Hard Girls

  She had given the police a detailed description of James, and she hoped they caught him. Whatever anyone else thought of the brasses and their way of life, they were still people and deserved to be treated with respect. Jemimah was humming when she packed her bag, she was going to have one last scam. The rent was due on this place in ten days’ time, she was already a month behind, so she would knock them. That, she decided, was going to be her last crime. Except that it wasn’t a crime, was it? Not really. After all, whoever owned this gaff was rolling in it, and she needed as much money as she could get to start her new, legal and hopefully happy life on the Costa del Sol.

  God bless Miriam. She was a strange old bat, but she had a heart of gold. And she had even managed to do something that no one else had ever managed to do before, talk some kind of sense into her thick head.

  Kate was out of sorts, and Annie knew better than to question her about it, she would talk about it if, and when, she felt the urge.

  Margaret Dole, in contrast, was like a dog with six lamp posts but as much as she irritated Annie, she had to admit that the girl was trying her hardest not to get on anyone’s nerves. As they drove to Grantley Library, they were all tense. It seemed that the suspect James Delacroix spent a good deal of his day there. In fact, he spent all day, every day there. He was working on a book, according to the Chief Librarian and, from the tone of her voice, he was not someone she was enamoured of. She had described him as a rather colourful character, library-speak for headcase, by the sounds of it. She had promised to ring them if he left the building before they arrived. So far they had heard nothing from her, so he must still be there, doing whatever it was he did there, all day every day.

  The library was a beautiful old building, it looked very much like an American courthouse, all columns and statues. The steps leading up were steep and Kate was gasping as she reached the top. ‘If there’s any chasing to be done, I think it had better be done by you two!’

  They laughed, but they were all nervous. This man could be dangerous and they were about to confront him in what was, in effect, his comfort zone. Kate quickly scanned the road and surrounding buildings. The police presence was heavy, but very low-key. Inside were plenty of plain-clothes and she hoped that they had walked out as many civilians as possible.

  As they entered the foyer, the Chief Librarian, a tall woman in her mid-thirties, beckoned them to follow her. Inside they walked to a large reading room on the second floor, and there she signalled towards James Delacroix. He was slumped in a chair, his feet on a desk, reading a copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’. He looked demented, even while relaxed, engrossed in the poem. Even his hair looked mad, shooting out in all directions where he obviously kept running his fingers through it. He needed a shave, and his heavy body was encased in a dirty suit that had the green shiny patches of wear and tear and rumpled look that said he slept in it. His shoes, Kate noticed, were as threadbare as the rest of him, the sole of one flopping down.

  Kate and Margaret stood back as Annie approached him.

  ‘James Delacroix?’

  He turned then. He looked Annie up and down with interest, his eyes seemed to take in everything that was going on. He noticed Kate and Margaret and the uniformed officers at the doorway, and the librarian, who was watching it all with undisguised interest.

  Then he placed his book on the desk, unfolded his body out of the chair and, bowing politely, said, ‘Good afternoon, ladies. I have been expecting you. Are we going out to tea?’

  Then all hell broke loose.

  Book Three

  Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years. That’s what makes a marriage last - more than passion or even sex!

  Simone Signoret, 1921-85

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘How come he’s not on our radar?’

  Margaret was amazed that James Delacroix was not in the system anywhere. He had gone berserk in the library and it had taken four uniforms to restrain him. He had then literally been dragged from the building, shouting to anyone who cared to listen about the police working for government agencies and trying to stop him from writing the truth. All he had against him were two minor offences, many years previously, for being drunk and disorderly as a teenager.

  He was under the local psychiatric facility’s care for schizophrenia. According to his doctor, he could go for weeks without any delusions. But when he had them he believed he was invincible and that there were dark forces at work trying to stop him from achieving his true potential. The government were extraterrestrials, and Steven Spielberg was working with them to take over the world. The doctor also explained that James’s aggression would almost certainly be directed at the female gender, men seemed to intimidate him. His only living relative was a sister who wanted nothing to do with him and, as he seemed to find her presence as abhorrent as she found his, they didn’t meet up unless by accident.

  James Delacroix was very ill, anyone could see that, and Kate felt sorry for him having to live a life that was so blighted as to be no kind of life at all. Paranoia, what a dreadful affliction.

  As Kate observed him pacing the interview room, counting the steps and then, after every eighth step, spinning around as if he was at a disco-dancing competition, her heart sank. This man wasn’t organised enough to kill anybody. He would be hard pressed to sort out a bus journey. She wasn’t ruling him out altogether, but her experience told her that whoever killed those girls had a very analytical mind.

  They had planned the deaths down to the last detail and this man wasn’t capable of that. He simply wasn’t capable of something so well executed. James Delacroix wouldn’t think of wiping the surfaces down and taking the evidence away with him. He might be faking it with this act, but Kate had the feeling that he wasn’t. All her instincts told her that he was not the man they were searching for.

  She stepped inside the room with Annie, and they sat opposite his chair, their actions relaxed and easy just as the doctor had recommended.

  ‘Come and take a seat, James. We’d like to have a few words with you.’

  James looked at them then, as if seeing them for the first time. ‘I don’t like you. You are both mean. Mean to James.’

  They had been warned James often referred to himself in the third person, especially if he felt threatened. If he did commit the murders, there was no way he would ever get near a courtroom.

  ‘Come and drink your tea, it’s getting cold.’

  ‘Don’t like tea. Not your tea.’

  Kate’s voice was low, friendly. ‘Would you prefer something else? Water, coffee, a Coke?’

  As James watched them warily, Annie saw he was digging his nails into his palms, the blood visible on his hands. He was extremely agitated and seemed confused.

  As they observed him, the door opened, and Miriam bustled in, her huge bulk almost taking over the room. She was followed by a small man in a cheap suit and carrying a vinyl briefcase.

  ‘This is Mr Victor Blaine and he is here to represent Mr Delacroix.’

  Miriam was very respectful, and Kate saw the compassion in her eyes for James. As she turned to leave he suddenly launched himself at her, almost rugby-tackling her to the ground. As big as she was, Miriam went down like a sack of spuds, taking the unfortunate Mr Blaine with her. Her head gave a loud crack as it hit the cement floor.

  Pandemonium ensued.

  Patrick and Danny were sitting in frosty silence in Patrick’s office at home. They both wondered how they could start the conversation they knew needed to be had. After all, they needed to talk about this problem sooner rather than later.

  ‘Look, Danny. I think we should get this out in the open. I treated Eve badly. I am ashamed of meself.’

  ‘So you fucking should be.’

  Patrick admired Danny for his anger, for the fact that he had not tried to pretend that nothing untoward had happened. That would be a coward’s way out. Danny Fost
er was a lot of things, but a coward was not one of them.

  ‘I made a mistake. I was trying to get over Kate and Eve . . . well, you know the effect Eve can have on men. To be honest, she reminded me of Kate. Strong, open, forthright. Then it all just got out of hand. I apologise, Danny, from the bottom of my heart. I never set out to hurt her.’

  Danny saw the genuine sorrow in Patrick’s eyes. In a way, he had guessed the truth. He had warned his sister not to get too involved. In fact, he had been surprised at her reaction to Patrick Kelly. He knew that, like him, she wanted to further her career, and Patrick Kelly would have been ideal in that respect. But he now knew that Eve had fallen for the man, hook, line and the proverbial sinker.

  Danny sighed. ‘You hurt her, Patrick, she deserved better.’

  Patrick shrugged and held his arms out in a gesture of forgiveness. ‘I know that better than you do. But she caught me off guard, and you know me by now. I don’t mince my words when I’m cornered. If she had left last night none of this would have happened.’

  Danny nodded slightly and Patrick breathed a mental sigh of relief. ‘So, can we put this behind us?’

  Danny nodded. There wasn’t anything else he could do. He had the apology he craved and he knew that if he pushed it, their partnership was over. They shook hands and were both extremely glad that the episode was behind them. They were adult enough to draw a line under it now.

  ‘So, you heard about Desmond then?’

  Danny nodded and smiled at the glee in Patrick’s voice. ‘God pays back debts without fucking money. The O’Learys are over the moon.’

  Patrick grinned. ‘I bet they fucking are. Us Micks, for all the jokes about us, are shrewder than the average person. My old mum always said that the Mick mentality, when used to its fullest extent, is the equivalent of a locomotive. It steams along and runs over anything in its path.’

  Danny laughed, but he couldn’t stop himself from thinking, I’ll tell my sister that.

  ‘Now then, Danny Boy. Down to business. When do I get my money back?’

  Colin Charter was a heavily built man in his forties. He had a bald head, merry blue eyes, and the arms of a bodybuilder. Kate liked him at once.

  ‘James has lived at Buxton House for about nine years. When the illness allows him to be, he is very intelligent. It’s a shame really, without the disorder he could have made something of his life. If you look at him properly, full on, you can see where he was operated on. At nineteen, he took to his own face with a cut-throat razor.’

  Colin waited for Kate to compose herself after that little bombshell but shrugged when he noticed that, unlike most people, she didn’t wince.

  ‘Go on.’

  Colin sighed. ‘I checked the list of dates the murders occurred on. James was here on all but one of them. He plays Monopoly for hours with another resident, Andrew Spark. They are obsessed with it, and argue all through the game.’

  ‘Do you know where he was the other night?’

  Colin nodded. ‘Because he had refused his medication, something he does occasionally, he was in hospital, so that when he had his break with reality we were ready for him. We can’t make him take his medication if he chooses not to, we’d need to get him sectioned first.’

  ‘Did you know he used prostitutes?’

  Colin shrugged. ‘He’s over eighteen and we understand that he is a fully functioning male in that department. We can’t stop him from doing anything unless it’s dangerous.’

  Kate understood that the doctor’s hands were tied in many respects. ‘It turned out to be very dangerous for the young women involved.’

  He shrugged. ‘We can’t watch him twenty-four-seven, and he isn’t currently sectioned.’

  ‘Has he ever attacked anyone here before? Only today, he went on the rampage twice in three hours.’

  Colin shook his huge head and said sadly, ‘He is a paranoid schizophrenic. If you surround him at any point then I think we can safely say that he would attack. We know better than to do anything like that though. He was frightened, the voices were telling him God knows what. Like anyone who felt threatened, he attempted to defend himself. It’s not rocket science. He won’t wash because he believes there are drugs in the water that will sink into his skin and dissolve him from the inside out and he cut his face off because he thought he was someone else, he believed a stranger was taking over his body. Not just any stranger, an extraterrestrial stranger at that. So, no, he’s never attacked any of us. But we are always prepared and we know how to deal with people with his condition.’

  ‘Prepared, like the boy scouts?’

  ‘More like the CIA and the FBI combined. But listen, Miss Burrows. James is not your guy. We’ll review his care plan in the light of what you’ve told us though.’

  ‘Thank you for your time.’

  Colin nodded. ‘You’re welcome. I know this sounds strange, but he can be good company when he’s on his best behaviour.’

  Kate didn’t answer him, she just didn’t know what to say.

  Annie and Margaret Dole sat in the canteen drinking coffee.

  ‘She’s a bit concussed, but she’ll be all right, bless her.’

  ‘Poor Miriam. I bet it was funny in a sick kind of way though!’

  Annie grinned. ‘It was. I mean she took that poor little solicitor down with her. She’s a big girl.’

  They laughed again at the image.

  ‘He really looked good for it.’

  Annie nodded. ‘Kate didn’t think so though. She said at the outset that he was too disorganised, too manic, and she was right.’

  Margaret smiled slightly. ‘She’s always right from what I’ve heard.’

  Annie knew she could take the comment in one of two ways. She could either agree with Margaret in a nice way, commenting on Kate’s experience and years in the job. Or she could decide to be a bitch and remark on Kate being a know-all and hard to work with. Neither of which were true. It amazed Annie that she even had to think about which way she was going to go and proved that her jealousy was far deeper ingrained than she had realised. After everything they’d been through together, of late, and she still felt jealous?

  ‘Look, Margaret. Take a tip from me. Kate was the one who got you on this gig because, to be totally honest, I didn’t want you. You’re a marler, and you need to develop a bit of loyalty. You can learn more from Kate Burrows in a few hours than you could from anyone else in the police force if you shadowed them for the rest of your career. So save the innuendo for someone else.’

  Margaret’s wide blue eyes were stretched to their utmost. She knew she had just made a really bad move, and she was desperate to cover it up.

  ‘I was only joking around, Annie. I mean, come on.’

  Annie stood up then and, smoothing down her trousers, she said nastily, ‘If that’s your idea of a joke, Margaret, I’d rethink me whole comedy standpoint if I was you.’

  As Annie left the canteen, she knew that her reaction had been so vehement because she felt just like Margaret, and it galled her.

  Jealousy was such a destructive emotion. Kate said that to her about eighteen months ago, when they attended a homicide to find three young children crying hysterically and their young mother stabbed to death by their own father. The father had believed that she was having an affair, a rumour that turned out to be totally false. Jealousy had destroyed five lives, and been the cause of one life being ended brutally and viciously. It had been Annie’s first run-in with the aftermath of a jealousy-fuelled murder and she knew that it would not be her last.

  The image of those poor children still haunted her. As did the images of those poor young working girls, tortured and dying in agony, not even able to make a sound.

  Jealousy had nearly stopped Annie from doing her job to the best of her ability and getting justice for those girls. She knew they were all very lucky to have someone of Kate’s stature on the case, as it were. So she determined to learn everything she could and maybe one day, some youn
g up-and-coming murder detective would feel the same way about her. The thought made Annie smile.

  But it still didn’t make her feel any better. Whoever was out there, preying on these girls, was still at large. It was like he was invisible. Why did no one see him come or go? He had to have been seen by somebody at some point, surely? But, as Kate said, some people blended in so well they were like wallpaper, no one noticed them after a while. Well, this bloke had to make a mistake soon and, when he did, they would be waiting for him. As Kate said, sometimes you had to play the long game. Without any forensics or sightings they could only wait and hope. But knowing all that didn’t make it any easier.

  Kate saw Patrick’s name flash up on her mobile phone screen and cut him off. She felt thoroughly satisfied by doing so.

  As she steered the car into the hospital car park, she wondered what poor old Miriam had inadvertently done to be targeted by James Delacroix. She could only assume it was her sheer bulk. In the tiny room she must have looked even bigger than normal and with her wacky hair and open-toed sandals she could look very intimidating.

  As she parked and walked up to the ward she made a point of not smiling, Kate wanted to look contrite and concerned for the woman’s physical welfare. After all, Miriam had taken a major blow to her head. As Kate walked on to the ward she saw Miriam immediately, she was hard to miss, after all.