Page 36 of What Have You Done?

He keeps perfectly still and listens intently as his wife answers the door. ‘Yes?’ she says.

He hears a voice, ‘Is your husband home?’

It’s Brad Turner. Fuck.

‘Yes, he’s in the kitchen,’ his wife says. Kelly hears their steps coming toward him and prepares himself. He hasn’t spoken to Brad since he phoned him Friday night to warn him he was going to go to the police the next morning. He’s ignored his calls. His wife doesn’t know anything about any of this.

‘Look who’s here,’ his wife, Sandra, says brightly. ‘Can I get you some coffee?’ she asks Brad.

‘Yeah, sure, thanks,’ he says, and she turns to the carafe and grabs a mug from the cupboard and pours him a coffee.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Sandra says and exits the kitchen, glancing at them curiously.

Kelly doesn’t want to risk her overhearing anything. ‘Let’s go to my study,’ he says, getting up. They take their coffees upstairs to his office at the end of the hall. He lets Turner enter first and closes the door firmly behind them. Sandra is downstairs and has begun vacuuming the carpets.

‘The detectives interviewed me yesterday,’ Brad says, before they even sit down. And then he becomes petulant. ‘Why haven’t you answered my calls?’

This gets Kelly’s back up. He hadn’t answered because he hadn’t wanted to talk to him. ‘I already told you what I was going to say,’ he answers hotly. They both take a breath. Kelly sits down heavily in one of the armchairs, and Brad sinks into the other. They lean toward each other, keeping their voices low. Kelly asks, ‘So, how did it go? They can’t think you had anything to do with what happened to Diana.’

‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ Brad says, looking tense.

‘What?’ Kelly asks in surprise. ‘Surely you must have an alibi, though?’ he asks anxiously. ‘Wasn’t your fiancée with you?’

‘She was at home at her parents’ that night.’

‘I thought she lived with you.’

‘No, she lives with her parents.’

It stuns him for a moment. Brad doesn’t have an alibi. He hadn’t anticipated this. So Brad won’t be quickly discounted as a suspect, as he’d expected. They will look more closely into him, and into Diana’s complaint, and how Kelly handled it. Now Kelly is deeply worried. He’s required to report suspected child abuse. If it becomes known that he did nothing about these allegations of Diana’s, his career will be finished. He has a mortgage, three kids. He swallows. ‘Do you think the police will pursue this further?’ he asks.

‘I don’t know.’

He gives Brad a cold, angry look. ‘I’ve tried to protect you the best I could. It was her word against yours, and I believed you. I don’t know what really happened, and I did what I thought was best. Innocent until proven guilty. I didn’t believe her and I didn’t want to ruin your career. But I don’t want anything more to do with this.’

He experiences a plunging sensation inside him as he tells Turner this, while the younger man sits hunched in front of him, visibly nervous and smelling strongly of cigarettes. Kelly has a sudden, horrible feeling that things might be much worse than he thought, that it might actually be possible that the twitchy young man in front of him killed that young girl. He remembers what she said he’d done. He’d thought she was lying because she’d refused to go to the police. And because he thought she was a dishonest girl. She’d been caught cheating on a science assignment the previous spring. At first she’d denied it emphatically, but had finally admitted it, in tears, in front of him and her science teacher. But what if she hadn’t been lying about Brad Turner? He recoils from the man across from him.

Where does that leave him now? He could have blood on his hands. He should tell the police the truth, not the milder version he gave them yesterday, the version that’s written down in the file that he’d never meant anyone to see. Let them figure out who was lying.

But there’s his mortgage, and his wife and three kids.

Still, he decides, observing the man in front of him with deep dismay, if Turner can’t account for where he was that night, he must now do the right thing. Perhaps Turner senses his change of mind because he suddenly leans in closer, and his eyes sharpen.

‘I’d stick to your original story if I were you,’ he says.

‘I must do what I think is right.’

‘But, Kelly, I know about that fling you had. With Ms Desjardins. And I wouldn’t hesitate to tell your wife.’

Kelly feels his face go pale. How the hell does he know about that?

‘I saw you, one night, last spring, after dark,’ Turner says, pressing close. ‘I was in the park, after a run, catching my breath. I saw you knock on her door across the street and slip into her house. Saw the way you kissed her, before she closed the door. I was curious, so I stayed. You were there long enough.’

Brad Turner leaves Graham Kelly’s house more unsettled than he was when he arrived. He feels like everything is closing in on him. He doesn’t trust Kelly any more. He hadn’t liked the way he’d looked at him in his study. His barely concealed revulsion – as if he thinks he might have murdered Diana. And he couldn’t have Kelly thinking that, because then what might he do? He might tell the detectives what Diana had really said. He’d had to threaten to reveal what he knew about him, that he’d seen him and the attractive young teacher together, quite by chance. Lucky for him that he did.

Still, he doesn’t know what will happen. Kelly had been terrified. He doesn’t think he’s going to say anything, but he can’t be sure. What if he thinks his wife will forgive him? What then?

Brad doesn’t walk directly home. He walks around the perimeter of town, head down. He doesn’t want to talk to anyone.

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