Turning Nasty (Anna McColl Mystery Series Book 4)

by Penny Kline

  I thought about Jon Turle and felt annoyed that he had been so unhelpful. Imogen had seen him six times. He must have learned much more about her than he was letting on. Why was he holding back? Because he knew something important but felt Imogen ought to tell me about it herself? On the spur of the moment I decided to pay him a visit. Face to face he would find it harder to fob me off.

  An old man, dragging a shopping bag on wheels, paused to light a cigarette and cough into his gloved hand. Stepping aside to let him pass I consulted my street map, took the next turning on the right and found myself standing directly outside the house.

  It was larger than I had expected, on four floors but divided up into flats, apart from the ground floor space which seemed to be occupied by an aromatherapist, an acupuncturist — and Jon Turle. Since it was after five he could well have left for home by now. Still, it was worth a try. If I was out of luck I would phone him in the morning, although I had a feeling he would find an excuse to avoid meeting me.

  Just as I was about to press the bell the front door opened and a woman rushed out, nearly bumping into me, then steadying herself on the iron railing that separated the house from the one next door.

  ‘So sorry.’ She had an accent that could have been Spanish.

  ‘Jon Turle,’ I said. ‘Do you know if he’s still in the building?’

  She hesitated and I guessed she was trying to work out who I was. A patient, trying to snatch an unplanned appointment? Someone from the Inland Revenue, checking up on his tax return?

  ‘My name’s Anna McColl,’ I said. ‘I’m a psychologist.’

  Her face relaxed. ‘Oh, I see, nice to meet you. As far as I know Jon’s still in his consulting room. I believe his last client will be due to leave any minute, or she may have already… ’ The end of her sentence was lost as a Badgerline bus passed close by. Running down the steps she turned and raised a hand covered in large chunky rings, then she set off at a brisk pace in the direction of Cotham Hill.

  The front door was still open. I stepped inside, taking in a sharp antiseptic smell, more reminiscent of a hospital than a centre for complementary medicine. The hallway seemed to provide a waiting room for the clients. There were no rugs, no pictures or ornaments, just three matching chairs and a long low table, with several copies of a magazine called Healthy Living. Each of the three closed doors, leading off from the hallway, had a wooden nameplate with gold lettering. Della Haff, aromatherapist. Mark English, acupuncturist. Jon Turle, psychotherapist.

  I sat down, listening for sounds behind the closed doors, something that would tell me if the two remaining therapists still had clients with them. The woman I had met on the doorstep must have been Della Haff. I had guessed she was the aromatherapist rather than the acupuncturist but that was pure prejudice, based on a vague idea that acupunture was more scientific than aromatherapy, and Ms Haff looked more the type that rubs scented oils into her clients, rather than sticks needles in them. The names on the doors confirmed it.

  The whole place felt deserted. There were no sounds from the floor above, but presumably it was still too early for the occupants of the flats to have returned from work. After skimming through an article entitled ‘Sex with the Same Partner: does it have to turn you off?’ I moved closer to Jon Turk’s door, waited for a few seconds, then tapped lightly on the polished wood.

  ‘Hang on a moment.’ The voice sounded relaxed, friendly. Most likely he assumed I was his colleague, Mark English. Perhaps they met up for a drink at the end of the day.

  The door opened and the smile on the man’s face turned to a frown. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you. Anna McColl. We spoke to each other on the phone.’

  He knew who I was but pretended to be puzzled. Then he jerked his head as though a few brain cells had suddenly connected. ‘Oh yes, I remember. How did you know where I worked?’

  ‘Martin Wheeler. He had your address on his computer index.’

  He managed a feeble smile. ‘You’d better come in. Who let you into the building?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Della Haff?’

  His back was turned as he fiddled with the window catch. ‘It’s about Imogen, is it? I’m afraid I’ve told you everything I know. It’s unusual for my clients to want information about them passed on to someone else. What did she say exactly?’ ‘Not much.’ I moved further into the room, making it clear I had no intention of being fobbed off with a few perfunctory words. ‘Look, I don’t know if you agree but from what I’ve observed I’d say she was fairly depressed. Covers it up as best she can with plenty of laugher and irrelevant chatter, but I’m worried about her otherwise I wouldn’t be here.’

  He remained standing by the window. Slim, tall, with the reddish skin that often accompanies very fair hair, he inspected himself in a long gilt-framed mirror on the opposite wall and seemed displeased with what he saw. His hair was fine and fluffy, like a day-old chick, and he was dressed entirely in white: white jeans, white shirt, white V-neck sweater with the sleeves pushed up above his elbows.

  ‘I’ll tell you everything I know,’ he said suddenly, ‘although I doubt if that’s why you’re here.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve heard about you before. I expect you’ve heard about me.’

  ‘Yes, I knew your name.’ He wanted to keep me in suspense, or perhaps he was searching for the right words.

  ‘You knew Maggie?’ he said flatly. ‘Who?’

  ‘Maggie Hazeldean. She went to see you.’

  ‘No, no I never met her — ’ I broke off, wondering if Maggie too had been one of his clients. ‘She was — ’

  ‘A friend. I didn’t know her all that well, but it was a dreadful shock, the fire. I suppose I thought… ’

  I pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘You thought I was asking about Imogen as a way of trying to find out more about Maggie Hazeldean. Yes, it’s true she’d made an appointment to see me but it was for the Monday.’

  ‘Two days after the fire.’ He looked a little sceptical, then seemed to decide I was telling the truth. ‘She wasn’t impressed with us lot. Therapists, counsellors, psychologists. She believed in action. Political action. Thought we just propped up the status quo, turned social deprivation into a psychological problem, acted as government agents.’

  ‘Yes, I know the theory.’

  ‘Even so she gave plenty of support to the Student Counselling Service at the university, campaigning to get them more money, better premises. I think she thought simple, straightforward counselling was all right. Just ordinary people being nice to each other.’ He stared at me but it felt as though he was looking right through me. ‘Imogen,’ he said at last. ‘Poor little rich girl, always managed to get her own way up till now, finding life as a student not quite the bed of roses she imagined.’ ‘But she’s in her final year,’ I protested. ‘Surely by now she should have settled down, come to terms with her fear of speaking in front of other students?’

  ‘Oh, that.’ He pulled back the edge of the curtain and gazed out at the street. A lorry carrying a skip piled high with builder’s rubble was passing, the driver changing down as the hill grew steeper. A moment later Jon let go of the curtain and turned to face me. ‘Look, if you want the truth, part of me was relieved when Imogen asked to see one of you lot. I never felt I was making much progress. She’s one of those people who demand somebody does something, then try to prove no one can possibly help. Sorry for herself, far too egocentric, I felt I was probably doing more harm than good.’

  He sounded more like a hard-faced schoolteacher than a psychotherapist. If Imogen had picked up his dislike of her it was hardly surprising she had asked to be referred to someone else.

  ‘So you’ve told me as much as you know about her background.’ I stood up and moved towards the open door. ‘Thanks anyway, I think I get the picture.’

  It wasn’t my intention to sound aggressive, I was just signalling my departure, but he took it badly.

  ‘Oh
, you think I found her a pain in the arse and palmed her off on to somebody else.’ He followed me into the reception area. ‘You’re about as far from the truth as it’s possible to be. I hate to feel I’ve failed, but it’s something we all have to come to terms with, just one of the more unpleasant aspects of the job, wouldn’t you say?’

  We stared at each other. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘you may not want to tell me, but have you any idea what Maggie wanted to talk to me about?’

  He hesitated, but only for a fraction of a second. ‘If I knew I’d have told the police.’

  My car was parked in a side road behind the university library. Before returning to the flat I decided to have a quick look through the journals and see if I could find any of Maggie Hazeldean’s publications. Knowing the exact nature of her research could be useful. At the very least I would be able to reassure Janice and Trev Baker it had absolutely nothing to do with picking out individual children and telling their head teachers they ought to be sent to special schools for the maladjusted.

  Unless I was exceptionally lucky, finding the right research journals would be a slow business. Far easier to ask Owen’s advice, but if I phoned him he would use it as an excuse to come round to the flat, and I wanted an evening on my own.

  Thumbing through a copy of the British Journal of Educational Psychology I felt a warm hand on my shoulder. It was Terry Curtis.

  ‘Fancy seeing you here. Thought you’d finished your project.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Planning something new? You know, if you’re really interested in the forensic stuff you should try getting a grant from the Somerset and Avon Police Authority.’

  ‘Some hope.’ I stood up, replacing the journal in its slot on the shelf. When I turned to face Terry he was looking thoughtful.

  ‘Are you busy, Anna? In the middle of something?’ His voice had changed, become serious. ‘I wondered if we could have a brief chat.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Can’t tell you here. My car’s parked close by.’ He held open the swing door. ‘I’m worried about Grace. She’s taken all this wretched business very hard. I suppose I just needed a spot of advice — from a professional.’

  The pavement was swarming with students. Terry walked on ahead, turning into St Michael’s Hill, then first left into a street where a row of cars had been parked nose to tail. I didn’t bother to tell him my car was parked only three away from his.

  ‘Maggie was working with some of the primary schools,’ he said, searching for his keys until he found the right pocket. ‘Three or four inner city ones and the same number out in the suburbs. Her thesis was that poverty’s the main cause of disruptive behaviour in young kids. Tension in the home, combining with a child’s inherited personality.’ He unlocked the passenger door and held it open. ‘You’re not in a hurry, are you?’

  ‘No, not particularly. I’ve been talking to someone quite nearby so I decided to drop in at the library to see if I could find any of Maggie’s publications. Just out of curiosity.’

  The Morgan felt too low to the ground, like a bumper car at the fair.

  ‘Won’t find any, I’m afraid.’ Terry leaned across to make sure the passenger door was properly shut. ‘One or two papers due to come out in the not too distant future but most of her data was yet to be analysed.’

  ‘Can’t someone else complete it?’

  He raised his shoulders, then let them sag. ‘Let’s hope so, but her research assistant’s not really up to working on his own, and most of the people collecting data were part-time, nothing to do with the real nitty-gritty of the project.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Me? Carry out a statistical analysis of Maggie’s data? I suppose I could, if I had the time, but it’s totally at odds with my own work. Interesting enough, but misguided, ultimately doomed to get nowhere.’

  His dismissive attitude caught me by surprise. Just for a moment it was as if he was speaking evil of the dead and it was my job to defend Maggie Hazeldean’s integrity. ‘I thought you were both interested in disruptive behaviour in the classroom.’

  He stretched his arm along the back of my seat. ‘Yes, that’s right, but I go for a mixture of poor child-rearing practices — inconsistent discipline, bribing with food, and so on — plus parents exposing their kids to bad models of how to control frustration. When you think of the environment some kids grow up in it’s astonishing they turn out as relatively normal as they do. I say relatively normal. Look at it the other way — if parents knew what they were doing the whole of society could be transformed.’ He was rubbing his hands together, excited, exhilarated.

  ‘So you blame the parents,’ I said, ‘and Maggie blamed the government.’

  He laughed. ‘And the child’s genetic inheritance. She was keen on the idea of personality evolving out of a particularly reactive nervous system. Or a particularly inactive one, of course.’

  It was interesting, worth discussing, but not just now. I felt tired and, for no particular reason I could put my finger, a little depressed. Did he really want to talk about Grace or had he seen me in the library and decided I would make a good captive audience, someone outside his department who would listen admiringly to his latest theories?

  I turned to face him. ‘You said you were worried about Grace.’

  He was silent for a moment or two. His arm brushed the back of my neck and he pulled it free, then started talking about Owen. ‘I’m so glad the two of you have got together. Just what Owen needed. I lost my first wife so I can understand how he felt. Takes time to adjust, make a fresh start.’

  So it wasn’t his research he wanted to talk about, or Grace.

  ‘My first wife,’ he continued, ‘it was a long time ago. We met as students, married far too young, but you don’t realize at that age. She was in her early twenties. Brilliant career ahead of her.’ He started massaging the back of his head. ‘Took her own life. Such a waste. Such a bloody awful waste.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I was, but why had he lured me into his car to tell me about something that had happened nearly twenty years ago? Then it occurred to me that, far from seeking help for himself, he was trying to help me.

  ‘You mean, you think Owen hasn’t got over his wife’s death.’

  He spun round. ‘Owen? Oh, heavens, I didn’t mean that. No, of course not. He’s besotted with you. May not show it but you know Owen. Yes, of course you do.’ Placing both hands on the steering wheel and gripping it until his knuckles turned white he sighed deeply. ‘Oh God, isn’t life impossible? Why can’t we just be satisfied with a roof over our heads, enough to eat… ’

  I decided to return to the subject of Grace. ‘I think Grace is worried about Bill and Ian. Before she cleared up the house it looked as though nobody had done any cleaning for months, but I think she feels she ought to do more.’

  ‘She knows you’re helping Ian. What about Bill? How’s he taken it all?’

  ‘I’ve only seen him briefly. Last time he was out at a parents’ evening. I think he’s glad to avoid me. Grace says he doesn’t like psychologists, and I get the impression he was in quite a bad way, even before the fire.’

  He jumped, almost as though he had forgotten I was there. ‘The fire? Oh, the fire. So you’ve talked to Grace quite a bit. That’s good, that’s really good. D’you know Bill’s school? It’s up near Bristol Rovers’ old ground. Apparently he was very bitter when the marriage broke up, so certain he was the innocent party and Maggie had been seduced by university life. God knows what he thinks we do, it’s as run of the mill as any other job, but Bill seems to have got it into his head she was meeting all kinds of interesting people and it was wrecking their relationship, forcing them apart.’

  ‘But she didn’t leave Bill for someone else?’

  He cleared his throat. ‘Not as far as I know. If there was someone she was keeping it very quiet and surely whoever it was would have come forward after the fire.’

  We stared through the
windscreen, both wondering the same thing? That the fire had been started by a rejected lover — or husband?

  ‘Grace is up in London,’ said Terry. ‘Her daughter’s having a baby at the end of April. There’s some complication, high blood pressure or something. Grace goes up quite often. She was on her way there on the night of the fire but I didn’t phone her. Waited to tell her the news when she got back.’

  ‘I didn’t realize she had a daughter as well as a son.’

  ‘Oh, didn’t Owen tell you? Grace was married to a doctor. A GP in St Albans. Angus is seventeen, doing his A-levels. Laura’s nineteen, lives in London with a man who sells junk from a stall in Camden Market.’ He laughed. ‘You’re doing a few calculations, working out how long Grace and I have been together. Things are too complicated these days. Better when people stayed married come hell or high water. It was tough for Grace, leaving the kids with their father, not that it did them any harm — they were quite old enough to understand, both in their mid-teens — it just seemed unfair to uproot them when they were settled into school.’

  The windows of the car had steamed up. Terry pulled part of his shirt free and started to polish his glasses. ‘Grace admired Maggie,’ he said. ‘We all did. She only completed her PhD a year ago. Didn’t do her first degree until she was nearly thirty.’

  ‘She was lucky to get a job.’

  ‘Yes. Right place at the right time and any research involving schools has a high profile at the moment. Of course the education system’s needed a good shake-up for a long time. Maggie and I used to enjoy arguing about the pros and cons of testing, school achievement tables, all that kind of thing.’

  ‘You approved. She took the opposite line.’

  He smiled. ‘Got me summed up already, have you? The people in Whitehall seem quite interested in my proposal.’

  ‘It’s got that far?’

  ‘Only an outline, possible pilot study in a cross-section of schools. The problem is it’d have to be a fairly long-term project, following up kids who’d been given some training in parenting, comparing them with… ’ He broke off suddenly. ‘Do you know, Anna, I wouldn’t admit this to anyone else but I wake in the night picturing the scene when the fire engines finally arrived. Wondering how it looked. How Maggie… I suppose Bill had to identify the body, what was left of it?’