Watched: When Road Rage Follows You Home (32 page)

DI Ling made all of the introductions and then settled her probing blue eyes on Esther. ‘So, can you talk us through your evening, Ms Pooley?’

‘It’s Esther.’

‘I’d prefer to call you Ms or Mrs Pooley.’

‘Mrs, then.’

‘Fine. Can you talk us through your evening,
Mrs
Pooley.’

‘I was at home with my husband—’

‘For the record, that’s Mr Charlie Pooley, correct?’

‘Yes. We were cooking together, we watched television and then we went to bed.’

‘That’s all you did?’

‘Well, we did…couply stuff in bed.’

DI Ling nodded. ‘I need some timeframe to all of this. What time did you start cooking?’

‘Probably about half-past-five. We ate at around seven.’

‘And then?’

Esther shrugged. ‘I don’t know. We shared some wine, we left the dishes in the sink and we lay on the sofa.’

‘What time was that?’

‘Maybe eight?’

‘How long did you stay on the sofa for?’

‘Around three hours. There was some panel show thing on, then we watched
Groundhog Day
. That finished at eleven and we went upstairs.’

‘What did you do up there?’

Esther lowered her head slightly, flickering between the two officers and the camera. ‘Do you really want the details?’

‘I’m asking what time it was that you decided to go to sleep.’

‘Perhaps twenty-to-twelve? I was definitely asleep by midnight.’

‘And when did you wake up?’

‘When you started knocking this morning at half-six.’

DI Ling nodded again, shuffling papers in front of her and exchanging a look with the sergeant. This was clearly what they’d expected her to say.

‘So, just to confirm,’ DI Ling said, ‘to be absolutely, one hundred per cent certain, you’re saying you were with your husband for the entire night?’

‘Yes.’

‘He didn’t nip out at all?’

‘No.’

‘Not even for a quick five minutes for a cigarette?’

‘He doesn’t smoke.’

‘Not for ten minutes here to say hello to a neighbour?’

‘We don’t know anyone.’

‘And he was with you all of the evening?’

‘Yes.’

Another glance between the officers. DI Ling opened her mouth but Esther’s solicitor cut in first. ‘If you’re going to keep asking the same question over and over, then I’m going to stop the interview. Mrs Pooley, Esther, is here as a witness for her husband – she’s told you what you want to know and if you want to continue harassing her, then we’ll see how that looks on your evidence list against Mr Pooley, shall we?’

DI Ling was unmoved, ignoring the solicitor and focusing on Esther. ‘Where were you yesterday morning when your husband assaulted Mr Jamieson?’

‘At home – I didn’t know it had happened until he was arrested.’

‘And how did you feel about it when you found out?’

‘I—’

The solicitor cut in again, stretching a hand across in front of her. ‘—How Esther may or may not have felt is none of your concern and irrelevant to the case we’re supposed to be dealing with.’

There was a small silence as the radiator grumbled unhappily, despite it being summer. DS Best took an envelope from the table and pulled out two photographs, turning them over and putting them on the desk.

‘What do you think of those, Mrs Pooley?’ DI Ling asked.

Esther pored across the detail: vicious welts across a man’s chest, red gashes, purple marks. The second showed Dougie’s face, except that it was barely him. His left eyelid was closed and black, his nose had been squashed to the side. Dried black and red blood clung to his ear and there was a laceration diagonally across his head.

The solicitor leaned forward again. ‘It doesn’t matter what she thinks of these injuries – they’re nothing to do with her.’

DI Ling leaned forward, grabbing Esther’s gaze and not letting her go. ‘They
are
to do with her, though, aren’t they? Mr Jamieson was seriously assaulted at half-past-twelve last night. He says that Mr Pooley stormed around his house with a baseball bat and pushed his way inside yelling death threats. He then proceeded to beat Mr Jamieson into a near coma with that bat, only stopping when Mr Jamieson’s partner called the police. He did that to protect your honour: some big, strapping, six-foot giant picking on someone smaller than him to protect
your
honour. How do you feel about that?’

The solicitor cut in again. ‘It doesn’t matter how she feels about it—’

‘—It wasn’t him.’

Esther spoke defiantly, trying not to flinch under the glare of DI Ling.

‘You said you were sleeping at half-past-twelve – how do you know he didn’t sneak out?’

‘He didn’t.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I’m a light sleeper.’

It was a lie but Esther spoke with so much conviction that she almost convinced herself. She thought of Charlie telling her about the contents of Dougie’s shed – he must have snuck out one night to find that out. Light sleeper? Pah! Once she was out, she didn’t stir until the alarm began blaring. The past few weeks of struggling to drop off and waking up constantly had been an aberration brought upon by the circumstances. But knew it wasn’t him, not her Charlie.

‘I have statements from both Mr Jamieson and his partner positively identifying your husband as the attacker.’

‘It wasn’t him.’

‘I also have neighbour reports saying they heard a commotion.’

‘That could mean anything.’

‘Are you trying to tell me that everyone’s lying and it’s your husband who’s telling the truth?’

‘Yes.’

‘What if he’s not?’

‘He is.’

‘What if we find that bat and his fingerprints are on it?’

‘They won’t be.’

‘So what are you suggesting happened?’

DI Ling reclined in the chair, drumming her fingers on her knee as the solicitor leaned forward, doing his thing. He certainly knew his stuff. He said something about not speculating but Esther cut him off.

‘Dougie did it to himself.’ The solicitor and both detectives stared at her. ‘He either got Leah to beat him, or one of his friends, then she called you. They wanted to set Charlie up. It might have even been your Chief Inspector bloke – Dougie’s brother, he—’

Esther knew straight away she’d gone too far. Her solicitor tensed and thrust an arm across her as the two officers turned to face each other.

There was silence, broken by DI Ling’s firm granite voice. ‘Is there something you’d like to make a formal complaint about?’

‘No, I… I just know it wasn’t him.’

DI Ling coughed as if to clear the remarks away. ‘Going back to your original remark, why would Mr Jamieson do that?’

‘Because he has a thing about me. It’s been going on since we moved in a few weeks ago – you must have some of it on file…’

DI Ling nodded and the two officers exchanged another knowing look. This was clearly what Charlie had told them too.

‘…Some of it is on file – but it’s a two-way thing, isn’t it? We’ve got complaints for noise, we’ve—’

‘—What noise? There was no noise. Ask your officer, ask the next-door neighbours.’

‘…we’ve also got a statement from Mr Jamieson’s landlord saying that your husband went to him trying to get the victim evicted.’

‘
We’re
the victims!’

DI Ling nodded towards the photographs of Dougie’s shattered face and beaten body and, for a moment, nobody said anything.

When the officer spoke again, her voice had moved down an octave. ‘For the record, and just to be sure, I’m going to ask you one final time.’ She held a hand towards the solicitor before he could speak. ‘Where was your husband at half-past-midnight last night?’

Esther didn’t hesitate: ‘He was lying next to me in bed.’

FORTY-ONE: ESTHER

Charlie was sitting on the sofa, holding his head in his hands again, speaking in stunted sentences. Esther had been home for hours, expecting the call to say he’d been remanded. Then, just after five o’clock, the taxi had pulled up and out stepped his dishevelled-looking frame.

He didn’t want anything to eat or drink, instead sitting in a stunned state of inertia. Esther sat cross-legged at his feet, trying to get him to open up.

‘What are your bail conditions?’ she asked.

‘To live and sleep here and not to go within a hundred metres of Dougie, Leah or Aaron.’

‘Who’s Aaron?’

‘The landlord.’

‘Oh…’ Another thing Esther wished she didn’t know. ‘…did you call Alan?’

‘I’ve been suspended. They say attempted murder is a step too far, plus I think they’re just sick of it. I don’t blame them. They’re going to pay me, which is one thing, I suppose.’

‘What’s going to happen now?’

‘The police are waiting for medical reports from Dougie and then they or the CPS will make the decision whether to charge.’

‘What did Dad’s solicitor guy say?’

‘He says it’s touch and go. Apparently, you and me gave the same story—’

‘—The truth!’

‘Exactly. He says that will cause them a few problems because we’ve said exactly the same thing about timings. Obviously it’s our word versus Dougie and Leah’s. They’re a couple and so are we, so, to a degree, it cancels each other out. It’s like everything else that’s happened – one person’s word versus another’s. The solicitor reckons his neighbours don’t really count – they heard a commotion but that could have been anything. If Dougie did rope a mate in to beat him up, or got Leah to do it – that would’ve caused a noise too.’

‘The inspector said something about finding the baseball bat.’

‘What bat?’

‘I don’t know, I—’

Esther stopped mid-sentence, a creeping, horrifying thought crawling through her.

‘What if…’ she started, before standing and dashing to the back door. Outside, she opened the wheelie bin, delving through the contents on the top before turning in a circle. Charlie was standing behind her in the doorway.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘What if they left the bat somewhere here?’

Charlie stared at her, eyes slowly widening before the penny dropped. He said he was going to put some shoes on and disappeared back inside the house.

With the bin checked, Esther ran into the back garden. The red-brown stain from Patch was still in the centre of the lawn, a constant reminder of what Dougie was capable of. Her eyes hunted around for something unfamiliar – and then she saw it. Her allotment patch wasn’t drenched with petrol any longer, it had been watered and then dug up. The soil was ever so slightly still damp, clumped together into blobs of clay, rather than crumbling earth.

Esther grabbed her trowel and began to spoon the soil to the side, before realising it was quicker to use her hands. Charlie arrived, standing behind her on the lawn, watching.

It only took a couple of minutes for Esther to uncover the thin wooden stem of a baseball bat. The wood was caked with mud, the handle grimy and sodden – but there it was.

‘
…What if we find that bat and his fingerprints are on it…?
’

Esther turned, holding her arms out so Charlie couldn’t step onto the soil. ‘Don’t touch it. That’s what they want. If the bat’s left here, the police will come – if you take it, you’ll leave your marks on it.’

‘What can we do?’

Esther turned back to the ground and brushed away another mound of dirt, thinking quickly. ‘I’ll sort the ground out here and then go in my car and dump the bat somewhere. You stay inside. If the police call around to ask anything, or search, then there’s nothing to find.’

‘Are you—?’

‘—I’ll be fine. Just get away from here: I don’t want your footprints to be in the soil, or your fingerprints on the bat. Go and get me some carrier bags.’

Charlie stared at her for a few moments, then glanced at the bat.

‘Go!’ Esther hissed.

This time, he turned and ran for the house.

Esther’s heart was pumping. How had this happened? One stupid moment in the car and it had all come down to this? Dougie was framing her husband for attempted murder? While she and Charlie had been at the police station, someone had come around and planted the weapon? The surface of the allotment patch was almost dry but the underneath was still damp, so they must have been around sometime in the morning. They could even have done it while she and Charlie were sleeping. They were just lucky the police hadn’t been around yet.

Charlie returned quickly, holding a handful of bags out to her as she shooed him away from the site. She pulled the bat out, put two bags at either end, and then tied another around the centre. When she was done, she clambered to her feet and began piling the soil back into the hole until it was filled. She used the trowel to smooth it over until it looked almost as it had in the first place. If the police came, they would notice it had been recently dug up, but at least there was nothing to find. Plus, she’d just tell the partial truth and say that she’d been sowing seeds.

Charlie was standing by the corner of the house, anxiously looking towards the front.

‘Anyone there?’ Esther asked.

‘No.’

She ran across the back lawn, holding the bagged-up bat in one hand and fumbling for her car keys in the other. She was covered in dirt but it wasn’t worth spending ten minutes cleaning herself up before going out in case the police came during that time. She plipped open the locks and tossed the bat into the boot, heading for the driver’s seat.

‘Esther.’

She turned to see Charlie staring at her. ‘I love you.’

She offered him the best smile she could. ‘So you sodding well should.’

In her mind, she could feel the police on their way to excavate the garden and search the house. She had to go.

Esther threw herself into the driver’s seat and turned the key. The radio sprang to life, blaring some dance nonsense. Kids these days.

Clutch in, first gear, GO!

The car surged forward with a screech of tyres far quicker than she meant. Esther turned the steering wheel hard to her right, trying to change gear with her other hand just as the red and brown flash zipped across from her right.

CRUNCH!