My Mother, The Liar: A chilling crime thriller to read with the lights on

Charlie closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. He supposed it did look somewhat strange. ‘You could say that I do.’

The woman peered at him, suspicion rippling across her face. ‘Are you a relative?’

He looked down at the pale, thin woman who lay against his chest giving everyone the perfect impression of a limp rag. To this day he still didn’t understand how they’d come to this. All those years and here she was, still able to hurt him with a single look.

‘I’m her husband,’ he said.

Chapter 4 (#ulink_8ea2c77f-1019-5472-8eec-1bfca041ad67)

When the doorbell rang, Delia Jones peered through the net curtains and smiled with grim satisfaction at the predictability of the police. Since reading the morning paper she’d been waiting for them to call with as much patience as a woman like her could muster. Which wasn’t much at all.

On opening the door she smiled at them both, listened as they introduced themselves, and perused their warrant cards with unnecessary scrutiny. When she felt she’d annoyed them enough, she adopted an air of weary disinclination and said, ‘I suppose you had better come in.’

***

Ratcliffe followed Angie into Delia’s cluttered sitting room and formed his first impressions while Delia lowered herself into a very fat armchair and took her time settling in. The whole room was stuffed to the gills with cheap china and whimsical little ornaments. It was the kind of room that could send a grown man slowly and steadily crazy over time. He looked at her smirking from her fat chair. Delia Jones struck him as the kind of woman who probably knew that and coveted her collection even more for that reason.

‘I know why you’re here – I read the paper. But if you’re looking for my son, he doesn’t live here any more. Besides, whatever you lot think he’s no killer, and Roy Baxter was alive and well long after he was locked up, so you’ll be barking up the wrong tree anyway,’ Delia said, offering the statement with smug satisfaction.

So, she’d read the papers. Sometimes Ratcliffe hated reporters; they were way too quick off the mark with their speculation. He hadn’t even had confirmation that the body was Roy Baxter yet, but the paper had got hold of the name and run the story anyway. ‘There is nothing that we are aware of that would link your son to this case, Mrs Jones, but we will need to talk to him at some point. It’s you we’ve come to see,’ he said.

The team had run some checks back at the station and had been surprised to find that there had been another body found at The Limes thirty years before. That one had been fresh though, not preserved in sand. Her body was still seeping blood when she was found complete with her killer, knife in hand, standing over her body.

The victim was Patsy Jones, daughter-in-law of Delia. The case notes stated that Patsy had been having an affair with Roy Baxter, an error in judgement that had led to her death. The murder had been committed by Delia’s son, who had been found next to his dead wife holding the murder weapon. A kitchen knife, which he’d used to stab Patsy four times after he had bashed her over the head with a blunt object that had never been found or identified. It had been an open and shut case. Delia’s son had served ten years of a possible fifteen and hadn’t come to the attention of the police since.

Delia was correct in saying that her son couldn’t have had anything to do with at least one of the bodies found the day before because he had been on remand when Roy Baxter had gone missing. For Ratcliffe there was no obvious link between the two cases other than The Limes appearing to be a popular venue for untimely and horrific deaths, but they did need to talk to Delia Jones – she had been the Porters’ cleaning woman thirty years before and was likely to be one person who knew more about them than anyone else.

Uniform had completed some preliminary door-to-door enquiries, and from the little information they had gathered, Angie and Ratcliffe had concluded that the Porter family were not neighbourly types. Of those people interviewed who were aware of their existence, most described them as eccentric, standoffish and weird.

The only real contact any of the neighbours had with them was on the odd occasion when someone had plucked up enough courage to complain about the run-down state of the house and the untamed jungle that may have at one time been a garden. All had been given short shrift and had not tried again. Consequently, the only person who might have any useful information on the family regarding the time that Roy Baxter had been a part of it was Delia Jones. An ornery old bird who was busy giving both he and Angie some seriously dirty looks.

Scowling at him she said, ‘What do you want to talk to me for? I didn’t bloody kill him, though if I had Charlie wouldn’t have had to pay for something he didn’t do. If you ask me, Roy Baxter got everything he deserved.’

Angie stepped in, going for the ‘woman’s touch’, Ratcliffe guessed. It wouldn’t work – nothing did with Delia’s type.

‘How did you and your son know Mr Baxter?’ she asked.

‘I would have thought you already knew that. I was their cleaner and Charlie worked for Roy. He was a builder; he gave Charlie work, and only did it to piss Valerie off. She wasn’t keen on Charlie.’

‘Why not?’ Ratcliffe asked.

Delia laughed and shook her head. ‘Valerie Porter didn’t like anyone much.’

Ratcliffe didn’t buy it. He looked at Angie and by his guess, neither did she. ‘What do you mean?’

Delia shifted in her seat. ‘She was a bitter woman, a dried-up old stick who liked to make other people miserable when she could. She was always the same, even when she was a kid: a nasty, spiteful bitch who thought she was a cut above everyone else. Put it this way, it takes more than a posh house and a good name to shift a reputation like hers.’

‘She must have liked you – she gave you a job,’ Angie said.

‘Huh! She gave me the job because I was the only person stupid enough to do it for the lousy money she paid. Liking didn’t come in to it. Besides, she enjoyed the fact that someone she knew worked for her, made her feel important,’ Delia said bitterly, obviously still suffering the indignity of her lot.

‘Why stay if she was so unpleasant, paid so little?’ Angie wanted to know.

Delia looked her up and down, obviously taking in the smart suit and the air of self-assurance.

‘I don’t suppose a woman like you would know what it’s like to be left on your own to bring up a kid. I left school at fourteen, got married when I was seventeen, had Charlie when I was twenty, and was widowed at twenty-two. I had no money, and a roof to pay for. Wasn’t quite so easy to go to the social, cap in hand, then. I had to work and I had to go somewhere I could take Charlie with me. Needs must, Constable.’

She paused and pointed a fat finger at Angie. ‘You should be glad the world has changed. If it hadn’t you wouldn’t be sitting there in your nice suit calling the shots. You would have been chained to the sink with a load of snotty-nosed kids around your ankles too, just like all the other women I knew back then, so don’t judge me, lady. I wasn’t too proud to earn my own living even if it was cleaning up someone else’s muck. At least I wasn’t raking through it like you lot do!’

Angie was taken aback by the level of venom in Delia’s tone, but Ratcliffe was unfazed by the attack. He liked to think of himself as thick-skinned, like a suit-wearing rhino – give her time and Angie would be the same. She had potential. He wouldn’t have given her the time of day if she didn’t. He’d spent his career hearing bullshit from the likes of Delia Jones and he could take it. He had a decent brain on him. Wasn’t exactly a people person but got the job done through determination and stoic patience.

Ignoring Delia’s defensiveness, he ploughed in. ‘You may have read that there was a second body found, a baby. Can you tell us anything about that?’ he said, not looking at Delia but studying her crowded mantelpiece instead. A photograph had caught his attention. A pretty, dark-eyed girl smiled out at him from the confines of a cheap silver frame. She looked familiar.

Delia saw where his gaze fell. ‘Well, you’re not going to get an answer by looking up there, are you? Sit down for God’s sake. You take up too much space,’ she said irritably, watching with grim amusement as he perched his big frame on the edge of another fat chair. ‘I don’t know anything about a baby, but I wouldn’t put anything past that family. They liked their secrets,’ she added enigmatically.

‘What secrets?’ Angie wanted to know.

‘Well if I knew that, they wouldn’t be secrets would they?’ Delia countered with a satisfied smile. ‘Look, I walked out of there the day Patsy died, and I never looked back. I don’t know anything about what you found there and I’ve had no contact with any of them since. I can’t help you.’

Ratcliffe glanced back up at the photo. ‘What about Rachel? Did you have contact with her?’

Delia shrugged. ‘For a while. Couldn’t help her family could she? Anyway, I haven’t seen her for getting on for twenty years. She moved away, cut herself off. Didn’t even go to the funeral.’

‘Did you go to the funeral?’ Angie asked.

Delia pursed her lips. ‘I did. Wanted to make sure the old cow really was dead.’

Ignoring this comment, Ratcliffe pressed on, ‘Why didn’t Rachel go? It was her mother after all.’

Delia looked away from him. Her eyes flicked rapidly from side to side before she answered, ‘They fell out. Don’t ask me why because I don’t know, but I think it was over money. Valerie’s sister-in-law died; left the lot to Rachel, which was when she buggered off to London. Rachel lives in Lila’s old flat now as far as I know. Look, they were a weird lot. Stella wouldn’t say boo to a goose, Frances was so far up her own backside she thought her shit didn’t stink, and Valerie wasn’t much better. She made Maggie Thatcher look like a pussycat. I just worked there. A long time ago.’

Ratcliffe sighed. This was going nowhere. ‘Is there anyone else you can think of who might have known the family?’

Delia shrugged again. ‘Not likely – they weren’t exactly the kind that had friends. And before you ask, no, I don’t know where Stella is.’

***

Ratcliffe had called it quits. They were getting nowhere fast with Delia Jones but they both knew that she was holding back. He could see her now, staring at them through her net curtains as they climbed into the car. Angie rammed the key into the ignition and said, ‘Well, she was like a breath of rotten air eh? What now, boss?’

He gazed out of the windscreen, looking at nothing in particular, while she waited for him to answer. She had fast-tracked through the force on a degree programme that meant quick promotion and instant status, but if he was honest, she was a bit out of her depth sometimes, especially around blokes like him. Older male coppers intimidated her. The only way she had learnt to deal with it was to refine a cool, detached persona that she hoped others saw as enigmatic and intelligent and pepper it with the odd bit of edgy humour.

The truth was, she was confused and often struggled to find a way forward, especially in cases like these. Everything she had learned in college flew out of the window when she was faced with someone like Delia Jones. The theory was there, she knew what she was supposed to achieve, but she just hadn’t developed the knack of engaging reluctant witnesses.

Ratcliffe just plugged away at them like an unstoppable force – he just didn’t go away until they gave in. ‘We’ll talk to Charlie Jones, then go back and see his mummy – until one of them gives us what they know. But first we go to the hospital and visit Frances.’

Chapter 5 (#ulink_7b7fbbb7-0397-5d90-96d0-78a8652ef928)

The first thing Rachel saw when she woke was Charlie sitting on a chair, feet up on the dressing table watching the TV with the sound off. She didn’t say anything at first, just watched him and tried to accommodate her shame and confusion. The aftermath of a fit was always the same: severe exhaustion and a strange sensation of derealisation. She couldn’t remember much of what had happened – other than she had been in a café and Charlie had walked in.