by David Hodges
‘But even allowing for the fact that Lupin went AWOL on a bank holiday weekend when you were understaffed,’ Kate put in, ‘that’s just three to four days. Why has it taken until now for it to be reported to us? Surely the breach in security should have been discovered as soon as you were back to full staffing on the Tuesday, the moment everyone returned from the bank holiday break?’
Falls fidgeted and looked down at his feet. ‘It was,’ he replied simply. ‘But we had to carry out a full search of the hospital and grounds to ensure Lupin was not just hiding away somewhere – it is a very big site. Then we had to alert the local police and have a search of the external area carried out—’
‘You mean you pissed about,’ Roscoe came in again. ‘Went into panic mode at the thought of the likely repercussions and sat on it, in the hope that this crazy arsehole would turn up again?’
Falls winced, but didn’t try to deny the allegation.
‘We have to accept that Lupin deceived us all,’ he said instead. ‘Seemingly taking her medication, going along with the treatment programme, and successfully combating her psychosis after years of violence and disruptive behaviour in different institutions, when all the time this was a ploy to gain our trust and earn those privileges that would give her the necessary freedom within the precincts of the hospital. We were fooled – I admit it – but hindsight is a wonderful thing. Nevertheless, this security breach should never have occurred and a rigorous internal inquiry is already underway to determine how it could have been allowed to happen.’
‘After the bloody horse has bolted,’ Roscoe muttered.
‘We all make mistakes, Doctor,’ Hennessey said quickly, ‘and it’s apparent that we are dealing with a very clever and resourceful psychopath. But what I cannot fathom is why she suddenly decided to break out and embark on her vendetta now after all these years of incarceration.’
‘Oh, she did try to get out before,’ Falls replied, ‘many times at different institutions, but each escape was foiled. Obviously, it eventually dawned on her that subterfuge was the only way she was going to be able to achieve her aims and she must have been planning her escape from Larchfield for quite some time.’ He hesitated. ‘There is possibly another reason too.’
‘Go on.’
‘She is dying.’
‘Dying?’
‘Yes, some weeks before her escape she was diagnosed with an aggressive tumour, which is untreatable. She knows she doesn’t have much time left and this may have given her the impetus for her escape plan and the launch of her vendetta.’
‘With nothing to lose one way or the other,’ Kate breathed.
Falls nodded soberly. ‘Precisely, and you should not assume that the tumour, which is eating away at her tissues, will make her any the less dangerous. She is otherwise very fit and in her time with us at Larchfield was a regular visitor to our well-equipped gym, carrying out gruelling workouts to develop her physique. Consequently, she is the match for any woman …’
‘Or man,’ Kate finished for him, throwing a quick glance at Roscoe as the office telephone rang and he picked it up and clapped it to his ear. ‘And she has just one more target to find—’
‘Who we may have found first,’ the DI cut in triumphantly, covering the mouthpiece of the phone into which he had just been speaking. ‘That was the front desk. We have a Mrs Iris Naylor downstairs, who wishes to speak to us.’
CHAPTER 21
Iris Naylor was a short, sprightly woman, who had to be in her early to mid-eighties. She reminded Kate of the late Joan Hickson in her role as Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple. Dressed in a grey jacket and matching skirt, she wore her grey hair in a bun under a green hat and carried a large, brown handbag in one hand. The grey eyes were sharp and watchful behind the rimless spectacles and they narrowed slightly when Hennessey, Roscoe and Kate entered the interview room where she was standing with her back to the radiator, a cup of tea – evidently untouched – on the table in front of her.
Hennessey introduced the three of them and indicated a chair, inviting her to sit down, but she made no effort to accept the offer.
‘Takes all of you to see me, does it?’ she snapped. ‘I would have thought one would have been quite sufficient?’
Roscoe seemed taken aback by her unexpected directness and Kate noticed his discomfiture with a faint smile, since it was rare for him to be thrown by anyone.
Hennessey, however, did not appear to be unduly put out by their visitor’s approach and also smiled.
‘We are very glad you are here, Mrs Naylor,’ she said. ‘We have been trying to get in touch with you.’
The old woman snorted. ‘Yes, so I gather, but you didn’t make a very good job of it, did you? I’ve been living at the same address in Wiltshire for twenty-odd years. Local vicar here got hold of me easily enough.’
Kate frowned. ‘Local vicar?’ she queried.
The grey eyes fastened on her. ‘Yes, the Reverend Glover. He was my late sister Beatrix’s parish priest and my other sisters, Elsie and Mabel, attended his church from time to time too.’
She made a grimace. ‘I was originally married in that church, so I suppose he felt he had an obligation to try and find me to tell me what had happened to poor Elsie and Mabel.’
Kate raised both eyebrows, surprised not only by her revelation that the clergyman had pipped them at the post, but by the apparent absence of grief in her demeanour at the loss of her sisters.
‘Reverend Glover didn’t happen to tell us he’d found you,’ she retorted. ‘When I last spoke to him, he said he had no idea where you’d gone.’
She was treated to a thin, humourless smile. ‘Good detective is Reverend Glover – better than you lot anyway,’ their visitor retorted. ‘He went through some old church papers apparently and came up with a letter I’d written to his predecessor about my late husband’s death. Quite a simple exercise really.’
The cunning, duplicitous old bastard, Kate mused, thinking of the priest and the way he had reneged on his promise to let her know if anything turned up. Nevertheless, she kept her thoughts to herself.
‘We’re really sorry about your sisters,’ Hennessey said, clearly relieved that Iris Naylor already knew about their deaths, absolving her of the responsibility of breaking the news personally. ‘We are doing all we can to catch the perpetrator.’
The grey eyes focused on her now, still empty of tears. ‘And it wouldn’t be difficult to guess who that so-called perpetrator might be, would it?’ the old woman said.
Hennessey quickly pulled out a chair and nodded to Roscoe and Kate to do the same.
‘Well, I’m going to sit down, Mrs Naylor,’ she said firmly, ‘and it would be easier for us to talk if you would do the same.’
Their visitor hesitated for a second, then shrugged and eased herself into a chair on the opposite side of the table, taking a sip from her cup of tea after she had done so.
‘Georgina managed to break out of that place at last, has she?’ she said, setting the cup down with one trembling arthritic hand. ‘I knew she would one day. I told my sisters to expect that and to be careful. Obviously, they weren’t careful enough.’
‘I admire your fortitude, Mrs Naylor,’ Kate commented. ‘You seem to have coped well with the tragic news of your sisters’ deaths.’
There was a brief nod and the grey eyes blinked a couple of times.
‘At our time of life, Death’s shadow is a constant companion, Sergeant,’ the old woman said in a much more sombre tone. ‘And it should come as no surprise to us when he claims his bounty. Elsie and Mabel are safely in the care of the Lord now anyway – as I shall be soon – so grief is a pointless emotion.’
‘Tell us about Georgina,’ Hennessey put in gently, ‘and why she would want to kill her own aunts.’
Another snort greeted the question. ‘She was the devil’s child, that’s why. We tried to drive his demon out of her, but he was too strong for us.’
Kate stared at the large silver cruci
fix suspended on a chain around her neck.
‘I assume from the cross you are wearing and your expression of faith just now that you are a strong Christian?’ she said.
Iris Naylor gave her a defiant glare. ‘The Lord is my life – always has been and always will be,’ came the sharp reply. ‘It was the same for all my family. Without Christ we are nothing but clay.’
‘So, what made you think Georgina was the devil’s child?’
‘Because she was. She had his mark. Even from the beginning, it was there.’
‘And what form did this mark take?’
A tight grimace. ‘It was in the way she looked, the sinful way she behaved,’ came the bitter reply. ‘She was an affront to decency. And her wicked ways grew worse as she got older. We all knew there was a demon inside her, mocking the ways of the Lord, and that he needed to be cast out.’
Hennessey glanced quickly at Kate, but seeing that her DS was getting somewhere, she allowed her to continue without interruption. As for Roscoe, he just stared at their visitor in stony silence, plainly out of his depth.
‘What did she do to mock the Lord?’ Kate went on.
‘Do? She was an abomination, a freak of nature that should never have been created.’
‘And why is that?’
‘You know very well why and I refuse to name it.’
‘You mean because she was a transsexual?’
The old woman gripped the crucifix around her neck for a moment.
‘I wouldn’t let that filthy word pass my lips,’ she said tightly. ‘She disgraced the whole family with her degenerate behaviour.’
Kate nodded. ‘Is that how you and your sisters saw things at the time?’ she went on. ‘Degenerate behaviour? And is that why you persuaded Georgina’s parents to punish her so severely?’
Iris Naylor’s lip quivered with suppressed emotion.
‘It was the only way,’ she said. ‘She refused to abandon her sinful conduct and seek the Lord’s forgiveness.’
‘Maybe she didn’t see that there was anything to be forgiven for. Have you considered that your efforts to drive the demon out of her could actually have had the opposite effect and turned her into the psychotic she became?’
‘Rubbish! She was born evil. Was it our fault that she stabbed that man to death in the orphanage? Of course it wasn’t. She chose the wicked path she followed.’
‘Apparently she killed the man because he was abusing her.’
‘And that makes it right, does it?’
‘No, it doesn’t, but it explains her motive, doesn’t it?’
There was a sharp hiss.
‘And I suppose the next thing you’re going to say is that because my sisters and I had Georgina sent to the orphanage at Talbot Court, it was our fault that she became a cold-blooded killer – we were responsible for what she did?’
Not directly, Kate mused grimly, without answering her question. But she felt tempted to quiz her as to what, apart from her so-called deviant behaviour, had motivated the old woman and her sisters to have their niece packed off to Talbot Court so soon after the deaths of the parents – and whether, as alleged by George herself and hinted at by Leslie Brookes, it might have had something to do with the inheritance due on their estate.
Certainly questions that needed answers, but maybe, Kate decided, not at that precise moment in time. As yet, there was no proof that anything fraudulent had actually occurred. Furthermore, there were far more important priorities to attend to than worrying about the veracity of Iris Naylor – like, for example, apprehending a dangerous psychopath before she killed again. So, she simply bit her lip and said nothing at all – which, ironically, had an adverse effect on Irish Naylor, who apparently took the detective’s non-response to her question entirely the wrong way.
Leaning forward in her chair now, shaking with righteous indignation, she blazed defensively.
‘We did everything we could for that ungrateful girl. Everything—’
‘Including packing her off to Talbot Court, so you could wipe your hands of her?’
‘That’s a malicious slur! She was beyond help and none of us was prepared to take on responsibility for her when her parents died in that tragic car crash. Talbot Court should have provided the guidance and support that we couldn’t. They were the professionals after all. How could we have been expected to know what was going to happen there?’
‘But why pretend her surname was still Lupin, when in fact her mother had remarried and it should have been changed to Quigley? Was that to protect your family’s reputation?’
‘Absolutely not. It was Georgina herself who insisted on keeping that name. She refused to have it changed to Quigley—’
‘What, a child of – what was she then – nine or ten?’
Perhaps sensing that the interview was fast becoming an interrogation, Hennessey quickly held up a hand in an apologetic gesture before the old woman could reply.
‘Please, Mrs Naylor,’ she said hastily, ‘we are not seeking to criticize you or your sisters. We are simply pointing out what seems to be behind Georgina’s murderous vendetta – what twisted thoughts are motivating her – and the key issue here is that, whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, you are in the gravest danger.’
The warning prompted a short, cynical laugh. ‘What, from the devil’s child, you mean? I’m not afraid of Georgina Lupin, Chief Inspector – God’s power will protect me.’
‘It didn’t do much for your two sisters,’ Roscoe cut in, abruptly surfacing from the reverie that seemed to have occupied him since her arrival. ‘They’re both in the morgue.’
Hennessey threw him a sharp sidelong glance. ‘We must find you some sort of safe house until we bring her in,’ she said. ‘You’re welcome to remain here for a few hours until we can fix something up for you.’
There was an obstinate shake of the head. ‘You’ll do no such thing, Chief Inspector. I intend staying at Elsie’s bungalow until everything is sorted out. I presume you’ll want me to carry out a formal identification of my two sisters’ remains, as I am their sole surviving relative, and there are funerals to arrange. I am determined both Elsie and Mabel will be given proper Christian burials and I will be speaking to the Reverend Glover about it as soon as I can get hold of him again.’
Hennessey sighed heavily. ‘I’m afraid that, apart from the usual opening inquests, nothing else can be arranged until Georgina has been caught and the whole murder inquiry concluded,’ she said, ‘and actually catching her could take quite some time.’
The grey eyes appraised her again. ‘There is one way to shorten the process.’
Hennessey frowned. ‘I don’t follow you.’
‘Don’t you? Well, it’s quite simple really. You use me as a lure.’
‘A what?’
A watery smile greeted the question. ‘Bait, Chief Inspector, bait. We make sure my darling niece finds out that I am staying at Elsie’s house. Then you and your officers lie in wait for her to come for me.’
For several seconds, all three detectives stared at her, plainly aghast at such an outlandish suggestion, especially coming as it had from a frail-looking old woman who seemed to have difficulty holding a tea cup steady in one hand, let alone confronting a dangerous psychopath.
‘You’ve got to be joking?’ Hennessey finally exclaimed. ‘There is no way that that will happen.’
An ambivalent shrug. ‘Please yourself. I shall be staying at Elsie’s home anyway and I’ve already spoken to a reporter from the local newspaper, so Georgina is bound to find out sooner or later.’
‘You’ve done what? Are you mad?’
‘Now you’re being insulting.’
‘You’re telling us you tipped off the press?’
The old woman tutted irritably and shook her head several times. ‘I didn’t tip anyone off. I just happened to run into a reporter outside your police station when I arrived here earlier. He seemed a pleasant enough young man and was obviously bored, so we ha
d a nice little chat about things.’
‘What sort of things?’ Hennessey asked cautiously.
Their visitor hesitated, as if sensing that she had said too much. ‘Well, you know – about the callous murder of my sisters and the fact that the … er … daughter of our late sister-in-law was responsible.’
‘You said what?’ Hennessey closed her eyes in resignation. ‘Do you realize what you’ve done, Mrs Naylor? We’ve managed to keep all that information from the press so far and now you’ve blown it for us. This will be headline news in the daily newspapers this evening and it will almost certainly be on the radio and television news by lunchtime.’
Mrs Naylor tried unsuccessfully to feign innocence. ‘Well, I wasn’t to know that, was I?’ she said with a cultivated humility.
The DCI’s stare was cold and angry now.
‘Whether you were or were not is irrelevant, but you’re certainly not going to stay at your sister’s home after this,’ she said, ‘and that’s final – I won’t allow it.’
‘You’re not in a position to stop me. Elsie was my sister and I have every right to stay at her home if I wish to do so. There’s nothing you can do about it. Oh yes, and you needn’t think you can scare Georgina off by sticking a uniformed policeman outside my door – I won’t allow that!’
‘It’s a bloody crime scene,’ Roscoe blurted suddenly. ‘That means, it’s a prohibited area.’
‘No, it isn’t. I happen to know that your people have already finished there.’ The old woman climbed slowly to her feet. ‘Anyway, perhaps you would like to argue the point with my solicitor? I’m quite sure she would see things very differently.’
