The Ladykiller

by Martina Cole

  But George had a secret. A very important and exciting secret that he would not tell to a living soul.

  He ate his own breakfast. For some reason he had a ravenous appetite this morning.

  Chapter Three

  Elaine sat at her till in the supermarket. Every customer who had passed through the large glass doors today had had only one thing on their minds: the rape and murder of Geraldine O’Leary. Since the body had been found, Grantley had been buzzing with news, views and assumptions. While tills crashed around her and people packed their shopping Elaine chatted to a customer, a woman who had known the victim.

  ‘It makes me go all funny, just thinking about it.’ The woman paused to force a large packet of cornflakes into her shopping bag.

  ‘I mean, poor Gerry, she had three of the most gorgeous children you’re ever likely to see. And she was happily married.’ She nodded her head sagely. ‘And how many can say that in this day and age?’

  ‘You’re right there. So who found her then?’

  The woman rearranged her silk scarf. In the heat of the supermarket it was beginning to make her head itch.

  ‘It was a young kid. He was on his way to deliver the papers. Well, he used the cut through from Vauxhall Drive and there she was . . . dead as a bleeding doornail!’ She shook her head again.

  ‘I bet this will just be the start. You mark my words. This is just the start.’

  Elain grimaced and totalled her till.

  ‘Seventeen pounds and eighty-five pence, please.’

  The woman opened her purse and took out a twenty-pound note. ‘Bleeding daylight robbery, if you ask me. I ain’t even got the makings of a dinner here!’

  Elaine smiled in sympathy but her mind was still with Geraldine O’Leary. Poor woman, to die like that. She shuddered.

  Giving the woman her change, she went on to the next customer.

  The whole of Grantley was appalled and shocked at the rape and murder. Every woman knew that it could easily have been her and they were all frightened.

  Frightened and excited. Because nothing like this had ever happened in Grantley before.

  Detective Inspector Kate Burrows looked down at the body and winced.

  Detective Sergeant Willis watched her surreptitiously, smiling slightly as he watched her blanch.

  Who, he wondered, in their right mind, would give a female copper a rape and murder? Women were too emotional for this type of thing.

  He looked Kate up and down on the sly. Not a bad-looking bird for her age. Bit flat-chested to his mind, but she had good legs and nice eyes. Deep brown eyes that matched her hair exactly.

  Willis dragged his mind back to the present as the pathologist spoke again.

  ‘The nail entered the head here.’ He pointed to Geraldine’s temple. ‘On the left-hand side, where it entered the brain. I would say that death was instantaneous. We found traces of semen on her thighs and breasts, which is unusual in these cases. Only a small amount was inside the vagina.’

  The man rubbed his eyes with the forefinger and thumb of his right hand.

  ‘The blow to the face was administered after she had died. As you can see, he crushed the nose. She has several broken ribs. I would hazard a guess that she had been kicked. Kicked very hard as one of the ribs broke and punctured a lung.’

  He shook his head. ‘A very brutal attack. Very calculated. She has scratches and particles of dirt on her knees. My guess is that she put up a fairly good fight.’

  ‘Any skin under the nails? Anything else for us to go on?’ Kate’s voice was low and subdued.

  He shook his head. ‘Nothing, I’m afraid. Of course we can get a DNA reading from the semen . . .’ His voice trailed off. He shrugged. ‘Maybe some traces of hair or fibre will turn up off her clothes. I’ll let you know.’ The pathologist began combing Geraldine’s pubic hair slowly and carefully, his mind back on his job. Kate turned away from the woman’s rapidly greying body.

  ‘Thanks.’

  She walked from the mortuary and Willis followed her. Neither spoke until they were back in the canteen at Grantley Police Station sipping cups of coffee.

  ‘Look, don’t let it get to you, love. These things happen.’

  Kate stared at the younger man, frowning in concentration. She took a deep breath.

  ‘How dare you?’ Her voice was low and filled with rage. Willis was shocked. ‘How dare you patronise me like that? Just who the hell do you think you are? “These things happen”! Is that what you honestly believe?’

  Her voice was incredulous. ‘Do you think that Mrs Geraldine O’Leary is standing in heaven thinking: These things happen. Do you think her husband and children are just shrugging their shoulders thinking: These things happen!’

  Her voice was beginning to rise and Willis looked around him in embarrassment.

  ‘These things don’t just happen, boy.’ She stressed the last word. ‘Out there somewhere is a murdering rapist. Do you understand the enormity of that? Do you? Well, DO YOU?’

  Willis sat rigid in his seat, crimson with shame. Everyone in the room had gone quiet and was sitting watching them.

  ‘It means that for the majority of women normal living will now be curtailed at four-thirty when it gets dark. It means that women who live alone or whose husbands work nights will be sitting uneasily in their own homes. It means that even locked in a car driving along they will not feel safe. It means that parents with young daughters will be sick with apprehension until they return from school, work, wherever they may have been. The list is bloody endless! How dare you sit there and tell me these things happen?

  ‘And one last thing, while we’re getting ourselves sorted out. I am a Detective Inspector. I am your boss. So in future you address me as such. In the six months I have been here there has been a general lack of respect, and as from today your lackadaisical attitude stops.’

  Getting up from her seat, Kate stormed from the canteen, leaving a hush behind her.

  Willis sighed heavily and one of his friends, DS Spencer, went to his table.

  ‘So the vixen’s got claws, has she? Flash bitch! If she’d spoken to me like that I’d have punched her in the mouth.’

  A female voice from a nearby table said, ‘Very macho, Spencer. Sure you ain’t the rapist? I hear the victim had a broken nose.’

  ‘Get stuffed!’ Spencer went back to his cronies and sat down.

  ‘Bloody women. Whoever it was who let them in the force in the first place wants psychiatric help. As for that Burrows . . . Uppity cow!’

  ‘She’s been put in charge of the murder and rape, so you’d best get used to it.’

  Spencer looked at the speaker. ‘Well, let’s see how well she does, shall we? Personally she gets on my wick.’

  ‘Maybe that’s what’s wrong with you, Spencer. She won’t be getting on your wick.’

  Everyone laughed.

  Spencer picked up his cup of tea and with his free hand shoved his middle finger under the other man’s nose.

  ‘Spin on it, Fisher.’

  Fisher grinned.

  ‘Only if you ask me nicely!’ He fluttered his eyelashes suggestively.

  Spencer drank his tea down. Bloody women. It would take a rape to bring out their true colours. He wouldn’t mind but the silly bitch O’Leary had probably been asking for it.

  Kate Burrows sat in her office and tried to calm down. She admitted that she had been hard on Willis, but he got on her nerves. Most of the plain clothes at Grantley CID got on her nerves. She rubbed her hand over her face. She had been on the receiving end of discrimination since she had joined the force, it was an occupational hazard. But this lot here . . .

  She turned her attention to the file in front of her. She wanted every bit of information imprinted on her brain. As in most of the cases she worked on, she wanted to be more knowledgeable than her male counterparts. She began to read.

  A little while later there was a tap on her door.

  ‘Come in.’

 
; The door opened and Willis walked into the room.

  ‘Yes?’ Her voice was clipped.

  Willis nodded. ‘Ma’am, Superintendent Ratchette would like to see you, if you’re not too busy.’

  ‘Thank you, Willis.’

  She watched him turn and walk meekly from the room. Mentally, Kate licked her finger and chalked one up to herself.

  ‘You wanted to see me, sir?’

  Superintendent Ratchette smiled at her as she entered his office.

  ‘Sit down, Kate. I suppose you know that we have had the nationals on to us already?’

  She grimaced. ‘I didn’t know, but I guessed it wouldn’t take long.’

  ‘Well, as usual they’re making a nuisance of themselves. We must try and contain this as much as possible. Hopefully this is just a one-off thing. It’s all we need, especially with Christmas not two weeks away.’ Superintendent Ratchette’s voice was tired and Kate felt sorry for him.

  ‘Well, at the moment, sir, there’s not that much to go on. We’re hoping that forensic will show something up. I’ve already arranged the door-to-door, it’s within a mile radius. The usual thing. Every male from fourteen to sixty-five will be interviewed - their make of car checked, where they work, where they were between six thirty p.m. and seven a.m. Oh, and before I forget, I’ve made DS Dawkins the office manager. She’s good.’

  Superintendent Ratchette raised a bushy grey eyebrow. ‘I bet that went down well, didn’t it?’

  ‘Not really.’ Kate laughed ruefully. ‘Two women on a big case. Makes male CID eyes red just thinking about it!’

  Ratchette laughed out loud. He liked Kate Burrows.

  ‘Well, whatever you think, Kate, it’s your case. If you could just keep me informed of any developments, as and when they occur?’

  ‘Of course, sir. But I don’t like the feel of this one. Geraldine O’Leary worked at Rudys wine bar, but from what I can gather she was not a woman who encouraged men, although she was good-looking and would obviously attract them. We’re checking out all the customers anyway. Most are local men. Her husband was babysitting last night and a woman called Conroy called around at seven-thirty to collect an Avon order and stayed chatting till gone eight when Geraldine O’Leary’s mother came round to drop off some Christmas presents. There’s no way it’s the husband. His alibi is watertight.’

  Ratchette nodded at her.

  ‘Looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you.’

  Kate stifled a yawn. It had been a long day and it still wasn’t over.

  ‘I have a feeling this is going to be a tough one, sir, a very tough one.’

  George walked into his house and was grateful for the warmth of the central heating. He was freezing. Under his arm he had the local paper. He could hear Elaine clattering around as she cooked. Taking off his overcoat, he hung it up in the hall cupboard and silently entered the kitchen.

  Elaine turned from the sink and jumped.

  ‘Oh, George! You gave me a start. I didn’t hear you come in!’

  She waved her hand in front of her face as if cooling herself down.

  He smiled.

  ‘Sorry, dear.’ He sat at the table and looked at the paper. He smiled wider. Across the front page in large black letters was one word: MURDER.

  Settling himself into his chair, George began to read. This morning the body of a woman had been found in Grantley Woods. She had been raped and murdered . . . He felt the familiar excitement flow through his veins. The victim was a Mrs Geraldine O’Leary, a thirty-two-year-old mother of three.

  The poor children! The poor, poor children. Shaking his head, he began to read again.

  Elaine placed a cup of tea by his hand and he looked up at her.

  ‘Isn’t it terrible, George? That poor woman. Those poor little children losing their mother like that, and just before Christmas as well.’ George was surprised at the emotion in Elaine’s voice.

  ‘It’s all we’ve talked about at work. I mean, no woman’s safe, is she?’

  George tutted and shook his head. ‘You be careful, Elaine.’ He pointed a finger at her. ‘Promise me you’ll get a taxi home from work? I don’t want you standing at bus stops in the dark.’

  She stared at her husband and then smiled.

  ‘Oh, George! You old silly.’

  Despite herself Elaine felt an enormous surge of pleasure at his concern. Getting taxis home from work! Well, she would, because as George said it wasn’t safe for her to be standing at bus stops in the dark.

  She started to dish up the dinner.

  Later in the evening, the sex murder was reported on Thames News. Elaine shook her head sadly. But George smiled. His secret smile that just showed his teeth.

  Kate finally arrived home at eleven fifteen. She pulled into her drive and decided that she just couldn’t be bothered to park the car in the garage. She was too tired. Getting out of the car she locked it, stifling a large yawn.

  The front door was opened as she approached it and a woman of indeterminate age practically pulled her into the hallway.

  ‘Get yourself in now, love, you must be frozen. I’ve got your dinner in the oven keeping warm.’

  Kate smiled to herself. Her mother still thought she was eighteen.

  ‘Where’s Lizzy?’

  ‘Oh, she’s in the bath, she’ll be down soon. I heard about the terrible goings on today. Scandalous, bloody scandalous! Was it the husband?’

  Kate followed her mother through the lounge and into the kitchen, where on a small breakfast bar her knife and fork were laid out. She sat on the stool gratefully and accepted a cup of steaming coffee.

  ‘It wasn’t the husband, Mum.’

  Evelyn O’Dowd wasn’t listening which did not disturb Kate. Her mother never listened to anyone or anything.

  ‘It’s usually the husband or some other relative . . .’

  Evelyn opened the oven and Kate felt her mouth water as the tantalising aroma of a good beef casserole wafted towards her.

  ‘Be careful of that plate now, it’s roasting.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum, this is just what I needed.’

  ‘I’ve made soda bread to go with it.’

  Evelyn O’Dowd was tiny and thin, like a little bird. She had black eyes that darted continually and never settled on anything. She wore black all the time which accentuated her thinness. She still looked after her forty-year-old daughter as if she was ten. Kate loved her.

  As she broke off a piece of bread her mother sat opposite her with a cup of coffee and the ever present cigarette. Taking a large draw on it, she blew smoke across the breakfast bar and smiled.

  ‘What a feather this one will be in your cap - when you finally solve it, of course. Which you will, I’m sure of that.’ It was said with absolute certainty.

  ‘Well, we’re doing the best we can, it’s early days yet, Mum.’

  Kate ate the food with an enthusiasm that pleased her mother no end.

  ‘If only your father could have lived to see you, he’d have died of happiness!’

  Kate grinned to herself. Her mother’s Irish sayings were not only unintelligible most of the time, they were often highly amusing - though Evelyn didn’t always think so.

  Declan O’Dowd had been a London docker and had made sure his two children received a good education. Kate’s elder brother now lived in Australia to where he had emigrated to twenty years before. He was a civil engineer and had a wife and five children whom Kate and her mother had never seen in the flesh. Kate had made her career in the police force. Declan O’Dowd had died a happy man shortly after she had passed out from Hendon.

  Kate’s mother had come to live with her shortly after Lizzy, her daughter, had been born. Danny Burrows, Kate’s husband, had left her when Lizzy was three months old. He showed up periodically over the years, turned everyone’s world upside down and then disappeared again. Kate was secretly dreading this Christmas because he was due on one of his flying visits. Lizzy adored her father, which made it hard for
Kate to keep everything on an even keel.

  She heard her daughter patter into the room in her slippers.

  ‘Hello, Mum. I heard about the murder. Me and Gran watched it on the news.’

  ‘Hello, baby, come and give us a kiss.’

  Lizzy went to her mother and put her arms around her. At sixteen she was exquisite. Sometimes the beauty of her own daughter made Kate frightened. Lizzy had the O’Dowd darkness, like her mother and grandmother, but she also had porcelain white skin and startling violet eyes. She looked sixteen going on twenty-five. Unlike her mother she was full-chested, already a thirty-six B and still growing by the looks of her. She was as tall as her mother but far more graceful. One thing she had not inherited from Kate was brains. Though shrewd enough in her own way, she was no scholar, had no interest in anything academic. She worked now in the local Boots, filling shelves and waiting for the magical day they trained her for the tills. That was the height of her ambition and Kate accepted this.

  ‘How was your day then, love?’

  ‘Not bad, Mum, the usual. With the Christmas rush, we just don’t stop. I never even had my coffee break today. Mr Williams the manager said I was doing very well indeed, though.’

  She put on a very posh voice for the last part and Kate and Evelyn laughed. Kate broke off some more soda bread and mopped up the gravy on her plate.

  ‘Shall I run you a nice bath, Mum? I got some bath crystals from the Body Shop last week. It’s the aromatherapy range. They’re lavender and supposed to make you relax.’

  ‘That would be gorgeous. Today has been pretty hectic.’

  Lizzy went from the room and Kate and her mother smiled at one another.

  ‘Sure, she’s a good girl, Katie. That fellow’s been ringing her again. I think it’s love.’

  Kate lit herself a cigarette from her mother’s pack and pushed her plate away from her.

  ‘Well, she’s young, the boys are bound to be after her.’

  ‘True, Katie, but I worry about her. I don’t think she realises the effect she has on them, you know.’

  ‘That’s part of her charm, I think. We’ll keep an eye on her.’

  ‘That we will. Now you smoke your fag while I clear this lot away. You’ll need all the sleep you can get, I’m thinking.’