breakfast for an explanation. If it had been anyone else, he said, he’d have created merry hell, spoiling his boiled egg like a Bombay telemarketer, but for her he was happy to oblige. Afterwards, he would phone Brock to say he was worried about her.
And this party was more than a welcome home to Michael Grant, she realised. It was also the end of the story, the end of Dee-Ann and Dana’s story. She felt suddenly unbearably hot and breathless,and turned towards the shopfront facing out to the Lane. A small boy was standing outside, face pressed so close to the glass that his spectacles were tipped up on his nose. For a moment they stared at each other. Then, as she made towards the door, Adam jumped away and began to run, leaving the marks of his nose and hands on the window. He had been the snowball, she thought, that started an avalanche. If he hadn’t made his mad expedition across the railway line, none of this might have happened. As she watched him scampering away she imagined herself returning,like Brock,in twenty-four years’ time, and wondered what he would have become. Another Michael Grant? Or the next Spider Roach?
‘You look sad.’
Kathy turned to find George standing at her side.
‘I’m sad about what happened to you, George,’ she said.
He shrugged.‘I’ll be all right.Anyway,you took care of Teddy Vexx.’
‘Yes.’ She looked away.
‘You should feel good about that. I wanted to tell you what I saw that night the girls died, but I couldn’t. Nobody’s that brave or stupid, leastwise, I’m not.’
‘What did you see?’
‘About one o’clock, I was coming back to Winnie’s after practising with the group. I saw his Peugeot standing outside the school and I wondered what it was doing there.’
‘Ah.’
‘You’re mad at me, yeah?’
‘No.What else did you see?’
‘Mm?’ George looked at his feet.
‘The other car.’
He shrugged, keeping mum.
Kathy said,‘It’s all right,George.I’d worked it out.’It was why they had been unable to connect Ivor Roach to the crime scene. They’d been looking for the wrong car on the CCTV footage.
‘I’d better get back to do our next number,’ George said.
‘Sure.’ Kathy watched him shuffle back into the crowd, then retrieved her coat from the pegs behind the door and left.
She pulled her car in at the gates and spoke into the intercom.
Magdalen answered.
‘What do you want?’
‘Is your mother with you, Magdalen?’ Adonia was on bail, Kathy knew, while the CPS negotiated with the family lawyers (no longer Martin Connell, of course) over questions of murder and voluntary manslaughter.
‘Yes.’
‘I’d like to see you both, if I may.’
‘Mum can’t speak to anyone without her lawyers present.’
‘I appreciate that, but this isn’t about Ivor’s death. I’m on leave at the moment, not on duty. There’s something I need to clear up for my own peace of mind. I know it’s an imposition, but it shouldn’t take long.’
There was silence, and Kathy was on the point of turning away, but then at last the gates clicked and swung open. She drove to the house and saw Magdalen waiting at the front door. The young woman looked fragile and weightless as she led her silently into the living room, where her mother sat beneath the chandelier. Even before they spoke Kathy saw a marked difference in them both. Adonia sat upright, pale but alert and determined, and all signs of her earlier assault, the bruises and bandages, were gone. Her daughter, on the other hand, seemed utterly exhausted and diminished by what they’d been through.
Adonia spoke first,her voice firm.‘I don’t think we should be talking to you. We’re both very tired. I think you should come back another day.’
For the second time, Kathy almost left. She really did want to leave, and she felt an awful hollowness in the pit of her stomach, not unlike that she had felt lying on the floor of the cottage,
training the pistol on Teddy Vexx.
‘Well?’
‘I’m sorry. This is a terrible time for both of you. But I have to ask you this.’
Again she hesitated,and again Adonia said impatiently,‘Well?’
‘When your car was stolen, Mrs Roach, you told me that your pendant was also taken, and you later found it on the floor of the car. Is that right?’
Adonia looked astonished by the question. The mention of the pendant threw her for a moment.‘Yes.Why?’
‘Where exactly did you find it?’
‘I can’t remember.What is this?’
‘You see,’ Kathy went on, ‘we checked with the people who examined your car when it was recovered. They said they searched it very thoroughly. It would be impossible for them to have missed something like that.’
Adonia stared at her,then said,‘No,you’re right of course.It was Ivor who returned it to me. He told me to say I’d found it in the car, but I don’t need to lie for him any more.’ Then she added,‘You said you’re no longer on duty. Is it because you killed that man?’
‘Yes.’
‘So we’re both the same,you and I.Why are you asking these questions?’
Kathy hesitated,gazing helplessly at one woman,then the other. ‘I’m sorry. I have to know.You see we couldn’t connect Ivor to Teddy Vexx or Cockpit Lane that night. That was because we were checking the wrong phone records, looking for the wrong car. It wasn’t Ivor that got the pendant back, was it, Magdalen? It was you.’
The young woman shuddered suddenly, hugging her arms around herself as if against the cold. ‘That bloody pendant,’ she said, and began to sob, big tears running down her cheeks.
‘Stop it!’ her mother said sharply.‘Don’t say another word.’
‘You got it from Dee-Ann’s neck.You pulled it off so hard it left a small lesion.’
‘Yes.’ Magdalen bowed her head, her whole body rocking back and forth.‘Yes,yes,yes.’
Adonia turned on Kathy.‘Get out! Get out this minute!’
‘Vexx phoned Magdalen that night,’ Kathy said.‘I’ve traced the call. And there are CCTV pictures.’
Adonia fell silent, staring in horror at Kathy.
And there would be other evidence,Kathy guessed.It had been so cold the night the girls died, and Magdalen would have worn gloves, which now would carry microscopic traces of barium, lead and antimony from the firing of Brown Bread.
‘I asked Teddy Vexx to find out who’d hurt Mum and stolen her pendant.’ Magdalen spoke in a gulping rush, as if wanting to bring up something unpleasant she’d swallowed. ‘The pendant that meant so much to her.’ She gave a bitter shake of her head. ‘He phoned me late Thursday night to say he and Jay had found them. I drove to the place they said, next to the school on Cockpit Lane. I took a gun I got from Grandpa’s cabinet. I didn’t even know if it was loaded, but I wanted to frighten them. I was very angry at what they’d done to Mum. I wanted to scare them to death. Teddy and Vexx had them on their knees. I was shocked when I saw they were girls, but still . . .’
Adonia moved to her daughter’s side and put an arm around her. It was the same protective gesture that Magdalen had made to comfort her mother, Kathy remembered, that first time she had spoken to them in this room.‘That’s enough, darling,’ Adonia said, but Magdalen continued.
‘Teddy had found Mum’s bag there in the squat, but not the pendant, and the girls refused to say where it was. I screamed at them, but they just sort of laughed, even when Teddy smacked them. So I took out the gun. I had no idea how to cock it and Teddy had to show me what to do. I pointed it to the head of the bigger one. My hand was shaking. But she wouldn’t tell me where it was.’ Magdalen stared at Kathy as if she still couldn’t quite
