Angel of Death

‘Very well, Mrs Grey, but we would like you to come back here tomorrow. We may need to interview you again.’

They sent her home in a police car. She had left her car at the office. The young policeman driving the car did not speak to her. She sat in the back seat, staring out of the window at passing shops, trying to make sense of everything that had happened.

How had they found out about Tom’s death and her months in the hospital? They must have talked to Sean, and Terry, who would have told them her history.

She had accused his son of murder. He was going to be very angry. She couldn’t blame him. He would fire her, of course – he would have to, she could see that. Not to fire her would be to appear to believe her.

She was so tired by the time she got home that she had a shower, put on a short cotton nightshirt, made herself some toast and peanut butter, and a mug of hot chocolate, her favourite comfort supper and went to bed. Chocolate was sensuous and soothing. She began to use the survival techniques she had learnt in hospital. To switch off your head. Stop thinking. Shut out worry, fear. Just do little tasks quietly, without thinking about them.

She sat up against banked pillows. The phone began ringing, kept on and on, but she had switched it on to the automatic answering system, so she could ignore it. She would hear the messages tomorrow. By then she might feel stronger.

But she could not shut off her head. Her mind kept ringing up questions, doubts, uncertainties. What had really happened in that bathroom? If the girl had drowned, where was her body?

She nibbled toast and sipped the warm, sweet milky drink, feeling the warmth of the bed seeping into her cold flesh.

She hadn’t imagined what she saw and heard. Or had she? From the moment at the engagement party when she saw that man across the room she had been expecting a death, hadn’t she? When death has come so close it is hard to believe you have shaken it off completely. You keep expecting it.

When she heard the screams, the splashes, in the bathroom across the courtyard, hadn’t it all seemed inevitable, unrolling like a film she had seen before, knowing exactly what was going to happen? The echoes of past experience always made it easier to believe something was happening again, especially if you have been expecting it. The mind loves patterns, echoes, finding again what it has found before.

So, had she imagined everything that happened? For a second she doubted her sanity, then she angrily shook her head. No, no, she hadn’t imagined any of it. That girl had drowned. But where was the body?

It made her head hurt to try to think; she kept going round and round in circles, reaching no real conclusion.

Opening a drawer in her bedside table she hunted for a bottle of sleeping pills that she had not needed to take for over a year and had hoped she would never need to take again. There were only a few. She shook two out into her palm, swallowed them with some water, and lay down in the shadowy room, her eyes wide open, the pupils dark with images she desperately wanted to forget, her head aching.

Had somebody drowned in that bathroom or had she dreamt the whole thing? If it had happened, where was the body? Or was she going mad again?

Next day she was up early to go to work. She put on muted grey; a trouser suit with a white shirt and flat, sensible shoes. The outfit made her feel responsible and sensible, but it would not make any difference, she knew that. Terry would terminate her contract. It was bound to happen.

Filled with dread, she left her apartment building and stopped in her tracks, recognising the dark red Jaguar parked outside.

Terry’s usual smiling cheerfulness was absent. His features were drawn and grim. Her nerves jumped as he lowered his window and stared at her like an enemy.

‘Get in, Miranda.’

She shivered, slowly walked round his car and got into the passenger seat. Terry started the engine again and drove off at speed, his tyres spinning on loose gravel in the road. He didn’t speak until he had turned into a quiet road beside a small local park. Pulling up beside railings through which she could see well-mown grass, trees, spreading sycamores under which children were running, laughing, All so familiar and summery.

He turned to face her, his stare level and remote as if he didn’t know her and did not like what he saw.

‘You realise you’ll have to leave the firm? I couldn’t keep you on after this.’

She lowered her head and stared at her hands, biting her lip. What was there to say? She had been expecting this ever since she really started to think last night in bed, working out the reactions that were bound to follow her accusation against Sean.

After a pause Terry burst out, ‘Haven’t you got anything to say? My God, you’ve accused my son of murder. Murder! Why? Why did you do it? Are you off your rocker again? When I offered you a job people said I must be mad, said I was taking a terrible risk, employing someone who wasn’t all there. But I thought you were over all that. I thought you were cured. But you weren’t, were you? And now you’ve done this to my son, a mere boy, only twenty-one, his life just beginning, and you’ve accused him . . .’ He broke off, breathing roughly. ‘Well, you’ll have to go. I don’t want you around me from now on. There’s no room in my firm for crazy people. Do you understand?’

She sighed, nodded. Yes, she understood. She didn’t blame him. Everyone knew how much Terry loved his son. Sean was the apple of his eye and he had great hopes for him. She had always admired Terry’s love for his only child and had understood how he felt. Terry had built up a successful company by a lot of hard work, he was proud of what he had achieved, with good reason, and he wanted to leave it to his son, to give Sean all the things Terry, himself, had not had when he was growing up.

‘I’m sorry, Terry – really. I thought about ringing you before I talked to the police, but I was in a terrible state. I had to make up my mind quickly and . . . well, I couldn’t just ignore it, could I? I had to do something fast. If you had heard her drowning . . . it was horrible, Terry . . .’

He burst out angrily. ‘It never happened, you crazy bitch! You imagined the whole thing! And not for the first time, either. I told the police all about you. It’s not the first time you’ve claimed to hear people drowning, is it? That’s why they put you away.’

She flinched. ‘I was ill, then, I’m not ill, now, Terry. I’m quite clear about what I heard and saw.’

‘Sean was with me, at home,’ he told her furiously. ‘He wasn’t in London at all. You know, I was sorry for you, after your husband’s death, that’s why I gave you the job, but now you’re trying to destroy my son. Why are you doing it?’

She groaned. ‘I don’t want to harm Sean, I’ve always liked him, but I saw what I saw and I heard what I heard, it was not my imagination, it really happened.’

‘You lying bitch! My boy wouldn’t harm a fly, let alone drown a girl!’ Terry put his flushed, strained face right next to hers, his eyes stared into hers, she could see the little yellow rays around his dark pupil, the deep-set laughter lines cutting into his upper cheekbones. Terry was always laughing, smiling; that cheerfulness had carved out his flesh, made his features what they were. She had always liked his face, but suddenly she had a sickening feeling that his face was only some sort of mask, that if you peeled off the smile, the warm curves of cheek, nose, mouth, what you would have left would be something terrifying, The bony, rigid glare of an animal, primitive, predatory, with teeth that bit into you, jaws that could chew you up.