Healers (20 page)

“I was wondering if you’d go to see the lad, James. To express our sympathy. Someone from the Centre should do it and I’m busy.”

“I don’t know,” she said quickly. “Surely he won’t want to see us.”

“Why?”

“Well, first Faye. Then Val. I should have thought we were the last people’

“Nonsense,” he interrupted. “I think it would be a welcome gesture.” Then, persuasively, “Val was very close to him, wasn’t she? If she confided in anyone it would have been in him. Find out if she talked to him before she died. You’re good with kids.”

“All right,” she said. “If you think it’s a good idea.” He smiled because he had known all along that he could make her agree.

In the Alternative Therapy Centre his patient was already waiting for him. Daniel introduced himself and began mentally, almost automatically, the process of diagnosis: rigid posture, he thought, firm grip, cold hand. All that could be relevant.

“Just give me a couple of minutes,” he said and let himself into his treatment room. He put on a clean white coat. Other acupuncturists might practise in jeans and a sweatshirt but he had never been comfortable with such informality. He looked at his equipment with satisfaction. He loved this work, cared more about it than anything else in his life. There was the plastic case of sterile, disposable needles; the aka bani the sticks which warmed the skin to test for an imbalance between the left and right side of the body; and the moxa, the herb which was burned on the acupuncture points to warm the energy. The tools of his job, he thought. Then, suddenly: healing gave you power. That’s why he got such a buzz out of it.

He rang through to Rebecca to send the patient in.

The man complained of migraine.

“I’ve been to the doctor,” he said, ‘but he just tells me it’s stress related. Of course I’m under stress. All the time. I’m running my own business in a recession. Who wouldn’t be?”

“Today I’ll do a TD,” Daniel said. “A traditional diagnosis. If I can help we’ll start the treatment in the next session.”

He already had the man down as a wood causative factor. He could even hear the shout in his voice. Woods could be rigid, over-independent, needing to control. Cissie Bowles had been a wood causative factor, though she had mellowed with treatment and become almost human by the end.

“I’ll take a personal history,” he began. “I’d like to concentrate on the first five years of your life.

Perhaps you could tell me something about that time.”

The businessman claimed not to remember anything, looked at Daniel as if he were wasting time.

“That’s not unusual,” Daniel said, but probing gently he discovered that the father had been a merchant seaman, away a lot. The patient had spent much of his early childhood with his grandmother.

“Now,” he said, ‘what about your present family?”

There was a wife apparently, who had a successful career in her own right, two teenage children. All the time Daniel was looking for the secondary gain. What did this man get out of being ill? Attention, it seemed. The wife made a fuss of him when he had a migraine attack and at other times dismissed him as a failure. In Daniel’s experience there usually was a secondary gain. In Cissie Bowles’s case her arthritis had allowed her to ease up on the farm and boss poor Ernie about.

Poor Ernie! Daniel gave a little grin. The business man looked at him suspiciously.

“I’ll ask you to undress now,” Daniel said, trying to concentrate, ‘so I can do a physical examination.”

When he was waiting for his patient to strip he went out to reception. Rebecca was opening the mail. She heard him coming, looked up nervously.

“Yes, Mr. Abbot. Is there anything I can do?”

“I’m sure there is, Rebecca. I’m sure there is. But not just now.” He walked round behind her, so he could look over her shoulder at the letters on the desk. His hand rested on her waist. As he walked away he tapped her on the buttocks.

“Very good,” he said. “What a fast little learner you are!”

Back in the treatment room he completed his diagnosis. He took the pulses, six on each wrist. He waved the burning aka bani over the man’s fingernails and waited to see how long it took for the skin to feel warm. He took his blood pressure.

“Now,” he said, ‘we have to decide what to do next. I think we’ll clear any polluted energy that may be in your system,” Daniel continued, explaining the test for aggressive energy in the best way he knew how. “It’s always safest to do that first. It involves thirteen needles in your back but you’ll feel no real discomfort.”

The patient was impressed. Daniel felt the old satisfaction in knowing that he could help. He realized that he really was very good at this.

After making a new appointment with Rebecca, the business man hovered in reception. Although he had been so un forthcoming at the beginning now he was reluctant to leave. Eventually Daniel walked down the steps with him, and through the Old Chapel to the street. The man was still talking about his wife.

In the health food shop Lily Jackman was at work. The place was empty and she stood listlessly behind the counter while the two other assistants carried on a conversation over her head. Daniel nodded at her and paused for a moment. He wondered whether Win had phoned her at Laverock Farm to ask about the babysitting. Perhaps he should check. In the end he decided to leave it. It wouldn’t be a good idea to make an issue of it.

When he got back to the Centre Magda was in. The door of her treatment room was open and she was on the phone. But by the time Ramsay and Hunter arrived at eleven-thirty she had a client with her and she refused to be disturbed. That suited Daniel very well. He thought he could handle the police better by himself. The successful session with his patient had given him confidence.

“I’m sorry, Inspector, I’m afraid I’ll have to do,” he said, standing up to greet them. He was still wearing his white coat. The room smelled slightly herbal. Hunter sniffed the air disapprovingly. “Besides,” Daniel went on, ‘we’ve all given statements already. I don’t think we can add to what we’ve told you.”

“I think you can,” Ramsay said. “I’m interested in a girl called Faye Cooper.”

“What possible interest could you have in Faye?”

“We’ve been given information which links her death with the recent murders.”

“I don’t know who could have put that idea into your heads. It’s ridiculous’

“Are you quite sure?” Hunter leaned forward. He played the part of the heavy too convincingly, Ramsay thought. And Daniel Abbot was too clever to be taken in by it.

“Of course,” Daniel said. “You must have looked at the records, seen the inquest verdict. Faye’s death was accidental.”

“I understand that you employed Faye for several weeks last summer,” Ramsay said. “As a nanny.”

“It wasn’t such a formal arrangement as that,” Daniel said. “Not really. She was at a loose end during her college holidays. We invited her to stay with us and in return she did some babysitting.”

“I see,” Ramsay sounded sceptical. “Did the arrangement work?”

“Yes. The children seemed to take to her and we found her a very pleasant girl. Very accommodating.”

“Was she working on the weekend when she went with you to the retreat at Juniper Hall?”

“What do you mean?”

“I presume that by then she’d returned to college for the autumn term. She was living in her bed sit in Otterbridge again. Did you invite her to accompany you to look after the children so you were free to participate in the weekend’s activities?”

“You make it sound very calculating, Inspector. It wasn’t like that. We thought she’d benefit from the retreat. And she was very keen to go. She did look after the children on occasions during the weekend. Win and I were both very busy. But we waived her registration fee.”

That was big of you, Ramsay thought.

“Perhaps you could tell me exactly what happened that weekend,” he said.

“I’m sorry, Inspector, it’s not that I’m not keen to help but I don’t see how that’s relevant to your present enquiries.”

“I’ve explained that certain allegations have been made,” Ramsay said quietly. “They may be malicious but you do see that I have to follow them through.”

“I suppose these were anonymous allegations!” Daniel said petulantly.

“I’m sorry, sir, you can’t expect me to discuss that.”

“Why don’t you just tell us what happened,” Hunter said threateningly, ‘on that weekend that the lassie died.”

Daniel seemed about to protest again but looked at Hunter and thought better of it.

“We picked Faye up in Otterbridge on Friday lunchtime,” he said. “She didn’t have classes in the afternoon, or if she did she was prepared to skip them. She seemed in an emotional mood, rather withdrawn. I kept expecting her to burst into tears. We discovered in the course of the trip to Cumbria that a boy she’d been seeing, Peter Richardson, had finished with her. I don’t think it was ever a particularly close relationship but she seemed to be taking it rather badly. I hoped that the weekend would be good for her, do something to rebuild her self-confidence. Certainly by the time we arrived at Juniper Hall she seemed more cheerful

“It was a beautiful weekend, very hot and sunny. Everyone talked about it, said how unusual the weather was for that time of year. We kept expecting it to break, for there to be a thunderstorm. It had that sort of feel. But it stayed fine.”

He paused. He would have found it easier to deal with specific questions. But Ramsay and Hunter just waited for him to continue.

“Juniper’s a beautiful house,” he said. “Elizabethan, I think. All chimneys and pointed gables. More the sort of place you’d expect to find in the Cotswolds. You could tell that Faye had never seen anything like it before. There wasn’t much arranged for the Friday. Some of the people had a long way to travel and didn’t arrive until late. We had a meal. There was a session where we all started to get to know each other.”

“Val McDougal was there?”

“Yes. She arrived in time for dinner.”

“And Lily Jackman?”

Daniel paused. “Yes. She got a lift with Val.”

“How did Miss Jackman afford it then?” Hunter thrust his face towards Daniel’s. “I’ve seen the brochure. It doesn’t come cheap.”

“You’d have to ask Lily that. I presume she thought it was worth it.”

“Did Faye have her own room?” Ramsay asked.

Daniel nodded.

“She died late on Saturday night or early Sunday morning. Did anything unusual happen on Saturday?”

“No. It had all gone very smoothly. There was a great sense of sharing and openness. Everyone seemed very close.”

“Did Faye go to all the sessions that had been arranged?”

“I don’t think so. You’d have to ask Win. She’d be more likely to remember. Faye definitely took the kids out for a walk in the morning while I was running a group, but in the afternoon I think they went for a nap so she could join in.”

“And what session was that?”

“It was Magda’s Voice Dialogue.”

“The same thing she was doing with her group on the Sunday before Val died?”

Daniel nodded. “It’s a technique of consciousness-raising,” he said. “A way of achieving self-acceptance. You know.”

“Not really,” Ramsay said brightly. “But I’ll take your word for it. Were they working in pairs?”

“Yes. That’s how Magda works it.”

“Who was working with Faye?”

He paused again.

“Come on, Mr. Abbot. You must have some idea.”

“I think it was Magda herself. There was an uneven number so she joined in.”

“And that session lasted all afternoon?”

Daniel nodded.

“How did Faye seem? Was she still upset?”

“I didn’t notice,” Daniel said dismissively. “Magda would know.”

“What happened then?”

“There was a period of free time before dinner. For people to reflect quietly in their rooms or explore the garden.”

“Or go for a swim?” Hunter demanded.

“Yes. Some of them went for a swim.”

“But not Faye? She didn’t swim until later, did she?”

“No,” Daniel said awkwardly. “That’s right.”

“Tell us about that,” Ramsay said confidentially. “Tell us exactly what happened.”

“I don’t know,” Daniel cried. “I wasn’t there. No one was.”

“Take me through the evening then.”

“We had dinner. Helped clear up. That’s part of the deal at Juniper. Everyone mucks in. After the meal there was a talk by a visiting speaker. He went on rather. It was gone ten by the time he’d finished. We had coffee then most people drifted back to their rooms.”

“Wasn’t that unusual?” Ramsay asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I get sent on conferences too. Not so uplifting, of course, and I expect the food’s better, but the set-up’s similar. I always mean to got to bed early but I never seem to manage it. There’s too much going on. People you’ve not seen for years. I always find myself up until the early hours chatting.”

“It’s hardly the same, Inspector. Our sort of programme is very intensive. Emotionally draining. People need time to come to terms with what they’ve learnt about themselves.”

“They don’t all go off to the pub then?”

“We don’t need alcohol, Sergeant. That’s not encouraged.”

“And yet,” Ramsay said, ‘after a long day of looking after the children and this intensive group therapy Faye decided to go swimming. By herself. I wonder why she should do that.”

“I don’t know, Inspector. All I know is that she was found drowned the next morning.”

“Who found her body?”

“My wife did,” Daniel said. “She’d gone out for a walk before I was awake. Of course she was terribly distressed. She came to find me and once we realized Faye was dead we called the police.”

“Yes,” Ramsay said. “I see.”

There was a silence. Daniel looked at his watch. “My next patient will be coming soon, Inspector. If there’s nothing else …”

“Faye’s diary,” Ramsay said.

“What about it?”

“It wasn’t among her belongings at Juniper Hall. Not when the police arrived.”

“She must have left it at home then.”

“In your house? Did you ever find it?”

“No,” Daniel said. “Not in our house. In her bed sit I don’t know what happened to her stuff there.”