Transcript of recorded interview with Mark Edwards (excerpt)
Also present: DI Heather Scott, PC Marilyn Button
HS: Mr Edwards, can you tell us anything about your wife’s behaviour? Had she changed in any way recently, perhaps around the end of June? Was there anything specific you might have noticed or which might seem relevant in the light of what’s happened?
ME: I suppose she was a bit funny after our Katie’s nineteenth. She had a nosebleed that night and she seemed upset, I suppose. And the next morning she’d gone into herself, further than usual.
HS: Can you tell us anything about the folder containing the crime reports?
ME: (Pause)
HS: For the benefit of the tape, Mr Edwards is clearing his throat.
ME: She’d started with the file the year before. I asked her not to, but she was determined to get enough articles together to take to our MP. She wanted him to take it to Parliament and get something done about all the knife crime. She was very committed to it. I’d hear the printer going sometimes and I’d check the alarm clock and it’d be like five, six, half six in the morning. But it was only after Katie’s do that she started going out in the evenings. Only round our way at first. Took the dog, like. I didn’t think too much about it. But then… then she started going further.
HS: Did you ask her where she was going?
ME: She said she was walking the dog. But our Archie doesn’t need much walking. He’s eight. That’s middle-aged, in dog years. She just seemed to need to get out of the house. She’d be out for hours. And I couldn’t think of a reason to stop her. I mean, I had no idea. So… so I didn’t. Stop her, I mean.
11
Rachel
I met Jo about forty minutes’ walk from our house. It was further than I’d walked in years.
On the Wednesday, I think it was, and this is embarrassing, I’d nicked some chewing gum from the Spar to stop me stuffing my face of an evening. I can’t believe I did that, but I did, and I’ve nicked other stuff since, so maybe that should be added to the charges. But the chewing gum was because I’d put on weight over the last year or so and I suppose I was hoping the evening strolls would pay off eventually, especially as they meant that I was laying off the Hobnobs and the Cadbury’s in front of the telly, and whatever white wine was on offer in the Co-op that week.
‘And you took the dog?’ Blue Eyes uncrosses her legs, recrosses them the other way. She’s wearing a black tunic thing today with a big necklace of coloured glass beads, what Katie would call a statement piece. I’m wearing jogging pants and a T-shirt. I’m not in a prison, which makes sense because there’s no prison overlooking the Shopping City. I’m in a psychiatric unit.
They still lock us up at night, though, which is a relief.
‘Rachel?’ Oops. Earth to Rachel, come in, Rachel. ‘You took your dog with you when you walked?’
‘The dog was my alibi.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
Good question. I have a think before I tell her I was trying to pull myself out of the hole I was in, get fit, take my mind off things. But I can see that if I was thinking of the dog that way, I must have known deep down that what I was doing wasn’t strictly speaking a simple leg-stretch.
The girl, Jo, the one in the news, was wandering around in front of the station. I mean, I didn’t know her name then, obviously. She was wearing a too-big tweedy overcoat, skinny jeans and monkey boots and she looked to be about Katie’s age. She looked lost and a bit frazzled so I asked her if she was all right and, as was becoming depressingly familiar, she almost jumped out of her skin. Really, I thought, I should buy a sheet and some chains to rattle just to wring some drops of amusement out of the situation.
‘I’ve lost my satchel,’ she said, fingers bunched at her forehead ‘I thought it was in my rucksack but it’s not. It’s got my purse and my phone in it. I think someone must have taken it while I was asleep. Or I might have left it on the train, I don’t know.’