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He laughed. ‘Postman pulled my leg this morning after I had got back from walking Archie. Accused me of being a dark horse and having a bit on the side.’
‘A bit on the side? I don’t follow you?’
His smile was unconvincing. ‘Said he thought he saw a young woman running away from the back of the house as he arrived.’
The lights dipped, then returned to full strength and she heard what sounded like a tile sliding off the roof. She took another sip of her drink, unable to face those thick black glasses even though the eyes they concealed were allegedly sightless. She could feel the tension mounting in the room. It was as though he already knew she had been in his house and was testing her response.
‘Probably a mermaid,’ she laughed back, knowing that her attempt at humour must have sounded equally false.
His smile broadened, but it still lacked any warmth. ‘Then maybe I should try and net her next time?’ he said softly. ‘Any idea what I should use as bait?’
Before she could think of a suitably frivolous answer, his expression suddenly softened and he laughed again, this time with something akin to genuine humour. She took his cue and laughed with him, but the sound had a shaky note to it and carried more than just a hint of relief.
‘Now,’ he continued in a much brisker tone, ‘you said you needed some company. For how long exactly?’
‘How about the whole night?’ she replied.
He nodded. ‘I’ll drink to that,’ he said. ‘What would you like to eat first?’
She took a deep breath. ‘Perhaps we should just skip the food?’ she said.
****
Lynn finished her shower and wrapped a big white towel around herself before returning to the bedroom to dress. The storm was gathering in even greater strength, with everything in the house seemingly shaking and rattling, and she shivered, feeling a sudden chill. Alan was no longer in the double bed and turning back out on to the landing, she heard the sound of clinking glasses coming from the direction of the living room downstairs.
‘Shower’s free, Alan,’ she called down to him before returning to the bedroom to dry herself.
‘Be up in a minute,’ he shouted back. ‘Just poured us a couple more drinks.’
Moments later she heard his heavy footsteps on the stairs, moving very slowly and apparently feeling for each step in turn. He appeared in the doorway as she was pulling on her clothes. He was barefoot, but wearing a short white robe and his glasses. She frowned. With the heavy curtains pulled in the bedroom and no lights lit during their love-making she had not been able to see his eyes, and now that the bedroom light had been switched on he had replaced his glasses and she was once more being denied the opportunity. The way he was holding his head, with his face slightly elevated and turned towards the far corner of the room, it appeared that he was not sure exactly where she was standing, but she was still not convinced. It could have been an act. But if it was, he was certainly damned good at it – a suspicion that had crossed her mind more than once before.
‘Do you have to wear those things all the time?’ she said sharply, unintentionally revealing her frustration.
He gave a slow smile. ‘Why, do they bother you?’
She zipped up her trousers and grimaced. ‘It … it’s just strange,’ she replied.
He nodded, as if in understanding. ‘I am very self-conscious about my eyes,’ he said. ‘When you lose your sight, their appearance sometimes changes and this can be very off-putting for sighted people.’
‘It wouldn’t bother me.’
‘No,’ he said drily, turning clumsily in the doorway, ‘but it would bother me.’ He felt his way across the landing towards the bathroom. ‘I’ll take my shower now,’ he said. ‘Won’t be long. Drinks already waiting downstairs.’
She watched him go, biting her lip anxiously, and even when he had closed the bathroom door she still stood there, waiting and listening. She heard him using the toilet. Then there was the sudden gurgle of the shower. She swung back into the bedroom. She had very little time to do what she had come to do, but she was determined to do it anyway.
Picking up the pair of trousers he had left draped over the end of the bed, she felt in his pockets for his house keys and jerked them free of the lining in which they had become entangled. There were four or five keys on a brass ring and she immediately found the one she wanted. It was the only key that looked as if it might fit.
Wincing at a sudden thunder-clap, she crossed to the wardrobe. Then crouching down on all fours, she peered at the steel cabinet she had noticed on her earlier visit. If there was anything about Alan that needed to be hidden away, it would be in the cabinet, she was certain of it. After all, where else could it be? She was just able to make out the lock, but fumbled a little as she tried to insert the key into it. After the third attempt it went home easily. In the bathroom, the water still gurgled reassuringly and she heard Alan moving about in the shower cubicle.
She turned the key to the left, but it stuck and would go no further. Swearing under her breath, she turned it back and tried the other way. It still wouldn’t budge in the lock. Damn it! She tried the left again and felt a thrill of excitement as it turned all the way. The door of the cabinet swung open. She listened again. But the shower was still gurgling.
Papers. The cabinet contained a sheaf of papers in a folder. Laying the folder on the floor in front of her, she began sifting through the contents. The photograph jumped out at her immediately and she held it up in the light. It was a picture of herself. She gaped as she scanned the typed report clipped to it. It was a complete résumé of her early life, right up to her teens and the death of her father in a fire in Maidenhead. There were also newspaper cuttings of the incident and photographs of his burned-out house. She felt an icy hand clutch at her heart and flicked over the pages. Pictures of her in several different fashion magazines as a model. One, a full-length nude in a French magazine, which had been taken very early in her career. There were also details of her National Insurance number, a copy of her birth certificate and other personal documents, including copies of some medical papers relating to a year she had spent in hospital after a nervous breakdown. What the hell was all this? Where had Alan got hold of the stuff and more importantly, why?
The shock of what she had discovered left her frozen to the spot for several seconds, like a victim of some 21st Century Medusa, unable to straighten up from her crouched position and reduced to staring into the gloomy depths of the cabinet in a bewildered, near vegetative state. How long she might have remained like that if she had been left to her own devices it is impossible to say, but as it was, she was denied the luxury of a gradual recovery, for it was at this point that her luck suddenly ran out.
It was the faint crack of a floorboard which first alerted her, cutting through the fug that clouded her brain and wrenching her back to reality. It was only when she lurched to her feet and stumbled round to face the bedroom door that she suddenly realised the shower in the bathroom had stopped running. Alan was standing there in his robe. He was no longer wearing his dark glasses and it was obvious from the way he was staring at her that he was no more blind than she was.
‘I’m really sorry you had to find that,’ he said quietly. ‘It rather complicates things, you see.’
CHAPTER 18
Steam poured from under the crushed bonnet of the police Traffic car, spreading outwards in a wider vapour cloud as it mixed with the pouring rain, while the two uniformed officers hauled themselves groggily out of their vehicle. Felicity Dubois stared blankly at them through the driver’s window of her BMW – like them, shocked, dazed and for a few moments unable to fully comprehend what had just happened. One thing soon became apparent: her car was going nowhere except perhaps to a breaker’s yard. The police car had hit her with such force that it had slammed her back into the lane from which she had emerged and into a dry-stone wall, demolishing her front offside wing and burying the wheel under the twisted engine block.
‘Felicity Dubois?’ O’Donnell snapped, switching on the interior light and sliding into the seat beside her. ‘This is a bit of a mess. In a hurry, were you?’
The model shrugged, without answering the question.
‘You stayed at The Blue Ketch Inn two nights ago, didn’t you?’
‘So?’
‘Why did you register in the name Denise Cross?’
‘It’s a free country.’
Benchley climbed into the front passenger seat and kneeling on it, turned round to face her between the two seats. ‘Are you carrying?’ he demanded, showing no interest in her shocked state or the nasty cut to her forehead.
Dubois treated him to a slow contemptuous smile. ‘Carrying what, hon?’ she replied. ‘A shopping bag? A baby? Well, I’m not pregnant, so you must mean a shopping bag.’ She looked around her and shook her head. ‘But nope, no shopping bag either. Sorry.’
‘You know what I mean,’ he replied. ‘A shooter. Are you armed?’
The model chuckled and held both her hands out in front of her, trailing smoke from her cigarette. ‘Want to search me?’ she offered. ‘I’m game, if you are.’
‘Do you think this is a joke?’ O’Donnell snapped again.
Dubois shook her head. ‘Hardly. Not after what those two cop dickheads did to my car.’
‘You seem to have pulled out in front of them, not the other way about. So I’ll ask you again, why the hurry?’
‘I was visiting a friend, but saw her drive off as I arrived—’
‘And went after her?’
‘Nothing wrong with that, is there?’
‘Not unless you write off a police car in the process. Was that friend Lynn Giles?’
‘What if it was?’
O’Donnell went for shock tactics. ‘So, after leaving a dead man back at The Blue Ketch, you casually drive over here as if nothing has happened?’
Dubois frowned. ‘Dead man? What dead man?’
‘Vernon Wiles.’
Dubois’ eyes widened and she straightened up. ‘Vernon?’ she exclaimed, brazenly faking her surprise like an Equity pro. ‘Vernon Wiles? You’re saying he’s dead?’
‘Hardly surprising with half his skull blown away.’
Dubois continued with her pretence. ‘You mean someone shot him?’
‘Well, he didn’t top himself and that’s a fact.’
‘Poor old Vernon. He was a nice little guy too.’
‘You admit you knew him then?’ Benchley queried.
‘’Course I knew him. He was Freddie Baxter’s pal. But … but I didn’t kill him. Why would I? And anyway, I’ve never fired a gun in my life.’
‘Maybe he saw you push Freddie Baxter off the cliff and you stiffed him to shut him up?’
‘Freddie? You reckon I did him in too? Oh come on, hon, what do you think I am – a serial killer?’
O’Donnell gave a thin smile. ‘That is exactly what I intend finding out, Miss Dubois. In the meantime, you are under arrest on suspicion of murder.’
****
Felicity Dubois took a long pull on her sixth cigarette and eyed Benchley and O’Donnell in turn through the smoke. ‘Okay,’ she said eventually, glancing briefly at the light on the tape machine which was winking at her from the corner of the police station interview room, ‘when do you put on the thumbscrews?’
‘Very funny,’ O’Donnell replied, ‘but there’s nothing funny about the reason for your arrest.’
Dubois stubbed out her cigarette on the table-top in front of her. ‘And you two won’t be laughing when I sue you for wrongful arrest either,’ she snapped back.
‘You were offered a solicitor and you turned that down.’
Dubois shrugged. ‘Don’t need one. I haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘What about Vernon Wiles then? You’re still saying you had nothing to do with his death?’
‘I didn’t even know he was dead until you told me.’
‘Fine, but if we find your fingerprints in his room, how will you explain that?’
Dubois hesitated, her face creased into an ugly frown.
‘Trying to remember what you touched in the room, are you?’ Benchley said.
The model stared at him for a moment. ‘I didn’t kill him – or Freddie for that matter,’ she muttered.
‘But you were in his room?’
Dubois took a deep breath and abruptly capitulated. ‘Okay. I admit I know what happened to him. When I checked in at The Blue Ketch a couple of days ago, I went to see him … to try and find out what he knew about Freddie’s death, as I was pretty sure it wasn’t an accident. But the little shit didn’t answer the door. So I left it—’
‘But you tried again?’ Benchley encouraged.
Dubois nodded. ‘The next day … yesterday … after I had called on Lynn. But again, he didn’t answer the door and when I sneaked into his room, I found him with a hole in his head.’
‘And you ran?’
‘You bet I did. I didn’t want to be framed for that, so I headed back to the Smoke, staying overnight in a motel on the way – and I have the receipt to prove it.’
‘But what made you change your mind and turn around?’
‘I wanted to see Lynn again.’
‘Why? You two didn’t get on. You were rivals.’
‘So what? Maybe I was curious about how she was doing.’
‘That’s rubbish and you know it.’
Dubois selected another cigarette from a gold-coloured cigarette case. ‘Think what you like,’ she retorted, though her hand was trembling slightly as she lit up. ‘But I’m not saying anything else. Except that I didn’t kill Vernon or Freddie.’
Before either O’Donnell or Benchley could pursue the interview further, there was a sudden interruption. The knock on the door was rapid and urgent and O’Donnell got up quickly to answer it, verbally indicating for the benefit of the tape recorder that the interview was temporarily suspended and switching the machine off on the way.
The young uniformed constable was smiling confidently as he handed the DI the buff envelope. ‘Found it when we turned over her car, ma’am,’ he said. It was stuffed under the front passenger seat.’
O’Donnell nodded, and inserting her hand in the flap of the envelope, withdrew one of a number of black and white photographs. For a moment she stared at the first picture in astonishment. Then her expression changed to one of grim satisfaction. Thanking the officer and turning back into the room, she strolled over to the table and laid the photograph, followed slowly by several others, in front of Dubois, noting Benchley stiffen beside her as she did so.
The photographs had obviously been taken at a club of some sort and depicted a young Lynn Giles in a variety of indecent naked poses, cavorting on a stage or swinging on a long striped pole under powerful spotlights.
‘Is this why you wanted to see Lynn Giles?’ O’Donnell queried. ‘Putting the squeeze on her about her early career as a pole-dancer, were you? After all, these pics wouldn’t do her any good if they were to be made public, would they?’
Instead of being thrown by the photographs, Dubois drew nonchalantly on her cigarette and met her stare with arrogant amusement. ‘How would I know?’ she replied. ‘I found them in Freddie’s office and was returning them to Lynn as a favour, so she could destroy them.’
‘Why didn’t you give them to her on your first visit?’
‘She had company and I didn’t want to embarrass her—’
‘What a load of balls,’ Benchley cut in, conscious of the fact that the t
ape recorder was no longer switched on.
Dubois shrugged again. ‘Maybe,’ she replied, ‘but how are you going to prove otherwise? Lynn wouldn’t want those pics used as evidence and you have nothing without her testimony anyway.’ She leaned forward towards the Met man. ‘But I’ll tell you something else, Mr Detective. The pics sure as hell give me a reason for being down here – and that sort of throws your theory about me being a serial killer, doesn’t it?’
****
‘What now then?’ O’Donnell said to Benchley in the CID office ten minutes later. ‘We have nothing on Dubois, except a few naughty pictures of Lynn Giles, and she knows it.’ She tapped the envelope containing the photographs, which was lying on the desk in front of her. ‘We’d never get a blackmail conviction on the strength of what we have here.’
Benchley took a gulp of his coffee. ‘I don’t give a damn about the blackmail,’ he said sourly. ‘But the cunning little bitch is right when she says it lets her off the hook for murder. After all, why would Dubois want to kill Lynn Giles if she was out to blackmail her?’
‘True, but if she’s not our murderer, then someone else definitely is. The problem is who?’
The Met man nodded grimly. ‘And more importantly, if Lynn Giles is to be their next target, how close are they to finding her?’ He swore. ‘Holy shit! She could be anywhere, which means we are buggered.’
O’Donnell snapped her fingers, her eyes gleaming. ‘Maybe not,’ she retorted, grabbing her coat from the back of the chair and heading for the door at a run. ‘I think I know where she might have gone.’
‘Now you’re telling me?’ Benchley shouted as he dumped his coffee in a wastepaper bin and raced after her. ‘I just hope you’re right and we’re not already too late!’
****
Lynn Giles was scared – more scared than she had been for a long time – but she was also very angry. Dropping the folder on the floor, she snatched a pair of long-bladed scissors from the top of the bedside cabinet.
‘What’s this then – a miracle in the shower?’ she shouted, holding the scissors out in front of her defensively and glaring at the man who had so cruelly deceived her. ‘Not so blind now, are you, Mr Murray?’