The Four Last Things (36 page)

Underneath the mass of black hair – Lucy’s hair? – the police had found another, much smaller package, shrouded in clingfilm, at the very bottom of the padded envelope. It contained a small ear, roughly severed from the head. From the lobe dangled an earring with a silver crucifix attached to it.

Michael touched Sally’s shoulder. Sally raised her hand and clung to his.

‘Could the ear have come from the same body as the legs or the hand?’ Michael asked.

‘Definitely not the hand.’ Carlow was patently happier talking to a man. ‘The skin’s white. Don’t know about the legs. But if I had to put money on it, I’d say not.’

‘Why?’

Carlow shrugged. ‘I don’t know – the legs were sort of big and clumsy – whereas the ear’s rather delicate. Just a guess, but I’d say they come from different kids.’

‘Had the ear been frozen too?’

‘We don’t know yet. Quite possibly.’

Three victims, Sally thought: one for Death, one for Judgement, one for Heaven. And for Hell –

‘There was one other thing,’ Carlow went on. ‘You know the tights we found yesterday?’

Sally nodded, thinking that this must pass for tact: not mentioning that the tights were Lucy’s or what they had contained.

‘Forensic found a hair clinging to the wool. Natural blonde. We should know more by this afternoon.’

‘Man or woman?’ Michael asked, his fingers tightening on Sally’s shoulder.

‘At a guess, a woman’s: it’s about twelve inches long and it’s fine hair, too.’

‘I need to talk to Maxham.’

Carlow looked blankly at him. ‘Oh yes?’

‘For God’s sake!’ Michael shouted, moving away from Sally and towards Carlow. ‘We’ve just found what might be a pattern. If we’re right, time’s running out.’

‘OK, OK. What sort of pattern?’

‘The one the killer’s using.’

‘Tell me.’

‘I’d rather tell Maxham. It supports what we already thought, that there’s a religious nutter behind this.’

Carlow clamped his lips together. A muscle twitched above his big jaw. ‘If you insist.’

‘Of course I insist. And I’ll need to bring someone with me.’

Carlow glanced at Sally, raising his eyebrows.

‘A priest,’ Michael said. ‘David Byfield – you met him yesterday. He can explain the technical side better than I can.’

‘The technical side?’ echoed Carlow. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t –’

‘We’ll all be sorry if we don’t get moving.’ Michael turned back to Sally. ‘You could stay here if you want, or take the car back to Inkerman Street. Up to you.’

‘I’ll see. You’d better take the mobile. You can phone me here or at Oliver’s.’ Sally was upset that he did not want her to go with him, but was unwilling to insist; she could add nothing but emotional complications. Besides, she had an overwhelming urge to find somewhere private so that she could cry without interruption or well-meant sympathy.

Carlow tried again. ‘I’m not sure there’s any advantage in this. If you’ve got any information, I can pass it on, of course. But Mr Maxham may be too busy to actually –’

‘I know,’ Michael said in a voice that climbed in volume and wobbled towards the edge of hysteria. ‘He’s got a full-time job. It doesn’t leave him much time for socializing. But let’s see if we can persuade him to make an exception.’

In Inkerman Street, Sally carefully reversed the car into an empty space. Unfortunately, she forgot to brake. The back of the Rover collided with the front of the dark-blue Citroen. The engine stalled.

Sally rested her forehead against the top of the steering wheel.
Your will be done.
Could God really and truly want something as stupid as this to happen? The red oil lamp on the dashboard winked at her, red drops on a dark background, blood on a floor. She closed her eyes but the blood would not go away. More than anything, she would have liked to pray for Lucy. When she tried, her mind filled with her daughter – not with her name or her face, but with the essence of her. In Sally’s mind, Lucy expanded to such huge proportions that there was no room for anything else, even God.

Gradually the image of Lucy contracted. Like a departing aeroplane, the image grew smaller and smaller until it was no longer visible but still there.
I am not worthy to be a priest. I have no room for God.

The sound of tapping forced itself to her attention. Sally opened her eyes, resenting the intrusion. Oliver was standing in the road outside, bending down so that his face was level with hers, just as Frank Howell had done. She rolled down the window.

‘Are you all right?’

Dumbly she shook her head.

‘Come inside.’ He put his hand into the car and unlocked the door. ‘You’ve had news? Is it –?’

‘No. They haven’t found her.’

‘Then she may still be alive. She may still be all right.’ Oliver opened the door. ‘Out you come.’

Moving like an old woman, she struggled out of the car and clung to Oliver’s arm. With his free hand he turned off the ignition, took out the key, rolled up the window, shut the door and locked it.

Sally stared at the front of the Citroen. It was this year’s model and the paintwork gleamed. Now there was a dent in the front and one of the headlights had lost its glass. It was surprising how much damage a little knock could do. She had not realized that cars were so vulnerable.

‘Look what I’ve done.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘But the owner –’

‘I’m the owner. You can drive into it as much as you like. It’s only a car.’

Oliver led her towards the house. He took her into the kitchen and put the kettle on. Sally put down her handbag on the table. She picked up a tea towel and began to dry the mug on the draining board.

‘There’s no need,’ Oliver said after a while.

‘No need of what?’

‘No need to dry that. It’s been draining there since last night, and even if it were wet, you would have dried it four times over by now.’

Sally stared at the mug and the towel in her hands. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing.’

‘That’s not surprising. Why don’t you sit down?’

She watched Oliver making tea. He poured two mugs and added three spoonfuls of sugar to hers. He gestured towards the kitchen table.

‘We’ll sit there.’

She sank into a chair, grateful to have the decision taken away from her. ‘We must do something about your car. Shouldn’t I ring the insurers? Or report it to the police?’

‘I told you: forget the car. Do you want to tell me what’s happened?’

In the midst of everything, she noted his technique: asking questions rather than advancing propositions or making statements. In that respect, policemen were like priests and psychologists. She told him what Maxham had shown them in Paradise Gardens. Gradually, his questions prised out the rest: the meeting with Howell, David Byfield’s theory and the arrival of Sergeant Carlow.

‘So what does it add up to?’ Oliver said at last. ‘If I was Maxham, I’d be thinking that the blonde hair probably belongs to one of the victims. As for the rest, it’s largely speculative, isn’t it? But I suppose it supports the theory that there’s a religious crank behind this.’

Sally wrapped her cold hands around the warm mug. ‘It does more than that. We’ve got two patterns now. One’s obvious – the geographical concentration in north-west London. The other’s religious, not just vaguely anti-religion but specifically tied to the Four Last Things.’

Where hell is, there is Lucy.

Oliver went out of the room. A moment later he came back with a London street atlas. He turned to the index.

‘Michael’s already looked,’ Sally said. ‘There’s a Hellings Street, but that’s in Wapping.’

‘Way out of your geographical frame.’ Oliver’s finger ran down the printed column. ‘But that’s the closest match to hell.’

‘It wouldn’t be that simple. The connection will probably be oblique, like using that church in Beauclerk Place to represent Judgement.’ Sally looked across the table at Oliver. ‘Michael’s trying to make Maxham take it seriously.’

‘You must admit, there’s not much to go on.’

‘What else have we got?’ With sudden violence, she pushed aside the mug. Tea slopped on to the table. Neither of them moved. ‘Time’s running out. Can’t you see the schedule? Friday, Lucy was taken. Saturday, the hand was found in Kilburn Cemetery. Sunday was St Michael’s, today was Paradise Gardens. So tomorrow –’

‘Why?’ Oliver interrupted. ‘What’s the purpose of it all? Have you thought of that?’

There was a silence. Then Sally said, ‘Revenge, of course. Against the Church, authority, parents – who knows? But I think there’s something else as well.’ She shook her head, trying to clear it. ‘The Four Last Things – in theological terms they’re meant to represent what will happen to us all: death, then whatever lies beyond. And if there are four victims, each representing one of the stages, one part of the possible destinations of an individual soul…’ She looked at Oliver, trying to gauge his reaction.

‘Someone who wanted to be a priest but was turned down?’ he suggested. ‘This could be a way of –’

‘No, I don’t mean that, though you may be right.’ Sally sat up. ‘It’s as if the killer wants to die by proxy. His victims are dying for
him
.’

‘But what would be the point of that?’

‘To cheat death and be reborn? To have a second chance? To escape from a private hell?’

His face had turned in on itself, like a house with curtained windows. ‘You may be right.’

‘I’m not sure. I’m not sure of anything.’ Sally shot another glance at him. ‘Anything at all.’

Except that where hell is, there is Lucy.

Oliver sipped tea and said nothing.

In the silence high above her she felt rather than heard the sound of wings. It was vital not to stop talking to Oliver, and yet so tempting to surrender, to let the wings overwhelm her.

‘Pain is very dreary, you know,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I never realized that before. It’s like a desert. Nothing grows there.’ She hesitated. ‘You don’t go to church, do you?’

‘Not now. My mum and dad were chapel people. When I was sixteen, I decided all that wasn’t for me. Not just the chapel. The whole lot.’

‘Lucky you.’

‘What?’

‘It sounds so simple. So comfortable.’ She saw the disbelief in his face. ‘A lot of people think religion’s a prop. It isn’t. If you believe in God, it’s as if you’re facing a constant challenge. He’s always wanting you to do things. You can never relax and get on with your own life.’

‘And you still believe in him? Now?’

‘Oh yes. After a fashion. Not that it helps. Not in the slightest.’

Oliver raised the teapot and held it out towards her. Sally shook her head.

‘I have dreams, too,’ she heard herself saying. ‘Waking dreams, sometimes. I wish I didn’t.’

‘That’s a common side-effect of stress,’ Oliver said briskly, topping up his own mug. ‘We know there’s a relationship between stress and suggestibility. That’s been clear since Pavlov. And there’s also a link between stress and the seeing of visions. If you apply the appropriate stimuli to the appropriate bits of the brain, you get hallucinations.’

‘And waking dreams?’

‘OK, and waking dreams.’ He shrugged, telling her without words that he personally did not see any distinction between a hallucination and a waking dream. ‘Stress is just another stimulus. It can cause the sort of electrical activity in the temporal lobe that makes you see things. It’s as simple as that. There’s nothing mysterious about it.’

‘Isn’t there?’

He was instantly apologetic. ‘It’s a bit of a hobbyhorse, I’m afraid. Don’t take any notice. I’m reacting against all those sermons I had to listen to when I was a child.’

‘This is a watershed,’ Sally said. ‘Whatever happens, however it ends, this is a watershed. In Paradise Gardens, Michael said that nothing would ever be the same again, and he’s right. There will always be a gap between before and afterwards. It’s made a break in the pattern.’

Oliver nodded as if he understood, which of course he couldn’t. But it was nice of him to go through the motions. She wasn’t sure why she found him so comfortable to be with, to talk to. If she talked like this to Michael, either he wouldn’t listen or, if he did, he would engage passionately with what she was saying, agreeing or disagreeing.

He glanced up at the window. ‘Why don’t we drive down to Hampstead Heath and have a walk, and then have a pub lunch?’

‘Now? I couldn’t.’

‘Why not? It will do you a lot more good than moping around here.’

‘But what happens if –?’

‘I’ll let Maxham know where we are, and I’ll take my phone.’

‘I don’t know. I –’

‘Come on, the exercise will do you good. It’s a lovely day.’

She lifted her head and stared out of the window. ‘It’s not.’

‘It’s better than yesterday. It’s not raining and the wind’s dropped.’

‘I don’t call it lovely.’