Little Face (23 page)

`So was Darryl Beer passionate about Cryer, then?' asked Simon.
`Since you're claiming he stabbed her.'

`That's different and you fucking well know it,' Charlie snapped.

`Fancourt's son went to live with him after Cryer died.' Proust
wrinkled his nose, as if bored or disgusted by the precise details. `His
mother, I gather, was happy to act as an unpaid Mary Poppins, and
Fancourt was free to swan off with his new girlfriend. The best of both
worlds. It sounds like a viable motive to me.'

Charlie shook her head. `You haven't met him, sir. All Fancourt
wanted, after separating from Laura, was a new start. He wouldn't have risked prison to kill Laura. Alice Fancourt, on the other hand ...
I can imagine her taking a crazy risk like that.'

`You can imagine.' Proust sneered at Charlie. `If I wanted to work
with John Lennon, I'd hire a clairvoyant.'

`Sir, if I could just ... ' Simon persisted. The Snowman had asked
for the results of his thought processes, so now he could damn well listen to some of them. `Yesterday I had a look at the Laura Cryer files.'

`I see. So you're asking my permission for something you've already
done.' Proust sounded interested, though. The leaden atmosphere
had diluted; everyone felt it.

`I noticed some things that didn't seem quite right. There were no
cuts on Cryer's arms or hands. If Beer tried to grab her bag and she
fought for it, surely there would have been.'

Charlie looked as if she had turned to stone.

`Not necessarily,' said Chris Gibbs. `It's easy to imagine Beer panicking and plunging the knife straight into her chest. As we know he did.'

`In which case Cryer would have stopped struggling pretty soon
after receiving that one fatal blow. So why was there so much of
Beer's hair and skin on her body? There were no foreign skin cells
found under her nails, nothing at all.'

`Of course there wasn't,' said Charlie. `Both her hands would have
been on the bag, to stop him taking it. As for the hair and skin on her
body, Beer probably knelt down and leaned over her after she was
dead. He might have checked her pockets, in case there were any valuables he'd missed.'

`Why did he cut the strap off the bag with his knife, then?' said
Simon, who'd had this argument with himself already. `It was cut at
both ends. That would take a while to do, with a good quality leather
handbag. If Cryer was lying on the ground bleeding to death after the
one killer stab wound, Beer could have taken the bag in one piece.'

`Maybe she had the strap diagonally across her chest,' Sellers suggested. `A lot of women wear their bags like that. When she fell to the
ground, it might have been trapped under her body. If Beer wasn't wearing gloves, he wouldn't have wanted to touch the body to move
it, would he?'

`The strap was found beside Cryer's body, not under it,' said Simon,
amazed to have to tell Sellers such a basic fact, Sellers who had worked
on the case. Had none of the team spotted this crucial detail? What the
fuck was wrong with them? `It just doesn't add up. It's almost as if the
strap was cut and left by the body to draw attention to the missing bag.
To make the stabbing look like a mugging that went too far.'

Proust was looking worried. `Sergeant, I want you to go over all this
again with a fine-toothed comb. Go and see Beer, see what the little
toe-rag has to say. It's all going to be in tomorrow's papers anyway,
according to the press liaison office. Some pipsqueak has cottoned on
to the connection between the names Cryer and Fancourt. If we aren't
seen to be going over the Cryer case again, they'll accuse us of negligence, not to mention downright stupidity. And they'll be right!' So
that was what had changed the inspector's mind, the threat of censure
from the tabloids. Nothing Simon had said. Might as well be fucking
invisible, he thought.

Proust looked pointedly at Charlie. `All Waterhouse's reservations
sound valid to me. You should have been on to this already.'

Charlie blushed and stared at the floor. Simon knew she wouldn't
get over this in a hurry. Nobody spoke. Simon waited for Proust to
soften the blow, to say, `It's just a formality, of course. As Sergeant
Zailer rightly points out, Beer is as guilty as hell.' But Proust was not
a softener of blows. All he said was, `Sergeant Zailer, can I see you in
my office, please? Now.'

Charlie had no choice but to follow him to his cubicle. Simon felt
irrationally guilty, like a collaborator. But sod it. All he'd done was
inject a bit of rationality into the proceedings. Charlie seemed determined to be dense at the moment. Was she doing it to spite him?

Sellers elbowed Simon in the ribs. `It's going to take a pretty decent
blow-job to get the Sarge out of trouble this time,' he said.

Monday, September 29, 2003

FEELING WORSE AFTER seeing Simon, I park the car and prepare
myself, once again, to walk into the big, cold, white house that is
supposed to be my home. I see Vivienne watching me from the
window of Florence's nursery. She does not retreat when she sees me
look up at her. Neither does she wave or smile. Her eyes are like two
perfectly engineered tracking devices, following my progress along
the drive.

When I open the door, she is in the hall, and I do not understand
how she could have got there so quickly. Vivienne manages to be
everywhere, yet I have never seen her hurry or exert herself. David
stands behind her, watching avidly. He doesn't even look at me as I
come in. He licks his lower lip nervously, waiting for his mother to
speak.

`Where's Little Face?' I ask, hearing no baby noises, only silence
vibrating through the house. Hollow, screaming silence. `Where is she?'
There is panic in my voice.

No answer.

`What have you done with her?'

`Alice, where have you been?' says Vivienne. `I thought you and I
had no secrets from one another. I trusted you, and I thought you
trusted me.'

`What are you talking about?'

`You lied to me. You said you were going into town to do some
shopping.'

`I didn't find anything I wanted.' My lie was pathetic, I can see that
now. As if I could even think about shopping in my present distraught
state. Vivienne must have seen through my story right from the start.

`You went to the police station, didn't you? That policeman telephoned, Detective Constable Waterhouse. Is it true that you told him
your mobile phone had been stolen?' She places a disgusted stress on
this last word.

`I was going to go shopping,' I say, thinking quickly. `But then my
phone wasn't in my bag. . . '

`Detective Constable Waterhouse said you were hysterical. He was
extremely worried about you. So am I.'

Defiance rises in me like a fountain. `My phone was in my bag this
morning and I know I didn't take it out! One of you two must have.
You've got no right to take my things without permission! I know you
both think I'm sick in the head, and so does Simon, but even sick people have got a right not to have their private possessions stolen!'

`Simon,' David mutters under his breath. His sole contribution.

`Alice, can you hear how irrational you sound?' says Vivienne gently. `You misplace an object, and your immediate thought is to involve
the police. I found your phone in your room, just after you went out.
No-one took it anywhere.'

`Where's Little Face?' I ask again.

`One thing at a time.' Vivienne has never believed in the natural ebb
and flow of a dialogue. As a child, one of her hobbies was to produce
a written agenda for every family dinner. Vivienne, her mother and her
father would take it in turn to speak, to deliver their `daily report', as
Vivienne called it. Her turn always came first, and she took the minutes as well, in a notebook.

`All right, then. Where's my phone? Can I have it? Give it to me!'

Vivienne sighs. `Alice, what's got into you? I've put it in the kitchen.
The baby is sleeping. There's no conspiracy against you. David and I are both very concerned about you. Why did you lie to us?' Any impartial
observer would see a kind middle-aged woman trying in vain to reason
with a dishevelled, shaking maniac in an ill-fitting green dress.

Exhaustion scratches at my brain. The insides of my eyelids feel
grainy and the tendons in both my hands ache, as they always do when
I am deprived of sleep. I do not want to talk any more. I push past Vivienne and run upstairs.

When I get to the nursery, I throw open the door, more violently
than I intended to. It thuds against the wall. I hear footsteps mount the
stairs behind me. Little Face is not in the cot. I swing round, hoping to
see her in the Moses basket or her bouncy chair, but she is nowhere in
the room.

I turn to leave, but as I get to it the door is pulled shut from the outside. A key turns in the lock. `Where is she?' I scream. `You said she
was sleeping! Let me at least see her, please!' I hear my words crash
into each other. I am frighteningly out-of-control.

`Alice.' Vivienne is on the landing, a bodiless voice. `Please try to
calm down. The baby is sleeping in the little lounge. She's perfectly all
right. You're behaving like a maniac, Alice. I can't allow you to rampage around the house in your present condition. I'm worried about
what you might do to yourself and the baby.'

I sink to my knees and rest my head against the door. `Let me out,'
I groan, knowing it is pointless. An image of Laura appears in my
mind. If she could only see me now she would laugh and laugh.

I curl into a ball and cry, not bothering to wipe away my tears. I sob
until the top of the vile green dress is sopping wet. It occurs to me that
this was what I was wearing the only time I met Laura, and that I cried
my eyes out on that occasion as well, once Laura had gone and I
realised what a fool she'd made of me. Maybe that's why I hate the
dress so much.

It was when I still worked in London, before I moved in with
David. Laura booked an appointment with me using an alias, Maggie
Royle. I later found out that that was her mother's name before she married Roger Cryer. I met Laura's parents at the funeral, and was
naive and presumptuous enough to feel slighted when they were frosty
towards me.

David and I didn't want to go to Laura's funeral. Vivienne insisted.
She said something odd: `You should want to go.' Most people would
have said only, `You should go.' I assumed Vivienne was talking about
the importance of doing one's duty willingly rather than grudgingly.

Maggie Royle was my first appointment that day. She insisted on seeing me early in the morning because she had to be at work for a ten
o'clock meeting. Over the telephone I asked her, in the way that I
would show an interest in any new patient, what she did for a living.
She said `research', which I suppose was true. Laura was a scientist who
worked on gene therapy, but she was careful not to mention science.

She arrived at my office in Ealing wearing full but subtle make-up
and a navy blue Yves St Laurent suit, the same one in which she was
found murdered. Vivienne told me that. `It was caked in blood,' she
said. Then, as an afterthought: `Blood is quite thick, you know. Like
oil paint.' Vivienne makes no secret of how delighted she was when
Felix moved into The Elms. `And he's been so happy here,' she says.
`He adores me.' I believe Vivienne is genuinely unable to distinguish
between the best possible outcome for all concerned and what she personally wants.

Laura was petite, with tiny hands and feet like a child's, but her
high-heeled, square-toed suede shoes made her almost as tall as me. I
was struck by her colouring. Her skin was olive but her irises were a
vivid blue and the whites around them so bright they made her complexion look sallow. Her hair was long, almost black and very curly.
She had a wide, full mouth and a slight overbite, but the overall effect
was not unattractive. I remember thinking she looked powerful and
confident, and feeling flattered that she should have come to me for
help. I was eager-more so than I usually am-to know what had
brought her to my office. Many of my patients looked shabby and
defeated; she looked the opposite.

We shook hands and smiled at one another, and I asked her to take
a seat. She arranged herself on the sofa opposite me, crossing her legs
twice, at the knees and ankles, and folding her hands in her lap.

I asked her, as I do all my patients at the first meeting, to tell me as
much about herself as she could, whatever she felt was most important.
It is easier to treat the talkers because they reveal so much more of
themselves, and Laura was a talker. As she spoke, I felt sure that I
would be able to help her.

I am embarrassed, now, to think that I sat there and nodded and
made notes, and all the time she must have been thinking I was a
gullible idiot. I didn't even know what David's wife looked like. Laura
must have counted on that, must have known David would destroy all
photographic evidence of her and of their marriage as soon as things
went wrong.