Destroy Unopened

by Anabel Donald

  ‘She’s a better cook and housekeeper than you are,’ Eyre told the wall.

  ‘She didn’t even go to school. We had her educated at home.’

  ‘We had to hire someone to come in,’ said Eyre. ‘At considerable expense. But my wife wasn’t up to it. Her own education, if you could call it that, having ground to an ignominious halt in her mid-teens.’

  ‘And I’m worried about the – about the Notting Hill serial killer.’

  ‘Having a tabloid mind,’ said Eyre to the wall. ‘Thinking only in terms of popular stereotypes. Out of the fifty plus million population of our island, if there is a serial killer, he must be focusing his murderous attentions on my daughter, the moron.’

  This time she responded to him, but indirectly. ‘Miss Tanner, our daughter is nineteen. She is five foot one. She is blonde haired and blue eyed. And she’s living here.’

  Eyre said nothing. She had a point, of course. Her daughter met the Killer’s specifications exactly. Right colouring. Right age: under twenty-one. Right height: under five two. Right location: the killer’s victims disappeared in the Notting Hill area, stayed out of sight for three to five days, and were then dumped on Wormwood Scrubs Common, thoroughly raped and efficiently strangled. And mutilated. But police weren’t releasing details of that.

  Then it hit me. That was what Hilary Lucas had been getting at, surely, when she’d fretted on at me about my height and age and colouring. Embedded in her exhaustive cross-examination had been exactly that information.

  She’d been concerned that I might be a target for the Notting Hill Killer.

  I reached for my bag, took out the envelope and put it on the desk in front of me. The bold red printed scrawl had been a come-on. It was still a challenge, but now it was also a threat. DESTROY UNOPENED.

  I looked at it. Just an envelope. Silent. As of course time bombs were, just before they exploded.

  Chapter Four

  ‘Miss Tanner? Miss Tanner? Oh really, this is beyond a joke.’

  I blinked, looked up from the envelope and focused on fractious Dr Eyre, who sounded as if he’d been trying to attract my attention for a while. I was sure I was right about Hilary Lucas, absolutely sure, but I couldn’t see why, or how it fitted in with the job she’d said she wanted me to do.

  I needed to talk to her, right away.

  Pauline Eyre was talking. ‘I just want to know where she is. I want to know that she’s safe, that someone’s looking after her Which is why I came to your agency on Monday, having used my secretarial skills, limited as they probably are, to consult the Yellow Pages and make a list of private detectives in the Notting Hill area. And why I was prepared to spend my own money hiring you to find her.’

  I looked directly at her. ‘You’re the client?’ I said.

  ‘I’m the client.’

  ‘In that case, I’d prefer to discuss the matter with you. Just you. So if Dr Eyre would care to . . .’ I got up.

  ‘Tell her I’m your husband and you want me to stay,’ he said to the wall.

  ‘Please, Roland,’ she said, looking directly at him for the first time.

  ‘You want me to leave?’ he asked, incredulously.

  ‘Please,’ she said again, and squeezed his hand.

  ‘Where do you expect me to go?’

  ‘There are some excellent cafes on Kensington Park Road,’ I said. ‘Up to the traffic lights, turn left, then first right. Have a cup of tea. Watch the world go by.’

  ‘I don’t drink tea.’ He sounded annoyed, which I’d expected, but also slightly lost, which I hadn’t.

  ‘Have a nice cup of coffee and a cake,’ said his wife, looking at him for the first time. ‘I won’t be long.’

  ‘Don’t sign anything,’ he said. ‘Don’t sign anything before I’ve approved it, Pauline. And don’t give her any more money.’

  ‘Certainly not, Roland.’

  After he’d gone, I gave her the usual warnings. Chances were the girl was no longer in the area. She may have been lying about where she was living. She could be anywhere. And even if we found her, if she didn’t want to go home or speak to her mother then we couldn’t make her.

  ‘Nick told me all that already,’ Pauline Eyre said. She sounded altogether more businesslike and less plaintive, without her husband. ‘I’m sorry Roland was so rude. He’s upset.’ She cleared her throat. ‘He doesn’t always quite . . . He’s very devoted to Samantha, you see.’

  I had no idea what she was getting at. ‘Naturally,’ I said.

  ‘She isn’t always easy to understand. Has her own ways . . . Did you say there’d be notes about her on the computer? Would you look?’

  I booted up the computer and looked, feeling more annoyed with Nick by the minute. Here I was spending time on one of her cases when I needed to get on with something else, urgently. I opened the document: eyre.1. Then I felt less annoyed. Nick had done a good deal: a cracking fee, half paid in advance and half at the end of the week and receipt of a detailed report, and if the girl was found before the week was up, we got the week’s fee anyway, as a bonus. Plus expenses. A bit of a rip off, actually. Nick’s a smart operator.

  Then I read the rest of her notes. She’d done what I would have done, more or less. She’d started in Ladbroke Grove itself and shown the girl’s photograph in the local post office, the baker’s, the cleaner’s, the all-night rip-off grocery store, the off-licence, the video rental place, the two pubs and the five takeaways. Some recognition but no hard information. She’d also set Lil on the case, with the usual deal, twenty quid in cash finder’s fee. Nothing from her as of yesterday.

  The last entry was much more promising. Possible ID with location, the Golden Kid.

  I didn’t want to raise Pauline Eyre’s hopes too far, but she was watching me so intently that she’d noticed my change of expression. I had to tell her something.

  ‘It seems that Nick had a lead,’ I said. ‘But it’s not clear what.’

  ‘What does it say?’

  In a moment, she’d moved round behind me and was reading over my shoulder I closed the document.

  ‘You’ll get a report from Nick when we have something concrete to tell you,’ I said.

  ‘I want to see,’ she said desperately. ‘Let me see.’

  ‘No, Mrs Eyre. We’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Soon?’

  ‘As soon as we can,’ I said, and got up to show her out, ushering her like a bouncer Otherwise, I reckoned, she’d stick around all evening.

  I closed the door behind her and waited a minute, in case she came back, then I went into the street and looked for Lil. No sign of her. A black drug dealer was leaning against his white BMW, parked on the pavement right outside. I knew him by sight, because he was hard to overlook: six foot plus, wearing only jeans and a singlet, despite the temperature. The singlet was probably to show off his pumped-up muscles which looked as if, at any moment, they’d burst free of his over-stretched skin and writhe around splattering his car.

  ‘Seen Lil?’ I asked.

  ‘Loony Lil? She went up the Grove. You all right for the weekend, then? Fixed up?’

  ‘Yeah. Thanks.’

  I retreated into the office before he decided I’d dissed him by refusing to buy, and sat down again at the desk. I had wanted to ask Lil if she’d got anywhere on Samantha Eyre and also to ask about Nick, if she’d seen her, if she knew where she’d gone.

  First, I’d speak to Hilary Lucas.

  Answering machine, of course. It always is when you want a particular human being. I left an urgent ring-back message, giving my home telephone number, then locked up and headed for home.

  My flat smelt stuffy and uninhabited. I opened the living-room windows and the fog billowed gently in, dissolving as it came. Last Sunday, when I went to Newcastle, I’d left Barty still packing for his trip. He’d tidied the flat before he left – an effort made for me and not natural to him. The tidiness reminded me of him more than his litter would have. It reminded me of his c
onsideration and his thoroughness and, a little, how irritating his remorseless consideration could be.

  I dialled my call-minder. Five messages.

  I took my boots off while I listened, expecting something from Nick.

  The first three were dates for future TV work, two of which clashed. Always the way. I noted them down.

  The fourth was from my friend Polly, who owns the downstairs flat. She’s been working in Hong Kong for a while. ‘Hi Alex, this is Poll, I’m in England, isn’t it great? I’ll be back in the flat Friday morning, hope to see you then, lots and lots and scads of kisses.’

  I had my usual Polly feeling, that it would indeed be great to see her but not quite yet. Tomorrow morning . . . plenty of working hours before tomorrow morning, and she might not be staying long . . . Then I felt disloyal.

  Feeling disloyal meant I hadn’t taken in the last message, so I played it again. The call-minder timed it for me: ten thirty this morning. ‘Alex, this is Alan. I’d like to see you, please. Any chance you could come over this afternoon? Any time after three, or later this evening. I’m not going out.’

  Alan Protheroe is one of my old bosses at the BBC, now an independent producer. He puts plenty of work my way. I looked at the clock. Four twenty. Maybe I’d pop round to get in on the ground floor of whatever he was planning.

  But there’d been nothing from Nick. Where was the girl? It wasn’t like her to miss office hours. She was like a kid with a new toy about the office generally, and she was always going on at me about methodical business practices and building up a client base. And she knew I’d be back in London this afternoon. Usually, she’d have a report waiting for me on the clients she’d taken on while I was away, plus some letters for signing and invoices for approval. She’d also be trying to cadge a free supper and a game of Scrabble, her latest craze. I hate Scrabble. I’ve only played with her once, but she’s stubborn, she keeps trying.

  I dialled her mobile phone. A recording told me it was ‘unavailable’ – presumably switched off. That was really unusual. She carried it everywhere and made incessant location calls: ‘I’m in Oxford Street’, ‘I’m just leaving Paddington Station’. She never, ever turned it off, except for a few hours at night when she charged it. I’d refused to buy her a second battery.

  So where the hell was she?

  Too late, I wished I’d gone after Lil to ask her about Nick. Lil wasn’t on the telephone. Maybe, after I’d spoken to Hilary Lucas, I’d go round to the old people’s home and fight my way through the carers whose smiles were as false as their teeth and who resented Lil because she wouldn’t sit quietly in front of the television all day and go to bed straight after her seven o’clock cocoa. I opened my overnight bag, fished out the slices of ham and salami I’d pinched from the breakfast buffet in the Newcastle hotel, and bunged them in the fridge. No fresh milk, which I’d asked Nick to get.

  I’d been slightly worried before, now I was back to annoyed.

  She’d turn up.

  I turned on the central heating and the immersion heater – I’d need plenty of hot water later, when I got stuck in to cleaning the flat – then went up to the bathroom and had a quick cold shower. I only just heard the phone ringing, wrapped a towel round my head and another round my body in case Nick came in, and hurled myself down the stairs.

  ‘Hilary Lucas here. You asked me to call.’

  ‘I need some information, please.’

  ‘Have you found something? Do you have the woman’s name for me?’

  ‘I haven’t looked at the letters yet. I’d like you to tell me why you think the Notting Hill Killer is involved in this case.’

  Silence.

  I let the silence go on. I was sure I was right, and I hoped she had enough sense to acknowledge it and not go all round the houses.

  ‘Why do you suppose me to think that?’ she said.

  ‘Because some of the apparently irrelevant questions you asked me seemed to be slanted in that direction.’

  Silence.

  I waited again, looking round the living room. I’d been away five days and there was a film of dust on everything, blackish London dust. I took the towel off my head and wiped down the desk with it, then walked through to the kitchen and bunged the towel into the washing machine.

  ‘Mrs Lucas?’ I said, groping in the cupboard under the sink for a duster.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she said.

  ‘Dusting. I’ve been away a while and the place is a mess. Are you going to answer me?’

  She made an impatient clicking noise. ‘I’m thinking,’ she said.

  She wasn’t thinking; she was gathering her courage. I dusted the television and video, then wedged the telephone between my shoulder and my ear, and used my nails inside the duster to scrape out the gunge round the buttons of the remote controls.

  ‘Miss Tanner?’

  ‘Call me Alex.’

  ‘Alex, do you have good contacts in the police?’

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘Would they act on your information if you didn’t give a source?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Have you been following the press reports of the Notting Hill Killer?’

  ‘Pretty much.’ I try to skim at least three serious newspapers a day, to keep up, so long as I don’t have to buy them.

  ‘Are you interested? Do you have any theories?’

  Actually, I wasn’t and I hadn’t. Somewhere in Notting Hill was a man, probably young, who wanted sex just before, during or after killing his small young blonde partner, which was a problem for the man and an even greater problem for his partner. But I don’t find nutters interesting, and tracking serial killers is classic police work: interviews, cross-checking, physical clues. It needs manpower and resources. None of it, to date, had been anything to do with me.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  Silence again.

  I bent down and dusted the underside of the desk.

  ‘I’ll come round to see you,’ she said abruptly.

  This surprised me. I’d have expected her to get me round there. She was making the effort perhaps as a concession, unless she couldn’t stand staying in her flat any longer and wanted to get out and do something.

  I agreed and gave her the address, then got dressed and started cleaning. Even if she took a taxi I’d have time to get the living room hoovered.

  Chapter Five

  I offered her black coffee or Malvern water. She took the water, sat on the sofa and looked about her. I saw my flat through her eyes and silently agreed with her that the street was noisy, that the fitted carpet was cheap and showing its age, and should have been polished floorboards by now anyway, and that the curtains were dated; a faded pastel Florentine print. Plus the woodwork was screaming ‘wash me’.

  Lucky she couldn’t see inside my kitchen cupboards.

  ‘I like it anyway,’ I said.

  Then she looked straight at me and I saw rage in her eyes and pain. Nothing to do with my flat or me.

  ‘What do you know about 10 Rillington Place?’ she said.

  ‘It’s been demolished. The whole street has. It used to be round here. It was the house where Christie murdered about five women, including the wife of his retarded lodger, Timothy Evans, plus Evans’s child, and buried them in the garden or walled them up in the house. The lodger, a pathological liar, confessed to the murders of his wife and child and was hanged for it. They got Christie later, and hanged him.’

  ‘Exactly,’ she said. She’d expected me to know. Pretty well everyone in England did, even though the Christie case was nearly fifty years old. We don’t have many multiple sex-killers, possibly because, apart from mild sado-masochism and the apparently inexhaustible male desire to gawp at huge tits, obsessive (or indeed any) sexuality is un-British. Consequently when a juicy sex-killer pops up, we’re fascinated. There’d been a Christie documentary every five years or so since I’d started in TV, though I’d never worked on one.

  She sipped her wate
r. ‘Do you know why Christie killed his victims?’

  ‘He was a necrophiliac, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Quite. And the Notting Hill Killer?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He might well be a necrophiliac too. Some reports suggest he is.’

  ‘And some reports in the tabloids suggest he’s an alien.’ I was beginning to lose patience.

  ‘Alex, if you had a son who told you that he liked his new flat because it was built on the site of 10 Rillington Place, what would you think?’

  ‘Hilary, I wish you’d get to the point,’ I said as gently as I could manage. It wasn’t gently enough, because she bristled her eyebrows at me in genuine astonishment. Perhaps nobody had ever told her to get to the point before. Maybe they hadn’t needed to.

  She was ruffled but not distracted. ‘If a son of yours said that, would you think he was the Notting Hill Killer?’

  ‘Not first off. Unless he’d shown other signs. Besides, mothers don’t, do they? “My boy’s a good boy, he wouldn’t hurt a fly.” That’s what mothers say.’

  ‘That’s what they say. I’ve often wondered if that’s what they think . . . anyway, that’s what was in the letter.’ She looked me full in the face, guilty.

  ‘What letter?’

  ‘The last letter in the envelope that I gave you. The most recent one.’

  I picked up the envelope, but she said, ‘I took it out. It isn’t there.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘I – destroyed it.’ She looked even more guilty.

  ‘How?’

  She hesitated, started to speak, hesitated again. Finally she blurted, ‘I ate it.’

  I didn’t even smile, but it cost me. ‘All of it?’

  ‘Every scrap.’

  ‘And what exactly did it say?’

  ‘I can’t remember the words. But the sense was – the sense was that the woman believed that her son might be the Notting Hill Killer.’

  There was plenty I could have said, like you should have warned me, like you may have destroyed evidence, but as that was so obviously what she felt guilty about, I didn’t.