Chapter 4 #2
‘Maybe that’s the wrong metaphor, then,’ I say.
‘But something changed in me after her little psychological torture experiment. I wasn’t an ordinary person any more.
I was a murderer. On the inside, I mean.
I was just … completely different from how I’d been before.
From that point on, I knew I was going to do it.
I could feel it bulging in my brain, the reality of it, as if it had happened already.
It was like …’ It’s almost impossible to explain to a person who has never experienced it.
‘Like it already existed in the future, as a … a done thing. It was never going to leave me alone unless … The only thing that was going to stop me was this: coming here, telling you my carefully worked out, foolproof plan, so that I could never get away with it. Even then, I thought, “Don’t be ridiculous, there’s no need to do something so extreme.
Just don’t kill her. Decide you’re not going to do it and then don’t do it.
” But telling myself that didn’t work, didn’t make it go away, and I started to panic, especially when I noticed I’d attached a time and a date to the plan in my mind.
I knew when exactly it was going to happen. Can you guess?’
‘Guess what?’ Waterhouse asks.
‘It was going to be today. This afternoon.’ I glance down at my watch and feel a tiny detonation of relief in my chest. The moment I chose for Marianne’s murder is now well and truly in the past; safely gone, never to return.
‘I put it in my diary weeks ago: 30 October, 5.15 p.m.’ A harsh laugh escapes from me.
‘How self-sabotaging can you get? But it’s the diary-writer mentality: once you’re hooked, you need to get it all down, all the important things.
It’s Marianne’s fault I became a diary addict.
She started laying into me one day when I was about Lottie’s age, as if I was a moron who’d really screwed up: how could I be a teenage girl, with all the complicated emotions that entailed, and not keep a diary?
She was going to buy me one, and I was going to love it, and write in it every day, and one day I’d thank her for it …
blah blah blah, on and on she went. Did I have no life of the mind that I felt was worth recording?
What was I, a human being with a soul, or was I soulless? She actually asked me that.’
Happily, I’ve forgotten most of the specifics of Marianne’s viciousness from my childhood, but a few incidents have embedded themselves like thorns – mostly the ones witnessed by Dad, who never questioned or objected.
The funny thing was, I didn’t expect him to.
I knew he had no more power in our home than I did, and of course he wouldn’t want to risk his ‘Special Subordinate’ status.
‘It took me ages to realise all Marianne wanted was to be able to spy on me,’ I say.
‘The diary thing wasn’t about soulfulness, it was about surveillance.
She was right, though: I quickly got hooked.
Wrote down nearly every thought I had between the ages of thirteen and eighteen.
The state I must have been in, emotionally?
Suzanne says it’s hardly surprising my diary was my best friend until she came along. ’
‘Thirtieth of October, 5.15 p.m.,’ Waterhouse repeats in a dull voice.
‘Right.’ I feel dizzy suddenly, and squeeze the back of my neck with my left hand, hoping it might send more blood to my brain. ‘There was something about seeing my murder plan in black-and-white on my laptop screen, the date and time all neatly laid out in 12-point Times New Roman—’
‘You type your diary?’ Waterhouse cuts me off. ‘Onto your computer?’
I nod. ‘Haven’t always, but I do now. Perhaps if it had been handwritten, it wouldn’t have felt so much like I was typing up an official execution order.
’ I shudder. ‘When I read it back … It sounds like a cliché, but every part of me turned cold. I knew I had to try and stop it, but at the same time I …’
There’s no reason to hold back. He knows why I’m here.
Say it.
‘At the same time, I wanted to kill her so much. I still do. And I’m also glad I didn’t, glad I thought of this as the only way out: coming here, telling you everything. It was the only way to make sure I didn’t ruin my daughter’s life by ending up in prison.’
‘The plan can’t have been foolproof, then,’ says Waterhouse. ‘Not if you were worried about prison. Make up your mind.’
‘Nothing like that’s ever foolproof.’ I shouldn’t have to tell him this. ‘When you start to feel sure you’ll get away with it, that’s when you’re really in danger.’
‘Is that a fact?’
He seems to hate me. I’m not sure why. I’m trying to do the responsible thing and prevent a crime from happening.
‘I think so, yes,’ I say. ‘Anyway, this is going to work, this … deterrent I’m creating for myself now, by telling you.
5.15 on 30 October has come and gone, and if anything ever happens to Marianne in the future, I know I’m the first person you’ll suspect, which is enough to make me drop the whole idea.
And … I mean, I’m assuming you’ll be making contact with her at some point and telling her there’s been a threat against her.
Isn’t it normal to … I don’t know, warn people in situations like this?
Not that you need to, because, like I said, there’s no way I’ll do anything now. ’
I have to hope Marianne won’t risk harming me either, if she finds out about this. Surely knowing that she and I are now on the radar of a murder detective will be enough of a deterrent.
‘I just need to tell you how I planned to do it, and then I can go,’ I tell Waterhouse.
He yawns. Makes no attempt to rein it in, either.
Time to ramp things up. I hadn’t been planning to bring up what happened eleven years ago, but desperate measures and all that … ‘In case you’re wondering, it wasn’t me last time,’ I say matter-of-factly. ‘It was someone else who tried to kill Marianne in 2012. I’ve no idea who.’
Ha. That got him. His eyebrows just shot up, like they were trying to slap his hairline. I guessed right: he had no idea. Neither he nor Sergeant Zailer reacted with particular interest when I first mentioned Marianne’s name.
‘There was an attempt on Marianne Upton’s life in 2012?’ he asks.
I nod. I’ve become expert, by now, at detaching my concept of what happened from the scene itself.
I can talk about it easily these days, without seeing what I found when Paddy and I got back that night: the blood on the kitchen floor, the shrunken, grey skin around Marianne’s bulging eyes, the red and white inside of her neck …
I translated it into image-and-emotion-free words soon after that night, and now I can think and say all the colours and the adjectives, and use them as a distraction from what they mean and a barrier to stop me going back there in my mind.
‘She survived, and the person was never caught,’ I say. ‘If that hadn’t happened, I’m not sure killing her would have occurred to me as a possibility earlier this year. I’d probably have carried on thinking murder was something that only affected other people, never me or anyone close to me.’
‘This is starting to make more sense.’ Waterhouse inspects his hands.
‘It was you in 2012. You got away with it, and it’s been eating away at you.
The guilt, the regret. You want to see if confessing makes you feel better, but can’t risk admitting to an attempted murder because that’s an actual crime.
Obviously it hasn’t occurred to you that conspiracy to commit murder is just as much of a crime, but leaving that aside for now … How am I doing so far, guess-wise?’
I feel as if I’ve just been addressed in a language I don’t speak. ‘What?’
His head dips forward, though he keeps his eyes on me. Can’t be bothered repeating himself.
Standing up, I say, ‘Is that the best you can do? No wonder you and your cronies screwed it up in 2012. They must all be as shit as you.’
‘I didn’t get anything wrong in 2012,’ he fires back and, at last, there’s some energy in his voice. ‘Hadn’t heard of Marianne Upton until you mentioned her today.’
‘Really? Well, it was detectives from Culver Valley CID, your colleagues, who made no progress whatsoever and let an almost-killer go free. Tell you what …’ I move towards the closed door. ‘I’m going to find another police station, one with proper professionals in it who—’
‘Leave whenever you like. I’m not stopping you. None of this is going on the record, by the way.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What I said. There’ll be nothing in our files or on our system to say you ever made a threat against Marianne Upton. And no one’s going to be warning her about anything.’
I don’t understand. If he isn’t planning to put any of our conversation on the record …
Does he … Is it possible that he wants me to kill Marianne?
As if on cue, he says, ‘She must be a pretty unpleasant character if all these people keep wanting to murder her. So go on.’ He gestures in the direction of the door, a sweeping motion. ‘Do it if you want to. Get away with it if you can.’