Suspicion Points Read online

  It was easy to imagine Bridget peering through a gap in her curtains with her eyes full of malice. No wonder she didn’t get on with her neighbours.

  ‘Do they know?’ Sharon asked.

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘That you know about their living arrangements?’

  ‘Not till one of the parties Alice had at her house. Yves was rude to me, so I told him I knew.’

  ‘Does it matter nowadays?’ I asked. ‘It’s legal. People can have civil partnership ceremonies. There’s no need for – ’

  Bridget looked scornful. ‘Yves is a Catholic. He and Fleur – she’s supposed to be married to Craig – went to the same church as me every Sunday. What would his parents think if they knew?’

  ‘Did you, er,’ I was reluctant to use such a condemning word as threaten, but as I searched around for something more benign, Sharon chipped in with a brilliant piece of strategy.

  ‘Did they live in France? His parents, I mean,’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So it’s not as if you were ever going to meet them, was it?’ she said.

  Bridget looked triumphant. ‘I met them alright. They was over at Easter to visit. Yves was a nervous wreck when I introduced myself to them after church.’

  ‘Yves,’ Sharon said as we went down the steps. ‘Another person with a strong motive.’

  I nodded and made notes in my head. Much as Bridget repelled me I knew I’d have to keep my thoughts about her to myself, otherwise Sharon would accuse me of being a snob.

  When we reached the bottom of the steps a door opened. A woman who had been in Mrs Bradley’s flat stuck her head out. ‘Hey!’ she whispered. ‘You got a minute?’

  We went into her flat, declined her offer of tea and didn’t sit down.

  ‘I just want to tell you about Mrs Bradley – she’s Bridget’s mum. Evil bitch, she is. Never wanted Bridget to get married – threatened to kill herself and all sorts when she knew her tears wasn’t working.’

  ‘Didn’t she like Declan?’ I asked.

  ‘She never liked no one Bridget took up with. But with Declan all her old arguments never worked. She said that Bridget must marry a Catholic – you should have heard the carry on if she went out with a Protestant. When she did have a nice Catholic boyfriend then Mrs Bradley complained he weren’t Irish. But Declan were not only a Catholic he were born in Dublin to Irish parents. Poor Bridget, I think it was only then she caught on that her mum didn’t want her to marry no one. Then she showed some spark. Even her mum’s threats not to turn up at the wedding never worked. You should have heard it. His mum come storming over, lived over there, she did.’ She made a vague gesture.

  ‘On this estate?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, she used to. Anyhow there were such a fight – not fists, just tears and screaming from Mrs Bradley and shouting from Declan’s mum.’

  ‘Is there a Mr Bradley?’ Sharon asked.

  The woman snorted. ‘Was once – not for long. He left when Bridget were a little girl. Got any suspects yet?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Put Mrs Bradley down as one.’

  ‘Does she have a car?’ I asked.

  The woman giggled. ‘Don’t need one – got her broomstick.’ She saw Sharon’s stern look. ‘Sorry, yes, she has . . . a car, I mean. Think about it. Bridget’s here with her. The son-in-law’s in the house – ’

  ‘With her grandson,’ Sharon pointed out. ‘Would she kill her grandson?’

  ‘Never seen much of him, she didn’t. Spent last Christmas and the one before that, alone. None of us round here wanted to ask her in, even if she give us enough hints and tears about how she’d be by herself. Bridget and Declan don’t have to come here no more, see? His dad retired and got a good pension and then his mum retired a few months later – and she got a good pension. Lump sums too, so they bought a little house near St Austell to be near Declan and their grandson.’

  ‘Did they like Bridget?’ I asked.

  Sharon gave me a ‘what does it matter?’ look.

  ‘Adored her. Like her dad she is. Everyone adores Bridget.’

  Except the people at Farrier Way and where she worked, I thought.

  ‘Why did Bridget come to see her mother the other night?’ Sharon asked.

  ‘Ha! I were just getting to that bit. Mrs Bradley said she fell down them stairs. I come out of my flat because I heard her scream. I found her lying at the bottom. First I did think she’s fallen, but after, I think it was a trick to get Bridget over to visit her. Staggered into my flat she did, wailing and carrying on. I done a first-aid course at my work and I know the more serious a hurt is, the less noise you make.

  ‘Said she’d fallen all the way down, but I don’t think so. Them stairs is concrete – she’d have broken bones and be knocked clean out, she would. But she wanted me to ring Bridget, so I did. She weren’t pale neither. I didn’t see no harm in it, but now . . . ask her if she’s got any bruises. I bet she don’t have none. And if she found out Bridget’s been seeing her dad on the sly for years, that might just send her crazy – tip her over into madness – get what I mean?’

  ‘I’m going to scream if we get any more suspects,’ Sharon said as we walked to the car park.

  ‘Do you think the mother’s a serious suspect?’

  She frowned. ‘Hard to say. But, if I had to, I’d judge not. Although her neighbour said she was evil, I don’t think she is. Just lonely, bitter and possessive. While she might have killed Bridget’s husband, I can’t see her killing her grandson, even if she didn’t see much of him. What do you think?’

  ‘We shouldn’t discount what she’s told us and we’ll have to look into it. Let’s first find out if Mrs Bradley knew Bridget was secretly seeing her father.’

  We were nearing the car when we saw four youths approaching us. They had facial tattoos and shaven heads. I saw Sharon tense. Her hand slid into her pocket.

  ‘It’s okay, keep walking,’ I said surprised by her faltering pace. ‘Look confident.’

  We changed direction. They didn’t.

  Sharon expelled her breath. ‘They looked like trouble,’ she said as we reached the car. ‘Sometimes I’d love to be a man. If I’d been alone I bet they would have had a go.’

  I laughed.

  ‘What’s funny?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What would you have done if they’d attacked us?’

  I shrugged. ‘No idea.’ But I was lying. I did know what I’d do. Even though it happened fifteen years ago my conscience still troubles me.

  It was 1993. Vanessa and I had been twenty. I was living and working in Florence, and Vanessa was working as a temp at the Public Record Office in London. We were visiting our great-aunt in America.

  ‘Rob, what did Judith do to upset you?’ she asked as we were walking through a forest one afternoon.

  ‘What makes you think she did anything?’

  ‘You’ve avoided her since we were fifteen.’

  To begin with I had avoided her. But it was because of embarrassment not because I disliked her. Our O levels were over. We were free. Eight of us had packed up a picnic and gone to Richmond Park. After eating we played silly games and chased each other. I caught Judith and something happened. I wanted to kiss her. She, unaware of my feelings, giggled and wriggled. My arousal was so conspicuous I was sure everyone could see. I let her go and ran out of the park. Later I told Vanessa I’d felt sick. I’d avoided Judith for a year, but I’d been unable to get her out of my mind and I missed her. Then, when I decided that I would see her again and bought baggy trousers to wear, she avoided me. That was one of the reasons I’d decided to go to Europe and study languages first hand instead of going to university.

  So I told Vanessa.

  She laughed and jumped up and down. ‘Rob, she’s crazy about you. She didn’t realize it till you started avoiding her. She was so hurt.’

  We’d both been laughing so much we hadn’t heard anyone approaching. Suddenly there were six thugs surround
ing us. Everything slowed down. I can remember every detail. One had the skull and crossbones tattoo on his arm. One was a skinhead. The one with red hair had multiple rings and studs in his ears and face. The shortest one was dressed in camouflage gear. The blonde was all in black. One was fat. They all leered at Vanessa.

  ‘Better looking than the last one,’ said Skull and Crossbones.

  Skinhead said, ‘What a beauty.’

  The redhead, the blonde and the fat one unzipped their trousers.

  ‘You can watch, lover boy,’ said the redhead. He shoved the blonde one out of the way. ‘Me first this time!’

  ‘We’ll both have her,’ shrieked the fat one. ‘You do the front and I’ll do the back!’

  Vanessa’s face was white. Skull and crossbones and the skinhead seized my arms.

  By law I had to tell them. I said it in Italian.

  The one in camouflage spat in my face. ‘A wog! What are you saying? I don’t speak French. You’re in America now.’

  I kneed him in the groin. Skull and crossbones and skinhead tightened their grip on my arms. I pulled myself free and spun round. ‘Translated it means,’ I said as I shattered their collar bones and knee caps, ‘I’m a karate black belt.’

  By the time I spun around again, Vanessa had thrown fatty and redhead to the ground. ‘So am I,’ she said.

  I heard the tearing muscle as she wrenched their arms out of their sockets. I hurled Skull and crossbones against a tree and kicked him so hard in the groin he passed out. The one in camouflage was trying to get up. Vanessa broke his wrists and nose and kicked the hand that was clutching his groin. I heard his fingers break. The blonde ran off.

  She swung her leg. ‘We’re going to make sure,’ she said in an American drawl, ‘that none of you can ever have sex, consensual or otherwise, again.’

  Unsure about the laws in America about self-defence and concerned because skull and crossbones wasn’t moving, I grabbed her arm. ‘No,’ I whispered. Having visions about us being arrested at the airport I called her by her mother’s name. ‘No, Mary.’

  ‘We’ve got to stop them doing this ever again.’

  ‘Then we’ll ring the police.’

  I had to drag her out of the woods. On our way back to our aunt’s house we furiously debated whether to call the police from a public phone box. I wanted to. Vanessa didn’t. The dilemma was solved because we didn’t see a public phone box. When we got back to our aunt’s she was out.

  ‘We should have made sure,’ Vanessa raged. ‘They were all going to rape me. How many girls have they raped? We should have made sure they never could again.’

  ‘When they’re found they’ll be taken to hospital. They’ll say we attacked them.’

  ‘I doubt it. Do you think they’re going to admit that a girl and one man got the better of them? They’re more likely to say they were attacked by a gang.’ She laughed. ‘And even if they do tell the police they’ll be looking for an American girl called Mary not an English one called Vanessa. And they don’t know what your name is.’

  What she said made sense. ‘Even so, there’s a big difference between self-defence and causing severe injury. Remember the karate ethics. We defended ourselves. We escaped. To do more would have been – ’

  ‘Sensible. Justice.’

  ‘Vengeance. We did more than defend ourselves. We caused multiple fractures.’ I didn’t want to tell her that I was frightened I’d killed one of them.

  She started to cry. ‘I wanted to kill them.’

  ‘So did I. But we’ve got to have control over our actions.’

  ‘We should have made sure. It’s not like a miscarriage of justice, Robert. We were there. We knew what they were going to do.’

  ‘And we stopped them. Karate’s for self-defence not execution.’

  ‘But did we stop them from ever doing it again?’

  I didn’t know. I’ve often wondered. Whatever scenario I imagine my conscience troubles me. What if skull and crossbones had died? I might have broken his neck. Was he dead or confined to a wheelchair? What if Vanessa was right and they were still gang raping?

  Three days later, back in London, Vanessa still had a migraine. We told no one, not even our parents, what we had done.

  I wondered what Sharon would say if I told her it wouldn’t be the police we’d need, it’d be an ambulance.

  6

  SHARON

  I shivered.

  Robert looked at me. ‘Are you cold?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes.’ But I wasn’t. He probably thinks he can add coward to all the other awful things he thinks I am, like bigot, irrational, nosey and lower-class. Maybe I should have told him when we were on friendly terms, but I didn’t want anyone in my new life to know. My story, to anyone who asked why I’d moved to Cornwall, was that the gang violence, drugs, stabbings and shootings in East London were getting to me.

  Once I asked him why he’d come to Cornwall.

  His response, like mine, sounded rehearsed. ‘My parents grew up here. We spent most holidays here when I was at school. I always regretted when it was time to leave. I got fed up with London and wanted a change.’

  But Robert’s London and my London were opposites. He’d lived in St Margarets. I’d never been there, but knew it was up-market. You only had to look at the house prices.

  Moving to Cornwall was a last resort for me. At first I’d looked at other parts of London until I realized I wouldn’t even be able to afford a studio flat. I thought about joining my brothers in Australia and persuading my mum and dad to come with me. But one of my colleagues had suggested simply moving out of London. I had plenty of leave so I booked days off in blocks of four and drove somewhere different each time. I stayed in bed and breakfasts. Wales was majestic, and I could have bought a small house with a garden, but many of them disliked the English. Wiltshire, Sussex and Oxfordshire were out of my price range. The flatness of Suffolk and Norfolk didn’t suit me.

  One long weekend I headed to Cornwall where I immediately felt at home. I drove around exploring areas and the major towns. I loved St Ives, Looe, Polperro and Charlestown, but they were too expensive. I decided on St Austell because it was an easy drive to the coast. It wasn’t a tourist hot spot and parts of it were rough, so small houses were reasonably priced. Given my history the transfer was easy to arrange.

  Robert drove out of the car park and I pulled my mind back to our growing list of suspects. I’d been wrong about Phoebe having it all. She was desperate for a baby. Or was she? Bridget might have been lying. Phoebe’s motive would be revenge for being bullied and made redundant.

  But, if Bridget was telling the truth, Yves had a stronger motive. Fear. Would he resort to murder to stop Bridget telling his parents about his sexuality? And he had been close by. The high hedges would have hidden him from sight. It would have been easy for him to creep through the front garden to Bridget’s house. But I couldn’t see him, or any of the other neighbours, killing a baby. They were snobs, but I didn’t think they were evil. Unless he was so frightened Bridget would tell his parents that he didn’t even think about the baby.

  Was Bridget’s mother a serious suspect? If she wasn’t seeing her grandson, would she have baulked at killing him to get her daughter back? Bridget was seeing her father in secret, which probably meant he was also seeing his grandson and featuring in his life. Would rage and jealously have overcome her?

  Before meeting Bridget all my sympathies had been with her. Not only had her husband and baby been murdered, she had neighbours who resented her. None of them had expressed any sympathy for her tragedy and they had wasted no time in telling us that she didn’t fit in. Even Phoebe’s account of Bridget’s bullying, had done little to change my opinion. Now I had met her I understood why her neighbours disliked her.

  ‘Bridget seems to have two personas,’ said Robert. ‘The people on the estate think highly of her and so do her in-laws.’

&nbs
p; ‘Maybe she changes to suit the situation. She was friends with Phoebe before the new manager came. An odd friendship though, don’t you think?’

  ‘Why?’

  I suspected Robert was too politically correct to say he agreed with me, although I bet he thought it. ‘What did they have in common – apart from working in the same place? Phoebe’s obviously from a different class – ’

  ‘If I’d said that you would have called me a snob, and quite rightly too.’

  ‘Come on, Robert, I bet Phoebe didn’t grow up on a council estate.’

  ‘No, but they both ended up in the same street.’

  ‘The neighbours didn’t like Bridget and they liked Phoebe. Bridget and Declan had enough money to buy a house in Farrier Way, but they didn’t fit in. Phoebe likes gardens – Bridget wanted to concrete over her front garden and dig up the hedge between them. I’m trying to work out why they were even friends.’

  ‘Perhaps Bridget thought that being friends with Phoebe would be to her advantage,’ said Robert. ‘When it was no longer advantageous she dropped her.’

  ‘Okay, but why would Phoebe be friends with her? Phoebe’s lounge is full of books. There are no books at Mrs Bradley’s that we could see. Just the huge TV and stacks of DVD’s and TV magazines. Phoebe hasn’t got a TV. They’re so different. I would have thought that Phoebe would have looked down on Bridget – the way she speaks, dresses and she’s not particularly intelligent, is she? She had no idea that she was portraying herself and Elaine as bullies, and the way she described Phoebe’s book as being full of long words – ’

  ‘It might be full of long words – like compromise.’

  I smiled. ‘True, but to admit she couldn’t understand it showed her lack of education. The ungrammatical way she spoke grated on my nerves, so I would have thought it would have driven someone like Phoebe mad.’ I sighed. ‘Maybe I was lucky.’