by Julie Howlin
I struggled up the slight slope, back the way I had come. The silence was eerie. Then I heard a sound. The unmistakable whoosh of skis coming to a stop, just out of my sight. I could sense him, even though I could not see him. I froze, hardly daring to breathe in case it gave me away. I wondered if ski poles made effective weapons for fighting off a crazed killer. I could make a run for it, or perhaps I should say, a ski for it - but he was undoubtedly a much better skier than me and I was unlikely to get far. I’d just have to stay still and pray he didn’t see me. I wished now I’d not chosen the luminous pink ski suit - it probably glowed in the dark like a beacon.
I heard rustling as he moved. It sounded as if he was bending to adjust his boots, or something. My hands tightened on my poles. They were the only defence I had.
He was moving towards me. Getting closer. Then I saw a beam of light. He had a torch. He’d find me now, for sure.
My heart was thudding so hard I was sure he could hear it. Then the inevitable happened - the light of his torch found my face. I blinked, caught like a rabbit in headlights, frantically wondering how I could get out of this. If I kicked off my bindings and made a run for it in my boots I might at least be able to find somewhere in these trees to hide. I started to turn to release them, but the movement only served to dislodge my skis and I was sliding backwards. Moments later, I was sprawled on the ground. I could feel cold moisture seeping through my ski suit. Through the glare of the torchlight, I could see the outline of the man towering over me, and the condensation of his breath as it hit the cold air.
He was laughing. Did he know I was the psychic helping the police track him down? Or was I just a random passer-by who had discovered his crime? Either way, I wouldn't have long to live.
His laughter grew louder and stronger. He was bending over and clutching his sides. If he was laughing this uncontrollably, I might have the advantage, even if it was just for a second. It was my only chance. I raised the pole. My best chance would be to poke him in the eye with it, only I was on the wrong side of the torchlight and couldn’t make out for sure where his eyes were. He’d probably be wearing goggles, anyway. His throat? Or his leg? My mind raced as I tried to figure out where would be the most effective place to hit him. It was obvious, of course. I had to get him in the balls.
I lunged. I knew as I did that it was useless. His laughter stopped abruptly. He deftly caught the end of my pole and twisted it out of my hand, but he slipped himself and landed with a thud in the snow beside me.
‘Oh, Tabitha, you’re so funny!’ he gasped, and exploded into giggles again.
How did he know my name? I grabbed the key-ring torch, which he’d dropped as he fell, and turned it on him, and got a proper look at his face for the first time.
‘You?! I thought you were the Mitzi Doll killer!’
‘You did? That’s hilarious!’
‘Why the hell didn’t you say something?’ I demanded.
‘I did,’ said Jamie Swan. ‘I said I thought you were funny.’
‘What are you doing here, anyway? Where’s Alison?’
‘Gone back to the hotel, with instructions to alert mountain rescue if she hasn’t heard from me in an hour. We were on the chairlift going up for one last run when I spotted you coming down. There’s no mistaking that suit. Or your skiing style - typical beginner with your bum sticking out.’
‘Gee, thanks,’ I said, wishing I had hit him with a pole, after all.
‘I saw you careering off down the wrong path by yourself and I thought I’d better come after you.’
The fact he had not seen Marie-France didn’t surprise me in the least.
‘I thought I was following my instructor. But it was her ghost. She was here all the time.’ I took the torch and shone it on Marie-France's body.
‘Oh. My. God,’ said Jamie.
‘That's not all.’ I pointed the beam at the doll.
‘Shit,’ said Jamie. ‘No wonder you thought I was him.’
‘Do you know the way back?’ I asked, through chattering teeth.
‘Yes, I do. I’ve been skiing here a few times. There’s another little hamlet further down this path. It’s a blue run all the way down - nothing harder than you’ve already done. Just follow me and take your time - you’ll be fine. There’s a small bar at the bottom. We'll head there and call you a taxi back to your chalet and I'll call the gendarmes.’
‘And Alison,’ I reminded him. I imagined she would not have been impressed when Jamie told her to go back and wait in the hotel while he chased off round the mountain after me, of all people. I could imagine her pacing up and down, muttering to herself and looking at her watch.
‘Yes, and Alison,’ he agreed. He helped me up and we picked our way back to the piste.
**
Some time later, we limped into the little local bar Jamie had mentioned. I sank gratefully into a leather armchair in front of a roaring fire, not caring that the locals were giving us funny looks. Jamie thrust a warming brandy into my hands. I listened to him speaking in halting French into his phone, explaining to the police what had happened. I drained the glass just as my taxi arrived.
By now, Jamie was on the phone to Alison and I could hear her shouting at him, although I couldn’t make out what she was saying. As I followed the driver towards the door, I heard him telling her in that unflappable, patient way of his that this was work. He’d found a crime scene and he needed to let the French police know what was known about the killer, and that no, I was not with him, he was putting me in a cab, and yes, he was sorry, but she would have to eat alone tonight. I think at that point she hung up on him. As the door closed behind me, I saw Jamie shrug sadly and pocket his phone.
Safe in the back seat of the cab, I phoned Rob.
‘Where the HELL have you been?’ We've all been worried sick. I was about to call mountain rescue!’
‘I'm in a cab. I'm on my way back. It's a long story; I'll tell you when I get there. Save me some grub.’
The cab stopped outside the chalet. Rob came rushing out and insisted on paying the fare. By the look on the driver's face, I guessed he had given a hefty tip on top.
For the rest of the week, Rob let me ski with him. It seemed he had had enough challenging blacks for one holiday and didn't want to let me out of his sight.
I only saw Jamie once more in the resort, having lunch with Alison in a mountain restaurant. I almost went over to talk to him, but then Alison saw me and gave me such a filthy look that I changed my mind.
I also tried to spot the man I’d seen Marie-France with - but there was no sign. I guessed he had probably left town.
Try as I might, I had no more visions or insights. I was sorry I hadn't got a better look at Marie-France’s date that night. I had got it wrong again and someone was dead. Could I have saved Marie-France? I would never know.
34 jamie
I am surrounded by lists. There is the list Tabitha faxed me a while ago of the Mitzi Dolls, showing how that guy is working his way through them. Or was. He’d missed one, because he’d failed. Horsewoman. Then he’d apparently skipped a few. It's a shame we didn't work out what he was doing while he was still working through the list in order. He is becoming completely opportunistic and completely random, now, so any woman engaged in any activity or occupation not crossed out is in danger, and since ‘policewoman’ is on the list, that includes many of my close colleagues.
Like Tabitha, I'm wondering where he is going to find a ‘spacewoman’, ‘super-heroine’ or ‘witch’. And when he gets to ‘Member of Parliament’ it’s going to be a real media circus. I pray we’ll stop him long before then.
I put that list down and pick up another. The passenger lists for Clare Mulholland’s last flight, going on the theory that he targeted her at work, and for every flight from anywhere in Britain to Geneva or Lyon in the two weeks before the murder of Marie-France Pascale, and in the days afterwards. I was sure there would be one name from the former also on the latter, but there ju
st isn’t. At least I can’t see it. I have to keep looking.
I keep hoping Tabitha will call, with some amazing dream or vision involving this guy’s name or something, but she hasn’t. Though to be truthful, anything I get from her is just as likely to be another puzzle. It was the same with Maggie. Sometimes the information she got wasn’t related to the cases at all. That’s why we have to be so careful. ‘Often spirits on the other side don’t actually care so much about bringing their killer to justice as they do about letting their families know they love them,’ Maggie had told me once. It was after a case where the victim’s spirit kept coming to Maggie and talking about Bournemouth. I remember Fleming and I scouring the town for leads and then finding out it was the murdered woman and her husband’s favourite holiday spot. We’d wasted months crawling around Bournemouth when we should have been looking in Swindon. ‘Working with spirits is just like working with children or animals sometimes,’ Maggie also used to say. ‘They’ve got their own agenda and you can never control what they are going to do next. It won’t always be what you want them to do.’
It’s frustrating. I really hope we can get this guy before the wedding. I’ll be away for three whole weeks and that’s three weeks in which he could kill more women. I don’t want to be thinking about Mitzi Dolls on my honeymoon and I know Alison won’t want me to be.
I never realised just how much planning and organisation has to be done for a wedding. I guessed there’d be a lot to do in the week leading up to it, so I’d booked that week off, but even now there is always something I have to check or chase up. Alison just faxed over the proofs for the invitations and the order of service for me to look at. I said it was fine and then she faxed a guest list. That was fine too except she hadn’t included Tabitha and Rob and she got annoyed with me when I pointed that out. I can’t understand what she has against Tabitha after getting all that reassuring information from her about Monica, and that she herself wasn’t on the killer’s list.
What surprises me most is that, given that it’s supposed to be one of the most important days of my life, I just can’t muster up all that much enthusiasm for wedding planning. I sometimes wish Alison would just get on with it and stop asking me to approve things. I trust her to get it right, but she doesn’t see it that way. She gets annoyed with me for not taking enough of an interest. No doubt the excitement will kick in when it gets a bit nearer. I’m just preoccupied with tracking down the Mitzi Doll killer just now.
Sick of looking at lists, I went out for a walk and a coffee. I sat in a coffee shop and let my mind wander, hoping it would go somewhere useful. It didn’t. Just round in the same old circles. The song Waterloo by Abba was playing on the radio. Alison was singing it in the shower that morning and I’d not been able to get it out of my head all day. It was driving me crazy.
On the way back I bumped into Christina. I hadn’t seen her for a few weeks, so we stopped for a catch up. She told me she was working with the fraud squad now, and preoccupied with a difficult case herself. The boss of a mail order company had noticed that the firm was haemorrhaging money and nobody could work out who was siphoning it off or where it was going. The fact that there were a whole lot of subsidiary companies and different departments that were virtually independent of each other didn’t help. There were any number of people who could be involved and they had to watch them all, waiting for somebody to make a mistake. Homicide is much more interesting.
Back in my office, I went over the flight lists again, I hoped with fresh eyes - still no match. He had to have travelled from England to France at some point between the last two murders. So what was I missing?
35 tabitha
I hadn't heard from Jamie in weeks, which was good because it meant there had been no more murders. I missed seeing him, but I had no reason to get in touch with him. Somehow knowing that he was with Alison made me reluctant to speak with him, anyway. I didn't want to have to hear about how happy they were together.
I had a couple of vivid dreams, but they didn't seem all that relevant. In one, the Mitzi Doll Killer was on a train, in a tunnel, but his mobile phone was working and he was making a call. ‘I’m on the train!’ he said. ‘That’s why they can’t catch me, because I’m on the train!’
Jamie already knew the guy was getting away. He didn't need me to tell him.
Then I dreamed about Rob. I was in his office with him - it was really vivid, like I was really there. I could see the writing on every file on the shelf and every paper clip in his jar. His office was exactly as it always was, down to every last detail, but for one thing. There was a money plant on his desk, an absolutely huge one. Rob never had any plants in his office. Rob was writing something in one of the staff files. When he saw me, he looked guilty and put it away very quickly. It was Sarah’s file.
‘Have you heard from Sarah?’ I asked, wondering why he was writing in her file.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I haven't. I'm going to the management meeting now. I'll be back about three.’
When he had gone I got the file out and looked at it, and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There was a note, dated six months ago, which said that he'd given Sarah a warning because some of her figures didn’t add up. The note said Sarah ‘looked guilty when challenged.’ The ink was still wet.
Whatever I might have said about Sarah, going on about her kids, getting time off and getting out of doing things she didn’t want to do by playing the ‘Mummy card’ also known as the ‘get out of tedious meetings free card’, I knew she would never, ever get her figures in a mess. Rob making up an incident that never happened and putting it in someone’s file bothered me. A lot. But I was having a great time with Rob. I didn't want that to end. I’d got it wrong with Becky – I hoped this was another dream that was wrong.
Everyone has free will, Gran used to say, and they have the right to it. They have the right to completely ignore and deny the truths spirit places right under their noses, should it suit them to do so. She had been talking about clients, but it's just as true of those being given the message directly. It suited me not to listen, to be in denial.
When the same dream continued the next night, I should have taken notice. Looking back, it just proved to me how easily people can ignore a blatant truth when they don't want it to be true.
In this dream I was in my office with a new colleague - Sarah's replacement, who hadn’t been appointed yet. In my dream, they’d appointed a young black woman called Jada who had a tiny diamond stud in her nose and wore huge gold rings in her ears. She was telling me that she thought Simon was a really great guy - she'd met him at my birthday drink, which I hadn’t even planned yet. Anyway, who should walk in but that woman I saw with Jamie in the King’s Arms that time, Christine, I think he said her name was, with a bloke I didn’t know. He was short and bald. They asked if Rob was there and I got up to go and call him, but he came out of his office, looking quite ill. He asked the visitors if they would like anything to drink. They refused. Rob asked if I’d mind getting him a coffee. When I took it in, Christine was reading Sarah’s file, and making notes. Knowing Rob had put that fictitious warning in there, I wondered if I should mention it - but I knew if I did I would get Rob in trouble and so I just gave him his coffee and left. As long as there is no money plant on Rob's desk, I told myself, none of this can happen, and went back to sleep.
Then I had another dream. In this one Alison and the Mitzi killer were strangling Jamie Swan. I woke up screaming at them to stop.
**
My birthday was coming up and I wanted to get a bunch of mates together and go out, as I liked to do every year. I was thinking of The Swan, as there was going to be live music that night for St Patrick’s Day. I resolved to phone everyone in the morning and invite them.
I was feeding Thumbelina when the post arrived. There was just the one envelope, a large, lilac one, very thick, good quality paper with a slight glittery sheen to it. Must be an early birthday card, I thought, with glee. I love birt
hdays. Cards and presents and everyone making a big fuss of me! I flipped it over and saw my name and address was printed on a label rather than handwritten. I couldn’t make out the postmark, so I had no clue as to who it might be from. I sat down with my cup of tea and opened it. I pulled out a lilac card with gilt edging. It read:
‘Alison Harman and Jamie Swan request the pleasure of the company of Tabitha Drake and Robert Grant on the occasion of their marriage on 16 June, at 3p.m., St Mary's Church. RSVP’.
The blood drained from my face as I read it. I didn't know why. I could only guess that I was still embarrassed because I'd made a pass at Jamie Swan just after he'd got engaged to her. Thinking about that still made me cringe. Perhaps it was because I simply couldn’t bring myself to like Alison, and part of me didn’t like to see a lovely guy like Jamie handing himself to someone like her on a silver platter. He deserved better. But who was I to interfere?
36 the interview
A couple of big cheeses from Head Office came to make up an interview panel, with Rob, for my old job. The Human Resources people handled all the applications so neither Rob nor I had any clue as to who had been shortlisted.
I couldn’t wait to meet all the candidates, knowing that one of them would be the person I’d be sitting opposite in a few weeks’ time. I hoped they'd pick someone who was easy to get on with and good fun.
Rob had agreed to come to the wedding with me, so I dashed off an acceptance card to Alison. I hoped she wouldn’t throw it in the bin.
The first candidate arrived at 10 a.m.: Richard Bernhardt. He looked about fifteen, rather nerdy with thick glasses and a brown suit. If they appointed him I’d have to teach him a thing or two about fashion. Quiet and nervous, I wondered how he’d cope with the difficult customers - or working with me, for that matter.