by Jane Adams
Price shook his head. ‘Yeah, but they have handbags,’ he pointed out.
‘Not our Beth. Doesn’t believe in them.’
He wolfed a few more mouthfuls of steak pie, sucking up more coffee without first swallowing the mouthful of food.
Price shuddered inwardly and looked away, half-nauseated, half-amused.
Morrow swallowed again, then said, ‘She died of smoke inhalation but there was enough of a cocktail of drugs and drink in her system that I doubt she knew much about it.’ He paused, prodded at his pie once more. ‘Bloody hope she didn’t know anyway. Hell of a mess.’
‘There was enough soft tissue left for the tox results and blood typing then?’ Price enquired.
Morrow nodded. ‘Practically pickled, she was, probably had been for days, the surgeon reckons. All body tissues saturated.’
‘Well,’ Price observed, ‘she sure as hell didn’t drive there.’
Morrow guffawed, at least that’s what Price thought it was. ‘The car she was found in was stolen two or three days before her death. The owner was away so there were no reports, but witness statements have given us a rough fix. It was a BMW 3 series before they killed it,’ he said with feeling. ‘Quality. Whether that says anything or not I couldn’t tell you.’
He paused, chewed thoughtfully for a moment or two, then said almost wistfully, ‘Amazing things women’s bodies. I mean, if she’d been a man we’d have known a whole lot less about her.’ He looked deliberately at Price, leaning forward slightly, and said, ‘Did you know that the womb is often the last thing to be destroyed? Symbolic that, don’t you think?’
Price laughed, he couldn’t help himself, then he sobered. ‘The question is,’ he said, ‘who killed her and what the hell does she have to do with Theo Howard?’
6 p.m.
Davy had given John no trouble. He had driven him back to divisional HQ at Norwich and delivered him quietly to the front desk. The custody officer had taken over from there.
John, waiting for Mike to finish Davy’s interview, had made a statement telling how Davy had arrived on his doorstep. Then he’d drunk several cups of tea with the desk sergeant in the tiny, untidy room behind the front office.
‘You miss the job?’ the desk sergeant asked him. He knew John, had been around long enough to remember him as a serving officer.
Tynan nodded. ‘Old habits and all that, but I fill my time one way or another.’ He smiled. ‘It’s hard though, wanting to get stuck in and being kept on the sidelines like some damned civilian.’
‘You knew the dead woman.’
‘Theo, yes, my wife and I grew up with her, well, her older sister really.’ He paused, settled himself more comfortably in his chair. He had no real right to be here, aware he was trading on his past reputation and on Mike’s friendship. But what the hell, it was a quiet Sunday evening and the opportunity to talk shop with old colleagues didn’t come up all that often.’
‘So,’ he said, ‘anything new on this other business . . . ?’
* * *
Mike sat down at the table and started the tape, going through the usual formalities. Time of interview and those present. ‘Mr Martin has not requested the services of a lawyer,’ he said, ‘but understands that he may do so at any time and that the interview will then terminate until such time as one can be made available.’
He looked across at David Martin. ‘You have been made aware of your rights, Mr Martin?’ Mike asked quietly.
‘Yes, yes, thank you, yes.’
‘And you understand the information that you have been given?’
‘Yes, I understand,’ Davy said. ‘I understand it all.’
Mike tipped the envelope from the evidence bag and emptied the photographs on to the table top.
‘Do you recognize these, Mr Martin? For the record, Mr Martin is being shown photographs found in his room at Miss Howard’s house. They will be listed as exhibit B1.’
Davy looked at the pictures and swallowed hard. ‘Yes, I recognize them,’ he said. ‘I took them.’
‘And the woman in the picture,’ Mike asked. ‘Who is she?’
‘A girlfriend. She was a girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend now of course.’ He laughed nervously.
‘Why “of course”, Mr Martin?’
David Martin looked surprised. ‘Well, because of Theo, of course. I never looked at another woman after Theo.’
‘And your relationship with Theo Howard, for the record?’ Mike asked him, slightly shifting tack.
‘We, we were . . . I loved her.’
‘You were lovers, Mr Martin, is that what you are telling me?’
‘You know it is.’
‘And this other woman, this former girlfriend.’ Mike changed direction once again. ‘Can you tell me her name?’
David was looking puzzled now. ‘I don’t see . . .’ he began.
‘Just answer the question, please.’
‘But it’s not relevant. Look, I told you, I never looked at another woman after Theo. These pictures, she asked me to take them. She meant nothing to me after Theo.’
‘She must have meant something for you to have kept the photographs,’ Mike said. ‘Her name please, Mr Martin.’
For a moment David Martin stared at him, then he said, ‘It’s Marion. Marion O’Donnel. I knew her for a little while when I was living in London. She asked me to take them for her. Some magazine she wanted to get into. I don’t know. She did some modelling or something for them afterwards.’
Mike took the second evidence bag from his folder and laid the magazine on the table. ‘This magazine?’
Again Davy swallowed hard and nodded that it was.
‘For the record,’ Mike intoned, ‘Mr Martin is nodding.’
‘What does this have to do with Theo?’ Davy was asking. ‘I came here because of Theo, not because of some other woman.’
There was a knock on the interview room door, a whispered consultation between someone outside and the PC sitting in on the interview. Mike was called out. He returned moments later with a second envelope and added its contents to those already on the table.
‘Did you also take these, Mr Martin?’
David stared in silence at the images strewn across the table. Pictures of Theo in various stages of undress. She had taken care of herself and her body was still well-shaped and firm. She laughed playfully into the camera as though it was all some huge joke. These pictures were not pornographic, merely intimate, and Mike felt suddenly too much like a voyeur.
‘You took these also, Mr Martin?’
‘Yes, I took them. Theo asked me to.’
There was a catch in the younger man’s voice. Tears caught in the back of his throat. Mike pushed forward.
‘And now Theo’s dead,’ he said softly. ‘Dead, Just like Marion O’Donnel. Strange coincidence, don’t you think, Mr Martin?’
Chapter Twenty-Three
8 p.m.
Max turned the pages slowly. The books were like old friends to him now. His closest confidants.
He rarely saw Jake, to speak to anyway, though he followed his career closely through the newspaper reports and the work that Jake put out. Jake always made sure Max Harriman had his copy of a new work. Jake always knew where Max could be found no matter how many times he moved.
Max could not say the same. It was years since he had known exactly where Jake made his home. He had a flat in London; Max had borrowed it a time or two, he had a key. Marion had used it too when she worked there, and, Max knew, others went in and out, using the place as a letter drop and collection point. But that was not where Jake lived. As far as Max knew, it was not even a place where Jake spent the night.
He missed Jake, missed the closeness of their early years when he and Jake and the rest had been the best of friends. He often thought about them, the kids he’d gone to school with. Had them in his cuttings books too, when they’d done anything worth recording.
One was inside. Armed robbery, three counts. Others had gone th
eir own, more respectable way. He had the notices of marriages and births and even deaths of half a dozen others he and Jake had known. But it was only Jake that had made it to the big time. Jake who’d seen the greater picture, known that nothing really mattered so long as you were following your own particular star.
He turned the pages, pausing at one particular entry. Jake’s first really successful film. It was the story of a police raid on a sex shop and the seizure of some special stock that Jake had provided for them.
It had been tame beside the stuff he was producing now, Max thought, but he still had his copy, he hung on to it knowing it would be worth an absolute packet some day.
* * *
Jake stared out into the garden through his conservatory window. He had a night sight in his hand and had spread food on to the lawn hoping they would come back. The badgers had made his garden a regular stopping-off point and Jake had come to like watching them. They were a family group, both parents and three little cubs. He liked to watch them as they came snuffling through the long grass near the hedge and nosing around at the scraps he put down for them. They argued over the food like nursery school kids at a Christmas party.
Jake liked the creatures far more than he liked the average human.
He scowled suddenly, remembering Marion, how close she could get to them before they ran away.
It soothed him a little, remembering that, though his pride still hurt at just how much he had misjudged her. But he knew he must let the anger go now. If things as wild and fey as the badgers could be taken in by that stupid, nosy cow, then it was not so bad that Jake could make that same mistake too.
It would be the last time, though, Jake made that promise to himself. The very last.
8.30 p.m.
Sitting in the Myers’ house had brought back so many memories for Judith. It was, in many ways, so like the house her grandparents had owned. Tall and imposing, in truth a little in need of modernization and repair, but a place Judith had loved.
She remembered the big kitchen, the two halves of it, divided for the preparation of milk and meat. The long wooden table. The family gathered, generations of it, at Sabbath, at festivals.
Judith’s father had married outside his faith and Judith had been their only child. It had been hard on her grandparents, she knew, but they had accepted it. Her parents had divorced when she was three and Judith spent holidays with her father. Mostly with her grandparents.
With her mother, she lived one life. At her grandparents’ house she lived another, one steeped in ritual and tradition. In music and stories. Sometimes, she thought, the stories had seemed far more real than the everyday world of school and her mother’s home. She had loved the stories, told in her grandfather’s sonorous voice. Elaborate tales to be narrated slowly, savoured like a fine wine.
Judith winced at the analogy. The strongest thing she allowed herself these days was coffee and it would stay that way. For Terry’s sake.
She remembered that day clearly, so clearly. That final Pesach she had spent with them. Terry had been five years old, the youngest child present. Her grandfather the patriarch, in his dark suit, sitting at the head of the table. Judith herself heavily pregnant with her second child and deeply, deeply unhappy with the way her world was turning.
Terry, the youngest child, a little shy because it was the first time he had played the role, going to her grandfather and asking the question. Asking why they were celebrating with the bitter herbs and the salt and the Passover Lamb. His great-grandfather sitting him on his knee and telling the story of the flight from Egypt and the days his people had spent in the wilderness before they came finally to the promised land.
‘Were you there?’ Terry had asked him, his eyes round and innocent.
‘No, I’m not quite that old, my boy.’
And then the final words, the pledge to celebrate the festival next year in Jerusalem. Next year. And Judith could remember her feelings of utter and complete despair. Remember also how much she had craved a drink, the partial oblivion that alcohol would provide.
Next year in Jerusalem. She’d heard that every bloody year since she could remember and that next year had never, ever come. Not for her grandparents, not for her father not for her.
Her grandfather had told her once that Jerusalem represented a dream. The image of fulfilment and the precious treasure of the soul.
She could remember his face when he had said those words. The conviction in his eyes.
‘You’ll find your Jerusalem,’ he’d told her. ‘You will see.’
But Judith knew that, search as she might, she never would, unless she glimpsed it briefly in the bottom of a glass.
She remembered how she had excused herself then. Got awkwardly to her feet with the weight of the second child wanting to drag her down. Had hurried from the room and sneaked into the kitchen. A half-empty bottle of whisky lay hidden at the bottom of her bag. She took a teacup from the cabinet and poured herself a large measure, drinking it down almost without tasting.
Then another.
Judith could taste it now, sitting in her tiny kitchen, hugging a cup of cooling coffee between her hands. Disgusted with the memory of herself, craving oblivion in spite of her disgust. Looking out of the window at the pouring rain, she thought of her son. Of what had happened with Terry.
8.30 p.m.
Davy lay on his back on the bench in the police cell and thought of Theo.
He had touched her when he’d found her dead. He’d told no one that. Touched her face, her hair, the curve of her breast and hip, imagining the flesh beneath.
He had felt no disgust at her death, at the smell of sick and alcohol, only a strange sense of detachment that this woman, lying so still on the couch, was the same woman that had shared his bed. Finally, Davy had taken a comb from his pocket and combed out Theo’s hair, arranging it across the pillow. He had still been holding the comb in his hand when the banging on the front door had broken the spell. Then the police had been there and life had become so much more complicated.
He fell asleep and dreamed of Theo. Theo lying beside him, her body still warm and the grey hair tangled about her face. She reached out, wrapping him in her arms, drawing him close, her body curving against his. And he, responding so strongly to her touch that even in his sleep he felt himself grow hard. Wanted her. Breathing in time to her rhythm, breathing her breath as if they were a single being.
Then Theo dissolving, becoming another woman with fairer hair and lips stained so red they seemed to drip with blood. The woman pressing her mouth against his, sucking the air from him as he wrapped her tight, pinning her to the ground.
He felt her body writhing beneath his own. The arousal and the fear blending into a single emotion as he held the woman hard enough to cause her pain, pulling away from her kisses that were not kisses and threatened to suck the breath from his lungs.
In his sleep, Davy cried out, struggling to control her. He’d never felt so much strength in anyone, man or woman, as he felt now. She had one hand free and he fought to catch her wrist again, throwing his whole weight down on top of her.
With a cry of pain, Davy woke, just as the woman’s red tipped hands flashed out to rake across his face.
11.15 p.m.
It had taken only an hour or two to find her, but then he knew the places to look now. Had watched her enter the pub with her friends, followed them inside, sat drinking only feet away from them all evening without them paying any notice. The pub crowded enough for a lone drinker not to draw too much attention, and anyway, he’d gone through the pretence of waiting. Looking at his watch, showing reluctance when someone wanted to use the chair next to his. He’d been too clever to be noticed, he was sure of it.
He had left just before the group had broken up, the first couple going off just about the time he did, turning towards the main road, too preoccupied to pay him any mind.
He’d made certain that the girl had been alone. No boyfriend, one of four in th
e group who’d obviously been singles.
Then he’d waited, parked in a side street with a view of the main door. She could have left the other way, of course. And if she had, slipping out of the side door, then that would have been it. But he was certain she would not.
His waiting time paid off. She came out of the main door with two other friends. He waited some more, breathing shallow with anticipation as they stood a minute or two and talked on the pub step. Then the couple turned one way and the girl the other.
Yes! Yes!
He followed slowly, waiting until she had walked almost out of sight before starting the car. Would she go left towards the bus station or turn right down the side road towards the park?
Right towards the park.
Right towards the park.
He drew the car into a side street and got out quickly. His feet in their soft-soled shoes made little noise on the pavement. He followed, keeping the same distance behind her all the way until she reached the spot he wanted, where the road swung left and there was a small patch of derelict ground.
Then he ran, grabbing her from behind and using his momentum to take her down.
This one wasn’t like the last. She didn’t fight. Just lay there, stunned, her mouth opened in a silent scream, her breath stinking of alcohol and cigarettes.
The smell nauseated him so he hit her anyway, striking again and again at the side of her head until it lolled back at an awkward angle, blood staining the lips an even deeper red.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Monday, 19 December, 3 a.m.
Terry woke up cold and stiff, realizing that the fire had burned itself out.
He swore under his breath and eased his arm from around Sarah’s shoulders, feeling the familiar pins and needles sensation in his fingers. He’d been in one position far too long.
Sarah opened her eyes with a start. ‘What’s going on? Oh, it’s freezing.’
‘The fire’s gone out.’
