“I’m afraid I can’t do anything about that.”
McLaren laughed. “I’ll do my best. It’s a bit sexual, you see. The dream. We’re in the woods, you know, on the ground, making out, kissing and stuff.”
“Got you so far,” Annie said. “And just for the record, I haven’t blushed once.” The kettle was boiling, and she put the phone back under her chin as she poured the water on the tea bag in her cup, careful not to splash any on her exposed skin.
“Well, it turns into a horror story after that,” McLaren went on. “All of a sudden she’s not a lovely young girl anymore, but a monster, with like a dog’s head, or a wolf ’s, sort of like a werewolf, I suppose, but her chest is more like raw human skin, only there’s just one nipple, bleeding, and the rest is all crisscrossed with red lines where her breasts and other nipple should be. Then my head splits open. I told you it was pretty weird.”
“That’s the nature of dreams,” Annie said. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to psychoanalyze you.”
“That’s no worry. I’ve been there. Anyway, that’s about it. I wake up in a sweat.”
Annie knew from her conversation with Sarah Bingham that Kirsten Farrow had surgery on her breasts after the attack, and on her vagina and pubic region. “What do you think it’s about?”
“That’s what my shrink asked me. Beats me.”
“What were you doing in Whitby?”
“I’d just finished uni and wanted to see something of the world before settling down back home. I had some money saved up, so I came over to Europe, like so many Aussies do. We’re such a long 2 8 4
P E T E R R O B I N S O N
way from anywhere, and it’s such a huge country, so we feel we have to do the big trip once before settling down back here. I have an ancestor who came from Whitby. A transport. Stole a loaf of bread or something. So it was a place I’d heard a lot about while I was growing up, and I wanted to visit.”
“Tell me about the girl you met.”
“Can you just hang on a minute? I’ll get my notebook. Everything I remember is in there.”
“Great,” said Annie. She waited about thirty seconds and McLaren came on the line again.
“Got it,” he said. “I met her at breakfast one day. She said her name was Mary, or Martha, or something like that. I never have been able to remember exactly which.”
Annie felt a pulse of excitement. The woman who took Lucy from Mapston Hall had called herself Mary. “Not Kirsten?” she asked.
“That doesn’t ring any bells.”
“What sort of impression did she make on you?” Annie asked, sketching the view from her window on the writing pad, the mist like feathers over the corrugated red roof tiles, the sea a vague haze under its shroud, gray on gray, and a sun so pale and weak you could stare at it forever and not go blind.
“I remember thinking she was an interesting girl,” McLaren said. “I can’t remember what she looked like now, but she was easy on the eyes, at any rate. I didn’t know anybody in the place. I was just being friendly, really, I wasn’t on the make. Well, not much. She was very defensive, I remember. Evasive. Like she just wanted to be left alone. Maybe I did come on a bit too strong. Us Aussies sometimes strike people that way.
Direct. Anyway, I suggested she might show me around town, but she said she was busy. Something to do with some research project. So I asked her out for a drink that eve ning.”
“You don’t give up easily, do you?”
McLaren laughed. “It was like pulling teeth. Anyway, she agreed to meet me for a drink in a pub. Just a sec . . . yes, it’s here . . . The Lucky Fisherman. Seemed to know her way around.”
“The Lucky Fisherman?” echoed Annie, her ears pricking up. That F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L
2 8 5
was Jack Grimley’s local, the one he had just left the eve ning he disappeared. “Did you tell the police this?” she asked.
“No. It’s just something I remembered years later, and they never got back to me. I didn’t think it was important.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Annie, thinking there were more holes in this case than in a lump of Swiss cheese. But Ferris was right: They didn’t have the luxury of pursuing every mystery to its solution the way TV cops did. Things fell through the cracks. “Did she turn up?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t easy having a conversation with her. It was like she was very distracted, thinking of something else. And she’d never heard of Crocodile Dundee. That’s something I remembered years later. He was big at the time.”
“Even I’ve heard of Crocodile Dundee,” said Annie.
“Well, there you go. Anyway, I was quickly getting the impression she’d rather be elsewhere. Except . . .”
“What?”
“Well, she wanted to know about fishing. You know, the boats, when and where they landed the catch and all that. I mean, I didn’t know, but I just thought it was another weird thing about her. To be quite honest, I was beginning to think I’d made a big mistake. Anyway, I went to the loo, and when I came back I got the distinct impression she was staring at some other bloke.”
“Who?” Annie asked.
“Dunno. Local. Wearing one of those fisherman’s jerseys. Good-looking enough in a rough sort of way, I suppose, but really . . .”
