The Devil's Feather

by Minette Walters

  There wasn’t much else she could tell. She recalled MacKenzie tucking my father’s mobile and binoculars, together with their two wallets, into a canvas knapsack, which he tossed on to the back seat of the BMW. Then he taped her hands and feet again and told her he was going to move her to the boot as soon as they were clear of built-up areas. He warned her to keep her mouth shut until he did or he’d tie her up so tight she wouldn’t be able to breathe, but it wasn’t until they’d passed the Fleet service station on the M3 that he left the motorway and made the transfer on a quiet country road.

  He must have rejoined the motorway because my mother remembered constant traffic noise but, as happened to me in the cellar, she quickly lost track of time. She remembered one other stop of about ten minutes, which was probably when he sent me the text, and her last contact with him was five minutes after the engine died for good. She’d been in darkness for so long that, when the boot suddenly opened, she had to close her eyes against the daylight.

  “He apologized,” she said. “It was very strange.”

  “For shutting you in?”

  “No. For the fact that, if I’d given him the right address, he was going to come back and burn the car with me in it.” She gave a muted laugh. “I presume he wanted me to panic but, you know, I was so tired by then I fell asleep…and the next thing I knew, the alarm was going like the clappers, and a rather jolly policeman was wrenching the boot open with a crowbar.”

  It was all lies. She couldn’t possibly have slept with the level of cramp she had when she was found, any more than my father could have passed “a halfway reasonable night.”

  From: Dan@Fry.ishma.iq

  Sent: Sun 22/08/04 17:18

  To: connie.burns@uknet.com

  Subject: MacKenzie

  Of course I’m upset that you didn’t tell me at the time. I’m not made of stone, Connie.

  What did you think I was going to do? Invoke your contract and force you to write the story with all the salacious details? Write it myself? Sell you to the highest bidder? I thought we trusted each other, C. I thought we loved each other…but maybe that was all on my side. Jesus! I’m not some fly-by-night. When have I ever not been there for you?

  OK, I’ve calmed down a bit. I wrote that first paragraph three hours ago after reading your email. Now I’ve had some time to think. I realize I’m being unfair. I’ve decided not to delete the para because I want you to know that I am hurt. I wouldn’t have done anything differently if you’d told me the truth…except perhaps protect you a little harder. Reading between the lines, I wonder if that’s what you were afraid of? I’m sure it’s no accident that the only person you felt you could trust in the last few months was a woman.

  The newswires are short on detail. They’re all naming MacKenzie and describing him as extremely dangerous and wanted for questioning re abduction and murder in the UK, Sierra Leone and Baghdad. But there appears to be a blackout where you’re concerned. Is this at your request? Or is it something the police have imposed because you’re still being questioned?

  An answer ASAP would be helpful, as I’m already fielding questions re my piece on the Baycombe Group which named MacKenzie/O’Connell re passport fraud. How little/much should I say? Do you want it known that MacKenzie held you in the cellar? Or have you asked for anonymity under UK rape legislation?

  AAGH! I can’t believe what a tosser I was. I keep remembering that I told you to play-act some tears and milk the sympathy vote. I am SO sorry, C. Will you see me if I come to England? Or have I burnt my boats? I’m due some time off.

  Love, Dan.

  PS. Sorry to be the journalist but do you have any updates on MacKenzie? Have there been any sightings, or do they think he’s fled the country?

  20

  “WHAT’S THE SECOND REASON?” Inspector Bagley asked, after reminding me that I’d said a man wouldn’t understand why I was so calm. “You said, ‘In the first place, my parents aren’t dead.’ What comes next?”

  “Jess and Peter?” I suggested. “I wouldn’t be remotely calm if anything had happened to them.”

  “No one would. Why should a man have trouble understanding that?”

  “He wouldn’t. It’s what I thought of MacKenzie that he might have problems with. For a kick-off, I couldn’t get over how small he was. He’d been in my head for so long as something monstrous that to find he was just a dirty little runt was…strange. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t frightening…but I had him in perspective for the first time, and it felt good.”

  “Was?” he echoed. “Had? Felt? Is he dead, Ms. Burns?”

  We’d been this route several times already. “I don’t see how he can be,” I said. “I might wish it…I might earnestly pray for it…but he was alive the last time I saw him. It depends on whether broken fingers can kill you…but I wouldn’t have thought so.”

  “If that’s all that was wrong with him.”

  I shrugged. “Peter said it was.”

  “You and Ms. Derbyshire were alone with MacKenzie for thirty minutes. A man can suffer a lot of damage in that time.”

  “Then where is he? Why haven’t you found him?”

  “I don’t know, Ms. Burns. That’s what I’m trying to discover.”

  I showed my irritation. “How about I turn the questions on you? What sort of police force allows a man to escape as easily as MacKenzie seems to have done? He can’t have left the house much before you arrived…but it was two hours before you started searching the valley. He could have been anywhere by then…on a ferry out of Weymouth…on the train to Southampton airport. Have you checked those places?”

  He gave an impatient nod as if the question didn’t warrant an answer. “We’re more interested in your father’s BMW, Ms. Burns. That was his obvious choice of transport. It was parked less than half a mile down the valley-he could have been out of the area before anyone knew it was missing-yet he didn’t return to it. I find that strange.”

  “Me, too.”

  Bagley hated it when I agreed with him. He seemed to think it was a form of mockery. “Perhaps you have an explanation,” he murmured sarcastically. “You seem to have explanations for everything else.”

  “I expect he got lost,” I said. “It happens to me all the time…and I only go walking in the daylight. It’s a big valley. If you lose your bearings and take the wrong footpath, you end up at the Ridgeway instead of in the village. I suppose you’ve checked the empty houses in Winterbourne Barton? Perhaps he’s holed up in a weekender’s cottage, eating their food and watching their telly. Or maybe he went the other way and fell off a cliff?”

  There’s no question Jess and I sparked an intense suspicion in Bagley. He knew we couldn’t have magicked MacKenzie out of existence in half an hour, but our attitudes offended him. I was too glib, and Jess was too mute. According to Peter, who heard it from a friend on the force, she was no more forthcoming with the police than she was with anyone else.

  What happened when you left the kitchen, Ms. Derbyshire? I was jumped. Can you be more explicit? No. Did you know who your assailant was? I guessed. Who removed your clothes? He did. Did you think he was going to rape you? Yes. Even with Dr. Coleman and Ms. Burns in the house? Yes. Did MacKenzie speak to you? No. Then why did you think he wanted to rape you? He took my clothes off. Can you be more explicit? No. Were you upset by your dog’s death? Yes. Did you want revenge for Bertie? Yes. Did you want revenge for yourself? Yes. Did you take it? No. Why not? There wasn’t time. But you would have done if the police hadn’t arrived? Yes.

  Our worst fault seemed to be that we weren’t frightened enough. With MacKenzie on the loose, we should have demanded round-the-clock police protection or seclusion in a safe house, but neither of us did. Jess refused to leave the farm because she couldn’t rely on Harry and the girls to run it alone, and with search teams scouring the valley, I effectively had police protection anyway.

  IT WAS an odd few days. Although Jess and I were never arrested or charged with anything, we
were both treated like suspects in a murder investigation. I was asked several times if I wanted a solicitor present, but I always refused on the basis that I had nothing to hide. I believe Jess did the same. The silver lining was that the press was held at bay while every nook and cranny of Winterbourne Valley was painstakingly examined, and the police withheld our names-including Peter’s and my parents’-after Jess and I invoked our right to anonymity because of the nature of the crimes against us.

  I was allowed to see my mother briefly in Dorset County Hospital before she was transferred back to London to be near my father, and I was able to speak to Dad on the phone. Because of his jaw, I did most of the talking, but he gave a couple of grunting laughs and seemed pleased when I suggested he and Mum come to stay as soon as the brouhaha died down. He managed a few sentences that I understood. “Did we win? Are the demons dead?”

  “Dead and buried,” I said.

  “Good.”

  Perhaps it was a mercy no one overheard that little exchange, because it would certainly have been misinterpreted. As would my conversation with Jess when the police finally ackowledged we’d had no hand in MacKenzie’s disappearance. We were warned to expect further questioning if and when MacKenzie was taken into custody, but in reality it was a green light to pursue our lives as normal.

  I hadn’t seen or spoken to Jess since the early hours of Sunday morning. There was no official ban on our communicating with each other, but, with the continuous police presence in Barton House, neither of us felt inclined to do it. The telephone line was repaired almost immediately, more for police convenience than mine, but I was given permission to operate my laptop in the back bedroom when I explained that my boss in Baghdad deserved an explanation before MacKenzie’s name appeared on the newswires.

  For three days, the back bedroom and the kitchen were the only areas I was allowed to use. Even the bathroom was sealed off for forty-eight hours while the U-bend was taken apart for forensic examination. The same happened in the scullery. I asked Bagley what he was expecting to find since both drains had had bleach down them, but he said it was routine. I pointed out that it was routine for me to take regular baths and wash my clothes, and with bad grace he ordered the plumbing to be reinstated on the Monday afternoon.

  On Wednesday evening, I watched Jess’s Land Rover nose up the drive less than half an hour after Bagley had taken his leave. I remember wondering how she knew he’d gone, and half-suspected she’d been squatting in her top field with binoculars. The one thing I knew about Jess was that her patience was inexhaustible. It had taken one hundred hours of filming to capture the antics of weasels on a fifteen-minute video loop.

  “I hope you understand why all this was necessary, Ms. Burns,” Bagley said as he left, offering me his hand in a gesture of peace.

  I shook it briefly. “Not really. Is it a job’s-worth thing? Do policemen get chopped off at the knees if they don’t go through the motions?”

  “If that’s how you want to see it.”

  “I do,” I assured him. “Peter tells me he’s only been questioned twice…once to give his version…and the second time to confirm or deny what Jess and I said. That doesn’t seem fair when we were all witnesses to the same crime.”

  “What happened before Dr. Coleman left isn’t in dispute. It’s how MacKenzie freed himself and vanished into thin air that interests us.”

  I shrugged. “Perhaps he used his SAS training.”

  “I thought you believed the SAS claim was a lie.”

  “I do,” I agreed, “but it doesn’t mean I’m right.”

  There was a moment’s silence before he gave an abrupt laugh. “Well, that’s something I never thought I’d hear.”

  “What?”

  “Ms. Burns admitting she might be wrong.” He eyed me for a moment. “I hope you and Ms. Derbyshire know what you’re doing.”

  I felt the familiar flutter round my heart. “In what way?”

  “Staying put,” he said with mild surprise. “I’m not sure either of you is strong enough to face MacKenzie again…”

  THERE WAS something immensely reassuring about Jess’s scowl as she stomped into the kitchen and put a bulging carrier bag on the table. “I hate that bastard,” she said.

  “Which one?”

  “Bagley. Do you know what his parting shot was? ‘You’ve been thoroughly obstructive, Ms. Derbyshire’ ”-she screwed her mouth into a Bagley sneer-“ ‘but Dr. Coleman tells me you lack communication skills so I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt.’ Bloody wanker. I told him to get stuffed.”

  “Peter?”

  “Bagley.” Her eyes gleamed with sudden amusement. “I’m holding Peter on ice. Christ knows what he said to them, but it sure as hell didn’t do us any favours. Bagley seems to think we’re a pair of Amazons. Did he ask you what your sexual orientation is?”

  “No.”

  “I suppose I have the idiots in the village to thank,” she said without animosity. “He asked me if I thought it was worse for a lesbian to have her clothes taken off by a psychopath. What kind of question’s that?”

  “How did you answer?”

  “Told him to fuck off.” She started unpacking the bag. “I’ve brought you some food. Have you been eating properly?”

  “Mostly sandwiches. The police have been ordering them in by the cartload.”

  “Champagne,” she said, producing a bottle of Heidsieck. “I don’t know if it’s any good…also, smoked salmon and quail’s eggs. It’s not the kind of thing I usually have but I thought you’d like it. The rest’s off the farm.” She handed me the bottle. “I reckon you’ve earned a little celebration.”

  I couldn’t resist a nervous look over my shoulder towards the drive. What would Bagley make of this? I wondered.

  Jess read my mind. “Bertie deserves a toast,” she said, taking some glasses from the cupboard, “and your parents. I don’t see why we shouldn’t remember them just because Bagley’s got bees in his bonnet. Go on, open it. We’d all be dead but for you.”

  That’s not how I saw it. “It was me who put you in danger in the first place,” I reminded her. “If I’d never come here, it would never have happened.”

  “Don’t go feeble on me,” she said scornfully. “You might as well blame your father for going back to the flat…or Peter for showing up when he did…or me for leaving the kitchen. You should be on cloud nine.”

  “Keep talking like that and I will be,” I said more cheerfully, peeling the wire from the neck of the bottle. “It’s unnerving to have you ply me with drink and compliments, Jess.” I popped the cork and poured froth into one of the glasses. “Are you going to have some?”

  She inspected it as if it was devil’s brew. “Why not? I can always walk home.”

  “When did you last have champagne?” I asked, wondering how drunk it was going to make her.

  “Twelve years ago…on my mother’s birthday.” She clinked her glass against mine. “To Bertie,” she said. “One of the good guys. I buried him in the top field under a little wooden cross with ‘For valour and gallantry’ on it, and that bastard Bagley got his men to dig him up again to see if MacKenzie was underneath. Can you believe that? He said it was normal procedure.”

  “To Bertie,” I echoed, “and a plague on Bagley. What did you say to him?”

  She took a tentative sip and seemed surprised when she didn’t drop dead. “Called him a grave robber. Peter was there when they did it, and he gave Bagley hell…kept asking him how I could have smuggled MacKenzie’s body out of Barton House without anyone noticing. I don’t think he realized until then what a bloody great hole he’d dug for us. You know he repeated our conversation about chopping MacKenzie’s dick off? I got more questions about castration than anything else.”

  I watched her thoughtfully over the rim of my glass. “Mine were all about manipulation and control. Peter told them I knew what I was doing…even to the extent of giving your dogs commands.”

  For the first time ever,
Jess defended him. “He was trying to give praise where praise was due. It backfired spectacularly…but he meant well.”

  “What did they tell him we were saying?”

  She flicked me an amused glance. “Men are a waste of space.”

  “Well, that didn’t come from me. I might have thought it, but I didn’t say it.”

  She nodded. “It was Peter quoting Bagley quoting me. I said something like ‘Men are useless in a crisis’ but Bagley milked it for all it was worth. Did you accuse Peter of releasing MacKenzie?”

  “Not exactly. I asked why he wasn’t being given the third degree when he’d had the same opportunities that you and I had.”

  “It was presented as a full-on accusation. According to Bagley, you bust a gut to implicate Peter, and it was only my evidence about timing that exonerated him.”

  I took a mouthful of champagne. “Is Peter upset about it?”

  Jess shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s being a bit odd at the moment.” She changed the subject. “Madeleine phoned him to say she’s coming down tomorrow. She spoke to someone in the village and they told her MacKenzie targeted you because you knew him from before. Now she wants to talk to whoever’s in charge of the inquiry.”

  “Why?”

  Jess shrugged. “Maybe she thinks there’s money in it.”

  “How?”

  “Cheque-book journalism.” She rubbed her thumb and forefinger together. “You’re back in the news-or could be if your anonymity’s blown. She’ll sell your story like a shot if Bagley gives it to her. She was pumping Peter for all he was worth over the phone. Who was MacKenzie? Where had you met him? She said she’d read that he was wanted for abduction in Iraq…and it wasn’t difficult to put two and two together.”

  “What did Peter say?”

  “That he’s been warned to keep his mouth shut in case it jeopardizes a future trial.” She picked up her glass and examined it. “He says Bagley’s bound to give her the details of what happened…if only to winkle out any information she might have.”