by Alex Gray
Alice was asleep, her eyes closed on wrinkled lids. There was no expression of pain on her face, just a slight downturn to her mouth as though she were cross about something. It was a look that Maggie knew well. But she could remember her smiles and her laughter too, she thought, as the tears began to slide down her cheeks. She could remember the good times they had spent together. Taking her mother’s hand in hers, she stroked it softly, bending forwards so that Alice might hear her.
‘Do you remember the time we went to Skye, Mum? The mist was all down when we arrived and you said we’d have been better off staying at home. Then the next day everything was so clear we could see the whole of the Cuillins. And that sunset? D’you remember the sunset? Dad and you made me stay up to see it until the sun had gone right down, even though it was past my bedtime. You were always so good to me, Mum, always. The best Mum in the world.’ Maggie stopped then, unable to speak for the tears pouring down, clasping Alice’s hand as though she would never let it go.
Even when the sounds changed and the thin green line upon the monitor brought nurses into the room, Maggie refused to let go of her mother’s hand. Squeezing it gently in a gesture of farewell, she bent over and kissed the still-warm cheeks.
‘Goodnight, Mum,’ she whispered.
Then Maggie felt her husband’s hands upon her shoulders and she leaned against him, taking her hands away from the bed at last.
CHAPTER 37
Five Months Later
Detective Inspector Rhoda Martin waited until she was sure that the courtroom had finally emptied. An usher looked her way, a frown of enquiry on his face so she rose from her seat and made her way out. She turned up the collar of her jacket. If she kept her head down, looked down at the floor, maybe nobody would see her, or try to engage her in conversation.
Ever since that dreadful night, Rhoda had been unable to face her colleagues. The extended leave of absence was coming to an end and she would be moving on. A desk job, the psychologist had suggested, but Rhoda had demurred.
Stumbling through the wide hall, the policewoman pushed open the door to the ladies’ toilet and stood, gasping for breath. She would not let it happen. She would conquer the sudden trembling that threatened to overwhelm her whole body. Breathe. Breathe, she told herself, willing the shudders to subside.
Blowing out one long exhalation, Rhoda opened her eyes. Her hands still grasped the edge of the basin, the cool porcelain a relief after the stuffiness of that witness room. Above the basin the mirror showed a thin, unsmiling face, green eyes regarding her image critically. Yesterday she had gone to see James who had cut her hair. With every snip of his clever scissors, the hair stylist had shorn more than her blonde locks. Rhoda remembered how she had felt, gasping at her reflection in the salon mirror. James had handed her a tissue and she had blown her nose noisily, trying not to weep. ‘It’s wonderful,’ she had assured him, smiling tremulously through her tears.
And now that elfin shape hugging the line of her jaw belonged to the person she had needed to become. The foolishness of trying to emulate another person was over. But the shame of it still lingered.
And when had it all started? Her mind had played over so many scenes from school during the last months, wondering how the girl that had fascinated her for so long could possibly have become a killer. Had there ever been any manifestation of evil in the slight, blonde child who had beguiled her? It was hard to remember Serena as anything other than the perfect girl. Yet hadn’t she been the one to suggest the malicious little pranks that other kids carried out? Serena Jackson might have been on the edge of the action, but never at its heart. It was strange how she had such clear recall of events from her schooldays. The psychologist had given that some name or other, explaining how the trauma had triggered all these snippets of their shared past.
One memory stood out from all the rest. They had been in English class the period before lunch for a poetry lesson. Miss Michael had been in an inspirational mood, waxing lyrical about one of the best poems from a twentieth-century poet, as she had put it: Edwin Brock’s ‘Five Ways to Kill a Man’. They’d been issued with handouts of it and had stuffed them into their satchels, making a bee-line for the girls’ cloakroom to eat their packed lunches. She couldn’t recall who had asked the question first. ‘How would you kill a man?’ They’d giggled over their sandwiches, suggesting daft and even lewd ideas until Serena had spoken. ‘I’d burn him alive,’ she had said. The conversation had effectively stopped then and Rhoda could still remember the shiver that she had felt as the girl had uttered these words. Yet, until the night when her school friend had robbed her of every shred of dignity, leaving her drugged and trussed in the back bedroom, these words had been completely forgotten.
Rhoda took another deep breath. It was becoming harder to find the same inner strength that had made her become a police officer in the first place. Okay, so that little voice kept telling her worse things happened to other people. And hadn’t she seen so many of them already in her young life? But she was ready to begin again. The memory of Serena disappearing down into the cells below the courtroom would fade in time. Like everything else. The transfer to Kilmarnock had been approved and next week a new chapter would begin for DI Martin. She could never pretend that these terrible things had not happened and she knew that police gossip would continue to follow her wherever she went. But she had to go on, as the psychologist had gently advised; there were people out there who needed her to be a good police officer.
Slipping her bag across her shoulder, Rhoda left the coolness of the ladies’ room and walked past the people milling about in the foyer of the High Court. Men and women in black robes, bewigged and talking closely together; neds dressed up in their best gear for the occasion; officers like herself, coming and going for reasons of their own.
Out in the warm summer air, Rhoda stood for a moment looking around her. Over there was the back door of the mortuary: there were other deaths and other trials still to come. And perhaps, one day soon, she would play her part in bringing a culprit to justice. Straightening her collar, Rhoda Martin lifted her head and walked smartly into the afternoon sunshine.
Doctor Solomon Brightman winced as the blinds were opened, letting in the glare of light. Harsh shadows sliced across the room, making dust motes whirl in lozenges of sunshine. The click of the door made him look up and he stood politely as the woman was ushered in. The duty nurse who had opened the blinds gave the patient a cursory glance.
‘I’ll leave you all to it, then, shall I?’ he said, nodding at the patient and her female companion. Serena Jackson sat down at the table, her head turning towards the window as if she wanted to bask in the warmth of the sunshine streaming in. It was a gesture guaranteed to remind Solly that she was a prisoner here. He leaned forwards and held out his hand. ‘Good to see you again, Jacqueline,’ he told the psychologist. They met from time to time for seminars and discussions but Jacqueline’s time was mostly spent here as a full-time employee of Carstairs Mental Hospital. The woman smiled and nodded, her eyes always on the slim blonde woman sitting at the table, even as she retreated to the back of the room where she could quietly hear and observe.
Solly stared at Serena Jackson, marvelling at her perfect profile and translucent skin. The blonde hair was like spun silk in the sunlight. Her hands, he noted, were on her lap beneath the table where he could not see them. Clasped loosely together? Or twisting and turning in nervous agitation like a swan who seemed serene yet whose feet paddled furiously below the surface of the water. It was not the first time that Solly had thought the woman’s name so appropriate; she did have a serenity about her but it was no more than a mask to hide that twisted personality.
That Serena Jackson had agreed to take part in Solly Brightman’s research did not surprise him. He didn’t flatter himself that she was greedy for the sort of fame that came with notoriety. No. Solly knew that the woman was only here to relieve the boredom of this place. It was a diversion for her, no more. He d
oubted if she would ever bother to read the book once it was published, even though an entire chapter would be devoted to her killing spree.
‘Why did she do it?’ Rosie had asked him. He had shrugged, only half-knowing. But their conversations had provided more of an answer to that question.
‘Good morning, Serena,’ he said at last. ‘How are you today?’ The woman turned to him, squinting her topaz eyes a little against the dazzling brightness. Then she gave him one of her rare smiles.
‘Daniel’s gone abroad,’ she told him. ‘The States.’ She gave an insouciant shrug. ‘Don’t think he’s going to come back.’
‘Won’t you miss him?’
She shrugged again in answer as if it was no big deal to her but Solly detected a small shift in her expression and knew that the loss of her brother was a real blow to the woman.
‘Don’t you miss your mother and father?’
Serena looked down at the table and traced a pattern on its plastic surface with her index finger. ‘Sometimes,’ she replied at last.
‘What sorts of things make you miss them?’
She heaved a sigh then her mouth twisted as if the exhalation had come unbidden. This was a person, Solly knew, who liked to be totally in control of her own emotions.
‘I never wanted to have my own place. I told you that already, didn’t I?’ she began. ‘They wanted me out, especially her.’ The pretty mouth made a moue of distaste. ‘Thought we didn’t know what was going on under our noses, filthy bitch!’ She shook her head as if to rid herself of the memory. ‘But I do miss Dad sometimes. He used to come and say goodnight. Nothing to titillate your nasty little mind,’ she added with a sneer. ‘He’d call out from the top of the stairs, that’s all,’ she said.
Solly nodded as though he believed what she told him. Perhaps it was true but it was more likely that she was feeling lonely and panicked at night times here in this place when she was so completely alone. The father figure that she had destroyed haunted her with good memories, even if they might be false ones.
Serena looked at Solly suddenly. ‘I suppose you want to find out why I killed them.’
There was a long moment between them when the psychologist was acutely aware of normal sounds like that of a plane overhead and the metallic growl of a mowing machine in the grounds. Of course he wanted to hear that. But, he wondered, noting a sly smile cutting the edges of that pretty mouth, would she ever tell him the whole truth?
‘They wouldn’t let me be what I wanted, would they?’ she told him, enjoying his discomfiture at her deliberately enigmatic remark.
‘When did you first enjoy making fires?’ Solly asked, changing the subject. He had asked this question in various ways before and was not really expecting an answer today, just the usual cold silence. So he was surprised when Serena leaned forwards and told him in a whisper, so that the other psychologist could not hear. He listened to the story of over-privileged teenagers bored with all the things that their parents’ wealth could buy, joy riding and wrecking a car. Her face became more animated as she described the fire and the tree.
‘I was alone with the sound of crackling wood and that moaning voice. It was easy to think of the tree as a living thing in its death throes,’ she told him.
Solly locked eyes with the woman, ‘And…?’ he prompted her. ‘And I liked what I saw,’ she said, a gleam of triumph shining from those tawny eyes.
‘You always wanted to find out what it would be like? To kill?’ he asked.
Serena nodded then turned away with a yawn. It was a signal Solly recognised as the end of this current session. Her boredom assuaged, she would return to the hospital’s routine until his next visit. Then perhaps he would ask her other questions. About the vulnerable old ladies who had died at her hand.
There was still a lot to learn about this woman whose strange beauty was so at odds with a nature that one journalist had described as pure evil.
It was quiet here and I liked it after that funny little man and his probing questions. He amused me and I enjoyed trying to fool him. Sometimes I think I did outwit him, though today I had let rather too much slip, hadn’t I? There were things that he would never hear from me, though. I hugged them to myself gleefully; that laughing child whirling through the air and the old vagrant, his face contorted with the poison choking him to death. These were my secrets and no clever bearded psychologist would ever find them out. And there were other secrets too, desires that might never be fulfilled — different ways to kill. I considered them in the long hours within this place, wondering if I would ever be given the chance to carry them out.
Maggie bent down by the flowerbed and pulled out a weed, adding it to the little pile in the plastic bucket. The rose garden had been Flynn’s idea and Maggie badly wanted to keep it neat and tidy. The late July sun beat down on her head as she stood up, her eyes on one particular rose. Several buds had opened up now and the blooms were a shade of deep amber. She didn’t need to examine the plastic tag to know the flower’s name: Remember Me. Flynn had brought it the day after Mum’s funeral, planting the rose where he knew Maggie would see it from the kitchen window. It had been a gracious gesture and she had hugged him silently, both of them weeping in that shared moment of grief. So Maggie had determined to keep this plot weed-free. Her mother’s remains were scattered elsewhere and now she only had her memories of Alice Finlay to console her.
Sometimes the night of her mother’s death would come back to her, a jumble of images and impressions like a bad dream that makes no sense on awakening. She felt the cat at her side, rubbing himself against her and automatically she put out a hand, stroking his fur. Chancer had howled like a banshee that night, prowling around the house looking for Alice. His eldritch screeching had unnerved them both. Yet once the sofa bed had been tidied away and all her things had gone he had settled down again. Had he sensed her death? Or was it simply that he could feel the tension created by all the hours of anxiety and sorrow? Maggie cuddled the cat at her side and sighed.
What should she do next? Perhaps she could cut one of the roses and bring it into the house? No, she decided, better to let it flourish out here, a constant reminder of Alice as she had been, vibrant and bright. She glanced across at the sunbed by the lawn. Bill was in Glasgow today and she had plenty of time to prepare work for her Advanced Higher class next session. Maggie rose to her feet, brushing the bits of grass from her bare legs.
There had been some altercation between the Chief Constable and her husband in the wake of their own personal tragedy. She was not quite sure what it was all about and Bill had been reticent on the subject. Still he seemed happy to be back in his own division even though Superintendent Mitchison had returned from the Met releasing Lorimer from his temporary designation. Now he was Detective Chief Inspector once more and he gave no sign that it bothered him in the slightest.
The books and papers were scattered on the grass beside her sunbed waiting for her attention. Maggie smiled as she picked up one of the books. It was an old friend, from her undergraduate days, this book with its blue cover. Lying back, Maggie thought of the writer. Hadn’t he spun tales that were woven around the changing seasons, giving a pattern to life? There was some comfort in such notions, she thought.
Come the winter there would be the time for Rosie and Solly’s baby to be born. A Valentine’s child, Rosie had told her dreamily, after calculating when she had conceived. The year would turn and death would give way to new life, just as the Orcadian poet had observed. Maggie smiled, browsing through the familiar stories. Her kids at school would love some of these.
Then she stopped, finding a page where her younger self had underlined an entire paragraph. Maggie gave a little sigh, feeling something heavy slip away from her as she read the words that told of this dance through the everlasting cycle of life.
‘And then suddenly everything was in its place.
The tinkers would move for ever through the hills.
Men would plough their fields.
Men would bait their lines. Comedy had its place in the dance too — the drinking, the quarrelling, the expulsion, the return in the morning. And forever the world would be full of youth and beauty, birth and death, labour and suffering.’
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