Imago Page 4

“That must have been very – hurtful,” said Olbeck. “Were you angry with her?”

  Claudia gave him the boldest look she’d managed so far.

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “Did you argue?”

  “Sort of. I didn’t get a chance to say much. She just slammed out, and I didn’t see her again.”

  Claudia’s words seemed to strike her, and Kate saw her eyes become shiny with tears.

  “I didn’t see her again,” repeated Claudia, softly.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” said Kate, automatically. Claudia nodded silently, blinking.

  “Did Mandy have a boyfriend that you know of, Claudia?”

  Claudia shook her head.

  “I don’t think so. She never mentioned anyone.”

  “Did you ever see her with a man or – or a boy? Did anyone ever come to visit her that you know of?”

  “No,” said Claudia. She was shifting a little in her seat. Then she pulled out her phone and checked the time.

  “I’m really sorry, but I’ve got to get Madison now.”

  “Right, that’s fine,” said Olbeck. As Claudia went to open the back door, he recalled something else.

  “Claudia, one more quick thing. Did Mandy have a handbag that she used?”

  “A handbag?” asked Claudia, and Kate was reminded of the line by Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Ernest. She tried not to grin. God knows, it wasn’t funny in this context.

  “What d’you mean?” asked Claudia. “Yeah, she had one, just one. She used it all the time.”

  “What did it look like?”

  Claudia indicated her own bag.

  “Like this. We got ‘em together except Mandy’s was white.”

  “Just like yours?” Kate checked. Claudia nodded. Kate quickly grabbed her phone and took a photo of Claudia’s bag. Claudia didn’t protest but looked a little startled.

  “Thanks, Claudia. Here are our cards, if you think of anything else, please let us know.”

  Claudia didn’t say goodbye. She ducked her head in shy, silent acknowledgement and got out of the car, closing the door quietly.

  Chapter Five

  During that evening’s running session, Kate was forced, reluctantly, to admit to herself that it was getting easier. Slightly easier. Her face was still flushed a fetching shade of beetroot, and her t-shirt was still welded to her back with sweat, but even she couldn’t deny that the actual running was getting easier. She was able to push herself a little further and run a little faster without feeling like her lungs were about to spontaneously combust inside her.

  She didn’t mention that to Olbeck. She’d never hear the end of it.

  They finished their run along a section of the canal path, actually passing close to where Mandy Renkin had met her killer. Kate glanced at the derelict buildings as they jogged past.

  “Why would she meet a punter here?” she asked, between puffs of breath. “It looks so dangerous. So dingy and dirty. Why go here?”

  Olbeck was running along freely and easily.

  “It’s private,” he said. “It’s quiet, it’s overlooked. Easy to do the business there if you didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

  “Are you talking about Mandy or the perp?”

  Olbeck eased down to a fast walk, and Kate followed him gratefully.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Surely that would apply to both of them.”

  “Well, exactly,” said Kate, also noting that she was getting her breath back much more quickly these days. “We need to find out what Mandy’s usual method of operation was. Did she normally work the streets? Had she been to this place before with punters?”

  Olbeck nodded, swiping the sweatband strapped around his wrist across his glistening forehead.

  “Why don’t we try and track down some of her old associates? Find out whether she used to work with another girl, stuff like that.”

  Kate was walking normally now. She pushed some loose strands of hair off her hot face.

  “Of course, there’s another possibility,” she said. She looked up at Olbeck and raised her eyebrows. “That she went there because she was with someone that she knew. Someone she didn’t think would harm her.”

  Olbeck slowed. “Yes,” he said slowly. “That’s a possibility. That she went there with a friend or an old acquaintance.”

  “For sex?”

  “I don’t know. Who knows?”

  “There didn’t seem to have been any partner on the cards. Not according to Claudia.”

  “That’s not to say there wasn’t. Maybe Mandy was keeping it quiet.”

  “Why?”

  They’d reached the end of Olbeck’s street by now. Kate could see the golden lamplight shining out from the living room windows of his house, warm and friendly-looking. I wish I had that at my place, she thought wistfully. Someone waiting for me at home.

  “Why would Mandy keep it quiet? I don’t know. Maybe she was in a relationship with someone who was embarrassed or ashamed of her. Maybe she wasn’t in a relationship at all. Oh, I don’t know.” Olbeck sounded irritated for a second. “We don’t seem to be getting very far, do we?”

  Kate shrugged.

  “Let’s leave it for now. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  “Kate!” exclaimed Jeff as he opened the front door. “Don’t you look wonderful? Come in, darling.”

  “You’re such a liar,” said Kate, grinning and stepping forward into the hallway. “I look like a sweaty tomato.”

  “That’s my favourite look,” said Jeff.

  “He’s not lying, it actually is,” said Olbeck, receiving a kiss from his partner, which made Kate slightly uncomfortable to witness. The awkwardness only lasted a moment. Jeff swept Kate into the kitchen, where the French doors were open to the garden and a table was laid for dinner outside.

  “Why don’t you grab a shower while I finish dinner?” suggested Jeff. “You know where the towels are.”

  “I don’t have anything to change into.”

  “Borrow one of my t-shirts,” said Olbeck. “Want a drink to take up with you?”

  “Okay and yes,” said Kate, accepting the cool glass of orange juice, beaded with condensation. She headed upstairs and locked the bathroom door, remembering that their shower was one that started off icy and rapidly became too hot without some judicious juggling of the controls. When she’d got it to an acceptable temperature, she stripped off her clothes and hopped in.

  The bathroom was pretty clean and nicely decorated, but it had enough of a homely kind of clutter to feel very lived-in. All they need is a couple of kids, and they’d be the perfect family, Kate thought as she sluiced herself down. She was suddenly swamped with a wave of loneliness so severe that tears sprang to her eyes. She pinched the bridge of her nose hard, leaning back against the comforting spray of hot water.

  Fifteen minutes later, she’d successfully washed the grime from her workout—and her emotions—down the drain.

  “Better?” said Olbeck as she came back into the kitchen, dressed in the old Rolling Stones t-shirt he’d left hanging on the doorknob of the bathroom door for her.

  “Much,” said Kate, emotions under control again. She accepted a refill of her glass and stretched her clean feet out on the decking. It was still very warm, the kind of warm night rarely experienced even at the height of a British summer. Olbeck lit a citronella candle to keep away the insects.

  Jeff surpassed himself with the food. It was the typical fare: healthy, heavy on the vegetables and light on lean protein, but still intensely flavourful. The first course consisted of rice-paper spring rolls accompanied by little white bowls filled with soy sauce for dipping. When these were disposed of, Jeff brought out an Asian salad, bright with slivers of carrot, red pepper and spring onion, with thin ribbons of rare beef curled like moist, pink ribbons amongst the greenery.

  “God, this is delicious,” said Kate, trying to eat daintily although she felt like inhaling the plateful whole. “You’re
such a good cook, Jeff.”

  “I’m a man of many talents.”

  That remark resulted in a sly exchange of smiles between the two men. Kate, well-aware of the innuendo, kept her eyes on her plate, eating steadily. What’s the matter with me? She never normally minded Olbeck and Jeff being all lovey-dovey. Despite the good food and the familiar company, despite the afterglow of the exercise and the beautiful night, Kate felt itchy and cross and miserable. She had to work hard not to show it. Probably hormones, she told herself. Just my luck.

  When she got home that night, the house felt very big and empty. Kate walked around, checking the doors were locked and windows tightly shut. She watched television in a desultory manner for five minutes before pressing the off button on the remote irritably. Her mobile pinged and she read a casual, chatty text from her brother Jay which, somehow, she just didn’t feel like answering right away. Kate picked up a book she’d been meaning to read for several weeks, opened the cover, scanned the first page and snapped it shut again. She switched on the kettle to boil the water for her camomile tea, waiting for it to steam itself to a stop while she looked out the back kitchen window onto the darkness of the back garden. Occasionally a neighbourhood fox trotted across the lawn, but he wasn’t around tonight. Kate made her tea.

  Balancing her delicate cup on its saucer – tea made in a big mug just tasted wrong to her – she stood for a moment at the big, bay window in the living room, having snapped off the overhead light. She watched the silent street outside, blinking through a veil of steam. He’s out there somewhere, she thought, and turned abruptly away, wincing as she spilled a little hot tea over her thumb.

  Safely tucked up in bed, she paged through the stored numbers in her phone, looking for the one right at the start of the list. Anderton’s name glowed from the screen. Kate looked it for a moment, her thumb hovering over the call button. Then she sighed, put the phone down on her bedside table and turned out the light, lying down and drawing the duvet cover up to her chin.

  J’s diary

  My most pressing problem was, of course, what to do with the body. I’m not one of these people who do what they do to have a corpse to play with. The thought makes me feel ill. What I seek is the moment of transformation – the sinking of the knife into warm, living flesh. Once that moment has passed, there’s nothing left for me there. The body is just something cumbersome and unpleasant to be disposed of as quickly as possible.

  After the first blind panic had passed, I realised that I had to get rid of the body. I may not have many visitors, but I do have some, and there was no way I could explain away the presence of a dead tart on my kitchen floor. Not for a moment! So something had to be done. Should I dump the body? Would I get away with it? I thought uneasily of DNA, of dropped hairs and clothing fibres all leading a trail back to me. If the body was found, then I would eventually be found out. Surely?

  For a few hours, I thought of all kinds of ridiculous plans for disposing the body. Dropping it in front of a truck from a motorway bridge. Weighting it down and sinking it to the bottom of a deep lake. I knew that these fantasies were a way of getting through the horror of what I had to do. Of course in the end, I realised that the body had to stay here, in the house – or in the garden.

  I thought for a while of dismembering it, but to be honest, that was beyond me, even if I had enough knowledge, dexterity and strength to actually do it. Just the thought of saws and axes chopping through bone and gristle actually made me retch. In the end, I wrapped the body up in several layers of thick plastic, taped it up and took it down to the cellar.

  These old houses all have cellars. Those which have been renovated usually turn the dank, cobweb-hung, dark little rooms under the earth into modish studies, guest bedrooms, or perhaps a home cinema. Of course, Mother would never have countenanced anything like that.

  Our cellar – my cellar – was as it probably had been when the house was built over a hundred years ago. The floor was brick, but right at the back, there was a boarded up aperture that was originally intended to house coal. The door in the planks at the front wasn’t very big, but I was pretty sure I could get the body through intact. When I took a torch down to have a proper look, I could see the brick floor hadn’t extended into the coal store – the ground was bare earth. No wonder this house is so cold, I thought to myself irrelevantly, before pushing myself through the little door of the coal store and gingerly standing up. I couldn’t stand upright, and that presented a problem. How was I going to be able to wield a spade? I needed a deep hole.

  One thing about me is that I won’t give up. That used to be one of the insults flung at me by Mother, one of the many. Stubborn as a mule, selfish, it’s all about you, you, you… Of course, the real root of the issue was that I was me and not Father, that for some reason, she’d been left with me instead of him. Why can’t you be more like your Father? It was a constant refrain. In the end, I rather prided myself on being different to him, or I told myself that’s what I felt.

  So, even though burying the body in the coal store would be a tough and laborious task, it was one I set for myself and of course I completed it – eventually. I spent an hour or so every spare evening over the course of several weeks digging away with a short spade and hand trowel. Luckily, the cellar also contained a large chest freezer, and I was able to store the body in there while I prepared its final resting place.

  Finally it was ready, and I levered the stiff corpse from its temporary icy tomb and transferred it to the hole dug beyond the coal store door. Once it was covered with a foot of earth, the coal door padlocked and the cellar door bolted, I toasted myself with the last of Father’ s whisky, raising a glass to a job well done.

  For a good while after the killing, I was in what I now see as an exalted state. At first it was fuelled by the feverish grip of fear that I would be caught, but once this had abated, I felt something different but equally as intense. Everything about life seemed brighter. My usual dreary routine – work, household duties, watching television – all this seemed saturated with colour and emotion, sparkling with vivacity. I felt everything intensely. It was like being born anew, and it was an experience that I could never have anticipated. From the moment I thrust that knife into her stomach, everything had changed. I went about my day with a gladdened heart and a mind that was suddenly alive to the possibilities of the world.

  And then, much as the fear had done, my acute euphoria began to ebb. Daily, little by little, this marvellous new feeling faded until the glitter and sparkle that had been mine was gone, the shine rubbed off by time and reality. I could feel the greyness gathering again, and my mood dipped and dipped and dipped until everything was back to how it had been before.

  That was when I knew I had to do it again.

  Chapter Six

  The next morning, the team assembled in Anderton’s office for a debrief. Kate had managed to grab a chair, but after seeing Theo hobble in on his crutches, she stood up again and made him take it. He collapsed onto it and stuck his plastered foot out carefully, giving her a grateful smile.

  Anderton spun on his heel, realised how close he was to the wall and spun back again, thwarted.

  “When do we move back?” he implored. “This is intolerable.”

  “Next Monday,” said Jane, confidently. “I’ve just had an email from the Facilities Team. We’re back in on Monday.”

  “Thank God for that. We’ll have to have champagne. Now, where were we?”

  “Stuffed into your office,” said Olbeck with a grin.

  “Very funny, Mark. How are we getting on with Mandy Renkin?”

  Olbeck immediately became serious. “Kate and I have interviewed her friend, the priest who runs the Mission that provided her accommodation and one of the volunteers who works at the Mission.”

  “Get anything?”

  Olbeck hesitated for a moment. Kate took up the baton.

  “It seems quite likely that Mandy had gone back to using drugs. That could well be
why she taken up prostitution again – to get the money.”

  Anderton nodded. “We’ll have the tests back from the path lab this week. Should be easy enough to see whether that was the case. Now, it’s a possibility that it’s a drug-related crime, although I’m inclined to think that it’s not. It’s an angle worth investigating, though. Go through the records, see if we have any dealers we can lean on. Anyone with a record of violent crime, knife crime, that sort of thing. Rav, you do that.”

  He swung around, churning his hair with both hands. “What else? No one’s mentioned a partner, a boyfriend. Was there one?”

  There was silence from the team. Anderton lowered his hands and his gaze swept the room.

  “You need to start doing some more questioning. Kate, Mark, go back to the Mission, talk to Father Whatshisname again. Get some more background.”

  “Fine,” said Kate. “But we’re interviewing the social worker today and the foster family.”

  Anderton raised his eyebrows.

  “Okay, good stuff. Do a follow up at the Mission when you can. Okay team, unless anyone else has anything to add, let’s get on.”

  No one had anything to add. They began to file slowly out. Kate, one of the last to leave except Theo, saw Anderton walk over to him and say something in a low tone, speaking too quietly for Kate to hear.

  She lingered outside the office until Theo hobbled out on his crutches, and they walked back to the temporary office together.

  “What did Anderton want?” asked Kate unblushingly.

  Theo was by necessity looking at the floor as he swung himself along.

  “What?”

  “What did he say to you at the end?”

  Theo looked up and grinned.

  “Nosy. Nothing much. He just asked me to check the national databases for similar cases.”

  Kate frowned. “Similar?”

  “Yeah. Similar weapon, similar MO.” They reached the door of the office, and Kate hurried to hold it open for Theo. “Thanks. Anyway, that’s all he wanted. Why?”