The Edge (21 page)

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Authors: Clare Curzon

BOOK: The Edge
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She walked out of the house, let herself into the caravan, sat with head in hands, mindless. When she raised her eyes it was as though, half-conscious, she sat before a wide screen on which the tragedy was being silently projected: Jennifer, in her nightdress, insanely laughing over her husband's bloodied corpse, at her son's anguish.
And then Daniel, filled with rage, going after her. There was a knife. Had Jennifer been holding it and he'd wrested it from her? Whatever, he'd not shot his mother. Caught up with her when she fled to the barn. Was it there they used to meet in secret, play at being lovers, commit incest?
And there he'd half-strangled her, then stabbed her to death. Execution. And mutilation. That awful detail with the broom handle. Revenge for the sex puppet she'd made of him? And then, totally out of his mind …gone back to stab the two little girls.
Anna rushed to the galley's sink and vomited until throat and stomach ached. She wiped bile from her lips and chin with a harsh paper towel and went shakily out into purer air. In the distance she saw DC Barley striding up the hill towards the woods, out of hearing.
How long she sat slumped on the van's steps she'd no way of knowing, but dark had come on when she realised: dear God, he'd still have the missing gun.
She must go back into the house and ring Mr Yeadings before there was another death.
In the hall she halted, one hand reaching for the phone. There were sounds of someone moving on the floor above. Alma Pavitt. She had to prevent the housekeeper meeting Daniel in his present state. ‘Mrs Pavitt,' she called and started up after her.
The woman must not have heard. She was going higher, towards her own room under the eaves. Anna, breathless, followed.
She was on the final flight when she caught the sound of voices. And, instant upon it, a choking scream.
A single shot. Then nothing.
 
‘Do you still have doubts about Anna Plumley?' Yeadings asked Z.
‘Not really. She seems genuinely concerned about her grandson. She said yesterday, “I believe all children pass through a vicious phase, however brief. Natural savages before they reach a more civilised state. Their own violence may scare them out of it early on. But staying that way too long – that can mould them into a monster”.'
‘So does she see Daniel as a monster?'
Z hesitated. ‘I think she's trying not to. She knows he's deeply disturbed. And she loves him.'
She sounded uneasy at the admission.
Yes, awful, Yeadings silently agreed.
‘I wish I knew how deeply he's implicated in whatever occult or immoral play the adults were up to. That's unnatural enough. And then crack cocaine plus an adolescent's overcharge of testosterone. A dangerous mix.'
‘Those foolish women had a lot to answer for,' Yeadings grunted.
Women? Jennifer yes; but who else? Surely he didn't include Anna Plumley. She seemed to have interfered as far as she'd dared to keep the children unaffected, using what information Freddie Hoad had leaked to her in letters.
‘The housekeeper,' Yeadings said, as if she'd questioned aloud. ‘Alma Pavitt was heavily into whatever went on in the hut in the woods. Hers were the only fingerprints on the Tarot cards and the
whip. She'd set herself up as a psychic, some kind of medium or priestess of the occult. And then the Manson book which Anna had found in Daniel's bookcase: those were Pavitt's initials inside the cover, not Plumley's. Both AP'
‘So Anna told the truth then: that she'd found it in Daniel's bookcase? I'd assumed it was hers because I saw her with it.'
‘Milton's
Comus
,' Yeadings murmured as if to himself. Then, as Z glanced at him enquiringly, ‘The rout scene. Drunkenness and bestial behaviour. Remember the animal masks SOCO turned up? God knows what depravity they got into. If Daniel ever came across that, and was drawn in …'
‘It could account for his mental state now. But that doesn't connect with the murders. There had to be some outsider who decided it all had to end. How about Huggett? He could have come across something obscene when out poaching. His wife's a Pentecostal. She'd not have stood for it if she'd got a hint of what went on. And that brick through their window. More than a threat not to talk out of turn?'
Yeadings appeared not to be listening. She had lost him some way back. ‘I think …' he began. ‘Yes, I fancy a quick trip out. I don't think we've been told all there is to know. I want you along.'
He let her drive, heading for the M40 eastbound while he was occupied searching through his pockets and grunting with dissatisfaction as each slip of paper he found was discarded. They made a little pool of screwed-up post-its round his feet.
‘Ah, got you!' he finally exclaimed and read out a Slough address Z hadn't come across. But the only Slough connection was the prostitute killed in the bike crash.
‘Not their case, so they didn't pursue it,' he muttered. Meaning the Ascot police, she supposed. But our case, so what have we let slip through unquestioned?
Yeadings was now riffling through the pages of a street map and directed her to a narrow road with an alley off it. She ran the side of his Rover on to the kerb. They got out. She handed him the car key, flicking the doors locked.
At 57b, an appropriately red-painted door between a barber's and a sleazy café, Yeadings pushed the doorbell and left his finger
on it. The brunette who eventually opened up was in snarling mode.
‘Police.' He said as she opened her mouth to sort him out. ‘And we haven't time to waste. So let us in.' He flapped his ID under her nose. She looked past him to Z and saw little support there.
‘It's about Charleen, I suppose.'
‘It is. And your name is …?'
‘Prue.'
‘Short for Prudence?'
‘Yeah, but not for long. That's got green whiskers on it. Every punter thinks he's the first to say it. You better come up. Happens I'm on me own at the moment.'
She seemed reconciled to their intervention. Involvement with police was nothing new. She almost felt at times she had mates among them.
‘You must feel bad about what happened to your friend,' Yeadings said when they were in the cramped little sitting room.
‘Miss her, yes. Her and her sloppy ways,' Prue allowed. ‘I'd like to get my hands on that skunk what done it.'
‘An accident, apparently. What did you make of Daniel Hoad then?'
‘Never met him. Just read the papers. Spoilt rich kid, he sounds.'
‘Were you away that weekend?'
‘Nuh. My asthma was somethink awful. Had to stay in for a coupla days.'
‘You were here all Friday and Saturday?'
‘Yeah. Sunday too. Bloody inhaler ran out and I couldn't get a new prescription because the clinic was shut. They never think you may need 'em in a hurry.'
‘Difficult,' Yeadings sympathised. ‘Must have been a bit of a crush that Friday, with Daniel staying over.'
She stared at him as if he was stupid. ‘He never did. It was Sat'dy he picked her up at the pub. Same day he got ratted and crashed his bike. Anyway we never have punters stay overnight. There's no room. Just one double bed and we both used that, me and Char.'
‘I see. The pub potman got it wrong, saying it was Friday.'
She shrugged. No concern of hers. ‘Now I gotta find someone to share with. Can't afford to pay for the flat on my own.'
Yeadings forbore to offer money. It could be misunderstood.
Yeadings opted to drive back. On the way it began gently to sleet. Staring through the wipers' slow slog-slog across the squeaky windscreen Zyczynski tried to come to terms with Daniel as the killer, but something was disturbingly wrong with that.
The sleet changed to rain and intensified. Yeadings switched to fast-wipe. The change of rhythm broke Z's half-trance with the wipers' irritating screech.
‘I meant to renew the blades,' Yeadings reminded himself.
‘So did she,' Z exploded, sitting bolt upright. ‘Alma Pavitt claimed she put in her car to have a new motor fitted for the wipers, so she travelled to Swindon by train. I gave her a lift back, but I never saw the return half of her ticket.
‘She returned the favour yesterday, gave me a lift after you dropped me off. That's what was bugging me, but it didn't come through. Her wipers were still faulty.
‘I believe she drove down to Swindon and left her car still parked there when I gave her the lift back. She must have gone to pick it up later, when Anna gave her the day off:'
‘Phone her garage as soon as we get back,' Yeadings snapped. ‘If she lied, there'd be a reason for it. With her aunt sedated that night after the fall, Pavitt could sneak out and return to Fordham. For whatever purpose.'
 
Anna Plumley reached the top of the stairs, breathless, and her heart racing. The door to the housekeeper's room was wide open. Mrs Pavitt was sprawled backwards across the bed, a black hole above her eyes, a mess of blood on the duvet under her head.
Anna stared at Daniel standing wild-eyed over her, the gun drooping from one hand. She realised he was stoned. He must have had access to more drugs all the time. The stuff had been stashed somewhere and, like the gun, the police search hadn't turned it up.
Her eyes went back to the body of the woman and her blood ran cold. He'd run amok. Past all reason. She herself was the next he'd turn on. But she had to try and get through to him.
‘What have you taken?' she demanded in a low voice.
He smiled at her from a great distance. ‘Dutch courage.'
‘Drugs are no help. The only safe thing for you now …'
He was suddenly on a high. ‘Who wants safety? That's for losers. The world's full of them. Where are the real heroes?'
In their graves. Dead, from leading charges against impossible odds, she thought. But you never say that to the young.
‘No, Grananna. For me the buzz is living on the edge. Like kids on skate boards taking the Big Leap. You get older and bolder and you do it all bigger.'
‘But not drugs, Daniel. Subsidising criminals to rubbish you. You're worth more than that.'
He advanced closer to her. The momentary bravado had gone. His hands were shaking. The gun fell on the floor between them and he seemed not to notice. ‘That's the point. I'm not.' His eyes brimmed with unshed tears.
‘You were, once. Despite mistakes, the real you is still there.'
‘It's dead. I'm finished. What do you know about me? – the things I've done. That girl, just a trollop, but I had to. I needed an alibi. Dead, she couldn't disprove it.'
Anna drew a deep breath. ‘It was deliberate, then? No accident?'
‘As if you hadn't guessed! I took the call when they phoned to cancel scout camp. Not that it made any difference. I'd always meant to come back, sneak in up here and spend the weekend in her bed. I'd been screwing her for weeks. Or, more like, she was screwing me. We had some of Jenni …' His voice broke.
‘ …some good stuff my mother got in London. We'd get high together, plumb the depths. There was nothing like it in the whole world. We were immortal.'
Anna came towards him, arms outstretched. ‘What you do and what you are — they're not the same. There's atonement, forgiveness.' Desperately she knew she must keep him talking.
His laugh was harsh. ‘Religious crap: hate the sin and forgive the sinner?' he jeered. ‘I'd expect better of you than that, Grananna.'
‘What's wrong with it?'
‘It's not real. Even my father knew better, poor sod. He used to insist that you pay for what you get and what you do. Well, by now the price is too high.'
His voice was rising, then the treble cracked into a man's hoarse shout. ‘You don't realise what I've done. I killed my father!
‘I never meant to. We got caught downstairs. Neither of us was supposed to be in the house. She wanted to rough the place up and steal a few trinkets, to make it look … Only, between us we knocked over a chair. We were both stoned. Then my … my father came down and we hid. I had the revolver from the cabinet. Not a rifle. He should have handed it in when they changed the law. I'd always wanted it and I knew he could never openly admit it was gone.
‘Somehow it went off. It sent her right over the edge. She'd always despised my father, hated my mother, even when they slept together out at the hut. They had this sort of … Well, each had to master the other. Rivals, really crazy. Alma the psychic and Jennifer with the money, the access to crack.'
He had covered his face again, muttering between his fingers. Now he stood erect, punched the air with his fist.
‘And now the Jezebel's dead! I should have cut her black heart out. Butchered her with a kitchen knife. Like she used on the others.'
His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I didn't know until afterwards about them. Just that, after I'd shot him, she had to make sure he was dead. I sort of passed out and woke up under the cold shower. It was all over then and she was on a high. She said at first that I'd done it. With the knife. Only, later, she admitted … gloated.
‘She drove me away, through the storm, with Jeff's bike strapped on to the roof rack. Seemed cold sober by then, dropped me off and I hid in a shed out at the quarry. Had to break in. Next day I rode over to find the girl in Slough.
‘It was Saturday I met her at the pub, not Friday. The potman got it wrong. But she was a blabbermouth. Once the police got to her she'd have sold me down the river. By then it had all gone too far not to go on. Finish it.'
Anna stood silent, letting him tell her everything. But she had guessed. On the last flight of stairs she had realised it wasn't his mother he'd needed to kill. Over days all the facts had been coming together. It made sense of his reaction to this house, to the woman who served his meals, cleaned his room, who had to be avoided like the very devil. He could never meet her eyes.
And now, the last act was over. The full truth struck her the moment she reached the door of this room, saw him with the gun in his hand, smelled the cordite. He believed he had done all he must, had completed the nightmare.
But surely something could yet be retrieved. ‘Dan — '
She broke off at the distant but persistent hee-haw of a police siren. She reached out for him. ‘They'll find the front door locked and go round to the back. You must be quick. We haven't long.'
‘We? What do you mean? You can't hold them off.' His voice was desperate. ‘There's nowhere to go!'
He was right. Only the fire-escape. And the gravelled courtyard below.
Now a second siren joined in. In minutes the cars would be turning in from the lane. Police would pour out, covering all exits from the house. Someone would look up towards the roof, see the lit window.
One way or the other, he had to go down to them.
Inside she was all ice and flame, could barely breathe. She opened the fire-escape door on to dark night, gestured towards it. As he hesitated, she touched his hand.
‘Your edge, Daniel. The one you always had to live on. It's out there.'
Briefly their eyes met. The shock of her meaning reached him.
He pulled his hand away, unbelieving. ‘I don't un …'
‘You do understand.'
‘I won't. You can't make me.' Momentarily the petulant child again.
‘You're right. I can't make you. I wouldn't. Daniel, what else is there?'
Headlights swung up as the first police car started on the hill
towards the house. Then a second. They were coming in force.
‘Shit, no. No!'
They were already here, braked with engines still racing. Gravel scattered. Doors slammed. There were voices below now, blue lights pulsing in the dark. The front doorbell shrilled through the house.
‘Oh God, I can't.' He blundered out on to the iron platform, gazed down at dark figures moving against the cars' headlights.
‘Shit, no!' He looked back at her, his eyes starting from his head. He straddled the rail, stood on the outer ledge, leapt as though he couldn't reach out far enough.
 
The same shock was in DS Beaumont's eyes as he knelt beside the body and covered the boy's mad stare. He looked up at the eaves and saw the woman silhouetted in the attic doorway.
Anna slowly began the long journey downstairs. She would tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Except for one thing: if he'd resisted, she would have thrust him bodily out there and turned the lock on him.
But at the end he'd chosen. A lifetime locked away would have destroyed what little was left of the innocent child.
And she had loved him.

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