The Ladykiller (7 page)

Elaine placed a cup of tea by his hand and he looked up at her.

‘Isn’t it terrible, George? That poor woman. Those poor little children losing their mother like that, and just before Christmas as well.’ George was surprised at the emotion in Elaine’s voice.

‘It’s all we’ve talked about at work. I mean, no woman’s safe, is she?’

George tutted and shook his head. ‘You be careful, Elaine.’ He pointed a finger at her. ‘Promise me you’ll get a taxi home from work? I don’t want you standing at bus stops in the dark.’

She stared at her husband and then smiled.

‘Oh, George! You old silly.’

Despite herself Elaine felt an enormous surge of pleasure at his concern. Getting taxis home from work! Well, she would, because as George said it wasn’t safe for her to be standing at bus stops in the dark.

She started to dish up the dinner.

Later in the evening, the sex murder was reported on Thames News. Elaine shook her head sadly. But George smiled. His secret smile that just showed his teeth.

Kate finally arrived home at eleven fifteen. She pulled into her drive and decided that she just couldn’t be bothered to park the car in the garage. She was too tired. Getting out of the car she locked it, stifling a large yawn.

The front door was opened as she approached it and a woman of indeterminate age practically pulled her into the hallway.

‘Get yourself in now, love, you must be frozen. I’ve got your dinner in the oven keeping warm.’

Kate smiled to herself. Her mother still thought she was eighteen.

‘Where’s Lizzy?’

‘Oh, she’s in the bath, she’ll be down soon. I heard about the terrible goings on today. Scandalous, bloody scandalous! Was it the husband?’

Kate followed her mother through the lounge and into the kitchen, where on a small breakfast bar her knife and fork were laid out. She sat on the stool gratefully and accepted a cup of steaming coffee.

‘It wasn’t the husband, Mum.’

Evelyn O’Dowd wasn’t listening which did not disturb Kate. Her mother never listened to anyone or anything.

‘It’s usually the husband or some other relative . . .’

Evelyn opened the oven and Kate felt her mouth water as the tantalising aroma of a good beef casserole wafted towards her.

‘Be careful of that plate now, it’s roasting.’

‘Thanks, Mum, this is just what I needed.’

‘I’ve made soda bread to go with it.’

Evelyn O’Dowd was tiny and thin, like a little bird. She had black eyes that darted continually and never settled on anything. She wore black all the time which accentuated her thinness. She still looked after her forty-year-old daughter as if she was ten. Kate loved her.

As she broke off a piece of bread her mother sat opposite her with a cup of coffee and the ever present cigarette. Taking a large draw on it, she blew smoke across the breakfast bar and smiled.

‘What a feather this one will be in your cap - when you finally solve it, of course. Which you will, I’m sure of that.’ It was said with absolute certainty.

‘Well, we’re doing the best we can, it’s early days yet, Mum.’

Kate ate the food with an enthusiasm that pleased her mother no end.

‘If only your father could have lived to see you, he’d have died of happiness!’

Kate grinned to herself. Her mother’s Irish sayings were not only unintelligible most of the time, they were often highly amusing - though Evelyn didn’t always think so.

Declan O’Dowd had been a London docker and had made sure his two children received a good education. Kate’s elder brother now lived in Australia to where he had emigrated to twenty years before. He was a civil engineer and had a wife and five children whom Kate and her mother had never seen in the flesh. Kate had made her career in the police force. Declan O’Dowd had died a happy man shortly after she had passed out from Hendon.

Kate’s mother had come to live with her shortly after Lizzy, her daughter, had been born. Danny Burrows, Kate’s husband, had left her when Lizzy was three months old. He showed up periodically over the years, turned everyone’s world upside down and then disappeared again. Kate was secretly dreading this Christmas because he was due on one of his flying visits. Lizzy adored her father, which made it hard for Kate to keep everything on an even keel.

She heard her daughter patter into the room in her slippers.

‘Hello, Mum. I heard about the murder. Me and Gran watched it on the news.’

‘Hello, baby, come and give us a kiss.’

Lizzy went to her mother and put her arms around her. At sixteen she was exquisite. Sometimes the beauty of her own daughter made Kate frightened. Lizzy had the O’Dowd darkness, like her mother and grandmother, but she also had porcelain white skin and startling violet eyes. She looked sixteen going on twenty-five. Unlike her mother she was full-chested, already a thirty-six B and still growing by the looks of her. She was as tall as her mother but far more graceful. One thing she had not inherited from Kate was brains. Though shrewd enough in her own way, she was no scholar, had no interest in anything academic. She worked now in the local Boots, filling shelves and waiting for the magical day they trained her for the tills. That was the height of her ambition and Kate accepted this.

‘How was your day then, love?’

‘Not bad, Mum, the usual. With the Christmas rush, we just don’t stop. I never even had my coffee break today. Mr Williams the manager said I was doing very well indeed, though.’

She put on a very posh voice for the last part and Kate and Evelyn laughed. Kate broke off some more soda bread and mopped up the gravy on her plate.

‘Shall I run you a nice bath, Mum? I got some bath crystals from the Body Shop last week. It’s the aromatherapy range. They’re lavender and supposed to make you relax.’

‘That would be gorgeous. Today has been pretty hectic.’

Lizzy went from the room and Kate and her mother smiled at one another.

‘Sure, she’s a good girl, Katie. That fellow’s been ringing her again. I think it’s love.’

Kate lit herself a cigarette from her mother’s pack and pushed her plate away from her.

‘Well, she’s young, the boys are bound to be after her.’

‘True, Katie, but I worry about her. I don’t think she realises the effect she has on them, you know.’

‘That’s part of her charm, I think. We’ll keep an eye on her.’

‘That we will. Now you smoke your fag while I clear this lot away. You’ll need all the sleep you can get, I’m thinking.’

Kate grinned again. Her mother was not happy unless she was looking after someone. Over the last sixteen years, Kate did not know what she would have done without her.

Going up to the bathroom a little while later, she lay in the steaming and fragrant water. She had been working for sixteen hours non-stop. She had seen a woman practically dismembered on a mortuary slab, had set up an incident room, and had organised over thirty policemen and women for the door to door inquiry. She had at her fingertips information about anyone and everyone.

Yet her mother still made her feel like a child. And after a day like this, it felt good.

George lay in bed with Elaine. He listened to her deep snores and smiled into the darkness. Every time he thought of Geraldine O’Leary he felt great.

Once more he replayed in his mind what he had done. He took himself through the act step by step, congratulating himself on his cleverness.

Then he frowned.

Into his mind’s eye came pictures of his mother. He wiped his hand across his face in the darkness as if that would erase them. He saw his mother as she had been when he was a child. Her bright red hair, naturally red not dyed like Elaine’s, was shining in the sunlight. Her sea green eyes were sparkling mischievously, and George could see himself smiling back at her. He could see the room: the cast-iron fireplace with the dried flowers in the hearth, the Victorian prints on the flock wallpaper and the black leather Chesterfield. He could also see the pipe and the bag and the china bowl.

George tried to shut out the images but they were too strong. He lay in bed and watched.

‘Come to Mummy, Georgie boy.’ Her voice was a caress. She held out her arms to the little boy in front of her. In the distance Georgie could hear the sounds of the anti-aircraft fire. He stood silently in front of her.

She spoke again, her voice harder this time.

‘I said, come to Mummy, Georgie.’

The little boy looked at the doorway and his mother laughed.

‘Come in, kids!’ Her voice was loud.

George looked at the doorway with frightened eyes. He watched his elder sister and brother come into the room.

‘Lie on the floor, Georgie boy.’

The child shook his head and began to edge his way backwards. He watched his mother’s red-lipsticked mouth twist into an ugly shape.

‘Don’t annoy Mummy, Georgie. Just lie on the floor.’

The child watched the others make a semicircle around him. His elder brother Joseph was so close he could smell the odour of bull’s eyes coming from him.

He closed his eyes at the inevitable. She had already given them the sweets. They would want this over with as quickly as possible. He felt the familiar sensation of ice water in his bowels as the older children pulled him to the ground. He felt a surge of hatred for his mother as his shorts and underpants were pulled off. He felt the contained violence from the others as they held him, face down on the floor.

He began to cry. Slowly at first, then violently, painfully, as his mother began pushing the rubber piping into his rectum. He tried to fight but it was useless. He felt the warmth of the soapy water hitting his bowels and then he felt the sick, wrenching feeling as they emptied. He winced as she ripped the rubber tubing from inside him. Then it was all over.

He lay on the floor looking up into his mother’s smiling face. The sweat was standing out on his forehead, and he felt the waves of nausea washing over him.

Then he saw his mother’s heavily made-up face approaching his own, felt the coolness of her lips as they sucked at his mouth.

‘That feels better, doesn’t it, Georgie boy?’

Lying on the floor of the parlour, weak and sick, he nodded at her. Fighting back the words.

Then his mother picked him up in her arms tenderly and took him to his bed. He felt the coolness of the sheets that smelt of Lux soap flakes and then the red pain in his behind.

He saw her smile again.

‘You’re Mummy’s little soldier, what are you?’

The child watched her through tear-filled lashes and sighed, sending a shudder through his thin little body.

‘I’m Mummy’s little soldier.’

Then he was pulled up from the bed and held against her ample bosom while she rained kisses all over his face and neck.

George watched it all as if it was a film. He closed his eyes to shut out the sight. But his mother just would not go away.

She never went away.

It was Saturday and George was alone in the house. After carefully washing up the breakfast things and putting them away, he made himself a pot of tea. While it brewed on the kitchen table he walked down the garden to his shed and brought back his scrapbooks.

Sitting at the kitchen table, he settled himself down and opened the first book. He felt the anticipation course through his veins as he looked at the familiar pictures and smiled.

Soon he would have his own album of death with pictures of his victims instead of Peter Sutcliffe’s. He had already started it.

George took a sip of his tea and began to read, though he knew the words off by heart. After a while he glanced at his watch. It was nearly lunchtime. He had hours yet until Elaine came home from work. He decided to watch his video. He clenched his fists tightly with sheer elation at his good luck.

No Elaine. No noise. No company.

Putting the scrapbooks back in the shed, he locked up the house, closed the front-room curtains, unplugged the phone and put on his new film.

As the pictures flickered before him, George finally relaxed.

The girl on the video looked just like Geraldine O’Leary and the most violent of the men looked just like him.

This was what they wanted. This was what they all wanted. Walking around, covered in make-up and perfume. Even the very young girls. He knew all about them.

In his agitation George started to blink rapidly.

He had seen films of school girls. The real life ones were as bad. Learning to be sluts, every last one of them. Oh, he had watched them, walking to school. He began to nod his head. Bare-legged, some of them. With bouncing bosoms, emphasised by their school uniforms. Oh, he knew all about women. Dying for it, the majority of them. Just dying for it. Well, he would show a few of them before he was much older. Oh, yes. He would show them.

The girl on the television screen was dead.

George cleared his mind. This was the best bit.

He smiled.

Detective Sergeant Amanda Dawkins brought Kate a cup of coffee.

‘Thanks. I could do with this.’

The other woman smiled. ‘You look beat.’

Kate nodded. ‘I feel terrible. I didn’t have a very good night and today isn’t much better.’