The Calling

by Alison Bruce

  Afterwards he walked, wet and naked, back to his bedroom and flopped on to the bed. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, his head resting on one hand and the other hand massaging his erection. He had Fiona to look forward to. Tomorrow she’d be wet and naked, too.

  After forty minutes the battery indictor showed a full charge. Now he needed to make sure that red light didn’t come on.

  He flicked open the manual and checked the function of each of the buttons. It related to none of them, so it must be in the on-screen menu system somewhere. Start at page thirty-four. The manual fell open at page forty-two, and the word ‘lamp’ jumped out at him.

  He’d found it just like that.

  But, then, it was funny how simple things could become when you just left them for a while.

  Inside the wardrobe he’d stacked some shoeboxes up to the right height. He placed the new camera on top – where the old one had been. His shirts hung down on each side, and he arranged them so only the lens protruded.

  He left the door ajar, knowing from experience that she wouldn’t let him down.

  CHAPTER 67

  MONDAY, 4 JULY 2011

  Marlowe Gates’ flat was tiny: a studio apartment erected at the height of the eighties property boom, when developers could build smaller and sell faster than at any other time.

  The bed settee was folded out flat and made up with a dark-blue duvet set. Marlowe tipped it back into the sofa position and pulled away the bedding, before stowing it in the airing cupboard.

  She motioned for Goodhew to take a seat and left the room to fill the kettle.

  The dark-blue carpet looked no thicker than flock wallpaper, while the paintwork carried the tired veneer of age. Marlowe was surviving here, not living.

  To his right, an unlit eight-by-four hallway ran between the living area and the shower room. Estate agents would call it a ‘dressing room’, no doubt. A few blouses hung from a free-standing tubular-steel clothes rail. In the bad light he could spot the picture frame on the wall above, but not the print inside it.

  He crept over to the hallway and flicked on the light. It was the same picture he’d already seen at Pete’s and Julie’s: Robert Mitchum paddling in the sea. This was a better version, the largest of the three prints and framed in chunky wood.

  ‘What about it?’ she asked.

  And he turned to find her close to his shoulder.

  ‘Pete Walsh has this, too,’ he said.

  ‘I know. I bought it for him.’ She paused, waiting for Goodhew to comment. He said nothing. ‘I had this first, and he liked it, so I bought him a copy for his birthday.’

  ‘Doesn’t it remind you too much of him, then?’

  ‘Oh, yes, but I can’t allow him to deprive me of everything, can I?’ She reached past Goodhew and touched the sleeve of a blue shirt. ‘Like these clothes that remind me of places we went together. Or TV programmes that we watched together.’ She kicked at a cardboard box on the floor. ‘Or even books we both read.’

  Goodhew looked down and found a paperback copy of The Cross and the Switchblade staring up at him. ‘I don’t believe it. Pete has this, too.’

  She nodded slowly. ‘And Julie. And probably Paulette. Not just this book, either. Julie had the picture, too, and other books and CDs just the same as mine. I saw them when I went round there. And I’ve seen her wearing the same clothes, even.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ he frowned. ‘Is he trying to make them all like you?’

  ‘Oh, no, I think he is building up an ideal, and trying to mould each girlfriend to fit it. Each thing he likes, he carries forward to the next relationship and—’

  ‘And he throws away what’s left?’ Goodhew cringed as he said it.

  ‘You have an excellent way with words, don’t you?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Forget it.’ She smiled. ‘I’ll finish making the drinks.’

  Goodhew bent and picked up The Cross and the Switchblade, and turned it over to read the back cover: the true account of a preacher’s mission to save teenagers from a life of crime. ‘What’s the particular appeal of this book?’ he called to her.

  ‘It’s supposed to be inspirational; shows how people can rise above their situation. Apparently,’ she replied. ‘Borrow it, if you like.’

  He tucked it into his jacket pocket.

  ‘While I’m out here, I’d say this is your best opportunity to snoop around.’ The cutlery rattled as she raked around for a clean spoon. ‘You might like to start in the middle drawer to your left.’

  Goodhew pulled it open, and found it contained about eight books all the same size. Diaries. The top one was current, and each was marked on the front with a separate year. Each was A5 in size, with a page for each day except Saturday and Sunday, both of which occupied half a page each.

  ‘I’ve always kept diaries.’ She reappeared in the kitchen doorway. ‘All my “sightings” of him are noted in there, as well as any days when I didn’t know where he was.’ She leant on the door frame and stared ahead for several seconds. ‘It’s usually only weekdays when I watch, though, because I’m working in the town centre, and so is he. At the weekends I avoid the town altogether, just in case. But I always thought there was little chance of seeing him around here, so this is where I spend most of my time. Sometimes I’ve driven past his road, though, or even his house.’ She shrugged and picked up the mugs of tea. ‘Well, it’s all in there.’

  She passed him one mug and sat down with her own on the floor in front of the television.

  Goodhew opened the most recent diary first, and jumped to Saturday, 26 March, the day of Kaye Whiting’s disappearance. No mention of Pete, so he turned back one page. Friday lunchtime, he’d left work at noon and returned by 12.30. He’d left at 4.30 and walked towards Mitcham’s Corner.

  ‘What time’s his usual lunch break?’ he asked.

  ‘Twelve, why?’

  ‘You’ve made a specific note here that he went out from twelve to twelve-thirty?’

  ‘He usually has a full hour. He’s meticulous about starting on time and not working later than he needs to.’

  ‘Not a high-flyer, then?’

  ‘No, not at all. Did he finish early that day?’ she asked.

  ‘Four-thirty, it says, and then off down Mitcham’s Corner,’ he said.

  ‘OK, well, he normally leaves at five and heads to the bus stops opposite the train station. The only thing I know Mitcham’s Corner for is …’

  ‘I know, but I think it’s been cleaned up now. Besides, is that his style?’

  ‘Prostitutes?’ she smiled. ‘No, that’s just my catty little joke, but I can’t think what else.’

  Goodhew read on for several minutes. Marlowe located a fluorescent pen and dropped it on the sofa beside him.

  ‘You can highlight anything that you’ll need to find again, if it helps,’ she said.

  Goodhew marked occasional entries, mainly dates that coincided with key dates in the investigation. Each abduction, the discovery of each body, and each time Goodhew himself had seen Pete Walsh. Marlowe stayed cross-legged on the floor, watching him with one eyebrow slightly raised. She still reminded him of Lauren Bacall.

  He turned to Friday, 1 April 2011, the day he’d first encountered Marlowe. The entry read: Peter didn’t come out to lunch. Rang his office and he didn’t pick up his phone. Wonder if he’s ill. Went to his house and no sign of his car. Followed a man there to Acacia Road and Park Terrace.

  Michelle’s home and then his own.

  Goodhew hadn’t even noticed he’d been followed. He stared at her again. She was an enigma: a teeming mass of contradictions, chaotic but organized, timid and yet undoubtedly brave. She blushed and hurried to her feet. She took his empty mug and retreated to the kitchen.

  He flicked backwards, checking more dates, and discovered she’d been very thorough. ‘Incredible,’ he murmured; there didn’t seem to be a flaw in her theory that Walsh could be the killer. Whenever he’d needed to be out
of town, she hadn’t spotted him. Goodhew mapped Walsh’s movements against everything he knew to be true, and found they tallied accurately. Walsh clearly had no idea he was being constantly watched.

  Goodhew’s gaze drifted across to the next entry: Had another bad dream.

  Finally he pulled the entire pile of diaries from the drawer and selected the one marked 2009 on the front with black marker pen.

  Goodhew turned to 29 May, the Wednesday on which Helen Neill’s body had been found. There was no entry there, just frantic hatching scored deeply in black with a biro, as though neat shading had given way to impatient scribbling. He held it up to the light, looking for words that had been destroyed, and noticed at once that the previous page was disfigured the same way, and the one before that, too. In fact going all the way back until Saturday, 25 April, the day Helen had vanished.

  A cupboard door slammed and Marlowe exclaimed, ‘Goodhew!’ She came darting into the room. ‘I completely forgot to tell you, but I think he might be seeing someone new. It’s in there, too.’ She picked up her current diary and flicked through page after page. ‘It’s here somewhere.’ Finally she found it. ‘Here!’ She held out the page: Monday, 13 June 2011. Peter bumped into a girl in the square and they ran into the Flying Pig to get out of the rain.

  ‘Marlowe, could you meet me again tomorrow and show me exactly how you’ve been watching him? And I’ll take these diaries with me, meanwhile.’

  Marlowe nodded. ‘Will I get them back?’

  ‘I’ll do my best, but I don’t know. I’m sorry if that makes you feel uncomfortable.’

  ‘It’s OK.’ Marlowe ducked back into the kitchen and soon returned with two fresh mugs of tea. ‘What happens now?’

  ‘Well, I’m going to go through these some more to find out whether you know more than you realize. I know you’ve made one mistake, though.’

  ‘What?’ asked Marlowe.

  Goodhew held up the last of the scored-out pages. ‘This is the day he finished with you, isn’t it?’

  Her skin flushed and she bit her lip. ‘So?’ She studied her mug intently.

  ‘You thought Helen Neill’s body turned up several days after Pete finished with you, but it didn’t,’ he said. She’d stopped even looking at him, and he could see sweat glistening in the little ‘V’ of her neckline. He had to know. ‘Marlowe, what do all these blank pages mean?’

  She glowered at Goodhew. ‘I told you, he changed.’ Her hands shook and the scars on her wrists seemed suddenly brighter. ‘He was vicious and spiteful.’ She grabbed the diary and stabbed it with her finger just in front of him. ‘On all these days. Every single one of them.’

  Goodhew grabbed her hand as it still held the diary. ‘The first of those is the day Helen was abducted; the last of them is when her body was found.’

  CHAPTER 68

  MONDAY, 4 JULY 2011

  Goodhew’s grandfather’s old library smelt of fresh emulsion and new carpeting. It smelt like a show home, but no show home has photos of dead people scattered across the Axminster.

  Goodhew sat on the floor in the middle of the room. He had spread out all his copies of the crime-scene photos to his left; and the photos of Pete Walsh, Julie Wilson and Marlowe Gates to his right.

  A bare bulb hung from the ceiling, casting large, unhelpful shadows across the carpet. He couldn’t work like that, so he rummaged through a cupboard, and returned with his old reading lamp. He plugged it in and extended the cable to the centre of the floor, where it cast a smaller pool of brighter light directly on to the photographs.

  He decided to return to his grid idea, but redrew it with pairs of names: girlfriends and victims, instead of just girlfriends.

  Down one side he listed:

  ‘Marlowe and Helen’,

  ‘Julie and Extra Victim’,

  ‘Paulette and Kaye’,

  ‘Extra Girlfriend and Stephanie’,

  ‘Girl in the rain and Planned Victim’.

  If Pete finished with his girlfriends on or just after the day the bodies had been discovered, then their investigation had missed one murder: the one that tied in with his breaking up with Julie. The last sighting of Julie and Pete in Marlowe’s diaries was 26 July 2010.

  And there would also have been a girlfriend to coincide with Stephanie’s death, someone Pete had dumped on or just after Wednesday, 8 June 2011.

  And if Pete had now met another woman, how long before the next abduction?

  Goodhew phoned Gully. ‘Sue, are you busy?’

  ‘Just lying around, doing sod all,’ she replied sleepily.

  ‘I need you to check for another murder. We’re looking for a body discovered on the twenty-sixth of July 2010, or in the week running up to it. Make that two weeks, so the twelfth of July to the twenty-sixth of July 2010.’

  Lisa Fairbanks needed most of all to ignore the stench of her own urine and excrement. She couldn’t afford to be sick, as the gag would make her choke.

  She looked up. The Thetford Forest sky hung bright with pinprick stars and a moon with an opaque face like a weather-beaten gargoyle. She could glimpse it in patches through tiny gaps in the foliage of the taller trees surrounding her.

  The trunk of her own tree sloped away from her, giving her no shelter and looking like it too had turned its back on her. She lay face-up, with her feet pressed flat against the bark. A few inches above the toes of her shoes, she could still make out the shadow of a sharp outcrop of broken branch protruding from the gnarled trunk.

  She just couldn’t reach it, though. The ends of the rope binding her wrists had been tied to the rope around her ankles, securing her hands and feet so they were less than twelve inches apart. She shuffled her feet up towards it. The rope tugged hard, digging into her wrist bone. She arched her back and thus managed to move her hands a fraction closer to her feet.

  One hand was clenched over the other, and the base of her spine pressed down on them both. Both hands now started feeling numb.

  She shuffled her feet forward again, but they were still at least two inches from the branch.

  But too close to give up.

  Lisa took a deep breath, then another – ignoring the taste of blood where the gag cut into the corners of her mouth. Concentrate, she told herself. Concentrate.

  Marlowe tossed her duvet out of the airing cupboard. She had decided to sleep on the sofa as it was, instead of folding it out to make a bed.

  She brushed her teeth in front of Robert Mitchum, wondering which film he had been making when it was taken.

  She felt sure the picture meant nothing significant.

  She returned to the living area, switched out the light and lay down on top of the duvet, staring up at the sulphur glow that the street lamp cast on her ceiling.

  She tried to remember The Cross and the Switchblade in detail. Who’d written the book? Was it David something? She couldn’t even remember the author’s name.

  What would Peter enjoy in a book about love and salvation? And she now doubted whether it would affect her in the same way it had when she’d first read it. She was altogether too cynical now.

  She pictured the words on the back cover: ‘The face of a killer started him on his lonely crusade.’

  Marlowe closed her eyes and fell asleep.

  Goodhew’s notes had expanded to six pages scattered across the floor, overlapping with each other to cover the assembled photos.

  He scanned his notes and questions. They’d have to wait for tomorrow before he could start filling in the answers.

  His jacket hung on the door handle, and the edge of the paperback jutted from one pocket.

  He pulled it out and leant against the wall, as he started to read the first chapter. Read it for a few minutes, then go back to the notes fresh; that was his plan.

  Lisa writhed and wriggled, still trying to hook the rope binding her ankles over that sharp stump of bough. The more she fought, the more it bit into her flesh.

  She ignored the pain. Another inch and s
he’d be there. Her neck twisted as she tried to allow her hands another inch of movement towards her feet.

  She lunged out with her feet and her right toe caught the tip of the cracked bough.

  Nearly there.

  She thrashed around, struggling for just another inch. She grunted, fighting for breath and twisting her torso against the restraint of the rope. She felt the broken bough bump against her ankle bone. The rope was hooked.

  She’d done it!

  She lay there panting, her weight now resting on her shoulder blades; her hips suspended just above the ground. The flesh on her wrists was dragged taut towards her ankles. A searing pain shot through her neck, across her shoulders and down her spine. Even if she’d torn every muscle in her body, it was still worth it.

  A draft of cool breeze swept through the forest, rattling the leaves and brushing against her face. It passed on, but a different rustling remained. A more determined sound.

  She held herself still.

  It stopped, then scurried closer.

  A film of sweat erupted across her cheeks. A rat!

  She dragged the rope from side to side across the sharp stump of the bough. Pulling it tight, disregarding her chafed skin; just begging for the rope to fray.

  The rat scampered to the edge of the bank, paused, then scurried closer still.

  She let out a strangled squeal and the rat retreated. Lisa squirmed to free her legs, but it was the stump which gave way, sending her legs skimming back down the trunk to the ground. Her ankle bone banged against the serrated bark of the tree. The wood flew apart, dry and brittle, and the largest fragment catapulted into her eyebrow. Blood oozed into her eye.

  Gully slipped into the police station at 1 a.m. She turned on the second-floor lights, glad to be alone in the office. The last thing she wanted was company, especially when there was only a sweatshirt between her Dumbo nightie and the rest of the world. This wasn’t how she had wanted Goodhew to wake her up in the middle of the night.