Fiona had been drawn to Jane, first because of her intellectual incisiveness but also because of her acerbic wit. She could see why Jane had prevailed against the understandable demands of her publishers for her to take a more active role in promoting her work. Anyone who had once been on the receiving end of that caustic tongue wouldn’t want to repeat the experience in a hurry.
But now that voice was stilled forever. It was, Fiona thought as she plodded up Dartmouth Park Hill, a loss she felt more keenly than she would have expected. And now she would probably have to break the news to Kit.
She walked through the front door to the clear voice of Tracey Thorn revealing that she was out among the walking wounded. Fiona knew just how she felt. She walked into Kit’s study, finding him hunched over the keyboard, fingers flying. She put a hand on his shoulder and kissed the top of his gleaming head.
“Gimme five minutes,” he said abstractedly.
Fiona left him to it. Bad news always came too soon. Better that he finished what he was focused on than she interrupted his flow with something so momentous that he would always connect it to that chapter, that paragraph. In the kitchen, she poured them both a glass of cold white wine and sat down at the table to wait. The five minutes turned into twelve, but Fiona felt no impatience. There was nothing either of them could do for Jane now.
At last, Kit appeared, grinning a greeting that faded to uncertainty when he saw her sombre face. “What’s the matter?” he asked, concern furrowing his forehead.
Fiona pushed a glass towards him. “Bad news.” There was no way to sugar-coat it, so she didn’t even try. “Jane Elias has been murdered.”
Kit’s hand froze halfway to his drink. “Jane?” he said, incredulous. “Murdered? Where? When? What happened?”
Fiona pushed the paper across the table. “That’s as much as I know.”
Kit dropped heavily into a chair, reaching for his wine and scanning the paper. “This is terrible,” he said, shaking his head. “Poor Jane. Shit, I can’t believe it.”
“I couldn’t take it in either. She was such a strong personality. It’s hard to imagine her as a victim.”
“It’s a fucking nightmare.” Kit ran his hand over his head in a gesture of consternation. “And it’s only two or three weeks since Drew was killed.” He stopped dead in mid-gesture. “You don’t suppose they’re connected? Somebody going after thriller writers?”
“No, I don’t,” Fiona said firmly, reaching across the table and putting a hand on his arm. “There’s no reason to think that, Kit. Different countries, different gender, different body dumps. The fact that they both wrote psychological thrillers is just a horrible coincidence.”
“You always say there’s no such thing as coincidence.”
“OK, maybe not quite coincidence. It’s possible that somebody who was as obsessed with Jane as Drew’s killer was with him saw the stories about his murder and decided that was the best way to deal with the object of his desire. But to decide on the basis of these two cases that there’s a killer out there targeting people who write crime fiction is a nonsense.”
Kit shook his head and sighed. “Yeah, I know. It’s just that I live in a world where conspiracy theory always seems more attractive than cock-up. It’s like, it would be easier to believe that there’s a serial killer on a spree than that there are two seriously fucked-up individuals out there who get their rocks off murdering writers. And when you factor in the letters…well, it just seems like there’s a fuck of a lot of crazies out there with an interest in people like me.”
“I can see why it feels like that. But I don’t think it’s anything more than bad timing, I really don’t.” Fiona felt the hollowness of her words even as she spoke them. There was nothing she could say to help, and she hated that feeling.
Kit pulled away and slammed his hands palm-down on the table. “I mean, how could this have happened to Jane? Of all people? She guarded her privacy so closely. Everybody knew that place of hers was like a fortress.”
“Maybe that was the challenge,” Fiona mused, unable to ignore the professional wheels going round. It was always her refuge of choice when she didn’t know how else to respond. She wasn’t proud of it, but she didn’t know how to change it. Or even if she wanted to. Some of her best ideas had come out of work as displacement activity.
“Why would anybody have it in for her?” Kit demanded. “I mean, sure, she generated a lot of envy from other writers. But people who say they’d kill for Jane Elias’s sales figures, that’s just talk. Writers don’t take out the competition like the Mafia. But outside the business why would she be a target?”
Fiona shrugged. “The usual reasons. Love, hate, greed, fear. Was she involved with anyone?”
Kit shook his head. “I’ve no idea. I never heard any gossip about her personal life. Which is unusual in itself. You know what a rumour mill the book world is. Everybody knows everybody else’s business. I could tell you what her last advance was.”
“Which was?”
“Eighteen million dollars for a three-book deal. But I’ve never heard anything about who she was shagging. If there was anybody. Maybe she was just one of those people that aren’t bothered about sex. I certainly didn’t get any vibe off her. Did you?”
“No,” Fiona said. “Nothing flirtatious, either with the women or the men at that dinner.”
“That’s right. Dead cool, kept her distance. The only time she really got animated was when the two of you got stuck into that stuff about the compliant victims of the sexual sadist.” He got to his feet and headed for the fridge, where he started methodically removing vegetables from the chiller. “Couscous and roast vegetables,” he said, half to himself.
“When in doubt, cook,” Fiona said affectionately. “You want to talk about it?”
“Nope. I’m going to chop the hell out of these vegetables and then I’m going back to work while they cook. Best therapy I know.”
She finished her drink and stood up. “I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”
Kit nodded. “You going to check it out on the Net?”
“You know me too well. You don’t think I’m being a ghoul?”
Kit half turned and grinned. “The bells are ringing for me and my ghoul,” he sang in his bass voice. “Go and dig the dirt. You can serve it up with supper and calm my irrational fears.”
Fiona returned his smile. Unbidden, the thought came to her that if Jane Elias had had a lover, someone was in unbearable pain tonight. “Call me when it’s ready,” was all she said. It felt too much like tempting fate to tell him how much she loved him. Extract from Decoding of Exhibit P13⁄4599 Uimef afmxx ketmf fqdqp mrfqd vmzqq xume. Mxxui mzfqp fapai meexq qb. Upupz fzqqp mzkbu xxefa wzaow yqagf quftqd…I was totally shattered after Jane Ellas. All I wanted to do was sleep. It was as if I wanted to wipe the memory of it from my brain, and sleep was the best way to do it. I couldn’t even pick up a pen and keep the record straight until today.
Of course, I couldn’t kill her on the boat, because I didn’t want to get blood everywhere. That would have been completely wrong, in the context of the book. So once I’d got her unconscious, I had to sail over to the sailing club landing ramp, get her out of the boat and finish her off in the shallows there. But my luck held. I let her bleed out a bit in the water, then I got her in the back of the 4x4 and set her boat adrift on the lake. Let them work that one out, I thought. Then I did what I had to do. I don’t know why, but it felt worse than doing Drew Shand. Maybe because she was a woman. Or maybe because I had to strip her and she looked much more vulnerable than she did with her clothes on. Everything went according to plan. And from what I read in the papers, it sounds like the message is starting to trickle through. Not before time. Now, it’s time to start thinking about number three. Georgia Lester. I’ve been reading her book again, and why anybody would publish it, never mind turn it into a film, is beyond me. It’s unfortunate that my plan will help sell more copies of her pitiful book. Butthat can’t be helped. I’ve got to keep thinking about the bigger picture. I’ve done a recce on her cottage in Dorset, and it’s perfect for what I want to do. It’s finding when she’s going to be there that’s the difficult bit. I know she’s in London this week, and looking at her engagements on the website, I think she’ll go down to Dorset at the weekend and come back on Tuesday or Wednesday. I’m not looking forward to this one little bit. It’s the worst prospect so far. What I’m going to have to do to her is so horrible. I keep rereading the bit of the book that describes it, and it turns my stomach to think I’m going to have to copy that. But I can’t stop now. That would make everything I’ve done so far completely pointless. When I feel like this, I look around me and see what I’ve been reduced to because of what they did to me. I don’t get any pleasure out of doing this, but it does give me back my self-respect. I haven’t taken everything they’ve thrown at me lying down, and that’s worth something. So I just have to grit my teeth and do what has to be done. Two down, four to go. They should have got the point by then.