The Shadows in the Street (42 page)

She switched on the desk lamp, opened a folder and settled down to work. She was deep in an article about drug dosages in the final hours of a dying patient when she saw car headlights as someone drove in through the gate. Simon possibly, though he had said he would be staying for supper at Hallam House. There was a single ring at the front doorbell.

‘Am I calling at a very inconvenient time?’

Miles Hurley stood slightly back from the door, his coat collar pulled up.

‘Oh. No, no, you’re not. I was just doing some work. Sorry, Miles, come in.’

He smiled and unbuttoned his coat.

‘I was going to make some coffee.’

‘That sounds delicious. I expect you make coffee as well as you do most things.’

The compliment sounded genuine enough and yet Cat instinctively recoiled from it. It made her feel uneasy. She supposed she wasn’t used to compliments from men since Chris – given that her father and Simon did not go in for them, and Russell, at the surgery, gave out praise only sparingly, though she knew he appreciated her.

Miles followed her into the kitchen.

‘You heard about Ruth Webber, I imagine?’

‘I did.’

Miles held up a hand. ‘I realise you can’t discuss a patient, of course, but it’s a great strain on Stephen, indeed on all of us, I’m sure you understand.’

‘The police will have a much better sense of things this time. They can separate her disappearances from the murders … Do sit down, Miles … if you don’t mind the kitchen sofa, or we can go into the sitting room …’

‘No, this is perfect. Cosy. Thank you.’

Cat spooned coffee into the cafetière, noticing that in fact Miles remained standing.

‘I came past the police vans just now … they’ve set up quite an encampment near the canal, haven’t they?’

‘Yes. If there are any girls in that area they’ll feel safer.’

‘Those wretched young women. But I didn’t see any. I hear they’ve moved on. Hunt Square, that dismal place nearer the centre.’

‘Is it about the Magdalene Group you wanted to see me, Miles? I haven’t had it in my mind, I’m afraid. I’ve had a lot of other things going on and I rather thought that with all this business of Ruth …’

‘Well, it was something we could discuss. Yes.’

‘I meant to ask my brother if perhaps there could be a police representative in the group. I’m not sure if they could spare anyone at the moment but in the future.’

‘Ah yes, it must be interesting having such a senior detective in the family.’

‘Interesting? I’m not sure it’s that.’

‘So he doesn’t come to you to offload his work problems then?’

‘Absolutely not.’

Cat poured milk into the saucepan and went to the dresser to take down two mugs. After a second, she put her hand on the smaller ones. She did not particularly want to have Miles linger over a large beaker of coffee. She liked him well enough, it was just that she minded having her work interrupted, and she suspected that he had in fact come to discuss Stephen Webber, in spite of paying lip service to Cat’s commitment to patient confidentiality.

‘I wonder,’ he said now, ‘if you agree with me that Stephen should take a sabbatical? He has been under great strain, you know.’

‘That’s understandable.’

‘I have strongly advised him to go away, take Ruth, unless of course she has to go into hospital once she returns. He’s a wonderful person, you know. I was hoping you would back me up on this.’

Cat set the coffee down on the table. He was still standing.

‘Miles, I really can’t get involved in Stephen’s work. It wouldn’t be right, as I’m sure you understand.’

He looked at her carefully for a long time, but it was a look she could not read.

‘Please, do sit down.’ She filled his mug. He picked it up but then began to wander round the room, looking at the children’s drawings pinned on the cork board, reading a couple of notices, looking at a photograph.

‘Is this your husband?’

She nodded. She wanted to rush over and take it down, turn it to the wall, anything to stop him scrutinising it.

‘Tell me, what was his view of the scourge of prostitution in our city?’

‘Of … ? I don’t think it was something we ever discussed. I think he would have felt much as the rest of us – and wanted to do something to help the girls get off the game and try to get decent jobs, live normal lives. He’d certainly have been concerned about their health. As I am.’

‘Yes. Sexual diseases, I suppose.’

‘Not only those. Their general health is usually poor – their diet is bad, a lot of them are on drugs, they smoke, they get cold and wet and … all of that.’

As she spoke, she had turned to reach for a teaspoon on the worktop behind her so that she had her back to Miles when he said, ‘Ah yes.’ And then, after a pause, ‘Poor wretches.’

And in that split second something struck her, some sort of reminder, or recollection, something … But what was it? What? An alarm bell rang in her mind. As Miles Hurley had spoken, there was that and also …

He said again, ‘These prostitutes really have to be dealt with.’

Cat froze and then a great shiver ran down her back. She realised what it was. The newspaper and the television reports. Abi. The girl who had survived, the one who had done the drawing of the man in the beanie hat. Abi who had been half strangled so that she was unable to speak, unable to do more than draw and nod and shake her head. Abi Righton. Her own patient. Abi who had said she was going to ‘get out of this’.

Abi had not been able to do more than draw the rough little sketch of her attacker, and write two things. ‘BEANIE MAN’ was one. The other was that he’d had a ‘
whispery’
voice.

It had not stayed in Cat’s mind, or she thought it had not, until Miles Hurley had just spoken, in a tone quite different from his normal one.

These prostitutes really have to be dealt with.

A whispery voice.

She could not turn, could not speak, she remained as if paralysed, reaching for the spoon.

It was nonsense of course. What had gone through her mind could not be, but then, into that mind came the identikit picture of ‘Beanie Man’. He had no distinguishing features, no beard or broken nose, no exceptionally thin or fat lips, no scars or marks. Just a middle-aged man wearing a dark-coloured beanie hat pulled well down. And that man could be Miles Hurley who also had an unmemorable face without any distinctive features. She saw the picture steadily. But it simply could not be the case.

She turned and as she turned she looked at him. He was a few paces from her, and what she had suddenly thought, in absolute disbelief and horror, must have been written on her face.

He came round the table and stood beside her.

‘Poor girls,’ he whispered. ‘What did Abi say, Cat? How much did Ruth tell you?’

She opened her mouth to ask what he meant and could say nothing, it was dry and her jaw seemed to be locked.

She looked into Miles Hurley’s eyes, just for a second before she had to look away, but it was enough. She had seen madness there, the steady, assured, arrogance of a certain sort of madness, emotionless, intent, focused. And then he smiled, a thin, pleased, mad sort of smile, and took a step closer to her so that she was trapped between him and the worktop. With some strange instinct for self-preservation and knowing that she could not get past him, she half turned away from him. Miles raised his arms with his hands outstretched.

‘Mum, I can’t –’

Cat looked round in terror. Miles did not flinch or drop his hands or stop staring at her, did not seem to have been startled at all by Sam, who had come a step or two into the kitchen and then stopped dead. She saw the expression on her son’s face change from enquiring to bewilderment to terror like the swiftly moving pages of a flicker book.

There was no thought, no plan, nothing but pure gut reaction as she screamed, ‘Sam, phone –’ before Miles lunged forward to grab her round the neck.

Sam did not think and afterwards did not remember. He could see Cat’s mobile on the hall table, ran for it and pressed 3, her automatic dial for Simon, who answered within a couple of rings.

It was Simon who recalled in detail and who never afterwards forgot the voice.

‘He’s in the kitchen, he’s killing Mummy, please come, please come …’

The phone was knocked out of Sam’s hand by Miles Hurley who swung at him twice, catching him on the side of his head, before opening the front door and racing to his car, starting it, turning it so fast it kicked up the gravel and the smell of burning tyres drifted in through the open door.

‘Mummy,’ Sam said, and stumbled towards the kitchen door, his head smarting but not bleeding, not seriously hurt.

‘Mummy …’

Cat lay on the floor where Hurley had left her. Afterwards she remembered more than Sam, remembered the terrible pain in her throat and the pressure of trying to breathe, and then breathing again as she fell, remembered the odd sound that came out of her mouth and another sound, a grunt or a gasp that came out of Hurley’s, remembered hearing the car, hearing Sam, feeling Sam’s small warm body pressed against her own, his face against hers, hearing him trying to breathe and say her name through his panic and tears, remembered reaching up and holding him, holding him. Remembered a hundred years or five seconds and then the sound of sirens and more cars, more spraying gravel, and the blue of a light whirling round and round somewhere. Remembered footsteps, voices, and holding tightly to Sam. Remembered Simon’s voice, Simon, talking to her, talking to Sam, talking to the others, shouting at the others. Remembered more sirens, more lights, more confusion. Remembered relief.

Sixty-six

Serrailler was waiting at the entrance to the station at nine when the Chief’s car turned into the gates.

‘Morning, Simon, how are you feeling now?’

‘Morning, ma’am. Where do I start? Shock, relief, fury, satisfaction … but my reactions are nothing to what the teams are feeling this morning.’

They headed up the stairs to his office.

A tray of brewing coffee was waiting, cafetière, hot milk, best cups, chocolate biscuits. Paula Devenish glanced at it.

‘Hmm. Guilt offerings.’ But she smiled. ‘You’ve nothing to beat yourself up about Simon, none of you has. But I know what you’re thinking – it’s been down to luck. Never despise luck. Your policing wasn’t at fault. Look how many unsolved murders there are on the national police books and thank God these are not adding to them.’

‘I’m just kicking myself … surely there was something we should have known, something …’

‘Why? Did he ever come within a mile of your radar?’

‘He fitted the profile.’

‘Along with how many other men in Lafferton? Loners. You’d already questioned one loner twice, and if you think about it, you had far more reason to suspect the librarian.’

‘I know, I know.’

‘How’s your sister?’

‘She’s fine, thanks. They kept her in overnight, and she’s still shaken. Sam’s the one I’m worried about. He was a hero but he also had a horrible experience. He needs to get it out of his system. I’m planning to take him away for a weekend, go walking. He’ll talk to me.’

‘Has Hurley talked?’

‘Can’t shut him up, apparently. He asked to see the MO and was assigned psychiatric time. He’s talking to the shrink.’

‘It’s not unusual, you know – this sort of split personality, half the man of the cloth, the pillar of the community, the other half …’

‘A man with a dread of prostitutes and a hatred of them, yes. In a way, you know, if we hadn’t been all over the area and frustrated him, huge police presence, broken the pattern, he would have gone on killing the street girls. Instead, it changed and Leah Wilson died just because she was there and he couldn’t stop himself killing. If we hadn’t –’

‘Come on, Simon, what are you saying? That if he’d found another prostitute to murder if would have been better?’

Serrailler sighed and finished his coffee. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Sorry. Of course I’m not.’

‘He was very cunning, you know. So the ends are tied up?’

‘Well, no … Mrs Webber is still missing.’

‘Have you spoken to the psychiatric team?’

‘Yes. They think suicide a strong possibility but that doesn’t mean we’re not looking out for her alive too – all the usual, railway station, bus station, there’s a photo out in case there is even a remote chance she hitched a lift somewhere.’

‘I imagine the cathedral’s in shock – are we liaising with them?’

‘Yes. People carry on, but Stephen Webber is distraught.’

‘Tell me, how have you found young Ben Vanek?’

‘Impressive … still a bit green, still not quite confident enough to strike out on his own, but that’s understandable. No, he’ll do well.’

‘Perhaps for the next week you could pull him into the debriefings, get him to do some analysis of the way the policing was organised, what worked, what was less successful. Assuming that everything goes quiet enough for that sort of luxury.’

‘Pray for quiet, ma’am.’

There was a knock. Serrailler frowned – he had said no interruptions – but the Chief nodded towards the door.

‘Guv, ma’am … sorry, but you need to see this.’

The sergeant put a piece of paper into Serrailler’s hand and disappeared.

Simon glanced at it quickly.

‘Trouble?’

‘Hurley’s made a full confession. Ruth Webber.’

‘Oh
no
.’

‘Uniform’s already searched his bungalow. First place they went …’

Paula stood up. ‘Let’s go.’

They took Vanek, Mead and a couple of uniform. Paula Devenish went with Serrailler in his car.

‘Mad or sane?’ she asked as they turned out of the yard.

‘Hurley? Evil.’

‘Try to stand back a bit, Simon.’

‘Stand back? The man tried to strangle my sister! If Sam hadn’t been there, if he hadn’t had the presence of mind to –’

She held up her hand. ‘I know. That’s precisely why you need to detach emotionally, and you know it. I think getting this last piece of the puzzle solved will help. How well do you know Hurley?’

‘Hardly at all. Cat knew him a bit better but not well – she didn’t much like him, which is quite rare with her, but she doesn’t let an instinct get in the way. They were on a committee together, and she’s a pillar of St Michael’s congregation of course. She just gets on with it.’