The Fifth Rapunzel Part 7

It was a similar night tonight, but less dark, and the rain was the warm rain of early summer. The photograph that she'd pinched from Simon and not returned was on the small rickety table she used as a desk. There was a sheet of paper in her typewriter with the heading The Games Men Play' - a commissioned piece of nonsense for a magazine. She had chosen to call her contribution The Snooker Syndrome' and had attempted to be wryly amusing about b.a.l.l.s and phallic cues. Freelance journalism was a penurious occupation, unless you were good at it. Tonight she wasn't good at it.

She was remembering that other night so strongly she could almost smell the wet leather of Peter's shoes and see the hair on the back of his hands. His s.e.xy hands that had probed the cadavers of five strangled prost.i.tutes. She'd asked him what he was celebrating. Nothing, he said. He wasn't celebrating. Clare was. So don't look at him like that. Hixon's conviction hadn't depended on his evidence alone. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d would have been convicted without it. It wasn't his fault that the Press had hyped him up - singled him out. He'd just been part of a team.

Modesty wasn't usually one of his strong points. Hixon's last outburst of aggro, widely reported in the evening papers, must have got to him. And Clare's party was just that much too much.

She hadn't gone to it. Parties weren't her scene, either. And the rift with her sister over Peter had seemed more of a chasm than it actually was. But it hadn't been an act of enticement when she had poured him a generous whisky, he'd looked as if he'd needed it, and his hand shook when she handed him the gla.s.s. He was cold, he said testily. Why didn't she keep her flat warmer? Because she hadn't paid the last electricity bill yet, she nearly told him. Her money problems had nothing to do with him. She managed.

Clare had been managing rather better, she guessed. A free billet in Peter's flat, and the modelling she had been doing for one of the London stores paid very well. The red outfit she had worn in the photograph had probably been bought at discount - or hired. Hadn't she known that you turn up to that sort of village do wearing tweeds and flat heels? Mrs Maybridge's gear. Why, in G.o.d's name, had Peter invited her? If he had.

He had stayed a couple of hours, nursing his whisky and gazing morosely at the two-bar electric fire she'd switched on for him. He was almost fifty - twice Clare's age. And that night he'd looked it. She had sat up with him. Going to bed might have been interpreted as an invitation to join her. They'd had good s.e.x together in the past, but on that last night there had been no s.e.xual pull at all. She'd sensed he had something on his mind. He mentioned Simon once or twice - said he'd had a raw deal - been robbed of a normal upbringing - hoped everything would be better for him in the future. He hadn't mentioned Lisa at all, but by implication everything he said concerned her.

Rhoda picked up the photograph and had another look at it. Lisa appeared so sane, so normal. An attractive middle-aged woman. Had Peter been standing beside her - and Clare absent - it would have been a scene of bucolic bliss. Macklestone on a sunny day - villagers smiling - an enclosed safe little community - hurrah for constancy - married love - no roving husbands - no horror paintings - no hate - no fear - no terrible accident waiting to happen - everything clean and sweet. Macklestone as it never was.

The vicar's grumble about Creggan's dog digging a hole in the cemetery seemed relatively trite to Maybridge until the vicar pointed out that it was natural for a dog to go after bones, but that the bones of h.o.m.o sapiens were sacrosanct. So would he please go along and have a word with Mr Creggan? Maybridge, stifling the retort that it would be better for the vicar to go along and have a word himself, said that he'd mention it to Doctor Donaldson. As medical superintendent, it was up to him to keep his patients and his patients' pets in line.

The vicar, who had been reluctant to broach the subject with Donaldson, was relieved. Several of his parishioners had complained from time to time about Donaldson's so-called progressive methods - with particular reference to letting Creggan creep around in the dark. A psychiatric hospital, especially when housed in a large forbidding building, didn't enhance the village, one of his parishioners had pointed out. It devalued one's property if one wished to sell. Sutton's pious response about being charitable to the afflicted had been greeted with polite derision. "The afflicted, Vicar? Those aren't long-term patients with Down's Syndrome or other incurable genetic disorders, they're victims of their own folly, their way of life, drink, drugs, etc. etc. and Donaldson is reaping a rich harvest." Another parishioner, homing in on the harvest theme, had been equally bitter. "It's all very well singing about ploughing the fields and scattering, but that d.a.m.ned dog of Creggan's has scattered a bedful of tulips at the end of my lawn."

That the dog's holes were, so far, desultory explorations and of more annoyance to Creggan than anyone else, no one knew. Creggan had expected better. The animal had a perverse habit of slipping out of its collar and lead and going in the wrong direction, whereas Creggan knew, or thought he knew, where a hole might produce something of interest - in the copse where the fifth Rapunzel had been found, somewhere just outside the area of the police search.

He guessed when he noticed Maybridge's car in The Mount's drive that a complaint might be about to be made. And wondered how Donaldson would react.

Would another bribe pacify him? If so, how much? When money doesn't matter it becomes a bit of a bore. It had bored him for years. How much would bore Donaldson? he wondered. People had different levels of financial boredom. Caviare, for some, descended to the level of baked beans rather fast. He debated whether to go out for a walk and avoid confrontation, or to lie on his bed and feign sleep.

Maybridge had never found Donaldson easy to communicate with, though he had always made an effort to attend any event that Donaldson had put on to give the patients an opportunity to mingle with the villagers. After a period of isolation, stepping back into society is made easier by meeting strangers at an art display or performing, rather amateurishly perhaps, at a musical soiree. Maybridge rather liked Donaldson's old-fashioned use of the word soiree, it had an air of elegance, of peaceful days long gone. That Donaldson's patients were bruised by late-twentieth-century stresses he could understand, though Victorian stresses had probably been worse. Sherlock Holmes had smoked opium and his doctor creator hadn't condemned him.

Maybridge, rather guiltily, lit a cigarette. Donaldson frowned. "It's not a healthy habit, Chief Inspector. Addictions are easy to acquire and hard to lose. Please put the ash in this." He indicated a crystal inkwell on his desk, a purely decorative item from a patient. He had never been able to call Maybridge Tom, though Maybridge had suggested that he might. Maybridge's attempt to call him Steven had been received coldly and he hadn't tried again. They might live in the same village, drink sometimes in the same pub, but each had his separate professional ident.i.ty.

"I don't see that this is a police matter," Donaldson commented stiffly when Maybridge told him why he'd come.

Maybridge a.s.sured him it wasn't. "The vicar is troubled about the possible disinterring of human remains, though that seems extremely unlikely. The dog could have sniffed out a dead bird, or something. I think it's Creggan's night-time walks that alarm some people and then they complain to the vicar rather than to you. Sutton isn't all that robust when it comes to dealing with criticism. And, candidly, I believe he gets a certain amount of the nimby att.i.tude from his parishioners - you know, not in my back yard - with reference to The Mount."

Donaldson, who knew it only too well and had learnt to ignore it, ignored it again, but it bothered him that the dog had dug a hole in the cemetery. Creggan had promised to keep the animal on a lead.

"Whose grave did it desecrate?"

Desecrate was too strong a word. As far as Maybridge knew, the hole hadn't been near a grave - if it had been, the vicar would have told him. He explained this to Donaldson. "It's probably a lot of fuss about nothing. If the animal worried sheep or cattle there would be cause for complaint. But that could happen and I think your patient should be warned of the consequences."

Donaldson said he had already warned him, but would do so again. Maybridge might consider it a lot of fuss about nothing. He didn't. Matters that at one time he might have dismissed as trivial now tended to loom. Even mildly aggressive att.i.tudes were threatening and difficult to cope with. The professional staff, not normally argumentative, were tending to go more by the book than they used to. And to use bookish words. If you tell a patient he's suffering from cyclothymia you scare him rigid, whereas a few simple words about mood change do no harm at all. He knows that. That's why he's here. One of the psychotherapists, not Sue Raudsley this time, but probably encouraged by her, had argued for the reintroduction of electroconvulsive therapy in place of the monoamine oxidase inhibitor drugs for endogenous depression. The fact that Donaldson used hypnosis from time to time had come in for criticism, too. Lexman, the senior nurse, had referred to it obliquely as "one of the many rather archaic ways of persuading a sick patient he's well". Donaldson could have retorted that a few soothing words that rub out nightmares and make the patient feel better for a while can't be a bad thing. Disinterring memories that are buried deeply and festering can be therapeutic, too, but it's a more painful process and perhaps at times dangerous. Donaldson, suppressing an urge to argue the pros and cons, had said nothing. Lexman depended on him for his salary and if he were wise he would remember it. Or be asked to leave. Creggan, on the other hand, brought the money in.

Which brought his thoughts into sharp focus on him again. Disinterring memories and disinterring bones. Equally hazardous. Only the dog hadn't, which was some consolation. Even so, should he ask Creggan to leave? A confrontation with him might lead to that. It would please the villagers if he went, restore his credibility with his staff, and soothe Mrs Mackay whose dislike of the man was almost paranoid. G.o.d knew there was enough paranoia here without her adding to it. Sally, she had told him, might be in some moral danger if she saw too much of him. Moral danger presupposes a degree of innocence in the vulnerable party. Sally might be guilty of active encouragement - or was her relationship with Simon using all her s.e.xual energy? Her physical energy was being expended on the seven o'clock jog around the grounds - she loping ahead of Simon, he looking foolish a few yards behind. A spectacle that amused some of the patients who rose early. He hadn't joined her this morning. Aware of a growing audience, perhaps.

"It's almost two months since the Bradshaws' funeral," Donaldson informed Maybridge abruptly.

Maybridge carefully tapped ash into the crystal inkwell. Peter had been a heavy smoker, too, and then had suddenly given it up and been extremely irritable for a while. One tended to forget the ordinariness of people in the first few weeks after death. They had gone ahead into the great unknown, wafted along to the accompaniment of sonorous church music, and you thought of them with awe. Afterwards you remembered their tetchiness - their fallibility - their kindness - their humanity.

"Two difficult months for Simon," he said. "Let's hope everything turns out well for him."

Donaldson agreed. Two very difficult months, he thought bitterly, and not just for Lisa's son.

"Creggan attended the funeral," he said. "I suppose you noticed?" Maybridge had. If allowing him to attend had been part of Donaldson's therapy then who was he to question it? The Mount wasn't a closed inst.i.tution. Creggan had also been seen by Radwell mooching around the cemetery some weeks later, carrying a bunch of wild flowers. "Rather out of character, wouldn't you say?" Radwell had commented to Maybridge. As no one knew Creggan's character - with the exception of Donaldson and The Mount's psychotherapists - the comment seemed pointless. Radwell hadn't approached him. "He didn't see me," he explained. "It was getting dark. There was no one else around. And he wasn't doing any harm." No pigs' trotters on graves. Nothing nasty. No dog then to dig holes. No point in mentioning it now.

"A great many attended," Maybridge said. "Mostly the media. Some genuine mourners there too, of course; the Bradshaws were well liked."

Speaking well of the dead, or voicing at worst a veiled criticism, is ingrained in most people. Maybridge had valued his friendship with Bradshaw and kept his criticism under wraps. Meg had deplored Lisa's att.i.tude towards Simon but no longer mentioned it. Max Cormack was in a different category - an unbiased stranger. He sensed that the Millingtons hadn't liked Bradshaw and, though deeply curious to know why, he had avoided any conversation that might lead to an explanation. He was, after all, part of the medical brotherhood. His disquiet about Bradshaw's forensic evidence in the case of the last Rapunzel murder had been growing. The professor's reports on the first four murdered prost.i.tutes had been meticulously detailed - the murders had been done by Hixon and proved to have been done. The notes on Rapunzel number five were slipshod - a brief extension of some of the other notes - a postscript that tended to a.s.sume too much. Hixon's guilt, had it been based on this evidence alone, couldn't have been proved beyond reasonable doubt. An elastic phrase - reasonable doubt. Where does unreasonable doubt set in, Cormack wondered, and what, if anything, should be done about it?

Creggan's effort to nourish Cormack's doubt was premature. They met by accident a few days after Donaldson had given Creggan an ultimatum - any more complaints from the villagers and the dog had to go. Creggan had promised to be more vigilant. He had bought a new chain-type collar and lead for Perry and taken the dog along to what he thought of as the Rapunzel copse to try it out.

And had come across Cormack who was about to time Radwell's run from the copse to the Millingtons' farm. He had already timed the shorter route to the main road where there was a telephone box. Not vandalised. At a guess there would be about twenty minutes' difference, so why hadn't the sergeant taken the quicker route? Too distressed to think of it? A gra.s.sy field easier to run across if you've discarded your shoes? Dawn Mill-ington's bosom soft to weep on while you girded up your strength prior to reporting to your D.C.I, that you've found a corpse ... and walked on it? Any other reason?

The dog, emerging from the trees and about to leap joyously in Cormack's direction, gave a gargled agonised yelp and arched over on to its back.

"Holy Jesus!" Cormack rushed over to it. "You'll throttle the poor little devil." He s.n.a.t.c.hed the lead from Creggan and loosened it. Creggan, appalled, went down on his knees by his pet. "It's Donaldson's fault. I didn't mean to hurt it." Cormack had met him once before, briefly, in Millington's kitchen where Creggan had been paying for the dog's kennelling fees. Over the odds. In Millington's eyes Creggan was crazy. Perhaps dangerous. Cormack suspended judgment. He asked him why he wasn't using the leather lead and collar.

Creggan explained.

"Even the most reprehensible of grave digging mongrels shouldn't be strangled," Cormack pointed out. "Use its old collar, put an extra hole in it, but make sure it's not too tight." If Creggan hadn't obviously been fond of the dog he would have been worried. A choke chain might be all right used carefully in the right hands, though personally he didn't like them in any hands.

Creggan said humbly he would do just that. "And I'll throw this one away."

"Good," said Cormack.

It was the kind of encounter that was difficult to withdraw from. Not casual enough. Where they were standing, in the shadow of the trees, there was the option of walking on together towards the road or taking the longer twisting route peppered with fallen pine cones that emerged eventually on Millington's land. Radwell's route. And, until now, Cormack's. He waited to see which way Creggan intended to go so that he could go in the opposite direction.

Creggan removed the choke chain from Perry. The dog ambled over to Cormack and sat at his feet. A thrush chattered out of sight somewhere and late evening sunlight made gentle amber streaks across a palette of dark green leaves.

"She was naked, wasn't she?" Creggan said.

"What? Who?" Cormack was startled.

"The woman the police called Susan Martin," Creggan gestured vaguely towards the heart of the woods. "The fifth Rapunzel. Poor little lady. Poor little girl. A rose by any other name would smell as ..." He broke off. "I do beg your pardon. But several weeks underground - a degree of decomposition - and no identifying clothes."

Cormack stiffened. Barriers up. Defences ready. The police should have been more discreet at the Press conference. Everyone knew she had been naked and had long hair.

He told Creggan brusquely that he hadn't been involved in the case at all. Knew nothing about it. "And you can't believe everything you read in newspapers."

Creggan agreed. "I found it very difficult to believe that anyone could identify the woman by a picture of a reconstructed face, especially one that looked much the same as hundreds of other faces."

The reconstruction had been done with considerable skill by Professor Miles Benford, who had done a similar reconstruction in the Edward Carne case a few years previously. The television presenter had been on trial charged with murdering his wife. Apart from the period underground and the reconstruction, there was very little similarity in the two cases. Jocelyn Carne hadn't been a prost.i.tute, her family background was known, and she had visited her dentist. Susan Martin either had perfect teeth or her dentist had burnt all his records and dropped dead. Her teeth hadn't revealed anything. But as he wasn't supposed to know anything, Cormack said nothing.

Creggan, after a momentary pause, pressed on. "A little lady," he said, "or maybe a floozie, a tart - who's to know? - meets her end in this wooded glade where the birds sing and the evening sun is very pleasant and some while later Professor Bradshaw and Inspector Maybridge, to name but two locals, together with a professional team which you, Doctor Cormack, have just joined, have the body presented to them, upthrust to the surface by mother nature in a quest for justice, perhaps. And you can tell me that justice has been done - unequivocally?"

It was a carping question. Not accusatory - but almost. Arrows of misconduct aimed mainly at Bradshaw, and to some extent at the police generally. A serial murderer gets landed with another murder - he's carrying the can already, so one more can't make much difference. Or so Cormack interpreted it. It made him angry. It was all right for him to harbour suspicions about the validity of the forensic evidence, but it was a b.l.o.o.d.y nerve if anyone else did. Especially this undoubtedly unhinged, unkempt-looking fellow who was regarding him now with a half smile on his lips. He wondered how old he was. Not old enough for senile dementia - early fifties - so what sort of paranoia was it? Police phobia? An urge to kick the fuzz in the teeth?

"Emphatically," he retorted coldly, "justice has been done. No need for you to worry about it at all. The verdict on Hixon was based on sound evidence. Absolutely."

Creggan noticed the over-emphasis. "But no family came forward. If she had been using a different name from her own that would be understandable - for a while. But when the reconstructed face was shown in the papers and on television then her family would have recognised her - had it been a good reconstruction."

It was a point that had bothered Cormack, too. He suggested irritably that, even in this liberal age, families might prefer not to lay claim to a tart - especially when the whole wide television-viewing world was looking on.

"She was identified by her clients," Creggan said, "according to the papers." And then - very abruptly - he changed the subject. "I haven't seen you up here before, Doctor Cormack, but then I usually come later. Moonlight on the black boles of trees is rather splendid. Don't let me detain you from your evening stroll." He clicked his fingers at Perry and the dog followed him obediently down one of the paths.

Cormack watched them go. The encounter had disturbed him. It had come naturally to him to defend his fellow-professionals, but his own suspicions viewed now seemed contaminated by Creggan's paranoia. Why be so concerned with Radwell's delay, a very short delay, in phoning? He hadn't murdered the girl. Just found her, poor sod. A phone call to the police made twenty minutes or so earlier than it had been wouldn't have made a lot of difference. The corpse had to be left unattended for a brief period. Radwell couldn't have mounted guard over it until someone came along. He had acted perfectly naturally. As for identification -Bradshaw's notes might have been spa.r.s.e but Benford's wouldn't have been. Every step of the reconstruction would have been scrupulously annotated. If Creggan didn't think the corpse was that of Susan Martin, then who did he think it was? Joan of Arc?

It wasn't his case, he reminded himself firmly. And he hadn't full knowledge of it. If he started investigating in the laboratory he would risk the ire of his forensic colleagues. Had anything been amiss they would have reported it at the time. So stop bothering. Bradshaw was probably the genius everyone says he was. It's a comforting thought, so think it.

"Mrs Bradshaw had shoes like those," Mrs Mackay said. Sally, busy spiking small pieces of cheese and sausages and round nutty things on to wooden toothpicks, only they weren't called toothpicks, almost pierced her finger. b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l! A whist drive was going on in the games room and all this fancy stuff had to be carried round in about half an hour. She bled on to a piece of cheese and was about to wipe it off with her handkerchief when she saw Mrs Mackay's sombre eyes watching her. All right, so there were germs. All right, so it wasn't nice. All right, so shove your thumb under the tap, chuck the cheese into the pedal bin and think what to say about the shoes.

Disposing of the Bradshaws' clobber hadn't been a very happy task. Money-wise. The best offer she had had for the lot had been a hundred and twenty-three quid from a second-hand shop called Priceless. Good clobber bought cheap from grieving relatives and sold at about a thousand percent profit. She had told them so and the lady in charge - lady? by G.o.d! - had told her to try elsewhere. She had already tried everywhere and other offers had been much the same, but Pryceless paid cash. While the owner went to a small room at the back to count it out in tenners, it didn't take long, Sally had removed the green shoes from one of the bin bags. They were Italian, expensive when new, not too middle-aged looking, and in a nice shade of green.

She didn't think Simon would recognise them, but hadn't worn them on any of their dates. That Mrs Mackay should recognise them was amazing. Did the old bat creep around gazing at the patients' feet?

"Really?" Sally said. "Had she really? Shoes like these?"

"Yes," Mrs Mackay said quietly, "just like those."

That Sally might be in moral danger from Paul Creggan worried Mrs Mackay deeply. That she might do a bit of pilfering on the side worried her, too. The shoes, she believed, had been removed from Mrs Bradshaw's wardrobe, either here at The Mount during her last stay or from her home. That Sally had access to the Bradshaws' home, and probably to Simon's bed, worried her even more than Creggan's lechery. But as yet she didn't know what to do about it.

The late Angus Mackay, a pillar of the Lutheran church and as rigid as a block of cement, had seemed a suitable husband when they had married thirty years ago - she had been Sally's age but innocent of the ways of men. He had a.s.sailed her virginity like the Black Rod thumping the door of the House of Commons, but had failed to gain entry. Not that there had been anything anatomically wrong with her - just lack of co-operation - and he had stopped short of rape. She would have liked a child, had it been possible to produce one differently. She would have liked one like Sally. But Sally made good. Sally saved.

Sally, neither good nor wanting to be saved, wondered if she could get off the boring task of spiking food and suggested that it would be easier to lay it flat on plates. "Now that I've cut my finger."

Mrs Mackay told her to stir the dip instead, a creamy-looking sauce with a fish flavour, while she did the spiking. "But put a plaster on your finger first. There are some in the cupboard."

The Mount's kitchen was a large utilitarian room with white-painted walls and functional worktops that held an a.s.sortment of utensils, mostly in stainless steel, the exception being a set of pretty saucepans given by a grateful patient, together with a note: "For stimulating my tastebuds so wonderfully, may these flowery pans remind you of me and my grat.i.tude." A patient who hadn't been cured, Mrs Mackay had thought dourly, but she had received them politely and put them on a top shelf where they glowed pinkly prettily next to the first-aid cupboard. "If I had my own home," Sally said, selecting a Band Aid, "I'd like saucepans like those."

"What goes into them matters," Mrs Mackay jabbed a piece of cheese, "not how they look." She was reminded of one of Hixon's homilies about empty vessels - or human receptacles, as he'd called them - being filled with a broth of evil and stirred with the hands of sin. Not one of his happier sermons. At his best he'd had the power to soar into the realms of ecstasy and drag his congregation with him. The Welsh called it hwyl, she believed, the Scots hadn't a word for it, or if they had she didn't know it. Whatever it was, it did one good. She wondered if his talent for words would flourish in the gaol's chapel, or would he be in solitary confinement and gagged for ever?

"Do you think they'll eat all these biscuits?" Sally asked, "or may I have one?" The biscuits were shaped into hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs. She had cut them out earlier from the savoury pastry that Mrs Mackay had made. To ask if she might have one was politic under the circ.u.mstances. She had already nicked half a dozen before Mrs Mackay had noticed the shoes.

Mrs Mackay told her she could. "Just one."

Sally chose a heart and ate it. She had tried to persuade Simon to come to the whist drive. It was the monthly one that was open to villagers. The Maybridges would probably come, she had told him. It might have been the wrong thing to say. Mrs Maybridge had put her foot in it, apparently, she wasn't sure how. Something to do with the woman Creggan had nicknamed the senorita - or senora - who had gone away. Creggan had been to one of the bridge parties, patients and guests only, and had pinched her bottom when she had leaned over with the tray of fancies during the interval. He hadn't been to any of the others. It was boring without him. She wasn't even allowed to carry his tea down to his tent, these days. One of the other domestics did it - Mavis Dunoon - but she had managed to slip into his tent now and then when no one was around. "Mavis," he had said bitterly, "a song thrush, how inaptly named - a corn-crake of a woman - a mastodon of a female - an extinct mammalian creature with nipple-shaped prominences on her molar teeth." A bit of an exaggeration. There wasn't much wrong with Mavis, apart from being overweight and over thirty. Her teeth did stick out a bit. Not a lot.

Creggan had asked her if she was still seeing the Bradshaw boy. His name is Simon, she had said. Yes, he knew that, he said. Was she still seeing him? Sometimes, she said. "Has he f.u.c.ked you yet?" That was a rude question - a rude way of putting a rude question. Old guys shouldn't use words like that. She had glared at him. "I take it," he said gently, "that he has not, and I apologise, my dear child, if I have hurt your susceptibilities by phrasing it in such a gross manner."

"Hm," she had snorted, not appeased. He had been at his weak beer again, she guessed. It filled his mouth up with dictionary words - and rude ones - and he spat them out. "Dear Sally," he had reached out and held her hand, "I'm so sorry." A nice simple apology that time and she had accepted it. "Never get hurt," he had added, "never let anyone destroy you, dear child. There are other places away from here - other places of employment - other boys. Go away, little Sally Loreto, while all is well."

Maybe he was a little mad. She had smiled at him doubtfully. He hadn't smiled back.

The seduction of Simon was taking a lot longer than she had expected, and it annoyed her that Creggan might have guessed it. She had lost her virginity at fifteen, a race in those days to see which of her girlfriends could lose it first. She had never had difficulty enticing a boy, just pretended he was enticing her. She had hoped to sleep with Simon on the day she had disposed of the clothes, and had driven the empty van back optimistically and with a handy story ready about Oxfam being awfully pleased. He hadn't been in a good mood. Where were the keys? he wanted to know. Had she emptied the pockets - his father's pockets - and taken out the keys? Rather cross, too, by now (he should have been grateful she'd done the job at all), she'd told him that all she could find in the pockets were handkerchiefs - did his father have a perpetual cold? - and as no one would want those, she had thrown them away. There was no loose change in the pockets, she had added coldly in case he thought she was stealing. He wasn't interested in loose change, he'd said, just keys. Not the house keys, he had those, keys to a place in London his father's solicitor had told him about. They must be somewhere. "Then look," she had said, "but don't look at me. I haven't got them. All I have is a head that's about to split after spending hours doing a charitable job you wouldn't do yourself." The atmosphere hadn't been warm and cosy. He hadn't even mentioned the tracksuit.

On their next date, a few days later, he told her he'd found the keys in his father's travelling case, which seemed an odd place to keep them. And he'd thanked her very much for the tracksuit and was sorry if he'd been pretty rotten to her on the day she'd disposed of the gear, but he got like that sometimes. And where did she want to jog?

It was clear to her that he didn't particularly want to jog anywhere and it took some cajoling to get him to rise at seven and meet her at The Mount on her daily run. They had run together on five mornings, and if he saw that as a penance it wasn't a very long one. He wouldn't mind jogging somewhere else, he said, but he didn't like people watching and he didn't like having to get up so early. What about an evening jog some time - across the fields, perhaps?

It was a reasonable suggestion - with possibilities. She had smiled her happy Sally smile again and said, "Why not?"

Macklestone wasn't brilliant jogging countryside. The main road was lethal and the minor roads had a devious habit of ending up in cul-de-sacs and farmyards. The right of way through part of the Millingtons' farm was one of the few possible options when the weather was dry. To reach it meant pa.s.sing Mrs Mackay's cottage, which was tucked away like a sullen little toad at the end of a lane. Sally on the whole preferred being spied on by The Mount's patients, who were either madly enthusiastic or insanely jealous (well, she guessed they were), than by Mrs Mackay, who exuded displeasure like a squeezed carbuncle, but as they pa.s.sed her cottage in less than half a minute of a quick run, and as Mrs Mackay spent most of her off-duty time sewing samplers and making curtains in the room at the back, Sally wasn't too bothered. Mrs Mackay's samplers and curtains were topics of conversation, dry islands of dull talk, when she wasn't busy stirring something or other. The curtain material she had bought cheap at a Bristol market, blue and cream striped cotton. The sampler she was working on showed clasped hands and the words 'To have and to hold'. All this information had been elicited by Sally, who wasn't particularly interested but didn't like silence very much. 'To have and to hold' was part of the marriage service, she had informed Mrs Mackay. There were other meanings, Mrs Mackay had replied. There was virtue in constancy. In having principles and keeping them. To have courage in the face of adversity. To have faith in one's friends. What friends? Sally had wondered. The Millingtons? Mrs Mackay and Mrs Millington met sometimes, she'd heard, and went somewhere to sing. The thought of Mrs Mackay singing made Sally collapse into giggles. It was impossible to imagine. Her mouth was trap shut most of the time. She hoped it would stay trap shut about Simon's mother's shoes.

She wished she would stop looking at them.

Sally, escaping from her gaze, picked up the tray and carried it through to the games room. A bell rang. Half time, or had someone revoked? Revoked - another word she'd learnt. If a psychiatric patient revoked, and thought the accusation unfair, would he fling his cards in his opponent's face, overturn the table, scream? People did scream in The Mount - just now and then - and were taken along to the quiet wing where they could scream in peace and quiet. Or Doctor Donaldson would get them to lie on his couch and say something in a soothing voice until they fell asleep - hypnotism without dangling an object in front of their eyes, some sort of trick. He usually had one of the women psychotherapists with him when he did that. A canny old cove - Donaldson. Very careful. Any accusation of s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g and he'd screw the female patient for damages pretty d.a.m.n fast.

The games room wasn't as full as usual. Only six tables. It had been a very hot day and the evening light was still strong. Card games were better played in the winter.

Max Cormack, who thought the same but had come out of curiosity, noticed the fair-haired girl standing in the doorway holding a tray. He had seen her jogging past Millington's farm with Bradshaw's son. A happy sort of friendship. She was older than him, he guessed, but not too much older. He had hoped to meet Simon by now, in the pub or somewhere, but the lad seemed to lead a hermitical existence apart from going out with the girl, whatever her name was. Maybridge had told him that the lad was doing all the wrong things, if one viewed life rigidly from a practical angle, but who was to judge? What was wrong for some was right for others, Maybridge had stressed. If a person got knocked down by a car, forcing him to get back on his feet before he was ready wouldn't do him much good. Healing took time. Simon, emotionally stunned, was still groping around. Had he rushed back to school and then on to university in the autumn, his friends might have felt easier about him, applauded his courage, but he had to work things out in his own way.

Maybridge's wife, apparently, would have been one of the applauders. She hadn't handled him very well, she'd explained to Cormack, and felt guilty that she wasn't helping him more, but knew she wouldn't be welcome. "I probably lack sensitivity, or patience, or both. He's an emotional adolescent in need of guidance, but he's so hard to approach."

Cormack had listened without comment. How would Josie settle into this environment, he wondered, when she came back from the States? Would she prefer the wider scope of living in Bristol - the shops - the theatres - above all, the anonymity? Here in this village people carried each other on their backs - or they pushed them away. A normal, not too warm, not too cool mingling seemed to be out. It was a village of extremes. Or maybe it seemed that way because he lodged with the Millingtons. Had he lodged with the family of the bloke who ran the garage and referred to Bradshaw as a good guy, a thoroughly nice chap, he might view it differently. A positive att.i.tude is acceptable. The Millingtons' dislike of Bradshaw, though never openly voiced, was like touching a sweaty hand. This evening he had met Doctor Donaldson for the first time and had deliberately made clear to him that he felt privileged to follow in Bradshaw's footsteps - and then waited for a response. It had been slow to come but, when it had, it had been meticulously phrased, like an obituary. A man of brilliant academic ability. A loss not only to the local community but to the country as a whole. A professorship in forensic science was greatly valued in the teaching hospitals where men of his calibre were badly needed.

Was Doctor Cormack interested in lecturing, writing papers and books on the topic, perhaps? Was he planning to follow in his footsteps that far?

A neat steering away from Bradshaw. The sweaty hand again, discreetly gloved?

He would have liked to ask about Mrs Bradshaw but it would have sounded like arrant curiosity, or at the very least, bad form. He had heard she had attended here from time to time as a patient. That made the subject taboo. Mrs Maybridge was the only one who mentioned her, quite naturally during the course of conversation, and had described her as a gifted artist who would have done even better if she had become an ill.u.s.trator of modern fairy stories. Fresh images seen through her own eyes, as she had put it, and not been so immersed in the past.

Images of the past tended to change with pa.s.sing time. The murdered girl in the copse would become part of folklore one day. In Ireland, Celtic land of ghosts, she would become wraith-like, a gentle creature that had died too young. Here in more prosaic England they might see her differently. A strangled prost.i.tute, labelled with the wrong name, perhaps. d.a.m.n Creggan for voicing it. He was relieved he wasn't here this evening. The other patients, most of them good card players, were typical of any social gathering. The only one who got on his wick was a heavily built woman who carried a bag of sweets around from table to table and masticated like a ruminant whilst taking surrept.i.tious peeps at his cards. He didn't discover she was the vicar's wife until later. Her husband, not a card player, had wandered around smiling vaguely and rung the bell from time to time, apparently at the M.C.'s instructions. A bland evening. Rather dull. The kind of affair his parents used to attend in the village hall at home when Father Duffy was the M.C. The Maybridges had the good sense not to come. Perhaps they preferred playing bridge - as he did.

"The pate is Mrs Mackay's speciality," Sally said, moving over to him with the tray. "And the other bits and bobs are rather nice, too. Try one." She gave him a wide, happy smile.

"Thanks," Cormack smiled back. He felt more cheerful. Not a bad place, The Mount. Donaldson was doing a good job. And he knew how to pick his staff ... Or maybe he didn't. If s.e.xy signals could be wafted into the air then he was breathing them in alarmingly fast. He stopped smiling. For G.o.d's sake, Josie, come home!

"Go on," Sally cajoled, edging closer, "spoil yourself, take two." He was the first presentable male she'd seen in the place since she'd been here. Dark red hair, almost black, probably grew it on his chest, too. Muscles like ropes. Eyes that had seen a lot.

Aware that he was being a.s.sessed, mentally stripped naked and approved of, Cormack found himself doing the same in the opposite direction. And stopped. A herculean effort of self-control. If he wanted s.e.x he'd get a tart in the city. Or be celibate.

"I hear you're a Roman Catholic," said a man's voice in his ear.

Transfixed by Sally, he didn't answer.

"A believer in transubstantiation," said the voice.

"The things on sticks are mainly cheese," said Sally.

"A kind of spiritual cannibalism," said the voice.

"And the dip is fish based," said Sally.

"Fish, an early Christian emblem," said the voice. And went away.

Cormack took two biscuits with pate on them. And waited for Sally to go, too. "One of the nutters," she whispered, between giggles, and moved on to the next table.

The air, neutered once more, became breathable. Cormack ate his biscuits and resisted glancing after her. No wonder the Bradshaw boy was happy to stay put. Grief? Emotionally stunned? Hadn't Maybridge eyes in his head?