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‘Then maybe he’s innocent.’
‘He isn’t, Dawn,’ she stated. ‘I’m sorry. I know you want your father to be a good man. I want that for you too, but the evidence doesn’t lie. You work in the legal profession; you should know that. He killed her. That’s all there is to it.’
‘Maybe it was one of his parents?’
‘No. When all the facts came out, there was no denying it was him. Look, this is why I didn’t tell you the truth when you were young. I didn’t want you growing up with this hanging over your head. I know it was wrong of me to hide the truth all these years, but you’ll understand when you have children of your own – you want to protect them as much as you can.’
I gave her a weak smile. ‘I do understand, Mum. I just can’t help feeling there’s more to this than a bloke suddenly snapping and butchering a poor child like that.’
I could feel Mum’s gaze burning into me. She was studying me, reading my thoughts. ‘You’re going to try and find new evidence, aren’t you?’ she asked.
‘I have to.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I have more questions than answers.’
‘But who are you going to ask? As far as I’m aware there were no witnesses to the murder.’
‘I don’t know. I just need to know the truth. The Dominic you tell me about and the Dominic I read about online sound like two completely different people. I need to know how he turned from one to the other so quickly.’
‘You’re going to—’ Mum stopped abruptly as the door opened and an elderly couple entered.
The couple wanted to order some flowers for a party they were holding to celebrate their forty-fifth wedding anniversary the following weekend. It was going to be a long discussion. I made my excuses, picked up the only photograph I had of my parents together and left. I looked back through the door and saw my mother looking wistfully after me.
While it wasn’t perfect, our damaged relationship was slowly repairing itself, and I was pleased we’d been able to have such a frank and open chat. Now it was out in the open that I was digging into Dominic’s background, I felt better knowing that I would no longer have to lie if Mum questioned where I’d been or what I’d been up to.
As I headed back to the car park, my next step was obvious. I needed to locate my grandparents – Anthony and Carole Griffiths. If they didn’t know what had turned their only child into a cold-blooded killer, then nobody did.
Chapter Nine
I decided I would have to turn detective to track down my grandparents. First, I tried all the social media sites. There were a couple of people sharing the name Anthony Griffiths living in Newcastle, but I doubted my grandfather was a nineteen-year-old George Ezra lookalike or a forty-year-old plumber with a tattoo of a spider’s web on his neck. I couldn’t find anyone with the name Carole Griffiths.
From information I had gleaned from the old newspaper coverage of the court case, Anthony and Carole had been around fifty when Dominic was sentenced, which meant they would be around seventy now. As far as I knew, not many seventy-year-olds used Snapchat and Instagram, and I’d been unable to find them on Facebook or Twitter. The only thing I had to go on was the address where Stephanie’s body had been discovered on Aldwick Road near Scotswood. I googled ‘Aldwick Road’ and ‘Griffiths’ and found an article in the Newcastle Chronicle from 2000 which had an interview about the murder with one of the neighbours. I doubted they still lived there, but it was the best place to start.
The latte I’d drunk with Mum had warmed me up, but an hour of investigating on my phone in the freezing car had made me cold again. As I started the car and headed for Scotswood, I hoped, once I found Dominic’s parents, they would be the kind of people who would invite me in for a coffee and a warm by the fire.
Aldwick Road was a long road with a row of semi-detached houses on each side, all uniformly neat and tidy. The front gardens had the equivalent of bed hair from being left unattended during the winter months: grass was uneven, bushes were bare and plants were dead.
I looked at the article I’d been reading on my phone. The main photograph was of the neighbour, Sylvia Hurst, a hard-faced woman with a severe haircut, her arms tightly folded beneath her ample bosom and an expression of disgust on her face, as if she had just been told house prices would plummet now a murderer had been unmasked in the neighbourhood. She was standing on her doorstep with the white door closed behind her.
I looked from the photo to the houses and back again. They all looked so similar. It was difficult to guess which one Sylvia had lived in. I squinted to try and get a better look at the door number, but it was no use. I pinched the screen and zoomed in on the house number above Sylvia’s left shoulder, but the close-up was a blur. I thought the first number was a three but couldn’t decipher the second digit. It could be a one or a seven. Screw it. It was early, I had nothing else to do. I could knock on every door in the street if I had to. I parked the car and headed for number thirty-seven.
Pausing at the bottom of the short drive, I looked up at the semi-detached house. It looked similar to the one in the newspaper report, same door, same tree in the front garden. I knocked on the door and stood back, glancing around at the neighbourhood. I could imagine myself living on a road like this, maybe with a husband and a couple of kids. There wasn’t much room for parking, but… The door opened.
‘Hello, I’m looking for Sylvia Hurst,’ I said, in my most professional voice.
‘Wrong house, love. Across the road. Number forty-six.’
Before I could apologise, the door had closed.
Okay, maybe my detective skills were incredibly amateurish, but at least I’d achieved my goal.
In the nineteen years since Sylvia Hurst had given her interview with the Chronicle, time had aged and withered her. Gone was the severe haircut, the bosom had dropped, and her stern expression had softened. She looked the epitome of a sweet old lady. When I told her I was a paralegal investigating Dominic Griffiths, she was only too happy to take the security chain off and invite me in.
The living room was a shock of colour. The carpet was a busy pattern which should have come with a warning to anyone who suffered from photosensitive epilepsy. The feature wall with the fireplace had white wallpaper decorated with huge red poppies. The curtains were a dusky pink, and the sofa was navy blue. It was an assault on the eyes.
I gratefully accepted Sylvia’s offer of a cup of tea and made myself as comfortable as I could on the dated sofa. Sylvia returned with two mugs and a chocolate sponge cake. I had made a new year resolution to drop a dress size, and despite a sweet tooth, I was winning the war on snacking between meals. However, if I wanted Sylvia to open up, I would need her onside and that would mean placating the elderly lady when she proffered the cake.
