Marina stood on the beach at Wrabness, reading the email. Now she knew why she had been sent here. And it wasn’t the reason she had first thought.
Stuart Sloane. Somehow this was all connected to Stuart Sloane.
She walked upriver along the beach, putting the dilapidated farmhouse behind her. The trees were thickening, blocking out the sunlight as she went. The beach huts were set back from what passed for sand, up on stilts, accessible only by wooden steps. Most of them looked occupied, people there for Easter. Some seemed to have permanent occupants. Marina thought it a curious place for a holiday, and certainly to live. But then the place was forever tainted for her.
This is everything you need to know, the email had said. Read it.
As she walked, she worked through in her mind what she had just read.
Once upon a time, there was a little boy called Stuart Milton. Stuart was different. He was special. He had learning difficulties. He was socially awkward, missed the cues other kids didn’t, was out of step with the other kids by at least one beat. But a good kid. A nice kid.
He had never known his father, who had left when Stuart was very young. His mother, Maureen Milton, had taken any job that came along, anything to feed herself and her son. She ended up working for the Sloanes, a local landowning family. They, as the brochure said, ‘had farming concerns, and were the producers and harvesters of most of the seafood from the area, particularly cockles, mussels and oysters’. Maureen worked in their house, cleaning and serving. She did work hard, we’ll give her that. And she made herself popular with most people. One in particular.
Jack Sloane was the head of the family. He had just lost his wife, so he was in a bit of an emotional state. He liked Maureen and asked her to move in. She brought her son with her. Now Jack Sloane liked Maureen a lot, and let her know it. For her part, she was happy to respond to his attentions. Jack proposed marriage and Maureen accepted. The wedding was arranged and Stuart was adopted. He was now officially a Sloane.
So far, so happy ever after, Marina thought. But then the tone of the email had changed, become angrier.
But not everyone shared Jack and Maureen’s delight. Michael and Deanna, his son and daughter, for instance. Because they saw Maureen for what she really was, a common gold-digging bitch, and they thought her son was a thick, useless mong. They told them so before the wedding. And how did Jack respond? Threatened them with disinheritance.
The next part of the email was a link to a local newspaper from sixteen years ago. Marina had opened it. It was headlined: Bloodbath in Wedding Day House of Horror.
The article told how the Sloanes had enjoyed a perfect wedding day and couldn’t have been happier. The following day, however, the police were called to the scene of one of the biggest and bloodiest massacres they had ever come across. The house had been destroyed. Every ornament smashed, every piece of furniture upended, gutted, broken. Phone lines ripped out. The family had been stalked through the house by a maniac with a shotgun. Jack Sloane and his new wife were both dead. The son and daughter, Michael and Dee, had been shot and left for dead. One of the family’s workers, Graham Watts, had phoned the police to raise the alarm. There had been horror on finding who was discovered holding the shotgun: Stuart Sloane.
Marina could remember the rest. Stuart Sloane was arrested and charged. Although he was technically an adult, his defence lawyers claimed he was unfit to stand trial as he was not mentally competent. They brought in as many psychologists and psychiatrists as they could afford, to assess Stuart and back up this claim. To diminish his responsibility, to plead for him as mentally unfit.
It was damage limitation and the defence knew it. The evidence, although circumstantial, was too damning. They were in no doubt that he had done it. All they wanted was for him to avoid prison. Serve his time somewhere that could help him, not harm him.
And that was why Marina knew the story so well, even without the email, because it was one of the first cases she had been assigned after leaving college. She knew that newly qualified psychologists were rarely presented with opportunities like this, and if she didn’t mess it up, there would be a lot more work coming her way. It was also an opportunity to show just what she could do. But she remembered it for another reason.
She hadn’t believed Stuart Sloane was guilty.
She remembered him being led into the psychologist’s office in HMP Chelmsford. Everyone referred to him as a man because he was eighteen, but when she finally met him, she thought he was just a boy. A small, confused boy, underweight, his growth stunted by a childhood of malnutrition, his educational progress hampered by the damaged hard-wiring in his brain.
She stopped walking, looked at the trees ahead of her. Tried to think of the questions she had asked him, the answers he had given her. She couldn’t recall specifics, but she remembered his attitude, his demeanour. Lost. If she had to sum him up in one word, it would be that. A lost boy cast adrift in the big city after inadvertently letting go of his mother’s hand. He didn’t understand what was going on around him, or how serious his situation was.
He had been found with the shotgun in his hand, and the police had, with good reason, assumed his guilt from that. She had gone along with that assumption, as directed by the defence lawyers, and her questions had been weighted accordingly.
What was he doing at the house? Could he remember what had led up to that? How had he felt about his mother marrying Jack Sloane? Specific, focused questions.
But he was vague in his answers, unfocused when asked about those specifics.
He couldn’t remember how he had felt, or what he was doing there. But he had been very happy for his mother. His mother was happy so he was happy too.
What about his mother now?
Now he was sad. Very sad. And Marina remembered him looking sad as he said it. Then his expression had changed, his face had lit up in a smile. But it was all going to be OK, because Jiminy Cricket had said so.
Marina had been intrigued. Asked him more. Who was Jiminy Cricket? Why was everything going to be OK?
He had looked at her beatifically. Jiminy Cricket was the voice of his conscience. Jiminy Cricket had said his mother was in heaven with the other angels. And Jiminy Cricket had a plan. Everything would work out OK. Just wait and see.
Afterwards, she had repeated the conversation to the lawyers. They weren’t surprised. Other psychologists had experienced the same thing. They believed that Stuart had a split personality. His damaged mind had been unable to cope with the enormity of what he had done, and he had abnegated responsibility in that way.
Marina hadn’t been convinced. She had read his records. Stuart had never displayed any prior symptoms of multiple personality or dissociative states. This Jiminy Cricket sounded like a real person, someone else in the room with him. Stuart seemed to have no knowledge of how the shootings had been carried out, or indeed how to use a gun at all. She wasn’t convinced he was actually responsible for the killings. Yes, the lawyers had said, but it could also be argued that the trauma of his actions had brought on the multiple personalities, had given him the knowledge to use the gun, the courage to act on his impulses …
And that was what they had gone with.
Marina had flagged something else up too. She was sure she wasn’t the only psychologist to notice, but it never appeared in the trial. When she asked Stuart about his stepbrother and stepsister, he recoiled, his expression filled with dread. He became agitated, stuttering and stumbling over words, unable to sit still. Convinced there was something there, she had tried to press him. She wanted to question him further on his relationship with them, but had been politely but firmly reminded what her brief was. The brother and sister were not a part of it. They were the victims in this case. And they were also very rich, so the defence had to think carefully before making any investigations into them or allegations against them. Marina had reluctantly agreed.
The case continued to gnaw at her, but since she hadn’t been called on to give evidence, there was nothing she could do. As her colleagues suggested, she banked the cheque and settled down with a nice big gin and tonic to put it out of her mind.
But she still followed the case on the news, in the papers, and was horrified at the level of reporting, the scale of tabloid vitriol directed against Stuart from people who had never met him. She saw his supposed multiple personalities defence ridiculed and heard no mention of his relationship with his step-siblings. When he was found guilty and sentenced, she wasn’t the least surprised. But she had to let it go. It was no longer her problem.
Until now.
She looked round, trying to find a path back to the beach huts. Then noticed what was in front of her. A huge old house, backing on to the river, crumbling and overgrown, nature trying to reclaim it, pull it back into the earth. And she knew immediately what it was.
The old Sloane place.
That had been one of the stipulations after the trial, she remembered. The brother and sister moved away but wanted the house to be left to rot away on its own. They had refused every offer from developers and the council to buy the land or do something with the old property. They wanted it left as it was.
They had got their wish.
The phone rang. Love Will Tear Us Apart. She answered it and was asked if she had read the email. She said she had.
‘You were the only one who believed him,’ the voice said. ‘The only one who thought he was innocent. We checked the records. You knew what was going on. That’s why we chose you.’
‘Now do you understand why you’ve been brought here? What you’ve got to do?’
Marina, still staring at the house, remembered the last part of the email.
Stuart Sloane was not insane. Stuart Sloane did not have multiple personalities. Stuart Sloane is as sane as you or I. She doubted that part but had read on. Stuart Sloane has been made a scapegoat and been defrauded out of millions by the Sloanes that should rightfully have been his. Stuart Sloane needs to get even.
Stuart Sloane needs your help to do that.
‘Yes.’ Marina sighed. ‘I suppose I do.’
‘Congratulations, Dr Esposito. You’ve got a new client.’