The Magdalena Curse

by F. G. Cottam

  They travelled in the Land Rover to the school. It was much better on the snow and ice of the roads than Kilbride’s patrol car. It was less ostentatious and with the four-wheel drive engaged, it was quicker. They would arrive by about 4.30 p.m. There was every chance that the man they were looking for would be there. The teachers did not finish their working day for another hour after that. The children got out at 4 p.m. The timing was ideal. Kilbride said he did not wish yet to caution Cawdor formerly. He just wanted to talk to him. They had no clue as to the identity of the man’s accomplice. He might be panicked into providing that, but would likely say nothing if formerly charged with a serious offence. But the evidence was irrefutable. They had one of the culprits for sure. It would come to court. The police would prosecute, even if Elizabeth chose not to press charges.

  ‘From where did you extract the DNA?’

  ‘Do you really want to know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You have some snapshots tacked to a pinboard in your kitchen. One of you and your mother had been spat upon. It was a spontaneous gesture of contempt or loathing and it will convict him. His emotions got the better of him. The obvious question is why does he feel so hostile towards you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Elizabeth said. ‘But something else bothers me. Schools do criminal record checks on their staff. They’re generally very scrupulous about it. But you had Andrew Cawdor’s DNA on your database. So he must be a known offender.’

  ‘He was arrested once for being drunk but never charged. He was with that silly arse troublemaker Tom Lincoln; they’re drinking buddies. They both did swabs voluntarily in the police cell we locked them in to sober up. We were after a sex offender at the time, knew it was someone local, they fitted the age profile and we wanted to eliminate anyone we could from suspicion to identify the right guy quickly.’

  ‘Did you catch him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you kept the sample Cawdor provided on your database?’

  ‘Aye, we did.’ He turned to her. ‘And we could have an impromptu debate about civil liberties. But aren’t you glad we did?’

  They were at the school. The headmistress, Mrs Blyth, was a patient of Elizabeth’s. So were two or three other members of staff there. But that number did not include Andrew Cawdor. They went first to Mrs Blyth’s office to ask for permission to speak to him. She didn’t ask them why it was they wanted to do so. Discretion was one of her professional requirements. If the matter was serious, the details would be disclosed over time. She took them to a classroom where he was supervising a detention. He grew pale when he saw Elizabeth. But he agreed to talk to them privately. Mrs Blyth took the key to the library from a ring on the belt of her skirt and said it was an ideal location for a confidential chat. Elizabeth liked Mrs Blyth. But taking the library key from its heavy ring, she reminded her of a gaoler.

  Cawdor clutched his briefcase to his chest, wrapped in his arms. He was dark-haired, pallid and thin, and Elizabeth judged him to be in his mid-forties. There was a tiny spot of blood on the collar of his shirt from a morning shaving nick. He was a hopeless bachelor type. He wore designer glasses, the heavily framed sort shaped as narrow rectangles. The effect was somewhat spoiled by the thickness of the lenses he required. The cloth of his charcoal grey suit was too light for the weather. His leather-soled shoes slipped on the packed snow of the path to the library and she found herself fighting not to feel sorry for him. She reminded herself that the worst violation had been cleaned up by Tony Kilbride and his team. She had not been obliged to face it. And, symbolically at least, this man had spat in her face.

  Elizabeth had not been in the library at the school before and thought it beautiful. The circumstances of her visit to it were not ideal. But she thought she might ask Mrs Blyth if she could come back another time. The stained glass in the windows alone was worthy of proper study. In summer light, this little hexagon of carved masonry and polished wood with its shelves of old books would be an enchanting place.

  They sat at the librarian’s desk, which was at the centre of the single room the building housed. Elizabeth looked at Cawdor, looking back at her through his trendy spectacles. There was nothing opaque about the look. There was fear there, she thought, or wariness. But mostly there was hatred. It turned his thin mouth into a grimace. He could not have concealed so strongly felt an emotion. But he didn’t attempt to. He must have worked out what had led them to him and realised the futility of denying it.

  ‘Someone has orchestrated a campaign of terror against Dr Bancroft,’ Kilbride said. ‘I want to ask you if you can tell us anything about it or about the motives for it.’

  Cawdor picked his briefcase up from the floor where he had placed it next to him and rested it on his knees. He undid its brass catch with a click, opened it and took out a transparent plastic folder containing photocopied classroom worksheets. He spread the worksheets on the desk and fanned them out. ‘Adam Hunter is studying “A” level maths,’ he said.

  ‘The boy is ten years old,’ Kilbride said.

  ‘This is not a hothouse school. And his father would not sanction the sitting of any formal examinations until Adam reaches the appropriate age. But this is the level of work we have to set him to retain his interest and enthusiasm. That’s across the board, by the way. Not just in the one subject.’

  ‘I’m a patient man,’ Kilbride said. ‘But this seems somewhat tangential to the point.’

  And that was an excellent pun, Elizabeth thought. Tangents were a feature of geometry. The calculation on the worksheets described geometric formulas, co-ordinate geometry and curve-sketching.

  Cawdor addressed his words to her. ‘You’re called Bancroft. But it is Campbell blood that runs through your veins. In this locality the Campbell name is remembered for its proven association with macabre and sinister practices,’ he said. ‘Colonel Hunter was not aware of your ancestry when he had Adam put on your patient list. But I was.’ He reached into his briefcase again. This time he took out a single sheet. On it had been drawn a shape in three dimensions. It had been described in what Elizabeth judged was probably HB2 pencil lead. And when she looked at it, it would not stay still on the page and provoked a feeling of dizziness so similar to vertigo that she was forced to look away.

  ‘What is that?’ Kilbride said. He had gone pale. One of his blue eyes had become bloodshot. There was sweat beading at his hairline.

  ‘Something Adam concocted, shortly after he became Dr Bancroft’s patient,’ Cawdor said. With his eyes on Kilbride, he turned the sheet over on the desk. ‘Motifs such as that have been symbols of black magic going back centuries. They subvert reason. They undermine rationality. That is their evil function. One of my own ancestors made a study of witchcraft, before an ancestor of the doctor here destroyed his life.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Kilbride said. ‘You think Dr Bancroft is somehow corrupting Adam Hunter? You think she is an evil influence on a little boy in her professional care?’ His voice was incredulous.

  ‘He isn’t just a little boy,’ Cawdor said. ‘He is a phenomenon. And he is profoundly good. I’m talking about his ethical sensibilities, Sergeant. There is greatness in Adam Hunter. He will grow up to be a significant force for good in the world. That is his destiny. That is what I am trying to protect.’ He pointed a shaking finger at Elizabeth. ‘That is what she is trying to destroy.’

  ‘You are deranged,’ Kilbride said. He massaged his right temple as he spoke and winced. He was a dogged copper and he had looked at Adam’s drawing for far too long.

  ‘Ask her mother about what she did to poor Max Hector all those years ago in the barn on the Hector farm,’ Cawdor said. ‘Better still, ask Tom Lincoln. Tom was there and witnessed the whole bloody, murderous event. He still has nightmares about it.’

  They left the library a few minutes later. Darkness had descended. Andrew Cawdor walked rapidly away along the snowbound path, insufficiently clothed for the severity of the weather, slipping and sliding now an
d then, his working life left behind him in ruins, his briefcase clutched tightly under his arm. Kilbride turned and leaned heavily against one of the library’s stone window surrounds and puked on to a border beneath it of frozen thorns. He was sick a second time. The sourness of the hot vomit stung Elizabeth’s nostrils. He gasped and apologised. She would have to drive them back to the pub. The policeman was in no fit state to do it. She was glad they were in the Land Rover and not the patrol car. If McCloud saw them return to his car park with her at the wheel of a police vehicle, he would probably explode. There was aspirin and paracetamol in her handbag. There was a water cooler outside the headmistress’s office. They walked slowly back towards the main building.

  ‘He’s put Tom Lincoln in the frame with him,’ Kilbride said.

  ‘I’d just as soon forget the whole business,’ Elizabeth said.

  ‘You can, now. You won’t be required as a witness. And your home is safe.’

  ‘Yes. My home is safe. And it’s you I have to thank, Tony.’ She stopped and hugged him. His breath smelled sourly of sick, but she had a strong stomach. He deserved a hug and, she thought, at that moment he needed one.

  They walked in silence for a while. The library was a fair distance from the main part of the school and the children had turned patches of the path into skid runs. ‘He believes every word of what he said, you know. He’s very seriously deluded. Though I must say that picture he showed us was not something I would want on my wall.’

  Elizabeth nodded. She looked ahead of her at the lights in the school building. She would not share this with Tony Kilbride because there would be no point. But some of what Cawdor had said had helped her make sense of Miss Hall’s enigmatic claim during their dinner that Hunter had not been in Magdalena just by chance.

  Chapter Ten

  By the time Elizabeth dropped Kilbride at the pub he was fine to drive. The aspirin had done its job. They did not stay for the drink she owed him for the work done to her front door by the police locksmith. Neither of them felt a celebration was in order as the case of her harassment progressed towards its now inevitable resolution in the criminal court. Neither of them was inclined to drink and drive. And as Kilbride confessed to her, the very thought of a drink of any sort other than water was enough to make him heave again, dryly this time. There was nothing left in his stomach.

  Elizabeth felt sad driving back to the Hunter house. She would have to leave it, now. His father was back and Adam no longer required her full-time care. Mark had enlisted her potential help in some future confrontation with Mrs Mallory. But though she had her own suspicions, they had no real idea where Mrs Mallory was. She had no justification for staying at the house. Her cottage had just been made a safe refuge once more for her. She would miss putting Adam to bed. She would miss their kitchen banter and their popcorn ritual. It had only been a few days and nights and some of it had been extremely disturbing. But most of it had been wonderful. Her feelings of impending loss on the drive back made her realise just how lonely and starved of emotion she had allowed her life to become. It was shocking. Surely she deserved better? But you got out only what you put in, she knew. She shifted into a lower gear as the incline towards the house began and she felt the shudder of the snow under her in the torque-heavy grip of the wheels. Bloody hell, she thought, I’m thinking exactly like Jeremy Clarkson would. She laughed out loud, but there were tears in her eyes. When all this was over, she was going to live differently, she decided.

  Adam was watching sodding Clarkson when she let herself back into the house. She asked where his father was and he gestured vaguely in the direction of upstairs. Perhaps Mark was having that siesta he had coveted earlier. It was after six now and late for a siesta, but in the army you napped whenever you could and probably the habit had become ingrained in him. She would shower before she packed. Her encounter with Andrew Cawdor had left her feeling soiled. She walked into the bathroom and Hunter turned from the sink to face her. She realised that of course he never locked the door, because why would he? He occupied the bathroom with only his family there to surprise him; he was not used to the protocol of house guests.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. His bare torso had scars and weals across the plates and ridges of sculpted muscle. She could not help looking.

  ‘Not so much a body as a campaign map,’ he said. He smiled.

  She nodded. It was a good line. She wondered whether he had used it before. But she decided not. He had been anything but a philanderer in his life. She thought his body, as bodies went, went very well indeed.

  She had caught him shaving. It was something he could not have done with his injuries and this was the first chance she supposed he had really had since her mother had healed him. His jaw was partially covered in shaving foam. Then his expression changed and she knew he had realised why she was there.

  ‘Oh, God. Please don’t leave us, Elizabeth,’ he said. ‘Please stay?’

  He dropped his razor into the water in the sink with a plop and wiped the foam from his jaw with a towel and walked across the bathroom to her and she took his face in her hands and kissed him hard on the mouth and then held him.

  That night Adam dreamed of a visit to the pub. He had very much enjoyed his lunch with Elizabeth and his dad. It had made him feel sophisticated and adult and the real joy was that he was supposed to be at school. It was a school day. And there he was, in the dining room of the pub with his dad and cool Elizabeth who was lovely on top of being so utterly cool. It was all perfect really, except for his failure to persuade his dad that two Diet Cokes in one day did not exactly make him the Anti-Christ of proper nutrition. Still, he had been allowed to drink lemonade. And Nosy McCloud (as Elizabeth called him) had put both ice and a slice of lemon in his glass of lemonade. A straw was the ultimate insult. Ice was pretty much to be expected. But, generally speaking, you had to be at least a teenager to qualify for a slice of lemon in your drink.

  The pub in his dream was not the Black Boar. It was the Red Bull. And it was not constructed from stone and ancient beams of oak. It was pressed from metal in shades of silver and blue that had an odd, somehow queasy geometry about their shape. And the sign was red of course. The sign was a bright, bloody crimson swinging in the windy night under a pale curve of anaemic moon. Adam knew that he should not be there. He knew that it was way past his proper bedtime in the dream. He did not have any money and his mobile phone, the one his dad insisted he carry, had long run out of credit. But he pushed open the door anyway. He felt reckless in the dream, like one of those characters in a cowboy film or a country and western song on the radio who keeps saying they have nothing left to lose.

  Nosy McCloud was not polishing glasses behind the bar. But why would he be? This was the Red Bull. Mrs Mallory ran the Red Bull and she was there, with her glossy black hair playing over the shoulders of her white shirt and a smile on her mouth the same crimson as the sign in the moonlight outside.

  ‘What will be your pleasure, Master Hunter?’ she asked.

  But Adam was distracted. There were TV monitors suspended all over the pub, he saw. They would not have had that in the Black Boar. The Black Boar was all quaintness and tradition. They did not want MTV in there, spoiling the authentic Highland atmosphere with videos by Kylie and Girls Aloud. Except that these videos were all in black and white. And they had a grainy look. And they were of marching uniformed men in harsh spotlights, with torches that flamed and flickered held on high. And there were roared tributes and songs and staunch salutes. These had become familiar scenes to him in other dreams. He knew their smell, the hot stink of cigar breath and sweat-stained armpits on cruel summer nights.

  Adam swallowed. He was afraid. Despite the knowledge that this was a dream he was having, he had remembered everything about who Mrs Mallory was and the things he had heard her say and seen her do. He did not like her just standing there and staring at him, the way someone hungry might look at something appetising on their plate. It seemed best just now to fill
the conversational silence somehow, to distract and maybe flatter her. ‘You’ve witnessed a lot of history,’ he said.

  She laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. It was the scrape of talons dragging at reluctant cloth. ‘History is not a spectator sport, Adam,’ she said. ‘It is not there to be watched like a football game. It is there to be influenced and affected. Sometimes, it is there to be determined.’ She laughed again. He did not know what she meant. He would in time, he knew. It was not the vocabulary. He seldom came across an English word he did not intuitively understand the meaning of. It was the adult way of using language as a code. It took him a little time, sometimes, to decipher it. But he always did in the end.

  He did not feel like bothering with a drink. Even if she offered him the speciality of the house, he did not want to stay to drink it. He wanted to go home. It was the yearning impulse he felt always in his recent dreams. He wanted to wake up. He wanted his mother. He wanted the strength and comfort of his father’s embrace.

  The following morning, Adam again slept late. Elizabeth and Hunter discussed over breakfast what they thought they ought to do next. Outside the kitchen window, the snow fell and muffled the features of the landscape in subtly varied shades of white under a matt grey sky. It was very still and silent out there through the falling petals of snow. In the warmth and light of the kitchen, it was easy to believe that the world was empty and they were the only people left, just the two of them, and the boy sleeping peacefully upstairs. It was a seductive temptation, but of course it was not true.

  ‘She could be anywhere,’ Hunter said. ‘She could be in Cape Town or Havana or Boston or Madrid.’

  ‘So your journey to that place in the Tyrol was a waste of time.’

  ‘As a means of locating her, yes it was. But I think I found out what Miss Hall intended me to. I told you the last words Rodriguez said. Do you remember them?’