Who she was, p.18
Who She Was, page 18
DCI Graves was waiting for me. Ironically enough, she was sitting at the same chair at the same corner table out on the deck, looking out across the water at the same lights in Polmouth that Sergeant Monk had stared at, the night he also waited for me.
‘Is everything OK?’ Lisa said, and it could have meant anything or everything. She could have been talking about the sleeper train that was already winding its way through the night, or of our friend sitting in a cell in Dartmoor prison, or the nice little old lady who was waiting for me on the deck.
‘Everything’s fine,’ I said, which was a bit of a stretch under the circumstances. I looked at Lisa’s concerned face and I knew that she worried about me in a way that Clementine never did. I lightly touched her arm.
‘Thanks for staying open, Lisa. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
I joined DCI Graves out on the deck. Her face told me nothing. There was a plastic bag on the wooden table. Inside it was a phone with a smashed glass.
‘When I was a child, people would say – we have the best police in the world in this country,’ she said. ‘Nobody ever says that these days. Did you notice? And that’s because of them. The Monks. The cruel cops. The modern cops who are in it for themselves, who are drunk on their own power, acting like they can do what they like with anyone. Mocking the people we are sworn to protect, as well as the decent police who think they are doing a noble job for the greater good.’ She smiled at me. ‘Do you really think you are the only one who hates the police, Mr Cooper?’
‘I never said I hated the police.’
She smiled her twinkling old lady smile.
‘Ah, I see it in your eyes! But I will let you in on a secret – me too. I feel the same way. How do you think a decent copper feels when they hear about scumbags like the Monks using their warrant cards to pick up vulnerable women? We don’t feel good! I will tell you something for nothing, Mr Cooper – nobody hates a bad cop as much as a good cop. So I will be glad to be out of it. Retirement can’t come soon enough for me. Because nobody respects us anymore. Nobody cares. Why should they, with cops like the Monks in the world, arresting women so they can get them in the back of their squad car on some industrial estate at midnight. People fear us, at best, these days. They despise us, at worst. But – I want to get this job right. If this is murder, then I want to see the guilty party punished. Because if I don’t, then the job I just gave a lifetime to is a joke, a waste, a travesty.’
She indicated the phone in the bag between us. ‘Sergeant Monk’s phone,’ she said, and I felt my heart fall away. ‘He was holding it when he fell.’ She held up her small right hand, slowly clenched it into a fist. ‘He didn’t let go, even after that fall. And he didn’t let go, even after he died. And he didn’t let go, even when the gulls picked his eyes out.’ She nodded at it. ‘There are pictures on that phone. I would show you, but there’s nothing to see. Rocks. The sea. I don’t know what he was trying to photograph. You can’t see anything.’
I tried to hide the relief I felt flooding through my veins.
‘But here’s the funny thing,’ she said, picking up the phone in its plastic bag. ‘There is an audio file. Sergeant Monk was recording a conversation when he fell.’
We stared at each other. The gulls were laughing, laughing, laughing.
I felt my breathing stop. I wondered if there were police waiting for me down on the esplanade now, if there were more sitting outside the front door of the Lobster Pot, tired and bored, waiting to put me away so they could go home to their rest.
She pressed play.
I heard that loathed voice.
‘Don’t. She’s not worth it.’
DCI Graves shook her head. ‘That’s actually where the recording ends. It starts a bit earlier.’
I watched her fumbling with the phone. An old lady flummoxed by modern technology.
But I could see him with total clarity, high above those black cliffs. He had his phone out and was taking pictures. He said something but I was behind him and his words were lost in the wind. I remembered him asking me how he could get down to the rocks where the paddleboard was wedged. I remembered telling him that he would only access that place from the sea. And I saw – clearly now, though it had hardly registered at the time with the blood pumping through my veins – I saw him press a button on the phone as we faced each other in those final moments of his life.
He had been recording our last little chat. What an efficient dirty cop he was, the dead sergeant. But the wind – the wind screamed and howled down the coastal path, and his voice was clear whereas the other voice in the audio file was lost in the wind.
‘Then how did she do it?’
We faced each other again, me and Sergeant Monk The sea stretched to a misty horizon behind him.
‘Who?’ I heard myself say on the phone, feeling it again, wanting to hear him say her name, longing for him to say it, but my voice was very distant, very different, unrecognisable even to me, like a voice that has been imagined or heard in a dream.
DCI Graves and I leaned our heads closer to the phone inside the evidence bag, straining to hear every word the wind allowed.
Again Monk snorted with the contempt that came so naturally to him.
‘Tina. That – [inaudible].’
‘Call her by her name. Her name is – [inaudible].’
‘I’ll call her what I choose. That slag. That slut. That little whore who could make a dead man come. That piece of trash who just wants to get her legs around as many men as possible.’
‘I did it. [Inaudible] – boat out – [inaudible]. It wasn’t an accident.’
The wind, the wind, the furious wind.
‘Don’t. She’s not worth it.’
And then a curious silence, as the wind seemed to diminish and there was only a sickening thud and then the sea, nothing but the endless sea, ebbing and flowing.
DCI Graves carefully pressed stop. She placed the plastic bag with the phone back on the deck.
‘That’s a confession by the murderer,’ she said.
I stared at her.
‘Do you know who that other man is?’
I waited.
‘That’s Mrs Tina Monk’s lover,’ she said. That’s your friend. That’s the man we have rotting on remand in HMP Dartmoor.’
‘That’s Charlie Farthing,’ I said.
36
BET FARTHING: They all wanted my son to take the blame. And it was just so wrong. Charlie was a good boy. Charlie never did anything bad. And all of this mess – whoever was to blame, it certainly wasn’t my beautiful boy. I call him my boy! A grown man now, of course, but there is a part of your heart where they are still the baby you held in your arms, and always will be. A grown man now but still the skinny little boy who ran around St Jude’s with the other little harbour rats. All grown up, yes, but still the teenage boy who cried in my arms when he was dumped by his first girlfriend. And they all said they loved him! And they said they cared! But it just wasn’t true. Or maybe they cared – but not the way his mother did. They didn’t love him enough to keep the police from his door, did they? They didn’t care enough to keep him out of Dartmoor. And my husband, my Will, he told me – calm down, girl, it will all work out in the end. Charlie will not be done for these murders.
But as time went on, I saw that my Will was kidding himself. They wanted Charlie to take the blame. All of them wanted it. It suited that old detective – my age, she must have been – who just wanted to retire and put her feet up, as far as I could tell. It suited Clementine. It suited Lisa. It suited Tom. And I can’t help believing that it even suited my husband. They all said they cared about Charlie, but they did not care enough to swap places with him. They all wanted Charlie to pay for their sins. And I would never allow it. I would not let these lies stand. Because they all said they cared about my Charlie but none of them cared as much as me. And before Charlie went down for these murders, I was prepared to do anything. And I mean – anything. How stupid they all were to not take me seriously. How stupid they all were to mess with a mother’s love.
I looked around the visits room. That’s what they called this place in HMP Dartmoor – the visits room. Not the visiting room. There was a blank stupidity about prison life – the visits room! – and I knew that I would rather die than be in here.
The visits room was full of wives, partners, children – especially children – children of all ages, from tiny toddlers who squawked and fidgeted and wept, to surly teens who had taken a vow of silence and whose mouths were set in lines of permanent dissatisfaction. The men they had come to see, the men who sat opposite them on tables that were secured to the floor, were not my idea of jailbirds. They were all shapes and sizes, ages and races, but what they shared was they all looked like ordinary men.
‘In St Jude’s, I was always my father’s son,’ Charlie said. ‘And that’s all I ever was – no matter what age I was, no matter what I did. When I was a little harbour rat, hanging out with my mates down on the quay. That’s Will Farthing’s boy. When I came back at the end of term from university. He’s Will Farthing’s boy, that lad right there. When I started my business. There’s Will Farthing’s boy – the fucking tourist guide. That’s all changed in here. My dream of being my own man finally came true. Isn’t that lovely?’
‘We’re going to get you out of here, Charlie,’ I said.
‘Dartmoor is a Category C prison,’ he said, not listening to me and my big promises. ‘Mostly white-collar types. A few sex offenders. A lot of us on remand, waiting for our trial date. Category C is – Those who cannot be trusted in open conditions but are unlikely to try to escape.’
‘Escape seems unlikely,’ I said, and Charlie laughed. This monumental prison had been built in the early nineteenth century to hold POWs during the Napoleonic wars. Its high granite walls dominated this part of Dartmoor. I had not breathed properly since passing through the huge steel gates.
‘And – the one good thing, Tom – in here, I am finally more than Will Farthing’s boy. I am a big man! A dangerous man!’ He leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘The man who topped two dirty cops.’
‘Listen to me, Charlie,’ I said.
‘Do you think anyone pushes me around in here? They talk about what prison takes away from a man. His job, his family, his status on the outside. Prison is all about taking things away from you. Your freedom is just the start, Tom, believe me.’ He looked around the visits room with something like affection. ‘But it’s given me something that I never had before.’ He hung his head. ‘Finally I am more than Will Farthing’s boy.’
I wondered if he was going to weep. ‘You didn’t do anything,’ I said. ‘You’re an innocent man.’
He lifted his head, and his handsome face split in a cheeky grin. ‘We’re all innocent in here,’ he said. He gestured around the room. All those unhappy meetings, nobody allowed to leave the table – apart from the children in the sad little play area – not allowed to touch, all of us watched by the guards with their bored, mask-like faces. ‘That’s the first thing you learn in Dartmoor – they got the wrong man!’
‘Please listen to me, Charlie,’ I said.
But Charlie wasn’t listening.
‘Remember when you first came to St Jude’s, Tom? You were desperate to be a part of our fishing village – and I was desperate to get out. I guess we both made it, didn’t we?’
‘Charlie, I spoke to my bank. I’m going to remortgage the Lobster Pot. We are going to get you the best legal representation in the country. You are going to get through this.’
A cloud passed across his face.
‘Do you know what sea boils are?’
‘Charlie—’
‘Sea boils are what a fishermen gets. They are like these red welts that are caused by the bacteria in seawater interacting with the oilskins that fishermen wear. And it causes these horrible red welts on the skin that nobody wants to put on a postcard from Cornwall. And I came home from university one Christmas holiday with this girl I liked. And when we walked in, my dad was sitting in his pants in the living room while my mum bathed his sea boils in warm salt water. And that’s when I decided I wasn’t going to be a fisherman, Tom.’
‘You can be what you like, Charlie. You are young enough to start again. Do what you like. But you are not going down for something you didn’t do.’
He reached across the table and seized my arm just below the elbow.
‘No touching!’ a guard barked.
Charlie smiled at me, took his hand away. Neither of us looked at the guard, but we waited for him to pass.
‘Tom,’ Charlie said. ‘Oh Tom! Did it ever occur to you that they got the right man?’
I said nothing. I shook my head. It was a form of madness that had touched him, I thought, just as it would touch me if they put me behind these walls within walls within walls, if they ever locked me up behind these high granite walls and endless steel doors in the middle of Dartmoor.
And I felt a flood of shame.
Because I knew that I would do anything within my power to free my friend from behind these walls, anything at all apart from the one thing that would guarantee his freedom.
I would never confess my crimes.
‘You know nothing,’ Charlie said, with a weariness that infuriated me.
‘Charlie—’
‘No, you listen to me,’ he said, and he licked his lips, and quickly scanned the room. No guards nearby, our nearest neighbours lost in their own tearful little dramas.
‘You think it should be you in here, Tom? Or Lisa? Or my old man?’
‘I don’t think it should be you, Charlie.’
He should have got out. Out of St Jude’s, I mean. He should not have come back after university. If he dreamed of Australia and Thailand and California – and he did, and he always would – then that was the time. Leaving was never easy. But sometimes you have to leave just to survive.
‘Maybe they got the right man,’ Charlie said, almost casually. ‘That old detective – DCI Graves – maybe she knows something that you don’t. Did that ever cross your mind, Tom boy?’
‘I think we shouldn’t be talking about these things. Not here. Listen – we will get you out, Charlie. I told you, money is not going to be a problem.’
He smiled sweetly. ‘But I went down to the icehouse,’ he said. ‘After you had been down there with Clementine. My parents were talking. I was alarmed, to say the least. Dear old Mum and Dad had a man tied to a chair in the icehouse. And my mum was afraid he was going to choke on his vomit. And so I went down there. And when I took the gag off …’
He shook his head, and the sounds of the visits room filled his appalled silence. The tears of the wives and mothers. The laughter of the children. The orders of the guards to not touch, to never touch.
‘He – her husband, although I can never quite get my head around that – Steve – he said such terrible things about her, Tom. He said such terrible things that I needed him to stop talking immediately. Do you know what I mean?’
I nodded.
Charlie’s voice was not quite a whisper. ‘I did not want to kill the guy. I just wanted to stop him talking. So I went outside and found the first thing I could to shut him up.’
‘You put something in his mouth?’
‘No, I beat his brains out with an oar. And later, when we went out to throw his kit away, that morning below the Baulking House, you were wound too tight to even notice that Steve’s paddleboard oar had his blood and brains on it.’
I stared at him dumbfounded.
‘I hit him so hard with that paddle it killed him,’ Charlie said. ‘What do you think, Tom? That Lisa killed him with that little stab? Or that you topped him with a bit of tape around his cakehole? Or my dad is to blame because he parked him in the icehouse?’ Charlie shook his head. ‘I killed him, Tom, and that little old detective can smell it on me.’
‘Did you kill Sergeant Monk too?’
He stared at me for a while. Then he shook his head.
‘That was a suicide, wasn’t it? Looks like a suicide to me.’
‘Clementine’s husband would have died anyway,’ I said. ‘Perhaps your mum was right. He was going to choke. And maybe he had lost too much blood from that—’ I glanced around the room, suddenly convinced that everyone was watching us, everyone was listening to us.
I leaned as far across the table as I could, and lowered my voice to the level of the Lord’s Prayer. ‘Steve had been stabbed in the neck, Charlie. And he was tied up too tight. Maybe we did all kill him. But what you’re saying – it’s not true.’
‘What part of it isn’t true, Tom?’
‘All of it!’
‘Are you sure? Are you sure that none of it is true? What if I did what you lacked the guts to do? What then? What if I am a more of a man than you are, Tom?’
‘I think you did it in your dreams, Charlie. I think you wish you had beat his brains out.’
‘You think you’re the only one who cares?’
‘I think you have your reasons for confessing to a crime you didn’t do.’
‘And what’s that, Tommy boy? Explain my reasons to me.’
‘Because you want to protect your parents. And you want to protect Lisa and Paolo.’
We stared at each other.
‘And you want to protect me. Your old pal.’
A distant bell rang.
Visiting time was over.
And I saw in his eyes I was wrong.
Charlie’s eyes slid away from me, and I saw there was something else. The reel of his brief fling with Clementine played in my mind. I would never know exactly what had happened in the night and day between Charlie picking her up Polmouth side the day she swam across the water and the moment they came into the Rabbit Hole on the night of the lock-in. And I did not want to know. But I was aware that, whatever it had meant to Clementine – not much, was my guess and my prayer – those hours alone with her in the cream-and-blue cottage had hooked Charlie for life.
And I saw that whatever he had or had not done in the icehouse, and whatever he said now, it had nothing to do with protecting his parents, or Lisa and Paolo, or me.
