‘A clear case? You’re waiting for something else to happen, aren’t you?’
‘Frankly, yes.’
Holman was dismayed. His mouth dropped open in disbelief.
‘But that doesn’t mean I’m not taking any action,’ Wreford added quickly. ‘I’ve alerted all our forces in the West Country—’
‘Telling them what?’
‘Telling them to be on the lookout for a dangerous gas and to move in immediately they hear of any disturbances, big or small.’
‘But the people should be warned. They should be cleared from the path of the fog!’
‘First we have to locate the fog, Mr Holman. And then we have to make sure it is responsible for these outbreaks.’
‘But you said you believed me!’
‘And so I do, but I have no power to do as you ask. And to get any authorization at all, I have to convince my superiors of the danger.’
‘So you’re going to wait for more people to die.’
‘Within the next few hours, the fog or gas – whatever it may be – will begin to take effect on the people it has already been in contact with and then we should be provided with insurmountable evidence. There would be nothing we could do about these particular people now, anyway.’
‘Except lock them up for their own good!’
‘Be your age, Mr Holman. What would we do? Broadcast a message for anyone who has been in contact with fog recently to please report to their nearest police station? At best, we’d be a laughing stock, at worst, there’d be panic throughout the country. And for what purpose? What if the fog has now dispersed? What if it is now ineffective? What if we find the fog is not to blame after all, that the things that have happened are only unrelated, freak occurrences? What then, Mr Holman? Will you take the responsibility?’
Holman sprang to his feet and thumped the desk with his hand. ‘We can’t sit around doing nothing!’ he shouted.
‘I’ve told you my course of action,’ snapped Wreford. ‘Now please sit down and try to be reasonable.’ He spoke more soothingly. ‘Think about it, Mr Holman. We only have your evidence about the fog, and let me be frank, you were only released from hospital the other day after what appeared to be a nervous breakdown. Bear with me, let me assemble the facts before I put forward a case. As it is, I’ve stretched my neck out by ordering a full alert in the West Country. There’ll be all hell to pay when my chiefs hear about it in the morning.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I mean later today. I’m just asking you to be a little more patient.’
‘I don’t have much choice, do I?’ said Holman, resting his elbows on his knees and clenching his hands together. ‘Very well. But now I want to see Casey. I want to go to the hospital.’
Wreford smiled kindly. ‘Of course, but I’d rather you stayed here.’
‘Like hell!’ Holman sat up again.
‘I need you here. Let me get Detective Inspector Barrow to ring the hospital and see how she is. They wouldn’t let you see her at this time of the morning, anyway.’ Wreford nodded to the young detective, who disappeared from the room.
‘I’m sure you understand our position,’ Wreford continued smoothly.
‘I’m sure I don’t,’ answered Holman.
Barrow returned a few moments later, a look of concern on his face. He ignored Holman and walked round the Chief Superintendent’s desk to whisper in his ear.
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ stormed Holman.
‘It’s all right, Mr Holman,’ said Wreford, quickly, not wanting the man’s temper to boil over again. ‘Barrow has rung the hospital and they informed him Miss Simmons was discharged a few hours ago in the care of her father.’
Holman stared blankly at him.
Wreford looked embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry. Apparently, there was nothing they could do. The girl seemed perfectly all right, if a little dazed, and her father insisted he took her home despite their protests. They would have liked to have kept her under observation for a short while, but unfortunately they couldn’t prevent her from leaving.’
The blue-green Rover sped through the quiet streets towards Highgate, its three occupants grim and silent. Holman stared blankly out of a window, his tired mind in a frenzy of concern for Casey, an empty, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Was she all right? Had the effects of the gas worn off? She really hadn’t had too much exposure to it.
Barrow sat beside him in the darkness, his feelings a mixture of disbelief and curiosity. It certainly was an unusual case and he still did not know if he was sitting next to a lunatic or a crusader. The man was certainly hot-tempered, but not exactly raving. And his incredible story certainly had some cold logic to it. You had to take a step back because you found yourself accepting it, and then, when looking at the whole affair objectively, that was when you realized how ridiculous it was. He was glad it was Wreford who would be taking responsibility and he would only be carrying out orders. Too soft, was Wreford, always had been. Shrewd, though, no question of that. But he’d made a big mistake this time, trusting this prick! He’d stuck his neck out all right, but not as much as he’d led Holman to believe. Wreford had alerted the local police forces, certainly, but only to be on the lookout for any adverse weather conditions, particularly fog, and to report such to him direct. He’d persuaded a friend in the central control room where information from all over the country was relayed, to keep him informed throughout the night if any reports of an unusual nature came in from Somerset, Wiltshire, Dorset or Hampshire. Unofficially, of course. He’d have to explain his request for weather reports, and he’d better have a good reason ready, but that was as far as he’d risked his reputation. And if – just if – Holman’s incredible theory was correct, Wreford was covered; he’d acted, with discretion, on the information he’d received.
Barrow glanced at his watch. Ten past five. Jesus, he was tired. A couple of hours kip in one of the detention rooms hadn’t done him much good and all for what? For the benefit of this creep. Still, it had been uncanny about the school. Maybe . . .? No, now he was falling for it! Holman’s voice instructing the driver interrupted his thoughts.
‘Straight to the top of Highgate Hill and turn left through the village. Then it’s a side-road off to the left. I’ll tell you where.’
The police car began its ascent up the long hill, the gradual dawn light giving the streets a lonely and chilly atmosphere. They reached the village and turned left towards Hampstead, Holman peering through the window, anxiously looking for the road Casey and her father lived in. He spotted it and told the driver to turn off, the tension inside him beginning to mount. Again, he asked himself: had the effects of the fog worn off? He would soon find out.
He tapped the driver’s shoulder when he saw the house. ‘That’s it,’ he pointed.
It was a large house, set close to the road, the small front garden only nominal, but compensated for by the huge landscaped garden to the rear. Casey’s father was a wealthy man, deputy-chairman of one of Britain’s biggest unit trust finance houses and with interests in many other commercial enterprises, not the least of which was property development. On the few occasions they’d met, they had taken a dislike to one another, because both knew they were vying for the same person – Casey. Holman had been surprised at the intensity of Simmons’ hostility; he understood his possessiveness after losing his wife, but the affection he displayed towards Casey made Holman feel uncomfortable. It seemed a little too intimate for a father-daughter relationship. When he later questioned her about it, Casey had been genuinely amazed that she should think there was anything odd about her father’s attitude. Amazed, then angry at his implication. Holman had backed off, realizing his own jealousy could be colouring his view of the situation. But Simmons had made it quite obvious that Holman’s interest in his daughter was not at all welcome and on one occasion had gone to great lengths to tell him so while Casey was out of the room. Holman’s icy response had done nothing to soothe the situation between the two men and, as a consequence, he’d
never been back to the house again while her father was there.
Now as he stared up at the dark windows of the house, he cursed the older man’s stupidity in insisting Casey be released from the hospital so soon. If she had harmed herself – He pushed the unwelcome thoughts from his mind.
‘Looks like they’re all in bed, doesn’t it?’ remarked Barrow caustically.
Holman ignored him and got out of the car.
‘You wait here, Tom,’ he heard Barrow behind him tell the driver. Holman walked towards the front gate to the house, then stopped to let the Detective Inspector catch up.
‘Do you really want to wake them up?’ Barrow asked.
‘Yes,’ answered Holman, and walked towards the impressive white front door. His sense of foreboding increased when he discovered it was open. He pushed at it with a trembling hand.
10
At that precise moment, just over a hundred miles away, Mavis Evers stood barefoot on Bournemouth beach and contemplated suicide. She had driven through the night from London, fighting the tears that welled up, obscuring her vision, threatening to send her red Mini crashing off the road. She did not want to die in the wreckage of a car so that her friends, her parents would never know whether it had been deliberate or accidental. She wanted them to know she had taken her own life. Her death, unlike her life, had to have some meaning. Even if it was only Ronnie who fully understood that reason.
Ronnie had destroyed her. Ronnie had made her fall in love. Ronnie had made her lose her innocence.
Twice she had to pull over to the side of the road and stop, unable to stem the flood of tears that had abruptly burst forth. Once she had to stop as fog drifted into her path, and she had wept as she waited for it to pass.
Why had her lover done this to her? After living together for two years, sharing each other’s lives joyfully, excluding anyone else from their intimate happiness. Laughing at the world. Until Ronnie had suddenly, and irrevocably, drifted away. It had taken a mere two weeks, the first signs when Ronnie had sorrowfully but firmly rejected her caresses, then the arguments, the questions, the pleading, and finally, the terrible revelation. Ronnie had fallen in love with someone else. A man. She had fallen in love with a man.
The irony was that it had been Ronnie who had seduced Mavis. Seduced her and introduced her to a kind of love she’d never known. A private kind of love – the kind that can only be shared by two women. A love not acceptable to most, but more binding by those it touched because of its illicitness.
Mavis had known Ronnie years before when they were both children living in Basingstoke. Their parents had been friends and they would often all go off together at weekends to the coast. The times they spent at Bournemouth were the times Mavis treasured most for it was there, in a boarding house where the two young girls had to share a bed, that Ronnie first introduced her to the delights of her own body. She was eleven, Ronnie was twelve. Their parents had gone out for the evening, promising the girls crisps and lemonade if they were good, hoping, in fact, that they’d both be sound asleep when they returned. As the girls lay there, talking over the events of the day, whom they both liked, whom they mutually disliked, Ronnie had suddenly asked Mavis if she had ever touched herself. Perplexed, she had asked where?
Shyly, Ronnie had put her fingers between Mavis’s legs, then quickly drew them away. Mavis had been surprised and excited by the strange tingle that had run through her, and touched herself in the same place again, giggling at first and enjoying the sensation. Ronnie had asked if she could feel her there again and she’d agreed, a flush now spreading through her body, but on the condition that she could also touch Ronnie. They’d spent the following two hours in exciting, girlishly innocent, mutual masturbation.
It only happened on two other occasions after that, neither girl placing any significance on the act, both enjoying it for what it was – a happy diversion. They’d seen little of one another in the subsequent years, Ronnie’s parents having moved to London, visiting each other perhaps three or four times a year, neither mentioning their earlier intimacies, Mavis at least realizing it was just a stage in development they’d gone through together. Eventually, Ronnie had moved away from her parents, finding a flat for herself further into town, nearer to her job, nearer to her social life. They had corresponded for a while, but even this dwindled to cards on birthdays and at Christmas. And then, not long after her twenty-first birthday, bored by her job, bored by her parents, and bored by her lack of boyfriends, Mavis decided London might be the place for her too. She contacted Ronnie to see if she knew of any reasonably priced flats available, and her friend wrote back suggesting she stayed with her until she found something. So, a little nervous of the sprawling city, Mavis moved in with Ronnie. She was slightly in awe of her friend of long ago when they met at Euston, for Ronnie had developed into a beautiful, sophisticated young woman – on the surface, at any rate. Mavis was soon to learn that she assumed this pose for people she didn’t know very well, and this, for a brief time, included Mavis.
Mavis was amazed by Ronnie’s wide circle of friends, several of whom were actually coloured, and tried desperately to fall in with their cynical and blasé attitudes towards their lives, but after a few weeks, she realized she would never fit naturally into their set. She found their values phoney, their ideals superficial.
She disliked being an imposition on her friend whom she found, underneath the gloss, was the same understanding lonely girl she’d once known, so she searched for a suitable flat of her own. Disappointed by the depressingly poor accommodation she had been offered, she finally broke down one night after she had returned from another fruitless expedition into gloomy bedsitter land. The flats she had liked were way above her price range; the ones she could afford were too run-down and seedy for words. She had got soaked to the skin in the steady London drizzle and at the first kind words of sympathy from her friend, her emotions had bubbled to the surface.
Ronnie had perched on the arm of the settee on which Mavis was sitting and put her arms round her distraught friend’s shoulders, telling her not to worry, that they would work something out later. She told her to get out of her wet clothes and to take a quick hot bath, then to hop into bed and she would bring her a good stiff drink. After weeping a little while longer, with Ronnie gently stroking her damp hair, she pulled herself together, smiled her thanks through her tears, and went into the tiny room that was used as a dressing-room and spare bedroom. She changed into her dressing-gown as Ronnie ran the bath for her. She soaked for ten minutes, allowing the hot water to warm her body and soothe her distraught nerves. She scrubbed herself and washed her hair, then briskly dried off on one of Ronnie’s luxuriously soft towels. Her friend had done well for herself since she’d moved up to London, working as a secretary to the chairman of an American tobacco company, later becoming his personal assistant. The rent for the flat must have been quite high if the prices of the humble flats Mavis had come across were anything to go by. And her clothes were expensive and plentiful, the extent and range of her wardrobe stunning Mavis into open-mouthed admiration. But she was still basically the same sweet friend Mavis had known all those years ago.
She went to her room and heard Ronnie’s voice from the kitchen. ‘You get into bed and I’ll bring you in some hot chocolate and that stiff drink I promised you!’
‘Thank you,’ Mavis called back, taking the towel from her wet hair, rubbing her head with it vigorously. She brushed out the knots until it was long and straight, clinging closely to her neck and shoulders. Unwrapping her dressing-gown from her body, she caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror, her pink flesh looking round and pure in the soft glow of the reading lamp. She studied herself for a few seconds, content that her figure, although not stunning, was firm yet supple, curvy, but certainly not fat. She ran her hands along her sides and inwards, over her hips and across her soft midriff, then up towards her breasts. As they travelled over the gentle swells, she became aware of Ronnie watching her f
rom the doorway.
She quickly dropped her hands and flushed when she realized her nipples had stiffened to tiny pink points.
‘Your body is lovely,’ said Ronnie quietly.
Mavis was embarrassed. ‘Oh, I’m no Venus, but I suppose it’s okay.’
‘It’s beautiful.’ Ronnie moved into the room and set the tray with hot chocolate and two brandies on the small dresser by the side of the bed. She pulled back the blankets and patted the pillow. ‘Came on, jump in before you catch cold,’ she said, holding the blankets open and moving aside to allow Mavis past.
As Mavis slid between the sheets, Ronnie sat on the edge of the bed, only partially covering her friend’s body with the blankets, leaving her breasts and most of her tummy bare. Mavis felt herself reddening even more as Ronnie unashamedly studied her, a faint smile on her lips.
‘Remember when we were kids?’ Ronnie asked.
Mavis remembered, only now the memory seemed to take on a special meaning. She nodded her head.
‘Your body was nice even then,’ Ronnie went on, her gaze lingering on the two tiny rosebuds of flesh that were now even more pronounced. Strangely, Mavis no longer felt embarrassed by her look, but began to take pleasure from it, feeling the same rising excitement she’d felt as a child. Her heart was thumping, her nerves trembling. She neither thought of what might happen next, nor denied the thought; her mind was peculiarly alive, yet numb.
Ronnie raised her hand to Mavis’s cheek. ‘I’ve missed having a friend,’ she said, her fingertips barely touching the skin, but delicately sensual because of it.
‘But I thought you had lots of friends here.’ Mavis’s voice was small and hesitant.
Ronnie’s eyes flickered with sadness for an instant, but the look was barely perceptible. ‘Yes, I’ve lots of friends. But not a real friend – as you were.’
Mavis looked down. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’ Ronnie smiled. ‘You’re here now.’