"That shirt was Jo's. She bought it in Barcelona. Unless you've been buying clothes in Barcelona as well."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure."
I fell silent. I was thinking furiously. That was something. That meant something. But what?
When we were standing on his doorstep, we kissed again. For a moment I felt as if I couldn't let go. I would just stay clinging to him and I would be safe. Then I told myself not to be so stupid. "I need to go back into the horrible world," I said.
"What are you going to do?"
"I'm going home I mean to Jo's to change. I can't go around in this stuff."
"I don't mean that."
"I'm not sure. Today or tomorrow, this man is going to discover that he's killed the wrong woman. He'll start looking for me again. Maybe I'll see if I can find out where Jo has gone. Though I don't know whether that will do any good." The hope I had felt earlier, lying in bed with Ben eating toast, was fading again.
Ben was fidgeting with his car keys, deep in thought. "I'll call Jo's parents today," he said. "They should be back by now. Then we'll take it from there."
I kissed Ben. I had to stand on tiptoe to do it. "That means "thank you"," I said. "And that you don't have to go out on a limb for me."
"Don't be stupid, Abbie. I'll call you later." He handed me a card and then we both laughed at the formality of the gesture. "You can always reach me at one of those numbers."
We kissed and I felt his hand on my breast. I put my hand on his hand. "I'm just thinking of this man from Amsterdam," I said.
I lay in the bath with the flannel over my face, and I tried to think what he would be thinking. He was about to discover that I was still alive. Perhaps he knew by now. There was another thing as well. There had been that reckless phone call to my own mobile. He had kept it. It was his trophy. And I claimed to be Jo. Did he think I was after him?
I dressed in Jo's clothes. I deliberately chose grey cords and a cream-coloured, thick-knitted sweater that were different from anything I had ever worn. Abbie Devereaux had to be dead and gone for the present. I'd just be one of the millions floating around London. How could he find me? But, then, how could I find him?
Next, I did what I should have done before: I picked up the phone and dialled from memory and Terry's father answered. "Yes?" he said.
"Richard, it's Abbie."
"Abbie." His voice was frostily polite.
"Yes, look, I know how awful everything must be at the moment
"Do you?"
"Yes. And I'm so sorry about Terry."
"That's rich, coming from you."
"Has he been released?"
"No. Not yet."
"I just wanted to say that I know it wasn't him and that I'll do anything to help. Maybe you could tell his solicitor that."
"Very well."
"I'll give you my number. Or, no, I'll ring you again, or Terry when he's back. All right?"
"Very well."
There was a silence, then we both said goodbye.
I stood in the centre of Jo's main room and looked around. It was like that awful stage of looking for something when you start looking again in the places where you've already looked. Even worse than that, I didn't know what I was looking for. A diary would have been useful. I could have discovered if she'd had anything planned. But I had already rifled through her desk. There was nothing like that. I wandered around picking up objects from shelves and putting them down again. There was a pot plant standing on the shelf by the window. My mother would have been able to identify it. She would know its Latin name. But even I could see that it was yellowing. The soil was hard and cracked. I brought a tumbler of water from the kitchen and dribbled the water on to the sad plant. It ran down into the cracks. That was another thing, wasn't it? Would a grown-up responsible young woman like Jo go away on holiday and leave her plant to die? I watered the banyan tree as well.
All of the pieces of evidence I had found were like mirages. They shimmered in the air, but when I ran to clutch them they melted. I had been living in the flat. It might well have been that she went on holiday leaving me in residence. She might have assumed that I would be there watering her plants.
I looked at the pile of mail that I had already filleted in search of anything useful. I flicked through it, for want of anything more sensible. One envelope caught my attention. It was the gas bill that I hadn't paid yet; my own funds had run out. It had one of those transparent windows, so that you could see the name and address inside. I gave a little grunt of surprise when I saw the name: "Miss L. J. Hooper'. Almost in a dream I found Ben's card and called the number of his mobile. When he answered he sounded busy and distracted, but when he heard my voice, his tone softened. That made me smile. More than smile, it sent a warm feeling through me. It made me feel ridiculously like a fourteen-year-old with a crush. Could you have a crush on someone you had just spent the night with?
"What is Jo's first name?"
"What?"
"I know it's a stupid question. But I was looking at one of her bills and she has an initial. An L before the J. What does it stand for?"
I heard a chuckle on the other end of the line. "Lauren," he said. "Like Lauren Bacall. People used to tease her about it."
"Lauren," I repeated, numbly, and I felt my legs tremble. I had to lean against the wall to hold myself up. "Kelly, Kath, Fran, Gail, Lauren."
"What?"
"That man, he used to give me a list of names of the women he had killed. Lauren was one of the names."
"But.. ." There was a long pause. "It could be a coincidence .. ."
"Lauren? It's not exactly in the top ten."
"I don't know. There are some funny names in the top ten nowadays. The other problem is that she didn't use the name. She hated it."
I started murmuring something, more to myself, so that Ben had to ask me what I was saying. "I'm sorry, I was saying that I know how she might have felt. She might have given that name to him because it was her way of refusing to be beaten by him. It wasn't her, Jo, that he was humiliating and terrifying, but someone else -her public self."
I put down the phone and forced myself to remember. What had he said about Lauren? Kelly had cried. Gail had prayed. What had Lauren done? Lauren had fought. Lauren hadn't lasted long.
I felt sick. I knew she was dead.
Jack Cross's tone did not soften when he heard my voice. It darkened. It grew weary.
"Oh, Abbie," he said. "How are you doing?"
"She was called Lauren," I said. I was trying not to cry.
"What?"
"Jo. Her first name was Lauren. Don't you remember? Lauren was one of the list of the people he had killed."
"I'd forgotten."
"Doesn't that seem significant?"
"I'll make a note of it."
I told him about the clothes as well, the clothes of Jo's that I'd been wearing. He seemed cautious.
"This is not necessarily significant," he said. "We already know that you were living in Jo's flat. Why shouldn't you have been wearing her clothes?"
I looked down at Jo's grey cords that I'd put on, then I shouted, "For God's sake, what sort of evidence is good enough for you?"
I heard a sigh on the line. "Abbie, believe me, I'm on your side, and as a matter of fact I was looking through the file just a few minutes ago. I'm even putting one of my colleagues on to it. We haven't forgotten you. But to answer your question, I just need the sort of evidence that will convince someone who doesn't already believe you," he said.
"Well, you're going to fucking get it," I said. "You wait."
I wanted to slam the phone down but it was one of those cordless phones that you can't slam, so I just pressed the button extra hard.