Sandy Gee narrowed her eyes at Lol. ‘I’ve seen you somewhere before, haven’t I? Never forget a face, Martin. It’ll come to me. Meanwhile, I hope you’re prepared to do something. Thought we were getting somewhere, but I’m getting a teensy bit anxious. I think the doctor was right about her being delusional, but if we have to go along with a delusion to save her life, let’s do that, eh?’
Lol nodded at the opening from which Inspector Gee had emerged. ‘She’s on her own?’
‘Hell, no. Female paramed’s in with her. More than two people, she feels threatened, moves further into the window space. We’re trying to keep her talking because once or twice she’s nearly fallen asleep. Now you’d think that would mean we could nip up and snatch her, but she’s so very close to the opening it could just as easily mean she’d rock backwards and… gone.’
Sandy Gee shuddered. She was about Lol’s age, had frizzy hair, dyed a deep red, and earrings like joined-up multicoloured paper clips. Family liaison: was this the halfway point between policing and social work?
‘What I’d like to do,’ he said, ‘is bring in someone—’
‘To be quite honest, Martin, for the reasons I’ve just outlined, we really don’t want the world and his wife in there.’
‘One person…’ He hesitated. ‘Merrily Watkins?’
Sandy and Steve swapped glances. Sandy said, ‘Dr Saltash and the Canon—’
‘Have changed their minds about her,’ Lol said. ‘They’re probably discussing it now.’
Sandy Gee sucked in her small mouth, thought about it.
‘All right, go and find her, Steve.’ She turned to Lol. ‘Both of them were very firmly of the opinion that any kind of ceremonial would only fortify the fantasy that Sam’s constructed. Dr Saltash insisted that the only sensible strategy would be to gradually make her aware of the reality of her situation.’
‘And the fantasy is…?’
‘She seems to think that a number of… I don’t know, spirits? Dead people want her to join them. That’s over-simplifying it. It’s a lot to do with guilt at what she thinks she’s done, which Dr Saltash tried to tackle. But, in the end, she feels crowded by… influences she can’t get rid of.’ Sandy glanced over at the entrance to the tower. ‘We’ve managed to find the parents now, and we’re bringing them across, although she insists she doesn’t want to see them, but we’ll argue about that later. You know she was Jemima Pegler’s best friend?’
Lol nodded. ‘I know about the e-mails.’
‘Do you know about the boyfriend situation?’
Lol shook his head. Sandy took his arm and guided him up to the main way out. A police van was parked in the Inner Bailey now, near the separate round tower.
‘Jemmie Pegler, the only friend she had was Sam. But then she stole Sam’s boyfriend, Harry, so that was the end of that. Sam says Jemmie was letting him have sex with her, which Sam wouldn’t. This obviously gave Jemmie a feeling of power — short-lived when she heard what the other boys were saying. Jemmie was fat, you see, like me and, when you’re a fatty at school, life is hell, your self-esteem’s rock-bottom and you absolutely know you’ll never find a boyfriend because you’re so disgusting. If anybody ever got round to compiling statistics on this, I’m pretty sure they’d find that well over half the teenage pregnancies are fat girls. We don’t want to be chubby and mumsy, Martin, we want to be lithe and slinky and do parties, but in the end we go for what we think we can get.’
‘Sam and Jemmie had a falling out?’
‘Sam didn’t like her any more at all because Jemmie, even before she pinched Sam’s boyfriend, had been going well off the rails for a long time. I think Sam was getting frightened of her at this stage. Big girls, when they cease to be jolly and philosophical, can be very dark and threatening. Doing drugs doesn’t help. Nothing heavy at that stage, in Jemmie’s case — Es and whizz, a bit of blow, but she was moving up, you know? Also hitching rides with stupid little younger boys who’d nicked cars — very ominous. Taking risks. Doesn’t care what happens to her — maybe hoping something
‘Didn’t having a boyfriend…?’
‘Oh well, that didn’t last, did it? Thinks she’s finally got something steady with Sam’s ex-boyfriend… Hoo! Terrific! I’m a real woman! And then, having had his evil way, this lovely Harry dumps her like an old sofa. So Jemmie is now very depressed indeed, because she’s lost the feller, and she’s also lost her very best friend, the only real friend she’s had. So then she’s desperately trying to get back with Sam, bombarding her with pitiful, wheedling e-mails, the way these kids do. They were at different schools, you see?’
‘Jemmie was manic-depressive?’
‘That was certainly what Dr Saltash thought. Now Sam… the thing with her, she’s a very soft-hearted girl, basically. She’s quite pretty, but not too pretty, and perhaps a bit short on confidence — this is my opinion, you understand, from talking to her and listening to what she’s got to say. I’d guess that Sam was friends with Jemmie very much out of pity, in the early days. Because Sam doesn’t yet have the confidence to make her own way, she’s drawn to the underdogs — well, it’s nice to be needed, isn’t it? But at the end of the day she’s a little girl, she’s not a saint, and she’s really not going to forgive Jemmie that easily — if at all — for the business over the boy. And I think she was very glad, actually, to be free of Jemmie. Only to find herself, I’m afraid, with another underdog on her hands.’
Sandy Gee folded her arms, bulky in the fleece, and looked at Lol.
‘Guess,’ she said.
Lol shook his head. Behind the clouds, the sun was setting and the stones were full of detail and texture.
‘Robbie Walsh,’ Sandy said. ‘There’s a turn-up, eh?’
In the drabness and dereliction of the Hanging Tower, the first window, the one you could easily reach, was barred.
Or partly. The two bars didn’t reach to the top of the window, so it would be possible for anyone determined enough to climb up and squeeze over them.
This window offered a view of the River Teme and the pine woods where The Weir House, apparently, was hidden. Inside the tower, the window was on the ground floor, but outside there was a very long drop to the path at the bottom of the rocks into which the foundations were sunk.
Was this how Jemmie Pegler had gone?
Above it — it would have been one storey up if the floors and ceilings hadn’t all gone, leaving the tower as a hollow funnel — was another window, the second of four. A window that would have been inaccessible but for the scaffolding.
‘They were going to make it safe,’ Sandy murmured. ‘Ironic, isn’t it?’
The skeleton of galvanized metal tubing ended about three feet under the window, two planks along the top, a brown mug on the end of one. A wooden ladder extended to the top of the scaffolding; a second one had evidently been pushed away and lay at an angle against the wall.
The girl was huddled like a squirrel in the deep recess around the second window, about fifteen feet above the floor. A small girl in a pink hoodie and jeans, short brown hair and the glint of a ring at the end of an eyebrow. The window space almost directly behind her was about four feet high and two or three feet wide, and all you could see through it was the darkening sky.
‘You want another coffee, Sam?’ Sandy called up.
Sam didn’t reply.
‘How about a hot chocolate? You must be getting cold up there.’
‘No, thank you,’ Sam said. They thought she was fourteen or fifteen, but she sounded younger.
‘She must be needing to go to the loo by now,’ Sandy whispered to Lol. Then she called back up to the ledge, ‘Sam, if you want to go to the loo, we can organize something.’
‘No, thank you.’
Lol said tentatively, ‘I’m… Martin.’
Sam didn’t acknowledge him. He wished Steve Britton would get back here, with Merrily.
Sandy whispered in his ear, ‘Try again, eh?’
Lol said, ‘About Robbie… it really wasn’t your fault. I can explain why. Can I do that?’
There was silence. Sandy Gee looked at Lol, showed him fingers crossed on both hands. A bird fluttered at the top of the tower.
