Cracked
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Synopsis
When Jenny's old therapist is murdered and she is implicated, she realizes that someone else out there might know her deepest, darkest secret.
Seven patients. One dark secret.
Jennifer Nielsen has her life on track. Until she gets news that her former psychiatrist, Phillip Walton, has been brutally murdered, and that she is implicated.
Philip knew her darkest secrets. And circumstances of his murder suggest that someone else out there knows them too.
Jenny needs to speak to old friends, and old enemies, from her dark years spent at Hillside Psychiatric Hospital. Because they are the only ones who know what really happened at Hillside, about the secret that Phil kept for them all, and that this is not the first murder.
(P) 2019 Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
Release date: May 7, 2020
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Print pages: 304
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Cracked
Louise McCreesh
The Bleecher case. One of the worst in Sutton police’s history and certainly the worst I can remember. Rosie Bleecher. Nineteen years old and a fully popped six months pregnant; raped, beaten and left to die in a skip behind the flat she’d been renting with her fiancé, Carl. Nasty business all round but particularly for the family, who were left devastated and scratching their heads as to what prompted so grisly an execution. Everyone else had a theory of course. None of them were right.
Carl’s older cousin Mark was arrested ten days in. The motive: wanting from Rosie what she had made very clear he would never have, leaving him no option but to take it by force and clean up the mess thereafter.
It was an ugly outcome. Ugly that the killer’s own mother turned him in, found a bag of bloodied clothes beneath his bed and thought it odd enough to bring to the police’s attention. Uglier still that Mark uploaded several lengthy video messages to his Facebook page just hours before his arrest vowing to avenge his slain cousin-in-law and his own cousin’s unborn child.
A paper shredder, Simon called it. One of the few major murders to slow down the national news cycle, people hurrying past the newspaper section with their eyes averted rather than stopping to read the stomach-churning headlines. ‘And right before Christmas, too.’
It’s the kind of ugly that makes the scars on my wrists tingle, though they rarely do these days. The kind that disgusts and relieves me in equal measure because, on a good day, I can convince myself it’s one worse than my own.
Shuddering for Rosie, I reach for my phone to see if James has at least bothered to call me but he hasn’t. I have no call. No text. No clue as to where my husband is or why he’s there, hours after finishing what was supposed to be a twelve-hour shift.
Nothing, bar my favourite picture of us and an alarm clock in the top right-hand corner, reminding me I have 31 minutes left of sleeping. Not that I feel like sleeping. Not anymore.
Aggravated by my concern I sit up and call him, the dial tone of my own phone ringing through the room for a few hopeful moments. I know after the first couple of bleeps he won’t answer. That it will ring out to voicemail, which it does – and I get out of bed and open the blinds at our bedroom window to find his car also gone.
It’s too early to be worried but it’s definitely weird, and I think about trying his phone one more time before I spot Car Thief a few houses over and grow distracted.
Watching Car Thief is a relatively new pastime of mine. I first saw him a few months ago, jogging from drive to drive. Not thinking much of it until I saw what he was really doing; which was checking all the cars on the street to see if any of my neighbours had been stupid or naïve enough to leave their vehicles unlocked. Punishing them, if they had.
Car Thief doesn’t steal any cars, just whatever valuables are left inside them and only ever enough to fill his crappy brown satchel, so maybe the name Car Thief is misleading. He probably has a normal name – something like Brian or David – but I wouldn’t know it. I don’t know anything about Car Thief, other than the fact he likes to steal things out of cars and I like to watch while he does.
I’m still staring out of the window when my phone buzzes violently in my hands. I take a deep breath and answer it.
‘Jenny, I’m sorry.’
It’s James’s voice. Croaky. Apologetic.
I leave Car Thief to it and retreat to the bed, folding my toes beneath my thighs to thaw them from the cool of the floor. I feel a cooling at my centre too. A relief that James is safe (so perhaps I was more worried than I thought) but also a frostiness. A shard-like iceberg bobbing through the cavern of my chest at his lack of consideration.
‘You could have called,’ I say, my voice an unusual shade of plum. ‘Texted me, even.’
‘I know. I was going to text you but …’
James starts talking to someone whose voice I don’t recognise while I wait on the other end of the line.
‘Thanks, mate,’ he murmurs, before breathing back into the receiver. ‘Jen, I’m so sorry. Nightmare morning. Are you still there?’
‘Yes,’ I say curiously. ‘What’s going on? Where are you?’
‘I’m at work.’
I hear more people in the background. ‘So you’re at the station?’
‘No,’ he says slowly, apologetically, and I immediately know what it means.
‘Another one?’ I ask. ‘But you’re already working the Bleecher case.’
‘We wrapped Bleecher last night,’ he says apologetic yet again. ‘Keith and I had just finished the paperwork and were heading home when this call came in and it all spiralled from there.’
Unsure of how to respond, I don’t.
James sighs. ‘Come on, Jen. You know what Keith is like when he gets his teeth into something. He thinks the Bleecher solve fell into our laps. He wants the credit for this one.’
Again, I say nothing because I refuse to be the nagging wife. The asshole wife. Sometimes, I think James would prefer it.
I’m four years younger than he is, a collegiate twenty-eight to his grey-around-the-sides thirty-two, and I think he worries I’ll eventually grow tired of waiting around for him: That I’ll figure I have my best years left ahead of me and bugger off, though he’d never admit it to me. James and I have a good marriage. We have fun, but in any relationship we both know it’s dangerous to be the one who cares more.
I squint at the clock on my phone, which tells me I now have twenty-five minutes left before I have to get ready for work. It’s twenty-five minutes more than the amount of sleep James had all night, and I wonder what about this case in particular made Keith want to work it.
I press the phone back to my ear.
‘So, what’s the job?’ I ask. ‘Is it as bad as Bleecher?’
‘Nothing’s as bad as Bleecher Jen,’ James replies, darkly. ‘Certainly not this. It’s just one victim. White male. Over fifty years old. I’m pretty sure over sixty, which is actually a bit unusual …’
‘Definitely murder?’
‘No question.’
I hear static down the line and can imagine James clear as day, tucking his phone beneath his chin and reaching for his pen or little black book to make it look like he’s doing something useful in front of his colleagues. The thought thaws the iciness and makes me smile but I quickly scold myself for being callous. A person had died today and I know the kind of hole that can leave. More than anyone, I know how many lives can be changed by the death of a single person.
‘Where did it happen?’ I ask, soberly now. ‘Where are you?’
‘That’s the weird part. Do you know the psychiatric hospital on Mondsey Road? Hillside?’
The name hits me like a slap I’m not expecting, ringing through my ears and stiffening my neck.
Hillside. It’d been a while since I’d heard the name, though I’d thought of it often. It’s even more of a shock to hear it from James.
‘Kind of,’ I say, discomfited. ‘Why? What happened? Who died?’
James clears his throat. ‘One of the psychiatrists or doctors or whatever you call them. It looks like he was murdered while clearing out his office. He’d only just retired as well, poor guy.’
Each word is a falling domino. The displacement of a sense of self, years in the making – and I pull the duvet up to my knees, the frost steadily returning.
‘What was his name?’
‘Phillip Walton,’ James says, and I feel a lot of things. Fear. Disbelief. Oddly, nostalgia, and the instinctual relief of a hunch just proven, because it is who I thought it would be. The name that’s haunted me for almost a decade, alongside a few others.
I’d heard of Phil’s retirement a few months back, but only by chance. A local news bulletin on my phone and a blessing, I thought, once the shame and every other bad feeling I associated with Phil had subsided. A relief, in knowing our shared and terrible Hillside memories would finally leave there with him, although I never wanted it to happen like this.
That he’s dead is hard to believe and I drop my phone but it doesn’t go far. It falls on to the duvet covering my knees and I pick it back up, a tremor to my grip that wasn’t there before.
‘Jen, you there?’
‘Yes,’ I say, my tongue like cotton wool. ‘Do you know who killed him? Do you know why?’
‘No.’ James replies. ‘We don’t know anything yet.’
My stomach flutters gratefully although I don’t know why it should. It’s been years since I’d seen or spoken to Phil and I certainly didn’t kill him. But there are things I knew about Phil, things he knew about me, and I know I’m too close to this. That James can’t work the case.
‘James, listen …’
I hear a door open and voices, laughter in the background. James calls out to someone nearby.
‘Babe, I can’t talk now,’ he says, to me this time. ‘I’ll call back when I can …’
‘No, wait.’
James must hear the anxiety in my voice. He moves away from the laughter to somewhere much quieter.
‘What is it? Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine,’ I garble, shakily. ‘I just don’t think you should work this case. I think you should hand it to someone else.’
James laughs. ‘What? Honestly, I’m not that tired. I can catch a few hours’ sleep back at the office while the forensic guys do a sweep.’
‘It’s not that. Please, just don’t work it.’
There’s a brief pause. ‘Jenny, I don’t have time for this. Why not?’
There’s an awkward pause and I seriously think about telling him. Not everything, but at least that I had gone to Hillside and was Phil’s patient while there, though I soon dismiss the idea. I can’t tell James anything now. It would only invite more questions.
‘Because … you’re tired.’ I say lamely, ‘You need a break.’
James doesn’t reply for a few moments, and I imagine his fingers at the back of his neck. The anguish on his face; the effort of trying to please not only me but Keith as well – because I know James but he doesn’t know me. Not as well as he thinks he does.
‘Jen, I’ll be fine.’ Through the phone, I hear footsteps and once again he’s back with the noise.
‘No, James—’
‘I have to go. I’m sorry. I love you.’
He hangs up like nothing much has happened. I know everything has changed.
I’m still in bed. Lost in thought, my fingers locked around the stress ball Simon gave me for Christmas. Well, it’s more of a stress square, shaped like a fire alarm and emblazoned with the phrase ‘squeeze in case of an emergency’. Whatever shape it is, it’s not working and I launch it across the room. I waste a few more minutes worrying and call the office, letting them know I’ll be late but not the reason why. Simon will want more of an explanation when I turn up. He won’t get one.
My mind wanders and I think of the investigation. About how right this minute, James and Keith and their police colleagues will be looking for a motive; a reason why someone would want Phil dead. Possibly, something bad from Phil’s past. A secret.
We had one. Phil and I, and a few others I haven’t spoken to in an equally long while. Technically, it was more my secret than Phil’s or any of theirs. One they’d all kept for me.
It’s unlikely anyone else knows this secret. Unlikelier, it’s related to Phil’s death for too many reasons to count. What happened was a long time ago. Keeping it quiet, in all of our interests. It wasn’t Phil’s fault, it was mine – and yet, the idea gnaws persistently at my stomach, prolonging my sense of unease.
It’s why my heart curdled when James first told me he was at Hillside, and it makes me anxious to think of him there now. Inside Phil’s office. Mere metres away from the worst thing I’ve ever done; this secret, inching closer with every second he spends there – although, maybe this was supposed to happen. Things had been good for a while. Trouble feels like the logical next step.
Perturbed by the thought, I get out of bed and move towards the window. Car Thief is still out there and I recall the time I left my own car unlocked for two weeks; my iPod tucked into a brand-new brown satchel on the passenger seat for him to take, which he did. I think about how James would never understand my reasons for doing so or why I sometimes walk out of the house with my earphones in just to keep up the pretence that I hadn’t empathised with this man, whatever his name, and lost my iPod to him – because James has no clue who I can be at my worst, but there are others who do. People, who have as much to lose as I do if our secret is exposed and who may, irrationally or otherwise, worry that it might be once news of Phil’s murder reaches them but there’s only one I trust and I should let him know about Phil. Tell him, before the internet or his television does.
I grab my phone and scroll through my contacts, glad I’d saved his number and hoping it hasn’t changed in the many years since he’d left it with me. Trembling slightly, I hit dial, almost hoping it will ring out to voicemail. It doesn’t.
‘Hello.’
‘Tony?’
‘Yes, who is this?’
‘It’s Jenny … Parker,’ I say, careful to use my maiden name.
There’s a stunned silence.
‘Jenny, I can’t believe it. Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine.’
He laughs, sounding relieved. ‘I’m sorry, I just didn’t expect to hear from you …’
‘Phil died,’ I say brusquely. ‘That’s why I’m calling.’
‘How?’
‘He was murdered. Someone killed him.’
There’s another stunned silence.
‘Are you free to meet today?’
My throat thickens. ‘No. I’m working.’
‘Well, how about lunch?’
‘Sure. Lunch is fine.’
Someone yells for Tony in the background. A woman, I think.
‘Jenny, I’ve got to go. Text me the address and time and I’ll be there.’
My phone abruptly emits a dial tone and I realise I’ve been hung up on for the second time this morning. I decide on a time and place and text it to Tony and almost immediately, regret doing so.
Reluctantly, I get ready for work. There’s no longer enough time to shower so I grab the dry shampoo from my dresser and spray it through my roots, flipping my head up just in time to see Car Thief scurrying away from our street, wearing the satchel I bought him.
I read the headlines on the train. Not ours but all of the nationals. There are multiple articles about the forthcoming trial in the Bleecher case and one particularly tragic tale about a pair of twins, one of them killed by a drunk driver. It’s too soon, obviously, for any coverage of Phil’s murder but it’s only a matter of time. A psychiatric institution. A slaughter. As Simon would call it, a hell of a story, but not on patch so, thankfully, none of our concern.
The Ealing Gazette comes out once a week, has a circulation of a couple of thousand and a readership of even less. There are four reporters in total (three of whom work from home) and an even scarcer sales and advertising department.
I’ve had the job for over three years now, though I didn’t think I had a chance in hell of even getting it after bombing the interview; my inexperience clouding the room like a bad smell. Simon hired me anyway, forgoing much more experienced reporters for a trainee still in need of her journalism diploma. A diploma he ended up paying for, alongside my various newspaper subscriptions.
It’s not an easy commute from Sutton – a twenty-minute drive followed by an hour-and-a-half train journey – but one I do happily if it means I don’t have to work closer to home. I live in Sutton, yes, but Hillside is in Sutton too and I had just about escaped Hillside with my life. As of this morning, Phil hadn’t.
I get to work, stopping by one of the catering vans for coffee before and buzzing myself into the office with my key card, which has always seemed an unnecessary precaution. The Ealing Gazette is exactly what you’d expect a z-list local newspaper office to look like: a cheap, rented space in some converted garages just off the industrial estate. There’s nothing much of value inside it.
Everything’s grubby, even though I bump into the cleaning ladies most mornings, like that’s how it was built; finished with a coat of vanilla grime and furnished with boxy, poly-plastic cubicles and red wheelie chairs that itch the skin of your back if your shirt isn’t long enough.
There’s not much in the way of amenities apart from a dusty old vending machine and a dishwasher that’s been under maintenance since 2012, but then most things at the Gazette are under maintenance. Shabby, that’s what the office is; an environment that, despite my best intentions, I’ve never had much trouble fitting into.
I sit down at my desk, push my coffee to one side and load up my laptop-connected-to-a-screen, scrolling through my emails until something makes sense but nothing does. My mind is scrambled by the worry I’m trying my best to ignore and the words on the screen might as well be gibberish. Frustrated, I close my email browser and unwrap the Snickers bar next to my keyboard, shoving the end into my mouth. I take a couple more merciless chews and lean back in my chair, pondering what James is doing right now.
‘Some bloody health correspondent you are.’
I jump slightly in my chair, turning to see Simon leaning against the empty desk beside me and pointing to the chocolate bar on my desk with an unimpressed grimace.
Simon. Big belly. Heavy breather. Heavier drinker. Tie ever loosened, smells like Amaretto and Listerine. Simon, who kept me on despite the mass staff exodus two years ago because I cared about the person not just the story, a quality he deemed more important than years spent in the trenches. Simon, whose first wife killed herself if you believe the rumours and I’d seen him drink – really drink – so I do.
Sometimes, I wonder if Simon only gave me the job because he could smell the damage on me during our first meeting. The same way I could smell his.
I wipe chocolate from the corner of my mouth and swallow hard.
‘I’m not your health correspondent, Simon,’ I say diplomatically. ‘You don’t have one.’
‘But if I did, they’d show up on time,’ he says with a subtle wink. ‘So? Where were ya?’
‘I slept in. I’m sorry.’
I shuffle back on my chair. Simon nudges the paper coffee cup on my desk with the tip of his pen.
‘Slept in – but still time for a coffee run.’ He tuts loudly. ‘This from Maggie’s van?’
I nod.
‘Where’s mine?’
‘I didn’t have the change. Left my bank card at home,’ I say, which is a lie. He and I both know it.
It’s no secret that Simon puts alcohol in his morning coffee, nor that his second wife Yvonne is desperate to get him to stop; so much so that she’d sought help from the Ealing Industrial Estate caterers. That’s why I don’t have a coffee for Simon. Maggie from Maggie’s food van wouldn’t let me take one.
Simon sighs and grabs a warm bottle of Diet Coke that’s at the end of my desk, opening it with a heavy-handed crack.
‘So, what’d ya have for me story-wise kid? Something good, I hope?’
I rack my brain trying to come up with something, though it’s no use. There’s only one thing on my mind currently – and it’d be unwise for me to tell Simon anything about it.
‘I’ve got a meeting after lunch, actually. A potential scoop, but I don’t want to jinx anything.’
I tense in my seat, burdened by the lie. Simon takes a sip from the bottle in his hand and nods approvingly. ‘Excellent. I knew you wouldn’t let us down. That’s why you’re my favourite.’
I don’t say it but Simon’s my favourite too, common as muck with a Classics degree from Cambridge. Potential: that’s what Simon has. More potential than the converted garages of the Ealing Gazette, but th. . .
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