Cold Blood by Jane Heafield (great books to read txt) 📕

she did. So I smacked him for it. But she was on her knees in the mud, behind him. My smack made him kick. I didn’t see the impact, but I saw her fly through the air. There was no blood, but she wasn’t moving.’

Richard Turner leaned forward, shaking his head. ‘And that’s when you strangled her to death.’

It wasn’t stated as a question, or even a fact. It was a line loaded with sarcasm. Another lie exposed. Bennet wanted to sit, but feared a single movement might break the spell entrancing the two Turners. Still, the young man could not look up at his father.

‘No. But I thought you’d believe that. No blood. I didn’t even see an injury.’

‘But there was one. Her skull was smashed.’

The files were still on the table. Turner slapped the sheet of paper aside, seeking the one he wanted. Neither detective moved a muscle as paperwork skimmed off the table and onto the floor, in case it broke whatever spell father and son were under. Turner snatched up the sheet he wanted – the photo of the break in Sally Jenkins’ skull – and stopped little short of ramming it into his son’s nose.

Lucas leaned back so his eyes could focus. Even when Turner dropped the photo and it hit the table and glided to the floor, those eyes followed it. It was face down, but still the young man stared as he said, ‘I knew you’d be angry. Angry because I went behind your back to let Sally ride B’fly. So, yes, I lied. I’m sorry.’

Bennet was shocked. To cover the fact that he’d disobeyed his father’s wishes not to let Sally near the Clydesdale called B’fly, ten-year-old Lucas had instead claimed he’d killed her. And Turner seemed more upset that his son was a liar than a killer. How messed up was that? If only Turner had also warned his son never to pretend to kill little girls.

‘Continue,’ Turner ordered his son.

Ten-year-old Lucas Turner dragged Sally’s body into the stable, put B’fly away, and sneaked back into the house, into his bed, and there he yelled for the babysitter. He was ill, in pain, and needed his father. She got on the phone, and within minutes Richard Turner was driving home from his bash. Lucas was waiting in his room, crying. Turner sent the babysitter home. Alone now with his father, Lucas’s story poured out: Sally had come to borrow a bike, but she tried to open the stables to see B’fly. He said no. She insisted. They fell out. They fought. He was stronger. She couldn’t unsnap his hands from around her neck. Neither could he. Turner left his son in the bedroom and went out to see the body for himself.

And here, a twist that shocked both detectives. Lucas looked up at his father, and in his voice was such rage the councillor jerked back in his chair.

‘And then she got up, now suddenly alive, and ran away from home, right?’

The councillor found it hard to speak at first. Their roles seemed to have reversed, with Lucas now the accuser and his father weak and nervous. ‘What else could I do, son? You were ten. You wouldn’t have understood.’

Lucas stabbed a finger at the hypnotised detectives. ‘So tell them. Tell them what you told me.’

Turner looked at the policemen, one at a time, then back to his son. He folded his arms and visibly relaxed. An hour earlier, Bennet would have assumed the councillor had suddenly renewed a belief that he could lie or parry and escape the anvil hanging over his head. But everything was different now. This, he knew, was the calm that filtered through those unwilling to fight any longer.

‘I told you she was alive,’ Turner said. With his skills as a vet, he’d brought her round. She had only been choked unconscious and, revived, Sally had run away. Lucas feared she would tell her mother and he’d get in trouble, but Turner had told him not to worry. Sally hadn’t run home. She’d told Turner she was leaving the village, running away forever. ‘And off she ran.’

‘I believed you,’ Lucas said. ‘We all did. But I didn’t believe you for long. Nobody saw her, nobody heard from her. When I was older, I knew. She wasn’t living a new life somewhere. She’d been dead all along. And you fed that theory of her running away to the whole world. You lied to everyone, and you have the nerve to sit there and scold me for a lie? So tell it. I know what happened, because it’s obvious now. But I want to hear something truthful from your face.’

Turner nodded and began telling it. Sally had been quite dead when he found her and he’d dragged her behind the stables until he could think what to do. That night, after Lucas had fallen asleep, Turner loaded Sally’s body into the boot of his car and left her there until daylight. In the morning, as the village was becoming increasingly panicked about the little girl’s disappearance, he drove out of Lampton to dump the body. He knew about Lake Stanton, a place he and friends had swam in as kids. He also knew a body could lay at its deep bottom for years. A decade later, the location had proved its worth and once more received the dead.

From a charity shop in Castleton, a few miles north of Lampton, he bought an old steamer trunk. By Lake Stanton, he loaded Sally’s body into the trunk and inserted rocks in the spaces around her to cut down on the amount of air that would be trapped, so it would sink. He dragged the trunk to the water, slid it in, and kicked it over the submerged edge. Once the rippling lake had calmed, he turned his back. The easy part was done. Now it was time for the real test.

In his car, Turner lifted an item he’d bought from