The Unkindest Cut

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘I’m not the only—’

  Ian hushed her. The interview room was becoming occupied. Marie Webb brought Helen Maple in and then took up a position with her back against the door. They were joined by Sergeant Midmill who, with a show of consideration, made Helen as comfortable as the austere room permitted. Helen was looking unusually smart in a brown linen dress printed with a faint pattern of flowers; and, matching the colour of the dress, polished fashionable knee-high boots.

  Midmill went through the ritual of telling the recording devices who was present and when. ‘About the assault on you by Knifeman …’ he began.

  Helen gave a hiss of indrawn breath in protest. ‘That wasn’t the real Knifeman,’ she said. ‘That was only Alistair Ledbetter trying it on as a once-in-a-lifetime thing.’

  ‘I’m sure you hope so. Do you think he knows the identity of the real Knifeman?’

  Helen seemed to be caught flat-footed. She looked in Sergeant Midmill’s direction but her eyes were not focused on him. Helen thought that they were looking into the distance. After a few seconds that seemed to add up to a full minute she said, ‘You’re trying to trap one of us or even both.’

  Midmill chuckled. ‘No point trying to pull the wool over your eyes,’ he said. ‘I’ll ask again, quite openly. Do you think that your boyfriend knows who the real Knifeman is?’

  ‘No, I’m sure he doesn’t.’

  ‘What makes you so sure of that?’

  Once again it took Helen several seconds to formulate a reply. ‘If he knew, he’d have told me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? Just in the course of general conversation.’

  ‘You discussed the identity of Knifeman?’

  ‘Yes, of course. So did half the town, maybe more than half.’

  ‘And he never dropped a hint as to who Knifeman might be?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And nor did you?’

  ‘How would I? I have no idea who Knifeman is.’ Helen was beginning to sound out of breath.

  ‘That surprises me. When you pretended to have been assaulted by Knifeman, you imitated and described him. I’m told that you’re a prominent member of the Amateur Dramatic Society, and a skilled one.’

  ‘I can’t help what you’ve been told. And I never imitated him. I just described what I’d heard. And I don’t think I was very accurate or very detailed, I just said that he was a little taller than I am.’

  ‘So you did,’ said Midmill. ‘So you did. And you said that his shoes were black and highly polished.’

  ‘I don’t think I said quite that. I probably said that they were of black leather but in need of a clean.’

  ‘Like his bicycle?’

  ‘I never saw his bike.’

  Midmill did not look in the least put out. ‘Didn’t you also comment that his head was shaped like a chimney pot?’

  Jane leaned close to Ian Fellowes. ‘It wasn’t Helen who told you that—’

  ‘Ssh!’ Ian frowned and put a finger to his lips. ‘He’s trying to catch her out.’

  ‘Not very subtly.’

  Back in the interview room, Helen was beginning to look a little ruffled. ‘I’m sure I didn’t say that. Nobody ever asked me about the shape of his head,’ said Helen, ‘but that might have been a fair description.’

  ‘Come now, Miss Maple,’ said Midmill. ‘You have said quite enough, and in what you have said your references to Knifeman universally point away from yourself – and away from Alistair Ledbetter. That might well be described as a giveaway. Anybody with a bad conscience trying to transfer suspicion to somebody else will usually try hard to make sure that the description is of somebody wholly unlike themselves. Please allow Miss Webb to pass her hand down your back. There may be occasion later for a body search.’ Perhaps this time a full body search would show the foil that she’d been using to cover up the microchip.

  Helen Maple jumped to her feet. ‘I don’t know what you’re after …’

  ‘I’m after the outline of a sheet of metal foil,’ said Midmill.

  ‘But you’ve no right to intrude on my privacy like this.’

  ‘Miss Maple, I assure you that we have every right, but if you continue to raise objections you may force me to go ahead and charge you. I believe that you have been guilty of armed robbery—’

  ‘I wish to use the toilet,’ Helen said excitedly. ‘I have the right and you can’t stop me. Any court—’

  ‘Constable Webb will accompany you.’ Sergeant Midmill leaned across the table to switch off the recorder as Marie Webb collected together a sheath of papers from the table. She took her time in sliding back her chair and getting ready to escort Helen from the interview room.

  At this point, Ian Fellowes leaned in close to Jane. ‘He’ll bring her to my room afterwards,’ he said, ‘and it might be neater if we were to get there first. Come on.’

  Both groups were now rising to their feet. Ian Fellowes, preoccupied with proceedings still to come, acted in accordance with ingrained habit. He reached across to switch off the light. The switch, however, had three positions and had been in the middle or low setting, between ‘off’ and ‘bright’. With the sudden decrease in the light level, the window became a mirror again and the interview room was invisible to both Jane and Fellowes.

  TWENTY-ONE

  For what took place next in the interview room and elsewhere Jane had to rely on fragments of talk and extracts from evidence given months later in court.

  Ian Fellowes would not have made his disastrous mistake with the light switch if he had not been distracted by worrying how Helen’s words might slot into the wider picture. For the same reason he was slow to see his error and to dim the light again in what might well be termed the cabinet de voyeur. The result was that Helen was given several seconds to see and understand the apparently magical transformation of the mirror into a window. By the time the explanation had dawned on her, Ian had moved the switch again and the view was gone. Jane heard a riot of sound that Marie Webb later interpreted for her.

  ‘I never saw such a change in a person,’ Marie said. ‘One moment she was as sweet as sugar, butter wouldn’t melt, you’d hardly believe it, the next a look came over her face and it was as if she’d been taken over by a devil. It made a shiver run up my back. Fury doesn’t begin to describe it.’ The policewoman’s eyes were wide. She was being transformed into a superstitious islander. ‘And she was beginning a rant. I could hardly make out a word of it except for “traitress”, which came into it again and again. I recognized your name more than once and I did not like the tone at all. I hope nobody ever speaks of me like that. I could see that she was ready to be violent so I fetched out the handcuffs. But she was quicker. You saw those knee-high boots she was wearing, looser than riding boots but not as loose as gumboots? She made one snatch. There was a loop of thin twine, the same colour as the boot and almost invisible, which is why I never saw it, and out of the top of her right boot she came up with that kitchen knife the victims described. I tried to get between her and the door – Mr Fellowes says I was mad to do any such thing – but she slashed at me with the knife. I ducked my head quickly or she’d have cut my throat, and as it was she nearly scalped me. I’d no idea that the top of the head could bleed so much and I’ve been in and out of surgery while they trace each source of bleeding. They suture one cut and another starts to bleed. I’ve more stitches in my scalp than a wedding dress.’

  Jane was visiting Marie in the local hospital – they could see Ian’s window from where they sat. The town looked too peaceful to have hosted any such carrying on. Marie was bandaged almost beyond recognition. ‘Well, I think you were very brave,’ Jane said.

  ‘Mr Fellowes said that I was as daft as you were when you went down that well. I didn’t feel a bit brave, I just knew that if I stood aside and let her run past me I’d be doing the wrong thing and then I would be mad – mad at myself! I had some training in Unarmed Combat and how to disarm a person who’s coming at you wit
h a knife, but it doesn’t seem to work if the other person has a real knife and means to fillet you like a herring.’ Marie’s soft voice with its Highland lilt died away leaving Jane to wonder whether the other really meant what she said.

  Ian Fellowes gave his evidence in the later trial more fully but less colloquially than what he said to Jane, which essentially was: ‘I got out of there and into the corridor damn quick and there she was just coming out of the other door with that evil-looking knife in her hand and dripping blood. But I suppose it only looked evil in hindsight – at the time it was just a bloodied kitchen knife. I could only assume that she’d killed Marie Webb. I was all set to be just as big an idiot as she was – Marie Webb, I mean, not the Maple girl – and I did just as I’d been taught at Hendon quite a long time ago, but I fumbled it and the knife went through between my hands and got me –’ Ian paused and rubbed the shoulder of the arm in a sling – ‘damn close to that major artery they call the carotid or the jugular, I can never remember which is which. I went down with the shock of it. I thought she was going to stoop and cut my throat and I was ready to kick her through the ceiling if I could, but she changed her mind, maybe she sussed out my intention. She ducked out of the interview room and ran for the emergency fire doors. I was in no doubt that she’d flipped her lid …’

  The sergeant on the desk had his own story to tell and his own more northern dialect to tell it in. ‘Yon quinie cam oot o the emergency ootgang wi her gullie a’ bluidie. A thocht it maun be another damn test or a training exercise. Afore a jaloused a shid stap her, she was oot an awa.’

  Behind the police station is an area of tarmac, divided up for the use of visitors, the parking of police cars, the depositing of cars seized from motorists who have overstepped the mark, badly damaged police cars awaiting treatment in the adjoining garages and sundry other purposes. Among these vehicles was a scattering of officers going on or coming off duty, collecting or parking police cars or sneaking out of the offices for a secret smoke. The sudden arrival of a bloodstained and crazy-looking young woman with her hair flying, brandishing an equally bloodstained knife, fell so far outside the experience and instructions of these officers that one and all waited for a lead that was not forthcoming until Ian Fellowes burst out of the building spouting blood and calling for first aid and the immediate arrest of the woman. But by then she had rounded the corner of the hotel and vanished into the wood beyond and moments later Ian fainted from loss of blood.

  Inside the building a more orderly scene soon prevailed. Jane, drawing on her medical experience, began applying first aid to the wounded but routine soon took over from her and she found that whatever she might have offered to help with was the responsibility of somebody else. She found paper and a pen, wrote out a statement in longhand, left it on Ian’s desk and went home. The officers of the law seemed to have quite enough to be getting on with without having to nursemaid a young vet who was beginning to feel slightly sick.

  Ian Fellowes was determined to remain on his feet and take over, but it was quite obvious that such a course of action would be likely to kill him. He was whisked away, protesting vigorously, to the cottage hospital. Being the nearest that he had to a deputy, DS Bright took over. He appeared at the front door of Whinmount just as dusk swept over the land. Roland, who had heard nothing of all this, made his appearance seconds later. The result was a period of babble during which Roland was asking questions, Jane was trying to answer them while explaining developments so far and asking a few questions of her own; and Bright, who was faltering under the weight of unaccustomed responsibility, was trying to explain, report, reassure and answer questions without drawing breath.

  When a sort of calm had been restored and Jane had managed to get the small group seated in the kitchen with mugs of tea, Bright reviewed his report which, stripped of irrelevancies, boiled down to this: ‘God alone knows where that young madwoman’s got to. I’ve had every man and woman I could raise scouring the woods and empty buildings and there’s no sign of her, none at all.’

  ‘Did you tell them to keep looking up?’ Jane asked. ‘She’s a climber, remember. I told Ian Fellowes. It’s human instinct to flee upwards but searchers hardly ever look up.’

  ‘Was I in the room when you told Mr Fellowes? But never mind it for now. The leaves are still on the trees so it would be easy enough to hide yourself among the branches of a big hardwood, and now the light’s gone. From what she was saying, it’s you she blames for her downfall and I’m damn sure it’s you she’s coming after. Short-handed as we are, we could never cover the whole area and we’ll have to use a few men to cover the railway and the bus stops in case she makes a run for it. Do you think she’d know how to steal a car?’

  ‘For a while,’ Jane said, ‘about two years ago, she was very much in love with Duggie Gough.’ Young Gough had been a prominent local car thief, now believed to be in Canada but still pursuing the same profession.

  ‘And now she’s been going around with another mechanically-minded young yob,’ Bright said gloomily. ‘The question is, does her hatred of you outshine her wish to escape; and on the whole, going by the look I saw on her face, I would say probably yes. Anyway, I can’t take any chances. Is there anywhere you can go, anyone the pair of you could possibly go and stay with a long way from here, where you’d be safe for the night? Obviously you must tend your patients tomorrow.’

  Jane might have shrugged off the threat from Helen Maple, but Bright, usually the most stolid man in the tradition of British policemen, was obviously nervous and he communicated his nerves to Jane, who began to feel a fluttering of her insides as she explained that Roland’s parents were in New Zealand and that her own were dead.

  ‘Then all I can do,’ said Bright, ‘is guard you as well as circumstances allow. I’ve phoned Edinburgh and Honeypot promised that she’ll send every man who can be spared … in the morning. Same story all round. Scraping the bottom of the barrel and working the men in shifts, I reckon I can keep watch on the main road and the car parks and put a warning out to the bus company. That’ll leave me four men in or near this house during the night. That’s one man near each door plus one outside this room. And that includes me. Not a lot to fend off a madwoman, especially one who’s a skilled climber and a bit of an athlete, by all accounts. Tomorrow, if we haven’t caught her, we’ll see about finding a safe house for you. Maybe your sister in Dublin …’

  Jane made a face. She had largely overcome her dislike of her sister but their childhood hatred still waited in the background, ready to erupt at the first careless word, and her acceptance was not reciprocated.

  Neither Mr nor Mrs Fox felt like doing any useful work during what was left of the evening. Bright would have been seriously hampered in making and maintaining his dispositions if the householders had been pottering about the place. An early night seemed to be called for. Happily, each was immersed in a lengthy book at the time – Jane in a new treatise on veterinary practice and Roland proofreading Simon Parbitter’s latest crime novel. Thus occupied, they found that the time passed swiftly.

  Jane, whose habit it was to sleep in the nude, rose once before turning out the light and wrapped herself in a towelling bathrobe with a dressing gown over the top in order to make tea and to dispense biscuits to the officers on guard duty as well as to Roland and herself. The night had become hot and stuffy, so that to have attempted to sleep in those unaccustomed gowns would have been wasted effort but Jane, remembering the likelihood of there being a man on the landing, hung them carefully behind the door. She often had to rise in the night.

  The night was also very still. When the lights were out and they were trying to settle, Jane said, ‘Roley, are you afraid?’

  Roland was fairly sure that any reply suggesting that Helen was only a girl might be taken amiss. ‘I’d be nervous,’ he said, ‘except that it’s not my job to be nervous. It’s Sergeant Bright’s job to keep her well away from you and me and I don’t see what I can do to help.’


  ‘I can’t think of anything very practical,’ said Jane. ‘In a way, that’s what scares me. Whenever I’m doing something useful that contributes to our safety, I’m never scared; but waiting for somebody else to protect me, that’s terrifying. We don’t know how good Sergeant Bright will be at the job.’

  ‘I can understand that, I think. Would it help if I got out your shotgun and had it ready?’

  Her whisper came out of the darkness. ‘That would be waiting for somebody else to act. And you’re not used to it. Nor are you licensed to handle it. If you fired a shot with policemen all around there might be hell to pay. But if you gave it to me with a couple of shells, that might help. The law would allow me to fire a shot if I had good reason to believe that my safety or my possessions were being threatened.’

  Roland sighed, not so much at the thought of getting out of the warm bed but more at having to detach himself from a warm and naked Jane. He switched on his bedside lamp and quitted the bed. Jane’s shotgun was one of her several bequests from her great-grandfather. It was an old gun but of very high quality by a top maker.

  With only one gun in the house, the police had accepted that a solid oak built-in wardrobe reinforced by a digital lock would be acceptable security. In addition, the wardrobe was, as usual, so full of clothes that the gun was not immediately obvious. Jane had some idea of the value of a top class hammer gun from the 1870s by Westley Richards and had had to stop Roland airing his damp laundry on the barrel. He found and extracted the gun and took it to Jane, handing her a brace of orange cartridges separately.

  Jane loaded the barrels and laid the gun beside her right leg. She knew full well that a hammer gun, not having a safety catch, should not be cocked until the moment before firing; but that moment can be an eternity when danger threatens. She cocked both hammers. Then, comforted by the familiar feel of the comb, the action and the trigger guard under her hand, she pulled the single sheet up and fell immediately asleep.