Child's Play (29 page)

26

Dewi
drove up and down the village street twice, looking for a parking space near the O’Connors’ house, but in the end had to leave his precious car in a narrow alley.

Avril
welcomed him like a long-lost relative and all but dragged him into the hallway.

‘
Actually,’ Dewi said, ‘I was looking for Sean. Inspector Tuttle thought it might be useful to have another chat with him.’ When he saw the naked fear on her face he added, ‘Just to see if he can fill in a few blanks.’

‘
What sort of blanks?’ she demanded.

‘
The great big ones about the school that no one else is willing to talk about.’

‘
Oh,
those
!’ Avril breathed a sigh of relief. ‘The problem is,’ she added presently, with a grim smile, ‘will our Sean be able to find enough time to tell you? Or you to listen, for that matter?’

‘
Well, if I don’t see him we’ll never know.’

‘
He’s gone for a drink with his mates, like he always does on a Friday after work.’ She looked at the old wooden clock on the wall, pursing her rosebud lips. ‘They usually start off at the Harp, but by now they could be anywhere.’

When
Dewi retrieved his car, he found it mercifully unmolested by local louts, although not by passing seagulls. The black fabric hood, but not the easily washed metal bodywork, was splattered, rather artistically, with chalky white droppings. Telling himself it was supposed to signal good fortune to come, he set off for Bangor and its multitude of taverns.

Knowing
where Sean liked to drink, he left the car in the covered parking area opposite the cathedral and, after checking in the Harp, walked down High Street to the White Lion. Sean was all alone at a corner table with a half-drunk glass of Guinness. A gaggle of half-naked girls nearby were unashamedly making eyes at him.

Dewi
bought himself a pint of shandy, then sat down at Sean’s table. ‘Your mam thinks you’re getting bevied up with your pals,’ he remarked.

‘
Yeah, well I don’t feel like it tonight.’ He stared at Dewi. ‘Are you
on
duty, or off?’

Dewi
shrugged. ‘Depends.’

‘
What on?’

‘
Whether you feel like telling me things you wouldn’t necessarily want to talk about in front of your mam.’

‘
What sort of things?’

‘
Dunno, do I?’ Dewi commented. Quaffing shandy, he added, ‘Unless you tell me.’

‘
By that,’ Sean said, ‘I assume you’re expecting me to help you break down Scott’s wall of silence.’

‘
It’s not so much a wall of silence as a cloud of confusion.’

‘
And what makes you think I can see through it any easier than you?’

‘
How long have you been working at the Hermitage?’ Dewi asked. ‘It must be four years, at least.’ He took another long drink. ‘Four years of unconscious observation, not to mention all the other stuff you picked up by being as nosy as some curtain-twitching old maid.’

Briefly,
Sean grinned. Then, wrapping his strong labourer’s hands around the glass, he said, his face serious, ‘Nothing for nothing,
Sergeant
Prys. You tell
me
something first.’

Dewi
nodded. ‘Fair enough.’

‘
Am I under suspicion?’

‘
Your mam might worship the ground under your feet,’ Dewi replied, ‘but I know she’d never lie for you. So, provided Paula doesn’t drop you in it, you’ve got a solid alibi.’

‘
Have you arranged to speak to her?’

‘
Yes, when she lands later on tonight.’

‘
Right.’ Sean picked up his drink. ‘What’s Jack Tuttle done with that car number I gave him?’

‘
Checked it out and that’s as much as I’m saying.’

‘
Right,’ Sean again said. When he put down his Guinness, the glass was less than a quarter full. ‘So what d’you want to know?’

For
the next hour, the girls at the neighbouring table, whispering and giggling, played up to the two gorgeous young men, but neither took the slightest notice of their antics. With a collective toss of their garish young heads the girls eventually flounced out into the street, but not before the brashest of them had leaned over to ask, ‘What’s the matter with you two, then? You queer, or something?’

27

Vivienne
had been on her way to her room for a fresh pack of cigarettes when she saw Dr Scott outside Ainsley’s door. Involuntarily she stopped short, as if her reluctance to meet the woman, a reluctance rooted in years of chronic fear, had taken physical form and were pushing a hand in her chest. Then something utterly remarkable occurred. The headmistress took a step towards her, hesitated and suddenly turned on her heel to hurry down the staircase. Vivienne, trying to put a name to the expression that had flickered briefly across her face, walked slowly along the corridor, nodding absently to Ainsley as she emerged from the showers with a towel slung about her shoulders and her hair plastered wetly to her bony skull. She was in her room tearing off the cellophane from a cigarette packet when she realised what that expression betrayed. Dr Scott was afraid, she thought jubilantly, and not only because Therese’s fantastical, apocalyptic schemes for retribution must by now have reached her ears. She was in fear of the unforeseen and ungovernable consequences of her latest opportunism, of being exposed for the ruthless, manipulative sham that she was. No one, not even Nancy or Charlotte or their hangers-on, truly believed Imogen guilty of Sukie’s murder, and the expedient resolution Dr Scott contrived and thrust in the face of the police might yet prove her Achilles’ heel. There was a groundswell of resistance to the injustice and as Vivienne closed her door she had the strangest feeling. She pictured herself and the headmistress joined in a battle that the woman already knew she would lose. Telling herself that hallucinations were part and parcel of her condition, she went to check on Imogen, but her new, if fragile, clarity of mind persisted, astounding her with the sense of something approaching cheerfulness.

The
policeman on guard in the corridor opened Imogen’s door for her, then stood aside. The room was, as usual, tidier than most, with Imogen’s possessions neatly ordered along the counter, her clothes folded, her books on the shelf, the borrowed stick and crutches in the corner, an unstamped letter propped against the spider plant newly installed on the window ledge and a rinsed-out glass upended on the tray next to the bottle of painkillers. Imogen was still asleep.

Scratching
her cheek, Vivienne stared at the recumbent form under the duvet and, although she wanted so much to talk to her, knowing how exhausted Imogen had been at lunchtime, she thought it might be kinder to leave her undisturbed.

Imogen
lay on her left side, face towards the wall. Vivienne imagined the inflexibility of the artificial leg beneath the good one, then cringed when she remembered the feel of the stump. Debating with herself whether to come back before or after supper, she wondered absently how anyone could lie so absolutely still.

‘
Oh, Jesus!’ she whispered. Snatching up the pill bottle, she found it was empty.

28

When
McKenna arrived home, his two hungry cats had their noses pressed to the glass panes in the front door. Wailing plaintively, they circled him every step of the way from the door to the downstairs kitchen, where from long conditioning he immediately set about filling clean dishes with food and water. Then he filled the kettle, dropped four teabags in the pot and slumped at the table. The cats purred as they ate, glancing up at him every so often to make sure their world was still in order.

From
the spread of Fluff’s body on the floor, he had to concede that she was indeed becoming what the vet had described as a ‘cat and a half’, but he attributed her girth to her history as a starving vagrant that now compelled her to eat everything in sight. Fatter or not, she was agile as ever. Blackie remained sleek, despite dietary supplements of field mice, birds and, possibly, rabbits. One overcast spring day, McKenna had found four rabbit paws on the patio flagstones, but not a drop of blood nor a wisp of fur. Later, he was accosted by the embryonic juvenile delinquent from next door but two, who reported that Blackie had been ‘copped’ tottering through the back gardens with the hapless animal squirming in his jaws.

Once
the kettle boiled, he made the tea and put it to brew on the cooker. Fluff came to sit at his feet and began grooming herself. Blackie was still eating. He looked from one to the other, seeing his life before their arrival as a time in abeyance, like the blankness Jack had said preceded the birth of his daughters. McKenna loved his cats with the ferocious, protective vigour others bestowed on their children, and knew only a child of his own could ever invoke a similar devotion; but with each passing year the prospect of fatherhood receded, in inverse proportion to the hope. Perhaps hope was all that Freya Scott had represented, he thought, forcing himself to confront his momentary folly; perhaps less than hope, merely a biological imperative.

Fervently
wishing he could so neatly unravel the welter of emotions and impulses that had killed Sukie, he turned his attention to his own meal and was cutting bread for toast when the telephone rang. Praying that it would not be Eifion Roberts, he dusted the crumbs from his hands and lifted the receiver, to be told that Imogen was fighting for her life after overdosing on painkillers. She had left him a letter.

*

Sunset still glowed bright in the western sky but once inside the school gates, the total darkness of the woods closed about him. Water dripped from the trees, and the reek of wet earth and rotting vegetation was everywhere. As he negotiated one or another of the crazy bends, his headlights caught the startled eyes of small animals, and intermittently, he heard the owl above the trees, although dusk had silenced the thousands of birds that filled the day with their song. There were no nightingales in Wales, he recalled, turning slowly round the last bend, but why, no one knew.

The
school was lit up from end to end and faces were pressed to the glass at almost every window. Matron was one of those on watch and she advanced across the forecourt as soon as he stopped the car. The harsh white fluorescence of the outside security lamps was grossly unkind to her ageing face, turning her into a hag. She wrung her hands, stared at him, then led him in silence into the school and to her room.

‘
Who found her?’ he demanded. ‘When?’

‘
Vivienne Wade went to see if she wanted supper. She was all right when I took up the stick and crutches you’d borrowed, and I know several people looked in on her later, but no one else noticed.’ She blinked rapidly. ‘Isn’t that strange?’

‘
Noticed what?’

‘
I’m not sure.’ She frowned. ‘Maybe that she was sleeping too deeply—’

He
interrupted her. ‘Where’s Vivienne now?’

‘
She insisted on going to the hospital. Dr Scott’s gone, of course, so I don’t see why Vivienne thought
she
should, but she wouldn’t be put off. I suppose she feels she’s got a stake in the matter. She
did
find her, after all.’ She collapsed into a chair and her whole body seemed to deflate. ‘It was awful! Francoise came tearing downstairs, screaming there was an ambulance on its way, then Dr Scott rushed up and found Vivienne and your policeman dragging Imogen around the room trying to wake her up.’

‘
How many tablets had she taken?’

‘
Thirty-odd? She gets forty-two every Wednesday and she’s allowed six a day.’

‘
Did it never occur to you that she might overdose?’

‘
Why should it?’ Matron snivelled and grabbed the handkerchief stuffed into her belt.

‘
Because she’d lost her leg, she was clearly in extreme pain and her lifelong friend had just died!’ he replied savagely. ‘What’s in the tablets?’

‘
Dihydrocodeine.’

He
had no idea what an overdose might do, but wanted to wound. ‘Then don’t expect her to survive. Where’s her letter?’

Matron
’s whole face began to quiver. She levered herself upright and faced him. ‘Don’t speak to me like that! Who are
you
to criticise? Eh?’ She panted stale breath in his face. ‘It’s
your
fault this happened!’ He backed away and almost fell over a chair. ‘Your
fault
!’ she screeched. Dragging a crumpled envelope from her apron pocket, she flung it at his feet. ‘
There’s
her letter! Dr Scott opened it. This is
our
school!’ She began to sob, helplessly flapping her hands. ‘
Ours
!’

Crouched
miserably and uncomfortably on the edge of a chair in the visitors’ room, McKenna told himself he must read the three pages of Imogen’s rather cramped script slowly and calmly. When he first unfolded her missive and saw how she had begun, the words rabbit-punched him in the belly. He still felt sick.

Dear Superintendent McKenna

When you took away my stick and crutches, I realised how helpless I really am. I can’t even get to the bathroom on my own. I know you’re getting me another stick, and I know Vivienne and Justine will look after me, but I hate being a burden and dependent on the kindness of others, and I despise weakness — so that’s partly why I despise myself so much — but I don’t want to be pitied, either. I just want to be what I was before the accident, and that’s impossible.

When you brought
Sukie’s plant to my room, I saw you looking at my foot and I knew exactly what was going through your mind because the same things go through mine, day and night. I can’t wear high heels, or frocks, or sandals. I can’t sunbathe, or have lovers, or run through the streets after a party, and if a rapist comes after me I can’t run away, because I’ve put myself in the grim, freaky world of the maimed and ugly and helpless.

People tell me I
’ll get used to having a false leg and eventually get my independence and they could be right, because I’ve actually seen models on the catwalk with two false legs. People learn to live without limbs, I know. In some places they’ve got no option. They can go for a walk, step on a landmine and get their legs blown off, or have their arms chopped off because they belong to the wrong tribe. It’s a wicked world and when I see pictures of people like that I want to die, because they all look so brave. I’m not. I’m a coward and a fraud.

When you have a limb amputated, you know it will hurt, but you can never imagine how much it hurts until it happens. Nobody will talk about the pain, so you can
’t know if it might become tolerable, or even go away altogether, and for me the prospect of waiting to find out is too hard, too daunting, too uncertain. When Vivienne found me taking extra pills this morning, she said I was on the slippery slope to becoming a junkie, and she was quite right, but what else can I do? The pills make me feel sick and dizzy, and give me blinding headaches and constipation, but all that put together is better than the pain.

I
’m writing to you so that even if I’m not dead when you get this letter, you must start to right the terrible wrong I did to Sukie and her parents. I was driving the car. I was driving too fast and just lost control. Sukie was stunned in the crash, but she wasn’t knocked out. She pulled me out of the wreck in case it blew up. Then she passed out.

My parents know, but I pray to God
Sukie really couldn’t remember and that she never knew how dreadfully I betrayed her. We loved each other like sisters, and I haven’t got words to tell you how horrible it was after we came back here but couldn’t be together — couldn’t even speak to each other. My parents forbade me ever to speak to her again, in case I let something slip by accident, or my conscience simply got the better of me. Sukie believed she’d lost me my leg and I wanted to tell her that wasn’t true more than I actually wanted my leg back, but I couldn’t. I let myself get caught up in one lie, but it went out of control far faster than the car. My father put me on his own insurance when he bought my car and he was absolutely incensed about how much the crash was going to cost him. The lying started when the police told us Sukie couldn’t remember anything. We swore those dreadful lies were God’s honest truth just to save some money, because my parents are both mean and greedy. But then, in my experience, very rich people usually are. I went along with them because I’m weak and I knew my father would punish me if I disobeyed. I felt sorry enough for myself as it was.

My parents had always despised the
Melvilles. They called Hester silly and immature, and John a born loser. My father laughed about ruining him —‘only sooner rather than later,’ he said and thought it was ‘piquant’ for the Melvilles to be beggared by the people they believed were their closest friends.

My insurance money was put into trust — I was
supposed to have it next year. The money my parents swindled out of the Melvilles is in one of my father’s accounts. I’m relying on you to make sure the Melvilles get back their money and my parents get what they deserve. Don’t let me down, because I could come back to haunt you.

I can
’t tell you how much calmer I feel already. I just wish and wish I’d found the strength to tell Sukie the truth. I wish that so hard it hurts more than my leg, because if we’d still been close, I would have known something was wrong and I could have kept her safe. When I realised you thought I’d killed her, I felt like going mad with grief, but I don’t really believe you’re stupid enough to fall for Dr Scott’s conniving. She won’t care who you arrest as long as you solve the problem for her, although she’d probably prefer it to be me because I’ve become quite a burden to her and I know she’d like to wash her hands of me. Unfortunately for her, she can’t do that without showing her true colours.

Sukie
was the sweetest, kindest, bravest person I’ve ever known. She was brave in all sorts of ways, not just because she pulled me out of the car. She was never nasty either, or bitter, though God knows, her family gave her plenty of cause. She shouldn’t have died. She didn’t deserve to die. She’d never hurt anyone, so she must have died because of something I began by lying and that’s unbearable. That’s why I want to die, as well. I wouldn’t even think of killing myself if she was still alive.

When you were talking to me earlier I wanted so much to ask you how she died, but I couldn
’t pluck up the courage. Do you know? Did she suffer? Did she know? I pray not, I really, really do.

Imogen Oliver

PS Last Christmas, Sukie gave me a beautiful necklace. I’m positive I haven’t lost it because it was too precious — it was the last gift I’d ever have from her — but I can’t find it. The drugs affect my memory, you see, and I forget wheie I’ve put things, especially the small ones and I can’t crawl around on the floor or move the furniture to look in case I’ve just dropped something. Since the accident, I’ve become a lot tidier, because it makes life a little easier, but things still seem to disappear of their own accord. Please find the necklace for me. I want to wear it to my funeral.

Folding
the letter with shaking hands, he pushed it back in the envelope and damned every single person who had crossed her path since that tragic December day, beginning with her murderously avaricious parents and finishing with himself. Had he returned after taking away her crutches, she might have told him the truth, but the complete mental disarray that followed his insane capitulation to Freya Scott gave Imogen time to make an irrevocable decision. Harrowed, enraged and even close to tears, he left the school, after first arranging for Imogen’s room to be locked and sealed. When he arrived at the police station, he contacted Berkshire police and faxed a copy of her letter. Realising that Jack also needed to know, he scribbled a covering note and sent that, with the letter and, as an afterthought, the report from pathology, by messenger to his house. Then he drove to the hospital.