by Jo Bannister
He looked at Will. ‘I tried to contact you then. This was months after you split up. I wasn’t sure if you’d want to know, but I had to do something – she was tearing herself apart. But I couldn’t find you. She insisted she didn’t want to see you again. She burned her address book in front of me so I couldn’t call you, or her parents, or anyone else I thought might help. She’d done what I wanted – cut herself off from everything that might distract her from her task. I felt as if I’d sharpened the knife for her to cut her throat with.’
‘We should have got together.’ Tariq’s velvet eyes were deep with regret. ‘I felt the same way – I didn’t know what to do with her. She’d had some good deals – sponsorships, endorsements, a bit of modelling, a TV ad. Then all at once she’d no more interest in it. It was something she’d fit in if she’d nothing better to do. She seemed to think the clients were lucky to get her. Worse than that, she let them see it.
‘People who’re spending good money won’t stand for that. When she started losing matches as well as her manners they dropped her. I put off making a decision – hoping for a miracle I guess. Even if she never recovered her form I could have done something for her if only she’d helped. She was an attractive girl and there was that spark of fire that meant you never forgot her. She could have been a property long after she was too slow to reach tennis-balls. But she’d dug herself a hole and wouldn’t stop digging, and the time came that I had to let her go.’
‘The time never came that I let her go,’ Larry retorted fiercely. ‘I coached her as long as she’d come. When she stopped coming I went and got her. She was still young, she could have got back. If I could have found out what the problem was I could have got her through it. But she quit. She wouldn’t see me, wouldn’t even talk on the phone. Dear God,’ he laughed despairingly, ‘I even wrote to her, but she never replied.
‘By then she hadn’t played in public for six months. She hadn’t won anything worth having for more than a year. Maybe she was right and there was nothing left to salvage. But it shouldn’t have ended like that – as if what she’d achieved, what I’d helped her do, was worth nothing. She was a great tennis-player, but the way she was that last year people couldn’t wait to forget. She didn’t deserve that. She didn’t throw it away by choice. Maybe nothing showed up but I’ll always believe she was ill.’
‘Why did you stop coaching?’ asked Miriam.
His eyes spat at her. ‘I didn’t. I still coach.’
‘No,’ she said patiently, ‘you give lessons at a tennis club. I might call that coaching but until recently you wouldn’t have done.’
Defeated, Larry bowed his head. ‘It’s a living. Why? – because I never want the responsibility for someone like Cathy again. She was a once-in-a-lifetime chance and I blew it. I don’t know how but I blew it, and that failure cost her her life. I won’t risk that happening ever again.’
Tessa broke the silence of respect, of remembrance, in the crassest way imaginable. ‘Any abnormalities in the brain would have been noted at the autopsy.’
‘She drove into a river,’ Larry said in his teeth. ‘They wouldn’t puzzle too long over the cause of death.’
‘No,’ she agreed, not realizing they were arguing. The intelligent hazel eyes were thoughtful. ‘But they’d have spotted a brain tumour of any size. Were you at the inquest? Did they find anything interesting?’
‘Stop it,’ said Will.
‘I have a copy of the post-mortem report,’ Miriam said quietly. ‘There was no tumour.’
Tessa nodded. ‘Anyway, a lesion severe enough to cause personality changes a year earlier would probably have killed her.’
‘Please, stop it.’
‘Unless she had treatment and I presume you’d know if she had.’ She twitched a little smile. ‘I mean, it’s hard not to notice when someone turns up with a row of stitches where their fringe used to be.’
‘God damn you,’ cried Will, coming to his feet, ‘stop this! You’ve no right to talk about her like that. You don’t even remember her! You’ve no right talking about her as if she was – dead meat.’
‘But she is dead, isn’t she?’ Tessa said reasonably. ‘That’s why we’re here – because Cathy Beacham is dead. Her life fell apart and she killed herself. Her father blames the people she knew but you all feel she was on self-destruct for more than a year. Larry suspects a neurological problem; I’m just saying it’s unlikely. If there had been it wouldn’t have gone undetected so long.’
‘Why does it matter to you?’ Sheelagh wasn’t upset in the way Will was but she resented this clinical, even cynical intrusion into a grief Tessa clearly didn’t share.
Tessa spread long-fingered hands, not understanding the hostility she’d provoked. ‘It doesn’t, except that it’s why I’m stuck here. I’m sorry I can’t remember her. I agree, it’s likely that I treated her, and maybe her father thinks I should have made a better job of it. Hell, maybe I should – maybe there were symptoms I missed, maybe I sent her away with a scrip for sleeping pills when what she needed was referring to a psychiatrist. I don’t know. All I’m saying is, if it was a physical problem it would’ve shown up at the autopsy. What’s your problem with that?’
Miriam said quietly, ‘This is very personal to some of these people. Try to consider their feelings.’ She asked Larry, ‘Did she start drinking because she stopped winning or vice versa?’
‘She never drank when I knew her,’ the coach said emphatically. ‘Not even socially, not even when the trouble began. It wasn’t a cause. It wasn’t even a direct result. Maybe it was a last resort, after everything was gone.’
‘Then what was the beginning?’ demanded Tariq. ‘She went into the nineties in sparkling form. She was playing well, she was playing the sponsors like a violin, she was still heading for the stars. What changed? What happened to alter her whole attitude?’
‘You think I haven’t asked myself that?’ snarled Larry. ‘Or that something could turn her inside out and I wouldn’t notice? I noticed when she missed an hour’s sleep, when she got a tax demand, when she ran out of coffee for God’s sake! For five years I lived for that girl. I knew her better than she knew herself. I knew what she was capable of, and what she needed.
‘Then suddenly I didn’t know her any more. I don’t know what happened. It was as if someone had stolen my golden girl and left a changeling in her place: a coarse replica, aggression instead of drive, temperament instead of talent. She was almost literally a different girl. I don’t know where my Cathy went. Try as I did, and I tried till my heart was broken, I never found her.’
Miriam stood up, just touching his shoulder in mute sympathy as she passed behind him. She sighed. ‘It’s getting late. It’s been a funny old day but maybe not a wasted one. Even if it took deceit to get you here, you all had reason to come and it seems to me that dealing with what happened to Cathy has been good for you. Maybe we’ll talk some more in the morning.’ She smiled. ‘Unless we get up and find the lift’s back on, in which case I don’t expect I’ll see you for dust.’
No one argued. They were exhausted, in the brain and in the bone, heads and bodies aching with the effort of exploring their own and one another’s psyches. The fact that the day had taken an unexpected turn actually added little to that burden. It was the searching that had worn them out, not what they had found.
Mrs Venables laid out supper on the dining table, but most people took a drink and some biscuits to the privacy of their rooms where they could be alone with their own thoughts and not bludgeoned by each other’s.
Tessa was sitting on the edge of her bed sipping cocoa when she heard Sheelagh’s voice, sharp with concern, from next door: ‘Now what?’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘My key’s gone.’ Tessa’s door was ajar and Sheelagh came in, her face scrubbed, her dark hair spread out in a cloud from brushing. ‘The key’s gone from my door – I can’t lock the damn thing.’
Tessa looked at her own door. �
��I haven’t one either. Don’t let it worry you. I doubt anyone’s got the energy for a midnight ramble.’
Sheelagh scowled. Without the warpaint she looked like a well-developed adolescent, until you saw her eyes. They were a soldier’s eyes, crystal hard. She wasn’t afraid of anyone sleepwalking in her direction: that she could deal with. She was worried by the implications. ‘That’s not the point. It was there earlier – Larry locked my door to keep that boy inside – and now it’s gone. Somebody took it. I imagine the same person took yours.’
Tessa refused to share her concern. ‘Perhaps the boy grabbed it as he ran.’
‘So not only can I not lock the little bleeder out but he can lock me in!’ snorted Sheelagh. ‘Terrif.’
Tiredness made the other woman irritable. ‘Wedge a chair under the handle if it bothers you.’
‘Damn right it bothers me,’ snapped Sheelagh, tossing the black hair fiercely. ‘It’d bother you if you’d take the time to think about it. Yes, my key could have been grabbed in blind panic – he’d just enough wit to turn it and not enough to let it go. But yours makes it deliberate. He’s been back while we were in the conference room and made sure we can’t protect ourselves while we sleep. Tessa, that’s terrifying! He must mean to come back tonight. How the hell can we sleep knowing that?’
‘Speaking personally,’ yawned Tessa, ‘like a log. I’m dead beat – it’ll take more than an idiot boy who’s scared of his own shadow to keep me awake. Look, there are nine of us within earshot. What can happen? If you have a bad dream you’ll wake up to find eight people peering under your bed.’
Sheelagh was only a little reassured. ‘Maybe I should tell Miriam.’
‘What’s she going to do – sit up with you? Be your age, Sheelagh. It’s odd, it’s not a disaster.’
‘Say that tomorrow,’ muttered Sheelagh darkly, returning to her room, ‘when you wake up and find you’ve been murdered in your sleep.’
Tessa was not murdered in her sleep that night. Neither was Sheelagh; but if she’d followed her instincts and reported her discovery Miriam might not have got her head beaten in with a rolling-pin.
Chapter Fourteen
Richard dreamed. In the core of himself where he knew he was dreaming he felt a pang of disappointment. Extraordinary things had happened during the long day past, and some were good and some bad but together they’d changed his view of the last fifteen months; not just the events but his role in them. Whatever her reasons, whether she was only the instrument of a bitter man’s vendetta or had become committed to the group as individuals, Miriam had identified the source of his dysfunction and set him on the path to resolving it. Finding himself back in the old nightmare was a cruel blow.
It was a Bosnian village, its name unpronounceable for lack of vowels. That much was true. But the nightmare sent him driving up the road from Broko an hour early so instead of discovering the aftermath of atrocity he stumbled on the slaughter in progress. The trench scratched in the dirt of the main street. The last dozen inhabitants, too old, too young, too sick or too stubborn to run, lying face down over it, bound like rolls of carpet. Two young soldiers working steadily along the line, lifting each head by a handful of hair, slitting throats. The trench running with bright blood that an hour later would be congealed to a black paste.
In reality he’d been sick, his heart raging at the inhumanity but his more pragmatic stomach rebelling at the smell. In his dream he wasn’t sick so much as bewildered. He found the soldiers’ commander and asked why.
The man misunderstood. ‘This is how we kill sheep. It is an efficient way to kill many sheep.’
Richard shook his head. ‘Not why this way. Why kill them at all?’
‘They are different to us.’
‘So?’
The officer shrugged. ‘If God had meant us to live together He would not have invented hatred.’
Richard never found the man who killed old women like sheep but he’d conducted enough interviews to know what he’d have said; what they’d both have said. They would have been professional about it, the soldier talking about orders and the need to achieve objectives, the reporter swallowing his outrage long enough to do his job.
But in the dream he was bound by neither propriety nor fear of the consequences. There was a gun on the desk. He picked it up. ‘And if He’d meant you to butcher each other and the rest of the world not to care, He’d never have invented television.’ Then he shot the officer in the heart. Not once, but again and again until the gun was empty.
The shots echoed in his head long after the scene had faded. Just as he realized the noise was real, someone hammering at his door, it stopped. The door flew open, his light was snapped on and Tariq was shaking the sleep out of him. ‘Get dressed and come with me.’
‘What’s happening?’
‘Quickly.’
He pulled on his clothes and followed the big man – the dove-grey suit replaced by charcoal denims with the label prominently displayed – along the corridor. Tariq tapped softly on one of the women’s doors and it opened.
Miriam Graves lay supine in the middle of her carpet, bulky and still as a beached whale, her round face white in the electric light. Tessa was bent over her, stethoscope applied to the broad bosom where the jacket and shirt were unbuttoned.
Richard’s breath whistled in his throat. ‘Is she dead?’
The doctor straightened up. ‘No. But she is concussed. Lift her on to the bed for me.’
Joe was there too, ashen, a tartan dressing-gown over his pyjamas. He went to help but Tariq moved him aside. She was a big woman; lifting her was a young man’s job.
While Tessa continued her examination Richard asked, ‘What happened? Did she fall?’
Tariq directed his attention to an object on the floor. ‘Sure. She was just contemplating a little late-night baking when she tripped and fell head first on her rolling-pin.’
Richard stared. ‘You mean – someone hit her?’
‘It didn’t go off while she was cleaning it.’
‘Who? When? Why?’
‘Don’t know who,’ Tariq said laconically. ‘Or when, except that it was probably some time ago – it’s after three, everyone else was in bed but she’s still dressed. Why depends on who.’
‘Who found her?’
‘I did.’ Joe had sat down and some of his colour was returning. ‘I couldn’t sleep, I was hungry – I went to the kitchen to see how we were fixed for biscuits. When I saw the light under her door I stuck my head in to say it was only me prowling about, and saw her—’ He jerked his head at where the carpet was spotted with blood. ‘When I couldn’t rouse her I went for Tessa.’
‘How is she?’
Tessa let the injured woman’s eyelids close. ‘It’s a bad knock. She won’t wake up for a while, but I think she’ll be all right. If there’s a fracture it’s not depressed. There are worse things you can be hit with than a wooden rolling-pin – harder things, things with corners. I think she’ll wake up with a headache later today and feel a good bit better tomorrow.’
Richard was trying to think through the cloying mists of the nightmare. ‘I suppose we’d better wake everyone up, ask them—’
‘What?’ asked Tariq, one eyebrow arching. ‘If they brained anyone tonight? They’ll say no. Most of them, maybe all of them, will be telling the truth. If it was one of us, there’s been plenty of time for him or her to calm down and wash their hands. Someone might confess in a fit of remorse, but if she’s been lying there for three hours the urge has probably passed by now.’
‘We have to do something!’
‘We are doing,’ said Tessa calmly. ‘We’re caring for her. And in fact Mrs Venables is getting everyone up. Until we know what happened we ought to be awake.’
As she spoke the others began arriving at the open door, in silence, faces pale and drawn. They looked into the room, saw the doctor tending the woman on the bed, didn’t come in. Tariq repeated what he knew.
‘So
someone finally voted with their fists,’ said Larry. ‘Well, it wasn’t me.’
Tariq’s gaze was level. ‘No one said it was.’
‘No. But it’s me keeps losing his temper, me who wanted to leave and couldn’t, me who threatened her in front of everyone. I want it on record that it was someone else who laid her out with a blunt instrument.’
The note of flippancy in his voice grated but it may only have been his reaction to stress. Tariq nodded. ‘She’ll tell us what happened when she wakes up.’
‘She’ll be all right then?’
‘Oh, I think so,’ said Tessa from the bed. ‘Concussion is never trivial but her vital signs are pretty good. I think she’ll wake up when she’s ready.’
‘Thank God for that,’ said Tariq fervently. ‘I don’t know how we’d set about getting help for her.’
They had worried about their isolation before, but Miriam had promised no one would get hurt and by and large they’d believed her. But she’d been wrong; and if they couldn’t get out when they wanted to, they also couldn’t get out if they needed to.
Sheelagh pushed through the gathering in the corridor and felt behind the door. Her voice was barbed with meaning. ‘There’s no key.’ Seeing their puzzlement she spelt it out. ‘They’ve all gone. When we first arrived there were keys in the bedroom doors; now there aren’t. Miriam was hurt because somebody took her key.’
‘Who?’
Fear as much as impatience made her snap. ‘That crazy bloody boy, of course! The one who was fooling around in my underwear and Tariq’s briefcase. And the kitchen. I presume that’s where the rolling-pin came from?’
Mrs Venables nodded. ‘He could have taken it. I hadn’t missed it, but then I wasn’t looking for it.’
