Newspapers had begun asking when the Cinema Slayer would strike again. It would have been easier for them if the two victims hadn’t been such disparate characters, if they’d been, for instance, young women. Then the stories they carried might have included warnings that no girl was safe on London’s streets. But what had a young, good-looking, comfortably situated man in common with an elderly female vagrant, except that neither had any money or owned property? All they knew was that there was nothing rational about this killer, no plan of action, and apparently no particular category of victims he or she targeted. Not politicians or vivisectionists, prostitutes or rich old women, capitalists or anarchists. What did the killer get out of it? No financial benefit, no sexual satisfaction, restored security, or freedom from menaces. Newspapers started calling the murderer the “mindless” or “aimless” killer.
The neighbors in Holmdale Road had known Michelle and Matthew only well enough to say “Good morning” or “Hi” (according to age) and Fiona only as the woman who had lost her fiancé in a very dreadful way. Being questioned as to these people’s movements on the night Eileen Dring was killed changed their attitude to this no longer harmless couple and this no longer blameless young woman.
There was no concerted campaign of ostracism and no dramatic shunning. But the woman whose nephew Fiona had suspected might be a detective began looking the other way when she passed her and the man next door to her, who’d always looked up from his weeding to comment on the weather, now kept his head down. The red graffiti that appeared on Fiona’s gateposts might have nothing to do with the murders, it might be coincidence, but, if it was, the aptness of the graffitist spraying KILL, KILL on the stucco wasn’t lost on her.
Fiona thought it was the police back again when the doorbell rang on a Saturday morning about ten. She felt like telling them to arrest her and have done with it. A point had been reached when she was beginning to understand how people made false confessions of murder so that they would be left alone and have a little peace. She opened the door to a woman about her own age. It wasn’t Miss Demeanor but someone of similar build, age, and dress. Another police officer?
“Good morning,” the woman said. “My name is Natalie Reckman. I’m a freelance journalist?”
Fiona said, rudely for her, “What do you want?”
“They’ve made a real mess of your gateposts, haven’t they?”
“They’re brainless morons. I don’t suppose it’s personal.”
“No? May I come in? I don’t want to talk about Jeff’s murder or who did what to whom. I was once his girlfriend too.”
“When?” Fiona’s mouth had dried. She felt a frisson of terror.
“Oh, long before you. Don’t worry. A woman from Kensal Green came between me and you.”
Fiona had to know. She couldn’t resist it. “Come in.”
Though the feature on the women in Jeff Leach’s life had been shelved, Natalie hadn’t been able to put it into the back of her mind as she had hoped. It kept surfacing. And one morning, when she woke after a dream in which she was hunting for the missing Jims Melcombe-Smith in Guatemala, the name of her predecessor came back to her. There it was, absolutely clear as if her memory had never mislaid it: Nell Johnson-Fleet and she’d worked for a charity called Victims of Crime International, or VOCI. Of course, Johnson-Fleets are not exactly thick on the ground, and Natalie soon found her address and number in the phone book.
Perhaps something was telling her the time had come to concentrate on this story. She made herself recall that last conversation she’d ever had with Jeff. In Christopher’s in Covent Garden it had been and when she’d asked who came after her he’d said, “A funny little thing who lived opposite Kensal Green Cemetery. I don’t think I’ll tell you her name. I called her Polo…” Knowing Jeff as she did and in possession of this limited information, had she a chance of finding this woman? For a start, he probably hadn’t meant she lived precisely opposite the cemetery but on the other side of Harrow Road in one of the streets that lay behind it. Natalie got out her London atlas and turned to page 56. There was a positive web of little streets in that hinterland. Instead of making a list of them, she photocopied the atlas page. At a cost of £200 you could buy access on the Internet that would give you the names, addresses, and a dossier of every single citizen of the United Kingdom. Or so she’d read in some cyberspace magazine. But would it help? She thought she still preferred the old-fashioned electoral register.
Why would he have called the woman Polo? He had that peculiar addiction to Polo mints, chewed up a tube of them every couple of days, so this woman must have had something in common with them. Incongruously, she remembered Jeff’s funeral and the wreath of white rosebuds his father and the person called Beryl had sent. It had looked just like a mammoth version of a mint with a hole in it. Mint, she thought, mint, hold on to that, as she consulted the voters’ list for the London Borough of Brent.
A woman called Minton was perhaps what she was looking for. Could you be called “Peppermint”? She turned page after page. Those eligible to vote were listed in the electoral register according to street, not name. If she was very young or a lunatic or a peer she wouldn’t be listed, but she couldn’t be under eighteen, could she? Jeff had surely never gone for very young girls. If she wasn’t a British citizen she wouldn’t be there either. Natalie thought that a distinct possibility as she ran her finger down the side of the pages. A lot of immigrants settled in this area, many of them waiting for naturalization. Surely, when he’d briefly talked of “Polo,” said where she lived and that he owed her money, he’d have mentioned that she was Asian or African or from Eastern Europe.
She’d started a long way back, almost as far as North Circular Road, the borough limit, and now she’d come close in her search to Harrow Road and the cemetery. Only Lilac Road remained after Syringa and then she’d have to acknowledge that this line of investigation had failed. Her finger on the left-hand margin stopped. Here, at number 39, was something. Knox, Araminta K. No one else in the house, apparently. Just this one single woman.
“Minta,” she probably called herself. That would be a gift to Jeff, who would immediately have thought of his Polos. She could hear him saying it. “I shall call you Polo.” Polo, Polo, the rick-stick Stolo, round tail, bobtail, well done, Polo. She lived alone, so very likely owned her house. Natalie remembered Jeff trying to make her take out a second mortgage on her flat to start some business he enthused about. By then she knew him well enough to be quite sure he’d do no such thing, but spend the money on horses and other women. Was that how he came to owe this Polo a thousand pounds? Because he’d got her to mortgage her house?
It was a bit farfetched, perhaps. Certainly a woman living in that neighborhood, in Syringa Road, wouldn’t be well-off; she wouldn’t be able to afford to lose such a sum.
“I don’t want to hear this,” Fiona said, wishing she’d never asked this Reckman woman in and determined not to mention Linda Davies.
“Well, no, it’s not very pleasant for me, either. I was fond of Jeff myself. But I knew what he was.”
Like a child being told frightening things, Fiona covered her ears. Not usually timid or shy, she found this woman overwhelming. The trouble was that even with her hands over her ears she could still hear.
“It was a thousand pounds. He told me himself. As I’m sure you know, he had lunch with me on the day he was killed. I’m certain this Araminta Knox couldn’t afford to lose that amount. Not living in a little back street in what’s practically Harlesden. Did he have money off you?”