Dead Man's Daughter

by Roz Watkins

  ‘Of course you’re not. And you’ve been fine recently, haven’t you?’

  ‘I still have a flashback every now and then.’

  ‘Meg . . . That’s not right. You should see a counsellor.’

  ‘I can hardly remember her face any more, Hannah. The flashbacks . . . they’re the only time I see her clearly.’

  ‘Seriously. Have a chat with the counsellor.’

  ‘Oh maybe, once this case is out of the way. And . . . ’ I didn’t say it. I couldn’t face talking about Gran today, and I sensed Hannah knew that. But I’d thought it. Once Switzerland was out of the way. I felt a sick churning in my stomach. Part of me was looking forward to it being over. Which meant I was looking forward to Gran being dead. Maybe I was a monster.

  ‘You’re assuming it’s the religious maniacs,’ Hannah said. ‘But anyone could have read their insane blog posts. It could be someone else. Someone to do with the murder you’re on at the moment.’

  ‘I guess so . . . ’

  ‘Could you be in danger?’

  ‘I don’t think so. This was pretty cowardly. I don’t suppose they’ll confront me. Let’s talk about something else.’

  Hannah looked at me, wide-eyed. ‘Is it true the little girl killed her father?’

  ‘Of course not. Where do you get all this stuff from?’

  ‘People are tweeting about it. It’s all over the place. Do you know who did it then? Should we be barricading the doors?’

  ‘You’ll be okay with your five-lever mortice locks. Think of me in my ramshackle old hovel with un-lockable windows the landlord keeps saying he’ll fix.’ I had a spasm of worry. Not about Phil Thornton’s killer, but about whoever thought it was a nice idea to post Carrie through my letter-box.

  ‘Do you think he’ll kill someone else?’

  ‘What? My landlord?’

  Hannah tutted.

  I wondered how much genuine concern was behind this. Hannah tried to make light of her disability, but how must it feel to know you couldn’t kick someone or even run away? Hannah was so far from being a victim, and I’d never told her about my particular terror of paralysis – about waking up sweating and gasping after dreaming I’d been in that car accident with Dad. ‘Seriously, Hannah, there’s no reason to think anyone’s going to kill anyone else, and I came here to get away from all that, and you know very well I can’t talk about it anyway.’

  ‘Do you think it’s something to do with the paedophile?’

  ‘Anyway . . . How are you?’

  ‘Made the mistake of trying on some of my thin-clothes. Maybe I should give up and take them to a charity shop.’

  ‘Life’s a lot easier when you stop caring how you look.’

  ‘So you tell me. And when you stop cleaning your car and your house . . . ’

  ‘Yep, that too. Accept that you’ll share your life with spiders.’

  ‘Ugh. What a disgusting thought. I can’t think of anything I’d less like to share my life with.’

  ‘I don’t know, Hannah. I’m remembering some of those blokes you’ve tried to hook me up with on the dating site.’

  I so wanted to chat dating and silly, irrelevant stuff with Hannah, but there was too much crap in my head. Gran, the Carrie-doll, Craig . . . Although in a surprise development, the thing with Craig seemed less important now. I could distance myself from it. ‘Craig’s been lying about me to Richard,’ I said.

  ‘The little shit. What’s he been saying.’

  I laughed. It did almost seem comical now. ‘The victim’s wife in this murder case had a fairly half-assed go at me for police brutality, and . . . ’

  ‘What? You never told me that.’

  ‘It was preposterous. Her lawyer’s attempt to distract us. Even she didn’t take it seriously. I tried to stop her getting to the crime scene, and she fell, but then she got up and punched me.’

  ‘Christ, Meg, you do have a time of it.’

  ‘I know. Craig turned up after she punched me, but now he’s lying and saying he saw me push her. I don’t know why he hates me so much. His wife said he was desperate to impress me, but that’s clearly not the case.’

  ‘He hates you because you’re better than him. He can’t stand that. Did Richard believe him?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Richard kind of left it hanging, but I feel I should talk to Craig about it, preferably without resorting to violence.’

  ‘You know what I think you should do? Totally ignore it. Have you told anyone else? Jai? Fiona?’

  ‘Jai seems to know. I don’t think Fiona does.’

  ‘Okay, don’t mention it to anyone. Don’t confront Craig. Be super-nice to him. He’ll bloody hate that. He won’t know if Richard said anything to you. He’ll suspect he didn’t and then he’ll wonder if Richard didn’t believe him, or just thinks you’re more important than him. He won’t want to ask you about it.’

  ‘What if he does?’

  ‘Be really vague, as if Richard might have said something but you’ve forgotten what it was because it was a matter of such supreme indifference to you. Seriously, Meg, this is the way to go. Don’t reward the behaviour by giving it attention. Basic training principles.’

  I smiled. Hannah had read a book called Don’t Shoot the Dog many years ago, and had been applying dog-training principles to managing her colleagues ever since, although possibly with fewer food-based rewards.

  ‘Okay.’ I raised my glass and clinked it against Hannah’s. ‘I solemnly vow. No attention for Craig. I will rise above it all.’

  14.

  I breakfasted in the reassuring company of Hannah and Hamlet, feeling surprisingly relaxed. Something about Hannah’s company did that to me. And her calm, spacious kitchen and neatly bordered garden helped too. It was good to be away from my place, where everywhere I looked there were reminders of things I should have done.

  Once at the Station, my calm evaporated. It was the morning briefing for Operation Sweeney Todd. Abbie’s drawing was projected onto a screen at the front of the room. I stared at the black lake, the man with the huge teeth, the girl being dragged by her blonde hair. It still gave me goose pimples.

  I took myself to the front of the room and tried to look as if I was in control. The excited chatter died down.

  ‘We need to find out if there’s anything in Abbie’s life to justify her dreaming about a girl being pulled towards a lake,’ I said. ‘Or thinking her father’s a murderer. It must have come from somewhere.’

  ‘Other than from the donor child?’ Jai said, and the chatter kicked off again.

  I raised my voice. ‘Yes, other than from the donor child! It’s not possible she remembers something that happened to the donor child. Okay?’

  ‘Could Harry Gibson have inadvertently given Abbie some details about the donor child?’ Fiona said.

  ‘That would make sense,’ I said. ‘Except that the letter giving him the information about the donor child was dated after all his meetings with Abbie.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter why she did it,’ Craig said. ‘If we can show she did.’

  I was following Hannah’s advice and pretending I knew nothing about Craig’s blatant lies to Richard. It didn’t mean I had to respond to the guy though.

  ‘Have we got any more from the blood spatter?’ I asked.

  Jai nodded. ‘Got the report back from the Dexters. But it’s not conclusive. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a person-shaped hole in the spatter on the wall, so they can’t actually tell the size of whoever did it.’

  ‘What did Michael Ellis say about the drugs?’ Fiona said.

  I filled them in briefly about Ellis’s odd claims and behaviour.

  Craig folded his arms pointedly. ‘Paranoid his colleagues are after him? Claiming a drug could make a kid kill someone? He’s mad as a box of frogs. Why are we even following it up?’

  Fiona shot an irritated glance at Craig. ‘Did he seem like he might be mentally ill?’

  ‘Not on the face of it.’ I pictured Ellis standi
ng by the Destroying Angels, his gaze darting to and fro, his leg tapping. ‘Our forensic psychiatrist said he was clearly scared but didn’t seem obviously mentally ill.’

  ‘What about Dr Gibson?’ Fiona said. ‘Did he know too much about the bad heart or the drugs? Was he murdered as well?’

  The energy in the room was bubbling up again. ‘We don’t know that,’ I said.

  ‘No, he wasn’t.’ Craig’s tone was smug. ‘His blood was full of booze and his own prescription tranquillisers. His sister and parents were shocked, horrified, didn’t believe he was a paedophile, desperate for us to catch the bastards that put his name online. He’d had problems with depression and it was believable that he’d kill himself after reading those lies on the internet.’

  ‘Prints in the house?’

  ‘His and his sister’s.’

  ‘There’s more to it,’ I said. ‘He was wondering if the donor child was murdered. There’s more to this than a simple suicide.’

  *

  I eased myself into the car. ‘We’re meeting her at Black Mere.’

  Jai paused half way into my passenger seat. ‘At the place where her daughter drowned?’

  I nodded. ‘I was surprised. But maybe she wants us to see what it was like.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be taking Craig with you?’

  ‘I don’t have to take him everywhere I go like a little puppy-dog.’ I opened my mouth to say something about Craig’s lies to Richard, but then remembered Hannah’s advice.

  ‘You’d be upset if you asked for a puppy for Christmas and that turned up.’

  ‘Are you getting in or have you got a more pressing engagement?’

  Jai brushed the seat pointedly and plonked himself next to me.

  I pulled out of the car park. ‘Why did you call Craig Twinkletoes the other day?’

  ‘Ah, now, that’s a state secret.’

  I looked round at his impassive face. ‘Come on, Jai. What’s going on?’

  ‘His wife’s bullied him into doing salsa classes with her.’

  I laughed. Too loudly. ‘Oh my God. I love it.’

  ‘To try to re-build their crappy relationship. But you mustn’t tell him I blabbed.’

  ‘I won’t. It’s enough just to know. That’s made my day. Like a hippo doing ballet. How fabulous.’

  We drove in companionable silence for a while. It was ridiculous how much the salsa revelation had cheered me up.

  Jai coughed. ‘You think there might be something in this heart business? If you want to talk to the donor child’s mother?’

  ‘Something damn peculiar is going on and I want to know what. But hopefully the child’s mother can tell us the details of the girl’s death, and it’ll be nothing like Abbie’s picture or her dreams, and we can put this ludicrous theory to rest once and for all.’

  ‘Well, I found out the girl was with her father when she drowned. There are no details of her swimming costume or hair colour or whether her dad had a black beard or anything.’ Jai looked at the sky. It was white and low, seeming to sink onto the tree-tops. ‘They’re saying it’s going to snow. If it does, it’ll be bad up there.’

  ‘They’ve been saying that for days.’ I had a peculiarly English confidence that it wouldn’t snow, and that if it did, I’d be fine. ‘This car’s not too bad in the snow actually,’ I said, further adding to my ridiculous position on the matter. ‘Front wheel drive and narrow tyres.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jai said. ‘Sure it is. Old heaps are famously good in the snow.’

  ‘I told the donor child’s mother we were doing some research on drownings,’ I said, ignoring the dig at my poor car. ‘She was happy to help. Seemed keen to talk.’

  ‘Sort of true,’ Jai said. ‘Did you know there’ve been a few drownings at the pool? The locals blame an evil mermaid.’

  ‘Of course they do. We’re only seventy miles from the sea. Why ever would it not be the fault of a mermaid?’

  As I took the road past Carsington Water, I could feel the wind getting up, buffeting the side of the car. But there was no sign of any snow.

  ‘Someone fell in love with her,’ Jai said. ‘But she spurned his advances so he accused her of being a witch and persuaded the townspeople to drown her in the pool.’

  ‘Some men need to learn how to handle rejection.’

  ‘Don’t worry, she sorted it. She cursed him with her dying breath and later he was found dead by the pool with his face covered in claw marks.’

  ‘Seems reasonable.’

  ‘And now she lures single men to her and drowns them in the bottomless depths.’

  I glanced sideways at him. ‘Does that include you then, Jai? Or not any more? Are you safe?’

  An uncomfortable thickness filled the car. ‘Er, no, yes, I did meet someone recently.’

  ‘That’s great.’ The words felt lumpy as they rose up and out through my mouth. ‘It’ll help you get over your divorce. Anyway, what else do you know about this pool?’

  Jai gave me a quick, relieved smile. ‘It’s supposed to be linked to the sea by an underground passage. They pumped a load of water out of it once, to put a fire out, and the level didn’t change. And they say cattle won’t drink out of it and birds won’t fly over it. The water’s supposed to be black.’

  ‘Like Abbie’s drawing.’

  We were silent for a moment. I pictured the drawing.

  We made our way through Ashbourne and on towards Leek. Still no snow but it was bitterly cold. The pool was near the side of the A53 heading north. ‘Keep your eyes peeled,’ I said. ‘We should be nearly there by now.’

  ‘I think I know where it is. I’ll tell you.’

  The warmth of the car must have loosened me up. I found myself telling Jai about the doll I’d found hanging through my door.

  ‘Holy crap,’ he said. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine. It freaked me out a bit at first but it’s nothing.’

  ‘Have you reported it? And did you get your dodgy windows fixed?’

  ‘Yes, and the landlord’s going to do it.’

  I noticed a dark patch of water, like a blob of black ink sinking into the hillside. ‘Is that it?’

  Jai looked over. ‘Oh yes. You can park opposite.’

  I pulled the car into a small lay-by. ‘It’s a bit grim.’

  ‘It might be nice in the summer.’ Jai eased the car door open an inch. The wind grabbed it and slammed it wide, snatching at the pages of a map on my back seat.

  ‘Christ, shut the door a minute.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ Jai fought with the door, and finally clunked it shut.

  A car pulled up in front of us. A woman forced her door open.

  We bundled ourselves into coats, battled with the car doors, and emerged into the windswept landscape.

  The woman confirmed she was Vanessa Norwood, mother of the girl who’d drowned. She looked drained of life, as if exhausted by tragedy. Everything about her was hesitant, as if any large movement could provoke even worse things to happen in her life.

  ‘If at any point you want to leave,’ I said. ‘Just say. I know it must be hard to come here.’

  ‘Nick and I split up over it,’ she said. ‘He’s living in our old house up in the hills. I can’t bear it there any more. Not many marriages survive the loss of a child. I suppose you know that.’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’ The wind took my words and whipped them away.

  ‘Of course I blamed him.’

  We crossed the road and followed an unclear path towards the pool. As we neared the dark water, the wind dropped and the air fell still. The blackness of the pool was overwhelming, as if it was sucking the light from the sky. It smelt of peat and something oddly sweet I couldn’t place. The first flakes of snow fell onto its smooth surface.

  I took a step nearer and felt my foot sink into swampy sludge. I leaped back before it engulfed me.

  ‘What a stupid place to bring her,’ Vanessa said. ‘He knew there’d been drownings here in the past. She
wasn’t a good swimmer, and . . . ’

  I gazed into the pool and imagined a young girl thrashing around, being dragged into the bottomless depths.

  ‘She wasn’t his. She never knew, but he did. I knew he didn’t like her as much as Ben. Ben was his, of course.’

  I exchanged a glance with Jai. Ben. Ben had been mentioned in Harry Gibson’s report of Abbie’s hypnosis. Why didn’t Mum and Ben and Buddy come with us?

  ‘He used to get really angry with Scarlett. Way more than he did with Ben.’

  ‘You don’t think he . . . ’

  ‘What, did something to hurt her? No, not really. But how did he let her drown? I just don’t think he’d have let Ben drown. What did you want to know anyway? Aren’t you compiling statistics or something?’

  ‘We’re just after details of the circumstances if that’s okay.’

  She looked towards the pool and nodded.

  ‘Was it just the two of them that day?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. Ben had football. I don’t know why I always took him to football, but you know how it is. Mums always seem to do the boring, regular stuff and dads get to choose. And that day Nick decided he wanted to come here. So he took Scarlett. He didn’t even take the dog. The dog would never have let her drown.’

  ‘What kind of a dog is he?’ I spoke casually, conversationally. I thought asking his name might seem weird.

  ‘Buddy? Oh, he’s just a mongrel – something hairy crossed with something greedy.’

  Ben and Buddy. It wasn’t only the bitter cold giving me goose-pimples.

  ‘So, they went swimming?’

  ‘They must have done. Although how he got her to swim, I don’t know. She had her swimmers on but I was only expecting her to sunbathe and paddle, not to swim. She rarely swam, and now this . . . Sorry, maybe it is too much coming here.’

  ‘Let’s go back up to the cars.’

  She didn’t move. ‘He never even learnt first aid. Everyone should know first aid. They revived her when the ambulance arrived but it was too late. She’d not had oxygen for . . . ’

  I took her arm and led her gently up the slope towards the cars. Flakes of snow swirled across the moor and over the black water of the pool.