by A J Waines
‘Nothing to pin it on him, then?’
‘Bugger all…sorry, been a long night…day…’ He looked confused as though he had no idea what time it was. ‘Your “Demo-man” alias Reginald McGuire is back on the radar, though. That’s not his real name. He’s also known as Damon Hartnell and has a record for assault on…wait for it…women who’ve had terminations.’
‘Really?’ He tapped one of many loose sheets lying on his desk.
‘He was in Paris earlier this year outside an abortion clinic and allegedly punched one woman and was verbally abusive to another, but he wasn’t arrested. We know he’s been an agitator in Ireland and has been at various Pro-life demonstrations up and down this country. Problem is, we can’t find him.’
I let my shoulders drop with a heavy sigh. He’d made no mention of Andrew, but I knew that didn’t mean he was out of the picture. I couldn’t handle any further setbacks, so I didn’t ask.
‘You wanted me to see something.’
‘Yeah. You can’t see the body. It’s badly decomposed and —’
I put my hand up. ‘I know - can we stop there?’ I’d already spent a night seeing images of the victim; her skin puffy and transparent, and starting to peel away. For once I wished my imagination wasn’t quite so sharp.
He reached across his desk for some photographs. ‘Suzanne was strangled like the others,’ he said. ‘Dead before she got in the sewer - pathologist says there wasn’t enough water in her lungs or stomach to suggest she drowned. And, like the three others, she’d had a recent termination - at Fairways.’
That link again.
He handed me a batch of photographs. I flinched.
‘It’s okay. These are just pictures of her clothes, that’s all. Like before, we wondered if there was anything familiar.’
I carefully checked each print. The girl’s clothes had been dried and laid on a white table; a thin zip-up jacket, a single green glove, jeans, a black t-shirt, black bra and matching panties. My first thought was that it wasn’t much for a wet November night, forgetting that she may have been killed on a dry day earlier in the week. I didn’t recognise any of it.
‘And then there was this.’ He handed me a sealed plastic bag containing a small white card. It had been scuffed, the way paper disintegrates when you’ve put it by accident through the washing machine.
It was the size of a business card. I held it closer until I could make out a few letters on the front.
‘It says “Odeon”, I think,’ I said.
‘Yeah, that’s what we think. We’ve also been able to work out a couple of other sections; one is “Future”, the other looks like it might be “Derby Street”.’
I dropped the plastic bag and took a step backwards, colliding with a filing cabinet. I had that horrible feeling: the one when you look up and realise your purse has been stolen or walk in the front door and know you’ve been burgled. That nasty cocktail of shock and despair that made the pit of your stomach collapse. ‘It’s a cinema ticket…from Norwich.’ I grabbed hold of it again. ‘Look here…these numbers…it’s a date.’ I squinted, unable to believe what I was seeing. ‘It’s from…1990.’
‘What the —’
‘The killer knows about my past. He was there,’ I said. This stupid, vile game was turning into a never ending torment.
While Brad stabbed about on DS Markeson’s desk, trying to find the file to replace the ticket, I leant against the desk, not trusting myself to stand unsupported. I glanced down at the cascade of overlapping sheets. There were pages and pages of handwritten numbers in columns and others that looked like complex diagrams of electrical grids. I was about to ask if I was free to go, when my eyes fell on another page. I stared at it in disbelief, my pulse throbbing in my temples.
This can’t be happening.
‘Where did this come from?’ I asked, my voice sounding like it was being dragged over sandpaper.
Brad turned round. ‘Oh, it’s the pile of papers we picked up from Jones’ flat. Tide-tables for the Thames and pages of calculations about boats and speeds. It doesn’t mean anything to me, I’m afraid, but our technical guys say it’s high-level complicated stuff.’ He glanced up at my face and must have noticed my ashen colour. ‘You okay?’ He pushed a chair into the fold of my knees and I gratefully slumped into it.
I held up the top sheet. There it was: the hallway with stairs on the left and the sitting room first right; the dining room second right, leading to the breakfast room and then the kitchen. I pressed it against my chest as if it was a photograph of a long lost relative.
‘It’s mine,’ I said.
The home where we were all happy, until the fire swallowed Luke up.
‘What is?’
‘This plan. It’s the layout of our old house in Norwich.’
Brad dropped the folder he was holding. ‘Your house?’ he said, pressing his fingers into his forehead.
‘Yes. And look at it.’ I held it up. ‘It shows the power points and the position of basic appliances. It’s about the fire, isn’t it?’
‘Let me see.’ He prised the page out of my hands and flattened it out on the desk. ‘You sure this is the plan of your house?’
‘William was involved with the fire…’ I whispered. My voice didn’t sound like mine anymore. It sounded flat, distant, disembodied.
He repeated his question, the way policemen do.
‘Yes, I’m sure,’ I said. ‘Every detail. The exact location of the rooms, the fuse-box under the stairs…the fridge, the cooker - everything.’
‘Oh my God,’ he said. He squeezed his eyes shut and looked dazed for a second, then called to an officer sitting at a desk by the window. ‘I want all the records of Jones’ history, where he used to live and when,’ he said. ‘And I want it now.’ He turned to me. ‘We’ve missed something huge,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to stay. This might take a while.’
Chapter Twenty-nine
I wasn’t sure if I could cope, sitting in the police station unable to do anything; squashed inside this manic bee-hive, but not part of it, wondering what other nasty shocks might be in store for me. I checked my watch: only 10.30am. The rest of the day felt like it was going to be an ordeal.
I felt like someone had punched me hard in the face and I was trying to see though a blanket of stars: blinding, flashing, blurring my thinking. This new discovery was taunting me, teasing me, but felt slightly out of reach. Two entirely separate tragedies were merging together. The fire that killed Luke and the deaths of these women - there was a link. And that link was William Jones: a man I’d never met, who was two years older than me and had Asperger’s. I was trying to complete a circuit but, pull as hard as I might, I couldn’t get the two wires close enough to touch each other. I needed to be somewhere on my own to try to process what all of this meant.
I caught the Tube back to Putney Bridge and walked along the river. Thoughts battered around inside my head like hailstones, as I tried to figure out what had happened over the past eight weeks since that dreadful first text message in September. I needed to focus on the facts, not speculation or assumptions.
For a start, what did I know? William Jones had a plan of our old house showing the power points, main appliances and the fuse-box under the stairs. William Jones had been at Kew Bridge and had given me the date of the last murder. I’d never met him before the police interviews. The dates were significant to him, due to some traumatic incidents in his own past. But he wasn’t the killer: his hands were too small, his feet were too small and he didn’t drive, but he did have lists of tide-tables for the Thames in his house and spare body-bags that were a match for fibres on two of the victims, at least.
What other facts were there? On each body of the victims, something belonging to, or connected with me had been left and each of the women had strong connections with Fairways; three having had a recent termination there and one working as a cleaner. I worked there. Another link.
Who would have known my favourite
book was The Secret Garden? How could this person have got a handful of my hair? And who on earth could have got hold of one of our cinema tickets from the night of the power-cuts, nearly twenty years ago - the night Luke died?
I could feel a frown burrowing into my forehead as I fought to get it all to make sense. It was like dragging parts of a buried skeleton to the surface, but not knowing what it was going to be. Then, for some reason, I had a flashback to my visit to Mr Knightly. His tartan slippers, his missing teeth, his photo album. There was something I wasn’t seeing, floating just out of my grasp. Someone wearing a badge - a gold badge - with coins dangling together.
As soon as I headed back towards my flat my phone rang.
‘Where are you?’ said Brad, his voice breathless, sounded like he’d been running.
‘Near home, why?’
‘William Jones has given us the slip.’
‘Shit.’
‘You still got Penny with you?’
I looked up and saw Penny, sitting holding a half-eaten sandwich on a bench near the road.
‘Yes - she’s here.’
‘Make sure you keep her informed about where you are,’ he said. ‘I’ll let you know once we’ve caught up with Jones. And by the way,’ He cleared his throat. ‘Thought you’d like to know - Andrew Wishbourne’s last-minute alibis have just checked out.’
Finally - some good news.
‘On October 6th he was on a train to Derby,’ he said. ‘And on the 12th, he was causing a fuss in an all-night café in Notting Hill. Someone remembered him because he was…drunk.’
‘Sounds about right,’ I said. I didn’t bother to add that since then, he’d gone on the wagon. For all I knew he could have fallen off it by now.
‘And those shoes we found - the size tens - they belong to the next door neighbour. Andrew lets him leave stuff in the outhouse, as he doesn’t have a shed of his own.’
I felt an internal cheer sing out loudly inside me.
When I got back home, there was a message waiting for me on the answer-phone. It was Lynn Jessop, sounding apologetic, checking to see if I’d found a set of keys. She said she lost them around the time of our last session.
I went straight to the spare room and took a look around. There was nothing on the floor. I checked behind the cushion, inside the tissue box. I was on the verge of phoning her back, when I decided to check down the side of the comfy chair. Sure enough, I came across a key-ring with three keys attached to it. They looked important.
‘Thank you so much,’ she said. I’d never heard her sound so gracious. ‘They must have slipped out when I last saw you.’ I heard a rush of traffic in the background.
‘Where are you?’ I said.
‘I’m not far from where you live,’ she said. ‘On the embankment opposite Bishop’s Park - my daughter’s having a rowing session. I’d drop round, only she needs me to be here to let her back into the boathouse.’
I didn’t hesitate. I knew it would shed more light on Billy if I could meet another member of the family and the idea of coming across Lynn’s daughter in this off-hand way sounded too good to be true. It wasn’t exactly orthodox practice, but I was running out of ideas when it came to supporting Lynn.
‘I need to come over that way to go to the supermarket,’ I said. ‘Tell me exactly where you’ll be and I’ll be over in about half-an-hour.’
I sent a text to Penny to tell her the starter motor on my mini was still playing up and I was going over the bridge on foot. Once I’d been shopping, I sent another message to say I was heading down to a boathouse by the river. She tailed me in the car, but I lost her for a while as I cut down to the Thames through a pedestrian walkway and she had to take the long way round by road.
There were several boathouses facing the boat ramp, just along from the Duke’s Head, where I’d met Brad for a drink on Friday night. It was around 3.45pm and the light was fading, so most of the boats had been hauled out of the river by now. It looked like the tide was edging its way out. I found the second boathouse, walked around the side and tapped on the door. Lynn appeared straight away and invited me inside.
It was like a warehouse, with wooden racks holding upturned boats from floor to ceiling and rows of lockers at the back. There were stepladders for reaching the higher boats and trolleys of paints and waxes for keeping the boats in tiptop condition. My heels clacked on the dusty granite floor.
‘It’s very kind of you to drop off my keys,’ she said. She pushed the side door shut behind me and locked it. There was a strong sweet gluey smell; a mixture of rubber and marshmallows.
The lighting was poor inside, even though the doors at the front were wide open. I looked up and saw several swinging sockets where light bulbs used to be. She smiled and held out an opened bag of sweets. I understood now where the sugary smell was coming from.
‘Angela is going out for another session on the water before it gets dark,’ she said. I looked out towards the embankment and saw a lone figure climbing into a boat. ‘Come and say hello.’
We walked down the ramp towards the river. Lynn’s daughter was considerably older than Billy. She was busy leaning into the boat adjusting the footplate, but she looked up.
‘Hi,’ she said simply with a distracted smile and returned to securing the oars. There was something familiar about her lank mousy hair and broad chin, but I put it down to the family likeness to Lynn. ‘She’ll be back soon,’ said her mother. ‘We can talk more then.’
As Angela expertly pushed herself away from the bank and glided straight into her rowing rhythm, I was disappointed that our meeting had been so brief. I hadn’t had the chance to get a sense of what she was like and it wasn’t appropriate, as Lynn’s therapist, for us to stand around and chat while we waited for her to come back.
‘I’d better go,’ I said.
‘Why?’ she said sharply.
‘It gets in the way of our therapeutic relationship.’
‘I didn’t realise there were rules.’ She strode off towards the boathouse.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, catching up with her.
Her face softened a little. ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘But, my session is due in a couple of days and there’s no one else here,’ she beckoned me inside, as if she owned the place. ‘How about we have it now, if you’ve got time?’
She pulled the doors shut as if the matter had been decided.
‘That’s not really —’
‘We could go upstairs. There’s a private room overlooking the river. No one will disturb us,’ she said. ‘We can stop when Angela comes back. I’ll pay you just the same.’
‘I don’t think —’
‘I want to tell you more about me…my life,’ she said.
Her words were music to my ears. That’s what I’d been hoping for with Lynn all along after weeks of facing a closed book. I came to the conclusion that it could do no harm to talk privately upstairs until Angela returned. We might start getting somewhere, at last.
Lynn locked the main doors to make sure we weren’t interrupted and I followed her upstairs into a cosy well-furnished room, with a huge window looking out across the Thames.
‘This is only for committee members,’ she said, pulling two seats together.
I rested my hands in my lap. ‘So - what is it you’d like to tell me?’
‘This place is like home to me,’ she said. ‘I was supposed to be selected for the double skulls at the Seoul Olympics in 1988. We were all celebrating and then I saw my name wasn’t on the list.’
My eyes shot wide open. ‘You were that good? At rowing?’ Lynn had told me she swam regularly, but I had no idea she’d ever been Olympic standard at anything. This woman had once been strong and powerful. I’d seen before how life’s setbacks could break people so that their entire demeanour was affected.
‘That same year I was told I couldn’t have any more children, due to the punishing amount of training I’d put myself through. No one tells you it messes up your reproduct
ive system.’ She stroked her abdomen as if there was a child inside. A child she was waiting for. Something about the way she touched her stomach sent a chill around my legs, as though someone had opened a door.
I gulped audibly, hoping she hadn’t heard. ‘Lynn - that was two devastating disappointments. How did you cope?’
It wasn’t what I was thinking. I was thinking that here was a woman still visibly grieving for that loss, over twenty years later. I was wondering who had paid the price for those two major setbacks in her life. The room felt like it was shrinking, the air getting heavier with something I couldn’t explain.
She didn’t answer. Instead I caught the trace of an expression flickering across her face. If I hadn’t been studying her I would have missed it. The slightest tug of a sly, self-satisfied smile. As if she knew something I didn’t. In that moment I knew Lynn was a woman who had first-hand knowledge of reprisal. She was a woman who knew how to hold a grudge.
Lynn pointed outside to Angela’s boat barely visible in the dusk. She was skimming the water away from us at speed.
‘Do you remember her?’ she said, her eyes now watery and deep.
‘Remember her?’
‘Yeah. You were at the same school.’
‘Were we?’
‘Back in Norwich. She was in the year below you, but you met on a school boating trip once. Silly girl - she was a terrible swimmer back then.’
Visions of the Lake District leapt into my mind; the dinghy tipping up in the rapids; the two girls from my boat who fell in the water. One of them called Angie. Angela.
My head was buzzing. I was quickly trying to piece things together: the Angie I’d dragged out of the water in 1995, was Lynn Jessop’s daughter.
I gave a quick smile. ‘Angela - yes I do remember…’ My brain was somewhere else whirring fast, matching things together. Norwich. Angela went to my school there. Lynn used to live there. My mind shot back to Mr Knightly and the way he assiduously pointed out the people in his photo album. People from my past. I had a vision of a gold badge catching the light…