Dead Alone

by Gay Longworth

  ‘Me, too. I was there too,’ said Clare. ‘Everything I told you was true. I was on my knees, I thought he was going to kill me, then this bloke turned up. Ray smiled at him and told him to finish me off. He raised his arm, I prayed to Mum to save me and it worked. Alistair hit Ray on the back of the neck. He went down immediately. We took him to the crypt, Alistair told me everything Irene had told him. Between the two of us, we soon filled in the rest –’

  ‘Clare didn’t do anything,’ interrupted Alistair. ‘It was me – and I don’t mind going to prison for it.’

  ‘Alistair –’

  ‘Please, Clare. You’re the best thing that’s come out of all this shit.’

  ‘I’m not letting you do this alone.’

  ‘Clare, please, we’ve talked about this.’

  ‘Alistair, if you identify Joshua, I will make a deal that we lower the charge to manslaughter. You went back to Irene when we showed up, you woke her up and told her to return to the cemetery. You told Irene what to say to Clare. There was no tall, ghostly figure in the cemetery, but you were pointing me in the right direction and that probably saved Maggie Hall’s life. I will help you.’

  ‘How did you know?’ asked Clare.

  ‘The blood on your fingers,’ Jessie replied. ‘It wasn’t from your head. You never were unconscious. You pushed the biro off Ray’s vein.’ Clare opened her mouth. ‘But I can’t prove it and I don’t want to. The pathologist found the biro further inside his leg. It could have slipped.’

  ‘I’ll tell you –’

  ‘It slipped,’ said Alistair. ‘This is my fault. I killed Ray.’

  ‘No, it’s mine,’ said Irene.

  ‘No it isn’t,’ said Clare. ‘It’s my mother’s, for having the affair with him in the first place.’

  ‘Don’t be too harsh on her, Clare,’ said Jessie. ‘It was your mother who told the police where to find Ray.’

  Irene and Clare stared at her in disbelief.

  ‘I traced the phone number. It was the payphone in the hospital. I think she was trying to make amends.’ Jessie stood up. ‘Alistair, will you come with me? There’s someone I need you to identify.’

  ‘I really didn’t work it out until Cosima. I wouldn’t have let those women die – that would have been the sort of thing he did, and I’m nothing like him.’

  ‘I believe you,’ said Jessie.

  ‘He saved me,’ said Clare.

  ‘And that will work in his favour as well. What about Tarek? Where is he?’

  ‘Channel Five, I think. I wanted to warn him off. Tarek had used up his lives, Ray was going to get rid of him, permanently, if he made any more trouble. He was going to sue if you came after him again. You would have unwittingly created a hero. Ray St Giles, a hero? It doesn’t make sense, does it?’

  ‘No,’ said Jessie. ‘It doesn’t.’

  ‘I’ll come and visit,’ said Clare as Jessie led Alistair to the door.

  ‘I’d like that. You should both go and meet my granddad, he’s practically family now.’ Clare hugged him. At last she had a brother. A true blood brother. Veronica had been wrong. Bad blood was better than no blood. Jessie looked at Clare.

  ‘What are you going to do about Frank?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Clare. ‘I come with quite a story.’

  CHAPTER 89

  ‘I deny everything,’ said Joshua. ‘I had absolutely nothing to do with the crimes you are accusing me of. Ask Maggie if I forced pills down her throat. I didn’t.’

  ‘Maggie can’t talk at the moment.’ She’d had her stomach pumped, her blood washed out with saline, and adrenaline injected into her to keep her blood pressure from dropping again. Initial tests showed no Rohypnol in the blood. But Sally had found traces of many other pharmaceuticals.

  ‘Where is your evidence?’

  ‘We have someone who can place you at the house in Barnes. You left your own evidence with Eve Wirrel, and when Cosima’s dress is fully examined, I have no doubt we will find something you left behind there.’

  ‘If the crime is sleeping with Verity and Eve, then you’ll have to arrest half of London. Including my dear old dad.’

  ‘You were also seen driving Cosima to Haverbrook Hall the night she died.’

  ‘Come on, Jessie, you can’t really think –’

  ‘Don’t “Jessie” me.’

  ‘Why not? It worked for P.J.,’ said Joshua sharply.

  Jessie leant across the table. ‘And I myself saw you leaving my flat after you’d slept with Maggie.’

  ‘So? The girls like me.’

  ‘They like your mother. Her status.’

  Joshua shrank from her.

  ‘I spoke to your mother’s agent this morning. I’m afraid when Henrietta showed your work to him, she told him in no uncertain terms that he was not to get you a deal. She ruined your career.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘I’m afraid it is. Just like she used to lock you in dark places on your own, like she used to tell you bloodthirsty stories then make it all better when you had nightmares. Violence and affection are intertwined in your psyche, Joshua.’

  ‘Bullshit! Armchair psychobabble. I’m sure it works great with lesser mortals, but –’

  ‘Your methods were ingenious, but the messages to your mother were obvious once I knew where to look.’ Jessie pushed over the four titles: A Smuggler’s Tale; Father Bernard – A Recusant Priest; Isabella of France; and the manuscript on London’s Great Disease. ‘Henrietta told you that loyal mothers like her would jump into the burial pits to be with their dead children. More and more bodies would be piled on top of them until they died of suffocation. But you know deep down that her loyalty is only to herself. She won’t join you in this pit. She has her reputation to think of.’

  ‘Why? Why would I kill all those women?’

  ‘Because they were famous and you weren’t, and it drove you mad. You knew what they were really like, behind the glossy photos and the PR bollocks.’

  ‘No. You’re bluffing. I know you.’

  ‘Not as well as you think.’ Jessie slowly pulled back her leather jacket and showed him the minidisk clipped to the inside. ‘I lost a good track, recording you.’ She pressed ‘play’ and Joshua’s voice filled the room.

  ‘… 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 …’

  Jessie stopped the machine and looked at Joshua. ‘Add it all up, and it’s not a bad case against you,’ she said.

  ‘I want my mother,’ he said.

  ‘She’s had to go on a book-signing tour.’

  ‘I want my mother,’ Joshua said again, louder.

  ‘Christopher is here. He wants to see you.’

  Joshua suddenly stood up and ran to the locked door. ‘NO! I WANT MY MOTHER! I WANT MY MOTHER! MOTHER! MOTHER!’ He turned back to Jessie. ‘She always comes in the end, always …’

  Jessie took his arm and led him back to the chair. ‘We’ll get you help.’

  ‘She loves me,’ said Joshua. ‘She won’t be able to cope without me. She needs me, you see. I’m all she has, don’t you understand …?’

  Jessie softly closed the door as Joshua continued to mumble quiet words to himself.

  EPILOGUE

  Jessie held the plastic bag containing the white-tipped cigarette found outside her house and continued to stare in disbelief at the typed details on the corresponding report. P. J. Dean. He’d stood outside her house. Why? It was the one thing that didn’t add up.

  ‘He probably came to explain the lawsuit.’

  Jessie looked up and saw Niaz in the doorway. She smiled, stood up, walked around the desk and gave him a hug.

  ‘You have proved yourself more than worthy of the murder squad. I was wondering if you’d like to remain here? Depending, of course, on the outcome of the Dean investigation. I may not be here myself …’

&n
bsp; ‘Ma’am, he isn’t going to go through with it.’

  She appreciated his confidence but didn’t share it. ‘It’ll mean long hours, Niaz, and exams.’

  His head shook on his long neck. ‘No matter. My wife won’t mind.’

  Jessie was horrified. They had been through a whole case together and she didn’t even know he was married.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Niaz, I never asked. I’d love to meet her.’

  ‘You will, when I have. And when I do, she’ll understand about the long hours. I can feel it.’

  She had an overwhelming desire to kiss Niaz. ‘Okay, Niaz, I’ll talk to Jones straight away.’ Jessie looked back at the cigarette. ‘You really think he came to explain?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’ Jessie unlocked her filing cabinet and carefully placed the envelope inside.

  ‘Because he is here.’

  ‘Not funny, genie. With that transfer in mind, don’t you think you should go to the surprise drinks that Burrows has organised, rather than standing here and taunting me about bloody P. J. Dean,’ she said, carefully closing the drawer and locking it.

  ‘Actually, ma’am, he is here. Standing right next to me.’

  Jessie looked up. And he was. Niaz retreated, smiling quietly to himself as he was prone to do. Jessie went through a rapid succession of emotions. Embarrassment, guilt, humiliation, but recovered quite well with anger.

  ‘You’re suing me. If you want to live, you should leave,’ said Jessie.

  ‘It wasn’t me, it was the record label – damage limitation bollocks. Anyway, I’ve put a stop to it.’ P.J. pointed to the plastic bag containing the cigarette. ‘Mine?’

  Jessie nodded.

  ‘I came to explain, but I chickened out,’ he said. ‘Then I came here, but you’ve been busy.’

  ‘Here? Did you speak to –’

  ‘Frances Leonard. Yes. Another problem I should have addressed a long time ago. We talked about everything. She isn’t mad, she’s just lonely. I guess on closer inspection I lost some of that sheen she thought I had.’ He paused. ‘And she isn’t the only one to think less of me now, is she?’

  Jessie wouldn’t be drawn on that. She tidied her desk and didn’t look at him.

  ‘Anyway, I wanted to say sorry. Sorry for what happened in the garden.’

  Jessie relented. ‘It was my fault.’

  ‘How is that possible when I was the one who lied, I was the one who left Bernie with that man, and I was the one who ignored Verity’s misery so I could keep the illusion of a family around me? If I’d told you about Eve earlier, she might still be alive. And I did that for the most unforgivable reason.’

  Jessie waited.

  ‘I didn’t want you to think badly of me.’

  Jessie smiled slightly. ‘In retrospect, shagging Eve Wirrel was probably the least of your worries.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s famous people for you – short on perspective. Long on selfishness, blind ambition, insecurity, money and misery.’

  Jessie tilted her head to one side. She could still see the metal plates shooting volts through Maggie’s chest. ‘Why do it then?’ she asked seriously. ‘When it so often ends in tears?’

  P.J. leant back against the doorframe. ‘To escape, I suppose.’

  ‘And do you?’

  ‘No.’ P.J. paused, his green eyes studying her. Jessie stared straight back. ‘Unless you’re lucky and meet someone who doesn’t believe the hype.’

  ‘But, P.J., you are the hype, you created the hype.’

  ‘That is the nature of the beast.’

  Jessie shook her head and stood up. ‘You know what, I’ve seen way too much of that beast and, although I’m sure you’d love to talk about yourself for the next few hours, I am very thirsty. I have a pub full of people waiting to surprise me on my success. I’m probably going to get very pissed, I might even dance on a few tables, cry into my pint. And it is possible that around eleven I’ll puke up because I can’t remember when I last ate.’

  P.J. was smiling at her. It wasn’t the reaction she’d expected.

  ‘So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to go to the pub.’

  ‘Can I at least help you on your way and buy you a drink?’

  Perhaps she should have said no. But she didn’t. ‘You’d better get in there quick. I’m a popular girl at the moment.’

  ‘That comes as no surprise to me,’ said P.J., a smile in his eyes.

  ‘No queue-barging, just because you’ve been on Top of the Pops.’

  He saluted. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Or signing of autographs.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘And don’t expect me to protect you from the lads. They can be brutal.’

  ‘I never expected you to make this easy for me.’

  ‘And the first whiff of a photographer, you will do the decent thing and bugger off.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’ P.J. held the door open. ‘Come on, your fans await.’

  Jessie peeled on her leather jacket. ‘Not fans.’

  ‘No. Not fans. Colleagues. People who admire you. People who look up to you. People who respect you because you are good at your job. And the odd hanger-on who would like to cook you cheese on toast some time, drink red wine and play Scrabble.’

  ‘Scrabble?’ she mocked.

  ‘Not Scrabble then. Whatever you like doing, anything – just don’t write me off yet.’

  ‘I like dancing,’ she said, zipping up her jacket.

  P.J. lowered his head into his hands and groaned.

  ‘What? You’re always prancing about in those videos.’

  He looked at her through his fingers. ‘I thought you said you’d never listened to my songs?’

  ‘Just doing my job,’ said Jessie primly.

  ‘Did you like them?’

  She stood opposite him in the narrow doorway. ‘Don’t change the subject. Can you dance?’

  P.J. shook his head slowly from left to right.

  ‘And the videos?’

  ‘Body doubles.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. You are a con, Paul John Dean.’

  P.J. laughed loudly and took her arm. ‘At last,’ he said. ‘A woman who understands me.’

  If you enjoyed Dead Alone, check out these other great Gay Longworth titles.

  Buy the ebook here

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Becoming a thriller writer is a daunting prospect and I could not have done it without the help of Paul Dockley, retired Detective Chief Superintendent of Hertfordshire Constabulary. Many pints were sunk for the sake of accuracy.

  For reading, advice, soundboards and shoulders to cry on I’d like to thank Stephanie Pavlik, Joanna Longworth, Thalia Murray, Dee Poku, Juliet Dominguez, Felicity Gillespie, Angelina Davy and my mother. For chai made to exacting standards I’d like to thank Sophie.

  A special mention to those who shall remain nameless who lifted the lid on celebrity and let me take a peek inside.

  To my fantastic agents Stephanie Cabot and Eugenie Furniss at William Morris Agency whose influence and assistance go far, far beyond the limits of literature. Thank you also to Marie Baron and Tracy Fisher in the WMA in New York for giving this London-based book an international audience.

  At HarperCollins I’d like to thank everyone involved in the impressive production of Dead Alone. A special mention to Anne O’Brien, a brilliant copy editor who turned a usually painful process into a joy.

  Most importantly, my sincere gratitude to Julia Wisdom, for her faith, expertise and insight; thank you.

  Lastly, but most heartfelt, my love and thanks to my husband Adam – it just gets better.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Born in 1970, Gay Longworth trained as an oil trader after graduating from university. It was during this time that the idea for her first novel, Bimba, came to her. Eventually she took courage, left the job, and moved to Cornwall to write. Bimba was published in 1998, and her second novel, Wicked Pea
ce, came out two years later.

  During that time Gay had too many jobs to mention, though donning fishnets for Club Med was probably a low point. Thankfully she is now a full-time writer.

  Dead Alone is the first in a series of Jessie Driver novels, and she is currently working on the second. Gay lives in London with her husband, theatre producer Adam Spiegel, and their daughter.

  ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

  Bimba

  Wicked Peace

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by HarperCollinsPublishers

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  Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2002

  Copyright © Gay Longworth 2002

  Gay Longworth asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, locations and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination, other than the names of TV personalities who make cameo appearances in the book. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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