44

“They’re calling them ‘the Escort Murders,’ subhead ‘Serial Killer on the Loose?’ At least they made it a question.” DS Cummins had turned the paper around so that Jury could see for himself the headline and the photos beneath it. There were two of the Valentine’s and Smart Set agencies, together with what looked like agency photographs, one of Deirdre Small and one of Mariah Cox using the name “Stacy Storm.” Kate Banks was missing, as was the King’s Road Companions agency. Beneath these photos was a smaller one of Rose Moss, who was “helping police with their inquiries.”

Jury and Cummins were sitting in the Chesham station.

Cummins went on: “I guess they’re all related, only…”

“Only what? I’m open to intuition.”

Cummins scratched his ear. He looked awfully young. Jury envied him the boyishness so close to the surface. He thought of Rosie Moss. He worried about her, to tell the truth. He hoped he wasn’t leading her on, making that date with her.

“Well, it doesn’t feel right, that it’s a serial killer.”

“Why?”

“I think it’s because… Mariah being murdered in Chesham, not London.”

“Exactly. Mariah Cox was murdered because she was Mariah Cox, or Stacy Storm, not because she was an escort. That it would be the same for the other two would follow, wouldn’t it? They’re connected, but not by escort services, by something else. We have to find out the something else.”

David Cummins smiled. “Chris thinks so, too, the escort business doesn’t have anything to do with the murders. Chris thinks it’s all about shoes.”

Jury really laughed for the first time in days. “Tell her I can send someone round to talk to Jimmy Choo.”

“And Louboutin, the red sole guy. Those shoes look like they stepped in blood.”

Edna Cox came to the door looking a little less worn out, but not much. She seemed, oddly, glad to see Jury, maybe because he was one of the few left who connected her with Mariah. He hoped he wasn’t the only one.

He was seated with a cup of tea, not speaking of her niece and the other victims until she’d stopped bustling around and was herself sitting down.

“These other two women, Mrs. Cox-Deirdre Small and Kate Banks-do those names mean anything to you?”

She shook her head. The paper, the same one Cummins had shown to Jury, was lying on a rust-colored ottoman. Edna Cox picked it up. “No. But I’ve seen her somewhere.” As Cummins had done, she turned the paper so Jury could see. Her finger was tapping the picture of Rosie Moss. “Adele Astaire, it says her name is.” A little hmpf! of disbelief followed.

Jury was surprised. “You’ve seen her where? I thought all you knew of her was the name.”

“That’s right. I’d never seen these girls. I mean, their pictures. No, Adele Astaire is a made-up name just like Stacy Storm is. You’d think”-pause for a sip of tea-“they could come up with better names than those, wouldn’t you?”

Jury thought he’d better not prompt her with Adele’s real name just now. “This Adele Astaire-do you recall where you saw her?”

She set down the cup and was prepared to really exercise her brain. “I’ve been trying to bring it to mind ever since I saw that picture.” She shook her head. “But I can’t.”

“Could she have come here at all, I mean, to Chesham, with Mariah?”

Edna Cox’s eyes shut tightly, as if squeezing the last drop from memory. “No. No, I’m sure not. At least that’s not where I saw her.”

Jury waited, but when she added nothing, he said, “Her real name is Rose Moss. Does that mean anything to you?”

Edna frowned down to study either the hands in her lap or the carpet of cabbage roses at her feet. Then she tilted her head a bit, as in the way of one trying to hear an indistinct or distant sound. Her eyes widened. “A film! There was a film long ago that I remember seeing with my sister, Mariah’s mum, when they lived in London. Mariah must’ve heard us talking about it, and laughed and said something like its being funny, the way the film had got the name the wrong way round. It was called Moss Rose. She thought it very funny.”

“You think Rose Moss was someone she knew?”

“Well, it must’ve been a school chum, maybe. Mariah wouldn’t have been more than eight or nine, I shouldn’t think. But you’ve talked to the girl; what did this Moss girl say? Did she recognize Mariah?”

“She knew her by Stacy Storm, you see. And when I told her the real name, she didn’t say she knew your niece.”

Edna Cox leaned her head on her hand, fisted round a handkerchief. A tear tracked slowly down her face. “My Mariah making up such a name. It’s a sad name, isn’t it? It’s so false. It’s so falsely like a film star, isn’t it? My Mariah.”

Understandable that she’d settled on the name instead of the whole charade. Denial, he supposed, our last refuge. “Why do you think Mariah went to such trouble to appear, well, plain, when she was clearly so striking?”

Or was the striking one, the escort, the real Mariah?

Was either identity real? Neither?

Edna Cox shook her head. “She was prettier as a child; she seemed to grow into plainness somehow. Even then, she was fairly quiet and uncomplaining, not a lot of energy. This other self of hers-I don’t know where that came from.”

“You’d have had no reason to think it, but is it possible she was suffering a mental illness, what’s thought of as a personality dissociation? You know-where the sick person splits into one or more other selves?”

The aunt frowned. “Oh, no. At least there’s no history at all of that kind of thing in the family.”

Jury nodded. If it were some sort of personality split, what would it mean to this case? It was certainly not one of Mariah’s selves that had killed the other two women. Mariah had been the first one to die.

Jury rose, thanked Edna Cox, and offered to do for her anything he could, which, they both knew, was nothing. Still, the offer. “I’ll be going back to London. You have my card? You know where to reach me. Please do, if you need me.”

She took some comfort in this and said good-bye.

45

Dr. Phyllis Nancy peeled off the skin-thin green gloves and dropped them into the gutter of the table where Deirdre Small lay, shrunken in death, hollowed out, deflated.

“I wanted another look at the bullet wounds, the trajectory of the bullet. Your suspect, the client she was meeting-if he is a suspect…” Phyllis looked at her notes.

Jury nodded. “Nicholas Maze. DI Jenkins doesn’t think he did it.”

“Then Jenkins is probably right. Maze, I believe, is very tall; the victim was quite short. The trajectory would have been different-”

“Even at close range?”

She nodded. “It would still make a difference.”

Jury looked at the face of Deirdre Small, wiped clean of all expression, and knew the expressions that had once played over it: it would have been a game face, a face put on to meet the demands of her world. Because of her background, her job, her small structure, she must have conceded a lot. More, he bet, than the intelligent and beautiful Kate Banks or the ambiguous Mariah Cox.

Three of you, he thought. Dead for no reason, died for nothing, killed because you were an inconvenience in some way, murdered because of someone’s greed, or rage, or fear, or guilt. How do you connect? How were you alike?

He looked up, nodded back to the body of Deirdre Small. “What did she tell you, Phyllis?”

“Not nearly as much,” said Dr. Nancy with a little smile, “as she told you. Dinner?”

He nodded. She took off her apron, went to collect her things, and they left the morgue.

“The neurologists,” said Phyllis, “aren’t very hopeful. But I expect that comes as no surprise.”

Jury studied his crispy fish, something Wiggins liked to order, but not he. It looked like a puzzle.