Twenty

Robert Wilde sat in the temporary post-lunch silence of his office, head in his hands. Beside him on the desk lay the remains of a sandwich, its crust sweating in the polythene wrapper. He stared morosely at the Diet Coke in its cold can. He ran his finger down the side, making a trail in the condensation.

A sea of papers littered the desk. They had been tidy first thing that morning; now, they reflected his own growing sense of confusion. His fingertip traced a neat straight strip on the aluminium. No straight path through this case, he thought. Remembering Alice’s old picture books, he wondered if he were the prince in the Sleeping Beauty story, lost in the blackthorn hedge, trying to find his way to the castle, and finding thorns growing around him even as he cut them down.

Wilde took his hand away from the can, forgetting his thirst.

Who was in the castle?

Was it Anna Miles, with her fierce defensiveness, her own thorn fence? Was it the unnamed girl in the cell below, who wept and put her arms around his neck? She was a storybook heroine if ever there was one, he thought. The imprisoned princess with her long fair hair and her innocent and wounded expression, and her patent terror. Struck dumb by a spell. A spell that had something to do with Alisha Graham, or Anna Miles, or both.

Wilde’s eyes fell on the forensic report that he and the team had been discussing in depth before lunch. He lifted the page that had most mystified him, ran his eye over the neatly professional script, the cold facts, the unemotional language. The box of words that held Alisha’s death and all its tortuous and winding wrong turns.

Alisha Graham had died around midnight on Monday evening.

She had not, as they had first guessed, been dead for longer. She was merely very cold because of the coldness of that stormy night.

She bore, the report noted, several bruises to her throat, not caused by the pressure of thumbs and fingers, as might be expected by strangulation. Nor were they the result of clawing at her face, if she had been suffocated. They were the marks, it suggested, of a soft cloth binding that seemed to have been tightened and then slackened in several places. While this had caused underskin bleeding typical in a woman of Alisha’s age—the bruise looking so much worse than it might have done in a younger person—Alisha had not died from the pressure of such a ligature.

Other marks on the body were equally puzzling.

There were the marks on the heels, for a start.

Wilde himself had not seen them; Alisha’s feet had been hidden in the footwell and by Alisha’s own posture of sitting upright in the seat, her feet on the floor. But there were, the report noted, deep scuffed grazes on her heels, which had also been both muddy and greened with grass. Tests were being carried out on the pollen and grass seeds that had stuck in the mud and the skin of Alisha’s feet. Similarly, the reddish mud—not typical of the chalk soil in the Melkham area—was being analyzed.

Alisha had been dragged across a muddy field or track, the report said. Dragged with her bare heels in the mud. Scratches on the legs, feet and the backs of the thighs bore testimony to the same journey. Yet more bruises under the arms showed where she had been pulled. Under the arms, feet trailing. Not roughly held, the report said. Carefully, possibly with the perpetrator’s hands clasped gently over Alisha’s chest and looped under her arms from the back. Yet more grass stains and mud and seeds on her clothes showed that she had been laid on the ground. Perhaps as whoever was dragging her paused, more than once, for breath.

Wilde put the sheet down and replaced his head in his hands, closing his eyes, trying to visualize the scene. He knew the rest of the report by heart.

Alisha’s hands.

Yet another obstructed, labyrinthine path.

Alisha’s palms had been stained by a dark substance. Her nails were ringed, too, with dirt, possibly more of the same. That, too, had gone for analysis, but the pathologist had been certain that it was ash. Not cigarette ash, either. It looked too much like charcoal.

What had she been doing? Wilde wondered.

The ash of burned wood. The ash of a fire …

But where?

And why?

But that was not all, by any means. And the fact that it was not all was the heart of Wilde’s dilemma.

Because Alisha Graham had not died as the result of murder, the report concluded. She had died of a heart attack. One massive, first, and fatal attack. A natural cause. A cause entirely consistent with her age.

Wilde opened his eyes, and picked up the phone.

He was through to Chief Inspector Wallis in seconds, and, at the first note of the other man’s voice, with its thick Manningham accent, Wilde relaxed visibly in his seat, and started to smile. There was something infinitely comforting to him in the sound of his old stamping ground—even if the abrasiveness of Manningham was different to the softer Cumbrian. It was still north of Watford. It was home.

‘You got my faxes?’ Wallis asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Are you still coming up here?’

‘Tomorrow morning,’ Wilde confirmed.

‘We’ve got something else,’ Wallis said. ‘Something that might tie the girl in. We’ve talked to the local vicar. The girl and Alisha Graham went to a kind of weird church together. Alisha Graham was interested in cults, and it looks like the girl was part of one. And she has a name.’

Wilde was momentarily distracted from his own revelation.

‘Name? What is it?’

There was a soft laugh on the other end of the line. ‘A kind of name, anyway. Omega. The vicar reckons it’s from Revelation.’

‘Omega,’ Wilde repeated.

‘And a possible address.’

Wilde sighed heavily. ‘Hold on.’

‘What?’

‘It’s not a murder investigation, Mark.’

A pause. ‘I thought it was strangulation.’

‘Yes, it looked that way. But it was heart failure.’

Another moment of silent consideration. ‘What else?’

‘Dragged through a track or field. Charcoal on the palms.’

‘Dragged after death?’ Wallis asked.

‘Yes.’

‘She had this heart attack when the girl was with her, then?’

‘Probably. Possibly.’

‘That implicates her. What the hell is the charcoal about?’

‘Pass.’

‘Maybe she terrified the woman to death. Has she said anything?’

‘Not a word. She seems terrified herself, though. She prays.’

‘Prays?’ the other man said. ‘Yeah, that would be right.’ Wilde could hear a door opening and closing. ‘Hold on,’ Wallis said. A hand muffled the receiver, then Wilde’s voice came back on. ‘Just have to bring this lot up to date, then,’ he said. ‘How much longer can you hold the girl?’

‘Without a crime?’ Wilde laughed softly. ‘Not long.’

‘Bloody funny business.’

‘I know.’

‘You’re still coming up here?’

‘Yes. I’ll drive up early in the morning—be with you by ten or so. Collate this mess, if nothing else.’

‘OK.’

‘I’ve got a TV appeal tonight,’ Wilde told him. ‘I’ll carry on with it. I still might come up with some answers.’

‘Good luck. We’ll check out this address.’

‘Thanks,’ Wilde said. He settled the final details of where to find the Manningham station, and then, in a mood of resignation, put the phone down.

It rang again immediately.

He almost didn’t pick it up—he was already on his feet, ready to go down again to the Incident Room. Putting on his jacket, however, he snatched at the receiver.

‘Wilde.’

‘We’ve just got a 999 call, sir. Thought you’d want to know.’

‘A 999?’ Wilde echoed. ‘Who from?’

‘The cottage at Aubrete,’ came the reply. ‘From Anna Miles.’