by Roz Watkins
‘So, in her sleep, Abbie thought her dad was trying to kill her?’
‘Yes! Because she was remembering what happened to her heart donor. I’ve looked it up. It happens. But they won’t tell us who the donor was. They only let you write via the transplant coordinator and you can’t say who you are. I tried writing but the family never replied after their first card, and no one would tell us anything.’ She reached over and grabbed my hand. ‘You’ve got to believe me. It’s only since she had the new heart. Screaming that her dad was a murderer. Phil’s not a murderer. Something happened to the donor child. The heart made Abbie do it.’
I could feel a muscle twitching below my eye. I pictured Abbie’s face. ‘You think Abbie killed him? She killed her father in her sleep?’
‘She can’t have . . . ’ Rachel said nothing for a long moment. Then took a deep breath and spoke in a voice I could barely hear. ‘It was in her hand. The knife was in Abbie’s hand.’
*
I called Fiona. ‘Can you set up a meeting with Abbie’s psychiatrist. Please. We need to know more about this child.’
Patricia charged into the living room and stood staring at us, her fingers spread as if she was about to attack and claw us. ‘Rachel’s told me what she said to you. I told you she had problems. Abbie would never have killed Phil.’
I stood and touched her arm. ‘Would you sit down?’
Patricia pulled away. ‘I can’t sit down.’ She paced to the window and looked into the garden, then spun round to us. ‘You’ve got it wrong!’
‘Your daughter clearly thinks Abbie did it.’ That was Craig’s contribution, despite having agreed earlier that my feminine touch would work best.
Patricia’s voice was high and shaky. She was on the verge of tears. ‘Rachel’s not been well. Do you know how terrible it’s been? We’re all having to take sleeping pills each night just to get a drop of sleep. She’s in a terrible state. And she felt intimidated by you. You have to understand. She’s suffered from delusions. You can’t trust what she says!’
I stood and walked over to the window. If you met people half way when they were agitated, it was so much more effective that trying to stay super-calm. ‘Was Rachel diagnosed with a particular disorder?’
Patricia came and stood next to me, pointedly ignoring Craig. She lowered her voice. It was still shaky but she sounded better. ‘A few years ago she was. She went through a difficult time. It affects people in different ways.’
‘What exactly happened?’
Patricia wiped the windowsill several times with her hand, then leant against it. She smoothed her skirt down over her legs. ‘You heard about Rachel’s daughter, Jess?’
‘A little. Maybe you could tell us again.’
‘She died four years ago.’ Patricia took a determined breath. ‘Abbie was with her, saw it happen. And of course Rachel and Phil . . . Well, they went to pieces. And Abbie too. She felt guilty because she was there.’
‘I understand.’ I knew what it was like to see a dead sister. And to feel guilty.
‘And it all happened not long after they’d had the terrible news about Abbie – you know, when they realised she had the same heart problem Phil had, and was going to need a transplant. So they were trying to come to terms with the possibility of losing Abbie, and then they lost Jess. Rachel became obsessed with Abbie’s health. I mean, she couldn’t bear to lose another child. I know Abbie’s not her biological child but she adopted her and she absolutely adores her. We never knew then if Abbie was really ill or if Rachel was just worrying. And Rachel had a bit of an incident where she imagined things.’
‘What did she imagine?’
‘She thought she was infected with a parasite, but she wasn’t. It was short-lived, but you see she sometimes thinks things that aren’t real.’ Patricia gave me a beseeching look. ‘And then of course Abbie started getting really ill.’
‘And she had a transplant last year?’
‘September. And everyone thinks that’s the end of all the problems, but it’s not. We have constant worries about her body rejecting the heart, and about cancer developing. She needs biopsies all the time – her poor arms are always full of needle marks. And she can’t have pets because of the risk of infection. I even have to keep her away from Minxy here.’ She pointed to the ancient cat, who’d sloped into the room and crawled onto the windowsill between us. ‘I mean, for someone like Rachel, who’s always struggled with her nerves, it was a recipe for disaster. It made her more and more anxious.’
‘And Abbie’s nightmares?’
‘She did have problems. Apparently it’s not uncommon. Phil said he had them after his transplant – he had to go abroad for his and it was hard. But for a child especially, it’s a scary thing to have someone else’s heart. Anyway, Rachel had this idea that Abbie was remembering things from the heart’s past life. So, you see, she’s not stable. She may believe Abbie killed Phil, but it’s not true.’
‘So, what do you think happened on Sunday night?’
‘Someone else must have killed him and then poor Abbie must have wandered through. She does sleep-walk. And then Rachel found them and drew the wrong conclusion.’
‘Do you have any idea who might have killed him?’
Patricia took a breath right into her stomach and gulped. ‘Okay. Right. Phil met someone a few times and wouldn’t tell Rachel who it was. Whether he was having an affair or something else, I don’t know. But you should look into it. And you should talk to that scientist man. There was something strange going on there.’
‘Which scientist man?’
‘Michael Ellis, he was called. He was from the company that made the immunosuppressant drugs Abbie’s on, only he’d left because he was concerned about their safety.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Something about a drug Abbie takes. Unusual side effects. But he was worried people were after him, not wanting him to talk. Maybe he told Phil too much, and that got Phil killed.’
7.
‘Jesus Christ.’ Jai sat on the spare chair in my room and didn’t fidget. He must have been in a profound state of shock. Craig leant against the door frame.
‘So the kid stabbed him to death?’ Jai said.
I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. People were going to go nuts over this. An angelic blonde ten-year-old savagely murders her father. The eyes of the world would be on us. ‘Her mother seems to think she did.’
‘Did you think she was telling the truth?’
‘Why would the mother make that up?’ Craig said. ‘Everyone’s told us how much she loves the kid.’
‘Rachel Thornton’s story does fit the facts as we know them at the moment,’ I said. ‘I’ve arranged for the child to be taken to a secure unit, just for now, till we find out what’s going on.’
‘She was asleep when she did it?’ Jai said. ‘Is that even possible?’
‘Her mother thinks she was possessed by the spirit of her heart donor.’ Craig seemed to be enjoying this.
‘We don’t know,’ I said. ‘We need more information.’
‘Jesus. And if she did it in her sleep, I mean, is it even her fault?’
‘It’s not our business,’ Craig said. ‘We only have to show if she did it. It’s up to her defence team to excuse it.’
I doodled on a scrap of paper. Looked down and realised I’d drawn a series of hearts. I’d drawn their outlines and then coloured them in, using black pen. Black hearts on a white background.
The door banged open, knocking Craig forwards, and Fiona rushed in. ‘Did the little girl do it?’
‘Christ, woman, slow down,’ Craig said.
Jai spun round in his chair. ‘Looks like it.’
‘Oh my God.’ Fiona walked over to my desk. ‘Oh my God.’
‘I’m off.’ Craig headed for the door. ‘Have to leave early.’
Jai smiled. ‘Doing anything nice?’
Craig blushed. ‘Promised the wife. Kids and whatnot.’
‘Bye, Twinkletoes,’ Jai called after him.
‘What the . . . ’ I said. ‘Oh, never mind. Fiona, did you manage to speak to Abbie’s psychiatrist?’
‘I can’t get hold of him,’ Fiona said. ‘The practice manager says he’s on holiday this week and he usually goes off to the Lakes where there’s no signal. He’s not answering calls or emails.’
‘Wonderful.’
The door swung open and Richard charged in. ‘What’s this about the little girl? Did she kill her father?’
Nobody said anything. Richard looked expectantly at me.
‘We don’t know,’ I said. ‘If the victim’s wife is telling the truth, then the girl was found with a knife, covered in arterial blood, by the side of the victim’s bed. Asleep.’
‘Good Lord. The child killed her father in her sleep?’
‘We don’t know if her mother’s telling the truth. And the child seemed really . . . well, really sane.’
‘She’s not sane if she slit her father’s throat in her sleep. She’s clearly psychotic.’
‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ I said. ‘I don’t see her as a dangerous child.’
‘You can’t always tell, Meg.’ Richard wiped his forehead. ‘My God. The girl was seeing a psychiatrist, wasn’t she? What does he say? Is she capable of this?’
‘We can’t get hold of him, so we don’t know. But I’ve never heard of anything like this.’
‘The time of death fits with the mother’s story,’ Craig said. ‘In fact, all the evidence fits with the mother’s story.’
‘Seriously,’ I said. ‘When have you ever heard of a ten-year-old kid slitting her father’s throat? Let alone in her sleep.’
Richard rubbed his nose. ‘There have been cases of ten-year-olds committing murder. But why would she kill her father?’
‘She’d been having nightmares where she was terrified of him,’ I said, somewhat unwillingly. ‘Thought he was trying to kill her. Her mother thought she was remembering how her heart donor died.’
‘Heavens,’ Richard said.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘There must be another explanation.’
*
Fiona had pivoted her desk away from its normal spot. After a moment of bafflement, I realised she now didn’t see Craig’s desk when she faced straight forward. I didn’t have time for diplomatic outreach this week, so pretended I hadn’t noticed. Craig wasn’t around anyway.
‘Can you tell me about that folk tale to do with the statues?’ I said. ‘Rachel said something about it. I’m wondering if that was what triggered Abbie’s nightmares. I mean, she can’t actually have been remembering her donor’s death. It’s ridiculous. So it must have come from somewhere else.’
‘Do you think she really could have killed her father?’ Fiona said.
‘I don’t know.’ I sat on a spare chair by Fiona’s desk.
Fiona picked up a paper-clip and started bending it. ‘The folk tale. It’s not very nice.’
‘They rarely are, especially when the place where it happened has Dead Girl in its name.’
‘No. So, it was a few hundred years ago, and they had this spate of young men doing weird things. Have you heard of a fugue state?’
‘Where you wander off and forget how you got there?’
‘That’s it. Young men kept disappearing. They could be gone for days, weeks or even months. Some of them came back, but claimed they had no memory of what had happened to them. Others didn’t come back at all.’
‘How bizarre.’
‘I know. And it seems like this did actually happen. I looked into it. There have been other epidemics of it. There was one in Paris. But it was really bad in Eldercliffe. It was often the oldest son who went. It was causing no end of problems.’
‘So, what happened?’
‘The local priest said the village had to make a sacrifice. A human sacrifice, to stop the young men going off.’
I looked at Fiona’s earnest face. ‘Seriously?’
‘They had to sacrifice children. He said that was the only way to stop it. The village had to choose four children. Virgins.’
‘Obviously. It’s always bloody virgins.’
Fiona smiled nervously. ‘They had to vote which children to sacrifice.’ She picked up a couple more paper-clips and looped them through the first.
‘My God, they sacrificed children to try to stop young men wandering off on a whim?’
‘So my granny says. And of course it was poor and powerless girls who were chosen. Just young children. Eight years old, I think she said.’
My fists tightened. I felt a surge of anger for all the girls down the centuries whose lives weren’t considered important. ‘What the hell did they do to them?’
‘There was an old house in the woods, on the site of where that house is now, the victim’s house. They put them in there and set fire to it.’
‘Oh for Christ’s sake. Is this true, Fiona?’
‘I’m not sure, to be honest. But my granny thinks it is. One of them jumped out of a window and ran off through the woods, but the villagers followed her and caught her and threw her into the gorge.’
‘Jesus. Abbie ran off towards the gorge yesterday morning. Did the girl die?’
‘Yes. She either drowned or was smashed to bits. The others burnt. And the particularly horrible thing is their own fathers went along with it. Their mothers didn’t, but their fathers bowed to the pressure from the rest of the village. Or at least that’s how the story goes.’
‘And Abbie was screaming that her father was trying to kill her. Maybe this was the trigger for her nightmares?’ I forced my fingers to relax. My nails were digging into my palms. I wished I had a paper-clip installation to mangle. ‘And this story’s what the statues are about? When were they put there?’
‘Victorian times, I think. They loved that creepy stuff, didn’t they?’
I rubbed a sore patch on my palm. ‘How does the story end?’
‘The young men did stop going off. I’m not sure why, so the villagers thought it had worked. It was worth it. Even though four children lost their lives.’
‘If the fugue states were hysterical, it could work. Like a huge placebo.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘The children were sacrificed. For more important lives.’ I remembered the plaque beneath one of the statues. For the weak and the poor who died for the strong and the rich.
‘Horrible, isn’t it? My gran thought there was something more. Something about the girls’ mothers getting revenge. The Destroying Angels, she called them. She’s going to ask her friend.’
‘I can imagine that story giving a kid nightmares. But the story seemed to mean something to Phil Thornton as well, according to both his wife and Karen Jenkins. In fact, it sounded like he almost sought that house out because of the statues. And he made a carving the same as one of the statues except that the girl’s heart had been removed. It’s all very strange.’
Fiona grimaced. ‘And the other daughter fell from the window of the house, didn’t she? Like the poor girl who was sacrificed.’
Richard appeared as if from nowhere. ‘We’ll need to talk to a forensic psychiatrist about this kid,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I agreed, although I didn’t know any in the area.
‘Give Dr Fen Li a call,’ Richard said. ‘She’s on the list. She’s good, and if it comes to it, which in the circumstances I hope to God it doesn’t, she’s excellent on the witness stand. But she’s not cheap, so for the love of all that’s holy, keep a tight eye on the budget.’
*
Dr Li ran her psychiatric practice from a small clinic attached to her home, about two miles outside Eldercliffe. The area was rocky and barren, known for its tall, spiky houses, but the clinic was all on ground-level, sitting on a flat site partially hollowed out of a cliff. A bungalow clung to its side, where I
assumed Dr Li lived.
I’d taken Jai with me. I couldn’t face Craig. I kept running through in my head what I’d overheard him saying to Richard, and I had an unpleasant feeling it had been about me.
We walked up a ramp and came to a wide, automatic door. A light blue plaque announced that we were at the White Peak Clinic.
We just needed Dr Li to tell us a ten-year-old couldn’t have killed her father like this. Then we’d have to find another explanation, no matter how well this one fitted the evidence.
The door whooshed open and sucked us into a reception area suffused with light and decorated with modern art prints and plants of the non-dying kind. The area was guarded by a plastic-faced receptionist who sat behind an expansive, curvy desk, and sported an American-toothed smile of the utmost symmetry. We showed her our ID and she tapped a keyboard with long, scarlet nails.
I glanced at a panel of images of glum-looking women and their smooth-faced after-the-procedure alter-egos. ‘It’s a cosmetic surgery clinic then?’ I said.
The woman looked up and answered with a surprising Derbyshire accent. I’d half expected her to be American, or possibly a robot. ‘Cosmetic surgery and psychotherapy,’ she said. ‘Dr Li Senior always makes sure the patients are suitable for the procedures. If their problems are psychological, we won’t operate.’
‘Dr Li Senior? Is there another Dr Li?’
‘Her son. He works here as a cosmetic surgeon.’
A door to the side of the desk opened, and a young man glided through in a wheelchair.
‘This is Dr Li Junior now,’ the receptionist said.
The man was in his late twenties or early thirties and was skinny with foppish black hair and clear, almond eyes. He rocked back in his chair and pivoted round to face us. ‘Are you here for my mother?’ He looked South East Asian but spoke public school English.