Tower of Silence (37 page)

‘Are you going back to Durham?’

‘I expect so. Yes, of course I am. If I go all out for it, I might manage to take my Finals in the summer.’

‘And then?’

‘Don’t know,’ mumbled Emily, bending over the washing up.

‘Come back here, Em. Would you?’

‘To this cottage?’

‘To me,’ he said, and Emily turned round, the stupid tears half blinding her so that she could hardly see him, but finding that it did not matter, because his arms were reaching out for her, and happiness–the real thing, the genuine piercing happiness that was so strong you could practically taste it–was filling up the entire kitchen.

In her narrow, hatefully familiar room inside Moy, Mary swam in and out of the drug-induced drowsiness. For most of the time her mind drifted aimlessly on a sea of uncaring half-consciousness, but there were moments when she was able to shake it off, and to consider the events of the last twenty-four hours, and wonder whether her break-out had been reported to the press yet, and, if so, what the press had made of it.

Remarkable bid for freedom by the famous Sixties killer, Mary Maskelyne…Mary Maskelyne today cheated her gaolers and was, for a few hours, a free woman
…

What none of the press reports would say, of course, was that for those few hours when she had been free, the ghosts of her enemies and her victims had walked with her. Her parents. Darren Clark. Curious to think that although she could not remember what he looked like, Darren Clark’s daughter was somewhere out there in the world, working, living her life, maybe with a boyfriend or a husband. Had she ever been told who her parents really were, that child who had had dark hair and blue eyes when she was born? A daughter…A new idea began to take shape in Mary’s mind.

Supposing that one day the newspapers carried headlines that said things like,
Emotional reunion between Mary Maskelyne and the daughter she was forced to give up…‘I never forgot her,’ said Mary, a catch in her voice. ‘I always knew that one day I would find her
.’

It would make a very good story. She could do the emotional catch-in-the-voice thing pretty easily, and she could even write an account of it all if they wanted. Yes, she would rather like to do that. And finding, and meeting, the child would be something to plan for in the dreary years ahead. You had to have something to aim for, otherwise you would go mad in a place like this. She began to turn over various ideas in her mind, knowing she would think of something, knowing that whatever she thought of would be good. Never mind its being good, let’s make it newsworthy.

And what of Selina March? They had told her that Selina had died tonight; Mary was still not sure if she believed this, because it would be like the conniving
creatures who ran Moy to say it, purely to prevent Mary from trying to get out again. So she would have to listen and watch very carefully to find out the truth of that.

But even if Selina was dead, the bitch might find a way to come back. Christabel had done that over the years: she had whispered things into Mary’s ear when no one was around. Ingrid, the faithless cow, had done it as well. Mary had seen Ingrid very clearly indeed tonight: she had seen her looking out through the eyes of that woman, Joanna Savile.

Ghosts. They never quite left you. They affected your whole life, and they stayed with you for ever. As Mary drifted into sleep again, she was once again feeling, quite strongly, that Christabel’s ghost was very near.

Christabel Maskelyne did not sleep very well that night, because she did not sleep very well any night. You had to remain alert; you had to be constantly on the look-out for the creatures who lived inside the dreadful towers. They were cunning, those ogre-creatures; they donned their human masks and their human manners, but Christy knew them for what they were. She had known, the instant the great clanging bell started to boom its horrid warning, that the ogre-creatures would be involved somewhere, and she had known she must be more watchful than ever. The ogres were still out there in the world–the sonorous note of the bell might even be to warn people of them.

Eventually, she drifted into the light shallow sleep that was the only rest she had known for half a century.

Of the people whose lives had been affected by the tragedy of Alwar and the Tower of Silence, only one lay silent and unknowing tonight, and only one had gone beyond the pain and the fear and the ghosts.

Selina March, carefully laid out in Inchcape’s little Chapel of Rest, awaited the good Christian funeral she would be given by the little community in which she had lived for almost her whole life. There would be a post-mortem, of course, and an inquest, but it had already been agreed that once those unpleasant formalities were over, it was only right that Selina be buried next to her two great-aunts and her great-uncle.

Everyone agreed it was what she would have wanted.