Dead Alone

by Gay Longworth

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. He wanted to know why his daddy didn’t love him. He deserved the truth. You aren’t his daddy. Joshua understood after that.’

  ‘You have created a monster, Henrietta, and you won’t allow yourself to see it.’ Christopher turned back to Jessie. ‘She would play games with him –’

  ‘Do shut up!’

  ‘She’d tell him horrific tales then put him in places he couldn’t get out of. He would scream and shout and finally she would rescue him –’

  ‘Those were just games!’

  ‘The poor boy forgot it was you who put him in there –’

  ‘I will divorce you if you say another word. I will make sure you don’t get a penny. No more club, no more drink, no more little girls. I will ruin you.’

  And there it was, Jessie realised. Henrietta’s tell. The closer anyone got to the truth behind the image, the more of a bully Henrietta would become.

  ‘This is a murder investigation, if you don’t tell me everything you can about your son, I shall arrest you both for obstruction of justice. That wouldn’t look so good on the front pages, would it?’

  ‘I’m calling my lawyer,’ said Henrietta finally.

  ‘Well,’ said Jessie. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere.’ She leant back on Joshua’s desk, nudging the mouse by accident and sending the sleeping computer whirring into action. Jessie let her eyes wander over the screensaver.

  ‘Oh no …’

  ‘What,’ said Henrietta cattily. ‘Have you never seen a picture of a naked girl?’

  Jessie put her head in her hands. She’d been so stupid. All that time she’d wasted in the cemetery, back at the police station.

  ‘Where is she?’ Jessie took a menacing step towards Henrietta.

  ‘Splashed all over some magazine. You have to admit, it is tacky. Let go of me! Didn’t you know your flatmate was just another nasty little exhibitionist?’

  ‘I will make sure you never see the light of day unless you tell me now. Where has he taken Maggie?’

  ‘Have you read my wife’s books?’ said Christopher.

  ‘Shut up,’ shouted Henrietta.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You should have,’ he said. Just as his son had at the Epoch party. Joshua had been playing with her all along. Christopher directed Jessie to the bookshelf with his eyes. ‘She wrote about smuggling in the eighteenth century. There was a famous woman smuggler, as cruel as you like. And then there was the story of the priest hole, and the crippled man who’d been kept in a hole for years. He was the last recusant priest to hang.’

  Jessie frantically began to pull out titles by Dame Henrietta Cadell. How could she have been so blind? The Isabella Plantation – it had been screaming at her for days. ‘Which one is next?’

  Henrietta shook her head. ‘You are insane, both of you. My Joshua would never do such a thing. Do you realise how intelligent he is?’

  ‘He could have done anything, been anyone,’ said Christopher. ‘But you stopped him. You made sure his books didn’t get published.’

  ‘How dare you! I’ve supported him every step of the way. Who do you think gave him the contacts in the first place? Who got him the column?’

  ‘Stop lying. Look what you’ve done.’

  ‘Me? Me? And where the fuck were you all this time? Drunk. Like you’ve always been. Well, congratulations. You are just as guilty as me. We’re in this together.’

  Christopher sunk back into the chair and bowed his head. Henrietta had won. Again. Jessie was close to tears. There were too many books. Too many essays. Joshua had surrounded himself with his mother’s heavy-hitting words. They would have bored down on him every day, reminding him how ineffectual he too had become. And yet all around him were those women – Verity, Eve, Cosima and now Maggie. Splashed over the society pages, famous for no reason at all, naked on glossy pages, taunting him. He had lived in his mother’s shadow, dependent on her, wary of her, resentful of her, obsessed with her …

  ‘Which fucking book is it!’ screamed Jessie, pulling another from the shelf.

  Christopher shook his head. Henrietta didn’t move. ‘This is absolutely insane,’ she said, but the certainty had left her voice.

  ‘If she dies, if she fucking dies, I will …’

  ‘What? What could you possibly do to someone like me?’

  Jessie closed her eyes for a moment as blood roared through her brain. She could feel herself expand with anger. She breathed again, slowly, like she had told Mark to do in the crypt. The crypt had put her off the trail. Joshua wasn’t interested in Ray St Giles – of course he wasn’t, there wasn’t any link, any clue. It hadn’t been him standing mysteriously in the cemetery.

  Cosima and Maggie had some secret in their past, that was why Maggie was so jumpy around her. What were the other clues, what had she missed?

  ‘The plague,’ said Jessie suddenly. ‘The plague, you’ve written something about the plague?’

  ‘No,’ said Henrietta.

  ‘Yes,’ said Christopher.

  Henrietta moved incredibly quickly for a woman her size. But Jessie was faster and she grabbed Henrietta’s arm just before she brought the lamp down on her husband’s head. Christopher jumped away. ‘You can’t protect him any more. She is writing about the plague now, how it affected London. She’s working on it at the moment. Josh has read it.’

  ‘You bastard, he’ll never forgive you now.’

  ‘And nor should he,’ said Christopher. ‘I was too feeble to stop you. I can’t forgive myself.’ He moved to the other side of the room and opened a drawer in Joshua’s desk. ‘Moorfields. There was a burial pit. It’s still wasteland, right in the middle of the City. Joshua has been there. It’s a car park and dealers use it to supply the City boys …’

  Jessie didn’t hear the rest of the lesson. She didn’t care if the Cadells ripped each other to shreds. Maggie was dying in a wasteland in the city, surrounded by people too busy to stop, all because Jessie hadn’t wanted to see what Clare Mills had done.

  The first policeman scrambled to the site radioed what he had found. A black VW beetle was parked next to the wire fence at the very back of the wasteland. Two people were sitting in it. One male. One female. They were talking. Jessie cried with relief. By the time she arrived, they had the car park surrounded.

  Jessie went in alone, she didn’t want to ignite the situation. She pulled the driver’s door open. She didn’t know who was more surprised to see her. Maggie or Joshua. Joshua disguised it better, though that didn’t surprise Jessie.

  ‘Jessie! What are you doing here?’ exclaimed Maggie, leaning over the handbrake.

  ‘Joshua, Maggie,’ said Jessie, ‘would you both mind stepping out of the car?’

  ‘Hey,’ moaned Maggie. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘No problem,’ said Joshua.

  ‘Come on, we weren’t doing anything –’ Maggie caught the expression in Jessie’s eyes and stopped talking. ‘Christ, Barnaby, you’re no fun any more.’ Maggie’s television diction was slipping. Her eyelids kept sliding closed. Joshua followed Jessie’s eye to the near-empty bottle jammed between Maggie’s legs.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ slurred Maggie. ‘I wasn’t doing the driving. It’s been one of those days, you don’t know what …’ She stepped out of the car and her legs gave way. The bottle shattered on the ground. Maggie didn’t seem to notice. She kept on talking as she slowly sank lower.

  ‘Christ,’ she slurred. ‘I don’t feel so good.’ She hauled herself up again and made her way round to the back of the car, where she collapsed to the compressed rubble ground.

  ‘Your friend likes to drink,’ said Joshua, emerging from the driver’s seat. Jessie did not move. The keys were in the ignition of the car. He was nearer to them than she was.

  ‘She thinks I’ll help her career, but I can’t. She drinks too much, everyone knows it. She’s good, but she won’t get on unless she quits. But you know this, don’t you? It’s difficult telling someone you love
to stop, isn’t it? Deep down you want their approval more and you know they’ll hate you for pointing out their weaknesses. Don’t be fooled, the messenger always gets shot. And I suppose you need what she provides – the excitement, the parties, the famous people. Not for you a pint of bitter and a packet of pork scratchings.’

  ‘Joshua Cadell, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murders of Verity Shore, Eve Wirrel, Cosima Broome and the attempted murder of Maggie Hall.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it? She’s killing herself. Don’t blame it on me.’

  ‘Maggie Hall will wake up when the Rohypnol in that drink wears off. She will not remember a thing until I tell her that you were going to slice her artery and leave her here to die above this human cesspit.’

  Joshua smiled a wolverine smile then chuckled. ‘Oh. So even you didn’t know about the pills?’ Jessie wouldn’t fall for the trick. ‘Oh, come on,’ said Joshua. ‘You surely didn’t think the sudden mood swings were hormonal? It’s been going on under your nose. One minute sitting on the floor in a dark room, the next minute, all smiles. My, how she bounced back from those set-backs.’

  Jessie felt a cold sweat creep over her.

  ‘She is dying. Right now. I have your stubbornness on my side. Don’t I? The more we wait, the less you have. You are so confident, you aren’t even wired. It didn’t cross your mind, did it? You are always in control. Let me tell you something, Miss Driver. I would not have had to slit another vein after Cosima died because everyone would have known it was me whether it had my insignia or not. Eventually, all the great artists stop signing their name because their work spells it out for them. Maggie Hall, another tragic victim exposed as the sorry little junkie she was.’ Joshua stepped to one side. ‘Check her handbag, if you don’t believe me about the pills. You think she came here because I asked her to? A lot of pills change hands in this car park. Maggie took too many, that’s all. She loves her tranquillisers. Trust me,’ he said. ‘You won’t find a trace of Rohypnol in her bloodwork, and the autopsy report will pronounce liver failure brought on by prescription drug abuse.’

  Something in his voice made her believe him. All the way through, Joshua had been pointing out weaknesses. Verity’s, P.J.’s, Eve’s, the Broome family secret, his own mother’s, and now hers. Idiosyncrasies that played straight into his hands. She abandoned her position and moved to the back of the car where Maggie lay, inches from the rear bumper. There is a world of difference between being unconscious and struggling to stay alive. Maggie was blue. Her eyes had rolled to the back of her head and she was frothing at the mouth. Jessie pushed her fingers down Maggie’s throat, rolled her on to her side and watched the contents of her flatmate’s stomach regurgitate on to the compact earth.

  When the engine suddenly burst into life, instinct took over. Jessie dropped Maggie, pulled out her gun and shot once through the rear window without a warning. Then she moved round the right side of the car, kicked the door fully open and stared at the shattered glass on the old leather seat. Joshua was not inside. She screamed for back-up and started to run, frantically searching the other cars. Joshua had always intended to leave this place, the question was how.

  Within seconds, police were streaming through the gates, checking every car they passed. Jessie was barking orders: ‘Lock the gates!’ ‘Check under the cars!’ ‘Find him!’ The paramedics arrived and Jessie led them to the Beetle, then watched as they carried Maggie’s limp body away from the car and laid her on a stretcher. Maggie was grey. She wasn’t breathing.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Jessie, moving incessantly around the working paramedics.

  ‘She’s choked.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ cried Jessie. ‘I left her, I …’ She fell to her knees and began to pray as one of the paramedics ripped open Maggie’s shirt and began to pump her heart while the other breathed air into her mouth. The equipment was charged, and everyone stood back as 200 joules of electricity passed through her flatmate’s body. Jessie continued to pray as oxygen was manually pumped into Maggie’s lungs. The paramedic felt for a pulse, the world shrank and time expanded. Sometimes Jessie thinks she is still on her knees praying to God on a piece of land into which the luckless were thrown. She would kill Joshua if Maggie died. She would find a way. Somehow. And then the paramedic nodded. He’d found a pulse. They raised the stretcher to its full height and pushed Maggie across the crude, uneven burial ground.

  The police, meanwhile, had stopped their frenetic search. Joshua Cadell had disappeared.

  From the first moment she had seen him with wisps of mist swirling around his ankles on the morning Verity Shore’s remains were discovered, Jessie had sensed that there was something very special about Niaz Ahmet. And she had been right. About that, if nothing else. While the police had searched every car in the place, Niaz had slipped away to the back of the perimeter fence and gone in search of Joshua’s getaway vehicle. He knew this piece of wasteland was used by dealers, and he calculated that to transport their illicit goods safely it had to be done at night, when the place was empty. After the gates were locked. The car park was separated from the backs of the surrounding buildings by a high wire fence and a narrow passageway. The wire had been cut several months before. All you needed was to know where and which bits to untwist in order to escape unseen through the back of one of the buildings and out into a rabbit warren of narrow streets that led south to Old Street with its seven subway entrances or east to the sprawling council estate, north to Kings Cross, or east back to Bethnal Green.

  Niaz found the bike propped unchained behind some rubbish carts. He removed the bolts that held the wheels in place and loosened the seat. When Joshua jumped on the bike and pushed down on the pedal, the front wheel jammed, the frame lurched forward and the seat dropped six inches, causing temporarily crippling injuries. Under normal circumstances, Niaz would not have been strong enough to overpower Joshua, but with his opponent on the floor, writhing in agony, all he had to do was walk up behind him and swipe him round the head with his standard-issue cosh.

  CHAPTER 88

  Jessie heard the same unmistakable scrape of metal against metal and saw the large brown eye peer out at her. The expression had changed. As Jessie had known it would.

  Jones’ tenacity had finally paid off: Frank had been found. The trail had led to a Dr John Gurney, who had arranged for wealthy, childless parents who did not fit the adoption rules of the time to have a child from care. At a price, of course. The child in question would have no siblings and no surviving immediate family. Names were changed, records were lost, death certificates were forged. Three stones were buried and one child went on to a new and hopefully happy life. Jones did not discover a paedophile ring, he discovered an eccentric and ageing philanthropist who believed he was rescuing these children from a terrible life in care.

  Irene, in her promise to Veronica to keep Frank away from St Giles, had signed him over as Trevor White. White was Trevor’s mother’s maiden name. That was why two cars had arrived the day after Veronica died.

  On paper, little Frank was perfect for Dr Gurney’s purposes. A loner. Trevor White became Gareth Blake and Gareth Blake was put to death on paper and reborn as son and heir to a Mr and Mrs Tennant. No one reckoned on Clare and her unceasing tenacity. Irene had always believed she’d failed and that Ray had found Frank and taken him away. She could never have imagined what had really happened. So she clung on to her secret, year in year out, believing that she was protecting Clare from the truth. Now Clare knew the truth, but that wasn’t the cause of the bravado in the big brown eye that stared back through the crack in the door.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘It’s not a good time.’

  Jessie shook her head. ‘I want to do this quietly, Clare. Don’t make me have to call for back-up. I need to talk to Alistair.’

  Clare’s eye widened.

  ‘Let her in,’ said a voice from inside the flat.

  They were sitting around the
coffee table sipping whiskey-laden tea: Clare, Alistair, Irene. Irene’s bruise was now yellow.

  ‘How did you know Joshua Cadell was killing people, Alistair?’

  Three mouths gaped at her like guppies in an aquarium.

  ‘Let’s not make this any harder than it has to be,’ said Jessie.

  ‘Don’t say anything –’ said Clare.

  ‘It’s okay,’ reassured Alistair. ‘You said she was smart.’ He looked at Jessie. ‘I was following the women on Ray’s orders. I had no idea what was going to happen.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ asked Jessie. ‘You could have stopped those women dying.’

  ‘Honestly,’ said Alistair, ‘it was only when Cosima died that I knew it was him for sure. I’d seen them leave a party together and drive off. He was dressed like a chauffeur. She was in on the joke – it got her away from some lecherous bloke.’

  Jessie folded her arms in front of her.

  ‘How it looks to me, is that you knew Joshua’s modus operandi and were waiting until you could kill Ray and make it look like the Z-list Killer had struck again.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ said Clare.

  ‘It was my fault,’ said Irene. ‘I thought he was Frank. I went to tell him to warn Ray that the police were nearly at their door. I was terrified Clare was going to find out. I thought Frank would understand. All I did was tell Alistair the reason why his old man had never given a damn about him or his mother. Ray only had eyes for Veronica, he didn’t care who he hurt along the way.’

  ‘All those women I’d dug dirt on, I couldn’t find a grain on Ray. I’d never even heard of Veronica and Frank. I thought Trevor had been another gang member. Ray had just used Mum to make Veronica jealous; he didn’t give a shit that he’d ruined her life. Or mine. The bastard. He probably would have killed Mum too, if she’d made a fuss, but she took herself back to the country and never got over it. Something in me snapped when Irene told me about Veronica. I hit her, left her unconscious on the floor, and went to the cemetery. Those fucking roses.’