Fry watched the way Maggie drank her coffee without turning fully to the desk, then spun her chair back towards the window.
‘Ready now?’
Maggie nodded and closed her eyes.
‘Tell me what happened that day, Maggie.’
Maggie didn’t need to ask what day she meant. ‘I’ve been over it so many times before. I can’t remember.’ ‘What would you normally have done that day? It was a Sunday, wasn’t it?’
‘All right, then. On a Sunday, I would have got up later than usual, had a leisurely breakfast. Toast and marmalade and two cups of coffee, probably. I need coffee to get myself ready for the day. I would have switched on the TV to get the morning news. Maybe I looked out of the window and I saw what a nice day it was.’
Fry watched Maggie gradually becoming less tense. She was starting to relax as she focused on the world outside herself. The best way was to ask few questions. Encourage the interviewee to close their eyes and picture the scene, down to even the tiniest details; let them recall smells, noises, their feelings at the time. Officers were no longer trained to take control of an interview. Too many courts had accepted the contention of defendants and lawyers that the police had suggested the answers themselves.
Eventually, this process might be conducted by machine entirely. Two tape decks to record the answers,
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and a third to repeat the necessary phrases: ‘Now, just close your eyes…’ ‘Is that what made you decide to go to Ringham Moor? That it was a nice day?’ ‘I really don’t know,’ said Maggie. ‘It’s OK.’ ‘Ringham Moor is not too far away. I’ve walked there lots of times. I used to go there before I became a partner. Afterwards, there never seemed to be time.’ ‘All right. Move forward a bit. To when you reached Ringham ‘ Maggie was silent. Fry tried to detect from the expression on just one side of her face whether she was remembering any more. But it was impossible to tell. Finally, Maggie’s eyes came fully open, and her body tensed again. ‘Does it tell you in my file that I’m unable to form relationships?’ Fry could only nod. The moment was lost. No point in trying to recreate it now. ‘Yes, it would. But I was like that before, you know,’ said Maggie. ‘Too busy for relationships. And it’s too late now.’ ‘Not necessarily.’ ‘Please don’t try to patronize me on the subject. I’m learning to be a realist. People won’t accept me now. But people have never really accepted me in my entire life.’ Fry frowned. If there was anything in the file to support this perception, she had missed it. Maggie Crew had received a perfectly normal education and upbring256 ing. Her father had been a regional manager for British Rail, and the family had lived in Wingerworth, near Chesterfield. Mrs Crew had died some. years ago of cancer, and a sister, Catherine, had married and lived in Ireland. Maggie’s father was still alive, though, and living not so far away. The two girls, Fry noted, had attended a well-known Catholic girls school in Chesterfield, and both had gone on to university. Maggie had studied for her Law degree in Nottingham. She had been successful in her career, yet had never married or had children. ‘Do you see much of your father?’ asked Fry. ‘He’s rather elderly now,’ said Maggie. ‘Yes?’ ‘And … well, we were never a very close family, really.’ ‘Does the same apply to your sister?’ ‘Cath? She has her own family. A husband and four children. Why would she bother about me? She’s as content as an old cat in her little town in Ireland.’ ‘And did you never want to do the same, Maggie?’ But Maggie smiled. Fry was beginning to recognize that smile as one that signalled a subject she didn’t want to discuss. ‘What about you, Diane?’ said Maggie. ‘Married?’ ‘No.’ ‘Children?’ ‘No.’ ‘Ah. It would interfere with the career, perhaps? No creche at the police station? No husband at home, no mother-in-law to look after them during the day? It’s
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so difficult for some women, I know. We see them in the legal profession, carrying their babies invisibly on their backs in court, disposable nappies spilling out of their briefcases, baby sick on their clothes, yawning from lack of sleep on the night before an important case. You can’t help but feel sorry for them.’
‘It happens in the police, too.’
‘No broody feelings for you either, Diane? No ticking biological clock?’
‘I don’t believe so.’
‘You’re lucky, then. I find the idea pretty horrific, to be perfectly honest. Awful, puking things, aren’t they? I can understand women who have abortions. It’s a horrible business, but there must be times when it seems vastly preferable to the alternative.’
Fry was conscious of Maggie’s gentle probing. It was well done, the sign of a skilful interviewer. The fact that Fry had allowed herself to be interviewed had encouraged Maggie, of course. At this point, she either went along with the game and told Maggie what she wanted to know, or she closed it down and risked losing the fragile intimacy she had built up.
‘I had an abortion once,’ she said.
Maggie’s voice dropped a shade, sliding a sympathetic note. into her next words.
‘They tell me you always wonder what the baby would have been like, what sex it was. You think about what name you would have given it, if it had been allowed to live. Even an abortion doesn’t mean a clean ending, it seems to me.’
‘Yes, you’re right.’
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A small silence developed between them. Fry held on to it, valuing the suggestion of understanding. At the same time, she was calculating how she could use it. The time was almost right.
‘But there’s more, isn’t there?’ said Maggie quietly. ‘Something else that you can’t forget.’
‘Yes,’ said Fry. ‘There is.’ She told herself it was for the best. She could work it out of her system later. Maggie seemed to decide not to push for details. ‘Sometimes there are things you need to remember,
no matter how much it hurts,’ she said. ‘A necessary pain?’
‘Maybe. But that necessary pain … does it always have to be a pain that you inflict on yourself? Because that sort of pain hurts all the more, don’t you find?’
Fry put her finger on the ‘play’ and ‘record’ buttons, and looked at Maggie.
‘Shall we try again?’
Maggie closed her eyes. The tapes whirred quietly. ‘Think about when you reached Ringham…’ Maggie breathed quietly. ‘I remember the leaves
under my feet,’ she said. ‘There were deep piles of them. They crunched when I trod in them. Thousands of dead leaves. I kicked some of them up in the air, like I used to do when I was child. A great heap of them, all brown
