Open Writing

'An official of government security, so Colonel Danby says.'

I always expect people to laugh when you produce credentials like that. Goff was quite ready to accept it. He was the psychiatrist Danby had told me to ask for.

They'd had to bring him in from a game of tennis. In shorts, he looked too young, too clean and healthy, to be a mind mechanic. With a white coat he probably looked imposing.

'That's what it says,' I agreed.

'You certainly look the part,' he said, with a quick wrinkle of his brow. He was looking at my rumpled dusty clothes and wodge of crimson tissue I'd wrapped around my finger where the Browning's slide had ripped the nail off. 'Do you want anything for that?' he added.

'Trapped it in the car door,' I said. 'It looks a lot worse than it is.'

'Right then, Mr Hussy. We'll go and have a look at young Fiona, shall we?'

It was only half-an-hour after the shoot-out in the quarry. I'd made a quick phone call to the Unit and left them to clear it up. Then I'd driven straight up to Massingham Hall, dripping blood out of my finger all the way.

I followed his brown bare legs over the thick carpets which kept the corridors hushed and plush. He talked as he led the way.

He'd been half-expecting someone to turn up. Both Brassington and Kentish had instructed him that the girl wasn't to be questioned and that, in any case, she was suffering from dangerous delusions.

'But of course she has been talking,' he went on, 'and I would say she's surprisingly rational after what she's been through.'

He knocked on a heavy cream door and waited.

'She is sedated,' he whispered, 'but only lightly.'

We went in. She was sitting in a high-backed armchair by the window, but she got up to greet us.

She had that pale prettiness that girls seem to get at English boarding schools — you see a lot of them in South Ken. But the purple hoops under her eyes didn't go with the soft hair and the blue eyes.

'What do you want to know?' she asked, when we'd all found seats.
'Andrew said I wasn't to tell anyone.'

The way she said it there was no conviction in her — only exhaustion. I knew she'd talk then. She was hurt, and talking is a sort of bleeding.

'Andrew's in a lot of trouble,' I said.

'In your own time,' Goff said, leaning forward over his brown knees. 'In your own way, Fiona. Just let it come.'

'When from?' she asked.

'From the time you met Striker,' I said. 'Last year.'

She flopped in the chair and put her head back so she was looking at the ceiling.

'Yes, that was when it all started. It was at the fair. The gayla they call it here. I was back from Switzerland - my school - and I saw Striker on the ring-the-bell machine. It was . . . breathtaking. He just poured all his strength through the hammer, I've never seen anything like it, no one has . . . I'm sorry. I mustn't go on. But I keep thinking about that. I fell in love with him then. The very second I saw him. That's all.'

She closed her eyes. Her breathing sounded loud in the silent room.

Outside the shorn lawns were almost brown from the sun.

'Take your time,' Goff said.

'It'll make it easier,' I said. 'Just saying it makes it easier.'

'I know,' she said. Then, with her eyes still closed, she carried on.

'We began to see each other, secretly, because Andrew would have been furious. But he found out and he said it all had to end. I was terribly fond of him, he's a marvellous brother and he's almost brought me up all by himself, but I couldn't give Striker up.'

She shook her head. 'There were rows. Awful, awful rows. I was packed off back to Switzerland, and I found out later that Andrew and his cronies made life so bloody for Striker that he had to go to London. Please, has anyone got a cigarette?'

Goff produced one from a crumpled packet in his breast pocket. She sat quite still until he'd lit it for her. Those finishing schools really do their stuff.

Then she smiled her thanks when he left the packet on the table in front of her.

'Andrew got them to watch my mail to see I wasn't getting letters from him, but I fooled them - Striker wrote to a friend of mine and she passed them on. He was working in a nightclub in London, but he said he hadn't even looked at another woman and I know he wouldn't lie.'

She'd got going nicely, so to keep her moving I said, 'Then at this year's fair .. .'

'We arranged to meet. We said that if we still loved each other after a year then it must be real, and even Andrew would have to agree to that.'

She gave a giggle that was half a sob. 'We'd got to like all the secrecy of it, it made everything more romantic. Striker was staying at the Drawbridge - I think he did that to impress Andrew. So that Andrew would think he was a success. I sent him a note telling him to ring the bell at the fairground as a signal - I know it all sounds silly, sitting here like this, but it was so exciting then. We managed to meet without Andrew knowing and on the last night we knew we were more in love than ever. We decided we wanted to get married. I can't tell you . . .'

She stopped talking. She sat there, her closed eyes facing upwards while she remembered what her dreams had been like before the world soiled them.

'We walked down from the fairground, not talking, just holding hands. We took our photographs in the station booth. Our engagement photographs, we said they were. There was a gorgeous cashmere jacket in that shop in the square and the man was still there, so Striker went in and bought it. He put it on and came out to show me, but I didn't go in the shop. I didn't want to do anything that would hurt Andrew if he heard afterwards.'

'Striker left it for alterations,' I put in.

She opened her eyes. 'How did you know that? Yes, he did.'

'And this is a copy of the photograph you had taken on the station?' I held out the picture I'd found in the jacket.

She seized it out of my fingers. Then she quickly rifled a small white bag and produced three similar pictures.

'You get four at the same time,' she said. Somehow focusing on such small factual details helped blur the outlines of the tragedy that had swept into her life.

Then?' I said.

'We went to that little terraced house where Striker used to lodge to get his old blacksmith's hammer.'

'Why?' Goff asked.

'For me. I wanted to keep it. I always used to say that Striker looked like one of the gods of old with his hammer.'

'Yes, of course,' Goff replied.

'Then we went up to my home. We thought everything would be all right then, when Andrew saw how happy we were, but it was terrible. It was like some sort of nightmare.'

She puffed at the cigarette. It had gone out, but she didn't notice.

'Charles Danby was there, the Colonel's son. Have I mentioned him? Oh he's sweet, he really is, and I feel awful saying it, but he's . . . well, he's simple. Striker and I were standing there, with Andrew behind his desk like the head-master, and he just wouldn't listen when we said we were in love and we were going to get married. It was as though we hadn't spoken at all. He didn't seem to hear. And he didn't even seem to see Striker, as though he didn't exist. So Striker lost his temper and he smashed his hammer on the desk. God, the noise was terrible! It nearly split the desk in two, right down the middle.'

She looked without interest at the black end of the cigarette.

'It was so frightening. I was crying and poor Charles was standing there looking so confused. Then Andrew began to shout at Striker. Called him awful names — scum, thicko, gutter rat. He said he'd struggled out of the sewers to get away from people like him. He said his own life had been ruined because of his father's crazy notion about love and he wouldn't permit it to happen again. That was because father ran away with some woman. But we weren't like that.'

She sat up and looked at both of us. 'I hate him now,' she said.

Then she got up and went to a handbasin in the corner. She poured a glass of water, drank a little, then tipped the rest away.

She looked in the mirror over the basin and fingered her hair back from her face. It was an automatic movement.

We waited until she came back. This time she didn't sit down. She stood in the window, facing out over the smooth lawns.

'He said the wildest things. I'm not sure I know what he meant, even now.'

'Like what?' Goff asked.

'Oh, he said I was going to marry Charles. Charles! He has a mental age of about eight, and no memory. That was the plan. He went on about how all the grand old families had drawn the talent from those beneath them. He said we would be pushing our way into the history books.'

'I see,' Goff said. 'What did you think of that?'

'I thought he was mad,' she said, in a low voice. All I could see of her were her slim shoulders and her long hair. 'But I am the one in the madhouse.'

'Who killed Striker?' I asked.

Goff frowned at me, but someone had to ask the question.

Fiona didn't move. I could see a faint ghost of her reflection in the window. Her answer was quiet, but clear. 'I did,' she said. 'I killed him.'