‘Why Gordon?’ James asks. ‘We know you were in the house that night. You talked to a Mrs Dexter, who I’m sure will be happy to identify you as the woman she saw in the kitchen.’
‘Why not Gordon?’ Mary asked. ‘Why not the stinking old man?
‘He was harmless, demented. He hadn’t killed Jane, he couldn’t even care for himself,’ James added.
I snort with laughter. Harmless? A man who wouldn’t acknowledge his own child and who married a woman he couldn’t stand just to keep up appearances. Harmless, my arse. He locked his wife in a room and left her to rot. He watched his child die and had her buried in secret. He got rid of his brother’s wife and child so he could inherit. And you call him harmless? I call him evil. I call him greedy and I call him sick. A selfish, nasty little man who couldn’t tolerate anything that wasn’t perfect. If he couldn’t kill it he turned his back on it. He turned his back on Connie soon enough, paid her to take Jane’s baby. Connie was an evil cow. Pimping out their own child to them and getting old and bitter on the money they paid her to keep her mouth shut. Cheryl never knew he was her father. He was no father, he was filth.
‘Why wouldn’t I get rid of him too?’ I ask. ‘They all had to pay. It went a bit wrong, though, because of that woman with the broken-down car. It was supposed to look like the nurse had done it – she was supposed to pay for what she did to Jamie by knowing what it was like to have no choices and know you’d been wronged. Jamie was suffering and she’d said she would help him, but she disappeared and left him to rot. He didn’t deserve that and she needed to pay. You were supposed to arrest her and make her pay.’
He is looking at me and shaking his head. I ask him why. ‘She didn’t disappear, she was ill. Her partner died and she was suffering from depression.’
I didn’t know that. She never said. I tell him that. She never said. And he says, ‘Why would she? It wasn’t your business or your burden. Besides, you know how to keep secrets. Everyone has them. She was entitled to hers.’
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘and look what they do to you. Look what they create. She never wanted to live anyway – you could see it in her eyes. She had the same look as Jamie, the same look as Jane, all haunted and empty.
‘He hung himself because of her, because she’d left us and we were losing the flat. He couldn’t go on like that. Seems only fitting she should be made to go with him.’ I shrug – I can’t care, I’m beyond that. ‘You found her, though, you must have done – you found me.’
There’s a look on his face. I don’t know what it means, but they stop the interview and he walks out. I guess they found her but she didn’t make it.
Serves her right. She should have told me. No one keeps secrets from me.
‘I want to pull you out of the interview,’ James said. ‘You’re losing your cool and she’s milking it.’
Poole knew she was right, but there was no way he was pulling out. He wasn’t losing his cool, not yet. But he was angry and James was sensing it, just like Buster could sense the rustle of a biscuit packet from thirty feet away. ‘I’m OK. I need to do this. We need to hear what she has to say,’ he said, trying and failing to let the tension out of his voice.
James sighed. ‘You’re letting her pull the strings in there.’
‘Because she’s on a roll. We’ll get more out of her this way. Just let her talk. She seems to want us to know exactly why she did all this. I think she’ll clam up if we push her.’
James frowned at him. ‘OK, we’ll play it your way – but I’m telling you that woman has an agenda. This isn’t just confession time, Poole. She isn’t just unburdening her sullied soul in there. She thinks she’s some kind of avenging angel, so watch your step – don’t put us in the shit with this.’
He glanced through the viewing panel in the interview-room door. The woman was just sitting there. Hands resting in her lap, staring at the ceiling as if there was nothing more to bother her than the cracks in the tiles. He wondered just how long she’d been insane.
Gallan was walking down the corridor, his face taut with concern. He slowed when he saw Poole and hesitated, as if contemplating turning back. ‘Any news from the hospital?’ Poole called out, confused by Gallan’s strange behaviour.
Gallan shook his head. ‘Spoke to them about half an hour ago. It’s not looking good. Her family are with her.’ He said it apologetically, with a slight shrug of his shoulders as if asking Poole not to shoot the messenger. ‘Sorry, but I need to speak to the boss – alone.’ He looked at James and nodded his head back down the corridor.
James followed him, her scowl firmly in place and her shrill voice echoing around the walls. ‘This had better be important, Gallan. I’m in the middle of a bloody interview here!’
Poole watched them go, pissed off he wasn’t in the loop. He took the absence of James as licence to have a break himself, using the time she was away to walk to the washroom and sluice his face with cold water. As if the action was going to clear his head. A brief glance in the mirror told him that wasn’t going to happen any time soon. He felt as though he’d just glimpsed the old man he would become.
Back in the corridor, James looked troubled too. He had no idea what had transpired between her and Gallan, but whatever it was it wasn’t sitting easy on her. When she spoke she was terse and avoided his questioning look. ‘OK, one more bout with the Butcher of Essen, then we break. She can sweat it in the cells overnight.’
They had barely sat and started recording when Mary opened up again, spilling information as though it was a rising tide inside her.
‘I didn’t have much sympathy. She’d killed Sorrow. The nurse, that is. She broke his neck, just like she broke Jamie’s.’
‘Sorrow?’ he says. I sigh and wonder why he can’t keep up. ‘The bird,’ I tell him. ‘We found him as a fledgling, hand-fed him, gave him to Jane for company – tame as anything he was. She called him Sorrow because he was alone too.
‘That’s when I lost it with Cheryl – she never saw to Jane, but she knew she was there, knew she and the bird would need food and water if I wasn’t coming. Knew I was sick and she left them to die. I’d have dragged Jane’s body and put it on her doorstep if I could – the bitch! Had about as much conscience as Connie, and she had the conscience of the devil! And to think I was always so nice to her, felt sorry for her. I thought it was a bit bad when she kept dating men and they never wanted a second – poor cow must have thought all her Christmases had come at once every time one of them said yes! I laugh, but it’s not funny, it’s cruel. But not as cruel as starving a woman to death because you’re too scared to go up the stairs and too scared of your “mummy” to do the right thing.’
He’s going a bit green around the gills and I haven’t even begun to tell him what I did to Cheryl. But he knows that already, he’s seen the results – my pretty mess in the kitchen. I am my mother through and through. She took the ear of the man who didn’t listen, I took the tongue of the woman who talked when she shouldn’t have and kept quiet when she should have spoken up. I took the eyes of the woman who saw it all and did nothing. That’s justice, not this lily-white questioning and whatever comes after.
‘It was your fault,’ I tell him. ‘You lot forced my hand. I’d have done it nice and clean if you’d just arrested the nurse and played along. But no, you let her go and I had to deal with her too. Cheryl let me in, silly cow. Thought I was a friend. I’m no one’s friend and no one is mine.’
Why did I butcher her, he asks. All I can do is stare at him. It’s like he’s not listening, not taking this in. ‘I was angry,’ I say. ‘It’s as simple as that. I took the eyes that would not see and the tongue she held too tight. It was justice. My justice. How many times do I have to explain?’
I can see the expressions on their faces, the disgust, poorly disguised behind learned impassiveness. ‘I’m not all bad,’ I say. ‘I didn’t kill the dog. Thought about it. But I didn’t. I didn’t kill Moss either, though you could say I encouraged him to do it himself. He’d been helpful in getting the nurse to the house for me, but then he would have been – I had his wife, I had his source of money, and I had his secrets. They were planning to run, you know, him and Elizabeth. Thought they could just walk away and forget what they’d done. Had a bloody key to their house too, and the bastards didn’t even ask for it back when they told me I wasn’t needed any more.
‘I wasn’t needed any more – can you believe that?’ I laugh but I can see they don’t get the joke. ‘She was going to meet him at a holiday cottage she’d been stupid enough to print the booking confirmation for. He was under the impression that if he did what I wanted and got the nurse to the Grange that I’d let Estelle and Elizabeth go and they could all fuck off into the sunset with the money from the land. How stupid can you get? I sent him a picture of what I did to his wife and I sent him one of what Estelle did to herself. I guess he weighed up his options and did the decent thing. First decent thing he ever did. Shame that fucking nurse didn’t follow suit.’
That was it. Poole had had enough. He made a slicing gesture across his throat and James called the interview to a halt. Mary looked surprised, insulted even, but he’d had enough of looking at her for that day and hearing the putrescent hatred that was coming from her mouth. Yes, he was being unprofessional and he knew it. James had told him not to land them in the shit – if he’d had to spend one more second in that room with Mary he might well have done just that. By smashing the mad bitch’s face in.
He stalked to the door, ready to wrench it open and put as much distance between himself and Mary Baxter as was humanly possible.
And that was when the wheels came off.
That was when Mary had really done it. Felled him like a sapling and blown a final hole in his already shaky world.
He’d just made it to the door, his hand on the handle, seconds away from never knowing, moments from walking back into his normal world. She wouldn’t have spared him for long, he knew that now, but even a few more minutes of peace of mind would have been better.
Being trampled by a ravening horde of wild animals would have been better.
Afterwards, he knew he would never have to face Mary Baxter again and the relief of it was overwhelming.
Don’t you walk away from me, Mr Policeman! You forget who you’re dealing with. You don’t get to call the shots, boy, no one does. I call the shots now.
‘How’s your brother these days, Mikey?’ He freezes, hand on the door. He turns to face me and really sees me for the very first time.
I’m not so invisible any more. I smile. And then I tell him who he is.