Killing the Shadows (2000) (47 page)

This much she learned from her first pass through the flat. But Fiona was no behavioural psychologist. It wasn’t her business to try to read the crime by reading the victim. In this instance, her primary goal was to find something in Drew Shand’s life to connect him to Charles Cavendish Redford. She knew the police had searched the flat thoroughly, but at that point they’d been looking for a connection with the gay S&M world, not a communication from a frustrated writer.

She pulled the desk chair over to the filing cabinet and started going through the files. The bottom drawer was devoted to personal papers mortgage, accounts, household receipts, car insurance, the general detritus of modern life. The next drawer contained a series of suspension files that seemed to relate to Drew’s published work and work in progress. She searched the files quickly, on the off-chance that he really had stolen an idea from Redford. But there was nothing to indicate any source for his material other than his own imagination.

The top drawer was devoted to correspondence. There were files for his agent, his publisher, his publishing contracts and, finally, one marked ‘Fan Mail’. It was a surprisingly thick file, Fiona thought as she pulled it out of the drawer. She’d lived with Kit for long enough to have an appreciation of the sort of volume of mail a successful writer would ordinarily receive, but Drew’s file exceeded her expectations. The first dozen letters were much as she expected; letters of appreciation for his first novel, inquiries about when the second would be out, requests for signed bookplates, the occasional, slightly embarrassed pointing out of a minor error in the text. There were a couple of letters expressing disgust at the violence of Copycat, but nothing that would stir any great feeling of concern in the recipient.

The bulk of the file, however, consisted of letters and printed-out e–mail from men who expressed an interest in meeting the author of Copycatbecause they found him attractive and were intrigued to know if his personal sexual tastes were reflected in his novel. These were held together with a paper clip. Stuck to the top sheet was a Post-it note that read, ‘Saddo file’.

As she flicked through, a single letter dislodged itself from near the back of the sheaf. It was a folded sheet of A4. Fiona unfolded it, and let out a long sigh of satisfaction.

Drew Shand,
she read
,

Your career has barely begun, but already it is based on the dangerous ground of theft. You have stolen from me. You know that you have taken my work and passed it off as what you have yourself made. And your lies deprive me of what is rightfully mine.

Your work is a feeble reflection of other people’s light. You take, you destroy, you are a parasite who lives off the life force of those whose gifts you envy. You know this to be true. Search your pathetic grimy soul and you will not be able to deny what you have deprived me of.

The time has come for you to pay. You deserve nothing from me but my contempt and my hatred. If killing you is what it takes to grant what is rightfully mine, then so be it. It is a fair price for stealing my soul.

The hour and the day will be of my choosing. I trust you will not sleep easy; you do not deserve so to do. I will enjoy your funeral. From your ashes, I will rise like a phoenix.

There were differences between this letter and the ones she had already seen. But the similarities were overwhelming. There was no doubt in her mind that Drew Shand had received a letter from the same person who had written to Georgia and Kit, and who had also composed the flyer distributed to the press conference where he had admitted his guilt.

It was hard to find an argument to contradict what Fiona was now beginning to accept was the case. The coincidences were piling too high. Whoever had killed Georgia had also killed Drew. And it looked as if that person really was Charles Cavendish Redford.

H
er flat was like her, Steve thought. Light, bright and smart. Stylish and bold. Terry lived on the top floor of an old brick building off City Road. The three floors below her were occupied by a graphic design business, a leather goods workshop and a company providing post-production facilities to independent film makers. The label by the third-floor button in the goods lift read simply, Fowler Storage. Steve suspected there was no planning permission for residential use for the top storey. He also suspected that Terry didn’t give a toss.

Her living space consisted of a large open room around forty feet by fifty feet. A door at the far end gave on to a narrow bathroom and a shower cubicle. The main area was whitewashed, the floor painted a dark glossy terra cotta There was a sleeping area with a brass bed and brass rails for hanging clothes, a sitting area with half a dozen beanbags and a mini stereo system, a work area with a desk, a computer and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. A kitchen area was squeezed into a corner by the windows, complete with a round pine table and six folding chairs. A portable TV and video on a trolley were stowed in one corner. The walls were decorated with framed Keith Haring prints, their bright splashes the main source of colour.

She’d opened the door with a flourish, imitating a trumpet fanfare through pursed lips. He’d stood on the threshold, appraising the room with a professional eye. He nodded. “Great views,” he said. “I like it.”

Then he was through the door and in her arms, their hungry mouths searching for satisfaction. No time to undress, just the urgent fumbling aside of whatever clothes got in the way, desire sweeping everything away except the consciousness of each other’s body.

Afterwards, they lay in untidy array, breath mingling, both for once entirely lacking in self-consciousness. “So, what’s the main course?” Steve asked.

Terry giggled and snuggled her hands under his shirt. “That wasn’t even the starter. Think of it as an amuse-bouche.”

“Consider me amused.”

Terry freed herself from his arms and stood up, lithe movements that he followed with his eyes. “Let’s get comfortable,” she said, pulling her dress over her head and kicking off her shoes.

“Sounds good to me,” he agreed, getting to his feet. He scooped his mobile phone and pager out of his pockets and crossed to the desk, where he put them down next to the keyboard. He shrugged out of his clothes, throwing them over the desk chair. “Bathroom?” he asked.

Terry pointed. “Down there.”

“Don’t go away,” he said.

“As if.” As soon as the bathroom door closed behind him, she jumped to her feet and moved purposefully to the desk. She stared down at the phone and pager. The mood had been shattered the previous evening by a phone call that hadn’t even been his case, bringing to the surface all his worries and fears for his friend. And, even worse, thrusting Fiona Cameron into the space between them. She wasn’t sure what the past history there was, but all her instincts told her there was more to it than mere friendship. His body language changed whenever Fiona’s name cropped up, betraying something lurking beneath the surface. Tonight, she didn’t want Fiona in bed with them. Impulsive as always, Terry reached out. It was the work of a moment to switch off both phone and pager. Besides, she reasoned as she crossed to the bed, tonight was Friday night and the end of the working week. If she was going to have a relationship with this man, Terry knew she would have to change his workaholic ways. And there was no time like the present.

Sarah Duvall stood under the feeble spray from the shower head and wondered why every police station she’d served in had had crappy showers. She’d spent the last hour in the computer room where the officers on her squad were patiently entering the results of all the Smithfield interviews that had been conducted already and were still going on all over Greater London. While the interviews with Redford remained so unproductive, she’d decided to crack the whip in other areas of the investigation. She’d only walked away from the computers when she realized that the lines of print on the screen were wavering before her eyes as if through the lens of a swimming pool. If she had any more caffeine, her system would probably go into cardiac crisis, so she’d headed for the women’s showers in the hope that a cascade of cool water would restore her brain to something approaching working order.

The first twenty-four hours were crucial to a murder investigation. Unfortunately for Duvall, those essential hours had passed over a week ago. And she was left picking over a very cold trail. So far as she could tell, not a single witness statement apart from that of the literary agent had anything approaching a positive lead that would tie Redford more strongly into the crime. And that only spoke to motivation, not direct connection to the murder. The only concrete thing they had was a sighting of a metallic-grey four-wheel-drive, possibly a Toyota or a Mitsubishi, seen by a passing motorist parked behind Georgia Lester’s Jaguar on the day of her disappearance. The driver hadn’t seen either Georgia or the occupant of the 4x4. But there was no record of Charles Redford possessing such a vehicle. She already had someone checking with car hire firms to see if he’d hired one recently.

Duvall turned off the trickle of water and stepped out of the cubicle. She towelled herself dry and climbed into the only clean clothes in her locker a pair of blue jeans and a Chicago PD sweatshirt. Not exactly ideal, but better than the crumpled outfit she’d been wearing for the past thirty-six hours. The clean material against her skin made her feel more refreshed than the shower had. A cursory glance in the mirror, and she was ready to roll again.

When she walked back into the operations room, she instantly plugged in to the fresh sense of excitement that buzzed under the hum of the computers. She was two steps into the room when one of her sergeants bounded up to her. “We’ve got something in from Dorset,” he said, unable to keep his face solemn.

Duvall felt her tired face trying a smile on for size. “Tell me more,” she said, pulling out the nearest chair and sitting down.

“There’s an outhouse at the bottom of a field at the back of the property. They didn’t realize it belonged to the cottage, which is why they haven’t searched it before now. Anyway, it turns out the husband mentioned it to one of their officers, so they broke in there a couple of hours ago and that’s where he butchered her. It’s got stone benches along one wall, and there are bloodstains all over them. Even better, he left his tools behind. Knives, hacksaw, chisel, hammer, the lot.”

Duvall nodded. “Probably thought that was safer than hanging on to them or trying to dispose of them somewhere else. I take it they’ve got a full forensic team in there now?”

“They’re going over it inch by inch.”

“Great. Keep me informed.”

He moved off, glad to have some definite purpose. He had completely missed the troubled look on his boss’s face. For the first time since Redford had grandstanded his way into her interview room, something had come up that didn’t gel with what he had said. She’d have to double-check. But Duvall was as sure as she could be that he had said he had taken Georgia to, “a place he’d known about for years, a place they’d never find.” That squared with what the book had said.

It was, however, entirely at odds with the Dorset Police’s discovery.

Uneasiness crept through Duvall’s weary body, as palpable as nausea. What if her instinct had led her astray? What if Redford was nothing more than an attention-seeker? What if there was still a killer on the loose? She shook her head, unwilling to concede the possibility. It couldn’t be. Redford was so right, she felt it in her heart.

But what if she were wrong?

The pain came first. A desperate localized agony inside his head, red, yellow and white waves behind his eyes. When he tried to groan, Kit found his mouth couldn’t move. Then the secondary pains began to take focus. His shoulders ached, his wrists smarted. He tried to shift his position and found himself rolling helplessly from his side on to his back. His hands dug uncomfortably into his spine, and he had to rock his shoulders furiously to get back into the less painful position he’d started off in. Nothing made sense. Opening his eyes was no help. The darkness was more profound than it had been before he’d forced his eyelids apart.

His stomach grumbled. The waves of pain from his head seemed to be directly connected to his gut, producing an uncomfortable queasiness. Slowly, he realized that wherever he was, he was in motion. Now he could hear the low grumble of an engine and the hiss of road noise. Muffled voices separated out and he understood that a radio was playing. It dawned on him that he was inside a moving vehicle and the driver was listening to the radio.

Comprehension brought memory back with bewildering swiftness. The courier at the door with the box of books. The movement out of the corner of his eye. Then nothing, till now.

With appalling clarity that momentarily banished pain, Kit recognized the scenario. He was trapped in a nightmare of his own invention. He was living the story of Susannah Tremayne, the second victim of the serial killer he’d dubbed the Blood Painter. The killer had captured her by pretending to be a courier delivering a package. Then he’d loaded her into his van and driven her to the holiday cottage.

Twenty-four hours earlier, it would have been at the front of his mind. He would never have opened the door to a courier, not even one of the ones he was familiar with. But that had been before Charles Redford had been arrested, before Sarah Duvall had told Fiona the killer was in custody and life could return to normal, without the bite of fear cutting into every moment.

They’d been catastrophically wrong. Terror clutched at his heart. He knew exactly what lay in store for him. After all, he’d written the script.

Before she let herself out of Drew Shand’s flat, Fiona took a look at the Edinburgh street map on his reference shelf and decided to walk back to her hotel. A brisk couple of miles on the city streets might clear her head. She set off through the Georgian streets of the New Town, heading for Queensferry Road, the damp air clinging to her skin and hair. She was almost the only person on the streets. She turned on to the Dean Bridge, enjoying the spectacle of walking above tree-top level, with random blocks of light from the backs of the New Town tenements glowing pale-yellow through the insubstantial mist. It could have felt spooky, she thought, and if someone with the gifts of Kit or Drew had been describing it, it would have crept off the page and made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. As it was, after a day of airports and the enclosed office at St. Leonard’s, it felt curiously liberating, a brief escape from the concerns of work and love.