“It isn’t the money I’m interested in, Ruth,” she muttered, turning the pages of the first file. “Just the details of productions and trips and so on. Could I have a look at these for a bit?”
“Of course. Are you looking for the productions that Zoë was involved in? I could point those out to you.”
“I’d just like to have a browse. If I get stuck, I’ll come to you.”
“Very well.” Ruth pursed her lips and removed her glasses. “Will the sound of our sewing-machine bother you?”
“No, no.” Kathy saw the frown on her face and made an effort to sound unconcerned. “Mustn’t slow down the war effort.”
“Absolutely not. Your aunt is a treasure, Kathy. We simply wouldn’t have managed without her.”
Aunt Mary didn’t raise her head from her sewing. Kathy thought she was looking extremely smug.
KATHY HAD BEEN WORKING through the papers for half an hour when Bren Gurney rang.
“Bren? Are you back at Orpington?”
“No, Kathy. I’ve got a bit of a problem.”
There was a sound of a baby crying in the background, then a siren in the distance.
“Where are you? Can I help?”
“No, I just need a bit of time to sort it out. They told me you needed me urgent.”
“Yes. I need to talk to you about the . . .”—she hesitated, aware of the two women at the table, heads down, busy at their work, listening to every word—“. . . the case.”
“What’s happened?”
“I need to meet you, talk something over.”
“Can it wait? Can you manage without me for a bit?” He was talking rapidly, anxious to get away.
“Could I meet you, wherever you are? It’ll only take ten minutes.”
“No, Kathy. Prefer you didn’t. Look . . .” She heard the reluctance in his voice, not wanting to say more, then, “You remember I mentioned my mother-in-law the other day?”
“Yes, the one you wanted to . . .”
“Yeah,” he cut in hurriedly. “Well, she’s had an accident.”
“Oh dear. Is she bad?”
“Yeah, pretty bad. I’m at the hospital, see.”
“Right. What kind of accident?”
“Hit and run.”
“Bren!”
“Kath, I gotta go.” His voice had dropped to a rushed whisper. “Take care of things, will you?”
“Yes, yes, of course.” She rang off, stunned.
“Bad news, pet?” Mary said quietly, after a bit.
“Er . . . someone’s had an accident.”
She dialled the Queen Anne’s Gate number and was put through to Brock.
“Kathy! I’ve been wanting to catch up with you. How are things?”
“I need to see you, Brock.”
“Of course. Later on this afternoon?”
“Now?”
“Well . . . why not? Where are you?”
“Shortlands. I’ll be up in half an hour.”
When she rang off she turned to Ruth. “I’d like to take some of your files with me. I’ll keep them safe.”
“That’s all right, Kathy. Goodness, you do look serious! Is something terribly wrong? Can’t we help?”
WHEN KATHY OPENED THE door of Brock’s office she was taken aback to see Leon Desai standing at the desk with him, examining a stack of paper. She hadn’t even heard that he was back from Edinburgh, and she felt a jab of resentment that Brock had wanted to put her off till the afternoon, when apparently he’d been meeting with Desai. Desai’s expression didn’t help, either, a cool assessment which made her feel that she should have checked herself in the mirror before charging in.
“Kathy!” Brock looked up and beamed at her, pulling the glasses off his nose. “Leon just dropped in with the latest collations on the audiences at the three venues.” He lifted the thick sheaf of print-outs and let it drop back on the table. “Sweet F.A.”
“The parameters are too wide,” Desai explained, voice quiet. “We could go on for ever.”
Brock shook his head grimly. “We haven’t got for ever, Leon. He’s going to do it again. That’s one thing we can be sure of. Anyway”—he straightened and grinned at Kathy—“you gave me the opportunity I needed to cancel my grilling from our friends down the road this morning, Kathy. Something important’s come up, I told them. Sergeant Kolla only consults me when she’s made a big breakthrough.”
A little smile formed on Desai’s face. “I’ll get going then, Brock. I need to show these to Bren.”
“He’s tied up at present, Leon. Probably be away for the rest of the day,” Brock said. Kathy was relieved he knew.
“Oh, right. I’ll get back to Lambeth then.”
“Why don’t you stay?” Kathy said, somewhat to her own surprise.
Desai looked surprised too, Brock amused.
“You might be interested in this,” she added.
“Yes, why not, Leon?” Brock said. “Have some coffee. You look as if you could do with it, Kathy.”
Brock sauntered over to the percolator he kept continuously going by the window, leaving Kathy and Desai to seat themselves, scrupulously avoiding eye contact.
“Well, now,” he said once they were provided for, “what do you have for us, Kathy?”
“I can narrow your parameters,” she said.
“Can you indeed? Well, that would be very useful. How do you manage that?”
Kathy had rehearsed the story on the way up from Shortlands, but it seemed so obvious now that it told itself.
“I was struck—we all were—by the title of that play that Zoë had been in, The Lady Vanishes. It was such a beautiful and terrible coincidence, like a prophecy. But then I looked at Macbeth again, the play Angela Hannaford had been to see that night, and I realized that it too could be taken as a prophecy, of her death by stabbing, with a dagger.”
Brock frowned and clawed at his beard thoughtfully. “Yes, that hadn’t occurred to me, Kathy. It’s certainly a thought.”
“So then I wondered about the third murder that we knew was connected, in Edinburgh. I wondered what play could have suggested an attack on the eyes of the victim, stabbing them out.”
“Mmm!” Brock’s face had lit up with interest; Desai was still sceptical. “Oedipus?”
“Or King Lear. But I checked, and neither had been performed at the Festival.”
“Oh.” Brock sounded disappointed. “Pity.”
“Only the list we’d got from Edinburgh was incomplete.” Now Desai looked up sharply. “They hadn’t included all the companies who took part in the Fringe festival. Among them was a group who did Equus.”
“Oh my God.” Brock stared at her. Desai didn’t seem to follow.
Kathy turned to him. “Equus tells the story of a highly disturbed boy who loves horses, and who, after failing to achieve sex with his girlfriend, stabs out the eyes of his horses with a hoof pick. Apparently the author, Peter Shaffer, based it on a real case.”
Kathy pulled the book out of her bag. “Look at the final speech of the play. The character describes how he stands in the dark with a pick in his hand, striking at heads. That’s what Kirstie’s killer did, isn’t it?” she said softly. “He stood in the dark, striking at heads.”
Desai nodded. “Yes.”
“Well,” Brock said slowly, “that does sound promising. If it really was more than coincidence, we could concentrate on the audience of just one out of the dozens of performances in Edinburgh that night, which would be a big help, wouldn’t it, Leon?”
Desai nodded grimly. “It certainly would.”
“There’s more to it,” Kathy said. “The group that performed Equus that night in Edinburgh was the same group that did The Lady Vanishes—SADOS, from Shortlands.”
“What!” Brock jerked forward in his chair.
“It turns out they also had an outing to Macbeth at the National Theatre on the same Saturday night that Angela went.”
For a moment Brock was speechless. Then he
exploded, “How the bloody hell could we not have known that, for God’s sake! We’ve been interviewing them for the best part of a week. None of them mentioned Edinburgh or the National Theatre, did they?”
“We didn’t ask them. We decided not to raise the other cases with them—there’s been no public announcement that they may be connected, or that we may be dealing with a serial killer.”
Brock was out of his chair now, roaming round the room, his big feet narrowly avoiding sending flying the piles of documents dotted about the floor.
“Something else,” Kathy said, and he stopped dead and turned to face her.
“During the week ending Saturday the ninth of June this year, SADOS put on a play at the Shortland Repertory Theatre. It was a comedy, by Neil Simon. It was called Barefoot in the Park. That Saturday was the night that Carole Weeks was murdered in Spring Park. Her shoes were never found.”
BROCK HAD STOPPED HIS roaming, and they sat around the low coffee-table on which the secretary, Dot, had put a plate of sandwiches. It was early for lunch, but Kathy’s revelations had made Brock hungry.
“All right,” he said, nodding his head, swallowing. “All right. Now what about that other murder we looked at? The woman in Blackheath. Any possible connection there?”
“Janice Pearce,” Kathy replied. “That happened a couple of months before the Edinburgh murder, and it doesn’t seem to correspond to anything in the SADOS calendar. Besides, the reason we identified that one was that it was the only unsolved murder of a woman commuter on the same rail line that Gentle uses. If Gentle is now irrelevant, there’s no particular reason to include it in the series.”
Brock nodded. “So, the proposition is what? That SADOS have a crazed fan who shadows them around the country, turning their make-believe into horrible reality. Is that it?”
“That would be one possibility.”
Brock shook his head. “A sort of cultural Billy Spratt.”
“Who?”
“Billy Spratt was a Chelsea fan. He used to follow the team faithfully to all their away matches, and whenever they lost the game he’d hang around the town in question afterwards, and kill somebody before he went home. Revenge. It was some time before anybody noticed the connection between the murders and Chelsea losing their away matches. But you wouldn’t think of theatre people doing that sort of thing, would you? Or is that just me thinking in stereotypes? What would provoke it? A bad review in the paper?” He snorted dubiously.
“Another possibility,” Kathy said, “is that one of the SADOS people themselves finishes off each stage run with a little private play of his own.”
“That’s even more bizarre. But it should be easy to check. The problem is that, even when we’ve narrowed the field of suspects down to people connected with this particular theatre group, we’re still dealing with someone who takes a lot of care to cover his tracks. If he’s as careful buying his tickets and keeping in the background as he is in cleaning up his traces at the murder scene, we may still miss him.”
“The Macbeth murder shows that he’s closer to them than just looking out for their play announcements in the local paper,” Kathy said. “He must have seen their newsletter, or known someone who’s a member, to know that they would be going to the National that night.”
“True. Still, I think we need some help to get a clearer idea of what we’re after here.” Brock looked at Desai. “Dr. Nicholson again, I think.”
Desai nodded.
“Is that the profiler?” Kathy asked. “The one who knocked my Gentle theory on the head?” Kathy had already formed a mental picture of a cranky old pedant.
Brock nodded. “Psychologist from the University of Surrey. I’ve worked with Alex a few times now. Very good.”
“An academic,” Kathy said doubtfully, her image confirmed. “Are you sure he’s what we need, Brock? I mean, some old professor may be strong on theory, but . . . I don’t know.”
Desai smiled. “Alex Nicholson’s a she. Our age. You’ll like her.” He nodded. “She’s very good.”
“Oh.” Kathy coloured.
“Shall I get on to her?” Desai asked.
“Yes, please, Leon. See if she can spare us her weekend. OK with you, Kathy?”
“Yes, of course.” Kathy nodded, chastened. “That’s fine.”
“Why don’t you get that fixed up straight away, Leon?” Brock said. “There’s one or two other things I want to go over with Kathy.”
Desai nodded and got to his feet. Before he moved off he turned to her and said, “That was quite brilliant, Kathy.”
“What?” she said dumbly, still thinking about her reaction to the psychologist.
“Your ‘big breakthrough.’ I’m very impressed.”
Brock beamed at him. “Thought I was joking, didn’t you, Leon? I knew she must have come up with something. I could tell. She reminds me of me, thirty years ago.”
Desai grinned a broad grin, lots of perfect white teeth, the first time Kathy had ever seen them.
When he had gone, Brock said, “Don’t let it go to your head, Kathy. What’s all this about Bren?”
Kathy looked at him in surprise. “He’s spoken to you from the hospital, has he?”
“Yes. What’s going on?”
“Well, it seems his mother-in-law has had an accident.”
“Yes, I know about that. She stepped out into the street without looking. They phoned Bren at work first thing this morning . . .”
“He was at work when it happened?” she interrupted, and felt a surge of relief when he nodded.
“Yes. Did you think he did it?”
“No! No, of course not.”
“Shouldn’t say it, but having met the lady once myself . . .” Brock stopped himself and grunted, looking uncomfortable. “My question was directed at you and Bren, Kathy. Are you two getting along all right?”
Kathy was puzzled. “Yes, I think so. How do you mean?”
“You’re working well together? Teamwork is very . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence.
“Important, yes, I know.”
“Tricky, I was going to say. No personal difficulties?”
“Personal? Brock, I don’t follow.”
“No, no. I didn’t think so.” He sighed and spread his hands out on the table in front of him. “I should probably tell you that Bren’s wife, Deanne, rang me not long ago. She was in quite an emotional state. I think I did mention, didn’t I, that she lost her father recently, after a long illness?”
“Yes, you told me.”
“He died, apparently, on that Monday evening, the day after we started the Angela Hannaford investigation. It was expected, by that stage, and Bren had promised to be home early. Only he got caught up in things at Orpington, with the result that Deanne was delayed getting to the hospital, and consequently she wasn’t with her father when he passed away.”
“Oh.”
“In point of fact, at the moment Deanne’s father passed away, Bren was with you, munching a hamburger in his car on the road back up to town, a fact which Deanne subsequently ascertained after prolonged interrogation of her husband.”
“Oh dear.”
“Yes. Unfortunately, Bren had earlier spoken about you to his wife, in glowing terms, she said, about how much he was looking forward to working with you again. His enthusiasm was quite childish, she said, an enthusiasm which clearly DS Kolla has manipulated for her own purposes.”
Kathy winced. “I’m not her favourite person, then.”
“I did my best, Kathy, but I think you can take it that you are one of the many dark clouds in Deanne Gurney’s world at present.”
“Should I go and talk to her, do you think?”
“I wondered about that. But when Bren phoned and told me about the latest blow this morning, I thought that would be the last thing the poor woman needs.”
Bren was telling me the same thing, Kathy thought, recalling her offer to meet him at the hospital.
“I just thought I shou
ld warn you, Kathy. Go carefully, eh? Now.” He sat up and rubbed his hands briskly. “Since you are effectively in charge of this investigation, where do we go next?”
“We’ll have to interview the SADOS people again, try to compile audience lists for Barefoot in the Park and Equus, find out who went on the Macbeth trip. I thought I’d take a team down and catch them when they’re all together at their rehearsal in the Three Crowns this evening.”
“Good. I’ll come with you if I may. I’d like to see what they’re like, this crowd. Fancied myself as a bit of an actor once, as a matter of fact, long time ago.”
TWELVE
BROCK BROUGHT THEIR REHEARSAL to an abrupt halt as soon as he came through the door of the upstairs room. He didn’t need to say anything. There had been a light shower of rain, the evening was cool, and he had a black raincoat over his big frame. He stood, feet apart, hands deep in the coat pockets, considering them, and they knew that this was trouble even before he opened his mouth to introduce himself.
Stage presence, Kathy thought.
He apologized for interrupting them, but there had been a serious development. The police had been investigating a series of attacks on women in the south-east London area, and it was possible that they were related to the disappearance of Zoë Bagnall. It was possible that audiences at some SADOS productions might be able to provide useful information, and the police were therefore seeking the co-operation of the company to trace as many audience members as possible on the dates in question.
The message wasn’t particularly threatening, but Brock’s tone was ominous, and their faces showed that they were unsettled by him. The outside world was breaking in again, uninvited, to the Captain’s half-realized living-room, demolishing its illusion in a few quiet words from the big policeman. Standing with another officer, a couple of paces behind him, Kathy felt Stafford Nesbit’s eyes on her throughout Brock’s little speech.
They moved to the room across the landing and began interviewing people in turn, while another two officers collected the information on ticket purchasers. Kathy and Brock began with Ruth, who was fascinated by these developments.
“Are you suggesting that someone in our audience at each of these performances is the person you are looking for, Chief Inspector?” she asked.
All My Enemies Page 18