Paternoster (28 page)

‘When was this?’

‘Molly died six years ago.’ She brushed away a tear. ‘After she’d gone and Nick had gone, I went into undercover work, living full time with the gang.’ She glanced up at Aidan and saw his face was seared with pain. ‘I dream about Molly.’

‘Are you still in touch with Nick?’

‘No. I don’t exist anymore, remember? He was told the same thing as my parents: that I died. I am dead.’

Aidan rubbed away her tears with his thumbs. ‘I don’t know anything about you,’ he said, despair crackling in his voice. ‘All this time, I didn’t know a thing.’

‘It had to be like that, for my safety.’ The water sloshed on to the floor as she sat up and reached for the soap. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Where you were born, where you grew up, went to school. Everything. You said you went to university in London, was that true?’

‘Yes, I did go there. But I went to Oxford first, then Edinburgh for my MA, and did my PhD in London.’

Aidan’s mouth hung open. ‘You’ve got a PhD?’

She flicked water at him. ‘You’re not the only one, you know.’

‘What in?’

‘First degree in Psychology, MA in Forensic Psychology, then a PhD in Criminology. It tied in with work.’

‘You worked and did a PhD?’ Admiration shone in his voice. ‘I studied full time for mine and whinged about how hard it was.’

‘I enjoyed it.’ She shrugged and began to soap her arms. The hot water transformed her scars into bright red welts.

Aidan posted more chocolate into her mouth. ‘So you’re Dr Grey?’

‘No, Eden Grey doesn’t have a PhD. The woman who did all of those things is dead now, remember?’

He rang for takeaway while she dried herself and dressed.

‘Thai meal for two on its way. Will be about forty minutes.’

‘Lovely, I’m starving.’

He took the towel from her hands and sat behind her and rubbed her hair dry. As she knelt there, between his feet, she looked round the room, at his books in colour order, at the precise distances between the candlesticks on the mantelpiece, the perfectly straight pictures on the walls, the symmetry to everything in the room.

‘You’re good at puzzles, aren’t you?’ she said. Dragging her bag over to her, she dug out the paper she’d uncovered in Donna Small’s house: her ‘insurance’, the list of dates and names and yes/no. ‘What do you make of this?’

He scanned the piece of paper, flipped it over and read the other side. ‘What is it?’

‘Don’t know, except it’s valuable to someone. Anything jump out at you?’

‘All the dates listed are a Monday,’ he said.

She snatched the paper from him. ‘How do you know that?’

He shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Check if you like.’

She foraged her diary out of her bag and started to check the dates. He was right: they were all Mondays.

‘Anything else?’

‘I recognise some of these names. Keble’s a developer. So’s Osbourne. Might be a coincidence. Not sure about the others. Have you run them through a search engine?’

‘Er, no.’

He grinned at her. ‘And you with a PhD. Elementary, my dear Doctor.’

She thumped his arm playfully. ‘Can I use your computer, please?’

He powered up his laptop and balanced it on his knee. ‘Read out the names.’

Cross-legged beside him on the settee, she read out the names from the paper and he ran a search on each one in turn.

‘Property developers.’

Eden scrubbed at her face with the palms of her hands. ‘What’s all of this about, Aidan? My client, Paul, who was a property developer, was poisoned some time between Saturday evening and Tuesday morning.’

‘Poisoned?’

‘Yes, some sort of bean.’ She scrabbled through pages of notes to find the name. ‘According to the coroner’s office it was lucky bean or love bean.’

‘Not that lucky.’

‘Or loving. He’d been dating Donna Small until a few weeks ago, and she turned up dead on Thursday morning. They were both members of the same singles club. Donna was PA to the planning committee at the council.’ She stopped. ‘Hang on, the planning meeting is always on a Monday. Coincidence?’

‘How did you get this paper?’

‘Donna hid it and told her son she had “insurance” in case anything happened to her.’

‘Which it did.’

Eden nibbled a bit of dead skin round her thumbnail. ‘Maybe the two deaths aren’t related. Maybe Paul was poisoned by his ex-wife, or by Donna. We know she hated him.’

‘So who killed Donna?’

Eden shrugged. ‘Her son, Wayne, had a fight with her and then ran away. And she had an affair with her boss: maybe his wife did her in.’

Aidan traced his finger along her jawline. ‘What a job you do. Poisonings and jealous spouses and people being done in.’

‘Normally it’s divorce work and proving adultery, or people fiddling insurance claims,’ Eden said, stroking his face in return, tracing the outline of his lips. ‘Which reminds me. The Cheltenham Park School is into something dodgy, too.’

She told him about the sale of the real Constable and the theft of the fake. ‘It was to pay for the new buildings they’re doing there, where you dug up your skeletons,’ she said. ‘But the whole project is only costing them two million quid. I asked someone in the business how much a project like that would normally cost and they said about five million. So how is the school able to get that sort of building done at such a discount?’

‘A parent in the building trade, willing to tender at a low price?’

‘Could be. Paul tipped me off about the painting. He’d spotted there was something wrong with it because he’d seen the original. Maybe he confronted Rosalind Mortimer and she fed him a love bean.’

The doorbell buzzed and she froze.

‘That’ll be the takeaway,’ Aidan said. ‘I’ll buzz them up.’

‘No, go down and open the street door,’ she said. ‘I’ll watch from the landing.’

He frowned at her. ‘It’s only a Thai meal for two.’

‘You don’t know that, Aidan. Go on, I’ll stay out of sight, but I’ll be able to suss them out.’

‘You don’t really think that they know about us, that they know where I live and have turned up with a shotgun in a takeaway bag?’

She fixed him with a look. ‘Don’t underestimate Hammond,’ she said, quietly. He hesitated, and the doorbell rang again. ‘Go on.’

Aidan trudged downstairs. As he reached the bottom, he glanced up at the stone staircase, his eyes searching for her. Eden waved him on, then slid behind the curve of the wall and watched as he opened the door, got out his wallet, and handed over cash.

‘Thanks,’ he called, too loudly, as the delivery man went back to his car. He carried the plastic bag back upstairs and brandished it aloft. ‘Hungry?’

‘Always.’ She took the bag from him and started sorting out plates and spoons in the tiny kitchen. ‘Aidan?’

‘Hm?’

‘Thanks.’

‘It’s only a takeaway.’

‘Not just this. For everything.’

Pale light filtered through the curtains and played across her face. She flopped on to her side and bumped up against Aidan’s back. Curving her arm round his waist, she kissed the tender spot between his shoulder blades, peppering tiny kisses up his spine to the nape of his neck and back down again. His fingers entwined with hers.

‘Sleep OK?’ he mumbled.

‘Like a log. You?’

Yawning, he shuffled round to face her. ‘All right. A few odd dreams, I think it was the curry.’

‘Tea?’

‘Yes, please.’

She kissed him and slid out of bed, padding to the kitchen and filling and setting the kettle to boil. Aidan liked toast for breakfast: made under the grill not in a toaster. He was emphatic about that, insisting the grill was properly warmed up before the bread went under, and demanding that his toast was slathered in butter. She switched on the grill to heat up and fossicked in the fridge for butter, marmalade and marmite.

She’d left her bag tossed on to the end of the settee. She dug out her phone and switched it on. Immediately it beeped with a voicemail message. She stood at the tall windows, gazing out at the sweep of tawny buildings opposite and the imposing square tower of Christ Church, her phone pressed to her ear.

A message from Kaz, the hooker in Gloucester. She thought she’d seen the missing schoolgirl, Chelsea, outside a club the night before. The girl’d been with a couple of men, older than her, and she’d been crying.

No point ringing Kaz back just yet, she’d still be sleeping off her Friday night, but Eden needed to find out what Kaz saw before she started on today’s bender and forgot all about it. She reckoned she had a window of about two hours before the first vodka of the day sluiced down Kaz’s throat.

She made breakfast and carried it into the bedroom. Aidan propped himself up against the pillows and helped himself to toast as she slipped back into bed beside him.

‘I’ve got to go,’ she said, pulling down the corners of her mouth.

‘Someone else been murdered?’

‘Missing schoolgirl been seen in Gloucester. It smacks of a grooming case and I think she’s in real danger.’ She pulled a face. ‘I’m sorry, I’d hoped we could spend the day together. I won’t be too long, though.’

‘That’s all right. See you when you get back. I’m just going to have a quiet morning, I think.’

‘Tired?’

‘Bit of a headache, that’s all.’

She showered and dressed, and kissed him deeply before she left. ‘You feel a bit hot, Aidan,’ she said, smoothing his hair back.

‘Just a headache,’ he said.

She left him flipping the pillows over in search of a cool spot, and went to hunt down a missing schoolgirl.

The other side of the pillow was cool against his cheek and he sank his head into it. The headache pulsed behind his eyes and throbbed down the side of his face. He took another pillow and pressed it on top of his head, smelling Eden’s coconut shampoo on the cotton.

He slept, waking an hour later. The headache had receded and his mind was whirring with ideas. Aidan threw back the covers and wandered into the kitchen, hopping from foot to foot on the chilly tiles while he made coffee. Eden’s piece of paper with the names of the property developers was lying on the table. He carried it to the window and studied it. There was a pattern here, he knew it, he just couldn’t quite see it.

Patterns had always mocked, intrigued and irritated him in equal measure. As a child, he’d rearranged the decorations on the Christmas tree to make them symmetrical: the weighting of blue baubles to the left of the tree had been intolerable. His grandmother’s fireplace induced unbearable scratchiness in him: unable to shuffle the thirteen tiles across the top into any pattern. Four threes and then a left over one. Impossible. He started to sit where he couldn’t see the tiles, knowing that he’d be compelled to count them over and over, the frustration rising in him as they refused to be put into order. Even when he sat at the other side of the room, knowing that the tiles were there in all their thirteenly inadequacy nagged away at him.

His flat in a Regency building was perfect for him: tall windows (two sets of eight, a divine sixteen), the elegant proportions, the black and white tiling that could be mentally grouped into small squares and larger squares. And though he saw the same objects day after day, still he counted. Eleven mugs on the tray at work distressed him until a new person joined and suddenly there were twelve, and it was as though his brain smoothed out, fell into a shallow wave of comfort.

Now here, a list of property developers, a list of amounts, yes and no, and a set of Mondays. No discernible pattern. He slugged a couple of paracetamol with his coffee; the headache was lurking at the back of his mind like a ghost, a shadow on his brain, but he must find the pattern, had to find the organising principle behind the list.

Logging on to his laptop, he drew a pad of paper and a fountain pen towards him and started to search. The names were all property developers, and Eden said the planning meetings were on Mondays, so he started with the planning reports, writing down every application that related to the companies listed on the paper, the amount involved, and whether or not it was successful. Working back over two years, painstakingly tabling every one, a pattern emerged.

Aidan sat back in his chair, his neck stiff from hunching over the laptop for so long. His headache was worse now. When he stood, his spine creaked. Time for a shower, another coffee, then look at the results again.

The pattern was there. He transcribed it into a spreadsheet so he could manipulate the data and show Eden, and so he could double-check what was already evident to him. He could see precisely what this list meant, and exactly why someone would kill to get it.

He rubbed his hands over his face and yellow flashes sparked before his eyes. His headache flared and he watched his thoughts swirling. A migraine on its way. It always started like this, when he could see his thoughts, could see his mind making connections, dragging up esoteric facts he didn’t know he knew. When he went back to the spreadsheet, he was automatically finding the middle letter of every word, dividing each word up into equal pockets of letters. Counting.

He knew he didn’t have long before the migraine exploded. His hands trembling, Aidan went back to the search engine, looking for patterns, searching for connections between the building firms on the list. Some were based in Cheltenham, some Bristol, others from London.

He tried another line of attack and this time hit pay dirt. An hour later he had a diagram that proved the pattern. He’d cracked it.

The migraine knifed the side of Aidan’s face. He flinched at the light and tugged the curtains closed, then crawled back into bed. Just before the agony struck, he sent a one-word text to Eden: migraine.

Eden. What was it she’d said about Paul Nelson and how he died? Lucky bean. Love bean. He watched his thoughts churning and making connections as though he was viewing the operation of a massive computer.

Just before he died, he said ‘Paternoster’.