Randall shifted uncomfortably on his feet, unsure what revelations were about to pour from this person. He couldn’t cope with the supernatural and disliked images of the Devil and his minions. He cleared his throat noisily and fingered his mobile phone, keeping his mind aware of the fact that this really was the twenty-first century. He only had to call and officers would come from all directions.
Violet’s beady eyes were small and suspicious, hard enough to drill holes right through Martha. But Martha was unfazed. She knew she was here by invitation. She eyed Violet Taylor right back without flinching.
‘I think you’d better tell me the full story, Miss Taylor,’ she said, ‘before the police press charges of abduction.’
It broke the spell. Violet gestured for them to sink into the chintzy sofa which faced the fireplace square on so they had no option but to look up at the painting. ‘You’re right,’ she said, heaving a big sigh and dropping into the armchair. ‘You’re right.’
She looked from one to the other. ‘I don’t know how much you know,’ she said. ‘So I don’t know where to start.’
‘Assume we know nothing,’ Randall said, speaking with difficulty.
‘It all starts with Charity,’ Violet said and Martha nodded. She had suspected as much.
Violet pointed an accusing knobbly finger at Martha. ‘You should remember the case.’
Martha nodded. ‘I do,’ she said. ‘But I have the feeling that you know more than I did – or do.’
Violet nodded. ‘That girl murdered her family.’
Randall cut in tersely. ‘How can you know that?’
Violet’s face was firm. ‘I know.’
Martha waited. This woman would not be hurried. She would take her time. Like a cheese with a vein of blue mould running through it, this story had been a long time maturing. Let them wait.
‘My mother and I used to live in Hope Cottage,’ Violet said, her eyes skimming first the picture, then the room and its occupants. ‘People thought of us as witches but that just wasn’t so. We simply understood our plants and fungi. We knew the medicinal values of what grows around us. Some of these herbs and fungi need to be collected at strange times. In the dark. With dew on them. On certain days of the year. And so it was on that day. I was collecting fungi when I saw Charity. You have to realize that we not only understand plants but people too. We sense good and evil by the aura which surrounds a person. Charity grabbed my attention because the aura around her was anger and violence and resentment too. Pure hatred. Black as blood, and it’s never left her. Bitter to the end. A hateful girl who grew into a hateful woman.’
Randall and Martha waited.
‘I was searching the woods at the bottom of the Long Mynd and I saw her. She had a basket with her and she had some Death Cap in the basket.’ She drew in a long, sucking breath.
‘I told her,’ she said. ‘I told her it was poisonous. Yes, I told her. I warned her what happened to people who ate them. By mistake,’ she added mockingly.
Martha was still. Then she leaned forward. ‘Why didn’t you come forward at the inquest?’
Violet stuck her pointy chin out. ‘You think I don’t regret it?’
Alex Randall was becoming impatient. ‘What does this have to do with Daisy’s abduction?’
Violet gave him a withering look, as though he was of no account. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘If you don’t know all the facts you’re not going to understand. Believe me.’
Martha tried to silence Alex with a brief look and whether it was that or Violet’s request, he was quiet.
‘I knew Charity was bad.’
Randall wanted to hurry her along but he kept silent. He wanted to know.
‘And Tracy, well, she was weak and greedy. She had a greeny, yellowy aura around her, nasty as vomit, it was.’
Martha listened. She couldn’t see where this was going either but was blessed with more patience than the detective.
‘And then there’s that other woman.’
Martha couldn’t even guess who that other woman was and shook her head, but Randall had a stab at it.
‘Sheila Weston? How did you know about her?’
Violet simply tapped her nose. ‘She’s different. A sort of …’ Her eyes flicked up to the painting with its sinister implication. ‘Sheila thinks she can dance through the world doing nothing but good. She’s that stupid. Thinks she can right all the wrongs. Of course, she does it for money but she pretends to herself that she’s some sort of saint. Then put the two together … Daisy is such a pretty child. I knew when I saw Tracy talking to Charity in the coffee bar a few months ago that they were up to something. I knew it would be about money. And when the pair of them turned to look at the child I felt my blood run cold. People have auras, you know, and around that child was the cloak of pure innocence. She didn’t know the two women were plotting. Small and pretty, she was, and all they could see was how to profit out of her.’
‘How?’ Martha couldn’t stop herself.
‘Women who can’t have children will pay a lot for a pretty little girl like Daisy.’
Violet’s eyes swivelled up again towards the picture. Harvesting the unbaptized. ‘There’s different ways of doing that,’ she said, nodding her head at it. ‘And different reasons too. No one notices an old crone sitting bent over her cup of tea, of course. I listened in.
‘The deal was this: Tracy was to hand the child over to that Weston woman. It was to take place at night. But Neil was protective of the little girl. He would want to know where she was. So she would deliberately cause an argument and leave. Then Tracy would say she’d gone to stay with her mother or some such nonsense. Even that she’d lost her. Children aren’t always found.’
‘No,’ Alex commented drily.
‘Obviously, I’m not sure which story Tracy was planning on telling, only that she was planning on letting another woman have Daisy and she would make a deal of money out of it. I couldn’t know what or when she was going to carry out her evil plan, but that night I just couldn’t settle. There’d been strange lights over the Long Mynd, dancing will-o’-the-wisp sort of lights, and I knew something was afoot so I went for a walk. And I saw the car lights.
‘Weston was waiting in a big black car. Tracy drove up in that little red thing of hers. Actually hit Weston’s car, she was that drunk. And then I like to think it knocked some sense into her and she thought the better of her idea. Maybe she wasn’t all bad. Maybe she did have some feeling for the child after all. Or maybe she didn’t quite trust that lady Weston and was worried that she wouldn’t get her money after all. And she could hardly go to the police, could she?’ Violet cackled. Neither Alex nor Martha joined her. They were both thinking the same thing: Would a woman really sell her own daughter?
Violet continued: ‘Anyway, I showed myself.’ She grinned. ‘That shocked her all right. I could see the terror in her eyes. Then Tracy started to back down the Burway in a bit of a state and a panic. Next thing I knew the car’s careered over the side. Over and over and over. Metal jangling. Her screaming, little Daisy screaming too. The noise was enough to wake the Devil. I’ve never been so frightened for a child as at that moment. As soon as the car was still I got Daisy out. Her leg was broken – badly. The bone was stickin’ through her skin. She was crying. I knew I could heal her without further suffering. I knew I could keep her safe. I took her back to my cottage and gave her something to make her sleep before I set the bone. Then I had a conscience about Tracy and I went to Hope Cottage. Charity’s cottage. I wanted to implicate her.’
‘But how can she possibly have had anything to do with it?’ Alex asked, exasperated. ‘She was in bloody Dubai.’
‘And where to do you think the handover was to take place? She was out of the compound, Inspector, wasn’t she? In a holiday resort where there are plenty of tourists. I suggest you go through some of the guest lists of the hotels there, Inspector. She’d gone there to receive the little girl that Weston the meddler was bringing over.
An American lady was to buy her, I wouldn’t be surprised, though I can’t be sure.’
DI Randall’s jaw dropped open.
‘I kept Daisy here. I didn’t want her moved. The bone was in alignment. It was just a greenstick. I gave her comfrey – or knitbone. Tell me,’ she finished with a touch of pride, ‘perfect alignment?’
They both nodded.
‘And the wound’s clean and healed?’
Again he nodded. ‘But the garments left around?’ Alex persisted.
‘I left clues so you’d keep looking around here for her and keep trying to find her. I was hoping that by the time she had healed, you’d have almost worked it out. I knew that at some point I would have to return her. She couldn’t just stay here with me for ever, never found. In the end, once Daisy got better, I couldn’t keep waiting. I thought it best to let her go.’ She paused for a second. ‘Neil and Lucy love her as if she’s their own, you know.’
Martha glanced across at DI Randall.
‘Incredible,’ he said, and Violet challenged him with a look and a triumphant smile. What would they charge her with?
‘Abduction,’ he out loud, but even then looking doubtful. ‘Though God only knows whether we’ll make it stick,’ he said, standing up.
‘You think God knows?’ Violet glanced upwards at the picture again and jerked her head towards it. ‘Or him? Maybe the Devil has more idea than God.’
But for all her professed supernatural wisdom, Violet couldn’t resist asking the question, ‘What’ll happen to Daisy now?’
And Alex gave her the straight answer. ‘The way the child courts tend to work these days is to give the child the main say in it. Daisy has said that she wants to be with Neil, and he wants her.’ He couldn’t resist a smirk, which he aimed at Martha. ‘Lucy Stanstead wants her too. She’s walked out on her bully of a husband and moved in with Neil. They’ll stay in Church Stretton and couldn’t be happier.’
‘So something good might have come out of this.’
Randall nodded. Something good. He fixed his eyes on Martha Gunn. Possibly something very good.
He turned to go. Violet had the last word, following them to the door. ‘Just remember,’ she said, looking at each of them in turn, ‘there’s white magic as well as black.’
THIRTY
Two weeks later.
In Martha’s office, Randall was filling her in on the results of the investigations. She had shut the door firmly in Jericho’s face so this time there wasn’t even any coffee.
‘So?’ she queried.
‘Well, we have a passport and plane tickets in Daisy’s real name plus a letter from Tracy saying the child was visiting Dubai with her grandmother.’
Martha waited.
Naturally Sheila Weston was the ‘grandmother’.
‘Why? What was in it for her?’
‘She says doing good, helping to “place” a child in a better home.’ Randall frowned. ‘The truth is she was making thirty thousand pounds out of the deal – more even than the mother.’
Randall gave a cynical smile. ‘The only charge we have any chance of making stick against her is the intended abduction of a child.’
‘Oh?’
‘There was only one return ticket.’ He sighed. ‘But the CPS can be very tricky and there is precious little evidence.’
‘How did Tracy and Sheila cook this up on such a slight acquaintance?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘And Sheila isn’t being exactly forthcoming. They obviously kept in touch and in that first weekend they must have recognized something in each other. Perhaps Sheila, being a social worker, had met enough greedy dysfunctional mothers to recognize one. I don’t know. Something must have been said that gave a clue that Tracy was more anxious to make a bit of money than to be a mother, and Sheila must have proffered a solution. To both problems,’ he finished.
‘But how was Tracy going to explain Daisy’s disappearance?’
‘Wanda Stefano gave us the answer to that one. She said that, according to Tracy, Allistair had been expressing an interest in his daughter.’ Randall screwed up his face. ‘Tracy said he was getting married and his soon-to-be wife was anxious to meet the little girl.’
‘A half-truth,’ Martha said.
‘But not the whole truth. In reality Allistair couldn’t give a damn about Daisy, but he is getting married. Tracy said that Daisy was going to stay with her father and that if things worked out she might just be staying.’
‘And Charity,’ Martha said. ‘How did she know Tracy?’
Randall leaned back in his chair. ‘I find it hard to get the real truth out of that woman,’ he said. ‘I think some of what she says is true and other bits pure fantasy, but from what we can gather it appears that Charity noticed her bawling the child out in the supermarket. What she actually said was that she could see Tracy hated and resented her daughter. Very quietly she said to me that she knew what it was like to be hated by your mother. She spoke to Tracy. I have the feeling that money, probably a substantial amount of money, was involved, but we’re having trouble getting any information out of the Emirates where her account is. We’re still working on that one. One of Charity’s colleagues said that Charity had been looking at a property on the Palm Jumeirah. I think even a flat there would set you back over a million.’
‘So they both thought they were putting the world to rights, but being greedy at the same time. How did Charity know Sheila?’
Randall crossed his legs. ‘Well, that’s an interesting one. You remember the deaths of Charity’s family?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, it turns out that Sheila gave her some bereavement counselling. I don’t know how close they became, but it’s possible that Charity confided in Sheila about her childhood at the time – we don’t know what was going on in that cottage leading up to the deaths. I think that Charity probably mentioned how she was an unhappy child, which touched a nerve in Sheila. When the two met up in Dubai, they renewed their acquaintance. Sheila, after seeing Tracy at the hotel with Daisy, probably remembered what Charity had told her about her own childhood. And then, when Charity came across Tracy and Daisy in the supermarket, she would have been upset by what she saw and gone straight to Sheila. Being someone who felt she could put the world to rights, Sheila set about finding a family whom she believed would love little Daisy and bring her up in a wealthy and secure environment. False papers, a new identity. All so much simpler when an American family repatriate after working abroad, having adopted a little girl while away. It would all have worked out if Violet hadn’t interfered.’
‘Have you found the woman who was trying to buy a child?’
‘We’re trying but it might be very difficult to prove. There are hundreds of Americans in the two Palm resorts. Plenty of childless ones or women who might like a pretty little daughter as they might want a Hermes bag.’
In spite of the grim tone of the conversation Martha smiled. ‘I didn’t know you were in to expensive handbags, Alex.’
The look he gave was very straight and honest. ‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Martha.’
And she had no response to this except to watch as he left, the door swinging behind him.
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