The House of Women (38 page)

‘
He did.’

‘
Then what? Did he go, or did he stay?’

She stared at him, then clutched Solange
’s bare arm, squeezing so hard the Frenchwoman winced. ‘Don’t tell Mama!
Please
don’t tell Mama!’

Gently, Solange pulled herself free, then held
Mina’s trembling hands, while McKenna talked on, relentlessly. ‘Tell me about the car.’

‘
What car?’

‘
The car you and Jason followed along the expressway. You sprayed it with brake fluid, and nearly caused a serious accident.’

‘
Well, we didn’t! It just stopped.’

‘
Why did you follow it?’

‘
Jason wanted to.’

‘
Why?’

‘
Because I told him about it.’ She smiled at Solange. ‘It was outside your house on Wednesday morning, so I wrote down the number and what colour it was.’

‘
Why do that,
cherie
?
’
Solange asked.

‘
I often do it. Jason says it’s like train spotting, only more grown up. He gives me a list of cars to look out for, and when I see what he wants, I write down the number, then where it’s parked.’ She giggled. ‘And when we see it again, I spray it with a water pistol, and cross it off the list. Trainspotters do that in their little books when they see a train.’

‘
Did you tell Jason the car belonged to a police officer?’ McKenna asked.

‘
Of course I did! He wouldn’t have been able to find it again if I hadn’t, would he?’ She frowned at him, working her mouth. ‘And I wish you’d stop going on! Jason’s got to know about the cars for his job.’

‘
Why?’

‘
Because he does. It’s his job!’

‘
How is it his job, Mina?’ Solange asked.

‘
He listens for cars getting abandoned,’ she said wearily. ‘When they’ve broken down or the driver’s been arrested for being drunk or something. He’s got a big scanner in the van, and he picks up police radios and people calling for help on their mobiles.’

‘
Have you ever been with him when that’s happened?’ McKenna demanded.

‘
I’m not telling you!’

‘
Why can you not tell Mr McKenna?’ Solange asked.

‘
Jason said he’d get into trouble if his boss found out I was with him.’

‘
Let’s talk about Uncle Ned,’ McKenna suggested. ‘When did you put the powder in the butter?’

‘
I’m tired. I can’t remember!’

‘
I think you can.’

‘
In the morning!’

‘
Which morning?’

‘
That
morning,’ she responded, sullenness pinching her lips.

‘
The day Uncle Ned died?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
When in the morning?’

‘
After breakfast.’ She scowled, almost viciously. ‘Mama made me wash the dishes before I went to work, so I did it then. I was going to put it in the milk, only I remembered what she’d said.’

‘
What your mother said?’

‘
About tablets and stuff. Hot drinks stop things working, so it would’ve been stupid to put anything in the milk, because nobody drinks milk except me. Phoebe says it gives her spots, and Uncle Ned said it gave him the stomach ache, like everything else.’ She bit her lip again. ‘And I wish you’d stop going on about it! I’ve already told you, it didn’t
work
!’

*

The solicitor’s secretary, her machinery in a neat grey case, promised the transcript of Mina’s interview within the hour, assuring McKenna it was a matter of seconds to transfer the data from one machine to another, and of minutes to make the hard copy.

‘
What did we do before computers were born?’ Dewi asked idly.

‘
We managed.’

‘
Any joy with Mina?’

‘
She’s told us how she poisoned Ned, but there’s no joy involved, except for a sadistic bloody psychopath like Jason Lloyd.’

‘
Well, he’s banged to rights on the vehicles, so that’s some comfort,’ Dewi said, following McKenna away from the ward where Solange had elected to remain. ‘Geraint doesn’t know owt from nowt, because he’s thick, like most of these backwoods types, but Dervyn got verbal diarrhoea once he knew Jason was behind bars and couldn’t come after him with a baseball bat, as is apparently his wont if people upset him.’

‘
If he can’t get hold of some poison.’

‘
That was a one-off, sir, and sheer opportunism, and if Ned hadn’t made such a very noisy song and dance about all his ills, he might be alive today.’

‘
No, he wouldn’t, because he’d crossed Jason,’ McKenna said. ‘And one day, Edith, or Phoebe, or the cleaner, or even Mina, would have found him with his brains splattered around the room, instead of less bloodily, and, I hope, less painfully, dead in his favourite chair.’ As Dewi yawned, fist against his lips, he added: ‘Why are you here, anyway?’

‘
To let you know you were right about Jason. Your mobile’s been switched off for ages.’

‘
They interfere with hospital equipment.’

‘
Do they? I thought that was a bit of fiction to beef up TV drama. Anyway, where Jason’s concerned, it’s like mother like son with a vengeance, ’cos he was
extremely
careless with things at Merlin yard. There’s been a huge amount of respraying, none of it in Merlin’s own colours, or like the boss’s personal vehicles, and forensics turned up a load of windows, most with the original numbers etched in, which happily for us, match up perfectly with a lot of stolen vehicles.’ Following McKenna across the car park, he continued talking in lists: ‘Equipment and die stamps, all well used, for grinding and reblocking engines and chassis, nearly two dozen VIN plates out of missing vehicles, and odds and ends like ashtrays and whatnot, which sometimes have the vehicle marque and date embossed in the making. Oh, and there’s an enormous bunch of keys, so hopefully one of them belongs to George’s flat.’

About to carp at him for the repetitious use of vehicle, McKenna bit his tongue. Dark shadows smudged Dewi
’s eyes and cheekbones, and the bruise from yesterday’s injury seeped down his face like watery ink.

‘
Interviewing Jason’s kin was like having a conveyor belt on the go,’ Dewi added, ‘which is probably why I’ve got a storming headache. And his boss was ringing every half hour, wanting to know when we’d be done with the fat man, and how much longer forensics would be turning his office and yard upside down.’

‘
D’you think Mr Merlin’s involved with the car thefts?’ McKenna asked. ‘Jason couldn’t have run the business on his own, and it’s hard to believe his boss noticed nothing.’

‘
Why?’ Dewi unlocked his car and reset alarm and immobilizer. ‘Edith let an awful lot pass her by, didn’t she? It’s dead easy to con people when they trust you, even when gut instinct tells them something’s amiss.’

‘
Point taken,’ McKenna said, envy niggling as Dewi sat behind the wheel. Hood folded down, the dark vehicle’s long, raked shape was almost sinister. ‘Are you off home?’

‘
I’ll finish taking Dervyn’s statement first, as he knows so much about Jason and his mates in the used car business.’

‘
What’s the
quid
pro
quo
?
’

‘
He hasn’t asked for anything. Maybe he’s glad to get things off his chest.’ He turned the ignition key, letting the engine tick over. ‘Phoebe rang a couple of times, and Superintendent Bradshaw called to say we’ve done a very good job.’ He gunned the motor. ‘I said we should be able to locate her car, because we found the papers for its scrap twin, so we know the new number.’

‘
Have you put out a bulletin on it?’

‘
It’s in the computer, sir, along with all the others. The vehicle examiner wants everything ready for Monday morning, including Annie’s car.’

‘
She knows.’

‘
Phoebe said it doesn’t matter if you’re late ringing back.’

‘
I’ll probably visit the house.’

‘
This must be dreadful for them, and none of it would’ve happened if Mina hadn’t taken up with that villain.’

‘
Unfortunately, she’s the sort of girl who’ll always end up with some villain or other,’ McKenna said. ‘She needs cheap, quick thrills to make her feel alive, because she can’t bear life’s usual tedium, and where we see Jason’s wickedness for what it is, she sees it as a source of constant excitement.’

‘
Does she actually understand what she’s done? Does she
know
she killed Ned?’

‘
I honestly can’t say, and in her present frame of mind, it wouldn’t be wise to tell her that what she thought were Epsom Salts was the drug which killed him,’ McKenna replied. ‘Common sense tells me she must understand, but she seems not to, so perhaps Solange is right to call her stupid, in the true sense of the word.’

‘
Did she really come good, like you said? I didn’t think she had it in her to be good for anything but spending hubby’s cash.’

‘
Hubby hasn’t any cash to speak of. He’s drowning in debt, robbing Peter to pay Paul, and Paul to pay back Peter.’

‘
Serves him right for conning people about that poetry,’ Dewi commented. ‘What goes round comes round.’ He paused, flicking the indicator switch. ‘I saw Janet again, while I was waiting for you. Her father’s gone, but her mother was there. She looks terrible.’

‘
Who does? Janet, or her mother?’

‘
Her mother. Janet’s still out of it completely, but she isn’t any worse. If she can hold her own while her body starts to get over the trauma, she should be OK.’

‘
Then we should pray she can,’ McKenna said.

‘
I am doing,’ Dewi answered, roaring off into the night.

13

The front of Edith’s house was in total darkness, only a faint nimbus of light defining the gable wall and the trees overhanging the garden. Debating with himself on the wisdom of retreat, McKenna crunched up the drive and around the side, pushed open a heavy wooden gate smelling of sun-scorched wood and, faintly, of creosote, and into the back garden.

A cloud of midges danced under the trees, and there was a shiver of autumn in the air. A clothes-line, slung between a concrete post against one boundary wall, and the branches of a huge old beech tree, sagged under the weight of laundry pegged along its length. In the wedge of fuzzy light spilling through the back door, and the elongated rectangles from the kitchen windows, he saw the pillowcases and quilt cover and sheet from Mina
’s bed, the clothes she had worn when she was stretchered into the ambulance, Phoebe’s much larger shirt and trousers, and what must be, he thought, the carpet from the bloody bathroom, a large square of pale pink, indented with curves and slits, dripping on to the grass at the end by the tree, and stippled with leaf shadows. Or perhaps, he mused, the darker patches were splatters of blood, as indelible as Rizzio’s on the floor of Holyrood House.

They must have heard the closing of the gate, for Phoebe appeared in the doorway, throwing an enormous amorphous shadow across the garden and the clothes line. The cat materialized by her feet, creating another black hole in the light.

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t come earlier,’ he said. ‘I know you’ve been trying to call.’

‘
Solange telephoned,’ she said, drawing him into the house. ‘And that bloody excuse for a man she married called, as well. He wanted to come round, but Mama told him not to.’

His eyes adapted to the soft darkness, the lights in the kitchen were dazzling, making masks of the faces of Edith and her daughters. She sat on the far side of the table, a mug of coffee steaming in front of her, a cigarette in her hand, and the ashes of many more in the blue glass tray. Annie rose, to pour coffee for their visitor.

‘I actually said if he wasn’t too drunk to stand upright, he should be at the hospital,’ Edith added. ‘And I also said all the drink and drugs in the world can’t stop things happening, and can’t shield you from the consequences, either, but Iolo’s a fool, because he still seems to think they can.’ She stubbed out the cigarette, and reached for another, summoning a smile. ‘I told Phoebe it was too late to expect you to come, but she would insist on calling.’

‘
You wanted to see him, Mama, only you wouldn’t ask,’ Phoebe said.

‘
I did, and I didn’t,’ Edith countered. ‘Have you anything to tell us we don’t already know?’

He sat down between Annie and Phoebe, close enough to feel the heat of their bodies and smell the scents of fresh air and scouring powders. Coloured plastic buckets, wrung-out cleaning cloths, and rubber gloves, littered the counter beside the sink, and he could hear the whine of a washing machine on fast spin behind a closed door.

‘I’ve told them about Mina,’ Edith added, pushing the ashtray towards him. ‘I should have done it years ago. Secrets do nothing but fester.’

‘
I’ve wondered if Professor Williams prevailed upon you to keep quiet,’ McKenna asked.

‘
Not so I noticed,’ Edith said, ‘but perhaps he did. We’re both responsible for her, and we’ve both failed her, because we started whatever it was that finished with Ned’s death.’ She gazed somewhere over his shoulder, into the night. ‘I think we broke her heart, and she couldn’t put it back together again. Or perhaps it was so wounded and scarred it just stopped working.’

‘
Or perhaps she never had one in the first place,’ Phoebe added waspishly.

‘
Don’t!’ Annie snapped at her. ‘You’re too young to know.’

‘
Know what?’

‘
How it makes sense of all the things I never understood.’

‘
Like what?’ Phoebe enquired.

‘
Like Mama being afraid and sad, when I couldn’t see why, and why Mina was always unhappy even though she seemed to be Mama’s favourite.’ She paused, searching for words. ‘I was jealous of her, and nasty to her, because she was my sister, but so different.’

‘
If you’d seen her as my child, too, your life might have been easier,’ Edith said.

Once again, McKenna thought, he was caught in cross-currents, as their dynamics adapted to crisis and aftermath, closing the wound in the family body opened by the bereavement of Mina, and in their distress, he wanted less to leave them than before.

‘And,’ Phoebe said, ‘I suppose that’s why Mama didn’t drop on you like a ton of bricks over Bethan, because most mothers would’ve gone ape. She could’ve put you in some awful place for fallen women, and they’d have punished you every single day for sinning, and never let you out, in case you had some fun, or worse still, more sex.’

‘
I think your mother was too busy punishing herself,’ suggested McKenna.

‘
Probably,’ Phoebe agreed. ‘And you’ll go on doing it even more now, won’t you, Mama?’

‘
I don’t know what I’ll do.’ Edith fumbled with her lighter.

‘
World in freefall again,’ Phoebe sighed.

‘
Well,’ Edith said, her cigarette glowing, ‘I won’t go back on the pills, so you can stop worrying.’

Phoebe clasped her mother
’s free hand, stroking the fine skin on the back of it with her thumb. ‘I know you won’t, Mama.’

Smiling, Edith squeezed Phoebe
’s fingers, holding tight. ‘But there’s such a very thin line between things being tolerable, and even good, and things being absolutely and unimaginably bloody terrible, you see. All it needs is one small step, one little omission or neglect, one tiny,
tiny
shift.’ She looked across at McKenna. ‘And I seem to be going willy-nilly backwards and forwards over that line all the time.’

‘
The winds of circumstance,’ Phoebe said. ‘Uncle Ned talked about them a lot. A breeze one day and not a leaf moving the next.’

‘
And a vicious storm blowing up from nowhere the day after.’ This from Edith.

‘
It makes life exciting,’ Phoebe added, ‘and the storms don’t really come out of the blue. You can always see the clouds on the horizon.’

‘
Only if you care to look,’ Annie said. She turned to McKenna. ‘Solange says she’s failed Mina, too. She told us what Mina did to Uncle Ned, not that we didn’t already know in our hearts.’

‘
Mina did exactly what Jason told her to do,’ stated McKenna. ‘No less, and no more, and perhaps in her mind, only to prevent something worse.’

‘
I didn’t know criminal stupidity was a defence,’ Phoebe commented. ‘It wasn’t when Derek Bentley was topped, was it?’

‘
Oh, for God’s sake!’ Annie exploded. ‘Are you a couple of valves short of an engine, or is there just a swinging brick where your heart should be?’

‘
Too much emotion interferes with creative thinking,’ Phoebe said mildly.

‘
And not enough kills it stone dead,’ Edith countered. ‘Ask your Uncle Iolo if you don’t believe me.’

‘
If that’s the case, he wouldn’t know, would he?’ Phoebe prattled on. ‘Will Minnie go to prison? That’s what’s screwing up Mama at the moment, and not so much because Minnie wouldn’t survive there, but because Mama couldn’t survive it for her.’

‘
Don’t presume too much.’ Tears glinted in Edith’s eyes. ‘You’re not the only one to know Ned’s death for the tragedy it is.’ She looked across at McKenna again, and he wondered where she found her strength. ‘Have you found the rest of his papers yet?’

‘
Jason had them hidden at the Merlin yard.’ He pulled the long envelope from his briefcase. ‘And I found Ned’s will.’

‘
So I was right! I
thought
he’d made one.’ Fingers shaking, Edith reached into the envelope, her daughters clustered at her side and reading with her, and as the last page was turned, Phoebe choked, blundered from the room and crashed upstairs. Alarmed, the cat streaked after her.

‘
Oh, dear,’ Edith said, left hand flattening the folded papers. ‘Oh, dear.’

‘
She’ll wake Bethan.’ Annie sighed, making for the door to quell the thuds and bumps coming from above.

Again, Edith read the last few paragraphs, scrabbling blindly for her cigarette, then put the document in its envelope. Behind the veil of smoke, she asked:
‘What does he mean about Iolo? Why can’t he forgive him?’

From somewhere at the top of the stairs, McKenna heard Annie
’s voice, urging quietness on the cadences of Phoebe’s distress.

‘
The recovered mediaeval manuscripts on which Professor Williams built his career are no such thing,’ McKenna told her. ‘He faked them when he was a student.’

‘
I see.’ She nodded, as if to herself. ‘Why aren’t I surprised?’

‘
He claims Ned was involved in the chicanery, and that both of them wrote the poetry under the influence of Ned’s sleeping tablets, but I don’t believe him.’

‘
Nor do I,’ decided Edith. ‘Isn’t it amazing how one little thing makes everything else fall into place? All this secrecy! And for so long!’ Dousing the cigarette, she added: ‘And for what? I know I said otherwise when you asked, but I always felt there was an atmosphere between Ned and Iolo, even though I couldn’t think of a logical reason for it. If my common sense hadn’t been so befuddled by drugs, I might have challenged them outright, and perhaps none of this would have happened.’

Rising, he put the will away, leaving her with the copy.
‘I’ll let you have the original for probate as soon as possible.’

She smiled wryly.
‘Are you sure you’ll know which is which?’ She too stood up, holding the edge of the table for support, and, like him, listened to the voices from upstairs. ‘Phoebe hasn’t even
begun
to feel the loss of Ned yet, you know. She’s still in that wonderful limbo which opens up after a terrible shock, then closes around you, so you just function, but scarcely feel. I only pray she’ll be able to grow through the sorrow instead of letting it wither her humanity.’

‘
And you?’

‘
Oh, I’m in limbo, too.’ Her voice was tinged with irony. ‘And perhaps if I pray very,
very
hard, God will let us both stay there, but I doubt it. Sooner or later, the feelings batter their way through, and when that happens, Phoebe will think she’s been hit by a ten ton truck.’ Still leaning on the table, she added: ‘And then I’ll have another damaged child, won’t I?’

‘
Life marks all of us in one way or another. Phoebe has the means to make something good from the bad.’

‘
Like Ned.’

‘
Like Ned.’ He nodded. ‘You don’t have a copy of his Eisteddfod essay, do you?’

‘
Phoebe has one.’ She made for the stairs, McKenna behind her, and called softly to her daughters, who sat in a huddle beneath the landing window, its colours now leeched by the moon. ‘Mr McKenna wants to borrow Uncle Ned’s essay, dear. Will you get it for him?’

‘
Why?’ Phoebe whispered, rubbing her eyes.

‘
To read again,’ McKenna said. ‘I’ll make a copy and let you have it back tomorrow.’

As Phoebe scrambled to her feet and padded away around the dog-leg, Annie dragged herself upright by the banister rail, came downstairs, and stood on the bottom step hugging the ornately decorated newel post, her face almost as aged as her mother
’s, her eyes almost as dark. ‘You haven’t told us what’s happening with Mina. Have you arrested her?’

‘
I questioned her, but I didn’t tell her she was responsible for Ned’s death.’ He paused. ‘We can’t proceed further without a proper psychiatric evaluation, and not just because of the wrist-slashing.’

‘
But she can’t come home, can she?’ Annie persisted.

‘
She’ll stay in hospital until we’re in a position to make a decision, and she’ll be transferred to the psychiatric unit when she’s medically fit.’

Edith took a deep breath, which rattled in her chest.

‘Tell me what
you
think will happen. Please!’ She touched his arm. ‘We won’t say a word, and we won’t hold you to it.’

He found it hard to think straight, to be guided only by professionalism.
‘Jason will be charged with Ned’s murder, and the car thefts. He’ll also be charged with assaulting Mina.’ He paused again. ‘Her evidence ties him to the murder, but of course, it implicates her, too. If she’s found unfit to plead, for whatever reason, we could have a problem.’

‘
And if she isn’t?’ Annie demanded.

‘
There would still be much to consider in the way of mitigating circumstances, and, given the situation, I don’t think the Crown would press too hard.’