The Mother, page 13
‘What happened to Liam . . .’ The words catch in my throat. The same words I had written so many times from prison, the letters to Peter and Colleen that had never been answered. ‘It destroyed me. But I’m innocent. It’s only the thought of the boys that’s kept me going.’
‘Every time you deny it,’ he says, his voice hardening, ‘you make it worse for his parents. You tear open the same wound again, make it impossible for their son to rest in peace. Do you understand that?’
‘It’s the truth. I didn’t do it. And I’m going to get my life back.’
‘You think you deserve that, do you? You think you should get your sons back too? It’s because of you that Mr and Mrs Vernon will never see their son again. You certainly don’t deserve a second chance like the one in that letter, but they think it’ll be worth it if they never have to see you again.’
‘I loved my husband,’ I say. ‘And I’m going to get justice for him, for the whole family.’
There is a long silence on the other end of the line before Hammond speaks again.
‘The offer is valid for forty-eight hours, I suggest you take another look in the meantime. Make the right decision for Theo’s sake, for Finn’s sake.’
As he ends the call, a sharp tap on the window makes me jerk in my seat. I turn and buzz the window down to see my sister-in-law standing beside the taxi, a deep frown of recognition dawning on her face.
‘Heather?’
Seeing her for the first time in a decade – this woman who had been my friend, my confidante, my bridesmaid all those years ago – steals the words from my throat. There are a million things I want to say but all of them are out of reach.
‘Amy.’ My throat is suddenly dry.
‘What are you doing here?’ she says, arms crossed tightly over her chest. She’s dressed in jeans and a white sweater, dark hair loose to her shoulders, the same chestnut brown as her brother’s. The years have taken their toll but she’s still an attractive woman, with high cheekbones and kind, soulful eyes.
‘I was . . .’ I indicate the sheaf of white paper on the seat beside me. ‘Talking to your father’s head of legal. About the letter.’
Her frown deepens, as if a decade of grief and pain and loss is settling there.
‘What letter?’
‘The offer.’ I hand her the papers through the open window and she studies the text, something passing across her face that I can’t identify.
‘You got this today?’
‘By courier,’ I say. ‘You didn’t know about it?’
She shakes her head, handing the letter back to me through the taxi window.
‘And I take it you said no?’
‘I did.’
‘I could’ve told Dad you’d say that,’ she says. ‘Saved him the trouble.’
‘Amy, can I—’
‘You should go, before he comes out of the house again. You shouldn’t be here.’
‘I need to talk to you.’
‘He’s never going to forgive, you know. It’s not in his nature.’ She crosses her arms again. ‘I don’t think I can, either.’
I open the door and climb out of the taxi so we can talk face to face. ‘I’m not asking for forgiveness. Just for you to hear what I’ve got to say.’
‘What makes you think I want to talk to you?’
‘Please,’ I say, ‘just ten minutes. There are things you need to know.’
‘Don’t think that’s such a good idea in the—’
‘He’s still out there, Amy. Still walking around free. Whether you want to accept it or not, I’m telling you that your brother’s killer got away with it. He was never punished, never had to answer for what he did to your family. And mine.’
My sister-in-law is already shaking her head but I cut her off.
‘If I’m wrong, what have you got to lose? I’m already convicted of the crime so nothing will change. But if I’m right – and I think deep down you might have always had a doubt, otherwise you wouldn’t be out here talking to me now – then we can finally get justice for Liam. Finally let him rest in peace.’
She glances towards the house, but her expression has softened a little.
‘All right,’ she says finally, quietly, as if worried about being overheard. ‘But not here.’
Besides Liam, she had always been the member of the Vernon family to whom I felt closest, and there is a little lift in my stomach at her words. It is the faintest glimmer of hope, but it is there nonetheless.
‘Thank you, Amy.’
‘Where?’
I think for a moment, dredging memories until I hit on a neutral venue, a place nearby that we have in common.
‘Remember that place in Alexandra Park, where we used to take the boys when they were little?’ I open the door of the taxi. ‘Tomorrow morning, nine o’clock. I’ll look out for you.’
24
The house on Maitland Street is just as I remembered it. A semi-detached, double-fronted Edwardian with big windows faced in white. The same small black garden gate at the front, same cherry tree on the left, same purple wisteria climbing the side of the house on the right. Even the front door is the same fire engine red that I remember. It had been a place of so much joy – where I’d brought both the boys back from the hospital as newborns; where Theo and Finn had spent their first birthdays, first Christmases; where they’d taken their first steps, uttered their first words. A place of tragedy too, of unimaginable heartbreak, the place where Liam’s life had been taken and mine had been shattered forever. Where our boys had lost both their parents in one terrible night.
The last time I’d been here there were strangers in the house who had started to arrive as soon as I had made that first panicked 999 call, who had arrived all day and tramped through the hallway, the kitchen, going up and down the stairs. Scenes-of-crime people pulling on their white boiler suits on the drive, filing in with bags and cameras and lights and all kinds of equipment. Our home invaded, our private space violated, not once but twice. First by a silent intruder in the night, and now – as if the nature of Liam’s death had suddenly turned the house into public property – to be photographed and swabbed and picked over by anonymous strangers.
A VW people carrier pulls into the drive as I watch, disgorging three chattering teenage girls who are followed into the house by a dark-haired woman in a smart raincoat. As she’s closing the front door she catches sight of me across the street and pauses, eyes narrowing as if to say, I see you, and you don’t belong here, before pushing the door fully shut.
On the way back into the city I stop at a 24-hour garage and follow Tanner’s advice, buying a cheap pay-as-you-go mobile with twenty pounds worth of credit and stashing it in the bottom of my backpack. I buy a small notebook too, conscious of his instruction to keep things out of the digital domain if at all possible. I walk with the hood of my sweatshirt pulled up over the baseball cap, stealing glances into restaurant windows where families eat and drink together, talking and laughing and enjoying a meal out on a Monday night. I haven’t eaten since breakfast and hunger gnaws at my stomach, but the idea of sitting down alone in one of these places with a dozen pairs of eyes on me is impossible, unthinkable.
There is a volunteer food kitchen at the Methodist church hall on Nelson Place – free meals every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 6 p.m., according to Jodie – and I head there instead.
It’s the tail end of dinner by the time I arrive but the place is still busy, full of low chatter and the fug of warm bodies, long tables lined with people of every age, prematurely old men bundled up in heavy coats, skinny boys barely out of their teens, women with young children and others closer to my own age, alone and watchful as they eat. Jodie had suggested we meet here for dinner but there’s no sign of her. I get a few stares from people as I wait in line at the serving hatch, a few who give me that double-take I’ve started to notice more and more over the last few days. I know you. Don’t I?
Each time, I look away and shuffle forward with the queue.
The food is hot and filling, a rich vegetarian stew served with hunks of wholemeal bread and mugs of strong tea. It’s the best food I’ve had in years, a whole world better than the slop we had been served in prison. While I eat, I send Owen the number of my new burner phone and jot notes in the pad. I also send over a series of questions on Telegram asking him about Christine Lai and the detective who had led the murder investigation, Inspector John Musgrove.
He replies quickly with an address on Woodford Avenue, Weston Park, a suburb on the north-west side of the city. A message saying it is the last address he has for Christine, with a couple of other messages following straight after.
Handle with care. She has restraining order against me.
No idea about Musgrove, retired 2018 and dropped off the radar since. Will have another dig around.
Once upon a time, Christine and I had been friends, of a sort. She had worked closely with Liam for some years, by his side as he first won the seat in the 2007 election and then built on his majority in 2010. She ran things for him in the constituency, handling all aspects of his work as the MP for Bath. But that was before she had given evidence for the prosecution at my trial, before she had been embroiled in Owen’s own investigation into parliamentary corruption, before she had sued the journalist for libel – and won.
She no longer works for Liam’s successor, who still occupies the Bath parliamentary constituency office on London Road.
She doesn’t have much of an online presence and gives the impression of someone who takes their privacy seriously, the only hits on Google linking through to a LinkedIn page and a handful of local news stories around the time of the last election, where she’s pictured in a grinning line-up with various other party workers. A Twitter account seems to have been dormant since 2020. There doesn’t seem to be anything personal online about her at all, no Facebook or Instagram, at least not under her own name.
She would not want to see me now, of that I’m sure. But I need to see her.
The dinner crowd at the church hall has started to thin out as I finish my meal. Taking my empty plate up to the servery, I recognise one of the other women from the probation hostel. She’s in her mid-twenties with dark hair cut very short and a line of piercings in one ear.
I give her a nod of recognition.
‘Haven’t seen Jodie, have you?’
‘Not since this morning,’ she says. ‘She’ll probably be down the Arches by now.’
‘Is that a pub?’
She snorts. ‘The old railway arches? Off Station Street.’
‘Right.’
‘With all the other alkies.’
‘Got you.’
I grab my jacket and head back out into the darkening city.
* * *
The Arches are little more than a line of soot-stained brick openings beneath the London-bound railway line, a couple of dozen dark semicircles beneath the track that seem to extend back into the hillside behind them. About a mile from the city, away from the tourists, away from the Roman Baths and the Royal Crescent and all the pretty architecture, they might once have been home to stables and warehouses and working yards. But now they are dark and derelict, at the far end of a dead-end road, the tang of woodsmoke and burnt plastic hanging in the air.
The blood drums a little quicker in my veins as I approach, an unpleasant flicker of adrenaline in my stomach, my fingertips. I peer into the first of the arches, a graffiti-sprayed cavern littered with rubbish and a torn red sleeping bag discarded in the corner, heavy smells of earth and rain and human waste. In the next one, split-open black bin liners are piled beside a grubby green tent zipped tightly shut, used syringes scattered in the dirt. A hugely bearded man in the third arch is warming his hands by a small fire. When I ask him if he’s seen Jodie, he gives a brief jerk of his head towards the further reaches of the crumbling structure.
It’s another six arches further down when I spot my old jacket, draped over the back of a shopping trolley. A soft sobbing reaches me from the darkness within. I flick my phone light on and make out a shape in the shadows of the corner, a prone figure sprawled on sheets of dirty cardboard. Shining my light closer, it reveals my room-mate groggily propping herself up on her elbows.
‘Jodie,’ I say, my voice a flat echo in the enclosed space. ‘It’s me, Heather. Are you OK?’
She shields her eyes against the light.
‘Too bright,’ she slurs.
On the torn blanket next to her is a half-empty bottle of supermarket vodka and scattered blister packs of pills. The sharp sour smell of vomit is somewhere close by.
I angle the phone torch towards the pill boxes. Paracetamol.
‘Did you take these? How many?’
She mumbles something I can’t make out.
‘How many, Jodie?’ I crouch down and grip her arm, the first pulses of real fear arcing through me like an electric current. One of my first cellmates at Eastwood Park, Caitlin, had overdosed after saving up all her meds for weeks, her body already stiffening and cold to the touch by the time I realised the next morning and began screaming helplessly for a guard. It was difficult to overdose in prison but it still happened, rules circumvented, drugs hoarded by the most determined. Jodie reminded me of Caitlin in some ways: the same sweeping, manic highs and deep, dark lows that left her mute and inconsolable, the swing from dizzying exuberance to black despair.
‘The pills,’ I say to Jodie again, holding up an empty box of painkillers in front of her face. ‘Did you take all of these?’
She nods, her voice catching in another sob.
‘Two . . . two boxes.’
‘Then we need to get you to the hospital,’ I say, pulling her upright. ‘Can you walk?’
I try to pull her to her feet but she pushes my hand away, mumbling an objection.
‘Jodie, listen to me, we have to go right now and get you to a doctor.’
‘No.’
‘I’m not asking you, I’m telling you.’
She bats my hand away again.
‘Couldn’t keep them down.’
‘What?’
‘The pills. Couldn’t keep them down.’ She collapses back against the dirty brick wall. ‘Sick everywhere. Couldn’t even do that right.’
The sharp smell of vomit hits me again, hanging pungent in the air.
I kneel down next to her on a piece of flattened cardboard.
‘Let me help you, Jodie,’ I say. ‘Talk to me. What’s going on?’
‘Just wanted to be on my own.’
I find a bottle of water in my bag and hand it to her.
‘Here, have some of this.’
She tips the bottle back and takes a long drink, before finally seeming to focus on me for the first time. ‘What are you even doing here?’
‘Missed you at the food kitchen,’ I say. ‘I wanted to ask you about something.’
‘Everyone always wants something.’ She sits up and rubs her face with both hands. Her eyes are puffy and bloodshot from crying. ‘You know, no one’s going to give a shit about me when I’m really gone. I’m going to be like one of those old fogeys who dies in their flat and no one realises for months until the stink gets bad. Eaten by my Alsatian or something.’
‘No chance,’ I say gently. ‘You haven’t even got an Alsatian.’
She snorts, but there is the ghost of a smile too. ‘You know what I mean, smart-arse.’
‘What’s happened?’ I indicate the pills and vodka bottle next to her on the ground. ‘Why did you think you wanted to do this?’
She looks away, her face creasing in pain, a tear cutting fresh tracks through the smudge of dirt on her cheek.
‘She’s gone.’ Her voice is little more than a whisper. ‘He’s taken her away.’
‘Who?’
‘My ex.’
‘Who’s he taken away, Jodie?’
She sniffs. ‘My Holly. My little girl. First, they said I couldn’t see her anymore and now he’s taken her and he’s gone. To Ireland, back to his parents.’
‘How old is Holly?’
‘Fifteen in November.’
‘Let me help you,’ I say. ‘I’m sure there’s something we can—’
‘No,’ she sobs. ‘There’s nothing. There’s no point anymore, no way to get her back.’
I cover her hand with mine. ‘There’s always a way, Jodie. We just have to find it.’
‘Leave me.’ She goes to lie back down again on her makeshift mattress of flattened cardboard. ‘Just leave me. I don’t wanna . . .’
‘You can’t stay here, it’s not safe,’ I say. ‘You don’t know who might be hanging around.’
The hostel closes its doors at 10 p.m., which means we have barely half an hour to return before we’re in breach of the curfew. I put a hand under Jodie’s armpit and hoist her to her feet. She’s unsteady, swaying as if she’s on the deck of a ship in heavy seas.
‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Let’s get you back.’
25
TUESDAY
The view from Alexandra Park is breathtaking, all of Bath laid out in the valley below. From the lookout, the city is a graceful mass of pale stone and dark roofs, church spires and tall Georgian row houses marching up the hill, the railway line curving up and around like a spine running through the middle. Across the valley, the streets rise towards Larkhall and Charlcombe, wispy September clouds above the ridgeline on the far side.
I’m early for my meeting with Amy. I hadn’t slept well, checking on Jodie every few hours to make sure she was still OK, rolled onto her side in the recovery position. She had still been asleep when I left the hostel this morning, pale and still beneath the scratchy grey blankets, her breathing deep and slow.
Amy is early too. She approaches from the path and sits down at the other end of the bench, leaving plenty of space between us. She’s dressed for work in a pale grey trouser suit, her long dark hair tied back. We exchange brief greetings and lapse into an awkward, loaded silence, both of us staring out at the view.
