Acid Lullaby (34 page)

Underwood stopped. Jack had finally dropped his guard and given a specific detail: ‘YXH’. Was it a person or place?

Underwood felt a spark of grim satisfaction. The picture was emerging. The patient’s father had organized Jack’s involvement. He had suspected a concerned third party had been involved for some time. He also began to wonder if the middle-aged male corpse that they had retrieved from Fulford Heath was the murderer’s father. He also noted that the accounts tallied chronologically with the timeframe implied by the post mortems conducted by Leach. The first murder had taken place around the beginning of February. The sessions with Jack seemed to end in mid-March. The second murder – the woman with glass fragments embedded in her body – had been dated to early April.

The kitchen clock suddenly chimed for five o’clock,
making Underwood jump. The dead house was unsettling him; as was the growing recognition that Mary Colson’s unusual abilities had again steered him a step closer to the killer. He could feel the dead watching him, anticipating his next move. Underwood briefly read the two photocopied pages that gave details of the Soma legend and of Brihaspati, the sage of the Gods, before deciding to leave the house.

‘YXH’ was now the key. He needed to talk to Alison Dexter.

He gathered his papers and left the house, double locking the door behind him.

The house fell quiet again. Rowena Harvey’s perfume drifted faintly down the stairs. Water lay still in a film across the coloured rocks of the water feature. The kitchen clock ticked pointlessly and the central heating timer clicked the boiler on. The photographs on the living room wall stared out at the emptiness.

The emptiness stared back.

Alison Dexter realized as she drove back towards New Bolden that Adam Miller had been correct on two issues. Firstly, he had apparently located a site from where the killer could have harvested his poisonous mushrooms. Secondly, her shoes had indeed been totally inappropriate for trudging about in the woods. Her feet were soaked and her shoes and tights caked in mud. She had left the scientist at the final site after the forensic team from Suffolk police had arrived. It was possible that they might find something useful: a discarded item containing a print, maybe even an impression in the soil. The ground was certainly soft enough, as her ankles and footwear uncomfortably proved.

She needed to be at the station. Information was going to start flowing through the department quickly: Leach’s full
post-mortem results, details from Sauerwine’s investigation into Toyota dealerships and hopefully data from the forensic team in Thetford Forest. She wanted to be the focal point for the investigation: allow the data to filter through her. If it was going to be a long night, she needed to change. Dexter turned off the New Bolden ring road and headed for her apartment.

As soon as she unlocked her door and walked inside, Dexter’s instincts told her that something was wrong. Maybe it was an unfamiliar smell or a sense of disruption to her ordered world. Then she realized, her Police College graduation picture was smashed on the floor. Cautiously, she moved down the hallway trying to keep as quiet as possible. She passed the kitchen and shot a quick glance at the mess of rice and litter that had been spread across the work surface and the floor. Just as she was about to open her bedroom door, Mark Willis emerged from the bathroom behind her and, using all his weight, dragged her through the doorway, flung her on to the bed and fell heavily on top of her.

She fought violently against him, her hands scratching and tearing at his eyes. She could smell beer on his breath. After a moment or two she drew blood and Willis lost patience. He slapped her hard across the face and clamped his hand down over her nose and mouth.

‘Sssshhh!’ he whispered. ‘Or I won’t let you breathe.’

She bit at his hand and he slapped her again.

‘Don’t worry,’ he slurred, ‘I’m not going to try and slip you one.’ He grabbed one of her breasts and squeezed hard. ‘Although I’m glad to see that you’ve been looking after yourself.’

‘What do you want?’ she hissed before the hand could cover her face again.

‘I want my drugs, Alison. You took them. They belong to me. I want them back.’

‘I haven’t got them.’ She was working on an exit strategy. His body weight was keeping her legs pinned. If he moved slightly she could swing her knee up into his crotch.

‘I know you haven’t, I’ve been looking around. Nice flat,’ he observed, ‘like a cell.’

‘Well you’d know, wouldn’t you?’ she snarled.

‘That was uncalled for, Alison. Give me my drugs and you’ll never see me again.’

‘I don’t have them.’

‘I know you took them, I know you’ve hidden them. If I don’t get them back, I’m going to hurt you. And you know I’m good at that.’

‘The only thing you’re good at is screwing people over.’

‘Harsh words coming from you, Sparrer.’ Willis smiled a malicious yellow smile. ‘You never even told me I was gonna be a daddy.’

Dexter realized for the first time that her journals were scattered across the room. She felt herself go limp as if her final ounce of fight had suddenly fled from her body. He had violated her. The past she had tried so hard and secretly to rationalize lay in disorganized and exposed heaps on her bedroom floor.

‘Little Zoe’s going to be eight in a couple of weeks,’ he continued, ‘or at least she would have if you hadn’t got her sucked out.’

‘Go away,’ Dexter whispered quietly.

‘You see, Sparrer. You’re not the Pollyana Perfect everyone thinks you are. At least I’ve never killed anyone. Then there’s the issue of your rural anonymity. There are people in London who’d love to know where you’re hiding. Maybe I’ll put the word out. Maybe someone really scary will come to visit.’

Dexter was cold, numb with shock. ‘Go away now and I’ll give you your drugs tomorrow.’

‘Why not now?’

‘That’s the deal,’ she whispered, staring directly up at the ceiling. ‘Take it or leave it.’

Willis thought for a moment. ‘Where and when?’

‘I’ll send you a message.’

‘Don’t mess me around, Sparrer. I’ll know if a cart-load of plods is waiting for me.’

‘I’ll send you a message.’

‘See that you do.’

Willis climbed off of her and took a step back. He watched
her for a second lying perfectly still on her bed. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘it’s getting me all nostalgic seeing you lying there, Sparrer.’

She said nothing. Willis grinned, collected his beer from the sideboard and left.

Five minutes later, Alison Dexter stood up and collected her past from the different corners of the room. She put the journals back in their correct order and stacked them back in her cupboard. The mud on her tights had dried and crumbled onto her duvet and white carpet. The telephone was ringing in her living room. She didn’t hear it.

Rowena Harvey gradually awoke from a nightmare that had seemed to last days. It had been a state of near consciousness of strange dreams and images: terrifying and enlightening. All the time the strange electronic voice had droned at her, conjuring dark shapes from her imagination. She had tried to fight but had found the powerful suggestions impossible to control.

She gradually began to remember the details of her abduction and the face of the man who had taken her. She recalled the pain of the car crash that still nagged at the side of her head. There were other images too floating in her mind: being dragged upstairs and tied down, lying naked while he washed her with a sponge, screaming into the masking tape gag that she still wore, the man feeding her some terrible omelette before she’d sank into oblivion.

Who
was
he?
What
did
he
want?

He hadn’t raped her but she felt a cold terror that he fully intended to do so. She knew that she had to try and free her hands, at least try to get away. Rowena Harvey tried to open her eyes but they felt so heavy, as if she was trying to lift the world with them. The lights of the room swam between her
half-closed lids, uneven shapes that made no sense. She was aware that her legs itched but couldn’t see why. She also gradually became aware that she was not alone in the room. The man was in there too, talking to her, the same haunting, prompting voice that had driven her nightmares.

‘… a little bit of foam … a scrape and hey presto!’ the voice said happily.

Rowena managed to open her eyes a little more. She could see the outline of his body in front of her. She could hear water splashing too.

‘… fortunate to have been incorporated in the incarnation.’

He was shaving her legs. Rowena Harvey could feel the razor dragging across her skin. She looked down and saw her entire body was covered in shaving foam. He was shaving off all her body hair. She screamed and threw every ounce of strength into freeing herself of the bindings.

‘… you move around I’m more likely to slip and cut you, aren’t I?’ the voice warned sternly, ‘the blood of the lunar race should not be spilt so stupidly.’

Max Fallon checked his watch. It was only a matter of hours now. Darkness was already stretching across the East Anglian sky beyond the windowpane. As the planets span beautifully and gigantically into alignment above him, he and Rohini would bring forth the lunar race on earth.

Underwood found an envelope waiting for him at the front desk of New Bolden CID. It contained a mass of receipts and for a moment he had no idea who had left it for him. Then he remembered his conversation with Doreen O’Riordan. He crammed the bulging envelope into his inside jacket pocket. He had really made the request to try and frighten the woman into behaving more respectfully towards Mary Colson. He
hadn’t expected her to be so bloody-minded as to provide him with hundreds of receipts. Still, he could be bloody-minded too when necessary.

He found Sauerwine and Harrison together in CID, sifting through two huge piles of photocopying.

‘Service and sales records?’ he asked.

Harrison nodded. ‘It’s all a bit of a mess. Some of the dealerships have given us records for all the two-point-eight litre Land Cruisers they’ve sold or serviced, others have given us details on completely different models. It’s taken us since five just to identify relevant records.’

Sauerwine placed his left hand on one pile. ‘These are relevant. Hopefully.’

Underwood pitied them. Examining documents in detail had never been one of his strong points. He found he could focus intensely but only for short periods before his mind wandered into minefields of its own creation.

‘I found something that may be relevant in Jack Harvey’s papers,’ Underwood said. ‘The letters Y,X,H are important. It may be a short form of the killer’s name, it may be something to do with his address, it may even be his car licence plate.’

‘Postcode?’ Sauerwine volunteered.

‘Worth checking out,’ Harrison nodded. ‘At least it gives us something to focus on.’

‘Where’s Dexter?’ Underwood asked, seeing her empty office.

‘Supposedly on her way,’ Harrison replied. ‘She’s late in.’

Underwood felt a stab of anxiety. He recalled his conversation with Paddy Mclnally and realized that he had done little to help or investigate Dexter’s own situation. She always gave him the impression of total self-sufficiency: of almost resenting his interference. Dexter seemed to take any offers of help as a professional and personal affront. He sensed that McInally’s relationship with her was more affectionate than his own. They were both East-End types, Underwood consoled himself, perhaps it was natural for them to have an affinity.

He tried to remain focused on Rowena Harvey. Jack’s
notes had given him an insight into the killer’s frame of mind. The drug addiction seemed to have eroded the murderer’s sense of identity. Underwood vaguely remembered reading an article a few years previously about LSD addiction amongst rock stars in the sixties: notably, the manner in which excessive use of the drug gradually undermined an individual’s ego and destroyed their idealization of the self. It seemed plausible to him that a mind weakened by usage of the drug or its close relatives might try to create a new identity as the old one evaporated.

He flicked through the papers he had discovered at Jack’s house. The killer believed he had become a Hindu deity, the Soma. Why had he assumed that identity? Underwood thought for a moment and then remembered a fragment of his conversation with Adam Miller from a couple of days previously.

‘Have we got a contact number for Miller?’ Underwood shouted across the room to Harrison and Sauerwine.

‘We’ve got a mobile,’ Sauerwine replied. ‘He’s being driven back to Cambridge, I think.’ The police constable read out Miller’s number from a photocopied sheet Dexter had left on his desk.

Underwood dialled and impatiently waited for Miller to pick up.

‘Hello,’ said Miller after three rings.

‘Doctor Miller, it’s John Underwood from New Bolden Police.’

‘Hello John,’ Miller replied. ‘I’ve just got back from Thetford. You’re not going to send me back up there, are you?’

‘No. Did the forensic team find anything?’

‘Not while I was there. I think they got fed up with me. They sent me home in a squad car.’

‘Adam, I need to ask you something. When we met you in Cambridge, you mentioned that some of these mushrooms have a long history; that they were used by ancient cultures. You called it “ethno-something-or-other”?’

‘Ethnomycology,’ Miller confirmed. ‘The Fly Agaric
mushroom – the amanita muscaria – certainly has a colourful history.’