‘My God,’ Mason murmured. ‘Is this even possible?’
‘It’s rare to say the least,’ Woodrow replied. ‘But there are case studies.’
‘Wait a minute,’ York cut in. ‘Julian Faulkner is a psychopath. He could just be telling us what he wants us to hear. He doesn’t want us pursuing his brother, he wants us closing the case.’
Woodrow nodded in agreement. ‘That’s your call, and it’s quite possible. But I’m here only to document the interviews and give my professional opinion. And my professional opinion is this: if you drop this now, the brother will walk free. He’s out there, and since the two brothers are sharing the same personality, you can bet your bottom dollar he’s going to keep on killing. What Julian is capable of, his bother will be too.’
Before York could respond, Graham joined them in the corridor. ‘Nick, there’s a woman here to see you. She says it’s urgent.’
‘Kind of in the middle of something here, Will,’ said Mason.
York held up his hand. ‘Wait, what does she look like?’
‘Oh erm, she’s erm small, blonde…’
York sprinted from the corridor and disappeared.
*
Apprehensively, York pushed into the briefing room that Abigail Fuller and Roy Sunnily had shared recently. As expected, a woman waited alone, her face shrouded in anxiety. She was not the woman he was expecting. ‘Do I know you?’
Like Graham described, the woman was petite and had blonde, almost silver hair. He failed to mention she was elderly, pushing eighty, wearing a tweed jacket and ankle-length skirt.
‘I’m so sorry for the intrusion, Inspector,’ said the woman demurely. ‘I know you’re busy. But I wondered if you’d mind sparing me a few minutes.’
‘It’s actually a bad time right now, Miss…’
‘Mayfield,’ the woman replied holding out her hand.
‘Mayfield?’ It took a moment to recall where he’d heard the name. ‘As in Margaret Mayfield?’
‘Or Maggie May,’ she confirmed.
York stood his ground and looked bemusedly into the eyes of the former Faulkner nanny.
‘You look surprised,’ she smiled.
‘Well, Maggie, it’s not every day I encounter a ghost. And today I have managed to unearth a handful. You’re supposed to be dead.’
‘Nothing but the inventive imaginations of small-town people, I’m afraid,’ said Maggie. ‘No body was ever recovered and so people just assumed the worst. Arthur Faulkner had nothing to do with my disappearance. Well, not directly at least.’
York leaned back in his chair and breathed in heavily. ‘What are you doing here? How did you know where to find me?’
‘Oh, I’m quite resourceful. Just because I no longer live in Market Rasen, I still hear everything that goes on there. When I heard a police officer from the capital was in town digging up Faulkner tales, I made some enquiries. Didn’t take long to find out your name and where you were based.’
‘Well I’m glad you found me, Maggie. But I need to ask, where have you been all these years? Everybody thought Arthur Faulkner had murdered and buried you somewhere out in the woods. Why didn’t you come forward and let people know you were still alive?’
Maggie’s smile faltered slightly. ‘You think it was easy, what I did? I abandoned those kids, Inspector…’
Kids…
Plural.
‘…and I’m ashamed to say my plan failed. Before Arthur was called up to fight for his country he was such a sweet man, gentle. Mary, his wife, meant the world to him. But when he returned he was no longer that man. The war had twisted his mind. He was evil, and the fact that he’s still alive is an insult to me. He deserves to burn in Hell.’
‘You say your plan failed,’ York stated. ‘What did you mean?’
‘I couldn’t take the way he treated the children. I stayed for as long as I could for the sake of those two boys, but the madness of it all eventually got to me. His favourite was Robert. He considered Julian an embarrassment because of his disfigurement.’
York recalled Arthur Faulkner rambling on about Robert in nonsensical gibberish. McCullick had insisted it was the name of one of the carers at Rampton, but he was wrong. Arthur Faulkner’s second son was named Robert, the boy with no disfigurement. Jonathan Wheeler was Robert Faulkner, not Julian.
'But that doesn't make sense,' York mused, recalling his conversation with Frank Blithe. 'Nobody in Market Rasen mentioned anyone called Robert. All the old myths and wives tales up there all talk about Julian. How can that be if Julian was the one under lock and key, why is he the brother everybody remembers?'
Maggie smiled a joyless smile. ‘Because Arthur called them both Julian to avoid anybody discovering he had two sons. He used to keep poor disfigured Julian locked up in the basement, no light, no food. He wanted no one to know of him because of his defect, and from what you're telling me, he pulled it off.’
‘You still haven’t explained how your plan failed,’ York questioned patiently.
Maggie shifted uncomfortably in the plastic seat. ‘Those boys were raised in Hell, Nicolas. Mary, Arthur's wife, was so incredibly ill she was completely out of the picture. But she was so scared of Arthur, of what he’d become, she wanted her boys taken away from him. And in her frail state she asked me to run away, take the boys and disappear. I didn’t want to leave Mary with him but I knew she was right. And so that same night I packed up some of
