Crying Out Loud Read online

  There was still some time before I had to get back home so I paid an unannounced call on Heather Carter, Charlie’s widow. I suspected if I rang first I’d get the brush-off. For the family of a victim, the apprehension of the killer is a huge part of dealing with the loss. They know who is responsible at the very least. If the convicted person then starts crying innocence, it’s a fresh trauma. Not something any family would want to accept.

  Heather and her son Alex still lived on the riverside in Hale by the Bollin. The Carter house stood in its own grounds, bristling with security devices like all the properties nearby. The gates were open, perhaps because it was daylight, but I wondered if the cameras were filming me.

  Heather Carter answered the door. I recognized her from the photos in news reports that I’d found online. I introduced myself and asked whether she could spare me a few minutes: I was working on a case linked to her husband’s death.

  Her eyes narrowed and she took a step back. ‘Are you the press?’

  ‘No.’ I handed her my business card. ‘A private investigator.’

  She hesitated. I thought I’d blown it, but then she inclined her head and invited me in.

  Heather was short with a mass of curly black hair. She wore trendy glasses, black and red rectangular frames, and was dressed in a cherry-red sweater and fitted chocolate-brown slacks which showed off her curves. She still wore her wedding ring.

  The house was lovely: thick carpets and luxurious curtains, high ceilings and huge windows which let in plenty of light. There were several doors off the entrance hall and I guessed there were three or four reception rooms. Heather led me into one which served as a formal dining room. In the centre was a large teak table and chairs, and along one wall a matching sideboard arrayed with family photos.

  As we sat down, I heard footfall above and glanced upwards.

  ‘My son, Alex.’ Heather smiled. ‘Heavy on his feet.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Eighteen now.’ Her smile faded, her eyes softened. ‘He took Charlie’s death very hard – I don’t know if he’ll ever get over it.’ She shook her head then adopted a more businesslike tone. ‘So, how can I help?’

  ‘I’m reviewing the circumstances around Damien Beswick’s conviction.’

  Heather frowned.

  ‘Did you receive a letter from his sister, Chloe?’

  ‘Yes,’ her face was alert, ‘I burnt it. I almost went to the police,’ she said. ‘The cheek of it!’ She gave a brittle laugh. ‘Is that who you’re working for?’ She was riled: circles of anger flared on her cheeks.

  ‘No. I’m sorry, I can’t reveal the identity of my client.’ Would she guess it was Libby? I thought not. The normal assumption would be that it was someone connected to Damien who’d employ me.

  ‘That man killed my husband. I know,’ she emphasized the word. ‘I’ve no idea what he or his sister hope to gain from this and I don’t give a damn. He’s where he should be.’ Tears stood in her eyes and I felt a sweep of pity for bringing this to her door.

  There were footsteps on the stairs. ‘Mum?’ a voice called out.

  ‘I’m in here,’ she sniffed, taking a breath.

  Alex Carter pushed open the door and came in. He stopped short when he saw she had company. He’d inherited his mother’s wayward hair and his father’s bigger build but he was rangy rather than blocky. He wore black jeans and a plain blue sweatshirt. He avoided eye contact and I formed the impression he was shy and awkward with strangers. ‘I’m going now,’ he said.

  Heather stood up, wishing him good luck as she crossed the room and touched him on the shoulder. ‘Just try to relax.’

  He nodded, dipped his head and left.

  ‘Driving test,’ she told me as she came back to her seat. ‘Second time.’ She paused, then said: ‘Exactly why are you here?’

  ‘I’m trying to establish whether there might be any truth in Damien Beswick’s new position. If there is any possibility that they might have got the wrong man.’

  Her face hardened and I thought she would sling me out. ‘You know what happened?’ she demanded.

  ‘I’ve read about it.’

  ‘Charlie—’ The name unseated her this time and I was alarmed to see her mouth quiver and her eyes swim with tears.

  ‘I’m sorry; this is very upsetting for you.’

  ‘It brings it all back,’ she said quietly. ‘You can’t imagine. Charlie never hurt a soul; he was a good man. The shock . . .’ She took her glasses off, wiped her eyes, replaced them. Put her hand to her forehead. ‘I’d like you to go now.’ Suddenly drained.

  ‘Please, Mrs Carter, I won’t bother you again but if you could just tell me what you remember.’ I was pushing it; the woman was in bits and I was asking her to rake it all up. ‘Please? And then I’ll leave you alone.’

  She looked directly at me. Her mouth was taut and trembling. ‘We didn’t part on good terms. That still makes me so sad. You probably read that Charlie was seeing someone else?’

  I nodded.

  ‘He’d told me he wouldn’t see her for a while. It was a chance for us to give it another go, see if we could make it work.’

  In Heather’s eyes. But from Libby’s point of view the marriage was past saving; it was simply a compassionate pause in Charlie’s new relationship for the sake of the boy.

  ‘That Saturday Charlie said he was going to a sales exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham.’ She ducked her head, studying her hands. ‘I didn’t believe him.’ She looked up, stretching her neck, rubbing one hand up and down it then covering her mouth and giving a shaky sigh. Her anguish was palpable but I waited quietly for her to continue.

  ‘I got a friend to come round and I’m not proud of this now . . .’ her brow furrowed and she sniffed hard ‘ . . . but we followed him in her car. As soon as he turned off for Thornsby instead of staying on the road to the M6, I knew he’d lied to me. He was sneaking off to see her.’ Tears coursed down her cheeks and she swept them away. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No,’ I murmured, feeling lousy.

  ‘So we turned round and drove back here. I was calling him all the names under the sun but he was—’ She didn’t complete the sentence but I knew what she was saying: he was dead or dying. ‘That made it even worse. That those were my last memories of him.’

  ‘I’m sorry. There weren’t any other suspects?’ I asked her.

  She looked a bit muddled – still lost in the past, her nose red and puffy from crying. ‘No. Well, the girlfriend.’ I noticed she avoided Libby’s name. ‘Then they found Damien Beswick. If Charlie had just given him his wallet, instead of trying to hang on to it, then he might still be here.’ She went and fetched a tissue from a box on the sideboard, blew her nose. In Damien’s new version of events the wallet was on the kitchen counter; in his original confession the knife had been beside it.

  ‘Maybe we would have gone our separate ways,’ Heather said, ‘but Alex would still have his father.’

  And so would Libby’s daughter. Had Heather known that Libby was pregnant? It hadn’t been in the papers. The women had no contact so I could only assume that Heather had no inkling of Rowena’s existence. I imagined it would be even harder if she had done. To discover that Charlie had been on the brink of starting a new family when he died, replicating what Heather and Alex had shared with him, would have been an extra grief.

  She fell quiet.

  After a moment or two, she asked: ‘He couldn’t get a retrial, could he?’

  ‘He’d have to present new evidence.’

  She nodded, reassured.

  We made small talk as she showed me out. The house was warm but she shivered and rubbed at her arms, the chill of murder in the air.

  I had parked on the roadside. Above the high wall, tall shrubs and specimen trees seethed in the wind. I could see some sort of palm and a lovely graceful fir, the spiral of its branches reminiscent of Japanese watercolour paintings. My phone rang before I could start the car. It was Chloe Beswick. ‘Did
you see him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Chloe, I’m not sure what you expect me to say.’ I sighed.

  ‘You believe him – that’d be a good start,’ she said baldly.

  ‘I’m not sure I do. He wasn’t very coherent; he kept going off at a tangent. He didn’t say anything that would count as new evidence. Frankly he seemed to be evading my questions.’

  She swore. ‘Wanker! I told him. So, you just giving up, are you? ’Cos I’m not.’ I couldn’t help but admire her determination. She’d a losing hand with Damien to defend but she was with him all the way.

  ‘I’m working for Libby Hill,’ I reminded her, ‘not you.’

  ‘You’re not totally sure about it, though, are you? If you could just talk to him some more—’

  ‘I don’t know yet. Let me think about it, see some more people.’

  ‘OK.’ She sounded disappointed.

  ‘Oh, he wants you to take him some tobacco,’ I said.

  ‘I always do, cheeky git.’

  Had Damien Beswick killed Charlie Carter or had he made a false confession? I spent the next hour in my office, researching the phenomena. Most articles stressed that the area was complex and several factors were involved when someone made a false confession. There were three broad categories: voluntary confessions, compliant false confessions and internalized false confessions. I reckoned I could rule out the first – Damien had not walked into a police station claiming responsibility for the murder. He hadn’t been seeking fame and notoriety or meaning for his life as most of these people did. His confession was only made once he’d been arrested and in the middle of interviews. There were elements in both the other categories that I thought might fit with Damien Beswick. Compliant false confessions are made by those who see no other way out. The suspect thinks if he confesses he will get away, get help, be allowed to leave. Damien had been panicking about his drug supply being cut off. He hoped to see the doctor; he hoped the doctor would give him something to manage the withdrawal symptoms he was experiencing. On the other hand, he also fit the picture of an internalized false confession: people who are highly suggestible and over the course of questioning come to believe they may be guilty.

  Damien Beswick was suggestible. He had been at the scene, his memory of events was fragmented, he was eager to finish the questions and end the interview to get drugs. The fact that his memory of events was so poor was a major obstacle to establishing if he was lying now – or had been lying when he owned up.

  The friend that Heather had enlisted to trail her cheating husband, the one Libby had told me about, was Valerie Mayhew, a retired teacher and a justice of the peace. Mayhew is not a common name in Manchester and it was easy enough to find her in the phone book. She answered my call on her way out to a meeting at the Civil Justice Centre. She would have put me off but I asked whether she could spare me ten minutes over a coffee if I came into town, telling her it related to the Charlie Carter case. She relented; I think her interest was piqued.

  The Civil Justice Centre is a brave new building in the Spinningfields area of the city centre. It’s an audacious design: a tall, thin central skyscraper with glassy boxes jutting out irregularly at either end; coloured battleship grey and primrose yellow, it looks a bit like a Jenga toy tower made of snazzy shipping containers, defying gravity with their overhangs. The feel as you enter is of a sweeping space, a hotel or conference centre, perhaps. The atrium soars twenty stories high and each floor has vistas to the Pennine hills that fringe the city to the north and the east. A bank of lifts whisk people heavenward to their fates: for adoption, bankruptcy, custody hearings. There’s a café on the ground floor where Valerie had arranged to see me. I had described myself (grey wool pea-coat, turquoise scarf) and she waved me over. A woman in a navy trouser suit with silver-grey shoulder-length hair, expertly cut. Valerie had fantastic bone structure so, although her face was heavily lined with age, she was still very attractive. She’d paid attention to her teeth, too: they gleamed white and regular.

  Valerie had finished a snack and I refused her offer of a drink and sat across the table from her.

  ‘You went to see Heather?’ she asked. ‘How was she?’

  ‘Upset.’

  ‘It’s still very raw,’ she said. ‘You don’t put any store by Damien Beswick’s retraction?’ There was a no-nonsense, teacherish tone in her voice which got my back up.

  ‘I’m keeping an open mind,’ I said, ‘still building up a picture of events. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.’

  She weighed me up for a moment. ‘OK,’ inviting me to proceed.

  ‘Just describe that day,’ I said.

  ‘Heather rang me in a complete state, mid-afternoon. Charlie had told her he was off to some sales convention in Birmingham but she didn’t believe him. He’d more than enough work on and he’d never touted for jobs outside the north-west before. She thought he was using it as an excuse to go see this other woman.’

  ‘Libby Hill?’

  Valerie nodded.

  ‘Heather had already told you about her?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. He’d agreed to stop seeing this woman for a few months. They didn’t want to mess up Alex’s exams and I think Heather hoped he would come to his senses. But then she suspected he’d broken his promise and asked me to help her find out one way or the other. She thought if we used my car Charlie wouldn’t notice.’ Valerie shrugged and rearranged her plate on the tray in front of her. ‘It all seemed a bit . . . seedy.’ She looked up. ‘I suppose it’s the sort of thing you do all the time, in your line,’ she said dryly.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I agreed.

  ‘So, I tried to dissuade her but she was set on catching him out and I owed Heather a lot. She’d been brilliant when my own marriage was breaking up.’ She shrugged. ‘I couldn’t say no.’

  ‘How did you know each other?’

  ‘Through church.’ Valerie caught sight of someone across the foyer and waved hello. She turned back to me. ‘I went round there, called for Heather and we parked a few hundred yards down the main road. When Charlie came out and turned right at the junction, we would go after him. We didn’t have long to wait. He set off about four.’ She frowned. ‘It really was the most horrible, awful irony.’ She gave her head a little shake. ‘As you probably heard from Heather, we followed him until the turning for Thornsby and off he sailed. The opposite route from Birmingham. Heather knew he must be going up to the cottage. She was furious – hurt, too. We went back to hers and I didn’t feel I could leave her like that so I stayed with her. Alex was there but he didn’t know about any of it.’

  ‘Didn’t he realize something was going on?’

  ‘No, he was in his room most of the time. Meant to be cramming in revision for his mocks but it sounded like he’d got some video game playing. We do advise them to revise to music but not that sort of racket.’ She was being sardonic. ‘Heather had to tell him to turn it down. He came downstairs for tea but she let him take it up to eat, so I doubt he noticed the state she was in. Then, at seven, the police came.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘Devastating,’ she said simply.

  A waitress began clearing the table. Valerie checked her watch.

  ‘And when you heard they’d charged Damien Beswick?’

  ‘Relief.’

  ‘You never had any doubts?’

  ‘Good grief, no. He owned up, the evidence fit. Kids like that: dysfunctional family, drugs, crime – sooner or later there’s violence.’ She pushed back her chair. ‘We see it all the time.’

  The wind had brought rain with it – not heavy yet, just squalls that spat drops at me. As I walked back through the complex in the direction of the car I felt dwarfed by the buildings lowering over me and a little overwhelmed by the investigation. It wasn’t the complexity of it; after all, it boiled down to one question: was Damien Beswick lying then, or now? But it was the frustration of not being able to tell whether he was guilty or wrongly convicted and the s
ense that there was no easy path I could follow to clearly establish that. Before his conviction the emphasis had been on proving Damien culpable beyond any reasonable doubt; now the reverse was true. In the balance of probability he had killed Charlie – it would need some stunning evidence to convince anyone otherwise.

  Ray had left me a text: clothes – no joy. So I called into Children’s World on my way home. It stocked every possible accessory and accoutrement. I found myself drooling over patterned towelling Babygros and funky baby sweaters, instead of just grabbing the two-for-a-tenner value packs in the dump bins. I could have spent a fortune and stayed all day but I got a grip, reminded myself that Jamie might be gone by teatime and settled on three cheapish cotton all-in-ones in powder blue, dusky rose and white with stars and moons.

  The place didn’t sell small sets of nappies; the ones they had would need a forklift truck to shift them. But there was a special offer on starter packs of three reusables. They’d a terry towelling inside and a plastic outer coating, fitted with velcro tabs. I’d used something similar for Maddie when I’d read how it took hundreds of years for disposables to degrade in landfill.

  As I negotiated the traffic home, I mused on how the world seemed full of babies: Jamie, Chloe’s little one, Libby’s daughter. How old was Rowena? Due in June, Libby had said, so she’d be three months or so. The possibility stuck in my mind like a fishbone in the throat. I couldn’t dislodge it. With it came a creeping unease, a quickening of my pulse. Why hadn’t it occurred to me before? Because it seemed so unlikely – that a new client would dump her child on me? It was unlikely whoever had done it. It was ridiculous – still I had to ring her, had to know.

  Parking in our drive, I pulled out my phone and found her number. I would get myself invited there to give her feedback – explain I understood it would be harder for her to come to me with a baby in tow. If she tried to wriggle out of it, then I’d know I was on to something. Maybe I’d have to ask her outright. My throat felt dry as I entered her number.