Leigh Russell, page 28
‘What am I paying you for then?’ Nigel had fumed. ‘If you can’t get her released?’
With exaggerated patience, Higgs had explained that it was no longer a question of trying to prove Carol was innocent. All he could do now was try to make sure her sentence was as light as possible, given the circumstances.
‘What the hell am I paying you for?’ Nigel repeated crossly.
Higgs insisted Carol had disregarded his counsel. ‘She’s a headstrong woman,’ he added ruefully.
‘It was your job to guide her,’ Nigel snapped. ‘This is all your fault. I should complain to the Law Society.’
‘Good luck with that,’ Higgs replied.
The lawyer was right to be complacent. Carol had confessed to two murders. Only Nigel knew she had been planning a third – and perhaps even a fourth. He shuddered to think that she had quite possibly been intending to do away with him once she had despatched his sister, but he tried not to dwell on that. She was still his wife and he loved her. That was to say, he loved the woman he had married, the woman he had believed her to be. But the Carol he had married had been replaced by an evil doppelgänger, a creature of nightmares. Something must have happened to cause such a change in her. He refused to believe she had always been a psychopath, hiding her true nature from him. Facing her now in the drab visiting room, he studied her face, searching for the woman he had married, while Carol stared back at him coldly, as though they were strangers.
‘How are you?’ he enquired awkwardly. The question sounded inappropriate and formal.
Carol let out a bark of laughter. ‘Oh, I’m just great,’ she replied. ‘Couldn’t be better.’ Without warning she leaned forward and hissed at him. ‘Get me out of here, Nigel. You have no idea what it’s like. The place stinks. You have to do something. You can’t leave me here to rot.’
Again he had the sensation that he was listening to a stranger. Tempted to retort that it was her own fault she was in prison, and she ought to have thought of the repercussions before she killed his father, he shook his head, muttering that he would speak to Higgs.
‘I’m sure he’s doing everything he can,’ he added helplessly. ‘He’s the best—’
Carol’s face twisted in an ugly snarl. ‘The best? The best?’ Her voice grew shrill. In the corner by the door the guard stirred and she lowered her voice. ‘He’s useless. I don’t know what you think he’s doing but whatever it is, it’s not good enough, is it? Because I’m still here. Get rid of that useless idiot and find me a proper lawyer. If you’d done that in the first place, none of this would be happening.’
Nigel didn’t even try to hide his surprise at her belligerent tone. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Bertram Higgs is the most prestigious law firm in York, and William Higgs is a senior partner. He’s been—’
‘Senior is right,’ Carol interrupted him. ‘He’s practically senile. He must be at least eighty.’
Nigel ran out of patience with her griping. He stood up abruptly, telling her there was no point in him visiting her if she was going to spend all her time complaining.
‘It’s all right for you,’ she snapped. ‘You can go home to a nice flat and sleep in a comfortable bed and eat whatever you want whenever you want while I’m stuck here in this hellhole with no prospect of ever getting out, being slowly starved to death. Your precious Mr Higgs hasn’t even managed to get them to fix a date for my trial. Although why I should be put on trial when you stand to benefit even more than I do is beyond me. Why is this all my fault?’
‘Because you killed two people,’ he replied quietly. ‘That’s why you’re here.’
‘But I did it for you,’ she went on, growing tearful. ‘You have to get me out of here.’
Once he would have been desperate to alleviate her distress. Now he just thought how ugly she looked with her face contorted in misery. He tried to explain that it was impossible for him to grant her request, and Higgs was equally helpless to influence the justice system. Her case would have to follow its due course and there was nothing anyone could do about it. The more she protested, the more unhinged she seemed. He supposed the experience of being arrested and locked up might have tipped her over the edge, but he had a horrible suspicion that she had always been deranged. After all, she had admitted to killing two innocent people without showing a shred of remorse. That was hardly sane. He had to accept that his wife was a psychopath, possessed of enough cunning to fool her own husband.
Until recently, he had been an easy target, wilfully blind to her wickedness. Admitting she was insane placed a serious question mark over his discernment in choosing a wife, and he had never before had cause to doubt his own judgement. Now he was forced to acknowledge what might have been in store for him if she hadn’t been stopped. He shivered and gazed apprehensively at her, wondering what he would do if, by some fluke, she escaped a prison sentence. The prospect of her returning to his house made him tremble with fear. Looking at her now, with her greasy hair and smouldering eyes, he wondered how he had failed to see the terrible psychosis that must have always been present, lurking beneath her mask of sanity.
He hesitated to ask, but he had to know. ‘Were you planning to kill me too? After a reasonable interval, of course,’ he added bitterly.
Carol eyed him speculatively before answering, but her vacillation was all the confirmation he needed. Far from being shocked by the suggestion, she was calculating how to respond.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said, shifting uneasily in her chair. ‘Are you suggesting I don’t love you?’ She stared into his eyes, seeming to grow in confidence as she slipped into her familiar wheedling. ‘I wouldn’t have married you if I didn’t love you, would I?’
He tried to recall exactly when she had learned about Martin’s financial position, and whether that was before or after he had proposed. Strictly speaking, he had never actually asked her to marry him. The idea had just evolved and he wasn’t sure which of them had suggested making their relationship permanent. He had a sinking feeling she had probably known about his expectations right from the start. He remembered her job interview and the impression he had of her when he first saw her inviting smile. In a way, he had been at her mercy ever since. But not any longer.
‘Now focus on getting me out of here,’ she said plaintively. ‘I hate having to meet you like this, unable to touch you. Get me out of here so we can be together again. Nothing else matters right now. Only us.’
‘Does my father’s death not matter?’ he asked sadly, feeling a shutter closing between him and the wife he had loved.
‘How can it matter when he’s dead?’ she asked, but he was no longer listening to her. ‘Now, what are you going to do to get me released? There must be a way.’
Nigel rose to his feet. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘This is over. I won’t visit you again.’
At the door he turned his head to glance back; her jaw had dropped open in astonishment while her eyes blazed with fury. He walked away, blinking his watering eyes.
64
Daisy was back at home, claiming to be over her ordeal, but Nigel wasn’t convinced she had made a full recovery. She was bound to experience some after effects from being held captive, not to mention being stabbed. Apart from the terror she had suffered, her injury must have been agonising. The wound was not yet fully healed after three weeks, and the dressing was still being changed regularly, which involved regular trips to the hospital. Nigel was on hand to drive her there and back each time. He did so not just because she was his sister, but also because he couldn’t help feeling at least partly responsible for what had happened to her. After all, he was the one who had introduced a violent maniac into their family. Of course, at the time he had married Carol, he had not entertained the faintest suspicion she would turn out to be mentally ill. Daisy refused to concede that Carol was unhinged, preferring to believe she had plotted quite deliberately and coldly to get her hands on Martin’s money.
‘If she was prepared to go to any lengths to get hold of his fortune, including murdering innocent people, then you have to agree she’s ill,’ Nigel argued. ‘Killing people isn’t exactly normal. She’s a psychopath.’
Daisy was recalcitrant. ‘You of all people would have known if she’s a psycho. You married her. Dear God, Nigel, you lived with her. How could you not have seen what she was like? She was your wife. Surely even you can’t be that blind.’
Nigel merely shrugged and was silent. He had no defence against her accusation. It was true he had been utterly oblivious to his wife’s true nature, the side of her she had concealed from him for years. He actually sympathised with his sister’s scepticism, because he too found his own poor judgement hard to believe. Seeing the doubt in Daisy’s eyes, he shivered as she reflected his own misgivings back at him. He felt he was living on quicksand; everything he had once trusted was collapsing around him and there was nothing he could do to escape the ensuing chaos. If he could live with a killer and not have the faintest inkling about her true nature, what else might he have failed to understand about the world and about himself? He trembled to think that he might have been drawn to Carol because he was unconsciously attracted to her violent nature.
‘Well, obviously, had I known about her sickness, I would have had her committed,’ he muttered sullenly. ‘I would have done something about it. You seem to think I’m happy to discover my wife suffers from some devastating mental illness,’ he ended lamely, because he wasn’t quite sure what was wrong with his wife. He cursed his fate. ‘If I’d known, I’d have got her help,’ he bleated. ‘I never wanted any of this. But you can’t blame Carol. She needs professional help. Surely you can see that?’ He was pleading with Daisy now. ‘She needs help.’
‘What she needs is to be locked up,’ Daisy answered promptly.
Perhaps her refusal to compromise was understandable, given that Carol had tried to kill her, but it was typical of Daisy to be difficult. He wanted to support her, driving her wherever she needed to go and taking her shopping, but he couldn’t carry on like this indefinitely. She was taking advantage of his good nature… or his guilt.
‘None of this was really my fault, you know,’ he pointed out. ‘I’m the one who’s lost a wife.’
‘Oh well, poor you. I only nearly lost my life,’ Daisy retorted promptly. ‘You can divorce her and get yourself another wife. But make sure you make a sensible choice this time, instead of going for someone years younger than you. Didn’t you ever wonder why she wanted to marry you?’
He couldn’t bring himself to reply that he had believed Carol loved him. He listened in silence as Daisy continued to harangue him about his wife. Nigel had always found his visits to his sister thoroughly depressing, but she was the only close family he had. Besides, she needed ferrying around and there didn’t seem to be anyone else in her life able to help her.
‘You need to think about how you’re going to manage when you’re older,’ he said, in an attempt to steer the conversation away from the painful subject of his marriage.
‘I’ll manage how I always manage,’ she replied. ‘I’ve got you, haven’t I? We’ve got each other.’
He wanted to shout out that she couldn’t keep relying on him for support, and it was unfair of her to even think of doing so, but instead he merely pointed out that he wouldn’t be around forever. He spoke mildly, but she bridled visibly.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she snapped. ‘Who said I want you to be around forever?’
Carefully avoiding mentioning Carol, he told her that he was missing their father, and she began to cry.
‘Don’t worry,’ he heard himself say, almost automatically. ‘I’m still here.’
Daisy nodded and mumbled incoherently. They both knew he would be back at her door ready to ferry her to her next hospital appointment. They were trapped together in a relationship built up over decades of loneliness and mutual dependency. While Nigel had Carol for company, he hadn’t spent much time with Daisy. Now that he was on his own again, he and his sister would be thrown together more than ever. Even spending time with his sister was better than spending every evening alone nursing his bitter disappointment.
‘At least we’re both still alive,’ he said. ‘We had a narrow escape. You do realise that sooner or later we’d both have been killed if Carol had managed to get her way. As for Serena, she did nothing to deserve what happened to her. All she did was give our father some happiness to help him through his grief. She didn’t deserve to be murdered any more than we did.’
He had been trying not to dwell on his last conversation with Carol, but it was difficult to forget how she had glared at him when he left, her eyes filled with hatred.
Daisy sniffed. ‘I’ll never understand why you didn’t see through that wife of yours,’ she said. ‘You always were an idiot.’
Miserably, he left. As he turned into Leeman Road, there was a flash of lightning and it began to rain. He swore as his wipers smeared water across the windscreen. Once he would have been pleased that he was nearly home, but he could never go back to those days. The sense of loss hit him like a punch in the chest and he realised he was crying.
65
Geraldine smiled as Ariadne put a couple of pints on the table and sat down. They had agreed to join their colleagues at the pub nearest to the police station to celebrate the successful conclusion to the case, and were waiting for the others to arrive.
‘I can’t stay long,’ Geraldine said, glancing at her watch. ‘One pint and I’m off.’ She sighed. ‘It’s difficult, but hopefully, we’ve made the right decision.’
She was glad Ariadne hadn’t responded glibly that she was sure Geraldine would have found the right person this time.
Ariadne grunted. ‘Parental duties,’ she said, a trifle wistfully.
Geraldine had never wondered whether her friend might want a family. Until Tom had come along, quite unplanned, such questions had never occurred to her.
‘You’ve got to feel a bit sorry for Nigel,’ Ariadne said, picking up her glass and studying the head on her pint. ‘I mean, imagine discovering you’ve been living with a psychopath. Do you really believe he didn’t know what she was capable of?’
Geraldine shrugged. ‘It’s difficult to say. People can be wilfully blind to faults in the people they love.’
Ariadne laughed. ‘Being a killer is some fault!’
‘And what about his sister? She’s a real piece of work,’ Geraldine said.
‘I guess any woman would seem appealing compared to her.’
‘But I agree, I do feel a bit sorry for Nigel,’ Geraldine said. ‘Even though he’s hardly someone you can warm to.’
As she was speaking, a group of their colleagues arrived. Sam came over trying not to spill his pint and sat down next to Ariadne. There was a buzz of excited conversation for a few minutes, with some of their colleagues standing at the bar waiting to be served while others found seats or stood around chatting. Naomi dragged over a chair and joined Geraldine, Ariadne and Sam.
‘I know this is a gathering to congratulate everyone on a successful outcome,’ Ariadne said, ‘but before Binita starts holding forth telling us what a wonderful team we are, I want to add my thanks to Geraldine for saving my life.’
A few colleagues standing nearby cheered.
‘Sam helped,’ Geraldine said quickly.
‘All I did was shove you through a window,’ he protested, laughing.
‘Sam wanted to go inside instead of me but I felt it was my duty seeing as I’d brought you there in the first place,’ Geraldine said. ‘But what I still don’t understand is how you ended up in there with Carol? I left you on the doorstep. What were you thinking of, going inside?’
Ariadne nodded and put down her pint. ‘I know it looks as though I was taking a stupid risk, but we didn’t know Carol had a knife when I went in. In fact, we didn’t even know she was there. As far as we knew, Daisy was at home on her own, so there was no reason not to go in. Daisy had never said Carol was at her house. So as far as I knew, we were going there to help Daisy. At first no one answered when we rang the bell, but after you went round the back, Daisy opened the door. It was only after I’d gone inside and she’d shut the door that I saw Carol behind her, holding a knife at her neck. At that point, there wasn’t much I could do without endangering Daisy. I could see she’d already been stabbed at least once, and was bleeding quite badly. Then we heard you calling from outside, and it was as much as I could do to warn you that Carol was armed.’ She shuddered.
‘Well, she didn’t kill anyone on that particular occasion, and it’s all over now,’ Geraldine said.
‘Thanks to you,’ Ariadne replied.
‘And Sam, and everyone else here,’ Geraldine smiled. ‘Like Binita is about to tell us, we’re a team.’
Binita tapped a glass with a teaspoon and cleared her throat.
‘If there’s one thing I want to say to you all, it’s that we are a team,’ she began.
Geraldine and Ariadne looked at one another and raised their glasses in unison. ‘We’re a team within a team,’ Ariadne whispered, and they both smiled.
Acknowledgements
I never imagined we would progress beyond twenty books featuring my detective, Geraldine Steel, but readers keep wanting more and so here we are, launching Deadly Will, the twenty-second title in the series. I couldn’t be prouder of all that Geraldine has achieved, but none of this would have been possible without the wonderful team at No Exit Press, Bedford Square Publishers. I would like to thank Polly Halsey for her invaluable help in production, Jem Butcher for his brilliant covers, Anastasia Boama-Aboagye for her enthusiastic marketing, Jayne Lewis for her highly skilled copy editing and Rachel Sargeant for her eagle-eyed proofreading.
