She looked at his kind face and hardly needed to ask the question. ‘Can I trust you?’
His response was a smile.
‘Everything about this case feels wrong.’ Again, she hesitated. ‘A bit like Ilsa. I feel I’m being deliberately led along a track.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘You picked up on that too?’
‘Yeah, but I don’t know exactly what it is that I’ve picked up on. Is it possible that, like Kobi, she is playing us?’
‘To what end?’
‘I don’t know. Kobi might be clear cut. He’s locked up, safely put away. With Ilsa I don’t know what’s going on but it feels unsafe.’
He smiled and his worn, tired face lifted. She could see that once, before baldness and that cruel exposure, he must have been an attractive man.
She put a hand on his arm. ‘If you do have any ideas, Edward, I’d really appreciate it if you’d share them with me.’
He nodded. ‘If you want you could let me have Kobi’s notes and I’ll take a look at the police files.’
‘Thanks. I might do that. In the meantime, I’d better go up and spend some time with Ilsa.’
TWELVE
Ilsa was lying in bed, the sheets pulled right over her face. She didn’t move as Claire closed the door behind her and gently pulled the sheet back. Ilsa’s eyes remained tightly closed but Claire knew she was awake. ‘Sit up, Ilsa,’ she said. ‘I need to talk to you.’ Ilsa moved, slow and elegant as a cat, until she was sitting bolt upright, her eyes focused on Claire with a perplexed expression.
Ilsa was a beautiful woman in her mid-thirties, with white-blonde hair and high cheekbones. She had once had a sporty physique, according to her husband. She had been a minor tennis star but now she was looking gaunt and her expression was apprehensive almost to the point of terror. She dropped her legs to the floor. ‘I know I should go home to be with my boy but inside … In here …’ She banged her chest. ‘I know I shouldn’t go back there.’ Her eyes were round and frightened.
‘Why not?’
Ilsa didn’t answer but moved her gaze to stare out of the window. ‘He is a bad man,’ she said finally. ‘And when I am near a bad man something could happen.’
Claire paused. It sounded like a threat. ‘What?’
Ilsa’s eyes, forget-me-not blue, looked incapable of deceit.
‘I don’t know, Dr Roget. It’s as though a dark cloud comes over me.’
Claire felt her scepticism grow. ‘Do you see the cloud in here?’
‘No. That’s why I feel safe and want to stay.’
‘And that dark cloud, what does it hide?’
Ilsa’s response was to shake her head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘If you don’t go home, Ilsa, where do you suggest you do go?’
‘Can’t I stay here, Dr Roget?’
Claire shook her head. ‘No.’ And she repeated the points she had made at the meeting. ‘You’ve passed the acute stage of your episode. The medication’s kicked in. You’re not a danger to yourself or the general public. We have no justification in detaining you.’ She couldn’t stop herself from adding, ‘And there will be other patients who need admitting.’
Ilsa’s eyes grew hard then, a cold, icy blue. She shook her head and held up her hand as though to ward off this judgement. She tossed her hair and her voice was angry. ‘Is that your only concern, that you need to put someone else in my bed? What if I am in danger from … my … husband?’ She almost shouted the last few words.
‘Are you telling me you’re the victim of domestic abuse?’
‘Not physical abuse,’ she said quickly. ‘Although one day he might resort to that. No. Mental abuse. Dominance, control. Mental cruelty.’ Her voice was getting higher. ‘He wants to control me. My mind. Make me do things I don’t want to do. And then he will divorce me. And then he will marry his mistress, the woman who was once my best friend. Tsstt.’ She made a spitting sound.
Claire watched her. John Robinson was not your typical wealthy businessman. His financial success had more to do with brains, good decisions and luck rather than ruthlessness. In her opinion he was not unsafe. But … who knows what goes on behind closed doors? A cliché, like many clichés, grounded in truth.
‘It’s been suggested that you spend some time in the clinic in Birmingham to prepare you for your return home.’
Ilsa’s eyes remained tightly closed as she shook her head. Then she opened them, eyes wide. ‘My son.’ It was all she said before she squeezed her eyes tight shut again. ‘I need to be with him. I need to protect him.’
‘From what?’
Ilsa opened those forget-me-not eyes wide. ‘From his father. I need to be there to keep them apart.’
And that, Claire reflected, was just what John Robinson did not want to happen. But Ilsa’s apprehension was infectious, and it was infusing her with a sense of something dark approaching. She was frowning now as she looked out of the window, at patients wandering aimlessly, staff walking purposefully, clusters of gossiping nurses and the tea trolleys, collected, being returned to the kitchens. It was ironic that this family, so outwardly prosperous, was, in reality, damaged, dangerous and disturbed. Families, she thought. Hers, Grant’s, the Robinson’s and Marvel’s family. All unhappy in different ways. Close the doors on them and the misery intensifies.
6 p.m.
It had been a long day but it wasn’t over yet.
Back in her office she tried Zed Willard one last time and this time he picked up. ‘Hi, Claire. How did your first visit go?’
Surely, she thought, he wasn’t expecting a miracle? A quick confession followed by the GPS location of the missing girl’s body?
‘Much as expected. Zed. He denies killing Marvel.’
‘And you believe him?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘When?’
‘I’m not a miracle worker. If I had more detail I might be able to catch him out. As it is I don’t have a lot of ammunition in my approaches.’ Even though he wouldn’t be able to see it she couldn’t resist a smile. ‘For the time being I’m keeping an open mind.’
‘You’ve got our notes?’
‘Yes. They’ve arrived safely.’ She hesitated. ‘I hope it’s OK but I intend sharing them with Edward Reakin, our clinical psychologist.’
‘Anything that’ll help, Claire.’
‘The trouble is, apart from those extra photographs, all I know, at the moment, is in the public domain. I know what she was wearing when she was last seen. I know what she looked like. If I’m going to catch him out I need something that only you and the killer would know. What I don’t have are the family dynamics. I haven’t met any of her friends. There are very few interviews with people who knew Marvel. The whole thing looks – well – sketchy and a bit impersonal. No one’s opinion is off the record. It’s all polite and too careful. I have no flavour of her except to guess that she was a bit of a misfit. Tom hinted at her being jealous of her sisters. What was she really like, this girl? Was she likely to abscond? I need to get a flavour of her. I want to know what her catchphrases were, her perfume, her habits. Her friends. Was she always bonded to her mobile phone? What happened to the mobile phone? There’s so much missing from this investigation, Zed.’
Had she known him better she might have inserted the word, sloppy.
‘We never found the phone,’ he said grumpily. ‘According to the service provider it was switched off almost to the second when she left home.’
‘Which probably means she was the one who switched it off. Isn’t that odd?’
‘Maybe saving the battery. Our thinking was that she was coerced into meeting someone. We thought at the time Kobi.’
‘And now?’
‘We thought he could have persuaded her to switch her phone off. The other girls’ phones were switched off pretty soon after they were abducted. It fitted in,’ he finished defensively.
‘Do you think it was a chance meeting? Through social networking?’
>
DS Willard hesitated and she pressed on sensing the thin end of a very fat wedge.
‘That wasn’t the way he operated, was it, Zed? They were chance encounters. Not assignations made through social networking. You did, at least, check her phone records and any computer she had access to?’
‘Of course.’ DS Willard cleared his throat noisily.
‘The others were picked up randomly, weren’t they? Pure chance.’
When he was still quiet, she pushed him. ‘Look, Zed, I need something more intimate. I’d like to speak to her brother and her sisters. Her mother if possible. Can you persuade them to talk to me?’
His response was a noisy huff.
‘Have you at least got their contact details?’ She hesitated. ‘I’ve spoken to Marvel’s mother but she wasn’t prepared to help. I think she’s buried the past, decided that whatever happened to her daughter, she’s over it. To be honest I’m not sure she wants to be involved at all even though …’ She stopped, uncertain where she was going with the words. She wasn’t a mother herself (and if she continued with her on/off relationship with Grant was unlikely to ever be one). But this total lack of interest where a daughter’s body lay, along with the true story of her disappearance, felt abnormal. She was perfectly aware that response to a violent tragedy affects people in different ways. She had met the entire gamut of responses in her time. Some people bottled it up, pretended it had never really happened, while for others it sparked a crusade. Suicide among siblings as well as parents of a murdered child was more common than in the general population and marriages frequently split apart as had the Trustrom’s. The repercussions could be unpredictable and far reaching.
She waited before adding, ‘This is going to be a long haul. Longer than Tom’s got. Kobi is not going to crack any time soon whatever questions I throw at him.’
On the other end of the line there was silence.
‘I’m happy to see him again, Zed, but I need something more. A tempter. I need something that makes me appear more knowledgeable than I am.’
She tried to clarify. ‘Something that makes him want to impress me.’
‘You think that’ll work?’
‘Yes, I do. Like many killers what he actually wants, however dangerous it might prove, is recognition along with accolade.’
‘OK. I’ll gather some stuff together and bring it over.’
Replacing the handset, she felt better. At least she was beginning to work to a plan. She had only one thing left to do before she could head home for the weekend.
She crossed the corridor to her secretary’s room and left a note asking Rita to make another appointment with John Robinson. She needed to discuss his wife’s discharge and possibly list some warning signs he should be wary of – a return of the self-harming, inappropriate behaviour, signs of delusion, paranoia, psychosis. He would need to watch her carefully.
But … the little voice said, voicing her brief moment of doubt. She knew Ilsa’s case inside out. There was no record that John Robinson had ever assaulted his wife. Mental abuse might be harder to prove. She could interview him again and form her own judgement. All the same, as she shut down her computer, she had a second’s doubt. What if she was wrong and she was sending Ilsa back to harm?
THIRTEEN
A moment of weakness was waiting to ambush her. Driving home her car phone ‘somehow’ found Grant’s number and pressed Call. He didn’t pick up right away, but she didn’t want to leave a message. She ended the call, feeling a bit deflated. It had been a long day and she would have liked a chat – maybe over a drink? Not to be.
Minutes later, he called back. ‘Claire? Did you just ring?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Oh, that’s nice. Was it about anything special?’
His voice, husky and intimate, sounded as if he’d just got out of bed.
Years ago, she had realized that the sexiness of a man is implanted deep in the memory and waits, ready to resurface. That is why a delicate touch, a whispered phrase, a sudden look can be so erotic. It brings memories flooding back of shared nights, of long periods spent in bed, of touching, of love making, the feel of his mouth hard, sometimes soft, against hers. She sighed and shoved it all aside. But when she spoke she could hear a distinct waver in her voice.
‘No, not really. I just wondered if you fancied a drink.’
‘What, now?’
‘Yeah.’ She got the feeling his mind was not one hundred per cent on this conversation and added, more sharply than she’d meant, ‘What are you doing?’
‘Now?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Looking at swatches of material and paint shades.’
‘Grant,’ she said again and fell straight into cliché, ‘we need to talk.’
‘Now?’
‘Face to face,’ she said. ‘Not over the phone.’
‘Come here then.’
‘Where is here?’
He chuckled. ‘Ah, you don’t know, do you?’
She waited.
‘A rented house,’ he said, ‘in the Westlands.’ And he gave her the address.
‘I’m still in my work clothes.’
‘I’ve seen you in those before. And I’m wearing paint-spattered jeans. Just come round, Claire. If you feel the need to talk just come over.’
She was there in twenty minutes, standing in front of a small, detached bungalow with the unloved air of a rented property. She pulled on to the drive and the front door opened. He’d been telling the truth about his clothes. The jeans were ripped and paint-spattered, his shirt similarly decorated. It looked as though he’d been using his clothes as a paint shade card. But he looked achingly anxious and gave her a slightly querying smile. ‘I hope this business bloody well works,’ he said ruefully, as he kissed her on the cheek and led her into a sitting room, the back wall of which held French windows and overlooked a neat lawn but little else except a fence at the back. He saw her looking. ‘Chez Steadman, temporarily,’ he said. Then added with a shrug the cliché, ‘It does for now.’
At the back of the room was a glass-topped dining table strewn with wallpaper books and swatches of material, a few Interiors magazines and dirty coffee mugs, a large scribbling pad with squared paper and a bunch of pencils. He followed her glance and smiled and some of his enthusiasm rubbed off on her. She bent over the table and studied his designs.
‘And can your client afford all this?’
‘Oh, yeah.’ He disappeared into the kitchen, returning with a bottle of wine and holding two wine glasses by the stems. He shoved some of the papers to the side and poured them both a glass. Then, eyes focused on her, he waited for her to speak.
‘I had the test for cystic fibrosis,’ she said. His eyes flickered up and he waited, still without speaking. He was not going to make this any easier for her. ‘I’m negative.’
He gave the ghost of a smile, dark eyes flickering. ‘Me too,’ he said, frowning.
‘So why didn’t you have that test before?’
‘Because,’ he said wearily, ‘I didn’t want to know. So I didn’t have the test until after Maisie had died. It would have seemed somehow disloyal.’
‘You’re a strange guy,’ she said.
His response was a shrug. He took a sip of the wine, put his glass back on the table and waited while she put forward her second objection to resuming their relationship.
‘Your mother,’ she said, and he nodded, as though he had anticipated this. ‘She’s going to need you too.’
‘I’m her only family, Claire.’ Already he was on the defensive and she saw this would be the tricky road ahead. ‘I’m all she’s got left.’
She continued doggedly. ‘So when she’s low or depressed or needs a picture fixing on the wall, she’ll just pick up the phone and you’ll go?’ She could already see that if they got back together again this would be their most frequent topic for argument. A source of chronic friction.
Grant tossed the ball back in her court. ‘And what wo
uld you expect me to do?’
A clever move on his part. And she had no answer.
‘Mum has friends in Cornwall,’ Grant said, frowning. ‘She’s going back there. But actually I was looking a bit farther forward.’
Now it was she who was frowning. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well …’ He took a deep breath and seemed to gain confidence. ‘Put it like this. You and your mother are not exactly close.’
She could feel her temper rise.
And that was her fault? And what did that have to do with it? Was he expecting her to become a surrogate daughter to his mother who disliked her on sight? Recalling the brief glimpse she’d had at the funeral of his mother’s rigid back and carefully coiffured hair Claire couldn’t see it. So she looked at her ex-partner for explanation which he gave in a way. ‘Your job is important to you.’
She nodded.
‘And …’ He wafted a hand over the papers and plans. ‘I’m determined to make a go of this, Claire.’
She couldn’t stop herself. ‘So?’ It sounded brittle and hostile.
‘My mum could help with childcare,’ he said lamely.
‘From Cornwall?’
‘I don’t think she’d stay there if she had a role up here.’
Her mouth dropped open. This wasn’t just looking way into the future but was making a whole kettle load of assumptions.
Grant was grinning now. He knew what he’d done, taken the wind right out of her sails because he’d anticipated this very conversation, solved the problems, or so he thought, and now he waited while she digested this. It wasn’t so much that he had raced way ahead of her; she hadn’t even considered her life following this particular path.
She might be teetering in his direction, but she wasn’t quite ready to fall back into his arms just yet or into this proposed life plan. Perhaps sensing this Grant changed the conversation and started leafing through his sketch book.
She was contemplative for a moment. She hadn’t realized that this would be such a serious, large-scale venture. Grant had always been the lazy, easy-going sort. She was looking at a different side of him, a driven businessman. Imaginative, clever and talented.
A Game of Minds Page 9