Jane Renshaw - Watch Over Me

Now she was sitting in the passenger seat, fingering the bright pink and blue plastic beads on the necklace Edith had insisted she keep.

‘We’re here,’ Flora repeated.

She got out of the car and opened the passenger door. She unclipped Beckie’s seatbelt and lifted her out, as if she was still a toddler, and for a moment Beckie clung to her.

Caroline’s front door opened and Lara appeared. Behind her was DI McLean, his face stony, and Sue.

DI McLean looked at Beckie, and fixed on a smile. ‘Hello there. Beckie, right? We just need a word with your mum for a minute, okay?’

And now, thank goodness, here was Caroline, taking Beckie’s hand, pulling her inside, and Flora was being herded after them, into Caroline’s front room, where there were three cups on the coffee table and a plate of digestive biscuits.

‘What are you doing here?’

Sue grimaced. ‘Mrs Parry –’

Not Flora any more, then.

She took a breath. ‘Why haven’t you arrested the Johnsons?’

DI McLean just looked at her. ‘Mrs Parry, I am placing you under arrest for the murder of your husband.’ A pair of handcuffs were suddenly in his hands. ‘You are being detained under Section 14 of the Criminal Procedure, Scotland, Act 1995. You have the right not to say anything other than giving your name, address, date of birth, place of birth and nationality, but anything you do say will be noted and may be used in evidence. You have the right to see a solicitor. Do you understand? Mrs Parry?’

‘My daughter!’

‘Do you understand?’

‘Yes, I understand, but please – let me see her… Let me see her without…’ She looked down at the handcuffs. ‘ Please! Her dad’s just been murdered, and now…’

The police officers exchanged glances. ‘Okay. But please keep it brief.’

In the kitchen, Beckie was sitting at the table, staring at a slice of bread and jam. She looked up at Flora, at the police officers behind her, with a blank expression.

‘Beckie. Darling… I have to go with the police now. There’s… there’s obviously been a misunderstanding, but it’ll all get sorted out, so you don’t have to worry, okay?’ Flora squatted by her chair. ‘I’m not sure when I’ll be back, but Caroline will look after you for now.’ She shot a pleading look at Caroline, who was standing propped against the sink, her face very pale.

‘Course I will,’ Caroline said at once, attempting a smile.

‘Where are you going?’ said Beckie.

‘To the police station. I – the police think… They think I had something to do with Dad… with what happened to Dad… But Beckie, I promise you I didn’t, okay?’

‘Something to do with it? What do you mean?’

Flora couldn’t say it. She put her arms round the thin, stiff little shoulders. ‘It’s going to be okay.’

‘You mean –’ Beckie pulled back. ‘You mean they think you killed Dad ?’ And suddenly she was up and away, backing from the table, and Flora’s words caught in her throat, she couldn’t get them out, she couldn’t move, like one of those terrible dreams where all powers of speech and movement are denied you.

Beckie was staring at DI McLean. ‘She didn’t,’ she said, quite calmly. ‘My mum didn’t kill him.’

‘But they have to… They have to ask me questions…’

‘Are you arrested?’

Flora nodded. And at last she was able to go to her, to put her arms round her and pull her close, and Beckie was saying, ‘It’s okay, Mum, it’ll be okay because you didn’t hurt Dad.’ But she wasn’t hugging Flora back, she was just standing there.

It was the shock.

Of course it was the shock.

‘Mrs Parry –’

Flora pulled away; put both hands either side of Beckie’s face. ‘You’re going to have to try your hardest not to worry about me, Beckie, because I’ll be fine. It’s a mistake and it’ll be sorted out. I’ll be back before you know it, but in the meantime you’ll be fine here with Caroline.’ She smiled. ‘Remember you have to eat to keep your strength up, okay? And probably soon they’ll let Caroline pick up some more of your things from the house… Anything you want…’

Beckie’s lips moved in an approximation of a smile. ‘Okay.’

And then suddenly she was having to leave her, and how was Beckie going to even begin to cope with this? She wanted to hold her so tight and never let her go but she couldn’t, all she could do was say ‘Thank you’ to Caroline, and then she was out of the kitchen, Beckie was gone, the cuffs were around her wrists and hands were on her upper arms and she was walking down the path to the street.

‘This is fucking ridiculous!’ Caroline said behind her. ‘There’s no way Flora… How can you think she killed Neil? This is a huge fucking mistake and you’re getting your arses sued for this!’

Flora turned.

Caroline was trying to push her way past Sue.

Flora caught her gaze and held it. ‘Look after her.’

It seemed to stretch on, the moment in which she stared into Caroline’s eyes, wordlessly beseeching.

‘God, yes, of course I will, Flora, don’t worry about that for a second… Are you proud of yourselves, are you, for traumatising a nine-year-old child, taking her mum away from her when she’s just lost her dad?’

‘Ms Turnbull, please go back inside.’

‘Don’t worry, Flora! Don’t you worry, okay, we’ll sort this out!’

It was the same pale blue interview room. This time her solicitor, Charles Aitcheson, was sitting next to her, a calm, reassuring presence. He had told her to make no comment to anything they said. They had to wait and see what ‘evidence’ they had against her before they formulated their response.

That made sense.

But what evidence could they possibly have against her?

She hadn’t done it.

She hadn’t killed Neil.

Could they know? Could they know she was Rachel Clark?

DI McLean was accompanied, this time, by a male colleague in uniform who was making notes on a laptop. DI McLean sat opposite Flora. He also had a laptop, and a blue card-covered file on the table in front of him.

He opened this, removed a photograph, and pushed it across the table. ‘This is a photograph of the chain used to strangle your husband. A partial print has been recovered from it, and it’s a match for the thumb of your right hand. How do you explain that?’

‘I told you. I touched it when I found him. When I – when I tried to get it off him, when –’

Charles put a hand on her arm.

But she didn’t need to say ‘No comment’ to that, because the explanation was so straightforward and obvious.

‘Okay.’ The policeman took back the photograph; returned it to the file.

She turned her head away. She didn’t want to see anything else from that file.

‘Mrs Parry, I’m going to ask you to have a look at some CCTV footage obtained from Eden Security, the company that stores footage from the cameras installed at your residence at 17 Gardens Terrace.’

‘Okay.’

‘Before you do so, I have to tell you that the post-mortem findings include an estimation of time of death of between 8:45 and 10:30 a.m. on the day your husband died. Until the arrival of the paramedics at 6:28 p.m., no one appears on the CCTV footage for that day apart from yourself, your daughter and your neighbour Caroline Turnbull. The three of you leave the house at 9:19 am. You and your daughter return at 5:38 p.m. and then leave again at 5:46 p.m. You said in your statement that your priority was getting your daughter out of the house to safety. That’s why you didn’t call the emergency services straight away.’

She nodded.

‘Is that correct, Mrs Parry? Please speak for the audio.’