Roz Watkins - Dead Man’s Daughter

We walked to the bench, which was in the clearing with the statues I’d seen earlier.

‘Do the woods belong to you?’ I asked. ‘And the statues?’

She glanced at them and let out her breath. Nodded slowly. ‘Horrible things.’

‘Are they old?’

‘Victorian, I think.’

A plaque was attached to the nearest statue’s base. I leant forward to read it. For the weak and the poor who died for the strong and the rich . How depressing.

I glanced at Rachel. She was shaky but seemed to be coping. ‘Just a few more questions. Is that okay?’

‘I suppose so.’ She stared ahead, as still as one of the statues. ‘I don’t think it’s sunk in.’

‘Thank you. We can go back to Abbie in a moment. But do you remember when you first noticed you were being followed?’ I was careful not to say, When you thought you were being followed , or anything that implied she might have been mistaken.

‘A few months ago. I wondered if it was something to do with Phil’s job. He’s a social worker, and sometimes the parents of the kids can get nasty. But Phil didn’t think it was that.’

I twisted to sit sideways on the bench, so I could look at her. ‘Who did he think it was?’

She paused and her eyes went glassy. When she spoke, her throat sounded tight. ‘I don’t think he even believed me. He thought I was imagining it. Ironically.’ She twisted her mouth into an almost-smile, and fiddled with her wedding ring, rotating it on her finger. ‘But he’s been odd recently. He disappeared a few times and didn’t tell me where he was going. And he’s been a bit secretive.’ She sat up straighter, and some life came back into her, as if thinking about her husband’s strange behaviour was dulling her pain. She took a deep breath and turned to look at me. ‘I do love him though. I really love him.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Thanks. And I need to know where you were this morning.’

She fished a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose loudly. ‘That other detective already asked me. I stayed at Mum’s. It had been arranged for ages. Phil and Abbie came home and I stayed on a couple more days to help Mum with sorting out some stuff. Wills and things.’

It was one of the most painful things about these investigations. This woman was sitting next to me on a freezing bench with her life splintering apart. Although I could only sense the jagged edges of it, I knew her pain. And yet a part of me was assessing her. Wondering if she could have done it. If she was the one who’d plunged that knife into her husband’s neck. ‘So, you were at your mother’s last night, but you came home this morning?’

‘Yes. When I’m away, Phil and I always talk in the morning. And he didn’t answer, and he wasn’t responding to texts. So, well, I wasn’t exactly panicking because he and Abbie are both on these sleeping pills and he can sleep late, but I had a bad feeling. So I came back. And then when I got back, I found you and . . . ’

I waited but she didn’t carry on.

‘Where does your mother live?’

‘A couple of miles past Matlock. Not far.’

‘And did you drive straight from your mother’s to your house this morning?’

She hesitated. ‘I got petrol in Matlock. You can check that.’

That suspicious part of me felt something. Something deep inside that my boss would dismiss as a hunch, but that I knew was based on years of experience and observation. Something my subconscious mind had translated into a twitching in my stomach. Her responses weren’t quite right.

‘So, when you saw me, had you come straight from your mother’s, apart from getting petrol?’

She touched her throat. ‘I told you that. It took a while though, with the traffic. Do you think Abbie was there when . . . She’s really sleepy. She doesn’t remember. She’s on these pills for her night terrors. But she must have . . . what? Seen the killer? Or wandered through to our room and found Phil . . . ’

‘How old’s Abbie?’

‘Ten. She’s small for her age.’

I waited a moment, feeling the cold air in my nostrils. The wind whispered through the trees, and I could hear the river in the distance. ‘What pills is she on?’

‘Sleeping pills. I can show you.’

A ten-year-old on pills. I knew in the US the drug companies had achieved the holy grail of pills for all – old or young, sick or well. But in this country, sleeping pills for a kid was unusual.

‘And . . . why did you realise something was badly wrong?’ I said. ‘When you saw my car, I mean. You seemed very upset and worried.’

Rachel turned her body away from me and spoke as if to someone sitting on her opposite side. ‘I just knew.’ She blew her nose again.

All the birdsong and rustling of the trees and the rushing river seemed far away. The woods were quiet around us, as if muted by the presence of the stone girls.

‘What’s the story behind the statues?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I don’t know. Some ancient folk tale or something. Phil was obsessed with them but he always denied it.’

‘I noticed a carving on your landing, similar to one of them.’

‘You see. Phil did that. I sometimes thought he only bought the house because of the statues. It’s such a money pit, I don’t know why else he came here. But he always clammed up if I asked him about them, apart from one time when he was drunk . . . ’

‘What did he say then?’

‘I couldn’t get much sense out of him. But something about doing penance, I think.’

My ears twitched. ‘Penance? What did he mean by that?’

‘He wouldn’t say. But it seemed to have something to do with these.’ She nodded towards the stone children.

Penance. That was a hot word. When anyone wanted to do penance, there was always a chance someone else wanted revenge. I wondered about the story behind the statues. ‘So, any more ideas why you were so worried when you arrived at the house this morning?’

She hesitated. ‘I don’t know. Because no one answered the phone earlier I suppose. I’m always worried about Abbie’s health. I’m sure he probably does know what he’s doing, but I always wonder if Phil gets her medication right when I’m not around.’

‘What medical problem does Abbie have?’

Rachel rubbed her nose. There was something sticky in the air between us. Something she wasn’t saying. She didn’t seem numb and shocked any more – there was a new sharpness about her. She huddled into her coat as if suddenly aware of the cold. ‘You never think about your heart, do you, until it goes wrong? And then you think about it all the time.’

‘Does Abbie have a heart problem?’

‘Yes. It’s in Phil’s family.’

‘So, did Abbie have a sister?’

‘Jess. She died four years ago. She was only six. Not of the heart problem though. An accident.’

‘I’m sorry. Were they twins?’

Rachel shook her head. ‘Abbie’s Phil’s daughter and Jess was mine. I adopted Abbie after Phil’s ex-wife died.’

I turned to Rachel and looked at her dead eyes; weighed up whether to say anything; decided I should. ‘I lost my older sister when I was ten. She was fifteen.’

Some of the tension left her body. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned my sister. It wasn’t exactly in the manual of recommended interviewing techniques. But Rachel Thornton was a person too, and I found if you shared with people, they often had a strong urge to share back. Sometimes they’d even share that they’d killed someone. Most murderers didn’t intend to kill – it was something that happened in a loose moment that slipped away from them, when they were so furious they weren’t really noticing what they were doing. Often it was a relief to explain and justify.