Till We Meet Again (32 page)

‘Something on your mind?’ she asked, perching on the edge of his desk.

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Firstly, the police rang earlier and said they’ve got some new evidence and want to interview her again tomorrow. So I rang the prison to inform them. What do I hear but Susan’s been put on the punishment block.’

‘Really! What on earth for?’ Beth asked. ‘Everything was fine when I saw her yesterday.’

‘She attacked another prisoner.’ Steven pursed his lips in disapproval. ‘A serious attack too, the other woman had to be taken to the hospital.’

Beth was astounded. ‘I can’t believe that. She’s so passive!’

‘Is she? I’m beginning to wonder if we know her at all,’ Steven said, with more than a touch of despair in his voice. ‘Apparently it happened just after you left her. Her cellmate was in there alone, and the fight broke out. Apparently the other woman is a real hard case, so the prison officers were very surprised by it, especially as Susan’s never shown any signs of aggression before. They think that if they hadn’t intervened when they did, she might well have killed the woman.’

‘Oh, shit,’ Beth exclaimed, and slumped down on a seat by Steven’s desk. ‘I hope it wasn’t my visit that wound her up?’

‘I expect it had something to do with it,’ Steven said wearily. ‘What did you talk to her about?’

Beth didn’t want to tell him, she knew he would think it was inappropriate and possibly foolhardy. ‘Nothing much,’ she lied. ‘She was a bit hostile at first about me grassing her up as she called it. I remarked on how much weight she’d lost, and she took the opportunity to snipe at me a bit.’

‘Sounds like she was pretty fired up already then?’ Steven said.

Beth felt awkward then, and she didn’t know what to say.

‘Come on,’ he said impatiently. ‘I need to know. I don’t want her coming out with something tomorrow in front of the police that I know nothing about.’

‘She was goading me about dropping her when I went to university,’ Beth admitted reluctantly. ‘It ended up with me telling her about the rape.’ She blushed furiously. ‘Heaven only knows what made me blurt that out. Don’t say it, Steven!’ she added warningly.

‘Don’t say what?’

‘That I shouldn’t have.’

‘She’s your friend.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s not for me to tell you what you can talk to her about. Anyway, what sort of effect did it have on her?’

‘She reverted right back to how she was when we were girls,’ Beth said. ‘It was emotional and very comforting for both of us, I think.’

‘Maybe that was the trigger,’ Steven said thoughtfully.

Beth frowned, she couldn’t see what he meant.

Steven got up from his desk and walked over to the window, then turned and looked back at Beth. He looked very worried, and weary too.

‘Maybe she went back to her cell feeling angry at what had happened to you. So angry that when this other prisoner said something she didn’t like, she lashed out.’

‘It would have made her sad, not angry,’ Beth said. ‘I can’t believe she would lash out at someone else because of it. She’s a peacemaker, not a fighter.’

‘Maybe we’re mistaken about that,’ Steven said glumly. He put his hands in his trouser pockets, and rocked on his heels. ‘She has led us to believe that the only time she’d ever been violent was the day she went into the surgery and shot two people. We swallowed that, hook line and sinker, because of the tragic circumstances, and because of your knowledge of her. That’s also why we can’t believe she had any hand in these other people’s disappearance.’

‘Surely you haven’t changed your mind just because she’s attacked another prisoner?’ Beth snapped at him. ‘We both know what it’s like in there!’

‘Look, the police have got something or they wouldn’t be wanting to talk to her again,’ Steven said heatedly. ‘They’ve been up in Wales and out in Luddington. Now she has shown us she
is
capable of sudden and irrational violence.’

‘Aren’t we all?’ Beth retorted. ‘Even the gentlest, calmest person can lash out with the right provocation. I would imagine being cooped up in a cell with someone who gets on your nerves is enough to blow anyone’s lid off.’

‘I know all that,’ he said, making a despairing gesture with his hands. ‘But there is something about her, Beth, something she’s holding back. I’ve sensed it several times. Liam, Reuben and Zoë. What happened to them, Beth?’

She looked at him in horror. She had come to trust his sound judgement and his keen perception, but she couldn’t bear to hear him doubt Susan. ‘Don’t, Steven,’ she pleaded, putting her hands over her face. ‘I don’t care how many coincidences there are of people disappearing around her, I can’t and won’t believe she had anything to do with it.’

‘She certainly has a way of making you believe in her,’ Steven said wryly. ‘She makes me feel that every time I’m with her. It’s only afterwards I begin to get doubts.’

‘Your job isn’t to look for guilt,’ Beth reminded him sharply. ‘You’re defending her, for goodness’ sake. It’s the police and the prosecution who have to do the ferreting.’

‘Interview with Susan Fellows commenced at 9.15 a.m. at Eastwood Park,’ Roy said into the tape-recorder. ‘Those present are Detective Inspector Longhurst, Sergeant Bloom, and Steven Smythe, solicitor representing Susan Fellows.’

Roy began the interview by asking Susan to think back to August 1986. ‘We know you went to Bristol on the 8th, we have confirmation from your old landlord in Ambra Vale that you looked at his house that day and paid a deposit. Is that correct?’

‘Yes,’ Susan replied.

‘Did you go straight home to Stratford-upon-Avon afterwards?’

‘No, I stayed the night in Bristol in a bed and breakfast,’ she said. ‘I went home the following day.’

‘The 9th?’ he said. ‘Was Liam there when you got home?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘He was working away.’

‘By working away you mean he was sleeping at his work?’

‘Yes, well, in his camper van,’ she said.

‘Where was this work?’

‘I don’t remember,’ she said. ‘He didn’t always say.’

‘So when did you see him again?’

‘I didn’t, he never came back again.’

‘Why do you think this was?’

‘I’ve already told you that, several times. He didn’t want to be tied down.’

‘But you were expecting his child,’ Roy said. ‘I’m sure you must have thought he had to take at least some of the responsibility for that?’

‘That never came into it because I didn’t know I was having a baby until after I’d moved,’ she said, frowning with irritation because she’d told him that before too.

‘So when was the last time you saw Liam?’ Roy asked.

‘The day before I went to Bristol,’ she said.

‘So that would have been the 7th of August?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘And he left the village in his camper?’

‘Yes.’

‘You didn’t see him or his camper again?’

‘No,’ she said, and sighed deeply.

‘But you must have seen his camper, it was still parked up in a lane in the village for some weeks after you moved away,’ Roy said, looking at Susan intently.

‘Was it?’ she said, eyes wide with surprise. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘I suppose you didn’t know either, that on August 9th, the day you were in Bristol, he was working for a Mr Andrews, less than three miles from Luddington?’

‘I can’t remember after all this time where he said he was working,’ she said.

‘Then it’s just as well Mr Andrews can,’ Roy said sharply. ‘Apparently Liam completed the job during the afternoon, and left after arranging to return the next morning for his money. He didn’t return. Can you explain that?’

Susan shrugged. ‘Maybe he went on to another job, I don’t know, I was in Bristol.’

‘Not at that time, you arrived home in Luddington by bus, at around one-thirty that same afternoon.’

‘If you say so,’ Susan said, folding her arms and looking up at the ceiling.

‘We have a statement from Mrs Vera Salmon, who lived across the road to you, that you sat next to her on the bus that day. She said you told her about the house you’d just found and seemed very excited about it.’

‘I was,’ Susan agreed. ‘I was really happy.’

‘Of course you were, you believed Liam loved you, and that moving to Bristol was a new start for you both. I expect you hoped he’d drop by or phone you later?’

Susan looked confused then. Well, yes, but he was working away.’

‘No, he wasn’t, Susan,’ Roy said. ‘He was seen by this same neighbour going into your house later that afternoon.’

‘Well, maybe he did,’ she said, colouring up. ‘I can’t be expected to remember what happened on what day, not after all this time.’

‘I don’t believe you can have forgotten anything about that day,’ Roy said sternly. ‘Not the journey back from Bristol full of excitement, talking to Mrs Salmon, or what Liam said to you when he called round. I believe that was the day he told you he had no intention of going to Bristol with you. I believe it ended in a fight in which you killed him.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she retorted, then, jumping from her chair, she implored Steven to help her. ‘Tell him, Mr Smythe! I couldn’t have hurt him, I loved him.’

A little later Susan did admit tearfully that Liam had called round and they had an argument. But she said he had left the house by five-thirty and that was the last time she saw him.

She said it was quite possible his camper was still parked up in the village, but even if she had seen it, which she hadn’t, it wouldn’t have meant much to her either way, as it was always breaking down. As for him not returning to get the money owed to him for a job, she said he had always been a bit vague about money.

‘Right, let’s move on, to two years ago, 1993,’ Roy said crisply. ‘The disappearance of Reuben Moreland and Zoë Fremantle, from the house in Wales.’

‘How can I help it if they’ve disappeared?’ Susan asked incredulously. ‘I was only one of twelve people living there.’

‘Do the names Roger Watkins and Heather Blythe mean anything to you?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Susan said. ‘They both lived at the house while I was there.’

‘Neither of them lives at Hill House now, but they’ve both made statements concerning Reuben and Zoë,’ Roy said. ‘They said that the couple left to sell goods at a craft fair in North Wales in early April. While they were gone you left.’

‘That’s right, I did,’ she said.

‘But Watkins claims he saw you over a week later in Emlyn Carlisle.’

‘He’s mistaken. I was in Bristol by then.’

‘Was he mistaken in saying that Reuben had treated you very badly, bringing Zoë home with him and sharing what was once your bed with her?’

‘No, that’s true. That’s why I left, I didn’t like it.’

‘You didn’t take the room in Belle Vue, Clifton until April 28th, some two weeks after you left Hill House. I have seen a dated copy of the tenancy agreement you signed. So where were you for the two weeks before that?’

‘In Bristol,’ she insisted.

‘Where in Bristol?’

She hesitated. ‘I can’t remember the address, a bed and breakfast place. I was looking for a flat during that time.’

‘You weren’t, Susan,’ he said, leaning towards her. ‘You were camping up in the woods near Hill House. Weren’t you?’

Steven hadn’t been perturbed by any of the questions and suggestions put to his client up till then. In fact he couldn’t really understand why the police wanted to question her again, for they didn’t appear to have any new evidence which would positively link her with the disappearance of these people. But the suggestion that she was camping near the house jolted him.

‘That’s completely ridiculous,’ Susan said indignantly.

‘You don’t have to answer any further questions,’ Steven reminded her.

‘It’s okay. I’ve got nothing to hide,’ she replied, and she half smiled at him as if the line of questioning wasn’t worrying her in any way. ‘What on earth would I want to camp out in the woods for?’

‘Revenge?’ Roy suggested, raising an eyebrow. ‘We have been up to those woods, the camping equipment is still there, a little the worse for wear after two years.’

‘I have never had any camping equipment,’ she scoffed. ‘If you found stuff there it’s nothing to do with me.’

‘I didn’t say it was your camping equipment, but it came from Hill House, it has been identified.’

‘Why blame me?’ she asked, wide-eyed, looking around at Steven as if for support. ‘Anyone in that house could have taken it there. Reuben could have taken it there himself. He was always vanishing, he liked camping, anyone who ever lived in that house would tell you that.’

‘The last time Reuben and Zoë were seen by anyone in Hill House was as they made their way towards that wood for a picnic,’ Roy said. ‘But they left the house with nothing but a small basket and a rug.’

‘Well, there you go,’ she said triumphantly. ‘He’d taken the stuff up there before. He probably stayed up there for a while, then they went off abroad or something.’

‘He couldn’t leave the country without his passport,’ Roy said with a faint smirk. ‘We found that at Hill House. He left his van there too, and he hasn’t touched his bank account either since then.’

‘Then ask the others where he is,’ she snapped. ‘If they saw him walking off with just a rug, and he didn’t come back, why didn’t they report him missing?’

‘They had their reasons,’ Roy replied. ‘Benefit fraud, for one. You see, when he didn’t come back they had nothing to live on. So they signed on and claimed housing benefit. They could hardly report their landlord missing when they were supposed to be handing over thirty quid a week each to him. Could they?’

Susan laughed, surprising Steven. ‘I think that’s all a bit cock-eyed. You’ve just given a perfect reason for any one of them, or all of them, to want him out of the way. But not me. I didn’t claim benefits I wasn’t entitled to. When I left that house I left for good. I couldn’t care less about what went on there.’

Steven agreed with her. He wondered what on earth Roy was playing at, and what he knew but wasn’t saying. For he had to have something better than this.

‘The glen in the woods was Reuben’s “special place”, wasn’t it?’ Roy continued. ‘He took you there for love-making, didn’t he?’