Authors: Michael Robotham
The nursing home receptionist, Mrs Hamilton, is an overly cheerful woman who is addicted to watching TV soaps. She talks about the characters as though they’re real people and has been in mourning ever since Pauline died in
EastEnders
in 2006. She stops me as I lead my father across the entrance foyer.
‘There was someone looking for you,’ she says.
‘When?’
‘Just now – maybe ten minutes ago – she had some photographs of your father.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘I said you’d taken him for a walk.’
‘You’re sure she had photographs?’
‘And a sketch.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘I saw her heading towards the beach. You might still catch them.’
‘Them?’
‘She was with her sister. I think they were going for a swim.’ She glances through the large bay window. ‘I hope they hurry. Looks like we’re in for a storm.’
My father has already gone back to his room. He’ll be unlacing shoes and sitting on the bed, waiting for someone to tell him what to do next. Mrs Hamilton is still talking about the weather, but my mind is elsewhere. Calmly I walk out of the main doors, and down the front steps and across the sloping lawn. This is what I feared – the photographs can expose me. Somehow I have to get them back and keep the girl quiet. She’s brought her sister along. That complicates things. What will I tell her? What excuse can I use?
Harper didn’t stay quiet. She didn’t believe my story. I saw her that afternoon on the coastal path. I still had the box-cutter in my pocket and blood on my hands. Maggie Dutton lay bound and gagged and bleeding in the undergrowth.
‘Did you hear a woman scream?’ Harper asked.
‘No. It must have been a seagull.’
She looked along the footpath, unsure what to do. She had a large sketchbook beneath her arm and a zipped case of pencils and charcoals.
‘Where are you off to?’ I asked.
‘I’m going to sketch the cliffs.’
‘I’m just going to see my dad,’ I told her, motioning back along the path in the same direction that she’d come. ‘You should come and sketch him. You always said he had a great face.’
‘Would he mind?’
‘He won’t care. He doesn’t know what day it is.’
And so she came with me to the nursing home and sketched my father in a corner of the garden and took photographs with her Polaroid camera. I washed my hands under a tap and hid the box-cutter amid the rose bushes. I didn’t think about the sketches or the photographs until later when Harper called and said she’d seen a story on the TV about a woman being attacked on the footpath.
‘Did you see anything?’ she asked me.
‘No.’
‘But you must have walked right past her.’
‘Who?’
‘The woman who was attacked.’
‘I didn’t see anything.’
‘The police are asking witnesses to come forward – anyone who was on the footpath. We should call them…’
Jogging across the narrow lane, I reach the entrance to the footpath and take the steps to a viewing platform overlooking the bay. The clouds are churning overhead and thunder rumbles in the distance.
I scan the shoreline. Families are packing up, folding umbrellas and collecting toys. Small sunburnt children are being washed off, squealing at the cold, but not wanting to leave the water.
Charlie is sitting on a rock watching a younger girl paddling. Her sister looks about eight or nine, dressed in denim shorts and a T-shirt, carrying her sandals.
Swinging between boulders, I move closer. A group of teenage boys is also looking at Charlie. They’ve been drinking. Smoking a little weed. One of them asks Charlie if she wants to join them. She shakes her head.
‘You promised I could go for a swim,’ says the little girl, gazing down at her toes. The nails are painted bright pink.
‘Later,’ replies Charlie.
‘When?’
‘Soon.’
Julianne’s eyes open and she gives me a dreamy smile, as though I’m drifting in and out of focus. Her dry lips are stuck together. They separate slowly like a zipper opening.
‘Did they cut off my legs?’ she asks.
‘No.’
‘You hear stories, don’t you – of people going into hospital and they amputate the wrong limb or cut off the wrong breast.’
‘Your legs look great.’
‘What about my breasts?’
‘Very perky.’
‘Perky?’
‘That’s the left one. Pinky also looks good.’
‘You have names for my breasts.’
‘Is that wrong?’
‘I think they call it sexual objectification.’
‘But that assumes that I treat them merely as sex objects, which I don’t. I love every part of you equally.’
She tries to smile and squeezes my hand. I’m lying awkwardly half on the bed, half off.
‘How are you feeling?’ I ask.
‘Sore.’
‘Shall I get off?’
‘No, don’t move. Stay. How are the girls?’
‘Charlie has taken Emma swimming.’
‘Did you have to bribe her?’
‘No.’
I can’t take my eyes from her – the way her mouth moves when she speaks, the slight careless arching of her brows, her scent. She has always been like another language that I’ve never quite managed to master.
‘They want to see you.’
‘Maybe later,’ she says, sleepily. ‘They should drug me all the time. Feels wonderful.’
Her eyes shut and her breathing becomes shallow and steady. I climb off the bed and walk along the corridor. I try to call Charlie, but she isn’t answering her phone.
Becca Washburn is at the nurses’ station, talking to one of her colleagues.
‘Has your wife woken up?’ she asks.
‘She’s sleeping again.’
‘That’s pretty normal. There’s a cafeteria downstairs. The coffee isn’t as good as up the road, but you could always have tea.’
I tell her that I’m fine and just stretching my legs. I go back to Julianne’s room. Sitting by the window, I look across rooftops that are dotted with chimney pots and aerials. Picking up the TV remote, I turn on Sky News, muting the sound. Banner headlines roll along the bottom of the screen. Bombings. Beheadings. Threats. Refugees. A new story:
Attack Victim Wakes
is the headline. A photograph of Milo Coleman flashes on screen. I turn up the sound.
‘…psychologist found unconscious in the stairwell of a Bristol car park yesterday has woken from a coma. However, neurologists at the Royal Infirmary hold grave fears that Milo Coleman has suffered severe brain damage and may never recover his mental or physical faculties…’
A deep sadness swells in my chest and rises to my throat. I didn’t admire or respect Milo, but of all the fools in the world – and there are many – I feel as though he is my responsibility. I would rather be dead than live like a vegetable, but I could never ask others to make that choice for me.
‘The lion’s gaze,’ I whisper to myself.
Elliot Crowe didn’t kill his mother and sister. I don’t think he attacked Milo Coleman, yet someone wants to make him responsible. There are seven other known victims – different ages, genders, locations and demographics. Most have admitted to having extramarital affairs and the others might be lying, but I want to believe Maggie Dutton is telling the truth.
The same man is responsible for all these crimes – someone who feels betrayed, marginalised or cheated, who sees the world in black and white. How did he find his victims? Internet chat rooms. Online dating services. Dogging sites. Maybe he’s a cab driver or a marriage guidance counsellor or a divorce lawyer. What do people buy their mistresses? Flowers. Lingerie. Where do they take them? Restaurants. Hotels.
All at once I feel a surge of realisation like ice water running down my back. Every door and window in my mind seems to open and wind blows through lifting papers from desks and dust from corners and causes that tiny figure madly pedalling inside my head to stop for a moment and slap his forehead, saying,
Of course, a hotel!
He sees them come and go. He has their names or addresses or number plates. In the same breath, another detail catches and holds. When I visited Jeremy Egan’s office in Portishead he had a scale model of the Regency Hotel in Clevedon. His company is redeveloping the site – turning it into luxury apartments.
Punching my mobile, I call Maggie Dutton. Her answering machine picks up.
Hello, this is Maggie. Sorry I can’t come to the phone just now, but leave a message and I’ll get back to you soon … wait for the beep.
‘If you’re there, Maggie, pick up. It’s Joe O’Loughlin. I have a question. It’s very important. Did you and your husband ever stay at the Regency Hotel in Clevedon?’
I wait, listening, muttering, ‘Pick up! Pick up! Pick up!’
The receiver lifts. I hear Maggie’s voice.
‘Did you ever stay at the Regency?’ I ask.
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
‘I’m trying to remember … it must have been about seven or eight months ago.’
‘Did you pretend to be strangers? I mean, did you and your husband act as though you were having an affair?’
She hesitates. ‘Brendan thought it might be fun. He got me to wear a wig and short skirt. I chatted him up in the bar. Told him I was married.’ The penny drops, her voice changes. ‘Is that why I was attacked?’
I don’t answer her question. I’m running now, down the stairs and across the foyer. I call Ronnie Cray. She can stop this. She can take the credit. They’ve charged the wrong man.
The temporary incident room is being dismantled and packed way, whiteboards wiped clean and case files put in boxes. Most of the task force has been reassigned and only half a dozen detectives remain, inputting the backlog of statements and preparing a report for the Crown Prosecution Service. The case now belongs to the lawyers who will take it to trial.
I make an entrance, veering sideways and colliding with the furniture. People look up as I pick up a fallen chair and straighten a stack of files that have almost toppled from a desk. I nod apologetically and rattle pills into the palm of my hand, swallowing them dry.
DI Abbott emerges from an office. Not happy. ‘What’s this about?’
‘Where’s DCS Cray?’
‘On her way.’
As if on cue she arrives, throwing open doors and pushing aside chairs, acting as though she’s the one who’s been kept waiting. Bennie is behind her, hanging back because she’s unsure of her role.
‘What’s this about, guv?’ asks Monk.
‘The Professor has a theory,’ replies Cray, taking a seat and summoning the other detectives, who pull up chairs or prop buttocks on the corners of desks.
I waste no time laying it out, putting the pieces together as they came to me, avoiding a desire to skip ahead or to let details tumble out without context. If I cannot remember a particular time or date, I don’t attempt to fill in the blanks or force the facts to fit my conclusions.
‘Leaving aside Milo Coleman, seven people were attacked and mutilated. Almost all admit to having an affair – but we haven’t managed to establish how they were targeted. What if they were guests at the same hotel? They arrive separately and check in, possibly using fake names and bogus addresses. It doesn’t matter when or why – it’s how he found them.’
‘Who?’ Monk asks.
‘Jeremy Egan. His company is redeveloping the old Regency Hotel in Clevedon. Last September it hosted a fitness convention where two of our victims had a one-night stand. It’s also where Maggie Dutton stayed with her husband. This links Egan to at least three victims. He was also having an affair with Elizabeth Crowe, which links him to the farmhouse murders.’
‘Hold on,’ says Monk. ‘Maggie Dutton denied having an affair.’
‘She and her husband stayed at the Regency pretending they’d never met.’
‘Why would they do that?’
Bennie punches him on the shoulder. ‘It’s called role-playing.’
One of the other detectives pipes up: ‘Naomi Meredith’s boss took her to the Regency on their first weekend together.’
‘That’s another one,’ I say. ‘And Egan’s wife changed her statement. He doesn’t have an alibi for the night Elizabeth and Harper Crowe were murdered.’
Monk reacts belligerently. ‘Elliot Crowe killed his mother and sister. We found the murder weapon buried in his garden.’
‘Jeremy Egan could have planted it there. We also know he talked to Harper at the Salthouse pub a few hours before she died.’
I look at Ronnie Cray, hoping for support. ‘I’m not even supposed to be here,’ she says, deferring to DI Abbott.
Monk gets to his feet, giving nothing away. He walks to his desk, opens a drawer and takes out his badge. Then he picks up his coat from a chair.
‘All right, let’s take another swing at Jeremy Egan … see if he blinks.’
Late afternoon and dark clouds, humped and bruised, are moving across the sky with surprising speed, giving the impression that the Earth is spinning at a faster rate. The wind has picked up. First come little gusts and then stronger ones that sing in the rigging of yachts moored in the marina and make the trees sway like drunken dancers.
Charlie still isn’t answering her phone. Maybe she’s cross at me for making her look after Emma. Two police cars pull up in front of the building site, beneath a billboard displaying an artist’s impression of the finished development:
Regency Apartments
. High plywood fences, dotted with posters and stained by graffiti, surround the construction area.
Nobody answers our knock at the site office, but high on the scaffolding we hear nail-guns firing and tiles being cut. Ladders lead between the floors of the old hotel, which is now draped in plastic sheets to prevent debris from falling on the road.
‘Looks as though we’re climbing,’ says Monk.
‘I’m not good with heights,’ I say.
‘Tough.’
We pass a workplace safety sign that says all visitors must have hard hats and high-visibility vests. Monk goes up first and I follow. There are no windows on the first level, just empty wooden frames, waiting for the glaziers. Inside I can see kitchens being fitted out, the appliances still wrapped in plastic and resting on wooden pallets.