The Devil's Feather - Minette Walters [77]
Belatedly, I asked the obvious question. “How did you get in if all the doors are locked?”
She fished a key-ring from her pocket and held it up. “Spares to the scullery. Lily was worried about falling down and breaking her hip so she put them on a hook behind the oil tank in the outhouse.” She shook her head at my expression. “But, if they hadn’t been there, I’d have come in through the downstairs loo. That’s the easiest window to open from the outside. You just need one of these”—she dropped the knife back on the bed—“to ease up the catch. Any moron can do it.”
I surprised her with a laugh, although her puritan streak blamed the alcohol and not the absurd waste of time of checking locks every two hours. “There’s not much hope then, is there? What do you suggest I do? Use the knife on myself and save MacKenzie the trouble?” I lifted a hand in apology. “Sorry. That wasn’t a dig at you…just tasteless gallows humour.”
“You can start by eating,” she said severely. “I’ve brought some food. If nothing else, it’ll help you think straight.”
“Who says I want to?” I asked, sinking onto the end of the bed. “You don’t get panic attacks when you’re pissed.”
“Too bloody right,” she muttered grimly, pulling me to my feet for the second time in ten days. “If you carry on like this, you’ll be mincemeat for this animal.” She shook me angrily. “It won’t stop you hurting, though. You’ll be sober as a judge the minute he shoves your head in a bucket…but by then it’ll be too late. He won’t be playing with you…he’ll be killing you.”
IT WAS an interesting juxtaposition of ideas. I’d mentioned drowning to Peter but it was Alan who’d suggested that MacKenzie “played” with his victims. All Jess should have known—assuming the Hippocratic oath and police confidentiality stood for anything—was what I’d told her and Peter in the kitchen ten days before. My abductor was British, I’d unearthed his story, it hadn’t surfaced because he was under investigation for serial rape and murder and the reason for the abduction was to warn me off.
Peter drew his own conclusions about what might have happened—“You don’t warn people off by feeding them grapes for three days”—and returned later with a printout of the Istanbul protocol. Jess left the whole subject alone, and talked weasels and crows until I stopped answering the door. I was prepared to accept that Peter might let drowning slip during one of their conversations—in fact I expected it—but there was no way either of them could have known of Alan’s theory.
I stopped on the landing and shrugged Jess’s hand off my arm. “OK. What’s going on? Have you been talking to Alan Collins?”
She didn’t bother to lie. “Only your mother…but I’ve read Alan Collins’s emails. She forwarded them to me this morning…along with the ones you wrote to him.”
“She had no right,” I said angrily, “and you shouldn’t have read them. They weren’t addressed to you.”
“Well, I have,” she said without heat, “so there’s nothing to be done unless you want to sue me. Your mother didn’t do it to hurt you.”
“How did she get hold of you?”
“Rang directory inquiries. You gave her my name, apparently, and told her I had a farm down the road from Barton House. It wasn’t that difficult.”
“You never answer your phone,” I said suspiciously, “and you never return messages.”
“I did this time. She kept phoning till I answered.” Jess held my gaze for a moment. “I thought it was you at first because she called herself Marianne. The pitch of your voice is pretty similar but she’s got a stronger accent.”
“Is she here?”
“No. That’s why she sent me the emails. To explain why I’m having to do this, and not her. She’s frightened of leading this bastard to your front door.”
“Do what?”
“Tell you what an arse you’re being…persuade you to stop feeling sorry for yourself.” Her mouth twisted. “I told her I wasn’t much of a talker, but she wouldn’t listen. She doesn’t give up easily, does she? She was ready to give me your whole bloody