The Healers Read online

  ‘Did she tell you she already had a boyfriend?’

  ‘Yeah. I thought that was a good sign. I didn’t want to get into anything too heavy.’

  ‘How long did you go out with her?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that. I mean, it wasn’t as if we were engaged or anything. She still had her boyfriend, James, and I was seeing other women… We talked mostly. Went for walks. I didn’t really think of her as my girlfriend.’

  The relationship with Faye had obviously confused him. Girlfriends you took out to clubs and pubs. If they let you, you screwed them. If they didn’t, you dumped them. His friendship with Faye had been different, less clear cut. He hadn’t known how to handle it.

  ‘But Faye did consider herself your girlfriend, didn’t she? She told James about you. And last summer she got a job in Mittingford so she could be close to you.’

  ‘I told her not to do that,’ he said. ‘I knew it would be a mistake.’

  ‘Cramp your style, you mean?’

  ‘If you like!’ The macho lout had returned. ‘I wasn’t ready to be tied down. Not to a lass like her.’

  ‘Is that what she wanted? To be tied down?’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I never knew what she wanted.’

  ‘Did your parents know that you were seeing Faye?’

  ‘They knew I was seeing someone called Faye. They never met her.’

  ‘Wouldn’t they have approved?’

  ‘It wasn’t that.’ It was because she wasn’t leggy and ornamental, Ramsay thought. She was pretty enough, but she would have worn the wrong clothes, given the wrong impression altogether. He would have been embarrassed to be seen out with her. ‘None of my friends knew,’ Peter said. ‘They wouldn’t have understood.’

  ‘Did Faye understand?’ Ramsay asked. ‘Didn’t she mind being kept a secret?’

  ‘I don’t think she realized,’ Peter muttered. ‘She really liked me, you see.’ Then, trying to be flippant, a man of the world: ‘ Women are such romantics, aren’t they?’

  ‘You went out with her all that summer?’

  He nodded. ‘Not often, though. The Abbots were real slave-drivers. She didn’t have much time to herself.’

  ‘Did she ever meet Ernie Bowles?’ The question suddenly occurred to him.

  ‘No. Not when she was with me. Why?’

  Ramsay did not answer. ‘Did you ever consider putting an end to the relationship?’ he said. ‘If she was such an embarrassment…’

  ‘Of course I considered it. But I liked her. She listened. And I wasn’t sure how she’d handle it. She didn’t have anyone else. I suppose I didn’t have the guts. Besides, I knew she’d go back to college at the end of the summer. I thought it would die a natural death.’

  ‘Instead,’ Ramsay said, ‘she died a natural death.’

  Peter flushed. ‘ I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make a joke. Not about that.’

  Suddenly he became almost likeable.

  ‘Tell me about her,’ Ramsay said. ‘You must have known her better than anyone.’

  Peter shrugged. He wasn’t used to putting feelings and impressions into words.

  ‘Everything was black or white with Faye. She either loved you or hated you. She hated her step-father. “I had to get away from that house,” she said, “or I’d have killed him.” The crowd at the Old Chapel were her heroes. She quoted them all the time: Daniel said that or Magda said this. It really got on your nerves …’ He paused. He had more to say but he wasn’t sure how to put it. ‘She didn’t play safe,’ he said. ‘There was no pretence. If she liked you, she said so. If she wanted something, she asked for it. There was no… protective layer between her and the world.’

  He blushed again. ‘This must sound dead stupid. Do you know what I mean?’

  Ramsay nodded. ‘I think so. It would have meant that she’d be easily hurt.’

  ‘That’s why I found it so hard to tell her that I didn’t want to see her again.’

  ‘Did you tell her that?’

  ‘In the end.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Like I said, I expected we’d stop seeing each other so often when she went back to Otterbridge. She’d become too demanding. I wouldn’t have minded meeting her occasionally…’ On your own terms, Ramsay thought. To have your ego massaged. To be flattered by her admiration. ‘ But that wasn’t enough for her. She seemed to be obsessed. She even phoned me here, begging me to go out to Otterbridge to meet her.’

  ‘I expect she was lonely,’ Ramsay said. ‘It must have been hard to go back to her bedsit after having had company all summer.’

  ‘I suppose it was.’ He was so self-centred that the idea had never occurred to him before. ‘Anyway I thought I should make a clean break of it. Tell her straight that I didn’t want to see her again.’

  ‘When did you do that?’

  ‘I’m not sure exactly. Not long after she left here to go back to college.’

  ‘How did she take it?’

  ‘She seemed all right,’ he said. ‘Quite controlled. She didn’t burst into hysterics or anything, which is what I expected. It was a bit hard to tell because I told her on the phone. I couldn’t face a mega scene in public. At least she stopped bothering me.’

  So you could forget all about her, Ramsay thought. You could go back to your mates in the rugby club and making money. And a much more suitable girlfriend.

  ‘Then I heard she was dead,’ Peter went on, bleakly.

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Mrs Abbot phoned me. She’d never liked me but she thought I should know.’

  ‘She didn’t blame you in any way?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She didn’t suggest that Faye killed herself because of the way you’d treated her?’ He realized that was cruel, but he felt vaguely that Peter deserved it.

  The boy was defensive and all the bluster returned. ‘ Of course not. I’d finished with her a couple of weeks before that. She’d had time to get over it, hadn’t she? Besides, I thought it was an accident.’ He thrust his head towards Ramsay. ‘You can’t go around making that sort of allegation. What’s this got to do with you anyway?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ramsay said as he let himself out of the house. ‘I really don’t know.’

  When he returned to the hotel most of his team were still in the bar. He hurried past the door to the stairs so no one should see him. From his room he phoned Prue. She seemed pleased to hear from him and when he replaced the receiver he was comforted, more optimistic.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Early the next morning the Abbots sat over muesli and apple juice. Win was still in her night-dress, a long, shroud-like garment. She looked faded; her skin had the dusty, dried out texture of dead leaves. Daniel felt a shudder of irritation, even of disgust. He had never found her sexually attractive. Now her lethargy repulsed him. But not enough, he realized, for him to consider leaving her and risking all that they had achieved together.

  The telephone rang. It was Ramsay, requesting an interview.

  ‘I’m seeing a patient at nine,’ Daniel said.

  ‘I must see you this morning.’ Ramsay was polite but emphatic.

  ‘I could be free by eleven-thirty,’ Daniel said. He replaced the receiver slowly.

  ‘He’ll want to talk about Faye,’ Win said. She looked at him anxiously.

  ‘Of course…’ He paused. ‘I wonder who’s stirring up trouble after all this time.’

  He spooned yoghurt on to his muesli and said, as if he were changing the subject completely: ‘Do you think Lily would have the boys this afternoon?’

  ‘I expect so. I think it’s her afternoon off. Now they’re staying in the house I could phone and ask.’ Win faced him uncertainly across the breakfast table. He realized she was frightened of him and felt an exhilarating rush of energy.

  ‘I was wondering if you’d go to see the lad, James. To express our sympathy. Someone from the Centre should do it and I’m busy.’

&
nbsp; ‘I don’t know,’ she said quickly. ‘Surely he won’t want to see us.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, first Faye. Then Val. I should have thought we were the last people—’

  ‘Nonsense,’ he interrupted. ‘I think it would be a welcome gesture.’ Then, persuasively, ‘Val was very close to him, wasn’t she? If she confided in anyone it would have been in him. Find out if she talked to him before she died. You’re good with kids.’

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘ If you think it’s a good idea.’ He smiled because he had known all along that he could make her agree.

  In the Alternative Therapy Centre his patient was already waiting for him. Daniel introduced himself and began mentally, almost? automatically, the process of diagnosis: rigid posture, he thought, firm grip, cold hand. All that could be relevant.

  ‘Just give me a couple of minutes,’ he said and let himself into his treatment room. He put on a clean white coat. Other acupuncturists might practise in jeans and a sweatshirt but he had never been comfortable with such informality. He looked at his equipment with satisfaction. He loved this work, cared more about it than anything else in his life. There was the plastic case of sterile, disposable needles; the akabani, the sticks which warmed the skin to test for an imbalance between the left and right side of the body; and the moxa, the herb which was burned on the acupuncture points to warm the energy. The tools of his job, he thought. Then, suddenly: healing gave you power. That’s why he got such a buzz out of it

  He rang through to Rebecca to send the patient in.

  The man complained of migraine.

  ‘I’ve been to the doctor,’ he said, ‘but he just tells me it’s stress related. Of course I’m under stress. All the time. I’m running my own business in a recession. Who wouldn’t be?’

  ‘Today I’ll do a TD,’ Daniel said. ‘A traditional diagnosis. If I can help we’ll start the treatment in the next session.’

  He already had the man down as a wood causative factor. He could even hear the shout in his voice. Woods could be rigid, over-independent, needing to control. Cissie Bowles had been a wood causative factor, though she had mellowed with treatment and become almost human by the end.

  ‘I’ll take a personal history,’ he began. ‘I’d like to concentrate on the first five years of your life. Perhaps you could tell me something about that time.’

  The business man claimed not to remember anything, looked at Daniel as if he were wasting time.

  ‘That’s not unusual,’ Daniel said, but probing gently he discovered that the father had been a merchant seaman, away a lot. The patient had spent much of his early childhood with his grandmother.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘what about your present family?’

  There was a wife apparently, who had a successful career in her own right, two teenage children. All the time Daniel was looking for the secondary gain. What did this man get out of being ill? Attention, it seemed. The wife made a fuss of him when he had a migraine attack and at other times dismissed him as a failure. In Daniel’s experience there usually was a secondary gain. In Cissie Bowles’s case her arthritis had allowed her to ease up on the farm and boss poor Ernie about

  Poor Ernie! Daniel gave a little grin. The business man looked at him suspiciously.

  ‘I’ll ask you to undress now,’ Daniel said, trying to concentrate, ‘so I can do a physical examination.’

  When he was waiting for his patient to strip he went out to reception. Rebecca was opening the mail. She heard him coming, looked up nervously.

  ‘Yes, Mr Abbot. Is there anything I can do?’

  ‘I’m sure there is, Rebecca. I’m sure there is. But not just now.’

  He walked round behind her, so he could look over her shoulder at the letters on the desk. His hand rested on her waist. As he walked away he tapped her on the buttocks.

  ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘What a fast little learner you are!’

  Back in the treatment room he completed his diagnosis. He took the pulses, six on each wrist He waved the burning akabani over the man’s fingernails and waited to see how long it took for the skin to feel warm. He took his blood pressure.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘we have to decide what to do next. I think we’ll clear any polluted energy that may be in your system,’ Daniel continued, explaining the test for aggressive energy in the best way he knew how. ‘It’s always safest to do that first. It involves thirteen needles in your back but you’ll feel no real discomfort.’

  The patient was impressed. Daniel felt the old satisfaction in knowing that he could help. He realized that he really was very good at this.

  After making a new appointment with Rebecca, the business man hovered in reception. Although he had been so unforthcoming at the beginning now he was reluctant to leave. Eventually Daniel walked down the steps with him, and through the Old Chapel to the street. The man was still talking about his wife.

  In the health food shop Lily Jackman was at work. The place was empty and she stood listlessly behind the counter while the two other assistants carried on a conversation over her head. Daniel nodded at her and paused for a moment. He wondered whether Win had phoned her at Laverock Farm to ask about the babysitting. Perhaps he should check. In the end he decided to leave it. It wouldn’t be a good idea to make an issue of it.

  When he got back to the Centre Magda was in. The door of her treatment room was open and she was on the phone. But by the time Ramsay and Hunter arrived at eleven-thirty she had a client with her and she refused to be disturbed. That suited Daniel very well. He thought he could handle the police better by himself. The successful session with his patient had given him confidence.

  ‘I’m sorry, Inspector, I’m afraid I’ll have to do,’ he said, standing up to greet them. He was still wearing his white coat. The room smelled slightly herbal. Hunter sniffed the air disapprovingly. ‘Besides,’ Daniel went on, ‘we’ve all given statements already. I don’t think we can add to what we’ve told you.’

  ‘I think you can,’ Ramsay said. ‘I’m interested in a girl called Faye Cooper.’

  ‘What possible interest could you have in Faye?’

  ‘We’ve been given information which links her death with the recent murders.’

  ‘I don’t know who could have put that idea into your heads. It’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Are you quite sure?’ Hunter leaned forward. He played the part of the heavy too convincingly, Ramsay thought. And Daniel Abbot was too clever to be taken in by it.

  ‘Of course,’ Daniel said. ‘ You must have looked at the records, seen the inquest verdict. Faye’s death was accidental.’

  ‘I understand that you employed Faye for several weeks last summer,’ Ramsay said. ‘As a nanny.’

  ‘It wasn’t such a formal arrangement as that,’ Daniel said. ‘ Not really. She was at a loose end during her college holidays. We invited her to stay with us and in return she did some babysitting.’

  ‘I see,’ Ramsay sounded sceptical. ‘Did the arrangement work?’

  ‘Yes. The children seemed to take to her and we found her a very pleasant girl. Very accommodating.’

  ‘Was she working on the weekend when she went with you to the retreat at Juniper Hall?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I presume that by then she’d returned to college for the autumn term. She was living in her bedsit in Otterbridge again. Did you invite her to accompany you to look after the children so you were free to participate in the weekend’s activities?’

  ‘You make it sound very calculating, Inspector. It wasn’t like that. We thought she’d benefit from the retreat. And she was very keen to go. She did look after the children on occasions during the weekend. Win and I were both very busy. But we waived her registration fee.’

  That was big of you, Ramsay thought.

  ‘Perhaps you could tell me exactly what happened that weekend,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry, Inspector, it’s not that I’m not keen to help but I do
n’t see how that’s relevant to your present enquiries.’

  ‘I’ve explained that certain allegations have been made,’ Ramsay said quietly. ‘They may be malicious but you do see that I have to follow them through.’

  ‘I suppose these were anonymous allegations!’ Daniel said petulantly.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, you can’t expect me to discuss that.’

  ‘Why don’t you just tell us what happened,’ Hunter said threateningly, ‘on that weekend that the lassie died.’

  Daniel seemed about to protest again but looked at Hunter and thought better of it.

  ‘We picked Faye up in Otterbridge on Friday lunchtime,’ he said. ‘She didn’t have classes in the afternoon, or if she did she was prepared to skip them. She seemed in an emotional mood, rather withdrawn. I kept expecting her to burst into tears. We discovered in the course of the trip to Cumbria that a boy she’d been seeing, Peter Richardson, had finished with her. I don’t think it was ever a particularly close relationship but she seemed to be taking it rather badly. I hoped that the weekend would be good for her, do something to rebuild her self-confidence. Certainly by the time we arrived at Juniper Hall she seemed more cheerful…

  ‘It was a beautiful weekend, very hot and sunny. Everyone talked about it, said how unusual the weather was for that time of year. We kept expecting it to break, for there to be a thunderstorm. It had that sort of feel. But it stayed fine.’

  He paused. He would have found it easier to deal with specific questions. But Ramsay and Hunter just waited for him to continue.

  ‘Juniper’s a beautiful house,’ he said. ‘Elizabethan, I think. All chimneys and pointed gables. More the sort of place you’d expect to find in the Cotswolds. You could tell that Faye had never seen anything like it before. There wasn’t much arranged for the Friday. Some of the people had a long way to travel and didn’t arrive until late. We had a meal. There was a session where we all started to get to know each other.’

  ‘Val McDougal was there?’

  ‘Yes. She arrived in time for dinner.’

  ‘And Lily Jackman?’

  Daniel paused. ‘Yes. She got a lift with Val.’