Charisma

by Jo Bannister

  ‘We’ll ask her that when we find her.’

  Finally he seemed to be thinking about it. ‘Young girls. Hookers?’

  ‘Not the last one but probably the others.’ She waited.

  ‘Jenny – knows something about hookers.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He flashed her an angry, embarrassed look. His cheeks were flushed. ‘Jenny knows where girls like that hang out. Even in places we’ve never been before.’

  Liz’s sensibilities had taken a beating in the last half hour and she wasn’t as quick on the uptake as she might have been. The puzzlement in her eyes infuriated him.

  ‘For me, damn it! I told you, Jenny looks after me. She gets me what I need. That too.’

  Then she understood. Not only what he was saying but what it meant. They’d been stuck for a motive, even the sort of motive that would seem reason enough in the abnormal mind of a serial killer. But that would do.

  Her voice was a stunned whisper. ‘You mean, you sent Jennifer Mills out to procure prostitutes for you?’

  ‘I could hardly go myself, could I?’ he snapped back. It didn’t seem to occur to him that doing without would have been an alternative.

  ‘No,’ Liz agreed faintly. ‘Michael, the woman’s in love with you. And you sent her looking for young girls for your bed?’

  That took him completely by surprise. For a moment he gaped at her like an idiot. But by the time he found his voice he was ready to disbelieve, finding it easier to scoff than to deal with the possibility. ‘In love? Jenny? Be your age.’

  Liz found herself growing angry on the missing woman’s behalf. What she’d done – if indeed she’d done it – was almost incomprehensible. But Liz was beginning to understand where the despair driving her had come from. ‘You think she’s an old maid? She’s twelve years younger than you. And she’s known you a lot longer than you’ve known me. Why is it all right for you to be in the grip of a great passion you can’t control, that you’re willing to risk everything for, but absurd that she might be?

  ‘Couldn’t you tell? I knew from talking to her for half an hour. You must have seen the way her eyes light up when she’s near you.’ She gave a little angry laugh. ‘Or do you think women glow like that all the time, because it’s how they react to you? You’re a bloody dangerous man, Michael Davey. You drop matches into dry undergrowth and deny all responsibility for the fire.’

  He hauled himself into the car and slammed the door. ‘You’re mad,’ he repeated furiously. ‘I think you’ve imagined all this. Jenny wouldn’t hurt anyone. If she loves me it’s like a sister. All she ever wanted was what was best for me. When I told her about you—’

  Liz’s eyes widened. ‘You told her about me? About—?’

  ‘She warned me. I should have listened. She’s a good woman, she knows what I need, what’s important to me. I thought I could turn my back on everything I’ve done, go after what I wanted for once. She knew I couldn’t. She knew loving you would be the ruination of me. I should have listened to her.’

  He started the car with a fierce twist of his wrist and drove off at speed, the wheels spitting gravel, leaving Liz standing literally open-mouthed beside her front door.

  But before she had time to work through the implications of what he’d said the phone rang. She hurried inside.

  It was Shapiro and he came straight to the point. ‘Are you alone?’

  She gritted her teeth. ‘I am now. Michael Davey was here when I arrived but he’s just left.’

  She thought he was going to drag her over the coals for seeing a man at her house when they’d already been the subject of talk. But instead he said, ‘Listen to me, Liz. Stay inside. Lock the doors and windows. I’ll be with you in five minutes.’

  Surprise piling on surprise left Liz hardly knowing what to say. ‘Frank? What’s this about?’

  ‘We’ve spotted Jennifer Mills’ car. It’s parked round the corner about fifty yards from your house.’

  6

  All the time Davey had been baring his soul on the patio the front door had been standing ajar. It didn’t mean Mills had got inside but it meant she could have done.

  It would be consistent with what they knew, or believed, of her. She was an intelligent, obsessive woman with apparently no life beyond the crusade. She was hopelessly in love with a man who failed not only to reciprocate but even to recognize this, to the staggeringly insensitive degree of sending her to procure his prostitutes. Of course she hated young girls: not only the street-girls who served him but all the young girls with their plump bodies and their china-doll faces and their idiot giggles that sparked a glow in him when all her devotion earned only ashes. She killed out of rage, frustration, jealousy and revenge.

  And something more? – because even a woman labouring under the triple lash of an obsessive personality, unrequited devotion and callous emotional abuse could still not have seen Alice Elton as a rival. Poor little Alice, trotting her pony through the park, why did she die? Only because she was available? Because the pain and rage had built up to such a pitch within Jennifer Mills that she had to let it out, and Alice was the first girl she met?

  But the meeting was too unlikely, too contrived: Mills had sought her out, and sought her in a place and at a time she could not expect to find prostitutes. It was as if Alice had something different to contribute. As close as Liz could approach it, the unique thing about Alice’s murder, that set it apart from those of Charisma and the other toms, was its utter wantonness. As if it were specifically designed to shock. As if Alice were no more than a tactic in her killer’s campaign, not even so much against Davey as against the world in general.

  Now he’d told her that he loved Liz Graham, meant to give up the crusade for her so that Mills would never see him again. His choice was particularly cruel. Liz wasn’t a sluttish teenager he could lay and pay: she was an intelligent professional middle-class woman on the brink of middle-age – the same sort of woman as Jennifer Mills. It had been possible till now for Mills to tell herself that Davey wasn’t interested in commitment, used the girls to scratch an itch because his work didn’t allow him time for a real relationship. She couldn’t believe that any more. For Liz Graham, and not for her, he would make time. The rejection was personal.

  And, which made it worse, Liz was married: he couldn’t even love her honourably. She threatened everything Mills cared about. Now she’d followed Davey to Liz’s home: her purpose could only be guessed, but it was likely that she intended to deal with her rival in the manner she had practised.

  Five minutes until reinforcements arrived. Liz would have been wise to wait outside, but she was damned if she’d be driven from her own house by a tragic neurotic woman. She’d as soon be found locked in the bathroom with the curtains drawn as meekly waiting on the front step for Shapiro to arrive. Pulling on her sheepskin gloves and Brian’s leather jacket for protection, she began working her way through the rooms.

  It was an eerie sensation. This was her home, and every time she opened a door she half expected a banshee to come at her with a stiletto. The bubble safety was pricked.

  Finding no one on the ground floor, checking cupboards and under tables and anywhere else a woman might hide, Liz moved quietly upstairs. All but the main bedroom were piled high with tea-chests, rolled-up carpet and furniture still seeking a home. A small troop of Boy Scouts could have been camped amid the chaos and she wouldn’t have known unless they started to sing ‘Rolling Along On The Crest Of A Wave’. She worked carefully through each room but found no sign of an intruder.

  When the cars arrived she went down to open the door. DC Morgan’s habitually rather hang-dog expression fell off his face in surprise, and Liz remembered that in the warmth of a spring evening she was dressed for the north face of the Eiger. She peeled off the coat and gloves, but not quickly enough to escape Shapiro’s notice.

  ‘You’ve searched the house then.’ His voice was flat, conveying nothing, but Liz knew he’d tear strips o
ff her when they were alone. ‘No sign of her?’

  ‘I checked every room.’

  ‘Outbuildings?’

  At that she turned paler, gave a quick shake of the head. Morgan took off at a run with Liz following at an anxious jog and Shapiro at a brisk walk. By the time he arrived at the stable Liz had checked the horse and Morgan the tack-room and they’d found nothing.

  ‘Sir.’ The voice was DC Scobie’s but for a moment they couldn’t see him. He was beyond the hedge separating the Grahams’ garden from the bridleway. ‘Do we know if she smokes?’

  Liz thought back to the interview at Queen’s Street. ‘Like a chimney.’

  ‘Two fresh cigarette ends, ma’am, with lipstick on them.’

  ‘Bag ’em,’ Shapiro said briskly. To Liz: ‘Where did you talk to Davey?’ She indicated the patio. Shapiro’s eyes took measurements. ‘Close enough to hear. What would she have heard?’

  Liz told him. He looked pensively down the orchard, the trees twisted with age, capable of bearing only the hardest, sourest fruit. ‘So he offered to take you away from all this, you declined and he left in a huff.’ Liz nodded. ‘Maybe she has no more quarrel with you. Maybe her quarrel now is with Davey. Where did he go?’

  ‘He didn’t say. We were past making small talk by then. You know, I really think he expected me to pack a bag and leave with him.’

  Shapiro said soberly, ‘If you had I don’t know what Mills would have done.’

  ‘What will she do now?’

  He thought. ‘She won’t run, even if she knows we’re on to her. All her emotional investment is in Davey: I can’t see her doing anything that’d mean leaving him. But she knows by now that she’s running out of time, she heard you tell him as much.

  ‘And then, knowing that he was prepared to throw away all her years of devotion, everything she’d done for him, in order to be with you, must have brought the thing to a head. He doesn’t love her, he’ll never love her. He thinks the idea of her loving him is ludicrous. She knows now exactly what she’s worth to him. Any decent secretary could take her place. She’s sacrificed lives to him, not least her own, and he was going to dump her for a married woman. There’s no going back for them, and no way forward either. I think she’ll reckon this is the end.’

  ‘Suicide?’ breathed Liz.

  Shapiro’s tone was sombre. ‘Yes, that’s probably the bottom line. The question is, will she want to kill Davey first?’

  Twice during the long day Brady left the wagon for half an hour. Both times he insisted on tying Donovan with a length of electric flex. Donovan complained but in the end he submitted, mainly because he had no choice. Brady was afraid that if someone checked and found the prisoner free and unguarded, that carelessness would cost them both their lives. Also, he was aware that Donovan might be gone when he got back. Donovan let himself be tied because he knew if he didn’t they’d fight and he’d lose.

  So he complained but sat still while Brady roped his wrists behind him then pushed him on to his side and tied his ankles. ‘How’s that?’

  Donovan couldn’t sit up. ‘Bloody.’

  ‘Good.’

  When he returned, with hours to kill and nothing better to do they talked. Kneading the ache out of his arms Donovan said, ‘How did you get involved with Drugs Squad?’

  Brady shrugged. ‘I couldn’t go back to Ireland. This was the same sort of work.’

  Understanding hit Donovan like a train and his jaw dropped. ‘You were a supergrass? For the Army?’

  ‘Special Branch.’ Which explained their too easy acceptance of the myth of his death. They knew who he was and what he was doing, were in the habit of covering for him.

  ‘Jesus. How long?’

  ‘Seven years.’

  Liam Brady was his father’s son, he entered manhood believing that armed struggle was the way to reunite Ireland. That was before Claudy. ‘You won’t remember Claudy,’ he said, ‘you were only a wee lad. But I was twenty, which is an impressionable age. Three cars blew up in the main street and nine people died. There was no warning. The boyos were going to phone from Dungiven, only they had trouble getting through. All Ireland was stunned. It was such a tiny, harmless little place, and afterwards there was damn all of it left. Even the Provos were ashamed of what was done at Claudy.’

  ‘So you turned informer?’ Donovan could not rid his voice of the incredulity which would have been the universal reaction in Glencurran, even among those who hated the IRA. It was a small town with small town prejudices, and they lived on in the back alleys of his mind as the accent lived on in his speech.

  ‘The opportunity came and I took it.’ Brady grinned. ‘That’s when I started working up a reputation. As long as everyone knows you’re a mad bastard who eats English babies you never have to prove it. I may have been the least effective soldier the IRA ever had but by God I looked the part.’

  ‘But the Army shot you,’ objected Donovan. ‘Didn’t they?’

  ‘I was shot,’ agreed Brady. ‘But not by the Army. That was the da’s lads. They finally worked out why so many things went wrong that I’d had a part of. They came for me one night with a gun and a black bag. I had the devil’s own luck, but they were taking me for interrogation when the car was stopped at a road-block. All hell broke loose: the Brits were firing at the boyos, the boyos were firing at the Brits; the car broke through the blockade but one tyre was ripped up and it ran into a ditch.

  ‘Everybody was trying to get the hell out at once: when I found myself on the road I ran like blazes, never mind that my hands were tied behind my back and there was a bag over my head. One of them finally remembered what they’d come for and dropped me as I ran. But the Brits were right there, there was no time to finish the job. They scattered and most of them got clear. I just had wit enough to tell the soldiers who I was, then I passed out. I woke up three days later in the military wing of Musgrave Park. And that was the end of my contribution to peace and stability in Northern Ireland.’

  ‘So what were you doing in the States? The word was you were raising money for the Provos. I take it that’s not true?’

  Brady chuckled. ‘Damn right it’s not. The da put that about to explain my disappearance: it was better than admitting he’d fathered a British agent. I think he hoped that sometime I’d be daft enough to go back and he could finish the job.

  ‘But Mammy didn’t raise no fools. I knew I could never go back; to be safe I had to disappear for good. So Special Branch got the FBI to add my name to the list of the dead in a car crash, and that’s when Joseph Bailie was born. Twelve years ago. Until you turned up I hadn’t heard the name Liam Brady for twelve years.’

  ‘The Provos, Special Branch and now Drugs Squad,’ mused Donovan. ‘You’d like living on a volcano.’

  Brady shrugged. ‘You get used to it. To tell the truth, it was being a brickie’s labourer I couldn’t stick. When I first came to England this was. I was reduced to picking fights with the foreman for a bit of excitement. So I volunteered for this. It’s funny. A lot of it’s just like being a brickie’s labourer, but that’s all right because I’m deceiving them. All the time I’m fetching and carrying, and putting grease on rope-burns and living in a dirty caravan with the kind of people the Provos wouldn’t meet socially, I’m thinking “They don’t know”. I’m cleverer than them and they don’t even know it.’

  He seemed to be talking at least half to himself: a man given a rare opportunity to talk freely finding that he couldn’t break the habit of communing inwardly because for months at a time that was the only safe way. ‘That’s what makes it OK. The results too, knowing that when we move on the dealers’ll be rounded up with the stuff on them. But what keeps you going from day to day is working with these men who think they’re so smart and saying to yourself, “They don’t know.” ’

  ‘Is Davey part of it?’

  Brady was scathing. ‘St Michael the Mouth? – no. He has his faults but actually hypocrisy isn’t one of them. Neither him nor t
he Iron Maiden are involved. Kelso set it up, Danny – the French guy with the beard? – organizes the supply end on the Continent, the rest of them take a cut mostly for keeping their mouths shut. It’s money for old rope. Davey even pays them. Actually, they should be paying him.’

  Donovan nodded slowly. ‘So you let slip about your past as a hard man and Kelso brought you in as muscle. Which means going round with him and seeing who he’s dealing with. You pass that back, and when the circus moves on Drugs Squad moves in.’ He sniffed sourly. ‘You should have told us what was going on. I wouldn’t be sitting here if you had, and you wouldn’t be finished as a spy.’ He wondered if he should apologize for that.

  Brady shrugged. ‘I’ve been with them seven months already, there’s a limit to how long you can keep any operation going. We never meant for them to go back to France.’ He chuckled ruefully. ‘I shan’t be on the dole. When I’m ready to go again there’ll be another job waiting. You’ve been a damn nuisance to me, Cal Donovan, but don’t flatter yourself you’ve broken something I can’t mend.’

  In the early evening Brady said he had to go out again. Long-sufferingly, Donovan put his hands behind him.

  ‘This is the last lap,’ Brady promised. ‘It’ll be over by bedtime. We’re meeting Scoutari up at the castle. My lads’ll be waiting. When we’ve rounded them up I’ll come back here and cut you free. OK?’ Donovan nodded grudgingly. ‘OK then.’ Brady left. His feet crunched in the cinders for a pace or two, then the silence came surging softly back.

  Achingly uncomfortable, Donovan lay in the fading light and listened to the silence pattering down like ashes. The minutes groaned past. To fill them he entertained absurd fancies; like, Suppose Brady’s feeding me a line to keep me quiet while he finishes his business with Scoutari and disappears. Suppose I’ve spent the day in a disused railway wagon recalling old times with a drug smuggler, and not only did I not try to escape, I helped him tie me up. Suppose he never comes back.

  If there was no sign of Brady by morning, rather than try to explain to Shapiro how he’d been fooled he thought he’d hobble over to the canal and throw himself in.