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Authors: Jo Bannister

BOOK: Charisma
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It was Shapiro's turn to play devil's advocate. ‘Charlene Pierce was killed, hidden, put in the canal and pulled out again all before Jennifer Mills arrived in town on Sunday night.'
Liz shook her head. ‘We don't actually know when she arrived, only when she checked into the hotel. We do know she and Davey travelled separately – he booked in a couple of hours after she did.'
‘She goes ahead to finalize the arrangements, make sure everything's ready for when the tent arrives,' mused Shapiro. ‘So how come she got here a day and a half after the road crew? If it's her job to liaise with the council, book hotel rooms, get the posters printed and put up – all the stuff that takes time – she should have been here days before she was.'
Liz nodded energetically. ‘And if she had everything arranged in advance and didn't have to be here first, why didn't she travel
with Davey? Because she didn't or they'd have booked in together. Two hours between her arriving and him arriving is both too long and nowhere near long enough.'
‘Now, don't let's get excited,' Shapiro admonished. ‘There could be a perfectly sensible explanation. Perhaps everything was fixed up so she spent a few days looking for other places the mission could visit. Perhaps if we ask her she'll produce hotel receipts for a night in Nottingham or a night in Cambridge and she'll say that's what she was doing – planning the next season's itinerary.'
‘And perhaps if we ask at the Town Hall,' said Liz, ‘we'll find that she was here at the end of last week to pay for the site and arrange the insurance and everything.' She picked up his phone and dialled from memory.
‘Fancy that,' she said, deadpan, as she put it down again. ‘Miss Mills saw the Works Manager at the Town Hall on Friday morning. They visited the site, finalized the details, then she told him she was heading for the Midlands but she'd be back for opening night.'
‘And of course, that may be what she did.'
‘Of course. Or she may have hung around until Friday night, met with Charisma, then set off for the Midlands to give herself an alibi. Not that she expected to need it but just in case. If she could find a motel that would take her in at three in the morning she could even have a receipt for Friday night. Unless we had good reason to check the details, we'd accept that as putting her elsewhere at the material time.'
The more sure he was that they were on the right lines, the softer Shapiro's voice fell. ‘So she could have done both the murders here. And she could have done it before: there are a few days every couple of weeks when she's on her own in a strange town, before the rest of the circus arrive. No one made the connection before because it was a matter of record that Davey's crusade didn't arrive until after a murder had taken place. Instead of drawing attention to her, effectively the timing gave her an alibi.'
‘What Davey said, about how the papers were full of atrocities wherever he went: I thought he was exaggerating, but he meant it quite literally. He was seeing more of these things than we were because he was following the murderer round the country. Dear God, he even told me the papers in Le Havre were full of a murder when he got there. A young girl butchered on the street, he said. I never thought—'
‘Of course you didn't,' Shapiro said calmly. ‘We none of us paid that much attention to what he said. All right, we'll get them in
here again – both of them, he can tell us more about her than anyone else. I'll have her room at the hotel searched: it's the same weapon that's been used and reused, she must have it somewhere. Living out of a suitcase she won't have that many places to hide it. And when she says where she spent last Friday night we'll check with them what time she arrived. Any later than two in the morning – unless it was Aberdeen – and I think we have a case.'
‘Where's Donovan? He'll want to be in on this.'
Shapiro scowled. ‘I don't make arrests for the purpose of entertaining my sergeants. Anyway, he's at the hospital with that hand of his.'
‘I bet he'd be back pretty sharpish if someone got word to him,' murmured Liz.
They separated, Shapiro taking WPC Wilson to the hotel, Liz proceeding with DC Morgan to the wharf. They were confident of finding both the people they wanted in one place or the other.
 
But they were out of luck. Both Davey and Mills had been at the Castle Hotel an hour before but neither was there now and both cars were gone: Davey's big automatic and Mills' vermilion super-mini. Shapiro thought about following Liz to Broad Wharf, decided he could use the time more profitably searching Mills' room. He explained to the hotel manager and they went upstairs.
Knowing what he was looking for it was absurdly easy. The raincoat was hanging in the wardrobe with her other clothes. It wasn't plastic, it was rubberized cotton of the kind used to make riding mackintoshes. It was putty-coloured, styled as a trench-coat with big patch pockets.
Handling it carefully – he could see no traces of blood but the microscope at Forensics had younger and sharper eyes than his – Shapiro felt in the pockets. In one there was a thick wad of tissues and a packet of moist cleansers. In the other was a folding mirror and a printed scarf.
But they couldn't find the knife. It wasn't in the coat or any of her clothes. It wasn't in either of her suitcases. It wasn't in the chest of drawers or slipped between the mattress and the divan. It wasn't reared up primly in her tooth-mug. So far as they could see it wasn't anywhere in the room.
Shapiro felt a twinge of unease under his ribs, like heartburn. If it wasn't here she must have it with her. Perhaps she kept it in her car: a woman travelling alone into the grimmer parts of strange towns might claim with some justification, moral if not legal, that
she needed some means of self-defence. And they did have the coat. If she was planning another murder, surely she'd have taken that too? It was much more likely that she was down at the marquee setting up the evening performance.
But the cars weren't at Broad Wharf either. Liz asked the men who were getting the tent ready but they hadn't seen Davey all day and Mills had only put in a brief appearance around noon. She would normally have been here before now to oversee their work.
The big Geordie grinned at Liz. ‘It's desperate complicated, see, putting chairs in straight lines and putting a bit of paper on each one. We'd likely get it wrong if she didn't keep an eye on us.'
Liz smiled back. ‘Tell you what. Do the best you can in the circumstances.'
‘You think she'll be impressed if we get them all facing the right way?' Kelso was rather enjoying this, exchanging banter with a detective inspector who didn't know he had her sergeant under guard in a railway wagon three-quarters of a mile away.
‘Actually,' Liz said honestly, ‘I don't think she'll give a toss.'
Before she left she asked, indirectly, about the knife. ‘Does Miss Mills keep anything of her own down here: a bag, papers, anything?'
Kelso traded a shrug with the nearest of his colleagues before shaking his head. ‘Nothing. All her stuff's at the hotel.'
Being this close she thought she'd take five minutes to bring Donovan up to date. She'd tried to call him but his mobile seemed to be on the blink; she'd left a message at the hospital but he mightn't have got it. Looking up the wharf she saw a glow behind
Tara
's curtains that suggested he was at home.
But she could get no reply to either a knock at the door – she felt sure Donovan called it something more nautical than that – or a sharp rap at the window. He must have left the light on by mistake. So he'd been at the hospital all day. Perhaps they'd kept him in. It was odd that he hadn't let Shapiro know. Or perhaps he'd called the office by now and found them both otherwise engaged.
As she clambered ashore, a manoeuvre Donovan performed with disdainful ease and she had yet to complete with dignity intact, the heel of her shoe went as if drawn by magnets to a crack in the gangplank, lodged just long enough to trip her and then, as she clutched at the rail, came off her foot as if it had never heard of laces. It described a graceful parabola
en route
for the spot where
Tara
's stern curved away from the wall and the water waited. Liz heard the smug plop with the resignation of someone
who had never doubted where that shoe would end up.
She hobbled back to her car and called Shapiro. ‘I just dropped my shoe in the canal,' she reported flatly. ‘I'm going home for another pair.'
There was the briefest of pauses. Then he said, reassuringly, ‘Of course you are.'
There was a car outside her house: not Brian's, he'd gone to his new school for a look round before starting work on Monday. She thought she didn't know anyone with a big light-coloured car like that. Then she realized with a genuine shock whose it was. She didn't even check the controls for confirmation.
She stood foolishly for a moment wondering what to do. Hurrying away half-shod would be pathetic, calling for help an overreaction; going inside would seem odd, hobbling in search of him would be painful. So she was still standing there wondering when the distinctive crunch of narrow wheels on gravel preceded him round the corner of the house.
He'd heard her car. He said by way of explanation, ‘I was talking to your horse.'
‘Have you been here long?'
He thought. ‘Quite a long time, yes.'
‘How did you get my address?'
He flashed his winning smile. ‘I asked round till somebody told me.'
‘You've no business here.'
The massive shoulders shrugged as ingenuously as a boy's. ‘I wanted to see you.'
‘You know where my office is.'
‘It wasn't police business I wanted to see you about.'
‘Well, it's police business I want to see you about.' She sighed then. He was no threat to her. It was contrary to conventional wisdom, but before she did anything else she had to find another pair of shoes. She opened the door. ‘Come in while I change my shoes.' Then she looked at the step. ‘Oh – can you?'
He smiled at her consternation. ‘No. But it doesn't matter. Get your shoes, then come back. I really do need to talk to you.'
When she was comfortable she walked him round to the paved area at the back of the house, looking down the garden to the
orchard. The mare's long face watched them curiously over the stable door.
‘Before we start,' said Liz, ‘do you know where Jennifer Mills is?'
Davey could not have looked more astonished if she'd asked where his mother was buried. ‘Jenny? Down at the tent, I expect. She usually is by this time.'
Liz shook her head. ‘I've just come from there. They haven't seen her.'
‘Why are you looking for Jenny, for heaven's sake?'
‘I'll come to that. What are you doing at my house?'
His gaze dropped. ‘I had to see you,' he said compulsively, as if it were a mantra. ‘I had to talk to you.'
‘About what?'
His eyes came up then, steel flecked with flame, raking her. ‘About us, of course!' There was a kind of breathy desperation in his voice, terribly different from the massive self-possession that rang from him when he addressed the faithful.
He'd succeeded in startling her. She didn't know what to call him: they'd started using first names but now it seemed an unwise intimacy. She avoided the issue, said baldly, ‘There is no
us
to talk about.'
‘You know what I mean,' he said urgently. ‘You must feel it too. I didn't want this, I didn't come looking for it. It's tearing my life apart, for God's sake. My work's the only important thing I've ever done, and because of you I don't know if I can go on doing it.'
‘Me? What have I done?' That sounded phoney even to her. She winced.
Davey managed a little twitch of a smile. ‘You haven't done anything. I haven't done anything. But something's happened between us. Don't pretend you haven't noticed.'
‘Michael, stop this,' she said firmly. At least it was her own voice this time. Then she spoiled it by lying. ‘I don't know what you're talking about.'
‘You do,' he insisted roughly. ‘I know you do. You feel what I feel. You don't know why, or where it's come from, or what it's for. I know you don't want it. It could ruin everything for you: your home, your marriage, your job. Your self-respect. But you feel it. If we were two people without responsibilities to anyone in the world but ourselves, we wouldn't be discussing this on the patio.
‘What do you think? – that I'm less of a man, that I don't have
a man's feelings, because my legs don't work?' His voice soared with sudden outrage. ‘Or is that the problem here? You can't see yourself making love to a cripple? They're all right for companionable little strolls by the canal or a bite of lunch, then you can go home in a warm glow of satisfaction and tell your husband about your good deed for the day. But to make love with? I mean, that really would be gross, wouldn't it?'
She didn't mean to but, moved by his pain, she put her hand on his. The nerves jumped under her palm like electricity. ‘Michael, for heaven's sake. You're talking as if you have some rights over me. We're casual acquaintances, that's all. I like you, Michael, I've enjoyed talking to you. But it's absurd to pretend there's anything between us. I love my husband.'
She thought a moment longer, wondering whether to add what had come to the tip of her tongue, deciding at last that she should. ‘I don't know if this is what you want to hear but just for the record, if it was my husband in that chair I don't believe it would make any difference to how I feel about him. Find a woman who loves you, Michael, and she won't think of it as making love to a cripple.'
Remembering then that there was a woman who loved him like that, and that as soon as they could find her the police would put her behind bars, Liz fell silent.
‘But I don't want a woman,' he cried. He was almost shouting, Liz was sure her new neighbours must be all agog. ‘Not just that. I'm not so desperate I'll take any woman who'll look at me. I want you. You: Liz Graham. I want you enough to give up everything else for you – and don't think that's an easy thing, my work matters to me. But having you matters more.
‘So tell me to get the hell out of here and stop annoying a married woman. Slap my face if you want, tell me I've no right to feel this way. Tell me I'm some kind of hypocrite, preaching morality to other people when I've no more self-control than a schoolboy in the throes of his first crush. But don't tell me I've imagined this thing between us, don't tell me that you haven't felt it too, and don't tell me all I need is a good lay. I've been laid by professionals, girl, and it's like a Chinese meal: you're full for half an hour, then you're hungry again.'
She didn't know what to say to him. He was right, there was something between them. An attraction; something. It wasn't of her making and she had no use for it but he hadn't imagined it. It wasn't going anywhere but at least as a moment in time it existed.
‘I'm sorry,' she said at last. ‘I'm sorry if I've hurt you. I'm sorry if I've let you think there was some sort of future for us. There never was, and it never occurred to me you felt this way. You're an interesting man, Michael, and you're good company. But if you're asking me to give up things that matter to me, then the answer's no. I like the life I have.'
That left no room for misunderstanding. Her directness sank through Davey's expression until it struck bottom, jarring his eyes. For a moment shock and disappointment made the big face, robbed of the spirit that animated it, pale and fleshy. He looked as she had never seen him look before: like someone weakened by an illness from which he would never completely recover. The magnetic power of the man, the massive personality, were shrunk into this cumbrous body, constrained by its inadequacies. For a moment she saw the wreck of a human being he would have been without the strength of his mind, his heart and his faith to sustain him.
Then like a blind falling he shut himself off from her gaze. The muscles of his face resumed their usual contours, his eyes hardened, his wide mouth compressed to a line. His voice was low but perfectly controlled. ‘Then there's no more to be said. I'm sorry to have troubled you, Mrs Graham.' He turned the chair and headed back to his car, his progress over the gravel ponderous but unstoppable like a supertanker with a ten-mile deceleration, the unoiled wheel still squeaking.
Liz leapt to her feet and hurried after him but he wouldn't break his rhythmic progression, forcing her to jog backwards before him. ‘Michael, wait. I have to ask you about Jennifer Mills. I have to find her, quickly.'
‘What?' They'd reached the front of the house. He opened the door of his car, began the laborious work of getting behind the wheel.
‘Jenny Mills. I have to talk to her. Where is she?'
‘I don't know. The hotel?'
‘She's not there either. My chiefs there.'
Davey paused then, staring at her. ‘Why are you looking for Jenny?'
So she told him. ‘She may be able to help with our inquiries into the deaths of Charlene Pierce and Alice Elton. Among others.'
He didn't believe her. He barked a laugh. ‘Don't be absurd.'
She didn't argue with him. ‘Tuesday morning you had breakfast in the hotel dining-room alone. Why?'
‘Jenny had hers in her room. She was tired, she had a bit of a lie-in. What's wrong with that? She'd been on the road for days, then she spent all Monday getting the tent ready for opening night.'
‘Did you travel together?'
‘No, I came over on the ferry. Jenny was off round the country – I don't remember just where: Midlands, was it? – planning next season's schedule. Inspector, you're not serious about this?'
‘Of course I'm serious,' she said quietly. ‘A woman was seen at the park where Alice Elton was murdered while Jennifer Mills was supposedly having breakfast alone in her room. It could be a coincidence. But it's important that I talk to her right away.'
When he realized she was in earnest his confusion turned abruptly to anger. ‘You're mad. Jenny? She's my right arm.'
Liz breathed heavily. ‘Michael, this isn't about you. Or only in a way. It's about Jenny and the fact that she may have killed several young girls.'
‘Why ever would she?' He was genuinely amazed at the suggestion.
‘We'll ask her that when we find her.'
Finally he seemed to be thinking about it. ‘Young girls. Hookers?'
‘Not the last one but probably the others.' She waited.
‘Jenny – knows something about hookers.'
‘What do you mean?'
He flashed her an angry, embarrassed look. His cheeks were flushed. ‘Jenny knows where girls like that hang out. Even in places we've never been before.'
Liz's sensibilities had taken a beating in the last half hour and she wasn't as quick on the uptake as she might have been. The puzzlement in her eyes infuriated him.
‘For me, damn it! I told you, Jenny looks after me. She gets me what I need. That too.'
Then she understood. Not only what he was saying but what it meant. They'd been stuck for a motive, even the sort of motive that would seem reason enough in the abnormal mind of a serial killer. But that would do.
Her voice was a stunned whisper. ‘You mean, you sent Jennifer Mills out to procure prostitutes for you?'
‘I could hardly go myself, could I?' he snapped back. It didn't seem to occur to him that doing without would have been an alternative.
‘No,' Liz agreed faintly. ‘Michael, the woman's in love with you. And you sent her looking for young girls for your bed?'
That took him completely by surprise. For a moment he gaped at her like an idiot. But by the time he found his voice he was ready to disbelieve, finding it easier to scoff than to deal with the possibility. ‘In love? Jenny? Be your age.'
Liz found herself growing angry on the missing woman's behalf. What she'd done – if indeed she'd done it – was almost incomprehensible. But Liz was beginning to understand where the despair driving her had come from. ‘You think she's an old maid? She's twelve years younger than you. And she's known you a lot longer than you've known me. Why is it all right for you to be in the grip of a great passion you can't control, that you're willing to risk everything for, but absurd that she might be?
‘Couldn't you
tell
? I knew from talking to her for half an hour. You must have seen the way her eyes light up when she's near you.' She gave a little angry laugh. ‘Or do you think women glow like that all the time, because it's how they react to you? You're a bloody dangerous man, Michael Davey. You drop matches into dry undergrowth and deny all responsibility for the fire.'
He hauled himself into the car and slammed the door. ‘You're mad,' he repeated furiously. ‘I think you've imagined all this. Jenny wouldn't hurt anyone. If she loves me it's like a sister. All she ever wanted was what was best for me. When I told her about you—'
Liz's eyes widened. ‘You told her about me? About—?'
‘She warned me. I should have listened. She's a good woman, she knows what I need, what's important to me. I thought I could turn my back on everything I've done, go after what I wanted for once. She knew I couldn't. She knew loving you would be the ruination of me. I should have listened to her.'

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