Angel of Death

by Charlotte Lamb

  A man could be proud of a son like Sean. Terry would have moved mountains for him. In a way, he had, over the past ten years. He had built the business up so that his boy should have a golden future. He had never laid a finger on him, either, from the day of his birth. He did not want his son scared of him, the way Terry had feared his own father. He wanted Sean to be his buddy, to like him, enjoy being with him.

  ‘Hi, Sean – come and have a glass of champagne.’

  There was no time to think about it. Miranda knew she had to go back. The road was empty. She drove out of the layby, turning the way she had come.

  ‘Back again? Forgot something?’ the porter said in surprise, letting her in again.

  She managed a smile and hurried across the foyer to the lift. Up in the office again she glanced at the window. There wasn’t a sound over in the flat now. Sean must have gone.

  She picked up the phone and dialled the emergency number.

  ‘Police, please,’ she told the operator.

  Almost at once a calm, measured voice said, ‘Police emergency service – what is your phone number, please?’

  She plunged straight into what she had to tell them. ‘I overheard a fight in a room opposite. I think a girl is dead.’

  ‘First, can I have your phone number, please?’

  ‘What?’

  She blanked on it – what was the number for the whole building? She could only think of her office extension. ‘I . . . it . . .’ she stammered. What on earth was the firm’s main number? She knew it, of course she did. Why couldn’t she remember it now?

  The operator did not seem surprised by her dithering. ‘Try to stay calm. Let’s start with your name – what’s that?’

  ‘Miranda,’ she said, relieved to have an easy answer to give. ‘You see, I was working, doing overtime, just me – I was alone in the office, and then they arrived, I heard it all . . .’

  ‘Sorry to interrupt, but I must know your surname, Miranda.’

  ‘Oh, yes, sorry – Grey.’ She spelt it and as she did so her eye was caught by the printed heading on the office writing paper, giving the address, telephone, fax and e-mail numbers.

  Eagerly, she gave the phone number to the policeman at the other end of the line, then began again on her story. He seemed to take forever to take all the details, but eventually she was told to wait where she was, they would be there soon.

  They arrived a quarter of an hour later. A CID sergeant, in his forties, grizzled, burly, and a young woman police constable with sculptured features and short, dark, straight hair, came to her office. Others went straight to Terry’s flat. She saw them open the bathroom window and look across.

  ‘Is that the window?’ the sergeant asked her and she nodded, shivering.

  ‘Yes. Yes, that’s it.’

  The sergeant opened her window and called across to one of his colleagues. ‘OK, that’s the room.’

  They did not answer, but their expressions were odd and they immediately looked away. Miranda shivered. They seemed to be staring at something – the bath? What did someone look like when they had drowned?

  She hadn’t seen Tom afterwards, she had been too ill, but she had often thought . . . wondered . . . what he had looked like, how the sea had dealt with him.

  That was the stuff of nightmares, the thought of what the sea had done to Tom. It had kept her awake, night after night, torn between wishing she had seen him so that this everlasting question could be answered, so that it would stop beating in her head – and being glad she had not seen him dead, disfigured, terrible, as he must have been.

  One of the men in the bathroom reappeared at the window, tapped, waved, beckoning in a peremptory way.

  ‘They want us over there,’ the sergeant said unnecessarily. ‘Do you mind coming along, Miss?’

  She grew agitated, her skin icy. ‘Oh, no. No, I don’t want to see her.’ See a girl not much younger than herself, drowned, dead. Her stomach clenched in sickness. ‘Can’t I wait here?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss, I’m afraid they would want you to be there, in person, whether or not you agree to identify someone.’

  Her legs were wobbly, she could scarcely walk, and the sergeant suddenly put a protective, supportive arm around her.

  ‘You’ll be all right, Miss. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.’

  Out of the corner of her eye she caught the sideways glance of the policewoman, a cool, strangely cynical look which bothered her, because what did it mean? Did the other woman think she was play-acting to get this male sympathy? Or did she think the sergeant was enjoying himself in this traditional, this age-old way, a man comforting a woman by holding her, talking softly to her.

  The passages of the building flickered by in a strangely surreal way. She had rarely visited the private flat, the way to it from the office was circuitous and bewildering. It seemed to take ages to get there.

  ‘Wait here, Miss,’ the sergeant said at the flat’s front door. ‘Collins will stay with you.’

  The policewoman gave her a polite smile, yet Miranda got the impression she was under observation, that WPC Collins was there to stop her bolting. Maybe she was imagining it, yet she distinctly felt as if they suspected her of something.

  Did they think she was lying? But what about? Surely they didn’t suspect she, herself, had drowned the girl? The idea gave her a jolt; she felt nervous, as if she were actually guilty of something.

  The sergeant reappeared and now his face was very different. He looked at her in a worrying way, and Miranda felt panic beating in her throat. Why was he looking at her like that?

  ‘Come in now, please, Miss,’ he said with the same outward courtesy, yet with frost on every syllable.

  She was too disturbed to argue. She went into the flat and found herself facing another handful of policemen who all watched her, narrow-eyed and with distinct hostility.

  One of them said curtly, ‘Inspector Baines, Miss Grey. You reported a death, a possible murder. You claimed you had heard someone being drowned in the bathroom of this flat.’

  She nodded, swallowing convulsively.

  He waved a hand towards the bathroom door. ‘Please look for yourself, Miss.’

  Something was wrong. But what could it be? For a second she hesitated, still nervous, yet knew she was going to have to obey him. His face was too unyielding. She walked slowly forward and stood in the doorway, her eyes moving at once to the bath.

  It was empty.

  The smooth cream-coloured bath was spotless, as dry as a bone, gave no sign of having been used recently. There were no splash marks on the walls or on the carpet. The towels on the heated rail were clean, pristine, untouched. The bathroom was immaculate, as clean as a whistle.

  She looked at the inspector. ‘I don’t understand. I tell you, I heard them in here, heard splashing, flailing about. I wasn’t imagining it. He drowned the girl in this bath.’

  ‘Then where is the body?’ Inspector Baines curtly asked, and she had no answer, simply stared blankly at him.

  They took her back to the police station where she was interviewed for hours by a thin detective in a dark blue suit. When he switched on the tape machine he said into it, in a calm, quiet voice, ‘Present, Sergeant Neil Maddrell,’ and she noted his name, liking the tone he used.

  He was perfectly pleasant, but the way he watched her, spoke to her, told her that he suspected her to be crazy or malicious, or both.

  Her statement was typed; after reading it she signed it, and then she had to sit in a waiting room for another couple of hours. At last she had another interview with Sergeant Neil Maddrell.

  His voice was gentler, almost soothing. ‘Your husband, Mrs Grey, drowned three years ago – that is correct, isn’t it?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And following on that, you spent some months in hospital, in a psychiatric department. During that time you had frequent hallucinations about people drowning.’

  She saw immediately what he was s
uggesting. ‘Yes, but I was ill then. I’m OK now. I’ve been better for years. What are you trying to imply? That I imagined what happened today? That I made it all up?’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘No! It happened. I tell you, I heard the girl drowning!’ Her voice rose, out of control, shaky. She swallowed, hating the sound of herself, got up, blundering against the table, barking her shins. ‘I want to go home!’

  ‘Very well, Mrs Grey, but we would like you to come back here tomorrow. We may need to interview you again.’

  They sent her home in a police car. She had left her car at the office. The young policeman driving the car did not speak to her. She sat in the back seat, staring out of the window at passing shops, trying to make sense of everything that had happened.

  How had they found out about Tom’s death and her months in the hospital? They must have talked to Sean, and Terry, who would have told them her history.

  She had accused his son of murder. He was going to be very angry. She couldn’t blame him. He would fire her, of course – he would have to, she could see that. Not to fire her would be to appear to believe her.

  She was so tired by the time she got home that she had a shower, put on a short cotton nightshirt, made herself some toast and peanut butter, and a mug of hot chocolate, her favourite comfort supper and went to bed. Chocolate was sensuous and soothing. She began to use the survival techniques she had learnt in hospital. To switch off your head. Stop thinking. Shut out worry, fear. Just do little tasks quietly, without thinking about them.

  She sat up against banked pillows. The phone began ringing, kept on and on, but she had switched it on to the automatic answering system, so she could ignore it. She would hear the messages tomorrow. By then she might feel stronger.

  But she could not shut off her head. Her mind kept ringing up questions, doubts, uncertainties. What had really happened in that bathroom? If the girl had drowned, where was her body?

  She nibbled toast and sipped the warm, sweet milky drink, feeling the warmth of the bed seeping into her cold flesh.

  She hadn’t imagined what she saw and heard. Or had she? From the moment at the engagement party when she saw that man across the room she had been expecting a death, hadn’t she? When death has come so close it is hard to believe you have shaken it off completely. You keep expecting it.

  When she heard the screams, the splashes, in the bathroom across the courtyard, hadn’t it all seemed inevitable, unrolling like a film she had seen before, knowing exactly what was going to happen? The echoes of past experience always made it easier to believe something was happening again, especially if you have been expecting it. The mind loves patterns, echoes, finding again what it has found before.

  So, had she imagined everything that happened? For a second she doubted her sanity, then she angrily shook her head. No, no, she hadn’t imagined any of it. That girl had drowned. But where was the body?

  It made her head hurt to try to think; she kept going round and round in circles, reaching no real conclusion.

  Opening a drawer in her bedside table she hunted for a bottle of sleeping pills that she had not needed to take for over a year and had hoped she would never need to take again. There were only a few. She shook two out into her palm, swallowed them with some water, and lay down in the shadowy room, her eyes wide open, the pupils dark with images she desperately wanted to forget, her head aching.

  Had somebody drowned in that bathroom or had she dreamt the whole thing? If it had happened, where was the body? Or was she going mad again?

  Next day she was up early to go to work. She put on muted grey; a trouser suit with a white shirt and flat, sensible shoes. The outfit made her feel responsible and sensible, but it would not make any difference, she knew that. Terry would terminate her contract. It was bound to happen.

  Filled with dread, she left her apartment building and stopped in her tracks, recognising the dark red Jaguar parked outside.

  Terry’s usual smiling cheerfulness was absent. His features were drawn and grim. Her nerves jumped as he lowered his window and stared at her like an enemy.

  ‘Get in, Miranda.’

  She shivered, slowly walked round his car and got into the passenger seat. Terry started the engine again and drove off at speed, his tyres spinning on loose gravel in the road. He didn’t speak until he had turned into a quiet road beside a small local park. Pulling up beside railings through which she could see well-mown grass, trees, spreading sycamores under which children were running, laughing, All so familiar and summery.

  He turned to face her, his stare level and remote as if he didn’t know her and did not like what he saw.

  ‘You realise you’ll have to leave the firm? I couldn’t keep you on after this.’

  She lowered her head and stared at her hands, biting her lip. What was there to say? She had been expecting this ever since she really started to think last night in bed, working out the reactions that were bound to follow her accusation against Sean.

  After a pause Terry burst out, ‘Haven’t you got anything to say? My God, you’ve accused my son of murder. Murder! Why? Why did you do it? Are you off your rocker again? When I offered you a job people said I must be mad, said I was taking a terrible risk, employing someone who wasn’t all there. But I thought you were over all that. I thought you were cured. But you weren’t, were you? And now you’ve done this to my son, a mere boy, only twenty-one, his life just beginning, and you’ve accused him . . .’ He broke off, breathing roughly. ‘Well, you’ll have to go. I don’t want you around me from now on. There’s no room in my firm for crazy people. Do you understand?’

  She sighed, nodded. Yes, she understood. She didn’t blame him. Everyone knew how much Terry loved his son. Sean was the apple of his eye and he had great hopes for him. She had always admired Terry’s love for his only child and had understood how he felt. Terry had built up a successful company by a lot of hard work, he was proud of what he had achieved, with good reason, and he wanted to leave it to his son, to give Sean all the things Terry, himself, had not had when he was growing up.

  ‘I’m sorry, Terry – really. I thought about ringing you before I talked to the police, but I was in a terrible state. I had to make up my mind quickly and . . . well, I couldn’t just ignore it, could I? I had to do something fast. If you had heard her drowning . . . it was horrible, Terry . . .’

  He burst out angrily. ‘It never happened, you crazy bitch! You imagined the whole thing! And not for the first time, either. I told the police all about you. It’s not the first time you’ve claimed to hear people drowning, is it? That’s why they put you away.’

  She flinched. ‘I was ill, then, I’m not ill, now, Terry. I’m quite clear about what I heard and saw.’

  ‘Sean was with me, at home,’ he told her furiously. ‘He wasn’t in London at all. You know, I was sorry for you, after your husband’s death, that’s why I gave you the job, but now you’re trying to destroy my son. Why are you doing it?’

  She groaned. ‘I don’t want to harm Sean, I’ve always liked him, but I saw what I saw and I heard what I heard, it was not my imagination, it really happened.’

  ‘You lying bitch! My boy wouldn’t harm a fly, let alone drown a girl!’ Terry put his flushed, strained face right next to hers, his eyes stared into hers, she could see the little yellow rays around his dark pupil, the deep-set laughter lines cutting into his upper cheekbones. Terry was always laughing, smiling; that cheerfulness had carved out his flesh, made his features what they were. She had always liked his face, but suddenly she had a sickening feeling that his face was only some sort of mask, that if you peeled off the smile, the warm curves of cheek, nose, mouth, what you would have left would be something terrifying, The bony, rigid glare of an animal, primitive, predatory, with teeth that bit into you, jaws that could chew you up.

  Fear seeped into Miranda. She tried to move away but Terry held on to her shoulders and shook her violently until her head wagged back and forth on her
neck so that she began to be afraid it would fall off altogether.

  His teeth clenched, he grated, ‘Now, listen to me, and listen hard. I want you to vanish, go away, stay away – from the firm, from me and from my son, and especially from the police! And when I say I want you to do this, I’m warning you that if you don’t, you’ll regret it. Do you understand?’

  He shook her again and Miranda cried out at the pain of his grip. His long, brown fingers dug into her and hurt.

  ‘Do you understand?’

  She nodded. Through the iron railings of the park she saw sunlight and flowers and laughing children, but here in this car there was a brooding, threatening darkness. Terry’s physical bulk loomed over her. She was scared.

  ‘I understand. Please, let go of me, Terry!’

  He released her and straightened in his seat, started the engine. As he began to drive on, he said flatly, ‘Get a job somewhere a long way off. I’ll give you a good reference. And to help you with expenses, you can have three months salary on top of whatever you’re entitled to. Just so long as you drop all this nonsense about Sean.’

  ‘The police said they would want to see me again today.’

  ‘Well, tell them you realise now that you imagined it all. You had a flashback. One of your crazy dreams. You know that now and you’re sorry you gave them so much trouble.’

  He stopped the car outside her flat. ‘Don’t come anywhere near the office again. If you’ve left anything personal, I’ll have it packed up and brought here today.’

  She got out of the car, closing the door behind her. His engine flared again; she stood watching him streak off into the oncoming traffic.

  As stiffly as a wooden doll, she turned to go back into the building, then stopped as she saw someone standing on the other side of the road.

  She wasn’t even surprised to see him there. He was still haunting her. The angel of death.

  Chapter Three