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Authors: Jo Bannister

BOOK: Charisma
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‘It's what I do.' Donovan offered no further explanation.
‘Who did you tell about me?'
‘Away on!' Donovan exclaimed indignantly, moving to get up. He had his breath back and thought he could move faster than Brady could reach him.
He was wrong. He rose into the path of a blow that somehow in the dark found the side of his face and sent him tumbling over the soft furniture until he fetched up in a heap against the door. Before he could defend himself Brady was on him, cranking his head back by a handful of hair. He felt the cold clean prick of steel against his throat.
Brady hissed in his ear, ‘You want to try that again, Cal? I warned you, mess me about and I'll gut you. You may be God's gift to Castlemere CID but to me you're still a snotty-nosed kid
with an attitude problem. Feel that? That's disembowelled better men than you. You give me some answers, boy, or I'll vivisect you.'
The problem was, Donovan believed him. He didn't like yielding to coercion, it went against the grain with him, but it would be nothing short of silly to let Brady cut his throat. He growled, ‘My inspector, my chief inspector and Special Branch.'
Brady laughed out loud. He sat back, unknotting his fingers from Donovan's hair. ‘Special Branch? What did they have to say?'
Donovan no longer had any qualms about answering. He'd called Brady's bluff and found he wasn't bluffing. ‘They said you were dead. They said I was mistaken. Looks like it, doesn't it?'
‘What about your chief? Who did he believe?'
‘Special Branch.' With his face in the carpet Donovan still managed to convey disgust.
‘Good. Very good.' The hand that didn't hold the knife lay amiably on Donovan's shoulder. ‘Now, listen to me carefully. You were mistaken. Liam Brady is indeed dead, God rest his soul. So nobody held a knife to your throat and nobody asked you any questions. Tomorrow you can tell your inspector and your chief inspector that you were wrong, Joseph Bailie isn't the man you knew in Glencurran. They know I couldn't have killed that girl: if I'm not a terrorist either they'll lose interest in me. So will you. Won't you?'
Donovan felt the cord of his carpet pressed against his face, felt a cool spot of blood where the blade had pricked his skin, felt humiliation rise through him like a crimson tide. He gritted his teeth and said nothing.
The knife pricked behind his ear. ‘I mean it, boy. I don't want to turn round and see you ever again. What I do is none of your business. You keep out of my way. If I catch you nosing round again, I'll fix you. You've seen men knee-capped, Cal, you know that's a thing worth avoiding. Unless Castlemere CID has a positive discrimination policy about detectives on sticks, don't give me a reason to come back.'
‘All right, damn you,' shouted Donovan. His cheeks were hot, his eyes squeezed tight and he had to unclench his jaw to get the words out. Saying it cost him precious self-respect but there was no alternative that wouldn't cost him more. ‘All right.'
Too tired and too rattled to sleep well, Liz woke early. She lay still for a while, hands behind her head, watching the sunlight strengthen through the flimsy curtain, her mind stumbling over a confusion of images drawn from her work and her marriage. She was unhappy about both, in oddly similar ways.
There was too much happening under the surface, unstated and only dimly perceived, brewing up a turmoil that she should be dealing with and could not. Poor Charisma and her cut throat. Poor Brian, whom she both loved and liked yet who once again found himself playing second fiddle to her career. This move was to benefit her career. He'd taken a set-back in his own to accommodate it: he'd headed the art department at his last school, might have to wait some time for a similar chance at Castle High. But she'd come down here with her horse and a few other treasures, and left him to do everything else alone. She didn't know what else she could have done, but perhaps that was no answer. Perhaps it was in failing to see the alternatives that she was at fault.
She wondered if breakfast in bed would cheer him up. She didn't fool herself that it would put everything right but it was at least a gesture. But he was still deeply asleep, his face pensive against the pillow with a tiny frown between the eyebrows, and he wouldn't thank her for waking him yet. She got up to see to the horse instead, sliding her feet into the boots she kept behind the kitchen door. She made up a feed and a haynet in the little store beside the stable, then – fetchingly attired in green wellies and a nightshirt announcing ‘Policemen do it with conviction' – walked through the orchard to catch Polly.
The mare had acquired a little friend. Her nose was thrust deep into the high hedge enclosing her field and the tip of a small white nose peeped through from the other side.
If Liz had been here long enough to get her bearings she'd have known the pony had no business being there, that it wasn't another
field beyond the hedge but the lane round Belvedere Park. A forward-thinking council, an unusual thing in the history of Castlemere, had taken the Belvedere estate in settlement of taxes during the '50s and now used the house as a town hall and the grounds for public recreation. The lane was a bridleway.
Only when the white pony followed Polly up the hedge and appeared at the side of the house, saddled and with its reins dangling, did Liz realize it had gone AWOL. The likeliest explanation was that it had dumped its rider and set off at a spanking trot with its tail in the air to show the world how clever it was. Some hot and grubby little girl was probably pursuing it as fast as her jodhpur boots would carry her.
With Polly safe in the stable Liz went into the lane with a handful of feed. The pony was wary of her, standing on tiptoe with its neck arched and nostrils flared. But when it got the smell of food it threw caution to the wind and made a dive for it; Liz snatched the rein and the pony had the grace to acknowledge itself caught.
There was still no sign of the rider. But there were marks in the grass verge to show the pony had come from the park and not up the road so after a moment Liz, wishing she were more formally dressed, led it back the way it had come. Then she cast dignity aside, mounted – her feet hanging to the pony's knees – and let it do the work.
Rounding an overhanging rhododendron she saw a pair of polished boots and thought the decanted rider must be hurt, concussed perhaps. She dismounted quickly, tied the pony to the bush and pushed aside the lower branches to see what damage the girl had sustained.
When she saw, she stood frozen for perhaps half a minute. For another half minute she concentrated on what she was seeing, in case someone came by and disturbed the scene after she left. The gaping wound in the throat, ear to ear as before. The denim jacket pulled half-way down her back, imprisoning her arms. The putty-coloured jodhpurs pulled down to her booted calves. She was a child, not even as old as Charisma, and she was dead.
Then Liz flung herself back on the pony and galloped for home, shouting for Brian as she ran to the telephone.
 
Dr Crowe agreed with Liz, that the similarities between the two murders were significant. The throat wound in particular struck him as distinctive, almost as individual as a signature.
‘There are no hesitation marks. There was no doubt in his mind, either about what he wanted to do or how to do it. That should tell you something about him.'
Liz had pulled on some clothes, and a warmer coat than the season dictated, without making much impact on the deep inner chill occupying her. She'd seen many bodies in the course of her work, some of them nastier sights than this, but this was the first one she'd discovered. The shock of that was like cotton-wool in her brain, keeping the synapses from firing. ‘Like what?'
Shapiro saw what he was getting at. ‘This wasn't done on the spur of the moment – he didn't just happen to be here, see her and find himself overwhelmed by lust. It was planned. Look at the jacket: that's not the sort of thing you'd think of in the heat of a struggle. He knew exactly what he was doing, had it all worked out. He got her off the pony, pinned her arms, cut her throat, then went on his way. He could have done the whole thing in half a minute.'
Liz stared. ‘Not if he raped her he couldn't.'
‘But did he?' He turned to the pathologist as if he thought he knew the answer already.
The large young man shook his head. ‘No. There was no sexual assault beyond the disordering of the clothes.'
‘He was disturbed? Again?' Liz heard her voice soaring and steadied it. ‘At eight o'clock on a Tuesday morning in a country park? This is getting silly. Nobody's that unlucky.'
‘Nobody's that lucky, either,' grunted Shapiro. ‘What are you suggesting? – that he was disturbed in the act of rape, and killed the girl to ensure her silence, and not only did he get away without being seen but the person who disturbed him didn't notice the body? Or they noticed it and did nothing about it? And this happened not once but twice? Pull the other leg,' he suggested dourly, ‘it's got bells on.'
‘Then – what—?' Liz was still too shaken to follow his train of thought.
‘I don't think he ever intended to rape them. He meant to kill them. His kick isn't sexual, it's cerebral: he likes killing. He didn't start with Charisma: he's too handy with that knife, too sure of himself altogether. He's done this before. But not round here or I'd know. So he travels. Maybe he's a visitor, or maybe he's moved here since his last fix. But two in five days: that's quite a habit.'
‘You mean, there'll be more?'
Shapiro nodded mechanically. ‘Oh, yes. The man who did this isn't finished. He's going to want some more.'
‘Some more
what
?' demanded Liz shakily. ‘What does he get from killing young girls?'
‘Revenge,' said Dr Crowe unexpectedly. Finding the experts regarding him with interest – for motives are the stuff of detection not forensic pathology – he blushed and muttered, ‘I did a course once.'
Shapiro smiled inwardly. Young Crowe might remember what he'd been told on his course but he'd clearly forgotten who was speaking. ‘Revenge?' he said encouragingly.
‘Against women in general or one woman in particular. He can't handle relationships with women so he takes it out on young girls. He can't deal with rejection so he doesn't leave himself open to it: he only approaches them when he's in a position to dictate the outcome of the encounter.' He heard himself lecturing and stopped abruptly. ‘Anyway, that's what they said on the course,' he mumbled.
‘Indeed I did,' Shapiro agreed good-naturedly. He caught Liz's grin and returned it, glad she was recovering her sense of perspective.
What had happened was still shocking, but by degrees she was remembering how to deal with it, how to do her job. She had made the first moves on auto-pilot, out of habit, a machine running along well-worn tracks. Now her mind was catching up and she was beginning to think constructively again. She said, ‘Perhaps he doesn't rape them because he can't.'
Shapiro dragged his mind away from the exotic image of a homicidal eunuch and back to essentially pragmatic Castlemere. ‘Or maybe it's that, if he always intends to kill them, rape would be irrelevant. Look. Rape isn't about sex, is it, it's about power. It's men saying, “Look what I can do, that you aren't strong enough to stop me doing.” But ending a human life is the ultimate exercise of power. You can't top it. Maybe he isn't interested in rape because he wants to get straight to the main course, not fiddle around with the canapés first.'
He glanced at the sad, tumbled little body now decently covered by a blanket. ‘But in that case, why touch the clothes at all? Why does he want us to think he's a rapist when
he
thinks he's something better than that?'
‘To confuse us?'
‘Not for long. He knew what the medical examination would
show. Did he think we'd continue looking for a sex maniac in the continued absence of sex?'
‘It's as if he's playing with us – challenging us to discover the real reason he kills. And he can do that,' Liz went on, developing the thought even as she was speaking, ‘because there's a time limit of some kind. You're right, he doesn't live here, he may never have been here before and he doesn't plan on staying. If we don't find him soon he'll have moved on.'
Shapiro nodded slowly. ‘That fits. We know he's an arrogant man – to kill twice in five days, both times in public places, the second time in broad daylight. That isn't need or compulsion, it's doing what he wants to do because he thinks no one can stop him. He thinks he can outsmart us. Not necessarily for ever, just for long enough.'
Liz was thinking back. ‘If he's so confident, why the change of heart about disposing of Charisma? We assumed that he panicked and had to go back later to tidy up. But this time he hardly troubled to hide the body.'
Stuck for an answer, Shapiro only shook his head.
Beyond the screens, beyond the barrier which had been erected at the end of the lane, a car pulled up and a door slammed. Liz said, ‘I've had someone ringing round the local stables, trying to get an identification on her. Maybe that's it now.'
It was a dark green saloon, discreetly prosperous, and the man hurrying towards them wore a business suit and a stunned expression. A constable stopped him at the barrier. The man tried to shake free but the policeman held him back, respectful but unyielding.
‘The father?' murmured Liz, and Shapiro gave a fractional nod. ‘Oh, God,' she sighed.
‘Are we finished with her?' asked Shapiro. ‘Photographs? Scenes of Crime? You, Dr Crowe?' The pathologist inclined his head in assent. ‘Then tidy her up a bit, would you? I can't ask him to wait till we get her to the morgue to find out whether his daughter's dead but we don't have to show her to him like this.' He moved out from behind the screens.
Despite the suit and the dark car he was only a young man. Words spilled from him anxiously as Shapiro approached. ‘Alice? Is that my daughter? I was at the stables – she forgot her schoolbag – and somebody called and said there'd been an accident. A girl on a white pony. Is it Alice? Is she hurt?'
Shapiro introduced himself. ‘It's Mr Elton, isn't it? – of Elton & Farrow, the accountants?'
The man ran an agitated hand through his hair. ‘Yes, I'm Sam Elton. For God's sake – is it Alice? Is she going to be all right? That damn pony—!'
‘How old's your daughter, Mr Elton?' Partly he needed the information, partly he was giving Crowe time to tidy up behind the screen.
‘She's thirteen. She has blonde hair and blue eyes, she was wearing a denim jacket, a checked shirt and jodhs, and she was going to ride round the park then catch the bus to school. I left her at the stables – Mrs Skinner's in Cobham Lane – at seven-thirty. When I got to the office I found her bag in the car. So I drove back, and while I was with Mrs Skinner someone phoned – a policeman, someone – and said there'd been an accident. For pity's sake, Chief Inspector!' His voice cracked. ‘Is it my daughter?'
Shapiro took his elbow and guided him through the barrier. ‘I'm not sure, Mr Elton. From your description it could be. In a minute I'll ask you to look at her and tell us. But first, I'm very sorry to have to tell you that the girl is dead.'
The blood drained from Sam Elton's face. His mouth opened and closed twice, then his knees buckled and he went down.

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