Hilary Bonner - When the Dead Cry Out

Jennifer Roth did not respond for several seconds. Then, as if maybe aware that Karen had deliberately orchestrated the seating arrangements so that her visitor was at a disadvantage, she wriggled in her chair so that she was sitting as tall as possible. Her blue eyes bored into Karen’s, so much so that the superintendent had to make a real effort not to look away.

“I know Ricky could not have murdered his wife because I was there.”

Jennifer Roth spoke very quietly, putting no particular emphasis on any of the words. When you dropped a bombshell like that you didn’t need to, reflected Karen obliquely as she stared long and hard at the young woman, trying to make any kind of sense of her words.

Karen’s brain was buzzing. Was Jennifer Roth mad? Or was there some other logical explanation? Something much more dangerous to the safety of the conviction so recently obtained. All kinds of thoughts raced through Karen’s head. As ever she fought the demons of doubt inside her to ensure somehow that when she spoke again she appeared calm and controlled and unflustered.

“How could you have been there?” she asked, her voice as expressionless as Jennifer Roth’s had been.

“I was there because Ricky is my father,” Jennifer Roth announced, almost casually. “My real name is Janine Marshall.”

Karen was dumbfounded. This was unbelievable. This was potentially catastrophic. She found herself studying Jennifer Roth closely, trying to work out if she could see a resemblance with the man who had just been jailed for murder, and also trying to see if she could detect any trace of the child she had known only briefly so long ago. Jennifer was every bit as pale-skinned as she remembered both of Marshall’s daughters to have been. Karen stared into the young woman’s eyes. She also remembered how the little girls had both had their father’s very clear, very light blue eyes. Jennifer’s eyes were blue all right, but much darker and murkier, certainly not nearly as bright or as clear as Marshall’s still were. They could so easily have changed as she grew older, of course. The detective superintendent could really reach no conclusion at all based on Jennifer Roth’s appearance. She was exceptionally tall, just like Marshall, and had the same air of arrogance about her, that was for sure.

Karen shook herself mentally. She was being ridiculous. This wouldn’t get her anywhere.

“Together with the rest of the world I understood that you were Ricky’s girlfriend, his lover,” she countered.

Jennifer uttered a little snort. “People believe what they want to believe, don’t they?” she sniffed. “I’m thirty-one years younger than Ricky, but when I moved into his flat the entire world just assumed we were lovers. Ricky said he was flattered. And it was much easier to go along with it. Much safer too, under the circumstances.”

“And what particular circumstances are you referring to, may I ask?”

“Ricky told me you lot had never left him alone, you were always after him, and you might come after him again at any moment. And if you did, well, I was supposed to have disappeared, wasn’t I, along with my sister and my mother? It was much safer to leave things like that.”

“Was it indeed?” enquired Karen. “If one half of what you say is true, why on earth didn’t you speak out before?”

“Ricky wouldn’t let me. He said there was no need. He said I had gone through enough. He said there was no real evidence against him and that he was sure to be acquitted without me rocking my boat, as he put it. But when he was sent down, well, I was left with no choice, was I? I can’t let him spend the rest of his life in jail for something he didn’t do, can I? He’ll be angry with me, I know. He didn’t want me to suffer, and he didn’t want to blacken Mum’s name either, he said.”

Karen tried desperately to think straight, to return to the basics of policing, to pick up on detail and allow small points to clarify the big ones.

“Why should anything you have to say blacken your mother’s name?”

Jennifer opened her eyes very wide then, as if in surprise. “Didn’t I say?” she enquired. “I thought I’d said. It was Mummy who tried to kill us, Lorraine and me. She tried to kill all of us. It was Mummy who killed herself. Daddy had nothing to do with it at all.”

Karen called in Tompkins again then, and arranged for Jennifer Roth to be taken to an interview room for formal questioning on tape. This was very serious indeed, and she wanted no loopholes in procedure. The eventual outcome could so well be Marshall’s reprieve. If that appalling end was achieved Karen wanted at least to be sure that it was not down to any basic errors in policing.

Once the three of them were installed in an interview room Karen gestured for the tape recorders to be switched on, sat down opposite Jennifer Roth and began the formal interview.

“First of all I would like to ascertain for the record that you are Janine Marshall,” began Karen.

Jennifer nodded.

“Please say your answer out loud for the tape recorder,” instructed Karen.

Jennifer Roth did so.

“Now, could you tell us the events of that Sunday in June 1975 which led to the death of your mother and sister?”

“Not my sister,” said Jennifer. “Only my mother. Lorraine’s alive.”

Karen did a double take. This was getting more and more curious. If Lorraine Marshall was also alive, where the hell was she? She turned her attention back to Jennifer Roth.

“Just tell me what happened, everything,” she said.

Jennifer Roth leaned back in her chair and half-closed her eyes as if trying to transport herself back into another time. Her voice sounded far away when she spoke.

“Mummy and Daddy had had a terrible row that day,” she said. “They were always rowing, usually about money, sometimes about other women. Oh, I know I was only five, but kids do pick up on things. Parents never seem to realize it, but they do. Mum was violently jealous of Dad. Completely without reason, but she was totally neurotic, of course...”

Jennifer Roth paused. Karen smothered a wry smile. Without reason? Half the paperwork in the Marshall file involved reports on the multitude of convoluted liaisons with women in which Marshall had become embroiled over the years. Including bigamy. He was not capable of monogamy, that was for certain.

Jennifer began to speak again.

“Dad was out, I don’t know where — it was Sunday of course, I think he may just have been down in the harbour working on his boat or something — but he phoned home and he and Mum had this particularly awful row. Mum kept shouting at him. Screaming at him. Accusing him of being with another woman. She told him that if he was going to behave like that she would take us away from him. Permanently. He could have whatever life he wanted, but he couldn’t have us. Then she slammed the phone down on him and grabbed Lorraine and me and took us into the garage...”

Jennifer paused, put one hand to her forehead. She was frowning, trying to concentrate.

“It’s hard, so hard to remember it. I’ve blocked it out for all these years...”

Her voice trailed away.

“Take your time,” said Karen softly. “Just take your time.”

Jennifer nodded. “Can I have a glass of water?” she asked.

“Of course.” Karen gestured to the uniformed constable at the door, who immediately left the room.

“Do you want to wait?” she asked Jennifer.

“No, I want to talk. I want to get it out of my system, I really do, it’s just, it’s just so painful to make myself remember...”

Karen tried to look understanding. It wasn’t easy. She so wished this wasn’t happening. Never mind Jennifer Roth’s own boat, or Janine Marshall or whoever she really was, at the very best this young woman was going to seriously rock the boat of justice. At worst she could turn it right over and sink it.