‘That’s why I sent her Angel’s post-mortem report. There’s a graphic account of the scars. I wanted her to know what she denied.’
Peter picked up a needle from a colourful pin cushion and attempted to thread it with black cotton. It was a long time since he had done such a thing. He was trying to remember if his mother had ever taught him to sew.
‘I did so many things wrong, right from the beginning,’ Hen said, watching him. ‘Or I did so many wrong things. Sending that post-mortem report was one of them, but earlier than that I cocked up mightily. I should have called the police to the flat, rather than taking her away. There were still traces of blood on the table, there were still the filthy sheets she slept in, but I couldn’t let her stay there another minute. I bundled up evidence like that,’ she gestured towards the carpet bag, ‘all his letters and his camera, and we went. Gave him plenty of chance to sanitise the place before he was arrested. I gave stuff to the police selectively. And I let her get cleaned up; it’s the first stage on the road to recovery, isn’t it? Getting cleaned and dressed.’
‘Wasn’t she dressed?’
‘Scarcely. It was November, bloody cold.’
‘He was arrested in that flat,’ Peter said slowly. ‘He didn’t move on when he came back and found she’d gone. He wasn’t expecting it.’
‘No, he wasn’t. He cleaned up for himself and he took away the axe, but it would never have occurred to him that Angel would send them. None of the others had, they were found later, they didn’t volunteer. More than that, it would never have occurred to him that he’d done anything wrong. She was his. Even if he didn’t want her any more, she was still useful and she was still his. Rick Boyd, you see, was always innocent. I didn’t know him, and there were aspects of Angel I didn’t know and couldn’t predict, either.’
She sewed three small stitches and put the cloth down. Peter remembered Mrs Joyce’s surprising confidences in the absence of Mr Joyce. The tapestries on the walls, which must have taken years to sew, the need of certain women to keep their hands busy.
‘Rick Boyd wanted total exoneration,’ he said, ‘and he didn’t get it. He got a disgraceful half-win and emerges from prison with the mark of Cain still on him, only technically innocent, still personally outraged. The only person who held out against him was Angel, led from behind by you. The only two people who knew the full extent of what he did were you and Marianne Shearer. Marianne Shearer, who was supposed to be going to write a book, and could have got him rearrested. Someone, something, was harassing her before she died. And now there’s only you. You both had something he needed to destroy. Knowledge and evidence. The Lover knew where the evidence was, even if he didn’t know what it was. He’s dead, too. He was . . . played with, tormented a little before he died. Maybe he came across with more information than he gave me. Doesn’t this suggest Rick Boyd? He’s out there and you need protection. Either you move from here, or I don’t leave you alone until I see the police tomorrow. You can’t stay here by yourself. He wanted what Marianne had; she’s dead. He wanted what the Lover might have had and I don’t know what the Lover might have told him. Now there’s only you and some of Marianne’s possessions. He can’t know where they are.’
His voice tailed off. Hen smiled at him gently. He could see himself as he imagined she might see him. Long and skinny in an ill-fitting suit, playing with a needle he could not thread without spectacles, not exactly the protector of choice.
‘I won the three-legged race, once,’ he volunteered. ‘My school reports said I was “resourceful”.’
And Marianne Shearer branded me a wimp. And trusted me with something precious.
‘Thank you,’ Hen said, without any argument. ‘I should like that very much, although what I really want is forgiveness. For the wrong things.’
He shook his head, the weariness coming back to hit the back of his neck like a cudgel, making him realise he would soon be slurring his words and there was nothing more to be said or done before morning. No stamina, that boy. There were dark hollows below his eyes.
‘You have my bed, and I’ll sleep here,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to sleep, we’re dead on our feet. I’ll just check there’s nothing overcooking downstairs.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘There’s no need. And I don’t want you staying on false pretences. I want you to stay because it’s late and you’re tired and I can press that suit in the morning and find a clean shirt. Not because Rick Boyd’s going to turn up here in the middle of the night. He won’t come here.’
‘I’m coming with you.’
‘He won’t come here,’ she repeated.
Peter followed her downstairs to the basement. It was cooler, full of the chemical smell which revived him, but only a little. There was so much more he wanted to ask. The place was a laboratory for cleaning. Their footsteps sounded loud on the stone floor. He watched her detach a piece of cambric from the clothes line and lay it flat. It would be easy for a thief to gain access here, but there was nothing a casual thief would want to steal. Marianne’s skirt hung on the overhead pulley, accusingly. Not even the eyeless teddy bears held any appeal.
‘Why wouldn’t Rick Boyd come here?’ he asked. ‘He can get in anywhere. Squats, other people’s house, the Lover’s perhaps. He just walks in to other people’s lives.’
Hen was standing by the light switch, ready to usher him out, pausing before moving.
‘He won’t come here,’ she said, ‘because he came here before. The one week he was on bail, he came to find Angel. She was waiting for him upstairs, hiding in the dressing room, dressed in her best. She would have gone with him, but I found him first, down here. He came in the back.’
Peter moved to stand close to her, touched her arm gently.
‘And?’
She shrugged.
‘I chucked a bucket of dry-cleaning fluid all over him. It was fluid out of the drain from the tank. It blinded him for a while. I pushed him out. I should have killed him.’
She turned out the light and Peter followed her up the stairs. Again, he felt he was following in the footsteps of someone he did not know. Hen spoke over her shoulder.
‘He won’t come here,’ she was saying. ‘So you’re safe with me. Rick Boyd may hate me like poison, but as long as he’s on his own, he’s still afraid of me.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Wake up, Frank my lad. We’ve got things to do. I think we’ll take a Mercedes.
C’mon, it’s a Saturday, the place is closed. I found where Marianne put her stuff. It’s OK, Frank.
Peter slipped out of the house in the dark of early morning and hit the street running. He could forgo a pressed suit or a clean shirt until he was home. The most ominous thing she had said was that Rick Boyd was afraid of her. He could make himself believe she was safe where she was and that Boyd was afraid of the place. He must be, otherwise he would have come back long before and would not return to the scene of a previous humiliation without an ally, and Rick Boyd had no allies; no ally or friend mentioned in the whole of that trial; men like that did not. He made others conspire with him, though: that was what he had done with his series of hapless women. Peter went back to his own flat in a state of suppressed panic he could not fully explain either to himself or to anyone else, except by saying that he had to see what was in the post. And then the nine o’clock appointment with the police to make a statement and say his piece about all the rest as well as he could. In the growing light of day, it all seemed as woolly and ephemeral as dawn mist.
Tube quicker than taxi for the route to Camden on a Saturday morning. Hen had promised she would not move. She had plenty to do indoors, she said. There might even be customers.
Thomas Noble, another early riser, had already phoned. Peter found himself looking round the carriage of the underground train, so prompt, so efficient at this hour, so half full of silent listeners, he wanted to hide inside his coat so that his own thoughts would not be overheard.
Would sir like the services of a solicitor to accompany him on his visit to the police station? I’m not au fait with these situations, not my kind of law, but I think I might owe you that. Early morning sarcasm. No, thank you, Peter muttered. I know what I have to say. Besides, you would alienate them and I need them to listen.
Whose side are you on, Peter?
I didn’t know there were sides.
You know what you were hired for.
To find out Marianne was murdered, rather than suicidal, isn’t that what you want, what the client wants? I thought you said it was to find out why.
Why was an obscene word in an early morning train bearing passengers in and out of town to open shops, markets, weekend businesses, anything, whilst bearing home the night shift. Whatever had been sent by post should have arrived. Snail mail. Why on earth had Marianne Shearer failed to commit her intentions to email? Too easy? Perhaps her laptop was at the bottom of the trunk. He should have paid the price and towed it all back, not left it lonely.
His flat was stuffy and warm. He hated it on sight, but then he had never loved it, or any place he had ever lived alone. It was not home, it was a stopgap. The post in the front door was disappointingly small. A manilla envelope, A4-sized.
An envelope, punctiliously addressed in a sloping hand. To Peter Friel, Esq. in the Lover’s old-fashioned hand. Inside it, a few pages looking for all the world like a part of the transcript of the trial. All that trouble to send him something he might have missed from the original volumes which still lurked in the corner of his room; in a corner of Thomas Noble’s office and in several other damn corners; a big, paperwork reminder of failure.
A single sheet of paper clipped to the front.
You never read anything properly, Peter. This is Why. Look after the relics.
Peter changed his clothes in his colourless flat, feeling homesick for where he had been, wishing he had not slept in Hen’s bed without her. He could not stop to read now, stuffed everything in the knapsack he used in lieu of a briefcase and ran for the next appointment. He was dressed in jeans and the same dusty black coat, his boots were worn. He thought how the Lover would be appalled, and wished there could be a chance to meet him again. It was piercingly cold: Peter went back for his gloves. Concentrate on one thing at a time. Make the statement, set them rolling, pray for them to believe him, and then get back to Hen. Get Hen to join him. West End Central Police station was close to the station where they could take the train. He wanted her to see what was in storage long before it was given to Thomas Noble.
They kept him waiting. It was the fate of a witness to be kept waiting. There would be a certain pleasure in keeping a witness as to material fact waiting even longer if they also happened to be a lawyer – although he doubted if there was anything contrived about that. It was Saturday morning, and a pall of resentment hung about the place. Peter remembered from the original police report in R v Boyd, that this was the station where Hen had first taken Angel, over a year ago. Police stations did not change. They could be painted in different colours and vain attempts tried to make them user-friendly, but it never made them different. He never went inside without feeling he was under arrest, although to his knowledge he had never committed an offence worthy of that. Drunk and disorderly, perhaps, cheating on train fares in the critically poor days of student life. He was only ever guilty by proxy. Guilty of not doing enough. He waited and read what Marianne Shearer had sent him.
The last questions and answers spoken before they had stumbled towards their respective beds, while Hen found towels and toothbrush for him, her efficiency never quite deserting her, haunted him too. Do you suppose anyone loved Marianne Shearer? she asked. Do you suppose he loved her? I hope he did. Can you die of not being loved, or want to die because you aren’t? No, he had said. I don’t think anyone loved her, or not in a way I understand. She took what she could. And, Hen, why did neither you nor Angel ever mention you were adopted children?
She was handing him the towel. Angel never mentioned it after getting into trouble for shouting about it in school the way she did. Besides, it would have made her look even more like a natural victim, somehow. Nobody else’s business. As for me, it was never relevant. I thought I was lucky to be chosen, never curious because my own mother was dead, my father told me.
He was beginning to read when the officer came to fetch him. She found a studious young man, not looking like a lawyer, nodding to himself, beginning to understand.
Ann, the work-experience girl, came back on the Saturday morning because she was bored. It seemed better to be out of the house and Henrietta Joyce had said come back sometime over the weekend, so she was taking her at her word. Eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning seemed a reasonable time. The street was only half busy; the specialist shops mostly closed, still recovering from Christmas holidays and the dearth of trade in January. Ann did not notice this; she was thinking of the sad fact that her mother did not understand her and never, ever would in a month of Sundays, and if anyone had a chance of understanding the mess of her life, it was Henrietta Joyce. Hen Joyce actually talked to her. Hen was OK, and Ann did not think she would mind being messed about. Hen wouldn’t point out that her hair was dyed all wrong and her skirt didn’t suit her plump legs, like Mum did.
It turned out she was right. She rang the bell, spoke into the intercom and was told to come upstairs, there was plenty to do. Weekends were not sacred in this kind of business and the company would be good. While she waited on the doorstep, she saw a Mercedes cruising down the street. A silver machine, erratically but slowly driven, as if the person behind the wheel did not know where he was going, or if the two of them were having a row. Her parents drove around like that sometimes.
‘I was just making tea,’ Hen said. Today she was wearing a scruffy boiler suit. ‘Milk no sugar, wasn’t it?’
As if there had been no intervening days, she sat down and felt at home in the dressing-up-box room. It was nice here. There was a radio burbling music on the big table, not Ann’s kind of music, but OK-ish, not classical at least, something which made her want to tap her feet without much effort while letting the rest of her stay still, and oh, heavens above, Hen actually asking her opinion, showing her something hanging off the dummy.
‘What do you think of this bodice thing? Is it worth doing, do you think? I wanted something that could look good with jeans, something you could button or leave undone. Something that could be worn by all ages, that someone like you could wear, or someone as old as me.’
‘Cool,’ Ann said. ‘Really cool, but where’s the other half?’
But then Hen was no longer listening, just like any other adult. Her head was cocked to one side and she was listening for something else entirely, such as the sounds of her own house or whatever else was going on in her weird head. Then Ann watched her put a finger over her own lips, miming shhh, rather than saying it, moving closer to the door she had left open behind her, closing it and listening harder. A voice shouted a cheerful greeting up the stairs, comfortably far away. Two sets of footsteps.
Hide, Hen mouthed, then whispered, ‘Hide. Hide now, and stay where you are until I say come out, OK? Just do it. Here. Just hide.’
She pushed back the rack of evening gowns and garments that hung to the floor. There was space behind, aired clothes need space around themselves, don’t squash them up. A stuffy space, all the same, warm and dark and rustling with noises as she pushed her way through, so it made Ann want to giggle as she was shoved in there, saying, What? like it was a scene from a play, or something. Get right back and stay there, OK. OK, OK, OK, Hen was sounding like her mother and she was being ordered about again, but it was more than that. It was Hen’s face that told her it wasn’t a game. So she curled herself up into the smallest foetus shape she could make of herself, backed against a warm wall, seeing nothing but the light of the dressing-up room where it penetrated for a few inches between the gaps in the garments, which did not quite sweep the floor. Sh
e held on to the skirt of something to lower herself down, let go quickly. It was some kind of taffeta and it made a noise. She heard Hen go back and sit at the table. Then the men came in.
Ann could see one set of polished shoes. An attractive voice, greeting cheerfully.
‘Hello, Hen. No, don’t phone out, please. Be polite, for God’s sake. Meet my friend, Frank. Be nice to him, he’s not too well at the moment.’
‘Hello, Frank. What was it you wanted to buy? Either of you? Why don’t you just get out of here?’
Frank’s voice, slurred and dreary. His shoes taking the place of the other shoes.
‘Where’s the lumpy little girl, then, the one at the door? I fancied her. You’re not that bitch are you, naaa, you can’t be, what are we doing here, Rick? I dunno.’
The sound of someone sitting down heavily, moving the wooden chair so it scraped on the floor, dumping a great weight inside itself.
‘I didn’t think you’d have the nerve, Rick,’ Hen was saying quietly. ‘Fancy you coming back, after last time.’
‘Couldn’t have done it alone, Hen, not after that. But I’ve got a friend, see? Makes all the difference. Adds weight, if you see what I mean. So where’s the lumpy girl, then? Frank likes them young.’
‘You mean the one who delivers the paper and goes away? You’re out of luck, Rick Boyd. So’s your friend. Get out.’
‘Are you my fucking niece?’ That other, druggy voice.
‘We’re all related to apes, aren’t we?’
Then they hit her. They stood round her and hit her. Ann could see the movement of their feet. Or maybe one was hitting, soft, breathy blows, and one was watching, she couldn’t tell. Enough to stay hidden back among the clothes and listen. Easy does it, Frank, easy up, Frank, she only scratched you, she’s got things to tell us, like where’s the stuff?
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