By the time Carole returned with the tea, Gaby had more or less calmed down. Her pale face showed the effort she was putting into battening down her feelings. But her flatmate Jenny was doing enough emoting for both of them. As if auditioning for the role of some tragic diva, she kept telling them how ghastly it had been to come back and find someone in the flat, how he’d told her to be quiet, implying a variety of threats if she disobeyed. And how awful it had been just to sit there waiting till Gaby’s return, knowing there was nothing she could do to warn her friend of the danger.
“Yes,” Stephen agreed grimly, “I think it’s lucky I didn’t just drop you, love, and go straight on to the station with Mum.”
Gaby nodded bravely. Carole could see on her face the strain of not letting her thoughts wander to what might have been.
“The good thing about it is, though – ”
“There’s a good thing, Stephen?” she asked incredulously.
“Yes, Mum. At least now we’ve got an up-to-date physical description of Michael Brewer.”
“Have we, though?” asked Carole. “Couldn’t see much of his face, with that scarf wrapped round it. I could say that he was tall, thin and probably bearded – that’s about it. The light in the hall was pretty dim.”
“Yes, I didn’t see much more. What about you, Gaby? He looked at you very closely. Would you be able to identify him in a police line-up?”
His fiancée shook her head firmly, as if hoping to shake out unwelcome images. “I don’t know. I just thought he looked…” She decided not to pursue the thought, and shook her head again.
“He looked what?” asked Carole. “Were you about to say he looked familiar?”
“No. Well, he couldn’t be, could he? I could never have seen him. Not if he’s been in prison for the last thirty years.”
Carole felt sure Gaby was leaving something unsaid, but the girl would not give any more.
Stephen turned his attention to her flatmate. “You were with him for longest, Jenny. Did you see his face?”
“No.” Onstage the word would have been a thrilling whisper. “He had the scarf on when I came in. He wassitting here waiting. At first he thought I was Gaby. I had to show him a credit card to prove I wasn’t. It was terrifying.”
“Did he talk much?”
“Hardly at all.”
“Did he threaten you, Jenny? Say he’d hurt you?”
“Not exactly. But I don’t think he would have been afraid to hurt me. There was something, I don’t know…obsessional about him.”
“Was he carrying a weapon?”
“I couldn’t see anything, but I got the impression that he probably was.”
“Did he say anything that…” Stephen tried to find the right words, but ended up with the rather feeble “…anything that sort of seemed important?”
“He said – ” Jenny dropped her voice to another audition-tingling whisper, “‘After the old man died, and the boy, Gaby had to be next’.”
At these words, an involuntary shudder ran through their subject. Instinctively Stephen put his arm round his fiancée’s shoulder.
At that moment the doorbell rang, and a couple of local detectives arrived, somewhat disgruntled at being summoned to a crime scene where no one had been hurt and nothing stolen. Stephen had to spend some time impressing on them the seriousness of the incident before they agreed to put a call through to Inspector Pollard of the Essex Police.
By the time the two girls had been calmed, and the police arrived, the last train to Fethering was long gone. It was agreed that Stephen would stay in Pimlico to give Gaby moral support – and support through the police interrogations – while Carole took Gaby’s set of keys to Stephen’s house in Fulham. Carole was slightly miffed at not being on the scene for the next stage of the investigation, but knew the chances of her finding out anything further from the police were pretty minimal. So, obedient to her son’s instructions, she took the cab he had ordered for her round to his house.
She had been there before, but only a couple of times. First, on a tour of inspection just after he’d bought the place, perhaps her first realization of quite how successful her son had become in his career (whatever that might be). And then second, a few months after that, for a rather formal and awkward Sunday lunch party to which he’d suddenly invited her (a social experiment that had not been repeated).
But she remembered her way around. Following Stephen’s instructions, she found the drinks’ cabinet in the sitting room, and surprised herself by pouring a large Scotch. Her rationale was that she wasn’t going to sleep, anyway, so she might as well take something to calm her nerves.
She took the drink upstairs with her, located the new toothbrush Stephen had described in the bathroom cupboard, had a perfunctory wash, and slipped under the crisp clean sheets of the spare room bed. She thought to herself how well organized her son was domestically, with his cleaning lady and his – Instantly, she was asleep.
A creak of a floorboard woke her and she looked up to see Stephen just closing the door to her room.
“Sorry, Mum, didn’t want to wake you. I had to come back to pick up a clean shirt and some papers I need for a meeting.”
He lingered by the door, as if about to beat a hasty retreat, embarrassed by her presence in his house. “How’s Gaby?” asked Carole.
The question made up his mind for him. He came back into the room. Carole patted the side of her bed, then immediately felt awkward because she only had on bra and pants under the duvet. She shouldn’t feel awkward with her own son. Or perhaps it was worse with her own son.
Stephen sat down heavily on the bed beside her. He didn’t look as if he’d slept at all. With Gaby and Jenny to keep calm, not to mention questioning from the police, he probably hadn’t.
“Oh, Gaby’s bearing up,” he said. “Inspector Pollard arrived in the early hours.”
“All the way from Essex?”
“Yes. They’re taking this very seriously indeed. No more pussy-footing around the subject. Pollard is now actually saying that Michael Brewer is their chief suspect for the two murders.”
“God. Which makes it even worse. For Gaby, I mean, to think what might have happened last night if we hadn’t – ”
“I don’t need to be told to think about it, Mum. I haven’t thought about anything else all night.”
“Did Inspector Pollard let slip any reason why they’re so sure of Michael Brewer’s guilt?”
“Yes. There’s a DNA match from both sites. They’ve still got samples on file from the Janine Buckley murder. There’s no question it’s him.”
“But the cars were burnt out. How can you get DNA samples under those circumstances?”
“Oh, Brewer left them very deliberately. He’s not trying to disguise the fact that he’s involved.”
“You mean – he left calling cards?”
“Almost literally that, Mum. Playing cards.”
“What?”
“At each crime scene, a playing card was found. They definitely belonged to Brewer. Traces of his DNA all over them.”
The image came to Carole’s mind – something Jimmy Troop had described to Jude – of Michael Brewer in Parkhurst, playing endless silent games of patience. And, as he flicked over the cards, who could say what fantasies of vengeance had run through his head?
Well, he’d revenged himself on Howard Martin. Though for what offence it was hard to imagine. Bazza’s death, Carole felt pretty sure, had not been for revenge, just a necessity to stop the boy talking about his involvement in Howard Martin’s. Leaving a playing card there was just an act of bravado – or maybe the intention had been to frighten someone.