I’ll tell you the strange thing about them beatings. They taught me how to split my mind in two. I didn’t leave home at sixteen. I left home years earlier when I was hanging on those railings. I left home when that cord whipped through the air and sank into my skin.
I used to fantasise about what I’d do to him when I was big enough and strong enough. I didn’t have much of an imagination back then. I thought of punching him or kicking him in the head. It’s different now. I can imagine a thousand ways to cause him pain. I can imagine him begging to die. He might even think he was already dead. That’s happened to me before. An Algerian terrorist, captured fighting for the Talibs in the mountains north of Gardeyz, asked me if he was in hell.
‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘But it’s going to seem like a holiday camp when you get there.’
Pop pushes his plate away and rubs a hand over his jaw, giving me a quick sly look. A gin bottle appears from the cupboard below the sink. He pours a glass, with the air of a man who is putting something over on the world.
‘You want one?’
‘No.’
I look around, seeking a distraction, an excuse to leave.
‘You got to be somewhere?’ he asks.
‘Yeah.’
‘You only just got here.’
‘There’s a job.’
‘Fixing more locks.’
‘Yeah.’
He snorts in disgust. ‘You must be cock-deep in cash.’
Then he launches into another speech, complaining about his life and telling me I’m useless and selfish and a fucking disappointment.
I look at his neck. I could break it easily enough. Two hands, thumbs in the right place, and he stops talking… and breathing. No different to killing a rabbit.
On he goes, blah, blah, blah, his mouth opening and closing, filling the world with shit. Maybe the Algerian was right about hell.
31
A shadow fills the glass panels of the door. It opens. Veronica Cray turns and sways down the hallway.
‘You seen the Sunday papers, Professor?’
‘No.’
‘Sylvia Furness is all over them- page one, page three, page five… Monk just called. There are two dozen reporters outside Trinity Road.’
I follow her to the kitchen. She moves to the stove and begins pushing pots and pans around the hotplates. A spill of sunlight from the window highlights flecks of silver at the roots of her hair.
‘This is a tabloid editor’s wet dream. Two victims- white, attractive, middle-class women. Mothers. Both naked. Business partners. One of them jumps off a bridge and the other is left hanging from a tree like a side of beef. You should read some of the theories they’re coming up with- love triangles, lesbian affairs, jilted lovers.’
She opens the fridge and retrieves a carton of eggs, butter, rashers of bacon and a tomato. I’m still standing.
‘Sit down. I’m going to make you breakfast.’ She makes it sound like I’m on the menu.
‘That’s really not necessary.’
‘For you maybe- I’ve been up since five. You want coffee or tea?’
‘Coffee.’
Breaking eggs into a bowl, she begins whisking them into a liquid froth, every movement practised and precise. I take a seat, listening to her talk. A dozen different newspapers are open on the table. Sylvia Furness is smiling from the pages of each one of them.
The investigation is focusing on the wedding planning business, Blissful, now in receivership. The unpaid bills and final demands had built up over two years, but Christine Wheeler had kept the bailiffs at bay by periodically injecting cash, most of it borrowed against her house. Legal action over a food poisoning scare proved to be the final straw. She defaulted on two loans. The carrion began circling.
Police artists are due to sit down with Darcy and Alice. They’re going to be interviewed separately to see if their recollections can help create identikit images of the man they spoke to in the days before their mothers died.
Physically the girls described him as being roughly the same height and build, but Darcy remembered him having dark hair, while Alice was sure that he was fair. Appearances can be altered, of course, but eyewitness descriptions are notoriously fickle. Very few people can remember more than a handful of descriptors: sex, age, height, hair colour and race. This isn’t enough to draw up a truly accurate identikit and a poor one does more harm than good.
The detective scoops bacon from the frying pan and halves the scrambled eggs, tipping them onto thick slices of toast.
‘You want Tabasco on your eggs?’
‘Sure.’
She pours the coffee, adds milk.
The task force is following up a dozen other leads. A traffic camera on Warminster Road picked up Sylvia Furness’s car at 16.08 on Monday. An unidentified silver van followed her through the traffic lights. A week earlier, a similar looking van crossed the Clifton Suspension Bridge twenty minutes before Christine Wheeler climbed the safety fence. Same make. Same model. Neither CCTV camera picked up a full number plate.
Sylvia Furness received a call at home at four-fifteen on Monday afternoon. It was made from a mobile phone that was purchased two months ago at a high street outlet in south London, using a dodgy ID. A second handset, purchased on the same day, was used to call Sylvia’s mobile at 16.42. It was the same MO as with Christine Wheeler. One call overlapped the other. The caller passed Sylvia from her landline to her mobile, possibly ensuring that he didn’t break contact with her.
DI Cray eats quickly, refilling her plate. The coffee must burn her throat as she washes down every mouthful. She wipes her lips with a paper napkin.
‘Forensics came up with something interesting. Semen stains from two different men on her bed-sheets.’
‘Does the husband know?’
‘Seems they had an arrangement- an open marriage.’ Whenever I hear that term I think of a small delicate craft floating on an ocean of shit. The DI senses my disillusionment and chuckles.
‘Don’t tell me you’re a romantic, Professor.’
‘I guess I am. What about you?’
‘Most women are- even a woman like me.’
She makes it sound like a statement of intent. I use it as an opening.
‘I noticed photographs of a young man. Is he your son?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Grown up. He lives in London. They all seem to go to London eventually- like turtles returning to the same beach.’
‘You miss him?’
‘Does Dolly Parton sleep on her back?
I want to pause and study this mental picture, but carry on. ‘Where’s his father?’
‘What is this- twenty questions?’
‘I’m interested.’
‘You’re nosy.’
‘Curious, that’s all.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m not one of your bloody patients.’ She says it with unexpected anger and then looks slightly self-conscious. ‘You want to know, I was married for eight months. They were the longest years of my life. And my son is the only good thing that came out of them.’
She takes my plate from the table and dumps the cutlery into the sink. The tap is turned on and she scrubs the dishes as though cleaning away more than scrambled eggs.
‘Do you have a problem with psychologists?’ I ask.
‘No.’
‘Maybe it’s me?’
‘No offence, Professor, but a century ago people didn’t need shrinks to get by. They didn’t need therapy, Prozac, self-help manuals or the fucking “Secret”. They just got on with their lives.’
‘A century ago people only lived to be forty-five.’
‘So you’re saying that living longer makes us unhappier?’
‘It gives us more time to be unhappy. Our expectations have changed. Survival isn’t enough. We want fulfilment.’
She doesn’t answer, but it’s not a sign of consensus. Instead her demeanour suggests an episode in her past, a family history, or a visit to a psychologist or psychiatrist.
‘Is it because you’re gay?’ I ask.
‘You got a problem with it?’