Ostopolis recorded the cause of death as starvation for the tiny Beatrice. Joan had been strangled.
On the last trolley at the far end of the silent room lay two small scatterings of what seemed to be ashes. But these had been carefully laid out, disclosing the teeth of two different girls, and the small remains of bones, and the shattered jaw bone from a battered skull. Paula Crabb had been twenty four years old when she disappeared when walking home from church. Joan Marshall had been eighteen and was hitchhiking up from Somerset to visit her grandmother in Cheltenham. They had both been identified by DNA from their teeth. Their families had long guessed they were dead.
Many other girls had gone missing in the area over long years, but there had been other killers in the same area, some even more gruesome such as Fred and Rose West, and more recently Lionel Sullivan. Therefore the loss of a family member, after a year or so, was inevitably mourned, being acknowledged as probable murder. Eve Daish’s parents still hoped desperately that she was alive.
Nicholas Ostopolis closed the door of the lab, sighed deeply, and plodded downstairs to the police canteen.
“I remember it well. It was so exciting,” whispered Iris. “Just in the pub, you know, The George over the other side of Bourton. They had three fruit machines. That was the old days when you pulled a lever and everything jangled. I used to like that.”
Sylvia nodded. “I doubt I’ve ever been in the George, but I know what you mean.”
“I wasn’t very happily married. He was very controlling. I was a shy little thing, so I didn’t mind that, but I just wasn’t allowed to develop any personality. At least, that’s how I felt.” Iris was mumbling as if wishing to prove what she was saying. “But then at the George, while Greg was drinking heavily and laughing about some young girl at the bar, I put a coin in the one-armed bandit, and it went clank, clank, clatter with the most amazing sound of tumbling coins. I just stood there. Staring. I couldn’t believe it. Greg never gave me any money except the housekeeping, and I had to account for every penny of that. This seemed like another world. I filled my hands with money. It felt like precious gold. I was tingling all over. I squashed as much as I could in my handbag, but then Greg saw me and hurried over. He took all the rest, and he thought that was all there was, so he kept the little bits he’d seen in my hands,t and I secretly felt rich.”
Sylvia nodded. When her much despised husband had died and left her a fortune, she had felt like that. It had been almost sexual. Her legs had tingled, and her eyes had misted over. She still remembered it. She hadn’t ever felt the same again until meeting Harry. “I understand,” Sylvia said. “How much did you get?”
“A hundred and three pounds,” Iris breathed. “That was a fortune to me back then. I stayed awake all night and wondered if this was going to change my life. It did, of course, but not the way I had hoped. I was such a silly ninny. I thought – well, I thought silly things. I went out the next day and bought a new coat. I still wear it though it’s terribly old and out of fashion now. Greg never noticed. He never looked at me anyway.”
“He was too busy spending his own sudden bonanza,” Sylvia pointed out.
Iris nodded. “I was so happy for a week. Then one night, wearing my new coat and shoes, I went to a small casino up a lot of stairs in a back street a long bus ride from where I was living. It was terribly dark and so exciting. There was loud music and all those chinkling sounds of falling money. I put in fifteen pounds, which frightened me because it was so much. But the risk and the fear was even more exciting, so I went on with my knees shaking. This was all I had left from my first win. It was nearly all gone when the machine went crazy. Clankity clash, and down came the money into my hands. Not as much this time, but more than I’d spent. I remember it so clearly. Thirty pounds. I thought this was proof. I was going to win and win and end up rich. I kissed the machine. I saw a young man sniggering at me, but he was losing, and I was winning.”
“And that started it?”
“Oh yes. I kept creeping back to the same place. Then I discovered other places, even more exciting. Sometimes I won a little bit, and that always gave me hope. But then I started putting in some of the housekeeping money, and when I lost it all, then I couldn’t cook dinner. I had to borrow from Agnes next door. But then she said she couldn’t afford anymore and Greg found out.”
“You didn’t try to stop?” Sylvia asked.
“Oh yes, a hundred times.” Iris shrank back down under the stiffly laundered hospital sheets. “I swore to Greg and Agnes that I would never, ever gamble again. I swore it to myself too. Then I couldn’t help thinking – well, just one more time. I’d win big – and then I’d stop forever.”
“I suppose,” said Sylvia softly, patting Iris’s white gowned shoulder, “you never won anything more.”
“Sometimes a pound or two. Usually nothing. Eleven pounds once, but that just proved I was onto a new winning streak, and I went again the next night. I started going during the day so Greg wouldn’t see me, but then he went to the pub every night, and I sat and cried.” Iris was crying again now. “All my own fault. You see what a horrible fool I’ve been. Greg left. The next year he divorced me and chucked me out of the house. I asked if I could move in with Agnes and she was sweet and hugged me but said no, she was sorry, but only one night. So then I went to a B & B, but after two weeks I couldn’t pay my rent. I moved into another one, really dirty and tiny and I never bought any more food and just ate the morning breakfast. I started getting Social Security but then I got thrown out of the B&B and I had to start finding sheltered places to sleep. Recently, well, I got worse and worse. I didn’t mind the thought of dying – it seemed like a good escape. But now I’m so blessed, Sylvia dear. You’ve been an angel, you and Harry too, and now Joyce. She’s had a dreadful life. Me too, but mine was my own fault, and hers wasn’t.”
“I don’t think yours was either,” Sylvia stood smiling down at the little frowning pink face on the pillows. “I think that sort of addiction is a drug just like heroin and after a miserable life, you can’t help chasing improvements.”
“I don’t think I like the idea of taking heroin.”
“No.” Sylvia grinned. “So you see, you were very intelligent. You didn’t take heroin when you could have. You just lost a little money.”
“Kind words.” Iris sniffed. “But I’ve heard about all that denial stuff. I have to admit what I did.”
“I have to go. Harry’s waiting for me.” Sylvia turned towards the door. “But I’ll be back on Friday. They say you can leave Friday, and I’ll bring Joyce with me to usher you home.”
“You’ve told her?” whispered Iris. “I mean, that I was an addict. But not any more.”
Sylvia nodded. “You can work out the future together. Remember, when Lionel Sullivan is back in prison, Joyce can return to her own home. Whether you go with her or not depends on many things, especially on whether you’ve gloriously squashed the addiction. Other things too. You may not like her.”
“She may not like me.”
“But you’re both easy-going and you both want friends.”
Harry was waiting in the car, parked in the pick-up bay outside the hospital. Sylvia flopped into the front passenger seat. “Thank all the angels and all the demons that I’ve never been an addict,” she mumbled to Harry’s ear as he leaned over to kiss her cheek. It was raining, and the water streamed down the windscreen, but the cold had softened. “Not for heroin or cocaine nor booze nor gambling. Not even exercise or sex.”
“Shame about the sex.”
Rochester Manor’s hundred windows ran with reflections in both glass and rainwater. Harry and Sylvia hurried inside, bringing a whistle of wind with them.
“Oh, it’s you two at last,” said Lavender, trotting by with a tray of teapot and teacups. “Arthur was looking for you. Arthur, with David in tow.”
Not an accustomed greeting. “They’ll find us,” said Harry. “We’ll be changing wet clothes first, and if none
of that tea’s for us, can we have some later?”
“Not too much later,” added Sylvia. “We’ll be down in five or ten minutes.”
They were twelve minutes, and the tea was waiting for them. So were Arthur and David. Sylvia offered tea which Harry was pouring, but David said he’d sooner have a cream cake, although there weren’t any on offer.
“That lady makes them,” David said. “The lady with the shop who married a teacher.”
“But the shop’s closed,” remembered Sylvia. “At least it was last time I was there. Does anyone know if it’s reopened?”
“It hasn’t,” said Arthur, looking morose. “And I asked, so I know the teacher went on long sick-leave. Both gone. I don’t know no more.”
“Is that what you wanted to tell us?” asked Harry, bemused.
David shook his head. “T’was me as wanted to tell you. See, I remembered. I got a good remembrance.”
“We had this car-boot sale, see,” nodded Arthur. “I told you. I sold the white fluffy rug. Alpaca it was, really nice, but it had sort of silk in it too. I never took any notice of who bought anything, but David remembered. He reckoned it was the teacher’s wife. She didn’t have a shop back then, she was just a nice young lady with a nice young husband.”
“The lady wanted the rug,” David said eagerly. “She paid me lots.”
“And then I sold other stuff too, and one was an acro-prop,” Arthur continued. “It was good for holding stuff up, like straw bundles when I was younger on the farm, but I didn’t need it no more, so I sold it at the same sale out on the roadside. I was talking to Lavender this morning, and she talked about acro-props and those nasty murders.”
“Go on,” and then Harry held his breath.
“It was the teacher as bought the acro-prop,” he said. “Maurice Howard was the name. That’s right, ain’t it, Dave lad?”
“Yes, Dad,” David said through his smile. “See, I’s good at ever so many things right. I ain’t stoopid, is I?”
“You’re bloody brilliant,” said Sylvia. “I’ll order some cakes from Cavendish House. But first of all, I have to phone Morrison. The police will be delighted to know about this.”
“I didn’t do nuffing wrong,” said David suddenly, stepping back.
“Nothing wrong,” said Arthur and Harry together.
“Everything right,” said Sylvia, pulling her phone from her pocket and hurrying back up the stairs, Harry immediately behind.
A brief phone call, but Morrison was most certainly interested. So was Sylvia. “ Her husband buys the acro-thing. Would Kate have guessed anything?” But Sylvia browned. “She knew, didn’t she? She knew everything. That’s why she’s been giving us hints for ages, and we’ve been too stupid to put them all together and guess what she’s been warning us about.”
“No.” Harry was squeezing his own phone as though hoping for further guidance. “Kate;’s sweet. If she’d known about something that sick, she’d have found a way to tell the police. And the hints she gave us – well, they weren’t obvious, were they!”
“They might have been,” sighed Sylvia, “:if we’d been more intelligent.”
“Kate’s not the type. And Maurice isn’t the type.”
“Nor was Lionel when he was being a busy bus driver.”
55
His temper was a three year old toddler’s tantrum. Master screwed shut his eyes, stamped both feet over and over, fisted both hands and shook them up and down with infuriated frustration, and screamed, shouted, cried, screamed and shouted over and over again.
Cowering in a corner, Eve sat naked, pushing herself back against the wall. Already she had one puffy bruised eye and a lip badly split, enough to bleed heavily. She licked the blood, tried to staunch it, and sucked it back.
But it was the past she saw. Not daring to close her eyes, not risking the flame, the knife or the fist abruptly smashing into her face and body, Eve stared unblinking at Master. But she was remembering the cosy wallpaper of her bedroom back at home. Pink magnolia had woken her every morning. Her mother’s voice. “Evie, are you awake, love? The tea’s in the pot. It’s nearly eight o’clock.”
Her thoughts almost touched the warmth of her quilt, soft and pillowed in its rosy pink cover. Her toes remembered the snuggled comfort of her flannelette sheets. Everything welcoming. Everything loving.
And then the freezing crash as Master stamped and squealed, running in circles and swearing the same word over and over and over, his voice raised as though he had a microphone but could repeat only, “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” Fists screwed into flying balls, he leapt, tottered, and tumbled to the ground at Eve’s feet. She pushed back harder against the badly plastered wall, but she knew escape was impossible. He would soon turn, acknowledging her, planning revenge.
Now he was holding a pair of pliers, dragged from his pocket. “Well, bitch.” Now Master was snarling. “What bits does I take, eh? Swipe off them bits of titties? Or some o’ them lumpy bits between yer legs? What punishment does you want?”
She whispered, “Please, oh please. I don’t even know what I’ve done. I never meant to be naughty. Please – why are you angry?”
Master forced his head onto hers, his eyes scarlet rimmed and glaring into her tears. “You knows. I were coming – right good it were, oozing them seeds, when you made that stooped noise. Gulping. Put me right off. Tis your fault. Now I gets me own back.”
“I didn’t mean it. I couldn’t help it. It’s my stomach, because I’m so hungry. Three days, Master, since I’ve eaten.” Eve watched the pliers waving before her, their bright points towards her breasts. She heard her mother’s voice so faintly in the back of her mind.
“Tea’s ready, my love. Time to get up.”
The door opened. Both Eve and Master lurched, turning to look. Another, deeper voice spoke clearly. “Milton, come here. Leave the girl where she is.”
The pliers clattered to the floor, Master spun, his small twisted expression turned from fury to delight, and he scampered towards the tall man entering, looking up at him with adoration. “Number One, you done come. Here I is. Now I’s proper happy.”
In the open doorway stood a man Eve had never seen before. He looked so very much like Maurice Howard, Eve’s teacher in Primary School, who she remembered well, and who had invited her into his car one rainy night with an offer to give her a lift home. But she had not seen her home since then.
Yet somehow this man was different. His eyes were colder. They led nowhere. Piercingly dark, they held menace but no other message. It was as if the spontaneity had been banished. The man did not look at Eve crouching naked against the wall. He spoke only to Master. “Milton, I’m leaving. Maurice will look after you from now on. I’m sorry, but of necessity, I shall be gone a long time.”
His eyes were piteous as Master said, “You doesn’t love me no more, brother?”
The man knelt at once, one immaculate knee to the filthy blood-stained floor, and took Master’s little crumpled hand in his. “My dearest,” he said softly, and the menace left his eyes. “I shall always love you and always send you gifts. But I am at risk and have to fly home. Don’t worry. Maurice will look after you.”
“Number Two.”
“None of us, Milton, is lesser than any other. Remember, we are triplets. We are all equal, you to me, and Maurice to you. Now, come upstairs with me and we shall have a last feast.”
Master trotted behind as the dark man led him by the hand. He was about to close the door behind him when Eve, terrified and desperate, called, “Food, I beg you. Or I shall die of starvation. Please, please, just a little food.”
Impatient, the man turned, the cold menace returning. He eyed Eve’s wounded nakedness in silence for a moment, then said, “It is of no matter. You will die shortly one way or another. You now know who I am. Milton informed me some days ago that you remember that it was Maurice who abducted you. That was your death sentence. The execution will come before I leave. Realise this – you are simply
Milton’s toy. You have no life or choices of your own and will live or die at my will. Be quiet now, and breathe while you can.”
The door slammed behind them. Eve sat alone in the darkness as the light was switched off from outside. The shock blocked her misery. She stretched out her legs and exhaled. One second of panic was snuffed out like a candle, and she knew absolutely that death was preferable. She had escaped whatever horrible brutality Master intended moments before. Now, even if her death was prolonged and painful, it would be the end. The end would be a relief so enormous, she could not contemplate it. She closed her eyes and started to whisper her goodbyes.
“I never ran away, Mum. I love you all ever so much. You and Dad and Niles. I wish I could die in my bed, but it might be easier for you if I’m here, far away, and you don’t have to watch. But I’m thinking of you. I’ll be kissing and hugging you all in my head. Night, night, sweet dreams.”
Morrison thanked them, eyes narrowed, looking at Sylvia and Harry over the top of his clasped fingers, his elbows to the desk. “This is somewhat startling news,” he said softly. “Are you sure?”
“Of course we aren’t sure,” Harry said, leaning back in the chair. “I’m only repeating what we heard.”
“It’s almost funny,” said Sylvia. Then shaking her head, she said, “Well, not really funny of course. It’s horrible. But we’ve been trying to make sense of three crimes. There’s Mark Howard and his money laundering. Trying to find him before he goes back to Dubai, though I suppose he’s already gone by now.”
The Games People Play Box Set Page 50