A Game of Minds

by Priscilla Masters

  ‘He knew Marvel wasn’t his daughter?’

  Dixie nodded.

  ‘Did Marvel know?’

  Dixie shook her head vigorously.

  ‘That last Saturday, how long was Tom gone?’

  Dixie’s face froze. ‘Hours.’

  Both were silent, contemplating the possibilities.

  ‘I told everything to the police. I didn’t hide anything. When the other two girls were taken and Kobi charged we sort of relaxed. But it’s dragged on and he’s never confessed. We’ve appealed to him but have had no response. Tom and I separated. The girls grew up. Shane’s made a life of his own.’ Her face and voice were pained. ‘Now it’s all being raked up again and …’ She put her hand out towards Claire. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude or unhelpful but I don’t see how a psychiatrist’ – she managed to make the word sound pejorative – ‘can help. I think dragging you in will prove just as pointless as all the other enquiries, investigations and cold case reviews.’

  Claire was silent, sensing that even now Marvel’s mother was frightened for the truth to come out.

  So she nodded her agreement and moved on.

  ‘Do you think I can have a quick word with Clarice?’

  ‘Go ahead. May as well get it over and done with. She’ll be in her bedroom, probably listening in. She’s a sneaky one. But I don’t think she’ll be able to help you. She was just a kid.’

  Clarice was a complete contrast to her oldest sister. Small, dark-haired with soft brown eyes, she was tiny, delicate and dainty and, unlike Sorrel, was wearing no make-up at all. Her hair was tied back and she had an endearingly earnest look.

  ‘Dr Roget,’ she said holding out her hand and smiling, perfectly composed.

  Her bedroom was lined with bookshelves and posters; a small desk in the corner was smothered with papers. She sat on the bed while Claire perched on the chair.

  ‘I know why you’re here,’ Clarice said.

  ‘Tell me about your sister.’

  ‘There was always lots of shouting around her. She seemed to cause trouble. Conflict.’

  ‘I gathered that.’

  ‘You’ve met Sorrel?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘She’s something, isn’t she?’ There was a note of admiration in her voice.

  ‘You’re fond of your sister?’

  Clarice laughed. ‘Yes,’ she said, sounding surprised at her own admission. ‘Yes. I am. She and Marvel were always shouting at each other, always quarrelling but Sorrel and I were thick as thieves – most of the time,’ she put in with honesty. ‘I used to hide in the bedroom under my bed. The house was very …’ She knitted her eyebrows together. ‘Turbulent.’

  ‘And Shane, how did he get on with his sister?’

  ‘I think they got on OK – sometimes.’

  ‘Oh?’ Clarice’s voice had held a frisson of embarrassment.

  ‘They would go in a huddle together and start whispering. There was something … secretive about them.’ She licked her lips. ‘She’d go in his room and I’d hear noises.’

  Claire could have asked what sort of noises but Clarice’s face was flushed. ‘The rest of the time,’ she continued, ‘they’d look as though they hated each other.’

  Claire was silent for a moment. Sibling relationships are notoriously unpredictable. Was this something more?

  ‘He gave her money,’ Clarice finished.

  Claire tucked the facts away. ‘You’ve confided this to your mother?’

  Another miserable nod.

  ‘Do you have much to do with your father?’

  That provoked a deep, guilty sigh. ‘I see him a couple of times a month. More of a duty call really. I can’t say we’re close. And I’m not that fond of Yvonne. She hardly lets Dad get a word in edgeways.’

  Tom Trustrom hardly had the breath to speak but Claire let it ride.

  ‘And your mother?’

  That provoked a firm head shake. ‘She can’t wait for me to leave home. She’s not that maternal. Look,’ she said in a burst of confidence, ‘I’m not being funny but we don’t want all this dragged up again. It was bloody awful at the time and I was only eleven. Marvel’s dead. We’ve accepted that. She died a long time ago. No one’s mourning her now. We don’t want it all raked up again.’

  ‘So you don’t care who killed your sister or that she’s buried with your dad?’

  ‘No. I don’t think it’s important. I don’t believe in God and Heaven and all that stuff. What difference does it make whether she’s in a shallow grave or in the local crematorium with a headstone?’

  ‘You don’t care if her killer goes free?’

  Clarice shrugged. ‘What does it matter now? Kobi’s in prison. He can’t hurt anyone again. Why is it so important that my sister’s killer is convicted for her murder when he’s already serving life? I can’t see the point. We just want to forget about it, Dr Roget. Forget.’

  ‘Can you add anything to the investigation, something that would prove or refute the police theory that Kobi murdered your sister?’

  She didn’t even think about it. ‘No.’

  And that was that.

  FORTY-FIVE

  And now she wondered about Shane. What had the relationship been between brother and half-sister? ‘There was something … secretive about them. She’d go in his room and I’d hear noises.’ What did Clarice’s words mean?

  And Tom? How had he really felt about the cuckoo in the nest? Was his interest powered by guilt? Had his emotions erupted and he had killed her? And hidden the body in those missing hours? Was he now seeking not only a body but absolution?

  Tuesday 22 October, 11 a.m.

  Yvonne picked up the phone, still acting as gatekeeper. ‘He’s not well enough to speak to you again.’ Her voice was uncompromising in response to Claire’s request.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s necessary.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I need to speak to him.’

  ‘Well then, you’d better come soon.’

  As before, Tom was lying on the sofa, a blanket over him, his head resting on cushions. The whites of his eyes had turned yellow and even through the blanket Claire could see that his weight had further dropped and his abdomen was distended. He barely had enough strength to lift his eyelids. The last grains of sand were running through the hourglass.

  She sat down and watched him for a brief time. His eyes were open, his face strained, cheeks hollowed out.

  She waited for him to speak.

  He wafted Yvonne away, telling her to leave them.

  Claire was a medic. A trained general doctor before she had selected psychiatry, although sometimes she believed that psychiatry had selected her. In her role as a medic she’d seen people die more times than she cared to remember. Each one different and yet all strangely similar when life finally left them. This was a man desperate to cling on to that life until this one last mission was completed.

  She leaned in and spoke quietly. ‘What do you know, Tom? What have you kept hidden?’

  Even now he didn’t want to say the words. But he did. Extruding them as though they were painful. ‘Where did she get that money from?’

  It was not what she had expected.

  ‘She … she didn’t have a bean to her name but she got money from somewhere. Shane cleaned the car for a bit of extra pocket money. What did he need money for?’

  In that moment she understood. Tom too, like his younger daughter, had wondered about the relationship between brother and half-sister.

  ‘Where do you think?’

  ‘He gave it to her.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Shane did,’ he managed, his eyes forced wide open in appeal.

  Claire went ice cold. ‘Why?’ She’d asked the question while dreading the answer.

  Tom needed to stutter out these words. He turned his head so his eyes looked straight into hers. The movement hardly rippled the air around him.

  ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that she was offer
ing herself to him and Shane took it.’ Tom Trustrom was pale now. ‘He took it. She didn’t even like him. They fought and argued all the time. He gave her money.’

  Did he realize what he was accusing his son of?

  Tom’s lips were cracked and dry. ‘The truth,’ he managed, his voice hoarse and weak. ‘The truth has to come out.’

  Claire thought about Shane, his wife, the baby, the life he’d built up around him. ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘I wanted it to be Kobi but now I know the truth.’

  He closed his eyes before he spoke again. ‘He had a scooter, you know, did Shane. He went to look for her too.’

  She fingered the tiny object in her bag. Beginning to understand something.

  But Tom hadn’t finished. He managed to lift his head from the cushion, turn and stare at her. ‘I should have protected her but I didn’t. In some ways it is my fault. I have to say sorry, Claire. You have to get him to tell you where she is and I will say sorry to her. I will apologize for not having protected her.’ He was running out of breath. ‘Find her for me. Get him to tell you where she is. Tell him to confess. Find forgiveness. Find her for me. Please.’

  Exhausted now he closed his eyes. Claire waited but he didn’t rouse and finally she left the room and found Yvonne. ‘I think you need to come,’ she said, ‘and sit with him.’ It earned her a hostile look which was only too easy to read. You’ve worn him out. You should have left him alone.

  Claire was not going to point out that all this had happened through Tom’s request.

  As she let herself out, she could hear Yvonne fussing around him, muttering.

  Sitting in her car, Claire frowned and put her thoughts in order. Tom had kept quiet all these years. Only now when he was dying did he feel the need to confide the truth. He believed his son had murdered his stepdaughter. Shane was convinced his father had killed Marvel. Dixie feared one of them had killed her daughter. And they all wanted Kobi to be found guilty – including DS Zed Willard.

  And Kobi?

  As she turned the car back towards Greatbach, Claire recalled some of the conversations she’d had with son and father and started asking herself questions.

  Hauling a body on to the back of a scooter is impossible. But Marvel would willingly have climbed on to the back.

  So what about Tom’s car? Behind these ‘tricks’ she sensed Loki, the god of mischief. Not a brother who was rebuilding his life after a troubled adolescence nor a father who wanted to clear his troubled conscience. It had Kobi’s thumbprint all over it. But how could he have manipulated this situation? What was the missing link?

  It was interesting that she had never really been convinced that this was Kobi’s crime. Quite apart from the anomaly of the MO, it had never fitted. Leopards don’t change their spots. Kobi liked applause. Recognition. He wanted the families’ grief, the horror, the graphic newspaper headlines. He revelled in accolade.

  Kobi did not hide his light under a bushel.

  So was it possible that this was not Kobi’s crime but father or son’s? And if so, why did she still sense Kobi’s mischief behind all this? Hear Kobi’s laugh, feel Kobi’s pleasure at pulling heartstrings even from inside prison?

  She’d arrived back at Greatbach and pulled into a parking space, but Claire didn’t move.

  FORTY-SIX

  Wednesday 23 October, midday

  Kobi was curious and a tiny bit apprehensive as to why she was there. He was trying to hide it but a little click in his throat told her enough. ‘Claire,’ he said as she sat down. ‘This is a nice surprise. I didn’t think you were coming again.’ He giggled. ‘A bit like curtain calls. They go on and on and you just wish the people would stop clapping and bloody well go home.’

  His mouth leaked anxiety. He couldn’t work out why she was there.

  She sat down. ‘I wasn’t going to, Kobi,’ she said, ‘but I wondered something.’ She’d reluctantly made the decision, sitting in her car in the Greatbach car park the previous day, that she needed to see Kobi again and to ask him a specific question.

  Now he was watchful. ‘And how are the family bearing up?’

  ‘Oh, they’re all right. A little confused.’

  ‘Oh. Shame that.’ He examined his fingernails. ‘Not exactly a happy band, are they? Mother buggered off, father dying. Two sisters who couldn’t stand Marvel.’ He paused, eyes watchful before rolling out his next comment. ‘And then there’s the brother.’

  Claire stayed silent, simply watching him.

  That little click in his throat again.

  ‘I wondered something.’

  ‘What?’ When she didn’t answer he spoke quickly. ‘I expect the entire family are anxious to know the fate of the poor child.’

  ‘I expect they are.’

  He wasn’t winning. He knew that and tried to regain ground. ‘The brother. He’s a strange character, isn’t he?’

  She didn’t even blink. She was waiting for him to realize that he wasn’t rattling her at all. After the briefest of pauses and a narrowing of his eyes, he continued, ‘And as for the father – or should I say …’ He let the sentence hang, suspended in the air.

  ‘Say what you like.’

  He drew in breath to parry again. ‘I wonder how the mother is these days. Speak to her mother, Dr Roget,’ he said. ‘Ask her about her son, her husband, her daughters.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘A mother knows all.’

  ‘So they say.’

  He leaned in, intense now. ‘Why did you come?’

  ‘I wanted to watch your face when I asked you something.’

  His throat clicked again.

  ‘I wondered why you married.’

  He blinked.

  ‘When did Jessica first contact you?’

  ‘Soon after I was charged.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘What is this? Why are you interested in my wife? This isn’t about her at all.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  He sat back in his chair, folded his arms and watched her. ‘You’re just fishing around, aren’t you? Still hoping to catch something. Or get a confession’ – she shook her head, but he continued anyway – ‘that I killed that poor unhappy girl.’

  She didn’t react except to smile.

  Kobi scowled but in his face there was an alertness and a sudden vulnerability she’d not seen before. He was almost quivering with tension and she knew she’d hit home. She was nearly there.

  It was hard to leave the prison and Kobi with his secrets. But she was near her quarry. And it wasn’t the only step forward she was to make that day.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Wednesday 23 October, 4 p.m.

  John Robinson was sitting outside her office, waiting to speak to her. He looked different – less self-assured. He was dressed differently too, in casual chinos and a tweed jacket. Somehow the business suit had looked better on him. But maybe today was a day off.

  He stood up and immediately started to apologize. ‘I’m sorry to just turn up like this again but your secretary said you were coming back after your outside visit.’

  Claire wasn’t cross. She was more puzzled. What was he doing here?

  She led him into her office and he sat down heavily with a loud sigh. ‘I think I need to come clean with you, Dr Roget.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  He drew in a deep breath, eyes cast down, voice subdued. ‘It wasn’t the first time.’

  She sat up and stared at him. ‘You mean she’s assaulted you before?’

  For answer he pulled up his shirt. The scar was unmistakably a healed knife wound. ‘I would have said but no one else was involved. Only me,’ he added hastily.

  ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘I know.’ It burst out of him then. ‘Why do you think I can’t leave her alone with our son? Why do you think I keep my own children – her stepchildren – away? Ilsa flies into a rage. And then she lashes out. She gets an idea in her head and you can’t reason with her. You can’t shift it. She’s accused me of
having an affair with Maggie, but I’m not. We both just want the best for her. I hoped if I made some effort with the house that she would change.’ He paused, looked around him, licked dry lips. ‘I don’t want to tell you your job. But is it possible Ilsa needs anger management or something?’

  Claire didn’t respond. Ilsa needed more than anger management.

  ‘She used a glass ornament once.’ John Robinson pushed his hair back to reveal a bald patch and a scar on his scalp. ‘Maggie’s witnessed these rages.’

  ‘But Ilsa has never assaulted her before?’

  ‘Once.’ He looked shamefaced. ‘Ilsa smacked her in the face. Broke a tooth.’

  ‘But she didn’t involve the police?’

  ‘I begged her not to.’

  Claire felt sorry for him. Not only had he been covering for a wife he must at times have felt frightened of, but now he was having to confess all and take some responsibility.

  ‘And the anxiety attacks?’

  He looked even more shamefaced. ‘I thought that was the cause.’

  ‘Mr Robinson, it’s possible your wife has a personality disorder. We can try various therapies when the courts have finished with her but the outlook isn’t good.’

  He passed a hand across his sweating forehead. ‘Believe it or not,’ he said, ‘I just wanted to protect her.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Maggie’s not doing well,’ he said. ‘Her lung’s collapsed and she has some sort of infection that doesn’t appear to be responding to antibiotics. She might …’ He tried again. ‘If she dies will that make a difference as to what happens to Ilsa?’

  ‘Of course.’ She felt she should be at least trying to reassure him. ‘But the chances are Maggie will pull through.’

  ‘I hope so. I feel so responsible.’

  For once she held her tongue. ‘It’s probable that Ilsa will be found to have acted while the balance of her mind was disturbed and detained for a period under the Mental Health Act.’

  She felt she should add something more forceful. ‘But given what you’ve just told me it will be impossible to guarantee that she won’t become violent again.’