The Calling (23 page)

Goodhew drove towards Julie Wilson’s flat, to meet her sister. Every detail of his only previous meeting with her had stayed fresh in his memory.

He ran over it again and again. Had there been any signs that Julie had been so desperate? Or, God forbid, had he pushed her too hard somehow?

He remembered her fear when she’d encountered him waiting outside her door. But that hadn’t been fear of him; he knew that much at least.

Of who, then? Peter Walsh? She’d implied that he’d been a bastard, but clearly didn’t put him down as a killer. But would she have actually known?

He remembered her sarcasm. She’d been so uptight that asking her about Pete had felt like tapping dangerously hard on a sheet of glass.

Uptight but not depressed. Something must have happened after his visit to trigger this.

He turned into her road and an involuntary shudder rattled through him. It was the waste that bothered him most about suicides. The universal response from family and friends: ‘If only we’d known, we could have helped.’ And the truth being that the suicide always caused more distress than the secret that triggered it.

Goodhew knew he was being watched as he headed from his car across the footpath to Julie’s flat. The cul-de-sac bristled with twitching net curtains and with the hush that sweeps down and steals the usual day-today sounds when a tragedy occurs.

The door of Julie’s flat stood wide open, so Goodhew knocked on the door frame. Beyond, a sandy-haired woman of about
twenty-five
knelt in the kitchen doorway, filling a small removal crate. ‘Nicole Wilson?’

She was packing china and had already wrapped all but one piece of a Ports of Call dinner service in sheets of newspaper. She glanced up. ‘Come in.’ She picked up the final saucer and stood to shake Goodhew’s hand. ‘The cup’s missing,’ she remarked.

Her hand trembled and the end of her thumb was pressed white as she gripped the china.

‘I’m sorry,’ he replied.

She nodded, averting her gaze to stare at the saucer. It was chipped. ‘I can’t bear to throw it out, but it’s no good, is it?’

‘What are you going to do with the rest of it?’

She shrugged and shook her head. She then covered her face with her right hand, pressing her fingers to the bridge of her nose. Tears trickled across her palm and flowed down her wrist.

Goodhew picked up a fresh sheet of newspaper and took the saucer from her. ‘Why not keep it all together for now?’ He carefully folded the paper around it and handed it back.

She knelt again to tuck it in with the rest of the set, before pulling a tatty tissue from her sleeve. ‘Sorry.’ She looked up at him. ‘Go through and I’ll fetch drinks.’

A pile of empty boxes stood next to the settee. Only two had been filled so far, and Goodhew flipped back their lids. One crate held the stereo; Nicole had pulled out the speaker leads and wrapped the cables in neat rolls. She’d laid the speakers flat on their backs and covered them with a tea towel to keep out the dust.

The other box held some of Julie’s clothes, smoothed out and folded, item by item, so they could be unpacked ready to wear. Not that they would.

Nicole came back with two cans of Coke. ‘This is all I’ve got.’ She nodded to the boxes. ‘I decided to pack up straight away. Mum and Dad were on holiday, and they’re being flown back right now, so I thought I’d get on with it.’

‘To save them the pain?’ A photo of Julie, Nicole and their parents lay flat but face-up on the top of the bookcase. Goodhew picked it up.

She nodded. ‘They won’t understand why she did it.’

‘Do you?’ he asked, glancing at her sharply.

‘No.’ She held out her hand and he passed her the picture. ‘We all thought everything was OK, so this is out of the blue. What could be so bad as to make her do this? We just keep asking why.’ She wasn’t guarded in her thoughts, like her sister. ‘Why are the police involved, anyway? We’ve already been assured that there were no suspicious circumstances. Isn’t that true?’

‘Yes, it is, but I’d spoken to Julie shortly before her death about another matter, and I need to ensure that there is no connection between our conversation and her suicide.’

He knew he had just made an unfortunate choice of words and, with a flash of hostility, she suddenly looked a whole lot more like her sister. ‘You mean you’re scared in case you said something to upset her? Were you heavy-handed with her?’

‘Of course not.’ He raised his hands in protest, and some Coke slopped into the rim of the can. He used his handkerchief to wipe its top and sides, then set it down on the carpet. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’ve explained myself very well. I’m actually investigating the death of Kaye Whiting.’ He paused but Nicole clearly hadn’t recognized the name. ‘You may remember the case: she was found in the water at a flooded quarry just south of Ipswich.’

‘I remember.’ She placed her can alongside Goodhew’s, and by the time she straightened again the colour had drained from her cheeks. ‘Julie showed me her picture in the paper,’ Nicole whispered.

‘What did she say about it?’

Nicole thought for a second. “‘Awful, isn’t it” is what she said, I think. Why do you ask?’

‘We’ve had a variety of leads to follow, one of which was an anonymous caller giving us a name to investigate. We don’t know, at this stage, if it’s merely a hoax, so we’re keen to find the caller.’

‘It wouldn’t be Julie,’ she answered quickly, as if it was a reflex.

‘Why not? Something clearly upset her.’

‘I know. Saying it wasn’t her was my gut reaction, but I’m sure it’s right. But she wouldn’t have called and dropped someone in it. She was loyal. Always loyal.’

‘Even to people who didn’t deserve it?’ He didn’t wait for her
answer. ‘We know Julie wasn’t the caller, but we thought she might know who was. I must also stress that it’s just one line of enquiry.’

‘Who are you investigating?’ she asked. When he did not respond, she insisted, ‘Who?’

‘It’s an ex-boyfriend, Peter Walsh.’

Nicole sighed. ‘Oh.’

‘As far as I can gather, she went out with him for just about a year and was very upset when they split up. But that was some time back now, maybe a year ago. Would that be about right?’

‘They split up last summer, and she was more than upset. Destroyed, I’d call it.’ Nicole faced Goodhew unflinchingly, anger holding her rigid. ‘He treated her like dirt, and shattered her confidence. So do you know what she did?’

Goodhew shook his head.

‘She just waited for him to come back. She hoped he’d come back and still want her. She said she couldn’t understand what she’d done wrong.’ Nicole clenched and unclenched her jaws. ‘I couldn’t get through to her that it wasn’t just her: he’d be the same with anyone.’

‘And do you know of anyone else he’s been out with?’

‘What, since?’

‘Or before,’ he asked.

‘Before Julie there was a girlfriend with a funny name. Marlon or something …? No, Marlowe, that was it.’ She grabbed Goodhew’s arm and pulled him towards the long sideboard. ‘I think there’s a photo of her somewhere.’

Nicole opened and closed the first two of the six wide drawers. She opened the third and, as soon as she saw it brimming with an assortment of papers and greetings cards, she pulled it off its runners and scattered the contents directly on to the carpet.

Goodhew picked up a small square Paddington Bear gift tag. ‘All my love, Pete.’ He dropped it back next to the pile.

Nicole spread the pile of stuff more thinly with a sweep of her hand. ‘Let’s get stuck in.’

Goodhew sat on the floor next to her and they sifted through the heap. Brown-edged petals of a dried red rose crumbled amongst the greetings cards. He found a birthday card, a Valentine’s card, a
bracelet, some photos, a book called
The Cross and the Switchblade,
and several more gift tags. ‘Are these all from Peter Walsh?’

‘Souvenirs of a dead romance – except it wasn’t dead for Julie. Unrequited love, that’s what I think it’s called.’

Goodhew spotted a print half hidden in the pile. It was an old black and white movie still: Robert Mitchum paddling in the sea with his suit trousers rolled up to his knees.

‘What about this?’

‘He bought it for her.’ She smiled. ‘I always liked it, even though it came from him.’ She pointed to a spare picture hook on the wall. ‘Julie used to hang it up there, above the video shelf, until quite recently. It was the last thing of his on display. I asked her where it had gone, and she said it reminded her too much of Pete. Said she’d been so stupid and naïve, but that was all she said.’

‘When was that?’

‘About a week before she died. I just thought she’d finally come to her senses.’ Then she spotted the corner of a photograph jutting from inside the book. ‘Ah, look, here it is.’

She handed Goodhew a six-by-four snapshot of two people standing at a bar, both smiling and holding their drinks up towards the camera.

‘She pinched it from Pete’s house, because he always told her how she didn’t match up to Marlowe.’

Pete was standing with his right arm around Marlowe’s waist. He looked happy and younger, and she looked younger too.

Younger and happier than the moment when Goodhew had come face to face with her in the rain in Hanley Road.

Goodhew placed the cardboard box on the end of the desk standing in the far corner of the incident room. He shovelled everything else from the desktop on to the adjacent printer table. He unrolled a new pad of flip chart and ruled five columns on the first sheet with a chunky black marker. He needed to concentrate on nothing else.

He was alone in the room, but WPC Wilkes and Sue Gully were chatting out in the corridor.

‘I think he was an actor,’ Gully said.

Wilkes disagreed. ‘No, I reckon he was a character.’

Goodhew crossed the room, pushed the door shut and was able to stop listening. He filled in a name at the head of the second, third and fourth columns: Marlowe, Julie, and then Paulette. It was the order in which Pete Walsh had gone out with them. The fifth column he left blank.

Nicole Wilson had packed the contents of that drawer into one of her boxes for him, and he reached into it now and pulled out two photographs. He placed them side by side on the desktop.

Marlowe and Pete. Julie and Pete. He’d fill in what he could about Paulette from memory.

There was a quote that went ‘Know the victim, know the killer’. He wondered why it had suddenly sprung to mind. Were they all victims, and if so what was the crime?

In the first column he wrote ‘date of birth’ and beneath that ‘occupation’, ‘appearance’, ‘address’, ‘education’ and thus
continued
writing other headings, till he finished with ‘hobbies’ near the bottom of the sheet.

He began to fill in spaces on the grid he had devised. He knew most about Julie Wilson; just as well because he wouldn’t be getting a chance of questioning her again.

As he wrote, he realized how little he knew about any of them. He could question Paulette again but not Julie, and he wondered when he would locate the mysterious Marlowe. At least he now had a name to go on.

Clarke nipped into the room to pick up his car keys, and left without shutting the door; Wilkes’ and Gully’s voices intruded again.

‘I think that’s where the name’s from. But it doesn’t help, does it?’ Gully was saying.

‘We could ask her, I suppose,’ Wilkes replied.

‘Yeah, or her family – if they turn up.’ That was Gully talking again.

Goodhew crossed the room and pushed the door shut again, before returning to his chair.

He was going about this the wrong way. He threw the elaborate page in the bin and redrew the columns on a fresh sheet.

OK
, he thought.
They are all linked by Pete Walsh. Let’s start there
. He knew that they shared physical characteristics: height, colouring, similar ages. He knew too that these were all
characteristics
shared with Helen Neill, Kaye Whiting and Stephanie Palmer.

‘
Previous relationships?
’ he entered a question mark under each name.

‘
Behaviour similarities
’. This time he had something to write. Assuming Marlowe and the anonymous caller were one and the same, she was clearly still also preoccupied by Pete. Julie had taken and kept a photo of Marlowe and Pete, while Paulette had taken down Julie’s address. Paulette had considered her own behaviour as resulting from jealousy, whilst Nicole had described her sister as being ‘unable to move on’.

And as for Marlowe, beyond the phone calls, he had yet to find out anything at all.

The door bumped open yet again. This time it was Kincaide, who held it open long enough to finish a conversation with Gully and Wilkes. ‘That’s the sort of question you should ask Goodhew. He’s
the one that’s interested in shitty old films.’ He looked across at Goodhew and feigned surprise. ‘Oh, hello, Gary. I didn’t see you there!’ He smirked and dropped into his own chair.

Goodhew folded his newly annotated paper and placed it in the top of the box, covering Julie’s personal effects. He’d come back to it later.

Gully poked her head around the door and called across to him. ‘So, was Philip Marlowe an actor or a character?’

‘Character,’ Goodhew replied automatically. He carried the box over to his own rather noisier desk. Suddenly he realized the implication of what she had asked. ‘Why?’ he called out.

Gully was already back in the corridor. ‘You’re right,’ he heard her say.

He dumped the box in the footwell of his desk and followed her. By the time he reached the door, WPC Wilkes had gone. ‘Well, that solves that,’ Gully beamed.

Goodhew’s tone was tense. ‘What, exactly?’ he demanded.

‘That girl from the lake is called Marlowe.’

Goodhew frowned. ‘What girl?’

‘Oh blimey, Gary, keep up,’ she scolded him. ‘You know, the one the taxi driver fished out of the same lake where they found Kaye’s body.’

Goodhew shook his head. ‘I don’t know, Sue. I’ve been out places.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Sorry, I just assumed you’d heard. She was dropped off by a taxi and the driver thought her behaviour seemed odd, so he went back to make sure she was OK.’

‘And?’ Goodhew grabbed her arm.

‘And, she’d tried to drown herself. She was already unconscious when he pulled her out. She’s now at Fulbourn Hospital Mental Illness Unit.’

Goodhew grinned. ‘She’s our anonymous caller, Gully, I’m sure. Can you take me up there?’

‘Of course, but she’s sedated and refusing to speak to anyone. Wilkes has been dealing with it, and only mentioned it because of the connection to Kaye.’ They were walking towards the exit even as they spoke. ‘Wilkes has just found out her full name and managed
to contact her parents. Apparently she’s had some emotional problems before and we’ve now managed to locate her counsellor, called Elizabeth Martin. Wilkes has made an appointment for two p. m.’

‘We’ll visit her on the way to the hospital.’

‘OK, I’ll let Wilkes know, and then meet you at the car.’