A Game of Minds

by Priscilla Masters

  ‘But it would hardly make any difference to his sentence.’ He sounded eager. ‘He’s not getting out any time soon, is he?’

  Was he looking for reassurance? ‘No. Whatever comes to light Jonah Kobi is staying inside for life.’

  Shane was silent and, in spite of her assurances, he still looked unhappy.

  ‘I simply want to help your father, give him peace of mind.’

  Shane shook his head slowly from side to side, not as though he was doubting her words but as though her task was impossible.

  ‘If you don’t believe Kobi is guilty, what then?’

  ‘I’ll simply hand the cold case back to the police. My involvement will end.’

  ‘So your job is really only to assess Jonah Kobi.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  His voice had remained quiet, but in his eyes there was a sudden light of panic. He was skittish and nervy. The hands cradling the coffee mug had a slight tremor. He was uncertain about something and this knowledge was nibbling him from the inside out. She waited while he took a sip of coffee before setting his mug down with a carefully controlled action which hardly made a sound.

  ‘Has Kobi actually confessed?’

  She shook her head. ‘That isn’t the way he plays this. As long as I keep going to the prison and asking questions he’ll string me along. So far I’ve had nothing useful out of him.’

  Except hints, she thought.

  Shane Trustrom stared down at the pale wood grain before looking up. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I have an open mind. Shane. Now tell me what you remember of that day.’

  He half closed his eyes. ‘It was a Saturday,’ he said, ‘a day like so many other Saturdays. Lots of quarrelling and shouting. Everyone screaming and yelling at everyone else. We’d run out of milk so Mum was grumpy but didn’t want to go out in the rain to fetch some more.’ His pale eyes were seeing that past day as though it was laid out in front of him. ‘Sorrel and Clarice were both crying, goodness knows why. That house …’ He looked at her before turning his gaze around the kitchen. ‘It was like a zoo. It was chaotic.’ He looked around him. ‘The opposite of here.’

  He shrugged. ‘I made a couple of slices of toast and took them upstairs to my bedroom, ate them there while I played on my computer, headphones on to block out the din.’

  ‘When did you actually see Marvel last?’

  ‘Round about lunchtime. I was hungry again. The house was a bit quieter. Sorrel and Clarice had gone out somewhere – to friends’ houses, I think. Mum wasn’t there but Marvel and Dad were. They were arguing in the kitchen. Dad had her by the arm.’

  He gave Claire a quick glance. ‘Maybe that’s why he feels so guilty,’ he said. ‘Because they argued the last time he saw her.’ And then he looked downwards again as though having proffered a false explanation he had to conceal the truth.

  Claire absorbed the image of Marvel’s noisy, conflicted family life.

  ‘Later that day?’

  ‘I don’t know …’ His shoulders drooped even further. ‘I suppose everyone came back.’

  ‘Except Marvel.’

  ‘Yes. Of course. Except Marvel. The house got noisy and quarrelsome again. Everything, everyone erupting.’

  ‘So when did anyone realize your sister was missing?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I stopped in my bedroom. It was the only place I could get any peace. Someone … I think it was Mum … knocked on my door and asked if I’d seen her.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Six-ish? It was dark. It seemed late.’

  She wanted to goad him, prick his conscience. He knew something. She waited. But he wasn’t saying anything more. He finished his coffee and sat, waiting for her to speak, his fingers interlocked. Then he looked up and she felt he had come to a decision. He let out his breath with a strange, relieved sigh. One hand stole up and rubbed his forehead as though erasing some memory. He pushed his chair back, stood up and left the room.

  FORTY-THREE

  She heard him climb the stairs and a minute later descend lumpily as though he was reluctant to do this, each step a heavy, uneven thump on the tread.

  He came back into the room and threw something metallic on to the table. A pair of silver intertwined pointe ballet shoes tiny enough to form a charm on a silver bracelet.

  She looked at it for a moment and waited for him to explain.

  He was looking at the tiny shoe as though it was poisonous. Then across at her, as though he was waiting for her to put two and two together.

  When she didn’t, he elaborated. ‘I found this in Dad’s car,’ he said. ‘That’s why she went to Hanley that horrible afternoon. Sorrel and Clarice had one and she was stomping around because she didn’t. Sorrel and Clarice were’ – he smiled – ‘dainty little things, whereas Marvel was the proverbial baby elephant.’ He reflected for a moment. ‘Just built differently, I guess. Sorrel and Clarice did ballet classes. Marvel was desperate to go but as she was so big Mum wouldn’t let her.’ He frowned. ‘Maybe she thought Marvel would be teased. I don’t know. Anyway, Sorrel and Clarice had passed a ballet exam and Mum bought them a little charm each, just like this, as a reward. Marvel was livid. She screamed and shouted and cried.’ His face sagged. ‘We weren’t fair to her, you know. She was different and we didn’t understand why then.’

  Claire held the tiny object on her palm. To Marvel, this must have seemed like the final insult.

  ‘Next thing she said she was meeting a friend.’ Again, he wiped his forehead. ‘She was full of shit. She didn’t have any friends. Anyway, she was off to Hanley to buy her own little pair of dancing shoes. Marvel being Marvel she couldn’t see how pathetic it was. She could have the charm but she was never going to pass the ballet exam. Sad, really.’

  ‘This could be one of your sisters’ charms,’ she said, ‘not necessarily the one that Marvel went to buy that day.’

  Shane shook his head. ‘They would have created holy hell if they’d lost it.’

  Claire sat back and thought. In which direction was this tiny object sending her? ‘When exactly did you find this?’

  ‘Later,’ he said. ‘Much later. Maybe a month or so after Marvel had gone missing. I was cleaning the car for a bit of extra pocket money. I was studying and really hard up. I’d do little jobs around the house for some cash.’

  ‘But you didn’t mention this? To anyone? You didn’t challenge your father over this?’

  ‘How could I?’ He looked appalled. ‘Incriminate my own father when everyone – everyone, the police too – were all saying it was the Schoolgirl Killer. No one made a big thing about the differences in the crimes. Why not let Kobi carry the can? It wouldn’t make any difference to him. Marvel was a pain.’

  ‘You can’t believe your father killed her?’

  ‘Why not?’ he countered. ‘He bloody well hated her. They were always rowing. And he’d gone out to look for her. He was gone ages. Hours. Plenty of time to …’

  ‘But if that’s true why …’ she ruminated slowly, ‘… would your dad now be making a big thing about her body being found?’

  ‘I’ve thought about that,’ Shane said, without rancour, even with some affection. ‘He’s a lapsed Catholic. He’ll want to go to his Maker with a clear conscience.’

  ‘So why not just confess and tell us where she is?’

  Shane shrugged.

  ‘I can’t believe it of him,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘You’re just seeing a dying, weakened, old man. You didn’t know him then. He was full of fire and hatred.’

  ‘Do you believe he killed your sister?’

  Shane shrugged. ‘What else am I to believe?’

  Both were silent for a minute or two, then Claire moved on to the practicalities. ‘And her body?’

  ‘There’s places.’

  She was silent, her thoughts struggling with the fact that Marvel’s brother
had preserved this tiny piece of evidence for all these years. He’d kept it but why?

  ‘You’ve never mentioned this to your dad? Never even hinted at it?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Why not?’

  He didn’t answer but twisted his mouth.

  ‘But you’ve shown it to me.’

  ‘Don’t you understand,’ he hissed. ‘Someone knows.’

  Kobi knew. Or at least he knew something. How? He wasn’t a psychic or a medium, able to talk to the dead.

  She tossed her thoughts around until she realized that Shane was still watching her.

  She recalled his words about limiting his visits to half an hour at a time. ‘How do you get on with your dad?’

  ‘OK,’ he said, guarded now. And she realized this was all hinging on Marvel’s brother’s testimony. She picked up the charm. ‘Do you mind if I keep this?’

  He put his hand out as though to stop her. ‘What are you going to do with it?’

  ‘I don’t know – yet. Maybe talk to your dad again.’

  He spread his hands and drew them back towards his body. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘I guess. It’ll all come out but he won’t be there to face the music. He’ll be out of it.’ He couldn’t resist adding a jibe. ‘Hopefully not in purgatory.’

  ‘Is there anything else you want to add?’

  Shane shook his head and at the same time Claire heard the front door open and close and the sound of a baby crying. He jumped up and as she watched he wheeled a small pushchair into the room followed closely by a blonde-haired woman Claire took to be his wife. The baby was in her arms.

  ‘This is Dr Roget,’ he said, and with a hard stare at her, added, ‘she was just leaving.’

  Trustrom’s wife gave an unconvincing smile. ‘Nice to meet you,’ she said. ‘Goodbye.’

  Claire pocketed the charm and left, questions burning in her mind.

  Did the answer to Marvel’s disappearance lie outside prison walls?

  Sitting in her car, she connected with DS Zed Willard who simply sounded irritated that she hadn’t yet squeezed a confession out of Kobi. His irritation compounded when she asked him about the silver charm Marvel had gone to buy.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Was it the same as the one her sisters had?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Now he simply sounded offended.

  ‘Didn’t you check with the jeweller?’

  ‘We didn’t make a big thing of it. We knew where to focus our investigation.’

  At last he displayed some curiosity. ‘What’s all this about charms anyway?’

  ‘Marvel’s brother found one in his father’s car.’

  This was greeted with silence before Willard responded gruffly. ‘Could have been one of the sisters.’

  ‘He says not. What were Tom Trustrom’s movements that day?’

  ‘What do you think? He went out looking for his daughter.’ Willard’s voice was raised an octave. He was sounding defensive and again she sensed that the murders had been too quickly linked. Like charms on a bracelet, events tell a story. It was possible that Willard and his colleagues had been reading the wrong story. ‘And by the way,’ Willard continued, fighting back now, ‘if Marvel’s brother found a silver charm why didn’t he give it back to one of his sisters? If it wasn’t one of theirs why didn’t he ask his father whose it was? Or else hand it in to us if he thought it was evidence?’

  The question she didn’t want to answer.

  ‘It’s even possible,’ DS Willard added, ‘that he bought it as a sort of memento.’

  Unlikely, she thought as she ended the call.

  The logical step now would be to tackle Tom and simply ask him, but before she half accused a dying man of his daughter’s murder she wanted to make sure. She picked up the phone and connected with Sorrel’s salon. She could hear a plaintive female voice in the background and the distant ripple of what sounded like rainforest music.

  Sorrel’s pickup line was trotted out, a pert, ‘Hello, Sorrel and Yvonne’s Beauty Salon. Sorrel speaking. How may I help you?’

  ‘Hi. It’s Claire here, Dr Roget.’

  ‘Yes?’ The response was guarded.

  Claire got straight to the point. ‘The silver charm that your sister went to buy the day she went missing. Can you describe it?’

  ‘It was a pair of intertwined pointe ballet shoes. Tiny. I’ve still got mine.’

  That answered two questions.

  ‘And Clarice still has hers?’

  ‘Yeah. Marvel was sooooo jealous.’ There was still a hint of malice in her voice.

  ‘Are you sure that’s what she went to buy the day she went missing?’

  ‘Yeah.’ There was a pause before she added, ‘When you find her,’ Marvel’s sister said, still with the same note of satisfaction, ‘she’ll probably still be wearing it.’

  ‘Are you wearing it now?’

  ‘I am, as a matter of fact.’ Her voice was still pert.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Is that it?’ She sounded disappointed.

  ‘Yes.’ Claire put the phone down reflecting on something that had seemed insignificant at the time. Marvel had told Shane she was meeting a friend. She recalled his words. She didn’t have any friends.

  She spent the rest of the afternoon preparing for Ilsa’s court case with recommendations mainly restricting access to her family and further psychiatric evaluation.

  What troubled Claire now was that she wondered how much Ilsa had planned from the first. The hospital admission provided documented instability of her mental state, then there was her self-discharge from the clinic. Writing her report, she was compelled to point out that it was possible her patient was highly manipulative. If Ilsa was lucky and the courts swallowed the version so carefully planted she wouldn’t face a charge of GBH or attempted murder but would slide under the radar with a ‘while the balance of mind was disturbed’ plea. She wrote her report. It would be up to the courts to decide.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Monday 21 October, 8.45 a.m.

  She had spent the weekend pondering both cases – and failed to come up with a neat solution. Grant had been busy moving his mother back down to Cornwall and she had been on call. She’d popped in to Greatbach on the Saturday morning and been called out in the early hours of Sunday to see a patient who had had an epileptic fit. Otherwise all had been calm. But going in to Greatbach on the Monday morning seemed like a tiresome extension to last week’s work.

  The obvious person to ask about the charm was Tom and ask him outright how it had turned up in his car. But even she could provide an alternative explanation – one which did not mean that he had picked her up in Hanley on that rainy November evening. He could have bought a similar one out of sentiment – or guilt – particularly if he’d felt he had not treated his daughter as well as he might.

  What did Shane believe when he had suggested his father wanted to die with a clear conscience?

  But the fact that Tom was dying held her back from questioning him. She would try any other means to find out the truth. So she decided she should speak to Dixie and perhaps Clarice and hope they might give her some titbit. She looked down at her hand. Such a tiny object to open so many questions.

  Without much hope she tried Dixie’s phone again. And at least she answered the call but her voice was spiky. ‘I have no idea why all this is being raked up again. The man who murdered my daughter is in prison.’

  Claire stayed quiet while Dixie ranted and finally she spoke. ‘We have new evidence.’

  ‘What new—’ Claire heard fear in her voice as she gave her address and suggested she drive down after the rush hour. ‘Leave it until seven o’clock.’

  The day dragged but finally Claire was driving the stuttering stop/start journey that was the M6 into Birmingham. She drove through the city centre and turned towards the south east.

  Marvel’s mother lived in a neat inter-war semi halfway along a row of similar houses. It was a few minut
es before seven when Claire knocked on the door which was opened almost straight away. Dixie rejected Claire’s proffered hand and stomped towards a kitchen where she grudgingly offered Claire a cup of tea.

  The kitchen was space age with grey plastic units and a dark granite top. The walls were stark white. At the far end of the room was a grey sofa and a very large television.

  Dixie worried away at the subject. ‘What good any of this will do I really don’t know. My daughter is dead and I believe that Jonah Kobi killed her.’

  ‘Do you?’

  The words were enough to stop Dixie Trustrom in her tracks. ‘What have you found?’

  Claire opened her hand and Dixie stared. ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘Shane found it in your husband’s car.’

  Dixie said nothing but closed her eyes wearily, her face sunken. ‘I wondered,’ she said. ‘Tom paid attention to young girls.’ She licked her lips. ‘He …’

  She began again. ‘He … I saw him looking at them. Sometimes. I wondered if Marvel knew something. If one of her friends had said something. And …’ She couldn’t go on.

  Claire felt bound to pursue her. ‘Do you mean you wondered whether your husband had molested young girls?’

  ‘God help me,’ was Dixie’s response.

  Claire spoke softly. ‘Why was Marvel such an ugly duckling?’

  Dixie’s head jerked up. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Why was she always the odd one out, Mrs Trustrom?’

  The question seemed to freeze Marvel’s mother. She began with an unconvincing, ‘I don’t know what …’ but the words faded before they’d even left her mouth.

  After some moments Dixie met her eyes. ‘You already know, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know but I have an idea.’

  At which point Dixie’s face sagged. ‘You can easily know who is the mother of a child,’ she said. ‘Not so simple to find out who is the father.’

  ‘So who is the father?’

  Dixie didn’t respond so Claire spoke. ‘Not Tom.’

  Dixie shook her head. ‘It has nothing to do with Marvel’s disappearance. He was just a man I met at work. He moved to Australia just before the millennium. I don’t think I’d even told him I was pregnant. Tom forgave me. We moved on.’