The Patchwork House (24 page)

The Lies

One month after
they first called, the police have brought me down to the station for questioning. I was expecting this, but I am no less nervous. So here I sit in a windowless interview room behind a plain desk on an uncomfortable chair, wondering if I’m going to be able to hold my nerve.

Officer Warrington from Chicago PD is with me. This time however, a middle-aged woman wearing smart business attire accompanies him.

“Mr Randal,” says Warrington. “This is Detective Inspector Black of Hereford and Worcester Police in the UK.”

I’m surprised to see a British police inspector here. She’s come a long way.

They both sit down opposite me. They look sombre. Of course I know what they’re going to tell me. My palms are sweating. It was hard enough to lie to them in my apartment the first time. Being here is so much more intimidating. I force myself to remain calm. As long as I don’t screw up and say something stupid, I should be home by noon.

Warrington speaks again. “I’m afraid we have some very bad news for you, Mr Randal.”

I stare at them in shock. Of course I know why I’m here, but I pretend to have just worked it out. “No,” I said. “No no no.”

“I’m sorry to say that the body of Miss Bethany Harris was found at Binsham House three days ago.”

I gape at them stupidly. Then the tears come. To me this is hardly news, but that doesn’t stop the pain from resurfacing. I use the raw emotion to add credibility to my feigned shock. It isn’t hard for me to cry on demand these days. All I have to do is think of her.

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Black says.

“We… we weren’t together anymore,” I say through the sobs. “But I still…” I can’t finish the sentence even if I want to. Neither of the officers speaks for a time. Warrington offers a box of tissues and I take one. I try to clean up my face a bit.

“How?” I ask eventually.

“She was murdered in the house.”

“
Murdered?
”

“I’m afraid so. We discovered Derek Jackson’s body too. We’re still trying to determine if his death was an accident.”

Warrington says, “I should tell you now, Mr Randal, that your prints are all over the scene.”

I glare at them through the tears.

“Is that why I’m here?”

“Yes.”

“Am I under arrest?”

“No, Mr Randal. Like I said when we brought you in, we just need to ask you some questions.”

“Here’s the thing,” says Black, her British accent sounding odd to my ears despite my recent trip. “The bodies had only been deceased twenty-four hours when we found them two days ago. We know you’ve been in Chicago for weeks.”

“I went out with friends on the weekend,” I say, my voice wavering. “I can give you their numbers. I never left...”

“No need, Mr Randal,” said Warrington. There’s no trace of you passing through any airports. Plus we’ve been… keeping tabs on you since Beth went missing. We know you were here when she died.”

I act surprised but it’s hardly a shock to learn that the police have been watching me. I’ve been very careful these last few weeks, just in case.

“Then why fly out here?” I ask Black.

She gives me a piercing look. “I’m afraid I need to ask you more details about the nature of Miss Harris’s relationship with Derek Jackson. And I need to know what happened that night while you were in the house. The cab driver who took you to London said you were in bad shape and we have security pictures of you at the airport. You were quite a mess.”

“Yeah, the bruises, right. Well, I confronted Derek about his… affair with Beth. He got angry. Chloe said he had anger issues. He would hit her regularly is what she told me. The night before I left the house, he beat me up, kicked me down the stairs.”

“You didn’t check in to a hospital before proceeding to London?”

“No. I wasn’t really thinking clearly. I just wanted to get home. I got a lot of funny looks at the airport. They nearly didn’t let me on the plane. I told them I got mugged.”

“You should have reported Mr Jackson to the police. Leaving Miss Harris with him was putting her in danger.”

For a moment my heart freezes. I’d not considered this line of reasoning. Shit, if Derek was capable of beating me to a pulp, why
would
I leave Beth with him?

“As I said, I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was in pain and my girlfriend cheated on me. I just wanted to get away. At the time I didn’t think about what might happen to her. At that moment I didn’t care.”

“And now?”

“I miss her every day.” I start to cry again. All the nightmares come flooding back. I’ve been dreading this moment, having to explain myself to the police. I knew it would force me to replay all the horrors in my mind like they happened yesterday.

Black takes a photograph from her pocket and shows it to me. It’s a picture of the corpse Chloe and I buried, the priest. “We found this man, Father Jeremy Granger, recently buried in the cemetery on the grounds of the house. He’d been missing for six months. Now, I’m not saying you had anything to do with his death, Mr Randal, because that happened months before you were in England. But perhaps you know how he came to be buried there. Your blood was found near his shallow grave. I’m wondering if you had anything to do with that.”

I feel chills again. Is she onto me? Does she know I’m lying?

“That’s where Derek and I had a fight. He attacked me in the house, pushed me down the stairs, but I got away. He chased me all the way to the cemetery before he caught me. That’s where he beat me up the worst.”

“I see,” Black says. She doesn’t sound convinced but I’m hoping it’s enough. “And something else that confuses me, Mr Randal,” she continues. She sounds like she’s interrogating me now. I can see in her eyes that she knows something doesn’t add up. Can she see my guilt? “We discovered the body of Derek and Beth in the hall and the dining room respectively. We swept both rooms for evidence when they originally went missing, and of course your DNA was all over them. So was Chloe Jackson’s. You’d all been in the house so nothing unexpected there. But what surprised me was how much of your blood we found
after
the discovery of the bodies. It was everywhere. All over the stairs and the landing, the hallway and the drawing room. Nearly everywhere we looked there were traces of your blood in that area that hadn’t been there the first time we looked. And the blood was fresh, Mr Randal. It had only been there a day, not a month. How do you explain that?”

“I… I can’t explain it,” I say. I am now certain I’m going to jail. I’m going to spend the rest of my life in prison for a crime I didn’t commit. Eventually I croak, “Maybe you missed something the first time.” It feels like such a weak argument. I hold her gaze, trying hard not to crack. I feel like my world is crashing down. I’ve worked so hard and built this lie so carefully. I’ve tried my damnedest to ensure neither Chloe nor me gets the blame for the deaths. And now this wretched inspector is going to find the hole in my story and isn’t going to let me go.

She leans in close. “What happened that night, Mr Randal?”

I swallow, trying not to let my guilt glow like a lightning rod in an electrical storm. When Beth had sent the bodies forward in time by a month, so that Chloe and I could prepare alibies in time for their discovery, I hadn’t given a thought to the evidence of my involvement that travelled in time alongside the bodies. Derek had nearly killed me on that staircase, of course my blood was all over the scene. And of course it would only have been a day or so old when the bodies were found…

“We heard some weird noises. We saw some strange things. But the four of us were alone in that house. I don’t know who buried the priest or who killed Beth. I have no clue how fresh blood got there. I’ve been here the whole time, in Chicago. I didn’t travel back to look for her, though I kept telling myself I should. I don’t know what else to tell you. I wish Beth was still alive. I kept hoping she would call me or knock at my door. I can’t believe she’s gone.”

I am sure Black is going to push some more. I expect her to suddenly whip out an incriminating photograph, or some other piece of evidence that proves I am guilty.

“You realize if I can prove you were in England at the time of the murders, Mr Randal, you will be in very serious trouble.”

“I wasn’t there,” I say dumbly, my throat so dry I’m surprised any words come out.

Warrington addresses me now. “About the car, Mr Randal.”

“What about it?”

“Tell me again how it got smashed.”

He’s trying to catch me out. I know now why he didn’t show me the photograph back at my apartment on his first visit. He wants me to reveal more now than I knew then.

“I have no idea. Derek and Beth went off in it. They abandoned me and Chloe so we left. After I got back to the States, my dad called me, all pissed off that he had to pay the deductible on the wrecked car. I asked him if anyone was hurt and he said no. But I don’t know what happened.”

Warrington considers my story for a moment, and this time he decides to show me. It’s a picture of the car with the bookcase embedded in it. I’ve seen it before of course, but I have to act shocked. It
is
pretty shocking.

“Oh my God,” I say. The image brings back more unpleasant memories. I’m glad I resisted the temptation to snap some pictures of the wreckage before I left. My phone would be burning a hole in my pocket right now. “How the hell…?”

“We can’t explain it either,” he says. “Apparently several tons of solid oak bookcase threw itself out of a window and crushed your car. And you know nothing about this?”

“I assumed Derek had just run it into a ditch. I had no idea… I remember the bookcase from the library upstairs. When I left it was still
in
the library…”

We all sit in silence for a moment. Neither of them seems convinced.

“Have you spoken to Chloe?” I ask.

“I spoke to her yesterday,” says Warrington. “We’ve been keeping an eye on her and she wasn’t anywhere near Fletchley Park at the time of the murders either.”

“How is she doing? Is she okay?”

“As well as can be expected.”

More silence. Black seems lost in thought. She’s aware that I know more than I’m saying. I know the evidence is not lining up to make a case against me. She’s not going to let this go, but unless she can prove that Beth and Derek’s corpses travelled in time and make a jury believe it, she has nothing that will stick. All I have to do is keep my cool and wait this out.

“Can I go home?” I ask in a small voice. “I would really like to be alone.”

Warrington glances at Black, who nods.

“I’ll have Officer Hunt drive you home,” he says. “Call us if you think of anything else.”

“Do you have any other suspects?” I ask as we stand up. I want to be sure they don’t try to pin this on poor Arthur the groundskeeper.

“No,” Warrington says. “This wasn’t a professional hit, and Miss Harris’s death certainly wasn’t an accident. Our suspicion is that Mr Jackson killed Beth and then had an accident. But if we do make an arrest we’ll let you know.”

“Thank you, Inspector Warrington.”

Officer Hunt drives me back to my apartment and I ride the elevator in silence. I manage to hold myself together until I get inside my door. Then I collapse against the wall and sob myself into a stupour. I am so relieved to be home, but I know they won’t give up that easily, and all of this is stirring up memories I just want to bury for good. They have questions and suspicions but nothing they can prove. The story will never make sense. They will never find Beth’s killer. But the relief I feel for surviving today’s interview, and the knowledge that I am probably safe from blame doesn’t bring my Beth back to me. And it will never erase the memories of that night.

I pull my phone from my pocket and flick back through the photos until I find Beth’s picture, the one I took of her playing the piano. I stare at it for a while, and then move forward to the next photo. This one is of the clock in the wine cellar. It’s the picture I snapped just before leaving the house for the last time.

I stare at it for a long time.

Something is wrong.

I sweep my fingers apart to zoom in until the five clock faces fill the screen of my phone. I remember very clearly that when I took the picture, none of the clocks were running and they were all set to the same time.

One of them is different now.

I stare at it, unable to comprehend how that is possible. My eyes widen and I feel my hair stand on end like there’s an electric current passing through me.

The clock that’s different from the others is the fourth clock.

Derek’s clock.

I can hear the ticking again. I don’t know where it’s coming from, it’s almost beyond my hearing. But it’s there. Perhaps it’s in my head.

It will be a long time before I sleep again.