by Ann Troup
In stories in magazines: ‘My husband tried to kill me’, ‘My ordeal at the hands of my mother’, ‘My secret love child’. All messages, all for her. Hadn’t Jeremy Kyle yelled her sin at her every morning for years now? The newspapers had been battling with her stupidity for months, but they’d worked out that subtlety didn’t work with stupid Stella. Finally, they had published her picture, to make sure she finally understood.
The headline had spelled it out in black and white: ‘Is this the inconspicuous face of evil?’ When the police had found her, she had almost rejoiced. Yes, I am. I am the inconspicuous face of evil. That’s why she had sought out her father, to check with him that she had interpreted the messages correctly. He hadn’t made much sense, had refused to know her for a time. Not that she blamed him. Then one day he had looked her square in the face, his eyes clear with recognition, and he had said those words. Peccavi, peccavisti.
Now that she had finally understood, everyone was being nice to her. The policewoman who returned her belongings smiled and held the door for her. The man who had told her he was a doctor smiled at her and wished her luck, told her that he would arrange for her to have a check-up with a consultant for the following week. He was pleasant about it, but there was a clear warning there. They would be checking up on her. No room for mistakes this time.
After leaving the police station, she had wondered where she should go. She thought about the flat above the shop, but it wasn’t the right place to do what she needed to do. She knew that she was being followed. People were looking at her. Until she took the road that led to The Limes. Then she was alone, no followers, no disapproving whispers. All alone. She knew that this was the right place to go. Home.
Everything had already been prepared for her. The police had left signs telling other people not to enter. The house was empty, cleaned of its contents so that there were no distractions for her. She was angry with herself; she should have worked it all out weeks ago. But no matter, she was here now. The sense that everything was finally going to be solved was a balm to soothe her soul. Stella felt peaceful, serene and serendipitous, and very far from stupid.
Chapter 24
Diana Lovell had been surprised to find Rachel waiting for her when she got home from the library that day, even more surprised to see the state of the girl. She had dropped her books and lurched forward to catch her just as the expression on Rachel’s face had mutated from relief at Diana’s arrival to pallid dread as her legs gave way.
Diana had managed to get her inside the house and into a chair. She’d wanted to call an ambulance, or at least a doctor, but Rachel had insisted and told her she had been discharged from hospital the night before, that she had medication but just needed someone to help her out for a few days. Would Diana let her stay? Diana had instantly agreed. There was no way the girl could cope on her own, and Diana knew that there was no one else to look after her.
After she had tucked her up under a quilt on the sofa, made sure she had taken her medication, and waited with her until she fell asleep, Diana contemplated the nature of their friendship.
She had first met Rachel on Blackfriars Bridge, on a cold and foggy February morning five years before. Diana had always loved the London of early morning when the city was magnificent and quiet. Its dirty beauty unhampered by the bustle of the day and unsullied by the hordes that swarmed its streets like voracious termites. Just after dawn was the only time Diana could almost guarantee she would not hear a police siren, a scream or a cacophony of arguing voices. So, that was when she walked.
The few people she did see on her dawn constitutionals she ignored, and they ignored her. They were either too busy getting where they wanted to go, or still too drunk from the night before to be bothered with the niceties of being polite to strangers. At first, she had walked past the girl on the bridge. Though Rachel was forty now, she’d always been a girl to Diana. Something had drawn her back, as if an invisible thread had caught on her clothes and halted her progress. She had paused a few feet away and followed the girl’s gaze to the water below. ‘Tempting sometimes, isn’t it?’ she’d said.
‘Never quite tempting enough,’ Rachel had said, taking a step backwards, away from the balustrade that edged the bridge.
‘Did you know that years ago there were people specifically employed to dredge this river for bodies? I have always thought that it must have been a particularly oppressive occupation,’ Diana had mused. There was something peculiarly compelling about this lost soul. ‘I was just about to treat myself to a full-fat latte macchiato, my pre-breakfast tipple. Would you care to join me?’
Rachel had glanced behind her briefly, as if Diana had been issuing the invitation to someone else.
‘There’s a rather pleasant little café just over the bridge in Southwark. It opens early, just me and a few of the more discerning cabbies usually,’ she added as if the extra information would act as some kind of inducement.
Rachel had looked at her dubiously.
Diana had smiled and flapped her hand. ‘Oh, ignore the dog collar. I’m not trying to save you. Just offering to buy you a cup of coffee. In fact, to be honest with you, I’m having rather a crisis of faith at the moment. God and I aren’t seeing eye to eye.’
‘Then I’m the last person you should be talking to,’ Rachel had said.
But she had accompanied her anyway. And over the years, they had become friends of sorts. Diana had developed a great deal of affection for Rachel, mainly because Rachel demanded so little from her, had no questions that demanded answers beyond Diana’s knowledge, wanted nothing in exchange for her company. In fact, the request for help and shelter was the first thing Rachel had ever asked for, yet she had given Diana so much. Though she would never acknowledge it.
That first morning, as they had sipped their coffee, Rachel had asked, ‘Are you a vicar?’ Diana had shaken her head. ‘No, merely a curate. A part-timer I’m afraid. Though I am sometimes trusted to collect the hymnbooks,’ she’d quipped.
Rachel had given her half a smile.
‘What about you?’ Diana had asked, hoping that it sounded casual.
‘Me? Oh, I’m nothing much – a bit of a curate’s egg if you like,’ Rachel had replied, with the other half of the smile. ‘I’m all bad, but you’ll be too polite to say so.’
Diana had never found out which bit of Rachel was bad. She’d had to assume that it must mean the epilepsy, but knew that it was not. Rachel held a belief that she was inherently bad, but always refused to explain her conviction. The girl was not a talker, and that was part of her appeal.
The pieces of her history that Diana had managed to glean had been information Rachel had accidentally released in occasional lapses. The rest of Diana’s impressions were the profits of guesswork – that and an innate talent for jigsaw puzzles. Though Rachel was the type of puzzle where there were so many pieces missing that only a vague impression of the finished article could be formed. Diana had assembled enough of the picture to establish that there had been a difficult childhood, an early trauma and a bad relationship. She had the shapes, but no detail. It both frustrated and intrigued her.
In her experience, Rachel had always been unstintingly generous, almost singlehandedly funding the women’s centre that Diana ran. In fact, she had been there supporting the centre from its original inception. The idea had been needling away at Diana’s conscience way before she met Rachel. In her role as curate of an impoverished parish in the East End, she had hoped to be able to provide something more than a poorly attended service on a Sunday. She had wanted to be active in the community and give something to the people, particularly the women.
The church, or more specifically the bishop, whose incumbents were somewhat of a burden to him, had not supported her ideas or her efforts. After that, Diana had left the church, realising that her crisis of faith had been with the church, not God.
At her lowest ebb, God had provided – he had sent Rachel to her. Not only did Rachel financially
support the centre, but through her property portfolio she had provided good-quality housing for many women who had suffered domestic violence or who were just down on their luck with no way out. As far as Diana was concerned, Rachel was a saint, and she didn’t see her nearly often enough.
To see her so pale and ill was heartbreaking in the extreme. It was impossible to imagine what it must be like to suffer from an illness that could cause so much direct harm. It was equally impossible to know what she could do to help. But Diana’s home was Rachel’s home for as long as it was needed. In fact, as Rachel owned the house, it needed no consideration at all.
Though Diana knew where Rachel lived, she had never visited. Rachel’s privacy was sacrosanct, as was Diana’s faith. It was an unspoken rule and mutually unquestioned that neither would ever cross the line. However, it didn’t stop Diana from being curious and wanting to complete the picture.
As she prepared vegetable soup for them both, Diana pondered on the circumstances of Rachel’s injuries. Something must have triggered the fit. Rachel’s epilepsy was erratic, but rarely that bad. It was one of the few subjects that Rachel was prepared to talk about, so Diana was well versed in the path of the illness. For instance, she knew that stress was a major trigger for Rachel.
To an extent, it was pointless to speculate. Rachel wouldn’t tell her. In fact, it would be hard enough to get her to have the soup, let alone disclose her secrets. Diana had never known someone so indifferent to food. In her world, there were two great comforts in life: faith in God and a good dinner.
‘Rachel, I’ve brought you some soup,’ she said, placing the tray on the coffee table before gently shaking Rachel’s shoulder.
‘Uh?’ Rachel uttered, her reactions bleary. ‘I’m not really hungry. But thank you.’
‘I don’t care whether you’re hungry or not – you’re going to have the damned soup. Now, sit up and eat!’ Diana demanded in a tone that brooked no argument.
Rachel looked as if she knew when she was beaten, and took the soup. Diana wished the girl would tell her all the things that had happened in the last few days, but she knew that she was Rachel’s only friend and she dreaded alienating her by pushing too hard. So, she swallowed the wish down with her own bowl of soup.
***
Amy was distraught, adamant that they had to find Rachel.
‘I have no idea where to start, Amy. What do you want me to do?’ Charlie pleaded, completely at a loss. He was worried too, but Rachel had always been a law unto herself. She could be anywhere. There were close to nine million people in London and Amy’s expectation was that he could just wander through the morass of the city and pluck her out of the crowd.
‘Someone must know where she’s gone; she must have friends, contacts, something? We can’t just not know where she is. You didn’t see her, Dad – she was a mess. It’s all my fault. If something happens to her, it will be my fault,’ she cried, tears bulging in her eyes.
That did it for Charlie; he never could stand seeing her upset. ‘OK, we’ll try, all right? We’ll try.’
Amy wiped her face, and sniffed loudly. ‘We could ask in the local shops and stuff. Someone’s bound to know her.’
Charlie nodded. If he knew Rachel as well as he thought he did, it would be a dead end. But if it kept Amy happy, they could try.
Amy attacked the task with unbridled enthusiasm, waltzing in and out of the shops in Queensway, hoping to find someone who knew her mother. No one did. She soon concluded that no one knew anyone in a place like this, especially when the person in question didn’t want to be known.
Charlie had trailed after her with an apologetic look on his face when she bombarded people with questions.
‘You’re not exactly trying very hard,’ Amy told him outside yet another shop where she’d had no luck.
Charlie shrugged. ‘Look, why don’t we take a break from it, get a coffee or something and rethink tactics?’
Amy looked as if she was going to argue, just for a second or two. Then she agreed. Charlie led her into the nearest café, a seedy place that smelled of old grease and burnt spices. At the counter he ordered their coffee and paid, then loitered impatiently. As it was, he wasn’t that fussed about the coffee, but his feet ached from trudging the streets and he just wanted to sit down. It wasn’t possible to just grab a coffee these days, not even in a greasy spoon joint like this. Waiters were now baristas who had to turn the simple act of producing a hot drink into a virtuoso performance.
He tapped his fingers on the edge of the sticky counter and looked around. Next to him on the wall was a cork notice board with a variety of yellowed business cards and curling notices attached. Minicabs, locksmiths, masseurs, French lessons, all the usual.
A letter of thanks for a fundraising effort was pinned there. It didn’t seem like the kind of place where charitable efforts were rife so the letter caught his attention. Apparently, the café had raised £452 for a women’s centre in Southwark. It struck Charlie as odd that a Bayswater café would be raising money for a charity in Southwark. As he absently scanned the page, he noticed a familiar name in the small print, right at the bottom of the page. The chairman of the charity was none other than R.L. Porter.
‘Gotcha,’ he said to the surprise of the man who was trying to present him with two cups of milky froth.
When the man had disappeared behind a grubby bead curtain, Charlie looked around, saw that no one was paying him any attention, and ripped the letter off the board. He shoved it into his jacket pocket, grabbed the coffee, and made his way over to Amy.
Chapter 25
Ratcliffe and Angie arrived at the hospital with two uniformed officers. Just as Peter Haines was helping Frances into her coat, the ward sister told Ratcliffe that Mrs Haines had just been discharged. That made his task even easier. He made his way down the ward with an air of gusto, a sardonic smile on his face as he spied his prey.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Haines,’ he said, watching the look of consternation that flickered briefly across her sharp features.
‘Was there something else you needed? Only I’ve been discharged. We were about to go home,’ she said, her face now suffused with an expression of helpful concern.
‘Yes, as a matter of fact there is. We have a few more questions that we would like to ask you. Would you mind coming down to the station with us?’
Frances glanced at her husband. ‘As I told your colleagues earlier, I really have nothing else to add to my statement. I really don’t see how I can be of any help.’
‘I think you can help us a great deal, Mrs Haines,’ Ratcliffe said, extending his arm as if to usher her out.
‘Now look here,’ Peter Haines interjected angrily. ‘My wife is going nowhere, except home. She has just been discharged from hospital and she is in no fit state to be interrogated about something she has no knowledge of.’
Ratcliffe glanced at Angie and raised his eyebrows. ‘I have spoken to the doctor, and he assures me that there is no reason why your wife can’t accompany us. I would prefer it if you agreed to come voluntarily.’
Underneath the thin veneer of pleasantry, Frances was as imperious as her husband. ‘And if I refuse?’
‘Then I will have no alternative but to arrest you.’
The gasp of shock came from Peter, not Frances. She just stood there, swaying slightly.
‘On what grounds?’ Peter demanded, aware that every pair of eyes on the ward were turned to him.
‘I think we should discuss that outside, don’t you, sir?’ Ratcliffe said, banking on the fact that Peter Haines was a man who liked to keep up appearances.
Peter looked around him. People were staring, whispering. He swallowed and turned to his wife. ‘Do as they say – we don’t want a scene,’ he hissed.
Frances looked at him with a mixture of dismay and disgust. ‘What?’
‘Just go, before this turns into a debacle! I’ll get Nigel Latimer to come. Just don’t say anything stupid before he gets there. In fact,
don’t say anything at all.’
‘But I haven’t done anything, Peter,’ she said.
‘That doesn’t matter. Just don’t say anything until I get there.’ With that, he left, leaving his wife to face the music alone.
‘This way, Mrs Haines,’ Ratcliffe said, indicating the direction in which her husband had just fled.
Frances set her jaw, raised her head, and walked out of the hospital with an air of what was, under the circumstances, admirable hauteur.
Ratcliffe observed her demeanour and was concerned to see certain similarities between Frances and his wife, Marie. The aura of indignation and specious innocence was tangibly familiar, so much so that it sent an unpleasant thrill through his gut. Not that he would have considered Marie capable of murder, but it occurred to him in that radical moment of truth that his wife was an exceedingly unpleasant woman too.
When Frances had been safely confined to the back of the patrol car, Angie turned to her boss. ‘What’s up?’
Ratcliffe rubbed his face wearily. ‘Nothing. Any chance I can hijack your sofa for a few nights?’
Angie frowned. ‘Why, is something wrong?’
‘Far from it, in fact everything is great. Just having a little epiphany, that’s all.’
‘OK … If you say so. Should we discuss this later perhaps, after we’ve dealt with Frances Haines?’
His phone began to ring. He took the call and turned towards her. ‘Detour,’ was all he said. Frances would keep. A few hours sitting in an interview room on her own would do her no harm at all.
***
Curling, toxic plumes of smoke billowed down the drive of The Limes, making the firefighters into masters of the disappearing act as their forms were blurred by thick clouds of the stuff. Both Ratcliffe and Angie had to squint and cover their mouths as soon as they got out of the car.
Angie managed to locate a spare fireman. She showed him her warrant card and asked him what the deal was.
‘Difficult to say what caused it yet. The chief is thinking it was deliberate. It started inside anyway, and given the pattern of combustion I’d say he’s right, but no way of knowing till we get in there, and we’re a way off that. We’ve broken the back of it but it’ll be a while before it’s completely under control.’