we hadn’t hugged for years, and then she started whispering about Elsie with such a show of secrecy that Elsie immediately began asking about it. I started to cry and couldn’t conceal it and my mother led Elsie out of the room and I was alone again. I’d suddenly thought of Danny. Not the Danny from the past but the Danny I would never know anything about. I pictured him being held at gunpoint and made to write his note to me and I made myself imagine what he must have felt. He must have died thinking he had betrayed me and that I would never know. Ever since I was a teenager, I have been able to make myself giddy with the thought of my death, the disappearance into oblivion. The idea of Danny’s death was more terrible and I felt it not just in my mind but on my skin and and at the back of my eyes and humming in my ears, and it made me cold and implacable.
My mother had moved into the house to look after Elsie. Her sympathy was operatic.
‘I suppose the house will hold unhappy memories for you,’ she said. ‘Can you bear to go back to it?’
I didn’t want to be told what to feel.
‘The house has Elsie. It has no bad memories for me.’
Within a couple of days I felt strong enough to leave hospital and two days after that I was able to ease my mother on to a train at Stamford and myself out of her debt. Everything was all right, except that I heard nothing from Baird and I knew that there was something I wasn’t dwelling on because if I did, I didn’t know where it could stop. A full week after I had spoken to Baird, Chris Angeloglou rang and asked me if I could come in to the station. I asked what for and he said they wanted a statement but also that I might learn something to my advantage. Could I come that afternoon?
I was led into an interview room with Chris and Rupert. They were being very nice to me and smiling. They sat me down, brought me tea and biscuits, switched on their double tape recorder and asked me about the events of the day of Michael’s death. With all their questions and my replies, additions and insertions, it took me almost an hour and a half, but by the end they seemed well satisfied.
‘Excellent,’ said Rupert, as he finally switched off the machine.
‘So you believe me?’
‘Of course we do. Hang on a moment. Phil Kale was supposed to be here at three-thirty. I’ll go and see if he’s around.’
Rupert got up and left the room. Chris yawned and rubbed his eyes.
‘You look the way
‘It’s all your fault,’ said Chris with a grin. ‘We’ve been hard at it since your tip-off. You’re going to enjoy this.’
‘Good. I need some enjoyment.’
Baird came back in leading the distracted, dishevelled man I remembered from the day we found Mrs Ferrer dead. Now his wire-framed spectacles had a sticking-plaster on one of the hinges and he wore a corduroy jacket of the sort that I had last seen on several of my teachers in the late seventies. Under his arm was a thick stack of files. Chris pulled a chair over and the man sat down.
‘This is Dr Philip Kale, Home Office pathologist. Phil, this is our heroine, Dr Sam Laschen.’
We shook hands, which resulted in many files being scattered on the floor.
‘DI Baird tells me you’ve just made a statement about Dr Daley’s admission.’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. I can only stay a minute. They’ve just pulled a lollipop lady out of the canal. I can just tell you that what you told the police seems to be confirmed by the full range of forensic evidence. God, where should I start?’
‘Did you check Michael’s boat-house?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ Kale said. ‘There were copious traces of blood in the boat-house. We’ve done a series of serological tests. We also found fibres and hairs and did a Neutron Activation Analysis on the hair samples. We’ve cross- referenced them with hair samples from Mr Rees and some found at the Mackenzie house. We’re still waiting for some results of DNA tests but I know what they’re going to tell us. For undetermined periods and at undetermined times, the bodies of Daniel Rees and Fiona Mackenzie were kept in Michael Daley’s boat-house. This is confirmed by my post-mortem findings on the burnt bodies. There was an absence of hyperaemia, no positive protein reaction, and a host of other signs showing that they were dead when the car was set on fire.’
‘So Finn’s, I mean Fiona’s, dead body was in the boat-house as well?’
‘Traces of hair and fibre associated with Fiona Mackenzie were found attached to a canvas sheet in a rear corner of the boat-house. The assumption, the near certainty, is that it was used for wrapping her body. And now I must go to the canal.’
‘What about Mrs Ferrer?’
Kale shook his head.
‘I think you must have misunderstood. I’ve been over my report. There’s nothing I could find.’
‘Why would he have done it?’ Baird asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I said numbly.
Kale held out his hand.
‘Well done, Dr Laschen.’
‘Well done?’
‘This is
‘It’s not my triumph.’
We shook hands and Kale left the room. Angeloglou and Baird were grinning like schoolboys with a dirty secret.
‘What have you got to look so happy about?’ I asked.
‘We’re holding a press conference tomorrow morning,’ said Baird. ‘We shall be revealing our findings and announcing that the cases involving the murders of Leopold and Elizabeth Mackenzie, Fiona Mackenzie and Daniel Rees are now closed. There are no further inquiries pending. We shall also give you full credit for your own contribution and your heroic actions
‘Let’s not overstate it.’
‘I don’t want to be insensitive to what you’ve been through,’ said Rupert. ‘But in the circumstances this must be the best possible conclusion.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I need to think all this through. Do you know how the murders of the parents were committed?’
‘You really need to talk to Kale about that. It looks as if Daley and the girl tied up and killed the parents in the middle of the night. Fiona allowed herself to be tied up by Daley. When the cleaner arrived, Daley used a scalpel and made what was basically a shallow incision in her neck and then escaped down the back stairs that lead into the garden. We’d always thought that there was relatively little blood because she had gone into shock with a massive drop in blood pressure. In fact, it was because the wound had been inflicted only a few minutes before. Is everything all right? You don’t look happy.’
‘I keep going over it in my head, trying to disentangle it.’ I said. ‘It was all a fake. Finn helped to cut the throats of her own parents and then allowed her own throat to be cut. Is there anything in her past that was consistent with that?’
Chris looked puzzled.
‘You mean, had she killed anyone before?’
‘No, I don’t mean that. Was there evidence of serious conflict with her parents? Or medical instability?’
‘There was ?18,000,000. I’m afraid there are a lot of people out there who would cut their parents’ throats for a lot less than that. And we’ve ascertained from his bank that Dr Daley was living well beyond his means. He was seriously in debt.’
‘What about the stuff on the wall? The animal rights connection?’
‘Daley knew about that because he was involved with monitoring animal rights terrorists. It gave him the perfect opportunity to shift suspicion. It’s all perfectly simple.’
I forced myself to think, the way I used to do mental arithmetic at school, when I would wrinkle my nose and my forehead and think so hard that it hurt.
