‘She lives alone? Your dad . . .’
‘Died. You haven’t told me yet exactly what my injuries are.’
‘Your right ankle is broken, that’s why it’s in plaster. That will take a while to heal, I’m afraid. You’ve strained your right wrist, that must have been when you fell, you would have put your hand out to stop yourself. You’ve got superficial cuts and bruises to your head, hence the bandages – but you haven’t got concussion or any serious injury.’
Frowning, Miranda said, ‘Well, that doesn’t sound too bad – I thought it might be worse.’
‘You sound almost disappointed!’ Nurse Embry grinned at her. ‘It’s bad enough, surely!’
Miranda smiled back at her. ‘I’m relieved, believe me!’
A woman in a bed on the other side of the ward raised her head and called, ‘Nurse . . . nurse . . . I feel sick!’
Nurse Embry hurried over there. Miranda closed her eyes and drifted away into a dream about the Dorset garden; the clove-like scent of old-fashioned, frilly petalled pinks, a thrush picking up a snail and smashing it down on the rockery, the sound of the wind in the lime tree, and her mother wandering about clipping and weeding.
At lunchtime next day she was eating a small chicken salad when a man walked up to her bed, drew up a chair and sat down. The other women in the ward watched curiously. One of them bridled and said pointedly, ‘This isn’t visiting time, you know.’
The man ignored the comment. One of the nurses came into the ward and the other patients all watched avidly as she went over to Miranda’s bed, expecting the visitor to be turned out. Instead the nurse drew the curtains around Miranda’s bed and murmured, ‘Now, I told you, you can only stay for a little while.’
Miranda stared at the visitor who smiled.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘You remember me, don’t you? Sergeant Maddrell, Neil Maddrell. I interviewed you a couple of days ago.’
She flinched back against her pillows, reminded sharply of what she only wanted to forget. She had barely taken in what he looked like, but now she realised she did remember him. What was he doing here? Had he come to give her another chilly warning about wasting police time?
‘I’m sorry to hear about your accident. I’ve talked to your doctor and heard about your injuries. I’m afraid you’ll be stuck in bed for a while. That will be boring for you, but at least you’re being well looked after and you can have a good rest in here. You look as if you need one.’
His face was angular, a sculptured mask, the skin pulled tight over the bones and framed in straight, dark hair. His eyes were sharp and intelligent, bright hazel. He wasn’t good-looking, yet he was attractive, she liked looking at him. Perhaps it was that calm, cool expression he always wore? You felt you could trust him. She should have remembered him. He had a memorable face.
‘How did it happen?’ he asked her.
Nervously she whispered, ‘I don’t remember much, just that I was crossing a road when a car hit me.’
She remembered his quiet, level voice very well, she found; the patient technique with which he questioned, water dropping on a stone, repeating every query until he was convinced he had got a final answer. He took her through her accident now in the same way.
‘Did you notice the make of car?’
‘No; just that it was black.’
‘Had you ever seen the car before?’
‘Not that I remember.’ She was puzzled by the question – why should she have seen the car before? What was he implying? Filaments of doubt began twining through her mind. Why was he here, anyway? Why would a detective follow up a perfectly ordinary traffic accident? Surely they didn’t suspect her of inventing it?
‘Did you see anything of the driver?’
She shook her head. ‘It all happened too fast.’ Defiantly, angrily, she said, ‘There were plenty of people around. I’m not inventing it.’
He considered her soberly, his head on one side, then crisply told her, ‘I know you’re not. We have statements from a number of people who saw it happen, including an eye witness who says the car deliberately swerved towards you after you had moved out of its path.’
‘Deliberately . . .’ Miranda looked at him with startled incredulity and he nodded.
‘You seem surprised – that hadn’t occurred to you? Our witness said the driver drove straight at you.’
She remembered with sudden, shocking intensity the way the car had been driven at her, had hit her twice. ‘He meant to hit me?’
‘You didn’t get that impression at the time, or since?’
She had to be honest. ‘No. Never.’ She wished it hadn’t entered her mind now, she did not want to think that somebody had deliberately tried to kill her. A shudder ran down her spine.
Sergeant Maddrell stared fixedly, those hazel eyes wide and clear. ‘Try to remember exactly what happened, how the car came towards you – and think about it. Could the driver have meant to hit you?’
‘I don’t know, how can I tell? I heard the car behind me and looked round.’ Her memory sharpened. ‘No, wait a minute . . . the driver sounded his horn, to warn me he was there. Yes, that was what happened. I heard his horn and looked round – surely he wouldn’t have warned me if he wanted to hit me?’
‘Maybe not,’ agreed Neil. ‘You hadn’t been aware of a car behind you until then?’
‘No, it was the horn sounding that made me realise there was a car right behind me. When I saw it, I tried to get out of the way but it swerved at the same time, and hit me. And . . . anyway . . . why on earth should anyone try to kill me?’
A little silence fell while they stared at each other. A coldness crept through her bones at something in his eyes, a thought which leapt from him to her.
‘You can’t think of anyone who might?’ His voice held no particular inflection, yet she knew what he was hinting.
She slowly shook her head, refusing to believe what she realised he was suggesting.
‘Someone couldn’t be trying to silence you?’ he persisted.
‘Terry wouldn’t do something like that,’ she burst out. ‘No. The idea’s ridiculous. Terry’s not a murderer.’
‘But you believed his son killed that girl.’
She bit her lip, remembering those sounds in the bathroom. Sean was so young, a boy with fresh, apple-blossom skin and clear eyes – it was hard to think of him as a cold-blooded killer. If he had killed his pregnant girlfriend it must have been in a fit of crazy rage. He wouldn’t kill again, Sean wasn’t a natural killer; she couldn’t believe he would try to kill her.
‘You didn’t believe a word I said!’ she accused and saw his eyes flicker. Suddenly she began to realise there was something behind his visit, something he had not yet told her. ‘Why have you really come to see me, Sergeant?’
He hesitated, then reluctantly said, ‘We have had some further information. A girl has been reported missing. She shared a flat with another girl, who went into a local police station yesterday to report her missing. She went out on Sunday morning, and has not been seen since. I saw the report and went to see the flatmate who told me that her friend had been seeing Sean Finnigan for a few months.’
Her eyes were stretched wide in shock and a strange sort of relief because she could see at once that the police no longer thought she was crazy and had imagined the whole thing.
‘So you believe me now!’
He didn’t say yes or no, he simply shrugged. ‘When I heard a car had tried to run you down I was concerned, obviously. It seemed a big coincidence, and we had several witnesses too, who seemed sure the car had driven straight at you, hit you, then gone on without stopping or even slowing. In fact, it seems the car accelerated after hitting you. A pity you didn’t see who was driving it.’
‘I told you, it happened too quickly.’
‘Yes. But if you had seen the driver . . .’ He broke off, seeing her face tense. ‘What is it? Have you remembered something? Did you see someone?’
‘Not in the car,’ she said huski
ly, shivering. ‘But before . . . and afterwards, after I was knocked down. I was conscious for a while. There were people all round me and one of them . . .’ She swallowed convulsively.
‘Yes?’
‘One of them was a man I recognised. I saw him first outside my apartment building, standing on the other side of the road. In fact, that was why I ran round the corner. He scares me, I didn’t like the way he was staring at me. And then when I was lying in the road I saw him again, among the crowd.’
‘Who was he? Does he know the Finnigans?’
‘He’s a Greek . . .’
‘A Greek?’ the policeman interrupted sharply.
‘Yes, he’s called Alexandros Manoussi, and he’s a client.’
‘Of the Finnigan firm?’
‘Yes, we . . . they . . . make the navigational computers he puts into his boats. He’s a boat builder, back in Greece.’
‘And you saw him outside your flat before the accident?’
‘Yes.’
‘And again, after you were knocked down?’
She nodded, remembering her foreboding the minute she set eyes on him after the accident, the strong sense she had had that she was about to die. She did not tell Sergeant Maddrell her fears. Or that she had always called Alexandros Manoussi the Angel of Death – he would look at her incredulously, then revert to his first belief that she was crazy.
Miranda knew how it would sound. She also knew for certain that she wasn’t mad, or even irrational. The way the Greek showed up just before something terrible happened was more than just coincidence. She didn’t really know what it was, only that she was terrified whenever she saw him.
Strange how she remembered so distinctly seeing that picture of the Angel of Death in her childhood. It had petrified her; the stern, dark eyes, the commanding hand beckoning, the black armour, those wings. Her grandfather had told her the Angel of Death came for children, maybe that had disturbed her? She had never seen the picture again, yet she recalled every detail as if she had seen it yesterday. But then childhood memories were like that. If they sank into your mind at all, they stayed there, unchanged, year after year.
‘But you only know him through the firm? There’s no personal relationship?’
‘None at all. I’ve only met him twice, in fact – the first time three years ago. His firm owned the boat Terry chartered.’
Sergeant Maddrell watched her as she broke off. ‘The boat you and your husband were on, the one that was wrecked?’
She nodded.
‘And the second time you met him?’
‘At the party for Sean’s engagement.’
The policeman’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. ‘Now that is an odd coincidence – that you met him first just before your husband was drowned, and then again, just before you heard a girl drowning in the office block.’
Miranda didn’t answer. Sergeant Maddrell was intelligent enough to seize upon the coincidence, but she still could not tell him that she called the Greek the Angel of Death.
‘Have you talked to Terry and Sean since the girl was reported missing?’ she asked.
‘We’re going down to their country house this afternoon.’
The reply surprised her. ‘Wasn’t Terry at work this morning?’
‘Yes, he was, but we preferred to interview them in the country. I want to get an idea of the ground around it.’
Were they going to search it for the girl’s body? Where would Sean have hidden it? It must be buried somewhere, you couldn’t just leave a dead body lying about. But there was plenty of room to hide it in the grounds of Terry’s country house.
That would suggest, though, that he knew his son had killed the girl. Sean could surely not have buried a body near the house without his father knowing?
The nurse came along with a trolley of rattling medicine containers, pulled back her curtains and nodded to Neil Maddrell in a friendly, bossy way. ‘Sorry, officer, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave now. It’s time for the patients to have their treatments and they won’t want an audience. You can come back tomorrow if you need to ask her any more questions.’
He stood up immediately. ‘I may do that. I hope you’re feeling better by tomorrow, Mrs Grey.’
He walked out of the ward watched by seven pairs of female eyes. ‘Now he’s nice,’ the nurse said, and Miranda agreed with her.
Later, the woman in the bed next to her asked, ‘Was that really a policeman visiting you? Was he asking questions about your accident? It was a hit and run driver wasn’t it? Have they caught him?’
How did such gossip get around? Presumably they had asked the nurse.
‘Not yet, but they have had some information, and they wanted to check it with me.’ Miranda was on medication that left her drowsy and peaceful, and finding out that the police now believed her about Sean was very comforting. The tension had drained out of her. She felt safe, her body heavy and limp.
‘Well, let’s hope they get him soon. They want locking up, driving like that. He could have killed you.’
Had he intended to? that was the question, but Miranda was not going to discuss that with the other woman.
‘I’m Joan Patterson, by the way. Your name’s Miranda, isn’t it? I heard the nurse talking to you. You don’t mind me using first names? Call me Joan.’
She was much older, about fifty, with a thin, flushed face and sharp, curious eyes.
Miranda made a polite response, but her heart sank as she realised the other woman was one of the sort who talks non-stop, barely pausing to give you a chance to reply.
Her mother arrived that evening, along with the other visitors streaming into the ward with bunches of flowers, bags of fruit and boxes of sweets. The patients were all sitting up against banked pillows, beds very tidy, their hair brushed and most of them wearing make-up which they had spent the last half-hour applying slowly and intently.
Miranda had not expected a visitor and was surprised to see her mother, wearing a flowered scarf flowing round her neck, coming along the ward towards her, clutching flowers.
‘Now what have you been up to?’ she asked, dropping the brown-paper-wrapped flowers on to the bedside table and leaning down to kiss Miranda’s cheek. ‘Getting yourself run over! Silly girl.’
‘Hello, Mum.’ Miranda was suddenly surrounded by her mother’s perfume; a home-made essence of lavender Dorothy made every year. She made rose water, too, from the flood of roses which appeared in her garden each spring and summer. On shelves in her kitchen the glass bottles of perfume stood in rows. The sun shone through them and made an impressionistic wash of pink and mauve on the green walls.
‘What on earth were you doing, to get yourself into this state, darling?’
‘I couldn’t help it, a car ran into me from behind. Good of you to come all this way. I know you hate leaving home, especially at such short notice. You must stay in my flat – I’ll give you the keys if you pass me my handbag.’
Mrs Knox looked around. ‘Where is it, then?’
‘In the cupboard down there.’ Miranda pointed and her mother bent to open the small cupboard under the bedside table top.
‘Oh, I see it.’ Mrs Knox brought out the brown, yellow and navy-blue harlequin patchwork leather shoulder bag which Miranda had bought at a trade fair in Dublin last year during a short trip there with Terry on business. Miranda opened the zip compartment inside it and found her keys. ‘Here you are, Mum. Don’t forget to give them back to me, I have only this set.’
‘Why don’t I have another set made for you while I’m here. You ought to have a spare set, you know, in case you lose these.’
‘I suppose you’re right. Thanks, good idea.’
Putting them into her own bag, Mrs Knox pulled up the chair which was pushed under Miranda’s bed at the far end, and sat, smoothing down her brown velvet skirt. She was wearing shades of yellow and brown, today; a sweater as vivid as the feathers of a canary, toffee-coloured suede shoes, that rich, silky skirt. Miran
da felt people staring. Her mother had always made people stare. As a young woman she had been beautiful. As an old woman she was still lovely, in a different way. She glowed with life and other people watched her with admiration and envy, wishing they felt as obviously happy as she did.
Some people were so dull, so traumatised by their humdrum lives that they trudged along without lifting their heads, merely straining to get through each day. Dorothy Knox almost danced through her life.
It must be her genes, Miranda thought. But I inherited them, too, so why don’t I look like her, give off that radiant self-assurance, that laughing certainty? I inherited genes from my father, too, of course, a completely different set. Impossible to untwine them all, decipher the secrets of my own biology.
How many genes were there? Hundreds? No, thousands, if not millions. The ones that dictate your colouring, height, tendency to put on weight, your ability to draw, or sing, or dance? The ones that make you good-tempered or irritable, that give you the talent to cook brilliantly, or shape wood into amazing reality? It was like a card game where you never knew what sort of hand you would draw, you just had to play it the best you could.
Was there a gene for luck? Were some people born fortunate? Some who habitually won a prize in raffles, or a bet on a horse race? While others inherited bad luck.
She was sure she wasn’t lucky. When Tom died, that had been bad luck – but had it been her genes or Tom’s dictating that outcome? And when she saw Sean in that bathroom, whose bad luck had caused that? Surely, Sean’s. Yet she felt as if it were she who had unlucky genes. If there was such a thing.
‘Tell me about the accident,’ her mother said, taking a plum from the bowl of fruit on Miranda’s bedside table. She peeled it delicately, dropping the dark red skin into a paper handkerchief, before putting the fruit into her mouth with a sighing sensuality.
‘I was crossing a road near my flat. A car came round the corner, very fast, and hit me.’
Dorothy swallowed the fruit in her mouth. ‘And didn’t stop, so the police told me!’
‘No, it was a hit and run driver.’
Miranda was getting sick of telling the story, this was the third time today, she had the words off pat and muttered them in a cross voice.
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