Little Fingers! (32 page)

We move to eat
outside on the square. There are tables dotted around under
candlelight.

Mary fixes me
with a gaze of oblique intensity. “Julia, why do I always get the
impression that most of you travels separately? There is a third
person missing from this table - the rest of you.”

“
What do you
mean exactly?”

“
Who are you
exactly?”

“
Please,
Mary, let's not fight.”

“
I am not
trying to fight, Julia. I am trying to get access to the greater
part of you which you deprive me of, which never shows
up.”

“
What part is
that?”

“
I really
wish I knew.”

“
There is
nothing to say. You know everything about me, about my mother,
about my childhood, about my sister, about my car crash, about my
life as a City trader, about what I like to eat, and what I like to
do. Please tell me, Mary, what you need to know.”

“
I need to
know the bit I don't know. The bit you hide from me, and therefore
almost certainly from everyone.”

“
And maybe
from myself.”

“
No, not from
yourself. You are extremely aware of it. That is why you hide it.
What do you think? That if I knew everything about you, I would
hate you? That I would be ashamed of you? That I would love you any
the less?”

“
Undoubtedly.”

“
You are
wrong, Julia. It is more that we cannot love each other completely
until all of us is here, at this table, in this square, infront of
this restaurant, in this village, in Andalucia, now.”

“
I am not
sure that he is free tonight.”

“
He?”

“
A slip of
the tongue. A manner of speaking.”

“
Now that is
interesting.”

“
You think it
is a Freudian slip.”

“
No, I think
it is a confession.”

“
How,
exactly?”

“
You once
said that you could not technically be a lesbian. What did you
mean?”

“
Only that I
have also slept with men.”

“
With how
many men?”

“
Well, you
know about Tom, and about Frank.”

“
Yes.”

“
Do you
really want a list? Do we have to talk about this?”

“
Only if I
matter to you.”

“
Of course
you matter to me.”

“
Then how
many other men have you slept with?”

“
Not
many.”

“
Not many, or
not any?”

“
You are
being very persistent, Mary.”

“
And you are
refusing to be truthful.”

“
I have not
lied to you. I don't think I have ever lied to you.”

“
And even
less have you told me anything like the truth.”

“
So you
suspect I am hiding a deep dark secret somewhere.”

“
I suspect
that you think it is dark.”

I try to
listen to Mary's thoughts. They are steely. Focused.

“
We all have
things we are ashamed of.”

“
And now is
the moment to talk about them.”

“
So what are
yours?”

“
Uh-uh! We
are discussing you, Julia. We can do me tomorrow.”

“
I look
forward to it.”

“
So …….. why
did you really come to Hanburgh?”

“
To meet
you.”

“
Charming,
but 100% untrue.”

“
You are
discounting destiny. That may well have been the
purpose.”

“
I am not
really talking about the cosmos, Julia. What was your
purpose?”

“
To take
revenge?”

“
To take
revenge on whom?”

“
On those
people who made my mother's life hell when she lived
there.”

“
Who was your
mother?”

“
Lucy
Benson.”

“
Oh my God! I
knew she had one daughter, but I thought she died of cancer or
something when she was only a small child.”

“
Leukaemia.”

“
So she had
two daughters?”

“
No, she only
had the one.”

Mary tugs at
her hair in frustration. “Julia, I am totally lost here. Who are
you?”

“
She also had
a son.”

“
Had?”

“
Yes. He died
too.”

“
And?”

“
And he was
reborn as me.”

“
As
you?”

“
Yes.”

“
You used to
be a man?”

“
Quite a man,
actually.”

“
You mean
that I am really in love with a man?”

“
Hard to
say.” I grin. “I hate to categorise.”

Mary takes my
right hand, and ostentatiously and deliberately strokes
it.

“
That is
truly extraordinary.”

“
Now I may
have to kill you.”

“
Is that what
people do when they return from the dead?”

“
It does make
things easier. They are harder to trace.”

“
Are you
really planning on killing me?”

“
No, of
course not, Mary.”

“
Are you
planning on killing anyone?”

“
Yes.” I sit
back. “And I think it is the time.”

* *
*

Chapter
16

I am home.
There is that usual thrill of expectation as I re-enter my house
after my holiday, and that immediate disappointment as I realise
that it is just the same as I left it, only filled with dead
air.

Having checked
into each room to ensure that there has been no interference in my
belongings (there hasn't been), I go to collect Gargoyle from the
kennels.

He is so
pleased to see me, he is all wags, licks and leaps for over 15
minutes. It is horrible in its way. I abandon him for months, and
he is so grateful for my return. If I were him, I would bite me,
and I, being me, would respect him for it.

I have to wait
a further twenty minutes before I drive off because I am terrified
that he will leap the seats and get under my feet.

He is even
more excited once he is let into the house. He is everywhere,
scrabbling, snuffling and barking.

I have to
leave him there and get out. I must announce my arrival to
Hanburgh, and where better than the pub? It will be an ordeal. Just
another one. I will be swamped with questions about Mary I cannot
answer. So be it. I will face them down (Frank will be the worst),
and no doubt I will live to tell another tale.

I enter the
Hanburgh Arms. Brenda is behind the bar, and immediately says “Hi,
Julia! What a surprise! Where's Mary?” Jeff Berringer is standing
at the bar with Mary Knightly. Jeff does not bother with me at all.
Mary notices me, and looks away.

I hug Brenda.
“I'll be back in a minute, Brenda,” I stall her. “There is
something I forgot to bring in from the car.”

“
A present?”
she asks.

“
And
certainly thoroughly deserved,” I reply. “I hope that the recipient
learns to understand the significance.”

Brenda looks
puzzled. “I'll try.”

I go to the
boot of the car, and retrieve my “present”. Entering the lounge, I
am holding the petrol can, with its cap removed, in my left hand,
slightly behind me so that it cannot easily be seen in the time I
need to do this. In my right hand, the cheap non-refillable lighter
is at the ready. I only have a few seconds of opportunity and I
have never done this before. I have never even practised
it.

Jeff is
ignoring me naturally - he does not know who I am, and if he did he
wouldn't care. Mary is ignoring me studiously, not even attempting
to hide the sour expression besmirching her face.

I march
smartly forward, lift the can, and glug the contents all over
Jeff's silver head. It takes so long to pour out. I needed another
air hole in the can, ideally. Too late. Fortunately, Jeff is slow
to react. Eventually, he throws his left arm up in the air, drops
his pint against the top of the bar, from which it crashes to the
floor spilling beer everywhere but not breaking, and swears “What
the hell?”

I flick the
lighter, and he immediately conflagrates ingloriously in the flames
of hell fire. What the hell indeed!

Mary Knightly
hurls herself into the corner of the room and crouches there. I
smile at her graciously. It is almost fun standing over her as she
anticipates pitifully that I will do the same to her. Instead, I
prefer to kill her with condescension. “I am sorry, Mary,” I
declare. “You are evil, but not evil enough for that. I forgive
you.”

Brenda is
squirting Jeff with the soda siphon, trying desperately to dowse
the flames. She looks at me with horror and dread. “Take your time,
Brenda,” I advise her. “There is no rush. I love you. Bye.” Dr.
Berringer, I am pleased to see, is writhing around in frantic
anguish, aflame from head to toe. Soda siphons are useless in that
sort of emergency.

I am off to
find you, Inspector. There is nobody I would rather meet up with
now in my moment of vengeful triumph.

Hurrah for
Julia! Hurrah for Julian!

* *
*

Part
II

AN INSPECTOR'S
TALE

Chapter
17

“
Julia,
Julia, what have you done?”

She faces me
calmly, her dark, sharp eyes almost twinkling at me. “Is he
dead?”

“
It's touch
and go.”

“
Well, I hope
that the touch is painful.”

“
No remorse
then?”

“
No remorse,
Inspector. You know what he has being doing over many years. You
know the lives he has ruined. You have never tried to stop him. Who
is the guiltier, I or you?”

“
Taking the
law into your own hands is never right.”

“
Not applying
the law when it is your job to is never right either,
John.”

“
We couldn't
pin him down. There were never any credible witnesses. Most of his
victims refused to talk. Those who would were so distraught as to
be unreliable. We would never have succeeded in obtaining a
conviction.”

“
Don't you
think it was your duty to stop him, whatever the price, because the
price others have been paying for your lapse has been so much
higher?”

“
We cannot
waste public funds going after people on whom we could never secure
a conviction. The Crown Prosecution Service would never let us
proceed.”

“
I admire
your courage, John.”

“
And I regret
yours.”

“
So be
it.”

“
So, will you
confess?”

“
Of course I
will confess. There is no question that I poured petrol all over
Jeff Berringer while the state of my mind was temporarily
disturbed. I shall tell the story in court of how many people in
Hanburgh knew exactly what was happening, of how many victims there
have been of his paedophilia, of the depths of their suffering and
of their many suicides, of the extent to which the police were
fully aware of his filthy activities and chose to do nothing to
stop him. I only set fire to Jeff. I am now going to blow this
whole village apart.”

“
I never
realised you were quite so angry. So can you explain why you killed
Tom Willows, George Knightly and Tom Becker?”

“
I never
killed any of those people, as you well know. It was at best a
coincidence that I was near them at the times of their deaths, and
at worst a plot to incriminate me.”

“
And whose
plot was that then, in your far from humble opinion?”

“
I keep
saying that I really haven't got a clue. I do not know who hated
them. If it was intended to incriminate me, I don't know who hated
me. I have certainly pissed off a few people around here, but I
have not actually made an enemy out of them, as far as I am aware.
Except perhaps Mary Knightly, and she hates everyone. If she were
the killer, she would be stitching up the entire village, and maybe
anyone she has ever met.”

“
So you will
not be confessing to the murders?”

“
As you well
know, Inspector, a false confession not only puts an innocent
person in gaol, it also leaves the guilty one free and, from the
look of things, you have a serial killer on your hands. He may well
kill again.”

“
He, or she,
seems to have stopped for the moment. Since you left the country,
in fact.”

“
Console
yourself with that, then, Inspector. I will not compound your
complacency.”