A Species of Revenge (24 page)

‘Get her to talk, somehow.'

‘OK, I'll take care of it. I'm due in court in an hour, and I'll be there most of the day, but I'll get over as soon as I can.'

Imogen had risen early, after a restless night. She buttered toast, poured herself another cup of tea, then let it go cold as she reread yet another accusing letter from Melissa.

It hadn't really been necessary to read it in the first place. It was the same as all the others – Mel, from her sixteen-year-old vantage point, offering criticism and telling her mother what she must do. They knew it all, today's children, potted psychology from television soaps. But not from experience. All very well for Mel to tell her she was being selfish, she
must
go back to Daddy, whatever was wrong wasn't wrong enough to split the family up. Imogen hadn't told her exactly what the rift was about, nor, presumably, had Tom – only that the marriage wasn't working. Which must have seemed patently untrue to Mel. She'd been home the weekend before Imogen had so precipitately left, and everything had been quite normal. Mel would have noticed if it hadn't been, she was sharp and very intuitive, possessive even, where her parents were concerned. Except that she seemed to have got it into her head somehow that she, Imogen, was following up some women's lib prescription, doing her own thing, making a menopausal bid for freedom. Yet Imogen shrank from telling her the truth ... to a child of Mel's generation, it would surely seem a trivial reason for breaking up a marriage ... most of the parents of her friends at that expensive school were in and out of bizarre relationships like jack rabbits. Perhaps Mel had seen the effect on their children ...

She stared down at her toast, which appeared to have got itself cut into minute squares, scarcely big enough to feed a mouse. She scraped the lot into the bin. She wasn't hungry, anyway. Her appetite had disappeared halfway through that Chinese meal last night, when Dermot's heavy hints left no room for doubt as to how he was expecting the evening to end.

She couldn't blame him. She'd been expecting the same thing, which was why she'd accepted his invitation. Defiantly. Sauce for the goose, she'd thought. I can't go on living my life like this. I'm not like Hope. And Dermot Voss was a very attractive man. Free, what was more.

And then, for some inexplicable reason, she'd chickened out. She'd had no need to say anything, he'd sensed her change of mood immediately, and correctly guessed the reason for it. He hadn't bothered to hide how he felt; while keeping up a semblance of conversation for form's sake, he'd been incandescent with anger underneath. The waiters had impassively removed her half-eaten food, managing to convey intense Oriental disapproval without blinking an eyelid and then, as if to humiliate her further, Dermot had gone to ask Gil Mayo and the two women he was with to join them, without so much as asking her whether she would mind or not.

Not that she did. It was a relief at first, until the conversation had slid, inevitably, around to Patti Ryman's murder. Mayo, however, had skilfully avoided making comment on that. Professional etiquette or something, she supposed, but those watchful, slate-grey eyes were alert, she knew he'd missed nothing of what was said.

She suspected that he'd known right from the beginning, when he'd first come to interview her, that she was keeping something back, and she knew, if he questioned her again, she wouldn't be as successful this time in avoiding him. They could do you for obstructing the police in their duty, that much she knew. Did that include lying by omission?

She was dodging the issue. Anyone with any sort of social conscience would have told them before now. It wasn't loyalty, or that she couldn't imagine something that had happened all those years ago not having any bearing now – all too easily she could imagine that. Human nature didn't change, human failings remained constant. You could keep the lid on a can of worms for half a lifetime but sooner or later it would burst open and the fat would be in the fire. God, her metaphors were as confused as her thoughts.

The truth was, she was frightened, thrown badly off balance by a fear she thought she'd conquered years ago ... She'd wanted so desperately to believe that the past was over and done with, but that little girl, Patti, had made it impossible.

The awful loneliness that had rolled over her yesterday morning – fear as well, rearing its head from her childhood – grabbed her again. Feelings of hurt and injury, memories of being left out of their shared secrets. But more than that, much more. She'd been so frightened of them, of Francis especially, but of Hope as well. They'd been thoughtlessly cruel to her, terrifying her with their peculiar games and their closeness and their half-understood innuendoes, in that hateful old house, Heath Mount. She had thought, when it was pulled down, that its power would have been destroyed forever, but the past, like some frightful miasma, hung over this house and its occupants, too. Something terrible was happening here.

She was alone in the house. Hope was at school and Francis nowhere to be found – probably on one of his long walks, or shut up in his study with his icons and his books, and his holy pictures. Where she could not – dared not – disturb him.

She couldn't cope with this by herself. Her life hadn't equipped her to deal with this sort of situation, but there was no one else she could confide in, she'd lost touch with most of her old friends when she went away to live. She wanted, needed, Tom. But would Tom, after everything that had happened, want her?

Lucy had been invited to tea with her new friend Jodie, and Jodie's mother had telephoned to say she would meet both children out of school, arranging to have Lucy at home by half past six.

Sarah could see that it would be no bad thing just now that Lucy should have the chance to do something on her own. She was being difficult, and it all had to do with the people at Simla, with Imogen and, to a certain extent, Francis. It was on Allie, for some reason, that their favour had especially fallen. Anyone else might have been in danger of becoming spoiled through all the attention being paid to her, but Allie, being Allie, accepted it without appearing to notice. Poor Lucy, who was used to being the one in the limelight and couldn't be blamed for not understanding what was going on, had her nose sadly out of joint.

Hope, despite the gift of the dolls, remained detached from all this, which Sarah had decided must be due to diffidence, in view of how she'd sent the children's presents over via Imogen, rather than giving them herself. ‘I think she's basically a very shy person,' she'd told Fitz.

His reaction had been disconcerting. ‘Don't let the children get too close to the Kendricks, Sarah. They're an odd bunch.' He wouldn't say anything more and she wondered what he meant. But Fitz had grown up in this area and had known the Kendricks all his life, he'd gone to school with Francis, they'd both been day boys at Lavenstock College. She sometimes forgot what a tight community this was, compared to a big, anonymous city like London, how well known so many people were to each other.

She drove up to the school at home-time, parked in the long line of cars belonging to waiting mothers, and settled down until Allie should put in an appearance. The children came out, Lucy and her friend Jodie (hair
definitely
highlighted, ye Gods!) piled into Jodie's mother's car after she (
her
hair improbably auburn) had had a brief word with Sarah, and were driven away. Other children followed, until Sarah's car was the only one left. Lisa had often laughed about how she and an impatient Lucy had sat thus outside their former school, times without number, waiting for Allie to emerge. She was invariably one of the last, if not
the
last, trailing out, clutching her slipping possessions, dreamily unaware how long she'd taken.

Sarah sat staring through the windscreen at the pleasant grouping of the red-brick school buildings and, as seemed to happen every spare moment now, her own problems swam into focus.

She'd spoken to Simon last night. He was becoming increasingly irritated at her refusal to say when she was coming back. Fending him off had been just another cowardly excuse for not coming to grips with what she really ought to say to him – that this space between them had given her time to think, that she was now sure that her own future couldn't include him, not in any way meaningful to him. But, apart from the fact that she didn't want to ask herself why this decision was connected with Fitz, telling Simon the truth took more courage than she'd been able to summon up last night, after she'd at last remembered where she'd last seen the face in the photograph.

The knowledge lay like a heavy, indigestible lump in her stomach. She couldn't yet bring herself to do what she knew she must, eventually. She'd once despised others in the same situation, not seeing it as a viable choice. She understood better now. Yet there was no decision, not really. It was not a matter of if, but when. And not really even that – it must be now.

The last, lingering child had departed, and still no sign of Allie. She should have been out ten minutes ago. Sarah got out of the car and went to jolly her along.

Three minutes after that, she was on the telephone to the police.

Dermot was furious with the school. ‘What the hell do they mean, they let her go with that woman? They're supposed to be responsible for the children in their charge, for God's sake!'

‘
That woman
', DC Jenny Platt reminded him gently, was Hope Kendrick, a well-known and respected member of the community, another teacher, and although not of their school, known to most of the staff at Greymont JMI as well. Known also to live next door to Allie, her affection for Allie obviously returned. All the same, Sarah could see that she agreed with Dermot. The school was in serious dereliction of duty, they should have checked, there was simply no excuse for letting her go off with anyone, no matter how plausible the reason for taking Allie out of school. Allie's class teacher, now appalled at what she'd done, had been far too ready to accept that Hope had been asked by the child's father to pick Allie up for him that morning – a forgotten appointment, she'd said, with the orthodontist who was building up that chipped front tooth. Reasonable enough to be accepted by a busy teacher.

It was now nearly eight o'clock, and the house fully lit up, with a heavy police presence everywhere, doorbells ringing, people coming and going. In view, presumably, of what had happened to Patti Ryman, they were taking no chances, they'd sent this policewoman round to stay in the house, and they'd put out a search for Hope's car. But this must be a different matter to Patti's murder, entirely. Yet it seemed equally impossible to associate Hope with taking Allie away like that.

‘She won't get far. We'll pick her up. It isn't as though we don't know who's taken her,' they'd said. Which made it all the worse in Sarah's eyes. It was such an irrational thing to have done, and when reason went out of the window ... She tried not to think what might be going on in Allie's mind, by now. Rigid-faced and making cups of tea for all as if her life depended on it, she couldn't make any sense of any of it.

With all her heart, she wished Fitz here. She'd telephoned him at his office, at the first available opportunity. ‘What?' He'd listened without interruption until she'd blurted out the story, but when he answered seemed not anxious to prolong the conversation. ‘Sarah, this is terrible. Don't worry, I'm sure she'll be all right. I'm sorry, but I can't come over straight away, I've made other plans for this evening. I'll try and get over later.'

It wasn't what she'd hoped for. She'd never spoken to him on the telephone before and hadn't realized how clipped and abrupt his voice would sound, more so than usual. Perhaps she'd rung at an inconvenient moment, but all the same, she'd expected concern and warm sympathy and felt depressingly let down.

They were all sitting in the cheerless drawing room with its incongruous furniture – why there, of all places, Sarah couldn't imagine, except that it was next to the hall and only a few strides from where the telephone was, and there was more room for all the people who were coming and going. Every time it rang, they all sat up, as if pulled up by wires attached to their shoulders, only to sag like puppets when one of the police answered it and there was no news.

Dermot sat with his head in his hands. Suddenly he looked up. ‘What the hell are you all hanging around here for, doing nothing, when you should be out finding Allie?'

The policewoman, who said they should call her Jenny, had a clean-scrubbed appearance and well-polished shoes. She was young, but not afraid of showing her disapproval. All she said, however, was, ‘There's still time for Miss Kendrick to bring her back. She may just have taken some misplaced notion into her head to take Allie out for the day.' She didn't look convinced. No one else did, either.

Doreen Bailey came downstairs at last from seeing Lucy calmed down and tucked up in bed. She'd insisted on staying with her, apparently thinking that someone was going to steal into the house and spirit her away, too. ‘Asleep, poor lamb,' she said.

The doorbell rang. The lanky sergeant, Kite, looked round the door and summoned WDC Platt with a jerk of his head. A murmur of voices came from the hall and then Jenny Platt returned, shaking her head at their hopeful faces.

‘Anyone fancy a cup of coffee?' Doreen asked.

‘To hell with coffee, we're all awash with it,' Dermot said, jumping up and beginning to pace the room. ‘Sorry, Mrs B. In God's name, how much longer?'

Sarah, clutching Angel to her like a talisman, as if the doll could somehow summon Allie back, saw defeat traced on his features, defeat and something dark and deep in him that Sarah had never recognized before. Some realization of his inadequacy as a parent? At seeing the whole bright enterprise collapsing? A need for Lisa at this time – who could tell?