Core of Evil (18 page)

A disquieting thought occurred to him. Had they been there
when
the body had been discovered? But that was impossible, surely. It was more likely that they had somehow picked up the news from the local police or the journalists at the scene. But in that case, what exactly was it that had triggered their arrival? Did they turn up to every car crash that occurred in the area?

Or did they just turn up every time the body of an elderly woman was discovered?

He thought about letting Emma in on what had been happening, on the basis that she could turn up something about these mysterious strangers, but something stopped him. He needed information, but he had a strong feeling that it needed to be outside normal channels. Retrieving his mobile from his pocket, he scrolled through the list of contacts until he found a name and a number that he thought he’d
never have to use again, but had avoided deleting just in case.

‘Dom McGinley,’ said a voice that triggered an inappropriate but familiar taste across his tongue, like salmon-flavoured bubblegum.

‘McGinley? Mark Lapslie.’

‘Mr Lapslie. It’s been a long time.’

‘It’s been fifteen years. I probably look now the way you did back then.’

McGinley laughed; a noise that at one time could have cleared a bar. ‘I usually only accept calls from coppers when I have something on them,’ he said. ‘I seem to recall that you and I parted on even terms.’

‘Then this is your lucky day,’ Lapslie said. ‘I need a favour. Can we meet up?’

‘Ah, I thought this day would never come. Wednesday – the usual boozer on the Thames. You remember.’

‘I try to forget, but I can’t. All right – Wednesday it is.’

The phone went dead, and Lapslie stared at it for a moment. A voice from the past, indeed. Dominic McGinley had been a legend in North London, back in the 1970s. He ran most of the drugs, most of the protection rackets and all of the prostitution between the North Circular and the City of Westminster, bounded on the left by the A5 and on the right by the A10. Lapslie had been only one of many policemen to try and get something on him, but McGinley was
always several steps removed from the crimes. Tracing anything back to him was impossible.

And now Lapslie needed his help. Funny, the way things turned out.

Something Daisy Wilson had missed, reading through the local papers covering the Tendring Hundreds area, was the arts pages. It was only later that afternoon, sitting on the esplanade and gazing out across the grey waves, trying to recall where she had seen the face of that girl in the library book before, that she remembered. Delving into her bag, she recovered the
Gazette
and flicked through the pages until she found what she was looking for. Yes! Apart from the usual end-of-pier shows – faded TV entertainers who would attract the wrong type of target entirely – there was a theatre in nearby Clacton which appeared to show real plays. Cultured entertainment. If her previous experience, several victims ago, admittedly, was anything to go by then the pickings at a theatre should be pretty good. Even if she avoided the couples and the coach parties then she should be left with a fair selection of women who had enough money to afford a theatre ticket but nobody to share their evenings with. Perfect!

According to the timetable she had picked up from the Visitor Information kiosk, there was a bus leaving Leyston at six o’clock in the evening that would get her to Clacton in good time for the performance. And fortunately she had packed some clothes that were formal enough to go to the theatre in but casual enough that she wouldn’t have any problems catching a bus in a seaside town late at night.

Returning to her hotel, she showered and put on some make-up: not enough to be obtrusive, but just enough to help support the story she would be selling: that she was refined without being posh, that she had money but no friends. The mirror image of the person she would be looking for. People were often, she had noticed, attracted to their own reflections.

The dress she pulled out of her suitcase was black, but not funereal. With a belt, a pair of tights and an overcoat, it would be perfectly acceptable. She cast her mind back, trying to remember where she had obtained it. She certainly hadn’t bought it – Daisy tried not to buy anything, if she could possibly help it. Had it belonged to Alice Connell? Jane Winterbottom? Daisy tried to remember their faces, but all she could recall was their clothes with her own features on top, looking back at her. No, Alice had been taller than her, and Jane a lot wider. Was it someone earlier than Alice? She had a vague memory of a woman in Leeds who had died slowly after
Daisy had grated yew tree bark into her food over the course of several weeks. She had seemed absolutely fine, to the point where Daisy was about to switch to a different plant, and then she had suddenly dropped dead, apparently of a heart attack. Daisy hoped her heart had been weakened by the yew bark. It would have been a waste of time and effort if she had died of natural causes.

Now what had that woman’s name been? Was it another Jane? She really couldn’t remember.

No matter. To go with the dress, Daisy chose a rather nice necklace that she remembered had belonged to Violet Chambers, once upon a time. It set the dress off nicely. By the time she had finished dressing, it was almost time to go.

It was nearly night by the time she left the hotel. The pier was coming to life: what had been tawdry paint and worn woodwork in daylight was now hidden by the glare of the light bulbs which surrounded the entrance and were strung along the dark bulk of the pier like sparkling drops of water on cobweb threads. Daisy could hear music too: a regular, hypnotic pounding that echoed back in strange counterpoint from the houses. How could people live here, night after night, with that racket going on?

The bus was on time, and the journey along winding country lanes and through nameless villages was long enough for Violet to fall into a
daze. The bus was half full, and the passengers were evenly divided between teenagers and older people, some of whom were probably on their way to Clacton for the play. Daisy deliberately didn’t take note of any of them. There would be time enough for that later.

Every so often Daisy would glance out of the window, but the encroaching darkness meant that more often than not she just saw her own reflection. And, as she slipped deeper and deeper into a reverie, her reflection sometimes became that of one of the women she had supplanted in life. Once, when she looked over, the woman looking back was thinner than her, and wore glasses. Deirdre – Deirdre something? Another time, it was the former Daisy Wilson who turned to meet her gaze, her eyes deeply sunk in puffy flesh, her white hair piled high on her head in a sad remnant of the beehive hairdo she had once sported so proudly.

And once, when Daisy opened her eyes and looked into the dark mirror of the window, a young girl was staring back at her. A red-haired girl in a flowery dress, stained down the front with something dark and wet and terrible.

With a jerk, Daisy woke up. Her heart was pounding fit to break. She took a deep breath, having to fight to get it past the lump in her throat. Gradually, her heart eased itself back into its normal rhythm.

Daisy knew that girl. She knew that face, she even knew that dress, but there was something about the girl that she didn’t want to think about. When she saw the girl’s photograph at the library she had slammed the book shut and left. Now she deliberately focused on the lights outside the window, trying to wipe all trace of the girl from her mind.

The bus was pulling into Clacton now. The lights were brighter than Leyston, the music was louder and everything was more intense. If Leyston was the shy, retiring brother then Clacton was the older, outgoing and rather blowsy sister.

Taking her cue from some of the other older passengers, Daisy left the bus and found herself just a short walk from the theatre. Looking up at the frontage, she realised that she hadn’t even checked what play was being performed that night. Now, gazing up at the title, a giggle escaped her lips.

Arsenic and Old Lace
.

How apt. How perfectly apt.

The audience heading into the theatre seemed to be mainly people around her own age, and her dress and overcoat did not mark her out from the rest of the crowd. She headed towards the box office and managed to secure a ticket in the balcony. A better class of person went in the balcony, she had found.

Sitting in her seat, with just a few minutes to go before the curtain rose, she gazed around. The theatre was about half full, and she could already see
a few good prospects in her vicinity. Best to wait until the interval and see what transpired.

The play was well performed and the set was a convincing reproduction of a down-at-heel boarding house in the 1950s, but Daisy felt her attention wander after a while. She didn’t recognise any of the actors – no doubt they were well known from television soap operas or something of the sort, but she rarely watched television. They rushed around the stage, keeping the audience laughing with the story of two old ladies who were killing off the single male guests in their house and burying them in the cellar, but Daisy found it all too frantic and too unbelievable.

There was a woman sitting two rows ahead of her, and just to the left. She was white-haired, and quite stocky. The seat to her left was empty; the one to her right was occupied by a man, but he was younger than her and his head was turned towards the person on his other side. She wore a silk scarf tied around her neck. She was absorbed in the play, and Daisy became more and more absorbed with her as the play went on. She kept glancing at her, taking in the curve of her neck, the shape of her ear, the way the earring she wore sparkled in the light. Daisy felt her pulse quicken: this was the kind of drama she liked.

Come the interval, Daisy quickly manoeuvred out of her aisle and made sure she was slightly ahead of the other woman in the queue for the bar. She
wanted to make sure that she had been seen. It was always best if the first move came from the prey, rather than the predator.

Daisy bought herself a small gin and tonic at an extortionate price, then went to sit by the nearest window, making sure there was a second chair at her table. The bar was too warm for comfort, but a cooling breeze came in from outside, flavoured slightly with candy floss and hot oil from the nearby sea front. She composed her expression into one of quiet resignation, and gazed blankly out of the window.

‘Excuse me, is this seat taken?’

She turned her head. The woman she had targeted was standing beside the empty chair.

‘No, I’m – no. Please, feel free.’

The woman sat down. She was holding a glass of white wine. Daisy could just make out her perfume above the smell from outside. ‘My name is Sylvia – Sylvia McDonald. Are you enjoying the play?’

‘It’s very good. Yes,
very
good,’ Daisy replied. ‘I don’t get to go out much, and I do so enjoy the theatre.’

‘So do I. I thought the actors were terribly good.’

‘It’s such a lovely theatre, too.’

‘It is. And so convenient.’

‘Do you live nearby?’ Daisy asked.

‘I live in Leyston,’ the woman said. ‘I drove in this evening. I’m parked just down the road.’

‘Daisy. Daisy Wilson.’

They raised their glasses at each other, and smiled.

‘My husband used to love the theatre,’ Sylvia said after a few moments.

Daisy looked around. ‘Is he—’

‘I lost him, nine years ago last month.’

‘I’m terribly sorry.’

‘And you?’

‘Oh,’ Daisy said, ‘I never married. There was a man, once, but …’ She trailed off, leaving Sylvia to fill in the rest of the story. ‘I’ve just moved into Leyston myself,’ she added. ‘It’s such a quiet place.’

‘And it can be quite beautiful,’ Sylvia added.

The bell rang for the second act. Daisy realised she only had a few seconds to make her move. ‘It can also be so lonely,’ she said. ‘If you don’t know anyone in the area …’ She gazed out of the window, leaving the thought hanging.

‘Perhaps you’d like to meet for a cup of tea,’ Sylvia offered. ‘Let’s organise something after the play finishes. Perhaps I could offer you a lift back?’

Daisy finished her drink, aware that the glass was trembling slightly in her hand. And so it began: the long dance of friendship, dependence and ultimately death. She felt as if she was poised on the brink of a long slope. One step, one small step, and she would be committed.

‘That would be lovely,’ she said.

Daisy hardly noticed the rest of the play. She was
too busy rehearsing her own production in her head: practising her lines until the words and the mood were perfect; choosing various locations for the scenes until she found the ones that best conjured up the mood she wanted to create. Following the final curtain, the two of them nattered while walking to Sylvia’s car, and nattered more as they drove. And by the time they arrived outside the station, where Daisy had asked to be dropped off, they had arranged to meet the next day at the coffee shop by the post office – the only one that Daisy knew, although she wasn’t going to admit that. She went to sleep that night exultant, and she slept the sleep of the dead.

The next morning, Daisy awoke early. She had a lot to do. After a quick breakfast, she made her way through the town until she found an estate agents that met her criteria: not the flashiest, but not the most down at heel either. One tucked away in a side street that catered to local people, not holidaymakers wishing to rent a flat for the summer.

Daisy knew her requirements, and politely rejected everything she was shown until the young man helping her showed her a photograph of a house a little way out of town, close to the cliff. Old in style, with a small garden at the back and a passion-fruit climber wrapped around the porch and trailing up to the first-floor window, it was just what she was looking for. The first floor was already let to a foreign girl studying at the local college. The ground
floor was available for immediate letting. It was, Daisy decided as she looked at the photograph, the perfect web in which to trap the fly she sought. Using bills addressed to Daisy Wilson’s old address as proof of identity, she obtained a set of keys and went to view the flat by herself, although the young man offered to drive her. It hardly mattered.