Jacob's Ladder (Stone & Randall 1) Page 10

  ‘Come.’

  Molly opened the door and slid in. ‘Evening, Chief.’

  ‘On time as usual, Inspector. Coffee?’

  ‘Yes please, Ma’am.’ The caffeine would need to work on its own until she could escape for a nicotine fix. She often thought that torture would be too good for the person who had suggested banning smoking in public buildings.

  Chief Superintendent Avril Smart put a full cup of coffee on the table in front of Molly and sat down opposite her.

  ‘You did well at the press briefing.’

  ‘Thank you, Ma’am. It felt as though I was in a pit with a pack of rabid dogs.’

  ‘My sources tell me you brought in Malachi Pike for questioning?’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am.’

  ‘You do know he’s number thirteen on the UK’s most eligible bachelor list, and as well as being the owner of Pike International, his father is chairman of the government’s think tank on International Finance?’

  ‘No, Ma’am.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting that last piece of information should influence you in any way, but bear it in mind. We don’t want to ruin the Commissioner’s chances of a mention in the New Year’s Honours List, do we, Inspector?’

  ‘No, Ma’am. We didn’t keep Pike long anyway.’

  ‘You don’t think he’s the killer?’

  ‘I didn’t say that, Ma’am. Forensics found nothing of interest at his home or his office, and according to him he has an alibi, which we’ll check out tomorrow. We’re also going to look into Pike’s property holdings. If he is the killer, he has to be using somewhere other than his Kensington flat to store the axes and change his clothes. Also, DS Lowen is sending out an INTERPOL query. Pike travels all over the world and he might be leaving mutilated bodies in other places as well. But the biggest problem I have is with the evidence.’ She told the Chief about her concerns.

  ‘Yes, I see what you mean.’

  ‘Even if we find the killer in the act with the butcher’s axe in his hands…’

  ‘…That’s more or less how DI Miller found Randall, and he was drugged by the killer.’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am. Anyone we charge with the murders has an automatic defence.’

  ‘I’ll speak to our legal people. DCI Miller left us holding a sack full of venomous snakes with a gaping hole in the bottom of the sack.’

  ‘If you say so, Ma’am.’

  ‘So, what else have you been doing?’

  Molly had made a list on a piece of paper so that she didn’t forget anything. She also didn’t want to make the mistake of saying anything about Cole Randall, the photographs, the photocopies, and her meeting with Randall at eight o’clock. God, she thought, I’m leading a double life.

  Pulling out the scrap of paper from the pocket of her slacks, Molly informed the Chief about the Tarot cards and Vicki Mandrake’s expected appearance in the morning. She also told her about the new psychological profile Doctor Grady had produced; about Doctor Hilary Mansell and the meaning of the symbols carved into the soft flesh of the young girl’s foreheads; and about Father Ignatius and the possible religious connection between the Hebrew characters and the Tarot cards.

  ‘Does the psychological profile describe Malachi Pike in any way?’ the Chief asked.

  ‘No. Ma’am, but as Detective Morgan reminded me earlier, the profile could be wrong.’

  ‘Yes, Detective Morgan is right. A psychological profile is not a blueprint of a killer. It’s merely a tool to help us narrow down the suspects. But remember, in a court of law the defence might use the fact that there’s no match between profile and killer against us.’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am.’

  ‘What leads do you have?’

  ‘One of the team is cross-referencing the gaps between the murders and prisons, secure hospitals, and trips abroad. Someone else is examining how the killer might select two-child families. Also, we’re investigating inmates who were released from secure hospitals around the time of the first murder.’

  ‘You seem to have everything under control, Inspector. The Commissioner has asked me to tell you that he’s watching your performance with great interest.’

  Just what I need, the bloody Commissioner sitting on my shoulder like a gargoyle. Molly leaned back in the easy chair. If it hadn’t been for the Chief’s stupid questions she could have put her feet up on the coffee table, closed her eyes and had a couple of hours sleep.

  ‘After this is all over, Inspector, would you like to go out for a meal?’

  Molly’s eyes jerked open and her mind refocused. ‘Excuse me, Ma’am?’

  ‘I said, two of your experts think that there might be a religious slant to the murders then?’

  ‘Oh! Yes, Ma’am. I’ll find out more when Miss Mandrake gives us the benefit of her experience in the morning.’ Molly leaned forward, picked up the half cup of cold coffee and took a swallow. She was obviously hearing voices. Maybe the auditory hallucinations didn’t come all at once. She had thought that the onset of her schizophrenia would be like a light being switched on – one minute normal – the next crazy as a box of frogs. But maybe it didn’t happen that way at all. Maybe it happened over time, gradual, in fits and bursts, until there was more crazy than normal, until even a psychiatrist with an electron microscope couldn’t find any normal in amongst the crazy. She realised that apart from what her dad had done to her mum and those other people, she didn’t know much about schizophrenia at all. When her dad had been diagnosed with the illness, she had avoided him, avoided going home, looked the other way. Hadn’t she done the same with Cole Randall? She had been a terrible daughter and a terrible partner.

  ‘You look dog-tired, Inspector,’ the Chief said. ‘You should go home and get some sleep.’

  She smiled. You cheeky fucking bitch, at least I don’t look like a dog. ‘I will, Ma’am,’ but she knew she wouldn’t. There were too many obstacles between her and the quilt – and when she was finally lying naked in the darkness would she be able to sleep? And if she could get to sleep what type of sleep would it be?

  She stood up to go.

  ‘Don’t forget to update me by email over the weekend, Inspector.'

  ‘I won’t, Ma’am. Thanks for the coffee, and have a good weekend.’

  She went directly down the stairs to the car park for a cigarette. Instead of standing outside the door stamping her feet she walked to the darkest corner away from the Chief’s car and standing half-hidden by the trunk of a tree. Within seconds the Chief came out. Molly lit a second cigarette while she waited for the Chief’s Volvo to drive away, and during that second cigarette she decided to ring Dr Lytton when she returned to her office.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘Dr Lytton, this is Molly Stone,’ she said into the phone with her heart hammering in her ears.

  ‘Hello, Molly. Why haven’t you been to see me?’

  ‘I’ve been very busy, Doctor, but I can come tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m not working tomorrow, Molly, it’s Saturday.’

  ‘Oh!’

  There was a long pause, and then Dr Lytton said, ‘If you’re desperate…?’

  ‘I am, Doctor.’ She sounded desperate even to herself.

  ‘Meet me at the surgery at eleven-thirty. Is that all right with you?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll be there. Thank you, Doctor.’

  ‘You’re not going to waste my time again are you?’

  ‘No, Doctor, I’m ready to deal with the truth.’

  ‘I hope so, Molly.’

  She was sitting behind her desk with the grey telephone cradled in the palm of her hand staring at it as if it were a dead animal. It was for the best that she knew one way or the other. Not knowing sapped her energy, made her think the unthinkable. Maybe Dr Lytton could give her drugs to slow the illness down, or make her appear normal. Oh God, would they let her carry on being a detective? Would she need to tell the Commissioner that she might kill people? "Excuse me, Sir, I’m a paranoid schizophrenic, but as long as I
keep popping the pills everyone is safe in their beds." They’d sack her, or worse still put her behind a desk without any authority to make decisions. Who would trust the decisions of a crazy person? They’d say, "Who did you think you were when you made that decision – Napoleon? Jesus Christ? God herself?" No, she would need to keep her condition a secret or resign. Nobody must ever know.

  She packed up everything and headed towards the car park. She’d leave here car here, do what she had to do with Randall and Andrew Harvey, and then come back for it and drive home.

  ***

  Randall plugged the phone into the computer, downloaded the pictures Molly had sent him, and printed them off. He used the cross-eyed photograph of her sticking out her tongue at him as the wallpaper on his mobile and laptop. Then he spent two hours transferring the information from the photographs onto his two large whiteboards.

  Tears came to his eyes when he began to work with the information from the third board entitled "Randall". Never in his life had he contemplated suicide, but now the loss and emptiness he felt as he stared at the mutilated corpses of his wife and two children was enough of a reason to put the Glock 17 in his mouth and pull the trigger. He was sitting on the edge of the bed and convinced himself that revenge must come first. He felt comforted by the gun pressing into the small of his back should his despair spiral out of control.

  As he worked, throbbing rock music seeped from upstairs. He thought about climbing the stairs and pounding on smelly man’s door to ask him to turn down the noise, but he restrained himself.

  It was nearly six o’clock by the time he’d finished with the boards. His stomach began rumbling, which was a new experience for him. In the asylum he’d never had an appetite because the food was merely sustenance to keep him alive.

  When he left this time he locked the door and took the gun with him. Outside, he decided to use the same café as before. It was close to his flat, and the food certainly tasted better than it had at the asylum.

  On the café door a sign said that they were open until seven. He went in and sat in the same seat as he’d sat in at lunch. There were a few customers, but it was mostly quiet. He stared out of the window into the night at the people going home. He used to have a home, now all he had was a flat with a smelly neighbour.

  ‘Lasagne with chips and garlic bread, please,’ he said to the waitress standing behind him. A whiff of her perfume wafted up his nose, and his heart lurched as he thought of Sarah.

  ‘Tea?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  She wrote his order down on a small notepad then said, ‘Are you famous yet?’

  He swivelled on the chair, surprised to see the same white-haired waitress. Between a tight black top that rose up above her hips and a short crimson skirt beneath a white apron, his attention was drawn to the pale skin of her flat midriff and the hint of creases beginning their descent at the inner junction of her thighs. He thought of the dream he’d had about her earlier. ‘You do long shifts.’

  She shrugged. ‘I own the place, part of the job description.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m still not famous, but I’m sure I will be one day.’

  She smiled at him, but said nothing.

  After he’d eaten he ordered a second mug of tea, and nursed it until all the other customers had left and the lights went out.

  He was about to leave when the waitress slid into the seat opposite with her back to the window.

  ‘I know who you are, you know. You’re Cole Randall.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You didn’t kill your family after all then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘My name is Kiri.’

  ‘Nice name.’

  ‘My parents were hippies in the 70s. It means ray of light.’

  He pushed the chair back and tensed to stand up, but she put a hand on his arm.

  ‘I could help you to forget.’

  ‘You’re a bereavement counsellor as well as a waitress?’

  ‘That’s not what I mean.’

  ‘You don’t even know me.’

  ‘I know you, Cole Randall.’

  He was surprised to see that her white hair was natural, and yet she didn’t appear to possess any other telltale signs of being an albino. In the dim light, her eyes looked black. Around her neck she wore a silver chain from which hung a heart pierced with a silver arrow.

  ‘I’m sure you’re an extremely nice person, Kiri, but no one can help me.’

  He stood up and walked out of the café, but instead of turning left towards his flat he turned right. There were still people going home, going out, or simply going. He hunched into his donkey jacket, pulling the collar up, and pushing his hands deep into the pockets. Brown autumn leaves swirled about him as he put one foot in front of the other. The traffic had begun to thin out on King Street, but it was still noisy. He passed a flower shop, a shop selling Polish foodstuffs, the Lyric Theatre showing Mama Mia, the brightly lit King’s Mall, and an Irish bar called O’Leary’s. In between the red buses and the black taxicabs he saw the Town Hall on the opposite side of the street. He kept walking until he passed Ravenscourt Tube Station and reached the Premier Inn, and then he turned back.

  ***

  Molly leant against the wall outside his flat waiting for him. He thought she still looked beautiful, but worn out like a well-used dishcloth.

  He unlocked the door, switched the light on, and moved back to let her in.

  ‘This is like the room you were in at the asylum,’ she said as she took in the cramped space and sparse furnishings. ‘Except the smell of urine has been replaced by mould.’

  ‘It’ll do,’ he replied.

  She looked at the two boards on the wall as he closed the door. ‘You’ve been busy, Sir.’

  ‘You don’t need to call me "Sir" anymore, you know, Molly.’ His voice was soft like summer rain.

  ‘Habit.’

  He pointed at The Fool. ‘Are these Tarot cards?’

  ‘Yes, I have someone coming into the station in the morning to provide us with information on them in the context of the murders.’ She repeated everything that she’d not long ago told the Chief, and gave him the handful of photocopies she’d made.

  ‘Is Pike our killer?’

  She took the DVD from her bag and passed it to him. ‘Take a look for yourself.’

  He put the disc into the CD-ROM of his laptop and they sat on the two-seater sofa under the window watching the interview in Media Player.

  ‘I never rated Frank Lowen,’ Randall said when he saw Dunstan getting the better of the Sergeant. ‘That’s why you were promoted to DI and he’s still a DS.’

  Randall adjusted the angle of the screen on the laptop and leaned closer to peer at Pike’s face.

  ‘He’s the killer,’ Randall said.

  ‘He has an alibi.’

  ‘I don’t care, he’s the killer.’

  ‘You know you can’t go around accusing people without any evidence.’

  ‘We’ve got evidence, haven’t we?’

  ‘As well as an alibi he has a defence, which throws reasonable doubt over everything we have.’ She told him about the problems they had with any evidence found at the crime scene.’

  ‘You’re confusing me with a rule-following police officer. I’m just going to kill him.’

  ‘What if he’s innocent?’

  ‘I’ll make sure he’s guilty before I kill him. You won’t need to worry about him having a defence then, Molly.’

  ‘But…’

  Chapter Twenty

  But… what?

  She’d known Randall was going to kill whoever had butchered his family, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise now. The question in the end was: "What was she going to do about it?" She was a copper for Christ’s sake. In her heart, she knew that Randall was a copper as well. Surely, he wouldn’t throw all that away? Even though he’d said he was going to kill Pike, she didn’t believe him. He wasn’t that type of man, or he didn’t used to be
that type of man. Was he someone different now? Had the asylum changed him?

  She left him watching Pike’s interview for the fourth time. He didn’t turn around when she opened the door to leave, or respond when she said, ‘Goodnight.’

  Outside Randall’s flat Molly lit up a cigarette and turned left into King Street. It was quarter to nine. She walked towards Ravenscourt tube station past the open shops and late-night shoppers, past the queues at the Lyric theatre, and past the noise bleeding from the Irish bar, until she reached The Purple Chilli restaurant.

  She peered in through the window, and the colour scheme reminded her of roasted butternut squash. Indian memorabilia was strategically positioned on the walls and other surfaces; tables, with starched white table cloths, were surrounded by purple covered chairs and benches; and customers sitting eating, talking and laughing. Andrew was standing at the bar chatting to the bald-headed barman. She finished her cigarette and went in.

  ‘My day is complete now that I’ve seen you,’ Andrew said helping her off with her jacket. There was a strong smell of aftershave as his face brushed her hair. The smell reminded her of teenage holidays in Spain with her friends, of happier times. What happened to holidays? What happened to her friends? What happened to her happiness?

  She laughed half-heartedly. ‘Did you go on a course to learn how to talk to women like that?’

  ‘Absolutely not, you inspire me. During the day I’m a tongue-tied fool, but at night when I’m with you I’m the man I always wanted to be. A bard, a wordsmith, a…’

  ‘Are you going to talk rubbish all night, Andrew, because if you are…?’

  ‘All right, I’ll try and control myself. You look stunningly beautiful tonight, Molly Stone,’ he said.

  The Indian maître d’ approached and led them to their table. Andrew let her go first and she felt as though she was the meat in a sandwich. Once the food and wine had arrived and they were elbow-deep in Bombay-spiced chicken skewers, sweet saffron pilaf with nuts and currants, chicken and mango stirfry, and a kaleidoscope of pickles and chutneys Molly said, ‘Tell me about yourself, Andrew?’