The Devil's Feather - Minette Walters [111]
I did understand his dilemma. An obsessive need to clean seemed a poor excuse when the lives of well-loved parents were at stake. Predictably, we disagreed about how long Jess and I had been alone with MacKenzie—the Inspector favoured forty minutes (Peter’s assessment), while I favoured twenty. We compromised on thirty when police records showed that the time lapse between Peter’s 999 call and the arrival of the first police car was just over twenty-three minutes, allowing seven minutes for Peter to drive home from Barton House. But, in the Inspector’s view, even thirty minutes suggested I hadn’t accounted for all my actions.
“That’s a mighty lot of washing, Ms. Burns, and it doesn’t explain why you only remembered your parents when we arrived. You admit you saw your father’s binoculars in the bag. Why didn’t they prompt you to contact him?”
His suspicion wasn’t helped by the fact that I didn’t tell him DI Alan Collins of the Greater Manchester Police had a file on MacKenzie. Alan only entered the equation when he contacted Dorset police himself at lunchtime on Sunday, after hearing via the Met in London that my father had been rushed to hospital at three o’clock in the morning after being found, brutally attacked, in his sitting-room. With no details of what had happened at Barton House, the Met simply informed Alan that Keith MacKenzie was a suspect in the assault, and the request to check the flat had come from Dorset police.
In the belief that MacKenzie would head straight for me, but unable to warn me because he didn’t have my address or number, he rang Dorset’s Winfrith headquarters. What he told them subsequently of my history with MacKenzie, which was a great deal more detailed than anything I’d said, persuaded Bagley that I was not only well-practised at withholding information but also made a habit of it.
“Why didn’t you tell me that you failed to report this man to the Iraqi authorities, Ms. Burns? Or that it’s only in the last two weeks that you’ve divulged any information at all about your captivity?”
I toyed with saying, “You didn’t ask,” but decided he wasn’t in the mood for flippancy. “There hasn’t been time. I’ve tried to fill in some of the gaps, but most of your questioning has been about what happened here.” I looked him straight in the eyes. “I suppose I could have insisted on talking about Baghdad, but wouldn’t that have made you more suspicious?”
His eyes didn’t drop, but a perplexed frown puckered his forehead. “I can’t make you out at all,” he said. “From Dr. Coleman’s description of the video, you suffered the most appalling abuse at this man’s hands…Alan Collins says you were so frightened of him you wouldn’t divulge his identity and went into hiding…Ms. Derbyshire says you haven’t eaten or been out for a week…your parents are in hospital…MacKenzie’s still free…yet you’re sitting here in front of me as cool as a cucumber.”
“Is that a question?”
He smiled in spite of himself. “Yes. Why are you so calm?”
“I’m not sure a man would understand.”
“Try me.”
“In the first place, my parents aren’t dead,” I said.
There was no mystery about how they both ended up at the flat as MacKenzie’s prisoners. My father did exactly as Jess described, set out to lure MacKenzie into a trap, using himself as bait. Afterwards, he was given the same lecture I received about vigilantism and revenge but, as Dad took most of the punishment, no charges were brought despite question marks over his purchase of wood and nails on Friday morning.
He wasn’t very forthcoming about the details of his plan—claiming only that his intention was to confine MacKenzie and call the police—and denied knowledge or responsibility for the homemade “stingers” that ended up in Barton House. Of course Jess and I did, too, which left MacKenzie as the guilty party. I told Alan privately that my father had made them, and MacKenzie had brought them to Barton House; but, with the law as it was, none of us was going to admit to it publicly.