I made the call and then we both sat at the kitchen table waiting. Zoe was opposite me, her face pale and sweaty. It took Carter eight minutes to get to our house. It was the longest eight minutes of my life.
The bell rang and I got up, my movements jerky and highly strung. Zoe didn’t move. I went to the door.
Carter looked at me gravely, a handful of officers and paramedics behind him. ‘She’s here?’
‘Yes.’ I nodded and moved aside to let him pass. I followed him through to the kitchen where his eyes came to rest on Zoe.
‘Zoe, glad to see you home.’
She nodded, mute, her eyes on me.
‘May I?’ He indicated upstairs and into the living room.
Zoe and I stood in silence while Carter and his accompanying officers collected evidence and the paramedics pronounced both bodies officially deceased.
Carter asked to speak to us individually. An officer was assigned to look after Zoe while Carter spoke to me in the dining room.
‘So I’ve been to your office and the park. I’ve seen the graffiti on the walls and now you are telling me that Zoe planned to run away all along?’ He frowned. ‘Then you come back here and find your husband and your lover…’ His words trailed off.
‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘When I told Stephen about Robert he was furious, beside himself. He’s always had a temper, but with the stress of Zoe going missing, things have escalated. I’d thought he was having an affair himself, but when I saw the note…’ I trailed off, weighed down by the enormity of what I was doing.
He studied my face and I concentrated on my breathing and controlling any strange nervous ticks.
‘You didn’t know about the gambling and the debt?’
‘No! I thought he was having an affair, paying for a mistress or an escort service or something. Being an accountant, he always handled all of our finances.’
‘We found irregularities in his bank accounts – that was what we were questioning him about. I thought you knew.’
‘Well, I didn’t,’ I snapped. This much at least was true.
Carter didn’t say anything for a minute.
‘Zoe seems to be coping remarkably well considering she has just come home and found her father has committed suicide.’
‘She’s not coping.’ I frowned. ‘Zoe is a good actress. She’s probably in shock. When I came back, I saw Robert attacking Zoe. You’ve seen the marks on her neck.’ I stifled a sob, convincing even myself with my performance. ‘He was calling her names, blaming her for running away and leading me to accuse him of raping her. It all happened so quickly. She was choking. I grabbed the bronze off the side to protect my daughter. Anyone would have done the same.’
After a few more minutes, I could feel he had no more to push me with and he let me go. Zoe assumed my position and I waited nervously in the kitchen with a uniformed officer who made me a cup of tea that I couldn’t bring myself to touch.
‘Go on,’ the young man insisted, ‘I know you’ll be needing it for the shock.’
I nodded obligingly and drank. It was important I act the part, but I was in shock; little did he know it ran deeper than he could have imagined.
After an hour or so, Carter came through with Zoe and nodded at me. I pulled my daughter into my arms – it seemed like the kind of thing a mother should do for her daughter in this situation. ‘Zoe confirms your story. We’ll need to take her to hospital so her neck can be examined and photographed, but for the time being, we will leave you to it. I am, once again, so sorry for your loss.’
I gave him a small, grateful smile though he could never know how deep my wounds ran.
‘Of course,’ he said, looking at Zoe, ‘I will have to see if the college and park authorities want to press charges, as technically you could be arrested for vandalism.’ She nodded, her eyes empty. He frowned. ‘Anyway, I’d recommend you both stay at a friend’s house tonight. We will need to collect evidence from the scene and I’m sure you don’t want to be here right now. We will take your official statements tomorrow at the police station.’
‘I don’t know where to go,’ I said quickly. How was I meant to begin again with my daughter?
Zoe turned to me, adopting the role of mother, and took me into a firm, secure embrace. ‘Come on, Mum,’ she said in my ear, ‘we’re going to be okay.’ I looked over her shoulder at Carter and caught the quizzical look in his eye.
I nodded, a sob escaping my throat. ‘We’ll go to a hotel for tonight, how about that? I presume I can use the credit card.’
I felt sick, unable to think. I had no money, not a penny to my name. My husband had committed suicide, leaving me with debts the depths of which I had yet to discover. My little girl had just committed cold-blooded murder and she looked happy, relieved. I had lost everything.
‘Yes, let’s do that,’ Zoe encouraged me.
Carter nodded. ‘I’ll get my officer to take you to a hotel and I’ll have someone bring you to the station tomorrow.’ He paused. ‘You might want to collect a few things. We might be processing the crime scene for a few days.’
We might be processing the crime scene for a few days…
His words spun around my head. Did he know we were lying? Did he know that I was doing the only thing I could think of to prove to my daughter how much I loved her?
I didn’t know, but I looked at Zoe and tried to adopt her calmness. As we packed up some clothes and Zoe dutifully took down the picture from the mantelpiece of her and Stephen, resting it carefully at the top of her bag, ensuring Carter saw her doing it, I was horrified by her calculation. My daughter, my beloved little girl.
Carter told me he would be in contact first thing in the morning and we walked in silence to the waiting patrol vehicle. The neighbours’ curtains twitched with curiosity and, as we pulled away from the house, Zoe smiled at me and I smiled back. She was all I had left. I’d never let her out of my sight again.