The Red Room (12 page)

She smiled and drained her glass. She put
down her glass then stepped across to me. She put
one hand on my cheek and kissed me on the lips,
quite lightly. "If I become a lesbian," she
said, "you'll be the first person I make a pass
at. Night-night."

14

I'd been right about one thing--the moan had come
from the witness, or a moan had, at least. A
police officer called on Miss Mary Gould
and she said she wasn't sure, well, yes,
maybe she might have cried out when she saw the
poor girl, in fact, come to mention it, yes, she
was sure she had. She wasn't in trouble, was she?
So it had been wrong to assume that Lianne
had been killed by the canal.
"Which means," I said to Furth, "that there's no
reason to think it was Doll rather than anyone else.
Right?"
"Lady," he said, thrusting his face toward
mine so that I could see the yellow stains on his
teeth, the shaving rash on his neck, the 187
lines of exhaustion round his mouth, "this is all
wanking around, you know. She was murdered beside the
canal, by Doll."
"It would be worth looking into other murders,
though, wouldn't it?"
"We've already done it. Gil and Sandra spent
four hours this morning trawling through the unsolved
murder cases in London from the last six
months and no match turned up. So there goes
your theory. Sorry. Just the one body for you, not a
glamorous clutch of them."
"What were you looking for?" I asked.
"We are trained police officers, you know.
Similarities in methods of killing, victim,
geography. That kind of thing. There was nothing.
No drifter, no mutilated bodies, no
common location. Zero. Nothing."
"Can I look through the cases too?"
He rubbed his eyes and sighed. "You're meant
to be helping, not getting in the way. What's the
point?"
"I'm looking for different things," I answered
mildly.
He shrugged wearily. "If you want to waste
a day off, it's your business."
"Are there a lot, then?"
"Thirty odd, unless you want to extend your
search parameters to include the Bronx."
"How do I look at them?"
"We'll take someone away from catching
criminals and you can find a spare terminal."
"So when can I see them?"
He looked at his watch and muttered something under
his breath. Then: "Half an hour or so."
"Thanks."
"Can I ask you something?" he asked, in a more
earnest tone.
"What?"
"Are you always sure that you're right?"
I blinked at him, feeling the little knot of
panic in my stomach. "You've got me wrong,"
I said. "I'm never sure. That's the point."

Thirteen of the unsolved murders were of young men,
who had been killed late at night or in the
early hours of morning, outside nightclubs,
pubs, football matches, parties. I
scrolled through their cases: bludgeoned to death,
stabbed, smashed in the face with a broken bottle.
In twelve of the thirteen cases, they 189
had drunk a large amount of alcohol; the
thirteenth was a nineteen-year-old black man
who'd been found lying underneath his bicycle, the
lights still on. His skull was fractured. Hit
by a car. Possible accident. Possible race
attack.
Two prostitutes, one found dead in her little
room above a kebab joint, whose owners wondered
what the smell was; another who'd been battered
to death on some wasteland in Summertown. Not far
away from Lianne. I hesitated briefly
over her: Jade Brett, aged twenty-two,
HIV positive, no next of kin.
Probably not, but I made a note. There were
several homeless people, winos with wrecked livers
found dead by park benches, or in the shop doors
where they usually slept. There were seven children, and
although their murders were unsolved, in all except
one case the police were directing their inquiries
towards family members, acquaintances. They
weren't relevant anyway.
And of course, there was Philippa Burton,
thirty-two years old, middle class,
respectable, famous now for dying. Hers was the
only name I recognized. Clearly none of the
others had merited more than a couple of
paragraphs on page five of some newspaper.
I looked at the details of her case. As I
already knew, she'd been snatched from Hampstead
Heath, by the playground where her little daughter had
been playing, and discovered several hours later at
the far, wild end of the Heath, face down among
trees and bushes. She had been hit over the
head, several times, with a stone that had been found a
few feet away from her. There was a cut down her
left cheek, and faint bruises around her
wrists. She had not been molested. There was no
sign that it had been a sexual murder.
I rubbed my eyes and stared at the screen.
Then I picked up the phone and dialed Furth's
extension.
"I'd like to see Philippa Burton's
body. And her case file."
"What?"
It wasn't a "What did you say?" It was a
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"Can I?"
"Why?" he repeated heavily. I could hear
him breathing.
"Because I want to," I said. 191
"Are you messing us around, Doctor? Is this
something to do with your own work?"
"I realize that I--was
"You want to know what I think?"
"What?"
"You've got a problem. After Doll's
attack. Other people have been saying it."
"Then why was I asked in?"
"I've been wondering about that."
"The fact is that I'm here. Can I see the
body?"
"Just because it would be interesting? No way."
He put the phone down on me. I stared at
the computer screen for a few seconds longer, then
I picked up the internal phone again and asked
to be put through to Oban.
"Can I come and see you?"
"Sure. Now?"
"Please."
"All right."
Oban looked at me steadily over the
steeple of his fingers. His eyes seemed paler
than ever. It was several seconds before he
responded. "I don't quite understand, Kit, what
it is you're looking for."
I didn't reply--there wasn't much to say,
since I didn't know either, and the consciousness that I
was probably making an idiot of myself, to the
delight of the whole police station, was growing
stronger.
"You've talked about not making assumptions.
Now you're assuming that Lianne's killer
murdered someone else as well. Why? You think
there might be a connection with the Pippa Burton
case. Why? Help me out here, Kit." His
gentle and courteous tones were much harder
to respond to than Furth's bluster.
"I don't think I'm assuming that at all,"
I said. "I am just saying that if Lianne
wasn't murdered by the canal--and there's no
reason now to suppose that she was--then there are
things we should consider, that we might have missed."
Oban was being painfully patient with me. "For the
sake of argument, let's say that you're right.
Let's ignore the fact that Furth's team have
already looked through the files. Why Pippa
Burton? All I can see here is the lack of
connections." He started counting them off on his
fingers: "The victims are different, the 193
wounds are different, the areas are different, the
=inds of area are different. And it's not just that,
it's office politics. You've got a fund of
goodwill, guilt even. We felt bad about, you
know, the accident. You don't want to use all that
up."
Again, I didn't reply. I managed
to hold his gaze, and not drop my eyes.
"OK," he said with a sigh. "Take a
look."
"Thank you."
"It's not in our remit, of course, but it
shouldn't be a problem. I'll make sure Furth
sets it up--he won't be happy, though. I
know he's an idiot, but he's got instincts as
well. They're not all wrong." He looked at
me assessingly and didn't smile.
"Oh, well ..." I managed a laugh that
sounded more like a sob.
"Why is this case so important to you,
Kit?"
I gave a shrug. "I'm trying to be
thorough."
"I hear you've been seeing Will Pavic."
"How would you know that?"
"Dodgy character. You know he used to be something
big in the City?"
"I heard something about that."
"I don't know all the details, but he had
a breakdown, gave it all up. He's tried
to become the Mother Teresa of north London."
"That sounds like a good thing."
"It's more complicated than that. He's out of his
depth." Again, he looked at me searchingly.
"He's not very friendly to the police either."
"Apparently the feeling is mutual," I said
drily.
"We've just been trying to persuade him to obey
the same laws as the rest of us. Don't be
fooled by his charm."
Finally, something that made me smile. I thought
of Pavic the other night, with his bristling head and
scornful eyes. "There's no chance of that."
Oban was right. Furth was right. So why did I
not agree with them? I stared again at Philippa
Burton's body on the tray. A slim,
smooth body, with round hips, high breasts and
faint stretchmarks on the stomach, from the birth of
her daughter probably. The hands were 195
long and graceful, the manicured fingernails
painted with pearly-pink polish, matching her
toenails. Her body was untouched, except for the
marks around her delicate wrists. She lay there
like a beautiful statue, draped in the folds of a
sheet. But above her smooth torso, the left
side of her head was bashed in. Her cap of
yellow hair stuck to the dark blood.
I felt no impulse to touch her, or linger
over her body. She had a husband and a daughter
to mourn her, dozens of shocked friends, a whole
crowd of strangers who had fallen in love with the
thought of her. There had been articles in the
newspapers; politicians had queued up
to pay tribute to this model mother, so brutally mown
down by an evil monster, and we must not rest till
he's caught, etc. Thousands of people had piled
flowers and soft toys at the site where her body
had been discovered. Hundreds of people would go to her
funeral. Strangers would send flowers. But I
stayed, staring at her, because of a feeling, like an itch
I couldn't scratch. She'd been found face
downwards, like Lianne had been found face
downwards. Even I knew that wasn't enough
to connect them. Nevertheless, I had this sense of a
connection waiting to be made, if only I could
think about it in a different way.
I left the morgue and went for a walk on the
Heath. It wasn't raining, but it was a dull and
heavy day. The grass was wet and the trees
dripped steadily. There weren't many people around, just a
couple of joggers, and dog-owners throwing sticks
into the soggy undergrowth. I walked fast, past the
playground, past the ponds, up the hill where on
sunny days people fly kites. I wasn't really
going anywhere, just round in circles, my brain
churning uselessly.

END OF VOLUME I

THE RED ROOM

by Nicci French

Volume II of Three Volumes
Pages i-iii and 197-404

Published by: Warner Books. A Time
Warner Company. New York. Further
reproduction or distribution in other than a
specialized format is prohibited.

Produced in braille for the Library of Congress,
National Library Service for the Blind and
Physically Handicapped, by the American
Printing House for the Blind, 2003.

Copyright 2001 by
Nicci French

SPECIAL SYMBOL USED iii
IN THIS VOLUME

@ (4) Accent sign. Placed immediately before the
letter marked with an accent in print.

THE RED ROOM 197

15

I was already distrusted by one group of
detectives. Now I had to deal with another.
At least they were attached to the same station--or
maybe, given the way I was regarded, that
wasn't such a good thing after all. Oban was kind,
despite all his misgivings, and spoke to the head
of the Philippa Burton murder inquiry and said
nice things about me. So within a day I found myself
sitting opposite Detective Chief
Inspector Vic Renborn. He was a large
bald man, with a very small amount of ginger hair
above his ears and at the back of his head. With his
fiery red complexion, he was a scary sight. I
could imagine doctors taking bets on whether the
heart-attack or the stroke would come first. He
panted slightly as he spoke, as if the effort
of opening the door for me had been too much.
"Oban says you're interested in
Philippa," he said, as if he were referring
casually to a friend in the next room.
"Yes."
"Everybody's interested in Philippa."
"I know."
"I've got uniformed officers out directing the
traffic and controlling the crowds around the area where
she was found. We've had to install traffic
lights and create a temporary car park. People are
coming from all over the country and leaving notes and
flowers. I've just had a Canadian forensic
psychologist on the phone. He's in London
promoting a book and he was offering his services.
I've got an astronomer. Is that right?" He
looked inquiringly at a female officer who was
sitting in a corner with a notebook.
"Astrologer, sir."
"Astrologer. And a couple of psychics. One
woman dreamed last month that the murder was going
to happen. Someone else has said that they'll be able
to identify the murderer if we give them a
piece of bloodstained clothing. The press are
sniffing round. It's like a circus down there.
I'm a lucky man. Everybody wants to help
me. And I've got nothing. And we're fucking
moving office so I haven't even got a place
to hide. Are you here to help me?"
"I'm not specifically concerned with this case."
"I suppose I should be relieved. 199
Oban says you're involved in the case of a dead
drifter found by the canal."
"That's right," I said. "No psychics have come
forward about that one. Nobody cares."
"What do you want with Philippa Burton?"
"I'm not sure."
"It's not just that it's a higher-profile
case?"
"What do you mean?"
"I just want to inform you that I've already got a
psychological adviser. Seb Weller--do you
know him?"
"Yes."
"Good man?"
I paused for a moment. "I'm not here
to compete," I said tactfully.
"Our problem is that we've only got one
witness and she's three years old."
"Has she said anything?"
"Plenty. She likes strawberry ice-cream
and The Lion King and small stuffed
animals. She doesn't like avocados or loud
noises. We've got a child psychologist who
spends her time making mud pies with her, or
something. Woman called Westwood. Know her?"
"Yes, I know Dr. Westwood." My
heart banged uncomfortably. I didn't want
to tell Renborn that actually Bella Westwood
had taught me. We'd all revered her--a young,
striking, intelligent and sardonic woman who
sat on her desk swinging her slim legs when she
taught--and it would always be hard for me to think of her
as an equal. Once a teacher, always a teacher.
When I was seventy and she was eighty she would still be
the person who'd written in the margin of my
project: "Beware of confusing instinct and
hypothesis, Katherine." Now, I was muscling in
on her world, questioning her judgement, even.
"So what do you want?" asked Renborn.
"I'd like to talk to the husband. Maybe see the
child, if possible."
He frowned. "I don't see why not myself.
But you'd better talk to Dr. Westwood about the
child. I don't know whether she'll let you anywhere
near her. There are complicated rules about what people
are allowed to say to her. I don't understand them,
anyway."
"That's fine," I said. "Ask Dr.
Westwood, and see what she says."
"All right," said Renborn. 201
"We'll get back to you."
"I'll wait."
Renborn gave a grunt. "Well, then,"
he said, "if you'd step outside, I'll call
her. Now."
I had barely had enough time to take a drink of
water from the cooler outside when Renborn came
out of his office looking puzzled, and not especially
pleased. "Do you know Dr. Westwood?" he said.
"I've met her," I hedged.
"Hmm," he said. "I thought she was going
to tell you to sod off. That's what she's said
to everybody else. Got something on her, have you?"
This last was said with a wry expression close to a
smile, which was better than nothing.
"So that's all right, is it?"
"She'll take you this afternoon."
"Thanks very much," I said, mentally rearranging
my day.
"Look," he said, "I haven't got a
clue what you're up to, but if you turn up
anything, please tell me first. I'd be
disappointed if I learn about it on the front
page of the Daily Mail."
"I only want to help," I said, which, come
to think of it, was what I'd said to Pavic as
well. My new catchphrase. It had a
melancholy ring.
"There you go," Renborn said sadly. "You're
sounding like an astronomer again."
"Astrologer," said the female officer.
"I was testing you."