The House in the Woods (Atticus Priest Book 1) Read online

  Ralph left his hand there for a moment before he took it and squeezed it more tightly than necessary. Atticus had expected this kind of show of strength, and, as Ralph looked into his face, he showed no discomfort or any other reaction. Ralph squeezed a little harder, Atticus held his gaze and, with a flicker of annoyance, Ralph released his hand.

  “Come on, Ralph,” Allegra said. “He’s on our side.”

  “Really?”

  Allegra turned to her husband and put her hand over his. “Please, darling. You need to trust him. I’m doing everything I can to show them you didn’t do it. Atticus can help us to do that.”

  Ralph glared at Atticus, a muscle in his cheek pulsing as his jaw clenched. There was anger there and a quick temper. He was not a pleasant man. The defence was planning to call Ralph as a witness; Atticus wasn’t sure that that would be wise.

  Ralph took a deep breath and exhaled. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “This is all very stressful.”

  “Of course.”

  “And my wife is desperate. It would be easy to take advantage of that.”

  Allegra groaned. “Ralph—”

  “It’s fine,” Atticus said. “It would be easy. But that’s not what I’m doing. Between us, I think you should have had someone looking at the evidence earlier.”

  “The lawyers are shit,” Ralph said sourly.

  “They’re doing their best,” Allegra said, although there was no conviction in her voice.

  “I told you Cadogan was a bad choice,” he said, bitter once again. “I told you, didn’t I? I said.”

  “Maybe I can find something that will help,” Atticus intervened, trying to reassure them. “I’m going to do everything I can. I’m not working for anyone else at the moment. I’ve cleared all my other cases.”

  Other cases. Ralph looked at him, and Atticus wondered whether he was perceptive enough to see through his lie. They locked eyes for a moment before, finally, Ralph breathed in deeply and then exhaled.

  “Fine,” he said. “Let’s carry on. What do you want to talk about?”

  “A few things, if you don’t mind.”

  Ralph gestured around the room with a sweep of his arm. “I’m not going anywhere.” He pulled out the chair on the other side of the table and dropped down into it, his legs out straight and crossed at the ankles.

  Atticus sat down, too; Allegra did not.

  “Go on, then,” Ralph said.

  “Shall we start with your brother?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I’ve read through all the papers,” Atticus said.

  “And?”

  “His anger.”

  “What about it?”

  “Do you have any idea why he had such a problem with it?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Nothing in his history? When you were children?”

  “It wasn’t a happy childhood,” he said.

  “How do you mean?”

  He paused for a moment, perhaps picking out the right words. “My father was a difficult man.”

  “How so?”

  “He was in the army before he took over the farm. Discipline was important to him. He was old-fashioned about bringing up children.”

  “Better seen and not heard?” Atticus offered.

  “That’s one way to put it.”

  “He beat you.”

  Ralph glared at his wife. “You told him?”

  “Of course,” she said. “It might be important.”

  Atticus glanced down and saw that Ralph had turned his feet towards the door. It was a classic sign of discomfort, an unconscious indication that he was considering the exit, and how he might forestall the rest of the conversation.

  “You and Cameron?”

  “Yes,” Ralph said.

  “What about your sister?”

  Ralph chuckled bitterly. “Cassie was the apple of his eye. It wasn’t the same for her. It was me and Cameron. We both got it bad.”

  “And you think that explains Cameron’s problems?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not a psychiatrist. I’ve no idea why he ended up the way he did.”

  “Angry,” Allegra added. “Angry and bitter.”

  “And violent?”

  Ralph nodded. “He could be.”

  “Do you think he was angry enough to do what’s been suggested?”

  He looked troubled. “Maybe,” he said. “I wouldn’t have said so, but who else was there? I know it wasn’t me. There’s no way my mother or father would ever have done something like that. And Cassandra?” He shook his head. “No way. Unless someone else was in the house that night, and no one’s suggesting that. It could only have been Cameron.”

  Atticus let that sit for a moment, wondering whether he should press. Ralph had put both hands onto his knees, another clear sign that he was uncomfortable and ready to end the meeting. Atticus suspected that Ralph hadn’t told him absolutely everything, but he wasn’t sure whether what might have been left to say was worth the cost of digging it out. He had other questions to ask and, with time already moving on, decided to change tack.

  “Can we go back to Christmas Eve?” he said.

  “Must we?”

  “I’ve read the statements.”

  “So what do you want to know?”

  “The argument with your family—what was it about?”

  “The way they treated Allegra,” he said, glancing over at his wife. “They never accepted her. My mother and my father. Never.”

  “Why?”

  He exhaled wearily.

  “They think I’m a gold digger,” Allegra said. “It was his mother more than his father—wasn’t it, Ralph?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “I’m too young, apparently. And we got married too quickly.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “Online,” she answered.

  “How quickly did you get married?”

  “Six months after we met,” she said.

  “That is fast.”

  “Why wait?” she said, laying her hand on her husband’s. “We both knew we wanted to be together.”

  “And to say that she’s a gold digger is hilarious,” Ralph said. “There’s no gold to dig. It’s not like I have all that much.”

  “But you could have.”

  “I’m not interested in his inheritance,” Allegra said.

  Atticus smiled. “Tell me more about how they reacted.”

  Ralph snorted. “To Allegra? It was just the attitude. They didn’t make her welcome at the house. They wouldn’t speak to her. We tried to ignore it. We thought, eventually, they’d realise that they were wasting their time, that they’d realise that we love each other and that nothing was going to change, but it was getting worse and not better. I told them that unless they made Allegra feel welcome on Christmas Day, then that would be the end of it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That I’d consider us to be estranged.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I went to the pub.” He paused. “This is all in the statement.”

  “I know. But it’s helpful to hear it in your own words.”

  “I went to the pub and had a drink. I had second thoughts. It felt like I ought to give them a second chance. I’d been angry, and I wanted to explain to them—calmly and rationally—why what they were doing was so upsetting. I wanted them to understand. I drove back over there and…”

  He stopped.

  “And they were dead,” Allegra finished for him.

  35

  Ralph went over what he had found when he arrived back at the farm that evening. His recounting tallied exactly with the testimony that he had given in his witness statement: the locked door, the kitchen light on, a glimpse through the window to see his father’s body on the floor. He related his call to the police and the wait for them to arrive. Atticus probed with a handful of
questions of his own, but found nothing new that might be helpful: no, Ralph couldn’t say that he saw any sign that there was someone else in the house, as DS Lennox had suggested; no, there was nothing outside that suggested someone had visited the house in the time he had been in the pub; no, he couldn’t think of anyone else who might have had a reason to do the family harm.

  “What about the coal hole?” Atticus said.

  “What about it?”

  “Can you fit through it?”

  “I used to be able to,” he said.

  “When’s the last time you tried?”

  “I don’t know. The time I locked myself out of the house.”

  “When?”

  “Five years ago? I got inside through the cellar then.”

  “And now?”

  “I think I probably still could.”

  “I don’t know, Ralph,” Allegra said. “You’ve put on a little weight since then.”

  “Thank you, darling.”

  “I don’t mean it like that,” she said. “I’m just saying. It’s in our best interests that you can’t. If they can’t find a way for you to get out of the house while leaving it locked from the inside, the case collapses.”

  “I know,” he said wearily. He shook his head. “I haven’t tried, but I think I would fit. And I’m not going to agree to the charade of going out there and trying to show that I wouldn’t.” He chuckled bitterly. “Is this what we’re left with? O. J. Simpson? ‘If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit’?”

  “It did work that time,” Atticus said.

  Ralph stretched out, straightening the kinks in his back. “But not this time. You need to do better than that.”

  Atticus nodded. There was no obvious weakness in the prosecution case, and he had done as well as he could with the tiny inconsistencies that he had been able to uncover. He agreed with Ralph: he thought he probably would have been able to squeeze through the coal hole, and now was not the time to push the suggestion that he couldn’t. It was too late to test the hypothesis now unless they were sure that it had value. The danger of taking the judge and jury to the house and then finding that he could get through would be significant; it would make them look desperate. The defence should have investigated that earlier.

  “Are we done?” Ralph said.

  “I’m afraid not.” Atticus held Ralph’s eye.

  He slumped back in his seat. “Let me guess. Freddie?”

  “We need to talk about him.”

  Allegra stiffened, and Ralph sighed. Atticus felt bad about forcing Allegra to listen to her husband speak of his infidelity more than once. But it wouldn’t be the only time that was required, nor even the worst: listening to the testimony in a packed courtroom was going to be bad enough.

  He decided to abbreviate his questions to the most essential. “He’s key to the prosecution case. If we can discredit him… well, I’m not going to make any promises, but it would be helpful.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “You met him a year ago.”

  “Something like that.”

  “I don’t need all the details,” he said, casting an eye at Allegra. “I’ve read what you’ve said, and I’ve read what he says. You’re saying that he’s not telling the truth about you telling him that you wanted to kill your parents.”

  “It’s a pack of lies.”

  “So why would he say that? Why would he put himself in a position where he’s going to have to stand up in court and give that evidence in front of everyone and perjure himself?”

  “Because he bears a grudge.”

  “That’s a serious grudge.”

  “He hates me.”

  Atticus looked at Allegra.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “I know what happened. We’ve spoken about it. It doesn’t matter.”

  Ralph laced his fingers and put his hands on the table. “Allegra and I were having trouble with our relationship. I was working too hard, not coming home. We weren’t talking…”

  “It was both our faults,” Allegra said, laying her hand atop her husband’s.

  Ralph smiled at his wife, then looked back to Atticus. “I was in London, I was lonely, and… well, you know what happened.”

  “Please—go on. In your own words.”

  “It was a moment of madness. I saw a card in a phone box. I saw him. I thought…” He stopped. “I don’t know what I thought.”

  “But you called him?”

  “I did. He told me where he was, and I went to see him. We… well, you know what happened next.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I saw him whenever I was in London. Four or five times over the course of six months. He said he had feelings for me. I know it was stupid, but I was flattered.”

  “And then?” Atticus prompted.

  “He got it into his head that we had a future together. He’s nuts—you’ll see when he gives evidence. He’s loopy. But he started talking about how he would stop working, about me leaving Allegra and moving to London so that we could be together. I’d realised by then how stupid I was, that I love my wife very much and that I didn’t want to throw away my marriage, so I told him that it wasn’t going to happen. I said we couldn’t see each other anymore and he just lost it. Lost it. He said I was joking, and then, when he realised that I wasn’t, he was all about how he was going to tell Allegra, how he was going to ruin my life.”

  “A lover spurned,” Atticus suggested.

  “Exactly. You’ve read his witness statement. He saw the news about my family over Christmas and called the police to say that he had something that he thought would be relevant. But it’s bullshit. The whole thing—none of what he says is true. I never said what he says. Not a word of it.”

  “Thank you,” Atticus said.

  “Anything else?”

  Atticus stood up, the legs of the chair scraping against the linoleum floor. “No,” he said. “I have enough to be getting on with.”

  “So, what now?”

  “I’m going to concentrate on Freddie. That’s the most important testimony they have, but I think it might be the flimsiest. We’ll see.”

  “Are you going to speak to him?”

  “Probably.”

  “But isn’t that—you know—tampering?”

  “Depends how it’s done,” Atticus said. “There’s no property in a witness.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that, as long as I don’t try to make him change his evidence, there’s nothing to worry about. You can relax. I’m very discreet.”

  Allegra got to her feet now, and Ralph followed suit.

  “Thank you,” Ralph said. “Sorry for snapping at you. Like I said—this is a nightmare.”

  Atticus nodded. The apology felt hollow, almost as if delivered by rote, and he could see no sincerity there. More likely Ralph had seen the possibility of a crease in the prosecution’s case and, realising that—and that he had very few friends—Ralph was trying to present a slightly better impression in the hope that Atticus might, after all, be able to widen that crease. It didn’t matter. Ralph was still Atticus’s client, and he would be professional. He would do the best job that he could, regardless of how he felt about the man. That was what he was being paid to do.

  “I’ll be in touch,” Atticus said.

  Ralph put out his hand and Atticus took it, locking eyes with Ralph in the event that he tried to squeeze hard again. He didn’t, releasing his grip and turning quickly to his wife. Atticus turned away as they embraced, and knocked on the door and waited for the guard to unlock it. He went outside into the waiting area and sat down. Allegra followed him a minute or two later.

  “Was that okay?” she said.

  “It was.”

  He looked at his watch. It was nine. He could be back in Salisbury by ten.

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “There’s someone I want to talk to,” he said.

  36

  Mack had arrive
d back at the station at six and had been at her desk ever since. It was ten now, and she was beginning to flag. The work that was necessary to ensure that a trial proceeded smoothly was significant. She knew that there would be a series of late nights until proceedings came to a conclusion with the jury’s verdict, but, even though she had warned Andy that that would be the case, she still felt bad. She couldn’t keep pulling these late shifts. Time to go.

  She locked her PC, pushed herself away from her desk and got up.

  “Done for the night, boss?” Lennox said from the other side of the room.

  “I’ve been looking at the same page for the past twenty minutes,” she said.

  “Another half an hour for me.”

  “Don’t work too hard,” she told him. “I’d rather you came back early tomorrow than stay later tonight.”

  “Understood,” he said. “I won’t be long.”

  She grabbed her jacket and bag and, with a final wave, left the CID room and took the stairs down to the ground floor.

  The Bourne Hill area of Salisbury was close to the city centre, yet might just as easily have been miles away. It was set around a large park, with an abundance of trees, shrubs, flowers and wildlife. There was a tended lawn area and neatly arranged flowerbeds, but, apart from that, the rest of the grass was left to have a wild feel. The medieval ramparts of the city had run right through the gardens and, although most of them had long since been removed, there still remained a small monument on one of the footpaths that wound its way between the trees. The council had chosen the area for its administrative buildings and, following the closure of the old nick on Wilton Road, the police had been moved here, too. Mack liked it better. It was more peaceful, and she liked to be able to walk into the city for a change of scene during her lunch break.

  The police station had been rehoused in one of the council’s newer buildings. It was a surprisingly modern design for a city like Salisbury and had been built at the back of the old council office, its modernity shielded by the eighteenth-century façade. The main body was composed of a concrete shell that was, seemingly, suspended beneath a long rank of concrete arches. A smaller glass construction emerged from those arches, its sleek, dark shine providing a contrast to the dullness of the rest of the building.