The safe house Read online

  ‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘And ladies,’ he added, catching the ironic eye of WPC MacAllister down at the far end of the table. ‘We won’t keep you long. This is just a preliminary meeting.’ He paused, scanning the faces around the table. ‘Look, lads. We need to get this one right. No pissing about.’ There were nods of acknowledgement. ‘I’d like to take the chance to introduce Chief Superintendent Anthony Cavan, who’ll be new to most of you.’

  The uniformed man by the door nodded at the heads turned towards him.

  ‘Thanks, Bill,’ he said. ‘Good morning, everybody. I’m here for the press conference, but I wanted to put my head round the door, show some encouragement. Pretend I’m not here.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bill Day, with a thin smile. ‘I’ve asked Detective Inspector Baird to chair the meeting. Rupert?’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Baird, and he shuffled some papers on the desk in front of him with a purposeful air. ‘The point of this introductory meeting is to establish clarity right from the outset. Stamford CID is going to be under the spotlight. Let’s not make fools of ourselves. Remember the Porter case.’ Everybody knew the Porter case, if only by repute: the TV documentaries, the appeal, the books, the early retirements, reassignments. The atmosphere became noticeably chillier. ‘I’ll try to cover the ground as quickly as I can. Ask any questions. I want everybody to get all this straight.’ He put his reading spectacles on and looked down at his notes. ‘The bodies were found at about eight-thirty this morning. Thursday the eighteenth of January. The victims are Leopold Victor Mackenzie and his wife. Elizabeth. Mr Mackenzie was the chairman of Mackenzie & Carlow. They made medicines, drugs, that sort of thing. Their daughter, Fiona, was taken to Stamford General.’

  ‘Will she live?’

  ‘I haven’t heard. We’ve got her in a fully secure room at the hospital with minimum access. Her own doctor insisted on it and we think he’s right. A couple of PCs are standing by.’

  ‘Has she said anything?’

  ‘No. The emergency call was made by the family’s Spanish cleaning lady, a Mrs Juana Ferrer, shortly after half-past eight. The scene was secured within ten minutes. Mrs Ferrers is downstairs at the moment.’

  ‘Did she see anything?’

  ‘Apparently not, she…’

  Baird paused and looked up as the door opened. A middle-aged man with unbrushed hair and wire-framed spectacles stepped into the room. He was carrying a bulging briefcase and he was panting.

  ‘Philip, thanks for stopping by,’ said Baird. ‘Could somebody give him a chair?’

  ‘Haven’t got time. I’ve just come from the house and I’m on my way to Farrow Street. I want to walk the bodies straight through. I can give you about one minute. Anyway, I don’t think I’m much use to you here.’

  ‘This is Dr Philip Kale, the Home Office pathologist,’ Baird explained to the meeting. ‘What can you tell us?’

  Dr Kale placed his bag on the floor and frowned.

  ‘As you know, one of my responsibilities as a forensic pathologist is not to construct premature theories. But…’ He began to count off his fingers, ‘… based on examination of the bodies at the scene, the two cases seem strikingly similar. Cause of death: anaemic anoxia, due to the incised wounds in the throats, which some of you have seen. Manner of death: their throats were cut with a blade, possibly non-serrated, of at least two centimetres in length. It could be anything from a Stanley knife to a carving knife. Mode of death: homicide.’

  ‘Can you tell us the time of death?’

  ‘Not with precision. You must understand that anything I say about this is very preliminary.’ He paused for a moment. ‘When I examined the bodies at the scene, hypostasis had commenced but was not fully developed. I would estimate that the deaths occurred more than two hours before they were found and not more than, say, five or six hours. Definitely not more than six.’

  ‘The daughter couldn’t have survived five hours with her throat cut, could she?’

  Dr Kale paused for thought.

  ‘I haven’t seen her. Possibly not.’

  ‘Anything else you can tell us? Anything about the murder?’

  Dr Kale gave the smallest hint of a smile.

  ‘The person who wielded the knife was using his or her right hand and has no disabling aversion to blood. And now I must go. The autopsies should be complete by mid afternoon. You’ll have a report.’

  There was a hum of conversation in the moments after his departure, silenced by a rap of Baird’s knuckles on the desk.

  ‘Is there anything from the crime-scene people?’

  There was a shaking of heads.

  ‘I talked to the cleaning woman.’

  It was Detective Chris Angeloglou who had spoken.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘She said that the day before yesterday Mrs Mackenzie gave a party in the house. There were two hundred people there. Bad news. Sorry.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’ll just have to let them get on with it. We’ll need a list of who was there.’

  ‘I’m already on to it.’

  ‘Good. We haven’t found any signs of forced entry as yet. But it’s early days. Anyway, you could open their front door with a credit card, a plastic ruler, anything. A cursory survey of the contents showed some rifling of drawers, cupboards. Lots of damage. Photographs torn and smashed.’

  ‘Looking for something?’

  ‘We’ll leave the theories until we’ve gathered the information and collated it. I don’t want officers looking for evidence to prove a theory. I want all the evidence. You can start thinking after that.’ He looked down at his notes. ‘What else is there? There was the writing on the wall, in Mrs Mackenzie’s lipstick. “Piggies.”’

  ‘Manson,’ said DC Angeloglou.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Isn’t that what the Manson gang wrote on the wall in blood, when they killed all those people in California? “Death to Pigs.” It’s from a Beatles song.’

  ‘All right, Chris. Look into it. Don’t get carried away. It’s probably a blind alley. So that’s where we are now, which isn’t anywhere much. I’m going to wind up in a moment. If you pop round to Christine afterwards, you can get a copy of the roster. The investigation is going to involve searching every inch of the house, knocking on doors in the area, talking to Mackenzie & whatever the company’s called and interviewing people who were at the party. We’ve already got officers at the railway station and roadblocks on the Tyle road asking for witnesses. I hope we’ll catch the bastard inside twenty-four hours. If we don’t, I want a lot of information to fall back on. Any questions?’

  ‘Did they have any enemies?’

  ‘That’s why we’re having an inquiry.’

  ‘Were there a lot of valuables in the house?’

  ‘Go and find out. You’re a policeman.’

  ‘It may just be very simple, sir.’

  Baird’s bushy eyebrows rose to a forty-five degree angle. Everybody turned to Pam MacAllister down at the far end.

  ‘Enlighten us WPC MacAllister.’

  ‘If she survives, the daughter may be able to tell us.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Baird drily. ‘Meanwhile, until she is fit to give a statement, we could pretend that we’re policemen. Or policewomen. I will if you will.’

  Pam McAllister reddened but said nothing.

  ‘Right,’ said Baird, grabbing his papers and standing.

  ‘If you come across anything significant, see me. But don’t waste my time.’

  Four

  ‘Wind up your window.’

  ‘But I’m too hot.’

  ‘It’s freezing; we’ll both get pneumonia. Wind it up.’

  Elsie struggled sulkily with the handle. The window inched up and stopped.

  ‘Can’t.’

  I leaned across her cross body. The car veered.

  ‘Can we have my tape on? The worm tape.’

  ‘Are you enjoying sc
hool?’

  Silence.

  ‘What did you do yesterday?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Tell me three things you did yesterday.’

  ‘I played. And I played. And I played.’

  ‘Who did you play with?’ Brightly. Eagerly.

  ‘Mungo. Can I have my tape?’

  ‘The tape machine’s broken. You shoved coins down it.’

  ‘It’s not fair. You promised.’

  ‘I did not promise.’

  ‘I’m telling of you.’

  We’d been up three hours already, and it wasn’t even nine o’clock. Elsie had slipped into my bed before six, scrambled up beside me, pulling the duvet off in the icy dawn, scratching my legs with her toenails, which I’d failed to cut, putting cold little feet against my back, butting her head under my arm, kissing me with a warm, wet, pursed mouth, peeling back my eyelids with her expert fingers, turning on the bedside light so that for a moment the room full of unpacked boxes and cases from which creased clothes spilled had disappeared in a dazzle of pain.

  ‘Why can’t you collect me?’

  ‘I’ve got to work. Anyway, you like Linda.’

  ‘I don’t like her hair. Why do you have to work? Why can’t Daddy work and you stay at home like other mummies?’

  She doesn’t have a daddy. Why does she say things like that?

  ‘I’ll come and get you as early as I can from Linda, I promise. I’ll make you your supper.’ I ignored the face she made at that. ‘And I’ll take you to school in the mornings. All right?’ I tried to think of something cheerful. ‘Elsie, why don’t we play our game? What’s in the house?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘You do know. What’s in the kitchen?’

  Elsie closed her eyes and wrinkled her brow with the effort.

  ‘A yellow ball.’

  ‘Brilliant. What’s in the bath?’

  ‘A packet of Coco Pops.’

  ‘Fantastic. And what’s in Elsie’s bed?’

  But I’d lost her. Elsie was staring out of the window. She pointed at a low, slatey cloud. I turned on the radio. ‘… freezing weather… high winds… north-easterlies’. Did that mean from the north-east or towards the northeast? What did it matter? I turned the knob: crackles, jazz, crackles, stupid discussion, crackles. I switched it off and focused on the landscape, such as it was. Was it for this I’d left London? Flat, furrowed, grey, wet, with an occasional industrial-looking barn made of aluminium or breeze-block. Not a good place to hide.

  When I was trying to make up my mind about the Stamford job, I made a list. On one side I’d listed the pros, the other the CONS. I love lists – every day at work I make long ones, with priorities asterisked in a different colour. I feel in control of my life once I’ve reduced it to a half-sheet of A4, and I love crossing off the things I’ve done, neatly. Sometimes I even put at the top of the list a few neatly crossed-out tasks I’ve already completed, as a way of getting some momentum which I hope will get me through the things I haven’t done.

  What had the pros been? Something like this:CountrysideBigger houseMore time to spend with ElsieJob that I’ve always wantedMore moneyTime to finish the trauma projectWalksPet for Elsie (?)Smaller schoolWork out relationship with DannyAdventure and changeMore time (this was asterisked several times since it engulfed all the other reasons)On the con side it simply said:Leave London.

  I grew up in the suburbs and through my teenage years I only ever wanted to get to the centre, the hub, the bull’s eye. I used to go shopping in Oxford Street with my mother when I was little and she was still choosing my clothes (demure circle skirts, polo-neck tops, neat jeans, navy sandals with nibbly little buckles, sensible coats with brass buttons, thick ribbed tights that never stayed up properly, and ‘Oh, look at you, you’re getting so tall,’ my mother would say as she tried to force my gangly body into clothes for dainty girls). I’d sit at the top of the double-decker bus and stare at the crowds, the dirt, the chaos, the wild-haired youths swinging down the pavements, couples kissing on the corners, the hot bright shops, the disorder of it all, the terror and the delight. I always said I was going to be a doctor and move into the centre of London. While Roberta was dressing her dolls and carrying them around, clutched to her chest, cooing, I was amputating them. I was going to be a doctor because no one that I knew was a doctor, and because half of my class at school wanted to be nurses and because my mother raised her eyebrows and shrugged every time I told her my ambition.

  London to me meant tiredness, early-morning starts, traffic jams, jaunty radio stations every notch along the dial, dirt in my clothes, dog shit on the pavements; meant I was called ‘doctor’ by men who looked like my father; meant advancement and money in the bank that I could spend on loud ear-rings and unsensible coats and pointy shoes with loud buckles on them; meant sex with strangers on strange weekends that I could hardly remember now, except for the sense in my euphoric body that I’d abandoned Edgware, not Edgware the place, but the Edgware in my mind with its Sunday lunches and three streets to get to somewhere that wasn’t a house. London meant having Elsie and losing her father. London meant Danny. It was the geography of my coming of age. As I drove into Stamford, having unpinned Elsie’s fingers from my jacket and kissed her suddenly flushed cheeks and promised on an impulse to collect her from school myself, I suddenly missed London as if it were a lover, a far-off object of desire. Though, actually, the city had betrayed me after Elsie was born, had become a grid of playgrounds and creches and babysitters and Mothercares. A parallel universe I’d never even noticed until I’d joined it, working in the week, pushing a buggy on Saturday and Sunday, swearing revenge.

  This was what I had dreamed of. Time. Me, alone in the house, and no child and no nanny and no Danny and no schedule that ticked away in my mind. There was a miaow and a prickle of claws on my leg. Opening the cat food at arm’s length, I filled Anatoly’s bowl and shoved it and him out of the back door. A breath of air blew a whiff of the tuna and rabbit in jelly back into my face, provoking a heaving cough and memories of seasickness. How could something like that be good even for a cat? I washed up Elsie’s bowl and mug from breakfast, and made myself a cup of instant coffee with water that hadn’t properly boiled, so the granules floated to the surface. Outside, rain dripped on to my waterlogged garden; the pink hyacinths that I’d been so excited about yesterday had tipped sideways in the rubbly soil, and their rubbery petals looked grimy. Apart from the sound of rain I could hear nothing, not even the sea. A feeling of dreariness crept over me. Normally, I would have been at work for two, maybe three or, in a crisis, four hours by now; the phone would be ringing, my in-tray would be overflowing, my secretary would bring me a cup of tea and I’d be dismayed by how quickly the morning was going. I turned on the radio: ‘Four small children died in a…’, and turned it off again hastily. I wished that someone had sent me a letter; even junk mail would be better than nothing.

  I decided I ought to work. The drawing that Elsie had done for me last week, when I’d complained about forlorn spaces on the sallow, peeling walls of my study, gazed accusingly down at me from where I’d pinned it above my desk. The room was dank and chilly, so I switched on the bar fire; it heated up my left leg and made me feel droopily in need of a morning nap.

  The screen of my word processor glowed green. A cursor pulsed at a healthy sixty beats a minute. I clicked the mouse on the hard disk, then on the empty folder called Book. ‘Even a journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step,’ somebody irritating had once said. I created a file and labelled it ‘Introduction’. I opened the file and wrote ‘Introduction’ again. The word sat, pitifully small, at the head of a green, blank space. I highlighted it and upped the typesize, then changed the font so that it thickened and slanted. There, that looked better, more impressive anyway.

  I tried to remember what I’d written in my proposal for the publisher. My brain felt as shiny and empty as the screen in front of me. Perhaps I should start with
the title. What does one call a book about trauma? In my proposal I’d simply called it ‘Trauma’, but that sounded bald, a kind of scholarly idiot’s guide, and I wanted this to be controversial, polemical and exciting, a look at the way trauma as a label is misused, so that real sufferers remain invisible, while disaster junkies jump on the bandwagon. I typed, in large print, above the ‘Introduction’, ‘The Hidden Wound’ and centred it. That sounded like a book about menstruation. With a smooth swipe of the mouse, I erased the letters. ‘From Shell Shock to Culture Shock’. No, no, no. ‘Trauma Victims and Trauma Addicts’? But that was a small strand of the book, not its overall pattern. ‘Soul Searching’. That was a title for a religious pamphlet. ‘On Griefs Track’. Yuk. How about ‘The Trauma Years’? I’d save that for my memoirs. At least time was passing now. For nearly three quarters of an hour I typed and erased titles, until at the end I was back at the start. ‘Introduction.’

  I ran myself a bath and filled it with expensive oils and lay in its slippery warmth till my fingers shrivelled, reading a book about end-games in chess and listening to the sound of rain. Then I ate two pieces of toast with mashed sardines on top and the remains of a cheesecake that had been sitting shrink-wrapped in the fridge for days and two chocolate biscuits and a rather pulpy slice of melon.

  I went back to the melancholy green on the computer screen and typed firmly: ‘Samantha Laschen was born in 1961 and grew up in London. She is a consultant psychiatrist who heads the new Referral Centre for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder based in Stamford. She lives in the Essex countryside with her five-year-old daughter and her cat, and in her spare time plays chess.’ I crossed out the bit about the cat (too fey). And the bit about chess. I erased my age (too young to be authoritative, too old to be prodigious) and the bit about growing up in London and now living in Essex (boring). I erased Elsie – I wasn’t going to wear my daughter like an accessory. I looked at what was left; maybe we doctors were too hung up on status. There, I liked it: ‘Samantha Laschen is a consultant psychiatrist.’ Or what about just ‘Samantha Laschen is…’ Minimalism has always been my style. I lay back in my chair and shut my eyes.