Wexford 14 - The Veiled One by Ruth Rendell

manner of speech, as that which people in therapy - no matter how inhibited, reserved, disturbed - inevitably pick up. He had heard it before. ‘I felt threatened.’
       ‘By what?’
       ‘I’d like to talk to Serge now. If I’d had some sort of warning I’d have tried to make an appointment with him and talk it through with him.’
       ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to make do with me, Mr Sanders.’
       Burden was apprehensive for a moment that he was to be confronted with total silence against which even an experienced detective can do little. Sounds from Mrs Sanders could now be heard. She was in the kitchen, moving about, making an unnecessary noise by putting crockery down heavily and banging instead of closing cupboard doors. Whatever she was doing it seemed to be contrived to disturb. He winced at the sound of something breaking as it fell from her hands on to a stone floor. And then he heard another sound - he had got up to stand by the window - and this was far distant, the dull roar of an explosion. He stood quite still, his ear to the glass, listening to the reverberations die away. But he thought no more of it once Clifford began to speak.
       ‘I’ll try and tell you what happened. I should have told you before, but .I felt threatened. I feel threatened now, but I’d be worse if I didn’t tell you. I left Serge’s place and I drove to the car park to pick up my mother. I saw there was a dead person lying there before I parked the car. I went to look at it - when I had parked the car, I mean - because I meant to call the police. You could see the person had been killed; that was the first thing you could see.’
       ‘What time was this?’
       He shrugged. ‘Oh, evening. Early evening. My mother wanted me there at a quarter-past six. I think it was before that; it must have been, because she wasn’t there and she’s never late.’
       ‘Why didn’t you call the police, Mr Sanders?’
       He looked at the picture on the wall, then at the dark shiny window. Burden saw his reflection in it, impassive, one would have said devoid of feeling.
       ‘I thought it was my mother.’
       Burden turned his eyes from the reflected image in the dark glass. ‘You what?’
       With patience, in a heavy, almost sorrowful way, Clifford repeated what he had said. ‘I thought it was my mother.’
       And she had thought it was her son. What was the matter with the pair of them that each expected to find the other dead? ‘You thought Mrs Robson was your mother?’ There was a slight resemblance between the two women, Burden thought wonderingly - that is, to a stranger there might be. Both were of an age, thin, grey-haired, dressed in the same kind of clothes of the same sort of colour . . . but to a son?
       ‘I knew it wasn’t really my mother. Well, after the first shock I knew. I can’t explain what I felt. I could tell Serge, but I don’t think you would understand. First I thought it was my mother, then I knew it wasn’t and then I thought someone was doing it to . . . to mock me. I thought they had put it there to get at me. No, not quite that. I said I couldn’t explain. I can only say it made me panic. I thought this was an awful trick they were persecuting me with, but I knew it couldn’t be. I knew both things at the same time. I was very confused - you don’t understand, do you?’
       ‘I can’t say I do, Mr Sanders. But go on.’
       ‘I said I panicked. My “shadow” had taken me over completely. I had to get out of there, but I couldn’t just leave it lying there like that. Other people would see it like I had.’ Dark colour had come into his face now and he held his hands clasped tightly. ‘I had an old curtain in the boot of the car I’d used to cover the windscreen in cold weather. I covered it up with that.’ Suddenly he shut his eyes, screwing them up as if to drive away the sight, to blind himself. ‘It wasn’t covered, you