by Clare Curzon
She was right; it hadn’t. But my name was there, typewritten with a new-looking black ribbon: Chloë Knightley. She tucked it firmly between two of my books, looked past me and said, ‘Next, please,’ as friendly as a flatiron.
There seemed to be quite a lot inside the envelope. I knew I had never seen it before, so someone had left it, intending it to be handed to me next time I came in. And since it hadn’t yet reached the Lost Property cupboard, that person must have left it a matter of minutes before.
Out in the torrid street I hugged my books to me and squatted on the low wall by the bus stop, with the park railings hard against my back. One bus must just have gone because there was no queue waiting. So with twelve minutes or so to spare I laid the books down and eased the envelope open with a fingernail while the traffic droned past, building towards rush hour.
Inside were six glossy black and white photographs and no note to cover them.
I had never seen porn before, but that’s what these must be. No way could you call it Art.
The shots were of a woman’s naked body squirming in obscene positions, brightly front-lit. Two of them showed the photographer’s squat, cruciform shadow projected across her white flesh. Long hair, tangled and rat-tailed, barely allowed a glimpse of her eyes closed in mock ecstasy. The rest of her face was in deep shadow. The last shot was every bit as obscene, although she wore a filmy, translucent dress. It was long and seemed to have a snaky pattern. In only this picture was the face revealed.
With horror I found I was staring at my own. I appeared to be asleep.
Automatically I boarded the bus, showed my pass, found a seat. I felt nothing, except some difficulty in breathing.
Time must have passed as I sat there unbelieving. And yet it made sense now. It accounted for so much: the confusion, the film-clip flashes of memory, the bruising.
I didn’t think any more that I’d been drunk. This was due to more than alcohol. I’d read sometime in a newspaper about what they called the date-rape drug. I could even remember its commercial name: Rohypnol. Dentists sometimes used it, and there was a similar veterinary product which sometimes got loose on the market.
There had been women who innocently accepted drinks from a stranger. Perhaps as much as a day later they’d woken to the sort of state I’d been in, with whole passages of time missing from their lives. They’d suffered the same symptoms. The friendly stranger - as they’d thought - had drugged and abducted them, then raped them while they were helpless. To anyone watching as they left the bar, the women had seemed a little drunk, not unwilling to be led away. Even co-operative.
Now it had happened to me. I’d been given something like that, when I’d been with Beryl Ryder. How could she let it happen? And why would she?
But she hadn’t been alone. I recalled the shadowy sightings - a man, a decadent with pale eyes like washed-out blue denim, the pupils pinpoints. And Morgan, dressed to look like a nurse.
How much of that was nightmare fantasy, and how much real? And I’d thought I’d seen my father looking furious. Perhaps that was a memory escaped from some earlier time I’d offended him. How would I ever know?
But then I didn’t want ever to know.
I found the bus had gone past my stop and I rushed to get off, clutching my library books and the package with the revolting photographs. Now I’d nearly a mile to walk back.
I’d need all of that to get a grip on myself before facing Leila. She hadn’t offered to pick me up today, expecting us to hang about after the last exam or go off to discuss it over milkshakes. That was one thing to be glad of.
I started to walk, and to try sorting things in my mind. My mind which I’d thought I’d been going out of. Now I knew I wasn’t sick in quite that way.
But there were other horrors every bit as bad: what had actually happened. I could have been made pregnant.
Bile came up in my mouth. Whatever had happened was too far back now for any precautions to work. I knew there was a ‘morning-after’ pill but it was too late even for that. And what about AIDS? HIV? I should really see a doctor, but I didn’t dare. I would just have to wait and see what happened. How could I, though, with so much hanging over me?
I had to find Beryl Ryder. She had a lot to answer for. She had certainly laced my drink at that pub. Where had she dropped me off afterwards? Maybe she’d taken the photographs too. The idea shamed me. I wasn’t sure I could trust myself to get in touch.
Was I imagining the way she’d looked at me once she knew who I was? With silent amusement. Could she be so coldly malicious, the sixth-former I’d admired because she was beautiful and, as I thought, sophisticated?
I still wasn’t ready to face Leila by the time I reached home. I couldn’t believe I ever would be. She was in the front garden planning where she’d plant a Viburnum hedge. She saluted me jauntily with a soily trowel but I went right past.
‘I’m going for a shower and then early bed,’ I said shortly. ‘I couldn’t face going out tonight.’
‘Whatever you like,’ she offered. I’d worried her, but she doesn’t fuss.
I’d reached the foot of the stairs when I thought of something and went back to her. ‘Do you think I could borrow your mobile? I’ve a couple of calls to make. I promise I won’t run you up an immense bill.’
‘Of course. The phone’s in my shoulder bag in the kitchen.’
I helped myself to it and to the current area phone directory from the study. Then, as I’d said I’d do, I showered; but no amount of standing under the water and soaping myself off would ever get rid of what had happened to me.
In bed I looked up the Ryder number. There were only two entries for that name and one was for Truck Rental, so I chose the other. It still took me a long time to get round to ringing it.
It must have been her mother who answered; a languid, rather artificial voice. ‘Beryl’s not here,’ she told me. ‘Who shall I tell her called?’
When I gave my name and was halfway through my number she snapped back, ‘She has it, as you must know. I’m quite sure she won’t want to trouble you by ringing back, Mrs Knightley.’ Then the line went dead and the dialling tone returned.
It rather stunned me, but her mistake was understandable. So Beryl’s mother knew about her affair with my father and had probably heard her ringing him at this number. She’d taken me for Leila, not knowing her first name. Now she might not pass on to Beryl that I’d rung. Perhaps that was a good thing.
But it seems that she did.
I was lying sleepless at a quarter to eight when the downstairs phone rang and Leila called up that it was for me. ‘Beryl someone,’ she said as she passed the handset across.
The voice on the other end sounded a little breathless, and something more, perhaps uneasy.
I made certain the kitchen door was fast closed on Leila before speaking. ‘I want to know,’ I said as firmly as I could, ‘exactly what you were up to on Friday. And as for the photographs, you’ve no hope of blackmailing me. I’ve no money of my own. You must realise that.’
There was a silence. I tried to picture her face and couldn’t. Then, ‘What photographs?’
It sounded like genuine incredulity. But with someone like Beryl how could I tell?
‘Listen,’ she said threateningly. ‘It’s not my fault you got sloshed. You ought to be thanking me for what I did for you.’
It was unbelievable. ‘Did what for me?’
‘Got your dad to come out and pick you up. I even undressed you and put you to bed at home. I’m not surprised you don’t remember. You were out cold at that point. He was disgusted. Lucky it was your mum’s weekend away.
‘And don’t forget I want the dress back. It cost somebody a helluva lot of money. Make sure it’s dry-cleaned, in case you puked all down it.’
I didn’t know what she was talking about, any more than she’d appeared to know about the photographs. I put the receiver down and went, sickly, back to bed.
The thought of Beryl h
ere in my room, touching my things, undressing me, filled me with added disgust. And then, remembering how uneasy she’d sounded at first, I knew why: because of the little sachet of white powder I’d found in my bedding. It could have been in her pocket and dropped out when she manhandled me. Maybe some of my bruises had happened then. But she wasn’t sure she’d lost it here. As far as she knew it could be anywhere.
Next morning I knew I had to get away. I would tell Leila I’d arranged with Granny to stay with her for a week or two. I might even do that, but only after I’d been for a medical check-up.
I couldn’t trust any local doctor not to gas to Leila or my father, so it would have to be in London or even further away. I’d have to go private and use an assumed name. And the fee must come out of my holiday money.
Meanwhile I saw no point in pushing Beryl any further, but there was someone else who might be more forthcoming. I wasn’t fooled anymore by her apparent niceness when she’d offered me coffee and dry clothes after my drenching. She’d been anything but a friend to me the first time I saw her, forcing that salty drink on me. The image had hardened in my memory and I knew for sure now that it was Morgan. Morgan who might, or might not, be a nurse. And nurses had access to all kinds of drugs.
So that was why I dressed and went out, saying I needed fresh air. Which was how I came to get really involved with the Gregorys, all three of them, just trying to get myself sorted out.
Investigation
Chapter 17
Sunday 4 July
Chloë wandered out into the darkening garden and sat on the broken stone seat they’d retrieved from a tangle of brambles. Through the big windows she could see Janey moving about the kitchen illuminated like a stage set by the harsh strip lighting.
Leila had intended changing it, rejigging completely with new cooker, fittings, the lot. Now it would never happen. Everything had been struck dead. A part of her, Chloë knew, had gone the same way.
At Granny’s she’d been getting over the shame and the shock of what had happened in her own life, sorting herself out and facing up. Then this unbelievable horror of Leila’s killing. Today was the worst ever, so immeasurably long, starting in Nice and then ending in nightmare.
She tried not to see the physical murder in her mind, but that was impossible. It had happened in only one actual way, but a hundred dreadful images of it overwhelmed her. To break free of them she needed to know exactly who, and how, and the full agony of the reality. But she didn’t yet dare face up to it. Oh God, not yet.
The sight of Janey getting on with life was offensive. Yet she was showing guts. No one could deny Janey had loved Leila. As I did, Chloë admitted. It was terrible to think did, not does. Because the love was still there, in the great gap that had appeared.
Janey seemed to be hunting for something, pulling out a kitchen chair and climbing up to peer in the top cupboards. Chloë brushed grit off the seat of her jeans and went in to help.
‘Ah,’ Janey said. ‘That big brown pottery thing she does the casseroles in; have you any idea where it’s been put? I thought I’d start tomorrow’s steak off tonight; let it cook slowly for an hour or two.’
‘Does the casseroles in …’ She was having the same trouble with tenses.
Chloe went through to the conservatory and retrieved the pot from where the cleaned china had been stacked. Under the trestle table Leila’s yellow rubber gloves hung over the edge of a bucket, plumped out as if her hands were still curled in them, but weirdly collapsed.
She hugged the pot to her, its bright highlights on the heavy brown glaze comfortingly familiar. Continuity: that was something.
‘Anything you’d like me to do?’ she asked Janey, back in the kitchen.
‘Could you trot down to Hetty Chadwick’s and say I’d like a word with her when it’s convenient. I could phone but it’s better face to face since we barely know each other.’
‘Right.’
Passing the first of the old cottages she noticed the absence of lights. No sign of Morgan or her brother. Next-door the chenille curtains had been closed but sounds of the television escaped from an open casement. She recognised the opening music of the Sunday evening serial. Mrs Chadwick wouldn’t care to have her regular viewing interrupted.
Chloë hadn’t accounted for the woman’s priority of the real world over the screen one. Or perhaps it was just unhealthy curiosity. ‘I’ll come right away,’ she offered. ‘Just a sec while I put me shoes on.’
She riffled through a bulging handbag for her key-ring which she dropped in her skirt pocket. ‘Time was,’ she said, ‘when you never needed lock your doors. That’s long gone. So how’re you all bearing up, dearie? What a terrible thing to happen. I couldn’t believe me ears when they told me.’
She slammed the door and they turned into the lane. Chloë was glad she wasn’t expected to interrupt Mrs Chadwick’s flow. The sky was growing overcast, like a lid pressing down the day’s stale heat. Because the unmade edges of the road were tussocky and shadowed, they walked together in the middle.
‘Gotta nasty bunion on me left foot,’ the woman confided, to account for her hobbling.
‘I hope it doesn’t stop you …’
Chloe broke off, dazzled by headlights instantly switched on by a car racing towards them.
As she left she’d been vaguely conscious of a vehicle parked beyond Knollhurst with its engine idling. The speed at which it was roaring at them now was terrifying. She grabbed Mrs Chadwick by one arm and dragged her towards the verge, almost made it, but the woman tottered and was on the point of falling as the car struck, tearing her from Chloë’s grasp. Falling, the girl saw in slow motion the big pale figure strike the bonnet and seem to leap off into the night as the car screamed past, its red rear lights swallowed up in the dark.
In the awful silence after it she gazed around. Grit in her eyes made them stream and she couldn’t see. Hetty Chadwick had disappeared.
Then she made out a dim shape heaped against the far verge. There was no movement, no sound.
Chloë crawled across on hands and knees. She took the heavy, ungainly body in her arms, rocking over it, lifted her head and howled like a dog.
Over breakfast on Monday Superintendent Yeadings paused after the first bite into his marmalade toast and wondered aloud where the proverbial prejudice against stepmothers had sprung from.
‘Fairy tales,’ Nan supplied. ‘Snow White and the Wicked Queen, that sort of thing. Or maybe it goes further back, to the Ancient Greeks. They were pretty smart about funky families.’
She reached out to retrieve young Luke’s yoghurt spoon which had unaccountably come sailing across the table in a wide parabola. ‘I hope you aren’t considering a replacement for my useless self.’
‘That’d be the day,’ her husband said, grinning fiercely. ‘I just hoped you could shed some light on the stepchild’s point of view.’
Nan planted her elbows on the table, earning a squeak of priggish protest from their daughter. ‘Well, at best a new mum means comfort and support for a lonely little person who’s rather adrift. For an older child who’s into independence it can seem an invasion, a rupture of a standing relationship with the father, as well as an insult to the memory of the real mother. That leaves a sizeable area in-between.
‘Does this sudden interest stem from the two boys who killed themselves in the stolen car?’ She meant the case which had made front-page news in last week’s local paper.
‘No. Both had a full complement of biological parents, however inadequate they may have been. You recall the incident in Shotters Wood that we came across on Friday night? Nine years back the dead woman had married a widowed professor with two young children. The son’s abroad at present, but I’ve met the daughter and she gives every sign of being devoted to her late stepmother. In fact she’s devastated by her death.’
‘How old?’
‘An intelligent fifteen.’
‘It’s not simply shock at the idea of murder?’
‘I’m sure it’s much more.’
‘In that case the new mother could have replaced her own early on when she needed basic nurturing. Or else the girl’s at odds with her father and welcomed the new mother as an ally.’
‘Or both,’ said Yeadings. ‘Thanks, Nan. That backs up the impression I get from the whole set-up.’
Nan made a grimace of distaste. ‘Will the murder turn out to be a domestic?’
‘Could be. It depends what Angus has made of the husband overnight,’ Yeadings allowed, rising from the table. ‘Then again it could be a lot more complicated than that. There are some definite undercurrents that make me wonder.’
‘Are the Press on to it yet?’
‘They will be shortly. The PR office is putting out a brief statement today after I’ve checked it. So the Evening Standard will give it a para or two tonight, the morning dailies tomorrow.’
So she could read about it there, and that would be her lot. She could see Mike wasn’t going to loose-mouth on this one. Not at this juncture anyway.
He brushed off his toast crumbs, solemnly kissed his way round the table, wiped the resultant stickiness off his mouth and went with Nan to the door. ‘What’s for tonight?’
‘I’d better make it lamb, slow roast. Safest when I can’t be sure how late you’ll be.’
‘Right. New case: lots’a spadework.’
She watched him drive out on to the road and reflected that any digging was rightly the team’s. But Mike was no slouch when it came to active policing. No way was his desk the full-time obsession the top brass had meant it to be.
Mott was in early and Yeadings stopped off at the CID office. ‘Anything promising with Knightley, Angus?’