Tower of Silence

by Sarah Rayne

  First she tied William to one of the rusting pipes protruding from the copper boiler, and then positioned him so that he was leaning back against it. After this she twisted her mother’s hands behind her back and bound them tightly with thin tough nylon rope. She bound her ankles in the same way and stood, considering. Enough? No, she could wind the rope around Leila’s upper arms as well, so that they were clamped to her body. It was absolutely vital that her mother did not manage to loosen the ropes. She bent over, tightening a knot. Yes, that was better. The bitch would never be able to work free of those cords. Now for the next part.

  Working with care, testing the strength of each section of rope and the toughness of each knot she made, she bound her mother’s body to that of her father, so that they were face to face. It amused her to position her father’s arms around his wife, in the travesty of an embrace. She thought she heard Christabel laughing as this was done, and then she realised it was her own laughter. It sounded faintly eerie in the dank enclosed space, and there was a faint echo. Mary thought she had better remember not to laugh like that again.

  It was lucky that William’s body had not yet stiffened in rigor mortis, because it was easy to tie his arms into place, and turn his head so that the dead eyes stared straight into his wife’s, and so that the sick-crusted lips were only inches from his wife’s lips.

  It was lucky, as well, that Leila Maskelyne was thin, because it made it easier to manipulate her. ‘Grief,’ Leila often said, ordering a smaller size skirt or dress. ‘Grief strips the flesh from one’s bones, I am afraid.’

  It would not be grief that would strip the flesh from Leila’s bones now. It would be the embrace of her dead and decomposing husband.

  Mary thought it would take about a week for Leila to die. She was going to enjoy watching it happen.

  Emily was going to Teind House every day at the moment, on account of Miss March’s having a writer staying there for two whole weeks. Miss March had seemed a bit jumpy about it; Emily thought she probably had an image either of a frumpy scholarly person with scragged-back hair and lisle stockings, or a husky-voiced female with draped scarves and a pink feather boa and too-elaborate make-up from the 1950s. Barbara Cartland, maybe, or that woman who wrote those books about girls from poor homes becoming millionairesses and heads of industry, and marrying gorgeous hunky men along the way. Emily did not think Joanna Savile was likely to fall into either of these categories, which was just as well, because if she had done Selina would never have coped.

  Joanna Savile was neither frumpy nor elaborate, of course. Her hair was great, but although she was quite nice-looking you would probably not have crossed the road to look at her a second time. Her clothes were great, as well. She wore jackets like velvet patchwork quilts and she had a Chinese-red silk skirt you would die to own. Emily wondered whether, if she saved up her Teind House and Inchcape School wages for about six months, she would be able to afford a skirt like that. It made the idea she had had about having a butterfly tattoo on her shoulder seem a bit tacky.

  Joanna–she had told Emily to call her that, because she said breakfast-time was not a time for being formal–was going to Moy to get some background for a new book. She was meeting Patrick Irvine: she asked if Emily knew him, and Emily said, carefully, that she did. She thought it would be better not to say that most of the female staff at Moy fancied Dr Irvine rotten. If he had not been so old Emily might have fancied him herself, but he was at least forty so it was out of the question.

  ‘Is he good-looking?’ asked Joanna. ‘I could do with seeing a good-looking man at the moment; my husband’s working abroad.’ She grinned when she said this, and quite suddenly she was not merely vaguely nice-looking, she was absolutely beautiful. Emily stared at her.

  ‘He’s in Spain,’ Joanna went on, eating toast and honey with industrious pleasure. She could probably scoff food all day and never put on an ounce. ‘He’s in the northern part, near the Pyrenees. The people he works for are mounting a display of western versus eastern religion, which means northern Spain and then across to the Czech Republic and as far east as possible. I don’t think they’ve got much further than chasing Inquisition thumbscrews in Spain yet, but Krzystof’s probably having a wonderful time, the rat. Have you ever been to that part of Spain, Emily?’

  But Emily had only been to a couple of eastern Spanish resorts on package holidays and they had not been all that different from Blackpool except the weather was better and the food unfamiliar. And although the Spanish boys she had met talked a lot about making beautiful love all night, the one she had finally gone to bed with had suffered from premature ejaculation, which had been embarrassing for both Emily and the boy. But clearly she could not say any of this to Joanna Savile, so she said, ‘Um, no, I haven’t,’ and asked should she bring fresh toast or more coffee.

  She wondered what sort of man somebody like Joanna would have married. People married the most surprising partners. Emily hoped Joanna’s husband matched her. The name Krzystof sounded Romanian or Russian, or something equally dark and romantic and passionate. Emily hoped Krzystof was drop-dead gorgeous and nice into the bargain.

  Patrick Irvine was not really surprised when the governor asked him to talk to Joanna Savile.

  ‘You deal with her, will you, Patrick?’ the governor had said. ‘It’s more your territory than mine, this business of creative writing workshops.’ He added that in any case Patrick had more experience at handling women, and took himself off to a finance meeting to consider orderly reports and quarterly budget reviews, which were the things he understood best.

  Patrick, in fact, was perfectly agreeable to setting up some kind of gathering so that Ms Savile could study a few of the more intelligent of Moy’s inmates. It often worked both ways, that kind of arrangement: the inmates liked to see a new face, especially a nice-looking one, Moy got an outside speaker without having to trawl the lists, and on this occasion their image might be boosted by having an acknowledgement in whatever work was in the melting pot. Joanna Savile was not a bestseller, but she wrote good mystery books that you saw in libraries and bookshops, usually with the sub-heading ‘A Jack Tallent Mystery’. Patrick was always curious to see the effect that visitors had on the patients, and he would be intrigued to see how they coped with a writer of popular thrillers.

  His first impression of Joanna Savile was very similar to Emily’s: nice-looking, but not outstanding. She explained about wanting to study a handful of Moy’s more seriously disturbed inmates, and said it did not matter which ones; she simply wanted an all-round view of life inside a mental institution if that was possible.

  ‘I’d make sure there was a proper acknowledgement to Moy in the preface when the book comes out, of course,’ she said, seated in Patrick’s office, her face alight with enthusiasm. ‘And one to you as well, Dr Irvine, if medical etiquette doesn’t ban it–I’m never sure about things like that.’

  She smiled, and Patrick instantly revised his first opinion. It was the smile that did it. It was extraordinary. In the space of a single heartbeat, Joanna Savile switched from being an unremarkable young woman to a confiding and rather sexy gamine. Patrick said, ‘If it turns out that I’ve been of any help, I’d be rather honoured to be acknowledged, Ms Savile.’

  ‘Joanna.’

  ‘Joanna. Good. I’m Patrick.’

  ‘Irish?’ she said, putting her head on one side as if assessing him.

  ‘On my mother’s side.’

  ‘I thought you might be. It’s the eyes. And there’s a trace of accent as well.’

  ‘My father was Scottish, though. Hence the Irvine part. Not the easiest of mixes, Scots and Irish.’

  ‘My husband’s half Hungarian. But mostly the English half has the upper hand.’ The smile showed again, briefly. ‘But the Hungarian’s there just often enough to keep people on their toes. You’re not very happy about one-to-one interviews with inmates, are you?’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘I thought you wou
ldn’t be. Well then, how about this for a deal? I could give a talk to your more literate people–any of them you think might be interested in creative writing. I could even set up a couple of workshops for them, if that would be allowed–say three or four sessions, giving them some writing projects. I don’t mean “What I did in the hols”, or “My pet parrot”, but things they might find interesting, or even helpful. I’d discuss it with you first, of course, in case I was trespassing on any therapy.’

  ‘Most forms of writing are therapy anyway,’ said Patrick.

  ‘That’s true.’ Her eyes flickered as if something–some unpleasant memory perhaps?–had stirred. But she only said, ‘You see, simply by meeting some of the inmates and talking to them I’d get a fair idea of their lives in here and the routines of their days.’ Before he could break in, she went on, ‘I do know I could get that from your warders, but it’s the prisoners’ point of view I want. Working it this way would give me that, and it would also give you an outside speaker. I’m not the world’s greatest lecturer, but I’ve talked to quite a number of writers’ groups and adult learning set-ups over the years, and I’m not bad.’

  ‘It sounds a reasonable quid pro quo,’ said Patrick. He studied her. ‘Tell me how you’d approach it when the audience was a clutch of mentally disturbed murderers and rapists.’

  He had used these words deliberately to see if she could be thrown off balance. But she was not. She leaned forward, her thin hands moving expressively, and said, ‘I don’t know that I’d approach it very differently. Presumably they aren’t murdering or raping twenty-four hours a day. And what I’ve done with potentially awkward groups before is to start them off with music. Play a few pieces to them, and then see what word-pictures they conjure up.’ Again the grin. ‘I expect that’s first-year psychiatry-course stuff, isn’t it?’

  ‘We do use music in therapy, sometimes,’ said Patrick.

  ‘Are you being tactful?’

  ‘Not really. I’m interested. Go on.’

  Joanna paused, frowning slightly as if assembling her thoughts. She said, ‘Do they watch much television, your patients?’

  ‘Yes. Too much, most of them.’

  ‘I’ve got a tape of some of the great classic pieces used in TV commercials. The Bach Air in G for Hamlet cigars, of course, and Delibes’ Flower Duet for British Airways. Dvorak’s New World Symphony—’

  ‘Hovis bread?’

  ‘Yes. Yes. Well, all right, I know it’s probably a bit obvious, but it works quite well. To start with–mostly to break the ice–I’d make a little quiz for them. Playing the pieces and seeing if they could match the TV advert to them. It needn’t be very competitive–just a fun thing. After that we’d discuss why which music was chosen for which product: what emotions did the ad-makers hope to inspire? And from there, with luck, it’d be a fairly easy step to playing other pieces–deeper stuff–and asking them to write down their reactions. Some of them might want to drop out at that point, but there might be enough who’d want to go on to a second or even a third session, perhaps with a bit more advanced stuff. Then I could set them exercises to write on specific subjects, or ask for suggestions for short stories, and have group criticism.’ She regarded him. ‘What do you think? Any good?’

  ‘Yes, certainly.’ Patrick thought about it for a moment, and then said, ‘I’d have to choose the participants carefully. Off the top of my head I can think of about six or eight who would be genuinely interested, and whom you’d probably find very worthwhile.’ He glanced up at her. ‘The thing is that with any kind of outside speaker we always have the problem of time-wasters. Life in here gets monotonous for most of them, and there’s an element that will sign up for anything going, regardless of whether they’re interested in it.’ He did not say that there was an element that might get a sexual kick out of sitting in Moy’s small lecture room with a female talking to them.

  ‘I wouldn’t necessarily mind opportunists being in the group,’ said Joanna.

  ‘No, but I would. It might lead to a difficult situation,’ said Patrick. ‘They might start barracking–they aren’t here purely because they’re mentally sick, these people; they’re also here because they’ve committed serious crimes. Moy isn’t a place for charming rogues or Ealing-film bank robbers. You’d be in amongst the murderers and the child-molesters. It’d be important that you didn’t forget that, not for a minute.’

  ‘I do know that,’ said Joanna, after a moment. ‘You’ve just had Mary Maskelyne transferred here, haven’t you?’

  There was an odd little silence. Patrick, no slouch when it came to gauging another’s emotion, thought: you’ve been waiting to plant that, my girl. Now why, I wonder? Is it Maskelyne you’re really after? Is all this stuff about background just a blind? But he said, equably, ‘Yes, Maskelyne is one of my people. I’m still assessing her, but I think she might be included in your group. She’s an intelligent girl.’

  ‘“Girl”? She must be well over forty by now.’

  ‘She’s forty-five, in fact. According to her file, she’s kept a diary at various times. That indicates a fair degree of literacy. Yes, I think we could include her.’ He made a note, and added a few other names.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Joanna. ‘I won’t take up any more of your time: I expect you’re fiendishly busy. But–would you phone me at Teind House with a possible day? Here’s the number. Teind House, care of Miss March. I’m in Inchcape for at least two weeks and I could fit in with any day you wanted.’

  ‘I’ll sound out the wing governors,’ said Patrick. ‘But let’s provisionally say Thursday afternoon, shall we? At two o’clock? That would mean their lunch would be over and the half-hour recreation would just have finished.’ He considered briefly the idea of inviting her to lunch beforehand. No, she would probably be too taken up with the preparations.

  ‘Thursday at two would be fine,’ said Joanna, standing up and holding out her hand. As Patrick Irvine took it, he thought it was rather a pity about the Hungarian husband.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Mary did not especially want to attend some crappy talk by some even crappier female writer, but Dr Irvine had sounded as if he would like her to go, and for the moment it was probably a good idea to play along with him. They had had several discussions now: it was actually quite stimulating to find ways to dodge Dr Irvine’s calculatedly worded questions. Mary could see through most of them, of course, because she knew by this time how these doctors worked. They tried to set snares for you, and sometimes they placed depth-charges deep inside your mind, so that you would find yourself reacting or responding when you least expected it. Mary was not going to fall into any stupid doctor’s traps.

  At best, being at the talk might give her a chance to spy out Moy’s possibilities. So far, these had been non-existent. Moy was famous for its extremely high security: the word had even passed into the language. ‘As safe as Moy,’ people said, in the same way that they said, ‘As impenetrable as Fort Knox.’ But that meant that it was going to be extremely difficult to find a chink in Moy’s armour and burrow beneath it, and turn things to her advantage.

  The years inside the different prisons had melted into one another, and time had sometimes blurred a bit. Mary often felt there were huge gaps in her life–black pits of incredible tedium in which she had become trapped and during which absolutely nothing of any interest had happened. The thing to do was to recognise these pits for what they were, and to climb out of them by making something happen. There were any number of ways that could be done–she had tried several–but the result was almost always the same. Public interest in the original double murder was revived, and articles were written by people who thought they understood what had motivated it, sometimes comparing Mary with Myra Hindley or Rosemary West. And practically overnight Mary became a Somebody all over again. A person to be treated with respect. Warders and fellow inmates who had more or less forgotten what she had done looked at her through different eyes, often with awed curi
osity. Mary could feel their thoughts clearly. Did she really do those things? they were wondering. She looks quite normal now, but how must she have looked when she committed those murders? She always made a point of looking her best at these times because of everyone’s interest.

  And always, after these articles appeared, people began writing to Mary all over again. New generations of angry teenagers grew up, and wrote to Mary saying they absolutely identified with what she had done all those years ago: they hated their parents who did not understand them, and they wished they had Mary’s courage. Some said they were going to leave home because their parents would not let them go clubbing all night, but some wrote how they had been abused–how fathers or uncles had been secretly screwing them since they were eleven–and how they were one day going to kill them, just as Mary had killed her father. These teenagers–who were not all girls–did not always just use the word ‘screwed’.

  Mary would have liked to reply to these letters, especially to the girls, urging them to go ahead, not to be afraid, telling them that their evil selfish fathers and uncles deserved to die writhing in agony. But the first time she tried it, the letters were intercepted, and she was told curtly that they were regarded as incitement to murder and could not be sent. Years later, at Broadacre, when she met Ingrid, she found out that if it had not been for those letters she might have been allowed a phone card so that she could make calls from one of the hooded phone boxes that smelt of stale sweat and halitosis. Mary said, ‘But who would I ring up? I don’t know anybody,’ and Ingrid had laughed and said, You know me. Mary had regarded her, and thought: yes, I do, because you’re easy to know. But you’ll never really know me, not if I can help it…

  Some of the letters asked how Mary had managed for so many years without having sex. Mary thought they were probably try-ons to see if she would start up a titillating correspondence with boys of fifteen and sixteen, who wanted to be turned on by reading about masturbation or lesbianism. She did not bother to reply to these, even though it was a joke for people to think she had to manage without sex. She had not had to manage without sex at all; she had had all the sex she had wanted, and she could probably have had more if she could have been bothered.