Flowers for the Dead (18 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

~ Justicia ~

The Perfection Of Female Loveliness

PRESENT

Despite being a big man, DS Mike Bishop can move surprisingly stealthily when needed. Right now he is holding his breath and tiptoeing backwards. Just another couple of steps and he will be safe.

He reaches behind him, feels the cool brass doorknob – he’s almost made it. Easy now…

A gentle pirouette and he is out of the room, closing the door on his daughter’s soft sleep noises.

She had taken an age to drift off, but Mike didn’t mind as he enjoyed reading to her. Doing the different voices of characters, seeing her eyes widen at the exciting bits even though she knew the stories off by heart. It was a wonderful, bonding time, just him and her, a step away from reality.

Once downstairs, Mike tidies away the toys.

“Miss you, Mags,” he whispers, thinking how she would scold him if she saw that he had not yet done the washing up. But he is busy with life, with looking after their daughter, and him prioritising her would definitely be something his wife would approve of.

Life doesn’t stop because there has been a death. There is no choice, you simply have to carry on.

As he turns the taps on to fill the sink, the phone rings. Mike snatches it up, terrified it will wake his daughter, but he hears no sounds of stirring.

“Hey, you!” says a voice, mock stern.

“Would you like to boogaloo?” the two men finish in unison. They chortle, but one is sounding distinctly lacklustre.

“You sound knackered, mate,” offers Mike.

“You too,” Simon laughs. “How’s Daisy doing?”

“She’s good. Sleeping peacefully cuddled up to Mag’s jumper, as usual.” Mike’s heart tightens at the thought, sad and glad all at once that his little girl still finds comfort in snuggling up to her mum’s soft blue cashmere top. “So, what’s keeping you up at night?”

“Operation Blaze is being scaled back, after nine months of bloody hard work.”

“Sorry, mate, I know this must be gutting for you. Nothing came of the serial killer angle then?”

“The criminal psychologist, that Emma Cawthorpe, she’s as convinced as we are that there is a serial out there. Has to be, eh, with a signature like removing someone’s lips. But despite her report, despite the unique MO, we can’t find any evidence to catch the bastard.”

Mike hears the frustration in his friend’s voice.

“Background checks have uncovered nothing the women have in common,” Simon continues. “They have different jobs, friends, social lives, hobbies, social media presence, as well as living in completely different areas. There are simply no physical clues to tell us anything about who the killer is or how he chooses his victims.”

“It’s just a question of wait and see, then.” Mike’s voice is as leaden as his friend’s. This is the worst part of police work. The only chance of getting this man is waiting for him to strike again, and hoping that when he does he will slip up somehow.

“I’ll get him. I don’t care how long it takes, I’ll get him,” vows Simon. “And I’ll get you to leave Essex and join my team.”

He is trying to lighten the mood with that last comment, Mike knows, and takes up the joking tone.

“Yeah? What you going to do if I don’t? Arrest me?”

“It’s an idea. You look dodgy enough if that bloody mac.”

“You’re attacking my dress sense? You? The man who thinks it’s still 1986?”

The two men continue for another ten minutes, trying to joke their cares away. One forgetting about murder, one obliterating the pain of loss. Neither succeeds, but the companionship of effort is comforting.

***

The dripping tap is getting worse. It has been leaking for weeks and Laura has not bothered doing anything about it, mainly because she does not know what to do. She knows her mother would have muttered something about a washer going, and got Seamus to fix it.

Of course, that is not an option for Laura.

The soft thud, thud, thud of droplets into the white basin gets into her head and is impossible to ignore as she lies in her bath, trying to warm up after a cheek-stingingly cold walk home from work. It isn’t even December but people are already talking about the possibility of a white Christmas with excitement in their voices, but right now all Laura can think about is that tap, and what its noise reminds her of.

Dangling helplessly upside down. Hearing Marcus’s blood pattering onto the roof, his head split open, brains on show. Listening to his life escaping.

Surging forward impatiently, sending bathwater sloshing around her, Laura reaches over to the sink and grips the tap with both hands. She tugs at it with all her strength but the dripping does not slow. There will be no long, relaxing soak for her, not now. With a sigh, she pulls the plug.

Minutes later she is dry and bundled up in a claret-coloured thick, fluffy towelling robe that has a hood she pulls up to make herself even cosier. Then she pulls on her favourite slipper socks, which are exactly the same colour as her robe, but have jazzy sequins sewn onto the outside and have a fake fur lining. They are so thick that they make her size four feet look as wide as they are long as she pads into her lounge, flops onto the sofa with a dramatic sigh, and dials Aunt Linda.

“I just wondered if maybe Uncle Kieran could come round some time to have a look at my tap?” she explains after chatting for a couple of minutes.

“Just a sec…” There is a muffled yell as her aunt calls to her husband. Within seconds she is back to Laura. “He can come over at the weekend; that okay?”

“That’s brilliant, thanks for that.”

She will simply avoid baths until the weekend, stick to only having her usual morning showers instead. And keep the bathroom door shut tight so that the noise does not filter through to her bedroom.

***

Adam is staying in a B&B in Ipswich, twenty miles away, as he watches the scene play out – he likes to vary the locations he uses so that he never becomes a familiar face.

He does not see the point in bothering someone else with this simple plumbing job; it is his responsibility to look after Laura. So the next day, when she goes to work, he drives to her place and changes the washer. It only takes five minutes, and he cleans up after himself to ensure his beloved does not come home to a mess. He knows from various women’s magazines he has skim read that a pet peeve about men in general is that they take an age to get round to doing any chores around the house, and when they finally do something they make a mess.

The bathroom is left sparkling. Buoyed, he ends up doing the entire flat, vacuuming, dusting, and tidying. It was already spick and span, but it makes him feel useful.

***

When Laura comes home she slows as she walks through the living room, thinking that it seems slightly different than when she left it. She is sure she can smell glass cleaner and furniture polish hanging in the air, but then she shrugs. The neighbours must have had a blitz of their place and the smell has permeated her home too. As for the tidiness, it is her imagination as there is no one else to do things but her, and she certainly does not believe in cleaning fairies.

She has been home a little while before she wanders into the bathroom and washes her hands. She does not think as she twists the tap on, but when she turns it off she pauses and looks at it curiously. Turns it back on, then off again. No drip. Leans down and peers at it.

“Huh,” she breathes.

As she is walking back into the lounge she pulls her mobile from the back pocket of her jeans and taps out a text.

Hey, guess what? The tap fixed itself! Result! No need for Uncle Kieran to fix it now xx

***

Adam smiles when he reads the text, which comes up on the screen of his own smartphone too, thanks to the spyware he has fitted.

Laura does not need anyone but him ever again.

As Adam watches Laura watching television, giggling at the latest instalment of
Strictly Come Dancing
, he buries his nose in a forest green top. It is Laura’s favourite t-shirt, the one she loves so much that she even wears it to bed sometimes. He rescued it from the washing pile the other day, and now he likes to breathe in her smell. It makes him feel closer to her.

***

SIXTEEN YEARS AGO

Sara played a blinder. Even Adam had to admit that. Realising that her son was bound to have been seen with Lisa, and that it was only a matter of time before he was linked to her disappearance, she contacted the police herself. Not to drop him into trouble, but to provide an alibi.

“I’m so, so sorry we didn’t contact you sooner,” she apologised to the CID officer down at the station. She had wasted no time taking Adam there to confess the connection. “My husband lost his mother, and we’ve just been in this bubble of grief, and sorting things out…”

She gazed up from under her blunt fringe, all innocent eyes. 

“I completely understand,” said the sergeant.

“It was only when I turned on the telly for the first time in over a week that I saw what had happened. You could have knocked me down with a feather when my son here,” she indicated Adam, standing miserably beside her, “told me that he knew the girl. That he had met her for the first time the very day that she disappeared! Oh, it’s just too awful.”

“Can you tell me exactly what happened that day, please?”

“Well, Ada, Adam’s gran, had died ten days earlier. Poor Adam here had found her, and he was in pieces. So when he said he was going for a walk at about 6pm, I just let him be, you know, gave him some space. But he hadn’t been gone more than fifteen minutes before I started fretting and drove to the park to get him. I don’t think you should be alone when you’re so sad, do you? I know when I’m sad all I want is to be held.”

She bit her rouged lip. The detective sergeant enclosed her hand in his soothingly.

“It only took me minutes to find him. He was talking to a girl with the loveliest hair, but I didn’t take much notice of her I’m afraid, and the second he saw me he left her and joined me. We were home by 6.30pm – I know because I looked at the clock and thought how tired I was for that time of day. Grief takes it out of a person, don’t you find?”

Another squeeze of the hand from the sergeant. “Can you remember where exactly in the park you last saw Lisa?”

“It was by the outline of the Roman theatre.”

“And this was the first time you had ever met Lisa Brookman?” He asked Adam a direct question for the first time. Sara jumped in.

“It certainly was,” she confirmed, adding in a stage whisper, “Don’t mind my son, he’s painfully shy and suffers terribly with a stammer. I hope you can forgive me answering on his behalf.”

He certainly didn’t seem to mind, although Adam did. If he did not watch himself, he would be under his mother’s spell forever. He could not allow that to happen. He wanted to lash out, hurt her, push her away from him so that she would leave him alone once and for all, but he knew that would never happen. He would never have the strength to stand up to her.

Instead he was going to have to do something far more cunning.

As the fifteen-year-old stood in the police station, he was already toying with ideas. He would get his happy ever after. He just had to neutralise Sara first.

***

PRESENT

The flat is falling apart, Laura concludes. First the tap in the bathroom sink started dripping then miraculously stopped, and now the wiring must be on the blink because last night the light in the hall stopped working. As Laura had been on her way to bed at the time she had not bothered changing the light bulb, promising herself she would do it in the morning instead. Then in the morning she had been running late, so had not got round to it.

When she had got home just now from a day out with Charlotte and Emily, she had automatically flicked on the hall light and…it had come on! Only then had she remembered that it shouldn’t have. So, clearly the problem was more complex than a light bulb blowing.

She gets straight on to an electrician and asks him to come round as soon as possible. When he comes round the following day, he not only checks out Laura’s wiring and gives it his seal of approval, he does the same with her. Introducing himself as Andy, he flirts ceaselessly, finally asking her out for a drink that night.

“Go on,” Andy pushes, all twinkly eyes and cheeky-chappy smile.

“I would love to,” Laura says slowly, “but I already have a boyfriend, so...”

It makes life easier to lie than explain the complex truth that, while she does fancy him, she is currently having to use all her strength not to fall apart.

This period of time between the anniversary of the accident on November fifth to Christmas and New Year is always dreadful. Her longing to be with her family, to see them again, is almost overwhelming and had become a time traditionally when she thinks most about ending it all. This year she is fighting hard against those thoughts but it is difficult. She does not want to slide backwards after the headway she had been making in recent months, but the struggle is tiring and…well, Laura is concerned it is starting to take a toll on her.