The Betrayal of Trust (37 page)

He pushed aside an overgrown bush and edged his way up the side, coming out onto a terrace of uneven old paving stones. The back door was open. A woman was sitting in
an ancient basket chair, reading a newspaper, a basin of eggs on a table beside her. Half a dozen hens were scratting round behind some netting.

‘Miss Wilcox?’

The woman leapt up, sending the paper flying.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.’

‘Well, you did. Who are you? What are you doing in my garden?’

She peered at the warrant card he showed, coming closer to him and reading it intently.
He saw that her hair was thinning, enough to show the scalp here and there.

‘I’d like to ask you a question or two, please. May I sit there?’

She hesitated, looking at him with an expression that was both angry and suspicious. And fearful.

‘All right.’ She picked up the paper and folded it roughly together.

He sat. Waited. Watched her.

‘What’s this about? I’m quite busy. I don’t like intruders.’

‘What can you tell me about a young woman called Agneta?’

‘I don’t know any young woman called that.’

‘But you did.’

She stared him out. He waited.

‘Oh, that girl. A long time ago. She helped a bit in the house. I don’t remember anything about her.’

‘Why did she leave?’

‘She worked for some other people in the village – that was her main job, she only helped us out a bit now and then. She
just upped and went.’

‘Why?’

‘I – she stole. They caught her thieving, so did I. She was confronted. She went. That was that. Never saw her again.’

‘You said “she helped us out”.’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you tell me who else lives here?’

‘No one. Not now.’

‘You read the papers.’ He glanced sideways at the one on the table. ‘The
Guardian
.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you see the local paper?’

‘No.’

‘Do you watch
television?’

‘Don’t have it. I listen to the radio.’

‘So you won’t have seen this?’ He took out a copy of the press release with the image of the missing girl and passed it to her. She hesitated. Glanced at it, then away. Picked it up again and looked at it closely.

‘Is that Agneta?’

She drew in a slow breath. ‘It looks like her. But I don’t remember her well and this isn’t a proper photograph,
is it?’

‘No. It’s a facial reconstruction done by computer.’

‘Oh, well …’

‘From her skull.’

She did not move. The hens scratched about. The sun was warm.

‘The other family she worked for in the village have confirmed that it is a strong likeness.’

‘They moved away.’

‘Yes, but we have been in contact with them. They’re sure this is Agneta Dokic.’

‘They’re probably right. I don’t know. If
they say so, why do you need my opinion?’

‘Confirmation. And you didn’t see her again after she left?’

‘No. I think the people rang and said they’d caught her stealing – and I agreed that she’d taken things from here. So that was that.’ She stood up. ‘I can’t tell you any more.’

‘Thank you.’ Simon took out his card. ‘If you do remember anything else …’

‘I won’t.’ She did not take it.

‘May
I have just a couple of details from you? Your full name, the name of anyone else living here.’

‘I told you. There isn’t anyone else. Unless you count the cat.’

‘So you’re a widow? Your husband died?’

‘What’s that to do with anything?’

He waited without replying.

‘Not a husband,’ she said. ‘If it’s any of the police’s business.’

‘I just need to tick all the boxes.’ It was the kind of ridiculous
phrase he would never normally use.

‘My partner has dementia and is in a home … and do not
dare
tell me that you are sorry.’

He did not.

‘If that’s all, you can leave, I’m going there now, actually. Have you ever visited someone you love but who no longer knows you?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not exactly.’

She looked at him with contempt.

The cat had moved, following the sun.

Simon stood in the lane
and rang in the number of the van for
a
check, which came back within the minute as registered to Miss Leonora Dulcie Wilcox, clean licence, up-to-date insurance.

‘Sir John? Simon Serrailler.’

‘Good morning. Beautiful morning.’

Simon was startled. He had not noticed anything whatsoever about the day.

‘Yes indeed.’

‘Been out in the garden since half six. I even took my morning tea out there
– But you haven’t rung for this. What’s happened?’

‘I wonder if you can answer a question for me please.’

‘Anything. Has there been a development?’

‘Possibly. You said Harriet was very musical.’

‘Yes. Though what does that mean in a young girl? I’ve no idea if she had any sort of exceptional ability but she did love it … loved playing her instruments.’

‘Which were?’

‘The piano first, she
started at seven, then the clarinet – she wanted to play the guitar too but we didn’t agree.’

‘Why was that?’

‘Three different instruments to practise – takes up a lot of time, you know. She had to concentrate on her schoolwork. So the piano and the clarinet were fine, nothing extra.’

‘Where did she go for lessons?’

‘School. It had good music teachers, that school. It’s closed now, of course
– sad. Just not enough fee-payers to keep a girls’ day school like that going these days. Harriet had her music lessons there.’

‘Do you remember her teachers?’

‘I’m afraid not … oh, wait. Yes, of course. The clarinet was Mr Winder, which became the inevitable bad joke as you may imagine.’

‘And the piano?’

‘No. I don’t remember any name. Sorry.’

‘Presumably whoever it was wrote on Harriet’s
reports at the end of term?’

‘Yes. And if you’d asked me a few years ago I’d have told you I would look them out, but after Eve died I cleared out all
of
that sort of thing. It suddenly seemed pointless to keep it. All the paperwork, all her toys and sports things and tapes and clothes – everything Eve had wanted to keep. I couldn’t bear it. It went out, the hospice shop, the bin. I’m sorry.
Is this important?’

AN HOUR BEFORE
she left home, Jocelyn Forbes made a pot of tea and a round of toasted fruit bread and took them on a tray into the conservatory. It was another of the clear blue, warm, daffodil-golden mornings that had started over a week earlier and she wanted to enjoy watching the birds before she got ready to go out. Five minutes later, she was bent over double, choking, unable to
swallow a piece of the toast down or to cough it up and spit it out, paralysed both in her throat and with terror. No one else was in the house. No one would hear her because she was making no sound, though an odd, thin whistling noise came out of her mouth once or twice.

Her heart raced and she reached out to hold onto the back of her chair, but could not grip it, her hand was as useless as
her throat.

She saw the bright room swirl round in front of her eyes, inside her head.

And then, abruptly, her throat pushed the lump of food up and out. She heard herself retching, heard her breath rasp. She stumbled backwards to find the chair and sat down heavily, her body shaking.

It was as much as she could do to get herself ready and she called a taxi, feeling unsafe to drive, wondering
if that was that, if the previous day’s short foray to the supermarket was the last time she would ever take out her own car.

Everything was slipping out of her grasp.

For a moment, she was reminded in Switzerland. The consulting rooms were in one of Lafferton’s Edwardian houses in Sorrel Drive, many of which had become either flats or dental surgeries and solicitors’ offices in the last
few years. But the entrance hall was light, the walls and doors freshly painted white, the magazines new. She tried to look at one but her hands would not turn the pages and she was still shaky after her earlier fright.

She looked out of the window onto the trees that lined the road, old trees with thick trunks and heavy canopies of leaves.

I will not see any of this again, she thought. The
thick lushness of the leaves, the shady green, the sunlight filtering through here and there. I will not see an autumn or a winter either.

And it occurred to her that she was glad, that however much she had wavered in Switzerland and immediately after coming home, she now felt the old calm resolution returning, the sense of decision, of having a choice and making it.

She did not want to go on.

‘Mrs Forbes?’ The voice was familiar, though the appearance was not and took her aback slightly.

This was a light room too, with a high moulded ceiling, a recent partition across one end.

He had a sheet of notes in front of him on the desk but he did not look at them, he looked at her, leaning back in his chair, calm, still, waiting.

‘Something happened, just this morning,’ Jocelyn said, and
began to talk. He listened, as she had rarely known anyone listen, listened, without interrupting, looking at her steadily, his eyes thoughtful and full of sympathy. She talked about the onset of her illness, the symptoms, the fears, the creeping dread of becoming dependent, the terror of dying in the way she might have died this morning. She recounted everything about the visit to Switzerland,
told him about Penny, told him about her own changes of mind and heart. Until now.

‘Now,’ he said when she had fallen silent at last. ‘Now, today. Where do you find yourself?’

‘Decided. Absolutely. If I could only be sure that there was somewhere even a little like that place in my mind. The one I imagined.’

‘Not like a shabby apartment in a suburb of Switzerland where the bed was more like
a none-too-clean examination couch.’ His voice was filled with disgust. ‘That is a complete scandal and a disgrace and I cannot tell you how many of us would wish to have the place closed down. The whole organisation closed down.’

How many of us
. Who? What did he mean?

‘One of the few things we are managing to do in this country is rescue people such as yourself once they have fallen into –
and, thankfully, out of – the clutches of these criminals – because that is what they are, I assure you. We have some efficient ways of tracing their victims – I don’t use the word lightly, Mrs Forbes – and offering an alternative to at least a few.’

‘How?’

He put his fingertips together and glanced down at his desk. ‘Let’s just say there are people prepared to pass on information. But the point
is, as I know you are aware, for the time being we have a legal problem in the UK. All of this is strictly against the law – in short, it is criminal. That is a crime in itself, in my view – a crime against common humanity and an infringement of basic human rights. One day, we’ll win the battle, I have no doubt about that. It’s a moral battle, not merely a legal one. But in the meantime, we have
no alternative but to be very careful, very circumspect. Before you leave here today I will ask you to sign a statement which will not only help you but will be essential to me and to my staff should there be any future legal challenges or problems. Do you understand? I’m sure you do.’

She thought of Penny. Penny could not know.

‘For this reason, among others, if I do offer you an appointment
in my clinic, you will not be allowed to bring anyone with you – no relative or friend. It is better to involve no one else at all. I have staff who will look after you and be with you every step of the way to the final step – who will take the place of that relative or friend and are specially trained to do so.’

‘Are they not at risk of prosecution?’

‘Yes in theory, but they believe as passionately
as I do in our work, so they are prepared – brave enough – to take the risk. And we are very, very careful indeed. Now, you’ve told me
about
your condition. It’s plain that it is deteriorating and you’re right to fear some of the things you do. But I would urge you, even so, that care for motor neurone sufferers, in hospices for example, as well as in hospitals, is increasingly sophisticated.
There’s no cure but there are many ways in which symptoms can be controlled. You should leave no avenue unexplored, you know.’

‘I haven’t. I appreciate what you’re saying to me but I am very clear now about what I want to do. Very clear. Going to Switzerland put me off in one sense. I would never go back there and I’d deter anyone else from going, with the last breath in my body. It was a terrible
experience. But you assure me that you have something quite different to offer.’

‘I like to think that my small facility is as – well, yes – as perfect – I won’t be afraid to use the word – as I can make it. As peaceful, as calm, as tranquil, as spiritual, as beautiful – and as professional. All those images you had which you have called “fantasies” of a place of great peace and acceptance in
which to die with dignity – all those images are true. You will see.’

‘So I would be able to visit in advance?’

‘Ah, no – I’m afraid not. That is part of our having to be so private and secure – it’s a risk we couldn’t take. Not at the moment. You can imagine … word would only have to get out after an unscrupulous person decided to “visit in advance” … I hope you understand. I wish this were
not the case, I really do.’

‘What should I do?’

‘I can’t tell you that, Mrs Forbes. This is your decision. Your illness. Your life.’

‘My death.’

He looked directly at her without any embarrassment.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is. You should go home and think everything through. Think it through again, from every point of view. Make the decision – to remain alive until death takes you in its own time.
Work your way through that in your mind, looking at every possible outcome, every sort of care you might opt for, every medical help. The positives and the negatives. Then do the opposite. Make the decision to come to the clinic and take
your
death into your own hands. See how you feel about that. Look at that from every point of view.’