Bye Bye Baby (6 page)

‘So the colour, that brighter blue, is deliberately chosen too,’ she finished.

He nodded. ‘Yes. I think we should consider painting or tattooing the body as an ancient warrior practice — in fact, it’d be worth putting Sarah on to that — but even so it doesn’t fully gel in my mind.’

‘Blue means depressed,’ Kate said, warming to the task.

‘Injury,’ he countered, ‘as in black and blue.’

‘Or sexually explicit.’ Kate sat up at this. ‘Actually, that’s quite intriguing, isn’t it? Depressed, sexual, injury — they all relate to our crime scene.’

He nodded, concentrating on the road ahead as he considered this.

‘Blue law relates to morality,’ he finally said.

Kate ran her hand through her hair, messing up the careful style she’d taken so long to blow dry in order that the highlights she’d paid a fortune for appeared precisely where they were meant to. They were onto something she was sure. ‘What else is blue?’

‘Sky, sea, swimming pools.’

‘Nothing helpful there. Blue, blue, blue . . . credit card.’

‘An expensive one, gets you into a lot of trouble.’

She smiled but was thinking hard. ‘Blue blood?’

‘Royalty? I don’t think so. But the blue and blood link might mean something. The blue flag in motor racing forces the car in front to give way to faster cars coming up.’

‘I’m sure that’s relevant,’ she said, her tone laced with sarcasm. They passed a snooker hall. ‘Is there a blue ball in snooker?’ she asked absently.

‘Yes, worth five points.’

‘Perhaps there’ll be five murders then,’ she said as a throwaway line.

‘I hope not. Blue chip? Blue ribbon, Blue Pages, blue moon, Big Blue?’

She tried not to laugh as she shook her head. ‘No, it has to be more visceral than those.’

‘Veins. They carry blood. And they’re blue. Is that visceral enough?’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘Okay then, what about the university blues?’

‘What’s that?’

‘You know, the sporting colours of Oxford and Cambridge. Perhaps our killer and victims were all scholars.’

She groaned. ‘I doubt it, but please don’t tell me you went to either of those?’

‘No, Warwick.’

‘Good. Anything else?’

‘Chelsea.’

‘Right, thank you. Leave it with me, Jack. I do love a puzzle but you’re hindering rather than helping now.’

She was already wondering if Jack was right that this paint might be the message. The ‘boys in blue’ referred to the police after all, and then there were blue collar workers, which might refer to the killer, although that felt entirely wrong.

‘What did Farrow and Sheriff do for a crust?’ she asked.

‘Farrow was a contract glazier who turned permanent casual courier when he arrived in London. And Sheriff was a teacher. Why?’

‘Random thoughts. Blue is a political colour, of course.’

‘It’s also a musical genre.’ He pulled a face in apology. ‘Information overload, I think.’

She nodded and looked at his watch to work out the time. She liked the shape of his fingers, and the way his thumb crooked and didn’t quite grip the steering wheel.

‘I’m hungry,’ she said. It was the first thing that came into her mind to distract her from his hands.

‘We’ll get you something. I know a couple of good spots in the old quarter. You can take your pick from the Wig and Mitre pub or the rather famous Brown’s Pie Shop. But I warn you — there’s an almighty cobbled hill to climb first. Ah, I’ve just thought of
something else. Blue-tongued lizards. They live in Australia, with my sister.’

‘What, all of them?’

He grinned at her quip as he overtook a car, narrowly missing it and making her hold her breath.

‘And Cashel Blue is delicious,’ he added. ‘It’s the most famous cheese in Ireland, I’m told.’

‘Shut up, please, and drive.’

Kate wished he didn’t make her feel quite so warm inside. She covered her left hand with her right and twirled the beautiful diamond solitaire that Dan had given her when he’d proposed on a romantic spring weekend in Marlow last year. It had been directly after some ‘morning glory’, as he liked to call it, and they were both tousled and drowsy in that warm, sticky cocoon of arms and legs that lovemaking provokes. Kate recalled how she’d wept when he pulled a black velvet box from beneath his pillow and, without hesitation or awkwardness, kissed her deeply and asked her to marry him. She hadn’t been able to speak for a few moments, and had always believed it was because of the rush of the emotion, the tears, the happiness, but now she was beginning to understand why she’d cried and taken that time to answer Dan. It was because she really wasn’t sure that she loved him in the way he loved her, in the way that people who plan to marry, have a family and grow old together should. But she was already into her early thirties, and her two sisters, both younger than her, were married and starting to tease her about still being a spinster.

‘Penny for your thoughts,’ Jack said into the heavy silence.

‘I was just thinking whether to be a thoroughly modern bride and not get married at all. Or whether to go through the whole ceremony thing so my mother won’t feel robbed and just opt for white chocolate cake as my act of rebellion.’

‘Mmm, that second option is definitely subversive. Very modern.’

‘Yes, maybe that’s the way to go. And Dan likes white chocolate.’

‘And you?’

‘Oh, I’m a bitter chocolate kind of a gal, I’m afraid.’

‘Milky Bars are for babies, I agree.’ He gave her one of those soft smiles, and Kate realised he had sensed her awkwardness about her forthcoming wedding, perhaps even about Dan.

He changed the subject and began regaling her with tall stories of how he and Geoff nearly didn’t make it through their cadetship. By the time they caught sight of Lincoln’s magnificent cathedral through the drizzly haze that the windscreen wipers did little to improve, she was laughing delightedly, lost in his tales, but she also noticed she hadn’t stopped twirling her engagement ring.

Clare felt Garvan’s hand squeeze her shoulder. He’d been acting strangely for the past couple of days: distracted and forgetful. After being so close for thirty-five years of marriage, Clare was suddenly feeling left out from her husband’s life.

‘Want a coffee, love? I could murder one,’ he said.

‘Who was that on the phone?’

‘Nothing important,’ he said, moving to put water in the kettle.

‘Why so secretive?’

He looked at her, surprised. ‘No secret. A doctor’s appointment, that’s all. I’d forgotten it was today actually.’

‘Since when does a doctor’s surgery call its patients?’ she asked, her tone disbelieving.

He closed the tap. ‘When the doctor’s not going to be in for some reason and they need to change the appointment.’

She looked at him long and hard. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

Garvan flicked the switch on the kettle. ‘I have to get something for this sore throat.’

Clare moved away, irritated by his manner. She knew this man too well and he was hiding something. ‘Don’t forget to ring Peter,’ she said.

‘I plan to call him straight after my coffee. I think I’m going to dig out all my fishing tackle.’

‘What? How long’s it been?’

‘Fifteen years, probably.’

‘What’s brought this on?’

He shrugged. Busied himself making the coffee. ‘Want one, love?’

She shook her head and walked away to the sitting room, inwardly berating herself for overreacting. His mind was probably elsewhere because of this big potential contract Peter was waiting to hear about. Both of them knew it would change their son’s life if the deal went ahead. He could afford to buy a house, get on with getting married and starting his own family. Retired, and feeling every one of her fifty-nine years, Clare felt that grandchildren were all she had to look forward to. She regretted being so much like her own mother in this way, and hoped with all her heart
that Peter didn’t feel the pressure too much, although she suspected she might be kidding herself.

She thought about the dark days of long ago. All Clare had ever wanted in life was to have children, and her mother, Elsie, had desperately wanted to be a grandmother. Elsie was a strong, dominant woman who liked to control her husband and her daughter. Grandchilden had become a burning issue between mother and daughter once Clare had married, and when four years passed with no baby, the relationships between daughter and mother, son-in-law and mother-in-law had suffered intensely.

She could remember the ensuing arguments between herself and Garvan as if they were yesterday. It was the only time in their marriage that they had really fought. Many years later, when she was much older, much wiser, Clare could see that all the aggression was being generated by her mother and being passed on via herself to poor Garvan. Once the tests had confirmed that he was indeed the problem, her mother had had someone specific to blame. ‘Slow swimmers,’ the hospital specialist had offered with an awkward grin as an interpretation of the sperm test.

She hated to remember those times. Garvan had changed character entirely. It was as though, after four years of marriage, she was suddenly living with a stranger, and by 1975 they were living separately, to give themselves some breathing space from the arguments and the tension of being childless.

She had no idea where Garvan had gone during that time. He’d kept working, and she’d assumed he was staying with a friend, but contact between them was minimal and always filled with pain for both of them.
Even in the blur of her own despair she’d understood that he was hurting every bit as much, but Elsie had ensured Garvan had felt it was all his fault, as though he’d betrayed his wife and her family. But then a miracle had occurred and Peter had come along. She had asked no questions, couldn’t bear to know the whys and wherefores. All that mattered was that she was to be a mother. She would never forget the moment that newborn Peter was placed in her arms. She had wept uncontrollably, so had Garvan. In fact, the depth of his emotion had surprised her and she had never seen him sob like that before or since.

He had looked so frightened that night. She had been frightened too, but instant love had overcome all fear of any possible repercussions of taking Peter into their lives. All that mattered at that moment was that they were a family and they were together.

Garvan handed her a mug, dragging her thoughts back to the present.

‘I made you one anyway,’ he said. ‘I’m going upstairs to get into some decent clothes for the doctor, and before you remind me, I’ll call Peter before I head off. You’re meeting Sheila today, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, you’ll be alone most of the day, we’re going over to Worthing.’

‘Buy yourself something nice.’ He kissed the top of her head and pointed at the remote control. ‘Could you turn on the news, love, let me know if there are any more bulletins on those murders?’

She watched him go upstairs and wondered why on earth he was so interested in Britain’s latest serial killer.

6

I sat in the comfy bucket seat and eyed Dr March with a direct stare. My life had taken a new, dangerous path since the last time I’d sat here and poured out my thoughts. Now it was February and nearing the end of winter, and I had the blood of two men on my hands.

I’d been seeing Dr March for years without my spouse knowing. The psychiatrist thought I was here to talk about depression. About how the unhappy discovery that having children — the simplest, most normal event of all Nature’s magic — had been such a problem for us. And then James had been born and had changed our lives forever.

But really I was in therapy for the opportunity to talk about the effects of something that had happened three decades previous. I never referred to it openly, of course — it was my secret. But Dr March helped all the same, without knowing it, for her rooms were the only place I ever felt safe enough to allow my thoughts to go back to that horrific year during the 1970s.

I had spent most of my adult life suppressing the memories, unable to face returning to a time I could recall in such vivid and excruciating detail. But now
the time was right for me to recall every nuance of that experience. I needed to remember it, to live through it again, because the rage it invoked gave me the courage to finally seek the vengeance that was long overdue.

The public at large had nothing to fear from me: my next victim was already chosen. There was nothing random about the killings that had the media in a frenzy. But I still had to find my target, and I had to move fast now that Detective Chief Inspector Jack Hawksworth would be closing the gap as quickly as his resources could fill it. Time was surely more on my side than Hawksworth’s, though. He had no idea why I had killed two seemingly unrelated blokes from different counties with very different lifestyles. But once he began digging into the past, he would put Sheriff and Farrow in the same place at the same time. I just had to make sure I got to Billy and Phil before Hawksworth joined all the dots and reached them first.

It began for me one Wednesday after school. They were following me. This in itself wasn’t so unusual; it happened once or twice a week. I didn’t want to look around because that only encouraged them.
Keep walking
, I urged myself.

All I wanted was to be left alone to survive the mire of misery my life had become, make something of myself and build a new life far away from Hangleton and the tragedy that surrounded my family.

But they wouldn’t let me. Every group needs a target — someone to ridicule, someone whose life is worse than theirs.

‘Bletch’ they called me. Some kid from Manchester who’d moved down south said it meant ‘oil slick’ up north, and the name had stuck, spewing out of my tormentors’ mouths like the vomit they mimicked as they said it.

Humiliation — it was my closest companion then. It went perfectly with my poor eyesight, the ugly glasses with their thick lenses, and the hated braces clinging to my teeth. Mother Nature hadn’t been terribly kind to me.

But the real darkness had descended when a drunk driver crashed into my father and my baby brother one rainy night. My mother, incapable of coping with her own pain, had sunk into an oblivion aided by a mixture of sedatives and brandy. I needed a mother more than ever during those early teenage years of being goofy, moon-faced and solid all over, but my mother rarely bothered to get out of bed. She knew I’d figure out how to get myself ready for school, organise my own breakfast and pack my own lunchbox — if there was any food in the house.

If school was a minefield, home was a war zone. I was constantly reminded of our loss there, through photos and the way my mother had given up on her own life, and on me. Each Monday after school, I’d force her to stand in the bath — usually in her stained nightie to appease my own modesty — and let the shower bring her back to some semblance of life. Then I’d help her to dress, always averting my gaze to avoid looking upon her bared flesh, and we’d walk slowly to the post office to withdraw our weekly living allowance from the funds my father, a doctor, had left us. Now my mother was so numb, the
household budgeting fell to me. Numbers were easy for me, so I took on the financial responsibility as Mum slid fully into the all-consuming abyss of grief. There was one blessing: the house was paid for.

‘Bletch!’

That was Billy Fletcher, tall and strong for his age, and good-looking. We were in the same English and Science classes. On top of his handsome appearance, Billy was very smart and I hated that he wasted his gifts simply because of a stutter that brought unwelcome attention from his peers. Instead of rising above it, that simple flaw prompted in him an all-pervading bitterness.

I ignored Billy’s call and hurried on, feeling the full weight of my homework in my schoolbag. I clutched it tightly, knowing it would be the first item to be ripped from me and emptied on the street or tossed into someone’s garden.

‘Hey, Bletch, wait for us.’

That was Michael Sheriff. I could tell by his scratchy voice. Mikey was stocky, permanently rosy-cheeked and cursed with severe eczema behind his knees and thick, forever-cracked lips. I’d been at junior school with Mikey but he was now at a different senior school, although I gathered he had no friends and still relied on his earlier acquaintances for his social interaction.

‘What have you got in your schoolbag, Bletch? Anything for us to eat?’

That was Phil Bowles, preoccupied with food as usual. It was Phil who’d begun the routine of following me home from school, doing his stupid Biggles impressions, forming his fingers into goggles
around his eyes and pretending to zoom around in an aircraft. He was tiny for his age and I’d known him since primary school, when he used to like pretending to be a dog and would bound alongside the other kids. He was funny then, but something had obviously happened to him since to shape him into something far more sinister than man’s best friend. I had no idea what school he went to now for he didn’t wear a uniform; just nondescript black trousers and a white shirt without a tie.

Finally, there was Clive Farrow, who solved his problems with his fists. Clive was slow, always in the remedial classes at school, and subjected to a lot of taunting. By secondary school, he’d learned to fight back by picking on people more vulnerable than himself and had become a fully fledged bully. If the foursome of tormentors had an inciter, Clive was probably it, although Billy was quietly accepted as their leader.

It was Clive’s coarse voice that answered Phil. ‘No, Bletch ate it all. Be careful, Phil, Bletch will eat you too. You’re about snack size, aren’t you?’

This set off much joshing and I sped up. I didn’t want to flat out run because that was an invitation for trouble, giving them the excuse they wanted to chase me down. If only someone would step out of their house or pull up in a car and frighten them off.

No such luck. Billy was on my case now, stammering out the next insult.

‘You think you’re so clever. I saw that test you did today. Perfect score. Only one in the class. What are you doing in this school anyway if you’re so smart?’

Billy Fletcher had hit the bull’s-eye, the one taunt that could really injure me. Yes, I was smart, clever
enough to have gone to the grammar school and shone. But just before the eleven-plus exam, my mother had been rushed to hospital to get her stomach pumped after an overdose of tranquillisers. I’d been terrified I’d be left alone, and in my trauma I had fluffed the most important test of my life. There was no going back, no resitting it. The brown envelope arrived in due course to announce what I already knew. I remember crying alone at the bottom of the garden in my father’s shed, thinking of other kids who received good news in those pristine white envelopes, telling them they were the ‘cream’ and would attend one of the two county grammar schools and have a better chance in life.

I stopped and turned angrily to answer Billy. ‘I don’t want to be here.’

Michael licked his flaky lips. ‘Go to grammar then! We don’t want a fat, ugly, clever bastard around us.’

‘What does it matter to you? You’re not even at our school, and I’m no more a bastard than you are,’ I countered. ‘My father may be dead but I know who he was.’

‘Oooh,’ they crowed, revelling in the high colour creeping up from my neck and the catch in my voice. I was such an idiot to let them do this to me with such ease.

‘Yeah, well, bastard or not, you’re still fat and ugly,’ Phil said and the others laughed.

‘Are you alright?’

I realised Dr March was staring at me with a worried frown.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said and pulled myself back to the present.

‘What happened just then?’ she asked.

‘I just tuned out. Something must have triggered a memory. I was remembering my childhood for some reason.’

‘Was it the deaths, do you think?’ she prompted.

‘Deaths?’ I echoed, startled. Mikey’s and Clive’s death grins were still vivid in my mind.

‘You told me, remember? How your father and brother were killed. We’ve never really discussed that time in your life, have we? You’ve never felt strong enough to go there.’

‘Oh,’ I replied, trying not to show my relief. ‘Do you mind reminding me what we were talking about before?’ I wanted to move her away from the subject of death.

Dr March gave a small smile of sympathy. ‘Of course. We were discussing how it feels to be told that you can’t be a parent.’

‘That’s right, I do remember.’ I smoothly picked up our previous discussion. ‘Well, James solved that issue, I suppose, although we can’t have any more children.’

‘Any more? You wouldn’t consider it at your age, surely?’ Dr March allowed her surprise to break through her normally professional facade. It was quite amusing.

‘No, of course not,’ I said, trying not to laugh.

I didn’t need Dr March any more. Perhaps I’d come back for one more session, so as not to provoke any alarm bells, but right now I wanted to be gone from here and my memories.

‘Dr March, I don’t feel at all well. I’ve got the most hideously sore throat and talking is making it worse. I’m so sorry to cut our session short,’ I lied.

‘Oh, absolutely,’ she said, closing her notebook with a light slap. ‘We can have a slightly longer talk next time perhaps? Now, when are you back in London?’ She consulted her diary.

‘Actually, Dr March, I’m not sure of my movements or when I’ll next be here. How about I call you later this week?’

‘Oh,’ she said, frowning at her diary and flicking backwards through the pages. ‘I’m actually rather full this week. Um . . .’ She tapped her pencil against a page. ‘But give Teresa a call — she’s a witch, as you know, and capable of magicking up space for all my clients.’

I smiled. I was always impressed at how she referred to us as clients rather than patients. ‘That will be fine. Thank you.’

Dr March had been very kind and earnest in her endeavours to help me through the past couple of years. I wondered how calm she’d remain if she knew Britain’s latest serial killer was sitting opposite her now, thinking about my next victim.