A Fatal Verdict (29 page)

‘Not to me it doesn’t. Oh God.’ She bent urgently over the bowl for a second bout. When it was over she collapsed, weaker than before. He found some moist tissues by the basin and crouched beside her, wiping her face. She tugged fretfully at her dress, trying to cover her breasts, then shook her head feebly. ‘God. What do I look like.’

‘You look lovely.’ Terry smiled gently. ‘Look, why don’t I get you a glass of water, and then run you a bath, or a shower if you prefer. I’ll stay outside till I’m sure you’re okay.’

‘Yes. Water. Just a sip.’ She took the glass, then clambered to her feet and stared at herself in the mirror, all dignity gone, while he ran the taps for the bath. ‘Look, Terry, I’m so sorry, I wanted to but I don’t think I could possibly ...’

‘No, of course not. What do you think I am, Frankenstein?’ He met her gaze in the mirror - draggled hair, death white face, shaking hand holding a glass of water over naked breasts no longer enticing but infinitely pathetic, and grinned. ‘It’s the thought that counts, you know.’

The faintest hint of an answering smile crossed her lips and was gone. She put down the glass, gave him a brief, sisterly hug, then pushed him urgently towards the door.

‘Just go now, Terry, please. Just go. You’re a nice man but I’m humiliated beyond belief already. I’ll never live this down.’

He backed out of the sitting room. ‘Just as long as you’re okay?’

‘I’ll be fine. Terry, please. I’m so sorry.’

He kissed his fingers and touched them to her lips. ‘Another time, perhaps?’

‘Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.’ She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, he was gone.

37. Mickey Finn

The flat was lighter, and more modern than Miranda had imagined it. There were wall lights in the living room, which he switched on, as though to dispel her fears. There were African masks on the wall, and framed photographs of lions and giraffes. There was a pale green sofa and armchair, a wide screen TV with DVD player, and a white coffee table with plastic flowers on it. Near the far window and patio door was a dining table and two chairs.

‘Shall I take your jacket?’ he asked, oddly polite.

‘No, it’s okay. I’m only staying for a minute, anyhow.’ She shrugged her hands into the pockets of the leather jacket and strode across the room, staring about her with unfeigned curiosity. So this was where it happened!

‘Up to you. Black or white?’ he asked, hovering at the door of a clean, well-appointed kitchen just to the left of the short entrance lobby.

‘Black, please. One sugar.’ There were two doors out of the living room. Through one, to the right, she saw a double bed, with a shirt and pair of jeans strewn across it. The other door was in the left-hand corner of the room near the window. The bathroom. She touched the handle tentatively with her hand and pushed the door open. It was shadowy inside, whitish tiles on the floor, a decorated blind pulled down over a window, a bath ... Resolutely, she pulled the cord. A light came on and a fan started up in the ceiling.

‘Need the loo? Help yourself.’ He had come out of the kitchen and stood close behind her. Really he was two or three feet away, but any distance felt uncomfortably close in here.

‘No, thanks. I just wanted to see ...’

‘Where it happened. Yeah, well, that’s it.’ He sighed, a decent imitation of grief. ‘Right there, in that bath. That’s where I found her when I came in.’

‘But ... you said she cut her wrists, didn’t you? How did she get the knife?’ Miranda re-activated the mini recorder in her jacket.

‘She must have got out of the bath, walked to the kitchen and picked it up, then got back in the bath to kill herself. Then I picked up the knife when I found her. That’s how my fingerprints must have got on it. That’s all I can think.’

‘It seems a long way.’ Her voice trembled slightly, but that was okay. Any girl’s would, in a set up like this. He grinned, enjoying her fear.

‘You’re a tough chick, I’ll give you that. What do you think happened?’

‘How should I know? I wasn’t there.’

‘No. Well, neither were the jury, but they said I was innocent.’ The kettle boiled, and he turned back into the kitchen, busying himself with cups. He set two down on the coffee table. Cups with saucers, she noticed, and spoons. ‘Here, sit down. Yours is black, mine has the cream.’          

She sipped her coffee and looked around. ‘Have you lived here long?’

‘Three years. It took me a while to get the place right.’

‘And you shared it with this girl. What was her name - Sheila?’

‘Shelley.’ He grinned. ‘She looked a bit like you, in a way.’

‘Really?’ Not that again. Just a clumsy attempt to scare me, she told herself. He’s enjoying this, the spook. She sipped the coffee and searched for a question to take her further. ‘So, don’t you feel guilty, about her death?’

‘I would if I’d killed her, but I didn’t.’ He shrugged. ‘So ...’

‘It would be a natural reaction, though. I mean, you were here with her.’

‘Are you accusing me?’

‘No, of course not, I ...’ Outside the window, the deep bell of the Minster clock tolled twelve, interrupting her train of thought. She drained her coffee, seeking stimulation to clear her mind. She had got herself in exactly the position she had aimed for, and yet she had nothing, so far. He was just playing, spooking her for fun. And all the time she had to maintain this pretence of an innocent American, who had never heard any of this before. The tape spun, but recorded nothing useful. Perhaps her whole plan was misconceived.

‘Why all these questions?’ He leaned forward, watching her intently. She stared back, thinking, his eyes weren’t that big before, were they? Oh God, they’re slipping around ...

‘I think I’d better go.’ She stood up, but as she did so the coffee cup crashed to the floor. How did that happen? She bent to pick it up, and strangely, without understanding quite how, found herself sitting on the table, the cup a long way off. A voice somewhere, not unlike hers but much more brainless and girly, began to laugh.‘This is crazy. Get it yourself, will ya?’

‘You’ll be safer on the sofa. Here, pet, this way.’ She felt his hands slide under her arms, cupping her breasts as he pulled her back. She tried to resist, but her limbs wobbled like jelly. Nothing seemed to be working. ‘You’ll be more comfy without that heavy jacket, now, won’t you? And the rest of these clothes too.’

The ceiling, it seemed to Miranda vaguely, was more interesting than she had realised at first. In fact, it was probably the answer to the entire puzzle, if only she could remember the question. Whatever it was, this ceiling was fascinating. She had never understood before how these swirls of Artex were really continents and galaxies, that moved in such amusing ways.

She giggled as he stripped off her clothes. When his face came close to hers she turned aside, concentrating on the wonderful ceiling. The sound of his voice was wonderful, intricate, a surreal pattern of noise vibrant with vivid colours but devoid of all meaning. So only the faithful machine in her jacket recorded what he said.

‘Now you can let yourself go, sweetie. No inhibitions, and no memory in the morning.  At least I hope not, not like Shelley. She woke up too soon, but you - you’ve had twice as much. So just relax, darling, and enjoy ...’

There was a waterfall outside the window. Or was it a fountain? The sound rose and fell, splashing and trickling and setting off rainbows of colour in her mind - sparkling crimson, aquamarine, viridian, and black. Ouch! the black ones hurt - there was another, a little hammer thumping the inside of her skull, like a woodpecker trying to get out. Yes, that was it - birds were taking over the world. She sat up abruptly, rubbing her skull to still the knocking inside, then winced at another loud black thump from the mighty church clock. She shook her head and the kaleidoscopic images in her mind fell into a clearer pattern. She understood now - she was in a flat, behind the Minster. The sound wasn’t waterfalls or fountains - it was birdsong, in the trees under the wall.

The room was light; it must be morning. She stood up, and the hammers inside her skull thumped so hard that she felt dizzy and her eyes went blind for a time. When sight returned, a soft woollen rug fell to the floor around her feet and she saw she was naked. Dimly, she tried to recall why she was here but no reason answered.

Her mouth was parched and sandy, her limbs ached. If she could find something to drink and paracetamol, that might help. There was a kitchen. Clutching the rug around herself, she tottered into the kitchen and saw clean tiles, cupboards, a cooker and fridge, but all in unfamiliar places. Had she been here before? She couldn’t remember. There was a glass, anyway, and orange juice in the fridge.

Paracetamol? Nowhere. Coffee, she thought, that might help, strong sweet coffee. She found a kettle and switched it on, spooned coffee into a mug, searched for sugar. Whose kitchen was this? A face came into her mind, and swam away again. Not a nice face. It was talking, laughing at her as it vanished, with words she couldn’t decipher.

The kettle boiled. She poured water into the mug, hot droplets scalding her naked arm so that she jumped. It was all wrong, to be here like this. In a moment she would remember and sort it out. Where was the sugar? There it was, in a jar with
Sugar
on the side. She tugged the wooden lid which seemed to be stuck, then - whoosh! - sugar sprayed everywhere, all over the side, crunching under her toes on the floor. What the hell, spoon some into the coffee anyway, stir it. And the white pills? What about them?

She sipped the scalding coffee, and studied the white pills in the mounds of spilt sugar on the side. Had they been there before? Surely not - they’d come out of the jar with the sugar. She scraped around in the sugar jar, found some more in the bottom. She picked one up and studied it, searching for what it might mean. As she did so the face swam back into her mind. A sneering face, laughing at her, saying something she couldn’t quite grasp. But it had to do with the pills, she felt sure.

Why am I here, like this? She sipped more coffee and her brain began to clear. Shelley’s boyfriend, that was it! He killed her and I came here. Oh God. He gave me coffee too. Not this coffee but ...

She poked at the pills with her finger. This is it, of course, this is why I feel like this. I must keep some, find out what they are. But he’ll come in, she thought suddenly, he’ll see I’ve got them. Then what? Christ! Maybe he gave these to Shelley. Think what he did to her!

Urgently, she scooped as much of the sugar as she could back into the jar, pushing the pills to one side. Then she found a dustpan and brush under the sink and tried to clean the floor. As she did so the rug fell off, leaving her naked again. She emptied the pan in a bin, drank some more coffee, picked up the pills and the rug, and wove her way unsteadily back into the living room. Her clothes were strewn all around the sofa on the floor. The horrible African mask on the wall glared as she unzipped a pocket in her leather jacket, stuffed the pills inside, and sat down, exhausted.

The hammers in her head throbbed with renewed energy, the birds outside the window resumed their waterfall impressions. She felt a powerful urge to sleep. But that’s no good, I’ve got to get out of here now. This is a dangerous place, Shelley died here. She saw her panties on the floor, put them on, and as she did so she realised she was wet, sticky between the legs. How can that have happened? Bruce isn’t here, he’s four thousand miles away, this is all wrong. If it wasn’t Bruce, who was it?

She found her bra and struggled with the clasp like an insuperable chess problem. Only when she stopped thinking and let her trembling fingers do what they done a thousand times before did it work. It was the same with the buttons of her blouse - if she looked at them they became alien Mensa puzzles with no solution, but her fingers remembered.

What had happened to her mind? She was trying not to think about how her shoes were put together or which way round they went when the bedroom door opened and a man came in. Not a man she knew or liked. She shrank back on the sofa, hugging her knees under her chin.

‘Hi there, sweetie! Not thinking of leaving, are you?’

She considered the words and didn’t like what they meant. He was naked under a blue silk dressing gown that hung open all down the front. His face was darker with stubble than the face in her dreams. He was her sister’s murderer, she remembered that now. Was this how Shelley’s last moments had been?

‘Go away. Who are you?’

‘Don’t you recognize me?’ His grin broadened. He took a step closer. ‘You liked me last night, sweetie. Liked me a lot.’ He sat on the sofa beside her and put his hand on her knee. She shrank further into the corner, feeling the shameful stickiness on the inside of her thighs, hugging her arms across her stomach to protect herself. ‘So what now?’

Now you kill me, she thought. Just like you killed Shelley.

‘Let me go, please. I want to go home.’

‘Home? Where’s that? Back to America?’

‘Yes. Please. I don’t feel well.’

‘I thought you liked me, you muppet. You did last night. Want to do it again?’

She shook her head silently. All the strength she had left went into clutching her knees tight to her chest, a little ball of fear. But the hammers still beat inside her skull and her arms shook feebly. She felt weak as a baby. There’s nothing I can do, she thought, whatever he wants I can’t stop him. If only he’ll give me time.

‘I’d like breakfast.’

He stared, then laughed aloud, gloating at the shivering figure beside him. ‘Oh, you’d like room service, would you? Orange juice, boiled egg, slices of toast?’

She nodded, meeting his smile with what she hoped was one of her own. ‘Yes. Please. I’ll feel better then.’

He leaned forward, his face an inch from her own. ‘You know what? You stink.’

Here it comes, she thought. This is the end.

He stood up, drew his dressing gown together, covering himself. ‘Tell you what. I’ll make the breakfast, you have a bath.’ Again, a mocking smile. He walked - strutted almost - into the kitchen. ‘Towels in the airing cupboard next to the bedroom. Go on, clean yourself up.’

‘I don’t want a bath.’ She said the words so softly, she scarcely heard them herself. There was no way she was going into that bathroom. Not unless he dragged her in there with his hands around her neck. Was that what he’d done to Shelley? She stayed in her protective ball, relaxing the arms around her knees slightly. To her astonishment, she heard him light the gas on the cooker, clattering plates and cups. She heard him press down the toaster, smelt the toast.

Will he let me escape? Very slowly and carefully, she lowered her feet to the floor.

‘Go on. Have a bath. I told you where the towels are.’

‘I ...’ She got to her feet, stumbled to the kitchen door. ‘I’ve got a headache. Have you got any paracetamol?’