Hilary Bonner - When the Dead Cry Out

“Suddenly I remembered it all so clearly as if it was yesterday. It was like I was five again, like I was there again.

“Our mother hadn’t tried to kill us in the car in the garage, neither had she killed herself. No...”

Jennifer’s voice broke completely. Karen could hear muffled sobs, and the young woman was still crying when she continued to tell her story.

“There was a terrible row. Lorraine and I were playing in our room upstairs but there was so much noise that we crept out onto the landing and then downstairs to see what was happening. We lived in a hotel, of course, and there were guests, but they wouldn’t have heard anything because the guest bedrooms were all in the new extension. Mummy and Daddy were in the kitchen. They were shouting at each other, screaming. Then Daddy caught hold of Mummy around the neck and started shaking her. She made this awful sound. This gurgling noise. I can hear it now, I can still hear it. I just turned and fled upstairs, but Lorraine was always braver than me. She ran into the room and I could hear her shouting at Daddy to stop.

“Then after a bit Daddy came upstairs with Lorraine in his arms. She was still in tears but she was fairly calm. Daddy said everything was all right and Mummy was fine. Lorraine and I just huddled together because we were frightened. Then a little later he came back and said that Mummy had been very cross with him and she’d gone away and he was going to take us next door to the neighbours because he wanted to go after her and find her.

“Even Lorraine was too frightened to say much that night but at school the next day she kept telling the teacher that Daddy had got rid of Mummy. I think that’s what she said. I think those were her exact words.

“We went back to the neighbours’ house after school that day but early the next morning Daddy came to fetch us. He said that Granny would be coming to look after us. I couldn’t take any of it in, really. Then he said we could have the day off school as a special treat. I still don’t remember much about that day. We stayed indoors, I think, until bedtime. And I do remember that when he put us to bed Lorraine kept asking him what he’d done to Mummy. Why had he hurt Mummy? Where had he put Mummy? I just clung to him, though. I don’t think I even wanted to know what was going on. I sensed that I had lost one parent, I suppose. I really didn’t want to lose another.

“Eventually I fell asleep. And I have no idea what else happened that night. But in the morning Lorraine wasn’t there. Her bed was empty and I never saw her again.

“Daddy said he was taking me to live with some kind people for a while who would look after me until he’d found Mummy and Lorraine. He kind of suggested that Lorraine was with Mummy, I think. I was too young to understand, to question anything.

“He took me to Carol and Michael. They had wanted children all their lives. They looked after me and cared for me and helped me forget, I suppose. So I blocked it out. That’s what kids do. Sounds incredible but it’s very common with small children faced with something terrible, Dr. Huxtable told me. They just shut everything out.

“Without his help, without learning about Recovered Memory Syndrome from you, I would never have remembered all this. Never have known the difference between my nightmares and the truth.”

Kelly’s voice broke in. “Are you quite sure of this, Jennifer?”

He sounded stunned, as indeed he might, thought Karen. Whatever he may have suspected, whatever any of them may always have believed, hearing it first-hand after all these years was something none of them would have thought possible. It was a total shock to Karen, too.

“Oh, yes, I’m quite sure. I can see it so clearly. It’s absolutely real to me. I can see our father bringing Lorraine upstairs and trying to tell us everything is all right. I can even see the scratches on his face, angry weals down both cheeks. Mummy must have tried to fight him off, but he was always such a strong man...”

Jennifer completely broke down in tears then. Karen found that her own hands were trembling, just as Kelly’s had been in Hammersmith Police Station. She remembered what her mother had said. “Scratches, he had scratches on his face.” The tape was silent for almost a minute before Jennifer’s voice filled the room once more.

“Lorraine wouldn’t stop accusing him. I have no doubt at all that he killed Lorraine, too. But not me. I survived because I didn’t really question our father, I think. Didn’t question him at all, in fact. Also, I think I’d always been his favourite. I was a complete daddy’s girl. I didn’t want to believe he’d done what he’d done, so I just didn’t accept it. And I was only five.”

Kelly’s voice came on the tape. “What now, Jennifer?” he asked. “What are you going to do? What do you want me to do? We should go to the police, you know.”

Kelly no longer sounded like a journalist doing an interview. It was as if he had been overwhelmed by the magnitude of what he had just learned. And Karen could understand that well enough.

“There isn’t any point in going to the police, is there?” It was a rhetorical question from Jennifer. “My father has successfully appealed against his conviction. He cannot be tried again. I know the law might change one day, but that’s how it is at the moment. In any case, would I be believed? It was my evidence, the evidence of my alleged memory, which let him walk away a free man, wasn’t it? I doubt what I have told you would ever stand up in a court of law. I don’t know what I’m going to do yet, Kelly. But I want you to take this tape away with you, so that the truth is on record. And I want you to get it published if you can.”

Kelly had said something about doubting that any paper would dare publish such stuff about a man who had been declared innocent by the Court of Appeal, and Jennifer had simply responded: “You’ll do your best, though, won’t you? I know you’ll do your best.”

Then the tape ended. Karen realized she had been holding her breath for the last couple of minutes. She let it out in a whoosh.

“Jennifer did know what she was going to do though, didn’t she, Kelly?” she said.

Kelly nodded and smiled grimly. “She knew, all right. I’m sure of it. She’d already decided that she was going to kill Richard Marshall. And right after I left her she drove to Poole and shot him. God knows how she managed to get hold of a gun, but she was a lot more resourceful and together than she looked, that young woman. She was, after all, her father’s daughter.”

“When I got the tip the next day that Marshall was dead I just knew at once what she’d done. So I took off back to London again to confront her, to make sure, I suppose. But... but, she was dead.”

Karen stood up with a jump. “You’ll never learn not to interfere, Kelly, will you?” she asked.

“I might after this,” said the reporter. “I can’t say I’m sorry that Marshall’s dead, but I am sorry about Jennifer Roth.”

“Too late,” said Karen. “It’s too late for that. Dead bodies follow you around, don’t they, Kelly?”

The reporter stared hard at her. He looked despairing.

“This was the last thing I wanted,” he said. “I feel as if I am to blame.”

“You are to blame, Kelly,” Karen said flatly. “You bloody well are to blame.”

Four months later, on a crisp clear autumn day, Karen stood on a Scottish cliff-side looking out over the sea to the Isle of Skye. They were just outside the little Scottish coastal town of Plockton, known both for its palm trees, an unlikely vegetation in the Highlands made possible only by the presence of the Gulf Stream, and as the setting for the TV series Hamish Macbeth , about a dope-smoking copper.