It had been a beautiful autumn but it turned into a stark, bitterly cold winter. In spite of the Home Secretary’s best efforts, Siberian winds entered the country illegally and made themselves at home in the capital, only to be followed by snowstorms which left the streets looking delightful for days at a time and slush-ridden for weeks. Spring seemed like a myth, a golden faraway land to dream about, one we would never actually arrive in.
I spent all that night in the hospital and most of the next day there too. Sharon needed another operation and didn’t regain consciousness. Again, I was told, the operation went well, succeeding in doing whatever was necessary. I’m sure they told me what that was. When it was over I was finally persuaded to leave. Nicky, and Mike, who had been there most of the day, insisted on it. I woke up early and headed straight back in, only to be met with the two words I least wanted to hear from the doctor.
‘No change.’
I drank coffee and ate sandwiches and chocolate bars and prayed to all the gods I’d ever heard of and some I made up myself. Hours and then days passed, as did porters and nurses and managers and doctors, who all nodded hello as they went about their business. It wasn’t until a really, really miserable morning five days later that they had anything more definite to tell me than no change. I was asked to go to a small room at the side of Sharon’s ward. When I saw not just the doctor waiting for me there, but also the nurse I’d spoken to on my first night and who was in charge of caring for Sharon, my heart nearly stopped. The doctor started to speak but caught himself and turned instead to his colleague, and nodded to her.
‘She’s going to make it,’ the nurse said. ‘She’s going to be all right.’
And I don’t know if she’d have got full marks from Florence Nightingale for it but then she took me in her arms and held me while we both cried and shook and cried and shook and just carried on doing that for a long, long time.
‘Come on,’ the doctor said finally. ‘Come and sit with her. I hear you’ve got a bit of a thing for her eyes.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Well, don’t you want to see them?’
‘Yes,’ I said again.
Spring did come, but before it had arrived I’d been to four funerals. Jennifer Tyler’s was the first, where I met her husband and children. He knew what had happened but bore me no grudge, he insisted on saying. He asked me what Jen had been like at school and I told him: pretty and clever, but shy.
‘She just needed someone to appreciate her,’ I said. ‘Someone good enough.’ David Tyler smiled and nodded his head.
The second funeral I went to was Carolyn Oliver’s. I was the only one there, if you don’t count the priest and the unmarked cars and vans full of coppers surrounding the cemetery. They were hoping that Jeff would attend. He still hadn’t been picked up and they didn’t find him that day either. The service was short, the priest clearly having no idea what to say. He reverted to platitudes from a book and I can’t say that I blamed him. I didn’t know what to say either. All I could do was try to focus on the terrified little girl walking out to her father’s car. Afterwards I went for a greasy-spoon lunch with Andy and he found some words and they were as good as any.
‘Kids,’ he said. ‘You damage them and you damage everything. Because you damage the future. And not just for them. For everybody.’
Andy and I went over the case, and he filled me in on details that had been garnered once it was all over. Inside the pram I’d seen on the river bank were blankets and a small plastic rattle. A Volvo with false plates was discovered nearby, filled with the usual paraphernalia of parenthood, including a car seat, clothing and feeding bottles. In the boot were numerous toys and games, most far too old for a baby. Receipts traced them to various stores both in London and Chester. Though the toys were all unused, still in their packaging, some of them were up to five years old.
Fingerprints assumed to belong to Jeff had been found in the kitchen of the loft Cherie rented from Mrs Minter. Traces of blood had been found there too, in between tiles and kitchen units. More specks were found in the freezer compartment of the fridge. The blood belonged to Denise Denton and her unborn child. Denise Denton must have been killed in the kitchen, strangled first so that there wouldn’t have been any arterial flow, making the clean-up much easier, the blood slippage more controllable. It was why Cherie had strangled Ally first, too, and Jenny Tyler. Cherie and Jeff had done a pretty good job of cleaning the loft and if the police hadn’t really gone over the place no one would have found any signs of what they’d done there. But if you know what you’re looking for you find it much easier than if you don’t. No traces of bloodstained clothing relating to the murders of any of the other women was found, however. They must have dumped it all in the river or burnt it.
‘She was careful,’ Andy said, a hint of admiration in his voice. ‘She really was. We won’t know until we find the uncle but I suspect that they used fresh overalls for each killing. He was in the Marines so that would have helped but she knew what she was doing too. She could have got away with it, she really could. Anyway, there’s something you haven’t told me.’
‘Which is?’
‘How you found her. How did you know she was staying with the Minter woman?’
I thought of Charlie Baby and of his house guest as he called him and I thought of Helen, a needle dangling from her wasted thigh. I wanted to tell Andy, I really did, I wanted him to know where Charlie lived and what he did there. But I couldn’t. When I made my pact with that particular devil he’d made sure that there were plenty of penalties for breaking the contract.
‘I spotted her near the gym and followed her home.’
‘Of course you did, Billy, of course you did. And that hooker you did a Mac-Fit of, who was found in some toilets the same day, had nothing whatsoever to do with it.’
I told the truth to Sally, over a pint one night not long after. She didn’t seem surprised or shocked, simply giving me a nod that said: well, I did warn you. Sally was more interested in talking about the two people who had hoodwinked us both, how Cherie had been sweet and friendly and a terrific masseur. How Jeff had seemed like a run-of-the-mill, bluff kind of guy. Again she apologized for being the route that Carolyn Oliver had used to get into my life, but I shook my head and thanked her for being the route with which I’d got her out of it again.
At Ally’s funeral I said a lot more than I had at Carolyn Oliver’s, to her family and to Mike’s and to people I didn’t know and to some I did, from the Lindauer Building especially. Jemma was there, and Cass; they had made up and were back in business together in their studio. I held hands with Mike by the graveside and hugged a lot of people after the committal, and just tried to get through the day like everyone else. It wasn’t easy, but we managed it. I offered to stay with Mike that evening but he said he just wanted to be with Ally’s family and so I left the place, going back to the hospital, where Sharon still had a week to go. She was upset to have missed the funeral but the doctor had forbidden her to attend, especially with the weather the way it was. I said I’d take her out to the grave when she was fit and she said she’d like that.
It was three months before we managed it. Sharon caught an infection that kept her in the Royal London another six weeks and then, when she did come home, she was told to stay indoors. When we did get there the weather had finally softened and as we stood over Ally’s grave there were birds singing and only a slight chill in the air to bother Sharon. I was wearing the scarf Jemma had made me but I didn’t really need it. We stayed for half an hour, looking at the snowdrops Mike had planted, as they bickered with their shadows. We spoke about Ally, remembering times we’d spent together and we both agreed that we’d been rarely privileged to know her. Then we stood for a moment in silence, knowing what had to come next. Eventually Sharon squeezed my hand.
’It’s time,’ she said, with a sad smile. And we walked along a neatly laid-out pathway to the small Victorian chapel, where the vicar was waiting for us.
We’d lost our baby. It had happened when Sharon was asleep, after her second operation. It was, as the doctor had warned me, inevitable really. The news was still crushing, though, to me and to Sharon when she came round. The only way to cope with it, we both believed, was to try again, as soon as Sharon was well enough. I’d never wanted anything so much as to have a baby with this girl I loved. Just looking at little Sophia, her face glowing with all the light in the universe when she saw her father, made me certain of that. Whatever edge I had to lose, I’d lose it. Sophia was a miracle and not really because of the things that had already happened to her in her short life. She was just a miracle because she existed. I wanted a miracle of my own.
After we’d said goodbye to our baby we went straight over to Mike’s, both feeling the need to see his and Ally’s child that day. Mike smiled when Sharon told him how beautiful the grave looked. Mike was exhausted, so I volunteered to cook for him and Sharon and for Ally’s sister Carla, who was staying with Mike. Once I’d got the sauce on I crept into Mike’s bedroom and sat next to Sophia’s cot, listening to her breath, marvelling at the tiny fingers holding onto the top of her blanket. I closed my eyes and inhaled the warm, musty air.
And was in my office, footsteps scampering down the corridor towards me. Then the door was opening. Over the top of my table I could see a beautiful little girl with curly black hair – Mike behind her – who already knew she could get anything she wanted from her Uncle Billy.
I opened my eyes to see Mike, sitting next to the cot beside me.
‘Sharon tells me you’re going to try again,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘The doctor says it’s possible.’
‘Well, good luck. If it’s a girl, I hope they’ll be friends. Good friends.’
‘I hope that too,’ I said, quietly so as not to wake the baby. Not able to speak any louder anyway.
Mike squeezed my arm and smiled. ‘But if it’s a boy, keep your son away from my daughter. You hear me, mate?’