by Nicci French
‘Yes.’
Baird ran his finger down the page.
‘Hunt sabotage, hunt sabotage, public order, public order, obstruction, she’s even moved on to some assault here.’
‘Good for her.’
‘But not necessarily good for you, Professor Laroue. Would you like to talk to your solicitor?’
‘No, officer.’
‘Detective Inspector.’
‘Detective Inspector.’ A smile spread across Laroue’s pale bony face and he raised his eyes to meet Baird’s gaze for the first time. ‘This is all crap. Speeches and where was I on the night of the whatever. I’m leaving now. If you want to talk to me again, make sure you’ve got something to talk to me about. Will you open the door, please, officer?’
Angeloglou looked at Baird.
‘You heard the bastard,’ said Baird. ‘Open the door for him.’
In the doorway, Laroue turned and faced the two detectives:
‘We’re going to win, you know.’
Paul Hardy said nothing at all. He sat in his long canvas overcoat, as if removing it would itself be a minor concession. Once or twice he pushed his hand through his curly brown hair. He glanced at Baird and Angeloglou in turn, but mostly he stared into space. He didn’t reply to questions or acknowledge he had even heard them.
‘Do you know about the Mackenzie murders?’
‘Where were you on the night of the seventeenth?’
‘You realize that if charges are preferred, your silence may be cited in evidence against you.’
Nothing. After several futile minutes there was a tap at the door. Angeloglou answered it. It was a young WPC.
‘Hardy’s briefs here,’ she said.
‘Show him in.’
Sian Spenser, a firm-jawed woman in her early forties, was out of breath and cross.
‘I want five minutes alone with my client.’
‘He hasn’t been accused of anything.’
‘Then what the hell is he doing here? Out. Now.’
Baird drew a deep breath and left the room, followed by Angeloglou. When Spenser brought them back into the room, Hardy was seated with his back to the door.
‘My client has nothing to say.’
‘Two people have been murdered,’ Baird said, his voice raised. ‘We have evidence to suggest that animal-rights activists were involved. Your client has been convicted of conspiracy to cause criminal damage. He was fucking lucky that he wasn’t caught with the explosives. We want to ask him some questions.’
‘Gentlemen,’ said Spenser. ‘I want my client out of this building within five minutes or I’ll file a prerogative writ.’
‘DC Angeloglou.’
‘Sir?’
‘Let it be noted for the record that Paul Michael Hardy has refused any cooperation with this inquiry.’
‘Have you quite finished?’ Spenser asked with a quizzical expression that was almost amused.
‘No, but you can take your piece of filth out with you.’
Hardy stood and moved to the door. He paused in front of Angeloglou. A thought seemed to occur to him.
‘How’s the girl?’ he asked, then walked away without waiting for an answer.
An hour later, Baird and Angeloglou were in Bill Day’s office for a debriefing. Bill Day was standing at the window looking out into the darkness.
‘Anything?’ Day asked.
‘Nothing concrete, sir,’ said Angeloglou cautiously.
‘I didn’t expect anything,’ said Baird. ‘I just wanted to get a feel for the people. Get the smell of it.’
‘And?’
‘I think it’s an avenue worth going down.’
‘What have we got?’
‘Almost nothing. The reference in the magazine, the message written at the scene.’
‘Almost nothing?’ Day asked sarcastically. ‘Scene of crime?’
Baird shook his head.
‘It’s not good. There was this huge reception a couple of days before. Hair and fibres is a total disaster. The girl’s room may be better.’
‘What about the girl?’ Day asked. ‘Have we got anywhere with her?’
Baird shook his head.
‘What are we going to do with her?’
‘She’s ready to be discharged.’
‘Is this a problem?’
‘It’s possible, just possible, mind, she may be at some risk.’
‘From these animal-shaggers?’
‘From whoever.’
‘Can they keep her in the hospital for a few more days?’
‘This may be for months, not days.’
‘What’s her mental state?’
‘Upset. Traumatic stress, that sort of thing.’
Day grunted.
‘Jesus, we got through two world wars without fucking stress counsellors. Look, Rupert, I’m not happy with all this but go ahead and find her somewhere discreet. For God’s sake, make sure it’s somewhere the press won’t find.’
‘Where?’
‘I haven’t a clue. Ask Philip Kale, he may have some names.’
Baird and Angeloglou turned to leave.
‘Oh, Rupert?’
‘Yes?’
‘Find me some bloody evidence. I’m getting nervous.’
Six
In just a couple of weeks I had managed to construct a life for myself. I had a house and a garden. The house was old with large windows and a solid, four-square shape and stood on what must have been a quayside long ago. Now it looked forlornly across marshland to the sea, half a mile away.
In the hectic few days after buying the house in November I had asked around in the estate agent and in the shop a couple of miles up the road in Lymne and found a child-minder. Linda was small and slight with a pasty complexion and seemed older than her twenty years. She lived in Lymne and though she was lacking in GCSEs, she had the two main qualifications I was interested in: a driving licence and an air of calm. When Elsie first met her she went and sat on her lap without a word, which was enough for me. At the same time I arranged for Linda’s best friend, Sally, to come two or maybe three times a week to clean the house.
The nearest primary school, St Gervase’s, is in Brask, three miles on the other side of Lymne, and I went and looked through the railings. There was a green playing field, bright murals on the wall, and I didn’t see many tears or children left to fend for themselves. So I walked into the office and filled out the form, and Elsie was accepted on the spot.
It had all seemed almost alarmingly easy: a grown-up life to go with my imminent grown-up job. A few weeks into January, when Britain was starting to get going again after Christmas and when Danny had been staying for five days and was still showing no sign at all of going again, filling my house with beer cans and my bed with warmth, I went to Stamford General Hospital to meet the deputy chief executive of the trust who administered it. He was called Geoffrey Marsh, a man of about my own age so immaculately turned out that he looked as if he was just about to present a television news programme. And his office looked big and elegant enough to double as the studio for it. I felt immediately underdressed, which must have been part of the point.
Geoffrey Marsh took me by the hand – ‘Call me Geoff, Sam’ – and told me that he was immensely enthusiastic about me and about my unit. He was convinced it was going to be a new model for patient management. He took me for a walk up staircases and along corridors to show me the empty wing that I would fill. There was almost nothing to see except how big it was. It was on the ground floor, which I liked. There was a patch of green outside a window. I could do something with that.
‘What used to be here?’ I asked.
He shook his head as if this were an unimportant detail.
‘Let’s head back to my office. We’ve got to arrange some brain-storming sessions, Sam,’ he said. He used my name like a mantra.
‘About what?’
‘About the unit.’
‘Have you read my proposal? I thought the staffi
ng and therapeutic protocols I laid out there were clear enough.’
‘I read it last night, Sam. A fascinating starting-point, and I want to assure you that it is firmly my belief that this unit, and you, will put the Stamford General Trust on the map, and my aim is that it must be as good as it can be.’
‘I’ll need to liaise with social services, of course.’
‘Yes,’ said Marsh, as if he hadn’t heard, or hadn’t wanted to hear. ‘First I want to get you together with my Human Resources Manager and the management working party for the current programme of expansion.’ We were back in his office by now. ‘I want to show you the energy-flow structure I have in mind.’ He drew a triangle. ‘Now at this apex…’ His phone rang and he answered it with a frown. ‘Really?’ he said and looked at me. ‘It’s for you. A Dr Scott.’
‘Dr Scott?’ I said in disbelief, taking the receiver. ‘Thelma, is that you?… How on earth did you find me?… Yes, of course, if it’s important. Do you want to meet in Stamford?… All right, whatever you want. It’ll be your chance to see the new style I’m living in.’ I gave her an address and the elaborate directions I already had off by heart about the third exit on the roundabout and level crossings and duck pond with no ducks in it and said goodbye. Marsh was already on another phone. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got to go. It’s urgent.’ He nodded at me and gave me a brisk wave in a pantomime of being busy. ‘I’ll ring you next week,’ I said, and he nodded in response, obviously engrossed in something else.
I drove straight home. Danny’s van was still in the drive but he wasn’t in the house and his leather jacket was no longer hanging on the hook. A few minutes later Thelma spluttered up in her old Morris Traveller. I smiled as I watched her stride across to the path, her head darting around, assessing where I’d ended up. She wore jeans and a long tweed coat. Thelma could look inelegant in anything. I didn’t find her comic, though. Nobody whose research had been supervised by Thelma Scott found her comic. I opened the door and gave her a big hug, which required some dexterity as she was getting on for a foot shorter than I was.
‘I can see the house,’ she said. ‘Where are the elms?’
‘I can take you round the back and show you the tree stumps. This is the first place the beetles came when they got off the ferry from Holland.’
‘I’m amazed,’ she said. ‘Green fields, silence, a garden. Mud.’
‘Nice, isn’t it?’
She gave a dubious shrug and walked past me into the kitchen.
‘Coffee?’ she said.
‘Make yourself at home.’
‘How’s the book going?’ she asked.
‘Fine.’
‘Bad as that? Danny still around?’
‘Yes.’
Without asking, she opened the food cupboard and removed a packet of ground coffee and some biscuits. She heaped tablespoon after tablespoon of coffee into a jug. Then she sprinkled some salt on top.
‘A pinch of salt,’ she said. ‘That’s my secret for good coffee.’
‘What’s your secret for why you’re here?’
‘I’ve been doing some work for the Home Office. We’re looking at the neurological pathology of childhood recall. It’s all to do with the capacity of small children to give evidence in criminal trials.’ She poured the coffee into two mugs with a great show of concentration. ‘One result of becoming a member of the fairly great and good is that you get tickets to things you were never able to get tickets to before.’
‘Sounds nice. Are you here to ask me to the opera?’
‘Another result is that people ring you with odd requests. Yesterday somebody asked me something about post-traumatic stress disorder, about which I know almost nothing.’
I laughed.
‘Happy is the doctor who knows that she knows nothing about post-traumatic stress.’
‘Not only that, it concerned a problem that has arisen in Stamford. I was struck by the remarkable coincidence that the best person I know in the field has just moved up the road from Stamford, so I came to see you.’
‘I’m flattered, Thelma. How can I help you?’
Thelma took a bite from a biscuit and frowned.
‘You should keep biscuits in a tin, Sam,’ she said. ‘Left in an open packet, they go soft. Like this one.’ But she finished it anyway.
‘Not if you eat the whole packet in one day.’
‘We have a nineteen-year-old girl whose parents have been murdered. She was attacked also but survived.’
‘Using my famous forensic skills, I think I can guess at the case you’re talking about. This is the murder of the pharmaceutical millionaire and his wife.’
‘Yes. Did you know him?’
‘I think I may have used his shampoo occasionally.’
‘So you know the details. Fiona Mackenzie’s life is not in any immediate danger. But she is scarcely speaking. She has refused to see anybody she knows. I understand that there are no surviving relatives in Britain, but she won’t see any family friends.’
‘You mean nobody at all? It’s none of my business, but she should be encouraged to restore some sort of connection.’
‘She allowed the family’s GP to visit her. I think that’s all.’
‘That’s a start.’
‘What would you recommend for a case such as hers?’
‘Come on, Thelma, I can’t believe you’ve come up here from London for my advice about a patient I’ve only read about in the papers. What’s going on?’
Thelma smiled and refilled her mug.
‘There’s a problem. The police consider that she is possibly still at risk from the people who murdered her parents and tried to murder her. She needs to be kept reasonably secure, and I wanted some advice about what might be best for somebody who has suffered as she has.’
‘Do you want me to see her?’
Thelma shook her head.
‘This is all unofficial. I just wanted to know what your first thoughts on the subject might be.’
‘Who’s treating her? Colin Daun, I suppose.’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s all right. Why not ask him?’
‘I’m asking you.’
‘You know what I’m going to say, Thelma. She should be in a familiar environment with family or friends.’
‘There is no family. The possibility of her staying with friends has been considered, but the matter is academic because she has rejected the idea out of hand.’
‘Well, I don’t think staying in hospital for an extended period will do her much good.’
‘It’s not practical, anyway.’ Thelma drained her coffee. ‘This is a lovely house, Sam. Large, isn’t it? And quiet.’
‘No, Thelma.’
‘I wasn’t saying…’
‘No.’
‘Just wait a moment,’ Thelma said, with a more insistent tone now. ‘This is a severely troubled girl. Let me tell you what I know about her. Then say no.’ She sat back, marshalling her thoughts. ‘Fiona Mackenzie is nineteen years old. She is academically clever, although not brilliant, and apparently she has always been eager to please and to conform. A slightly anxious girl, in other words. I gather she was quite dominated by her father, who had a very forceful personality. Since puberty, she has been somewhat overweight.’ I remembered the plump, smiling face of the girl in the news. ‘When she was seventeen she had a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized in a godawful private unit up in Scotland for almost six months. In the process she lost almost half her body-weight and plumpness became anorexia that nearly killed her.’
‘How long has she been out?’
‘She was discharged in the summer, missing the last term of school and her A levels; I think the plan was that she was going to go to a crammer this year and do them. And then she immediately spent a few months going around South America; I think her parents felt it would mark a new beginning. She’s only been back a couple of weeks, if that. It seems that the people who committed these murders didn’t expect her to be th
ere. It may be the weak link in the crime. Hence the danger she’s in and the help she needs. Aren’t you intrigued?’
‘Sorry, Thelma, the answer is no. For the last eighteen months I haven’t seen Elsie except on weekends, and as soon as she fell asleep on Saturday and Sunday I would do paperwork until two in the morning. Mainly I just remember migraines in a fog of fatigue. If you have seriously considered that I could have a traumatized young woman actually staying in my house where I have my little daughter… And staying here because she may be in danger. It’s not possible.’
Thelma bowed her head in acknowledgement, although I knew her well enough to know she wasn’t convinced.
‘How is little Elsie?’
‘Cross, insubordinate. All the usual. Just started a new school.’ I was worried by the interested, predatory look that came over Thelma’s face when I mentioned Elsie and my home. I had to get on to something else. ‘Your research sounds interesting.’
‘Mmm,’ she said, busily dunking, refusing to be so crudely drawn.
‘I’ve been overseeing some work on trauma in children which might interest you,’ I continued, stubbornly, on the same doomed track. ‘Obviously, you know that children relive past traumas in repetitive play. A team down in Kent is trying to assess the effect this has on their memory of the event.’
‘So it’s not your own research?’
‘No,’ I said with a laugh. ‘The sum total of my research on childhood memory is a mnemonic game that Elsie and I play. It’s just for fun, but I’ve always been interested in systems of organizing mental processes and this is one of the oldest. Elsie and I invented the image of a house, and we know in our minds what it looks like and we can remember things by putting them in different places in the house and then retrieving them when we want to remember them.’
Thelma looked dubious.
‘Can she manage that?’
‘Surprisingly well. When she is in a good mood we can put something on the door, on the doormat, in the kitchen, on the stairs and so on and later she can usually remember them.’
‘It sounds hard work for a five-year-old.’
‘I wouldn’t do it if she didn’t like it. She’s proud of being able to do it.’
