The Devil's Feather

by Minette Walters

  Finally, I’ve passed MacKenzie’s details and picture to the Met and asked for heightened alert in the region of your parents’ flat and your father’s office, and I’m happy to do the same with your county police force if you’re prepared to tell me where you are. I have upped MacKenzie’s description to “extremely dangerous and possibly armed” and I urge you to consider that before you “go it alone” any longer. I understand very well that you feel safer with no one knowing your address, but you’ll be isolated and vulnerable if MacKenzie does succeed in finding you.

  Yours as ever,

  Alan

  DI Alan Collins, Greater Manchester Police

  From: connie.burns@uknet.com

  Sent: Sun 15/08/04 02:09

  To: BandM@freeuk.com

  Subject: Correspondence with DI Alan Collins

  Attachments: Alan.doc (356 KB)

  Dear Dad,

  I’m really sorry to be causing all this trouble for you and Mum, and I don’t blame you in the least for being a grouch. I’ve sweated buckets trying to put an explanation into words, but I can’t do it. It’s 2 a.m. and I’m exhausted so, instead, I’m attaching some pieces I wrote and my correspondence with a Manchester Inspector called Alan Collins. It’s fairly self-evident. FYI: The conclusions in Alan’s last email (yesterday) are spot on. He’s obviously a very good policeman.

  Lol, C xxx

  PS: I do NOT need sympathy, so please don’t offer it. I shall refuse to discuss this again if you go tearful on me. You know I don’t mean that unkindly, but the milk’s spilt and there’s no point crying over it.

  13

  IN RETROSPECT, I’m sure my primary reason for keeping quiet was because I knew how difficult it would be to accept support. Perhaps I’m a deeply contrary person but I started to see everything as a control issue-advice or offers of help were euphemisms for “I know better”-and I struggled with anger in a way I hadn’t before. Yet it was never directed where it should have been, at MacKenzie.

  I was still obsessed with the fear that he’d come looking for me, but my new objects of suspicion and dislike were Alan, Peter and my father, who in their various ways spent the following week urging me to step up to the plate. The only one who put it so baldly was Dad, but when I accused him of trying to exorcize his own demons through me, he retired hurt from the battle. Which increased my irritation, because I saw it as a ploy to make me feel guilty.

  My mother tried to breach the gap by leaving messages of love on the answerphone; Alan sent well-argued emails, appealing to my intellect, which sat in my inbox; and Peter brought me piles of research until I bolted all the doors and refused to answer the bell. By the end of the week I was so stressed out that I was thinking of doing another vanishing act. In a grotesque way, their generosity and affection were more intrusive than MacKenzie’s sadism. I’d survived brutality, but I couldn’t see how I could survive kindness.

  Jess showed up for the first few days and stood around, saying very little, but she stopped coming when I started ignoring the doorbell. I left a message on her phone, saying it was Peter I was trying to avoid, but she didn’t reply or come to the house. It was one of the reasons why I thought about leaving. There seemed little point staying if the only person I felt comfortable with had lost interest. Even if the fault was mine.

  SHE FRIGHTENED the life out of me when she walked into my bedroom the following Saturday. It was seven o’clock in the evening and, as far as I knew, every outside door was locked. I hadn’t heard the green baize door open or close, nor her footsteps on the stairs, nor even had a suspicion there was anyone else in the house. It sent me scrabbling to the nearest corner. I’d had my back to the door, sorting clothes on the bed, and in the second between sensing a presence, turning and recognizing her, I thought it was MacKenzie.

  “Don’t go weak on me,” she warned, “because I’m not in the mood to play nursemaid. Supposing I’d been this bloke? Were you planning to cower in the corner and let him jump you all over again?”

  I pushed myself unsteadily to my feet. “You gave me a shock.”

  “And you think this bastard won’t?” Her gaze shifted to the empty wine bottle beside the bed, her eyes narrowing in disapproval. “In your shoes, I’d have weapons stashed all over the house and a baseball bat to hand twenty-four hours a day. It’s not you who should end up on the floor, it’s him…preferably with his brains smashed out.”

  I nodded to the carving knife on the bed. “I’ve been carrying that.”

  “Then why didn’t you use it?”

  “I recognized you.”

  “No, you didn’t,” she answered bluntly. “You were backed into the corner before you knew who it was…and you never even thought about reaching for the knife.” She stepped into the room and picked it up. “It’s a useless weapon, anyway. He’ll have it off you as soon as you get close enough to stab him.” She balanced it on her palm. “It’s too light. You won’t be able to put enough weight behind it…assuming you have the balls to stick it in, which I doubt. You need something longer and heavier that you can swing”-she stared at me-“then it won’t matter if you’re drunk. You’ll still have a fifty-fifty chance of hitting him.”

  I steadied myself against the wall. “I’ll get a baseball bat on Monday,” I said.

  “You’ll have to be sober to do that.”

  It was a good thing I wasn’t as drunk as she thought I was, otherwise I might have reacted more aggressively. I’d never met anyone who was quite so self-righteous. To a teetotaller like her, a tablespoon of wine represented ruin and perdition; to a hard-headed hack like me, it took several bottles to close me down completely. But in one way she was right. I might not have been paralytic, but I certainly wasn’t sober. The tranquillizing effects of alcohol were easier to come by than Valium or Prozac. As long as I paid by credit card to an anonymous call centre, it was delivered by the caseload to my door.

  It didn’t stop me having a go at her. “You’re such a puritan, Jess,” I said tiredly. “If you had your way, we’d all be walking around with steel rods rammed up our back sides. There’s no joy in your world at all.”

  “I don’t see much in yours either,” she said dismissively.

  I shrugged. “There used to be, and when I’m feeling optimistic there still will be. Can you say that? Will you ever unbend enough to accept someone else with all their frailties?” I stared into her strange eyes. “I can’t see it myself.”

  It was like water off a duck’s back. “I’m helping you, aren’t I?” she said impatiently. “I helped Lily. What more do you want?”

  What more indeed? Approval? Encouragement? Sympathy? The very things I was rejecting from everyone else, but they seemed more desirable from Jess because they weren’t on offer. Perhaps there’s always a gap between what we want and what we know we can take for granted. “Nothing,” I told her. “This is as good as it gets.”

  She studied me closely for a moment. “When did you last eat? You haven’t been out of the house all week, and your fridge was empty when I last put some eggs in it.”

  For someone who didn’t want to play nursemaid, she was giving a good impression of one. I wondered how she knew I hadn’t been out. “Have you been watching me?”

  “Just making sure you were still alive,” she said. “Your car’s growing moss on its wheels because it hasn’t moved, and you spend so much time checking your doors and windows that anyone can see you…particularly at night when you have all the lights blazing. There might be better ways of saying, ‘I’m here, I’m alone, come and get me,’ but I can’t think of one off the top of my head.”

  Belatedly, I asked the obvious question. “How did you get in if all the doors are locked?”

  She fished a key-ring from her pocket and held it up. “Spares to the scullery. Lily was worried about falling down and breaking her hip so she put them on a hook behind the oil tank in the outhouse.” She shook her head at my expression. “But, if they hadn’t been there, I’d have come in thr
ough the downstairs loo. That’s the easiest window to open from the outside. You just need one of these”-she dropped the knife back on the bed-“to ease up the catch. Any moron can do it.”

  I surprised her with a laugh, although her puritan streak blamed the alcohol and not the absurd waste of time of checking locks every two hours. “There’s not much hope then, is there? What do you suggest I do? Use the knife on myself and save MacKenzie the trouble?” I lifted a hand in apology. “Sorry. That wasn’t a dig at you…just tasteless gallows humour.”

  “You can start by eating,” she said severely. “I’ve brought some food. If nothing else, it’ll help you think straight.”

  “Who says I want to?” I asked, sinking onto the end of the bed. “You don’t get panic attacks when you’re pissed.”

  “Too bloody right,” she muttered grimly, pulling me to my feet for the second time in ten days. “If you carry on like this, you’ll be mincemeat for this animal.” She shook me angrily. “It won’t stop you hurting, though. You’ll be sober as a judge the minute he shoves your head in a bucket…but by then it’ll be too late. He won’t be playing with you…he’ll be killing you.”

  IT WAS an interesting juxtaposition of ideas. I’d mentioned drowning to Peter but it was Alan who’d suggested that MacKenzie “played” with his victims. All Jess should have known-assuming the Hippocratic oath and police confidentiality stood for anything-was what I’d told her and Peter in the kitchen ten days before. My abductor was British, I’d unearthed his story, it hadn’t surfaced because he was under investigation for serial rape and murder and the reason for the abduction was to warn me off.

  Peter drew his own conclusions about what might have happened-“You don’t warn people off by feeding them grapes for three days”-and returned later with a printout of the Istanbul protocol. Jess left the whole subject alone, and talked weasels and crows until I stopped answering the door. I was prepared to accept that Peter might let drowning slip during one of their conversations-in fact I expected it-but there was no way either of them could have known of Alan’s theory.

  I stopped on the landing and shrugged Jess’s hand off my arm. “OK. What’s going on? Have you been talking to Alan Collins?”

  She didn’t bother to lie. “Only your mother…but I’ve read Alan Collins’s emails. She forwarded them to me this morning…along with the ones you wrote to him.”

  “She had no right,” I said angrily, “and you shouldn’t have read them. They weren’t addressed to you.”

  “Well, I have,” she said without heat, “so there’s nothing to be done unless you want to sue me. Your mother didn’t do it to hurt you.”

  “How did she get hold of you?”

  “Rang directory inquiries. You gave her my name, apparently, and told her I had a farm down the road from Barton House. It wasn’t that difficult.”

  “You never answer your phone,” I said suspiciously, “and you never return messages.”

  “I did this time. She kept phoning till I answered.” Jess held my gaze for a moment. “I thought it was you at first because she called herself Marianne. The pitch of your voice is pretty similar but she’s got a stronger accent.”

  “Is she here?”

  “No. That’s why she sent me the emails. To explain why I’m having to do this, and not her. She’s frightened of leading this bastard to your front door.”

  “Do what?”

  “Tell you what an arse you’re being…persuade you to stop feeling sorry for yourself.” Her mouth twisted. “I told her I wasn’t much of a talker, but she wouldn’t listen. She doesn’t give up easily, does she? She was ready to give me your whole bloody life story if I hadn’t said I’d be coming anyway-” Jess broke off abruptly. “Your mother gave me a list of things to say. She said you’d want to hear them.”

  “Let me guess,” I said dryly. “My father’s deeply hurt, my mother can’t cope with his mood swings and needs me to start phoning again, they hate the hotel…What else? Oh, yes, I’m their only child and all their love and hopes are vested in me.”

  Jess felt in her pocket and took out a piece of paper. “Nothing so corny,” she answered, unfolding it and running her finger down the page. “Your dad’s gone back to the flat. Your mother thinks he’s trying to prove something re demons. He refuses to discuss it and won’t say if the police know. Just keeps telling her Japera was a mistake and he doesn’t want a repeat. He’s moved your mother to a different hotel and banned her from calling him. He’s left the laptop with her, and she wants you to email or phone. She’s given me the number of her new hotel.” She looked up. “That’s it. She said you’d understand the references to demons and Japera.”

  Angrily, I snatched the page from Jess’s hand. “I knew I shouldn’t have told anyone. It was all OK, as long as no one knew. What the hell does he think he’s doing?”

  Jess took a step back. “The way your mother described him, he’ll be setting traps…which is what you should be doing.”

  “He doesn’t have a chance,” I hissed. “He’ll be sixty-five in November.”

  “At least he’s trying.”

  If that was her best shot, the conversation wasn’t going to last very long. “I tried, Jess. I told Alan Collins. And this”-I shook the piece of paper-“is the result. My father trying to prove he isn’t a coward. He’s ashamed because he thinks he gave up the farm too easily…so he’s salvaging some pride by behaving like a jerk.”

  She shrugged. “It runs in the family then. That’s pretty much what you’re doing, isn’t it? Being ashamed and behaving like a jerk, except there’s not much sign of pride.”

  “That’s not going to make me do what you want,” I snapped.

  “Who gives a shit? You’re not my responsibility.” She set off down the stairs. “I’ll be taking my phone off the hook, so if you don’t want your mother calling the police when she can’t get through, you’d better contact her.”

  I think she half-expected me to plead with her to stay, because she paused on the bottom step to look up at me, but when I didn’t say anything she disappeared through the baize door. I didn’t need to say anything. I knew she’d come back.

  I DECIDED to speak to my father first, since my mother would ask me to do it anyway. I’d have preferred to dodge any conversation with him that evening because it would certainly develop into a shouting match, but I felt responsible for his being there. Nevertheless, I was so paranoid about my landline registering as the last call that I dialled 141 first to withhold it, and only remembered that withheld numbers were being blocked when I heard the message telling me so. I tried his mobile but it wasn’t responding.

  My choice was to redial his landline without 141 or use my mobile, but there were too many hairs bristling on the back of my neck to take the first option. It wasn’t that I expected MacKenzie to be in the flat-I didn’t-rather that Sod’s Law predicted my number would still be registering when he broke in and took a punt on 1471. At least if I used my mobile, there’d be no exchange code and nothing to show I was phoning from Dorset.

  My second choice was to rebuild Jess’s pyramid in the back bedroom, which I’d dismantled when I’d had broadband installed, or climb into the attic. I chose the attic as the least onerous option, and went in search of the hooked pole that released the latch on the trapdoor. I found it behind the door in the nearest bedroom, and when I picked it up I realized what a good weapon it would make. It was a homemade construction of two hefty wooden rods, designed to come apart in the middle for storage. The top half was capped by the hook and the bottom by a two-inch screw.

  Jess would have said they weren’t heavy enough, but they started me thinking about what else was in the house-the axe in the woodshed; rakes, spades and forks in the toolshed; a hammer in the scullery; empty wine bottles that could be turned into razor sharp clubs. I can’t explain why none of this had occurred to me before, except that my plan had always been to leave through the nearest exit and find a place to hide.

&nb
sp; Peter put it down to MacKenzie’s manipulation of my “fight or flight” response. In simple terms, I’d been conditioned to submit rather than rebel, but that doesn’t explain why one of my recurring dreams was an intensely physical one where I bludgeoned MacKenzie to death. The desire to kill him was always there.

  Perhaps fear has to be taken one step at a time. Perhaps the mind needs to heal before it can switch from one automatic response to another. Perhaps we all need to suffer the contempt of a Jess Derbyshire before we remember that fighting is possible. Who can say? I do know that I had a new sense of purpose as I climbed the ladder to the attic.

  The roof space ran the entire length of the house. I found a light switch beside the trapdoor which lit a series of bulbs that hung from the rafters. Half of the filaments had blown but there were enough still working to lift the gloom. A pathway of planks had been laid across the joists to make access easier, but I still had to navigate my way past two chimney-stacks before I found a decent signal. The whole place was filthy and draped with cobwebs, and from the odd skittering near the eaves I guessed I had bats and mice for company.

  In the event, it was a wasted exercise. There was no answer from the flat or from Dad’s mobile. Rather than leave messages, I fished Jess’s piece of paper from my pocket and called the number of my mother’s new hotel, but when I asked to be put through to Marianne Burns’s room I was told she’d checked out.

  “Are you sure?” I asked in surprise. “She was definitely there this morning. I was given this number to call.”