Invisible (16 page)

My stomach
lurched, my breathing quickening as if I was running rather than rooted to the
spot. Manchester,
Tilbury
, Turkey…all places Daryl
knew well. He couldn’t be capable of these crimes though; if he did, how come I
managed to escape his evil clutches? No, he’s a
mardy
arse
sometimes but he’s such a gentle, loving bloke –
when he comes home after a long break, he gets into bed with me, spoons up
behind me, gives a huge sigh of contentment and says: ‘Ah, thank God I’m home.
I know I’m home when I’ve got your freezing cold feet against mine. I bloody
love those blocks-of-ice feet.’ That is not how a rapist and murderer
acts
.

I ignored
the burning bile at the back of my throat, and ploughed on.
Stared
at the list of dates, willing more memories to come.
18 December, 14
January, 3 February, 2 March, 29 May, 2 June.

Nothing would come, why
wouldn’t anything come?!
Then another date jumped out
at me: Friday 29 May. According to the newspaper, the Port Pervert murdered a
woman that night.

God help me,
but I almost danced with glee at that news.

Daryl can’t
be the killer. On Friday 29 May he was on a plane, flying to Turkey with me.
Being trapped 30,000ft in the air with over a hundred witnesses has to be the
most airtight alibi ever. I know I mentioned it during my interview, so why on
earth haven’t they corroborated it yet and released Daryl? Lazy, useless
buggers!

I hadn’t
realised
I’d been holding my breath until I let it out in a
great big huff of relief. Now I knew for certain – not just certain enough to
defend him to friends, family, the world, but to
know
to the depths of my soul. Now I can focus all my energy on
supporting my husband and getting him freed. And getting justice for those poor
women too; they deserve seeing the real criminal jailed rather than some poor
hapless bloke the police have chosen for no apparent reason.

Smiling for the first time
since my husband was banged up for a crime he didn’t commit, I shouted to my
parents. ‘He’s innocent,’ I said, almost laughing as they ran into the room
looking comically panicked. ‘Everything’s going to be fine. I’m going to get Daryl
out.’ Then I explained everything. They smiled too, gave me a massive hug.
Didn’t realise I saw the worried look they exchanged.

‘Mu-um, Da-ad,’ I said in
warning.

‘Umm, it’s just…’ began Mum.

‘There have been more calls,
love. While you were out we plugged the phone back in. Some of the stuff was,
well, I’m just glad you didn’t hear it,’ explained Dad.

Stupid
me.
Just because I’d realised the truth doesn’t mean others
will. That moment won’t come until the trial, a whole year away from now.

‘Well, don’t worry about it
now,’ Mum told me with fake brightness, then shot Dad a look and told him in a
stage whisper: ‘I knew we shouldn’t have said anything.’ She walked from the
room then came straight back holding a box. ‘Anyway, this package came for you.
Is it something exciting? It always cheers me up, getting a delivery through
the post; almost like getting a present, somehow.’

She smiled and shrugged at
her silliness as she handed it over.

I stared at it, confused. ‘I
haven’t ordered anything.’ She was right though, I did feel a thrill of
curiosity and excitement as I tore into the box, and plunged through the
plastic bag inside to reach the contents.

I reeled back in horror, a
terrible stench making me want to gag.

It was a dead rat. Attached
to it was a note: ‘This is what happens to vermin. You’re next.’

Saturday 18

The police came round last
night and took the package away after Dad called them. Thank goodness he was here;
I couldn’t have done it… I’d been busy having a bit of a breakdown while it was
all going on, to be honest.

Fear, lack of sleep, the
strain of what’s happening all built up to a point where I couldn’t take any
more. I’ve never felt like that. I’d literally no strength in my legs or my
body (or my soul, it felt like) and I sank to the floor right where I’d been
standing and curled up, sobbing.
Couldn’t have moved if my
life had depended on it.
I just wanted the world to stop for a while so
I could have a break and get the chance to catch up, cope.

Mum pulled at my arm
ineffectively, saying ‘oh, love, don’t, don’t’, then gave up and sat beside me,
her arm wrapped around me while Dad talked down the phone about ‘deaths
threats’, ‘protection’, ‘it’s simply not good enough’, oh and of course ‘she’s in
fear of her life’.

Someone out there wants me
dead. Even if they’d never go through with the threat and actually kill me,
they still want it. Not in a transitory way, that split second moment in a row
where you shout petulantly: ‘I hate you! I wish you were dead!’ Instead they’d
taken the time to write it down and tell me. I can’t imagine thinking that
about anyone; not really, truly.

Turns out they aren’t the
only ones either. The postman knocked on the door this morning with a thick
handful of letters and suspicious-looking packages. Mum, Dad, and I went
through them warily, with wrinkled noses, touching things gingerly, fingertips
only. Most were poorly spelled messages of vitriol and spite. We quickly became
able to spot them without having to read anything. A quick peek, a guttural
noise of terror and then they were flung to one side into the growing pile; it
would have become mechanical had it not been for the fear.

People hate me. People want
me dead. People want to kill me.

I can’t take this
any more
. This is not my life. I’m bloody well going to get
my life back though.

So I picked up the pile of
hatred, stuffed it into a carrier bag, and stepped out. Noise erupted, flashes
exploded.
Bloody journalists.
I put my head down and
marched straight to the car with a stony face and drove to the police station.
There I gave a fresh statement to DI Baxter about what I’d remembered.

‘Oh, and I’m fairly certain
that if you look in my diary – I dropped it in the day after my arrest, did you
get it?’

He nodded.

‘Well, if you look in my
diary I’m fairly certain it will back up what I’ve just told you.’

He doesn’t give much away,
DI Baxter, but I swear he gave a shadow of a smile as I spoke; perhaps he’s
been having second thoughts about Daryl’s guilt too.

Then I explained about the
threats and handed over the bag. ‘I’m really scared. Is there anything you can
do? Everyone knows where I live because the telly and newspapers keep
mentioning the road I live in, well, Daryl lives in, so…’

The detective did his by now
familiar dog bum impression, pursing his lips. Ah, that brought back happy
memories of the last time he and I had spoken, but I brushed off the revulsion,
instead hoping this time I’d get help.

‘I’m aware of your father’s
call last night and the subsequent package an officer picked up from your
house,’ he nodded. ‘We’re taking these threats very seriously, and will be
investigating. In the meantime, because of the nature of the threats we’re
assigning protection officers to you.’

‘You are?’ I was stunned,
relieved…but also kind of more scared. It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it, but I
couldn’t help thinking: ‘Blimey, if the police are taking this seriously then
there really is something to worry about. They don’t think this is just a sick
joke; it’s real.’ Of course I’d known it was real, but now it was really real,
sort of thing…

‘We’ll deploy plain clothes
officers to be outside your home at all times,’ he said. ‘There will be two
officers working 12-hour shifts, and we’ll try to keep to the same people as
much as possible so that you get to know them by sight – it will help to put
you at ease instead of worrying about who the strange people outside your house
are.’

Wow. I could have hugged him,
aside from the rather massive matter of him wrongfully arresting Daryl and me.

Back home and feeling safer
already, Dad told me he’d organised for an alarm to be fitted. ‘He’s due any
minute; I told him it was an emergency,’ he said.

As if on cue, there was a
knock on the door. Dad opened it and a chipper-looking bloke with a scrubbed
face and glowing cheeks managed a cheery smile despite his confused expression.

‘Hi, I’m Paul, here to fit
your alarm,’ he said, bustling in. ‘What’s that lot all about then?’

‘The
crowds of people?’
I asked.
Stupidly.
‘They’re, umm, they’re here for me. That’s why we need the alarm.’

‘
Ooookay
,’
he frowned, nodding. He was only short, couldn’t have been much over 5ft 5in,
but looked so capable that just his presence made me feel calmer and safer. I
was in good hands, I was sure.

‘So, Mr…’ he glanced at the
form on his clipboard, ‘…Miles, is this alarm for you? Can you sign just here
for me, please?’

‘
Er
,
no, it’s for my daughter,’ Dad explained.

‘Righty-o.
Can
I just make a note of your name?’ he asked me. I didn’t think of giving a fake
name until afterwards. With hindsight, telling him my real name was a stupid
mistake, because as soon as I did it was like a switch flicking inside him.
Instant recognition – and repulsion.

He screwed his face up as if
he’d bitten into an apple and found a wriggling maggot. ‘Hold up, you’re that
bloke’s wife?
That-that rapist fella?
Port Pervert.
Jesus!’

He reminded me of a Jack
Russell terrier the way he kept edging back then dancing forward, then edging
back again, nervously warring between the urge to stand his ground and desire
to get away from me in case I infect him with ‘murder flu’ or something that
would instantly turn him into a
perv
too. The cheeky
chappie
who’d arrive on my doorstep minutes before was
unrecognisable.

‘I don’t want your money.
Sorry, but no, no way, no, it’s disgusting what he’s done. I’m not helping a
scumbag like him. Find someone else to fit your alarm.’

‘Now just a second, sonny
Jim,’ said Dad, waggling his finger. ‘Our money’s as good as anyone
else’s
…’

‘
Pffffft
,’
was the huffed reply, as the alarm man opened the front door. Cue lights and shouting…
And then slammed the door shut.

Dad turned this way and
that, unsure what to do with himself or his annoyance. ‘The cheek, the bloody
cheek,’ he muttered. Mum stood in the doorway between the lounge and the hall,
white-faced, her hand over her mouth in shock.

I think that’s when it
really hit home for all of us. This is the way life’s going to be from now on.
It’s not just a handful of nutters who hate my very existence, it’s everyone.

It’s a hard thing to get
your head round.

I’m a nice person. I am!

And if I’m getting a
reaction like this on the outside, what the hell is happening to Daryl in
prison? Suspected sex offenders get a really hard time inside, don’t they?
They’re targeted by other inmates, picked on, beaten up. I’ve never been one
for religion, but suddenly I find myself praying.

Please let him be okay,
please God let him get through this.

Curling up on the sofa in my
now favourite foetal position, I thought about my lovely husband and how he
simply doesn’t deserve to be in this position. How the hell did we find
ourselves in the middle of this tornado of insanity? What will I find when I
see him on Monday? I just want to hold him, tell him everything will be okay.

I sniffed at the tear that
had tickled its way diagonally across my face and now hung on the end of my
nose. It dropped onto the cushion beneath my head, quickly joined by another
and another until they started a little damp patch.

Desperate to escape the
constant misery I forced myself to think about something nice. What though? Ah,
Daryl’s proposal – that always brought a smile to my face. We’d only been
together a couple of months at the time but already I’d moved into his little
house, and although others might have called it a whirlwind romance it hadn’t
seem fast to us. It had seemed just exactly right.

Never having lived with a
man before, I’d found every little domesticated thing thrilling somehow and
felt incredibly grown up buying new towels for us or the odd ornament. Even
cooking and cleaning had seemed fun because they were a bit of a novelty.

One night I’d been ironing
with a soppy smile of contentment on my face when I’d realised Daryl was
staring at me. ‘What? Do I have something on my face?’ I’d laughed, quickly
rubbing at my nose and cheeks.

‘What would you say if I
asked you to marry me?’ he’d replied, matter-of-fact.

I’d broken into a grin, then
quickly looked down and continued ironing, determined to be as casual as he.
‘Well, I’d say yes, I’d imagine.’

‘Hmmm.
Excellent.
Shall we get a ring tomorrow?’