The Red Room (10 page)

"Was she on any drugs?" I asked, as
I sat in the passenger seat of Will Pavic's
rusting Fiat and we eased through the traffic.
"More questions, eh?"
"I was curious."
"Tell me where to turn off."
"Not yet. Why are you so angry?"
"Seems a reasonable response to me."
"To what?"
"Everything. All this crap." And the gesture he
made, with his hands off the steering-wheel, took in
everything: the traffic, the conversation, me beside him when
he wanted to be alone, Lianne's death, life
in general.
We drove the rest of the way in silence, apart
from the instructions I gave him. He pulled up
right outside the front door, and I climbed out.
"Kit. Hey, Kit--Kit!"
My heart sank.
"Hi, Julie."
"Brilliant timing. I've forgotten my
key." She bent down and smiled in at Pavic
through the open door.
"This is Will Pavic," I said, in a muttered
grunt. "Julie Wiseman."
She leaned right into the car, so that her skirt
rode up her thighs and her breasts swelled under the
flimsy shirt. "Hi, Will Pavic. Are you coming
in?"
"He just gave me a lift. He's on his
way to a meeting."
Julie ignored me. "Tea? Coffee?"
"No, thank you." His voice was remarkably
courteous. So it was just me, then.
"Thanks for the lift," I called, and turned
my back on them. I left the door open so that
Julie could let herself in, and went upstairs,
although in a few minutes I'd have to turn round and
head back to the clinic and my car. Time for a cold
drink, at least. I let the tap run, dabbling
my fingers under the flow. I heard Julie's
feet clattering up the stairs.
"Wow! He's gorgeous."
"You reckon?"
"Oh, definitely my type. Grim,
weathered, strong, silent. I asked him for
dinner."
I spun round. "You what?" 153
"Invited him for dinner." She smiled
triumphantly. I spluttered something incoherent
and she grinned and kicked off her sandals. "No
good hanging around waiting. I'm not like you, Kit.
Did you know you can divide people into herbivores and
carnivores?"
"I--was
"You're a herbivore. I'm a carnivore.
And he's a carnivore."
"Is he coming?" I managed to say.
"Tomorrow. Eight o'clock. He couldn't think of an
excuse in time."
"I'm going out."
"You never go out," she said dismissively.
"Anyway, you can't. I said we were having a few
friends round for a meal, and why didn't he join us
if he was free. So who are you going to invite?"
"Julie ..."
"And what shall I cook?"
"Listen ..."
"And, most importantly, what shall I wear?
Can I borrow your red dress?"

12

After I'd returned with my car, I went into the
living room and sat down with some papers while
Julie, well pleased with herself, took a shower.
She took so many showers, singing unseasonal
Christmas carols loudly and tunelessly. Perhaps
she'd picked up all these clean habits from
traveling abroad. I remembered the jokes that
American and Australian colleagues had
made about the English: untidy, dusty houses,
bad teeth, unclean. If you want to hide
something in an Englishman's bathroom, what's the
best place? Under the soap. I'd been told that
late at night at a conference in Sydney.
I reread the scene-of-crime report. I
looked at the photographs. I closed my
eyes and tried to picture what it had been like
down there by the canal. Something was irritating me.
It almost drove me mad, this feeling of something beyond
my grasp that I was reaching for. Yet there was
excitement as well. Something was coming. I had a
photocopied map that showed the sites. I stared
at it helplessly. What was there to worry about?
Julie came into the room, glowing, almost steaming
from her shower. She was wearing her cut-off 155
jeans, a very small T-shirt that didn't reach
her belly-button and no bra. There would have been
no room for a bra. She was carrying a bottle of
white wine and two glasses. Without a word, she
poured it and handed me a glass. She went to the
kitchen again and returned with a small Chinese bowl
full of olives. She put it on the coffee
table and sat on the sofa with her knees up against
her chest and took a sip. I tasted mine. It was
wonderfully cold. I looked at Julie.
She was very attractive, tanned, so relaxed in
her own body. I thought of Oban and smiled.
There was something of the couple about us now, and I
suppose he thought Julie was rather a catch for me.
I could easily see the attraction of being gay.
There was so much bother with men. Their basic
foreignness, the different stuff in the bathroom,
everything. I took another sip. Unfortunately
there was nothing I could do about it. It was probably
to do with my upbringing or the pressures of
society, but I was stuck with heterosexuality.
"Try an olive," Julie said. "I was
walking through Soho this afternoon. It's great, and I
bought these olives stuffed with anchovies and
chilies. It's like being kicked in the face by a
horse. In a good way, I mean."
I chewed one and indeed it did suddenly feel
as if a match had been struck on my tongue but
I took another gulp of wine and the cool dousing
of the hot felt wonderful. "Nice," I said.
"I was walking around and doing some thinking. I've
got to find three things. A job, a place
to live and a man. That's why I grabbed that guy
outside. Is he married?"
"I don't know."
"Or gay?"
"I've never met him before."
"If he's not gay and he looks good and he can
string a couple of words together and he's available,
then you've got to act instantly."
"It's my experience that when people are available
it's often for a good reason."
"You mean he might have a disease?"
I only laughed.
"But look, Kit, I meant what I said.
I feel bad about squatting like this. I want
to say that I'm actively looking for a place."
"That's all right."
"I'm cramping your style, I know."
"Do I have a style at the moment?" 157
I asked. "No, I know I get a bit
ratty, but if I was on my own, I'd
probably be crawling up the walls."
"I thought you'd be out more. Looking for clues."
I leaned over, took the bottle and topped
up my glass and Julie's. "I'm mainly
looking at files, I'm afraid."
Julie put two olives into her mouth then
started coughing and gulped at her wine. She went very
red in the face. "Have you got a suspect?" she
managed to gasp.
"That's not what I'm doing. I'm going through
everything I can with a different eye, to see if
anything occurs to me about the sort of person they
should be looking for. I'm just supposed to look at
it lucidly, with no pre-judgements--a bit like
those lateral-thinking riddles. You know, Antony
and Cleopatra are lying side by side, dead.
Beside them is a puddle of water and some broken
glass. How did they die?"
"Goldfish," said Julie instantly. "But
what about the man who gets into a lift on the
ground floor and always presses the tenth floor,
then walks the last five floors, whereas on his
way down he gets into the lift at fifteen and
goes all the way to the ground, no stopping?"
"Dwarf."
"So, do you think they'll find the murderer?"
"That depends. If he stops now, then no,
I don't think they will."
"That's a bit negative."
"Do you know how many murders are committed in a
year?"
"What? In the whole world?"
I laughed. "No. In England and Wales."
"I haven't a clue. Five thousand?"
"A hundred and fifty, two hundred, something
like that. And more than half of those, maybe
two-thirds, are solved straight away. Most
people are killed by people they know, husbands, family
members. There'll be a fight outside a club,
some football fans, a burglar killing an
old lady, caught by her as he's leaving. For the
rest, there's the golden first forty-eight hours in which
most people who are going to be caught are caught.
That's when the killer is still going to be covered in
blood, behaving strangely, disposing of weapons
and clothes, covering his tracks. It's only days
and days later when they've run out of ideas that they
even think of asking someone like me to get 159
involved. The murder weapon has been got rid
of and not found. The blood has been washed away.
If a witness had seen anything, they would almost
certainly have come forward by now. You know when you've
lost your keys and you get to that terrible stage where
you're looking in the places you've already looked
in? That's the stage they've reached now."
"Sounds hopeless."
I bit another olive. Lovely. "The
police aren't too bothered. No relatives
creating a fuss. No press calling for a
result. But there's a bright side. If the
situation is hopeless, then at least it's
difficult to make things worse."
"Is that why you were talking to that guy, Will?"
"Yes. Lianne--well, there are a lot of
people like her in this area."
"You mean prostitutes and runaways."
"I mean young women drifting around, not in stable
relationships, earning casual money. And I think
Will Pavic knows as much about that world as anybody."
"What is he? A pimp?"
"He runs a hostel that helps some of these
runaways." I smiled at Julie's
disappointed expression. "Sorry. He's not a
lawyer or a doctor or a television
producer. I've already gathered from the expressions
on the police's faces every time his name comes up that
they don't think much of him. Anyway, as you may
have heard, he wasn't very keen on communicating with
me, so maybe your plot to get him into your
clutches could be useful. While he's falling in
love with you, he might start talking to me. Or do
you mind me being here?"
"For Chrissake, you've got to be here.
You've got to help."
Julie was going out for the evening but I finished the
bottle of wine and read through files I'd already
read. I looked at the map again and then I gave
a sort of grunt.
"That's it," I said to nobody. It wasn't a
great eureka moment. I didn't run around the
room shouting. But I felt puzzled and that was
something.

When I appeared in Detective Inspector
Furth's office the following morning, he looked
as if I had arrived to repossess his stereo.
"Yes?" he said.
"I've had a thought." 161
"Good," he said briskly. "You didn't have
to come in, though. You could always just give a ring. It
saves us all trouble."
"We don't have to be enemies, you know," I
said.
"What do you mean?" he asked, in a tone of
innocence.
"Doesn't matter. Do you want my idea?"
"I'm agog."
"You may want to look at the map," I said.
"I've got my own map."
"Do you want to hear what I've got to say?"
"Please tell me your thought, I'm on
tenterhooks."
I sat down opposite Furth's desk. The
chair was irritatingly low, which made me feel as
if I was looking up at the chairman of the board.
"Why the canal?" I asked.
"Because it's secluded."
"Yes, but look at the map." I laid out
my photocopy on his desk. "There are very
secluded parts of the canal, but not where the body was
found. Look. Where Lianne was found is right by the
Cobbett Estate."
"That's secluded enough," Furth said
breezily. "I know the site backwards. There
are plenty of bushes. It's poorly lit,
deserted at night. Also, the murderer could
escape along the canal in either direction or
cut off into the streets."
"That's what occurred to me when I looked at
the map. It's a place that can be driven up to.
Look, it's almost next to the estate car park."
"So?"
"Another thing puzzled me. Lianne had her
throat cut and her carotid artery severed. Her
clothes were soaked in blood. I looked at the
scene-of-crime report for the amount of blood
found on the scene. Nothing."
Furth gave a shrug.
"Well?"
"Isn't that strange?"
"Off the top of my head, not really. If she
was pulled backwards, the blood might just go on
her and the murderer. The other spots wouldn't be
noticed. Anyway, the scene-of-crime guys
probably didn't mention it. What would have been
the point?"
"This is the point. What if Lianne
wasn't killed on the canal? What 163
if she was brought there, already dead, and dumped? The
site was chosen because it could be driven up to, and was
dark and quiet, as you say."
"Is that it?" said Furth briskly.
"Yes."
He got up, went to a filing cabinet and
opened a drawer. He flipped through it, pulled out
a gray file, walked across and tossed it onto
the desk. I picked it up and looked at it.
"Recognize it?"
"Yes."
"Darryl Pearce. He found Lianne's
body, remember? Remember how he found it?
He heard a drawn-out groan or cry. He
hung around a bit. Cowardly bastard. Finally
made up his mind, rummaged in the undergrowth and
found her. What's your argument? Did your
murderer bring a half-dead person in his car? Do
you know how long it takes someone to die after a wound
like that?"
"I thought of that as well," I said.
"Then what the fuck are you doing here?"
"One of the things I've tried to remember is not
to give too much importance to any single piece
of evidence. Because it might be wrong. Remember
the Yorkshire Ripper hunt? They looked in the
wrong place for about a year because they believed a
fake tape."
"You think that runt Darryl Pearce has the
brains to fake anything?"
"I was wondering about that. I tried to work out if
he might have made a mistake or fabricated
the story to cover up for something, but I couldn't think
of anything."
"So?"
"Mary Gould."
"Remind me."
"The woman who found the body."
Furth looked dismissive. "She was the one who
was too scared to report it and phoned up the next
day. It was no big deal. She didn't have
anything important to contribute."
"She saw the body, but in her statement she
didn't say anything about Lianne still being
alive. What do you make of that?"
"She might have forgotten. Or not noticed."
"You don't not notice someone bleeding to death from
an artery."
"She could have arrived on the scene just after
Lianne had died." 165
I looked at Furth. His expression was a
little less contemptuous. He looked as if he was
starting to become interested, despite himself. "So,"
I said, "in that scenario, you imagine Darryl
Pearce hearing a groan. According to his account he
was on the towpath, just by the canal. Then while he
is deciding what to do, Lianne dies and Mary
Gould arrives from the other side, from the direction
of the housing estate, she said. She is horrified
and runs off before Darryl comes round and finds the
now-dead body. That's quite a lot to happen in
ninety seconds."
"You got a better suggestion?"
"I've got an alternative. Mary Gould
finds the body, cries out, runs off. Darryl
Pearce hears that cry and assumes it came from
Lianne. That's all I'm saying. Darryl
Pearce's statement is the only suggestion we have
that Lianne was ever alive when she was lying by the
canal."
Furth leaned back. "Fuck," he said
reflectively.
"Do you see what I mean?"
"I'm going to have to think about this one."
"There's one more thing."
"What?" asked Furth, looking past me
into space.
"If we're agreed that the actual killing
isn't tied to the canal--was
"Which we're not," Furth interrupted.
his-comthen the significance is not the place but the
means of killing. Which may mean that if this is a
random killer on the look-out for a vulnerable
victim, then there may be other killings that have been
overlooked. So it would be worth checking with other
cases. What do you think?"
"I'll consider it," said Furth.
"Do you want me to talk to Oban about this?"
"I'll do it."
"Good," I said brightly. And, having spoiled
Furth's morning, I left, feeling oddly
cheerful.