The Yeare's Midnight (26 page)

Underwood came around the front of his desk and shook her
hand. ‘No. Thank you, Heather, thanks for coming down. Your comments were very helpful. Call us if you have any concerns or if he contacts you again.’

‘Will do.’

‘We’re getting closer, Dr Stussman,’ said Dexter.

‘Or he’s getting closer to us.’ Stussman seemed worried.

‘Either way, we’ll nail him.’ Underwood’s words didn’t sound very reassuring. Stussman nodded and left the office. Dexter stayed. ‘What did you make of all that, Dex? You think he’s getting sloppy?’

‘Maybe. I feel like you do: the Drury thing may have been a rush job.’

‘But why? What’s his hurry? When we found the Harrington girl, I thought it would be weeks until he struck again. He was so careful. But here we are, three days later and we’ve got two, maybe four bodies. Not to mention poetry coming out of our fucking ears.’

‘Perhaps we are getting close to him, sir. Maybe he’s getting freaked out. What should we do about the other two possibles?’

‘Nothing we can do, really. Unless someone’s reported missing, that is. We shouldn’t assume he’s killed anyone else yet. He might have been in a fight or something.’ There was a pain in Underwood’s chest: he shifted uncomfortably. Mad images flickered in his mind like some terrible bonfire. He was finding it harder to push them aside.

Dexter waited for a second. She had to say something. She pushed the door shut behind her. ‘Sir, about what you told me earlier. Outside the Drury woman’s house. About your wife.’

Underwood retreated back under his shell like a frightened turtle. ‘What about it?’

‘I know it’s not my business but is there anything I can do, sir? I couldn’t help noticing the bottle.’

‘There’s nothing to say, Dex. It’s not your concern.’

‘With respect, sir, it is.’ She was quietly insistent. ‘If it’s affecting your work it
is
my concern.’

‘What are you going to do? Report me for being separated?’ His tone was desolate, despairing. The light in his eyes had been switched off.

‘Drinking won’t help, sir. It won’t help toothache and it certainly won’t help this. I needed to speak to you last night and your mobile was switched off. I understand that Harrison couldn’t get you this morning.’

‘Your point, sergeant?’

‘My point is that I’m overstretched. Things are getting missed. We can’t afford to balls this up now.’ Her gaze scanned his face for some expression, some flicker of recognition. Nothing. ‘And on a personal level, sir, I am always available if you need a sounding board. I’ve knocked around a bit myself. I’ve been shat on so often I sometimes think I should have WC stamped on my forehead.’

Underwood nodded. ‘Point taken. Thank you Alison.’ He felt ashamed. Again.
That
bitch
Julia.
How
could
she
have
driven
me
to
this?
I’ll
make
her
understand,
her
and
her
musical
ponce
wife-fucker
boyfriend.

Dexter was talking. He tried to tune in.

‘… Of housebreakers. The list is down to eighteen. Harrison and Jensen are going to start looking them up. I’m going to check up on antique shops and other places that might sell old medical junk. The more I think about it, that case
did
look old-fashioned …’

Little
Julia
Cooper
with
her
spoddy
haircut
and
brace …
goody-goody
Julia
Cooper
and
her
angel
voice
…
Julia
Cooper,
make-up
smudged
with
tears
when
he’d
proposed,
laughing
through
the
tears,
holding
his
face
…
Julia
Underwood
big-
eyed
in
her
cream-white
wedding
dress
…
Mr
and
Mrs
Under
wood
cutting
the
fucking
cake,
taking
the
first
dance
– Unchained
fucking
Melody …
Julia
Underwood
hugging
her
lover
in
the
shadows
of
a
lamp
lit
doorway
…
Julia
Underwood
writhing
with
pleasure
under
another
man,
grunting
like
an
animal
…
Julia
Heyer
hosting
a
dinner
party
for
the
fucker’s
friends
…
expensive
haircut
over
expensive
earrings
…
sing
us
a
song,
Jules
…
sing
us
a
fucking
song
…

‘… More about Drury. What’s she’s done, where she’s been. He must have found her somehow. I’m sure he’s using public information, we just have to figure out how …’ Dexter continued. Underwood drifted out again.

Julia
Heyer
drives
her
children
to
school
…
older
than
the
other
mothers
but
just
as
pretty
…
she
drives
a
big,
flash
Mummy-Jeep
…
she
waves
at
the
other
mothers
…
her
children
have
beautiful
voices
and
big
green
eyes
like
their
mother,
their
singing
whore
mother
…

‘… If that’s all right with you, sir?’ Dexter had stopped. He saw her suddenly, focused, watching him intently. He coughed.

‘That sounds good, Dex. You run with it,’ he improvised.

‘Thanks, sir. How about you?’

‘Me?’ He thought for a second and an idea flared at him out of the bonfire. ‘I’m going to follow up on that Heyer bloke. Remember the guy Harrison and I had in for an interview?’

‘I thought he was a non-starter.’

‘Probably. But it’s probably worth checking where he was last night. His alibi for the eighth was a bit wobbly.’ Underwood stood up and tried to look businesslike, reaching for his coat. He knew that his every movement shouted ‘Liar!’

‘Fair enough. Have you got your mobile, sir?’

‘Right here.’ He tapped his coat pocket and hurried out.

Dexter waited for a moment, until she was sure he had gone, then edged around his desk and withdrew the whisky from the drawer. She unscrewed it and poured a double measure into a plastic cup. It tasted fantastic: bad for toothache, bad for broken marriages, but good for concussion and the shakes.

Suzie Hunt got home just after four that afternoon. She had gone beyond tiredness and was operating on automatic pilot: turn key, take off coat, kettle on, biscuit from barrel. There was no sign of Katie anywhere in the house. Suzie flopped into her favourite armchair and dialled Katie’s mobile for the tenth time in six hours. No reply. She was beginning to feel a pang of anxiety. Still, she reasoned, Katie was a big girl now, she’d stayed out nights before. You had to give youngsters freedom
these days or they just took it for themselves and resented you for ever. She didn’t want Katie to be her enemy. She didn’t have that many friends. The kettle clicked off. Suzie squeezed the life from a tired-looking tea bag and collapsed back in her armchair. Her phone was ringing. She smirked: here come the excuses. Suzie had heard them all before: mainly from herself.

‘Hello.’

‘Is that Katie’s mum?’ A woman’s voice, aggressive. Suzie felt a flash of uncertainty.

‘It is.’

‘I’m June Riley, Steve’s mum. Is he there?’

‘Here? No. I haven’t seen him or Katie since they went out last night. I assumed they had stayed at yours.’

‘Wait till I get hold of that dirty little bastard. He was supposed to call me.’

Suzie sat up in her armchair. ‘Hang on a minute – do you think they’re all right?’

Ten miles away, as the sky began to darken and birds aligned themselves blackly on telephone wires, Jimmy Jarrett drove his flat-backed van along Blindman’s Lane out of Afton. He was in a bad mood: up at five in the morning, he should have finished an hour ago. He had got delayed at a farm near Evesbury, mending a cow gate. Replacing the hinge had been straightforward but the wood of the gatepost had been rotten and it had crumbled when he’d screwed the new hinges in. That had meant a new post and a fifteen-mile drive to the timber mill on the outskirts of New Bolden.

One job left before Jimmy could put his feet up. It looked pretty easy, though: a quick waterproof-paint job on a rusting gate between two fields. He found the entrance to the meadow quickly and away in the distance he could see the gate connecting with the next field. He knew he shouldn’t drive down there really but there were no animals about and the ground looked pretty firm. He drove down the slope and parked up near the gate. A quick inspection, and then Jimmy retrieved his paint-brushes from inside the van. A brook babbled happily in the
background as Jimmy got to work, slapping the waterproof paint over the rustiest patches of metal. His mobile phone started ringing.

‘Wouldn’t you bleedin’ know it?’ he muttered as he trudged back and rooted around in his pockets for the phone. Eventually, he found it. It was turned off. Something else was ringing, though. He looked around, confused. Was someone hiding in the trees? He made his way in the direction of the noise: it drew him towards the trees, towards the brook. There were tyre tracks on the ground. Jimmy quickened his step, jogged to the edge of the brook and looked down the bank. He caught his breath.

Steve Riley’s Fiesta lay against the bank of the gully, its nose in the water and its back end in the air. Jimmy couldn’t see anyone inside. Katie Hunt’s mobile stopped ringing.

‘Jesus Christ.’ Jimmy Jarrett scrambled down the gully, slipping and cursing in the mud until his feet were underwater. He was breathless.
Getting
old,
Jim.
‘Is anyone there?’ He bent down and looked through the driver’s open door, stretching into the car. What he saw would haunt him.

Suzie Hunt slammed her phone down. She had agreed with June Riley to keep trying Katie’s mobile until six. Then June would call the hospitals and Suzie would call the police. Time crawled by and Suzie became increasingly agitated. She chewed her fingernails and sucked the last molecules of smoke out of a packet of ten. At half-past five, her house phone rang.

New Bolden’s scene-of-crime officers were stretched: four murders in under a week had put their meagre resources under strain. Extra officers had been seconded from the Area Major Incident team at Huntington after the news of the murdered couple broke. He stood amongst the mêlée in the darkening field
with a growing sense of frustration. He had now examined four bodies – all young and healthy people – in a matter of days and felt no closer to the killer. There was some trace DNA from the Drury woman but even though it might give them a preliminary match if they actually caught the killer, he shuddered to think what a good defence lawyer would do to it in court.

Leach stepped back as a crane began to haul Steve Riley’s Fiesta from its muddy resting place. The chain creaked and groaned as it grappled with the car’s inertia. Slowly and awkwardly, the car edged up until it juddered to a halt at the top of the bank. Not for the first time, Leach glumly considered the banality of death.
We
exist
is
inexplicable
complexities,
the
crest
of
the
evolutionary
wave,
imbued
with
insecurities
and
aspira
tions,
preconceptions
and
knowledge,
affectations
and
delusions.
And
yet,
we
leave
the
world
in
lumpen,
ugly
banality.
Car
crashes,
heart
attacks,
cancer,
hypothermia:
attached
to
a
machine
in
a
hospital
corridor
or
lying
in
a
puddle
of
glass
on
tarmac.
Or
sometimes
brutally
ripped
from
the
world,
like
Kate
Hunt
and
Steven
Riley.
He held their personal effects in two evidence bags: a purse containing twenty pounds and a Connect card, a wallet holding ten pounds, a couple of credit cards and two unused condoms, and two mobile phones. What could be more banal than caving someone’s skull in with a hammer?

Leach needed a smoke. He watched Sergeant Dexter walking towards him from the recovered car. Her face looked softer under the light of the SOC’s halogen lamps; the harsh lights of the police station made her look like she was carved from granite. He realized that was an illusion.
More
like
marble,
really
, Leach mused.

‘What do you think, Doctor? Is it our man?’ Dexter stumbled slightly on the uneven ground.

‘Almost certainly. Similar pattern of blows to the back of the head, within two miles of the Drury woman, approximate time of death between ten and midnight yesterday. No obvious signs that they fought him. I’d say he surprised them.’