Cold Shoulder (18 page)

Lorraine showered and combed the flecks of paint out of her hair. It was good to feel so tired — it meant she didn’t have to think over what had happened during the day. She felt stiff from painting, and her back ached, but when she flopped onto the sofa she was too tired even to work out what she was going to do the following morning. She had a bus schedule, a street map of Santa Monica; she had even decided what she should wear. The two dolls were packed in a carrier bag: one blonde the other dark-haired. She didn’t think about the future, about having to find alternative work. Tomorrow, seeing her daughters, was all that mattered.

R
OSIE WOKE up with a start, and then flopped back. Lorraine was in the shower. She squinted at the alarm clock: half past eight. She couldn’t go back to sleep, so she got up and went into the freshly painted main room. Lorraine’s bedding was neatly folded, and a pot of coffee was on the stove. Rosie toasted some muffins, then went out to see if the Sunday papers had arrived.

Lorraine emerged, made up and in her new blouse and the safari suit. She also wore the high-heeled slingbacks and skin-tone tights. She no longer needed to raid Rosie’s make-up or jewellery box, as she had bought her own cosmetics and a pair of fake pearl earrings.

Rosie gaped, and then sniffed. ‘My God, you look good and you smell terrific. Are you working today?’

‘Yeah, there’s a big art dealer coming so I’ve got to open the gallery early. I’m sorry if I woke you.’

‘No problem. You want a muffin… coffee?’

‘No thanks, I’ve had breakfast. I’m off now.’

Jake arrived about an hour later. Rosie was still reading the papers. ‘Morning. It’s baking out already. Where’s Lorraine?’

‘Gone to the gallery. You want some coffee and muffins?’

‘Wouldn’t say no.’

Rosie bustled around getting him a cup and plate, then sat and ate another muffin, washing it down with more coffee. She divided up the paper and they sat opposite each other, reading.

‘They found another body,’ said Jake. ‘Prostitute. Reckon she was killed the same way couple months back, this time in Santa Monica.’

Rosie slapped down the paper. She looked at Jake. ‘She’s lied. She’s not gone to that gallery, she’s gone to see her kids in Santa Monica. She’s so secretive… but I know she’s traced them ’cos I saw the address on a note by the telephone and I know she’s gone because she’s taken the dolls she bought. Now why does she lie?’

‘That’s maybe just the way she is,’ said Jake, folding his paper. ‘Why don’t we surprise her? Let’s get the kitchen started.’

Rosie pulled a face. ‘I was hopin’ you’d forget all about it, I hate painting, it gives me a backache, and then my arms ache from the brushes. Even Walter’s done a bunk — paint gets to cats, you know.’ She glared at the bedroom door. ‘This is bloody Sunday morning, for chrissakes, a day of rest!’

Jake began to clear the kitchen. It was so small it wouldn’t take long, and then maybe they could do the bedroom, really surprise Lorraine.

Rooney was sweating. Ten o’clock and it was way up in the seventies. He hated losing his Sunday: there was nothing he liked better than sitting in the yard with the papers. He had them all stuffed under his arm as he plodded along the corridors towards his office. He saw Bean up ahead with a balding man.

‘Morning, Captain.’

Rooney glowered, and waited for Bean to join him. ‘That’s not him, is it?’

‘Yep, he’s been working from home, seems a nice guy, real low key.’

Rooney snorted, and together they went into his office. Andrew Fellows was younger than Rooney had first thought. Prematurely bald, his rather handsome face was marred by a pair of enormous ears that constantly caught the attention — they moved up and down when he talked. The more animated he became, as Rooney was to discover, the more the ears worked overtime — and Professor Fellows was an animated man. He used his hands like a conductor, and his trim body in its pristine white T-shirt and tight jeans seemed incapable of staying still for a second. Rooney took him into the ‘Hammer Killings’ incident room. Photographs of all the victims had been posted up on the walls and rows of computers installed. He looked up expectantly at Fellows. ‘So, you come up with anything for us?’

Fellows nodded, his ears waved, and he opened a worn leather briefcase. ‘I’ve spent three days studying all the evidence to date, and I’ve tried to assimilate the most important aspects so we can cut through the dross. Much of the evidence you gave me was of no use, so I concentrated on this detailed description apparently given by an anonymous caller…’

He began to pace up and down. “The caller gave a concise and exceptionally clear picture of the assailant — apart from his actual size…’ Rooney sighed, looked at Bean and raised his eyes to the ceiling. Fellows flapped his hands. ‘…leading me to believe she had not met the man before. He was in the car when he picked her up, so she may have been a stranger to him. Let’s give him a name rather than have to keep calling him the assailant or killer. Why not — for want of better — “the Teacher”…’ Fellows laughed. ‘Sorry, it’s just that the description fits an old college professor I had.’ Rooney gave a faint grimace that was supposed to be a smile.

Fellows moved to the row of victims’ faces. ‘Now, we’re led to believe that all these women and Norman Hastings were killed by the Teacher — and this woman, Helen Murphy—’ Fellows pointed to the wrong picture, and Bean corrected him. ‘Ah, sorry, the body of Helen Murphy was found in the trunk of a car, so we are to presume the Teacher first attempted to kill her, failed, then traced her once more, or knew where she lived or the area she worked, whatever, and killed her, using the same method, claw hammer blows. Am I right so far?’

Rooney sighed. ‘Yes, but, frankly, you’re wasting time. What we need to know — what
I
need to know — is what sort of man is this bastard?’

‘That’s obvious. You’ve been given a remarkably clear description, but don’t get me off track. Something’s wrong, you see. When I went over the information regarding Helen Murphy, I was confused.’

Rooney coughed. ‘What
we
got from that description, Professor, was that he’s probably got a good income, a good job and—’

‘Yes, yes, but let me get round to that. What’s bothering me, as it doesn’t make any logical sense, is, if a woman is badly beaten — as witnessed by, er, that couple, Mr and Mrs Summers — and, assuming that it was the same woman who subsequently gave you the killer’s description — going so far as to report the incident to the police, describing the hammer — would she go with him again? He had to pick her up again, correct? Now, she was found in a car that had been left unattended, a wrecked vehicle, abandoned for possibly two or three months. Not like any of the other vehicles used. All of those were reported stolen shortly before the crime was committed. So that means our Teacher had to pick her up in another vehicle, kill her, and then dump the body. So Helen Murphy’s murder does
not
follow the same pattern as the others.’

Rooney frowned. He’d given this a lot of thought himself and was about to say as much when Fellows continued, pointing at Bean. ‘Whoever took the call said the woman was precise, articulate, and spoke fast in an almost clipped tone. She refused to give any details about herself, and they were unable even to ask her name because she continued to talk so quickly, but they jotted down almost the entire conversation, and then she hung up. Yes?’

Bean nodded. He felt almost guilty, as if he’d done something wrong, because Fellows was glaring at him.

‘You took statements regarding the victim Helen Murphy, correct?’

‘Yes,’ Bean said, ‘but I didn’t do them all, a few of the statements were taken by—’

Fellows interrupted, his arms swinging like windmill sails, ‘Who was Helen Murphy? Previously Helena, Helena Dubjeck, an alcoholic, drug abuser, persistent brawler, and… I can’t recall all her previous charges. And she had false teeth. Also, according to the pathologist, a possible malformation of her upper lip, which you can even see on her photograph…’ He paused. Rooney was rising slowly to his feet, when the windmill arms waved again. ‘One moment. Didn’t your anonymous caller say that the assailant, our Mr Teacher, was possibly around one hundred and eighty pounds? Odd, don’t you think? Not “fat” or “thin, skinny, well-built” — but she gave you his possible weight? Doesn’t that strike you as an odd thing for this kind of woman, Helen Murphy, to say? And you make
no
allowance for the fact that she might have had a speech defect, might even have had — and you must ask those who knew her — the trace of a foreign accent. She was not born in America, was she?’

Fellows ran his hand over his bald head then pulled at one of his ears. ‘Do you see what I’m getting at? I would say that whoever made that call describing her attacker was someone familiar with police procedure, familiar with short-cutting a description. Am I right? It was
not
made by Helen Murphy.’

Rooney sat back, transfixed by the information that Fellows spouted out like bullets.

Fellows faced the wall lined with photos. ‘These women were all prostitutes, but none of them had been penetrated at the time of death. No sexual intercourse took place. So why did he pick them up? What was he wanting them to do? I doubt he wanted intercourse — perhaps he wanted simulated sex, or to be jerked off. Or I would say he has a sexual problem, probably impotence. They get into his car or stolen vehicle, he drives them to some location. If they are bending over his groin, then it’s simple for him to strike the back of the head. Again, go back to Mr and Mrs Summers. The woman they saw was bleeding badly, but also bleeding from her mouth. Correct?’

Rooney nodded. ‘She also said she’d bitten the man in the neck.’

‘But she also said she’d broken the skin,
his
skin, I presume, so the blood on her mouth could easily have been his blood, not her own. She was facing the Summerses who saw no wounds to her face apart from the bloody mouth — but the back of her head was bleeding. Nevertheless she was quite capable of flagging down a cab, giving an address.
Now
, would that woman, just a few days later, go with the same man again? And be caught the same way, yet again, with a hammer blow to the back of her head? Unless she knew him or was an accomplice to the other killings I doubt it. If she was an accomplice and made that call, then she could or would be arrested.’

Rooney felt inadequate. This big-eared windmill of a man, after just a few days’ thumbing through their files, was throwing out mind-blowing stuff. He half expected Fellows to have another pull at his ears and then name the killer. But Fellows had become silent, and was sitting staring down at his sneakers.

‘He is a sick man, a tormented man, deeply disturbed, and I think he has killed regularly. I don’t think he’s been put away or locked up. On the contrary, he’s walking around confident,
very
confident, because he’s gotten away with it for years. Now, with this press coverage, will it make him stop killing? Possibly. I hope so. But it may make him irrational. You see, he’ll want to prove, even more, just how clever he is. You won’t catch him unless he makes mistakes. On the other hand, the press coverage could also make him stop, for a while anyhow. But he won’t be able to stop completely, because, I would say, these murders are the only way he’s able to get sexual gratification.’

Fellows got up again and marched up and down the wall of victims, peering at the faces, turning to retrace his footsteps. ‘He must be in full employment, possibly some kind of travelling sales executive. He’s moving around a lot of areas. He could even be a car salesman — he certainly knows about cars and how to steal them. I would say he might have a garage, or a storage place where these cars can be hidden. I doubt if he has a family — no wife or children. This man has a hatred of older women, a terrible hatred—’

Rooney interjected to ask about Angela Hollow. Fellows took a deep breath. ‘Yes. She was young — and the most recent victim? Prostitute, working the streets the night she was killed?’ He looked at the picture of Holly. ‘Find out if, on the night she was killed, any other girl or woman was next to her. Maybe Holly crossed to him when he was really after another girl close by, it’s possible. Because I have to admit she makes my theory wobble, as she’s not in the same category as the others. This worries me…’

He tapped the picture of Norman Hastings. ‘There’s something odd about him, too, if we talk it through. He leaves his car, I can’t recall the exact location, our Teacher steals it, or is even in the process of stealing it, and is caught red-handed. Hastings calls out, may even try and stop Teacher so, in that case, why the wound to the back of his head like the women? Unless Hastings was actually opening his car, Teacher, ready for the kill, simply walks up and strikes him?’

Rooney hitched up his pants. ‘He went to the bank and—’

Fellows wafted his hand. ‘That’s immaterial — Teacher’s not after money, he even left the victims’ jewellery on their bodies. No, he’s not after something as mundane as that, he’s not a robber. He’s a sex killer, he wants sexual gratification, nothing more.’

Rooney waited, almost afraid to interrupt. Fellows sighed, and sat down, looking at the picture of Hastings. ‘It’s possible they knew each other. I could be wrong, and nothing in all the reports gives any indication, other than that Hastings was an unfortunate man who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. What is not clear is what was that place? Outside his bank? In a car park? No one has come forward to say they saw Norman Hastings on the day of his death, so where did it happen? We don’t know.’

Fellows went silent, chewing at his lower lip before he returned to the photo wall, to the graphs and memos. He stared at the photographs of the vehicles in which the dead women had been found. A Lincoln Continental, a Chrysler Le Baron, a Saab, a Mercedes, an Eldorado Cadillac — the latter the burned-out wreck where Helen Murphy had been found. Then he looked over the charts of the locations. Beverly Center on Melrose, Shopping Mall Van Nuys, West Hollywood, Santa Monica Boulevard, Century City and lastly the Santa Monica shopping centre. He stood for at least three minutes, his eyes roaming the photographs, the locations. There had to be a link between them, a pattern beyond the method of the murder itself. He needed to know as near as possible the times of, one, when Helen Murphy was killed, two, when the attack on the woman in the Van Nuys shopping mall occurred — the one they had wrongly presumed was Helen Murphy — and, three, Holly’s murder. The three were of interest because Holly’s was the last, the failed murder attempt would have been between the last two.