My Mother, The Liar - Ann Troup

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Every word of the headline sent a slug of reality into her brain. Each time a blurred sentence unravelled itself and landed in her grey matter, her senses began to fizz and pop like a damp firework, until the whole thing short-circuited and she felt herself going down.

      ***

      The whole café held its breath as Rachel hit the floor. Even the hiss of the coffee machine halted for a second or two. As she’d fallen she’d taken the tablecloth with her, dragging everything with it and sending a mesmerising cascade of sugar skittering across the floor like a million microscopic diamonds, which were swiftly crushed under Charlie’s feet as he rushed to move furniture out of the way. Someone shrieked as Rachel’s body began to twitch and jerk, and almost everyone panicked as Charlie dropped to the floor and started to yank at Rachel’s neck in an attempt to loosen her scarf.

      ‘Oh my God!’ the waitress yelled, trying to pull him off.

      Charlie shouted, and shrugged her off. ‘Get off me, you silly cow, and move the bloody tables out of the way. She’s having a fit!’ All his old, familiar instincts had kicked in as soon as he’d seen the warning in Rachel’s eyes before they had glazed over and rolled back into her head like a couple of milk-white marbles.

      Adrenaline surged through his body as he struggled to loosen her scarf while trying to ignore the chattering voyeurs. The waitress was twittering on about calling an ambulance, but he told her no, even though she shrieked again as blood began to dribble from Rachel’s contorted mouth. ‘She’s bitten herself – it’s nothing. She’ll be fine in a minute. Just give her some space will you, and tell those bloody people to stop gawping,’ he shouted.

      ‘Are you a doctor then?’ the terrified girl asked, only to have her question completely ignored.

      Rachel’s body began to relax and Charlie found himself trembling with relief. He hadn’t had to deal with one of her seizures in a long, long time. He sat back, stretched out his legs, and pulled her limp, exhausted body into his lap, propping her head against his chest, and stroking the damp hair away from her pallid face. He wasn’t sure which one of them was more traumatised. ‘Can you get her some water please?’ he asked the shocked waitress.

      The girl nodded and scurried off, briefly pausing to turn and ask, ‘Still or sparkling?’

      Charlie rolled his eyes. ‘Tap,’ he said impatiently.

      The girl returned with the water and the proprietor of the café in her wake, a sensible-looking woman who offered to pull the screen across and give them some privacy. Charlie accepted gratefully and took the water, holding it to Rachel’s mouth and making her drink though she was still disorientated.

      The café woman ushered the waitress away. ‘Can I do anything? Should I check her bag, call a relative or something?’

      Charlie shook his head. ‘No thanks, it’s fine. I’ll look after her.’

      The café woman frowned, looking unsure of him. ‘Not being funny, but do you actually know her?’ she asked, shifting her posture to demonstrate that she wasn’t to be trifled with if he turned out to be some random weirdo.

      Charlie closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. He supposed it did look somewhat strange. ‘You could say that I do.’

      The woman peered at him, suspicion rippling across her face. ‘Are you a relative?’

      He looked down at the pale, thin woman who lay against his chest giving everyone the perfect impression of a limp rag. To this day he still didn’t understand how they’d come to this. All those years and here she was, still able to hurt him with a single look.

      ‘I’m her husband,’ he said.

      When the doorbell rang, Delia Jones peered through the net curtains and smiled with grim satisfaction at the predictability of the police. Since reading the morning paper she’d been waiting for them to call with as much patience as a woman like her could muster. Which wasn’t much at all.

      On opening the door she smiled at them both, listened as they introduced themselves, and perused their warrant cards with unnecessary scrutiny. When she felt she’d annoyed them enough, she adopted an air of weary disinclination and said, ‘I suppose you had better come in.’

      ***

      Ratcliffe followed Angie into Delia’s cluttered sitting room and formed his first impressions while Delia lowered herself into a very fat armchair and took her time settling in. The whole room was stuffed to the gills with cheap china and whimsical little ornaments. It was the kind of room that could send a grown man slowly and steadily crazy over time. He looked at her smirking from her fat chair. Delia Jones struck him as the kind of woman who probably knew that and coveted her collection even more for that reason.

      ‘I know why you’re here – I read the paper. But if you’re looking for my son, he doesn’t live here any more. Besides, whatever you lot think he’s no killer, and Roy Baxter was alive and well long after he was locked up, so you’ll be barking up the wrong tree anyway,’ Delia said, offering the statement with smug satisfaction.

      So, she’d read the papers. Sometimes Ratcliffe hated reporters; they were way too quick off the mark with their speculation. He hadn’t even had confirmation that the body was Roy Baxter yet, but the paper had got hold of the name and run the story anyway. ‘There is nothing that we are aware of that would link your son to this case, Mrs Jones, but we will need to talk to him at some point. It’s you we’ve come to see,’ he said.

      The team had run some checks back at the station and had been surprised to find that there had been another body found at The Limes thirty years before. That one had been fresh though, not preserved in sand. Her body was still seeping blood when she was found complete with her killer, knife in hand, standing over her body.

      The victim was Patsy Jones, daughter-in-law of Delia. The case notes stated that Patsy had been having an affair with Roy Baxter, an error in judgement that had led to her death. The murder had been committed by Delia’s son, who had been found next to his dead wife holding the murder weapon. A kitchen knife, which he’d used to stab Patsy four times after he had bashed her over the head with a blunt object that had never been found or identified. It had been an open and shut case. Delia’s son had served ten years of a possible fifteen and hadn’t come to the attention of the police since.

      Delia was correct in saying that her son couldn’t have had anything to do with at least one of the bodies found the day before because he had been on remand when Roy Baxter had gone missing. For Ratcliffe there was no obvious link between the two cases other than The Limes appearing to be a popular venue for untimely and horrific deaths, but they did need to talk to Delia Jones – she had been the Porters’ cleaning woman thirty years before and was likely to be one person who knew more about them than anyone else.

      Uniform had completed some preliminary door-to-door enquiries, and from the little information they had gathered, Angie and Ratcliffe had concluded that the Porter family were not neighbourly types. Of those people interviewed who were aware of their existence, most described them as eccentric, standoffish and weird.

      The only real contact any of the neighbours had with them was on the odd occasion when someone had plucked up enough courage to complain about the run-down state of the house and the untamed jungle that may have at one time been a garden. All had been given short shrift and had not tried again. Consequently, the only person who might have any useful information on the family regarding the time that Roy Baxter had been a part of it was Delia Jones. An ornery old bird who was busy giving both he and Angie some seriously dirty looks.

      Scowling at him she said, ‘What do you want to talk to me for? I didn’t bloody kill him, though if I had Charlie wouldn’t have had to pay for something he didn’t do. If you ask me, Roy Baxter got everything he deserved.’

      Angie stepped in, going for the ‘woman’s touch’, Ratcliffe guessed. It wouldn’t work – nothing did with Delia’s type.

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