by Jane Adams
‘You’d better come inside,’ he said. ‘But I’m warning you, David, when you’ve talked to me, I’m taking you into Norwich. You’ve got to turn yourself in.’
‘You going to make me?’
For a moment, John thought he was going to hit out at him. Then he shook his head. ‘No, you’re right. I’ve got to go back and I know that. But I’ve spent all night going through this. I needed time. And I need to talk to someone first.’ He gave John a look of such desperation that the older man was moved, despite his instinct towards caution.
Tynan said, ‘See it from their point of view. From mine. Theo is found dead, murdered in her own home. You disappear, no word of explanation, you just skip out through the back way like some common thief. And you ask us not to think badly of you? For all I know, you might well have killed Theo. For all the police know, you probably did.’ He shook his head. ‘You’ve got half an hour; Davy. Long enough to have a cup of tea and give me your version of events before I drive you to the station. Talk to me and let me take you in and I’ll do everything I can for you. But you run out again and there’ll be no one believes you’re not implicated. You must see that.’
David nodded. ‘Yes, I do. I do. Thank you, you won’t regret it. I promise you that.’
Chapter Twenty
3 p.m.
It had been a long drive and the light was already fading when Price arrived. Morrow suggested they go straight out and view the crime scene while there was still daylight left to see. Dental records had provided the final confirmation that the body was that of Marion O’Donnel.
Morrow drove. An experience Price vowed he was never going to repeat, tearing along the curving down-land road as though it was a slalom course grafted on to a race track.
He pulled the car into a farm gate close to a small cottage and pointed.
‘Up there, that’s where we found her. The gate was opened. Somebody had cut through the chain.’
‘They came prepared then,’ Price commented as he climbed out of the car, trying not to notice that his legs were shaking from all the compensatory braking he’d been doing.
Charlie Morrow nodded. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘I think they came prepared.’
The place where the car had burned was the widest point of the track, before it narrowed into a single file walkway between the fields. It was unremarkable, just a barren area of rutted mud and grass and a rough oblong of charred earth showing where the car had stood.
Morrow had talked almost non-stop during their drive, bringing Price up to speed on his conversation with Mike. He had, Price discovered, a disconcerting way of turning to look at his passenger while he talked rather than concentrating on the road. Price was certain he’d made most of the curves on a mixture of memory and instinct. It certainly hadn’t been by sight.
He flipped through the photographs of the crime scene that Morrow had provided for him, trying to match the pictures to the reality. The photographs showed what must have been a wet, foul-tempered night; they revealed little of the surrounding landscape.
‘What’s that over there?’ he asked, his attention attracted by a large conical hump that rose out of the flat earth on the opposite side of the road.
‘Silbury Hill,’ Morrow told him. ‘I’ll take you up there later; when you’ve more chance of getting a view. It’s fenced off now, problems of erosion, but we still get the odd tourist braving the barbed wire, looking for crop circles or something equally psychic I suppose.’
‘You’re not into that sort of thing, then?’ Price grinned wryly.
Charlie Morrow grunted. ‘Not so’s you’d notice,’ he said. He gestured towards the rise behind them. ‘Want to go and take a look?’
He set off up the path without waiting for a reply.
Price followed.
It seemed an oddly appropriate place to contemplate a murder; Price thought. The mist was coming down, much as it must have done the evening that the woman died, and it would soon be dark. The dampness seeped through his clothes and into his bones, but he hardly noticed it. Despite himself, he was captivated.
Morrow had led him into the tomb itself. West Kennet Long Barrow. Thousands of years old, and Price could feel the weight of every one of them pressing down on him through what looked like precariously balanced rock.
Someone had lit candles inside the tomb. He commented on them.
‘People come here all the time,’ Morrow told him. ‘Religious feelings they’re supposed to have for it or something.’
He sounded dismissive, but there was something in his voice that made Price look at him suspiciously. It was at least an edge of affection; it might even have been a touch of awe.
It was in the tomb and the flickering candlelight that Morrow, with an unexpected sense of the dramatic, gave Price the two sheets of folded paper.
One was the poem Price already knew, a copy of the one found in Theo Howard’s hand.
‘It was in the dead woman’s flat,’ Morrow told him. ‘Is it the same?’
Price nodded slowly. ‘The other one was found in her bag. It seems to be about this place.’
He unfolded the paper and began to read.
I spent the night beneath the stones, he said,
But didn’t sleep,
Their whisperings kept my thoughts alive,
And held my mind from dreams.
I spent the night beneath the stones, he said
And watched the beacon lit upon the dead man’s hill.
And when the night had fallen full,
I spent the night beneath the stones, he said
I spent the night beneath the stones, he said,
But did not sleep.
Your voice within the beacon kept my thoughts alive.
And held my mind from dreams.
At the bottom of the sheet were written the words, ‘With love, David.’
Chapter Twenty-One
5 p.m.
Harriman was preparing his evening meal. He took chicken breast from the styrofoam package with an old fork he kept specifically for meat and placed it on a grill lined with foil. Potatoes were already baking in the tiny oven; he had to turn the flame up high to get the skins to crisp the way he liked. He had already prepared the salad, slicing everything neatly and arranging carefully on his plate.
Max liked to cook. He knew his workmates had found it a little odd when he’d admitted to this in an unguarded moment, but the fact was, it gave him great satisfaction that he knew exactly what went into his body.
His mother had always cooked, drumming into him from an early age how important it was to treat your body right, and Max had taken her advice to heart. He kept himself fit with regular exercise, his body well fed and his mind active, and he was meticulous about the details.
Max crossed to the sink and washed his hands once again. The third time during his ritual of food preparation.
Then he examined his hands and nails with the greatest care.
Max did a manual job operating a lathe, and the hands of his fellow workers were calloused and stained in a way that Max could not allow. He wore gloves at work and kept his hands very clean at other times. In addition, twice daily he massaged them with a cream used, so the advertising said, by Icelandic fishermen to combat the effects of cold.
It had earned him some odd comments the first few weeks at this job, but he did his work well enough to silence the criticism and the ‘he’s a bloody poof’ jokes had faded when they had spotted the pictures taped to the inside of his locker.
It was, Max thought, the sort of thing that Jake would do to throw others off the track. The women he attacked would remember his hands as being soft and smooth — if they remembered anything at all — not rough and hard like the skilled manual worker that he was.
He went back to the sink and scrubbed at his nails once again, shaking his head. There were still marks. Stains around the nails and on his knuckles, but it would have to do.
He thought of Jake. Jake had never laughe
d at his neatness or his meticulous habits. Jake had been the only one Max’s mother had ever really liked, but then, Jake always knew the right thing to say.
Staring at the table with its blue-checked cloth, carefully set and clean enough for his mother to be proud of, Max remembered how it had been when Jake had come to call for him.
‘Your house, it always looks so nice,’ Jake would say, and Max’s mother would award him one of her small, tight smiles and let Max go out without another word.
Max’s face grew dark as another image imprinted across the first. His mother dead on the kitchen floor, her small, tight smile replaced by a bloody grin that split across her cheeks from ear to ear.
5 p.m.
Judith had walked for a long time before finally getting up enough courage to go to the Myers’ house. Their number was in the phone book and had taken only moments to find. The house was only a ten-minute walk from her flat, but it had been close on an hour before Judith had finally been able to bring herself to go to the door.
Paula Myers replied quickly to her ring, her pale face anxious and the faint hopefulness in her eyes fading as she saw the stranger on her doorstep. She had been expecting news. Judith didn’t look like news.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Can I help you?’
Judith swallowed nervously. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Sorry to bother you. It’s just that I thought maybe we should talk; if we put our heads together, we may get some idea.’ She broke off, aware of how jumbled her words must sound and of the woman’s cold stare.
She began again. ‘I’m . . . I’m Judith Ryan,’ she explained. ‘Terry’s mother. I just wondered, have you heard anything?’
For a moment Judith thought Paula Myers was going to fly at her; the look of rage and pain that crossed her face was so strong and so obvious. Then it faded. The two women gazed at one another with red-rimmed eyes. ‘I think you’d better come in,’ Paula said.
‘It’s a lovely house,’ Judith said. She was seated at the kitchen table cradling a mug of very hot coffee between her hands.
‘Thank you. You live on Cavendish Road . . . it’s a nice road, Cavendish.’
Judith half-smiled. ‘We live at the other end, in one of those tall three-storey places. It’s flats now. Terry and I, we have the top floor.’ She sipped her coffee. ‘It’s all right really, and it’s our own place. That’s what matters.’
Paula didn’t really know what to say to this woman now she was inside the house. They had spent the last ten minutes like this. Dodging around the questions each one wanted to ask. Trying not to step on feelings that were so bruised already one more hurt would make little difference.
‘I didn’t know about Terry,’ she said.
‘No, neither did I. I mean about Sarah. He never told me.’ Judith hesitated. ‘I thought we’d got a good relationship,’ she said. ‘Thought he told me things. But he never mentioned Sarah. He didn’t mention many of his friends really, but I never noticed somehow. Not till now.’ She smiled wryly, trying not to feel too uncomfortable with the admission.
Paula smiled back. ‘Nice to know we’re not the only ones facing that conclusion,’ she said. ‘God, but I feel so helpless just sitting here. Maybe Phil was right, at least he did something.’
‘Did something?’
‘Yes, well, it turns out they were going to a party yesterday. Both of them.’
‘Terry as well? He didn’t say a thing. Well, he talked about going out . . .’
‘Oh, don’t fret. Sarah spun a yarn about staying at a friend’s. Seemed to think we’d disapprove if she’d told the truth.’
‘Would you?’
‘No! Of course not. Sarah’s . . . Probably. I mean yes. I suppose we would if I’d thought she planned to be out all night. Anyway, Phil found out where this party was supposed to be. His going round there didn’t do much at the time, but this morning one of the girls phoned us. Said, did we know about Terry?’
She paused. ‘The parents are away, where this party was, so you can just imagine.’ She smiled bitterly. ‘I mean that’s just it, isn’t it? You can just imagine, more to the point you can remember.’
Judith thought back to her rather strict upbringing. Actually parties at sixteen without adults present were not something in her experience, but there had been other things that probably more than made up for that.
‘But I mean, we could have compromised. Picked her up at midnight or something. I don’t know. And it doesn’t explain why they ran away.’ She looked awkwardly at Judith. ‘I’m sorry to ask this, but was Terry in some kind of trouble or worried about something? I mean, I know how that must sound . . .’
Judith was shaking her head. ‘No. I’m certain not. He was happy here. Settled well in school. It had been a fresh start for us.’ She sighed deeply. ‘I don’t know why he would go off like that.’ She looked hopefully at Paula. ‘Sarah, she had no problems, I mean . . .’
Paula shook her head. ‘I don’t know. She was doing well at school, seemed to have plenty of friends. The usual worries, I suppose, but nothing . . . She didn’t get on with her father.’ The words came out almost unbidden and immediately she felt she had uttered a betrayal. ‘I mean, a lot of teenagers have problems with their parents, there was nothing. I didn’t mean . . . Oh God, I’m making this sound much worse than it is. He’s gone out tonight,’ she added irrelevantly. ‘These days he’s always going out.’
She looked up suddenly as though a thought had struck her. ‘Terry’s father. He wouldn’t have gone to his father? No, I suppose you already thought of that.’
Judith sat quite still, the coffee cup still clasped tightly between her hands. ‘Oh no,’ she said, keeping her voice as steady as she was able. ‘We’re divorced, you see. I mean, obviously you realized that. Terry’s father walked out of our lives when Terry was just six years old. Terry wouldn’t even think of going to him.’
5.30 p.m.
The search warrant had been applied for as soon as David Martin had debunked. It had been granted in a special session and served mid-afternoon. Mike’s beeper went when he was halfway back to Tynan’s place. He pulled over on to the grass verge and called in, then turned his car around and headed back to Norwich.
The search was well under way by the time he got there. White-clad figures, their hands covered in surgical gloves, moving from room to room giving the impression that they really knew what they were looking for.
‘The lady was an actress then,’ someone commented. Mike took the proffered book of clippings and reviews. There were, he saw, glancing across at the shelves, about a dozen such books.
A shout from upstairs distracted him. He went up to the second bedroom. David’s room, he thought, seeing the men’s clothes lying on the bed and the shaving gear on the shelf. He thought about Davy’s assertion that they had been lovers, wondering how much this room had seen.
The magazines were nothing unusual, soft-porn top-shelf editions, and Mike was ready to dismiss them, but one edition was being thrust into his hands, open at the centrefold. It had been marked by a bulky envelope slipped between the pages.
‘Bit of a looker, guv! Marianne,’ he commented, looking at the name that headed the page.
Mike opened the envelope and tipped the contents carefully on to the bed. About a dozen photographs fell out. Polaroids of the woman in the centrefold. The poses were amateur and the photography of questionable ability, but there was no doubt but that it was the ‘Marianne’ of the centrefold. Blonde hair, blue eyes, her body more graceful than voluptuous. She gazed out at the photographer, her expression slightly uncertain. A quality of innocence, despite the lewdness of some of the poses, that was highly charged. Genuinely seductive, Mike caught himself thinking.
He shoved the thought to the back of his mind and took a pen from his jacket pocket. Used it to flip the photos over. With the third, he struck lucky. There was a date, some eighteen months previous, and a name.
‘Marion,’ Mike said softly.
C
hapter Twenty-Two
6 p.m.
Price and Morrow had retreated to the Red Lion in Avebury. It was still early enough for the dining-room to be relatively empty and they found a table at the back of the room where they could talk about the case in privacy.
‘Nice this,’ Price commented, looking around the comfortably furnished dining-room with its heavy beams and warm lighting. The food was good too, he thought, realizing just how hungry he was and how long the day had been.
Outside, although it was only six o’clock, the night was closing in, fended off slightly in the pub yard by the only street-light in the entire village.
Morrow was eating with great enthusiasm and didn’t seem to want to be interrupted. Price got on with his own meal in equal silence. He was beginning to like Morrow. The man was blunt to the point of rudeness, drove like a maniac and seemed terminally prone to bossiness. But he had an energy and drive that Price guessed he was going to enjoy, and a commitment to the job that matched Price’s own.
Morrow’s large hand reached into his pocket, withdrew a small carton of single cream, opened it and dumped it in his coffee. He’d pocketed about a dozen of these little cartons when they’d been ordering their meal, and about the same amount of sugar, brown and white in little packets.
Price waited for the sugar to emerge from the big man’s pocket. He was disappointed. Morrow drank it without.
‘Tell me something,’ he said. ‘All that stuff you half-inched. You a klepto or what?’
Morrow slurped his coffee noisily. ‘Probably,’ he said. ‘But I’m getting help.’
‘Oh?’
Morrow nodded solemnly. ‘I’m training my sergeant,’ he said. ‘So far she’s only got the hang of sugar. Women have stupid pockets, have you noticed that? No room for anything but a lipstick and a pack of tissues. I mean, what the hell use is that?’