Alex Gray - Pitch Black

‘Thank you for agreeing to see me,’ he said, still looking at her with those disconcerting light-blue eyes.

Janis pulled her hands away and hid them out of sight below the table, anxious that he would not see her fingernails digging into the soft flesh of her palms.

‘That’s okay,’ she replied, hoping for nonchalance. But the sound coming from her lips was a strangled croak, as if she’d forgotten how to make polite conversation.

Lorimer nodded and gave a small smile of his own. She cursed inwardly. Voices were a great giveaway and now he’d know that she was nervous, though she’d tried to make her handshake firm and she was still holding his gaze.

‘How have you been?’

His question was so unexpected and asked in a tone of such gentleness that Janis felt the beginning of tears behind her eyelids. He wasn’t supposed to be doing this. He was there to deal with her case, not to make her feel so vulnerable. For a moment she wanted him to come around that table and take her in these strong arms, to hold her and tell her that everything would be all right. But some inner sense told her that if she wasn’t careful this surge of self-pity would betray her completely.

So, ‘Fine,’ she said, trying to inject some lightness into her tone. ‘It’s a real holiday camp.’

‘Not spending your days stitching mail bags, then?’

‘Actually it’s not that bad,’ she said. ‘There’s a good educational programme and plenty of stuff to do, really. Some of them are better off here than they are at home.’

Lorimer nodded. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But you’re not one of them, Janis, are you?’

At last her gaze dropped and she knew he could see the struggle to maintain an outward calm.

‘Tell me about finding Nicko. Was he dead when you came home that night?’

Janis sat bolt upright, feeling the colour draining from her face. She glanced to one side, making a mute appeal to the female prison officer who stood motionless by the door. But that one was staring straight ahead as if she couldn’t see or hear a thing.

Janis bit her lip. It was decision time. What she said now might very well seal her fate.

‘He was dead,’ she replied, her voice husky.

‘Tell me what you remember about his appearance.’

Janis swallowed. Was he trying to trick her into something? But a quick look from under her dampened lashes showed her that same concerned expression.

‘He was lying on his back,’ she began. ‘There was all this blood …’ Her voice tailed off in a whisper.

‘What about the knife?’

‘I — the knife?’ Janis looked up. Her mouth was open but no words came. Licking her lips, she stalled for time. What had it looked like?

‘God, this is a nightmare!’ she said at last. ‘Do I have to try to see it all again?’

His gaze told her that she did, so, closing her eyes, Janis Faulkner visualised the last time she had seen her husband.

‘It was sticking out of his chest,’ she began, shuddering at the memory.

I was terrified he’d get up and come for me again.

‘Someone had stabbed him. I could see it was our bread knife, the one with the serrated edge.’

I just wanted to get away from there.

‘I just wanted to get away from there. Can’t you understand?’

‘Didn’t you think to feel for a pulse? Or to phone someone? Like a doctor or the police, perhaps?’

Janis opened her mouth to protest.

Does he think I’m some sort of monster?

‘No. I was frightened.’

‘So you ran away?’

He made it sound so reasonable. Yes, she’d run away. Who wouldn’t under those circumstances?

Janis nodded. ‘That’s why they think I did it, isn’t it?’

He didn’t reply but continued to look at her as though he could understand her. Suddenly he reminded her of Lachie. She’d trusted Lachie all her life. Maybe she could trust this man too?

‘It must have been some lunatic,’ she insisted. ‘Look at these other deaths. It’s obviously the work of some mad person.’

‘Did you tell anybody about the knife?’

Janis frowned, puzzled. What was he harping on about the knife for? Why wasn’t he listening to her?

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Have you described the murder weapon to anybody?’

‘No, of course not. I mean, I only just told you I was there after he died…’

‘Tell me again. Where had you been that night?’

‘I — out at the gym. I came home and found him in the kitchen…’

Where is he going with this?

‘You told your solicitor you’d left the house earlier after a quarrel with your husband. That he’d given you one beating too many and you decided to leave him.’

The voice was more matter-of-fact now, less cosy. She chewed on her lower lip, considering.

‘That seemed to be the best thing to say,’ she said slowly, watching as he nodded. ‘I didn’t want to seem a heartless bitch. And anyway, I was going to leave him.’

‘After all the terrible things he’d done to you,’ Lorimer agreed, still nodding his head.

‘I didn’t kill him,’ she said suddenly. ‘And there’s no proof that I did.’

There’s no forensic trace to link you with the murder , Marion Peters had told her.

‘A jury would understand the provocation that might drive a woman to kill her husband,’ Lorimer suggested.

Janis shook her head. She wasn’t going down that road, not now and not ever.

‘So, up until now nobody knows that you recognised the murder weapon?’

What was it with the knife? Why was it so important?

‘No.’ Yet even as she spoke, Janis felt the sweat break out on her palms. Had she heard Marion Peters discuss the murder weapon? And what exactly had she told that reporter? For an instant she was about to mention Jimmy Greer but something stopped her.

The DCI was leaning back in his seat, hands stroking his chin as he considered her. Janis froze. Had it all been a game? Could he see through her story and its shreds of truth and lies? Now he was on his feet and she stood up too.

‘Thank you for seeing me today,’ he was saying. She felt the warmth of his fingers clasp her own, then, giving a small smile and a nod to the prison officer, he was gone.

For the first time since coming into Cornton Vale, Janis Faulkner felt utterly bereft.

‘I think you ought to go and see your client,’ Lorimer told Marion Peters. ‘She’s just told me that she was in the kitchen after her husband was killed.’

‘What?’

Lorimer could imagine the lawyer’s expression of disbelief. In the ensuing conversation he tried to maintain a neutral tone but he feared his excitement was palpable. Janis Faulkner’s story could be true. Maybe she had come upon her husband’s body like she’d said. But if she had, why scarper like that? Unless she’d worried that she’d be fingered for the crime. He’d seen other cases where perfectly innocent people had reacted in a panic, only to plunge themselves into a bad light. It happened. But even as Lorimer tried to visualise the scene in that kitchen he wondered how the woman had felt. Hadn’t she realised that her dead husband couldn’t harm her ever again?

Maybe there had been occasions when Janis Faulkner had considered plunging that knife into Nicko’s chest. And maybe she had reacted once she’d seen the visible result of all her guilty thoughts.

He sighed. That was something for her lawyer to deal with now. He steepled his fingers against his chin, wondering yet again at how much truth had been in the woman’s words. Had she told anyone about that knife? Or was it simply a bizarre coincidence that an identical one had been plunged into Donnie Douglas’s shirt?