Only Darkness (23 page)

The house looked dark and abandoned, as though it had been empty far longer than a week. Debbie, seeing the curtains in the next-door house twitch, let herself in through the front door. The smell that greeted her was both familiar and strange. She could recognize the faint, spicy smell that she had always associated with home when she was a child, and had come to associate with this house. It was overlaid with a smell of cold and the faint smell of damp of a house that had
been empty and unheated for a while. Already it was starting to feel uninhabited, as though the imprint of her mother was fading.

Rob looked at the place with the eyes of a policeman, which Debbie found chilling and disconcerting. He looked at both of the doors and asked Debbie about Gina’s usual method for locking up at night. ‘The door wasn’t bolted,’ he said, ‘but they put that down to the booze in the end.’ He frowned. He seemed to be worried about more than the result of the inquest. Debbie stood in the front room, looking at the familiar things and wondering what to do with them.

Neave checked the kitchen and looked again at access to the back of the house. It would have been very easy for someone to get in unseen. There was no evidence to show that someone had. He looked at the door. The bolts were stiff. The Yale was a good one that would double lock. He checked his memory. It had been double locked when Gina Sykes was found. Would she bother with those stiff bolts as well?

He went into the front room and checked the bottles in the sideboard. There was only sherry. The rum was in the kitchen, standing openly by the cooker. He looked in the kitchen cupboards. He nearly missed it. At the back of one cupboard, tucked away behind some cookery books, was a 35cl bottle of vodka. It had a price label, pristine and new, from one of the large supermarkets. It was more than half empty. He frowned, and called to Debbie, who was in the other room. ‘What did your mother drink?’

‘Rum,’ she called back.

‘What did you drink when you were here?’

‘Sherry, usually. Wine, if I bought some. Why?’

‘Nothing.’ The problem was, who’d hidden the vodka? If Gina Sykes was a secret drinker, then the openly admitted bottle of rum in the kitchen and the hidden bottle of vodka would be a pattern he’d expect to find. He looked at the price label on the rum. It looked faded, old. It came from an off-licence, he recognized the name of the chain. He was pretty sure there was one in Goldthorpe. He could check. He knew, though, that the supermarket the vodka came from didn’t
have a Goldthorpe branch. The nearest one would probably be Mexborough. Another part of an expected pattern – don’t buy the drink at your local shops. If Gina Sykes had been a secret drinker, would Debbie know?

Debbie wandered round the house. Everything was just as Gina had left it, a book on the table by the sofa, the TV guide open to the day she died. She felt a welling up of desolation and wanted to walk out of the house, leave it, ask someone to come in and take everything away.

The china cabinet. There was the good tea service that had never, to Debbie’s knowledge, been used. It had been a wedding present. She wondered what to do with it. If she took it, it would be broken within a year, unless she kept it unused for another several decades, until her own child, or friends or distant relations looked at it in the same bemusement that she looked at it now. Perhaps she could give it away. The only things she wanted at the moment were the photographs, the record of their life together as a family, a small collection that Gina had kept in a drawer in the spare room.

She went upstairs, looking at the steep, angled stairway that could, it was true, be lethal to someone who fell. In Gina’s bedroom, clothes were neatly placed over her chair, and the bedding was thrown back as though someone had just got up. Debbie’s Christmas book lay on the floor, face down.

She pushed open the door of the bedroom where she had slept when she stayed here. The bed was made up, but unused. She went over to the chest where the photographs were kept, and opened the top drawer. A photograph slid off the top of the pile. Debbie grabbed for it and missed, dislodging a few more. A wallet of photographs had been left spilling out in the top of the drawer. Gina must have been looking at them, put them away in a hurry. Debbie frowned. Gina didn’t brood over the photographs the way Debbie sometimes did. Which ones had she been looking at? The ones of that last holiday in Ireland, the last holiday they’d taken together as a family, visiting Caitlin. There was her father outside Caitlin’s house, squinting in the sunlight. Debbie had a sudden, sharp picture of her mother going to
visit his grave, then coming back to the empty house, looking at photos of her dead husband. Her eyes felt hot, heavy.

She picked the photograph up that had fallen on to the floor, and something caught her eye. Under the chest of drawers – another photo. She reached and pulled it out. It was from the same batch, Debbie in that bikini that should have got her arrested. The photo looked crushed, bent. She put out her hand to flatten it out, then withdrew it. It was there again, that cold sense of dread and menace, as though something alien was watching her.

Lynne Jordan sat at the desk in the archives of the
Moreham Standard
and fast-forwarded the microfilm through the viewer. Pages of newsprint shot past her eyes. She slowed it down a little, trying to see dates as they crossed the screen. There! She stopped the film, then slowly wound it back a couple of pages. There was the picture and the article – the Griffins with their daughter. The headline,
Karen-Can,
and the short article. It was exactly the same as the cutting she had seen when she talked to Stuart Griffin that last time. She made a note of the date of the article and pressed the print button. She rewound the spool of film and put it back in its box, then checked her notes again. The more recent issues weren’t on film yet, but the issue she wanted might be. She looked at the dates on the boxes – yes. She took the last box from the shelf and wound it on to the viewer. Again she fast-forwarded the film, slowing it down as she thought she was getting near the date she wanted. She checked a date on the screen – too far. She rewound a few pages, and there it was –
Broughton’s Winning Team.
She printed it off and checked the date against her notes. Right.

Now for the difficult bit. She went back to the boxes of film, and went back through the dates until she had three boxes for checking. She sighed, loaded the first one in the machine and pressed the forward button. The pages of newsprint flowed past. She got to the end of the reel without stopping it. She knew she’d lost her concentration. She rewound the reel and went through it again. Still nothing. Backwards or forwards? She checked her dates again, and went and got another box from the shelf. Earlier issues. She went
through the same process with this film, but this time, on the second run-through, she stopped the film and looked closely at an article and photograph. Kate’s face was small but recognizable as she looked challengingly at the elegant man in the picture with her. The headline was,
Sheffield Students in Protest to Minister,
and the caption of the photo read,
NUS rep. Katherine Claremont hands a petition to Education spokesman in Sheffield today.
Yes! She felt the tension beginning. Now for the next one. ‘Come on, Mandy,’ she said. ‘Show me where you are.’

The next hour was frustrating. Her eyes were aching from staring at the screen, and she was finding it harder and harder to keep up the level of concentration necessary to select possible pictures as they flowed past her eyes. Maybe a picture wasn’t necessary? Maybe a mention in an article …? No, it had to be a picture. She rubbed her face with her hands and thought. She’d gone back six months – that was surely too far. Had she missed it? It was possible, but she’d been through these films three times. She was wasting time.
Think, woman!

She went back to her notes on Mandy. Amanda Varney, 21. A clerk in a small firm. Nothing memorable or newsworthy there. Lived at home with her mother, kept a dog. Had the dog done anything interesting? She made a note. Single. She had been engaged, had broken it off. Boyfriend upset. There had been the phone calls. Lynne thought about this. There wasn’t anything there to attract press interest. She tapped her thumbnail against her teeth. Would it be quicker to go and talk to Mandy’s mum again, or would it be better to keep plugging on with the film for another hour or so? When was Mandy’s birthday? No, it was almost nine months before her death. Too long, probably. But something was nagging at Lynne now. She sat quietly, letting her mind work. Yes. When did Mandy get engaged? February, two months before she died. What had her mother said about a photograph? Lynne went back to her rolls of microfilm, and got out the one that covered the late winter. These photos were smaller, so she ran the pages more slowly through the machine. And there it was. In the local news, the photograph that Mrs Varney said
was so good. There were photographs of six couples under the headline,
True Lovers Love the Spring!
There was Mandy, smiling prettily at a nondescript youth beside her. It
was
a good photograph.

It surely couldn’t be a coincidence. Each of the victims had had their picture published in the local newspaper shortly before they died. Lisa’s was six weeks almost exactly. The gap was a bit longer with Kate – just over seven weeks. Mandy’s engagement was announced on the eighteenth of March. She was killed six weeks later. But the pattern didn’t continue. The story about Broughton’s appeared on the thirteenth of August. Julie was killed in early December, almost seventeen weeks later. Why the discrepancy? Lynne collected her things and prepared to go back to the station. Her weariness was gone now, and an adrenaline surge was running through her. Maybe this was the breakthrough they needed.

The adrenaline carried her into Berryman’s office, where, to her annoyance, she found Steve McCarthy discussing the information that had come in from the recent house-to-house enquiries. Berryman looked at her. ‘Lynne?’ He didn’t sound in a mood to be interrupted.

‘Sorry, sir, but this is important. It’s …’ She pulled out her folder of photocopies. ‘I was looking at the files again and something came up.’ She spread the pictures over the desk, pointing to the dates she’d marked on each one. She felt the atmosphere in the room change as they realized what she was showing them.

‘How do these link up?’ Berryman heard her through and wanted her ideas, now. ‘Is it just the local paper, or is there another connection?’

‘I don’t know.’ Lynne had thought about this. ‘There aren’t any similarities that we haven’t found already, but …’

‘Photographers? Journalists?’

‘I’m checking on that. The stories were written by different people. The photographer angle – one of the pictures was sent in by a relative.’ She pointed to Mandy’s engagement picture. ‘The others I need to check out.’

‘Send one of your team. Get them to talk to everyone involved in those stories.’ Berryman pressed his fingers against
his forehead. He thought for a moment and looked at Lynne and McCarthy again. ‘Are we missing anything here?’

After a moment, McCarthy said, ‘Deborah Sykes.’ Lynne cursed herself. She’d been too tied up in the past, too cock-a-hoop at finding this connection. She hadn’t been thinking ahead. And McCarthy had got there first. Deborah’s picture, about five weeks ago.
I
saw the face of the Strangler.

Berryman looked at them. ‘What do you think?’ he said.

Lynne and McCarthy exchanged glances. ‘It’s early for the next one,’ Lynne said slowly, talking it through. ‘I wouldn’t want to pin everything on that – he’s broken his pattern already. But … We know with Lisa and with Mandy, the stalking started almost straight after the pictures went in the papers. I’ve checked,’ she added, in response to Berryman’s unspoken comment. ‘Lisa’s diary, she wrote about Karen’s “nightmares”. They started within a couple of days of the picture appearing. Mandy’s boyfriend didn’t make all those calls, not the early ones. When I talked to Deborah, I asked her about phone calls, people following her, anything odd, out of place. There wasn’t anything.’

‘But then her mother …’ McCarthy sounded as unsure as Lynne felt.

‘It’s out of the pattern. Why? No other families were bothered. Only if they lived with the victim. I don’t know.’ She shook her head, looking at Berryman.

‘I’ll get back to Pete Cave,’ he said. ‘He’ll keep his team on alert, look again. What’s happening with the Peterson case?’

‘They charged the boyfriend. Manders says he’s coming apart, thinks he might confess, go for manslaughter, sudden loss of control.’ McCarthy had been liaising with the team investigating Sarah Peterson’s death.

Berryman nodded. ‘Maybe they need to look again. Get on to them, Steve. What about the Sykes woman? Someone’s going to have to talk to her again. I don’t want this photograph thing getting out though.’

‘She seems to have Rob Neave in residence at the moment,’ Lynne said, aware of a surprised glance from McCarthy. She felt irritated at the efficiency of the gossip machine. ‘He’ll keep an eye on things.’

Berryman grunted in bad-tempered agreement. ‘He’ll get up my nose as well. OK, she’s in good hands. But get someone to go and talk to her. I’ll get in touch with Cave.’

The new possibilities of a connection with the recent killings was the first thing Berryman discussed at the day’s briefing. He could see the same frustration in the eyes of his team as he felt himself. It was all too nebulous, and it all needed checking, tying in or finally eliminating.

Lynne Jordan had better news for them. Finding the photographs had been the result of a flash of insight. The work with the freight companies had involved Lynne and Dave West in hours of painstaking work, interviewing, coordinating interviews, coordinating information that came in, and it had paid off. ‘What we found,’ Lynne was saying, trying to avoid looking at the rather sour smile on McCarthy’s face, ‘was that trains stopped at signals, freight trains, on the relevant nights. We can get that information for those dates because they were stops for scheduled trains. Anyone who knew the schedules would know about them. And these stops all occurred within an hour of the estimated times of death.’ She went over to the map. ‘Here – Julie. A train went through Moreham station at eleven-thirty. It stopped just before the station because something was due to go across higher up the line. Here – Kate. A train comes off the main line on to the freight line at Kirk Sandall, two hours after she vanished, if Steve is right. It was stopped at the signal here. There’s another train that goes through Conisbrough at the right time for Mandy. It waits just before the cutting for the InterCity. The clincher for me is this one.’ She indicated a page on the report. ‘A train was supposed to go through Mexborough the night Lisa died. It usually does. But it was delayed at the last minute – they had a breakdown. It actually went through about two hours late – and so it didn’t stop at the signals like it would have done at the normal time.’

There was silence as the team absorbed what she was saying. McCarthy frowned. ‘You’re saying we’ve got a hitchhiker?’

‘Yes, only he doesn’t ask.’ Lynne was wary of McCarthy’s response, but he only nodded.

‘They’re dead when he puts them on the train?’ That was Curran, a member of McCarthy’s team.

‘I’m assuming so,’ said Lynne.

‘It’s a hell of a job,’ McCarthy said, ‘lifting a body from the line on to one of those trucks.’

‘Yes.’ That had got in the way of Lynne’s thinking at first. ‘But this is another thing. They were trains with either flatbed trucks, or some flatbed trucks. It can be done. Dave and I experimented.’ She grinned reluctantly at the laughter that greeted this. ‘A strong lad like Dave,’ she went on, ‘can lift someone of my size on to one of those things. Then it would just be a case of getting on himself and holding on. He could use a strap or a hook if he needed to.’

‘And getting off?’ Berryman knew Lynne’s thoughts, but he wanted the rest of the team to have them. ‘Another stop?’

‘I don’t think so, sir, not necessarily. If you look at the drop places, there’re bends, signals, obstructions. The drivers go fairly slowly at those points, slowly enough for someone to risk jumping.’

‘Push the body off with him and he’d have a soft landing anyway,’ West added. There was silence as they thought about the postmortem injuries that the pathologist attributed to a possible fall.

‘OK,’ said Berryman. ‘If this is right, then he’s got to know those schedules like the back of his hand, and he’s got to know those routes. Who are we looking for?’

‘Freight company employee, ex-freight company employee. Railtrack employee, ex-Railtrack employee.’ McCarthy pulled an expressive face. ‘Trainspotter, or some other kind of anorak.’

‘It’s not that bad,’ said Berryman, thinking it was bad enough. ‘He’s local – or he’s got local connections. We’ve got a profile, but remember, it’s only suggestions. Don’t ignore a possible because he doesn’t profile right. Physically, we have evidence to suggest he’s strong. He’s got to be to do it, and the Sykes woman said the man she saw was big. He might wear glasses. We’ve got the picture that Lisa’s daughter drew.
Lynne, Steve, I want both of you on this. I want some names. OK. Any questions?’

It was over a week after her mother’s death that Debbie went back to work. The world of the college carried on as normal and Debbie was seamlessly incorporated into the routine of teaching, marking, meetings. The A-level class were pleased to see Debbie. That was partly because they had had Louise to teach them while she was off, and Louise was a notorious dragon with her classes. But it was also, Debbie realized, that they liked her, enjoyed the work they did with her, and felt in sympathy with her.

‘OK,’ she said, signalling the beginning of the class, ‘let’s just go over the timetable again. Your exam is in June. I want your coursework in at the end of the month.’ She looked up as groans arose from various parts of the room. ‘And I know some of you are going to have trouble with that deadline, so start working
now,
please. We’ve got one more book to do –
The Handmaid’s Tale
– so if you haven’t started reading it, get on with it. I’ve got some handout material here on theocracies, religious states, that I’d like you to have read by Monday. We should have plenty of time for revision at the end.’ She could feel herself slipping back into harness, feel the control of knowing what she was doing, and knowing she would do it well. She was looking forward to the next few weeks.

The initial seeing of people was difficult, because they all wanted to say how sorry they were about her mother. They were embarrassed by bereavement, and Debbie didn’t really know what to say to them. She was always glad when the necessary ritual was over. She was aware of some people who ducked into empty rooms when they saw her coming, avoided her eye when they met, couldn’t bring themselves to mention the unmentionable. She didn’t let it worry her.