An Unfamiliar Murder Read online

The sound of the door clicking open broke her train of thought. Will walked back into the room. He looked straight at the uniformed officer. “Would you give us a moment please?” She nodded and left the room, closing the door behind her.

  Anna gripped the sides of the chair tightly. Anger turned to frustration as she glared at him. “Will, what is it?”

  When his eyes finally met her gaze they were sorrowful, like a puppy pleading forgiveness for chewing the back of a sofa.

  Anna could feel the bottom drop out of her stomach. “Will please?” She stared up at him desperately. “You have to tell me what’s going on?”

  He was silent for a moment, as if he were trying to find the right words. Finally, he looked directly at her. “Anna, I need to tell you something and I need you to be calm.”

  She stared back at him with fear in her eyes, a bunny startled in headlights. “OK.” Again she swallowed hard.

  “This isn’t easy for me, so please bear with me until I’ve finished.” She continued to stare up at him expectantly, nodding her head slightly.

  “When you were three years old you were adopted by Edward and Kathleen Cottrell. Jim McCafferty was your biological father.”

  “No!” Anna shook her head in disbelief. “This isn’t happening.” She could hear the sound of her heart pounding in her chest.

  “I’m sorry, Anna. I’m very sorry to have to be the one to tell you.” He looked around the room in despair. “In here . . . Like this.”

  Anna opened her mouth to say something, but her voice caught in her throat. She closed it again. She shook her head as if it were wrong, as if he were mistaken. She focused on the linoleum flooring which was speckled in black and grey, put together in a mock tile effect, wondering who would create such a design. Were there companies who focused on designing flooring for police stations, cells, interview rooms?

  She suddenly became aware of Will’s face in very close proximity to hers and turned her head to face him, her hands still gripping the sides of the molded chair. He was crouched beside her.

  “Can I get you anything?” he asked tenderly.

  “I need to go to the ladies room.”

  “Of course.” He stood up. “I’ll take you there. It’s just at the end of the corridor.”

  One by one, Anna peeled her fingers off the plastic and stood. Her legs felt shaky and her eyes were set in a wide, trance-like state.

  Anna couldn’t remember the walk down the corridor. It was like a whirlwind. She walked into the empty toilets and immediately headed over to the basins, turning on the faucet and splashing water on her crimson face. The cold water soothed her burning skin momentarily. She lifted her head to look at her reflection, staring at herself for several minutes. The face looked familiar, but she didn’t know who the hell she was looking at.

  Chapter Seven

  They returned to the interview room to see two Styrofoam cups of coffee on the table, steam rising out of them, diffusing into the cool air around. Anna hadn’t spoken to Will since they had left the room. She had no desire to speak to anyone. At this moment she felt as if she were piloting a plane which had descended into a tailspin, unsure of her surroundings or how to correct her position.

  She sat down as the door opened and the detectives re-entered, seating themselves opposite. Placing her hands around the white cup, the warmth providing some bleak comfort, she lifted it to her lips, not noticing the lack of sugar usually craved by her sweet tooth. She gazed at the grey wall behind them, staring at nothingness, hoping her gesture may provide a few more precious minutes of respite.

  It was as if both detectives were telepathic. They sat and waited patiently until she replaced the cup on the table before they restarted the interview. She was aware of tapes being switched on again, voices in the background.

  Finally, Detective Chief Inspector Lavery spoke up. “Anna.” She waited until Anna looked her in the eye. “We understand that you’ve had quite a shock.” Anna looked away instantly, feeling her face flush in anger. “But we need you to stay focused,” she continued gently, tilting her head in an attempt to regain eye contact. “We just have a few more questions to ask you.”

  Anna bent her head, rubbed the fingers of her right hand hard up and down her forehead and then looked up at the detective, allowing her hand to drop loosely onto her lap. More than ever, she really wanted to get out of here.

  “Can you tell me whether you recall hearing the name Jim McCafferty before today?”

  Anna stared at the tape for a moment, watching the spools wind around slowly. She lifted her eyes and spoke directly at the DCI. “I’d never heard his name until your colleague here,” she nodded at Pemberton, “mentioned it in the interview on Friday night.”

  “Have your parents’ ever mentioned the name McCafferty to you?”

  “Never . . . Well, not until Saturday.”

  “Oh?” The detective leant in towards Anna.

  “When I mentioned his name they seemed to sort of know him - said he was an old acquaintance.” She felt herself cringe. “It kind of makes sense now. I wondered why they were being so cagey.”

  “How do you mean cagey?”

  “As soon as I said his name, they both looked as if they had seen a ghost.”

  “Did you have any idea that you were adopted?”

  “What!” Her face screwed up in horror. “No,” she said. “I thought I was just . . . Well, you know, I thought they were my real parents.”

  “You never suspected anything?”

  “No, why should I?” She shook her head incredulously. They brought me up as their own. I don’t remember anything different.” Silence saturated the room for several minutes. Anna could literally feel the cogs turning in her own brain. “That explains it,” she concluded finally, as the penny finally dropped into place.

  “What?” Detective Pemberton asked.

  “They’ve never said things to me like – ‘You’ve got your father’s smile’ or, ‘you take after your mother, she was good at swimming.’ My friends’ parents would say things like that to them and I always wondered why my parents never did. When I was young, I asked them several times, like when I won an award for my reading in Year 3 – ‘Do I take after you Daddy?’ And my father would just say, ‘You’ve always been a clever girl Anna’.”

  Anna stared at the walls, her brain searching through its depths, examining memories from her youth. “And they never had any early photos of me. When I was in Year 4 we had to take in baby photos of ourselves. You know, a game so we could guess which one belonged to whom?” Anna was gazing into space now, talking to nobody in particular. “Mum didn’t have any of me. She said a whole box of photos was lost when they moved to Worthington, so I had to take in one of her instead. I was really embarrassed at the time because it looked so old fashioned.” Anna dropped her head realizing, with chagrin, that these were going to be the first of many memory recollections over the next few days. Many occasions when the clues were there, screaming out at her, but she had always failed to notice who she really was.

  * * *

  As they drove into Worley Close the rain was coming down in a steady stream, blurring the windows. So much so that she almost missed the police car heading out. Almost. Will pulled up outside number 12 and cut the engine. Anna undid her seat belt and swung round to face Will who, it seemed, was deliberately avoiding eye contact, instead staring up at the road ahead.

  “You knew, didn’t you?” she asked finally.

  He turned to face her, resting his right hand on the steering wheel. He didn’t need to speak. It was written all over his face.

  “How could you have kept it from me?” she pleaded. Will had been a family friend for as long as she could remember. His son, Julian, was the same age as Anna and, at gatherings, Will would always play footy in the garden with the two children, or roll around on the grass, pretend fighting. He was like a fun uncle. Since adulthood, she had always seen him as a friend, an equal, not simply one of her parent’s friend
s. This made the disappointment and betrayal all the heavier to bear.

  “It wasn’t for me to say,” he answered finally, looking back at the road.

  “Who else knew?” she asked, but as soon as the words left her mouth she regretted them. Once again, his face displayed all the answers. Everyone: family, of course, and their entire circle of friends, she guessed. All of them, closely guarding their precious little secret. She imagined them talking, huddled in bundles at parties and gatherings over the years. “Poor little Anna. She has no idea where she comes from.” She could taste sick in her throat.

  He looked back at her. “I’m sorry, Anna, truly I am. But your parents do love you. You must know that?”

  “Don’t lecture me about happy families. You know mine well enough to know what we have been through over the years, walking around on hot coals trying not to upset my neurotic mother. In fact, you know more about my family than I do.” She noticed his mouth move as if he were about to speak, respond in some way, but didn’t hang around to listen. Pushing the door open, she leapt out of the car, muttering, “Thanks for the lift,” before slamming it shut and marching up the pathway and around to the rear of the house.

  Anna never heard the sound of Will’s engine, his car turning and pulling away down the road. She walked doggedly in through the conservatory and into the kitchen. Relieved to find it empty, she headed straight up the stairs to her bedroom and her white bedside table, opening the top drawer. Here were the remnants of her old stuff, things that she hadn’t used in years, belongings that she hadn’t seen the need to take with her but always intended to sort out, sooner or later.

  The top drawer contained a couple of old magazines. She carefully lifted them out. Underneath was an instruction manual for an old mobile phone and some cookery recipes. Her fingers searched urgently and, frustrated by the bare wooden bottom, she pushed everything back in the drawer haphazardly, closed it and moved onto the next one down.

  She lifted out her old exam certificates, beneath which was a favorite essay from university, the diary that she started keeping in her first year at uni, but only managed to write daily entries until the end of the second week in October. There were some old receipts which were curled up at the edges. Eventually, in amongst the fluff and bits of glitter at the back of the drawer, she found what she was looking for - a pile of photographs.

  Anna pulled the photos out of the drawer, brushed the dust off the edges, and sat on the bed flicking through them, one at a time. These were old photos, taken in the pre-digital age, when people actually developed and kept all the copies. She’d retrieved them from one of her mother’s clear outs, memories that told the story of her life which she meant to put in an album some day. There was one of her playing the violin, very poorly she recalled, in her final concert at primary school; another of her and her parents on a sun scorched beach in Corfu, one of them all on her graduation day, another of her and her father holding a huge pumpkin they had grown in the vegetable patch, when she was ten.

  As she flicked through the photos her eyes searched desperately for similarities, small signs of a resemblance between her parents and herself, frantically holding on to her own thread of reality. She wanted more than anything to find something. Some kind of connection to dispel the science, prove the experts wrong. But the more she searched, the more the stark differences jumped out and slapped her across the face. In his younger years her father had shared the same hair color, but not chestnut like hers, more a light sandy brown. Her mother had fair features and blue eyes, unlike her own which were dark brown. Her father was average height and build, her mother a pear shaped size 14, both in stark contrast to her petite frame. As she scanned each photograph her frustration grew and tears pricked her eyes.

  She stopped when, halfway through the pile, she reached the photo of her mother that she had taken in for the game at primary school. Her nostrils flared and she clenched her teeth angrily. Defeated, she tossed the pictures to one side and reached into her pocket for her mobile phone, her fingers working the keys with a sense of urgency.

  “Hi, Anna, what’s up?” Ross’ soothing voice felt therapeutic, relaxing the tense muscles in her neck.

  “Ross, sorry to bother you at work. Can you do me a favor?”

  “Sure. You only just caught me. I’ve a class in a few minutes.”

  “Can I come and stay with you for a few days?”

  “Yes, sure you can. But what’s happened? I mean . . .are your parents OK?” He sounded concerned.

  “They’re fine, just doing my head in. I’ll explain everything later.”

  “OK.” She could feel him nodding at the other end of the line. “Do you want me to pick you up?”

  She glanced at the red digital numbers of the alarm clock. It read twenty five minutes past two. So much had happened since she spoken to him that morning. It seemed like days had passed, rather than several hours. “No. No thanks. I’ll make my own way over. I’ll see you back at yours.”

  “No problem.” He didn’t sound particularly surprised. “I’ll be back around five thirty.”

  “See you then. And thanks.” She pressed the button to end the call, straightened her body and went downstairs.

  It took Anna a while to locate her parents. They weren’t in the kitchen, which was their normal haunt, and she couldn’t see her father in the garden through the conservatory window. Rain had been falling softly all day and the windows were masked with scattered patterns of water droplets. She was still straining her eyes to search through the wet windows when she heard murmurs coming from the lounge.

  She stood in puzzled silence for a moment, as if any movement would block her hearing. Her parents rarely ever sat in the lounge during the day. She heard another voice, quiet, almost a whisper. Yes, somebody was definitely in there. She headed for the lounge door and opened it.

  Kathleen and Edward Cottrell sat together on one of the large sofas, her left hand enveloped in his. The shadows under Kathleen’s eyes had grown darker in contrast to her pallid complexion. Her cheeks were sunken and she looked as if she had lost half a stone in the last few days. Edward, usually so calm and in control, looked tired and worn, older somehow.

  They startled Anna and it was several seconds before she realized why. This was the first time she had ever seen them hold hands. Her parents looked up at her sheepishly, like a pair of toddlers interrupted whilst drawing on the walls.

  Kathleen was the first to speak. “Why don’t you sit down, Anna?” It was more of a command than a question and it felt like a red rag to a bull. Anna balked, a lifetime of domestic repression fuelling a rage within her.

  She creased up her whole face and lent forward. “What?” she said, incredulous, nostrils flared, eyes boring into her mother. Kathleen jolted her head back, affronted.

  “Sit down, darling.” Edward’s soft, silky voice spoke now. But Anna was not in the mood to be disarmed.

  “How dare you tell me what to do!” she snarled.

  “Anna, you need to calm down,” Edward said, arching his forehead, a look of deep concern in his eyes.

  “I’ll make a cup of tea,” Kathleen said, rising from her seat.

  “Oh yes, you do that, Mum. Make a cup of tea. A cup of tea,” Anna repeated, “that’ll sort everything out.”

  “Anna!” Edward stood now and stared at her. She glared back at him as her mother left the room.

  “Just tell me why?” she said through tightened teeth.

  He looked at her and blinked, as if he didn’t know what to say.

  “Go on, I’m dying to hear it. Tell me why you decided to keep the grand secret from me all these years. Poor little Anna, the desperate, adopted girl. How come everyone knew but me?”

  “Anna. Sit down. Please?” She could see his eyes were watering. A lump rose in her throat and she moved across to the other sofa, tripping over the rug and finally falling into the seat. Her teeth clenched indignantly, her ears burning in clumsy embarrassment which only served t
o exacerbate her anger.

  Over the years it seemed that her parents had mastered the art of sticking a plaster over problems and moving on, always treating the symptom instead of the cause. The problem, whatever it was, would then never be mentioned again, swept under the carpet as if it never happened. She was determined it was not going to happen this time.

  Her mother re-appeared with three mugs of tea, carefully balanced on a tray which she set down on the coffee table in front of them. Anna watched as she retrieved coasters from a draw in the dresser and set them out on the table. She couldn’t stop herself from rolling her eyes. That’s it, carry on as normal. Let’s pretend that nothing’s going on here.

  She waited until her mother sat down before she spoke again. “How could you not have told me that I was adopted?” she asked.

  Edward lifted his hand and scratched his ear uncomfortably. “We did what we thought was best, Anna.”

  “For who, you or me?” she asked, blinking as a sharp pain seared into her head.

  “For all of us,” he replied.

  Anna looked at her mother, who had lifted her tea to her lips. She looked as though she wasn’t part of the conversation.

  “Were you ever going to tell me?”

  “What good would it do?” His face slackened and his voice grew quieter, as if someone had turned the volume down.

  “How can you say that?” she said drily. “Especially when everyone else seems to know. Surely I was bound to find out sooner or later?”

  “First, everyone didn’t know. Only family and our oldest friends, those who have known us since you joined our family. Second, we always felt that we were a strong, loving family and you would never need anything else.”

  Anna stared at him, her eyes wide. He had no idea how she was feeling.

  “I remember the first time I set eyes on you.” Kathleen finally spoke, staring into space. “You were three years old.” She smiled to herself, as the memory warmed her heart.

  “This isn’t about you!” Anna cried, the tone in her voice rising. “What about me?”