My Husband's Wife(64)

Another thought strikes me. ‘Who helped you?’

A smug grin. ‘When I was in prison, I advised a lot of people on their financial affairs. Gave them advice on insurance and other stuff. I didn’t take any money. But they knew I’d call in favours.’

‘But if they were inside, how could they help you?’

‘Some have been released. Others have contacts on the outside to do things for them. Prison life is like that. Not that I’d recommend it, mind you.’

This is unbelievable. Yet at the same time my mind goes back to the time when Joe agreed to meet a man for ‘table football’ in the prison. ‘Three p.m. on the dot,’ he said. ‘In the community lounge.’ At the time I thought it friendly, albeit a bit out of character. Was this really a business appointment?

‘I could report you.’

‘Really? If you do, I’ll have to say what happened the last time we met.’

‘What do you mean?’ I stammer.

‘Come on, Lily. Don’t play games. Not with me. Those sticker books you gave me in prison are nothing compared with the last present.’

His voice might sound firm but his hands are shaking.

A sickening thought hits me like a sledgehammer. ‘You did it, didn’t you? You did kill Sarah. You murdered your girlfriend.’

An older woman with large emerald-green drop earrings is looking at us now from the neighbouring table. Joe’s eyes grow hard. ‘Be careful what you say.’

‘But you did.’ My instinct is certain.

Joe is now talking in a low voice. ‘Why do you think I arranged to bump into you this evening? To tell you what happened. But remember. When you’ve been cleared of something, you can’t be re-tried for the same crime. I felt you deserved the truth, Lily.’

My heart starts to beat really fast. He seems tense as well. Beating his fists against his knees as though playing a drum.

‘She came in pissed, like I said. Late, too. Then she was sick, but she didn’t want me in the bathroom. I knew she was trying to hide something. When she was shutting the door, I noticed a mark on her neck.’

I have a flash of that mark on Tony’s neck from earlier. ‘A love bite?’

‘Love?’ He seems to weigh this up. ‘That depends on how you define love, doesn’t it? A bite can also be made in anger.’

I’m losing patience at Joe’s constant questioning of non-literal language. ‘How did she get this mark?’

‘Now that’s more relevant.’ He nods as though I’m a child in class who has finally asked the right question. ‘When I accused her, she said the mark was mine. But she was lying. I don’t do that sort of thing.’ More drumming of the knees. ‘I said we’d talk when she was clean, but she wouldn’t let me run her bath like I usually did. Kept calling me a weirdo. So I went and turned the boiler up. Thought I’d teach her a lesson. But she was still screaming at me. Said she’d found someone else, someone normal. That’s when I lost it. How could I let Sarah leave me for someone else? I pushed her. She was so drunk that I hardly needed to touch her. So simple, really. She just fell into the water.’

There’s a shocked silence. On my part. He doesn’t seem fazed at all.

‘You didn’t try to get her out?’

A shrug. ‘She hurt me. She was leaving me. So no, I didn’t try to get her out. I walked out. Then I made a cup of tea. Cleaned the floor because it was sticky from her vomit. I told myself I’d give her thirty minutes to pull herself together. I didn’t mean to kill her. Just teach her a lesson. When I went back in, I found her staring up at me. Purple and red. I’ve never cared for those colours. That’s when I rang 999 and told them the story I originally gave you. If it hadn’t been for that bastard of a neighbour, and Sarah’s stupid made-up stories, I would have been all right.’

I can’t quite believe the way he’s talking. He’s so unemotional – just like the police said.

Joe continues. ‘But then I found out about the boiler problem – real stroke of luck – and realized that if I hired the right person, I might have a chance on appeal. Wasn’t sure about you at the beginning, to be honest. So I set you a test and, I have to say it, Lily, you proved your worth.’

I’m stunned by his lack of repentance. ‘But the mole who sent you those figures? Who was that? And why didn’t you use the evidence sooner?’

Joe snorted. ‘You’re not getting it, are you, Lily? The mole didn’t exist. Or the figures. Great bit of luck, that was. I saw the newspaper stories that had just started to come out, and made them up. No one could prove my boiler hadn’t been faulty.’ A smug look flits over his face. ‘There’s some very useful textbooks in the prison library, you know. Plumbing and all sorts.’

There is a long silence. I am too shocked to talk. Joe, by his own admission, is after all a murderer. When he ‘tested’ me at the beginning to see if I understood the meaning of those figures, it wasn’t to see if I was up to the job. It was to see if I was gullible enough to believe him. Not only that, but he played on his idiosyncrasies to me. Did he already know then about Daniel? It wouldn’t surprise me.

No wonder he told the court that he didn’t want compensation but only ‘justice’. It was just another way to fool the jury into believing his innocence. Just as he fooled me.