Jigsaw Man (30 page)

‘Do you have any idea who might want to kill him?'

Price smiled. ‘When I heard he'd disappeared, well . . . But there's a big difference
between wishing someone dead and actually doing something about it. Has he been found?'

‘Possibly. Do you know who this man is?' Tartaglia pulled out the E-FIT of the man
called Spike.

Price studied it for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Wish I did. If he had anything
to do with getting rid of Richard English, I'd like to buy him a drink.'

Thirty-five

Adam had found it impossible to leave the café without paying. No amount of explaining
that his wallet had been stolen and that he would come back later with the money
had made any difference. A large man wearing a ponytail and a sweat-stained denim
shirt, who claimed to be a security guard for the antique arcade, had appeared from
nowhere and blocked the doorway. Clearly burned by previous experience, the middle-aged
female owner had threatened to call the police until he handed over his watch. Nothing
else he had offered had been acceptable. The watch was a black-faced Rolex Submariner,
which had belonged to Kit and was worth several thousand pounds, even in its battered
state. It irked him to have to leave it behind, even for half an hour until he came
back with some cash, but what else could he do? He certainly didn't want the police
called. All for a measly fucking twelve quid fifty. The food hadn't even been that
good. He made the woman sign a full receipt with her name, address and phone number.
He wished he could make her write it in her own blood.

As he marched back up the hill towards Notting Hill Gate, he tried to think back.
The last time he had the wallet was when he bought the chestnuts. After paying for
them, he remembered holding the burningly hot bag in one hand as he struggled to
push the wallet into the zip pocket of his jacket with the other. People were milling
around him all the time, but he wasn't aware of anybody bumping into him or trying
to
distract him, while somebody else dipped his pocket. Maybe the wallet had just
fallen out somehow, but instinct told him otherwise. It was annoying about the cash,
but he could afford to lose the two hundred pounds. There was the cash in the rucksack
under his bed, and more still in the lockup. It was also annoying to lose Kit's credit
card, although it was near its limit, as anybody trying to use it would soon find
out. He had others to fall back on, safely stowed away from Kit's house and Gunner.

Five minutes later, he was in Bedford Gardens. He opened the front door and found
a letter for Kit inside on the floor. It looked like some sort of boring circular
and he tossed it onto the hall table on top of the small pile of Kit's accumulated
post. He would go through it all later, once he had sorted out Gunner. As he shut
the door, he noticed a brown padded envelope lying behind it on the mat. Turning
the package over, he saw with surprise that it appeared to be for him, the name Tom
printed on the front in black felt tip. There was no address or postmark. It had
been hand delivered. It felt like a book and he tore open the package. Inside was
a hardback copy of
The Talented Mr Ripley
by Patricia Highsmith. The red dust jacket
was dog-eared and foxed, and it smelt musty as though it had been kept somewhere
damp. The drawing on the cover showed a pair of spectacle frames and the outline
of a dead man.

He felt the blood rush to his face as he stood staring at the picture, wondering
what to do. He hadn't read the stupid book, but he had seen the film and remembered
the plot clearly enough to know that somebody was trying to make a point. Somebody
was pulling his chain. Was it Gunner? Had he bought the book at the market stall?
If so, he must have raced back to Kit's house to put it there, although why go to
the trouble of putting it in an envelope and shoving it through the
door? The only
other person who knew him as Tom was Hannah Bird, but she didn't know where he lived.

There was a parallel of sorts between Ripley's situation and his, and between Dickie's
death and Kit's, although that little godforsaken pocket of Thailand where he had
holed up for a few weeks with Kit was nothing like San Remo. There the similarities
ended. Ripley was a low-life conman and Dickie's killing was amateurish. By contrast,
he had planned Kit's final moments down to the last detail. Nor had he scuttled the
boat. It would have been a waste and what would have been the point? He had made
sure nobody saw them go off in it. There was nobody waiting for their return who
would notice, let alone care, that only one person came back; there was nobody to
miss Kit. And even if one of the locals did remember him, he was just another in
a long line of drinking buddies and hangers-on that lonely Kit had picked up at one
of the many nearby tourist bars. Adam had allowed himself to be picked up. His money
was running out after many months of travelling and he needed somewhere to stay while
he worked out what to do next. Some drunken Aussie in another bar had told him about
the Englishman with more money than sense and it hadn't been hard to find Kit and
get his attention. Kit must have thought he'd struck it lucky that night with Adam,
but the boot was on the other foot. The reality had probably only dawned in Kit's
pickled brain weeks later, on the afternoon he died.

Each moment of that day was still sharp in his mind. It had been Kit's forty-second
birthday. Adam could still feel the shimmering heat, taste the salt in the air. Kit
didn't get up until almost midday, which was normal. When he eventually struggled
out of bed, he was in a funny mood and couldn't make up his mind what he wanted to
do. Adam remembered getting
increasingly angry as time passed. The plan they had
made the night before had been to go snorkelling on the reef, then have a light snack
on the beach with cocktails, and watch the sun go down. It had a romantic appeal,
even for cynical old Kit. The reef was one of the best in the area, but being small
and remote, it was rarely visited. The drop-off where the reef met the ocean was
steep and the water around it incredibly deep, going from a bright turquoise to an
inky blue-black in about thirty metres. Few people ever bothered to venture far down
the outer wall and whatever was at the bottom remained hidden in darkness. It was
the perfect place to dispose of a body.

Even Kit, who hated most forms of physical exertion, liked snorkelling and had agreed
to the idea with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. Adam had the picnic basket packed and
ready for loading by the little jetty, along with the snorkelling equipment. He
had also prepared a bag with some other necessary items. But it had all been too
easy. As if Kit had suddenly developed a sixth sense about what lay in store, he
tried to back out at the last minute. It was his birthday, after all. He could bloody
well do what he wanted. Adam had been a little too forceful trying to make him cooperate
and Kit had got quite nasty, calling him all sorts of unpleasant things and threatening
to throw him out on his ear if he didn't shut up about the bloody snorkelling. In
the end, an apology and the sight of Adam stripped down to his tight white trunks,
his body oiled and brown, had grudgingly calmed him down. With the hint of something
more to come in the physical line (‘at long, bloody last') once the snorkelling was
over, Adam finally managed to get him on board.

But the trouble didn't end there. All the way out, Kit had whinged about having ‘a
bit of a headache', about it being ‘too bloody bright' and about Adam having brought
the wrong
cocktail ingredients. Adam could still hear Kit's lisping, nasal tones.
He wanted Manhattans, not Daiquiris, even though Adam had twice explained that, thanks
to Kit having finished the bottle the previous night, they were out of bourbon. Kit
was keen to skip the snorkelling part altogether and get straight to the beach, but
Adam had stood firm, deaf to Kit's whining as he steered the little boat as fast
as possible towards the edge of the reef. Thank God he wouldn't have to put up with
it for much longer.

He wished he could have strung it out a bit more and taken his time, but he had had
enough of Kit's moaning and Kit was right: it was way too hot. Even with his tan,
he was getting burnt. So there was no delicious build-up. No foreplay. He anchored
the boat and before he knew it, his hands were around Kit's damp, scrawny neck and
he was throttling the last desperate, gasping breath out of him just to shut him
up. Like bad sex, it was all over in a matter of minutes and instead of the usual
elation, he felt flat afterwards. He secured the weight belts tightly around Kit's
middle and carefully eased him, feet first, over the side. As Kit slid into the water,
there was barely a splash. God, how he hated him for depriving him of his pleasure.
The sight of his face, eyes still open, disappearing swiftly downwards into the deep
blue, was no consolation. He couldn't remember how Ripley had felt after murdering
Dickie, but unlike Ripley, he had no desire to punch a hole in the boat, watch it
sink, then swim back all the way from the reef to the shore. He was far too exhausted.

He stared down at the book in his hand. For a moment, Kit's face morphed onto the
cover. He had had a puerile taste for practical jokes and he was laughing. Had Kit
sent him the book? Had he somehow come back from the dead? Had he crawled out of
the sea and been following Adam ever since, all
the way back to the UK and to the
house in Notting Hill? At times he felt as though someone was looking over his shoulder.
But he dismissed the idea as paranoid. There could be no return from that deep, dark
watery grave. The book had to be from Gunner. But if so, the Ripley idea could only
be a lucky guess. Gunner couldn't possibly have any idea what had happened to Kit.
He was just fishing, trying to see how Adam would react. Perhaps Gunner saw himself
as Freddie Miles, Dickie's smart-ass, suspicious friend who wanted to expose Ripley.
If so, there was only one ending to that particular little strand of story and Gunner
certainly had it coming.

He went into the small sitting room on the ground floor next to Kit's library and
started to make a fire in the grate. He used several firelighters and a huge mound
of kindling and it was soon blazing away. He added a couple of broken panels of wood
from one of Kit's empty wine crates and when it looked good and hot, sparks spitting
noisily out onto the rug, he tossed the book into the heart of it. The paper cover
curled and disappeared in seconds and soon the cloth-covered board below blistered
and turned black. As he watched the pages disintegrate, he saw Kit's face in the
flames. He was still smiling, mocking him. Would he always be there? Again he told
himself that there was no way Kit could still be alive, but would he be his nemesis?
Getting rid of the book had changed nothing and he felt suddenly feverish. He had
never before felt so out of control. Somebody was slowly and viciously pulling at
the vital thread that held his life together and his world was unravelling.

He heard a footstep behind him and swung around. Gunner was standing in the doorway
watching him.

‘What do you want?'

‘Thought I smelled smoke,' Gunner said, eyebrows raised. ‘You burning something?'

Thirty-six

The drive back into London on the M40 was slow, as Tartaglia hit the tail end of
the rush hour. Pool cars were usually impossible to get hold of at short notice
and Minderedes had offered the loan of the BMW. It was much nicer than anything available,
with a decent sound system, but he missed the Ducati. He would somehow have to make
time to pick it up in the next day or so. He was due at his sister Nicoletta's that
evening and had arranged with Minderedes to return the car the next morning. She
had called and apologised for what she had said the other evening and eventually
he had agreed to go to her house for dinner. He had managed to speak to Ramsey. There
were no new developments with the Aldford fire, although they had received a report
that a bearded man, matching the description of the man seen hanging around at the
fire, had checked in to a nearby B&B for a few days leading up to Guy Fawkes
night. He had paid cash up front and had left on the night of the bonfire. According
to the woman who ran the B&B, he had been driving a white van and she'd seen
very little of him. She didn't know the make of the van and hadn't made a note of
the licence number. Ramsey had also looked into the beach fire in some detail and
had spoken to the team that had dealt with it. The results from the autopsy had been
inconclusive, although it was assumed that the woman was already dead when placed
on the fire and set alight. Without witnesses, let alone possible suspects, it remained
unsolved and there was nothing to suggest a link with any of the other fires they
were investigating.

An hour later, Tartaglia pulled up outside Nicoletta's terraced house in Islington
and as he walked up the front steps, her husband John opened the door.

‘Got rid of the Ducati?' he asked, welcoming Tartaglia inside.

‘It's in the garage for a service.'

Inside, the house was warm and filled with delicious cooking smells. He took off
his jacket and followed John down the corridor into the large kitchen at the back,
where Nicoletta was taking something out of the oven.

‘You're late,' she said, kissing him quickly on the cheek.

‘Traffic on the M40 . . .'

‘Never mind. Go and sit down.' She turned back to the stove.

‘What can I get you to drink?' John asked.

‘Something soft, please. I'm still on call.'

‘San Pellegrino and lime?'

‘Thanks.'

Nicoletta lifted the lid off a large, shallow pan on the stove and sniffed the air
before turning off the gas under it. Her long black hair was loosely clipped up on
top of her head. Dressed in skinny jeans and a large T-shirt, she was barefoot, as
though it were still summer. Unlike him, she rarely felt the cold.