm, firm, genuinely happy-for-her handshake.
‘What about money? I must owe you some . . .’
‘You didn’t incur any charges.’ It was a small lie but a right one. The bill was minimal as most of it had been paid by Her Majesty’s government. As a partner of the firm, he could and would write it off.
‘Thank you, David. Thank you so much.’
She turned at the door. ‘I was very fond of Alma by the end, you know. And she was fond of me.’
‘I don’t doubt it, Bonnie.’ And he didn’t.
Bonnie waited in reception with the glass of water, the words tumbling round and round in her head. It was over. It was over. It was over.