Stop Dead (DI Geraldine Steel)

than a child myself. You don’t know what it was like. It was such a shock. I’d had my suspicions before then, but yes, I didn’t want to believe it. You don’t want to believe it of your own husband. And what was I meant to do? I was too scared to confront him –’
    ‘Scared?’
    ‘I was so much younger than him and he was so sure of himself. I can’t explain it, but he wasn’t the kind of man you could argue with. He never listened to me anyway. But he must have realised I knew, because he changed. He stopped being furtive. I’d go into the lounge and he’d be there, with his arm around her, and he wouldn’t move away from her when I sat down. Nothing was the same after that.’
    She dropped her face into her hands as though to shut out the memory.

     
    ‘So you closed your eyes to what was going on. Wilful blindness.’
    It was a statement, not a question. Linda lifted her head and nodded, with an expression almost serene.
    ‘When it happened, when she killed him, I finally saw my way to doing the right thing by her –’
    ‘The right thing?’
    ‘I’d promised my sister I would protect Emily, look after her. When I was given this chance to make it up to her, I took her place in prison, so she could go free. None of it was her fault. She was only a child. She didn’t deserve to be punished.’
    ‘But you did, because you had kept silent about your husband’s abuse –’
    ‘Yes. I don’t regret what I did, not for a second, not even now you’ve caught up with her. Because she knows my sentence gave her twenty years of freedom, twenty years of life she would have missed out on. Twenty years of freedom while she was still young –’

     
    Coldly Geraldine interrupted to explain that if Ingrid had received professional help when she was fourteen, she might in time have been able to live a normal life, with a new identity. There were extenuating circumstances to her murdering her uncle. In sacrificing twenty years of freedom to assuage her own guilt, Linda had sentenced her niece to a lifetime of torment and hatred.
    ‘She’s insane, Linda; completely insane. Maybe she has been ever since she killed your husband. God knows what has been going through her mind for the last twenty years. You dealt with your own guilt, but left her to deal with hers alone. If she wasn’t damaged enough already, you abandoned her to turn into a psychopath, beyond hope of recovery.’

     
    Linda gave Geraldine a baleful glare.
    ‘What do you mean, a psychopath? You’re forgetting that Emily was the victim in all this, not William. He got what was coming to him. She never deserved to be abused. She never asked for it. That’s exactly why I didn’t want her to be put on trial, because of that kind of attitude. You don’t understand anything. She killed her uncle, so you immediately assume she must be evil, when she was just a frightened child.’

     
    Geraldine shook her head.
    ‘That’s not what I’m saying. Whoever was responsible for what happened to your husband, Emily needed help. In the course of a month your niece has battered four men to death, and who knows how many more she’s assaulted over the years. She was abused and seriously disturbed as a young teenager. I don’t know if her urge to kill people is part of her nature or was brought on by her early experience. I’m not qualified to hazard an opinion on that. But she’s a psychopath now, if she wasn’t born one. There’s a chance that, if she had received professional help after killing your husband, she might have grown up to lead a semblance of a normal life. She might have recovered from her experience. People do. But by refusing to acknowledge her guilt, you stole that chance from her.’

     
    With a cry of rage, Linda scrambled onto the table and tried to fling herself at Geraldine who dodged out of the way, just as the prison officer reached them.
    ‘You’d think she’d be pleased she’s going to be let out,’ the officer called over her shoulder as she led Linda away. ‘We only told her this morning.’
    ‘That depends,’ Geraldine called after her. ‘There are worse sentences than prison.’

CHAPTER 72
     
    G eraldine had only taken a few days off work when she had moved to London. Her holiday entitlement had been accumulating for a while. Nevertheless, she experienced a twinge of guilt when she locked her front door and set off for the airport. It was a long time since she had left work behind her for more than