Fog Heart (32 page)

‘Right.'

‘One day, it seems, Oona lured a four-year-old girl away to a secluded corner and bashed her head in with a stone or a piece of brick. The victim was a neighbour's child and there wasn't any feud between them, so there was no rhyme or reason to it, but you wouldn't expect it to make much sense when the murderer is eleven and the victim four.'

‘Did she admit to the crime?'

‘Oh, I think so. Yes,' Mr Pond replied. ‘The one quote I remember had her saying more or less that she wanted to see what somebody looked like when they were dead.'

‘Christ.'

‘It might make a certain kind of sense to a child that age, but only a child raised as she was.'

‘Was her sister there that day? Rosalind.'

‘I think the most you could say about any of Ellen Rodgers' children was that they were either half-brothers or half-sisters to each other.'

‘Oh, yes, of course.'

‘But to answer your question, yes, Rosalind was in the same general area at the time of the murder. But she was with some of the other neighbourhood kids, and they were all at a fair distance from the exact spot where the killing took place. Remember, she was a good three years older than her sister, she was a teenager. Rosalind no doubt had her own, different crowd of pals.'

Oliver nodded. ‘So there was never any question—'

Mr Pond shook his head. ‘No.' Oliver was glad. ‘Rosalind was actually the closest thing to a success story in that family. She held them together when the mother was away or acting up, she finished school and, as I said, she held jobs and gradually moved up a bit, to the point where she could manage to pay the rent for a bedsit of her own.'

‘Yes.'

‘That twelve-thousand-pound payment is a puzzler but it does suggest some business sense. I think she may have received it as payment for a newspaper interview. We never located one with her featured, but that doesn't mean there wasn't one.'

‘That's all right,' Oliver said. ‘I'm not really interested in the exact source of that money.'

‘Well, then, let me just finish up on Oona now.'

‘Please.'

‘Considering her age, and the results of the various mental tests and psychiatric evaluations they did on her, Oona was never brought to trial or convicted of any offence.'

So she had not illegally entered the United States, and she really didn't have a criminal record.

‘It's a murky area of English law, or was at that time,' Mr Pond went on. ‘I'm not sure about now. But obviously they were not about to turn her loose, as if nothing had happened. She'd have been strung up from the nearest lamp-post overnight. There were a lot of hard feelings in the community and around the rest of the country. There was another odd fact that came into play, however. England has no facilities for the detention of children so young who commit serious crimes.'

‘None?'

‘None at all.'

‘So what did they do with her?'

‘She was sent to the remand home for children in Low Newton. It's not a criminal facility but it does house troubled children. It wasn't a popular decision. Some people thought it was a little like putting the fox in the hen-house, but there weren't any good alternatives. Low Newton is located in Durham county.'

‘Aha. That's why Roz moved to Durham.'

‘Yes, she broke away from the family circle, such as it was, two years later, when she turned sixteen. News reports indicate that she visited Oona as often as regulations allowed.'

‘How long did Oona remain at Low Newton?'

‘The best part of seven years,' Mr Pond replied. ‘She was released when she reached the age of eighteen, as they no longer had any legal grounds for holding her.'

‘Why not?'

‘Legally she was detained for her own protection,' Mr Pond replied patiently. ‘And for psychiatric treatment. But she had not been convicted of any crime because she'd been declared unfit to stand trial, on mental grounds. When Oona turned eighteen she became an adult under the law, and other factors came into play, some of which worked in her favour.'

‘But why couldn't they just commit her to an adult facility for further treatment at that point?'

‘Obviously they couldn't do that as a punitive measure, and apparently it wasn't justified in view of her progress.'

‘You mean they thought she'd been cured?'

‘At least to the point where she was no longer regarded as a threat to society. There may also have been other considerations we don't know about. The authorities may have been given a quiet word that Oona would be taken in charge by Rosalind, and that the two intended to leave Britain permanently. It might even be that the twelve thousand pounds Rosalind received was provided by some wealthy do-gooder for just such a purpose.'

‘I suppose that is possible.'

‘By all accounts, her record at Low Newton was adequate. No major infractions, no trouble-making or violent behaviour. But it showed no special achievements of any kind. She took classes and received passing grades. She saw counsellors, social workers and psychologists, the usual battery of experts. We couldn't see any of their reports, obviously, and we didn't come across any public comments about her by any of the personnel at Low Newton. It was all done very quietly, her release. No doubt they hoped to avoid re-inflaming public opinion about her, and for the most part they succeeded. I assume that Oona slipped out of the country a short while later with Rosalind.'

‘She must have done,' Oliver said.

‘Yes. Well, I think that's about it, in brief. You'll find more details in the news reports, but do bear in mind they're not always completely accurate.'

‘Of course. Thank you very much. You've been very helpful, and at such short notice.'

‘Thank you.' Mr Pond handed Oliver a slip of paper. ‘This is our bill, if I may.'

‘Certainly.' Oliver took out his cheque book on the Coutts account that he still kept open in England.

Mr Pond smiled. ‘I would like to ask you something in turn.'

‘Yes?' Oliver said warily.

‘This is your business and I have no wish to pry, but as I'm from Newcastle, and I do remember this case, I can't help feeling a tiny bit curious about Clare Oona Muir. If you happen to know, would you mind telling me what she's doing now?'

Oliver laughed. ‘She's a fortune-teller.'

Mr Pond blinked, and then realized that, in fact, Oliver was perfectly serious. Now he looked somewhat disappointed, but he shook his head and smiled. ‘Is she, by God. Well, well. It's a wonderful life, isn't it?'

*   *   *

Oliver didn't open the folders until he had poured himself a large duty-free Scotch and was settled comfortably in an armchair in his hotel room. He propped up his feet on the bed, lit a cigarette, set Pond's reports aside without even glancing at them and turned immediately to the photocopied newspaper clippings.

The first photograph of Oona took his breath away. Her eyes dominated in cold newsprint, as they did in life, staring evenly out at the world, too open, too knowing. Too unforgiving. Oona might have been only eleven years old at the time, but those eyes must have unnerved a good many people when she forced the country to sit up and take notice.

She was so far ahead of him.

Her hair was surprisingly short in the picture, trimmed in a
Rubber Soul
mop-top, the fringe neatly parted in a tight inverted V in the middle of her forehead. It was quite thick and full but nothing like the mane she now possessed.

Oona's face was younger, but not much. The Oona he knew had hardly aged in ten years, in spite of all she'd been through. It was a personal snapshot, not a police or newspaper photograph, Oliver realized. She looked as if she had applied a bit too much make-up to her face. Her lips were rather dark and full, her eyes shadowed. A girl trying to look like a young woman, and she still had that quality today. The photo had probably been taken at a party or some other such occasion.

The rest was suddenly uninteresting to Oliver and he quickly scanned the contents of both folders. Details, details, but none of them essential. He didn't care if the home secretary had had a hard time deciding what to do with Oona. Oliver could go back over all that some other time, but he could see that Mr Pond had given him an accurate and thorough summary of the case.

He turned again to the first photograph of Oona.

Oliver gazed at the grainy black-and-white image. He wanted to cry. She was so beautiful. She would be perfect for him, the ultimate Myra. If only they had met at the right time, if only a few things in his life were different, and in hers. If only this and if only that, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck it.

Was it too late?

You know me, Oliver thought, but now I know you, and nothing will ever be the same. You never had a proper father, but that wasn't the real problem. It was your mother, wasn't it? She was never there for you, even when she was there. Everything else in that household was probably bad enough, a kind of swirling chaos of pain and fear, hatred and need, but your mother was the centre of gravity, the black hole at the heart of it all.

That's why you used the word mother so many times and in so many ways in your psychic rants. They were only marginally about me or Carrie, or the O'Donnells. They were really all about you and your mother. I know, love, I know.

Oliver forced himself to stop grinding his teeth. He took a long drink of Scotch, drained the glass and poured another. He felt as if an iron bar had been removed from somewhere inside his chest, a dead weight he'd been carrying around all his life. Oona was like him. She knew.

It was different but the same. Oliver's mother had
always
been there, suffocatingly omnipresent. He had watched her slowly wear down his father, sanding him away like a piece of wood until there was nothing left but dust. It was just the little things, the million daily little things that cumulatively add up and make human life intolerable. The only justice came when his father's heart finally gave out – on the M5 at 110 m.p.h. Oliver's mother had died at the same time. He liked to think that, somehow, the old boy had done it on purpose.

But the price was too high. No man should have to yield his life to escape. Why did his father stick with her? Why not just leave, separate, divorce? Had it been for Oliver's sake?

No. Please, no.

You're so beautiful, he thought, staring at the photograph. Oona had been out for more than three years now. So why have you stopped? It's Roz, your surrogate mother. Roz had Oona trapped in that psychic racket. Scream for a bit of affection, bleed for the money we live on. And beat your brains out because Roz won't let you do the one thing you want to do and need to do and
like.
She even has you convinced you're helping people. It's that much easier to sell torture and slavery if the victim actually thinks there's a point to it. But it was sick, that's all.

How could he kill her now?

Oona, if I could save you would you come with me?

Be my my my my my Myra?

*   *   *

He couldn't stay in. This information made him restless and excited. Oliver had a burger at a place down the street and then continued on to the Edgar Wallace pub, just off the Strand. He'd read a number of the Wallace thrillers and mysteries when he was about twelve or thirteen – his father had had a whole shelf of them. They would probably seem simple and rather silly now, but at that age Oliver had fallen in love with the image of a vanished London conveyed in the books. It was the London of the 1920s, by turns glitzy or grey, gaudy or drab, swathed in cold wet fog. A London somehow always exotic, and wonderfully dangerous.

Forty miles and a lifetime away from the house in Aylesbury, where he'd been raised by a quiet stamp-collecting accountant dad and his – and his dad's wife.

Oliver had been dreaming of London for years, long before he finally got to the city. And it had been great for a while, but then New York drew him. Perhaps that had been the mistake. He could move back. Carrie would do it. But then what?

He had a wife, work, a range of business activities, a whole life – apart from himself. It was dangerous to imagine he could somehow scrap all of that – with Oona? – and merge with himself to be reborn, complete and fully realized. No, no. That way was the path to chaos and collapse. He could kill them all if he had to – Carrie, Marthe, Becky, Roz and even Oona. That would be an astonishing feat. But a greater admission of failure was hard to conceive.

And what would be left of him then? His true self, pure and supremely unconstrained? Or nothing at all?

The Edgar Wallace was somehow comforting, as always, but too quiet just now. Oliver finished his pint and caught a cab to the Miranda club. It was quiet there too, but the usual late-evening crowd was starting to drift in. Soon he would be able to feel at peace in their midst, blurred and anonymous.

Perhaps Marthe was the best he could hope for, after all. A ferocious lover, not a placid wife. A partner in lighting up the dark, who shared his monumental secrets. Marthe had a talent for it, no question. But there was something missing in her. She was not the perfect Myra.

He knew what it was. Marthe was too much like him. Unique, different if not special, talented, bright,
sui generis.
In sum, she was not ordinary enough and never would be.

That was what made the real Myra Hindley – and the barbaric child-killings, the Moors murders, that she participated in some thirty years ago in Manchester with her crabbed little pea-brain of a man, Ian Brady – so fearfully compelling, so significant in the annals of crime. Myra was as ordinary as a block of wood but she had gone all the way down to the bottom of the deepest trench in the deepest part of the deepest ocean, where all of the great transactions in the secret agenda of the true soul are conducted. Myra had been there. She knew.