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

Chloe was even living with Peter and Vanessa. He was totally shocked when I told him.’

D.S. Markham pulled a face. ‘What? Peter Vale attacks Martin Jarvis so badly that he ends up in the prison hospital but doesn’t tell him that he has his daughter living with him?’

You took my daughter, so I took yours. Vanessa’s words came tumbling back to her.

Frankie’s brain blundered around, trying to tie it all together.

‘Listen! Jack orchestrated it all! He was going to kill us!’

The D.S. regarded her as though she was looking at a naive child.

‘The question is, Frankie, do you trust everything Martin Jarvis has told you?’

The D.S.’s head tick-tocked again. She pursed her lips as though she was trying not to smile.

‘Let’s look at the options here, then. Let me play devil’s advocate for a moment. Let’s say Martin Jarvis was involved with Jack Vale in some very dark and shady enterprises. We already know that Martin and Jack are associated through drug-dealing—’

Frankie interrupted her. ‘But Martin wasn’t a dealer like Jack! He only did bits and pieces. He was just small fry, recreational, that’s all—’

The D.S. continued as though she hadn’t spoken.

‘—Martin and Jack become involved in some shady stuff and somehow Charlotte Vale gets lured in, but she doesn’t like what she finds. She’s going to spill the beans, so she gets murdered to shut her up. But Martin does the prison time for it and resents Jack for walking away scot free.’

‘But Jack already told us—’

The D.S. held up her hand. ‘Now just go along with my theory for a while and let’s unravel it a bit further. Martin believes Jack owes him. Martin threatens Jack. So Jack gets his father involved, hoping he’ll kill Martin in prison, but Peter messes up. Peter Vale now knows too much, so Martin takes him out too. Martin then goes into that house with you, finds Jack there, and sees an ideal opportunity to get rid of him once and for all. How about that?’

Her whole tone was ladled with glib sarcasm. Frankie stared at the desk. She concentrated on the scratches and whorls on the tabletop, seeing patterns and faces: a goblin with a hooked nose, an elephant with three legs, a leering pumpkin with hollowed-out eyes.

She looked up suddenly, ‘Where are Chloe and Vanessa?’

‘We haven’t been able to locate them. We don’t know where they are right now. We’re trying, though. A neighbour said they’d just gone away for a couple of days. But we will trace them, rest assured of that… Now, come on, tell me what you think about my Jack and Martin scenario?’

But Frankie could only think about Chloe. She felt her mind drifting: Vanessa’s plan was obvious: Jack had told her to get her as far away as possible. But what would she do now Peter and Jack were dead? There was no one to corroborate anything.

‘Okay Frankie, let’s do this your way.’ The D.S. pushed her chair back a little and put her hands flat on the table. ‘None of what I’ve said is true. It’s Jack Vale from beginning to end: he’s a sex offender, a murderer and a drug dealer, yes? So this vital evidence, this hairband, this necklace, this photograph, just explain how come you’ve got it all? Seems odd, doesn’t it?’ She looked at her awry. ‘You said you told the police all about it in your earlier statement, but all we have are a few hastily scribbled notes. Why didn’t you give this hairband and necklace to the police if it was so crucial to this murder?’

Frankie shook her head.

‘There are so many things and actions that you don’t seem to be able to explain, Ms Turner.’ D.S. Markham paused. ‘And just so you are aware, Martin says he doesn’t have the photograph of Jack Vale that you referred to.’

Frankie’s eyes batted up.

‘He also says that you and Charlotte had a fight at the party the night she died.’

There was a pause where the two women looked at each other. The moments ticked by. So what was Martin doing: Shifting? Deflecting? Denying?

‘What we’ve got so far is a dead girl’s necklace and hairband in your possession, and her step-brother and step-father dead on the same night. Is that right?’

She noted the colour of the D.S.’s eyes. They were a kind of washed-out blue: muddy and a little dull, not sharp and bright and full of clarity.

‘And you’re wanting me to believe, what? That it wasn’t Martin Jarvis who killed her, but Peter or Jack Vale. Is that right?’

Frankie looked down into the surface of the tea and watched the steam rise.

‘So take me through it, frame by frame, Frankie. That night when you went down to the canal boat. What did you do? What did you see?’

She remembered the keyed-up pounding swirl of emotion. She’d wanted a row – to scream out – but when it came to it… When she saw…

Frankie scoured her memory.

‘I thought it was… I assumed it was… But now I think—’

What did she see?

Charlotte was gone.

Jack was gone.

Peter was gone.

Martin had done fifteen years of a prison sentence that she had orchestrated.

All she had was a broken necklace and a hairband and a bunch of weirdo letters pointing nowhere.

Nothing she had to say now was going to change anything. No one wanted to open this case to get justice for an ex-offender with dodgy background.

She frowned. ‘I think I’ve got it all wrong. I was only seventeen. I was drunk, I’d been taking drugs. It was dark. I’m making connections where there aren’t any. Maybe Charlotte was wearing a necklace that night, or maybe she wasn’t – who knows?’

‘Who indeed.’

No evidence, no corroboration, no point. It’ll never stick with the CPS. But she could see by the D.S.’s face that there were things that might: the death of Jack and Peter Vale for a start off, and then abandoning a baby. Frankie saw her future, what was left of it, being mapped out on