Minette Walters - The Devil's Feather

Finally, I’ve passed MacKenzie’s details and picture to the Met and asked for heightened alert in the region of your parents’ flat and your father’s office, and I’m happy to do the same with your county police force if you’re prepared to tell me where you are. I have upped MacKenzie’s description to “extremely dangerous and possibly armed” and I urge you to consider that before you “go it alone” any longer. I understand very well that you feel safer with no one knowing your address, but you’ll be isolated and vulnerable if MacKenzie does succeed in finding you.

Yours as ever,

Alan

DI Alan Collins, Greater Manchester Police

From: connie.burns@uknet.com

Sent:Sun 15/08/04 02:09

To: BandM@freeuk.com

Subject:Correspondence with DI Alan Collins

Attachments:Alan.doc (356 KB)

Dear Dad,

I’m really sorry to be causing all this trouble for you and Mum, and I don’t blame you in the least for being a grouch. I’ve sweated buckets trying to put an explanation into words, but I can’t do it. It’s 2 a.m. and I’m exhausted so, instead, I’m attaching some pieces I wrote and my correspondence with a Manchester Inspector called Alan Collins. It’s fairly self-evident. FYI: The conclusions in Alan’s last email (yesterday) are spot on. He’s obviously a very good policeman.

Lol, C xxx

PS: I do NOT need sympathy, so please don’t offer it. I shall refuse to discuss this again if you go tearful on me. You know I don’t mean that unkindly, but the milk’s spilt and there’s no point crying over it.

IN RETROSPECT, I’m sure my primary reason for keeping quiet was because I knew how difficult it would be to accept support. Perhaps I’m a deeply contrary person but I started to see everything as a control issue-advice or offers of help were euphemisms for “I know better”-and I struggled with anger in a way I hadn’t before. Yet it was never directed where it should have been, at MacKenzie.

I was still obsessed with the fear that he’d come looking for me, but my new objects of suspicion and dislike were Alan, Peter and my father, who in their various ways spent the following week urging me to step up to the plate. The only one who put it so baldly was Dad, but when I accused him of trying to exorcize his own demons through me, he retired hurt from the battle. Which increased my irritation, because I saw it as a ploy to make me feel guilty.

My mother tried to breach the gap by leaving messages of love on the answerphone; Alan sent well-argued emails, appealing to my intellect, which sat in my inbox; and Peter brought me piles of research until I bolted all the doors and refused to answer the bell. By the end of the week I was so stressed out that I was thinking of doing another vanishing act. In a grotesque way, their generosity and affection were more intrusive than MacKenzie’s sadism. I’d survived brutality, but I couldn’t see how I could survive kindness.

Jess showed up for the first few days and stood around, saying very little, but she stopped coming when I started ignoring the doorbell. I left a message on her phone, saying it was Peter I was trying to avoid, but she didn’t reply or come to the house. It was one of the reasons why I thought about leaving. There seemed little point staying if the only person I felt comfortable with had lost interest. Even if the fault was mine.

SHE FRIGHTENED the life out of me when she walked into my bedroom the following Saturday. It was seven o’clock in the evening and, as far as I knew, every outside door was locked. I hadn’t heard the green baize door open or close, nor her footsteps on the stairs, nor even had a suspicion there was anyone else in the house. It sent me scrabbling to the nearest corner. I’d had my back to the door, sorting clothes on the bed, and in the second between sensing a presence, turning and recognizing her, I thought it was MacKenzie.

“Don’t go weak on me,” she warned, “because I’m not in the mood to play nursemaid. Supposing I’d been this bloke? Were you planning to cower in the corner and let him jump you all over again?”

I pushed myself unsteadily to my feet. “You gave me a shock.”

“And you think this bastard won’t?” Her gaze shifted to the empty wine bottle beside the bed, her eyes narrowing in disapproval. “In your shoes, I’d have weapons stashed all over the house and a baseball bat to hand twenty-four hours a day. It’s not you who should end up on the floor, it’s him…preferably with his brains smashed out.”

I nodded to the carving knife on the bed. “I’ve been carrying that.”

“Then why didn’t you use it?”

“I recognized you.”

“No, you didn’t,” she answered bluntly. “You were backed into the corner before you knew who it was…and you never even thought about reaching for the knife.” She stepped into the room and picked it up. “It’s a useless weapon, anyway. He’ll have it off you as soon as you get close enough to stab him.” She balanced it on her palm. “It’s too light. You won’t be able to put enough weight behind it…assuming you have the balls to stick it in, which I doubt. You need something longer and heavier that you can swing”-she stared at me-“then it won’t matter if you’re drunk. You’ll still have a fifty-fifty chance of hitting him.”

I steadied myself against the wall. “I’ll get a baseball bat on Monday,” I said.

“You’ll have to be sober to do that.”

It was a good thing I wasn’t as drunk as she thought I was, otherwise I might have reacted more aggressively. I’d never met anyone who was quite so self-righteous. To a teetotaller like her, a tablespoon of wine represented ruin and perdition; to a hard-headed hack like me, it took several bottles to close me down completely. But in one way she was right. I might not have been paralytic, but I certainly wasn’t sober. The tranquillizing effects of alcohol were easier to come by than Valium or Prozac. As long as I paid by credit card to an anonymous call centre, it was delivered by the caseload to my door.

It didn’t stop me having a go at her. “You’re such a puritan, Jess,” I said tiredly. “If you had your way, we’d all be walking around with steel rods rammed up our back sides. There’s no joy in your world at all.”

“I don’t see much in yours either,” she said dismissively.

I shrugged. “There used to be, and when I’m feeling optimistic there still will be. Can you say that? Will you ever unbend enough to accept someone else with all their frailties?” I stared into her strange eyes. “I can’t see it myself.”

It was like water off a duck’s back. “I’m helping you, aren’t I?” she said impatiently. “I helped Lily. What more do you want?”

What more indeed? Approval? Encouragement? Sympathy? The very things I was rejecting from everyone else, but they seemed more desirable from Jess because they weren’t on offer. Perhaps there’s always a gap between what we want and what we know we can take for granted. “Nothing,” I told her. “This is as good as it gets.”

She studied me closely for a moment. “When did you last eat? You haven’t been out of the house all week, and your fridge was empty when I last put some eggs in it.”

For someone who didn’t want to play nursemaid, she was giving a good impression of one. I wondered how she knew I hadn’t been out. “Have you been watching me?”

“Just making sure you were still alive,” she said. “Your car’s growing moss on its wheels because it hasn’t moved, and you spend so much time checking your doors and windows that anyone can see you…particularly at night when you have all the lights blazing. There might be better ways of saying, ‘I’m here, I’m alone, come and get me,’ but I can’t think of one off the top of my head.”