Treated like a common criminal, and feeling like one too, I took a slurp of the going-cold tea and tore the sandwich from its plastic wrapper. Being watched, I refused to feel self-conscious, and despite the rather stale bread and dubious unidentifiable meat filling, I ate the whole thing and felt glad to have something to fill the hole in my middle.
Beardy took my empty cup and plastic wrapper, then led me to a phone mounted on a wall. It was an old thing like one used to find in a public call box.
‘There are numbers for lawyers on the wall,’ Beardy pointed out. I twitched my eyes at a board covered in business cards, but I already knew who I was about to call. For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to me until I was chewing my sandwich, but unbidden the memory surfaced – my brother-in-law is a lawyer.
My Sister and I do not see eye to eye on anything and never have. She is a bully who has always tried to rub my face in her superior height and superior looks. She was happy to point out her husband’s superior job. Anywhere she could score a point, she did. Since we were little girls living in the same house, she always had a reason to pick on me.
Of course, I believe the reason is because she is a horrible cow, but I wasn’t going to point that out right now because I needed her for once.
Mercifully, hers was one of the numbers I had etched in my memory. It was after eleven; late, but not so late that I thought she might be asleep.
‘Ginny Walters,’ she answered the phone, wondering who might be calling this late and on a number she didn’t recognise.
‘Ginny,’ I bit my lip and cursed my luck. She would call mum the moment she got off the phone to me and would ride my incarceration like a bad anecdote for the next decade. ‘It’s Felicity. I need your help.’
It was a simple statement and one designed to interrupt whatever she was about to say next - I rarely got to finish a sentence before my big sister would start to talk about herself. For once I managed to silence her, even if not for long.
‘You need my help,’ she repeated. Her tone turned suspicious. ‘Why? What with?’
I sucked in a deep breath and got the words out before I changed my mind. ‘I’ve been arrested for murder. I need Shane.’
Several seconds of silence followed. Enough that I drew a breath to ask if she was still there.
She spoke before I could. ‘I see. Well, I have to say this doesn’t shock me.’
‘What? My getting arrested and accused of murder doesn’t shock you? I’m a wedding planner, Ginny. Why would you ever think I might get arrested for murder?’ With our history, it didn’t take much for my rage level to spike.
Ginny snapped, ‘Do you want me to help you or not?’ She was enjoying her position of power, just the way I knew she would.
‘Yes,’ I replied with a reluctant sigh.
‘Yes, what?’ She was going to make me beg. The horrible old witch was genuinely going to make me beg when my very freedom was on the line.
‘Please, Ginny,’ I begged, imploring her to stop messing me around. ‘I’m in Maidstone police station. I need Shane’s help and I need it now.’ I was almost at the point of tears, the evening proving too much for my gentle spirit to take. I wasn’t hardened against such experiences the way Vince seemed to be.
Sounding bored, Ginny said, ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ and with that she put the phone down. I was left standing in the corridor with Beardy watching me while I stared incomprehensibly at the phone. The dial tone mocked me, but my one call was complete, and I was going nowhere except back to my cell.
Good News and Bad
I awoke shivering in the dark some hours later, but it was the sound of the viewing hatch being opened and closed that woke me and my door was being unlocked now that whoever was outside had confirmed I wasn’t poised to attack behind the door.
It was Beardy again, whose name I still didn’t know and guiltily had not attempted to learn. ‘Come on,’ he beckoned. ‘You’re being released.’
The news propelled me from the bed and onto the cold floor of the cell.
‘Released? As in I can go home?’
‘That’s usually what released means,’ he replied flippantly while waiting for me to straighten my clothes.
I didn’t waste any time getting out of the cell, slipping my shoes back on and hurrying through the door while still rearranging myself. Immediately buoyed by the prospect of having the charges against me dropped, I was disappointed to find myself back outside Interview Room 2.
‘I thought I was being released?’ I questioned.
I got a nod from Beardy. ‘Once you have spoken with the chief inspector.’
He did the knock, wait, push the door open thing, but to my great relief, when the door swung to reveal the room, my brother-in-law was sitting opposite Chief Inspector Quinn. I could not remember ever being more glad to see anyone in my life.
He was getting to his feet and I all but knocked him back into his chair when I flung my arms around him.
‘Good morning, Felicity,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘Don’t worry, we will be leaving shortly. The chief inspector just has a few things to say first.’ He dropped the amused tone he used on me.
