A Willing Victim (17 page)

‘Did she seem upset?’

‘That was the worst thing. She was so cold. Ruthless. She said she wanted a death certificate. I said I must see the body before I could do it – I hadn’t seen Milburn for at least a month, and it was against the law – and then she said that it wasn’t necessary. She said I ought to trust her because we were lovers. I tried to explain – we weren’t lovers, it was because of Daphne – and then she said … she said …’ Unable to speak, Slater sat clutching the women’s hands, tears coursing unchecked down his face. There being no nurses in sight, Ballard leant forward, proffering his handkerchief, which was twitched from his hand by the crone in pigtails. Slater sat passively and allowed her to dab his face, which she did with the infinite tenderness of a mother ministering to a sick baby.

‘She said I’d taken advantage of my position to seduce her. I realised then that she’d tricked me, that she’d only pretended to contact Daphne and go into a trance and that it was all a put-up job. She’d lied to me and I’d … I’d …
betrayed
… my wife … insulted her memory … I couldn’t bear it. I know I should
have insisted on seeing the body but at the time my whole concern was to get away from her. She was demonic … her eyes as she said those things … You can’t imagine … I made up a death certificate – I can’t even remember what I wrote. It was the first thing that came into my head. I just wanted her to leave me alone. I remember I asked her to return some letters I’d written her, and there were some things of my wife’s – jewellery – that I’d given to her, but I never had them back … I broke down after that. I gave up my work … I was terrified that Mary would blackmail me … It haunted me, and the terrible thing I’d done to Daphne … to my beloved wife … I couldn’t bear it …’

Ballard stared at Slater, appalled. Mary had targeted the man at a time when, almost deranged by grief, he was supremely vulnerable. Had she married the much older Reverend Milburn in order to manipulate him, too? And, more importantly, had she got Slater to cover up the fact that she’d murdered her ailing husband – a man for whom she had, presumably, no further use?

‘Just one more question, Dr Slater. Did Mary have a child?’

‘Yes, a son. Little more than a baby.’

‘Do you remember his name?’

Slater drew his brows together in the effort of recollection.

‘Was it Michael?’

‘I don’t think … No,’ he said, more decisively. ‘Not Michael. Something else. But I’m afraid …’ He shook his head, defeated.

‘Thank you.’ Ballard rose. ‘You’ve been very helpful. I’ll leave you in peace.’

Bloody stupid thing to say, thought Ballard as he left. He’d rarely seen a human being so bereft of peace as Slater. Picturing the poor man, stripped of all dignity and without hope in either this world or, if it existed, the next, broken and shaking between his two senile and uncomprehending attendants, he fervently hoped
that no one would suggest charging Slater with aiding and abetting. He was lucid enough, yes – he’d even remembered Mary’s Woodbridge address – but whether he was physically or mentally fit to stand trial was a different matter, and would, Ballard thought, be simply cruel. Also, given Slater’s condition, and the utterly fantastic nature of the story he’d told, he very much doubted they’d have enough to justify disinterring the Reverend Milburn – assuming that he’d been buried and not cremated – for forensic examination.

Sitting alone in the car, Ballard took his copy of Mary Milburn’s photograph out of his pocket and stared at it, remembering the feelings he’d had on meeting her. They’d unsettled him then, exacerbated the other feelings he’d been having, that his life was being lived but somehow unspent. Not that he’d imagined some glorious epic, taking place against a background of heroically soaring strings, like a film or something; it was more a feeling of being due something … well, just something
more
. Of course he couldn’t imagine actually being with anyone else but Pauline, in the sense of living with and married to – it wasn’t that, or even being on the lookout for someone to have an affair with, as some men did. In any case, he told himself, you’re more than a bag of glands, for God’s sake.

It was just that Mary/Ananda had, in a way that he couldn’t quite put his finger on – and wasn’t, in fact, going to allow himself to pinpoint, because that way lay danger – represented an opportunity. Something happy, something simple, something different; something that wasn’t tied up with all the business of failing to get pregnant and the concomitant disappointment, grief and the obscure, but increasing, feeling of being blamed that seemed, nowadays, to colour his life with Pauline …

Recalling the vitriolic terms in which Mrs Dixon had referred to Mary in the letter, Ballard had no hesitation in agreeing that the woman was an ‘absolute bitch’. And Slater had said that his
sister didn’t know the half of it … If what he’d said was true – and, extraordinary though all of it was, Ballard had no reason to disbelieve the poor sod – then Mrs Dixon’s description of Mary/Ananda as ‘ruthless and amoral’ didn’t begin to cover it. But – he looked again at the photograph – she was so beautiful, so sexy. Ballard felt himself enveloped in disappointment. Mary had, in some indefinable way (after all, she owed him nothing – what was he to her or she to him?)
let him down
and this sensation, no matter how ridiculous and illogical, refused to go away.

Wishing the feeling would go away, but knowing that any resolve not to think about it or feel like it was impracticable and bound to be ineffective, he pulled out the choke with an unnecessarily brutal yank and started the car.

‘I doubt we’d get an exhumation order,’ said Stratton, when Ballard telephoned to report on his meeting with Dr Slater. ‘Was he buried locally?’

‘Hasketon. That’s just outside Woodbridge, where they lived. Reverend Milburn was pals with the vicar there.’

‘Did you talk to him?’

‘Yes. I called him from the station at Lincott. He didn’t think there was anything untoward … I got the impression he didn’t think much of Mary/Ananda, though. Flighty was the word he used. Quite polite compared to some of the stuff we’ve been hearing, but then he is a man of the cloth.’

‘No help there, then,’ said Stratton. ‘The death certificate is certainly unusual – and McNally’s right, it wouldn’t have got past a coroner if he’d had to examine it – but it’s all so …’

‘Bizarre,’ supplied Ballard.

‘It’s that, all right. And unless someone else comes forward to tell us about it, or the bloody woman confesses when we find her, there’s not going to be enough evidence to do anything about it.’

‘On a slightly different subject,’ said Ballard, ‘Slater was sure that the boy’s name wasn’t Michael, and I was just wondering
if Roth might have given him a different name, along with his mother.’

‘Yes, but “Ananda” is meaningful. To them, anyway.’

‘So’s Michael,’ said Ballard. ‘I nipped home and looked it up in Pauline’s book of baby names. It means “like the Lord”.’

‘Only
like
the Lord? I’m surprised they stopped there. But they do call him something else, don’t they? Wait a minute …’ He put the receiver down to flick through his notebook. ‘“Maitreya”. Mind you, Michael was an archangel, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes. Oh, by the way, Lamb spoke to my guv’nor and we’ve sent a policewoman up to the Foundation to keep an eye on him. Still no sign of Mary/Ananda … We’ll just have to hope the picture in the papers does the trick.’

Stratton was massaging his temples and wondering what the hell to do next, when Grove lumbered in and stood in front of his desk, grinning.

‘What have you got to be so bloody cheerful about?’ asked Stratton.

‘Turn up for the books, old son. Your pin-up girl made the late edition and someone’s just called about her. A Mrs Dora Wheeler, lives in Suffolk. Dunwich, so you’re in for a trip to the seaside tomorrow, because she says she’s got some
very
interesting information about your Mrs Milburn. Wouldn’t tell me any more, other than that she’s been trying to find her for years—’ Grove stared at Stratton. ‘Give us a smile, for God’s sake – it’s good news.’

‘Sorry,’ said Stratton. ‘I know it’s good news, but I’ve got a horrible feeling it’s going to lead to more complications. The woman’s a menace. Leaves a trail of destruction wherever she goes.’ He told Grove about Dr Slater and the suspicious circumstances of the Reverend Milburn’s death.

‘Bloody hell! Obviously chooses her prey carefully, though – vulnerable old men …’

‘Lloyd wasn’t old. And Roth – that’s the chap in charge at the Foundation – certainly isn’t vulnerable, although I did get the impression he was pretty taken with her, in his way.’

‘Perhaps it’s all men, then. Oh, I managed to get hold of Lloyd’s aunt this afternoon. She says he was still at school in 1944, evacuated to Wales. You said your woman was in Suffolk then, so a meeting seems pretty unlikely.’

‘Never mind. It was just a thought. Thanks, anyway.’ Stratton stood up. ‘Right, I’d better clear this little jaunt with Lamb, then.’

Reading the paper at home after a piece of his sister-in-law Doris’s steak-and-kidney pie –
EDEN FACES GRAVEST HOUR
– Stratton suddenly remembered that he’d made a date with Diana for the following evening. Lamb had been remarkably sanguine about Stratton’s visit to Dunwich, suggesting that he drive to Lincott afterwards to see Ballard ‘in case of developments’ and adding that he should stay the night and return to London the following morning.

When he telephoned Diana in Chelsea and explained the situation she announced, to his utter amazement, that if he had to spend any length of time in Suffolk, she’d be happy to join him. ‘A friend of mine has a cottage down there. She hardly ever uses it, and she’s always telling me I can go whenever I like. I’ve never taken her up on it before, but now … well, it might be fun.’

Diana, thought Stratton,
would
know people with country cottages going spare. ‘Ordinarily,’ he said cautiously, ‘I’d like nothing better, but I’d be working, so there wouldn’t really be any time—’

‘Not during the day, but you’ll be free in the evenings, won’t you? I can take a few days off – the alligator crisis has passed, thank goodness – and I’d enjoy playing at keeping house for you.’

‘It’s a lovely idea,’ said Stratton, ‘but – even if I had to spend some time up there, which I don’t know, because I’ve no idea
how the thing’s going to pan out – the local police would need to know where I was, and I could hardly tell them I was … you know …’ Stratton tailed off, aware that he sounded ungrateful and churlish.

‘I know you couldn’t, darling, but they’re not likely to want to contact you in the middle of the night, and you can always go back to wherever you’re supposed to be staying in the morning, can’t you? Of course, if you don’t want me to come …’

After a bit more of this, Stratton had agreed to a provisional arrangement, at the same time hoping that the circumstances in which it might happen wouldn’t arise. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see Diana – he did, very much – and the idea of actually spending the night with her was tremendous, especially as it was something they’d only managed a couple of times before. It just seemed a bit of a hole-and-corner way to go about things, and mixing up work and Diana was bound to cause problems. She could be so impulsive, and this tendency – at least where it concerned men – had, in the past, led to disaster. Not that
he
was anything like
those
men, of course, but this time it might have disastrous consequences for him. What if he and Diana were together in Suffolk and Ballard were to find out? He supposed it wouldn’t be the end of the world – after all, Pete had seemed more amused than upset – but all the same, it wouldn’t look very professional. God knows what Ballard would think about it, and if – God forbid – he mentioned it to anyone else, Stratton really would be for the high jump. Besides which, he had a lot on his plate and he needed to concentrate on it.

He turned back to the
Daily Mirror
, trying to shrug off the feeling of uneasiness. In any case, he told himself, it would probably never happen so there was no sense in getting steamed up about it.
The House of Commons will hold an emergency session to hear whether or not the Prime Minister will obey the ceasefire order of the United Nations Assembly
… Stratton’s eyes strayed past advertisements for Magic
Margarine and Bear Brand nylons to the bottom of the page.
Eden tries to justify his war by calling it a police action … The truth is this: There is NO treaty, NO international authorisation, NO moral sanction for Eden’s War
. He wondered what Pete was doing. On a troop ship somewhere, presumably, sailing towards Christ knew what. We’re all so powerless, he thought. We don’t control anything – we’re just shunted through life like pieces on a chessboard. Sighing, he turned off the gas fire and trudged upstairs to bed.

Stratton, who’d learnt to drive after the war, had brought his own car, a black Ford Popular, purchased when they came out a couple of years earlier. Driving to Dunwich, he wondered if Lamb’s insistence that he stay the night at Lincott might not have been something to do with his superior’s concern about his ability to get back in the dark in one piece. It would be a bloody long drive anyway – Dunwich was at least a hundred miles from London, and Lincott, being right on the other side of the county, was a good sixty miles again.

Heading towards the coast, he squinted into the bright winter sun and thought, as he always did when in the car, how much Jenny would have enjoyed the ride. Arriving, he parked by the shingle beach and walked back, past the pub and the post office and down a row of cottages until he found Mrs Wheeler’s house, which was next door to the village school.

Apparently oblivious to the yells coming from the narrow, muddy garden, where a large number of children were playing some sort of complicated game involving a ball, a cricket bat and a lot of chasing and dodging and tagging, Mrs Wheeler sat Stratton down in the back parlour which, spotlessly clean – if, despite the fire in the grate, a little chilly – was clearly the room kept nice
‘just in case’, and went to make a pot of tea. Bright-eyed and cheerful, with a comfortably middle-aged figure, Mrs Wheeler settled herself on the sofa opposite him and accepted a cigarette. ‘I couldn’t believe it when my husband showed me the picture in the paper. We thought she must be dead because she never came back or wrote or anything.’