The Devil's Feather

by Minette Walters

  I shook my head.

  He relaxed enough to smile. “To be honest, I could do with a double whisky after being savaged by that pack of brutes.”

  I put a hand on Jess’s arm to forestall another tirade. “Let’s go back inside. I don’t have any whisky, I’m afraid, but I do have beer and wine. Have you had anything to eat?”

  If I’d stopped to think about it, I’d have remembered how easy it was to be lulled into a sense of false security. Fear has such strange effects on the human body. It keeps you at a pitch of concentration while danger’s in front of you, then sends you into carefree mode afterwards. I think I was the first to laugh because Jess looked so disapproving when I offered her a glass of wine, but within a few minutes even she’d lightened up enough to smile. Hysteria was very close to the surface in all of us.

  Tears came into Peter’s eyes when I tried to explain what the plan had been. “So let me get this straight. You were going to break my kneecaps while Jess sank an axe in my head? Or was it the other way round? I’m confused. Where do my goolies come into it?”

  I snorted wine up my nose. “They get chopped off along with your dick.”

  Laughter ripped out of him. “What with? The axe?” He turned a twinkling gaze on Jess. “What do you think I’ve got between my legs? An oak tree?”

  The spark between them was unmistakable. It fizzed like an electric charge. Jess came as close to giggling as I’d ever seen her. “More like a Christmas tree,” she retorted. “The balls are for decoration only.”

  Peter grinned at her. “You can’t chop men’s dicks off, Jess. It’s not the done thing at all.”

  I tittered into my drink, happily playing gooseberry. I couldn’t tell how successful Peter’s courtship had been-they might never have got beyond the teasing stage, or they might have been rogering each other stupid every night-but they were comfortable to be around because I didn’t feel excluded. It reminded me of the relationship I’d had with Dan-easy, affectionate and all-embracing-and I wondered if he and I would ever be able to rekindle that closeness, or if I’d killed it through lack of trust.

  “Penny for them, Connie,” said Peter.

  I looked up, conscious suddenly that the banter had stopped. “I was thinking about a friend of mine. You remind me of him…same kind of humour.” I should have stopped there, but I didn’t. For some reason, I felt I had to give Jess a push in the right direction. “You’re mad, Jess. If Peter makes you laugh, you should nail him to your floorboards immediately.”

  There was a brief silence.

  “So now we’re into hammers,” said Peter lightly. “Is there any abuse you’re not prepared to inflict on me?”

  Jess pushed her chair back. “I need to check on the dogs,” she said gruffly. “I’ll go out the front door. There’s some food for them in the Land Rover.”

  I pulled a wry face at Peter as she disappeared at speed down the corridor. “Sorry. I’ve obviously put my foot in it big time. What did I say that was so awful?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Relationships terrify her. As far as she’s concerned, they’re all doomed to death or failure.” He refilled his glass. “It’s not surprising if you consider her history. Even Lily’s effectively dead to her now.”

  “I should have been more sensitive.”

  “It wouldn’t have made any difference. She sees herself as a jinx. Anyone who grows too fond of her dies…simple as that.”

  “Nathaniel didn’t.”

  Peter flicked me a mocking glance. “But he wasn’t fond of her. If he had been he wouldn’t have left her for Madeleine.”

  I held his gaze. “Presumably that’s Jess speaking, and not you?”

  He nodded. “Nathaniel would have her back in the blink of an eye if she showed the remotest interest-he’s been down here to promote his cause more times than you’ve had hot dinners-but either she can’t see it or she’s genuinely uninterested.”

  “She’s comfortable with indifference,” I murmured. “She’s also the most determined walker-away that I’ve ever met. It makes sense if she has a fear of relationships. I thought she was trying to control me, but maybe she’s afraid of being sucked in. Is that why she does nothing to correct her image? Because it’s safer being disliked than having to give anything of herself?”

  Peter looked amused. “Possibly, but it’s also her character. She’s hard work…always has been. Lily was the same. You have to chip away at the armour plating if you want to reach the person underneath, and not many people are prepared to do that.”

  I wondered if he knew about Lily’s claim to be her aunt. “It must be a gene then,” I said.

  His amusement turned to surprise, but he didn’t try to feign ignorance. “My God! You’re either a damn good journalist or you’ve convinced her you won’t repeat it. Is there anything she hasn’t told you?”

  “A great deal, I should think, but if you give me a list of what there is to know, I’ll tell you if I know it.”

  He laughed. “No chance. Hippocratic oath, remember.”

  I thought I’d challenge him on that, but I didn’t want Jess to hear me do it. I cocked an ear for her footsteps returning. There was only silence. “Except you seem to use that oath at your own convenience,” I said. “There’s a message on my answerphone from Madeleine telling me you took her to task for talking out of turn about Jess’s wrist-cutting episode. You can listen to it, if you like. It’s still there.”

  He shook his head. “No thanks. I get enough of them on my own damn machine.” He toyed with his glass. “She’s telling the truth. I did repeat what you told me. I’m sorry if that upsets you but I wanted her to know how angry I was.”

  “I’m not upset,” I told him. “I’m curious. The implication in the message is that it was you who told Madeleine about Jess…and I remember how uncomfortable you were when I first mentioned it in your kitchen. You tried to convince me it was Lily who’d spoken out of turn, but I don’t think that’s true, is it?”

  “No.” He took a mouthful of wine. “It was me. I thought if Madeleine knew how desperate Jess felt about the loss of her whole family, she’d give the poor kid breathing space and back off the affair with Nathaniel.” He paused. “I should have known better.”

  I didn’t answer. Instead, I listened for footsteps. At the back of my mind I must have been wondering why there was no sound from outside, because I recall being incredibly conscious of an oppressive silence. At the very least, we should have heard the crunch of gravel and the Land Rover door opening.

  “The first thing she did was tell Nathaniel,” Peter went on. “He was in London when it happened, so Madeleine had free rein with her interpretation of events…which was a souped-up version of what she told you, with Jess as a paranoid schizophrenic. It scared Nathaniel off completely.”

  I was more interested in the continuing silence. “Shouldn’t we have heard something by now?” I asked, turning towards the window. “What do you think Jess is doing?”

  “Looking for the dogs, I expect.”

  “Then why isn’t she calling for them? You don’t suppose-” I broke off, unwilling to put the thought into words.

  Perhaps Peter, too, was uneasy. “I’ll go and check,” he said, standing up, “but for Christ’s sake stop looking so bloody worried. You’d have to walk on water to get past those animals of hers.” He smiled. “Trust me. I’ve still got the bruises.”

  17

  HOW LONG DO you wait in such circumstances? In my case, a very long time. I told myself Peter and Jess were having a heart-to-heart, and the best thing I could do was leave them to it, but I remained glued to the window, watching Jess’s dogs patrol the garden. At one point a couple of them spotted me through the glass and ambled over, tails wagging eagerly, in the hope of food. Could someone have got past them? Logic said no, but instinct had every hair on my body standing to attention. If MacKenzie knew about anything, he knew about dogs.

  I remember trying to light a cigarette, but my hands were tr
embling so much that I couldn’t bring the flame anywhere near the tip. Knowing how easily panicked I was, would Peter really abandon me for Jess without calling out that everything was fine? And why couldn’t I hear them? His wooing technique was based on gentle teasing, and he was incapable of speaking to Jess for more than a few minutes without laughing.

  In the end I decided to call the police. The chances were they’d arrive to find Jess and Peter in flagrante delicto on the sofa but I couldn’t have cared less. I was happy to pay any fine they liked for wasting official time, as long as I didn’t have to walk down that corridor on my own.

  ***

  WOODY ALLEN ONCE SAID, “My only regret in life is that I’m not someone else.” It’s funny if you don’t mean it, and desperate if you do. I’d rather have been anyone but Connie Burns when I tried for a dial tone on the kitchen phone and discovered it was dead. I knew immediately what it meant. The line had been cut some time after I emailed my parents. In the vain hope of a miracle, I tugged my mobile from my pocket and held it above my head, but unsurprisingly the signal icon refused to appear.

  Panic came back in waves, and my first instinct was to do exactly what I’d done before, lock myself in the kitchen, turn off the lights and crouch out of sight of the window. I couldn’t face MacKenzie on my own. The fight had been knocked out of me when he’d rammed himself into my mouth and told me to smile for the camera. I couldn’t go through that again. His smell and taste still had me bursting out of nightmares every night. What did it matter if he killed other people, as long as he didn’t kill me?

  I can’t pretend it was courage, or a sudden flush of heroism, that took me outside. Rather, the memory of my email to Alan Collins re elderly Chinamen, death-rays, and the difficulties of coping with the guilt. Any problems I had now would be magnified tenfold if I had to live with Jess’s and Peter’s blood on my hands. My plan was to run as fast as possible for the nearest hillside and dial 999. But when I opened the back door, I was met by the dogs, and I had a strong sense that taking to my heels would be the wrong thing to do. Either they’d bark and alert MacKenzie, or they’d bowl me over.

  Instead, I walked slowly towards the outhouse in the hope that they’d lose interest and let me cut across the grass to the main road. They didn’t. Each step I took was mirrored by five rippling shadows. For big animals they were extraordinarily quiet. The only sound any of them made was the brush of paws over grass. I couldn’t even hear their breathing, but that may have been because mine was noisy enough for all of us.

  I stopped after about twenty metres, seriously doubting that MacKenzie was in the house. How could he have got past these dogs unless he’d broken in before Jess brought them? In which case, why had he waited? And why only cut the telephone line after I’d emailed my parents? I’d been alone all day, and for a good hour between Jess’s first and second visits. He could have done what he liked and left. It didn’t make sense to involve other people.

  From there, it was a small jump to the absolute conviction that I was doing what he wanted-putting myself at his mercy by leaving the house. It’s hard to think logically when you’re frightened. I turned rather wildly to head back towards the kitchen and found myself looking at MacKenzie.

  He was sitting at my desk with his hands linked behind his head, staring at my computer screen. He laughed suddenly and swivelled the chair to talk to someone behind him. With a dreadful sense of inevitability I caught a glimpse of Peter’s face before MacKenzie completed the turn and blocked Peter from sight again.

  THE SAME POLICEMAN who’d asked what Jess and I had talked about during our five hours alone the previous week suggested I might have acted differently if MacKenzie had shown her the same respect that he showed Peter. “I’m assuming it was this man’s mistreatment of Ms. Derbyshire that persuaded you to confront him? Was it seeing her in trouble that took you back into the house?”

  I shook my head. “Jess wasn’t visible from outside. The first time I saw her was when I reached the hall.”

  “But you guessed she was in distress?”

  “I suppose so. I saw that Peter was frightened-which almost certainly meant Jess was, too.” I couldn’t see the point of his questions. “Wouldn’t you be scared if someone broke into your house?” I paused. “I knew he’d kill her…he liked hurting women.”

  “So why weren’t you scared, Ms. Burns?”

  “I was. I was terrified.”

  “Then why didn’t you continue with your original plan”-he glanced at his notes-“to run for the nearest high point and use your mobile? Wouldn’t that have been more sensible than going back inside?”

  “Of course it would, but…” I shook my head. “I don’t understand. What do you want me to say? That I was stupid to do it? I agree with you. I was the fool that rushed in. I acted first, thought later.”

  “You thought long enough to take an axe with you,” he pointed out mildly.

  “So? I was hardly going to tackle MacKenzie empty-handed.”

  I CREPT DOWN the corridor on bare feet and eased the baize door open a crack before sliding through and letting it close silently behind me. MacKenzie had turned up the volume on my computer and I could hear my own voice coming through the speakers. I knew then what he was looking at. There was no mistaking my begging tone even if the only words I could make out were a repetitive “please don’t…please don’t…please don’t…”

  The sound died suddenly. “Is that you, Connie?” he said in his familiar Glaswegian accent. “I’ve been expecting you, feather. Will you show yourself to me?”

  How did he know I was there? I hadn’t made a sound. I didn’t make a sound.

  “You know what’ll happen if you don’t,” he warned with a grunt of amusement. “I’ll have to make do with your friend. She’s an ugly little bitch but her mouth seems to work.”

  My flesh crawled in response to his voice, and it took considerable will-power to move into the open doorway. I hated the way he spoke. It was mangled vowels and glottal stops and exploded any myth that “Glesca patter” was attractive. No printed words can convey the ugliness of his accent or the effect it had on me. I associated it with his smell and his taste, and nausea flooded my mouth immediately.

  He was still sitting at my desk, and Peter was where I’d seen him from outside, in the chair Jess had perched on earlier. He was fully clothed and his eyes were uncovered, but there was duct tape across his mouth, and his hands and feet were bound. MacKenzie had half-turned the chair towards the desk so that Peter could see the images that were flickering on the computer screen, and beyond them Jess, who was standing in the far corner.

  I hardly looked at Peter because I was focusing all my attention on MacKenzie, but I saw the panic in his eyes before I picked out Jess at the edge of my vision. She was naked, blindfolded, gagged and bound, and balanced precariously on a footstool. I felt a lurch of panic for her because I knew how frightening that was. Unable to see, and without being able to move your hands or feet, your only point of reference is the wall behind you. If you lose contact with it, you fall. The strain of concentration is unbearable.

  I’ve no idea if MacKenzie’s intention was to frighten me into complying-or if the degradation of women was irresistible for him-but Jess’s frailty shocked me. Without its normal covering of a man’s shirt and jeans, her body looked too small and childlike to take the kind of punishment that MacKenzie liked to inflict. I was aware of an object on the carpet in front of her. I couldn’t see it properly because I didn’t want to lose sight of MacKenzie for a second, but the serrated outline reminded me of one of my father’s homemade stingers.

  They were short planks with nails hammered through them, and he’d used them anywhere on the farm where he found rustler or poacher tracks. His favourite trick was to bury the wooden base in the dry earth and leave the nails poking half an inch above the surface. Occasionally he caught elderly vehicles which were abandoned when their tyres burst, but the more usual result was bloody footprints in
the dirt. No one died from having his feet pierced but it was an effective deterrent against stealing from my father.

  Where had it come from? Had Dad made it?

  I ran my tongue round the inside of my mouth. “How did you find me?”

  “The world’s smaller than you think.” He took note of the axe that I was holding across my chest. “Are you planning to use that, feather?”

  Dad always used two-inch nails…They’d kill Jess if she fell on them… “Don’t call me that.”

  MacKenzie smiled. “Answer the question, feather. Are you planning to use that?”

  “Yes.”

  His smiled widened. “And when I take it off you and use it on Gollum over here”-he tilted his head towards Jess-“what will the plan be then?”

  “To kill you.”

  I think my expression must have shown that I meant it, because he was in no hurry to move. “I persuaded your father to tell me where you were. He didn’t want to, but I gave him a choice…you or your mother. He chose your mother.” There was a glint of humour in his pale eyes. “How does that make you feel?” He pronounced “father” in almost the same way as he pronounced “feather”-“fay-ther”-a rasping, grating sound.

  My fists tightened round the axe. “Flattered,” I said from a dry mouth. “My father has faith in me. He knows I can survive you.”

  “Only if I let you.”

  “Where is he? What have you done to him?”

  “Taught him the facts of life. It was sad. It’s always sad when old men fight.”

  “You wouldn’t have taken him on if his hands had been free. You won’t even take on a woman unless she’s bound, gagged and blindfolded.”

  MacKenzie shrugged indifferently and took my father’s mobile from his pocket, turning it towards me so that I could see it. “Recognize it? Remember this? ‘All fine. Mum with me. Nothing to worry about. Call soon. Dad.’ Your text came through while I was still on the road. I thought I’d put your mind at rest by answering.” He studied my face for a reaction. “I’d have sent another one but I lost the signal when I reached the valley. Why would you want to live in a dead zone, Connie?”