The Company She Kept (6 page)

Now, in response to her friend's plea, she stayed and it was Tommo who stood up, saying in his abrupt way, ‘I'm off. I've no patience with all this. It's childish – and dangerous, what's more. And if you've any sense, Sophie, you'll go home, too.'

Their eyes met and for a long moment held. Sophie wavered; then, contrariwise, smiled. ‘Oh, I don't know. What's wrong with a spice of danger?'

Flippancy in her infuriated him, she knew, though he'd only himself to blame. There was a lot of unreadable angst about Tommo which she had tried to understand but, questioning him, gently probing, she had been snubbed. ‘You're not mature enough to take your own emotional problems on board, never mind mine,' he'd replied with unthinking cruelty, and though he'd been immediately contrite, neither could forget. He turned away now, and without another word, went out via the window, striding over the low sill. In the ensuing silence, his heavy footsteps could be heard crossing the flagstoned courtyard and presently the latch of the gate was heard to click.

‘Well, who's going to get this Ouija board, then?' Sophie asked brightly.

‘I will go,' volunteered Irena, lumbering to her feet. ‘I am knowink where.'

‘Well, go quietly and don't wake Kitty,' Madeleine warned, ‘you know how lightly she sleeps –
quietly,
Irena!'

‘That woman,' declared Felix as Irena stomped out as noisily as if Madeleine hadn't spoken, ‘is not merely irritating, she's impossible.'

‘Go easy on her. It is her last night. We owe her that,' Madeleine said. Felix was arrogant and rude, but he was only twenty. All the same, he needed an eye kept on him; you never knew which way he would jump.

‘I shall never understand how Kitty sticks her. She's too easily put upon.' Which was rich, coming from Felix, but it had occurred to Sophie, too, although somehow she felt that there was more than Kitty's kind-heartedness involved. There was something about Irena that made her shiver, almost a sense of menace underlying that infuriating smugness. If it wasn't too fanciful one might almost be persuaded to think she had some hold over Kitty.

She was gone some time and when she did arrive back, it was minus the Ouija board. ‘Ach, I do not remember where I saw it and is too dark to look now,' she declared, shrugging.

‘Well, that's it, then!' Madeleine looked relieved but Sophie, envisaging the rest of the evening which must be got through somehow, was not to be put off.

‘We can use a tumbler and the Scrabble counters,' she said, but by the time the tiles had been found and a glass produced Madeleine was again looking at her watch and Felix had lost interest. Angie was half apprehensive, half eager. ‘Do you think we should?' She giggled nervously.

‘Of course we should!' Sophie was determined not to give up now that they'd gone this far, switching on a lamp and beginning to arrange the letters of the alphabet in a circle round the polished rosewood table.

The dusk had closed in. A small breeze ruffled the water on the lake; drawn by the light, moths and other small insects flew in, recklessly immolating themselves against the lamp. Sophie was suddenly conscious of the adjoining room, with its red walls and its mementoes of ancient Carthage and hideous sacrificial rites. She sometimes thought the room was less of a workroom for Kitty than a shrine to Alfred. Angie hated all mention of it and Sophie herself was often uneasy with it, for less superstitious reasons. She gave a quick glance to see that the door was firmly closed and shivered, wondering for the first time whether they had embarked upon something they didn't understand. But it had gone too far by now; they were all seated round the table, five fingertips already planted upon the base of the upturned glass. Angie was excited, her other hand fiddling with her hair, drawing the flick-up at the side further across the livid mark on her face, Madeleine was endeavouring not to look embarrassed at having condoned this, Felix still had that superciliously amused expression imprinted on his face; his pale, cold eyes looked glassy, almost colourless. He'd definitely had too much to drink – but perhaps they all had. Especially Irena.

Her eyes, too, glittered, and the excitement had brought a flush to her swarthy cheeks. Wearing the barbaric jewellery Kitty had given her as a farewell gift, she looked more foreign to Sophie than ever. Of them all, she was the only one who was not either amused, embarrassed or half-scared, though none of them quite knew how to start.

After a small silence Felix began by asking in a facetious, sepulchral tone if anyone was there.

‘You should not laugh!' Irena reprimanded him sharply. ‘Ask if there is message for anyone, Sophie.'

Sophie cleared her throat and asked the question self-consciously. The glass began to move: I-R-E-N-A.

‘That was predictable!'

Felix's laugh was unkind, but this time Irena ignored him and spoke excitedly. ‘Who is there?'

D-I-D- The glass stopped. Irena's gasp caught in her throat.

‘Do you have message for us?'

E-L-I-S- ...

At that point the glass skidded madly and slid away, knocking several letters off the table. The nervous silence was fractured by Angie's frightened gasp, followed by

Irena's guttural, accusing voice: ‘Elissa! She is wishink to spell Dido, then Elissa, but you, Felix, you push the glass!'

Felix uttered a word not likely to be in Irena's vocabulary, but she got the gist.

‘Is not a joke!' she shouted, turning on him. Her pronunciation and command of English was rapidly deteriorating into the accents of farce but Sophie saw that she was deadly earnest. ‘And you frighten Angie!'

‘I – I'm not scared,' Angie denied, white and trembling by now. Any reference to Carthage and the darker elements of its past was likely to upset her. Kitty, telling her ghoulish stories with relish, had brought the past too vividly into the present and Angie, who was impressionable, hated them; detested Kitty's workroom, the red walls, the blue and red and gold mask of Tanit above the desk, and all the other reminders of fire and magic and evil, however long ago they had occurred. Felix knew this and it was quite possible he had mischievously pushed the glass in order to frighten her, but really it was Irena who was his target tonight. He began bickering with her again.

‘Oh, for heaven's sake, do be quiet, you'll wake the old ladies!' Madeleine ordered, even her patience wearing thin. It was unlikely that Jessie Crowther would be disturbed; she was growing deaf and in any case slept like a log, but if Kitty was awakened from her first sleep, she vowed that she never slept a wink for the rest of the night.

‘It must be our collective subconscious,' Sophie put in, trying to harmonize the situation. ‘When we see the obvious beginning to a word, we all start willing it to move to the next letter –'

‘Collective balls!' Felix gave a bark of unamused laughter. ‘One of us
must
have been pushing the glass – but it wasn't me. Tommo was right. I've had enough of this voodoo!'

Sophie, too, by now, felt that enough was enough, and as everyone else began to voice their own opinion, the noise level increased. Somewhere above, a floorboard creaked.

‘I told you you'd waken Kitty!' Madeleine accused.

‘Well then, go up and see if she wants to join in. She can take my place and welcome,' Felix answered flippantly.

‘We start again!' Irena announced with authority. ‘Come, sit!' She began to rearrange the tiles. ‘Is only a game.'

Did any of them believe this by now? However, with varying degrees of unwillingness, they were all, even Angie, eventually persuaded to begin once more and after one or two initial skirmishes, the glass again moved. And now it spelled K-I-T-T-Y. ‘You see!' Sophie said, ‘Madeleine mentioned Kitty's name and now look –'

‘Sssh!' hissed Irena.

The glass had begun to move again. D-E-A-T- it spelled. Before the word was finished, it skidded and stopped.

‘Oooh!' Angie wailed, white-faced, her eyes enormous and dangerously bright.

‘You do it again, Felix!' Irena was in a fury, but Felix's amusement had now vanished totally. He was no longer prepared to laugh, or even make sarcastic comments. He was as angry as she was, his face ugly with temper. He jumped up, pushing himself from the table with his hands and in doing so, rocked it so that the glass slid off the polished surface, followed by a slither of letters, and splintered on to the floor in a thousand shards of light.

Irena was beside herself. Screaming, she launched herself towards Felix like a wild cat. Sophie, perhaps with some premonition of a horror she could never have envisaged, tried to ward her off, appalled at the way they were acting, like barbarians, at how easily the fragile calm of the hour before had been shattered. Angie began to cry, adding to the hubbub, while Madeleine endeavoured without success to calm everyone down. Footsteps were heard outside: Tommo returning, no doubt ashamed of his boorish departure, perhaps remembering he'd left without even a civil word of farewell to Irena.

Felix, with an exclamation of distaste, suddenly brushed Irena off as if she were some sort of disgusting fly and with great strides left the room. Unstoppable, she flew after him. Their voices could still be heard when they reached the hall, loud but indistinguishable. In the room above, footsteps shuffled across the floor, a door banged. A moment or two later, there was a crash, and after that there was silence. A silence that went on and on.

‘Stay here, you two,' Madeleine ordered, walking to the door. Sophie had no desire to do anything else and stayed rooted to the spot but Angie crept after her. Sophie waited alone, trembling, until the waiting became intolerable and then she, too, went into the hall.

A couple of hours' sleep after getting the murder inquiry under way wasn't much, but after breakfast, a sharp shower and a change of clothes you were good for another twelve hours. No wonder, though, that Howard Cherry had opted for promotion that bound him more and more to the desk but at least promised a fair share of good night's sleep! But Mayo didn't really envy the Super. Cherry was a good friend and welcome to his promotion. It was where he'd been aiming ever since he and Mayo had been young coppers together, working on the same beat in the north of England. Mayo was a practical policeman while Cherry was a born administrator who was willing to rely on Mayo to get on with the job so long as he was kept well in the picture, a situation which suited both of them very well.

After performing this function as soon as he got to the station, Mayo came down from the third floor to find

Kite returned from Pennybridge, waiting for him with the name of someone who could put him in touch with the relatives of the murdered woman so that they could get a positive identification. Her name, he said, was Freeman, Dr Madeleine Freeman.

Kite didn't look as though his own sleep had done him much good; there were pouches under his eyes, but he was full of nervous energy, unable to keep still, and it soon became evident why. He was jubilant with the news that one of his informers had contacted him with a possible lead on the whereabouts of the disappearing witness in the child pornography case. It would mean, he remarked, a drive down to Essex for someone that morning, would mean taking two off the strength just when manpower was needed most. It was a statement made partly in query, partly in hope.

‘Better get off then, hadn't you, Martin? It's your case and we're not letting them slip through the net at this stage.'

Mayo would be glad to see the end of it himself, for more reasons than one. It had been an emotionally slanted affair and a successful outcome would give a fillip to every man and woman on the strength.

Kite could hardly conceal his satisfaction at the hoped-for-reply, but he tried. ‘Couldn't have come at a worse time, I know, but we can't let up until we've got these bastards.'

Mayo hoped Kite wasn't letting this one get to him. His normal, cheerful insouciance had been remarkable for its absence since he'd been dealing with this admittedly depressing inquiry. It was understandable – he had two boys of his own and an investigation of this sort was the pits, but Kite was a police officer and the rotten, mucky things of life were his business – he'd better snap out of it if he thought otherwise. You couldn't afford to become involved to the point where your efficiency and sense of judgement were impaired. And yet, without it, without the pity and the rage, what was the point?

‘Keep at it, Martin,' he said.

All available manpower would now be called upon for the murder investigation, but the possibility of letting up on the case which had occupied the time and skills of the department for so long was a non-starter. Mayo was used to handling half a dozen cases at once, as they all were. It was simply a question of who now did what, how much routine work he himself could delegate to his inspector, the mature and unflappable Atkins. He mentally surveyed the rest of his team, most of whose strengths and weaknesses he could gauge to a millimetre.

‘Sergeant Moon,' he said, ‘I'll keep Abigail Moon with me for the most part of this one and leave you free to concentrate on Billen. You take Farrar with you today.'

He wasn't displeased with this strategy. He felt it to be an adroit compensating move on his part, killing two birds with one stone, one that would give Abigail the experience she needed – without rubbing Farrar's nose in it. Of all the team, he was the one who resented the woman detective's presence most, as being about to achieve (without much effort, as he saw it) the promotion which continually escaped him. He wouldn't see why, for instance, he, rather than Abigail Moon, should have been sent with Kite, but tough. That's the way we all had it once, lad.

Abigail, unlike Farrar, was delighted.

Her plans for her future were not going too badly. If only she had as much confidence in her personal life as in her professional one! Although her academic prowess at university hadn't been particularly brilliant, she'd obtained a respectable degree and she knew, backed up by the assessments she'd undergone so far, that she was capable, given the opportunities and a share of luck, of rising to a senior position in the force. She had no illusions about what she'd be up against. Even if it was an exaggeration to say that she'd have to be twice as good as any of her male colleagues to get anywhere, the way ahead was certain to be tough, and since this present case was going to give her the opportunity to get her foot in the door, she was determined she wasn't going to miss a trick. She was going to enjoy the new experience of a murder hunt, of working with the team. No one could be easier to get on with than Martin Kite and she could ignore Farrar, whom she liked well enough when he wasn't acting like a jealous prima donna. The rest of the team were friendly and she thought she would like the challenge of working for Mayo, despite his reputation for being a bloody-minded Yorkshireman when the occasion demanded it, and a slave-driver to boot. She didn't mind either; she could cope with the one and rather admired the other – especially since she'd found he worked twice as hard himself. She'd also heard he was a right old male chauvinist – but then, ninety per cent of her colleagues were.