The Various Haunts of Men (44 page)

He had been determined to stay away, knowing perfectly well what all the psychologists and the profilers said about people like him. ‘They will always return to the scene in some way or other. They can’t keep away. If there is a search, they may offer help, if there is a public appeal,
they may come forward with spurious information, if there is a reconstruction they will hang about to watch.’

He had no need. What had happened on the Hill was unimportant, merely a necessary prelude. What mattered was what he did in the unit. He was not interested in the hunt, the capture, the kill. He understood perfectly
why bodysnatchers had been employed in those dark streets of Edinburgh
centuries ago. If he could have employed people to bring the necessary bodies to him, he would have done so.

What drove him to the Hill this morning was the desire to see how the police managed things, what mistakes they made, how far they got it wrong. There could be no outcome of course. However many people came to watch, however many came forward, none of them could be of any use because none
of them had been there. No one had been there. He was the only one who knew what had happened.

He hesitated. In the group of uniformed police around one of the vans, he saw the young woman he had met at the dinner party, Freya Graffham. If she saw him, he would have to speak to her, would have to have a reason for being here. He moved out of her line of sight a little and began to think. But
it came to him quite quickly and easily, as things always did. He knew what he was going to say and rather looked forward to saying it. But the scene was set, the actors were waiting, the curtain was about to rise. He went to the left a little along the path, to get a clear view.

He could see at once that they had got it wrong. The girl was not fat enough and her hair was slightly too fair. But
the fleece jacket was right, and the dreadful acne. Another young woman was talking to her, head close, talking, talking, gesturing with her hands. The flatmate.

Someone called for quiet. There was a moment of absolute stillness. Then the girl began walking and the cameras started to roll, the television crew walking backwards in front of her, the men with the furry microphones alongside.

The
clothes were identical and she walked in almost exactly the same way. Almost. He watched. She was crossing the road now, heading for the opening that led to the Hill itself. He wanted to shout directions to her, tell her to move faster, tell her to change her expression, and to look up at the Hill, not ahead. Whoever the girl was, she was too conscious of the camera ahead of her, the walk was too
hesitant.

Everyone else watched intently, some of them, including Freya Graffham following in a group some yards behind the girl. Freya had not seen him, he was quite certain of that. Better that way. His story would be of more use later.

The girl was on the Hill now and the others were staying back. The weather was not right but as he watched her, apparently alone, going towards the point at
which they had met, he realised that excitement was rising in him. He knew what was going to happen, it was running in his head, reeling out like a film he had already seen and whose ending was perfectly right. For a few seconds, she veered in the wrong direction and he wanted to call out to her, but then she turned again and then everything was right, it was as though she knew, as though she was
Debbie, not a stand-in, and he felt a surge of power. It was extraordinary. She was doing as he wanted. She was obeying his silent orders, as if she were one of the remote-control planes boys flew on the Hill on Sunday mornings. Every footstep was as he directed. He had to hold himself from running to meet her. She was almost there, poor, fat, badly dressed, spotty girl. How could there be two of
them in the world? He had no need of two but if he had been on his own, he would have taken her all the same.

She was a few yards away. He held his breath until his chest was strained. Someone shouted. The woman. Freya Graffham.

‘OK, Caroline, OK, you can stop there.’

Freya came running up and the pack of them followed. Everything was ruined, in the last few seconds, the last few strides. The
film had broken down.

He watched Graffham, her hand on the girl’s shoulder. He could no longer hear her. The girl had taken him to the edge and then the policewoman had pulled him back.

He wanted to kill her.

By the time Cat Deerbon drove round the perimeter road on her way to the surgery, the Hill was empty, but she had deliberately taken the detour to try and remember anything at all about
Debbie Parker that might be useful. She had been a funny girl, on the one hand seriously depressed, disfigured by the acne, overweight – and yet when she had come into the surgery, she had not made Cat feel drained and tired, as so many of her patients with low moods did. They had joked, Debbie had made sharp, observant remarks, there had been a wit and a warmth there, beneath the doleful outer
layer. And now, where was she? Off with some gypsy-hippie tribe, travelling in an ancient bus and never washing? On the road to the gurus of India? Neither seemed likely.

The disappearance of Mrs Chater was even more troubling. Cat thought of the hours she had sat in the hot front room with her and her dying husband. No, she was not a woman to vanish without warning either. She was made of tougher
stuff, the type of woman who would soldier on for however many years she had left, and make the best of things. She was a stayer not a runner.
Cat thought the same was probably true of Debbie.

She pulled into the surgery car park and sat for a moment after turning off the engine. In the pit of her stomach, a hollow, slightly painful sensation made her uneasy. Dead, she thought. They are both
dead. How do I know that? Why am I so sure? Freya Graffham had asked her if there was anything she could tell her about the two women and in one sense there was a great deal – everything she had just been thinking. But what did that amount to, in terms of a police investigation? Nothing. Vague ominous feelings. They would not be worth ringing in to describe.

But she wanted to talk to Freya again.
She liked her. She had enjoyed their chance meeting and lunch. And she wished very much that Simon did not have a place in the picture. She had recognised the signs given out by Freya only too well. There had been enough of them in the past, heaven knew. Si attracted women, unsurprisingly. Si liked women, enjoyed their company, took them out, talked to them and, even more important, listened
to them carefully. After which, he panicked. Besides, there was presumably still Diana.

Cat was the only member of the family, and possibly the only other person at all, who knew about Diana Mason. Simon had known her for five or six years, after they had met in Florence, where he had gone, as so often, to draw. They had struck up a conversation, discovered their hotels were in the same street.
That might have been that, but for some reason, it was not. When they returned to England, Si had telephoned her.

Diana Mason lived in London and had been widowed over twenty years before and never wanted to remarry. Instead, she had wanted to find the career she had never
begun, and with the money her husband had left her, she had bought her first small restaurant, in Hampstead. Now, all those
years later, she owned a chain of nine, all called Mason, in London, and in smart, cleverly chosen places like Bath, Winchester, Cambridge and Brighton. Masons were relaxed brasseries with excellent food, open from ten until ten, serving the best coffees, ices and salads in an American style, welcoming to children and families and students, with exactly the right atmosphere, furnishings, staff,
drinks. Diana had designed and chosen everything, every detail was decided upon by her, and she now took the sensible view that she had found a winning formula and should stick to it. She worked hard at it, constantly driving between her restaurants checking details, talking to staff, eating in each branch in turn. As a result, she had made a lot of money. Several larger restaurant chains had offered
to buy her out but she had always turned them down, saying that when she was no longer having fun she would quit, but that for now, she was still enjoying herself. The relationship between Diana and Simon was unorthodox, and it suited them both. Cat had long ago decided that they were not in love with one another, and that for this very reason, it worked well. They were fond of one another, enjoyed
one another’s company, saw one another for a weekend several times a year, once or twice had gone on holiday again. But they were both independent people who, for different reasons, preferred not to have permanent ties. They both liked their work and their own space, their own friends, their own lives.

Added to which, Diana Mason was ten years older.

Simon almost never mentioned her, even to
Cat, who had sometimes wondered how much either of them
would mind if the other fell seriously in love with someone else. Probably not much.

Still, women like Freya Graffham, nice women, worried her. Si was either obtuse or chose not to notice the broken hearts that regularly lay about him. In a way, he was indifferent, even callous, and Freya, for one, deserved better. But how to warn her, how
to broach the subject at all was a problem Cat would shelve for the time being. Apart from anything else, she knew from experience that if Freya was as in love with her brother as Cat suspected, she would be beyond the stage of taking kindly to any warnings whatsoever.

An hour or so later, Cat was washing her hands after attending to a child with a suppurating eardrum – why couldn’t the mother
have so much as given the poor kid a clean pad of paper tissues to hold against it? – when the phone rang.

‘Can you take a call from Aidan Sharpe? He says he can call back later if not.’

‘No, I’ll take it, give me a break.’

‘Tea?’

‘You read my thoughts. Thanks.’

The outside line connected in with a click. ‘Aidan? Good morning.’

‘Cat, my dear, is this a very inopportune time? I did say I
would be happy to call back.’

She smiled at his rather old-fashioned way of speaking, his extreme courtesy. Chris always said Aidan Sharpe’s manners went with bow ties.

‘It’s fine. I could do with a break.’

‘Bad morning?’

‘Busy. You?’

‘As ever. But I had a cancellation, and there is something I really do want to mention to you. I’ve been worrying about it but this morning, I don’t know if
you were aware, but the police were doing a reconstruction of the last known movements of that young girl who is missing.’

‘Debbie Parker, yes. I drove by. I didn’t see you.’

‘Oh, I was like you, passing. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know what was going on at first. I thought someone must be making a film until I saw the police vans. But, you see, it is precisely this that I’ve been worrying
about and I really feel terrible. I should have thought earlier, I should have done something but I simply didn’t.’

‘About what?’

‘Cat, the young woman came to see me. I treated her.’

‘Good Lord. She didn’t tell me.’

‘Dear me, was she your patient?’

‘Oh yes. I’ve seen her several times recently as a matter of fact.’

There was a silence, and then a small sound, which might have been a sigh,
or an intake of breath.

‘Aidan, what exactly is the matter? You say you treated her?’

‘I did, just once. I asked her to make more appointments but she never did. I’m not sure she liked needles, to be frank. But her acne was really quite serious and we do sometimes succeed with it, though I rather suspected she needed a course of oxytetracycline as well.’

‘I gave her one. She came to see me
about it eventually … she ought to have come earlier, but Debbie was rather into – alternative therapies. She’d started going up to Starly to see a New Age healer.’

Aidan groaned. ‘Which one? Dear me, it is the poor little girls like Debbie one so worries about.’

‘A rather wafty character in a blue robe called Dava. He gave her some potentially dangerous skin cream and some herbal stuff to which
she had a serious allergic reaction. I had to go out to her as an emergency.’

‘This is precisely the sort of thing you’ve been talking about, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. But Aidan, I don’t quite see why you’re worried just now about Debbie. What has it to do with you?’

‘Well, surely I ought to have reported it to the police? It is information.’

‘I shouldn’t think it is the least relevant to her disappearance.
Would you?’

‘Well, no, but they wanted to hear about anything at all … I had simply forgotten and I’m appalled. I seem to be losing my grip.’

Cat laughed. ‘You’d better not. I’ve got a couple of intractable arthritic pains for you to see and you always manage to help.’

‘My dear, you are very kind. I can’t tell you what it means to have your confidence in this way.’

‘You do. And meanwhile,
don’t worry about Debbie Parker.’

‘I’m afraid I do. I just do. I have a very uneasy feeling.’

‘So do I, between ourselves.’

‘I really think I might go to the police.’

‘If it will ease your mind, then yes, I think maybe you should, Aidan.’

Cat put the phone down. Aidan Sharpe was an old woman, but she liked him and respected him. It was typical of him to fret because he had temporarily forgotten
that he had treated Debbie Parker. She wondered, as she
pressed the buzzer for her next patient, what had led him to acupuncture. He was an unlikely practitioner. One day, she would ask him to tell her his story.

The door opened on a heavily pregnant young woman, clutching a toddler by the hand and carrying a one-year-old baby. So much for the hours I spent at the family planning clinic, Cat
thought wearily.

‘Hello, Tracey. Come and sit down.’ She smiled at the tired-looking girl. ‘Not long to go now. How are you?’

Tracey sat down, perched the baby on her lap somehow, yanked the toddler towards her with her foot, and burst into tears. Morning surgery flowed on.

The desk officer was about to ring up, when Freya Graffham came through the door into the lobby and stopped.