“Cause of death was overdose.” I felt sick to the stomach. “And she couldn’t have given herself the powerful painkiller that caused her death, the doctor who performed her autopsy testified–”
We sat in silence and let the revelation settle.
“It doesn’t make sense,” said Suzanne, looking pained, her pretty face steamed up.
I explained carefully. “Harrison was very involved in her health care and had an exceptionally close relationship with her–and her family. Until, that is, the parents turned on him and accused him of killing their daughter.”
Cece returned to form. “He was having an
affair
with her?” She conducted the words with shocked emotion, master of the choristers.
I close my eyes and see a beautiful woman and she fills me with reasonable doubt. “I don’t know.”
Cecelia, meanwhile was struggling to get her head round the facts. “The parents thought Harrison
killed
their daughter? Isn’t this a bit…
imaginative
?”
“Someone overheard them arguing.”
“Who?” coaxed Cece. “About what?”
“A nurse came forward. Said she heard a heated exchange between Harrison and Vivienne Roberts the day before her death.”
“And?”
“The patient was asking for drugs to end her life.”
Cece sucked in her cheeks. You don’t think he–”
“And risk being prosecuted for murder? I don’t see it.”
Suzanne looked horrified. “But someone believes Harrison administered the drugs?”
“Yes, I guess–”
Kate cleared her throat, “Let me get this straight. Someone thinks your husband overdosed Vivienne Roberts with morphine–a mercy killing? As retribution, Harrison’s death is
made
to look like an accident?”
“I–”
“Drink this,” said Cece, swapping Champagne for a large whisky.
Kate asked, “Did you ever doubt him?
The silence said it all. The things you do for love.
“You have to tell this detective absolutely
everything
,” said Cece. “Let him deal with it.”
Harrison didn’t talk about it. I respected his silence because I never thought he was capable of intentionally killing someone, although there were moments, if I am completely honest, when I suspected he was not telling me the absolute truth. Furtive is too strong a word but there was vagueness about him. Distractedness. He was with me but wasn’t with me. Did he fall for his beautiful patient and find it irresistible to turn down her one last request? It is a ridiculous tragically romantic notion but, yes, there is still reasonable doubt.
Kate assessed the damage. “He wasn’t struck off?”
I filled in the blanks the best I could. “He was cleared with the full support of the hospital but the whole incident was a huge knock to his reputation. He wanted to start over–somewhere else. The hospital killed the story although there was an internal enquiry, which dragged on for, like, forever. Then he was officially cleared and went back to work.”
“It didn’t go to court?” asked Kate.
I shook my head.
“The family didn’t pursue it? Go for a settlement?”
“No, it was over.”
But is it ever over? Anyone who has ever loved and lost someone in suspicious circumstances would know it was never about the money, it was about revenge.
Cece was back up to speed, determined to get to the bottom of this. “What else did this detective tell you?”
“We didn’t talk at length. I fainted.”
“You fainted?” gasped Suzanne.
The girls edged closer to me.
“Yes.” I blushed. “Messy on the street.”
“Did you hurt yourself?” asked Kate.
“I’m okay, really. Embarrassed, majorly.”
“When do you meet him again?” asked Cece.
“He is waiting for me to call him.”
“Do you want me to call him? Let me call him. We can get to the bottom of this.” Cece persisted.
“Cece,” warned Kate. “Lori’s got this.”
I know this much is true. Secrets don’t like to be suffocated. Secrets claw to the top, crawl over people and break hearts, escape and hiss free into the atmosphere, returning to earth without breaking up.
I will tell anyone now, my one piece of advice to the world: never ever attempt to entomb a secret. Let it out and be free. No matter what the fallout might be; otherwise you remain stuck in a moment forever, looking over your shoulder, while the rest of the world moves on.
Love told me to defend my husband for better or worse while my head hammered home the importance of truth. Talking to Cece, Suzanne and Kate about Vivienne Roberts seemed to breathe oxygen into the incident. It became alive again. And vengeful. Tell the truth or else.
When we left London behind Harrison promised that the scandal was in the past. Fresh start. Clean slate. Did he really believe he was allowed to forget? I’m guessing he received the anonymous letters before we moved to Edinburgh but never mentioned this to me. What terrible words had he read–and did he think he deserved this?
Did
he deserve this?
Chapter Sixteen
Back to Black
The detective’s name was Eddie McCarthy. He tried to contact me at work first, so he said. This was two days ago. I found him leaning against the tenement-building wall outside my main front door just after 7.30am.
First impression, he was wearing a white shirt and jeans, no sign of a police helmet or baton or epaulettes with decorative badges. Plain-clothes cop.
“Mrs Lorien Warner?”
I froze, seized by panic, remembering the hand cupped over a cigarette, a silent stare.
While I stood gaping at him, he showed me identification and introduced himself. He also pointed out a colleague who was doing paperwork in an air-con car across the street.
I blurted. “Your uniform?”
“I’m a detective inspector. Special sartorial privileges.” There was a rough texture to his voice, sanded down with a smile.
“Detective?”
“Yes and you
are
Mrs Lorien Warner?”
“Walker
,” I snapped, more aggressive than intended.
“David Warner’s wife?”
“
Widow
. Can I help you?”
He cut to the chase. “I’m here to talk about your husband,
Ms
Walker.”
At that moment, I had what I can only describe as a “pop-up” moment in my head: news-flash information
. He isn’t dead. Harrison’s alive
. There had been a monstrous mistake. It is known for identities to be mixed up after fatal car crashes. That’s what dental records are for. This man was here to explain everything.
“Harrison?” I whispered, hopeful.
“Is there somewhere we can talk?”
Then for some inexplicable reason I wanted to run; bolt down the street and leave him stranded on a cobbled street.
I hesitated. “I need to be at work.”
His eyes narrowed fractionally. “Call someone.” Said like someone used to getting what he wanted.
I nodded and pointed at the coffee shop across the street. “We can talk over there.”
We both looked across to the tables and chairs clustered on the pavement, metal surfaces reflecting in the sunshine throwing silver spears across the pavement.
I walked carefully and wondered if this was a good idea. I should have invited him up to the flat to prove that I had nothing to hide. I was feeling nervous and was quite sure McCarthy could detect pulse waves of panic.
“Coffee?” he asked, heading inside. I nodded, noting he didn’t ask what I wanted.
There was no shade but I’d made up my mind to risk surface burns from a metal chair than go inside and be in a confined space with someone so seemingly omnipotent and knowing as Eddie McCarthy.
I watched him queue for coffee and guessed him to be in his mid-forties; shipshape, shaven and taller than average. Broad, too–time doing pull-ups on a beam (
check out the Bruce Springsteen biceps
, my sister would have said). His dark brown hair was flecked with white, but he was an attractive older man albeit with a battered face that had seen some action. The sharp dent at the top of his nose suggested it had been broken once or thrice. Fighter and survivor, I figured.
I was quick to assess and no doubt he did the same. What did he think the moment I opened the door and starting spinning away from him down the street, panicked? Me dressed in Rag & Bone. Skin and bone. Rake-thin fatigued and fashionable. Widow or murderer?
Moments passed. The familiar feeling of being watched returned. I could see my home directly across the street and fixed my eyes on the front door as someone would do when watching me entering and exiting the building.
I looked around for the best vantage point. Several cars passed, dropping speed over the cobbled street. There were more cars parked further up the street, some with tinted windows. I couldn’t see inside.
There were no obvious signs of someone else, but I
knew
I wasn’t on my own. Sitting up straighter, I scanned the street and shops empty of people at this early hour except for the occasional person pressing onwards to work. The mailman dropped off deliveries. It could be normal but instinct told me otherwise.
I turned my attentions back to this McCarthy man. There were a few people inside the café, including a couple talking intently over pastries, another man sat with his back to me, head stuck in a newspaper, hand clutched around cup. I stared but he didn’t look round.
Why didn’t he look round
?
Outside, a younger couple lingered over empty drinks, looking in the direction of their phones. Their voices seemed to return the world to normal. I swallowed hard and tried not to think about how frightened I felt.
Detective inspector returned through a shimmer of sunshine that filled the doorframe, brightness forcing him to squint. He set down large black coffees, plus espressos in paper cups. No froth or frills. Not a drop of milk either. I watched him tip espresso into the larger coffee and, when I said I didn’t want mine, he sloshed it into his.
This was a man who didn’t cushion the blow. “I’m part of the criminal investigation department. We’re looking into your husband’s death.”
I gaped at him. Fish out of water.
“You alright?” He took a swallow of coffee, sounded concerned not sympathetic; the gravelly voice rumbling under my skin. His accent was strong.
Awright
.
“I’m fine.”
“You were looking for someone?” He glanced over his shoulder.
This caught me up short. “I… no… just… deadlines.” I studied my watch feeling quite ridiculous.
“So. The car accident.”
“Is he still alive?” I quickly whispered. This was one of my favourite theories: Harrison had faked his own death to escape his troubles. Or returned true to form as a ghost. Swayze style.
McCarthy looked up from his coffee cup, an intense stare of someone wearing eye-tracking goggles. He was sizing me up: the opponent.
“Ms Walker, your husband is definitely dead. What makes you think otherwise?”
“Then why are you here? Harrison died six months ago. You’ve returned to tell me he is
still
dead?” I didn’t like the sound of my own voice.
There was a silence while he picked up his cup and looked straight at me as if I was the prime suspect: the spouse. I avoided his gaze and focused on his strong hands that could tear down brick walls, the well-worn wedding ring and nails brutally short but not bitten.
Abruptly, he scraped his chair backwards over the cobblestones, making room to stretch out his legs. The grating reverberated down my spine and threatened to leave hairline cracks across each rib. How fragile I felt.
“I’m just going over some details.”
“I
know
how he died. He was killed in a car crash.” It was still sickening for me to admit that he had been driving while drunk.
“We know he was involved in a road traffic accident. We can’t, however, rule out unusual circumstances.”
I could feel myself being sucked back into the seat, gripping the metal armrests to stop me turning upside down in turbulence. McCarthy sat back also but with much more grace than me while sipping his volcanic caffeine concoction, watching me.
I babbled. “He crashed his car. The police showed me the blood alcohol results. He’d been drinking and then for some godforsaken reason decided to drive home.”
Suddenly, I felt vulnerable and dropped in the dark; like the only person in the world to witness the eclipse. “Are you saying he
wasn’t
drunk?”
“He was definitely over the limit. We have no reason to think otherwise.”
“Then? I don’t understand.”
“I’m just here to tell you what I know.”
“What you
don’t
know.” The words sounded sharp and stretched as I delivered them.
“We may have missed some information at the time of the accident. Proper investigative procedure wasn’t followed.”
“
Procedure
?”
“Stop signs at an accident, appeal information–I’m embarrassed to say… a string of things.” He leaned forward and I could smell soap, leathery aftershave with sharper base notes of lemon and rosemary. It complemented the hint of hot coffee on his breath.
“Is everything okay, Ms Walker?”
“You tell me,” I whispered, needing deep-sea apparatus such as a carbon-fibre helmet to protect my head from extreme pressure.
“I saw you looking around earlier. You seemed a little… off kilter.”
Back to that.
“Just give me a moment,” I said. “To process this.”
He nodded while I focused on the table, hearing his words drill through my ears, painfully so.
A moment passed. “We received an anonymous email,” he said.
Not following, I returned his stare over cup and saucer and said nothing.
“It’s regarding your husband. Do you want to read it?” he added, when I didn’t respond.
I attempted a nod.
He abruptly softened his tone, tip from crime school I guessed. “Do you have any idea who would want to harm your husband–did he receive any threats?”
Time ticked while my sleep-deprived brain attempted an answer. Yes, I had an idea but I wasn’t going to share it. Another secret.