The Scribe

by A A Chaudhuri

  The evidence against Stirling was getting stronger. He wondered what excuse he’d make up this time.

  ‘Surely, you’re not insinuating that I had anything to do with Natasha’s death?’ Stirling’s expression was incredulous. Although his house was detached, and it was dark, he looked around guardedly, as if someone might overhear. ‘Shall we go inside?’

  They followed him into the house. Also dark, silent. ‘My wife goes to Pilates every Thursday from five till six,’ he explained.

  He offered them coffee, but Carver declined, his tongue craving something stronger.

  They all sat down in the living room, and Carver repeated his question. ‘Where were you this afternoon, Professor Stirling? The girl on reception said you left around midday. Where did you go?’

  ‘I’d rather not say.’

  ‘I’m not sure you appreciate the seriousness of your situation. The law student daughter of a top City partner has been found murdered. And you were seen having a drink with her last Monday night, in Dukes Hotel.’

  Stirling looked like he might be sick. He swallowed hard. No doubt urging himself inside to find a way out.

  ‘Were you having an affair with Ms Coleridge?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Were you trying to? Did she turn you down?’

  Slight hesitation, then Stirling nodded. ‘Yes, on both counts. She led me on all term. We drank cocktails all night, then went our separate ways.’

  ‘Were you angry with her for turning you down?’

  More hesitation. Carver had his answer.

  ‘I was annoyed, rather than angry. I felt that she’d wasted my time.’

  ‘Do you have a temper, Professor Stirling?’

  ‘No, not really. I get angry once in a while. Like most people. But nothing out of the ordinary.’

  ‘Really? That’s not what we’ve heard.’

  ‘Oh yes? From who? Someone who’s obviously got it in for me and has been making up stories.’

  ‘Have you ever hit your wife, Professor Stirling?’

  A knowing smile as realisation hit. ‘It’s her, isn’t it? My wife. You know she’s a manic depressive? Pops pills like Smarties. She hates me, and now she’s trying to get her revenge.’

  ‘Revenge for your affairs? Or for abusing her? Or both?’ Carver’s questions came at Stirling like rapid gunfire.

  The pressure was getting to him. Stirling sprung up from his seat, started manically pacing the room. He ran his hand down the back of his head in exasperation. ‘I have never abused her per se … maybe slapped her across the cheek a few times. But that was a long time ago, when I was drinking too much, and I’m damn certain it happens between husbands and wives all the time. It doesn’t make me a murderer by any stretch of the imagination.’

  ‘You condone violence towards women?’ Carver didn’t let up. His tone was scathing.

  Stirling shook his head, scrunching his eyes shut as he did so. ‘No! That’s not what I said. You’re twisting things.’

  ‘We have Paige Summers’ diary. In it, she categorically states that you hit her. Are you saying she’s a liar?’

  Stirling raised his hands in the air, as if to emphasise his vexation. ‘I’ve told you before, she was obsessed with me. She had a wild imagination. Who knows what other lies she invented?’

  Carver shook his head in disgust, as if he didn’t believe a word of what Stirling was saying.

  ‘We’ve spoken to your mother. We know your father was abusive.’

  ‘My father never abused me.’

  ‘Maybe not you, but he hit your mother.’

  ‘That’s true. So what?’

  ‘So, you know what they say, like father like son. Are you saying your father’s violent behaviour towards your mother had no effect on you?’

  Carver saw the desperation on Stirling’s face. He was like a wild animal caught in a poacher’s net struggling to free himself, but with no obvious means of doing so.

  ‘None whatsoever,’ he said. ‘Naturally, it upset me. I certainly didn’t condone it or feel moved to treat women in the same way.’

  Carver was silent. Digesting Stirling’s response. Making him sweat.

  ‘Do you listen to classical music regularly, Professor Stirling?’

  Stirling looked at Carver in surprise. ‘Yes, you know I do. We only spoke the other day about my love for it. I find it relaxing. It helps me to deal with the stresses and strains of life.’

  ‘Where do you listen to it?’

  ‘At home, in the car, on the Tube.’

  ‘You have an MP3 player, an iPod?’

  ‘MP3 player. So what? What’s this got to do with anything?’

  ‘Just curious. Are you an artistic person, would you say?’

  ‘Not particularly. Elizabeth’s the arty one. Did she mention that she sculpts? She has her own studio upstairs.’

  ‘She did. Can we take a look?’

  Stirling wavered. ‘I don’t think my wife would take kindly to our snooping around her private things. She doesn’t even allow me up there.’

  ‘Please, Professor Stirling. It won’t take a minute.’

  Sensing that he didn’t have a choice, Stirling reluctantly led Carver and Drake up two flights of stairs to the loft. The door was closed. Stirling tentatively opened it, almost as if his movements might telepathically alert his wife to their intrusion. It was pitch-black. He reached inside for the light and turned it on. The room was filled with paintings resting on easels and propped up against the walls, along with various sculptures set on plinths and sideboards. The air smelt of paint and clay, while the bare wooden floor was covered with a thick layer of dust.

  Carver let his eyes wander around the room. In the corner, he spotted a large piece of tarpaulin covering something. Beside it, there was a stool, a stained green overall draped across it. ‘Is that your wife’s pottery wheel under there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Carver walked over to it. He reached out his hand to remove the tarpaulin.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that.’ Stirling stopped him in his stride.

  ‘Too late for that,’ Carver said as he uncovered the wheel.

  For a while, all three men gawped at Elizabeth’s latest work. A naked man and woman. The man was horizontal, the woman straddling his torso, a dagger in her right hand, bearing down into the man’s heart.

  Stirling’s face was aghast.

  ‘Christmas present perhaps?’ Carver said sarcastically.

  ‘Lately, Elizabeth’s been spending more time up here than usual. I had no idea that this was what she was working on.’

  ‘Do you think that might be you and her?’

  ‘Good God, I hope not.’ Stirling chuckled uneasily. But then his face grew long.

  ‘What is it, Professor?’

  ‘The woman looks like …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘She looks a bit like Sarah.’

  Carver bent down over the sculpture. Noted the contempt on the woman’s face, the sheer helplessness on the man’s. ‘You did say you think your wife’s trying to take revenge on you.’ He straightened. Looked directly at Stirling. ‘Maybe you were right.’

  ***

  Carver and Drake left Stirling before Elizabeth got home.

  In the car, Carver considered Stirling’s reaction to his questions – and to his wife’s artwork. All five murders had been committed by a highly intelligent, methodical person. But a cool, calm and collected approach would also have been required. Stirling was certainly clever and meticulous, but he hadn’t come across as calm when questioned. He’d seemed genuinely flustered, his answers unrehearsed. Unless, of course, his dithering was merely an act to sway his interrogators from the possibility that he might be the killer?

  Plus, Carver still didn’t know where Stirling had been all afternoon.

  Why had he been so reluctant to tell him? If he hadn’t been out poisoning Natasha Coleridge, where the hell had he been?

  And then Carver thought about Elizabet
h’s disdain for her husband, her graphic sculpture. Stirling had thought the woman holding the dagger was Sarah. Did this mean he’d also been violent towards her, as well as Paige, Lisa and Elizabeth? Did Elizabeth know this? If so, how?

  Elizabeth had the motive to kill all five girls. But does she have the capacity for murder? Is she so driven by revenge that she could be capable of such atrocities? She wasn’t a big woman either. Yes, she was smart, and good with her hands, but she was also paper-thin. Whether she had the physical strength to carry out the murders was debatable. Then again, the mind was an amazing tool. If a person was determined and driven enough, it was astonishing what they could achieve.

  Carver prayed that this time round, the killer hadn’t been so careful. That as his CSOs conducted their painstaking analysis of the crime scene, they’d find something, anything, that might lead them to the killer.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Friday, 9 April 2010

  ‘Can I help you?’

  Sarah Morrell had been enjoying an intimate first date with hunky, rugby-playing LPC student Connor Dexter. With cheekbones you could cut glass on, dreamy blue eyes, kissable lips and a butt as pert as a peach, Sarah also suspected that underneath that slim-fit shirt of his he had a rock-hard six-pack. She was looking forward to finding out later if she was right.

  The handsome couple were tucked away in a snug alcove of a popular Bloomsbury bar, nursing a bottle of Cabernet. The area was a hotspot for London university students and postgrads at the nearby Bloomsbury Academy of Law. But it was rarely frequented by the likes of the tall, elegant woman, dressed in a black cashmere overcoat, four-inch court shoes and wearing a massive rock on her ring finger, who’d just walked up to their table.

  The woman glanced at Connor, cut him a dry smile. ‘So, you’re what she moved on to.’ Her eyes ran over him. ‘I can see why.’

  Sarah’s date looked dumbfounded. He said nothing, took a nervous sip of wine.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ Sarah demanded.

  Elizabeth Stirling picked up Sarah’s wine glass, drained its contents, then placed it back down on the table. ‘Elizabeth Stirling. Ring any bells?’

  Sarah was a pro at keeping her cool. But Elizabeth saw apprehension in her almond-shaped eyes. She was rattled. Brilliant.

  ‘Professor Stirling’s wife?’ Sarah said coolly. Just like that, the apprehension had evaporated, her expression inscrutable.

  ‘Don’t play innocent with me, you little home-wrecker. You know exactly who I am. And I know exactly what you’ve been getting up to with my husband over the last six months.’ Elizabeth explained how she’d followed them to a hotel, watched them emerge separately the next morning, before challenging her startled husband in the car park.

  Connor had gone from looking mildly uncomfortable to wanting the ground to swallow him up. ‘Another bottle?’ he asked Sarah hopefully.

  ‘Don’t move,’ Elizabeth ordered.

  ‘As far as I could tell, you don’t have a home to wreck.’ It was a cold, malign thing to say, but Sarah couldn’t help herself. That was who she was. When anyone threatened or challenged her, she bit back. With interest. What’s more, she was still furious with Stirling for striking her across the cheek the previous weekend, and for threatening her future with Channing & Barton.

  Sarah was afraid of no one – certainly not Stirling or his psycho bitch wife.

  She wanted Elizabeth to know that. So she kept going. Kept spouting her venom. ‘Maybe if you weren’t so cold, if you paid your husband a little more attention in the sex department, he wouldn’t go looking for younger, hotter blood.’ She cocked her head to one side, smiled smugly. ‘Or maybe you’ve tried, but he’s the one who’s gone frigid because you can’t give him kids.’

  Elizabeth had come there to teach the little tart a lesson – to threaten her future hopes as a lawyer, to embarrass her in front of her new boyfriend. She hadn’t imagined her to be so ruthless, so self-assured. Was that what had excited her husband?

  The pain of not being able to have children was one that gnawed at Elizabeth every second of every day; like some ugly flesh-eating disease. Making her feel more and more abhorrent to the outside world as it devoured her. Making the simplest of tasks a chore. Making life almost unbearable. And now, to add to her suffering, she’d discovered that her husband, who, for all his despicable shortcomings, she’d never have believed capable of disclosing her most agonising secret to an outsider, had in fact revealed it to his shallow bit on the side. This beautiful, vicious young woman who’d used James for her own gratification and mercenary purposes, then cast him aside like yesterday’s news, and now laughed in his wife’s face as if her feelings meant nothing. As if she’d brought it on herself.

  Sarah had made her feel so small, so pathetic, so worthless, Elizabeth didn’t know what to say or where to look. She told herself to hold it together until she got out of there.

  ‘Just stay away from my husband in future,’ she warned, willing her voice not to falter. ‘Or you’ll live to regret it.’

  She didn’t allow Sarah the chance to respond; she turned on her heel and walked out of the bar, not noticing the individual sitting in a quiet corner sipping a beer, and who had been watching the show with interest from a discreet distance.

  She didn’t stop walking until she’d reached the end of the road and turned the corner.

  At that moment, her body shaking with hurt and humiliation, Elizabeth saw that it was all her husband’s fault that she’d been made to feel so useless, so unloved, so unattractive. If he’d stayed true, hadn’t allowed his hands to wander like his father before him, none of this would have happened.

  She’d give him one more chance. But if she discovered he still couldn’t keep his flies zipped up, making a mockery of her and their marriage in the process, then she’d make him sorry.

  She’d make him sorrier than he’d ever been.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Friday, 12 December 2014

  ‘So, you haven’t told me. Are you going to your mother’s for Christmas?’

  Maddy sat opposite Paul in Jewel, a West End bar just off Regent Street. It was Friday night, and she’d managed to escape the office early, taking the opportunity to do a spot of Christmas shopping on Oxford Street before meeting Paul for a drink. The bar was rammed with an eclectic mix of shoppers, workers and tourists, while the ritzy decor was tasteful rather than garish.

  Maddy usually loved central London at this time of the year: the streets lit up like a scene from a fairy tale; the buzz of stressed, excited shoppers; the delicious smell of roasted chestnuts hanging temptingly in the air; street stalls selling naff Santa hats and even naffer singing snowmen. There was an all-round aura of happiness, optimism and festive cheer.

  But this year, it was lost on Maddy. Since Natasha’s death, the office had felt like a morgue, everyone stunned by the senior partner’s daughter’s murder just weeks after Sarah’s. More unsettling was the news that forensics had once again turned up nothing, other than confirming that the apple juice had been spiked with one of the most highly toxic insecticides on the market. This, together with the volume Natasha drank, had been a lethal combination.

  Unsurprisingly, the firm’s Christmas ball at the Dorchester Hotel had been cancelled as a mark of respect for Coleridge and his family, and the managing partner was holding the fort until Coleridge felt able to return to the helm.

  Even as she’d battled her way through the masses on her way to meet Paul, Maddy couldn’t help looking over her shoulder. Couldn’t help wondering if the killer was behind her, tracking her every move, somehow aware that she was still helping Carver, waiting for the right moment to silence her for good.

  But by the time she’d arrived at the bar on Glasshouse Street, only seconds away from seeing her best friend, she’d felt calmer, certain that the killer would never strike with Paul there at her side. Later, they’d take the Tube home together, and she’d be safe. For tonight at least.

/>   ‘Not sure if I can stand it,’ Paul said grimly. ‘Philip will be there.’ He rolled his eyes for effect.

  ‘Her latest squeeze?’

  ‘Uh-huh. He’s more than that. They’ve been together for almost a year. He with the terrible toupee, Hitler moustache and donkey laugh.’

  Maddy didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Her heart went out to Paul, forced to cope with his vacuous mother’s soap opera love life, drifting from one man to another, forever putting her own needs above her son’s. But the way Paul joked about her and her squeezes was also quite comical.

  ‘Go on, laugh, I know you want to,’ Paul said grumpily.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Maddy giggled, twirling her straw between her thumb and index finger, ‘it’s just the way you describe them.’

  ‘If I didn’t make light of it, I’d go insane,’ Paul laughed back. ‘So, as I was saying, I’m not sure if I can be bothered. She hardly ever calls me to see how I’m doing, and I end up feeling like a giant gooseberry. Plus, I resent seeing some buffoon sitting at the head of the table. It was Dad’s place, and all I can think is that he should be sitting there, not one of her idiot boyfriends.’

  ‘Forget that, you should be sitting there. You’re the head of the house.’

  ‘It’s because I’m gay,’ Paul said. ‘I’m not a real man as far as she’s concerned.’

  It was so unfair, Maddy thought. He didn’t deserve to be treated so shoddily by his own mother. But she was a superficial, selfish woman, and sadly Paul had drawn the short straw with her.

  ‘Spend it with me and Gran then,’ she said, finishing off her margarita, her insides hit by a blast of tequila in the last dregs.

  Paul grinned. ‘I thought you’d never ask. I’d love to. Another round?’

  ***

  Carver leaned back in his chair and squeezed his stress ball. Repeatedly. Until his knuckles turned pallid, his hand throbbed, and he found his mind zoning in on the uphill struggle he faced. He swivelled round and studied his wall, littered with facts, signposts, names, everything and anything possibly relevant to each murder; plastered with large, glossy prints of the victims – graphic, shocking, sickening to most, but not to Carver. The job had made him immune to the kind of atrocities that would give any normal, sane human being recurrent nightmares. It had to be that way. Otherwise, he’d go mad, let alone be able to get up and face the day.