The Way You Look Tonight (29 page)

‘Rockfair residence. Who’s calling?’

There was a distinct pause at the other end before she heard a chuckle followed by the words: ‘Judging by that wonderful accent I’m either talking to the Queen of England or
Stella’s mother.’

Diana laughed in her turn. ‘Diana Arnold speaking, without a speck of blue blood in her veins. Who is this?’

‘Agent Lee Foster. Good morning to you, Mrs Arnold.’

Diana laughed again. ‘As my hosts here would say, “right back-atcha”, Lee . . . I may call you Lee? You must certainly call me Diana. No more Mrs Arnold, please. That’s
strictly for my bank manager.’

‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d left for England, Diana?’

‘I go later today, more’s the pity – it’s such a shame we couldn’t meet before I went back. But Stella’s told me so much about you. It’s obvious to me
that she thinks the world of you.’

‘As I do her. In fact I’ve never met anyone quite like Stella. She’s very, very special. Look . . . please don’t think I’m being rude, but I haven’t much time
to talk right now. Something real bad happened down here in the Keys last night to do with the investigation. I need to talk to Stella, not as my girlfriend but as a special advisor to the FBI.
It’s pretty urgent; in fact I may ask her to fly down here today, so maybe you’ll be sharing a ride to Logan Airport later. Would you put her on to me, please?’

Diana raised her eyebrows. ‘Hold the line, Lee, I’ll go and get her. And goodbye for now.’

‘Goodbye, Diana. We’ll meet soon, I’m sure.’

In the breakfast room Stella was laughing with Sylvia over a cartoon on the front page of the
Boston Globe
.

‘Come and look at this, Mummy,’ she called as Diana entered the room. ‘It’s
so
funny. Sylvia says—’

‘I’m sorry to interrupt, dear, but Lee is on the phone for you from Key West. He says something bad happened down there last night.’

Stella got up from the table and hurried into the hall, snatching the receiver from the table.

‘Lee? What’s happened?’

He told her.

Three hours later, as Lee had predicted to Diana, mother and daughter found themselves in a car together, headed for Boston’s Logan Airport. It wasn’t a cab; the
shiny black Chrysler that had pulled up outside the Rockfairs’ house was an FBI cruiser. Its driver sported the inevitable crew-cut: Stella wondered if Lee was in breach of some agency
regulation by wearing his hair in a short-back-and-sides and that floppy fringe.

Stella had provided the rest of them with the latest headlines from Key West before running to her room to pack again for Florida. As she folded her clothes into the same bag that she’d so
recently emptied, she could hear Jeb on the phone downstairs making excuses on her behalf to the head of her college. Today was meant to be her induction day and she’d been looking forward to
exploring the campus and meeting her tutors. All that had been torpedoed by events taking place over a thousand miles away. She began to wonder if she’d ever get around to studying for her
doctorate.

As Stella was now explaining to her mother, the latest body had been found shortly after six o’clock that morning. Lee said that a woman hotel cleaner taking a short-cut to work across a
patch of waste ground had seen the blood first; a great pool of it that had flowed out from behind a wall before congealing into a waxy puddle already half-covered in a black swarm of flies.

When she had timidly poked her head around the brickwork and seen what lay on the other side, the cleaner had promptly vomited her breakfast all over the crime scene, much to the later annoyance
of the forensics examiner who had been flown by helicopter down from Miami.

‘Same M.O. as the others?’ Stella had asked Lee over the phone.

‘Yes and no. It’s definitely him: the torture wounds are typical – long slashes and puncture wounds in all the usual places, the knife buried up to the hilt in the left eye.
The handle’s already tested positive for his fingerprints.’

‘So what’s different about this one?’ she asked him.

She could practically hear him thinking during the pause before he answered her.

‘Well, for a start . . . I used the word torture – but I don’t think this woman felt a thing. There were no signs that her hands and feet had been bound; none of the usual
burn-marks from struggling against the ropes.’

‘That
is
odd. So she was killed
before
he did his stuff?’

‘No – there was far too much blood on the ground. The pathologist reckons the body may have only had a couple of pints left in it by the time he did his party trick with the knife to
the eye. As a working hypothesis, I’m thinking he drugged her in the usual way with chloroform – we found traces of it on her – and cut her in the usual way while she was
unconscious. I don’t believe she ever woke up again.’

Stella was deep in thought for so long after hearing this that eventually Lee said: ‘Honey? You still there?’

‘Mmm? Yes, sorry . . . just thinking . . . Did you say there are other aspects here that vary from the norm?’

‘Yup. The victim herself, for a start. We know he likes them young – late teens, early twenties, good girls. This was a 43-year-old prostitute, name of Mary Strimmer, string of
convictions for soliciting and a couple for assault with a deadly weapon – if clients didn’t pay her for services rendered, she was quite capable of sticking a switchblade into
them.

‘The other aberration is that there was no prior interception and abduction. He took Mary just a few yards around the corner from her usual pitch and butchered her. We have one witness who
saw her alive and touting at about two o’clock this morning. Body temperature and rigor mortis indicate she died sometime between three and four. So this was a totally uncharacteristic,
opportunistic, even rushed hit. He must have crept out of wherever he’s holed up – in disguise, one assumes – and grabbed the first woman he came across. No real preparation.
High-risk stuff, with the sadistic element entirely missing. It doesn’t make sense.’

Stella nodded to herself. ‘It certainly doesn’t. I was going to say that maybe he’s become sexually frustrated since going into hiding and he couldn’t resist the urge to
kill again . . . but the whole point of these attacks for him was always to inflict unimaginable pain on women, and listen to their suffering. Why go through the motions while she was
comatose?’

She paused again, and this time Lee allowed her thought process to go uninterrupted.

After almost a full minute’s silence, she spoke again. ‘As I say, we know he likes to listen to them, that’s why in the past he’s taken them right out into the mangroves
where no one else can hear. So I can see he might have been worried last night that people living nearby might have heard screaming and come running or called the police . . . so why not just gag
her or stick some tape over her mouth? There’s a totally different motive here, Lee. He’s up to something.’

She heard him sigh deeply before saying: ‘Could it be he’s just taunting us? Showing he can pretty much do what he likes, right under our noses? You know, “I’m the king
of the hill, you can’t catch me”, kinda thing?’

‘Possibly. But he probably thinks he’s already shown that, merely by staying one step ahead of the investigation. Look, Lee, I’m going to have to give this a lot more thought.
Would you like me to fly down there? He might do this again before you find him, you know. I can be there by this evening. Shall I come?’

‘My sweetest, dearest Stella. I thought you’d never ask.’

When she’d finished her account of the conversation with Lee, Diana smiled at her.

‘Doesn’t it a feel a little odd to be working on a murder case alongside a man you say you’re in love with?’ she asked.

Her daughter shook her head vigorously. ‘No, not at all. Of course I know what you mean – it
is
a bit of a rum way to meet a boyfriend. But somehow it feels perfectly
natural and almost
meant.
Anyway, I suppose we both know something like this is highly unlikely to happen again, working on the same case, I mean.’

Diana looked surprised. ‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Assuming things work out between you, Lee is bound to discuss future cases with you, isn’t he? And you said this
isn’t his first involving a psychopath. The more you study the phenomenon, and the more cases he’s assigned to, the more you’re bound to exchange ideas and theories, whether
it’s officially or unofficially.’

‘Gosh, I hadn’t quite thought of it like that. I suppose you’re right. I can be Watson to his Holmes. Or maybe it’s the other way round . . .’

Stella grinned suddenly at her mother.

‘But it’s all rather exciting, isn’t it? And speaking of exciting, Mummy, what
did
happen between you and President Kennedy in that corridor? Every time I ask you, you
change the subject.’

Diana turned to look out of the car window. ‘Oh look,’ she said, craning her neck towards the sky. ‘The geese are flying south for the winter.’

The latest murder was all over the radio breakfast shows and lunchtime phone-ins. By that evening he was headlining every broadcast outlet in the state and was impressively
high up on the running-order of networked news bulletins.

He’d brought the radio from the kitchen to the spare bedroom – the master bedroom was unusable for sleeping now that he’d pretty much demolished the four-poster – and
he’d dragged the upstairs TV on its castors across the landing and to the foot of his bed.

The state governor, C. Farris Bryant, had been taped for the early-evening news, pledging the re-call of FBI special advisor Stella Arnold to the case.

He sipped his scotch as he watched the interview play out. ‘Miss Arnold, to whom we already owe a substantial debt of gratitude, is on her way down here as I speak,’ the governor
informed his interviewer in reverent, sonorous tones, as if a mere touch of the hem of the English woman’s garment would lead investigators to make an immediate arrest.

His plan had worked. It had fucking worked! She was coming, and the fact that she was coming meant that no one – not even her – had figured out the real reason he’d killed
the hooker. Because if they had . . . well, she would’ve been kept safe and sound back up in Massachusetts. But he’d set his snare and she, with the connivance and encouragement of the
police, the FBI, even the frigging state governor, was walking right into it.

He was still unsure exactly how to spring the trap closed _ until he switched channels to Todd Rodgerson’s nightly news show. It was good old Todd who unwittingly supplied the break he
was looking for.

The anchor informed his viewers that the police and the FBI had called a news conference for three o’clock the next afternoon in Key West. Stella Arnold was expected to attend and make
a brief statement in response to overwhelming press interest about her role in the case.

He stared at the TV screen for a moment before slowly toasting it with what remained of his scotch. He genuinely could not believe this.

They were serving her up to him on a plate.

Stella’s FBI helicopter landed in Key West shortly after five that evening. She looked out of the cockpit’s Perspex bubble and almost immediately saw Lee standing
outside the special arrivals hut reserved for helicopter passengers and crew. He was waving at her, a huge smile on his face.

The earphones the pilot had given her before they took off from Miami an hour earlier, so they could talk to each other on the way down, crackled into life.

‘That yer fella, the one you been tellin’ me about?’

She nodded happily.

‘Yes, that’s my Lee.’

‘He sure looks crazy to see ya again.’

When the blades above them had stopped turning, the pilot reached across her and opened the passenger door, reaching behind them for her bag. ‘I’ll bring this over to ya. Looks like
yer gonna need both hands free.’

A few moments later Stella had run across the strip of tarmac that separated her from Lee and was in his arms.

‘Oh Lee . . . I’ve missed you
so much
,’ she whispered, holding him tight. ‘I just want this
stupid
case over with so we can spend some proper time
together. Let me look at you.’

She pulled away from him slightly and stared at him.

‘Lee, you look exhausted,’ she said, genuinely concerned. ‘You’ve lost weight and you’re much too pale and there are dark rings around your eyes.’

‘Thanks,’ he said ironically. ‘You, by comparison, look fabulous next to this wreck of a man.’

‘Don’t be silly!’ she retorted. ‘I’m just worried about you. You’ve been under a colossal strain.’

He smiled down at her. ‘Nothing a proper kiss won’t put right.’

A minute or so later they pulled slowly apart.

‘You
do
look a bit better now, actually,’ she said dreamily. ‘Really, you’ve got some colour back in your cheeks.’

‘Well, the love of a good woman, as they say . . . c’mon, I’ve got lots to tell you on the drive back to your hotel.’

‘
My
hotel?’ she said as they walked to the car. ‘Don’t you mean
our
hotel?’

‘Not tonight, Josephine,’ he said drily, tossing her bag onto the back seat and opening the passenger door for her. ‘I’m sleeping on a cot at headquarters. Given what
went down last night I have to be on constant call. And speaking of being on call . . .’ He went round to the driver’s side and climbed in, starting the engine.

‘Go on,’ she said. ‘What about being on call? And why do you suddenly look all shifty?’

He glanced guiltily across at her as he drove towards the airfield’s perimeter gates.

‘Because . . . well, there’s something happening in the afternoon, Stella, that everyone wants you to be involved in.’

She looked at him with increasing suspicion.

‘Going by the expression on your face, I don’t think I’m going to like it.’

‘Like it? I think you’re going to hate it.’