Dead Famous

DAY FORTY-ONE. 2.15 p.m.

Trisha did everything she could to keep Sally’s sad past a secret. She knew that if it came out Sally would be crucified in the press. Being aware of what leaky places police stations are, she asked to see Coleridge privately to explain her findings.

“There’s no suggestion of abuse or provocation,” Trisha said. “By all accounts Sally’s father was a decent sort of man, if rather weak. Her mother was just pathologically unbalanced, and one night she just flipped.”

“Why did she get prison?” Coleridge asked. “It seems obvious that the woman was ill.”

“Senile judge? Incompetent defence? Who knows, but the prosecution managed to get her tried as a sane defendant. Maybe it was because she was black. This was twenty years ago, remember. Anyway, she got life for murder in the first degree.”

“But appealed, of course.”

“Of course, and won, but sadly not before she’d stabbed two other inmates in Holloway with a sharpened canteen spoon. After that she went to a hospital for the criminally insane, where she still lives. Sally had been born shortly before her father was killed, and I imagine that these days they might have established some link with postnatal depression or whatever, but then they just banged her up and left her. She’s thoroughly institutionalized now, apparently. Sally found out a couple of years ago and went to see her. Shook her up quite a bit.”

“Well, it would do. Does Sally have any mental problems?”

“Yes, depression and plenty of it, right back to puberty. Been on numerous prescriptions and hospitalized once. The adoptive mother thinks it must have all been bound up with working out that she was gay, but I don’t know about that, it certainly never…”

Trisha was about to say that it had never bothered her, that at the age of fourteen when she had finally worked out that she was a lesbian it had in fact been an enormous relief, explaining as it did the abject confusion that she had been experiencing in her relationships with both boys and girls. But she decided to leave the sentence hanging. Now was not the time.

“Whatever the reason, Sally has definitely had problems with depression, and of course ever since she found out about her mother she’s been worrying that she’s going the same way.”

“And what’s the likelihood of that? I mean in medical terms?”

“Well, she’s more likely to flip than, say, you or I, but the chances only become truly significant if both parents were sufferers. Then some doctors say it rises to nearly forty per cent.”

“What on earth were these appalling Peeping Tom people doing letting a serial depressive with a family history of mental illness into their grotesque exercise in the first place?”

“They claim that they didn’t know, sir, and I believe them. Sally didn’t tell them, and they would have had to dig pretty deep to find out, what with medical confidentiality and all that. It’s not as if Sally’s considered dangerous at all. I only found out because her mother told me.”

Coleridge leaned back in his chair and sipped at his little paper cup of water. It had been Hooper who had led the movement to get a water cooler installed in the incident room. Coleridge had resisted it fiercely, believing the whole business to be just another example of everybody these days wanting to look like Americans. However, now that the thing had been installed, he rather liked to be able to sip at clear cold water while he ruminated, and it had helped him to cut down on tea.

“So, tell me, Patricia,” he said. “What are your thoughts? Do you think this information about Sally is significant – I mean, to our murder inquiry?”

“Well, sir, it certainly explains Sally’s touchiness about mental health. But on the whole I’m tempted to say that this puts her more out of the frame than into it. I mean, now we know why she said what she said the night she quarrelled with Moon.”

“Yes, I’m inclined to agree with you, constable, although it must be admitted that the similarity between Sally’s mother’s crime and the crime committed in the house is a pretty nasty coincidence. Anyway, whatever we might think, I doubt that the press will consider Sally exonerated if they ever get hold of this.”