Conviction, page 7
‘Big gig for you this trial, I’m sure…’
The tube will be pulling up at the last stop any minute now. I could kick off my shoes, sprint as hard and as fast as I can until—
‘…It’s a shame what happened to his previous counsel, isn’t it?’
My thoughts stop dead. His eyes narrow as he smiles knowingly.
‘Adrian jumped…’ I say. ‘He took his own life.’
‘I can tell you what his last words were before the train hit him, if you like?’
Winding rivulets of sweat slink down my ribs from each pit.
I imagine the scene: Adrian Whittaker innocently standing back from the tracks as he waits for the tube home, when a strange man thrusts him into the oncoming train from behind, feeling nothing but the stranger’s hot breath against the nape of his neck and rough palms thrust into his spine. There one minute; gone the next.
Bile spits up my throat. I stare at Whittaker’s killer, gripping my hands together in my lap until every drop of blood is squeezed out of them.
‘Why on earth would you want to kill Mr Whittaker—’
‘For the same reason we’re sat here tonight. You have something valuable, something I want, and I have something of yours you want to keep hidden. So, I’m going to offer you a trade.’
I sit in my shock, wondering how the evening has transformed into this. I had been getting the tube home, a journey I have taken so many times. I had been slightly tipsy from the red wine when I sat down in my seat. Now I am stone cold sober.
‘And what about Adrian? Why didn’t he get to trade?’
‘He did,’ he replies. ‘But he didn’t want to play along.’
I stare at the man’s unwavering smile, each of his crooked teeth. The ridges between them are stained with dark tar from cigarette smoke.
‘W-what… what do you want from me?’
‘Wade Darling mustn’t get off,’ he says seriously, the amusement gone from his eyes. ‘He is to go to prison for a very long time.’
He tightens his grip on the gun, his palm rasping against the handle. His finger moves slowly towards the trigger. My heart skips so violently that a wave of nausea rips through me.
‘I can’t throw a trial,’ I stutter. ‘I have a duty—’
‘But you also have a dirty little secret, don’t you? One that you’re desperate to hide.’
His smirk makes me feel ill. He could be bluffing, waiting for me to assume too much; watching as I dig my own grave. I know from my experience in the courtroom how easy it is to twist a story with just a few facts, spin a narrative until it points in the direction you want.
‘The people I work for,’ he says. ‘They have a way of bringing buried secrets out into the open. They don’t take kindly to being told no. Adrian Whittaker thought he could outsmart them. That would be a fatal mistake on your part.’
‘Who do you work for?’
‘You know full well I won’t answer that,’ he replies. ‘You’ll lose the trial, Wade Darling will go to prison, and you can keep your sordid secret to yourself.’
Despite the terror, I almost scoff at his arrogance.
‘You make it sound easy.’
‘It would have been easier, had you not pulled that trick with Wade’s solicitor. Eddie Chester’s role was to help you lose the case. You’ll have your work cut out for you now, but that’s your affair. I’m just the messenger.’
That’s why Eddie had approached Wade. He will have purposefully failed to deliver those files to help, rather than hinder.
I nod towards the gun.
‘Well, if you’re planning on kill me, it won’t matter, will it?’
‘Who said this bullet is meant for you?’ His smile widens. He draws out the silence between us, staring so deeply into my eyes that the sounds of the tunnel fall into the ether. It is just him and me, swaying lightly from side to side, staring into each other’s souls. ‘Hannah’s a pretty girl.’
I had never fully believed one’s blood could turn cold until Hannah’s name left his lips. His words hit me square in the chest, the utterance of her name lodging a breath in my throat.
Hannah.
I grip the keys tighter, trying to keep myself in my seat while eyeing the soft skin at the base of his throat. I could lunge forwards, end this. But the reality of the situation pins me to my seat in fear.
This man hasn’t just been watching me. He’s been watching Hannah too.
‘If you hurt her—’
‘Nothing will happen to either of you if you make the trade. You can be angry with me all you want, but her fate isn’t in my hands – it’s in yours. The same goes for that little secret of yours… you decide what happens now.’
The tube starts to slow. The man clicks the safety on his gun and slips it in his waistband. It’s only then that I allow myself to soften; my head is throbbing from contracting every muscle in my body. The Messenger returns his sunglasses to the bridge of his nose, and my reflection stares back at me, hued green from the coloured lenses. I look gaunt with fear, almost as though I have aged a decade between Liverpool Street and the end of the line.
‘So,’ he says casually. ‘Guess you’ve got a decision to mull over, eh? I’d make sure Wade Darling goes to prison, because it’s him or you. His freedom or yours. And then there’s sweet little Hannah, of course… You’ll be of no help to her behind bars. Who knows what could happen to her.’ He looks me up and down with those predatory, infringing eyes as he rises to his feet, somehow even taller and broader than before. He could crush the life out of me if he wanted to. I jolt at the sound of a tired voice coming over the tannoy announcing we have reached the end of the line.
‘And what if I go to the police, and tell them what happened here tonight?’ I stutter. ‘What then?’
He stops at the door as the tube pulls up at Aldgate Station with a squeal of the brakes. The doors open with a hiss and whoosh of stale air. He stands at the threshold, watching me. The smirk returns to his lips.
‘Then your secret will be out in the open,’ he says. ‘And I’ll pay a visit to sweet, sweet Hannah.’
He pats the gun at his hip and gives me a wink, before slipping away as suddenly as he appeared.
10
I am sitting in the empty train carriage, staring at where the gunman had been. The silence of the station on the other side of the open doors is ringing in my ears.
Guess you’ve got a decision to mull over, eh? It’s him or you. His freedom or yours.
I had been on the train home, a journey I have taken over a hundred times. I am familiar with every jut in the tracks, recognise the faces of frequent passengers and the stops they call home. Now the familiarity of the journey has been ripped from under me and I don’t recognise it at all. My blouse has stuck to my back with sweat, and my palm is indented with deep, purple craters from gripping onto the keys.
I hear a man’s voice and a bolt of fear rips through me. The conductor is staring in at me from the platform edge.
‘I said it’s the end of the line, love. Gotta get off.’
‘Sorry.’
I take my carry case and step out onto the deserted platform in a daze. All there is to be heard is the cooling thrum of the tube train as it winds down, and the distant whisper of traffic calling down the stairs from street level. I am the only passenger. The man from the tube is nowhere to be seen.
‘You sure you’re all right, love?’
I jerk again. The conductor is approaching me, his brow creased with concern.
I catch my reflection in the framed tube map behind him. My face is as white as a sheet and my eyes look empty, as though a piece of me is missing; just like the woman from the tube had appeared as she muttered to herself, bottles clinking at her feet. I manage to force enough composure to reply.
‘I’m fine, thanks.’
I drag my case towards the stairs and take it by the handle as I ascend, gripping onto the rail like a lifeline, the conductor’s eyes burning into my back as I go. I’m swaying from the shock, rather than the drink I’m sure he suspects.
I reach the top of the stairs and pass in a haze through the barriers. The evening chill seeps in through the open station from the street.
I step out into the night and take a deep breath of fresh air. The panic hits me as soon as it fills my airways.
Let’s start with how you murdered your husband.
Tell me, did the police ever suspect you?
Hannah’s a pretty girl.
I hide myself away in the nearest doorway; it feels like there is a foot crushing down upon my chest, pressing my ribcage against my organs.
The people I work for, they have a way of bringing buried secrets out into the open.
A single word makes my heart jolt.
Buried.
I raise the handle on my case and break out into a sprint, my case jolting against the uneven pavement and kicking the backs of my heels as I race for home.
They know where I buried him.
* * *
I turn the corner for my street and lurch violently as my heel cracks beneath me, snapped in two like a wishbone. I stumble out of my shoe, kick off the other with a huff of breath. I can’t remember the last time I ran as fast or as far as this, and stop to catch my breath as the muscles in my legs spasm from the strain. The church sits at the other end of the street. Witnessing my sins.
I’m almost home.
I snatch up my shoes, chuck them in the carry case, and run along the street as I hunt for my keys, stray stones digging into the soles of my feet. My hands are shaking so violently that I can barely hold the key to the lock as I reach the front door.
‘Evening, Neve.’
I flinch with the sound. My neighbour, Lucinda, is stood outside her door with a bin bag in her grip. She has wiped off her make-up and slipped into a baggy sweatshirt and jogging bottoms, her hair tied up in a messy bun. Very different from her work attire, selling commercial real estate. Her smile fades as she takes in the state of me.
‘What on earth happened to your shoes?’
I look down at my feet and see blood stained between my toes. I must have stepped on glass.
‘Long story,’ I reply, and fit the key into the lock.
‘Your foot is bleeding—’
‘I’m fine.’
Leave me alone. Please.
Any other time I would stop to chat, but tonight I can’t get free of her quick enough. She isn’t my friendly neighbour, but a hurdle. I open the door and take my first step inside.
‘Are you sure?’ she asks, her voice an octave higher.
‘Yes,’ I snap curtly, and hike my carry case up the step. I slam the door shut behind me and sink against the door.
I heave for breath, my heart hitting the wood at my back like a jackhammer. Lucinda is a nice, thoughtful woman, and on any other night I’m sure she would say the same for me. Now I will have set off alarm bells. I can’t help but think like a barrister: should tonight become pivotal in a case against me, Lucinda will remember it.
Something wasn’t right. She was scared and bloodied, and completely barefoot. She looked like she was running from someone, or in a hurry to get somewhere.
I will have to make an excuse and extend my apologies. Cover my tracks. I have spent these last few years trying to appear as the perfect neighbour to avoid any suspicion after Matthew’s disappearance. To keep people from noticing the blood on my hands. I can’t screw it up now. But the thought of more lies makes my throat tighten. Lies upon lies upon lies. The secret I have kept all these years, the guilt I have kept inside. The Messenger has dragged them out into the open.
Maybe I deserve this.
I should feel safe now I am home, but it is as though Matthew is here, waiting for me. I can smell him, feel him. As the memories draw in, I almost expect him to call out my name.
I peel off my jacket, drag on my nearest pair of shoes, and bolt through the living room for the kitchen. The chicken I left out this morning to defrost is sitting in its saucer in a pool of defrosted ice, tinged pink with blood. It was just another morning, nothing unusual or exemplary, with no notion of what was to come. I scramble at the lock on the back door, throw it open, and sprint.
Stray locks of hair stick to the sweat beading at my temples, and the sky has started to spit, but all I can think about is what lies ahead. The grass is damp with the night, licking at my ankles. I imagine Lucinda watching me run into the darkness from her window.
When I returned back inside, I caught sight of her running down the garden from my window, despite the dark and the rain. I have never seen her like that before. It was as if she had lost her mind.
I clamber over the wire fence separating the lawn from the train tracks, and wince as it claws at my inner thighs. Long, jagged rips run down my inseam.
I stand before the moonlit rails, my thighs smarting. The tracks stretch along the back of the terraced houses and go on for miles. I peer at my watch. The next train is in five minutes or so, passing the back of my house at quarter-hour intervals.
The stones between the tracks move and dislodge beneath my feet, and I stop before the small patch of woodland on the other side. The past comes to me in violent flashes.
Thwack.
I hear Matthew’s head crack open.
Thwack.
Blood splatters against my face.
Thwack.
He’s near dead, but I keep on hitting.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
I haven’t been here since, but the memories are as fresh as if it were yesterday. The smell of blood creeps into my nostrils. Nervous sweat slinks down my sides. Seeing it, hearing it, it’s enough to make me sick. The guilt feels solid, swelling in my abdomen; a meaty black mass inside of me. I’d vomit it up if I could; stick my fingers in my mouth and prod the back of my throat until it was steaming on the cold ground.
I head into the darkness, making my way through the small knot of trees, drifting between the past and the present in my mind.
Thwack.
Twigs and undergrowth crack beneath my feet.
Thwack.
I count the trees, following the mental map inside my head.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
I freeze when I reach it, and my knees buckle. I catch myself against the nearest trunk.
Someone has marked the tree with an aerosol paint can, the colour red as blood. X marks the spot.
I drop to my knees before the tree with a crunch from the undergrowth, my husband’s body buried directly beneath me. I scratch helplessly at the red paint until my fingertips are bloodied and torn and bark has dug beneath my nails. Rivers of tears snake towards my jaw as the church clock tower strikes the hour, each gong of its bell calling through the darkness.
They know what I did. They know everything.
11
Three days until the trial
I ride the Metropolitan Line, listening to the jarring squeak of people’s shoes after getting caught in the rain, the rustle of wet anoraks. The sort of sounds that make one’s teeth numb. I grit them together and look down at my shaking hands.
I cut my fingernails right back to the beds after breaking them against the tree. There are still splinters dug deep into my fingertips, littered with small cuts where I managed to tweeze out others. After I had found the mark on the tree, I ran back inside, saddled myself with supplies, and returned to the scene, scrubbing at the trunk until the air reeked of chemicals and I had bleached the life out of the bark; its dark brown shell turned off-white, like bone. As for the cut on my foot, thankfully it only needed a plaster. I close my eyes and try to calm myself.
I spent the night pacing, unable to sit still in case my panic took hold and consumed me entirely. But nothing helped me escape the fear. The fear that no matter what I do, the truth will come out in the end, as if I had buried a bomb among the trees rather than a body, and any minute it will blow my life to smithereens. It has been ticking for three long years; the persistent backdrop to my every thought.
Guilt tugs at me. The consequences of one wrong act ripping through those closest to him and changing their lives forever. People often said my husband adored me in ways they had never seen before. And then I took a golf club and ground his skull into the hallway floor.
I am woozy with exhaustion, and my jaw throbs from grinding my teeth through the night. My first instinct was to run. I didn’t know where. I didn’t know how. It wasn’t a logical train of thought, but visceral. I can feel it even now, twitching incessantly in my legs.
His freedom or yours.
Sweet, sweet Hannah.
When I sat in the aftermath of what I had done, dripping with my husband’s blood, my first thought was to call the police and confess. Pay the price for my sudden burst of rage. I picked up my mobile phone, the screen bloodied in my grip, and pressed one nine, then the other, my thumb shaking over the third. I paused. If I confessed to what I had done, I wouldn’t just lose my job, my freedom. I would lose the only family I have ever known. Hannah and Maggie would never speak to me again, and I would have no one else in the world.
Now, their love is bittersweet. When Hannah looks at me, I shiver with shame. I took away the person she loved more than anyone else in the world, and here I am, taking that affection as my own, to fulfil my desperate need for a family. I thought the toll would only be against me; that if Hannah and Maggie didn’t know what I’d done, we could carry on with my secret buried deep within me. But now the price is to be paid in the form of the Messenger, putting Hannah’s safety in jeopardy because of me and my lies.
How did they discover what I did? I left no trail of where to look or how to find him. I did the deed alone, in the dead of night. Even the police couldn’t find him, with their countless searches and sniffer dogs, which had been fooled by the rabbit carcass that I’d found by the tracks and buried just above his grave to throw off the scent.
