The previous autumn, Liam had cut down some trees. One stump had been left, intended to be turned into a bird table, but it had sprouted from the base again during the spring. Only a few weeks earlier, Liam had insisted on digging it out, he said it was diseased and an eyesore. She didn’t see why that mattered, seeing as she would be leaving, but he insisted.
He made a real mess of the lawn by digging such a deep and wide hole to get the roots out, and she got cross with him because she thought the new owners would be upset. Liam had promised to get some new turf for it, and a new shrub to plant. He had done it too, just yesterday while she was still in Bristol – she’d noticed it the moment she got home.
Distressed as she was, she got a little comfort from thinking of Liam tucked away under a new shrub. He’d loved the garden, and therefore he’d be happy to be buried in it.
Peeling back the turf and digging out the shrub was so easy. It took no more than a few minutes. Digging the hole again, though, took a very long time, for she knew it had to be deep or foxes or cats might dig it up. But sheer panic and desperation kept her at it, and the plastic sheet she’d laid on the lawn to protect it was soon covered and the heap of earth grew steadily. She remembered thinking how lucky it was that her nearest neighbours were so used to hearing her moving around in the garden as she watered and weeded, even very late in the evening. If they could hear her tonight they wouldn’t find it unusual.
She didn’t know what time it was when Liam came home, perhaps half past four, but by the time she’d finished the hole it was well after nine, and dark. She’d had to make it a little longer than the original one, which was the hardest part, but she’d peeled back the grass there to lay it again later.
Pulling Liam’s body out of the kitchen and across the lawn by his feet, in the dark, was awful. His head thumped down as she pulled him over the doorstep, and the thick trail of blood left across the kitchen floor made her feel sick. Once he was on the grass it was even harder to pull him, and she kept crying and having to stop. But she finally rolled him into the hole and began refilling it, glad that it was too dark to see the earth on his face and body.
Once the hole was refilled, she got a plank from the shed and laid it across the mound, then walked heavily all over it to flatten it, just as she’d seen Liam do after he’d dug the roots out. That was the very worst part, it seemed so cruel and so final.
It was much too dark by then to see anything, so she watered the pile of turf so it wouldn’t start to die before morning, and went back inside.
Scrubbing the kitchen floor came next, bucket after bucket of water, turning bright red with the blood, before it came clean. She could remember lying down on the floor while it was still wet and sobbing her heart out. If she slept at all that night, she didn’t remember, and first thing in the morning she was out in the garden again, pressing the soil down once more, replanting the shrub and laying the turf around it again.
Once she’d taken the plastic sheet away and brushed the last traces of soil from the lawn, then watered it with the hose, it looked much the same as it had the previous day. It wasn’t quite so flat as Liam had made it, but she knew it would flatten out with time. Finally, she carefully hosed away all the blood on the grass.
‘Are you sure you only stabbed Liam once?’ Roy asked her.
Susan was quite startled by his question. While she was aware of telling the story as she relived it, she’d gone so far back into herself and that day that it was almost as if she were alone in the room.
‘Yes, of course,’ she said.
He asked Sergeant Bloom to get up and turn his back towards Susan, so she could show them where the knife went in.
Susan couldn’t be exact about it. Liam’s back had been brown and shiny with perspiration, nothing like the sergeant’s dark uniform. But she told them she knew it was just below where his right shoulder blade stuck out.
‘And he died instantly?’ Roy asked.
‘Not instantly. He sort of half turned and spoke before he fell down. I don’t know how long after it was that he died. I was crying, pulling the knife out and trying to stop the blood. I wanted to ring for an ambulance, but I was too scared, then I realized he was dead.’
‘What did you do with the knife?’
She looked up at him in surprise. ‘I washed it and put it back in the drawer.’
‘And his belongings?’
‘He didn’t have much,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Only a jacket, some underclothes, a couple of shirts and some waterproofs. I kept those for a while. Well, you would, wouldn’t you, if someone had just walked out on you?’
Roy nodded gravely, chilled by her calm logic.
‘And no one came looking for him?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said, looking him straight in the eye. ‘But then, they wouldn’t have come there. He always went to see people about his work, and he hadn’t actually told anyone he was living with me. That’s why he left his camper up the road.’
‘Can you draw me a plan of where you buried him?’ Roy asked, giving her a pen and a sheet of paper.
‘You don’t have to do that,’ Steven said quickly.
‘I want to,’ she said, giving him a scathing look.
Steven and Roy exchanged glances as she bent over the desk, painstakingly drawing in the house and the river, a winding path going around flower beds, even marking out and naming certain trees.
‘It’s about twenty yards from the back door, there’s a lilac bush on top of it,’ she said, drawing a broken line which ran left at a forty-five-degree angle away from the house. ‘The bush will be very big now, I expect,’ she said. ‘In case they can’t recognize it as lilac now while there’s no leaves, there’s a holly bush about fifteen feet behind it.’
‘Please sign and date that plan,’ Roy said as she finished, his voice cracking because he hadn’t wanted to believe this of her. He went on to question her about the day she left The Rookery and whether her brother Martin had come before she left.
‘He was too cowardly to come again while I was still there,’ she said, a gleam of triumph in her eyes. ‘You see, the last time he came, he insisted I was to make an inventory of everything in the house, then mark which pieces I wanted to take with me. He said he would then decide which of them I could have. Liam came in while he was there, and he went mad at Martin. He said if Martin stopped me taking anything I wanted, he would not only call the national newspapers and tell them what a rat he was but he’d also give him a good hiding.’
‘That stopped him, did it?’ Steven asked, forgetting he wasn’t supposed to make any comment except when reminding Susan of her rights. From his one meeting with Martin Wright, he didn’t think the man would be easily intimidated.
‘Martin was scared he’d be in trouble at his bank if his name was in the papers,’ Susan said, and half smiled. ‘Liam was wonderful that day. He sounded like he really meant it. Martin backed right down and he couldn’t get out of the house fast enough. But then, I suppose he knew I wouldn’t take everything, or start selling stuff. I’m sure he turned up again the moment I’d left, though, to check.’
She paused for a moment, then suddenly laughed.
‘When I first got to Bristol, I used to hope someone would find Liam’s body and Martin would be charged with the murder. Wouldn’t that have been divine justice? No one would have suspected me. The whole village would have turned out to tell the court what a bastard he was.’
Steven couldn’t help but snigger and Roy looked at him sharply. ‘Sorry,’ Steven said. ‘But I have to agree with my client on that point.’
‘Would you have stood by and let him stand trial for murder?’ Roy asked Susan.
She smirked. ‘Certainly. He deserved it after the way he treated me. I just wish it was him I stabbed, not Liam. If Martin hadn’t been so nasty after our father died, if he’d given me some of the money for the house to buy a place of my own, I don’t think I would be sitting here now.’
Roy looked
at her, saw the sincerity in her face and felt a tug of sympathy. She had been brave and forthright in spilling it all out so clearly. He had no doubt that part of the reason why she had clung so desperately to Liam was because of the way her brother had treated her. Martin Wright had a great deal to answer for.
‘Tell me about how it was after you buried Liam and before you moved,’ Roy asked. ‘It was another two weeks, wasn’t it?’
‘Do you mean how did I feel?’ she asked.
Roy nodded.
‘Like a sleep-walker, I suppose.’ She sighed. ‘The good weather broke, it rained for about three days solidly. I remember being glad about that because wherever Liam was supposed to be working, they wouldn’t expect him to turn up in such heavy rain. I stayed in and began packing, though I kept going outside to check the grave. I could almost see the turf settling in and growing. I was very weepy. I couldn’t eat or sleep. I was sick several times too.’
‘Did you know you were pregnant then?’ Roy asked.
‘No. I didn’t realize until the morning of the day the removal man was coming to collect me and my stuff. I’d put the sickness down to panic, but that morning my tummy felt different, my breasts were tender, and I suddenly realized that’s what it was.’
‘What was your reaction?’ Roy asked.
‘Reaction?’ She frowned. ‘I was glad of course. Really glad.’
‘Really?’ he said in disbelief. ‘You’d just killed and buried your lover but you were glad you were carrying his child?’
‘I was thirty-five,’ she said as if that explained it. ‘I had always wanted a baby. It didn’t seem so awful to be leaving the house and starting over again somewhere else, not with that to look forward to.’
The interview was halted at that point because Susan said she needed to go to the toilet. Roy asked her if she wished to stop for the day and continue again the next morning, but she said she’d rather do it all today.
As Susan went off with the prison officer who had been waiting outside the room, Roy turned to Steven.
‘Tell me, off the record, did you expect that?’ he asked.
‘No. I’m astounded,’ Steven said sadly. ‘When she said she had killed them and wanted to confess, I thought she just meant Reuben and Zoë. But it kind of makes sense of something that’s cropped up several times.’
‘Annabel’s dying being punishment?’ Roy asked.
Steven nodded. ‘She used to go to church. Right up until she left Luddington. She’s mentioned it several times in our interviews. I asked her once if she had Annabel christened, and she was a bit odd about it, she said she couldn’t when she wasn’t married. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. But now –’ he broke off, not sure what he actually meant.
Roy nodded. ‘For someone religious that would have been troubling. I wouldn’t know if it was the thought of entering God’s house after murder that was the problem, or the lack of protection for the child. But I could see it could prey on someone’s mind after the child had died.’
‘I wonder what’s going to come next.’ Sergeant Bloom spoke up for the first time from his chair in the corner of the room. ‘Reckon she’s preparing her next bombshell right now.’
Susan wasn’t preparing anything. As she washed her hands after using the lavatory, she was thinking about Martin. He was the only thing she was really afraid of, just the thought of seeing him in a court room made her quake inside.
Her earliest memories were all of him being cruel to her. Knocking her over in the garden, hiding or breaking her favourite toys, terrifying her with threats of nasty things he intended to do to her. He was clever with it too, nothing was ever done in front of anyone and any injuries to her looked accidental, so he was never punished.
When he got older and left home for university, his cruelty didn’t stop, it just changed to the mental kind. Constant belittlement, caustic remarks about her appearance, her school work. He made her believe she was worthless. Yet perhaps the saddest thing of all was that she kept striving to make him like her.
When Martin came home to visit after Mother had the stroke, she would always cook something special, make his room and the whole house look nice. Just one word of praise would have been enough for her, but she never got it. He was so smart, handsome and sophisticated, and she thought for years that she deserved his contempt for being so mousy and ordinary. Her mother had said once that it was because he felt pushed out when she was born. But that had never made any sense to Susan because as she remembered, he was the one her parents always boasted about.
He was awful after their father died. He would come to the house unexpectedly, ordering her around and calling her a fat slag, because someone had told him about Liam. Even though he had all that money coming to him from the sale of the house, and she was looking after the house and garden for him, he wouldn’t help her out, not even with at least part of the household bills. He coldly ordered her to sign on at the Job Centre and claim dole money, and said it was about time she entered the real world.
If Liam hadn’t given her money every week for food, she would have been forced to break into the money left to her, and she needed that for advance rent and a deposit. It was only through the intervention of Mr Browning, Father’s solicitor, that he let her take furniture with her when she left. And that was only because Mr Browning said if he didn’t do this, he would encourage Susan to challenge the will.
In fact Mr Browning did actively encourage her to do so, but she couldn’t go through with it because she was so afraid of Martin. That was why she chose to move to Bristol. She knew if she stayed around Stratford-upon-Avon he’d be keeping tabs on her. She even changed her name to Fellows, a name she’d picked at random out of the phone book, as she didn’t want her unborn child to bear the same name as Martin.
She wished now she’d never relented and written to him about Annabel. She’d done it in the first flush of euphoria after Annabel was born, convinced it would make a difference. But he hadn’t even replied to her letter.
Nor did she know now why she telephoned his office to tell him about Annabel’s death and ask for a loan when she got back to Bristol from Wales. She might have known he wouldn’t help. But that was what tipped her over the edge. It seemed to her at that moment that if even her own brother didn’t care that her child had died, and she was destitute, there was no hope for her at all.
She straightened up in front of the mirror, smoothing down her hair. Perhaps now she was confessing everything, Martin wouldn’t be called to her trial.
‘Did you feel guilty about Liam after you moved into the house in Bristol?’ Roy asked her when she’d come back and sat down. He had started the tape again.
‘Not really,’ she said. ‘That sounds so awful, but it’s true. I had so much to do making the new house nice, and all I could really think about was my baby inside me.’
‘And after Annabel was born? You must have been reminded of Liam constantly then?’
Susan had been reminded. She could remember holding Annabel in her arms as she sat up in the hospital bed and seeing Liam’s face so clearly in her daughter’s. She looked like a little gypsy baby with her curly dark hair and olive skin. One of the nurses had asked if her father was Spanish or Greek.
Susan had felt deep pangs of remorse, thinking how if she hadn’t fought with Liam they might have remained friends and she could contact him now. But her real sorrow was that she wouldn’t have him somewhere in the background to share her joy and pride in their child. Just the way Annabel’s fingers gripped hers, her little head butting against her chest for more milk, was so sweet that she felt privileged to have been given her.
‘Yes, she did remind me, but only of the good things.’ She shrugged. ‘She had his curly hair and olive skin, but she made me so happy and complete I just kind of blanked out what I’d done to him. It was like he died from natural causes really. I saw myself as a widow.’
‘Four happy years?’ Roy said.
Susan looked u
p at him, and the sympathy in his eyes brought a lump to her throat. She had never really been able to explain adequately to anyone just how happy those years had been: the rush of joy when Annabel held up her little arms to be lifted out of the cot, the sound of her laughter, the sheer jubilation she experienced when she took her first faltering steps. How could she make anyone understand the bliss she felt when, all rosy from a bath, Annabel fell asleep in her arms, or when her plump little arms were wound tightly round her mother’s neck? It was a mother’s thing, a state of grace too wonderful for mere words.
‘Yes,’ she said simply, looking down at her hands. ‘But I paid a heavy price for those years, didn’t I? When she died I was convinced it was God’s judgment on me. I wanted to die too.’ For the first time in the interview her eyes filled with tears, and Roy too found he had a lump in his throat.
‘Then you met Reuben?’ Roy prompted her after a few seconds of silence.
She looked up, her eyes swimming with tears. ‘Yes, and he convinced me it was possible to find happiness again.’
Steven had already heard how Susan met Reuben, and about her life in Wales with him. Roy knew some of it from Beth and he’d gleaned more from the witnesses in Wales and things Susan had told him in previous interviews.
Both men had been left with the impression that it hadn’t been a real love affair, more something born out of desperation. Yet as Susan began to talk about it, they both saw they were entirely wrong.
‘I believed in Reuben,’ she said forcefully. ‘I don’t mean just him loving and looking after me, but I believed in his philosophy of life, his truthfulness, his nobility. To me he stood head and shoulders above other men, he was above corruption. He was like the Good Shepherd, he rounded up damaged people who needed his guidance, strength and love and he made them whole again. I suppose I thought he had been sent to save me. I would have done anything for him.’