‘And if they ask you for alibi names?’
‘I just act thick. Like I can’t tell one night from another. Everybody knows I’m a bit slow, so they won’t think anything of it.’
‘That’s right. Vague is good. Vague is what they expect from you. You did a great job last night. Wonderful footage. When you get home tonight, there’ll be a little reward waiting for you.’
‘You don’t have to do that,’ he protested, meaning it. ‘I’m sorted.’
‘You deserve it. You’re a very special young man.’
He felt a warm glow inside, a warm glow that’s still there. Nobody but the Voice has ever thought anything about him was special, except his educational needs.
So now he’s out there, mooching around like usual. He checks out the cops, a mixture of uniforms and obvious CID. They’re working their way down both sides of the street. He could go back to Stan’s and wait for them to come to him, or he could amble towards them like a fool with nothing to hide.
He recognizes one of the CID from before, when they were all over Temple Fields a couple of years ago. A big Geordie. Geordie didn’t treat you like shit. He changes his angle of approach to come close to Geordie and the woman he’s working with. They’re talking to a punter, but he’s got nothing to say, he can’t wait to be away. He’s probably given them a moody name and address and he wants to skip before they catch him out.
They step back and the punter scuttles off sideways like a crab. The cop looks up and sees him. He’s got that ‘I know you but I can’t put a name to you’ look. He gives Geordie a stupid grin and says hi. Geordie says he’s Detective Inspector Merrick.
He repeats the name a couple of times to fix it good and proper because he knows the Voice will want to know everything. He tells Geordie his name and address almost before he asks and the woman cop writes it down. She’s not bad looking. A bit on the skinny side, but he’s learning to like them like that. The cop asks if he’d heard about Sandie and he says yes, everybody’s talking. And he comes out with the lines that the Voice has carved on his brain. Word perfect.
They ask if he saw anybody acting strangely. He laughs loudly, playing up to the image of the Gay Village idiot. ‘Everybody acts strange round here,’ he says.
‘You’re not kidding,’ the woman cop mutters under her breath. ‘Can anybody vouch for your movements last night?’
He looks puzzled. Mr Merrick says, ‘Who saw you around? Who can confirm where you were last night?’
He opens his eyes wide. ‘I dunno,’ he says. ‘Last night, it was just the same as every other night, you know? I don’t remember stuff too good, Mr Merrick.’
‘You remembered you didn’t see Sandie,’ the woman chipped in. Smart-arsed cow.
‘Only because that’s what everybody’s talking about,’ he says, feeling a tickle of sweat at the base of his spine. ‘That’s a big thing, not a little thing like who was in the café or the pub.’
Mr Merrick pats him on the shoulder. He takes a card out of his pocket and tucks it into his hand. ‘If you hear anything, you give me a call, right?’ And they’re off, ready for the next friendly little chat.
Not a flicker of doubt. Not a breath of suspicion. He fooled them. They were talking to an assassin and they had no idea. So who’s the thickie now?
Carol eased the door shut, not wanting to disturb Michael and Lucy. She was aware how even slight noises carried in the high-ceilinged loft. She slipped out of her shoes and padded through to the kitchen at one end of the open-plan living space. The concealed fluorescent strips that cast light on the worktop were turned on, revealing her cat Nelson sprawled on his side, soaking up the warmth. He twitched one ear as she approached and let out a low rumble that the charitable might have interpreted as a welcome. Carol scratched his head, then noticed the sheet of paper he was half-obscuring. She slid it out from under him, ignoring his wriggle of protest. ‘Hi, Sis. Lucy’s doing an armed robbery in Leeds tomorrow and Thursday, we got last-minute tickets for the opera so I’m staying over there with her tonight. See you Thursday night. Love, M.’
Carol crumpled the paper and tossed it in the bin, allowing herself to be momentarily wistful about the prospect of a night at the opera in good company. Anything was better than thinking about a night alone in the apartment. Opening the fridge to take out the half-eaten tin of cat food, she was drawn irresistibly to the bottle of Pinot Grigio sitting in the door. She took both out, fed the cat and contemplated the wine.
In her battle for restoration, Carol had resisted the easy comfort of drink, nervous of its easy promise of oblivion. She’d told herself she didn’t want to sleepwalk through the aftermath of the rape. She wanted to deal with it, to unpick its effects and put herself back together in something approximating the right order. But tonight she wanted erasure. She couldn’t bear the thought of closing her eyes and seeing the images she’d brought home from the mortuary. Without anaesthetic, there was no way she was going to sleep. And without sleep, there was no way she could effectively lead the hunt for Sandie Foster’s killer. Carol raked through the cutlery drawer for the corkscrew and hurriedly opened the bottle. Full glass in hand, she leaned against the worktop and buried her fingers in Nelson’s fur, grateful for the beat of his heart against her skin.
Before last night, she’d had nothing in common with Sandie other than their gender. But what had happened to the prostitute had given her a sort of kinship with the woman charged with hunting down her killer. They both possessed a victimhood that had been conferred because they’d both been guilty of being female in a world where some men believed they deserved never to feel powerless. Sandie hadn’t merited what had happened to her any more than Carol had.
Carol drank steadily, topping up her glass whenever it fell below the halfway mark. She understood the terror Sandie must have known as she realized there was no escape from her attacker. She knew that sense of utter helplessness, knew the absolute fear of the prey that has no defence against the predator. But in one crucial sense, perverse though it sounded, Sandie had been luckier than Carol. She hadn’t had to find a way to live with what had been done to her.
Tony stood by Carol’s side, his eyes focused on Sandie Foster’s lifeless face. He didn’t mind being present at post mortems. If he was honest, it intrigued him to watch the pathologist uncovering the messages contained by the dead. Tony read corpses too, but his was a different text. What they had in common was that they both received communication from the killer via the conduit of his victim.
The body lay in a pool of halogen light, the surrounding room a collage of shadows. Dr Vernon, the pathologist, stooped over the body. It offered a gruesome illustration in contrast. Below the waist, Sandie’s body was still caked in blood, a study in scarlet. Above the waist, she was apparently untouched. The plastic bags covering her hands partially obscured the bruising at her wrists, allowing the illusion of wholeness to persist. ‘Poorly nourished,’ Vernon said. ‘Underweight for her height. Signs of intravenous drug use–’ He pointed to the needletracks on her arms.
He leaned forward and gently probed her mouth open. ‘Slight bruising on the inside of the mouth. Most likely as a result of the gag we removed earlier. Some indications of long-term amphetamine abuse.’
‘I know you hate it when we jump the gun,’ Carol said. ‘But can you give me any indication on cause of death yet?’
Vernon turned and gave her a wintry smile. ‘I see you haven’t acquired patience in your time away from us, Carol. So far, I see nothing to contradict the obvious. She bled to death as a result of injuries inflicted vaginally. The tissue in the area is macerated almost beyond recognition. Not a pleasant way to go.’
‘She didn’t