Keep My Secrets by Elena Wilkes (large ebook reader .txt) 📗

‘He’s not my boyfriend…’ Frankie watches as she settles herself, organising her pen and pad of paper. ‘You’re holding him on what charges?’

‘I’m not at liberty to discuss the details of the people we’re detaining, I’m afraid.’ The D.S. looks at Frankie disapprovingly. She rests her hands on the pad, fingers linked, leaning forward slightly as though waiting for Frankie to speak.

‘I’ve told you everything.’

‘Really?’ The D.S. twitches an eyebrow. ‘Okay. Well… Let’s look at that from our point of view. A man has died in a house fire, in a house that you broke into through a window, using Mr Jarvis’s Swiss army knife. Is that correct?’

Frankie nods.

‘You’ve already told us that you were intending to remove a laptop from the property, but which is no longer in your possession, and all the evidence you claim to be proof of his sexual offences, has been lost.’

‘But there was a camera—’ Frankie starts.

‘Many houses have security cameras, Ms Turner. It’s not that unusual.’

Frankie stares across at this woman who is probably only a few years older than herself. She can tell what she’s thinking: she’s an open book. Her eyes move from Frankie’s hair to her nails and then to the state of her jacket. They’re assessing and judgemental. Her gaze says a lot: that she may have designer clothes, a nice car, and a fancy rural postcode, but the smell of her background comes off her in waves. There’s the stink of trouble in her DNA, and they both know it.

‘Jack Vale was involved with drugs,’ Frankie repeats for what feels like the millionth time. ‘I’m telling you, he killed Charlotte, his stepsister. He told us. He said—’

‘He told you? You’re absolutely sure that he said that: word for word?’

‘Not precisely, but he—’

‘So he didn’t say it?’

‘He told us that she was “his” and he was angry that Martin had touched his property.’

‘He was angry that Martin Jarvis had murdered his sister?’

‘No!’

‘He wasn’t angry, then?’

‘Christ!’ Frankie slams her hand on the table.

‘You seem very upset, Ms Turner.’ D.S. Markham sits back, frowning a little. ‘Would you like me to get you that cup of tea?’

‘Look. We went to the house because Jack told me that Peter Vale was a danger to Chloe—’

‘Jack gave you information to protect your daughter?’

‘Yes.’

She can immediately see how contradictory this all sounds.

‘Although you haven’t yet explained how Chloe came to be living there without you. Odd isn’t it? She’s only fifteen, after all.’ The D.S. puts her head on one side like a bird, but that’s where the resemblance ends: there’s clearly nothing small and sweet about her at all.

‘I – She—’ Frankie stumbles. ‘She wasn’t there alone. She was with me for a while—’

‘—A ‘while.’’ The D.S.’s head moves to the other side. ‘We’ll need to define what ‘a while’ means, I think…’

The lie burns hot in her cheeks.

‘But let’s come back to that later,’ the detective switches tack, smiling.

Frankie can feel the threat being applied as leverage.

‘So let’s get back to where we were.’ The D.S. picks up the pen and taps it on the table. ‘You’re saying that Jack Vale, this drug-dealer, confessed that he had indecent images of his stepsister, which his father, Peter Vale, took the blame for, and indeed was prepared to do a six-month prison sentence for. Have I got that about right?’

‘Yes,’ Frankie nods emphatically. ‘Martin knew that Charlotte Vale was scared out of her mind and that something bad was happening to her, but she wouldn’t say who, or what, she was scared of. Jack had a hidden camera in her room. I saw the photographs that he’d taken… I saw one of Chloe—’ She breaks off suddenly remembering the photograph of Chloe that Jack had given her in the car. ‘I took it when she wasn’t looking.’

His grinning face comes back to her and she’s instantly repulsed.

‘I don’t know what Jack did to Charlotte. But I know it was so awful she couldn’t even talk about it.’

The D.S. consults the pad in front of her.

‘The police believed that Charlotte had been sexually assaulted; that she’d been raped.’

The hardness of her statement shudders the air.

‘But the DNA evidence was washed away by the amount of time she was in the water.’ Frankie can feel the D.S.’s eyes raking her face. ‘I read all the statements that are on file, Ms Turner, and it was your evidence, your very compelling evidence I might add, that put Martin Jarvis behind bars. Are you now saying that evidence was a lie?’ She gives her a quizzical sideways look.

‘It wasn’t a lie… Not a lie, no. I was mistaken, I made a mistake—’

‘But you said you saw Martin Jarvis. You said you were sure of it.’

‘I said I saw him, yes—’

‘But now you’re saying you didn’t see him, and that you couldn’t be sure, which means that what you said in a court of law, Ms Turner, was, indeed, a lie.’

Her head tips to the other side again.

‘So how do you explain the necklace and the hairband?’ Frankie feels suddenly exhausted and close to tears.

‘The necklace and the hairband?’

‘The night she died, Martin said Charlotte was wearing a necklace.’

‘Martin Jarvis said.’ The D.S.’s tone is unpleasant.

‘Yes. When her body was recovered from the water, she had marks around her neck that were never explained, and the necklace was missing. Until Vanessa, her mother, gave it to me as a gift. Somehow it got from Charlotte to her jewellery box.’

D.S. Markham’s eyes flicker. ‘You have this necklace?’

‘Yes. At home.’

‘And the hairband?’

‘It was sent to me – with the letters… Stalking-type notes. I came in and told the police about them. You have all this on file.’

The D.S.’s chin lifts a little in query. ‘But you’ve already said that someone called Matthew Jarrow sent you notes when he got out of prison. And the hairband doesn’t appear in the evidence file.’

Frankie falters. She takes a breath. ‘Matthew Jarrow: that wasn’t the truth, and I took the hairband… My husband