Past Praying For (27 page)

He
could see the woman he was looking for, could see her stress, her anxiety, her pain. He could see her desperately striking back at a world that must be punished for – what? Some failure of love, Robert had said, but how many lucky adults could say that this did not feature at some important part of their lives?

Ruffling
through the disorder of papers on his desk, he picked out his interview with Margaret Moon in hospital the previous day, grimacing in remembered frustration. Why were things never straightforward?

Vezey
had gone reluctantly; he did not like hospitals. He walked along the aseptic corridors feeling chilled, as always, by the contrast between their professional tone of relentless optimism and the miasma of human suffering.

Miss
Moon, however, was sitting up in bed when he arrived, looking, despite her ordeal, surprisingly calm and cheerful for someone whose eyes were still the colour of raw steak and whose voice was strained and clearly painful.

He
had promised he would keep it short and she was able, under his questioning, to describe the voices she had heard and the differences between them, though not, unfortunately, with any sense of recognition.

‘
Well, I know now of course that they were the same person,’ she added carefully, ‘but it honestly didn’t occur to me at the time.’

‘
Good.’ Vezey had made a particular note of that; it was the sole glimpse they had of the other persona and suggested a noticeable difference between them. It was, at least, a chink into which the lever of questioning could be inserted.

‘
Now – she thought of phoning you when she was in this desperate state. Do you think this was purely because you were the vicar and could carry out this exorcism she wanted, or because she had some previous direct contact with you?’

Margaret
shut her eyes for a moment in concentrated thought, almost as if she were replaying the conversation in her head.

‘
Well, it’s certainly someone I know – Dumbo said “Yes” when I asked her. But “direct contact”?’ She considered it, then said positively, ‘Nothing was said either way, I’m sure of that. But if you’re asking my impression…’

He
nodded. ‘Anything.’

‘
It is my definite feeling that from the way she began the conversation she had been in recent contact. She didn’t say, “Is that the vicar?” or “Is it all right if I talk to you?” as most people would, she just started straight in.’

‘
Right. So let’s start with your contacts on that day.’ Margaret coughed, with evident discomfort, and took a soothing drink from the glass at her bedside.

‘
Yesterday there was Suzanne Bolton, of course. I spent a long time with her. A couple of her neighbours – I can’t remember the names – came in as I was leaving, and I exchanged a few words with them, and with Laura Ferrars earlier, on the way to Suzanne’s. Oh, and Elizabeth McEvoy at the church. Old Miss Christie was at church as well, I talked to her briefly – ’

‘
Not relevant at the moment,’ he interrupted brusquely. ‘Save your voice. We’re sticking to the original profile meantime. Those women – close friends, aren’t they, all about the same age? And the American, Mrs Cutler, too? You weren’t speaking to her?’

Margaret
shook her head. ‘No. I passed her as she came back from jogging the day before, but she certainly hasn’t sought me out. But –’

She
broke off.

‘
Go on,’ he urged.

‘
Oh, nothing, really.’ She was clearly not in the habit of prevaricating, and colour began to show in her cheeks. She coughed again, making a business out of taking another sip from her glass, but he was not deceived.

He
hesitated. He did not want to upset her, not least for fear of incurring her brother’s wrath.

He
said, keeping his tone as light as possible, ‘Now, why do I feel there’s something you’re not telling me?’

Over
the rim of the glass, her eyes behind the spectacles were rounded in anguish, and she went pinker than ever.

The
penny dropped. ‘Oh, good grief,’ he said in exasperation. ‘We’re on sacred ground here – seal of the confessional, and all that, aren’t we?’

‘
Well, not exactly,’ she said, but she would not meet his eyes.

‘
A professional confidence, then? Do you know who’s doing this?’

‘
Oh, no, no – nothing like that...’

‘
But a useful piece of information, nonetheless. Oh, for goodness’ sake, Miss Moon, someone tried to kill you last night. Don’t you think, even if you feel that you have higher duties than your civic ones, that you might tell me from self-preservation?’

‘
Least of all from that,’ she said coldly. Now she looked directly at him, eyes guarded and mouth firmly shut.

He
hammered his fist on his knee in frustration.

‘
So tonight, when someone else dies because you haven’t pointed me in the right direction, you will feel quite justified because you kept a promise of silence to someone who had no moral right to ask it of you?’

She
bit her lip, and emboldened he went on.

‘
It’s a question of time, you see. Your brother says – and I don’t need to tell you that he’s very astute – that this one’s going to strike again. I need every short-cut I can find, if we’re to get there first.’

‘
Oh, I know all that. I’m not stupid,’ she croaked impatiently. ‘But you’re asking something I can’t do.’

She
sat back against her pillows, battered perhaps, but still sturdily unyielding. He wondered if anyone had ever felt driven to shake her until her teeth rattled in her head, but that was hardly a productive thought.

He
ran his hand through his hair in a gesture of impatience. ‘Look –’ he began forcefully, then stopped. There was no chance of bludgeoning his way through. He would have to try another tack.

‘
Supposing,’ he said carefully, ‘supposing I suggested to you the direction in which I am planning to move. Would you feel capable, without compromising your integrity, of telling me whether, in the light of this information which you cannot give me, I am wasting my time?’

She
considered what he had said. Then, ‘Yes,’ she said positively.

He
gave a sigh of relief. ‘Thank God for that. Right.’ He ran his hand across his chin in thought.

‘
These four – Bolton, Ferrars, McEvoy, Cutler. Do you consider that is a line worth following up?’

‘
Yes,’ she said, not happily but without hesitation.

He
rose. ‘Thank you: I hope I haven’t tired you too much.’

It
was infuriating that she wouldn’t give him the information direct, he thought as he scanned his notes again, but at least he had prised out confirmation for the area he had defined. He hadn’t time for detail at the moment anyway.

The
other notes he had dug out related to his interviews with the women they had discussed. These had not been easy. He had taken along with him the chirpy WDC Boyd, who at the end of the gruelling round had said forthrightly, ‘Thank goodness that’s over. Right bunch of neurotics they are, and with nice homes and lots of money, what have they got to be neurotic about, I should like to know?’

Vezey
’s lips twitched. ‘That’s what we would all like to know, Jackie. It was rather what I thought the interviews were about.’

‘
Oh.’ For a moment she took it as a rebuff, then recognized it as one of Sir’s rare jokes, and grinned.

The
enterprise had been, he acknowledged, a fishing expedition as much as anything else. He had wanted a good look at the four women he had placed in the frame: surely the one who made last night’s frantic phone-call must be showing visible signs of strain?

Well,
if she was one of the four, she certainly was. Each of them in her own way was showing signs of severe strain, which left him back at square one.

They
had gone to the Briar Patch first. It was his second interview with Hayley Cutler, of course; he had been abrupt with her before, and had no time to waste if he were to get round the rest of the women today, so she had in a sense the right to be irritated, snapping his head off when he asked if she had suffered any particularly traumatic stress in her childhood.

‘
Stress?’ she had spat at him. ‘
Stress?
Shee-it, my childhood was nothing
but
stress. You want I should fill you in on a couple of calm periods?’

‘
Or could we, maybe, talk about what’s happening right now, instead of in the distant past?’

He
had had more than he could take of that sort of attitude. Too many people had been bending his ear with their views on the inadequacy of the police investigation, so he had stalled her with promises of another visit, and left.

Laura
Ferrars, so icily cool that she looked as if she might splinter into pieces at any moment, had denied any stress at all. She contrived to imply that people like her had, as they were entitled to expect, perfectly satisfactory childhoods, and that such a question was grossly impertinent. It was an obvious defence mechanism, but there wasn’t a lot he could do to get behind it.

With
Elizabeth McEvoy he had been forced to proceed much more gently. Whenever he had appeared, she had begged to be reassured that the police wouldn’t let it happen again.

‘
It’s the children,’ she had said, her eyes brimming. ‘I’m so frightened for the children.’

One
of them was ill, a little girl who came trailing into the room sniffling and coughing pitifully, and demanding to be taken on her mother’s knee.

Stifling
his irritation he had made meaningless comforting noises. A distressed subject was no use to him, but even once she was calmer he had no reward for his patience. Questioned about her childhood, she was vague, more concerned with the child on her lap; it had been, she seemed to think, much as others were.

Mrs
Bolton, the last on their list, had been by turns lachrymose, belligerent and downright obstructive. No, she had not had a particularly happy childhood, but it wasn’t something she was prepared to discuss. She had terminated the conversation firmly with a ringing denunciation of the police as amateur psychologists.

All
of them, without exception, had looked at him as if it were he who was mad when he asked if any of them had noticed any friend who spoke oddly or differently at times.

No,
it had not been a successful series of interviews. All it had established was that all of them were reluctant in one way or another to go into detail about their childhoods.

Perhaps
anyone would be; he sure as hell wouldn’t care to have someone raking through his memories of that uncomfortable part of his life.

And
getting information from other sources on that sort of subject was seriously delicate; he’d have to be pretty sure of his ground before ‘Enery started getting more phone-calls complaining about harassment.

He
groaned, and reached for another half-pound of paper from the table at his side.

***

It was, thought Patrick, as if Suzanne had suddenly gone stone-deaf, or he had lost his voice. Or perhaps it was more like dreaming, when you talked and talked at people but found you were inaudible and invisible too.

‘
We have to send him away,’ she repeated. ‘We have to get Ben out of here. If we don’t, we could be signing his death warrant. We have to live with this – this nightmare, but he doesn’t. Would your parents take him, do you think? I know they’re not very fit, but surely they wouldn’t mind when it’s a matter of life and death?’

He
tried again. ‘Suzanne, please! Look, I’ve fitted another three smoke-detectors, and it wasn’t easy. I had to go to that shop over at Darnham before I found one that hadn’t been completely cleaned out. And there’s the security lighting. The place lights up like Harrods’ frontage now every time a cat so much as tiptoes across the garden.’

‘
Would your parents have him, do you think?’

He
sighed, running his hand helplessly through his hair.

‘
Well, yes, I suppose they would. But Ben won’t want to leave his friends, and with the best will in the world my parents would find it hard to amuse him. They lead a very quiet life since Father’s coronary, as you well know. And as I said before, I think you’re simply over-reacting.’

‘
That’s settled, then. Will you phone them or shall I?’

Patrick
conceded defeat. ‘I’d better do it,’ he said grimly. ‘Mother’s bound to get into a flap, and I can’t think you would be the person to calm her down.’