Core of Evil

by Nigel McCrery

  ‘Because we didn’t think she posed a threat any more. And because we needed the space.’ Geherty suddenly looked tired. ‘It was before my time.’

  ‘That’s no excuse.’

  ‘That’s not an excuse – that’s an explanation. Her death was faked – we even made up a tombstone at a church near where she grew up – and a new identity was created for her. We got her a job waitressing in Ipswich, and a nice flat. And we watched her – extensively for three months, then intermittently after that. And then, when she thought we weren’t watching carefully enough, she vanished. Turns out she’d spent several months crafting a new identity, and she just slipped out of the one we’d created for her and into the one she’d created for herself. We’ve been looking for her ever since.’

  ‘And I’m looking for her now. We should work together.’

  Geherty shook his head. ‘The only reason you’re looking for her is because we asked Chief Superintendent Rouse to bring you in on the case. You’d known her. You’d talked to her. If anyone had an insight into how her mind worked, it was you.’

  ‘So let me catch her.’

  ‘You’ve located her. That’s all we need. If you arrest her now, she goes to court and it all spills out. If we catch her, she vanishes. Forever.’

  ‘That’s not justice.’

  ‘No, but it’s just.’

  Lapslie gazed at Geherty. ‘I can’t let that happen,’ he said.

  Geherty nodded. ‘I’m not asking you to,’ he said. ‘I’m telling you. Or rather, Detective Chief Inspector Rouse is currently taking a call from my Minister telling him to put a stop to this case. It’s over. We’ll take it from here.’

  ‘Over my dead body,’ Lapslie snapped.

  ‘No – over your dead career,’ Geherty said, and smiled.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ‘Are you feeling better?’ Eunice’s voice boomed from the kitchen.

  Sitting in Eunice’s sparse front room with a cup of tea clutched in her hands, Daisy’s stomach was churning. All she could see in her mind was the graveyard.

  The churchyard and the gravestone.

  The gravestone with the name on it: Madeline Poel.

  ‘I’m … not sure,’ Daisy said. It sounded to her as if her voice was coming from a long way away. Or perhaps a long time ago. Something was wrong with her ears: everything sounded muffled, distant, unimportant. Her hands were trembling.

  ‘Perhaps I should call the doctor?’

  ‘No.’ She swallowed, trying to ease the feeling in her ears, but it would not shift. ‘No, I’ll be fine. I think it was just the sun.’

  Daisy did not want to think about Madeline Poel, but now that she had seen the name on the gravestone she found that she could not stop. She felt dizzy and breathless, the way she imagined Eunice’s dog, Jasper, was feeling now, with his food dosed with poison. Unbidden, unwelcome, faces were appearing in her mind. Faces and names.

  So many names.

  Before Daisy Wilson there had been Violet Chambers, and before Violet Chambers there had been Annie Moberley, and before Annie Moberley there had been Alice Connell, and before Alice Connell there had been Jane Winterbottom, and before Jane Winterbottom there had been Deirdre Fincham, and before Deirdre Fincham there had been Elise Wildersten, and before Elise Wildersten there had been Rhona McIntyre, and before Rhona McIntyre there had been someone whose name was now lost to the past, and another before her, and another before her, all just shadows in the darkness now, but before all of them, at the very beginning of it all, there had been Madeline Poel.

  Daisy sat in the chair in Eunice’s front room, rocking gently to and fro. Tea slopped from the cup into the saucer, and from the saucer onto the floor, but she didn’t notice. The past, long denied, had her in its grip.

  ‘Daisy?’ Eunice was standing beside her. ‘Daisy, my dear, whatever is wrong?’ She took the cup and saucer from Daisy’s hands and placed them on a nearby table.

  ‘I used to live here,’ Daisy said quietly. ‘I had quite forgotten, but I used to live here when I was a child. My father had a house near the Naze, and I used to go to school in the town. I thought there was something strange when I came back. I still recognised some of the buildings, and the streets, and the pier, and the church. But a lot of things have changed. It is as if I can see the town the way it was, and the way it is, both at the same time. If I tilt my head, or narrow my eyes, I can even see them both at once. Isn’t that strange?’

  ‘Daisy, I think you need to lie down. Come on, let’s take you up to the spare room. You can stay here tonight.’

  Eunice led Daisy upstairs and eased her down on a single bed with white sheets and a pale blue duvet. Daisy was disoriented enough that she failed to take in anything of what she saw. Eunice took Daisy’s shoes off and swung her legs onto the bed. ‘Sleep for a while,’ she said. ‘You’ll feel better when you wake up.’

  ‘My handbag …’ Daisy murmured.

  ‘I’ll get it.’ Eunice went downstairs and returned, a few moments later, with Daisy’s bag. She put it on a chair beside the bed, closed the curtains and left.

  Daisy reached out and grabbed the handbag from the chair. Opening it up, she fished around inside until she found what she was looking for. And then, holding the secateurs close to her chest, she laid her head back on the pillow and slept.

  And she dreamed about Madeline Poel and a garden in summertime, long, long ago …

  The green lawn was still dappled with shadows of rust-coloured blood, although Madeline’s brothers and sisters had been taken away some time before. Carried away, limp and helpless, hands trailing down. Hands that seemed strangely deformed.

  She knew that she wouldn’t be seeing them again. Even though they had looked like they were sleeping, their eyes were open, staring up at the bright, bright sun. And their eyes were dry. Dry and wide.

  The blades of grass were stuck together in clumps by the blood. It reminded Madeline of the way her hair went sometimes when she’d got sap in it from the trees in the garden: matted and gummy and impossible to brush out. She didn’t know how they were going to clear up the garden. Perhaps they were going to wait until the rain came. Nobody seemed worried about the garden. Instead they were clustering around her mother and her grandmother, or just standing around saying nothing.

  Madeline stood in the shade of a bush, fingering the ripe red berries. The poisonous berries. Every so often she glanced over at where her mother was sobbing in the arms of a neighbour. People were standing around the garden as if they didn’t quite know what they were doing there. And none of them were paying any attention to her.

  Off to one side her grandmother was sitting in a cane chair by the table. A policeman was sitting with her and another one was standing behind her. The policeman sitting with her was asking her questions, but she wasn’t replying. She was just twisting her fingers in the material of her cardigan, making tight little spirals of cloth, her face an impassive mask hiding something feral underneath.

  Her grandmother had done something bad. Madeline knew that, although she didn’t understand exactly what the bad thing was. Her grandmother often did bad things. She hit Madeline and her brothers and sisters when her mother was working. She pretended to Madeline’s mother that she didn’t, but she lied. Sometimes she twisted their arms behind their backs, or hit them with branches, and then screamed at them that if they told their mother she would hurt them even more. And now she had, even though they never told a living soul.

  Madeline took a handful of berries from the bush and crushed them slowly in her hand. The juice ran out between her fingers, red and slow, falling to the ground where it stuck the blades of grass together.

  Madeline glanced over to where the tea party had been set up and then forgotten. The cups sat, ignored and forlorn, on the crisp white tablecloth.

  She glanced down at her stained hands.

  Perhaps her grandmother would like a drink, she thought.

  Day turned into night, and dreams
slipped past each other like deep-sea fish, stirring up sediment from the bottom of the ocean as they went. But as the night wore on the sediment settled and the fish hid themselves amongst rocks and strands of seaweed. By the time the sun rose and poked intrusive fingers through the gap between the curtains, Daisy Wilson had forgotten who she had been, and remembered only who she was now.

  Eunice brought her a cup of tea while she was still in bed.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m as weak as a kitten. What happened?’

  ‘You had some kind of a fit. I think it must have been the exertion of the walk to the church, and the sun. You overdid it. Poor thing.’

  ‘I suppose you must be right.’ Daisy tried to remember what had happened the day before, but the attempt made her uneasy.

  ‘Could you manage some breakfast?’ Eunice asked.

  ‘Feed a cold and starve a fever,’ Daisy replied. ‘Perhaps just a cup of tea and a slice of dry toast. I’m sorry to be a burden.’

  ‘No burden,’ Eunice said, as she headed for the door. ‘It’s nice to have someone around the place. I do get lonely.’ She stopped and looked back. ‘I’ll leave the Arts and Crafts Centre closed today. I think you need to rest.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Daisy said. ‘God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb. I’m sure it will be a quiet day, and pottering around will give me time to recover.’ She paused momentarily. ‘Perhaps I could lie here for a while this morning and then join you later in the barn. I am still feeling a little unsteady.’

  After breakfast, Eunice opened up the Arts and Crafts Centre and Daisy, having first made sure that Eunice was out of the way, spent her time making an inventory of the items in Eunice’s bedroom and the spare room. She had long suspected that Eunice was a diary keeper – all artistic people kept diaries, in her experience – and she found it within a few minutes, in a drawer of the bedside cabinet. Found them, in fact, for there were multiple volumes going back years. Flicking through the most recent one, Daisy realised that this was all she really needed, apart from the financial records in the barn. Everything Eunice thought, believed or experienced was in there. Every memory was preserved like a flower pressed between the pages of a book. She didn’t need to spend time pumping Eunice for information now – she had it all. Everything that was Eunice was now accessible to Daisy.

  Which meant that there was really no reason to keep Eunice alive any more.

  Determinedly, Daisy set out from Eunice’s house – soon to be her house – for the barn which housed the Arts and Crafts Centre just across the way. She still felt light-headed, but she had work to do and there was no point moping around in bed. She had to up the dose of grated apricot kernels that she was putting in Jasper’s food and see how long it took him to die. That way, she could calculate the precise dose needed to kill Eunice.

  In fact, Jasper died three days later.

  He had been breathless and twitchy for two of those days, during which Daisy progressively increased the dose of grated apricot kernels that she was sprinkling over his food. On the morning of the third day he lay in his basket in the back of the barn, unwilling or unable to move his hind legs.

  ‘Poor angel,’ Eunice murmured, bending down to stroke his head. ‘Poor, poor angel. We shall call the vet, yes we shall.’

  ‘Let me,’ Daisy said. She went to the phone and made a great play of pressing the buttons with one hand whilst her other hand unplugged the cable from beneath the phone. ‘Hello?’ she said to dead air. ‘Is that the Tendring Veterinary Surgery? I need an urgent appointment for a dog that’s having difficulty breathing.’ She paused for effect. ‘It is an emergency, yes. Nothing until tomorrow? Nothing at all?’ She sighed. ‘Very well. We’ll bring him then. The name is Jasper. Sorry – yes, I see. The owner’s name is Eunice Coleman. C-O-L-E-M-A-N. Yes, thank you.’ She turned to Eunice with a mournful face as she put the phone down. ‘They don’t have any appointments until tomorrow afternoon. They suggest keeping Jasper warm and letting him have plenty of fluids.’

  Eunice’s eyes were heavy with tears. ‘I don’t know what I would do without Jasper. He’s my constant companion. He’s everything to me.’

  ‘There is a time for every purpose under heaven,’ Daisy said. ‘If it is Jasper’s time, then we can do nothing but make him comfortable, and be with him. And when he is gone, then I will be your constant companion.’ Until you in turn die, breathless and paralysed, thought Daisy, but she kept the thought to herself.

  Jasper’s breath came slower and slower. At some stage during the morning, while Eunice was fussing about, finding blankets to put over him, he breathed no more.

  Daisy, in contrast, breathed a sigh of relief. She had hated that little monster. Every dog had its day, that’s what they said, and this particular dog’s day had passed. And now Daisy had a good idea how much of the grated apricot kernels she needed in order to kill Eunice. It also looked as if the death would be mess-free, based on the way that Jasper had just slipped away. No vomiting, no diarrhoea, nothing to clean up. After the problems she’d had last time, Daisy was grateful.

  Eunice sobbed inconsolably over Jasper’s body. As Daisy had hoped, the dog’s death had sent her into a spiral of grief which, if Daisy was any judge, would leave her even more dependent on the only person she had left.

  Daisy took Jasper’s body outside in a wooden box left over from a delivery some time in the past. She promised Eunice that she would take the body to the vets, and ensure that he had a decent burial. In fact, Daisy intended only to throw the box over the nearest wall when she left. She wanted as little to do with the dog now that it was dead as she had when it was alive.

  Eunice spent the rest of the day lying down in her house, behind the barn. Daisy closed the Arts Centre down and joined Eunice in the house. While Eunice was sleeping, Daisy spent her time going through drawers and looking at photographs. All grist to the mill.

  Later she checked in on Eunice. The woman was still asleep, snoring with a sound like bubbles forcing their way through mud. Daisy sat down on a chair beside the bed for a while, watching Eunice’s face: absorbing every wrinkle and pore, every stray hair and mole. In sleep, Eunice’s muscles slackened, gravity pulling the soft tissue downwards so that it seemed as if her flesh were slowly sliding off the skull beneath and pooling on the pillow. Her complexion was dry and over-powdered. The skin around her rouged lips was marked with thousands and thousands of hair-fine vertical chasms, like minuscule razor cuts. The signs of old age. The signs that the flesh was beginning to give way.

  Daisy spent some time trying to twist her lips into the same shape as Eunice’s; lower lip thrust forward, ends turned down, slightly parted. It wasn’t that she had any delusion that she would gradually start looking like Eunice once she had taken on her identity; it was more that she wanted to fix the woman’s face in her mind now, while she still could. When she was being Eunice, when she was Eunice, she wanted to be different from Daisy, from Violet and from all the ones that came before. And the best way to do that, she had found, was to hold the face in the memory, and never to look in mirrors.

  Later, she rose from the chair and went downstairs to the kitchen. The percolator sitting fiercely on the marble surface frightened her, but she needed to master it. She suspected that the grated apricot kernels had a bitter taste, and she needed to mask it somehow. Strong coffee seemed like a good idea.

  Girding her courage, she approached the device and tentatively pulled the glass jug out from where it sat on a circular metal hot plate. It came out surprisingly easily. Emboldened, Daisy examined the funnel-like arrangement that sat above where the jug went. There was a flap in the top which, when opened, revealed an opening where water probably went. Below that was a curved section that swung out when Daisy pulled on a projecting handle, revealing a plastic mesh filter, still damp from the last time Eunice had washed it. So – water in the top, coffee grounds in the filter, and jug underneath.

  Chirpier, now she had w
orked out how the percolator functioned, Daisy filled the jug with water and poured it into the top of the machine. Opening a few cupboard doors, she eventually found a Portmeirion-design porcelain jar with a cork lid that proved to contain ground coffee and a plastic spoon. Before she put the coffee in the filter she reached into her handbag and retrieved the tupperware container she had brought with her. A spoonful of coffee, then a spoonful of ground apricot kernels, then a spoonful of coffee, then a spoonful of ground apricot kernels. The filter was half-full, and as Daisy was uncertain how much coffee to put in for a strong cup, she spooned in another measure of each, just for good luck. Pushing the filter holder back into the machine, she hunted around for a moment before finding a switch on the base of the percolator. When she pressed it, the switch lit up amber. Within moments she could hear the swooshing of steam from somewhere inside, followed by a reassuring plup plup plup. Coffee trickled into the jug in a thin stream. Coffee, and something else.

  The kitchen began to fill with the rich, spiky aroma of fresh coffee, undercut with something drier and more bitter. Daisy sniffed, then quickly backed away. It hadn’t occurred to her, but what if the fumes from the apricot kernels were fatal? That would be the ultimate irony – to be killed by her own poison!

  Daisy stayed in the front room for ten minutes, until the sounds of coffee percolating had ceased. When she was sure that there was nothing else coming out of the machine she went back into the kitchen, holding her breath all the while, and opened the window behind the sink. A few minutes should blow any fumes safely away.

  Daisy removed the jug from the hot plate, dislodging a final drip of coffee from the filter arrangement above. It fell onto the hot plate, hissing for a moment or two as it boiled away, leaving a faint trace of dry residue behind.