No Longer Safe (29 page)

As soon as we reached the hospital, I was
fast-tracked through A&E. I’m not sure why I got to see a doctor so quickly
– I wasn’t injured – just a bit cold and stiff from being stuck in the damp for
a few hours. And devastated about what had happened to Stuart. He’d been
innocently caught up in Karen’s audacious plan and she was going to pay for it.

The doctor checked my pulse, my heart rate, looked in my
ears, my eyes and held fingers up in front of me. He asked about the bruise on
my forehead.

‘That looks nasty,’ he said, peering at it. ‘How did you do
it?’

‘Oh – it’s completely innocent. Just banged my head under
the sink. I was checking a leak.’

‘When was that?’

‘The day I got here. November the thirtieth.’ It felt like
months ago.

‘Did you get to see anyone about it?’

‘No. We were a bit too far from anywhere…’

He gave me a look that suggested he wasn’t happy with me.

‘I think we might need to do more tests, but the police will
need to speak to you first, okay?’

I let myself be led to the police car. I was feeling fairly
blasé about everything at that point. Perhaps it was relief at being rescued,
but I was also elated to be away from Karen, to be finally going home.

Shortly after, a weird kind of lethargic stupor came over
me. I kept thinking about Stuart and how I’d never see him again. All my hopes
had been crushed. Of course, I told the police that Karen had killed him, but
it was only once I’d said it out loud that I really started to cry.

They asked if they could go through my belongings and I
agreed without hesitation. I knew there was nothing there, but I did warn them
that Karen could have messed with my things and planted something to make me
look guilty.

After the initial chat with the police, there was an odd
hiatus and I was left in a room and told to wait. I told them I wanted to go
home or failing that I was at least supposed to go back for more tests at the
hospital, but they asked me to stay.

I was left for ages with only a lukewarm cup of tea for
company. There was a lot of coming and going in the corridor and I gathered
from snippets here and there that they must have been searching the cottage. I
bit my nails. Would they find a link to Charlie? What if they found something
belonging to Brody and realised what Karen had done? They’d think I was in on
it.

Time passed and still they kept me there. I was starting to
think they’d forgotten me. I tried to leave the room but as soon as I opened
the door an officer came from nowhere, took my arm and led me back to the
chair. There was a mirror on the wall and they must have had someone in there,
watching me the whole time.

I heard shouting and then it went quiet. Where was Karen?
Hadn’t they arrested her by now? Had she put the blame on me?

Finally, another officer came back. They allowed me to make
a call and not wishing to worry my parents, I rang Nina. I gave her a quick
résumé to let her know where I was. She was appalled by what had happened.
After batting questions and answers back and forth about my horrendous
experience, she asked how I was coping.

‘Not great, obviously…I’m heartbroken about Stuart. I know I
barely knew him, but…’

She said all the right things in an attempt to comfort me.

‘Why do you have to go back to the hospital?’ she asked.

‘I’m very headachy. The doctor thought the bump was quite
bad,’ I said. ‘He told me off for not getting proper medical attention.’

‘You’ve been through the most unimaginable horror. You need
to be out of there. How long are they going to keep you?’

‘I don’t know. It’s all a terrible mess.’

‘Hang on in there, girl. Just tell them everything you know
and it’ll be alright.’

My eyes welled up and I couldn’t answer her straight away.
‘I’d love to see you again before you head back to London,’ she added.

‘Absolutely,’ I croaked. ‘As soon as I’m out, I’ll ring
you.’

‘Take care.’

I never got the chance to call her again.

Alice was found in the cellar before any
more harm was done. I didn’t want her to suffer down there – I just needed her
out of the way.

On the way to offer my information at the police
station, I stopped off at The Holland’s farm and left Brody asleep inside the
porch. I heard voices inside so, wearing gloves, I rang the doorbell and fled,
knowing he’d be found quickly and his parents would be over the moon.

I’d rinsed the wash-in, wash-out dye from his hair and
dressed him in the clothes Charlie took him in – so he barely looked any
different from the day he disappeared. I knew by then that my scheme was
untenable. I’d told too many people about my baby girl – a boy wouldn’t work.
The plan was doomed.

The police have been searching our cottage, of course,
since they discovered Stuart’s body in the cellar. I’d done a thorough job
earlier of wiping away any possible prints left by Charlie in the kitchen, the
bannister and Alice’s room. Of course, there will be the odd stray hair and
bits of skin with his DNA, but they will be mixed up with hundreds from other
people who’ve stayed there over the years. I found out he doesn’t have a police
record, so his details won’t be on file, anyway.

We’ve been lucky too. We’d kept Charlie’s head well
wrapped in the sheet when we dragged him down the stairs, and the rug where he
fell was thick enough to soak up all his blood. Because I’d burnt everything,
there were no incriminating traces inside the cottage.

I’ll need to wait until they get all the test results
back, but I’m banking on the police not knowing there was an earlier crime.

They kept me waiting for hours before they took my
fingerprints and a DNA swab. They asked if I wanted a lawyer. I didn’t like the
sound of that. Karen must have told them a pack of lies about me. She must have
been prepared for this and set up a trail of false clues I knew nothing about.

The next day, the police took me back to the interview room
and everything was more serious this time. It was no longer a friendly chat. I was
very careful about what I said; I didn’t want to fall into a readymade trap.

They asked me about Stuart. Of course my DNA was on his body
– I’d found him down there in the cellar in the dark. I’d held him and cradled
him, because we were in love and about to embark on a wonderful journey
together. No, I didn’t know he was there! No, I didn’t know how he died –
except there was blood on his face and his head was caved in.
Ask Karen
, I said.

They brought in Exhibit A inside a plastic bag and asked if
I recognised it. Yes, it was my pyjama top, but no – I had
no idea
how it got covered in Stuart’s blood.
Karen
, I said.
It has to be her doing.

Then there was Exhibit B; did it belong to me. Yes, it was
my camera; I’d taken shots of the mountains, the trees, the lake.

Later that day, I was taken back to the hospital and a
different doctor came to see me, a police officer at her side. She asked about
my headaches.

‘Quite bad, actually,’ I told her.

‘And how many sleeping tablets did you take?’

‘Just the odd one – and only since I’d been at the cottage,
as a last resort. Nothing for anyone to worry about,’ I insisted.

Her questions went on and on. Had I been feeling unwell at
any time? Had I taken any other medication? Didn’t I have some kind of seizure
in the bathroom?

‘Yes, I’d had a little episode, but it was just a panic
attack.’

I knew it. Karen had told them all my private, personal
things and was making out I was some kind of deranged nutcase. But I kept my
cool. I knew that once they probed deeper, the truth would come out and I’d be
going home.

‘What about when you hit your head, did you black out?’

I remembered the clocks. Karen had told me it was only a
second or two, I told her, when I thought it was more like twenty minutes. The
doctor shared a knowing look with the police officer and I smiled, because I
knew then that Karen was going to be in trouble for lying through her teeth.

It was Alice’s camera that sealed it. 

The night Charlie broke in, there was a photo of the
open kitchen window, with the time logged at 2.45am. The police never worked
out what that picture signified and only Alice’s fingerprints were on the
camera, with a few partials from Nina, the woman she met by the loch. But I
knew that it proved Alice was up and about that night.

She was the one who brought down the stool on the back
of Charlie’s head. It must have been the last thing he was expecting!

Why Alice would have taken a picture of the spot where
he broke in, I have no idea. She had no recollection of any of it, but then
people do strange things when they’re sleepwalking.

I heard the noise of him falling in Alice’s room
during the night and rushed in to see what had happened. She was back in bed by
then, curled up like a baby.

That’s when I took the stool. I knew what I was doing.
Alice would have freaked out if she’d known she’d killed him. She would have
insisted on giving herself up and the police would have been crawling all over
the place, getting in the way of my plan to steal the child. I couldn’t afford
to let her mess things up.

It was better for her to think it was a freak accident
at first. Then the possibility it could have been me – or even her – kept her
on her toes. By then it was too late to alert the police – we’d handled the
body, messed with a crime scene.

The police asked me to stay in the area for
questioning, so while Alice was being interviewed, I picked up a local paper to
find the latest news on the loch.

Charlie hadn’t been found and the police had called
off the search. The first two dives brought up only a battered oil drum, a
fishing seat and an old cast-iron meat mincer. As soon as Brody was discovered
back at home, the police looked at other lines of enquiry – no one else had
been reported missing so they didn’t know there was still a body in the water.
They were looking for Charlie, but they thought he was on the run, they didn’t
know he was dead.

None of the witnesses could be certain what had been
dumped that night – there was evidence of a smashed-up boat, that’s all –
assumed to be the work of drunken tourists.

Charlie was hidden for good.

My world collapsed after that. I didn’t even get to
see Stuart at the mortuary to say a proper goodbye. The police fired the same
questions at me over and over:
When had I last
seen Stuart? Did I remember taking photographs at the cottage?
They
started talking again about my camera and fingerprints and sleepwalking and
suddenly a psychiatrist was shining lights into my eyes.

Before I knew it, I was in a ward full of mad people; they
must have run out of hospital beds or something. Lying there with no one
sensible to talk to, I decided to go right back to the beginning in my mind and
run through everything I could remember about the last two weeks. I wanted to
secure it inside my head and remind myself about the parts I had to keep
secret, before the sedatives they forced me to take turned the whole experience
to fog.

I was right to do it; it wasn’t long before everything was a
blur – they must have put me on even stronger tablets. I think Karen came to
see me at one point, but I had no idea what she said. I could just picture her
walking away. Although, when I thought about it later, I couldn’t even be sure
it was her.

Finding Stuart that final morning was a
ghastly shock. He’d stayed over on the sofa in the sitting room and Alice must
have taken another sleeping tablet.

At some stage during the early hours, she’d battered him
with a rolling pin from the kitchen drawer. The evidence was on her camera,
including a selfie she’d taken with the automatic timer. It showed her beaming
face pressed next to Stuart’s, with his head split open – timed at 3.05am. Once
the police saw that one, there was no question that Alice was seriously
unhinged.

They asked me about finding his body.

‘Alice must have dragged him into the cellar after
she’d killed him.’ I said. ‘I had no idea he was down there until I went to
find the vacuum cleaner for a last-minute tidy up.’

‘What made you think Alice had killed him, Ms Morley?’

‘I didn’t think it could have been anyone else. There
was no sign of a break-in and there were no fresh footsteps or tyre-tracks
outside in the snow.’

‘Alice Flemming is your friend, isn’t she? Did you
think she was capable of that?’

‘Well – I hadn’t seen her in a while. She used to be
very quiet, but she’s come out of herself since then. She’s certainly more
assertive. I should tell you that Alice had been having panic attacks and
periods of anxiety. I think, on reflection, she was probably quite unbalanced.’

I knew what was coming. ‘This bang on the head – how
long was she unconscious for?’

I pretended to think about it. ‘It would have been
around fifteen to twenty minutes. I was quite worried.’

‘But you didn’t suggest she went to hospital?’

‘Oh, yes,’ I corrected, without a beat. ‘I insisted on
taking her,  but she categorically refused. She was adamant that she was
fine. I kept an eye on her as far as I could. To be honest, I thought she was
okay – until I found Stuart, obviously.’

‘Why didn’t you ring the police as soon as you found
the body?’ they asked.

‘I panicked. I was terrified for myself and the little
girl I was looking after.’

‘Did you touch the body?’

‘I think I might have touched him to check if he was
still alive.’

I knew there was a chance they’d find my DNA on him
when I’d hidden him in the cellar. In fact, I’d moved Stuart before Alice got
up that morning, because I didn’t want her dragging the police in again before
I’d decided what to do about Brody. That was my only crime. Otherwise, my
conscience was clear.

I hadn’t killed anyone.

‘What exactly was your reason for tying up your
friend, Ms Morley, and leaving her there in the cold?’

‘I was scared! – desperate to get out of the house and
I knew if she was tied up, she couldn’t hurt us. I rang the police as soon as I
got a signal outside.’

The officers could see that I’d left water and food at
the top of the steps in the cellar and I hadn’t even locked her in. That stood
in my favour. I didn’t tell them I’d rattled the key in the lock to make it
sound like I’d shut her in.

Apparently, forensics found her fingerprints – and
hers alone – on the rolling pin in the sitting room; it had rolled under the
sofa out of sight. She had blood spattered on her night clothes too. Poor
Alice. During the night, she turned into a different person.