‘There’s no “perhaps” about it,’ snapped Stratton, remembering that Tynan had done something very similar. ‘Are you incapable of thinking for yourself?’
‘I felt that it wasn’t my decision to take.’
Stratton sighed. ‘You mean that you weren’t prepared to do it without Roth’s approval.’
‘No,’ said Miss Kirkland quietly, ‘I was not.’
‘But circumstances have changed, have they? Or have you asked him?’
‘No, Inspector, I haven’t. There hasn’t been time. But given what’s just happened, I should have thought my reason for telling you was self-evident.’
You mean Michael’s important but the other two aren’t, thought Stratton. ‘How did she kill them?’ he asked.
Miss Kirkland stared at him as if she didn’t quite understand the question, then said, ‘As I told you, I didn’t hear everything she said, but I heard her say that because she was hysterical – shouting. Mr Roth calmed her down, and then she spoke more quietly, so I couldn’t pick up the words.’
‘All right, then, why?’
Miss Kirkland blinked.
‘Why did she kill them?’ asked Stratton. ‘After all, she knew that Michael wasn’t Billy, didn’t she? She had no reason to kill them. The moment Mrs Aylett arrived at the Foundation asking about her son, Michael could have told her when his birthday was. And if Mrs Aylett still didn’t believe it, Ananda could have produced his birth certificate.’
‘But then—’ Miss Kirkland stopped abruptly, eyes flicking about the room and hands twisting in her lap.
‘But then …?’ prompted Stratton. When no answer was forthcoming, he said, ‘But then the birth certificate would have revealed the name of Michael’s father, wouldn’t it?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Miss Kirkland. ‘I have never seen it. There was no reason … Mr Roth said—’
‘Never mind what Mr Roth said, Miss Kirkland. Of course, the other reason Ananda had for not wanting Mrs Aylett to come here and start asking questions was that, once Mrs Aylett found out Ananda was here with a different child, she’d be bound to start asking what happened to Billy. Did she tell Mr Roth anything about that?’
‘Yes!’ Miss Kirkland leant forward, eagerly helpful. ‘She said he’d died.’
‘When?’
‘As a child. She said she realised he was sickly soon after she’d taken him from Mrs Aylett, and she couldn’t do anything for him, and the doctors couldn’t help because he was too weak. He got pneumonia and died in the middle of September. She had him buried here, in Suffolk.’
‘Did she say where?’
‘Yes, Hasketon. She said her husband was buried there. Then she said she put up a wooden cross because she couldn’t afford a headstone – and then she went to live in London. She said that was when she realised she was pregnant with Michael.’
‘Given that she’d have been almost five months gone by that time,’ said Stratton, ‘I find that hard to believe.’
‘Well,’ Miss Kirkland, ‘that is what she said. She told Mr Roth,’ Miss Kirkland gave him a triumphant look, ‘that it was like a miracle. One child had been taken, and another had been put in its place.’
‘Well,’ said Stratton, ‘you seem to have heard that part of it all right. Did Roth ask her the name of Michael’s father?’
‘No.’
‘Does he already know who Michael’s father is?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know?’
‘I have no idea. As I explained, Inspector,’ said Miss Kirkland patiently, ‘the individual is quite immaterial. As I believe I explained before, things can be understood on different—’
‘You’re not speaking to the students now, Miss Kirkland. What did Roth have to say about what Ananda told him about Billy?’
‘Ananda said that she felt guilty about the child’s death. That she blamed herself. Mr Roth said that was to do with a desire within the baby, and not with her.’
‘What desire?’
‘A desire,’ said Miss Kirkland, in a voice of supreme assurance, ‘not to obey the laws of the universe.’
Stratton wanted to throttle her. ‘For the love of God,’ he spat, ‘what is wrong with you people? Next, you’re going to be telling me that Lloyd and Mrs Aylett didn’t want to live either, so somebody – some individual whose identity is quite immaterial,’ he added, sarcastically, ‘acted according to the “laws of the universe”, whatever they may be – and killed them.’
Stratton saw that her face had changed. It was almost imperceptible but, added to the overwhelming certainty of her expression, he thought he saw a touch of pride.
As he glared at the prim little woman, Stratton knew that if he stayed any longer, he would say – or, worse, actually do – something he’d regret. ‘I shall need to talk to you again,’ he said, in the most measured voice he could manage, ‘but right now I need to speak to Michael. Please take me to him.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Outside Michael’s room, which was along the landing from Roth’s, Stratton indicated that Miss Kirkland should leave him and made a point of waiting until she was out of sight before opening the door. This was only partly because he feared she’d stay around to listen – after all, he could throw open the door at any time if he thought that’s what she was doing – but more because he needed a moment to collect himself: the boy was bloody unnerving, no two ways about it. He was clearly unused to being treated like a child, so any hint of condescension was out of the question. Besides which – Stratton winced at the memory – he’d made a fool of himself in front of the kid once already, hadn’t he?
It was no good trying to think about it. He’d just have to play it by ear. Swearing briefly but vigorously under his breath by way of preparation, he knocked once, and then, without waiting for a response, opened the door.
Michael’s room was only slightly more marked by the tastes of its occupant than the few others he’d caught glimpses of through open doors. The small evidence of a life being – or having been – lived was a pile of textbooks on a desk, a battered-looking puppet dangling from a wooden crucifix and the moulded plastic sections of a half-constructed Airfix Spitfire. Michael himself was sitting alone on the bed, his blond hair a shining halo in the coned beam of an Anglepoise lamp on the cabinet next to him. He was dressed in an open-necked shirt and jersey, one flannel trouser leg rolled up, and staring down at the cotton wool pad that was stuck to his knee with strips of plaster. Without looking up, he said, ‘I thought I told you—’
‘Told me what?’
His head jerked up sharply, and Stratton saw that there was a bruise on his cheek. ‘There was someone else here,’ he said. ‘Fussing. I told them to leave.’
‘Someone who was looking after you?’
‘I don’t need anyone to “look after” me,’ he said, irritably. ‘Does Mr Roth know you’re here?’
‘No. And I’m here because I want to have a chat.’ Stratton closed the door and, crossing the room, pulled the hard chair from under the desk and sat down.
Michael treated him to a haughty stare. ‘I don’t have anything to say to you,’ he said, and turned his attention back to his injured leg. He was so self-assured that Stratton had to remind himself, before he spoke, that he was talking to a child. Crossing his legs, he said, easily, ‘Oh, I think you’ll find you’ve got plenty to say. Fancy a smoke?’
Michael’s chin dropped, and he gaped in a mixture of adult outrage and boyish astonishment which, in any other circumstances, Stratton would have found funny. ‘I shan’t tell if you won’t,’ he said, digging into his pocket and extending the packet to Michael.
‘Churchman’s,’ said Michael. ‘Mr Roth smokes those.’
‘Pinch his cigarettes when he’s not looking, do you?’ Two hard spots of colour on Michael’s cheeks told him he was right. The boy stared at him for a further moment, then extracted one, clumsily one-handed, stuck it in his mouth and allowed Stratton to light it. Stratton lit one
for himself, nudged the metal wastepaper basket forward with his foot to serve as an ashtray, and sat back in his chair, screwing his face up to contemplate Michael through one eye. The boy sat stiffly, self-consciously smoking; a parody of Roth, sucking in deeply but without actually inhaling, so that his cheeks bulged as he held the smoke in his mouth.
‘Practise that, do you?’ asked Stratton. ‘Smoking like he does?’
Michael, unable to hold on to the smoke, exhaled in a rush, face puce and eyes watering. ‘How do you …’ he managed, then couldn’t speak for coughing.
Stratton laughed. ‘We all do things like that. It’s how you learn to be grown up – by copying. I used to copy the way my dad did things. Mind you, my childhood was a bit different from …’ he jerked his thumb at the door, ‘all of this. We lived in the country, though – Devon. My dad was a farmer. I had two brothers, both older than me. They didn’t half boss me about.’
Michael looked at him curiously. He’s never been treated like this before, thought Stratton; people here are deferential, even his teachers. ‘Why did they boss you about?’ he asked.
‘Well, it was a farm,’ said Stratton. ‘We all had to pitch in and help, so they had to tell me what to do. Mind you,’ he added, ‘some of it was just because they could, because they were bigger than me. But we did have fun as well. Harvest suppers and football matches, that sort of thing.’
‘I’ve seen them playing football in the village.’ Michael sounded wistful. ‘It looks like fun.’
‘Oh, it is,’ said Stratton. ‘Great fun. You don’t know what you’re missing. I’m sure if you asked Mr Roth, he’d let you go along and have a kick-about. You’d have to ask the boys in the village as well, of course, but I’m sure they wouldn’t mind.’
Michael looked doubtful. ‘I don’t suppose they’d let me play. I mean, I’ve never had anything to do with them. I saw them at the bonfire. They were mucking about.’ There was a peculiar mixture of emotions in his voice, as though this were something he ought to despise, but couldn’t.
‘Sounds like fun,’ said Stratton. ‘I used to enjoy a good burn-up when I was a kid. Still do, as a matter of fact. Who took you to the bonfire?’
‘Miss Kirkland. But we didn’t stay for very long. I didn’t speak to the boys or anything.’
‘Why not?’
‘Mr Roth said he didn’t want me to. He says I should keep away from them because they don’t understand people here.’
And he certainly doesn’t want you getting ideas about another way of life, thought Stratton, feeling the knot of fury that had been in his stomach since talking to Miss Kirkland clench tightly. ‘That’s a shame,’ he said, equably. ‘I think I’d have been very lonely if I hadn’t had friends to play with. And my brothers, of course. Do you know you’ve got a brother, or didn’t anyone tell you?’
Michael looked at him incredulously. ‘You’re making things up again,’ he said, flatly.
‘Not this time. His name’s Tom, and I’ve met him. He’s a couple of years older than you, so if you met him he’d probably boss you about, just like my brothers did me.’
Michael stared at him as if this idea was even more absurd than the notion of his having a brother in the first place. ‘If I’ve got a brother,’ he said, watching Stratton closely, ‘then where is he?’
‘Here, in Suffolk. He lives in a place called Dunwich. It’s by the sea.’
Evidently deciding to humour Stratton, perhaps in the expectation of a joke, the boy said, ‘Why does he live there?’
‘That’s where his parents live. Not his real parents, of course, but a couple called Mr and Mrs Wheeler, who adopted him to be their own. They’ve got other children, too, so Tom’s got lots of brothers and sisters. I don’t suppose,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘that he’d boss you too much, if you met him. He seemed a very nice chap.’
‘So why is he there and not here?’
‘That’s a very good question,’ said Stratton, ‘but I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for it yet.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘That’s a pity. But you will believe me when you meet him.’
‘When we play football?’ Michael’s tone was sarcastic.
‘I think Tom might have a bit of trouble playing football,’ said Stratton.
‘Anyone would have trouble playing football if they didn’t exist.’
Stratton laughed, and Michael stared at him with barely concealed irritation. Not used to that, either, he thought. ‘What I meant was, he’d have trouble with football because he’s got an illness called polio. Makes it hard for him to run about.’
Michael stared out of the window for a moment, into the rapidly fading light, and then, in a voice that was a child’s echo of Roth’s intonation, said, ‘People have illnesses because they ask for them.’
Keeping his tone deliberately light, Stratton said, ‘In that case, a whole lot of kids must have asked for polio all at the same time, because there was an epidemic. Do you know what that is?’
Without turning his head, Michael said ‘No, I don’t.’
‘It’s when there’s an outbreak of a particular illness, so that lots of people get it at once. Like measles.’
‘I had measles.’ Michael was looking at him now, uncertainty in his face.
‘Did you ask for it?’
The boy frowned for a moment, and Stratton could see that he was struggling. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, did it happen because you were bad? Because you deserved it?’
‘No!’ Now, he looked outraged.
‘There you are then,’ said Stratton, leaning over to twitch the cigarette from the boy’s fingers and stub it out on the side of the wastepaper basket. ‘Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Life isn’t always fair, you know.’
‘Then,’ said Michael, not like Roth now, but with the black-and-white absoluteness of childhood, ‘it’s stupid. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘Some things don’t make sense. Take what happened this afternoon.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ Michael ducked his head and started to tug at one of the plasters on his injured knee.
‘I can understand that,’ said Stratton. ‘But I’d like you to tell me about what happened.’
Michael did some more fiddling, then raised his head and said, abruptly, ‘It was my fault.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘She came back because I kept on thinking about her. Mr Roth said not to, but I couldn’t help it.’
‘Telling yourself not to think about something doesn’t mean it won’t pop into your mind every now and then,’ said Stratton. ‘But it certainly wasn’t your fault.’
‘Mr Roth says thoughts are very powerful things,’ said Michael, stubbornly.
Giving this up as a bad job, Stratton said, ‘So you were out for a walk, were you?’
‘Yes. With Miss Kirkland and Miss Banting, and then the car came. She was staring at me.’
‘Ananda was?’
The boy’s face clouded at the mention of his mother’s name. ‘She’s gone mad, hasn’t she?’
‘Is that what Mr Roth said?’
‘Not exactly. But when she … went away, and you came, I asked him what was happening, what everyone was talking about – because nobody would tell me, they just said we shouldn’t talk about it … Except that they were talking about it, about Mr Lloyd and the lady in the wood, when they thought I couldn’t hear, but when I asked Mr Roth where my mother was, he said something about people falling by the wayside. He said it as if it wasn’t important … he kept saying that the Work was what mattered, and we mustn’t get caught up in other things, and then you came and told me about the other boy, and then …’ Michael was blinking fast, now, trying to hold back tears, ‘she tried to kill me! I know she did. I wanted to jump out of the way, but I couldn’t move. Miss Banting jumped right in front of me and the car hit her.’
‘Sometimes,’ said Stratton, ‘when we�
��re scared of something – really scared – we sort of seize up. Our brains send the message to our muscles all right, but our muscles refuse to obey it. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.’
‘It didn’t happen to Miss Banting,’ said Michael. ‘She did something. I just stood there.’
‘She wanted to protect you. That was her idea, and it was a good one, wasn’t it? She stopped you from being injured and she might even have saved your life.’
‘What you’re saying,’ Michael’s tone was flat, ‘is that she was better than I was when it happened. I’m supposed to be better than her, all the time, but I’m not, am I? And now she’s been hurt, and it’s my fault. She’s not … not going to die, is she?’
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Stratton. ‘We think she’s got a broken leg, and people don’t usually die of those. And you mustn’t think that’s your fault, because it isn’t. You didn’t make any of this happen.’
‘But it did happen! I only wanted my mother to come back because I missed her, and then … then …’ The boy’s face quivered and broke apart, tears coming now. ‘I don’t understand!’ He leapt up and hurled himself at Stratton, an explosion of windmilling fists, puny blows catching him on the chest and arms. ‘Everyone thinks I do, but I don’t! And she tried to kill me, and then you said I’ve got a brother I didn’t even know about, and they all whisper and talk about me behind my back – they think I understand everything Mr Roth talks about, and how … how … important it is, and they won’t even tell me stuff about her, and …’ Stratton, closing on him, pinned the struggling form in a bear hug. Unable to fight any more, Michael went suddenly limp, allowing Stratton to rub his back.
‘Steady on, steady on,’ he murmured, as the boy gulped and hiccupped.
Stratton thought suddenly of his own children at the same age, and of Tom and his siblings, playing in their garden, and felt ready to bash someone. Stifling his rage, he said, ‘You must be tired.’
‘I am, a bit,’ Michael admitted. ‘We don’t have to talk about this stuff any more, do we?’
‘Not if you don’t want to.’
A Willing Victim Page 29
