Identity Crisis (12 page)

He turned and stared at her. Was that surprise behind the mask? As she returned his gaze, her eyes on his, unwavering, she moved one leg, slightly, invitingly, taunting him with her sexuality. As if to say, do your worst. I know what you’ve got, and it don’t scare me. He loosened her bonds and turned away. She could see the skin on the back of his neck redden: a small victory for Vanda.

‘Get dressed.’ His voice was so quiet she’d to ask him to repeat what he’d said. ‘Get dressed, please.’

This time she was sure there was guilt in his voice. And something else. A slightly familiar quality; something in his tone. Did she know him, or was she imagining it? Whereas previously when she’d dressed in front of him she’d been embarrassed, attempting to hide her shame and cover her modesty, the new Vanda Dawson wouldn’t behave like that.

She stretched, long and languorously, all the time watching him with half-closed eyes. He was no longer turned away; he was all attention. Still on the bed, she rose to a kneeling position, leaning forward. Hands balancing her, breasts framed by her upper arms. Displaying her wares. ‘Would you pass my bra and pants, please?’

She just stopped herself from adding, darling. That would have been pushing her luck too far. She slipped the bra cups over her breasts before turning her back on him. ‘This is how you do it,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Watch carefully, it’ll come in handy, if you can manage to do what you keep threatening.’

She made a burlesque act out of the everyday routine of putting her pants on. A routine where she made sure he got a further prolonged display of all she had to offer. And it was having its effect too. She saw him move as if to mop his forehead, forgetting he was still wearing that mask. Instead, he rubbed the back of his neck. Another tiny victory. Once the show was over, she slipped her top and jeans on quickly, pushed her feet into her trainers and stood in front of him, hands forward. ‘What now? Back to the chair and tied up for hours on end? Or off to the altar ready for burning?’

He didn’t speak, merely grasped her upper arm and guided her to the door. He opened it and gently pushed her in front of him, then guided her downstairs, through the hall and into a farmhouse kitchen. She paid attention to her surroundings. Her eyes wandered from the old, but serviceable-looking Aga in the recessed fireplace to the range of kitchen units, and the large picture window over the double drainer sink. Outside, the view consisted of rolling fields, grassland, dotted with cows. She was on a farm.

‘Please, sit down.’

She obeyed, although there was nothing in his tone to suggest a command.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

‘What? You expect me to sit here calmly drinking tea after what you’ve done to me? This isn’t some vicarage tea party, you know. We’re talking kidnapping, false imprisonment, attempted rape and any number of other sexual assaults. That’s so far. God knows what else there is to come. How the hell do you expect me to react? Sit here calmly and say yes please, milk and one sugar.’

‘You don’t take sugar.’ The words were out before he could stop them.

‘And how the fuck do you know that?’ Vanda reckoned she could count on the fingers of one hand the times she’d used the word fuck during the years she’d been married to Brian. Now she’d used it about four times in the last twenty minutes. She should be ashamed of herself. No she shouldn’t, the new Vanda told her. If you want to say it, say it, girl, and don’t give a fuck.
The other interesting thing was that she was already thinking of her marriage to Brian as a thing of the past.

‘Come on, tell me. How do you know I don’t take sugar? You’ve never given me tea since you brought me here. It’s either been fizzy pop or water. Neither have had sugar in, just sedatives to keep me quiet. And they’ve worn off, by the way. So come on, spit it out. You’ve kidnapped me, stripped me naked, tried to rape me and failed; don’t you think an introduction’s in order?’

Vanda wondered briefly if confronting her abductor in this way would make things better or worse. What the hell, she thought, if her guess was right she didn’t have long to live anyway. From what she’d read of the other Cremator cases, the attack was so brutal it would all be over quickly. No human constitution could withstand the level of pain this man inflicted for long, she was certain. She’d be dead and gone soon, almost unnoticed, almost unmourned, apart from Jo. She forced herself not to think of her sister. Once they’d been less than friends, now Jo was the only person Vanda was anywhere near close to. That came as a shock, as she realized how lonely her existence had been. That wasn’t always the case. Before her marriage she’d had plenty of friends, of both sexes. She’d enjoyed her social life, but gradually, after she’d got married, her friends had dropped out of her life, or she’d dropped out of theirs. Why? And why had she never stopped to think of it before? It was hardly because her marriage was so happy, or that she was fulfilled by a meaningful career, or bringing up a family.

As she stared at the man in front of her, she wondered when the attack would start. Was he gearing himself up? Did he need to prepare himself? The rape would be horrid, but somehow that didn’t seem as important as it would have done once. And hopefully it would be over with quickly.

No, she thought, that’s the wrong way to look at it. Once he’d raped her, he’d move on to the torture and the burning. So perhaps the rape was the lesser of two evils. It would certainly pale into insignificance once he started on the rest of his vile tricks. She felt slightly comforted that she’d faced the inevitable; thought her way through what she felt sure was going to happen.
By confronting her fears, she felt she was prepared for what was to come.

In the event, Vanda’s wildest nightmares couldn’t match the horror of what happened next.

Nash drove towards Wintersett next morning, the memory of yesterday evening’s encounter still fresh in his mind. Dr Grey’s implied criticism rankled, but he could understand the emotional stress that had provoked her outburst. His distraction could have proved dangerous, but there was little traffic on the road. His lack of concentration almost caused him to overshoot the entrance to the driveway of Mill Cottage. If he hadn’t caught the peripheral flash of metal from the tail end of Mironova’s car as she turned in to the drive, he might have ended up out in the countryside beyond the village. He shook his head, making the mental gear change into work mode.

The first thing Nash noticed as he got out of his car was the blinds at the kitchen window. He waited for Mironova to join him. ‘When we left here yesterday, weren’t those blinds drawn?’

She looked across the gravel pathway. ‘Yes, they were. I closed them myself. I thought it better, with the house being unoccupied. Do you think someone might have broken in? It wouldn’t have been very difficult, especially if they found that broken pane of glass in the back door.’

‘I thought you were organizing someone to fix it?’

‘I thought so too, but they’re all up to their eyes in emergency repair work following last week’s storms. A little thing like a replacement windowpane is very low on their priorities. Added to which, they all wanted to charge an arm and a leg just to come out here. If they’d been attending a big job, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but the call-out fee for this was a hundred pounds on average. All for a piece of glass that you could buy at a DIY place for about two pounds and another fifty-pence for the putty.’

‘Right, well you’d better stay here. If it is an intruder, they might be dangerous. Have your mobile ready to call for back up if needs be.’

Clara saw movement over Nash’s shoulder. ‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary.’ She nodded. ‘That’s Dawson, isn’t it?’

Nash swivelled round, sending a cascade of tiny pebbles scattering across the pathway. A man in his late thirties or early forties was standing in the doorway of the house. He wasn’t so much watching them as glaring at them.

‘Who are you?’ the man demanded. ‘And what the hell do you think you’re doing on my property?’

Nash walked over to him, dragging his warrant card from his pocket on the way. ‘Detective Inspector Nash, Helmsdale CID,’ he told the irate householder. ‘This is my colleague, Detective Sergeant Mironova. I assume you must be Brian Dawson?’

‘That’s correct. What’s this all about? Where is my wife? Has there been some sort of an accident?’

‘We don’t know where your wife is. May we step inside?’

Dawson moved reluctantly to let them pass.

Nash began to explain. ‘When her sister came to visit her on Friday night, she found the house deserted and in darkness. It appeared as if the kitchen door had been forced. You may have noticed there’s a pane of glass missing. Despite extensive searching and enquiries in the neighbourhood, there appears to be no trace of your wife. I have to say her disappearance took place in very suspicious and alarming circumstances. We’re very concerned for her welfare and safety. Our one remaining hope is that you might be able to shed some light on to where she might be, and that there might be an innocent explanation.’

Dawson shook his head, less in denial than in sheer disbelief. ‘I don’t understand. Her car’s still here, in the garage. Where do you think she might have gone? And what do you mean precisely by “suspicious and alarming circumstances”.’

‘The fact that she didn’t take her car simply adds to our concern. Given the weather at the time of her disappearance, it’s hardly likely that she simply put her coat on and walked out in the middle of a raging storm. In addition to the broken pane of glass the
officers found when Dr Grey called them, there’s a red wine stain on the lounge carpet, where a glass had been knocked over. That might have an innocent explanation, of course. What is far less easily explained away is why someone wiped all the surfaces in the lounge, hall and kitchen so that they were clear of fingerprints. Wiped them, may I add, with sanitized wipes. What is particularly disturbing is that we found no trace of any such cloths in the house, not even empty containers in the bin.’

‘What you infer is that you think my wife has been abducted; is that it? Has there been some sort of ransom demand?’

Nash shook his head. He was irritated by Dawson’s manner and couldn’t quite work out why. Perhaps it was the man’s coldness. Although he’d undoubtedly been surprised by Nash’s statement, he didn’t seem particularly distressed about the news that his wife had possibly been kidnapped. The other reason for Nash’s dislike of Dawson was the way he kept referring to Vanda as ‘my wife’ instead of using her name. Dawson’s aloof and distant arrogance struck him as particularly unfeeling. He decided shock tactics might ruffle the man’s unnatural calm.

‘We don’t believe that money was the motive. I’m afraid we suspect that there might be a far more sinister motive behind her abduction.’ Nash waited to see if his assertion provoked any noticeable reaction. When he failed to see one, he continued, ‘Our strongest theory is that this might be the work of a man who has kidnapped several women in the past, in very similar circumstances. All the indications are that your wife’s abduction fits that profile − almost perfectly.’

Once more, there was surprise, and this time something else. Nash wasn’t sure, but it almost sounded like nervousness. If it was, what had Dawson to be apprehensive about? If he was upset by the news that his wife might be in the hands of a homicidal maniac, then Nash failed to see any evidence of it.

‘The Cremator? Is that what you believe? That’s impossible. You can’t surely think this is the work of the Cremator?’

‘I’m afraid that is exactly what we believe, Mr Dawson.’

Dawson opened his mouth as if to say something, but then changed his mind. He merely shook his head in denial. Nash
continued as if he hadn’t noticed the gesture. ‘We’ve been trying to locate you since early on Saturday. Our enquiries revealed that you obviously didn’t go to Spain on a golfing holiday, which is what I understand you told your wife you were doing. So would you mind telling me exactly where you have been and what you’ve been doing, Mr Dawson? You must understand that if your wife hasn’t been abducted, your unexplained absence at the time of her disappearance could be seen as highly suspicious.’

‘Don’t be absurd.’ Dawson’s tone was arrogant, dismissive. ‘You can’t possibly think I had anything to do with this. In fact, it seems as if you have very little evidence whatsoever. That doesn’t seem to have stopped you stringing together a couple of fairly preposterous theories. The fact that you seem uncertain whether it’s me or this Cremator character you ought to be pursuing tends to reinforce the fact that you know absolutely nothing. For all you know, she might have gone swanning off with a new boyfriend or something equally innocuous.’

‘Is that a likely scenario? Given that she was expecting her sister to arrive for the weekend,’ Nash asked, with a quiet calm he was far from feeling. ‘You must be aware that when a woman goes missing like this, the majority of such incidents later prove to have been sparked by some form of domestic dispute. So, I will ask you once more, Mr Dawson, would you please account for your movements over the past week?’

‘I’ve been visiting clients.’

‘I’ll need the names and addresses of those clients.’

‘I’m afraid that information is confidential.’

‘Not any more, it isn’t. I’ll give you chance to contact them, to warn them we’ll be in touch, but I need those details.’

For a moment, Nash thought the accountant was going to argue the point but eventually he nodded. ‘Very well, I’ll write the contact names and phone numbers down. Is there anything else?’

‘Yes, there is. I’m afraid we’re going to remain here until after the postman arrives with this morning’s mail.’

‘Why on earth do you want to do that?’

‘Because if this is a Cremator incident, part of his modus
operandi is to send photographs of his victims to their relatives and I want to make sure that you don’t get such a delivery.’

‘In that case, I can write those details down whilst you’re waiting.’

When Mironova had first entered the kitchen her automatic act was to look round. She noticed that Dawson had eaten breakfast − that much was obvious from the cereal bowl and coffee mug that were soaking in the sink. Apart from them, the room looked exactly as it had when she left it. The careful placing of the breakfast pots tallied with Jo Grey’s description of Dawson’s obsessive neatness. Although Nash was very observant, Mironova wondered how much of this he’d noticed.

‘Stay there; I’ll get those details for you.’ Dawson went out into the hall.

Clara looked across at Nash. He shrugged, as if he was struggling to understand Dawson’s mind-set, but Mironova could sense the speculation in his eyes. Whatever she thought about Dawson it was obvious Nash was forming his own opinion about the accountant. Clara would be interested to learn what that was.

Before either of them had chance to speak, Dawson returned. He handed Mironova a slip of paper with a series of names and phone numbers scrawled on it. She nodded acknowledgment, and before the silence became oppressive, they heard the sound of an approaching vehicle. Dawson glanced at the kitchen clock on the wall above the range cooker. ‘That’ll probably be the postman.’

They followed Dawson through into the hall where Nash signalled to him to open the front door. Nash stepped outside in time to prevent the postman from thrusting the bundle of mail through the letterbox. As he reached for it, Clara noticed Nash was wearing latex gloves. She wondered when he had put them on, as she got closer to see what the mail comprised.

Nash singled out an A5 envelope from the rest and passed the others to Dawson. He turned the one he’d retained over so it was address side up. The size and colour were not the most common, Clara thought. The name and address was printed on a label of the type produced for printers attached to personal computers. That in itself didn’t suggest any sinister motive. Far
more chilling however was the second, smaller label fixed in the top left hand corner of the envelope. It too had been printed, with a message that she could read as clearly as if Nash had spoken it: ‘Photographs − please do not bend’.

She looked up to see Nash’s expression conveyed the same foreboding that gripped her. He took his penknife from his pocket and passed it to Clara, asking her to open one of the blades. She passed it back and Nash began to work the envelope flap free, taking care to avoid the gummed section.

When he had loosened the flap, Nash inverted the envelope and shook it gently to release the contents. A trio of photos slid into his hand, all measuring about six inches by four. He turned the first of these over and as he scrutinised the subject, Clara saw his face wearing an expression of unparalleled grimness. Clara looked over his shoulder and saw with mounting horror that it depicted a woman lying naked on a bed, her wrists and ankles secured to the frame.

Nash tucked this to the back and looked at the second print. In this, the same woman had been moved to an oblong, altar-like table covered in some form of purple material. She was naked and tied up as in the first photo, and the altar was surrounded by a number of symbols that were only partly visible owing to the angle of the shot. Closer to the centre of the photo was an object Clara recognized only too well: a petrol can.

Nash turned to the final print. In this, a man had climbed on to the woman. He too was naked, apart from the mask that obscured his head and the top of his neck. There was absolutely no doubt in Clara’s mind that this photo had captured the woman being raped. No doubt in her mind, that the woman in all three photos was Vanda Dawson. No doubt, that the man who had abducted and raped her was the serial killer known as the Cremator.

Nash turned to Dawson and held up the first photo. ‘Is that your wife?’ he demanded.

Dawson’s glance was cursory, no more. ‘Yes, it is.’

‘And this one? And this?’ Nash held the second and third photos up in turn, giving Dawson ample opportunity to examine them.

Dawson looked from one photo to the other. His expression interested Clara. It changed from surprise to absolute astonishment, but at no time did she see the slightest flicker of distress. His voice was steady as he replied. ‘Yes, those are all photographs of my wife.’

‘Then I think you will have to brace yourself for some bad news. I mean really bad news,’ Nash reinforced the point. ‘Because it seems obvious that the man who has abducted your wife is the Cremator. Furthermore, having read the files on his other victims only yesterday, I think you should be aware that by the time photos such as these are sent out, the victim is either dead or within hours of it. We can’t be certain on the timing, but I think you should prepare yourself for the news that your wife has already been murdered.’

Clara stared at her boss in astonishment. It was totally out of character for Nash to behave in such an unfeeling manner. Apart from this, his statement was surely against regulations.

Nash was watching Dawson even more closely than Clara was watching Nash. She switched her gaze to the accountant. There could be no doubting his utter bewilderment on being confronted by the awful evidence of the ordeal his wife had suffered. On the other hand, Clara couldn’t see anything to suggest that Dawson was in the slightest worried by his wife’s fate.

Despite several attempts by Nash to persuade Dawson to accept the presence of a police family support officer to stay with him at the house until, as Nash put it, the situation was resolved, the accountant steadfastly refused. When Nash suggested the alternative of asking Jo Grey to come over to the house, Dawson rejected the idea vehemently.

Although Mironova was aware that the two of them didn’t get on, the force of Dawson’s refusal surprised her. Clara was left with the feeling that Dawson was either disinterested, or that he was bottling up his feelings. How else could you explain his apparently calm acceptance of the knowledge that she was in the power of a ruthless and evil serial killer. She could tell from Nash’s expression that he was equally baffled.