Читать книгу Who Killed Ruby? онлайн | страница 15
Over the following days and weeks, a kind and patient lady with thick round glasses, a turquoise jumper and a gentle voice had, while Stella held her hand, coaxed from her the evidence they’d needed to put Jack Delaney away for good. She’d told how she’d heard him in the house that morning, had heard him shouting at her sister, then Ruby’s terrible cry, the thump as her body hit the floor. Of course Jack had killed Ruby; who else could it have been? There was Morris Dryden’s account too; the butcher’s son telling how he’d passed Jack in the lane after he’d dropped off his delivery. And Declan Fairbanks, their neighbour, who’d seen Jack running from the house ten minutes later, and all the other locals who’d witnessed his bullying behaviour towards his pregnant girlfriend in the months leading up to her death.
Jack Delaney was responsible. There could be no mistake.
After the trial, Stella would sit immobile at the kitchen table for hour after hour, week after week, steeped in grief. It seemed to Vivienne as though all the darkness in Jack had poured into her mother: when Viv looked into her eyes she saw the same dull fury that had once burned in his.
The letters began to arrive soon after. Folded pieces of paper deposited like petrol bombs through the letter box during the night. At first she would bring them to Stella, who would turn away without looking at them, so Vivienne would go to Ruby’s room, where the row of china pigs still stood on the dressing table, where the handsome pop stars still grinned their 100-watt smiles, and she would sit on the bed and wrap the orange and turquoise quilt around herself and begin to read.
They were all from the Delaney family, from Jack’s mother or uncle or brothers. Those from his mother were pleading, desperate. You’ve made a mistake. Please please tell the truth. He’s only 18. He never did it. You know he never did it. He’d never kill no one, please, please make them see. But the ones from his brothers and his uncles were angry, threatening; written in thick black capitals that all but tore through the page: Your daughter’s a lying little bitch. Make her tell the truth. And, You and your brat are fucking liars. Watch your back. She would read them with terror rising inside her. At night she’d lie in her bed and tremble, listening for the letter box to rattle. But Viv hadn’t lied. She had heard him that day. She had told the police she did, so it must have been true.