Chimera (18 page)

Rosa had sat back down on the edge of the bed and was biting her nails. She looked up in surprise as Kate came in.

Kate held out the paper with its front page photograph. “Is this the bald man you saw with Stelios Costa?” she asked, puffing slightly.

Rosa looked at the spotted, creased paper for a long time, frowning slightly. Then she nodded, a quick bob of her dark head.

“You’re sure?” persisted Kate.

“Yes, it was him.”

“Good girl.” Kate turned to go, anxious not to delay even for a moment. Then, at the cell door, she turned round. “Rosa, for what it’s worth, I think you’re an extremely brave person. You really are.”

Rosa finally smiled, a little wanly. Kate smiled back in response and then she was out the door and across the floor to the stairs, running as fast as her tired legs would carry her.

Olbeck was back in his office, thank God. Kate almost fell through the doorway, still clutching her paper. He looked up, surprised. “What’s up?”

“I’ll tell you in the car,” said Kate. “We need to go. I’ll drive.”

Chapter Twenty Three

They approached the house just as the sun was starting to set. The reddish light blazed off the autumn colours of the trees as they drove slowly down the winding driveway, gradually descending into the hollow of the valley. The beautiful, lonely house was before them. It had a blank, closed-in look, as if nobody lived there.

Kate parked the car and they rang the doorbell. Kate was expecting the small, dark-haired housekeeper to answer the door, but nobody came. She looked at Olbeck, raising her eyebrows.

“Try again,” he said. “This house is so massive, it might take ages to get to the door.”

Kate rang the bell again and knocked for good measure. There was no answer. “Well…” she said, stepping back a little. “Do we force it?”

As she spoke, Olbeck tried the door handle. It moved easily in his grasp. “It’s open.”

They stepped into the house, announcing their presence in muted shouts. Kate expected to see either the housekeeper or Michael Dekker himself appear, alarmed at their sudden entrance, but again, nobody came. The house felt empty. Their footsteps sounded inordinately loud as they crossed the marble floor of the hallway and passed into the rooms beyond.

Kate walked towards the orangery at the back of the house, merely to ascertain that it was empty. But seated in the same chair as he’d been sat in when she’d visited before was Michael Dekker. For one frozen moment, she thought he was dead – he was so silent and still, staring out at the view beyond the window with glassy eyes. She and Olbeck stopped and she almost jumped when Dekker spoke.

“Come in, Detective Sergeant. Do sit down.”

Kate and Olbeck remained standing, watching Dekker, who hadn’t taken his gaze from the window. He looked diminished; smaller, somehow, than he had at their last meeting. There were grey shadows beneath his pale blue eyes. His hands were folded together in his lap and his legs were tucked under a tartan blanket.

“Won’t you sit down, officers?”

“Do you know why we’re here, sir?” asked Olbeck.

At last Dekker moved his gaze to look at them. He smiled a little. “I saw on the news you’d arrested Stelios Costa. I guessed it wouldn’t be long before you paid me a visit.”

“We need you to accompany us to the station, Mr. Dekker.”

Dekker smiled again. “Would you mind if we spoke here, just for now?” He looked at them directly again. “I’ll tell you everything again later, at the station. I’ve got nothing to hold back now. But if we could talk here…?”

Olbeck hesitated. Then he nodded. “Very well, Mr. Dekker.” Kate and he moved further into the room as he spoke the words of the caution. Dekker said nothing for a moment, but Kate saw him close his eyes briefly as the charge of murder was mentioned. Then he opened them again and an air of calm resignation touched his features.

Kate and Olbeck seated themselves in the two armchairs that faced Michael Dekker’s seat. He continued to look past them, staring into the distance. Once they had settled themselves, he turned his gaze back to their faces.

“Do you wish to have legal representation?” asked Kate. Something about his stillness, his aura of fatalism, was making her faintly uneasy, without her being able to put a finger on exactly what it was.

Dekker shook his head. “Not just now. Perhaps later.”

“What did you want to tell us, Mr. Dekker?” asked Olbeck.

“Everything,” said Dekker, simply. “Everything. I’ll start by telling you about my health. About a year ago, I was diagnosed with an inoperable, incurable cancer.” He tapped the side of his bald head. “Up here. The doctor told me that I had only months to live.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Olbeck said, frowning a little.

“It’s probably why I decided to finally act,” said Dekker. Then he shook his head, as if dislodging the thought. “No, no it’s not. I know why I decided.” He shifted a little in his chair, unclasping his hands. “I saw Trixie Arlen earlier this year. I think I told you so before. I almost bumped into her, but as it happens, she didn’t see me. It was the same day as the anniversary of David’s death. I couldn’t have had a clearer sign than that.”

“A sign to do what?” asked Kate gently.

Dekker looked at her in surprise. “To kill her, of course. To kill her. I should have done it years ago.”

“You admit to killing Trixie Arlen,” Olbeck said. “Is that right? Why?”

Dekker looked at him as though he were stupid. “Do you have children, Detective Inspector?”

Olbeck shifted a little in his seat. “Not yet.”

Don’t ask me
, prayed Kate. But Dekker’s attention, for the moment, was entirely on her partner.

“I think if you had children you might understand. Trixie Arlen was not the golden girl, the nation’s sweetheart that she liked to be seen as. She was a monster.”

Dekker’s gaze had somehow narrowed and sharpened. Despite his illness, for a moment, he pulsated with real energy. It was hate, Kate realised. Strong enough to kill.

Seeing that the detectives weren’t going to say anything, Dekker continued. “Trixie Arlen killed my boy. She murdered him as surely as if she plunged a knife into his heart. She killed her first husband too, and the baby that she lost. All of them.”

For the first time, Kate began to doubt his sanity. She looked anxiously over at Olbeck but he was staring at Dekker steadily.

Dekker carried on speaking. “I can see you don’t believe me. Trixie’s own mythology was quite seamless. Of course, she told everyone that her first husband, Ivo Wright, was the one with the drug problem. Would you believe me if I told you that it was Trixie who introduced
him
to drugs? Within a year of meeting her, he was a hopeless drug addict. She did the same to David.”

Kate didn’t want to interrupt him but she couldn’t quite let that go. “Don’t you believe that people make their own choices, Mr. Dekker? Didn’t your son decide to take heroin of his own free will?”

Dekker look at her, smiling gently. “Addicts don’t have free will, Detective Sergeant. The first time David took heroin was the start of his addiction. He didn’t realise it then, of course. Trixie lied to him, as she lied to everyone else. She lied to the entire country about who she was.”

This time, Kate didn’t speak. She realised that further interruptions would be futile. This man had a story he wanted to tell, probably a story that he’d wanted to tell for a long time. All she and Olbeck had to do was listen.

“Everyone was so sorry for her,” Dekker was saying. His mouth twisted a little. “The poor young widow who then lost her baby. You know
why
she lost the baby? She was still taking drugs, of course. She cared so little about the life of her unborn child that she continued to take drugs during the pregnancy and then, of course, the baby died.”

“How do you know this, Mr. Dekker?” Kate hadn’t wanted to interrupt but she couldn’t help herself.

“David,” said Dekker, simply. “David told me everything the night before he died. After he told me, he went home and injected himself with an enormous quantity of heroin. I think he wanted to die. His life, by then, was such a source of misery to him that I think he didn’t want to carry on.”

There was a moment’s silence. Dekker raised one trembling hand to his eyes and brushed away what could have been a tear.

He started to speak again. “I don’t know why I didn’t kill her the second I realised what she was. When David died I was – I was so – I couldn’t function. I could barely live, let alone plan. So…so time went on and Trixie still lived, and I went on doing what I did, but I never forgot, you see. You never forget. They say time heals everything but that is nothing but a lie, I’m afraid. You never forget. Every morning on waking – every morning – I have a couple of seconds of pure happiness, did you know that, Detective? Just a few seconds before I remember, and then it’s like reliving the day he died, over and over again.”

Dekker’s voice had grown hoarse. He stopped speaking for a moment, clearing his throat, before he began again. “When I saw Trixie that day, I knew I had to act. At first I thought of killing her myself. I wanted to do it. I wanted to see the fear on her face. But when I began to think about it, I realised I could do society more than one service. I could remove Trixie Arlen from the face of this Earth and in doing so, get rid of as many drug addicts as I could at the same time. Let Trixie kill herself as I knew she would one day. There was as certain poetic justice in it that appealed to me.”

Again, he stopped speaking. After a moment, Olbeck leaned forward. “It was you who organised for a shipment of heroin to be contaminated with Sulatenil?”

Dekker nodded. When he spoke, he sounded almost proud. “When you’re rich, Detective Inspector, you can do pretty much anything. You can arrange for chemists and manufacturing laboratories and whatever ingredients that you need. All you need is money. Did you know that?”

“No,” said Olbeck. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Well,” said Dekker. “Now you do.”

Outside, the sun had almost set. Shadows were creeping across the marble-tiled floor of the conservatory, entwining Dekker’s blanketed feet in darkness. Kate could see the blood-red clouds on the horizon as the last of the daylight began to slip away.

Dekker was still speaking. “I went to Stelios because I knew he was exactly the kind of man who would do as I asked. He was surprised, of course. I think he thought when I first made the appointment that I wanted to do something with his legitimate business interests.” Dekker chuckled. “He soon came round to the idea, though. He could see the profit in it. And no doubt he also thought it would also make excellent blackmail material if it ever came to that.”

“Did he realise that you’d contaminated the heroin with Sulatenil?”

Dekker looked surprised. “Of course not. Where would be the profit in that for him? No, Stelios thought he was distributing heroin in the ‘normal’ way. I knew he would be able to ensure that Trixie Arlen was given the drugs that would kill her, without realising what he was doing.” He was quiet for a moment. “Of course, when people began dying, he realised something was wrong. But by that time, I’d achieved what I set out to do. I didn’t care much about the rest of it anymore.” He paused again and then said, “I don’t care anymore. I can’t really bring myself to care that much about anything.”

Olbeck and Kate glanced at each other. They waited for Dekker to go on speaking but it seemed that he’d come to the end of his confession. The silence stretched on and on, as the room gradually darkened.

Eventually Olbeck stood up. “Mr. Dekker, you’ll have to accompany us to the station now.”

Smiling again, Dekker shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“It’s not a request, sir.”

Dekker was still smiling. “I won’t be going anywhere.”

“You—”Olbeck began, but that was all he had time to say. Dekker’s hand slipped down to the blanket on his lap. It delved beneath the tartan fabric and came up swiftly, holding something. For a frozen moment, Kate thought it was a gun and she was on her feet before she realised it was a syringe. Before she could say or do anything, Dekker had plunged the needle into his thigh, stabbing himself through the blanket, and depressed the plunger.

Rosa had said it had taken Trixie Arlen a minute to die. Michael Dekker didn’t even have that long. In the twenty seconds it took Kate and Olbeck to reach him, to pull the syringe from his leg, a spurt of blood coming with it, he was dead. He sagged against the back of the sofa, his head rolling to one side.

Olbeck dropped the syringe and it fell to the hard floor, rolling away beneath the sofa. Kate stood trembling, looking down at Dekker’s blue-tinged mouth and half-open eyes.

“Oh God,” was all that Olbeck said, in a low, aghast tone. Kate said nothing but she groped for his hand as the last of the sunlight finally slipped below the horizon.

Chapter Twenty Four

“Wow, you look like shit,” was Theo’s heartening remark as Kate flopped into her chair the next morning.

“Gee, thanks. Hardly surprising is it?” countered Kate. She put her handbag under the desk, noticing a brown envelope on her desk as she straightened up. Frowning, she got up to make herself and Theo a coffee.

“Thanks,” said Theo, as she handed over a brimming cup. “You know we charged Stelios Costa with everything we could throw at him?”

“I heard,” said Kate. “Fantastic. Let’s just hope we make it through to the trial.”

“Well, yeah.” The two of them were silent for a moment, remembering the other times they thought they’d had the Costa brothers firmly in their sights only for them to slip away under the instruction of their highly paid and ruthless legal representation. Theo brightened a little. “Still, fairly watertight case, this time round. Particularly if it really is true that Maria Todesco is dead.”

Kate yawned. “Do we have any evidence of that? They might have just moved her to another brothel.”

“Let’s hope so,” said Theo. “Let’s really hope so.”

There was a short silence. Kate looked at the pile of reports that needed attention, squared her shoulders and pulled the first one towards her.

“So, did Dekker really just kill himself right before your eyes?” Theo asked suddenly, leaning over the desk.

Kate flinched. “Can we not talk about it right this second, thanks?”

“But did he?”

“Yes. And there will probably be hell to pay. That’s why I don’t want to talk about it. Okay?”

Theo said nothing. Instead, he sauntered round to Kate’s side of the desk and gave her cheek a hearty smacking kiss. She reared back in amazement. “What the hell are you doing?”

“You’ll be all right,” Theo said, grinning. “You’ll be just fine.”

He wandered off, whistling a little tune. Kate looked after him with raised eyebrows. Then, shaking her head and smiling despite herself, she turned back to her desk.

She sipped her coffee and picked up the brown envelope, turning it over in her fingers. She had a nasty feeling she knew what was inside it. In an act of cowardice unlike her, she opened her desk drawer and dropped the envelope inside it, shutting it out of sight.

The day passed slowly in a blur of paperwork, phone calls and many cups of coffee. Towards the end of the day, Kate found her gaze being drawn back to the closed desk drawer. She tried to ignore it, turning her attention to the final report that she’d planned for the day. Once that was signed and complete Kate sat back, tapping her pen against her jaw. Leave it for today, she told herself. Wait until you’re not quite so knackered and burned out. She switched off her computer and stretched, easing the ache in her neck. Then, in a rush, she pulled open the drawer, yanked out the brown envelope and quickly slit the back of it with a trembling finger.

She read the first line
we regret to inform you that in your recent examinations for the position of Detective Inspector…
and slumped back in her chair, closing her eyes. Bitter regret surged up her throat. If she’d just worked harder, studied harder, spent more time actually focusing on passing the exam… Kate leant forward, pressing her fingers into her eye sockets, dangerously near to tears. What an
idiot
. She’d applied for the exams in such confidence –
I’ll breeze through them
– and to realise that she had, in fact, failed was a bitter pill to swallow.

She soberly folded the letter back into its envelope, not wanting to read it here in the office, and put it away in her handbag. Looking up, she realised she was alone in the office – just as well, as she felt as if she were about to burst into tears at any moment – but at the same time, she felt a sharp surge of loneliness. Slowly, she got up, pulling on her coat.

As she turned to leave, Kate’s gaze fell on the neat pile of reports she’d completed during the day. She remembered Rosa, so scared but so determined to do what was right. She thought about all the women who’d been in that stinking house, and what their lives must have been like. Really, when you thought of it like that, what did a silly exam really matter? You’re good at your job, Kate, she told herself. You can retake them. In the grand scheme of things, it
really doesn’t matter
.

Feeling a little more cheered, she marched out of the station and stopped on the top steps. There, standing side by side, with their hands in their pockets were Olbeck and Jeff. They looked up at her and smiled a greeting.

“Were you waiting for me?” Kate asked, feeling a burst of happiness at the thought.

“Who else?” said Olbeck. He extended his arm as Kate came down the steps and she took it, hooking her other arm under Jeff’s. “We thought we’d go for tea and cake. We need to talk
weddings
.”

“Oh God,” said Kate. “That sounds ominous.”

“You’re our best woman, darling,” said Jeff as they began to walk down the street. “You can’t get out of it now.”

Kate squeezed his arm. “I know, I’m joking. I’m thrilled.”  They walked a few more steps while she wondered whether to say anything and decided that yes, she would. What were best friends for, if not to listen to your troubles? “I failed my exams.”

“Oh bugger,” Jeff said, just as Olbeck said over the top of him.

“That’s a shame but don’t worry about it, just retake them. You’ll ace them next time.”

“Yes,” said Kate stoutly. “I’m sure I will.”

Their six feet shuffled through a rustling pile of autumn leaves. The daylight was fading and a chill wind made them all huddle into one another as they walked. Kate could feel the warmth of Olbeck and Jeff on either side of her and she sighed with deep thankfulness that despite everything else, she still had her friends. That was all you needed, really, wasn’t it? When you got right down to it. That was all that really mattered.

They turned the corner of the street and Kate could see the welcoming lights of the tea room up ahead.

“Come on,” she said, “I’m buying. It’s the least I can do.”

“Nice one,” said Olbeck and they walked up the steps of the tea room together.

THE END