Now fully awake, tightening his grip on the handset, Barry made a mental note of the arrangements the former detective outlined for the next day and repeated them back to him.
“Do you know Barry, this is such a relief. You’re the first person I’ve told about this. I have carried the guilt of what I have done for far too long and it’s time to set the record straight. Especially the fact that I know that Lucy’s killer is still free.” A short coughing fit followed and then the voice added, “Barry, do you ever think about dying?”
Before he had time to answer, the line went dead.
Barry hung onto the phone for a few seconds, listening to the soft burr of the dialling tone, his eyes studying the gloom of the bedroom while his thoughts mulled over the call. Setting the handset back in its cradle, he reached across and switched on his bedside light. He knew he was going to have difficulty getting back to sleep.
23rd November.
Pushing himself back in his seat, Barry Newstead watched as Susan Siddons, all petite, five feet of her, made her way back to him between the knot of people who were queuing at the bar.
It still amazed him that at fifty-one, despite giving birth and indulging in such an unhealthy lifestyle over the years, she still managed to hold onto her teenage size ten figure. And from the way some of the men glanced at her as she brushed past them, she also hadn’t lost any of her ability to turn heads.
He knew he shouldn’t be surprised. After all, it had been her dainty figure and natural beauty that had first attracted him all those years ago.
Looking at her now, weaving between the small throng towards him, it seemed she had hardly changed since that first day they had bumped into one another. True, her hair was now artificially coloured and cut a lot shorter, and there was a slight kink to the bridge of her nose, the result of a beating from a previous partner, but it didn’t detract from her prettiness.
He couldn’t help but feel smug. He considered himself so fortunate to get a second chance with Susan. Fate had brought them back together, he had repeatedly told himself over the past few months; she had been a key witness in a recent case and it had given them the opportunity to rekindle their friendship.
As she neared she threw him a beaming smile, followed by one of her mischievous winks.
She’s caught me; he had been eyeing her far too long.
That smile of hers brought the memories flooding back.
He’d first met Susan in 1976. He had been twenty-two at the time and had just entered CID as an aide. She was eighteen, embarking upon a career as a journalist with the local paper and had turned up at a stabbing he had been called to. She had dogged him for the story. It had not just been Susan’s prettiness and persistence which had captured him, but she has also had an inner quality which he had found hard to resist. He gave her the story and she had become a regular contact with whom he shared information. They formed a clandestine partnership. He would drop a snippet her way or give background to some of the court cases he was involved in and in return she’d give him a lead on a suspect, which would help him clear up local crime.
They soon began to meet in pubs to swap stories, until one night when they’d both had too much to drink and they had ended up back at her flat. From there, the relationship had changed to one which became intimate and sexual.
The first time it had occurred, Barry’s conscience had been pricked. He had been about to get married and for months thereafter he had tried to avoid Susan, dealing with her enquiries over the phone.
But they did meet again and the inevitable happened. Barry had been dealing with a nasty rape of a young mum. The rapist had forced his way into the twenty-one year old woman’s home and attacked her in front of her two year old son.
Making her own enquiries for the newspaper, Susan had got a lead on the suspect — a fifteen year old, living two streets away from his victim, who had been exposing himself to young girls from his school.
Susan had helped Barry crack the case. They had celebrated their triumph in the pub and after closing time they had jumped into bed together again back at her flat.
For the next couple of years they bounced in and out of each other’s lives, though neither of them wanted the relationship to develop any further.
Then, right out of the blue, in 1979 she had telephoned him and made it clear she no longer wanted to see him again. She had met someone else.
Her phone call was a relief. It gave Barry the chance to throw everything back into his marriage, though from a discreet distance he hadn’t been able to resist keeping track of her life. He learned of every one of her relationships with men, none seemed to last for longer than six months. Reports came across his desk that she was drinking far too heavily and there had been occasions when police had been called to domestic incidents with some of her partners. She had a habit of falling for the wrong kind of guy.
Barry had also discovered that she had given birth to a daughter and Social Services had been involved because of her regular drunkenness.
In 1985 he had dropped back into her life after a fashion. On an evening shift, the duty sergeant had requested he should join him at her address, uniform had attended as a result of a 999 call. Susan had suffered a vicious beating at the hands of her latest boyfriend.
She was a sorrowful sight and he had offered to take her to casualty for treatment. There, he had stood guard outside the cubicle, listening as the doctor checked her over.
“You’re going to be just fine Miss Siddons. We’ll clean you up and then send you for an X-Ray,” he had heard the doctor say, and then he had caught, “Now if I can just take down a few personal details.”
She had hesitated when the doctor mentioned her daughter. It wasn’t much of a hesitation, but it was long enough to arouse his suspicions. He had whipped aside the curtain and locked onto her gaze. She had tried to glance away but the look on her face instantly told him he was right.
He had a daughter. Carol was six years old.
The news had rocked him. Speechless and dumbfounded, he had sat beside Susan in the hospital cubicle, doing his best to focus on what she was saying.
She confessed she had ended their relationship because she was pregnant with his child and didn’t want to ruin his marriage.
After Susan had sobered up, been given treatment and discharged from hospital, she had apologised and made it clear no one would ever find out.
She had kept her word and allowed him to move on and he became a father for the second time when his wife Jean gave birth to Sarah.
He made regular appearances in Carol’s life, supporting her and Susan financially as much as he could, and he always bought presents for birthdays and Christmas. But he was never a father to her like he was to Sarah and knew he would have to carry that millstone around his neck until his dying day — especially after the tragedy.
Carol had gone missing on 12th October 1993; the date was ingrained in his memory. She had sneaked away from the Social Services residential care home, where she had been placed and had simply disappeared without trace.
Because of her background history, every officer who had picked up the file had written Carol off as a runaway, believing that she had fled the area to make her living off the streets. Barry had thought differently. He covertly monitored the case every day for weeks and had picked up the Missing from Home File once uniform had filed it away. Behind the scenes he had worked on it, even defying threats from his Detective Inspector to ‘leave it alone’ because it was not a CID job. After eighteen months of secretive investigation, he had got no nearer to solving Carol’s disappearance. Deep down, he always guessed that his daughter was dead, but he had never shared his suspicions with Susan.