by Thorne Moore
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘I don’t think you have the faintest idea what being scared is really like.’
‘Oh I do, believe me. You should try being in a Cessna with a drunken husband who thinks looping the loop in a dust storm is all part of the fun.’
The husband, presumably, who then died in a plane crash, insisting on flying in poor conditions. The husband before the one who committed suicide because he was falsely led to believe he had cancer. I wondered. How could I not? ‘How many people have you killed, Serena?’
‘I’ve never killed anyone. I’ve never hurt anyone. Surely you understand how entirely innocent I am. What other people choose to do, that’s their business, but my hands are clean. I don’t kill.’
‘What about Janice?’
‘What about her? Janice Dexter was murdered by person or persons unknown. The poor police never did get to the bottom of it. All right, we know the truth, don’t we? You killed her, Karen. Smashed her head in. But I think it’s perfectly reasonable to call it self-defence, because the chances were, she would have done the same to you, if you hadn’t got in first. Don’t blame yourself too much. You really were petrified.’
She was so smooth, so casual in what she said, that for a moment I wondered if she could be right. I had seen and unseen so many things, over the years. Over the last few months even more. Was she right?
I could feel, in my flesh, the pitted iron of the sewer, the ice cold water, the roughness of the concrete block. I could smell the exhalation of chill, stale air from the tunnel. I could see the pathetic hole in Janice’s unshod sock. I could hear…
She was wrong. All that I’d remembered, standing on the bridge in Sawyer’s Lane, was the truth.
‘No, Serena. I was petrified, all right. So petrified, it screwed up the rest of my life, but I didn’t kill Janice. I didn’t drop the block. You did it. You are the one who killed her.’
She was very still, very white, her eyes wide. Was she waiting to see if I would waiver in my certainty, or was she facing up to a truth she’d been denying even to herself? I stared her out.
‘You’re fantasising, Karen. You do, you know. I understand that at one time you thought you were Jane Eyre. And Flora MacDonald, apparently.’
‘And Éowyn. Yes. I did. I imagine you’re telling me that because you want to divert me. I’m supposed to start worrying about how you got to see my records, but I don’t care. Yes, I’ve done a lot of fantasising, but I’m not fantasising now. You killed Janice Dexter.’
‘You want to think that. Understandable, I suppose. A scary business, murder – enough to tip anyone over the edge, especially when you’re convinced you’ll be hanged, if you’re caught.’
‘Did you enjoy threatening me with that? Did you believe it, yourself? Or did you know they didn’t hang children, even when they were still hanging adults?’
‘I certainly got some satisfaction from it. It was punishment for your recalcitrance. Of course they’d stopped capital punishment by then. Only just, but you didn’t know that. Current affairs and ten-year-olds don’t really mix. I knew about it, because it was a sore subject with my father. He disapproved of abolition. He thought the death penalty was essential to the administration of justice. I tend to agree… Don’t you?’
‘Do you have any idea what justice is?’
‘Of course. Just rewards and just punishments. That’s what it was all about, in ’66. If people misbehaved, they had to be put right.’
‘With you as their self-appointed executioner.’
‘Never executioner. Not even judge. Counsel for the prosecution, maybe. Some people needed to be prosecuted.’
‘Like poor Nigel Knight? What did he do to offend?’
‘He tried to paw my hair once. Ghastly. They should have put him in an asylum or something. Anyway, blame Denise for that. She was the one who set the police onto him.’
‘With your prompting.’
‘I didn’t do anything. I never do.’
‘But you did. You can try and make me think black is white all you like, but I know that you killed Janice. You dropped that block on her. You dragged her into the culvert.’
As I spelled it out, I saw the twitch in her neck, the suddenly speeding pulse, although otherwise she didn’t stir a muscle.
‘You murdered her, because I refused to do it.’
She sighed, with a hint of irritation. ‘I always suspected this memory loss business wouldn’t be quite as permanent as the others seemed to think. You wiped it out, like a good girl, but you’ve come running back with it, like a rotten bone. That’s your trouble, Karen. Totally unreliable. I can’t trust you to do anything. You wouldn’t even kill yourself. Twice I laid it out for you, and each time you failed.’
‘You nearly succeeded the first time.’
‘Yes. Bad luck.’
‘For you.’
‘For both of us, judging by the end result. What did you gain by surviving the fall? Just misery for yourself and all around you. You should have died. After all, whoever dropped the block, you were the one who was crippled with guilt about it. And so you should be. I did it for you.’
‘No you didn’t, Serena.’
‘Oh but yes. I protected you. You were both so scared, in that lane, one of you was going to finish up committing murder, and I didn’t want it to be her. You should be flattered. I wanted you to be the survivor. And then I came up with a perfectly convincing story, so that you would never be suspected, remember?’
‘By making it look as if she’d been sexually assaulted.’
‘Weren’t we all so innocent in those days? I’d do a much better job if I were an eleven-year-old today. Mind you, dragging her filthy knickers off was bad enough. I’m not sure I could have faced getting any more intimate with her. Ugh. I had to scrub my hands raw, when I got home.’
‘Did it hurt? I hope so. I hope your skin’s been rubbed raw ever since.’
She smiled, mockingly. ‘A little hand lotion works wonders. I was over it in no time.’
‘It was Mr Cutler’s lecture in assembly that made you think of it, wasn’t it?’
‘It was 1966. They’d only just caught the Moors Murderers. The trial wasn’t for another few months, so I’m not sure if the full shock horror had hit the press yet, but my father certainly knew all about it. All the nasty details – and he repeated enough in front of me to tell me it was about children being picked up in cars and having unspeakable things done to them. If he’d been more specific, maybe I’d have made it more convincing. Anyway, as it turned out, Janice’s foul pudenda hanging loose was enough to do the job. Everyone was primed to suspect the worst.’
She drained the last of her gin and shrugged. ‘At least I didn’t record her screams. Or even yours. It was you doing most of the screaming, as I recall. Yes, see? I’m not a psychopath like Brady. Not that stupid. Far from it. I don’t think anyone has ever suspected me of anything. Except you.’
‘You’re wrong. Your father suspected you. I saw it in his eyes.’
She took a deep breath, tapping her fingers on the arm of the sofa. ‘I hate to say it, but you’re probably right. But he hated to say it too, so he didn’t. Not then.’ She laughed. ‘He made such a mess of the investigation, didn’t he? Didn’t do anything by the book. Bullied you into a complete breakdown. I think that might have been intentional. If you were too doolally to say anything, you couldn’t hint at anything I might have done. He could never be quite sure. That’s why he didn’t object to being shunted off to some distant colony, I suppose. I wouldn’t be a threat to the suburbs, in Hong Kong.’
‘Just a threat to Hong Kong. How many people did you kill out there?’
‘I don’t kill,’ she repeated, primly. Then smiled. ‘Never you mind. Whatever happened out there, it pushed my father beyond his limits. He blurted out all his suspicions about the Janice Dexter case. Not that it did him much good. He had a fatal heart attack moments later.’
‘Another of your triumphs.’
‘Nothing triumphant about it. It was bloody inconvenient. We had to find somewhere else to live.’
She stood up. ‘I’m getting myself another of these. Sure you won’t have one?’
‘Quite sure.’ I followed her to the kitchen door, half suspecting her of intending to escape across the garden. ‘I wouldn’t trust you not to poison it.’
She laughed, scooping fresh ice from the freezer. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t kill people. Other people do it, or kill themselves. The whole world is so obliging. Except you. Karen Rothwell. Why did you always have to be so damned awkward?’ She gestured to the table, littered with salad ingredients and a board with half a lemon and a sharp knife. ‘Cut me a slice, would you?’
I reached automatically for the knife, then stopped myself. ‘Cut it yourself.’
I caught a flicker of fury at my little show of defiance. She stared at me a moment, then picked up the knife and started slicing the lemon. ‘Won’t do a single thing to oblige me, will you. Wouldn’t turn your back on the Dexter brat. Wouldn’t finish her off. Wouldn’t tell the police what I told you to say. Wouldn’t kill yourself – twice! You really have no idea how much you annoy me.’
‘I don’t care how much I annoy you. Complain to the police. I’m sure they’ll sympathise.’
‘Oh, good Lord, you don’t really mean to go to the police, do you? With a cockamamie story about a murder in 1966? You do realise they’ll laugh you out of court. Or lock you up in a hospital, more likely. Which is where you ought to be. Because you are totally mad. They’ll only have to look at your medications or speak to your psychiatrist. And to me, of course. I don’t have your trouble with little white lies. I can be totally convincing.’
‘I’m sure you will be. You’ll have them at your feet as soon as look at you and I don’t suppose for one minute that they will believe a word I say. But still, I’m going to the police. For Janice’s sake. Let the heavens fall.’
She was watching me as she sliced, with that contemptuous, confident smile, and her words rang so true that I was completely unprepared for the lunge she made at me with the blade.
Maybe some schizophrenic instinct took over, because, prepared or not, I lurched to the side, toppled, grabbed the kitchen table, scattering its contents, knocking over a chair, and I dragged myself out of her reach. A can crashed, a bottle smashed, tomatoes rolled on the floor.
She came at me again, round the table and I felt all the old terror wash back into me. She was going to kill me. Why hadn’t I realised she would? She was mad.
And then… Then she wasn’t there.
I didn’t understand how Serena could just vanish. Had I blanked out? Was I hallucinating? I’d been feeling horribly, icily sane since I’d left Sawyer’s Lane, but I knew my confusion and delusion, my panic and denials were gathered around me like armed guards, waiting to grab me, the moment I glanced their way. Perhaps I was blocking her out, because I didn’t want to see her.
No. It couldn’t be that. I’d heard a thud, I’d heard a gasp, and now I saw red.
Bizarre. Like some strange abstract art. Glistening red spraying the kitchen walls beyond the table. Why? It didn’t make sense.
Then I heard her groan, and a gory hand grasped the table top. Tried to grasp and then it slipped back. I stepped round the table to make sense of it, my heart beginning to thunder, my vision beginning to blur.
She was there on the floor, behind the fallen chair. There was a broken olive oil bottle too, but I couldn’t connect the two. An olive oil bottle. Serena. Lying. Trying to sit up, the knife slipping free from her groin, blood spurting and spraying from the wound. So much of it. An unstoppable flood, and her face growing paler and paler as I watched.
She tried again to scrabble for a grip on the table and haul herself up. Serena Whinn. Janice’s murderer. Part of me wanted to stand and watch her die, crowing for vengeance.
Another, more human, part of me couldn’t do it. You can’t just let someone die. Not even a murderer.
‘It’s all right. I’m here. I’ll get help. I’ll call an ambulance.’ I doubted there was even time for that. I knelt down, leaning over the chair to support her. I felt and smelled her blood drench me. It wouldn’t stop. I looked round, grabbed a tea towel and tried to press, but it was utterly pointless. The flow was too great. There was nowhere to tie a tourniquet. The towel was sodden before I’d even brought it near the wound.
Serena grasped my hand in both of hers. I understood. At least, for one short moment, I thought I understood. She was asking for help. For forgiveness, maybe. At least for a human touch, at the end.
Then I realised how wrong I’d got it, yet again. I could see what she was doing. She was trying to force my fingers onto the handle of the knife. I snatched my hand away.
She struggled to speak, through bared teeth. ‘Why…won’t… you…ever…’ Fading. Fading. She never finished the words. Her eyes were no longer seeing me. She sank down into a sea of blood and oil.
I rocked back, wanting to be sick. I raised my hand to my mouth, but it was so wet and sticky, with warm gouts of blood, that it made me retch even more. I had to get away. No point in calling an ambulance now. She was dead. Blood was no longer spurting, just oozing, but the kitchen was awash with gore. The fallen chair had created a dam, but blood was beginning to seep under it. It would be circling my feet soon.
I stepped back. I should call 999, of course I should. The police.
I would. But not here. I had to get away, out of this abattoir. It was the blood. I couldn’t take it. My head was spinning.
I stepped away, stumbling to the kitchen door, and seized the handle, but my slippery hand couldn’t grip. I grabbed another towel, hanging beside the door, swallowing hard as I wiped the handle clean, and gripped it, through the towelling. The door opened and I threw myself out, gulping down clean air, forcing it into me. Get me out of here. Get me away.
— 25 —
‘No, I won’t tell you what happened. You can work it out for yourselves, I imagine.’ Yes they had no trouble working out how and why I had killed Serena Whinn. ‘I’m sure the police are looking for me, so why not just tell them where I am?’
Ruth, Angela and Denise glanced at Barbara, willing to leave her in command, this time. Passing the buck. I could see her hand still trembling as she plucked at her coat. She swallowed.
‘Actually, the police don’t suspect murder. The painter chap told them she’d been drinking when he left. They found a broken bottle of oil in the kitchen and signs that she simply slipped in it while slicing a lemon. They have to ask questions, of course, but the coroner’s verdict will almost certainly be accidental death.’
‘After all,’ said Ruth, bitterly. ‘The whole world loved her. Who could possibly have any motive to murder the saintly Serena Whinn?’ She waited some seconds for a reply that never came.
‘We shall say nothing,’ announced Barbara.
‘I’m not asking you to keep it quiet,’ I said.
She brushed it aside. ‘If the law is satisfied, why complicate the matter? We’ll say nothing.’
The others nodded.
Then Ruth shrugged. ‘Look, no offence, not that I can’t stand your company or anything, but if that’s it, can I just go home?’
‘Oh yes.’ Angela hauled herself to her feet. ‘Good idea. Let’s all go home and get on with our wonderful, bloody lives.’
There was a hesitation, some shuffling, some wondering what to do next, but finally Barbara nodded her consent, and they trooped out. One by one, they shook my hand. Denise tried to kiss me.
I closed the door behind them and was alone with Malcolm.
‘Karen—’ he began.
‘I know.’ I smiled. ‘You’re honest. You’re not going to tell me that it was all right to kill her because she deserved it. You’re going to tell me to go to the police.’
He winced and sighed. ‘Karen, it was wrong. Murder is alway
s wrong.’
‘Yes. But I didn’t kill her.’
‘But then…’ He ran his fingers through his thinning hair. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I went to confront her. I wanted her to confess, and she did. I don’t know why, after all these years. I think she’d just got tired of it. She admitted it all. She didn’t care that I knew. But when I told her I was going to the police, she went for me, with a knife.’
‘My God! So it was self-defence.’ Poor Malcolm looked so relieved.
‘Not even that. In fact, it was just what the police think. An accident. I knocked over a bottle of oil. She slipped in it. She fell and accidentally stabbed herself. It must have been an artery, here.’ I indicated my groin. ‘There was so much blood. And it was so quick. So quick. There was nothing I could do. She died, there on the kitchen floor, and I just had to get away.’
‘Of course. Of course. Oh Karen.’ He hugged me. ‘How could I have suspected you? But why didn’t you tell the others? They’re convinced you killed her.’
‘They’ve spent thirty-five years believing I killed Janice. I can’t expect them to cope with too much enlightenment in one day.’
‘But if they do go to the police, after all…’
‘If they do, I’ll tell them exactly what happened, and maybe I’ll be believed, and maybe I won’t. You believe me, which is enough.’
‘No, it isn’t.’ He frowned, beginning to worry. ‘Have the police really accepted it was an accident? What if they’re still asking questions? If they find any suggestion that somebody else was there…’
I moved to the window, staring out across the yard, remembering the scene in Serena’s kitchen – the scene I had been trying to forget.
‘She offered me a drink, but I said no. There was no second glass. She really had been drinking. She really was slicing a lemon. The blood…’ I shut my eyes with a shudder. ‘I was the other side of the room. The blood sprayed, right across the wall before I got to her. No void, showing I was there. There was a fallen chair, holding the blood back. I didn’t tread in it. I didn’t leave footprints.’