Witch (18 page)

“And the other guy gets to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair,” I snapped. I didn’t want to see Michael’s side of the story. I didn’t want to feel sorry for him.

“Don’t you think I haven’t thought about that every waking hour for the last ten years?” he growled. “I’ve paid my dues and I can’t take back what I did. We all make mistakes. I thought you would understand that more than most.”

“And what is that s’posed to mean?” I spat.

“You shouldn’t have been spread across this here kitchen table the other day, should you?” he said. “You shouldn’t have been drinking whiskey. You’re a law-abiding citizen – you’re a cop. A cop who dropped her knickers while on duty to have a quick fumble with a convict.”

“You bastard,” I hissed, slapping Michael hard across the face. His head rocked backwards. The sound of my hand connecting with his face sounded like gunfire in the poky kitchen.

Michael shot forward, grabbing my by the shoulders. The left side of his face looked red and sore. His eyes had clouded over, and the green had been replaced with a dull grey. I looked into them and could see his anger and pain. Is this how he had looked just before he had pushed that man down the stairs? Is this how he had looked when he pushed...

“Oh, my God,” I breathed. “It was you...
wasn’t it?”

“What are you talking about?” he barked.

“It was you who pushed Molly Smith into the well,” I whispered, shrugging his hands from my shoulders and stepping away from him. “You pushed her into that well just like you pushed that man down the stairs. It was you she was coming to meet that night...”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, taking a deep breath as if to calm
himself. “I didn’t even know that girl.”

“Yes, you did,” I said, “You knew her name. You knew her father. You told me he spoke kinda strange.
Pronounced his words kinda funny.”

“I said I knew
of
them,” Michael said. “I didn’t say I
knew
them.”

“That’s why you and Molly kept your relationship a secret, because of your father,” I gasped.

“What has he got to do with any of this?” Michael asked.

“Your father hated that family,” I reminded him. “He called them witches. He told me that they were nothing but vermin –
that they were thieves who kept breaking into his farm. Your father wouldn’t have been able to deal with the fact that his son had gone and fallen in love with one of them.”

“Okay, so he didn’t like that family, but...” Michael started.

“It wasn’t the Smiths who were the criminals. It was you and your father,” I whispered as everything seemed to slot into place.

“My father’s not a criminal,” Michael snapped at me.

“Yes, he is,” I said. “It wasn’t me who killed the Smiths out on the road, it was your father.”

Michael looked at me, his face ashen. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again. 

“What’s going on here?” someone suddenly thundered from behind me.

Startled by the deep, booming voice, I looked around to discoverer Michael’s father standing in the open kitchen doorway.

“Sydney was just leaving,” Michael said, taking me by the arm and guiding me towards the door.

“I’m going nowhere,” I said, shrugging off his arm.

“Oh, no?” Grayson said, eyeing me. “So what seems to be the problem, officer? You are here in an official capacity, aren’t you...or is this some kind of social visit?” His large bald head looked ruddy and weather-beaten as he closed the door on the cold air blowing into the kitchen.

Before I’d the chance to answer, Michael cut in and said, “Sydney seems to think I was somehow connected to the death of that girl who fell into the well.”

“Her name was Molly Smith,” I reminded him, shooting Michael a glance. “She did have a name.”

“What in the hell are you dragging that up for?” Grayson huffed. “That was years ago.”

“Sydney seems to think I was having some secret relationship with her and that I pushed her into that well,” Michael said, not taking his eyes from me.

“Is this for real, or some kind
of joke?” Grayson snapped. Taking a step closer to me, he added, “Is this because my son went to prison for being in that fight? He’s paid society for his crime. Anyway, who says the girl was pushed? There was an investigation at the time. It was an accident. The girl
fell
into the well. It would ‘ave never happened if she hadn’t been trespassing on me land.”

How could I tell Grayson and Michael it was Molly who had told me she had been pushed? How could I explain she had told me in a dream I’d had about her being at the bottom of that well? How did I tell them I knew she had been meeting someone on their farm that night? I only knew that fact because of the statement my father had tried to bury, but which Vincent had discovered hidden away in the filing room back at the police station. If I said that, then I implicated my father.

“So c’mon, officer, tell us what makes you think that girl was pushed?” Grayson demanded.

I looked at him, then at Michael. I felt a fool standing in their kitchen with a bunch of half-cocked theories. Theories I couldn’t prove without making myself sound like a crazy bitch and telling them my father was bordering on committing police corruption, if he hadn’t crossed that line already.

“I think you should leave now,” Michael said. He didn’t sound angry, just disappointed and confused. I looked at him and could see the hurt in his eyes.

I looked at Grayson. “So what were you doing last Wednesday afternoon?” I asked.

“Is this some kind of police interview?” he grunted, rolling up the sleeves of his checked shirt to reveal his meaty forearms.

“Please could you answer the question, Mr. Grayson,” I shot back.

“I can’t remember,” he said, pushing out his chest defiantly and rolling back his powerful-looking shoulders. “What has it got to do with you anyway?”

“Sydney believes it was you who killed that family out on the road the other day.”

With his eyes bulging in their sockets like two large rocks, Grayson looked at his son, then back at me. “What!” he gasped. “What do you mean I was involved in killing those people?”

“You disliked them enough,” I said. “You told me that they were witches and nothing but vermin.”

“Just because I didn’t like their kind, it don’t make me no killer,” Grayson said, sounding flabbergasted. “What you say and what you do are two completely different things. You didn’t know them. They were strange – the lot of them. The old guy was the worst. You could barely understand a word he said, mixing all his words up and such. He sounded like that cartoon character Elmer Fudd, for Christ’s sake,” Grayson mocked.

“Just because people are different –
strange
– as you like to put it,” I said, “doesn’t make them bad people.”

“I didn’t kill them!” Grayson roared.

“So how did you come by those dents and scratches on your four-by-four?” I quizzed.

“So that’s what this is all about?” he sneered. “Can’t live with the fact that it was you who killed those people, so you come snooping around here looking for someone else to blame?”

“How did you get those dents?” I shot back.

With a look of exasperation on his face, Grayson leapt forward and gripped my arm. He shoved me across the kitchen and yanked open the kitchen door. It was twilight outside, and the sky was so overcast with bluish-black clouds, it looked like a piece of bruised and battered skin.

“I’ll show you how I came by those dents and scratches,” he huffed, frogmarching me down the short, overgrown lane, past the parked 4X4, and to the wide gate which barred anyone from driving onto his property.
“Look! Look! Look!”
Grayson barked, pointing at the gate frame with one thick, grubby-looking finger.

I pulled my arm free of his strong grip and looked at where he was pointing. At once, my heart sank and I felt foolish. The gate post was dented inwards, leaning to one side where it had been struck. I could see that the bend in the metal frame was at the height consistent with being hit by the cattle grill on the front of his 4X4.

“What have you got to say about that?” He glared at me. “Mm?”

What did I have to say to that? What did I have to say about any of it? I looked at Grayson, then at Michael, who was now standing behind his father. Again he stared at me with that same look of bewilderment and hurt in his eyes.

What had I done? I just wanted to curl up and crawl away.

“So what have you got to say for yourself?” Grayson boomed, unwilling to let me off the hook, even though he had proved me wrong and left me feeling humiliated.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.  What else could I say? It would seem I’d screwed up, yet again.

“Sorry don’t cut it,” he breathed just inches from my face. “How dare you come onto my land and start making these wild accusations against me and my son! How dare you!”

“Sorry,” I whispered again, unable to force myself to meet his stare.

“I’ve got a good mind to ring your father and make an official complaint about police harassment,” he threatened.

“Cut her some slack, dad,” Michael said, coming to my rescue. “I’m sure Sydney didn’t mean anything by it. I guess it’s been a difficult time for her lately – it can’t be an easy thing to come to terms with – what, with killing those people and all.”

“W
ell, she better learn to live with it,” Grayson sniffed.

“C’mon, dad, you’ve said your piece, let her be,” Michael said, trying to coax his father back towards the farmhouse.

Grayson looked at Michael then back at me. “Okay,” he huffed. “But I’m warning you, if I see you back on my land, I’m going to make sure you lose your badge. Call yourself a copper? God only knows what your father must think of you? What a joke!”

Grayson turned his wide back on me and stomped away, leaving Michael and me alone.

“I’m sorry about that,” he said.

Looking at him, all I could see was sadness in his eyes. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Michael,” I said.

Turning my back on him, I walked slowly away. I didn’t look back once. I couldn’t. Feeling foolish and ashamed, I headed back down the road towards town. How could I have been so stupid? I guess I’d been so desperate to pass the blame.

You never face up to your
responsibilities
, I heard my father whisper in my ear.
You need to start taking responsibility for your actions. You’re not a little girl anymore.

Feeling sick
, I lowered my head in shame. As I reached the spot where the accident had taken place –where
I
had killed those people – I looked up to see Vincent standing next to his bike, propped against the wall. He was smoking a cigarette. It was almost dark now, and Vincent stood in the cold, blowing out jets of smoke from his nose.

“Are you okay?” he asked, stepping away from the wall and pushing the bike towards me.

“No,” I whispered, not stopping but walking straight past him.

“Where are you going, Sydney?” he called after me.

“To see my mum,” I snapped.

“I’ll walk with you,” he said, catching up.

“What, all the way to Spain?” I said, walking into the darkness which lay ahead.

“Spain?” Vincent said, following me into my apartment.

We had walked in silence on the way back from the farm, both of us lost to our thoughts. I felt stupid for daring to go up to the Grayson farm and accuse both Michael and his father of being killers. I must have lost my freaking mind. Then again, what else is new? Hadn’t I spent the last few days or more dreaming of dead people? Chasing ghosts! Maybe that was the curse Jonathan Smith had cast upon me when he had called me a
witch
? Maybe Grayson was right – the Smiths had been nothing more than a family of witches? I’d been cursed to go out of my tiny little mind. To spend the rest of my life dreaming about them until I went insane?

I pulled off my coat and dropped it onto the sofa. I heard Vincent close the front door and come into the living room. He looked at me.

“Spain?” he said again, obviously still mulling over what I had said out on the road. “You can’t go to Spain.”

“Why not?”
I said, looking back at him.

“Because I’ll miss you,” he said half-jokingly. 

“You’ll be the only one who will,” I said, bursting into tears.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Vincent hushed, crossing the room and taking me in his arms. “Why are you so upset?”

“Because I’m losing my freaking mind, that’s why,” I sobbed against him. “I wish I had never gone back to the farm that day, I wish I’d never been anywhere near that road. I wish I’d never killed those people.”

“I thought you said you hadn’t?” he whispered, holding me tight.

“That was just me wishful thinking...”

“But what about those tyre marks and...” Vincent tried to comfort me.