The Primrose Switchback

by Jo Bannister

  By slow degrees the red tide ebbed. Shad found himself back in his room, on his bed, his clothes and the sheet under him drenched with sweat. His head sang and he couldn’t focus his eyes. His tongue was thick in his mouth. “Well?”

  Doctor Cunningham finished sponging his face. Then he straightened up with a sad smile. “More detail, the same story.”

  Shad bit back a sob. “Then it’s true. It’s what happened. We’re not finding anything else because there’s nothing else to find.”

  Cunningham rocked a hand. “That’s too sweeping. It may be I’m not asking the right questions, or asking them the right way. Or using the right drugs.”

  “There are others?” He tried to keep from his voice his terror at going that route again.

  “Yes, but I don’t know if there are any better ones. You have to understand, there are risks. I can’t justify doing something that might damage you.”

  “Christ Jesus!” swore Shad, the breath rattling in his throat, “does it matter? If I did it, I’m a murderer. If I just think I did, I’m a madman. Either way I have nothing to lose.”

  “You have the same as everybody else,” Cunningham retorted sharply: “the rest of your life. Maybe it won’t be what you hoped, but it’s the only one you’ve got and I’m not going to risk it on a quest to which there may be no happy ending. I’m not going to resort to unapproved methods in the hope of finding something – another answer, a better answer, one that will let you sleep nights – which may not exist.”

  Only the two men’s breathing punctuated the silence. In here the walls didn’t have ears, they had acoustic padding.

  Finally Shad said, “What methods?”

  “Not one of our better performances,” said Prufrock judiciously. “Where now?”

  They crossed the Trent into the pleasant suburb of West Bridgford and hunted up its main arterial for the turning that was Dootheboys Avenue. The Burgess house was a square brick dwelling built into rising ground with a rockery for a front garden. A Japanese fastback crouched in the sloping drive.

  “Must be the wife’s car,” said Rosie, parking on the other side of the road. She’d been afraid they’d find the house empty. Now the prospect of a difficult conversation loomed.

  “Are you sure we’re wise approaching her?”

  “I don’t know about wise,” shrugged Rosie. “I think it’s what we have to do next. What I have to do, anyway. You’d better stay in the car this time: we don’t want to look like a delegation. Toot the horn if you see Burgess coming.” She tapped the centre of the wheel. “That’s the horn.”

  Only having something useful to do kept him from going with her, uncomfortable as the meeting was likely to be. Though it was mid afternoon and Roy Burgess was unlikely to be home for a couple of hours, he saw the advantage of an early warning system. “Be careful.”

  “Count on it,” said Rosie fervently.

  The woman who answered the door was small, dark-haired and probably in her mid forties. “Yes? Can I help you?”

  Crossing the river Rosie had decided on a mixture of truth and wilful deceit falling just short of lies. “Mrs Burgess? My name’s Rosie Holland, I work in the media in Skipley, outside Birmingham. Where a girl called Jackie Pickering used to work. You may have seen in the papers: she was killed a week ago.”

  Mrs Burgess frowned. “What has this to do with us?”

  “Miss Pickering and your daughter Debbie were friends from university. I understand they talked on the phone a couple of times every week. There’s a possibility that Jackie said something that would cast light on what happened to her. It’s important that I get in touch with Debbie. Can you give me her number?”

  Mrs Burgess didn’t ask her inside; but nor did she ask her to leave. She was thinking, trying to work out what it meant. “You say you worked with Jackie?”

  “Not directly. But everybody involved is anxious to find out what happened. You were aware of the friendship between her and your daughter?”

  “Of course. Jackie came here quite often when they were at university. Until—” She strangled the sentence at birth. “We were upset when we heard the news, but we didn’t know that she and Debbie were still in touch. We … don’t see much of Debbie these days.”

  Rosie nodded understandingly. “They drift away, don’t they? She’ll have her own life now – job, friends, home. Does she still live in Nottingham?”

  “No, she …” She stopped, eyeing Rosie speculatively. “Tell me again why you want to talk to her. Are you saying she’s involved in Jackie’s death?”

  “No, not at all,” said Rosie hurriedly, though that was exactly what she was hoping. “It seems likely she was killed because of something she was working on. No one at the office knew what it was – I hoped Jackie might have told Debbie.”

  “And why are you asking this, not the police?”

  It was a good question. “Detective Superintendent Marsh from Skipley CID will want to talk to Debbie. If you’re not happy about giving me her phone number, give it to him.”

  Something unexpected happened in Mrs Burgess’s face. She was a respectable middle-class woman, not at all the type to come out in a rash at the mention of the police. But she flushed and her eyes hardened, and she shook her head crisply. “Thank you very much, but I’ve already seen enough policemen to last me a lifetime.”

  Rosie held her breath, aware that somewhere upstream a floodgate had given way. Mrs Burgess might not want to talk to her but if she went on standing here she would. The polite thing, of course, would have been to make her excuses and leave. But Rosie Holland rarely, if ever, did the polite thing. “You’re talking about the court case.”

  There had been a little time for the memory to lose its edge, not so much that the woman was surprised her visitor knew. “So you heard about that. Then you know that the court acquitted him.” Her manner was both bristly and tired. She’d been through this so many times.

  “Yes,” nodded Rosie. “The jury believed him, not Debbie. I assume” – she waved a hand to indicate the reason, that the woman still lived with the man accused of raping her daughter – “you did too.”

  “That’s right. Miss Holland, I knew long before the jury that my husband hadn’t done what Debbie said he’d done. I knew he was innocent. Now everyone does.”

  “It must be every mother’s nightmare,” Rosie said softly. “Having to choose between her husband and her daughter.”

  Coals of anger burned deep in the woman’s eyes. “It is. I’ve never regretted my choice, but I never go to sleep without praying that one day Debbie will come to terms with what happened and we can be a family again. Debbie was certainly a victim, Miss Holland, but she wasn’t her father’s victim. If you don’t believe me, perhaps you’ll believe him.”

  So involved in this conversation was Rosie that she had barely noticed, only as a minor irritation on the edge of consciousness, the idiot across the street trying to use his car horn as a musical instrument. Now, in a flood of understanding, she remembered what it meant. What it meant, and what she’d been meant to do when she heard it.

  She spun on her heel on the Burgesses’front step and found herself eyeball to eyeball with an SAS-trained killer.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Between the back door of the building where he lived and the residents’car park Matt Gosling was mugged by a reporter from that newspaper known in the trade as the ‘Daily Vomit’.

  Traditionally such persons are small men in raincoats, ferrety faces decorated by narrow ginger moustaches. But time moves on even in the most retro division of the newspaper industry, and today’s face of ‘The Vomiter’was female, aged about twenty-five, attractive in a brittle sort of way, and about as dedicated to ethical journalism as her predecessor had been.

  “Mr Gosling, how does it feel to know your paper’s professional psychic murdered a girl working for a rival organisation over a ratings war?”

  So the genie was out of the bottle, and nothing Matt could
do now would squeeze it back inside. It was going to be in ‘The Vomiter’, and if ‘The Vomiter’had it tomorrow morning the real newspapers would have it the day after. Their language might be more restrained but the story would be the same: Shad Lucas had confessed to killing Jackie Pickering.

  What he said now, the precise words he used – assuming she quoted him precisely – were vital. He could cut his own throat, and the throats of all who worked for the Chronicle, or he could throw up a palisade they could conceivably defend.

  He always found it helpful to define his problems in military terms.

  It was an effort to smile at the little harpy, but he made it. “You’re a bit late for a scoop, Miss” – she had to remind him – “Miss Moody. Six o’clock tomorrow morning you’ll be able to read the full account in the Skipley Chronicle. I don’t think you can get out before that, can you?”

  She stared at him, emblazoned eyes suspicious, unsure whether to believe him. “You’re carrying the story?”

  “Of course we’re carrying the story. I’d offer to run you off a proof, but it wouldn’t be much help to you. Being full of facts and littered with accuracies, I mean.”

  She swallowed hard. “You could answer my question.”

  “Let me get my tape recorder from the car,” he said, “and then I’ll answer any questions you have. Only, regardless of what you write, let’s at least get the questions right.

  “Shad Lucas isn’t a professional psychic for my paper or anyone else. Rosie Holland is the Chronicle’s professional counsellor; Shad is her gardener. The production company making You’ve Been Had is no more a rival to a proper newspaper than is your own. The ratings issue is equally spurious: they get viewers, we get readers, many of them are the same people. It’s true there’s been some animosity between our two organisations, but I’m happy to say their people and ours are cooperating fully with the police investigation.

  “If you want confirmation of that, talk to Ms Holland or to Ms Frank at PVF. As a result of their cooperation, facts have emerged which cast serious doubt on Lucas’s guilt. Naturally we’re hoping he’s innocent. But mostly we’re hoping the killer of Jackie Pickering will be brought to justice.”

  “Even if the murderer was your employee? I’m sorry,” she amended slyly, “your employee’s employee.”

  “Oh yes,” said Matt firmly.

  “If Lucas didn’t kill her, why is he saying he did?”

  Matt breathed heavily. “He suffered a head injury. However he came by it, there’s no doubt he suffered a severe blow to the head with concussion and consequent amnesia. Have you ever been concussed, Miss Moody? Because I have, twice. You’re not at your best for quite a while afterwards. The first time I insisted on telling the MO how to play Charades. The second time I was convinced I’d lost my gun. It didn’t matter how many people told me I hadn’t, or how often they produced it, I was convinced I’d left something vital behind.”

  She was mesmerised. He was a good-looking man, with steady, intelligent eyes in which still danced a glint of boyish humour; a strong man, competent and successful – he’d rescued a failing business and put it on a profit-making basis. Of course, that could change; particularly in the light of recent events. But even the prospect of bankruptcy didn’t stop him being a damned attractive man. She said breathily, “And had you?”

  Matt nodded and smiled. “My foot.”

  It wasn’t the first time he’d thrown his missing extremity into a conversation deliberately to unsettle an opponent. But there weren’t many advantages to being an amputee, he was damned if he wasn’t making full use of any he came across.

  Emma Moody didn’t know where to look. A gravity well was dragging her eyes down to ground level and she hadn’t the time to recognise that it would be more natural to look than to avoid doing. He’d raised the subject, she had nothing to be embarrassed about, but she was. Which was odd, because ‘The Vomiter’and her own contributions to it embarrassed her not at all.

  “That one,” he said helpfully, pointing. He wasn’t at all a malicious man, but there was a part of him which took an unkind pleasure in the colour flooding through her cheeks.

  It wasn’t quite the end of the interview but it might as well have been. The flustered reporter had trouble stringing together three intelligent sentences. Finally Matt took pity on her and gave her a statement; and repeated it when she pressed the wrong button on her own tape recorder. They parted civilly, and Matt continued his journey feeling oddly satisfied with the encounter.

  At the Chronicle he went straight to Dan Sale’s office. “You’re going to have to remake the front page.”

  “What?!” There was still time. There was time until – and in real emergencies even after – the presses started to roll. But Sale hated surprises.

  “We need to carry something on Shad Lucas and the Pickering girl. The ‘Daily Vomit’s onto it, and if they’re going to have it we have to have it.”

  Sale looked at him over the wire-rimmed specs he wore primarily for that purpose. “Wouldn’t you say that was an editorial decision?”

  Matt nodded cheerfully. “Of course it is, Dan.” While he was nodding he was calling up the front page on Sale’s terminal.

  “As long as we’re agreed,” sniffed the editor. With all the wonders of modern technology on the desk before him, he took up a biro and a sheet of paper. “Now, how much do we say? What we know, or what we think ‘The Vomiter’knows?”

  It took Sale no more than ten minutes to draft an unsensational but informative piece on the continuing investigation into the death of Jackie Pickering and Shad Lucas’s involvement in it. Mention was made of Lucas’s connection with the Chronicle and of his previous successes on behalf of the police. It wasn’t entirely clear whether he was Helping Police With Their Inquiries, or just helping police with their inquiries.

  “You don’t think we’re being a bit coy?” ventured Matt.

  Sale glared at him. “Restrictions apply to the reporting of criminal cases where a person has been charged, is about to be charged or where charges may reasonably be anticipated. The Poison Dwarf from the ‘Daily Vomit’may not be aware of that, you may not be aware of that, but I am a professional journalist and know exactly what we can and cannot say at any juncture of a criminal prosecution. Prejudicing a trial is a serious offence, and I don’t intend for the highlight of my career to be reporting my own conviction for contempt of court.”

  “Plus, if that’s all we can lawfully say, no one can criticise us for not saying more.”

  “Yes, there is that,” admitted Sale. Scrutinising the front page layout, he selected an item on oil seeping into the Brickfields Park pond and consigned it to page three. “There. It’s on the front page, nobody can say we tried to hide it; but it’s amazing how things vanish when they’re just below the fold.”

  Matt nodded his approval. “I don’t see what more we can do. It meets our obligations without making things harder for either Shad or Rosie.”

  “No, we’ve covered our backs,” agreed Sale. “But don’t imagine that’s the end of it. The ‘Daily Vomit’will make up for being second with the story by blowing it out of all proportion, turning speculation into allegations and allegations into facts. You won’t recognise yourself or anyone in it. We should be braced for trouble. People who mistake it for a newspaper may think we’re in some way responsible for that girl’s death.”

  “We’d better warn Rosie. Where is she today?”

  Sale put a letter on the desk and waited while Matt read it.

  The proprietor of the Skipley Chronicle, who could take slanderous accusations by the ‘Daily Vomit’in his slightly uneven stride, paled at its contents. “She’s gone? Dan … you accepted her resignation?”

  “Of course I didn’t,” Sale said indignantly. “I put her letter in my drawer, as insurance against a major emergency. She’s determined to leave if Lucas is charged. I said we could ride it out, but she wouldn’t risk the Chronicle’s reputation. Unles
s and until this all turns out to be a hideous mistake, Alex is running The Primrose Path.”

  Matt didn’t know what to say. He knew they were in trouble but he hadn’t realised it could come to a choice between his newspaper and his star columnist. “So … where is she? At home?”

  Sale shook his head. “I really don’t know, Matt. Officially, at this moment, she doesn’t work here any more. But if I was guessing, I’d say she’s out somewhere trying to prove Shad Lucas didn’t do what he thinks he did.”

  “Prufrock might know.” Matt reached for the phone.

  There was no reply. He found himself the recipient of one of Sale’s knowing looks. “Where Holmes leads,” he said, “can Watson be far behind?”

  Ray Burgess was not a big man but he moved with a quiet authority that swept all before it. Rosie found herself borne up the steps and into the front hall, and Burgess shut the door behind him with a crisp, rather final click.

  “Now then,” he said quietly, “let’s start again at the beginning. Who are you, and what do you want with my family?”

  Long before she worked for an ex-soldier, Rosie had discovered that the best form of defence is attack. She drew herself up to her full, impressive scale and rapped out: “I’m Rosie Holland, I work for the Skipley Chronicle, and there are people who know exactly where I am and what I’m doing.”

  “Like the idiot in the Volvo?” Burgess failed to look alarmed. “Well, I wish somebody’d tell me.”

  “She was asking about Debbie,” said Mrs Burgess. There was a sense of things unsaid in the timbre of her voice.

  “Ah.”

  Rosie had reached the point of looking for the back way out. Any two normal people the size of the Burgesses she’d simply have shouldered past; but Roy Burgess was not just a former soldier, he was a former member of the SAS. He was also, possibly, a child abuser and murderer. Her sense of vulnerability was not soothed by knowing that Prufrock was in the car.