The Devil's Chair

by Priscilla Masters

  ‘You were married at the time?’

  Mansfield nodded, shame-faced, and tried to justify his actions. ‘Tracy, well, she’s a looker, you know. She just about swept me off my feet. I fell in love with her instantly. Daisy, too. She is such a sweet little thing.’ His glance dropped to the baby doll and his face sagged even more.

  ‘And your wife at the time?’

  Mansfield gave a rueful smile and they knew his romance had cost him dear. ‘Karen?’ He sucked in a deep breath. ‘Took it bad. In fact, bloody livid, she was. Called Tracy all sorts of names – a whore and …’ His eyes flickered over them. ‘I don’t want to say stuff …’ His face looked sad, ‘… but she was really angry. Her and the boys, too.’

  Talith felt a prickling of interest. ‘And is your wife still angry?’

  Mansfield shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I don’t have much to do with her now.’

  ‘And your sons?’

  ‘Them neither.’ Both officers knew that his apparent disinterest was no more than bravado. Mansfield paused and dropped the facade. ‘Unfortunately.’ His eyes looked down at the floor and a look of pain contorted his features. ‘I didn’t think it’d cost me the boys too,’ he said with endearing honesty, ‘but they’ve stuck by their mum and, well, there isn’t anything I can do. Not really.’

  ‘How old are they?’ Lara Tinsley asked.

  ‘Fifteen and thirteen. I thought as they got older and got into girls themselves that they’d maybe understand that I’d been swept off my feet but …’ His voice trailed away miserably but neither of the two police felt much sympathy for him. It was a common enough scenario.

  Talith continued. ‘Tell me about your relationship with Tracy.’

  As though he had erased the accident from his memory, Neil Mansfield smiled. It turned him into a handsome man, a charmer, one who would be attractive to females. His eyes were warm and friendly. He sat up straight and unconsciously sucked his stomach in. ‘She were sparky,’ he said. ‘Full of fun. Great to be with.’

  ‘But you had a lot of arguments?’

  ‘Yeah. Trace were very jealous, you see. At first she was worried I’d go back to Karen and the boys. She’d shout and scream and threaten all sorts of things.’ His face crumpled into a careworn expression, aging twenty years in an instant. And now you could see what Mansfield would look like when he was an old man. Forlorn. Lost. Someone who had taken the wrong road all his life. He rubbed his forehead with his fingertips as though trying to erase the lines of concern and unhappiness, then he looked up, haunted. ‘It were …’ He peered into the air. Began again. ‘It was … it was hard.’ Again he tried to explain further. ‘Harder than I’d thought.’

  Now they did feel sorry for him, but they had a job to do.

  ‘And Saturday night?’

  ‘Was pretty typical,’ Mansfield admitted. ‘Trace was in a bad mood. She’d wanted to go out for a curry but we couldn’t get a babysitter. Then she …’ His honest brown eyes flickered around the room and now looked evasive. ‘So we had to stay in. I wanted to watch football. The Shrewsbury match was on Sky Sports.’ He licked his lips. ‘Then Trace starts up. I’d been doing a job for a girl. A woman,’ he quickly corrected.

  Talith licked the end of his pencil. He sensed quarry nearby. ‘Her name?’

  ‘Lucy.’

  Talith looked up expectantly. ‘Surname?’

  ‘Stanstead. Lucy Stanstead. She lives over in Norbury and I’d been doing some decorating for her. It was taking a bit of time. Longer than I’d thought. Trace wasn’t happy about it.’ A hint of mischief softened his features. ‘It was another tricky job.’

  And now both officers recognized him as a serial flirt, a man who loved women – a man who would probably never manage to stay faithful to just one woman but would flit from one to another without any lasting fidelity.

  Lara faced him, feeling the bitter taste of hostility. Why were women drawn to these shallow philanderers? Her own husband had had a brief affair. They had ‘patched up’ their marriage. But what remained was just that, a patched garment. Not quite the same perfect piece of clothing but a poor consolation with an ugly, obtrusive repair that would fool nobody. Her voice was an oil slick as she asked her next question. ‘And was there any truth in Tracy’s suspicions?’

  The evasive look was back. Lara Tinsley had the feeling that Neil Mansfield was about to lie and badly. Any respect or sympathy she might have had for him gurgled down the plughole.

  And perhaps Mansfield sensed it because his answer was guarded. ‘Not really,’ he tried, biting his lip and avoiding looking at her.

  WPC Tinsley gave Talith a quick glance. Not really? What the hell does that mean?

  Talith raised his eyebrows and asked the next question. ‘Is this – this Lucy girl – is she married?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Talith and Lara Tinsley exchanged another glance.

  Mansfield filled in, awkwardly, ‘Her husband’s in the navy. He’s away a lot.’

  ‘I see,’ Talith said heavily.

  And the two police officers thought, So Tracy was probably right.

  ‘Go on,’ Talith prompted.

  Mansfield continued to look uncomfortable. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I can’t remember everything. It’s all a bit hazy. See?’

  Oh, yes. They see all right.

  ‘Trace got in a really bad mood. She was shouting. I think … I think Daisy had wet the bed or something and she started crying. Trace went on up to her. She used to get really cross if Daisy wet the bed and she’d drunk a few glasses of wine by then so she were a bit—’

  He looked up. ‘A bit tetchy, if you know what I mean.’ He gave a cynical snort.

  ‘Trace was already a bit fed up with Daisy because she’d sort of stopped us going out. After a bit Daisy started screaming.’

  Shock still froze his face at the memory. ‘Then Trace came down. She were shoutin’ at me. She said somethin’ about goin’ out, somethin’ about goin’ to Wanda’s.’ He sniffed but made a pathetic attempt at jauntiness. ‘It were just the drink talking,’ he said.

  Lara Tinsley spoke. ‘Had she threatened to leave you before?’

  Mansfield looked ashamed. ‘Every day,’ he said. He swallowed before continuing. ‘I told her she was too pissed to drive. She told me to mind my own business so I had another cider.’

  The officers exchanged glances. Great idea.

  ‘Next thing I knew, she were comin’ down the stairs holdin’ Daisy.’ He passed his hand over his forehead again and looked bleak. ‘I just thought she were bringin’ her down to comfort her but she’d wrapped her up in her dressing gown.’

  Talith looked up. ‘Daisy was in a dressing gown?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘There’s been no mention of that before.’ He made a note in his pad. ‘What colour was it?’ He could guess the answer.

  ‘Pink.’

  Talith had been right. Had the situation not been so tragic he would have felt smug, given himself a mental pat on the back for reading it so astutely. As it was he simply felt sick. Where was that small pink dressing gown now? Was it stained with blood? Wrapping up the cold corpse of a four-year-old?

  Neil looked mystified by such interest in the colour of a child’s garment but after the briefest of puzzled pauses he shrugged, sniffed again and continued on with his blurred version of events.

  ‘I thought Trace was probably going to give Daisy a bit of a cuddle but she walked straight past the door.’ His eyes drifted towards the doorway as though he half expected to see mother and child still there, waiting for him to notice them. But the hallway yawned empty. There was just a blank wall. Mansfield shook his head in disappointment and continued with his story. ‘Next thing I knew I could hear the car startin’ up. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe she’d drive. I went outside and shouted at her not to be so stupid but she started screamin’ at me to leave her alone.’ His eyes were wide and confused now. ‘I weren’t touching her but I thought th
e police’d be comin’ in a minute if we carried on like that. The neighbours, you know. They’ve done it before – reported us for public disturbance. The police have warned us a couple of times and they always believe the woman so I didn’t argue. I just shut up. I didn’t think she’d go anyway. I thought it was all a bluff. And if she did take the car I never thought for a minute she’d be so stupid as to go up the Burway.’ He heaved a great, sad sigh. ‘But, as we know, she did.’ His face crumpled. ‘Mad cow.’ He blew out an angry breath. ‘Anyway, she drove off, little Daisy in the back, probably crying, in the car seat. I went to call the police and then I thought no. She was well over the limit. She’d be banned. She’d probably lose her job.’

  Talith gave Lara Tinsley a swift glance and picked up on the hostility that was hardening her face. He knew his colleague’s story only too well. She had been open and quite public, firstly furious with her husband and his ‘fancy woman’, then grieving, and lastly suspicious. It had been the suspicion which had remained. Back then he’d witnessed all the emotion which he could see reflected in her face now. He felt he should be the one to continue with the questions.

  ‘Where was she heading?’ he asked, pen hovering over the pad, ready to scribble.

  ‘Wanda’s, I think,’ Mansfield said, dislike sharpening his voice. ‘Wanda Stefano. She’s a troublemaker. Fed Trace all sorts of lies about me.’

  ‘Like what?’ Lara asked with the smoothness of a cappuccino.

  ‘Stuff,’ Mansfield said grumpily. ‘Not a word of truth in it.’

  ‘What sort of stuff?’ asked Talith.

  Mansfield shook his head, terrier-like. ‘Crap,’ he said sharply. ‘Crap like I’d made a pass at her.’ He looked up, mischief in his eyes. ‘I didn’t fancy her,’ he said simply. ‘It was all in her imagination.’

  And both Talith and Tinsley made a mental note. That’s another call we have to make.

  ‘Where does Tracy work?’ Tinsley realized this was an angle of Tracy Walsh’s life they had not explored.

  ‘At the Long Mynd Hotel. She does a bit of cleaning and sometimes waits in their restaurant.’

  Tinsley felt that some response was called for. ‘Right.’

  After a polite pause Neil continued, his voice changing now to become self-pitying and indulgent: ‘I didn’t imagine any of this would happen, believe me. I just thought that Trace would see some sense after all. I thought she was just being dramatic, that she was just tryin’ to frighten me and would drive round the block and come back again, tail between her legs, little Daisy in her arms.’ He folded his arms. ‘I thought she was calling my bluff.’

  Lara Tinsley looked closely at him. Was there was something insincere – something not quite right not only about his words but in the way he was telling the story? As though they worked independently of his brain, Mansfield’s fingers fumbled across the sofa and found the doll. They closed around the soft neck, squeezing the pliable face until the features distorted and the glass eyes bulged. As if he was short-sighted he moved the doll nearer to his face and stared at it as though he had never quite focused on it before. An expression of grief saddened his face but there was anger too as he breathed in, long and slow, as though he could divine the whereabouts of the child merely by breathing in the air that surrounded her doll. It was a form of divining that felt almost pagan. He may not have been her father, but Neil obviously cared very much about little Daisy.

  His eyes also on the doll, Talith spoke. ‘Did you in any way blame Daisy for coming between you and Tracy? For preventing you having a social life?’

  Mansfield screwed up his face. ‘No,’ he said initially, before adding, ‘it isn’t her fault. She is just a little girl.’

  Tinsley and Talith exchanged yet another glance.

  Talith pressed on. ‘Tell me a bit more about your relationship with little Daisy.’ Mansfield didn’t answer straight away but, as though he was invoking the child herself, he caressed the doll in the crook of the sofa, giving it a sentimental, almost maternal glance before crossing the room to the mantelpiece and picking up a framed black and white photograph in an ornate silver frame. A little girl peeped shyly around a door. Pretty little milk teeth, curly dark hair. Big, big eyes. It was an artistic photograph.

  ‘A friend took that,’ Mansfield said proudly. ‘Thought she was pretty enough to be a model.’

  ‘Do you mind if we keep this?’ Tinsley asked. ‘We’ll let you have it back, of course, when we’ve taken a copy.’

  Mansfield looked reluctant but he handed it over. ‘You asked about the relationship between me and little Daisy?’ He turned around to face them. ‘It’s good,’ he said, returning to the sofa. ‘She’s a sweet little thing and it isn’t as though I’d come between her and her real dad. He’d gone when she was just a few months old. She’s never even known him. He’d never been interested in her. I’m the only dad she’s really had.’

  He looked suddenly agitated. ‘I don’t know what to do now,’ he appealed. ‘Whether to stay here in case Daisy turns up or to go the hospital and see Tracy.’

  ‘I think you should go to the hospital,’ Lara Tinsley said gently, not wanting to point out the patently obvious – that if the child was still missing thirty-six hours after a serious car accident in a remote and exposed area which had all but killed her mother, it was kind of unlikely that she’d simply come walking back in here unscathed. Mansfield didn’t seem to realize that ‘little Daisy’ was probably dead, or at the very least seriously injured. Or she could have been abducted in whatever state by their mystery caller. And what could his or her motive possibly be for concealing a dead, injured or at the very least traumatized child? Hardly benevolent. But Tinsley didn’t point any of this out to Neil Mansfield.

  ‘We need a list of the clothes Daisy was wearing,’ she said.

  Mansfield looked resigned. ‘Pyjamas,’ he said. ‘They’re new. Tesco’s.’

  Tinsley waited, pen poised.

  ‘White with …’ Mansfield searched his memory. ‘… teddy bears on, I think,’ he said. ‘Yellow teddy bears.’

  ‘Slippers?’

  ‘I think so,’ Mansfield said dubiously.

  ‘Pink as well?’

  Mansfield smiled ruefully and nodded.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘She was holding her little toy. She’s always sucking on it.’

  ‘Do you have a picture of her holding it?’

  Mansfield reached for his mobile phone, scrolled through a couple of pictures then passed it across to the two officers. On the screen was a picture of Daisy, tears on her cheek, her mouth full of what looked like a soft toy with a bushy tail. It looked identical to the Jellycat squirrel they’d found near the crash site in Carding Mill Valley.

  Tinsley handed the phone back to Mansfield, who was watching her with guarded wariness.

  With a quick glance and a nod from Talith, Tinsley affirmed what must have been going through Mansfield’s mind. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We found one like it near the car. We’ll be testing it for Daisy’s DNA to ascertain whether it’s hers.’

  Mansfield nodded, his face a sickly green.

  ‘There is one other thing,’ Talith said quickly. ‘This is a recording of the nine-nine-nine call made to report the accident. Can you listen to it, please, and tell me whether you recognize the voice.’

  ‘There’s a car gorn orf the Burway … Wrecked … Someone’s inside ’urt … A woman.’

  Neil Mansfield listened intently but his face remained baffled. Slowly he shook his head, mystified.

  With a quick glance at her colleague, Lara Tinsley stood up. ‘Is there any chance we can take a look around Daisy’s room?’

  Mansfield jerked his head towards the staircase. ‘Be my guest,’ he said with cold sarcasm.

  The staircase was narrow and carpeted in pale beige which had more than a few wine stains decorating it. Daisy’s room was patently the one at the top, on the left, the one with a Barbie doll beckoning them in. It was nea
tly decorated (presumably by Neil) in lemon wallpaper and a teddy bears’ picnic frieze with a small single bed in its centre. The window was open, the bedclothes still thrown back, a damp patch on the bottom sheet bearing testimony to Mansfield’s story. Toys and books were scattered around randomly, some clothes – a small pair of jeans, a flowered dress and a cardigan. Shoes but no slippers. On the wall was a poster of a Disney princess and hanging on the back of the door was a Snow White outfit, red and blue bodice, bouffant yellow skirt and plastic crown. It conjured up a picture of a very typical little princess, everyone’s beautiful, innocent child. They turned away from it and headed back down the stairs. There was nothing to be gained here; they had what they needed. ‘If there is any news of Daisy we’ll be in touch, Mr Mansfield. We have your mobile and landline?’

  Mansfield nodded, his face haunted. ‘What do you think’s happened to her?’ he asked. Answers, unspoken, floated around the room, insubstantial as bubbles blown from a wand: Daisy is dead, Daisy is not dead. Daisy is hurt. Daisy is OK. Daisy is lost. She will be found. Someone has abducted her. Daisy is frightened but Daisy is alive.

  Talith gave it to him straight, with a hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘The truth is, Neil, we don’t know.’

  Perhaps the true awfulness of the situation was just beginning to penetrate. Or maybe not. A spasm of revulsion jerked Neil’s body. ‘I won’t ever forgive Tracy for this,’ he announced. ‘If harm’s come to that little girl it’s finished between us.’ His eyes bulged. ‘Finished. She can do what she likes with ’erself. That don’t matter. But to put little Daisy through all that … It’s unforgiveable. Besides, all them rows, all that drinkin’… I thought everything’d be great,’ he bleated. ‘Not like this. It’s not how I thought it would be.’

  ‘Nothing ever is,’ Tinsley muttered under her breath, the self-pity nauseating both officers equally.

  There was nothing to be gained by continuing the conversation. Tinsley and Talith moved towards the door. As they opened it, Lara Tinsley couldn’t resist turning to confront him. ‘And would you say you’re happy now, Mr Mansfield?’ she challenged. ‘Was it all worth it? Eh?’