‘All right, well thank you for that,’ said Vogel. ‘We will look into it. Meanwhile, I don’t think you’d finished telling me about the night Kurt died, had you?’
‘No, I hadn’t. The most important part of my story. And the most dreadful.’
She paused yet again. Vogel wondered how anything could be more dreadful than what he had already heard.
‘Go on,’ he encouraged.
It was still several seconds before Helen spoke again. She looked as if she might be struggling to find the right words.
‘The thing is, I planned it,’ she blurted out suddenly.
Vogel was momentarily puzzled. ‘Planned what?’ he asked.
‘I planned Kurt’s death. I planned exactly how I would kill him. Down to the last detail.’
Vogel looked at Saslow. Saslow looked at Vogel. Neither of them dared speak.
‘I was ready and waiting for him when he came for me, even though I had prayed every day that he never would,’ Helen continued. ‘Everything was organized. My weapons, the gun and the little butter knife, were concealed underneath the table by the door. Waiting, as I was, just in case. I wanted Kurt to think I was running, trying to get away. And I wanted it to look that way to the police too.
‘I had the gun behind my back, ready, when he came at me, and I shot him at point-blank range in the chest. I didn’t hesitate, Mr Vogel.
‘When I was sure that he was dead, I set about framing him. I put the gun in his hand so that it would have his fingerprints on it as well as mine. Then I stabbed myself with that little butter knife. It might have been little, but it hurt like hell. I had to do it though, Mr Vogel. Everything had to be extreme, to justify and explain my shooting Kurt.
‘I wiped my own prints off the butter knife, but not my blood, of course, and smudged Kurt’s prints all over it. The DNA, the blood pattern, the prints, all matched my story. A neighbour reported hearing my screams. That was a bonus. I wasn’t even aware that I had screamed.
‘I didn’t want to kill him. Really I didn’t. I just never wanted to set eyes on Kurt St John again. Even though I had planned every detail, it was a plan I hoped never to execute. But, was I glad he was dead? Oh yes, Mr Vogel, so very very glad.’
Quite abruptly, Helen stopped speaking.
Vogel had been quite mesmerized. And he suspected it was the same for Saslow. He had to struggle to think like a policeman again. Could it really be true?
‘That’s quite a story,’ he said eventually. ‘There are parts I don’t totally understand though. The gun, as you said, was traced to Kurt—’
‘I was imprisoned for fifteen months, I had all the right contacts,’ Helen interrupted. ‘Prison gives you that. You come into contact with people who know how to get a gun if you want one. And people who are more than willing to teach you the tricks of their nefarious trades. You can learn how to cover your tracks. You can learn how to lay a false trail, how to frame someone else. And, if you’re desperate enough, you can even learn how to kill and get away with it...’
Again she paused. Again Vogel glanced at Saslow, and Saslow glanced at Vogel. Again neither of them dared speak.
‘I didn’t want it to come to that, chief inspector,’ Helen continued eventually. ‘I did everything I could for it not to happen. I changed my name, I went to live in a crap bedsit in a place where I knew nobody and nobody knew me. I did everything I could to hide from Kurt. I was prepared to exist like that for the rest of my life. And it would have been just an existence. I didn’t go after Kurt, Mr Vogel. And I so hoped he wouldn’t come after me again. But when he did, I had no choice.
‘It was still self-defence, in my opinion, chief inspector, but I don’t think a court would have seen it that way, do you?’
‘No, I don’t,’ Vogel agreed. ‘It would have been regarded as premeditated.’
‘I never thought I’d have the guts, you know, not if it came to it,’ Helen continued, almost as if Vogel hadn’t spoken. ‘But ultimately I did it without batting an eyelid. I killed my husband. I blew a hole in his chest. And I planned it down to the last detail. That’s something I’ve had to live with for more than twenty years.’
‘Yes, Kurt St John died a very long time ago,’ commented Vogel. ‘So why are you telling us this now?’
‘One reason is that I’m a lapsed Catholic, I’ve been waiting a long time for this confessional.’
Helen laughed, almost as if she were telling a joke, before turning deadly serious again.
‘Another is that I can no longer be hurt. Not really. Not by William, although he doesn’t know that. And not by the forces of law. I have multiple sclerosis. It was diagnosed not long after I killed Kurt. At the time my Catholic guilt told me that it was just retribution. Mine is relapse-remitting MS, the commonest sort, and most of the time I have been able to live more or less a normal life. There have been bad episodes over the years, of course. And it’s largely because of the MS that I became so overweight, which I’ve always hated. But it’s only recently that I’ve had to accept I am approaching end-stage MS. My attacks have become more frequent and I am often in considerable pain.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, Helen,’ murmured Vogel.
With the benefit of hindsight, however, he was not entirely surprised. He had, after all, noticed her trembling hands before, and the way she’d stumbled and then needed to sit after she’d attempted to mow the lawn. But at the time he had thought nothing of any of that, and totally misinterpreted what now seemed to be quite clear indications of a potentially serious health issue.
‘Yes, but it means I am unlikely to ever stand trial, not for anything,’ Helen replied, with another small laugh.
‘However, the most important reason is that I want you to know what I’m capable of,’ she continued. ‘I know how to kill. I know how to commit a murder. I’ve done it before. I also killed Thomas Quinn, I don’t want there to be any doubt about that, and I don’t want the wrong person to be convicted of his murder.’
‘Well maybe,’ responded Vogel. ‘But killing a man who has caused you such terrible suffering and repeatedly put you in fear of your life is one thing, killing somebody you don’t even know on behalf of a third party is something entirely different.’
‘Yes it is, isn’t it?’ remarked Helen conversationally.
She looked thoughtful and paused yet again.
‘The thing is, I’ve done that before too,’ she said.
Vogel could hardly believe his ears. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked, although surely the meaning had been clear enough.
‘I want to tell you something, Chief Inspector Vogel and Sergeant Saslow, something monumentally catastrophic that people who have never been directly involved rarely even consider. I doubt either of you really know about domestic abuse. Not really. I don’t think you’re married, are you, sergeant? Or not to a man anyway. And I doubt you’ve ever had a close relationship with a man, have you?’
Saslow shook her head. She couldn’t trust herself to speak. She felt her cheeks begin to colour. Saslow liked to keep her private life exactly that. She never talked about her sexuality at work.
‘As for you, Mr Vogel, I doubt you’re an abusive husband somehow. And attending a few select committee meetings on the subject tells you nothing. Absolutely nothing. I am sure you know the basic facts, two women a week in this country are killed by men. Yet there are government strategy initiatives looking into homelessness and knife crime, and all manner of other crucial issues, but not into domestic violence — despite the fact that almost two million women and 800,000 men suffered domestic abuse during 2019, the last fully recorded year. And those, of course, are only the cases that were reported to the authorities. Data is limited since the pandemic, but we know the situation has become much much worse. During the first lockdown the National Domestic Abuse Helpline reported a sixty-five per cent increase in calls. For me every statistic is a stab to the heart. But there is something else, perhaps the greatest horror of all, for which there are, as far as I am aware, no recorded figures, no substantiated data.