Thrown Down (14 page)

Adrian and Joe introduced themselves to Jade Matheson who led them through to her office at the back of the salon.

‘I don’t know what you gentlemen want to speak to me about?’ she said a little nervously after they’d both sat down.

‘You seem tense, Miss Matheson’ Joe observed. ‘A little … uneasy?’

‘Would you mind getting to the point of why you’re here, officers?’

‘It seems evident in your tone too, Miss Matheson’.

Jade looked at her watch. There was somewhere she needed to be and she didn’t have time to hang about. It had been a particularly busy day in the salon and she’d got behind with the other things that were occupying her mind. That was a lie. They could have dropped a nuclear bomb on the salon today and it wouldn’t have distracted her from what she had to do.  

‘Could we get to the point, please?’

‘How would you describe your sister’s marriage to her late husband?’

‘Why are you asking me that?’

‘Because we think you can tell us more than your sister would be prepared to’.

Adrian noticed the look in Jade Matheson’s eyes. They were desperately searching for a place to rest that didn’t involve looking at either him or Joe. What did she want to tell them that she knew she really shouldn’t?

‘Well let’s see’ said Jade as she ran her fingers through her shoulder length feather cut hair. ‘Didn’t your colleagues ask my sister about this when they came round?’

‘Well we’re asking you now’ said Adrian. ‘I mean, it strikes us as being rather curious that your sister hasn’t been in touch with us at all since her husband’s murder. Doesn’t that strike you as being somewhat odd? I mean, do you know why that might be?’

‘Not if you know my sister it doesn’t seem odd, no’.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘She didn’t love Barry’ said Jade. ‘She never loved him. Barry only stayed because of their daughter Georgina and because he didn’t want Tabitha running off with another man and taking half of Barry’s cash with them’.

‘It’s a common enough story’ said Adrian. ‘Was she having an affair, Miss Matheson?’

Jade looked at them, looked away again and then looked back at them. ‘Yes’.

‘Do you want to tell us about it?’

‘Barry found out about the affair but refused to give her a divorce’ Jade revealed. ‘Their marriage was in a terrible state when he died’.

‘When he was murdered’ Adrian corrected.

‘Yes, I’m sorry, when he was murdered. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful. I liked Barry. He was a good man and I got on well with him. It’s a shame to say it when it’s my own sister but I think Barry married beneath him’. 

‘What’s the name of your sister’s lover?’ Adrian asked.

‘Do you think she’d tell me?’

‘Well if your relationship with her is as bad as you say it is I’d say she’d want to gloat about it to you. Is his name Chris O’Neill, Miss Matheson?’

Jade blushed and shifted in her seat.

‘Miss Matheson, you do realise that a warrant has been issued for the arrest of Chris O’Neill on suspicion of murder?’ Adrian pursued. ‘If you know anything that could lead us to him and you don’t tell us then you’ll be committing a criminal offence. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Yes, it’s Chris O’Neill’ Jade blurted out. ‘But I don’t know anything about him or about what he’s been doing with my sister recently’.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘They’re planning something’ said Jade who then started to cry. ‘I don’t know what but she’s asked me to take care of her daughter, my niece Georgina, whilst she’s away’.

‘With O’Neill?’

‘Yes, with O’Neill’.

‘But you don’t know where?’

‘No’ Jade whimpered, shaking her head. ‘I don’t’.

‘Could your sister have been party to a plan to murder her husband, Miss Matheson?’

‘I wouldn’t put anything past her’ said Jade, wiping her eyes.

‘Do you really understand what you’re saying, Miss Matheson?’

‘Look, I wouldn’t put anything past her! You asked me the question and I’ve answered it’.

Carol Anderson had grown up knowing that she didn’t matter. Her own father had made that clear when she was just seventeen. After her mother died her father remarried with apparent haste and Carol’s step-mother was quickly pregnant. Carol’s father told her and her brother that they were old enough to find their own way and that his new wife didn’t want them to be part of their new family. She apparently wanted people to think that Carol’s father’s first child was the he had with her. She didn’t want them to know that he’d got two older children from another marriage. Carol hadn’t argued at the time. She’d run through the argument with her father many times in her head since but at the time she’d still been so full of grief over the death of her mother that she just didn’t have the strength. Her brother hadn’t argued either. This was in the days when people didn’t have mobile phones, Skype, email. They just had letters and pay phones and it required a lot more effort to stay in touch. Her brother, a couple of years older than Carol, said that he had a friend down Birmingham way who he was going to go and stay with for a while. Carol wanted him to stay so they could get a flat that they could share and therefore stay together. She was terrified of being lonely and couldn’t understand what she’d done for all the parts of her world to be dropping away from her. But her brother had been intent on making a new start somewhere else. She’d seen him off at the station. She gave him some of his favourite cheese and pickle sandwiches that she’d made for his journey. She hadn’t cried until he was walking down the platform where he wouldn’t be able to see her tears. Her last vision of her dear brother Ron was the back of him as he got on the train. He hadn’t waved or looked back. He’d promised to get in touch when he was settled. But the weeks went by. And they became months. That first Christmas was the worst. Her brother still hadn’t been in touch and her father had made a new life with his new family and had slipped a Christmas card under her door without even knocking. By the time she’d realised she’d ran down onto the street just to see him pull away in his car. She didn’t speak to a single soul from Christmas Eve until she went back to work after the festive break. She never did hear from her brother again and that was the last Christmas she had a card from her father. They’d both gone off to new lives and left her behind. Not only that but they’d completely cut her loose. Just like everybody else she met in her life did. Nobody had ever taken her feelings into account on anything. She was there but she was invisible to people.   

When the first blow came down on her face she stole herself for a split second before the sheer force of his hand stunned her. She’d learned not to scream or to cry out loud. She’d learned over the many years of being the victim of male aggression that they liked her to stay as quiet as she could. If she did try and make a fuss then they only made it harder. She had to let the blows rain down on her until he was finished. Chris O’Neill was only the latest in a long line of men who’d thrown her affections for them literally right back in her face.

He quickly followed with another blow to the opposite side of her face. She was sitting on the edge of her bed and he was towering over her with one hand holding her wrist so tightly she thought it might break. She was in a short black silk slip with lace stitched around the edges. She’d wanted him to get into bed with her and show his appreciation for what she’d done for him. If she felt like it she could turn him into the police right now and he’d be in very big trouble but he was like all of the others. He was all take, take, take and more bloody take. He didn’t expect her to stand up for herself because she was one of those people in life who didn’t. But she needed something back. She needed to feel like it hadn’t all been a complete waste of her time and that she was at least going to get something out of it to remember him by. Well she was going to get something out of it. But it just wasn’t going to provide her with a fond memory. 

‘Do you really think I’d soil myself by … with you?’ O’Neill snarled. ‘Look at you! You’re grotesque. You’re not even mutton dressed up as lamb. You’re begging dressed up as desperate and the idea of the two of us … it makes my bloody skin crawl’.

‘You were happy enough to accept my roof when you needed to keep your head down when you thought the police might be after you’ Carol snapped back. ‘Oh no, I wasn’t so disgusting an idea to you then, was I?’

O’Neill swiped her hard across her mouth and then he let go of her wrist. She was stunned and the room went quiet for a moment. She could sense all his anger as he stood over her. She touched the blood beginning to pour out of the wound to her mouth and then started to cry which was never what you should do in circumstances like these. If there was any hope of the man changing his mind and staying then that hope was always destroyed by tears.     

Why would she never learn? Why did she always put herself in this position? She used to go and sit in the bar of the Midland hotel in the centre of Manchester, all dressed up to the nines, and sipping from a glass of tap water that of course had been provided for her for free. Some nights she’d sit there for three or four hours without a sniff and end up going home alone and crying herself to sleep. Other nights she wouldn’t have to wait long before some prize idiot came along, bought her a drink or two and then took her up to his room. She’d have to smile and act grateful whilst they sweated on top of her and didn’t give her anything to write home about. It was alright for them. They’d get what they wanted. She’d leave them sated in the early hours but none of them ever asked to see her again. They’d talk about themselves but never ask anything about her. They’d tell her all about the wife and kids at home and the happy family life that nobody could ever threaten. It was their warning to her not to read anything into what was happening between them other than the here and now. She could remember the family life she’d had when she was growing up and it had all seemed happy enough on the surface. Then her Mum died and it was all over. She sometimes wondered what her father or brother would say if they saw her acting as she does like some prostitute in a swanky hotel bar because she’s desperate for male company. Would they run for the door and hope she hadn’t seen them? Or would they be overwhelmed with regret at the way they’d both left her years before? It was a fantasy she sometimes used to get through the loneliness. A fantasy of half brothers and half sisters, of people she could take care of and people who would take care of her. She would close her eyes on Christmas morning and imagine the room full of laughter and merriment, people with stupid hats on sitting round a long extended lunch table and nephews and nieces fighting to be the first to show Aunty Carol what they’d got for Christmas. Then she’d be snapped out of her dream by the sound of the microwave buzzing to let her know that her turkey dinner for one had finished cooking. The room would be silent except for the television.

Chris grabbed her by the jaw and held her face up. It was like looking at a bloody clown. ‘If you tell the police that I’ve been here or about anything else you know then I will come back and I will kill you. Do you understand?’

Carol nodded her head gently.

‘I said do you understand?’

‘Yes!’ she pleaded. ‘Yes, I understand that once again good old Carol has been there for someone but they’re never going to be there for me. Yes, I understand that you got what you wanted and now you’re just going to piss off as if I don’t matter at all. So why don’t you? Just go and you know full well that I won’t open my mouth to anybody’.

‘You’re pathetic’.

‘Yes, well I’ve said that to myself a thousand times but all I ever wanted out of life was to be normal and to have people who wouldn’t leave me. Was that too much to ask?’

‘Aw I’ve no time to join the bleeding hearts club’.

‘Some of us get no choice’.

‘Alright, alright I have appreciated your help, Carol. But anything else between us was never on the cards. You’re old enough to be my mother for fuck’s sake. I’m out of here. Don’t follow me and don’t make it possible for anyone else to either or else I might have to come back and that wouldn’t be pretty’.

After O’Neill had gone Carol sat on the edge of her bed for what felt like hours. She was motionless as she stared into space wondering what might have been if just one thing had gone right in her life instead of everything having gone wrong. She shivered. She was still just in her silk slip. She rubbed her arms and then stood up. She went to where she kept her bottles of alcohol in the living room. Since she’d been seeing Padraig she always kept a bottle of Irish whiskey for when he was there. She quite liked it herself now too. She’d only bought a new one the day before he went over to Ireland and it was almost full. Poor, poor Padraig. He’d let her down. He hadn’t respected her the way a man should respect a woman. So she’d done a deal with the devil and Padraig had paid a high price for all the pain that had been inflicted on her by others. She was sorry now.

She picked up the whiskey and took it with her to the kitchen. In the cupboard above the sink she took the packets of paracetamol she kept there and pushed out each tablet from its plastic casing. When she was done she counted 33 of them. That should be enough, she thought.

She then sat at the kitchen table and thought for one last time about the father and brother who’d just walked off and left her when she wasn’t much more than a child getting over the loss of her mother to cancer. She thought about all the men she’d tried to love, all the worlds of happiness she’d glimpsed for a moment before it was all taken away again. She thought about Padraig. She’d so loved him but for that very reason she didn’t expect he’d be waiting on the other side for her. She took as many of the tablets at one time as she could along with ever bigger gulps of the Irish whiskey. She went into the next life hating everyone she’d ever met in this one and hoping that her Mum would be waiting for her with the hug she’d needed for so many years.