I could feel the weight of her disbelief bearing down on my bent head. "You'd have known if something had died. The smell of death is terrible."
"Only when it's warm. This happened in winter-a particularly cold winter-and we had fitted carpets over all the floors."
"But-" She broke off to marshal her thoughts. "Why didn't you hear them? Tomcats make a terrible noise when they yowl."
"It depends what was done to them first." I shook my head. "In any case, I think they must have died of hypothermia very quickly."
Another pause. "What on earth could be done to a cat to stop it crying?"
I hunched my shoulders as I thought of the chilling research I'd done on the subject. "At a guess, they had superglue pumped into their mouths and eyes and Elastoplast wrapped tightly 'round their faces so they couldn't see, eat, drink or cry. Then they were pushed under our house to try to scratch their way out with the only things left to them ... their claws."
My mother drew a disgusted breath, although whether her disgust was leveled at me for making the suggestion or at the suggestion itself, I couldn't tell. "What sort of people would do a thing like that?"
I reached into my pocket for a copy of the police report describing the entry into Annie's house the day after her death and passed it across to her. "The same people who tortured cats for Annie's benefit," I said. "The only difference is, they pushed the wretched creatures through her cat flap so she could see what was happening to them."
She glanced at the report but didn't read it. "Why? What was the point?"
"Any reason you like. Sometimes I think it was done to cause fear, other times I think it was done for pleasure." I turned my face to the wind. "In a perverted sort of way, I ought to feel flattered. I think the assumption was I was cleverer than Annie and could work out for myself that animals were dying in dreadful agony under my house. And the fact that I wasn't ... and didn't ... must have been a disappointment."
If my mother asked me why once, she asked it a hundred times on our journey home. Why hadn't Annie gone to the police? Why hadn't Annie phoned the RSPCA? Why would anyone feel confident about tormenting me in the same way they'd tormented Annie? Why weren't they afraid I'd go to the police? Why hadn't I gone to the police? Why would anyone want to reinforce my suspicions about Annie's death? Why risk getting Sam involved? Why risk getting the rat catcher involved? Why hadn't I questioned the RSPCA findings at the inquest? Why...? Why...? Why...?
Was she finally beginning to understand how betrayed I'd felt when she hadn't believed me at the time? Or was I being cynical in my absolute conviction that it was only her recognition of my father's tireless support of me that had shamed her into asking any questions at all?
In any case, I had few answers for her, other than to say no one believes a madwoman. "But why assume there was a logical thought process at work," I asked her finally, "when whoever tortured the cats was clearly unbalanced?" It was done for the pleasure of inflicting pain, not because it was possible to predict how Mad Annie or I would react to having mutilated animals left on our doorsteps.
Family correspondence-dated 1999
CURRAN HOUSE
Whitehay Road
Torquay
Devon
Monday
Darling,
Just a quick note to thank you and Sam for the weekend. It was good to see the boys again, although I do think you should persuade them to have their hair cut. Your father and I both liked the house, despite its dilapidation, and feel it would be sensible to make an offer for it. Sam is clearly at a loose end at the moment (country life doesn't really suit him, does it?) and a renovation project would keep him occupied. You can always sell it afterward if and when he manages to find a job.
With regard to what we talked about yesterday: I have since had a word with our local RSPCA inspector. He tells me stories like yours are not unusual and that cruelty to cats is more common than anyone realizes. He gave me some horrific examples-cats tied in sacks to be used as footballs; claws pulled out with pliers; and fur doused in gasoline and set alight. Apparently the favorite sport is to use them as target practice for air-guns and crossbows.
He's given me the name of a solicitor down here whose wife runs a rescue home for abused animals, and suggests we consult him with a view to a prosecution. I said I was sure you had some idea of who was responsible and, while he is not optimistic of a successful prosecution twenty years after the event, he believes it may be worth a try, particularly as the RSPCA inspector involved at the time is still alive and able to give evidence. Let me know what you'd like me to do.
All my love,
Ma
PS I know she's barking up the wrong tree but do give her credit for trying. She's very "down" at the moment because she feels we ganged up on her and can't understand why. I said she should have expected it-i.e., what goes around comes around-but she doesn't want to be reminded of how she ganged up on you all those years ago. It would be tactful, my dear, to avoid saying "I told you so," however strong the temptation. I would think less of you if you did!
Dad
X X X
*11*
Portland Peninsula was under assault from a blustery southwest wind the following Wednesday when Sam and I drove up from Chesil Beach in search of the sculpture park. Given the choice, I'd rather have gone on my own. There was too much that still needed explaining-my more-than-passing interest in Danny, for example-but I balked at telling Sam his presence would only exacerbate the problem when, like my mother, his way of making up for past indifference was a belated wish to be involved.
I had made a halfhearted attempt the previous day to talk about the three weeks at the end of January and beginning of February '79 that I spent alone on Graham Road, but my habit of silence was so ingrained that I gave it up after a few minutes. I found I couldn't talk about fear without becoming cruel, and I couldn't become cruel without turning on Sam because he had abandoned me when I needed him most. In the end, as so often in my life, I took the fatalistic view that whatever would be would be. Sam was a grown man. If he couldn't learn to live with the truth, irrespective of how it was revealed to him, then nothing I did or said would make a difference.
The Isle of Portland, a tilted slab of limestone four miles long and one mile wide, forms a natural breakwater between Lyme Bay to the west and the sweep of sheltered water between Weymouth and the Isle of Purbeck to the east. Its precipitous cliffs rise out of the sea to a high point of nearly five hundred feet, with only the hardiest of vegetation surviving the mercurial English weather. As Sam and I wound our way up its spine, I thought how bleak it was, and how unsurprising that successive governments had claimed it both as a fortress against foreign invasion and as a colony for prisoners.
In 1847 the Admiralty had employed convict labor awaiting transportation to Australia to construct a mighty harbor on Portland's eastern shores, which remained the preserve of the Ministry of Defense until the government abandoned it in the early 1990s. It seemed fitting somehow, in view of the convicted men who had toiled to create the anchorage, that the most prominent feature in Portland harbor that Wednesday was a gray prison ship that had been imported from America some four years previously to deal with the chronic overcrowding in Her Majesty's inland gaols.