Special Relationship (33 page)

She took his hand. “I have more to tell,” she said.

“Do you want to?”

“I have to.”

“You have to, why?”

“So that we can be together and maybe that I can start to live again.”

“Let's go outside. I need a cigarette.”

On the terrace, Nick sat on a seat and Alex beside him.

“I'll light it for you,” she said, taking a cigarette out of the pack she found in the inside pocket of his jacket, puffing once and then putting it into his mouth. Nick smoked with one hand, his other held Alex's tightly.

“OK, so the rest of that night is a blur. I now know they gave me medication and apparently I spent the night at an hotel. There were three women with me, a police woman, the counsellor and Katie.

“I felt really drowsy from the drugs they had given me but I still couldn't sleep. I'd never felt so tired – or so ill – in my life. I was battling the drugs in the hope that I could stay awake long enough to kill myself, although first I wanted to figure out what had happened, like what had caused the fire.

“Then I'd think that I was just having a nightmare and that everything would be fine in the morning and Megan would come in and jump on top of me, like she did every morning.

“But when I started to come round the police woman who was with me told me they were investigating the fire as a possible case of arson. I wasn't shocked. Not only did I know it was arson I knew who had caused it – David, the evil shit, Harris.”

“But he wouldn't kill his own daughter?”

“Don't you see? He didn't mean to kill his daughter – he meant to kill me. He thought that Megan was on a sleepover at her friend's house and he'd decided in his very warped mind that if he couldn't have me then no one would. He meant to kill me, not Megan or my mother.

“And I think every day that if had I bothered to call him and to tell him that Megan's sleepover was cancelled, she would still be alive. Sooner or later, I'd most likely be dead but she'd be alive.”

“Where is she now?”

“She is buried at Cypress Hills Cemetery, Brooklyn. It's a beautiful place, rolling hills and great big trees. Just wish I could find it in myself to return to New York and visit.”

“And he got life?”

“No Nick, he's free.”

“What?”

“Our great American justice system, the more money you have the more your chance of getting off – and his clever and very highly-paid lawyers financed by his parents selling property managed to convince a jury that he wasn't the one who set the fire. He got away with murder, the murder of my daughter.”

“Wait.” She went back inside and came back with a page of the New York Times, dated November 2008 and headlined “HARRIS ACQUITTED.” There were pictures of Alex, Megan, her mother and David Harris. Nick read the report.

“
A mistrial was declared yesterday in the case of a man accused of murdering his daughter and mother-in-law in an arson attack on a house in Queen's last August.

With the jury deadlocked after ten days of deliberation, Judge Milton Chapman said that there was no possibility of a satisfactory outcome after they had told him for the third time that they could not reach a majority decision.

Six-year-old Megan Harris and Ella Anderson, 55, both perished in the fire which police found was started with the use of an accelerant in a downstairs room.

State prosecutors produced autopsy evidence which suggested Mrs Anderson, whose body was found at the bottom of the stairs, was bludgeoned prior to her death. The defence claimed the head injury might have been the result of her falling down the stairs trying to escape the blaze and, even if she had been struck, there was no evidence that their client was responsible.

An accelerant found on the accused and in a wash basin at the home of his parents where he lived was found to be Coleman fuel used in camping stoves and lanterns, but forensic scientists were unable to determine whether the fuel found at both scenes came from the same source. The defence proved that Mr Harris had been on a camping trip two days previously and presented testimony from both parents that he never left the house on the night of the fire.

Footprints found on the driveway of the house matched shoes owned by Harris but a forensic team could not date them precisely enough to conclude they were made on the night of the fire. The defence team referred the jury to the absence of any shoe marks on the lawn outside a broken window through which the arsonist was believed to have entered the house.

Two jurors spoke to reporters after the trial. One of them, David Wilkes, 54, tears in his eyes, said he was “sorry beyond belief for a good mother and daughter, and the daughter's mother, for whom they couldn't bring justice.” Another, Jennifer Watson, 25, said: “Did we let off a murderer today? I think we might have done, but we had to be beyond reasonable doubt and we couldn't be with the evidence presented.”

Prosecutors said they would review the case before deciding whether to press for a retrial.”

“And there was no retrial?” Nick asked.

“No, there wasn't.”

“And your mother likely being bludgeoned?”

“The defence argued that the smashed window showed it wasn't him who set the fire because he would have had keys access, his parents owning the place, and he wouldn't have needed to break in.

“But obviously that was a red herring he set. He was lighting the fire when my mother probably heard a noise and went to investigate. She may have recognised him, I don't know, but one thing for sure is she wouldn't have fled down the stairs to escape the fire and leave Megan in her bedroom. So he hits her and starts the fire.”

“After the trial you left New York?”

“I went to stay with a friend in Syracuse once all the police stuff was out of the way. I went back to New York for the trial. Then I went back to Syracuse and rented a place. Months went by and the day after I was told there would be no retrial I booked a ticket on the ship to Southampton. It left two weeks later and the only time I returned to New York City was to board that ship.

“It was the new Queen Mary, and I felt guilty about the luxury of it all – but it was the only ship I could find and, like I said, I wanted to try to cleanse my mind as best as I could, even though I knew that Megan's death would haunt me forever. Everyone else on board was having a great time. I was just escaping. And as we sailed out of the harbour I watched the Statue of Liberty disappear from view. The fucking irony of it - he was free, I was in prison for the rest of my life.

“When I arrived in England I said that I was just a tourist. Then I battled immigration for a couple of years before finally being given indefinite leave to stay. And I changed my name so no one would find me, not my friends, my sister and particularly the fuck that killed my daughter. ”

“Not your sister?”

“She asked me at our mother's funeral why I hadn't told him Megan's sleepover had been cancelled. I told her because I didn't know he would set the fucking house on fire. First time I've sworn in church.”

“So you had to be sure about me, hence the private detective?”

“Yes, infidelity ruined my life and, I'm sorry Nick, but I couldn't let it happen again. And then there were the text messages.”

“Text messages?”

Alex pressed some buttons on her phone and handed it to him. “From the time I first met you I have been warned about you by someone unknown.”

He scrolled the messages, knowing that Katherine had also received a mysterious text when they were in New York. And he knew that one of Alex's texts he couldn't deny – he had slept with Katherine on that business trip shortly before he'd made love to her. But he realised there was no way he could discuss it now. “I'll find out who sent these,” he said.

“I need to go now. I want you to think alone, and I'm going away for a short time by myself and with no phone, so I can think too. I do want to be with you, but now trust in you can only come from what you promise me, no halfwit private eye, and I want you to appreciate what a huge leap of faith I would be taking.

“But one thing - don't come back if the messages are true and you are not the person I hope – think – you are. I vowed to Megan I would never love another man again. Don't take that betrayal of her lightly.”

The next day Nick told Katherine that he wanted to see both her and
Tavis for a meeting to discuss Alex Anderson. She said that Tavis was at a football game in Scotland but she'd contact him and tell him to come back as soon as he could.

Alex called Kerry and told her of the previous night's events and that she was going away – she hadn't decided where yet - for a few days, without phone, just to be by herself, think and to recover from recent events. Kerry said she'd look after the office and to take as much time as she liked.

“I suppose there's not a great deal to do now I've lost us the Hensen contract,” Alex said.

“We'll have it back in no time, you'll see.”

“Hope you are right, babe.”

Alex then spent time searching the internet for somewhere to go. Has to be the sea, she thought. Brighton would be too lively while Bournemouth would remind her of her time with Nick. She considered
Stonehaven in Scotland with its dramatic landscape and castles, but was put off by the journey time. Then she discovered Cromer in Norfolk, a blue flag beach, Victorian buildings and a beautiful medieval church. She was not religious, but often sat in St Helen's in London to find sanctuary and calm, and to think of Megan. She took solace in lighting candles for her – and thought the Church was under appreciated, even by atheists like herself.

She booked the last room available – due to a cancellation - at The Red Lion Hotel which overlooked the beach and then paid for the train tickets which she would collect at the station. Travel light, she thought, as she put jeans, T-shirts and underwear into a holdall. Anything else she could buy when she arrived.

At Liverpool Street she bought two magazines and a newspaper in the hope they might keep her mind off of Nick Hensen for the three-hour journey. She bought a pack of sandwiches and replacement earphones for the ones she had forgotten to pack before boarding the 12.14 train.

In Mayfair Nick wanted to know the “news on
Tavis”, barely giving Katherine the time to hang up on her phone call.

“His flight lands tomorrow morning at ten. He'll be here by one,” she said, looking at him and sensing somehow his mood had changed for the first time since the events at The Savoy. She wondered whether he'd seen Alex and became even more apprehensive about what he might say the next day.

At the end of the pier, the Pavilion
Theatre, a hauntingly beautiful Victorian structure, was promoting their summer show, “a mixture of all that's best in seaside entertainment, comedy, dance and magic.” Alex decided to get a ticket for the next day, not for the entertainment but just to see inside the building.

She then wan
dered the small lanes of the town, spending the last hour before the shops closed buying makeup and toiletries. She felt greatly unburdened after explaining her past to Nick. That evening she sat in her hotel room with a bottle of red wine to finish The Magus.

The book ended
with the quote from a Latin poem, “Cras amet qui numquam amavit quique amavit cras amet”. She looked up the meaning on the internet.

“Let those love now who've never loved; let those who've loved, love yet again.”

She lay over and spent the hours before sleep thinking of the past, but also, for the first time in a long time, the future.

In the morning her first thought was to reach for her phone before she remembered she had purposefully left it at her flat. She felt at the same time both protected and vulnerable without it.

Nick dressed casually for his meeting with Tavis and Katherine. He had run through so many scenarios that he was confident in what he was going to say. He didn't need to dress like the founder and head of a big financial company, especially for two people he still liked a lot. He was though more jittery about the meeting than he expected, just in case he had got anything wrong.

Katherine looked nervous too. She came into his office after he had arrived and briefed him on the day's schedule. “A couple of conference calls this morning and, if you want to do it, a Radio 4 interview – recorded – for a financial spot on the Today programme tomorrow about the EU crisis. I said I'd get back to them?”

“Yeah, I'll do it,” he said. “Thanks.”

She waited for him to give a clue about the meeting but none came and she left the office, looking in vain at her phone to see if there had been any guidance from
Tavis. She checked her watch and decided that it couldn't start or end soon enough.

Tavis
arrived on time, appearing ebullient after his trip to Scotland – Hibernian had won 2-0. “Is he in?” he asked her as she reached for the printer to pull out some notes she had written about the post-Savoy meeting.

“Yes, just let me get this and we'll go in.”

“Are you OK?”

“I'm fine,
Tavis...well maybe a bit concerned about what this might be about. It's just that he seems different...you don't know anything, do you?”