Caedmon’s Song (28 page)

‘I’m sorry.’ Kirsten reached out and touched her shoulder. ‘I didn’t mean that. It’s just that I haven’t thought about it. I suppose I’ve put the
future off and I resent being made to dwell on it.’

‘Why don’t you go back to university, do your MA? It needn’t be up north if you don’t want. There’s plenty of other places would be glad to have you.’

Kirsten nodded slowly. ‘I won’t say it hasn’t crossed my mind. But I couldn’t start till the next academic year. What would I do in the meantime?’

Sarah laughed. ‘How the hell should I know? What do you think I am, a guidance counsellor? But seriously, you could get a job, something in Bath. Just to keep you going and take you out of
yourself. You’ve got too much time to brood on the past hanging around this village. What about a bookshop, for example? You’d probably like that.’

‘But what would my mother think?’ She put on a finishing-school accent: ‘I mean, it’s
awfully
common being a shopgirl, dear.’

Sarah laughed. ‘Is that why she’s so frosty towards me? Maybe I should tell her my father owns half of Herefordshire. Think that would help?’

‘I’m sure it would. She’s such a snob.’

‘Seriously though, Kirstie, you’ve got to do something, get out of here. What about Toronto? You could go out there and join Galen.’

Kirsten topped up both their drinks. It was eleven-thirty. Mozart’s
Requiem
had just ended and the world outside was silent and still.

‘Well?’ Sarah repeated. ‘What about it? Or is it over between you?’

Kirsten stared into the fire. Flames licked the wood like angry tongues. If I don’t tell her now, she thought, I probably never will. She looked at Sarah, so lovely in the winter firelight
with red and orange and yellow flames dancing in her eyes and flickering over her face. Her skin looked almost transparent, especially where the fire seemed to shine a delicate coral through her
nostrils and over her cheekbones. And she had it all: not just the looks, but a whole body. She could make love and have orgasms and have children.

‘What is it?’ Sarah asked softly.

Kirsten realized that a tear had trickled from the corner of one eye. Quickly, she wiped it away. She would have to stop this crying business. Once was all right, it had helped drain her of
tension, but it mustn’t become a habit, a weakness.

Over another cigarette, she finally told Sarah all about the damage to her body. Sarah listened in horror and couldn’t find anything to say. She poured more cognac. They leaned back
against the sofa, and Sarah put her arm around Kirsten and held her close. There were no more tears. They sat like that, content and silent for a while, sipping Rémy. Finally, Sarah swore
softly: ‘Shit, it’s ten past twelve. We’ve forgotten the new year.’

Kirsten looked up and the spell was broken. Her back ached from the position she’d been sitting in. ‘So it is. Never mind. I’ll get the Veuve Clicquot and we’ll have our
own new year a bit late.’ She stood up, rubbed her aching muscles, and went into the kitchen.

And so they had poured champagne, sung ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and wished each other a Happy New Year at twenty past twelve.

And now Sarah was gone. Kirsten walked aimlessly around Bath, its streets quiet with post-seasonal depression, and thought over what Sarah had said about the future. She decided that she would
resume her studies, or at least apply for next year. It would be a good cover, and it would keep her parents off her back.

In the meantime, she was going to attempt to find out who had crippled her. It might take months, she realized, but at least now she had discovered that the knowledge was there, locked inside
her. Of course, she must take care that no one suspected what she was really up to; she had to appear as if she was simply getting on with her life and putting the past behind her. She didn’t
know yet what she was going to do if she did discover anything, but she had to find the key, unlock the voice, and then . . . First, though, she had a lot of thinking and a lot of planning to
do.

SUSAN

By the time the man had left the newsagent’s, Sue had managed to get her breathing under control. She bought her papers and a packet of cigarettes, then walked back out
into the drizzle.

He had reached the end of the street and turned left, down the lane towards the water. Without really considering what she was going to do, Sue started following him. She half expected him to
turn into the council estate, assuming that was where he lived, but he didn’t. Instead of walking down to Church Street, however, he turned right along a narrow road that ran parallel to
it.

There were no houses on the right-hand side of the street, just a stretch of waste ground that sloped up to the southern edge of the council estate, almost hidden beyond the convex swell of the
land. On the left stood a row of small, detached cottages. They were nothing much really – just red brick with slate roofs – but each had its own front and back gardens. Their rear
windows would also look out over the harbour towards West Cliff, and a good view always costs money.

Sue had tried to hang back a reasonable distance behind the man, and she didn’t think he had spotted her. Beyond the row of cottages lay another open tract of weeds and nettles, where the
street itself petered out into a narrow dirt path that veered left, eventually to join Church Street by the Esk. It might be difficult to follow him over open land, Sue thought. Although she looked
ordinary enough in her long navy-blue raincoat and hood, if he turned he might just recognize her from the shop. And then he would wonder what a tourist was doing following him through such an
unattractive part of town.

Before she had time to decide whether to go on or turn back, however, she saw him walk down the path to the last cottage in the row. She paused, taking cover behind a parked van, and watched him
put the key in the lock and enter. So that was where he lived. She wondered if he lived alone. If he really was the man who had attacked her, and she had been certain as soon as she heard his voice
that he was, he probably did.

Then she thought of Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper who had lived with his wife, Sonia, throughout the period he had killed and butchered thirteen women. And hadn’t there been two or
three others who had survived his attacks? Sue wondered what had become of them. Anything was possible, but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to believe that the man she was after shared his
life with a woman.

When he had disappeared inside the cottage, Sue turned and walked back down the lane to the road. There was nothing more she could do at the moment. A little careful planning, at least, was
called for now. She couldn’t just go barging in and kill him; she had to lure him to an isolated open place after dark. Because she had been attacked in just such a place, she felt that she
would have more chance of succeeding somewhere similar when the tables were turned. He was stronger than her, so she would have to use cunning. She couldn’t see it happening in a house or on
a street. But she knew where he lived now, and that was comforting knowledge. It gave her an advantage.

As if to mark her entry into tourist Whitby, the drizzle stopped and the clouds began to break, allowing a few feeble rays of sun through here and there. She was on the narrow, cobbled part of
Church Street again, north of Whitby Bridge. The world went on as normal there: families and courting couples wandered down the road as usual, pausing to look in the windows of the jet shops and
the little gift shops that sold flavoured fudge or sachets of Earl Grey tea and Colombian coffee.

It was one-thirty, and Sue hadn’t eaten yet. She was also eager to read the papers. She went into the Black Horse, bought a half of lager and ordered a steak and kidney pie. The place was
moderately busy, mostly with young couples eating lunch, mackintoshes strewn on the seats beside them and umbrellas propped up against the wall. She managed to find a small corner table and sat
down to read the papers while she ate.

There was nothing about the Student Slasher in the
Independent.
It had, after all, been almost a week since he had last struck. Unless the police caught him or found an important clue,
there would be nothing more about him until he had slashed and strangled his next victim. Sue meant to see that that never happened. She glanced quickly at the headlines – war, lies,
corruption, misery – and then turned anxiously to the local paper.

The news was on the front page, staring her right in the face:

Sue put the paper down on the table and tried to control her shaking hands. He wasn’t dead! Keith wasn’t dead. She should have known she hadn’t hit him hard enough. Instead of
finishing the job, she had been frightened by that damn dog and hurried away without making sure. Perhaps she had felt sorry for him, too, and that had made her soft. But it had never entered her
mind that she might not have killed him. What could she do now? What if he were to come round and tell the police who she was? They already had a description of Martha Browne.

Sue pushed the rest of her pie aside and lit a cigarette. She had no appetite left. It was time to get a grip on herself. She went to the bar, bought a double brandy, then settled down to
re-read the article carefully. She must be careful not to panic, not now that she had the scent of her true prey. She had to think clearly. The description of the girl was vague, for a start, and
it certainly didn’t resemble the way she looked now. But would the proprietor of the Abbey Terrace guesthouse remember her? And what about Grimley’s pals in the Lucky Fisherman? She had
been dressed much the same that night, she recalled, as when she had walked in the woods with Keith. Would the men remember seeing her sitting with the Australian, glancing over at Grimley as if
she knew him? And had anyone seen her with Keith in Staithes? She had been wearing her new outfit at first, before she had changed in the toilet, so what if someone could connect the one girl with
the other?

The police could be getting very close indeed, she realized. She would have to act quickly. There was no sense in staying around to get arrested for killing Jack Grimley when she had now caught
up with the man she really wanted. Time was definitely working against her, its winged chariot snapping at her heels. And what about Keith? He might recover consciousness at any moment. Would he
still be able to identify her, or would his memory of the incident be gone, as hers had been for so long? She didn’t know. All she knew was that she had her man in sight, and she had better
find a way of luring him into the open soon, or the whole mission would be at risk.

A tweedy woman who had just come to sit at the next table gave her a curious look. It was probably time to change her haunts. She had been to this pub and the nearby cafe far too often.

She sipped some more brandy; it warmed her throat and settled her fluttering stomach. Should she go to the hospital in Scarborough, creep into Keith’s room and put the pillow over his
face? Could she do it? Did she have the nerve? But she remembered that her attacker had tried to get to her in a similar situation and he hadn’t succeeded. There would be police guards;
security would be far too tight for her to be able to get through to him. No, that was out of the question. All she could do was hope that he wouldn’t recover.

There was still the holdall back in her room. She hadn’t got rid of it yet. That was something she could do while she worked out a plan to deal with ‘Greg’. Then she would have
to leave town quickly, no foolish hanging around to wallow in the outcome of her actions. She would have to read about and savour her success at a distance, like everyone else.

KIRSTEN

With Sarah gone, Kirsten had only her fears and a growing sense of mission to keep her going. In late January, the killer claimed his fourth victim, a second-year biology
student called Jane Pitcombe. Carefully, Kirsten cut out her picture and all the details she could find and put them in the scrapbook she had started to keep track of the victims.

Also that month, she told Laura Henderson that she wanted to stop the hypnotherapy sessions as they were becoming too painful for her. In reality, she was worried that she would give away to
Laura whatever she discovered and that the police would find the killer first. She had come to realize shortly after Sarah left that she wanted him for herself. It was the only way to heal her
wounds and put the spirits of Margaret, Kathleen and Jane to rest. It wasn’t difficult to convince Laura to stop the hypnotism; after all, the police had got as good a description of the
killer as they were likely to.

It was important to try to keep everyone happy, so to this end she finally read Galen’s letters and wrote him a long, cheery but noncommittal reply. She apologized for not writing sooner,
but said she had just come through a lengthy period of depression. She also told him she was going to resume her studies, probably back up north. Canada just seemed too far away from home for her
to consider yet. She was sure he would understand.