‘She was right, people around here were too trusting. A surge of anger welled up in me and I thought about overpowering Ivy and tying her up. But it was her mind I wanted in chains, not – as well as, I mean – her body.
‘“Off you go then.” I looked out of the window. “Better take an umbrella.”
‘Standing in front of me, surprised and suspicious, Ivy seemed to find it hard to know what to say next. After a pause, she put her hands on her hips. “Very well. I will.” With that said, and a toss of her head that set her bob swaying, she turned and clattered up the bare wooden stairs to where she was presumably dressing to go out.
‘Tempted as I was to spring to the computer, I knew better. In The Old Man and the Sea there is a battle between the fisherman and a fish desperate for its freedom. If the fisherman had just tried to land the fish immediately, his line would have snapped. Instead, for hours and hours, he let it run and twist and dive. You see the analogy, Superintendent.
‘It was a risk, letting Ivy run out the line for a while. But it was less of a risk doing that, than to pull her in hard. Not right now, while she was all full of flame. A long walk. No money. No place to stay. Hunger and tiredness. They would help. And I had a plan to demoralise her further.
‘So I tied back my hair, got my wellies, a trowel and several pot plants and opened the back door. So when Ivy came down with her coat on and looked over at me, it must have seemed to her that I was about to go out and re-pot some plants. We had talked about the need to do so earlier.
‘“Goodbye, Amy.” There was a tone of finality in her expression.
‘“See you later.” I picked up two large pots and went outside, where I stayed until I heard the front door shut. Then I hurried up to the corner room, from where you can see the drive. Sure enough, after a minute, there was Ivy, walking briskly towards the road. Surprisingly, she paused. Was she having second thoughts? It must be daunting to have no money, no access to money. Where would she go? Well, the library, where computer access was free. But if she thought that this would allow her to seek help from her new friends, she was going to be in for a shock.
‘I stood back in the shadows of the room, just in case. And there it was. Ivy turned and looked directly at me. You’ll both know that if you want to stay hidden, it’s best to be still, even if you are in the light, than move. The human eye picks up movement far more distinctly than make sense of a shape that is motionless. So I fought the urge to duck out of sight and remained completely still. After a moment, Ivy resumed her walk away from the farm. Perhaps she had seen me. Probably, she had not.
‘Once Ivy reached the road and turned from my sight, I went downstairs and switched on the computer. Then I went to Facebook. As I thought, there was a link to click if I had forgotten my password. I entered Ivy’s email address and a code was sent to it. Then I reset the password. It was as simple as that. Now, Ivy would find herself locked out. Plus, I reset the password on her email account, so she wouldn’t be able to log in and see what I’d done, or email somebody.
‘There was a downside to this, which was that now she was aware I had control of her email, she would probably create a new address and keep it hidden from me. Still, this would come as a huge blow to her, when she sat down at a computer in the library. Her loss of these accounts to me would serve as a warning. There were no relationships that she could create that were safe. I could break every one them.
‘Then I turned my attention to the messages she had exchanged via Facebook. There were hundreds of them, stretching back months. It was unpleasant to read them all, mainly because how it told me Ivy had been living a secret life. That she had been dissembling all this time. The pain of reading these exchanges and seeing Ivy come closer and closer to one of the men, Brendan Crokery, was awful. I felt a rush of vertigo. But it was bearable, not least because I was in control now and could write to Brendan as if I were Ivy. I could cut him down.
‘In one of his messages, he had written, “Are you as attractive in person as in your pictures?”, following this with a yellow smiley face. I took this as my cue, quoted it back to him and wrote, “Dear Brendan, I thought you were a friend I could talk to. A penpal of sorts. But now, when I look at this clumsy attempt to start a line of conversation that ends with us agreeing to meet, I see someone who from start to finish has had that goal in mind. You have been grooming me. I believe your solicitous and seemingly sympathetic words are not displays of empathy for me but have been written with a purpose that is, in fact, sinister. I know nothing about you apart from what you’ve put on Facebook. You could be anyone. I therefore am unfriending you as soon as I’ve sent this message. I do not want you hear from you again. Any attempt to contact me again or reply to this message will be reported as harassment. Yours very sincerely, Ivy.”
‘That, I thought, should do the trick. It was well phrased, don’t you think, Superintendent?’
I shrugged. Once again, I felt that there was a game within a game taking place here. Like I was viewing her through a mirror.
‘I have to admit, however, that as the day wore on, I became anxious. I really did re-pot some flowers. And I did a little work online. In the afternoon, I tried to read one of my father’s old books. He had been in a book club for adventure stories and they looked impressive on the shelf. Faux leather bindings in red with gold letters. But I couldn’t settle. I was too worried.
‘The weather closed in so evening came early and with it, rain. What if someone had taken pity on her? What if she’d borrowed some money, rung home and her family had made some arrangement to fetch her? Did I still have a strong enough influence over her mind? Did she no longer fear the consequences of leaving me?
‘It was just after eight when she came in, bedraggled and tired after having walked six miles in the rain. I ran over and made a big fuss, swapping her wet clothes for a dressing gown and running a hot bath. Later, I got into the tub behind her and sponged her lovely, pale skin.
‘“You can’t leave me, Ivy.”
‘“I know,” she said, slumping forward, in a tone of utter despair.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
‘You still haven’t explained Ivy Patterson’s silence for the last month,’ McCarthy pointed out.
‘Oh, but I have. No more Facebook, email or phone calls for Ivy after her having betrayed me.’
‘Then Michael Patterson shows up, wanting to know where his sister is?’ I ask.
‘Exactly. But unfortunately for me – and for him as it turned out – I can’t show him Ivy, because she went and drowned herself the week before Mike showed up.’
I wondered how much of this story she had planned out in advance. If she was making it up as she went along, she was very good, brilliant even. It all fitted together. And yet I was sure it was all lies. Not all. The best liars take a line that is very close to the truth. Probably, most of the incidental anecdotes were true. Most of the story of their shared past. But Philips’s account of the murder had to be a lie.
I smiled at our suspect and she smiled back, not warmly. ‘What cement work have you done recently?’ Philips looked surprised and McCarthy too, gave me a quick glance.
‘None.’
‘But the powder in the back of your car shows you had a bag of cement there.’
‘It’s always useful to have a bag or two around the farm.’
‘Where do you keep it?’ I pushed on.
‘In the stalls, the second one, along with a small mixer.’
‘And what’s the most recent job you did?’
‘Just a repair on some looseness in the castle stones.’
There was a shift in her manner. Her answers were coming a little too quickly. Gone were the sarcastic looks and mocking smiles. Now she was leaning forward, anticipating my next question, rehearsing her answer so she was ready for me. So I waited and watched her for a while. The silence in the room lengthened. Philips might have found it uncomfortable, but I was content.
‘Did you use it to hid
e Ivy’s body?’ I asked at last.
Her lawyer was looking a little less bored than he had all morning. He leaned over and whispered, ‘I advise you not to answer any more questions.’
‘No.’ Philips utterly disregarded Brian Healy, whose fleshy neck flushed red at the contempt in her voice.
‘Is that why are you stringing us along here? To give cement the time to dry, to make it merge with its surroundings?’
‘No.’ Philips took a quick drink and sat ready for my next question.
This time I knew I was on the right track. I stood up and McCarthy immediately did the same.
‘This interview is adjourned.’ One last look at Philips confirmed the hope that was rising in me. In all the time I’d spent in her company I had never seen her look genuinely worried. Now, however, she was pale and did not look me in the eye.
Once outside the door, I looked down at McCarthy. ‘Well?’
‘I think you got to her. Why didn’t you tell me about the cement in her car?’
‘I did, then I asked whether you remembered seeing a small mixer in the barn.’
By way of response, she pulled a face, part rueful, part disgusted. ‘Sorry, I should have remembered. We should have impounded and searched her car from the beginning. We should still do that.’
‘True. But first, let’s get out to the farm. Have Gidds put some tools in my boot. We’ll want a pickaxe, crowbar and drill.’
I’d decided to take my own BMW, despite the potholes I’d encounter on the farm’s drive. I wanted to get there as quickly as I could, while the light was good. As soon as the duty sergeant had brought the tools – with McCarthy struggling with the length of the drill cord, which had spilled and was trailing to the ground – we were under way. There was a torch in the boot already, so I reckoned we were good. Siren on. Through the traffic lights, green or red. Blue flashes reflecting off the car windows as we overtook them. Up the M11 and then onto a B road.
There wasn’t a lot of chat in the car. But as the castle came into view, as ominous as ever, McCarthy chuckled to herself and I gave her a quick, quizzical look.
‘Did you see her face, when you brought up the concrete?’
‘I did. It means something all right.’
‘Makes sense of her stalling us too.’
‘It does. But so did the idea of the grave. And nothing came of that.’
‘It’s different this time,’ said McCarthy with certainty and I took heart from her enthusiasm. It really did feel like a breakthrough.
We pulled up in the yard, sending two hooded crows up to the roof of the houses with squawks of alarm.
‘Where first?’ McCarthy slammed the door too hard in her eagerness to get going.
‘Castle.’ It was the obvious place, even if Philips hadn’t mentioned it.
‘Right, what should I bring?’
‘Just the torch for now. We’ll come back if we find anything.’
Once we’d found the key and opened the door, I could switch on the bare light bulb and once more we were inside this grim building. The smell of urine was strong in the large, bare room. Last time, I had thought there was a lingering scent from the place having been used to store potatoes. Now that was gone, overwhelmed by the sour, unpleasant human smell.
‘Phew,’ said McCarthy, ‘it’s like someone’s been using this place as a toilet.’
‘Maybe they have. Maybe someone knows about the hidden key and stays here sometimes.’
We walked slowly around the room, examining the wall. It was not the thick, original stones of the castle that we were looking at but the modern bricks that lined the interior.
‘Here,’ said McCarthy.
When I looked carefully at the section she was pointing at, which was about four feet square, I could see that it had been cemented more recently than the rest of the room. Although someone had taken the trouble to rub dirt along the pale lines and done well enough that we’d missed it on our previous searches, it was clear enough that here the cement was actually a lighter colour than elsewhere.
‘Gloves,’ I said, straightening up.
We went back to the car.
‘Her body is in there, isn’t it?’ McCarthy looked sombre now and a little afraid. The reality of the situation was so horrible and grim that it completely drove away any sense of excitement that we could win this case.
‘Probably.’
We put on our gloves and, having opened the boot, we looked at the tools.
‘I think the drill might be enough, drill and crowbar. We want to have a minimal impact on what might be a crime scene.’
‘Right,’ said McCarthy.
I picked up the drill (leaving its cord behind) and also the crowbar. With approval I saw McCarthy bend over the boot to gather up an armful of evidence bags.
As I stepped back from the sunlit yard into the shadow of the castle, I wondered what had happened here. How had Philips managed it, so that she could stab Michael Patterson in the heart? Was Ivy alive at that time? Did Philips really have time to wall up Ivy’s body before calling the police? Or did she hide it first, then do the cement work in the morning?
Conscious I was kneeling in a crime scene, I carefully selected a brick on the upper left side of the recently cemented area and drilled into the cement to the left of it. After a couple of loud bursts, like an angry wasp, grey fragments flew out, along with dust.
‘Bag some of these, please, McCarthy. And knock out some of the older cement to compare them with.’
It seemed to me that McCarthy was glad to have something to do, something other than stare at the wall with a glum face. I wasn’t happy about the situation but I’d seen a few bodies in my time. Death had to be in your thoughts from time to time in this line of work and I honestly didn’t think I was kidding myself when I examined my heart and found that wasn’t at all afraid of death.
It didn’t take long to clear around the brick. When I worked it clear with the curved end of the crowbar (placing it in an evidence bag) the smell of urine grew stronger. When I shone my torch through the gap, I couldn’t see far down. But I could see that there was a gap of only about two feet between this wall and the rough, grey stones of the original castle.
As I worked on the next brick down, I sensed McCarthy’s return to stand behind me. After removing the second brick, I had room enough to view the torch beam as I angled it down towards the ground. There was something unexpected in the light, something that gleamed darkly. Black hair.
‘She’s here.’
‘Oh fuck.’
‘Take a few pictures.’
McCarthy got her phone out and with a grimace, stuck her hand through the hole and with a flash, then another and another, recorded the position of the body. When she withdrew her hand, both of us looked at the images. They weren’t very good in quality: the flash rendered the stones and bricks too white and the body too dark.
In the National Museum, there’s a bog person: a body that is over one thousand five hundred years old. A small man had been preserved by the cold, unmoving bog water and his skin turned to leather. Archaeologists could determine that he had died violently and had been tied up. Well, as I looked at Ivy Patterson’s corpse in the picture, I was reminded of the bog man. She was small and curled up, as though she had tried to sleep in the junction of wall and floor.
‘She must have been alive when she was put here,’ said McCarthy.
‘What makes you think that?’ I guessed it was the posture of the body that my partner was referring to.
‘The smell. She pissed herself.’
‘Good point.’
I let out a long breath, while McCarthy continued to study the picture. Then she looked up. ‘What now?’
‘Call forensics; alert the pathologist’s office to an incoming case.’
‘Should we try to get her out?’
I paused. It seemed to me a good idea to obtain the body as soon as possible and I couldn’t see how waiting for a bigger team would prod
uce much of a difference in terms of the quality of the evidence. They’d still have to cautiously remove the bricks to get at Ivy’s corpse.
‘Yeah. I’ll keep removing this row of bricks while you make the calls.’
For the next few minutes, the large, sombre castle room was filled with the sound of McCarthy’s voice and intermittent growls from the drill. When we both happened to fall quiet at the same time, I heard something that caused a shiver to run down all my limbs.
‘Water.’
It was a whisper, a croak. And it did not come from McCarthy or me but the now-large hole in the wall.
Immediately, I took out my phone and called for an air ambulance. McCarthy was staring at me, mouth open.
‘What the fuck?’ she muttered when she finally recovered. ‘Ivy’s alive?’
I drilled hard and fast now, caution only needed to stay well clear of Ivy. ‘Come on,’ I ordered, ‘use the crowbar, pull those bricks out.’
It probably took us less than three minutes before a large fall of bricks allowed us access to Ivy Patterson, who had slumped forward so that an arm and most of her head was protruding into the room.
‘Should we move her or wait?’ McCarthy.
‘Come on, help me lift her. It’s thirst that’s the issue, not injury.’
Even stinking of urine, with brick dust on her hair and with broken, bloody fingernails, I could see that Ivy Patterson was attractive. Slender, dressed in navy skirt and cardigan, her sharp-featured face was elfin. And her eyes! When she opened them to meet mine, I saw in their brown depths a woman who was haunted, tortured and desperate, but alive.
Leaving her for a moment in the care of McCarthy, I sprinted to the car and got a bottle of water from inside the door. We then gently raised Ivy, to rest her head on McCarthy’s lap, while I sprinkled drops on lips that were cracked and dusty.
With eager movements of her head, Ivy reached for the water with her mouth. Her hands, too, made feeble motions towards me.
‘Not too quick; not too fast,’ I told her. ‘You’re safe now. Just take it easy. There’s all the water you need.’ As I spoke these words, I did wonder. She was so frail and her breathing, in particular, was so shallow and irregular, that I feared we might lose her before the ambulance came. Still, Ivy seemed to have understood me, for she stopped her movements, other than to lick at the drops I continually dripped onto her mouth.
Struggles of Psycho Page 23
