A Game of Minds

by Priscilla Masters

  ‘I realize—’

  Dixie cut her off. ‘I’ll tell you what I believe. My daughter’s dead. I’m not saying this out of a sort of supernatural feeling. I’m saying it because I’ve rolled the facts around in my mind for years. She’s been dead for years now. Ever since I kissed her goodbye on that rainy Saturday. I have …’ She quickly corrected herself. ‘We have mourned her and come to terms with our loss. I don’t want it all dug up again. I don’t want the headlines. I don’t want the case reopened. Let’s just be content with saying that Kobi killed her and for some unknown reason he’s refusing to confess.’

  ‘So your husband’s wish means nothing to you?’

  This provoked a long silence. ‘You don’t know my family, Doctor. You don’t know my husband. You didn’t know Marvel. We did. To us she was flesh and blood, a difficult, sometimes unhappy, jealous and resentful teenager. She is still real to us. Not simply another body in that vile man’s repertoire.’

  ‘Yes.’ Feeble though it was, it was the only response Claire could make.

  But Dixie’s rant wasn’t over. ‘Dr Roget, you may be a psychiatrist. But have you any idea what happens when a couple loses a child like that? The poison enters the bloodstream, infects the entire relationship. We blamed each other. We blamed ourselves. We blamed the family dynamics. We blamed the police. We blamed him. The entire family collapsed like a house of cards and we had to rebuild. Card by card.’

  ‘So let me help. Talk to me. Give me something.’

  There was a long silence, then Dixie Trustrom said, ‘Not over the phone. I don’t want to describe my daughter to some faceless person, an anonymous voice.’

  ‘Then come here.’

  That drew a laugh as sharp as broken glass. ‘To a mental hospital? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Then …?’

  ‘You come to Birmingham. But I don’t want you coming here. I don’t want Clarice to know I’m meeting a psychiatrist about her dead sister. Meet me at the coffee bar on the corner of Harrison Street, Acocks Green. Say six o’clock? Tomorrow evening? You can park in the NCP just round the corner.’

  ‘OK.’ Claire was intrigued, curious and excited. But at the back of her mind she was mindful of the fact that this was just what Kobi had wanted. He was directing the drama from his prison cell.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Tuesday 8 October, 4 p.m.

  She spent the day reviewing patients’ treatment, dealing with discharges and patients who needed to be transferred to other units, changing medication and regimes, reading through the notes made by different disciplines. By four she had finished and felt anxious to get on her way. On impulse, just as she was leaving, she rang her GP friend, Julia Seddon, and arranged to go on a run with her over the weekend. And that would not only take up time but also give her something to look forward to. Since she and Grant had split up the weekends needed filling up with plans. Going for a run would mop up a few of those empty hours.

  Plus, as a bonus, if Simon and Marianne were in the house over the weekend, she would be out for at least some of the time. And a run of a few miles would free her spirit and do something for her fitness.

  But now it was time to head off and meet up with Marvel’s mum.

  She didn’t know what to expect from the encounter when she parked in the suggested NCP and walked round the corner to a lively, steamy coffee bar which had a feel of the fifties about it. The aroma of coffee hit her as she pushed open the door and a woman, sitting on her own, who had obviously been watching for her, beckoned her over.

  She’d pictured Marvel’s mum as she must have been six years ago, at the time that her daughter had gone missing.

  Time had not been kind to her.

  Dixie looked very much like her oldest daughter. As Claire drew nearer the resemblance intensified. She could have been looking at an adult Marvel. Dixie was a large lady with wobbling arms and a succession of chins. Luminous dark eyes and a perma-frown with small, screwed-up eyes. She was dressed in jeans she was spilling out of and a baggy sweater over the top in faded red.

  Claire smiled and headed straight for the table where she sat. Dixie’s face was pale and, far from having moved away from tragedy, she looked tired, unhealthy and unhappy. She raised her mug to Claire and echoed Kobi’s phrase. ‘Dr Roget, I presume?’

  Claire nodded. ‘Would you like another coffee before I sit down?’

  ‘Don’t mind if I do.’

  ‘Any particular sort?’

  Marvel’s mother shrugged and Claire headed for the counter, looking back at the woman who was sitting, staring in front of her, eyes unfocused, her face swamped with that old tragedy. Maybe she was right and it was a mistake to drag it all out again, taking this poor woman back to the time when her life and her family had fractured.

  She returned and put the two cups on the table. Dixie picked one up and took a sip before speaking. ‘You’re wasting your time; you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Possibly,’ Claire agreed.

  ‘Kobi’s not going to tell you anything,’ she said finally, ‘because he doesn’t know anything.’

  Claire felt herself freeze. She hardly dared breathe for fear any air disturbance would blow this confidence away and, like a wisp of a spider’s web, or the merest hint of cloud in a blue sky, it would drift away and be gone for ever.

  Dixie’s eyes looked small, encased in folds of fat. The irises were tawny brown and might, at one time, have been her best asset. In her early fifties now and obese, it was hard to say what she would have looked like six years ago. Now she looked a poor, unhappy specimen. Was it her daughter’s disappearance that had done this to her? Or would this have been her fate anyway? Tragedy has its impact on a family. Each member reacts in a different way. So had Dixie turned to food for comfort? Had Marvel?

  Dixie seemed to be chewing words over in her mind. Frowning, abstracted. Claire resisted the urge to prompt or question her. She had the feeling that what Marvel’s mother was about to say would impact her whole take on the mystery.

  After a few deep, steadying breaths she finally spoke. Her first question startled Claire. ‘How much of this needs to go further, Doctor?’

  It was so far away from the truculent woman who had been on the phone only yesterday that Claire blinked. But she couldn’t avoid honesty. ‘It depends, Mrs Trustrom, on what you have to tell me.’

  Dixie chewed her lip and Claire felt compelled to add, ‘I’ve just been called in as a psychiatrist for a professional opinion. I’m not employed by the police. But surely you want the truth about your daughter to come out?’

  Dixie’s mouth twisted. ‘Depends.’

  Claire laid her hands on the table. ‘I’m a doctor bound by the Hippocratic oath. Anything you tell me will be kept in strictest confidence unless it impacts on another person’s safety, in which case my duty would be to tell the truth and involve the authorities.’ She gave an encouraging smile. ‘But I’m sure that’s not the case now.’

  Dixie’s eyes dropped but not before Claire had read despair in them.

  She waited while Dixie finished her coffee and stared down at the dregs as though they were tea leaves and she could read her fate from them. ‘I don’t think Kobi had anything to do with my little girl’s disappearance,’ she said finally. Then she looked up with unhappy eyes. ‘I was never convinced. None of the facts fitted. She wasn’t like the other girls.’

  ‘But you said when I spoke to you on the phone—’

  ‘I didn’t know then what I know now. It’s taken me a while to realize things.’

  Dixie fumbled in her bag and brought out an envelope. She selected something from it and handed Claire a photograph. It was a different picture of the missing girl than the ones on police files but the essence was the same.

  Like mother like daughter. Marvel Trustrom was plump and unappealing. A doughy face stared out of the picture. She had straight, red-gold hair, her one claim to beauty, but the same pallid complexion and small eyes as her mother. He
r face was podgy, her stare more of a glare. Claire looked at it for a long time, wondering. She looked again at the picture of Marvel. That cockiness which had so infuriated Jonah Kobi in the other girls was completely absent. Claire laid the photograph on the table, face up, frowning and troubled. Then she looked right into the girl’s mother’s face and tried to divine what the woman was wanting to tell her.

  ‘We’re alike,’ Dixie said baldly. ‘This is what we look like. This is us.’

  Claire sensed something. She reached out and touched Dixie’s hand. ‘What are you afraid of?’

  Dixie closed her eyes as though years of weariness had finally caught up with her. ‘Once I knew the facts, I knew something else. If Jonah Kobi had nothing to do with the disappearance of my daughter someone else did. Not for the reasons that he gave but for something completely different. And that person is still out there.’

  ‘Who?’

  Dixie put her hands over her face.

  ‘There have been no more schoolgirl killings since Kobi was arrested,’ Claire pointed out.

  But Dixie kept her hands over her face. Then one hand reached out and slid the photograph back towards her, tucking it back into the envelope. A hen gathering up her chicks. Belatedly.

  Claire waited, but nothing more was forthcoming and she sensed the interview was over. Dixie Trustrom was going to say nothing more.

  Claire could have prompted her. If not Kobi then who? But Dixie’s face was hard, her expression set.

  ‘I have one more thing to ask you.’

  Dixie’s mouth tightened and her eyes were alert.

  ‘Will you ask your two daughters and your son if they will at least speak to me?’

  ‘Why?’

  And Claire couldn’t answer – at least not honestly. That perhaps from one of them she would learn the truth.

  THIRTY

  She drove home in a pensive mood, realizing something else. DS Willard had concerns about this case too. That was the real reason he had asked her for her opinion. Not because he thought she would extract a confession out of Kobi, but because he felt there was another dimension to Marvel Trustrom’s disappearance. As soon as she was home to a blissfully quiet house, she rang him. ‘You never thought it was Kobi,’ she accused.

  ‘That’s not true.’ But she could hear awkwardness in his voice. DS Zed Willard was not a great liar.

  ‘Really?’

  He responded with a gruff laugh. ‘Police aren’t supposed to have instincts,’ he said, ‘or feelings. They’re supposed to go on hard evidence.’ He gave another cynical cough. ‘Except in this case there wasn’t any.’

  ‘Zed,’ she said, irritated, ‘you haven’t been playing fair with me, have you?’

  Silence on the other end.

  ‘It wasn’t just the physical differences in the cases, was it?’

  ‘Hrrm.’

  ‘Tell me. When you arrested him and charged him with the murder of Shelley Cantor, did he confess quite readily to the other three girls’ murders?’

  The only response she got was a heaving sigh as he agreed, ‘Yes.’ He then continued, sheepishly, ‘I probably need to talk to you, Claire. But not at the hospital or the station.’

  ‘You can come here if you like.’

  ‘Sure?’

  And she felt irritated. ‘I wouldn’t have invited you if I didn’t mean it. Like you I just want any conversation we have about this to be completely private.’

  He cleared his throat – the nearest to an apology he’d ever give her. ‘I’ll bring the list.’ She had to remind herself that the list she was waiting for was the details of Kobi’s jobs from 2010 when he had left the Macclesfield school and entered into supply teaching until he had been arrested.

  She roused herself to Willard’s voice.

  ‘I can be round in … twenty minutes or so.’

  But it was half an hour before the doorbell rang and he stood there.

  She led him into the kitchen and offered him a glass of wine or a beer. He chose the beer and they sat around the table. He handed her sheets of paper stapled together. ‘The supply teaching list.’

  ‘So many?’

  ‘I did warn you. He was very busy and very much in demand. Obviously,’ he added drily, ‘there’s a shortage of history teachers. I didn’t want to jeopardize or delay the court case, Claire, while we scrabbled around for evidence about Marvel.’

  ‘So Tom’s just brought it all back? Evoked all the doubts and misgivings you had years ago?’

  ‘I worried about the family.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘They didn’t seem right. At first, they were just completely shocked. Then they seemed to freeze over. Then we got Kobi and the focus shifted.’ He paused, collecting his words. ‘Is it possible,’ he asked, ‘that you’re being hoodwinked by him? That it’s all part of the game after all?’

  She shook her head. Held up her index finger as a warning. ‘It’s possible,’ she said. ‘I keep my mind open to all possibilities. At this moment I still don’t know. But I have big misgivings.’ She recalled Dixie’s words, still baffling, hinting at something so much more personal than the accepted view.

  ‘Zed, I want you to do something for me.’

  ‘What?’ His response was guarded.

  ‘I’m doing some research,’ she said, ‘into women who marry lifers. Will you find out all you can about Jessica Kobi?’

  ‘Jessica?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve met her and put it like this.’ She hid behind legal jargon. ‘She’s a person of interest.’

  He took a long swig of his beer. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Person of interest? You want to leave it at that?’

  ‘For now. You’ve met her?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Zed Willard’s face creased into a frown. But if he thought he could will her to explain further it wasn’t going to work.

  They moved on to other general subjects, but Claire felt uncomfortable with the DS. He was still keeping something back.

  THIRTY-ONE

  She wandered back into the kitchen and poured herself a nightcap, picked up the sheets of paper Willard had left – and put them down again. They could wait.

  And in the silence she made an attempt to answer the questions.

  Was Kobi guilty of Marvel’s disappearance? She was unconvinced.

  What she had learned tonight was how deep Zed Willard’s doubt was too.

  If Marvel’s body was ever found there would be forensic evidence to link victim with killer but, given the ease with which the other girls’ bodies had been discovered, she wondered now just how hard the police had searched. Had they expected it to just ‘turn up’ – like the others? There was something else that Kobi had touched on which she didn’t want to acknowledge. But it had the ring of truth.

  Because he had been abductor and killer, he had knowledge. So if this was one crime he was not guilty of maybe he could point her in the right direction. Could Kobi, after all, be useful?

  While naturally sceptical of anything he told her, certain words resonated. His words floated back to her as clearly as though he sat in the chair opposite, still talking …

  Look at her, Claire. Use your common sense. She wasn’t the type that riled me. She was rather pathetic. An outsider. A loner.

  She frowned. How could he know that unless …

  She was a lonely, sad girl. Had he deduced that from her picture? Or the articles? She’d skimmed through a few. Marvel had been portrayed as a ‘loved big sister, a sweet girl, a lovely, happy daughter’. There had been no hint of family problems. Claire was tempted to smile. You don’t speak ill of the dead and the family had come in for sympathy rather than criticism. Sometimes even the press follow the accepted rules. She half closed her eyes and tried to think. Big mistake. Into the room wafted that prison scent – carbolic soap, disinfectant, cheap deodorant and the scent of a community laundry.

  My advice to
you is look closer to home.

  So now she had no option but to speak to him again, try and find out what he was, so far, only hinting at.

  Wednesday 9 October, 10 a.m.

  She sensed a change in him the moment she entered the interview room. He was fidgety whereas before he had been outwardly still. His upper lip held a bead of sweat. She met his eyes and they looked uncertain, uncomfortable. His mouth was set rigid, lips pressed hard together and his hands on the surface of the table had a fine tremor. She sat down, sensing desperation.

  ‘You wanted to see me.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Claire,’ he pleaded. ‘Please. Listen to what I’ve been telling you. Use your common sense. Your instincts, if you like. Look at her, Claire, and just think. Marvel wasn’t anything like the kind of girl I would want to shove off the face of the earth. She just didn’t light that spark.’

  She leaned in, studied his face. Glanced up at the dual cameras, one in each corner. She had insisted they have no sound. This was Kobi’s right – to speak, in private, to a psychiatrist, hopefully volunteering information and have no one listen in.

  ‘Tell me about … the spark.’

  Kobi thought about this for a while. But she could wait. She had time on her side and Claire was used to allowing her patients to choose their own rhythm.

  ‘The spark,’ he said finally. ‘Have you ever stood in front of a class of pubescent girls awash with hormones they can neither understand nor control?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘They taunt you,’ he said, ‘lead you up a garden path although they have no insight into where it will lead. They flounder and act’ – he screwed up his face in disgust – ‘in provocative ways and then …’ His hands flew out before forming a stranglehold in the air. ‘It is all an act and when anyone is taken in by it they shout and scream and beg for mercy.’ His voice was raised now, his eyes bulging with hatred. This then was the last face the girls had seen before they’d lost consciousness and died.