Liar Page 12

  Amelia felt sorry for the series of policemen who stayed in shifts overnight. They had to be terribly bored and cold – the weather had turned Arctic with intermittent flurries of snow. When she started back at work, the officer on guard drove her there and another collected her to bring her home. She rather liked having her own private chauffeur, but she wished she could take walks and go shopping, and wondered how much longer she’d have to live like that.

  There was a pall of gloom everywhere, and though Amelia knew hers was understandable, everyone at work was much the same. They kept going on about the decimalization, which was due to start in February. No one wanted it, and most were convinced it would put prices up. But that was a little way off. Right now, there were the power cuts to grumble about. Every afternoon for at least two hours, the electricity went off. Hospitals, hotels and large factories mostly had generators to fall back on, but garages and other businesses couldn’t function at all. A shop without lights made it impossible for shoppers, but paradise for thieves.

  Housewives complained they couldn’t do the ironing, or cook if they had electric cookers, and an all-electric home meant no heating, TV or cups of tea. Mothers couldn’t even make up a baby’s bottle. At the newspaper the phones were still in use so Amelia could carry on with ringing the advertisers, but for the duration of the power cut, typing had to be done on the two old manual machines. With the power off, the office was soon freezing, and everyone started coming to work wearing several jumpers and usually added a coat once the electricity went off.

  Max’s accounting work wasn’t suffering so much: the ledgers he worked on were all handwritten, but he said it was hard to see figures on a dull grey day without a desk light.

  ‘Life’s not a lot of fun right now,’ Max remarked one cold Saturday afternoon when once again the lights had gone out. ‘But I suppose I should be grateful we’ve got a gas fire.’

  ‘You certainly should,’ Amelia said. ‘I spoke to Ted and Barbara upstairs yesterday. They’ve only got an electric heater, and they said they get into bed when the power goes off. I don’t care about the lights or anything else much, not now they’ve taken my stitches out and I can wash my hair again.’

  Max just looked sharply at her, as if what she’d said was selfish. She’d had a lot of those looks from him lately. She wondered if he was jealous that she was driven to work and home again, while he had to do the shopping and go to the launderette. She hadn’t asked him how he felt because that might mean she had to disclose her own feelings. The truth was she was scared. Not just of the Creeper, but of Max growing tired of her.

  Just when it seemed everyone had lost interest in the Creeper, on 18 January he struck again, killing a third girl.

  This one was left behind a tree on the green by Turnham Green station. It had been an exceptionally wintry night, with thick frost, and perhaps that explained why no one spotted the girl’s body until seven the next morning.

  Amelia heard the news from Jack when she went into work and was so shocked she felt faint.

  The new victim was Rosie Lark, a model, close in age to the others, but this time with chestnut brown hair. Jack said he’d been told by his source she was well known in the fashion world and had been on the cover of She magazine last summer. Her name was linked with that of a Chelsea footballer, Matt Parkin.

  ‘If he let her go home on the tube alone, he’ll take a lot of flak,’ Jack said cheerfully. He had an unerring knack for nosing out a secondary story.

  ‘Does she live in Chiswick?’ Amelia asked, ignoring his previous remark.

  ‘Yes, in Bedford Park. Her parents are loaded.’

  ‘But if she’d come back by tube, why was she on the green? Surely she’d go straight down the road.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Jack looked startled. ‘The workings of the female mind are a mystery to me. Maybe she didn’t come back on the tube. She could’ve been somewhere on Chiswick High Road and cut down the back streets.’

  ‘I know if I was out when it’s dark and frosty, I’d go the well-lit route where people are.’

  ‘Let’s wait for more news – no point in surmising stuff. Anyway, the father of this girl is the managing director of Larks Engineering, out Slough way. It’s a phenomenally successful company so I expect the police will pull out all the stops to find the killer this time.’

  ‘Are you saying they didn’t bother much before because the girls weren’t from wealthy homes? That’s a hideous assumption.’

  Jack gave her a lopsided grin. ‘You know me, Amelia, I say it how it is. This girl’s father will flex his muscles and suddenly the police will be combing every blade of grass, dragging all sorts in for questioning. You wait and see. Meanwhile another murder in the area is going to cause panic. As if things aren’t bad enough with the power cuts.’

  By the same evening the murder was front-page news and on the television, and they knew it would be splashed over tomorrow’s dailies across the country. Amelia sensed Jack wanted to get some special handle on this, as he had with her help before, but he didn’t suggest involving her – if he had, she would have turned him down. He had had to be satisfied with using one of his other reporters and writing a rather scaremongering front-page article himself, about the danger of younger women going out alone at night in the Chiswick area.

  When she got back from work, Max was already home. ‘Your friend Kat called round and brought you these.’ He pointed to a bouquet in the sink. ‘She said she was sorry she hadn’t come over recently but, first, she got tied up late with work and then she saw I was home.’

  The flowers – bright pink roses – were lovely, and Amelia was touched at Kat’s kindness. Neither Jack nor Max had thought to buy her flowers. ‘How sweet of her,’ she said. ‘I bet she asked you a million questions.’

  ‘Not quite that many,’ Max replied, and frowned. ‘But she certainly wanted to know all the ins and outs about where I’d been. I thought she’d never go. I was talking to her on the doorstep and it was freezing. In the end I had to ask her in. She was so nosy too, looking at everything. I’m being mean about her, aren’t I?’

  ‘Well, a bit, when she’d brought me flowers, but I’m sure you were diplomatic and told her you were in the middle of cooking our tea.’

  ‘I was peeling potatoes and about to grill some chops.’

  ‘That’s good! I’m starving.’

  Half an hour later when they were sitting at the table eating, they talked about their respective days at work. Max said he had to go on a special course to do with the imminent decimalization.

  ‘What do you need a course for?’ she asked. ‘Surely accounting will be easier with everything in tens rather than twelve pennies in a shilling et cetera.’

  ‘That’s what I thought but it seems it’s more complicated. The thing is, sweetheart, I’ve got to go to Rugby for it, and be away for two nights. I don’t want to leave you while everything is so messy, but I’ve got no choice.’

  ‘I’ll be perfectly fine,’ Amelia said, reaching out to take his hand. ‘The police are outside and they take me to work. I’m not going anywhere else. I’m as safe as it’s possible for anyone to be.’

  ‘Okay, then, but when I get back, I think we ought to find somewhere new to live. Not just because of the Creeper but because it doesn’t make any sense paying two lots of rent and us both living in here. Or we could buy a flat or a little house. I’ve got lots of contacts to get us a mortgage.’

  Amelia loved the idea of having her own bathroom, not to mention a separate bedroom so her clothes and bedding didn’t absorb cooking smells. Yet she had a feeling it wasn’t a good idea to burn her bridges just yet. She was still annoyed that Max had left her alone at New Year. He hadn’t been very sympathetic about her attack, and often seemed cross that he had to do the shopping. She just wanted to be absolutely certain before they began house hunting.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s too soon? What if we fall out?’

  ‘Is that likely?’


  ‘How can I answer that? We haven’t known each other that long.’

  ‘Long enough for me to know I want to spend the rest of my life with you.’

  Amelia loved that he felt that way, and so did she. But she still didn’t understand why he was rushing things and pushing her into a corner.

  ‘Wouldn’t your parents think we were being a bit hasty?’

  ‘They got married when they’d only known each other for six weeks so they can’t say that to me. Besides, I told them I wanted to marry you.’

  That was news to her. Surely he should be taking her to meet them before telling them he wanted to marry her. ‘What on earth’s fired you up like this?’ she asked.

  ‘Just loving you,’ he said. He got up from the table and crouched beside her chair, putting his arms around her and leaning his head against her chest. ‘You haven’t told me much about your childhood, but I know it was bad – I sense the insecurity in you. I want to wipe that out, make you feel as special as I know you are.’

  For some reason she heard the desire to control her in that statement, rather than to protect her. ‘That’s a lovely thing to say, Max, but I’d rather go on as we are for a bit longer. See how things pan out.’

  He got up and went over to the window. Without seeing his face she knew he was hurt, maybe even angry. How could she make him see that she had to be 110 per cent sure before she gave up this room that had been her haven for seven years? It was the only security she’d ever known. But Max couldn’t understand how she’d been when she first came here: he and his siblings had had a happy childhood, with parents who loved them. He’d never witnessed his mother being beaten to a pulp or felt the sting of a leather strap across his back as she had. And until she felt able to tell him all of that, how could they move forward to a future together?

  11

  Max slammed the door as he left at eight that morning and Amelia burst into angry tears. It had been their first real row, just as he was going off to Rugby for two days.

  Ever since he’d suggested moving and getting married, she’d noticed a change in him. It wasn’t her imagination: he was becoming controlling. So far it was all petty things that perhaps were unimportant. Suggesting she kept a notebook to jot down everything she bought, the money she put into the electric and gas meters so she could economize. He criticized her habit of buying fruit and veg from the Greek shop in the Goldhawk Road. He said it was cheaper in the market. As he’d been doing the shopping since she was attacked that hardly mattered, but to Amelia, Demetri in the Greek shop was a friend – she’d talked to him almost daily for seven years – and she hated Max referring to the place as the Wop Shop.

  He said she was to stop buying cleaning materials to use in the bathrooms and other common parts of the house, and indeed stop cleaning until the other tenants agreed to pay her to do it.

  Amelia had no intention of doing that. Maybe that was the way it should work, but she’d taken it upon herself to do the cleaning seven years ago. It was a bit late now to change the order of things and, anyway, she quite liked doing it. If they said they’d take turns to clean and then didn’t do it, she’d be unhappy about it.

  Max had also begun to tell her what to wear: her checked skirt was too short; she looked ‘brassy’ in her red jumper. Some people would say it was just his way of showing how much he cared about her. But a little voice in Amelia’s head was telling her to be cautious. She wasn’t going to ignore it.

  Last Sunday they were going to a pub in Shepherd’s Bush that did a good Sunday lunch and he told her to put on her blue wool dress. She didn’t like herself in it: she felt it was too tight and made her tummy look fat. He said that was silly and he liked her in it so she must put it on.

  That same day after lunch she stopped to speak to a man she knew from the market. He’d been taken into hospital with a heart attack recently and she asked him if he was better now and whether he was going back to his china stall. She spoke to him for just a few moments, but Max asked why she wanted to speak to a deadbeat like him. It was true, he did look a bit rough in a woolly hat and a shabby donkey jacket, but it was very cold and, anyway, what difference did his appearance make? She’d bought mugs, plates and other items from him over the last seven years – what sort of person would it make her if she didn’t ask how he was?

  On Tuesday night he said he wanted sausage and mash for dinner when she’d planned to make a new pasta dish. ‘You can do that tomorrow,’ he said dismissively. ‘I don’t fancy pasta tonight.’

  She told herself she was being hypersensitive, but she kept noting more and more of these incidents. Each one was nothing to get worked up about on its own, but put together, she could see he was undermining her decisions.

  The row this morning had begun when he’d said she must ring some estate agents while she was at work. He wanted details of houses selling for up to fifty thousand pounds in the Chiswick and Ravenscourt Park areas. ‘Two bedrooms and a garden,’ he said, not even looking at her.

  ‘Max, I did say I thought it was too soon,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Nonsense,’ he said, as if she was a naughty child. ‘I want to get onto the property ladder now while prices are low because of the state of the economy. It’s madness to wait. By the time you’ve made up your mind, the prices will have leaped up.’

  She didn’t like his tone when he said ‘by the time you’ve made up your mind’, the implication being that she was unable to make decisions quickly. She remembered the many times her father had belittled her mother in that way. In the end her mother couldn’t make decisions because he’d convinced her she was too stupid.

  ‘If you want to get on the property ladder you do so,’ she snapped. ‘Just don’t drag me into it.’

  ‘Are you wearing blinkers?’ he shouted at her. ‘Do you really want to stay in this crummy room for another year or two?’

  That did it.

  ‘Crummy room?’ she exclaimed. ‘I love this place, and if you don’t like it, don’t bother to come here any more. Get back to your own room, which is infinitely crummier than this one.’

  She saw a new expression on his face. His eyes darkened, he scowled, and he looked frighteningly angry.

  Backing away from him she caught her leg on the coffee-table and fell.

  ‘See what I mean? So much bloody rubbish in here you can barely move,’ he said.

  She asked how he dared to criticize her home and he said it was like a hippie junk shop.

  At that she told him to get out, picked up some clothes he’d left on a chair and threw them at him. ‘Take that “junk” with you too,’ she snarled.

  He grabbed his stuff and left, banging the door as he went.

  She was proud that she’d held back her tears till he’d gone. But now she felt as if she’d be crying all day. All this time she’d believed he was The One, daydreaming of a rosy future, having children, and growing old together, fulfilling all each other’s needs. But now she could see the flaws in their relationship. She’d fallen for a man who wanted and needed to be in charge. He wasn’t cruel, not the way her father was, but might he become so in time?

  Before she’d met and fallen for Max, if any friend had asked her what to do about a controller in her life, she would have advised her to get out of the relationship, as men do not change, even when they promise they will.

  But she couldn’t end it with Max: she loved him too much. The attack on her had meant she was unable to go out and interview any more women for Style magazine, and Jack had put her back on selling advertising space, saying she could write articles again when he thought she was fit for it. So Max had become her entire world.

  What was she to do?

  She had to pull herself together because at any moment her police guard would be knocking on the door ready to take her to work. She wiped her face with a damp flannel, ran a comb through her hair and put on some lipstick.

  Right on cue the front doorbell rang three times, the police’s signal. She put on her
coat, picked up her handbag and went down to open the door.

  It was PC Sam Hamilton, young, fresh-faced and boyish, with blond hair and blue eyes. He had told her on a previous occasion he was twenty-eight, but he looked more like twenty-one.

  ‘How are you today?’ he asked. ‘I’m stiff with cold and starving.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘It must be awful being out there in the car. I’m beginning to think it’s pointless and the Creeper’s lost interest in me.’ Sam opened the car door for her. ‘It’s all part of the job,’ he said, with an easy smile. ‘I’ll be fine after a bacon sandwich and a mug of coffee. Let’s hope whatever made you cry this morning can be fixed as easily.’

  Amelia was embarrassed that he’d noticed her puffy eyes. She’d thought she’d calmed them down. As he pulled away, he looked round at her. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. But I’ve got a sister, so I know when someone’s been crying.’

  ‘I hope you’re as good at detecting crime,’ she said, and smiled at him because he looked crestfallen.

  ‘I read your articles about the murdered girls,’ he said. ‘You write really well – I felt I knew them. Lucy seemed lovely, but reading between the lines, Carol sounded a real piece of work.’

  ‘I’d have put it in stronger terms, but it didn’t seem right to come out and say it. Now there’s another dead girl, and my theory about there being some connection between them doesn’t seem to hold water any longer. This one’s got dark hair.’ She paused for a moment and sighed. ‘Sadly I don’t think I’ll get a chance to stick my beak into Rosie and her family.’

  ‘Never mind about that. I’m only glad you weren’t another victim,’ he said. ‘You were lucky that couple came along when they did.’ He fell silent for a couple of minutes, then turned to her again when he stopped at the traffic lights. ‘Did you fight with your boyfriend? He came out of the house with a face like thunder.’

  ‘I can see why you joined the police, questioning everything.’