Jenkins creaked back in his chair. “Remember Kim Novak? Vertigo?”

“You brought that up last night. You think Kate Banks was thrown off a bell tower?”

Jenkins frowned but not at Jury. “There was something really sick about that film.”

“You mean the Jimmy Stewart character?”

“The whole film. Her, too. She fell in with it.” Jenkins was rolling a pencil over his knuckles, back and forth. “You ever study obsession?”

“Aside from my own? No.”

“Yeah. Cops tend to be. It doesn’t have much to do with love or any other feeling. It has to do with the idea of it. Obsession has to do with itself.”

“You’ve lost me.”

Jenkins sighed. “Yeah. Me, too.” He tossed up the pencil and caught it like a baton twirler. “No… wait. I did have a thought there.” He paused. “Hitchcock was way off base with Vertigo. That character just wasn’t set up right. Now, take Norman Bates. Norman was completely mad-”

“Psycho?”

Jenkins nodded. “But the guy in Strangers on a Train, Bruno. Now, there was a characterization. Bruno was only half-mad. Both of those characters were more believable than the James Stewart character.”

A WPC rapped on the door frame-the door itself was open-came in, and handed Jenkins a folder. On her way out, she smiled at Jury.

Jenkins slapped the folder open. “Okay.” He muttered a few hmm’s.

“Is that Kate’s?” Jury thought he was picking up Wiggins’s habit of speaking of victims on a first-name basis.

Jenkins nodded. “No surprises. No cartridges found at the scene. Two recovered from the victim. There’s not really much to link these shootings other than the escort service angle.”

“And that nothing happened.”

Jenkins frowned, puzzled. “What?”

“Nothing happened aside from the two women being shot: there was no rape and, what was more curious, considering the seven hundred and fifty pounds-no robbery. They were both dressed up, as if for a party.”

“Yet where they happened, those places are completely different. It wasn’t as if they’d both occurred in a certain part of London. One in London, one outside of it. That’s what distances them. That would make you think this isn’t a serial killer; it makes you think the two killings aren’t related.”

“But you don’t think that?” said Jury.

“No. I think they’re related.” Jenkins sat brooding on something. Obsession, Jury guessed, and asked, “What did you mean when you said obsession ‘has to do with itself’?”

Jenkins chewed at the corner of his mouth. “Look at lago.”

Jury liked that trip from Hitchcock to Shakespeare.

“There’s nothing to explain Iago. The reasons given are absurd. No, it’s like Hamlet: nothing in the plays explains their actions. Iago didn’t act out of jealousy or rage or revenge. He was just being lago-you know what I mean.”

Jury smiled. “This is good, but can we get back to our own little drama? Can we talk about our two dead women?”

Jenkins looked genuinely puzzled. “I thought we were.”

“Meaning, you think our killer was obsessed with sex, or prostitutes, or…?”

But Jenkins was shaking his head. “I don’t think he knew what his reasons were.”

Jury gave a brief laugh. “This is getting away from me.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s lunchtime. I’m off to a pub to have a word with my own Iago. ’Bye, Dennis.”

27

“Where were you last night, Harry?”

In the Old Wine Shades, Harry Johnson was languidly smoking a small, thin cigar. Jury hadn’t bothered with a greeting, at least not for Harry Johnson. He did say hello to Mungo.

“Where did you want me to be, and at what time?” Harry blew a smoke ring. “There’s been another murder, I take it.”

“Just a hop, skip, and a jump from here.”

“A hop, skip, and a jump from here lies the part of inner London with the highest crime rate in the city. Could that perhaps explain your murder? Or do you have it in mind to tie the one in the City together with the one in Chesham?”

Mungo lurched up and froze like a pointer, as if Chesham had fallen somewhere out there in the fields.

“Something wrong?” asked Jury.

“Yes,” said Harry. “Stop trying to-”

“I’m talking to Mungo.”

“Mungo’s nerves seem to be in a state. God knows why.”

Mungo had defrosted but still sat up alert, all ears.

As if something spooked him, thought Jury. “You still haven’t answered me. Where were you last night?”

Harry sighed. “I was here.” He tipped his head in the direction of Trevor, who was serving a couple at the end of the bar. “Ask Trev.”

“I will. Were you here all night?”

“Did I doss down here? No.”

“You know what I mean. You came when and left when?”

“Came at nine; left at ten or eleven. Does that fit the killer’s schedule?”

“Close.” Jury smiled. “That ten or eleven’s a bit vague.”

Harry shrugged. “I can always change it. Have some wine. It’s a great Bordeaux.” Trevor had come along and placed a glass before Jury.

“You’re pretty cavalier about a double murder.”

“I can afford to be, given I didn’t do them.” Harry tapped ash from his cigar with his little finger, looked at the cigar, scrubbed it out.

“You were in Chesham. You’ve been to the Black Cat-”

Again, Mungo stood up between the two bar chairs and froze like a pointer.

Harry looked down. Ineffectively he gave a command: “Sit, Mungo.”

As if.

“You’re giving Mungo commands?”

“I like to see if it has any effect.”

“It doesn’t.”

“No.”

“The Black Cat, Harry?”

Mungo quivered.

“It’s interesting to me that there’s a black cat gone missing from the pub. I’m wondering if there’s a relationship.”

“Wonder away,” said Harry.

Mungo started turning in circles.

“Is Mungo trying to say something?” He reached down to the dog. “What’s up, boy?”

What’s up, boy? Mungo cringed.

Jury looked at him and then went on. “The little girl who lives at the pub thinks the cat was either murdered or kidnapped. Like the woman found outside. She claims that the black cat there now isn’t her cat, that it’s been put in the real cat’s place-” Jury frowned at Mungo, who was clawing at his leg, something he never did. Jury reached down to pet his head, and Mungo flopped onto the floor.

Harry looked at Mungo, shook his head, and set another cigar on fire. A tiny flame leapt up when he put his gold lighter to it. “You’ve read E. A. Poe, I expect. Have you read ‘The Black Cat’?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Interesting tale, and a very sick one, but it’s Poe, after all. Narrator has a black cat. They’re inseparable. Cat follows him around all the time. The fellow starts drinking and is soon deep into an alcoholic mind-set. He does something horrible to the cat and eventually hangs the animal. The story’s pretty ghoulish.”

“Why does he do it?”

“The narrator’s idea is that one does things just because they’re perverse. No motive other than that.”

What came to Jury’s mind was the conversation he’d just had with Jenkins. Vertigo.

Harry continued, “I think it has more to do with the man’s psychological state, not his spiritual one. Perversion for the sake of perversion. Interesting. The black cat, of course, comes back to haunt him in particularly nasty ways. The only thing I don’t like about Poe is the payback. There’s always a payback, a punishment. I find that unconvincing.” He mused. “This little girl at the pub you mentioned, she could be making it up about the kidnapped cat.”

Mungo was off the floor and turning in circles again.

“It’s just too strange a story,” Harry went on. “Why would someone kidnap a cat? It’s ludicrous. Like the other one.”

Jury turned full face to stare at him. “Oh, you mean the one you told me about Mungo disappearing and magically coming back? That story you stuffed into me over drinks and dinners, and me, idiot that I am, believing it? That story?”