Caught in the Web by Emmy Ellis (classic english novels .TXT) 📕

probability that this was even happening. A fucking cliché in his own back yard—killer goes after copper. If that’s what was happening. It could all still be a coincidence.

He held tight to his emotions and eyed his empty cup.

“What on earth do you mean?” Mum asked. “He’s dead, God rest his beautiful soul. How can this have anything to do with him?”

Shaw gave her a smile—a bit tight, but a smile nonetheless. “We have reason to believe that the man doing this is…is related to your late husband.”

God help us if we’ve got this wrong…

“What?” She slapped a hand to her chest. “That’s impossible.” She laughed—that tinkle again. “All William’s relatives are dead, too. His mother, father, cousins, the lot of them, gone.”

“But not his other son?” Shaw delivered it so calmly that it was more a gentle prodding of her memories than an outright shocking question. “He had another son, didn’t he.”

She paled. Fiddled with a locket about her neck. Glanced from Shaw to Burgess. Her scrutiny was uncomfortable. So there, so abrasive. He continued to stare at the cup but reached out to lay a hand on her forearm, squeezed a little, then took it away to place it on his lap beneath the lip of the table.

“Burgess?” she whispered.

“It’s all right, Mum. Tell Shaw what you know. Stop pretending now.”

Tell him what you never told me. What you’ve hidden all these years. I understand why you did.

“But…but what about you?” she asked.

“Doesn’t matter. Just let it all out.” His throat hurt from holding his emotions in check. “Wasn’t your fault or my fault. And he was still a good man, regardless.” He thought that might chivvy her along. If his father’s memory could continue with the fallacy that he’d never done wrong, even though they were about to discuss something very wrong, that was all right by him. Whatever it took to get the information they needed. Whatever it took to get it out of her without her breaking down. Hysterical. Wrecked. Her fabricated recall of life before his father’s death exposed to the three of them. And later, if it proved to be true, exposed to the country via the news.

Ouch.

“But it does matter. I protected you from it all.” Her locket jangled where she fussed with it so much. “I didn’t want you to ever know.”

“But I do, and now we must deal with it.”

Chapter Sixteen

“You have to know he was good,” she said. “I won’t continue until you agree with that.”

“I already said something along those lines, didn’t I, Mum. Things happen. Life takes weird turns, and Dad just happened to go down a road he shouldn’t have. Got lost for a while, shall we say. Like I said, wasn’t your fault, wasn’t mine, and maybe, mad as it sounds, it wasn’t his. All right, he had the responsibility of control, but sometimes we lose that. She might have enticed him, met him at a vulnerable stage in his life. What was he doing around that time that could have made him do such a thing?”

He couldn’t say it outright. What could have made him shag another woman? Talking sex with her had never been something they had done, Burgess finding out it existed through the kids at school and biology lessons. Discussing his father’s sex life in any form…well, that wasn’t the most comfortable of conversations, but it was on the way and had to be deliberated.

“When…when you were about five, we weren’t getting along, me and your father,” she said. “We argued about almost every little thing. God, I’ve been denying this for so long that speaking about it now feels surreal. Like it isn’t me, wasn’t us involved.”

“Go on,” Burgess said. “It’ll be all right. Might be good for you to get it all off your chest. Must be difficult holding a beacon for someone all these years.”

“Yes,” she said. “Quite. He…he was late home from work, the usual rubbish excuse, but his wages didn’t reflect the overtime. I remember looking at his payslip, the realisation that he was possibly having an affair hitting me hard.” She lowered a hand from her locket and held one of Burgess’ beneath the table. “So I asked him. Asked him outright. He denied it, of course, and we continued on as though nothing had happened, but it was always there, in the back of my mind. The overtime stopped at that point, and not another word was said about it—any of it.”

“How did you deal with that kind of betrayal?” Burgess asked.

“Oh, you know, you tell yourself it didn’t happen. How else can you go on?” She stroked her thumb over the back of his hand. “You pretend you’re happy when inside you’re crumbling, that sort of thing. All easily done. And I had you to keep me going. I didn’t want you living with just me, a broken marriage behind us.”

Burgess winced. That was his mother all over. Prepared to stick it out so she wasn’t shamed by having a divorce under her belt.

Although he’d signalled for Shaw to do the talking, Burgess found that it was all right, he could do it now. “What time did the woman come to the house? With her son. What time of day was that?”

She gasped. “I thought…I thought you’d forgotten.”

“Just answer the question, Mum. It’s important.”

“Morning. I remember it was half term and you were home. She came around ten.”

“And the police came to you about eight at night, didn’t they.” Not a question. Definitely not a question. He’d read the case file too many times not to know. He now remembered it had been dark, he’d had a bath, had been in his pyjamas when they’d knocked on the door.

“Yes. I’d telephoned the police about seven because your father hadn’t