She sat for a moment looking at the small tape recorder. She had achieved all that she had set out to achieve. But she felt quite sick.
She must calm down, be careful. She mustn’t blow it now. She had the tape and the computer disc. She certainly had him. She turned the car east and headed for Scotland Yard. After a couple of minutes, she pulled into the side of the road, remembering what Marcus had said.
‘Half the top men in the Met were Friends.’
The ramblings of a desperate man, or the truth? Probably a bit of both, she thought — a gross exaggeration for certain, but one ‘Friend’ in the Met could be enough to scupper her. And anyway, how could she be sure of getting to somebody who would take her seriously if she went in cold? She had not thought beyond conning and confronting Marcus, she realised. That had been a daunting enough task. So, now how should she handle it? Todd Mallett. She trusted him totally. She would call him and seek his advice. Damn. She had left her mobile phone at home in Richmond. Unlike her, but then it was an unlikely time in her life.
And so she decided to drive home. The traffic would be terrible at that time of day, and it would probably take her the best part of forty-five minutes to get there from Chelsea. None the less it was a good idea. She needed the comfort of her own familiar surroundings around her. She would phone Todd as soon as she got there.
The journey took forty minutes. She pulled the Porsche into the driveway and opened the electronic door to the garage with the flick of a switch inside the car. The garage door shut behind her. There was a connecting door from within the garage to the house. She opened the glove compartment at the front of the Porsche and took out the computer disc. Clutching her car keys, the computer disc, and the micro tape in her left hand, she used her right to unlock the house door, ran up the steps to the living room, flung herself full length on the big squashy sofa, and burst into a fit of painful, body-racking sobs.
It was a luxury she could not allow herself for long. It was no good falling apart now. She hoisted herself up to a sitting position, reached for the telephone on the coffee table, and asked directory inquiries for the number of Durraton Police station. She dialled it. Todd was not in and was not expected back that evening. Damn. And damn again.
She called directory inquiries once more, and got Todd’s home number. Then she looked at her watch. Still not six o’clock. There was no way he would be home by now, not Todd. He must be off somewhere working. She would leave it at least half an hour. She did not particularly wish to speak to his wife Angela, she was not sure if she could deal with that right now.
She was also not sure that she could cope with being on her own and keeping all of this to herself for much longer. It might be time for Anna. She thought about it. Yes, it definitely was. She needed another brain, and Anna was the one person she could trust one hundred per cent.
She dialled the Barnes number. Anna picked up the phone, which was a relief. Then she remembered that Dominic had told her he was off on a seminar. Would that be a problem? She hoped not.
Anna was furious with her.
‘What on earth is going in?’ she stormed. ‘You put the fear of God into Dominic this morning. He actually seemed concerned about you, said you weren’t yourself at all — which would usually have delighted him...’
Jennifer did not have the energy to respond. Her voice was quiet and distant. It stopped Anna short.
‘If you can come over this evening I will tell you everything,’ Jennifer said. ‘I need your help.’
‘Can’t you come over here?’ asked Anna.
‘No. I have some calls to make and I may have to leave messages and I need to use the computer and it would all be too complicated.’
‘Don’t babble,’ said Anna, in an attempt at normality. ‘Dominic’s away and I was just about to give Pandora her tea and put her to bed.’
Jennifer was ready for her. ‘Give her her tea, put her to bed, and when she’s asleep carry her out to the car and bring her over here. You’ve done it before, the last time she never stirred.’
‘Oh God,’ said Anna. ‘OK. I should be able to make it by eight.’
She paused. ‘And Jennifer... this had better be good.’
Then Jennifer did manage a wry laugh.
‘I don’t think “good” is quite the word for it,’ she said.
She put the receiver down with, in spite of everything, just the merest flash of the sense of well-being that she almost always experienced after talking to Anna. She went to the bathroom and peeled off her clothes. She put them in a plastic bag for the dustbin. Even the much-loved old Levis. A bit extreme, perhaps, but when it was all over she wanted nothing that would ever remind her of Marcus again.
She kept thinking about the sex with him. She had made a conscious decision to go to bed with him again, because she knew no other way that she could have convinced him to trust her and talk to her like he had, no other way to use her power over him. Jennifer had never lied to him before, she didn’t think, and never pretended either — certainly not in bed. That had given her all the advantages in the final confrontation, but it had been obscene, and with what he had told her afterwards, the obscenity was overwhelming.
Suddenly she felt nauseous again. It happened quickly. She fell to her knees in front of the lavatory pan and just managed to lift the lid before being heartily and extensively sick.
Afterwards she felt very slightly better. She clambered under the power shower and let a steaming hot jet of water drench her in its powerful stream. She stood there for a couple of minutes and then energetically shampooed her hair for the second time that day and soaped every half-inch of her body, as if she was washing the last vestiges of Marcus away. By the time she had let the water pour over her for several minutes more, she really did feel better.
She dressed in tee shirt and leggings, wrapped a towel around her hair, and then tried Todd at home. Angela answered. He was not there. She really was not having much luck.
‘Do you know when he’ll be back?’ she asked.
‘Haven’t a clue.’
The voice at the other end was cold and unhelpful. Angela had never forgiven Jennifer for not only escaping from North Devon, but also, in every practical appearance at least, being highly successful in London. Jennifer had conquered worlds Angela could only dream about, and it made the policeman’s wife resentful. Little did she know how much at that very moment Jennifer envied Angela her rural family existence with Todd and their children. ‘Is there anywhere I can contact him?’ she asked.
‘Nope. He’s off playing cricket in a field somewhere.’
Cricket? Jennifer couldn’t believe it. It was absurd. Her ex-husband had just confessed mass murder to her, and the only man she knew who could help her and whom she could trust, a policeman re-investigating one of the murders, was playing cricket.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘It’s vital that I contact him.’ She was pleading, but the voice did not become any more friendly.
‘He’s playing cricket,’ Angela repeated. ‘And then it’ll be the pub afterwards. You know Todd.’
‘You know Todd,’ repeated Jennifer to herself in her head. Oh God, did Angela know about her and Todd? Or did she just suspect? It all seemed so unimportant now... to her. But she had to speak to him, she had to.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘It’s about the murders in the Bay. I have new evidence. I must talk to him; hasn’t he got a mobile phone?’