Harry blew smoke away from Jury and said, “Yes, I’d say death puts a damper on things. But it’s cheering to know you’re on the case.”
“What case is that?”
“Whatever case you’re on.” Harry lifted his glass, sniffed, and tasted it.
“I’ve just come from St. Paul’s,” Jury said, then asked himself, annoyed, why he had told him that. Hoping for some reaction. If Jury had said he’d just come down from the space shuttle or the Pleiades, it would make no difference. It was impossible to surprise a response out of Harry Johnson.
Harry looked at his watch. “They still hearing confessions at this late hour? Maybe I should go.” He smiled at Jury. “But I won’t. So what happened at St. Paul’s?”
“You’ll find out soon enough from the tabloids.” Jury twirled his wineglass, asked, “Where were you an hour ago, Harry?”
Harry shook his head. “Let’s see. An hour ago I was just going through Watford, I think.”
“Why were you in Watford?”
Harry said, “No reason, except I was out for a drive. I like to get beyond the Ring Road. Clears my mind.”
“Talk to anybody? Anybody see you?”
Harry signaled to Trevor, who came down the bar with a bottle wrapped in a napkin. He presented it as if it were a baby in a blanket. “Very pleasant Chassagne-Montrachet.”
That’s right, give yourself time.
Harry nodded, and Trevor set about uncorking it. He said to Jury, “Now. Did I talk to anyone? No. Next question: Do I have an alibi for the designated time? Alibi for what? There was a murder in the Lady Chapel? Was this another woman? Another tart-pardon me, escort?”
Jury didn’t answer. He shook his head when Trevor set a clean glass before him. “No, I’ve got to be going.” Trevor poured Harry’s.
Harry said, “So now it’s a serial killer. Superintendent Jury: do you honestly think I’d murder three women just like that?”
Jury smiled and slid off his chair. “I wouldn’t put it past you, Harry. Night.”
He headed for the door.
40
Early the next morning, Jury was in the Snow Hill station talking to Dennis Jenkins.
Jenkins said, “What else do we know about the first victim? Kate Banks? You talked to this woman”-Jenkins flipped open a folder on his desk-“Myra Brewer?”
“Right. But I still don’t think Kate Banks is the first; I think she’s the second. Stacy Storm-I think she was the first.” Jury produced a folder, copies of documents brought from Chesham. “Escort services, all three, and it seems different agencies. We can’t find the client who-I’m guessing here-Kate Banks was with. Anyway, according to the record, Kate hadn’t an appointment with a client that night. That’s what King’s Road Companions claimed. What about this Stacy Storm?”
“Also no client booked for the Saturday night. Of course, the usual blather about ‘client confidentiality.’ You’d think these women were all high-powered attorneys. Like what’s-his-name-Cochran? O. J. Simpson’s lawyer. He was guilty.” Jenkins rocked back in his chair.
“What?”
“O.J. He was guilty.”
“Probably, but unless he was Kate’s date, I don’t much care. The trouble is, I’ve got nothing when it comes to motive.”
Jenkins had come down in his chair and was leafing through the folder, stopping at a page. “You don’t think this might have been more than one killer?” Head still bent, he looked up at Jury from under his eyebrows. “No?”
“No. All three were working in the same job, and the killer used the same MO. They were all shot at close range.”
“Different guns, though, thirty-eight revolver, twenty-two automatic.”
“True. But it’s the range that suggests the victims were standing very close to their killer.”
Jenkins nodded. “As if the shooter’s body were pressed against Deirdre Small’s. If it wasn’t the boyfriend, or, rather, the client, then who?” Head down, arms folded tight across his chest, he considered. “Double Indemnity. Fred MacMurray shoots Barbara Stanwyck in the middle of a kiss. Great scene. But here…” He was tapping the folder Jury had just given him. “It wouldn’t have been that close.” He held up a morgue shot of Stacy Storm. “No, with the first victim there’d have been daylight between them.”
Jury liked that. “Not an embrace, then? Not close enough to kiss? But close enough to suggest the victim knew the killer. I mean, that these women would let the killer get that close.” He rose, said, “I’m going to have a word with our pathologist. Thanks.”
“What do you think? About the proximity of the two?”
The pathologist in this case was Phyllis Nancy; she looked up from the body of Deirdre Small and drew a sheet over her. She seemed puzzled.
“I could demonstrate what Jenkins is talking about if it would help.”
Phyllis gave him a look. Grow up.
Ashamed of his glibness in the presence of this girl, Deirdre, who would never stand close to anybody again, Jury said, “Sorry. I don’t seem to be on the right track lately.”
“I don’t see how you could be, what with worrying over Lu Aguilar. As to this…” She was looking at the police report. “‘You could have seen daylight between them’-what a lovely way of putting it. I think I see what he means, though: one bent over the other. Say the man’s already there, sitting at the table, when the woman comes along from the car park. ‘Hello. Hello, sweetie-’”
Jury smiled.
“I don’t mean you. I can see this Mariah Cox or Stacy Storm coming along to the Black Cat, walking over to him, saying hello, bending over to kiss or embrace him. The gun comes up and at an angle and fires into her chest. It’s a hypothesis, of course. But if it happened that way, yes, there would have been daylight between them. I see this Detective Jenkins’s point. Except it was nighttime. The shooters of these three women, then, were also their lovers.”
“Not necessarily. If the wounds suggest that kind of proximity, there are other people who might do the same thing: friends, relations. The wife of the Chesham detective claims that a heel mark was left by a Manolo Blahnik shoe.”
Phyllis was surprised and skeptical. “She thinks a woman did these killings? Well, of course a woman could shoot as well as a man, but somehow the psychology just doesn’t seem to fit.”
“I agree. And the heel print isn’t much evidence. But the embrace, if there was one, could’ve come from a woman. I’ve had friends clap me round the shoulders and hug me.” Had he really? He was trying to think up somebody-that is, besides Phyllis and Lu-and that thought pinched his eyes shut in a brief spasm.
“Richard? Something wrong?”
Phyllis was regarding him out of concerned and blameless eyes. That was one thing he liked, no, loved, about her. She didn’t judge people. He smiled a little and shook his head. “Thanks. I’ve got to get going.”
“All right. ’Bye.”
At the door he turned. “Good-bye, sweetie.”
41
All the while between the morgue and his office, Jury was trying to think of someone. Carole-anne? No. Mrs. Wassermann? Never. One or two children he knew. Gemma? Abby?
On his way into the office he grunted a hello to Wiggins, who was plugging in the electric kettle. Jury sat down without removing his coat. He picked up a paper clip and started bending it. He was feeling rather ill-used in his hugless universe.
Wiggins was looking at him, eyebrows dancing.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Jury punched in Melrose Plant’s number.
Ruthven answered in his most stentorian tones, then greeted Jury as if he’d been lost in a small craft off the coast of Scotland. The call was then overtaken by Melrose.