The Devil's Feather

by Minette Walters

  Nevertheless, the result of this orgy of self-flagellation was that he set out to paint me and Jess in glowing colours. I became the iron lady who took control and exercised it-Peter even used the word “revenge” after describing what he’d seen on the DVD, claiming anything I did to MacKenzie was “reasonable.” Jess became the martyr figure who refused to give in to exhaustion or threats, and retained an icy composure even after the death of one of her dogs.

  It left Bagley with the impression of two tough and determined women who, for different reasons, had wanted MacKenzie dead. An impression not helped by the various weapons hidden around the house, particularly Jess’s baseball bats and my carving knives. To Peter’s credit, he tried to set the record straight as soon as he realized the damage he’d done, but by then it was too late. If both Ms. Burns and Ms. Derbyshire were subject to panic attacks and agoraphobia, Bagley asked, why had we shown no evidence of it that night?

  “You watched,” he echoed now. “Yet I understand Dr. Coleman asked you to call the police and an ambulance. Why didn’t you do that?”

  “The landline wasn’t working.”

  “But you knew your mobile worked in the attic.”

  “I didn’t think it was a good idea to leave Peter alone with MacKenzie.” I rested my forehead on my hands and stared at the table. “Look, what I’m going to say isn’t very kind, but it is true. Peter was petrified from beginning to end of the whole thing. I didn’t blame him-I don’t blame him now-but I guarantee MacKenzie would have freed himself somehow if I hadn’t stayed.”

  “How?”

  I dropped my hands into my lap. “Probably by pretending to be more injured than he was. Peter was uncomfortable about the way I’d bound his hands behind his back, particularly when he realized the fingers were broken. He wanted me to retie them at the front while MacKenzie was still unconscious.”

  “But you refused. Why?”

  “Because I wasn’t as convinced as Peter that he was unconscious.”

  “You think a doctor would make a mistake about something like that?”

  I shrugged. “It’s hardly difficult to fake but, in any case, it wasn’t a risk worth taking. I couldn’t see Peter leaping to my rescue if MacKenzie decided to grab me round the throat and throttle me. There’d have been a lot of hand-flapping and not much action. He made a hell of a fuss about getting Bertie’s blood on his trousers.”

  It wasn’t a very fair description of Peter but it seemed to strike a chord with the Inspector. “Dr. Coleman certainly seems to have found the experience more”-he searched for the appropriate phrase-“soul-destroying than you and Ms. Derbyshire.”

  “You don’t know much about women then,” I said flatly. “If it’ll bring an end to this, I’ll happily burst into tears and throw hysterics. Is that what you want me to do? It’s easily done…almost as easy as MacKenzie pretending to be unconscious.”

  A gleam of humour appeared in his eyes. “I’d rather you told me why you persuaded Dr. Coleman to go back to his own house and call the emergency services from there. That puzzles me.”

  “It didn’t happen like that,” I demurred. “It was Peter’s idea…I merely agreed it was sensible.”

  The Inspector consulted his notes. “Dr. Coleman has the roles reversed, Ms. Burns. I quote: ‘When I told Connie we needed the police and an ambulance as a matter of priority, she pointed out that MacKenzie had cut the telephone line. She said the only option was for me to go home and call from there. I agreed.’ ”

  “I honestly don’t recall it that way…but does it matter?”

  He frowned. “Of course it matters. There were five working mobiles in the house, yours, Dr. Coleman’s and Ms. Derbyshire’s…plus Mr. MacKenzie’s and your father’s. We’ve already established there’s a perfectly good signal in the attic, so why not send Dr. Coleman upstairs? Why tell him going home was the only option?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t remember doing that…but, even if I did, how does it make me the bad guy? Peter knew about the signal in the attic. He could have thought it through just as well as I could. It wasn’t a normal situation…we weren’t exactly sitting around, discussing the best way to proceed, you know. We were both shaking like leaves…and all I recall is jumping at the first suggestion that was going to bring us some help.”

  “In fact Dr. Coleman expressed surprise when we told him it was possible to use a mobile at Barton House.”

  “Then he’s two-faced,” I said crossly. “He knew all about the pyramid Jess built in the back bedroom so that I could use my laptop when I first arrived. You can ask my landlady. It was Peter who told her about it when I asked permission to install broadband.”

  The Inspector steepled his hands in front of his mouth and studied me reflectively for several seconds. “He recalls that now,” he agreed, “but not at the time. And you didn’t remind him.”

  “Then I can only apologize for a blonde moment,” I said sarcastically. “Has Peter apologized for a senior moment? It all happened very fast. As soon as he made up his mind to go, he ran for the door.” I folded my hands on the table. “I wish I could make you understand how disorientated we all were…but maybe you’ve never had a psychopath break into your house and take you prisoner.”

  He didn’t rise to that bait either. “So what happened next? When did Ms. Derbyshire join you in the hall?”

  “Almost immediately. She heard Peter’s car on the gravel and came down to find out what was happening.”

  “Were the dogs with her?”

  “No. She left them in the bedroom…she was worried they’d start sniffing around Bertie.”

  “What was she wearing?”

  “My dressing-gown. It was too long for her and trailed across the floor. She knelt down to stroke the dog, and-” I sighed. “It all got very messy.”

  “What was on her feet?”

  “Nothing. None of my shoes fit her. Which is why she asked me to find her boots.”

  “But you weren’t wearing shoes either.”

  “No, I took them off before I went into the hall. I didn’t want MacKenzie to hear me coming.”

  Bagley nodded. “What made you look for Ms. Derbyshire’s clothes outside the office window?”

  “Because they weren’t in the office. MacKenzie had kept her knickers-he’d put them in the bag-but there was no sign of anything else. Then Jess told me she’d heard the window open and close after he put her on the footstool…so I raised the sash and spotted them immediately.”

  “And you went through the kitchen to retrieve them?”

  “You know I did. You found my bloody footprints.”

  “Mmm. And during the time it took for you to go outside and return, Ms. Derbyshire was alone with Mr. MacKenzie?”

  “Yes,” I said wearily. “We’ve been over this twice already. I ran-you can measure my strides-and when I returned, the only thing that was different was that Jess was sitting in the armchair under the stairs. If you spray it with Luminol I’m sure you’ll get a reaction from the bloodstains on my dressing-gown.”

  “You’re very knowledgable about crime scenes, Ms. Burns.”

  “I’ve covered a fair number of trials over the years. It’s amazing how much information you pick up from hours of police evidence. You should try it yourself some time.”

  It was impossible to provoke him to anything other than displays of polite scepticism, except when it came to MacKenzie’s disappearance. On that subject, his disbelief was total. Yet again, he took me through the sequence of events.

  “You say MacKenzie was lying on his side and you could see the duct tape was still firmly in place.”

  “Yes.”

  “You then handed Ms. Derbyshire her clothes and suggested she have a bath to wash off Bertie’s blood because it was clearly distressing her. She went directly upstairs, and shortly afterwards you heard the water running.”

  “Right.”

  “You were also distressed by the dog’s blood, so you chose to wash in the
kitchen sink before changing into a skirt and T-shirt that were waiting to be ironed in the scullery. And to avoid the blood setting on your stained clothes, you left them soaking in a bleach solution in the sink…because they were ‘whiteish’ and made out of cotton.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you expect it to work?”

  “Not really, but it seemed worth a try. My wardrobe’s hardly bursting, and it was only dog’s blood. The pathologists will prove me right. I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that DNA is still recoverable after a garment’s been washed.”

  “Except we’re not talking about washing, Ms. Burns, we’re talking about bleaching…and all the literature says bleach destroys DNA.”

  “Really?” I murmured. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Why did Ms. Derbyshire do the same thing? Why did she leave your dressing-gown in a bleach solution in the bath? Was it your suggestion? Did you take the bleach to her after you’d finished in the kitchen?”

  I dropped my chin onto my clasped hands. “It’s ‘No’ to the last two questions, and ‘That’s what women do’ to the first two. Every woman in the world has a problem with bloodstains on her clothes. You should watch African girls spending hours at the rivers, hammering away with stones to get rid of them. We’re all programmed to do the same thing…never mind our cultures. Do you have a wife? Ask her.”

  “Did you take the bleach upstairs, Ms. Burns?” he repeated.

  “I’ve already said I didn’t. There was a bottle of Domestos beside the lavatory in the bathroom. Look”-I paused, wondering if it was wise to continue-“you must see how ridiculous this line of questioning is.” What the hell! I was exhausted. “Peter wasn’t away more than twenty minutes…and the police and ambulance arrived shortly after he returned. How could Jess and I kill MacKenzie and get rid of his body in that short time?”

  “You couldn’t.”

  “Then why keep implying we were in some sort of conspiracy? Has Jess told you a different story?”

  “No. Her account matches yours. MacKenzie was still tied up when she went for a bath, and she only learnt he’d gone when Dr. Coleman started shouting in the hall.”

  19

  POOR PETER. He became intimately acquainted with panic that night. His first idea when he found the front door wide open, and no MacKenzie on the floor, was that he was about to be jumped again. His second was that Jess and I were probably dead. His third-not very sensible in view of the first two, as they suggested MacKenzie was hovering around with the axe-was to start hollering for us.

  His voice was high-pitched and uneven, and I heard it in the kitchen. “Connie! Jess! Where are you? Are you all right?”

  I called back that I was in the kitchen, but when it became obvious that he hadn’t heard me, I dried my hands and went down the corridor. Peter described me as behaving “with extraordinary calm.” Indeed, I was so relaxed that when I urged him “to get a grip,” he came to the strange decision that Jess and I had moved MacKenzie somewhere else.

  “But you hadn’t?”

  “Of course not. Peter told me to leave him where he was until the ambulance arrived. How could we have moved him, anyway, without releasing his feet? We couldn’t have carried him.”

  “Two of you might have been able to.”

  “Where to?” I asked reasonably. “You’ve searched the house three times, and he’s not here. And you’ve tracked every one of our footprints.”

  “Those we can find. Blood dries quicker than you think, Ms. Burns. We’ve found your outward tracks through the kitchen when you went for Ms. Derbyshire’s clothes, but there’s nothing to show you returned.”

  “Except that I must have done since she was wearing them by the time the first police car arrived.”

  I think he found my composure as frustrating as Peter had done. They both felt that hand-wringing and breast-beating suited the mood better than hard-headed analysis. Peter lost it completely in the middle of the hall when he asked me what I’d done with MacKenzie. He even accused Jess and me of “doing something awful” since MacKenzie couldn’t have freed himself without assistance.

  “And did you, Ms. Burns?”

  “No.”

  “Then how did he free himself?”

  “I don’t know. At a guess, he used Jess’s Leatherman. She said he took it off her. If it was in his trouser pocket, he might have been able to move his arms enough to wriggle it out.”

  “Hard to pull out a blade with broken fingers.”

  “He had quite an incentive,” I said dryly. “He was about to be arrested.”

  Bagley studied me for a moment. “Why weren’t you as worried as Dr. Coleman when you saw that MacKenzie was missing? He could have been anywhere…upstairs with Ms. Derbyshire for example.”

  “Jess arrived on the landing about the same time as I came into the hall…and Peter’s voice was so far up the register that most of what he said was incomprehensible. I’m not sure I even realized MacKenzie was missing until Peter started to calm down…and then we heard the sirens. It was all very quick.”

  “You’re an observant woman, Ms. Burns. You must have noticed the floor was empty.”

  “I was looking at Peter.”

  But Bagley couldn’t accept that. “As soon as you realized Dr. Coleman was frightened, you’d have checked on MacKenzie as a matter of priority.”

  I shrugged. “This would be a lot easier if Peter hadn’t given you such an inflated opinion of me. You seem to think I have an immediate grasp of what’s going on in any situation. Well, I don’t. I may have seen Bertie out of the corner of my eye-a shape-and assumed it was MacKenzie…although I don’t remember doing it, and I don’t remember thinking about it.” I tugged a cigarette out of my pocket and lit it with relief. “Just out of interest, why isn’t Peter being put through the third degree? He’s far more likely to have freed MacKenzie than Jess or I.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because he was worried about MacKenzie’s hands. Perhaps he decided to loosen the duct tape when he came back in.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  I absorbed as much nicotine in one shot as I could, then blew the smoke in Bagley’s direction. “Is that a bloke thing, Inspector? The fact that you’re willing to believe a man, but not a woman?”

  He took it in good part. “Ms. Derbyshire heard Dr. Coleman’s car come back. She says there was a few seconds’ time lapse between that and his shouting. I haven’t ruled out that he did what you suggest but it seems unlikely. He didn’t have a knife on him when we searched him, and he’d have needed one to cut through the duct tape.”

  “Perhaps MacKenzie took it off him.”

  “Did Dr. Coleman look as if he’d been in a fight?”

  “No…but if he had any sense he’d have relinquished the knife and run out the front door before he got slashed with it.”

  “Leaving MacKenzie to collect his bag and disappear through the office window? Is that what you’re saying happened?”

  “Why not? It’s what you’re suggesting Jess and I did, isn’t it?”

  “We think he left through the front door…and, from the impressions on the floor, he appears to have been on bare feet.” Bagley smiled slightly. “We have a lot of bare feet, Ms. Burns. It’s quite confusing.”

  “All different sizes…and with different toeprints.”

  “Prints don’t register well on stone. There was a lot of skating done through the blood. It’s hard to say who went where when.”

  “Only in the hall. Have you found MacKenzie’s prints anywhere else?”

  He wasn’t going to answer my questions. “One line we’re pursuing is that he managed to ease his shoes off in order to slip out of the duct tape round his ankles. You told us you wrapped the tape round the bottom of his trousers. Do you recall how many turns you made and whether he was wearing socks?”

  I thought back. “Not really. About four, perhaps. I just wound it till it seemed tight enough. I don’t remember seeing
socks.”

  “What sort of trousers were they?”

  “Denims.”

  “Do you remember Dr. Coleman undoing the fly to help him breathe?”

  I nodded.

  “So all MacKenzie had to do was slide out of the trousers to free himself?”

  I saw criticism immediately. “I’m damned if I’ll take the blame for that,” I said indignantly. “It wasn’t me who unbuttoned his stupid trousers. Blame Peter. He could have worked it out just as well as I could.”

  “I’m not blaming you, Ms. Burns, I’m pointing out what might have happened. Did you bind his hands in the same way? Was the duct tape over his cuffs or against his skin?”

  I was very tempted to say it was over his cuffs but it wouldn’t have been true. “Against his skin. The cuffs were rolled back.”

  He’d obviously been told the same by Peter because he nodded. “He had more opportunities once his feet were free, of course. Do you remember what happened to the flick knife?”

  “I kicked it away from him. As far as I remember, it went under the stairs.”

  “We haven’t found it.”

  I shrugged, suspecting another trap. By his twisted logic, victims were probably required to retrieve all pieces of evidence and line them up for inspection when the police arrived.

  “A flick knife would have been easier to manipulate than Ms. Derbyshire’s Leatherman…but, in either event, he seems to have taken them with him. We haven’t found the Leatherman either.”

  I drew in a lungful of smoke. “Why didn’t you tell me this at the beginning? Why accuse me of murder if you’ve known all along how he freed himself?”