‘I think we’d like to keep this conversation between the three of us, Val. Can you give us a few minutes?’
‘Of course.’ The colour rushed into her cheeks. ‘I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me, though.’ She stumped back out, carrying her mug, head held high. I didn’t like her at all, not one little bit, but I felt a twinge of pity for her;
what
was she supposed to achieve here, apart from making endless cups of tea? They were waiting for news of a confession, I knew, and it could come at any time, but all the same, the Shepherds struck me as being in dire need of time alone.
‘You were saying?’ Michael Shepherd prompted me. I really didn’t want to go on.
‘The thing is … my parents suffered a lot after Charlie disappeared. They couldn’t live with what happened, and they couldn’t live with one another, and in the end it destroyed them both. I don’t want the same thing to happen to you. No one deserves to go through what they did. If nothing else, I’d like something good to come out of what they endured.’ I took a deep breath. ‘And there’s something else.’
‘Yes?’
‘Danny Keane … the things he did were dreadful. Terrible. But you should understand
why
he did them.’ I was getting ready to tell them that it was my fault, that they shouldn’t blame themselves. What did it matter if they blamed me?
Michael Shepherd stirred. ‘Has he confessed, then? Keane?’
‘Not as far as I know,’ I had to admit.
‘I thought you might have heard before we did. You seem to be well in with the police.’
His tone was unpleasant and I blushed again. ‘I’ve got to know them, that’s all. As you said, I kept cropping up.’ I pretended to sip my tea, playing for time. It was far too hot to drink. I looked around for a place to put my mug,
not
liking to put it on the highly polished table at my elbow without a coaster. In the end, I reached down and set it on the floor.
‘Look, what I really came here to tell you was –’
There was a clatter of claws on tiling. A small, dirty West Highland terrier shot into the living room from the kitchen and pranced up to me, panting engagingly, head on one side.
‘That bloody dog!’ Michael Shepherd jumped up from the sofa, towering over the dog that was crouching by my feet with his tail wagging tentatively.
Diane stirred. ‘Just leave it. He’s not doing any harm.’
‘I should have got rid of him,’ Michael said over his shoulder to his wife, reaching down to drag the dog by the collar towards the kitchen. He handled him roughly and the little dog whimpered, cringing away from him. I found myself holding the arms of my chair, wanting to intervene but knowing I couldn’t. As he disappeared through the open door, I could hear him telling Valerie off. ‘I’ve told you before, he doesn’t come into the house any more. The place for him is outside.’
‘He just ran in when I opened the door.’
‘I’m not interested, Valerie. You’ve got to be more careful.’
I looked at Diane, whose eyes were closed. Her lips were moving, as if she was praying. Her mouth looked dry, covered with tattered flecks of dead skin, and her eyelids were raw. They flickered as I watched and she met my gaze.
‘Is that Jenny’s dog?’
It was a moment or two before she responded. ‘Archie. Mike can’t stand the sight of him.’
That much was obvious from the way he’d handled him. ‘I suppose it reminds him. It must have been awful when Archie turned up here without her.’
She started shivering so violently that I could see it from across the room, and I felt sorry at once for reminding her. Her eyes were unfocused and I felt that she was miles away, that she’d forgotten I was there at all. When she spoke, I had to strain to hear her.
‘Turned up here? But Archie was here all along …’ As her voice trailed away, it was as if she came to her senses. She sat up a little straighter and cleared her throat. ‘I mean, yes. It was a shock. We didn’t expect Archie to be outside the front door at all, because he should have been with Jenny.’
But that wasn’t what she’d said.
I sat in my chair as if nailed there, frozen with horror. I felt as if everything I’d previously known and understood had suddenly shifted through fifteen degrees, forming a new and wholly horrible reality. I had to be mistaken, I told myself. I was still in shock because of what had happened with Mum, with Charlie’s body. I saw death and violence everywhere, in everything, and what I was imagining was impossible. It was unthinkable.
That didn’t mean it wasn’t true.
She had turned her head, listening intently to the sounds from the back of the house. The voices were receding, as if Valerie and Michael had gone out to the back garden.
There
was time, I thought – not much, but some. Maybe enough.
‘Diane,’ I said carefully, keeping my voice low and level, ‘if things didn’t happen exactly the way you told the police, that’s OK. But if there’s anything – anything at all – that you think they should know about what happened to Jenny, I think now would be a good time to tell them.’
She dropped her head and stared at her hands, which were knotted in her lap. Tension was vibrating through her. I could see her struggling, wanting to speak. I waited, hardly daring to blink.
‘He’ll kill me.’ It was a ghost of a sentence, slipping from her on an outward breath, and I flinched at the fear in her eyes when she looked up at me.
‘They’ll protect you. They can help you.’ I needed to press her, and knowing what I was doing, hating myself for it, I said, ‘Don’t you want to tell the truth, Diane? For Jenny?’
‘Everything we did was for her.’ Her eyes were on a picture on the table beside her, a holiday picture of a younger Jenny in a swimsuit, blue sky behind her, laughing down at the camera. Silence settled on the room and I almost jumped when Diane spoke again. ‘There’s no point, is there? There’s no point in any of it. I thought there was. I don’t know why.’
‘I understand that you’re afraid, Diane, but if you just—’
‘I
was
afraid,’ she interrupted, her voice stronger now. ‘I was afraid, so I did what he wanted. But I’m not going to lie for him any more. He thinks what he did was right,
but
how could it have been? And I couldn’t stop him. There was nothing I could do to save her, because everything has to be perfect for Michael. He can’t stand it if things aren’t just … perfect.’
‘Even Jenny?’
‘
Especially
Jenny. She knew he wouldn’t stand for her being disobedient. She should have known it was dangerous.’
I was remembering Michael Shepherd at the police station, the scene he had made when he realised that his daughter’s abuse would be common knowledge. At the time, I had seen it as wanting to protect her, even in death. I had got it wrong. He’d wanted to protect her reputation. He’d wanted to protect himself.
Diane’s voice had dropped again, so quiet that I could only just make out the words. ‘He was devastated about the baby.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘No. No, you can’t. Do you know what he made me do? He made me leave her there. My baby. In the dark, and the cold, and the rain, with nothing to protect her, until someone – you – came along and found her. And I let him do it.’
Tears were sliding down her cheeks. She rubbed them away violently, wiping her nose on her sleeve. I didn’t need to push for more; the story came tumbling out of her in a torrent that I couldn’t have stopped if I’d tried. It was as if she’d been waiting for a chance to tell someone what her husband had done.
‘He found out, you see, about her boyfriend. Oh, he
didn’t
know the whole story. We had no idea that there were those … others. We assumed that she had gone behind our backs to be with Danny because she knew we wouldn’t approve. Michael had told her she couldn’t have a boyfriend until she was eighteen, you see, so even if Danny had been the same age as her, we still wouldn’t have allowed them to see each other.’ She blinked, sniffing a little. ‘I wondered if that was why she went with him. Because she was supposed to be perfect – Daddy’s little girl – and it was hard for her to live up to it. But then, maybe it was just that she was used to doing what she was told. Maybe that’s how that man convinced her to do those things. She looked so young, didn’t she? She was only a baby, really, and when she told me she was pregnant, I just couldn’t believe it.’ Now Diane looked at me, anguish in her eyes. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have helped her to get rid of it. We could have forgotten the whole thing. She would have been so grateful to me, because she was worried, she knew she was too young to have a baby, and she knew her father would be upset. But I reassured her. I said it would be all right. I said we’d take care of her, like we always did. I didn’t know … I didn’t know …’
She almost screamed the last few words, then pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, her chest heaving as she fought for control.
I knew that grief could affect people in strange ways. I knew that hysteria could produce vivid hallucinations; that lack of sleep and mental turmoil could make people confuse fantasy and fact. I knew that guilt was the most
destructive
emotion of all, that any parent would feel responsible for the failure to protect their child. But I couldn’t help but believe every word Jenny’s mother was saying. I looked out through the glass doors of the dining room, to where Shepherd was standing in the back garden. It had stopped raining, though the clouds were low and steely grey. He had lit a small cigar. Tendrils of blue smoke swirled away from him, spiralling through the air. I had to find out more. But I had to be quick.
‘How did he kill her?’
She shook her head, eyes closed, and said again, ‘I didn’t know.’
‘I understand, Diane. You couldn’t have known.’ I tried again. ‘What happened?’
‘When we told him, he
hit
her.’ The shock of it was audible in her voice. ‘He couldn’t stand that she’d lied to him. Then he told her she was dirty. She had to have a bath. He asked me to help her get into the bath. I made her undress … I thought it was something that would help. I thought he would calm down while she was out of sight. I didn’t think he’d blame her, anyway …’
‘And then?’
Her eyelids fluttered and she frowned. ‘I stayed in the bathroom, you see. Jenny was upset – so upset – and she didn’t want me to leave her. So when he came in, he was terribly angry that I was there. He called me a slut, too, and the mother of a whore, and he told me that I could watch, if I liked. And then he put his hands on her shoulders, here –’ She gestured to her collarbones, where I had seen the bruises on Jenny’s skin. ‘He pushed her down so
her
head was under the water, and he held her there until she stopped fighting. It didn’t take long. He’s very strong. I tried to stop him, but I couldn’t. He’s so very strong.
‘Then he took her, and he left her in the woods. He didn’t even cover her up. I begged him to wrap her up, but he wouldn’t. She had nothing to keep her warm …’
‘Diane, you have to tell the police what happened.’
Her eyes went wide. ‘No. He’d kill me. You have to believe me. He’d kill me in a second.’ She looked truly terrified.
I pulled my mobile phone out of my bag and started scrolling through the contacts. ‘Let me call DCI Vickers. He’ll understand, really he will. He’ll help.’
My hands were shaking, my fingertips numb. I was trying to sound confident for Diane’s sake, but I could barely make the phone work. A noise from the kitchen made my heart jump into my throat.
‘Is everything OK?’
Valerie was standing in the doorway. I had never been so pleased to see her. I jumped out of my chair and ran over to her, pushing her into the kitchen. I wanted to get her away from Diane so I could speak freely. I had to make her understand what Michael Shepherd had done. She would know what to do.
She didn’t struggle, stepping backwards obediently, but once we were out of range of Diane she stopped dead, like a mule.
‘What’s going on? We only left you alone for a few minutes.’
‘Just listen, Valerie, I’ve got to tell you –’
‘If you’ve upset Diane—’
‘For God’s sake, shut up!’
We glared at one another, irritation on both sides, and I allowed myself the luxury of a second spent wishing that any other member of the police was standing in front of me. I took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, Valerie. This is really important. Just – just listen.’
I started to tell her what Diane had told me, stumbling over the words, getting ahead of myself and having to go back to explain. Her face went pale as soon as she understood what I was saying.
‘Oh my God. We have to tell someone.’
‘I was going to call DCI Vickers,’ I began, but Valerie’s pale blue china-doll eyes tracked over my shoulder and widened in horror. I felt fear prickle along my spine even before I whipped around, and when I saw what Valerie had seen, a scream forced its way out of my throat before I could stop it. Michael Shepherd stood in the doorway, holding his wife by the back of the neck. In his other hand, he held a vicious-looking black crossbow, about eighteen inches from tip to tip, pointing directly at us. One bolt was already fitted, ready to fire, and he had another stuck through his belt.
‘Don’t make another sound, either of you.’
I moved away from Valerie instinctively, making a bigger target area. Fear made my movements awkward. I had been too slow. I had wasted time with Valerie. I shouldn’t have bothered explaining things to her; I should have run away. I had left it too late, as usual. My anger was like a red-hot wire cutting through the cold fog of terror and I
held
on to it for dear life, knowing that it would keep me focused, that it would stop me from giving up. Still edging backwards, I came up against the edge of the kitchen worktop and stopped, reaching behind me with one hand, trying to remember if there had been anything on the counter that I could use as a weapon. Shepherd was looking at Valerie and his face was black with rage.
‘Hands,’ he spat, and raised the crossbow. ‘In the air, now.’
‘Hold on, Michael, just hold on,’ Valerie said, trying to smile. ‘I know you’re upset, but this is no way to deal with the situation. Just put the weapon down, let Diane go, and we’ll talk about this.’