Die With Me (28 page)

When he had finished, he got out and had just started to dry himself when he heard his mobile ringing in the sitting room. He picked it up just before voicemail kicked in and heard Wightman’s voice at the other end.

‘I did what you said, sir,’ Wightman said. ‘She came home on her own and went inside. I waited, like you asked me to, and about ten minutes later, Kennedy showed. He hung around for a bit in the street and then went round the back, just like you said. Her lights were still on and he was gone a good quarter of an hour. Then he came out again and drove off.’

‘You wrote all of this down?’

‘Yeah, with the exact times. I waited a bit, just to make sure he wouldn’t come back and, when he didn’t, I thought I’d go and take a look round the back. There’s a gate halfway down the side passage but the lock’s broken, so anyone can go through. Her bathroom and kitchen’s down there. She’d left the lights blazing all over the place. The blind was drawn in the bathroom but I could see right into the kitchen.’

‘What about her bedroom?’

‘It’s round the back. She had the curtains drawn but they don’t quite meet and I could see her quite clearly lying in bed. I think she had the telly on because I could hear the noise in the background. He must have stood there, watching her.’

‘Good work. I had a feeling he’d go there again, particularly after seeing her this evening. He just can’t resist.’

‘What are you going to do, sir?’

‘I’d like you to do the same tomorrow night and I think you should take somebody with you. If Kennedy does it again, I want you to call me and we’ll bring him in. No point in messing about any longer.’

‘No, and he bloody deserves what’s coming.’

Tom pushed away the remains of his smoked chicken and avocado salad and sipped his glass of wine, watching the tail-end of the lunchtime crowd from his seat in the far corner of the wine bar. Most of the men were dressed in badly cut suits, with loud ties and gallons of hair gel. The women looked even more ridiculous, perched on stools around the small high tables, their short skirts hugging their fat thighs, tits pushed up and out, the heels of their shoes so high they could barely walk. Faces lathered in slap, they had ‘fuck me’ written all over them. It was all so bloody obvious, so fake and nasty, but the men seemed to be gagging for it like stupid, bouncy little puppies, lapping up every giggle, every cheap sideways glance and calculated flick of the dyed hair. In the normal course of events, he’d have been long gone. But he had more important things to think about.

The fever had passed and he felt calm again, satiated for the moment. He’d been stupid with Yolanda, although he reminded himself how much worse it might have been if the little bitch had lived to tell the tale. Nobody must ever be allowed to get away. No point in beating himself up about it now but he must never do something so risky and badly thought out again. He’d been up for most of the past night, unable to sleep. He’d watched part of a war film on TV and then, when that was over, listened to some music, until the fucking arsehole of an estate agent who lived next door had banged on the wall and shouted so loudly that he was forced finally to turn it off.

He felt tired today but at least he had come to a decision. It was time to go away for a bit, take a long holiday until things quietened down. There were places in the world where you could live cheaply, where life was cheap, where nobody would notice if you were there one day and gone the next. It would be a different game but it might be amusing for a while. Certainly different. Variety was the spice of life, according to someone in the know and it was time for a change. Lots of people took sabbaticals these days, so why shouldn’t he? Anyway, he had a fair bit of money put by in the bank and he could afford it. He would find a safe place for his little treasures and then he would be off somewhere exotic and hot. It would be good to lounge around on a beach, drink margaritas and get a tan, somewhere where there were lots of backpackers and tourists coming and going, lots of slags looking for a bit of tawdry romance and a quick shag, where the police were crass amateurs at the game.

Just thinking about it got the old buzz going again. It would be a new beginning and he would reinvent himself. Like a magician, he would disappear in a puff of smoke and leave the London lot chasing their arses, with nothing to find. The thought made him feel warm inside and there was no point in hanging about, now he’d made up his mind. His grandmother could rattle around in the old house on her own as much as she liked once he’d gone. He didn’t give a flying fuck what she thought and it would serve her bloody right.

She was showing herself more frequently now, for some reason. Last night when he’d gone over to put Yolanda’s hair in one of her little tea caddies, she had appeared on the first floor landing, peering down angrily at him over the banister as if questioning his right to be there. He had every fucking right. It was his house, not hers any longer, he had shouted. But she ignored him as usual. She was wearing her favourite navy and cream spotted silk dress, the one which she usually put on when friends came round for bridge, and he could see the bright spots of rouge on her cheeks and the hard line of crimson lipstick on her shrunken lips. Even down in the hall, he was aware of her cloying scent and she seemed so solid for a change that he was tempted to rush upstairs and try and touch her. That would give the old bag a fright and put the wind up her. But before he had the chance, she disappeared like smoke in the wind as if she had never been there at all.

The bitch would get a shock once she realised that he had gone and he decided to look on the net for tickets that afternoon. It wouldn’t take long to pack his things. But first there were some other practical issues to deal with and he took a pen from his pocket and started to make a short list on the back of an envelope. Along with all the boring mundane items, there was that one last thing he had to take care of. In the normal course of events he wouldn’t have bothered. It was also highly risky, but what the hell. He wrote down the bullet point, underlining it and marking it with a large question mark. But he knew that he had to do it. The plan had been taking shape in his mind over the last few days and it would be so, so simple, like taking candy from a baby. He saw it as his final curtain call, his swan song. It would be good to go out with a bang.

Growing increasingly annoyed, Tartaglia paced up and down the towpath alongside the Regent’s Canal, near the spot where they now knew Yolanda Garcia had been assaulted. It was past four o’clock in the afternoon and Steele and Kennedy were nearly twenty minutes late. Steele had called him earlier to say that she and Kennedy wanted to view the scene and he had no choice but to wait, although what earthly purpose it would serve was beyond him. So far, Kennedy had drawn little meaningful conclusion from the other crime scenes he had visited and Steele only echoed whatever he said. If they didn’t turn up soon, it would be dark and there would be next to nothing to see.

Samples taken from Yolanda’s body had been rushed through as a priority and the computer had come up with two DNA matches: Lee O’Connor and Wayne Burns, eighteen and nineteen respectively, both with form as long as your arm for a whole range of crimes, including burglary, mugging and assault. They had been arrested and questioned, each crumbling like a house of cards in the face of the overwhelming forensic evidence, each blaming the other for what had happened. Apart from that, the important details of their stories more or less matched. They explained how, high on a cocktail of alcohol and drugs, they had found Yolanda wandering along the towpath and given her what, in their view, she was looking for. However, they both vehemently denied having had anything to do with her death. At least one piece of the puzzle solved. It had never seemed psychologically probable to Tartaglia that Tom had raped Yolanda before killing her.

The spot where Tartaglia was standing was only about half a mile from where Yolanda’s body had turned up. But it might have been in another city. Unlike the area around Little Venice, with its expensive houses, tall trees and glossy, colourful houseboats, this stretch of the canal was seedy and barren, surrounded by the backs of tall office buildings and dilapidated council housing. The few houseboats moored along the bank were patched and tatty, some barely habitable. A series of small bridges intersected the canal at irregular intervals and the towpath seemed to be primarily used as a local cut-through by a mixture of cyclists, dog-walkers and joggers. Even in the fading daylight it was forbidding. Wondering why anyone dared to venture along it after dark, he sighed at the thought of a young girl, on her own and new to the city, trying to get home that way.

Tartaglia was almost on the point of giving up, when he spotted Steele, coming along the towpath towards him in the gloom. She seemed to be on her own.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said briskly, coming up to where he was standing. ‘The traffic was horrendous and I had trouble finding a place to park.’

‘I thought Dr Kennedy was gracing us with his presence,’ he said, failing to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

‘I decided to come alone,’ she replied curtly, offering no further explanation for the change in plan.

‘Are we sure this is where she was attacked?’ she asked, looking towards the area along the path where the SOCOs were working.

‘According to O’Connor and Burns. They live nearby and seem to know the towpath pretty well.’

She sighed heavily, as if imagining what had happened. ‘Pretty grim, isn’t it?’

‘Not where I’d choose to die, certainly.’

‘Are you sure we can’t do the pair of them for her murder?’

He shook his head. ‘A lock of her hair’s missing and there’s GHB in her system. Who else could it be? Newlands Park have the computers from the library where she sent her emails. They’re treating it as a priority and I expect they’ll show she was in contact with Tom, like the others.’

She nodded, as if convinced. ‘But we still have no idea how Tom had originally come across any of them.’

‘No.’

‘Nor how he found Yolanda?’

‘No,’ he replied again. ‘Neither O’Connor nor Burns saw anybody, although given the state they had been in, they might not have noticed someone watching from afar.’

‘But Tom killed her along here?’

‘It can’t be far and it’s got to be towards Maida Vale. O’Connor and Burns ran off the other way and they say they didn’t see anybody.’

Steele followed his eye then turned and gazed in the opposite direction. ‘Perhaps she was killed where her body turned up? I know that stretch with all the houseboats, it’s…’

‘Unlikely,’ Tartaglia interrupted before any further speculation. ‘This section of the towpath stops at the Maida Tunnel, further along there.’ He jerked his head in the general direction. ‘To reach the other side, you have to go up some very steep steps and walk across a series of roads. I don’t see Tom risking that with her, do you?’

Steele frowned, as if irritated and didn’t reply.

‘We’d better get a move on, otherwise there’ll be nothing to see,’ he said impatiently, noticing how quickly the light was dimming.

They walked together in silence towards the barrier of the inner cordon. She seemed lost in thought, perhaps regretting having come. He had no idea why she had bothered to make the journey. Maybe she just wanted an excuse to get out of the office.

‘What was Tom doing down here?’ she said quietly, as if talking to herself. ‘It doesn’t make any sense. All the other crime scenes have been places he could control.’ She stopped and folded her arms, going through the motions of studying the scene in front of her. ‘So, the girl’s attacked over there, O’Connor and Burns run off and leave her, and along comes Tom to murder her. It’s all a bit coincidental, don’t you think?’ She turned to Tartaglia with a sceptical look.

‘I don’t believe in coincidences either,’ he said, a little sharply. ‘I’m sure he wasn’t coming along here by chance. He must have known where to find her.’

She nodded slowly, her eyes focusing on a distant point further down the canal as if lost in thought. ‘Which way’s the tube?’ she asked, after a moment.

‘Over there.’ He pointed behind them. ‘O’Connor and Burns say she was heading that way when they met her.’

She rubbed her lips thoughtfully. ‘So, she wasn’t going to meet Tom. She was on her way home.’

‘That’s what we think. We know that she left her employer’s house between seven and a quarter to eight. If O’Connor and Burns are to be believed, it was close to ten when they came across her down here. Which gives her ample time to have met Tom.’

She looked at him questioningly. ‘So what’s your theory?’

Surprised that she actually seemed to want his opinion, Tartaglia said: ‘From what we know, Tom plans his killings very carefully. There’s nothing opportunistic in the way he chooses his victims. So it’s fair to assume that Yolanda was the intended victim, that Tom had selected her in his usual way and that the contact followed a similar pattern to the other girls.’

She gave him a curt nod of agreement. ‘That seems logical.’

‘Let’s say she had agreed to meet him somewhere near here. I imagine the choice of location will be his. It’s a pretty seedy area and…’

‘Low risk from his point of view,’ she added.

‘Yes. It’s pretty transient and people are unlikely to remember him, or at least that’s what he was hoping. The meeting place would have to be somewhere very close to the canal for her to consider coming this way. She had a considerable amount of alcohol in her bloodstream so we’re checking all the pubs and bars in the area.’

She didn’t say anything for a moment, as if she were thinking it all through very carefully. ‘But why was she coming along here without Tom? If they had met, I’m amazed he let her out of his sight.’

It was the one thing that had puzzled Tartaglia too. As he gazed at the scummy, dark brown slick of water, he had a flash of inspiration and turned to Steele. ‘Maybe he was late. Or she got cold feet for some reason, either before they met or after.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘The one that got away, you mean?’

‘It’s the only thing that stacks up, given what we know about him.’

She looked thoughtful. ‘That would have made him very angry indeed. Very, very angry. He would be panicking as well, worrying about failing and also worrying about leaving a trail. He would have to find her and finish her off somehow.’

‘If she twigged what he was up to and was trying to get away, she’d have been in a blind panic, not thinking straight. It may also explain why she was desperate enough to come along here after dark.’

Steele nodded, as if that was what she was thinking too. ‘He has to find her. He can’t let her get away…’

‘Whatever his motivation, he must have worked out which way she went. He either found her after she had been attacked or it’s possible that he even watched, waiting for his moment.’

She sighed meaningfully. ‘If he saw her being attacked, it would mean nothing to him. Someone like him has no concept of mercy. It’s all just a despicable game.’

He looked at her a little surprised. He could tell from the bitterness in her tone that she wasn’t just thinking of Yolanda but of the emails and she seemed to be taking what had happened by the canal personally. If so, it was a brave move to come down there and try to get close to what had happened. If she wasn’t careful, it would end up haunting her. Sometimes it was vital to keep a distance but after everything that had gone between them, he bit back the desire to say so.

She folded her arms and turned to him. ‘So where do you think he killed her?’

He looked along the ribbon of water again, towards the dark entrance of the Maida Tunnel. ‘I don’t think he’d have gotten far with her. According to the post mortem results, she had a significant amount of GHB in her system and there was very little water in her lungs. So she must have been unconscious, or almost unconscious, when she was put into the canal. My guess is that she was killed somewhere very close to where we’re standing now.’

Steele followed his gaze, her expression distant as if she were picturing it all in her mind. ‘I agree with you,’ she said quietly, after a moment. ‘He probably had something entirely different planned for her but he ran out of options and was forced to improvise.’

He agreed. ‘I think there’s a very good chance that somebody saw something. If so, we’ll find them.’

*

‘You say Harry Angel was out all that Wednesday afternoon?’ Donovan asked, trying to contain her excitement.

‘Most definitely.’ Jenny Evans gave an emphatic toss of her small, round head. ‘I’ve been off sick with the flu, otherwise I’d have called you sooner.’

Donovan was sitting at the small bar at the back of Wild Oats, an organic food shop immediately next door to Harry Angel’s bookshop in Ealing. The shop smelled deliciously of a mixture of coffee and freshly baked bread and Jenny had just presented her with a large cappuccino on the house. With short, fluffy grey hair, Jenny looked to be in her mid-fifties. Her pink checked shirtsleeves were rolled up and she wore a spotless white apron over a calf-length brown tweed skirt and flat slip-on shoes. Her manner was reassuringly precise and down-to-earth and she reminded Donovan of an old-fashioned school matron.

Taking a sip of rich coffee through the thick layer of froth, Donovan asked: ‘You are sure about this? That it was that Wednesday afternoon, I mean. When I came in here before, nobody remembered anything.’

Jenny planted a plump, bare forearm on the slate counter and gave a sideways glance at the scrawny, scantily dressed young girl standing at the front of the shop, helping a customer to some cheese. ‘They wouldn’t, would they? It’s not their shop and half the time their mind’s on other things, usually boys and pop music. All I can say is that it’s a jolly good thing the till does all the adding and working out the change for them, otherwise I don’t know where we’d be. At least someone had the sense not to throw away your card and to leave it on my desk for when I came back.’

‘Do you remember what time Mr Angel went out, Mrs Evans?’

Jenny gave her a brisk smile. ‘It’s Miss Evans, but please call me Jenny. Everyone does. Harry came in and got a sandwich and a coffee about one o’clock and said he was popping out for a bit. He asked if we could keep an eye on things.’

‘What did he mean by that?’

‘He gets deliveries from time to time. I was fond of his grandfather, even though he was a tricky old sod, and I don’t mind signing for things and taking them in if we’re not too busy. Although I draw the line at being expected to mind the shop, without even being asked, for the whole afternoon, like that Wednesday.’

‘So, he was gone a long time?’ Donovan said, amazed that Angel had had the gall to pretend otherwise when Tartaglia had questioned him. Perhaps he thought that they wouldn’t bother to check.

‘Yes. I remember distinctly, he didn’t come back until well after five. I was hopping mad by then. He hadn’t told me he’d be gone long and I had a constant stream of his customers coming in here all afternoon, asking if we knew where he was. Naturally, thinking he’d be back soon, I told them to wait or come back later. Some of them seemed to imagine I was stringing them along on purpose, trying to con them into buying something.’

‘Do you know where he’d been?’

She shook her head. ‘He didn’t even have the courtesy to let me know when he got back. He just slipped in and removed the sign. Once I found out he was there, I jolly well went round and gave him a piece of my mind. He was cool as a cucumber, even had the nerve to pretend he’d been there for quite a while. When he saw that wouldn’t wash, he just thanked me for minding the shop and showed me the door in no uncertain terms.’

‘Did you ask where he’d been all that time?’

‘I didn’t bother. He wouldn’t tell me. But I’ve a pretty good idea what he was up to.’

Donovan gave her an enquiring look. ‘I promise to be discreet, Jenny.’

‘Well…’ Jenny opened her small, round brown eyes in a conspiratorial fashion and leaned towards Donovan across the counter, speaking in a half-whisper. ‘It’s sex, isn’t it? Has to be. I’ll wager he’s got some lady on the go and pops round for a session of nooky in the lunch hour, only this one went on till teatime.’

‘You really think so?’ Donovan asked, stifling a giggle and making a quick note.

‘Oh, yes. Harry’s always chasing after every bit of skirt that comes in his shop. His grandfather was just as bad, even in his eighties. Maybe it’s genetic or perhaps it comes from living amongst all those musty old books.’