I followed him outside into the car park. ‘I just need a few minutes of your time,’ I said. ‘I don’t mean to offend you, but something isn’t right with your wife and I need your help to understand what her motives are.’
He stopped and turned. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what goes on in Laura’s head any more than you do. We’ve been separated coming up for two years and we don’t live together. My daughters live with me. And it’s important I make sure their lives are stress-free. That includes keeping them away from Laura and anything she might have done.’
How had I not worked this out from the time I’d spent parked outside Laura’s home? It explained why Tony’s car was rarely on the driveway, and the animosity between them as they sat together in Bruce’s office.
‘Please, Tony,’ I begged, ‘you’re the only one who can help me.’
Tony paused and narrowed his eyes as he mulled over my request, then something in him relented. He gave a deep sigh. ‘What do you want to know?’
I told him how I’d discovered what Laura had encouraged Charlotte to do. But, as with Janine, I omitted to mention anything about how I’d manipulated his daughter or my cottage confrontation with his wife. Even in the pale beam from the overhead light, I saw the colour draining from his face.
‘Why would Laura want a caller to die?’ I asked.
Tony looked at me. ‘She is a very complicated woman,’ he said, ‘with many demons. She has a fixation with death. I can only assume it has extended to trying to assist people to reach that goal. She told me she wanted to volunteer at End of the Line to help others. I had no reason to disbelieve her.’
‘And now, after what I’ve told you?’
He shook his head. He didn’t need to vocalise what he was thinking.
‘There’s more to this,’ I continued hesitantly. ‘Laura had me arrested recently and is making horrible, career-ending allegations against me. So I need to know exactly who I’m up against.’
‘What happened?’
‘I stood up for myself, fought back against her.’
Tony shook his head and rubbed the cool night air into his face. He looked as if he was debating whether to tell me what he knew or remain silent. When his eyes returned to mine, he spoke. ‘If you knew what she’d done in her past,’ he said, ‘then you’d be afraid of her too.’
‘What could be any worse than talking people into killing themselves?’
Tony looked at me as if he wanted me to work it out for myself.
‘Unless,’ I continued, ‘she’s killed someone herself.’
‘No, Laura never gets her hands dirty. She manipulates others into doing what she wants them to do.’ The alcohol had begun to loosen Tony’s lips, and he steadied himself with his hand against the roof of a car. ‘I assumed it stemmed from losing her parents when she was a kid and having to stick up for herself when she was put in care.’
He continued by explaining that Laura’s father had used her to help him kill himself and her sisters. It went a long way to explaining her obsession with death.
‘Three years ago, while we were redeveloping our house, our marriage was going through a rough patch,’ he said. ‘One afternoon, the tumble dryer stopped working, and wedged behind it I found an envelope Laura had hidden. Inside was a long, detailed psychiatric report about her time in the care of social services. She’d been found a foster home with a woman called Sylvia and her son. Apparently dozens of kids had been in her care over the years and she’d even won a CBE or some such honour for it. Sylvia’s boy was a couple of years older than Laura but had some learning difficulties. He was fascinated by her and followed her around like a puppy, doing everything she told him to do, like shoplifting and fighting other kids at school. Sylvia kept Laura there for as long as she could, but she had to put her lad’s well-being first and Laura was by all accounts a terrible influence. But when social services arrived to take Laura away, she’d wound Sylvia’s son up so much that he attacked his mum. He punched her and pushed her so hard that she fell, hit her head. Died instantly. He was sent to a young offenders institute and then an adult prison. Laura got away with it.’
‘Did you tell her what you knew?’
Tony nodded. ‘She denied it all. She claimed the report was falsified to hide the local authority’s own failings and I really think that’s what she believes. You need to know that my wife doesn’t recognise her own lies. The psychologists wrote that she rewrites episodes from her history and her recent past if they don’t suit her. She will always be the victim, never the guilty one. And she rearranges timelines and locations. Events that happened weeks ago she’ll think happened yesterday, and somewhere completely different.’
‘So when you learned all this about her, that’s when you left with your children?’
‘No, and that’s the biggest regret of my life.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Henry might still be the normal little boy he was when he was born.’
I looked at him and waited for more, but he shook his head and brought our conversation to a close.
‘This will be the last time that you and I talk, Mr Smith,’ he said, and walked towards a red Audi.
‘Can I ask you one last thing?’ I said. ‘When I first started phoning her at End of the Line, she called me David. Do you know why?’
‘That was Sylvia’s son,’ Tony replied as he clambered into his car, choosing to drink and drive over facing any more questions from me. ‘When he came out of prison, he lived rough in Northampton. Laura brought him to the house a few times to clean him up – maybe she’d developed a conscience about what she’d done to him, or perhaps she’d changed their history to something that suited her better. David Oliver, but she called him by his nickname, Olly.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
LAURA
Janine eyed me sceptically when I removed two raspberry and white chocolate muffins from a Tupperware box and left them on a plate on her desk.
‘They’re gluten-free.’ I smiled. ‘I made them last night.’ The first part I was lying about, the second part I wasn’t. For once I had baked them myself. ‘It seems a shame everyone gets to enjoy my baking but you. Sorry, but I ran out of paper cases.’
‘Thank you,’ she said and I turned to leave her office, but not before ‘accidentally’ kicking her vulgar orange handbag.
‘Oops,’ I said, and smiled as I bent down to straighten it up. She was too engrossed in her muffin to notice me removing her iPad.
Back at my desk, I checked my mobile phone to see if the police had been in touch regarding Ryan’s break-in. It’d been six days now and still they hadn’t updated me. Likewise there’d been no contact from Effie’s head teacher. What the hell was going on with these people? I didn’t want the accusation of Ryan trying to molest Effie to go as far as a court case, because she was not as strong as me – she’d crumble under questioning. I just wanted that accusation and the pornography found on his work computer to be enough to make it impossible for him to return to his post.
They’d eventually learn the images had been placed there by a third party. I’d spent hours trawling the Internet searching for pictures of teenage girls in various states of undress involving school uniforms to show Ryan had a fetish for them. It was impossible to tell if they were underage and it didn’t matter – it would add to the mounting pressure I was piling upon him. I’d moved the images to a memory stick and given it to Effie. She’d spent so much time in Ryan’s office that she’d seen him input his password into his computer. It didn’t take much effort for her to log on, transfer my folder of pictures into his files and leave.