*
The cathedral clock struck one as Jack ushered Hester into the back of the chauffeur-driven car. John was already there, slumped in the opposite corner, eyes half closed, breath reeking. The look she gave him was more eloquent than a thousand words.
J
ack watched the car drive away, then trudged back upstairs to McKenna’s office to relay the essence of Hester’s disclosures. ‘I’m sorely tempted to go to that damned school now, drag Scott out of her bed and ask her what
else
she didn’t think we needed to know,’ he finished.
‘
So that’s what Melville meant.’ McKenna’s face betrayed sorrow and outrage in equal measure. ‘In among his maundering and drunken gibberish, he said Sukie had cost him “an arm
and
a leg”, and then began laughing like a lunatic.’
‘
Didn’t you ask him what he meant?’
‘
No, I didn’t,’ McKenna said curtly. ‘I decided to have him escorted to his car.’
‘
Probably for the best, in the circumstances,’ Jack remarked. ‘We shouldn’t really interview people when they’re the worse for wear.’ He fell silent, fiddling with the papers on the desk, trying to find expression for the feelings Hester had evoked in him. Presently, he said, ‘What happened between those girls reminds me of a Greek tragedy, but we mustn’t assume that it’s relevant to Sukie’s death.’ Stifling a yawn, he rubbed his eyes. ‘Even though,’ he went on, ‘there’s a compelling motive for suicide in there.’
‘
And what’s that?’
‘
Isn’t it obvious? Sukie believed she’d destroyed her best friend’s future. She must have been eaten up with guilt.’
‘
I rely on you to keep off the psychological bandwagon,’ McKenna told him, grinding his teeth. ‘As you said, we’ve got to keep an open mind, so don’t start spouting claptrap just because you got too close to the Melvilles’ emotional meltdown. I don’t know which of them needs treatment the most.’
‘
A helping hand springs to mind, rather than treatment,’ Jack argued. ‘Hester’s development was obviously cauterised at some crucial stage. She’s utterly pathetic.’
‘
And her husband’s an upper-class English twerp hoping to find his balls at the bottom of every bottle of Scotch he uncaps,’ McKenna added, with wholly uncharacteristic vulgarity.
‘
I imagine he’s given to snide remarks about Paddies and so forth when he’s in his cups,’ Jack ventured.
McKenna
’s eyes gleamed. ‘He wanted to talk to an
English
policeman.’
‘
He probably only wanted to talk to someone who’d offer comforting answers to the nasty questions his daughter’s death has raised, but that’s not your style. You’d rather cause an explosion and see what settles with the dust.’
‘
It must be my Irish genes,’ McKenna retorted.
‘
You Celts do like to flaunt your background,’ Jack commented wearily. ‘Dewi’s so unbelievably Welsh he probably bleeds daffodil yellow.’
‘
Or leek green,’ said McKenna, with a crooked smile. ‘He’s no longer “Dewi”, by the way. He’s now “David”, because Torrance, our glitzy American with the toothy smile and Rapunzel-like hair, can’t get her pretty mouth around “Dewi”.’ The smile evaporated. ‘She seems to have true cross-gender appeal.’
‘
Why? Because Sukie “adored” her? That’s schoolgirl stuff, surely.’
‘
You said Hester also thinks very highly of her,’ McKenna reminded him. ‘However, Dr Scott doesn’t. Nor does Matron. Interesting, eh?’
‘
Only up to a point,’ Jack said. ‘I’m far more interested in the accident and Imogen’s paper-thin explanation.’
‘
Quite.’ McKenna began to tidy his desk. ‘And if she
has
been lying, she had a first-class motive for murdering her erstwhile friend, especially if Sukie was getting her memory back.’ He paused. ‘Then again, the motive is equally strong if she’s been telling the truth. I’d feel murderous towards someone who lost me one of my legs.’
‘
But could she have done it without help?’ Jack wondered. ‘Anyway, we can’t go too far down that road until Eifion confirms cause of death. But whatever, forcing those girls back together was the worst thing anyone could do. Hester should have heeded her instincts. Poor bitch! Her daughter would still be alive if she had.’
‘
Considering she gave you quite a hammering,’ McKenna said, eyeing Jack’s scratches, ‘you’re being extraordinarily sympathetic.’
‘
She expected to get arrested. She finds you terrifying. Pity Scott doesn’t feel the same way, isn’t it?’
After
the meeting in the sixth-form common room, Vivienne went downstairs for supper with the others but, sick in heart and stomach, returned almost immediately to her room. At the head of the first flight of stairs she encountered Matron and the headmistress on their rounds. When she gave way, pressing herself against the wall, Matron stalked past as if she were invisible, but Dr Scott paused momentarily to stare coldly into her eyes. Feeling like a sickly fox marked by the hounds, Vivienne scuttled up the next flight and, once in her room, rammed a chair under the doorknob.
She
had a packet of cannabis taped behind the bed frame and another stuffed inside a padded coat-hanger but, desperate as she was, dared not open either, for the pungent smoke was sure to alert the policeman guarding the fire exit at the end of the corridor. She collapsed on the bed, wondering where it would all end and, with one of those fearful perceptions her addiction could induce, she realised that the girl she had once been was now only a decaying memory inside the dead thing she had become.
Imogen
must feel the same way, she thought. The girl who returned to school early in the spring term to receive Lancaster’s house captaincy as consolation for losing her leg had already suffered a sea change in her personality that shocked even Vivienne’s blunted sensibilities. The always nice, often kind, sometimes reckless, rich kid Imogen once was disappeared with the amputated leg. Bitter, morose and despairing, her surrogate yawed through the remaining weeks of term on one leg and her crutches while the artificial leg gathered dust in the corner of her room.
Hope
seemed to flare briefly the day school reopened after the Easter holiday. Vivienne was in her room when the Olivers’ car drove on to the forecourt. As the chauffeur opened the rear door, she watched with something like joy as Imogen put
two
feet and a silver-topped cane on the ground, waved away the chauffeur’s helping hand and pulled herself upright. Then she heard the headmistress’s horrified voice.
‘
My dear girl!’ Dr Scott exclaimed. She came into Vivienne’s line of sight, striding elegantly in high-heeled shoes, and grabbed Imogen’s arm. ‘Where are your crutches?’
‘
In the boot,’ Imogen replied. She was rock steady on the prosthetic leg.
‘
Get them,’ the headmistress instructed the chauffeur. ‘This minute!’
Imogen
protested. ‘I don’t need them.’
‘
But you do, my dear. You
do
!
I’ll
tell you when you can do without them.’ Taking the cane from Imogen’s hands, she put her arm round her shoulders and began walking her towards the door. ‘You shouldn’t have done this,’ Vivienne heard her say. ‘You’re not ready. A little at a time, Imogen, a little at a time.
Trust
me, my dear. I know what I’m doing.’
But
obstinately, Imogen persevered with her new leg, except when she was in the swimming pool. There, she cleaved the silvery water as clean and fast as ever, and although her wake had lost its old symmetry, her tapering silhouette made her resemble a mermaid. When she hauled herself back into the human environment she became a cripple once more, and she clearly mourned, weeping often both with grief and with a pain that was closer to agony. She also wept with misery, for the headmistress condemned her self-determination as treachery and, under the onslaught of a displeasure as pernicious as a foul smell, Imogen’s spirit withered towards another death. Vivienne was not surprised, for only sour and poisonous plants thrived in Dr Scott’s greenhouse.
Sukie
also grieved. Her friendship with Imogen, an entity in its own right, was suddenly, like Imogen’s left leg, not there, but its absence was mystifying. The girls went out of their way to avoid each other and, if inadvertently, they found themselves together, Imogen would hobble away with downcast eyes. Vivienne perceived guilt in one and raw sorrow in both, but doubting her befuddled impressions, could only ache to help them.
She
was jolted from her reverie by scuffles and whispers outside the door. The knob turned slowly, the chair rocked slightly and she heard the vile, vicious, predatory Nancy titter. She clutched her stomach, wanting to vomit with fear.
‘
McKenna’s sussed you out, Dopehead.’ Nancy’s voice slithered into the room. ‘He’s after you.’
Then
she heard Charlotte’s breathy tones. ‘When did he say that?’ She sounded confused. ‘I didn’t see him talking to you.’
‘
He didn’t,’ Nancy replied. ‘Dr Scott told me.’ Her nails beat a tattoo on the door. ‘You’d better believe it, Dopehead,’ she hissed. ‘Your days are numbered.’
*
A dim glow from the outside security lamps lit the cavernous dormitory Daisy shared with seven others. In the next bed Alice muttered, adding her nocturnal voice to the quiet, comforting chorus of grunts and sighs. They were like animals in a den, Daisy thought, loving the familiar sounds. When she was at home, the nights were a lonely torment.
A
soft, uncertain wind scuffled among the trees, and she hoped it heralded one of those wonderful storms bursting with the promise of devastation and excitement. During one of last winter’s gales she had watched an ancient Douglas Fir snap like a matchstick, and crash to earth in a tumult of flying needles and broken branches. Alice tried to flee its screaming death throes, but Daisy grabbed her arm, dragging her towards the impending disaster simply to relish the experience.
Alice
was an odd choice to be her best friend, but in truth, it had never been a matter of choice. The first term was three days old when Daisy arrived, and as Alice was the only first former not already joined in some alliance, leftover and latecomer made their own. Three stultifying years later, Daisy felt trapped in the same kind of oppressive relationship her parents endured, but while divorce was theirs for the taking, even had she been sure that was what she wanted, she did not dare break the bond with Alice. When friendship died at the Hermitage, its body was picked apart, its bones stripped of every scrap of flesh and ounce of marrow, and the one who killed the friendship broken on the wheel. Betrayal, of a certain kind, was still a capital offence in this small, cynical world.
She
heard the lift whine at the far end of the building, then footfalls overhead and the thud of bedroom doors. She listened avidly for whatever might come next, as she listened at home for the furious, savage coupling that closed each bitter row between her warring parents, but although she waited until her ears began to hum, nothing arose to divert her agitation. Suddenly she reared up in bed and yelped, dragging the other girls from the shallows of sleep.
‘
Did you hear that?’ she asked, her voice throbbing with horrified excitement.
‘
Hear what?’ someone mumbled.
‘
That
awful
sloshing noise in Sukie’s room. It must be her ghost!’
For
a long time Torrance had regarded the arcane traditions of the Hermitage as simply ‘quaint’, because her New World eyes misread the cosy, wrinkled face of the Old World. Her eventual realisation that brutality and malice were the school’s lifeblood brought with it a profound and crippling sense of helplessness, and that feeling returned with a vengeance when she made the rounds of the Tudor dormitories that night. She could actually smell the tension and fear gripping the school, and she searched deep for the brave face she presented and the calming words she spoke. The only light moment in a dreadful half-hour came courtesy of the ever acerbic Alice, when Torrance asked, ‘How’s your breathing now, little sister?’ and Alice, rigid with stress and grey as a corpse, replied, ‘Fine, thank you, Torrance, and would you
please
stop calling me “little sister”. You may want to run Tudor like a sorority house but, as I’ve told you before, this is
not
America.’
On
the way to her own room, Torrance saw Ainsley going into the showers. She sat on the bed, waiting and counting, and exactly eight minutes later Ainsley returned. Three more minutes passed before she heard the thump of books, the rustle of paper and the click of a lamp switch as Ainsley settled down to one hour of intellectual gymnastics, and Torrance knew that ten minutes after Ainsley eventually went to bed she would be muttering in her sleep, her overstretched brain unable to quiet itself. The prospect made her feel like screaming.
Vivienne
’s room was tonight as quiet as the grave. There were no soft giggles or heartbreaking sobs, no scraping matches and no cloying scent drifting through the open window. Perhaps, for once, sheer exhaustion had sent her to sleep.
Torrance
went for her own shower, and was sitting on the bed, drying her hair, when she heard screams from the floor below, quickly followed by Matron’s shouts. Hair flying, she ran from her room and down the stairs, to find Matron hovering over the crumpled figure of Grace Blackwell.
It
’s all right,’ Matron said, hauling Grace to her feet. ‘I’ll put her in the infirmary for tonight.’
‘
What’s wrong with her?’
‘
Daisy was teasing the dorm. I’ve already told her off.’
‘
She — she s-s-said she could h-h hear Sukie’s ghost!’ Grace almost choked on the words. Her eyes glittered.
Torrance
recoiled as if she had been punched in the stomach.
‘
Daisy’s a very naughty girl,’ Matron was saying, patting Grace’s arm. ‘You’ve had enough frights for one day with that stupid police dog, haven’t you?’ She set off for the infirmary, trudging on leaden feet, with Grace tottering beside her like a drunk.
Leaning
weakly against the wall, Torrance watched until they were out of sight and several more minutes passed before she felt strong enough to return upstairs. Once back in her room, she draped a towel round her shoulders and spread out her hair to dry, then sat by the open window. Lights glowed in the police caravan, from where she could hear the occasional voice, and she realised that its presence underscored the sense of menace she felt at every turn. She shivered. ‘
Damn
Daisy!’ she muttered, wanting to throttle the little horror. Matron would have done no worse than chide her gently, for Daisy was one of her particular pets and her mischief, according to Matron, was quite harmless. Was Daisy perhaps retarded, Torrance asked herself, realising that the girl’s emotional attachments, as well as her behaviour, were decidedly infantile. She exchanged one idol for another as a child jumps from toy to toy. For a while she had plagued Torrance with her affections and insinuating presence, before dropping her for Justine, who was ousted in favour of Imogen.
A
movement outside caught her attention. A figure was crossing the forecourt from the police caravan, trailing an ever lengthening shadow. She stared out as she had on Tuesday night, when the silence was disturbed by the scream of a military jet low overhead and the rustle of trees in its aftermath. Almost immediately, she had heard another noise, as if someone had kicked a stone, then what had sounded like the whisper of voices. She had peered into the darkness until her eyes glazed, but still could not be sure whether what she saw was a trick of the light or a shape flitting among the trees.
Suddenly
bone weary, she removed the towel, twisted her hair into a loose plait and fell into bed. Hearing Ainsley’s sporadic gabbling through the wall, Torrance remembered that she too had suffered Daisy’s attentions for a while, before Sukie became the latest passion. Then thoughts and images of the dead girl that she had resolutely thrust aside all evening flooded her mind and she began to weep.
*
Alice had not shed a single tear when Sukie’s death was announced, nor during the strange, disturbing, dragging evening that followed, when the school’s inviolate routines collapsed about her ears. Tea was late, prep was abandoned, and showers and bed turned into a brawling, shouting mêlée that subsided into simmering unrest once Dr Scott and Matron had made their rounds. Alice blamed the atmosphere for her bitchiness towards Torrance, who called her charges ‘little sister’ only to make them feel protected, not to promote Dr Scott’s sinister notions of a surrogate family to which every girl must offer herself like a sacrifice. Dr Scott was a hypocrite, Alice decided as she fell asleep, and she made hypocrites of others, for the Hermitage was, in truth, just a gigantic cardboard box where parents abandoned their daughters as if they were unwanted puppies.
Grace
’s ear-drilling screams wrenched her awake. She shot upright to see Grace tearing towards the door and Daisy, flapping her arms and howling, in pursuit. She chased her into the corridor, then came running back and dived into bed, giggling like a lunatic. She went on giggling even when Matron burst into the dormitory and began shouting at her. Although Daisy shouted back that she had only been joking and had not heard anything from Sukie’s room, her silly, nasty antics set the cauldron seething again, and Matron and Grace were long gone before even a semblance of quiet fell in the dormitory.
Alice
tossed and turned interminably, cursing Daisy one moment, the next feeling cold with dread about what the future held for her friend, for sooner or later, she knew Daisy would go a step too far, with deadly consequences. Wanting to warn her, she rolled over, but Daisy, looking quite cherubic, was fast asleep.