The Retreat(85)

DI Snaith held up a hand. ‘I’ll come to that in a minute.’

‘But—’

‘Please, Mrs Marsh, I need you to be patient, just for a minute.’

I squeezed Julia’s hand. It was cold. I turned back to DI Snaith and DC Hawkins.

I kept my voice calm. ‘What about Shirley and Malcolm?’

‘Malcolm Jones died from his heart condition,’ DI Snaith said. ‘But Heledd admits to confronting him – threatening him, I should say – the morning before he died, telling him not to talk to Ms Sullivan. It seems likely that the stress of the situation contributed to his death.’

‘But it’s not something we’ll ever be able to prove in court,’ DC Hawkins added.

‘How did Zara die?’ I asked.

‘We won’t get the coroner’s report for a while, but Heledd said she led Zara to the chapel, telling her she had something important to show her, something related to her investigation. She pushed her down the stairs to the crypt. We think she broke both her legs during the fall. And Heledd left her there.’

My whole body went cold. ‘Left her to die. Of dehydration?’

The detectives’ silence told me I was right. I hung my head, imagining Zara lying there in agony, unable to climb the stairs, cold and growing increasingly thirsty and hungry, her body shutting down. A slow, aware death. It was my greatest nightmare.

I forced myself to shake the image off though I knew it would return, deep in the night. That it would haunt me for the rest of my life.

‘So what about Shirley?’ I asked. ‘Did Heledd confess to killing her?’

DI Snaith replied. ‘She says it was an accident. They were arguing at the top of the stairs, after the wake. Heledd was furious that Shirley had agreed to talk to you and she was convinced her mother was going to tell you the truth.’

‘What truth?’ Julia asked.

‘I’ll come to that in a second. Heledd said her mother tried to get past her. She was drunk and wanted to lie down before Mr Radcliffe here turned up. Heledd blocked her way, they struggled for a second and Mrs Roberts ended up at the bottom of the stairs with a broken neck. Heledd says she checked her pulse, realised she was dead and fled the scene.’

‘That’s bullshit,’ I said. ‘She’d already killed Zara by pushing her down the stairs. It’s her MO.’

‘Maybe,’ DI Snaith said. ‘Although she’s confessed to the other murders.’

‘She keeps talking about needing to confess her sins,’ added DC Hawkins.

‘And “the sins of the mother and father”?’ I asked. ‘That’s what she was saying last night.’

Snaith nodded. ‘Again, I’ll come to that. But regarding her mother’s death, even though Heledd is clearly terrified, she doesn’t seem to regret her mother’s death. Her attitude is that her mother was ungrateful for everything Heledd was doing, trying to protect her. She says Mrs Roberts wanted to be punished. She wanted to atone before she died so she could, as Heledd puts it, face St Peter at the pearly gates with a clear conscience.’

I was pretty sure I knew, now, what Shirley and Heledd’s father had done. But I waited for the detectives to continue.

DC Hawkins said, ‘It seems Heledd was far more concerned about protecting her father. Concerned, that was, until the Red Widow told her to confess.’ She rolled her eyes.

The hairs stood up on my arms. Whatever DC Hawkins thought about Heledd’s sanity, we were so close to the truth.

‘Her father?’ I braced myself. It had to be Glynn, surely. According to Malcolm’s journal, Shirley had been sleeping with him. Glynn had to be guilty of everything, just as I’d suspected. I was itching for the detectives to get to the end of their account. ‘Glynn Collins?’

‘No. Not Glynn Collins.’

I thought I’d misheard. ‘Sorry, did you say not Glynn Collins?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Then . . . then who?’

DI Snaith and DC Hawkins exchanged a look, as if they weren’t sure if they should tell us.

‘Rhodri Wallace,’ DI Snaith said.

Julia gasped. ‘Oh Jesus!’

‘I believe you know him?’ DC Hawkins said to Julia.

‘He’s my handyman. I mean, he’s done a lot to help me since we moved here.’

My mind raced ahead, trying to fit it all together. Rhodri was Heledd’s dad? He, not Glynn, had been Shirley’s lover back in the 1970s?

‘So Heledd was protecting Rhodri and her mother . . . because they abducted Carys Driscoll. Oh my God, they did it to protect Heledd, didn’t they? To save their child from the Widow?’

Julia stared at me, confused, but DI Snaith nodded. ‘I’m not sure how you knew that, but that’s Heledd’s story. Her mother told her the whole thing when she was growing up. I think she wanted Heledd to know how lucky she was. How blessed.’

DC Hawkins sighed, and DI Snaith went on to recount what Heledd had told them.

‘In 1980 the Widow was due to come to the town to claim a child, unless another child was given to her as an offering. Heledd says that her parents’ friend, Glynn Collins, had warned her mother about it at a meeting of the Historical Society.’

I nodded impatiently. ‘He found some old newspaper articles.’