Evil for Evil (36 page)

Her mouth twisted. ‘Is that what they told you?’

‘No, they didn’t. I saw her body for myself. If that’s what it will take to stop this disgusting charade, I’ll tell you: her coffin was there, on the table in our dining room. There were candles and white flowers, and she was lying with her hands crossed on her chest and her eyes wide open.’ His voice faltered. ‘I’ve never forgotten it, and it’s haunted me all my life. So perhaps you could just forget your nasty, sordid little scam and get yourself out of here.’

‘What happened to Nellie, my elephant, after I was gone?’

‘
Nellie
!’ He choked. ‘How – how could you know about—’

‘Because I’m Helen!’ she shouted suddenly. ‘Oh, for God’s sake – an open coffin, just left lying on our dining room table, flowers and candles – are you mad? No one would do that. It’s out of some Victorian novelette! You must have dreamt it.’

‘I—’ Matt was ready to protest, and then he stopped. So much of his memory of that terrible time had a dreamlike quality; could he be absolutely sure that she wasn’t right? Then he looked at her again, and his resolve strengthened.

‘Really? Then could I just point out that my sister and I were very much alike. Dark curly hair – oh, and Granny’s nose. My mother always used to say that it would be all right for a man, but it wouldn’t do Helen any favours.’

‘But nothing a nose job couldn’t fix – do you remember she always used to finish by saying that? And hair …’ She shrugged. ‘A good colourist and hair straighteners. But let’s talk about the eyes. That’s something you can’t change – the colour of the eyes, and the line of the brow.’

Struck dumb, he looked at her yet again. There it was – the resemblance he had failed to pin down had been to himself. He felt dizzy with the shock.

‘Yes, Matt, I’m Helen –
was
Helen,’ she corrected herself. ‘I call myself Elena now.’ She was smiling again, the slate-blue eyes bright as she patted the sofa beside her. ‘Come and sit down. We’ve a lot to talk about.’

The pub had been very busy but at least it was nearly closing time, Georgia Stanley consoled herself as she pulled the umpteenth pint. The media types had drifted off, after the brief excitement of the ambulance coming for Hugh Donaldson, but one of them had got into conversation
earlier, said he was desperate to get out of the rat race and with a little pub in a glorious place like this she must be living the dream. She’d said she was thinking of retiring, and he’d actually kissed her across the bar. He was coming tomorrow to have a proper look around. It was the thought of a neat little house in Kirkcudbright that was keeping her going – that and getting to her bed.

It was with no enthusiasm at all that she saw Inspector Fleming and Sergeant MacNee elbowing their way through the drinkers.

‘We need to speak to Matt Lovatt urgently,’ Fleming said.

‘Right.’ She looked round a little helplessly. ‘If you can wait a couple of minutes, I’ve just called time—’

‘Now,’ Fleming said. ‘Just tell us where he is.’

‘Fine. Through that door, along past the kitchen, up the stairs and it’s the second door on the right.’

They had gone before she’d finished speaking.

Eddie wasn’t moving very fast. It was even colder outside than it had been in the car and the light coat that was all he’d had with him was doing no sort of job at all. And it was treacherous underfoot; it was so dark he hadn’t seen an icy puddle until he slipped on it and fell heavily. He had a sore hip to contend with now as well as stiffness, and as he limped on towards the farmhouse, the unwisdom of what he was doing struck him more forcibly.

What if Elena came out, to go back to the man in the chalet? He was on the drive now; there was no cover until you reached the trees at the back of the house. There was a dog, too, in a pen; a big dog, pacing to and fro as it watched him with glowing eyes. What if it started barking? It hadn’t barked at Elena, but then perhaps she was a regular visitor. He eyed it distrustfully as he neared the house.

He could see that the front door was standing open, then he heard
voices coming from round the side of the house. They must be in the curtained room he had noticed earlier, where a flickering reddish glow suggested firelight. And the window was open.

With exaggerated caution, Eddie tiptoed along the flagstone path and pressed himself against the wall beside the window.

‘I … I owe you an apology,’ Lovatt said awkwardly. ‘I was very rude to you just now.’

‘Oh? I think you owe me rather more than that,’ Elena said.

His stomach lurched. She didn’t know – he’d always believed – or hoped, perhaps, that she couldn’t have known. And it was all so long ago.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘You’re entitled to half the property …’

She ignored that. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me where I’ve been all these years? What I’ve been doing?’

‘Well, of course.’ Matt swallowed. ‘You’re looking very … well, elegant, I suppose.’

His sister made a face, pulling at the long-sleeved Primark T-shirt she was wearing. ‘Elegant? I think you just probably mean expensively groomed. You see, I’m married to a wealthy man – a lovely, kind man who adores me.’

‘That’s … that’s nice.’ He knew that wasn’t the right reply, but he was stalling, playing for time, putting off what he dreaded that she would say.

‘Nice? It should be, but it isn’t. Do you know why? He loves me, but I can’t love him, because I can’t love anyone. I’m an emotional cripple, you see. Because of what went before.’

‘Before?’ Matt wanted to put his hands over his ears, wanted to blot out what she was going to say. The words were already forming in his head before she said them.

‘What do you think would happen to a nine-year-old girl once she was abducted? Shall I tell you? Men, that’s what happens. A paedophile ring. Years and years of pain and terror and torture; I would tell you in minute by minute detail, but …’

For the first time he saw a loss of control. She was shaking, and her hand went to her slim throat as if it were constricting. She took a shuddering breath before she went on, ‘… I–I can’t. I can’t go there myself. I don’t allow it to destroy me. Just imagine the worst things you can think of, and they happened.’

He was feeling numb and sick as she took up the story again. ‘It was such a relief when I got too old, and could just go on the game. Oh, you get beaten up sometimes – but that wasn’t anything new. When you’re a prostitute you get paid, and I hadn’t a drug habit so I could steer clear of pimps. I could take a day off, or say no to someone I didn’t like the look of – that was a real luxury! Of course I’d have liked to be a call girl – easy life, posh place to live, good clothes. But you see, I wasn’t the type. Skinny. Scared. And …’ she gave a harsh laugh ‘… with Granny’s nose, no beauty.

‘God knows what Eddie saw in me. He’s the only good man I’ve ever met. But for years and years I’ve lived with the rage bottled up inside me, and it was starting to destroy me. I was cutting myself in pieces, literally. I have a special little silver knife to do it with, you know.’ She was wearing broad silver cuffs round her wrists; she snapped one back now and showed him the network of scar tissue on her arm.

‘God, I’m sorry. I–I don’t know what to say,’ Matt stammered.

‘There’s nothing to
say
, Matt. It’s way past
saying
– way, way past.’

‘What can I do, then?’ he said desperately. ‘Anything—’

‘Oh, I’ll tell you in a minute. But we need to talk a little more. I’d like to have had this – this little talk years ago, when I began the
process of sorting myself out. I don’t suppose you’d want to hear about that either. But you were unfinished business. I didn’t know where you were, you see.’

‘Mother died when I – we were seventeen. Then it was the army, then here.’ That sounded almost like a normal conversation, filling in the gaps between separated siblings. ‘And hospital, after I was wounded in Bosnia.’ Matt touched his cheek.

Elena looked at him with withering scorn. ‘Looking for sympathy? Don’t make me laugh. I couldn’t care less what you did with your rotten life. Finding out where you were was the final piece in the jigsaw I thought I’d never manage to complete. Do you remember the one we worked on for ages that turned out to have a piece missing?’ She laughed.

The little, homely detail was the sort of thing anyone might produce, finding a long-lost brother, but Matt was under no illusion. ‘Oh yes,’ he said grimly. ‘Go on. Say what you’re going to say.’

A sudden hiss and flare-up from a knot of resin in a log sent the flames dancing, and in the shadow-play her face, with those bright, hard eyes, looked almost demonic.

‘You were awake,’ she said. ‘You saw him take me. And you didn’t scream, Matt – you could have saved me. You didn’t. You condemned me to a life of destruction and pain. You. You. You!

‘So now I’m destroying you, taking you apart bit by bit, the way I was destroyed, and I’m feeling better all the time. All the things you cared for: your home, your wife, your dog – though the brute’s still here, I see. And you did it. Nothing that’s happened is my fault, Matt. It’s yours.
Yours
!’

Matt’s head was bent, as if bludgeoned by her rising voice. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Mine.’

Eddie leant against the wall, afraid that his legs wouldn’t hold him unaided. The past ten minutes had been a dizzying series of highs and lows, from swelling joy at the way Elena described him – ‘a lovely, kind man’ – to pity at her sad incapacity to feel love, to bewilderment at her attitude to the brother she had just found, whom she seemed to be blaming for all that had happened to her, when he could have been no more than a child.

And then to blank horror as he realised what she had done, and what she was going to do now. His heart ached for her: she had never allowed him close enough to share her corroding anger, never let him help to talk out her pain. She had let it not only destroy her, but make her an agent of destruction.

There was no way back, no way he could make it right for her, but he had to stop her doing this last, terrible thing. His eyes streaming with tears, he blundered round the house to the front door.

‘He’s not here! He’s not bloody here!’ Fleming was beside herself with rage as she came downstairs again, with MacNee at her heels, after a fruitless visit to Matt Lovatt’s bedroom, and, as an afterthought, to Christie’s as well, just in case the girl’s story had been true. But Christie was innocently asleep, her face childishly pillowed on her hand, and Fleming shut the door again quietly so as not to wake her.

‘Does that uniform think he’s being paid to kip in his car?’ she demanded as she stormed through the bar without so much as a nod to the astonished Georgia, while the last drinkers moved swiftly out of the way. As the door shut behind her, a swell of conversation rose, and Tony Drummond, seeing his moment, made his way across in her wake and wrenched it open again.

‘Don’t think so.’ MacNee was standing immediately outside. ‘Back, Drummond.’

‘Oh, come on, Tam,’ he pleaded. ‘What’s going on?’

MacNee’s eyes were cold. ‘A murder inquiry’s going on, that’s what. And the officer in the car there – the one that’s getting a bollocking right at this moment – will have orders to arrest you if you step outside.’

‘Arrest a member of the press? You’re joking!’

‘For operational reasons,’ MacNee said. ‘He’ll be telling the others to stay where they are as well.’

‘Operational reasons?’ With the scent of an exclusive in his nostrils, Drummond was getting desperate. ‘Look, Tam, I’m sorry about the business with your father. It wasn’t personal. It’s just the job.’

‘This isn’t personal either,’ MacNee said, smiling sweetly. ‘In fact, this is so far from being personal that when we’re able to give out details, we’ll be making it general, very general. All the media at the same time. Now, inside, like I said.’

The constable, looking dazed after the hairdryer treatment, was standing awkwardly beside his car.

‘Get in there, tell them they’re to stay inside and see that they do,’ MacNee said, and followed Fleming towards the coast path.

The street lamps switched off just as they reached it.

‘Yes, I woke up. I saw him take you, and I didn’t scream. Look, Helen, I was nine years old! I was terrified – you can’t blame a child of nine for not having the courage to give the alarm.’

Matt was blustering now and her smile was almost pitying. ‘No. Perhaps not at the time. But there was more to it than that, wasn’t there?’

She knew. Now he was going to have to face the truth he had tried to hide from himself all these years. He moistened dry lips.

‘
Wasn’t there?
’ Elena’s voice rose.

‘Helen, I was half-asleep. I didn’t believe it was real. I thought it was some kind of bad dream.’ Matt was pleading with her now, scanning her face for some sign of understanding, but it was coldly implacable.

‘Bad dream?’ she mocked him. ‘But you didn’t mention your “bad dream” to anyone, did you?’

He bent his head. ‘I couldn’t believe – couldn’t understand …’ He felt his throat closing on the words.

‘Say it!’ she screamed suddenly. ‘Say it! That my own father abducted me from my bedroom –
and you let him do it
.’

Matt opened his mouth, formed his lips to say the words, but no sound would come.

‘It’s hard to believe anyone could be stupid enough to take themselves out of police protection after all that’s happened. But at least we know
where he is,’ Fleming said grimly, pointing towards the flickering glow in the farmhouse window as they made what speed they could with only the pale stars for light, on the slippery, uneven ground. MacNee was out of breath, trying to keep up with his superior’s longer strides. She was feeling more and more uneasy about the mystery woman, who had struck that ruthless blow and then just … vanished.

‘I still can’t get a hold on this. It certainly started after Natalie Thomson came here, and it looks like Lovatt’s been the target. The twin could be him – those papers were with his stuff, after all. But if so, who’s she?’

‘Sssh!’ MacNee stopped suddenly. ‘I can hear voices coming from the house. And look – I think that’s someone moving round the side.’

Straining her eyes, Fleming could see a shadowy figure. ‘What do you think – is that her?’ she murmured. She’d feel happier if the person inside talking to Lovatt wasn’t Natalie Thomson.

MacNee shook his head. ‘Nuh. Think it’s a male. But look – the window’s open.’

‘We’ll make for that, then. I’ll just give warning that we may need backup.’

Who was the man? And who was Lovatt talking to? With a sick feeling of apprehension Fleming spoke softly into her phone as MacNee headed towards the house.

The man was round at the front now. He seemed unaware of their approach and as she watched he disappeared inside.

He still hadn’t said it. Matt had tried to make the admission she wanted, but he was swallowing bile. Elena looked with contempt at his contorted face.

‘You can’t face up to it, even now, can you? If you’d just told Mum, even afterwards – I was weeks in solitary confinement, weeks!
Would you like to try to imagine what that could do to a little girl? Mum must have known what he was, that nothing meant anything except gambling. That was all I was, you know – another gambling chip to let him go on playing with the big guys. She’d have believed you.’

‘But–but …’ Lovatt stammered. ‘I know what I thought I saw – but how could it be him? He was there next day.’

‘Cal was waiting outside ready to whisk me away. He’d roped him in to bring me here – his other son.’

‘Cal? Cal Findlay? But I know him, he never said—’

‘He wouldn’t, would he? Oh, he wasn’t all bad. I even wish the poor fool hadn’t got in my way tonight. He didn’t know what was going on at the time – he’d been given some story about a custody problem because there was going to be a divorce so …’ Her lips framed the word ‘Dad’ but she too couldn’t bring herself to utter it. ‘
He
could marry Cal’s mother. All lies, of course. But they were willing to act as jailers for me, across there,’ she jerked her head over her shoulder, ‘there on the island. I was imprisoned in that bothy, until the hunt died down. Alone. Until …
he
came to fetch me.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ Matt was weeping now. Then he looked up. ‘Did … did he—’

He stopped, but she understood. ‘Haven’t even got the guts to ask, have you?’ Her voice was contemptuous. ‘No, he never touched me. I was sellable goods, you see. He did do a favour for an old friend here first, though. Presumably owed him money as well.’

Elena paused to allow Matt to say something, but he was beyond speech. ‘I still have this nightmare—’ She shuddered. ‘But it’s all right. I’ve squared it with him. I’m nearly there. Just one last detail.’

She picked up her bag from the floor beside her.

The door creaked as it opened. The twins, so deeply engaged, both jumped and Elena gave a little startled scream.

The fire was dying back and as Eddie stepped into the room he was in deep shadow and for a second she didn’t recognise him. Then she gave a cry of dismay.

‘Eddie! Oh no, no!’

‘Elena, it’s all right, pet,’ he said, coming across towards them. ‘You’ve had a cruel, cruel time. I know how you’ve suffered, why you’ve done these things. But you mustn’t go on like this. I’ll sort everything out. Come away with me now.’ He held out his hand encouragingly, as if to a child.

‘Oh, Eddie,’ she wailed. ‘You’re making it so difficult for me. Just go out and leave me for five minutes – three! Then I’ll come. And we can drive back home and forget any of this happened. It’ll be all right, you’ll see.

‘Don’t spoil it, darling – I promise we’ll go back to our lovely life, and I’ll be so relaxed and cheerful – so loving, you won’t know me.’

His wife, the wife he adored, was a monster. She was sick – she was completely insane. No wonder, with all that had happened to her. His heart wrung with pity, he said, ‘No, Elena, I can’t leave you. I’m going to make you come with me—’

‘No.’ Her movement was so quick that before he reached her, she had taken something out of her bag and jumped to her feet.

Eddie paused, warily. She seemed to be holding some sort of large dart, and the skin on her hands looked oddly shiny – gloves, of course. ‘What’s … what’s that?’ he said uncertainly.

‘Go away, Eddie.’

Matt sat, frozen. ‘Do as she says, Eddie. There’s nothing you can do. It’s a tranquilliser for animals – fatal in minutes. Not a bad way to go, really. The drug of choice for suicidal vets.’

He turned to his twin. ‘Yes, I owe you. And I don’t care any more. Carry on. I’m sorry for everything.’ He held out his hands, waiting.

‘You can’t, Elena!’ Eddie cried. ‘I won’t let you do this.’

He lunged towards her.

‘Police! Get away from her! Stand back!’ MacNee yelled, launching himself through the window. The curtains caught; it was a second before he had a clear view. He could hear Fleming at his shoulder, shouting into her phone.

It was as if he had invaded a tableau. No one moved. A man he’d never seen before, a stout, balding, middle-aged man, was standing looking at his hand with a puzzled expression. Matt Lovatt was gaping from his position on the sofa and a blonde woman was standing holding what looked like some sort of dart.

MacNee grabbed her from behind. The dart fell from her hand and she crumpled to her knees. ‘Eddie! Oh Eddie, no!’

Eddie dropped, a crumpled heap on the floor. Matt put his head in his hands and moaned. Elena was weeping as Fleming came in through the window.

MacNee, still holding Elena, jerked his head at the dart on the floor. ‘Some sort of poison,’ he said. ‘Don’t touch it.’

Matt Lovatt looked up. ‘Not “some sort of poison”,’ he said. ‘Immobilon – you need the antidote within five minutes.’

‘There should be an ambulance up the hill …’ Fleming was tapping a number on her phone, but Matt shook his head.

‘They won’t have it. It’s vet medicine – I had the antidote in my medicine cabinet, but they took that away after the fire.’ He looked at his twin, still in the policeman’s restraining grasp as she yearned towards her unconscious husband.

‘Dad finished us both,’ he said, the word coming to his lips for the
first time in almost thirty years. ‘You, crippled by what happened to you, me crippled by guilt. Did you kill him? Did you chain him to a rock, and let him die? If I’d known, I’d have been right there with you.’

Elena was on her knees. She looked up at him with contempt. ‘You could have told the truth any time. You’ve lied with every breath you’ve taken for thirty years. And you’ve killed Eddie – the only decent man I’ve ever known.’

Fleming had never watched a murdered man die. As long as she lived, she would never forget it.