Just my luck.
‘Luna Glassbrook has made a statement this morning that contradicts what you told us in the early hours,’ Sharples went on. ‘She thinks there may well have been a woman involved in the abduction and remembers thinking at one point that you’d come to rescue her, because she distinctly smelled a perfume that reminded her of you.’
‘I don’t wear perfume,’ I said.
‘Soap, hairspray, whatever,’ said Sharples.
‘She’s a scared child and someone is planting ideas in her head.’
‘Needless to say, the Glassbrooks want you out of their house with immediate effect,’ said Brown. ‘Your things have been collected and are waiting for you downstairs. We’ve retrieved the keys of the car you were driving.’
The knots in my stomach were getting tighter. My head was telling me to keep fighting; my instincts were to run and hide.
The phone began to ring.
‘That’ll be all, Lovelady.’ Rushton looked relieved as he grabbed the receiver.
Sharples and Brown ushered me out through the door and all eyes in the room turned to us. On my desk was a cardboard box. Someone had cleared away my personal stuff and I would have to carry it out of here, collect the rest of my worldly goods in Reception and …
I had nowhere to go, and no means of getting there. I wasn’t even sure I had the money to get home, and in any case, I’d been told not to leave town.
It would take me twenty steps to get from the door of Rushton’s office to the one leading out into the corridor and I was going to be watched every second of the way. I had to pass Tom’s desk to get to my own. He was the only person in the room looking down.
I stopped. ‘Anything to say?’ I asked the top of his head.
He looked up and his eyes were hard as marble. ‘Don’t make it worse, Florence,’ he said.
If I stayed in this room much longer, there was a danger I’d be sick. I crossed to my desk and picked up the box. It was pathetically light, but when I glanced inside, I saw my police-box paperweight was broken into several pieces.
Brown was holding the door open. I walked through it and felt the room sighing with relief behind me. Picking up my pace, I reached the stairs and went down. In Reception, a young woman in a purple miniskirt and matching high-heeled boots, her hair a tall, blonde beehive, was sitting, smoking. She stood up when she saw me. She was maybe a year or two older than I: her make-up was a little heavy for first thing in the morning, but she was an attractive woman.
‘Eileen,’ said the desk sergeant, in a warning voice. From the back room other constables appeared. The one at the front was grinning.
She strode up to me and jabbed her cigarette towards my face. I had to dodge backwards to avoid it.
‘You, whore, can stay the hell away from my husband or I will have you.’
‘Eileen.’ The sergeant had come out from behind the counter. ‘Leave her,’ he said. ‘She’s not worth it.’
My things, two suitcases, another cardboard box and several plastic carrier bags were piled up by the door. There was no way I could carry them out of the station by myself, and yet everyone was determined to watch me doing so. Then a constable in the doorway was pushed rudely to one side and two newcomers strode into Reception like players onto a stage.
‘There she is,’ said Daphne. ‘Darling girl, the car’s outside. Let me take that.’ She pulled the box from my grasp as I stared at her stupidly.
‘Are these your things?’ Avril looked down at the pile by the door. ‘Well, I’m sure the sergeant will help us to the car.’ She turned to face him. ‘We’re blocking the superintendent’s car, Bilko, so in your own time.’
The sergeant didn’t move, but he nodded to one of the watching constables, who picked up my suitcases. I grabbed the box, Avril took the carriers, and two minutes later, I was in their Triumph Herald, top down, speeding out of town towards their house.
Avril, who had to get to her offices in town, dropped us off at the door and roared away. Daphne, who didn’t have to be at the library until ten o’clock, steered me into the kitchen, made tea and flicked on the immersion heater so that I could have a bath.
‘They hate me,’ I said. ‘All of them.’
Daphne’s movements around the kitchen were abrupt and noisy. She banged down mugs, clattered spoons onto the worktop. When she pulled open the door of the fridge, I was afraid it might fall off its hinges.
‘It’s stupid,’ I went on, thinking that she hated me too and was just being a bit more civilised about it. ‘They have no evidence, but they’ve all leaped at the idea of my guilt. It’s as though they want to believe. As though they’ve been waiting for the slightest excuse.’
I could see Daphne getting angrier by the second. She’d spilled tea all over the counter because her hands had been shaking when she’d tried to fill the pot.
‘I’m so sorry.’ I dropped my head into my hands. I couldn’t look at another angry, accusing face a second longer. ‘I’ll go when I’ve had my tea. I’ll call a taxi. Thank you for picking me up.’
With a howl of rage, Daphne raised a milk jug high into the air and then slammed it onto the tiled floor. It shattered. We stared at each other.
‘You are going nowhere until that bunch of morons issue you a public apology,’ she spat at me. ‘Until we find those poor children and string the monster that’s hurting them up by his pathetic, shrivelled-up testicles. And that was Avril’s favourite jug.’
She pulled out the chair next to mine, sat down and burst into noisy tears.
‘To be clear,’ I said, in a small voice, ‘is it me you’re angry with?’
She sniffed, wiped her nose with the back of her cardigan sleeve and reached out a hand. It clasped mine and I had my answer.
‘Tell me something,’ she said, when her sobs had subsided. ‘That rather magnificent blonde baggage at the police station, the one who called you a whore. Was she getting her wires crossed?’
Tom’s wife, Eileen. Oh, to turn the clock back twenty-four hours.
‘I see.’ Daphne gave me a weak smile. ‘Well, we all make mistakes, dear, especially when we’re young. I hope he was worth it.’
‘He wasn’t,’ I said. ‘He’s turned on me as well. I don’t get it, Daphne. I’ve tried to be as brave as they are, and as clever as I know how, and to work as hard as I can, and I thought they were starting to like me.’
‘My darling, be thankful we’re not in the Dark Ages. They’d be building a stake by now and dipping torches into tar.’
I stared at her.
‘That’s the patriarchy for you. It’s what men do when they’re afraid and they feel helpless and out of control. They turn on the outsider, usually a woman, and they blame her for everything that’s going wrong. You’ve become the witch, my dear.’
I thought of the Pendle witches. Accused of murder, sentenced and hanged, when they’d almost certainly been guilty of nothing more than a bit of low-key extortion. Up till now, they’d been characters from a storybook. Suddenly, they felt very real.
‘They’re going to charge me with murder,’ I told her.
‘Oh, poppycock. You know better than that. Do they have a scrap of evidence?’
I shook my head. They didn’t, did they? No, of course they didn’t.
‘But you may have to be prepared for some ugly rumours flying around town. Superintendent Rushton will be under huge pressure to catch this man. While attention is focused on you, he gets a reprieve.’
‘I thought he liked me.’
Daphne gave a bitter laugh. ‘I’m sure he does, but he likes himself more. And his livelihood. And the respect of his peers at the golf club. He will throw you to the lions if it means he gets out of this unscathed.’
She got up and looked out of the window into the sky. ‘Dear, I have to get to work. Will you be OK for a while?’
I nodded.
‘Have a bath, unpack your things, go to bed for a couple of hours and sit in the garden.’ She s
miled at me and glanced down. ‘Do your nails. That varnish is badly chipped. Avril and I will be home shortly after five and we can talk then about what we can do.’
‘You can’t do anything. I don’t want you getting into trouble.’
She leaned down towards me. ‘Those dimwits got their knickers in a twist over a smart girl they think is a witch.’ She winked at me. ‘Wait till they find themselves dealing with some real ones.’
49
For the next couple of hours, I did what my friend the witch had told me to. I had a bath, ate some toast and marmalade, put my clothes away and redid my nails. I lay on lavender-scented sheets and tried to sleep. After half an hour, I gave up. I brushed my hair and left it loose, then found my best dress, an apricot shift with a white Peter Pan collar, for no other reason than I thought Daphne and Avril would approve, and caught the number 18 into town.
Monday was market day in Sabden and the town centre was busy. As I climbed down from the bus and made my way across the terminal and towards the main road, I had the sense of people watching me. I didn’t think too much of it at first. When your hair is the brightest shade of ginger imaginable, when it’s long and very curly, you get used to being stared at.
My first stop was the Over Sabden Building Society. I’d been suspended without pay and I would have to offer Avril and Daphne something for my keep. I had a little under a hundred pounds saved up. I withdrew half of it. I had to queue for a while, and when I stepped outside, fifteen minutes later, I felt an immediate stab of alarm.
Word of my fall from grace had got round very quickly. At the foot of the steps, leaning against the railings that kept pedestrians from falling into the building’s cellar void, even stretching a little way back along the pavement, people were waiting for me. They were mainly women, but quite a few elderly men, and some younger men who weren’t on the morning shift at the factories.
They were obviously waiting for me. They were all staring at me.
I knew none of them. A quick glance around told me that. Also that some of those at the back, the men in unnecessary raincoats and garish sports jackets, were press. One of them had a large black camera. He held it loose, pointing down, but his eyes were fixed on me.
Instinct told me to brazen it out, to pretend they weren’t there, walk down the steps and out onto the pavement. They weren’t exactly blocking my way. But some crabbed curiosity held me back. They seemed to be waiting for something, and oddly, I wanted to see what it was.
A dozen yards away, at the edge of the market, a stallholder was talking to a thin man in a black jacket. A paper bag was passed from one to the other.
Then a woman, middle-aged and heavyset, was walking quickly towards me. Her permed hair gleamed in the sun, and her chins bounced as she strode across the narrow road, over the pavement and up the steps. She was breathing heavily by the time she reached me, and a gleam of sweat was visible on her upper lip.
She pointed a finger in my face, the second time that morning such a thing had happened. ‘Do you know where my Susan is?’ she demanded.
Tricky one. Technically, I did, if Tom’s guess proved right, and I had a feeling it was going to.
‘No, I don’t,’ I said. ‘I’m very sorry for your loss.’
‘How do you know she’s dead?’ said a woman holding the handle of a large pram, and the mean, thin smile on her lips said she was taking a spiteful pleasure in getting one over on me.
Mrs Duxbury stabbed a finger at me again, this time hitting me on the chest. ‘If you’ve hurt my Susan …’ She left the threat hanging.
I felt something strike my shoulder. Someone had thrown an egg at me. I could see it out of the corner of my eye, yellow and glutinous, running down the front of my dress, but I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of looking at it.
Not far from the egg stall was someone I recognised. The bobby on the beat, watching while pretending not to.
I raised my voice. ‘PC Roberts, get over here now and deal with these people or I will report you to the chief constable.’
I had no idea how to report someone to the chief constable, but the bluff worked. He sauntered over and the crowd began to drift away, even Susan Duxbury’s mum.
‘If you don’t want trouble, stay out of town,’ Roberts said in my ear, when he was close enough so that only I would hear him. ‘In fact, why not leave it altogether?’
I stood my ground and glared. ‘I will remember you,’ I told him, and saw with satisfaction the flicker of alarm in his eyes.
So that was what it felt like, to be a witch.
I wanted nothing more than to flee the town centre, but I was giving nobody the satisfaction of seeing me run, so I walked round the market to a stall on the other side, where they might not have seen the confrontation, and at a butcher’s stall bought three Barnsley chops. When I turned away from the stall, it was to find Marlene Labaddee standing in my way. For a second her brown eyes glared into mine.
‘Stand still,’ she ordered, and then she raised her hands towards me. One caught hold of my shoulder; the other began dabbing a damp cloth at the bodice of my dress.
‘Why shouldn’t we put Patsy back in the ground?’ I asked her.
The pressure of her hand increased.
‘You called me, two weeks ago, at the station. It was very late and I was the only one left in the building. You said we shouldn’t put Patsy’s body back in the ground, that she wouldn’t rest.’
‘That’s the worst of it off,’ she said.
‘I still struggle to understand the Lancashire accent much of the time, so I’ve got into the habit of listening very carefully, especially on the phone. People round here don’t say “burn” the way you do. I realised when we were in the steam room, when you said you had to leave, that you were burning up.’
‘Soak it when you get home,’ she said. ‘Use bicarbonate of soda. Egg can stain.’
‘Why do you want us to burn Patsy’s body? Why will she not rest?’
Her lips moved soundlessly for a second, and then she turned and walked away.
I went back to the bus terminal. The bus I caught, though, didn’t take me back to Avril and Daphne’s house, but rather up to St Wilfred’s.
‘Dwane,’ I called, when I found him pushing a lawnmower around the few patches of flat grass in the churchyard. ‘Do you have a moment?’
‘Heard you’d been sacked,’ he said, leaning on the handle.
‘Something like that,’ I agreed. ‘I need to ask you a big favour.’
‘Will you be leaving? Going back to … wherever it is you come from?’
He looked quite downcast.
‘So, about this favour,’ I said. ‘It would be really helpful if I could spend some time in your shed, looking at your model of the town.’
His eyes gleamed. ‘You really like—’
I didn’t have time to be coy. Besides, I was a witch now, and witches weren’t scrupulous when it came to getting what they wanted. ‘Dwane, I do like small things, and I like you. You’re clever and talented and helpful. I think your model will help me work something out. Only the thing is, and I know this is a lot to ask, I need to be alone.’
‘You want me to let you in and leave you?’
‘Yes. I do my best thinking when I’m on my own. I’ll be really careful. Do you mind?’
Without another word, he left the mower in the middle of the grass and set off back towards his house.
Dwane’s model town was exactly as we’d left it the day before. The coloured plastic figures were all still in place. He was hovering in the doorway and I turned to smile at him.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
He nodded and left the shed.
I’d misremembered yesterday morning. I thought back to the map at the station and moved three of the figures. Then I pulled over Dwane’s work stool and sat on it. It raised me high enough to be able to see the whole town.
Sometimes in order to see a pattern, we need to see what breaks it.
Luna’s movements on the night she was taken bore no resemblance at all to those of the other three. They’d all said goodbye to their friends at various points close to the town centre and then headed towards their homes.
Two out of three children had been seen at the railway station. Another had been spotted on the road leading up to the bus depot. And yet I was pretty certain none of them had left town.
Luna, though, had vanished from over a mile away, on the outskirts of town, forced into the back of a white van by a masked figure. And she’d been allowed to live. Someone had made sure she lived.
Luna had vanished during a full moon. The others when the moon was at its darkest. Luna had been raped, and yet there was no evidence that Patsy had been sexually molested. The only sensible conclusion was that Luna wasn’t part of this. Or if she was, that she was serving a different purpose entirely.
It was obvious. Luna wasn’t the fourth victim. Luna had never been intended to die. Luna was about throwing us off the scent.
Throwing me off the scent.
Dwane walked me to the bus stop and waited ten minutes until the bus arrived. ‘I know you didn’t do it,’ he said, as the bus pulled up. ‘You’ve still got one friend.’
When I got back to Avril and Daphne’s house, it was to see my bike leaning against the frame of the front porch. The last I’d seen of it was outside the back door of the Glassbrook house, at least two miles away on the other side of town.
Maybe I had more than one friend, after all.
That night, after dinner, Daphne spent the evening arranging a meeting of her moon coven. She didn’t tell me, but as I came barefoot down the stairs to collect a glass of water, I overheard her on the phone.
‘Tomorrow at moonrise,’ she was saying. ‘We can’t leave it any later: we’re already two days past full. I’m hoping to get the full thirteen. Goodness knows the poor girl needs all the help she can get.’
As I came down the last flight, where she saw me and ended the conversation in a hurry, I had half a mind to volunteer my services. After all, what did I have to lose?
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