‘Is it correct that you were there between the hours of approximately eight a.m. and six p.m.?’
‘Y-yes,’ stumbled Gill.
‘Did you leave the House at all during those hours?’
‘No.’
‘Are you quite sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not even for a breath of fresh air?’
‘No.’
‘Gill, you must realize the impact this information has on your situation, and yet you chose not to impart it yourself. It changes everything. You have an alibi. Why did you not tell us that you were at Helen’s House, Gill?’
‘Because it’s private, it’s nobody else’s business.’
‘It’s my business now, I’m afraid, Gill,’ responded Vogel. ‘And I need to ask you this: were you there because your husband had attacked you?’
‘It was b-between us, it was nothing,’ Gill replied almost inaudibly.
‘Well Gill, as you can see I’ve brought Dr Lamey with me. I need her to examine you again.’
‘No, no. I don’t want that. I d-don’t want to be examined. There’s no reason to examine me, and you have no right. N-no right at all.’
‘I think there is reason, Gill. And if you’re not prepared to cooperate, then I shall have to arrange for you to be taken elsewhere. If necessary back to the hospital. And ultimately the station again. For another formal interview.’
Greg spoke again then, but more quietly, and addressing his mother. ‘Mum, you should do as Mr Vogel asks,’ he said. ‘This is important. We don’t want you going back to the police station, do we? And I want to know what’s been going on too. Do it for me. Please Mum.’
Greg’s voice when he was speaking to his mother was entirely different. Gentle. Full of concern and affection.
Gill shrugged. ‘All right, if you must,’ she said.
Dr Lamey took her temperature, checked Gill’s pulse and her blood pressure, just as she had earlier in the day, and looked at her hands and wrists. Then she asked her to stand and pull up her tracksuit top, so that she could examine the fading bruising on her abdomen.
‘I told them in the hospital,’ began Gill. ‘I had to do an emergency stop in the car, and the steering wheel...’
She stopped abruptly, perhaps aware that nobody in the room believed a word she was saying.
‘Would you sit down again, please,’ instructed Dr Lamey.
Gill did so.
‘I would just like to check behind your ears, please,’ said Dr Lamey, stepping forward.
Gill gasped. She held up both hands in front of her face, palms outwards.
‘No. no, no,’ she screamed. ‘Don’t you touch me. Don’t you dare touch me. You have no right to touch me.’
Dr Lamey stepped back, perhaps involuntarily.
Greg ran to his mother’s side, crouched down and put his arms around her, making soothing noises. Very gradually, the woman calmed down.
Vogel watched in silence. He reckoned anything he or Saslow said right then would only make matters worse. This was a moment when a police officer needed to do the most difficult thing of all. Take a watching brief and leave well alone.
‘I want to know what’s going on, Mum,’ said Greg. ‘I want to know what’s been happening to you, why the doctor wants to look behind your ears. I’m going to take a look for myself, is that all right?’
Gill neither replied nor moved.
With great care, Greg brushed his mother’s hair away from one ear and, pushing the upper part of the ear forwards, he leaned in slightly to look behind.
Gill winced.
‘Oh my God,’ cried Gregory. His voice was full of anguish now.
‘Oh no, oh no. Mum, why didn’t you tell me? I knew he was a bully. But this? Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘It was too much, just too much,’ whispered Gill.
‘Oh, my God,’ said Greg again.
‘I was ashamed, so ashamed,’ Gill continued. ‘I didn’t want anyone to know. Not even you. Particularly not you, my darling...’
Vogel, Saslow and Dr Lamey were all facing mother and son. They could not see what Gregory was seeing. Dr Lamey was closest. She moved quickly forwards until she was standing behind Gill Quinn. Vogel saw her face change as she saw what Gregory had seen. No doubt the doctor was used to all manner of horrors. And like Vogel, she’d had a fair idea what to expect. None the less she appeared stunned and appalled.
‘You have to see this, chief inspector,’ she said.
Greg gestured to Vogel to come closer. His mother seemed compliant now. As if she had finally given in to the inevitable, Vogel thought.
He and Saslow moved alongside Dr Lamey. They had a clear view behind Gill Quinn’s ear. The soft tissue there was covered with sores and scars, almost certainly burns administered by a lit cigarette, most in varying stages of healing, but one, red-raw and weeping, had obviously been inflicted very recently.
Vogel knew what to expect, of course, having already seen the photographs. But this was in the flesh. In more ways than one. And Vogel was shocked to the core. He had never seen anything quite like it, and he hoped he never would again.
‘Gill, you have suffered quite terrible injuries,’ said Vogel. ‘Is your other ear like this?’
‘Y-yes.’
Again she spoke in little more than a whisper.
‘I’m just going to move your hair so that we can see behind your other ear,’ said Dr Lamey. ‘Is that all right?’
Gill remained sitting still, just nodding very slightly.
‘I won’t hurt you,’ Dr Lamey assured her.
She reached out, and very carefully brushed Gill’s hair away, pushing the upper part of the ear forward, as Greg had done with the first ear.
The flesh thus revealed was also horribly damaged, bearing a number of scars at varying stages and one very recent angry burn, almost certainly inflicted no earlier than the previous day, Vogel thought, the day Thomas Quinn was murdered.
‘Gill, did your husband do that to you?’ the DCI asked softly.
Gill did not respond at first. Again Vogel wondered whether or not she would answer at all.
‘It’s all right, Mum, I’m here,’ said Greg. ‘I’m always here. Beside you.’
Gill smiled weakly and clutched one of her son’s hands in both of hers.
‘Go on, tell Mr Vogel,’ Greg continued. ‘Dad did do it, didn’t he?’
Gill began to weep. Big heaving sobs wracked her body.
‘Yes,’ she said, between her tears. ‘He did it. Again and again and again. He burnt me. He hit me. He hurt me in ways so terrible I have never been able to tell anyone.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me, Mum, why on earth didn’t you tell me?’ asked Greg, distress and bewilderment clear in his voice.’
‘You are my son, I didn’t want you to be hurt, you are the last person in the world I would have told,’ she said, suddenly quite articulate. ‘And you would never have understood. How could you?’
Twenty
Lilian had not given any proper thought to Kurt’s reluctance to sleep with her before their marriage. He’d told her his respect and love for her was such that he wanted her to be his in every way before they had sex together, and that meant he wanted her to be his wife first. She had found it touching, unusual, refreshing, and more than a little romantic. His subsequent inability to have intercourse on their honeymoon she had, to begin with, dismissed as merely a nervous blip. There had been too much of a build-up to the big moment. Neither of them had been able to relax properly.
It was only after they returned to London, to Penbourne Villas, that he had succeeded in achieving complete intimacy with her. It was after he had hit her for the first time — but only a couple of light, if perhaps overly enthusiastic, slaps on her buttocks, nothing which concerned her unduly. She had simply been delighted that their marriage had finally been consummated, and that Kurt had been suddenly more than capable of full intercourse.