Читать книгу The Dragon's Skin - Ross Gray - Страница 18

The house was a single-storey, double-fronted terrace house, with a narrow garden and a picket fence. It was painted in bright colours and looked like something Noddy might contract from Bob the Builder. It didn’t look like something the man she met in the pub would inhabit.

Carol pushed open the neat picket gate. It swung without a squeak. She walked up the short brick path and stepped onto the decorative tiles of the verandah. They looked to be the same vintage as the house. So did the ornate brass knocker. When the door opened in swift response to her knock she had the feeling her approach had been observed.

She didn’t know what she’d expected. The ebullient but enigmatic Detective Sergeant Marks had left her with the impression she would be confronting her doppelganger when she finally met his wife, the other Carol. Physically at least, nothing was further from the fact.

She, Carol Porter, was average height, maybe shading toward the shorter end of the range. Her hair was auburn, maybe shading toward the redder end of the spectrum. Her eyes were green, shading to deep emerald. And, as had been established on more occasions than she cared to count, she had the face and figure of a soap opera soubrette. Unfortunately.

Carol Marks was tall, close to one hundred and ninety centimetres Carol Porter guessed. She was whippet lean with the taut, stringy gauntness of a long distance runner, or an alcoholic who is narrowly prevailing in an endless war of attrition. Her smooth skin vacuum-sealed the sinew, muscle and bone of her face. It was almost translucent over the strong ridges of her brow and nose and cheeks. A fine intaglio around her eyes rippled into a fan of deep crinkles when she smiled. Her hair was crimped and fine and cut close, a silver skullcap burnished on her head. At first Carol thought she was face to face with the first platinum blonde she’d ever met. Then she discerned the silver threads amongst the gold – far outnumbering the gold. Carol Marks was greying prematurely.

Hers was a face that wouldn’t be described as beautiful or pretty when she was Carol Porter’s age, but was growing handsome with the years. It was a face that was striking, a subtle aesthetic alchemy of complexion, hair and her eyes. Her eyes were deep violet. Her wide mouth stretched in a smile that disappeared into deep furrows cutting an arc from where the short blade of her nose flared. When the smile faded the lines etching her face dissolved like a stagelight illusion. But at the moment the smile was still there.

‘The other Carol I presume,’ Carol Marks said to Carol Porter. She wore faded jeans and a huge yellow woollen jumper that might have been one of her husband’s. It bunched in thick folds around her wrists and hung off one shoulder revealing a black bra strap. She hitched it up, thrust out a long arm and took her visitor’s hand. She had a firm grip. ‘Come in, come in,’ she added, stepping back and drawing Carol across the threshold. ‘The place is a mess,’ she said as Carol followed her down the hallway. ‘But then it always is.’

It didn’t look particularly messy to Carol, just kicking back in a comfortable disorder. It was cosily warm and smelt like fresh bread. The interior was just as colourful as the exterior but the combinations of hue were more subtle and restful. They passed down the dark hall, through a bright skylit open area with a glistening kitchen on one side and a lived-in living room on the other, and emerged into a small glassed-in area with cane furniture, cushions in primary colours, a jungle of flamboyant plants and a stone-flagged floor. It faced north and the rays of the sun turned it into a bio-slab of the Kimberley. Thank God, thought one of the Carols, natural warmth at last.

There was a round glass-topped table laid out for afternoon tea. ‘Let me take your coat,’ said her hostess. ‘Hmm. Bit chilly for you down here?’ she added, appraising the coat. ‘Coffee? Tea?’

‘Love some coffee,’ said Carol, as she shrugged off her outer layer.

‘I hope you like blueberry muffins,’ said the other Carol and she and the coat disappeared back into the house. ‘Got some in the oven. Should be ready.’

‘Yum!’ Carol called after her. She wandered to the glass-paned wall. The garden looked like a bush block that was yet to be cleared for development. There could be a lost tribe living in there.

‘Here we are,’ she heard from behind. She’d been daydreaming, soaking up the sun, and had lost track of time. Her hostess was unloading a plunger of coffee and a steaming plate of huge muffins from a tray onto the table. She made her way over and sat facing the sun.

‘Well,’ breathed Carol Marks as she settled in the chair opposite. She had placed her body to take advantage of the sun also, but angled obliquely toward her guest. She turned her face to the woman across the table and placed her violet gaze very deliberately on Carol.

‘Thank you very much for giving me your time,’ said Carol. ‘Neville said you wouldn’t mind. I hope that’s true.’

The face opposite crinkled again. ‘Skid was tickled that I agreed,’ she said. ‘Have a muffin.’

‘Skid?’ queried Carol through an eruption of steam, as she cut into the muffin.

‘The academy mob from our intake call Nev that.’

‘Why was he so pleased about you speaking to me? Have you avoided shop talk since you retired?’

‘I didn’t retire.’ Carol Marks’s face was smooth as marble. ‘I was invalided out.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ So the reformed alcoholic observation was spot-on, Carol Porter thought complacently.

‘I’m schizophrenic,’ her hostess stated, her voice as flat as tarmac. Before her guest could react she added, ‘We seem to have it under control at the moment. I haven’t had a psychotic episode in over a year. Your visit is a bit of a test. In the past I haven’t reacted well to reminders of my former life. That’s why Skid was pleased: it meant I felt strong. But,’ she leaned over and pushed down the plunger on the coffeepot, ‘I’m schizophrenic. That’s the context of this information you’re getting. It’s only fair that you know.’ She picked up the pot and began pouring. As she slid the full cup across she smiled. ‘It helps me too, if it’s out on the table. I’ll leave the milk and sugar to you.’

Well, stick that up your prim little ego, clever boots. Carol didn’t know what to say in response to the frankness. She decided the woman across the table sought neither comment nor sympathy. ‘I don’t think there’s any reason to doubt the reliability of the witness.’ She smiled and took a sip of coffee. ‘Hmm, good.’

Then the other Carol took her by surprise again.

‘What is it that interests you so much about this sordid affair?’ she asked, fixing her with those violet lights. ‘Is it the case, the crime, the criminal – or the cop?’ She took a large bite out of her muffin, chewed and mumbled between squirrel cheeks. ‘Or do you just want to be top of the class?’

‘Well,’ Carol said, a little too defensively. ‘They’re all part and parcel aren’t they?’ But she didn’t think the violet eyes were fooled.

Carol Marks’s lips tweaked in a thin, wise smile. ‘You’re going to all this trouble so that in your paper you can argue the contract killer theory as an equally viable solution, dazzle them with your analytical brilliance, and take big fat credits home to WA that will justify their faith in you?’

‘Something like that.’ When she heard it from her namesake’s mouth, as a raison d’etre, it did sound a little reedy.

The other Carol’s smile stretched wider and her eyes glittered with a crystalline sharpness. ‘You know the murder statistics of course,’ she said. ‘Most murders are committed by someone who knows the victim. They’re the easy ones. We solve almost all of them. Even if we can’t get enough material evidence to make a case in court, we usually know who did it. Random, motiveless killing is harder. But it’s usually uncontrolled, unplanned, sloppy, and nine times out of ten someone dobs the killer in. Underworld killings?’ She shrugged. ‘Well, that’s more a case of who we know than what we know.’ She paused to sip her coffee.

Carol watched her eyes over the rim of her cup and said nothing. She knew she was rehearsing this as a prologue to something else. And she kept saying ‘we’.

‘Then there’s our serial killer. Apparently random, if we can’t detect the pattern. Nothing but a symbolic connection to the victim, and then, only in the fantasies of the killer. The best we can hope for is that he wants to get caught or we get lucky. We have to wait until he’s killed so many that he becomes over-confident, someone who knows him smells a rat, or we accumulate enough data to identify or anticipate him.’ She took another muffin from the pile and began to pull it gently apart, popping bite-sized pieces in her mouth. ‘There are so few serial killings in this country that they hardly register as a statistic.’ She popped another piece of muffin. ‘Of course, contract killings aren’t top of the pops either.’

Carol was doing a detective training course, she felt a sudden urge to show and tell. ‘Two percent of total murders,’ she said a little hurriedly. ‘According to recent research,’ she added feebly, as is if in apology for interrupting. The other Carol just smiled at her. ‘There’s between about seven and ten contracts a year in this country.’ There was still no response from across the table. She ploughed on. Much too breathlessly, she noticed. ‘Most of those aren’t cool professional hits. They’re usually crimes of passion. Someone in a broken relationship hires an amateur – occasionally a professional – to knock off a partner or the ex or the third party. Only about five contract killings per year are successfully completed. They’re usually professional ones.’

‘So,’ said her hostess. ‘You would argue that the statistics favour a “contract killer” hypothesis over a “serial killer” hypothesis in the Jogger Murders case?’ She flipped another bit of muffin, chewed, smiled, and said, ‘Interesting.’

Carol began to wonder about her motives. Was the case an itch this wo­man could no longer reach? And was this tête-à-tête an audition for the role of back scratcher? If it was, Carol Marks’s next words implied that she’d won the part.

‘They weren’t treated as serial killings until the fourth murder. That’s when we got involved,’ she began. She sounded like an officer launching a briefing.

‘Fourth?’ Carol interrupted. ‘I thought there were only three.’

‘Officially, yes. But we – the three of us in Davy’s little group – always thought of it as four. Davy postulated that another, earlier, murder was part of the picture. He suggested that it was … practice.’ She faltered as if challenged by some memory or association. ‘A sort of dry run.’ Her smile was narrow and bleak. Her eyes were no longer cut-and-polished amethyst but dull stone. Her head tossed as if to shake cobwebs away then she leaned forward in her chair, renewed.

‘To begin at the beginning,’ she said. ‘Davy – Skid said you’ve met him?’ Carol nodded. ‘Davy was the lead on the third – or fourth – murder. Once the similarity to the others was established, and they were officially connected and recognised as serial killings, a taskforce was established. Davy and the detectives investigating the other murders were subsumed into it under Bruce Tolliday, a senior sergeant. Bruce was plodding, but always well organised, very careful, very thorough. You probably gathered that when you read his report. He was far from persuaded by Davy’s theory, but he held a high opinion of his ability, and Bruce wasn’t one to let a stone remain unturned. He gave Davy the green light to pursue his own line of inquiry and allowed him a couple of uniforms for the legwork. That’s where we came in, Jac and me.’