Core of Evil (11 page)

Slowly, and with increasing tiredness, Daisy turned and wandered along the line of hotels and guest houses. The first few looked as if they were designed to catch the first people off the train: bland, plastic affairs with no character and nothing to recommend them apart from their proximity to the station and
the beach. The next one was a large public house with rooms above the bar: too noisy, she decided. And then, a little way on, she discovered a small Edwardian frontage, four storeys high, which advertised itself as
The Leyston Arms Hotel
. She stood for a few moments, looking it over. The windows were clean, and the front steps were spotless.

Someone in there knew about soda crystals, she thought.

Decision made, she walked purposefully up the steps and into the foyer. The carpet had been freshly vacuumed, and she could smell furniture polish in the air. These were all good signs. The man behind the front desk was impeccably dressed in dark trousers, white shirt and maroon tie. The twin folds down the front of his shirt indicated that either this was the first time he had worn it or he had his cleaning and ironing done professionally, but she could forgive him that by the way he smiled at her.

‘Good afternoon, madam. Can I help you?’

‘Do you, by any chance, have a room?’ she said, smiling back.

‘We do,’ he said. ‘How many nights will you be staying?’

She thought for a moment. ‘It might be up to a week. Would that be all right?’

‘Let me check.’ He looked down and consulted what Daisy suspected was a computer screen hidden below the level of the desk. Computers were
everywhere, these days. How had the world managed to function without them?

‘We have a room overlooking the beach, or one at the back of the hotel,’ he said eventually. ‘They’re both the same price.’ His eyes flickered to a velvet-covered pegboard, the same colour as his tie, which hung to one side. On it were displayed the prices for single rooms, twin rooms, double rooms, family rooms and for breakfast. Daisy took the information in for a moment, suspecting that the man was already wondering, based on her age and her clothes, whether she had enough money to pay for the room.

‘Is there any difference between them?’ she asked.

‘The one at the back of the hotel gets less traffic noise, especially in the mornings, but it doesn’t have quite the same view,’ he said, smiling again.

‘Then I’ll take the room at the front.’

He nodded. ‘May I take a credit card?’

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I don’t have a credit card.’ Forestalling his surprised reaction, she quickly added, ‘I don’t like them. I’ve never needed one, and I don’t see why I should start now.’

He was momentarily nonplussed. ‘We normally require some form of … surety,’ he said eventually.

‘Could I pay for two days in advance?’

He thought for a moment. ‘That will be fine,’ he said. ‘If you could fill out this form for us …’ He reached down under the counter and retrieved a clipboard with several pre-printed forms attached to
it. Sliding it around so that she could see it properly, he added, ‘Just put down your name and address – I’ll do the rest.’

A pen was attached to the top of the clipboard by a length of chain. Taking it gingerly, Daisy placed the tip of the pen against the paper and started to write her name.

And realised with horror that she couldn’t remember what it was.

Who was this woman, standing in the hotel foyer? Daisy Wilson? Violet Chambers? Jane Winterbottom? Alice Connell? How did she sign her name: simply, ornately or in copperplate handwriting? Her mind whirled with the flotsam and jetsam of too many abandoned lives. She was paralysed with indecision. Her hand trembled, making small patterns on the form.

‘Is everything all right, madam?’

She took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry – it’s been a long day.’

Work backwards. Where had she driven from? What did the house look like? What did the street look like?
Who was she?

‘Daisy Wilson,’ she said firmly, grasping onto the nearest, the most recent memory as it floated past. ‘My name is Daisy Wilson.’ Quickly she filled out her name and, with some misgivings, Daisy’s address. It was a trail, of sorts, but it couldn’t be helped. After all, she was going to be playing Daisy for a while yet.

‘Thank you,’ he said as she slid the form back and delved into her handbag for her purse. ‘I’ve taken the liberty of putting you in room 241. The bar is to your left, the dining room is to your right. Will you be requiring dinner tonight?’

She thought for a moment. It had been a long drive, and she didn’t particularly want to wander out looking for a civilised restaurant. ‘Yes, that would be lovely. About half an hour?’

‘I’ll make sure a table is available,’ he said. ‘I hope you enjoy your stay.’

Daisy took her suitcase up to her room. It contained a bed, a desk and chair and a small armchair, all arranged in the smallest possible space without actually looking cramped.

Another hotel. Another town. Another identity.

A wave of … something … rose up unexpectedly and crashed around her. It wasn’t quite grief, or sadness, or regret, or anything in particular. It was more as if a low-key version of each of those emotions had been blended together to form something new, something with no name: a general feeling of sad disconnection from the world. For a moment she was lost and drifting. For a moment.

‘Focus,’ she murmured. ‘Focus.’

She washed quickly and, taking a pen, notebook and a pile of plain stationery from her suitcase, she headed down to the dining room.

Dinner was two lamb chops with asparagus spears
and potatoes dauphinois, simply prepared but very pleasant. She followed it with a trifle – something she hadn’t had for years. It was what she considered to be ‘nursery food’ – plain but comforting – and none the worse for that. The portions were small, but enough was as good as a feast, as she always said.

While she ate, she started on the next phase of her task. Before leaving the house in London in the tender care of the estate agents, she had carefully combed through Daisy’s letters for the names of friends with whom she was in intermittent contact. Some of her correspondents had drifted away or died over the course of the years, but Daisy was still receiving Christmas cards and the occasional round-robin letter from seven people – old friends or work colleagues with whom she had shared some part of her life. Taking several sheets of stationery, Daisy carefully wrote the same message to each person or family in the almost perfect copy of Daisy’s scrawled handwriting that she had worked on whilst dancing attendance on the old bitch.

I’m sorry that I haven’t been in touch for some time, but life has been rather complicated. I don’t know if you remember my cousin Heather, but she has recently been taken ill. She is currently recuperating at home, and she asked me to come down and look after her and her cats. I don’t know how long I will be away, but I suspect it
might be some time. I have let the house out while I’m gone – I was worried that it would be empty, but at least this way I know it will be looked after, and I’ll get some (much needed!) income.

I’ll let you know when I have more information – in the mean time, if you get around to writing to me then please use the address above.

On each letter, Daisy added in the names and some personal details and questions she had gleaned from the letters, in an attempt to make them all seem more personal. She left the tops of the letters blank. When she had settled down somewhere local then she could fill the return address in. Or, if she wanted to really play it safe, she could use a PO Box number.

She read through the letters again. She wasn’t sure if they were too formal, too carefully worded. Daisy had been quite demotic in her speech, but what little writing of hers that Daisy had seen betrayed a sharper mind and a trained writing style. Having been through the house and seen Daisy’s choice in books, Daisy had revised her opinions of the woman. Daisy, she believed, had been putting it on a little.

After dinner she dropped the letters off in her room and walked through into the hall, intending to go for a quiet stroll around the town. The sun had gone down since she had arrived, and the indigo sky of sunset that had acted as backdrop to the drama of
the sea was now a black curtain against which the glowing bulbs of the esplanade’s lights were displayed. The bar, however, was just to her right, and she decided that she deserved a drink before setting out. The day had gone pretty well, all things considered.

The room itself was furnished with cane chairs and low glass tables. It wasn’t quite her ‘scene’, but she persevered, walking steadily up to the long bar and asking the barman – a lanky youth who was probably a third of her age – for a small dry sherry.

His thick brows contracted into a single line. ‘Don’t think we do sherry,’ he said without even looking at the bottles.

Daisy was not going to be put off. ‘Then I will have a Dubonnet with lemonade, please.’

He poured it with bad grace, and she took her drink to a table over in one corner from where she could see the entire bar area. It was pretty empty – most people had probably gone out on the town – but one or two of the tables were occupied. A middle-aged woman in a shawl was sipping on a gin and tonic at one table. Her husband, dressed rather uncomfortably in a suit, was sitting across the other side of the table. Neither of them was talking. The woman was staring at her glass as if it contained the secrets of the universe, and her husband fidgeted as if he was constantly on the verge of saying something just in order to break the silence and then
reconsidering at the last moment when he realised how banal it would sound.

Daisy found herself holding her Dubonnet like the woman at the table was holding her gin, and she forced herself to stop. She’d already had one moment of slippage. She had to keep a grip on who she was, lest it all slide away from her, leaving her with no character at all. Or a faceless stranger, perpetually reflecting every character she came across.

At another table a lone man sat, nursing a pint of dark liquid. He was burly, florid, with more hair on his knuckles than on his head. A flat cap sat on the table beside him. There was an air about him that made Daisy think he was drinking something old-fashioned and manly, like mild and bitter, or brown ale. She wondered briefly whether she should engage him in conversation, but she decided against it. She never stalked men: it was almost impossible to strike up a friendship without the sexual element creeping in, and there was always that ever-present worry that they were stronger than her should her little poisons not work quickly enough. And, of course, taking on their identities directly was almost impossible: she would have to find some sideways approach to realising their assets when they were gone, and that itself was adding an extra risk to the proceedings. No, best not.

Delicately she drained the last drops of her rather tart Dubonnet and gathered her handbag and coat
together. A little walk around town and then bed, she decided.

The air outside was cold. Across the road she could see the metal railings of the esplanade but behind that, where earlier there had been the beach and the sea and the sky, there was nothing. A black void, immense and empty. It was as if the world ended at those railings, and an unwary pedestrian might stumble and fall, pinwheeling for ever through space until the end of time.

Daisy shook herself. Really, the thoughts that were entering her head. It wouldn’t do. It really wouldn’t do.

She let her feet guide her, not planning where she was going. A side street led away from the esplanade and deeper into town. She crossed what she assumed was the High Street – occupied mainly by teenagers who appeared to be migrating from pub to club and back again – and found another side street that was lined with antique and curio shops. Something was pulling her on, some deep, primal attraction towards something sensed but as yet unseen. She stumbled on, letting the shop fronts and the lights all blur together.

Until she found herself in front of a gaudily lit frontage, all blue neon and yellow letters. It looked as if it had once been a cinema, but now it was used for another kind of entertainment.

Bingo.

A session had obviously just finished, and a crowd of women was descending the steps. Some were wearing wraps, some coats, some just low-cut silvery tops and skirts. They were laughing coarsely.
Secretaries
, Daisy thought, dismissively. Behind them came a gaggle of older women in long coats and woollen hats, walking in ones and twos, and suddenly Daisy’s senses came alert. Her mouth went dry, and every detail stood out as if spotlit. She could
smell
the lavender perfume, lovingly dabbed on from bottles bought twenty years beforehand. She could
feel
their rough, hand-knitted cardigans and scarves. She could
see
the surreptitious gleam of their scalps through their carefully coiffured hair. As they went their separate ways, with goodbyes and waves and little pecks on the cheek, Daisy noted which streets they went down, which directions they left in, who leant on a cane for support and who didn’t, who left in company and who left alone.

These were her natural prey.

And tomorrow, the hunt would begin again.

It was several weeks after the autopsy that Mark Lapslie and Emma Bradbury drove up to Ipswich together in Emma’s Mondeo. Technically, Ipswich was outside their manor, falling within the boundaries of Suffolk Constabulary, but Lapslie had made some phone calls before setting out and they’d been given permission to continue with their inquiries. The roads were busy, but Emma managed to weave her way through the mass of other cars, overtaking where necessary and undertaking where she had to, in order to get them there in good time. Lapslie just let himself sink back in the passenger seat, eyes closed, the roar of her engine sending pulses of marmalade through his mouth and provoking his salivary glands into spasm. He was so used to the sound of his own car engine that he couldn’t taste it any more, but he hadn’t spent long enough in Emma’s car to get used to the noise, or to be able to screen it out. He’d wanted to drive up himself, but it made no sense for them to take two cars on the journey, and police etiquette demanded that a DS drove a DCI, not the other way around.