Cambridge Blue - Alison Bruce [121]
‘What did you tell him?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You didn’t tell him about Richard?’
‘I tried to talk to my sister Alice, but she said I was wrong, called it a stupid story, so I never told anyone else.’
‘Why not?’
‘Oh God!’ She shook her head. ‘I’ve asked myself that so many times. My dad kept asking me what had happened. Over and over. By the time I realized he thought I’d killed David, telling the truth would have sounded like a lie.’
‘And he really thought you’d done it?’
‘Absolutely. He even explained to me, later, how children can create false memories. To be honest, there are times when I’ve even doubted myself.’ Jackie dug a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose. ‘As he pointed out, I was just a small child, I might have been taken into care, and that would have finished my mother off. But she drank herself to death in any case, so I’m not sure what difference it would have made. I regret I didn’t push things further, because it could have saved Emma.’
‘Emma, not Joanne?’
‘I didn’t know her well but, yes, I knew her as Emma. We had what you could call a fledgling friendship. A group of us had gone to watch the racing at Newmarket, and Emma and I seemed to hit it off. We talked about spending a whole day with the horses . . . We were enjoying ourselves until she met Richard. He spotted us and made a beeline for Emma and I didn’t see much of her for the rest of that evening. I don’t even know what went on between them. In fact, I didn’t realize that anything was going on at all. Until I caught them having sex together . . . A few weeks later she disappeared.’
‘You never came forward.’
‘To say what, exactly? I would never have thought anything of it if it hadn’t been for what had happened with David, so I spoke to Alice again. You know they’re really close – you’ve seen it. Alice was furious with me, said I had to promise to keep quiet, that it was too late to stir things up again about David, and far too cruel to my parents. She promised she’d deal with Richard, and said it was my duty to show some loyalty to them both.’
‘So you are saying that you think your brother was responsible for Joanne Reed’s disappearance?’
‘I think so. It’s his jealousy. He gets these rages, till he kind of burns up with them. If there had been any proof that Emma was dead, I might have come forward.’
‘And when “I’m like Emma” appeared in the papers? Did you consider that it might be intended as a message for you?’
‘I didn’t know what to think, but I’d never thought Lorna was in any danger.’
‘Did it scare you? Wasn’t it like a threat?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You told me about your father turning up at the farm and shouting, “Tell me what happened to her.” Who was he talking about?’
‘Emma.’
‘And what was he looking for?’
When Jackie hesitated, Goodhew cut in, ‘Don’t make me tease it out of you one sentence at a time, Jackie. You know where this is going.’
She nodded. ‘He never told me what he meant by “very clever”, but I walked everywhere that I’d seen him go. There was only one place that could have hidden Emma’s body and that was the manure heap, which, if you think about it, is pretty cunning. I assumed then that he said “very clever” to me because he thought it was all my doing. I didn’t even try to convince him that it wasn’t me. I thought about digging it over just to see for myself, but I never did.’
‘In fact, you never did anything.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
FIFTY
When Goodhew stepped outside the interview room, he wasn’t surprised to find someone waiting in the corridor. It was PC Kelly Wilkes.
‘I’ll go in with her now,’ she said. ‘DI Marks is next door.’
That made sense. Goodhew had deliberately ignored the camera in the corner of the room because he didn’t want to be put off by it, but at the back of his mind he’d been certain Marks was in the adjoining room, and with him for every second of the interview.
Marks himself opened the door from the inside before Goodhew was even close. ‘She agreed to the search then?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I’ve requested to see everything