"Gill, B M - Tom Maybridge 03 - The Fifth Rapunzel 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gill B M)

Maybridge assured him it wasn't. "The vicar is troubled about the possible disinterring of human remains, though that seems extremely unlikely. The dog could have sniffed out a dead bird, or something. I think it's Creggan's night-time walks that alarm some people and then they complain to the vicar rather than to you. Sutton isn't all that robust when it comes to dealing with criticism. And, candidly, I believe he gets a certain amount of the nimby attitude from his parishioners - you know, not in my back yard - with reference to The Mount."
Donaldson, who knew it only too well and had learnt to ignore it, ignored it again, but it bothered him that the dog had dug a hole in the cemetery. Creggan had promised to keep the animal on a lead.
"Whose grave did it desecrate?"
Desecrate was too strong a word. As far as Maybridge knew, the hole hadn't been near a grave - if it had been, the vicar would have told him. He explained this to Donaldson. "It's probably a lot of fuss about nothing. If the animal worried sheep or cattle there would be cause for complaint. But that could happen and I think your patient should be warned of the consequences."
Donaldson said he had already warned him, but would do so again. Maybridge might consider it a lot of fuss about nothing. He didn't. Matters that at one time he might have dismissed as trivial now tended to loom. Even mildly aggressive attitudes were threatening and difficult to cope with. The professional staff, not normally argumentative, were tending to go more by the book than they used to. And to use bookish words. If you tell a patient he's suffering from cyclothymia you scare him rigid, whereas a few simple words about mood change do no harm at all. He knows that. That's why he's here. One of the psychotherapists, not Sue Raudsley this time, but probably encouraged by her, had argued for the reintroduction of electroconvulsive therapy in place of the monoamine oxidase inhibitor drugs for endogenous depression. The fact that Donaldson used hypnosis from time to time had come in for criticism, too. Lexman, the senior nurse, had referred to it obliquely as "one of the many rather archaic ways of persuading a sick patient he's well". Donaldson could have retorted that a few soothing words that rub out nightmares and make the patient feel better for a while can't be a bad thing. Disinterring memories that are buried deeply and festering can be therapeutic, too, but it's a more painful process and perhaps at times dangerous. Donaldson, suppressing an urge to argue the pros and cons, had said nothing. Lexman depended on him for his salary and if he were wise he would remember it. Or be asked to leave. Creggan, on the other hand, brought the money in.
Which brought his thoughts into sharp focus on him again. Disinterring memories and disinterring bones. Equally hazardous. Only the dog hadn't, which was some consolation. Even so, should he ask Creggan to leave? A confrontation with him might lead to that. It would please the villagers if he went, restore his credibility with his staff, and soothe Mrs Mackay whose dislike of the man was almost paranoid. God knew there was enough paranoia here without her adding to it. Sally, she had told him, might be in some moral danger if she saw too much of him. Moral danger presupposes a degree of innocence in the vulnerable party. Sally might be guilty of active encouragement - or was her relationship with Simon using all her sexual energy? Her physical energy was being expended on the seven o'clock jog around the grounds - she loping ahead of Simon, he looking foolish a few yards behind. A spectacle that amused some of the patients who rose early. He hadn't joined her this morning. Aware of a growing audience, perhaps.
"It's almost two months since the Bradshaws' funeral," Donaldson informed Maybridge abruptly.
Maybridge carefully tapped ash into the crystal inkwell. Peter had been a heavy smoker, too, and then had suddenly given it up and been extremely irritable for a while. One tended to forget the ordinariness of people in the first few weeks after death. They had gone ahead into the great unknown, wafted along to the accompaniment of sonorous church music, and you thought of them with awe. Afterwards you remembered their tetchiness - their fallibility - their kindness - their humanity.
"Two difficult months for Simon," he said. "Let's hope everything turns out well for him."
Donaldson agreed. Two very difficult months, he thought bitterly, and not just for Lisa's son.
"Creggan attended the funeral," he said. "I suppose you noticed?" Maybridge had. If allowing him to attend had been part of Donaldson's therapy then who was he to question it? The Mount wasn't a closed institution. Creggan had also been seen by Radwell mooching around the cemetery some weeks later, carrying a bunch of wild flowers. "Rather out of character, wouldn't you say?" Radwell had commented to Maybridge. As no one knew Creggan's character - with the exception of Donaldson and The Mount's psychotherapists - the comment seemed pointless. Radwell hadn't approached him. "He didn't see me," he explained. "It was getting dark. There was no one else around. And he wasn't doing any harm." No pigs' trotters on graves. Nothing nasty. No dog then to dig holes. No point in mentioning it now.
"A great many attended," Maybridge said. "Mostly the media. Some genuine mourners there too, of course; the Bradshaws were well liked."

Speaking well of the dead, or voicing at worst a veiled criticism, is ingrained in most people. Maybridge had valued his friendship with Bradshaw and kept his criticism under wraps. Meg had deplored Lisa's attitude towards Simon but no longer mentioned it. Max Cormack was in a different category - an unbiased stranger. He sensed that the Millingtons hadn't liked Bradshaw and, though deeply curious to know why, he had avoided any conversation that might lead to an explanation. He was, after all, part of the medical brotherhood. His disquiet about Bradshaw's forensic evidence in the case of the last Rapunzel murder had been growing. The professor's reports on the first four murdered prostitutes had been meticulously detailed - the murders had been done by Hixon and proved to have been done. The notes on Rapunzel number five were slipshod - a brief extension of some of the other notes - a postscript that tended to assume too much. Hixon's guilt, had it been based on this evidence alone, couldn't have been proved beyond reasonable doubt. An elastic phrase - reasonable doubt. Where does unreasonable doubt set in, Cormack wondered, and what, if anything, should be done about it?
Creggan's effort to nourish Cormack's doubt was premature. They met by accident a few days after Donaldson had given Creggan an ultimatum - any more complaints from the villagers and the dog had to go. Creggan had promised to be more vigilant. He had bought a new chain-type collar and lead for Perry and taken the dog along to what he thought of as the Rapunzel copse to try it out.
And had come across Cormack who was about to time Radwell's run from the copse to the Millingtons' farm. He had already timed the shorter route to the main road where there was a telephone box. Not vandalised. At a guess there would be about twenty minutes' difference, so why hadn't the sergeant taken the quicker route? Too distressed to think of it? A grassy field easier to run across if you've discarded your shoes? Dawn Mill-ington's bosom soft to weep on while you girded up your strength prior to reporting to your D.C.I, that you've found a corpse ... and walked on it? Any other reason?
The dog, emerging from the trees and about to leap joyously in Cormack's direction, gave a gargled agonised yelp and arched over on to its back.
"Holy Jesus!" Cormack rushed over to it. "You'll throttle the poor little devil." He snatched the lead from Creggan and loosened it. Creggan, appalled, went down on his knees by his pet. "It's Donaldson's fault. I didn't mean to hurt it." Cormack had met him once before, briefly, in Millington's kitchen where Creggan had been paying for the dog's kennelling fees. Over the odds. In Millington's eyes Creggan was crazy. Perhaps dangerous. Cormack suspended judgment. He asked him why he wasn't using the leather lead and collar.
Creggan explained.
"Even the most reprehensible of grave digging mongrels shouldn't be strangled," Cormack pointed out. "Use its old collar, put an extra hole in it, but make sure it's not too tight." If Creggan hadn't obviously been fond of the dog he would have been worried. A choke chain might be all right used carefully in the right hands, though personally he didn't like them in any hands.
Creggan said humbly he would do just that. "And I'll throw this one away."
"Good," said Cormack.
It was the kind of encounter that was difficult to withdraw from. Not casual enough. Where they were standing, in the shadow of the trees, there was the option of walking on together towards the road or taking the longer twisting route peppered with fallen pine cones that emerged eventually on Millington's land. Radwell's route. And, until now, Cormack's. He waited to see which way Creggan intended to go so that he could go in the opposite direction.
Creggan removed the choke chain from Perry. The dog ambled over to Cormack and sat at his feet. A thrush chattered out of sight somewhere and late evening sunlight made gentle amber streaks across a palette of dark green leaves.
"She was naked, wasn't she?" Creggan said.
"What? Who?" Cormack was startled.
"The woman the police called Susan Martin," Creggan gestured vaguely towards the heart of the woods. "The fifth Rapunzel. Poor little lady. Poor little girl. A rose by any other name would smell as ..." He broke off. "I do beg your pardon. But several weeks underground - a degree of decomposition - and no identifying clothes."
Cormack stiffened. Barriers up. Defences ready. The police should have been more discreet at the Press conference. Everyone knew she had been naked and had long hair.
He told Creggan brusquely that he hadn't been involved in the case at all. Knew nothing about it. "And you can't believe everything you read in newspapers."
Creggan agreed. "I found it very difficult to believe that anyone could identify the woman by a picture of a reconstructed face, especially one that looked much the same as hundreds of other faces."
The reconstruction had been done with considerable skill by Professor Miles Benford, who had done a similar reconstruction in the Edward Carne case a few years previously. The television presenter had been on trial charged with murdering his wife. Apart from the period underground and the reconstruction, there was very little similarity in the two cases. Jocelyn Carne hadn't been a prostitute, her family background was known, and she had visited her dentist. Susan Martin either had perfect teeth or her dentist had burnt all his records and dropped dead. Her teeth hadn't revealed anything. But as he wasn't supposed to know anything, Cormack said nothing.
Creggan, after a momentary pause, pressed on. "A little lady," he said, "or maybe a floozie, a tart - who's to know? - meets her end in this wooded glade where the birds sing and the evening sun is very pleasant and some while later Professor Bradshaw and Inspector Maybridge, to name but two locals, together with a professional team which you, Doctor Cormack, have just joined, have the body presented to them, upthrust to the surface by mother nature in a quest for justice, perhaps. And you can tell me that justice has been done - unequivocally?"
It was a carping question. Not accusatory - but almost. Arrows of misconduct aimed mainly at Bradshaw, and to some extent at the police generally. A serial murderer gets landed with another murder - he's carrying the can already, so one more can't make much difference. Or so Cormack interpreted it. It made him angry. It was all right for him to harbour suspicions about the validity of the forensic evidence, but it was a bloody nerve if anyone else did. Especially this undoubtedly unhinged, unkempt-looking fellow who was regarding him now with a half smile on his lips. He wondered how old he was. Not old enough for senile dementia - early fifties - so what sort of paranoia was it? Police phobia? An urge to kick the fuzz in the teeth?
"Emphatically," he retorted coldly, "justice has been done. No need for you to worry about it at all. The verdict on Hixon was based on sound evidence. Absolutely."
Creggan noticed the over-emphasis. "But no family came forward. If she had been using a different name from her own that would be understandable - for a while. But when the reconstructed face was shown in the papers and on television then her family would have recognised her - had it been a good reconstruction."
It was a point that had bothered Cormack, too. He suggested irritably that, even in this liberal age, families might prefer not to lay claim to a tart - especially when the whole wide television-viewing world was looking on.
"She was identified by her clients," Creggan said, "according to the papers." And then - very abruptly - he changed the subject. "I haven't seen you up here before, Doctor Cormack, but then I usually come later. Moonlight on the black boles of trees is rather splendid. Don't let me detain you from your evening stroll." He clicked his fingers at Perry and the dog followed him obediently down one of the paths.
Cormack watched them go. The encounter had disturbed him. It had come naturally to him to defend his fellow-professionals, but his own suspicions viewed now seemed contaminated by Creggan's paranoia. Why be so concerned with Radwell's delay, a very short delay, in phoning? He hadn't murdered the girl. Just found her, poor sod. A phone call to the police made
twenty minutes or so earlier than it had been wouldn't have made a lot of difference. The corpse had to be left unattended for a brief period. Radwell couldn't have mounted guard over it until someone came along. He had acted perfectly naturally. As for identification -Bradshaw's notes might have been sparse but Benford's wouldn't have been. Every step of the reconstruction would have been scrupulously annotated. If Creggan didn't think the corpse was that of Susan Martin, then who did he think it was? Joan of Arc?
It wasn't his case, he reminded himself firmly. And he hadn't full knowledge of it. If he started investigating in the laboratory he would risk the ire of his forensic colleagues. Had anything been amiss they would have reported it at the time. So stop bothering. Bradshaw was probably the genius everyone says he was. It's a comforting thought, so think it.
"Mrs Bradshaw had shoes like those," Mrs Mackay said. Sally, busy spiking small pieces of cheese and sausages and round nutty things on to wooden toothpicks, only they weren't called toothpicks, almost pierced her finger. Bloody hell! A whist drive was going on in the games room and all this fancy stuff had to be carried round in about half an hour. She bled on to a piece of cheese and was about to wipe it off with her handkerchief when she saw Mrs Mackay's sombre eyes watching her. All right, so there were germs. All right, so it wasn't nice. All right, so shove your thumb under the tap, chuck the cheese into the pedal bin and think what to say about the shoes.
Disposing of the Bradshaws' clobber hadn't been a very happy task. Money-wise. The best offer she had had for the lot had been a hundred and twenty-three quid from a second-hand shop called Priceless. Good clobber bought cheap from grieving relatives and sold at about a thousand percent profit. She had told them so and the lady in charge - lady? by God! - had told her to try elsewhere. She had already tried everywhere and other offers had been much the same, but Pryceless paid cash. While the owner went to a small room at the back to count it out in tenners, it didn't take long, Sally had removed the green shoes from one of the bin bags. They were Italian, expensive when new, not too middle-aged looking, and in a nice shade of green.
She didn't think Simon would recognise them, but hadn't worn them on any of their dates. That Mrs Mackay should recognise them was amazing. Did the old bat creep around gazing at the patients' feet?
"Really?" Sally said. "Had she really? Shoes like these?"
"Yes," Mrs Mackay said quietly, "just like those."
That Sally might be in moral danger from Paul Creggan worried Mrs Mackay deeply. That she might do a bit of pilfering on the side worried her, too. The shoes, she believed, had been removed from Mrs Bradshaw's wardrobe, either here at The Mount during her last stay or from her home. That Sally had access to the Bradshaws' home, and probably to Simon's bed, worried her even more than Creggan's lechery. But as yet she didn't know what to do about it.
The late Angus Mackay, a pillar of the Lutheran church and as rigid as a block of cement, had seemed a suitable husband when they had married thirty years ago - she had been Sally's age but innocent of the ways of men. He had assailed her virginity like the Black Rod thumping the door of the House of Commons, but had failed to gain entry. Not that there had been anything anatomically wrong with her - just lack of co-operation - and he had stopped short of rape. She would have liked a child, had it been possible to produce one differently. She would have liked one like Sally. But Sally made good. Sally saved.
Sally, neither good nor wanting to be saved, wondered if she could get off the boring task of spiking food and suggested that it would be easier to lay it flat on plates. "Now that I've cut my finger."
Mrs Mackay told her to stir the dip instead, a creamy-looking sauce with a fish flavour, while she did the spiking. "But put a plaster on your finger first. There are some in the cupboard."
The Mount's kitchen was a large utilitarian room with white-painted walls and functional worktops that held an assortment of utensils, mostly in stainless steel, the exception being a set of pretty saucepans given by a grateful patient, together with a note: "For stimulating my tastebuds so wonderfully, may these flowery pans remind you of me and my gratitude." A patient who hadn't been cured, Mrs Mackay had thought dourly, but she had received them politely and put them on a top shelf where they glowed pinkly prettily next to the first-aid cupboard. "If I had my own home," Sally said, selecting a Band Aid, "I'd like saucepans like those."