Rattling the Bones (35 page)

I tiptoed softly towards it and on reaching it, put out my hand and gave it a little push.

Henry’s curtains were drawn back. The silver moonlight bathed the room, the bed and its occupant - and something else standing by Henry’s bed and bending over him.

For a second I froze in horror. I couldn’t tell what it was my terrified gaze fixed on, only that it appeared the kind of monster you are sure you will see in your bedroom when you are a kid, if you are rash enough to pull your head from beneath the bedclothes. It wasn’t tall but it was bulky, strangely misshapen, a Quasimodo of a figure, partly human but animal-like in its curious bulk. It hovered there filled with silent menace.

The paralysis which seized me lasted only that second. I let out a purely involuntary yell and at the same time threw out my hand and switched on the light.

It showed me Becky Ferrier. Her hands gripped the large pillow which had given her outline the strange bulky shape. She was standing by the bedside of her grandfather, crouching forward ready to place the pillow over the face of the sleeping man.

She stared at me open-mouthed, the blue doll’s eyes wide in shock. Her horror at seeing me was as great as mine had been a few instants earlier on beholding her. Then she flung the pillow at me and as I automatically put up my arms to ward it off, she barged across the room and full into me, striking me in the midriff.

The muscles of my diaphragm went into a sickening spasm, the air whooshed out of my lungs and I folded up on the floor, gasping. Somehow I managed to throw out a hand and grab at her ankle. A rib-crunching kick was the response and she had freed herself.

Old Culpeper was stirring, struggling against his medication to wake up. But my yell had been heard below. Stout police footwear pounded on the stairs and along the corridor behind me. I rolled over onto my hands and knees, although what I thought I could do in that position I had no idea. I crawled into the corridor, drawing painful breaths, determined to be a part of whatever happened next.

Becky had started to run down the corridor towards the head of the stairs but stopped, seeing the phalanx of opposition, both protection officers and Jessica hard on their heels, bearing down on her. She turned back towards me. But this time I wasn’t letting her escape. I wrapped my arms round her legs and hung on.

There was a confused mêlée in which I managed to avoid, by the narrowest of margins, being trampled by police footwear. Then a male voice shouted in my ear, ‘All right, all right, we got her! You can let go now!’

I released my grip and managed to stagger to my feet. Becky was held fast between the two police officers and squealing on a high long note, like a small mammal in the grip of a hunting owl. It was unearthly and I could only stare at her in horror.

Jessica showed more presence of mind and ran past us into her father’s bedroom. I blocked out the sound of Becky’s wail and followed Jessica. She had crossed to the bed and was leaning over it. The old man was struggling against his drugged state, moaning and rolling his head back and forth as if aware of the disturbance but unable to locate it.

‘It’s all right, Henry. Everything is all right,’ Jessica soothed him, placing her hand on his forehead. ‘It’s me, Jessica, I’m here.’

That seemed to get through to him and he stopped rolling his head in that distressing way.

Behind us, out in the corridor, Becky had stopped the eerie screeching to attempt a justification of her presence. ‘I only wanted to see Gramps. I wanted to make him more comfortable . . .’

Her plaintive voice tailed off as the protection officers frog-marched her away. I heard the trio clattering downstairs and then Alice’s voice, sleepy and frightened, asking what had happened. Jessica looked up and my gaze locked with her wild stare.

‘Is he all right?’ I asked.

She nodded but still looked white-faced and bewildered. There was no trace of her former self-possession. ‘She . . . little Becky . . . Not Adam . . . She was going to use that pillow, wasn’t she?’ Jessica pointed at the pillow lying on the floor between us. ‘How did she get in?’

‘She was in the house all the time,’ I said bitterly. ‘Bet my last penny on it. Adam must have phoned her on his mobile and let her know what happened at Lottie’s house. They’ve always worked together. Adam told her it was too risky for him to come and do the deed himself and she had to do it. She came over here - she must have a remote for the gates too - slipped in either before we got here or the cops arrived. She must know every inch of this house. She’s tiny and could easily hide in something like a cupboard. Or she could have concealed herself somewhere in the grounds first and got indoors later while we were all here with the alarm off and before Alice locked up for the night.’

An image of the little gazebo came into my head. Had that been her hiding place?

Jessica shivered. ‘Little Becky . . .’ she repeated.

It had not been so difficult for Becky Ferrier, so Morgan explained the following morning when Jessica and I went to see her. Morgan had calmed down and was prepared to overlook my rummaging at the Records Office and my dash out to Teddington. Overlook it for the time being, anyway. I dare say the next time I upset her she’ll bring it up. Les Hooper was right in saying that coppers have memories like elephants.

‘Adam had phoned her immediately and she hurried to her grandfather’s house, letting herself in through the front security gate with her own remote control and hiding, as you guessed, Fran, in the gazebo. She was in place before our people got there. They checked the house but she waited until later and when the protection teams were changing shift, slipped in through, of all things, a narrow disused coal chute into a cellar, a legacy of the house’s Victorian past. As children she and her brother had often come and gone secretly by that route and Becky is still tiny enough to squeeze through it. The burglar alarm was off in the house. The outside defences had never been triggered.’

‘We were worried about Adam Ferrier,’ added Morgan ruefully. ‘We forgot his sister.’

One always did forget little lisping Becky with the baby-doll eyes and apparent complete absence of working brain cells. Just goes to show.

‘They had always worked together, just as I told Jessica,’ I said to Ganesh later. ‘Becky was the hoodie kid I saw in the street and Edna had seen earlier, the one who set us both up for the onslaught by the motorcyclist. With her slight build, to disguise herself as a young boy was simple. She pretended to fiddle with a mobile phone and lured me out into the road by sprawling headlong. Good Samaritan that I am, I ran out to help as they knew I would. In Edna’s case the hoodie attracted her attention in some other way.

‘It must have been his sister to whom Adam gave the keys Les had dropped in the pub. It was Becky who phoned Susie and invited her to go out to Richmond to see about a job. It was Becky, not Lottie, who got to Susie’s office first and opened the door to make it look as if Susie was inside and then left. Later it was Becky who returned the lost keys to the barman with the tale of having picked them up in error. I should have realised that immediately because the barman didn’t speak to me as though he had recognised the girl. But if Duane drank regularly there, then it’s a fairly sure bet that Lottie had been in there with him from time to time. The barman would have known her.

‘Lottie knew about it all. I’m sure of it. They wouldn’t have dared risk any of it if Lottie hadn’t been on side. She’d have pulled the rug out from under them. She’s swearing blind she didn’t know a thing, of course. Who was it wrote that the female of the species is more deadly than the male?’

‘Rudyard Kipling,’ said Ganesh. He’d recently added a book of quotations to his reference library. At least it wasn’t a collection of football trivia.

Chapter Twenty

In one way, Jessica Davis had been more correct in her predictions made in Lottie’s kitchen than I had been in mine. As we later discovered, not daring to go to his grandfather’s house himself, Adam had phoned his accomplice, his sister, to set up her murderous attack. For himself, he’d set off driving hell for leather in that company car of his, heading towards the south coast. But, as Jessica had foreseen, he hadn’t got very far, although it wasn’t lack of cash which did for him. He seems to have intended to cross to the Continent. But he piled himself up in a motorway smash on the way. He had to be cut out of the wreckage by the emergency services. He’s still in hospital at the time of my writing this and it will be a very long time before he stands trial. Becky is pleading duress. Her brother dominated her and she was scared of him etc. She’ll have a job persuading a court. I saw her standing there with that pillow ready to smother a defenceless old man. However, I suspect Becky can be very persuasive.

Lottie, just as she said she would, is sitting tight and denying all knowledge of any of it. And do you know? She might even get away with it, at that. Duane will have his portrait up on the kitchen wall, after all.

A few days later I accompanied Jessica, at her own request, to the hostel where Edna lived.What might turn out to be the most difficult moment of all had come.

‘I have to tell my mother who I am. You’re her friend. She trusts you, Fran. I don’t want her to be frightened.’ Jessica, uncharacteristically nervous, fiddled with one large enamelled earring.

But Edna wasn’t at the hostel. She had already gone out. I’ll swear she knew that we, or someone, were on the way. Like the cats whose company she’d kept for so many years she was attuned to danger. Her whiskers had twitched and she was off.

Simon was bewildered and grouchily apologetic.

‘Nikki and I just don’t understand any of this. Inspector Morgan and some sergeant called Parry have been here and it’s upset all our residents. Sandra is huddled in her room upstairs and won’t come out. It took us months to get her as far as the front steps. Now we’ll have to start all over again.’ A pettish note entered his voice and he looked at me as if it was all my fault.

‘Edna!’ I said firmly, letting him know Sandra was his problem.

Simon shrugged. ‘Oh, she’ll be walking round the streets somewhere.You didn’t tell us you were coming, you know. We could have tried to keep her here. But it’s always very difficult. She’ll be back tonight with any luck.’

I was worried about that. Morgan’s visit must have frightened her. No wonder she had taken off. Would she return? I knew we had to find Edna at once.

Thought of delay clearly frustrated Jessica, who’d psyched herself up to this meeting though I had warned her you couldn’t ever count on Edna.

Nevertheless, I touched her arm. ‘I think I know where she might have gone. Come on, I’ll take you there.’

Sure enough, Edna was there, sitting on the same stone bench amid the headstones in Golders Green cemetery. The sun was shining and she had turned her face up to it. Her skin looked smooth, unlined and almost young. There was even a cat with her, a little black one with green eyes. Goodness knew where it had come from. Perhaps it had been mousing in the long grass. But it had joined Edna and they sat together like a couple of old friends.

Jessica and I stood a little way off and watched.

‘It won’t be easy,’ I warned her softly. ‘She’s happy this way. She doesn’t trust anyone who tries to help her. Some pretty horrible things happened to her in the past when people organised her life for her. I know some people might pity her now and say she doesn’t have much of anything. But when you look at her like she is now over there, you could say she has everything. She’s happy. There is nothing more she does want.’

‘I understand,’ Jessica returned. ‘But she can’t go on like it, Fran. No one will force her to do anything she doesn’t want to do. Neither Henry nor I want that. But somehow we will find a way. I’ll look after my mother.’ She hesitated. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you for everything you’ve done. Henry is grateful, too. He’d like you to go and see him so that he can tell you so himself.’

She set off towards the seated figure. I remained where I was, watching for a few minutes in case I thought it necessary to intercede. The cat blinked its eyes at the approaching woman and then got up and trotted away. Jessica bent over the seated form and, after a moment, Edna turned her head and looked up at her.

‘Hullo, dear,’ she said amiably.

‘Hullo, Edna,’ replied Jessica hesitantly. ‘Do you know who I am?’

Edna made an odd little sideways movement with her head. ‘I think so. You have Henry’s eyes.’

I saw the relief flood Jessica’s face. ‘My name is Jessica,’ she said and took a seat beside Edna on the bench. After a momentary hesitation she reached out and took Edna’s hand in hers.

I thought the older woman might resist the gesture but she didn’t. She seemed content to allow Jessica to have possession of her hand.