Dark Room

by Minette Walters

  "Not in the way you mean. She's been afraid for him as long as I've known her. 'If only Simon were more like me,' she always said, 'he'd be okay.' She was worried that he was becoming a bit of a loner. He never seemed to have any friends. I remember her saying once, 'He never plays at anything except being a priest.' "

  "Didn't it occur to her he might be ill?"

  Her expression clouded. "She asked me once if I'd noticed anything odd about him, and I said: 'What sort of thing?' 'I think he pretends.' she said. 'I'm sure he hates our parents, Mother in particular, but he never says anything unkind about her or to her. I'm the exact opposite. I'm always rude about her because she's a square peg in a round hole and won't do anything to change it, but I'm actually quite fond of the old bag, and okay, Dad's a sanctiimonious old buzzard, but I wouldn't have him any different.' " She pressed her lips into a thin line to stem her tears. "She wondered if I'd ever got the impression that Simon hated them, but as I never had, she let it drop. I know she always thought he was far too withdrawn, but I think she put that down to religious fanaticism. I'm sure it never occurred to her that he had anything to do with Russell's death." She laced her fingers nervously. "Well, it never occurred to anyone."

  "That's very clear-thank you. Let's move on. Tell us about the Sunday afternoon and this incident in your garage. What was that all about? Presumably the reference he makes in his letter to the birds having flown, and the phrase 'It was a secret but Simon made Jinx tell' had something to do with it?''

  Her hands began to tremble so violently again that she gripped them in her lap until the knuckles shone white. "It's what he says. I told him where they were. He knew they'd left Hammersmith, you see, because Meg didn't answer the phone." She stared at Cheever in desperation. "It was-he thought they'd gone to France, but he made me-I was the only one who knew." She brought herself back under control with an effort. "He came after lunch to apologize for what Meg had done," she managed. "He said he'd prayed for me during services that morning but realized prayers weren't enough and he needed to come and commiserate in person. So I laughed"-her voice broke again-"and said there was nothing to commiserate about. I said if anyone needed commiseration it would be poor old Meg in a few months' time when she discovered she'd tied herself to a mean, self-serving bastard." She swallowed painfully. "I shouldn't have laughed. I think he guessed I'd known about it for a while. He was so angry-kept talking about secrets, called Meg a whore-" She lapsed into a long silence.

  "What did he do then?" asked Frank gently.

  She shook her head.

  "I think it might be easier if I tell you," said Alan. "When he news came through yesterday that Simon was dead, Jinx told me as much as she could remember of what happened." He squatted down and pressed a warm, protective hand to the nape of her neck. "Would you like me to do that, Jinx?"

  She looked into his face for a moment, then looked away again. Why couldn't he see what he was doing to her? She was far too emotionally disturbed to survive an Alan Protheroe undamaged. She wished he would take his hand away. She wished he would go to the other side of the room. Oh God, she wished- "If you're allowed to," she said curtly.

  The Superintendent nodded. "I have no problem with that Doctor."

  Alan straightened. "Then I think it's important you understand how terrifying it is to be confronted with an individual whom you've known for years as a mild-mannered nonentity, but who, without any warning at all, becomes dangerously psychotic. This was Jinx's experience that Sunday afternoon. It's difficult to say what Simon's diagnosis would have been if he'd ever been examined, but it seems clear that he was suffering from some very extreme paranoid disorder, probably of a sexual origin, either centered on his mother or his sister, or both. I think this hatred he had of God may well have been a more general hatred of any dominant male figure, because he seems to have seen the sexual act as a degenerate exercise. Only whores enjoyed it; therefore for a man to enjoy it, he must either employ whores or make respectable women miserable." He looked inquiringly at the Superintendent. "Which may have been something his mother instilled in him. If she persuaded him that nice women found sex disgusting, then he would have had a very ambivalent attitude towards it in later life, particularly if his adored sister flaunted her libido while he curbed his by choosing voluntary celibacy within the Anglo-Catholic church."

  "His mother clearly has problems in that area but I doubt she set out deliberately to destroy her son."

  "I'm sure she didn't, and I'm sure there were other factors involved. For example, he hated being laughed at. That seems to have been one of the triggers of his paranoia. It may have been why he chose to enter the church, because he was more likely to be taken seriously inside it than he was outside. Another clear trigger was secrecy. As long as he knew what was going on, or thought he did, he could keep his paranoia under control, but the minute he discovered he had good reason to be paranoid, then the control deserted him. It's interesting what close tabs he kept on everything. Jinx says he used to phone her or Josh quite regularly, and I suspect he continued to do that after Meg and Leo were dead. He certainly phoned me to try and find out what information I had." He rubbed his shoulder thoughtfully.

  "One of the complicating factors of a paranoid disorder," he went on, "is that while it may impair your functioning on certain levels, particularly where relationships are concerned, your thinking remains clear and orderly and you can function normally within your job and the wider social environment. Which is why I told you it was important to recognize what Jinx was suddenly faced with that Sunday, and equally important that she recognize it too." He looked down at her bent head. "She's been terrified of Simon ever since she started to remember what happened, but I'm afraid she feels she didn't do enough to protect Meg and Leo, isn't that right, Jinx?" She didn't answer, and Fraser, for one, thought he was being surprisingly insensitive.

  "She went into the kitchen to make some coffee, and she thinks Simon must have hit her on the head while she was doing it, but she doesn't remember the blow. What she does remember is coming round to find herself lying on the floor with her hands tied to her feet behind her back. Simon then put a plastic bag over her head and said he would smother her if she didn't tell him where Meg and Leo were. She couldn't breathe and she believed him. So when he took the bag off her head, she told him the Chelsea address. The next thing she remembers is being pulled out of her car by her neighbor. She didn't know how long she'd been there, how long it took her to clear her head, or find the number of Leo's house in Chelsea, but by the time she phoned to tell Meg that Simon had just tried to kill her, Simon was already there. Am I right so far, Jinx?"

  Silence.

  "She was given a straightforward choice," Alan went on. Simon said, 'Leo is in the same position you were in. In other words, he will be dead of asphyxiation in two minutes. Meg is tied up but can speak into the phone if I hold it to her mouth. If you do what I tell you, they will live. If you don't, they will die.' " He brushed the back of her head with his fingertips. "She chose to help them live. She clung, as we would all have done, to the Simon she knew best. The vicar, the man who was fond of his sister, the man to whom she'd given her expensive keyring for luck. It was her tragedy, and Meg's, that they had only ever known and learned to trust Simon's false self, while his true self, the damaged self, had remained hidden. We all protect parts of ourselves-God knows it's not unusual-but for most of us the hidden self isn't dangerous."

  Jinx wiped her tears away. "I should have told Colonel Clancey. He's always been the best friend I've ever had." She sucked in her anguish on a sob. "I know some people think he's eccentric and stupid, and they make fun of him behind his back, but he would have made it all right." Her mouth worked as she sought for words. "I did it all wrong. I told the Clanceys everything was okay when it wasn't. I thought, if I just do what Simon says-because, you know, we used to play that game all the time-Simon says-but it was just arrogance-I thought I knew the right thing to do."

  Frase
r glanced at Protheroe for a permission he didn't need "It's not arrogance to believe a threat, Miss Kingsley, particularly if you knew what Simon was capable of. I'm no expert admittedly, but it sounds to me as if you acted out of love, and I'd say that does you credit."

  Alan nodded. "He said there wasn't much traffic because it was a Sunday, and that she had twenty minutes to drive her car to Leo's house in Chelsea. If she wasn't there in twenty minutes, he'd know she'd spoken to the police and he would kill Meg and Leo. Then he put Meg back on."

  "And Meg asked you to do as he said?"

  Jinx nodded.

  "What happened when you reached the house?"

  When she didn't say anything, Alan took over again. "She saw Leo briefly through an open doorway. He was lying on the floor, and from the way she described him, he had probably died of asphyxiation before she even got there, so whatever was done to him afterwards was done to disguise that fact. At least she gave Meg a chance to live by arriving when she did. Simon promised he wouldn't hurt them because he never killed women. All he wanted to do was talk. He sat them beside each other against the wall, tied their hands and feet in front of them, and talked for hours. So long, in fact, that Jinx felt he was beginning to calm down."

  "And?" asked Frank Cheever, when neither of them spoke.

  "Meg offered to have sex with him," said Alan into the silence. "She thought that's what he was after. It probably was, but he didn't want to be reminded of it." He shook his head. "To be honest, I shouldn't think it mattered a damn what Meg said. Whichever role she chose, sister, mother, lover, friend, he would still have gone off the deep end." He glanced at Jinx's fluttering hands. "But there's nothing Jinx can tell you about what happened to Meg and Leo after that," he went on. "Simon went berserk at that point, grabbed Jinx by the ankles to pull her away from Meg, then put a plastic bag over her head and taped it to her neck. All she remembers is Meg screaming and drumming her heels on the floor before she lost consciousness."

  There was another silence. "Can you tell us what happened to you. Miss Kingsley?" asked Frank. "Or would you prefer Dr. Protheroe to do it?"

  Her huge eyes searched his face, looking for understanding. "I truly don't remember very much," she said unsteadily, "except that I woke up at some point. There was a hole in the bag where my mouth was, and because my hands were crammed up under my chin, I was able to make the hole bigger. But that's all I could do. I was wedged into a sort of box and every time I tried to move, it was so painful that I gave up and went to sleep." She plucked at her lip. "I thought he'd buried me alive, and I just wanted to die." She paused, lost in some private hell. "Then the engine started and I knew I was in the trunk of my car. The funny thing is, I felt better knowing that. It didn't seem so frightening." She gave an odd little laugh. "But he was so angry," she said, "He kept kicking me and saying, get up, get up. He couldn't understand why I wasn't dead. 'You should be dead. You should have died in your garage and you should have died in your trunk. Why does God love you?' "

  "Where was that?" asked Frank.

  She looked at him blankly. "I don't know. Somewhere outside. I woke up and I was lying on the ground, but I couldn't move because I was so stiff. There was a black garbage bag round me and it smelled because I'd-" She glanced at Alan. "I think I must have been in it for hours."

  "So do you know what time it was?"

  "No, but it was getting dark."

  "Do you remember him giving you something to drink?"

  "I think so. He talked about sacrifices," she said in some confusion, "and Jesus."

  "Which is probably when you drank the wine, although if you'd been there for hours, then you were probably very dehydrated, and I doubt you drank as much as your blood sample implied. What happened next?"

  She stared down at the letter, which she'd abandoned in her lap. "I don't remember anything else." She crumpled the photocopy into a tight ball. "I don't remember anything else," she said on a rising note of alarm. "I think I remember him putting me into the car seat, but after that-I don't remember anything else."

  "That's fine," said Frank with a smile of encouragement. "I think we can work out the rest. You obviously have a very strong will to live, Miss Kingsley. I envy you your courage, and whichever guardian angel is watching over you, because I can't believe that courting couple arrived by accident." He watched her for a moment. "Dr. Protheroe tells me Simon came to visit you the day after you regained consciousness. Did you know then that he was responsible?"

  "No."

  "When did you remember?"

  She kept her head down. "Yesterday morning," she said, "when the policewoman asked me about the key ring."

  "Not before?"

  She didn't say anything.

  "Did you tell your father that Simon had murdered Meg and Leo, Miss Kingsley?"

  Her head snapped up, eyes huge with surprise. "No, of course I didn't. Why would I do that?"

  Cheever nodded. "Your brothers? Your stepmother?"

  "No."

  Alan Protheroe frowned. "Why do you ask, Superintendent?"

  Frank Cheever gave a small shrug. "Just tying up loose ends, Doctor. We don't want accusations floating around afterwards about the"-he sought for a word-"convenience of Simon Harris's suicide. One might almost say the poetic justice of how he met his end. Our problem is, there's only this letter and the bloodstains on the cassock linking him to the murders, and as the cassock had been cleaned recently, it may not produce the evidence we're looking for. We assume Simon took Leo and Meg in his own car to Ardingly Woods, but as it was completely burned out yesterday, we're very doubtful of being able to prove anything from a forensic examination. We've also examined your car, Miss Kingsley, and I have to tell you there's nothing to show you spent twelve to eighteen hours in the trunk."

  "There wouldn't be," said Alan. "Not if he wrapped her in black plastic before he put her in there."

  "I accept that. But it's a problem, nevertheless. It would have helped if you'd been able to identify him as your attacker."

  Alan nodded towards the crumpled photocopy in Jinx's hands. "You've got a written confession. Doesn't that count for anything? Presumably you've verified that it's Simon's handwriting."

  "Certainly we have, but the original is being tested at the moment for the blood and mucus stains on it. We believe Simon was bleeding from his nose when he wrote it. And that means he may have been coerced into doing it."

  "By whom."

  "We don't know, sir, which is why we're interested in finding out when Miss Kingsley began to remember and whether she told anyone about it." He glanced at Jinx. "It would be very unfortunate if doubts about Simon's guilt began to circulate."

  Alan rubbed his jaw aggressively, his fingers rasping through thick stubble. "Are you suggesting Jinx is lying about what happened, Superintendent?'' he demanded. "Because if you are, then I begin to understand why she has such a low opinion of Britain's policemen. Goddammit, man, imagine if the murdering bastard was still alive, and she tried to tell you he was guilty. She wouldn't stand a chance. You'd still be sitting there smugly, giving us this garbage about lack of evidence. Well, thank God she didn't remember before, is all I can say because she'd have been signing her own death warrant by naming him. He was obvously a psychotic with paranoid delusions, but he was quite clever enough to convince you of his innocence while he did away with the woman he held responsible for his murderous binges."

  Cheever shrugged. "You've encapsulated our dilemma rather well, sir. Personally, I have no doubts that Miss Kingsley is telling the truth. I am also hopeful that we will find other prostitutes in London who will identify Simon Harris as a client who assaulted them, which, in turn, will point to a pattern of serial criminal behavior. However, in the short term, we have a rather timely suicide on our hands which, in view of Harris's undoubted cleverness, to which you yourself referred, and his past determination to throw the blame on Miss Kingsley, raises rather too many doubts for comfort. I am sure Miss Kingsley does not want th
is story to run and run, any more than we do"-he turned his attention to Jinx and held her gaze with his-"so anything she can tell us now that will result in the coroner bringing in an unequivocal verdict of suicide would be helpful."

  Jinx nodded. "I understand," she said, glancing towards the open notebook on Fraser's lap. She thought for a moment. "I did not remember anything until the policewoman asked me about the keyring yesterday. Then it all came back to me in a rush and I was violently sick, as she will testify. I have been told since that Simon had been dead for some hours before I gave her his name. Because I did not remember who tried to kill me, I could not tell anyone who it was. Dr. Protheroe, whom I trust implicitly, and whom I would have told had I been able to remember, will testify that at no time did I ever give him a name or even hint at a name. Had I been able to remember, I would, of course, have told the Hampshire police, who from the outset of the investigation have made it clear to me that while I was a suspect, they would not allow media speculation to cloud their judgment. As a result, I have always had confidence in Superintendent Cheever and his team and have given them all the time and assistance I could."

  She looked inquiringly at Frank, saw the tiny encouraging lift of his eyebrows, and went on: "I believe Simon, through his telephone calls to my friends, my doctor, and my relations, learned that the Hampshire police had refused to take anything at face value, and realized he would be arrested the minute my memory returned. I have known him a long time, and knew him to be very fond of his parents. It is my own conviction that he would have done anything to avoid putting his mother and father through the trauma of his trial, and I am saddened but not surprised that he took his own life."

  "I don't think he'd want his colleagues or his parishioners to be subjected to that sort of trauma either, do you?" Cheever prompted.

  "I knew him to be a very dedicated clergyman," she resumed obediently, "who must have been appalled, when lucidity returned, to realize that the burden of his guilt would fall on the people who loved him. He was an ill man, not a bad one."