Disordered Minds

*24*

PALENCIA, FREAN STREET, SANDBANKS, BOURNEMOUTH

MONDAY, MAY 26, 2003, 11:00 A.M.

As Andrew Spicer had found, the close-up reality of Louise was nothing like Cill Trevelyan. She was finer boned, smaller featured and her eyes were the wrong color. She was also prettier and younger looking than Sasha had expected, with only a vague resemblance to the scowling, sulky child in William Burton's album. She answered the door in a crisp, well-fitting jade green dress that accentuated her slim figure. Sasha, bulky in an over-tight brown suit and wearing unattractive spectacles, felt fat and gauche by comparison, and showed it by tugging her jacket down to cover her hips. With an amused smile, Louise led her across the hall to the sitting room.

Sasha would have known it was a rented house even if she hadn't been told by the estate agent. It was painted throughout in standard cream with unexceptional furniture and framed prints of Impressionist paintings and Dorset scenes on the walls. There was very little of a personal nature and the only point of interest in the sitting room was a large television screen similar to the one in the study. It was showing a horse race but the sound was muted. Louise noticed Sasha looking at it.

"My husband's an Internet gambler," she said, gesturing to an armchair before lowering herself to the sofa. "We have wall-to-wall racing off the digital channels."

Sasha went into her smiling routine as she took the chair. "I didn't know there were meetings in the morning."

Louise glanced at the screen. "It'll be a recording. There's a video link to his study that means I have to watch whatever he's watching. Is it bothering you? Do you want me to turn it off?"

Sasha listened to the silence. "No, it's fine. I wouldn't want to upset him."

"He won't know unless he joins us," said the older woman, reaching for the remote and killing the picture. "Turning one off doesn't affect the others." She crossed a neat leg over the other and looked encouragingly at the younger woman. "How can I help?"

Sasha went nervously into her preamble about confidentiality, while recognizing that she might easily have been persuaded that William's story was fantasy if Louise had opened the door twelve days ago. The woman was composed, charming and elegant, and there was nothing to indicate a violent husband or a history of drugs and sexual abuse. Her voice was more educated than William's rough Dorset burr, although Sasha wondered how natural it was.

Louise allowed Sasha to finish her presentation without interruption. "You mentioned Cill Trevelyan on your card," she said then. "Does that mean David and Jean are your clients?"

Sasha nodded. "Do you remember them, Mrs. Fletcher?"

"Of course," she said easily. "Cill was my best friend ... as you know, or you wouldn't have written 'FAO Louise Burton' on your card."

Sasha ran her tongue across her lips. "I did, yes."

Louise was watching too closely not to notice the signs of nerves. "So how are the Trevelyans?" she asked. "I often think of them-it must be desperate to lose a child like that."

It was a very different start from the one Sasha had been expecting-more like the opening courtesies at a social function-but she went along with it, explaining that Jean hadn't been well recently. Louise produced several amusing memories of visiting the Trevelyan home in Highdown, then spoke of her shock when she learned that Cill had run away. "We were incredibly close," she murmured, before lapsing into an abrupt silence and waiting for Sasha to continue.

There was a sliver of sound from somewhere in the house and this time Sasha's nervousness was genuine. "I expect you're wondering how I found you."

"Not really," said Louise. "I'm hardly in hiding. You can't get more high profile than Sandbanks."

Sasha fixed her automatic smile to her face. "In fact it was your brother who passed your details to us, Mrs. Fletcher, because he knew we were acting for Mr. and Mrs. Trevelyan. I gather he reestablished contact with you a month or so ago?" She was watching equally closely and saw the sudden narrowing of Louise's eyes. "As you'll appreciate, David and Jean have never given up hope of finding Cill and we periodically reactivate the investigation when new information comes our way."

She retrieved her file and notebook from her case and placed them on her lap. "You may not be aware that various agencies have tried to locate you over the years without success," she went on. "Presumably because of your various name changes." She bent her head to her notes, holding her glasses in place with a finger. "First Louise Burton, then Daisy Burton, then Daisy Hopkinson, then Cill Trent, now Priscilla Fletcher Hurst." She looked up again, inviting Louise to respond. "I'm a little puzzled why you chose to take Cill's Christian name and marry her rapists, Mrs. Fletcher."

Louise answered readily enough. "Not that it's any of your business," she said mildly, "but I've known all three of them since I was a youngster. I'd have stayed with Michael if he hadn't died ... and with Roy if Colley hadn't come back. There's nothing sinister about it. Sensible people always marry their friends. That way, you know what you're getting."

Sasha held her gaze for a moment. "Except that, in this case, you knew you were getting three violent young men who gang raped your best friend. It traumatized your brother-he's still having flashbacks thirty years after the event. Were you not similarly affected ... especially as Cill vanished into thin air three weeks later?"

"Billy reinvents history to make his life more exciting."" Louise said dismissively. "I expect you would, too, if you'd married the most boring person you'd ever met, always done what your father told you and only ever lived in one house. He was ten years old and he was drunk. Whatever he remembers is bound to be distorted."

Sasha made a note. "You make him sound too unimaginative to reinvent history," she remarked. "He certainly believes his flashbacks are real."

The classy accent began to slip a little. "It was hardly a rape. Cill was desperate for sex with Roy, couldn't lift her skirt quick enough ... and it was only when Micky and Colley piled in on top that she started complaining. They were fourteen-year-old virgins, drunk as skunks on vodka, and at least two of them ejaculated before they even got in." She shrugged. "I'm not saying it's fun to have three teenage drunks wank over you, but Cill was as big as they were and gave as good as she got." She paused. "It's not what made her run away either. That was her dad taking the strap to her. She'd been saying for weeks she'd bugger off if he tried it on again."

Sasha refused to be sidetracked. "Your brother remembers it differently, Mrs. Fletcher. He describes a sickening level of brutality that was inexcusable whatever the age of the participants."

"Then you'll have to choose which of us you want to believe ... though I can't say I'm happy about having my brother slander my husbands. The only time he spoke to any of them was that day, and he was so paralytic he could hardly string two words together."

Sasha removed copies of the newspaper clippings that George had found and extracted Jean Trevelyan's interview. "You told the police at the time that it was a gang rape," she said, handing her the page. "Jean Trevelyan refers to it as such in this article."

Louise glanced at the headline, then laid it on the coffee table without reading it. "How could I use a phrase I didn't know?" she countered. "All I did was describe what happened. Gang rape was what the police called it ... and it's probably why Billy's embroidering his memories now." She took a breath and went on in a more conciliatory tone. "Look, is this really necessary? It's not going to help the Trevelyans to have Billy's version accepted. The boys were questioned at the time, but they weren't charged because it wasn't considered serious enough."

"No charges were brought because Cill was missing and you refused to identify the culprits."

"It wasn't a refusal. I couldn't ... not then. It was only later we became friendly, when Micky and I started going together. I never remembered he was one of them until I saw all three together and twigged who they were, and by that time Micky had persuaded me they were OK." She smoothed a hand down the crisp cotton of her dress. "Maybe you should ask Nick?" she suggested. "He'll tell you it's true." She tilted her head to one side. "Do you want me to fetch him?"

Sasha quelled a nervous tremor in her stomach. "That would be helpful," she said. "Thank you."

Louise gave an abrupt laugh and reached for her cigarette packet on the mantelpiece. "I wouldn't advise it. He suffered brain damage a while back and doesn't take too kindly to being quizzed about his past ... mostly because he can't remember it and hates being made to look a fool." She lit a cigarette. "It's weird the way the brain works. He's forgotten whole chunks of his life, but he can remember the form of all the horses back to 1980 and still work out odds in half a second flat On a good day he can make ten grand just by sitting at his computer."

"Does he remember the rape?"

"I don't know," said Louise, with a malicious glint in her eye. "I've never been stupid enough to ask. Feel free, though. His study's past the kitchen."

"Does he remember you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Are you part of a chunk that he remembers?"

Louise didn't answer immediately, as if fearing a trap. "I've known him for years," she said. "He'd have to've forgotten his whole fucking life to cut me out completely."

"Interesting," remarked Sasha idly, thinking that Louise's language and accent were falling apart by the second. "So what does he call you, Mrs. Fletcher? Louise? Daisy? Cill? Priscilla? It would be a very good indication of which ... er ... chunks ... he remembers."

"Priscilla," she said, watching the younger woman through the smoke from her cigarette. "The same name I've had for twenty years." She smiled cynically. "And, before you ask why, I was stoned when I chose it, so any thoughts of Cill were in subconscious. I used to think it was classier than Louise or Daisy ... probably because the Trevelyans were such snobs."

Sasha let a pulse of silence pass. "Why didn't you tell the police that Billy was a witness to the rape? He knew the names of the boys."

"I was protecting him. The folks didn't know he'd been truanting."

"Why didn't the school notice his absence?"

"I phoned in for him, pretending to be Mum. Said he was sick."

"Why?"

"To get him off the hook, of course." She took a pull at her cigarette. "It was his one and only time ... he was so scared he never did it again. He should be grateful for small mercies instead of turning it into a drama."

Sasha smiled again. "I'm not sure he'd agree with you, Mrs. Fletcher." She paused to push her spectacles up her nose. "I meant, why did you want him with you that day? He told me the meeting with the boys was preplanned, and that you and Cill talked sex nonstop to get them excited. I can't see the point of having a ten-year-old tagging along in those circumstances."

"That's rubbish," retorted Louise angrily. "There's no way it was preplanned ... couldn't have been. We'd never seen them before. We went down the arcade and bumped into them by accident, and Cill promptly got the hots for Roy. The only reason we were stuck with Billy was because he couldn't go into school without being quizzed and he couldn't go home because the folks were there."

Sasha flicked back a few pages of her notepad. "I understood it was Cill who persuaded him to go with you, and you were furious about it."

There was a pronounced hesitation. "I don't remember, but it's probably right," she said. "It made Cill feel better about herself if she could get the rest of us to bunk off with her."

"Billy's interpretation is different. He says Cill wanted him along because she wasn't as keen to meet the boys as you were. He says you contributed to the rape ... and may even have ordered it because you were jealous that Roy fancied Cill more than he fancied you."

"Dream on," said Louise scornfully. "If I'd ever wanted Roy that much, I'd still be married to him."

Sasha located the page she wanted from a follow-up interview with Billy. "Your brother doesn't buy into the idea that you were protecting him, Mrs. Fletcher, so he's looking for reasons why you didn't tell the police he was there. His childhood experience of you is that you got him into trouble at the drop of a hat to save your own skin." She ran her finger down the lines of the notepad. "These are some of the explanations he's offered. The boys were friends of yours and, as you didn't want them arrested, you couldn't afford to have Billy name them." She briefly raised her eyes. "No? Then perhaps you wanted a free hand to malign Cill because you knew how much your father liked her, and you didn't want Billy standing up for her?"

Louise squashed her cigarette into an ashtray. "Dad couldn't have given a shit. It was Mr. Trevelyan got excited about it. How dare Louise Burton suggest his daughter was a slut? It was quite funny, really. Everyone knew it was true except her tight-arsed parents."

Sasha let that go. "How about this one? You knew where Cill was but you didn't want to be asked questions about it, so you diverted attention onto something that had happened three weeks earlier. If Billy was involved, he might have mentioned Grace Jefferies's name, and you didn't want that." She deliberately echoed some of Louise's own words to Andrew Spicer. "It was no big deal. Cill was alive ... she was safe while she was with Grace ... and as far as you were concerned she'd go home as soon as she was bored." She looked up again and met the pale gaze.

"Billy never told you that."

"No," Sasha agreed, "but he's not the only person I've spoken to, Mrs. Fletcher. Let's go back to the rape for a moment. Billy says you went to Grace for replacement clothes because Cill's were torn and bloody. What happened then? Did you take her to Grace's house so that she could have a bath and clean up?"

Louise's expression hardened, but she didn't say anything.

"Should I take that as a yes?" She looked for a reaction which she didn't get. "Clearly, you couldn't tell the police about going to Grace's house," she went on evenly, "otherwise they'd have put two and two together and gone straight round to interview her about Cill's disappearance. And for some reason you didn't want that. Why not?"

"Because she'd have killed me for ratting on her. We'd had one fight already-I didn't want another one." Louise's lips twisted into a bitter smile. "Everyone pictures her as this poor little girl who ran away because she was unhappy, but she wasn't like that ... she was a bully. You didn't cross her unless you wanted your head caved in."

"What did you and she fight about?"

"What girls always fight about. Who's more attractive, me or you?" She shook her head at Sasha's expression of incomprehension. "Oh for Christ's sake! What planet are you from, sweetheart? Lose some weight ... get your hair done ... talk dirty once in a while. You'll be a spinster all your life, if you don't. Sex-darlin'-men! She kept boasting that she was more fanciable than me, so I said I'd tell her folks about the rape if she didn't shut up. It was getting on my wick something chronic."

Sasha concentrated on her notes. "So you did know it was a rape?"

"Figure of speech," Louise said scornfully. "Who the hell cared what it was? As far as Cill was concerned, it was a walk in the park ... proof that she was attractive enough to be fucked." She watched a look of distaste cloud Sasha's face. "Don't fret yourself. It'll never happen to you. You're not the type to get jumped. You have to show a bit of flesh if you want guys to be interested."

Sasha's fingers fled automatically to her spectacles, but she stuck gamely to her interview plan. "If Billy had been questioned, he'd have mentioned Grace. Is that the real reason you didn't want him involved?"

Louise lit another cigarette, then leaned her head against the back of the sofa and stared at the ceiling. "If you got all this off Andrew Spicer or his tame author, then I might as well save my breath. None of it would have mattered if the stupid girl had gone home. I was trying to do her a favor-give her an excuse for a bit of sympathy. Instead, she landed me in it by vanishing. She'd've been mad as hell if I'd let Billy name the boys, because she still fancied Roy. She'd have milked her mum's heart and thrown a wobbly if the police had tried to take it any further. That's the way she worked."

"You, too?" Sasha asked curiously. "Your mother became very protective of you afterward."

Scorn sparked in her eyes. "Protective of herself, you mean. She wet herself every time she thought of what the neighbors'd say when they found out I'd seen Cill at Grace's on the Saturday. The whole bloody family would've been hung out to dry."

"When did you tell her?"

"About Cill being at Grace's?" She lifted an indifferent shoulder. "Can't remember."

"It's important, Mrs. Fletcher." Louise lowered her gaze.

"Why? What difference does it make? Mum'll tell you I'm lying. She's like Billy-been rewriting history for years."

"So you told her on the Saturday?" A brief nod. "Before or after you went to the police station?"

"Before."

It was like pulling teeth, thought Sasha, as a silence developed. She wondered how contrived the strategy was, and who had instigated it. "How exactly?"

"It was a Saturday. She didn't work on Saturdays."

"And?"

"We were in the kitchen when the phone rings. It was Jean Trevelyan wanting to know if Cill was at our house. Mum says no, and hangs up, then gives me the third degree. What had I done? Why would Cill run away? What did I know? So I go looking round Grace's place. By the time I got back Dad was home, and he was in a right schiz because David Trevelyan had thumped him at work. Mum said it'd serve them right if Cill stayed away for good, so I told them she was holed up with Grace."

"Your mother told the police she had no idea where Cill was."

"Only because Dad was pissed off with David Trevelyan. He said it'd do him good to worry a bit. Then the cops turned up saying I had to go down the nick for interview because I was Cill's best friend. That really fired Dad up. He wanted them to talk to me at home, but they quoted the rules about questioning kids and Dad jumped to the idea that David had grassed him up about their fight. Dad's the one wanted me to tell the cops about Cill having sex, so the Trevelyans would know what a slut their daughter was."

"Your parents knew about that?"

A curl of smoke drifted out of Louise's mouth. "Dad did," she said curtly. "I don't know about Mum."

"Who told him?"

"Who do you think?"

"You?"

"Like hell!" she said dismissively. "There was nothing in it for me. Why would I want to give him a reason to get worked up over her? You seem to have worked out that he liked her." She regarded the other woman cynically. "It was Cill. That's how she operated. As long as men were fighting over her, she had what she wanted. It drove Dad crazy to think she'd let Roy have a bit of the action. It drove David crazy the amount of time she spent round our place." She gave a mirthless laugh at Sasha's shocked expression. "Oh, come on! You weren't born yesterday. Why the hell do you think the bastard kept thrashing her? It wasn't because he needed the exercise. It was because his wife was frigid and he creamed every time he lammed into Cill's arse."

Shock tactics were effective, thought Sasha, as she stared at the photocopy of Jean Trevelyan's interview on the table-"Mother's Anguish over Missing Teen"-and remembered David's forceful voice on the taped interviews. "Did Mr. and Mrs. Trevelyan know that you and Cill truanted at Grace's house?" she asked.

Louise shook her head. "Not unless Cill told them."

"But your parents knew?"

"Only after we'd stopped it. Howard kept pestering me about Cill, so I told him to fuck off and he went whining to his gran. Next thing I knew, Grace was on our doorstep wanting to know what was going on, and Mum sussed the whole thing in half a second flat. She gave Grace a right drubbing, told her she was lucky she wasn't going to report her for harboring truants just so her useless grandson could drool over a couple of teenagers."

It was like the pieces of a jigsaw slotting together. Every snippet of information that Sasha had been given, directly or indirecdy, was finding its place. She pondered for a moment. "What was your father doing while you and your mother were at the police station?" she asked.

"No idea. Sleeping probably. He'd been at work all night."

"Was he in the house when you got back?"

"I presume so. We had to keep our voices down on Saturday mornings, and I don't recall that day being different." She paused. "He was there in the afternoon. I remember watching Grandstand with him, because he kept talking over it to ask me what the police had said."

"Where was your mother?"

Louise took a drag of her cigarette. "No idea," she said, with an amused smile. "Probably round at Grace's giving her another bollocking."

"Do you know that for a fact?"

"Of course not!" she said disparagingly. "The only facts I know are that Cill was there on the Saturday morning and was gone by the time the police found Grace's body."

"What about the Tuesday evening?"

"I didn't see her, but it doesn't mean she wasn't there." Another teasing smile. "Maybe she was upstairs, slashing at poor old Grace."

"Unlikely," said Sasha. "Her fingerprints weren't found anywhere in the house."

"Jesus!" Louise said with an abrupt return to scorn. "It wasn't a serious suggestion. How the hell would I know where she was? I kept my mouth shut because the folks got twitched when the silly bitch was still missing on the Monday. Maybe one of them went round to see what was going on, but if they did, they didn't tell me ... and come the Friday, none of us fancied owning up to anything."

"You must have thought about it, though. What do you think happened?"

"What does it matter what I think? What I know is, it was a fucking nightmare."

"I'd be interested."

Louise looked toward the door into the hall. "All right," she said abruptly. "Howard went to Grace's on the Saturday afternoon, found Cill there, persuaded Grace she was mad to be hiding her and told her he'd take her home. Whatever happened after that wouldn't have been good, because Howard was a pervert. I'm guessing Cill wound him up by telling him about having sex with Roy, and he probably said he wanted it too. They got into a fight and she ended up dead."

Sasha felt the same prickling sensation between her shoulders as she'd felt the first time she came to this house, but she forced herself not to look at the door. "Why weren't they seen?"

"Because it was dark. If they'd left in daylight, everyone would've known Grace was involved."

"Where did he put the body?"

"How would I know? Somewhere close to where he killed her, I guess. It depends where he took her. He lived down Colliton Way and there was a lot of waste ground at the back of it."

"Her body would have been found."

Louise shrugged. "It's an industrial estate now, so maybe she ended up in someone's foundations. They were building the new Brackham & Wright's factory around that time, and Howard was always going on about it because they were putting in state-of-the-art automation and his mum was scared there'd be redundancies."

So neat. Too neat? "What happened then?"

Louise frowned. "He went home."

"No, I meant, what happened with Grace?"

"Howard took a carving knife to her. Had to've done. I expect she kept asking him why Cill hadn't gone home. She was on his back all the time to get himself a girl, but she wouldn't have wanted him having a go at a thirteen-year-old. She married a guy who was much older than her, so that's what she wanted for Howard ... someone motherly who'd give him confidence but wouldn't expect sex. It wasn't what he wanted. Sex was the only thing he ever thought about." She smiled at Sasha's expression. "Just because a person's disabled doesn't make them pleasant, you know. They were both bloody strange, and they both thought it was everyone else's fault they were lonely. They rowed about it all the time."

Sasha pointedly returned to her notes. "It's difficult to see when he could have done it, Mrs. Fletcher. His mother gave him an alibi for the Monday and Tuesday, but you say you saw blood on Grace's window on the Tuesday afternoon. That suggests someone else killed Grace."

"Don't see why. What was to stop Howard doing it Monday night?"

"His mother alibied him. She said she was awake all night worrying about his job prospects."

"You talking about Wynne?"

"Yes."

"She was lying through her teeth."

"The prosecution didn't think so. That's why they argued that Grace died on the Wednesday."

"Not my problem," Louise said frankly, reaching forward to stub out her cigarette. "You asked me what I thought and I told you. Wynne was a lush-put away half a bottle of gin a night because she couldn't stand Howard and she couldn't stand her job-and I've never heard of a chronic alky lying awake worrying. Everyone at Brackham & Wright's knew. Her shift followed Dad's, and she was so hungover sometimes, she'd collapse over her bench with her head in her hands. Why do you think she was so worried about getting the chop?" Her pale eyes flashed with sudden humor. "Ask David Trevelyan. He'll tell you it's true. Everyone knows the whole Howard thing did her a favor. She ended up with the money from the sale of Grace's house and got shot of her useless son."

Sasha rested her pencil against the arm of her spectacles and stared at her notepad.

"Is that it? Are you done?"

"Just a couple more questions, Mrs. Fletcher. You said it was Cill who told your father about the rape ... yet, according to your brother, you and she fell out so badly that she stopped coming to your house." She looked up with a smile. "When did she have an opportunity to talk to him?"

Louise didn't answer immediately. "Probably on the phone when Mum was at work. It's the kind of thing she did."

"Not easy if she was at school all day. There were no mobiles in 1970." No answer. "And if it wasn't Cill, there were only two other people who could have told him: you or Grace."

"Why not Billy?"

"He wouldn't have said that Cill deserved it, Mrs. Fletcher, but Grace might have done if you fed her your version first when you collected the clothes." She paused in face of Louise's incomprehension. "I'm trying to understand why your father encouraged you to tell the police about the rape on the Saturday morning, when David Trevelyan had punched him only a few hours earlier for saying Cill was a cheap little tart who deserved what she got. Most men-particularly men with unhealthy passions for little girls-don't do that. They damp down police interest as fast as they possibly can."

Out came another cigarette. "He always called her a tart."

"Only after the rape. Before the rape he wanted her on his lap all the time. That must have made you jealous."

"Why should it?"

"He was an abuser, Mrs. Fletcher, and you were his little princess. Did he show his disappointment too obviously when Cill stopped coming to the house? What did you tell him? That she preferred rough sex with Roy Trent to letting a dirty old man grope her?"

It was a second or two before Louise could bring the flame into contact with her cigarette. "What if I did? It doesn't change anything."

"It changes everything, Mrs. Fletcher. It says you're a liar and that you were jealous of your friend. And that lends credence to your brother's version of events." She paused. "It must have made you very angry that everyone you ever met-male or female-preferred Cill."