When Croft arrived at the psychiatric wing of Scarbeck General Hospital, just after three o’clock, it was to find a tired Millie Matthews waiting there too.
“Trish?” he asked.
Millie nodded. “If the psychos can get any sense out of her and if they’ll let me see her.”
“They’re not hopeful,” Croft admitted, sitting alongside her and staring gloomily at the floor. “She may recover, she may not.”
Trish had spent a night in intensive care, after which she was declared poorly but stable, suffering from exposure and circulatory complications due to having been bound in such rigid positions for so long.
However, even when, after 24 hours, she regained consciousness, she did not speak. She never registered the presence of anyone but stared vacantly into space.
“Are you okay?” Millie asked.
He nodded. “A few cuts and bruises, a couple of police charges hanging over my head, but nothing I can’t cope with.”
“Well, if you need company…” Millie trailed off and blushed. Sex was the last thing on Croft’s mind at the moment, and he guessed that she had merely been giving voice to her thoughts.
There was a short, awkward silence. Eventually, Croft broke it. “Christ, what a mess.”
Millie was more practical. “We could do with your girlfriend’s testimony.”
Croft understood at once. “He’s still denying everything?”
She nodded. “He admits to hating you because of what your father did to his, and he admits to writing the later notes, but he denies everything else.”
“You’ll get him? You have plenty of DNA.”
Millie was less certain. “We don’t know. You’re like everyone else; you believe DNA is the be all and end all, but it isn’t. Past experience has proved that it can be faked and mistaken. Although the chances are one in a billion that it could be someone other than him, there is still that chance, and if we can’t get anything else to tie him to the killings, we could lose it all.”
Croft allowed despondency to wash over him again. “You have that link between the victims. He is Gerald Burke, the son of Graham Burke, The Great Zepelli. He was the counsellor hidden in the background, who links all these women.”
“Too thin,” Millie said. “Although we do have his notes in which he declares his belief that The Great Zepelli was better than your Franz Walter.”
Croft smiled dully at Millie. “It’s pronounced Valter.”
She returned the smile. “And the counselling proves nothing other than he knew Evelyn Kearns. He’s admitting nothing. He has alternative explanations for everything. Some of them are not very convincing, but they’re there.”
Croft dismissed it. “The man’s insane.”
“Well, we have enough evidence to go ahead,” Millie admitted, “but I won’t pretend it’s going to be easy and it may come down to the judge and jury on the day.”
Croft sat back and let out a heavy sigh. “Tell you what crossed my mind yesterday. How did he live on the estate under the name of Humphries? I mean, isn’t it illegal to give the council a false name?”
Millie shook her head. “He didn’t. His rent account, Council Tax account, even his bank account, everything is in his real name, Gerald Burke. He was known on the estate as Humphries, but that’s not illegal. Anyone can go by any name they choose, as long as it’s not for purposes of fraud or deception, and he insists that he chose that name because he was a trained counsellor. It was his way of stopping his neighbours asking for favours.” Millie smiled thinly. “I told you he has alternate explanations for everything.”
A nurse came through the secure door from the ward and smiled benignly on them.
“You can go in if you wish, but Ms Sinclair is unlikely to respond.”
Croft stood. It was his duty to see her. He followed the nurse through, Millie at his shoulder.
Trish sat in an armchair alongside her bed. When he sat by her, took her hand, she did not even look at him. Instead she stared far off into space.
Croft struggled to contain his emotions. “One day, Trish, one day, you’ll come back and this madman won’t trouble you again.”
Alongside him, Millie took his hand.
***
Trish could not hear. There was too much noise on the beach for her to hear. The sun burned onto her back as she patted sand into her bucket, turned it upside down and gently removed the bucket, revealing a small, round turret of sand. She looked back at Mum and Dad. Mum was asleep, Dad was reading the
Daily Mirror
. He beamed a generous smile on her.
“Castles on the ground, lass? Better than castles in the air.”
Trish didn’t understand. She looked to the sea lapping the shore, where her brothers splashed in the calm, shallow water. Then she stared out at the sea, which stretched for miles and miles and forever.
“Dad, what’s on the other side of the sea?”
“Another land, chicken. A land where the workers don’t get sent away from their little girls just because they have an argument with the boss.”
“Will you take me to that other land?”
“One day, my love. One day.”
Trish stared across the sea again and wondered whether she really would ever go to that other land.
THE END
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