The Dark Room (44 page)

Was that her subtle revenge, he wondered, pissing publicly on what her father valued most, his self-made wealth?

‘He’s making good his threat now,’ she went on flatly. ‘He’s going to turn them off without a penny and divorce Betty.’

‘Do you blame him?’

‘No.’

‘What will happen to them?’

‘I don’t know. I doubt he can leave Betty penniless because the courts won’t allow it’ – she pressed her forehead into her clasped hands –
‘but I’m not sure about Miles and Fergus. He says he doesn’t care any more.’

She was more upset than he would have expected. If she had any love for her stepmother and her two brothers, she had always hidden it well. ‘There is a bright side,’ he
said after a moment. ‘If your father’s had them watched for the last four weeks, then one thing you can be sure of is that neither of them is guilty of the murder of Leo and Meg, or for
that matter responsible for the attack on me.’

‘I never thought they were,’ she muttered at the bed.

‘Didn’t you?’ he said, injecting surprise into his voice. ‘They’ve always struck me as likely candidates. They’re self-centred, not overly bright
and very used to getting their own way, usually through you or their mother. I can imagine both seeing murder as a solution to a problem.’

‘It never occurred to me,’ she said stubbornly.

Of course it didn’t, because you’ve always known who the murderer is
. ‘I wish you’d tell me why you don’t trust me,’ he said, in a
carefully impassive voice. ‘What have I ever said or done to make you feel you can’t?’

She rested her chin on her hand and regarded him as impassively. ‘How do you know it wasn’t me who attacked you?’

He took the sudden switch in his stride. ‘It didn’t look like you.’

‘Matthew says it was dark, the person was dressed in black and the only description you could give was five feet ten and medium build.’

‘How does Matthew know what I said?’ asked Alan.

‘Everyone knows.’

‘Veronica Gordon,’ he murmured. ‘One of these days that woman’s going to talk herself out of a job.’ He watched her curiously for a moment. ‘Look,
there are plenty of compelling reasons why it couldn’t have been you. You’re too weak to wield a sledgehammer. You’ve no reason to want to attack me. You didn’t know when I
was coming back, and I’d ordered half-hourly checks to be made on you before I left. If you’d been out of your room, Amy or Veronica would have noticed.’

‘Except that I
was
out of my room.’

He made no attempt to pretend surprise.

‘After Sister Gordon did her nine o’clock rounds,’ she went on, ‘Amy took over. I was in bed with my light out the first time she came. The second time, I was
in the bathroom in darkness, and she didn’t bother to check whether the pillow I’d stuffed down the bed was me or not. After that, I got dressed and went outside. I was wearing black
jeans and a black jumper. I’m five feet ten, and before the crash I weighed nine stone, so my clothes can easily take some padding.’

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘I wanted to know why Adam had sent Kennedy over, so I thought I’d waylay you. I waited under the beech tree until I was so tired I couldn’t wait any longer, then I
went back to bed and fell asleep with my clothes on. I was having a nightmare when Amy found me. I’m amazed she didn’t report it. She was scared stiff I’d been doing something I
shouldn’t and might be held responsible.’ She examined his face. ‘Or perhaps she did report it and you haven’t told me.’

He shook his head. ‘No.’

‘Then obviously she trusts me more than she trusts you, Dr Protheroe.’

He lifted an eyebrow. ‘Is that what this was? A lesson in who’s trustworthy and who isn’t?’

‘More or less,’ she said, refusing to look at him. ‘You already knew I was outside – Matthew heard you calling my name – but you’ve never
mentioned it, not to me anyway.’

Damn Matthew to hell and back! He was going to shred the little toe-rag the first chance he got
. ‘Only because I realized I’d made a mistake. I thought I saw you
at the side of the road as I drove in but, as it wasn’t you who attacked me, I saw no point in mentioning it. Does that set your mind at rest?’

‘No,’ she said bluntly. ‘You talk about trust as if it can be had for the asking. Well, it can’t, not when you’re up to your neck in it. All I know for
certain is that my father’s paying you to look after me, that for some reason he sent his solicitor over to talk to you on Monday afternoon, and that shortly afterwards you ordered
half-hourly checks on me before disappearing.’ A glint –
of humour?
– appeared in her eyes. ‘Then, when you finally reappear, you’re attacked with a
sledgehammer and the police come down on me like a ton of bricks.’

Thoughtfully, he scratched his beard. ‘You’ve run those facts into a related sequence when my interpretation is there’s no relation between them at all.’

‘Why did Kennedy come and see you then?’

‘Assuming there were no hidden agendas at work, to remind me that I promised your father you wouldn’t be subjected to therapy you didn’t want. Kennedy taped our
conversation and, as I haven’t heard anything since, I’ve concluded that I said the right things in response and not the wrong things.’

‘What did you say?’ she shot at him.

‘I suggested it was Adam and not you who didn’t want you remembering anything.’ He noted her alarmed expression. ‘I also said he’d misread your
character entirely and that he was worrying unnecessarily about any rehashing of Russell’s murder because you didn’t share his anxieties on the subject. Mind you, at that stage I was
unaware that Meg and Leo were dead, or that you knew about it.’ Her alarm deepened. ‘If I had, I’d have been even more forceful in my remarks on his misreading of your character
because I’ve never met anyone, man or woman, who is as self-reliant as you are.’

She plucked at the counterpane. ‘It’s something you learn very quickly when you find yourself on the wrong end of a murder inquiry,’ she said. ‘You never stop
watching your back.’

‘Yet you’re so adept at getting everyone else to watch it for you,’ he said mildly. ‘Amy, for one; Matthew, for another.’

She smiled grudgingly. ‘Poor Amy is watching her own back. She’s terrified of getting the sack, but you can’t use what I’ve told you as an excuse.
You’re my doctor and everything I’ve said was said in confidence.’ She changed tack. ‘According to Matthew, the police think the sledgehammer that was used to attack you
belongs to the clinic. Is that right?’

‘What a mine of information that young man is.’

She ignored that. ‘Is he right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is there any doubt about it?’

‘I don’t think so. One of our security officers went looking for it because he knew we had one. It was abandoned in an outhouse with paint from my Wolseley on the
head.’

She sat in deep thought for several seconds. ‘Could your security officer have been mistaken?’ she asked suddenly. ‘I mean, it seems such an odd thing to leave to
chance. How could he rely on a sledgehammer being here?’ She searched his face eagerly. ‘He must have brought one with him. It doesn’t make sense otherwise.’

He found himself moved by the terrible yearning in her amazing eyes. Were Matthew and Amy as easily moved? ‘Meaning there’s another sledgehammer out there
somewhere?’

She nodded.

‘OK. If it’s there, I’ll do my best to find it, but wouldn’t it be easier just to tell me who
he
is?’

Her face took on a closed expression. ‘Whoever hit you.’

He straightened with a sigh. ‘No, Jinx, it was whoever tried to kill me.’
You’re not the only one watching your back at the moment
. ‘Think about
that.’

Matthew Cornell was lounging against the front porch, smoking a cigarette, when Alan went outside. Alan toyed with the idea of tearing his arms off, then abandoned it as a
non-starter. All in all, he was growing increasingly fond of his ginger-haired convert.

‘How’s it going, Matthew?’

‘Pretty good, Doc. How’s the shoulder?’

‘So-so.’ He eased the muscles gently. ‘Could have been a lot worse.’

‘Yeah. You could be dead.’

Alan watched him out of the corner of his eye. ‘Any ideas who might have done it? One theory is it was a junkie after drugs.’

‘That’s not the way I heard it.’

‘Is it not?’

‘There’s only one person in the frame and it sure as hell isn’t a junkie.’

‘You mean Miss Kingsley.’

‘She’s the only one with sledgehammers in her background.’ He ground his cigarette out under his heel.

‘Except she doesn’t fit the bill. It was a man I saw in my headlights.’

‘You sure, Doc? You’ve got a loud voice and I was sitting by my window Monday night, having a quiet smoke. I didn’t get the impression you thought it was a
man.’

‘And you told her all about it the next morning.’

Matthew grinned at him. ‘Didn’t seem fair not to. It’s a mean old world, Doc, and how was I to know you weren’t going to tell the police? I knew she was out
there. She lit up her face every time she had a fag. I was watching her for about an hour before you came back and got clobbered. You should remember where my room is, upstairs on the corner, with
windows facing both ways.’

‘Are you saying you saw everything that happened?’

‘Not everything. I watched Jinx for a while, then some time later I heard you calling and looked out the other window. I saw your car parked, then – wham! – your
windscreen exploded and I saw a silhouette against your headlights as you roared backwards and piled into the tree.’ He lit another cigarette. ‘I thought, shit, what the fuck is going
on and what the fuck do I do about it? And by the time I’d made up my mind, all hell was breaking loose. You were driving up to the front door, blaring your horn, and all the lights were
coming on. So I reckoned I’d keep my head down and see what panned out.’

‘Thanks very much,’ said Alan tartly. ‘I could have been dead by the time you came to a decision. You’re required to act in good faith, you know, not stick
your head in the nearest bucket.’

He grinned again. ‘Yeah, well, I thought it was only your windscreen that’d been smashed, not your shoulder, and no one dies of a broken windscreen. You should have
lights along the drive, then maybe I’d have seen a bit more.’

Alan glared at him. ‘So all you saw was a silhouette,’ he growled, ‘and you don’t know any better than I do who it was.’

‘That’s about the size of it.’

‘Are you planning to elaborate, or is that all I get?’ he said curtly. ‘It may have escaped your notice, but I suffered an unprovoked attempt on my life two nights
ago and I’m not keen for a repeat experience.’

Matthew blew a stream of smoke into the air. ‘It was hardly unprovoked, Doc. The way I remember it, you were threatening to stay there all night till Jinx showed herself.
You’re too convincing, that’s your trouble. The bastard believed you.’

Alan had forgotten that. ‘So what was he doing there?’

‘Waiting.’ He flicked him a sideways glance.

‘What for?’

Matthew shrugged. ‘For whatever he came here to do.’ He saw thunder clouds gathering on the doctor’s face. ‘Look, Doc, I can guess, same as you can, but
that’s not to say either of us’d be right. Personally, I can’t see that scarecrow in number twelve murdering anyone, therefore there’s some maniac wandering around out
there, trying to shove the blame on to her. Strikes me he’ll be shitting bricks in case she spills the beans, so my guess is he was waiting to have another go at her.’

Alan considered this for a moment. ‘That can’t be right. You said she was out there for an hour and you saw her face every time she lit a cigarette. If you saw her, then
he must have seen her, too, so why not finish her off then?’

Matthew looked down the drive towards where Alan had stopped his car on Monday night. ‘Because he didn’t expect to find her outside. She’d have screamed her head
off if he’d crept up on her under the tree.’

‘Not if he’d hit her from behind. She wouldn’t have had time to scream.
I
didn’t.’

‘Jesus, Doc,’ said Matthew severely, ‘you don’t have much imagination, do you? He wasn’t going to make it look like murder, not after he went to so much
trouble to fake suicide last time. He was going to trap her in her room, slit her wrists or string her up from the bathroom door, and you’d have had a suicide on your hands next morning, and
the cops would have rubbed their hands and closed their files. My guess is, he’s been waiting for days for an opportunity to slip inside and do the business, but he’s up against it
here. He probably didn’t reckon on so many people being on the premises at night. You’ve got good security, Doc, but then you need to with the sort of fees you charge.’ He
grinned. ‘There are too many rich bastards in here who’d do their nuts if intruders could walk in and out as they pleased.’

‘Why did he have the sledgehammer if he didn’t plan to hit her with it?’

Matthew shook his head in exasperation. ‘You’re no psychologist, are you? It’s the tool of his trade, Doc, and the rule is, you carry the tools with you just in
case. Look at the Yorkshire Ripper, he carried his hammer and chisel with him wherever he went. You should study a bit. This guy’s an organized nutter, and your average organized nutter
doesn’t go out unprepared.’

‘Except we’re not talking about a serial killer.’

‘You reckon? Three murders look like a series to me.’

‘Come on, Matthew, there was ten years between them, two of the victims were men and one was a woman, and all three victims were linked to Jinx Kingsley. That’s not a
typical pattern for serial killing.’

‘Not yet maybe,’ said Matthew, ‘but I’d say his control’s really slipping now, wouldn’t you? There were nine years between Jeffrey Dahmer’s
first and second murders, then in the next four years he committed another fifteen. Will you still be saying this guy isn’t a serial killer when the next poor sod gets bludgeoned to
death?’ He saw Alan’s scepticism. ‘Anyway, who’s to say what he’s been doing between then and now? I’ll lay money on the fact that he’s found some other
way to work out his aggressions. You should talk to my Dad. He’s represented creeps like this at trial. They’re bloody clever and bloody manipulative, and I’ll tell you this for
free, if I were Jinx, I’d have amnesia too.’