Killing Me Softly (30 page)

This wasn't the way he liked a murder investigation to end. Neale shooting himself was tantamount to a confession in his eyes, but the law wouldn't recognise him as a murderer with that as the only evidence. There was nothing that would stand up in court. However much Mayo might be convinced about what had happened, there would be no case to answer.

He felt cheated. He'd have given a lot of what he possessed to have interrogated Neale. To have got out of him how he had killed Wishart, just what it was that had made him do it – apart from the consciousness of his own righteousness. He had set himself up as judge and jury. But that first killing had set in train other murders.

‘He's got away with it, the bastard.'

‘And what about Luce?' asked Abigail, pale with the aftereffects of shock. If Neale had had any hand in her disappearance, where was she now? There was a silence. Was she still alive, or was she, too, dead? How were they even going to begin looking for her?

Mayo was more shaken by the whole thing than he would have admitted. He wanted a shower, a change of clothing and a stiff drink. He'd been inches away from his own death and what had made Neale turn the gun on himself instead, nobody would ever know.

He was on his way out of the house when Farrar appeared at the doorway of the study.

‘There's a lot of stuff on his computer, sir ... He'd been putting it all on disc, for months.'

‘Been putting what on disc?' The DC was obsessed by bloody computers.

‘Mostly a record of his investments. He liked to play the stock market and he'd made a packet. He was very systematic, and all the information he'd been gathering is here ...' Mayo's eyes had begun to glaze over.' ... I can print it out for you, sir.'

‘Do that,' Mayo said, ignoring the implication that scrolling through a screen was beyond him ... though that might well be a justifiable doubt, given his avoidance of computers. He'd nothing against them, they smoothed the path of superintendents of police considerably, but the operating thereof he left strictly to others. No use having a dog and barking yourself was not a maxim he always followed, except in this case. ‘Send it up to me as soon as you've finished.'

The sounds started again. The thumps and bangs overhead that had penetrated the shallow sleep in which Luce now passed the whole of her time.

She fancied she'd heard the sounds some time ago, but they'd gone away quite soon and she knew she'd been hallucinating again. This time the noises went on, and she heard shouts and voices. There was a deafening crash as something fell to the ground just outside the window, another which made the floor above her vibrate.

This was what it had sounded like at the Bagots, in that wild storm when tiles and coping stones and a chimney pot had blown off the roof of number six. For a moment, time stood still. Was she – could she possibly be – in the cellar of her own house? Except for one shuddering foray half-way down the steps when she'd first seen the house, she'd never been into the cellar, preferring not to know what it was like. Only Jem ever went down there, under some compulsion to keep a check on the damp. Had they started already on the demolition work? Fear crawled over her skin like worms.

She imagined one of those huge balls swinging against the walls, causing them to cave in. Tons of bricks, concrete and rubble, the world smashing down on top of her. Exposed ceiling beams at crazy angles and plaster, the smell of old concrete. Choking grey dust, making her cough, blocking her throat and her sinuses. God, how thirsty she was!

She tried a shout which came out as a hoarse croak, a scream that sounded like the mewling of a seagull. But nobody heard her.

The indefatigable Farrar had two print-outs on Mayo's desk with a speed that had Mayo commenting, ‘He'll meet himself coming back, one of these days, that lad will.'

He handed one to Abigail, glancing at it without much interest until he saw what it was, what Farrar had meant by ‘gathering information'.

He wished the reports of investigations his DCs sent in were as precise and ordered as Neale's record of how he had taken justice into his own hands against the man he blamed for his wife's death. He skimmed through it but not as quickly as Abigail.

‘Luce!' she said. ‘It's all here, where she is.'

David Neale had been appalled when he saw the girl Luce at the bus stop and realized she'd seen him and was flagging a lift. Fractionally, he'd hesitated, but then decided he'd be better off complying than refusing to stop for her and thereby fixing the incident in her memory. It was quite feasible, after all, that he should have the use of the van, and if she became too nosy he could always concoct an excuse. She told him she had this train to catch, but not why. She was in fact unusually quiet, for her. He thought she might be afraid he was going to preach at her again. But he was more wary nowadays than he had been. She never had listened to reason, she'd been so pert when he'd tried to convince her of the error of her ways. And scornful when he'd tried to warn her of the dangers of drugs. She didn't do hard drugs, she said, she only smoked the occasional spliff, by which she meant cannabis, and that didn't do anyone any harm, it was practically legal anyway, these days. He had been so angry with her naïvety, her refusal to listen.

He knew he'd reacted badly when she saw the shotgun – he should have passed it off with some casual remark about potting rabbits or something. She'd have been disgusted, he knew she was vegetarian and disapproved of killing and eating animals, but at least she'd never have suspected that he'd been using the gun for any other purpose. But it had been a gut reaction to swing round and drive out of the station forecourt and into the yard of Miller's Wife.

She screamed at him all the way, even tried to grab the wheel at one point, and immediately they stopped in the yard, she'd tried to leap out of the van, but the rucksack was in the way and trying to clamber over it, she'd fallen. By the time she'd picked herself up he was round the other side, grasping her shoulders and shaking her. Then, horrified at the violence she'd unleashed in him, he had abruptly let her go and she'd fallen again and hit her head on the ground, losing consciousness.

He'd felt the blood drain from his heart, he was sure he'd killed her, but when he knelt beside her he could feel her slow pulse. She wasn't dead, and that meant that she would probably come round sooner or later. And would certainly tell what had happened.

For the second time, he panicked. He couldn't let that happen! On the other hand, he didn't want her to die. Only people who were evil deserved to die like that, and Luce wasn't that, only incredibly silly – and unlucky, coming across the gun like that. He felt her pulse and his panic subsided.

His mind began to work quickly, seeking possibilities, and presently it came to him what he could do. In his mind's eye, he saw the view across the river from his house: the old houses at the Bagots, the defunct warehouses and factories not yet demolished to make room for the flats and houses that would take their place. In particular, the building which had once been a sweet factory: humbugs, mint imperials and liquorice all-sorts a speciality.

He'd always taken a lively interest in every company he had shares in. Artemis Developments was one of them, and since the properties they intended to demolish were practically on his doorstep and he had a natural curiosity, he'd taken the opportunity to poke around. It was a good, solid building, pity it had to come down. Some of the machines were still there ... the boiled-sweet drums like cement mixers, where mint imperials were rolled until they were rounded and smooth, the toffee pullers, the sugar-boiling vats. Sometimes, he fancied he could still smell the peppermint and liquorice of the old sweet factory. Perhaps he could. He'd learned that if your imagination is strong enough, anything can happen.

His interest in the old building had been casual at first, but the basement floor and the small room whose function at one time, he guessed, had been to serve as some sort of counting house, for some reason fascinated him and remained lodged in his memory.

The room had a heavy lock with its rusty iron key still
in situ,
and offered the perfect place in which to leave Luce for a while now. She was already coming round when he left her, and each time he visited her with food and drink she tried to talk to him, but he never replied. From what she said he knew that she'd no idea who he was, and that she'd no memory of how she'd got there. This suited him very well.

He hadn't intended it to be for long – it wasn't part of his plan that any permanent harm should come to her. He was still angry with her but this captivity would make her come to her senses, he was sure. When he told her the truth, she'd forgive him and be grateful to him for making her see the error of her ways, and she'd understand why he'd had to get rid of Wishart, the source of so much human misery.

He hadn't reckoned on her losing her memory for so long, but gradually, insidiously, he began to enjoy the thought of her being there, not knowing who her captor was. The knowledge of his secret stimulated him, keeping him in a permanent state of excitation. This was another country, something other than the dull monotony of his normal daily life. It was almost as good as planning to kill Wishart.

As the days went by, however, these pleasurable feelings began to be clouded by doubts. He wondered if she really
would
keep quiet about Wishart when her memory returned. Luce was incapable of keeping her mouth shut – and she could take up a strangely moral stance about some things. No, he couldn't ever let her go now, she knew too much.

She would never escape from that prison, and the thought that she was going to die wasn't pleasant to him. He wrestled with his conscience for some time, he searched through the Bible, as his father had done before him, for some text which would give him guidance. He found many that he could have twisted to suit his purpose, but he had become accustomed to lying to himself and in the end, he found it easier to tell himself that her death would be painless and gentle. She would gradually sink into a coma until the end came. And then he could go and remove her before demolition work started on the warehouses and the possibility of her body being found occurred.

It was then, from his bathroom window, that he saw they were beginning work on the factory.

The contingent of three police cars and an ambulance drew frantically to a halt and officers piled out beside the three-storey building that Deeley, locally born and bred, had immediately and familiarly, if inaccurately, recognised from Neale's description. ‘That's Toffee Taskey's. Down by the river.'

The almost indistinguishable sign actually read: ‘G.W.Taskey & Sons Ltd. Purveyors of Fine Confectionery.' Instead of the busy confusion of big cranes and steel balls swinging on chains, the piles of old bricks and stinking bonfires they'd expected to be met with, they saw two high-sided lorries standing empty. There was also a mini-crane, lifting gear and cutting equipment, with half a dozen burly demolition workers wearing hard hats and a leisurely air, standing outside a temporary hut from whence the smell of bacon wafted.

Mayo asked one of them for the foreman.

‘Jack!'

Jack appeared from the hut, the last quarter of a bacon sandwich in one fist, a pint mug of thick mahogany-coloured tea in the other.

‘Knocking it down? Not yet, we aren't, squire. First we have to gut it. Stuff in there worth a bob or two, so they tell me.' He stuffed the sandwich into his mouth and spoke through it. ‘Nobody chucks nothing away, these days. Old machines, old fittings, somebody'll want it, somewhere.' He washed the sandwich down with a swallow of tea. ‘Architectural salvage, industrial archaeology, summat of that sort, that's what the boss calls it. You'll have to ask him, be here in an hour.' He threw a wary glance at the posse of police. ‘It's all accounted for, though, matey, nothing funny going on here.'

‘Not that kind of funny, anyway,' Mayo said, and told him why they were here and what they wanted to do. Jack looked disbelieving, but professed himself willing to allow them to search.

‘Is it safe, inside?'

‘Solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. Start at the bottom, I should if I was you, we're working down from the top and haven't found nothing up there.'

There was no light in the boarded-up building; the cavernous spaces echoed to the sound of feet and monolithic shadows from the heavy machinery danced in the torchlight as they progressed steadily from one section to another. The ground floor revealed nothing, except steps in one corner, leading upwards, and in another, a heavy door that was locked or bolted.

‘Are there cellars, a basement?'

Jack nodded. ‘I reckon that's where most of the offices were, where they used to put the clerks to work, poor buggers. No unions in them days.'

‘Do you have keys?'

‘No, but there's no need. There's steps outside.'

The basement was below the level of the river. The land sloped upwards on its far side. On the other it had gratings above a sunken area way created to give some light and air to the basement. The windows here were, like those in the rest of the building, boarded up, and the flight of stone steps leading down to the door was half covered in a heavy overgrowth of elder, buddleia and bramble, which perhaps explained why there were no signs of anywhere having been occupied by dossers or junkies, anybody sleeping rough.

They began their search through the numerous chambers which had once comprised offices and storerooms. The mechanism for a hoist still partly existed, from the time when, long ago, supplies had arrived by water and been lifted into the factory.

It was Deeley who found her. She was obviously in the last stages of starvation and dehydration. She could barely speak. He picked her up bodily and carried her out.