Part 7 (1/2)
It was a similar night tonight, but less dark, and the rain was the warm rain of early summer. The photograph that she'd pinched from Simon and not returned was on the small rickety table she used as a desk. There was a sheet of paper in her typewriter with the heading The Games Men Play' - a commissioned piece of nonsense for a magazine. She had chosen to call her contribution The Snooker Syndrome' and had attempted to be wryly amusing about b.a.l.l.s and phallic cues. Freelance journalism was a penurious occupation, unless you were good at it. Tonight she wasn't good at it.
She was remembering that other night so strongly she could almost smell the wet leather of Peter's shoes and see the hair on the back of his hands. His s.e.xy hands that had probed the cadavers of five strangled prost.i.tutes. She'd asked him what he was celebrating. Nothing, he said. He wasn't celebrating. Clare was. So don't look at him like that. Hixon's conviction hadn't depended on his evidence alone. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d would have been convicted without it. It wasn't his fault that the Press had hyped him up - singled him out. He'd just been part of a team.
Modesty wasn't usually one of his strong points. Hixon's last outburst of aggro, widely reported in the evening papers, must have got to him. And Clare's party was just that much too much.
She hadn't gone to it. Parties weren't her scene, either. And the rift with her sister over Peter had seemed more of a chasm than it actually was. But it hadn't been an act of enticement when she had poured him a generous whisky, he'd looked as if he'd needed it, and his hand shook when she handed him the gla.s.s. He was cold, he said testily. Why didn't she keep her flat warmer? Because she hadn't paid the last electricity bill yet, she nearly told him. Her money problems had nothing to do with him. She managed.
Clare had been managing rather better, she guessed. A free billet in Peter's flat, and the modelling she had been doing for one of the London stores paid very well. The red outfit she had worn in the photograph had probably been bought at discount - or hired. Hadn't she known that you turn up to that sort of village do wearing tweeds and flat heels? Mrs Maybridge's gear. Why, in G.o.d's name, had Peter invited her? If he had.
He had stayed a couple of hours, nursing his whisky and gazing morosely at the two-bar electric fire she'd switched on for him. He was almost fifty - twice Clare's age. And that night he'd looked it. She had sat up with him. Going to bed might have been interpreted as an invitation to join her. They'd had good s.e.x together in the past, but on that last night there had been no s.e.xual pull at all. She'd sensed he had something on his mind. He mentioned Simon once or twice - said he'd had a raw deal - been robbed of a normal upbringing - hoped everything would be better for him in the future. He hadn't mentioned Lisa at all, but by implication everything he said concerned her.
Rhoda picked up the photograph and had another look at it. Lisa appeared so sane, so normal. An attractive middle-aged woman. Had Peter been standing beside her - and Clare absent - it would have been a scene of bucolic bliss. Macklestone on a sunny day - villagers smiling - an enclosed safe little community - hurrah for constancy - married love - no roving husbands - no horror paintings - no hate - no fear - no terrible accident waiting to happen - everything clean and sweet. Macklestone as it never was.
The vicar's grumble about Creggan's dog digging a hole in the cemetery seemed relatively trite to Maybridge until the vicar pointed out that it was natural for a dog to go after bones, but that the bones of h.o.m.o sapiens were sacrosanct. So would he please go along and have a word with Mr Creggan? Maybridge, stifling the retort that it would be better for the vicar to go along and have a word himself, said that he'd mention it to Doctor Donaldson. As medical superintendent, it was up to him to keep his patients and his patients' pets in line.
The vicar, who had been reluctant to broach the subject with Donaldson, was relieved. Several of his paris.h.i.+oners had complained from time to time about Donaldson's so-called progressive methods - with particular reference to letting Creggan creep around in the dark. A psychiatric hospital, especially when housed in a large forbidding building, didn't enhance the village, one of his paris.h.i.+oners had pointed out. It devalued one's property if one wished to sell. Sutton's pious response about being charitable to the afflicted had been greeted with polite derision. ”The afflicted, Vicar? Those aren't long-term patients with Down's Syndrome or other incurable genetic disorders, they're victims of their own folly, their way of life, drink, drugs, etc. etc. and Donaldson is reaping a rich harvest.” Another paris.h.i.+oner, homing in on the harvest theme, had been equally bitter. ”It's all very well singing about ploughing the fields and scattering, but that d.a.m.ned dog of Creggan's has scattered a bedful of tulips at the end of my lawn.”
That the dog's holes were, so far, desultory explorations and of more annoyance to Creggan than anyone else, no one knew. Creggan had expected better. The animal had a perverse habit of slipping out of its collar and lead and going in the wrong direction, whereas Creggan knew, or thought he knew, where a hole might produce something of interest - in the copse where the fifth Rapunzel had been found, somewhere just outside the area of the police search.
He guessed when he noticed Maybridge's car in The Mount's drive that a complaint might be about to be made. And wondered how Donaldson would react.
Would another bribe pacify him? If so, how much? When money doesn't matter it becomes a bit of a bore. It had bored him for years. How much would bore Donaldson? he wondered. People had different levels of financial boredom. Caviare, for some, descended to the level of baked beans rather fast. He debated whether to go out for a walk and avoid confrontation, or to lie on his bed and feign sleep.
Maybridge had never found Donaldson easy to communicate with, though he had always made an effort to attend any event that Donaldson had put on to give the patients an opportunity to mingle with the villagers. After a period of isolation, stepping back into society is made easier by meeting strangers at an art display or performing, rather amateurishly perhaps, at a musical soiree. Maybridge rather liked Donaldson's old-fas.h.i.+oned use of the word soiree, it had an air of elegance, of peaceful days long gone. That Donaldson's patients were bruised by late-twentieth-century stresses he could understand, though Victorian stresses had probably been worse. Sherlock Holmes had smoked opium and his doctor creator hadn't condemned him.
Maybridge, rather guiltily, lit a cigarette. Donaldson frowned. ”It's not a healthy habit, Chief Inspector. Addictions are easy to acquire and hard to lose. Please put the ash in this.” He indicated a crystal inkwell on his desk, a purely decorative item from a patient. He had never been able to call Maybridge Tom, though Maybridge had suggested that he might. Maybridge's attempt to call him Steven had been received coldly and he hadn't tried again. They might live in the same village, drink sometimes in the same pub, but each had his separate professional ident.i.ty.
”I don't see that this is a police matter,” Donaldson commented stiffly when Maybridge told him why he'd come.
Maybridge a.s.sured him it wasn't. ”The vicar is troubled about the possible disinterring of human remains, though that seems extremely unlikely. The dog could have sniffed out a dead bird, or something. I think it's Creggan's night-time walks that alarm some people and then they complain to the vicar rather than to you. Sutton isn't all that robust when it comes to dealing with criticism. And, candidly, I believe he gets a certain amount of the nimby att.i.tude from his paris.h.i.+oners - you know, not in my back yard - with reference to The Mount.”
Donaldson, who knew it only too well and had learnt to ignore it, ignored it again, but it bothered him that the dog had dug a hole in the cemetery. Creggan had promised to keep the animal on a lead.
”Whose grave did it desecrate?”
Desecrate was too strong a word. As far as Maybridge knew, the hole hadn't been near a grave - if it had been, the vicar would have told him. He explained this to Donaldson. ”It's probably a lot of fuss about nothing. If the animal worried sheep or cattle there would be cause for complaint. But that could happen and I think your patient should be warned of the consequences.”
Donaldson said he had already warned him, but would do so again. Maybridge might consider it a lot of fuss about nothing. He didn't. Matters that at one time he might have dismissed as trivial now tended to loom. Even mildly aggressive att.i.tudes were threatening and difficult to cope with. The professional staff, not normally argumentative, were tending to go more by the book than they used to. And to use bookish words. If you tell a patient he's suffering from cyclothymia you scare him rigid, whereas a few simple words about mood change do no harm at all. He knows that. That's why he's here. One of the psychotherapists, not Sue Raudsley this time, but probably encouraged by her, had argued for the reintroduction of electroconvulsive therapy in place of the monoamine oxidase inhibitor drugs for endogenous depression. The fact that Donaldson used hypnosis from time to time had come in for criticism, too. Lexman, the senior nurse, had referred to it obliquely as ”one of the many rather archaic ways of persuading a sick patient he's well”. Donaldson could have retorted that a few soothing words that rub out nightmares and make the patient feel better for a while can't be a bad thing. Disinterring memories that are buried deeply and festering can be therapeutic, too, but it's a more painful process and perhaps at times dangerous. Donaldson, suppressing an urge to argue the pros and cons, had said nothing. Lexman depended on him for his salary and if he were wise he would remember it. Or be asked to leave. Creggan, on the other hand, brought the money in.
Which brought his thoughts into sharp focus on him again. Disinterring memories and disinterring bones. Equally hazardous. Only the dog hadn't, which was some consolation. Even so, should he ask Creggan to leave? A confrontation with him might lead to that. It would please the villagers if he went, restore his credibility with his staff, and soothe Mrs Mackay whose dislike of the man was almost paranoid. G.o.d knew there was enough paranoia here without her adding to it. Sally, she had told him, might be in some moral danger if she saw too much of him. Moral danger presupposes a degree of innocence in the vulnerable party. Sally might be guilty of active encouragement - or was her relations.h.i.+p with Simon using all her s.e.xual energy? Her physical energy was being expended on the seven o'clock jog around the grounds - she loping ahead of Simon, he looking foolish a few yards behind. A spectacle that amused some of the patients who rose early. He hadn't joined her this morning. Aware of a growing audience, perhaps.
”It's almost two months since the Bradshaws' funeral,” Donaldson informed Maybridge abruptly.
Maybridge carefully tapped ash into the crystal inkwell. Peter had been a heavy smoker, too, and then had suddenly given it up and been extremely irritable for a while. One tended to forget the ordinariness of people in the first few weeks after death. They had gone ahead into the great unknown, wafted along to the accompaniment of sonorous church music, and you thought of them with awe. Afterwards you remembered their tetchiness - their fallibility - their kindness - their humanity.
”Two difficult months for Simon,” he said. ”Let's hope everything turns out well for him.”
Donaldson agreed. Two very difficult months, he thought bitterly, and not just for Lisa's son.
”Creggan attended the funeral,” he said. ”I suppose you noticed?” Maybridge had. If allowing him to attend had been part of Donaldson's therapy then who was he to question it? The Mount wasn't a closed inst.i.tution. Creggan had also been seen by Radwell mooching around the cemetery some weeks later, carrying a bunch of wild flowers. ”Rather out of character, wouldn't you say?” Radwell had commented to Maybridge. As no one knew Creggan's character - with the exception of Donaldson and The Mount's psychotherapists - the comment seemed pointless. Radwell hadn't approached him. ”He didn't see me,” he explained. ”It was getting dark. There was no one else around. And he wasn't doing any harm.” No pigs' trotters on graves. Nothing nasty. No dog then to dig holes. No point in mentioning it now.
”A great many attended,” Maybridge said. ”Mostly the media. Some genuine mourners there too, of course; the Bradshaws were well liked.”
Speaking well of the dead, or voicing at worst a veiled criticism, is ingrained in most people. Maybridge had valued his friends.h.i.+p with Bradshaw and kept his criticism under wraps. Meg had deplored Lisa's att.i.tude towards Simon but no longer mentioned it. Max Cormack was in a different category - an unbiased stranger. He sensed that the Millingtons hadn't liked Bradshaw and, though deeply curious to know why, he had avoided any conversation that might lead to an explanation. He was, after all, part of the medical brotherhood. His disquiet about Bradshaw's forensic evidence in the case of the last Rapunzel murder had been growing. The professor's reports on the first four murdered prost.i.tutes had been meticulously detailed - the murders had been done by Hixon and proved to have been done. The notes on Rapunzel number five were slipshod - a brief extension of some of the other notes - a postscript that tended to a.s.sume too much. Hixon's guilt, had it been based on this evidence alone, couldn't have been proved beyond reasonable doubt. An elastic phrase - reasonable doubt. Where does unreasonable doubt set in, Cormack wondered, and what, if anything, should be done about it?
Creggan's effort to nourish Cormack's doubt was premature. They met by accident a few days after Donaldson had given Creggan an ultimatum - any more complaints from the villagers and the dog had to go. Creggan had promised to be more vigilant. He had bought a new chain-type collar and lead for Perry and taken the dog along to what he thought of as the Rapunzel copse to try it out.
And had come across Cormack who was about to time Radwell's run from the copse to the Millingtons' farm. He had already timed the shorter route to the main road where there was a telephone box. Not vandalised. At a guess there would be about twenty minutes' difference, so why hadn't the sergeant taken the quicker route? Too distressed to think of it? A gra.s.sy field easier to run across if you've discarded your shoes? Dawn Mill-ington's bosom soft to weep on while you girded up your strength prior to reporting to your D.C.I, that you've found a corpse ... and walked on it? Any other reason?
The dog, emerging from the trees and about to leap joyously in Cormack's direction, gave a gargled agonised yelp and arched over on to its back.
”Holy Jesus!” Cormack rushed over to it. ”You'll throttle the poor little devil.” He s.n.a.t.c.hed the lead from Creggan and loosened it. Creggan, appalled, went down on his knees by his pet. ”It's Donaldson's fault. I didn't mean to hurt it.” Cormack had met him once before, briefly, in Millington's kitchen where Creggan had been paying for the dog's kennelling fees. Over the odds. In Millington's eyes Creggan was crazy. Perhaps dangerous. Cormack suspended judgment. He asked him why he wasn't using the leather lead and collar.
Creggan explained.
”Even the most reprehensible of grave digging mongrels shouldn't be strangled,” Cormack pointed out. ”Use its old collar, put an extra hole in it, but make sure it's not too tight.” If Creggan hadn't obviously been fond of the dog he would have been worried. A choke chain might be all right used carefully in the right hands, though personally he didn't like them in any hands.
Creggan said humbly he would do just that. ”And I'll throw this one away.”
”Good,” said Cormack.
It was the kind of encounter that was difficult to withdraw from. Not casual enough. Where they were standing, in the shadow of the trees, there was the option of walking on together towards the road or taking the longer twisting route peppered with fallen pine cones that emerged eventually on Millington's land. Radwell's route. And, until now, Cormack's. He waited to see which way Creggan intended to go so that he could go in the opposite direction.
Creggan removed the choke chain from Perry. The dog ambled over to Cormack and sat at his feet. A thrush chattered out of sight somewhere and late evening sunlight made gentle amber streaks across a palette of dark green leaves.
”She was naked, wasn't she?” Creggan said.
”What? Who?” Cormack was startled.
”The woman the police called Susan Martin,” Creggan gestured vaguely towards the heart of the woods. ”The fifth Rapunzel. Poor little lady. Poor little girl. A rose by any other name would smell as ...” He broke off. ”I do beg your pardon. But several weeks underground - a degree of decomposition - and no identifying clothes.”
Cormack stiffened. Barriers up. Defences ready. The police should have been more discreet at the Press conference. Everyone knew she had been naked and had long hair.
He told Creggan brusquely that he hadn't been involved in the case at all. Knew nothing about it. ”And you can't believe everything you read in newspapers.”
Creggan agreed. ”I found it very difficult to believe that anyone could identify the woman by a picture of a reconstructed face, especially one that looked much the same as hundreds of other faces.”
The reconstruction had been done with considerable skill by Professor Miles Benford, who had done a similar reconstruction in the Edward Carne case a few years previously. The television presenter had been on trial charged with murdering his wife. Apart from the period underground and the reconstruction, there was very little similarity in the two cases. Jocelyn Carne hadn't been a prost.i.tute, her family background was known, and she had visited her dentist. Susan Martin either had perfect teeth or her dentist had burnt all his records and dropped dead. Her teeth hadn't revealed anything. But as he wasn't supposed to know anything, Cormack said nothing.
Creggan, after a momentary pause, pressed on. ”A little lady,” he said, ”or maybe a floozie, a tart - who's to know? - meets her end in this wooded glade where the birds sing and the evening sun is very pleasant and some while later Professor Bradshaw and Inspector Maybridge, to name but two locals, together with a professional team which you, Doctor Cormack, have just joined, have the body presented to them, upthrust to the surface by mother nature in a quest for justice, perhaps. And you can tell me that justice has been done - unequivocally?”
It was a carping question. Not accusatory - but almost. Arrows of misconduct aimed mainly at Bradshaw, and to some extent at the police generally. A serial murderer gets landed with another murder - he's carrying the can already, so one more can't make much difference. Or so Cormack interpreted it. It made him angry. It was all right for him to harbour suspicions about the validity of the forensic evidence, but it was a b.l.o.o.d.y nerve if anyone else did. Especially this undoubtedly unhinged, unkempt-looking fellow who was regarding him now with a half smile on his lips. He wondered how old he was. Not old enough for senile dementia - early fifties - so what sort of paranoia was it? Police phobia? An urge to kick the fuzz in the teeth?
”Emphatically,” he retorted coldly, ”justice has been done. No need for you to worry about it at all. The verdict on Hixon was based on sound evidence. Absolutely.”
Creggan noticed the over-emphasis. ”But no family came forward. If she had been using a different name from her own that would be understandable - for a while. But when the reconstructed face was shown in the papers and on television then her family would have recognised her - had it been a good reconstruction.”
It was a point that had bothered Cormack, too. He suggested irritably that, even in this liberal age, families might prefer not to lay claim to a tart - especially when the whole wide television-viewing world was looking on.