Evil Impulse

by Leigh Russell

  ‘Yes, I’m planning to go to the doctor.’

  ‘Well, make sure you do.’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing. I’ve had it before. It just stings a bit, down there.’

  He nodded. ‘As long as it’s nothing serious.’

  Could he really be so obtuse? It never seemed to occur to him that she might be mourning for her mother. And he obviously had no idea that she had seen him with another woman. Instead of supporting her while she had been grieving, he had been off chasing someone else.

  ‘Oh yes, they’ll give me a course of antibiotics and it’ll be sorted in a week or two.’

  She fully intended to spin this alleged infection out for longer than a fortnight, after which she would tell him she had her period. That would get her through the next month, buying her enough time to find out exactly what her husband was up to. It was still possible she was giving in to groundless suspicion, but when she thought about what she had seen, there seemed only one explanation. Nothing could alter the fact that she had seen him with his latest victim, his arm slung casually around her shoulders in a gesture of intimacy.

  Whatever happened, she had to save her husband from his evil compulsion, which had already cost more than one woman her life.

  5

  Geraldine stared miserably at a pile of papers on her desk. Nothing they did now could help the poor woman who had been sliced open, sewn up and stored in a drawer at the mortuary, awaiting release for burial. All the police could do for her was discover her identity so that her family could bury her with as much dignity as possible. Other than that, they would do everything in their power to track down her killer and bring him to justice. Someone had placed a piece of cloth – perhaps a pillow – over the dead woman’s mouth and nose, pressing it down until she stopped breathing. It might have been any old rag that could have been boiled, discarded, buried or burned after carrying out its fatal operation. But if the murder weapon was impossible to trace, there had to be another way to trace the killer, and Geraldine would not rest until she found it and tracked him down.

  By contrast to the elusive nature of the murder weapon, the means by which the body had been transported down to the river should have been easy to discover. It was hard to believe a body could be carried along the towpath and thrown in the river without leaving any tracks at all, yet so far scene of crime officers had drawn a blank. There were no unaccounted for footprints leading to the edge of the river bank near where the body had been found, and no signs of anything having been wheeled or lugged down to the water’s edge. The fence on the far side of the path was solid. The only conclusion seemed to be that the body had been deposited in the water somewhere further along the river, or else had been transported to its final resting place by boat. In either case, it must have been thrown in the river in the night when there was no one else around to witness what was happening.

  ‘Given that the body was in the water for a number of days,’ Eileen said with an angry frown, ‘it could have been dropped anywhere along that stretch of the river, quite possibly outside the built-up area, where no one was likely to be watching. There are stretches of water that are not overlooked from either bank, and if the body was deposited at night, there would have been almost no risk of being observed.’

  ‘But whether it was in a boat or floating on the water, how could the body have travelled along the river without anyone seeing?’ Ariadne asked.

  Eileen scowled, as though the team were deliberately concealing evidence that might expose the killer. When she had first moved to York, Geraldine had been disconcerted by the detective chief inspector’s flashes of temper. Before her own demotion from inspector to sergeant, Geraldine had been in line for promotion. In breaking the law to save her twin sister’s life, she had risked her entire career, and was fortunate that she still had a job at all. She liked to think she would have treated her team, had she led one, with more respect than Eileen accorded them, but she would never find out how effective she might have been as a detective chief inspector. After a while she had come to realise that her colleagues accepted Eileen’s irascibility as an expression of the frustration they all shared from time to time during the course of a murder investigation. No one took much notice of her outbursts.

  ‘Well? Does no one have anything useful to add?’ Eileen demanded, glaring around the room. ‘Nothing at all? Are we all completely out of our depth here?’

  No one attempted to crack a pun about the depth of the river where the body had been found.

  ‘We need more information, not more chatter,’ Eileen snapped, although no one had spoken. ‘So let’s get on with it.’

  A team was set up to question everyone who lived or worked along the river, or belonged to one of the boating clubs nestling at the water’s edge, and cyclists and pedestrians were questioned on the towpath. No one had noticed anything suspicious. Finally, a report was turned up that could be relevant. A woman who might match the description of the body had gone missing five days earlier.

  ‘Reported missing five days ago, she could be our victim,’ Eileen murmured thoughtfully.

  Geraldine was sent to advise the missing woman’s husband that there was a chance his wife’s body had been found. While it was unlikely he would be able to identify her, they only needed a sample of her DNA to confirm or refute the identification. Greg Robinson was an electrician, employed in rewiring an old house. Before Geraldine could speak to him she had to get past the householder, a stout middle-aged woman who was reluctant to let her enter the property.

  ‘He’s here,’ the woman admitted grudgingly, ‘but he’s rewiring the house and can’t be interrupted. We’ve been waiting long enough for him to come, and now he’s finally here, I don’t want him disturbed.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist,’ Geraldine replied quietly. ‘We are looking into a serious matter, and no private concern can be allowed to hinder the investigation. I’m very sorry, but you’re going to have to step aside or I will have to caution you for obstructing a police officer.’

  Grumbling under her breath, the woman jerked her head in the direction of the kitchen where Greg was working. He turned when she called his name, his green eyes alert with alarm, and Geraldine saw that he was probably in his thirties, tall and thin.

  ‘The police?’ he repeated when she introduced herself. ‘Is it about Angie? Have you found her?’ His voice shook slightly. ‘Is she all right?’

  When Geraldine asked him to sit down, his demeanour altered. His shoulders drooped and he shook his head.

  ‘What is it? What’s happened? Tell me. I’ve been going out of my mind with worry. Just tell me she’s all right.’

  ‘Greg, we don’t know if we’ve found your wife, but a body has been recovered from the river –’

  ‘No, no!’

  If he was putting on an act, it was certainly convincing. Hearing the cry, the householder came in. She looked furious.

  ‘Is everything all right? What’s the problem now? Don’t tell me you’re not going to get it done on time. I’ve got the decorator booked to start the day after tomorrow –’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to borrow Greg for a while,’ Geraldine said.

  ‘What? But he’s not finished. You can see for yourself, there are wires dangling all over the place.’ She turned to Greg. ‘You can’t leave before the job’s done.’

  Greg followed Geraldine out of the house without a word, shrill complaints echoing after them as they walked down the path. Geraldine explained exactly what she needed from him. As he lived quite close to the police station, she followed him home and went inside with him. He left her in a small square living room, and she heard him bounding upstairs. Glancing around the living room as she waited, Geraldine’s attention was caught by a wedding picture on the mantelpiece. She recognised Greg instantly in the smiling groom, but the beaming bride bore little r
esemblance to the bloated corpse that had been pulled from the river. She sighed, registering how happy they both looked.

  ‘Here you are,’ Greg said, clattering downstairs and entering the living room clutching a wooden hairbrush with fair hair caught in the bristles. ‘I can give you her toothbrush as well if you want, but –’

  ‘But if she comes home, she’s going to need it,’ Geraldine completed the sentence for him. ‘I hope the woman we’ve found isn’t your wife, Greg, but there’s only one way to be sure. But this is enough,’ she added, holding up the hairbrush which she had dropped into an evidence bag.

  He nodded. ‘It’s her hair,’ he muttered helplessly. ‘It’s Angie’s hair.’ He looked up at Geraldine. ‘Please, please, don’t let it be her.’

  6

  As usual, Zoe grabbed her plate without sitting down and turned to leave the kitchen.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ her father asked, eyeing her with a fake smile. ‘Why don’t you sit with us for once, and have your supper here?’

  ‘Why would I want to do that?’

  Zoe’s mother was watching them fearfully, as though mutely begging them not to lose their tempers, but if her father was upset by Zoe’s aggressive tone, he didn’t show it.

  ‘Because we’re a family,’ he replied evenly. ‘We hardly seem to see anything of you these days. We never sit together, and it would be nice to talk to you once in a while.’

  ‘What is there to talk about?’

  ‘We could talk about you,’ he replied patiently. ‘About what we’ve all been up to.’

  Zoe’s mother let out a curious grunt, which he ignored.

  ‘That won’t take long,’ Zoe replied. ‘I’ve been bored out of my skull at school all day. You’ve been at work, probably bored too. Mum’s been sitting around the house, bored. Nothing interesting ever happens and we’re all bored. So what is there to talk about?’

  She turned away.

  ‘Just sit down,’ he replied. ‘Please. Just sit with us.’

  ‘Why? What’s the point?’

  ‘The point is that it might be nice to sit together as a family, and talk to each other. So sit down.’

  ‘Or what?’ she replied. ‘Are you going to shout at me?’

  They both knew she was deliberately goading him. For a second, her father didn’t respond. Then, with a sudden burst of energy, he sprang to his feet, his face flushed with anger. Zoe’s mother reached out and put a restraining hand on his arm. Distracted, he glanced down and shook her off, but by the time he raised his eyes, Zoe had already reached the door. Her heart pounding, she dashed across the hall, raced up the stairs and slammed her door. Her bedroom was allegedly her own private space, but there was no lock on the door and her parents could walk in whenever they wanted. She knew her mother went in there while she was at school, because she often found her duvet straightened, and her clothes gathered up from the floor, but her mother seemed impervious to her protests.

  ‘You say it’s my room, but you just walk in whenever you feel like it,’ she complained. ‘You have no right to come in here when I’m out of the house.’

  Her mother either lied outright and denied having gone in there, or else replied that she had every right to enter any room in her own house. So even her own bedroom didn’t belong to Zoe. Whatever either of her parents said could not alter the fact that she was a prisoner in their home.

  She sat down on her bed, listening, but there was no sound of anyone following her up the stairs. She picked at her food, eating a few peas without touching anything else. Finally she took her plate to the bathroom. At least there she could lock the door. Mashing up her food, she flushed it down the toilet. If there were rats living in the sewers, they must be growing fat on her mother’s cooking. Having finished her nightly ritual, she slumped on the floor, leaned back against the side of the bath, and considered her situation. Whichever way she looked at it, her life was intolerable. Worse than endless pestering from teachers was the claustrophobic atmosphere at home. There seemed to be no end to it, and there was no let-up. Day after day life stretched ahead of her until she was finally old enough to leave her parents’ house. That day couldn’t come soon enough, as far as she was concerned. In the meantime, she had to endure her current circumstances for years and years, feeling as though there was a volcano inside her head, waiting to explode. She had nothing to look forward to, and her life and youth were slipping away. She was already a teenager, and she had nothing to show for the time she had spent in so-called living. The other pupils in her class at school were all idiots or bullies or swots, and there was no one she could talk to honestly about her intolerable existence.

  From downstairs came the sound of raised voices. Her parents were arguing again. All at once, she knew what she had to do. Her father had yelled at her for the last time. With a snarl of frustration, she grabbed her wash bag, dashed back to her room, and closed the door. Seizing her rucksack, she shook it upside down, letting her school books drop on to her bed. Sweeping them to the floor, she began stuffing clothes into her bag. Satisfied she had as much as she could carry, she ran lightly downstairs. Through the small window in the hall she could see it was drizzling outside, so she grabbed her school coat and an old knitted hat that was lying on the floor in the hall and ran out of the house, closing the front door quietly behind her. It would soon be dark and she hurried along the street, slowing down only when she was out of breath from running. At last she reached her school friend’s house and rang the bell. There was no answer. She knocked on the door, but still no one opened it. It had not occurred to her that her friend might be out.

  She had been thinking about walking out of her parents’ house for a long time, but when she had finally acted on her plan, it had been entirely spontaneous, more a reaction against them than a properly thought-out strategy. She was already regretting her impulse, but it was too late to change her mind. If she went home now and her parents spotted her returning with her bag, they were bound to realise what was going on. They might already have noticed her absence and searched her room, in which case they would have spotted that her bag was gone, along with some of her clothes, and other personal items from the bathroom. The missing toothbrush alone was a giveaway. She had to find somewhere to hide where her parents would never find her. Only then would they understand how miserable she was, and how much she hated them. They might even be sorry. And they would no longer be able to dismiss her feelings as trivial.

  She had often overheard them talking about her.

  ‘All teenagers go through a rebellious phase,’ her father had said. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

  He could hardly have been less respectful of Zoe’s feelings.

  ‘Yes, I know you’re right,’ her mother had replied, in another devastating betrayal. ‘But it’s hard to put up with her when she’s like this.’

  Well, now they no longer had to put up with her at all, and if that made them regret the way they had treated her, it served them right. Overcome with self-pity, she sat on the step and began to cry. After a while, it began to rain so she set off to look for shelter, wiping her eyes as she scurried along the pavement. She passed several shops that were closed for the night, but just as she was resigning herself to huddling under a bridge, which would at least offer some protection from the rain, she spotted a café that was still open. Her clothes were damp and she was beginning to shiver. Keeping her hat pulled down over her ears, she addressed the girl behind the counter in as gruff a voice as she could muster, bought herself a hot soup and sat down to sip at it slowly. Hopefully her friend would have returned home by the time Zoe went back there. In the meantime, she had something hot to drink, there was a grubby toilet at the back of the café, and she was safe for a few hours. She wondered if the café would stay open all night.

  Zoe had only once been out at night without her parents, when she had gone to a club in the
centre of town with a group of her classmates from school. If the café closed, she would try and find her way back to the club which she knew remained open until late. She might even see someone from school there and go home with them for the night. With that idea in mind, she finished her soup and sat, waiting for the café to close. She was in no hurry to leave, while it was still raining outside and she had nowhere else to go.

  7

  At the end of her shift, she hurried across Lendal Bridge towards home. The bridge was busy with people going home or out for the night, even on a Tuesday. Not only was the road packed with traffic but the pavement was crowded with pedestrians, in spite of the rain. Keen to avoid colliding with anyone or losing her footing, she hurried on, taking care on the slippery pavement. It seemed to take her a long time to cross the bridge but at last she arrived at the junction where she turned left, away from the station, and walked along the side of the huge Grand Hotel.

  It was quiet once she left the main road, and she hurried between high buildings away from the station. However careful she was, her feet were soon drenched because puddles were difficult to spot in the glimmering lights. The street was virtually deserted in the rain, and the few people she passed took no notice of her as she hurried on. As she reached the end of the road where she turned right into Tanner Row, she had a creepy sensation that someone was following her. She walked faster, along Toft Green towards another hotel, this one on her right on the opposite side of the road. Ahead of her there were two pubs, and an apartment block, and after that the disused brewery next to her own block of flats

  On a wet evening the area was deserted, and she felt a faint sense of unease. The street which she had traversed many times seemed unfamiliar in the gathering darkness until, wherever she looked, strange creatures seemed to be lurking in the shadows. Hearing footsteps behind her, she glanced over her shoulder to see a stranger, striding along. She couldn’t see his face beneath his hood, but she had a suspicion he was looking at her. With an effort she reassured herself that she was worrying about nothing. The rain grew heavier again, and she walked more quickly, cursing herself for having left her coat at home.