She laughed at Jill’s surprised silence.
‘Don’t worry. Our Tony’s a terrible ladies’ man, and I don’t know how Liz puts up with him, but he’s harmless enough.’
‘Perhaps he’d like to deliver my paper on his way past,’
Jill said lightly.
While Ella chatted about the unreliability of the paper boys and girls, Jill’s heart raced. Was Tony responsible for sending those silly photos and cards? She glanced over at the envelope still sitting on the table. If he ran past when she was out, it would be easy enough to put an envelope through the letterbox without being seen. Neither her short driveway nor her front door was overlooked.
Perhaps she’d have to drive her car into the village, leave it there, walk back via the fields, get in the house through the back door and lie in wait for him. Then, when he put an envelope through the door, she could confront him …
‘Anyway, must dash, Jill. Hope to see you on Wednesday night. Seven o’clock.’
‘Yes, OK, Ella. Thanks for that. Bye.’
Jill put down the phone and picked up the envelope. If it was a note from the milkman, and she was sure it wasn’t, it wouldn’t matter about fingerprints. If it was from the crank taking great delight in hounding her, then the envelope would be clean.
Heart racing, she opened the envelope - and nearly dropped it when she saw the contents.
For a moment, she thought she would vomit, and she had to pace around her sitting room, taking deep, calming breaths. She still wanted to scream.
Anger had her hands shaking as she picked up the phone again.
She hit the button for Max’s mobile and was relieved when he answered it immediately.
‘I’ve had another envelope pushed through the letterbox,’
she said breathlessly, ‘and this one - oh, God, Max!’
‘What? Calm down, love. What is it?’
‘There’s a lock of hair inside.’ Sharp, angry tears stung her eyes and she had to blink them back. ‘A lock of red hair!’
It was a weird sensation, switching on the television and seeing that prostitute’s face staring back at him. He only caught the end of the report, ‘… and said that hopes of finding the girl alive are fading.’ She looked different on the screen, mainly because she was wearing a school uniform and her hair was a mousy brown colour. For all that, she was easily recognizable.
The newsreader went on to speak about the appalling weather, and the floods that had hit the north-west. He switched off, not interested.
That was it then. The lock of hair must have convinced them she was dead. He’d checked it carefully; there was no follicle, nothing from which they could obtain a DNA sample.
They hadn’t found the body, though. Sometimes, he thought he ought to put up signposts and give them a helping hand. God, they were stupid.
He wished he could have watched Jill Kennedy open that envelope to find the lock of hair.
Was she wondering what Valentine had in store for her? Oh, he hoped so.
He still wasn’t sure what to do with her. It was so very tempting to kill her now, and send that Detective Chief Inspector Trentham a lock of her hair, but then half the fun would be over.
Eventually he’d kill her, of course, but meanwhile he was enjoying playing with her. With the police so slow and dim, it helped to pass the time.
He would visit her cottage this evening.
She was dim, too. Despite the fact that her cottage was being watched - that is, a patrol car drove past slowly two or three times a night - he delivered his little surprises to her in broad daylight and she was none the wiser.
Valentine was too clever for her, for all of them. He was a perfectionist.
‘Well?’
Jill looked up from the computer’s screen, rubbed her tired eyes to bring Don Cornwall into focus, and stretched her neck and shoulder muscles. It was late and she was tired. She’d spent over nine hours in front of this computer in the windowless office, and she was ready to go home.
‘Well what?’ She wasn’t Cornwall’s number one fan. He was ambitious, insensitive, abrupt and would sell his soul for an arrest. Or perhaps he simply wasn’t Max. He wasn’t on her wavelength.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Starting over,’ she said. ‘I’m going back to the beginning and plotting Valentine’s crimes in chronological order on the map - again. I’m seeing where the girls went missing and where their bodies were found.’ He came to look over her shoulder at the various coloured dots on the screen.
‘He gets about a bit, though,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘The murders all take place at night. Either he works during the day or there are more prostitutes on the streets at night.
Not much help,’ she admitted, seeing his scornful expression.
‘The thing is, though, a criminal will commit crimes in an area in which he feels safe. He’s used to the towns in Lancashire - could be a salesman who covers Lancashire, a delivery man, something like that. Yet the bodies are always found in remote places. So he drives them away to the open countryside. And that’s another thing. There are no signs of a struggle so they go willingly. And they’re in his car for one hell of a long time.’
‘So he pays them well?’
‘It’s more than that,’ Jill replied. ‘He’ll be well spoken, smartly dressed and driving a decent car.’
‘Like Brad Pitt in that film?’
Jill had no idea what he was talking about.
‘Millionaire, hooker, Ferrari,’ Cornwall said impatiently.
Perhaps their star signs were incompatible. Whatever, she wasn’t happy working with him. As usual, his dark suit was immaculate and, today, was teamed with a crisp white shirt and dark blue and grey silk tie. His aftershave was over the top, though. He was younger than Max, probably eight or ten years younger.
‘It was Richard Gere, not Brad Pitt. Richard Gere and Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. And yes, it’s a bit like that in that the girl will believe he’s a cut above her usual customer. He won’t drive a Ferrari or anything showy, though. That would draw too much attention. He’ll drive a high end of the market saloon - a model that’s smart yet popular. A year, two years old at most.’
She thought for a moment. ‘So he’s well spoken, high IQ, smartly dressed, good car. He offers them a good sum of money for a full night.’
‘That’s easy enough. They can even hold the cash while he drives.’
‘Exactly. Hold the cash and dream of other nights maybe days and weeks with him.’
‘What’s with the open countryside?’ he asked. ‘Why drive them miles away?’
‘He needs to feel safe. The fact that he’s killing them away from the towns makes me think he’s used to open spaces and feels happier in them. You’re looking for someone who lives, or at least was brought up in the country. A farmer perhaps. A farmer’s son.’ She rubbed her eyes again. ‘God knows,’ she said on a long sigh. ‘I’m going round in circles again.’
‘He’s a clever bastard,’ Cornwall muttered.
‘He is. The fact that he’s leaving no trace makes me think he’s clued up on forensic procedures. Another thing, he chooses his victims in busy towns yet nothing has ever been caught on CCTV. He thinks of everything. So, forensic procedures ‘
‘We could be looking for someone who works on the force,’ Cornwall said wryly, ‘if we could find anyone who knows what a night off is.’
‘Or someone who’s been arrested before, perhaps served time. Not murder - and I don’t think it would be a sexual crime - but I think he could have a police record, and I think it might have something to do with prostitutes.
Perhaps he roughed one up. I don’t know, but he’s certainly ridding the world of them now. Perhaps he fell in love with one and couldn’t get her to give up her work.
Perhaps his mother, sister, wife was one. No, not his wife.
He’s not married. He’s not in a long-term, stable relationship.
I’d stake money on his mother being a prostitute and his being starved of love as a child. It’s not the men visiting them he hates, it’s the women themselves. The men are nothing to him. Yet, although he resents prostitutes, he spends time cutting hearts from their skin.’
‘A real romantic,’ Cornwall muttered, eyebrows raised.
‘It must take a lot of time and care, though. He cares for women. He probably has a great deal of respect for them when they’re dead. To him, they’ll be clean and pure again.’
She stared at the screen. ‘A map is all very well, but I’m working on the geographical and our killer will be working from his mental map.’
‘Uh?’
‘The two are very different,’ she explained. ‘If I were asked to draw a map of Preston, say, and you were asked to, our maps would be very different. Because I’ve lived in Preston, the centre of my map would be more or less where I’d lived. You’ve worked there so yours would have a place of work as its centre. A city like London, which is clearly divided by the Thames, is a better example. Some people in London live north of the Thames and haven’t been south. Their map would show just a tiny part of London as being south of the Thames. We draw our own mental maps.’
He didn’t comment on that. ‘Meredith told me you were good,’ he said instead.
“I am!’
‘You’ll need to be if you aim to get one over on Valentine.
The man’s a genius.’
‘The man’s a killer,’ Jill corrected him.
He’s also sending me presents, she added silently, but Cornwall hadn’t seemed unduly bothered by that.
‘That lock of hair -‘ she began.
‘What about it? There’s nothing to say Valentine sent it.’
‘No, but ‘
‘More likely to be someone reminding you that you cocked up - that the whole force cocked up.’
‘Maybe, but ‘
‘We’re looking into it,’ he promised, dismissing it. ‘We’re also searching open fields within a five-mile radius of Burnley. That’s an awful lot of fields. If there is a body out there, and it looks likely there is, we’ll find it.’
Jill knew it was an impossibly large area to search, especially when they could be way off the mark. Valentine might have taken his victim six miles away.
‘That’s another thing,’ she said. ‘When he takes his victim to the place of death, he’ll take them in the direction of his base - where he lives. So that’s what I’m working on, the place of death.’ She looked at him. ‘It’s definite the victims haven’t been killed and then moved to these places, isn’t it?’
‘Yup.’ With that, he walked out of the office leaving her to it.
‘Ignorant so and so,’ Jill muttered.
Another hour, and then she’d go home.
Max had done his best to get her to leave her cottage, but she refused to do that. All the same, she felt uneasy when she was inside and hated opening the door when she got home. She’d had extra locks installed on the doors and windows, a couple of officers were keeping an eye on the place, and getting access to Fort Knox would be easier, but she still felt on edge.
Right, back to work.
Looking for the clues a criminal left was so much easier when going through crimes that had already been solved.
That was fascinating work, deducing clues from known facts. Now, she felt as if she were working completely in the dark, like a watchmaker trying to mend a watch up a chimney.
His church was cold, but Jonathan didn’t mind. It wasn’t as cold as the look in his son’s eyes as he’d left the vicarage earlier. Jonathan had no idea where Michael had gone. ‘For a walk,’ was all he’d said.
Jonathan loved everything about his church, including the temperature that had always made Alice shiver, and the smell of the place, a mixture of musty prayer books, polish and wax that had made her wrinkle her nose and pull a face.
The lights were on, yet he’d felt compelled to light a few candles.
Built in 1644, St Lawrence’s wasn’t a particularly old church, and Jonathan could still recall his first sight of the building and the disappointment he’d felt then. That, however, was perhaps mainly due to the fact that he’d hoped for a larger parish. Eleven years had passed since then, and now this felt like home. He wouldn’t want another parish.
The main body of the church was built of red brick, with darker, almost black bricks laid to make crosses. The west tower, stone-faced and topped by small but impressive battlements, had been added in 1720. On the south face was the large clock that told the people of Kelton Bridge the time of day.
The inside, in Jonathan’s view, was far more impressive.
Over the years, Jonathan had seen many visitors to the church stand in awe beneath the stained-glass window near the font that celebrated the baptism of Jesus. The nave, with its single aisle leading to the chancel, was broad and majestic, and the pulpit was one of the largest Jonathan had seen. Standing in that pulpit, gazing down on his flock, it was possible to believe he was God and not merely passing on the Word.
This evening, however, he paid scant attention to his surroundings. He sat in the front pew for a while, then knelt. His eyes were open, his hands clasped tightly beneath his chin.
‘Father, forgive me,’ he whispered.
He stared at the window high above him, where Jesus, carrying his weighty cross, stared straight back at him. His eyes were a deep blue and as pure as the open sky.
Jonathan shivered.
The Lord had given his only son to save the world; Jonathan had almost given his only son to save his own skin …
‘What else could I do?’ he whispered.
The silence was awesome and it would have been possible to hear the scurrying of the proverbial church mouse.
‘Alice, you understand, don’t you?’
He wanted - needed - some sign of forgiveness. If only Alice was here to pat him on the shoulder and say, ‘It’ll be all right, Jon. Your God will understand.’
Always his God. Never hers.
He had never heard her say so, but he knew her faith had not been strong. Only last year, before the Christmas service, she’d said, ‘They’ll be there in their droves - the one service of the year that people attend.’
‘Once a year is better than nothing,’ he’d said feebly.
‘Is it, Jon? Or are those who don’t come, those who are too busy doing things for others less fortunate, the better people?’