Gillian Mitchell had been a professional journalist: she knew that words launched into cyberspace were there forever, travelling to places their creator had never foreseen, and had been far too smart to be indiscreet about her personal relationships. All her posts were essentially advertisements for her writing, and when they found the file with her passwords in it there was little personal correspondence in her e-mail account.
‘She doesn’t seem to have had much of a life beyond work,’ said Hazel sadly. ‘I think she was quite a lonely person.’
She was propped on her sofa at home, her laptop on her knee. She’d copied the Mitchell files onto an external hard drive so she could keep chiselling away at them without annoying the office cleaners.
Saturday had just got back from visiting Ash at the hospital. There was sleet trapped in his hair. ‘Lonely, or just solitary? They’re not the same thing.’
‘I suppose not.’ But to Hazel, an essentially gregarious woman who enjoyed the company of other people, for whom a cloistered life held no appeal, they seemed almost the same.
‘If she was a journalist, she probably met as many people as she wanted to through her work. Maybe she couldn’t wait to see the back of them all and be alone with her own thoughts,’ suggested Saturday.
‘Perhaps …’ Hazel sounded unconvinced. ‘Or maybe it’s the downside of the digital revolution. We spend our days communicating, but we’re not actually talking to anyone. We’re just throwing words out there. Well, not me so much, policing is rather more hands-on than most jobs, but that’s pretty much what Gillian was doing. She e-mailed newspapers with ideas for articles; they e-mailed back and agreed; she did her research on-line; as often as not she interviewed people by e-mail too. She could have gone days without actually talking to anyone. That’s not good for people. It turns them in on themselves.’
Saturday shrugged. ‘It seems to have worked for her. She was successful. She didn’t buy a house in Park Crescent without being good at her job.’
‘She was successful,’ acknowledged Hazel, ‘but that’s not always the same as being happy. She had plenty of followers, but the closest thing to a friend she seems to have had was Colonel Aykhurst next door, and they didn’t use first names. She was an intelligent woman, successful and still young, but she was isolated.
‘And then she met Leo Harte. And Leo Harte is a bad man, but he is a practised charmer. When he learned what she was planning, charm might have been the first gun he pulled. It can be as lethal as the other kind, and you can’t be done for having it without a licence. And an intelligent, articulate, isolated woman who was still young but aware of getting older might have been the very one to fall for it. To fall for him.’
‘You think that’s all it was? He buttered her up because it was cheaper than buying her off and safer than pushing her under a train?’
Hazel looked up from her screen. ‘Actually, no. I think that’s probably how it started. He realised she was a threat to him and set out to neutralise her. But then … Maybe he fell for his own promo. Maybe he told her they were soul-mates, and started believing it himself. If that isn’t love, it’s something pretty close to it. Maybe something as close as a practised charmer is going to get.’
‘Yeah, right,’ drawled Saturday. ‘And there’s fairy gold at the end of a rainbow, and if you’re frowning when the wind changes you’ll stay like that forever.’
Hazel laughed. ‘There is no romance in your soul! But I was watching him when he spoke about her. He wasn’t relieved that a problem had been solved. He was hurting. He wanted to know what had happened to her. Improbable as it sounds, I think they were in love. She loved him enough to give up her book. And he loved her enough to break the habit of a lifetime and offer to help the police.’
‘Or he just wanted to convince you that it wasn’t him who killed her.’
It was an alternative Hazel couldn’t safely dismiss. She knew what she’d seen. There remained the possibility that she’d seen what she was meant to. ‘Then let’s look at what we know for sure. Gillian Mitchell was a freelance journalist. She was self-employed, she worked alone, she lived alone, she travelled quite a bit. She probably found it hard to make new friends, or see much of her old ones. Which is borne out by her letter files and e-mail account. Lots about work, not much about her personal life.’
‘That makes her fall for a crook?’
‘Maybe it makes her more vulnerable to an unexpectedly pleasant encounter than someone with more of a support network. She started writing this book because she was a journalist and she’d come across a story that needed telling. About this successful Birmingham entrepreneur who didn’t get where he was by blood, sweat and tears – or at least, not his own.
‘She asked him for an interview.’ Hazel had the e-mails in front of her. ‘Which was a brave thing to do, but I suppose she thought she had a professional obligation to let him tell his side of the story. He agreed – because he wanted to know how much she knew, and how much she could prove. Well, they did the interview, and they seem to have parted on good terms – gratitude expressed on both sides, Harte sends flowers the next day – then the following week they meet again. Twice. And twice the next week. And after that, Gillian Mitchell stops working on her book.’
‘Because Harte asks her to?’
‘Not in writing. But then, you wouldn’t expect him to.’
‘So he warned her off.’
‘I don’t think so. Judging by the e-mails, they go on meeting. Meals out, the Birmingham Philharmonic, a day at the races. Then in one of them – yes, this one – he says they’ll be late back and suggests she brings her toothbrush, and she says she might.’
‘She doesn’t sound scared of him,’ admitted Saturday. ‘Maybe she thought Harte was her last shot at a meal-ticket.’
‘Saturday!’ Hazel was appalled and amused in equal measures. ‘Gillian Mitchell was a successful professional woman. She didn’t need a meal-ticket.’
‘She was no spring chicken, either,’ he retorted. ‘How old was she?’
‘Forty-three.’
‘Second half of her career, then. Maybe she was wanting to slow down a bit. Ease up on the travelling and the deadlines. Maybe that’s why she was trying to switch from newspapers to books.’
‘That’s possible,’ conceded Hazel.
‘So maybe she was tempted by the idea of being a kept woman.’ He must have heard the expression in his grandparents’ house: no one of Saturday’s generation used it. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think women of forty-three get as many offers as girls of twenty-three. Harte might have looked like her last best chance.’
‘You’re wrong about older women. The offers are there, it’s just that we get more particular about which ones we take.’
He grinned at that. ‘Well, whether she was thinking with her heart or her head, she seems to have seen Leo Harte as a gamble worth taking. You’d expect a professional journalist to be a bit more cynical.’
‘I think they went way past where professionalism was any help to them. Not just her – Harte as well. I think they both threw caution to the wind. They must have thought that what they had was worth the risks they were taking.’
There was a pause then. Hazel returned to her files, thinking the conversation was over. But it wasn’t quite. At length Saturday said, ‘You’re going to need a very long spoon.’
Hazel looked up, puzzled. ‘What?’
‘It’s what people say, isn’t it? If you’re going to sup with the devil, take a long spoon. Well, Leo Harte might be holding umbrellas over you right now, because he wants something from you. What about when you find out who killed Gillian? Gorman’s going to want to arrest him and put him in front of a jury. But if this is personal, Harte might prefer a more direct approach. He’s offering to help you now because he means to use you later. Take a long spoon. Take a very long spoon.’
Hazel collected Ash from the hospital the following morning. Then she collected Patience from Railway Street, and drove them both to Highfield Road.
Frankie had gathered every cushion in the house and piled them in his armchair in the study; and looked out a spare quilt for over his knees in case the room got cold. When she went away to make the lunch, Ash whispered, ‘She makes me feel like Methuselah’s grandpa.’
‘I’m not sure how to break this to you, Gabriel,’ murmured Hazel. ‘But right now you look like Methuselah’s grandpa.’
It was true. The concussion had resolved, the strapped ribs were knitting, even his bruises were fading from Technicolor to watercolour. But he moved like an old man. If someone had offered him an arm, or a stick, he would have accepted with gratitude.
‘It was the steel toe-caps that did the damage,’ he said.
Hazel winced. Then she frowned. ‘You had time to study his footwear?’
‘I hadn’t time to be sure it wasn’t a truck rolling over me. The doctor in A&E reckoned he could tell.’
‘You know, we’re starting to get a picture of this guy,’ Hazel said thoughtfully. ‘Steel toe-caps suggest he works in heavy industry, or maybe a garage or workshop. That would fit with the wheel-brace or wrench or whatever he hits people with.’
Ash was staring at her. ‘Who?’
For a moment she thought he was being incredibly dense. ‘The guy who’s behind all this, of course,’ she said. Then she remembered that he hadn’t seen the three sets of X-rays taped to Gorman’s window, and she hadn’t meant to discuss the implications with him, at least not yet.
‘All what? Hazel, the guy who’s been stalking you left flowers and wine, and kicked seven bells out of someone he thought was a rival. Apart from this’ – he touched the side of his head cautiously – ‘there’s no suggestion that he’s ever hit anyone with anything. The wheel-brace belongs to the other guy: the one who murdered Trucker, and possibly the journalist.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Hazel, flustered. ‘I’ve been working on Gillian Mitchell’s files. I got confused for a moment.’
‘Yes?’ He peered at her. ‘Hazel – have you some reason for thinking it’s the same man?’
‘No,’ she lied, shaking her head. ‘Really. It was just … two things buzzing round in my head at the same time … they collided. It doesn’t mean anything.’
Ash disagreed. ‘It might mean something. It might mean your unconscious mind has spotted points of similarity between the three cases while your conscious mind is still weighing the evidence.’
Already she was wishing she’d been honest with him. She needed his input. Ash was very good at making connections. It was his field of expertise. Sooner or later – probably sooner – he would figure out that she knew more than she was telling him, and the reason for her reticence was that she didn’t want him worrying about what she might do next. She said carefully, ‘How would I know?’
He thought for a moment. ‘You have Gillian Mitchell’s computer files? Letters, documents, e-mails?’ Hazel nodded. ‘See if anyone left unexpected presents for her in the weeks before …’
You wouldn’t think it was possible to pronounce a full stop. But it is, and therefore it’s easy to tell the difference between a sentence which is complete and one which has been, for whatever reason, truncated. Hazel recognised that he had meant to say something more; and a moment later she knew what it would have been. ‘Before she was killed.’ A chill ran down her back like – yes, like rainwater dripping from an umbrella.
Ash nodded sombrely. ‘Yes. Before she was killed.’
Hazel swallowed. ‘It’s a bit of a leap, isn’t it? From flowers on the doorstep to beating someone’s head in with a wheel-brace?’
‘It would be,’ said Ash, ‘if he took the direct route. But stalkers don’t. They move by increments; their intentions, and the risk they pose, change a step at a time. Your man took a big step when he entered your house. He may not have meant to harm you. He may have told himself he was only checking that you were safe, or that the house was secure, or he wanted to watch over you while you slept. But his behaviour is diverging from what is normally considered acceptable. We have an in-built inhibitor that warns us when we’re in danger of stepping over some kind of a line: either his is becoming less and less effective, or he’s finding it easier to ignore. Kicking the living daylights out of me was another step along the same road.
‘He’s become obsessed with you. It isn’t rational. By definition, stalkers are not rational people. He thinks he has a relationship with you: you might think of him as a casual acquaintance, though it’s entirely possible you wouldn’t recognise him if you met. And before long that’s going to start annoying him. All these things he’s done for you, and you look through him when you pass in the street.
‘Once he starts getting angry, that same faulty inhibitor will let him think he’s entitled to punish you for rejecting him. I don’t know if he’s done this before, but he may have done. I don’t know if he’s hurt anyone before, but there was nothing amateurish about the way he ambushed me. If your instincts are telling you that the man who’s stalking you is the same man who murdered Gillian Mitchell, and probably Trucker Watts as well, I think you should listen to them.’
He was frightening her, all the more so because she had more than instinct to go on. There were those X-rays. They proved nothing; but two experienced observers had noted the similarities. ‘And do what?’ she demanded. ‘I’m already being as careful as I can be. Saturday’s going to stay at Railway Street until the danger passes. Apart from that, Gabriel, what can I do? The ball’s in his court. The ball’s always going to be in his court.’
‘You could go back to Byrfield. You’d be safe there.’
She knew he was right. He knew she wasn’t going to do it. ‘Run away again? Wait to see which of my friends he picks off next? Or are we all going to head down to Byrfield? I know it’s a big house, but even Pete might get a bit fed up if half of Norbold descends on him.
‘You want to know what my instinct’s telling me? That the only place this is going to be resolved is right here. If I go somewhere else, it’ll be waiting for me when I get back. He’ll be waiting for me. I don’t like it any more than you do, but I think – I think – the only way we’re going to catch this man is by drawing him out.
‘Somehow he’s got the idea that I can offer him something worth risking his liberty for. We can use that. And better sooner than later, while he’s still feeling protective, before he starts getting angry with me. He probably poses less of a threat to me today than he will in a month’s time. When we’ve got him, when we know who he is, we’ll know if there’s anything to connect him to the murders.’
‘Hazel – you’re not thinking of setting a trap for him?’ Alarm was rolling up the flatness in Ash’s voice like a rug.
‘No, of course not.’ But even as she said it, she knew it was another lie.