Minette Walters - The Devil's Feather

“Sorry.”

She squeezed my hand. “It all worked out for the best in the end. If you had answered…or if Jess had passed on my message a little more promptly…you’d have persuaded me to stay in the hotel. And where would your father be then?”

Six feet under, I thought. There’s a limit to how much punishment anyone can take, and MacKenzie’s frustration would have killed him eventually. He’s a good old boy, my Dad-a tough old boy-but he’s lucky one of his ribs didn’t snap completely and puncture a lung. I asked my mother why she hadn’t called the police, instead of going to the rescue herself, and she said it would have required too much explanation.

“Did you get the vigilante lecture?” I asked her.

She shook her head with a twinkle in her eyes. “I burst into tears and said how foolish I’d been…but then I’m not as bullheaded as you and your father.”

In fact, despite a gut-feeling that Dad was in trouble, she was more inclined to think there was a rational explanation for the phones not being answered. As I had done, she wondered if he’d gone out for food or was refusing to answer because he’d instructed her not to contact him.

“I expected to have my head bitten off for meddling,” she admitted, “but I couldn’t let the nonsense go on. You must have known he’d do something silly when you refused to talk to him. There isn’t a cut-off point when a man like your father stops trying to prove himself, Connie…any more than there is for you. I wish you’d learn that caring what others think is a form of slavery.”

Her safety net in the event of trouble-a little simplistic as things turned out-was to ask the taxi driver to wait while she went inside for his money. As he wouldn’t leave until she paid him, she must either return with her wallet or force him to come knocking on the door. “I was as naïve as your father,” she said. “I should have realized the driver wouldn’t care who handed over the money as long as he got it.”

MacKenzie must have been watching from the window because he was waiting behind the front door when Mum opened it. As soon as she was over the threshhold with her suitcase, he slammed it shut and had her mouth and hands bound with duct tape before she even reached the sitting-room. When the knocking began and an angry voice demanded payment, he calmly bundled her out of sight, took her wallet from her bag and paid up. “He’s not stupid,” she said reluctantly. “Most people would have panicked.”

“Did you ?” I asked her.

“I did when I saw your father. He looked terrible-face all bruised and misshapen-body curled into a ball to protect himself. He started crying when MacKenzie threw me on the carpet beside him.” She shook her head. “That’s the only time I felt I shouldn’t have gone back. Poor love. He was devastated. He’d tried so hard to protect me…and there I was.”

She had no qualms about bargaining my address against their lives. “It would have been madness to do anything else,” she said. “While there’s life there’s hope, and I knew you’d worry if you couldn’t get me at the hotel. I prayed you’d phone that policeman friend of yours in Manchester. Your father was unhappy about it…but”-she squeezed my hand again-“I was sure you’d understand.”

I did. I do. Whatever nightmares I still have would be a thousand times worse if I were carrying my parents’ deaths on my conscience. My mother believes my father’s “unhappiness” related entirely to his fears for me, but his concerns were rather more practical. He was appalled at her naïve assumption that a man like MacKenzie would honour a promise to leave them alive if she gave him the information he wanted.

He tried to dissuade her, but his dislocated jaw had seized the muscles in his face, making speaking difficult. To stop any further attempts, MacKenzie muzzled him completely by winding several turns of duct tape round his head. The ironic upside was that, with his jaw supported, my father’s pain lessened, and he survived the next twelve hours in considerably more comfort than he would otherwise have done. The downside was that it increased my mother’s concern for him, thereby encouraging compliance.

“Weren’t you worried that MacKenzie would kill you anyway?” I asked her.

“Of course…but what could I do? He threatened to strangle your father in front of me if I refused. At least there were slivers of hope if I betrayed you…none at all if I betrayed Brian.” A small crease of doubt furrowed her brow. “You do see that, don’t you, darling? It was a card game…and you were my only trump. I had to use you.”

I didn’t know how to answer. Absolutely…? Don’t worry about it…? I’d have done the same…? They were all just anodyne forms of words that meant nothing if she didn’t believe them. “Thank God you had enough faith in me,” I said bluntly. “Dad wouldn’t have done. He still thinks of me as a little girl in pigtails who screams every time she finds a spider in the shower.”

“Only because he loves you.”

“I know.” We exchanged smiles. “He was very brave, Mum. Is his tail wagging now? It damn well ought to be.”

Her smile played around her eyes. “You’re so alike, you two. You both assume the only way to win is to show no weakness. You should have played bridge with Geraldine Summers. I’ve never known anyone conjure so many triumphs out of hands that contained nothing.”

“By bluffing? Is that what you did with MacKenzie?”

“I couldn’t do anything until he removed my gag because he wanted the password to your father’s laptop. Before that, he went through my suitcase. I told him he wouldn’t find your address in the computer, but I suggested he read the email you sent to Alan Collins. I hoped he’d realize how pointless it would be to kill any of us.”

“What did he say?”

“That you’d chosen a good parallel in the story of the death-ray and the Chinaman. The only point of killing was to gain from it. He wasn’t very talkative-I doubt he spoke more than twenty sentences from the moment I arrived-and he became extremely agitated when I asked what he gained from killing. That’s when he said he’d strangle your father if I didn’t tell him what he wanted…and the gain would be the look on both our faces when it happened.” She shook her head. “And I’m sure he was telling the truth…I’m sure that’s why he does it.”

I felt a shiver of goosebumps on my arms. “Then why didn’t he go ahead with it?”

“Because your address was my trump card, darling. Supposing I was lying? He had no way of checking unless he phoned you-which would have alerted you-so I persuaded him to take me along as security. It was the only bargaining chip I had…and it meant your father and I stayed alive for a few more hours. I felt I’d won the trick when he produced the car keys and demanded to know where the car was parked.” She laughed suddenly. “Poor Brian! I don’t know which offended him more…my pandering to the brute or the brute driving his precious BMW.”

“You know damn well,” I said severely. “He was worried sick for you.”

Again, my father never speaks about the hours he lay on the sitting-room floor, except to say that his lowest moment was when I left my message and he couldn’t answer. I know he imagined the worst-we all do when situations are outside our control-but it wasn’t until the police broke into the flat in the early hours that the search began for my mother. She doesn’t dwell on those hours either, several of which were spent in the BMW’s boot, but her cramps were so severe by the time she was found that she had to be given morphine before her back and legs could be straightened out.