Tower of Silence (31 page)

‘We don’t fuss around anyone in here.’

Mary waited until the brisk doctor turned away to pull on the thin surgical gloves, preparatory to making an
examination, and then sprang up from the bed in one swift movement, and brought the kidney dish smashing down on the woman’s skull. The dish was not as heavy as she would have liked but improvisation was the name of the game, and even if it did not actually knock the doctor out it would surely be enough to daze her.

She was right. The doctor staggered back, one hand groping instinctively for the alarm button set into the wall. Mary lifted the stainless steel dish again, and dealt a second blow, and this time the woman slumped to the floor. Mary sent a quick look through the glass panel. Had anyone noticed? No. How about the door? No, the remaining warder was still there, still staring into space. Deal with her in a minute.

She knelt on the floor and curled her hands around the doctor’s flabby neck. She would have liked to stab the creature–stabbing was satisfying–but it was important not to get blood anywhere, and speed was of the essence now. Strangling would be fine–even half strangling would give her the time she wanted. She had not actually strangled before, so it would be a new thing to try. It was slightly annoying that the first time she tried it she was hampered by having an injured arm.

But even with the injury it was easy. It was far easier than she had thought. Yes, but you’re protected and guided, Mary, remember…? She thought there was a whisper from Christabel at that point, and then she thought it was not Christabel at all, but her own mind. But when she straightened up from the inert body of the doctor there was a moment when she saw, as she
had seen on the night she cut off Darren Clark’s penis, a shadowy ghost-outline watching her. Christabel? Her heart lurched and then resumed its normal pace, because of course it was not Christabel, the faithless bitch-cunt, it was Mary’s own reflection she was seeing. Still, it was a reminder that she needed to move quickly.

She had expected to have to drag off the doctor’s white coat at this stage, but in fact there were a couple of the coats hanging behind the door of the examination cubicle, and so Mary simply reached up and took one. Her arm was throbbing quite painfully now, and it felt as if it was bleeding through the handkerchief as well. She opened several drawers and in the fourth one found packs of surgical dressings. Good! She put two into the pocket of the white coat for later, and then she was ready. No–a couple more things to do. She wrapped a crêpe bandage around her right wrist, making sure that it was visible beneath her cuff, and dropped a further bandage in her other pocket. Then she bent over the doctor once more–she thought the woman was not quite dead, but she was unconscious which was all that mattered–and removed the spectacles. When she put them on they distorted her vision, but she could let them slip down her nose a bit and peer over the top to see. They altered her appearance quite a lot. Last of all she took the bunch of keys from the unconscious doctor’s belt.

She walked across to the door, to where the warder was still stationed outside, stupid slab-faced creature, and opened it. The warder half turned and saw Mary, and Mary saw the confusion and bewilderment in her face.
Before the creature could work out what had happened she lifted the stainless steel dish yet again, and although the warder made a swift instinctive gesture of defence Mary was too quick for her. This time she used both hands and the blow was heavier and better. There was a satisfying bone-bruising sound as she crunched the dish’s edge hard against the woman’s skull, and the woman dropped to the ground with barely a grunt. Good. Getting better at this. It was a shame there was not time to actually kill this one–there were several methods Mary had not tried yet–but at any minute someone might come along, and she could not risk that. With a swift look up and down the empty corridor, she dragged the stupid creature into the cubicle, and to delay her from raising the alarm she pushed one of the wadded crêpe bandages into her mouth. It might in fact suffocate her–she was lying on her back, so there was quite a good chance. Mary pushed it as hard in as she could.

It was this next part that would be really nerve-racking. She set off along the corridor, forcing herself to be calm, because this was where she needed coolness. Panache.

She was counting heavily on the fact that she had not been at Moy for long enough for all of the warders and doctors and attendants to recognise her. She had certainly never been in the infirmary wing. But despite the dangers her heart was thumping with excitement because this was new territory, just as strangling had been new territory. Just as she had never strangled anyone before, she had never tried to escape before either.

It seemed that the luck was staying with her. She had
only the sketchiest idea of Moy’s layout and she dared not go anywhere near her own D wing, but she had noted the way here very carefully, and if she could get to the central section without being challenged—

It worked like a charm. It worked as if the plan had been oiled and polished, and smoothed to a seamless finish. The white coat and the spectacles had been a stroke of genius; no one questioned her as she walked confidently through the corridors and most of the warders hardly gave her a second glance. She was just another doctor going along to see a patient or attend a group therapy session.

The infirmary wing joined the main central portion of Moy’s cluster of buildings by means of a small guardhouse that gave onto a courtyard. Beyond the courtyard Mary could see other guardhouses, each one manned by a warder, each one the entrance to one of Moy’s other wings. She paused unhurriedly at the guardhouse and held out the keys, making sure to let the warder see her bandaged wrist.

‘Hi–I’m Dr Brooker’s new assistant.’ Dr Brooker had been the name clipped to the breast pocket of the doctor she had strangled. ‘I’m needing to fetch some case notes from her car for her, is that OK?’ Had that sounded casual enough? Modern enough? You got out of the way of modern expressions when you had lived inside institutions for so many years. And what if she had got the car-parking arrangement wrong? She said, ‘I haven’t been here very long, so I don’t know all the procedures yet.’

‘That’s all right,’ said the warder, glancing up. ‘I expect she’s parked on the Bell Tower car park–she usually parks there.’

‘Yes, she is,’ said Mary, picking this up at once. ‘Uh–could you do the unlocking for me, d’you think? I’ve sprained my wrist, and it’s awkward to turn these big keys.’ She held out the bunch of keys to him. See? said her mind. I really am who I’m saying I am. And my wrist is bandaged.

‘No problem,’ said the man. ‘But you’ll be quicker to go through the east gate, you know.’

Mary gave him her best smile. ‘I told you I was still getting used to this place,’ she said. ‘It’s an absolute maze, isn’t it?’

‘I’ll walk you across,’ he said. ‘Don’t want you getting lost.’

‘I should think not! I’d never live that one down, would I?’

They chatted quite companionably about the weather as they went across the inner courtyard, and as the man unlocked Moy’s great outer door. He even sketched a little mock-salute as Mary went through.

Ten minutes later she was standing on the Bell Tower car park, and Moy’s bulk was behind her, and she was
out
.

Patrick had spent most of the hours since Mary’s escape was discovered in helping to organise search parties.

Stornforth police were in command of the actual search–‘We couldn’t have coped by ourselves,’ Don Frost had said–and the area around Moy had been divided into sections, with some of the men assigned house-to-house investigations and questionings. But there was still a lot for the staff to sort out in addition to the search. There were press releases to prepare, and various governmental departments to contact. Radio and television stations would carry the story with their early evening news programmes, and up-to-date photographs of Mary were being photocopied. This last was very important indeed, said the chief superintendent from Stornforth. Mention the name
Mary Maskelyne
, and most of the population instantly visualised that famous Sixties shot, but at least
95 per cent of people would not recognise Mary as she looked now, said the superintendent ponderously. Mid forties, ordinary and unremarkable.

Ordinary, thought Patrick going back to his own office. She would never be ordinary, that one. Yes, but she could don ordinariness at will, almost like a cloak, and she could pass unnoticed in a crowd if she wanted to.

‘And by anybody’s reckoning it’s five, if not six, hours since she got out,’ he said to Don. ‘They took her to the infirmary shortly after ten this morning, and it wasn’t until nearly midday that they found poor old Brooker’s body.’

‘I know.’ Don sat down in the chair facing Patrick’s desk.

‘Is that warder all right? The one she knocked out?’

‘Dazed and a bit concussed, but they say she’ll recover.’

‘That’s something, I suppose.’ Patrick glanced at the darkness beyond his office windows. It was almost five o’clock. ‘Maskelyne could be halfway to anywhere by this time,’ he said.

‘We had to search Moy before we gave the main alarm and called in the police,’ said Don defensively. ‘We had to be sure she wasn’t hiding somewhere.’

‘Don, I’m not criticising anyone,’ said Patrick, who wasn’t. The probability had been that Mary was still inside Moy’s complex; it had only been when they began the systematic questioning of the staff that they had realised what had happened, and the governor-in-chief had taken the decision to sound Moy’s great bell to warn
the surrounding villages. ‘But,’ Patrick went on, ‘I think we should try to work out why she escaped in the first place. That might get us one step ahead of her.’

‘Presumably she escaped because she wanted to be free.’

‘No,’ said Patrick. ‘There’s more to it than that. Think about it, Don. She’s been shut away for more than thirty years, and she’s never tried to escape before. Not from any of the institutions where she’s been. Exemplary behaviour, day to day.’

‘Except for the small matter of killing two people in Broadacre, and a question mark over that matron’s death in the Young Offenders’ Hostel,’ observed Don, and Patrick caught the faintly caustic note that Don’s daughter occasionally used.

‘You’re such an old cynic,’ he said, and Don grinned rather half-heartedly. ‘But listen now, my point is that Maskelyne has got more than enough intelligence to have concocted a reasonably workable escape plan long before this. Moy’s security system is very good, but no security system in the world is foolproof. Well, maybe Devil’s Island or Alcatraz might be. But Broadacre wasn’t nearly as good as Moy, and the youth place was laughable from the security angle. So, why did she never try to escape from either of those places?’

‘She wouldn’t have wanted to risk failing,’ suggested Don after a moment, and Patrick pounced on this.

‘That’s very shrewd of you, and you’re right, of course. But it needs taking a step farther. I think it’s more that she doesn’t want to risk being
seen
to fail.’ He frowned,
and then said, ‘I don’t understand her, and I don’t think anyone ever will understand her. But I do know that under all that false humility and that deliberate colourlessness she’s overwhelmingly vain and mind-blowingly arrogant. So
why
in the name of all the gods at once has she taken the risk now?’

‘Something she wants that’s outside Moy?’ hazarded Don Frost, who could not always keep up with Patrick’s swift twists of mind when he was in this mood, but who was following him at the moment.

‘Exactly,’ said Patrick. ‘But it must be something so compelling that she was prepared to take the risk of failure.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. That’s why I need to reread her case notes.’ He had been rifling his desk drawer to find the last batch of notes on Mary Maskelyne, because he had not got round to sending them for typing and entering on the computer system. ‘I’m hoping I can fathom out what she might be after. Something recent it’d need to be–even something from the last two days.’

‘I’ll leave you to your fathomings,’ said Don, getting up. ‘They’re preparing a press release and I need to make sure it doesn’t make us sound like total incompetents. Oh, and I want to phone Emily—’

‘Emily?’ Patrick looked up sharply. ‘What about Emily?’

‘She was going to Teind House after lunch,’ said Don. ‘If she’s still there I’m going to ask her to stay put and lock all the doors. Miss March won’t mind, in fact she’ll probably be grateful for the company if she heard Moy’s
bell. But I don’t want Emily coming back from Teind by herself with Maskelyne prowling the undergrowth.’

Patrick had only an approximate knowledge of Teind House’s whereabouts, but he did know it occupied a rather remote situation on the outskirts of Inchcape, and he knew that the roads between Teind and Don’s cottage were lonely and unlit. He said, more sharply than he had intended, ‘Don, for Christ’s sake ring her now! Here, use my phone! Wherever Emily is, tell her to stay put. We’ll get someone out to her—Young Glennon or someone.’

Don stared at him, and Patrick said, trying to beat down his impatience, ‘Maskelyne’s a multiple killer, Don! She isn’t a quiet, middle-aged lady who’s a bit eccentric, she’s a full-blown schizophrenic and she’s wildly delusional! She’ll kill anything that tries to get in the way of–well, whatever it is that she’s gone to find! She always does! Remember that three of her victims were killed within call of any number of people? Remember poor old Brooker, strangled in this very building this morning, within yards of at least thirty people? If Maskelyne meets anyone on those lonely moorland roads—’ And if anything happens to Emily—He snapped off the rest of the thought because it was too appalling to contemplate, and it was then that he saw something of his own panic mirrored in Don’s eyes. He remembered too late that Don’s wife had died barely a year earlier. (And Emily came back from university to be with him, said his mind).

He understood that if Don lost Emily so soon after his wife’s death, he would not be able to bear it. He
understood this all too well, because if anything happened to Emily Patrick would not be able to bear it either. In a gentler voice, he said, ‘I’m sorry. I expect I’m over-reacting. But ring anyway. Tell her to stay put.’

As Don reached for the phone, Patrick went back to the filing drawer, this time finding the handwritten notes detailing his interviews with Mary. Something so compelling that she was prepared to take the risk of failure…

What would compel Mary Maskelyne to break out of Moy? He flipped over two or three pages. Something to do with Joanna Savile, could it be? Yes, that struck an immediate chord. Joanna had unquestionably been interested in Mary: there had been that subtle probing on Joanna’s first visit here. And there had been that look in Mary’s eyes when she had first seen Joanna on the afternoon of the talk. The flicker of the serpent’s tongue and the smile of the Saxon–Patrick remembered how the simile had formed in his mind.

And now Joanna was missing. But that was four–no, five–days ago, surely? Mary could not possibly be involved in that. Then what else?
Think
, Patrick. What’s happened that’s been out of routine? Krzystof Kent’s visit to Mary? And with the framing of the thought he knew, quite definitely and quite unarguably, that that was where the clue lay. Something had been said that afternoon–something said by Kent to Mary–something that Patrick ought to have picked up.

What?

And then he knew what it was. It was the look on Mary’s
face when Krzystof Kent had said–quite casually–that he was staying with someone who had been in Alwar as a child. Selina March. Krzystof was staying with Selina March. Patrick stared at the three things in his mind. Mary Maskelyne. Selina March. And an Indian village. It’s there, he thought. The clue is there. He rearranged them, to see if a different pattern emerged. An Indian village, Mary Maskelyne, and Selina March. Like a child’s game where you built up brightly coloured blocks to make a pattern.
Think
, Patrick–for Christ’s sake, man, look at it the right way up, because the answer’s got to be there!

And then he saw that the answer was there, and he saw that it had been there all along, that in fact it was bloody staring him in the face, and so vividly and so glaringly that he could not imagine why he had not seen it straight away.

As Don put the phone down, Patrick stood up and reached for his car keys. ‘I know where Mary’s gone,’ he said. ‘And we’ve got to get after her. No, there’s no time to summon the police. We’ll ring them on the way–you’ve got your mobile with you, haven’t you? Yes, good. Oh, but wait now, see if you can get Robbie Glennon, will you? Ask him to meet us on the car park. He can think on his feet, that one.’

Don dialled a number, and then started to say, ‘Where are we—?’

‘I know where Mary’s gone,’ said Patrick, who was at the door by this time. ‘She’s gone to find Selina March.’

‘
Selina March?
’

‘Listen,’ said Patrick when Don caught him up in the
central wing. ‘Mary Maskelyne has spent the whole of her life hating one person, and that’s the one who escaped from the Tower of Silence in Alwar fifty years ago.’ He waited with barely concealed impatience as one of the duty warders unlocked the gates leading to the central courtyard. ‘The child who got away, leaving Mary’s older sister to die,’ he said, as they crossed the paved yard together and approached Moy’s main gates. ‘Oh–did you get Glennon?’

‘Yes, he’s on his way. Patrick, you said the child who got away—’

‘That child,’ said Patrick, ‘was always the focus of black bitter hatred, first by Mary’s parents, and then from Mary herself.’ He broke off, the memory of Pippa–Christabel Maskelyne–flooding into his mind. But Mary did not know about Christabel; she still believed that Christabel had died in that grisly tower all those years ago. Would it have made any difference if she had known the truth? I can’t tell, he thought, gesturing to the officer on the main gates to let them out.

As they went across to where his car was parked, he said, ‘Two days ago Mary found out–and I’ve only just realised it–that that child who escaped that night is here. Living in Inchcape.’

‘Selina March,’ said Don. ‘That’s what you meant, wasn’t it? Dear God, Patrick, are you sure?’

‘Not entirely. But Mary is. She believes it. And so we’ve got to get to Teind House before she gets there ahead of us. In fact—’ He stopped, seeing the other man’s face. ‘Don, what is it?’

‘There was no reply from my cottage,’ said Don. ‘So I tried Teind House.’

‘And?’

‘There was no reply from there, either.’ He opened the passenger door, as Robbie Glennon galloped towards them, his tow-coloured hair blown into disarray by the wind.

‘Does Emily have a mobile?’

‘Yes. I tried that as well. It’s switched off. That probably means she didn’t bother to take it with her. She often forgets it.’

‘So,’ said Patrick, switching on the ignition, ‘either no one’s in at Teind House—’

‘Which isn’t likely, if Emily was booked to go down there—’

‘Or if she’s at Teind, she can’t answer,’ said Patrick, horror washing over him.

It was completely dark by now, with the thick soupy night that descended on this part of Scotland in late October. As they drove down the road leading to Inchcape Patrick could hear a faint growl of thunder, as if, deep within the turgid skies, the storm was still seething and threatening. He had noticed the storm from within Moy, but only as part of the confusion and panic.

‘Mary escaped so that she could get to Selina March,’ he said, as they neared the cluster of buildings that made up the village. ‘That’s the thing that compelled her, Don. That’s why she took all those risks to get out. And that’s why we’ve got to get to Teind House before she does.’

‘She’s five hours ahead of us, Patrick—’

‘I know.’

‘And it looks as if Emily’s with Selina.’

‘I know that as well.’ Patrick glanced at Don who was seated next to him, and then in the driving mirror at young Glennon, white-faced and fearful in the back. I suppose he’ll go dashing to the rescue, white knight on a charger fashion, and she’ll fall into his arms, he thought. Very suitable, of course. He’s an ambitious intelligent boy; he’ll do well in life.

‘The police are coming,’ said Don, after a moment, switching off his mobile phone. ‘They said they’d catch us up.’

‘Good.’ Patrick was concentrating on the road, which was awash with rain from the storm, and trying to shut out images of Emily in Mary Maskelyne’s hands. As he turned onto the bumpy track that led up to Teind House, he said, ‘I don’t know if either of you believe in any kind of God. But if you do, this is the time to start praying that we’ve beaten Maskelyne to it.’

‘I can’t see any lights in the house,’ said Don after a moment. ‘But that might be the storm again.’

‘Let’s hope so.’

‘Uh–Dr Irvine–you really do think Mary might–hurt Emily?’ said Robbie.

‘Maskelyne’s waited nearly thirty years to find the child who survived in Alwar,’ said Patrick. ‘She’s wanted to kill her for all of those years. Tonight she won’t let anyone get in the way of that.’