Destroy Unopened

by Anabel Donald

  ‘Why did you lie?’

  ‘I thought it might push him on a bit, because I’d like us to get back together again.’

  There was chemistry between them. Chemistry, with Alan? He should snap her up, I thought. She must be completely rattled. She’d been married to the man for years, she must know that the way to him was flattery, full-frontal flattery, no matter how extravagant.

  ‘Why didn’t you just say you loved him and needed him and wanted him back?’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand. I wanted him to make the first move. I know it was stupid. Do you think he’s unstable, at the moment?’

  ‘Yes, a bit. Stressed,’ I said. ‘He needs you. Just speak to him frankly. Men usually like that,’ I concluded maliciously. She’d never hesitated to tell me what men liked – according to her, regular meals and tidy houses near Princes Risborough.

  Her eyes wandered round my living room, and she brightened perceptibly, probably thinking how she would refurbish it. ‘You’re probably right,’ she said, in the tone of one who wasn’t paying the least attention. That was the other thing about Janey, I remembered. She had the concentration span of a newt.

  After she left, getting on for eleven, I’d intended to work. I lay down on the sofa and closed my eyes for a moment.

  The insistent buzz of the telephone woke me up, and I knew as I grabbed it that it had been ringing for a while.

  ‘About time,’ said Eddy, irascibly. ‘You weren’t asleep, surely? You left a message asking for an urgent call-back.’

  I checked my watch. Just after midnight. No wonder he was surprised. I’m usually a night owl. ‘How’s Florida?’ I said, playing for time enough to remember why I’d wanted him to call.

  ‘Florida is long, thin and low-lying, as always, and I’m tired, jet-lagged and pissed off, so get to the point, young Alex.’

  Now I remembered. I’d left a call-back message at his holiday hotel before Polly had interfered by recruiting Fishburn as my go-between with the Met, involving him far beyond Eddy’s explicit instructions. Lucky for me that Eddy was three thousand miles away.

  A full explanation, it had to be. I gave it.

  When I finished, there was an ominous silence. Then Eddy spoke, in even more ominous, gentle tones. ‘Did I or did I not ask you if you were working on a doco?’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘And did you or did you not tell me you were?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Don’t you ever lie to me again, you little squit.’

  ‘Sorry, Eddy.’

  ‘Sorry doesn’t begin to cover it. Sorry isn’t in the same country, continent, planet or solar system, my girl, believe me.’

  ‘Galactically sorry, Eddy.’

  ‘Shut it, you little bleeder, I’m thinking. And while I think, let me tell you about Arthur. Back in the early sixties, Arthur was a DCI.’

  ‘A Detective Chief Inspector?’

  ‘Happy family man, lovely wife, lovely teenage daughter, great future. Then his wife and daughter were raped. Messy rape. We caught the toe-rag and he went down for five years. The night after sentencing, Arthur’s wife killed her daughter and herself.’

  ‘Ouch,’ I said in futile sympathy.

  ‘Then he went peculiar. Not peculiar enough to be booted out, not after what he’d been through, but peculiar enough to be safer as a beat constable, all things considered.’ With the tribal loyalties of the Met, I thought, no peculiar would have been peculiar enough to boot him out, and I was relieved not to be told what things they’d had to consider. ‘I warned you,’ Eddy went on. ‘I asked you and I warned you and you lied to me. And if you even begin to think you can tangle with the Killer – not that I believe this has anything to do with the Killer, mind you – then you’re even fuller of smart-arse feminist shit than I already know you are.’

  ‘Sorry, Eddy.’

  ‘And stop saying that or I’ll have a heart attack. I’m not pleased, Alex. Don’t push it . . . Right, this is what you do. I’ll call the lads in the incident room and tell them what you’ve told me, in case Arthur hasn’t, and get them to look out for Arthur. You keep away from him. Keep your nose out altogether, you hear me?’

  ‘I’m going to see the other men at Rillington Place tomorrow. I’ve got to keep on it, for my client.’

  ‘You want to finger the stupid slapper who let a married man shaft her stupid for thirty years and wrote crap about it, go ahead. But don’t mess in anything else, got it? Hear me?’

  ‘I hear you.’

  After he rang off I brushed my teeth and lay down on the sofa again with a glass of water, reassured by Eddy’s bollocking. He’d been right, anyway: he’d taken over with the Met, and he was in Florida and likely to remain so for two weeks.

  Next I knew, the room was full of giraffes, squealing. I dragged myself awake to shake off the dream and looked at the time display on the VCR. Two thirty. I was definitely awake, but the room was still full. Of squealing models, milling around the sofa with their long legs and long necks and tiny heads.

  ‘Polly!’ I snapped at the lead giraffe. ‘What the hell!’

  ‘She’s always like this when she first wakes,’ said Polly. ‘Coffee, girls!’

  Suddenly they’d all vanished into the kitchen, where they’d be hard put to mill, or even move. Only Polly remained, looking slightly drunk, extremely pleased with herself and extraordinarily beautiful in a tiny tight black dress which just grazed her nipples and reached a few inches down her thighs. ‘Isn’t it handy I’ve got a key? Because you didn’t answer when we knocked, not though we knocked for ages, and you’ll really want to know this, we’ve spent all evening on it practically because it was like a competition, adultery consultants, that’s what we called ourselves, D&E specialists –’

  ‘D&E?’

  ‘Dick and Ego, and it was such fun, although a bit disappointing –’

  ‘What was disappointing?’

  ‘The winner, although not really I suppose because it’s what you’d expect –’

  ‘Polly, why do you all look so tall?’

  ‘Shoes,’ said Polly, taking hers off and waving them in demonstration. ‘Clumpy high heels, hope they’ll be out again soon, my ankles are taking a pasting, put three or four inches on so the shortest of us is well over six foot. Oh good here they are . . .’

  I now saw there were only three other models in the herd. One, blonde, held a mug of coffee, another, black, a carton of milk, the third, a redhead, a bowl of sugar. Each one of them was beautiful and wearing about as little as Polly. ‘Pity I’m not a man,’ I said. ‘Plenty of milk, please.’

  When they’d stopped squealing and sat down I was introduced to them. I forgot their names immediately, and hoped that wasn’t a side effect of pregnancy but attributable to being jolted awake. Names didn’t turn out to matter because they all spoke at once. ‘We worked on the letters – it was such fun! Polly wanted to help we’ve all Been There – haven’t we just – and we were looking for tips, because thirty years and a husband – bloody good going but we didn’t get it . . .’ They looked at me expectantly. I was disgruntled. If they’d woken me up to tell me they hadn’t got it . . .

  ‘Because my mother did!’ said the redhead triumphantly. ‘She’s Been There in a major long-standing way, and she read them too, and she worked out what happened.’

  ‘What happened when?’

  Polly nudged me in the ribs, over-emphatically. ‘You told me you’d noticed a change in the letters a few years ago. You said they’d changed but you didn’t know why. We can tell you.’

  ‘So tell me.’

  ‘The lover’s wife died.’

  Of course. Of course. Under their choral explanations, I saw it for myself. When the lover’s wife died, the lover was free. But the mistress wasn’t. And the boat was thoroughly rocked. He could find another woman as a permanency. A younger woman or just a fresh woman. No wonder the tone of the letters had changed, become less confident, more tentative.

&nbs
p; The models were still talking. I met Polly’s eyes. ‘But that means –’

  ‘That means they weren’t written to your client’s husband. Because she’s still alive, of course.’

  ‘But my mum knows who they were written to,’ said the redhead.

  If her mum knew that, I thought, as well as being a prime brood giraffe she was also psychic. ‘How come? What do you mean?’

  ‘She doesn’t know his name, of course, but she knows who he’ll be. A colleague at work, a good friend. And, most likely, he’ll be dead.’

  ‘Recently dead . . . because the envelope will have been inside another envelope with your client’s husband’s name on it . . . in the event of the lover’s death, don’t you see, and then it goes to his best mate, to destroy unopened . . . so that there isn’t a scandal . . . What’s the matter, Alex?’

  Philip Gein. That was what Barbara knew. Philip Gein the English professor, whose mistress might very well lard her letters with literary references. Who was always trying his luck – whose wife had died four years ago – and who had been killed by unidentified muggers in broad daylight just off the Strand, right after he’d been asked to remonstrate with his illegitimate son who just might be the Notting Hill Killer . . .

  ‘Oh, shit,’ I said.

  ‘Aren’t you pleased? We thought you’d be pleased.’

  ‘I’m dead grateful. Really. You’ve all done brilliantly . . . oh, shit.’

  Saturday 5 November

  Chapter Nineteen

  I woke at seven thirty with the conviction that something was hanging over me that I didn’t want to remember, plus a cosmic crick in my neck because I was still on the sofa.

  Cosmic took me to Eddy, and the Fishburn cock-up. I groaned and stumbled upstairs to the bathroom, where the faintest, slightest, hint of nausea reminded me I was probably pregnant. Then I remembered Jack Hobbs, my irrational dread of Rillington Place, my reluctance to go back there, and the likelihood that I’d be going back that morning.

  Down in the kitchen, making coffee, I remembered the small-hours invasion of the Giraffe People and the possibility that Philip Gein had been murdered by the son of the letter-writer, the man I was tracking down.

  None of it looked better in the morning.

  Except possibly the pregnancy, which hadn’t looked all that bad to start with.

  I took the mug of milky real coffee and stood by the living-room french windows, staring out into the darkness. It was still foggy.

  And there was still, I realized, something else that I didn’t want to remember, something I hadn’t clocked properly the first time round . . . something to do with Alan Protheroe . . .

  Thump, thump on the door Polly’s voice. ‘Alex, can I come in? Alex are you awake? I bet you are. Alex –’

  I opened the door, groping for my thought. ‘Belt up, Polly – I’m trying to think. What’s the doorknob effect?’

  Polly went straight to the kitchen where she filled a pint beer glass with mineral water and came to join me in the living room. ‘I haven’t got a hangover, Alex. Do you know why?’

  ‘Because your head’s so feeble you get pissed on two glasses of wine?’

  ‘Wrong! Because I don’t drink coffee! It’s really handy, you should try it!’

  ‘It would be handy if I drank much alcohol, but I don’t because I’m drinking coffee. Listen, Poll, really, what’s the doorknob effect?’ I went back to the door and held the knob, trying to recapture the flash of memory I’d half had.

  ‘It’s the shrink thing, actually everyone knows it but shrinks have a name for it, when people say the really important thing they wanted to say to you when they’re just leaving. Hand on the doorknob, you know. Aren’t you pleased with what we found out last night? Wasn’t it clever of us?’

  ‘Very clever, well done,’ I said, picturing Janey Protheroe just leaving, turning at the door, saying – what had she said?

  She’d given a nervous laugh. – ‘You’ll think this is really silly. I know it is. But it was just – in all the papers, they do go on and on, I blame the media – all that stuff about the Notting Hill Killer. It makes you think, doesn’t it? People must know the Killer, mustn’t they, and they’ll all think it couldn’t possibly be him, but some of them will be wrong, because it will be. The man they know will be the Killer.’

  Then she’d shut the door behind her, leaving me with the absurd inference: Alan Protheroe, serial killer. And I’d dismissed it immediately, hardly even processed it through my brain. But it had taken root there and grown while I slept. Alan! He couldn’t possibly. But two days ago I’d have sworn he couldn’t possibly rape me. But then again, I’d have been right, because he hadn’t.

  What I needed, I realized, were facts. When the killings had taken place. Chances were Alan would have been working out of London and he could be ruled out straight away.

  No, I wouldn’t bother, it was ridiculous.

  I remembered Eddy. Talking about police work. ‘When I have a suspect, I don’t waste time poncing around with what he could or should or might have done. I find out what he did do.’

  I realized Polly was still talking. ‘. . . so I am actually putting the flat on the market, Alex, and I wondered, do you want first refusal? It wouldn’t be a bad investment, considering how the prices have gone, and the letting value is high, and I know how you like owning things, and maybe you wouldn’t want some stranger buying in, just think about it, for a week say.’

  ‘Name your price,’ I said.

  She named it: a very fair price. Well above what I could afford, though, was my first thought. But no, hang on, if I was letting it would more than cover the mortgage – a good investment. Actually she was being generous, even if she would save estate agents’ fees. ‘Thanks, Polly, I’ll be back to you within the week.’

  ‘That’s good, then . . . I won’t be moving far away, honestly . . .’ She hugged me. I hugged her back. No Polly in the house – a baby – everything was changing fast. I felt a lurch in my stomach which was nothing to do with pregnancy, as I had a vision of myself as a mollusc clinging to a rock with the sea coming in and swamping me, and me clinging on pretending nothing at all was happening. What water? I don’t see any water . . .

  We were still hugging. Unusually, I found it reassuring.

  Finally, she let go and wiped her eyes. Her emotion steadied me. She’d always been the emotional one; some things were unchanging. ‘I’ve got to pack. Is there anything I can do to help before I go?’

  I gave her the task of making an appointment for me to meet Richard Fairfax – that morning, preferably. Maybe Philip Gein was the man the letters had been written to, but I still had to prove it, and the easiest way to do that was to identify the Boy of the letters. Fairfax was my best bet for that: he had the right birthday, he had a sister, he’d been to boarding school. I was almost sure it was him. That didn’t mean he was the Killer, of course, but if Gein had been murdered, it might mean that Fairfax was the murderer. Or, it might mean nothing of the sort. Sometimes a mugging is only a mugging.

  I showered for a long time, hoping the water would sluice away the tension in my whole body and the nagging feeling that I was being swamped by events. There was too much in my head, too much on my plate.

  I needed Nick. According to the Golden Kid, she’d said she’d be back today. Early, I hoped.

  Meanwhile it was still only eight and I felt restless, unable to concentrate. So I went for a run.

  I did my warm-up exercises in the street. Stretching, deep breathing. The deep breathing was a mistake: chilly acrid fog seared my lungs. I set off very gently, at a jog, so slow that walkers easily kept up with me – I wasn’t sure how possibly pregnant women were fixed vis-à-vis running – but as the blood started pumping I felt better, and decided to listen to my body. It had told me it wanted milk and more sleep: now it told me to run, so I did.

  My route took me past Bartlett Close, but I didn’t look in at the flats; I went straight past under the
railway bridge seeing only the pavement in front of me and hearing only the sound of my own breathing. I deliberately emptied my head. When I reached the Scrubs I set off anti-clockwise to run the perimeter, one-minute sprints alternating with three-minute lopes.

  Over an hour later when I reached my flat again all I could think about was stopping. My legs were rubber, hauling me up the stairs, and I collapsed on the sofa, moaning. Physical exhaustion felt good.

  Now I could face the day. Now I looked forward to all the things I had to do. I pushed away a nagging anxiety, that pregnancy was already making me more moody than I was used to. I was usually contemptuous of women who had mood-swings and said ‘Now I feel like it now I don’t feel like it’, and had tended to think they should pull themselves together and get on with it. Who cared what they felt? But now I was behaving like that myself, so how far could I trust my own judgement?

  By nine thirty I was in the office, coffee-mug in my hand and ready to go. The one fixed point in the morning was the noon appointment Polly had made with Richard Fairfax for me. I checked for telephone messages, but there was nothing that couldn’t be left for Nick to deal with, apart from another what’s-happening-about-Sam call from Pauline Eyre, which I’d return just as soon as I’d talked to Solange and Jonno.

  I might as well check the e-mails, while I was at it: I didn’t use e-mail nearly as much as Nick, but there might be something from Barty.

  I logged on, quite quickly. America hadn’t woken up yet, of course. The usual ten or so messages for Nick. I didn’t look at them. One for me. I clicked it open. It wasn’t from Barty, nor anyone I recognized. It was sent from the local Internet Cafe, in the Portobello Road. I knew that much, because when Nick had bullied me into learning how to use e-mail, a few months back, she’d gone to the Internet Cafe, sent me messages and made me answer them, so I recognized their e-mail address. But this message was unsigned, and it made no sense.