He said to Mohktar, ‘Please don’t inform Mrs Campbell about the release of the child’s body before we have gone through that afternoon one last time.’ He closed his eyes against the blinding sun shimmering on the tarmac outside and sighed. ‘DS Mohktar, I am aware that you probably think of me as an insensitive, foreign policeman but my job is to try and find out what happened here, even if the truth is unpalatable to Mrs Campbell and Miss Montrose. A small child of five was murdered. We owe it to her to discover why.’
A small tic moved in James Mohktar’s cheek. It made Blythe uneasy. Mohktar did not reply until they pulled into the car park near the bungalows. He turned the engine off. His movements were slow and deliberate. His eyes followed a grey monkey running sideways across the tarmac to the trees beyond, clutching a baby to her breast, one eye on the car before she disappeared into the trees.
‘I understand, Inspector.’ Mohktar scanned the rocking branches left by the monkey. ‘I do not think of you as insensitive or foreign, but as a colleague. Neither do I forget that I am a policeman or that a child was killed and no one has been punished for her death. I have a son of four and I know how it would be for me if my child were to die a lonely death…’ He turned and looked at Blythe and the inspector saw an intellect behind his anger which gave him an alarming edge. ‘But what we are discovering here is not simple, Inspector. We might suspect a possible motive, but after all this time it is going to be difficult to prove anything. As you say, Nikki Montrose having a dream or believing her sister guided her to the spot to show her what happened is not going to stand up in a court of law, lah?
‘So, look what we have in evidence. Nikki says she sees a man on the beach in her dream. A man she remembers with long legs. She tells me she follows her sister up into the trees where her sister is killed by this same man. Nikki already knows, because I told her earlier, that the pathologist believes Saffie was suffocated.
‘I think about this all night. What if you are right, Inspector, and Nikki Montrose did go out later that afternoon to look for her sister and she saw this man in the flesh, no dream. But fear or guilt maybe has blocked the memory of him out, makes her forget…’
‘Your point, Mohktar?’
‘There is something going on in Nikki’s head. Suppose she saw this man after he had killed her sister? I believe there are things she has blocked that are slowly going to…to…’
‘Unravel?’
‘Yes, unravel. Nikki could not make sense of something she saw as a small child so she dismissed it. We suspect, because it is the only motive we have, that the person she saw with her father and the death of her sister must be linked. But, Inspector…this is what I feel. Mrs Campbell and Nikki Montrose had to go on living their lives after the child died and they have to go on living them now. Would you expose the killer at expense of more pain to those two women?’
‘You mean that if it was David Montrose’s lover, then mother and daughter will have to acknowledge that not only was the person they loved gay, but that he might have indirectly contributed to the death of one of his beloved daughters?’
‘Yes, Inspector, that is what I am saying. I believe this will break their hearts all over again. A future that was possible will become impossible. Nikki Montrose has an unborn child and a man who loves her and a new life in New Zealand. Mrs Campbell has suffered two tragedies. Do we give her another sorrow to take with her into old age and loneliness? Do we do that, Inspector? Do we show her the face of her husband’s lover and the man who killed her child? Do we let him destroy her one last time?
‘Oh, then we can close the case and go back to our homes and our wives and children and say to them, Ah, yes! After all this long time, we find the child’s killer? Is this not good? Is this what we do, Inspector Blythe?’
Mohktar got out of the car without waiting for an answer. He shut the door and leant against it, his face to the sea so that the inspector could not see his anger and confusion.
Blythe sat very still as the car warmed up. Damn! Damn! Damn! He was a policeman, for God’s sake! He was a goddamned policeman…not a psychiatrist…not a bloody priest or a therapist or a…bleeding-heart leftie social worker. It was his job to protect society, to solve crimes and to bring to justice those who broke the law of the land and transgressed against the vulnerable and innocent…
He erupted out of the car and slammed the door. ‘So, Sergeant Mohktar…’ Inspector Blythe was building up his own righteous anger. ‘I’d be interested to know the answer to this, given that you’re a policeman, and from what I hear a good one. How come you can’t see that what you’ve just suggested is totally immoral? It’s a policeman’s job to put perpetrators of crime behind bars, not to go into the ethics of it one way or another, or delve into the emotional ramifications of either the victim or the villain. That is not our job. It is for others: a judge, the Samaritans…God.’
Mohktar faced him. ‘You think I am unprincipled? I am sorry, Inspector. Do you think it dishonourable to speak my mind or to have an opinion? If being a policeman means that I must cease to care for those I am trying to help, then maybe you are right, it is time I gave up being a policeman.’
He locked the car and both men turned in silence and began to walk over the sand to the house. Blythe hated to be left-footed. He was an old-fashioned, dedicated policeman who was good at his job but certainly no high-flyer. He hadn’t been to university like all the young did now and he had occasionally been called unimaginative, but that did not mean he was uncaring. The young always thought they had the moral high-ground and it pissed him off. Right was right and wrong was wrong, and it was no good blurring boundaries or getting too involved. You did your job and you moved on to the next. That’s all you could do.
All the same, he liked Mohktar and it was a pity to fall out.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘We’ll go carefully. I don’t want to upset them any more than you do, Mohktar. We’ll take it easy, go over it all one more time and then they can go and collect the child’s body and return to their lives. There’s nothing else for them here. You too can go home to your wife in Singapore. We’ll carry on our inquiries in England. I personally am determined to find out who killed this child and ensure he pays for it.’
Mohktar stopped walking. ‘Yes, Inspector, I am sure you are right to do so, but I imagine he has paid every single day of his life. I wonder, is there a difference between an evil man who kills coldly and deliberately and a possibly good man who does a terrible, evil thing, by chance, by fear, by mistake?’
‘No difference, Mohktar, no difference at all to the person who dies or the people who grieve, or the people who have to live a whole life without the person they love.’
Mohktar abruptly put out his hand. ‘I believe we have said all we can say to one another about this bad business, Inspector. I understand and respect your views. I apologise for my extreme viewpoint.’
Blythe smiled and took his hand. ‘You have nothing to apologise for, DS Mohktar. We’ll have to agree to disagree.’
‘Indeed, Sir.’ Mohktar flashed him his dazzling and beautiful teeth. ‘That is what we must do, lah?’
They moved on in silence over the sand, and as they reached the house they saw the two women on the veranda. They were bent together, deep in conversation. Fleur suddenly lifted her face to the sky and gave a small cry of such anguish that both men froze to the spot. Blythe had never heard such a sound.
James Mohktar had. It had erupted from his mother on hearing two of her sons had plummeted needlessly to their deaths as she slept.
Nikki awkwardly knelt on the floor and put her arms round her mother and they began to rock silently back and forth, back and forth, eyes closed, oblivious to the two men. Blythe turned away, choked, and began walking swiftly back the way he had come across the sand.
Mohktar, looking for a moment at the fair and dark heads pressed together, whispered before he too turned away,
‘Inshallah! What God wills.’
FORTY
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When Inspector Blythe and Detective Sergeant Mohktar arrived the following morning before lunch, something seemed to have changed, although I could not tell what it was.
I was worried about Fleur. She was frail this morning and intensely vulnerable. Neither of us had slept much. I heard her wandering about the house making camomile tea as I lay sleepless in the dark. We were talked out; there was only so much we could bear at one time.
Our roles were subtly reversing and I began to regret telling Mohktar my dream. I didn’t know how much Fleur had heard because the walls were paper-thin. I had remembered an incident that was cruelly painful to her and she had begun to be haunted by memories during the night.
When the horror of the dream began to diminish I began to distrust it as I often had before, until the next time. I no longer felt that Saffie was near me and I missed her as if somehow she might guide me. I was afraid of a little chink of memory that was beginning to open. I knew I could not control my mind and what it might disclose. At breakfast, Fleur had suddenly broken down. The thought of someone we knew killing Saffie, someone Dad knew, seemed unbearable, too terrible to contemplate. I made her go back to bed and stayed with her until she fell asleep. She managed to sleep for two hours and was having a shower when the policemen came.
‘My mother’s very upset today; she’s had a bad night,’ I said, looking at Mohktar.
‘Yes,’ he said, as if he somehow knew. ‘I am so sorry.’
‘We won’t keep you long,’ Inspector Blythe said. ‘I just want to go over that afternoon one more time.’
‘What is the point?’ I asked wearily.
Fleur came into the room. ‘It’s quite all right, Inspector. Good morning.’ She smiled at both men. ‘Let me get you both a cold drink before we begin.’
She seemed to be her old self but I noticed her hands shook and so did the two policemen.
Inspector Blythe laid out the photographs and his witness statements on the table with a plan of the government rest houses showing where each family had stayed and we sat down with our drinks. I glanced at Mohktar he seemed very quiet this morning and I missed his reassuring smile.
Blythe said gently to Mum, ‘Will you humour me one last time, Mrs Campbell?’
He took her back over the time Beatrice Addison left us to go back to her own house. They had been staying in the one nearest to us, but slightly higher up the cliff. The Durys were the other side of them on the same level and the teachers were lower down near to the beach, like us, but further along.
‘You went to your room with the twins at about two thirty. When you fell asleep, both twins were beside you?’
‘Yes.’
He turned to me. ‘Can you remember if your mother fell asleep before you?’
‘I’m not sure, but I think so.’
‘Did you and Saffie go to sleep straight away?’
‘I did, I don’t think Saffie did, or only for a while.’
‘She woke you up?’
‘Yes.’
‘It was still afternoon, not evening?’
‘Yes.’
‘How can you be sure, if the shutters were closed? If you didn’t get out of bed?’
I stared at him. ‘The room was still hot. I was still tired and did not want to be woken.’
‘OK. So tell me what you can remember. Saffie got out of bed and asked you to go outside to play with her?’
‘She…she leant over mum and shook me awake…I was cross because she woke me and I turned over. I heard her get out of bed. She went to the window and opened a shutter because it was dark. I knew she was looking for her dress.’
‘Then?’ I opened my eyes and saw Mohktar was checking my original statement.
‘She came round to my side of the bed and picked up my dress…’
‘How did you know it was your dress?’
‘I’d dropped it on the floor beside me and as she pulled it over her head I saw my torn pocket. Saffie asked me again to go outside with her and I said, “In a minute”. I heard her moving a chair to the window, but I didn’t think she would really go out without me…and I went back to sleep.’
‘When you woke again was the room cool? Was it evening?’ I closed my eyes again. Despite the overhead fan in the room it was hot and sticky. I felt odd. I thought hard. No, it was still hot that afternoon and I couldn’t find my dress and I…
‘Nikki?’
‘No, it was still warm. I got up to go into the bathroom, which wasn’t shuttered, and I found Saffie’s dress there and…I put it on…’
The sweat began to trickle down the inside of my dress. It was as if a fog that had suffocated that whole afternoon was slowly clearing. ‘I put the dress on and then I went back into the bedroom. The shutters had blown nearly closed again and it was dark. I got onto the chair and pushed back the shutters just a little to see out…’
I listened to the silence in the room and it frightened me. ‘I saw Saffie in the distance. She was running towards the rocks, chasing crabs…’
‘Anyone else on the beach?’ Blythe asked me quietly.
‘No.’
‘Then?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did you go out after Saffie?’
‘No!’
‘But you had put your dress on,’ Blythe said. ‘Did you get back into bed with your dress on? Did you leave the shutters open?’
‘I don’t know!’ I shouted. ‘I don’t know what I did next.’
‘Nikki,’ Mohktar said gently. ‘You do not say these things in your original statement.’
‘What did I say, then? What did I say?’
‘Nikki,’ Blythe said. ‘Close your eyes, concentrate. Just tell us what you remember now.’
‘I can’t, it’s all a blur. You can’t expect me to remember after all this time…’
Fleur had been watching my face in silence and she suddenly leant forward. ‘Nikki, you’re trying to avoid saying that you tried to wake me that afternoon to tell me that Saffie had gone out, but you couldn’t wake me, could you?’
Fleur always knew when I was lying or avoiding the truth. The tears sprang to my eyes.
‘Did you try to wake me?’ Her voice was just a breath.
‘No! I didn’t,’ I lied. ‘I know…I know I should have done.’
I looked at my hands, then up at Mohktar again and his eyes were not those of a policeman. I kept my eyes on his face and told the truth that was surfacing. ‘I remember lying on top of the bed, waiting for Saffie to come back and for the house to wake up. I might have slept for a bit. Then I got bored. I got out of the bedroom window…I went a little way down the beach…but I still couldn’t see Saffie, then…’
‘Then, Nikki?’ Mohktar’s voice was soft.
‘I saw a man in the distance. He was walking up and down, up and down by the sea…as if he did not know which way to go. The sun was going down. He was tall and he made a shadow on the sand…like a giant.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I ran…I came back inside,’ I whispered. ‘I climbed quickly back through the window.’
‘What were you afraid of, Nikki? The man was far away across the beach, wasn’t he?’
I nodded. I was shaking and felt sick.
‘What made you afraid?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What did you do then?’
‘I don’t know. I remember going into the bathroom and playing with a clockwork dolphin in the basin. I remember hearing the amah come into the bedroom with tea for Mum. I came out, but she was still asleep…so I went to my own room.’
‘It was evening by then?’
‘Yes. The sun was huge and bright red on top of the sea.’
Blythe looked at his notes. ‘But Nikki, your bedroom was shuttered. How did you know where the sun was?’
‘I must have gone out onto the veranda…’ I heard my voice strange and high. ‘I think I went out…it’s hard to remember if it was then or later that…’
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bsp; ‘What?’ Mohktar held my eyes.
I looked away. I was cold and clammy in the hot room as the sweat cooled on my skin and memory came flooding back.
I got up abruptly and went outside to feel the sun on my limbs. I wanted the heat to penetrate my bones. I walked down the steps and across the sand away from the policemen towards the sea.
I could hear children laughing and chasing each other, and Indian amahs ran about with towels, the gold on their wrists and teeth catching the sunlight.
‘Lazy Daddy sleeping in the afternoon! We’d better not tell Mummy, had we? Let’s tuck you in, darling, you’ve got a fever…there we are. I’m going to get you a cold drink and a sponge to cool you down…back in a minute.’
‘Daddy, who’s that man in your…’
‘Just someone I work with…’
‘Is he lazy too?’
‘He is not very well, like you, so Daddy lent him his bed for a little while to rest. I don’t think we’d better tell mummy had we…’
“Cos it’s her bed too?’
‘That’s right. So is it our secret, little peapod, yours and mine?’
I nod. But daddy’s eyes aren’t laughing, they look frightened and the sweat is running down his forehead and down his chest and his hands as he tucks me in tremble and I don’t like this secret and I don’t like the smell of Daddy. I don’t like the smell of his fear and of something else which repels me, but I don’t understand why.
I walked to the sea’s edge and I stood letting the water lap against my ankles. I wanted Jack. I wanted to go home and see my wonderful garden. I was afraid of my memories and how far they would take me.
I knew Mohktar would come and he did. He took his shoes and socks off and stood beside me in the water. After a while, he said, ‘You tried to wake your mother more than once that afternoon, didn’t you, Nikki?’
I nodded. Then I said, ‘I can’t remember if it was after people began looking for Saffie or before Mum got up, but I know I went outside and sat on the veranda on a chair. That sun seemed huge and strange to me. It filled the whole sky. I knew something bad had happened, really bad. I felt…numb and frightened, but I didn’t know why and I didn’t know how to explain to Mum how I felt…in the very depths of me.’
The Hour Before Dawn Page 24
