TWENTY-ONE

As I walked through my front door my head felt very clear. I knew what I was going to do. Matters had become simple for the moment. The layer of fear was still there, but even that had receded a little. Cameron was out of his car and beside me in a second, looking questioning, hopeful even.

“I’m going up the road to get some food for supper,” I said.

We walked along together. I didn’t speak.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally. “For everything. I just want to make it all right. For you and me. Us.”

“What are you talking about?” I said.

He didn’t reply. We walked across High Street and along the pavement until we were standing outside Marks amp; Spencer. We mustn’t have an argument, nothing to arouse his suspicions. I put my hand on his forearm. Contact but nothing excessive.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not dealing with things in a rational way at the moment. It’s not the time.”

“I understand,” he said.

I turned to go into the shop. I gave a sigh. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

“I’ll wait here.”

“Can I get you anything?”

“Don’t worry.”

The Camden Town Marks amp; Spencer has a small back entrance. Up the escalator and out, and within a few minutes I was on an underground train. Going down the escalator to the platform, the warm air blowing past me, I had looked back. He was definitely not there.

As I sat on the train for the short journey, I tried to make sense of what Morris had said. I felt as if I had been trapped for weeks in a thick mist and now it was not exactly lifting, but it was becoming thinner and some sort of landscape was starting to become visible. If it had been a policeman, if it had been Cameron, suddenly what had seemed impossible became simple. The police had easy unquestioned access to Zoe’s flat, to Jenny’s house. My heart sank. To my flat. But why would they do that? Why would Cameron do that?

I only had to think of Cameron’s gaze and I knew the answer. I remembered my first meetings with the police, Cameron in the corner, his eyes fixed on me. Cameron in my bed. I had never been looked at like that before, never touched like that, as if I were an infinitely attractive and strange object. I’d felt he wanted to look at me and touch me and penetrate me and taste me all at the same time, as if nothing could ever be enough. It had been wonderfully exciting at first and then repellent, and now it seemed appallingly understandable. To be right next to the woman you were terrifying, to fuck her, to find out all her secrets. What a turn-on. And yet, what evidence was there? Had Morris found something I could use?

Morris’s flat was only a few minutes’ walk from the tube station. The main road itself was packed with crowds of people. He lived in a small alley that was difficult to find. I walked past it the first time, then asked and found it and walked along and round the corner. The tiny cobbled backstreet was deserted on this Saturday evening. At the end I found a door with a little card by the bell: BURNSIDE. I rang the bell. There was silence for a time.

Could he have gone out? Then I heard a series of knobs being turned, levers pulled, and he opened the door. He looked amazing, a live wire. He was wearing bulky trousers with large pockets all over and a short-sleeved shirt. He was barefoot. But there was something about his eyes, bright and alive, that was captivating. He had an energy about him that was like a force field. He was an attractive man, and what was more-here my heart sank a little-he was a man who fancied himself in love. I hoped he hadn’t made a mountain out of a molehill, just in the hope of wooing me.

“Nadia,” he said with a welcoming smile.

He stood in the doorway and looked over my shoulder. I turned and looked as well. There was nobody there at all, the whole length of the street.

“How did you get away?” he said.

“I’m a magician,” I said.

“Come in,” he said. “I haven’t tidied up.”

It looked very tidy to me. We had stepped straight into a small and cozy living room with a doorway at the far end leading into a short corridor.

“Was this a warehouse?”

“Some kind of workshop, I think. I’m just flat-sitting for a friend who’s out of the country.”

The only thing out of place was an ironing board and iron to one side by the table.

“You’ve been doing your ironing,” I said. “I’m extremely impressed.”

“Just this shirt,” he said.

“I thought it was new.”

“That’s the trick,” he said. “If you iron your clothes, they look like new.”

I smiled.

“The real trick is to wear new clothes,” I said.

I walked around the room. I was addicted to looking at other people’s houses. I gravitated with the instinct of a master snooper to a large cork board on the wall on which, here and there, were pinned takeaway menus, business cards of plumbers and electricians, and, most interesting of all, little snapshots. Morris at a party, Morris on a bike somewhere, Morris on a beach, Morris and a girl.

“She looks nice,” I said.

“Cath,” he said.

“Is she someone you’re seeing?”

“Well, we had a sort of thing.”

I smiled inwardly. She was someone he was seeing. When men said of a girl that they had had a sort of thing with her, it was the equivalent of a man taping over his wedding ring. They wanted to be ambiguous about their state of availability.

“Where are the rest of them?”

“What?”

“The pictures,” I said. “Many drawing pins, few pictures.” I pointed. There were gaps all over the board.

“Oh,” he said. “There were just some I got bored with.” He laughed. “You should have been a detective.”

“Speaking of which, this had better be good, because Detective Inspector Stadler is going to be very angry. I’ll probably be lucky if I get away with a charge of wasting police time.”

Morris gestured me to a chair at the table and he sat opposite me. “I’ve been going over the interview I had with Stadler and-what was the other one?”

“Links?”

“That’s right, and I’m convinced that there’s something strange about Stadler. The way he talked about those other two women was really strange, and I wanted to go through it with you. And I just felt I had to get you away from him.”

“Have you got any evidence?”

“What?”

“I thought you might have found something we could use against him.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish I could have.”

I tried to think. The mist in my mind that had been clearing suddenly became thicker again. Then suddenly I felt a wave of coldness pass through me.

“It doesn’t work anyway,” I said dully.

Morris looked puzzled. “What doesn’t?”

“The police theory. I got so excited about Zoe and that watermelon and her connection with the police before the notes arrived. But that doesn’t explain Jennifer.”

“Why?”

“Her locket was planted in Zoe’s flat before Zoe died, before Jennifer started getting the notes, before she called the police.”

“The police might have faked the planting of the locket.”

I thought for a moment.

“Well, maybe,” I said doubtfully. “Still, that doesn’t explain the connection with Jenny. Why pick on her?”

“Stadler may have seen her somewhere.”

“You could say that about anybody. The police theory depended on the fact that they had dealings with all the women.”

I felt depressed and sick. “It was all wrong,” I said. “I’d better go.”

Morris leaned across and touched my arm. “Just stay a bit,” he said. “Just a bit, Nadia.”

“It would have been so good,” I said flatly. “It was such a nice theory, it’s a pity to let it go.”

“Back to the haystack,” Morris said. He was smiling at me as if that was funny. His teeth, his eyes, his whole face, shone.

“You know what?” I said dreamily.

“What?”

“I used to feel strange that I’d never met Zoe and Jenny. It’s different now. Sometimes I think of us as sisters, but more and more I think of us as the same person. We’ve gone through the same experiences. We’ve lain awake at night with the same fears. And we’re going to die in the same way.”