The Fifth Rapunzel Part 13

Simon went into the larger bedroom again and looked in the wardrobe. A woman's clothes, a blur of colours, very bright some of them, and a few city suits of his father's were squashed untidily together like two people sharing a small bed. He felt a pang of sympathy for his mother and for the first time ever was on her side. His father might have needed the love and warmth of somebody normal, but understanding that wasn't quite the same as looking at the evidence. His mother had needed someone, too.

The living-room, which looked over the street - a rather sleazy street, not well lit this hour of the night - as nondescript, mostly done up in different shades of green and cream as if no one cared a great deal. It wasn't evocative of his father, no personal imprint of any kind.

He went into the kitchen and noticed that the fridge was connected but empty. He was hungry and couldn't do much about it. Some fish and chips would have been marvellous. There weren't any drinks on the premises apart from tea and coffee. No milk. He made himself some milkless tea, then went into the bedroom again and drew the curtains.

He slept in his underpants and socks, he had packed nothing, and woke a little after midnight when the light was switched on.

"So" you've done a runner, Simon," Rhoda said quietly. "I thought perhaps you might."

The owners of the shop downstair had noticed the drawn curtains and had phoned her. They were a couple of brothers originally from the West Country who had sold the flat to Peter, and had become friends over the years. They knew the background and thought Clare might have returned.

Disappointment that it was Simon and not Clare was difficult to suppress. His eyes were half closed against the light. He looked pale, very tired, very young.

He mumbled, "I'm dreaming you."

"Yes," she said, "you're dreaming me," and put out the light. Dream on, she thought. Get what rest you can. She would return in the morning with some food for him.

His dramatic rupturing of what had seemed an idyllic relationship with the missing blonde had shocked her. He was the type to be hurt. Not to hurt. He would need all the help she could give him.

Simon woke to the smell of bacon grilling and, ravenously hungry by now, went to see who was in the kitchen. So it had been Rhoda in the night. He'd had too much buffeting by a malignant fate in the last week or so to feel much about anything. Including her. He remembered being angry with her a long time ago - it felt like years. Seeing her now didn't jolt him into a state of emotional turmoil, but he was glad she was there. It didn't occur to him to wonder why she should be. It seemed natural for her to turn up. She always had.

Relieved that he was accepting her presence so casually, she asked him if he had slept well. He said he had, thanks.

"You're looking scruffy," she observed. "There's plenty of hot water for you to freshen up, but you'd better eat first."

It was like the old days at home. Rhoda cooking for him, caring for him, being critical. No intervening days of trauma.

She had breakfasted earlier and went through to the bathroom while he ate. She set out Peter's toiletries where he could see them, and put Clare's where he couldn't. A couple of toothbrushes sharing a mug had a raffish air of propinquity. She took the pink one out. Now what? she wondered. The situation was bizarre. His calm unnatural. When would he be ready to talk? She wanted to hear the facts, not the guesses of journalists. He had the dazed look of someone recovering from an accident, not clearly aware of anything yet.

She returned to the kitchen and poured his tea for him.

He asked her what day it was, not that it mattered, but time seemed to have got out of sequence.

"Thursday."

"It's raining?"

"Yes." She had hung her wet anorak on the hook on the back of the kitchen door. He was looking at it, and at her hair which gleamed with moisture.

"You've been out somewhere."

"Yes - to my own flat. And yes - before you ask it - I have a key to this one. Your father gave it to me. I look in now and again. And let's leave it at that, shall we? At least for now. Do you want more toast?"

He didn't. She had overdone the last piece and the smell of it reminded him of the burning quilt. And that evoked other memories.

"You forgot to take it with you," he told her.

"What?"

"Your nightdress. The police have it."

She knew nothing of the background: details of the investigation had been kept from the Press. All she knew was that the search was on and his garden was being dug. And the inference was strong enough that though Simon wasn't charged with murdering the girl yet, he soon would be. She asked him why the police had her nightdress. He said he didn't want to talk about it.

"If you don't tell me I can't help you."

He was grateful she wanted to help him, but he didn't see how she possibly could. To escape further questioning he told her he was going to have a bath.

He took his time over it, lying in the cooling water and trying to think things through. He would probably have to have a lawyer at some stage and wondered about Alan Drew. Perhaps he didn't do criminal work - just divorces, petty ordinary stuff. He explored his feelings about Rhoda sleeping with Drew. If she had. It was like sticking a pin in himself, a light cautious prod followed by a deeper one. Yes, it could draw blood, but at least he wasn't haemorrhaging over it.

Rhoda washed up then went to wait for him in the sitting-room. If he wouldn't speak of the past - yet - he couldn't force him to. When he joined her she asked him what his immediate plans were. "How long do you intend staying here?"

He had no idea. "A woman called Clare Warwick owns the flat. She might come any time. When she comes, I'll go. Or before she comes, if the police arrest me. I wish my father had left the flat to you."

She looked stricken. "Simon ..." She couldn't tell him. She went over to the window and stood with her face averted. He was puzzled by her reaction to a perfectly ordinary remark. If his father had given her the key to the place, then it might have been more than a casual friendship.

If it was, he didn't want to know.

The room was feeling stuffy. He told her he wanted to go out. The rain had eased and there were patches of blue in the sky.

She turned to face him. "Where do you want to go?"

He remembered he'd left his car somewhere, but he had no idea where. It had probably been stolen by now or impounded by the police. It didn't matter. He couldn't drive anywhere - there was no place to drive to. He would be arrested eventually, but for the next few hours he was free. "Anywhere - just walk around."

"Do you want me to come with you?"

"Of course." What did she expect him to do - go out and leave her? But she had left him and he had made a big thing of it. Met Sally and ... "We bled," he said, "both of us. There's blood on your nightdress. Hers."

"Oh G.o.d, Simon, what have you done?"

"Nothing. She just walked out. We had a row. I hit her. She had a nosebleed. That's all." He didn't expect her to believe him. n.o.body did. People had been convicted of murder in the past without the body being produced. They were put away on circ.u.mstantial evidence. Hixon had killed five women and had raised h.e.l.l about the last one. He should have shut up, he'd had nothing to complain about. All five bodies on the mortuary slab, examined by his father, guilt positively proved.

"I wouldn't mind so much," Simon said bitterly, "if I were guilty. It's being innocent that gets at me. It's so f.u.c.king unfair."

No words were ever more patently true, Rhoda, totally convinced, felt her taut muscles relax. It was then, on impulse, that she told him about Clare. And couldn't have chosen a better moment.

Clare's disappearance, compared with Sally's, seemed to Simon of no great consequence. She had decided to go somewhere else - take a holiday - not send a letter - that was all. She hadn't left any blood anywhere, had she? The police weren't chasing Rhoda, were they? That she was Rhoda's sister and had been his father's mistress, the owner of the clothes in the wardrobe, was more disturbing.

"Why didn't you tell me before?"

"I didn't want to upset you."

He thought about it. Had things been normal he would have been upset. If you fling a pebble into a goldfish bowl the splash wets you and you might kill the fish. If you throw that same pebble into a large grey ocean it sinks without trace. Simon's ocean was very grey. He stood a good chance of drowning in it.

"I'm not upset," he said. "I've other, more upsetting things to be upset about. But I still wish my father had left the flat to you."

Mrs Mackay couldn't believe that Sally might be dying. She was drowsy all the time, that was all, too drowsy, maybe. She was too weak to get out of bed and didn't try. But if she were to get back to The Mount then it was necessary that she should walk, even just a little. Mrs Mackay couldn't carry her. And Sally would have to say where she had been - a story about being concussed and wandering around, she couldn't remember where. That had been the plan. Doctor Donaldson had used hypnosis with his patients to help them to find out where they had been. If he used it on Sally she might tell him. He might guess about the drugs. The pharmacist had gone down the corridor to speak to one of the nurses while she had waited for her cough linctus. "Only be gone a tick' he'd said. A tick had been about five minutes. Long enough.

So, all in all, it didn't seem wise to let Sally go back to The Mount yet. And she wasn't clamouring to go. She wasn't clamouring to go anywhere. Mrs Mackay wasn't sure if she could still speak or if she were just having her on. She had invited Mrs Hixon, during one of their many telephone conversations, to come to the cottage to see Sally, but she had declined. She had come to Macklestone for the Bradshaws' funeral, she said, and that had been enough. A once-and-only mission to put the pig's trotter in the wreath. That she had managed to put it in the Chief Constable's wreath had been an act of divine guidance. "Read her the story about Hagar in the wilderness finding the spring of water," she had suggested. "You are her spring of water. You bring her new life. She's in your loving care."

Love might be a many splendoured thing, but it is deadly dangerous too. Sally's wilderness was a land of growing menace where the springs gushed blood. She was pursued by phantoms and she longed for peace. The witch at her bedside was waiting to eat her. When she was fat. She kept hauling her up and trying to feed her. Her face was a frog's, it was smiling and mouthing: Eat a little, m'love - drink a little, m'love. M'love ... m'dear ... m'love ... m'love ... m'love ...

Digging in the copse had diverted attention away from Simon's garden - apart from that, it didn't do any good. No severed hands were found hidden down a badger sett or a fox hole. They would never be found anywhere. Millington had fed them to his pigs.

That he had managed to be so calm after murdering the fifth Rapunzel was surprising. That he had murdered her was even more surprising. He hadn't thought he could do that. He hadn't thought he was that kind of man. Reading about the Rapunzel murders, in the early days before Hixon was caught, had made his body respond in a most peculiar way. He had half-hanged himself in the shed once; not out of remorse, he hadn't done it then, but out of a peculiar feeling of need. Something to do with s.e.x.

He had been working on one of the badgers he'd trapped that summer evening when he had seen the bus stop down on the main road and Professor Bradshaw's fancy woman getting out. He had hoped she would walk to the Bradshaws' home along the road, but instead she took the path leading to the copse. The evening sun had been low in the sky, but it was still bright enough to show the shape of her body through her white dress. White was a see-through colour. It shouldn't be worn. Had he not been so intent on looking at the way her hips moved, gracefully like a young animal's, he would have remembered the badger's head that he had put to lie in the bracken behind him. Badgers' masks, as the animal's face was called, were sold to the trade for good money if you had a contact who knew how to bargain, and you could sell a whole carca.s.s to be stuffed for two or three hundred quid. He didn't think it was illegal, but he kept quiet about it because he wasn't sure. Dawn didn't know he was doing it. She wouldn't have liked it. There were times when he didn't think she liked him very much either, whatever he did. They hadn't slept together for a long time. All she liked doing was singing in the choir and serving in the pub and being a kind of mother figure to Radwell. It was no use her blaming him that they hadn't a child. You have to get together to do that.

Ever since the first Rapunzel had been found, he had been having disturbing dreams about lying with a woman with long hair. The woman coming up through the copse had hair like a rope. He had put his hands across her mouth to stop her screaming when she had looked at him, and then past him at the badger's head. Its eyes had been open - dead, of course, but open - and there had been blood on its snout. If she hadn't screamed he wouldn't have touched her, but once he'd touched her he couldn't stop. He had been too upset to have s.e.x with her afterwards. It was necessary to get rid of her before someone came. If the police found her they would take her fingerprints to identify her, so he had cut her hands off with the badger knife. They might know her by her clothes so he had removed them. Kicking her head in had been the worst part of it - the memory had sucked at his brain like a leech. There had been no peace until it had finally gone. Radwell's finding the body had made the horror resurface, but it had faded again when Hixon was accused. Bradshaw, despite his immoral goings on and his nasty tongue, was supposed to be a good pathologist. If he thought Hixon had done it, then his own memory was a bad dream. A nightmare about something that hadn't happened. Having the police in the garden looking for Sally had given him a niggling pain in his stomach, but it didn't flash any signals to his mind other than wanting them off the premises. He wondered if the police would find anything in the copse now that they were digging there again. There was a bundle of torn up rags in a bag under the hay in his barn. He hadn't looked at them for a long time. If the dress had once been white, it wasn't any more. Why should he think of a dress? And why white?

He needed a clear mind to do his farm accounts and this Friday evening it was particularly difficult to concentrate. Dawn suggested he should leave them for a while and do something else. She needed to borrow Mrs Mackay's trays to carry some pies to the Avon Arms. They wouldn't be as good as Mrs Mackay's flans, which was just as well or she'd lose her friendship for ever, but they were a stand-in until she was well enough to get back to her cooking. She felt guilty she hadn't been to see her, but Mrs Mackay had dissuaded her in case she caught her cold. She hadn't sounded husky on the phone, but not all that perky, either. "You might as well borrow the car," she had suggested, "it's adapted for carrying the trays and Mr Millington won't have to come in.

"You won't have to socialise," Dawn encouraged her husband, "if that's what's worrying you. Just collect the car and drive it back here."

But as that seemed rather callous - after all, she was accepting a favour from a friend who wasn't well - she called after her husband to wait a minute while she cut her some dahlias. "Just hand them in and say thanks," she said, thrusting the crimson flowers at him. He accepted them with sullen docility. It wasn't until he had gone that she realised he hadn't spoken a word.

Millington's moods were as sombre as the Towers of Silence of the Pa.r.s.ees. Birds chirruped in the hedgerows as he walked towards the cottage and the gra.s.s was brightly green after recent rain, but nothing cheered his spirits. He was a man to be made use of. A minion. No authority. No luck. No money. And, annoyingly, when he reached the car, no keys. Mrs Mackay had forgotten to open it.

Carrying the flowers, ashamed of them, men didn't carry flowers, stupid women forgot to unlock cars, he went up the path to the cottage and rang the bell.

Mrs Mackay was down at the bottom of the long untidy back garden picking mint and didn't see him walking round to the back door, which she had left open.

He went in.

Sally moved restlessly and a strand of hair brushed her lips, which were dry and flaking. Afternoon sunlight was a pale wash over her dress, her first time to wear it. She had no recollection of Mrs Mackay forcing it on, but her voice droned in her head like a dirge: "It's lovely, m'dear ... you're lovely, m'dear ... it fits like a dream ..." In Sally's forest a cat purred, a sleepy gentle sound; it was getting dark and the trees were closing in.

Sally died at five twenty-five on Friday afternoon, minutes before Millington touched her.

'If only' are two of the most helpless, useless words that anyone can utter. If only the pharmacist had admitted his suspicions about Mrs Mackay sooner. If only Donaldson had contacted Maybridge sooner and they had gone down to the cottage at once.

They went in through the back door and Maybridge smelt blood. His common sense told him he couldn't, but he did, he always did in cases like these. A premonition, salty on his tongue, making his heart race. There was a scatter of flowers on the kitchen floor and roughly cut mint on the table.

Millington was sitting on the stairs, a sunburst of red on his shirt. Mrs Mackay had bled heavily on to him. His own wounds were mainly scratches but he had twisted his ankle when he had moved backwards and fallen over the wooden tray. She had sprung at him when she saw the girl and he had wrenched it from her and slammed it across her face.

"I can't walk," he told Maybridge plaintively.

Maybridge pushed past him and went into the bedroom.

Mrs Mackay was crouched by Sally's bed. Blood from her head wound was running down her face and mingling with her tears. Droplets spattered Sally's naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her dress had been ripped from throat to hem. She tried to tell Maybridge to cover her, that she wasn't decent, but it came out as a confused mumble.

"Oh, G.o.d," Maybridge said quietly, "Oh, dear G.o.d!" He felt for the pulse he knew he wouldn't find.

Claxby would have enjoyed interrogating Millington, his piranha instincts were aroused, but Maybridge had been at the scene of the crime and Claxby took the subordinate role.

Anger doesn't contribute to logical thinking, but in Maybridge's case it didn't detract from it, either. Sally was very clear in his mind. And so was his first sight of the lumpish, blood-soaked farmer sitting on the stairs. Moaning about his ankle.

Now, a few hours later, in the interview room in police headquarters and wearing a clean shirt, he was still moaning about it.

"Look, Chief Inspector," he said, rolling down his thick grey sock to reveal the bluish-black swelling. "I'm not deceiving you. It happened the way I said. I fell over the tray."

The interview was being taped. It was necessary to get the events in order, as far as possible, for the sake of clarity. And in Millington's words.

Millington's trivialising words. A dead girl. A battered woman. A sprained ankle.

Maybridge, outwardly unemotional, took Millington through the events quietly. "It happened in the bedroom. Why was the tray in the bedroom?"

Millington didn't know why Mrs Mackay had carried it upstairs, the thought hadn't occurred to him until now. He suggested that she might have heard him moving around upstairs and as she had it in her hand at the time, ready to give to him when he called, then she had just forgotten she was carrying it.

"So she knew you were there - walking about - and carried the tray up to you. Why did you go upstairs?"

"I was caught short."

"I see. You went to the lavatory. Why didn't she wait for you to come downstairs again?"

"I don't know. Maybe she didn't know it was me. I didn't have a chance to tell her. She wasn't there when I arrived. She must have been in the garden."

Maybridge gave the impression of thinking it over. "An awkward situation. Would it seem reasonable to suppose that she might have thought you were a burglar, and carried it defensively - like a stick?"

Millington agreed that she might have done.

"And that was the way you used it - on her. Why did she attack you, Mr Millington?"

Millington adjusted his sock. "I can't remember."

Maybridge turned to Claxby, who was seated next to him. "Isn't it amazing, Superintendent, the way memory plays one up now and then? After something rather nasty happens the brain takes a quiet forty winks or so before sorting things out. If it takes any longer then it has to be prodded - made to remember." Claxby agreed. Maybridge had enough strength of character to keep his anger in check, but he could be formidable. So far he was playing everything low key.

"Well, now," Maybridge said. "Do you think you might start to remember, or shall I help?"

Millington was silent.

Maybridge leaned back in his chair and seemed very relaxed. "Let's take it from the time you went into the bedroom. What is the first thing you remember when you went through the door?"

Millington tried to escape his gaze and couldn't. "The girl, I suppose."

"The girl, you suppose. Well done, we're getting there. Who was the girl?"

"Sally Loreto."

"Yes, Sally Loreto. The missing girl we came to your farm to enquire about. What was she doing?"

"I don't re -"

"Yes, you do," a quick thrust here, "keep it going, I'll help. She was what ... walking around the room ... sitting on a chair ... looking through the window ... reading a book ... what was she doing?"