If When

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  He smiled faintly. “Thank you. Most – illuminating. I think that will be enough for now, Mrs. Greene.”

  Chapter Two

  He had always been fond of knives. Each hilt sat warm and comfortable in the palm of his hand, as though asking to be cherished. He enjoyed sharpening them, and felt they sang back to him. His first, the splendid initiation of his career, he had never used again and kept it carefully as a reminder and even a homage to sweet Jemima. But he still kept it sharpened, caressing it as he watched it shine anew.

  They all brought back the thrill. The tingle down his spine, through his lungs, and into his groin appeared reflected in those silver blades as he held them, and he could relive the special moments and remember each detail with a shiver of delight.

  He prided himself on the care of his knives. The ropes, the bindings, electrical tape, the pliers, screw drivers and other small implements were simply tools of the trade, but the knives mattered. They had started it all. Once home from work, he hurried to greet them, and adored the slithering grate, almost a scream, or the sharpening, considering honing steel as the skill of an artist.

  Sylvia wondered how long it would be before she could sleep deeply and comfortably again, for a haunting memory so vividly vile was not something she thought she could easily ignore. The bed where she curled was mattresses in the most expensively soft and yielding billows anyone could afford, but now it felt cobbled into lumps of jagged stone. Her own bones felt broken. She wondered if the dead girl’s bones had been broken before or after death.

  Insisting on thoughts less tragic, she wondered about the man. Through her father, Sylvia had heard of many men who killed, but none of them had seemed to be a monster. This creature must be staggeringly worse. He delighted in pain and killed for lust. That was obvious to anyone, however ingenuous. So did such a murderer behave in a vile manner even when not in the process of killing, and not overcome by the longing to cut?

  “No,” she said aloud, “because that would mean instant recognition. The police would solve all such crimes within the week. Sufficient to line the suspects up and pick out the one with his eyes twitching and his tongue slavering. And that doesn’t happen.”

  Yet to commit such a crime, by choice and desire, means the criminal was depraved and a depraved man cannot seem simple, normal, or placid.

  She had hated someone once. She had imagined killing the rotten little bastard. But of course had done nothing. Yet was the thought of causing pain as cruel as the act?

  Finally the darkness took her, and she slept, dreaming of shadows and footsteps, the quivering reflection of the moon in the depths of someone’s eyes, and on the long blade of his knife.

  Two nights later the bed had had still not reverted to its soft cushioned welcome. Half asleep, having refused breakfast, now almost dozing, she was exceedingly surprised to see Harry through her partially closed eyes. He strode up the old gravel path towards her, a folded newspaper under his arm.

  “Tricia Innes,” Harry pointed to the headline.

  “They haven’t mentioned the cornflakes,” said Sylvia, sitting up and leaning over his shoulder.

  Harry grinned. “You mean he’s a serial killer and not a one-off. Yes, he has to be. But no one has linked this killing together with any others. Perhaps this was his first.”

  “No.” Sylvia released Harry’s shoulder and sat back on the garden bench. “It followed a ritual to such an obvious degree. There must have been at least two already. No one develops such a complicated M.O. after only one or two attempts.”

  “You know a lot about such matters? Your father, perhaps? That is – I don’t mean the actual –” Then he blushed, imagining the embarrassment if this happened to be true.

  “My father was a gambling man down in – not New Orleans. Soho. But he taught me about fixation, and the thrill you can’t resist. And besides, he was a detective too. Scotland Yard – homicide. More at work than at home. My mother got rid of him. No, only divorce. But he kept in touch until the suicide.”

  “Sorry.”

  “A long time ago, and I miss neither of them. But,” said Sylvia, squinting against the sunbeams, “he was good at his job. No DNA discoveries back then, and not a lot of other things either. But he tried. In-between making a fool of himself at poker.”

  Early June was a splash of rosebuds and a bawdy riot of honeysuckle, more daisies than grass on the lawn, and marigolds to dissuade the snails. Sun dazzle turned clouds transparent, and every pocket and purse was turned inside out to search for darkened sunglasses.

  Harry stretched his legs to the warmth. The garden benches at the Rochester Manor were not the most comfortable. He said, “I’m sorry about the suicide.”

  “He died of the Spanish flu. It was my mother who chose a more complicated method. But it was a very long time ago. “

  “Are we that old?”

  “Flotsam.” She nodded, and he laughed.

  The passing fluff, died bright scarlet, seemed like fire in the sunshine. Then came the flutter of black beaded gossamer and skirts to bare ankles, toes painted as scarlet as the hair. Earrings, red glitter, were expensive jewels. Ruby Pope flitted past, then hovered, hesitating. “Private chatter, my darlings?”

  “No.” Harry patted the wooden slats. “Join us. We were talking about the murder.”

  “Just for a change.”

  “I never saw her, poor little thing,” Ruby said. “But let us hope the killer stays at the Riviera. I mean – those who come to the races. My husband, you know, was one of the best –”

  “Ruby, he was the idiot who left you and now he’s more than twenty years dead. Stop talking about him.”

  “But that poor victim was British.” Harry again tapped the newspaper’s headline. “Tricia Innes. Part time cleaner at one of the grand hotels. Born in Manchester.”

  With studiously arranged skirts and bare toes peeping below her hems, Ruby sat on the bench, and sighed. “In seventy years, I’ve never come across such a thing. Well, only in newspapers and on television. Not touching my life, thank the lord above.” She stared momentarily at the others. “Are you two dating?”

  “No. Only friends,” replied Harry and Sylvia at the same moment.

  Ruby sniggered. “Carry her off, Mr. Joyce, please do. She’s a constantly sarcastic echo in our corridors. Take her away and rid us of her cleverness.”

  “Back to the Vatican, Miss Bluebell,” Sylvia waved her fingers. “My parents divorced. I divorced. Repetition is so boring. We don’t want a third.”

  “It’s a shame though,” Ruby was vague, nodding vacantly. “Such a happy place. Monaco. I lived there once, you know. No taxes and such gorgeous weather. Before Rod crashed. But you didn’t want to come anyway.”

  “Her husband was the thrice crowned Rodney Pope,” Sylvia interoperated. “But he crashed, though not on the track, his own private Lamborghini up somewhere on the Grand Corniche and broke his legs in several places. He went scurrying back to the patient woman he’d walked out on before. Lived a quietly peaceful life after that, being a husband instead of a show-off.”

  “You see what she’s like,” Ruby sighed again. “Not that it isn’t true. And my poor darling finally died in my arms. Which is all absolutely beside the point, because I was talking about Sylvia not wanting to come to the race. She hates racing. She only came in the end because I nagged her and told her to stop being narrow minded.”

  “I yawned all through. Such noise and fumes. But I liked the drive into France.”

  “But not the one home?”

  She grunted and shook her head. “Other things on my mind. Bloody slaughter, for instance.”

  Detective Inspector Morrison and his chief turned up the next morning and stalked through the Georgian pillared doorway with impatience. There was no reception desk nor porter. They stood on antique tiles and stared around.

  “Can I help?” asked Pam, who was definitely not old enough to be an inmate and was carrying a bucket. Eventually she led
both men to the central office, where Lavender Dawson was marching the length and breadth of her Turkish carpet, learning the speech she had written for that evening’s pronouncement over dinner.

  “Mrs. Dawson?”

  “Miss Dawson,” she turned with impatience.

  Both men were led to the principal salon, a spacious welter of cushions, tall bright windows, walls papered in William Morris, and the faint background music of Dvorak. Sylvia Greene was fast asleep and snoring loudly on the largest couch, head tipped back. She woke abruptly and glared at the interruption.

  “Damnation, Lavvy, give me some warning.”

  The manor’s director smiled secretively. “Detective Inspector Morrison and Sergeant Welsh, my dear. I shall call for tea.”

  “Coffee?”

  “I shall call for coffee and biscuits, Sylvia dear. Will that suffice?”

  Both men sat on the edge of their chairs, and Inspector Morrison said, “We visited Mr. Joyce this morning, Mrs. Greene, and we were most interested when he informed us that your father was a Detective Inspector at Scotland Yard some years ago. We took the liberty of looking up his past record. A very notable character, your father. D.I. Howard Greene. I presume this is why you are so observant when faced with unusual situations?”

  Sylvia regarded her visitors. “You and Harry talked about the murder? Or you talked about me?” She swung her legs down from their perch on the couch’s cushioned length. “And do you call manic slaughter simply an unusual situation?”

  D. S. Welsh had been warned that she was difficult. “I presume we see somewhat more of murder than you do, Mrs. Greene, but even to us, this case seems particularly appalling, and most certainly unusual. But,” and he nodded earnestly, “Mr. Joyce and yourself had the opportunity to be the first on the scene, and your observations are of interest to us.”

  Fresh coffee and welters of homemade biscuits appeared, and Pam served the drinks from a silver coffee pot. Sylvia sipped. “I’m flattered to find myself of interest,” she said. “Or am I of interest in the other sense?”

  “You are certainly not a suspect, madam,” said the detective, accepting his own cup and setting it back on the table. “The motivation was sexual without doubt. I presume you aren’t offended by my plain speaking? No? Then, not only for motive but also for the manner in which certain aspects of this crime was committed, our suspect must be male.”

  “Rape? Sperm?”

  “The victim was raped. But no sperm remains. I presume a condom, or some other device was used.”

  “No DNA? Nor on the glove?”

  “The glove is already at the forensic lab. It’s most certainly of interest. And now, Mrs. Greene, would you mind us showing you some photographs? They are not too graphic, I promise.”

  The first, placed flat on the table beside the coffee jug, was simply of two men talking together. It looked rather old and the clothes were out of date. A dark man was muttering to a short man wearing a cap. “Do you recognise either of these people, Mrs. Greene? Now aged a few years older, might either have been on the coach?”

  Almost positively no. Nor them. Nor him. But then her.

  Patricia Innes, alive and smiling in the photo, was neither plain nor stunning. A young woman of average height and average everything else, looking forward to an interesting life of small achievements. She had been killed at age twenty six, while working part time in Monaco in order to enjoy a short holiday that paid for itself. Her smile was attractive, and her eyes were kind.

  “I don’t believe I ever saw the poor young woman until – but then, I am not someone who stares at faces, nor remembers them. A bad judge, I’m afraid.”

  “On the contrary, Mrs. Greene, I’d consider you most observant,” said the detective.

  “Only when an unusual situation inspires special attention,” Sylvia told him. “Otherwise I dream. I cannot even tell you, for instance, who won that noisy car race which I actually sat and watched.”

  Detective Inspector Morrison coughed. “Football, I can understand. Formula One, no. Now if you asked me about Spurs –”

  “I wasn’t asking,” Sylvia interrupted. “But I do have one question. This appeared to me as the act of an active serial killer. Have you matched this murder up with others, either here or abroad?”

  Both detectives had finished their tea and only one biscuit remained. Both stood, brushing down their trousers. Walsh, the younger man, said, “I do apologise, Mrs. Greene, but we can’t discuss the details at this stage.”

  “I can divulge one thing,” murmured Morrison, “and that, sadly, is that nothing in this case is so simple. Not simple at all.”

  Harry wandered the hill path, head down to keep the wind from his eyes. Keeping his head down also helped him avoid sheep droppings. Some sunshine escaped the clouds, but it was not a warm day, nor bright, and a little disappointing for June.

  Thinking of murder had become a habit, and invariably ended with thinking about Sylvia. Sometimes, immediately before sleep, the two became blurred and woke him in a flurry.

  Having a reasonable grasp of computer software and technology, he had done his own research. But he had not discussed this with the police. He was not entirely sure whether to discuss it with Sylvia, but he had no desire to sit on rumbling earthquakes in his own head, and although he had started talking to Tony, he wasn’t surprised when Tony avoided the subject. “Want to give me nightmares? Let’s talk of other things, Harry my friend. They say there’s a sale on good woollen jumpers at Cavendish House.”

  “It’s summer.”

  “Exactly. We need some warm jumpers.”

  Cleeve Hill released Harry from everything except the wind and sheep, and finding a bare patch of rock, he sat and surveyed the scenery stretching below. But what he saw in his blurred memory was a young woman lying exposed and distorted in a pool of her own blood, her jeans, bra and T-shirt in a small heap on her stomach.

  He had a mixed vision of others. Twenty five years ago, in several places around Leicestershire, similar murders had taken place. Indeed, six over three years had been confirmed as – likely – by the same hand. Then nothing more. And the culprit had never been discovered. A possible killer had been arrested, young Paul Stoker, but the case against him was counted weak and he was found not guilty Appalled with the blackening of his name and the suspicions of his neighbours, Paul Stoker left the country on his release. He went to France.

  Funny, that. Southern France, perhaps? The Riviera? Monte Carlo?

  Having left all his notes and ancient newspaper cuttings in the car, he now trudged back down the scrubby slopes, unlocked the dented old Vauxhall, sat inside, scraped the sheep droppings off the soles of his shoes, and drove up the long winding lanes to Rochester Manor.

  She wasn’t exactly waiting for him, but she had one eye on the huge bay window, recognised the car but sat carefully staring in the opposite direction

  “Oh, hello Harry. This is a surprise. I didn’t think you were coming today.”

  “I wasn’t,” he said. “But I want to show you something. I’ve been collecting stuff for a week. The police will think I’m peculiar if I show them. But you know I’m peculiar, so it doesn’t matter.”

  “Almost solved, then?”

  “I found it all online. I printed out what I thought interesting. I found a couple of the newspaper offices as well and they sent me stuff. It’s been a fascinating dig. I was an archaeologist once, you know. No, not entirely, just a hobby. But I thought you’d want to see.” He spread the photos and printed copies over the larger table in the larger living room which they called the salon to differentiate it from the smaller and shabbier one next door. “This was the first I could find. Jemima D’Orsay. Twenty four. Junior school teacher in Leicester. Left very visible in a park overnight. Spread-eagled, legs and arms tied to trees, stripped and clothes left in a pile on her stomach, minus the pants. Tortured. They don’t go into detail on that, but it wasn’t post-mortem. Frenzied, they say. Cause of deat
h, her throat was sliced open.”

  “Relations?”

  “A heartbroken mother. They don’t say much else.”

  “Poor girl. Poor mother.”

  Harry sat back. “Did he die, and this new one isn’t him? Did he try and stop? Did he go abroad? Did he get sick, and need to take a rest? Did he get married or have a child and abuse his family instead?”

  “I’ve never met anyone that sick,’ Sylvia said, “or at least, I don’t think so. His motivation is beyond me. Can such a man stop?”

  “Jack the Ripper slaughtered every couple of days, didn’t he? But of course, we’ve no idea who he was or why he stopped either.” Harry spread out other papers on the table. “This was the second they found. Nearly a year later. Same behaviour. All very similar. She was twenty eight and a part-time prostitute. Found in the local church by the altar. Is that relevant? Goodness knows.”

  “But all that time ago. Gracious, I was nearly young.” Sylvia was staring at the first photo. “This too? How many?

  “Six.” He once again spread the papers. “And nothing that appeared to link them. Lived in different places around Leicester – city – village – country – farm – rich – poor – dark – blonde. But all in their early to mid-twenties. Only one a prostitute. Two were teachers. One a student. Not the same schools. They weren’t friends. They didn’t go to the same clubs. Not even the same gym, or library.”

  “Don’t they say it’s the very first victim who’ll lead you to the culprit?”