A Deadly Thaw (23 page)

‘What do you mean nothing happened to you?’

Kat could feel the fragile connection that she’d made with her sister begin to dissolve. Lena took a step backwards.

‘Your assault, from what you’ve told me, was absolutely horrific. But you seem to think something happened to me and nothing did. Okay, admittedly I’ve had my fair share of idiots, but nothing like you describe.’

‘You weren’t attacked? Here?’ Lena inclined her head towards the disused pub with its maelstrom of memories and its forbidding air.

‘No. That place was full of men on the prowl. I remember that. But nothing ever happened to me.’

He sister took another step back, away from the pale yellow light of the street lamp and back into the shadows. ‘Then it’s all been for nothing.’

Sadler had endured another night of bad dreams, this time walking through thick mud. He’d been trying to wade through the sticky viscous substance, but with every step he had sunk lower and lower into the ground. By the time he woke up, he had a sheen of sweat covering his body. In his dream he’d been waist-deep in the filthy mire.

Although a shower removed the physical traces of the night, his mind felt disjointed. As he walked into the communal office, he noticed that Palmer and Connie had only just got in themselves. Connie was yawning, without any attempt to put her hand over her mouth. Palmer had just taken off his jacket and was folding it up neatly to put in his desk drawer.

He gave them a nod and went over to his office and shut the door. He picked up the phone and dialled Llewellyn’s number. Margaret answered. ‘Is he in?’

‘Yes, but he’s asked not to be disturbed.’

‘It’s urgent.’

‘Hold on.’

‘He’s got a conference call in five minutes. It’ll last about half an hour. If you hold tight, I’ll call you when it’s over. You can see him for about five minutes then.’

‘That’s fine. I’ll wait.’

Sadler opened the door to his office and called over to Palmer and Connie. They came quickly. ‘Shut the door behind you.’

Connie complied with her foot.

‘I want us to go through the narrative of events as far as we’ve got with this investigation.’ Connie and Palmer looked at each other. ‘I know we’ve discussed this before but humour me. Let’s start with 2004. Philip Staley is killed by Lena Gray. We’ve established, as far as we can, that it is Staley.’

‘His medical records match the description of the body, in particular the excision of a melanoma in 1998,’ confirmed Palmer.

‘Plus he received a sum of money from his mother in August 2004 to buy a plane ticket to Australia. This money hasn’t been touched except for a small withdrawal.’ Connie was leaning forward in her seat.

‘Fine. So we’re proceeding on the assumption that it was Philip Staley in Lena Gray’s bed. What was he doing there?’

‘They must have been seeing each other,’ said Connie. ‘There’s nothing to suggest the sex wasn’t voluntary.’

‘Okay. Let’s move on. She pretends it’s her husband, Andrew Fisher. Any idea why she might do that?’

Palmer and Connie looked at each other. ‘It’s our biggest stumbling block, actually. We don’t know why she’d do that.’

‘Okay. Let’s leave that for the moment. Have you found a connection between Philip Staley and Andrew Fisher?’

‘We’ve found a possible connection,’ said Palmer. ‘I’d put money on the fact they knew each other from playing rugby. It’s all there. But we need to find some hard evidence, to go digging to establish that.’

‘Well keep on at it. Because, like you, I think there’s a rugby connection. Okay, so Andrew Fisher is told by his wife that she’s just murdered his friend. He then, voluntarily – let’s stick with that for the moment – agrees to hide out in Whitby, pretending to everyone, including his mother, that he’s dead.’

‘I think his mother knew he was alive,’ said Connie robustly.

‘I’m not so sure. But the question is why.’

‘Why what?’ Palmer rubbed his head. ‘Why did Lena kill Philip Staley, or why did she persuade or force her husband to hide out in Whitby?’

Sadler looked at them both. ‘The two are connected, aren’t they? Answer one and then the other.’

‘And what about Andrew Fisher’s subsequent killing?’ asked Connie. ‘If he’s perfectly happy in Whitby, for whatever reason, why did he come back to be killed?’

‘Come back to be killed,’ echoed Sadler. ‘That’s actually not a bad turn of phrase.’

‘Come on, boss. It doesn’t work like this. If you know something, you’re supposed to tell us. Not keep us hanging on like Hercule Poirot.’

‘The trouble is, Connie, that I don’t know anything. I’m as much in the dark as you are but I think there’s a reason for that. What do we know about Philip Staley?’

Palmer got in first. ‘That he was a rugger bugger, he overdid the sunbed use, and he didn’t ask for permission before he had sex with a woman he picked up for the night.’

Connie was looking at him in shock. ‘Permission? I think that’s putting it mildly. He raped Rebecca Hardy and then took a photograph of her. That puts it in the definition of aggravated rape these days.’

Palmer turned round to retort, but Sadler silenced him with a look. ‘There are two things you’ve just said that I want you to think about. The first is your mention of “these days”. We’re all pretty clued up on how we deal with reports of rape now. I want you to think about what Rebecca Hardy told you in the interview.’

‘She didn’t say anything bad about how she was treated here,’ pointed out Palmer. ‘She dropped the accusations because she was worried she wouldn’t be believed.’

‘I just want you to bear that in mind. The second thing that Connie said was that what happened to Rebecca constituted
aggravated
rape. What does that mean?’

‘It means’, Palmer’s tone was subdued, ‘that in addition to being raped, the victim is subject to additional trauma. Taking photographs is definitely on the list of serious aggravating features. I remember learning it for my sergeant exams.’

‘Can you remember what else was on this list?’

Palmer looked to Connie. ‘Not all of them from memory. Infecting the victim was one.’

The phone rang shrilly on the desk. Sadler picked it up. Llewellyn’s secretary came on the line. ‘The call finished early. He’s free now if you want to pop down.’

‘Thanks, I’m on my way.’ He looked across to his two colleagues. ‘Look at that list and tell me what comes to mind.’

‘Do you want me to look up some other rape cases from the time?’ asked Connie. ‘Lena Gray had a clean record before her arrest. There were no allegations made by her in relation to a prior assault.’

Sadler thought to his forthcoming meeting. ‘I think this might go further than you think, Connie. Stick to Philip Staley and see what you come up with.’

‘What’s this all about?’ asked Connie. ‘What’s going on?’

Sadler stood up. ‘That’s what I’m about to find out.’

Kat woke up and had no idea where she was. Not Providence Villa. The floral odour of the bedroom couldn’t have come from that musty house. And not Mark’s spare bedroom either. That had a flat, synthetic smell, probably emanating from the cheap carpet.

She hadn’t heard from him since their argument, and yet surely he must still be thinking of her. Poor Charlie must have been wondering where she’d got to. Perhaps this was his way of punishing her for walking out on him. Absolute silence.

Then she remembered Lena. After Kat had put right her sister’s assumptions about the events of twenty-five years ago, that she hadn’t been the victim of an attack, her sister had just turned away and walked off down the steps next to the canal bridge. Kat hadn’t run after her. Because Lena was still full of her secrets, and Kat was sick of trying to guess them.

Exhausted with despair and worry, she had rung Patricia and asked if she could come and stay the night. When she arrived, Patricia took one look at her and directed her towards the bathroom with the white modern fittings and deep pile towels, so different from the spartan furnishings of Providence Villa. After a long soak, she had gone straight to bed and had slept for eight hours. Not long for some, perhaps, but virtually unheard of for her.

She fumbled around for her mobile and realised, with a shock, she had five missed calls from a mobile number she didn’t recognise. She checked her voicemail. No messages. Could Mark be calling from a different number?

The doorbell rang downstairs, and Kat heard someone being let into the hall. Patricia must have a client. She needed to get dressed and slip out. She heard footsteps on the stairs and a knock on the door. ‘Hold on.’ She got up and pulled on the jumper and trousers she had been wearing the day before. Patricia was waiting outside the door, and behind her stood Lena. Kat looked at her in astonishment. ‘How did you know I was here?’

‘I followed you.’

‘Followed me? You can’t have, I saw you walk off.’

‘You saw me go down the steps by the railway bridge. Then you turned and went in the opposite direction and made a call. I doubled back and followed you.’

Kat’s confused brain tried to remember the sequence of events. ‘Why? Why did you follow me?’

‘I was so angry that I’d got it wrong about you, I stalked off. But then I thought how utterly stupid this was and how much I needed to talk to you about everything.’

‘Everything?’

Lena looked at Patricia. ‘Maybe it would help if someone else was here when I told you this.’

Patricia backed away. ‘I’m Kat’s supervisor. If you want me to act in a professional capacity, I have to tell you the provisos. Kat knows them too.’

‘Provisos?’

‘If I hear something that leads me to believe that someone is in danger, and that includes yourself, then I am duty-bound to inform the police.’

‘It’s true,’ Kat confirmed. ‘It’s probably better that Patricia doesn’t hear this. It’ll be all right.’ She opened the door wider and pulled Lena into the room.

Lena looked around her. ‘God, I’ve forgotten how normal people live.’

‘I know. I woke up this morning and thought exactly the same. How did we get to this state?’ Kat sat down on the bed, and Lena joined her. For Kat, it was the closest she could remember being to Lena in over twenty years.

‘The man I killed in 2004 was called Philip Staley.’

‘Philip Staley? I’ve never heard of him. What was he doing in your bed?’

‘I was having an affair with him.’

‘An affair? But I never thought—’

‘That I was that type of person? Well, no one likes to think of themselves as an adulterer until they’re unfaithful to their partner. I met Philip one day and started an affair with him.’

‘So why did you kill him?’ Silence. Lena’s face took on an expression so familiar to Kat. Stubborn and blank. ‘Lena. You need to tell me. Why did you kill him?’

‘I killed him because he must have been the same man who raped me in 1987.’

‘What? If he was the man who raped you as a teenager, what the hell was he doing in your bed?’

Lena looked at her in consternation. ‘I didn’t recognise him.’ Kat stared at her. ‘Honest to God. I didn’t recognise him from the first time. Think about it. Think of someone you slept with in your early twenties. Did you have one-night stands when you were younger?’

‘Well, all right, yes,’ admitted Kat. ‘A couple of times, but I never enjoyed it. It wasn’t really me.’

‘Okay. Think about one of those people you slept with. Suppose he waltzed back into your life today. Would you recognise him?’

A pleading note had entered Lena’s voice. Kat leant back against the wall and thought. She remembered a man she’d met at a restaurant when she was living in Italy and struggled to find his name.
Jacob
, she thought.
Something biblical from the Old Testament. Or maybe Joseph
. He had blond hair. She could remember that much but that was about it. A possible name and hair colouring. That was all she could remember. She looked at her sister. Despite, or perhaps because of, everything, she deserved the truth. ‘No. I wouldn’t recognise him again. I could sleep with him tomorrow, and I wouldn’t remember him from last time around. But your attacker. Surely after being—’

‘Raped? You think that makes you more likely to remember someone? I can tell you, from bitter experience, that it doesn’t. I had no idea who that man was until . . .’

‘Until what?’

Lena looked stricken. ‘Until he was in bed. He was a bastard anyway. It was just about sex. Even if it was good. Andrew and I had stopped. We were sick of the sight of each other. This man, Philip, was a friend of his. They were rugby drinking buddies apparently. I was never part of that crowd, but I did used to go to their annual Christmas dinners. Although I always hated it. The whole thing: dressing up and so on.’

‘I remember.’

‘Well, I met Philip there. It would be a lie to say we hit it off. We had nothing in common really but we did fancy each other. He took my number at the end of the evening and called me the next day.’

‘So that was Christmas—’

‘Christmas 2003, and for the first six months or so it was great. I didn’t even feel guilty about deceiving Andrew. I’m pretty sure he’d had some one-night stands along the way. I never paid him a single thought.’

‘And that night?’

Lena sighed and reached in her pocket for her cigarettes. ‘He had this phone. He was always on it. It was in the early days of smartphones, and he was obsessed. Always calling his mates, checking his texts. I got a bit obsessed about it myself. Wondering who he was texting and so on. I should have listened to my instincts. From his behaviour it was clear that he wasn’t to be trusted.’

Kat had heard these stories so many times. Women checking the phones of their husbands. It was something she always cautioned against. Better to challenge your spouse direct than live in a perpetual state of suspicion.

‘The funny thing was that he had another phone. One I didn’t even know about. That night in September, after he’d gone to sleep, I found it. When I looked at it, I couldn’t believe what was on it. Pictures of women. Six of them. I looked at them and knew straight away what they were.’

‘What?’

‘Kat, the bastard would photograph us. Afterwards, I mean.’

‘After what?’

‘After he attacked us.’

‘He photographed women after raping them?’ Kat couldn’t believe it. But Lena’s ashen expression couldn’t have been from anything other than the sickness that comes from a deep humiliation. ‘Did he photograph you? After you were attacked?’

Lena looked sick. ‘Yes. He pulled a camera out of his pocket afterwards and took a picture.’

‘Were they recent? The ones you saw on the phone? I mean, they weren’t from the time when you were raped, were they?’

‘Of course not. That’s the thing. I mean, you can’t always date an image just by looking at it now but this was twelve years ago. Phones had only just got cameras then, and these had definitely been taken with the phone. They weren’t photos of photos, if you see what I mean.’

‘Did you recognise any of the faces?’

‘Yes and no. I didn’t recognise any of the girls, but I looked at the photos, and I knew. Recognised those pictures for what they were and what those women were feeling. Repulsion and shame and fear.’

‘So you killed him?’

‘Yes. I didn’t even think about it. I put a pillow over his face and pushed. And then he was dead.’

Kat felt sick. She also felt, shockingly, a slight thrill of fear. It both excited and repulsed her. She resisted the temptation to shuffle along the bed away from her sister. There were still questions that needed to be answered. ‘But they thought it was Andrew.’

‘I know.’

‘But why pretend it was Andrew? Why not explain to the police what had happened? People would have understood. You could have got a decent lawyer.’

Lena bent over and traced with her finger a flower that decorated the duvet cover. She looked up through the hair that had spread across her face. ‘I sat there panicking about what I’d just done but I was also thinking hard. If it came out that I’d killed Philip Staley and refused to say why, then they’d have started investigating him. And they would have checked his phone and private life and it all might have come out then. I might have been able to cope if it was just about me. But it wasn’t, was it? What about those other girls?’