Kissing the Demons (29 page)

As he walked down the alley and out into Torland Place, he passed a man out walking his dog but he didn't give Death a second look. Then he saw his quarry, strolling with a young man by her side, one of her housemates – the one called Matt. They were walking close to each other in silence as if they were trying hard to avoid any kind of physical or social contact. But from what Death had heard that house affected people like that, setting friend against friend, husband against wife and brother against brother.

Matt's presence meant that Caro was out of reach for now. But there'd be other nights, other times. And, besides, it might be an ideal opportunity to put the alternative plan into operation.

When Death walked past them they didn't even notice. But why should they?

The mask of normality had always served him well. And now it was time to go home and consider the next move in the game. The greater challenge. Kissing the demons.

TWENTY-ONE

E
mily put the phone down. Jeff had had a hard day entertaining the kids after a week spent teaching a class of adolescents who weren't particularly interested in the history of the Industrial Revolution but he seemed to take the news that his wife wouldn't be home until after midnight philosophically. She'd told him it couldn't be helped. This new lead might well come to nothing but all her instincts were telling her to follow it.

She'd arranged to meet Joe in the car park and as she left the office she glanced at herself in the small mirror that hung on the wall, her one concession to vanity. She saw dark smudges beneath her bloodshot eyes and she knew she looked a wreck; but then she always seemed to look that way when there was a major murder enquiry on.

Joe drove them to Carla Vernon's address in Bacombe, a new block of flats on the main road out of Eborby. Just as he was about to press the button with the name ‘Vernon' printed neatly below it, his mobile phone began to ring and he answered it quickly.

Emily listened to the conversation. Joe rarely sounded angry and her curiosity was aroused.

‘You're drunk,' she heard him saying. ‘Just leave me alone, will you?' Then he seemed to change tack. ‘OK, you can stay at mine tonight. But only one night. My neighbour's got a key. Number five. Let yourself in and have a black coffee. I'll see you later.'

When he ended the call, Emily couldn't resist asking the obvious question. ‘Who was that?'

Joe seethed for a couple of seconds before answering. ‘Kirsten. My sister-in-law. She arrived back in Eborby this afternoon and she claims she's lost her credit cards so she can't book a hotel room. She says she's got nowhere to stay.'

‘That's not your problem.'

‘She sounds as though she's been drowning her sorrows all afternoon. I felt I had to offer her a bed for the night, the state she's in.'

‘I hope you're not giving her yours.' Emily was beginning to feel rather indignant on Joe's behalf. In her opinion, the Sister-in-Law from Hell was taking advantage.

‘I can hardly let her sleep on a park bench, can I,' Joe replied.

‘You're too bloody soft. I'd tell her where to go. Go on. Ring the bell.'

Joe did as he was told and after a few moments a breathless voice answered and they were buzzed in. The flat was on the third floor and Carla Vernon met them at the door, her arms folded defensively. When Emily had last seen her at the offices of McNeil and Dutton, she had been dressed for the world of business in formal suit and high heels. Now she wore jeans and a black long-sleeved T-shirt and her feet were bare. Emily noticed a pair of muddy trainers in the corner of the hallway as they followed her in. The mud looked fresh.

‘Have you been out?' Emily asked, trying to sound friendly.

‘I went out for a walk. Why?'

‘You got a car?'

‘Yes,' was the wary answer.

‘You'll have needed a car to transport the carpet, I suppose,' Joe said.

‘What carpet?'

‘The roll end you bought from the Cosy Carpet Warehouse. Where is it now?'

‘I'm not sure.'

‘You can't just lose a roll of carpet.' She smiled, trying to hide her impatience. ‘Do you mean you bought it for someone else?'

‘It was for Ethan's office. He knows someone who's going to lay it for him.

‘Is it still in the office?'

She hesitated. ‘I think he might have taken it home. I'm not sure.' She didn't sound convincing.

‘Have you got a key to the office?'

‘No. Ethan keeps the keys.'

‘What's his address?'

Carla hesitated. ‘I don't know if he'd like . . .'

‘His address.'

Carla thought for a few moments. Then she went over to the telephone and picked up a tattered address book. ‘Thirty-four Bamford Road, Hassledon.' She looked at her watch.

‘Anxious to be somewhere?' Emily asked sharply.

‘No. It's just that I planned to go out later and . . .'

‘Well we won't keep you.' She looked at the phone. ‘And I'd be grateful if you didn't contact Mr McNeil to tell him we're on our way. We like to surprise people and there's an offence called obstructing the police.'

Carla stood there with her arms folded and her expression gave nothing away. As Emily left she glanced through into the kitchen. The light was on, reflecting off a set of lethal looking knives arrayed against a magnetic strip on the wall. There was a space in the middle as though one was missing. But she dismissed the idea – for all she knew it could be in the washing up.

Kirsten's head was thumping. She'd thought a few drinks would take her pain away but she'd been so wrong.

She'd lied about losing her credit cards but he'd believed every word, so now she'd have him there alone and she'd get him to slip up and admit his guilt. And even if he didn't, there might be some evidence there in his flat, something that would give him away. She'd had no real luck in Devon but she was determined to prove somehow that her sister's death had been no accident.

Although her last drink had been a while ago and the effects had started to wear off, she still felt a little unsteady. Getting the key from Joe's neighbour as instructed hadn't been easy. She'd had to concentrate hard on getting the words out without slurring and betraying the state she was in. The neighbour had looked at her suspiciously at first but it seemed that Joe had rung on ahead to warn of her arrival. She had hardly expected him to be so cooperative. Perhaps he was up to something. She'd have to be on her guard.

She had aimed the key carefully at the lock and opened the door of his flat. It was dark and still in there and she didn't like the way the small block of flats stood so close to the grey, oppressive walls that guarded the old city.

After helping herself to several glasses of water to slake her raging thirst, Kirsten lay on the sofa and switched off the light. She kept her eyes open because whenever she closed them the room started to spin round and she felt a little sick. But after a while she couldn't fight sleep any longer and she lay there, unconscious and snoring, unaware that the front door she had left slightly ajar was being pushed gently open.

The small detached houses in Bamford Road had been built in the 1960s in the nadir of house building and no effort had been made to blend in with North Yorkshire's vernacular building style. Somehow Joe had expected an estate agent to have chosen something more architecturally inspiring.

There was no reply at number thirty-four although a light was on behind the closed blinds in the front room downstairs. Joe hoped Carla Vernon hadn't ignored Emily's warning and called to warn of their arrival.

After the third attempt he decided to try the neighbours.

With Emily by his side, he walked up to the front door of the neighbouring house and their knock was answered by a middle-aged woman dressed from head to toe in beige who gave them a glare that would have stopped a charging lion in its tracks. ‘Before you start I don't buy anything at the door.'

‘Quite right,' said Joe as he presented his warrant card. ‘We're trying to get hold of your neighbour at number thirty-four and there's no answer. Do you know when he'll be home?'

‘I don't, I'm afraid. His car's not there.'

‘There's a light on. Is his wife likely to be in, do you know? She might not like to answer the door to strangers after dark . . . some people don't. But if you know her . . .'

‘Oh I never see her. They keep themselves to themselves.' She leaned towards him and lowered her voice. ‘They've got a baby but it never seems to cry. But some babies are like that, aren't they? Not that mine ever were.'

Emily stepped forward. ‘You've seen Mr McNeil with the baby?'

‘I see him taking it out in a pram from time to time. When they moved in he said the baby was a girl but I've not had a proper look at her and you can't see their garden from our house 'cos it's surrounded by that huge leylandii hedge. I asked him to get it trimmed and he said he'd do it. But nothing's happened yet.'

‘You wouldn't have a key to the place by any chance?'

The woman shook her head. Then her round face lit up as though she'd just remembered something. ‘Hang on.' She disappeared into the house and returned a few minutes later with a Yale key in her hand. ‘I used to look after it for the Gibsons who lived there before and I forgot to give it back when they moved out.'

‘May we borrow it?'

There was mischief in her eyes as she handed over the key, as though she was enjoying being part of a conspiracy against her stand-offish neighbour. ‘Go on. But you'd better let me have it back.'

‘We're a bit worried about the family. We'll just have a quick look to make sure everything's OK,' said Joe, taking the key. That was the official line and, from the ghost of a wink the woman gave him, she understood the situation.

‘I wonder if she's had a look round the place already,' Emily whispered as they made for number thirty-four.

‘It wouldn't surprise me.' He paused. ‘But if she has she might have been playing a dangerous game.'

Emily inserted the key into the lock and the door swung open silently as she called out ‘hello' in a confident voice.

When there was no answer she stepped into the cramped hallway and flicked on the light switch.

Joe looked around. The hall was painted in bland magnolia and there were no pictures on the wall, or anything else that marked it out as someone's personal space. If he hadn't been told that Ethan McNeil had a wife, he would have said it lacked the feminine touch. A baby's pushchair was folded up in the space under the stairs but this was the only sign of youthful life.

‘So we're looking for a roll of carpet?' Emily said as she began to wander from room to room.

‘If it was still in the office, surely Carla would have known. I think he took it home for some reason.'

‘Or she did,' said Emily quietly. ‘There was something odd about her, don't you think?'

Joe didn't answer.

The living room was sparsely furnished and lit by a standard lamp in the corner of the room. There were oatmeal coloured vertical blinds at the windows which gave the place an institutional look.

Even the pile of brightly coloured plastic toys in the corner of the room looked wrong somehow. Too neatly arranged, perhaps or too shiny and new.

After a swift look in the kitchen, noting the bare worktops, Emily led the way upstairs. The wardrobe in the master bedroom contained men's and women's clothes but Emily observed that she'd never known a woman to have so little clothing . . . or so few shoes.

In the smallest room a night light glowed in the distant corner and Joe could see a mobile hanging over a cot. This was where the unusually quiet baby slept. He crept over to the cot and looked inside. But what he saw there made his heart almost miss a beat. A baby lay there on its side, its little face hidden in shadow. It lay quite still and seemingly fast asleep. He tiptoed out and found Emily on the landing. ‘The baby's asleep in there. McNeil and his wife have left it on its own.'

‘We'd better call Social Services then,' she said as she pushed past him into the small nursery. She bent over the cot and Joe saw her touch the baby's head with gentle fingers. When she swung round to face him he knew something was wrong. ‘She's cold, Joe. Put the light on.'

Joe obeyed and hurried over to the cot, hovering anxiously behind Emily who had stripped the bedding off the tiny body.

‘Oh God no,' he murmured as he watched Emily's fingers work quickly, feeling for a pulse, searching for signs of life.

Then suddenly she let the baby go and Joe saw her lips form a grim smile.

‘Is she alive?'

Emily didn't answer. Then, to his alarm, she picked the baby up by its left foot and when she threw it to him he caught the small body in his outstretched hands and stared down at it in horror.

‘Creepy or what?'

It took Joe a second or so to realize the truth. What they'd both assumed was a baby was in reality a very lifelike doll. It would fool most people at a distance and it had certainly fooled them in the dim glow of the night light.

Emily took the doll from him and flung it back into the cot. ‘Good job we didn't make fools of ourselves by getting social services out. But what I want to know is why.'

Suddenly Joe's mobile rang and he fumbled to answer it. After a quick conversation he turned to Emily. ‘That was Jamilla. She's just been round to Den Harvey's and he identified the boy on the photo as Ethan McNeil. He said he used to hang around with him and Cassidy sometimes – trailed after them, was how he put it. And he reckoned there was something odd about him. He used to act oddly around girls and Sharon Bell thought he was creepy.'