Nell
PRESENT
I’m about to leave for work on Monday when an early morning call from the police changes my plans. An officer tells me that Superintendent Moss would like to see me before she leaves on her Christmas break and wants to know if I’m free at ten o’clock.
“Yes,” I reply, my heart in my mouth, because I hadn’t expected to hear anything for weeks. “Thank you.”
I call Sadie.
“I’ve got an urgent appointment this morning,” I explain, “so I won’t be in until lunchtime.”
“No problem,” she says cheerfully.
“Why don’t you take Christmas Eve off?” I say, guilty that I’m leaving her to hold the fort again.
“Don’t be silly. Besides, Simon is on duty on Christmas Eve so we can’t leave for my parents’ until Christmas morning.”
“I’ll bring cake,” I promise. “To have this afternoon.”
Sadie tuts down the phone. “Stop with the guilt complex. It’s annoying.”
Another taxi takes me to the police station, adding to the guilt I feel about the amount of money I’m spending on cab fares to give myself peace of mind.
“First of all, let’s talk about Damon Parker,” Superintendent Moss says, once I’m installed in her office, sitting across from her.
“We made some inquiries and apart from his mother, nobody visits him in prison. He’s due to be released next month and I doubt he would jeopardize his chances by getting someone to follow you. ”
The air leaves my lungs, leaving me physically winded.
“We’ll talk about the implications of that in a moment,” Superintendent Moss continues. “First, there’s been a development in Bryony’s case that I wanted you to be aware of before it gets into the public domain.”
The sudden drain of blood from my brain at the superintendent’s words makes me light-headed.
This is it, this is what I’ve been waiting for all these years.
In my excitement, I lean forward and grip the edge of the desk with my fingers.
“I was right, wasn’t I, about Brett Parker driving the car that day? ”
Superintendent Moss frowns. “No.” She looks at me curiously. “I didn’t think you still believed that.”
“I’ve never stopped believing it.”
“That isn’t what I wanted to tell you, Nell.” The superintendent’s voice is gentle and my stomach cramps with fear.
“What then?”
Superintendent Moss’s voice lifts. “After all these years, we finally have Bryony’s murderer.”
My mind reels, searching for who it could be.
Damon Parker, it has to be him. Damon Parker killed Bryony Sanders and his father covered up for him.
But even in my desperation not to be completely, totally wrong about Brett Parker being involved in some way, I know the straws that I’m clutching at don’t exist. Damon Parker’s release from prison wouldn’t be imminent if he’d been found guilty of Bryony’s murder.
“A week or so ago,” Superintendent Moss continues. “A lawyer contacted us and told us his client wanted to confess to the murder of Bryony Sanders.”
“But—” I clutch at another straw. “How do you know that his client is telling the truth?”
“Because his story checks out. We’ve verified everything.
He was a lecturer at King’s, and Bryony was one of his students.
She told him he reminded her of her dad—if you remember, she had lost her father six months earlier.
She began to confide in him, about her mum and her worries at leaving her alone in the US.
He presumed, with the arrogance that sort of man often has, that she was in love with him but as it turned out, she saw him as a replacement father figure and nothing more.
That only became apparent to him when he took her back to his flat the day you saw her getting into his car outside your flat.
He’d been waiting for her to come out of the restaurant where she worked so that he could ‘bump into’ her.
He followed her for a couple of minutes in his car and witnessed her getting her phone snatched.
It gave him the chance to come to her rescue and although he made a halfhearted attempt to go after the man on the moped, he had already formed a plan to take Bryony back to his flat, telling her he had a book he wanted to give her to help with her course work.
” She pauses. “In his flat, she rejected his advances, and he lost his temper and strangled her. He waited until the early hours then drove the car with her body in the boot to Wimbledon Common and set fire to it.” She draws a paper from a file on her desk.
“He was interviewed at the time, like her other lecturers and classmates at the university. Nobody mentioned his name in connection with Bryony so he didn’t come up on our radar as someone who should be looked into further.
According to our records, on the day Bryony was murdered, he spent the day alone at home marking exam papers, then met up with a friend for dinner in the evening.
Probably because of his status—he was an eminent professor at King’s—his story about marking exam papers was believed and the restaurant checked out.
What we didn’t know was that while he was having dinner, Bryony was lying dead in his flat. ”
“But what about the car?” I ask, desperately looking for something, anything, to tell me that the man might be lying. “Didn’t you think at one point that it was a rental car? How come you weren’t able to trace it back to him?”
“It seems we were wrong about that.”
“It wasn’t a rental car?”
“Not exactly. We did check his car when we were making our inquiries in the weeks following Bryony’s murder, as we did with everyone we questioned.
He had a flashy Toyota registered in his name.
What we didn’t know—what we failed to check—was that it was in for a service on the day that Bryony was murdered and the garage had given him a courtesy car for the weekend.
When he turned up at the garage without it, he told them it had been stolen.
The garage in question reported the theft to the police but the police failed to follow it up.
They also failed to make any connection between the stolen courtesy car and the car we were trying to trace in connection with Bryony’s murder. ”
Despair suffuses my body. “Why?” My voice rises. “Why confess now, after fourteen years? He must know that he’s going to jail.”
“He won’t be going to jail. He’s terminally ill.
According to his doctor, he’ll be lucky to make it to the New Year.
Hence his confession. He has nothing to lose by confessing and everything to gain.
” She gives a grim smile. “Redemption. That’s what most people who confess to a crime on their deathbed are after. Redemption.”
“Do you have a photo of him?”
Superintendent Moss nods, opens the file on her desk, and slides a photo across to me. “This was taken a couple of years ago, before he became ill.”
I almost don’t want to look. I close my eyes a moment, praying that the man in the photograph is going to look something like Brett Parker, then open them.
The photo is of a man I’ve never seen before, a man who looks nothing like Brett Parker did.
I clap a hand over my mouth, horrified at the extent of my mistake.
Understanding my shock, Superintendent Moss slides another photo across.
“This is his photo from when he taught at King’s,” she says.
I stare at it, mentally tightening the jawline, darkening the hair a little.
There’s a resemblance to Brett Parker but it doesn’t bring me any relief.
Superintendent Moss was right all along; I had remembered Brett Parker’s face from when I’d bumped into him outside the supermarket on the day of Bryony’s murder and had confused him with the man driving the car.
“Is he at least American?” I ask hopelessly.
“No. But he did tell us that when he spoke to Bryony, he often adopted an American accent. It was a joke between them, apparently. That’s why he sounded American when he called to her from the car.
” She pauses. “I need to warn you, Nell. The news about Bryony’s killer being caught is going to be major headline news.
Once the media gets hold of the story, they’ll drag up everything to do with the case, and your name and your photo will be out there.
Every journalist in the land will be looking for you and they won’t stop until they find you. ”
Fear bubbles inside me. I think of Alex, of my friends, of what they will say when they find out what I did. “I’m going to lose everyone,” I say, my voice hollow. “I deserve it. I’ve ruined so many lives.”
I’m glad Superintendent Moss doesn’t patronize me by denying it. “You might want to think about taking an extended holiday until the initial furor dies down,” she says.
“It won’t go away though, will it? The press will find me wherever I am. Sooner or later I’m going to have to face the music.”
“If I could give you one piece of advice, it will be to tell those close to you before it breaks.”
I nod. “Do you know when that will be?”
“The man’s lawyer extracted a promise from us that we won’t go public until he’s dead.” She seems annoyed at having to keep to that promise. “He’s in a hospice, so it won’t be long. A couple of weeks, a month at the outside, maybe.”
It’s more, much more, than I could have hoped for.
“Will you give me twenty-four hours’ warning, before the news breaks?” I ask.
Superintendent Moss nods. “I can do that,” she says. “Now, before you go, I’d like you to give me a list of friends, work colleagues, current partners.” She leaves a question at the end of the sentence.
“I do have a partner,” I say.
“Have you known him long?”
“Coming up to six months. He’s American,” I add. “French-American.”
She sits back in her chair. “Right. Does he know about your past?”
“No.”
“Where is he from in the US?”
“Washington, DC.”
“Can I ask how old he is?”
“Forty-four.”
She straightens up and opens her laptop. “I’d like you to tell me more about him, please.”
“You don’t think—” I pause.
“Every person you know is a suspect,” she says. “Until I rule them out.”