Core of Evil (34 page)

Madeline Poel had been small and polite, he
remembered, but she hadn’t liked to talk about what had happened that day at the tea party. She had been diagnosed as borderline psychopathic, with a score of thirty-two on the revised Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist. She had actually offered him tea, he remembered, although there was nothing on the table in the interview room. When he said yes, just to see what happened, she poured him an invisible cup of tea from an invisible pot, then added invisible milk and invisible sugar. All the time he watched her, waiting for her to realise what she was doing, but she continued the charade, even asking him why he wasn’t drinking.

When he had read in the newspapers that she had died of a heart attack he had felt relieved and sad at the same time. Relieved, because he had felt when he talked to her that she would never be able to function normally in society. Sad, because underneath it all she had been friendly and talkative. And because she had offered him tea.

‘Everybody is dead who should be alive,’ he whispered, ‘and those who are alive
should
be dead.’

Colchester came and went, and the car drove on. Signs for Clacton and Frinton passed by. The car screamed across roundabouts with as minimal deviation from a straight line as Lapslie could manage. The landscape was flat and coloured in great swathes: the brown of ploughed earth, the green of fields that had been left to recover naturally and the
eye-aching yellow of flowering rape plants. The sky near the horizon was a deeper blue, reflecting the unseen ocean. He passed tractors, overtaking them on straight stretches of road when there was nothing ahead. Signs for Walton-on-the-Naze flashed past, advertising the sports centre, the pier, the sea front. And then there was only Leyston ahead: the end of the land, the end of the trail.

Lapslie stopped in a lay-by and checked his mobile. There were several voicemails waiting for him, but he ignored them in favour of the one text, from Emma. It was an address in Leyston-by-Naze, followed by a simple message:
World is ending here – don’t answer phone
.

The satnav guided him past the station and down a hill towards the centre of town. Suddenly there was nothing on his right apart from a low stone wall and the implacable sea, but then houses intervened again and he was dropping down into the town, past a tea room, a bingo hall and a seafood restaurant, and along the High Street with its collection of butchers and bakers and newsagents alternating with tattoo parlours and shops selling inflatable rings, beach balls and candy floss. He braked to a halt at a set of traffic lights, and heard sand crunch beneath his tyres.

The High Street petered out in a rash of fish-and-chip shops and pubs, and he found himself emerging into the other side of Leyston-by-Naze: past a long recreation ground and signs for the marina. The road
was on a level with the esplanade now, running parallel to it and towards the looming mass of the Naze itself, the gnarled cliff face that towered above the town. This area, leading away from the town centre, was more residential, with detached and weather-beaten houses set back from the road in gardens filled with hardy, cactus-like plants that could stand the salt and the storms, and inhabited by retired and weather-beaten residents who revelled in their semi-isolation.

The satnav directed him to a road that lay in the shadow of the Naze, curled back on itself and falling gently back towards the town. A cool breeze blew off the sea, taking the edge off the warmth of the afternoon. He parked just down the street. The house was on a corner: a white-washed two-storey building with leaded glass windows and ivy trailing up the sides. He approached on foot, aware that he should be accompanied by Emma Bradbury at the very least, and a full Armed Response Team at best, but also aware that the option was no longer open to him. He was on his own, trying to resolve a situation despite the circumstances.

As far as he could tell from the two front doors, nestled side by side, the house had been divided into flats: one upstairs, one down. The bell for the upstairs flat was labelled with a name he didn’t recognise. That left the downstairs flat as belonging to Madeline Poel, masquerading as Daisy Wilson.

He rang the bell, and waited.

When there was no response he took a small tool from his pocket, a kind of Swiss Army knife called a Leatherman that had been recommended to him years ago by Dom McGinley, looked around to check that nobody was watching from the street, and used its folding knife attachment to force his way into the downstairs flat. It was, he decided, just the icing on the cake as far as his career was concerned. And, if push came to shove, he could always claim that he thought a crime was in progress – which it probably was. Somewhere.

He could tell from the deadening silence in the hall that the flat was unoccupied. He walked into the front room. There were possessions scattered around – a cardigan, a bowl of petals, a pile of local papers – but something about it made him think of a theatrical stage set, waiting for the actors to arrive. Whatever was there was a prop, ready to support a performance. It wasn’t real.

Having quickly checked the flat over to make sure that Madeline Poel wasn’t asleep in the bedroom or out in the garden, Lapslie quickly searched the place without disturbing anything. Although he found some post addressed to Daisy Wilson he found nothing that mentioned Madeline Poel, and nothing that mentioned any of the previous victims. If Madeline – or Daisy, as she now was – kept trophies, or even just the kind of details she would need in
order to keep twelve previous victims apparently alive, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, then she must have it all stashed away somewhere else. It certainly wasn’t in the flat.

But he did find a pile of pamphlets advertising an arts and crafts centre on the outskirts of Leyston run by someone named Eunice Coleman. For some reason, Daisy Wilson was interested in it, and that gave him one more place to try if he wanted to locate her. Perhaps Eunice Coleman was her next victim. Perhaps, by now, Eunice Coleman was her.

The arts and crafts centre was probably twenty minutes away, according to the satnav in his car. He pulled away from his parking spot and accelerated on down the road, back towards Leyston town centre.

He found it along a muddy track. There were two buildings in sight: a sad, barn-like structure that was probably the centre itself and an impressive farmhouse built of red brick sat a hundred yards or so beyond.

Lapslie turned his ignition off and got out of the car. The fan in the engine ran on for a few seconds, disturbing the silence of the countryside, then it fell silent. The only sounds were the ticks of his cooling engine and the singing of the birds.

Eunice Coleman deserved to know that she was in danger, and she might know where Madeline Poel – now calling herself Daisy Wilson, of course – could
be found. Daisy might even be there, and Lapslie was unable to think of any circumstances in which he couldn’t manage to arrest her without help. She was only an old woman, when all was said and done.

He walked over to the barn. Mid-afternoon, and the arts and crafts centre should have been open, according to the times displayed on the door, but it was locked. He banged on the door, just in case, and peered through the smeared glass, but there was nobody about. He headed across to the house.

Lapslie rang the doorbell, and waited. Just as he was about to ring it again, the door opened. A woman looked at him enquiringly. She was wearing a velvet waistcoat over a frilled blouse, and a purple skirt with a fringed hem that brushed the floor.

‘Mrs Coleman? Mrs Eunice Coleman?’

She nodded. ‘None other,’ she said. ‘Can I help you?’

He waited for the taste of lychees, but there was nothing save a hint, perhaps just his imagination at work. Was this the same woman who had poured an invisible cup of tea for him in an interview room in Broadmoor? She had aged, and her hair was different. It might have been her, but it might also have been Eunice Coleman. He wasn’t sure.

‘Detective Chief Inspector Mark Lapslie,’ he said. ‘I need to talk to you. I’m looking for a woman named Daisy Wilson.’

She smiled. ‘Daisy’s not here right now,’ she said.
‘I suppose you’d better come in. I’ve made a pot of coffee – would you like some?’

Lapslie stepped inside the house. Shadows enfolded him. There was a smell of sickness wafting through the hall, but he didn’t know where it emanated from. Perhaps Eunice was lying upstairs, dying. Perhaps this was Eunice walking down the hall in front of him. He just didn’t know.

She led him into a cluttered room in which sofas and armchairs fought for space with low tables and potted plants. ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ she said. ‘I’ll just be a minute. Sorry if I’m a bit dozy, by the way – I had a strange nap this afternoon.’

She vanished off towards what he assumed was the kitchen. He listened out for movements elsewhere in the house, but there was nothing. He still wasn’t sure, and he couldn’t afford to get this wrong.

The woman calling herself Eunice Coleman came back into the room with a coffee jug and two cups on a tray. She seemed surprised to find him still standing. ‘You’re making me nervous,’ she said, putting the tray onto a side table and gesturing towards the sofa. He sat, and while she poured two cups of coffee he looked around the room. There were paintings of various kinds on the walls – some landscapes, some portraits and some abstracts – and all of the chairs were covered with embroidered throws. Obviously Eunice Coleman brought her work home with her.

‘Milk?’ Still, that maddening uncertainty. Did her voice taste of lychees, or was he hoping too hard that it would?

‘Please.’

‘Help yourself to sugar.’ She put the cup on another table within his reach, then sat down in one of the armchairs holding her own cup. ‘So, what can I do for you, Detective Chief Inspector Lapslie?’ she asked.

‘About Daisy Wilson …’ he said, watching the cup in her hands. It didn’t tremble.

‘Mad as a box of frogs, the dear thing,’ she said. ‘Yes, she’s been helping me out at the crafts centre. I think she’s gone to the pharmacy. What did you want her for?’

‘I need to ask her some questions.’ He raised his cup to his lips, then paused as he watched her face.

‘What kinds of questions?’

‘Questions about some women she might know.’

‘Perhaps I could help. Daisy doesn’t talk about her friends much, but she might have mentioned their names.’

‘Has she ever referred to Wendy Maltravers?’

‘No.’

‘Violet Chambers?’

‘I don’t think so. Don’t let your coffee get cold, by the way.’

‘Alice Connell, Rhona McIntyre, Deirdre Fincham, Kim Stothard …?’

‘I’m sure I would have remembered. They are very distinctive names.’

He raised the cup to his mouth. The steam prickled against his skin. There was something spicy about it. His lips felt hot and swollen.

Eunice Coleman was watching him intently. She hadn’t drunk any of her own coffee either.

‘And what about Madeline Poel?’ he said carefully, and watched as her hand twitched, sending coffee splashing across her lap.

The sudden flush of heat on Daisy’s leg shocked her, making her twitch again. The cup clattered in the saucer. ‘Oh dear,’ she said automatically, ‘Many a slip ’twixt cup and lip, as they say. I’ll just go and get a tea towel. I won’t be a moment.’

She stood up, hesitating for a moment, then placed her cup and saucer down on the tray and walked off into the kitchen. ‘I don’t believe Daisy ever mentioned Madeline Poel,’ she called back to the police officer who was sitting in Eunice’s living room. ‘No, I don’t believe she mentioned her at all. Were they friends?’

Once in the kitchen she leaned on one of the work surfaces for a few moments, trying to regain her composure. Whoever this policeman was – and he looked strangely familiar to her, as if they had met before under different circumstances – he knew too much. He knew names that Daisy herself thought she had forgotten.

Including that of Madeline Poel.

Patting herself down with a cloth, Daisy’s mind
was frantically going over what he had said, looking for some explanation of how he had found her. The only possible way was if he’d discovered the pamphlets advertising the Arts and Crafts Centre in her flat, and that meant she had nowhere to retreat to. Her safe haven was compromised, contaminated. She could never go back there again. The only thing that was saving her from arrest now was that the policeman thought she was Eunice Coleman. Or perhaps he wasn’t sure whether she was Eunice or not and was trying to find out. Either way, she had to play along, and get out of Eunice’s house as soon as she possibly could.

But where would she go? Even her special place was lost to her now; her garden, with its beautiful scents and flowers. She had to assume the police knew about it, although she couldn’t think of any way they could have found out. And that meant they had also found her little tea party.

All lost. All gone.

Black despair threatened to engulf her. She leaned against the refrigerator as her legs threatened to give way. Her heart was racing, and she could feel her breath rasping in her chest. The complex web of bank accounts and building society accounts was of no use to her any more. All that money, all that security, all those identities were lost now, washed away by the tide of circumstance.

She had to be strong. She had to move forward.
She couldn’t have expected her luck to last forever: the pitcher goes so often to the well that it is broken at last, wasn’t that what they said? She’d started with nothing before; she could do it again. She would have to cut her coat according to her cloth; things would be hard for a while, but she would survive. After all, after a storm comes a calm.

Concentrating on those old, familiar proverbs, Daisy felt her heart slow and her breathing return to something approaching normal. The policeman wouldn’t be a problem for long: the moment he had mentioned her name – well, Daisy Wilson’s name – she knew that she had to get him inside the house and get him to drink some of the coffee that she had so carefully prepared for Eunice. With luck, he would be comatose before he finished the cup and dead within the hour.