The Sting of Death

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ he said desperately. ‘They’ll turn up.’

  I’m phoning the police now,’ she said. ‘What was all that stuff you told me earlier on? People looking for Justine? What did you really tell them?’

  ‘That she’s gone camping,’ he said loudly. ‘The truth.’

  ‘So why are people looking for her?’ Sheena repeated. ‘Philip, I’ve had the feeling for the past half hour that something is terribly wrong.’

  ‘No, no,’ he persisted. ‘Look, don’t call the police this evening. It’ll be dark in a bit. They’re not going to do anything until tomorrow, are they? Wait till then. Justine might phone us this evening, anyway. Georgia won’t come to any harm.’

  She clenched her fists ineffectually. ‘I don’t see any point in waiting. They’ll ask why we delayed.’ She looked into his eyes, trying to read him. ‘Are you truly not worried?’

  ‘Truly not,’ he said, unblinking.

  She glanced at her watch. She had only missed a few minutes of the conference call. It would probably go on for at least an hour. Philip had given her a firm assurance. She continued to watch him. ‘Aren’t you afraid for Georgia?’ she asked one last time, with genuine curiosity. ‘Doesn’t it occur to you that you might have handed her over to a psychopath? Or that they’ve both been murdered? Why aren’t you showing more concern? Why aren’t you as scared as I am?’

  ‘I’m scared,’ he laughed tightly. ‘Believe me, I’m scared. But not for Georgia.’

  Drew felt very much in the way as Roma and Laurie slowly began to realise that Justine needed more than a drink and somewhere to lie down, but it didn’t seriously occur to him to leave. After all, he had been asked to find the girl, and her sudden reappearance was far too interesting for him to miss whatever might happen next. Roma came back from making up a bed, finding Justine sunk exhaustedly into Laurie’s usual chair, showing no sign of wanting to climb the stairs.

  Roma was stiffly furious, from the look of her. She had introduced Drew, adding, ‘He’s been looking for you, as it happens.’

  Drew’s immediate thought was that Maggs should be there. It seemed all wrong without her. She’d have enjoyed it enormously. As for him, he simply felt embarrassed.

  Justine’s eyes narrowed ‘Looking for me? Why?’

  ‘He won’t hurt you,’ said Roma, contempt clear in her voice. ‘I should think he’s as curious as I am to hear what you have to say for yourself.’

  Justine let her head flop back. ‘I don’t think I can,’ she said faintly.

  ‘Start from the beginning,’ Laurie advised calmly. ‘If you’re feeling well enough, that is. You’re probably thirsty, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’d love some orange juice or something,’ she admitted, seeming very small in the deep chair. Bare feet added to the waiflike image. Drew had a sense of struggle to maintain a fragile poise. Roma didn’t move to fetch the drink.

  After a long minute, Laurie got up heavily, and went out of the room. As he passed Justine, he looked into her face. ‘Everything’s going to be all right,’ he said kindly.

  Roma tutted, and returned to her interrupted defence of Drew. ‘You needn’t worry about Drew. He’s family, more or less.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘His wife is Penn’s cousin. On her father’s side.’

  Justine snorted, as if this were the final straw. ‘And that’s supposed to make me trust him, is it? Penn’s insane, you know,’ she went on earnestly. ‘She tried to kill me. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.’

  Roma tutted again. ‘Rubbish!’ she said vigorously. ‘Penn’s been very worried about you. She asked Drew to try to find you.’

  ‘Are you a detective?’ the girl addressed Drew directly for the first time. He looked into the dark eyes, which were the same colour and shape as Maggs’s, he noticed, but with none of the humour or energy.

  ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I seem to wander into complications from time to time, that’s all. I’m actually an undertaker. That might account for it. I’m drawn into people’s lives at times of crisis. And when someone dies, their secrets start leaking out.’

  ‘Who said anything about anybody dying?’ Justine seemed angry. ‘Why did Penn go to an undertaker, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I think my profession was irrelevant at the time. It was just a coincidence. All she knew was that I’m married to Karen.’ It sounded unconvincing to Drew, even as he spoke. It had been the weak spot all along, as Maggs had been quick to point out.

  ‘Actually, she did know you were an undertaker,’ said Roma. ‘That’s how I knew who she was talking about. She said you were New Agey.’

  Drew gave this some thought. ‘I wonder who she’d been talking to, then? Karen wouldn’t have given her that impression.’

  ‘You are rather famous, you know,’ Roma informed him. ‘It’s not the local press any more. Even I saw the piece about you in The Guardian not so long ago, and I hardly bother with the papers. Penn probably saw it, and made the connection with her cousin’s surname.’

  Laurie came back with the orange juice, and handed it solicitously to Justine. ‘They’re not interested in me,’ she said to him in a little girl voice. ‘They keep talking about Penn.’

  Roma smacked the table with the flat of her hand, not hard, but more than enough to indicate her frame of mind. ‘Perhaps Penn’s more interesting,’ she said unpleasantly.

  She doesn’t like her own daughter, Drew realised. The hints had been there, from Roma herself, but now he experienced it for himself, and it came as a shock, even though he wasn’t inclined to like Justine very much himself, the way she was behaving at the moment. Had she always been hard to like, or had Roma’s antipathy created a person who had come to expect the whole world to feel the same as her mother did? It seemed to Drew that the answer to this mattered quite a lot.

  ‘Nothing’s changed, has it, Mum?’ Justine said. ‘You still think I’m a waste of space.’

  ‘Prove to me otherwise,’ Roma invited. ‘Go on, I’m waiting. You turn up here looking like a Bosnian asylum seeker on a bad day, and then start whingeing about God knows what. Please, tell us why you’re here.’

  ‘Penn kidnapped me and held me prisoner in a foul derelict hovel,’ Justine said, looking from face to face as if expecting to be disbelieved. ‘She locked me in, and left me, with my hands tied behind me. I only had horrible water that came through a hole in the roof. If it hadn’t rained I’d be dead by now.’ She held out her wrists for inspection. They were banded by weals and raw places where the skin had rubbed away.

  Roma met Drew’s eye. Each raised brows, in silent question. Drew felt the room dividing into factions, him and Roma against Justine and Laurie.

  ‘Where? Where did she leave you?’ Roma demanded.

  ‘I had no idea at the time, but when I finally got out and found a road, it turned out to be a place near Glastonbury.’

  ‘So how did you get out?’ Drew asked. ‘Did you unscrew the hinges?’ Unscrewing the hinges was Drew’s own personal contingency plan, should such a fate ever befall him.

  ‘I tried,’ she turned to him earnestly. ‘But the screws wouldn’t budge. There wasn’t a screwdriver, so I had to use a knife. I broke two blades before I gave up.’

  Roma cleared her throat. ‘This sounds like a rather weak B-movie,’ she remarked. ‘Are you sure you haven’t lost your grip, dear?’

  ‘I knew you’d say that.’ Justine laid both hands palms upwards in her lap, deliberately calm. ‘How do you think I got these marks, then?’

  ‘She’s obviously had a terrible time,’ Laurie insisted nervously. ‘We should hear her out.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Justine threw him a smile. ‘She thinks I’ve staged the whole thing as some bizarre act of cruelty against her. Don’t you?’ she challenged her mother.

  Roma sniffed, like an offended headmistress. ‘I still have no idea what to think,’ she said imperiously. ‘So far you haven’t made any sense at all.’
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br />   ‘Perhaps you should keep quiet and listen,’ said the girl, wincing as she altered her position. You say everyone’s been looking for me – right? I said, didn’t I? They’re out to get me.’ She grew wild-eyed, turning her head to face them all, one by one.

  ‘Nobody’s out to get you,’ Roma contradicted her impatiently. ‘You sound like a madwoman. Who might they be, anyway? Have a bit of sense.’

  ‘They’ve been worried about you,’ Laurie explained soothingly. ‘Penn in particular. She told Drew you’d gone missing and then phoned us here. She thought you were in trouble.’

  Justine coughed inarticulate indignation at this. Laurie smiled understandingly, adding, ‘Then Drew went to your place and saw your landlord.’

  Justine turned to Drew. ‘Really? What did you think, when you saw the cottage?’

  ‘I thought it looked as if you’d left in a hurry.’

  ‘Right. I did. She tricked me into getting into my own car, with her driving …’ She shook her head, apparently at her own folly. ‘Then she parked in the woods, and attacked me.’

  ‘How?’ Drew was fascinated.

  ‘She pushed a pad into my face that smelt disgusting. Chloroform, I suppose. She must have had it all ready.’

  ‘Where’s your car now?’ Drew pressed, remembering the description of it.

  ‘Still tucked away in the woods, probably. When I woke up, we were getting out of her car and I was gagged, with my hands tied. I was so groggy and so totally astonished I didn’t put up much of a fight. Then she left me.’

  ‘So how did you get out?’ Roma asked, scepticism vivid on her face.

  ‘I managed to make a hole in the wall, beside an upstairs window. The place was made of cob and there was a soft bit. I climbed out, scrambled down a tree that had a branch within reach. It’s lucky I’m so small, but it was still a tight fit and I’ve got bruises all round my middle, where I had to force myself through. And then I fell about twenty feet and banged my knee.’

  ‘And then you walked forty miles with a bad knee and your hands tied behind you, until you got here,’ Roma supplied.

  ‘No. I hitched, actually, and walked the last half-mile.’

  ‘How did you get your hands untied?’

  Justine shuddered. ‘I almost pulled my arms out of their sockets, wriggling them round to the front. Believe it or not, it can be done. Then I chewed through the rope. It took hours.’ She threw her mother a scathing look. ‘That was before I made the hole in the wall.’

  Drew gazed at her, aware of an increasing desire to believe her. But the part about Penn was altogether incredible. There had to be lies or fantasy mixed into the story.

  ‘And how did you manage to find this place?’ Roma pressed on ruthlessly.

  Justine paused, flushing pink. ‘I looked you up, ages ago, on the Ordnance Survey. I knew how to get to you.’

  Roma was momentarily silenced, but Drew noted the effect Justine’s words had had.

  ‘I think that’s enough questions,’ said Laurie. ‘The poor girl’s dead on her feet. She needs a hot bath and clean clothes. Probably a doctor as well.’

  Justine shook her head. ‘I’m okay,’ she said. ‘Just terribly tired and stiff.’

  ‘The person you hitched with,’ Drew put in, more gently than Roma’s interrogation had been. ‘They must have been concerned about you.’

  ‘It was a young girl,’ Justine told him. ‘She was in a hurry and didn’t want to get involved in anything awkward. I told her I’d fallen over a stone in the road and scraped myself. People believe whatever you tell them.’

  Roma gave a sarcastic laugh. ‘Some people, maybe,’ she remarked.

  Laurie mumbled an inarticulate reproach and Drew suppressed a sudden urge to defend the girl against her intractable mother. This was an unfamiliar Roma and he began to regret having so unthinkingly taken her side. There was a long moment of silence.

  ‘So what happens now?’ Roma finally inquired. ‘Are you afraid that Penn will seek you out, and force you back into captivity?’

  ‘I’m hoping you won’t let her,’ Justine’s voice was stronger. ‘But she’ll tell you everything I’ve said is made up. She’ll say I’m in the habit of fantasising, and must be off my head.’

  Roma’s face clearly revealed her reaction to this. ‘Penn’s always been perfectly straight with me,’ she said. ‘She’s been an ideal niece, all her life. We get along very smoothly.’

  ‘She’s extremely devious, and she’s got something going on that she doesn’t want you or me or anyone to know about. She set this up, you know – my disappearance. She thought it all through, step by step.’

  Drew let a small sound escape his lips as he thought of all the wild theories Maggs would probably come up with at this point. Everyone looked at him. He tried to pretend he was coughing.

  ‘But why?’ Roma returned to the point. ‘Why on earth would she do that?’

  ‘I spent days trying to think of an answer to that,’ Justine replied. ‘And all I could come up with was that she’s always hated me, and this is some sort of mad revenge.’

  ‘She never hated you. She adored you. She followed you around, worried about you. You were the greatest of friends, right from the start.’

  ‘No, Mum. We fought like cats. We competed over every single tiny thing. But she can’t leave me alone. She always has to score one more point over me.’ Her face crumpled suddenly. ‘But I did think she liked me, that we were friends. I still can’t believe she wants me dead.’

  Roma took a long breath. ‘Well, somebody’s obviously cracked in all this,’ she summarised. ‘I’m even beginning to think it might be me. Nothing you just said makes the slightest sense. It’s totally at odds with the way I’ve always seen the family.’

  ‘I don’t think anybody’s mad,’ said Drew, tentatively. ‘It’s like this in families; people see things differently, remember things differently, too. When you get the whole picture, you can usually see how everyone’s perception fits in.’

  ‘Come on, Drew!’ Roma protested. ‘Either Penn locked Justine up in a remote shack or she didn’t. If she did, then Penn’s got a screw loose, and if she didn’t, then Justine’s either telling a terrible lie, or else she can’t distinguish fact from fantasy. You’re not telling me there are any other interpretations, are you?’

  ‘Obviously there are,’ Drew said. ‘Penn could have very sane and sound reasons for doing what she did. She could be following orders from someone else. Or she could have shut Justine in by mistake …’

  Justine laughed unpleasantly. ‘No, she didn’t do it by mistake,’ she told him. ‘It was all very very deliberate.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘Den?’ Julie flapped a sheet of paper at him, the moment he walked into the police station. ‘There’s a new development at that farm out at Tedburn – the one that reported the missing woman. Apparently there’s a missing child as well, now. Exeter were going to take it, but they noticed your name’s down as having some involvement there this week. Wonders of computers, eh?’

  ‘What?’ He snatched the paper from her. ‘When did this come in?’

  ‘Ten minutes ago. Danny said it’d wait until you got here. The parents seem pretty sure the missing woman has got the kid, and there’s no obvious danger. Just a weird story. You’d better go and see them.’

  He frowned in puzzlement. ‘Nobody’s mentioned a child up to now. Whose is it?’

  ‘Georgia Renton,’ supplied Julie, pointing to a line on the sheet of paper. ‘Aged three. Daughter of Mrs Sheena Renton, who called us. Says she thought the kid was with its grandma, but found out from her husband that he let the Pereira girl from the cottage take her on a camping trip.’

  Den sighed, well accustomed to garbled jottings from telephone conversations. ‘It really isn’t our patch,’ he reminded her. ‘I think we ought to leave it to Exeter.’

  ‘No, but this Renton woman asked for you by name. They want to see the same person again.’

&nb
sp; He could not quite avoid a small glow of pleasure at being personally chosen. ‘Oh well, can’t disappoint them, then.’ Privately, he resolved to call Drew Slocombe or his young partner before turning up at the farm. It might be unprofessional, but the whole case had a maverick feel to it – something and nothing – even if things now seemed to be escalating. The child sounded to be more mislaid than dangerously lost. Given the wishy-washy collection of vague facts and half suspicions, it seemed to him quite reasonable to involve the undertaker, not to mention the captivating Maggs.

  * * *

  Maggs listened with total attention as Drew recounted the bizarre evening at Roma’s house. ‘Phone Penn,’ she ordered him. ‘See what she’s got to say for herself.’

  ‘I can’t. At least, I can’t mention Justine. She’s genuinely scared of Penn finding out where she is. She doesn’t seem to trust Roma to keep her safe.’

  ‘Probably with good reason. She doesn’t sound much of a mother.’

  ‘I think Roma’s the one person in all this that’s okay,’ Drew defended. ‘She might have made a bit of a mess of her relationship with Justine, but otherwise I think she’s a hundred per cent. Look at the way she’s got her life sorted.’

  Maggs pursed her lips. ‘This I must see,’ she decided. ‘I can’t make proper connections if I haven’t met the people.’

  ‘I’ve told you everything there is to know about them,’ he assured her.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Drew. You know what you’re like with older women.’ She looked him in the eye, and he could hear the unspoken words, Remember Genevieve.

  ‘Well, you can’t just show up and put them under your expert scrutiny, can you?’

  ‘Maybe not,’ she mused. ‘But I could probably think of something. I could pretend to be a gypsy selling clothes pegs.’

  ‘You’re too black to be a gypsy,’ he told her. ‘You could be one of those wretched disadvantaged youths who sell dusters and gadgets that don’t work and cost ten pounds. Except they always seem to be male.’