Charisma

by Jo Bannister

  ‘Then – what—?’ Liz was still too shaken to follow his train of thought.

  ‘I don’t think he ever intended to rape them. He meant to kill them. His kick isn’t sexual, it’s cerebral: he likes killing. He didn’t start with Charisma: he’s too handy with that knife, too sure of himself altogether. He’s done this before. But not round here or I’d know. So he travels. Maybe he’s a visitor, or maybe he’s moved here since his last fix. But two in five days: that’s quite a habit.’

  ‘You mean, there’ll be more?’

  Shapiro nodded mechanically. ‘Oh, yes. The man who did this isn’t finished. He’s going to want some more.’

  ‘Some more what?’ demanded Liz shakily. ‘What does he get from killing young girls?’

  ‘Revenge,’ said Dr Crowe unexpectedly. Finding the experts regarding him with interest – for motives are the stuff of detection not forensic pathology – he blushed and muttered, ‘I did a course once.’

  Shapiro smiled inwardly. Young Crowe might remember what he’d been told on his course but he’d clearly forgotten who was speaking. ‘Revenge?’ he said encouragingly.

  ‘Against women in general or one woman in particular. He can’t handle relationships with women so he takes it out on young girls. He can’t deal with rejection so he doesn’t leave himself open to it: he only approaches them when he’s in a position to dictate the outcome of the encounter.’ He heard himself lecturing and stopped abruptly. ‘Anyway, that’s what they said on the course,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Indeed I did,’ Shapiro agreed good-naturedly. He caught Liz’s grin and returned it, glad she was recovering her sense of perspective.

  What had happened was still shocking, but by degrees she was remembering how to deal with it, how to do her job. She had made the first moves on auto-pilot, out of habit, a machine running along well-worn tracks. Now her mind was catching up and she was beginning to think constructively again. She said, ‘Perhaps he doesn’t rape them because he can’t.’

  Shapiro dragged his mind away from the exotic image of a homicidal eunuch and back to essentially pragmatic Castlemere. ‘Or maybe it’s that, if he always intends to kill them, rape would be irrelevant. Look. Rape isn’t about sex, is it, it’s about power. It’s men saying, “Look what I can do, that you aren’t strong enough to stop me doing.” But ending a human life is the ultimate exercise of power. You can’t top it. Maybe he isn’t interested in rape because he wants to get straight to the main course, not fiddle around with the canapés first.’

  He glanced at the sad, tumbled little body now decently covered by a blanket. ‘But in that case, why touch the clothes at all? Why does he want us to think he’s a rapist when he thinks he’s something better than that?’

  ‘To confuse us?’

  ‘Not for long. He knew what the medical examination would show. Did he think we’d continue looking for a sex maniac in the continued absence of sex?’

  ‘It’s as if he’s playing with us – challenging us to discover the real reason he kills. And he can do that,’ Liz went on, developing the thought even as she was speaking, ‘because there’s a time limit of some kind. You’re right, he doesn’t live here, he may never have been here before and he doesn’t plan on staying. If we don’t find him soon he’ll have moved on.’

  Shapiro nodded slowly. ‘That fits. We know he’s an arrogant man – to kill twice in five days, both times in public places, the second time in broad daylight. That isn’t need or compulsion, it’s doing what he wants to do because he thinks no one can stop him. He thinks he can outsmart us. Not necessarily for ever, just for long enough.’

  Liz was thinking back. ‘If he’s so confident, why the change of heart about disposing of Charisma? We assumed that he panicked and had to go back later to tidy up. But this time he hardly troubled to hide the body.’

  Stuck for an answer, Shapiro only shook his head.

  Beyond the screens, beyond the barrier which had been erected at the end of the lane, a car pulled up and a door slammed. Liz said, ‘I’ve had someone ringing round the local stables, trying to get an identification on her. Maybe that’s it now.’

  It was a dark green saloon, discreetly prosperous, and the man hurrying towards them wore a business suit and a stunned expression. A constable stopped him at the barrier. The man tried to shake free but the policeman held him back, respectful but unyielding.

  ‘The father?’ murmured Liz, and Shapiro gave a fractional nod. ‘Oh, God,’ she sighed.

  ‘Are we finished with her?’ asked Shapiro. ‘Photographs? Scenes of Crime? You, Dr Crowe?’ The pathologist inclined his head in assent. ‘Then tidy her up a bit, would you? I can’t ask him to wait till we get her to the morgue to find out whether his daughter’s dead but we don’t have to show her to him like this.’ He moved out from behind the screens.

  Despite the suit and the dark car he was only a young man. Words spilled from him anxiously as Shapiro approached. ‘Alice? Is that my daughter? I was at the stables – she forgot her schoolbag – and somebody called and said there’d been an accident. A girl on a white pony. Is it Alice? Is she hurt?’

  Shapiro introduced himself. ‘It’s Mr Elton, isn’t it? – of Elton & Farrow, the accountants?’

  The man ran an agitated hand through his hair. ‘Yes, I’m Sam Elton. For God’s sake – is it Alice? Is she going to be all right? That damn pony—!’

  ‘How old’s your daughter, Mr Elton?’ Partly he needed the information, partly he was giving Crowe time to tidy up behind the screen.

  ‘She’s thirteen. She has blonde hair and blue eyes, she was wearing a denim jacket, a checked shirt and jodhs, and she was going to ride round the park then catch the bus to school. I left her at the stables – Mrs Skinner’s in Cobham Lane – at seven-thirty. When I got to the office I found her bag in the car. So I drove back, and while I was with Mrs Skinner someone phoned – a policeman, someone – and said there’d been an accident. For pity’s sake, Chief Inspector!’ His voice cracked. ‘Is it my daughter?’

  Shapiro took his elbow and guided him through the barrier. ‘I’m not sure, Mr Elton. From your description it could be. In a minute I’ll ask you to look at her and tell us. But first, I’m very sorry to have to tell you that the girl is dead.’

  The blood drained from Sam Elton’s face. His mouth opened and closed twice, then his knees buckled and he went down.

  8

  Dr Crowe had done a good job in the short time he’d had. He’d closed her eyes, folded his jacket under her head to close the gaping wound in her throat and drawn the blanket up to her chin. She still wore the Pony Club-approved hat that was designed to protect her from any misfortune she met while riding but was no defence at all against a man with a knife. Under it the long fair hair framed her face. With the wound hidden she hardly looked dead, just somehow a little more stolid than a child asleep. She couldn’t have looked less like Charisma.

  Sam Elton whispered, ‘My baby.’ Then he began to cry.

  Shapiro took him home. Liz was relieved that it wouldn’t be her breaking the news to the girl’s mother. When Elton was safely installed in his car, Shapiro turned back and his face was grim. ‘We’re going to take flak on this one.’

  ‘Because of who she was?’

  He nodded. ‘Because of who she was. Because of her age. Because of where and when it happened. If a thirteen-year-old girl from a decent family can’t ride her pony in a public park in broad daylight without getting her throat cut, nobody’s kid is safe. We have to get this man, Liz. This town’s going to be in a state of panic until we do.’

  ‘I’ll start a house-to-house round the park,’ she said. ‘At least this time we know where and pretty well when the attack took place. People are getting ready for work about eight, someone may have seen him. The ground staff start about then too: I’ve got them together in the park-keeper’s hut, I’ll talk to them next. Somebody may have seen him this time, even if they didn’t see anything suspicious.’

&nbs
p; Shapiro indicated assent. She was making all the right moves, a fully functioning detective inspector again. ‘I’ll go back to the office when I’m finished with the family. I want to start a search for this man’s MO. I bet he’s left a trail of young girls with slit throats: we’ll know more about him when we find out where he’s been. I’ll get Donovan on to that: it’ll keep him away from Bailie if nothing else.’

  ‘What about Bailie? Do we ask him about this?’

  For a moment Shapiro was undecided, then he shook his head. ‘I don’t see much point. His connection to the last one was tenuous enough, to this one it’s non-existent. Unless we get a description, of course, in which case we’re into a whole new ball game.’ He winced. He hated using expressions he’d picked up from Donovan.

  The park-keeper’s hut began life as a garden pavilion for the family at Belvedere House. They kept their croquet mallets and tennis racquets there. When private enjoyment gave way to municipal endeavour it became a repository for scythes, billhooks and pruning shears, and the place where the gardeners took their tea and sandwiches. It was also where they punched their time-cards as they came on and off duty.

  There were four of them: an old man well past retirement age, gnarled and bent enough to have been undergardener to Adam; a powerful middle-aged man, a young man and a boy. The boy, who might have been about seventeen, was clearly shocked. He was trying to drink from the mug of his flask and his teeth were chattering on its lip.

  Liz took their names and addresses and asked when each had arrived at work that morning. The old man was the foreman: he fetched the time-cards from the clock. His deputy and the younger man arrived a few minutes either side of eight; the boy, who was on a year’s youth-training course, followed them in ten minutes later; and the gaffer, exercising the privileges of rank and age, arrived after the police, at about eight twenty-five. The big man, Arnie Sedgewick, had seen the white pony, complete with rider, trotting along the bridleway as he drove his van into the council yard. He thought that might have been about five to eight.

  Liz nodded. That agreed with what Mrs Skinner said, that Alice rode out of the yard at about seven-forty and should have been back by eight-twenty in order to feed her pony, change and catch the bus down the hill at eight-forty. The council yard was half-way on her three-mile ride.

  ‘You didn’t see anyone else?’

  “Fraid not. Only the other lads, until the police arrived and told us to wait here.’

  ‘What about you, Mr Carver?’

  The young man shook his head. ‘I never saw nobody.’

  ‘Except the girl.’

  ‘I never saw her neither.’

  Liz frowned. ‘The bicycle in the council yard, isn’t that yours?’ He nodded, warily. ‘Surely it takes you longer to cycle through the park than it takes Mr Sedgewick in his van? If you arrived four minutes behind him, he must have passed you on the bridleway. Didn’t he?’

  Ray Carver eyed her sullenly. ‘I don’t remember where he passed me. He passes me on the road just outside or just inside the park every day: I don’t remember where this morning.’

  Liz said reasonably, ‘It wasn’t much over an hour ago.’

  ‘A lot’s happened in that hour, though, hasn’t it?’ he snapped back. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t remember where Arnie passed me. But I do know I didn’t see the kid on the pony.’

  ‘All right,’ said Liz quietly. ‘So maybe they were off the lane and in the bushes when you passed. That would mean you passed the spot where Alice Elton was killed within moments of the attack on her, possibly while it was taking place – while the man was still there. The pony was loose, it was on the lane when I found it; if it was still in the bushes when you passed then the attack could only just have occurred. So anything you tell me, Mr Carver, is terribly important. Was there anyone else around?’

  ‘I didn’t see anyone. No one.’

  ‘All right. Did you hear anything – even something that seemed unremarkable at the time but which, looking back, could have been a man moving in the bushes or the child trying to scream? Anything?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m sorry. I’d help you if I could but I can’t. I’d be lying if I said I’d noticed anything.’ Long dark hair tumbled over his forehead and he tossed it back out of his eyes. His gaze on her was intense. ‘I can’t help you catch this man by saying I saw something I didn’t.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ she agreed automatically. But though there was nothing impossible about his account she was left feeling that Carver had told her less than the whole truth. She thought she’d talk to him again soon, at the police station next time.

  No one else had anything to add. All of them had seen Alice Elton riding in the park, sometimes alone, sometimes with friends, but only Sedgewick admitted seeing her take her last ride. It was enough: it made it possible to say that the attack took place in the ten minutes between seven-fifty-five when Sedgewick saw her and five past eight when Liz found the pony. The best pathologist in the country couldn’t have been that precise.

  Liz left Detective Constable Stewart taking statements and returned home. After the activity of the last hour the place seemed unnaturally quiet, abandoned almost.

  She found Brian in the living-room, drinking tea. He looked up and his face was still. ‘It’s just brewed. Sit down for five minutes.’ He padded into the kitchen for another cup while she shrugged out of her coat.

  The heat of it in her hands did as much good as the drink. She regarded him through the steam with a wry smile. ‘So what do you think of Castlemere so far?’

  He didn’t reply, just stood watching, quiet and still. In his intelligent face she saw respect, and compassion, and a new understanding of things that had eluded him for the past eight years. He finally understood that they meant different things when, discussing their work, they talked about ‘matters of life and death’. He meant whether there was enough poster-paint to get 3B through a double period and if they’d embarrass him over the nudes when he took them round the local art gallery. She meant hunting down a madman before he cut another child’s throat.

  Liz saw him regarding her as if they’d just been introduced and he wasn’t yet sure if he liked what he saw, and something inside her shrank. He doesn’t know me, she thought. We’ve been married eight years, and how I make my living has come as a shock to him! He thought it was like Agatha Christie, a neat intellectual puzzle with the bodies either off-stage or decently disposed with only a spot of blood under the watch-chain to show where the knife went in. Now it’s happened on his doorstep and he knows there’s nothing decorous about murder, that by the time a body’s suffered enough abuse to die of it it’s neither neat nor intellectual but as unrelentingly carnal as a butcher’s shop-window. And if murder’s not what he always thought then I must be other than the woman he thought he married in order to deal with it.

  She said quietly, ‘Don’t look at me like that.’

  His gaze didn’t flicker. ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like you’re watching a freak show.’

  News spread through Castlemere at a speed governed by the electronic telephone exchange. By ten o’clock when Shapiro was driving to his office the whole town seemed to know what had happened at breakfast-time in Belvedere Park.

  There was no one about. No one strolling in the spring sunshine; no young mothers chatting outside shops with prams beside them; no old people on the benches in Hampton Gardens. Most of all, no children. The Hampton Garden swings and the gaily painted roundabout hung still and forlorn. Two teenage boys and a dog hurried across the street and disappeared through a doorway.

  Finally, just before he turned into Queen’s Street, Shapiro saw a toddler in dungarees and tiny trainers playing in the gutter under the windows of a terrace of mill cottages. But the news must have arrived just as he did because one of the doors was suddenly flung open and a pair of bare arms, soapy from the morning’s laundry that was half-done when the phone rang, shot out and snatched the infant inside.

>   When he got out of the car he could smell fear in the air, acrid like the smoke from the tannery chimneys when the wind was in the east. He murmured to himself, ‘This town is just so far from wholesale panic,’ and his finger and thumb were the width of a matchbox apart. He climbed the police station steps.

  As he passed the CID room he saw Donovan hunched over a phone. ‘Oh, good, you got my message. Any luck?’

  Donovan shook his head, put the phone down. ‘He can’t have spent much time in London: the Met has nothing that fits. But they’re going to put it round, see if it rings any bells.’ He seemed to become aware then that Shapiro, who had only stuck his head in for an update, had not passed on his way but remained in the doorway, staring. ‘What’s the matter?’

  Shapiro did what in the classic days of Hollywood was known as a slow burn. His voice was flat with unstated meaning. ‘Cut yourself shaving?’

  Donovan’s hand went to his throat. He’d put a polo-neck on specially, but the collar had slumped while he was on the phone and there was a sticking plaster over his larynx. ‘Er—’

  By then Shapiro had also seen the black eye. He turned away. ‘My office, Sergeant.’

  For a moment Donovan hesitated, his hand sliding towards the phone. The words, ‘Now, Sergeant,’ came at him from the corridor.

  House-to-house inquiries are among the least productive way of using police man-hours. They’re slow, tedious and frustrating, and the chance of any individual call discovering something valuable is only marginally better than Millwall’s chance of winning the FA Cup. They’re unpopular with policemen and householders alike. Nevertheless, the list of crimes which would not have been solved but for diligent door-stepping and intelligent correlation of the information collected is too long for the technique to follow the bicycle patrol and the Black Maria into history.

  There were over a hundred houses around Belvedere Park whose residents might conceivably have seen (but probably had not) either or both players in the morning’s drama. Those on the Castlemere side – there were twenty-eight of them – had a view of that stretch of bridleway where Alice Elton met her killer. Someone looking at the right time might have seen her ride along the park boundary, stop and turn into the bushes. Scant minutes later they might have seen a man walking briskly – probably not running, the rest of his act was too slick for him to make that basic error – down the lane to where he’d left his car. They might have been able to describe the car.