Past Mortem (11 page)

‘Well, what I think is that for somebody who’s spent their life working for charity you’re being a bit uncharitable.’

When the time came to pay the bill Newson insisted that the meal be his treat. Helen protested, but not for long.

‘I suppose maybe you owe it to me for the way you dumped me at the Christmas disco.’

‘You mentioned that in your email. I never felt I dumped you. I mean, we weren’t…well, you know…We were friends, weren’t we?’

‘Hang on, we were more than just friends.’

‘We were good Mends, best friends, but…you weren’t my girlfriend, were you?’

‘No. I suppose I wasn’t. I just thought that was the way it was going, that’s all.’

‘Did you? Wow. I’m sorry…That would have been…well, it might have been great, but — ’

‘Princess Christine Copperfield wagged her little finger and I’m left standing beside the punch bowl feeling something of an idiot.’

They were just leaving the restaurant and for a moment Helen’s voice had hardened. Out on the street Newson found himself apologizing for something he hadn’t. realized he’d done, more than two decades before.

‘Look, Helen, I don’t think I realized. I mean, we were mates, weren’t we — ’

Then Helen burst out laughing. ‘For fuck’s sake, Ed, it doesn’t matter! We were kids. Who cares? I was only angry because I’d actually put on make-up for you and you
know
that was strictly against the rules of hardcore feminism
circa
nineteen eighty-four.’

They laughed together.

‘All the same, Helen, I wish you’d said something at the time. I’d never just presume a girl was interested in me — ’

‘And would it have made any difference? Little dumpy Hellie trying to keep you from the school star?

Come on, Ed, you were like a dog on heat that night. I watched you. Besides, girls didn’t
say
in those days, even committed femmos like me. This was years before the Spice Girls, remember.’

‘But really, it never occurred to me that you were interested in that way. I never do think that with girls. It never occurs to me that they might be interested. It’s got something to do with the fact that I’m an ugly shortarsed ginger twat.’

‘You’re not ugly, Ed.’

‘Oh, so just a shortarsed ginger twat, then?’

They both laughed. It was one-of those moments and it went the way those moments usually do. They kissed on the lips, on the pavement on Dean Street, and Newson said, ‘Would you like to come back for coffee?’

‘I can’t. I’ve got a sitter and it’s already late. But I’ve got coffee. Fairtrade, too.’

Newson hailed a taxi and went with Helen to her flat in Willesden. During the drive they kissed again. As they walked up the path, through the untended, unloved communally owned front garden of the big dark house, Newson realized that Helen lived barely five minutes’ walk from the scene of the Bishop murder. He’d driven past her house many times and not known it.

As Helen searched for her keys Newson noted the extraordinary number of bells- by the front door. It must have taken some architectural ingenuity to squeeze so many dwellings into a house built originally to contain only one.

They made their way past the bicycles stacked up in what had once been rather a fine hallway and up the stairs to Helen’s flat. There followed an excruciating period while they sat waiting in Helen’s tiny front room for the babysitter’s minicab to arrive. The three of them, trying to make polite conversation, plus the sleeping figure of the sitter’s own baby, which she had brought with her in a carrycot.

Newson made an effort to maintain his excitement He must surely go to bed with his old schoolfriend, but the desire was draining. He was certainly no kind of snob, but Helen’s life was so
drab
it made him sad, and sadness is not a good stimulant for sex. He tried to conjure her breasts up in his mind — he had no clues as to their current condition because she had still not removed her jacket, but he recalled her nipples from another age and tried to imagine what they would be like now that the puppy fat was gone.

Eventually the babysitter left.

Before Newson could speak Helen put her finger to her lips and disappeared into what Newson soon discovered was her bedroom. She returned a moment later carrying a small sleeping boy, whom she placed upon the couch and covered in blankets.

‘This is Karl,’ she said softly. ‘His father’s Samoan.’ Again Newson felt his sex drive slipping away. The tiny flat, the tiny boy…It was all too
intimate
.

‘Look, Helen, I hate to kick Karl out of — ’

‘Ed. I don’t have a lot of money. I only have one bedroom. So what? Does that mean I have no right to a sex life?’

‘Well no, of course not. I just thought — ’

‘He’s fine. He’ll sleep.’

Helen took Ed’s hand and led him into the bedroom.

He noted immediately that not only was there only one bedroom, there was also only one bed. He was going to have to make love to Helen in Karl’s still-warm bed.

She closed the door and then quite suddenly in the total darkness she was kissing him, working at his mouth with semi-drunken fervour. And he kissed her back. Now her jacket was finally off and her small, bony body was taut and strong against his. Newson’s energies returned as he resolved to take his luck where he found it. Together they fell upon the bed and once more after a gap of over twenty years he held her breasts in his hands. They were smaller now, tiny in fact, but the nipples were as he remembered them, big and fleshy, and they felt quite exquisite in the heat of his passion and the rarity of the moment. As his hands explored the rest of her body Newson discovered with excitement that both her navel and her vulva had been pierced, something he hadn’t encountered before.

‘Nice,’ he said, anxious to break what had become a rather intense silence.

‘I love being pierced,’ Helen said. ‘I want to do my tits, but it’s hard with nipples like mine, they’re so fat. I’ll do it one day, though. All the way through.’

‘Ouch,’ Newson murmured.

‘Yes!’ Helen replied with enthusiasm.

When the crucial moment arrived Newson whispered that he had a condom in his wallet. ‘I don’t think it’s quite past its shag-by date yet,’ he said, ‘although it may be getting close.’

‘Use it if you want. It’s up to you,’ Helen replied.

This was not something Newson wanted to hear. If there was one thing he did not like it was a girl who was casual about sexual hygiene. But he was too excited now. Her skinny body felt good and, anyway, he was committed. As long as he wore his condom he would be fine. He struggled in the darkness for his jacket. ‘Can we have a light on for a moment?’

‘No,’ Helen replied. ‘I like the dark.’

Eventually Newson found what he was looking for and began to fumble with the little packet. Of course by this time his erection was collapsing at speed, but fortunately Helen sensed the danger and made moves to rectify it. Ed reflected as her head descended that if she always made men try to apply condoms in total darkness she would be used to this problem. Eventually all was ready and they made love.

It had been many months since Newson had last scored and he endeavoured to make the most of it. The feeling of a lithe, hungry female body moving beneath him was a pleasure indeed. Nonetheless, as he finished he could not rid himself of a slight feeling of unease. Try as he might, he could not quite abandon himself to the moment.

Later, as they lay together, half propped on the pillows, Helen with her arms across Newson’s chest, the door opened.

It was Karl, asking for a drink of water.

This is not a situation that any man revels in, but Newson was not thinking about Karl. The light from the doorway had flooded the small room and as he blinked and his eyes readjusted he saw Helen’s thin white arm on his chest. She hurried to cover it with a sheet, but he saw in time that it was crisscrossed with cut marks, too many to count. The badges of honour of the dedicated self-abuser.

Helen knew that he had seen them. ‘Shut the door please, Karl,’ she said. ‘I’ll be through right away.’

Once more the room was black and Helen said, ‘It was a long time ago. I don’t do that stuff anymore.’

But Newson had been around cuts, scars and scarring all his adult life. Even in that brief bright moment he had seen that some of the marks were still ruddy and fresh. Not immediate, he thought, but recent Helen put on a dressing gown and went to attend to her child. When she returned she put the light back on.

‘I’ve ordered you a cab,’ she said. ‘You’ve got work tomorrow and so have I.’

Newson tried not to show it, but the relief was considerable. He’d been dreading the possibility of having to stay the rest of the night for politeness’ sake with this girl who clearly had more problems than he did.

She put Karl back in his rightful place in her bed and while they waited for the taxi she made coffee.

‘I still can’t quite believe you went off with Christine Copperfield that night,’ she said from the tiny kitchen that led directly off the living room.

‘I’ve told you, Helen, I had no idea you were interested.’

‘I don’t mean because of me, idiot,’ she said. ‘I mean because of her. I mean, you were kind of cool and she was just a complete shit.’

‘Me, cool? She was the one who was cool. She was Queen of the Year.’

‘She had power but she wasn’t cool. She was an arrogant, smug, nasty cow and secretly most of the girls hated her.’

‘Come on, she was incredibly popular.’

‘Bollocks. She wasn’t popular. All the boys fancied her, sure. That’s different. As for the girls, most of us were scared of her. I know I was.’

‘You weren’t scared of anybody.’

‘I was scared of everybody, Ed. Except you.’

‘Oh.’

‘Of course I tried to look tough and act tough, but, believe me, Christine Copperfield could have destroyed me any time she wanted. All she had to do was turn the other girls against you. Mostly it was just words, making you feel fat, ugly, useless, dead. Occasionally they’d get physical. I saw her and her gang force a tampon into a girl’s mouth once.’

‘I had no idea.’

‘In the girls’ changing rooms after netball. The girl had just started her period. She’d sat on the bench and when she got up there was blood. It was like that scene from
Carrie
. Christine Copperfield laid into her. Laughed at her. Called her ‘filthy hitch’ and ‘dirty slag’, made the other girls get some tampons from the vending machine and then they stuffed one in her mouth. That was golden girl Christine fucking Copperfield. And you went off with her, Ed.’

‘I didn’t know anything about any of that, Helen.’

‘No, you just knew about her tan and her hair and her tits.’

‘Yes.’

The doorbell rang. Newson’s cab had arrived. At the door he kissed Helen goodbye.

‘That girl who had the period,’ he said.

‘What about her?’

‘That was you, wasn’t it?’

She didn’t reply before closing the door behind him.

FOURTEEN

N
ewson got home shortly after two in the morning, feeling very uncomfortable indeed. He had enjoyed the sex, he couldn’t deny it, but he’d definitely not enjoyed the sudden and intimate immersion in someone else’s life. Someone who, if he was honest, meant nothing to him any more. Helen was clearly an unhappy woman. Her life was difficult and her self-harm was evidence of a low and damaged self-esteem. He didn’t need that in his life. He had enough trouble maintaining his own confidence without seeking out the company of sad, embittered single mothers. He felt guilty because he’d had sex with her, and now he never wanted to see her again. He imagined she could get a lot of that sort of thing from men if she wanted.

He had a long shower and thought about Christine and what Helen had said. It didn’t surprise him that Christine had been cruel to Helen. — She’d been cruel to him, dropping him after a week with the same casual presumption with which she’d picked him up. But beautiful people played by different rules. Surely everybody knew that, and if Helen didn’t then she needed to grow up. Newson couldn’t hate Christine. Christine was beautiful, and for a brief moment she had chosen him. For that he would always be grateful.

Newson’s computer was on broadband and so constantly online. After his shower he noticed that he’d received mail. Despite the lateness of the hour he couldn’t resist going to his inbox, partly in fear that Helen might already have sent some grim accusatory post mortem on their evening together.

There was nothing from Helen, instead two emails concerning the Farrah Porter murder. The crime had of course instantly become big news. The minicab driver who picked Newson up from Helen’s place had given him his copy of the late-edition
Standard
, and the MP’s death had been splashed across four pages. Newson knew that there would be immense pressure on him to come up with something fast.

The first message was from Dr Clarke.

Well, we are a brainy pair.

The killer did indeed break Farrah Porter’s spine in order to paralyse her. He-did so by bashing it with a heavy instrument, probably a clump hammer, while she lay unconscious from the Rohypnol. I think he (or she) caused the injury with a single blow, which suggests either great skill -and steadiness or a lot of luck. I incline to the former. The only point I can raise to mitigate the horror of this case is that by breaking the woman’s back the killer rendered her largely insensitive to the pain of the acid-bleaching, although of course the mental agony would have been almost beyond endurance.

Newson stopped reading and thought for a moment. This was an interesting point. The killer was not principally interested in inflicting pain. It was what he -was doing to Farrah Porter that counted — the bleaching, not necessarily the pain it caused.

Next point You were right about the cause of death. He made her drink the Phenol BP acid. An extremely clever guess. Her insides were rotten with it.

Newson took no pleasure or pride in his assumption. He knew he was on the trail of a single killer and he knew that this killer tortured first and then finished off the victim in a way that developed directly from the torture. But that was all he did know, and, as he had guessed when he stood before the corpse of Adam Bishop, more people were bound to die. How many was down to him. He felt utterly helpless.

I’ve been experimenting with skin and acid in an effort to determine how long the killer worked on Ms. Porter. This is clearly not an exact science, since the victim’s skin was alive and I necessarily used a section of dead skin. Nonetheless I can make an educated guess that he let her soak for approximately one hour. During that time Porter was gagged with a cloth stuffed into her mouth — there’s soft bruising on her tongue and her throat Unfortunately I’ve been unable to retrieve any evidence of what the cloth was made of, so he must have cleaned out her mouth thoroughly. After the killer deemed his bleaching process sufficient he killed her by forcing as much as a pint of acid down her throat. She might have been able to scream briefly at this point, between the removal of the gag and the administering of the acid, but her larynx would have been dry and damaged. Nonetheless, perhaps a neighbour heard something. It’s not possible to say whether the killer dyed her hair and pubic hair before or after he killed her. Unlike skin, hair is basically dead cell matter and hence would react to the dye in a similar manner whether the victim was alive or not. There was a minuscule growth in the hair, creating tiny blond roots, but hair of course continues to grow after death so that tells us nothing either way.

Newson knew the answer to this issue. He was certain of it. The killer dyed Porter’s hair before her death and made sure she saw it too. Having got Farrah Porter where he wanted her, he would have been anxious for her to understand every aspect of her fate. He could not leave her staring at herself as he’d done with Angie Tatum. Farrah Porter was a very different woman from Tatum. She was in demand, dynamic, busy, the centre of a vast, adoring circle both personally and professionally. She could not be left to die alone, staring at her ruined self; she would have been discovered in hours and saved to tell her tale. No, Farrah Porter was one that the killer had to finish off before he left, but Newson was in no doubt that she died in the knowledge that she departed her life with ginger hair.

The second email was from the forensic laboratory at New Scotland Yard confirming that the pubic hair Newson had found on the soap had indeed come from the victim.

Newson’s mind spun with the possibilities of what this might mean. It was such an out-of-character thing for the killer to have done. Normally he left no trace at all. In fact, that was perhaps the most compelling feature of all the murders. Why change now? Why be so careful to leave no sign of your presence save the corpse, and then deliberately plant this very specific clue? And then there was the killer’s shattered wineglass, and the Rohypnol bottle. Newson sensed that the killer was developing, heading for a change.

He looked at the clock in the corner of his computer screen. It was late and perhaps he was no longer thinking straight. It was surely arrogance to imagine that the killer was talking to him? Yet he
was
a ginger and he
was
the only person making any connection between the murders. Perhaps the killer was giving him a pat on the back, encouraging him to keep going. But how would the killer know that he was making the connections? Were his emails being intercepted? Was he going mad?

Finally, at three a.m., Newson went to bed. Despite the fact that only hours before he had been having sex with Helen Smart it was, as always, Detective Sergeant Wilkie who occupied his thoughts before he went to sleep. Perhaps this was the reason he was so determined to keep faith with his memory of Christine Copperfield. He did not care whether she had bullied Helen as a girl or not. She was beautiful, she was a woman and she was not Natasha Wilkie. Newson felt that as long as there was a corner of his mind in which there was room for a woman other than his secretly adored colleague, he was not without hope.