‘I’ve no idea. She’s dead to me, at least.’
I made a note on my pad, without caring to hide it: Was not Is. ‘We need to return to Ivy, but perhaps I can encourage you to bring us to the night you stabbed Michael Patterson?’
‘Encourage all you want, Superintendent, but we do this my way, or we don’t do it at all.’
This time it was McCarthy’s turn to keep Ms Philips talking. ‘Actually, I found that chess game interesting. What happened next? Did Ivy start standing up to you more often?’
‘Yes, she did.’ Amy Philips closed her eyes, as if to recall the past more clearly. ‘And that’s why I had to use Mike to get at her.’
Chapter Five
‘The fact was, Ivy was seeing other girls and sometimes refusing my requests. Oh, she was always polite about it, but she had already agreed to do her French homework with Adel. Or she had arranged a photography outing with Jenny. And I would catch her eye sometimes, when she was making these excuses and see an alert intelligence in them. Ivy was beginning to appraise me and I didn’t like it.’
‘She was growing prettier too. Back then, Liza Minnelli was a big star, which you’ll recall, Superintendent, won’t you?’ Amy Philips looked up at me. It was true, I was of her generation. I could sense McCarthy smirking. The fact was I didn’t like being middle-aged. I was discouraged by the thought my best physical years were behind me and I hated it when mirrors showed me the back of my head and a spreading bald patch. McCarthy knew this, because her slagging sometimes got to me. Still, there were some advantages to having experience in a job like this.
By now, it was perfectly clear that this woman in front of me was trouble. The nature of the trouble, however, took some thinking about. I didn’t rush to answer her question and the silence grew as I held Amy Philips’s steady, intense, dark-eyed gaze. What I needed to understand more was the extent to which we were hearing the truth. It all sounded authentic, but was it just intricate fantasy?
Were McCarthy and I being played by a Keyser Söze? Was all this reminiscing designed to bring us to a state of mind where we would miss something important when we got to the events of last week? It did seem to me that whatever was going on in Amy Philips’s head, she would make a mistake. Her sense of superiority and arrogance were palpable and this would give me something, perhaps something important, if I handled her correctly. And having McCarthy alongside me was a help. She was young, impatient and inexperienced. But she was grounded and impossible to overawe. Amy Philips had more chance of misleading me than McCarthy.
‘I remember Lisa Minnelli,’ I replied at last and dropped her gaze, looking back down to my notes. ‘Cabaret especially.’
‘Exactly, Superintendent. Well, that’s how Ivy started to do her hair. She would keep it short and curl it at the sides. Her hair was a rich black colour too and like a raven’s wings, it could shimmer with hints of purple, green and scarlet even.
‘I could see what was going to happen. She would get more and more admirers. With them would come confidence and, let’s be honest, far more healthy friendships than mine. It would not happen soon, perhaps not for years, until after I’d left school, but Ivy would be lost to me.
‘She’d grow into a lovely young woman and would be kind to her first friend. She’d write to me often. Those letters, however, would become more and more distant. To the point that I would not even be invited to her marriage. Oh, yes, I was only fourteen, but I could see all that.
‘So I began my campaign and started a correspondence with Mike.’ Amy Philips snorted derisively. ‘Let me tell you, that was a sacrifice. His letters were always so dull. Had I heard of Pink Floyd? Or did I follow Formula One? Niki Lauda was doing badly, which Mike was sad about because he identified with someone hurt so badly.
‘I made the mistake of telling him that my interests included literature. This wasn’t strictly true. I had one book in my bedroom, that I read over and over again, but that’s as far as my interest in literature went.’
‘What was it?’ I asked.
‘The book?’
‘Yes.’
Again, the anxious squirrel. ‘Titus Groan.’
She had paused before giving that reply, so I wrote down the title, slowly. And, resisting the urge to grin at her, asked, ‘Who is the author?’
Amy Philips leaned forward to look me in the eye. ‘I thought you wanted me to talk about Mike?’
‘Fine. I can look it up. It’s an unusual name.’
‘Anyway. Mike started sending me poetry.’ Amy Philips shook her head and pulled a face of distaste. It was an expression that she seemed well practised at and one that carried no genuine emotion. ‘I mean, the poetry of a fifteen-year-old boy. Can you imagine? And a rather stupid boy at that.
‘Of course I indulged him. Said that I found his lines mysterious, deep and touching. There were times when I was afraid I’d gone too far, that he’d read mockery into my words. But no, he was perfectly serious and assumed that I was too.
‘Soon, I was his best friend. The only person who really understood him and whom he could really talk to. One person who featured a lot in Mike’s letters was a boy called Adam Smith. Adam, it seemed, really made Mike’s life a misery.
‘Not being particularly athletic, Mike had a clumsy way of running, hands rather more outstretched than most and leaning too far forward, so that his bum swayed. Not that he would admit it. But Adam, apparently, knew how to imitate that run to great effect, so that Mike dreaded PE on Mondays and Thursdays, when his class had cross-country.
‘Inevitably, before they all set off, Adam would run up and down the row in Mike-ish fashion, setting all the boys laughing while Mike – the poet – had to pretend not to care.
‘One time a couple of years earlier, Mike had shown a hint of resistance to Adam. I forget how exactly. But Adam had jumped at the opportunity of a fight that would teach Mike exactly where he was in the pecking order. Somehow, Mike had been unable to get out of the fight, the idiot.
‘As the word had spread that there was going to be a fight, it became harder and harder for him to do anything other than turn up at the designated yard. There, of course, he got battered, but when he explained the fight to me, he said the worst thing was not the pain or the tears of humiliation. It was the fact that the other boys present – and there were many – were obviously relishing the beating that Mike was taking.
‘After that, Mike said, he found himself trapped and had to endure what he could not change.’
Here, Amy Philips leaned back, touching her bruised cheek. Then shared a cool look.
‘I wrote back, offering Mike a deal. If he could arrange an invitation for me to stay with his family for a month or more in the summer, I would fix it so Adam Smith never bullied him again.
‘Of course Mike was sceptical, wanting to know what I would do. So I told him. I had a bit of money, I would spend it on a private detective. The next Sunday, when we met for the family outing, this was all he wanted to talk about. I’d really do this for him? How did you hire a detective? What would the detective do? I hushed him. Swore him to secrecy when Ivy was in the bathroom.
‘“Why not tell Ivy?” he asked.
‘“You know how sensitive she is.” I answered. “If she finds out what a miserable time you’ve been having, she’ll be terribly upset.”
‘Mike thought about this. “And it might not work. Hiring a detective, I mean. Which would leave Ivy fretting about me.”
‘“Exactly.”
‘Mike was in high spirits the rest of that afternoon. He proposed we hire a boat and his father agreed. The town had a little pier on the river with a few rowing boats. We girls sat at the back, the stern, as I suppose I should properly call it. Mike sat facing me with one oar, their father facing Ivy with the other, and up the river we went.’
‘“Best go up on the way out,” explained Mr Patterson, “then the current will help us on the way back.”
‘By stretching, I could just put my fi
ngertips into the deep green water of the river. When Ivy tried to do the same, her wriggling brought a check from her father and she settled back down.
‘Mike could hardly take his eye off me, wanting to share something. His eyes were ablaze, his eyebrows kept arching as though his face was being massaged. I counted. There wasn’t even a series of three pulls on the oar without me getting this feverish contact.
‘Smiling, I kept the conversation going. In particular, I set out to be agreeable to Mr Patterson. How was his work going? Wonderful, there would always be a demand for sugar. What did he plan for the holidays? Nothing too demanding, he liked a good book in the fresh air. Probably, they would go to Snowdonia where his friend had a cottage. And, by the way, a single-engined light aircraft.
‘“Oh, not there again,” objected Mike. “Can’t we go to Spain? Half my class are going abroad.”
‘“Wales sounds lovely,” I caught Mike’s next look and held it. “I’ve never been, but the mountain views are supposed to be beautiful.”
‘“Oh, indeed.” Mr Patterson paused and we coasted in a sudden silence, with just the sound of water lapping against the side of the boat. “And if you like history, there are plenty of places to visit, castles and whatnot. Country homes.”
‘“You’re lucky.” I turned to Ivy. ‘“I shall be at my farm in Wexford with just my very dull uncle to entertain me.”
‘“I suppose we are,” Ivy shrugged. “Although I agree with Mike, Spain would be better.”
‘“Well, actually, I’ve changed my mind. I’d forgotten about the castles.”
‘Both Ivy and her father looked surprised. I pretended to study the clouds. Inside, I was beaming. This, I felt, was going to work. I could see that a month in the country with Ivy was a real possibility. No doubt, I’d have to read reams of terrible poetry. But it would be worth it.
‘The clincher was the detective. I never met him, but we spoke over the phone and he sounded very competent. I had access to about four hundred pounds in my bank at the time, which turned out to be more than enough. The cost of the investigation was just over two hundred and it was an excellent investment.
‘After a week – a week in which I got a letter from Mike every day, impatient to know what was happening – I got a report. It was very thorough: the detective had looked at the birth certificate, the marriage certificate of the parents, had gone to Little Bodmouth or wherever the Smiths were from and trawled back through the local newspapers in the library. And did whatever else private detectives do, like talk to the neighbours on some pretext or other. But his best find was a story that made the local papers.
‘One Guy Fawkes night, Adam had blown up his little brother. The silly boys had done exactly what the schools always warn you against and gotten their own fireworks. In England, this is usually respected. Unlike here, where my animals suffer every Halloween. But Adam Smith had attempted to construct a genie I believe it was called: a pile of gunpower shaken from fireworks.
‘When it failed to go off in the porch of an empty house, Adam’s brother rushed up to relight it and boom! No face. Even after the reconstructive surgery, the poor child looked like that racing driver, Niki Lauda. The detective was kind enough to take and develop a number of pictures for me.
‘Now the only question was how to best use them. Should I write, anonymously, to Adam Smith? Or should I arm Mike? I decided to handle the situation myself. In a matter like this, I couldn’t rely on Mike. He was likely to rush around the school with the picture in a state of high excitement. That wouldn’t do much good at all. Or, at least, it was likely only to do some good in the short term. Better to hold a threat over someone’s head than to actually use it, don’t you find?’
Her question, I knew, was rhetorical and I didn’t answer.
‘I can nearly recall the letter. Let me see.’ Amy Philips sounded as though she were musing aloud, but her voice was a little too high to ring true. She knew this letter inside out. It wouldn’t have surprised me to learn she’d kept a copy and read it to herself every day, to give herself a pat on the back.
‘Dear Adam, I have been watching the way you mistreat Mike Patterson and I dislike it intensely. So much, in fact that I took the trouble to find out if you are quite the hero you pretend to be. Enclosed is a picture of someone you will be familiar with but I don’t believe anyone else in the school would recognize. I also attach the story from the newspaper, which I notice, cannot help but take an admonishing tone on behalf of parents everywhere. If you cease your bullying of Mike, I shall keep your secret. If you persist, I will show the school what a cruel fate you brought upon your brother through pure stupidity. It’s as simple as that. No doubt you are distressed about how awful your brother now appears and what this means for his future. I am not trying to add to your misery. But I am warning you to keep it to yourself and not to inflict it upon others.
‘Yours sincerely, an older boy.
‘It worked. A few days later Mike wrote to say Adam had stopped mimicking him and was more polite. Mike, of course, was in a frenzy to know how I had managed it. What hold did I have over Adam? On the next Sunday, I showed him the photo and explained the story, but I pulled the picture out of Mike’s reluctant hands.
‘“Let me keep this for a while. It will lose its power if it were to get out.”
‘“I suppose so. What a rotter, though, taking it out on me. When he did this to his brother.
‘“It was just an accident. But luckily for you, he seems guilty enough about it that he’s leaving you alone. Now, would you say that you are grateful to me?’”
‘Mike looked at me with nothing but sincerity in his pale, moist eyes. “Of course I am. What can I do for you?”
‘“Don’t you remember? The holiday. Ask your dad to invite me to Wales with you.”
‘A strange look came over Mike’s face and it took me a moment to understand what he was thinking. When I did, it almost turned my stomach. He was leering at me. The poor, spotty, boy; he thought I wanted to go on holiday with him because I fancied him. Oh, well, if that was the way it had to be.’
‘So you didn’t like him?’ McCarthy interrupted with a frown.
‘No. I can’t say I ever did. Ivy was always interesting to me for some reason. I think because she had a moral quality. She wanted – and usually managed – to be a good person. Her brother was just a selfish, weak fool.’
I jotted down those words, mainly to remind myself that there was anger in Amy Philips’s voice when she said them. A contempt that could run deep.
‘But you went out with him, didn’t you?’
‘I’m coming to that. Yes, I did. But it was to make sure I was… so I wouldn’t lose Ivy as a friend.’
‘Even though you thought him a fool?’ McCarthy was incredulous but, under the table, I moved my hand with a flick to the side, to let her know I thought my partner should drop it. There was a contradiction here. But we needed to learn more and that meant letting the interview continue.
‘So,’ I said, ‘you got your holiday in Wales, right? How did that work out?’
Abruptly, Amy Philips stood up. She didn’t look angry or offended: in fact, she almost seemed to be smiling. ‘Time for a break, don’t you think? I’d like a cup of tea.’
‘If you like.’ I stood up too. ‘But I do need to hear about the night that Mike was killed.’
‘Of course, Superintendent, and so you shall. We will get there. But don’t you find the background interesting?’
McCarthy hadn’t moved from her chair and now she shook her head. ‘Not particularly.’
Amy Philips looked at me, with that intense stare she used, one that I felt was meant to show she considered herself one step ahead of us.
‘Yes,’ I replied, somewhat reluctantly, ‘you have had an interesting life.’
‘I certainly have!’ With that she left the interview room and McCarthy stopped the recorder.
‘Well?’ I walked over to the window and looked down the s
treet that led to a supermarket where people were taking shelter from the rain.
‘She’s stringing us along for some reason. It’s like she wants to be here.’
‘You’re right.’ Now that McCarthy had named it, I became conscious of a similar thought in my own sense of what was happening. ‘The question is, why?’
Chapter Six
‘Let’s go up top.’ I got to my feet and McCarthy followed me, bringing her notepad with her. Why not? I reached down for mine before leaving the interview room.
As we came to the staircase, I felt that McCarthy, behind me, had paused. She was standing at the elevator door, having pressed the button. I caught her eye.
‘What?’ she asked, slightly aggrieved.
‘If you used the stairs instead each time, you’d be amazed at the difference it makes.’
‘Superintendent,’ she drew herself up as high as she could. ‘These veiled attacks on my body shape could be considered sexual harassment.’
‘Suit yourself. I just know it helps me stay fit.’
The ping of the arriving elevator heralded the opening of the door. Head held high, McCarthy stepped in. It shouldn’t really be my concern, but I did like my colleagues to be healthy. And, more importantly, to be able to back me up if we ever had a chase on.
My own efforts to hurry up four floors and then an additional, shorter stairwell, left me a little short of breath. But I had made good time and felt virtuous.
Out on the roof, you had to pick your way past skylight boxes and cables. Three massive masts, on which were secured satellite dishes and aerials, dominated the roof, so it didn’t really feel like you were properly outside until you got to the wall where the smokers liked to gather and could look across town to the sea.
‘Ahh, there you are, Superintendent Doyle. And I was only going over my notes for the fourth time.’
‘All three lines of them.’ It was a cool day. Bright enough but the wind was sharp up here. Best not to stay long, I was only wearing shirt and jumper. ‘And what did you learn from these impressive notes?’ I didn’t want to get into jibe and counter-jibe with McCarthy about how long it took us both to get to the roof. Quite apart from the time it would waste, she always won in an exchange of smart remarks.
Struggles of Psycho Page 4
