‘And?’
‘She refused.’
‘I could have saved him the trip.’
‘I’m glad he went, because it gave him an idea of just what is happening to you. I’m not guaranteeing he’ll see you, Jason, but if he agreed would you talk to him?’
He shrugged. ‘Why not? If it’ll help.’
After he’d gone back to the remand wing she realised she had not mentioned the imminent arrival of the Loxton psychiatrist. But the time hadn’t been right.
She didn’t feel like going to the canteen for lunch and wandered out into the town. The pedestrian precinct was busy and she walked into the cathedral close. Kingstown cathedral was not one of the largest in the land but with its two rose windows and its newly-cleaned façade of yellow stone glowing in the autumn sunlight it was one of the most beautiful.
She was disturbed about Jason and thought about him as she wandered through the cathedral transepts. She was also worried about her own reactions. Was this going to be the pattern? Was she going to be drawn into the unhappy lives of the prison inmates? Could she keep her cool as Tom had advised? If not she’d be run ragged. The prison was a place where emotions, anger and frustrations raged, and if she was not careful she might find herself engulfed.
She passed the tombs of thirteenth-century knights and their ladies. There was the sound of organ music and the atmosphere began to have a calming effect on her. She went back to the nave. A dozen or more local people, some eating sandwiches, were sitting near the choir stalls listening to the music. She was about to join them when she saw Tom sitting at the back, chin in hand.
He gave the impression of being part of a private world and she had no wish to intrude. She found a side door and walked quickly out into the open air.
*
‘Huff . . . huff . . . huff . . . And that’s another king for me . . . bingo . . . bango . . . and you’re dead, mate. You want to stick to tennis, Jason, old sausage. Draughts is too complicated for you.’
Jason swept the draughts onto the cell floor.
‘Oh, very macho. I’m dead impressed.’
Jason went to his bunk. Billy remained seated.
‘You better pull yourself together. You let one of the screws see you do that and they’ll tell the quacks that you’re violent and the quacks’ll tell the psychiatrist from Loxton – and quick as a flash you’re in for observation. And observation can be anything – a month, six months – and then, depending on what they observe, Jason old trout, it’s bye-bye.’
Jason turned his back.
‘That’s the spirit. You turn away. Ignore it. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. Because the word is it’s next week.’
‘What’s next week?’
‘Your evaluation.’
‘What?’
‘That’s what I hear.’
Jason sat up and swung his legs onto the floor. ‘You bullshitting me?’
‘You don’t bullshit about something like that.’
‘How the hell would you know anyhow?’
‘Don’t be cheeky, Jason. Mustn’t be cheeky to Billy. I know because I got contacts, that’s how. There’s people in this nick that know everything. Prisoners, screws, doesn’t matter which. They see things. Bits of paper. Hear phone calls, swap snout or grass for info, they pass on news . . . You get me, Jason?’
‘Yes.’
‘And there’s people on the outside that think they know everything. I got a grannie. Lovely old lady. Only she wants her dearly beloved grandson, to wit me, to be locked up in Loxton and to rot there. She don’t want me home no more. Wants me kept out of the way. But I’ll tell you something my son. It’s not going to happen. William J. Sweete ain’t never going to that bloody place again. Never . . . never . . . never . . .’
‘What’s your grannie got to do with me?’
‘I’ll tell you what she’s got to do with you. The psychiatrist is coming down to e-e-valuate us. Big word for a tennis player, Jason, but it means he’s going to test us. You and me. And a couple of others on Rule 43.’
‘When did you find out?’
‘Last night.’
‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me then?’
‘Because you’d just heard about your wife and the divorce, that’s why.’
Jason was shocked. ‘How did you hear?’
‘One of the screws. Told me to watch you extra careful in case you tried to top yourself.’
Jason collapsed. Tears coursed down his cheeks and his body became racked by sobs.
‘You see why I didn’t tell you? ’Cause you’re in a state, that’s why.’ Billy sat down beside him, and put an arm round his shoulders. ‘You can’t do this on your own Jason. Everybody needs a friend and you haven’t got none.’
Jason said softly. ‘I know.’
‘Not your wife. Not your family. Nobody.’
‘There is one.’
‘Who?’
‘Dr Vernon.’
‘What? The woman quack? Don’t make me laugh.’
Jason shrugged off Billy’s hand and crossed to the window. He put a chair under it and stood on it looking out into the cold night. The lights of Kingstown twinkled below him. The castle was floodlit but that would stop as winter increased its grip and the tourists went home. Where would he be by then?
‘Listen, if she was your friend, why didn’t she tell you about the psychiatrist from Loxton? Tell me that, old sporty tennisplayer.’
He couldn’t answer.
‘You only got one friend, Jason, and that’s me.’
Billy had lit a rollup and now he pressed the tip to the inside of his left arm. The smell of roast pork permeated the cell again. Jason did not object this time. He watched the blister turn black and form a small area of vulcanised flesh.
‘You want to try? It might help.’
Jason took the cigarette.
‘You better draw on it, make it hotter.’
Jason put the cigarette to his mouth and drew. On top of the acrid, sweet, tobacco taste was the flavour of Billy’s lips.
‘Now,’ Billy said.
Jason pressed the cigarette to the inside of his forearm. The pain was fierce and he cried out. But a moment later came a feeling of relaxed peace, as though he had ejaculated.
‘That’s better, isn’t it?’ Billy said.
‘Yes . . . yes it is . . .’
‘Here. Try another draw.’
They smoked the rollup together in silence.
*
Anne was in her father’s flat amid the Masai spears and the Bushman bows and arrows.
She said, ‘I told Jason I couldn’t answer for you. You might or you might not.’
Henry’s pipe produced the sound of water draining from a bath.
He was at his desk, which was covered in open research books. It looked a mess, she thought, but she would never have dreamed of tidying it up. Watch was the one person who had ever been able to keep Henry tidy and only by continuous grumblings and threats. She had long ago decided it wasn’t worth the hassle.
‘What about Newman, does he want to see me?’
‘I think he’s desperate to see anyone.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I didn’t mean it that way.’
‘I was thinking about the case after we spoke. I went back to my original feeling that we’re becoming involved in something that isn’t our business.’
‘But it is our business. Mine anyway. And I’m asking you to make it your business.’ The fierceness of her tone surprised Anne herself.
Henry pulled out a cardboard file and she saw the name Jason Newman on the cover.
‘You’ve already decided!’ she said. ‘You’ve just been having me on.’
The phone rang upstairs and she went up to answer it. Five minutes later she returned and said, ‘That was Clive.’
‘Who’s Clive?’
‘You know very well who he is. He’s asked me to lunch at the weekend. Will you be around to look after Hilly? I sa
id I’d ring him back if you couldn’t’
‘I imagine so. Hilly and I will be fine.’
He took out a series of typed sheets and she saw they comprised Jason’s police statement. She felt a sudden rush of guilt. She had borrowed the statement from Jason and had taken it to the public library and photocopied it. She had not asked permission in case she was refused and hadn’t even been sure she was supposed to have seen it, which was why she hadn’t used the photocopier in the prison.
When she had told her father what she’d done, he had said, ‘Good girl.’
She had replied, ‘I thought you’d approve. It’s the kind of behaviour I learned from you and Watch.’
He turned a page and his finger stopped against a line he had highlighted in yellow.
‘Number 17 Castleview Terrace,’ he said.
‘What about it?’
‘It’s where Miss Smith lives. I went there this afternoon. Attractive little houses. They date from the eighteen eighties. And there’s a preservation order on them.’
‘How on earth did you find that out?’
‘Chatting to a traffic warden. Apparently commuters park their cars in the street during working hours to save parking costs and there’s an outcry from residents. Nice woman, the traffic warden. Couldn’t stop her talking once she got going.’
‘That’s because people hate them. Probably damages their psyches. She’d have been thrilled to talk to someone who wasn’t complaining.’
‘Did you know that Miss Smith’s father was a pillar of the local fundamentalist church?’
‘No. What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘I hope I never have to come to you for a diagnosis. What it tells me is that any daughter of a deeply religious man would not want him to think she was of easy virtue, i.e. she’d yell rape even if it wasn’t.’
‘You couldn’t prove that!’
‘Of course you couldn’t. But a case is made up of little bits and pieces of information, rather like a jigsaw puzzle.’
‘What else did you do in Castleview Terrace?’
‘I saw her house. Houses tell you things.’
‘And did hers?’
He picked up one of the pages and read from it. ‘She [the plaintiff] then let down the venetian blinds. She said the sun faded the carpet.’
‘So?’
‘There couldn’t have been any sun to fade the carpet. Not that day or any other day. The whole terrace faces north.’
*
‘Jason? You awake?’
‘Yes.’
They were lying on their bunks in the dark. Billy on top, Jason down below.
‘Remember what Kojak said?’
‘What?’
‘Didn’t you ever see Kojak?’
Jason remembered the tv sets in a thousand different hotel bedrooms. He had seen Kojak first as a teenager, then in a dozen repeats. He had seen him in Spanish, in Dutch, in Italian, even in Serbo-Croat.
‘I saw him.’
‘Come on then? What’d he always say?’
‘Who loves you, baby?’
‘Right. And who does? Who’s the only one who does?’
‘You.’
‘Right. Not all the fucking tennis fans. Not your wife. Not your family. No one. Except—?’
‘You.’
‘You want a ciggy? I’ll make you one.’
‘Okay.’
‘I’ll bring it down.’
‘Okay.’
Chapter Nineteen
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS CHILD?
Henry had just absorbed the lettering and the enlarged photograph on the roadside sign when he saw the police. There were four of them dressed in heavy blue uniforms and phosphorescent yellow tunics, checking cars on both sides of the road.
‘Why are we stopping?’ Hilly asked.
‘They want to know about a little girl who got lost,’ Henry told her.
Neither he nor Anne had discussed the disappearance of the two Sussex children with her except in general terms as part of the continual warnings about strangers and cars which were now part of every child’s learning process.
A policeman with a clipboard and radio bent down to the driver’s window.
‘Did you see the sign, sir?’
‘I could hardly miss it.’ He smiled but the policeman did not return the smile.
It was a cold day and the South Downs were covered by mist. The policeman’s cheeks and nose had turned pale blue and the tips of his fingers, sticking out of mittens, were bloodless.
‘I’ll ask you again, sir, to take a look at this photograph.’
Henry looked at the features of Tessa Marsh who had disappeared above Castle Fields and whose face he had seen in the newspaper files. The policeman presented him with the clipboard which gave the date and time of her last sighting.
‘I’m afraid I didn’t live in Kingstown then,’ Henry said.
The policeman looked hard at Hilly and said, ‘Can you tell me who the little girl is?’
‘My granddaughter.’
‘Have you got any identification, sir?’
He checked Henry’s driver’s licence and spoke into his radio.
‘Would you pull into the lay-by for a moment, sir.’
Henry opened his mouth, then closed it. What was the use of protesting? He drove the big old Rover into the lay-by and stopped.
‘Why’s he doing this?’ Hilly said.
‘I suppose he’s checking our car number on the police computer to find out if we are who I said we are.’
A few moments later they were waved on.
‘Has the little girl been lost for a long time?’ Hilly said.
‘Yes, for a long time. Since the summer.’
They turned off the main road and into the maze of winding lanes that pattern the South Downs.
‘How on earth anyone finds their way through these beats me,’ Henry said.
‘You’re lost.’
‘I am not lost.’
‘We should have turned down to the left.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
Henry backed and turned, the car wallowing in the lane like a stranded whale. At last he managed it. ‘I hope you’re right.’
‘This is the way.’
‘I get particularly irritated by little girls who pretend to know everything.’
‘There’s the track,’ she said.
A man loomed out of the mist, a gun in his hands and a large black shape on either side of him.
‘God save us!’ Henry pulled up.
‘Who are you?’ Joyce said. ‘What d’you want?’
‘We’ve come to see Dr Melville.’
Joyce bent down and the two black dogs whined softly. ‘Afternoon, Hilly,’ he said. Then to Henry, ‘You can go in so long as you’re with Hilly.’
Tom Melville was in the sitting-room building up the fire. The two men introduced themselves. Beanie was in her basket and when Hilly bent down to her she gave a series of high-pitched, welcoming howls.
‘Just look at that!’ Tom said. Beanie was struggling to rise on her back legs to greet the child. ‘The little beast never does that for me. Hilly, you’re the expert, where would you like to start?’
‘Outside.’
‘Right. Here are the biscuits.’
At first Beanie pulled herself along, trailing her legs, but Hilly refused to give her the rewards. The dog began to bark crossly. Hilly helped her to her feet but even then she wobbled and fell. It was no better than the first time.
‘Could we try the bath?’ Hilly said.
They trooped upstairs.
Tom began to run the water from both taps but she said, ‘Just the cold.’
The water was almost freezing. Tom put the dachshund in the bath. She was trembling and her eyes were filled with mute accusation. The moment she felt the water on her belly she stood. It was shaky but she was upright. Hilly held out the biscuit. Beanie walked through the icy water trying to reach it but tryi
ng at the same time to keep her belly clear of the water.
‘Marvellous!’ Tom said. ‘You go on for a bit and I’ll make us some tea.’
The two men went downstairs.
Henry said, ‘I’m only here on sufferance,’ and described the meeting with Joyce.
Tom smiled. ‘When I first bought the place it had been uninhabited for a couple of years. Joyce had once worked for the previous owner – he lives in a cottage in the woods – and I don’t think he was too keen on me. He had had permission to manage the woods as long as he supplied the house with firewood and I suppose he thought I might stop him from felling timber and selling it. He can be pretty bloody-minded when he wants to.’
‘So I gathered,’ Henry said dryly.
‘One day a tree fell on him. He’d been cutting down a dead elm and somehow it twisted and came down before he was ready. I just happened to be out looking for mushrooms and found him. I managed to get him out from under the branches. He was a mess. Fortunately his spine was intact though one of his legs was broken and he’d got cuts and bruises and cracked ribs and God knows what else. I splinted his leg and got him to hospital and ever since he’s looked after me like an over-protective parent. Doesn’t think I’ll survive by myself. He’s always bringing me eggs or wood or pheasants he’s poached.’
‘I used to have someone who looked after me a bit like that,’ Henry said. ‘I miss him like the devil.’
‘Was that Watch?’
‘Anne told you?’
‘She’s talked about him.’
Tom carried the tea things to the low table in front of the fire.
‘Does he always go around with that shotgun?’
‘He does since the break-in. I had a burglary some months ago. Nothing much was pinched. No respectable thief would take my tv or my stereo, they’re both far too primitive for these days. But he took an old radio that meant a lot to me. It had been halfway round the world with me and in some sticky places. No, the worst thing was that he hurt Beanie. She must have tried to defend the place and he must have kicked her or maybe he even threw her down the stairs. That’s where Joyce found her.’
Burn Out (Dr. Anne Vernon Book 1) Page 17
