Imago Page 12

  After a minute’s shower, a frantic rub down, a squoosh of perfume and a slick of eyeliner, she grabbed her velvet jeans and silk shirt from the wardrobe, pulled them on, dragged a brush through her hair, plucked her one smart jacket from the hanger, yanked her strappy sandals from under the bed and pounded back down the stairs, arriving flushed but hopefully less dishevelled in the doorway of the living room.

  Andrew was still clutching his bouquet of flowers. He didn’t look like he’d had much wine. He looked up as Kate appeared, and his face softened.

  “Wow. That’s a transformation.”

  “I’m really sorry about forgetting,” said Kate, making a mental note that she was no longer going to apologise.

  It looked as though Andrew had forgiven her already. He stood up and handed her the flowers.

  “That’s lovely,” said Kate. She couldn’t imagine Anderton giving her flowers. The contrast made her clench her teeth for a millisecond before she put all thoughts of him far from her.

  Andrew nodded.

  “You look really lovely, Kate,” he said and the warmth and sincerity of his tone made Kate smile with pleasure, despite her tiredness.

  “Come on, then,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  *

  Olbeck walked into the office the next morning to catch Kate halfway through an enormous yawn.

  “I know how you feel,” he said, slinging himself into his seat opposite hers.

  Kate shut her mouth with a snap. She looked at her colleague, noting the bruised half-circles beneath his eyes. Looking around the room, she thought, We all look terrible. We’re all running on empty. It was no longer surprising that Jerry had suffered a heart attack; what was surprising was that the rest of the team was all somehow managing to keep going despite the unrelenting pressure and stress.

  “I’m knackered,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “How’s Jerry?”

  “No change. They kept telling me he was stable, but they wouldn’t say much else.” He gestured to a small plastic bag he’d put on his desk. “I’ve got his stuff here. Apparently someone needs to go and get him some night clothes or something like that.”

  Kate yawned again, barely listening. She was wondering whether to mention her date with Andrew Stanton. Normally of course, that would set her up for at least half an hour of teasing from Olbeck, but looking at him this morning, she didn’t think he’d have the energy for even a mild joke.

  Not that there was much to tell. The dinner had been pleasant enough, the food very good, and Andrew had been charming and attentive company. He’d dropped her off at home at about ten o’clock and given Kate a gentlemanly kiss on the cheek on the doorstep. At least Kate thought he had; her memories by then were somewhat hazy because she’d been almost hallucinating from tiredness.

  She decided against mentioning it.

  Olbeck was saying something to her.

  “What?”

  “I said, someone needs to go and get Jerry’s things for him. Pyjamas and toothbrush and all that gubbins.”

  “Toothbrush? He’s in intensive care, for God’s sake, he’s hardly going to care about tooth decay.” Kate saw Olbeck’s face and relented. “Okay, okay. I’ll go if you like. I could do with getting out of here.”

  “Thanks. It won’t take long. Just drop them off at the reception area, I think.”

  “Fine,” said Kate, yawning yet again. She took Jerry’s house keys from Olbeck, scribbled down his home address and picked up her bag.

  Driving through the sunshine, negotiating the weekend traffic in Abbeyford, Kate found it hard to believe that somewhere out there in the town was a multiple murderer. Everyone on the streets looked so ordinary, so innocent, so untouched. Kate braked for a pedestrian crossing – a mother with a baby in a pushchair raised a hand in thanks and pushed the buggy across the road. For once, Kate didn’t look at the baby; she looked at the woman pushing the pram, who was small and thin with long, dark hair. Was she a potential victim?

  For a mad moment, Kate considered parking the car and following the woman home, just to make sure she was safe. Then she shook her head, bringing herself back to reality. You have to catch this man, she told herself. Because he’s a killer…and because if you don’t, you’re going to end up in a mental hospital. We all will.

  Despite the sat nav, she still got lost looking for Jerry’s house, which was in a suburb of Abbeyford called Fenwick. The street was quite similar to the one on which Kate lived: rows of semi-detached Victorian houses with tiny front gardens, some of which had been paved or gravelled over to provide parking spaces. Kate had to shunt her car into a tiny space on the end of the row of back-to-back vehicles and then walk back to Number Twelve, which apparently was where Jerry lived.

  Kate paused at the entrance to the front garden. The house had an uncared-for look: peeling paint on the window frames, a weed-choked patch of earth in front of the front bay window. There were yellowing net curtains hanging limply at the window of the downstairs rooms. Kate checked the scrap of paper on which she’d written the address, suddenly convinced she’d got the wrong house.

  No, this was definitely Jerry’s place. She found the house keys and walked up the little path to the porch and the front door, tripping over a loose paving slab, catching herself and looking around self-consciously in case anyone had been watching her. There was no one in sight. Kate tried the keys in the door and pushed it open, cautiously.

  The house had the kind of dusty, stale, cooking-remnants aroma that Kate, rightly or wrongly, associated with elderly people’s homes. The hallway was tiled in chipped red clay tiles, probably original, with the walls papered in a faded floral pattern. Kate stood for a moment, looking around, puzzled. Again, the feeling that she’d come to the wrong house resurfaced. This, surely, was not the home of a middle-aged man. She looked around again.

  There, hanging on a coat rack of dark, polished wood, was a coat she recognised as one of Jerry’s. Several pairs of black and brown men’s brogues were tumbled carelessly in a corner by the door. Mentally shrugging, Kate walked through the doorway at the end of the hallway that led into a kitchen.

  The kitchen was quite large but had clearly been refitted about thirty years ago, judging by the orange hue of the pine cabinets and the cheap, overly-shiny brass handles. The sink and counter were piled with dirty dishes. The floor was covered in drips of unidentifiable liquid, fluff, dust and scraps of tissue paper, while in the corner by the back door, empty beer cans and bottles were stacked in a collapsing cardboard box.

  Another wooden door with an old-fashioned metal latch stood under the slope of the staircase, clearly leading to what had been the cellar. Kate observed the squalor, feeling something very much like pity rising up inside her. This was Jerry’s house, his empty, lonely, dirty house. What a place to come back to after doing the job they did; it was cheerless, comfortless, without any company to render it more palatable.

  Kate thought of what Anderton had said about Jerry. He’s had a hard year… No immediate family. Poor Jerry. Now, his rudeness, grumpiness, abruptness – whatever you could call it – was more understandable. Kate thought of her own house, full of carefully chosen, beautiful things (nothing very expensive, but that wasn’t the point); she’d made a home for herself with love and care and attention. Was this slightly queasy feeling of pity something more? Did Jerry and she have something in common? You’re both alone, whispered a mean little voice.

  She left the kitchen and looked quickly into the other rooms on the ground floor. She wasn’t sure why she was bothering. Just being nosy, Kate. The living room was dim and musty, worn brown velvet curtains drawn against the sunlight, the net curtains between them and the window pane no cleaner when seen from this side of the window.

  There was a silver-framed photograph on the mantelpiece of what was clearly a much younger Jerry, a quite startlingly handsome Jerry. Kate stared. She wouldn’t have recognised the overweight, balding, angry middle-aged man in this picture of a dark-haired, dark-
eyed young charmer, smiling at the camera. She picked it up to look more closely and then looked up at herself, framed in the dusty mirror over the mantelpiece. For a second, she seemed to see herself in twenty years’ time: her skin wrinkled and blotched, her dark, shiny hair dulled and greyed. She put the photograph back, repressing a shudder.

  She headed for the stairs, thinking that she’d already wasted too much time here. Why on Earth had she offered to come and do this? Jerry would hate to think of her poking around in his cupboards and drawers, finding his toiletries. Kate was uncomfortably aware that she’d offered to do this precisely so she could legitimately get out of having to visit the hospital to do her shift of waiting for news like an anxious relative. She reached the top landing and pushed open the door of what was obviously the master bedroom. “Master” bedroom, what a stupid, sexist term. Kate shook her head.

  Again, the curtains were drawn against the sunlight, and the room had that stale, musty smell of a place uncleaned, unaired, and neglected. The smell of dust and something else, something ranker underneath it all. Kate wrinkled her nose. She hesitated for a second and crossed over to the window, pulling the curtains back enough to let a little light into the room. The bed was unmade, the duvet in its sombre navy blue cover tumbled in a heap at the foot of the mattress.

  Kate opened the bedside cabinet, as it was the only piece of furniture with drawers in the room. Working on the fairly reasonable assumption that Jerry might keep his nightwear next to the bed, she regarded the contents of the drawers with raised eyebrows. Each one was rammed to the top with porn: DVDs, videos, even the odd magazine. Kate grimaced and pushed them back with her foot. She straightened up and looked around the room. No chest of drawers, no tallboy. There was a cheap, flat-pack wardrobe over by the far wall. Kate opened one door, swept her gaze over the clothes hanging up and then opened the other door.

  For a moment, she looked at what was contained within with no emotion. Later, when she was to replay this moment in her head, Kate realised it had reminded her of a case she’d been working on in Bournemouth, the murder of a homeless drug addict. The victim had been found in a derelict house, and when Kate had arrived on the scene and viewed the body, she had for a few seconds wondered why there were a pair of white gloves on the victim’s chest. It had taken about twenty seconds of innocent perusal before she realised that the gloves were in fact his hands, cut off at the wrist and dropped contemptuously onto his body.

  Looking at the interior of Jerry’s wardrobe produced a similar response. A few moments of vague puzzlement before the thumping weight of reality crashed down.

  There were two handbags in the wardrobe: one white, one black. Both, except for their colour, were identical. Fringed and tasselled, pockmarked with cheap metal studs. Kate could recall very clearly where she had last seen the black bag: over the slender shoulder of Claudia Smith.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Kate breathed in slowly. She felt hollow, as if a heavy weight was falling through the middle of her body, leaving empty space behind it. She closed her eyes for a moment, opened them, and looked again, as if what was in front of her could be transformed into something else by the passage of a few seconds. The bags were still there. Kate heard herself make a sound, a muffled groan or a gasp. She found herself backing away, slowly, moving backwards without looking until the backs of her legs hit the edge of the bed and she collapsed onto it into a sitting position. The old springs of the mattress creaked and groaned, echoing the sound of disbelief she’d made.

  It can’t be true. Not Jerry. Kate found she had her eyes squeezed tightly shut again. She must be mistaken, she must be. She lifted her head a little, looking again at the bags within the gloom of the wardrobe. Getting up, she groped in her pocket for a clean tissue. Wrapping it around her trembling fingers, she lifted the black handbag out from the wardrobe and put it on the bed, opening the top. She could feel from the weight of it in her hand that it wasn’t empty, but it was still a shock to look inside and see a fluffy pink purse, a bunch of keys, a scratched lipstick, a balled-up tissue.

  The keys had a plastic key ring attached, the kind that had an opening for a small photograph. Kate turned the blank side of it over with her tissue-clad fingers. The big dark eyes of Madison Smith looked up at her from the depths of her mother’s handbag. Kate heard herself again, a noise that was something between a gasp and a retch. She picked up the purse and opened it. A credit card in the name of Ms. C Smith. A debit card in the name of Claudia Smith. No. No.

  Kate left Claudia’s bag on the bed and went to fetch the white one. What had Claudia said about Mandy’s bag? “We got ‘em together except Mandy’s was white.” Kate ferried it across to the bed and put it by its negative twin. Inside was a red leather purse, pens, a notebook with a geometric flower print on the cover, tissues, baby wipes, cigarettes, a packet of condoms. Kate opened the purse. Amanda Renkin was printed on the one bank card contained within it.

  There must be another explanation. There must be. Kate sat back down on the bed, the springs groaning beneath her, and pinched the bridge of her nose. Think, Kate. Think. Jerry had the handbags from two murdered girls in his wardrobe. Could he have taken them from the bodies? Of course he had, how ridiculous. Of course he had taken them – how else would they have gotten here? Kate realised her mistake. She meant, could he have taken them from the bodies without him necessarily being the killer? And if he had, why had he? Why tamper with the evidence?

  Kate raised her head and stared at the open door of the wardrobe. A coldness was creeping through her body, as if an icy wave were moving slowly through her. If Jerry wasn’t the killer and had tampered with evidence…well, the only explanation Kate could come up with was that Jerry had done it to shield someone else. Who?

  You know who, whispered that small mean voice again.

  Kate shook her head. This was ridiculous. Truly ridiculous. She stood up, wobbling a little, and walked to the window, staring out at the quiet suburban street outside. A woman walked past the house with bulging supermarket shopping bags in each hand, a little boy on a scooter following behind her. Could Jerry really be the killer? Kate thought back to the last crime scene, Jerry staring at the body, grey in the face, as within him his heart ruptured. What had Anderton said? He’s escalating. He will have made mistakes.

  Had Jerry seen something then and realised that he would be caught? Had he remembered something, some piece of evidence that would point the police to his guilt? Was he guilty? He must be, Kate. How else can you explain finding these handbags?

  He might be shielding someone else.

  Kate realised she was pacing the dusty carpet, arguing with herself. Who would Jerry shield? Who would he risk his career, his reputation, his freedom for? She turned on her heel and paced back. There was no one. Surely, no one. It must be him, Kate told herself, staring at her white face in the mirrored door of the wardrobe.

  Oh fuck, what was she going to do? She probably shouldn’t have even touched those bags, tissue or no tissue. She looked again into the wardrobe but there was nothing else there. No other bags or purses or anything suspicious.

  She pulled out her phone and brought Anderton’s number up on the screen. Her thumb hovered over the ‘call’ button for a moment and then she pressed it, listening to the ringing on the other end of the line.

  He might be shielding someone else.

  Kate jabbed the ‘end call’ button. Her chest felt tight. She told herself she was being ridiculous. Paranoid and ridiculous. She tried to think back over the times and dates, tried to tally them up with her own memories. Anderton was with me the night Claudia Smith was killed. He was with me for the whole night.

  But had he been? Kate had slept for several hours. Was it conceivable that Anderton could have left her sleeping, crept out and… Surely not. It was impossible.

  Other memories were creeping back. What had Anderton said when he walked her home? There’s a man who kills women on the loose in this town. And Kate had quer
ied the use of the plural. Why had he said ‘women,’ not woman? Only one woman had been killed then. She’d even said as much to him.

  Kate groaned. What she was thinking was impossible. Surely it was impossible. There was no way that Anderton could have left her room, driven to the factory wastelands, somehow lured Claudia there and killed her, returning in time to be there, naked in bed, when Kate woke up. Surely not?

  Kate was pacing again. She stopped dead, suddenly struck by a thought that was so devastating that she thought she might faint. She sat down hurriedly on the edge of the bed again.

  What if it was both of them? Anderton and Jerry? Of course they would have rock solid alibis for some of the murders if the other one was committing them.

  What you’re thinking is madness.

  Kate picked up her phone again and brought up Olbeck’s number. On the verge of ringing it, she hesitated. Now that her imagination had begun working overtime, she saw News of the World headlines, tabloid fever. Was it possible that her phone was tapped? Had someone been leaking information to the media? She thought of the scrum of photographers that they’d driven through yesterday.

  In the end, she sent him a text that read: need to see you here at Jerry’s URGENTLY. Can’t talk over phone. COME HERE ASAP!

  After she put the phone back in her pocket, Kate stood for a moment in the middle of Jerry’s fetid bedroom, hugging her arms across her body. Despite the dusty, prickling heat of the room, she felt cold. She could feel her lungs fluttering within her, her breath coming in short, tight bursts.

  Realising she was three steps away from a panic attack, she forced herself to sit down again on the edge of the bed, drop her head forward and breathe deeply, in through her nose and out through her mouth. She kept this up until her hammering heart had slowed a little and she felt very slightly calmer. The buzzing in her ears receded.