A Great Deliverance

by Elizabeth George

  “Who?” she asked in a low voice.

  “Gillian Teys,” he repeated evenly. “Whose father was murdered in Yorkshire three weeks ago, Nell.”

  She backed into the door stiffly. “No.”

  “Nell—”

  “No!” Her voice grew louder. Barbara took another step forward. “Stay away from me! I don’t know what you’re talking about! I don’t know any Gillian Teys!”

  “Give me the picture,” Jonah said to Barbara, rising. She handed it to him. He walked to his wife, put his hand on her arm. “This is Gillian Teys,” he said, but she turned her face from the photograph he held.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know!” Her voice was high with terror.

  “Look at it, darling.” Gently, he turned her face towards it.

  “No!” She screamed, tore herself from his grasp and fled into the other room. Another door slammed. A bolt was shot home.

  Wonderful, Barbara thought. She pushed past the young man and went to the bathroom door. There was silence within. She rattled the handle. Be tough, be aggressive. “Mrs. Clarence, come out of there.” No reply. “Mrs. Clarence, you need to listen to me. Your sister Roberta is charged with this murder. She’s in Barnstingham Mental Asylum. She hasn’t said a word in three weeks other than to claim to having murdered your father. Decapitated your father, Mrs. Clarence.” Barbara rattled the handle again. “Decapitated, Mrs. Clarence. Did you hear me?”

  There was a choked whimper from behind the door, the sound of a terrified, wounded animal. An anguished cry followed. “I left it for you, Bobby! Oh God, did you lose it?”

  Then every tap in the bathroom was turned on full force.

  14

  Clean. Clean! Have to do it. Have to get it. Fast, fast, fast! It will happen now if I don’t get clean. Shouting, pounding, shouting, pounding. Ceaseless, endless. Shouting, pounding. But they’ll both go away—God, they must go away—once I’m clean, clean, clean.

  Water hot. Very hot. Steam gushing forth in clouds. Feel it on my face. Breathe it deeply to be clean.

  “Nell!”

  No, no, no!

  Cupboard handles slippery. Get it open. Pull it open. Get the shaking hands to find them, hidden safely under towels. Stiff, hard brushes. Wooden backs, metal bristles. Good brushes, strong brushes. Brushes make me clean.

  “Mrs. Clarence!”

  No, no, no!

  Ugly breathing, tortured breathing. Fills the room, pounds in ears. Stop it, stop it! Hands at head can’t stop the echo, fists on face can’t kill the sound.

  “Nellie, please. Open the door!”

  No, no, no! No doors open now. No escape can come that way. Only one way to escape it. And that’s clean, clean, clean. Shoes off first. Kick them off. Shove them quickly out of sight. Socks come next. Hands don’t work. Tear it! Fast, fast, fast!

  “Mrs. Clarence, do you hear me? Are you listening to what I’m saying?”

  Can’t hear, can’t see. Won’t hear, won’t see. Clouds of steam to fill me up. Clouds of steam to burn and sear. Clouds of steam to make me clean!

  “Is that what you want to happen, Mrs. Clarence? Because that’s exactly what’s going to happen to your sister if she continues not to speak. For life, Mrs. Clarence. For the rest of her life.”

  No! Tell them no! Tell them nothing matters now. Can’t think, can’t act. Just hurry up, water. Hurry up and make me clean. Feel it on my hands. No, it’s still not hot enough! Can’t feel, can’t see. Never, never be clean.

  She called his name Moab, father of Moabites unto this day. She called his name Ben-ammi, father of the children of Ammon unto this day. The smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace. They went up out of Zoar and dwelled in the mountain. For they were afraid.

  “How is it locked? Is it a bolt? A key? How?”

  “I just…”

  “Pull yourself together. We’re going to have to break it.”

  “No!”

  Pounding, pounding, loud, relentless. Make them, make them go away!

  “Nell, Nell!”

  Water all over. Can’t feel it, can’t see it, won’t be hot enough to make me clean, clean, clean! Soap and brushes, soap and brushes. Rub hard, hard, hard. Slip and slither, slip and slither. Make me clean, clean, clean!

  “It’s either that or call for help. Is that what you want? The whole bloody police force breaking down the door?”

  “Shut up! Look at what you’ve done to her! Nell!”

  Bless me father. I have sinned. Understand and forgive. Brushes digging, brushes digging, brushes dig to make me clean.

  “You don’t have any choice! This is a police matter, not some marital squabble, Mr. Clarence.”

  “What are you doing? Damn you, stay away from that phone!”

  Pounding, pounding.

  “Nell!”

  Reader, I married him a quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson and clerk, were alone present when we got back from church I went into the kitchen of the manor house where Mary was cooking the dinner and John cleaning the knives and I said Mary I have been married to Mr. Rochester this morning.

  “Then you have exactly two minutes to get her out of there or you’re going to have more police than you’ve ever laid eyes on crawling through this place. Is that clear?”

  You are some little cat. Not again! Not so soon! God, Gilly, God!

  Gilly’s dead, Gilly’s dead. But Nell is clean, clean, clean, Scrub her hard, dig in deep, make her clean, clean, clean!

  “I’ve got to come in, Nell. Do you hear me? I’m going to break the lock. Don’t be frightened.”

  Come on, Gilly girl. I want nothing serious tonight. Let’s laugh and be wild and be absolutely mad. We’ll have drinks, dance till dawn. We’ll find men and go to Whitby. We’ll take wine. We’ll take food. We’ll dance nude on the abbey walls. They can try to catch us, Gilly. We’ll be absolutely wild.

  Pounding louder now. Pounding hard, hard, hard! Bursting ears, bursting heart. Rub her skin all clean.

  “That’s not going to work, Mr. Clarence. I’m going to have to—”

  “No! Shut up, damn you!”

  Late at night. I said goodbye. Did you hear me? Did you see me? Did you find it where I left it? Bobby, did you find it? Did you finditfinditfindit?

  Shrieking wood, splintering wood. Never safe anymore. One last chance before Lot finds me. One last chance to make me clean.

  “Oh God! Oh my God, Nell.”

  “I’m going to phone for an ambulance.”

  “No! Just leave us alone!”

  Hands gripping. Hands sliding. Water pink and rich with blood. Arms holding. Someone crying. Wrapping warm and holding near.

  “Nellie. Oh God. Nell.”

  Pressed against him. Hear him sobbing. Is it over? Am I clean?

  “Bring her out here, Mr. Clarence.”

  “Go away! Leave us alone!”

  “I can’t do that. She’s accessory in a murder. You know that as well as I. If nothing else, her reaction to all this should have—”

  “She isn’t! She couldn’t be! I was with her!”

  “You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?”

  “Nell! I won’t let them. I won’t let them!”

  Weeping, weeping. Aching tears. Body racked with pain and sorrow. Make it end. Make it end. “Jonah—”

  “Yes, darling. What is it?”

  “Nell’s dead.”

  “So he broke down the door,” Havers said.

  Lynley rubbed his throbbing forehead. The last three hours had given him an appalling headache. The conversation with Havers was making it worse. “And?”

  There was a pause.

  “Havers?” he demanded. He knew that his voice was abrupt, that it would sound like anger instead of the fatigue that it was. He heard her catch her breath. Was she crying?

  “It was…She had…” She cleared her throat. “It was a bath.”

  “She’d taken a bath?” He wondered if Havers was aware of the fa
ct that she was making no sense. Good God, what had happened?

  “Yes. Except…she’d used brushes on herself. They were metal brushes. She was bleeding.”

  “God in heaven,” he muttered. “Where is she, Havers? Is she all right?”

  “I wanted to phone for an ambulance.”

  “Why didn’t you, for God’s sake?”

  “Her husband…he was…It was my fault, Inspector. I thought that I should be tough with her. I…It was my fault.” Her voice broke.

  “Havers, for God’s sake. Pull yourself together.”

  “There was blood. She’d used the brushes all over her body. He wrapped her up. He wouldn’t let go of her. He was crying. She said she was dead.”

  “Christ,” he whispered.

  “I went to the phone. He came after me. He—”

  “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

  “He pushed me outside. I fell. I’m all right. I…It was my fault. She came out of the bedroom. I remembered everything we’d said about her. It seemed best to be firm with her. I didn’t think. I didn’t realise she would—”

  “Havers, listen to me.”

  “But she locked herself in. There was blood in the water. It was so hot. There was steam…How could she have stood the water that hot?”

  “Havers!”

  “I thought I could do something right. This time. I’ve destroyed the case, haven’t I?”

  “Of course not,” he replied, although he was absolutely unconvinced that she hadn’t blown their chances right into oblivion. “Are they still at their flat?”

  “Yes. Shall I get someone from the Yard?”

  “No!” He thought rapidly. The situation could not possibly have been any worse. To have found the woman after all these years and then to have this happen was infuriating. He knew quite well that she represented their only hope of reaching the bottom of the case. No matter the reality that insinuated itself from the pages of Shakespeare, only Gillian could give it substance.

  “Then what shall I—”

  “Go home. Go to bed. I’ll handle this.”

  “Please, sir.” He could hear the despair in her voice. He couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop it, couldn’t worry about it now.

  “Just do as I say, Havers. Go home. Go to bed. Do not ring the Yard, and do not return to that flat. Is that clear?”

  “Am I—”

  “Then get a train back here in the morning.”

  “What about Gillian?”

  “I’ll worry about Gillian,” he said grimly and hung up the telephone.

  He gazed down at the book in his lap. He’d spent the last four hours dredging up from his memory every single exposure he’d had to Shakespeare. It was limited. His interest in the Elizabethans had been historical, not literary, and more than once during the evening he had cursed the educational path he had taken all those years ago at Oxford, wishing for expertise in an area that, at the time, had hardly seemed relevant to his interests.

  He had found it at last, however, and now he read and reread the lines, trying to wring a twentieth-century meaning from the seventeeth-century verse.

  One sin, I know, another doth provoke.

  Murder’s as near to lust as flame to smoke.

  He gives life and death meaning, the priest had said. So what did the words of the Prince of Tyre have to do with an abandoned grave in Keldale? And what did a grave have to do with the death of a farmer?

  Absolutely nothing, his intellect insisted. Absolutely everything, his intuition replied.

  He snapped the book closed. It was imprisoned in Gillian: the meaning and the truth. He picked up the telephone and dialled.

  It was after ten when she trudged down the ill-lit street in Acton. Webberly had been surprised to see her, but the surprise had faded when he opened the envelope Lynley had sent. He glanced at the message, turned it over, and picked up the phone. After barking an order for Edwards to come at once, he dismissed her without a question as to why she had suddenly appeared in London without Lynley. It was quite as if she didn’t exist for him. And she didn’t, did she? Not any longer.

  Who gives a shit, she thought. Who bloody cares what happens? It was inevitable. Fat, stupid little pig, snorting around trying to play the detective. Thought you knew everything about Gillian Teys, didn’t you? Heard her humming in the next room and even then you weren’t smart enough to figure it out.

  She looked up at the house. The windows were dark. Mrs. Gustafson’s television blared from next door, but not a sign of life glimmered from the interior of the building in front of which she stood. If its inhabitants were disturbed by the neighborhood noise, there was no indication. There was nothing.

  Nothing. That’s really it, isn’t it, she thought. There’s nothing inside, not a single thing and especially not the one thing that you want to be in there. All these years you’ve been incubating a chimera, Barb. And what a bloody waste it’s been.

  She steeled herself against the thought, refused to accept it, and unlocked the door. In the quiet house the smell assailed her, a smell of unwashed bodies, of trapped cooking odours, of dead air, of ponderous despair. It was foul and unhealthy, and she welcomed it. She breathed it in deeply, finding it fitting, finding it just.

  She closed the door behind her and leaned against it, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. Here it is, Barb. It all began here. Let it bring you back to life.

  She put her handbag down on the splintered table next to the door and forced herself towards the stairs. But as she reached them her eyes were caught by a flash of light from the sitting room. She walked to the door curiously to find the room empty, the flash only a brief flicker of a passing car’s lights hitting the glass of the picture. His picture. Tony’s picture.

  She was drawn into the room, and she sat in her father’s chair, which, along with her mother’s, faced the shrine. Tony’s face grinned its impish grin at her; his wiry body twisted with life.

  She was weary and numb, but she forced herself to keep her eyes on the picture, forced herself back to the deepest reaches of her memory where Tony still lay, wizened and gaunt, in a narrow white hospital bed. He was branded into her consciousness as he always would be, tubes and needles sprouting from him everywhere, his fingers plucking spasmodically at the covers. His thin neck no longer supported a head that appeared by contrast to have grown immense. His eyelids were heavy, crusted and closed. His cracked lips bled.

  “Coma,” they had said. “It’s nearly time now.”

  But it hadn’t been. Not yet. Not until he’d opened his eyes, managed a fleeting elf’s smile, and murmured, “I’m not scared when you’re here, Barbie. You won’t leave me, will you?”

  He might have actually spoken to her in the sitting room’s darkness, for she felt it all again as she always did: the swelling of grief and then—blasting it away like a breath from hell—the rage. That single reality that was keeping her alive.

  “I won’t leave you,” she swore. “I’ll never forget.”

  “Lovey?”

  She cried out in surprise, brought back to the shattering present.

  “Lovey? Is that you?”

  Past the pounding of her heart, she forced her voice to sound pleasant. No problem, really, after so many years of practise. “Yes, Mum. Just having a sit.”

  “In the dark, lovey? Here, let me turn on the light so—”

  “No!” Her voice rasped. She cleared her throat. “No, Mum. Just leave it off.”

  “But I don’t like the dark, lovey. It…it frightens me so.”

  “Why are you up?”

  “I heard the door open. I thought it might be…” She moved into Barbara’s line of vision, a ghostly figure in a stained pink dressing gown. “Sometimes I think he’s come back to us, lovey. But he never will, will he?”

  Barbara got to her feet abruptly. “Go back to bed, Mum.” She heard the roughness of her voice, and she tried unsuccessfully to modulate it. “How’s Dad?” She took her mother’s bony arm
and firmly led her from the sitting room.

  “He had a good day today. We thought about Switzerland. You know, the air is so fresh and pure there. We thought Switzerland would be the nicest place next. Of course, back so soon from Greece, it doesn’t seem quite right to go off again, but he thinks it sounds a good idea. Will you like Switzerland, lovey? Because if you don’t think you’ll like it, we can always choose someplace else. I want you to be happy.”

  Happy? Happy? “Switzerland’s fine, Mum.”

  She felt her mother’s bird-claw hand grip her arm tightly. They started up the stairs. “Good. I thought you’d like it. I think Zurich would be the best place to begin. We’ll do a tour this time, with a hired car. I long to see the Alps.”

  “Sounds fine, Mum.”

  “Dad thought so, lovey. He even went to Empress Tours to get me the brochures.”

  Barbara’s steps slowed. “Did he see Mr. Patel?”

  Her mother’s hand fluttered on her arm. “Oh, I don’t know, lovey. He didn’t mention Mr. Patel. I’m certain he would have said something if he had.”

  They reached the top of the stairs. Her mother paused at the door to her bedroom. “He’s such a new man when he goes out for a bit in the afternoon, lovey. Such a new man.”

  Barbara’s stomach turned on the thought of what her mother might mean.

  Jonah Clarence opened the bedroom door softly, an unnecessary precaution, for she was awake. She turned her head at the sound of his movement and smiled wanly at her husband.

  “I’ve made you some soup,” he said.

  “Jo—” Her voice was so small, so weak, that he went hurriedly on.

  “It’s just the tinned stuff from the pantry. I’ve some bread and butter here as well.” He placed the tray on the bed and helped her into a sitting position. At the movement, several of the deeper cuts began to bleed again. He took a towel and pressed it firmly against her skin, a movement not only to stem the flow of the blood but also to block out the memory of what had happened to their lives that evening.

  “I don’t—”

  “Not now, darling,” he said. “You need to eat something first.”

  “Will we talk then?”

  His eyes moved from her face. Slashes covered her hands, her arms, her breasts, her stomach, her thighs. At the sight, he felt such a burden of anguish that he wasn’t sure he could answer her. But she was watching him, her beautiful eyes trusting, filled with love, waiting for his reply.