A Crushing Blow (Anna McColl Mystery Book 3)

by Penny Kline

  He sighed. ‘I just want Geraldine to be back to her old self. Before it happened, before the murder, I keep wondering if she was really as happy as I thought. She’s very intelligent, you know, should have had a proper career.’

  ‘You thought she might have been feeling a little frustrated?’

  His head jerked up. ‘Frustrated? Yes, I know what you mean. Sometimes — oh, I’m sure it was nothing serious — but she’d have these outbursts of anger.’

  ‘Like her father.’

  ‘Her father? Oh no, nothing like that. She’s such a gentle person, wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

  For the first time it occurred to me that Sandy might actually think Geraldine had something to do with Walter Bury’s death. Perhaps he believed she had inherited a ‘bad gene’ from her father. But surely he knew better than that. Because her agoraphobia was so inexplicable he had gone over and over in his mind every possibility, however crazy. Knowing was always better than not knowing. That was why he had been so keen for me to talk to Geraldine. He wanted me to find the real cause of her anxiety, then he could relax.

  ‘The trouble with all this counselling and psychotherapy,’ I said, ‘it breaks down the defences, makes people start thinking thoughts they normally suppress.’

  He smiled at me, as though I had picked up accurately how his imagination had been running away with itself. ‘We all have a persona, don’t we,’ he said. ‘A mask, the outward face we present to the world.’

  ‘If we didn’t we’d never survive.’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’ He crossed to the fireplace, bending down to look up the chimney as though he thought the squawking bird might be up on the roof. ‘Sorry to go on like this, it’s just, no one else would understand. Most of my friends and acquaintances would think I was mad. I have a sister, unmarried, a consultant paediatrician who works in Birmingham. She takes after our father, he was scientifically minded, a nuclear physicist.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘The typical self-absorbed boffin. Brilliant but rather remote. I take after my mother, never much interested in school, exams, that kind of stuff, more of an organizer, interested in people not things.’

  ‘Show me the rest of the cottage,’ I said, reluctant to hear his whole life history just at present, tired after my session with Geraldine and by the intensity of Sandy’s feelings. ‘Someone’s going to love it. Bryan and Helen, perhaps, they seem to like the south-west.’

  He searched in a box of tools, selecting a large chisel and testing the sharp end against his hand. ‘Now there’s a thought.’

  ‘You mean they’ve never seen it?’

  He shook his head, unwilling to change the subject and give up talking about his plans. ‘Have you noticed how often people say exactly the opposite of what they really mean? They tell you they don’t care when really they care like hell.’

  Who was he thinking about? Geraldine, or perhaps he meant Helen Sealey. ‘Or they say they want pornography banned when really they’re obsessed with sex and violence.’

  He laughed. ‘Exactly that. Fascinating, isn’t it? Oh, I’m sorry, you look tired, let me buy you some lunch, there’s a pub down die road that’s not too bad.’

  I had my hand on the door.

  ‘Just before we leave,’ he said, ‘I wanted to ask you. Obviously anything Geraldine’s told you is completely confidential, but now you’ve seen her a few times I wondered if you could tell me the best way I can help.’

  ‘Just be your usual self.’

  ‘Yes, of course, but it’s not that simple, is it? I mean should I encourage her to talk or just carry on as though everything’s normal?’ He thought for a moment. ‘The day it happened, the day they found the body, I came home at about ten to seven. I’d been to visit a friend in Portishead. Geraldine was watching the local news, an item about the Kennet and Avon Canal.’

  ‘You’ve got a good memory.’

  ‘Those kind of associations tend to stamp themselves on your brain. Hang on.’ He placed his hand on the bald patch on the top of his head, rubbing it round and round. ‘She was sitting on the window seat like she often does, with her shoulders slightly hunched, not looking at the television. I went up to her and kissed her on the back of the neck and she jumped, almost as though she had been unaware I was in the room.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Then she told me what had happened. She’s a very sensitive person but not neurotic, that’s quite different isn’t it? I think she imagined it could have been Thomas in the woods.’

  ‘On his own?’

  ‘No, of course not, but she’s always had a very vivid imagination. Tends to speculate about what might happen, then upset herself quite needlessly. Once when we were on holiday in East Anglia a child swam out too far and had to be given artificial respiration. For months after she kept going over and over it in her mind, almost as though the child had drowned. Supposing it had been Thomas, supposing … ’

  ‘I expect all mothers are the same.’

  He stared at me. ‘She hasn’t said anything, then, nothing that would explain why she feels so afraid?’

  So Sandy had noticed it too. Perhaps when they were alone together she dropped her guard, admitted her fear. ‘If there was anything I’m sure she’d tell you,’ I said. ‘Just try and be a good listener.’

  ‘Oh, I’m that all right. You see the thing is, she can’t look after Thomas the way she usually does, play with him, have games of backgammon and so on. I do my best to make up for it, of course, even asked if he’d like to help with the cottage, but it’s not really his kind of thing and I’m not very good company at present. I suppose that’s why he’s attached himself to Lynsey, she’s more fun to be with than either of his parents, poor little chap.’

  ‘Children are very resilient,’ I said, ‘and in any case it won’t go on like this for ever.’

  ‘No, of course not. Thank God we met when we did, Anna. One of those strokes of luck that only happen once in a life time.’

  I wanted to ask him about the woman sitting next to him in the car. I had to ask him.

  ‘Helen Sealey,’ I said. ‘What do you know about her? Rona Halliwell says she refuses to drive the car.’

  ‘That’s right.’ He looked a little surprised but his voice was perfectly calm. ‘Something happened I suppose and she lost her nerve. She’s a beautiful woman but I wouldn’t say she was terribly happy, would you? Perhaps she was pinning all her hopes on the baby, but having children never solves anything, does it, just produces a new set of problems, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Before the murder did Geraldine see much of the Sealeys?’

  Sandy pushed his hands in his pockets. ‘Why d’you ask? I think she talked to Helen sometimes — in the garden. Helen’s interested in plants, has a big garden of her own back in Wimbledon.’ He gave me a long questioning look. ‘There were no problems, if that’s what you’re thinking. I mean, we all get on together pretty well, just as I hoped we would.’

  ‘Apart from Lynsey and Rona Halliwell.’

  ‘Yes.’ He attempted a grin. ‘Well, that’s something they’ll have to sort out between themselves. Not the easiest person, that Rona. If you ask me there’s something odd about her, not quite what she seems.’

  There was a play on the radio — about a shipwreck. Either it was a memory, in the narrator’s head, or it could have been going on in the here and now. I listened for a couple of minutes then switched it off and picked up my jacket, the one with the broken zip that I had dropped on the floor in exasperation earlier in the day. The events of the day were going round in my head. Sandy’s plan to train as a Jungian analyst. His remark about Rona Halliwell. Geraldine taking me up to see Thomas’s room and dropping the binoculars on the window-sill when I mentioned how Lynsey had pointed out the place in the woods where Walter Bury’s body had been found. Had Thomas told his mother something important? Something about Lynsey? It seemed unlikely since both Geraldine and Sandy appeared only mildly concerned about the time
Lynsey and Thomas spent together.

  The phone started ringing. Expecting it to be Chris with the latest bulletin on the children’s mumps and yet another apology for the ruined holiday, I wedged the receiver against my ear and continued to tug at the maddening zip.

  ‘Anna?’

  ‘Yes.’ The voice was familiar but for a moment I couldn’t place it.

  ‘Owen Hughes.’

  ‘Owen? I thought you were still in America.’

  ‘Got back two days ago.’

  Only two days. So he wanted to see me. I was pleased. Or was I? Why had he waited two days? ‘Did you have a good time?’

  He coughed. ‘Sorry, brought a cold back with me. Not too bad, glad to be home. Look, you got my card, did you?’

  ‘Yes, but I couldn’t reply, there was no address.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t expect a reply. I was moving round, visiting various universities, plus a week’s holiday in Colorado. Anyway, the thing is, I wondered how your research was going, thought you might like to come round to the Unit and tell me about it.’

  ‘Ah. Yes. Well, I’ve done a lot of reading and made plenty of notes.’ This last wasn’t true but there was still time during the next day or two. ‘I’ll come next week, shall I? Actually I’m on holiday at the moment so I could — ’

  ‘What about Sunday?’

  ‘Sunday? You’ll be working at the Unit on — ’

  ‘I was thinking of a drive through the Forest of Dean. Still, it’s probably an area you know well. Not exactly an exciting afternoon out.’

  I thought fast. ‘I’ve only been there once,’ I said, annoyed with myself for inadvertently sounding too enthusiastic. ‘And it was raining so I didn’t see it at its best.’

  There was a pause at the other end of the line and for a moment I thought he had rung off.

  ‘Pick you up at two o’clock, then,’ he said softly. ‘’Bye for now.’

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Agoraphobia,’ said Ernest, clapping his huge hands together, then resting them on the wheels of his chair, ‘chance would be a fine thing.’

  I leaned across the table to look through the windows of St Mary Redcliffe. The church seemed to be constructed entirely out of matchsticks and tiny pieces of coloured glass. ‘It’s fantastic,’ I said, ‘must have taken you ages.’

  ‘Finding the right glass can be a problem but Dave Redwing from number thirty-one’s discovered a shop near Christmas Steps.’

  ‘Oh good.’ I tried to remember if I knew anyone called Dave. Ernest and Pam had moved into the ground-floor flat quite a time after I moved into mine above them but because neither of them went out to work they knew everyone in the surrounding houses, whereas I still felt like a newcomer.

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Ernest, ‘open the doors, it won’t fall to pieces.’

  I opened the door to the north porch, making a mental note as I did so to tell Howard Fry about Ernest’s handiwork. Howard had once described St Mary Redcliffe as the best parish church in England. He was well up on that kind of thing and on several occasions had expressed surprise, in the maddening tone of voice he had perfected, at my ignorance of Bristol’s architecture.

  Ernest was moving his wheelchair closer, negotiating the gap between the sideboard and sofa with an expertise that came from daily practice.

  ‘When it was nearly finished a violent storm shattered the roof,’ he said. ‘No, not this thing, the real one, built in the fifteenth century.’

  ‘It’s brilliant, must be worth a lot of money.’

  ‘Keeps me occupied. Once it’s finished I lose interest but Pam likes them put on display.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘So this agoraphobia you were telling me about, mostly women that suffer from it, is it? Why would that be, d’you suppose?’

  ‘Not easy to say. Women often feel isolated, sometimes they lose confidence, lose their sense of their own identity.’

  ‘Staying at home with the kids.’

  I nodded. ‘Some women feel they have to live up to a particular image of how they ought to look, behave. They’re afraid of criticism, they feel insecure.’

  ‘Yes.’ He looked a little sad. ‘Pam and I never had any kids. Wanted them but they never came along. These days you can get treatment, they work miracles. What’s the cure for it, then, this agoraphobia?’

  I thought about it for a moment. ‘Well, some people use desensitization techniques. Reducing the fear little by little. First the patient imagines herself walking out of doors, later she’s escorted a few yards down the road.’

  ‘But it doesn’t always work.’

  ‘No, usually it’s more complicated than that.’

  I stood up, not wanting to become embroiled in a long discussion. It was only ten to but Owen might be early. He wasn’t the kind of person who always has to appear desperately busy, too important to be on time. Not that I knew all that much about him, only that he worked at the university and had lived on his own, since his wife had died a few years ago, in a flat in Cotham. Just when I was starting to think our friendship had possibilities, and didn’t depend simply on the fact that he was supervising my research project, he had announced that he was off to America. And it was not as though it was something that had cropped up out of the blue. He had known about it for several months but never bothered to tell me. I had missed him, a little, then put him out of my mind. The postcard from Colorado had been a pleasant surprise but for all I knew he sent cards to all his postgraduate students.

  Someone knocked on the front door, then pushed it open and called Ernest’s name. Janos, dressed in a kind of boiler suit covered in zips and pockets, limped into the room. ‘Anna, good, I see you come down your steps and come to tell you my leg is OK, there is no need for you to take the dog out any more.’

  ‘You don’t look OK,’ I said.

  ‘Only a little stiffness. The doctor agree. Exercise is best, not sitting about watching silly rubbish on the television.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure, but if you need any help I’m on holiday for another week.’

  ‘The children still have mumps?’

  ‘Oh, I expect so but in any case it’s too late to go away now.’

  ‘You need proper holiday, doesn’t she, Ernest, somewhere to relax by the sea.’ Ernest glanced at me, then reversed his wheelchair, spinning it round till he was facing Janos. ‘Nice to talk to you, Anna. Off you go or you’ll miss your boyfriend. Leave us two old codgers to talk about our aches and pains.’

  ‘He’s not my boyfriend,’ I said.

  *

  Halfway across the Severn Bridge a light drizzle started to collect on the windscreen, blotting out the view of the south Wales coast. Owen switched on the wipers and as the screen cleared I turned to look across the other side of the estuary at the western reaches of Gloucestershire where, according to Janos, a member of the royal family had a large country estate.

  ‘So,’ said Owen, ‘you had a holiday arranged, then your friend’s child went down with mumps.’

  ‘Children. She’s got three but only two of them have caught it so far.’

  ‘Live locally, do they?’

  ‘Near Blaise Castle. We passed the turning on our way out of Bristol.’

  The traffic on the bridge had slowed down almost to a standstill. Owen wound down the window and the smell of the sea came in, a mixture of salt and mud.

  ‘I expect you’ve got plenty of friends in the area,’ he said.

  ‘Not really. I met Chris and Bruce through Martin Wheeler.’

  ‘The head of the Psychology Service.’

  ‘Oh yes, I’d forgotten you knew him.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that. Bump into him now and again. Bit of a cynical character, isn’t he?’

  ‘He’s all right when you get to know him,’ I said, feeling protective, almost as if Martin was a member of my family who could be criticized by me but not by outsiders.

  ‘Rain coming in on you?’ said Owen.

  ‘No, I’m fine, looks like it’s
going to clear up soon.’

  Once over the bridge we took the left-hand lane that left the motorway and joined up with the roundabout and the turning to Chepstow. It was the first time I had been so close to Owen. I could smell the newness of his shirt and hoped, absurdly, that he had bought it specially to impress me. He was whistling something Bach-like through his teeth. So far there had been no mention of my research and I was beginning to think he had forgotten all about it. Perversely, having dreaded his questions, I now felt slightly put out.

  ‘I was rather busy while you were away,’ I said.

  ‘More than usual?’

  I nodded but he was looking in the driving mirror, monitoring the sports car that had crept up behind us far too close. ‘We’ve had more referrals this year. I’m not sure why.’

  ‘Most people like talking about themselves, don’t they.’ He smiled to himself. ‘Oh, not me, I’m the archetypal academic. Have you ever met anyone less able to ask for help than an experimental psychologist?’

  ‘I haven’t done much work on my research,’ I said, ‘just some reading and a few notes.’

  ‘Thought you might’ve gone off the idea altogether. So many people have higher degrees these days I often wonder what they’re worth.’

  ‘All right for you,’ I said.

  ‘What’s all right for me? Anyway they’re setting up a top-up course for you clinical lot. Research project, carried out part-time, a few seminars, lectures, and you’ll have your doctorate, no trouble at all.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘I forget. They’ll send you details I expect, when it’s finalized, approved by the powers that be.’

  I turned my head to look at a couple of hitchhikers who wanted a lift to Aberystwyth. They were laughing and talking, the boy holding a can of Coke above his head and the girl leaping up to snatch it from his hand. Then I glanced at Owen who had stopped whistling and was tapping his fingers on the steering-wheel. It was all such hard work getting to know someone, finding out their interests and opinions, how they reacted in particular situations, whether they were placid or volatile, radical or conformist. No wonder people hung on to hopeless relationships. It was the loss of familiarity they dreaded, the realization that they would have to start all over again from square one.