A tongue of flame spurted from the gun barrel, then died as Flora released her pressure on the trigger.
I’d been scared shitless by a cigarette lighter.
I’d been scared, no two ways about it. But now I was really, really cross. When I’d walked through the door, I’d been feeling sympathetic. My instincts had all been to find a way out of this situation that didn’t mean Helen Maitland spending the rest of her useful life behind bars. Now I wasn’t so sure that was what I wanted.
‘That was really silly, Flo,’ Helen remarked in an offhand tone I’d never have been able to manage in the circumstances.
I disentangled myself from Flora’s hair and limbs and pushed myself back to my feet. ‘It was a lot more than silly,’ I said. ‘For fuck’s sake, I could have really hurt you, you pillock.’
Flora threw the gun across the room. It clattered into the kitchen unit next to Helen. Then she curled up into a ball and burst into tears.
Helen picked up the lighter and laid it on the kitchen table, then moved to Flora’s side. She crouched down and put her arms around her. It felt like Flora wept for a very long time, but it was less than five minutes by the kitchen clock. I didn’t mind. It gave my heart time to return to its normal speed and rhythm.
Eventually Helen steered Flora into a kitchen chair and sat down beside her. ‘Even a real gun wouldn’t stop the police running those voice comparisons,’ I said. ‘I’m not daft enough to embark on a confrontation like this without leaving a bit of insurance behind in case some idiot pulls some brainless stunt where I actually do get hurt.’
‘Then it’s all over,’ Flora said dully.
‘How can you say that?’ Helen demanded, pulling away. ‘How can you think that I…That’s crazy.’
‘It’s not crazy, actually.’ Flora’s voice was shaky. ‘You see, if the police did start to run comparisons on that 999 tape, they would find a match.’
‘Look, Flora, I don’t know where you’ve got this idea from. I didn’t kill Sarah,’ Helen protested. ‘I’m appalled you could think so.’
‘I don’t think so. No one knows the truth better than me.’
There was a silence as Helen and I digested the implications of Flora’s words. Then the enormity of my second screw-up in two days hit me. I’d been right about the obsessive power of love being responsible for Sarah Blackstone’s death. But I’d picked the wrong candidate for the killer. I’d been so convinced that Helen was the killer I hadn’t even paid attention to Flora.
‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’ Helen asked. There was an edge of horror in her voice.
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ I asked. Flora said nothing. She didn’t have to. We both knew the truth now. ‘So tell me. Was I close? The scenario I painted? Was I on the right lines?’
Flora pushed her hair back with her free hand. ‘Why are you so keen to know the details? So you can run to the nearest police station and turn me in?’
I sighed. ‘The reason I became a private investigator was because I like to know the reasons why things happen. I understand the difference between the law and justice. I know that handing people over to the police isn’t always the best way of ending things. If you want to prevent me going to the police, you’ve got more chance talking to me than you have trying to terrorize me. I have a client who has an interest in Sarah Blackstone’s death. She has her own, very pressing, reasons for wanting to know the truth here.’
While I had been speaking, Helen Maitland had been rummaging through a drawer in the kitchen table. As I got to the end of a speech that owed more to the British commanding officer in The Great Escape than any innate nobility of spirit, she pulled out a bashed packet of Silk Cut. ‘I knew there was a packet in here somewhere.’ She ripped the cellophane off, flipped the top up, tore out the silver paper, shoved a cigarette up with her thumb and drew it out with her lips. She picked up the gun and lit the cigarette. Pure bathos.
‘I think we’re in deep shit here, Flora,’ she said through a sigh of smoke, ‘but from what I’ve seen of Ms Brannigan, it seems to me she’s the person who can best deal with that. I think you should tell us what happened.’
Flora started crying again. I still wasn’t impressed. ‘I didn’t mean to kill her,’ she said through a veil of hair and tears.
‘I know that,’ Helen soothed in her practical, no-nonsense way. There was going to be a reckoning between these two, I could see that in her eyes. But Helen Maitland had the sense to realize this wasn’t the time or the place. ‘It’s not your style, Flo.’
Flora did a bit more weeping, and Helen just sat there smoking, her eyes never leaving her lover. It was impossible even to guess at what was going on behind that blank stare. Finally Flora sat back, pushed her hair away from her face and scrubbed her eyes with her small hands, like a child who’s been crying from tiredness. She took a deep breath, gave Helen a pleading look, then turned to face me. ‘I really didn’t mean to kill her,’ she said. ‘I didn’t go there with that intention.’
‘Tell me about it,’ I said. Helen only crushed out one cigarette and lit a second.
Flora breathed out heavily through her nose. ‘This isn’t easy,’ she complained.
‘Easier than killing someone,’ I remarked.
‘Not really,’ Flora said tremulously. ‘That happened in the heat of the moment. Before I even knew I had the knife in my hand, she was dead. Telling you is a lot harder, you have to believe that, Helen.’
Helen nodded curtly. ‘So what happened, Flora? I want to know just as badly as Ms Brannigan does.’
Flora pushed her hair back from her face and adopted a beseeching expression. I couldn’t get a handle on this woman at all. The image she projected was of a fairly timid, vulnerable innocent. Then I’d get a flash from those dark eyes and I’d feel like an entire brigade of dark, supernatural nasties were dancing on my grave. I realized exactly what Maggie had meant about the dragon and the maiden. I could see that it might be a powerful erotic mixture, but it left me feeling pathetically grateful that the gun hadn’t been for real. Flora was a woman who could easily have pulled the trigger then pulled the same ‘I didn’t mean it’ routine over me that she was giving us now over Sarah Blackstone.
‘Can’t it wait till we’re alone?’ Flora pleaded.
‘Ms Brannigan already knows too much for us to throw her out now,’ Helen said. Somehow her words didn’t scare me like Flora did. ‘I suspect that telling her the whole story is the best chance we’ve got of salvaging something from this mess.’ I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Flora looked as if she was about to protest, then she registered the determination in her lover’s face. ‘It all started when Helen was diagnosed with cervical cancer,’ she said.
‘I know about that,’ I interrupted her, not wanting to let her get into a flow of pathos too early in her narrative. ‘It resulted in a complete hysterectomy What had that to do with the murder of Sarah Blackstone?’
Flora darted me a look of pure malice. It wasn’t lost on Helen Maitland. This time, when she spoke, her voice was more brisk. ‘Helen was desperate to have a child, and as soon as she was diagnosed, she got a gynaecologist friend of hers, not Sarah, to harvest her eggs for the next three months.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
Helen stared at the table and spoke rapidly. ‘Part of me hoped that a full hysterectomy wouldn’t be necessary, that even if I couldn’t produce fertile eggs any more, I might just be able to have a child by artificial insemination, or even surrogacy. You know, get someone else to carry my child. So we took what eggs we could harvest before my surgery and froze them. It’s dodgy, freezing eggs; nobody really knows yet how successful it is. But I had this crazy idea that even if I couldn’t have a child myself, at least my genes might continue. And if all else had failed, at least I could have made an egg donation to someone who needed it.’