Child's Play

by Alison Taylor

  ‘She’s an odd woman. Considering how rich she is, she’s got absolutely no side to her at all. It’s like her feet are literally screwed into the ground.’

  ‘She simply has her priorities straight.’

  Nona followed him up the steps. ‘By the way, sir, I’ve packed up Imogen’s things and done a list, and I took her room apart in case I missed something. I moved the bed, and looked behind the shelves and cupboard as well as the radiator.’ Trotting after him into the little office, she added, ‘I even stripped the bedding and shook out the pillowcases and duvet cover.’ As he sat down, she leaned against the doorpost. ‘I put her jewellery in the safe here. There’s quite a bit of it, including a platinum and diamond tennis bracelet that must have cost a bomb, but I’m not sure if I found the particular necklace she was talking about in her letter. It would’ve helped to know what I was looking for,’ she went on. ‘I mean, is it an actual necklace? If it is, it could be a match for the bracelet. On the other hand it could be a pendant. She had a couple of those and both looked as if they could’ve cost what Sukie paid out.’

  ‘If that’s in fact what Sukie bought. It could have been a present for her mother.’

  ‘Mr Tuttle was going to ask Sukie’s father about it.’

  ‘We’ll leave him to do that, then,’ McKenna replied. ‘It’s the least of our worries at the moment.’

  ‘What if Imogen’s parents bring it up?’ Nona argued. ‘They’re due here any time, aren’t they?’

  ‘They don’t know she’s lost it,’ he told her irritably. ‘They haven’t seen her letter yet.’ Then he smiled an apology. ‘I’m sorry, Nona, I’m very tired. You will be, too, if you don’t get off home for a few hours’ sleep. You’ve a long night ahead of you.’

  She swallowed. ‘What d’you mean, sir?’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you? You’re babysitting Daisy. I want you back at eight to relieve Janet.’

  *

  McKenna was finishing his lunch when Jack telephoned from the police station.

  ‘I thought you were going to see Avril O’Connor.’

  ‘She wasn’t in, so I came back here,’ Jack said. ‘I’ll try again later.’

  ‘Are you making any progress?’ McKenna asked, lighting a cigarette.

  ‘What do you think?’ Jack replied. Nancy’s standing on her rights, with the aid of her brief, and Charlotte’s collapsed in a fit of hysterics, also aided and abetted by her brief.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, because Imogen took a swipe at her yesterday, Nancy reckons she’s the victim of an assault. She wants to know what we intend to do about it and the solicitor’s simply jumped on the bandwagon, as they do.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with the bullying they indulge in?’

  ‘A great deal, apparently,’ Jack said. ‘They claim they’re just protecting themselves from other bullies. Therefore we can’t pick on them to the exclusion of these alleged other bullies. Needless to say,’ he went on mordantly, ‘Nancy and Charlotte reckon it’d be more than their lives are worth to give us names, so they’ve got us over a very big barrel.’

  ‘You’re being conned.’

  ‘Probably, but I’ve no intention of risking an official complaint, which would be the next step if I don’t back off.’ Jack paused. ‘That said, I’m not releasing them just yet; they can sweat a bit longer.’

  ‘Daisy Podmore claims they threatened to slash Sukie’s horse,’ McKenna told him. ‘She’s also come up with a nasty tale about lesbian rape.’ Quickly he relayed the gist of Daisy’s interview. ‘So, if she’s telling the truth, Torrance has to be prime suspect in Sukie’s murder.’

  After a long silence, Jack said, ‘I’m extremely dubious. The Torrance I’ve seen just doesn’t fit the picture.’

  ‘But in actual fact we know very little about her,’ McKenna pointed out. ‘Everyone has a secret face.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Jack conceded, ‘but she nowhere near fits the profile either.’

  ‘We just cobbled together some ideas, not a proper profile. And at its best, profiling is far from being an exact science.’

  Jack sighed. ‘It makes no odds, anyway. You’ve got to proceed on the assumption. When do you intend to question her?’

  ‘She won’t be fit for interview under caution before tomorrow at the earliest. And I haven’t taken Daisy’s formal statement yet — I can’t until the protocols are sorted out. Her parents are abroad, so we’ll have to get her a responsible adult as well as a solicitor.’

  ‘Where are her parents?’

  ‘Italy, according to Miss Knight. She’s going to ring their hotel. It’s very civil of her to find the time,’ McKenna commented acidly. ‘She spent most of the morning in a staff meeting and now I’m told she’s burning up the telephone lines trying to get Nicholls to change his mind about sacking Scott.’ After a moment he added, ‘But not about Matron, apparently. She must be expendable.’ He pulled on the cigarette, then coughed. ‘Why don’t you,’ he went on when he had caught his breath, ‘challenge Nancy and Charlotte about their threat to slash Purdey?’

  ‘Is that wise?’ asked Jack. ‘As soon as they set foot back in the school, they’ll be out looking for whoever grassed them up and taking reprisals when they find out.’

  ‘I’ve got Daisy under guard in one of the staff flats.’

  ‘Yes, but Nancy and her cohorts could have given most of the school a thrashing before they realise who snitched. It’s too risky.’

  ‘You’re not thinking straight,’ McKenna said rather testily. ‘They already know someone ratted on them.’

  ‘Needless to say, Imogen’s suicide note was common knowledge before she was even carted off to the hospital,’ Jack said. ‘They assumed it was her. I didn’t see any need to correct them. What I could do, though,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘is have another go at them about Tuesday night, because if I remember correctly, none of the sixth form has an alibi, not even to the extent of being able to alibi each other. Nor did any of them apart from Torrance — if she was telling Dewi the truth, that is — remember hearing anything out of the ordinary.’

  ‘Suppose,’ McKenna began, fidgeting with a pen, ‘Sukie was lured out, by someone who knew about the threat to Purdey, on the pretext that it was about to be carried out?’

  ‘Sounds good,’ Jack agreed. ‘So who knew, apart from Daisy?’ Without waiting for a response, he went on, ‘Who else has made allegations about Torrance? Who else has suggested Torrance had a motive for killing Sukie? Unless Alice is being very economical with the truth, she only knows what Daisy told her.’ He paused. ‘And as Daisy likes seeing people thrown off horses, she’s an ideal candidate for the sabotaged saddle. Not only that, she fits the profile beautifully.’

  ‘Martha Rathbone overheard Grace Blackwell accuse Daisy of not knowing herself when she’s lying, just before Alice and Daisy started knocking hell out of each other. There’s real tension between those girls, but whether it’s relevant to us is another matter.’ McKenna stopped speaking, then said forcefully, ‘This investigation gets more labyrinthine by the minute. It’s one person’s word against another’s from start to finish — not only that, we have to re-evaluate every word as soon as it’s uttered and every nuance as soon as it suggests itself, and I doubt if we’ll he any the wiser once Daisy and Torrance have been formally questioned.’

  ‘Eifion might still be able to lift fingerprints off Sukie’s shirt,’ Jack reminded him. ‘And there’s the partial footprint on her jeans. But I wouldn’t advise,’ he went on, ‘waiting on the outcome. There’s a horrible sense of danger in the school, but from where or whom, I’ve no idea. I just don’t think the run of disasters is quite done with yet.’

  ‘I hope you’re wrong,’ McKenna said. ‘Still, Daisy’s out of harm’s way, or, depending on your point of view, temporarily neutralised. Alice is, too. As for the rest, we’ve taken every possible precaution.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’ Jack asked quietly. ‘Aside from the fact th
at we may be looking in entirely the wrong direction, I’ve been thinking about the pressure Nicholls was putting on for us to pack up and leave. It occurred to me he might have got rid of Scott and Matron because he knows they cooked up Sukie’s murder between them and, following the well-trodden path, decided to let them disappear into “retirement”, the way bent coppers slither off the hook.’

  ‘Neither possibility had escaped me. That’s why I’ve still got fifteen per cent of the force’s manpower placed strategically around the place, why Matron’s confined to her flat and why Freya Scott isn’t allowed to set foot over any threshold except her own.’ McKenna was about to disconnect the call when he remembered something. ‘By the way, Eifion faxed a name and telephone number for you.’

  ‘That’s for you, as a matter of fact,’ Jack replied. ‘The old cottage by the pier is coming up for sale privately and that’s the contact, if you’re interested.’

  McKenna made several more telephone calls, first to establish that Imogen’s parents had arrived at the hospital, then to find out if Berkshire police wanted him to interview them about the allegations in her letter. He was asked to hold fire until Imogen was fit to give a preliminary statement.

  Next, with great reluctance, he called John Melville, for a description of the jewellery Sukie had purchased the previous Christmas.

  ‘Yes, I saw it,’ John agreed. ‘But I’m afraid I have only the vaguest recollection of what it looked like.’ His voice was clipped, even brittle, and he sounded completely sober. ‘I’m sure you’ll understand, Superintendent, why that is. As it was the festive season, I was bound to be more drunk than usual, wasn’t I?’

  Ignoring the barb, McKenna asked, ‘But it was a gift for Imogen?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘And it was a necklace?’

  ‘It was a gemstone drop on a chain and that’s as much as I can tell you.’

  McKenna smoked another cigarette while he mulled over the various factors, mostly imaginary, that were sure to thwart any plans to buy the cottage by the pier. In the end he reached a compromise with himself: unless there was sufficient garden space for his cats he would go no further and thus block disappointment before it was able to frustrate him. He called the number and made an appointment to see the cottage on Monday evening, then set about wondering how to repair the rift with the pathologist, immensely touched by the man’s refusal to stop caring, even in the face of wilful and unreasonable hostility.

  18

  When Jack recommenced interviewing Nancy, he only succeeded in broaching the issue of the threat to slash Purdey before the solicitor intervened, demanding to know if the horse had in fact been harmed and wanting sight of the written statement of complaint, from the horse’s owner or from any other interested party, that related to the alleged threat. ‘And I mean “interested” in the legal sense of the word,’ the solicitor added.

  While Nancy’s smirk grew, Jack was forced to admit defeat on both counts and, soon, compelled to release both girls. Charlotte left the police station with her hair in disarray, her clothes limp with perspiration and her face blotched with tears and streaked with mascara. Nancy, dry-eyed and cool, strutted out ahead of her, flame-red hair glowing and green eyes hard with triumph. She sat imperiously in the back of the police car that was to return them to school, making an obscene gesture as it drove from the yard.

  Avril O’Connor was barely less hostile when she opened her front door to his summons. ‘The neighbours said you’d been hammering on the door earlier,’ she told him accusingly. ‘And last night young Dewi Prys was here, looking for our Sean.’

  ‘Right on both counts,’ Jack replied with a tired smile.

  ‘If you’re wanting our Sean again,’ Avril said meaningfully, leaning on the jamb as if to bar his entry, ‘he isn’t in. He’s gone to Tesco to do my shopping, like he does every Saturday. He’s a good son.’

  ‘I’m sure he is,’ agreed Jack.

  Narrowing her eyes, Avril peered up at him. ‘Have you spoken to Paula yet?’

  ‘Not personally, but one of my colleagues has.’

  ‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘Is our Sean still under suspicion?’

  ‘No.’ Jack smiled again. ‘He never was, really.’

  Avril sagged against the frame. ‘You’d best come in, then,’ she muttered, sniffing. Her eyes brimmed with tears.

  Just like the other morning, he followed as she padded into the kitchen. Today she was baking. A tray of buns in paper cases was ready to go into the oven and a wooden spoon stood on end in a big Cornish-ware bowl where she was mixing fruit and dough for a bara brith. ‘Sit down,’ she invited, then turned her back to open the oven door. ‘Cup of tea?’ she asked, picking up the bun tray.

  ‘If it’s not too much bother.’

  Without replying, she put the tray in the oven and filled the kettle before returning to the table. She picked up the spoon. ‘If you’ve talked to Paula,’ she said, stirring the fruit mix, ‘why d’you want to see our Sean again?’

  ‘I don’t. I thought you might have things to tell me you wouldn’t feel right saying in front of Sean.’

  ‘Did you, now?’ she commented. ‘What sort of things would those be, then?’

  Jack shrugged. ‘Women’s stuff, I suppose,’ he said vaguely.

  Avril smiled. ‘That’ll cover at least half the world’s business, won’t it?’ She moved two lined loaf tins within reach and began spooning the mixture from bowl to tins.

  Jack could smell the spices and tea in which the fruit had been steeped. ‘Personal stuff, then,’ he said, watching her level the loaves with the back of the spoon. Next, from a small white bowl filled with thick, clear liquid, she brushed on glaze. ‘Women notice an awful lot,’ he added encouragingly.

  She opened the oven, checked the buns, then placed the loaves on the shelf beneath them. Once that was done, she rinsed her hands at the sink and turned her attention to making tea, saying nothing.

  ‘If I were you,’ he remarked, ‘I wouldn’t feel obliged by any sense of loyalty to the school. Dr Scott said she’d sacked you because your work wasn’t up to scratch, but I’ve only got to look around your house to see she was giving me a cock-and-bull story. You’ve obviously got very high standards of cleanliness and so on.’

  ‘Stop flannelling,’ Avril said. ‘I like housework. I always have. It’s satisfying. A clean, tidy house and regular meals make life easier. You can’t relax with dirt and clutter at every turn and your stomach rumbling with hunger, can you?’ She lifted the teapot lid to stir the brew. ‘I’ve always thought these women’s libbers got it all wrong.’

  ‘You mean they chucked out the baby along with the bathwater?’

  ‘Something like that.’ She nodded. ‘They’d probably call me every name under the sun for looking after our Sean the way I do as well. But you see, it’s all about give and take. I do what I’m good at, he does what he’s good at, and when you work out who’s actually done what, his share’s often bigger than mine.’

  ‘You’ll miss him an awful lot when he gets married, won’t you?’

  Avril poured out the tea. Putting milk and sugar within Jack’s reach, she said, ‘He was barely a week old when I realised I’d be spending the next twenty years —perhaps more — rearing him just so he could one day up sticks and leave home. But that’s what having children means, doesn’t it?’ She smiled. ‘Anyway, when I’m not cooking man-size meals every day I might even lose a bit of weight. I certainly won’t take so much trouble just for myself.’

  ‘It’s still sad,’ Jack said.

  She nodded. ‘It’s still sad, but at least I know I’ve done my very best for him, which is more than Dr Skinflint’ll ever be able to say she’s done for any of those girls at the Hermitage.’ Picking up her tea, she gazed at him over the rim of the mug. ‘Did she really call me a slattern?’

  He was about to say not, but changed his mind. ‘I suppose she did, in so many words.’

  ‘She wants to be careful
,’ Avril commented. ‘I might even ring up and remind her what slander means.’

  ‘Did she ever give you a written warning about your work or anything like that?’

  ‘Did she heck!’ Avril said disparagingly. ‘She didn’t have cause. I told you yesterday, she got rid of most of us to save money and it wasn’t much of a surprise when she did, either. We’d seen the way the wind was blowing when she sacked the two assistant matrons. They were both qualified nurses, so they cost her. Instead, she took on two young chits just out of school with barely a brain between them.’ After a moment she added, ‘Matron told her at the time she was storing up trouble, but Dr Skinflint wouldn’t have it. Told Matron to mind her own nose and get on with her work, or else she’d be needing another job, too.’

  ‘Bit of a bully, is she?’ Jack suggested.

  Avril eyed him up and down. ‘You mean to say you haven’t found out yet? What have you been doing since Thursday, then?’

  ‘We’ve heard there’s some bullying among the girls,’ he replied.

  ‘Only “some”?’ she commented tartly. ‘Still, I suppose people have different ideas of what “some” means, don’t they?’

  ‘Did you come across much of it?’

  ‘I’d hear about it more often than actually see it,’ she told him, ‘and it wouldn’t be fair to say they were all at it. But then, you don’t need many to make life hell for everybody. Maybe six or seven of them ruled the roost and that was it. When they left, the next lot moved up — there was always another group in waiting, so to speak.’

  ‘What sort of things did they do?’

  ‘What bullies usually do.’ She rose, rather quickly, and went to the cooker and when she opened the oven door the smell made Jack’s mouth water. She removed the tray of buns and put them on the counter, leaving the loaves of bara brith to bake a while longer, and standing with her back to him, began laying out the buns on a cooling rack. ‘Plus taking advantage of what opportunities came their way because of being in a girls’ school,’ she added slowly. ‘I dare say you’ve heard stories about what goes on in women’s prisons, so you’ll know women can be very vicious with each other in a sexual way.’