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Authors: Clare Curzon

BOOK: The Edge
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There was more concerning the cocaine source awaiting them on their arrival. A Sergeant Batts from the Met had faxed in a report on Justin Halliwell's girlfriend who acted as his drugs ‘mule'. A surgeon, fighting against time, had removed twenty-eight packages of pure cocaine from her intestines. Only one had split but it could yet prove as fatal as the entire load. She was still comatose in intensive care at Hillingdon Hospital with a forty-sixty chance of recovery.
The woman's purse was found to contain counterfoils for her flight ticket Orlando-Heathrow and for hire-car travel Miami-Orlando. She had been scrupulous about retaining details of expenses. Her main luggage had been opened and examined when passing through both airports.
It seemed that on-flight she had avoided suspicion by ordering normal meals, and then contrived to dump the food in her cabin bag. Its unlovely mishmash had been more securely sealed to protect the fine leather lining than the plastic bag which now threatened her very life.
Examination of flight records for three major transatlantic airlines showed she was a frequent traveller between Florida and various cities in mainland Europe or the UK. At each eastern arrival point she had been met by her ‘fiancé' Justin Halliwell and provided with shared accommodation booked in his name.
This last fact destroyed the man's credibility as an innocently
deceived and caring friend. In hope of lessening the charges against him, the Met had persuaded Halliwell to admit that Jennifer blackmailed him into organising that vital part of her import business. He claimed that revealing an undercover set of accounts for Miradec Interiors would exonerate him as principal in the drugs dealing. It had been Jennifer's own speciality, using the decor business as a means of laundering profits.
Which solved the whole shebang in one fell swoop, declared Acting-DCI Salmon. His knobby-potato face glowed with Damascene revelation. This maniac case suddenly made sense. Halliwell, impatient at ranking as number two, had dreamed up a fantastic scenario to take over the entire operation. Jennifer must be eliminated.
And, in achieving this, somehow or other the rest of the family got caught up in it. A simple explanation for a complex outcome.
‘One or two small matters to clear up,' Yeadings told Salmon, excusing his return with Alma Pavitt to the Area nick.
‘We can leave those to Zyczynski, then.'
‘As you say.'
Never having seen Salmon so near a state of elation, the Boss was loath to prick his bubble. He also secretly admitted to a slick of malice in not sharing his own preferred intelligence.
‘If you're off to see the Met I may as well sit in on this with Z.'
Acting-DCI Salmon grunted agreement, patting his many pockets in a version of crossing himself. Spectacles, testicles, watch and wallet, Beaumont had once described the procedure.
‘Who's got my pen?'
It was retrieved from an ashtray alongside assorted paper clips and drawing pins, then the CID office settled to comparative peace with his departure.
 
In Interview Room 1, Mrs Pavitt was offered a choice of tea or coffee, both of which she refused.
‘Probably just as well,' Z remarked comfortably. ‘They're from a vending machine. I can never tell the difference myself. Now, about this hut in the wood. Just what was it for, Mrs Pavitt, and how were you involved?'
The woman was clearly prepared for the question. ‘It's been there for donkeys' years. Keepers used to raise game chicks in incubators. Mr Hoad didn't go in much for shoots, so when it fell out of use Jennifer thought she'd take it over for — well, for fun really. Crazy parties. She'd have friends down from London, and sometimes local people too who liked to act bohemian.'
‘And where did you come in?'
‘I did the catering, prepared the food at the house and reheated it at the Cave. We had a microwave oven there and a small fridge. There was music laid on too.'
‘Cave. Is that what everyone called it?'
‘The Rave Cave, yes.'
‘And what kind of raving went on?'
‘Oh, just like kids do. Only sometimes grown-ups want to let their hair down too, play the fool a bit. OK, so there was a bit of wife-swapping now and again. No real harm in it.'
‘And dressing-up?'
‘Jennifer got some costumes made, yes.'
‘Animal faces and so on?'
‘Things like that, yeah.'
‘For rituals which included flaring torches and dancing outdoors in a circle? Almost witchcraft, would you say?'
‘Only playing at it.' Her tone was contemptuous.
‘But for you it was different?'
‘I'm not a witch.' She sat straight, dark eyes fixed on the woman detective. ‘I'm gifted. I tell the cards. I can see into the dark ahead. When she got to know that, she relied on me. I warned her: of something terrible coming that she couldn't escape. It seemed to excite her.'
Z shifted in her seat, not daring to glance sideways at the Boss. Things were moving too fast, important points omitted.
‘When did Daniel start to join in?'
Mrs Pavitt sat silent, head bowed. Eventually she looked up. ‘He must have sneaked in. We discovered him hidden behind a curtain. Jennifer was a bit doped up and she let him … Well, we all …'
They'd all been stoned out of their minds and the boy had joined the rout, wore a ram's head, been bestial with the rest of them. High on drugs.
‘There were photographs,' Z claimed. None had been found, but surely, sometime, one of the revellers would have brought a camera. There had to be a record somewhere, and Pavitt must know that.
The woman started to shake. She brushed the back of one hand under her nostrils. It shone wet.
‘Jennifer provided crack cocaine,' Z claimed. ‘You were all out of your minds. Where did you think it would end?'
‘Not like it did! Never like that!' Her voice was a shriek. She fought to regain control. She closed her eyes and ground out the words. ‘Someone must have come back that weekend. Found the
stuff in the house. Went right over the edge! Don't ask me who. I wasn't there.'
Yeadings nodded to Z.
‘Thank you, Mrs Pavitt. That will be all for now. If you wait a moment I'll arrange for a patrol car to take you back.'
But was that all for now? Z asked herself, shocked at the Boss's cutting short the flow. Silently she followed him back to his office and, uninvited, sat while he refilled the coffee-maker. Her distraction wasn't lost on him. If she was troubled by some half-realised theory he could wait for it to surface complete.
Beaumont knocked at the door and looked in. Yeadings pointed to a vacant chair. The DS slid on to it, picking up on the prevailing mood.
After a moment's hesitation, ‘I think I know …' Z ventured slowly, and became aware that the others were waiting for illumination.
‘ …know why Jennifer wasn't raped,' she ended lamely.
Beaumont nodded. He knew too, of course. All that bloodletting came from frustration. The killer was struck impotent. When it came to the climax — couldn't get it up; hadn't the balls. Hence the broom handle.
‘Lack of the wherewithal.' Z felt obliged to finish her thesis. It left no impression on Beaumont. But the Boss was a step ahead. ‘What you mean is that her killer …'
‘Is a woman. Yes.'
 
At the Manor Anna had felt obliged to put together an evening meal in the housekeeper's absence. Daniel was out walking with Barley. This time downhill towards the river. When the phone trilled she had taken it for her own mobile. But it wasn't.
She followed the sound and unearthed the thing from a window-settle in the study.
‘Hi,' Camilla greeted her, ‘got over that sick do, Danny?'
‘It's his grandmother,' Anna said. ‘Thank you, Camilla, he is better. But when did he give you this new number?'
For a few seconds they were at cross purposes until it struck Anna this must be the same mobile he claimed to have dropped
from the balloon. She explained that Daniel was out: Camilla should try again later to reach him, and curtly rang off.
Twenty minutes later the men returned. She heard them talking in the gun room, then Daniel came through to the kitchen, unimproved by his taste of fresh air, and still grumbling about his father's feckless handling of the bequests.
‘Maybe it is a little hard on you,' she eventually allowed.
But was that actually true? Hadn't he started out as the golden boy, with everything showered upon him before he even knew any need? Yet the essentials had been missed out: a constant standard of care, back-up discipline.
Jennifer had been useless, so ambitious, and forever flaunting her sexuality. Only Freddie was present to listen, but the boy wouldn't have opened up to him; Freddie not his true father. That other man had long ago shrugged him off and gone his way. Early rejection followed by careless pampering were an unholy mixture for a child to take.
She tried again. ‘Daniel, there's so much anger in you. You need to get it out. Can we try to deal with it?'
‘Anger?' His voice was bitter. He turned away and rested his head on his arms, bent over the work surface. She thought the single strangled word that reached her was ‘guilt'.
Her heart beat fast in her throat. Would he talk now about the poor girl whose death he'd caused? At last show some regret, even compassion?
She wanted to believe that. There were times when she'd thought he wasn't capable of any feeling for others; always glibly charming and shallow, half-way to a casebook sociopath. Perhaps now that image was breaking down.
But instantly his mood changed again. He slouched over to observe the carrots she was chopping into batons and took a handful to chew.
‘Camilla rang,' she told him. ‘On the phone which you did not drop in the canal.'
‘I've got two. This is the new one.'
‘No,' she told him evenly. ‘I recognised the scratch on its cover.
‘So?'
‘So what did you drop from the balloon?'
He sauntered round the room, very
beau jeune homme
and mocking. ‘D'you know. Grananna, I think I'll tell you the terrible truth. I did have two mobiles, just for a while. Because I needed to send myself a message. Yes, the melodramatic threat: “U NEXT!”
‘Rather a clever idea, you'll admit. I picked up someone else's phone when I went in the pub to clean up after being sick in Camel's car. It was lying on a table by some spilled beer. If the filth wanted to trace the message back they'd simply find some dozy yokel who couldn't remember where he'd left the thing. That's the one I got rid of.'
His face flushed with sudden anger. ‘Hell, nobody cared a damn about me. They should have known I was next in line to be killed! I had to get the message across.'
‘You wanted pity? We were concerned enough and trying not to show it. And while we tried to understand your grief and shock you were playing stupid little tricks like this on us. Even at the risk of wasting valuable police time.'
‘They're so thick they couldn't — couldn't see …'
Anna carefully put down the knife she had been using and slid it under the bag the carrots had come in. A bid for pity? Or was it something else? An attempt to put them off the right track?
‘Daniel, I'm not the great fool you think me. And I'm not blind. I've tried, God knows, not to believe what's staring me in the face. You were here that night, weren't you? All along you've been telling a string of lies.'
There was complete silence, broken only when the refrigerator started up an active cycle. Anna discovered that her hands and knees were shaking.
He straightened, beat a bunched fist against the wall. His voice, a refined whisper till then, roared in agony.
‘He turned and saw me! I was startled. I never meant to shoot him. And then he was falling back, surprised. There was this black hole in his chest. The – the crack of the gun came after. But his shotgun went off, sprayed the cabinet. Glass showering like
fireworks. She was laughing …howling with laughter. She's insane!'
Never meant to shoot? He meant Freddie! Who else had been shot? Now he was claiming it had been him who …
‘She?' The word was torn from her.
He shoved off from the wall, turned a terrible, agonised face on her.
‘Who?' Anna insisted, but she knew anyway. There was only one woman in this. Jennifer. If Daniel could be believed, she'd watched him shoot dead the husband she despised, and she'd laughed out loud at it.
‘No, this is all wrong. You dreamt it. You weren't there!' she protested. ‘You were with that girl in Ascot.'
‘I came back. I had to see her.' His voice was monotonous now, grinding out the words, inhuman.
‘We needed each other. It was all arranged. But I had to get the gun. It was the pistol, not a rifle. That empty clip hasn't been used for years. I got the cabinet open and then, in the dark, a chair went over. He must have been awake and heard us.
‘He started coming downstairs, and I hid under the table. The light came on, but he went right by me, to the open gun case, reached in for the twelve-bore.'
Daniel stopped there, almost laughed. ‘I nearly wet myself.'
Anna drew a soughing breath. She had to believe him. The boy was reliving some real terror. It must have happened how he told it. He'd gone totally over the edge.
It had been Daniel who shot his adoptive father. Not an outsider breaking in, or someone Freddie had opened the door to.
The boy had only pretended to go away. His story of spending the whole weekend with the prostitute was a fiction and, being dead, she couldn't give it the lie. So many killled now. Who was left to be believed but Daniel?
So shooting Freddie was an accident? He had come back, to be with his mother because they ‘needed each other'. A secret assignation with his own mother? For sex? Surely, even for Jennifer, that was too depraved!
Is that what the orgies in the wood were about? But he, at last pushed too far, had desperately intended to end it the only way he knew how. He'd gone for a gun. But why so desperate? ‘Guilt', he'd said. Yes, over what his mother had made of him; not the crash with the bike. He didn't kill that wretched girl until the following night; part of a false alibi.
Whatever he'd intended, on the Friday it had all gone hideously wrong, and he'd shot poor Freddie. It was unbelievable, but the boy had said so himself.
She turned away, sick to her soul. There was nothing she could say or do. To turn him in was impossible. He was past counselling. She had presently such a horror of him – for him – that her mind was numbed. She needed time to regain sanity.

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