The Red Room Read online

  “It wasn’t a performance. Thought I was going to go mad.”

  “And then you got Doll after all.”

  “That was Gabriel. He said that with Doll gone, and blamed for it, that would be the end.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I had no will left. I just wanted it all to end.”

  “When you ran away from Emily, when you were so worried, you took her cup with you. That came in useful. You, or maybe I should say Gabriel, left the cup there. Of course, he also left a leather pouch. But it didn’t matter. It was another miracle. It just incriminated poor Mickey Doll even more. After all, what murderer would deliberately leave behind something that identified them? A bit tough on Doll, though.”

  She blew her nose again. “I know,” she said. “It torments me. But I can’t think of what else I could have done.”

  “And then there was me,” I said.

  “I was on the verge of telling you,” she said. “You knew that. I was going to confess when he came back. You’re not sure. I can see that in your eyes. You’re not sure whether to believe me. But I didn’t let him kill you. You’re sure of that.”

  “Yes, I’m sure of that. You suddenly resisted him. Why was that?”

  She lit another cigarette, her pretty face screwed up. “I thought it was going to go on forever and we would never be safe, not safe enough for Gabe. Maybe I was just tired.”

  I took a sip of my tea. It was very cold now, with a metallic taste, though it might just have been my dry mouth.

  Bryony leaned forward with an urgent expression. “I’ve been reading,” she said. “I think I was mentally ill. I’ve read about it. It’s an emotional-dependence syndrome. It’s a well-known pattern. Women get into the power of men and become helpless. I had years of abuse with Gabe. He’s a difficult man. A violent man. And it wasn’t a black-and-white situation. The first death was a suicide, a tragedy. Then there was the accident. By the time we were in the middle of it, I had lost any sense of self.” She took another drag of her cigarette and looked at me with narrowed eyes. “Do you think people will believe that?”

  “Very possibly,” I said. “People believe the strangest things, I’ve found. And you’re young and pretty and middle class, which always helps.”

  “You’re an expert,” she said. “You were the crucial person in this case. The police trust you. Will you help me?”

  I took a deep breath and put my hands in my pockets, perhaps to conceal that they were trembling. “I think I may be too involved in the case to appear as an expert witness,” I said.

  Her expression hardened. “Kit,” she said, “I could have let you die. I saved you. We could have been sitting at home now and you would be dead. I saved you.”

  I stood up. “I’m glad to have been spared,” I said. “I’m sorry not to be more effusive. I keep thinking of Emily and the dead bodies. I can’t get them out of my mind. They were alive and you killed them. Well, you seem to have forgiven yourself for that without too much difficulty. It never ceases to amaze me, the ability of people to justify themselves and never feel guilty.”

  “But haven’t you heard what I’ve been saying?” Bryony said. “I’m as devastated as anybody.”

  “I’ve heard you say that none of it was your fault,” I said. “I’ve heard you say that it was all Gabe and not you. It seems that I should be feeling sorry for you as well as Daisy and Lianne and Philippa and Michael.”

  “Help is what I need.” Her voice was a wail. “Help is what I’ve always needed.”

  __________

  Oban was waiting outside in the car park. There was a fierce cold autumn wind and I closed my eyes and took it full in the face. I wanted it to blow the last hour out of me. He smiled at me.

  “Was it like you said it was going to be?” he asked. “Was she presenting herself as one of Gabriel Teale’s victims as well?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You think she’ll get away with it?”

  “Not if I have anything to do with it,” I said, and shivered. My eyes filled with tears.

  __________

  The light was failing by the time Oban dropped me off at the top of my street, but even from a distance I knew who it was standing at my door. He was wearing a long coat; his hands were thrust into his pockets; his shoulders were hunched. He looked as if he was standing on a crag and cold winds were blowing round him.

  I stopped dead, and for a moment I considered running away. Or running toward him and putting my arms around his grim figure. Of course, I did neither. I walked as casually as I could up the pavement, and when he finally heard me and turned round, I managed a smile.

  “I’ve just come from Salton Hill,” I said.

  “Oh,” he said, pulling a face. “Her.”

  “Yes.”

  He gave a grunt and pushed his hands deep into his pockets. “At least there won’t be any more of his crappy plays,” he said, shoving his hands even deeper in his pockets.

  “I didn’t know you’d seen any of them.”

  “I didn’t need to.” There was a silence. Will looked as if he had been assigned to some sort of compulsory sentry duty outside my flat. He gave a sniff. “I suppose you’re expecting me to congratulate you.”

  “Well…”

  “I suppose you want me to go on about how you were right and everybody else in the world including me was wrong. Is that it? Give you a fucking medal or something.”

  I giggled then. “You’re welcome,” I said.

  I pushed open the door and kicked aside a bundle of mail lying on the mat. “Do you want to come in?” He hesitated. “Glass of wine? Beer? Come on.”

  He followed me up the stairs. In the kitchen, I handed him a bottle of beer from the fridge and poured myself a glass of red wine. I closed the curtains, then lit a candle and put it on the table between us. He took a sip. “How’s your neck?” he asked. “Or whatever other bit of you he…”

  “Fine,” I said. I looked at his face in the shadowy, shifting light. I knew he wouldn’t change. And I knew what it would be like: me hoping all the time for something more, always asking for something he couldn’t give.

  “Will…” I began.

  “Please,” he said then. He shut his eyes for a moment. “Please.” I wondered whom he was pleading with. It no longer felt as if he was talking to me, but to someone inside his head.

  I leaned across the table and put a hand on his arm. It was like touching a steel girder. I wanted to take his face in my hands and kiss him till he kissed me back. I wanted him to hold me, tight. If he did that, I didn’t stand a chance. But he didn’t move, although his eyes were open again.

  “It’s not fair of you,” I said at last.

  “No, I guess not.” He tipped back the last of his beer and stood up, the chair scraping on the floor. He looked around. “Are you moving out of the area?”

  “Why should I?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Bad associations. Trauma.”

  I shook my head. “What bad associations?” I said. “I’m staying.”

  “That’s good,” he said, then caught himself. “I mean, it’s an interesting area. In some ways.”

  “That’s what I think.”

  “Good.” He lowered his head and kissed me on my cheek. I felt his breath; his stubble. For a moment we stood like that, close to each other in the candlelight. Then he drew back.

  “You did well,” he said. “I told you that, didn’t I?”

  “Not in those words.”

  “I can’t believe you going in like that, on your own,” he said. “You should look after yourself more.”

  And then he was going, his coat flapping behind him, and I stood where I was and watched him leave.

  47

  I was helping Julie to pack. It was a friendly but melancholy kind of business, made more so by the soft autumnal weather outside my windows. The beech and chestnut trees were yellow and gold and russet-red now, and a warm wind gusted through
their branches, scattering leaves in radiant showers. Drifts of brown leaves piled up in the courtyard and occasionally children crunched into them, wearing boots and shouting with glee. The sun shone through a thin gauze of clouds. Summer, which had never really arrived, was leaving. Julie was leaving. I was staying behind.

  “Here, this is yours.” She chucked over a lavender-colored top, which I’d hardly ever worn. “And this.” A flimsy cardigan winged across the room, the arms flapping. “God, I didn’t realize how much of your stuff I’d borrowed over the months. I’m like a magpie.” She giggled. Her eyes were bright and she glowed with energy and excitement.

  We had been at it all morning, in an aimless kind of way, stopping every half-hour or so for tea. We were separating her possessions into piles: one pile for the things she was going to take with her; one for the stuff she wanted to store for when she returned; one for the rubbish bin or the charity shop or me. This third pile was by far the biggest—she was on a binge of freeing herself of possessions, throwing away all her baggage.

  She slung a pair of strappy black shoes on top of a violently yellow mac that she’d bought only a few weeks ago, when she was fed up with the rain. She added some beige cotton trousers that she said made her bottom look a funny shape, a jacket that she’d never really liked, three or four sweatshirts, tights with ladders, a beaded bag, a black skirt, bought for her supposed office job, which she picked up between finger and thumb as if it smelled bad, a lime-green T-shirt, a purple roll-necked jersey. “Here. Your red dress,” she said, unhooking it from the hanger and passing it across.

  “Keep it.”

  “What? Don’t be stupid. It’s yours and you look beautiful in it.”

  “I’d like you to have it.”

  “It’s not exactly practical.” She looked tempted, though, and stroked it as if it were alive.

  “Stuff it in the bottom of your rucksack. It hardly weighs anything.”

  “What if it gets ruined, or I lose it?”

  “It’s yours to lose or ruin. Go on, you’re throwing things away as if there was no tomorrow. Let me have a turn.”

  “OK.” She leaned across and kissed my cheek. “Every time I wear it I’ll think of you.”

  “Do that.” I was alarmed to find there were tears in my eyes, and busied myself with uselessly refolding items of clothing.

  “You’ve been lovely.”

  “Hardly. I’ve been anti-social and grumpy half the time, and neurotic the other half.”

  “Talking about grumpy, what’s happening with Will?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You mean it’s over?”

  “I don’t know. ‘Over’ is a big word, though. I’ve hardly ever ended anything in my life, even when I wanted to. So perhaps I’m letting him do the ending, by not contacting me. Or perhaps he will contact me and then—I don’t know. I don’t know what I will do. But he’s not good for me. He’s too harsh, like a rock I was always going to cut myself on.”

  “You’re probably right. You’ll meet someone else soon, you’ll see.”

  “What about these shorts?”

  “Chuck them. Your bruise has faded, you know. It’s gone yellow and brown, not that extraordinary purple any longer. Does it still hurt?”

  “Not much—a bit sore.” I touched it lightly.

  “Strange summer.”

  “You can say that again. It all feels unreal now, like a story that happened to someone else.”

  “Do you ever feel you’re playing at being grown-up?”

  I sat back on my haunches and picked up an electric-blue vest-top. “You should take this.”

  “I mean, I don’t feel grown-up at all—I feel as if I was just a step away from when I was a child. But, then, I don’t live in a very grown-up way, do I? Drifting around, not settling, not having a career or long-term prospects, wearing clothes for teenagers—like that top,” she added, picking up the blue vest and adding it to her to-take pile. “But you’ve got this amazing proper job, and a flat that looks light-years away from your student days—you even give papers at conferences, for God’s sake. But is that how you feel inside, as well?”

  “No.” I hurled a pair of silk knickers at her and she stuffed them into her backpack. “I feel as if it’s all a charade that I’m hiding behind. But we all feel like that. That everyone else is different, and sorted out in a way we’ll never be. If we live to a hundred we’ll probably feel like that. When we’re on our deathbed we’ll still be waiting to feel grown-up.”

  “Maybe.” She grinned across at me. “But I really am like that. That’s why I’m running away again. I don’t like real life.”

  “Who said I did?”

  She looked across at me, a mermaid in a bright sea of clothes. “You should come with me, then.”

  “It’s too late.”

  “It’s never too late.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  The phone rang.

  “I’ll get it,” said Julie, clambering to her feet. “You put the kettle on.”

  But it was for me. “The police,” she mouthed, handing over the receiver with a shrug.

  “Kit Quinn?”

  “Speaking.”

  “DCI Oban told me to call you. Apparently a Mrs. Dear wants to get in touch with you.”

  “Mrs. Dear? I’ve never heard of her.”

  “Something about her daughter, Philippa Burton.”

  “Pam Vere?”

  “Anyway, she wants to talk to you.”

  “OK, give me her number, then.”

  “She probably wants me to tell her about the Teales,” I said, after I’d put the phone down. “Though Oban went and visited Jeremy Burton straight away. There’s nothing left to say.”

  “Poor woman.”

  “It’s the funeral the day after tomorrow—finally. Philippa was her only child. She’s just got Emily now.”

  “Are you going?”

  “Probably. Though it’ll be crowded out.”

  “I’ll be in the air. Far away.”

  “I just wish I knew why she had to die. I feel it’s all unfinished still. It haunts me and it must haunt them a hundred, a thousand times more—not knowing anything at all.”

  __________

  Pam Vere was clipped and strained on the phone. She wanted to meet before the funeral, she said. Today, if possible. She was free anytime. I grimaced across at Julie, and said that I could be at her house in half an hour.

  “I’d rather meet outside.”

  “All right.” I glanced at the uncertain skies. “How about the Heath—that’s near you, isn’t it?”

  “I thought we could meet by the canal.”

  “The canal?”

  “Where the girl was killed.”

  “Lianne.” I hated the way nobody called her by her chosen name. Even in the papers, she was always “the homeless girl,” the “drifter.” And I hated the way adjectives were applied by an unimaginative press: Philippa was tragic, Lianne was merely sad.

  “Yes. Can we meet there?”

  I tried not to show my surprise. “If that’s what you want.”

  __________

  It was trying to rain by the time I reached the steps leading down to the canal. Occasional large drops splashed into the water, spreading ripples. It seemed ominous, except, of course, what I dreaded had already happened and was in the past.

  Pam Vere was waiting, standing quite still in her scarf and camelhair coat. She didn’t smile, but she held out her hand as I came toward her. Her grip was firm and steady. Her eyes were steady too, in her chalky face. I noticed that for once she’d applied her makeup carelessly—there was a pale smudge of powder on the side of her nose and a faint fleck of mascara on one of her wrinkled and hooded eyelids. “Thank you for coming,” she said formally.

  “I wanted to,” I said.

  “You’re coming to the funeral.”

  “Of course.”

  “There was something else I wanted to say to you. I couldn’t
say it there.”

  She looked around us, at the rash of nettles, the mucky path dotted with crisp packets, the slimy water spotted with rain. “Was it here?”

  “By the bridge,” I said, pointing.

  “Did she suffer?”

  That wasn’t what I had been expecting and it took me a moment to gather my thoughts. “I don’t think so. They weren’t serial killers, Mrs. Vere, they weren’t like the Wests. They didn’t enjoy killing. They would have got it over as quickly as possible. Maybe the worst thing for your daughter would have been knowing that she had left Emily at risk.”

  She cleared her throat. “I meant the other girl.”

  I gazed at her. “Who? Lianne?”

  “Yes.” She held my eyes. “Would it have been painful?”

  “No,” I said. “I think it was very sudden.”

  Mrs. Vere nodded and then said, in a voice that had become husky, “I heard they stabbed her all over.”

  “That was after she died.”

  “Poor girl.” A raindrop splashed onto her cheek and ran down it, toward her mouth. She didn’t wipe it away.

  “Yes,” I said, wondering why Pam Vere wanted to stand in the rain with me by a canal.

  She turned her back on me and stood looking out over the water. “Philippa was a good girl,” she said. “Maybe we put too much pressure on her—she was our only child, you know. Sometimes now when I look at photographs of the three of us, I think how little and single she seemed between us. Two adults and one little child. But then when she was eleven her father died, of course, and it was just her and me. And she was still a good girl, always neat, always thinking of other people, always helpful. Too helpful, perhaps. She wasn’t unpopular, but she didn’t have many friends when she was little. She liked playing by herself, with her blessed doll. Or being with me, making cakes and shopping and tidying the house. She never gave me any trouble.

  “And she was the same at school. A hard worker—that’s what school reports always said. Nothing brilliant, but a hard worker, a pleasure to teach. Always did her homework as soon as she got back from school. Good as gold. She would sit at the kitchen table and eat hot buttered toast and Marmite and then she would do her homework, in blue ink, with her neat handwriting, her looping Y. I can see her now, in her navy blue uniform, with her heels tucked up on the bar of the chair and her brow furrowed, blotting her work after each line. Or coloring in her maps for geography. She liked doing that, shading the coastline blue and the forests green, drawing lines of contour.