I Know It Was You

PROLOGUE A KILLER REVEALED ‘I know it was you, you f*****g b***h!’ Jesus s**t, I near on had a heart attack! I could feel the colour draining from my face, I was hyperventilating, and my heart was pounding at a thousand miles an hour. My legs turned to jelly. and I had to lean again the wall to hold myself up. Although the letter was unsigned, I had no doubt who had sent it. None whatsoever! David Jarrett, the man whom I framed for the murder of Donald and Janet Jarrett, his adoptive parents and who was now serving 32 years in jail. Murders committed by me, Chloe Macbeth, strangling Janet before hanging her from a beam in the garage. I made it look as though she had committed suicide in remorse after battering her husband Donald to death with a hammer. I’d been careful, very careful, to cover my tracks. Taking every precaution. Putting on decorator’s nitrile gloves and wearing David’s clothes as I swung that hammer at Donald’s skull. I’d made sure that the clothes I’d worn, David’s clothes, had been discovered by the police. Those clothes, liberally spattered with Donald’s blood and hairs taken from David’s hairbrush had been instrumental in convicting him of the killings. I had good reason, very good reason, to hate David Jarrett for what he did to me and his sister Julia. You see, we’d both been sexually abused by the bastard when we were young girls. He’d started on Julia when she was about eight and I was eleven or twelve when he inveigled me into joining in what he called the ‘brother and sister games.’ Whatever the f**k you call it, it was the s****l a***e of minors. And then finally, David r***d Julia, my very best friend ever. After the r**e Julia’s life turned to rat-s**t and eventually she turned to drugs and died from a h****n overdose. Killed by David Jarrett just as surely as if he had plunged that needle full of that almost pure h****n into her arm himself. And eventually he would have r***d me if I had not put a stop to the a***e by threatening to report him to the police. Wish to f**k I had reported him. Would have saved a shitload of grief later on. As for Donald Jarrett, David’s father, he was the one who r***d me, even though I had been a virgin at the time. OK, David’s grubby fingers had been inside me, but never a p***s. So, like father like son or I should say like son like father. Whatever, they were both r****g bastards. And like Julia, my life turned to s**t. After the r**e and suffering from RTS, r**e Trauma Syndrome, (which nobody believed), I glassed a guy who groped me in a pub. For that, I served 2 years of a 4-year sentence for Grievous Bodily Harm. Even though I was the victim! A guy grabs your arse and tries to grope your p***y and you’re the one who ends up in jail. Where’s the justice in that? So, to my mind, Donald and David Jarrett, rapists both, deserved all they got. In Donald’s case a coffin and a six-foot-deep hole, whilst for David, a life sentence with a minimum term of 32 years. But Janet’s death was simply unfortunate. During an argument between us, I believed (and still believe) that Janet had come at me with a pair of scissors in hand. In self-defence I had seized her by the throat and unintentionally strangled her. God, she died in seconds. Literally seconds. Which meant of course that Donald now had to die. Made to look as though Janet had attacked and killed him in anger (for good reasons which will I explain) and then had committed suicide in remorse. The perfect plan. Except! Except for that pesky f*****g hyoid bone. The hyoid bone, that horseshoe-shaped bone in the throat, which if fractured, strongly indicates throttling or strangulation. Janet’s hyoid bone was fractured, so it was evident that she had been strangled and could not therefore have battered her husband to death. Pity! The best laid plans of mice and men, eh? So, therefore, David had to be framed for their murder. However, we need to get some perspective here. Some background. Context. Firstly, I did not go to the Jarrett’s house with the intention of committing those murders. Let’s be clear on that. OK? It was only after Janet attacked me with the scissors that I killed her and decided to make it look like she had killed her husband in anger and then hanged herself. You see, after Julia’s death from a h****n overdose, she supposedly accused her father Donald of sexually abusing her. It was highly publicised at the time, the papers were full of it, with headlines such as an ‘accusation from beyond the grave’ or ‘the message from a dead girl.’ You might remember it. Janet believed, absolutely believed, that Donald had molested Julia which was why she had gone off the rails and into drugs. Drugs which eventually killed her. That accusation ‘from beyond the grave’ did occur, but it wasn’t Julia who made it. It was me, Chloe Macbeth. By means of an elaborate audio illusion perpetrated at a spiritualist meeting, Donald was accused of child a***e, and he was ruined. Overnight he became a social pariah and it served the bastard right. I won’t go into the details of how the illusion worked but I did write it all down. The r***s, the murders, and the illusion are all detailed in a file on my laptop, but nobody, but nobody has ever seen that file. However, I’m not computer stupid, I know that even if I deleted that file, forensics analysists can find it. There will always be footprints leading to the stuff you don’t want found. So, if things began to look serious, I’m going to have to destroy that hard disk. The first rule of criminology: don’t leave incriminating evidence on your hard disk. And now David Jarrett suspects that I am the real killer and is sending me these f*****g letters. I know it was you, you f*****g b***h!