Liar Page 18

  ‘Thank you for that.’ Amelia smiled. ‘And bless you for the pink roses you brought along before. That was such a kind thought. I hope Max wasn’t too rude to you.’

  ‘He’s a man,’ she replied, as if that explained anything he might have said or done. ‘I don’t think he was ever right for you.’

  ‘At the start I thought he was perfect,’ Amelia said sadly. ‘I really believed we were the ideal couple and we’d live happily ever after. But maybe I wanted that so badly I forgot to look closely. It’s astonishing how many women can fool themselves when they fall in love.’

  ‘I’m not sure I believe in falling in love. I think it’s a combination of lust and liking. If we could put aside the lust and concentrate on how much we like the new man, maybe then we’d find Mr Right.’

  Amelia shook her head. ‘Kat, I’m beginning to think there is no such thing as Mr Right. And for the time being I don’t bloody care. I’m happy to spend my evenings watching Coronation Street, The Prisoner, or even Dixon of Dock Green. And to catch up with some reading. But you haven’t told me what’s going on in your world.’

  ‘Nothing much,’ Kat said, and pulled a face. ‘I got taken out the other night to dinner at the Ritz. Nice man but I think he’s married. At least I had a lovely dinner.’

  ‘I can’t imagine going somewhere as grand as that,’ Amelia said. ‘I’d be afraid I’d give away my White City origins.’

  ‘You’d be fine being presented to the Queen,’ Kat said, reaching out to pat Amelia’s cheek. ‘You have a natural charm. I’m so sorry you’ve been in the wars – first that bang on the head and then Max turning on you.’

  ‘You’ve been a good friend, Kat,’ Amelia said. ‘I really appreciate it. Once my face is normal again and they’ve caught the real Creeper, because I’m positive it isn’t Max, even if his real name is Brian, we must have a night out, and I’ll buy you dinner – not at the Ritz, of course, but maybe the Chinese down at Shepherd’s Bush Green?’

  ‘Fish and chips out the paper would be good with you,’ Kat said. ‘But why do the police think Max is the killer?’

  ‘Appearing at the scene of the first crime, being dodgy chatting me up, evidence he’s told a lot of lies about himself. I don’t see that any of those things are evidence. But he was supposed to be working away at the time of the last two murders. I don’t know yet if they’ve checked out his alibis.’

  ‘Don’t you think him turning violent with you is the really suspicious thing?’ Kat said.

  Amelia thought about that. If Max was guilty it must have scared him when he got home to find a policeman in the house. But surely that would stop any normal person being violent? ‘I really don’t know, Kat. He lashed out at me in anger. The Creeper doesn’t seem angry – he does his work calmly, almost like an assassin.’

  ‘That’s a good word.’ Kat sniggered. ‘Perhaps he should be called the Acton Assassin. I like the sound of that, a person killing to order.’

  ‘Don’t!’ Amelia shuddered. ‘Creeping is bad enough. Someone killing coldly to order, like a job, is even scarier.’

  ‘I’m going to leave you with that thought.’ Kat laughed. ‘I’ve got to get dolled up for a date tonight. If you need anything send your guard dog across to me with a message. But not tonight!’

  Amelia listened to Kat’s footsteps on the stairs and the front door closing behind her. She suddenly felt very alone, and nervous.

  16

  Each morning Amelia looked at her black eye in the hope it had disappeared overnight. But no such luck. It had gone from black to purple and now, five days later, it looked yellow. At least it no longer hurt. She wished she could say the same about her stomach. The bruise there had spread and faded. But if she moved quickly or bent over it felt like a new blow.

  Max was released on bail for the assault on her and bound over so he couldn’t go near her. But there was not enough evidence to hold him on triple murder, and the police were still trawling through his life to find out where all the money they’d found in his room had come from. It transpired that, rather than being an accountant, he was just a clerk in an insurance company, and the amateur dramatics society he claimed he belonged to didn’t exist. Amelia realized that almost everything he’d ever told her was a lie, and that stung. Why would anyone make up such stories? Surely they knew that eventually they’d be found out. Where was he when he’d told her he’d gone to Rugby or Luton? Another girlfriend, or was he up to something criminal?

  But what puzzled her more than anything else was why he’d suddenly turned so nasty. Was he just bored with her? Had something she’d done or said triggered it? Or could it be, as Peanut had suggested, that as he’d watched her becoming successful as a journalist, he’d grown increasingly jealous? After all, when they’d first met, she’d been what she described as a ‘gofer’, and hadn’t imagined she’d rise above that station.

  If he was back living in his own room, she hadn’t seen him. She wished she could get him out of her mind because, ridiculous as she knew it was, she was worried about him. She was scared too, of course, but she couldn’t help wanting to know how he was coping after being arrested.

  She saw Sam every couple of days, either driving her home or taking her to work. He said they were still following a few lines of enquiry in the murders, but everyone was fed up with so many dead ends. He said many of his colleagues still believed Max was the killer, but he was quick to point out they’d found no evidence at all, no murder weapon or blood on clothing. Max had lied and said he was out of London for both of the last murders when in fact he was in a pub in Hammersmith, and the landlord there confirmed it. So there was nothing to warrant charging him with murder. Sam said he didn’t think Max was clever enough to cover his tracks so well.

  But today Amelia was going to see Miss Briggs, the Guide mistress, with Peanut, and she was hoping a clue to something else would come out of it.

  She took great care with her makeup, blending a concealing cream around her eye, then working foundation over it. By the time she’d finished the bruising didn’t show, but she looked like she was wearing too much makeup. It would have to do. A week was long enough to wait, and she wondered if not telling the police about this photograph amounted to ‘withholding evidence’, which was a criminal offence.

  Peanut arrived for her at nine thirty as she’d arranged. ‘You look nervous,’ he said, as she got into the car.

  ‘I am,’ she admitted. ‘Not just because I ought to have given the picture to the police, and admitted to Henry Lark that I had it, but also because I intend to tell lies to Miss Briggs, making out I’m writing a background piece on Rosie.’

  ‘In the big scheme of things a few lies hardly matter,’ Peanut said, as he started the car. ‘The parents of Lucy and Rosie need to see someone punished for their deaths, all the police involved are demoralized, and ordinary people need to feel it’s safe to walk around. I’d like to see you skipping off to get the bus again, to know you can go shopping or meet friends for a night out. If we can get a step nearer to that today, I don’t care what whoppers you tell.’

  ‘Just don’t look at me if I say something you know isn’t true or I might blush,’ she said. ‘But feel free to come in with any questions you think of – we’ve said you’re a senior journalist mentoring me during my training.’

  Miss Briggs lived in one of the smaller terraced houses close to Bedford Park. The front garden was neatly enclosed with a white picket fence that made Amelia think of Anne of Green Gables. It was good to see spring bulbs poking up through the soil, and she guessed that in another month the garden would be bright with flowers.

  A very slight young woman wearing an overall opened the door. ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘Miss Briggs is expecting you. I’m her cleaner.’

  She showed them into a sitting room at the front of the house. Miss Briggs was sitting by the window with a tabby cat on her lap and had perhaps been watching them get out of the car.

  ‘Do come in and sit do
wn. Mrs Calder will bring us coffee in a while.’

  ‘I’m Amelia White,’ Amelia said, and walked over to the older woman to shake her hand. ‘And this is my mentor Mr Phelps. He has come, as was explained to you, as part of my training.’

  Peanut shook hands and they sat down on the two armchairs closest to Miss Briggs.

  She didn’t look frail – in fact, she looked like she could have been the warrior queen Boadicea. With wide shoulders, a proud stiff back and a remarkably unlined face for a woman who must have been at least seventy, even her gold-rimmed glasses looked light and youthful. But her hands gave away the Parkinson’s: they shook as if they were blowing in the wind and she clutched them together, perhaps to hide the insistent tremor.

  ‘I believe my editor told you that I wished to write an article about Rosie Lark, as I did about the other two murdered girls,’ Amelia said. ‘We hope it might prompt people to remember something they’d seen or heard, and it helps the families to know their girls have not been forgotten.’

  ‘Very laudable, though I hope some of my memories won’t hurt her parents’ feelings,’ Miss Briggs said. She had a voice that matched her appearance, strong with a cut-glass accent. ‘I remember Rosie Lark well. When she first joined my Guide company, she was a joy, keen to learn new skills, anxious to get her badges, so helpful. I remember wishing all the girls had the same attitude. But, as I’m sure you know, when girls get to thirteen or fourteen, they often become wilful.’

  ‘Rosie became wilful?’ Amelia repeated, sounding surprised. ‘I got the impression she was Miss Goody Two Shoes.’

  ‘Her parents were of that opinion too.’ Miss Briggs pursed her lips. ‘I don’t wish to speak ill of her, for obvious reasons, and in her defence, I think she was led into challenging behaviour by another Guide.’

  Amelia got the black-and-white photograph out of her bag. ‘Was this other Guide one of these girls?’ she asked.

  Miss Briggs took the photograph right up to her glasses to peer at it. The seconds ticked by and Amelia braced herself to be told she wasn’t.

  ‘I apologize for taking so long,’ she said eventually. ‘I was trying to place where this was and who the other girls are. But I’ve got it now, at least in part. This picture was taken at Windsor Great Park, in 1957. A world camp to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of Baden Powell’s birth. The girls with Rosie weren’t in my company, but they came from somewhere close to here, so they stayed with us and we mixed them up with our girls in the tents. The idea was to encourage new friendships. Rosie got embroiled with them, and another girl called Hilary.’

  ‘Do you think the other two girls could have been called Carol and Lucy?’ Amelia’s heart began to thump with excitement.

  ‘By Jove, yes, that’s right! Carol and Lucy. Lucy was a sweet girl, but not the other one. She was a little witch.’

  ‘You don’t recognize them as the other two victims of the murderer they call the Creeper, then?’ Peanut asked.

  Miss Briggs looked at him indignantly. ‘Why would I? I don’t read the gutter press, or even watch television. If I’d seen pictures of these two as adults, I doubt I would’ve known them. I only know about Rosie’s death through local gossip because she’s notorious in Chiswick for being a model. The parents are extremely well known, too.’ She paused, suddenly stricken. ‘All three of the girls killed?’ Her voice was softer now with shock.

  Mrs Calder came in with a tray of coffee in a china pot, cups and saucers and some coffee and walnut cake. She put the tray on a side table and asked Peanut if he would pour it. ‘Don’t fill Miss Briggs’s cup to the top, or she’ll spill it,’ she whispered to him.

  Peanut did his duty, winking at Amelia as he handed the older lady her coffee. ‘Cake for you, Miss Briggs?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, yes, please. Mrs Calder always makes lovely cakes, but coffee and walnut is her star turn.’

  She drank a little of her coffee, holding the cup very carefully, then ate her cake with relish. ‘Mm, scrumptious,’ she announced. ‘Now back to business. All three girls were killed?’

  ‘Yes, and you’re sure the girls in the picture are Rosie, Lucy and Carol?’

  ‘Absolutely. Hilary took the picture – I remember Carol shouting at her to make sure it was a good one. She was often nasty to Hilary.’

  ‘Mr Lark implied that Hilary was a bad influence on Rosie.’

  Miss Briggs snorted in derision. ‘The other way round, if anything. Hilary was a bit gormless and plain, you see. The three girls used to tease her so I had to step in sometimes to say that wasn’t the Girl Guide way. Hilary had moved to Chiswick not long before that summer camp. I seem to remember she was staying with an aunt or a foster mother because of some problem at home. I’ve no idea what became of her. She came to our Guide meetings for a few weeks before the camp, and I never saw her again.’

  ‘Do you have any contact with the aunt or foster mother?’ Amelia asked.

  Miss Briggs shook her head. ‘She died at least ten years ago. When I gave up as Guide mistress, I lost touch with so many people. Folk can’t be bothered with the old, you know. They think we’re all feeble-minded because we walk with a stick or get a bit deaf. In my case it’s Parkinson’s, but there’s nothing wrong with my other faculties.’

  ‘I can see that.’ Amelia smiled. ‘So this teasing, was it nasty?’

  ‘I saw Hilary in tears a couple of times, but then she was the kind to cry at anything, so I didn’t take much notice. But that girl Carol was a real piece of work. To my shame, I would say she might have been hurting other girls without any of us adults noticing as she was very crafty. None of them would have told tales either – I think they were too scared of her. I’d say she was responsible for Rosie becoming nasty.’

  ‘Rosie turned nasty?’

  ‘Yes. Nothing drastic, but disappointing in such a previously nice girl. She definitely aped Carol.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any idea of which Guide company Carol or Lucy was in?’ Peanut asked.

  ‘None at all,’ she said. ‘I knew they were both in West London, might have been Hammersmith, Acton, anywhere. Back then almost every church had a company attached to it.’

  Miss Briggs was silent for a little while. ‘Tell me,’ she said eventually. ‘Do you think the killer picked these three girls for some particular reason?’

  ‘Yes, we do, but until you confirmed you knew all three, we didn’t know what the connection was. Can you think of a reason he’d want to kill them?’

  ‘We’ve come a long way from you wishing to write about Rosie,’ she said archly. ‘You could have told me the real reason you wanted to speak to me. I’m not gaga yet.’

  Amelia blushed. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Briggs. I suppose I thought you wouldn’t want to talk to me.’

  ‘So you thought you’d soften me up with an article on Rosie? Well, let me tell you, I like straight talking. If you’d come in here, shoved that photograph under my nose and asked who the three girls were, I would have told you. But perhaps your so-called mentor here has taught you that all journalists lie to get a foot in the door.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Briggs. I didn’t mean to offend you. You see, I’ve been convinced there was a common link between the three girls right from the start. But I couldn’t find it and the police didn’t take me seriously.’

  ‘So where did you get that picture from?’ She peered over her glasses, reminding Amelia of her old headmistress, who always put the fear of God into her.

  ‘In Rosie’s room.’

  ‘You stole it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  To her surprise, Miss Briggs laughed. ‘Good for you, and if it helps solve the murders then God will surely forgive you for theft and telling lies. Now clear off, but let me know when the murderer is caught.’

  Once they were outside Miss Briggs’s house, Peanut began to laugh. ‘She was a fantastic old bird. As sharp as a razor.’

  ‘So sharp we nearly cut our own throats,’ Amelia said, a
s she got into the car. ‘What chance have we got of tracking down this Hilary?’

  ‘We don’t even attempt it,’ he said. ‘We go to the police station right now. Show them this photograph and explain there’s a link. Then we leave it to them. We can’t do any more, Amelia, so take that look off your face.’

  ‘I’ll have to own up that I nicked it, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes, but they searched Rosie’s room before you went there and didn’t find it, so they should applaud your thieving.’

  On Saturday Amelia got out of bed listlessly. The whole weekend loomed before her with nothing to do, no one to do it with, and the sun was shining as if spring was on its way. She and Peanut had called in at the police station after visiting Miss Briggs. They had handed over the photograph as proof that there was a link between the girls and told them that it had been taken by a girl called Hilary.

  The police sergeant they spoke to didn’t seem very impressed – he didn’t even ask how Amelia had got it. As she and Peanut left the station, Amelia said it would probably be shut in a file and would never see the light of day again.

  At home later, she looked out of the window and saw her guard was Graham, a boring, bald guy in his late forties. On both occasions he’d driven her to work she was glad when they’d got there because he’d talked about fishing the whole journey. Who on earth was interested in fishing? Apart from other dull men who liked sitting by a river for hours and called it a sport.

  So, Graham was not going to be a diversion from boredom. She wanted to go out, to the market, or to a pub, shopping, anything rather than be caged where she was.

  She washed and dressed, but only because that made her life seem normal. She put the radio on and danced around the room to ‘I’ll Never Fall In Love Again’ by Bobbie Gentry, but wished it was a more upbeat song, like ‘He’s No Good’ by Betty Everett, when she could roar out the words and feel better for it.