Little Fingers! (19 page)

If you try to
unravel her world, she will fight you like a lynx. If you are about
to succeed, she will kill you. When it is all over, she will
protest her innocence and her ignorance.

As I saw him
in the village, Dr. Berringer is a fit-looking man, with
distinguished features and an underlying tanned sleekness. I
imagine that his female patients used to look forward to consulting
him, and would have thrilled slightly when he asked them to take
their clothes off. In the surgery he was probably a model of
propriety. His male patients would have viewed him as “old Jeff”,
the wise head and homely companion to be trusted and greeted with
affection.

In his
demeanour, he is courteous, considerate and gentle. He has a good
bedside manner. He was an old-fashioned doctor who listened,
speculated, explored and pronounced the solution, with a
subscription to salvation. If you were terminally ill, and there
was no saving you, he would visit you regularly, ask after your
comfort, show concern for the other members of the family and how
they were coping, and suggest that they phone him day or night if
you deteriorated suddenly.

In his
profession, he has made a lot of people very much happier than they
would otherwise have been. He has been an effective doctor, and
cured his patients of niggling complaints. Most people have left
his company feeling better about the world. It is just that, like
many of us, he has one central vice, and that vice happens to be a
rot that destroys young lives forever.

He got to know
most of his fifteen or so young victims because he was their
doctor. For some, he was present at their birth. For most of the
rest, he attended their mothers while they were pregnant with them.
He has examined them as babies, judged them to be healthy, pretty
young girls, helped them through coughs and sniffles, and won their
confidence directly through his behaviour towards them and his
reputation in the village.

Dr. Berringer
mostly likes girls sexually when they are pre-pubescent, when their
smiles are still straight and pure, their skin is fresh, their
bodies athletic, when they are testing out their flirting skills,
and of course when they are physically too weak to defeat him. For
him, he is tasting their innocence, sharing it, and even initiating
them into a greater stage of self-knowledge. Then, in the darker
hours of his self-examination, he grudgingly, shamefully admits to
abusing them. He is mortifiedly contrite. He shakes, he shivers, he
becomes feverish with guilt. However, this contrition never abates
his need for the tasting, and the sharing, and for the triumph of
that initial penetration of a small, tight, rigid body.

Over recent
years, it has been very much harder for him to gain unchaperoned
access to young girls, even for professional purposes, because
society has become much alerted in general to the risks young girls
incur simply by being girls, and by being young. Then, of course,
several mothers have been his victims and, beyond them, his
reputation by now mostly precedes him. He is getting old, he tells
himself. The experiences and adventures of youth must
pass.

Twenty,
thirty, forty years ago, his technique adapted itself to the
circumstances. In some cases it was quite simply, and brutally
rape. He found the girl unprotected, he coaxed her off to a quiet
corner, he removed her clothes as she cumulatively flailed, and
struggled, and screamed and cried. Eventually she would attempt to
fold herself into a protective hibernation, from where he would
resolutely prise her straight, and thrust himself inside her.
Afterwards, he would threaten her that if she ever breathed a word
to anyone about their secret, he would send someone to talk to her.
Wherever she was, if she let slip the tiniest hint or detail, his
friend would learn about it and find her. His friend would watch
her all the time. This would be what she would later remember most
of all, the booming, heathen godlike voice, threatening
recrimination for the minutest betrayal. The rest she would try to
suppress, or had already blanked out. And from then on, an
unidentified, unrecognisable dread would track her throughout her
life, striking every few days in unguarded moments. She must remain
forever on watch.

With others,
it took place in the surgery, when he would be giving them a
routine examination on top of whatever minor ailment he was
correcting. Their mothers would be waiting outside. He would look
down their throats, using a spatula to press their tongues into
place, he would listen to their lungs through a stethoscope, then
he would work his way ever more inappropriately down their bodies
until he was giving them a vaginal examination, without the
impediment of gloves. Children are very astute in recognising the
bounds of acceptability, but he was in a position and place of
authority and, indeed, domination.

In a strict
minority of cases, it was more like a seduction. He would initiate
proceedings by sitting down quietly with them and creating an
intimate atmosphere but, once in that situation for a few minutes,
it would be the girls who would start flirting with him. They would
sit on his knee. They would explore him to see how he would react.
They would surreptitiously expose themselves to him. They would
finger his groin through his trousers, wondering when he would stop
them. He didn't. Eventually he would ease them onto him. At this
point they would start to panic but find that they could not get
away. He was far stronger than they were, and had a determined wiry
grip. These girls would feel guilty for what he had done to them.
After all, they were the ones coming on to him, teasing him,
touching him, wanting to know what would happen next in this
illicit game. They absolutely knew that what they were doing would
be considered wrong by their parents and their teachers, but it was
the fun of playing a daring game with a respected adult.

Then, when he
ended the game by entering them, they believed that it was largely
their machinations that got them there. They took on the
responsibility. They were not yet wise enough to realise that they
were too young to be responsible for that outcome, that they had
been playing innocently against a stacked deck. And many years
later they may still not have realised it. Guilt consumed them.
They had been utterly bad, and all their parents' later lectures
about how boys can behave, what is inherent in boys' natures,
confirmed this. Any man will want to take advantage of them, it is
how the world renews itself. It was for them to resist.

Some put the
incident firmly behind them, suppressing the fall-out, and staying
well clear of Dr. Jeff Berringer. Most kept their daughters at a
watchful distance, and signed up to the practice in the next
village, which in other ways was unfortunate as Dr. Jarvis there is
an appalling, negligent doctor, devoted to prescribing antibiotics
for any and every misfortune, however useless, and indeed damaging,
they will be.

Two girls
become his disciples. He was their first sexual experience, for
good or for evil. He was extremely kind and generous towards them.
He even loved them. He certainly cared for them. They were
daughters to him. They felt rejected if they sensed that he had
favoured other girls. They became needy and, in a way, the tables
turned. They became predators on his time and his affection. Mary
and Samantha vied competitively for his attention, and they became
viciously jealous of each other.

Life plays
tricks.

* *
*

At last,
Inspector John, you arrive, twirling expectantly away from the
front door, avoiding the gaps in the flagstones, I
notice.

"Miss
Blackburn."

"Inspector
Frampton. We have played this scene before, and I ended up
unconscious."

My quip
unnerves you, as I intend. You are immediately agitated. You are
not a patient man. "Come in."

"Thank
you."

"How are you
getting on?"

"Making
progress."

"So why are
you here?"

Your feet get
caught up in a shuffle as you bob your head around to look at me,
saying nothing.

Settled, if
that is the word, in a chair, you start "I am having some
difficulty locating anyone at Mr. Willows' house on the afternoon
of his death, other than you."

I chuckle. "So
things are not progressing then."

"Yes, they
are."

"How can they
be?"

You do not
reply. "Can I call you Julia?" you declare, turning suddenly
intimate. Is this a psychological trick, a professional
question?

"Yes, of
course."

You do not
volunteer your own first name.

"Julia," you
lean forward intently, confidentially, "the whole village thinks it
was you."

"Fine. It
shows what they know."

"No-one can
supply a motive," you add.

"That would be
difficult."

"Why?"

"There isn't
one."

"There is
always a motive, however obscure or twisted."

"Maybe, but
not mine."

"What do you
suggest?"

"I have no
view at all. It is not my job."

"Wouldn't you
rest easier if we found whoever did it?"

"Yes."

"So who did
it, Julia?"

"I haven't the
first idea. I do not know the village. I don't really know who has
grudges against whom. I do not know whom Tom has humiliated and
provoked to violence, except that it must at least have been a
whole stack of people. My guess is that it must have been a man who
killed him. Women cannot usually chop people in half." I shudder
involuntarily.

"Defensive or
offensive?"

"Me?"

"No, the
killing. Was Tom Willows killed to protect someone, or out of anger
or hatred, or for material gain?"

"I still do
not know."

"Whom could he
have had an angle on?"

"Everyone
would say Dr. Berringer. He appears to be single-handedly
responsible for all the true evil in the village, and he has been
getting away with it rather successfully, for want of evidence, I
assume."

"Yes, they
would, but an axe does not strike me as being a doctor's weapon. A
doctor would use something more precise - a knife or a
gun."

"It might
depend on what was around at the time. Maybe it wasn't
planned."

Your eyes
widen. "No, maybe not."

"And why use a
weapon that points directly at you? A doctor can use an axe, a
lumberjack can use a syringe."

"True."

"What would
you use?" I ask.

"It has never
occurred to me."

"What would
you use to kill yourself?"

"Pills. I
would probably take lots of pills. An overdose."

"So suicide
has occurred to you?"

"We all like
some control over our lives, don't we? And you?"

"Oh, I would
commit suicide with a long-shafted axe." I laugh.

"Ah. I am
disappointed, Julia. I thought we were being honest, making a
connection."

"Where will a
connection take us?"

"Maybe towards
friendship."

"Can there
truly be friendship between a man and a woman?" I ask teasingly.
"Is there a Mrs. Frampton?"

"Only my
mother. Ninety this year."

"Are you fond
of her?"

"Very."

"Have you ever
found anyone else to be fond of?"

"In my time. I
am not just a policeman. And you?"

"Would you
like to stay for lunch?"

"Why not?" You
search my face to explore whether there is more on offer, then my
body.

Over lunch I
tell you a complete cock and bull story about my early life. I
enjoy making it up, lying to a professional. You appear to believe
me, or perhaps that is not what your mind is focused on. Several
times I suspect you want to hug me. I let you get enticingly close,
and will you to become excited, which you duly do if your squirming
is a giveaway sign. Our power over men!

* *
*

The party is
over, and Mary and I are feeling increasingly nervous and isolated.
What will the villagers come back with next? Mary and I spend the
whole day plotting. There is no lying on the beach, no writing, no
relaxing. We are consumed by preparations for our
self-defence.

I decide to
phone the police and tell them what happened last night, minus the
boiling oil. L'Inspecteur Herbert is not around. The policeman I
manage to talk to cannot help us. We must wait for l'Inpecteur
Herbert to return. He will be back in town this evening.

Why did we
ever get involved with Alice? We ask ourselves this question time
and time again. We were having a good time. I was overly wrapped up
in my writing, but we were about to have lots of fun together,
weren't we? Then Alice turned up, introducing jealousy and tension,
provoking the misery for me of their elopement, the stress of
Mary's return, now the fear of reprisals for no greater a crime
than liberating Alice to be herself, an uncommunicative self as it
turns out. She definitely wasn't worth it. Couldn't she just phone
her family once to get us off the hook? The villagers may still
ostracise us, but we can always shop elsewhere, and at least they
will no longer be trying to harm us.