The Darkness and the Deep (43 page)

Ellie went to sit beside her, taking one of the unresisting hands in hers. ‘Katy, it’s the police – Inspector Fleming and – er . . .’

‘Tansy,’ Kerr supplied. ‘We know each other already.’ She went across to drop to her knees on the hearthrug, looking up into the stricken woman’s face. ‘Katy, I’m sorry – so sorry.’

Katy nodded, as if someone had pulled a string.

‘Look, my boss here wants to ask you something – something terribly important. We wouldn’t be intruding at a time like this if it wasn’t. All right?’

This time, Katy simply looked back at her as if she had hardly heard what was being said and certainly failed to understand it. Watching, Fleming realised she was traumatised; she wondered whether she would be physically capable of answering questions. Katy needed a doctor, but a doctor would almost certainly send the police packing and there was too much at stake. It seemed unlikely, in any case, that anything they could ask Katy would damage this damaged woman any more.

Standing over her on crutches wasn’t going to help the atmosphere. Fleming backed to a seat opposite and ungracefully collapsed into it.

‘Mrs Anderson – Katy,’ she said in her low, persuasive voice, ‘this is going to be very tough for you, but what you can tell us might let us find the person who killed your husband Rob and your son. Do you think you’re strong enough to help us?’

At the mention of her husband’s name a flicker of animation came to the woman’s face. ‘Rob,’ she said with a deep, shuddering sigh. ‘For Rob. Yes.’

‘It’s about Rob I want to talk to you.’ Fleming paused; she was treading on eggshells here. ‘I never met him, but he was obviously a wonderful man. Everyone we talked to here seemed to love him.’

‘Except – except Nat.’ Katy was starting to look distressed, her lips quivering.

‘Let’s not think about that now,’ Fleming said hastily. ‘Katy, how long were you and Rob married?’

‘Four – four years. That was all we got.’

Another dangerous topic. ‘Did he ever talk to you about his life beforehand, about things that might have happened before he met you?’

She looked bewildered. ‘Sort of – yes, I suppose he did. Mostly we talked about the future, what we’d do, our life together . . .’ Her eyes filled and tears began to spill silently over, pouring unchecked and seemingly unnoticed down her cheeks. Ellie, a troubled witness, gathered tissues from a box and dabbed with tender ineffectiveness at her friend’s cheeks.

God, this was even worse than Fleming had imagined! Still, she had to go on with it now. ‘Did Rob ever talk to you about an accident he was involved in?’

‘Accident?’ That connected; Fleming could see her thinking about it. ‘Yes, there was something, I remember – he didn’t like to talk about it, though. We’d both had a bad time in the past and he always used to say not to look back, that every day was the first day of the rest of your life.’ She gave a convulsive sob. ‘He said he’d show me stuff about it sometime – but we never got round to it. I think he forgot – we were just busy and happy.’

‘Stuff?’ Kerr and Fleming spoke together. Fleming’s eyes went to the pile of newspapers on the floor; there would be officers working on accessing newspaper archives by now, but this would be a lot quicker. Hardly daring to ask, she said, ‘Did he keep the Press reports about it, Katy?’

‘I don’t know. Probably. That’s a pile of his things there – I was going to have gone through it and sorted everything out today, before I found out that Nat had taken my car again and I just knew something bad would happen.’

Kerr got up. ‘This pile?’ She picked it up and took it back to Fleming’s chair, handing half to the inspector. While Ellie murmured comfortingly to her friend, they both started flipping through the cards, the cuttings about lifeboat rescues, the
Galloway Globe
with pictures of crew dinners and Rob, looking self-conscious, having his hand shaken by some lifeboat dignitary.

Kerr said suddenly, ‘Here it is!’ She held up a yellowed newspaper, the
Helensburgh Clarion
, and Fleming read the headline at the foot of the front page.

‘Naval officer in child’s death crash.’ And there was a photograph of the nine-year-old boy who had been killed and one, too, of his grieving mother.

Enid Davis sat in her car in the gathering darkness outside Katy Anderson’s house. It was parked where she had parked it before, more than once, in the patch of deep shadow formed by the angle of two buildings, where the light from the one street lamp did not reach. Here she had waited for Willie Duncan; here she had watched last night until all the lights went out and she could be sure that no one would see her in her thin surgical gloves deftly loosening the wheel nuts of Katy Anderson’s car with a spanner. She’d always been good with her hands; she’d had to be, with her useless husband.

She’d been cool enough then, but now she was close to panic. It had all gone so terribly, horribly wrong. Her heart was racing and with her medical experience she knew she was hyperventilating. She had to take slower, less shallow breaths. The game wasn’t over yet; if she could just stay calm, get in to see Katy alone, she could still save herself.

There was a strange car outside now. A friend, most likely, having heard about Nat. Enid would just have to wait till she left, that was all, then make her own neighbourly visit to sympathise over the tragic accident and condemn the carelessness of garage mechanics. Not that she’d harm Katy – of course not. She wouldn’t want to harm anyone, not directly like that, in cold blood with her own hands. Not unless she really had to. She just needed to persuade Katy she ought to be in bed, then Enid could get her hands on those newspapers and destroy them.

She still didn’t know how she’d managed not to gasp audibly when she saw them first, lifting up the pile to sit down next to Katy and catching sight of the masthead of the
Helensburgh Clarion
. There had been a photograph of her in more than one edition and if Katy saw it . . .

It was the most cursed luck. You’d have thought the Bastard would have been ashamed of what he’d done, not kept the reports of it like some sick souvenir. She’d had no chance to remove them under Katy’s nose and Katy had obstinately refused her help in clearing and sorting, said it was stuff she had to go through herself. So it was all Katy’s fault, in fact; this latest disastrous mistake would never have happened, if she hadn’t been so stubborn – which was bad luck too. And Enid hadn’t even managed to reach Katy before anyone else did, so she had to sit here, fighting her fear in the encroaching darkness. She’d always known she was the unluckiest person in the entire world.

Muriel Henderson walked home, still in a bad temper. It was high time something was done about Enid, more than high time. She was barely civil to Muriel these days and once or twice she’d been downright rude. Then walking out like that! It simply wasn’t good enough. As
senior
receptionist Muriel was due proper respect.

Of course, if there was hanky-panky going on with her and Dr Lewis – as Muriel was still sure there was – he would stand up for her. Well, if it came to that she’d just have to say it was either Enid or her. That would settle it; without Muriel, the whole practice would collapse into chaos and none of the doctors could afford
that
. Dr Lewis would have to change his tune.

She’d speak to Dr Matthews about it tomorrow and put an end to it. An unpleasant smile came to her face as she reached Mayfield Gardens. Enid’s days were numbered.

The car was still there. Enid looked wretchedly at her watch, for the hundredth time. Quarter of an hour – what if they decided to stay all evening? What if she couldn’t get Katy alone? What if . . . ?
Stop it
, she told herself.
Stop it, stop it!

It was so unfair, the way it had all turned out. It was to have been her beautiful, elegant, secret revenge for what the Bastard had done to Timmy. He’d got off scot-free; nothing he could have done, the police said, when Timmy came flying out of a side road in front of him on his bike. Nothing he could do? He could have swerved, avoided him, couldn’t he? He’d killed
her son
.

Though it was just like Timmy, too – never a thought for the pain his carelessness would cause his mother, though she’d warned him often enough what it would do to her if anything happened to him. The impotent anger bubbled up in her even now: anger against him; anger against the police who wouldn’t punish the man who had ruined her life; against her husband who had, typically, refused to consider a civil case, knowing how important it was to her; anger against Anderson. Above all, against Anderson, the Bastard. Well, he was dead now; he had his rightful punishment at last, but it was all wrong that Enid should be having to suffer too. God knew, she’d suffered enough already!

She had watched him obsessively from that day on. She knew when he left the Navy, knew when he took up with Katy. Unrecognised, she’d even watched him from the other side of the road coming out of the registry office with his new bride, and mouthed a curse on their happiness. With the help of local gossip, she’d tracked him to the pub in Glasgow where he was working to learn his new chosen trade, then found out from them, oh so casually, where he’d gone, and subscribed to the local paper.

The advertisement for the medical receptionist’s job – a job she’d done before – seemed like a sign, one of the few pieces of luck she’d had. Her marriage, stormy at the best of times, had collapsed into acrimonious divorce; she reverted to her maiden name, applied and was accepted.

It was a novel that gave her the idea, shortly after she arrived in Knockhaven, some foolish historical romance about wreckers in Cornwall. The beauty of it was that his death would be an accident, just as Timmy’s had been, and actually, in the final analysis, not even her responsibility. After all, the man at the helm was accountable for the safety of his craft.

And if fate was kind, who would suspect anything but a deadly misjudgement? She’d taken every precaution, though, in case it didn’t quite work out like that – especially being as unlucky as she was – and she’d meticulously covered her tracks, buying the lamps with cash in a chain store, the glass paint from a DIY warehouse. She’d worn the gloves from the surgery to handle them, and polished them as well, just in case; she’d roamed the shelves at Stranraer Library to find
Reid’s Almanac
, which a book on sailing had told her gave details of navigational lights, rather than asking a librarian who just might remember her. She’d established the sites for the lamps while apparently scrambling innocently along the rocks, as people often did, admiring the views and peering into rock pools, picking up the occasional pretty stone or shell as an excuse. She’d rather enjoyed the planning, as a matter of fact.

Enid had no scruples about the others who would die along with the Bastard. She was just a little uncomfortable about the young lad – what was his name? Luke? – though of course that wasn’t her fault; he would never have been there if Willie Duncan hadn’t taken drugs. It was Willie who should have died then; drug dealers were trash, and the world would be a better place without Ashley Randall. Poor Dr Lewis! His wife had been selfishness personified, and if there was one thing Enid hated, it was selfishness.

A movement caught her eye and she turned her head sharply. A young woman had just come hurrying round the corner and Enid sank down low in her seat; no one would pay any attention to a parked car. She went straight to the door of Katy’s house and rang the bell. Another of Katy’s friends!

Enid bent her head, catching her breath on a sob. How long must she endure this torture of waiting?

There was a chilly wind and the woman standing on the doorstep jiggled from foot to foot and huddled her jacket more closely round her as she waited. When Ellie opened the door, the two women hugged.

‘Oh, Ellie! Isn’t this awful? Poor, poor Katy! I came round as soon as I heard to see if there was anything I could do.’

Ellie shook her head. ‘Not at the moment.’ Then, glancing over her shoulder, she lowered her voice. ‘The police are with her just now.’

‘Right, I’ll come back later, shall I?’ The other woman turned to go, and Ellie came out to walk down the path with her.

‘I don’t think they’ll be long. I’ll tell you what’s been going on later, but I’d better get back to Katy now.’

Ellie watched her friend go, then with a final wave went back into the house and shut the door.

Enid brought her fists down on the steering wheel in frantic frustration. For a moment there her heart had leapt, believing they were both leaving, but she should have known better. She never got the lucky breaks.

The fog that first time was bad luck too, though at least she’d retrieved the lamps, exactly according to plan. The second time, there had been the shock of finding cars there, lots of them, and people about looking round the new houses. She’d almost considered turning back, but once the houses were occupied people would be even more watchful about strange cars lurking around their homes, so steeling her nerves she’d gone ahead, the raging storm and darkness her friend. Indeed, Enid told herself, the other cars were good cover; who could possibly notice an extra car? Her deadly mission complete, she had gone home to wait.

She knew it had succeeded when she heard car after car racing up the High Street past her little house. She only had the first warning that, in an important sense, her luck had failed her again, when she went out, as before, in the dark of night to retrieve the lamps and found a police car on guard.

And the terrible thing was, once it wasn’t an accident, the police had to look for a reason. With Muriel supplying one by telling everyone Willie had been the real target, it was plain enough what Enid needed to do.

Not that she liked doing it. Having to mow someone down, having to see him fall, and scream – horrible! She shouldn’t have had to do something like that. She’d been quite upset about it afterwards, but at least she had been sure she was safe. Until she saw those newspapers.