Disordered Minds

*19*

9 GALWAY ROAD, BOSCOMBE, BOURNEMOUTH

SATURDAY, MAY 10, 2003, 9:00 P.M.

Rachel Burton moved the cursor to "send," then hovered her finger over the mouse. "Are you sure about this, sweetheart?" she asked her husband, looking up from the monitor. "Once it's gone there's no bringing it back."

Billy rested a hand on her shoulder and leaned forward to stare at the message on the screen. "It's not my choice. It's what you think that matters." He sighed despondently. "I just wish to God that stupid Gardener woman had done something, instead of making us do the dirty work."

"OK, then we send it." Rachel pressed the mouse button and watched the email vanish. "I'd rather have a husband with a clear conscience than a galloping insomniac, and if you change your mind, you don't have to give them her address." She reached up to squeeze his hand. "Look, it may not be as bad as you think. Louise could be squeaky clean ... your mother's conscience might only be troubled by a few white lies. Blame your parents for refusing to talk to you ... blame me and the twins for forcing you into it."

He dropped a kiss on the top of her head. It hadn't taken much forcing once he came clean about what was worrying him, because her attitude was the same as his. Neither of them was confident that George Gardener would let the issue of Priscilla Fletcher drop, and if there were skeletons in the Burton closet, then it was better to open the door themselves than wait for a stranger to do it. They wouldn't have a leg to stand on if the press arrived on their doorstep demanding to know why Billy had failed to recognize his sister, was Rachel's argument, so the best solution was to make Louise tell her story herself.

"And how do we do that?" Billy had asked gloomily. "She's never 'fessed up to a damn thing in her life."

"Tell the detective agency where she is," suggested Rachel. "You've got their card. Persuade them to ask the questions. That way, the police won't be involved ... or not immediately."

"She'll lie."

"At least they might find out why she's pretending to be Cill."

"How's it going to help us if they don't report back?" Billy said. "We'll be just as much in the dark as we are now."

Rachel had a more positive character than her husband. "Then we need to find a way of making them." She stroked his face. "You can't go on like this, love. Right's right and wrong's wrong, and you'll have a breakdown if you don't do something pretty damn quick. You were ten years old. Whatever happened wasn't your fault."

"Perhaps it wasn't Louise's either. Perhaps that's why she went the way she did."

"Then the truth won't hurt her," said Rachel, with a minimum of sympathy. Her own knowledge of Louise was confined to a brief period at school when the older girl had singled her out for spiteful attention. Chubby, freckle-faced, copper-haired, and very unsure of herself, Rachel Jennings had been teased mercilessly by dark-haired Daisy Burton who reveled in calling her a "fat gingerbread freak." Her hatred for Daisy had made her avoid Billy for years, and it wasn't until he admitted that his sister's name was Louise, that she was a redhead herself, and, better still, had probably died of a drug overdose, that Rachel had discovered the eternal truth-siblings are rarely alike.

Nevertheless, it was no surprise when Billy explained his preoccupation of the last few weeks on Louise's resurfacing. Rachel had always feared it would happen one day. She'd asked him why he hadn't told her that he'd recognized the photograph Councillor Gardener had shown him, and he'd answered, "Because I hoped I was wrong. Nothing good ever came from Louise. She's been easier to live with since I thought she was dead. At least that way, I could feel sadness for her."

From: wandr.burton@compuline.com

Send: Sat. 5/10/03 21:10

To: info@WCHinvestigations.com

Subject: Cill Trevelyan

Dear Sir,

I am Louise Burton's brother. One of your detectives came looking for her three years ago and gave me your card. It was in connection with Mr. and Mrs. Trevelyan's search for their daughter, Cill. I can supply you with Louise's name and address. However, I have only recently found her again and am concerned about her welfare. If you decide to talk to her, then I would appreciate a follow-up meeting with you afterward in return for me telling you where she is. I am finding it difficult to speak to her and hope you will have more success, but I would need some guarantees before I release the information. It might be of interest to you to know that she is calling herself Priscilla and styling herself to look like Cill Trevelyan. I understand that all dealings are confidential.

I wait to hear from you.

Yours sincerely

William Burton

PECKHAM, LONDON

SATURDAY, MAY 10, 2003, 9:30 P.M.

When his doorbell rang, Andrew looked up from the manuscript he was reading with a frown of irritation. Off the top of his head, he couldn't think of a single acquaintance who would be so crass as to visit unannounced at nine thirty on a Saturday evening. As his daughters were asleep upstairs, he didn't immediately leap to the idea that it was the police, but waited to see if the bell rang again. When it did, he rose reluctantly from his seat.

One of the downsides of living in a poky mews cottage, where every window faced forward and table lamps threw his shadow against the curtains, was that whoever was at his door certainly knew he was there, and he was too courteous a man to pretend otherwise. But he wasn't pleased about it. He was wearing scruffy corduroy trousers and an old denim shirt with soup stains down the front, and he had a sinking feeling that he was going to find Jenny and Greg outside, dressed to the nines for a party and hiding their smiles at his sad old man's appearance.

He slipped the Yale latch and opened the door, and if he hadn't recognized his visitor immediately as the woman he'd seen at the Crown and Feathers, he would certainly have known her from George's photograph. Priscilla Fletcher. He was quick-witted enough to see that he had two choices-to acknowledge her or pretend ignorance-and he rapidly assessed the advantages of each while hiding his astonishment behind a polite smile. "Can I help you?"

"Do you know who I am?" she asked bluntly.

Andrew prevaricated. "I believe so. You're Jonathan Hughes's mystery woman. I saw you at Roy Trent's pub in February."

Close up, she looked nothing like the black-and-white snapshot of plump, unlined Cill Trevelyan. Her face was thin and drawn, with signs of aging around her eyes, and Andrew was surprised at how dyed her hair looked. She reminded him more of an anorexic Wallis Simpson playing at being queen to a vacillating Edward VIII than she did of a vibrant thirteen-year-old on the threshold of life.

"Do you know my name?"

Andrew chose to play it straight. "It depends which one you're answering to," he said dryly. "Priscilla Fletcher ... Cill Trent ... possibly Daisy Burton or Louise Burton? Which do you prefer?"

"Louise," she said. "I never really got used to the others." She jerked her chin toward the room behind him. "Are you going to let me in?"

He examined her face for a moment, then pulled the door wide. "As long as you're not planning to steal my wallet. I'm even poorer than Jonathan, so it won't do you any good."

"I didn't steal it," she said, walking past him. "I borrowed it for an hour to see what I could find out about him." She looked critically about the small, open-plan room that had a kitchen at one end, stairs rising out of the middle and a couple of armchairs and a coffee table at the other. "It's not much of a place, is it? I guess being an agent doesn't pay."

Andrew closed the door. "Who told you where I lived?"

She drew some business cards from her pocket and handed them to him. "These were in your friend's wallet. Yours has your home address written on the back of it." Andrew flicked through the cards, most of which carried New York zip codes, until he came to his, dog-eared, at the bottom. He could even remember the fit of loneliness, shortly after he moved, that had prompted him to jot the number and street in Peckham on the back of it. He'd spun the card across a restaurant table at Jonathan and asked him to drop by one evening when he had nothing better to do. He never had. "Did you take anything else?"

"No. It was Hughes's address I wanted, but he didn't have any cards of his own." She glanced toward the stairs as if wondering if there was anyone else in the house. "He's a bit of a weird bastard, isn't he? His eyes were rolling the whole time I was talking to him ... I thought he was a junkie."

"He was ill."

She wasn't interested enough to pursue it. "Do you mind if I sit down?"

"Be my guest."

She took off her jacket and dropped into one of the armchairs. "How about offering me a drink?"

He opened a kitchen cupboard and took out some wineglasses. "Red or white? I've a halfway decent Margaux or an excellent Pouuly-Fume."

"What about vodka?"

"Wine's my limit, I'm afraid."

"Jesus!" she grumbled. "It's not much of a life, is it? I thought people made a fortune out of books." She eyed the two bottles that he held up for her. "OK, give me some of the red." She watched him cut the foil from the neck and insert the corkscrew. "Aren't you going to ask me why I'm here?"

"Do I need to?" he murmured, sniffing the cork to make sure it wasn't tainted. "Aren't you going to tell me anyway?"

She scowled at what she clearly thought was a piece of effete snobbery. "Not if you're gonna act like a ponce."

He poured some wine into one of the glasses and held it briefly to his nose before filling them both. "This isn't a particularly expensive Margaux," he said mildly, "but it still costs around twenty pounds a bottle." He took the glasses in one hand and the bottle in the other and brought them to the coffee table. "How much is vodka these days?"

"Twelve ... fifteen quid, but you'd have to be an alky to drink that much every night."

"Mm. Well, corked wine's about as disgusting as drinking sour milk," said Andrew, handing her a glass and lowering himself into the other chair. He raised his glass to her. "Cheers."

She took a tentative sip. "I guess it'll do," she said churlishly. "I prefer vodka and lime, though. Are you going to let me smoke?"

"Do I have a choice?"

She gave an abrupt laugh. "Not if you want to hear what I came to say."

Andrew rose to his feet again and fetched an ashtray from one of the cupboards. "Feel free," he said, handing it to her. "I'll open the window." He pulled the curtains back and unlatched one of the panes, glad of the excuse to make his affairs public. He didn't think she was going to pull a knife on him, but at the back of his mind was what happened to Grace.

"You're a strange bloke," she said, lighting up. "Don't you ever say no?"

He resumed his seat. It wasn't a question he'd ever been asked before and he was surprised by its perspicuity. "Not often," he admitted. "I turn down manuscripts fairly regularly, but those are business decisions."

"So what are you? A soft touch ... a bit lonely?" Her gaze traveled about the room again and came to rest on the soup stains on his shirt. "You're not married, that's for sure. Are you gay?"

Andrew shook his head. "Heterosexual and divorced. My two daughters are in bed upstairs."

She glanced toward the ceiling. "How old?"

"Old enough to phone the police if I raise my voice," he said good-humoredly. "Young enough to stay asleep if this encounter remains peaceful and legal."

She gave a small laugh. "What do you think I am?"

He tilted his glass to the light and gently turned it, watching the Margaux run legs down the curved inside. "I don't know, Louise. I'm waiting for you to tell me. Your old headmistress, Miss Brett, says you're a liar ... Jonathan Hughes says you're a thief ... and both he and George Gardener think you witnessed Grace Jefferies's murder." He watched her for a moment before savoring a mouthful of wine. "Does anyone have anything good to say about you?"

He expected her to take offense, but she didn't. "I doubt it. I've been a fuckup most of my life. What did Billy say?"

Billy. "Is that your brother?"

Louise nodded.

"Nothing much," said Andrew, recalling George's transcript. "I believe he said you were married and your family thought you were in Australia. But he didn't recognize your photograph ... or claimed he didn't."

She drained her glass at one swallow and put it on die coffee table, leaning forward to stare at the floor. "He's OK, is Billy, except he only sees what he wants to see ... wouldn't notice a fucking elephant if it sat on his bed unless it flattened him in the process." She dedicated herself to smoking her cigarette.

Strange expression, thought Andrew, reaching for the bottle and topping her up again. She didn't seem to notice.

"I hated that bitch," she said suddenly. "She was always hauling Cill in for a lecture, but it never amounted to much-everyone knew she liked her. It was me she dumped on. People think an upfront punishment's a bad thing, but it's the drip-drip stuff that's worse. She'd tell Cill she was too bright to hang around with the likes of me ... then tell me I was thick as pig shit and only good for bringing other kids down. It wasn't true. Cill was a maniac-stubbed a cigarette out on my arm once when I told her to get stuffed."

Andrew guessed the "bitch" was Miss Brett. "What did Miss Brett say to you after the fight?"

"The usual," she said cynically. " 'You're a nasty piece of work, Louise Burton, and one day you'll get your comeuppance. You provoked that fight deliberately to get Cill into trouble.' Bloody old cow! I'm sure she was a dyke."

"Was she right? Did you provoke it?"

Louise looked up, a gleam of amusement lighting her eyes. "What do you think?"

"Yes."

She gave an indifferent shrug. "It served Cill right. I took so much shit off her about the rape-why hadn't I jumped them? ... why hadn't I screamed? ... why didn't Billy do something? ... why did I keep telling her to forget it?" Her small, glittering eyes held Andrew's for a moment before sliding away. "It wasn't even that bad ... three puny fourteen-year-olds who couldn't keep it up for five seconds. OK, she had a bit of a kicking, but that was all." Louise jammed her cigarette into the ashtray and immediately lit another one. "She was shit-scared she was pregnant but even that was a no-no. She had a period ten days later and rammed it down my throat because she knew she was in the clear." She lapsed into silence, revisiting memories.

"What happened to her?"

There was barely a pause for reflection. "Her dad thrashed her for the fight, so she hid out with Grace." She smiled sourly at his expression. "That's what you wanted to hear, isn't it? It's where we went when we couldn't think of anything better to do. Grace let us watch telly all day as long as we could show her some bruises."

Andrew waited for her to explain. "Try running that past me again," he encouraged, after another silence. "You lost me between the telly and the bruises. At the moment I don't see a connection."

She rolled up the sleeve of her shirt. "Like this," she said, showing him a naked forearm with blue weals striping the flesh. "Enough of them and you could lounge around on her settee till the cows came home ... if you had a mind to it, of course." She licked her finger and rubbed a white line through the stripes. "Eyeshadow," she said laconically. "Pretty effective, eh? I put it on in the car before I came in. Grace fell for it every time."

Andrew took another slow mouthful of Margaux. "Why?"

"She was a moron ... just like her stupid grandson. Me and Cill could run rings around the pair of them." She paused, waiting for him to react. "It was Cill started it," she went on when he didn't. "She knew Howard hung out there all the time, doing eff all, so she rang the bell one day and told Grace her dad had been beating up on her. It worked a treat." She lifted a shoulder in a disdainful shrug. "We couldn't understand a word she said-she was worse than Howard like that-but she let us watch telly and gave us something to eat."

Andrew showed his skepticism. "Why?" he asked again. "What did she have to gain by it?"

"I don't know. She just did."

"Bullshit," he said without emphasis. "Grace may have had speech problems, but that wouldn't have affected her IQ. Your parents lived across the road. Why would she make enemies of them by letting you truant at her place?"

"She let Howard."

"He was her grandson. She felt sorry for him."

"Then maybe she felt sorry for us. Cill's dad had beaten her black and blue that first time. It was only afterward we used the eyeshadow." Louise took a curl of smoke into her mouth and stared at him with dislike. "You reckon you know it all, don't you? So when did your dad take a stick to you?"

"Never."

She pointed toward the ceiling. "How many times have you beaten them within an inch of their lives?"

"Never."

"Then don't tell me what Grace would or wouldn't do. She knew about people's lives being fucked. Why do you think Howard was the way he was?"

"He had a disability."

Louise shook her head. "His mother used to thrash the living daylights out of him. She was a right bitch. He was so scared of her, he kept running away to Grace."

Andrew remembered a couple of lines from a letter Jonathan had received. "Sometimes his mother dragged him in by his ear ... she wasn't a nice woman ... she was always hitting him." "Did you know Howard well?"

"Well enough," she said dismissively. "He had a thing for Cill."

"Was he in the house when you were there?"

"Sometimes. Cill used to let him feel her tits whenever his gran was out of the room. It got him really excited."

Andrew looked toward the window, quelling a prudish distaste. "It's hardly unusual," he said. "Adolescents explore each other all the time."

"Yeah, but he wasn't an adolescent, was he? He was twenty years old." The pale eyes fixed on Andrew again. "Actually, it was pretty funny watching him. He'd get a hard-on just looking at her, and when he touched her he'd start juddering as if he was having an orgasm." Another scornful shrug. "He probably was, too-he was a sad little git ... shot his load early every time, I reckon, assuming anyone let him get that close."

It wasn't just the remarks but the brutal way she said them that set Andrew's teeth on edge. Perhaps she thought shock tactics would make her more believable. "Who instigated it? Cill or Howard?"

"Cill, of course. She was a right little tart."

"What about you? Was Howard interested in you?"

"Like hell he was," said Louise bluntly, taking up her glass again. "I was the gooseberry so his gran wouldn't ask questions. He'd have gone the whole way with Cill if he could've got rid of Grace. He was always pressuring the silly old cow to go to the shops, but she never did because she hated leaving the house."

Andrew watched her drain the glass. It wasn't hard to see where she was going with this. "So because he was sexually obsessed with Cill, he killed his grandmother?"

"Had to've done," she agreed. "He was a dirty little pervert."

"Had to have done?" he queried. "You don't know?"

"Oh, I know all right," she said confidently. "I just can't prove it."

Andrew let a silence develop. "What was the point of coming here?" he asked at last. "I may be a soft touch in some areas of my life, Louise, but I'm not entirely stupid. Were you expecting me to believe this rigmarole?"

"What's not to believe?"

"That Grace would have allowed Cill to stay in her house once the police became involved. They were appealing for sightings on the Saturday morning. Grace wouldn't have hidden her in those circumstances."

Louise shrugged. "Maybe she was already dead."

"She can't have been," he said with conviction. "There was a debate over time of death at the trial, but the disparity between the two sides was twenty-four to forty-eight hours. If Cill disappeared on the Friday evening, then Grace would have had to have died on the Saturday in order to be ignorant of police involvement ... which would have meant her body lying for nearly a week before it was found." He shook his head. "And that isn't possible. Decomposition would have been well into the second and third stages."

"Not my problem," she said indifferently. "I'm telling you how it was. It's up to you to work out how it fits."

He gave an abrupt laugh. "Then it's a pity you didn't make your story match the facts before you brought it to me. Let's start with Cill. If you knew where she was, why didn't you tell the police?"

"She'd have killed me." She reached forward to stub out her second cigarette. "Like I said, she was a psycho. If they'd hauled her kicking and screaming back to her dad for another larruping, she'd have got me in a corner, first opportunity, and scratched my eyes out."

"So why tell them about the rape?"

"Because they wanted to know what the fight was about. Plus, I reckoned that if the police knew she'd been raped and got social services involved, her dad wouldn't be able to take her apart for it." Her expression became almost rueful. "I was trying to do her a favor, though you wouldn't think it the way things turned out. It's no good looking at it with twenty-twenty vision, you have to picture what it was like then. Far as I knew, Cill'd sneak home when she got bored and that'd be the end of it. I didn't know she was going to vanish and Grace was going to die; No one did."

It was a fair point, he thought. "How did you know she was in Grace's house?"

"Soon as her mum phoned to see if she was round our place, I went and checked. We used to go through the gate in the fence at the back and in the kitchen door. I watched her through the window, stuffing her face with ice cream."

"Did you talk to her?"

"No chance. She'd have gone for me. It was my fault that cow Brett suspended her."

"What about Grace?"

"Didn't see her."

"Howard?"

She shook her head.

"What time was it?"

Louise shrugged. "Nine o'clock or thereabouts."

"Morning? Evening?"

"Morning. I was down at the nick two hours later, being quizzed by the cops."

It sounded convincing, but Andrew wasn't much of a judge in these matters. Women had always run rings around him. He couldn't forget that, at the period Louise was describing, she was only thirteen years old-and, if her ex-headmistress was to be believed, not very bright. "Had you had dealings with the police before?" he asked. "I can't imagine withholding information at thirteen."

Her eyes glittered scornfully, but whether in contempt for Andrew's boyhood fear or impatience with his questioning, he couldn't tell. "It was my mother did most of the talking, and she was mad as hell that anyone'd think we knew where Cill was and wouldn't tell."

"But you knew."

"Right." She lit another cigarette. "That's why I talked about the rape." She forestalled his next attempt at a question. "Oh, come on, lighten up, for Christ's sake! What was the big deal? I wasn't going to rat on Cill, even if I did think she was a little bitch. All she'd done was take herself off for the night ... hundreds of kids do it every day. In any case, I didn't want the cops finding out we'd been truanting round there because I didn't know what they'd do to Grace. Or me for that matter," she added reflectively. "My plan was to go round as soon as I got home and give Cill a bollocking, but Mum got fired up about the rape and wouldn't let me out of her sight. After that it all went pear-shaped."

"How?"

"How do you think?" she said morosely. "When I next went round, it looked as if a bloody war had broken out."