Without changing out of his uniform, Leo drove straight to the Allan-Carlins. Their palatial house was on the border of Shere, a small commuter-belt village outside London. His normal daily drive necessitated covering under a mile from Sable Electronics to his home on mainly empty roads so he’d been nervous about driving such a distance after a shift.
Far from puncturing his exhaustion the news had left him as detached as he had been at the end of Bonsignore’s trial and, as the rain on the windscreen of the Saab got heavier, he resisted the temptation to turn on the wipers. Their rhythm had almost been fatal in the past – for him and other road users. He checked his rear-view mirror for a car but couldn’t remember what the colour of the last police surveillance vehicle had been.
He speculated as to who would be sitting on the low leather sofa at the back of Chevalier’s at that very moment and then realised that probably nobody would at this hour of the morning. How many people would sit in that spot today though, the seat where he’d waited? How many would use the ladies restroom? A familiar treadmill of thought cranked to life.
As the A3 took him through Epsom and he hadn’t identified any car as having accompanied him all the way, Leo realised that the last journey he’d made of any length was to the same location. He’d visited the Allan-Carlins at their home on a handful of significant occasions. A visit to Maggie and Joe was always a reminder of a shared loss but it was patently clear that it was only Maggie who willingly entertained his presence.
She’d told him to come at once so they could watch things unfold on the news and if he wasn’t so indebted to them he certainly wouldn’t have been driving barely conscious along the wet and hazardous roads. He swung the car sharply into the turning that led off the A3 and zigzagged up the forest track that led to their impressive, Georgian home. To an outsider, it appeared that life had been very kind to the Allan-Carlins.
Lights were on in every window and the door to their garage glided open as he pulled in front of the house. He parked the car and Maggie appeared through the side door. There was another marked decline in her appearance and it shocked even Leo. How long had it been since his last visit? It could only have been a matter of months. Now, her usually meticulously applied make-up was absent and her dark hair lay in uncombed disarray around her shoulders. Her complexion was as bloodless as his and served to highlight any blemishes. She wore loose-fitting, turquoise, fleece leisurewear and a pair of bright green crocs – he noticed her left hand was bandaged. She gave him a fragile smile as he got out of the car.
If Maggie hugs me it means Laura is still breathing.
Maggie put her good arm around him. She held him there without saying anything like she always did and he could smell the stale sweetness of alcohol – it wasn’t yet 9 a.m. Finally, she released him so he could follow her indoors.
The door from the garage led directly into a brightly lit, tiled kitchen where Joe was scraping up broken fragments of crockery with a dustpan and brush. He looked up through his bushy grey eyebrows and nodded once at Leo. A ring of white hair clung to the sides of his head and a sprig under his nose sheltered from the rest of his patent baldness, but the only change Leo noted in Joe’s appearance was that he appeared to have shrunk a little more. He didn’t know if this was his imagination though because Joe’s presence was usually peripheral, circling Leo’s visits from a distance or standing in adjoining rooms with a tumbler of brandy until he left. His head was bright red, and Leo suspected he’d interrupted an argument. He was dressed more crisply then Maggie – polo shirt, chinos and canvas shoes and it was obvious from his previous visits that Joe was the designated stay-in-control party of the relationship. Joe still ran Opallios but Leo assumed he now held it together on his own.
‘Sorry about the mess. I seem to be getting clumsier,’ Maggie rasped as she breezed past her husband. Joe rolled his eyes at her as she passed and it was obvious that she had given him a look. ‘Coffee?’
‘Please.’ It seemed like a good idea if he was to attempt the drive back.
‘Futile for me to offer you something stronger…’ Maggie put the spout of the kettle under the tap.
‘Coffee’s fine.’
Joe dumped the shards of crockery in the bin but didn’t beat his customary retreat.
‘We’ve got Fox News on in the lounge. They’re giving it more coverage.’ She clumsily plugged in the kettle and flicked the switch, then picked up a large tumbler of amber liquid and ice. She’d never drunk alcohol in front of him before. ‘Have you seen any of it yet?’
‘I came straight here.’
‘Come on then.’ The words scratched at her throat as Maggie chinked into the lounge. Leo followed and was surprised to hear Joe behind him.
The Allan-Carlins’ lounge was decorated with impractical coral carpets and white showroom furniture showing inevitable signs of neglect. Surely they had people coming in to clean? To his right the floor-to-ceiling windows showcased the acres of land that lay beyond the covered swimming pool, now coated by a crust of dead leaves. But as always their attention was focused on the enormous flat-screen TV that hung on the back wall; it was permanently turned on during his visits.
The three of them stood in front of it and waited, watching a report about Egyptian troops being deployed along the Gaza-Egypt border and eyeing the crawler at the bottom of the screen. Although he’d only just got out of the car, Leo’s knees sagged from exhaustion and he had to keep snapping them straight to prevent him from tipping forward.
‘I’ll sit if that’s OK.’ He pulled out a high-backed chair from the dining table display and awkwardly spun it round so it faced the screen. It took more effort to sit in it than to stand.
Joe moved into his line of vision to close the curtains, then Bonsignore’s elongated features filled the screen. Fox were still using the same photograph of Bonsignore that every news station had throughout the trial; the one that had been taken of him with his fishing buddies, the face of the person standing next to him blurred out. A floppy blue denim hat sat at the top of his extended forehead. His eyes were slits, squinted against the sun and he was grinning.
Howard Bonsignore, otherwise known as the Vacation Killer, died in Baraga Maximum Correctional Facility today after being assaulted by fellow inmate, Jacob Frank. Bonsignore, serving twelve life sentences for a spate of brutal killings which he carried out across seven US states as well as two corroborated European locations, was treated at the Brooks Medical Centre but died from brain trauma after he was stabbed in the eye with an unspecified weapon. With only months of his sentence served, relatives of Bonsignore’s victims are asking how this could have happened when the convicted killer should have been housed in a segregated unit. Jacob Frank was only midway through serving four consecutive sentences for aggravated assault.
The picture changed to a circling helicopter’s view of Baraga.
Warden Greg King has spoken only to confirm details of the event… Bonsignore never revealed the locations of most of his victims’ bodies and was still key to ongoing investigations.
Leo estimated Bonsignore to be nearly forty now. He’d confessed to killing twelve women and six men. His last victim had been Tom Andrutti, his own long-term boyfriend. Bonsignore still seemed like a fictional character – white, wannabe alpha male and the subject of an international manhunt that culminated in his confession to the Vacation Killer murders after murdering Andrutti. The trial and the media hype surrounding it had unfolded from a place that Leo had felt entirely dislocated from.
The three of them watched the same report book-ending the rest of the day’s news stories before Joe switched off the TV with the remote. The crackling screen seemed to pick up the static in the room and even Maggie’s neurosis couldn’t fill the silence.
‘That’s it then,’ Joe said definitively, although he seemed to be waiting for a consensus.
Leo suddenly felt his wrist straining with the weight of the full coffee mug in his hand and he couldn’t remember when it had been placed there.
‘Thanks for coming to see Maggie.’ Joe left after he said it and Leo knew he wasn’t just thanking him for driving to their house that morning. He was thanking him for all his visits now that no more would be required.
Leo looked at Maggie but she didn’t make eye contact. ‘Is this enough for you?’
‘Of course not,’ she croaked eventually and then lubricated her throat with her glass. ‘It’s always been out of our hands, though. You know that don’t you.’ She still didn’t meet his gaze but fixed her eyes on the patch of wall beneath the TV.
‘There’s so much we never found out.’
‘And what more would we have learnt if he’d lived another twenty years? Or wanted to learn?’ She clicked her wedding ring nervously against the side of the glass.
Of course, things were different for Maggie and Joe. There were more absolutes for them. It was obviously how Joe saw it but Maggie had been closer to Laura.
Maggie didn’t take his arm as she normally did when he left but led the way to the garage, striding as if she were trying to beat her own emotions.
‘I had another sitting last Friday. She’s in a comfortable place now,’ she said as she hugged his shirt collar again.
‘Maggie.’ Joe’s muffled remonstration came from the other side of the door. He must have followed them back into the kitchen.
Maggie touched Leo’s cheek, found his eyes and shuttered out her green tears. She nodded and returned to her husband.