Page 125 of Vengeance is Mine

‘Yes. He did. He hated Dominic just as much as I did?—’

‘He wouldn’t have wanted you to murder him,’ Harry interrupted.

‘That’s where you’re wrong. I told him everything, and he hugged me. He said he wished he had had the strength to do it himself.’

‘He didn’t know what he was saying,’ Harry shouted.

‘He knew exactly what I was saying. For crying out loud, Ian spent hours in that attic with the pathologist while they opened those bin bags and took out Stephanie in fifteen pieces. He was her godfather, for Christ’s sake. What do you think that did to him?’ She wiped her tears away. ‘He was never the same after that. He bottled everything up. He stored it all, up here.’ She tapped her head hard. ‘And it caused him to have a stroke that almost killed him. Dominic did all of that.’

‘You had no right—’ Harry was interrupted by the doorbell. ‘Who’s that?’

Barbara didn’t reply. She stood up and went to the door.

Terry and Harry looked at each other with confused expressions. They listened intently, trying to hear who was at the door, but they couldn’t. Outside, the crackling fire was slowly dying as Stephanie’s belongings were finally consumed and the wood burned out.

Barbara walked back into the living room. Dawn Shepherd followed her, carrying a shoe box. Both had blank expressions.

‘What’s going on?’ Harry asked.

‘Harry, I need you to be calm and listen carefully to what Dawn has to say.’

‘She knew?’ He pointed. ‘But she’s his daughter.’

‘Can someone please tell me what’s going on here?’ Terry said.

The atmosphere was tense. They all sat down. The only place for Dawn was on the sofa next to Harry. He scooted over to the far end. He didn’t want to be anywhere near her.

‘I think you’d better start from the beginning, Dawn,’ Barbara said.

‘When I found out who my dad was, when I found out what he’d done, I felt sick to my stomach,’ Dawn began. She didn’t look at anyone. Her voice was low, and her head was bowed.

‘I was filled with all these conflicting emotions. I wanted to get to know him because he was my dad, but at the same time I didn’t want anything to do with him because he was a murderer. But I wasn’t sure if he was guilty. The more I looked into what happened, the more it became clear that he had murdered Stephanie – all the evidence pointed that way. But I also discovered that maybe he wasn’t completely responsible for what he’d done. I heard about that drug he was taking, Fenadine, what it had done to other people who’d taken it. It was a lifeline. It gave me hope that maybe Dominic wasn’t the cold-blooded killer the press made him out to be. Maybe my dad really was a mixed-up, confused young man.

‘I met his father, my grandad.’ She smiled. ‘He was a sweet man. He loved his wife, that much was evident from the minute I met him. He wanted to protect her memory. At the same time, he could see I was eager to know everything I could about Dominic and what he was like. He gave me his wife’s journals.’ She removed the lid of the box but didn’t take out any of the hardback notebooks. ‘He knew exactly what she’d written. He’d read them all many times since her death. He knew what I’d find out when I read them, but he never mentioned it. He let me discover the truth for myself.’

‘What truth?’ Terry asked.

‘Carole Griffiths started writing these journals just after she was married. After several miscarriages, she resigned herself to the fact that children just weren’t on the cards for her and Anthony, but then she became pregnant. The problem was, she’d become severely depressed as a result of facing the prospect of not being able to have children, and Dominic’s birth didn’t lift her out of it, like you’d expect it to. She couldn’t bond with him. Anthony worked away a lot, so she was left to bring him up on her own, and she just physically and mentally couldn’t do it. Dominic began acting out, like a child who isn’t taught right from wrong would, but Carole exaggerated it.

‘Carole began taking medication for depression, but one particular doctor realised it was probably Dominic who needed the medication, not her. Again, she lied to the doctor. I suppose, nowadays, she’d have been diagnosed with Munchausen by Proxy or something, but at the time, nothing was picked up. There’s one entry in here where she categorically states that Dominic is ill. She believed it herself. In fact, there was nothing wrong with him that a bit of guidance wouldn’t have sorted out. He didn’t get that, and he went off the rails.’

‘Tell them about Joby Turnbull,’ Barbara said.

Dawn took a breath. ‘When Dominic was seventeen years old, he had a friend, Joby Turnbull. Joby was struggling with his sexuality. He turned to Dominic to confide in and told him he was gay. That night, Dominic attempted to rape Joby.’

‘What?’ Terry exclaimed.

‘We didn’t know anything about that,’ Harry said.

‘It was never reported. There was no physical evidence as Joby managed to fight him off. However, it was believed that Dominic was taking Fenadine at the time of the assault. He wasn’t. He was prescribed it, but he never took a single tablet. The attempted rape was all down to Dominic.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Harry said, squeezing the bridge of his nose.

‘All of Dominic’s bad behaviour was put down to him taking this drug,’ Barbara said. ‘But he lied about taking it.’

‘But he was taking it when he killed our Stephanie.’

Dawn rummaged around in the shoe box and brought out a dark red book. A page had been marked with a Post-it note. She opened it.

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