“Sergeant, I don’t like your threatening manner. I am going to call Mr. Denholm.” Mrs. Gentle turned to the phone.
“It’s all right, Mrs. Gentle,” Bren broke in quickly. “We’re finished now. What about Mr. Hannaford, by the way? Has he been causing you any more difficulties?”
“No, thank God. He seems to have decided to leave us alone.”
“Right. Well, sorry to have troubled you, Mrs. Gentle. Enjoy your Sunday lunch.”
“SLOW DOWN, KATH. WE don’t need to give the bastard the satisfaction of reading our obituaries in the paper.”
Kathy had said nothing since leaving the Gentles’. She gritted her teeth and eased back their speed in the narrow lane.
“Hang on . . .” Bren was looking out of the side window. “That’ll do. Pull in over there.”
“Where?”
“That pub. I’ll buy you lunch.”
“I don’t feel like lunch.”
“Well I do. I haven’t eaten since last night. You can have a drink. Cool you down.”
Kathy parked the car and they ducked through a low doorway in the side of the cottage inn, into an interior dark after the bright day outside. The bar was crowded with jocular locals having a pint before Sunday lunch.
Brock brought a couple of cool lagers over to the corner table Kathy had found. They sipped in silence, and then she said, “I’m sorry, Bren. I was so certain about him. Brock was right after all.”
“It was your pet theory, Kath. We never like to have them proved wrong. Who’s Bettina Elliott, anyway?”
“She’s the woman in Zoë Bagnall’s acting group that I recognized the other night from Gentle’s photographs. That really worries me, Bren. He knew who I was talking about, when I mentioned her name. I saw it in his eyes. He knew her, and he hadn’t told us. I think she might be in danger.”
“Hang on, Kath. I thought we’d just agreed that Gentle’s in the clear? We can check the Dordogne story, but it sounded pretty convincing to me.”
“Yes . . . yes.” Kathy shook her head. “She was telling the truth. Gentle couldn’t have killed anyone in Edinburgh that night.”
“Look, I know it’s sometimes hard to admit you’ve made a mistake about someone. But still, better sooner than later, eh?” He paused, then added heavily, “Sometimes you only discover you’ve made a big mistake years down the track.”
The way he said this made Kathy look up. Bren didn’t seem to be talking about Tom Gentle any more. She thought with misgiving of her aunt, and the same tone of voice, working up to a confession.
“Things haven’t been going right for you,” she said neutrally. There seemed no point in pretending not to have noticed.
“Oh . . .” He shook his head and rubbed his eyes. “I’m bushed. Too tired to bother.”
“I remember when we worked together, at Jerusalem Lane. I envied your self-confidence. You seemed so calm, well-balanced.”
“You notice a difference, this time, do you?”
She nodded. “You seem to be under a lot of stress.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not work.” He took a gulp of beer. “There’s nothing as boring as somebody else’s domestic troubles, is there?”
“Brock told me your wife lost her father recently. They were very close, were they?”
Bren nodded. “Yeah. Foundation of her life, it seems.”
“And he was ill for a while?”
“Yeah, yeah. That broke her up. But . . . oh, there’s other things as well.”
“If there’s anything I can do . . .”
Bren gave a little snort, as if this was funny.
Not understanding what that was supposed to mean, Kathy said, “I just thought, I lost my father too. Mind you, I don’t think that qualifies me for anything.”
“The thing that gets me, Kathy,” Bren said with sudden ferocity, “is the way she sticks by him—Gentle’s wife. Hell, she must turn over inside with every new bit of slime we come up with on that creep, but she doesn’t show us a thing. She sticks by him every inch of the bloody way. You’ve got to admire loyalty like that, haven’t you?”
He said it very bitterly.
“No, I don’t admire it, Bren. Not really. I feel sorry for her.”
They fell silent, Bren biting his lip.
Then he said, “Do you think you could kill him, if you were her, his wife? If you knew he’d killed those women?”
“Probably not.”
“I think I could kill June, my mother-in-law. Really, I mean that quite literally. I imagine driving home one night, turning the corner into our street and seeing her there, coming out of our house after spending the day poisoning Deanne and the kids, and crossing the road, and I really do think, in the moment I have to decide, that I might hit the accelerator rather than the brake.”
“No you wouldn’t.”
He smiled at her. “Pretty sick, eh? The grieving widow, newly bereaved, my wife’s dear mother, and I get pleasure from thinking about bumping her off.”
He lifted his glass. “Here’s to you, Kath. I look at you, and I remember that life doesn’t have to be like this.”
She was conscious of him staring thoughtfully at her.
“What?”
“Oh . . . nothing.” He sipped from the glass. “Oh, here, there is something. I meant to say this before. I only discovered a couple of months ago that I owe you.”
“You do?”
“Yes. Do you remember, at Jerusalem Lane, how I got into trouble over making a search without a warrant? The office of that hairdressing salon, you remember?”
Kathy nodded. She did remember, and she began to feel apprehensive about what was coming next.
“Well, I met the solicitor again recently, the one who swore he was going to nail me for that. Martin Connell. Remember him?”
Kathy concentrated on the glass in front of her, avoiding his eyes. “Yes, I believe I do.”
“Well, he made it clear to me that the only reason he didn’t pursue the matter with me was because he owed you a favour, and you asked him to lay off. I meant to say thanks before. I had no idea you’d done that, Kathy, no idea at all. That’s what impressed me most, that you’d quietly do something like that for a mate, and not say a word.”
Kathy met his eyes and thought she caught sight of something warm and yearning there that she wasn’t sure she wanted to see or to encourage.
“Is that the way he put it? That he owed me a favour?”
Bren nodded. “Didn’t say what it was.”
“We’d been lovers,” Kathy said, keeping her voice cold. “He’d gone back to his wife, but he hadn’t been open with her about me. I told him that if he didn’t leave you alone, I’d speak to her.”
Bren’s mouth dropped open, then closed again. “Hell. Sorry, Kath. I had no idea.” He looked stunned.
“What of it?”
“Well, it’s just . . .”
“Go on.”
“Well, I didn’t think he was a very nice guy. I mean . . . I reckon you deserve better.”
Deserve? “He was a shit, Bren. But that didn’t stop me falling in love with him. I made a bad choice. He was a terrific fuck.” Kathy said it deliberately, and watched Bren’s face redden. “He taught me two things, anyway.”
Bren gave a little cough. “What’s that?”
“Avoid married men, and avoid men that I have to deal with in the course of my work.”
“Ah.” Bren’s colour deepened. He fumbled for his handkerchief and wiped his brow. “Uh, maybe we should get going then.”
AFTER THE DRAMAS OF confessions and failed theories, Kathy determined that life was going to be simpler in the following week. She was relieved to see Bren on Monday, suit and shirt freshly laundered by someone, looking in considerably better shape than on the previous day. After being briefed about Leon Desai’s fax from Edinburgh, and Kathy and Bren’s interview with Gentle, Brock gave a grim smile. “Looks like we score one each, Kathy,” he said. “You may well be right about
our man being a theatregoer, and I may be right about him not being Tom Gentle. Agreed?”
She nodded.
“OK,” he said. “So now we come to the tedious bit. Gathering the names of everyone who was at the Edinburgh Festival on the twenty-fifth of August last year, the Shortland Repertory Theatre on the twentieth of January this year, and the National Theatre on the eighth of September. Are we aware of any connections at all between these three events, apart from the murders?”
Bren shook his head. “Leon sent down a list of the theatre companies performing at the Edinburgh Festival last year, and there’s no match with either of the other two performances. Trying to track down the audiences is going to be a mammoth job. And probably pointless. If I were a serial killer finding my victims at theatres, I’d make damn sure I bought my ticket in a way that didn’t reveal my identity.”
“Maybe. Let’s hope he wasn’t thinking as clearly as that. Any other ideas?”
“Well,” Bren said, “two obvious things. If he does use the theatre to find his victims, and he’s done it at opposite ends of the country, we should ask forces nationwide to review all unsolved murders in their areas to see if there could be a connection to a theatre or stage performance in the vicinity at the time. The other thing is to remember that one of his attacks, the Carole Weeks case, seems to have had no relation to the theatre at all, so we can’t necessarily count on the connection.”
Brock nodded agreement. “Anything else?”
Something else had occurred to Kathy, but she decided to say nothing.
Later that day she called into the public library, down the High Street, and spoke to the woman at the desk. “I wondered if you would have a copy of a play, The Lady Vanishes?”
“That was a film, wasn’t it?” the woman replied. “I don’t remember a play, but I can soon check.”
She rattled the keyboard of her computer for a while, then shook her head. “No, sorry, we don’t have it. I could order it for you.”
“Yes, all right. What about Macbeth?”
“Should have that . . . Yes, here we are, the four Shakespeare tragedies, Macbeth, King Lear, Hamlet, and Othello . . . Should be on the shelves, over there. I’ll write down the number for you.”
“Thanks. Also, I wondered if you could help me to find a play I don’t know the name of.”
“Do you have the author’s name?”
“No. All I know is that there’s a scene where one of the characters has their eyes stabbed or put out.”
“Mmm . . .” The woman thought for a moment. “Well, what about Oedipus Rex? Sophocles. You know, Oedipus murders his father and marries his mother, as the oracle had foretold, and when he discovers what’s happened, he puts out his own eyes.”
“That could be it. Do you have it here?”
“Expect so. Let’s see . . . Yes.” She wrote another number down. “Or there’s King Lear. Gloucester has his eyes put out, I think. You’ll find that in the book with Macbeth.”
“That’s a great help, thank you.”
“Doing a project, are you?”
“Sort of. Look, I don’t have a library ticket, and I don’t live in your area. But I need the books for a few days for reference.” Kathy showed the woman her warrant card.
“Oh, that sounds interesting. No problem, I’ll get you to fill out a form.”
Kathy put the books in her bag, and didn’t mention them to anyone when she got back to Orpington police station. Before she left for home she dialled the number she had for Aunt Mary’s neighbour in Sheffield. After a moment Effie’s broad Yorkshire accent boomed down the line.
“Hello, Kathy! How’s the runaway, then?”
“You knew she was down here then, Effie?”
“She told me she were going to stay with you, love. Is she all right?”
“Pretty good. How about Tom?”
Uncle Tom was not doing so well, it seemed. He had behaved almost exactly as Mary had predicted, sticking to his armchair, uncommunicative and uncooperative.
“Meals-on-Wheels calls most days, and I look in and give him his tea, like, and do his shopping. But he’s a stubborn old bugger. Hardly touches his food. Do you think she might come home soon?”
“She’s not giving any signs of it.”
“You don’t think you could persuade her?”
“I don’t know that I want to. I think he deserves it.”
“Aye, but what good will it do now, love? Bit late to teach an old dog like him new tricks.”
WHEN SHE GOT HOME that night, Kathy found an Aunt Mary transformed from the lost soul of the week before. Her work with Ruth seemed to have revitalized her. The task of creating period costumes for the three female characters of The Father was apparently going to be formidable, but not as formidable as the combined determination of Mary and Ruth.
“I can’t believe they’ve got themselves in this pickle, pet,” she said, eyes bright. “But Ruth says she’s got more hope of us being ready on time than the actors. There’s only two weeks left now to dress rehearsal, and they’re in a right shemozzle. Stafford’s going mad, and some of them are losing their nerve, Ruth says. She’s never seen things in such a state. It’s so exciting, love. It’s really grand.”
Kathy smiled, unpacked the take-away she’d bought on the way home, and said nothing about her call to Effie.
Later, after Mary had gone to bed, Kathy got out her library books. She started on Macbeth, sitting at the dining-table with a cup of coffee and a notepad in which she wrote from time to time as she went through the text. When she reached the end she looked back over the lines she’d written down, starting with
Is this a dagger which I see before me?
and then going on,
I see thee still,
And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood . . .
followed by
Go, get some water,
And wash this filthy witness from your hand.
Why did you bring these daggers from the place?
They must lie there: go, carry them, and smear
The sleepy grooms with blood.
The play was scattered with references to daggers and stabbing. Kathy saw in her mind the punctured torso of Angela Hannaford, her body posed, mouth open, as if declaiming her lines, face unmasked.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING MARY established the new pattern of her working day, waking Kathy on her folding bed in the living-room with a cup of tea, hurrying her through breakfast, and then joining her on the trip south across the river. At Bromley Kathy dropped her aunt off for the day with Ruth and her fabrics and sewing-machine, and went on to work in Orpington. The first thing she did there was to send a fax to their contact with the Edinburgh police, asking him to check whether any of the theatre companies on his list had performed either King Lear or Oedipus Rex at the previous year’s Festival. Towards lunchtime she got the negative reply.
Bren came by a little later. “Got something here should cheer you up,” he said. He reached into the bag he was carrying and produced a tiny bottle which he handed to Kathy. It was full of an amber fluid, like liquid honey.
“What is it?”
“Read the label.”
Kathy looked. “Leichner New Formula Spirit Gum No 165. The adhesive for beards and moustaches. Apply with brush and allow to become tacky before applying the crêpe hair. 25 cc. Leichner, London, England.”
“We gave the girl a sniff. She thinks it’s very like the smell she remembers from the man who attacked her. Leon’s getting his lads to go back over the fibre traces from Angela’s bedroom and Carole Weeks’s clothing, make sure there weren’t any black crêpe fibres we missed, or gum residues.”
ON THURSDAY, AUNT MARY said they were going to have a preliminary costume fitting for some of the cast before the evening rehearsal, and Kathy agreed to pick her up at the Three Crowns at seven. When she got there, however, the cast were just arriving.
“I’m sorry, Kathy,” Aunt Mary said. “I got it mixed up. We have to
do the fittings during the rehearsal. Do you mind waiting till we’re done, pet?” Her arms were full of bundles of cloth, a tape measure round her neck, eyes alight with anticipation.
“Aren’t you tired, Mary? You’ve been at it all day.”
“Oh, you don’t get tired when you’re busy, pet.”
“What about food? Aren’t you hungry?”
“We had something at Ruth’s. But what about you? You’ll be starving, I dare say.”
“That’s all right. I’ll get something downstairs.”
There was one exhausted sausage roll under a plastic cover on the bar, and Kathy returned with this and a half of lager to the rehearsal room upstairs. She tried to slip unobtrusively into a corner seat, but Stafford Nesbit spotted her and she suddenly found him dragging a chair to her side. “Sergeant Kolla. How very nice to see you again.” His angular elbows and knees stuck out like the limbs of a tree, trapping her in the corner. “We missed you on Monday night.”
“Monday?”
“Yes, your colleagues paid us a visit. They questioned us extensively for the names of people who bought tickets for The Lady Vanishes. Caused quite a stir.”
“Oh yes, of course.”
“Some people have had follow-up visits at home too, I understand. So very thorough, but about six months too late, one would have thought. One wonders indeed what has caused all this latter-day activity. Could there be new evidence? Or is one to detect the hand of a new investigating officer behind all this, one more thorough and more determined than her predecessors?”
He raised one eyebrow conspiratorially, leaning forward unnervingly close. When Kathy didn’t reply, he went on, “Your aunt has confessed all to me, Kathy. She has told me that you have recently been recruited to the top murder investigation unit in Scotland Yard—indeed, are practically running it! So you see, there is no need to hide your light under a bushel where I am concerned. Tell me the truth, what are you seeking tonight? Let me assist you.”
Kathy shook her head, exasperated, by her aunt and by this rather pathetic old ham. She was aware of the others looking in their direction, waiting for the producer to start the rehearsal. “There’s nothing new, Mr. Nesbit. I just came to take my aunt home after she’s finished the costume fittings.”
All My Enemies Page 16
