The Devil's Dice

by Roz Watkins

  ‘Yes. To Train Up a Child.’

  ‘It’s not surprising she was damaged, but honestly, I had no idea…’

  An image popped into my mind. Grace as a little girl, cowering in the corner of a room, her father looming over her.

  Edward glanced up quickly, then looked back down at his hand, drawing imaginary shapes on the table. ‘She wasn’t a bad person, not really.’ He knotted his eyebrows together as if working on mental arithmetic. ‘I’ve been researching it. We tend to think it’s the primitive side of the brain taking over, but it’s not. When someone kills like this, it’s the executive function over-ruling the emotional brain. It’s based on group identity, and obedience to an authority.’

  Poor Edward. He was coping by taking an analytical approach. I sympathised. ‘Yes, I’ve been reading some recent research. In relation to terrorists.’

  His expression brightened, and he actually looked me in the eye. ‘Me too!’

  If I started losing him again, I knew to get more technical. I could quote scientific papers with the best of them.

  I shifted back a little in my chair. ‘Were you aware she had access to potassium cyanide?’

  ‘For the jewellery business? No. But I’ve looked into it, and it seems normal. In fact, if you want to murder someone, being a jeweller gives you quite an advantage. But, she was so intelligent, she’d have found a way, no matter what. All that business with the casket and the mystery geocache. It was clever. Peter used to type his password right in front of us. And we often used to go to a café after we’d been out. Peter always had something to eat – chocolate cake or Bakewell pudding.’

  ‘So Grace knew he liked chocolate and almond.’

  ‘Yes. And she had a wonderful memory. And the net trap. If Mark hadn’t turned up…’

  ‘She’d seen the set-up with the floor when you borrowed the holiday cottage?’

  ‘I suppose so. They mentioned the trap door – something about reinstating the mechanism in the future. I never saw it though. I gather it was secured with some very big bolts.’

  ‘Yes. It was perfectly safe. Well, it would have been if the bolts hadn’t been undone.’

  ‘It was very ingenious, what Grace did.’

  How charming when a husband’s admiration for his wife could survive the discovery that she was homicidal. Although he did have a point about her brains. I’d been right about the burglar alarm – she’d set it to send her a message via the internet when anyone entered the house, so she’d known when Kate arrived.

  ‘She could have cleared it all up afterwards,’ Edward said. ‘And it would have looked like a terrible accident. But I gather she had a bit of fun with the Monty Hall problem?’

  Fun? What a strange man he was. ‘It wasn’t a lot of fun for me.’ I placed my splinted arm on the interview table. It turned out I’d dislocated my shoulder and sprained my wrist but hadn’t broken any bones. Did you keep the shoulder-joint immobilised after the injury? the doctor had asked. Not exactly, I’d said. It felt much better now it was back in its proper place, but I wouldn’t be doing any arm exercises with Hannah for a while.

  ‘Will you be able to keep the patent attorney business going?’ I asked.

  ‘With Peter dead, Felix possibly going to jail, and a major professional negligence claim?’ Edward sucked a breath deep into his lungs. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’

  ‘And what about Alex? How’s he coping?’

  He let out the air. ‘Poor Alex. It’s been terrible for him. Grace’s Life Line group offered to help, but I think I’ll be giving that a miss.’

  *

  Mark Hamilton was propped on hospital pillows, his legs surrounded by a framework which wouldn’t have looked out of place in a steel works or a modern art installation. I breathed the tangy, disinfected air and felt almost no guilt. My head spun with the unfamiliarity of it.

  ‘Both femurs,’ he said. ‘I’ve got pins in my legs and everything.’

  ‘Sounds nasty.’ I shuffled my chair forward so I could see him clearly. He had stitches in his lip, just below his nose, and two black eyes. ‘Is it very painful?’

  ‘My face is actually more painful than my legs, and I’ve got stitches inside my mouth so it’s hard to eat. The food keeps getting stuck in the stitches.’

  I grimaced.

  Mark lifted his hands and waved them around. ‘But amazingly, my arms are fine. I count myself lucky. I seem to have landed on my legs and then bounced onto my face. It’s common to break your spine in falls like that.’

  ‘Yes. Grace… I’m not sure if you’ve been told, but she didn’t make it.’

  ‘I heard. But it was a C2 fracture. Horrific. She’d have been completely paralysed. So it’s probably for the best… Even after everything, I’d have hated her to go through that.’

  I pictured Grace lying battered and broken, her head forced back at a sickening angle. I focussed on the flowers and grapes beside Mark’s bed. ‘Even though she killed your brother and sister?’

  ‘In a way, she did them both a favour. Ironic, really, in the circumstances.’

  I couldn’t reconcile this person with the man who’d hidden Rosie in his house while half of Derbyshire was searching for her; who’d let her walk off into the night to commit suicide.

  It was as if he’d read my mind. ‘Rosie made me promise,’ he said. ‘On Peter’s grave. She appeared at my door and said if I didn’t promise not to tell a soul where she was, she’d be gone and no one would see her again. Ever.’ He touched the stitches in his lip. ‘I couldn’t break that promise, even when you appeared. She hid upstairs.’

  I thought of myself in the Labyrinth, making all kinds of promises just to get that damn noose off Rosie’s neck. ‘I understand,’ I said.

  Mark shifted higher on his pillows. ‘I didn’t encourage her to commit suicide. She sneaked out while I was on the phone. I had no idea, honestly…’

  The heavy hospital door swung open and Kate Webster walked in. She gave Mark an uncertain smile, and her eyes flicked to me.

  ‘Meg!’ She hurried to my side. ‘Can I call you that? I don’t know what to say. How do you thank someone who saved your life? I’d hug you if you didn’t look so bruised.’

  I waved my good arm dismissively. ‘Oh, all part of the service. UK police – best in the world.’

  ‘Seriously. Thank you. And I’m so sorry about your shoulder. I seem to be the only one who came out relatively unscathed.’

  ‘I’m just sorry I chose the wrong trunk.’

  Kate laughed. ‘That’ll teach you to be good at probability. Anyway, I owe you my life. She wouldn’t have let me go even if you’d chosen the right trunk. I think we all knew that. So thank you.’ She touched my good shoulder, walked around Mark’s bed and sat in the chair on the opposite side.

  ‘Mark and Jai played a fairly major part too,’ I said.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Kate said. ‘Grace trying to kill us. I thought she was kind of… inoffensive.’

  ‘She was a nutcase,’ Mark said.

  Kate gestured towards Mark with a neat thumb. ‘Did you know he was in the clear with HD?’

  ‘Oh.’ I turned to Mark. ‘I assumed when you grabbed a homicidal lunatic and hurled yourself out of a forty-foot window that you must have had the gene?’

  ‘No, I was just being reckless.’ Mark gave me a stitch-stretching smile. ‘I had the test at the same time as Peter and Beth, and it came back clear, but I didn’t feel like celebrating in view of their results.’

  ‘It’s so awful losing Peter, and then Beth too, so soon after,’ Kate said. ‘And I’m angry I never got the chance to say goodbye to my husband. I know he’d made some bad decisions but he was a good man really. And he never got to make a Bucket List and swim with dolphins or whatever people do.’

  Mark shifted on his pillows. ‘I know what you mean. I knew I was going to lose my brother and my sister, but not so quickly, and with no time to say goodbye. There’s lots of things I wish
I’d said to both of them.’

  ‘It’s just…’ Kate brushed her cheek with the back of her hand. ‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s been a lot to take in.’ I thought about everything Kate had to cope with – not only Peter’s death but his disease, his possible daughter, and a pregnancy too.

  ‘It must be really tough,’ I said.

  I allowed myself a brief thought about Carrie. The usual hole inside me seemed to be missing.

  ‘I’ve decided to have the pre-natal test as soon as I can,’ Kate said. ‘When I thought about the poor child growing up with a fifty percent chance of HD, I changed my mind. And at least if the baby’s in the clear, it will have an uncle.’

  ‘That sounds like a good decision,’ I said.

  Kate crossed her arms. ‘I feel terrible for Rosie though. I’m praying she doesn’t have it.’

  ‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Do you know how she’s doing?’

  ‘A bit better. Olivia asked me to have a chat with her. I told her some other things that should be tested for. But she’s thinking about whether she wants the HD test.’

  ‘So, she’s not talking about… you know, wanting to die?’

  ‘No, not at the moment. If it does turn out she has it… who knows.’

  ‘I kind of promised her, in that cave, that if she did want to die…’

  ‘We’ll worry about that if it comes to it. She may change her mind. They’ve made some progress with epigenetics and gene therapy recently. Someday, there’ll be a cure. And people often say they couldn’t live if they were paralysed or whatever but then they find they do still value life.’ She glanced at Mark. ‘We’ll support both Rosie and Olivia any way we can.’

  ‘You do know the police have to carry out an investigation into Tithonus?’ I said. ‘But I’m not involved.’

  ‘I know. I understand. And I’m not taking those bequests, just so you know. Are you back at work?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve had enough written warnings to last a whole career. But yes. I’m back.’

  *

  Jai pulled up outside the hospital doors. I slid into the passenger seat. The radio blared out something poppy and cheerful, and the car smelt of its mirror-dangling air-freshener.

  I told Jai about Mark’s test result.

  ‘I do like a nice, happy ending in a murder enquiry.’ He smiled, but I could tell from his rigid posture that his ribs were hurting.

  We drove out of the car park and set off for Belper. The centre of Derby was very grey compared to the glistening, green hills I’d become used to.

  ‘Is your mum being okay with you? You know, for grassing up her group, as it were?’

  I sighed. ‘Yeah, not too bad. She’s coming over to mine actually.’ I looked at my watch. ‘Pretty much now.’

  ‘She must know you couldn’t have done anything else when Rosie disappeared. And when we suspected Kate.’

  ‘I suppose so. But I keep thinking about if she goes to prison. She’d never cope. And what would happen to Gran? And there’s this man she showed me a video of. Trapped in a horrible white room in a body that won’t work, with no one to help him. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t a cop.’

  ‘Well, you nearly weren’t, what with your vigilante performances and everything.’

  I shuffled around to get comfortable. ‘How are the ribs?’

  ‘Should be fine. Breathing’s a bit of an issue but otherwise I can do most things.’

  ‘Great. What a team. People will think we’ve had a fight.’

  We drove past the rows of mill-workers’ cottages which towered above us in Milford. I let my eyes go soft and gazed at the pattern of light and shade on the velvet hillside behind.

  Jai turned the radio down. His voice eased its way into my head. ‘Grace didn’t make it then.’

  ‘No.’ I shifted to give my bad arm more support. ‘I know it sounds ridiculous but… I feel a bit sorry for her. Even though she tried to kill my Mum. Did you hear about her childhood?’

  ‘Yeah, grim. I had a look at the reviews of that “child training” book on Amazon.’ Jai turned and gave me a horrified look. ‘Unbelievable. Telling you to hit babies.’

  ‘Look at the road, Jai. You nearly crashed into a taxi.’

  Jai laughed. ‘Oops. Yeah, I hate it when they do that in films. Give each other long, meaningful looks when they’re supposed to be driving. How are viewers supposed to concentrate on the simmering passion when they’re waiting for the horrific, head-on collision?’

  I laughed. Then we both fell silent.

  ‘Anyway,’ I said. ‘Did you know Olivia left Felix? Turned out he’d been abusing her for years, quietly behind closed doors. She only stayed because of Rosie and having no money of her own.’

  ‘What a bastard.’

  I relaxed back in the car seat, letting the warmth from the heater seep into me. ‘Would you come in for a coffee? Help me cope with Mum?’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yeah, it’ll make it less tense. She’ll have to be relatively nice to me if you’re there.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s see if we can get you to the top of that ladder before she turns up, then we can have chocolates too.’

  *

  Mum was pulling up as we arrived at my house. I watched her leave the car and walk over the cobbled road. I’d been expecting her to be angry, but she just looked old and fragile.

  I looked round at Jai. ‘Actually, do you mind? I think it might be better if I tackle her on my own.’

  Relief darted across his face. ‘Of course. I’ll drop you off.’ He double-parked next to Mum. ‘Save me some chocolates.’

  I hesitated. Should I give Jai the ‘friend kiss’? I decided not, patted him briefly on the arm, and levered myself out.

  I let us in, ushered Mum through to the kitchen, and shoved a cushion onto one of the wooden chairs. ‘Sit down. I’ll do tea.’

  ‘Can you manage? How’s your shoulder? You shouldn’t overdo it.’ She clenched her hands together and rested them on the table, interlocking the fingers.

  ‘If I can’t manage to make a brew, I’m in serious trouble. Without a regular input of tea, my body completely shuts down.’

  She smiled, but there was an invisible screen between us, like we were talking through glass. I stepped to the sink, filled the kettle, and stuck it on. I stared out at my windswept garden. The storm had ripped the wisteria off the side of the house and it lay forlornly in a puddle, but the un-killable shrubs were thriving. ‘I am sorry, Mum,’ I said. ‘You know… about Tithonus. Are you angry with me?’

  Mum let out a sharp laugh. ‘Angry with you? You are a strange girl. Two people were dead. You saved Kate’s life. You’re a public hero. And besides, if you hadn’t stopped Grace, I could have been next.’

  ‘But I’m sorry about the way it worked out. You know. That I told everyone about the group.’

  She said nothing. All I could hear was the boiler doing its extravagant burning routine and the rain tapping against the window. Finally she took a deep breath and said, ‘You thought Kate had that girl. You did the right thing.’

  The kettle pinged. I dropped tea bags in mugs and poured water over, still not looking at Mum. ‘I’m having nothing to do with the investigation into the assisted deaths, obviously.’

  ‘It’s okay, Meg. Losing two friends is the terrible thing, not the fact that you reported the group. I only wish I’d realised earlier someone was targeting us. I thought I’d seen someone following me but assumed I was imagining it. If I hadn’t been so quick to dismiss my fears, maybe I could have saved Beth.’ Mum picked up a mug and swirled the tea round. ‘No, I’m not angry with you. I’m just worried about the people we can’t help any more.’

  A flash of memory. The camera panning deep into Steven’s eye. ‘That video you showed me – the man who wanted to die?’

  Mum’s tone was brisk and practical. ‘His wife removed his feeding tubes.’

  I sat down with a thud. ‘What about Gran? If she wants to…’

  �
�I’ll find a way. She won’t be forced to stay alive.’

  There was a crash followed by a yowl louder than anything heard outside of teen horror. Mum jumped and slammed her mug on the table, spilling tea. ‘Oh, good lord…’

  ‘Jesus, Hamlet,’ I said. ‘You’ll break the cat flap again.’ He charged to the middle of the room, stopped and stared at me with a crazed expression. I patted my knee. ‘Come on, do your cat job. Sit here.’

  Not usually one to follow suggestions, Hamlet jumped up and settled himself on me, his purr so loud it drowned out the boiler. I rubbed under his chin, and felt a flush of satisfaction when I realised I hadn’t checked the rooms.

  Mum reached to stroke Hamlet, and the tension dropped out of her shoulders.

  ‘Is the milk fresh?’ she asked. ‘I know what you’re like.’

  ‘Ha. Yes, I went shopping. There’s even some vegetables in the fridge that don’t have bizarre foreign bodies sprouting from them. In fact…’ I reached behind me, careful not to dislodge Hamlet, and took a pack of chocolate digestives from the shelf. ‘Brand new, unopened, not-even-slightly-stale biscuits.’ I stuck them on the table in front of Mum.

  ‘So, all in all, you’re enjoying being back in Derbyshire?’

  I glanced at my splinted arm. ‘Yeah. I mean, it’s obviously a bit dull, but I think I’ll cope.’

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you to my incredible agent, Diana Beaumont, for being brilliant, and for making it fun too.

  I’m hugely fortunate to have HQ as my publisher. Thank you to my fantastic editor Sally Williamson, and to the whole HQ team for being so professional and enthusiastic, as well as lovely to spend time with.

  Thank you to Jo and Ducky Mallard, who know more about crime scenes and maggots than seems quite healthy, but who were okay with me being inaccurate when the story needed it. I’m not sure there would have been a book without my amazing early critiquers. Big thanks to Alex Davis, Beccy Bagnall, Sophie Snell, Gemma Allen, Fay Gordon, Katherine Armstrong, Alice Hill, Robyn Arend, and Hjordis Fischer. Also to Scribophile, and to Writing Magazine for choosing me to win a critique from James McCreet.