That Serena Jackson had agreed to take part in Solly Brightman’s research did not surprise him. He didn’t flatter himself that she was greedy for the sort of fame that came with notoriety. No. Solly knew that the woman was only here to relieve the boredom of this place. It was a diversion for her, no more. He doubted if she would ever bother to read the book once it was published, even though an entire chapter would be devoted to her killing spree.
‘Why did she do it?’ Rosie had asked him. He had shrugged, only half-knowing. But their conversations had provided more of an answer to that question.
‘Good morning, Serena,’ he said at last. ‘How are you today?’ The woman turned to him, squinting her topaz eyes a little against the dazzling brightness. Then she gave him one of her rare smiles.
‘Daniel’s gone abroad,’ she told him. ‘The States.’ She gave an insouciant shrug. ‘Don’t think he’s going to come back.’
‘Won’t you miss him?’
She shrugged again in answer as if it was no big deal to her but Solly detected a small shift in her expression and knew that the loss of her brother was a real blow to the woman.
‘Don’t you miss your mother and father?’
Serena looked down at the table and traced a pattern on its plastic surface with her index finger. ‘Sometimes,’ she replied at last.
‘What sorts of things make you miss them?’
She heaved a sigh then her mouth twisted as if the exhalation had come unbidden. This was a person, Solly knew, who liked to be totally in control of her own emotions.
‘I never wanted to have my own place. I told you that already, didn’t I?’ she began. ‘They wanted me out, especially her.’ The pretty mouth made a moue of distaste. ‘Thought we didn’t know what was going on under our noses, filthy bitch!’ She shook her head as if to rid herself of the memory. ‘But I do miss Dad sometimes. He used to come and say goodnight. Nothing to titillate your nasty little mind,’ she added with a sneer. ‘He’d call out from the top of the stairs, that’s all,’ she said.
Solly nodded as though he believed what she told him. Perhaps it was true but it was more likely that she was feeling lonely and panicked at night times here in this place when she was so completely alone. The father figure that she had destroyed haunted her with good memories, even if they might be false ones.
Serena looked at Solly suddenly. ‘I suppose you want to find out why I killed them.’
There was a long moment between them when the psychologist was acutely aware of normal sounds like that of a plane overhead and the metallic growl of a mowing machine in the grounds. Of course he wanted to hear that. But, he wondered, noting a sly smile cutting the edges of that pretty mouth, would she ever tell him the whole truth?
‘They wouldn’t let me be what I wanted, would they?’ she told him, enjoying his discomfiture at her deliberately enigmatic remark.
‘When did you first enjoy making fires?’ Solly asked, changing the subject. He had asked this question in various ways before and was not really expecting an answer today, just the usual cold silence. So he was surprised when Serena leaned forwards and told him in a whisper, so that the other psychologist could not hear. He listened to the story of over-privileged teenagers bored with all the things that their parents’ wealth could buy, joy riding and wrecking a car. Her face became more animated as she described the fire and the tree.
‘I was alone with the sound of crackling wood and that moaning voice. It was easy to think of the tree as a living thing in its death throes,’ she told him.
Solly locked eyes with the woman, ‘And…?’ he prompted her. ‘And I liked what I saw,’ she said, a gleam of triumph shining from those tawny eyes.
‘You always wanted to find out what it would be like? To kill?’ he asked.
Serena nodded then turned away with a yawn. It was a signal Solly recognised as the end of this current session. Her boredom assuaged, she would return to the hospital’s routine until his next visit. Then perhaps he would ask her other questions. About the vulnerable old ladies who had died at her hand.
There was still a lot to learn about this woman whose strange beauty was so at odds with a nature that one journalist had described as pure evil.
It was quiet here and I liked it after that funny little man and his probing questions. He amused me and I enjoyed trying to fool him. Sometimes I think I did outwit him, though today I had let rather too much slip, hadn’t I? There were things that he would never hear from me, though. I hugged them to myself gleefully; that laughing child whirling through the air and the old vagrant, his face contorted with the poison choking him to death. These were my secrets and no clever bearded psychologist would ever find them out. And there were other secrets too, desires that might never be fulfilled — different ways to kill. I considered them in the long hours within this place, wondering if I would ever be given the chance to carry them out.
Maggie bent down by the flowerbed and pulled out a weed, adding it to the little pile in the plastic bucket. The rose garden had been Flynn’s idea and Maggie badly wanted to keep it neat and tidy. The late July sun beat down on her head as she stood up, her eyes on one particular rose. Several buds had opened up now and the blooms were a shade of deep amber. She didn’t need to examine the plastic tag to know the flower’s name: Remember Me. Flynn had brought it the day after Mum’s funeral, planting the rose where he knew Maggie would see it from the kitchen window. It had been a gracious gesture and she had hugged him silently, both of them weeping in that shared moment of grief. So Maggie had determined to keep this plot weed-free. Her mother’s remains were scattered elsewhere and now she only had her memories of Alice Finlay to console her.
Sometimes the night of her mother’s death would come back to her, a jumble of images and impressions like a bad dream that makes no sense on awakening. She felt the cat at her side, rubbing himself against her and automatically she put out a hand, stroking his fur. Chancer had howled like a banshee that night, prowling around the house looking for Alice. His eldritch screeching had unnerved them both. Yet once the sofa bed had been tidied away and all her things had gone he had settled down again. Had he sensed her death? Or was it simply that he could feel the tension created by all the hours of anxiety and sorrow? Maggie cuddled the cat at her side and sighed.
What should she do next? Perhaps she could cut one of the roses and bring it into the house? No, she decided, better to let it flourish out here, a constant reminder of Alice as she had been, vibrant and bright. She glanced across at the sunbed by the lawn. Bill was in Glasgow today and she had plenty of time to prepare work for her Advanced Higher class next session. Maggie rose to her feet, brushing the bits of grass from her bare legs.
There had been some altercation between the Chief Constable and her husband in the wake of their own personal tragedy. She was not quite sure what it was all about and Bill had been reticent on the subject. Still he seemed happy to be back in his own division even though Superintendent Mitchison had returned from the Met releasing Lorimer from his temporary designation. Now he was Detective Chief Inspector once more and he gave no sign that it bothered him in the slightest.
The books and papers were scattered on the grass beside her sunbed waiting for her attention. Maggie smiled as she picked up one of the books. It was an old friend, from her undergraduate days, this book with its blue cover. Lying back, Maggie thought of the writer. Hadn’t he spun tales that were woven around the changing seasons, giving a pattern to life? There was some comfort in such notions, she thought.
Come the winter there would be the time for Rosie and Solly’s baby to be born. A Valentine’s child, Rosie had told her dreamily, after calculating when she had conceived. The year would turn and death would give way to new life, just as the Orcadian poet had observed. Maggie smiled, browsing through the familiar stories. Her kids at school would love some of these.
Then she stopped, finding a page where her younger self had underlined an entire paragraph. Maggie gave a little sigh, feeling something heavy slip away from her as she read the words that told of this dance through the everlasting cycle of life.
‘And then suddenly everything was in its place.
The tinkers would move for ever through the hills.
Men would plough their fields. Men would bait their lines. Comedy had its place in the dance too — the drinking, the quarrelling, the expulsion, the return in the morning. And forever the world would be full of youth and
