Midnight Murders (17 page)

He pressed her down on to the sofa beneath him, but even as she lay on her back and opened her legs to receive him, he felt as though it was not he who was making love to Jean, but Jean who was swallowing him whole. He felt cannibalised, consumed by her greed and hunger, a hunger he realised – as he rose to meet her thrusts with his own – that could have been satisfied by almost any man – and probably better than him in his present state.

‘It's too bloody neat for my liking.' Peter walked over to the chart Dan had drawn up. ‘How many murderers fall three storeys and break their necks just before we close in on them? Besides, he doesn't fit our profile.'

‘I thought you didn't pay any credence to profiles,' Bill said.

‘That was this morning,' Peter replied irritably. ‘The age is wrong for a start. Michael was nineteen, not twenty-five to thirty-five. His father's a bank manager, his mother a solicitor, so that leaves out the working-class, blue-collar hypothesis… '

‘What did he do?' Dan interrupted.

‘Bank clerk,' Peter answered. ‘But he wasn't showing anywhere near the same promise Daddy did at his age. In fact he probably wouldn't have got into the bank at all if it hadn't been for his father's influence. Far from living alone with a domineering female relative, he lived with both parents and three brothers before he was admitted here.'

‘But he did try to burn down his girlfriend's house while her entire family was asleep inside,' Bill said.

‘Only when she went off with another fellow. There's a world of difference between desperately trying to hang on to one particular girl and picking up anyone who comes along and burying them alive.'

‘Where are we on dates?' Bill asked.

Dan consulted his notebook. ‘He was held on remand in the hospital wing of the local prison for four months. After sentencing he was transferred here and that was a year ago.'

‘He was admitted before the murders, he had the opportunity, the personality, and he was caught red-handed. I say we've got our man.' Bill was eager to wrap up the case. If the profile didn't fit the suspect, then that was the fault of the psychiatrists who'd drawn it up. They'd got it wrong before.

‘Until two months ago, Michael Carpenter was locked in a secure ward for twenty-four hours a day,' Dan remarked, still studying his notes.

‘Secure secure – or secure Compton Castle style?' Bill queried.

‘Your guess is as good as mine.'

‘Stop guessing and find out the facts!' Bill exploded.

‘As we've never been allowed into that hallowed unit, it's a fair assumption the inmates would find as many difficulties getting out as we've had trying to get in,' Peter propped his feet on the edge of Bill's desk.

The telephone buzzed.

‘I said no interruptions,' Bill barked, knowing his voice would carry through the thin partition wall.

‘It's Mr O'Kelly, sir. You did say that you wanted us to put him through,' the constable's tone was so subservient it bordered on insolence.

Bill snatched up the receiver. ‘Patrick?'

‘Just finished Michael Carpenter. He died instantly. A clean break at the top of his spinal column which severed his spinal cord. I've opened the cranium and sliced a few frozen brain sections, but so far there's nothing. Not a single abnormality. Some barbiturate and tranquillisers in the bloodstream, but no more than you'd expect to find in a patient in a psychiatric hospital… '

‘I need to know if Michael Carpenter is our man.'

‘He didn't have murderer tattooed on his forehead. If you want to know any more, you can look at the results when you come down here this evening. The relatives are coming to identify three of the bodies, remember?'

‘I remember,' Bill repeated.

‘You're creating a corpse jam down here,' Patrick hung up.

‘Anything?' Dan dared.

‘Bloody nothing.' Bill crumpling the inevitable polystyrene take-away container in his hands.

‘Looks like we're back to square one,' Peter rose to his feet. ‘Carpenter might or might not be our man and after utilising our entire manpower on this morning's search, we still don't know where Vanessa Hedley is. In fact, we know sod all.'

Trevor had always felt faintly embarrassed after sex, and more so with Jean than he had with Mags. As Jean eased herself out from under him and they both reached for their clothes, physically close, but mentally estranged, each engrossed in their own thoughts, he wondered if it was that way with everyone. It had been easier while he was living with Mags; at least their lovemaking had taken place under sheets, in the dark. And usually both of them had been so worn out at the end of it there was no time or energy to do anything other than roll over and fall asleep.

‘I'll call that taxi for you.' Jean finished dressing and picked up the telephone.

He buckled his belt and pulled his pullover over his head. He limped towards her and kissed her gently on the cheek. ‘Thank you.'

‘For calling a taxi?'

‘No. For being there when I needed someone, and being understanding when I needed sympathy, and… ' he glanced at the sofa they had just vacated.

‘All part of the nursing service,' she smiled. ‘Count it as an NHS extra.'

Ten minutes after Trevor left Jean's flat, the telephone rang. She picked up the receiver.

‘Can I come over?'

She knew the voice. She didn't have to ask the name. ‘I thought you wouldn't be able to get away this evening.'

‘I can get away now.' The voice was curt, impatient.

‘When will you be here?' She was grateful that Trevor had gone, for her lover, who was so offhand and neglectful most of the time, could be uncontrollably jealous when the mood struck.

‘Twenty minutes.'

She remembered the champagne she'd put in the fridge, the sheets she'd changed that morning in the hope of enticing Trevor to stay the night. Strange that ten minutes of intense physical grappling on the sofa had killed all urge for conversation between them, and stifled her desire to keep Trevor with her longer. ‘I'll tell the porter to expect you. You can use your key.'

‘Want me to check inside for you, miss?' One of the constables on duty in the grounds joined Carol Ashford as she unlocked her car. ‘I have a torch.' He switched on his powerful, police-issue torch.

‘Thank you,' she said gratefully. ‘All the staff are on edge.'

‘Not surprising, when you consider what's been happening.' The constable opened the driver's door, shone his torch inside and looked at the passenger and back seats. ‘No bodies, alive or dead, lurking inside,' he joked tastelessly. ‘I'll check the boot for you as well.'

‘Please,' she said quickly, and the constable noticed that she was trembling. He swung the torch high as he closed the boot and noticed that she was beautiful. Cool shining bob of smooth blonde hair, mesmerising deep blue eyes, full luscious lips…

‘Thank you, Officer.'

‘Glad to be of assistance, Nurse.' He realised he was still staring at her. She sat in the car and he closed the door on her, watching as she locked herself in. He wondered if she was married, but before he could summon the courage to ask her out, four other nurses and Adam Hayter walked into the car park, and as they'd seen him do a check of Nurse Ashford's car, they all demanded the same service.

‘Everything quiet, Tom?'

The officer looked up from the interior of Hayter's car, and pushed aside Adam who was hovering too close for comfort. ‘Yes, Sergeant Joseph.' He automatically addressed Trevor by his rank. Old habits died hard.

‘Anyone in HQ?'

‘Inspector Evans, Sergeant Collins and the super have gone down to the mortuary.'

‘Have a quiet shift.' Trevor walked on down the drive.

He had walked a couple of hundred yards when he heard a muffled scream in the bushes on his right. He stopped and peered into the darkness, wondering if it was a cat or a fox. Squeezed out by the suburbs encroaching on their old habitat, packs of them had taken to living in and around the town, scrounging out of bins and raising their litters in burrows on waste ground. And the hospital gardens, though smaller than they had once been, were still vast by the tablecloth standards of the "executive homes" outside the walls. Trevor saw a bush move, heard a rustle of leaves.

He swung his stick forward on to the lawn. It sank into the soft earth. He saw a flash of white cloth, a pair of gleaming white naked legs stretching out from beneath a bush. He took another step – a burst of crimson exploded in his head, darkening the grey shadows into unrelieved black, and bringing in its wake a sickening tide of nausea, pain and afterwards blissful, numbing unconsciousness.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Jean stretched out in the bed, searching for a cool patch of satin sheet. Her companion's slow, rhythmic breathing rose and fell in the still air of the bedroom. She envied her lover and wished that she too was sunk in blissful rest. But sexually aroused and frustrated she would have waken him – if he hadn't had an uncertain temper.

She couldn't recall feeling like this when she had been younger. Was disappointment a feature of maturity? Maturity or old age? she debated, her forty-six years weighing heavily on her mind. It was unfair. Her companion was obviously fulfilled; why not her? Had she become more demanding, or had her appetite increased with her years to the point where it could no longer be alleviated?

She slid her hand over the smooth skin of his abdomen. She moved downwards, her fingers brushed his pubic hair with feather-light strokes she hoped would provoke a response; but the caresses only intensified the fire that burned within her. She elicited no reaction, the same steady sounds of breathing continued to fill the room.

She turned over and stared at the face that lay on the pillows alongside her own. The blond hair shone like cold moonlight in the darkness, highlighting chiselled features. The firm lines of the mouth, softened by sleep, curved into a full-lipped smile.

There had been a time, and not that long ago, when she would have given almost anything for a night of passion with the love of her life; but three years of secrecy, of keeping her feelings hidden in public, of long lonely nights and holiday weekends, continually aware of and jealous of her lover's other life, had worn the gilding from the flush of love.

Three years ago she wouldn't have gone out with Trevor, let alone taken him, if not into her bed, on to her sofa. But she'd used Trevor as she'd used so many others during the past year; as a stopgap, someone to help her while away empty hours. He wasn't the first man she'd slept with since she'd taken her lover, nor was he likely to be the last, but he had been the least successful.

Her sexual appetite made no allowances for weakness – and prolonged sickness had made Trevor weak. If anyone needed tenderness, gentleness and understanding, it was Trevor. She should have left him alone. If she had succeeded with Peter Collins – she pictured his hard, firm-muscled body, his grim set mouth, eyes that never betrayed his inner thoughts – and smiled.

The man lying next to her moved. She was in bed with the man she had professed to love while thinking of another. Perhaps she was no longer in love? What was “love” anyway? As a schoolgirl she would have answered the question with certainty. Love was the all-consuming, wonderful emotion that incited men and women to heroic, unselfish deeds, and inspired poets like Byron to pen immortal lines. After her marriage she would have defined love as a transitory madness that caused women to fling aside every ounce of pride and independence. And now – now she knew that its passion, pleasure and fleeting happiness, also gave rise to the uglier more selfish emotions of envy and rage.

Perhaps it was time to make a clean break, to lift herself above the second-class status of “mistress”. To say no when the telephone rang, to re-build a life outside of a relationship that existed only in snatched, borrowed moments. But – she looked at the face next to her own, and knew that once those eyes opened she would not be capable of thinking of anyone or anything else.

A whistle blew, blasting Trevor into agonising consciousness. The explosion in his head had left a residue of pain that intensified the moment he tried to move. He tried to speak, but his mouth was filled with something damp, and foul-tasting. He choked, coughed, and spat out a clump of soil. He was lying on something soft and yielding like –

‘Sergeant Joseph?'

He heard shock and dismay in the voice.

‘Andrew?' He pushed himself up on his hands, and slumped, one arm sinking into cold damp earth, the other into – he suddenly realised what he was leaning on.

‘Here, sir. I'll give you a hand.'

His first thought was that Andrew was being ludicrously formal considering they had been constables together. He couldn't remember Andrew calling anyone, not even Bill “sir” before. The ground beneath him reverberated as he was helped up.

‘Oh, my God!' The voice was young. A rookie's?

‘What the hell – ‘

Trevor heard a stream of curses that sounded like Dan's voice being played at the wrong speed. He opened his eyes.

‘Prop him against the tree.' Dan's voice again, shocked as Andrew's had been, but more urgent. Trevor looked up. He was surrounded by a ring of torches and Dan was peering down at him, while shouting orders over his shoulder.

‘Call an ambulance.'

‘Sir.'

‘Fetch the super.'

Men ran off towards the brilliantly lit windows of the main building.

Trevor lifted his hand to the back of his head. When he withdrew it, his fingers were sticky with dark clotted blood. Dan was staring at the body on the ground.

‘What happened?' he asked Trevor.

‘I was walking down the drive and I heard a noise,' Trevor looked over to the tarmac shining in the moonlight twenty yards to his left. Had he walked that far across the lawn? He struggled to focus his mind and eyes. The shapes he saw lying beneath a bush, and on a flowerbed merged. He ran his hands down his jacket and realised that the blood wasn't just on his head. His clothes were soaked in it.

‘What happened?' Dan reiterated.

‘I was walking down the drive – ' Trevor repeated.

‘Where had you been until this time of night?'

Trevor didn't need to look into Dan's face to know what he was thinking. ‘Town.'

‘Until now? It's nine-thirty.'

‘I had dinner with a friend. Jean Marshal,' Trevor revealed testily. His head hurt, he was in pain, and he was angry that his condition didn't appear to concern anyone else. ‘We went to a restaurant.' Trevor was seeing three of everything, including Dan. He turned his head and skinned his ear on the trunk of the tree he was leaning against. Bile rose into his mouth, and he barely had time to turn before he vomited.

‘Sergeant Joseph came in by taxi.' Chris Brooke volunteered the information.

‘How long ago was that?' Dan looked from Trevor, bloodstained, vomiting and dazed, to the mutilated body on the flowerbed behind him.

‘No more than ten minutes or quarter of an hour ago, sir.'

‘Which was it, constable? Ten minutes or quarter of an hour?' Dan demanded.

‘I – I'm not sure,' Brooke stammered.

‘Who is it?' Trevor's voice was quiet, detached and remote, but it cut across the night air like a whiplash. Everyone fell silent. ‘Who is it?' Trevor reiterated.

‘I don't know. It could be one of the patients,' Dan replied. ‘There's something familiar about her. I think I saw her on the geriatric ward.'

‘Is she… '

‘She's dead,' Dan answered.

‘How?'

‘Cut up, possibly with a broken bottle. There are shards of brown glass protruding from her windpipe and jugular.'

‘Has she been dead long?' Even in his dazed and disorientated state, Trevor knew that he had to clear himself of suspicion.

‘Difficult to say. She feels cold, but there's very little blood on the body.'

‘It's all over me,' Trevor said ruefully.

Dan shone the torch over him and took a closer look. ‘Glass is embedded in your chest. Whatever you do, don't move.'

‘It's my head that's hurting,' Trevor complained.

‘I don't know what happened,' Dan bent his head close to Trevor's. ‘But,' he glanced over his shoulder at the officers around them, ‘it's vital you tell me everything you remember before the ambulance arrives.'

Trevor turned and vomited the last of Jean's brandy and the Greek meal on to the grass.

* * *

Peter Collins hated accompanying relatives into the mortuary for two reasons. The first was that the moment they entered, the mortuary lost its impersonal, laboratory feel, and took on an atmosphere that was half chapel of rest, half graveyard; the second was that the murder victims were no longer evidence in an inquiry. Weeping mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, boyfriends, husbands, transformed them into people, lovable or otherwise, who had breathed, loved, laughed, fought, argued, worked and played, and not that long ago.

Like hospitals and cemeteries, relatives visiting mortuaries reminded him of his own mortality; and he hated any reminder of his own frailty. He arrived in the car park in time to see a red-eyed Michelle Grady lead a wild-eyed, fair-haired, middle-aged woman out of the mortuary. Her resemblance to the photograph of the first victim they'd discovered was striking, and he knew he was looking at Rosie Twyford's mother. A man with a beer paunch walked slowly behind them, misery etched into every line of his bloated face.

‘Mr and Mrs Moore and Mr and Mrs Moon are still waiting,' Michelle Grady whispered as she walked past. Peter nodded and pushed open the door to the bleak, comfortless waiting room.

‘Sergeant Collins, this is Mr and Mrs Moon.'

Peter nodded to the couple Bill had introduced. Mr Moon looked every inch the successful businessman in his hand-tailored suit. Mrs Moon was attractive, suntanned and also well-dressed, but behind their fine clothes he saw a look of nervous misery and expectancy that he recognised. They still hoped. Despite the overwhelming evidence of the suitcase, and the dental records the lab boys had slaved over, they still hoped that their daughter was alive.

‘I'm taking Mr and Mrs Moore in,' Bill opened the inner door. ‘Patrick will send for you when he's ready.'

Given the choice, Peter wasn't sure whether he'd prefer to supervise the identification of the badly decomposed body or the skeleton. Perhaps it was just as well that Patrick had made the decision for him. He sat across the room from Mr and Mrs Moon.

‘If you'd like a cup of coffee, I could rustle up something,' he offered, uneasy with their despair. The metre that separated the Moons' chairs stood testimony to their mental estrangement. They'd borne a child together, yet both were facing the loss alone, without even the dubious comfort of one another's touch. Peter had never had a child, or felt the desire for one, but even he grasped that to lose a son or daughter before your own death must be one of the greatest hells on earth for a parent.

‘Thank you, Sergeant Collins, but I'd prefer not,' Mr Moon said stiffly. Mrs Moon shook her head. A painful silence fell over the room.

‘I'd like to extend my sympathies and those of everyone on the police force.'

‘Thank you, Sergeant Collins,' Mr Moon replied mechanically.

‘What I can't understand – ' Mrs Moon pulled out a handkerchief and held it to her nose, ‘is why she wrote to us and said that she was going away with a friend. That last letter was so – so – ' Sobs choked her speech. ‘– so happy,' she finished at last. ‘It was full of plans for the future. I thought – ' she looked at her husband and there was such a wealth of bitterness in his return glance Peter was taken aback.

‘Where did you think she was, Mrs Moon?' he prompted gently.

‘On a round-the-world trip. She asked her father for money for the ticket, and we – I,' she corrected herself, ‘sent her some spending money. She knew if she ran out, she could always have more – ' She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief again.

‘Do you have that letter?' Peter asked hopefully.

‘With me.' She opened her handbag and pulled out a tattered and creased envelope. She offered it to him with a shaking hand.

‘You don't mind me reading it?' he took it.

‘We don't mind, Sergeant Collins.' Mr Moon left his seat and walked to the window. He looked out through the slats of the Venetian blinds at the car park and box-like facade of the General Hospital. ‘But I don't think you'll find it helpful. I must have read it a hundred times since we discovered Claire was missing.'

‘When was that?' Peter asked.

‘About two months after she left here. Belinda, – ' he acknowledged his ex-wife's presence for the first time since Peter had entered the room, ‘– contacted me, and asked if I'd heard from her. It was then that I realised the last contact either of us had with her was regarding the money for her trip, so I reported Claire missing. Not that anyone in authority took me seriously,' he added curtly. ‘I was told that youngsters go missing every day, and sooner or later the majority turn up again, none the worse for wear. Of course, we all know different now, don't we, Sergeant Collins?'

‘I am sorry, sir.' The words sounded inadequate, but Peter didn't know what else to say. He looked down at the envelope and removed the letter. It was written in bright blue ink, fountain pen or felt, not biro, and the letters were large, rounded, those of a child. Another factor that removed the living Claire from the bundle of mildewed bones and sorry remnants of tissue and hair that he had seen laid out on Patrick's slab. He unfolded the single sheet of paper, and began to read.

Dear Mummy,

I know you don't like using the computer so this is just a short note to thank you for the money, and to let you know that I am getting better all the time. The doctor was right; now that I am out of the hospital for part of every day I am getting stronger in every way.

I went into town today and bought some cool summery things. We have decided to stop off at Hong Kong and Sri Lanka on our way to Australia, from there it is anyone's guess as to where we'll go, so you mustn't worry if you don't hear from me for a while, I'm sure that the postal service in those out of the way backwaters must be dreadfull. I will e-mail Daddy though if I find an internet café.

As well as being fit I am also very happy. That's Happy with a capital H. You were right Mummy when you said that there is someone special for everyone. When I come home I will introduce you to him. But for now I want to keep him to myself. Hug him close to me and keep him secret. But it feels good, knowing there's someone special who cares for me every bit as much as I care for him.