The Various Haunts of Men (52 page)

Freya shook her head.

‘Something else then? I
don’t like drinking alone.’

She poured herself a glass of water.

Aidan Sharpe smiled. ‘That’s right. Humour him, don’t make him angry. But my dear, I am not in the least angry.’ He sipped his whisky, looking at her across the top of the glass.

She was glad of the water.

‘Tell me,’ he said, in a voice so pleasant and reasonable she was taken aback; they might still have been in
the Embassy
bar. ‘What do you think motivates a serial killer? It’s something I have long wondered about.’

She opened her mouth and her tongue felt sticky.

‘I imagine you must have come across one or two during your time in the Met?’

‘They … they are less common than people imagine. But yes.’

‘And?’

She knew what to answer and yet could not say it, not here in her own living room sitting opposite this
man. It seemed ludicrous to engage in a rational, intelligent discussion of the motives of murderers.

‘For instance, Dennis Nielsen was mad but he killed for company, you know. The Wests were simply evil. Bad but never mad. Those who kill children are the scum of the earth, satanic paedophiles. But has it ever occurred to you that there may be good motives? Understandable ones?’

She swallowed
more water, shaking her head. Speech was beyond her now.

‘I kill in the course of my work.’ He stared at her and paused.

Don’t react, don’t move a muscle, don’t give anything away.

‘The benefits will be immense. The study of the human body in its many stages will lead eventually to more knowledge about the process of ageing, the process of disease, the course taken by different ways of dying
and then by the process of death, than has ever been gained before. I kill to further that work. Those I kill die to benefit mankind and, as you have discovered, they leave scarcely any behind to mourn them. I am extremely careful. Angela Randall was not missed. She is of far greater value dead
than she ever was alive, you know. And she owes that to me.’

She was beyond terror. Only her mind still
worked, still struggled to remember the plan of escape. Give nothing away, wait, then move, move fast, fast, fast.

Aidan Sharpe sipped his whisky. ‘There are the simply mad, of course,’ he said, ‘those who have no motive, nor very much knowledge of what they do. They simply repeat a pattern, as children play certain games. If they have a reason for what they do it is usually a deranged, distorted
one, a product of madness. Schizophrenics hear voices commanding them to kill. They deserve sympathetic treatment, do you not think?’

She wondered what his motive could be in telling her that he had killed. Pride? Boastfulness? Gloating? She glanced at him. He looked so neat, trimmed, contained, so pleasant sitting there – what her mother would have called a pernickety little man. But he was
right about one thing. She did want to know. Before escaping, she needed him to tell her what he had done with the missing women and how, and whether there had been others before now, others nobody knew about.

She drank more water.

‘They are perfectly safe, you know,’ he said, smiling faintly again. ‘I take very good care of them.’

Then she saw in his eyes not only that he was mad but the extent
of his madness and the intensity of its focus.

‘I plan. I go to a lot of trouble. Sometimes I wait for months. I waited a long time for poor Debbie Parker.’

‘Iris Chater?’ She heard her own voice, odd, distorted in her ears like a voice at the wrong end of a speaking tube.

Aidan Sharpe inclined his head. ‘You’re right,’ he said, as if in real regret, ‘of course you’re right about that. There
was no plan. I went against all my instincts. It was foolish. It was wrong. But I didn’t kill her. She died of a heart attack and I kept the body. I took a risk and as it happens it paid off, but it might so easily not have done.’

‘You mean … you are sorry?’

‘Oh, no, not that. I regret taking a chance. But if it had not been Mrs Chater it would have had to be someone like her. An elderly woman
was next on the list. I had come to exactly that stage in my work. How could I be sorry?’

Freya was dazed, with fear and with a wild sense that she herself was becoming deranged, locked with a madman in his own claustrophobic yet oddly plausible mental world. How could he possibly be sorry? How could he have been so careless as to take the chance he did? Supposing it had not worked? Think of
the consequences to his life’s work, think of the stupidity … surely she had to agree with him?

‘You’re very quiet, Freya? You seem unlike yourself. I expected a torrent of questions – awkward questions, perhaps, or interested questions, but not this silence. Has nothing I have said interested you? You seem somewhat detached.’

But the questions were there, like bats fluttering round inside the
walls of her skull, flapping about, confusing her. She wanted to let them out, to voice them, to quieten them, but she could not open her mouth now. She simply clung on somehow to the awareness of what she must do and how and at what moment.

‘Perhaps I might have a little more of your excellent whisky?’

Aidan Sharpe bent slightly forward and reached out his hand.

A light went on inside Freya’s
brain. Now, she said, now. Go. Go. Go.

‘Yes!’ Nathan shouted. ‘Yesssss!’ and jumped on to the dining table.

‘Get down, you idiot.’ But Emma was laughing.

‘Naw, I might pull you up here and we’ll have a dance. I want to dance, Em. Where can we go to dance?’

‘Get down – and there isn’t anywhere at this time of night.’

‘I feel like it. I wanna dance …’ and he began a mock tap routine, waving his arms in the air.

Emma had said
yes. He knew she would and had been terrified she wouldn’t, he’d been sure she’d want nothing better than to marry him and certain she’d kick him downstairs. He would wait, he thought, he wouldn’t ask her now, she’d just had a long journey, she was tired, he’d wait till the weekend. Or the one after. Or until their holiday.

She’d dropped her bag and gone straight to the shower. Ten minutes later,
as she had walked into the kitchen with her damp hair tied up and wearing her old velour tracksuit, he had turned round from the sink
where he was washing his hands and said, ‘Em, I really, really want to marry you. Will you marry me?’

‘Yes,’ Em had said and gone to the fridge to get out a bottle of fizzy water.

‘You what?’

She had glanced up. ‘Can you open this top? I can never do them. I
said yes.’

That had been a couple of hours ago and Nathan had still not come down from his high of excitement, surprise, delight and disbelief. He stood on the table and stretched out his arms. ‘King,’ he shouted. ‘Yessss.’

‘GET DOWN.’

He jumped lightly on to the floor.

‘Nath, shut up, there are people below us asleep.’

‘How do you know they’re asleep?’

‘Because they go to bed at ten o’clock
and now it’s after midnight.’

‘Yeah, true.’

‘I’m whacked as well.’

‘Oh no you’re not, you’re going to marry me. We can’t just leave it there.’

‘Well, I wasn’t going to just leave it there, I was going to marry you, but not tonight.’

‘Let’s go out and find somewhere … let’s knock someone up.’

‘Don’t be daft.’

‘Haven’t you got any mates just coming off duty?’

‘No. They’re either in bed asleep
or they’re working. Same as your mates.’

‘Yeah, we could go down to the station. Or up to the hospital.’

‘They wouldn’t thank us. We can tell everyone in the morning.’

‘Let’s just go for a drink then.’

‘Where?’

‘We’ll find somewhere.’

‘Not anywhere legal we won’t.’

‘Hey, I know what – there’s that bottle of champagne you won in the raffle.’

‘It’s too late to start on that, it gives you
a terrible hangover.’

‘Not if we only have a bit and we’ll only have a bit cos we’re going to share it.’

‘Who with?’

‘I’ll tell you who with. Do you know who pushed me into this “Will you marry me” thingy?’

‘You mean it wasn’t your own idea?’

‘Yeah, well, I just hadn’t got round to it.’

‘I’d noticed.’

‘I don’t know when I would have, to be honest, what with this and that and you know how
shy I am.’

‘Hello?’

‘Yes I am, I’m a very shy person actually. It was Sergeant Graffham made me think about it. I can’t remember why it came up – something to do with them missing women, I think. Only she said to get on with it, kept on at me, told me how good you were for me … and how good a husband I’d make and all that. Honestly, you owe her, Em.’

‘I’ll remember to thank her.’

‘You can
do it now, we’re going round there. We’re going to dance outside her house and we’re taking this bottle. Come on.’

‘Nathan, don’t be stupid. You can’t just barge round to your sergeant’s house and wake her up.’

‘Oh, she won’t have gone to bed, she never does till
two in the morning, she told me, and anyway, she was singing in some concert tonight in the cathedral so she’ll definitely be up for
a drink.’

‘More likely crashed out.’

‘Naw … come on, I’ll push your bike.’

‘I don’t need pushing. Are you sure about this, Nath? I don’t know …’

But Nathan had grabbed her hand and the bottle of champagne and propelled her out of the door.

The streets were empty and peaceful. Their bikes made a silky swishing sound on the dry tarmac.

‘It’s like when you’re a kid, doing something daft like
this, creeping out when your mam and dad think you’re in bed.’

‘You never told me you did that.’

‘There’s a lot of things I haven’t told you. Why should I have?’

‘Because I’m a copper. You’ll be a copper’s missus. Carries responsibilities that does.’

They swerved round the corners of the narrow streets, meeting no one, avoiding the odd cat that streaked across the road, giggling.

‘Tell you
what, why don’t we go the long way round, on the road past the Hill?’

‘What for?’

‘It’s real spooky round there, I fancy frightening you to death.’

‘It’d take more than the Hill on a dark night to frighten me, Nathan Coates.’

‘Not if I told you what had been going on there it wouldn’t. Not if I told you –’

‘OK, race you!’

Emma whisked off ahead, catching him out, so that he had to pedal
furiously to reach her.

Freya got into the kitchen, unlocked the door and hurtled down the narrow passageway. She had managed to surprise him after all.

He did not catch her until she had her hand on the bolt of the side door into the street but then she felt a pain in the middle of her back as he put his fist into it, taking her breath away, and another as he wrenched her wrist from the door.
He had not looked strong, not as strong as this.

Freya began to scream. She screamed until he put his arm across her mouth and throat, at the same time pushing her hard, back into the kitchen, back into the sitting room. She tripped and fell, hitting her face on the floor.

Remember, remember what you should be doing, don’t let him surprise you, trip him up, roll over and kick him hard, don’t …

Her arm almost came out of its socket in a wrenching pain, as he yanked her to her feet. She saw his face, intensely white with two scarlet patches on the cheekbones, and his eyes, staring insanely at her, the syringe held aloft, glinting. Somehow she had expected him to be laughing but he was not, there was a grim and dreadful concentration on his features as he faced her. Freya lashed out at
him with her foot and raised her knee at the same time, trying to get to his groin, but he had her arm again and twisted it so hard behind her back she felt the bone crack. Sickness surged up.

Don’t let, don’t let him, don’t let …

A split second of pain so intense that it did not feel like pain at all but was like a brilliant light boring through her skull.

Don’t …

Then nothing.

In the end,
they did not stop on the Hill road, they raced one another, sweeping past it in the darkness and their laughter floated up towards the Wern Stones and the trees, dissolving the ghosts.

‘Hey, hey, hey …’ Nathan shouted, and stuck both legs out at the sides of his bike.

Emma was still ahead of him as they swerved round the corner of Freya’s street.

‘There you are, told you, her light’s on,’ Nathan
shouted.

They pedalled the last few yards alongside the parked cars, past all the darkened houses to the one with a dim light still showing. Nathan skidded off his bike and propped it up against the low wall.

‘What shall we do, sing? Let’s give her a song.’

‘Shut up, you’ll wake the street. Just tap on the door and if she doesn’t answer –’

‘Course she’ll answer.’ Nathan opened the gate and
marched up the drive, waving the bottle of champagne and laughing, dragging Emma by the hand behind him.

It had been very quiet in Graffham’s house. He had felt the usual surge of power and the adrenaline had carried him to the crest of excitement and strength. But afterwards, as he knew to expect, energy drained out of him so fast that he had to sit and take deep, slow breaths. His hands trembled.
He knew better than to take more alcohol but he tipped the last of the jug of water into his glass and drained it quickly.

She lay on the floor, a few feet away from him, one
leg bent awkwardly back, her head face down on the carpet. The blood had begun to seep out from under her making a thick stain. He did not like there to be blood, not yet. He avoided blood and he was angry with himself for
his own carelessness.

Things had rushed on, she had forced his hand when he was not ready. It was her fault. But she was not the one he was concerned about.
He
had to be safe. There had been very little noise, apart from the few moments in the alleyway and no one had come, no light had gone on.

He did not go near to her or touch her. He was confident he had no need to do so. In a few moments,
in his own time and when he was calm and steady, he would go out of the front door and walk down the quiet, dark street to his car which was parked at the far end. He knew there would be a few moments when danger would be acute, as he carried her out of the house and put her on to the back seat, but people were asleep, no cars had come down the road for over an hour and it was too late for people
walking home from the pub or the cinema.