“Oh, it reached the stage last year where I had no life of my own, working insane hours, so I decided to pull back a little, to give myself a bit more time to stand and stare, to travel a bit.”
“With Maeve?”
“Ah, when I can. No, usually with Dinah, my lady friend.”
This took Catherine completely by surprise, it was an effort to keep the astonishment out of her face, though the moment she stopped to think about it she realised that Terry would never have stayed unattached for long. In Dublin circles in any circles he was probably seen as a great catch. No, what had caught her out was the passage of time. In her mind he was still the rather solitary man from five years ago, the widower of under two years with the touching devotion to her mother. Also, and unforgivably, he was the arrogant self-made man who’d managed to equate love with power, and had the nerve to suggest a relationship with her at the very moment when he was in the process of defrauding her father.
“So,” she said carefully, ‘this spare time will you be spending it at Morne?”
“I’m always trying to come more often.”
“How often do you get here at the moment?”
“Ah. Not as often as I’d like,” he said a touch sheepishly.
“Weekends?” she persisted.
“Once a month, if I’m lucky. Bit of a waste, really.”
It could have been the wine, it could have been the reminders of the past, but the resentment welled up in her again. “Yet you were so anxious to get hold of this place.”
He paused. “I wouldn’t say anxious exactly.”
“Well, you didn’t miss the opportunity.”
“I never saw it as an opportunity, Catherine.”
“It was a favour, then?” She hated the sarcasm in her voice.
“No,” he said with dignity, ‘not that, either.”
And still she wouldn’t let go. “So Morne just fell into your lap.”
His eyes darkened, he gazed at her with something like disappointment.
“I didn’t seek to come here, Catherine.”
She shook her head at him in mute anger.
Slowly, with the air of someone undergoing an ordeal he would rather avoid, Terry slid his elbows onto the table and made a cage of his fingers, before saying in a considered tone, “I never wanted this house, Catherine. In fact, I’ve never known what to do with it. I’d sell it tomorrow if I felt it was the right thing to do.”
“But you took over the mortgage, you .. . foreclosed on it -or whatever it is. You were bound to end up with the place.”
Again, he chose his words carefully. “I only did what I was asked to do.”
“You’re suggesting Daddy wanted to give up the house?”
“It wasn’t quite as simple as that, Catherine.”
“So how complicated was it? Either my father wanted to stay or he didn’t.”
“Perhaps you should ask him.”
“I already have.”
He dropped his eyes, he sat back in his seat with a small gesture of submission, and said quietly, “Then you must take that as your answer, mustn’t you?”
The dependency clinic stood in the grounds of a private hospital serving the commuter belts of Kent and East Sussex. It was the cheapest Simon had been able to find, which wasn’t saying a great deal because all the private clinics were daylight robbery. But National Health places were impossible to find unless the addict was prepared to wait months. So far as his mother was concerned no amount of waiting would ever make the time right, of course, but the six weeks would at least offer a respite for Betty. And for me, he thought. Most of all for me.
Following accepted practice, his mother was to share a room; following normal routine, she informed the nurse that this would be out of the question. The inevitable scene ensued. First the imperious froideur, the grand inspection of the premises and the announcement that it wouldn’t do, as though she’d booked the Ritz and been shown a seedy B & B; then the reasoned argument, delivered in a sweet voice of injured innocence.
Some token tears followed, then, when these proved futile, came the venom, delivered with skill and precision because she knew exactly what she was doing when she was sober.
“I only have to look at him to feel sick,” she told the staff. “Because he’s just like his father a two-faced shit.”
The lexicon varied but the substance always remained the same. When he finally got her into the room and unpacked, she sat on the bed like a martyr, face set, mouth pulled down, eyes drooping, talking of suicide. He remonstrated, as he always did, but she wouldn’t be denied her outpouring of bitterness, her chance to visit her anger on him in the name of his father.
The next stage brought a familiar turmoil, a surge of heat and tension,
like the spiking of an old wound. She told him things about his father
that no mother should ever tell a son,
things that as a child he’d barely understood except to know that they were hurtful and loathsome and must surely be his fault, things that as he’d grown older he’d heard with growing confusion and despair, and something else dark and shameful which he dare not name.
He listened as he always listened, silently, obediently, feeling the heat and disgust which had long ago become indistinguishable to him, until they reached the last stage, the long process of pacifying her, of repeating the reassurances and promises of devotion that she’d heard a hundred times before, but still demanded of him feverishly, like a liturgy from an abandoned religion.
He returned to London with a sense of deep fatigue and nagging dread, knowing it was only a matter of time before she threatened to walk out, wondering as always how many phone calls and blandishments it would take to dissuade her.
His mood didn’t improve when he realised he was going to be late for his meeting with Wilson. Nearing town, it began spotting with rain. By the time he parked in Notting Hill it was bucketing down. He jogged into the police station exactly forty-five minutes late. Fortunately Wilson hadn’t gone out. While he waited for him to come down to the lobby, Simon ran a comb quickly through his dripping hair and dried his spectacles with a handkerchief.
“Mr. Jardine! Brought the weather with you, I see.” In keeping with his little quip, Wilson seemed lively, almost cheerful: the clear-up rate improved perhaps, or no murders this week. “How’s Catherine?” he asked.
“Fine, thank you.”
Wilson took him through the pass door. “She did better than expected, I gather. Earned herself early release.”
“She said she couldn’t take more of the physio’s sadism. That and the quiz nights.”
Wilson gave the obligatory laugh, then, finding a vacant interview room, waved Simon to a seat. “So, what can I do for you?” he demanded crisply.
“I just wanted to catch up really. I’ve been away ‘
“Argentina, you said?” Sitting on the other side of the table, he made a show of racking his brains. “Pampas? Or have I got that completely wrong?”
There seemed no limit to his bonhomie today. Simon replied pleasantly, “I only got as far as Buenos Aires.”
“Ah. No pampas then.”
“Not a lot.” Hoping this had exhausted the travel talk, Simon ventured, “There were a couple of things I wanted to ask, if that’s all right.”
Wilson gestured him on with a flip of his hand, as if he’d be the last person to hold things up.
“This is a bit difficult,” Simon began with a suitably awkward laugh. “I don’t want Catherine to think I’m going behind her back. It’s just that .. . well, she happened to mention that she’d come across the number of that nuisance caller. She made a note of it late one night, thought she’d lost it, then found it again a couple of days ago.”
Wilson made a face of great puzzlement. “But the calls came through on her mobile telephone. There was no easy way to trace them.”
“That’s right. But this time the call came through on the house line, and she used 1471 to get the numb
er.”
Wilson tightened his lips. “But this call it was silent, like the rest?”
“As I understand it.”
“So it could have been someone else altogether?”
“Possibly,” Simon conceded rapidly. “But Catherine thought not. She thought it was the same person.”
“Though the person didn’t speak?”
That’s right.”
They exchanged a complicit smile, as if to say: this is the way women are, intuitive, beyond simple logic.
“And we’re not talking wrong numbers any more?”
Simon chose to answer this with a diplomatic shrug.
“I never thought we were,” Wilson remarked heavily. “Not for a second.”
Under Wilson’s unwavering gaze, Simon reached into his wallet for the slip of paper he’d prepared and handed it over. Wilson laid the number on the table without looking at it. “I’ll get it checked this afternoon.”
“You’ll let me know, obviously? Rather than Catherine? So she’s not bothered.”
When Wilson’s eyes narrowed Simon thought for a moment he’d gone too far. But apparently it was just Wilson’s way, to consider all requests with circumspection, because the next moment he nodded unconcernedly and lifted his eyebrows, ready for the other item on the agenda.
“Yes ... Again, I’m going a bit behind Catherine’s back.” Simon frowned to show that even the mildest subterfuge was distasteful to him. “She didn’t want to tell you in case it was nothing, in case it caused unnecessary fuss, but I thought you should know. The thing is, Catherine had the idea that someone might be following her earlier this week.”
Wilson’s look of polite interest sharpened into something more terrier-like. “Did she get a look at this person?”
“No. Not enough to give a description anyway. It happened twice. She thinks it happened twice. The first time, she was out shopping and saw this man in a blue cap twice within the space of an hour. Sort of loitering nearby. Then on Tuesday night there was someone standing opposite the house for quite a while. But she couldn’t say if it was the same man.”
“A blue cap? Loitering?” Wilson asked in a flat tone of disappointment. “That was it?” Then, without waiting for an answer:
“And the man outside the house she only saw him the once?”
“Apparently.”
“Did he appear to be watching the house? Or just hanging about?”
“It was very dark.” Simon made a regretful face.
“Height? Age? Weight? Ethnic group?” Wilson rattled the questions off without expectation of anything useful by way of reply.
“Nothing.”
“And no similar incidents since?”
“No, but then she’s moved into this flat for the time being, and it’s quite a long way from the house.”
“Ah yes, WPG Cox did inform me.”
“I encouraged her to go. While her husband’s away.”
“Good idea,” Wilson muttered vaguely.
“It was just to be on the safe side.”
Coming to a decision, Wilson said, “Yes, best thing all round, because I regret to say we won’t be able to follow up on these incidents. Without a description to go on, without any certainty that she was being followed .. .” He gestured sympathy. “Perhaps she’s just a bit nervous, what with the trial coming up. A bit jumpy with her husband being away.”
“You don’t think it could have been Pavlik?”
Tavlik? Not likely.”
“Why?”
“Never been a stalker. No reason to start now. No motive to try to intimidate Catherine. She can’t identify him as her assailant.”
“He’s been keeping to his bail conditions?”
“He must be reporting daily to his local nick, otherwise we’d have heard soon enough.”
“And the other conditions?”
“We assume everything’s all right unless we hear to the contrary.”
Simon wanted to say: Well, he wasn’t bloody working at La Rondine last night for a start, and the house in Fifth Avenue was deserted till at least three in the morning, so I don’t know how you can sit there and assume anything at all.
“We did check things out at the beginning,” Wilson volunteered smoothly. “Visited his landlord.” He added with what might have been a sneer, Though landlord is not the word some might choose.”
Simon was silent.
“Protector,” Wilson threw into the air. “Admirer. An older man with what shall we say? charming manners and a voice to match.” He made a knowing face.
“Gay, you mean?”
“It would seem so, yes.”
“But.. .” In a theatrical gesture of incomprehension, Simon touched his fingertips to his temples. “I thought ... You mentioned sexual overtones ... in the attack. You talked about a possible stalker.”
That’s right.”
“But if Pavlik’s gay, then surely .. .?”
With the manner of someone only too glad to enlighten others, Wilson said, “I’m no psychologist, Mr. Jardine, but from what the experts tell me Pavlik wouldn’t be the first homosexual to have violently mixed feelings about women. Apparently some of them adore and worship women from afar, but once they get close, then something called I think I’m right hetero phobia kicks in. All mixed up with Oedipus-type feelings. Revulsion, revenge. Getting back at mother and women in general for all the imaginary wrongs they’ve suffered. Confused sexual feelings. I’ve explained it badly, but it’s something like that.”
“What about these objects that were found? The ones that made you think he was psychotic?”
“Yes .. .” Wilson grunted. “But in the end they may not feature much in the trial.”
“Why not?”
Wilson hesitated. “There’s a question mark over whether the CPS will be able to make much use of them. There’s no way of linking the items to Pavlik, you see. Nothing forensic.”
“And what were these items?”
“Some lace panties. A lady’s scarf.”
Simon frowned. “Catherine’s?”
Wilson shook his head.
“They were found near her?”
“The panties under her head, soaked with her own blood. The scarf .. . tucked up her skirt. With blood on it, but not hers.”
Simon’s heart gave a cold thump. He felt a blend of revulsion and curiosity. He looked away and took a long breath, to give himself time. “And you think these items were put there by Pavlik?”
“We think he carried them around with him, ready for a moment like this. A collector, you might say. An enthusiast for deviant little items. Probably graduated from thieving off washing lines.”
And still Simon couldn’t make any sense of this information.
Wilson peered at him. “You all right?”
“Yes, I’m just.. . shocked.”
“Catherine didn’t tell you then?”
Simon’s throat swelled, his voice choked slightly as he said, “No, she never mentioned it.”
“Well, I’m sure she just wanted to put it out of her mind.”
Sensing that Wilson was about to call a halt, Simon asked hastily, “But tell me, why can’t this be used against him?”
“Oh, it’ll be used, but the CPS won’t go strong on it. If Pavlik had been a known stalker, a known collector of women’s underwear, if there’d been forensic evidence .. . When Pavlik agreed to a body sample we thought we’d get him on some DNA traces, something on the scarf at least, but’ he pursed his mouth ‘no such luck.”
Simon said with a light laugh, “So what evidence do you have against Pavlik?”
“Oh, we can prove he was in the house. We can prove he was upstairs in the second bedroom. We’ve got four different strands of fibre plus some specks of very unusual paint. Then, what else .. .?” He checked his memory. “We’ve got a witness who’ll say Pavlik boasted about breaking and entering. And of course he was caught trying to flog the jewellery.”
“That’s going to be enou
gh, is it?”
Wilson gave the mirthless chuckle of someone who’d seen too many prosecutions turn to dust. “Mr. Jardine, you’re a lawyer. You know how it is. There’re no certainties in this game. It only takes a smart barrister. It only takes a jury who’re easily swayed. I wish I could promise you that Pavlik’s going to be put away. But I can’t. According to the defence disclosures, two men are going to swear they spent the whole of that Sunday evening with Pavlik.”
Simon made a show of absorbing this. “And will it stand up, this alibi?”
“Who knows?” Wilson exclaimed contemptuously. “Pavlik’s got a very sharp legal team. Presumably they wouldn’t be fielding these two witnesses unless they thought it might be of benefit to them. As I say, I can’t give you any guarantees.”
A sliver of fear slid into Simon’s stomach. “A sharp legal team? What do you mean?”
“The CPS people know them. Top firm of solicitors. Top QC.”
“Top firm?” he said incredulously. “What, this man Gresham?”
Wilson offered this up to his memory. “No, no he’s changed them all. No, the solicitor’s something else like .. . Blake? Black? And the QC, one of those that comes at ten thousand a day.”
Feeling slightly sick, Simon continued to hold very still. “A totally new team?”
“No expense spared.”
“But how can Pavlik afford people like that?”
“Mr. Jardine, I don’t think we have to look very far to work out who’s paying, do we?” Wilson said in the tone of a schoolmaster explaining the basics to a dim pupil. “Pavlik lives with an older man. An older man with a bit of money.” He shrugged to suggest that this settled the argument, and, pushing back his chair, got briskly to his feet.
Simon moved slowly, with a sense of being weighed down. “So he might get off? You’re saying there’s a good chance he’ll get off?”
“I’m saying that I can’t give you any assurances, Mr. Jardine. That’s all. But it wouldn’t be fair to anyone to promise he’s going to be put away.”
Chapter Thirteen
Keep Me Close Page 29