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One in Custody

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One in Custody

Some murders solve themselves and some remain mysteries forever. Harry Gleeson’s death was the straightforward kind. It really didn’t take much investigative genius to work out who had killed him. Not when the murderer herself called 999. Not when the first thing she said to the response officers who turned up on her doorstep was, ‘I’ve killed my husband.’ Not when she handed them the filleting knife she’d used, wrapped in a tea towel. She had even warned the officers to be careful with it because it was sharp. She had carefully preserved the fingerprint evidence for us, and that didn’t leave much room for ambiguity.

But obvious or not, the case still needed to be investigated. The evidence had been there to be collected in the small, cramped flat on the borders of Somers Town and Camden. The blood-soaked sheets on the bed. The bloody nightie Sheila had been wearing when she did the deed at the dead hour, three in the morning, while Harry was at his most vulnerable. The palm print on the wall above the head of the bed, where she’d braced herself as she knelt by him and stabbed him over and over again. And Sheila’s own confession, which spilled out of her in interview with the slightest nudge of encouragement, as if her guilt was water and she was an overfilled glass.

‘I killed him. I waited until he was asleep, then I got my knife and I stabbed him until he stopped breathing and I was sure he was dead.’

Premeditated murder, and that was the end of the story.

Except that it wasn’t. Not at all. I hung up the phone, stared at the computer screen and sighed.

‘So, DS Kerrigan, what’s up?’ There was a thud as the speaker collided with my desk, having rolled across the room on his chair. I shifted away, irritated.

Josh Derwent, Detective Inspector. Six feet of lean, muscular bad temper wrapped around a good heart that was his only saving grace. He was also the senior investigating officer in my current case. He had been letting me run it more or less unsupervised because ‘even you couldn’t balls this one up’, although that was precisely what I was about to do.

‘Just making some calls about the Gleesons.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Sheila didn’t give me the whole story.’

Sheila, who had been fragile in a paper boiler suit by the time I met her at Albany Street nick. Sheila, who had wept into the cup of tea they’d given her, the tremor in her hands obvious from the other side of the room. Sheila, who was forty-two and looked sixty, who smoked constantly, the cigarette nipped between the very tips of her withered fingers. Who had almost no formal education and was barely literate. Who had never had a job. Who had never had a bank account. Who couldn’t drive and owned one pair of street shoes and had met Harry when she was fifteen. Sheila, who hadn’t had a chance.

‘She gave you enough of a story that the CPS were willing to charge her.’

‘I know. But I’m not happy.’

Derwent jammed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, as if the conversation was exhausting him. ‘She pleaded guilty. That’s all you need. You’re not going to do better than a full confession, Kerrigan. Stop wasting your time.’

‘I am not wasting my time,’ I said with dignity. ‘I’ve just got off the phone with the social worker who was handling the Gleeson family.’

Derwent pulled a pasty out of his suit pocket. It was still wrapped in its cellophane, and as he listened to what I’d found out so far he gnawed at the edge of the plastic. I fixed my eyes above his head and refused to be distracted while I recited what I had been told.

Sheila Gleeson had had no life outside the home. She was totally dependent on her husband, and he had made sure she stayed that way throughout twenty-three years of marriage. She had given birth to six children, all of whom had been in care at one time or another. She was, like him, an alcoholic, dependent on a number of pharmaceutical drugs, and profoundly depressed, to the point where she could neither look after her children nor herself. And Harry had systematically, thoroughly abused her, for decades, to the certain knowledge of their friends, neighbours and social services, not to mention the police who were called to the address time and time again, until the Met got serious about domestic violence and someone finally persuaded her to give evidence against him, promising her that she’d be looked after. She’d come to no harm, they’d said. She could tell the truth about what had happened to her and put an end to the years of misery. Everyone had gone to court. Harry Gleeson pleaded guilty to actual bodily harm, despite the fact that the original charge had been attempted murder. Some prosecutor had taken the easy way out, rather than risk a jury trial. And then the judge had listened to the defence’s mitigation, believed that Harry was a changed man, and given him a twelve-month sentence. Suspended, naturally. He hadn’t spent a day in prison.