The Guilty Couple(83)
‘No!’ Dom bellows.
‘Leave it, Dom,’ Dani snaps. ‘Or should I say, Matt?’
Dominic jolts and takes a step backwards, repelled by the mention of his real name. I don’t wait for his response, instead I quicken my pace, certain that one or both of them will come sprinting after us and rip Grace away. We’re fifty feet away from the glass doors of the exit. I don’t know where we’ll go or what we’ll do once we step outside but I’ll figure that out when I get there. All I care about now is getting my daughter as far away from her father as I can.
‘Oh, wait!’ Grace slips her hand out of mine and dashes back towards Dom.
‘No, Grace. Come back!’ I run after her, terrified she’s changed her mind and she’s decided to stay with him instead. But she doesn’t break up the argument he’s having with Dani so she can throw herself into his arms. She grabs the handle of a suitcase and hauls it back in my direction.
Dom moves to run after her but Dani grabs his wrist, lightning fast, and twists it behind his back.
‘Dominic Sutherland.’ Her voice rings out, clear and loud. ‘I am arresting you for the murder of Jack Law …’
I feel hollowed out and empty as the cab carries us out of Heathrow and back towards the M25. The cabbie I owed money to was long gone when we left the airport but a friendly older woman, travelling to Cape Town to see her daughter, lent me her phone so I could look up the number of Ayesha’s university and give her a call. Ayesha booked us an Uber and she’s left work to meet us at her flat. After I told her what had happened in the garage she insisted I get the cab to a hospital so I could be checked over but I can’t face sitting in A&E for the next however many hours. I’ll go later. Right now I just need to be somewhere safe.
I should feel happy, with Grace sitting beside me – her heavy suitcase on her knees because she wouldn’t let the driver put it in the back – and the knowledge that Dominic will be going to prison for a very long time, but I’m broken inside. Jack is dead, murdered for loving me, and Smithy’s in hospital, beaten up and broken for being my friend. Grace has told me everything she saw and heard back in the house and if Dominic didn’t kill Nancy when he threw her across the hall she’ll be arrested too. Knowing they’ll both end up in prison won’t bring Jack back and it won’t heal Smithy’s wounds. Without that travel bag no one will ever know what Dani did and I’ll never prove that I didn’t commit a crime. But I have my daughter back, and that’s all that matters – assuming Social Services let her live with me, that is. Relief and grief crash over me like a wave and exhausted tears prick at my eyes. I reach into my pocket in the slim hope that I tucked a tissue in there at some point last night.
‘Mum!’ Grace nudges me, as my fingers close over something smooth and solid. ‘Mum, look!’
‘What is it, love?’ I watch as she unzips the suitcase on her lap, expecting her to show me a gadget or a fashionable item of clothing she owns. I’ll feign interest in it, whatever it is.
‘Dad and Nancy had a fight,’ she says quietly, keeping one eye on the driver in the front of the cab. ‘They didn’t realise, but I was watching from upstairs.’ She lifts the lid of the case a couple of inches, just enough for me to see what’s inside. She looks at me expectantly, waiting for my reaction.
‘Half a million pounds,’ she breathes.
Chapter 54
DOMINIC
Five Months Later
The shirt Esther provided for Dominic to wear to court is a half an inch too small around the collar and, with the button done up, he feels like he’s being throttled. It’s also a viscose-mix fabric and his armpits and back are slick with sweat under his heavy suit jacket. He runs a finger around the collar, then, suddenly aware of the jury filing back into the courtroom, drops his hand to his side. Only a guilty man would feel hot under the collar and if there’s the smallest chance of him walking out the courtroom as a free man he doesn’t want one of the journalists in the viewing gallery to write about how shifty he looked as the verdict came in.
He isn’t hopeful. Not in the slightest. The prosecution barrister painted Dominic to be a desperate man, a man who’d lost his savings, lost his wife and then lost his temper when confronted by the man who had been blackmailing him. Dominic, the barrister said, was a man living a fantasy life he’d become so embedded in that he’d been prepared to go to any lengths to protect it, even if that meant killing a man. The forensics were damning. Dom’s DNA was all over the body and his fingerprints were on the masking tape. Minuscule amounts of Jack’s blood were found on the skirting board in the hallway and on the living room carpet and the fireplace surround.
Olivia’s testimony slammed the last nail into the coffin of his defence. She openly sobbed on the witness stand as she told the court the terror she’d felt at being locked in the garage and how traumatised she’d been to discover the body of the man she’d loved. She didn’t mention the fact that Dominic had framed her to stop her questioning Jack’s disappearance, which Dominic found strange. If their roles had been reversed he’d have shouted his innocence from the rooftops, taken down everyone who had framed him, and then fleeced the government for miscarriage of justice. Not Liv, though. She was as weak and guileless as she’d ever been. She’d got Grace back. She probably accepted that as her win.