The Mill on the Shore (28 page)

When lunch was finished Molly went back to the study. There was one phone call to wait for. George spent the afternoon in the common room looking out at the shore. Tim was beachcombing, walking along the high tide line, pulling out treasures then throwing them back into the sea. Time passed but George felt none of his usual restlessness or impatience. He was not tempted to seek Molly out, to find out why it was taking so long. He watched the boy walk up the shore until he was a speck against the sky, then turn and make his way slowly back towards the Mill.

Molly came into the room.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘There was a case conference. They were late phoning back.’

‘Well?’ he said sadly. ‘ Is it how we thought?’

She nodded.

‘Where is she?’

‘I don’t know,’ Molly said. ‘I haven’t seen her since lunchtime.’

They sat for a moment in silence. George still seemed overtaken by lethargy. He thought there was no hurry. Not now. They watched Tim walk back up the beach towards the Mill. He was dragging a piece of old fishing net behind him. He stopped and seemed to be greeting someone else not yet in their line of vision. He disappeared over the bank and his place was taken by a small figure, shapeless in her padded jacket, bareheaded, her long hair tied back in a plait.

‘Do you want me to go?’ Molly asked.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it.’ He felt that he owed it to Jimmy to finish the thing properly. He raised himself slowly and stretched.

‘There’s still no proof,’ she said. ‘ But I don’t think you’ll need it. She’ll be glad to talk.’

‘What do you take me for?’ he said lightly. ‘A social worker?’

‘Nothing wrong with that,’ she said automatically. They smiled for a moment before the tension returned.

When he got outside the light was beginning to fade and the Salter’s Spit light was already flashing. She was still there, sitting on one of the large, round boulders. It was almost as if she was waiting for him. She must have heard him coming, his boots crunching on the shingle but she did not turn around. He sat down beside her.

‘You know, don’t you?’ she said, without looking at him.

He nodded. ‘How did you guess that I’d found out?’

‘I noticed that the photograph was missing from my room this morning. I always thought your wife was brighter than Meg made out.’

‘Why did you do it, Rosie?’ he asked.

‘Because James Morrissey ruined my life,’ she said simply. She turned then to face him, and he saw that her control was very fragile.

‘Why don’t we go for a walk and you can tell me about it,’ he said. He wanted to talk to her before Reg Porter was let loose on her, and that had nothing to do with social workers.

She hesitated and he thought she would refuse, might even attempt to run away. But she stood up and they walked, almost like father and daughter, following the high water mark as Tim had done earlier.

‘My father thought James Morrissey was wonderful,’ she said abruptly. ‘He’d seen him on the television, read his books.’ She paused. ‘Famous people should realize,’ she blurted out. ‘Take some responsibility.’

‘Why don’t you tell me about your dad?’

‘He was a bit before his time,’ she said. ‘A conservationist before it became fashionable. He used to take
Green Scenes
every month, read it like the Bible.’

‘You must have admired him very much.’

‘Very much.’ She kicked out suddenly at a stone, which clattered over the shingle.

They walked on for several minutes without speaking, in step with each other.

‘He worked for Mardon Wools, didn’t he?’ George prompted at last.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He’d worked there since he was a lad. He didn’t know anything else. All his mates were there.’

‘And he found out about the TCE leak?’

‘You know about that?’ She wasn’t surprised. ‘Yes. He knew what had happened. It was a matter of cutting corners, he said. That made him angry. He’d warned the boss that it might happen, and there was no guarantee that it wouldn’t happen again. And there was a cover-up.’ She stopped sharply and turned to face George, wanting him to understand. ‘He wasn’t telling tales,’ she said. ‘ There was nothing like that. But he wasn’t the sort to compromise with his principles. Perhaps it would have been better all round if he had been. He knew he’d get no joy from the management so he wrote to Mr Morrissey.’

‘He wrote an anonymous letter making allegations of pollution and corruption,’ George said. ‘Jimmy arranged for Aidan Moore to come up and meet him. Eventually he was so excited by the stuff Aidan turned up that he decided to come himself.’

She nodded.

‘Your father met Jimmy in the Dead Dog,’ George said gently. ‘Cedric remembers seeing them together. And you look so like him that when you first went in there he thought your face was familiar. When Molly took your father’s photograph to him this morning he picked it out at once.’

‘Did he?’ she said, pleased. ‘Did he really think I looked like Dad?’ Then, in mild surprise: ‘ I never realized they met in the Dead Dog.’

They walked on again in silence.

‘My father trusted him!’ she cried suddenly. He saw she had been brooding, reliving the imagined crimes and insults. ‘Dad thought he would do what was right. And he promised to be discreet. He said Mardon Wools would never find out where he had got his information. The very next month my father got the sack. That was the first the rest of us knew about what he’d been up to.’

‘I’m sure Jimmy did try to be discreet,’ George said, though discretion had never been one of Jimmy’s qualities. ‘But he had to discuss the pollution incident with the management to check his facts. It wouldn’t have been difficult then for them to find out who had access to the information he’d received.’

‘Oh,’ she said angrily, ‘Mr Morrissey discussed it with the management. He discussed it with his old friend Phil Cairns. My father must have been daft to expect any justice from them. They shared a wife after all. So they got together and decided to hush the whole thing up. My dad would be in the way so he was made redundant. It was all very convenient!’

‘I’m sure it wasn’t like that,’ George said. He felt in a strange position defending Jimmy Morrissey to his murderer. Shouldn’t Rosie herself be on the defensive? ‘Jimmy did intend to publish the story although it would damage his relationship with Phil and Cathy Cairns. Even Meg tried to persuade him to leave the thing alone but he insisted on following it through. It was only after the car accident that he felt he had to drop it.’

‘Why would the car accident make any difference?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘ James hurt his leg, didn’t he? Shook himself up. That was all. It wouldn’t stop him working.’

‘Didn’t you know?’ He saw then that there was no reason why she should be aware of Hannah’s death. She’d known nothing of the Morrissey family at the time of the accident, and though it had been reported in the newspapers it would hold no interest for her. Her father had passed on only his bitterness. Later, working at the Mill, she’d been considered a domestic. There would be no intimate conversations with Meg about the family’s past.

‘James had a daughter called Hannah,’ George said. ‘ She was about the same age as Ruth. When he and Cathy separated she lived with her mother, though she spent some of her holidays with the Morrisseys. That weekend, the weekend your father met Jimmy in the Dead Dog, he was going to take Hannah back to London with him. He was impatient to get back to start his story and he’d had an argument with the Cairns. He was driving recklessly, much too fast, and Hannah died. You can understand why he didn’t want to cause Phil and Cathy any more grief. He felt responsible.’

She began to bite her fingernails furiously and he saw that she did not want to understand. She did not want to lose her justification for killing Jimmy Morrissey. She preferred to see him as a heartless fiend.

‘I don’t care!’ she cried. ‘It wasn’t my dad’s fault that the girl died. Why should he have to suffer?’

George said nothing and they walked on. When he thought she was calmer he said: ‘What happened when your dad was made redundant?’

‘We moved to the bloody Midlands,’ she said. ‘We all hated it.’

‘And soon after that your father died?’

‘Don’t you see?’ she said earnestly. ‘Jimmy Morrissey killed him. It was just as if he’d shot or strangled him. It was Jimmy Morrissey’s fault.’

‘Then your mother had a nervous breakdown.’

‘She’d been dependent on Dad all their married life,’ Rosie said. ‘She’d never been strong. She became severely depressed.’ She gave a strange little laugh. ‘Just like Jimmy Morrissey, you might say. Ironic, isn’t it, that they had so much in common? But she wasn’t really like Mr Morrissey. He was pissed off because Meg had made him give up his television appearances and move up to the Mill. I suppose he had a crisis of confidence. But he wasn’t really ill. Not like my mother. Not screaming, barking mad.’

‘The crisis of confidence was about killing his daughter,’ George said. ‘And the Mardon Wools incident. He knew he should have followed it through. After Hannah’s death he was in a state of shock and he couldn’t decide what to do. Meg decided for him. He regretted it afterwards.’

‘I don’t care,’ she cried again. ‘He had everything, didn’t he? He had money and a family to look after him. He had it all.’

‘He tried to put it right,’ George said. ‘In his autobiography.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘ Why do you think I waited for it to be finished before I killed him?’

They walked on again without speaking. It was dusk but George’s eyes had become accustomed to the gloom. There was a soft sucking and gurgling sound as the tide came in, and the crunching of their footsteps on the shingle.

‘You were ill too, weren’t you?’ he said carefully. Molly’s phone calls had been to social work colleagues in the Midlands. She had found out about Rosie being committed to local authority care.

‘Not ill,’ she said at once. ‘Angry. I was angry.’

‘You attacked a social worker who was trying to help you,’ he said gently. With a bread knife, he could have added, but didn’t.

‘She didn’t help! She couldn’t understand. I told her that we had to come home, back here to Mardon. Mum would be all right then. But she couldn’t see it.’ She paused. ‘I lost my temper,’ she said.

‘And that’s why you got taken into care,’ he said. ‘They put you in a secure unit.’

‘It was dreadful,’ she said. ‘Hellish. That’s where I planned my revenge. It was the only thing that kept me going.’

‘You can’t have known that Jimmy Morrissey would need a cook,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Not that. That was luck.’ She stopped walking. ‘I did enjoy the cooking,’ she said. ‘ I really enjoyed that. It was creative, you know? It was the only good thing to come out of that place.’

He nodded.

‘When I saw the advert in the magazine it was like a sign.’

‘Didn’t Jimmy recognize you at the interview?’ George asked. ‘You look so like your father.’

‘Do I?’ She was distracted again by the thought. Then: ‘You don’t think Mr Morrissey interviewed the staff? That was below him. Meg saw to all that.’

‘And later? Did he recognize you later?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘That shows the arrogance of the man, doesn’t it? My father had no impact on him at all. He didn’t even recognize the name. If he had, you know, if he’d said sorry, everything would have been different probably.’ She paused again. ‘I quite liked him in a funny sort of way. But I couldn’t go soft. Not after all that planning. All that waiting.’

‘What happened then?’ George asked. ‘You said you waited until the autobiography was finished. How did you know?’

‘He told me,’ she said simply. ‘He came into the kitchen that afternoon pleased as punch. All smiles and laughter. “That’s it,” he said, “I’ll have to read it through of course. It’s just a first draft. But I’ve got all the facts down. It’s all straight now.” It was what I’d been waiting for. I’d been planning it for months. I knew those pills would kill him. My mum had the same sort at one time. The doctor told me to keep an eye on her. “ They’re useful because they have a sedative effect that the more modern drugs don’t have. But there’s always the danger of overdose. Don’t leave them lying about where she can get hold of them.”’

‘How did you know that Jimmy had been prescribed the same tablets?’

‘I looked,’ she said. ‘ The flat was never locked. I wanted to know all about him, all about his bloody loving family. When they were out I went up and poked around. They never knew, never suspected.’

‘And that night you stole his tablets from the bathroom.’

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘While they were at dinner. They thought I was in the kitchen skivvying. I crushed them up using two wooden spoons. I got a really fine powder.’

‘Did you put them in his food?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t be sure he’d eat that. I thought about the coffee but sometimes he even left that to go cold. But he’d always drink the whisky.’

‘But didn’t he keep the bottle in his study? Wouldn’t he have helped himself to a drink? He wouldn’t have needed you to get that for him.’

‘I’d cleared all the glasses away,’ she said. ‘He always started on the whisky after dinner so when I went to get his tray I knew he’d ask me to fetch him one. “Bring one for yourself,” he said. “You can have a drink with me and help me celebrate.” He was still reading through his manuscript when I came in. I could have tipped half a bottle of bleach into the glass and he wouldn’t have noticed.’

‘So there
were
two glasses in the study the next morning,’ he said. ‘The second one was yours.’

She nodded.

‘What was Jane doing when all this was going on?’ he asked.

‘You leave Jane out of this,’ she said sharply. ‘It’s nothing to do with her.’

‘Didn’t she even suspect?’

Rosie shook her head. ‘She thinks the best of everyone, Jane. I’ve told her, she’ll get hurt in the end. She’d have to toughen up or folks’d walk all over her.’ She paused. ‘I wasn’t going to let that happen to me,’ she cried. ‘I couldn’t let that happen to me, could I?’

It was almost dark. George took her arm gently and guided her back to the Mill. Molly would be waiting for them.