by Will Carver
He didn’t fall for coincidences.
She knew something. If there was something to know in this town, she knew it.
Pace drove up to the house, parking behind Mr Beaufort’s old green Jaguar. The driveway stones crunched beneath his tyres.
‘Mrs Beaufort,’ he called. She looked up. ‘Are you feeling all right?’
‘No, detective. One of my oldest friends is dead behind this door. I’m not all right. I have a pain in my arm and chest. I’m just trying to breathe, if that’s okay.’
God, does she save all this vitriol just for me?
He held it in.
He didn’t respond, just walked over to her and helped her to her feet.
‘A car will be along soon. I think it might be best if you wait in there.’
‘Oh, yes, that worked out perfectly last time, didn’t it?’ Her eyes were not her own. They were darker somehow. Older. But not in an elderly way. Old in the way that the universe is old. It knows things. It has seen things. It holds answers that are too far away to ever discover.
‘Mrs Beaufort, it’s cold out here. You’ve recently been in hospital and you’re clearly in pain with what sound like similar symptoms. I am not for one minute saying that you cannot handle your situation but there is a heavy rain forecast and, above all, I really don’t want you standing there when I bust through that door.’
The old bat huffed and groaned as she brushed herself down.
‘Very well. But leave the car open this time.’
Pace went to hold Mrs Beaufort’s arm to help steady her but she shrugged him off. He decided to let her walk back to the car herself. Independent she-devil.
Through the diamond window he could clearly see a body. Her hair was thin and grey. She had a floral dress on. The smatter of brain and plasma on either wall of the hallway and her distance from the door suggested that the killer rang the doorbell, May Tambor answered, and he shot her there and then.
But something didn’t fit.
All the victims had been executed while facing their killer. The shot to the face even matched that of Jess and Rachel Hadley. His female victims had each taken their bullet in the same place. Both boys had swallowed their pellet through the chest. Perhaps that said something about the man with the gun. He was trying to hide the identity of the women, of the mothers. He was breaking the boys’ hearts. Perhaps it was one of those coincidences that Pace did not believe in.
For coincidence to be of use, it had to collide with fate.
The difference with May Tambor’s death was that it was at her home and the murderer had not approached her from behind.
She let them in and then walked backwards down the hallway. It was someone she had known. Somebody she trusted.
She had been alone. The gunman would have known that. But everybody in the town would have known that. Her husband had died four years earlier and she had been scared to leave home since. It wasn’t giving the detective a big enough crumb. Of course, if she hardly ever left the house, it would mean that she hardly ever attended the Good Shepherd.
Salis made house calls. He went to see Mrs Beaufort at the hospital.
The letterboxes on this side of town were placed more conventionally so Pace could not just let himself in as he had at the Bradys’ home. He took a step back, inhaled deeply then rammed through the threshold with his shoulder, knocking all the air out of his lungs as he did so.
He had to step up into the house.
The first thing he did was close the door behind him. Pace had to duck down slightly to see through the diamond to the outside. Mrs Beaufort was muttering to herself in the back of his car. Probably babbling some voodoo chant while sticking pins in a Detective Pace doll, he mused.
He looked over his shoulder at the body of the late Mrs Tambor. She was stretched out nice and straight. Pace reckoned her to be around five feet and four inches. Tall enough to see out of the window at the person knocking. A woman so afraid of risk, of having no exit in a difficult situation, would surely not answer the door to somebody she did not know. An old friend, a priest, a policeman, a local councillor canvassing for votes.
The stench of death had filled the hallway but Pace investigated the other rooms to find them fastidiously clean. Dust-free surfaces, spotless carpets, not a single smear or fingerprint on any tap.
But then there were the biscuits.
More crumbs.
SAFETY IN NUMBERS
Two tracks of dirt lined the carpet where Catherine Raymond had been wheeling the baby back and forth in the pushchair.
She didn’t care about the stains, the little boy had been nodding off along the street and she didn’t want to take him out of the chair because she would have to start the entire soothing process all over again.
And she just couldn’t face it.
She felt wretched about Ben. Maybe she’d been too hard on him yesterday, but the baby, the baby, the tiring, relentless baby, that’s what was making her act differently; in a way that was other than herself. She’d make it up to her big boy. She would take him to the cinema on the weekend. He loved films. And popcorn. She could sit through an animated ninety minutes if it would just put a smile back on her boy’s face.
He had been walking around with slumped shoulders and a sour, downtrodden look that should never grace the face of an eight-year-old child. It was her fault and there had been nothing she could do about it.
But she could feel herself turning a corner. He’d forget it all in time. But she never would. That was the real burden of being a mother. Not the sleepless nights and constant worry, it was that feeling that whatever you were doing, no matter how great you were, you were somehow fucking up your child for the future.
WORRY: EVIL AND GOOD
Letting your child know that you are worried, putting your worry on to them, this is where I find you.
When things progress to anxiety and panic, these are the things I can use.
Worrying about your child, wanting the best for them, trying not to make the mistakes your own parents made, this is the good worry. Even if you don’t get it right, you care. I will not interfere with compassion.
The baby fell into a deep sleep. Catherine had reclined the seat on the walk home from school so that he was lying flat. She had, herself, been reclining in an armchair, pushing the baby back and forth with her foot.
She stopped the motion and he remained in perfect slumber. Allowing herself a smile and a relieved exhalation, she tucked the blanket tightly around the baby, swaddling him in comfort. Then she relaxed back into her seat, her feet resting on the pushchair.
Maybe Steph was right, she told herself. I’ll give Margot a call when I wake up. We can walk home together. In a pack. Safety in numbers.
Then she drifted off into faultless nothingness.
TAKES THE BISCUIT
Actually, it was more a lack of biscuits that concerned Detective Sergeant Pace.
May Tambor’s kitchen was spotless. Cream shaker doors hid every utensil and appliance that she owned, with the exception of a toaster and kettle. Even the oven door revealed a sparklingly clean inside through the transparent front.
Every inch of the oak work surface was clear but for a small section opposite the kitchen entrance. A square of wood was covered in icing sugar. A sheet of sweet snow with eight semi-circles at the top. Beneath that, the sugar had been smudged. Pace could see that some had spilled on the floor below. He walked back out into the hall and stood over the body. The section of kitchen surface with the icing sugar was clearly visible from that spot.
He could see what had happened the day that May Tambor was killed.
The killer called by the Tambor residence – time of death to be determined by the coroner – and knocked on the door. Pace would have the doorbell dusted for prints but expected nothing back on that front.
May Tambor would have entered her hallway, possibly from the kitchen where she was baking, and seen the person through the glass rhombus of her front do
or. Notoriously agoraphobic after her husband’s death, it stood to reason that to have opened the door she would have to have recognised the person. That meant it was somebody from Hinton Hollow. If she was old friends with Mrs Beaufort then the number of people she knew in town would be vast, though her socially crippling condition could narrow the search considerably.
She would have opened the door and been greeted with the barrel of a gun. It was close to her, the spray on the walls indicated that. The killer did not run. He stood over the victim to check her. Pace walked through the movements as though it were happening in real time.
The house was spotless, nothing seemed out of place. No drawers had been upturned, no wardrobes ransacked. The killer came for one reason, to kill May Tambor.
But the biscuits.
Those goddamn biscuits.
Pace stepped over Mrs Tambor just as the killer had. He walked into the kitchen, pretending he could smell home baking rather than decaying pensioner, and he stopped at that small sugar-coated section of work surface that seemed so incongruous with the rest of the impeccably dust-free home.
He counted the semi-circles.
They were obviously marks where biscuits had once been. May Tambor had baked them – perhaps she was expecting company – and sprinkled them with icing sugar. Why she hadn’t placed them on a cooling rack and done this, was unclear. Some agoraphobic idiosyncrasy, maybe.
Pace placed his arm above the top row and mimicked a swiping motion towards his waist. The murderer had stolen the biscuits before leaving. Some of the icing sugar was on the floor where they had been pilfered off the surface.
Criminals made mistakes, of course they did. They left prints and DNA, they walked in front of cameras, they bragged to the wrong person, they returned to the scene of the crime. But this, this seemed so impetuous yet somehow calculated.
Was the man with the gun suddenly hungry after such a kill. It wouldn’t have been that difficult. May Tambor required no stalking or planning, she never left the goddamned house. From the size of the circles there must have been forty biscuits for him to take.
Pace kept saying him in his mind, as though this were the same killer as the man who had been stalking parents and children after school closed. The town was too small and insular for it to be a different case altogether.
Everything was linked.
Perhaps it was fortuitous. The gunman running rampant in Hinton Hollow saw the biscuits and thought that moving them, taking them away, making the lack of biscuits stand out as a clue, would get the investigating officer thinking that it was related somehow.
He’s fucking with me, Pace reasoned.
Pace was annoyed at himself for giving it so much contemplation, thinking that this simple act of taking biscuits would build a better psychological picture of the man he was trying to find so he could contemplate his next move.
He laughed to himself. He was pinning his case on no biscuits. On the complete lack of physical evidence.
Forty fucking biscuits. Why would one person need forty fucking biscuits?
He was feeding somebody.
Maybe he had a dog. Or a friend. Maybe it was a kid with a sweet tooth. Or a cub scout. Either way, the biscuits were nowhere and so was Detective Sergeant Pace.
PLEASURE CENTRE
There were, in fact, forty-eight biscuits.
But only twenty left.
They were starting to go stale, wrapped in a torn plastic bag and rolled up in the boot of the car where Oz Tambor lay. He’d been rationing himself to four meals a day, each comprising of two peanut butter and banana cookies. He could feel himself getting thinner and it was making him feel colder at night in the woods, but the coat was beginning to feel more like a blanket.
HERE’S A NEW THING
I’ve noticed that, all of a sudden, people seem to like to suffer.
Oz took two biscuits from the bag and scoffed the first one whole, trying to trick his stomach or his brain that he’d eaten something large and was therefore full up. He savoured the second one, wanting it to last. Delaying his gratification if only for a minute or two.
In those moments, he was free. He didn’t even think about Liv to get him through. Perhaps it was a simple rush from the intake of sugar. The comedown was instant and severe, though. He’d started to contemplate death more and more. He dreamed again of how things could end and he would get back to Liv. The biscuits were the only thing keeping him alive.
What happened when they ran out?
A LOT OF TALK ABOUT BISCUITS
Inspector Anderson walked in to May Tambor’s house just as Pace was laughing to himself at the inadequacy and surreal nature of the case.
‘Something funny about this, Pace?’
‘Only how funny it absolutely isn’t, sir.’
Anderson looked comically confused as he interpreted the response. He peered over his moustache at the body.
‘Poor May. Tough few years, I tell you.’ Then he stepped over her carcass, just as Pace had, and joined his detective in the kitchen.
Pace was about to begin a short debrief on his findings when Anderson, at his unabashed best, said, ‘That old coot always seems to be on the back seat of your car. Something you’re not telling me?’ He widened his eyes at the inappropriate innuendo.
He ignored the inspector and ran through his findings in the Tambor residence.
‘Seems like a lot of bloody talk about biscuits.’ That was Anderson’s response.
‘If you’ve got anything to add, I’m all ears. You knew her?’
‘Of course. Everybody knows May Tambor. Bloody lovely lady and a marvellous cook, too. Bake sales at the church haven’t quite been the same since her husband died. Must have been about four years ago, now. Didn’t even know he was ill until it was too late, you know?’
Pace nodded as though he did.
‘She’s got a son. Oz. Supposed to be getting married soon. Looks like his mother won’t have to worry about which hat to wear now, eh?’ He turned around to look at the old, bloated baker. Pace looked up to the ceiling and muttered the words ‘Oh, God.’
‘Look, Pace, someone’s got to go and tell the kid. Now either you can do it or I can do it.’
‘Okay.’
‘Well, I don’t want to do it, so I’m sending you. I’ll stay here and get things cleaned up and we can meet back at the station in about ninety minutes.’
Pace bit his tongue. He couldn’t understand why Anderson didn’t want to report May’s death to Oz Tambor, it seemed like this kind of task fell very comfortably into his skill set. But Pace didn’t want to be stuck in that house. He wanted to be out solving the case.
Anderson gave him the address and Pace started out the door.
‘Don’t forget to take your girlfriend home first, though,’ Anderson called after him.
He stepped back over the dead woman. The red light on her answering machine was blinking with messages from Liv Dunham.
ANOTHER EPISODE
‘Finished now, are we?’
That was Mrs Beaufort’s welcome to the detective.
He ignored it.
‘How are you feeling, Mrs Beaufort.’ Pace was now stood by the car looking down at the feeble yet formidable woman.
‘The pain is wearing off and my patience is wearing thin.’
ANOTHER WAY THAT EVIL PRESENTS ITSELF
Mrs Beaufort.
Pace took a breath. The community he had stepped back into was not the community he remembered. It wasn’t just the passing of time that had changed these people. It was something else.
It was him.
‘I would like it if you’d take me to Oz. I’ve known him all his Hinton Hollow life and I should like to be there when he finds he is suddenly and cruelly an orphan.’
‘Buckle up, Mrs Beaufort.’ Pace closed the back door then got in the driver’s seat. He adjusted the rear-view mirror so that he didn’t have to turn around to speak with his passenger.
‘I can direct you i
f you don’t know the way.’ She was looking into the mirror at Pace’s dark, uncaring eyes and faultlessly transmitting the spite from her own. This was not a look that Mrs Beaufort had ever given before. But it was the resting expression of all that was evil in The Hollow.
‘I know the way to the surgery, it’s fine.’ He was almost robotic in his tone.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Are you?’ It was cheap but he’d just about had enough of her. ‘You’ve had another episode,’ he said condescendingly. ‘The best thing for you is to have a sit down with Doctor Green. Just to check you over.’
‘You can pull the car over right now and let me out. I’ll walk.’ She grappled with the handle but the door could only be opened from the outside.
‘I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, Mrs Beaufort, but there is absolutely no way on Earth that I am taking you with me on police business to inform a young man that his mother has been brutally shot and killed in her home. That is not your job, you should not be put under that pressure. Particularly in your condition.’
Her face turned red, he could see it reflected clearly. She was either embarrassed or flustered. Or angry. Or all of those emotions. But she did not respond to him. She wanted to say that it wasn’t his job, either. But I was holding her back.
‘I’ll swing by RD’s on the way and he can come and take you home once you have the all-clear.’
She said nothing.
It was like an interview with Michael Brady.
And that was fine by him. They travelled in silence until they reached the surgery. Pace opened the door for Mrs Beaufort. He offered her his hand as support. She refused. Then she strode by him without a word into the surgery. She didn’t even look unwell.