Fatal Act (37 page)

S
he was relieved to discover that Reg was out. If he had been there, he would probably have insisted on questioning Darius himself. Not only was Geraldine keen to see the investigation through, she had to make sure nothing could possibly go wrong. Whatever else happened, Darius had to pay for what he had done to Sam.

‘Are you sure you should be conducting the interview, after what he did to you?’ Nick asked. ‘Can’t it wait till Reg is back tomorrow? Or I could talk to him if you like. I don’t mind.’

Briskly Geraldine dismissed both his suggestions.

D
arius had killed three innocent people, endangering the life of a young police sergeant in the course of his killing spree. Geraldine wasn’t interested in finding out why he had done it. Her sole reason for wanting to question him was so she could make sure he went down. He might be a master of escape, but he wasn’t going to get away this time. And she was determined to be there to nail him. For now, he was merely a suspect. Even the charge of assaulting two police officers could be mitigated by a spurious defence about temporary derangement. With a clever barrister, he might even convince a jury that he had mistaken Sam and Geraldine for intruders. She had to make sure he was convicted.

D
arius acknowledged her entrance with a nod. When the preliminaries were over, Geraldine began to ask her questions. He didn’t need prompting. On the contrary, he was eager to boast about his exploits, his attempt on his interlocutor’s life apparently forgotten.

‘So you admit you killed Anna Porter, Bethany Marsden, and Zak Trevelyan?’

He didn’t flinch at the mention of his nephew’s name. ‘It was the only way,’ he said softly.

‘I don’t follow. What had any of them done to you? Help me out here. I really don’t understand why you killed them.’

‘He had to pay for what he did.’

‘Who had to pay?’

‘My brother-in-law.’

‘Piers Trevelyan?’

‘Yes, Piers Trevelyan.’ He screwed his face into a grimace of disgust as he said the name.

‘What did he have to be punished for?’

‘For Ella’s death.’

‘Ella, your sister?’

‘Yes, my sister.’

‘She died nearly twenty years ago.’

‘It’s not as long as that. And in any case, time makes no difference. She deserves justice.’

H
e leaned forward, and his voice grew urgent.

‘You can’t depend on the law to do anything. I tried.’ He shook his head, his expression solemn. ‘God knows, I tried. I told them over and over again, but they wouldn’t listen.’

‘Who wouldn’t listen?’

‘The police. I told them he did it. She never should have married him. I did my best to warn her, but she wouldn’t listen to me either. He had a hold on her. She would have done anything for that man.’

‘She was in love with him.’

He glared at her. Geraldine wondered if that was what Darius had been unable to forgive.

‘E
lla loved everyone,’ he replied sourly. ‘She was an angel.’

Geraldine nodded. He had told her that before. She wanted to talk to him about Piers.

‘Piers must have loved her very much –’

‘Love? Huh. There was only one person he ever loved. Himself. He was selfish and cruel. She should never have married him. He was always running after other women when he could have been with her. She was so miserable. I would have killed him myself, right there and then, but I didn’t want to see her any more upset. I wish I had done afterwards, because he grew tired of her and that’s why he killed her, so he could be free of her.’

G
eraldine wasn’t sure she had understood him correctly.

‘Are you telling me he made her so unhappy that he drove her to suicide?’

‘No!’ His voice rose hysterically. ‘Why won’t anyone believe me? He killed her. He held her head under and drowned her. He wanted to be rid of her.’

‘Why didn’t he divorce her?’

He shrugged. ‘Because of his son. He didn’t want to lose control of her child.’

Darius could offer no evidence to support his accusation.

‘When did you ever hear of someone drowning in a bath by accident?’ was all he would say in defence of his claim.

C
arefully Geraldine steered the conversation back to the recent deaths. Off the subject of his sister, Darius cheerfully described in detail how he had carried out the murders disguised as a woman. He had worn the same blonde wig to escape from each of the three crime scenes, and had been wearing it again when he had been apprehended in the ambulance.

‘It’s not the best wig,’ he added apologetically.

He confessed he had been shaken by the car crash, but had managed to jump from the van virtually unscathed.

‘It’s what I do,’ he added airily.

M
iraculously, Anna had survived the crash. Within seconds he had discovered she was still alive, and had inflicted a fatal wound on the back of her neck. Those few seconds had nearly cost him his freedom, because a policeman arrived before Darius had a chance to slip away.

‘That stupid plod.’ He grinned at the memory. ‘He didn’t have a clue! I didn’t have to do anything. He sent me away himself.’ He laughed out loud. ‘I spun him a yarn about being a reporter, the public have a right to know and all that claptrap, and he told me to sling my hook. He said the public had a right to be protected from people like me. It wasn’t perfect. I would have liked her to drown. I should have drowned her –’

He broke off with a far away look in his eyes.

W
ith the right preparation, it had been easy for a stunt man of Darius’ experience to climb off a road bridge, and out of a third floor window. He boasted that he had escaped from all three crime scenes with very little trouble.

‘Impressive, eh?’

Geraldine listened impassively. Inwardly she was shocked by his cavalier attitude to human life. Unhinged by his sister’s death, he had ended the lives of three innocent people – including Ella’s own son – without any compunction. Geraldine should have been satisfied with his full confession. But there were still unanswered questions.

‘I
don’t understand why you killed Anna, and Bethany, and Zak. Your anger was directed against Piers. Why didn’t you kill him?’

‘Death would have been too easy for him. He had to be made to suffer, just like he made her suffer. I wanted to break his heart. He would have had his turn, only you stopped me before I’d had a chance,’ he added with a spark of anger.

‘What do you mean? A chance to do what?’

‘Don’t you see? When I’d made him suffer enough, broken him down to nothing, I was going to drown him in the bath.’

G
eraldine frowned. ‘I still don’t understand. Why did you want to persecute him after all this time? Ella’s been dead for nearly twenty years.’

‘Yes, she’s dead, and he gets an award for lifetime services to the industry. You must have seen it in the news.
She’s
forgotten, and
he
gets a lifetime of achievement.’ He sat forward, with sudden energy. ‘Do you know what happens to a stunt man when he reaches forty-five? He’s finished. I tried, but no one would give me work. So I went to Piers, God forgive me. I knew what he’d done but I went to him for help. And you know what? He didn’t remember me! His own wife’s brother! When I told him who I was, he said “Ella’s history.” His own wife!’

H
e shrugged and leaned back in his chair. ‘That’s when I knew what I had to do. All these years I’d imagined him riddled with guilt and grief, and he’d moved on as though she’d never even existed. She had to be avenged. I did it for her. A life for a life.‘

‘Three lives,’ she corrected him.

It could be four. At the thought of Sam, her head seemed to fill with blood pumping with such force it felt as though her skull would burst. She paused in her interrogation, shocked by the power of her feelings. In that instant, her will was almost swept aside by an urge to kill Darius, squeeze the breath out of his lungs with her bare hands. But between desire and action lay an unshakable belief in the right to life.

‘Y
ou killed Ella’s son,’ she said, trying to put Sam out of her mind.

‘Her son, huh! He, of all people, should have wanted to avenge her death, but when I offered him a picture of her, he threw it back in my face. Oh come on,’ he added, noticing her frown, ‘it’s not as if I was doing anything wrong. Quite the opposite, wouldn’t you say?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I was putting things right. He drowned Ella. She was mine and he took her away from me, held her head under the water and watched her struggle. In the end only her legs were kicking, because he was holding both her wrists as he pushed her head, pushed it and pushed it until even her legs stopped moving.’ His eyes were still, looking inward. ‘He sat with her until all the bubbles had gone and the water was cold.’

G
eraldine stared at him, aghast.

‘It was you,’ she whispered. ‘You drowned your sister.’

‘No, I wasn’t there when they found her.’

He gave a cunning smile. His eyes glittered.

‘There was a window in the bathroom,’ Geraldine said.

‘They said it was an accident,’ he repeated. ‘I told them he did it. Why didn’t anyone listen to me?’

‘You killed Ella.’

‘No, no, it wasn’t like that. I loved Ella. I loved her.’

G
ERALDINE
WENT
ALONG
TO
the hospital early on Saturday morning. She sat by her colleague’s bed, trying to feel reassured by the steady rhythm of the heart monitor. After a while she dozed off and missed the moment Sam’s eyes flickered open. A faint mutter alerted her to the patient’s return to consciousness.

‘Is that you? Mum?’

Geraldine sprang to her feet. ‘It’s Geraldine. Your mother will be here soon. I’m going to call a nurse.’

‘Wait.’

Geraldine hesitated at the curtain while Sam mumbled incoherently under her breath. All Geraldine could make out was ‘I’ll try to be there next Christmas.’

S
eriously worried, Geraldine hurried off. Before she reached the desk she met a nurse who was on her way to check on Sam.

‘She’s awake but she’s rambling, talking about Christmas. Is she – will she be – She thought I was her mother.’

‘Don’t worry. It’s perfectly normal. She’s been sedated for hours, and even when she wakes up properly she’s going to be confused for a while.’

Sam had been moved out of intensive care so Geraldine went back to the ward and sat at her bedside. She would have stayed there all day on the off chance Sam would wake up again.

S
am’s parents arrived shortly before midday. Without directing her recriminations at Geraldine specifically, Sam’s mother made it clear she blamed her daughter’s senior officers for her condition.

‘I don’t understand it,’ she said, glaring at Geraldine. ‘Sam would never have put herself at risk like that, going to question a dangerous suspect all by herself. Someone must have sent her there. Whoever it was should at least have gone with her. But I suppose senior officers know better than to endanger their own lives.’

‘Now, now, Alice,’ Sam’s father said, ‘don’t go upsetting yourself all over again.’

‘My daughter’s lying here in a coma and you’re telling me I shouldn’t be upset.’

After an awkward exchange of greetings, Geraldine took her leave. There was nothing she could do for Sam, and she felt as though she was in the way at the hospital, so she arranged for a lift to Hendon where her own car was parked. After checking in at work, she intended driving back to the hospital, and then home in time for Chloe’s arrival at seven.

I
t felt weird rapping on the familiar door to check in with Reg. Outwardly nothing had changed, but Sam was lying in a hospital bed, drifting in and out of consciousness. Geraldine had managed to have a word with a doctor that morning. He had confirmed that Sam didn’t appear to have suffered any brain damage. But he admitted that was a clinical judgement, not a certainty.

‘How is she?’ Reg asked without any preamble. He knew Geraldine had come straight from the hospital.

Only after she had brought him up to speed on Sam’s condition did he enquire about her own state.

‘You’re looking rough,’ he added, gazing at her with such genuine concern that she felt her eyes water.

‘I’m fine,’ she answered gruffly. ‘Just a few scrapes and bruises, that’s all.’

Naively expecting him to send her home, she was unprepared for his censure as he rounded on her for placing Sam in danger.

‘What the hell were you playing at?’

D
ismayed at the turn things were taking, and vexed with herself for failing to see this coming, she explained how no one had known the truth about Darius at that time. Sam had simply gone to ask him about Piers’ past. As soon as Geraldine suspected Darius himself might be the killer, she had gone straight to Frognal, arranging for Nick and a back up team to join her as quickly as possible. Reg was remorseless as he challenged her decision to send Sam alone in the first place, and asked her to justify why she had summoned Nick, who wasn’t even on the case, and how she had selected the back up team.

‘More important than all of that, it beggars belief that you never once thought to consult me while all this was going on. I had to find out from another officer, who shouldn’t even have been involved in the first place.’

‘I know I should have called you, but it all happened so fast. There wasn’t time –’

‘There wasn’t time? Yet you had time to phone Nick. The fact is, you took it on yourself to make a decision that risked the life of an officer.’

‘Nick happened to call me so I asked him for help.’

‘He
happened
to call you? Is that how we operate here, on the basis of random phone calls? What would you have done if he hadn’t happened to call you when he did?’

G
eraldine understood Reg was covering his own back. If Sam was seriously injured, he had no intention of being held accountable. It was fair enough. After all, it had been Geraldine’s decision to send Sam to Darius’ flat. Reg had nothing to do with it. Not so long ago she would have been angered that his priority was to keep himself out of trouble. As her senior officer, he expected her loyalty and unquestioning obedience, yet was prepared to abandon her at the first sign of trouble. Intent on promotion, she wondered if his cavalier attitude to others would prove his downfall. More likely it would protect him from blame when anything went wrong. But it had been her call, and she was prepared to shoulder the blame. She didn’t care any more. If her blunder led to demotion, she would live with that. All that mattered to her right now was that Sam recovered.