Fragile Minds Page 0,120
if Malvern was following the example of the other girls.
‘Would she come in the main doors?’
‘No,’ Duffy shook her head, ‘she’d come up through the artists’ entrance.’ Where they wouldn’t search her.
Fuck. Silver grabbed the stage manager who was gathering Lucie’s cast-off garments. ‘I need to get the venue cleared – NOW.’
‘Are you mad?’ She frowned at him. ‘I’m afraid that’s not going to happen.’
On the stage, Longley was wrapping up and the corps de ballet were preparing for their entrance with a last-minute warm-up, bending and stretching gracefully as the orchestra began to tune their instruments.
‘Bloody do it,’ he grasped her arm harder, ‘or I’ll arrest you for manslaughter.’
Okeke ran back down the corridor. ‘Explosives are scrambling now.’
‘OK. Roger, we need to start clearing the—’
Duffy grabbed Silver’s hand, digging her sharp little nails in so hard she drew blood, her face pale beneath the make-up.
‘There she is,’ she pointed into the opposite wing. ‘Sadie.’
Sadie Malvern stood, dressed in a long, mauve dress. She was filthy, her long curls tangled, a beatific smile on her pretty face, a hand-drawn banner slung across her body that read IN BEAUTY WE BELIEVE.
She opened the white shawl she held closely across her breast. Round her slim waist was strapped a badly-made explosive belt.
THURSDAY 24TH JULY KENTON
Kenton yawned widely, deeply frustrated that they’d had to let Francis Watson go for the time being.
‘Nice try, Derek,’ she gave her colleague a thumbs-up as he walked back into the office from seeing the man out. Maybe it was time to let bygones be bygones.
‘Should have left me in there alone.’ Craven pulled his top lip back like an old horse, his teeth like yellowing tombstones. ‘Would have got a result that way.’
Price and Kenton exchanged glances as he wandered off. Price was busy downloading the information on Tessa Lethbridge from the PDF the Australian High Commission had sent, once their records had been checked and the name change registered. Not Tessa Lethbridge at all, of course, but plain Elaine Jensen, born in a tiny village just outside Queensland’s Brisbane forty-nine years ago, with not a formal ballet qualification to her name.
Kenton pulled an A4 bit of paper out of the printer and made a list.
‘Queen of hearts; Daddy’s gone a hunting; Atishoo atishoo we all fall down.’
All nursery rhymes; all some kind of code. Representing people, Kenton was imagining – certainly the first two.
But who was the Queen of Hearts – and who the hell was Daddy?
‘What does “as you like it” mean to you, Tina?’ She glanced over at the young policewoman. ‘Anything? Another kid’s rhyme?’
‘No,’ Tina shook her head. ‘It’s a Shakespeare play. Celia and Rosalind in the Forest of Arden. I did it for A level English. Good play. About hidden identities. Subterfuge and disguise.’
Kenton wished, not for the first time in this investigation, that she’d paid more attention in English Literature instead of mooning over Diana Grills.
‘Homoerotic you could almost say,’ Price was warming to her subject. ‘I think—’
‘Rosalind?’ Kenton sat up. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Oh yes, absolutely,’ Tina nodded with some enthusiasm.
‘From the east to western Ind,
no jewel is like Rosalind.’
Kenton’s phone rang. Alison! At last. She felt a shiver of anticipation.
‘I’m really sorry,’ Alison said. ‘I left my phone at my mum’s on Sunday evening, and I’ve only just got it back now.’
‘No worries,’ Kenton breezed. Alison wasn’t to know she’d been praying for her to ring for virtually seventy-two hours. Kenton smiled as she listened to Alison’s story of woe, tucking the phone beneath her ear as she typed As You Like It into the internet search engine. She scanned the first synopsis of the play that came up.
‘Christ,’ she sat up straighter, ‘I don’t believe it. Alison, I’ve got to go.’
Kenton stood, grabbing her jacket.
‘You come with me.’ She flung the phone at Tina. ‘And get me Silver on the phone, right now.’
TUESDAY 25TH JULY CLAUDIE
They left me in a room with only Helen for company, and a policeman outside the door.
‘I’m her psychiatrist,’ she smiled at the nurses when I tried to tell them my fears; but they just thought I was rambling. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll sit with her while we wait for the family. I’m afraid she might have to be sectioned again. She shouldn’t be alone.’
‘Who are you?’ I gazed at her as I struggled again in the bed, but the drips were restraining me. Why did I still feel so damn ill and weak? ‘You’re one of them, aren’t you?’
‘You can call me Rosalind if