The Deepest Cut Read online

  Dr. Juliet Loss had given him a safe house. A hideout. Why?

  I played with the idea of kicking in the door and asking him, but I knew the timing was wrong. There were too many people, and if he didn’t answer, if I had to kill him, a lot of questions would remain unanswered. I knew where he was, and neither Dr. Loss nor he knew that I knew.

  Just like they didn’t know that I knew about Maria.

  I walked back to Whitechapel and hailed a cab. In the back, I looked at my watch. An hour had passed since I’d seen her go into Loss’ house. I wondered if she was still there. I wondered it for fifteen minutes before I pressed her quick-dial number. I got a message telling me her phone was switched off. I tried again ten minutes after that. It was still switched off. I got the cab to drop me at the end of the road and tried again. This time it rang and she answered.

  “Hey!”

  “Hi, you at home?”

  “Sure, why?”

  “Okay, I’ll see you in five.”

  When I arrived, she opened the door and gave me a warm kiss. I tried to respond but I wasn’t feeling warm and she must have sensed it. She managed to smile and frown at the same time as she closed the door.

  She said, “How’d it go? Did you find him?”

  I went to the fridge and pulled out a cold beer. I cracked it and looked at her a moment before taking a pull. I said, “Yeah…”

  She frowned with a little less smile and spread her hands. “So?”

  I sat at the table and took another pull. “So, he’s pretty crazy. He wasn’t surprised to hear that I had a message from you.”

  “What?”

  “I told him I had a message from Maria Vazques. I wanted to see how he would react. He knew who you were and he wasn’t surprised.”

  She went pale. That’s something your autonomic system does. You can’t fake it. She didn’t say anything. She just stared at me, like she was wondering what the hell to say.

  I said, “Do you know him?”

  Now there was no trace of a smile in her frown. “Of course not! Why ask such a stupid question?”

  I spread my hands and shook my head. “I’m sorry, Maria. I’m just trying to understand what the hell is going on. This guy attacked me. He is very violent and very strong. He knocked me about like I was half his size. And if he killed Eva and Sally, you are next on his list.”

  She swallowed and sat slowly at the table opposite me.

  I watched her a moment, trying to read her, then I went on, “He knew who you were. He wasn’t surprised to receive a message from you. He was surprised that it was me bringing the message. Now, I’m going to ask you one last time. Do you know this guy?”

  She stared at me a long time before answering. “Liam, I don’t know what the hell is going on, but whatever it is, we cannot let it come between us or damage our trust.”

  I nodded. “Okay, you’re right.” I took another swig and hated myself for setting a trap with my next question. “What did you do this morning, babe?”

  She smiled. It was a feeble smile. “Don’t be mad at me. I know you said I should stay in. But you remember I told you I’d made a friend? Well, I felt so frustrated and upset, and I really needed to talk to someone. She is an amazing listener and she called and asked if I wanted to have tea. I couldn’t resist. So I went over. I was really careful—”

  I cut across her. “Your friend is Dr. Juliet Loss?”

  She burst out laughing. “Don’t be ridiculous! No, she’s a dear old lady called”—her face went blank and she hesitated.

  I put the bottle on the table and rubbed my face. I was getting mad and trying to control it because I didn’t know who to be mad at. I said, “She called you and asked you to go over? Let me tell you something. You missed Anthony Cavra by about two minutes. After he beat seven bails of shit out of me, he went to see her. They were together for half an hour, and I was just tailing him to a safe house she gave him the keys to, when you turned up.”

  We were quiet for a moment.

  Then she said, “That means—”

  “How long before you arrived did she call you?”

  She put her hand to her mouth. She looked scared. She stared at me. “About twenty minutes.”

  “While he was still there.”

  “Liam… What the hell?”

  “Let me ask you something. This course you were looking into. Who runs it?”

  “Dr. Loss… She does…”

  “How did you meet her, baby?”

  She shook her head. “I…” She frowned. “We got talking at the whole food shop on Portobello Road.”

  “Did she approach you or did you talk to her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Think, honey. This is important.”

  She shook her head again. “I don’t know, Liam. I can’t be sure.” She stood and walked away to the window. “No! This is crazy! I refuse to believe it.” She turned to face me. “She is a sweet, caring, lovely lady. I won’t believe it!”

  “Believe what?”

  For a minute, it seemed as though she didn’t know what to say. Finally, she said, “That she is somehow involved.”

  I sighed and took a while pulling a Camel from my pack and lighting it. I blew out a stream of smoke before answering her. “Baby, she is involved. That isn’t the question. The question is, how? How is she involved?” I thought for a moment then asked her, “What did she talk to you about?”

  She shrugged. “Nothing… Chit-chat… How I was getting on… Liam?” Her face was drawn. She was frightened.

  I stood and went to her and took her in my arms.

  She said, “I’m frightened. What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know, babe, but I plan to find out.” I pulled back a bit and held her face in my hands. “Meantime, we have got to be much more careful. And by that, I mean you have to be much more careful.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  I went over and fell into an armchair. I took a long drag and let the smoke out slow. “There are too many uncertainties. Is it one killer or two? Is it Anthony Cavra or not? Is Dr. Loss involved or isn’t she? Are the victims chosen to draw me in or not? Are you a target or aren’t you? There isn’t one single damned thing I can pin down as a certainty.” I thought for a moment then crushed out my half-smoked cigarette in an ashtray. “So tonight, I am going to pin down at least one.”

  Throughout the afternoon, the sky had turned black and the thermometer had risen to thirty-eight Celsius. As evening fell, it had started to rain again, torrential sheets, like there was an army of avenging angels up there with giant hoses. Maria had sat herself in front of the TV with a vat of Ben & Jerry’s, occasionally picking up the remote and flicking to a different channel.

  At one point, I kissed the top of her head from behind and told her, “Hey, it’s going to be okay.”

  She’d smiled up at me and said, “I know.” It was the sweetest lie she’d ever told me.

  She was watching the news. It was a special report on an Anglo-American initiative on clean energy and the fusion reactor they were building in Wales—the one del Roble had tried to kill so he could control Europe’s energy through Andalusian oil. The Minister for the Department of Environmental Regeneration was talking.

  “The reactor at Llyn Celyn will not only provide us with clean energy well into the next millennium, it will put us in a position to sell energy—totally clean energy—to the whole of northern Europe. Naturally, the EU wants to be a part of that, and that’s why they want to write the software. But, sorry. The fact is that we want to do what is best for Britain. And best for Britain is that the software is written in Silicon Valley by the Institute for the Climate and the Environment. They happen to be the best, and we want the best—the best for Britain.”

  I zoned out and looked at my watch. It was seven-thirty p.m. I put on my Driza-Bone coat and hat, kissed Maria and told her not to open the door for anyone, then made my way down into the deluge.

  The street
s were practically empty. You had to be crazy or desperate to be out in this. Maybe I was both. I drove slowly, and the wash from the tires was like the wash from a tanker in the night. It took me an hour to get to Spitalfields. I turned off Whitechapel onto Castle Street. The light from the street lamps seemed to hang above the road, without ever penetrating down into the shadows. I crawled up as far as Tyne Street and turned in. When I could see into Tyne Mews as far as number three, I killed the engine and the lights. The drumming of the rain on the soft top was deafening, and the water spilling over onto the windshield made it impossible to see. I cracked the window far enough so I had a clear view of his house. Down the road, that water had gotten into one of the lamps and it was buzzing and flickering like it was about to die. I peeled a fresh pack, stuck a Camel in my mouth, lit it and waited while I thought.

  Loss was his therapist. I knew that much. Cavra’s broke and he can’t pay her, but she’s a dedicated pro, so she lets him work at the college in exchange for therapy. Then Eva gets killed and I show up asking questions. She profiles the killer at my request, having seen the forensic report, and, after Sally gets killed, she knows he fits the profile like a glove. What does she do?

  The simple fact was that I didn’t know. I figured she’d had a session with him, but what had gone down in that session was anybody’s guess. What I did know was what had happened when I’d called her and told her I’d found him. She’d called him and told him to meet her at her house. Once there, she’d given him the key to this place. Why? And while he had still been there, she’d called Maria, the third girl, and told her to come over for tea. Why?

  They were questions I couldn’t answer without more information. And what I couldn’t decide on right now was the best way to get that information. My instinct was to go in and beat it out of him, but with a crazy like Anthony, that could just drive him deeper into his own craziness. The other option was to wait and follow him. But if Maria was his next prey and he didn’t know where she was, there was no telling how long I’d have to wait before he made a move—unless I used her as bait. And there’d be icebergs in Hell before I did that.

  So, that left a third option. Go in, grab him by the scruff of his neck and take him to Dr. Loss and have it out with both of them, right there in her house. She could give him up and have him sectioned, or I could hand him over to Russian Pete. Her choice.

  I flicked the butt out into the rain and climbed out of the car. The water was almost ankle-deep around my boots and beginning to spill onto the sidewalks. I waded through the discarded trash from the market with the dull, flickering light from the street lamps twisting and breaking on the ripples. I walked into the mews, fishing my lock picks from my pocket. It took me fifteen seconds then I entered silently.

  There was a narrow hall with a flight of stairs straight ahead and a door on the right. I got out my pen torch and shut out the rain behind me. The door on my right led into a small living room littered with boxes and bags and old junk that had once meant something to somebody. Now it was here because it didn’t mean anything to anybody, but no one was ready to throw it away yet. I pushed past an empty printer box and a clown on a bike then through a door into a kitchen with a linoleum floor. There were no dirty plates or glasses. The sink was dry and the whole place smelled of musty rot. I made my way back to the top of the stairs.

  They creaked. All stairs in old English houses creak. And even if you try to step on the outer edges, they creak. These creaked loudly in the dark, and after two steps, any hope I had of surprising him was gone. I paused and listened. There was not a sound in the house, except the patter and splash of the rain outside. I climbed the remaining stairs to a small landing with three doors. There were two bedrooms and a toilet. I guessed the back room would be his. I stepped in and flipped on the light. It was a single bulb in a fly-blown orb that gave a depressing, pallid glow. The bed had been lain on. Two of the drawers were taken up with a pair of jeans, two sweatshirts and four pairs of socks. The third drawer held three scrapbooks. Each had a name written in thick black marker pen—Eva, Sally, Maria.

  It was too easy. I opened each one and looked through them. There were photographs of the girls taken at the college, in the street, outside their homes. Shots taken from far away as well as close-ups of their faces, where he must have used a telephoto lens.

  I sat on the bed and began to go through them in order. They started out with pictures taken at the college, usually with a group of people. He’d written some sentimental poems, idealizing them. Then the pictures were in the street, mostly from a distance, at bus stops or Underground stations.

  There was Eva going into Pete’s apartment block, getting into her dad’s car and, beside these pictures, poems about how their love—Anthony and Eva’s—would set her free from her prison. Then there were pictures of her at the Albert Hall bus stop and in Hammersmith, going in to Mark’s house. A picture of Mark and Eva kissing near the river, looking radiant and happy then the tone of the poetry changed. It was about how she was blinded, unable to see the truth, but how he knew that his love would soon set her free. How her words were, unwittingly, like barbs that tore at his heart. How her own heart was frozen, but his love would melt it.

  And the last page was horrific. Close-up pictures of her face, scrawled over in red felt pen—bitch, whore, slut, betrayer of love, die.

  The Sally scrapbook was pretty much the same. It started out with fantasies of a relationship of love between them that would set her free, though he never said free from what. Then—as before—the tone changed. She was blind to her own love of him, but it wasn’t her fault. He would save her, open her eyes and her heart to her own love. And, finally, with the realization that it was nothing but a fantasy, the horrific outpouring of hatred and violence.

  I picked up the scrapbook titled ‘Maria’. I didn’t want to open it. There was a hot, smoldering pain in the pit of my belly that flared into a hot rage when I turned to the first page. She was there, talking to Steve, laughing. She was putting on a helmet to get on the back of his bike. The poetry was the same, badly written, naïve, self-indulgent. The next pages were of Maria entering Dr. Loss’ house and standing on the stoop, talking to her, then at the front door of our apartment block on Church Street. The poetry was still at the stage where she was blind to her own feelings, but his love would liberate her.

  I was finding it hard to think straight. All I wanted to do was find him and put the poor bastard out of his misery. Instead, I dialed Loss.

  She answered, “Dr. Juliet Loss.” Her voice was cool.

  I didn’t waste time. “I’m at number three Tyne Mews looking at Anthony’s scrapbooks. The way I see it, I have two choices. I tell you to come here now and explain to me what this is all about, or I call Russian Pete and tell him to come here so I can explain to him what I think it’s all about.”

  There was a long pause. “Where is Anthony?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Have you done anything to Anthony?”

  “I’m waiting, Doc. What’s it to be?”

  “I’ll get a cab. Wait for me there. Please, don’t do anything stupid.”

  I hung up.

  I picked up the scrapbooks and started going through them again, more slowly, searching for content, for details. I noticed sometimes the poems were written especially for a particular photograph, but sometimes they were reused. That seemed odd. Eva, he called a slut and a whore after he had seen her and photographed her with Mark. But there were no photographs of Sally with another guy. In fact, there was no indication at all of what had made him turn against her. Maybe he’d spoken to her and she’d rejected him. But when I tried to imagine Anthony talking to a woman about his feelings, it didn’t gel. And that got me thinking about Anthony on the bus with Eva. How the hell did he persuade her to get off with him? And where the hell had he killed her? That got me thinking about timing. I pulled a Camel from the pack and sat staring at it. The timing… There was something wrong with the tim
ing.

  A noise downstairs made me put the thought on the back burner. The door closed softly and the stairs creaked. I glanced at my watch. Forty minutes had passed since I’d called Loss. A couple more creaks and the door pushed open.

  She stood in a wet rain mac and hat, dripping water on the floor and staring at me. She said, “I do not appreciate being ordered out on a night like this and threatened with violence, Mr. Murdoch.”

  I wasn’t in the mood for being a wiseass. I said, “You want to explain to me why you gave Anthony Cavra a safe house? You want to explain to me why you phoned Maria and told her to come and have tea with you, while he was still in your house collecting the keys? And while you’re at it, Juliet, you want to tell me why you befriended her and encouraged her to go to Birkbeck to study psychology, where you had Anthony running errands for you and selecting his victims, and you never told her who you were? You want to explain all that to me, Juliet?”

  She sighed and shook her head and pulled her waterproof hat from her head. “Oh, please, don’t be so melodramatic.”

  “You can explain it to me, or you can explain it to Eva’s father. He’s got a real taste for melodrama. It’s your choice.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me and for a moment seeming real mad. “Don’t threaten me, Murdoch!”

  I stood, stepped over to her and looked down into her face. “I just did, Juliet, and I’m waiting. Are we going to talk or are you going to talk to Russian Pete and his friends?”

  She just stared up at me.

  I took a step closer, so we were touching and our faces were just an inch apart. “And, while we’re on the subject of threats, let me tell you something. If you or Anthony hurt Maria, I will do things to you personally that would make Pete break down and weep like a little girl. Do we understand each other?”

  She broke out of her stare and sighed again. “I need a cup of tea.”