The Beautiful Dead

by Belinda Bauer

  He stalked away and Guy turned to Eve. ‘What’s up with him? You must’ve really wound him up before I got here.’

  Eve gave him a cool look. ‘Like Kevin Barr’s father?’ she said. Then she walked away too, and Joe followed her.

  ‘Can’t you take a joke?’ Guy called after them. ‘And what happened to your face?’

  Mention of Veronica Creed always left Huw Rees out of sorts.

  She was a small, rosy-cheeked, round-faced forensics expert of indeterminate age, with glasses and bobbed grey hair, who wore fluffy cat jumpers and shapeless tartan skirts.

  And she scared the shit out of Rees.

  He had been a copper for twenty-two years and in that time he had seen things he wouldn’t have wished on his worst enemy. He had arrested torturers of small children, hunted down the owners of starved and beaten sex slaves, and had once captured a cannibal – who had proudly shown him knuckles in a jar.

  But Veronica Creed was the creepiest person he’d ever met.

  She had all the calm detachment of a psychopath, but none of the comforting iron bars between her and the rest of the world. And although Rees had no basis whatsoever for any suspicions, he often lay awake at night worrying about what she might do, or might have done.

  He knew it was ridiculous, so he’d never told anybody how he felt about her, but he also knew he was not alone. He’d seen grown men flinch from her near-touch and hurry from her presence. He’d watched them toss coins to determine who would have to go to her office and fetch a report. Whenever someone at work called Veronica Creed an absolute legend, Huw Rees always thought like Dracula.

  If Huw Rees had had to say why Veronica Creed was so creepy, he would not have been able to put his finger on it, but just thinking of her pushing her glasses up her nose and fixing him with her big moony eyes made him shiver.

  It had nothing to do with the snow.

  26

  EVE WENT TO the shop at the station on her way home. She only needed milk, but after she’d put that in her basket she wandered up and down the narrow aisles, adding random impulse buys. A pair of woolly tights, a sandalwood Yankee candle.

  The few late-night shoppers averted their eyes from her bruised face.

  She put a baguette in her basket. It smelled like childhood, and she thought that when she got home she would simply tear it into doughy chunks and eat it straight out of the bag. One of the good things about effectively living alone was that she didn’t have to mind her table manners. Sometimes she ate beans and fish fingers right out of the frying pan and felt like a cross between a cowpoke and a caveman.

  Waiting in the short line for the checkout, Eve decided that a Yankee candle was absolutely the last thing anybody in their right mind needed in their life. So what if the house smelled a bit like hamster? It wasn’t as though she entertained.

  She smiled wryly at the very idea, then took the candle out of her basket and left it on the sweet rack near the till. Instead she picked up two bars of Dairy Milk chocolate.

  One for now and one for emergencies.

  A weird sound confused Eve as she reached her gate.

  Mr Elias was clearing her path. He straightened up and looked at her, his breath blowing clouds around his head, with a shovelful of ice. The loose, dirty snow was piled up along the edges of the path, while he had broken up the compacted ice underneath into broad, jagged plates, ready for lifting. The slab already on his shovel revealed a vague rhombus of the old path she knew so well.

  Eve was oddly moved. It was the sort of thing her father would have done for her – or for a neighbour. An old-fashioned kindness unfettered by the complications of feminism.

  ‘Oh. That’s so kind of you!’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said, waving her thanks away gruffly. ‘I should have done it sooner, really.’

  There was an opened sack of salt by the gate, waiting to make everything safe.

  It made Eve feel warm inside, even before she went indoors to boil the kettle so she could make him a nice cup of tea.

  Later, Eve sat in her mother’s old easy chair, tearing bread off the baguette in chunks, and watched her father sleep.

  He was curled up on his side like a child. One loose fist on the pillow; the wedding ring he never took off glimmering in the glow from the street light.

  After every breath, she prayed to a God she didn’t believe in not to grant him another.

  This was the way to die. Warm and cosy in his own bed, and watched over by somebody who loved him.

  Other futures were not so rosy.

  But Duncan Singer kept breathing.

  In.

  And out.

  And in.

  Eve sighed. Either there was no God, or God just didn’t care.

  Her phone rang and she hurried out of the room to answer it.

  Number withheld.

  ‘Hello, Eve.’

  It was him.

  She opened her mouth – then said nothing. Didn’t know what to say. The man had killed three people. At least. What was the etiquette?

  ‘You’re wondering what to do,’ he mused with perfect vowels. ‘Should you say nothing and risk provoking me? Or say hello and play along?’

  ‘If I ever play along, it won’t be with a sick bastard like you.’

  He laughed. ‘I see you’ve plumped for provocation.’

  Eve bit her lip and thought of Mrs Crick, her form teacher in her final year at school, who used to raise her eyebrows at her across the classroom and say, ‘Engage brain, Evelyn. Then mouth.’

  Sometimes she forgot.

  ‘I knew my father,’ he went on, ‘although I didn’t care for him. And who’s to say who’s sick?’

  ‘You cut a woman’s throat. You sliced through a man’s spinal cord. You murdered a child! That’s what normal people call sick!’

  ‘Who’s normal?’ he said dismissively. ‘You’d probably call yourself normal and yet here you are, talking to a killer. What normal person does that? What normal person would appreciate my work? That’s why I like you, Eve – because you’re not normal.’

  She didn’t answer him.

  ‘Who broke your nose?’

  He spoke as if he cared and it surprised her. She hesitated. ‘None of your business.’

  ‘Do you think you can shock me, Eve? You forget who you’re talking to. Tell me anything. I cannot be appalled.’

  He was right; he was a serial killer, after all. For some reason, Eve had to keep reminding herself of that.

  ‘I am a friend,’ he went on, ‘and come not to punish.’

  ‘You’re not my friend,’ she snapped.

  ‘Neither is the person who hurt you,’ he shot back.

  ‘Shut up!’ said Eve angrily. ‘You don’t know anything about my life and you don’t care about it, so spare me your fake concern. Fake concern is my job! I’m the fucking queen of fake concern!’

  He laughed hard, and with real enjoyment – only tailing off slowly with a long, amused sigh.

  ‘You’re funny, Eve,’ he said at last, ‘but you’re wrong. I know you a lot better than you think I do.’

  She felt the skin crawl up the back of her neck.

  Only the long, long silence finally told her that the killer had hung up, and that, once more, she was alone.

  27

  14 December

  ‘THERE’S A TRAMP on the steps.’

  David Fallon looked up at the cleaning lady. Debbie Gomperts was a big, blunt woman who rarely prefaced anything she said with any kind of preamble that might tip a person off as to what was coming next, so in any conversation with her he always felt as if he were two steps behind.

  ‘Excuse me?’ he said.

  ‘A tramp,’ she repeated. ‘On the steps.’ As if his failure to comprehend first time round was only because the sentence was too long, so she’d kindly broken it up into two far simpler pieces to accommodate his stupidity.

  But David hadn’t heard the word ‘tramp’ for so long that it had taken a mome
nt to register – that was all. Everybody said ‘homeless person’ nowadays. ‘Tramp’ was a word from his long-distant past, when idealized old men who weren’t obvious alcoholics wandered the land, doing odd jobs and sleeping in haystacks.

  And ‘steps’ could be anywhere.

  ‘Which steps?’ he said.

  ‘The steps,’ said Debbie Gomperts. ‘Out front.’

  Ah.

  That was a problem.

  David Fallon rose from his cluttered desk, padded silently through the plush red-carpeted lobby and peered through the glass doors, to see that a tramp had indeed set up home outside the front entrance of the Barnstormer Theatre, and was now curled up – apparently asleep – on the top step.

  David sighed. He hated confrontation. But in two hours’ time patrons would start to arrive for tonight’s performance of Romeo and Juliet, and what theatre-goers didn’t like was real-life drama intruding on their suspension of disbelief.

  Especially if real life smelled like piss.

  ‘Oh dear,’ he said to nobody, and unlocked the main door.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  The man didn’t stir.

  David cleared his throat and raised his voice. ‘Excuse me!’

  The man sat up slowly and said, ‘What?’

  ‘You can’t sleep here,’ David told him.

  The man looked around him as if he’d only just noticed where he was, then back at David Fallon.

  ‘Well, I was doing all right until you woke me up.’

  David smiled briefly to show that he was a human being and appreciated the joke.

  ‘I mean,’ he went on, ‘we’ll be opening our doors in an hour.’

  The man put up a hand as if acknowledging – but rejecting – an offer.

  ‘Oh I’m fine out here, thank you.’

  This was awkward. David wished there was somebody else who could deal with this, but there wasn’t. All he had were half a dozen willowy drama-school ushers, Eric in the concession stand, who was almost eighty, Marge behind the bar, and Debbie Gomperts, who couldn’t really be set loose on any member of the public without offence ensuing – not even a tramp.

  The man settled down again in the corner he’d made shabby-chic with a floor and walls of cardboard, and a Harrods bag containing all his worldly goods in effortless style.

  David Fallon was a good person. He loved his cat, Dilly, and never forgot his godson’s birthday – even though he hadn’t had a thank-you card since the little shit had hit his teens – and he often shopped or watered plants for elderly neighbours.

  But the tramp did smell of pee.

  So he locked the door and called the police.

  ‘I’m queuing!’ insisted the homeless man as two policemen picked up his Harrods bag and hauled him to his feet. ‘I want to see Romeo and Juliet!’

  ‘You got a ticket, sir?’ said the younger of the two officers.

  ‘That’s what I’m queuing for,’ explained the man. ‘For returns. Like when people sleep outside the Apple store for an iPhone. Or the new Harry Potter.’

  The young cop looked questioningly at David.

  ‘He’s not queuing,’ said David. ‘He’s just sleeping.’

  ‘How do you know?’ said the man. ‘You never even asked!’

  The younger copper asked David if there were any returned tickets. Then when he was told that there were, he asked the homeless man whether he would like to buy one.

  ‘Well,’ the tramp said sniffily, ‘not now.’

  The two coppers laughed and the younger one picked up the cardboard walls and floor and handed them to the man.

  ‘You can sleep there,’ he said, pointing at the snowy pavement just a few feet away, ‘but not here.’

  ‘Sod that,’ the tramp grumbled. ‘I’m going to see The Mousetrap.’ And he stalked off.

  David sighed and watched him shuffle through the snow, then turned to thank the police officers.

  But they had their backs to him, and were staring down at the corner where the homeless man had been sleeping.

  He stepped forward to peer over their shoulders.

  Some cheeky bugger had stuck a flyer there.

  For an exhibition.

  28

  THE BARNSTORMER THEATRE was crawling with cops.

  Eve looked around her, spotting familiar faces in unfamiliar suits, mingling with the paying customers. She saw DS Rees standing in the lobby, wearing a rather faded dinner jacket, which was only just hanging on by its single button across his broad middle. She didn’t know the man alongside Rees, but he had the pinkest, shiniest, baldest head she had ever seen.

  ‘Thank you for the call,’ she said, and Rees nodded curtly. Maybe he was regretting the deal they’d made. Eve would if she were him …

  ‘This is DI Marr,’ said Rees, and she and the shiny-bald officer exchanged polite nods.

  DI Marr rubbed his hands together and said, ‘Exciting, isn’t it?’

  Eve and Rees exchanged dubious glances.

  ‘The West End,’ he explained. ‘Treading the boards.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Yes.’

  Rees looked over Eve’s shoulder. ‘Where’s your colleague?’

  ‘Joe? He’ll be here in a second.’

  ‘He’d better be. I don’t want anyone knowing that there’s anything different about tonight’s performance. And that means no coming in late, no big camera, no jeans …’

  ‘He’ll be here on time,’ she said confidently. She’d passed on the message about jeans, although Huw Rees’s DJ was the most distinctive item of clothing in evidence – and not in a good way. She herself was in a simple black dress she kept for funerals.

  A man in the only other tuxedo came over. A plastic badge on his silken lapel said that he was the MANAGER.

  ‘Do you have everything you need, Detective Rees?’

  ‘Yes thank you, Mr Fallon.’

  ‘Can we start then?’

  ‘Just give us another ten minutes.’

  ‘Another ten minutes!’ Fallon looked as if he might cry. ‘But we’ve had a freezer malfunction! If we don’t start now then by the time we get to the interval the ice cream will have melted!’

  ‘We’re moving as fast as we can, Mr Fallon. This is a murder investigation.’

  ‘But what about the ice cream?’ said Fallon, as if Rees had failed to identify the real issue. ‘It’s not so much the tubs – they’ll just be soft – but we have bars too and they lose their shape. I can’t sell a floppy Magnum!’

  ‘I can only do so much, sir.’

  Fallon flapped his arms miserably and hurried off towards the auditorium.

  ‘So,’ Eve asked Rees, ‘where do you want us?’

  ‘After everybody else is seated, you can come into the back of the auditorium with me, but you’re not to film unless something happens. Don’t want to raise any suspicions.’

  ‘OK, good. Where’s everybody else?’

  ‘We’ve got a dozen officers, mostly in the audience, with a couple in the bits on either side of the stage—’

  ‘The wings,’ said DI Marr.

  ‘Whatever,’ said Rees.

  ‘Well, that’s what they’re called,’ said Marr.

  ‘I didn’t know you were a thespian,’ said Rees sarcastically.

  ‘Croydon Players,’ said Marr. ‘Twenty years. We’re doing Oklahoma! in January. I’m Curly.’

  Eve and Rees both glanced at Marr’s shiny head, and he got all defensive.

  ‘It’s meant to be funny.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Rees, ‘we’ve got two men up in the lights—’

  ‘The rigging,’ Marr provided.

  ‘With night-vision goggles,’ Rees went on, ‘and half a dozen more mingling with the audience.’

  Eve was impressed. ‘You moved fast.’

  ‘Hope it’s enough,’ said Rees.

  ‘Are you armed?’

  He hesitated, then said stiffly, ‘We have armed officers in attendance.’

  Eve nodded
, excited by the idea of armed cops roaming up and down the aisles of this West End theatre. She loved this feeling of being in the know, being on the inside, while others were left in ignorance.

  Rees said he’d better take his seat, and joined the throng of people now streaming through the lobby.

  Eve turned to see Joe standing just inside the doors, looking around for her. He was in black jeans and a black sweater.

  Eve looked him up and down. ‘You look like a choreographer.’

  ‘Is that bad?’ he said.

  She squinted at him again. ‘Not too bad.’

  Joe looked great, she thought. Black suited him. He looked like James Bond with a social conscience.

  ‘You look great,’ he said, and she was so flummoxed by the echo of her own unspoken compliment that she just waved it away and said, ‘Did you get the flyer?’

  He nodded and showed her the LCD screen of a camera so small he had it in his pocket.

  EXHIBITION

  Venue: Here

  Date: December 14

  Time: Tonight

  Eve nodded her approval and told him the plan, which was less a plan than a vantage point, but they agreed that it was better than not getting a call at all. And a million times better than twenty other media outlets getting the same call.

  ‘Especially if one of them is Guy Smith,’ said Eve with feeling.

  An announcement asked everybody to take their seats, and the last person at the concession stand paid an ancient man dressed as Buttons for a tub of melting ice cream and hurried through the double doors.

  Eve and Joe joined Huw Rees just inside the doors. The two men nodded minutely at each other.

  After plenty of rustling and finding of seats, the lights went down and the play began.

  Romeo and Juliet was not Eve’s favourite Shakespeare play. She liked Macbeth, with all the blood and the witches and the moveable forest. Romeo and Juliet had always seemed callow and foolish to her, a couple of infatuated kids doing over-dramatic things in the name of love. She was far more preoccupied by the audience, wondering whether a killer sat among them. If he did, she hoped that any murder attempt wouldn’t involve another knife in the back of the neck, or anything else that resulted in a lot of blood.