Lonely Hearts (21 page)

“If I might suggest…” attempted the vicar.

“You can keep your bloody nose out of it an’ all!”

“I merely…”

“I should think we’ve had enough of your claptrap for one day.”

“Take it easy now,” said Lynn, moving so as to place herself between them.

At the far side of the room, the dumpy girl with red cheeks pulled open a door seeking a way out and a broom toppled forward from the cupboard and struck her on the side of the face.

Olive Peters held the framed photograph of her daughter and herself tighter, cradling it to her chest.

“Rejoice that she’s gone to a better place! Shoveled underneath that sodding ground, that’s where she is.” He raised the walking stick towards the ceiling. “You must think we’re all bloody soft!”

“Give me the stick,” said Lynn Kellogg.

“Will I, hell as like!”

“Yes,” said Lynn firmly. “You will.”

Never taking her eyes off his, she held out her hand and kept it there until he put the stick, with slow care, between her fingers.

“I know what you’re thinking, Graham,” said Resnick.

They were on their way down to the incident room, snarled up in the first flow of homegoing traffic. Millington had been wondering what his wife had bought for supper and what his chances were of finding out before it was dried up or cold or both.

“Len Lawrence gets the chance to get his boots under the super’s desk for as long as this takes. Why haven’t you been treated the same? Senior sergeant in terms of years, experience, surely you ought to be in my office, getting the feel of things, establishing yourself? Something along those lines?”

“Something like that, sir.”

“There’s another way of looking at it,” Resnick continued.

Isn’t there bloody always! thought Millington. Driving over in Resnick’s car, that was practically the only time he hadn’t been thinking about it since the teams had been announced.

“If we get a good result here…”

“Us and all the rest,” said Millington.

“…that might end up looking more impressive on your record than a week shuffling bits of paper across the surface of my desk.”

And it might not, Millington thought. We might not. Resnick applied the brakes too sharply as a youth on a skateboard swerved out in front of him. Both Resnick and Milhington were thrown forwards against their seat belts as the engine cut out.

Immediately horns sounded behind them.

“Those things should’ve been broken up and burned the first time round,” said Millington savagely.

“In a hurry to get home,” said Resnick, turning the key in the ignition.

“Can’t wait to spend his social security.”

In the end it was the girl with plump cheeks and now a strip of plaster over her right eye. Lynn had offered her a lift back into the city; too late to be worth going back to the office, she was meeting her boyfriend in the Pizzaland on the Market Square.

Lynn sat there with her, toying with a coffee while the girl drank Diet Pepsi and complained about not losing weight.

“Trouble is Darren likes to eat here of an evening, but I only ever have the vegetarian. Thin and crispy, not the deep pan. And the salad. Darren gets through a double portion of garlic bread as well as most of a regular pizza and he never puts on a pound.” She looked at the door as if she couldn’t wait for him to arrive. “I even went to aerobics for a couple of months but all that happened was I got short of breath.”

“Don’t worry,” Lynn reassured her. “It’s more difficult for us than it is for men.”

“But don’t you wish you weren’t so big?” asked the girl, leaning back to get a better look at her. “I bet you do.”

Lynn shook her head. “In my job it’s useful.”

“I don’t know how you can,” the girl said, thoughtfully.

“Do what I do?”

“Not want to lose weight.”

“I suppose I never think about it.”

“What about your feller? You have got one, a bloke?”

“He doesn’t seem to think about it either,” Lynn said. Probably, she carried on the thought, because he’s too busy thinking about his lightweight bike to notice.

“You’re lucky. Ever since I met Darren…”

“How did you meet him?”

“You’ll never guess,” the girl said, her cheeks growing redder than ever, “but I met him through the paper. Sort of, you know, a blind date. It was Shirley’s idea. We put it in together, two girls want to meet two smart fellers who’ll show them a good time. It was Shirley’s idea. She used to do it all the time.”

Rachel made a final note in her work diary and closed her eyes. Only for a moment. It wasn’t until her colleague touched her lightly on the shoulder that she realized she had fallen asleep.

“You all right?”

“Fine,” Rachel said, yawning and smiling self-consciously at the same time. “Nothing a few good nights wouldn’t cure.”

“Better get off home then. It’s way past any sort of time.”

“Isn’t it always?”

“Goes with the job.”

Rachel nodded, stood up and stretched, started collecting things together. “Carole,” she said suddenly.

“Mm?”

“That spare room at your place?”

“Yes?”

“Is it still empty?”

Twenty

The principal item at the morning briefing was a confirmation from forensic: analysis of semen deposited at the scene of both crimes yielded a positive comparison. Male pubic hair found on the body of Shirley Peters and in Mary Sheppard’s bed was also of the same type. Skin samples from beneath Shirley Peter’s fingernails were not a conclusive match with those taken from Mary Sheppard. A small number of wool fibers removed from the carpet of the room in which Shirley Peters was found as well as from the settee neither matched each other nor anything connected with Mary Sheppard.

“The assumption we are working on, therefore,” said Skelton, “is that both murders were the work of the same man.”

“Bloody brilliant!” said Colin Rich to no one in particular.

“What about the different MO?” asked Grafton.

“Forensic evidence and now the apparent link through personal columns, which seems to have been confirmed by a member of Inspector Resnick’s team, seem more important. But not conclusive.”

“As long as we’re aware of the dangers of tunneling our vision too soon,” put in Tom Parker, “that’s the line we’re taking. We’re looking for one man.”

The names and addresses of female advertisers were being entered on the computer and each would be contacted and, as far as possible, a list of those from whom they had received replies would be taken and accessed. These names would be crosschecked and then matched with the criminal records file; any who were known, for whatever reason, would be seen first—in addition to men who had, for one reason or another, aroused suspicion in the women they had eventually met.

“How about the letters, sir?” Andy Hunt looked up at the superintendent, pen resting on the almost full page of his notebook.

“In what regard?”

“Well, we’ve all seen copies of those that Charlie found in the Sheppard house…”

“Good old bloody Charlie!” said Colin Rich with quiet scorn.

“…and we’d probably all agree that some of them seem a sight more chancey than others.”

“It’s not always the ones as come out and say it,” said Tom Parker.

“That whining bugger,” said Grafton. “What’s his name? Minors?”

“Myers,” corrected Resnick.

“He’s the one I’d put my money on.”

Colin Rich leaned across to the uniformed inspector. “One weekend course up at the university and he thinks he’s Sigmund Freud.”

“Give him his full title, then.”

“Professor?”

“Bloody. You forgot the bloody. Sigmund bloody Freud.”

“Funny!” said Rich, sitting back. “Very bloody funny!”

“We have acquired the services of a Professor Ramusen from the polytechnic’s psychology department, who will look at letters with a view to picking out any which seem to suggest any kind of abnormality or deviancy. Any tendency towards violence.” Skelton paused, as if waiting for comments which were unforthcoming. “I’ve been in touch with the Yard this morning about the services of a handwriting expert and I’m waiting on their response.”

After that it was wrapped up quickly. Uniforms were going back over the house-to-house checks in the area of the two incidents. The Serious Crimes squad would start picking up anyone thrown up by the computer as being previously known. Grafton and Hunt would divide the remainder between them, beginning with those who had made multiple replies. It was down to Resnick and his team to follow up the letters that Graham Millington had discovered in Mary Sheppard’s bedroom, also the lead that Lynn Kellogg had picked up after Shirley Peters’s funeral.

A warrant would enable them to add the identities of all those responding to personal advertisements from first post that morning, although, once Skelton’s press conference, scheduled for eleven, had been reported, it was expected that the numbers of both replies and new advertisers would drop. Initially, however, it meant more legwork, more reports to be filed, more time.

“This time next week we’ll be up to our collective arses in astrologists and bloody clairvoyants!”

Colin Rich leant against the wall beside the coffee urn, looking at the expression of distaste on Resnick’s face at the sight of the coffee.

“Wait till you taste it, Charlie.”

Resnick lifted up the lid of the urn and poured it back.

“Champagne soon for you, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“How’s that?”

“Regular golden bollocks on this show, aren’t we?”

Resnick shrugged and turned away. The sooner he got back to the station, the sooner the team could get to work.

“Too good for the rest of us already, Charlie?” Rich was standing close behind him, but his voice was loud enough to be heard by the rest.

Resnick continued walking.

“That’s it, Charlie. You keep going. That way we can all see the way the sun shines out of your arse!”

“So what do they say about plumbers?”

It was a conversion job. Take an old house, large, garden on two levels with birch trees and wild strawberries thatching themselves across what had passed for lawns; gut it, aside from the central sweep of staircase and main load-bearing walls; fillet out the dry rot; spray for fungus and drill for damp; matching kitchen units, pine’s out so this is a job lot in heavy wood and dark. Executive apartments in highly sought-after residential area, excellent amenities, easy reach of the city center. Penthouse flat with superb views available now for immediate viewing.

Dave Beatty had his head behind the waste disposal, most of his body to the waist out of sight beneath the sink. A small transistor was not quite tuned to the local commercial station and too loud. Divine reached over and turned it off.

“Hey!”

The shout was muffled. Divine kicked the toe of his polished black shoe against the sole of Dave Beatty’s worn-down Adidas sports shoe. Not hard.

“What the hell d’you…”

“Come on out from there.”

“Who…?”

“Do yourself a favor, take a break.”

Beatty swung himself from under the sink and on to his feet. A wrench was gripped tightly in his left hand. Divine looked at him levelly, glanced at the wrench with a dismissive grin, and lifted up the kettle, testing the weight.

“Electrics working?”

“Yes. What’s going on?”

Divine switched on the kettle and picked up a jar of instant coffee, setting it right back down again. “No tea?”

Dave Beatty moved the wrench to his other hand and opened a cupboard; inside was a large packet of tea bags and some sugar. He was conscious of Divine looking at him again, weighing him up.

“Five-seven,” Divine said.

“Look…”

“About eleven stone.”

“This is bloody silly.”

Mark Divine reached out slowly and took the wrench from Beatty’s hand. “But I still don’t know what they say about plumbers.”

“If someone’s sent you round here to check on me, you can tell them they’re wasting their time. I said the end of the week and the end of the week’s what I meant.”

Divine smiled and switched off the kettle. “You want to be mum, or shall I?”

Dave Beatty didn’t move.

“Fair enough.” Divine dropped a bag into a clean mug and went towards the sink to rinse another.

“Don’t,” warned Beatty.

“You don’t want one?”

“If you run the tap it’ll go right through.”

Divine shrugged. “Not very clever.” He put the tea bag into the dirty mug, poured water into both of them. “You know what you’re doing, I suppose?”

Beatty gave a short, humorless laugh, almost a snort. “I’m fitting a sodding disposal unit, I don’t know what you think you’re pissing around at.”

Mark Divine stirred, added milk, pushed one mug—the used one—towards Beatty. “Better put in your own sugar.”

Divine allowed himself another smile. This was fun: he was enjoying himself. Almost as much as he would have been if Beatty had decided to have a go at him with the wrench.

“Don’t know what you’re getting shirty about. Thought you said you could always squeeze in a quick hour in the daytime.”

“Said?”

“Well, be more accurate, wrote.”

Beatty’s right eye blinked shut and a little nerve began to beat beside it; some of the color drained from his face. He glanced at where the wrench lay close to the kettle, closer to Divine than to himself.

“Remember?”

“Listen, all that stuff…”

“Yes?”

“That stuff I wrote…”

“Yes?”

“It was just a laugh, you know, just for…”

“A laugh.”

“Yeh, you know. I mean, wasn’t as if I meant anything by it.”

“Getting right down to it.”

“Eh?”

“Isn’t that what you like to do? No monkeying around beforehand, strictly wham, bam, thank you, ma’am, now where was that other little plumbing job you wanted fixing?”

“Jesus! All I did was write to her.”

“All?”

“Yes! Well, ask her. Ask her, for Christ’s sake! It was just a bit of fun. You know…”

“A laugh.”

“Yeh, a laugh.”

“You said.”

Beatty was looking smaller, younger by the second—a kid from the estate just starting on his City and Guilds. His age was what he’d lied about, Divine thought, probably wanted to convince her of his maturity, man of the world, no make of faucet that can’t be fixed.