Lynda La Plante: Twisted

‘Oh God, if I go back will I be arrested?’

He suddenly lost it, glaring at her. ‘I should have arrested you for having a sexual relationship with an underage teenager when you told me about your lesbian affair with Amy.’

‘Well why didn’t you?’ she snapped.

‘I don’t fucking know, and you have no bloody idea what this investigation has done to me.’ He could keep in his anguish no longer. ‘While you and that girl lived in some fantasy world of secrets and make believe, I went through a nightmare that I have been caught up in ever since. I nearly lost my mind and my job while trying to get to the bottom of it all. I believed an innocent young girl had been murdered, then wrongly accused her father of sexually abusing her and disposing of her body. You are a teacher, you’re supposed to act responsibly, and now all you seem to care about is your bloody self and whether or not you might get arrested!’

The slap caught him off guard and he lost his balance; it infuriated him to such an extent he lurched forward and grabbed her by the wrists.

‘Instead of bleating about the possibility of being arrested you need to realize that Amy’s running away was a major factor in tipping her mother over the edge, causing her mind to become possessed by a maniac bent on revenge and poisoning anyone perceived as an enemy.’

‘You can’t blame Amy for that, you can see from her letter to me that her mother was already mentally disturbed.’

‘Had you persuaded her to come forward at the beginning of this sordid mess, then the journal would have been exposed as being written by her mother. I could have got medical help for her, but above all three innocent men would still be alive, so yes I can in some ways blame Amy and you for that!’

Jo backed away from him, dragging her wrists free. He lifted his hands in a submissive gesture, recognizing she was genuinely frightened.

‘I’m sorry, but this has obsessed me for so long, and just so you know I am not here with any connection to the police, I’m here because I needed to prove…’ He couldn’t find the right words and stood shaking his head because he had an overpowering feeling he was going to break down and cry. He turned from her, hating becoming over-emotional and disliking the fact she seemed scared of him.

‘I was one of the casualties, believe it or not. I’ve lost my way and I’ve had to take sick leave due to the stress.’

‘I don’t understand.’

He held out his hand and asked her to sit with him. She truthfully did not understand and yet she held his hand as they sat in front of the fire.

‘Let me start from the beginning. Lena and Marcus Fulford reported Amy missing, and it was my job to investigate her disappearance. They brought to my attention a journal purportedly written by Amy.’

‘The journal, I know she told me she had been given it as a birthday present from her father. She did want to write short stories and I think had begun to write something but found that the journal had been opened so tore out the page because it was, I suppose, yet another indication that her mother pried into everything – she even said that at one time she had kept diaries but her mother read them… I think she just left it in her bedroom at her mother’s house.’

‘It was her mother who actually wrote in it.’

‘But why?’

He kept it as brief as possible; she made no interruption and only released her hand from his to put another log on the fire. Quietly he told her about the sessions at the secure unit between Professor Cornwall and Lena Fulford and how her emotional breakdown and the appalling revelations of her abuse had affected him. Lastly he described how Lena had admitted to using poison to eliminate her so-called enemies. He made little reference to the decision by DCI Jackson to close the case, with Marcus Fulford more than implicated in abusing his daughter and disposing of her body.

‘Oh my God,’ she said softly.

‘The most incriminating evidence against him was the discovery of the maroon sweater that Amy was last seen wearing, which was found in his rented flat. Plus the Cartier watch that had been in his car.’

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ she said sadly.

‘It did to the inquiry, because it meant that Amy had to have returned to his flat, as she was supposed to be going to see her father to collect the watch.’

Jo got up and stretched, in an attempt to detract from how she was feeling. She guiltily realized that she had unwittingly played a part in encouraging Amy to never make contact with her parents again.

‘What has happened to her mother?’

Reid shrugged and explained that after the last session she had become virtually catatonic and was now held in a secure mental facility. He added that he suspected she was perhaps better off being unable to remember, and due to her condition she would be deemed unfit to plead and there would be no trial.

‘Approve or not, it meant the case was closed – well it appeared that way to everyone else – but I have to live with the truth and it hurts me.’

‘Why?’

He gave a long sigh and his eyes felt as if they were burning with tiredness.

‘I honestly don’t know, apart from the fact that I had a lot of interaction with Marcus Fulford, and he was a weak man, but I could never get my head around the accusations that he had abused Amy,’ he confessed. ‘He seemed genuinely distressed about her disappearance and even when all the information about him being bisexual and hiring prostitutes and rent boys started to surface he never tried to lie his way out of it, he appeared to me to want to find his daughter. I also had to deal with Lena, and not until I witnessed the sessions did I realize that she was severely mentally ill. Now in retrospect, if I play out all the numerous times I talked with her, she virtually telegraphed her different personalities. They surfaced time and time again, but I was predominantly so intent on finding her daughter I just accepted that she was behaving oddly due to stress.’

Jo was now lying on a small sofa, with one arm resting across her chest, and her eyes were closed.

‘Well, now you know it all,’ he said, getting to his feet.

‘Do we?’ she said. ‘I am trying to imagine what it must have been like to live with Lena, how Amy had to become Miss Perfect, afraid to leave so much as a tissue loose in her bedroom. Then having the complete opposite when she stayed with her father, his sexual antics, and if it is true that her mother was feeding her poison to make her sick, then it’s no wonder she wanted to run away.’

He yawned, stretched his arms and looked at his wristwatch. It was almost five in the morning; the sun had started to stream through the wooden blinds.

Jo shook her head. ‘The way Amy had to be perfect at school, even after the times she spent with me, I am guilty of never really understanding the incredible pressure she must have been feeling. I am not excusing myself for what I did, but she told me that Serena Newman was blackmailing her, posting the disgusting comments on her Facebook page, and that she had found out that Amy had been with me in my cottage at the school, and she had wanted her Cartier watch to keep quiet about us. I am even more sure that the anonymous tip-off to Miss Harrington came from her.’

He had moved to lie on the cushions in front of the dying fire, and he was too tired to even reply as Jo went on.

‘She did go to her father’s that afternoon; she changed into an old hoodie and jeans and then caught the train to Henley and hid there. She told me she made the decision to run away when she got to Serena’s. She’d lost her Cartier watch and thought it might be somewhere at her father’s; it was expensive and she intended to sell it for cash to run away, not give it to Serena.’