Last Kiss (11 page)

I curl up on the sofa-bed, doing that thing I used to do as a child when I was nervous, rocking myself back and forth. Somehow an emotional crevice has grown between me and Edgar. If anyone had asked me a few months ago about Edgar being unfaithful, I would have laughed at them, dismissed it as ridiculous. What’s changed?
Maybe you’re the one who has changed. Have you ever thought about that?

I can’t sit still. I walk over to the two long studio windows looking onto the garden. Again, I think about finding things in the wrong places, how I had blamed Edgar at first. He’d looked at me as if I was mad. Then, talking to the girls yesterday, they hadn’t believed me either. Alice was the only one who said I might have imagined it, but the other two were thinking it.

The one place where nothing had been touched was the studio. I’m the only one who knows where I keep the key.
Could he be the one moving things around, and denying it? If he’s lying about being unfaithful, he could be lying about that too – but why?

After finding the petals, I stopped taking the medication. Then he started leaving the tablets with a glass of water beside my bed. He must have been checking whether or not I was taking them. I didn’t tell the girls about that, or that I’ve been crunching the tablets and flushing them down the toilet. The petals had been a warning that I needed to pull myself together.

Leaving the studio, I lock the door behind me, then hide the key. I listen for any movement other than my own, but I hear nothing. I look into the small study where his computer is, and I’m relieved it’s switched off. I remember turning it off last night after the girls had left, but this morning it was on again. I asked Edgar about it, and he said he didn’t remember.

It was Lori who asked me if I’d checked out the Cassie4Casanova link. I had, but all I managed was an error code. Alice wanted to know if I’d erased the link. I hadn’t. ‘Let’s all look,’ she had said, as if we were on some stupid adventure. It didn’t take long to crank up the computer, all four of us huddled in the study, wine glasses forgotten.

I was certain the link would be there. I never thought of it being wiped, but there wasn’t a trace, not a single reference to Cassie4Casanova. They all went through the motions, making suggestions as to how to restore it, but the longer it went on, the more convinced I became that none of them believed me. He has wiped it, I wanted to say, he has deleted the evidence, but I knew I was on shaky ground. The same way I knew they would all speak to one another about me afterwards.

I walk into the study, half expecting the computer to switch itself on without me touching it. My ear is on fire again, as another panic strikes me – what if one of them talks to Edgar? Would they?
Alice would
.

I pick up the phone on the desk. She answers on the first ring. ‘Hello,’ I say calmly, and surprise myself.

‘What’s up?’ she asks.

‘I want to make sure you don’t say anything to Edgar about my suspicions.’

‘Why would I do that?’ Her words sound like a test.

‘I don’t know, but you need to promise me.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Sandra.’

I can hear her annoyance. ‘Just promise me,’ I repeat.

‘I bloody promise.’

‘Fine.’ Before I can think of anything else to say, I hear the phone go dead. I tell myself we go back a long way – she wouldn’t betray me.

RIGHT ON CUE, half an hour after his last conversation with Kate, she arrived. Mark Lynch had already given his instructions to detectives Martin Lennon and Paul Fitzsimons to re-interview all of Rick Shevlin’s ex-girlfriends, including any paid escorts. The fresh information from Anita Shevlin didn’t only put a new spin on the international wing of the investigation: it meant all females connected to Shevlin had to be asked about a potential stalker. The staff at the hotel would be his next target. With the number of statements taken, more information should be forthcoming. If necessary, he’d get the chief super to agree to extra resources.

Having dismissed both detectives, he took a final look at the Parisian images before he gave the okay for Kate to come in. He had a nagging feeling he had missed something. The creepy monk outfit worn by the dead Pierre Laurent, coupled with the candlelit lantern, certainly added a freakish element to the scene, making it more like an image of a wake than a crime scene.

Unlike Shevlin’s, this victim’s eyes were closed, and although the visual Lynch focused on looked like a corpse at peace, underneath the dark monk’s habit there was a bloodied mess, puncture and slash wounds everywhere except for the face.
Why not the face?
The victim had been handsome – even in death Lynch could see that. He flicked to a later image from the morgue. He’d had a good physique too, quite the artist’s model, he thought. He would have to talk to Morrison. It would be a nice twist if the state pathologist found a similarity of pattern in each of the attacks, even if the ultimate cause of death differed. He already knew in Pierre Laurent’s case that it had been asphyxiation. The police report mentioned a couple of ex-lovers confirming that he had liked physical punishment during sex, including being brought to the edge with a rope around his neck. Had it not been for the knife attack, it might have been dismissed as a sexual act gone awry, one of the participating parties going a step too far. The police had also found friction burns on the victim’s wrists and ankles, consistent with bondage, only this time they had occurred prior to death. Pierre Laurent might have been little more than a lowly art student, but if it was the same killer, he had attracted their interest, just as Rick Shevlin had. What else, other than the obvious, had the two men had in common?

He couldn’t delay talking to Kate any longer, but he was still staring at the screen as she walked in.

‘You wanted to see the images from Paris, Kate. Here they are.’ He barely turned towards her.

‘First tell me why you’re so engrossed.’

‘There’s something about them,’ he pointed to the screen, ‘that’s bothering me.’

‘I’m listening.’ She sat on the chair opposite, folding her legs, causing her skirt to rise above her knees. As he turned to face her, she caught him eyeing her legs, and pulled the lower part of her trench coat over them.

‘Feeling the cold, are we?’ he asked.

‘A slight chill.’ She hoped he would take the hint. ‘You were saying about the images …’

‘The victim was younger than Rick Shevlin. He was also laid out differently, and with a different cause of death. The slash and puncture wounds to the body, unlike Shevlin’s, were concealed, and if there was any lipstick residue on the lips, either it was missed or it had deteriorated due to the delay in finding the body. Having said that, there is plenty to link the two deaths – a capital city, the murder taking place in a hotel room, the frenzied knife attack, a suspected female killer, a tentative art association, an inclination for kinky sex and, of course, the potential Tarot card connection, which led us to tie them together via the Europol database in the first place.’

‘And the level of detail,’ she added. ‘Don’t forget that. You were about to tell me what irked you.’

‘Although the images are different, I can’t shake the notion there’s something else about the two scenes that unites them.’

‘Like the images are telling you more than you actually see.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I felt the same way, Mark, about the photographs from the Earlbrook Hotel.’ She pulled her chair in closer, flicking through the images on the screen, including those from the morgue. She finally ended up where she’d begun, on the wide shot from the hotel bedroom. Knowing what she was looking for this time made it easier. ‘The scenes from the Earlbrook Hotel look savage in comparison. These images take on the appearance of something serene, and again, a practical replica of a Tarot card. The killer is re-creating the images to the point of obsession. Even though they depict different scenes, they have a visual hallmark.’

‘Do you mean like an artistic style?’

‘Exactly, but there’s more than that. Remember how Rick Shevlin’s image was re-created in the dressing-table mirror?’

He nodded.

‘Look at this,’ she pointed to the screen, ‘the image with the opened bathroom door.’ There was no denying Pierre Laurent’s clear reflection: it perfectly framed the corpse, and again, as if it was part of a Tarot-card image.

‘Look at the room,’ she continued. ‘It’s small. There isn’t a lot of floor space.’

‘Meaning the options for creating the image would be limited.’

‘And only one likely spot from which the image we’re looking at could have been taken.’

‘At the window again. Are you saying the killer is taking photographs?’

‘Perhaps, but even if she isn’t, she’s setting up the potential shot. The position of the body looks like it was determined by the position of the mirror and the potential viewing point.’

‘You do realise how big this could be?’ he asked, almost rhetorically.

‘Tell me why the Paris police believed the killer was female.’

‘Similar reasons as in the Rick Shevlin case, although no lipstick was found.’ His words were coming out fast and furious. ‘The victim had engaged in sexual activity before death. He had been tied up, this time, presumably, willingly. A witness statement said they heard a woman’s voice coming from the hotel room that evening, and the killer, despite inflicting severe wounds to the victim, never touched his face. The investigating team believed the killing had all the hallmarks of a crime of passion.’

If I could read his mind, she thought, Lynch is thinking this thing could be even bigger than his wildest dreams. She didn’t have a problem with his ambition: it was his absolute hunger for success that troubled her – the greater the prize, the more lethal the fall.

He was pacing around the room now, becoming more energised. ‘Kate, there is no roadmap for something like this. We need to move fast and efficiently.’ Then, standing close to her, as she had seen him do with the escort, he asked, ‘How high is the risk of the killer acting again soon?’

‘That’s impossible to say. The time span is nine years between the Shevlin and Laurent murders, and we’re still in the dark as
to more possible victims. I’m still not sure about that other case you mentioned, the one in Rome. The burning is putting me off, unless …’

‘Unless what?’

‘Unless she was re-creating the Tower card – it depicts a burning tower, but the wife being present deviates from her pattern of the victims being alone. If the case is connected, the stalking element is worrying. It illustrates a desire to get close to people in the victim’s life.’

‘And her motivation?’

‘Probably to infiltrate and control.’

‘Okay, Kate, if you can’t tell me when, do you think she has already moved on to another victim?’

‘Very probably – her level of motivation is high. Assuming, for now, the case in Rome is connected, it means the gap between killings can be short. If she has turned her attention elsewhere, the potential victim, and those closest to him, are certainly in danger.’

LORI’S PHONE CALL came as Edgar was driving to work. He’d known the girls had visited a couple of nights before. Since then, Sandra’s mood had deteriorated further. He also knew he needed to keep Lori sweet: he didn’t want any unnecessary complications.

‘Hi, Lori, is everything okay?’ he asked, keeping his tone upbeat.

‘I’ve been holding off phoning you, but I need to warn you about something.’

‘Warn me about what?’

‘Sandra is suspicious.’

‘Why, what did she say?’

‘She’s keeping notes on you.’

‘Notes?’ He didn’t disguise his surprise. ‘Hold on a second.’

He pulled the car into a side street. Once parked, he rolled down the driver’s window to get some air. ‘Lori, tell me exactly what happened.’

‘When we called to the house earlier in the week, she told us. She’s writing everything down.’

‘What do you mean writing it down? What is she writing down?’ He immediately regretted his anxious tone. He had to tread carefully, and her silence wasn’t a good sign. ‘Lori, I’m sorry for snapping. Just tell me.’

‘She says she’s writing down things about YOU.’

‘Where? In a diary? A notebook?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘And you didn’t ask?’

‘I didn’t want to push her. You understand, don’t you?’

‘Lori, I need you to find out exactly what she knows. She trusts you.’

‘I’ll try, but …’

‘But what?’

‘She has no idea what’s happening. She is completely off base.’

‘Are you positive?’

‘Absolutely – she’s digging, but she hasn’t found anything concrete. Maybe you should pay her more attention, make sure you keep her from finding out anything of value. You’ll need to do more to distract her.’

‘I’ve every intention of keeping her in the dark.’

‘I know that.’

‘Lori, I’ll need your help. You’re one of the few people she’ll
talk to. Call to her tomorrow. Go on your own. Tell her you’re there to give her moral support.’