Killing You Softly

by Lucy Carver

  Come on, Alyssa – they said you were smart! Why so slow to pick up the clues? Bad things are happening under your nose. It’s up to you to work them out, which I’m sure you can do if you’re as good as they say. The killer is in plain sight. Catch me if you can, memory girl. Love and kisses …

  Marco sat beside me, turning the car’s ignition.

  Four red hearts in a text message from an unknown number, which turned out to be Marco’s.

  Red, like the other carefully laid clues, like the red of Scarlett’s name. How could I have ignored it? Had I not been paying attention, for Christ’s sake? No, I’d been knocked sideways by Jack’s jealous reaction and spent all my energy convincing him that I wasn’t the least bit interested in Marco. Prime example of dramatic irony, as Bryony would doubtless have pointed out.

  Killing me softly.

  Red, red, red, the connection between all the clues – the hearts, the handwritten messages, the lipstick.

  Red is the colour of anger. A red mist is said to form before a killer’s eyes, he points the gun and shoots, raises the knife and stabs. Lady Macbeth has so much blood on her hands she can never wash them clean.

  It’s also the colour of romance.

  Roses are red, my love,

  Violets are blue,

  Sugar is sweet my love,

  But not as sweet as you.

  Killing you softly.

  I groaned as Marco started the engine. I tried the handle again though I knew it was hopeless.

  The car shot forward, spitting gravel. Headlights raked across the lawn as he swung towards the drive.

  ‘Stop,’ I pleaded.

  He put his foot on the accelerator.

  ‘Marco, this is futile. The cops are on their way.’

  We gathered speed past Saint Sam’s house, out through the gates on to the road, swinging left away from Chartsey along a winding lane that would eventually meet up with the main road into Oxford. There were no street lamps, no road markings, only high bare hedges to either side.

  ‘Talk to me, Marco. Say something.’

  He unleashed a torrent of foul, unrepeatable insults, took us up to seventy on an icy road that snaked viciously up and downhill.

  I groped for the seat belt and tried to strap myself in, but a sudden sharp bend made me lurch against him, sending us swerving across the road. He steadied the wheel and pulled us back on course, drove on like the maniac that he was.

  ‘OK, you win!’ I gasped. ‘If that’s what all this is about, I admit it – you were too good for me.’

  He kept his foot down, didn’t even glance sideways at me. All I saw was his beautiful, fixed profile, which could have been sculpted in marble for all the emotion it conveyed.

  But something that Zara had explained about the narcissist’s craving for admiration made me keep on with the flattery. ‘Much too clever. I was so slow in comparison, and I guess Scarlett was too. You must feel really good about beating us both.’

  We came to a crossroads and without braking Marco shot straight across.

  ‘Marco, I’m sorry I disappointed you. I did my best but you were too good.’

  ‘I’m laughing so hard my gut aches. Honey, how wrong can you be?’ he gloats in his fake Texan drawl.

  He’d enjoyed every moment.

  ‘Catch me if you can.’

  He’d posted a video of Galina’s kidnap on Twitter.

  ‘This is going to get worse.’

  The locker door swings open, Galina’s tie hangs from it. ‘PLEASE HELP ME,’ Galina writes.

  But I’d failed. I hadn’t helped her. I’d suspected Alex, Mikhail, Sergei, Will, even Sammy Beckett, but not Marco, or at least not for long. Because I’d taken him at face value – a privileged, self-satisfied player who skimmed over the surface of life, who was too busy partying, travelling around Europe and appearing in gossip mags to be taken seriously.

  I didn’t for a moment imagine that Marco could have been the driver of the old black Merc.

  ‘If I drive a car and hit you at thirty miles per hour, you bounce off my bonnet and collect a few broken bones. Forty miles per hour – serious head injuries. Fifty – you’re dead.’

  I find Jack, my Jack, down a dark side street, amongst the garbage. He’s semi-conscious and bleeding from the forehead. I beg him not to move. Water gushes from a broken down-pipe, I’m drowning in a tsunami of fear. I call 999.

  ‘Try to keep him awake. The ambulance is on its way. It should be with you in five minutes. How is he doing? Is he still conscious? Good. I’m staying on the line – I won’t leave you. Stick with it. You’re doing a great job.’

  I wasn’t. I was failing, floundering drowning.

  Five minutes feel like five hours. Then I hear the sirens and see blue lights flashing.

  I heard sirens. Blue lights flashed above the tops of the hedges. Marco pushed his speed up to eighty. We came to a roundabout, converging with two police patrol cars racing towards us from opposite directions.

  Swearing, gripping the wheel, Marco drove his car straight over the humpbacked roundabout. I shot out of my seat and struck my head on the roof, slumped back in the seat and tried to grasp hold of the door handle. He chose the only clear exit, but we’d only travelled a few hundred metres down a new side road before there were more blue lights and sirens ahead of us. Marco took a final bend then found a white police Range Rover blocking our way. He braked hard. Tyres squealed as we swerved, shimmied and careered into the ditch. Air bags inflated and the engine cut out. Marco’s door was jammed. Mine was the only one that would open.

  Ripley leaned in and gently helped me out.

  ‘Stupid bitch!’ Marco yelled as he struggled in vain to free himself.

  ‘You – you’re unspeakable!’ I shot back at him as dry, angry sobs erupted from deep in my chest. ‘You revolt me – you know that?’

  He shook his head as Ripley freed me from the wreck.

  Her two uniformed guys were less careful with Marco. They hauled him across the central gear control and out of the car. I’m not saying they didn’t follow police restraint procedures. What I am saying is that when I last looked, before Ripley drove me away in her car, Marco was lying face down on the road, arms pinned behind his back, not going anywhere.

  ‘So, my advice is the same as it was last time we spoke,’ my buddy the inspector told me. ‘You need to go home.’

  It was like throwing a bucket of cold water in my face. I stared at her in disbelief. ‘You know I don’t want to do that.’

  ‘You may not want to, Alyssa, but that’s because you’re too close to the situation to see things clearly. My job right now is to take a long, cool look and advise you on how best to keep you safe.’

  We were back at school, where there was an unprecedented amount of activity going on, given that it was 2 a.m.

  Saint Sam was up and about, dressed in his grey principal suit. Molly was there too – equally immaculate. She’d corralled my friends inside the technology centre – Eugenie, Zara, Connie, Will, Luke and Hooper. Charlie wasn’t there because she’d joined Jack in the Queen Elizabeth for treatment to her ankle, according to Zara. I’d told her the latest about Marco – currently held in a police cell in Ainslee, waiting to be interviewed by Sergeant Owen and Inspector Ripley, as soon as Ripley was through giving me advice.

  ‘It’s a free country. You can’t make me leave,’ I pointed out.

  ‘That’s perfectly true.’

  ‘Besides, it’s not logical. Why would I leave now that you’ve arrested Marco and the whole thing is almost over?’

  ‘To let events settle down, give yourself breathing space.’

  ‘What if I want to stick around and visit Jack in the Q.E.?’

  ‘Jack’s not in danger. He’ll survive a couple of days without visits from you. And don’t worry – we’ll keep you informed about Galina.’

  ‘You’ll let me know as soon as Marco tells you where she is?’

  ‘The minute we find her – yes. I
’ve got your mobile number so I’ll keep in touch.’

  ‘And where would you like me to go if I agree to leave?’

  ‘To your aunt in Richmond?’ Very cool and formal. In fact, excessively so, given the buddy-cop relationship I thought we had.

  ‘She’s not at home. She’s in Brussels on business.’

  ‘Don’t you have other family members you could stay with?’

  ‘No. My parents died when I was three. I’m an only child. Aunt Olivia never had kids. The family tree of living relatives stops right there.’

  ‘Close friends?’ Ripley was dogged – you know, nose to the ground, bloodhound style – sniffing out solutions.

  ‘They’re all here at St Jude’s.’ Milling around the computer decks in the depths of night, deep in the latest Marco shock-news. It came to me with a small shock of realization – Zara for all her flirty, girlie stuff, Connie for all her strident confidence and intense, geeky Hooper – I counted them as my closest friends.

  Ripley frowned. ‘So go home to Richmond and stay inside the house for a day or two. When will your aunt be back?’ She’ll be home for the weekend, won’t she?’

  ‘Probably.’ Reduced to a sullen, one-word response in the face of Ripley’s stonewalling, I began to think my way round the back of her advice.

  Why did she want me to leave? Was it really to keep me safe? And if it was, why not station an official, uniformed version of the Sergei–Mikhail heavy brigade at the entrance to St Jude’s to keep out unwelcome stalkers? Anyway, no – my psycho-stalker was in a police cell, remember.

  My ex-buddy took a couple of paces down the central aisle of the big glass and steel building then she paced back, arms folded, looking me directly in the eye. ‘They put a new guy in charge of the case,’ she told me quietly. ‘Chief Inspector Todd. He’ll be here by lunchtime.’

  Oh, she wants me out of the way so that I don’t complicate things for her! Todd might decide she’s been letting me off on too long a leash, doing too much investigating of my own. I stared back at her.

  ‘You see what I’m getting at?’

  Yes, she wanted to set up a clean sheet with her new boss. I nodded.

  ‘Excellent. I thought you would.’

  I gave a good impression of backing down. ‘OK, so you’ve got Marco and sooner or later he’s going to tell you where Galina is. Then you’ll go get her – that’s the main thing.’

  ‘Agreed. We’ll interview Marco as soon as we get him back to the station.’

  ‘So I’ll take a train to Richmond.’ I’ll let you think I’m out of your hair. ‘And you’ll keep me in the loop?’

  ‘For sure,’ Ripley said, without meaning it.

  What did she think – that she was fobbing off a four-year-old with an empty promise? Maybe that was how she saw me, as a kid way out of my depth who hadn’t done anything except get in the way of police investigations – starting with the visit to the canal with Jayden and Bolt, where I’d been in danger of compromising vital forensic evidence, right through to tonight’s car chase – in the way again as police patrol cars closed in on Marco.

  ‘OK,’ I told her, turning to walk down the central aisle of the technology centre, out into the black night.

  Marco Conti had made a fool of me.

  He’d killed Scarlett Hartley and thrown her body into the canal. He’d snuffed out the light in her lively grey eyes. Then he’d started on me, kidnapping Galina and using her as a form of collateral damage in the war against my eidetic memory.

  All along he’d stalked me and tricked me, played the game and almost won.

  Slowly, methodically packing a change of clothes into a backpack as the first streaks of grey light appeared in the January sky – jeans and black T-shirt, clean socks and knickers, toothbrush and toothpaste – I shuddered as I thought of the moment when I’d recognized Marco’s Aston Martin in the kidnap video and his intricate network of games and challenges had unravelled.

  Ripley could at least have said thanks for that, I thought as I zipped up the bag. It was me who did it – I recognized the car.

  I projected ahead to the police interview with Marco. It would be in a small, windowless room with puke-yellow walls. There would be a table – two grey plastic chairs on one side for Marco and his duty solicitor, two chairs opposite. Sergeant Owen would be at one of them, gnawing away at Marco’s lies. Inspector Ripley on the remaining chair would wait until, at a psychologically appropriate point, she would put pressure on him to reveal Galina’s whereabouts. Chief Inspector Todd would stand behind one of those one-way glass partitions (What are they called? I wondered), clocking each of Marco’s answers, reading his body language, waiting for him to crack and confess everything.

  Would Marco crack?

  I put on my jacket, pulled back my hair and twisted it into a clip at the nape of my neck, took one last look around Room twenty-seven.

  No, I didn’t think he would. His beautiful, chiselled face would give nothing away. He would keep on loving himself, nurturing his psychotic narcissism, refusing to admit defeat.

  The interview would terminate. Papa Paolo would be informed of his son’s predicament and straight away forget recent family differences. He would hire the most expensive legal team to construct a clever defence. Meanwhile, no one would discover where Marco had hidden Galina.

  I took a quick look in the mirror. Don’t quit now, I told myself.

  Then I walked out of the room, along the panelled corridor, past Lady Anne Moore in her stiff lace ruff and pearls, down the stone steps, and silent as Lady Anne’s ghost I crossed the quad before anyone else stirred.

  Don’t quit now.

  Knock-knock on Jayden’s door in Upper Chartsey at 7.45 a.m. I heard Bolt hurtle down the hallway, sharp claws on stripped pine floorboards, then saw his blunt snout appear through the letter-box flap. Jayden’s kid brother, Brad, eventually opened the door in his T-shirt and striped boxers.

  ‘I’m looking for Jayden,’ I explained.

  Bolt gnawed at my Uggs; Brad swore colourfully.

  In time, Jayden emerged fully dressed from his bedroom and stomped downstairs. ‘What the … ?’

  ‘I know – it’s a lousy time to visit.’ I’d already started to apologize when Jayden elbowed Brad out of the way and stepped out on to the garden path. Bolt tried to squeeze through but – bang – Jayden slammed the door behind him.

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘They arrested Marco Conti.’

  Jayden’s eyelids flickered and frown lines appeared on his forehead. He didn’t say a word.

  ‘I remembered it was his car in the kidnap video.’

  ‘Conti kidnapped Galina?’

  ‘It was his car,’ I said again. ‘He found out from Charlie Hudson that the police were after him.’

  ‘So he took off?’

  I nodded and filled in a few more details about the chase and about Ripley not wanting me to stick around. ‘No way will Marco tell them where Galina is,’ I predicted.

  By this time we’d been on our way down the hill into the Bottoms, me, Jayden and Bolt – the old team. ‘If he even knows,’ Jayden added.

  ‘Of course he knows! Wait, what are you saying?’

  ‘I’m not saying anything. I’m thinking.’

  ‘Anyway, I need somewhere to stay without people knowing. Ursula has a flat – right? – but I don’t know exactly where. Do you … I mean, will she … ?’

  ‘Let’s find out,’ he’d muttered, which is how come I found myself knocking on a tatty blue door above the organic veg shop in Chartsey Bottom.

  ‘You want to stay here, with me?’ an incredulous Ursula echoed. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Be nice,’ Jayden advised. ‘Let her sleep on your sofa.’

  ‘You know I don’t have a sofa.’ Ursula looked as if she was ready to leave for work – she had her jacket on and was holding one non-weather-resistant boot. The other lay on the living-room floor behind her, next to a pile of laundry.

/>   ‘She can sleep on your floor, then.’

  ‘I won’t get in your way,’ I promised. ‘I’ll be visiting Jack in hospital later today. I just need somewhere to kip.’

  ‘You told her where I lived!’ Ursula’s voice rose an octave as she challenged Jayden.

  ‘Yeah. They arrested Conti.’

  ‘For Scarlett?’

  ‘And Galina Radkin – yeah.’

  ‘Shit,’ Ursula said through gritted teeth. ‘That can’t be right.’

  ‘I know – that’s what I thought at first,’ I said. ‘But there’s a link none of us knew about, which is that Scarlett could have met him in Italy last summer – he’s the Italian guy you told me about – remember?’

  ‘Jesus!’ Stooping to zip on her boot, Ursula’s face was red when she stood up again. ‘OK, there could be a connection, but I still say no, it’s not right.’

  Her gut reaction unnerved me and made my stomach twist, but I stuck with the logic of what I knew. ‘The police think it’s him. They’re trying to get a confession.’

  Ursula reached for her other boot. ‘I take it you’re not just hanging around to visit your guy? If I know you, you’ll carry on looking for Galina.’

  I took a deep breath then nodded.

  ‘So stay,’ she decided. ‘There’s a spare key on the table. I have to go. I’m late for work.’

  I’d only spoken briefly to Julia Cavendish on my first visit to the Q.E. She was by Jack’s bed again, without his dad this time, and as soon as she saw me at the door to the ward she went in search of another chair.

  ‘You can never find anywhere to sit in these places,’ she complained. ‘They tell you not to sit on the beds, Matron’s orders, but then they don’t provide an alternative – what’s that about?’

  Jack raised his eyebrows. ‘Write to them,’ he suggested. ‘Complain about a serious chair shortage in the NHS. See where that gets you.’

  ‘Jack, you have to give me permission to moan about something while my only son is lying here with broken ribs and a punctured lung. What else is a mother to do?’

  ‘Bring me grapes? Tell me what’s going on in the real world?’

  ‘You ate all the grapes. The real world hasn’t changed too much in the two days you’ve been in here,’ she argued. ‘Your father is back brokering stock in New York, my gallery is still selling ridiculously overpriced paintings, it’s January and the weather is lousy – what more can I say?’