The Devil's Chair (25 page)

She looked a bit embarrassed. Then she smiled. The smile transformed her face into something almost open, almost happy. But only almost. ‘All right,' she said. ‘I'm not doing anything else today. The weather's so lovely, why don't we sit in the garden and I'll make us a cup of tea.'

Randall practically rubbed his hands together. What an attractive proposition. He sat at the small wooden table and chairs and surveyed the valley, waited for the rattle of tea cups. Then a sliver of unease trickled down his back like cold sweat.

A cup of tea? Mushroom soup? Hell – was she going to try to poison him?

It gave him some insight into people who have been acquitted of a crime. They may be acquitted but are they ever really free? Is it possible that the human mind never really forgets? That some small doubt always creaks in through the cracks underneath the door?

He pasted a deliberately bland expression on his face.

Charity reappeared with a tea tray, sat down and poured, not asking him whether he wanted milk or sugar, simply pouring it with milk and pushing the sugar bowl across.

‘You ask me about Hope Cottage,' she began. ‘There was a family tragedy when I was a teenager and so I came into money when I was twenty-one. That enabled me to buy here.'

She had pre-empted him.
Her dark eyes mocked him, her mouth curving into a smile.

Randall nodded to show that he was listening and made no comment about the
family tragedy
. Charity took a lady-like sip of tea, and continued. ‘When I bought it,' she said in her pleasantly husky voice, ‘seven years ago, it was in a very bad condition. It had been derelict for a number of years and needed a lot of renovation. Bringing up to date,' she expanded, waving her hands in apology.

The question about the cottage had simply been preamble. Randall really wanted to question her about the old poisoning case but he suddenly sensed a secret. He focused his eyes down as he stirred sugar into his tea. Then he looked up. Charity's face was flushed, her pupils dilated, her mouth open and the hand that held the dainty china cup shook as she lifted it from her saucer.

‘Who lived here before you?'

‘An old lady in her nineties who was taken eventually into a nursing home. Her name was Eva Taylor.' She flushed slightly. ‘She was a bit batty.'

‘Is she still alive?'

‘I don't know. It was seven years ago. She would be about a hundred by now so probably not.'

She looked at him expectantly as though she fully expected him to pursue the subject.

‘Which nursing home?'

‘I don't know the name. I'm sorry. It's probably somewhere near here. Why?'

Randall made a mental note to trace her. Why? He didn't know.

‘Did she have any family?'

‘I did speak to a daughter once or twice but I never met her.'

‘In what way was Mrs Taylor batty?'

Charity looked slightly bored. ‘Oh, the usual – forgetful, full of old stories, wandered around the Long Mynd in all weathers, at all times apparently, day and night, collecting herbs and fungi and such like for her spells.'

Randall realized this was just the sort of person he had imagined had planted the bouquet of herbs. He frowned. ‘Spells?'

Charity looked bored with the subject. ‘Oh, the usual,' she repeated. ‘She had a reputation for being a witch.' She laughed, putting her hand in front of her mouth as though it was impolite to giggle. ‘She did have a few hairs sprouting on her chin and she was bent up with arthritis. She walked with a stick, not flew on a broomstick.' She smiled. ‘And she did have a black cat too. I only met her a couple of times. She just seemed like a typical old woman to me but people in Church Stretton told me they'd come to Hope Cottage to sort out life's little problems.'

DI Randall lifted his eyebrows.

‘Oh, yes. She claimed to be able to make love potions and things to make people lose a baby or …' Her voice trailed away. ‘I suppose if she wasn't so aged and almost certainly dead by now she's just the sort of person that it's rumoured has spirited little Daisy away.' She giggled. ‘Probably needed a little girl who hadn't been christened for one of her black magic spells.'

Randall frowned. He did not like supernatural explanations for what was patently not a supernatural abduction of a little girl and there was nothing funny about any of this.

‘That's right,' he said, suppressing his disapproval. He deliberately did not mention the flower message. There were always facts the police held back.

‘In fact,' Charity said with another embarrassed laugh, volunteering information now, ‘it seems I'm the first non-witch to live here. The entire area …' She looked across the valley, ‘is full of folklore, all of it evil and connected with the Devil. But …' She put her elbows on the table, her chin cupped in her palm and looked up into Randall's face with a small hint of a smile. ‘I just love it here. It's so raw and wild.' She smiled. ‘The very opposite of my work environment, the manufactured world of the Middle East. Everything there is … so,' she frowned, ‘false. Everything.'

And yet that was the world she chose to work in. But then it would be a well-paid job and give her financial freedom. He met her eyes and saw a determined, ambitious and professional woman.

What was he missing? What else?

‘Have you ever had the feeling before that someone's been in your cottage while you were away?'

‘Well … Shirley usually comes in just before I'm due back and gives the place a tidy over, puts the heating and hot water on. That sort of thing, you know?'

‘You've never had the feeling that somebody other than Shirley has been in?'

‘No-o-o.' But she was frowning and her tone was dubious. She added quietly, ‘At least, sometimes I've thought things have been moved but I've always decided it's probably Shirley.' She sounded less sure of herself now and was frowning. ‘It's a horrible thought,' she said softly, ‘someone invading your home, your private space, your inner self.'

‘Yes,' Randall agreed.

Why did she live out here? Why in such a lonely and wild place? She had given an explanation of sorts but it didn't satisfy Randall. Charity Ignatio was keeping something from him. And it wasn't the old tragedy. She had flaunted that in front of him, waving it as audaciously as a national flag.

But she was hiding something else. What he wanted to ask her was
What?

‘More tea?' she asked sweetly. Randall shook his head. ‘No, thanks,' he said, ‘one's enough.'

Not too many
, he thought.

R
andall tracked Eva Taylor down in an old folks' home just outside Church Stretton – easily done if you're in the police. She was not gaga by any means but a sharp-eyed, sharp-nosed lady with sparkling blue eyes and an intelligent manner. He shook her hand.

‘Now why have you come to see me?'

He had the feeling she knew perfectly well why he was here. But she was calling the shots.

‘The little girl,' she said. ‘Oh, my, there's evil there all right.'

‘What do you know?'

The old lady sat back and regarded him. ‘Where do I start?' she said, perfectly at ease.

‘I don't know,' he said.

‘Hope Cottage. She's there now, isn't she?'

‘You mean Charity.'

She nodded. ‘That's a name I wouldn't have chosen for her.'

Randall decided to play her game. ‘So what name would you have chosen for her?'

She whispered something in his ear.

Randall made one more phone call before he clocked off for the evening.

‘Mansfield,' he said, ‘DI Randall here. Just one small question. Was Daisy christened?'

Mansfield spluttered. ‘What the fuck's that got to do with anything?'

‘Something someone said,' Randall replied. ‘So was she?'

‘No. Neither of us believed in it,' Neil said.

Randall thanked him and put down the phone.

In the end, uncertain what the instruction ‘casual dress' meant, she'd chosen a pair of snug-fitting jeans teamed with a black T-shirt and high-heeled black leather boots, with the result that she felt underdressed to be going out for dinner with Simon Pendlebury.

Right up until he arrived in similar garb of jeans and a check shirt. She gaped at him. His hair was tousled and he looked comfortable, relaxed compared to the habitually tense person usually turned out to immaculate perfection.

She regarded him without saying a word, simply looking curious and intrigued.

‘I meant what I said,' he said, smiling. Not grinning. ‘Casual dress and you'll need something for your hair.'

Still bemused, she fished out a headscarf, tied it under her chin Audrey Hepburn style, and followed him outside to a gleaming white Mercedes E Class with red leather seats, the hood down. He held the door open with a little bow. ‘My lady.'

Still feeling a little more like Audrey Hepburn than Martha Gunn, coroner of Shrewsbury and its environs, she slid into the seat and sat back, wondering where this was heading and she didn't just mean which pub.

Simon eased the car out on to the bypass.

Martha had always believed that you could judge a man by his driving. But if this was true she'd been wrong about Simon. She would have imagined he would have driven furiously, recklessly and fast.
Taking no prisoners
, as her father would have said.

In fact, he drove rather sedately with a lot more patience than she would have imagined, sizing up the road and the opportunities before pulling out to overtake. After half an hour they drew up outside an unpretentious country pub. Simon opened her door and she stepped out, shaking her hair free. She looked at him, puzzled. ‘Whatever are you up to, Simon?' she asked, half laughing.

‘I just wanted you to see a different side of me,' he said seriously. ‘I feel …' He steered her towards the pub door. ‘Oh, let's get a couple of drinks in and chat across a table,' he said.

Martha was bemused. She really didn't get this.

He returned with a glass of red wine and a beer, his face still cheerful and friendly. There was none of the tight-lipped stare he had adopted since Evie had died. He looked happy – happier than she had seen him for years.

‘I've been busy,' he said.

‘Yes, you said.'

‘I'm finally putting my house in order.'

‘Ri-ight?'

He leaned in. There was nothing threatening about his proximity. He simply looked like a very good friend who had something to say.

‘When I said to you about working so hard,' he said, ‘I realized.'

She didn't even prompt him with a
go on
. She knew this was a significant moment in their relationship.

‘The trouble is,' he said, ‘that with a successful business …'

What is your business?

‘You're all too aware how easily it can all go under.'

‘But you have …' she grasped for the word. ‘You have managers?'

‘It sounds like a cliché, Martha,' he said, ‘but they don't do the job as well as I do.'

She nodded. ‘So you have no one to delegate to.'

‘Exactly. And …' again he hesitated, ‘I'm not looking for sympathy,' he said, ‘but what's the point of pretending you want to lotus eat alone?'

She snorted. ‘I've never been a great one for lotus eating,' she said. ‘It sounds great but, well, I'm happier working.'

And suddenly he was like the older brother she didn't have, looking at her slyly from narrowed eyes. ‘And what if you meet someone special?'

She flushed. What she wanted to say was,
I have. But he's not for me
.

What she actually said was, ‘I'll cross that bridge when I reach it.'

The evening passed pleasantly. They had reached a new and happy place in their relationship and any awkwardness between them had melted. She felt the parameters had been set. He dropped her off a little before eleven p.m. with a chaste kiss on her cheek and a very chummy hug. Again, nothing threatening. The car roared off as she closed the front door behind her.

To an empty house.

Sukey had gone out with friends and Sam had left a message to say he was staying overnight with his buddy. She was alone. It was a taste of the future.

This is as risky as it is necessary. I need to keep the child's disappearance in the public eye.

And this is a sure way to do it.

I smile.

She always did this: arrived at the supermarket early, forgetting that it didn't open until ten on a Sunday morning. So now she had ten minutes to kill. She glanced around her car. Full of rubbish as usual: old half-read newspapers, sweet wrappers, a couple of empty Coke bottles. She'd fill the time by tidying it out. And so it was Maria Shelling who found them. She had tied her rubbish into a plastic carrier bag and was about to drop it into the bin when she saw, folded neatly, right on the top of the other trash, a pair of child's pyjamas. She stared at them. The papers had been full of the clothes little Daisy Walsh had been wearing when she had vanished. White pyjamas with a pattern of yellow teddy bears, available from Tesco's stores up and down the country. Without touching them Maria continued to stare. The way the clothes were arranged deliberately, exposing the torn and blood-stained pyjama bottoms there was no doubt in her mind that these clothes were Daisy's. Not only that but they were the very clothes she had been wearing when the accident had happened. They must have been taken off her and put here ostentatiously and deliberately by the person who had abducted her from the accident site, and it must have been done fairly recently by that same person. That person might still be here, watching her. Maria looked around her, suddenly on her guard. Who was it? All around her cars were pulling in now the shop was open. People were coming and going, threading into the store. Families. Couples. Lone men, lone women, young and old. Was it any of them? A few were gossiping at the shop's entrance. Was it one of them? That shifty-looking man. Did he have Daisy? That thin, cross-looking woman using the ATM. Was it her? That couple just getting out of that car. Was it them? Did they have Daisy secreted away somewhere?