Tregalles found Paget in the Casualty waiting room, hunched forward, head bowed, hands together beneath his chin. If he hadn’t known the man better, he might have thought the DCI was praying.
Paget had phoned him from the car as he followed the ambulance to the hospital, and told Tregalles to meet him there. “Mary Carr’s been injured, and I have her son, Michael, with me. Better let Alcott know as well.”
“Bloody hell!” Tregalles breathed as he saw the state of Paget’s clothes. “What happened? Are you all right, sir?”
Paget raised his head. His face was grey and drawn. “It’s a long story,” he said softly, “but in a nutshell, Mary Carr came close to killing Grace tonight, and now they’re both in there. He nodded in the direction of Casualty. Mary will recover, but Grace … I just don’t know.”
“Grace? She tried to kill Grace Lovett? Why? What …?”
But Paget was shaking his head. “Not now, Tregalles,” he said
wearily. “I’ll fill you in later, but in the meantime, you’d better have someone come and take Michael in.” Paget indicated the young man sitting a couple of seats away. “This is Michael Carr,” he explained. “He’s agreed to turn himself in, but I suggest you delay specific charges until I’ve given you my statement.”
“But he was working with her, wasn’t he? His mother, I mean.”
“As I said, it’s a long story.”
“Mr. Paget?” A nurse appeared beside him. “The doctor would like a word.”
“How is Miss Lovett? Is she going to be all right?”
“No doubt the doctor will be able to answer that better than—” the nurse began, but Paget’s hand shot out and grabbed her arm.
“I want to know if she’s still alive!” he said roughly. “Surely to God you can tell me that!”
A protest rose to the woman’s lips, but when she saw the look in Paget’s eyes, she nodded quickly. “But she’s lost a great deal of blood,” she said. As if he didn’t know. “Are you a relative?”
“No, but I’m the closest thing she’s got to one right now. If she needs blood, I’m quite prepared … .”
“You will have to ask the doctor about that,” she said firmly.
“Don’t go away, Tregalles,” Paget called as he followed the nurse. “And you’d better see about placing Mary Carr under arrest as well, before she walks out of here.”
By the time Paget returned to the waiting room, Michael Carr was being led away by two uniformed constables, and Molly Forsythe had arrived. She would stay close to Mary Carr until the woman could be taken into custody and charged. Alcott, it turned out, was in Birmingham, and wouldn’t be back until sometime on Saturday, but Tregalles had issued instructions to track the superintendent down and inform him of the apprehension of Mary Carr and Michael.
“What about Chief Superintendent Brock?” Paget had asked. “Does he know yet?”
“I was hoping to contact the super in Birmingham before talking to Mr. Brock,” Tregalles told him. “I thought it would be best if he were the one to tell Mr. Brock, rather than the other way round. What do you think, sir?”
“I think you’re learning,” said Paget, “but don’t leave it too long, or you’ll have Brock on your back. Better Alcott than Brock.”
Paget remained at Grace’s bedside throughout the night. The nurses recognized him from his own stay in hospital the month before, and brought him cups of tea to help him stay awake. The doctor had advised him to go home and get some rest, but he had stubbornly refused.
They had given Grace a transfusion, but she still looked deathly pale, and the bruise on her cheek looked almost black against the pallor of her flesh. The cuts to her throat looked worse than they really were, and the doctor assured him there would be no lasting scars. Unfortunately, the same could not be said of her wrists. The cuts, he said, were deep, but even they would fade … eventually.
But what of the scars within? The trauma of the mind? How long would it be before the horror of what she’d been through faded from her memory? Grace was strong, but even so …
He’d stroked her hair and taken her hand and held it to his lips as he offered up a silent prayer.
While Grace was receiving a blood transfusion the night before, Paget had prevailed upon the casualty officer to let him have a shower and lend him a hospital housecoat until he could get hold of clean clothes of his own. He had given his key to Tregalles and asked him to have someone go out to the house and bring him a complete set of clothing, because, as he told the sergeant, “I’m not leaving this hospital until I know that Grace will be all right, and I don’t want to go round wearing this thing any longer than I have to.”
Tregalles, accompanied by Charlie Dobbs, returned to the hospital just after eight o’clock on Saturday morning. They both looked shaken, but their first questions were about Grace.
“They’re being pretty cautious, but they seem to think that, barring complications, she’ll be all right—at least physically, but after what she went through last night, I just don’t know what that will do to her mental state.”
“We stopped in at her flat on the way here,” Tregalles said in hushed tones. “Charlie’s people are there now collecting evidence.” He grimaced. “The bathroom looks like an abattoir.”
“What I don’t understand is why she attacked Grace,” said Charlie. “Why would Mary Carr go after her?”
“It was my fault.” Paget’s eyes were bleak as he shook his head in self-recrimination. “Mary Carr chose Grace as a way of getting at me. We—we’ve been seeing each other recently, and Mary and her son must have been stalking us. I should have realized I was putting her in danger when I saw someone watching the house last week, but I chose to ignore it for my own selfish reasons.” He took a deep breath before continuing. “Mary Carr intended to kill her while forcing me to watch.”
“Bloody hell!” Tregalles breathed.
A grim smile touched Paget’s lips. “It’s an apt description,” he said tonelessly. “Did you get anything from Michael?”
“We have his statement, yes.”
“And … ?”
“He pretty much confirms what you told me last night, but we’re going to need a statement from you as well.”
“You’ll get it,” Paget assured him, “but unless you want to take it here, it will have to wait until I know for sure that Grace is out of danger. And I’ll want to talk to Michael about the night his stepfather was killed. He said something last night that made me curious. What about Mary? How is she?”
“In custody and spitting mad. Swears she’s going to kill Michael if she can get her hands on him. She has a full-length cast on her
right arm, and a smaller cast on her left wrist—which she tried to use on Molly as a club. Caught her a nasty clip on the shoulder. But Molly soon sorted her out. The woman’s as mad as a bloody hatter, of course.”
But Paget demurred. “I’m not so sure she is,” he said, “at least not legally; but she is dangerous, and I wouldn’t let her get too close to Michael or she will try to carry out her threat.”
He was dozing in the chair when he felt someone give his hand a shake. He opened his eyes, and blinked against the light.
“Can I have my hand back?” someone said.
He raised his head. “Grace! You’re awake,” he said. “Thank God!”
He took her hand between his own. “How do you feel?”
“Hungry,” she said with a tired smile, “which is why I need my hand back.”
“But how do you really feel?” he asked anxiously. “Oh God, Grace, I’m so sorry for what happened. I don’t know how …”
Grace slipped her hand free and pressed her fingers against his lips. “It’s not your fault,” she said softly, “so for heaven’s sake don’t try to take the blame upon yourself. I’m fine. I am a little shaky, and it will take time for me to get my strength back, but apart from that …” She shivered and her eyes grew dark. “But I don’t think I shall ever take a bath again.”
“Oh, Grace. I was so afraid …” The words died in his throat.
She took his hand again and drew him close to her. “I love you, Neil Paget,” she whispered, “and if you can negotiate your way through these tubes and needles, I’d like you to hold me.”
“I thought you said you were hungry?”
“Oh God, you really are hopeless,” she told him as she drew him down to her.
Andrea McMillan, who had been about to enter the room,
turned back and walked off down the corridor. Later. She would look in later on the patient, but right now it seemed best to leave Grace Lovett and Neil alone. She was very fond of Neil, but not in love with him. Grace, on the other hand, was in love with him. Andrea had known that from the very first time she’d met Grace, but what she hadn’t known was if Neil was in love with Grace. She sighed contentedly. From what she’d just witnessed, there didn’t seem to be much doubt.
Neither was there any doubt about her feelings for Sten. After years of trying to distance herself from the past, the past had caught up with her in the form of Sten Wallen. Although it was he who had found her, she felt as if she’d come home at last.
Paget went directly from the hospital to Charter Lane, where Alcott and Tregalles both sat in while his statement was being recorded.
The superintendent sat back and sucked deeply on his cigarette as Tregalles turned the tape recorder off. “I think both you and Miss Lovett had better spend some time with our trauma counsellor,” he said. “I know, I know,” he interrupted as Paget started to protest, “no one likes to think he or she might need help when it comes to the mind, but better to make sure at the beginning rather than have nightmares about it later. I should think you’ve had enough of those already.”
“True,” said Paget absently. He hadn’t thought about it until Alcott mentioned it, but he hadn’t experienced any of the dreaded flashbacks since before Christmas. Perhaps it was the realization that Mary Carr had been talking about her daughter rather than Jill that had banished them. On the other hand, perhaps it had something to do with Grace.
“You’ll do it, then?” Alcott sounded surprised.
Paget nodded. “I can’t speak for Grace, of course, but if you think it might help, I’ll give it a try.”
“Good.” Alcott rose to leave, but Paget stopped him. “I’d like to talk to Michael Carr about the death of his sister,” he said. “Something he mentioned last night about why she killed herself. I think he knows more about what happened the night his stepfather was killed than he told us at the time.”
“His mother was convicted of the crime.”
“And has consistently denied that she was guilty.”
“Are you saying you believe her now?”
“I don’t know, but I would like to know the truth.”
“I see.” Alcott drummed nicotine-stained fingers on the table. “Very well,” he said. “Let’s have him in, Tregalles.”
Michael Carr looked apprehensive as he was brought into the room to face the three men. Alcott dealt with the preliminaries, then turned the interview over to Paget.
“Last night you told your mother that Donald Carr didn’t have to go out the night he was killed, because he was sexually assaulting your sister. Is that true, Michael?”
Michael Carr swallowed hard. He’d expected to be questioned about his role in the recent murders, not about this. “I …”His mouth was dry. A sheen of sweat appeared on his brow, and he looked as if he might cry.
“Is that true, Michael?”
He managed to nod.
“With her consent?”
“Jesus, no!”
“You mean he was raping her?”
“Yes … No …” The boy gulped air. “I don’t know,” he said miserably. “I suppose he was. He threatened her with a knife. The one you found in the garden.”
“Was that the first time he’d done that? The night he died, I mean?”
“No.” Michael’s voice was husky as he tried to explain. “He’d been doing it for a long time. It started not long after he came to live
with us. Even before that, Gilly tried to tell Mum she didn’t like him, but Mum wouldn’t hear a word against him. He kept touching Gilly, stroking her hair and telling her how beautiful she was. Gilly didn’t like it. She told Mum it made her feel funny, but like I said, Mum wouldn’t listen. She told Gilly it was just his way of showing affection.”
“Where was your mother while this was going on?”
“Out. She’d go out most nights to visit her shops, talk to the managers and check the day’s takings.”
“But you knew?”
“Not at first. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t realize … I mean, I was a kid; I was fourteen, and Gilly was thirteen. I—I didn’t know that grown-ups did that sort of thing. I knew he kept going to her room and she would be crying afterward, but it had been going on for a while before she told me.”
“And you said nothing? Told no one?”
“How could I? Gilly said he’d told her he’d kill all of us if it ever got out, and she made me promise never to tell.”
“But there must have been times when Carr was out of the house and you or your sister could have told your mother.”
“Gilly was afraid. She said Mum might think that what was happening was her fault, and she wouldn’t love her anymore. See, Mum was really gone on Don. He could tell her anything and she’d have believed him. Besides, Gilly was afraid of what he’d do if she said anything.”
“An impossible situation for two children,” Paget said, and Michael nodded mutely. “So one night, when it became too much to bear, Gillanne managed to get hold of the knife, and she killed him. Isn’t that right, Michael?”
“No!” The boy stared at him in horror. “No!” he tried to say again, but the word stuck in his throat.
“Which is why she killed herself,” Paget went on. “She couldn’t live with what she’d done. She …”
He stopped. Michael’s head was shaking so hard that his whole upper body was twisting as if in torment. “It wasn’t Gilly,” he gasped. “It was me! She was screaming. He was hurting her, and I couldn’t stand it any longer.” Michael brushed the tears from his face with the back of his hands. “I’d always tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. I didn’t want it to be true. I used to go to my room and put a pillow over my head, but this time …” Michael lifted his head and met Paget’s gaze head on. “But this time it was different. I went downstairs. He was on top of her. The knife was on the floor beside him. I tried to pull him off, but he knocked me down. I grabbed the knife, and when he started to get up I stabbed him. But he didn’t stop. I was scared shitless, so I kept stabbing until he fell over. It wasn’t Gilly. It was me.”
They stood around the car, Tregalles, Audrey, and the children, as Philip put the last suitcase in the car. He wasn’t in the best of moods; he had wanted to stay on to finish what he’d started with Radio Shropshire, but Lilian had been adamant; she insisted on going home, and that was that.
“But it’s New Year’s Eve!” he’d objected.
“So it’s New Year’s Eve. It’s not as if we’ll be going dancing, is it? Not with this cast on.”
“You could,” Philip said unwisely. “I mean, it’s not as if it’s a very big …”
He never did finish the sentence. The look he received stopped him dead in his tracks, and he began to pack.
“Well, must be off,” he told his sister, glancing at his watch. “It will be getting dark by the time we get home.”
“So glad you could come,” said Audrey, “but I am sorry about your wrist, Lilian. I do hope it will be better soon.”
“So do I,” Tregalles told her, giving her a hug. Lilian put her arm around his neck, and in doing so managed to drag the rough cast across his ear.
“Oh, I am sorry, Johnny,” she said contritely as tears welled in his eyes. “I hope I didn’t hurt you.”
“It’s nothing,” he said huskily. “Take care, now.”
“Oh, I will,” she assured him. “I never make the same mistake twice.”