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‘Carole was very thorough in her journals. Sometimes, it’s difficult to work out what is the truth and what’s made up, but photographs don’t lie.’ From her handbag, Dawn took out a magnifying glass. She handed the journal and the spyglass to Terry and pointed out a photograph for him to study.
They all sat in silence as Terry leaned over the notebook and cast his eye over the picture. Dawn turned to Barbara and gave her a weak smile. They had both known this day would come, and they’d arranged what they were going to say.
‘His bedroom’s a mess. There’s crap everywhere. It’s like Where’s Wally? What am I supposed to be looking for?’ said Terry.
‘The drawer under the single bed is open. Look inside it.’
Terry leaned further forwards and squinted. ‘Boxes of something. Is that… Fexa…?’
‘Fenadine. They’re his tablets.’
‘So, he was a hoarder. I’ve got empty boxes piled high in the garage,’ Harry said.
‘Those boxes aren’t empty. There’s a protective tab on each one, and they’re still sealed. They were never even opened. Dominic was prescribed Fenadine, but he never took a single dose.’
‘What?’ Terry asked, his mouth agape.
Dawn took a photograph out of her pocket and handed it to Terry. It was the blown-up shot, clearly showing the sealed tablet boxes.
‘When Anthony and Carole were moving out of their house, not long after Dominic was sent to prison, Carole couldn’t bring herself to go through her son’s things, so Anthony did it. He confirmed that every single box of tablets Dominic had been prescribed was untouched beneath his bed. He threw them out and never told his wife. We confronted Dominic with the evidence, and he admitted he’d never taken Fenadine.’
‘So, his defence, based on the effects of the medication, was a lie?’ Harry asked.
‘Yes,’ Barbara confirmed clearly.
‘Dominic Griffiths knew exactly what he was doing when he tried to rape Joby Turnbull, and he knew exactly what he was doing when he kidnapped your daughter and killed her,’ Dawn said. ‘He saw this whole Fenadine business as a way to get out of jail early. He lied. I went to visit him in prison before he was released and asked him if he killed Stephanie. He said he couldn’t remember a single moment of it. He lied to my face. I hate to say this about my biological father, but Dominic Griffiths was evil and rotten to the core.’
Dawn fell silent and allowed her revelation to sink in for Terry and Harry.
‘Not only was he a murderer, but he conned the judicial system, and a pharmaceutical company awarded him one million pounds for what he’d done,’ Barbara said. ‘He was laughing at us, Harry. He was rubbing our noses in it. Yes, he served twenty years for killing Stephanie, but he hadn’t learned anything at all. He hadn’t atoned. He wasn’t remorseful, and he didn’t feel any regret. He’d lost twenty years of his life. He was forty and had a million pounds in his pocket. We had to do something.’
‘We?’ Terry asked.
Barbara and Dawn exchanged glances. Barbara nodded.
‘It was all my idea,’ Dawn said. ‘Barbara didn’t want anything to do with it at first. I had to convince her that it was for the good of everyone involved.’
‘And you inherit his compensation and live happily on blood money for the rest of your life,’ Harry said, with bitterness in his voice.
‘No. I don’t want a single penny of it. Me and Barbara have made a list of charities that support people who have lost someone to murder. The money will go to them.’
‘You have it all worked out, don’t you? Like father, like daughter,’ Harry said, standing up and moving to the other side of the room.
‘Harry!’ Barbara said.
‘It’s all right,’ Dawn said.
‘No, it isn’t.’ Barbara followed her husband, who was stood by the patio doors, watching the fire die. ‘You talk about justice, Harry. You talk about leaving everything to the legal system. Well, this is what your legal system has done. Yes, he was found guilty of murder, but he was a manipulating, evil, cold-blooded bastard. He saw a loophole, and he jumped right through it. If he was released after twenty-five years, full of remorse and sorry for what he’d done, I might have been able to accept that and move on, but he didn’t. There was no reaction to medication, because he never took it. He saw our Stephanie on the street, and he kidnapped her. He lured her to his shed. He murdered her. He cut her body up into fifteen pieces. He knew exactly what he was doing, and he didn’t care.’
Barbara didn’t take her eyes off Harry. She watched as the reflection of the flames danced on his face. His eyes were full of tears.
‘I can’t condone what you did,’ he said quietly.
‘I’m not asking you to. But you need to understand why I did it. Why we did it.’
‘Why did Anthony confess to the murder in his suicide note?’ Terry asked from the other side of the living room.
‘Anthony was dying,’ Dawn said. ‘Around autumn last year, he was told the cancer had spread, and there was nothing the doctors could do apart from manage his pain. He told me that when the pain became too much, he’d take his own life. He didn’t want to die in a hospice hooked up to a load of machines. When I discovered the truth about Dominic, I talked about it with Anthony, and the conversation moved on to us enacting our own justice for Stephanie. And for Carole.’
