The Burden of Doubt (21 page)

‘You got one of your own, didn’t you?’ she spat at him. ‘Or rather your wife did. Did she have to go through years of pain and disappointment before she got pregnant?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘You can’t imagine how I feel,’ she told him. ‘You haven’t a clue.’

‘No,’ he agreed.

‘But you’re suffering now,’ she said, stroking a finger over Naomi’s hair.

‘Yes.’ And how. He threw Naomi a quick glance, a look to assure her that everything would be all right. His innards heaved with anxiety.

Jayne gave him an appraisal through narrowed eyes. ‘I’ve nothing against you,’ she told him, ‘as a person. But you’re involved in my life now. You’ve almost worked out what happened that morning Moira was killed.’ She waited. ‘Haven’t you?’

He said nothing for a few moments. ‘Is that what you’d like to
talk about, Jayne? Moira? Is talking about what happened to Moira one of the things you want?’

‘Too easy,’ she told him. ‘I’m not so stupid as to fall for that. Once I’ve talked about what happened to Moira, I’ll have lost my bargaining power.’

‘What do you want to bargain for?’ His mind raced. No arrest, no charge. Freedom to hide out wherever she wanted. Would he set it up – in return for Naomi’s safety? There was no doubt, no beat of hesitation.

‘I’m not up for bargaining,’ Jayne said. ‘I’m enjoying this too much.’ She seized a few strands of Naomi’s hair and jerked her back head slightly. With her other hand she made sure the points of the scissors were still pressed against Naomi’s throat. ‘Power,’ she said. ‘Power takes away the pain.’

Naomi gave a tiny yelp of shock. She looked at her father and gave a brief, grim smile.

Jayne’s expression had become glazed and fixed. ‘Murder is easy,’ she murmured dreamily, ‘once you’ve done it the first time.’

Despite his anxiety for Naomi, Swift found himself seizing eagerly on the juicy morsel Jayne had just thrown him. His mind began to fit things together. He steadied himself. ‘Did you ask Moira to give you one of her babies?’ he asked in conversational tones.

‘The white one,’ Jayne said, with a devious glint. ‘We’d done all our homework and got it all arranged. Moira would have the babies in a Swiss clinic, then on the way back to Britain she’d give the spare twin to me. She knew people who would do the necessary paperwork so the baby would appear to be mine – she was a clever and resourceful woman, my stepsister. And she’d take her little brown baby home to Rajesh, and he’d never know she’d been playing hooky with the hunky registrar on the gynaecology team.’

‘And where would you and the baby go?’

‘France or Spain. I’ve lots of friends in Europe.’

As Jayne spoke, Naomi’s mouth had dropped open slightly, as she realized the level of psychological disturbance in this woman who had her in her power.

‘And Rajesh would never guess what had been planned
between you?’ Swift asked, injecting a degree of disbelief into his voice.

‘Rajesh was always working, or walking up mountains. He lived in his own private world,’ Jayne said. ‘He knew nothing of our little plot. Moira and me, having girlie chat sessions, putting our heads together and planning the most wicked and delicious adventure.’

Naomi made a little noise in her throat. ‘What went wrong?’ she croaked, her voice strangled by the pressure on her throat.

Jayne frowned. ‘She changed her mind.’ Her face crumpled. ‘She decided she wasn’t interested in our adventure any more. She wanted both her babies. She was going to tell Rajesh everything. She was going to
have
everything.’

There was long dead silence.

‘She was pissing me about,’ Jayne said with quiet venom. ‘There were some scissors on Moira’s desk. It only took one stab. It was so easy.’ She glanced down at the scissors threatening Naomi’s life. ‘I’ve kept them with me ever since, just in case I should need them.’

Swift stood frozen and useless as the seconds passed. He estimated how long it would take to move forward and spring on Jayne. Too long to be confident that she would not have the opportunity to make a response.

Then, suddenly, there were footsteps in the hall. A woman’s voice. ‘Jayne? Are you in there? Are you all right? What’s happening?’

Swift listened. So the station had managed to pass on his message for Sylvia.. He had no idea what Jayne would do now her mother was here. But at least the present deadlock would be broken, the dynamics in the room would change in some way. ‘In here,’ he called out.

Sylvia appeared in the doorway. The blood left her face. ‘Jayne!’ she whispered. ‘Jayne, what are you doing?’

‘Go away, Mum!’ Jayne shouted. ‘Leave this to me. Just for once, leave things to me!’

Sylvia moved forward.

‘Mum, stay back, I’m warning you.’

‘Darling,’ Sylvia said softly.

‘No. I’m not your darling!’ Jayne protested.

‘Of course you are, and you always will be.’

‘I’m not one of the two babies you lost,’ Jayne spat back at her. ‘They were your real darlings. I was just the replacement.’

‘That’s nonsense,’ Sylvia said, as though crooning to a fractious infant. ‘I always loved you just as much as the other babies.’

‘They were the ones who lived inside you,’ Jayne protested, tears glistening on her eyelashes. ‘Flesh of your flesh. Blood babies—’

‘I love you, Jayne,’ Sylvia said. ‘I could never have wished for a better daughter than you.’

‘People say it doesn’t matter,’ Jayne said, impatiently. ‘That blood connections aren’t important. But those are the people who have blood connections with their parents, who know where they came from. They take it for granted. They pretend it doesn’t matter, but it does.’

Sylvia’s face was contorted with pain. ‘I have never stopped you from finding your birth parents, Jayne.’

‘But I couldn’t find them! They were both dead by the time I started looking.’ She was shaking with despair.

Sylvia started to speak again.

‘Don’t!’ Jayne shrieked, beside herself. ‘You know nothing of what I’m going through. You knew what it was like to have babies and to give birth. But I could never have that, the one thing that could have compensated for never knowing my blood parents. I couldn’t have a blood child of my own, I could only have Moira’s spare, her little cast off. And even that was taken away from me.’ Her hand was trembling, pressing the points of the scissors harder against Naomi’s skin. Her eyes turned to dark slits. ‘The bitch, she deserved to die.’

Suddenly Naomi screamed: a shrill cry for her life. Its raw power ripped through the room like an electric charge. And then the air was filled with sounds and movement. Sylvia darted forward, calling out Jayne’s name with the firm maternal authority of a mother instructing a young child to obey her. Jayne responded with the instant obedience of a scared kid, taking her hands off Naomi, letting the scissors drop to the floor.

Swift ran to Naomi, encircling her in his arms, dropping down beside her, imprisoning the scissors with his knee. Jayne sprang away from her parent, and raced for the door.

Swift was tempted to let her go. But no, that would be too easy for her. Moreover Jayne was dangerous. As Sylvia Farrell moved forward and began struggling to free Naomi from the blue nylon rope which still bound her, he pursued Jayne out of the apartment and down the drive. She was a quick mover, and he was hard pressed to gain on her. On reaching her car which was parked in the road outside, she began fumbling with the lock, her desperation making her frantic and clumsy. He saw that she had no keys on her, that her means of a getaway were no more than a fantasy.

She sank down to her knees, defeated, all the rage temporarily knocked out of her.

Swift telephoned for backup, whilst Jayne turned to look at him, her arms slowly raising in surrender.

Late afternoon sun slanted into Damian Finch’s office. On his desk lay a word-processed statement.

Jayne Arnold had become quiet and rational on reaching the station. She had freely agreed to making a confession under caution. She had seen the forensic physician. Psychological and psychiatric reports had been requested.

‘I’d feared we might find ourselves in a situation where a good lawyer might have persuaded her to retract,’ Finch had told the team, prowling as ever behind his desk. He glanced up for a response, but no one spoke. ‘I know,’ he continued, ‘ever the pessimist, that’s what my wife calls me. Don’t think I’m not aware of my failings.’ He pondered for a moment. ‘Can anyone please explain to me how a woman like Moira Farrell would agree to give up a baby to another woman?’

There was a short silence.

‘Raging hormones, sir?’ Laura suggested with perfect seriousness.

Finch blinked and cleared his throat. ‘Really.’ He sat down heavily at his desk and plucked at the sheaf of papers lying on its top.

Swift glanced at his colleagues who took the hint and followed him as he went quietly through the door.

‘I wonder how long she’ll go down for,’ Doug said, in the more relaxed atmosphere of the CID room. ‘I’ve seen it so many times before These shrink guys know how to paint a villain as mad rather than bad.’

He and Laura looked towards Swift for a response. The DCI was staring into space, his face grey with fatigue. Privately he was reflecting on the way his skin had crawled as Jayne sat talking to him in the interview room, repeating her story in almost exactly the same phrases which she had screamed at him earlier. But this time her voice had been low and steady, her eyes cold and pitiless.

‘Do you think Jayne Arnold’s mad, sir?’ Doug prompted gently.

‘I’m not a psychologist,’ Swift said diplomatically. ‘But for what it’s worth I think she’s made up her mind that she’d like us to think she is. She’s sharp enough to know a psychiatric diagnosis would get her a more lenient sentence.’

‘Diminished responsibility,’ Laura commented.

Swift nodded. ‘But mad or bad, she’ll be put behind bars.’

The three of them sat in solemn contemplation for a few moments. The room had an air of quiet desertion: with the news of the confession and the bringing of a charge the place had emptied as the rest of the staff removed themselves to the pub. But Swift had been reluctant to join the celebrations and his companion officers were reluctant to leave him on his own.

‘You were a hero this morning, sir,’ Laura told Swift.

‘Seconded,’ Doug said.

Swift looked from one to the other. ‘So would you have been,’ he said. ‘If you’d been there at the time.’

‘Is your daughter all right, boss?’ Doug asked.

‘She’s doesn’t crumble easily. She’ll get through this.’ He glanced at his watch and stood up abruptly. ‘She’s still at the hospital having a check over. I need to collect her.’ There was a brief farewell nod, and then he was gone.

Laura watched him disappear through the door. ‘Will
he
get through it, though?’

Doug gave a smile based on long experience. ‘You’ve done enough fretting and pondering for the time being, Detective Constable Ferguson from Glasgow. I’m taking you for a drink.’

The next day, reassured that Naomi was quite capable of pottering around the apartment on her own for the morning, Swift went into work and was surprised to see there had been a message left
for him by Serena Fox, asking him if he would call to see her at his earliest convenience.

She answered the door before he had even rung the bell. Her welcome was unsmiling but she instantly invited him in. ‘I need to talk to you,’ she said tersely. Today her dress was a swirl of dark-blue cotton printed with vivid yellow parrots. Long silver ear-rings dangled from her ears almost brushing her shoulders and swinging slightly as she preceded him down the hallway and into her study.

‘Sylvia Farrell came see me last night,’ she said, swinging around to face him.

Swift had hardly had time to get through the doorway. Thick bands of winter sunshine flooded the room and pale dust particles swirled in the draughts from the tall sash windows. ‘So, you’re in the picture of what has been happening?’

‘I’m in the picture according to Sylvia,’ Serena Fox said drily. ‘Which is probably more reliable than the picture according to Jayne Arnold.’

‘You know that Jayne has been charged with Moira Farrell’s murder?’

‘Yes. And I know what happened yesterday at your house – the threats to your daughter. It must have been a traumatic experience.’

‘Naomi’s strong,’ he said firmly. ‘Tell me about Sylvia.’

Serena pulled thoughtfully on one of her long ear-rings. ‘I’ve known Sylvia Farrell for some time. She first came to see me about eight years ago, ostensibly for a problem of her own, but it soon turned out that the focus of her anxiety was her daughter Jayne.’

Swift stopped her there. ‘So – at that time Jayne would have been in her late teens.’

‘She was eighteen, about to go to college to study interior design.’

‘And Sylvia was at that time planning to marry Farrell?’

‘That’s right. They’d just got engaged. And Jayne had been extremely reluctant to accept the marriage. She became very hostile and abusive to her mother. She refused to go to college and then ran off to Spain with one of her dead father’s married
friends, leaving Sylvia with just a scribbled note to say she was going abroad. Not exactly an uncommon kind of story, but it was all very upsetting.’

‘How long was she away?’

‘No more than ten days. Jayne is volatile and unstable, she finds it hard to make commitments.’

‘That fits.’

‘There was some kind of reconciliation with Sylvia and Jayne agreed to come for sessions with me.’ She stopped.

‘Medical confidentiality?’ Swift suggested drily.

Serena gave a tight smile. ‘The focus was on her feelings of being an adopted child. And the distress of finding out that she was suffering from severe endometriosis. I’m assuming you already know about this as I gather Sylvia gave you quite a bit of information.’

‘That’s correct.’ Swift looked across to her. ‘Why are you telling me all this, Serena?’

There was a beat of silence. ‘Because I want to clear any stain on Moira’s memory. For her sake, for Rajesh, for you, for anyone who knew her.’

‘Go on.’

‘When I was treating Jayne I had access to reports from a child psychiatrist who had seen her at the age of fourteen. There had been difficulties at her school for some time. She was known to be a persistent liar – or fantasist as we in the psychological business prefer to call it. In other words she found it hard to distinguish between reality and invention, always producing the version of an event which suited her own purposes. Clearly this had a significant effect on relationships she made with both male and female friends, and inevitably led to rejections. The money she inherited from her grandparents made her independent and meant she had no need to work, which I believe made her life devoid of purpose.’

‘Thus the need for a child became overwhelming.’

‘Yes. But thank God she never had one,’ Serena Fox said with a rare display of feeling.

Swift raised his eyebrows.

‘She’s a narcissist. She thinks only of herself. I doubt she could
ever meet the demands of a baby – either physical and psychological. In fact …’

Swift felt himself stiffen.

‘In fact I would have been very worried for any child she had the care of. When she was thirteen she killed a Siamese kitten she had begged her mother to buy for her. It had put its claws through a new cashmere sweater so she stabbed it with an old razor she found in her father’s bathroom cupboard. The matter was all hushed up, but Sylvia eventually told the story to Jayne’s child psychiatrist as she was so worried about Jayne’s development.’

‘Where is the link with any stain on Moira’s memory?’ Swift asked.

‘As you know Jayne is superlatively skilled at putting on a good front when it pleases her. She’s convinced a good many quite perceptive people with her lies. When I heard Sylvia’s version of what Jayne had said regarding the plans which Moira and she were alleged to have cooked up together I was horrified. Moira would never have agreed to give away either of her babies.’

‘Did Moira talk to you about this?’ Swift interposed sharply.

Serena did not flinch. ‘No. And that is the truth. She talked to me about her work.’ She hesitated. ‘There were concerns about a colleague – it was all rather sensitive.’

‘We know about those concerns,’ Swift told her.

‘Right.’ She frowned and put her hand up to stroke an ear-ring. ‘She told me nothing of having an affair. She simply said she was having twins. She seemed secure and happy about the future and the pregnancy seemed to be going well.’

Swift wondered if Dr Fox was lying to defend her dead friend. Or maybe it had been Moira who had been the manipulator, concealing the truth from Serena. Or perhaps Serena Fox, despite her professional experience, was being surprisingly naïve. It struck him that her profession, like his, was heavily based on making decisions about the likely truth of what they were told. They were all capable of getting things wrong, even the most canny and experienced. ‘Why did you ask me to come here this morning?’ he asked.

She hesitated. ‘It’s Rajesh I’m worried about. I don’t ever want him to hear the story Jayne fabricated about Moira’s plans to give
a baby away. He would torture himself for the rest of his life wondering whether it was true or not.’

‘But we don’t know the whole truth about that, do we? And maybe we never will.’

‘No.’ Serena frowned impatiently and he could tell she didn’t welcome being challenged. ‘But I have no hesitation in saying that I believe Jayne’s version to be a fabrication. Moira never gave any intimation to me about some sort of deal with Jayne.’

Swift said nothing, but his sceptical expression spurred Serena on.

‘Moira and I were close friends,’ she protested. ‘It was not in her nature or her personality to make such an arrangement. Let alone renege on it. And, besides, she was well aware of Jayne’s disturbed personality. She would never have given her the care of a child.’

‘It’s possible that your conviction on the issue might well be coloured by your friendship with Moira,’ Swift reminded her. ‘You said yourself when we first spoke that you had reservations about taking on her in a clinical capacity.’

Serena’s eyes became steely. ‘In my view, and I’m speaking professionally now, Jayne displays all the classic signs of a sociopath, someone quite capable of killing her stepsister on impulse simply through jealousy of her happiness in expecting not one child but two.’

‘Did you invite me here and tell me all this in the hope that I would act as a messenger between you and Rajesh?’ Swift asked.

Serena pressed her lips together.

‘If you want to talk to Rajesh in the capacity of a friend,’ he said, ‘that is up to you, Dr Fox.’

‘Are you advising me to leave well alone?’ she asked.

‘It’s not my job to advise you,’ he said evenly.

She considered. She closed her eyes briefly. ‘No, you’re right.’ As she put up a hand once more to stroke one of her ear-rings he saw that her fingers trembled with apprehension.

When Swift called to speak to Rajesh Patel later on, he found the house in darkness. For a moment he was gripped with a surge of
anxiety, concerned that Patel had decided against serving his life sentence of loss and horror following his wife’s murder, that he had taken himself for a long walk up one of the Yorkshire peaks, deliberately straying from the charted trails and simply losing himself.

In answer to his ring at the front door, there was a long delay and then a light went on in the hall. Rajesh appeared, blinking in the brightness, as though he had just wakened from sleep. ‘Chief Inspector. Come in.’

‘I’m sorry if I disturbed you,’ Swift said.

‘No need to apologize.’ He led the way into the darkness of the kitchen and turned on the lights.

Swift noticed that although Rajesh Patel looked drowsy and relaxed, he was still fully dressed, so maybe he had not been to bed, merely taking a nap. ‘Would you like a drink?’ Patel asked courteously.

Swift shook his head. ‘There are some further issues connected with Jayne’s confession that I need to talk to you about,’ he said gently.

Rajesh remained perfectly calm. ‘She was here quite a lot, you know, at the house. Visiting Moira. They seemed to have become quite good friends,’ he said, surprising Swift and throwing him temporarily off track.

‘When was this?’ he asked.

‘Oh, in the last few weeks.’

Swift wondered if he had failed in appreciating what a complex man Rajesh was. ‘You never mentioned that in your various statements,’ he pointed out.

Rajesh gave a weary smile. ‘Why should I? Jayne was part of our family.’ He bowed his head for a few moments. ‘I had a visit from Sylvia earlier on today. She told me some rather disturbing things. She told me she would rather tell me herself than have me find out some other way. She’s a very brave woman.’

Swift said nothing, deciding that nothing Rajesh would tell him could any longer surprise him.

‘Jayne incriminated that poor man Busfield,’ Rajesh reflected. ‘She put Moira’s blood on his shoes and then she planted them in the garden.’

‘Yes. She admitted to it in questioning.’

Rajesh shook his head in sorrow. Silence filled the room and stretched on.

‘Moira would have known, you see,’ Rajesh said reflectively. ‘She would have known the possibilities of two of her eggs being fertilized by different sperms. She would have known that during the short space of time in which her ova were released and were then no longer viable, it was quite possible for the two of them to be fertilized by sperm from different men.’

Swift found it disturbing to watch this contained man rubbing the salt into his already agonizing wounds, mutely considering the image of Moira sleeping with her husband and another man in a very short space of time.