A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [184]
So many questions that needed answering! And if he had a load, how many more would the police have tomorrow? He wished he could just scoop Fifi up now and whisk her off somewhere peaceful and beautiful.
He was not going to take her back to Dale Street, ever.
Maybe it would be best to stay permanently in Bristol, so she never had reminders of all this again. It would be their first wedding anniversary on the 20th. What a terrible year it had been too! Surely it was time for something good to happen?
Fifi cried out suddenly, and Dan was off the camp bed and over to her in two seconds.
‘It’s okay, I’m here,’ he said soothingly, gathering her into his arms.
For a second she looked as if she didn’t know where she was, there was terror in her eyes. ‘It was the rats,’ she whispered. ‘They were as big as cats and they were coming for me.’
‘The only rat in here is me,’ he said. ‘And I’m the cuddly kind.’
She half smiled. ‘It was so real,’ she sighed. ‘That’s what I was most afraid of once I found Yvette dead. We used to hear them scuttling around at night, but we didn’t actually see any.’
‘So when did she do it?’ Dan asked gently, moving round so that his back was supported on the bed rail while he held Fifi in his arms. ‘Did you see it?’
Fifi shook her head and explained what happened. ‘I think she went a bit mad at the end. She was talking in French, she said she thought she was with her mother. But that wasn’t surprising after all she’d been through.’
Haltingly she began to tell him what Yvette had been through in Paris as a young girl. Dan was shocked, not just at the cruelty of it, but because he’d always had the idea Yvette was sort of born a spinster. He certainly couldn’t imagine her in a bordello.
‘I suppose she just didn’t have anything to hang on for,’ he said. ‘I mean, no one of her own looking for her.’
‘It wasn’t that,’ Fifi said in a small voice. She turned to him and buried her face in his chest, clutching his arms tightly. ‘Oh Dan, when she told me about it, it didn’t seem real. Nothing did while we were in the barn. But now!’
She began to sob, a harsh sound which came from deep within her. Dan held her close, whispering endearments, reassuring her she was safe. He had expected that she’d break down once she thought over what she’d been through.
‘What didn’t seem real?’ he asked after a little while. He thought it best to try to get her to talk. ‘Do you mean Yvette’s body hanging there?’
‘No, that was terribly real,’ she sobbed out. ‘It was what she said.’ Once again she buried her face against him.
Dan prised her from him, lifting her face and drying her tears with the edge of the sheet. ‘So maybe it wasn’t real then. Tell me and see what I think.’
‘You won’t believe it,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t think anyone will.’
‘Try me?’ he whispered.
‘She killed Angela.’
Dan almost wanted to laugh, and he might have done if he hadn’t thought Fifi was losing her grip on reality. ‘She couldn’t have, sweetheart. Maybe she said she did, but she was obviously getting in a state. Maybe she meant it was her fault it happened because she hadn’t reported the Muckles when she knew they treated their kids badly.’
‘No, Dan, she really did do it,’ she cried out.
As she began to tell him the story of that Friday night, the men arriving for the card game, Dan realized she was repeating what she’d been told by Yvette. At first he was just humouring her, listening but not taking it that seriously, but by the time she got to the part about Yvette crouching in her garden watching Molly offering Angela for sale, he knew this was what really happened. Suddenly it was almost as if he were there in that garden too.
‘She heard the man upstairs with Angela,’ Fifi sobbed.
‘She said his name was Jack Trueman, and that’s the name I heard you say to the policeman today. Is he the man you hit?’
‘Yes.’ Dan licked his lips nervously, feeling sick to his stomach