Simeon's Bride (28 page)

Jenny, apparently oblivious to her aunt’s drawn and anxious face, the undertones of tension in the small front room of the bungalow, looked relaxed, even happy. Unless, McKenna thought, she was merely doing what Serena said children do, and hiding her feelings.

‘Is my father all right?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’ McKenna tried to summon a smile. ‘Yes, he’s quite well.’

‘That’s good.’ She tucked her feet underneath her bottom.

McKenna willed her not to ask about her mother; at least, not for the time being. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m all right. I should be at school, really, but Aunt Serena arranged for me to stay off.’

Smiling back at the child, McKenna had coldness in the pit of his stomach, knowing he might destroy all she held dear, all that bound her world together. That she might want him to sever those bonds did not occur to him, for he saw himself as a corrosive personality, as destructive as her own mother, bitterness from his soul poisoning whatever it touched. Cloudy daylight filtered through the curtain nets at Serena’s bay window, but the light McKenna saw upon himself was harsh and bright, divested of the holy love apportioned alike to saint and sinner. Sin must be cast out, but he thought one must first recognize the disguises sin wrapped about itself before it might be rejected, and wondered why his church only told of that sinful by any standard, but kept its peace about the other dark things, the gall of loneliness, the tragedy of lost hope, which spread tentacles and squirted acids and wreaked destruction more terrible and profound than any knife or bullet or noose.

Jenny stared, waiting for him to speak. Serena rose suddenly, saying, ‘I’ll make another drink,’ before picking up the tray and hurrying from the room.

‘Have you seen my mother?’ Jenny queried.

‘Not since the other day.’

‘I wondered if she’d gone away, only I can’t think where she’d go.’

‘Why should you think that?’

‘She wasn’t there, was she?’

‘Wasn’t where?’

‘At home, of course.’ Her voice was a little sharp, as if he were stupid. ‘I went there yesterday with Aunty Serena because I wanted to get more clothes and my diary and things. There was nobody in.’

McKenna watched her. ‘Did you go into the house?’

‘Of course we did. Daddy gave me a key ages ago.’

‘Perhaps your mother was shopping at Safeways. They open on Sundays.’

‘The house was very cold, so I don’t think the heating had been on at all.’ She uncurled her legs, stretching down to massage the cramped muscles. ‘Anyway, it didn’t matter because I had a key.’

‘What time was this, Jenny?’

She frowned. ‘I’m not sure. Before we saw Daddy. We went there straight from the station.’

Serena returned with a tray of drinks and sandwiches and cake. ‘What time did we go home yesterday?’ Jenny asked her. ‘I was telling Mr McKenna how Mummy was out.’

‘I don’t know, dear.’ Serena put the tray down. ‘One o’clock? Half past? Some time around then.’ Still leaning over the coffee table, she looked at McKenna. ‘You don’t want to talk about Gwen’s to-ings and fro-ings, do you?’ she said.

‘No.’ He turned to Jenny. Anxiety began to stretch over her features, distorting their youth and serenity. She turned her gaze to Serena, and saw there the same gravity. ‘What is it?’ she whimpered. ‘What’s happened? Has something happened to Mummy?’

‘No,’ McKenna repeated. ‘Nor to your father.’

‘Why are you both looking at me like that?’

Serena put her hand on McKenna’s arm. He was aware of its strength and its softness. ‘Leave this to me,’ she said. Jenny kept her eyes on McKenna’s face, knowing that although Serena might be the messenger, his was the message.

‘Mr McKenna’s been told something, Jenny, and he has to ask you about it.’

‘Why?’

Why did children always ask ‘why’, McKenna wondered.

‘Because you’re the only person who can tell him if it’s true or not,’ Serena said.

‘Oh.’ Jenny leaned back. ‘I see,’ she said. Then, looking at McKenna still, she corrected herself. ‘No, I don’t see.’

McKenna lit a cigarette, then offered one to Serena. She shook her head. ‘Jenny—’ he began. ‘Jenny, I have been told you may have been a victim of abuse.’

‘What d’you mean?’ The frown returned, drawing two little lines
between her eyebrows. ‘What sort of abuse? Somebody cursing me?’

‘No.’ McKenna felt himself floundering, while at the back of his mind, a little voice nagged, asking if a girl of this age could be so naive, or was it not more likely she played for time? ‘I was told you may have been subject to sexual abuse.’

She stared at him blankly. Serena intervened. ‘To put it bluntly, dear, even though I don’t particularly want to, Mr McKenna was told somebody might’ve interfered with you. Touched your private parts. Even tried to have sex with you.’ She reached for a cigarette from McKenna’s open packet. He noticed the long fingers trembling and fumbling. ‘It grieves us both to have to ask you, Jenny, but there’s no choice.’

Jenny began to shudder: her shoulders, her hands, her whole body shaking and rattling its teeth and bones. She wrapped her arms around herself. ‘No!’ Her voice, a whisper, sussurated around the room, echoing from the sculpted ceiling, down the walls, trembling in the air. ‘
NO
!’ she screamed. ‘It’s not true!’

‘Stop it!’ Serena raised her voice. ‘Stop it this minute!’

‘It’s not
true
!’ Tears flowed down Jenny’s cheeks, as if a river of grief had finally burst its banks. ‘It’s a wicked, wicked
lie
!’

McKenna let the cold in his heart have its way with his feelings, shrivelling and withering the tatters of humanity left there. ‘Have you been abused in any way? In the way your aunt suggested, or in any other way? Beaten? Kept hungry or cold? Anything?’

‘No!’ The girl looked at him as if he were the most odious creature ever to draw breath. ‘No! No!
No
!’

‘Behave yourself, Jenny!’ Serena warned. ‘Mr McKenna’s got a job to do, and it’s no nicer for him than it is for you. Children are abused. They get raped and beaten and starved, and even killed, and the police have to deal with it. I expect you to help, not hinder.’

‘I know, ‘Jenny said. ‘I know what happens to kids. You read about it all the time … we had a girl in school who’d been put in a children’s home because her father raped her.’

‘Quite.’ Serena lit the cigarette she had been holding. ‘So you know perfectly well what we’re talking about, and there’s no need for all this performance. Or for being coy.’ She turned to McKenna. ‘There’s no point treating Jenny like a wilting flower. You can only protect people from so much. I’ve always thought Chris was over-protected. Everybody was too nice to him, and look where it’s got us all.’

‘If you know what I’m talking about, Jenny,’ McKenna asked, ‘why react so violently? Why pretend you didn’t know?’

The girl looked from him to her aunt, like a cornered animal. McKenna wondered how long it would be before Serena ate her own last words, and told him to stop the torture. Instead, she said, ‘You may
as well tell us, dear. I don’t really think you’ll be telling Mr McKenna anything he doesn’t already know. It has to come from you, though. It’s no good coming from anybody else.’

Jenny pulled a wad of snow-white tissues from her sleeve, and wiped her face dry, slowly and carefully. ‘Who told you?’ she asked McKenna. ‘Was it my mother?’

‘No.’

‘Then who told you?’

‘Why does it matter who?’ Serena asked. ‘What matters is whether there’s any truth in it.’

‘I’ve a right to know!’ The girl’s face pinked. ‘I’ve a right to know who’s saying things like that about me. Have you any idea what people say about girls who get raped? They call them tarts and whores and slags, and I’m not!’

‘Nobody’s calling you anything?’ Serena’s voice was firm, even sharp. ‘Will you stop prevaricating, and answer Mr McKenna.’

McKenna intervened. ‘Your father told me yesterday. He said your mother made allegations about him to Mrs Cheney.’

‘That’s all right, then.’ Relief smoothed her face, took the harsh edge from her voice.

‘All right? How can it be all right? Don’t be ridiculous, child!’ Serena was astounded.

‘Mummy told Romy Cheney all sorts of silly lies about Daddy and Mr Prosser.’ She paused, gathering her thoughts. ‘I didn’t understand, but I knew Mummy was saying horrible things about Daddy. ‘Except…’

‘Except what?’ McKenna prompted.

She drew a deep breath. ‘These were sort of more horrible, if you see what I mean. And then …’ Her voice faded away again. McKenna waited, watching Serena, who stared fixedly at the girl. Jenny drew another breath, and McKenna heard it catch in her throat like a sob. ‘Mummy told these lies, then Mrs Cheney got me on my own at the cottage. That’s why I went there. Mummy went upstairs, and Mrs Cheney started pumping me about Daddy and Mr Prosser, and I kept telling her ‘No’ and saying I didn’t understand.’ Silence fell, punctuated by tense and laboured breathing. ‘Mrs Cheney said if I didn’t understand she had to make me. She said Daddy and Mr Prosser could go to prison for ever, and if I didn’t tell her the truth, somebody would come and take me away and lock me up in a children’s home until I did talk. She—’ Jenny broke off, looking up at McKenna, with defiance glittering in her eyes. ‘Mrs Cheney showed me exactly what she was talking about, Mr McKenna. She touched me, asked me if Daddy or Mr Prosser ever did the same. She explained about sex, very clearly. She even showed me a magazine with photographs in it so there couldn’t be any mistake. And all the time, I could hear Mummy wandering about
upstairs, walking from room to room and opening and shutting drawers and cupboards. Mrs Cheney told me abusing children was a dreadful thing, and how no man would ever fall in love with me if he couldn’t be sure I hadn’t been raped by Daddy or Mr Prosser. And I hated her because she made me feel so dirty. She had no right to do that, and I’m glad she’s dead because she can’t ever do it to anybody else. And my mother let her. My mother let Romy Cheney do that to me, and I’ll never, ever, forgive her for it.’

 ‘Jenny told her father what Romy Cheney and Gwen Stott had cooked up between them the weekend it happened. Stott had the best motive of all for killing the woman,’ McKenna said. ‘In fact, I’d say he’s the only person who did have one.’

‘That we know about, sir,’ Dewi said. ‘My money’s on that wife of his, though I can’t understand why nobody’s bumped her off. She’s poison.’

‘At least we’ve got grounds for questioning her. You never know what she might let slip. That leaves us with the problem of what to do with her husband. I think we’ll keep him where he is for the time being. He’s less likely to come to harm that way.’

‘We’ve still only got people saying things about each other. And people tell lies.’

‘Circumstantial evidence. But it’s building up nicely, and I think we
might have to rely on that in the end. Nobody’s going to confess, and whoever’s been covering up their tracks so far has made a bloody good job of it. When is Eifion Roberts going to know about Jamie?’

‘Later today, he said.’

‘And where’s Inspector Tuttle?’

‘I don’t know, sir. I don’t think he’s in the building.’

‘I want Gwen Stott in for questioning first thing in the morning. Under caution, with a policewoman and solicitor present.’

‘What do we ask her?’

‘Specifically, about the tale she told Romy Cheney about her husband and Trefor Prosser, about letting that woman molest Jenny, and about where she was yesterday afternoon. Otherwise, I’m sure you’ll find your way to asking her about a few other things, won’t you?’

The smell of the hospital made McKenna feel ill, his memory responding to this most powerful of the senses. Dr Rankilor’s office, where he waited for the psychiatrist and Trefor Prosser, was scented with aftershave, and the throat-drying odour of new carpet.

Prosser trailed behind his guardian like a bit of flotsam in the wake of a liner, looking ill, diminished, the once shiny, well-filled skin wrinkling and loose about his bones. Head still bandaged, he snuffled and sniffed, eyes rheumy and dulled.

‘How are you, Mr Prosser?’ McKenna asked. ‘It’s very good of you to see me.’

Prosser subsided into a chair, looking carefully to make sure it was in the right place, as if his bones were stiff and his body unreliable. McKenna realized he was probably heavily sedated. ‘I knew you’d come,’ Prosser whispered. ‘I knew you’d get to me sooner or later.’ He spoke as if Nemesis came clothed in McKenna’s garb. ‘I can’t keep running away. I’m too tired.’

‘Remember my warning,’ Dr Rankilor said, as he left the room. ‘My patient is not to be upset.’

Prosser smiled bleakly. ‘They’re convinced I tried to kill myself. I keep saying it was an accident, but nobody believes me.’ He sighed. ‘I suppose it suits their purpose, doesn’t it? Makes sure they stay in business…’

McKenna sat down. ‘Was it an accident?’

‘It was, and all my own fault … my own stupid fault. I don’t have the guts to do away with myself…. I don’t have the guts for a lot of things … no doubt why there’s been so much trouble. I’ve had a lot of time to think in here – there’s damn all else to do with your time….’ He fell silent. McKenna waited for the rambling thoughts to be given their voice.

Prosser smiled. ‘You’ll really think I’m mad if I say I’m glad you’ve come, won’t you?’

‘Why should you be glad?’

‘Because you can set me free … that’s how I see it now. You’ve given me an escape route.’

‘Free from what?’

The response was oblique. ‘When psychiatrists decide you’re suicidal, you have to think about it. So I did. As I said, there’s been plenty of time.’ His voice was growing stronger, more sure of itself. ‘And God knows, the more I thought, the more I was surprised I hadn’t tried, if you understand me.’

McKenna wanted to walk from the room, so that Trefor Prosser, reaching out, could not touch him where he hurt.

‘You see,’ Prosser continued, ‘I’m one of those people who feel, deep down, if things are too awful, God or somebody will come along sooner or later and make a bit of breathing space. So you can build up your strength again for the next onslaught.’

‘What onslaught?’

‘Life, Mr McKenna. It’s a battle for some of us, isn’t it? Always got something up its sleeve to clout you with when you least expect it, something to fight if you want to survive … I’m a timid little soul afraid of the world, afraid of offering any challenges to life, trying to keep my head down below the parapets, as it were … not give people the chance to take potshots at me. That’s why I love my job. I can hide in my little office behind the castle walls, pushing pieces of paper here and there, safe and cosy, and get into my car and drive home, and lock my front door against the huge dangerous outside.’

‘And who invaded your safe little world? Who laid you to siege?’ McKenna leaned forward, the antiseptic smell of Prosser’s clothes sharp in his nostrils. ‘Was it Christopher Stott?’

‘Christopher Stott? Oh, no, Mr McKenna. Chris has been crouching down behind the parapet with me for a good long time. I suppose,’ he said, almost laughing, ‘you could even call us brothers-in-arms, except we had no ammunition. It wasn’t Chris. Surely you know that?’

‘I’m not sure I know anything.’

‘Perhaps you don’t. Perhaps you’re just as much blundering around in the dark as me, not knowing which way to turn to get out … the door slammed in your face every time you see a chink of light….’

‘We’re mixing metaphors an awful lot.’ McKenna watched the other man, wondering if it were merely fancy, or if Prosser were in reality growing before his eyes, filling up his skin and retrieving his self from wherever it went to hide in terror and in shame.

‘Aren’t we indeed. Are you fully recovered? I heard they brought you in here.’

‘Yes, I am better. Thank you for asking. Do you know when you’ll be discharged?’

‘When I can convince them I’m no risk to myself, I suppose.’ The little man rose to stand with his back to McKenna, looking from the window on to a paved quadrangle where an elderly man bent over a
flower bed, scrabbling in the soil, looking for something he was unable to find, and crying to himself in his distress. ‘Before I become like that poor old soul out there, I hope.’ Prosser turned. ‘I also heard you had Chris in custody. Have you charged him with anything?’

‘No.’

‘I won’t ask you if you will, because I don’t think you know. Anymore than you know if you’ll charge me with anything except driving under the influence of drugs and not wearing a seat belt.’

‘You won’t be charged in connection with the accident.’

‘No? Well, that’s very civil of you, I must say.’ He sat down. ‘One load off my mind, at least.’ He stared at McKenna, forcefully. ‘If you want my opinion, for what it’s worth, I think you should keep Chris locked up until such time as you’ve put his dear wife away where she can’t do any more harm. God knows, she’s already done more than the rest of the monstrous regiment put together!’

‘I’ve spoken to Jenny at some length. She’s staying with her aunt.’

‘Have you?’ Prosser smiled brilliantly. ‘Then you’ve already opened the door wide for my escape, haven’t you? And for Jenny and Chris.’ The smile disappeared, as the sun behind a swift-blowing cloud. He spoke almost in a whisper. ‘We can all get out now … after all this time….’

‘Tell me, Mr Prosser. Just tell me.’

‘There’s little to tell that’s of any use to you. Only a small tragedy … two weak men enfeebled by their own weakness, as you might say. But the child … now, there’s the big tragedy, and I don’t know what God or man can do to put it right.’ His breath rasped a little in a lengthening silence. ‘Gwen Stott blackmailed me, blackmailed Chris, and crucified her own child,’ he said eventually. ‘And we let her, make no mistake about that. We let her because we’re as weak and as fearful as she is amoral and wicked. If you ever want to know about wickedness and evil, Mr McKenna, ask a woman. Women have the imagination for it. More importantly, they have the stomach.’

‘What did you do for her?’

‘I took the mail for that woman at Gallows Cottage and gave it to Gwen.’

‘And what did her husband do?’

‘Chris did nothing, Mr McKenna. He did nothing and said nothing. That was his sin.’

‘Why didn’t you come to us and say you were being blackmailed? Why didn’t her husband take the child away?’

‘Because Gwen would have branded us, not only as homosexuals, but as child abusers. And then what would happen?’ Prosser asked. ‘You know as well as I do, don’t you? We would have been arrested, and Jenny would’ve been put into a children’s home and left to rot … or worse: she
might’ve been left alone with Gwen, utterly and completely at her mercy.’ He stared, challenging McKenna. ‘What would you have done, knowing the consequences for Jenny? I’m not making excuses for myself, because there aren’t any, and I must live with that. But Chris and I thought if we let Gwen have her way about the post and the furniture and whatever, it was simply the least of a lot of evils.’

‘Was Jamie blackmailing you as well?’

‘Jamie Thief? Of course he wasn’t. Why should you think he was?’

‘The car?’

‘All Chris ever did over the bloody car is cover up for Gwen. She let Jamie use it…. I wonder why? Why don’t you ask him? He might tell you. Whether he’ll tell you the truth is another kettle of fish, isn’t it? Jamie never tells the truth when a lie will do. Has it occurred to you, Mr McKenna, that he might’ve been blackmailing Gwen?’

About to tell Prosser of Jamie’s death, McKenna changed his mind, suddenly exhausted, bankrupt of sleep, of any will to talk or think or feel, as if the energy returning to Trefor Prosser had been stolen from his own body. ‘What about Romy Cheney?’

Prosser’s face hardened. ‘What about her?’

‘Do you know anything about her death?’ McKenna’s voice betrayed his weariness.

‘Only,’ Prosser said, his eyes cold, ‘that if somebody hadn’t got to the evil bitch first, I would’ve killed her sooner or later, because if Gwen had never met her, none of this would have happened.’

‘How do you know?’

‘In my heart!’ Prosser pushed his fist into his chest. ‘That creature was a catalyst. She breathed life into Gwen’s fantasies, gave her the strength to bring them to life. Gwen’s as weak and inadequate as the rest of us, and until she met that woman, she lived her life second-hand, draining people of their experiences, then regurgitating what she’d taken in…. Even then, she’d get it wrong one way or another. Whatever she said or did would be soured by her own bile, the poison in her soul.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘D’you know what I call Gwen Stott, Mr McKenna? The Queen of Night, after the character in Mozart’s
Magic
Flute
. A serpent lives upon her tongue as well.’

‘How much sleep did you get last night?’ Eifion Roberts asked.

‘Couple of hours, I suppose,’ McKenna said.

‘It shows. You’re a bloody fool.’

‘So you keep telling me.’

‘And I’m wasting my breath, aren’t I? You’ve never heeded anybody in your whole life: parents, teachers, the parish priest … always gone your own sweet way.’

McKenna lit a cigarette, coughing as the smoke seeped into a throat
already raw from too many others. Eifion Roberts noted with clinical interest the pointers of decay which wove around McKenna like a cloudy web, sucking the life from him. ‘I can’t sit by and watch a friend go from bad to worse in front of my nose. I think you should see your doctor.’

‘Why? I doubt I’ve suddenly fallen foul of some mortal sickness.’

‘Perhaps it won’t be mortal sickness that takes you to your grave, Michael. Folk can die of a broken heart, you know.’

‘I doubt I’ve a heart to break. I hear all this misery and despair from people, see their fears thrust up in front of me like monsters, and ask myself if I really care.’ He leaned against the window ledge, his shadow on the blind. Ash dropped from the cigarette, drifted to the floor. ‘I’m as empty as Jamie Thief. No conscience, no heart, no love, no understanding … I pretend compassion because I can afford to. There’s no need for me to fight and scavenge for survival, is there?’ He slumped into his chair. ‘Look what I’ve done to Denise. And for why? Why should I need to do that?’

‘D’you want to know why your marriage has gone to blazes?’ Dr Roberts asked. ‘Because you and Denise should never have got together in the first place. You’re like chalk and cheese, and it’s as simple as that. Still, you’ve got to have some excuse for all this selfish whingeing, haven’t you? I suppose throwing out one bit of dead wood from your life is as good as any.’

McKenna turned his head away. Eifion Roberts slammed his fist on to the desk. ‘I could kick your bloody arse from here to Chester and back again! You’re so wrapped up in the misery you’ve made for yourself you can’t see straight! D’you think Denise is sitting on her pretty backside wallowing in misery? She’s not, is she? Our Denise is busy packing her sun cream and her bikini and her fancy clothes and her frilly undies to go swanning off enjoying herself in Greece. I might not think much of her, but she’s got a bloody sight more sense than you’ll ever have!’

McKenna took a cigarette from the almost empty packet, looked at it, then put it back. He raised his eyes, regarding the pathologist almost warily. ‘Did you finish the autopsy on Jamie?’

‘I finished cutting him up, if that’s what you mean. I haven’t found out what killed him. I’ll know that when I know, and I’ll tell you when I know.’ Dr Roberts stood up, pushing back his chair. ‘You shouldn’t set yourself apart from the common herd, Michael. Arrogance is a sin in your church. We all know the world’s a detestable place, and the likes of you thinking they’ve got the right to remind folk doesn’t make it any less so. And I’ll tell you something else. Jamie had a heart like the rest of us. I know because I cut it right out of him, held it in my hands, felt the weight of death in it … and for all we know, he could’ve had a conscience to go with it. Not his fault if he never knew where to look,
was it?’ He walked to the door. ‘We all die of it in the end, you know. It’s what we do while we’re waiting for death that hurts or not, as the case may be.’ He pulled the door open. Standing in the opening, he looked back at McKenna, and sighed. ‘And I suppose you won’t speak to me for weeks now, will you? Avoid me like the plague, because I’ve seen through you, and had the cheek to say I’m not smitten with what I’ve looked at. And when you can’t avoid me any longer, you’ll put on the snooty face and the icy voice and the snotty attitude you’re so good at.’ He walked into the corridor. McKenna heard him say, ‘Well, you can please your bloody self!’ before the fire door closed behind him, leaving McKenna to the night.