Soul Seeker (21 page)

She took ten minutes to compose herself before going to the door and calling for Lancefield. She hoped that she didn't look too pale, and that she wasn't trembling, as she said, ‘Tell Eisenmenger about this. Tell him we need him to read the paper, but warn him, Lancefield. Warn him what he is going to see.'

Lancefield said nothing, merely nodded. She hoped that there was no sign of sick on her clothing

Having been to the doctor's once in the past six years (and that against her will when she had felt slightly faint in church and the then vicar – who had been almost as old as she was and, she was sure, gay – had insisted she be seen), Betty Williams considered herself to have little need of medical services. Indeed, she had only been in hospital once – when she had fallen and broken her ankle twelve years before – and hated the idea of dependence. From what she read in the papers, hospitals were dangerous places, anyway. Now, though, she knew that she needed help.

She reached for the phone.

Braxton had insisted on seeing the website, and Beverley had left him to it; she noted with wry and decidedly sour amusement that he summoned her back to his office after only forty-five minutes; far too little time to have done anything other than skim the delights on offer. Even so, she saw that he looked distinctly grey as she sat down before his desk.

‘We've got to get this bastard, Beverley.' Which was a truism and so she did not feel obliged to respond. ‘I mean, Jesus Christ . . .' The blasphemy was uncharacteristic and therefore significant. He sighed. ‘What do you need?'

She didn't understand at first, because she was so constrained by experience; investigations were these days resourced at minimum level, the ever-present mantra one of ‘efficiency'. He explained irritably, ‘Personnel, back-room staff, overtime, IT . . . Anything, Beverley. I'll clear it. Just make sure that you get him before he does any more of this . . .' He lost the words for a moment, a man shaken from his vocabulary by horrific things, visions from hell's own abattoir. ‘. . . atrocity.'

As welcome as this offer was, she could suck little comfort from the unexpected, almost unprecedented words, found it ironic that for once she had no need of it. ‘At the moment, we don't need them. We've only identified a single victim and had no leads from his disappearance.'

Braxton looked pained, approaching angry. ‘For goodness' sake, Beverley. Why?'

And she had to explain, although she suspected he knew as well as she did. With only one victim identified, by definition there could be no pattern to recognize, and in cases like this, pattern was everything. With but a single point, there could be no connections.

‘Are there no clues from the previous video clips?'

‘Lancefield has been going through them repeatedly. Nothing. They're just dark rooms.'

‘Someone will have to do the same with these new ones.' He looked at her as he said this, aware of what he was suggesting. It was not news to Beverley, though; she nodded impassively. Braxton then said slowly, ‘I'm coming under pressure, Beverley. From above.'

Of course he was; pressure from ‘above' was a constant for all middle-to high-ranking detectives; it was as constant and inevitable as gravity, and equally unforgiving; it was also as likely to flatten the unwary if it became too strong. She said nothing so he continued, ‘The press are sniffing and there are all sorts of rumours circulating apparently; they seem to have got hold of the idea that these murders are worthy of sensation.' She could not tell if he was being sarcastic or not; if the truth of these particular killings got out, if the context of pseudoscientific investigation and the colossal callousness of the way that people were being slaughtered became known, ‘sensational' would be revealed as a completely inadequate epithet, a fig leaf to cover a blue whale's erection. It would come out eventually, of course, but not, she fervently hoped, until after an arrest. He continued, ‘Is everyone on the team sound?'

By which she presumed he meant ‘trustworthy', rather than pure of tone. She nodded. ‘That's the beauty of keeping the team small, at least until we've got more leads to follow.'

He grunted softly. ‘Well, just make sure you ask as soon as you need the support. I don't want this bugger getting away just because you're too stubborn to ask for help.'

She bit down on her immediate reply; she did not think that she had ever before been accused of being backward in requesting extra resources; if anything, she had thought she had a reputation of agitating too often for more money and men. ‘I won't,' she promised with a tight smile.

THIRTY-SIX

B
etty Williams had been sick three times now and her breathlessness was increasing. She knew that she was dying and was very afraid. She sat in her favourite armchair, the gas fire on low, the clock ticking softly but menacingly. There was no pain but her chest was constricted, as if she were confined by an overtight corset; distressed as she was, the thought brought her fleeting remembrance of her life sixty years before. She was sweating, but was not hot, and she was feeling light-headed, much as she had done two Christmases before when she had drunk too much port at Sammy's house.

Where was the ambulance?

The door bell rang.

Her heart lifted.

The call from her father came through to Lancefield just as she was making her way to the canteen; she had just rung Eisenmenger and told him about his homework. ‘Dad?' She knew that something was wrong because her father was scrupulous about not disturbing her work for trivialities. ‘What is it?'

She knew what it was, though. Only one thing would make him phone her at work. ‘It's your mother, Becky. She's taken a turn for the worse. Doctor says it's pneumonia.'

‘Is she in hospital?'

The hesitation told her much, was as informative as an hour-long speech would have been, and far more illuminating than a flash of lightning. He said only, ‘She wouldn't want it.' The tone was defensive, as she had come to expect.

She felt riven by a host of thoughts and emotions, all conflicting, all badgering her at once.
Wouldn't she? How do you know? She's my mother! I love her! She's changed. She would welcome death. She's a fighter. She's the one who should decide. You've fallen out of love with her. You only loved Tim. I know that you had an affair . . .

He said, ‘I told the doctor she should just be kept comfortable.'

Because she suddenly felt corrosive rage towards him, and because she knew that she was being unfair, and because she was about to fall over the edge into tears that would sound in her voice and would be seen by those around in the main corridor of the police station, and because she was running out of words, she said only, ‘I'm coming over.'

Josh and Harriet had had their tea and Antonia had supervised their baths; as a treat they were staying up to watch DVDs in the small but cosy sitting room. Antonia was sipping a cup of Earl Grey tea while she read the
Telegraph
when Andrew came in from a trip to the local supermarket. As he plonked the linen bag down on the pitted surface of the pine table, he said at once, ‘Have you heard the news?'

‘What news is that, dear?' she asked after they had exchanged embraces.

‘Poor Betty Williams,' he said, taking off his ancient green jacket that still smelled faintly of tobacco even after fifteen years of abstinence. ‘She's passed away.' He sounded slightly incredulous as if he had had it on the best authority that she had been immortal, perhaps even had a small wager on her continued refusal to join the bleeding choir invisible.

‘Oh, no.' Antonia was genuinely shocked. She had liked Betty Williams, although she had sometimes found her a little
uncouth.
‘How?'

‘I'm not sure. As I was coming past, I saw the ambulance outside and Marcus Pilcher and Sammy Carter were just coming out from the house. I managed to snatch a few words with them, but they could only tell me that the paramedics had just pronounced life extinct.'

‘Oh, dear.' And she meant this. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear . . .' This last was a sighing lament, an ululation for the entire concept of death and dying as much as for the demise of a single little old lady. ‘She was such a sweet old thing.'

Andrew knew better than to take her to task for this bending of the truth; in his opinion, Betty Williams had been an over-curious, slightly unwashed and certainly wickedly-tongued harridan, and he could remember his wife uttering similar sentiments on more than one occasion. He said blandly, ‘Absolutely.' He found it best to be bland on occasion.

Her passing was thus remarked.

THIRTY-SEVEN

C
harlie had had enough and, perhaps due to her Irish ancestry, perhaps because she was slightly drunk, she did not stint in a demonstration of her exasperated disbelief.

‘You are joking, aren't you, John?'

Eisenmenger had a sense of humour, he was certain, although it was perhaps slightly stiff through underuse, perhaps even atrophied; an appendix of amusement. He, too, was less than sober. ‘About this? No.'

The remains of the meal lay between them, the second bottle of wine only half full (but only half empty, he caught himself thinking as they looked at each other over this battleground full of the dead). They were in his flat – a temporary abode, not to his taste, between Montpellier and Sussex Parade – and he had cooked a half-decent coq au vin (even if he did say so himself, because Charlie hadn't), followed by rum baba. She was wearing a low-cut pale green dress in Grecian style and he had had trouble not noticing how low-cut it was.

‘Can't it wait?'

‘I'm afraid not.'

‘This is becoming a habit.'

‘That's not fair.'

‘Yes, it is, John. It's bloody fair. I've hardly seen anything of you over the past couple of weeks, and every time I have, you've cut it short.'

‘I don't enjoy this life either, Charlie. Sometimes, it's intolerable.'

‘You can say that again.'

This invitation, as per custom, was not accepted. Instead, he said weakly (and was well aware how pusillanimous the words were), ‘It shouldn't take long.' He was thinking as he said this that this might be wishful thinking, might perhaps be an exaggeration, might even – were he in a state to be objective – be a lie.

‘What have you got to do?'

‘Look at a posting on the web from the killer.'

‘Is that all?'

He smiled; he tried to make it a friendly, reassuring smile, but perhaps he failed for when he said, ‘It's not that simple . . .' she flared.

‘What the hell is going on here, John? Why are you constantly blocking me out?'

‘I'm not . . .'

The flare became an incandescence, an explosion. ‘YES, YOU ARE!' She actually rose from her seat, a slight lift-off, one that did not achieve escape velocity and so she touched down again. Her vehemence tore a hole between them, a vacuum that she felt forced to fill while the shock of her shouting left him momentarily silent. ‘Yes, you are, John,' she continued in a low, urgent voice. ‘You do your thing, and I'm told you do it very well. I
know
you do it very well, because I can see what kind of person you are. You are intellectual, you are kind, you are dedicated, you are, somehow,
spooky
.' He hoisted eyebrows at that, but she nodded enthusiastically. ‘I've spoken to the mortuary man, Clive, and that's what he told me; he said that everyone says so.' This encomium was allowed to stand for less than a second as she added apologetically, ‘But you're a loss as a human being.' She stood, an almost reflexive action, way below the level of rational thought. It was completely unapologetically that she said, ‘No wonder Helena left you.'

Then, clearly to him aware that she had gone beyond the pale, she murmured, ‘I'm sorry.'

He didn't answer, was transfixed by this conclusion, speared, pinned, wriggling to the wall and feeling only the pain of its penetration, and a certain degree of windedness, as if he were unable to breathe. He didn't even move, just sat on his chair, staring, his thoughts active and turbulent, but a long way from his mind, a cinema show in the background that he was distracted from. She came around the table to him. ‘John, I am so sorry. I didn't mean to say that . . .'

But you did, and just because you didn't mean to
say
it, does that not imply that it was in your head, unsaid, but very much alive, a worm of a thought, a mealy-mouthed little thing burrowing away into their relationship.

She sat next to him, reached for him and, as they embraced, she whispered, ‘I am so sorry, John. It was an unforgiveable thing to say.'

He was bathed in her perfume and that brought with it memories of other times that he had been bathed in it – memories that were still fresh, still exciting – and these fought with his hurt, so that he felt confused, but still overwhelmingly desirous of her. They kissed, at first an almost formal thing – a tentative gesture that was effectively a mutual offer of reconciliation – but then rapidly it became passionate, and for him healing.

Very much against his better judgement, Eisenmenger let Charlie view the latest web posting with him. ‘It's not comfortable, Charlie. This one is seriously, seriously disturbed.'

‘I know that, John. Remember, I saw his first posting.'

‘This one is worse, apparently.' It wasn't so much Lancefield's words as her voice that came back to Eisenmenger.
Chief Inspector Wharton asked me to say to you that this one is bad. Be warned that the video attachments are difficult to watch.
‘I'm not being patronizing, Charlie, but you're not a criminal psychologist, are you? These postings contain a lot of tough material.'