by Jane Adams
Dolly glanced gratefully at her sister. ‘It made sense then, her not getting in touch. If she’d got herself involved and was worried we might not altogether approve. If this man wasn’t quite right in some way. So . . .’ She shook her head sadly. ‘So, we did nothing and then I heard the news this morning and I just felt . . . there was no reason, dear, not really. Just an old woman’s intuition I suppose.’
‘How long since you last saw Marion?’ Beth asked gently.
‘I looked at the calendar, dear. It was two weeks. Exactly two weeks.’
‘And when did you last speak to her, Miss Thompson? You said you called.’
‘Yes, yes. It took a few attempts to get her. She didn’t always leave her machine switched on and she was often out, so it was the Monday after her last visit. Ten days ago . . .’
‘And how did she seem?’ DC Stein asked.
‘A little strange,’ Dolly Thompson said. ‘I thought about it a lot. I wondered if she just seemed strange in retrospect. You know, as if I’m adding that to the way she was because that’s what I’m expecting her to be. But no. She was a little odd. A touch distant and impatient to get off the phone. She said she was expecting a call.’
‘Maybe she was. From the new boyfriend perhaps,’ Aiden Stein suggested.
‘Maybe so. Maybe so.’
Dolly got up and went into the other room, returning with a macramé shoulder-bag lined with a bright blue print.
‘This was hers,’ she said. ‘I glanced through, I was worried there might be something she might need inside. But it’s all just as she left it. And you should have this.’ She handed them another photograph of Marion O’Donnel. Written on the back were two addresses, her flat and her aunt’s house. Along with her date of birth. Beth noted that she was twenty-five.
It was obvious that the interview was at an end. That Dolly Thompson wanted now to be left alone with her sister. Beth took the bag from her and smiled encouragingly at the women. For the first time since their arrival Dolly Thompson looked her age, as though the handing over of the bag had forced the last piece of the puzzle into place. Made it certain that their Marion was dead and gone from their lives for ever.
DC Stein drove and Beth Cooper radioed in to Charlie Morrow. The DCI told her to look in the bag, give him a resume of its contents and then report back to the station.
‘It’s a bit of an odd collection, guv,’ Beth told him. ‘A white cardigan, cable knit, a couple of paid utility bills, both for her flat by the looks of it.’ She glanced more closely. ‘Must have paid them at the post office in Devizes from the look of the date stamp. Then there’s a letter.’ She slid it carefully from the envelope, touching as little as possible. ‘Signed Auntie Nora. That must be the other address we’ve got. Sounds like she’s Marion O’Donnel’s only relative.’
‘Well, you’d better talk to her next,’ Morrow instructed. ‘Anything else?’
‘Mmm, bunch of three, four, five keys,’ she said, leaving them where they lay in the bottom of the bag. ‘And another letter. No sorry, guv, it’s not a letter, it’s that poem Miss Thompson mentioned.’
‘A poem. Right. Handwritten?’
‘No. Typewriter, or printer. I’d say more likely printer, there’s no indentations on the paper and it’s pretty thin stuff.’
There was silence over the radio as Charlie Morrow processed the information.
Beth waited.
‘Go and talk to the aunt. Show her the stuff, she might have some idea. Maybe her niece wrote poetry. What’s it about anyway?’ he added impatiently.
‘Well, that really is the interesting part,’ Beth told him. ‘It seems to be about West Kennet and a fire being lit up on the hill.’
Chapter Eight
9.15 a.m.
They had not printed his letter. The morning paper carried an update on the latest attack, the revelation that the young woman had fought back and might have marked her attacker’s face, but there was no mention of his letter.
The woman sitting across the breakfast table poured more tea and pushed the cup in his direction. He murmured thanks and continued to scan through the inside pages.
It wasn’t there, no mention anywhere.
Perhaps it had simply been too late for the morning edition; he’d pushed the letter through the door the night before, and it had been late. Too late maybe for it to be printed in the morning.
He reached out and picked up his cup, sipping tea and allowing the loose page of the paper to rest against the teapot.
His face was sore where the girl had clawed at it with her key. Little bitch! There were bound to be stupid jibes from his workmates when they read the paper. Bitch! he thought again. His sudden surge of anger making his hand shake, he splashed his tea on to the blue-checked cloth.
* * *
The morning was chill and damp, the overnight rain soaking the fallen leaves and making the paths greasy underfoot.
Mike and Sergeant Price arrived at Aston Park at nine forty-five, slipping through the cordon, watching the search that had already been underway since first light.
The sergeant in charge crossed over to them.
‘Anything?’
‘Not a sausage. The rain’s washed out any prints. We’ve got crushed grass and broken branches where the struggle took place but bugger all else.’
Mike nodded, he’d expected nothing more. In this instance the best hope for forensics was the victim herself.
He watched a little longer, the slow, thorough process of finding and bagging fragments of rubbish, examining ground too wet to hold a decent print, then he turned to go.
‘The Chronicle offices next,’ he said. ‘See what Tom Andrews is excited about, then we’ll go and find out if they’ve resurrected my car.’
Price rolled his eyes. ‘Local garage got Jesus working for them have they, guv?’
* * *
Tom Andrews, senior staff reporter on the Chronicle, passed the letter in its plastic bag across to Mike and sat back waiting for the questions to begin.
‘When . . . ?’
‘It was there this morning, hand-delivered, near as we can guess between eleven last night and three this morning.’
‘Oh?’
‘Last shift cleared out just after eleven. Sid the security man picked it up and put it on the front desk at about three, so . . .’
‘So maybe our man works shifts?’
‘Or was coming home from the pub, or out walking the dog.’
Mike nodded and read the letter again. The typeface was clear and uniform. Daisy-wheel maybe but more likely something like a bubble-jet printer. At least, that’s what documents had said about the other two. Plain white sheet of typing paper and a cheap manila envelope, easily picked up at any stationer’s or post office and a lot of other places besides.
And if it was like the other two there would be no prints — except, presumably, for Sid the security man’s. With that in mind he said, ‘I take it this Sid of yours has gone off duty?’
Tom Andrews nodded. ‘He’d gone and his day relief was on by the time this was passed to me. You want to talk to him?’
‘Get him to call in to divisional. Have his prints taken for elimination, that should be it. He can give a brief statement as well, just to keep the record straight as regard to time, but there’s not much else.’ He paused. ‘You’ve taken a copy of this?’
‘It’s news, Mike. Look, we held off printing the other two because Flint strung us the line that the case was about to break. Didn’t want the investigation jeopardized. So OK, we went along with him even though I knew he was lying through his teeth, but I mean, Mike, you can’t expect the editor to hold off for ever. This is news, and there’s bugger all else happening with this business yet.’
He regarded Mike thoughtfully. ‘You’ve got an angle on this, I’ll play it for all it’s worth, but it goes in the next edition whether, which or how.’
‘And the other two letters?’
Andrews nodded. ‘
Along with our reasons for sitting on them this far.’ He smiled suddenly, the deep wrinkles creasing around tired grey eyes. ‘Anything new come out of this latest attack?’
Mike leaned back in the chair and stretched his long legs. ‘Plenty. Too much maybe. It’s being weighed and sifted as they say.’
Tom Andrews gave him a shrewd look. ‘Something on your mind?’ he said encouragingly, then laughed as Mike shook his head.
‘You know better than that, Tom.’
‘I can always hope. Even DI Croft has his weak moments. If you want me to play an angle on this you’ll have to let me know fast. I’ve got an editorial meeting in fifty minutes.’
Mike got to his feet. ‘I’ll give you a call.’
Tom Andrews watched him go, his eyes narrowing slightly as the tall man went through the swing doors and strode out into the car park. He had known Mike Croft some two years now, had come to like and respect him in that time, and had learnt to recognize when there was something preying on the man’s mind. Something new and something very big.
As Mike got into the car, Price asked, ‘He’s going to publish?’
Mike nodded, took the plastic-wrapped letter and envelope from his pocket and handed it to the sergeant.
‘And he’s right,’ he said. ‘Nothing I can say that’s reason enough to stop him.’
‘Flint will not be pleased.’
‘Superintendent Flint is never pleased. You’re right though, but that’s the least of our worries.’
Price handed the letter back to him and started the engine. This letter, which like the other two taunted the police for their lack of progress and threatened further incidents, was only a small part of what worried Mike. Tom Andrews had been right. Mike did have much more on his mind. There had been blood on Stacey’s keys and on her clothing that had definitely not been her own. Blood was something they hadn’t had before, but they’d typed the attacker from serology tests done on semen left at two of the previous crimes. The serology had shown the attacker to be type O.
The blood, of which there was sufficient quantity to leave no doubt, had been type A.
It had been a shock to Mike to realize that he had been dealing with two rapists and not just one. He was not yet ready to let Tom Andrews in on that fact.
* * *
Max Harriman took a slight detour on his way to work. He liked the two till ten shift best of all. It gave him his mornings free and didn’t end so late that he was unable to indulge in other activities in the evening.
His detour took him through Aston Park, within a few yards of where the girl had been attacked last night. A police cordon had been thrown up around the area and Max could see the search team still probing the bushes for clues.
Max stood and watched them for a couple of minutes. He wasn’t the only one; others paused too, fascinated by this glimpse into another official world. Then he walked on slowly, his gaze drifting from the three men poking around in the bushes to the other two standing a little apart, looking at a map.
Max wondered what they’d found so far. He looked around, making certain that no one could see, then he lifted his hands close to his face, first fingers and thumbs at right angles as though framing an image. Smiling to himself, Max panned his imaginary camera across the scene.
Chapter Nine
3 p.m.
Terry sat in the big chair in the corner of Maria’s consulting-room. He was restless, moving constantly as though the chair was uncomfortable and he couldn’t work out how to sit. His dark hair flopped forward over one eye as he stared down at his feet, turning them this way and that as though examining the laces.
Maria, sitting over by the window, the angle of her chair set obliquely to his, ignored the fidgeting. She had grown used to it; this sense of pent-up energy Terry exuded was symptomatic of a boy impatient to get away in time for football practice and had little to do with any clinical problem he might have.
Personally, she hardly viewed these sessions as therapeutic, or as making the best use of her psychiatric skills. The boy was in no need of medication, little need of deep therapy. Any trained counsellor could do what she was doing with him. He talked freely about his experiences and his feelings, trusting her, now, in a way that was very satisfying. In view of what he had been through, his mental balance was extraordinarily good. So good in fact that Maria was forced to wonder occasionally if she was missing something. If under the very moderate, very ordered facade lurked a clever manipulator. A psychopathic personality conning the expert.
Mostly, she preferred to believe that he was a very ordinary teenage boy, emerging from a bloody awful past with far more determination and courage than could reasonably be expected. She held out great hope for Terry.
He had finally told her about Sarah and about ‘some old woman’ he had befriended who lived up the road from him.
‘Her shopping bag broke,’ he told Maria. ‘I gave her a hand with her stuff and we kind of got talking.’
He stopped fidgeting for long enough to look up and meet her eyes, a Terry sign that this was important.
‘She’s all right,’ he said. ‘Used to be an actress, she’s got books and books of cuttings, you know, all her reviews and stuff. We got talking about it. She even played on Broadway once.’
Maria nodded. ‘And you’ve been to her house?’ Terry looked uncomfortable. ‘Yes, like I told you. She showed me her scrapbooks and stuff.’ He fidgeted again but tried to hold Maria’s gaze, something she knew he found terribly hard. ‘Look, I know I should have told you about her and about Sarah, but I mean, do I have to tell you everything?’
‘No, of course not.’ She smiled. ‘I know, sometimes it’s hard to explain, the way a complete stranger can become a friend almost overnight.’
He regarded her suspiciously for a moment, seeing if she was testing him, winding him up.
Then he nodded. ‘Yeah, it’s kinda hard. But I like her. And there’s Sarah too.’ He frowned suddenly. ‘Do they have to know, I mean about . . . ?’
‘That’s not for me to say, Terry,’ Maria told him. ‘But you should have a chat to your social worker about them both, especially Sarah, if things get serious.’
Terry frowned again. ‘Nobody “chats” to Mrs Williams,’ he said irritably. ‘I suppose if I don’t say anything, you’ll have to tell.’
‘No,’ Maria shook her head. ‘What you tell me is confidential, you know that.’
Terry stared at the floor, his shoulders tense. Maria knew how important these fledgling relationships were to him. Knew he was waiting for her to comfort. To encourage. Instead, she remained silent and waited for him to speak.
‘I will,’ he said at last. ‘I will talk to her, but not yet. It’s too soon. I don’t want to ruin everything.’ He gave her an odd sideways look as though challenging her to go against his wishes. The expression in his eyes caused Maria a moment of real doubt. It was so hard and so very cold.
* * *
7.55 p.m.
Sarah had been doing homework at a friend’s house after school. Her mother collected her in the car rather than let her catch the bus home alone with all the worry of the recent attacks.
‘I don’t mind too much if there’s two of you together,’ Paula, her mum, had said in familiar refrain, ‘but you’re not coming home alone.’
Friday night was her mum’s aerobics night and Paula collected her on the way to the class. It meant an hour of watching sweaty women in multi-coloured, multi-stretchy sports gear leaping around to the strains of a badly setup tape player, but Sarah had her magazine and figured she could cope.
The aerobics class was held in the gym of Fairfield Community College. They arrived just before eight fifteen, the evening wet and already cold, the car park yellow with the glow of sodium, discolouring the soaking tarmac.
‘Oh, look after this, will you?’ her mother asked her, dragging the mobile phone and her Visa card out of the glove compartment. ‘And don’t let me forget, I’ve got to get some petrol
on the way home.’
‘OK.’ Sarah took the card and posted it absently into the pocket of her jeans. Her mother plucked her sports bag off the back seat, almost spilling her towel and after class clothes on to the floor of the car as she stuffed the mobile phone inside. ‘Hurry up now,’ she said, shivering in her Lycra with just a sweatshirt pulled down over the top. ‘I’m freezing.’
They crossed the car park and pressed the buzzer next to the glass doors, waiting for the light to flash in the gym so someone would come and let them in.
Moments later, a woman in pink Lycra and silver trainers came running down the hallway, pressed the button to release the catch and greeted Paula effusively.
‘Are you joining us tonight?’ This to Sarah.
‘Oh no, our Sarah’s not into aerobics,’ her mother said. The two women laughed as though at some big joke and Sarah’s mother smiled at her, a private smile, as though to apologize that they found it funny. Sarah smiled back, falling behind the two of them, following them to the gym with her magazine rolled tightly in her hand. She glanced at her watch. Ten minutes before the class began and then another hour. She wondered, not for the first time, why perfectly sane women — and, generally, she actually liked her mother — behaved like idiots when they got together.
She seated herself at the end of one of the benches in the gymnasium and settled down with the problem page of her magazine. Half an eye watching as the women took off their sweatshirts and coats, talking noisily, comparing, she thought with more amusement than cruelty, the sag of their respective tits and bums.
‘OK,’ the instructor called out, clapping her hands then bending to turn on the tape. ‘Ready for the warmup. One and two and side and stretch . . . get those knees higher girls . . . Remember, this is the last workout before Christmas.’
Sarah watched with half-attention.
Then the blue light began to flash.
‘Reach higher, girls, higher . . . Oh, get that for me will you, love? Probably Debbie, she’s always late.’