Part 6 (1/2)

Private psychiatric hospitals, mostly for short stay patients, were doing a booming business, he'd read somewhere. Over thirty had been built in recent years and took some of the pressure off the N.H.S. The Mount, he guessed, would be limited to about fifty patients. Were all allowed to roam free, he wondered, or was Creggan having preferential treatment? When he had told Maybridge that he would like temporary accommodation in Macklestone, with a view perhaps to buying a property here, he hadn't envisaged anything quite like this. Bradshaw had been working on a murder practically on his doorstep. There was an uncomfortable feeling here of unfinished business. He glanced at the young sergeant's shoes, shabby suede brogues. The corpse of the girl would have been in an advanced state of decomposition. Whatever shoes, boots, green wellies, or worse, from Radwell's sensitive viewpoint, canvas trainers, he'd worn, they would have squelched deeply into human tissue. Had he worn them when he'd run back to the farm, or discarded them in horror by the corpse? They would have been subjected to a.n.a.lysis like everything else at the scene of crime. It couldn't have been an easy case for Bradshaw, but his careful professionalism would have linked the murder with Hixon despite the pa.s.sage of time and Radwell's unfortunate feet. In this case, identification had taken some while and followed a photograph of the girl after her features had been built up. The forensic expert who had worked on the facial reconstruction had done the best he could with a face that had been savaged, probably by a fox, so that the bone structure was damaged to some extent. The sergeant's feet, a minor irritation or Bradshaw would have mentioned them in his notes, couldn't have done much harm. The girl's name, Susan Martin, could have been her working name; there had been no family to come forward to lay claim to her. Not unusual. Girls took off, a.s.sumed a different ident.i.ty and disappeared. Acquaintances, clients, hadn't been too eager to come forward, either. But someone had. Hixon's third victim had used an alias for her job, too. According to Maybridge she was a twenty-three-year-old woman who worked under the name of Magda, later identified by her shocked and highly respectable family as Gina Gailymore. She had worked for a ponce in the Bath area, wore her long red hair in a plait and smelt strongly of scent.

Maybridge, when imparting information about the dead, was always politely respectful as if they were around, listening. Cormack had responded flippantly about Magda the Magdalene being a more apt description than Rapunzel. Long tresses and pungent perfume.

Maybridge had looked at him coldly. ”No sobriquet is apt,” he'd said quietly. ”The Press dreamed up the Rapunzel one. They might have dreamed up something worse. We've gone along with it.” Cormack, chastened, had apologised. He tended to forget that Maybridge dealt with both the living and the dead - the transition from one state to the other must quite often have appalled him. Or, at the very least, saddened. Cormack had long stopped thinking of cadavers as people. A reprehensible admission, but necessary for survival in the job. You couldn't pick away at pieces of tissue and wonder if the defunct owner had played bowls on Sat.u.r.day afternoons, gone in for painting watercolours or beating his wife. Though, of course, if it were necessary to discover if anything like that applied, you channelled your research in that direction. An interesting puzzle.

He asked Radwell if he had worked on all the Rapunzel cases.

Radwell had, with the exception of Jean Storrer, a twenty-eight-year-old unmarried mother found dead near Exeter cathedral. She had worked on her own account. No ponce. And had made enough money to send her five-year-old daughter to a private school. Radwell found it quite easy to be objective about her. ”A good-looking woman,” he told Cormack. ”I saw several photos of her.” The other murders he could hardly speak about at all. He had seen them in the flesh and didn't want to remember them. Hixon hadn't been as vehement in his denial of the murder of Jean Storrer as he had been with the others, though he hadn't confessed to it. He had blabbed at some length about the innocent fruit of sinful loins and sent a cheque for twenty pounds to Storrer's child. ”Tainted money,” Radwell said. ”I expect the cheque was torn up.”

Cormack tried a little tactful probing about Susan Martin, but got nowhere. Radwell's lips tightened as if he were being offered hemlock and Cormack hastily changed the subject. What had Macklestone to offer in the way of relaxation, he asked, apart from the local pub?

”Professor Bradshaw played golf,” Radwell said frostily.

”With you?”

Radwell thawed a little. The Irishman obviously hadn't a clue about the local cla.s.s system. ”No. With Chief Inspector Maybridge, Superintendent Claxby, and with the Chief Constable. And now,” he went on bitterly, ”presumably he plays with G.o.d.”

Cormack looked at him, astonished. Strange irony from a failed priest. Bradshaw must have given him h.e.l.l.

Sometime during the night after Simon's visit to The Mount someone slashed all four tyres of his car. The green Lotus Eclat sprawled on the tarmac drive like a huge wounded insect. Simon, scarcely believing what he saw, walked around it, touching the dew-wet metal here and there, before finally and therapeutically losing his temper and kicking it.

s.h.i.+t, oh s.h.i.+t!

He'd had enough. This and everything else. He'd had a phone call on the bedroom extension just after nine o'clock from Kester-Evans, who wanted to know why he hadn't used the rail ticket the young lady at the church had given him. Muzzy with sleep, Simon had asked what young lady and Kester-Evans had described someone rather like Rhoda. But it couldn't have been Rhoda because Rhoda hadn't given him anything apart from a lot of aggro and pain by going away. He still nursed her nightdress every night though it smelt of was.h.i.+ng powder now and not of her. The telephone receiver, on the pillow beside him, had yapped away in his ear. ”Simon, are you still there? Are you listening to me?” He'd mumbled that he was. ”You're not still in bed, are you?” ”No - been up hours.” He'd moved a little away from the receiver while Kester-Evans had launched into a long and boring homily about coping in a manly way with his tragic loss, accepting what had to be accepted, and walking wisely into the future as his parents would have wished. ”You're a man now, Simon, take on the mantle of a man. When you spoke to me at the time of the funeral about having doubts about your future in medicine, you were in an irrational state. You were grieving. I took little notice of it. Perhaps I should have listened more. Believe me, my dear boy, it is better that you should return for the last few weeks of term. I have been expecting you every day. It is better that you should be here with your peers. If you have problems we will address them together ...” And so on. Politeness is ingrained, in Simon's case not deeply, but deeply enough not to replace the receiver on the , bedside table while Kester-Evans was in full spate. When he had paused for breath Simon had slipped in a ”Thank you very much”, which was meaningless but the best he could be bothered to do, followed by, ”Sorry, there's someone at the door. Must go.”

The phone had rung again a couple of times while he was making himself some toast, but he had ignored it. The toast had burnt and he had run out of b.u.t.ter. He would have to do some shopping at the local store, where he would meet people who would be kind and say nice things about his parents and he would smile stiffly back and say thank you very much as he had to Kester-Evans, and tell them that he was managing, and that everything really was quite okay, and he didn't need anyone to come and clean the place for him, or to cook, or perform any other charitable action that probably made them feel awfully good, though of course he wouldn't say that, just smile or sigh as the occasion demanded. The only little glow of light on his horizon was the prospect of taking Sally out for a drive.

And now the car was vandalised.

Vandalism, a twentieth-century British disease.

He wondered if he ought to report it to Maybridge. Probably not. It was a minor crime, the sort the police didn't bother about. Nothing personal about it - no pig's trotter tied to the steering wheel. No threat. Just some yobs who'd got p.i.s.sed. If he went to see the Maybridges they'd carry on where Kester-Evans left off. Especially Meg. He was tired of the old refrain: You are grieving, Simon. Not rational. He hadn't grieved when Rhoda was here. She would be here still if Meg hadn't upset her.

And he wasn't grieving now. Just b.l.o.o.d.y furious.

Simon went indoors to phone the garage.

Sally's sunny nature shone most brightly in adversity, like polished bra.s.s on a dark day. That this could be extremely irritating to The Mount's depressive patients she had yet to learn. The others, provided they weren't too manic, or schizoid, or stressed, loved her for her cheerfulness. Simon loved Rhoda and wasn't influenced one way or the other. She was sorry that the car couldn't be used for a day or two, she told him with a wide smile, but it was probably a lot healthier to go walking. How about a stroll down to the woods to see the bluebells? Bluebells didn't interest him particularly, but when she found a patch of gra.s.s fairly free of them and suggested that they should sit down, he sat. She was wearing a blue tracksuit, a little tight over the hips, but wasn't making any effort to be s.e.xy. That Sally had the knack of oozing s.e.xiness when the occasion seemed right, and appearing coolly virginal when it didn't, he was yet to learn. Street-wise Sally sensed that working on Simon would take time, and there wasn't just the barrier of bereavement to be breached. There was someone else, she guessed, someone absent. Maybe the woman Creggan had told her about, the one who dried her undies on Simon's clothes line and had black hair down to her waist. ”Like a Spanish senorita,” he had told her, ”or senora, not a pretty little bambino like my Sally Loreto.” How Creggan could get maudlin on mild beer she didn't know, but he obviously could. She had teased him about being a peeping Tom and he had told her sadly that he wasn't. ”If only the occasion would present itself, my lovely child, but it never does. The villagers draw their curtains at night and only the stars smile at me.” And then, in a sudden change of mood, he had told her quite sharply never to go out with Simon in his car. ”He drives like a lunatic at Brand's Hatch. One of these days he'll be sc.r.a.ped off the road with a shovel.”

Sally wondered if Creggan had slashed the tyres. Some of the nurses at The Mount thought he was as sane as they were, which wasn't saying much. The only sane people up at The Mount were herself and the rest of the domestic staff, with the possible exception of the cook, Mrs Mackay. With her it was hard to tell. She didn't socialise. A bit manic, perhaps, the way she washed poultry under the tap as if a whoosh of water would drown listeria, or whatever nasty bug the food people would think of next, and then she would spend ages drying the thing, patting away at it with a paper towel. That the food she produced was so good was surprising, considering how soggy it was at the start. The food was one of the few good things at The Mount - better than the tips. The patients gave her the odd tenner or two when they left, but seldom more. Mrs Bradshaw had given her a brooch shaped like the letter L. ”L for Lisa,” she said, ”my name. And L for Loreto, your surname. Have it. I don't want it.” It was made of small enamel flowers and didn't look valuable, though it was pretty if you liked that sort of thing. Sally didn't. Brooches were for elderly ladies, even the word sounded ancient - like corsets. The only jewellery Sally liked was earrings, preferably something rather African like large metal hoops, but you couldn't safely wear them at The Mount. Patients on medication did odd things, and even odder things before they were medicated. Doctor Donaldson had warned her but she hadn't taken any notice until a middle-aged bank clerk who looked as harmless as a neutered cat had s.n.a.t.c.hed one of them off and eaten it. Luckily it was small enough and loose enough not to tear her ear lobe - or to stick in his throat and kill him. She hadn't told Donaldson, presumably the patient hadn't either, and she hadn't worn earrings on duty again.

She lay back on the gra.s.s with her hands behind her head and looked at Simon. He had a pretty awful hair style, short all over but beginning to grow a bit now and straggle on the nape of his neck. If he let the top bit grow and gave it a dollop of mousse it would balance his face better. He had the kind of lips, not too thin, that she wouldn't mind exploring with her tongue, but not yet. She would know when he was ready, probably before he did, but there was no point in rus.h.i.+ng it.

A bluebell with a twisted stalk was caressing her forehead. She moved her face from side to side and laughed when it tickled.

Joyous Sally.

Oh, G.o.d, Simon thought. He didn't know if he liked her or not. When she talked she babbled a lot of nonsense, and when she didn't she lay on her back giggling with her b.r.e.a.s.t.s bobbing up and down.

She stopped giggling and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s stopped bobbing. He looked away. Too quickly.

She smiled secretly behind his back. ”Si ... mon.” Long drawn out like two musical notes.

He kept his eyes fixed ahead of him. They were only just inside the woods and the long gra.s.s was a swirl of green all the way down to the perimeter wall. A rabbit, maybe a stoat... no, a bird, fluttered through a clump of bracken.

”Si ... mon.” A little crisper.

”What?” He was cross and didn't know why he was cross.

”Present for you, Simon. Look ...”

He looked round cautiously. She was sitting up now and her hand was extended to him, palm uppermost, holding the brooch which gleamed brightly against her pale skin.

It was a bauble. Cheap. And instantly recognisable, He had been about twelve when he had bought it for his mother's Christmas present. He remembered the - day out with his father very clearly. They had gone shopping together in Bristol and his father had told him to choose whatever he liked for his mother and to tell him if he needed more cash. The fifteen quid he'd saved had been ample. Three quid for his mother's brooch, a tenner for a cigarette lighter shaped like a Porsche for his father, together with a couple of quids' worth of cigarettes. His father had been pleased with the lighter, which he had given to him straight away as a pre-Christmas present, but had been doubtful about the brooch. ”Make it a pre-Christmas present, too, Simon. I've got your Mum a gold bracelet and she might prefer something else - not jewellery - from you.” He hadn't said that it was too cheap. And Simon couldn't remember saying that he'd bought it because it was pretty. But his father had looked rather keenly at him and must have guessed. ”Okay,” he'd said, ”let's chance it. Wrap it. Keep it for Christmas.” His mother had, in fact, appeared to like the brooch very much, and his father had smiled at her and pinned it on her dress. His gift, the bracelet, had been received with far less enthusiasm. She had made a joke about gilt and gold, and his father had quipped back quite sharply about having a nineteen-carat conscience. None of this had Simon understood at the time. And he didn't want to dwell on it now. Gilt. Guilt. A long time ago. What did it matter?

”It's for you,” Sally said. ”Your mum's.”

It was odd she had been wearing it up at The Mount. He hadn't seen her wearing it around the house. All her other jewellery was good stuff. Perhaps if you wore good jewellery at The Mount it got nicked. This wasn't worth nicking. Or maybe she had genuinely liked it and wore it for that reason. But why give it away?

He asked Sally why his mother had given it to her. Sally explained about the L. ”It was just a little pressie. Simon. L for Loreto. She usually gave a cash tip, but she hadn't any cash on her. She didn't have to give me anything, and this was a bit personal, I mean L for her name, too. But she didn't seem too bothered with it - I mean, not sentimentally attached or anything. So I accepted it, but you can have it if you want it, to keep - in memory, sort of - you know what I mean. But if you'd rather I hung on to it, then I will. It's for you to say.”

But Simon had nothing to say. He got up and walked down through the tall gra.s.s towards the road. His throat was raw as if he were starting a cold and his eyes were burning. He had the same reaction sometimes when he opened the wardrobes in his mother's bedroom and saw all the clothes hanging neatly like brightly coloured shrouds. They had to be got rid of. The lot of them.

His father's too. They should all go. Someone from the church might do it. He couldn't do it himself, any more than he could touch that brooch. He wasn't aware that he was clutching the rough stone wall hard enough to flake off pieces of moss and graze the skin of his thumb.

”Simon?” Not the fluting, seductive tone now. Genuine sympathy. He couldn't answer. Not yet. She was wise enough not to mention the brooch again, or to tell him, when she went to stand beside him, that his thumb was bleeding. Instead she suggested that it might be better if they started strolling back. ”It's getting chilly.”

But it will be warmer in time, Simon. And we have all the time in the world.

When you work in a psychiatric hospital you learn some of the jargon. You can't help picking it up. Some of the therapy at The Mount seemed reasonable to Sally. When people were under stress they needed to get away from whatever was bugging them. Her family had bugged her, especially her Da, though, fair play, the old man hadn't done anything he shouldn't. No sin of the flesh. When her Ma had walked out on them he had expected her to get a local job, waitressing or something, and live at home and look after him. If she had she would have landed up in a N.H.S. equivalent to The Mount. As a patient.

To get on in the world you had to look after yourself. A sense of self was one of the phrases she'd picked up at The Mount. She had that, all right. She knew who she was. Were there people who didn't, apart from amnesiacs? And she liked who she was. A nice body, kept fit by daily jogging, and a brain that didn't brood or go haywire or cause her or anyone else any aggro. As for s.e.xually induced neurosis - had she got that phrase right? - she hadn't any. And no s.e.xually induced disease. Luck on her side there, of course, though she tended to touch wood when she thought of AIDS. Superst.i.tion might be a weakness, but you only became an obsessive if you touched wood or washed your hands all day. She didn't know what category Mrs Bradshaw had been slotted into. Her stay at The Mount had been short and she hadn't spent all the time in bed, though she might have spent some of it in Donaldson's bed. But surely he could have visited her in her home when the professor wasn't there? Cheaper for her. But perhaps she didn't pay any fees at The Mount, got it for free. Donaldson had been looking pretty sick himself since the funeral. And who did he think he was kidding with his vodka and tonic? Was he trying to kill his libido, if that was the word, with ninety percent proof? No more Mrs Bradshaw. No more s.e.x. Oh dear, poor old Doc.

Sally smiled. It was an amusing picture, but it couldn't be true. If you had a good-looking husband like the professor and he didn't fancy you any more you got yourself a toyboy. Or you bunged yourself full of hormones to stop the menopause and had a face lift. Well, you did that if you were normal and had a good 'self image'. If you weren't normal you had it off with Donaldson, or ate too many cream cakes and got disgustingly fat. Mrs Bradshaw had been slim and her jaw hadn't sagged. For her age she had looked pretty remarkable. And she and her husband had both died together, celebrating an anniversary. Nice way to go, if you had to. Unfortunately you had. But when you're twenty-two you don't really believe it. Life is like a long gra.s.sy plain that the sun s.h.i.+nes on. Somewhere out there, further than you can see, the gra.s.s becomes less lush and the sky is darker. You have to start watching where you put your feet. Someone chucks a walking frame at you and it helps for a bit. But not forever. You walk over the edge one day, but you're so old by then you don't much care.

Simon's parents had gone over the edge about thirty years too soon. Fate tended to do that sort of thing sometimes. But only to other people.

If Simon had tried to evaluate his first date with Sally he would have given himself nil for effort and a few pluses to her for trying. Compared with Rhoda she hadn't amounted to very much, a stand-in player on an otherwise empty stage when the star had gone. Even so, she was a warm presence, bonny and bouncy, and thawed the ice of his solitude a little.

She arranged all future dates to slot in with her time off from The Mount, which varied according to her duties. Most of the work was in the kitchen and dictated by the needs of Mrs Mackay: preparing vegetables, loading the dishwasher, and carrying breakfast and tea trays to the patients. It was usually possible to have a couple of hours off in the afternoon, and the evenings, on a duty rota system, were free on alternate days. Mrs Mackay, usually not communicative, had praised her once or twice for doing her job quite well, and then warned her not to get too pally with the patients. ”They're not like us, m'dear.” A generalisation, Creggan not mentioned, but message received and understood. And ignored.