Rotten Apples (29 page)

It was Willow's turn to laugh. ‘Okay, fair's fair. But you do it to me, too. I just wanted to know what the buzz is about George Profett, you know, the Minister for Rights and Charters.'

‘What d'you mean by “buzz”?'

‘Come on, Jane. You know perfectly well. I know you're not on gossip any more, but journalists always know about cabinet ministers'private lives. What have you heard about him? Does he have a mistress? Is he gay? Does he gamble? What?'

‘Sorry. I can't help you.'

Willow was about to use her possible co-operation with the paper's romantic feature as a persuader when Jane added casually, ‘In fact we've graded him SCDD for the moment at least.'

‘That's an acronym I've never come across.' Willow was interested. ‘What does it mean?'

‘Squeaky clean; deadly dull,' Jane said, laughing again. ‘It was the most dreary outcome imaginable. Some of us were so unable to believe that of any politician that we wanted to do some really deep digging, but the editor wouldn't authorise it We couldn't decide whether he was being hardheaded or sentimental, or,' Jane laughed, ‘best of all, whether he himself has something to hide in connection with Profert,'

‘You journalists are a bunch of paranoid conspiracy theorists, aren't you?'

‘We have to be. Reluctantly, though, in this case we had no option but to drop the whole thing for the time being. I've decided since that the killer, as far the editor was concerned, was probably the fact that even Profett's most disaffected colleagues couldn't think of anything bitchy to say about him, and so he really may be unassailable.'

‘Oh, is that where you usually get dirt from? I'd never—'

‘No, no, of course not,' said Jane in a tone that sounded as if she really meant where on earth did you think we got it?

‘Anyone else I can help you with before I get going on cooking my Sunday lunch?'

‘Actually, since you offer, I'm also trying to find out a bit of background on Andrea Salderton.'

‘Who's she?'

‘Haven't you heard of her?' Willow let herself sound surprised.

There was silence. Jane must have been running all the people she had ever written about through her computer-like memory.

‘Can't say I have. Give me a clue.'

Willow knew that she had painted herself into a corner. She could hardly tell the truth, that she knew nothing whatever about the woman except for the money she received every month from the reputedly SCDD minister, and yet if Willow gave Jane nothing, she would probably make the connection herself and might cause trouble.

‘Just a hot new writer from the States,' Willow said eventually. ‘Someone was talking about her the other day in such glowing terms that I thought I ought to have heard of her and didn't want to expose my ignorance. I'm glad it wasn't just me who didn't recognise her name.'

‘She can't be that hot or we'd have had something here, and it would have come to me. The Lit. Ed. knows I like to keep abreast of publishing tittle-tattle. Well, I'd better get the beef in the oven or the delectable new man in my life will discover what an undomesticated slut I am and bugger off home to perfect mummy.'

‘If he's like that, he's not your type.'

‘He's shown no signs of it yet,' said the journalist, sounding much less tough than usual, ‘but they nearly always turn out to be that sort in the end, however promising the packaging.'

‘Not a good picker, eh?'

‘Rotten so far. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed this time.' Jane laughed again, and Willow wished her luck.

She rang off and went back to Tom's bedside and leaned over him, trying to see any signs of awakening. Failing again, she sat back in her chair, switched her computer back on and tried dismally to do some more work. Remembering the way John Blackled had talked of Rob Fydgett as fitting the likely profile of a criminal, Willow got as far as typing a few ideas about the characteristics she thought might be likely of an arsonist and possibly deliberate murderer.

Ten minutes later the words she had typed disappeared in front of her eyes and bright orange fish glided peacefully across the black screen. She tapped a key and her text reappeared. Then, like the fish swimming across the screen, a sluggish thought appeared in her mind and she cursed herself for having wasted so much time on ever less likely suspects.

If the arsonist had not been a member of Kate's staff, and Willow had reluctantly come to the conclusion that not even the mischief-making Jason was a reasonable suspect, he or she must have broken into the tax office to damage the wiring and set the timer—or the photosensitive tripswitch—that had triggered the fire. No taxpayer was allowed further into the building than the public parts on the ground floor.

The fire could have been started simply by pouring petrol through a broken window, but it had not been. It had been started on an upper floor of the building, in a specific office, and it had been started electrically. Whatever that vague description implied, it must have involved personal contact with the wires. Therefore, the person who did it must have got into the building without setting off any burglar alarms or leaving a trace of his entry that would have made the security people call the police.

Willow could not imagine why she had fiddled about trying to uncover evidence of corruption in the office, and searched Len Scoffer's home and worried about Kate and Cara and Mrs Scoffer and the minister, when there was such an obvious line of enquiry. She looked at Tom's unconscious face and blew him a kiss as she remembered, all too late, one of his precepts: ‘Never ignore the obvious. In most criminal investigations, the “obvious” means motive and suspect are the right ones. Check those out first and then let your imagination fly free. Otherwise you'll only waste time.'

‘As I have been doing,' she said to her unconscious husband. ‘Time and terror. In this case the most obvious suspect is someone with experience of breaking and entering. All I need to know is which of the people who had a reason to hate—or fear—Len has a criminal record for burglary, and Bob's your uncle.'

Since it was Sunday, there seemed little hope of getting hold of Brian Gaskarth at his office, but even so she went back to the telephone outside the ward so that she could at least leave a message on his answering machine.

To her delighted surprise, he answered the telephone himself and made no difficulty about checking her list of names against the police computer. He told her that he would try his contacts there and then, but that if none of them was on duty he might not be able to get back to her until Monday.

That night Willow was so tired when she went to bed that she fell asleep within a few minutes of turning off her bedside lamp. One moment she was thinking about Tom, and the next she was unconscious, only to wake, sweating and terrified, from a nightmare in which she was trying to reach him through a burning, noisy, stinking barrier of flame.

Although she could not get through it, she could see everything that was happening to him on the other side of the fire, and it was terrible to watch. Eventually, sobbing in her sleep, she came near enough to waking for her brain to tell her that she could pull herself right out of the dream if she would only make the effort. She opened her eyes.

It took several minutes before she could free herself of the effects of the dream and even then the smell of the imaginary fire seemed to stay in her nostrils. She pushed herself up the bed, propping her back against the headboard and switched on the light so that she could pull a paper handkerchief from the box on her table. When she had wiped the sweat off her face and poured herself a glass of cold lemonade, she began to feel slightly better. Having drunk it, she turned off the light and let herself slide down the bed again until she was lying flat.

She wondered what was happening in Tom's brain and whether he might have been suffering foul and terrifying nightmares since the shooting. That was something she had never thought of until then, and she longed to be able to save him from being trapped in terror. Her hand reached towards the telephone before she even realised that she wanted to ask the nurses caring for him whether he was dreaming. Feeling foolish, she put her hand back under the sheet and tried to go back to sleep.

It was then, as she was trying to make herself relax, that she heard the quiet footsteps in the passage outside her bedroom door. At first she laughed at her fear, assuming that the footsteps were Serena's as she went to the bathroom, creeping as quietly as possible in order to let the others sleep. But there was no sound of the bathroom door opening or any running water.

Straining to hear what was happening, Willow thought that she could hear someone breathing fast and nervously just outside her bedroom door. All her own and Stephen Harness's doubts about Rob rushed back into her mind. She remembered his unexpected dexterity, his anger and unhappiness, the questions she had asked him, and the fire.

The smell of it seemed all around her again and she silently slammed her hand across her mouth to stop herself making a noise. She thought that she heard the handle of her door begin to creak. Peering through the thick darkness, she saw a faint greyness around the door and knew that someone had opened it. She bit into her bandaged fingers and felt saliva soaking through the gauze. Her mind seemed suddenly clear and her imagination was working furiously.

She felt as though a whole troop of facts was being reviewed in front of her. Rob had been to his mother's house on the day she died. He climbed like a cat. He hated his mother's lovers. No one had seen the suicide letter except for him. He had shown Willow a letter, but it could easily have been a forgery for all she knew. The handwriting was like that on the letters she had seen in the tax file, but Rob might well have been able to copy it.

Staring at the darkness ahead of her, with her hand still jammed against her mouth, Willow thought of the tall, gangly, furiously unhappy boy discovering that his mother was in the house when he had got in through the back door. Had he gone into her room, perhaps, and overcome with jealousy or resentment or some other emotion held a pillow over her face until she suffocated? Had he subsequently tried to exorcise his guilt by burning down the building from which most of her torment had come? And had Willow been asking too many questions and getting too close to the truth of what had actually happened?

The grey line around her door widened and she saw Rob silhouetted in the gap, apparently listening. She flexed her free hand, trying to decide whether it would be strong enough to fend him off. He took a step forward into the darkness and she could no longer see him.

There had been a post-mortem on his mother's body, but it had been a formality, Serena had told her, once they found a high concentration of tricyclic anti-depressants and whisky in her blood. Perhaps they had not bothered to look for fluff or feathers in her larynx.

‘Willow?' The question was so quiet that she doubted that she had really heard it She lay silent and still, and realised that she had been holding her breath. Letting it out as quietly as possible against her hand, she knew that she was sweating all over and was terrified that he knew she was awake. A surreptitious pillow over her face was something she could deal with; a more violent attack—perhaps from further off—would be harder. Vile though it was to wait, she knew that she had to make him come close before she would be able to fight back.

He took another step towards her. She could hear his breathing, ragged now and very quick. It sounded frightened, or excited.

Why did I let them come into my house? she asked herself in silence. I must have been mad. Tom's getting better now. I want to survive. Why did I take such a stupid, hideous risk? Oh, God! I want to survive. What should I do? If I make the first move that might spark off something I can't control. I must wait. I must

Rob came steadily closer to the bed. He was moving far more neatly than he ever did during the daylight. She could not see him in the darkness, just the faint grey patch where the less well-curtained passage window let in a little light. But she could hear his breathing and she could smell him. He was sweating, but it was not only the acrid smell of young male sweat that hung about him. There seemed to be smoke as well.

Perhaps that's a hangover from the dream, she told herself, trying to keep up her collapsing courage.

The bed creaked and the mattress was pressed down as he lowered himself on to the foot of the bed. She nearly screamed.

‘Willow?' The almost silent whisper came again.

She did not move, determined not to give him any excuse to attack her.

Tom, she thought, I'm sorry. I don't want to die. I won't. I must be strong enough to fight. He may weigh nearly the same as I do, but I've got the advantage of surprise. What if he's got a knife or a hammer? What the hell is he going to do?

There was another movement at the end of the bed as he stood up. Willow longed to be able to see. She heard his footsteps again and braced herself. Astonishingly he seemed to be moving away from the bed.

His silhouette appeared against the grey patch by the door and then disappeared. The door closed. She took her hand away from her teeth, noticing that it hurt, and waited, listening.

Eventually there was another click, further down the passage, and she thought that he must be back in his own bedroom. Reaching for the light, she knocked over her Thermos flask. And then she heard footsteps again. They came back along the passage towards her room, and then sounded on the stairs. She listened to him reaching the ground floor. Then there was a pause when she could not hear anything at all.

It felt like at least five minutes before she heard footsteps in the hall and then on the pavement outside her bedroom window. When they had dwindled to silence, she turned on her bedside light at once and saw that the table and all her books were covered with lemonade from the Thermos. Flinging a batch of tissues into the spreading pool of yellow liquid, she looked down her bed and all round it in case Rob had left anything there.