by Susan Lewis
‘You don’t believe that, surely?’
‘Yes, I do. All right, no I don’t. But I can’t think about anything other than Cristos Bennati right now.’
‘Stop being such a wimp! Does Luke know that it was you who went to see Radcliffe?’
‘Yes. And we talked about it, before Cristos arrived. He was furious at first, he said, but then he explained why … Oh, Paula, don’t bug me about this now. My nerves have been in such a state all day, what with one thing and another, and as a result I’ve over-reacted about everything. I just want to forget about Luke Fitzpatrick now.’
And with her humiliating experience with Cristos Bennati to occupy her thoughts, that was precisely what Corrie did. For, she told herself, if Inspector Radcliffe was satisfied with what Luke had told him, then who was she to doubt it? OK, Luke’s behaviour was odd sometimes, but her imagination was even odder. She read things into situations that just weren’t there, like mistaking paint for blood, and frightened herself half to death doing it. What Luke had said about her first encounter with murder made sense; it had clearly spooked her to such a degree that she was starting to become obsessed by it. So it was time now, she decided, that they all, she in particular, put it behind them and stopped trying to play amateur detectives.
– 15 –
PHILLIP DENBY WAS standing in the porch outside a small terraced house in Twickenham. He had rung the bell twice now, but there was still no answer. She was in there though, he was certain of it, she simply didn’t want to let him in.
His handsome face was pinched and white as he turned to look up and down the suburban, tree-lined street. It was early in the evening and several people were about, mowing their lawns or washing their cars. A group of boys was playing in the garden three doors away, kicking a ball around and swearing like Irish navvies. Phillip winced to hear it.
He turned back to the front door. He should leave now, he told himself, he should just go away and leave her alone. It was what she wanted, and the thought almost broke his heart.
He walked the few paces down the garden path, pulled open the gate and dug into his pocket for his car keys. He was on the point of getting into his car when he took one last look at the house and his heart contracted as he saw her standing at the door.
For a long time they simply looked at each other, until finally Pam stood back and held the door wide. Phillip’s relief was so great that he started to shake. She was going to let him in, she was waiting there for him … He mustn’t jump to any conclusions, he didn’t know yet what she was thinking, or how she was feeling.
As he walked back up the garden path he was looking straight into her eyes. He thought she had aged in the past three days, but as he reached her she smiled, weakly, and he realized the tiredness in her eyes wasn’t tiredness at all – it was anguish.
‘I wondered if you would come,’ she said.
‘I had to. I had to know …’ He looked away. ‘If you’d prefer that I went …’
‘No. I wanted you to come. You’ve just come sooner than I expected. I needed some time to think, you understand that, don’t you?’
‘Of course.’
‘It’s why I haven’t been at the office,’ she added. ‘But I’m glad you’ve come now.’ She closed the door behind him, then walked through to her sitting room. Phillip followed, all the time thinking of how much he had always loved this cluttered little house and the woman who lived in it. They had shared such wonderful times here, but now he felt awkward, as though he no longer belonged. His tension, his fear, was so great that it was difficult for him to move – he simply stood at the centre of the room and waited as Pam poured him a drink.
When she handed it to him Phillip gazed down into her deep, hazel eyes, wanting her to know how much he loved her, but that he would understand if things could never be the same between them now.
‘It’s all right,’ she said softly. ‘I know you didn’t do it.’
For a brief moment Phillip’s face froze, then suddenly his chest started to heave. He could barely catch his breath, the relief was so intense. ‘Oh God,’ he murmured, ‘if you only knew how it felt to hear you say that.’
‘Come here,’ she whispered, and holding out her arms she drew him to her.
It was a long time before they broke their embrace, and both had tears on their cheeks when they did. Phillip looked again into her eyes and he knew that his love for this tiny woman, with her pretty face and enormous heart was now more precious to him than ever.
‘I was so afraid,’ he said. ‘I still am, but knowing that you believe me … Oh Pam, how can I ever begin to tell you what that means to me?’
She smiled and taking him by the hand led him to the sofa beneath an open window. ‘Have you decided what you’re going to do?’ she asked him.
He shook his head. ‘I know I should go to the police, tell them everything … I intended to, but … It’s Annalise and Corrie. It’s the shame, I can’t let them suffer, Pam, please try to understand that.’
‘But you didn’t do it, Phillip.’
He let his head fall back. ‘Oh, keep saying that, just keep saying it. If only you knew what it’s been like, how at times I’ve even wondered myself if I did it. But I didn’t, I couldn’t …’
‘I know you couldn’t. That’s why I believe you. You know that you didn’t need to go to a prostitute for what you wanted, don’t you? You could have come to me.’
Looking at her he cupped her cheek gently in his hand. ‘And defile you with what I feel for Octavia? I could never have done that, Pam. I never will.’
She smiled and kissed his palm. ‘Just in case you were wondering,’ she said, ‘I still love you. This hasn’t changed anything – except perhaps that I love you more for trusting me.’
‘I don’t deserve you,’ he whispered.
She laughed quietly and kissed him gently on the mouth. ‘I still think you should go to the police,’ she told him. ‘In fact, you must.’
Phillip shook his head. ‘We have to remember, Pam, that all the evidence points to me. That I could be convicted for this, even though I didn’t do it. These things happen … The trouble is, they’re holding an innocent man.’
‘How do you know he’s innocent?’
‘Because Fitzpatrick is behind this. I don’t know how he managed it, for all I know McIver could be some other poor bastard that Luke has got to, the same way he’s got to me.’
‘Phillip,’ Pam said, after a pause, ‘have you ever asked yourself how Luke knows so much about these murders?’
‘The police tell him. The inspector in charge of the case is a friend of his.’
‘Yes, but how does Luke know that you were the last person to see those girls alive?’
‘If they smelt of Octavia’s perfume, then I probably was.’
Pam shook her head. ‘You couldn’t have been. The murderer was the last person to see them alive. Now either he went to see them immediately after you, which in itself is a coincidence that stretches belief … OK, if there had only been one of them, but five! It’s just not credible. Or the murderer is using this perfume too. Which is another coincidence I find very hard to swallow. Does Luke Fitzpatrick know when you go to see these women?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘But he might.’
They sat in thoughtful silence for some time, sipping their drinks and holding each other’s hands. In the end, Pam said, ‘I think Luke killed those women, Phillip.’
Phillip immediately got to his feet and went to stand in front of the empty hearth. His back was turned so that Pam couldn’t see his face, but she didn’t have to to know what had made him stand up like that.
‘You think so too, don’t you?’ she said.
‘I can’t prove it.’
‘You don’t have to. That’s for the police to do. That’s why you have to go and see them. Unless they know about the way Luke is blackmailing you, manipulating you or whatever other vile little game he’s playing, then �
��’
‘I can’t do it, Pam! If I do then God only knows what he’ll do to Annalise and Corrie.’
‘But they’re in far more danger from him if you don’t. Oh, Phillip, I’m not trying to frighten you, but if Luke Fitzpatrick is killing those women, then you have to get him locked up as quickly as you can – before he does it again.’
‘He won’t, unless he can frame me. And if I don’t go to see any more prostitutes …’
‘It might not be as simple as that. Besides, five women are dead already, we can’t forget that.’
Phillip was pressing his hands to his head. ‘I don’t know what to do, Pam. I just can’t think straight anymore. He has my daughters, he has my wife … Jesus Christ, why is he doing this to me? What have I done to make him hate me like this?’
There was no answer Pam could give, so going to him she started to rub his shoulders, trying to ease his tension. ‘Has he been to see you at all recently?’ she asked.
‘No. But he’s spending more and more time with Annalise. Every time I call in to see her lately she’s either with him or on her way to him.’
‘And Corrie?’
Beneath her soothing fingers Pam had started to feel Phillip relax, but at the mention of Corrie’s name his muscles tightened again. ‘I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘She works with him, of course, but anything more than that … God, I’d like to kill that man for what he’s doing to us. He’s made me alienate my own daughter, Edwina’s daughter. I owe Edwina so much … If only I could get him out of their lives.’ He slammed a fist hard against the wall. ‘Dear God, what does he want from me?’
‘Not that you go to prison,’ Pam answered. ‘If he did, he’d have told the police what he knows himself by now.’
‘So what does he want? He’s got me, as they say, by the balls and I can’t move. If it ever comes out that I might, just might, have been involved in what happened to those prostitutes then I’m finished.’ He sighed. ‘I wouldn’t care, except for what it could do to Annalise and Corrie. I just can’t drag them down with me.’
‘Phillip, for heaven’s sake, he’s got you into such a state you’re starting to talk as though you’re guilty. OK, you visited the prostitutes, but there’s no crime in that. Nothing is going to happen to you, or to Corrie and Annalise, if you confess …’
‘Luke has other holds on me,’ Phillip interrupted. ‘You know that.’
‘Octavia?’
Phillip nodded. ‘Do you think I want Annalise to know what her mother’s really like? If I go to the police it’ll all come out, these things always do. And Fitzpatrick will see that they do. There’s nothing I can do about that.’
‘But if he did kill those women, Phillip, then something has to be done about that.’
The smirk on Luke’s face was making Phillip feel sick. He’d only been here, in this coffee bar, a few minutes, and already he knew it was a mistake to have come. Confronting Luke Fitzpatrick was not the answer, especially when he didn’t have one shred of evidence to back up what he knew deep down in his gut to be true. He waited with mounting impatience as Luke signed autographs for three middle-aged women, knowing full well that he was deliberately taking his time.
‘I’m just asking you where all this is going to end?’ Phillip repeated, when the women had at last returned to their own table. ‘Can’t you answer the question?’
‘Where all what is going to end?’ Luke said.
‘You know what I’m talking about, man!’ Phillip snapped.
Luke shrugged. ‘It’ll end, Phillip, when you give yourself up to the police.’
‘For something I didn’t do?’
‘Didn’t you?’
‘You know damned well I didn’t.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know anything of the sort.’
‘Then why aren’t you telling the police yourself what you know?’
‘I have my reasons.’
Phillip glared at him, knowing such hatred that his entire body ached with it. ‘You do realize, don’t you, that if I talk to the police then you will immediately be implicated yourself?’ he said.
‘How so?’
‘Well, I should have to tell them about the way you’ve been harassing me, that it’s because of that that I’ve decided to see them.’
‘If you were to tell the police that,’ Luke said, ‘then I should have to make it public that I have been pimping for your wife. Oh, didn’t you know that? Well, I have. It’s stopped now, but for a while there she took a fancy to become a whore. I have the photographs, Octavia and I look at them together from time to time – they blow her mind. I could lend them to you if you like, perhaps you might get a little more success with her in the sack if you shared her fantasies.’
‘You disgust me!’ Phillip snarled. ‘Almost as much as she does. But I’m not here to talk about Octavia, I’m here to talk about those girls – and who killed them.’
‘As far as I know, you did,’ Luke grinned.
‘Then who the hell is Bobby McIver?’
‘A friend. One you should be extremely grateful to, since it looks like he’s going to take the rap for you. Now, I have to be running along, I’ve got a date with one of your daughters.’ He threw a handful of coins onto the table and stood up. ‘Oh, and Phillip,’ he said, as he picked up his jacket, ‘I just thought you might like to know, that straight after the next time I screw Corrie, I’m going to ask Annalise to marry me.’
‘Keep away from them!’ Phillip cried. ‘Just keep your filthy hands off my daughters!’
‘But I’m only doing to them what you want to do yourself,’ Luke said pleasantly.
Phillip gaped at him in horror. ‘You’re sick!’ he gasped finally. ‘You’re insane.’
‘But I’m not a murderer,’ Luke grinned, and walked jauntily out of the coffee bar.
More than three weeks had gone by since Corrie had met Cristos Bennati, and still she couldn’t get him out of her mind. It was making her so miserable and irritable that she was turning down all invitations to drinks, the cinema, private views or whatever else was on the agenda, for fear of boring everyone to tears. She was furious with herself for behaving like a spoiled brat who was sulking because it couldn’t have what it wanted, but she just couldn’t help feeling cheated.
‘It wouldn’t be so bad,’ she told Paula on numerous occasions, ‘if I didn’t feel that someone up there was laughing at me. It’s like God, or fate or whatever, has deliberately dangled him in front of my nose just to show me what I really want, then they’ve snatched him away. Ha! Ha! You can’t have him!’
‘Well if you didn’t set your sights quite so high,’ Paula told her.
‘That’s not my fault is it!’ Corrie snapped back. ‘I can’t help the way I feel.’
She could hear the grin in Paula’s voice as she answered. ‘Were it anyone else, Corrie, I’d find it easier to sympathize with you, but you’re living in the clouds. Cristos Bennati’s an international movie director, one of the best in the world.’
‘I know that!’
‘OK, if you feel that strongly about him then get out there and do something about it.’
‘Like what?’
‘Don’t ask me, you’re the one with all the imagination.’
‘All right then, I will,’ Corrie retorted. The question was what?
The programme about transsexuals had now been transmitted, and Corrie and Annalise were currently investigating the increasing number of homosexual men, and the corresponding increase in the number of single women. This subject was depressing Corrie no end, since she was haunted night and day by the fact that she couldn’t have Cristos, and if these horrendous statistics were anything to go by, there wasn’t much hope of meeting anyone else.
‘I’ll be glad when we get this programme out of the way,’ she grumbled to Annalise one Saturday afternoon when they were on their way back from a series of interviews in the north. ‘Meeting all these single women is beginning to get on my nerves.’
‘Well, if I have my way you’ll be sharing a car with a married woman before much longer,’ Annalise said chirpily. ‘Anyway, we’ve only got the editing to do now, so you’d better start racking your brains as to what we do next.’
‘Don’t think I’m not trying,’ Corrie sighed. Which she was, though that in itself was annoying her intensely, since she was trying – and failing – to conjure up a story that would take them to Los Angeles. Exactly what she thought she was going to achieve there as far as Cristos was concerned was a question she didn’t care to answer, she simply scanned the newspapers every day in the hope that something in the vicinity of Hollywood would leap out at her begging to be made into a programme.
Annalise knew precisely what was going on in Corrie’s mind, and the following morning when she called in to see Corrie at her studio, and found her submerged in the Sunday papers, Annalise burst out laughing.
‘I can’t believe I’m doing it,’ Corrie wailed. ‘I’m going off my head. I must be to think that I could stand a chance with a man like that, especially after what happened. What the hell would he ever see in me anyway, even if I hadn’t behaved like a blithering idiot?’
‘Corrie!’ Annalise cried. ‘I think it’s about time you woke up to just how lovely you really are. Now stop putting yourself down and go and get me a cup of coffee.’
‘Get it yourself,’ Corrie said. ‘You know where it is.’
‘Oh, great hostess you are.’
‘I’m depressed. You should be sympathetic.’
‘Depressed because you can’t have your wicked way with Cristos Bennati!’
‘No, because no one else wants me either.’
‘Corrie!’ Annalise virtually screamed this time. ‘Are you blind, or what? Just about every man on that crew up in Leeds had his tongue hanging out for you. You’ve only got to walk down the street to get heads turning …’
‘If you think that then you’ve taken leave of your senses,’ Corrie informed her. ‘Besides which, we’re not talking about your average man in the street, are we? We’re talking about Cristos Bennati. A man who wouldn’t even lift his eyelids never mind turn his head to look at me. Which he proved …’