Dying for Christmas (22 page)

The Liz Gold that had greeted them at the front door early in the morning on 5th January was a very different woman to the one they’d met on Christmas Day. She was still well dressed – in a knee-length tartan wool skirt and long brown flat boots – but the whites of her green eyes were tinged with pink, and her skin was wrapped too tightly over her cheekbones. Her husband kept a protective arm around her shoulder, as if to stop her toppling right over, and Kim found her eyes fixed on how his hand, with his broad, black-haired fingers, gripped on to his wife tightly.

‘We heard you’ve been asking about Travis. Is he a suspect?’ It was one of the brothers speaking. Kim had been surprised when she and Martin had turned up and found both of the junior Golds at home on a weekday morning. They were a close family, she realized now. She found herself praying that Martin was wrong and Jessica would be found alive. Her loss would rip this family apart.

‘No,’ Kim was quick to reply. ‘We have to check up on everyone in a case like this. I’m sure you understand.’

‘I just hope you appreciate how hard this is for my parents, Detective. My daughter, Grace, is only thirteen, but if anything happened to her …’

‘We are doing everything we can,’ Kim said, aware of how inadequate that sounded.

On the way out, Liz Gold tugged her arm.

‘You’re a mother,’ she said. ‘You know how impossible it is to function unless you know your children are safe. Please bring her home.’

Kim nodded, unable to speak, and spent an unnecessary time doing up the zip of her coat so no one would be able to see her tear-blurred eyes.

* * *

I hadn’t expected to wake up at all.

I certainly hadn’t expected to wake up lying in the bed next to Dominic with my whole body aching, but my mind clearer than it had been in days.

I wondered if I’d dreamed that scene with Dominic sitting on the floor crying, his face scrunched up like a paper bag. Would he really have thrown away one of his carefully planned presents just because I’d missed a day? If so, how would he make me pay?

I’ve no idea how long I lay awake listening to the soft sigh of Dominic’s breathing while images of my parents and brothers and nephews and niece and Travis fluttered like flags just out of reach. With my newly clear vision, I started adding up the days I’d been in that apartment and the tally of presents. If he had been telling the truth about yesterday and the unopened present he’d hurled into the Thames, it meant that today was the twelfth day of Christmas and there was just one present left.

And then I’d be dead.

At the same time the thought occurred to me, I sensed I’d always known it. Dominic had brought me here, to play out this Twelve Presents charade, because he couldn’t face being alone and because directly or indirectly, he’d already killed the only people he cared about. But he could not let me live.

‘What are you thinking about, Jessica?’

He had propped himself up on his elbow and was running his free hand up and down my arm. My nerve endings felt so exposed his finger might as well have been the blade of his knife. At least he didn’t look angry any more. In fact the tearful scene of last night seemed completely forgotten.

‘About what’s going to happen after today is over.’

His mouth turned down in a mock-sad expression. ‘Jessica, Jessica. Why are you wishing away what’s left of our time together? You know your trouble, sweetheart? You don’t allow yourself to live in the moment.’

‘What will you do with my body?’

I needed to know if my parents would have something to grieve over or if they’d always be left wondering.

Dominic screwed up his face, as if I’d said something distasteful. ‘I don’t really want to talk about that, Jessica, if you don’t mind. Not on our last day.’

But I couldn’t leave it alone.

‘You obviously disposed of Natalie’s body here, piece by piece. What about her family? Do they have any idea what happened to her? What about the police? Didn’t they search here?’

Now he gave the dismissive scathing look I’d come to dread.

‘Of course they searched here, Jessica. And my offices in Vauxhall. Where they didn’t search – at least, not until it was too late – is the overspill warehouse in Kent I sub-let from another company to store all the stuff I buy and then can’t shift – pallet after pallet of it, all stacked up to the rafters. By the time they did get round to searching it I’d brought her back here – the choice bits of her anyway.

‘They had their suspicions, of course, but there was nothing they could do, particularly not after a woman vaguely matching Natalie’s description turned up in a jeweller’s in Edinburgh trying to flog a diamond necklace that belonged to me, or rather to Cesca, which I’d reported had gone missing the same time she disappeared from the clinic. They’d been looking out for it.’

‘A friend of yours, was she, that woman?’

‘Hardly a friend. Someone who owed me a favour, put it like that.’

‘But CCTV …’

Dominic looked bored now.

‘Haven’t you ever seen how grainy that footage is? All you need is a hat and sunglasses and it could be anyone.’

He really did think of every angle.

When Dominic pulled up the blind in the bedroom, we could see it was one of those rare, crisp winter days in London where aeroplanes rip sharp white lines across a clear blue sky. After more than twenty-four hours in the half-darkness, the sudden brightness hurt my eyes.

‘Breakfast outside on the balcony today,’ he decided, and carried me through the apartment like we were newlyweds, depositing me on the sofa while he dug around in his pocket for the key to open the glass door.

When he eventually got me outside, the cold literally snatched the breath from my lungs, but I also felt an exhilaration I hadn’t felt for a long time. I looked at the sun reflecting gold and silver off the river, and the glittering Shard, soaring up into the sky. I watched the distant cars on the bridge, and noticed how every now and then one of them would explode like a fire cracker when a ray of sunlight bounced off its bonnet. It was all so beautiful. Even the voices calling from Execution Dock didn’t seem so desperate. If I tuned them out, just a little, they joined with the noises from the building site across the river and the cries of the seagulls overhead, to form an almost pleasant background drone.

I lay back in one of the chairs, wrapped in the blanket Dominic had brought from the bedroom, while he went inside to make breakfast. He left the door open, even though I wasn’t shackled. As I sat back, letting the sun soak in through my ravaged skin, sending jets of warmth shooting through arteries and veins, into tissue and muscle and liver and heart, I started to return to myself. And bit by bit, as I returned, I had second thoughts. No, I wasn’t going to die. Not today. Not while the river was sparkling like that diamond necklace Dominic had claimed was stolen. He
would
let me go. He’d give me the last present and then I’d walk out of there and back into my life as if none of this had ever happened.

He emerged through the glass door carrying a tray which he deposited carefully on the metal table in front of me. There was a plate of croissants piled high, a pot of coffee, jam, butter. And, there in the centre, was the last present.

This one was around a foot high and half as wide. I swallowed. Hard.

‘Are you frightened, Jessica?’ he asked.

I picked up the package and began slowly to open it, lingering over every stage. He watched without hurrying me. I should have smelled a rat.

‘It’s lovely, isn’t it, that paper,’ he said, as I made a meal of feeling around for the edge of the Sellotape, trying to put off the moment I’d have to confront what was inside. I nodded, and ran a hand over the white, glitter-encrusted surface.

Finally, when I could delay it no longer, I peeled the paper back to reveal a ceramic vase with a lid.

‘Turn it round,’ commanded Dominic. ‘You’re looking at the back.’

Leaning forward, I edged the vase round to reveal a plaque on the front with a message inscribed in curly gold writing.

RIP Jessica Gold
Born 17th September 1985
Died 5th January 2015

Not a vase then. An urn.

My brain was swamped with confusing thoughts. Had he sent away for that plaque since we’d been in the flat? Or could he have engraved it himself, somehow without me noticing?

A scream sounded all around me, high-pitched and terrible to listen to. Only as I tried in vain to tune it out did I understand that the one screaming was me. Dominic’s hand reached out and clamped itself over my mouth. I could feel something hard and sharp jabbing into my ribs.

‘If you don’t stop making that noise,’ he hissed, ‘I will slice you clean in half.’

I stopped.

‘Pick up the urn, Jessica, so we can get rid of the wrapping underneath it.’

As I held the paper in my hand, he smiled. That dimple – a black hole you could get sucked into and never return.

‘It’s interesting, you know, that glitter’ – he gestured to the silver-snowflake pattern and I ran my hand over it, almost without thinking – ‘isn’t really glitter at all but granules of thallium. Are you familiar with thallium, Jessica?’

I shook my head. Now, looking back, I can see what an idiot I was, but at the time, I didn’t have a clue what he was getting at. Was it a special kind of decoration? Was it edible?

‘It’s poison, sweetheart. It can be absorbed through the skin and the effects of repeated exposure are cumulative. And, sadly, it’s fatal. It’s not an exact science, obviously, but by my calculations it should just about be getting to the end. Of course I’ve been adding the odd spoonful to your drinks too, just to be on the safe side. I’ve even sprinkled some on your food.’

Poison. I let the paper fall and inspected my fingers. There was a trace of powder on them.

Dominic watched as the information sank in, his smile growing broader. By now I could tell when he was excited: a muscle spasmed in his jaw.

‘Of course, I could have put the whole lot into your drinks. That might have made the dosage more accurate, but this felt so much more festive somehow. More fun. Oh, don’t look so sad, sweetheart, there is an antidote. Jessica, you didn’t happen to bring any Prussian blue along with you, did you?’

* * *

‘I just think you’re wrong, that’s all.’

Kim knew she wasn’t explaining herself well, and was frustrated by her own inarticulateness, especially in front of DSI Paul Robertson whom she was so desperate to impress, but Martin had put her on the back foot by implying she was allowing sentimentality to overrule the facts. Kim wondered if he’d found out she was living apart from her children and was somehow going to use that against her.

‘Her boss, her counsellor, both of them said we shouldn’t underestimate her, that she’s tougher than she appears. That’s all I was saying.’

‘And what about Travis Riley? Is he in the clear?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Martin.

‘Kim?’

‘Yes, except I still think there’s something he’s not saying.’

Robertson frowned, causing a deep furrow to appear between his eyebrows. He was sitting behind his desk in a black padded chair while she and Martin perched on hard seats opposite him like schoolchildren called in to see the head.

‘He feels guilty, that’s all,’ said Martin. ‘Maybe they weren’t getting on well. Maybe he hasn’t been so nice to her. She’s got all these voices in her head and he hasn’t got time for it. Ignores her cries for help. Course he’s going to feel guilty if she goes off and tops herself.’

‘So why would she buy all those presents then?’ Kim wanted to know. ‘If she was about to kill herself. Why go to the bother of trailing around Oxford Street on Christmas Eve if you know you’re never going to see Christmas Day?’

Martin turned to face her with such a patronizing look on his face that Kim had a sudden urge to slap him.

‘People who are mentally ill don’t always do things according to a logical plan. Christmas is very stressful for some people. Anything could have set her off when she was out.’

‘There’s no evidence that Jessica Gold is mentally ill.’ Kim could hear how her voice had crept up a few notes, and knew that would make her sound even more like she was allowing emotion to influence her judgement. ‘I just think if Jessica had done something to hurt herself, we’d have found the body by now. And until we do I’m keeping an open mind.’

Was she imagining the look that passed between the two men just before she and Martin left the Super’s office?

* * *

There’s nothing like a shot of sheer terror for revitalizing you. Now I knew my body was closing down I began resisting it, clenching my muscles against the pain, trying to use the calming techniques Sonia Rubenstein had taught me, breathing from my stomach and repeating in my head, ‘You will be all right, you’re not going to die.’

Dominic seemed more animated than he had in days. Probably the prospect of getting out of this apartment was as welcome to him as it would have been to me.

‘I want to paint you again,’ he declared. ‘Just as you are now.’

It didn’t surprise me that he would want to document his handiwork. I wondered if bits of me would also end up on his walls.

‘I’m going to fetch the paints. Don’t go away now.’

He almost skipped out through the glass door. Once again he hadn’t bothered to leave me tethered, so convinced was he of my frailty. I was alone. Uncuffed.

I grabbed the urn that was still on the table in front of me. It was a risk that he would notice its absence, but I had to take it. I concentrated all my efforts on standing up. Pulling the glass door almost closed to muffle the noise, I slammed the urn against the railing of the balcony. Nothing. Gathering all my strength, I did it again. This time there was a smash I felt sure could be heard as far as the Shard itself. My stomach knotted itself together as I turned and glanced through the window, expecting to see Dominic racing across the floor. Nothing.