A Spider on the Stairs

by Cassandra Chan

  “I’m afraid not,” answered Alice. “None of us had kept up with her after she left the area—we were all shocked to hear she was dead, but all I remember now is that it was a very gory killing. Why is it important?”

  “I’m not sure that it is yet,” said Bethancourt. “I’ve got two more questions. When was she killed?”

  “Oh, two or three years ago now,” said Alice, who had been drawn out of her funk and was now evincing curiosity. “What’s the other question?”

  “What was Veronica’s surname?”

  “Oh dear.” Alice frowned in an effort to remember. “Matthews, I think,” she said in a moment. “Something like that at any rate. Phillip, what’s this all about?”

  “I don’t know what it all means yet,” said Bethancourt. “But I think your Veronica was Ashdon’s first victim. That’s not for publication, though.”

  Alice’s eyes had widened. “No,” she said. “No, of course not. I understand.”

  Bethancourt leaned forward and kissed her cheek.

  “Thank you, Alice,” he said. “I promise we’ll talk later. Right now, I have to ring the police.”

  He rose and strode swiftly out of the room and in a moment she heard him clattering down the stairs.

  Gibbons was at that moment sitting in the Land Rover with an extremely frustrated MacDonald. Nun Monkton, the small village to the northwest of York where Brian Sanderson’s sister lived, lay at the confluence of the Nidd and Ouse rivers, neither of which was cooperating with MacDonald’s plans. The torrential rains which had begun yesterday had continued throughout the night and were still pouring down, causing the rivers to flood their banks and, indeed, making rivers out of any low-lying bit of roadway. If there was a way through at one place, it was blocked farther on, and MacDonald, who knew his patch intimately, was aggravated by the fact that even he could not find a water-free route to Nun Monkton. He and Gibbons had now spent quite some time in driving this way and that, trying to come at the place from different angles, but MacDonald had at last had to admit defeat. It had not put him in a good temper.

  “What the bloody hell is that?” he demanded, as Gibbons’s mobile began beeping. His tone was that of a man who suspected that someone else had found a way to get to Nun Monkton.

  “It’s just my phone,” replied Gibbons, who had decided the best way to deal with MacDonald in a temper was to say as little as possible in a calm, even tone. “It’s only my friend Bethancourt,” he added, closing the phone again.

  “Well, you might as well answer it,” said MacDonald. “For all you know, he’s sitting in Nun Monkton having tea with Lydia Sanderson.”

  “I’m pretty sure he’s stuck in York with the rest of us,” said Gibbons genially, but he obediently flipped the phone open and scrolled down to Bethancourt’s name.

  “Are you alone?” asked Bethancourt when he answered.

  “No,” said Gibbons. “Superintendent MacDonald and I are on our way back to headquarters.”

  “Oh,” said Bethancourt.

  “You aren’t by any chance in Nun Monkton having tea with Lydia Sanderson, are you?” asked Gibbons.

  MacDonald snorted loudly.

  “What?” demanded Bethancourt. “Why on earth would I be in Nun Monkton? And who is Lydia Sanderson?”

  Gibbons sighed. “I thought not,” he said.

  “Then why did you ask?”

  “Just to eliminate a possibility,” said Gibbons. “What did you want?”

  “I’ve got news,” said Bethancourt, a little hesitantly. MacDonald was, to him, an unknown factor, and he didn’t like to have the distinction made between what he came up with and what Gibbons discovered himself.

  But Gibbons was impatient. “Well?” he demanded. “Are you going to tell me what it is, or am I supposed to guess?”

  Bethancourt threw caution to the wind. “It’s about Veronica Matthews,” he said, “Ashdon’s first victim.”

  “Right,” said Gibbons. “I’d forgotten the name. What about her?”

  “She used to work at Mittlesdon’s,” Bethancourt told him.

  There was a moment’s stunned silence before Gibbons said sharply, “What?”

  “I know,” said Bethancourt, answering the feeling rather than the sense of the question. “I don’t know what to make of it either. But surely it’s too fantastic to be a coincidence.”

  “No,” said Gibbons flatly, “it can’t possibly be coincidence. How did you find out?”

  Bethancourt briefly ran through the events that had led up to his discovery, ending with, “So Veronica had been living down there for less than a year before she was killed.”

  “Yes,” said Gibbons. “I remember that. But it was assumed her killer—they weren’t calling him Ashdon yet, then—had stalked her there, in Essex. The Yorkshire angle was never investigated to my knowledge, though I’ll have to check with Brumby about that. I don’t think his team was brought in until after the second murder.”

  “But Ashdon doesn’t kill his victims in situ,” said Bethancourt. “And Jody was definitely killed in the bookshop.”

  “I know,” said Gibbons, who was as perplexed as Bethancourt at this piece of news. He was also acutely aware of MacDonald’s growing impatience beside him. “Let me pass this on,” he said, “and we’ll talk later.”

  “Right,” said Bethancourt at once. “Ring me when you can.”

  “That friend of yours seems to make himself very useful,” said MacDonald as Gibbons rang off.

  “He likes to take an interest,” said Gibbons distractedly. “Sir, he’s just found out that Ashdon’s first victim worked at Mittlesdon’s.”

  MacDonald squinted at him. “I think I would have remembered if a serial killer had struck on my patch,” he said.

  “No, not here,” said Gibbons. “She had left Mittlesdon’s and gone to live in Essex before she was killed. I don’t remember exactly, but I think the case file said she had been living with her grandmother there for about five or six months when she was murdered.”

  MacDonald was silent as he guided the Rover through the rain.

  “But Brumby—and you yourself, Sergeant—were sure that Jody Farraday hadn’t been killed by Ashdon.”

  Gibbons spread his hands. “I know, sir.”

  “Good Lord, but it’s a lot of killing for a respectable bookshop,” said MacDonald. “I’m beginning to suspect Mittlesdon is running an assassin’s agency on the side. All right, Gibbons, you had better ring Brumby. Tell him we’re coming into town now—it won’t be long before we’re back at the station.”

  They were already embroiled in the city’s traffic, coming off the A59 and poking along Nunnery Lane on their way to Skeldergate Bridge.

  “Always providing the damn bridge isn’t under water,” added MacDonald glumly.

  But although the Ouse was running high, it had not yet swamped the bridge, and they crossed safely over and turned south for the station.

  There was a lull in the constant hum of activity in the Sanderson incident room. At the back of the room, to one side of the whiteboard, Brumby set the phone gently in its cradle and stared thoughtfully out into space.

  The first results of the forensics tests were beginning to come in, and, according to his experts, the crime scene was remarkably clean. The phrase was one he had come to dread, since it accompanied every confirmed killing by the Ashdon serial murderer.

  But the Sanderson murder was not part of the pattern. Brumby had been profiling and investigating serial killers for most of his career, and although he had learned to expect the unexpected, he had never before come across such a break in a killer’s pattern. This murder, if it had indeed been committed by Ashdon, was special. And Brumby was excited by it, because it gave them a connection to Ashdon apart from his psychosis; it was a part of Ashdon’s regular existence, the one filled with co-workers and neighbors and perhaps even friends who knew nothing about the man who stalked women, selected his victims, and then, after judicious torture, murde
red them.

  While MacDonald looked for more ordinary motives for Brian Sanderson’s murder, Brumby had been on the lookout for anyone connected with the dead man who would fit the profile he had developed for Ashdon: a very bright man, mostly a loner but with a need at times to show off his cleverness to other people, a true psychopath who probably was truly unaware that he was not close to anyone. But so far there had been no one.

  All the men (and for that matter, the women) on whom suspicion had thus far fallen were well-established people with families. None of them, in Brumby’s opinion, showed much sign of psychopathy, nor did they appear to have another significant trait of Ashdon’s: a strong creative streak.

  From the very first, the way Ashdon arranged his victims had struck Brumby as artistic; the man had the same kind of visual sensibility and awareness of spatial relationships as a stage director. He certainly had a flair for dramatics. Brumby believed he was looking for someone who could not repress the creative spark, even if his day-to-day job was a humdrum one.

  But psychopaths did not have ordinary motives for murder. Ashdon might have killed Sanderson over something anyone else would consider quite trivial. If, of course, Ashdon was the murderer. And there was Brumby’s problem in a nutshell: did he spend time, men, and money on what could very well turn out to be a dead end, or did he concentrate his resources on the crime that he was certain Ashdon had committed?

  It was, in the end, a gut decision. And Brumby’s gut told him he had just stumbled onto the greatest piece of luck possible.

  He tapped his fingers absently on the desk and then jerked to attention as his mobile rang. Frowning a little at being interrupted, he answered it rather brusquely.

  Halfway down the room, DI Howard was collecting faxes. He didn’t know why, in the midst of skimming over the pages as they came off the machine, he looked up at Brumby. But when he saw the look of intensity on his superior’s face, he knew what it meant. He was already moving toward the superintendent by the time Brumby clicked off his mobile and called for his second in command.

  12

  In Which Aunt Evelyn Graciously Contributes

  MacDonald and Gibbons were borne into the station on a great gust of wind and rain, leaving puddles in their wake as they hurried down the hall. MacDonald was accosted by several underlings almost as soon as he was in the door, but he did not pause in his march down the corridors, merely gathering them to him like a pied piper of police detectives. He seemed to pay scant heed to what they said, however.

  “You there, Brummet,” he said, picking one out from the crowd. “There’ll be a fellow called Phillip Bethancourt arriving in a few minutes. Go nab him when he comes and bring him to the Sanderson incident room.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Brummet. “Er, sir, I did want—”

  “Later, Brummet, later. Fetch Bethancourt first.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Brummet ceded the argument and dropped behind. One by one MacDonald deflected the others until, by the time they reached the Sanderson incident room, he and Gibbons were again alone.

  They walked into an almost silent room in which the intensity was palpable. Everyone sat hunched over the long tables, so fiercely focused on case files and computer monitors that no one even looked up at their entrance. Brumby alone seemed to notice their presence; he beckoned to them impatiently from the far end of the room.

  “Good work, good work,” he said as they came up, but there was a perfunctory quality to his tone. He was like a hound who had found a scent, only he was keeping himself tightly leashed, narrowing his focus down to laser sharpness.

  “No work of mine.” MacDonald grunted.

  “Or mine,” chimed in Gibbons hastily before Brumby could make the assumption. “My friend Bethancourt found out about it while he was at Mittlesdon’s.”

  Brumby’s eyebrows rose. “Is that the fair chap who was at the crime scene the other night?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Gibbons, trying not to sound defensive.

  Brumby’s glance was calculating, as if he was debating the necessity of delivering a lecture about communicating privileged information to civilians.

  But MacDonald stepped into the breach. “I’ve told him to get himself down here right smartly,” he said. “He should be along any minute now.”

  Brumby nodded briskly. “Good, good,” he said. He indicated the reports laying open on the table in front of him. “This is the original case file on Veronica Matthews,” he told them. “There’s no mention of Mittlesdon’s at all—just,” and he selected a sheet of paper, tilting his head back to focus through his reading glasses, “that she held ‘a series of retail jobs in York.’ But it’s the same woman,” he added, setting down the paper. “It only took Andy about five minutes at his computer to verify that.”

  “Was she from this area?” asked MacDonald.

  “No,” responded Brumby. “She lived here less than a year. She was just one of those ordinary, feckless young people who are out to have a good time before they settle down to producing a family. She was brighter than most, which meant she never wanted for work, but there was nothing else special about her. She came to York with a boyfriend—one Ben Williams—who told the original investigator that she first got a job at Evans in Coppergate Walk. Their relationship didn’t last, though, and he didn’t know where she went after she left there.”

  MacDonald had raised an eyebrow. “I take it this Williams was looked into?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes.” Brumby gave him a wry smile. “Probably had the life scared out of him, but there was nothing to find. Most of the investigation focused on Essex, where she was living when she was killed and where she was originally from.” He gestured around the room. “I’ve got everyone looking back through the Ashdon file to see if any of his other victims had a York connection, but there’s nothing so far.”

  “It’s a surprise, that’s for sure,” said MacDonald. “I can’t recollect the last time I was this flummoxed by a turn in a case.” He reached for one of the chairs tucked neatly beneath the table and dragged it over to face Brumby’s seat. “Ah, that’s better,” he said, settling himself in. “Get yourself a seat, Sergeant, and we’ll hammer this thing out.”

  Gibbons obeyed with alacrity, before anyone could suggest that he should be given some routine parcel of background work to do. It was not often, he thought, that a mere sergeant got to sit in on a brainstorming session with two superintendents.

  And, it turned out, an inspector. DI Howard, seeing that a conclave was beginning, came over from where he was working at one of the computer terminals to join them, taking the empty chair next to Brumby’s.

  “So,” said MacDonald to Brumby, “what are you thinking? Were all these murders committed by Ashdon?”

  “It’s possible,” answered Brumby. “The Accessorize murder is most definitely Ashdon’s work. The Sanderson murder—well, we haven’t all the forensics back yet, but from what has come in, it looks very like an Ashdon crime scene. But the Mittlesdon murder doesn’t seem to fit in.”

  “Not that we’re ruling it out altogether,” put in Howard. “Unlike any of the other murders, the one at Mittlesdon’s appears to be totally unpremeditated, which might account for the difference.”

  Gibbons was glad to hear that Jody’s case was still being considered, although he said nothing. In this sudden spate of serial murders and everyone’s attendant focus on the famous killer, he was beginning to feel as if the Mittlesdon case had been almost abandoned, like an orphan whom no one wanted the trouble of caring for. But Gibbons still did care: he wanted badly to solve the case, even if it was not one that would be splashed across the national press.

  “Exactly,” Brumby was saying. “What we have here in York is, first, another in a series of multiple murders, remarkable only in its location; then an impulsive, perhaps even unintended, murder; and lastly the premeditated murder of a leading York citizen. We need to discover if there truly is a connection between all three, or only
between two, or possibly no connection at all.”

  MacDonald grinned broadly. “If none of them are connected, I’ll swear off beer for a month.”

  Brumby’s return smile was dryly amused. “Yes, I think it very unlikely, too,” he said.

  “Excuse me, sir,” said a new voice, and Gibbons swiveled round to see Bethancourt, looking about him with some trepidation and accompanied by Brummet. “Here’s Mr. Bethancourt.”

  Bethancourt gave the assembled company a hesitant smile.

  “Ah, Mr. Bethancourt,” said Brumby. “I hear we have you to thank for this break in our case.”

  “Is it a break then?” asked Bethancourt hopefully.

  MacDonald snorted. “Butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, would it, lad? Yes, it’s a bloody break. How did you come by it?”

  Brumby said nothing, but his look was expectant.

  If this made Bethancourt nervous, he did not show it.

  “Pure luck, really,” he said, with charming frankness. “I was looking at the photographs on the wall at Mittlesdon’s, and Libby Alsop came up and was pointing out the people in them to me. One of them was Veronica.” He shrugged. “It’s an odd enough name that I remembered Jack here having mentioned it in connection with the Ashdon case.”

  Brumby seemed willing to take this story at face value, though Gibbons was willing to bet that his desire to move on had more to do with that than his faith in Bethancourt’s words.

  But even MacDonald appeared ready to let the explanation pass muster, and Gibbons was grateful for his friend’s facile account of the matter.

  “I think a brief overview would be useful,” Howard said. “Just to put the superintendent and Mr. Bethancourt here in the picture.”

  “I could do with a refresher course,” said MacDonald. “I can’t say as I was paying much attention when you lot first arrived. Pull up a chair, Mr. Bethancourt.”

  “Thanks very much,” murmured Bethancourt, stepping around to pull out another chair and position it off to one side and just behind Gibbons’s seat.

  Brumby took off his reading glasses and laid them aside, pausing for a moment to muster his thoughts before saying, “What we’ve got is a series of murders of young women over the past two years. We believe that our killer stalks his victims to determine their habits, but probably strikes whenever he sees a possibility open up.”