Like today, when he brought me the letter from Carla. I take a deep breath and read the rest of it.
… I am writing to say that I am to get married again as soon as Rupert’s divorce is through. The wedding will be in prison, but it does not matter. Rupert does not mind that my face is different. He loves Poppy as if she was his own. (She is not.) My solicitor says that Life does not always mean Life.
Please forgive me.
I hope you can find it in your heart to wish me happiness.
Yours,
Carla.
I put down the letter on the grass. It flaps in the wind and then blows away. I make no attempt to chase after it. It means nothing. Carla always was a good liar. Yet there’s something still nagging at me. Something isn’t quite right …
‘Chewing gum, Sellotape, scissors, sharp implements?’
I’m back in prison. A different one from the last. And I’m not wearing my lawyer hat. I’m a visitor.
‘Hands up, please.’
I’m being searched. Swiftly but thoroughly.
Now a dog is walking past with his handler. He pays no attention to me but sits silently next to the girl behind. She is led away. Apparently that’s how sniffer dogs work. They don’t bark or growl. They simply sit.
‘Why are you here?’
I’m sitting when Joe Thomas comes in. He’s thinner. And somehow he looks shorter. He is looking at me stonily. I should be scared. But I’m not. There are plenty of people around us.
‘I want to know exactly what happened.’
He sits back in his chair, tipping it, and laughs. ‘I told you. Told everyone at the trial.’
I allow my mind to go back. To the time when Carla was convicted of assaulting me and murdering Ed. To the trial a few days later, when Joe was sent down for his assault on Carla. And for being an accessory to Ed’s murder.
Unbelievable, isn’t it?
But that’s what happened. Joe stood up in court, at Carla’s trial, and said that he had met her at Tony’s funeral (another mourner had come forward to confirm they’d been talking) and that they’d stayed in touch. Later, he swore that Carla, aware of his criminal background, had hired him as a hit man, promising payment when Ed’s life insurance came through. They’d agreed that he would come round on a certain evening. But when he had got there, she had been in a terrible state – and he had soon seen why. Carla had already stabbed Ed herself. In the thigh. Then she’d run, leaving him, Joe, to take the blame.
Carla vehemently denied this. Instinctively I felt it didn’t ring true either. I didn’t really see Carla as the type to hire a hit man.
But the prosecuting barrister was good. Very good. The persistent questioning finally made Carla break down and admit that, yes, she had plunged the knife into Ed. He’d picked it up first, she had sobbed. She thought he was going to hurt her out of jealousy over Rupert. It was self-defence. But she definitely hadn’t hired Joe as a hit man. That bit was a lie.
It didn’t wash with the new jury. The lies she’d already told made certain of that.
I’d been terrified that Joe would implicate me. But as soon as he said that about Carla hiring him, I knew he was doing it to protect me. I suppose the key should have been another clue. The one he posted back to me, inside Carla’s washing-up gloves. At the time, I thought he was encouraging me to take my revenge.
Now I wonder if he was giving me a ‘get out of jail free’ card.
Joe explained his presence at Carla’s house by saying he went there to demand his money. And that he’d found Carla hurting me.
But I know differently, of course. He’d come back because of me. Joe must have suspected I would go to see Carla after opening the envelope with the washing-up gloves inside. He wanted to make sure I was all right.
I’m painfully aware that if he’d told the truth about any of this, I’d be in prison too.
But that’s the problem with lies. As I said at the beginning, they start small. And then they multiply. Over and over again. So that the white lies become as black as the real thing. Yet his lie has saved me.
Amazingly the jury believed Joe. It helped that, on the night of Ed’s murder, there wasn’t any sign of a forced entry. So it made sense that Carla had let him in voluntarily.
Life, he got, for conspiring to murder Ed and for his assault on Carla. The same as Carla got for murdering Ed. The same as Joe should have got for poor Sarah Evans.
You could say it was justice. But I’m not so sure. That’s why I’m here.
‘I know you weren’t telling the truth. I want to know what really happened.’
He grins. Like we’re playing a game, just as we had at the beginning when he made me work out the boiler figures.
‘Touch me.’ His voice is so low that I barely hear it. Then he says it again. ‘Touch me and then I’ll tell you.’
I glance around. The officers with their folded arms. Women talking urgently to their partners opposite. Couples not talking.
‘I can’t.’
‘Look.’ He’s staring straight at me. ‘Look to your right.’
So I do. The woman next to me has her foot up, in between her partner’s legs.
‘I won’t do that.’ I’m flushing. Hot.
‘Then I won’t tell you.’
This is blackmail. Just as he’d tried to blackmail me over the DNA and the key.
I look again. The officer nearest me is making her way to the offending table. She’s not looking at us.
‘Quickly,’ he says.
My heart starts to speed up just as it had on the seafront when Joe took my key. A wave of desire starts to seep through the lower part of my body, even though I try to crush it.
Then the stables flash into my mind. Daniel with his limp neck. Amelia, my doll, lying on the ground below my brother. And Merlin with a puzzled expression on his all-knowing, dear old face. Killed by Sarah Evans’s murderer – or as good as – in an attempt to scare me.
It’s a wake-up call. A distinct prod back to sanity.
‘No,’ I say firmly, my feet still on the ground. ‘No. I won’t. I’m through with all these games, Joe. They’re over.’
A brief look of disappointment shoots across his face, followed by an ‘if that’s the way you want it’ shrug.
He makes as if to stand, and then appears to change his mind.
‘OK. You’re lucky. I’m feeling generous today. I’ll still give you a clue.’
‘I told you.’ I almost thump the table. ‘No more games.’
‘But this one, Lily, is in your interest. It will give you peace. Trust me.’ His smile chills me to my bones. ‘Watch my finger. Carefully.’
He is tracing a number on the table top. There’s an 0. And then a 5. And then, I think, a 6.
‘I don’t get it.’ Tears are pricking my eyes. I feel sick. Visiting time is almost over. I thought I might get closure coming here, but I haven’t. Instead I’m trying to get sense out of a madman.
‘Look again.’
0. Definitely.
5. Or so it seems.
6.
056.
‘Five minutes,’ barks the officer behind me.
Joe darts his eyes towards the clock. Is that a clue?
Try, I tell myself. Think about this puzzle like your son does. See it from another angle.
‘I don’t know,’ I sob. ‘I don’t know.’
Other inmates are beginning to look. Joe sees it too.
He’s speaking. Slowly. Quietly. Like a parent soothing a child.
‘Then I’ll tell you. It means nothing. Sometimes we see clues in things that are not there. The simple truth, Lily, is that you’re a good person, deep down. But you were weak that night. Hurt. Scared. That’s why you let me take the key. I knew that if I did something terrible using it, you’d never be able to forgive yourself. Well, now you can. So I meant it when I said that I didn’t have to use the key. That’s why I posted it back to you.’
There’s a glimmer of hope inside me. ‘Honestly?’
I realize for the first time that I don’t really know this man. I never did. Yes, he may look similar to Daniel. Speak like him. But he isn’t Daniel. He’s a killer. And a liar.
He grins. ‘It’s true – Carla opened the door before I could use your key. She was clearly making a run for it.’
‘So it wasn’t my fault that Ed was murdered?’
He shakes his head.