The Calling (10 page)

Gary dumped the carrier bag of videotapes on to the passenger seat and pulled a reporter’s notepad from the glovebox. The front sheet was covered by a spider’s web of words and phrases that he’d jotted randomly across the sheet. He’d circled some of the words and then linked some of these with lines and arrows.

Ruth Collette’s statement had added nothing to Zal’s but between them the two women had provided a key piece of information.

In an empty corner of the page he wrote ‘Woodbridge’ and ran an arrow from the heading ‘Last Sighting’ to point at it directly. He doubted the victim had made it back to Cambridge, because somehow, between a happy afternoon in Woodbridge and home, she’d been abducted and abandoned.

After a few minutes he paused, resting his gaze on the water. He couldn’t imagine how she would have been abducted by anyone other than the person she’d been waiting for in the café. Had she unwittingly stepped into the car with the killer’s plans already made, or had she fallen out with her driver – or companions – somewhere along the journey home?

If the driver or any fellow passengers weren’t connected to the killer, why hadn’t they come forward? Perhaps he or they were protecting someone else.

Goodhew next wrote ‘Who gave Kaye a lift?’ and went over the question mark several times until it made a heavy black indentation on the page. He stared alternately at the words ‘caller’ and ‘killer’. Were they one and the same?

Gary quickly ran through some possibilities. If the person or
persons who had given her a lift had killed her, then it was almost certainly someone she knew.

What if the anonymous caller had given Kaye a lift? Perhaps Kaye was seeing the mystery caller’s husband or boyfriend, and perhaps the other woman had found out. But then Kaye wouldn’t have gone shopping with her; she would have gone with her lover instead. And was he now protecting his spouse? No, that theory didn’t quite work, but …

Gary tapped the paper impatiently with his fingers as if he was trying to nudge the correct answer on to the sheet.

But what if Kaye was stealing this man away from a friend?

What if Kaye thought her friend didn’t know? She would be happy to take a lift from her, then.

Was the mystery caller this same friend? If so, how did Peter Walsh fit in? Was he the cheating boyfriend?

Had the caller made the abduction just to scare Kaye … or to scare Peter? Perhaps she hadn’t intended Kaye to die.

Too many permutations. He buckled up his seatbelt and started the engine. He drew one final line leading from the heading ‘Woodbridge’ out to a new query: ‘Where are the presents?’ He then dumped his notes on the passenger seat.

He headed out of the town on the same road that he’d come in on. The breeze from his slightly open window caused the top sheet of his pad to quiver slightly, then ripple and lift to reveal the blank second page. He stopped at the next roundabout and reached across to toss it back into the glovebox. The last words he’d written suddenly jumped out at him from the page.

‘Oh shit,’ he groaned and swung the car back towards
Woodbridge
.

Zal Pearson beamed widely when she spotted him crossing the café floor. ‘Didn’t expect to see you back so soon. Fancy another hot chocolate already?’

Goodhew shook his head. ‘I forgot to ask you. Could you show me which birthday card she bought?’

Zal wiped her hands on a tea towel and removed her apron. ‘I don’t know if I’d actually recognize it, but we can have a go. I think it was in a Fantasia bag.’

She locked the café for a second time, and they crossed the Thoroughfare and headed into the crammed gift shop. Zal scanned the rows of cards, then picked out a handmade one with rough-cut paper shapes mounted on a square of ribbon. She ran her fingers across it thoughtfully; something about its texture seemed familiar, but it wasn’t the one. She dropped it back into its pigeonhole. ‘I don’t know,’ she groaned. ‘I only saw it for a moment.’

Gary was standing beside an upright display stand. He spun it through one hundred and eighty degrees. ‘How about these?’

Zal shrugged. ‘You don’t want much, do you?’ she began, but then her eye fell on the bottom row of cards, each adorned with slivers of paper curled into leaves and petals. ‘Quilling – that’s it!’ She grabbed a handful of about fifteen cards and flicked through them; each was slightly different. ‘They’re all of them one-offs, but I’d say this is the closest.’

She passed it to Gary. He frowned as he read the message on the front. ‘Except it said “Happy Birthday, Grandmother”, I suppose?’

He passed it back and she held it on top of the others, concentration wrinkling her forehead. Finally she flicked through the pile again and pulled out a second card. She passed them both back to Gary. ‘I remember now, she bought two. A
Happy Birthday
, Grandma
card similar to that one, and definitely this one too.’

Gary bought the two cards, thanked her, and headed back towards Cambridge. He cut easily through the miles, losing them under the wheels. Once in a while he glanced at the card on the passenger seat. It was pink with a raised spray of fuchsia and cream paper flowers beneath the words
Happy Birthday, Mother
.

The junction at the top of Station Road in Cambridge is almost triangular. The war memorial stands in the middle, and anyone overtaken by the desire to admire it or watch the endless stream of traffic, or even study the mundane elevations of the nearby offices, would have the choice of standing in a doorway or sitting at a café window or making the short walk to the Flying Pig and sitting at one of its pavement benches.

The girl with the scarred wrists sat between an American tourist and a traveller with his collie dog.

She gazed down between her thighs and through the slats of the wooden bench to the concrete below. The heels of her scuffed shoes shook as the balls of her feet reacted to uncontrollable nerves.

She found a penny that had landed in a bare patch between pink and taupe splodges of dried-out chewing gum.
See a penny, pick it up, and all the day you’ll have good luck.

She didn’t pick it up though, just wondered whether she should.

I can’t be bothered
, she decided, and pushed her knee down until the shaking stopped. She gulped a few deep breaths before climbing to her feet. The lack of oxygen made her feel queasy and she panted a little as she pushed open the door and entered the bar, waiting at the counter.

The landlady glanced at her and smiled, as she finished pulling a pint for the man in front, then pulled a stubby pencil from her pocket and jotted his food order on to a small pad. And the whole time she continued to smile, almost to herself as if there was a joke in her head.

Who does she think she is?
the girl wondered.

She pretended she hadn’t noticed and turned away. Her gaze slipped on to the front page of a
Cambridge News
lying on the closest table. She tore her gaze away again; she didn’t want to see that face any more either.

She studied the customers, and finally the landlady too. No one looked at her now.
They’d be staring at me if I really looked like her.

She checked her watch: 11.55.

Above the heads of the customers and through the plate-glass windows she could see the main entrance of Dunwold Insurance. ‘Peter,’ she whispered, and her heart surged as she felt his name on her lips. He was nowhere to be seen, but he’d come out soon. She needed to be at her seat by the window, ready for what she called
her next fix
, the moment that would satisfy her addiction to him for another day.

With a start she realized that the landlady was now waiting for her. She’d already put an empty cup and saucer ready, and was killing more time in sharpening her pencil over the bin. ‘Drink?’

‘Coffee.’ She scowled. The woman was like a bloody Cheshire Cat. She handed over the correct money and tried not to ask herself if and why she was being laughed at. Over-analysis was bad; she knew that, and had been taught to remember it.

She settled in her usual seat and waited.

Come on, Peter, where are you?

She looked down and across the square outside. She scanned the groups of pedestrians, looking for those familiar bobbing heads, but there was no sign of either Peter or Paulette.

She began an argument with herself:
I couldn’t have missed him, could I?
The butterflies flew faster in her stomach and she shivered again.
Why can’t I forget him and get on with my life?
she wondered.

Because you’re obsessed by him, you stupid girl. Get some help. It’s gone on too long
.

I tried, didn’t I? Anyway, who would understand?
She continued to argue with herself and stared down at the table top as ugly tears threatened to screw up her face. She pinched the fleshy skin next to the knuckle on her index finger and watched it redden around the twin dents left by her nails.

You must make it stop. You can’t spend the rest of your life like this.

I won’t,
she promised and squeezed her eyes tight shut, pressing her face into her clasped hands. A tear still escaped and ran on to her thumb.
I’ll stop him. Everyone will see it was him that’s mad and not me. And then he’ll be gone and I’ll be OK again.

You’ll never be OK again.
She shook her head, and continued to shake it as she replied to herself.

Don’t say that.
She rocked gently in her seat until she felt calmer.
I’ll phone again. I’ll do it now.

As she left the Flying Pig, she immediately noticed how busy the streets had become, the pavements in particular. She hurried towards the city centre, watching for a safe route through the crowd. She felt as though she was suffering from tunnel vision. Around the periphery a kind of nothingness, and in the middle, in over-sharp, over-bright detail, face after face. She stumbled on, watching for Peter. Looking into strangers’ faces. Trying to find someone staring back into her own.

And what if someone recognizes you?
she taunted herself.
You won’t have the guts to grab them and demand to know what they’re staring at, will you?

They’d think I was crazy.
She carried on watching, though, but nobody even glanced at her.
I’m the only one who thinks I look like Kaye Whiting, aren’t I?

Perhaps you don’t at all. It could all be a terrible mistake, then you’ll pay.

I know. I know.
She thought of the sleeping pills she’d been taking since she’d first seen Kaye’s picture in the paper.

She decided to use one of the call boxes in the row beside the newsagent’s. There were eight of them, and plenty of people around, so she hoped no one would notice her.

She picked up the receiver, began to tap out the numbers and, when the call connected, she recognized the same female voice from the last time.

‘I rang before with some information about Kaye Whiting’s disappearance.’

‘Can I have your name please, caller?’ asked the police woman.

‘No, listen. I rang on Tuesday. I told you she was going to die if you didn’t stop Peter Walsh. Well, you didn’t and now she’s dead.’

‘What else can you tell us?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Do you have any evidence?’

She knew that the officer was trying to keep her talking. ‘No. I don’t have anything for you. I’m sorry.’ She hung up then and pushed her way out of the call box, forgetting to hold the door open for the pensioner waiting outside.

She felt no better. The emptiness she had carried for three years swelled to form a vacuum. She stumbled into a jog and ran towards her office, with one hand closed tightly around the landlady’s pencil sharpener.

She would unscrew its sharp little blade, if she had to.

Anything to stop the pain.

Goodhew and Gully sat facing one another across the table. Their hands, resting on the polished surface, were almost touching.

A lock of hair fell forward from behind her ear; she tucked it back again and ran a self-conscious hand across the crown of her head. He didn’t look up and her cheeks flushed as she tried to hide her desire to flirt with him.

But, working or not, she couldn’t overlook the fact that they were alone and she was enjoying his complete attention. Well, sort of. She waited for him to speak. ‘Is there anything I can do for you, Gary?’ she asked, and immediately cringed at the accidental double entendre.
Silly cow.

His gaze met hers for a moment. ‘You could get yourself into trouble with questions like that, Sue.’ He smiled, but his tone was too matter-of-fact to be flirtatious and she knew he hadn’t even noticed her deepening blush.

‘You know what I mean,’ she retorted, and banished the impulse to find out how it would feel to squeeze his hand. This was one of the only times in her life that she’d found her constant blushing to be a blessing.

Having a crush on your rescuer; Gully knew there had to be a medical name for it, just like she knew that
idiopathic craniofacial erythema
was the correct term for her involuntary blushing. She’d been searching for the phrase on every diagnose-it-yourself website she could find, and had terms like
transference, Inverse Stockholm Syndrome
and the worryingly titled
Erotomania
thrown up as possibles. All were incorrect.

Besides, putting a name to it wasn’t the same as finding a cure, and she guessed the slightly juvenile reaction she felt every time Goodhew was somewhere within one hundred paces would
eventually
fade of its own accord. And the sooner the better.

Gary’s hand was almost touching hers because they’d been highlighting sections of the transcription of the first and latest phone calls.

‘We need to find her, Sue. This call implies that she knew Kaye was still alive on Tuesday.’

‘And she was.’

‘For most of the day, yes. We need to know how she knew that. I need another visit to Kaye’s family, but then I’m going to see Peter Walsh again.’

‘Do you think he even knows who she is?’ she asked.

Gary shrugged and stared at her directly. Or possibly through her, she realized with disappointment.

‘He’s a bit cocky, almost like he wasn’t surprised to see me turn up. That’s not an indication of anything, of course, since too much indignant outrage can be just as suspicious, but I did have a feeling that he might know who the anonymous caller could be.’

‘What if she’s just some crank that sees him regularly at work, or in the street, and is just fixated with him? He might not actually know her, then.’

‘We’ll see.’ Gary ran his fingers along one highlighted line in the first transcript. ‘She talks of “killings”, and that needs some more research. Can you start looking for similar cases while I’m with Walsh?’

Gully strummed her fingers on the desk. ‘What about Marks? Is he OK with this approach?’ she asked.

‘Kincaide’s hot on the family or friends theory, and I guess it’s still the most likely,’ he replied, ‘but Marks was fine about us following up the phone call, and that’s all we’re doing, isn’t it?’

‘Of course it is, Gary.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘But you’re not talking about a mere five minutes tapping parameters into a terminal, you know. Have you any idea what you actually want me to look for?’

‘Better make it quite broad to start with. Say women aged between fifteen and forty, bound and gagged …’

‘Sexual assault?’

He shook his head. ‘No.’

‘Cause of death, drowning?’

‘Yes.’ He paused and flicked through the pages on the desk. ‘Or maybe exposure or starvation,’ he added.

‘Why?’

‘We don’t know that drowning was the intended cause of death.’

‘We don’t even know that she was supposed to die.’

‘If the killer had no plans to return and reckoned she wouldn’t be found soon enough, then it’s premeditated murder, isn’t it?’

Gully grimaced. ‘I’ve never considered murder by the elements before.’ She realized the search could prove vast. ‘What about geographical area?’

‘Anywhere in the UK, I suppose.’ They both reread the list. ‘Over the last ten years?’ he added. ‘I don’t know, but I’m just trying to think of something to narrow it down without losing what we most need. It’s not very specific.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll see what I can come up with,’ she said, with little enthusiasm.

‘Sure?’ Gary began gathering the notes. ‘Grab me if it’s not working.’

‘No problem,’ she said and blushed again.

‘And if you get bored we can widen the criteria,’ he added.

She shook her head in disbelief. ‘I hope you’re being sarcastic!’

He laughed. ‘Yeah, just kidding.’

‘As it is, I’ll be at it all night.’

‘Lucky you!’

She followed him as far as the water-cooler, where she filled a paper cup and held it against her cheek until the hotness subsided.