The Murder of Graham Catton

THE MURDER OF GRAHAM CATTON

Katie Lowe

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2021

Copyright © Katie Lowe 2021

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021

Katie Lowe asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008289027

Ebook Edition © April 2021 ISBN: 9780008289041

Version: 2021-04-20

Dedication

For my family,

for whom I’ll never have the words.

Epigraph

‘I will take this opportunity of cautioning you against all imprudent curiosity; let no incentive from it ever tempt you to seek an explanation of former occurrences; be assured your happiness depends entirely on your ignorance of them’

Regina Maria Roche, Clermont

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Before

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Episode One

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Episode Two

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Episode Three

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Episode Four

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Episode Five

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Episode Six

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

After

Chapter 66

Resources

Acknowledgements

Also by Katie Lowe

About the Publisher

1

London, 2008

It’s the sound of my husband’s blood on the floorboards that wakes me.

Like a dripping faucet.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Soft little splashes on the bedroom floor.

I stand over our bed, and I look at him, looking at me, and I think of the day we moved in.

I don’t know why it comes to me, then, but it does: the two of us aching and dripping with sweat.

We christened this bed. We made it ours. And when I peeled my body from his, he stared at me, dazed and gasping – stunned by the force of my love.

He’s looking at me in the same way, now.

Later, I will be asked about this moment: if I saw the body, if I looked. I’ll tell them I couldn’t, of course. That I shielded my eyes, and ran to find help.

But I don’t. I stand over him, watching. The only sound is the tapping, and my – only my – breath.

He’s quite clearly dead: perfectly still, his lips cracked and grey. And in his throat, the knife – my knife, a wedding gift – is angled sharply, like a conquering flag.

I stand over him, and try to piece together a story that makes sense. An explanation.

I remember words exchanged in the kitchen. A woman’s perfume on his skin. The bloody slick of wine around a glass, sediment clinging to the base. His footsteps, leaving me behind.

And after that: nothing.

Only an absence, a blur.

Now, I look at the face of the man I once loved, his pale body cooling in the pre-dawn light.

And I do not feel a thing.

2

‘I don’t remember,’ I say, in a voice that’s hoarse from screaming – another thing I can’t recall.

‘I heard a tapping noise. Like this.’ I tap-tap-tap on the metal desk. The strip light flickers overhead. ‘More of … More of a drip. And then I opened my eyes.’

The officers questioning me – a man and a woman, both fresh-faced and focused – nod.

They don’t believe me. And I can’t say I blame them. I’m not sure I’d believe me, if our roles were reversed.

‘I was on the floor,’ I go on. Evie, our daughter – my daughter – shivers in her sleep, her head resting on my lap, body stretched across the bed I’ve built with empty chairs. I run a finger through her curls, the way he used to do with mine. ‘I must’ve hit my head. I was dizzy. But I got up, and …’ I close my eyes, hoping they’ll take the hint.

He was dead, I want to say. You know that part.

But I can’t. Not in front of Evie. I need to protect her from that, for the moment at least.

When I’m asked to sign my statement, they’ve typed it in, on my behalf. I found the victim to be clearly deceased, via a single stab wound to his carotid artery. There’s something soothing about the medical wording – the bare facts of it. Still, I correct it. ‘I didn’t know it was … the artery. Won’t that be for the coroner to … You know?’

The male officer smiles. ‘My fault. I thought you were a doctor, so …’ I know what he’s saying. So you’d know where to stick the knife.

‘I’m a psychiatrist,’ I say. Not that it makes a difference: I still went to medical school; still know the basics of anatomy. But I’m not sure he knows that.

He nods, eyebrow raised. ‘Noted. Sign here.’

After eleven hours, they let me go. They don’t say it, but I know: this is conditional. A one-way flight to Barbados, right now, would all but confirm my guilt.

I check us into a nearby hotel, where I see myself for the first time in the greenish bathroom light.

I’m surprised at my own expression – the blankness of it. As though I’m expecting to find myself mid-scream, rigid as a Halloween mask. But aside from the faint sheen of filth on my skin, the clot of dried blood at the back of my head, I’m still very much myself. This is not something I expect to work in my favour.

I imagine conversations taking place at the police station. Not exactly a looker, I think they’ll say. A bit mismatched, weren’t they?

Or: She’s not very friendly. Closed-off. Like she’s hiding something.

I can’t dispute any of this. They’ll think it, because it’s true.

Still, I shower off the day, and crawl into bed with Evie. I smell home on her skin, and pull her close.

People say motherhood brings it out in you: a need to protect your child that verges on madness.

Only now do I realize it’s true.

3

The Friday eleven days later is my daughter’s sixth birthday. And for the first time since the murder, I don’t turn on the news.

It’s a day off for us both – from Graham’s face, and the home we shared, flashing across the screen. From the lurid details of the scene, referred to euphemistically – though I realize (in a way I hadn’t before) that there’s no such thing as an acceptable euphemism when the victim – or suspect – is you.

Instead, we order ice cream on room service, and use a lighter to make her wish. She’s so focused when she blows it out that I flinch at the knock that follows. I unlock the door, and open it slowly, almost expecting him.

But it’s the officers who questioned me before: Stevens, tall and bulky, clean-shaven; and O’Hare, slight, with a TV smile.

It’s over, I realize. They know.

‘Come in,’ I say. Too brightly. I hear myself, sounding unhinged.

Stevens is poker-faced. ‘This won’t take long.’

I glance at O’Hare, who smiles. It seems automatic; the good cop by default, because she’s a girl.

I sense movement in the corridor beyond, and I wonder who’s watching. Who’ll be there when they lead me away.

But then, O’Hare begins to speak.

The words themselves escape me, but their meaning is perfectly clear.

‘A burglary gone wrong,’ she says. ‘Suspect in custody. Yes, we’re absolutely sure.’

Stevens doesn’t take his eyes off me throughout. I can feel it in his stare: he doesn’t believe it – doesn’t believe me. He has doubts, but the evidence is clear. His instinct, in this case, is outweighed by the facts.

I understand his surprise.

But I keep this to myself. I say nothing.

I nod. I close the door, and lock it shut.

For a week, I turn housekeeping away. I stack room-service trays in teetering piles by our door. I settle Evie in front of cartoons for hours on end, much to her delight (never allowed, when Graham was alive). I don’t shower. I can’t eat. I watch myself from above, circling the room like a caged animal.

Like a woman going mad.

I see my husband, there, on the bed, newspaper slung over his lap. He taps his pen on the page and fixes me with a smile. Five-letter word, starting with ‘g’, an ‘i’ in the middle, he says. Appropriate response to the death of a loved one.

I blink, and he disappears.

So like him to make a joke at a time like this.

So like him to always have the last word.

4

Derbyshire, 2018

‘For God’s sake, Hannah. You can’t spend your whole life obsessing over the past. Eventually, you’re going to have to move on.’ Sarah leans back in her black leather throne and smiles. ‘Sorry, but it’s true. You and Dan have been together for – how many years now?’

I clear my throat. The dregs of a tasteless herbal tea cling to my tongue. ‘Seven.’

‘And Evie adores him, doesn’t she?’

‘Yeah. I think she prefers him to me, which is—’

‘And he’s sweet, in a Bear in the Big Blue House kind of way.’ She downs the last of her tea, and grimaces. ‘No, I’m sorry. I can’t do it. This is like warmed-up pond water. I need coffee.’

I stand and click the kettle on again. ‘At least we can say we tried.’

It’s a luxury not to have to sit in the bleak staff room, on the edge of the unit, constantly interrupted by nurses with urgent questions, or patients requesting a ‘quick’ chat.

Unlike the rest of us, in the age of ‘austerity’, Sarah has her own office, filled with beaming photos of her husband and children (two boys, both gap-toothed and luminous), expensive-looking sculptures and paintings – and her own working kettle and cafetière.

Our weekly catch-ups are supposed to be essential meetings about what’s happening ‘on the ground’ in the department she runs. More often than not, however, they turn out more like this.

‘I used to think about fucking him when the kids were little, you know. Like, extremely detailed fantasies?’

I blink. The kettle hits the boil. ‘Dan?’

‘Oh, God, no. The bear.’ A pause. ‘Just me then?’

‘… Yeah.’

Her laugh is an open-mouthed cackle – the same one I’d been stunned by when we’d first met. Sarah, at eighteen: smudged eyeliner and white-blonde, unbrushed hair, making cadavers mime to Madonna, while coming first in the class in everything. For all her gestures towards professionalism, a terrifying twenty-something years later, she’s still the same. Still outrageous. And still the one to beat.

‘I’m surprised,’ she says. ‘I thought you and I always shared a type.’

‘Do I need to remind you about the string of moony Jon Bon Jovi types that passed through your sheets, way back when? Not my type, at all.’

‘In my defence, that just proves consistency in mine. Jon Bon Jovi and that bear had the same hair for most of the nineties, didn’t they?’

‘My God.’ I stir the muddy coffee and put the cafetière on the desk between us. ‘Did someone just have a breakthrough?’

‘I knew I was paying you for something.’

A barb, there – though I barely feel it. I’m used to it by now. She was always top of the class, and I was – always – right beneath her, in second place. That hasn’t changed, no matter what else may have, since.

‘Seriously, though.’ She reaches for a sachet of sweetener, and shakes it out with a flick of her wrist. ‘What is stopping you? Dan’s clearly not going anywhere – and neither are you.’ Another jab, delivered with the ruthless whip-speed of a rattlesnake. She moves on before I can respond – though not so quickly that it doesn’t land. ‘So why wouldn’t you make it official?’

‘Ugh. I don’t know.’ I twist Graham’s ring around my finger, and squeeze the diamond in my palm. ‘I just wish he hadn’t bought that ring. He knows I don’t want to get married again.’

‘Are you sure it’s for you?’ She grins. ‘I mean, just because you found it in your house doesn’t mean it’s yours.’

‘That would almost be a relief.’

‘And you say I’m a cold-hearted old cow.’

‘You are.’

She looks at me with a kind of tenderness, and I bristle. I know what’s coming next. ‘Hannah, I know you think I’m a broken record with this, but … wouldn’t a fresh start do you good? You drive, what? An hour and a half every day to get here – and Evie’s about to move to sixth form, so it’s as good a time as any. And I can’t imagine there’s much news for Dan to report on in the middle of nowhere. Why not change things up a bit?’

‘Because I like it there.’

She runs her tongue along her teeth. She’s waiting for me to go on. For Sarah – a resolute city-dweller – the idea of living in a remote, rural village seems like the worst of all punishments. I see the same look in the eyes of our inpatients when we ask them to hand over their phones: as though we’ve asked them to sever their connection with life itself.

What Sarah doesn’t see, though, is that Hawkwood, for me, is a kind of connection. I put myself back together there. It’s where I found security, made new memories; it’s where I watched Evie grow up. The idea of losing that – again – is destabilizing. I can’t do it. And I don’t want to.

‘Anyway, I don’t see what moving has to do with it,’ I say, after a pause. ‘We don’t have to move to get married.’

‘I know. But if you moved, I wouldn’t have to drive so far to do the whole Matron of Honour bit. We could use it as an excuse to get drunk all the time.’

‘You could, you mean.’

‘Exactly. My boring sober friend, finally useful for something.’ She winks. ‘The thing is, I’m really not saying you should settle for Dan, if that’s what you feel like you’re doing. You’re smart, and you’re pretty, and you’re a catch, and if you want to get back on the market, I’m more than happy to live vicariously through you while you do so. I hear Tinder is a hoot.’

I brace myself for what’s coming next. Compliments from Sarah are almost always followed by some suggestion or advice that would otherwise be too callous to say outright. The ‘shit sandwich’, one of the nurses called it, once – a description that’s horribly apt.

She leans back in her chair, brow arched, eyes fixed on me over the rim of her cup. ‘I don’t think that’s it, though – is it? You actually do want to be with him.’

‘Yeah. I do.’

‘There you go, look. All you have to do is say that to him. In those exact words. At the end of an aisle. While wearing a big white dress.’

I sigh. ‘You’re going to think I’m ridiculous.’

‘Oh, sweetie. I already do.’ Her smile is wicked, and knowing. She’d looked at me in the same way when she offered me the job – though not before calling me a ‘daft cow’ for doubting myself, and her. At that point, though, we hadn’t spoken in years. My personnel file, sent over by my former employer – no doubt detailing my negative outcomes in forensic detail – sat on the desk between us. I suppose she must’ve looked at it. But she didn’t bring it up that day, and she hasn’t mentioned it since. ‘Go on,’ she says, now. ‘Spit it out.’

‘I guess I just thought there’d be … I don’t know. More of a …’

‘Oh, no. Don’t say it. Please don’t say it.’

‘What?’

She grimaces. ‘A spark.’

‘… Yeah.’

She places her coffee on the file in front of her, and leans forward, her hands folded under her chin. ‘Hannah,’ she says, gently. ‘I need you to listen to me carefully when I say this.’

‘What?’

‘And I need you to not be offended by it.’

‘Oh, God.’

‘… You’re old now.’

‘You’re older.’

‘By two months. And the difference between you and me is, I’m at peace with it. I buy three different creams for my face. I use them in a specific order, on the advice of some ten-year-old self-proclaimed beauty expert on YouTube. And—’ She cuts off my interruption with a raised palm – ‘I’m not deluding myself by thinking that love at our age is going to feel the same as love at eighteen.’

I lean back in my chair. I know she’s right – not that I plan to concede. ‘We’re not that old, you know. Fifty’s still a fair way off.’

‘I know. But what I’m trying to say is … he’s a nice guy. He loves you. And maybe comparing falling in love with him to whatever you felt when you were falling for Graham at eighteen isn’t all that healthy. Or fair. On any of you.’

‘Wow, Sarah – why don’t you tell me how you really feel?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, after a rare pause. ‘You know I’m not trying to make you feel bad, don’t you? I just want you to—’

‘Yeah, I know. And you’re right.’ I glance at the clock. ‘I’d better get going. You know Amy Barker’s being readmitted this week, don’t you?’

‘I saw. I’m already dreading our inevitable call from her lovely mother. I still hear those awful nails of hers clicking in my sleep.’

‘Well, when you do speak to her – ask her where she gets her Botox done, will you? Since I’m so old, and all. I could do with a referral.’

‘You know,’ she says, ‘I’ll still love you when you’re really old. Colostomy bag and all.’

‘I can see it. The two of us, being wheeled over to the nursing home TV, just in time for Bear in the Big Blue House.’

She winks, and lays a sheaf of papers across her desk. ‘The boys are out camping all weekend if you want to start sooner.’

‘You’re disgusting,’ I call as the door closes with a muffled click behind.

5

Dan leans over the arm of the sofa, book spread-eagled on the floor. ‘There she is.’ He makes a face as I kick off my shoes. ‘Oh dear. Long day?’

It’s like he sees straight through me, the moment I walk through the door. After a long drive home, replaying my conversation with Sarah in my mind, I’m exhausted, and he knows it.

But I can’t tell him why. Not this time. He still doesn’t know I found the ring.

I hang up my jacket and bag, and smile. ‘The longest. Where’s Evie?’

‘Upstairs. Revising. Or sleeping. Possibly both.’ He rolls up to standing. ‘Have you heard about this thing they’re doing now? Listening to revision tapes when they’re sleeping?’

‘I doubt it’s tapes, somehow,’ I say. ‘And I’m pretty sure that method was doing the rounds in the eighties. Didn’t work then, either.’

He wraps his arms around me. The smell of him is, as always, a balm. ‘All right, doc. Don’t tell her that, though. She’s convinced it’s going to change her life. And anyway, it can’t hurt, can it?’

It could, I think, if it replaces ‘real’ revision. But then, I know Evie. Her grades are impeccable. She’s almost too conscientious, approaching her schoolwork with a focus that manages to skirt outright anxiety – most of the time.

‘No,’ I say. ‘You’re probably right.’

He laughs, and lets go. ‘Even broken clocks are right twice a day. Dinner’s in the oven, so if you want to …’

My phone vibrates in my palm, and I glance at it.

I turn cold.

The distinctive logo: white handcuffs, a ‘C’ on a blood-red square.

The words, pixel-sharp: Conviction, Season Four: Trailer – The Murder of Graham Catton.

I’ve known, for months, that this might be coming. But denial’s a powerful thing, and I thought – ridiculously, I know – that if I refused to talk, they might not have enough to go on.

I look up at Dan, who’s still talking, though I can’t make sense of the words.

I follow him into the kitchen, and cut him off mid-sentence. ‘I need to talk to you about something.’

He looks over his shoulder, searches my face – and smiles. ‘All right. Sit. I’ll put the kettle on.’

As he pours the tea, I sit at the table. I don’t know quite how to position myself. Hands resting on the surface: too formal. On my lap, it looks as though I have something to hide. When he turns around, I’m somewhere in between.

‘OK.’ He takes a seat beside me, fumbling with a packet of biscuits. ‘What’s up?’

I hold out an open palm. ‘Give me those.’

‘You hate these. They’re junk food.’

‘I need junk food, right now.’

‘Wow. This must be bad.’

‘Not funny.’ I tear open the packet, and take a bite. The sugar dissolves on my tongue. I feel something light up in my brain, a synapse twitching in response. It’s one of the many things I’ve given up, over the years, along with alcohol, smoking (of course), red meat, bread … Dan, thanks to some (admittedly helpful) cultural conditioning, seems to think all women go through this: the gradual removal of pleasures from their lives, a slow self-sacrifice; a futile battle against ageing. All I know is this: I crave clarity more than I crave those pleasures.