Silent Truths (23 page)

Chas put an arm round her shoulders. ‘If I could get my hands on that bastard …’ he snarled at Laurie. ‘She was just a kid. Less than half his age. He had a responsibility to take care of her. She didn’t know nothing of the world, like he did. What did he think he was doing? I’d like to kill him, I would. Same as what he did to her.’

‘Sssh,’ Daphne sniffed. ‘It don’t do no good talking like that. They’ve got him, so at least we know he hasn’t got away with it.’

‘Do you have any idea
why
he might have done it?’ Laurie asked gently.

‘No. None,’ Daphne said. ‘We keep asking
ourselves that. But what reason could there be? If he’d wanted to go back to his wife she could hardly have stopped him, could she? He’s twice her size, never mind twice her age, and anyway, she wouldn’t have stood in his way. She wasn’t like that, hanging on to a bloke if he didn’t want to stay.’

‘Did the police give you any idea why they think he might have done it?’ Laurie said.

Daphne looked at Chas. ‘We don’t know what they think, do we?’ she answered. ‘They don’t tell you nothing. They just asks questions.’

‘Did Sophie know about Heather Dance and her little girl?’

‘What, the woman who was in the paper the other day? No. She couldn’t have done. She’d have told me if she did.’

‘So the suggestion that Sophie might have been blackmailing him –’

‘Is bloody nonsense,’ Chas growled. ‘They make me sick with the effing tripe they come up with. Blackmail! Anyone who knew her would tell you what a load of bollocks that is.’

Daphne looked down at the kitchen roll she was shredding. ‘Honest to God, I don’t know why he’d have done that to her,’ she said. ‘It just don’t make any sense.’

Laurie took a breath before asking the next question. It was probably one they’d heard before, and she wondered if, over the past few weeks, their answer might have changed at all. ‘Do you think there’s any chance it might not have been him?’ she said tentatively. ‘I’m sure you know he’s denying it.’

Chas’s face turned puce. ‘The bastard was caught red-handed,’ he practically shouted. ‘He did it all right, and I’ll tell you this much, they ought to bring back hanging for blokes who go round doing that to innocent young girls. I was never for it before this, but I am now. It’s different when it’s your own. Believe me. I’d do time just to get my hands on that bastard.’

Daphne’s eyes were bleak. ‘Yeah, we know he’s denying it,’ she said. ‘Well, I suppose he would, wouldn’t he? But he did it all right. They caught him right there, didn’t they?’

Laurie nodded, for there was no disputing that. ‘Did the police mention anything about blackmail?’ she asked. ‘I don’t mean about Heather Dance, I mean about anything else.’

‘We told you already, she wasn’t blackmailing him,’ Chas said testily. ‘She wasn’t that kind of girl.’

Laurie looked at Daphne again. ‘So the police didn’t mention it?’ she prompted. ‘As a matter of procedure, it would have made sense for them to.’

‘Why don’t you tell her?’ Simon suddenly shouted, startling them all as he burst in the door. ‘Tell her the truth, what’s really been happening …’

‘Simon! Shut it!’ his father barked.

‘Yeah, they reckon she was blackmailing him,’ Simon cried. ‘That’s why they think he killed her. She knew something she shouldn’t have and –’

Chas was on his feet. ‘Simon, go to your room!’ he bellowed.

The boy was already backing away. ‘Why are you helping them?’ he sobbed furiously. ‘All they’re interested in is protecting
him
. They don’t
care about us. They just want us to keep our mouths shut, that’s all.’

‘Simon!’ Chas roared, advancing with his fist in the air. ‘Don’t make me do this!’

‘Chas!’ Daphne cried, scrambling after him and grabbing his fist in both hands. ‘Stop it. Just stop,’ she sobbed. ‘I can’t stand all this … Simon, just go to your room.’

‘Not till you start telling the –’

‘Simon!’ she shouted.

The boy’s face was twisted with rage and frustration. Laurie could see he wanted to say more, but didn’t quite dare. In the end, he banged the door open again and stormed out, snarling ‘Fuck off, all of you. Just fuck off.’

For several minutes after he’d gone there was only the sound of Chas breathing as he stood with his hands resting on the sink, and the muted whirr of the tape as it absorbed these moments of calm after the storm. Laurie sat very still, feeling desperately sorry for them in their confusion, while trying to decide how best to proceed from here.

‘Maybe you’d better turn that thing off,’ Daphne said, pointing to the tape recorder.

Immediately Laurie put her hand over it and made it click.

Chas’s eyes were blazing with anger as he turned them on his wife. ‘You’re not going to tell her any more,’ he snarled. ‘Jesus Christ, woman, you know what they said …’

‘Calm down!’ Daphne snapped. ‘I’m not telling her anything. Anyway, we don’t know anything, do we? Not what it’s about, anyway. We just know there was something …’

‘And they don’t want us telling people like her,’ he raged.

‘Well, it’s a bit late now, innit?’ she shouted back. ‘She knows now, thanks to your big mouth son.’

‘And where does he get that from?’ he sneered. ‘You’ve never been able to keep your mouth shut.’

‘Fuck you!’ she spat. ‘Just fuck you.’

‘Fuck you too.’ He turned away, but not before Laurie had seen the tears in his eyes.

Daphne moved back on to the padded bench seat, and looked across at Laurie.

‘If it helps,’ Laurie said, ‘I already knew there was some kind of cover-up, so you haven’t told me anything you need to feel concerned about.’

Daphne nodded, then turned her head to stare out at the garden. It was several minutes before she spoke, and when she did she continued to look outside. ‘They didn’t threaten us, or nothing,’ she said. She jerked a thumb towards Chas. ‘He just made it sound like they did, but they didn’t. They just made it plain that they didn’t want us going into any kind of detail with the press about –’

‘Daph
ne
!’ Chas warned.

‘Look, it all comes down to the same thing in the end, don’t it?’ Daphne cried. ‘Sophie’s dead and he killed her. What does it matter what she did or didn’t know? She can’t tell anyone now, can she?’

‘Did she know anything?’ Laurie probed.

Daphne shook her head. ‘If she did she never told me. I mean not anything that could do anyone any harm. I don’t know if they believe that, but it’s the truth. She never told me nothing like that.’

‘What about the police? Did they give you any
idea what they thought she might be blackmailing him about?’

‘No,’ Daphne answered shaking her head. ‘Like I said, they never told us nothing. They just kept asking us all these different questions. It was a bloody nightmare, I can tell you.’

‘What kind of questions?’ Laurie prompted, choosing to forget that she wasn’t supposed to ask about their interrogation.

‘I don’t know. All kinds. If she’d ever met any of his friends. If they’d –’

‘Had she?’ Laurie interrupted, surprised that Chas hadn’t jumped in yet.

‘Some. You know, his colleagues, when he took her to show her the Houses of Parliament, and places like that. She met some of them then.’

‘Do you remember their names?’

‘Daphne!’ Chas growled. ‘This is the very stuff they told us not to talk about.’

‘What difference does it make now?’ his wife cried. ‘It’s not going to bring her back, is it? And we don’t know none of their names anyway.’

Laurie could easily believe they didn’t, but the kind of questions they’d been asked could tell her a great deal. She might make more headway were she able to get rid of Chas for a while, but since that wasn’t possible she resigned herself to treading carefully through the minefield of possibilities she was now facing. ‘These friends he introduced her to,’ she said, ‘did they ever go to her flat, do you know?’

‘She said they did, a couple of times. With him.’

‘And I suppose the police wanted to know what they all talked about?’

‘As if I’d know,’ Daphne responded. ‘I wasn’t blooming well there, was I? Did they talk about money or politics they wanted to know. Was there ever any mention of people who lived abroad? What kind of question’s that? I ask you. Hundreds of people live abroad, for crying out loud. How am I supposed to know if any of them did? And I told them, if he ever talked about any deals with her, or anything like that, then I wouldn’t have a clue.’

Laurie was frowning. ‘Did they give you the impression they thought he might be involved in some kind of deal?’ she said. ‘Something that might have been top secret, or even illegal, maybe?’

‘Oh yeah, we got that impression all right,’ Daphne replied. ‘Top secret, anyway, because you only had to look at where we was when they was asking all their bloomin’ questions. In this bloody great big house out in the country, with dirty great big fences and alarms and God only knows what. It was like being in a flaming prison, except you never saw luxury like it. All these paintings, and marble fireplaces, furniture straight out of a stately home. Well, it was a stately home. I’ve never been in such a posh place in me life.’

‘Where was it?’ Laurie asked.

Daphne shook her head. ‘All we know is we went north out of here, after that …’ she shrugged. ‘We reckon we must have been somewhere in Suffolk, even Norfolk. We don’t know, though. We was in the car a long time, anyway.’

Laurie waited for her to come up with more, but that seemed to be it, so she said, ‘What about the people who were questioning you? I suppose they were police?’

‘Good question,’ Daphne retorted. ‘That’s what they said, but Chas reckons they was MI5 or something like that, don’t you?’

Laurie looked at Chas, but his face was averted.

‘Do you remember any of their names, or what they looked like?’ she asked turning back to Daphne.

‘I don’t think they ever told us their names, did they?’ she said again to Chas.

This time his head came round. ‘Have you finished now?’ he growled. ‘Is there anything else you want to blab before she goes? We was supposed to say we was with relatives.’

‘What relatives?’ Daphne cried angrily. ‘We’ve hardly bloody got any, have we?’

‘But she don’t know that,’ Chas spat, jabbing a finger towards Laurie.

‘I’m afraid I do,’ Laurie interjected.

He glared at her with such menace that were it not for the underlying confusion in his eyes she might have been ready to leave. ‘Who the bloody hell’s that?’ he snarled as the Beethoven chimes started ringing down the hall.

He lumbered off to check, and was back within seconds, looking furious and pale. ‘It’s someone else from the press,’ he snarled. ‘I thought they said they was going to keep ’em away. Bloody parasites.’ His eyes shot to Laurie. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘but that’s what you are. You come here, trying to get things out of us … Well, we’ve had enough of it, do you hear me? Our girl’s dead, and all anyone wants to do is talk about that bastard –’

‘Chas, shut up,’ Daphne interrupted.

He flinched as the bell went again. ‘We’re never
going to bloody get rid of them,’ he raged. Then to Laurie: ‘We gave you what you came for, now you go out there and tell them to fuck off. Go on. We’re finished here. She’s told you all you’re going to hear.’

‘Chas, where’s your manners?’ Daphne scolded angrily.

‘If I were you,’ Laurie said, slipping the tape recorder, which had continued to run, back into her bag, ‘I’d call the police. I’m sure they’ll help clear the street.’

Daphne walked down the hall with her. When they reached the front door Daphne said, ‘Which paper is this going to be in?’

Laurie took a breath. It was a good question, but she would have to bluff. So after mentioning her own paper first, she added, ‘The final decision hasn’t been made yet. We’ll let you know when it has.’

‘Do we get to see it before it comes out? Elliot said we would.’

‘Yes, of course,’ she promised.

Daphne forced a smile. Then after a couple of nods, she said, ‘Do you mind letting yourself out? I don’t want them to see me. I hate the things they shout out.’

‘No, of course not,’ Laurie assured her. Then on impulse she pulled the small woman into an embrace. ‘Thanks for talking to me,’ she said. ‘And I really am sorry about Sophie.’

‘I know,’ Daphne responded, wincing as the doorbell chimed again. ‘She was a good girl. Everyone liked her.’ Her eyes came up to Laurie’s. ‘She weren’t no blackmailer,’ she said. ‘She might have been a lot of other things, but that definitely
weren’t one of them. I’d stake my life on it.’

Knowing how hard it was to think ill of someone you loved, particularly when they were recently dead, Laurie hugged her again, saying, ‘I’m sure you’re right.’ Now wasn’t the time to tell her that her efforts to preserve her daughter’s good name weren’t only going to be smashed apart once the Brad Pinkton story broke, but were, in the long run, more likely to get Colin Ashby off than to send him down.

There were about a dozen reporters outside, most of whom surged forward as Laurie opened the front door and quickly let herself out. It took a moment for them to realize it was her, and their resentment once they did became almost palpable. She tried to ignore them, pushing her way through their aggressive jostling and banter, but they were making it increasingly hard for her to get past. As if being first on the scene at Beth Ashby’s wasn’t enough, how the hell had she managed this?

‘So who are you sleeping with?’ someone jeered, as she forced her way out of the gate. ‘You’ve got to be sleeping with someone.’

‘Come on, Laurie, give us a break,’ Bill Krupps from the
Sun
shouted. ‘We’ve been waiting round here for weeks.’

‘What did they tell you, Laurie? Do you know where they went?’

‘No,’ she answered, still struggling to break free.

‘She’s not going to tell you anything,’ a female voice sneered. ‘She’s going to keep it all for herself.’

‘Did you tape it, Laurie?’ Rob Phipps from the
Star
demanded, trying to grab her bag.

‘Let go!’ she cried, hugging it hard to her chest.