Transgressions (36 page)

The tired one gave her a sympathetic nod back. Girls who don’t know what to do with boys’ tools. Their world must be full of them. “And you think that’s what he was doing, when you saw him outside?”

“I don’t know. But he did seem to have something in his hand. Although . . .” She hesitated.

“Yes?”

“Although it looked heavier than a piece of wire or pipe. It looked more like . . . well, more like a hammer,” she said, and this time she allowed herself to sound frightened.

The word carried its own impact. They didn’t even bother to look at each other to register it, but, then, unlike all the TV cop partnerships she’d ever seen, they didn’t seem to need to. What would Jake make of their technique? she thought.

“Let’s move on to the tape,” said the tough one very gently. The tired one was wide-awake.

She took them out to the hall and played it to them. She hadn’t heard his voice since last night. She discovered she didn’t need to fake the shiver.

“Hello, I723LPD. Women drivers. They’re all the same. Don’t have a clue about whose right of way it is. Well, I just want you to know that if you
ever
cut me up again, I’ll do the same back to you. Or is that what you were after? Snowing cats and dogs, wouldn’t you say? Sleep well.”

They stopped it, then played it back again. And again. They seemed to like hearing the sound of his voice, as if it were something they had been waiting for.

“When did you say you got this message?”

“Well, I didn’t hear it until this morning. But it must have come through last night.”

“You were out?”

“Yes, but only briefly. I had finished some work that I urgently needed to get somewhere, so I took the letter to the nearest main post office to catch the early collection. It was in the middle of that blizzard so, of course, I went in the car.”

“And that’s your license number on the tape?”

“Yes, it is.”

“But you don’t remember any incident?”

“No. Nothing at all.” She paused. “But maybe when he heard it was a machine, he needed to be careful what he said.” She gave an apologetic little shrug, as if she had just said something particularly stupid. They didn’t acknowledge it one way or the other.

“Why didn’t you call us this morning, when you first heard this?”

She sighed. “Well, I didn’t know what you’d say. I mean, in one way it doesn’t actually sound that threatening. Not unless you put it with all the other stuff. I dunno . . .” She hesitated. “I suppose there must be dozens of women who live alone and can’t sleep properly at night now for imagining things. I mean, you haven’t caught him yet, have you?”

They didn’t answer. “We’d like to take the tape away, if that’s all right with you.”

She nodded, snapping it out of the machine and handing it to them. There was a small silence. They can’t leave it there, she thought. My God, what would it be like if I really was telling the truth?

“There is something else,” she said quietly.

“What?”

“He rang me again.”

“When?”

“Just before I called you this afternoon. It must have been around three, four o’clock. I don’t remember the exact time. But I was here, so I didn’t get a chance to put it onto the machine.”

“And what did he say?”

She swallowed, the distress now very clear on her face. “Er . . . he said three words, that’s all. Just three words. ‘See you soon.’ ” She paused. “I think he was using a pay phone.”

They exchanged a glance and she was grateful she had been so careful. Even if they could track down the number, a pay phone on Holloway Road would tell them nothing. Someone careful enough not to use his own phone would probably also be careful enough to wear gloves. Though it might still be worth checking. Thank God for the cold. It wasn’t something she would have thought about otherwise.

“Can you get him?” she said.

The tired one frowned, as if he hadn’t quite heard the question. He gave a sigh. “Tell me, Elizabeth, are you going away for Christmas?”

So they were on a first-name basis now. Why not? They were obviously going to get even more intimate. “No. No. I . . . I’ve got nowhere to go. My parents are both dead, and I’ve got this work that has to be finished, so I was going to stay and do that. I mean, that’s why I called you. I suddenly realized what it was going to be like here over the next few days. Most of the street is going away. . . .” She trailed off. There was a pause. “I’ve got friends, though. If you thought I should go to them I could do that.”

At last they exchanged a glance. This time they seemed to be deciding which one should finish the race. The tough one got the job. But, then, don’t they always?

“Well, yes, you could do that. Though I have to say that given what you’ve told us there’d be no guarantee that something might not happen when you got back.”

“What else can I do?” And her voice sounded decidedly shaky.

He left a beat of a pause. Maybe at the really tense moments everything seems like TV drama anyway. “You could stay here and let us protect you.” And he kept on looking at her as the impact of what he had said sank in.

She counted to twenty. When that didn’t feel long enough she counted on to sixty. Then she said quietly, “If I do that, can you promise me you’ll get to him before he gets to me?”

“You have our word.” He smiled. “That’s our job.”

T
wenty minutes later she walked with them to the front gate. It was night again and the streetlights were throwing a dirty sodium glare on the ruined snow. In the garbage the black bag had potato chip bags and someone’s discarded hamburger wrapper littering the top. The package was gone. She smiled to herself.

Inside the house the telephone was ringing. The text had not included an RSVP. If he had something to say, did she want to hear it? Maybe he needed more encouragement. She picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

The man on the other end of the line was kind but efficient. But, then, it was after five on Christmas Eve and no one likes to be left with a dead animal on their hands over the holidays.

“I’m sorry to break it to you like this. I tried to get you earlier, but your phone was engaged.”

“But I thought you said there was no—”

“I said I didn’t
think
there was any internal damage. But it’s always very hard to tell. As soon as we realized it was a pulmonary edema we drained her chest and gave her steroids for the shock, but cats can react very badly to shock. In the end it was just too much for her, and her heart stopped beating. I’m sorry.”

“I see.” Although she didn’t. Didn’t see and didn’t feel. The silence grew. You have to say something to him, she thought. “Was she in pain?”

“No. There would have been no pain. I’m sure of that. She died very peacefully.”

He made her sound like a Victorian grandmother, sliding away amid bed silks and loving relatives. And I didn’t even say good-bye, she thought.

Millie, the bird killer, the warm weight at the end of the bed, the deep-throated purr, the garden adventurer who could no longer go out for fear of the blackness in the shadows. You should have fought back, girl, I told you. You should have laid your own traps, like I’ve laid mine.

On the other end of the line his sympathy was stretched by the hands of the clock.

“Listen, I’m sorry but I have to ask. What would you like us to do with the body? We could dispose of it here, or if you want we could keep it till after the holidays. I’m just about to close up the surgery now.”

Now? She couldn’t possibly go now. The locks were off the doors and there were still things she had to do. Millie would forgive her. “Er, thank you. I’ll pick her up in a few days.”

“The twenty-eighth. We open again for a morning surgery. And listen, if you really think that she was hurt by someone, then you ought to report him. Chances are if he’s done this once he will do it again.”

I
n the kitchen, she picked up Millie’s bowl, washed it, then filled it anew with cat pellets. Downstairs, from the box where she kept the gardening implements, she extracted a tin of weed killer. She poured a hefty slug of it into the bowl. The dry food would absorb it quickly, pumping up the little pellets till they were juicy and moist. She laid the bowl carefully next to the water on Millie’s tray. Every good house offers its visitors refreshments at Christmas.

Out through the cat flap she threw a handful of undoctored pellets onto the frozen snow. They scattered like brown dice over a white carpet. Luck be a lady tonight.

From the cellar she brought the stepladder and carefully unnailed the sheet from the window, then switched on the patio lights. The frozen snow glowed and sparkled under its beam. She lifted up the lock and opened the doors onto the garden.

A wall of freezing air hit her, so cold it hurt to breathe. She thought how long it had been since the summer and the music of possibilities. She exchanged Dvo(breve)rák for a Bob Seger compilation bought in that first autumn raid on the New York record store. Weird things, compilations—mixing up emotional memories into a new order, disconcerting to listen to until you had learned their alternative rhythm. But she knew exactly what she was looking for. She had always had time for Bob Seger, the kind of old rock ’n’ roller who was not afraid to show how he felt . . . or sing what he wanted. His voice cruised out into the snowy darkness, making whoopee with a badlands love song by Frankie Miller. . . .

 

Well I’m looking for a woman
About five foot six
Who ain’t into glamour
She’s just into kicks
Just a sweet fashion lady
Stepping dynamite
Who’s gonna take me for granted
In the heat of the night

She stood in the doorway and sang along with the words, her breath sending smoke signals out into the night. Not exactly Donne or Yeats. But it said what had to be said.

 

Come on baby
Don’t run away
Look here in my face
Be it night or day
I ain’t got no money
But I sure got a whole lotta love

Across the gardens a light shone like the Christmas star from one particular first-floor window. Was it her imagination or was that his silhouette against the frame?

twenty-five

T
hey came just before eight o’clock, and given that it was Christmas Eve and they would have had better things to do with their time, they were impressively enthusiastic. But, then, to be on duty the night you caught the Holloway Hammer would be the stuff that reputations were made of.

She had been waiting for them, sitting by the front window in the glow of the tree lights, watching the street, the inner kitchen door firmly locked from the inside, the key in her pocket. She saw them drive past, then go a little farther so their unmarked car wouldn’t stand out on the street. As they got out they checked to see that no one was watching. This time she scored a set rather than a pair: the weary one of the two with a woman, both dressed casually, she in jeans and a down jacket, he in suit trousers with a sweater and an anorak. A man and a woman. Would they sleep in separate dorms? Would they sleep at all?

As they crossed the road the woman slipped slightly on the ice and he put out a hand to support her as she righted herself. She was younger than he was, not unattractive, though a little solidly built. Were they lovers? Friends? Compatriots in crime? Or was it like the movies, professional coolness masking the thinly veiled dynamic of sexual politics, women muscling in on what men saw as their territory? Presumably in a situation like this there had to be a woman—no doubt there was some regulation about it—in case they didn’t get to her in time and some one was needed to mop up the distress.

Not this time. Not this night. Tonight she could smell victory. Promotions for all.

As social challenges go, having two police officers staying the night on Christmas Eve was tougher than most. Luckily, all three of them seemed cut from similar cloth: quiet, more interested in work than chatter. There was one thing they did want to talk about though: him. She rationed her answers, feeling almost jealous of their interest. Mistaking her reticence for fear they didn’t push it, but concentrated instead on the house, checking all the windows and the locks, anticipating his movements, planning his entry. They had a special place in their hearts for the kitchen. Aware of the windows on the other side of the gardens, they were careful, turning the light off before they went in so that he couldn’t see them. They checked the lock and the cat flap, then the man—Detective Inspector McCormick but she could call him David—moved upstairs, while the woman, Veronica (she had forgotten her second name as soon as she was told it), stayed behind to help her make the tea. The talk was so small it hardly registered, though she did get around to asking about the cat. She told her that Millie was a wanderer; sometimes you saw her, sometimes you didn’t. So, did that explain the pellets scattered in the garden?

“An incentive to find her way home. Sometimes she needs it.”

But it had been more of a cat lover’s question than a professional inquiry and the chat petered out quickly afterward.