Dancing With the Virgins. Stephen Booth

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СКАЧАТЬ completely, no matter how unpleasant. They left their traces everywhere, in the overlooked corners of your mind, and in the sensations of your body – the touch of your skin against your clothes, the sudden devastating echo in a sound, or the malignant resonance of a smell. Memories were cancerous growths, secretive and spiteful; sometimes you didn’t know they were there until it was too late. Diane Fry knew all about memories.

      ‘This is just an introductory meeting,’ she said. ‘I’ll come back to talk to you again tomorrow, Maggie. If that’s all right with you.’

      ‘If you must.’

      ‘It’s very important now.’

      ‘Ah.’ Maggie hesitated. ‘Does that mean you have another victim?’

      ‘Yes, Maggie. And it’s vital we catch this man before he kills again.’

      Maggie stared at Diane Fry out of her good eye, assessing her sharply, staring with the unblinking curiosity of someone who rarely saw a new visitor.

      ‘Kills?’

      ‘Yes, it’s murder this time. This victim died.’

      Fry watched for a reaction. The trembling in Maggie’s hands and the draining of the colour from her face gave Fry a small measure of satisfaction.

      ‘We also want to put you on a witness protection programme. You know what that means?’

      ‘Of course. Remember I’m a lawyer.’

      ‘We’ll ask you to consider finding somewhere else to stay, if possible, Maggie, until we think it’s safe. In the meantime, a technician will call to install alarms in your apartment. You’ll be given a phone number you can call at any time.’

      Maggie took a moment to recover her composure. ‘Is all that necessary?’

      ‘Maggie, we’re looking for a killer now. And you’re the only person who can identify him.’

      ‘I won’t go away. I’m staying here.’

      ‘But the other precautions …’ said Fry.

      ‘All right. But there’s one condition.’

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘If you’re going to visit me, do not feel sorry for me. I won’t talk to anyone who shows even the slightest sign of feeling sorry for me. Do you understand?’

      ‘Of course.’

      Diane Fry was glad when Maggie Crew turned away. Since she had met Maggie at the door of her apartment, it had taken her several minutes to settle down, to recover from the initial shock. The sight of her had made Fry’s stomach muscles clench with vicarious pain as she tried to control her expression. But this woman must be used to such reactions by now.

      Maggie Crew’s face would never be the same again. The knife had sliced her apart. No plastic surgery could ever completely hide the long, ragged scar that mutilated her cheekbone, splitting her face into two halves like a zip, its raised lips still red and angry, the flesh stretched painfully tight. No surgeon would ever entirely smooth out the ridges of shredded and bruised skin that puckered the corner of her right eye, pulling down her bottom lid to expose the pink veins, and twisting the whole side of her face into a leer.

      But there was more even than that. There was the psychological damage that had been done to Maggie Crew. Even to Diane Fry the damage was obvious, though she had never met the woman before. Maggie was a partner in a firm of solicitors in Matlock. She was a successful professional woman, used to feeling self-confident and sure of her own worth. But now she had lost that confidence; her image of herself had been ravaged, slashed to pieces by the knife that had torn her face.

      Fry knew that the attack on Maggie had happened six weeks ago. As far as they could ascertain, she had been attacked somewhere near the Cat Stones, the line of rocks below the Hammond Tower, not half a mile from where Jenny Weston’s body had been found. Maggie had been the lucky one. She had managed to stagger halfway off the moor before she collapsed from shock and loss of blood in the shelter of a wall, where she had been found by a farmer’s wife next morning. The doctors said Maggie had been lucky, in that the knife had narrowly missed removing an eye. Fry hoped that nobody had tried telling Maggie herself that she was lucky.

      Now Maggie was recovering at home. And that meant she had been sitting here, in this sparse room, hiding from the light.

      ‘I suppose I should be frightened,’ said Maggie.

      ‘We’re just taking precautions. No need to be frightened.’

      ‘It would make a change – a change from finding people are frightened of me. They don’t know how to react, most of them. They don’t know what to say. They don’t want to talk about my face. Do you want to talk about it? About what my injury means to me.’

      Fry shrugged. ‘Not particularly.’

      Maggie looked surprised. Disappointed?

      ‘They say plastic surgery might help. But not yet. The injury is too recent.’

      ‘Yes, it takes time.’

      ‘Oh, the body heals itself to a certain extent, in time. The blood clots, the wounds close over, fresh skin grows. They can do wonders with surgery, they keep telling me. But it’s never quite the same, is it? You can’t rebuild the original tissue, and your body remembers the injury. You’re always marked in some way.’

      The file said that Maggie Crew had received the appropriate counselling. She had gone through all the consultations with a psychiatrist. She had been encouraged to write down her feelings, to talk to Victim Support. The police had treated her with kid gloves for a time. But at the end of the day, they weren’t getting what they wanted. Maggie Crew knew far more than she had told them. She had seen her assailant and survived. He was the same man, they now suspected, who had killed Jenny Weston. It was at this moment, more than ever, that they needed the information locked in Maggie’s head.

      Fry wondered how secure the apartment was. It occupied part of the second floor of Derwent Court, a converted spa hotel, a relic of the town’s Victorian past as a health resort. The building had stood derelict for years before an influx of county council office workers had boosted the demand for housing in Matlock. Now comfortably-off residents lived at the end of its marble corridors and stared all day at an expensive view over the Derwent Valley, counting the cable cars as they ferried tourists to the Heights of Abraham.

      At least there was a concierge in the lobby downstairs. She would have to have a word with him before she left – he would be able to keep an extra careful eye out for visitors to Derwent Court.

      She stared out of the window into the darkness. The quarry-blasted hillside stood out white and stark on the skyline to the south. No attempt had been made to repair or disguise the damage that had been done to the landscape by the mineral companies. The scars had been left as a symbolic reminder, a legacy of the past. And perhaps as a warning too. A warning of what might easily happen again one day – if no one did anything to prevent it.

      ‘Yes, some things take time,’ said Maggie. ‘Other things take a miracle.’

      Ben Cooper had already formed a clear idea in his mind of what Jenny Weston had been like. There had СКАЧАТЬ