by Clare Curzon
‘Rather a clever idea, you’ll admit. I picked up someone else’s phone when I went in the pub to clean up after being sick in Camel’s car. It was lying on a table by some spilled beer. If the filth wanted to trace the message back they’d simply find some dozy yokel who couldn’t remember where he’d left the thing. That’s the one I got rid of.’
His face flushed with sudden anger. ‘Hell, nobody cared a damn about me. They should have known I was next in line to be killed! I had to get the message across.’
‘You wanted pity? We were concerned enough and trying not to show it. And while we tried to understand your grief and shock you were playing stupid little tricks like this on us. Even at the risk of wasting valuable police time.’
‘They’re so thick they couldn’t — couldn’t see …’
Anna carefully put down the knife she had been using and slid it under the bag the carrots had come in. A bid for pity? Or was it something else? An attempt to put them off the right track?
‘Daniel, I’m not the great fool you think me. And I’m not blind. I’ve tried, God knows, not to believe what’s staring me in the face. You were here that night, weren’t you? All along you’ve been telling a string of lies.’
There was complete silence, broken only when the refrigerator started up an active cycle. Anna discovered that her hands and knees were shaking.
He straightened, beat a bunched fist against the wall. His voice, a refined whisper till then, roared in agony.
‘He turned and saw me! I was startled. I never meant to shoot him. And then he was falling back, surprised. There was this black hole in his chest. The – the crack of the gun came after. But his shotgun went off, sprayed the cabinet. Glass showering like fireworks. She was laughing …howling with laughter. She’s insane!’
Never meant to shoot? He meant Freddie! Who else had been shot? Now he was claiming it had been him who …
‘She?’ The word was torn from her.
He shoved off from the wall, turned a terrible, agonised face on her.
‘Who?’ Anna insisted, but she knew anyway. There was only one woman in this. Jennifer. If Daniel could be believed, she’d watched him shoot dead the husband she despised, and she’d laughed out loud at it.
‘No, this is all wrong. You dreamt it. You weren’t there!’ she protested. ‘You were with that girl in Ascot.’
‘I came back. I had to see her.’ His voice was monotonous now, grinding out the words, inhuman.
‘We needed each other. It was all arranged. But I had to get the gun. It was the pistol, not a rifle. That empty clip hasn’t been used for years. I got the cabinet open and then, in the dark, a chair went over. He must have been awake and heard us.
‘He started coming downstairs, and I hid under the table. The light came on, but he went right by me, to the open gun case, reached in for the twelve-bore.’
Daniel stopped there, almost laughed. ‘I nearly wet myself.’
Anna drew a soughing breath. She had to believe him. The boy was reliving some real terror. It must have happened how he told it. He’d gone totally over the edge.
It had been Daniel who shot his adoptive father. Not an outsider breaking in, or someone Freddie had opened the door to.
The boy had only pretended to go away. His story of spending the whole weekend with the prostitute was a fiction and, being dead, she couldn’t give it the lie. So many killled now. Who was left to be believed but Daniel?
So shooting Freddie was an accident? He had come back, to be with his mother because they ‘needed each other’. A secret assignation with his own mother? For sex? Surely, even for Jennifer, that was too depraved!
Is that what the orgies in the wood were about? But he, at last pushed too far, had desperately intended to end it the only way he knew how. He’d gone for a gun. But why so desperate? ‘Guilt’, he’d said. Yes, over what his mother had made of him; not the crash with the bike. He didn’t kill that wretched girl until the following night; part of a false alibi.
Whatever he’d intended, on the Friday it had all gone hideously wrong, and he’d shot poor Freddie. It was unbelievable, but the boy had said so himself.
She turned away, sick to her soul. There was nothing she could say or do. To turn him in was impossible. He was past counselling. She had presently such a horror of him – for him – that her mind was numbed. She needed time to regain sanity.
She walked out of the house, let herself into the caravan, sat with head in hands, mindless. When she raised her eyes it was as though, half-conscious, she sat before a wide screen on which the tragedy was being silently projected: Jennifer, in her nightdress, insanely laughing over her husband’s bloodied corpse, at her son’s anguish.
And then Daniel, filled with rage, going after her. There was a knife. Had Jennifer been holding it and he’d wrested it from her? Whatever, he’d not shot his mother. Caught up with her when she fled to the barn. Was it there they used to meet in secret, play at being lovers, commit incest?
And there he’d half-strangled her, then stabbed her to death. Execution. And mutilation. That awful detail with the broom handle. Revenge for the sex puppet she’d made of him? And then, totally out of his mind …gone back to stab the two little girls.
Anna rushed to the galley’s sink and vomited until throat and stomach ached. She wiped bile from her lips and chin with a harsh paper towel and went shakily out into purer air. In the distance she saw DC Barley striding up the hill towards the woods, out of hearing.
How long she sat slumped on the van’s steps she’d no way of knowing, but dark had come on when she realised: dear God, he’d still have the missing gun.
She must go back into the house and ring Mr Yeadings before there was another death.
In the hall she halted, one hand reaching for the phone. There were sounds of someone moving on the floor above. Alma Pavitt. She had to prevent the housekeeper meeting Daniel in his present state. ‘Mrs Pavitt,’ she called and started up after her.
The woman must not have heard. She was going higher, towards her own room under the eaves. Anna, breathless, followed.
She was on the final flight when she caught the sound of voices. And, instant upon it, a choking scream.
A single shot. Then nothing.
‘Do you still have doubts about Anna Plumley?’ Yeadings asked Z.
‘Not really. She seems genuinely concerned about her grandson. She said yesterday, “I believe all children pass through a vicious phase, however brief. Natural savages before they reach a more civilised state. Their own violence may scare them out of it early on. But staying that way too long – that can mould them into a monster”.’
‘So does she see Daniel as a monster?’
Z hesitated. ‘I think she’s trying not to. She knows he’s deeply disturbed. And she loves him.’
She sounded uneasy at the admission.
Yes, awful, Yeadings silently agreed.
‘I wish I knew how deeply he’s implicated in whatever occult or immoral play the adults were up to. That’s unnatural enough. And then crack cocaine plus an adolescent’s overcharge of testosterone. A dangerous mix.’
‘Those foolish women had a lot to answer for,’ Yeadings grunted.
Women? Jennifer yes; but who else? Surely he didn’t include Anna Plumley. She seemed to have interfered as far as she’d dared to keep the children unaffected, using what information Freddie Hoad had leaked to her in letters.
‘The housekeeper,’ Yeadings said, as if she’d questioned aloud. ‘Alma Pavitt was heavily into whatever went on in the hut in the woods. Hers were the only fingerprints on the Tarot cards and the whip. She’d set herself up as a psychic, some kind of medium or priestess of the occult. And then the Manson book which Anna had found in Daniel’s bookcase: those were Pavitt’s initials inside the cover, not Plumley’s. Both AP’
‘So Anna told the truth then: that she’d found it in Daniel’s bookcase? I’d assumed it was hers because I saw her with it.’
‘Milton’s Comus,’ Yeadings murmured as if to himself. Then, as Z glanced at him enquiringly, ‘The rout scene. Drunkenness and bestial behaviour. Remember the animal masks SOCO turned up? God knows what depravity they got into. If Daniel ever came across that, and was drawn in …’
‘It could account for his mental state now. But that doesn’t connect with the murders. There had to be some outsider who decided it all had to end. How about Huggett? He could have come across something obscene when out poaching. His wife’s a Pentecostal. She’d not have stood for it if she’d got a hint of what went on. And that brick through their window. More than a threat not to talk out of turn?’
Yeadings appeared not to be listening. She had lost him some way back. ‘I think …’ he began. ‘Yes, I fancy a quick trip out. I don’t think we’ve been told all there is to know. I want you along.’
He let her drive, heading for the M40 eastbound while he was occupied searching through his pockets and grunting with dissatisfaction as each slip of paper he found was discarded. They made a little pool of screwed-up post-its round his feet.
‘Ah, got you!’ he finally exclaimed and read out a Slough address Z hadn’t come across. But the only Slough connection was the prostitute killed in the bike crash.
‘Not their case, so they didn’t pursue it,’ he muttered. Meaning the Ascot police, she supposed. But our case, so what have we let slip through unquestioned?
Yeadings was now riffling through the pages of a street map and directed her to a narrow road with an alley off it. She ran the side of his Rover on to the kerb. They got out. She handed him the car key, flicking the doors locked.
At 57b, an appropriately red-painted door between a barber’s and a sleazy café, Yeadings pushed the doorbell and left his finger on it. The brunette who eventually opened up was in snarling mode.
‘Police.’ He said as she opened her mouth to sort him out. ‘And we haven’t time to waste. So let us in.’ He flapped his ID under her nose. She looked past him to Z and saw little support there.
‘It’s about Charleen, I suppose.’
‘It is. And your name is …?’
‘Prue.’
‘Short for Prudence?’
‘Yeah, but not for long. That’s got green whiskers on it. Every punter thinks he’s the first to say it. You better come up. Happens I’m on me own at the moment.’
She seemed reconciled to their intervention. Involvement with police was nothing new. She almost felt at times she had mates among them.
‘You must feel bad about what happened to your friend,’ Yeadings said when they were in the cramped little sitting room.
‘Miss her, yes. Her and her sloppy ways,’ Prue allowed. ‘I’d like to get my hands on that skunk what done it.’
‘An accident, apparently. What did you make of Daniel Hoad then?’
‘Never met him. Just read the papers. Spoilt rich kid, he sounds.’
‘Were you away that weekend?’
‘Nuh. My asthma was somethink awful. Had to stay in for a coupla days.’
‘You were here all Friday and Saturday?’
‘Yeah. Sunday too. Bloody inhaler ran out and I couldn’t get a new prescription because the clinic was shut. They never think you may need ’em in a hurry.’
‘Difficult,’ Yeadings sympathised. ‘Must have been a bit of a crush that Friday, with Daniel staying over.’
She stared at him as if he was stupid. ‘He never did. It was Sat’dy he picked her up at the pub. Same day he got ratted and crashed his bike. Anyway we never have punters stay overnight. There’s no room. Just one double bed and we both used that, me and Char.’
‘I see. The pub potman got it wrong, saying it was Friday.’
She shrugged. No concern of hers. ‘Now I gotta find someone to share with. Can’t afford to pay for the flat on my own.’
Yeadings forbore to offer money. It could be misunderstood.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Yeadings opted to drive back. On the way it began gently to sleet. Staring through the wipers’ slow slog-slog across the squeaky windscreen Zyczynski tried to come to terms with Daniel as the killer, but something was disturbingly wrong with that.
The sleet changed to rain and intensified. Yeadings switched to fast-wipe. The change of rhythm broke Z’s half-trance with the wipers’ irritating screech.
‘I meant to renew the blades,’ Yeadings reminded himself.
‘So did she,’ Z exploded, sitting bolt upright. ‘Alma Pavitt claimed she put in her car to have a new motor fitted for the wipers, so she travelled to Swindon by train. I gave her a lift back, but I never saw the return half of her ticket.
‘She returned the favour yesterday, gave me a lift after you dropped me off. That’s what was bugging me, but it didn’t come through. Her wipers were still faulty.
‘I believe she drove down to Swindon and left her car still parked there when I gave her the lift back. She must have gone to pick it up later, when Anna gave her the day off:’
‘Phone her garage as soon as we get back,’ Yeadings snapped. ‘If she lied, there’d be a reason for it. With her aunt sedated that night after the fall, Pavitt could sneak out and return to Fordham. For whatever purpose.’
Anna Plumley reached the top of the stairs, breathless, and her heart racing. The door to the housekeeper’s room was wide open. Mrs Pavitt was sprawled backwards across the bed, a black hole above her eyes, a mess of blood on the duvet under her head.
Anna stared at Daniel standing wild-eyed over her, the gun drooping from one hand. She realised he was stoned. He must have had access to more drugs all the time. The stuff had been stashed somewhere and, like the gun, the police search hadn’t turned it up.
Her eyes went back to the body of the woman and her blood ran cold. He’d run amok. Past all reason. She herself was the next he’d turn on. But she had to try and get through to him.
‘What have you taken?’ she demanded in a low voice.
He smiled at her from a great distance. ‘Dutch courage.’
‘Drugs are no help. The only safe thing for you now …’
He was suddenly on a high. ‘Who wants safety? That’s for losers. The world’s full of them. Where are the real heroes?’
In their graves. Dead, from leading charges against impossible odds, she thought. But you never say that to the young.
‘No, Grananna. For me the buzz is living on the edge. Like kids on skate boards taking the Big Leap. You get older and bolder and you do it all bigger.’
‘But not drugs, Daniel. Subsidising criminals to rubbish you. You’re worth more than that.’
He advanced closer to her. The momentary bravado had gone. His hands were shaking. The gun fell on the floor between them and he seemed not to notice. ‘That’s the point. I’m not.’ His eyes brimmed with unshed tears.
‘You were, once. Despite mistakes, the real you is still there.’
‘It’s dead. I’m finished. What do you know about me? – the things I’ve done. That girl, just a trollop, but I had to. I needed an alibi. Dead, she couldn’t disprove it.’
Anna drew a deep breath. ‘It was deliberate, then? No accident?’
‘As if you hadn’t guessed! I took the call when they phoned to cancel scout camp. Not that it made any difference. I’d always meant to come back, sneak in up here and spend the weekend in her bed. I’d been screwing her for weeks. Or, more like, she was screwing me. We had some of Jenni …’ His voice broke.
‘ …some good stuff my mother got in London. We’d get high together, plumb the depths. There was nothing like it in the whole world. We were immortal.’
Anna came towards him, arms outstretched. ‘What you do and what you are — they’re not the same. There’s atonement, forgiveness.’ Desperately she knew she must keep him talking.
His laugh was harsh. ‘Religious crap: hate the sin and forgive the sinner?’ he jeered. ‘I’d expect better of you than that, Grananna.’
‘What’s wrong with
it?’
‘It’s not real. Even my father knew better, poor sod. He used to insist that you pay for what you get and what you do. Well, by now the price is too high.’
His voice was rising, then the treble cracked into a man’s hoarse shout. ‘You don’t realise what I’ve done. I killed my father!
‘I never meant to. We got caught downstairs. Neither of us was supposed to be in the house. She wanted to rough the place up and steal a few trinkets, to make it look … Only, between us we knocked over a chair. We were both stoned. Then my … my father came down and we hid. I had the revolver from the cabinet. Not a rifle. He should have handed it in when they changed the law. I’d always wanted it and I knew he could never openly admit it was gone.
‘Somehow it went off. It sent her right over the edge. She’d always despised my father, hated my mother, even when they slept together out at the hut. They had this sort of … Well, each had to master the other. Rivals, really crazy. Alma the psychic and Jennifer with the money, the access to crack.’
He had covered his face again, muttering between his fingers. Now he stood erect, punched the air with his fist.
‘And now the Jezebel’s dead! I should have cut her black heart out. Butchered her with a kitchen knife. Like she used on the others.’
His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I didn’t know until afterwards about them. Just that, after I’d shot him, she had to make sure he was dead. I sort of passed out and woke up under the cold shower. It was all over then and she was on a high. She said at first that I’d done it. With the knife. Only, later, she admitted … gloated.
‘She drove me away, through the storm, with Jeff’s bike strapped on to the roof rack. Seemed cold sober by then, dropped me off and I hid in a shed out at the quarry. Had to break in. Next day I rode over to find the girl in Slough.
‘It was Saturday I met her at the pub, not Friday. The potman got it wrong. But she was a blabbermouth. Once the police got to her she’d have sold me down the river. By then it had all gone too far not to go on. Finish it.’