Child's Play (14 page)
With
a sigh, Alice tucked her arm beneath her head, sniffing her flesh where the smell of horses still lingered. Wondrous creatures that they were, horses stripped her of all human misery or pretension and made her feel like nothing at all except part of the earth, and she knew Torrance shared that understanding. Earlier, in the paddock, with the handsome policeman a bemused and silent witness, when Torrance told Purdey and the other horses that Sukie was dead, the electricity in the air had made her hair stand on end. Alice smiled drowsily, for although the memory was heart-wrenching, it was also beautiful.
Faintly,
in the distance, she heard one of the horses cry. Thinking it must be Purdey, grieving for her dead mistress, she choked back the sob welling in her throat, but the next one defeated her and she began to weep quietly but convulsively.
Alice
’s restlessness brought Daisy out of a nightmare where a ravening dog with bloody fangs was chasing her through the woods. When Alice slid out of bed to go to the lavatory she followed, padding barefoot through the dawn gloaming.
Bleary-eyed,
still in her other world, Alice emerged from the cubicle to wash her hands and she almost fainted with shock to find Daisy perched on the edge of the sink. ‘What’re you doing?’ she grumbled. ‘You frightened me half to death!’
Daisy
licked her lips greedily. ‘Did you think I was Sukie’s ghost?’
‘
No, I didn’t.’ Ostentatiously turning her back, Alice washed her hands.
‘
Bet you did!’
‘
Oh, shut up!’ Alice reached for her towel. ‘And grow up, why don’t you? You really scared Grace.’
‘
She’s stupid.’
‘
She isn’t, she’s just nice. Unlike you. Sometimes you’re really horrible!’
‘
We are up our own arse tonight, aren’t we?’ Daisy sneered. ‘Could that be because Miss Wonderful picked you to help with evening stables, I wonder?’
‘
You’re only jealous, although I can’t think why. You don’t like horses.’ Her next words tripped out before she had even entertained the thought. ‘And horses positively hate
you
. You frighten them.’
‘
Crap!’ Daisy snapped. ‘Daddy’s going to buy me a horse for my next birthday. So there!’
‘
So what?
Mummy
would buy me one
before
my next birthday if I asked.’
‘
I sometimes forget you don’t have a daddy to ask,’ Daisy put forward thoughtfully. ‘I guess he didn’t love you enough to stick around.’
Alice
flushed. ‘You
are
horrible! And stop trying to copy the way Torrance speaks. You sound silly.’
‘
Better than sounding like a love-struck booby,’ retorted Daisy. ‘Bet you’d like to marry her, wouldn’t you?’ she added maliciously. ‘You’ll be lucky! Miss Wonderful’ll probably marry her bloody Tonto. She’s weird enough.’
Ignoring
her, Alice hung up the towel.
Daisy
pinched her arm. ‘Did you hear me? I said she’s
queer
.’
‘
I heard. I don’t know what you’re talking about and I don’t want to know.’
‘
Well, you should! You should steer well clear of her.’
‘
Horse shit!’
‘
You think?’ As Alice turned for the door, Daisy grabbed her by the hair, and Alice had no option but to stand still and listen. ‘Well, you didn’t see what I saw in the stables a couple of weeks ago.’ She paused, head to one side, eyes bright, face flushed. ‘I heard Sukie crying, so I went to see why.’ She moistened her lips again. ‘She was in one of the empty stalls.’
‘
Well?’ Alice demanded. Her neck ached from the pressure Daisy was exerting.
‘
Miss Wonderful was there, too. She was raping her.’
She
released Alice’s hair and stood back to assess the effect of her words. ‘SHE - WAS - RAPING - SUKIE,’ she repeated, laying horrible stress on the word ‘raping’.
Ashen-faced,
Alice gaped, bony chest heaving as she tried to draw breath. Suddenly she lunged violently. ‘Liar!’ she croaked. ‘Liar!’
Daisy
stumbled backwards, clutching at air, and fell against a cubicle door, striking her face. As Alice reeled from the room she yelled after her, ‘She
murdered
her! Sukie was going to snitch. I
know
she was because she told me. So, there!’
Had
Fluff and Blackie not been determined to wake him, McKenna would have slept until the alarm clock wailed at seven thirty, but he was driven from his bed long before then. As soon as he was on his feet the cats stopped howling, raced down the first of the steep narrow staircases and skidded around the corner to the second. One day, he said to himself, they’ll trip over their own noses and roll over and over like a car gone off a mountainside, then realised they would probably bring him down first. When he was at his groggiest, they would wait halfway down the stairs before shooting under him as his foot was in the air and his balance almost irredeemably compromised. The point of no return had so far been avoided only by a cat’s whisker.
By
the time he reached the parlour they were at the back door. Once he let them out, they roamed about the little garden, then scrambled across the ivy-clad wall into next door’s overgrown patch. Leaving the door open to the fresh morning air, he resolutely turned his back on the enchanting view, which embraced the city, Strait and Puffin Island, as if, like the face of someone once beloved but now dead, it were already a thing of the past.
At
seven thirty, gritty-eyed from lack of sleep, Jack plodded into McKenna’s office with some papers under his arm and a mug of tea in each hand. ‘Berkshire police have sent us a fax,’ he said, setting the mugs on the desk, ‘to say there’s absolutely nothing on the Melvilles. I was expecting a drink-drive on John, at least.’
‘
They have a chauffeur,’ McKenna reminded him. ‘So Melville can drink to his heart’s content, wherever he is. What do they say about the accident?’
Jack
scanned the papers. ‘No mechanical faults in the chassis, brakes, steering, wheels, etc. etc. and no post-crash fire to muck things up. Nor was there any ice around, black or otherwise, contrary to what Hester believes. Based on the physical evidence, it appears the car was travelling well in excess of seventy-five miles an hour when it left the road, so they came to the obvious conclusion that the driver simply lost control. Unfortunately,’ he went on, ‘and I quote, “prolonged and exhaustive forensic examination of the vehicle failed to establish which of the two females present had been driving. Both were wearing gloves and no viable fingerprint evidence was therefore available.” So that appears to be that, although as they’d like us to phone, they may want to talk off the record. Will you do that, or shall I?’
‘
I’ll call them after the briefing,’ McKenna said. ‘I want you to interview Sean O’Connor. You should be able to catch him before he leaves for work.’
‘
Which hat do I wear? “Nice copper” or “nasty copper”?’
‘
You know how you function best.’ McKenna gave him a lopsided smile.
‘
I trust Scott will be given the
really
nasty copper routine?’
‘
I haven’t decided quite how to handle that yet,’ McKenna admitted. ‘I’ve been indulging in displacement activity and thinking about Sukie’s horse. I wonder what will happen to it?’
‘
If the Melvilles are as broke as Hester reckons,’ Jack replied mordantly, ‘they’ll probably have to sell it to pay for her funeral.’ When McKenna winced, he added, ‘But I’m sure it’ll find a good home. Better than it’s got now, most likely, because I don’t see how one teacher, with other responsibilities to boot, can look after seven horses properly, even with help from the girls. They need a full-time groom.’
‘
What “other responsibilities”? According to the prospectus, Miss Attwill is a full-time riding mistress.’
‘
She might be full-time and she might be the riding mistress,’ Jack commented, ‘but she also teaches geography and social studies, so she’ll be one of the economies Scott grasps at every opportunity. Have you noticed,’ he went on, picking up his tea, ‘how many part-time staff and contract workers she employs? There’s nothing necessarily wrong in trimming excess, but to my mind she’s a cheapskate. The prospectus boasts about grand schemes for future expansion, yet in reality the school’s a dump.’ He grinned briefly. ‘I tried to talk to her about the staffing levels yesterday, but all I got was an ear bashing about market forces, market expectations, and market this, that and the other. Trying to get her to stick to the point was like pushing a bus up Snowdon.’
‘
She’s adept at wearing down opposition,’ McKenna said, ‘as well as deflecting attention elsewhere when she can’t. She’s very guileful and very clever. Don’t forget she’s got a doctoral thesis under her belt and to prove
her
particular point, that Shakespeare was the first to record the human capacity for insight, she must not only have jumped forwards, sideways and backwards through a lot of mental hoops, but persuaded a lot of others to follow her blindly.’ He took out his first cigarette of the day. ‘If she weren’t
quite
so clever, I wouldn’t mind telling her that her thesis is total rubbish, but she’d misuse the transaction. I’d end up compromised, one way or another.’ Gazing thoughtfully at Jack, he smiled slowly. ‘Then again, Dewi knows as much as me about the insights to be found in early-medieval Welsh poetry. I’m sure he’d jump at the chance to tell her.’
*
When McKenna reached the briefing room shortly after eight o’clock, he found it already full, even though many of the officers there had been working at the school until very late the night before, completing interviews, collating statements and putting information into the computers.
‘
Dr Roberts,’ he began, ‘is still unable to specify the circumstances of Sukie Melville’s death, although he’s disinclined to regard it as accidental.’ Then he told them of the car crash, discussing its implications and the doubts surrounding the identity of the driver. ‘Sukie had no memory of the crash, but believed she was responsible for maiming her closest friend. Day after day, she’s been forced to confront the consequences of her actions in the shape of Imogen’s amputation. A burden of guilt of that magnitude
could
have made her suicidal. However,’ he went on, Imogen may have been the driver. If she took advantage of Sukie’s memory loss to pass the blame, she would be living in fear of Sukie’s memory returning: hence a possible motive for murder. Although she appears to be physically incapable, we mustn’t make assumptions about the extent of her disablement. Nor must we assume that she couldn’t have had an accomplice.’
Janet
held up her hand. ‘No one’s even
mentioned
that Imogen Oliver and Sukie used to be best friends, sir. No one’s commented about Imogen’s leg, either.’
‘
They’re remarkable omissions,’ he agreed. ‘But while we see them as significant, to the school, the friendship and the accident may simply be past history. Nonetheless I shall be asking Dr Scott why she thought fit not to tell us.’ He waited for a moment for further questions, before continuing, ‘Aside from a natural element of shock, the statements we have to date are uniformly bland and essentially uninformative, including those taken from the security guards and the staff.’
Dewi
interrupted. ‘I’ve arranged with the guards to go over their routes, sir, to see if any memories get jogged,’ he said. ‘They reckon to vary the routes at random, but I’m not sure that means anything. They only do mobile patrols, so they’ll end up covering the same ground.’
‘
And the girls no doubt know precisely where they’ll be at any given moment,’ McKenna added. ‘As they doubtless know a great deal about many other things, which is what I want teased out of them. We don’t know, for example, if Sukie had a boyfriend. Dr Scott says not, her mother
thinks
not, but they’d be the last to find out. We must also establish who her friends were. Matron told me she idolised Torrance Fuseli.’
‘
Sir?’ Nona Lloyd raised her hand. ‘Do we treat Imogen Oliver as a suspect?’
‘
We bear her in mind,’ he replied, ‘pending Dr Roberts’s findings.’
Nona
held up her hand again. ‘A lot of the girls think Sukie killed herself. How should we handle that?’
‘
Don’t encourage the idea,’ McKenna told her, ‘but don’t refuse to speculate about the possibility.’ After some thought, he went on, ‘Suicide devastates those left behind when they believe they didn’t see it coming, but with hindsight the warning signals can become blindingly obvious. The same can be said for murder, which also appears to be an extremely intimate event. Don’t forget that the Hermitage is as much a closed society as any prison, with a similar degree of physical and psychological isolation. Dr Scott actively thwarts the influence of mitigating factors from the outside world, and rules the roost in a possessive and even despotic manner. In such a setting emotions become exaggerated and distorted. They will run on a permanent high, and are therefore less easily resolved and dissipated, and a murder could be provoked by something so trivial or incredible that no one took any notice of the antecedents.’
‘
There’s a considerable amount of spite and jealousy,’ Janet remarked, ‘and the sense of some very unpleasant undercurrents.’
‘
And fear, too,’ Nona said. She turned to her colleague. ‘Did you sense that, too?’ When Janet nodded, she added, ‘I’m sure there’s a lot of bullying going on and it must be absolutely hellish for the victims. They’ve got no escape.’
Her
remarks triggered discussion among the people in the room and McKenna listened for a while, following the skeins of ideas that were being drawn out. Then he held up his own hand for silence. ‘This is the largest investigation we’ve ever undertaken, we’re hamstrung by uncertainties and lack of knowledge, and we’re operating in a very complex and complicated environment. Much of what we learn will turn out to he wholly irrelevant: for instance, bullying may be well-established and endemic, but not material to Sukie’s death. Conversely, the key could be something which appears completely unimportant, or is so much a part of school life that no one takes notice of it. The potential for us to be sidetracked, either accidentally or deliberately, is enormous. Dr Scott is particularly liable to obfuscate issues because Sukie’s death may be the upshot of a level of negligence that could ruin her. So focus is crucial.’
As
he waited for more questions, he thought how tired many of them looked, Janet especially. She was very pale and the shadows beneath her eyes aged her. ‘A few more things before you go,’ he continued. ‘First, think very carefully about possible motives for murder, keeping them at the forefront of your mind during the interviews. We’ve already talked about jealousy and bullying, so consider where they might lead, such as to theft and revenge. Blackmail also comes to mind. Second, you’ll be given a recent academic paper on child killers, which outlines risk factors, the trail of warning signs and the detectable antecedents to the event. It should help you to build up a profile of the possible perpetrator without falling into the stereotype trap. Third, in any large group of teenagers, some are bound, by the law of averages, to be abusing solvents, alcohol, or controlled substances and, although Dr Roberts has found nothing to suggest Sukie was a user, the issue could still be very relevant to her death. Girls who
are
involved in substance abuse will be particularly wary and close-mouthed, but they may also be sufficiently disaffected with school life to let a few cats out of the bag. Finally,’ he went on, ‘remember that a murderer is usually found among those closest to the victim, so while we can’t yet exclude outsider involvement, attempted kidnap — although that doesn’t seem likely — or a family connection to Sukie’s death, we concentrate on the school. Any one of the staff or pupils could know something that places them at risk of becoming the next victim.’
Eifion
Roberts telephoned the moment McKenna returned to his office. ‘I’ve had a visitor,’ the pathologist announced. ‘The girl’s mother turned up almost at the crack of dawn, wanting to see her. I spent nigh on half an hour trying to persuade her to go but she wouldn’t budge. She said she had a right to see her daughter and if I didn’t let her, she’d get her father to get the coroner to
make
me.’
‘
She was in a dreadful state last night,’ McKenna said. ‘Perhaps she can’t grasp Sukie’s death without seeing the body again. You let her, I take it?’
‘
I couldn’t, could I?’ Roberts sighed. ‘I’ve got the lass’s skull in pieces.’ He fell silent. ‘In the end,’ he went on eventually, ‘I had no choice but to tell her I hadn’t finished the post-mortem, at which point she literally collapsed.’
‘
And where is she now?’
‘
Next door in casualty, waiting to see the psychiatric registrar. I rang the hotel where she’s staying but her husband was still abed. I’ve left a message for him.’
‘
In the couple of hours he was here last night, Melville consumed almost a whole bottle of whisky and he was drunk when he arrived. I’m not surprised he’s still “abed”. He must he comatose.’
‘
You sound like a prissy old virgin at times, McKenna. Puritanical venom literally drips from your mouth. For God’s sake, have a bit of compassion! The poor sod’s just lost his only child!’ With that he disconnected the call.