I look around the kitchen. ‘She doesn’t want to come.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know.’
He grunts.
‘I guess she’s at school now.’
‘Yeah.’
‘What school?’
I don’t answer him.
‘Probably some fancy private school like her mother went to. She was always too good for the likes of you. Couldn’t stand her father. Thought his shit didn’t smell. Drove a different car every year.’
‘They were company cars.’
‘Yeah, well, he looked down his nose at you.’
‘No he didn’t.’
‘Fucking did. We weren’t his type. Golf clubs, skiing holidays… He paid for that posh wedding.’ He pauses and gets excited. ‘Maybe you should apply for alimony, you know. Take her to court. Get your share.’
‘I don’t want her money.’
‘Give it to me.’
‘No.’
‘Why not? I deserve something.’
‘I got you this place.’
‘Yeah, a fucking palace!’
He shuffles into the kitchen and sits down. I dish up the food. He smothers everything in brown sauce. Doesn’t say thank you. Doesn’t wait for me.
I wonder when he looks in the mirror if he sees what other people see: a useless bladder of piss and wind. That’s what I see. The man has no right to lecture me. He’s a foul-mouthed, whining, skid-mark on the world and I wish sometimes that he’d just die or at least get even.
I don’t know why I bother coming to visit him. When I remember what he did to me, it’s all I can do not to spit in his face. He won’t remember. He’ll say I’m making it up.
His beltings were never as bad as the long, drawn out prelude to them. I was sent to the stairs, where I had to drop my trousers and put my arms through the railings, crossing them and gripping my wrists. I’d stand there waiting and waiting, with my forehead pressed against the wood.
The first sound I heard was the swishing of the flex as it curled through the air a split-second before it landed. He used an old toaster cord with the plug still attached, which he gripped in his fist.
I’ll tell you the strange thing about them beatings. They taught me how to split my mind in two. I didn’t leave home at sixteen. I left home years earlier when I was hanging on those railings. I left home when that cord whipped through the air and sank into my skin.
I used to fantasise about what I’d do to him when I was big enough and strong enough. I didn’t have much of an imagination back then. I thought of punching him or kicking him in the head. It’s different now. I can imagine a thousand ways to cause him pain. I can imagine him begging to die. He might even think he was already dead. That’s happened to me before. An Algerian terrorist, captured fighting for the Talibs in the mountains north of Gardeyz, asked me if he was in hell.
‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘But it’s going to seem like a holiday camp when you get there.’
Pop pushes his plate away and rubs a hand over his jaw, giving me a quick sly look. A gin bottle appears from the cupboard below the sink. He pours a glass, with the air of a man who is putting something over on the world.
‘You want one?’
‘No.’
I look around, seeking a distraction, an excuse to leave.
‘You got to be somewhere?’ he asks.
‘Yeah.’
‘You only just got here.’
‘There’s a job.’
‘Fixing more locks.’
‘Yeah.’
He snorts in disgust. ‘You must be cock-deep in cash.’
Then he launches into another speech, complaining about his life and telling me I’m useless and selfish and a fucking disappointment.
I look at his neck. I could break it easily enough. Two hands, thumbs in the right place, and he stops talking… and breathing. No different to killing a rabbit.
On he goes, blah, blah, blah, his mouth opening and closing, filling the world with shit. Maybe the Algerian was right about hell.
31
A shadow fills the glass panels of the door. It opens. Veronica Cray turns and sways down the hallway.
‘You seen the Sunday papers, Professor?’
‘No.’
‘Sylvia Furness is all over them- page one, page three, page five… Monk just called. There are two dozen reporters outside Trinity Road.’
I follow her to the kitchen. She moves to the stove and begins pushing pots and pans around the hotplates. A spill of sunlight from the window highlights flecks of silver at the roots of her hair.
‘This is a tabloid editor’s wet dream. Two victims- white, attractive, middle-class women. Mothers. Both naked. Business partners. One of them jumps off a bridge and the other is left hanging from a tree like a side of beef. You should read some of the theories they’re coming up with- love triangles, lesbian affairs, jilted lovers.’
She opens the fridge and retrieves a carton of eggs, butter, rashers of bacon and a tomato. I’m still standing.
‘Sit down. I’m going to make you breakfast.’ She makes it sound like I’m on the menu.
‘That’s really not necessary.’
‘For you maybe- I’ve been up since five. You want coffee or tea?’
‘Coffee.’
Breaking eggs into a bowl, she begins whisking them into a liquid froth, every movement practised and precise. I take a seat, listening to her talk. A dozen different newspapers are open on the table. Sylvia Furness is smiling from the pages of each one of them.
The investigation is focusing on the wedding planning business, Blissful, now in receivership. The unpaid bills and final demands had built up over two years, but Christine Wheeler had kept the bailiffs at bay by periodically injecting cash, most of it borrowed against her house. Legal action over a food poisoning scare proved to be the final straw. She defaulted on two loans. The carrion began circling.
Police artists are due to sit down with Darcy and Alice. They’re going to be interviewed separately to see if their recollections can help create identikit images of the man they spoke to in the days before their mothers died.
Physically the girls described him as being roughly the same height and build, but Darcy remembered him having dark hair, while Alice was sure that he was fair. Appearances can be altered, of course, but eyewitness descriptions are notoriously fickle. Very few people can remember more than a handful of descriptors: sex, age, height, hair colour and race. This isn’t enough to draw up a truly accurate identikit and a poor one does more harm than good.
The detective scoops bacon from the frying pan and halves the scrambled eggs, tipping them onto thick slices of toast.
‘You want Tabasco on your eggs?’
‘Sure.’
She pours the coffee, adds milk.
The task force is following up a dozen other leads. A traffic camera on Warminster Road picked up Sylvia Furness’s car at 16.08 on Monday. An unidentified silver van followed her through the traffic lights. A week earlier, a similar looking van crossed the Clifton Suspension Bridge twenty minutes before Christine Wheeler climbed the safety fence. Same make. Same model. Neither CCTV camera picked up a full number plate.
Sylvia Furness received a call at home at four-fifteen on Monday afternoon. It was made from a mobile phone that was purchased two months ago at a high street outlet in south London, using a dodgy ID. A second handset, purchased on the same day, was used to call Sylvia’s mobile at 16.42. It was the same MO as with Christine Wheeler. One call overlapped the other. The caller passed Sylvia from her landline to her mobile, possibly ensuring that he didn’t break contact with her.
DI Cray eats quickly, refilling her plate. The coffee must burn her throat as she washes down every mouthful. She wipes her lips with a paper napkin.
‘Forensics came up with something interesting. Semen stains from two different men on her bed-sheets.’
‘Does the husband know?’
‘Seems t
hey had an arrangement- an open marriage.’ Whenever I hear that term I think of a small delicate craft floating on an ocean of shit. The DI senses my disillusionment and chuckles.
‘Don’t tell me you’re a romantic, Professor.’
‘I guess I am. What about you?’
‘Most women are- even a woman like me.’
She makes it sound like a statement of intent. I use it as an opening.
‘I noticed photographs of a young man. Is he your son?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Grown up. He lives in London. They all seem to go to London eventually- like turtles returning to the same beach.’
‘You miss him?’
‘Does Dolly Parton sleep on her back?
I want to pause and study this mental picture, but carry on. ‘Where’s his father?’
‘What is this- twenty questions?’
‘I’m interested.’
‘You’re nosy.’
‘Curious, that’s all.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m not one of your bloody patients.’ She says it with unexpected anger and then looks slightly self-conscious. ‘You want to know, I was married for eight months. They were the longest years of my life. And my son is the only good thing that came out of them.’
She takes my plate from the table and dumps the cutlery into the sink. The tap is turned on and she scrubs the dishes as though cleaning away more than scrambled eggs.
‘Do you have a problem with psychologists?’ I ask.
‘No.’
‘Maybe it’s me?’
‘No offence, Professor, but a century ago people didn’t need shrinks to get by. They didn’t need therapy, Prozac, self-help manuals or the fucking “Secret”. They just got on with their lives.’
‘A century ago people only lived to be forty-five.’
‘So you’re saying that living longer makes us unhappier?’
‘It gives us more time to be unhappy. Our expectations have changed. Survival isn’t enough. We want fulfilment.’
She doesn’t answer, but it’s not a sign of consensus. Instead her demeanour suggests an episode in her past, a family history, or a visit to a psychologist or psychiatrist.
‘Is it because you’re gay?’ I ask.
‘You got a problem with it?’
‘No.’
‘Gertrude Stein told Hemingway that the reason he had a problem with accepting homosexuality was because the male homosexual act was ugly and repugnant whereas with women it is the opposite.’
‘I try not to judge people on their sexuality.’
‘But you do judge them, every day in your consulting room.’
‘I no longer have a clinical practice, but when I did I tried to help people.’
‘Have you ever had a patient who didn’t want to be gay?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you try to fix them?’
‘There was nothing to fix. I can’t change someone’s sexuality. I help them come to terms with who they are. I help them cope with their own nature.’
The DI dries her hands and sits down again, reaching for her cigarettes. Lights one.
‘You finish the psychological profile?’
I nod. The crunch of wheels on gravel signals an arrival outside. Safari Roy has come to take her to Trinity Road.
‘I got a morning briefing. You should come.’
Roy knocks on the door and comes inside. He dips his head in greeting.
‘You ready, boss?’
‘Yeah. The Prof is coming with us.’
Roy looks at me. ‘Always room.’
The incident room is busier and noisier than before. There are more detectives and civilian support staff, inputting data and cross-referencing the details of each crime. This is now an official murder investigation with task force status.
Sylvia Furness has her own whiteboard, alongside Christine Wheeler’s. Thick black lines are drawn between family members, colleagues and mutual friends.
The taskforce has been split into two teams. One team has already devoted hundreds of hours to tracking down every person who was in Leigh Woods, locating vehicles, checking alibis and studying CCTV cameras.
It has also focused on Christine Wheeler’s debts and dealings with a local loan shark called Tony Naughton, whose name appeared in her phone records. Naughton has been questioned but has an alibi for Friday October 5. Half a dozen drinkers say he was in a pub from early afternoon until closing time. The same half-dozen who give him an alibi every time he’s pulled in by the police.
I listen as Veronica Cray brings everyone up to speed on the previous twenty-four hours.
‘Whoever killed Sylvia Furness knew about the handcuffs which means we could be looking at a former boyfriend, a lover, or someone who had access to the house. A tradesman, a cleaner, a friend…’
‘What about the husband?’ asks Monk.
‘He was in Geneva, shacked up with his twenty-six-year-old secretary.’
‘He could have hired someone.’
She nods. ‘We’re looking at his phone records and emails.’
She hands out tasks and then glances quickly at me. ‘Professor O’Loughlin has drawn up a psychological profile. I’ll hand over to him.’
My notes are written on a page, tucked into my jacket pocket. I keep taking them out and glancing at them as if cribbing for a test. I consciously lift my feet and avoid shuffling as I move to the front of the gathering. It’s one those tricks I’ve had to learn since Mr Parkinson arrived. I don’t stand with my feet close together and I try not to pivot when I turn quickly.
‘The man you are looking for is a fully-fledged sexual sadist,’ I announce, pausing for a moment to look at their faces. ‘He didn’t just want to kill these women, he wanted to destroy them physically and mentally; to take bright, vibrant, intelligent women and strip away every last vestige of hope and faith and humanity.
‘You are looking for a male in the same age range as his victims or older. His planning, confidence and degree of control indicate maturity and experience.’
‘He has an above average IQ with high verbal intelligence and good social skills. He will come across as pleasant and confident, almost deceptively charming. For this reason his friends, workmates or drinking buddies are likely to have no idea of his sadistic nature.
‘His formal education won’t match his intelligence. He gets bored easily and is likely to have dropped out of school or university.
‘His organisational skills and methodology suggest military training, but he has reached a point where he won’t take orders unless he respects the person giving them. For this reason, he is likely to be self-employed or work alone. The timings of the killings suggest that he may work flexible hours, nights or weekends.
‘He is likely to be a local, someone who knows the roads, distances and street names. He directed both victims by phone.
He knew where they lived, their phone numbers and when they’d be alone. This took planning and research.
‘He will live alone or with an elderly parent. He needs the freedom to come and go, without having to answer questions from a wife or partner. He may have been married in the past and his hatred towards women could stem from this or another failed relationship or a problem in his childhood with his mother.
‘This man is forensically aware. Apart from the mobile phone he gave to Christine Wheeler, he left nothing behind. And he uses concealing behaviour- buying different handsets under false names, choosing different call boxes and staying on the move.
‘His victims were targeted. The question we have to answer is why and how. They were friends and business partners. They went to school together. They shared dozens of mutual friends and perhaps a hundred acquaintances. They lived in the same city, went to the same hairdresser and used the same dry-cleaning service. Find out why he chose them and we move a step closer to finding him.’
I pause and glance down at my notes, making sure I haven’t left anythi
ng out. My left forefinger has begun twitching but my voice is strong. I bob gently on my toes and begin pacing and talking at the same time. Their eyes move with me.
‘I think our perpetrator convinced each woman that they had no choice but to co-operate or their daughters would suffer. This suggests that he is supremely confident verbally but I think there is a question mark over his physical confidence. He didn’t overpower these women with brute force. He used his voice to intimidate and control. He may lack the courage for a face-to-face confrontation.’
‘He’s a coward,’ says Monk.
‘Or he’s not physically strong.’
DI Cray wants more practical information. ‘What are the chances that he’s an old boyfriend or spurned lover?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Why?’
‘If either victim had escaped or been rescued they could have identified an old boyfriend or lover. I doubt if he’d take this risk. There’s another issue. Would these women have followed his commands so completely if they knew him? The unknown voice is more frightening; more intimidating…’
Someone coughs. I pause, wondering if it’s a signal. There are muffled comments.
‘This leads me to another point,’ I say. ‘He might not physically have touched them.’
Nobody reacts. Monk speaks first. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The victims might not have seen him.’
‘But Sylvia Furness was handcuffed to a tree.’
‘She could have done that to herself.’
‘What about the hood?’
‘She could have done that too.’
I explain the evidence. The field was muddy. Only one set of footprints was found beneath the tree. There was no evidence of sexual assault or defence wounds. No other tyre tracks led to the field.
‘I’m not saying that he didn’t visit the scene in advance- he chose it very carefully. I also think he was nearby- the mobile signals indicate as much- but I don’t think she saw him. I don’t think he touched her- not physically.’
‘He fucked with her mind,’ says Safari Roy.
I nod.
There are whistling sighs and grunts of scepticism. This is beyond their comprehension.
‘Why? What’s the motive?’ asks the DI.
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