Past Mortem (28 page)

‘God, Katie Saunders must have had a terrible time,’ said Natasha.

‘Somebody obviously thought so, and to exact ‘justice’ they thought it necessary to create a harelip on the face of Angie Tatum and glue her eyes open so that she was forced to stare at it for every second that remained of her life.’

‘Do you think that Katie Saunders was involved?’

‘She’s certainly involved, but what part the victims’ victims played in the murders I can’t say. Did one of them do it? Did they all?’

‘Perhaps they clubbed together and hired a hitman.’

‘But how would they have
found
each other? Has somebody been spending their time trawling through the vast Friends Reunited archive?’

‘They have ten million members.

‘Well, anyway. Let’s — take a look at Farrah Porter. Where was she at school in 1989?’

‘1989?’

‘ ‘Love And Kisses’, remember. Dannii Minogue’s first single. The Ozzie nanny heard it playing in the Onslow Gardens flat.’

Newson was right about
Who’s Who
. A quick glance revealed that before going to Cambridge University Farrah Porter had boarded at one of the most expensive girls’ schools in the country. Armed with this information, it did not take long to find the entry on the school site of one Annabel Shannon. Annabel had been a housemate of Farrah Porter, a fact which appeared to have condemned her to a school life of abject misery.

You were so beautiful, weren’t you? You still are, of course, and don’t you milk it? I feel sick every time I put on the news and see you there preening yourself as if butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. I want to scream LIAR LIAR LIAR at the screen. Because I know you, Farrah. I know you for the evil, cruel, racist shit that you are. You made my life and the life of any other girl who was poor or foreign or stood out in any way a complete and utter misery, didn’t you? I was poor and foreign in so much as I was a scholarship girl from the Irish Republic, and I curse the day my parents ever thought it would be a blessing to send me anywhere I would find myself at the tender mercies of the likes of you. What chance did I have? A pale, white, freckly potato head from the bogs of Ireland? And you with your blond hair and Caribbean tan? You made my ginger hair and freckles the joke of the whole school, didn’t you? All the girls had to be in on it or they knew you would cut them adrift too. I’ll never forget as long as I live the misery of my accursed colouring. White skin and orange hair. You actually made ME hate it! As if it was my fault! I wanted to scrape off my freckles with sandpaper and shave my head! I tried tanning in the holidays, but of course all that happened was that I got burnt and blistered. Shower time was the worst; and getting ready for bed. When I had to reveal my body to your ridicule! You stole my nightie nearly every night I remember standing alone, naked and helpless at the centre of your pack, while you all taunted me. And of course it was my flame-red pubic hair that seemed to enrage and delight you most; wasn’t it, Farrah? How you loved your favourite joke of pretending to find strands of it on the soap and taunting me, throwing the soap at my head, pretending to be sick at the sight of what I was.

I hope you die, Farrah Porter. I hope you die a slow and horrible death. But in the meantime I’ll do anything I can to harm your career. I’ve tried on a number of occasions to interest journalists in stories of what you were like at school, but so far they’ve declined to risk the wrath of your lawyers. That’s why I’ve decided to put this letter on the Friends Reunited site. Perhaps someone of influence will read it. Perhaps some of the other girls who have achieved positions of authority may read it and remember. Remember in shame their failure to stop you. They did not speak out against your appalling bullying then, so perhaps they will now. Speak and denounce you for the evil devil that you are. Speak out and save the people of Fulham from electing the most poisonous viper that ever destroyed another person’s life.

‘Fuck,’ said Natasha, when they had both read Annabel Shannon’s letter. ‘So now we know what that pubic hair on the soap in Porter’s shower was about.’

‘Yes, we do. A little extra detail. Our killer seems fond of them.’

‘Reading that almost makes you feel the woman deserved it,’ Natasha added.

‘Nobody deserves to be bleached in acid, however awful they were at school.’ Newson took out his pen and added ‘Annabel Shannon (ginger’) to his ‘victim’s victim’ column opposite Farrah Porter’s name.

It was late, and Newson and Natasha decided that they had achieved all they could for the day. They would track down Warrant Officer Spencer’s and Neil Bradshaw’s records in the morning.

‘I suppose you’ll need to be rushing back,’ said Newson. ‘Please apologize to Lance for intruding on his Lance time.’

‘He’s dumped me,’ Natasha replied. ‘When you called me back in for the Copperfield murder he told me that I wasn’t to go. He said that I wasn’t obliged to.’

‘Which is true.’

‘And that if I loved him I’d tell you to shove it.’

‘Ah. And you didn’t.’

‘No, I came into work and he said I was a dysfunctional workaholic and that there was no point our being together if it was all going to be about me, so we should split up and I said fine.’

‘Since you didn’t tell him to shove it, does it mean that you don’t love him?’

‘Of course I love him. He’s my boyfriend.’

‘Not any more.’

‘No, that’s right.’

‘He’ll be back.’

‘He won’t. But if he does, of course I’ll have him back. I broke our agreement. We’d just decided that we’d both work harder at making what we have special and the first thing I do is spend the entire weekend at work.’

‘We’re on the track of a serial killer.’

‘That’s not Lance’s business. I’ve let him down.’

Natasha’s phone rang. It was Lance.

‘Of course I’ll try harder,’ she said into the phone. ‘I promise…OK, what do you want? Chinese? Indian? All right, I’ll pick up an Indian. See you. Love you.’ She put the phone back and turned to Newson. ‘Don’t look at me like that. I think we owe it to each other to work at our relationship.’

‘Is that what he said?’

‘Basically, yes.’ Natasha got up to leave and paused halfway. ‘Ed? That thing about your using my name as your password? That’s a nice thing, isn’t it? I mean, that’s how It was meant? Sort of like a compliment?’

‘Yes, you could put it like that. Although of course you weren’t supposed to know.’

‘Right. OK. Bye, then.’

After Natasha had left Newson sat and thought for a while. One aspect of the case disturbed and intrigued him more than any other. It was the astonishing development that he
knew the killer
. Once more he replayed the message that Christine had left on his mobile phone at a time that could have been only minutes before her death. ‘
Oh, hang on, that’s the doorbell…Ju-ust checking through my little spyhole
…
Well, well, well! This
is
a surprise…Wow, Ed, will I have something to tell
you.
You’ll have to come round now! Gotta go…Byeee
.’

Newson knew the man he was hunting.

Could he have saved her somehow? If he were a better detective might he not have guessed what was about to occur and shouted into the phone, ‘Do not open that door!!’ Except it had only been a message anyway. There was no one to shout to; by the time Newson had heard her message Christine was dead and long past saving. And how could he have known? It had only been Christine’s death and the manner of it that had revealed to him the truth. Without the coincidence of the killer’s choosing Helen’s note to provoke his latest murder Newson would still be entirely in the dark. Was that a positive thing? Was there some way in which Newson could use that thought to give some meaning to her death?

No. Try as he might, he could not. An old friend was dead, killed by the very man Newson had been hunting. Christine Copperfield, who never stopped talking, had finally stopped. Stopped scarcely a handful of words after those that Newson now knew off by heart and which he would never fully expunge from his mind.

Byeeeeee
.

TWENTY-SIX

T
he following morning Newson was at work by eight o’clock. He urgently wished to track down Annabel Shannon, and he needed to get his team on to the school records of the two remaining victims on his list:

Warrant Officer Spencer and Neil Bradshaw. He was uncomfortably aware of his fast-approaching meeting with the chief superintendent, which was scheduled for ten that morning, and he needed as much information as possible to prove to his commander that progress was being made. Above all, Newson did not want to be taken off the case. Of all the cases he had tackled in his ten years dealing with murders, this one, for him personally, most required a result.

It proved easy to trace Annabel Shannon. The school she and Farrah Porter had attended kept excellent records and was proud of its: old-girl network. They responded immediately to a police request for information, guessing correctly that it was to do with the Porter murder.

‘You don’t. think that one of
our girls
was involved, surely, Inspector?’ a very refined and extremely concerned secretary had enquired. ‘We’ve never had any sort of scandal here, not even drugs.’

Newson thought about saying that the real scandal was that they had allowed appalling bullying to happen to girls in their care without seeming to notice it. However, he confined himself to assuring the secretary that his enquiries were routine.

Annabel Shannon, or Annabel Ahern as she had been known since her marriage, was a farmer’s wife in County Kildare. Newson had hoped that Natasha would call Annabel Shannon. Natasha was an excellent conversationalist, she relished gossip and her sympathetic ear and chatty style had produced results from witnesses that Newson could never have hoped to open up. But Natasha was late, and, there being only junior women constables available to him, he decided to call Annabel Shannon himself.

A thickly accented voice answered the phone. ‘Annabel Ahern speaking.’

‘Ah. Mrs Ahern? I’m sorry to disturb you. My name is Newson and I am a detective inspector with the London Metropolitan Police.’

‘A British police officer?’

‘Yes, that’s right. Of course, I don’t have any jurisdiction at all with you, Mrs Ahern, but if you are amenable I’d like to ask you one or two questions.’

‘I don’t think my husband would approve of my talking to you, Inspector. If I’m honest, I’d have to say that he doesn’t approve of the British in general and their police force in particular. Nor do I.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that, Mrs Ahern. Of course I can speak to you via the Garda if you wish. We have excellent, mutually co-operative relations with the Irish Police, and they would without doubt put my questions to you if you would prefer it that way.’

‘You’re calling about Farrah Porter, aren’t you?’

‘Yes. Yes, I am. How astute of you, Mrs Ahern.’

‘Hardly. I’ve had a number of responses from old girls to the letter I left on the Friends Reunited site. Not on the whole very enthusiastic responses, sad to say. I don’t think it’s the done thing to denigrate one’s old school after one has slunk away, so to speak Did one of them call you?’

‘No, no. I looked you up on the site myself.’

‘That was clever of you.’

‘Oh, just a hunch.’

‘It was a very good hunch, Inspector. I’ve been expecting your call, of course.’

‘You have?’

‘Well, after the papers got hold of the details of her death I guessed it wouldn’t be too long before somebody made a link with what I’d written about what she did to me.’

‘Really? D’you think it’s that obvious, Mrs Ahern?’

‘Well, clearly you do, Inspector, or we would not be having this conversation.’

Newson wished that it was Natasha who was having the conversation. She would have made friends with this woman by now, whereas the interview he was conducting was getting colder by the minute.

‘You suffered greatly at Ms Porter’s hands.’

‘Yes, I did. And of course I killed her.’

‘I beg your pardon, Mrs Ahern?’

‘I said that I killed her.’

‘Would you elaborate on that?’

‘There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I killed her. I’ve always believed strongly in the power of prayer, you see. It was that which sustained me through the terrible unhappiness I suffered at that dreadful school and it has sustained me ever since in dealing with the memories. Not a single day has passed in these last fifteen years or so when I have not prayed for Farrah Porter’s death, not one single day. That’s an awful lot of prayers, Inspector. You’d think that it might eventually bear fruit, wouldn’t you?’

‘Well, yes, possibly.’

‘And in each prayer I took the liberty of asking the good Lord that he might see fit to arrange for her to die in a manner that befitted her sins. I rather cheekily suggested that some form of scourging might be in order. The papers seemed to be hinting that acid was involved. You have to hand it to the Lord, don’t you? He certainly has a way with these things.’

‘Um, yes. Mrs Ahern, d’you think you could possibly tell me what you were doing on the eighteenth of June?’

‘That being the day when Farrah Porter went to hell?’

‘Yes.’

‘I know exactly what I was doing. My husband and I were attending a Noraid benefit in Boston to buy bullets for British soldiers.’

For a moment Newson was confused, knowing that Mrs Ahern was a staunch Irish Nationalist. Then he realized that these bullets were not intended to be offered as gifts. ‘Ri-ght…’

‘Your prime minister and those Judases in Dublin may think that the war ended with the Good Friday Agreement. I can assure you, Inspector, that it didn’t.’

‘Fine, good, well, thank you for your time, Mrs Ahern.’

‘Not at all. Good day to you, Inspector, and God bless.’

Newson was grateful to put the phone down. As he did so he saw Natasha hanging her hat on the stand in the corner. It was another glorious sunny day outside and Natasha was always sensible about her skin. Her skirt lifted slightly as she raised her arm, and he admired the backs of her knees.

‘Annabel Shannon, or Ahern as she is now, has a very good alibi. She was with a bunch of Boston Republicans plotting the defeat of the British Army and the unification of Ireland.’

Natasha turned to face him from where she stood. Her face bore a slightly bewildered but also defiant expression. One of her eyes was swollen black and bruised. ‘I was mugged,’ she said before Newson had time to comment. ‘Last night, getting out of the tube station. Somebody tried to grab my bag and they whacked me.

‘Shit, Natasha, that’s terrible! Are you OK? I mean, should you be in work?’

‘I’m fine. It’s a black eye. So what? Just wish I’d managed to grab the bastard, that’s all.’

‘Yes, yes, of course. Can I make you a cup of tea?’

‘Lovely, thanks. Yeah, I could do with one.’

Newson got up and put the kettle on. ‘Actually you were in your car last night, weren’t you?’ he said gently. ‘You drove home.’

There was a pause before Natasha replied. ‘Did I say tube? I meant I got whacked as I got out of my car.’

‘Right. Of course.’

Natasha went to her desk and stared intently at the papers in front of her. She did not look up.

‘So,’ she said with a considerable pretence at good cheer, ‘let’s get on with it, shall we?’

‘Natasha — ’ Newson said.

‘I was mugged, Ed. Now can we please get on with our work.’

There was nothing more to be said and so they turned their attention to the school details of Neil Bradshaw, which had just been emailed to both their computers from colleagues working in the next-door office.

‘Born in 1960, started nursery school at four,’ said Newson, viewing the education record set out before him, which stretched all the way through to Bradshaw’s postgraduate studies as an archivist. ‘However. I think that what we need to be looking at is what his classmates thought of him around ‘72 to ‘74.’

‘Glam rock?’ Natasha enquired.

‘Yes. That’s what old Farmer ‘I pay my tax’ Goddard said he heard wafting across the fields while Bradshaw was having his balls crushed in a vice. Great period: T. Rex, Slade, Mud, Sweet. Real speaker-blasting boulders of rock. Much underestimated because it never really caught on in the States. That’s the problem with this country, we don’t really take anything we produce seriously unless the Americans have sanctioned it.’

‘Shall you log on or do you want me to?’ Natasha asked.

‘I’ll do it,’ Newson replied with a defensive smile.

Neil Bradshaw had attended a mixed grammar school in Leamington Spa, and once more a brief trawl through the various innocuous ‘remember me’ entries which included Bradshaw’s own, revealed another anguished soul who had elected to use the Friends Reunited site to point an accusatory finger back across the years. The entry, which had been made a year before, was entitled ‘An open letter to Neil Bradshaw’.

I’ve often thought about going to the police and telling them about what happened to me. Even now, over thirty years later, I still dream of justice. But I suppose it would be no good. We were only twelve and thirteen, weren’t we? It’s all long gone now, isn’t it? Except not for me. For me it’s still as if it happened yesterday. Which is why I’m writing this now and putting it up on this notice board. Just to tell the other kids in our year that if they were thinking of contacting you they should think twice, because you are a cruel sexual predator and I was your principal victim. It started with bullying didn’t it? You asked me out and when I refused you started to bully me. Your favourite trick was to steal my packed lunch from my bag and put it high up on the skylight ledge so that if I wanted to get it down I’d have to put a chair on to a desk and climb up on top of them. Then you’d stand underneath, looking up my skirt to see my knickers. And you’d tell the other boys what colour they were and make up stories about how they were dirty.

The details clearly recalled those of Neil Bradshaw’s murder. Whoever had starved Bradshaw to death had forced him to die reaching up for food while wearing a schoolgirl’s skirt and staring into a video transmission of the knickers he had been forced to wear beneath it.

‘Fuck,’ said Natasha, ‘this gets sicker every day, doesn’t it?’ She did not turn towards Newson as she said this. She was clearly all too conscious of the bruise on her face.

Then you got braver, and you started to wait for me on my way home. I used to have to walk along the canal towpath with the hedges by the side and that’s where you’d lie in wait. Every day you grabbed me and pushed me into those hedges, groping me and putting your hands into my bra and knickers, squeezing me and poking me. Sometimes you managed to get your fingers inside me. I expect that any classmates reading. this will wonder why I didn’t do something about it. I’ve asked myself the same question for three decades. Why didn’t I tell my mum? A teacher? The police? I suppose there were the threats, that was certainly part of it. You said that you’d poison my cat, didn’t you, and I believed you, I really really did. And then there was your power. You were such a teacher’s pet, you were on every school committee and always got elected form captain. You really knew how to play everybody off against each other and always end up smelling of roses. Meanwhile, you were sexually abusing me. It was a short step, wasn’t it, from staring at my knickers to bruising my body, particularly when you found out that you could get away with it, and then finally you raped me. We were both thirteen and you raped me, and that was when it stopped because I stopped going to school. I became an adolescent anorexic and was in and out of hospital for the next five years. The breasts that you so loved to squeeze as you forced me down amongst the twigs and brambles all but disappeared. As did I. Mentally and physically. I’m better now, but still not entirely well. I’ve never been able to get on with my life properly and I’m still single. Pathetic, isn’t it?

My closest relationship is still with you, Neil Bradshaw, and my hatred is undimmed. So if any of you old boys and girls were thinking of getting in contact with your old popular form captain, please try to remember Pamela White, will you, the quiet girl in the corner who left halfway through the third year. Because that bastard ruined my life.

When they had finished reading Newson printed off a copy and added Pamela White’s name opposite that of Neil Bradshaw on his list of victims’ victims. Natasha took the hard copy of White’s essay from the printer tray and read through it once more.

‘The more I learn about the people who got killed the more I’m on the killer’s side.’

‘You can’t think that way, Natasha. It isn’t helpful.’

‘But Bradshaw deserved what he got in that seed shed!’

‘You think so?’

‘Yes! Particularly because he was still at it thirty years later. Remember what I found out about that teenager who worked in the bookshop, the one who was sacked when she refused his advances?’

‘We don’t have the death penalty in this country, not even after a fair trial, so let’s not get misty-eyed about the deranged antics of a lunatic vigilante.’