Requiem Mass (43 page)

The crime programme on Wednesday evening featured ‘the Rowland case’. It was still the gruesome murder of the school teacher that captured the headlines even though, on this occasion, there was more to tell on Deborah Fearnside. The programme producers were keen to feature Fenwick again – continuity around a constant (and photogenic) personality pleased the viewers. The ACC was miffed but too shrewd to let it show.

DCI Fenwick quickly brought the watching public up to date on developments since his last appearance. He kept it all firmly in the present; there was no mention of Carol Truman, or the real connection among the women. But he did share with millions of viewers photographs of the BMW, a pedal bike and variations of the latest pictures of Rowland. All the emphasis was still on the need to ‘question’ him in relation to their
enquiries but Fenwick did admit in interview that Rowland was the man the police were most keen to talk to and that he should not be approached by the general public.

Reactions to the broadcast varied around the country. Fenwick’s mother videoed the second appearance even though the content was unsuitable for the children; half a dozen policemen including Nightingale, waited by phones, in the incident room. Leslie Smith’s husband watched the portable in her private room at the hospital, feeling the menace in the dark outside the window and the inadequacy of the single armed constable outside the door. He reached out instinctively for his wife’s limp hand as tears of anger and helplessness dropped on to the white candlewick blanket.

Octavia Anderson had the television on as background noise as she walked from room to room in her designer-decorated house. She had not slept properly since Sunday; her eyes were purple shadows set in a skin resembling uncooked pastry. For once, she looked older than her years. There was a small supply of sleeping tablets in the bathroom that could grant fragments of peace had she had the courage to take them.

His photograph caught her attention and she fumbled with the remote control to raise the volume. His face was left there for a long time as they talked. He hadn’t really changed; the neck was thicker, the angles of the face sharper, and the eyes were those of a dead man – flat, hard, expressionless. In her fearful and feverish state she thought them merciless, looking out of the screen; looking for her.

He had found her, the constant flowers proved that. Now he was playing with her, cat and mouse, deciding when to pounce. There had been a time, she reflected, when she would have relished his attention – they all would. Debbie, Kate, even silly little Leslie – all of them except Carol, who didn’t notice, which was ironic really. After all these years he had finally turned his mind to them – first Debbie, then Kate and Leslie. She was the only one left.

Octavia shivered involuntarily. She was last but why was he taking so long? Debbie had been killed in April. It was nearly
September. With a shock she realised that it was the first the next day. Only five more days to go and she could get out of this country for a long, long time. Rowland’s face was too well known for him to be able to follow easily. The police would catch him; she would be free.

The simplistic thoughts circled in her head, as if repetition would make them real. Fenwick’s face appeared on the screen. She muted the sound and stared at him coldly. Could he do it? Could he do it in time? He was clever enough, hard despite his weaknesses. He had made all, well nearly all, the connections by now and gave the impression that real progress was being made. Or was that simply good PR?

She had given him no clues, he had worked for all the answers. Why not just go the final step – fill in the remaining piece for him? Immediately she shied away from the prospect and, switching off the television, resumed her compulsive pacing and checking of empty rooms. As she walked, she forced herself to practise a few exercises and scales.

It was important, essential, that she be in top form for Monday. Compared with her latest achievements, the anniversary concert was nothing, a small-scale, local affair. But it was her opportunity to show them all that she had made it. All the people from the past that had doubted her ability, or had favoured others, would see that she had been right.

She was returning as a star,
the
star, at their request. Kate Johnstone had been amazed when she had accepted the invitation, but Kate had never understood her. Returning home would be final proof that the sacrifices, the impossible decisions that had nevertheless been made, the lack of friendships and loneliness, had all been justified. In childhood she had coloured her dreams with fantasies such as this. Again, the moment of triumph in the cathedral was a picture before her.

In that instant she knew, with absolute certainty, why he was waiting so long, why she had been kept until last. He had an opportunity for public display and he was not going to waste it. In the cathedral he would have the right occasion, the best
moment, to kill her. No, to execute her for what he believed she had done.

Octavia clung to the wall, shaking violently. She abandoned the checking of the locks; he wouldn’t be coming that night, nor the next. He would wait until Monday and strike in the cathedral. She clawed her way upstairs like an old woman and fell fully clothed on her bed. There was a clear choice in front of her, to cancel her performance or go on; neither was acceptable. Wide awake, for yet another night, she twisted within her dilemma, searching for a way out.

Miss Purbright would tell anyone who cared to ask her that she
never
watched television, her life being so full and varied. Unexpected visitors (of whom there were sadly few) would, however, inexplicably find the set in her large farmhouse kitchen switched on, whatever time they called. She had a number of ready-made excuses for this phenomenon – she needed the weather for the sheep; there was an important news bulletin to catch; her favourite programme had just finished.

The truth was that she was addicted to television. Although she had lived alone since her father died she was not cut from the happy hermit mould. She yearned for coffee mornings and bingo, whistdrives and cosy chats, but she had never admitted this, least of all to herself. Instead, she cultivated a surprisingly effective façade of eccentricity and a passionate involvement in hill farming and country pursuits.

Thus it was that Miss Purbright came to be watching the crime programme whilst absently mending her socks in front of the large kitchen range. She loved crime programmes and liked nothing better than a good murder reconstruction. She was aware of the Johnstone case because the woman had been a teacher, which had been her ambition once, and she was mildly surprised to find it still unsolved. He was a nice-looking policeman, though, realistically handsome. She felt confident he would find the killer.

The picture of the BMW tweaked her memory but she
ignored it. Then the three photographs came up slowly in turn and her stomach flipped. She had seen this man, the man on the television that they were saying was wanted in connection with no less than three serious crimes. But
where
had she seen him? Her mind ran over recent encounters, unable to find the face on the television among them.

She continued to puzzle over it until bedtime when, letting her overweight Labrador out, she remembered that she had to pay a visit to the new couple holidaying in the cottage. The memory triggered full recollection. That man had rented the cottage – she couldn’t remember when or what they had said to each other – but she had seen him there. She could picture him standing in the doorway, blocking her view down the hall. He had seemed much fatter than the man they described on the television but she was sure she was right.

Miss Purbright called the dog back in early and the bemused but tractable animal obeyed. With an unsteady hand she reached for the
Radio Times
, as always, tucked out of direct sight down the side of her chair. The telephone number for the crime programme was there and with excited nervousness she dialled.

There was one potentially important viewer who missed the
Crimewatch
programme and later had significant cause to regret it. But he was too preoccupied with preparation and with cleaning up behind himself. He was also far too confident in his continuing anonymity to bother checking TV, radio or newspapers for news, which was another, serious mistake.

Over fifty full-time police were deployed on the case on Thursday morning, now across four counties. The search for Rowland’s South London base was continuing without success. Extensive inquiries of businesses and shops around Victoria had produced no further clues.

Fenwick stayed at the operation’s centre, which had been moved to HQ as soon as the ACC had taken real interest in the case. Although it was no longer part of his job to read all the papers on the case, he read and reread reports and files, looking
for clues and connections others might have missed. There was nothing.

At 10.30 he was surprised to receive a call from Octavia Anderson. Her beautiful voice was dry and faded with an unexpressed tension behind each word. She needed to speak with him urgently, she said, and would be with him in just over an hour.

The news made Fenwick even more restless. He took a long walk to the cemetery, passing the school on the way. There was silence behind the thick walls and railings as the building awaited the rush of the new school year. The cemetery was similarly dry and silent in the flat September light. There had been no real rain since the day of Leslie Smith’s attack and the grass, shorn weeks before, had turned to a dull powdery khaki clotted with pale green splashes where graves had been lovingly watered or were shaded thickly by trees.

He walked automatically towards Carol’s grave. As he approached he could see the bright crimson splash against the desiccated grass. Her grave was a mass of red flowers. The florists had finally run out of red roses and had made up the order with carnations, deep-blooded chrysanthemums smelling of funeral parlours, and panting lilies. Fenwick doubted that Rowland would have wanted or appreciated the mournful effect. Far from being a defiant expression of love, the flowers stood for what they were, a memorial for a long-dead girl.

The blooms were still fresh. Some, still in the shade of the headstone, had drops of water on their perfect leaves – dew from that morning or perhaps even the florist’s spray. There was no card, no indication of where they had come from. Fenwick bent down and picked up one of the few perfect red roses, tucked into the margin of the grave and still damp. He snapped the long stem three inches from the bud and gently threaded the end through his buttonhole, before turning his back on the grave and retracing his steps.

Activity in the cathedral had quietened down from its earlier frenzy. The cleaning had finished and the echoing spaces were
left to the lighting technicians. A tall, dark-haired man moved among them with a quiet assurance and competence. His long, unkempt hair and straggly beard were an unintentional camouflage, the result of a casual neglect of personal appearance rather than deliberate disguise. Still, they were sufficient enough to allow him to walk about unchallenged.

Rowland made several trips to the triforium carrying his custom-built toolbox. Each time he carefully placed certain pieces of equipment, superficially disguised, into the oak chest, covering them again with old clothes and bell ropes, and making sure that everything looked as it had when he found it. By eleven o’clock on Thursday everything was ready. He had timed his escape routes and confirmed his line of sight, allowing for the trumpeters who would be in place by his side.

Returning to his digs he showered, shaved and trimmed his hair, feeling refreshed and relaxed for the first time in months. He decided to go out and enjoy a prelunch pint of hand-drawn beer in a pub on the outskirts of the city. Rowland was impervious to the landlord’s curious stare and the muttering of the bar maid. Preparing the cathedral had been tense, painstaking work, with constant risk of discovery. He felt he could relax this once before the final countdown started.

He took his pint jug into the beer garden and sat in a narrow angle of sun with his back towards a rough-cast wall against which brilliant red berries sucked in the late summer heat. Bees were droning on a few tardy lavender blooms, the city traffic was a distant buzz. He dozed.

A cat, rubbing itself against his leg, woke him with a start and he reached instinctively for the knife concealed in his belt. His untouched beer had grown stale and warm in the thick glass. He threw it out on the border behind him and decided on a quick half-pint to refresh himself.

It was instinctive to walk silently, to carry the box with him. Relaxed as he was, he still opened the door with caution. A drift of one-sided conversation carried from behind the bar. He was fully three steps into the passage between the door and the saloon before he froze.

‘… well no, I can’t be sure it’s him but it looks like him … About six foot two, yes, and dark … no younger-looking than your photos.’

Rowland drew back against the passage wall, breathing deeply and steadily. He suddenly realised that he had been a fool to assume that the police didn’t know who he was, that he could walk around unnoticed – to doze off in public and allow the fat landlord time to pluck up courage to call the police. In absolute silence he reversed his steps, eyes and ears concentrated on the bar hidden beyond the passage and the monologue that drifted towards him.

‘… Yes, still here, in the garden.’ He could sense the man turn towards the passage and held himself rigid, acutely aware that the sun streaming through the glass panels in the outer door was throwing a shadow of the box and his leg down the passage into the saloon. It cast an abstract, inhuman shape. If he was still it might pass unnoticed. If it did not, he would have no choice but to kill the man as he came to investigate. He flexed his free hand in the shadow in preparation for the blow.

The moment passed. He heard the man turn back, his voice become muffled. Rowland slipped into the garden, bent to put his glass down, thought better of it and placed it in the near-empty toolbox. He scuffed the rough wooden seat and table with his sleeve. Returning to the back door, he wiped the paintwork and handle swiftly on both sides. He could not recall leaning on the bar but the front latch would definitely bear his prints.