Tooth and Claw (26 page)

But not this time. He wanted that man out of the way when he killed the man’s lover. He struck Carl as being dangerous.

Carl’s bill arrived just as the man got up and walked towards the toilets. Watching him go reminded Carl again of just how badly he needed to empty his bladder. The man had obviously been in the restaurant before; he didn’t hesitate or look around but headed straight for the dark corner where the toilets were located. As he went, Emma’s phone rang.

‘Hello?’ she said, then, ‘Dr Catherall? Is that you? Can you hear me?’ A silence while she listened, screwing her face up as she tried to make out the reply. ‘Hang on – I’ll head outside to get a better signal.’ She got up and moved rapidly towards the door.

Leaving her handbag hanging on the back of the chair.

This was his chance. Carl stood, placing a ten pound note on the table and picking his coat up from the back of his own chair. The money would cover his food, plus a tip that wasn’t memorably large or memorably small. He moved towards the table where, moments before, Emma and her companion had been sitting. Carl glanced towards the toilets to see whether Emma’s companion was returning, but he wasn’t in sight. Carl moved in that direction, his path taking him directly past their table. His gaze scanned quickly across the restaurant, checking whether anyone was looking in his direction, but as far as he could tell he was unobserved. Emma was visible through the large front window; her back turned, talking into the phone. The only person who might have been scanning the room was the waitress, and she was busy scooping up the ten pound note with her back to him. Without deviating from his course, he let the hand holding the coat trail down, his fingers curled slightly beneath the cloth so that they caught on the strap of Emma’s handbag. The bag slid off the back of the chair and the coat draped over it. Carl’s hand took the weight without him having to shift his posture. He kept moving at the same
speed, waiting for an outcry behind him, but there was nothing. He did his best to keep walking in a straight line and not dip or twist his shoulders. Odd movements like that tended to attract attention.

The man was just leaving the washroom as Carl entered. Carl kept his chin down, allowing his face to be shadowed. The handbag was clutched tightly beneath his coat.

Within moments he was in the toilet; a small room with a single porcelain toilet bowl, a sink and a hand dryer. He quickly locked the door behind him and rifled through the bag’s contents, his hand still wrapped in the thin material of his jacket so that he would not leave any fingerprints. A chunky red leather purse caught his attention, and he hooked it out. He flipped it open: Emma’s driving licence was obvious inside. That would be enough to give Carl her address, but he had to make it look like a robbery rather than a fishing expedition for information. The woman was a police officer, after all. Slipping the purse into a pocket of his jacket he thrust the handbag behind the toilet bowl and then, unzipping his flies, emptied his bladder into the toilet bowl with a deep sigh of relief. The urine was purple against the white of the bowl, swirling like blood into the drain, but he thought it wasn’t as dark as it had been. The haematin tablets were kicking in.

Emma was still outside the restaurant, talking into her phone when he emerged. Her companion had returned to the table and was waiting for her. His gaze – grey and emotionless – swept across Carl, evaluating him for a heart-stopping moment, and then moved away to look at something else once he had dismissed Carl as a threat. He hadn’t noticed yet that the handbag was missing. Heart pounding, Carl kept on walking; past him, past the waiter, past his table and out through the door into the street, making sure that he turned immediately
away from Emma so that all the woman would see of him was his back.

He stopped fifty yards or so down the street, looking in the window of a charity shop. A faint mist of rain coated the shop window from the outside while humidity steamed it up from the inside, rendering the candlesticks, flowery blouses and porcelain horses inside into objects of mystery rather than assorted knick-knacks that would only swell the charity’s coffers by another pound or so if they sold. Back along the street Emma finished her phone call and re-entered the restaurant. Nobody came running out looking for Carl. He imagined the confusion, and then the panic inside as Emma realised that her handbag was gone; the fruitless searching under the table, the questioning of the waitress and anyone sitting nearby. Someone appeared in the doorway; he couldn’t tell whether it was Emma, her companion or the waitress, but whoever it was looked around and then went back inside.

Carl wanted to walk back past the restaurant again, partly to see what was happening inside and partly to establish himself as a harmless patron who was ambling up and down the street rather than a handbag-snatching thief, but he decided against it. There was no point in tempting fate, and he had what he needed. Instead he walked away from the restaurant, slowly so as not to attract any attention, stopping every now and then to check other shop windows. Just another shopper, idling the hours away.

Back at his car, he checked the contents of the purse. Fifty pounds in notes plus a small amount of change; twenty euros in small bills; three different credit and debit cards in the name of Emma Bradbury, several receipts, an old raffle ticket; three first-class stamps in a cardboard folder; a plastic bubble pack of aspirin; a Starbucks loyalty card; a condom in a creased foil
wrapper; and a handful of business cards. No warrant card; she probably kept that in her jacket. And there, at the front, was the driving licence: a lilac plastic card with Emma’s photograph on it alongside a tiny facsimile of her signature and, in print so small it was almost unreadable, her address.

Carl breathed a silent sigh of relief. He had been worried that the woman was living in a police section house somewhere in the region, which would have made a long-range shot tricky if not impossible, but the address appeared to be a block of flats in Brentford.

He drove back home carefully, not attracting any attention. He would have to spend some time in Brentford, he decided. Scope out the flats and any possible vantage points and lines of sight; establish escape routes; understand Emma’s pattern of life – what time she got up, what time she left for work, what time she got back, what she did at weekends. He would have to work it around his father, popping back at regular intervals to check on him, but Carl was willing to make the sacrifice if it guaranteed him a clean shot.

It was what he had done with Catherine Charnaud. He needed to know everything about her and the way she lived if he was going to successfully kill her. Not, he reminded himself, that killing her was the aim. It was a means. The aim was to get his family back together, and everything was subordinate to that. It was like hunting and killing animals; doing it for a reason, like because you needed food, or pelts for clothing, was okay. It was when you did it for fun that it became difficult to defend. That was why he’d eventually stopped following the Essex Hunt. He was just too uncomfortable about the pleasure the hunters took from the chase and the kill. When he killed, there was always a reason.

Twenty minutes from home he realised that his mother’s
place was only a short detour away. He made a quick mental judgement; his father was probably going to be okay for another half hour, and he would really like to know what was happening to the case she was working on. And he could do with using the toilet again. Damn this stupid illness!

He parked outside her house. Her car was there, so she was in. Probably working.

She seemed surprised to see him when she opened the door. She was wearing a long dress that clung to her figure, and her hair was loose across her shoulders and down her back. He got the impression she was waiting for someone else. The house smelled of tomatoes and garlic. Was she cooking for someone?

‘Sorry to barge in,’ he hurried, bladder suddenly feeling so full that it overrode all other concerns. ‘Can I use your toilet?’

‘Of course,’ she said, puzzled. As he pounded up the stairs, she called after him: ‘Carl! Is this another attack? Have you seen a doctor? You know you ought to be on medication if you’re having another attack.’

‘
I’m on medication!
’ he called down the stairs. The pressure in his groin was so heavy now that he could feel shooting pains along his forearms. He’d only been to the toilet half an hour before! How could he need to go again?

He slammed the bathroom door shut and yanked his trousers down, then pissed a long torrent of dark liquid into the toilet bowl. The sudden relief was almost more painful than the pressure had been.

Washing his hands after he had finished, he noticed that there were two toothbrushes by the sink. One red; one green. What was the deal? Was there someone else living in the house? He felt another pressure building, this time in his chest. In his heart. How could she just move someone else in like that to replace his father? His fingers clenched on the cold enamel of
the sink’s rim. He had to move quickly. He had to overload her with cases she couldn’t solve.

‘What are you taking?’ she inquired as he came down the stairs and entered the kitchen. She was chopping onions. A pan of pasta was bubbling on the cooker, and a glass of some clear liquid was sitting on the table beside her.

‘Haematin,’ he said. ‘Just started.’

‘Intravenous?’

‘Tablets. New form, apparently.’

‘Okay.’ She wouldn’t meet his gaze. ‘You can’t stay. I’m expecting company.’

‘I wasn’t going to. I have to get back. To Dad.’ No reaction. ‘How’s the case coming along?’ he asked.

Eleanor dismissed the question with a shake of her head. ‘I can’t talk about it; you know that. All of the details are confidential.’

‘I don’t want to know the details,’ he pressed. ‘They’re all over the news. I just wanted to know whether you were making any progress. I’m …’ He paused, artfully. ‘I’m interested in your work. I always have been.’

Her expression softened. She reached out to ruffle his hair. ‘It’s odd, but I keep forgetting how much you wanted to know what I was doing when you were young. I used to find you in your bedroom or down in the lounge, reading my textbooks, looking at my photographs. I did worry for a while that they would affect you, but you’ve grown up into a good boy. I’m proud of you, and of what you’re doing to look after your father. I know how much of a sacrifice you’re making.’

‘I miss you,’ he said simply. ‘I wish you’d come home.’

Eleanor shook her head. ‘It’s not going to happen, Carl; you know that. Your father and I … we’ve moved too far apart now. I know this sounds harsh, but he is not a husband any more.
He’s an invalid. There is nothing left for us to share – no conversations left to have, no new memories to build on. I have moved on, and he never will. He’s trapped by the accident, and by his illness.’ She sighed. ‘In many ways, we’ve all three of us switched roles. Nicholas was always a very traditional man. He wanted to be the breadwinner, while I was meant to be the one who looked after the family and you were the child who had to be cared for. Now I’m the breadwinner, you’re doing the caring and he’s the child. It’s not what he would have wanted.’

But it’s what you love, Carl thought, and immediately tried to call back the thought. But it was out there now, and he couldn’t help but think about it. His mother was successful and independent. She was in her element.

‘You never ask how he is,’ he blurted.

She winced. ‘Carl, I know how he is. He’s crippled, in mind and body, and he’s going to require constant care until he dies.’

He realised that he could use her discomfort at the direction the conversation had taken to manoeuvre her back to the subject he really wanted to talk about. He decided to come at it sideways. Looking across the kitchen, he noticed a business card on top of his mother’s handbag, which was sitting on the kitchen counter, beside the microwave oven. ‘I saw that policemen you met. Is that his card? He was on the news. It looked like he’d had an attack of some kind.’

His mother shook her head in irritation. ‘I don’t know what was happening there,’ she said. ‘One minute he was talking to me about the Catherine Charnaud case and the next he’s popping up on the news holding a press conference about a bombing. Is it too much to ask that he dedicates himself to one case at a time? And then he collapses. I was watching from an office on the second floor. I’ve not heard from him since, and where does that leave me?’

‘The two cases,’ Carl said carefully. ‘They’re not connected, are they?’

Eleanor frowned. ‘Why should they be?’

He wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or annoyed that his two most recent murders hadn’t been brought together. Still, there was plenty of time. ‘I just thought, if the same detective was in charge …’

‘That’s more to do with short staffing in the police force, I suspect.’

‘But even so,’ he pressed, ‘that must make it difficult for him to do a good job.’

‘That’s obviously why he needs a forensic clinical psychologist,’ Eleanor said. ‘To help out. And, given the nature of the killing, I think he is out of his depth. But I really can’t discuss it any more.’

‘I understand. I’d better get going, anyway,’ he said, turning to leave. ‘Dad will be worried.’

‘Of course. Thank you for popping around. Oh, can you just do me a favour before you go?’

He turned back, surprised. ‘Yes, of course.’

Eleanor walked across the kitchen and retrieved something from on top of the fridge. While her back was turned, Carl reached out and took the business card from on top of her handbag. He wasn’t sure why, but he thought it might come in useful, and at the very least it might make it more difficult for his mother to communicate with the policeman.

When she turned back she seemed almost girlish, and wouldn’t meet his eyes. ‘Could you help me put this necklace on? I haven’t worn it for a long time, and I can never manage the catch properly.’

She placed the necklace in his hand and turned around, running her hands beneath her abundant grey hair and
leaning forward, exposing her smooth neck.