Heathen/Nemesis Read online

  The movement behind the door ceased and she stood still for a moment, listening.

  Across the landing she could still hear the classical music.

  She waited a second longer then tried again, working the key back and forth this time, feeling it give a little.

  And a little more.

  She pulled hard and the key came free with a metallic rasping sound.

  Immediately she heard footsteps coming towards the door from the other side.

  She had to get inside Suzanne Regan’s flat as quickly as possible. Donna took the three paces across to the other door, slid the key in and turned it.

  The door of the flat next to her was beginning to open.

  Hurry.

  She pushed the door open, slipped inside and closed it. She leaned her back against it, trying to control her breathing as she heard footsteps on the landing. In the darkness of the flat she listened to them move towards the top of the stairs, the top step creaking protestingly.

  For interminable seconds she stood in the blackness, awaiting the knock and the confrontation. Her mind was racing, her thoughts tumbling in different directions. She closed her fists tightly.

  Closed one around the key.

  The key.

  As she stood in the darkness she realized that it was still stuck in the door, protruding from the lock.

  Nineteen

  On the landing the footsteps thudded back and forth, were still for a second then receded.

  Donna listened to the silence. Like a spring uncoiling she slowly turned the handle, shot her hand out and plucked the key from the lock, pushing the door shut again.

  She let out a breath explosively in relief.

  She stood there in the gloom, waiting until she had stopped shaking. Then she slipped the key into the pocket of her coat, ran a hand through her hair and turned, feeling for the light switch. Her hand brushed against it and she flicked it on. A sixty watt bulb flickered into life, illuminating the flat.

  She was standing in the entry-way. Coat hooks had been attached to the wall to her right. Two short jackets and a longer wool coat hung there. There was a phone on a table close by.

  Donna moved into the sitting-room proper and noticed how small it was. There was a sofa and one easy chair, a table and four chairs in one corner. These stood on a beige coloured carpet. On the other side of the room was an oven and hob and several fitted cupboards. A small fridge stood alongside.

  There was a stereo, a small TV set, dozens of records, tapes and compact discs on a DIY unit with one screw missing at the top. A video recorder, surrounded by a number of tapes, lay at the bottom of the unit. The automatic clock on the machine was flashing constantly. Four green zeros flickering in the dull light.

  The cooker was clean. There were no dirty dishes in the sink, no pots and pans on the hob. Everything seemed to be in its place.

  A framed picture of a muscular man dressed only in a baseball cap and a thong stared down at her from one wall. Donna glanced at it for a moment, then wandered back towards the main door. There had been two others.

  She opened the first and found herself in a tiny bathroom. Pulling the cord, she looked around at the contents. A bath which seemed to fill most of the room, a toilet and a sink. There was a cabinet on the wall and for a second Donna caught her own reflection in the mirrored doors. Clean washing was piled up at one end of the bath: blouses, T-shirts, skirts. A predominance of blues, she noted.

  Donna opened the cabinet and peered at the contents. Some anti-perspirant, a Mudd Mask Facial Cleanser, nail varnish remover, some Lil-lets and two packets of contraceptive pills.

  She moved to the next door and opened it, stepping into the bedroom.

  This, too, was small; there was barely room to manoeuvre around the bed. Wardrobes and bookshelves covered three walls. On one of the bookshelves there was also make-up, perfume. Donna sniffed it, inspecting the bottle. It was Calvin Klein. Good perfume, expensive.

  Had he bought it for her?

  She opened the wardrobe closest to her and regarded the hanging clothes in there impassively. There was a lot of silk and suede.

  How much of that had Chris paid for?

  Shoes, boots, trainers.

  She pulled open drawers and found underwear, more blouses.

  The envelope was in the bottom drawer.

  A brown manilla A4 envelope.

  Donna sat on the edge of the bed and upended it, the contents spilling out onto the duvet. She rummaged through the pieces of paper, inspecting each one. There was a motley assortment. Bills, some paid, some unpaid. Bank statements, business cards, a couple of old birthday cards. She opened them to check the sender’s name. Neither had been sent by her dead husband. A party invitation, a free pass to a London nightclub.

  She found the first of the photos sandwiched between a Medical card and a bank statement.

  It showed Chris and Suzanne together.

  Pale. Unsmiling.

  Donna swallowed hard and looked at another.

  It was of Chris dressed in a leather jacket and jeans. He was smiling, leaning against a tree. The land behind him looked barren: only fields and hills.

  Where the hell was that?

  There was another of Chris, alone again, hands tucked in the pockets of his jacket.

  Donna felt that all too familiar feeling building inside her, that combination of rage and sadness.

  Then she found the last two pictures.

  ‘Jesus,’ she murmured, her breathing deepening as she studied them. For long moments she sat looking at the pictures then, as quickly as she could, she gathered the spilled contents of the envelope together and replaced them, shoving the manilla container itself back into the drawer.

  The photos she tucked into her jacket.

  She moved quickly through the flat, switching off lights as she went, heading for the main door, concerned to make sure she had left everything as she’d found it.

  She paused at the door, listening for any sounds of activity from the landing or other rooms. Hearing none, she slipped out and closed the door behind her. She scuttled downstairs, the photos still tucked in her coat, returned the key to Mercuriadis, thanked him for his help and hurried from the house, resisting the temptation to run back to the waiting Fiesta.

  As Julie saw her approaching she leant across and unlocked the passenger side door, watching as her sister slid in and buckled up.

  ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’ she asked, starting the engine.

  Donna was staring straight ahead, but even in the dull glow of the streetlamps Julie could see how pale her sister was.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  Donna continued staring out of the windscreen.

  ‘Get us home,’ she said quietly, ‘as quick as you can.’

  Twenty

  Julie was the first to see the police car, parked close to the front door of the house. Even in the darkness she could make out two figures inside.

  As the headlights of the Fiesta illuminated the short driveway the car was picked out and held in the beams as if by some magnetic force.

  ‘Donna ...’ Julie began but she was cut short.

  ‘I can see them,’ her sister said curtly. She gripped the photos inside her coat, tucking them into the waistband of her jeans.

  One of the figures inside the car clambered out and watched as the Fiesta parked. Donna could not make out his features in the gloom.

  Had someone reported her?

  What were the police doing here at this time? She glanced at the Fiesta’s dashboard clock and saw that the time was 11.23 p.m.

  Had the occupant of the flat next to Suzanne Regan’s reported mysterious movements in the dead girl’s place?

  How would they know to look for her?

  Had Mercuriadis become suspicious?

  Why should he?

  Donna knew that the police could not possibly be at her house in connection with the visit to Suzanne Regan’s, yet she felt uneas
y, the way teenagers feel who have stolen penny chews from a sweetshop.

  She swung herself out of the car and walked across to the police car and its occupants.

  The plain-clothes man approached her, clearing his throat.

  Donna Ward, you are under arrest.

  ‘Mrs Ward, I’m very sorry to trouble you this late,’ he said apologetically. ‘My name is Mackenzie. I was at the hospital the other night.’

  Donna felt a sudden, joyous feeling of relief sweep over her.

  I realize this is a difficult time for you,’ Mackenzie went on, ‘but I would like to talk to you if I may.’

  ‘Come in,’ Donna said and the policeman followed her. When Julie entered she introduced them briefly. Then, as Julie went through into the kitchen to make tea, Donna ushered Mackenzie into the sitting-room.

  ‘I hope you’re feeling better,’ the policeman said, standing self-consciously in the centre of the sitting-room.

  ‘Sit down, please,’ Donna said, slipping a hand inside her coat with her back to him, dropping the photos onto a coffee table. She pushed the newspaper over them, then turned back to face him and pulled off her coat.

  Mackenzie perched on the edge of one chair, his hands clasped together as if he were cold.

  ‘The other night, when you arrived at the hospital, I know you probably weren’t thinking straight. It probably didn’t occur to you it was unusual that a plain-clothes man should be present at an identification. I didn’t think it was a good time to explain.’

  ‘Explain what?’ Donna asked.

  ‘There were questions I needed to ask you about your husband; only trivial things. Well, trivial to you, probably.’ He attempted a comforting smile but failed miserably. ‘I need to know how often he had his car serviced.’

  Donna looked puzzled, then she too smiled thinly.

  ‘I know it sounds like a stupid question but it is important, believe me,’ Mackenzie told her.

  ‘He had it serviced once a year,’ she said.

  ‘And he never complained about it? About things going wrong with it?’

  ‘Like what? Everyone complains about their cars, don’t they?’

  ‘Did he ever complain about the brakes?’

  Donna met the policeman’s gaze and held it, the colour draining from her face.

  ‘It’s a routine question, Mrs Ward,’ the DS said quietly. ‘When your husband’s car was examined following the crash, his brakes were faulty. It could have been that which caused him to crash.’

  ‘Are you saying the brakes were tampered with?’ Donna said, her voice low.

  ‘No, definitely not,’ the policeman qualified. ‘We have no proof that anyone interfered with the brakes on your husband’s car. I’m sure it was an unfortunate accident and nothing more.’ He shuffled his fingers together like fleshy playing cards, then looked at her again. ‘And your husband was hardly the kind of man to make enemies, was he?’ Donna shook her head.

  ‘No, Chris didn’t have any enemies,’ she said quietly.

  ‘None.’

  ‘Well then, that’s it. It was the brakes, I’m afraid.’

  Julie arrived with the tea but Mackenzie declined and insisted he must go. It was the younger of the two women who saw him out.

  Donna sat alone in the sitting-room, listening to the police car pull away. She moved the paper from on top of the photos, her mind spinning.

  Enemies.

  She looked at the photos lying on the table.

  Enemies?

  Twenty-One

  ‘Why would anyone want to murder Chris?’

  Donna looked at her sister in bewilderment.

  ‘You said they were convinced that he wasn’t murdered, that it was a mechanical fault with the car,’ Julie insisted. ‘It’s just routine, Donna. They have to be sure of everything.’

  The older woman nodded slowly and shifted her position slightly in the seat, looking down at the photos.

  In particular of Chris and the five men.

  One pile were those she’d taken from his office; the others those she’d taken from Suzanne’s flat that very evening.

  Identical.

  The same young faces, the same blurred images of two of the figures.

  Those same gold rings on the left index fingers.

  Who the hell were these people?

  ‘How could that happen?’ Donna said, prodding the photos of the group, outlining the fuzzed shapes of the older men’s faces.

  ‘A fault in the emulsion,’ Julie told her, inspecting the photos. ‘But it’s unusual. The negative could have been tampered with. The point is, why? Obviously, whoever these two men are, they didn’t want to be recognised.’

  ‘Then why have their photos taken in the first place?’ Donna asked challengingly.

  ‘Do you recognise the other three, the younger ones?’

  Donna shook her head.

  There were so many questions. She sifted through the pictures again, checking through both sets, looking for even the minutest difference, but there was none. The shots of Ward and the five men were identical in every way.

  ‘Perhaps they were the ones that killed him,’ Donna said finally.

  Julie shook her head.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Donna,’ she snapped. ‘The police said it wasn’t murder.’

  ‘I know what they said,’ she responded angrily.

  Julie studied her sister’s features for long moments then broke the silence again.

  ‘Did he have any enemies that you knew of?’

  ‘He’d been threatened before while he was working on other books. Not threatened with murder but, well, warned off, I suppose you could say.’ She glanced down at the pictures. ‘He wrote a novel to do with loan sharks a couple of years ago, how some of the big Security Companies were in business with them. The security men would act as strong-arm men for the loan sharks. Chris was told he’d be beaten up if he published the book.’ She smiled thinly. ‘Nothing ever came of it, thank God.’ Donna swallowed hard. ‘When he wrote about the porn industry he lived in digs in Soho for a week; he worked in a peep show to get information. He used a false name, of course. When the owner of the club found out he was getting information, he thought he was an undercover policeman. Chris said they wrecked his room one day while he was out. They left a dead dog in the bed with a note stuck to it saying he’d be next.’

  ‘There must be easier ways of earning a living,’ Julie said.

  ‘He used to call it the Method school of writing,’ Donna said, smiling at the recollection. ‘You know how actors like Robert De Niro research their parts, live them? Chris was the same with the characters he wrote about. He never knew when to stop pushing.’ She looked at the photos again. ‘Perhaps this time he pushed the wrong people.’

  ‘If you think there could have been a link between Chris’s death and the men in these photos, you should tell the police,’ Julie urged.

  Donna shook her head.

  ‘What difference would it make? They’ve already decided it wasn’t murder.’

  ‘And what if they’re wrong?’

  ‘You’re the one who keeps telling me they’re sure.’

  ‘That was until I found out about Chris’s research,’ Julie said. ‘These pictures could be evidence, Donna.’

  ‘No. The police said the crash was an accident. They have no reason to think otherwise, Mackenzie told me that.’

  ‘And what do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know what to think. I just want to know who these men are and why Chris and she had photos of them.’

  ‘Then tell the police, let them find out.’

  ‘What am I going to tell them, Julie? “My husband and his mistress had identical pictures of five unidentified men. Could you track them down for me, please?” Something like that?’

  ‘So what’s the answer? How do you find out who they are?’

  ‘I have to find out what he was working on. Find out if these five men,’ she tapped the picture, ‘we
re anything to do with his new book. I have to find out who they were, but I’m going to need some help.’

  ‘You know I’ll help you,’ Julie said.

  Donna smiled.

  ‘I know. But there’s someone I have to speak to first.’

  Twenty-Two

  The banging on the door woke him up.

  At first he thought he was dreaming, next that the racket was coming from the television, but then Mercuriadis realized that the incessant thumping was on his own door.

  As he hauled himself to his feet he glanced across at the clock on top of the TV set and groaned when he saw it was well past two in the morning. He had, he reasoned, fallen asleep in front of the screen - something he’d been doing quite regularly lately. It irritated him, and when he got to bed he always had trouble sleeping properly. Better to doze in the chair, he told himself.

  When his wife had been alive she had always woken him if he’d dropped off. Woken him with a cup of warm milk and reminded him that it was time for bed. He thought fondly of her as he moved towards the door. The loud banging continued. It seemed like only yesterday that she’d shared his life and he sometimes found it difficult to accept she’d been dead nearly twelve years.

  ‘All right, all right,’ he called as he approached the door, anxious to stop the pounding. He slipped the chain and pulled the door open.

  ‘What the fuck is going on?’ snapped the tall, dark-haired man who confronted him.

  Mercuriadis eyed the man inquisitively, irritated by his abrasiveness. It was too early in the morning for profanity, the older man thought, although he was only too aware of this particular tenant’s penchant for it.

  Brian Monroe stood before him in just a pair of jeans, fists clenched and jammed against his hips.

  ‘I’m trying to fucking sleep and someone’s creating merry hell in the room next door. In number six,’ Monroe persisted angrily, rubbing his eyes. He looked as tired as his landlord.

  ‘What’s going on, Mr Monroe?’ asked Mercuriadis.

  ‘That’s what I’d like to know,’ the younger man told him, running a hand through his short hair. ‘I’m trying to sleep and there’s banging and crashing coming from the room next to me. I’ve got to be up early in the morning; I can do without this shit.’