by William Shaw
‘See?’ she said. ‘Dead drunk.’
And then Ronald opened an eye.
‘Fuck,’ he slurred.
‘Go back to sleep, Ronald,’ said Mrs Russell.
‘Can’t walk,’ he murmured.
‘I’ll help you in a minute,’ she said. ‘A nice bath.’ She strode towards him and lifted the glass to his lips. ‘Just another sip,’ she said.
She turned to Breen as she poured a little of the drink into his mouth. ‘You interviewed my brother, didn’t you? He was Ronald’s alibi. He told me you’d talked to him. We were here together for dinner, he said.’
‘Was that true?’
‘We were. Ronald wasn’t. At least not all of the night. We sleep in separate beds, but I heard him get up and leave. He was away most of the night. When that poor girl was getting killed.’
‘Which night?’
‘Thursday night. He didn’t get back until some ungodly hour on Friday morning. I pretended I hadn’t heard him. It’s what you do, isn’t it?’
‘See, Helen?’ said Breen. ‘New evidence.’
‘Ah yes. I wanted to show you something else. If you still need it, come with me.’
‘Don’t go,’ mumbled Ronald, head lolling.
His wife gently pushed his head back down onto the pillow. ‘Stay here,’ she told him firmly. ‘I’ll just be a second. Oh, it’s fine,’ she told Breen. ‘I’ll lock the bedroom door. He’s in no state to go anywhere. We’ll only be a minute.’
Breen hesitated.
‘Come. You need to see this.’
And she led them out of the room, taking the key from the inside and locking the door from the landing. ‘There.’
‘What do you want us to see?’
‘He keeps them under his mattress,’ she said. ‘You should come and look.’
‘He keeps what?’ asked Breen.
‘His pictures. You want evidence?’
They walked up the stairs, past the second floor and up to the old servants’ quarters at the top of the house, unlocking a door and opening it. Mr Russell’s bedroom had a single bed in it, and one shelf piled with books.
‘Separate bedrooms?’
‘His idea, not mine. He couldn’t bear to be in the same bed as me. He likes it here. It’s private. He locks the door usually, but I have a spare key he doesn’t know about.’
It was a small room. A mirror. A small abstract painting that could have been Soviet. A risqué print by Aubrey Beardsley. The single bed was made up with a tartan blanket on top. ‘Here. Help me lift it,’ she said.
Under the mattress were three scrapbooks. ‘There. It’s evidence. Take a look. I always knew they were there. I didn’t really know what they meant until Helen here came to tell me about…’ She pointed to Helen’s face. ‘And the other women.’
Breen stepped forward.
‘People will say it’s my fault, I suppose. I should have known, shouldn’t I? All those excuses. Working late. The way he looked at young girls. You know what the awful thing is? I realise I did know, in a way. And I never did anything. You really don’t believe it. If I had, maybe…’
‘You can’t blame yourself, Mrs Russell,’ said Breen. ‘He’s the one who did it.’
Helen had already opened the first of the scrapbooks. It was full of photographs, cut out from Scandinavian pornographic magazines, carefully pasted onto the blue paper pages. Some of the girls looked very young. They posed in blonde pigtails and dirndls, bare-chested. Others were older, with dark tufts of pubic hair.
‘Oh my God,’ said Helen, turning a page.
‘I can’t bear to look at them,’ Mrs Russell said.
As for Breen, he found it embarrassing to be looking at these pictures with two women in the room.
She turned the leaf again. And then again. ‘Don’t you see? The ones that look like little girls… And the other ones, the older ones, look what he’s done to their faces.’
Breen leaned forward. She was looking at a page with a picture of a naked woman standing on a tennis court, hands on her hips. Her face had been entirely obliterated by biro, so much that the paper it had been on had disintegrated under the repeated, angry circles.
Again, she turned the page. This one showed a young woman, fully clothed, but again, the face had been completely destroyed. ‘That’s Penelope Tree,’ she said. ‘You know. She used to be a teenage model.’
Breen started turning pages too. On some older bodies he had pasted the faces of younger girls.
‘She found this and she did nothing,’ muttered Helen.
He looked round. Mrs Russell had gone. ‘What was she supposed to do?’
‘What a creep. Murderous, fucking creep.’
The faces of girls left intact; the women’s all scrawled out, destroyed.
‘Why didn’t you tell me? That when you saw the ring, you knew it was him?’
She closed the scrapbook. ‘I wasn’t sure.’
‘Yes, you were. Besides, even if you weren’t, you could have told me what you suspected.’
She bit her lip. ‘Don’t judge me, Cathal. After everything that has happened.’
‘Why didn’t you trust me?’
‘The ring you gave me was the same one he gave to Kay Fitzpatrick. It was in the drawer next to her bed at the hospital. It was just so creepy.’
‘Kay was Julie Teenager’s driver. I spoke to Tom Keylock. He confirmed it.’ The second ring hadn’t been for his wife; it had been for Fitzpatrick. He should have figured it out: when he’d asked Russell about the driver, he’d denied even knowing there was one. The others had all admitted they had heard of her, at least.
Russell had known that Kay could identify him; she must have suspected he was the one who had killed Bobienski.
‘When I saw the ring and realised it was him, I was just thinking: he had murdered two women and was going to get away with it. It crossed my mind, that if I killed him, everything would be all right, wouldn’t it? What would they do to me? A pregnant woman, going a bit mad? I’d be out in a few years.’
‘You came here to kill him?’
‘Not really. I came here to warn his wife. To tell her what her husband was really like. I was awake all last night, you know. It’s not easy to sleep with all the old biddies moaning – Christ, I hope when I’m old I don’t smell like they do! I realised how much danger she must be in. And, you know what? I suppose I was angry with her for letting all this happen. So I came here to tell her, instead. To talk to her.’
‘How did she take it?’
‘I was expecting a row. I was coming to tell her that her husband was a murderer and a pervert. But she just sat me down, made me tea and listened. So I told her everything. She didn’t even cry. I think she knew all along. Imagine that, Cathal.’
‘We should go back down,’ said Breen. ‘Mint is outside, with a car.’ He picked up the three scrapbooks, went to the door and turned the handle. But when he pulled, the door didn’t move. He tugged harder.
‘Shit.’
‘She’s locked us in,’ Helen said. She nudged him aside and tried it herself.
‘She’s going to escape with him, get him away. He’s still her husband.’
‘You think so?’
‘We’ve got to stop her,’ said Breen.
He moved back to the door and yanked at it again. Then he tried crashing his shoulder against it, but the door had opened inwards. He would have to break the whole frame to get out that way.
‘Help me,’ he said, but Helen just stood there.
He looked around for something he could use as a lever, but there were only coat hangers and shoe horns in the closet.
Breen shouted through the door. ‘Mrs Russell. There’s a police car outside. Don’t do anything you’ll regret. Please.’
He returned to the door and braced his leg against the wall next to it and pulled as hard as he could. He was sweating now; the damp on his palms made it hard to grip the doorknob. Looking around, he found a cravat and wrapped
it round the handle, using it to grip.
Something gave. He shot backwards, landing on the bare floorboards, banging his head against a chair by the bed.
But when he looked up, the door was still closed and the knob was spinning on the floor. All he had done was pull it off.
‘It’s OK, Cathal. She won’t be going anywhere with him. She knows what he did.’
‘We can’t leave her alone with him. She’ll be in danger.’
He ran to the window. It opened onto the back of the house but it was four floors up.
‘Can you see anyone?’
‘Hello!’ he shouted. ‘Is there anyone there?’ Breen looked down. There was an iron drainpipe just to the left of the window. He tried to reach out to it, but it was too far away.
‘Shit.’
When he looked round, Helen was listening at the door.
‘What’s she doing?’
‘Can’t tell.’
Breen pushed the bottom sash up as far as it would go, then edged himself onto the sill, clinging on to the frame with both hands.
‘Cathal. What the hell are you trying to do?’
‘Grab my left hand. So I don’t fall.’
‘Don’t be stupid. Please. There’s no need. It’ll be OK.’
‘Hold it,’ he shouted.
She came towards him and took his hand. ‘Cathal. Please. No.’
‘Tightly,’ he said.
Squatting on the window ledge, he swung his right leg at the drainpipe, until his toes could hook around it. There was a bracket about an inch below, so he slowly lowered his shoe until it braced against the rusted metal. The cast iron pipe descended to the ground at the point where two walls met. If it didn’t come away from the wall, he could lower himself down on it, bracing himself against the brickwork.
‘You’re an idiot, Cathal. Please.’
He closed his eyes for a second and breathed to steady himself.
‘Stupid bloody wanker,’ whispered Helen, but she still held his left hand tightly. ‘Don’t you want to see this baby?’
He paused. ‘Don’t say that now,’ he said.
He flung his right hand across. It missed the pipe and his right foot slipped.
‘Shit.’ He scrabbled to raise his foot back up to the bracket, flailing in clear air.
‘Fucking fuck,’ said Helen. ‘This is a stupid idea. I don’t want you to do this. I need you, Cathal. Please. I need you.’
Caught there, it would be just as hard to swing his body weight back to the window. There was nothing for it now. Without someone with the strength to pull him back up, his only choice was to climb down – or fall.
A second time he pushed his free arm towards the pipe. This time he got close enough to scrabble his fingernails round the paintwork until they could at last get some kind of grip.
He looked down. Directly below was a small square of concrete with a metal dustbin. If he fell from here he would be lucky just to break his legs.
‘Let go.’
‘No. I won’t.’ She gripped his hand more tightly.
‘I can’t get back in, anyway, now. There’s only one way.’
‘I can pull you back in. I can.’
‘Please. My arm is getting tired. I won’t have the strength to do it soon. You have to let go.’
He had seen a man fall from a tower block once. The body had landed next to him, skull flattened like a half-orange on the tarmac.
‘Farm girl, remember. I’m strong. Don’t, Cathal. Please. You’re going to die.’
‘No. You have to let go.’
‘It’ll be my fault if you die, Cathal. Please.’
Breen looked up at her. She was crying now. ‘You have to do this. After three. One… two… th—’
And he felt her loosen her grip on him. It happened fast after that. The moment he felt his hand was in free air, his left leg slipped off the window ledge and he was floundering for a second foothold, his left hand waving in the air.
‘Paddy!’ she screamed.
Just as his left hand reached the pipe, his feet lost their grip and he began to slide down the pipe. With both hands on the pipe he knew that only his legs could slow his fall, so he pressed his left leg against the rough wall, ripping the cloth from his trousers, and searing his skin.
Miraculously, the ancient pipe held. His body was wedged now, hands on the pipe, knee braced against the rough wall. He stopped falling.
‘Cathal?’
‘I’m OK.’
He took a breath.
From there, the descent was relatively simple: an ungainly scramble down the back of an old London house. When he reached the bottom, he looked up. Helen was scowling at him.
The kitchen door was open. He ran back upstairs.
The bedroom was empty. Had they run?
Downstairs again. But the front door was locked. Had she escaped through it?
Then he heard the sound of water, splashing from above. Again, he ran back upstairs. He realised the door to the first-floor bathroom, where she had gone to turn off the running bath, was closed now. He turned the handle; locked. Thumped on the door. ‘Mrs Russell. Open the door.’
‘Just a minute,’ a voice answered, as if everything was perfectly normal.
He kicked the door. ‘Open it.’
Slightly irritated now: ‘Give me a little more time.’
‘Cathal,’ came a shout from upstairs. ‘What’s happening?’
Breen raced up the next two flights of stairs to where Helen was still trapped. The key was in the door. He turned it.
‘Where is she?’
‘In the bathroom.’
‘Oh,’ she said.
They were too late. By the time they made it downstairs, Mrs Russell was standing at the open doorway to the bathroom, wiping her arms dry with a towel.
‘He’s gone,’ was all she said.
She had unlocked the door herself. Her naked husband was lying in the bath, with only his nose and the backs of his floating hands above the water, very pink and hairy. His white underpants lay crumpled on the mat.
There was an extraordinary stillness to him.
A man drowned.
In the time they were locked in his bedroom, Mrs Russell had dragged the drunken man here, helped him into the bath, and held his head below the water. She would have had to hold it there for two, three minutes, but it would not have been hard.
People die so easily in water.
Breen bent down and grabbed the man’s shoulders and lifted them.
‘You’re too late. He’s really dead, you know.’
With his arms under Russell’s armpits, splashing water onto himself, he started to drag the warm, flabby body out of the bath.
‘Help me.’
Helen pushed past Mrs Russell and took the lifeless man’s legs. Together they lifted him out of the water and dropped him onto the floor; he fell like a bag of meat.
Breen leaned down, grabbed Russell’s nose and forced a breath into his mouth. He tasted the whisky there.
Breen breathed again.
And again.
And again.
He thumped Russel’s chest repeatedly, making his body jolt and his flaccid penis flap from side to side, until he heard the ribs crack, but his wife was right. Nothing would bring Ronald Russell back to life again.
There was a doorbell ringing.
When he looked around, Mrs Russell was standing with the Waterford crystal in one hand, an inch of whisky in it, and a bottle of pills in the other.
‘Sarge? What’s going on?’
It was Mint, calling through the letter box.
‘So,’ said Mrs Russell, placing the pills and the whisky on the chair by the bath, ‘We better get our story straight for the police then.’
‘Death by misadventure,’ said Helen. ‘Like you said, it’s easy.’
‘Helen?’ said Breen.
‘They’ll believe it, too.’
Breen looked at her, horrified. Whisky, sleeping pills
and a warm bath. ‘It’s not what happened,’ he said.
‘I’ll go and let your policeman in,’ said Mrs Russell.
‘Not yet,’ said Helen. Mint was banging on the door hard now.
‘You can’t do this.’
‘You didn’t even know if the courts were going to punish him,’ Helen said.
‘She’s just killed a man. In cold blood.’
‘Yes,’ Helen said. ‘She did.’
And as he peered at her, trying to work out what had happened, Helen leaned forward, took a towel and wiped Mrs Russell’s fingerprints off the whisky glass, then, holding it just by the cloth, placed it carefully by the cooling bath and the pale body of Mrs Russell’s husband.
FORTY
But Breen said nothing.
When he let Mint in at the door, all he said was, ‘There’s been an accident. Call for an ambulance.’
‘Accident? What kind of accident? How?’ Of course, Mint wanted to know everything; to understand what had happened at the house in Upper Addison Gardens. And Breen could not tell him.
‘Please, just do as I ask. Call for an ambulance.’
And he sent Mint back to the police car while Helen finished arranging the scene upstairs. A man who had drunk too much, had taken a few of his wife’s sleeping tablets, and who had drowned in his own bath.
Now Mint stood on the edge of the garden path as the ambulance men struggled down the steps with the blanket-covered body strapped to its stretcher. Neighbours gaped open-mouthed, shocked. And when he could, Breen sneaked glances at Mint’s face, scanning for any flicker of doubt, any suggestion that he would say something to the local coppers who were arriving now. Mint trusted Breen; he was a good, honest copper.
When the stretcher passed, he looked round and saw Breen watching him. In that moment, Breen caught the expression of bewilderment on his face.
Breen, sick at himself, turned to the doorway, where the woman who was having his baby had put her arms around Kathryn Russell, who was weeping, for everyone to see. A grieving widow.
A bystander called to Mint. ‘Oi, copper. What happened?’
And he heard Mint answer, ‘It was an accident.’ But when Breen turned to look at him, Mint glared back with a new look; one of distrust and loathing.