Straightforward little number, although not much of a poem, Todd thought. He didn’t know a lot about poetry, but he suspected some of Claire Pearson’s poems were quite good. Others like this one were just blurted out emotion in rhyme. The message certainly seemed clear enough, though.
Marjorie Benson, or Claire Pearson, her mind disturbed by her horrific experiences, blamed Bill Turpin for the plight which befell her and her mother. If he had not killed Lord Lynmouth, everything would have been all right — that was what her mother had believed. And Bill Turpin was in fact the only one left to blame.
Marjorie Benson had come to Pelham Bay to get revenge, with some idea that she was going to kill Bill Turpin, Todd was sure of it. Trouble was, she might have been seriously unhinged, but she wasn’t a cold-blooded murderess. By nature, by all accounts, she was a gentle romantic — a gentle romantic who had stabbed a man to death...
So what had happened that night twenty-five years ago on the sand dunes? Todd suspected that they had all been looking at it the wrong way around. Nobody set out to kill Marjorie. More likely she had simply seen Bill Turpin walking over the dunes after Johnny Cooke had left her and had been unable to contain herself any longer. She confronted him, told him what she knew about him, maybe threatened him, the silly bitch.
And Bill Turpin was a cold-blooded killer. He knew exactly what to do. He knew how to get rid of a problem like Marjorie Benson, and was well capable of framing an innocent man — poor muddled Johnny had been a gift on a plate.
What a story! Todd shook his head in disbelief. He felt a kind of elation. For several hours he had almost forgotten his own personal involvement. He was just a policeman unravelling a mystery, making discoveries which had lain dormant for a quarter of a century — and that was a very exciting thing to do.
Only gradually did he begin to drift back towards the present. So his father had been right all these years, and learning that was going to destroy him. Johnny Cooke had been wrongly convicted. Todd was quite sure of it. Poor bastard...
Todd Mallett’s sudden sense of euphoria evaporated as swiftly as it had arrived. The more he thought about things, the worse they seemed.
He might have solved one half of the mystery, but what about the rest of it? What about little Irene Nichols? What about Marcus Piddell?
Damn it, thought Todd. None of the night’s revelations had helped with any of that. In his mind, Bill Turpin was sown up as the murderer of Marjorie Benson — but he was sure so much more lay behind it all. He was even more convinced than ever that Jennifer Stone had known that it did — and that is why she had died.
He had learned nothing to shed any new light on Jennifer’s death. And he had learned nothing to link Marcus with any of it. In fact just the opposite.
He clenched both his fists in exasperation and smashed them down on his desk.
His sergeant, who had fallen asleep exhausted in his chair, jerked awake.
‘What’s up, guv?’ he asked groggily.
‘The real villains have got away with it yet again, that’s what’s up,’ said Todd Mallett.
Twenty Three
Dominic McDonald was a broken man. He decided not to go home after Jennifer’s funeral. He couldn’t face the empty Barnes house. Instead he went to stay with his sister, a painter who lived alone in a cottage in the Lake District. For a week he walked and wept alone, striding endlessly over the hills, and at night his sister cooked him big nourishing vegetarian meals. She didn’t eat meat and didn’t think her guests should either. Dominic didn’t mind, he probably didn’t even notice. He didn’t notice either how carefully she gave him space. She barely spoke to him unless he spoke to her first. He didn’t really want to talk and she sensed that. All day he walked. At first she feared the repetition of the Yorkshire Moors episode, but Dominic had moved on from the early craziness of his shock. He was not self-destructive any more. He just needed time and space to work out if he could rebuild his life, if he even wanted to.
At the end of the week he felt surprisingly healed. He would never get over the death of the wife and child he adored. It would be a very long time indeed before he would again lead a normal life — if that ever happened. He felt only half a man — because his relationship with Anna had been a complete one, which had made them both whole — but he knew he could function, and he decided that was what he must do, start functioning again.
And so he set off for London on the very day that The Friends provided the Oriental twins for Marcus, and that Todd Mallett sat glumly at his desk still trying in vain to read the mind of a dead woman.
Dominic forced himself to shut out the tide of grief which swept over him as soon as he stepped into the empty Barnes house. Quiet as the grave, he thought to himself. He shuddered.
Resolutely, he unpacked his small bag and went into the kitchen and cooked himself some supper. He made toast and scrambled egg. He didn’t really want the meal, but he needed to start a routine. After he had eaten, he did what he had so often done when Anna and Pandora were alive. He went to his study and switched on his computers. It was the first time he had even been in the room since the dreadful night when they had both been killed. The gentle hum of the machines was familiar. In one way that was comforting, and in another it hurt even more. The last time he had sat there, contentedly working, everything in the room had been more or less the same. But the familiar little world, the cocoon of private love in which he had existed, had now been shattered for ever.
He checked the big desk-top computer, routine, something he always did. This was the IBM machine he kept permanently attached to his modem, able to receive messages automatically from other computers. Several documents had been sent to him. That was not surprising. He cast an eye down the files, nothing he could be bothered with. Then he stopped in his tracks.
Jennifer Stone had sent him a computer message. He checked the date and time. May 28th at three minutes past midnight. A file had been fed from Jennifer’s computer to his around five hours before her death. His brain was starting to work again now — for the first time since it all happened. Before going to bed that dreadful night Jennifer had decided to send him a document. Why? And what was it?
He quickly checked its length. 44K. That was nearly 7000 words. Quite a document.
In trepidation he called it up and began to read.
It was a detailed account of the last five days of Jennifer Stone’s life. And it included the transcript of a tape.