The Dark Room (10 page)

‘So, what do I tell him? That you’d like to have lunch with him in a wheelchair, or that you wouldn’t?’

‘You know I wouldn’t.’

He tipped a finger at her. ‘Then that’s what I’ll tell him.’ With the briefest of waves he disappeared through the door.

‘
NO
!’ she shouted. ‘
COME BACK
!’ But he didn’t come back, and, more angry than she could ever remember, she set off across
the floor and thrust herself out of her own doorway. ‘
DR PROTHEROE
!’ she screamed at his retreating figure. ‘
DON
’
T YOU DARE SAY A WORD,
YOU BLOODY SODDING BASTARD
!’

He turned round and started to walk back. ‘You
do
want to have lunch with Matthew?’

She waited until he had reached her. ‘Not particularly,’ she said quietly, ‘but I will.’

‘Why?’ he asked curiously. ‘Why do something you don’t want to do?’

‘Because you won’t tell him “no” kindly. You’ll tell him exactly what I told you, and I don’t want you to do that. He’s been nicer to me
than anyone else and I think you might hurt him.’

‘You’re right on every count, Jinx.’

She gave a bored sigh. ‘Oh, for God’s sake. Look, I know what you’re doing and I know why you’re doing it. You’re no different from Stephanie Fellowes.
You want me to get out of this room, you want me to stop feeling sorry for myself, and you want me to start mixing again. But why can’t you just say: Do it, please, Jinx, because it’s
good for you? Why involve that wretched boy in your silly games? He’s not responsible for what’s happened to me.’

Why couldn’t she see that the room he wanted her to leave was the one in her mind? What was keeping her there?

‘I agree, but I didn’t involve him, he involved himself.’ He tapped the Do Not Disturb notice that was taped to the wall beside her door. ‘Don’t you
think it’s a little patronizing to refer to him as a wretched boy, Jinx? He’s twenty-eight and doesn’t require protection from me or from you.’ He grinned broadly.
‘And one last point: as a matter of policy, I never instruct anyone to do anything. You either do things willingly, or you don’t do them at all. My credibility’s at stake here. I
can’t have people refusing. It would undermine everything I stand for.’

‘Then please tell Matthew, thank you very much and, yes, I’d love to have lunch with him.’ She reached up, tore off the notice, scrumpled it into a ball and threw
it at him. ‘As a good existentialist, Dr Protheroe, I’m sure you know why I did that.’

His thundering laugh boomed along the corridor as he walked away, tossing the ball into the air and catching it again. ‘Because you enjoyed it,’ he said over his
shoulder.

She was wheeled around the gardens like a highly prized pig in a wheelbarrow, with her lanky escort showing her off with pride to anyone who was interested. She loathed every
minute of it, spent the entire time chain-smoking and grinding her teeth at what she regarded as a Protheroe-inspired hijack. She perked up when, at the end of a tour of the boundary wall, they
came to the main gate and paused by the gatekeeper’s box. He glanced at them briefly through the window, then resumed his reading of the newspaper. Jinx gestured towards the unrestricted
exit. ‘Why don’t we just keep going?’ she suggested. ‘You can get some smack and I can take a taxi home.’

‘Sure,’ said Matthew. ‘You take it over then.’

She squinted up at him. ‘Take over what?’

He made pushing motions with his hands. ‘The wheels. It’s no skin off my nose if you want to scarper. You’re not my responsibility.’ He squatted down beside
her. ‘But if you want out, why don’t you just tell the Doc and phone for a taxi from your room?’

She shrugged. ‘Probably for the same reason you don’t.’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Reckon the guy from the band’s got it about right. What he says is, when you’ve flung yourself into the ultimate abyss and
you’re still alive when you reach the bottom, it’s probably worth asking yourself what the hell you’re doing down there. So, do you want lunch? Or do you want out?’

‘Both,’ said Jinx, ‘but I’ll settle for lunch. You’re not a rebel at all, are you?’

Matthew grinned. ‘That depends,’ he said.

‘On what?’

‘
Cui bono?
If it’s me who gains, then I might be interested. What’s the deal?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘but I’ll tell you this for free. If you ever manage to kick the habit, you could make millions. You’re
even more manipulative than my father.’

‘It takes one to recognize one,’ he said, spinning her round. ‘You’re not exactly backward in that direction yourself. Hold tight now. Let’s see how
fast this contraption will go.’ He bent down to press her back into the seat and, as he did so, she turned her head to smile at him.

The shock of
déjà vu
was so extreme that she flung her hand out instinctively and caught him a glancing blow across the face.
Meg and Russell . . . Meg and
Leo . . .
BLOOD
. . . whore . . . whore . . .
WHORE
. . .

Chapter Seven

AT THE OUTSET
Bobby Franklyn had been careful with the four stolen credit cards, all of which carried the flamboyant signature that was so
easy to copy. He had started in a modest way with purchases under thirty pounds to avoid incurring the inevitable telephoned checks, but after two days he was seduced by a leather jacket at one
hundred and fifty pounds and caution gave way to greed. He sweated under the beady eye of the shop manager while the call for authorization was made, only to hit an adrenalin high when the jacket
was handed to him and he knew that the cards had still not been reported missing. In the next five days, using each in turn, he bought goods to the value of six thousand pounds without, apparently,
ever reaching any of the credit ceilings. He had yet to touch the woman’s cards.

Of course, he grew careless. It was the nature of the beast to proclaim his cleverness and flaunt his new-found wealth, for there was no forward-thinking in Bobby’s
intellectual make-up, merely a childlike need to gratify immediate appetites and demonstrate that he was a cut above his peers. He strutted his stuff with increasing arrogance, provoking jealousy
and resentment, and was grassed up by an old school-friend, turned police informant, for a smoke and the price of a beer.

Friday, 24 June, Romsey Road Police Station, Winchester, Hampshire – 12.15 p.m.

At about the same time that Jinx was considering absconding, DS Sean Fraser tapped on the open door of DI Maddocks’s office. ‘You remember what the Super said about a
third party nicking our couple’s IDs and money? Well, I took a look at the charge sheets for the last week and came up with a cracker. It’s too bloody neat to be coincidence,
Guv’nor. A lad by the name of Bobby Franklyn was brought in this morning by the uniformed boys. He lives on the Hawtree Estate, single-parent family, five kids all running wild. He’s
the eldest. Seems he’s been using stolen credit cards to buy electrical goods and clothes to the tune of six thousand quid in five days. When they prised up the floorboards in his bedroom
they found four cards in the name of Mr Leo Wallader and two in the name of Miss M. S. Harris. He claims he found them in a carrier bag in the High Street, but when Ted Garrety phoned through to
find out when they’d been reported missing he was told that, as far as the companies who issued them are concerned, they’re still kosher. Ted’s been trying to contact the two
cardholders. Wallader’s registered address is 12 Glenavon Gardens, Richmond, and Harris’s is 43a Shoebury Terrace, Hammersmith. Two London numbers with no answer at either end. What do
you reckon?’

The permanent scowl on Maddocks’s heavy face smoothed into alert interest. ‘Is Franklyn still here?’

Fraser nodded. ‘He’s a nasty piece of work. Seventeen years old, and knows his rights. We’ve hauled him in before but this is the first time he’s been old
enough and bad enough to charge. According to Garrety, he had five televisions, half a dozen stereo systems still in their boxes beside his bed, and a quantity of brand new flashy clothing in his
cupboard.’

‘Does he have a brief with him?’

‘A young woman from Hicks and Hicks. She’s advised him to keep his mouth shut.’

The scowl returned. ‘Miranda Jones, I suppose. If women stuck to what they’re good at instead of muscling in on the male preserves, the world would be a better
place.’ He flicked a lazy glance at the young sergeant’s prudish face. ‘You’d agree with that, wouldn’t you, Sean?’ he goaded him, knowing that Fraser
hadn’t got the balls to contradict a superior officer.

Fraser stared at a spot on the wall above the Inspector’s head and toyed briefly with the idea of thumping the bastard. He really hated Maddocks. He suspected the man’s
misogyny was pathological and put it down to the fact that Maddocks was in the middle of his third divorce. But it was no excuse, any more than it was an excuse for his apparent willingness to
abandon the six children he had had along the way. ‘She’s better than some of the men they send, Guv.’

‘OK, let’s take a look at him,’ said Maddocks, abandoning his sport to push his chair back and stand up. ‘No chance he’s our murderer, I
suppose?’

Fraser stood aside to let him pass. ‘I wouldn’t think so, Guv. According to Ted Garrety, he has a reputation for liking little girls. A thirteen-year-old accused him of
rape a couple of years back but no charges were ever brought because her mother removed her very speedily when it emerged how many other boys her daughter had slept with. The view is that Franklyn
has all the makings of a paedophile, and give it another two to three years and we’ll be banging the little sod up on a regular basis for child molestation. A type like that is deeply
inadequate, so he’d probably rob two mature dead adults without a qualm, but I doubt very much he’d have the bottle to abduct them while they were alive.’

Which was a fair summary, thought Maddocks, as he examined the depressingly low-grade young man in the interview room who couldn’t open his mouth without uttering obscenities
and who fingered his crotch from beginning to end of the interview, apparently unaware he was doing it. He appeared unhealthy and unwashed with pinched, sharp features, eyes that looked anywhere
but at the person to whom he was talking, and a sullen cast to his mouth. At times like this, the Fascist in Gareth Maddocks wondered why society tolerated such weasels within its midst.

‘We have something of a problem here,’ he murmured after Franklyn had replied ‘no fucking comment’ to the first three questions. ‘I’m going to
deal this one straight, Bobby, so that you know where I’m coming from. I think, then, you might decide to give me some answers. I’m not interested in your credit card fraud. As far as
I’m concerned that’s a separate issue. What I am interested in are the two people named on the cards, Mr Leo Wallader and Miss M. S. Harris, and the reason I’m interested is
because I have two corpses I can’t identify who were found in Ardingly Woods yesterday afternoon. Now, guesswork tells DS Fraser and myself that our couple could very well be Mr Wallader and
Miss Harris and it would save us a great deal of time and effort if you could confirm that for us, Bobby. We think the chances are you stumbled on the bodies a week or so ago and did what any
normal red-blooded male would do, and removed their wallets.’ He smiled amiably. ‘What the hell, eh? They were dead, not by your hand, no question about that, but they weren’t
going to need their credit cards any more, were they? How about giving us a break on this one? It really would help us to know who they are.’

‘Sod off,’ said Bobby. ‘No fucking comment.’

Maddocks glanced towards the young solicitor. ‘What say the Sergeant and I leave the room for five minutes and you discuss options with your client? It’s worth pointing
out, I think, that we might very well decide to bring additional charges against Mr Franklyn if and when we identify our dead couple as Wallader and Harris, and I should add that perverting the
course of justice will be the least of them.’

Fraser watched Bobby’s involuntary masturbation with marked distaste. ‘If we’re forced to go house to house on the Hawtree Estate, I wonder if we’ll turn up
someone else, a young girl perhaps, who was in the woods with Bobby.’

‘There weren’t no one wiv me,’ said Franklyn in a rush, ignoring his solicitor’s warning hand on his arm.
Shit, if they ever found out he’d screwed a
twelve-year-old.

‘OK, OK, so I did find them two bodies and, Jesus, they were sodding ’orrible. Smashed bloody faces and bluebottles everywhere, but I was on me own. D’you fink
I’d ’ave been able to lift them cards if I’d ’ad someone wiv me? Use yer fucking brains. They’d ’ave wanted an in on the goods, wouldn’t they? But it was
like you said, them two was dead and they wasn’t gonna use their sodding cards again. Couldn’t see no ’arm in taking them and doin’ a bit of business.’

‘You had a duty to report it, Bobby,’ said Maddocks mildly, his habitual aggression cloaked in an encouraging smile which said: Don’t worry about it, lad,
we’re men of the world, you and I, and we both know rules are made to be broken.

‘Fuck that! It weren’t none of my business. If I were a bit keener on you lot, then maybe, but you’ve never done me no favours so why should I do one for you? They
was so bloody dead, you wouldn’t believe. Couldn’t see what difference it’d make to them if they was found a week ago or if they was found today. They’d still be dead,
wouldn’t they?’

Maddocks couldn’t argue with that. ‘Are you sure you were on your own, Bobby? If you had a girl with you we need to know now. It is important.’ He was thinking of
the skid marks on the bank, made by a woman’s heel.

‘Yeah, I’m sure.’ He pondered for a moment. ‘I’ll tell you this for free. If a girl ’ad seen what I saw, she’d still be puking all over the
sodding shop. I’m not thinking about it too much meself.’ His skin grew even more unhealthy-looking. ‘I ’ad to ’old me breath to search them. It was that bloody
disgusting. Reckon there was a million bluebottles in that ditch. You gonna charge me? It weren’t me what did them in. I don’t do that kind of stuff.’