Dead Alone

by Gay Longworth

  ‘Shit! Shit! I don’t believe he said that. Did he just say –’

  The door opened. Kay Akosa filled the frame. That was all Jessie needed.

  ‘You told me you couldn’t confirm it was Miss Wirrel.’

  ‘I couldn’t when you asked me. Her parents hadn’t got to the hospital, she hadn’t been formally ID’d. Would you have preferred we risk it and have Eve Wirrel calling up from a hotel in Barbados threatening to sue? Not to mention putting her parents, family and friends through unnecessary anguish.’

  ‘Well, you’d better make a statement and you had better make it good. Are you aware of the battle we have on our hands with the press? Do you realise how incompetent you look?’

  ‘No, but we do,’ said Mark as he left the room chuckling.

  Jessie followed him out.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Kay Akosa shouted after her.

  ‘Church,’ she replied, turning her minidisk on and drowning out Mark’s snide retort.

  CHAPTER 32

  Eve Wirrel had converted a church into a house-cum-studio. A council decision that still had the locals smarting. They couldn’t build so much as a rabbit hutch in this over-protected area of suburbia, but Eve Wirrel, she had a licence to do exactly as she pleased.

  Allegedly a Catholic, Wirrel had claimed that her work was spiritual. She’d hinted at visions and voices, and insisted that she was merely a vessel for a greater being’s expression. It was a good take, less anarchic than her predecessors. Being the daughter of a baronet, the anarchic take wouldn’t have held much water. Jessie pushed the high arched door open, expecting another den of iniquity. She was surprised when the glossy pages of Architectural Digest leapt up and licked her face.

  ‘Very tasteful,’ said Burrows, walking towards her.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you. Ray St Giles has nailed Verity and blown the Eve Wirrel story.’

  ‘I know. Fry called.’

  ‘He’s fucking loving this.’

  ‘Don’t be too hard –’

  Jessie put up her hand. She didn’t want to hear it.

  The kitchen stretched the length of the nave: thirty foot of zinc atop two-foot-deep drawer units. Brushed steel rods lay in regimented lines, making the kitchen seem to stretch on and on, as far as the eye could see. Jessie ran a finger along it. Dust.

  ‘Not a bad surface to freebase off,’ said Burrows.

  ‘I didn’t know Wirrel was a druggie.’

  Burrows shrugged. ‘She was a media babe, hung out with the flash-bulb faces, went to red-carpet functions and was an experimental artist to boot. I’d say the odds were quite low.’

  ‘Very poetic,’ said Jessie, looking in the fridge. Cans of Guinness. Cheddar. Uneaten tofu. Half a pack of bacon, going green. Mixed messages. She opened the freezer. Next to an empty ice tray were three plastic phials. The sort of thing the doctor gave you to pee in. They were labelled. Jessie took one out and handed it to Burrows.

  Initials. Height in feet. Eye colour and race. ‘Well, well, well – looks like Eve Wirrel has been paying the sperm bank a visit.’

  ‘They don’t give it to you to take away,’ corrected Jessie.

  ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

  ‘Just bag them, Burrows.’

  The cupboards were well stocked with unusable items. Fish paste. Date honey. Black-eyed beans, split. Jessie crossed the aisle to the sitting area on the left. She noticed a half-drunk cup of cold tea. ‘Get fingerprints on this. Found any hate mail, death threats?’

  ‘Nothing like that. In fact, it’s just a typical posh bird’s pad,’ said Burrows. ‘Sofa looks sat in, dog-eared mags, telly page is open. Whatever she was doing in the park, I’d say she was coming back.’

  Jessie looked around her. ‘Thought she was, at any rate. Bedroom?’

  ‘In the crypt.’

  ‘Should’ve known,’ said Jessie. ‘Anything of interest?’

  ‘She wasn’t a girl who restricted her experimentation to the canvas. This way.’

  Jessie followed Burrows down a curved stone stairwell. The treads had been smoothed to the softness of soapstone by the soles of bat-winged priests. The bed was a four-poster without the canopy. Each post was the thickness of a horse’s leg and engraved with entwined angels rising ever upwards. The swirling pattern tricked the eye into believing they were actually floating up to heaven.

  ‘She slept with the angels,’ said Jessie.

  ‘The dead, you mean. Isn’t this where they kept the skeletons? She was certainly into some kinky shit.’ Burrows lifted the lid on a heavy teak chest. ‘A Quality Street assortment of delectable sexual sweets.’

  ‘Burrows, what has got into you? You’re going all wordy on me.’

  ‘Dunno, must be all this creative air.’ He pulled out a sharp-toothed clamp. ‘It’s got my juices flowing.’

  The bed was neatly made. Egyptian white cotton. Above it was a black-and-white photograph of Eve chained up by her wrists, her arms pulled taut above her head. Her feet dangling inches off the ground. More mixed messages.

  ‘Strip those sheets and send them to the lab.’ Jessie examined the portrait. ‘Where is the studio?’

  ‘Upstairs gallery section,’ said Burrows, holding up a cat-o’-nine-tails.

  ‘Is there a strap-on in there?’

  ‘You know you can’t be taking evidence away, boss.’

  ‘Too close to the wind, Burrows. Way too close.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Is there anything in the studio?’

  Burrows smiled. ‘A lot of headless naked men.’

  Jessie waited for him to explain.

  ‘In charcoal. Pretty crap, actually, for a million-dollar earner.’

  Jessie stood on the thirty-foot landing. The division between the choir balconies had been knocked through, and now they formed a mezzanine above the nave. A regiment of gothic-style leaded windows ran the length of the upper walls, flooding the studio with diffused light. There was plenty of space to paint and a big cushioned area for the models to display their wares. The back wall was decorated with pictures, postcards, photographs, paint charts, swatches of material, book covers, wallpaper, words. Every inch was covered with images. Jessie looked through the pile of nude drawings. All men. All headless. Handless. Footless. Verity Shore. Verity Shore. Verity Shore.

  ‘How was I supposed to know that Eve Wirrel didn’t paint heads, hands or feet?’

  ‘I’m not with you, guv.’

  ‘I want to find every last one of those men.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t fucking know. Look in her phone book. Ring her agent, gallery – there must be some kind of artist model agency. Do I have to wipe your arse as well?’

  Burrows looked hurt.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t like playing catch-up.’

  Jessie retraced her steps through the old church and out into the garden. Graveyard. Resting place for bones. Eve, sleeping with skeletons. A skeleton. Verity Shore. That was personal. Everything pointed back to Verity. It was a two-way thing. If only she’d known where to look. But she had known. She’d even been offered binoculars to get a clearer view. Someone had details. Intimate details. They were familiar. Or familial?

  While the police machinery carried on harvesting Eve Wirrel’s life, Jessie gazed up at the church tower. Rumours. Secrets. Celebrities were like icebergs. Too much was hidden below the surface. She walked around the circumference of the church. Paced it out. Rumours and secrets. She stared back up at the church. It looked as if the mezzanine inside should be twenty foot longer. There was no access to the bell tower either. Could it be that this exhibitionist also had something to hide?

  Jessie returned to the gallery and stared at the heavily decorated wall with its confusion of colour and images. She looked back down at the sleek zinc kitchen, then back to the giant pinboard. Starting at one end, she began tapping the wall; it was stud partition. She lifted a few flaps of paper and material, pressing, feel
ing, tapping as she went. Three-quarters of the way along, she found what she was looking for. A concealed door. A gentle press to a photograph of a golden Labrador and the hinged entrance popped open. You couldn’t see the join behind the keepsakes. There was no door handle. This was supposed to stay hidden. Kept safe.

  She entered the dark room behind the board. The temperature dropped. There were no windows. No filtered sunlight to warm the place up. Jessie reached inside her bag and pulled out the torch. She switched it on and aimed the narrow beam of light straight ahead. A naked man was nailed to a cross, his penis grotesquely engorged. A blank space where his head should have been. His hands and feet were missing too. Jessie found the light switch. Garish halogen lights beamed down from above. It was a painting, about seven feet by ten, and it wasn’t finished. Around the crucified man, Eve Wirrel had painted writhing naked bodies in various hues of red. Magenta. Ochre. Crimson. Scarlet. Ruby. Burgundy. Cherry. They were all twisted and they were all men. The unfinished ones were initialled in pencil. It looked like a horrific colour-by-letters. Jessie thought of the phials in the freezer. Since Eve Wirrel’s body had been discovered, Jessie had ordered all the artist’s back catalogues. Nothing was as good, or as disturbing as this. Eve had titled it in thick, bleeding letters: ‘All Men Are Rapists’. Jessie’s eye moved back to the well-endowed centrepiece. It too was initialled.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ whispered Jessie to herself. She thought about the woman in the morgue; the mortician had used a circular saw to cut through Eve Wirrel’s skull so the pathologist could get to her brain. The epicentre of her creative genius. It would have been weighed with all her other vital organs and, when they were done, the whole lot would have been thrown back in and sewn up. Why did Eve Wirrel hide her work? Was she afraid she would be copied? Or was she afraid she’d be caught? Was this a clue to the next victim? Or not. An ingenious plot, or a wild-goose chase?

  P. J. Dean’s number appeared on her mobile. Jessie switched it to answering machine. Too many mixed messages. She needed to step back.

  In the pub, she plied her team with whatever they wanted. Gin. Whiskey. Vodka. Lager. Bitter. Mild. It was all blotting paper to her.

  CHAPTER 33

  Mark pushed open the door of the pub in Victoria. Neville Gray was sitting in a corner. He was the assistant director of the child and family unit that covered Bethnal Green. He’d worked in social services as long as Mark had been in the police force, they went back years. They’d worked a case together in the late seventies. Mark had put a man away who had abused his daughter, his granddaughter and niece. Incest. Neville got the girls out before the police went in. It had been a good joint effort. They’d been drinking buddies ever since. After the first pint and the habitual pleasantries, Mark got down to business. Neville remembered the Raymond Giles case but was unaware Ray had got himself on television.

  ‘That’s a fine way to repay a con, give him a fucking chat show.’

  ‘The mind boggles,’ said Mark. ‘The man he shot had two kids, Clare and Frank. Both came to you, but someone over there thought it best to change their names. The paper trail on Frank dries up, there and then. Thought you could do some digging around for me. See where he went. All we have is a date of birth.’

  ‘Was he a protection witness against St Giles?’

  ‘Nope. The kid was three. Go figure.’

  ‘Interesting. What about the dad, Trevor? What was his game?’

  Mark tore open a packet of crisps and lay them out on the table. ‘Normal bloke, by all accounts. I’ve got a DS going over their lives with a toothcomb. You know what the East End is like. Parts of it haven’t changed. Memories go way back; if he was up to no good, we’ll find out.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Do you think it will be classified?’

  ‘No doubt about it. I can’t think of one good reason why those kids had to be split up or have their names changed.’

  ‘I know it’s a lot to ask, but will you let me know, even if it’s classified?’

  Neville smiled. ‘I’ll do more than that.’

  ‘How?’

  The grey-haired man tapped his nose with nicotine-stained fingers. ‘We have ways and means. Give me a week.’

  ‘Good man yourself,’ said Mark, standing up to get his round in. Old ways. Old rules. They worked for him.

  CHAPTER 34

  The woman paid the driver of the black taxi and, close to tears, pulled two heavy suitcases out of the back. Her kids were crying. It felt like they’d been crying since they left the villa in the Canaries to get a last-minute flight at three in the morning. The kids were tired. It wasn’t their fault. She was shattered.

  ‘No tip?’ asked the burly driver.

  The woman burst into tears as she crouched back inside the cab to retrieve her children. The sight of their mother crying shocked them into silence. She slammed the door shut and received a throat full of black diesel fumes in response. She looked up and down the street nervously.

  ‘Come on, kids, quietly, not a word.’

  She pulled the suitcases up the old stone steps of the house. Her husband loved this house. She hated it, it was too old, unmanageable and had too many stairs. But she didn’t live there, so what did it matter? The front door was not double-locked. This worried her more than the endless unanswered phone calls she’d made from Tenerife. She hurried the kids inside and closed the door. She was safe. No one had seen her. Only a few lights were on in the street. Most people were still asleep.

  ‘Where are we?’ asked her son.

  ‘Stay here,’ she said. ‘Don’t make a sound and don’t touch anything.’

  She’d been worried about an alarm, but there didn’t seem to be one. She walked to the bottom of the narrow staircase and looked up the uneven, displaced treads.

  ‘Cary?’ she called quietly.

  ‘Is Dad here?’ asked her son.

  She turned on him. ‘Shh. We don’t know who is here. He’s Cary, remember, when we’re not at home.’

  The boy frowned. He was angry and he didn’t understand. Nor did she any more.

  ‘Cary! It’s me, Lorna! Are you here?’

  She took a step up. It creaked solemnly in the silence. She truly hated this house. It smelled funny. The kids watched her walk up the first flight of stairs, move across the landing and take the next flight. The girl started to cry.

  ‘Mummy!’

  ‘Shh, sweetheart, I’m right here.’

  Lorna pushed each door to each small, pokey room. None of the fires was lit, but dusty ash sat in the grates of some of them. Cary had been here. Living like a camp Edwardian gentleman with his leather-bound books and prompt serving of tea. It was all an act, he said. The viewers liked it. It paid for the lovely new house in Leeds. But at what cost, thought Lorna, staring at her husband’s unmade bed. He hadn’t called her for three days. He hadn’t joined them in Tenerife for their secret holiday, en famille. So she had broken one of the golden rules and called him. But there had been no answer from his mobile or this house. She’d even called work, only to be told he was away on holiday with friends. Friends! Friends! His wife and children, you mean, she wanted to shout at the pious receptionist. It was a stupid cover story. Now she had no one to turn to.

  ‘Mummy!’ screamed her daughter.

  ‘Coming, love, coming.’

  They sat in the kitchen of the empty house, their tanned faces suddenly pale and worried.

  ‘It smells funny in here,’ said her son.

  Lorna looked at the cellar door. Cary had told her it was unsafe. The ancient foundations needed underpinning or something. She’d never been down there. She’d never wanted to.

  ‘It’s coming from there,’ said her son, pointing to the door. He was right. She knew he was right. But she simply couldn’t move.

  Lorna wedged the door open with a pan and felt along the damp wall for a switch. She couldn’t find one. She pointed the torch down the steps and gingerly began to desce
nd into the darkness. The smell became more pronounced the deeper she went. She had given the kids colouring books, but she could hear from the silence that they weren’t playing.

  ‘You all right, Mum?’ asked her son.

  ‘Yes sweetheart, I’m fine.’

  She was far from fine. She was terrified. Had Cary fallen down the stairs? Would she find him dead, with a broken neck? She aimed the torch at the floor and millimetre by millimetre the beam of light etched into the darkness. She was afraid of what the shadows held in store for her, but the fear of what that slow-moving puddle of light might illuminate was somehow even worse. That smell did not signal good news. The stone became wood. Boards. An open trap door. A hole in the ground. Rope. Ropes descending into the fetid pit. She knew immediately it was a septic tank; there had been one on her parents’ farm. She shone the beam of light downwards and examined the rough, warm surface of the tank’s contents. She saw the underside of a shoe. She screamed and dropped the torch. It fell into the human faeces and sank, right next to her husband.

  CHAPTER 35

  Jessie slowed the bike down over Putney Bridge and watched the mist rise off the water and eddy like a jet engine’s exhaust. A few boats were already on the river, pulling hard in unison, fighting the river’s strength. She turned the bike on to the slip road and glided to a stop. She parked the bike, pulled her helmet off, ruffled her flattened hair and went in search of some oarsmen.

  The digger had made holes all over the lawn of the smuggler’s house in Barnes; the drill had done the same in the cement to the foundations. They had found nothing. There had once been tunnels, but they had long been blocked up. Jessie had pored over sewage maps, utility maps, telecommunications maps and water board maps, but had found nothing. The secret tunnels had remained just that. She had also sent a team to follow the tunnel that emerged near where Verity’s bones had been found. It looped into a maze of underground systems, but so far nothing that led to the house in Barnes.