Disordered Minds

*22*

25 MULL1N STREET, HIGHDOWN, BOURNEMOUTH

THURSDAY, MAY 15, 2003, MIDDAY

Jonathan suggested they sit in the garden so that he could inspect the rear of George's house, but she told him there was only one chair and no table. She seemed depressed, and he thought it sad that she had no one to share her garden with. He said the day was too glorious to miss and insisted on moving furniture out from the kitchen. Puffs of high cloud drifted across a turquoise sky and the scent of wisteria on her neighbor's wall was heavy on the air. He collected a cushion from the sitting room and tucked it behind George's back, worried about the signs of pain and weariness that were showing round her eyes. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," she said. "I'm just aching a bit."

He took the chair next to her. "You look tired."

"It goes with the job. I'm on nights again."

"I hope you're not playing the martyr," he warned her. "I'm investing a lot of time and energy into this book."

She gave a faint smile. "You're such a bully."

"I've been taking lessons from Andrew. Have you been to the doctor?"

"I'm going tomorrow."

He didn't press it. Instead he produced a printout of Andrew's bullet points which he'd emailed George at the beginning of the week. He began with what could be proved. If, as George's previous neighbor had told her, her house was an exact replica of Grace's, then Louise could certainly have seen into the sitting room through the French windows. Jonathan was less convinced about the girls entering through a gate in the fence at the back in order to truant. He nodded at George's rear boundary. "Their only access would have been through other people's gardens," he pointed out, "so why were they never seen by Grace's neighbors?"

George sorted through a folder that she'd asked him to fetch from her sitting room. "I think I've solved that." She drew out a photocopy of a street map and spread it on the table. "I found this in the library. It's from an early A-Z of Bournemouth, printed in 1969." She took up a pencil and placed the tip on Mullin Street. "This is where the houses were demolished to make the apartment block and, as near as I can get it, this-" she drew a small circle-''was Grace's house. If I'm right, then there was a narrow cul-de-sac at the back which was reached from Bladen Street." She ran her pencil up a road at right angles. "The alleyway doesn't exist anymore, because these two houses adjacent to Bladen Street appear to have extended their gardens, and the flats have garages along the boundary ... but it was obviously there in 1970."

Jonathan gave a nod of approval. "Good stuff."

George pulled a face. "It doesn't prove anything. What about fingerprints? The police would have found some if Cill had been there for any length of time. Children's fingers are smaller than adults' so, if juvenile prints had been there, the police couldn't have missed them. Particularly Louise's. Miss Brett said she was a skinny little thing. Even if she didn't go inside, she'll have touched the windows when she looked in. It's the natural thing to do."

"Did Lovatt have any ideas?"

"He said eyebrows would have been raised by children's prints. He also thinks there would have been a comparison set on file as Cill's would have been lifted from her bedroom in case a body was found."

"So Louise is lying?"

"That's his view."

Jonathan linked his hands and stretched them toward the sky, cracking the joints at the back of his neck. "Louise told Andrew he'd have to explain it himself," he murmured, "which was very clever of her, because he's a competitive little man and he loves winning."

George tut-tutted. "You shouldn't keep drawing attention to his height. You'll give him a complex."

"Fat chance!"

"He thinks that's why his wife left him."

Jonathan relaxed again, dropping his arms to the table-top and favoring George with a grin. "I did what you told me to do and went to see her a couple of days ago. She's bored with the parasitic stud, stressed to the eyeballs with work and kept asking me if Andrew had a girlfriend."

"What did you say?"

"That she didn't deserve a second chance because she was a two-timing bitch."

"You didn't!"

"Bloody did."

"No, you didn't."

He laughed. "OK! I may not have used those exact words, but I did say Andrew was a prince among men and if she had a blind bit of sense she'd recognize the fact. I also said he'd never had a bad word for her and was eating his heart out because she and the children were the best thing that ever happened to him."

George's eyes sparkled with delight. "What did she say?"

"That both girls had told her he'd had a woman in the house on Saturday, and the place stank of smoke on Sunday morning." He smiled at her deflated expression. "What's wrong with that? It means he's desirable."

"I hope you explained."

He shook his head. "I said the ladies were queuing up for him so she'd better get a move on."

"Do you think it'll work?" she asked, her soft heart visible in the pleasure that showed in her face.

"Should do, assuming he hasn't been seduced by Louise."

"Don't be silly!"

Jonathan tapped the bullet points. "He's very keen to believe her. His theory is that the house was cleaned either after Cill left it or after Grace was murdered."

"Who by?"

"Anyone you like. If it was after Cill left, then it might have been Grace herself. If it was after Grace died, then it was her murderer."

George pondered for a moment. "Why weren't Howard's prints wiped away at the same time?"

"They would have been, but he left enough on the Wednesday to satisfy the police. There's a clear suggestion in the prosecution case that part of his attempt to cast the blame elsewhere was to clean his prints from anything that looked suspicious-such as the bathroom taps-but that he was too stupid to do a thorough job."

She looked doubtful again. "It would have meant him using the lavatory after he found Grace's body. Do you think that's likely?"

"Very likely," said Jonathan dryly. "He probably vomited into it."

"What about Grace's prints?"

Jonathan eyed her with approval. "What about them?"

"If her murderer had cleaned up, there wouldn't have been any."

"Go on."

"Wouldn't the police have noticed?" she asked with a frown. "I mean, if they were arguing that Howard wasn't thorough enough to remove all of his, then Grace's should have been all over the place. Do you see the point I'm making? It would have been very peculiar if the only prints found were Howard's. The defense team would have picked up on it straight away because it would have supported his story."

Jonathan pulled a letter from his briefcase. "That's more or less what I thought, so I wrote to Howard's solicitor first thing Monday morning and this is his reply. I'll read the relevant paragraph ... it's quite brief: 'By recollection, the main sets were Grace Jefferies's and Howard's. In addition, policemen touched objects in the hallway and kitchen before the house was sealed. These prints were accounted for. Two or three unidentifiable sets were found on objects in the sitting room, which was considered unusual (most houses contain many more) until it became clear that Grace was a recluse. These sets were not considered suspicious. There were a number of partial prints about the house, which were thought to be Grace's, but they were too degraded for comparison.' " He looked up. "The rest is a diatribe about my suggestion that the defense team was negligent."

"Oh dear!"

He consulted the letter again. " 'We made every effort to substantiate our client's story, but I remain in no doubt that the verdict was a correct one.' " He pushed the letter across the table. "So unless they were even more negligent than I painted them," he said lightly, "which will be hotly disputed by my friend here, then Louise is lying and Cill was never there or-and this is Andrew's view-Grace cleaned the house of Cill's presence herself."

"Why?"

"Because someone told her she'd be arrested if the police discovered she'd been harboring a runaway."

"Who?"

Jonathan shrugged. "Anyone you like," he said again, "but Andrew's guessing Mr. or Mrs. Burton."

It was only when Rachel asked Billy to make a pot of tea that Sasha Spencer found out what he really believed, and she made a mental note never again to make assumptions about protective wives. Rachel waited until the door closed, then leaned forward and spoke urgently into the silence. "He's not going to tell you this because he's trying to convince himself he's imagining it. He's been surfing the Net researching recovered-memory syndrome. Half the sites talk about it being a recognized psychological phenomenon, the other half say the memories are invented ... and he doesn't know which is the case. I keep telling him the false stuff comes out of dodgy therapy sessions, but he doesn't want to believe me. He's off his head because he can't sleep, and he's worried he's developed a thing about his dad because Robert keeps lecturing him about the firemen being on strike..."

George closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sun while Jonathan explained Andrew's theory. "It's in bullet points again," he said, extracting another sheet of paper. "Cill took refuge at Grace's on the Friday night ... Louise saw her there on the Saturday morning ... she told her parents about it-probably on the Saturday afternoon-"

"I thought she told them on the Wednesday," George broke in.

Jonathan put a finger on the line and looked up. "Andrew says she never specified a day, only implied the Wednesday. Now, he thinks it's more likely she owned up after the police questioning because her mother had been so insistent the Burtons didn't know where Cill was."

"OK. Next point."

He returned to the page. "One of the Burton parents went round to Grace's ... read Cill the riot act and told her to go home ... put the fear of God into Grace about harboring truants and runaways ... became anxious when Cill remained missing ... started to lose it when Louise reported the state of Grace's house on the Tuesday or Wednesday ... and lost it completely when Grace's body was found. Result: withdrawal of Louise from school in case she said anything, total clampdown on the story in the Burton household and enormous effort to distance themselves from Mullin Street and the Trevelyans."

"So what does he think happened to Cill?"

"Pass."

"Who killed Grace?"

"Pass."

George shielded her eyes from the sun and squinted at him. "They'd have known by the Monday morning that Cill hadn't returned home," she pointed out, "so why weren't they worried about Louise spilling the beans at school that day?"

"They told her not to."

She eyed him with amusement. "Did she always do what she was told? They couldn't stop her truanting, don't forget."

"They threatened her with the police. Billy said she was frightened of them."

George shook her head. "I've never heard such a half-baked theory. There's only one explanation for why she wasn't confined to the house until the Wednesday: she didn't tell her parents she'd seen Cill in Grace's house until after she saw the blood on the window."

Jonathan gave his head a thoughtful scratch. "Maybe," he mused.

"What other explanation is there?"

"The parents were worried someone would come asking questions if Louise didn't turn up on the Monday ... she was threatened with a thrashing if she didn't keep her mouth shut ... they told her she was to blame for not telling the police where Cill was ... she was a fluent liar and was used to keeping secrets, so they were confident she'd keep that one."

"What sort of secrets?"

Jonathan shrugged. "The rape? The reason for the fight?"

"Why didn't they make her go in on the Wednesday? All the same reasons apply."

"The circumstances had changed. The blood on the window was a secret too far and she threw a fit."

"Assuming she's telling the truth," said George cynically. "I'm not as easily seduced as Andrew."

"She's an incredible flirt."

"Oh dear!" George sighed. "Please don't tell me Andrew fell for her."

"Probably," said Jonathan. "He's a randy little beast-short arses always are-but I meant, she flirted with information. She told him it was Howard who did it, but what she was really doing was hooking him into her father and Roy Trent."

Rachel pulled nervously at her hair. "This isn't easy," she said. "I've known Robert for ages and I'd never have thought ... Billy's saying now that he doesn't want the girls anywhere near him. He's even wondering if his dad had a go when they were younger. I keep telling him he can't have done because they never stayed overnight with the folks, and his mum was always around in the daytime. But it's funny, looking back. It was Billy who insisted they had to come home before bedtime ... and I never really thought about it till now. I asked him the other day if it was because of all this-" she made a vague gesture toward Robert's email-"and he said, no, he'd forgotten. He just needed to know his kids were safe with me while he was on nights shifts. He thought it was because he was afraid of fire breaking out ... now he thinks it was these unrecovered memories working like instinct. That's weird, isn't it?"

She didn't expect a reply because she wasn't even looking at Sasha. Instead, she twined a strand of hair about her fingers and concentrated determinedly on the carpet. "The trouble is, there's nothing specific. Billy never saw anything-it's just stuff he heard and things that Louise said ... like she hated her mother's cleaning job because it meant their dad had to get them ready for school. Eileen did offices from six to ten in the morning and the kids'd be left to sleep till Robert came off his night shift around seven. Billy was never woken till eight, but Louise was always up and her dad'd be giving her breakfast and laughing with her. He didn't do it with Billy ... just whacked some food at him and told him to get a move on." She paused. "You could say it was a daughter-dad thing-opposites attract and all that-but a few times Billy woke early and heard his dad talking to Louise in her bedroom. As a kid, it made him jealous because Robert never bothered to talk to him, but now..." She lapsed into a troubled silence.

Sasha watched her for a moment. "It doesn't prove he was an abuser, Rachel. The daughter-dad thing is just as likely,"

The woman sighed. "I know, that's the trouble." She clasped her fingers in her lap. "It's why Billy keeps surfing the Net. There are other things that are just as vague-but nothing that proves abuse. They just look suspicious when you put it all together."

"Try me."

Billy returned with a tray of cups while Rachel was talking and resumed his seat without interrupting her. He appeared relieved that she'd taken a lead and after a while began to interject memories himself. To Sasha, watching him, it was clear that some of these memories were coming back to him even as he was speaking. Did that make them true? She had no idea, but the picture he painted of his childhood was a disturbing one.

"You try to make sense of things when you're a kid," he said at one point, "so I thought Dad only liked ladies. He called Mum and Louise his 'beautiful girls,' but it was always Lou got the attention ... never Mum. She used to make me plait her hair in front of him, then push me away the minute he left the room." He smiled rather crookedly. "She said if I got a taste for it, I'd turn into a pansy. I thought she was talking about flowers."

On another occasion: "It was Lou started the Cathy McGowan thing. Dad slipped her some money and she came back with a miniskirt and loads of makeup. She was prancing around the sitting room in front of him, and Mum went completely crazy. Lou had this black eyeliner all round her eyes and pale pink lipstick, and Mum called her a tart and started hitting her. Dad just laughed...

"...He gave Cill money as well, so she could buy the same stuff as Lou. He called them his princesses. That's when Lou started getting uppity and saying she didn't want to be friends with Cill anymore. She was really jealous. I mean, she was skinny as a rake. You'd have to be blind not to see that Cill looked better than she did...

"... I don't know if my father abused Cill. You don't think about things like that when you're a kid. All I know is he liked her. He'd sit her on his lap when Mum wasn't around and play with her hair."

"Why did your mother go out if she was worried about him?" asked Sasha.

Billy buried his head in his hands for the hundredth time that morning. "I don't know if she was. I don't even know if I'm imagining all of this."

Rachel squeezed his hand. "Eileen worked in the evenings as well-four to eight. She was only at home when the kids were at school and her husband was asleep."

"She hated being a mother," said Billy. "It was Dad looked after us."

"Perhaps they needed the money," said Sasha.

"Then why didn't she work in a supermarket? That's what Rach does."

"Perhaps it was the only job available," the woman said; "Did Louise have any other friends who came to the house?"

"A few."

"Did your father sit them on his lap?"

"Sometimes, but Cill was the only one who'd let him play with her hair. I think she did it to make Lou jealous." He shook his head. "He can't have done anything really bad to her because I'm sure she was a virgin when those bastards raped her. There was too much blood on her legs."

"He may have been grooming her. That's usually how child molesters work."

Billy stared at her with a sick expression in his eyes. "It was never talked about in those days. There were kids like Cill who were given a larruping by their dads every time they stepped out of line, but this other stuff..." He shook his head. "There was Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, but they were psychopaths and went for other people's children. It's as if sex in families only started in the last ten-fifteen years."

"It's been going on for centuries," said Sasha, who'd researched the subject in depth. "It's society's attitude that's changed. We know now that if a child's forced into a relationship where the balance of power is unequal, the damage is irreparable. They tend to replicate that imbalance in future relationships, which is what Louise seems to have been doing."

Jonathan shielded his own eyes against the sun. "Louise persuaded Andrew not to look at it with the benefit of hindsight, but to keep in mind that no one knew Grace was going to die. In those circumstances the only thing the Burtons were guilty of was failing to ensure that Cill returned home. They'd have been as shocked as anyone when the police continued to report her missing."

"Why didn't they say something then?"

Jonathan shrugged. "They were worried about what the neighbors would say."

George pulled a disapproving face. "I can't believe any parent would behave so irresponsibly."

"You're looking at it with hindsight again. As far as they were concerned, it was perfectly straightforward. Cill was alive, she was streetwise, her house was round the corner, she promised to go straight back to it. They probably thought she'd be spotted before she even reached the end of the road."

"Why wasn't she?"

"Pass."

"Dear, dear, dear! You're expecting me to swallow more coincidences than I ever offered you. It's complete nonsense, Jon. You must see that."

He held up his hands in mock surrender. "I'm simply playing devil's advocate on behalf of the fat controller. I said I'd run it past you and I have."

"Do you believe it?"

Jonathan considered for a moment. "Andrew's looking for anyone other than Howard to be guilty ... and he prefers Mr. Burton or Mr. Trevelyan because he likes the symmetry of child abuse running through the story."

George pulled a face. "You're supposed to be bringing a critical eye to bear on the evidence."

He grinned. "Then I'll tell you what I do believe. When Louise told Andrew she looked through Grace's window on the Tuesday, it was done deliberately to implicate Roy and his friends."

George squinted at him again. "Why?"

"I don't know ... unless it's the truth..."

"She always picks blokes who're violent," Rachel said. "The one she's got at the moment gave her a black eye a few weeks ago. That's why Billy's worried about her. You could argue it's bad luck, except that, for a while, she was married to one of the boys who raped Cill. We don't understand that at all, because she must have known what she was getting into. She'll tell you she didn't know their names and couldn't identify them, but she'll be lying."

"It wasn't an accident that we all hooked up on the the day of the rape," said Billy. "Cill and Lou knew where to find them, so they must have been with them before. There's no way she wouldn't have recognized Roy when she saw him."

"Who's Roy?"

"Roy Trent ... manages a pub in Highdown. He's the one Lou married." Billy shook his head. "He's a right bastard ... raped Cill twice then kicked her. So why would Lou want to marry a man like that? I can't get my head round it at all."

Sasha smiled slightly. "Better the devil you know?" she suggested. "She'd have had more power in a relationship where she held a bargaining chip. Secrets are powerful weapons. You made that point yourselves in reference to the way your parents treated her."

"Then why leave him for someone she can't control?" asked Rachel. "It doesn't make sense."

"Only because you're assuming a rationale behind her behavior which probably doesn't exist. If Roy was an inadequate lover, she'd move on to a man who was better."

"'She can't go on doing it forever," said Rachel with a moue of disapproval. "She's no spring chicken anymore."

"I shouldn't think age has anything to do with it but, in any case, you said she's trying to look like Cill at thirteen, so perhaps she wants to act thirteen as well."

"That's pathetic."

"Yes," Sasha agreed soberly, "but, if your husband's right about his father, then she's a very damaged woman. Louise would have learned at ten or eleven that orgasm equals relationship ... so how can a relationship exist without it? It would explain why she cut Billy out of her life, and why she isn't interested in you or your children. She lacks the skill to handle nonsexual relationships."

"She hasn't spoken to Dad in years," said Billy, "just took money off him."

"I expect she felt she'd earned it." There was a brief silence while Billy and Rachel digested this.

"God!" said Rachel abruptly. "I hope we're not wrong about this. It's a hell of an accusation against a seventy-year-old."

Billy looked at Sasha. "What do you think?"

She hesitated, wondering how blunt she could be. "I'm no expert," she warned, "but you've described a common background for abuse. Absent mother, touchy-feely father, secretive behavior, taboo subjects-he certainly had the opportunity."

"Is that a yes?"

"I'd certainly like to talk to him about Cill. As far as I know, he wasn't interviewed at the time of her disappearance." She watched Billy's expression turn to anxiety. "It's what you suspect, isn't it? That he knows what happened to her? Your mother, too?"

He looked devastated, as if he'd wanted her to say the opposite. "Yes," he admitted. "And Louise."

"It certainly sounds as if he was using your sister as a procurer, although I wouldn't think she understood what role she was playing until she brought Cill into the house. You said she was jealous and uppity, so I'm guessing she realized that your father was getting bored with her." She paused. "As a matter of interest, how did she react when the boys paid more attention to Cill on the day of the rape?"

"She teased them about being virgins. It's what got them steamed up."

"So she contributed to what happened?"

Billy covered his eyes again. "She made Cill come back to help her, and that's when they jumped her."

"What did Louise do?"

"Curled into a ball," he said harshly. "Me, too, if it comes to that. Neither of us did a damn thing ... just let it happen."

Sasha exchanged a glance with Rachel. "What happened after the boys had gone?" she asked. "How did Cill clean herself up?"

"She didn't, not then. Lou sneaked off and got her clothes so she could cover up, then the girls left." He paused. "I've never been so scared in my life. I tried to go after them, but Lou said she'd drop me in it if I did."

"Did they say where they were going?"

"No."

"What time was it?"

"Afternoon ... two-ish."

"What did you do?"

He raised his head. "Hid in the park till school ended, then went home. I felt ill from the vodka, but no one noticed. Dad was in the garden, so I went to my room and stayed there till Lou came back. I was shaking like a leaf ... kept thinking Cill had died or something and the police were going to come. Then Lou waltzes in as if nothing had happened- it was weird."

"Did you ask her where she and Cill had gone?"

"I didn't need to," said Billy flatly. "I guessed where she got the clothes from, because she couldn't go to Cill's house or ours in case she was caught. Grace Jefferies," he explained. "Had to be. She came back with some trousers that were way too big for Cill. She had to bunch them at her waist to stop them falling down."

The sun was so strong that George decided they needed hats. Her face had turned the color of beetroot and she reappeared from upstairs with a pink straw confection on her head. "Friend's daughter's wedding," she said succinctly. "Total waste of money. They were divorced years later. Here!" She plonked a cap on his head. "This was my father's postman's hat. At least it'll keep the sun off your face."

Jonathan turned it round so that the peak was shading his neck. "It's the boiling brain that's the problem. The face was bred for this sort of weather."

She giggled as she sat down. "You look as if you've got a saucepan on your head."

He eyed her with amusement. "And you look great, George! I've always thought red and pink were the perfect combination."

She giggled again. "Wasn't it a terrible choice? Some wretched shop assistant told me it suited me, and I believed her!" She tapped the table. "Here's a question. I was thinking about it upstairs: why did Grace allow the girls to truant in her house? I don't believe that nonsense Louise told Andrew about bruises. Grace was a mature woman. If she was concerned about the girls, she would have phoned the NSPCC, or social services, or the school, even the police ... and she could have done it anonymously. So why didn't she?"

"For the same reason she didn't rat on Howard."

"And what reason was that?"

"She felt sorry for him."

George pondered for a moment. "Any normal grandmother would have busted a gut to find him some help, particularly when he was younger."

"Perhaps there wasn't any to be had."

George ignored him. "The only person who did anything for him was Wynne. She may not have been very effective, but at least she had a go. She dragged him to school by his ear, beat him up to make him stay there, went out to work to support him, took a two-day sickie to help him find a job, tried to get help from the GP." She raised her eyebrows. "Don't you think it's interesting that as soon as the two-day job search was over, he went straight back to Grace's house?"

"Not really. It's where he always went."

George wagged a finger at him. "Exactly."

"So?"

"Grace kept undermining Wynne's efforts. Every time Wynne got him up to the mark, Grace seduced him back again."

"She wouldn't have needed to seduce him. He preferred it there."

"Then she should have made it uncomfortable for him. It explains why Wynne never went to see her. They probably rowed all the time about Grace ruining Howard's chances. I'd have blooming well rowed with my mother if she'd kept my son from school." She smiled at Jonathan's continued skepticism. "Oh, come on! At least try to be objective. She did the same with Louise and Cill ... reinforced their truanting against their parents' wishes. But none of us volunteers for anything unless it works to our advantage. Grace was a recluse. She hardly ever went out, didn't have a job, rarely saw her daughter, couldn't socialize with her neighbors because she had a speech impediment. What does that tell you?"

He shrugged. "She was difficult? Unlikeable? Divorced from reality?"

"Probably all of those things ... but why did children like being with her?"

"She let them watch her television."

More finger pointing. "Right. And why did she do that?"

Jonathan shook his head. "Pass."

"She was lonely, Jon. I'll bet Louise could have had a party in there, and Grace would have baked the biscuits."

He stared thoughtfully down the garden, more taken by one of her earlier points. "Howard was supposed to be starting a job at the local dairy that Wednesday afternoon," he murmured. "Perhaps he was intending to do it until he found Grace's body."

"Why go to her house at all?"

"To see if Cill was there?"